Holy Cross Monastery Sermons : 2026

Sunday, April 12, 2026

The Second Sunday of Easter, April 12, 2026

Br. Scott Wesley Borden

The Second Sunday of Easter, April 12, 2026

Click here for an audio of the sermon

Here we are on the Second Sunday of Easter – a Sunday that has been traditionally a bit under-loved. In the Anglican tradition it is sometimes known as Low Sunday... It does pale a bit sat next to Easter. And yet there is some important work for this Sunday.

The Gospel Reading has the disciples hiding, as they seem to do a lot these days, in fear of the authorities. The disciples have reason for fear – it is these same authorities who crucified Jesus. Peter, in particular, has lied through his teeth to deny Jesus, so great was his fear. Fear is a big part of our Easter experience, but not a highlight...

Jesus comes to the disciples and presents them with his wounds. Well – that is to say, most of the disciples. Judas is gone. And Thomas is off doing something. So, Thomas misses the close encounter with the wounds. He also misses the first stirring of the Holy Spirit when Jesus breathes on them. These days it is not too clear, but back then Spirit and Breath were absolutely understood to be the same thing. In word and deed Jesus covers the disciples with the Holy Spirit.

Apparently, Jesus makes a quick exit as we hear nothing more from him for the time being. Jesus goes and Thomas returns. The disciples immediately tell Thomas that they have seen the Lord. Thomas seems not to believe them – and why should he. What they are telling him is impossible. He declares that if he doesn’t see the wounds for himself, he will not believe.

But the next week, when the disciples are once again hiding behind a locked door, Jesus appears – this time with Thomas present. And Jesus makes the first move – he goes right to Thomas and invites him to examine the wounds, even to go so far as to put his fingers in them. John does not tell us if Thomas took up Jesus on this offer... but Thomas is completely convinced.

It's an interesting thing that Jesus knows exactly where Thomas needs to be met. No challenges. No confrontation. Just Jesus essentially saying I know what you need... come see my wounds for yourself. Our loving God in the person of Jesus meets us where we need to be met. Not necessarily where we would like to be met; or in the way we would like to be met; or in the way we find most comfortable.

Sadly, for Thomas, this interaction with Jesus has come to almost totally define his identity – Doubting Thomas. Over about two thousand years Thomas has become the embodiment of doubt, even perhaps an archetype. And yet his actions are quite reasonable. He just wants the experience that the others had – they saw the wounds...

John is a bit vague in the narrative. Is Thomas doubting Jesus? Is he doubting the resurrection? John never tells us that. I suspect what Thomas is doubting is the trustworthiness of his fellow disciples. He doubts that they have seen Jesus. And let's be honest – the disciples have not exactly distinguished themselves as the most trustworthy folks on the planet recently.

Does Thomas earn his nickname “Doubting”? Who can say with any certainty. What we can be certain about is that he takes his faith seriously. Jesus asks “do you believe because you have seen? Blessed are those who have come to believe and yet have not seen.” That would be us – and so I think we owe thanks and gratitude to Thomas.

So, what do we think Thomas may have come to believe? The most obvious answer is that Jesus is Lord and Savior. What might that mean?

Well, it's not all that long ago, last Thursday – Maundy Thursday – to be clear, that Jesus gave us a mandate for how to believe. Jesus called it a new commandment, but in fact it was, even then, a very old commandment: Love one another. The new part is how Jesus clarifies: as I have loved you, so you are to love one another. This is how we are to be known as followers of Jesus. It follows that if we don’t love one another that we cannot be known as followers of Jesus.

But John’s Gospel is not through telling us about love... A few brief chapters later Jesus tells us that if we love Jesus, we will keep God’s commandments. All of this occurs as part of the telling of the Easter story. Clearly John has linked Easter with love. And it would seem we are called to do the same. God so loves the world that his son, his only begotten son, is given to us.

But this year part of the story has hit me a bit differently. Jesus and the Spirit and God are one, so their experiences must be one. Jesus comes to dwell among us so that we can gain experience of God, but also so that God can gain some experience of what it's like to be human, truly human. Our response is to crucify Jesus.

But even after that, God still loves us. God, it seems, handles rejection better than we do... We have done our very best to rid ourselves of God. Not only have we failed, but we have failed to change God’s love toward us. God’s call to us is still that we love God and love our neighbors and ourselves. This hasn’t changed since the Book of Genesis. But at the same time, it appears that we haven’t changed either.

In much of the Hebrew Scripture, our response to anything we didn’t like was to fight. And sadly, that hasn’t changed much either. When I was born the Korean War was mostly over, but in fact, technically, North and South Korea are still at was. On the heels of that came the Vietnam war. Then the Cold War, the war on drugs, the war on poverty, the war on crime. War seems to be our go-to answer for whatever we perceive as a problem.

This way of thinking defines our culture – just as it defined Roman culture in Jesus' time. It pushes our thinking into sorting our world into friends and enemies. But Jesus call to love our enemies notwithstanding. We prefer to crush our enemies. Where is the love in that?

In the so-called war on poverty, poor people were enemy adjacent. But the super-rich were not. And yet, the unjust conditions that create poverty are surely not caused by poor people. Bill Gates and Elon Musk have much more to do with creating poverty than all the poor people in the world.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King made clear that as long as we fight in a model that has winners and losers, the fighting can never end. For it will always be up to the winners to defend their stuff and the losers will always be driven to try to become winners... It's a horrific cycle that we have seen play out many, many times.

But the call of Easter is to break that cycle. And the tool that we must use is love. It is the tool that Jesus gives us. It the only tool that Jesus gives us.

Thursday, April 2, 2026

Maundy Thursday, April 2, 2026

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Randy Greve
Maundy Thursday, April 2, 2026

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Liturgy is the means by which we are renewed in faith in the present moment by remembering salvation history. Days of remembrance are ever the same and ever new. Into this remembrance, this history, we bring our present lives - griefs and hopes as well as the longings of people whom we remember who are hungry, who live in places of war, who are victims of oppression - Christ is with them and us in this moment. We share in the hope of the apostles and saints through the ages who groan for salvation - for life in the reign of justice and peace that is promised and in which we share even as this world is passing away.

Once again, the witness of Christ in his passion is proclaimed to our lives and to the world as the heart of our Lord’s self-emptying love for us. But that witness raises questions. What does Maundy Thursday have to do with today? Does the Jesus movement have anything to say to our nation and world which are volatile, uncertain, chaotic, and ambiguous? How might remembering our stories inform our disagreements about the meaning of justice and freedom in this political atmosphere? Many are processing how to cope with the time faithfully. It is stressful. We seek relief, resolution. And where there is chaos, there is temptation.

Before us in our collective life are two great temptations. One is to become zealots and fight for our side. The other temptation is to tune it all out. Some Christians have succumbed to the first temptation - they know who is right, who is wrong; they know the country needs defending from its enemies, whatever the means. Jesus is cast as the sword-wielding warrior who will come to bring divine wrath on the enemy. Some have given into the second temptation and view their faith as a defense against the call of the moment, a vacuum untouched by outside events, a way to go numb, regress into a bubble of isolation and illusory safety. Jesus here is cast as the detached mystic, only concerned with the life of the soul. So which will it be? Catastrophize or opt out? Is there not another way? Yes, yes there is, actually. It is staring us in the face.

Jesus has spent four days in the temple teaching and confronting the corruption of the oppression system with pointed and confrontational language and action. The tension has been building, the plot forming, the opportunity has come. In the garden, tonight, they will enact their plan to destroy this dangerous troublemaker from Galilee. Jesus knows what awaits him. Perhaps he considered saving his own life with violence or sparking the rebellion against the Romans that some around him wanted. I wonder if Jesus was tempted to slip away under cover of darkness toward Bethany or Emmaus or Jericho -wait until tempers cooled, keep a low profile in the countryside until Jerusalem was safe.

In the upper room, Jesus is a marked man. He knows this is his last night, a final few hours with the disciples before everything changes. We are gathered on this night to remember what he did and why it matters. We remember what he did not do. He did not fight. He did not leave. Instead, he shared a meal. He prioritized relationships. He gave us bread and wine - his very self in perpetual remembrance. Our call is as simple and revolutionary as that -a steadfast focus on what is ultimate and our allegiance to Christ: When the zealots declare that the sword is the way, we gather around a table. When the church seduces us into factions and divisions, we gather around a table. When the politicians want to sell us strife and blame, we gather around a table. We do not fight. We do not escape. We gather, we receive, we celebrate, we remember. We answer the chaos around us by being stable, reliable, orderly, and clear in our identity and our calling.

This gathering is no mere sentimental routine. When we gather, we participate in making present the outward and visible sign in bread and wine that declares Christ is alive and present and is the way to the life we most long for. Sacraments are not additives to life; they are windows into the very nature of reality. This gathering meal we call the Holy Eucharist is the sign that love will triumph over hate. The forces of division and malice may have their days, but those days are numbered; evil is marked for destruction. How like Jesus that it is a table of remembrance and sharing - even while the forces of tyranny and violence were right outside - a table that becomes the way the world is changed, that new life and new community come into our world?

Every time we gather in a Eucharistic community, we are committing to do what Jesus did in the face of anger and despair, when tempted to rage or escape. We are disrupting the fundamental structure of empire. Coming to the table is our act of renunciation of the forces of evil and division, it is declaring that we will not be defined by or aligned with the demonic powers of cruelty in word or action. Jesus' way to relate to the powers of evil is to expose, renounce, subvert, but never retribution, never harm.

When you come to receive Holy Communion, you are choosing life and resolving that you will not be bowed in fear or provoked to vengeance.

God exists in an “eternal now”. This is how in speaking about the Holy Eucharist we speak of one table, one offering, one priest. Here the Church is what it always and eternally is - one. At the table we join heaven and earth, past and future, this old earth and the new heaven and new earth into one singularity of the gift that is eternally offered to us and through us as long as the sun and moon endure. This is a foretaste of heaven where there is no conflict and no hiding. But we must meet the requirements to come - we open our hands empty and stand side by side with brothers and sisters. We belong to one another, and any other story about who we are is a lie. Our testimony is that we are still here. We are not leaving. Christ is our vindication. We come to the table again and again because we are hungry and this is where we are fed, and the Lord who loves us is happy to feed us with himself abundantly and eternally. Amen.

Sunday, March 29, 2026

The Sunday of the Passion/Palm Sunday, March 29, 2026

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Robert Leo Sevensky, OHC

The Sunday of the Passion/Palm Sunday, March 29, 2026

Isaiah 50:4-9a

Philippians 2:5-11

Matthew 26:14- 27:66

Click here for an audio of the sermon

We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you, because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world. Amen.

As a self-confessed liturgy nerd and a closeted anglophile, my eyes were glued to my computer screen this past Wednesday as I watched the installation service of the Most Reverend and Right Honorable Dame Sarah Elisabeth Mullally as the 106th Archbishop of Canterbury. It was a deeply beautiful and moving service, filled with joy and tenderness. And of course, with glorious music and Anglican pomp and ceremony. But for me the most touching point came at the very beginning when the new Archbishop was welcomed at the West door of the Cathedral.

Three children from a nearby school met her there saying: We greet you in the name of Christ. Who are you and why do you request entry?

The archbishop replied: I am Sarah, a servant of Jesus Christ, and I come as one seeking the grace of God, to travel with you in his service together.

The children then asked: Why have you been sent to us?

The archbishop again: I am sent as Archbishop to serve you, to proclaim the love of Christ and with you to worship and love him with heart and soul, mind and strength.

Then the children asked: How do you come among us and with what confidence?

And the archbishop simply said: I come knowing nothing except Jesus Christ and him crucified, and in weakness and fear and in much trembling.

The children then invited her and us saying: Let us then humble ourselves before God and together seek his mercy and strength.

“I come knowing nothing except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” These are, of course, words echoing those of Saint Paul, and if we are to be servants of Jesus Christ, they need to be our words as well. But these are not easy words. They are perhaps the most difficult words in scripture, especially for us contemporary folk.

Recently the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts developed a revised service for Palm Sunday, a revision allowed as well in this Diocese of New York. The revised service changes the focus totally to the triumphal entry of our Lord into Jerusalem and moves the reading of the Passion narrative to the very end of the service…indeed, to after the service. And it makes the reading of the Passion narrative entirely optional. The intention behind this change is not unworthy. It recognizes that our Passion narratives, each different from the other, have often been used or misused to promote anti-Judaism. And it provides a pastoral note explaining the reasoning behind this change, a pastoral note worth reading aloud:

“On Palm Sunday it is a tradition to proclaim the passion narrative so that Jesus Christ’s love for all is made clear. Over time, this narrative has been used to promote anti-Judaism. The responsibility for the suffering and death of Jesus Christ cannot be attributed, in either preaching or teaching, indiscriminately to all Jews of that time, nor to Jews today. The Jewish people should not be referred to or represented as rejected or cursed by God, as this claim cannot be found in Scripture. Christians must remember that Jesus, his mother Mary, and his early disciples were Jewish. We must affirm the long-standing teaching of the church that Jesus Christ entered into suffering and death by his own free will as a sign of God’s saving and reconciling love to the world.”

I get it. We know that it wasn't accidental that Jews in Central and Eastern Europe and elsewhere felt the need to be especially vigilant and perhaps invisible during the Christian Holy Week when pogroms and other forms of anti-Jewish violence became more common. But I do wonder whether avoiding these difficult texts, these Passion narratives, is the best way to engage them. Could there be other reasons operating here? Dean Andrew McGowan of Berkeley Divinity School at Yale, reminds us: “…we actually have no immediate access to the events of Holy Week other than via these texts. Other versions of this story we offer will be our creations and mirror our sensibilities.”

Could it be that our sensibilities include a real desire to avoid or forget the cross in all its scandal? Are we any different from those mentioned by Saint Paul in his First Letter to the Corinthians who find the cross a scandal, a folly and an embarrassment? The Reverend Vincent Pizzuto, a theology professor and pastor of Saint Columba’s Episcopal Church in, of all places Marin County, argues that this may be the deep truth about us. And not just us but American Christians generally. What the American church wants today, he says, is spiritual uplift, divine intimacy, ‘emotion devotion’--but please, God, not the cross. Anything but the cross. He continues: “Don't we, after all, secretly find all that gibberish about sin, divine wrath, judgment, suffering, sacrifice just foolishness from a bygone age? Vestiges of an archaic (even barbaric) worldview from which all of us undoubtedly bear some collective moral responsibility to unshackle the church in favor of a more enlightened values not centered on the cross but sanitized of it?” He quotes the famous line from Richard Niebuhr’s 1959 book The Kingdom of God in America: “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a Kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a Cross.” I doubt that Niebuhr, as wise as he was, could have foreseen churches which leap over Good Friday or who exalt a so-called ‘creation spirituality’ which has no place for the cross.

The cross is a scandal precisely because it holds up a mirror to the human heart. And, as Father Pizzuto says: “… what the cross will reveal with ruthless honesty is that the line between good and evil is never between us and them, but traverses straight through every human heart."

I'm not saying that we are more church-y or advanced because we read Matthew’s Passion narrative here this morning. It's easy even here, maybe especially here, to glide over the historicity and nitty gritty of it and make it a piece of light opera. Nor are we more advanced if we have a nicely developed theology of the cross, because in truth there are many theologies of the cross. Just as each of the gospel narratives of the Passion has its own theology of the cross--today in Matthew the cross is presented as fulfillment of prophecy, on Friday when we hear John's Passion we encounter a theology of the cross as glorification. There is no one theological explanation of how the great act of Godly love that we celebrate this Great and Holy Week leads to life and light and hope. Certainly not— forgive me—a literal substitutionary theory of the atonement. There will always be questions and divergences about the meaning of the cross, but not about its power to transcend time and help us see ourselves and our present world in its light, transforming that world and being ourselves transformed through it and by it, and being liberated and saved by its mysterious Truth.

Then the children asked: How do you come among us and with what confidence?”

And the Archbishop replied: “I come knowing nothing except Jesus Christ and him crucified, and in weakness and fear and much trembling.”

We must all come this way, or else we shall never arrive at all.

Amen.

Sources:

McGowan, Andrew. “The Passions of our Lord Jesus Christ—March 24, 2026” https://abmcg.substack.com/p/the-passions-of-our-lord-jesus-christ

Pizzuto, Vincent. “Passion Sunday—April 13, 2025” https://www.vincentpizzuto.org/post/the-overture

Wednesday, March 25, 2026

The Annunciation of our Lord Jesus Christ to the Blessed Virgin Mary, March 25, 2026

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Ephrem Arcement, OHC

The Annunciation of our Lord Jesus Christ to the Blessed Virgin Mary, March 25, 2026

Click here for an audio of the sermon

Listening to the Infancy Narrative from Luke’s Gospel in snippets may be necessary for liturgical worship but much is missed when we don’t see the whole canvas on which Luke paints his grand, programmatic overture. But when we do see the whole, we begin to appreciate Luke’s rhetorical and theological strategies. And, in this case, what stands out among them all are the series of contrasts he makes between the birth of John and the birth of Jesus. His point is clear: while comparisons with John are understandable, they ultimately and woefully fail because in Jesus God is doing something utterly unique…something no one has ever seen before…not even dared to imagine.

Between the two birth stories many elements are shared: the angelic visitor, the proclamation, the overcoming of a human deficiency (age and barrenness in the first instance, youth and virginity in the second), and a sign to legitimate the prophecy. Because the form of the angel’s statement in each case is so similar, the difference in content concerning the identity and role of the respective children attracts the reader’s eye. John will be great before the the Lord, but Jesus will be Son of the Most High. John will prepare a people, but Jesus will rule the people. John’s role is temporary, Jesus’ kingdom will never end. John is to be a prophet, but Jesus more than a prophet: he is Son of God. John will be “filled with the Holy Spirit,” but the overshadowing of the Spirit and Power will make Jesus “the Holy One.” The full meaning of these epithets become clear only in the course of Luke’s narrative, but from the start the reader is prepared to see in Jesus something far more than a Davidic king.

Luke expands his theological vision by also drawing contrasts between Zechariah and Mary. In contrast to Zechariah, we notice, Mary holds no official position among the people, she is not described as “righteous” in terms of observing Torah, and her experience does not take place in a cultic setting. She is among the most powerless people in her society: she is young in a world that values age; female in a world ruled by men; poor in a stratified economy. Furthermore, she has neither husband nor child to validate her existence. That she should have found “favor with God” and be “highly favored” shows Luke’s understanding of God’s activity as surprising and often paradoxical, almost always reversing human expectations.

Mary’s mode of response is more positive than Zechariah’s. Instead of his “how shall I know,” which is a demand for proof, Mary simply asks how the promise might come true in the light of its obvious roadblock, her virginity. When the angel makes clear that not human actions but divine power will effect this birth, she responds in obedient faith as powerful as the response spoken later by her son in the garden before his death, “let it be with me according to your word.”

Finally, there is the contrast in signs. Zechariah is struck mute, but Mary will magnify the Lord in song.

Yet, even as this overture comes to an end and the themes have been clearly introduced, no human ear will be prepared to hear or apprehend the chords struck and melodies developed by the Gospel’s end, and we, too, will sit awestruck like Mary before Gabriel wondering how can this be?

The Annunciation of Our Lord Jesus Christ by the angel Gabriel to Mary, the maiden of Nazareth is, then, about the total subversion of all norms and customs and paradigms. Nothing that has come before can contain this new thing that God is about to do. Except two things…a faith that is open to discover new wonders and an imagination wild enough to contain it. And its Mary, not Zechariah, who serves as our guide to this expansive faith and wild imagination.

Mary, then, is the archetype of how God’s new thing, God’s kingdom, comes into our world and establishes itself. Several points can be made to help us follow her example and live into this archetype.

First, we should be open to surprises from God. Pope Francis used to always say that God is full of surprises. So, we need to develop a contemplative gaze so that we don’t let them pass us by. Mary had that contemplative gaze and open heart that didn’t let this divine theophany pass her by.

Second, we should listen with humble reverence to what God is trying to tell us. “Listen, my son, to your master’s instructions, and attend to them with the ear of your heart.” To listen humbly with a burning desire to know, to understand, and to put what we hear into practice is the proper posture of the Christian disciple and monk.

Third, we should never allow our circumstances to limit the power of God. Though Mary knew she was a virgin, she had a faith that God was bigger than her circumstances and not constrained by her limitations. “For nothing will be impossible with God.”

Fourth, it is not a lack of faith to seek clarity like Mary. It is a lack of faith to doubt the power of God like Zechariah. Reason should be a handmaid to faith, not its substitute.

And fifth, we should consent whole-heartedly to the mystery of God’s message and come to know the implications of it through pondering it in our hearts.

Through the movement of this five-fold process a uniquely Marian spirituality is developed. Every Christian is called to be a God-bearer and to birth the divine life into our world. We do this just like Mary did through this process of openness, deep, reverential listening, faith in God’s power, the acknowledgment of our own limitation, and the contemplation, or, in this case, gestation, of God’s word.

Yet, this Marian spirituality remains part of the overture to Luke’s programmatic prophecy. The story to be told is not ultimately about her. The events of her life, at this point in the story, foreshadow a similar, yet altogether greater, event about to unfold.

The two other lessons for today’s feast point also to this utterly new thing that God is doing, not just in Mary but more specifically in Christ. Hebrews quotes Psalm 40, “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me…. Then I said, ‘See, God, I have come to do your will.…’” The old order of worship is abolished in the establishment of the new in the offering of the body of Jesus Christ as a sacrifice for sin once for all. Isaiah captures the utter newness of what God wants to do when God insists on giving King Ahaz a sign: “Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.”

The feast we celebrate today is the feast of new beginnings. But, let’s be clear, it’s new beginnings of a very special kind. This is not about renewal; nor about reform. This is about the birthing the unimaginable…about putting human ingenuity and control aside and letting God be God. This isn’t just another feast that marks the changing of the seasons of time. The Feast of the Annunciation is more like a turning point in history…the turning point of time itself. For here, in the womb of this humble maiden, the eternal, transcendent, all-holy God bears a human face…to be seen, known, and embraced…but, also, with the possibility of being despised, rejected, and spat upon. In the Annunciation, God becomes Immanuel in daring, vulnerable immediacy, and the Word becomes flesh, and God speaks directly to the human heart.

What will the human response be to this appearing? This is the fundamental question which each of the Gospels pose to those who read them. Luke, here in the Infancy Narrative, as he will do throughout his two-volume work, interrogates us with this question. Will we be like Mary who responds in humble faith? Or will we be like Zechariah who doubts, only to come around after much rationalizing? Or will we be like those to come who will reject him altogether? For, as he will soon put forth in Simeon’s address to Mary, “Behold, this child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel….”

Today different paths ahead now open up before us in this feast of the turning of time, and Mary and her Son show us the way to proceed forward. Luke’s Gospel, his good news to us, is that heaven and earth are becoming one in this new, decisive in-breaking of God to humankind…and God is in search of some who will give their unequivocal fiat, their whole-hearted “yes” to this summons. God’s power plus our “yes” equals a new creation…one where the dust of the earth is transfigured and can bear the face of God. Will you dare to believe? Will you, too, out of the dust of your life come to bear the face of God?

Sunday, March 22, 2026

The Fifth Sunday in Lent, March 22, 2026

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Bernard Delcourt, OHC

The Fifth Sunday in Lent, March 22, 2026

Click here for an audio of the sermon

Today’s gospel is, at its heart, about the act of believing. In John’s gospel, belief is never a noun, never a static possession to be stored away. It is always a verb — a living, active, ongoing commitment to who Jesus is and what God is doing through him. And in the raising of Lazarus, that act of believing is brought to its most dramatic test.

Let us begin with what is perhaps the most startling detail in this long passage: Jesus deliberately delays. He receives the urgent message from Mary and Martha — “Lord, he whom you love is ill” — and he stays two days longer where he is. He is not indifferent. We are told plainly that he loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. Yet he waits.

Why? He tells us himself: “This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” And then, almost shockingly, “For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe.”

God’s timing is not our timing. The delay is not abandonment. It is, in fact, preparation — an invitation to a deeper believing than the disciples, Martha, and Mary had yet imagined possible.

Martha meets Jesus on the road. Her words are grief-stricken but also theologically precise: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” Even now. There is a faith clinging to life in those two words, even though the rawness of her loss.

Jesus responds with what is, in John’s gospel, the climax of his great “I am” sayings. There are seven of them in this gospel — seven, the number of completeness and divine fullness in the scriptures. “I am the bread of life.” “I am the light of the world.” “I am the good shepherd.” And now, here at the tomb, the seventh and final declaration: “I am the resurrection and the life.”

This is the summit. In the Bible’s symbolic language, seven signifies wholeness, a finished work. These seven “I am” sayings together constitute Jesus’ complete self-revelation as the human face of divine fullness. And the resurrection and the life is the fullest revelation of all: Jesus is not merely a prophet who speaks of life, nor a healer who restores health. He is the very source and substance of life itself.

Notice, too, where this declaration falls in the sequence of Jesus’ seven signs — his miraculous works in John’s gospel. The first sign was the turning of water into wine at Cana (John 2:1–11), a quiet, almost hidden act of abundance at a wedding feast. The signs grew in scope from there: healing the official’s son, the paralyzed man, feeding five thousand, walking on water, giving sight to the blind. Each sign pointed beyond itself to the glory and identity of God’s Son.

And now the seventh sign: the raising of Lazarus. The climax of the signs matches the climax of the “I am” sayings. Both sequences find their fullness here, in this moment, before this tomb. It is as if the whole of John’s gospel has been building to this point: the demonstration that Christ holds sovereignty over death itself.

Martha understands resurrection. She believes in it. “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day,” she says. She has the theology right. She knows the tradition, the hope of Israel. But Jesus gently reorients her: resurrection and life are not only a future promise for the end of time. They are a present reality, standing right in front of her.

This is one of the most important correctives in the New Testament. We Christians are indeed a resurrection people — we live in hope of the life to come. Jesus himself promises in John 6:40: “This is the will of him that sent me, that everyone which sees the Son, and believes in him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day.” That promise is real and sure.

But the raising of Lazarus insists that God’s power to bring life out of death is not only reserved for the final judgment. It is available here. Now. In the midst of grief and stench and stone-sealed tombs. God is already in the business of resurrection. Our dead places do not have to wait for eternity to come alive.

Then comes one of the most tender moments in all of scripture. Mary falls at Jesus’ feet, weeping. The crowd weeps with her. And Jesus — the one who is the resurrection and the life, the one who already knows what he is about to do — is “greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.” And then: “Jesus wept.”

The shortest verse in the Bible. And one of the most profound.

The crowd says, “See how he loved him.” But there is more being said in those tears than personal grief over a friend. The Son of God weeps in the face of death. He does not remain aloof from human sorrow. He enters into it. He who is the resurrection and the life allows himself to be undone by the weight of mortality, by the tears of those he loves.

In the passion narrative we are now approaching, in Holy Week, this same Christ will enter his own death. The Lazarus story is a manifest prefiguration of what is to come: the death of Jesus and the new life that will burst from the sealed tomb on Easter morning. Lazarus comes out still bound in his burial cloths. Jesus will leave his burial cloths behind, neatly folded.

But before the miracle, there is resistance. Martha, still grieving and perhaps frightened, protests when Jesus orders the stone removed: “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” It is an entirely reasonable objection. There is no good reason to open that tomb. There is nothing left inside but death.

Jesus says: “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?”

This is the shape of faith in John’s gospel. We do not first see the glory and then believe. We believe, and then we see. Faith is not the reward that follows evidence. It is the posture that opens our eyes to the evidence that is already there. The stone has to be moved before Lazarus can come out. And sometimes, we have to be willing to roll away the stone before we know what God will do next.

What are the sealed tombs in our lives? What are the places that have been shut, that stink of old death, that we have stopped approaching because there is surely nothing left there worth hoping for? A relationship that ended badly. A vocation that collapsed. A grief we cannot seem to get through. A part of ourselves we have buried because it hurt too much to keep alive.

The God who raised Lazarus is the God who stands before those sealed places in our lives and says: take away the stone.

Not because we have it all figured out. Not because we are certain of what will happen. But because the one who calls himself the resurrection and the life is present, and he is not finished with us yet.

In John 20:29, after the resurrection, Jesus says to Thomas — the same Thomas who here at the Lazarus story said, “let us also go, that we may die with him” — “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” That word is addressed to us too. We have not seen the raising of Lazarus with our own eyes. We have not watched the stone rolled away or heard the voice cry out. But we are invited into the same act of believing that John’s entire gospel exists to evoke.

We are a resurrection people not because we have all the answers about what comes next. We are a resurrection people because we have staked our lives on the one who says “I am the resurrection and the life” — and who has shown us, in Lazarus, in his own rising, and in countless small resurrections in human lives across twenty centuries, that this is true.

So today, as we enter the final stretch of Lent and turn our faces toward Jerusalem, let us ask ourselves: Where do I need to hear the voice of Christ calling me out of the tomb? Where is God asking me to take away the stone, even when I am afraid of what I might smell when I do?

The resurrection and the life are not waiting for the end of time. He is here. He is calling. And he says to us, as he said to those standing around Lazarus: “Unbind him and let him go.”

Amen.

Thursday, March 19, 2026

The Feast of Saint Joseph, March 19, 2026

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Francis Beckham, OHC

Saint Joseph, March 19, 2026

Click here for an audio of the sermon

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable to you, O God, my Creator and my Sustainer. Amen.

Among the many rites and ceremonies contained in the Book of Common Prayer is a service of Thanksgiving for the Birth or Adoption of a Child (page 439). As envisioned in the Prayer Book, “the parents, with other members of the family, should come to the church to be welcomed by the congregation and to give thanks to God.” The book further states that, “it is desirable that this takes place at a Sunday service,” such as the Eucharist or morning prayer.

In the section concerning adoption, there is a moment where the priest, holding or taking the child by the hand, gives the child to the parents, saying:

“As God has made us his children by adoption and grace, may you receive [this child] as your own son or daughter.”

The service concludes with a Trinitarian blessing over the family, part of which bids, “May God the Son, who sanctified a home at Nazareth, fill you with love.”

With these relatively few words and simple gestures, the Church publicly affirms, celebrates, and blesses the bonds of family in a profoundly sacramental sense. A child, begotten and beloved by God, is entrusted to people with whom they may or may not share a biological bond, to be nurtured, protected, taught, and – above all, loved – in no less than the very same way in which God loves. Here, an adoption ends and a family begins.

I think this beautiful little ceremony models quite well how God desires all of us to treat one another, regardless of whether we’ve ever adopted or been adopted in the usual sense. And I also think it really captures the faithfulness of Saint Joseph in his role as Jesus’ earthly adopted dad. Although the gospels don’t record any of Joseph’s words, their accounts of his, Mary’s, and Jesus’ family life – and certainly of Jesus’ adult life and ministry – speak volumes about how much he accepted and loved Jesus as his own child.

From Saint Matthew’s gospel, which we heard at Matins this morning, we know Joseph was a righteous man. That is, he was committed to living the way he believed God wants us to. So, when he found out Mary was going to have a child who wasn’t his, he sat down and had a good, long think about the best way to proceed. On the one hand, Joseph knew he needed to honor the law, but on the other hand he genuinely wanted to spare Mary from shame and suffering. A quiet separation seemed like the best way to go, until an angel reassured him that all would be well, and he should still marry her and raise the child as his own. And we know from various gospel accounts that Joseph did indeed take the angel’s command, as well as his parental role, very seriously. There was the Nativity, in which Joseph went to great lengths in difficult circumstances to find a safe place for Mary to give birth to Jesus; then there was the flight into Egypt, a perilous journey Joseph undertook to protect his family from Herod’s murderous violence; there was also the Presentation, in which he and Mary brough Jesus to the temple to fulfill the law, and where Jesus was recognized by people who were expectantly awaiting Israel’s messiah. And then, of course, there was the family’s annual trip back to Jerusalem for the Passover.

In today’s story from Saint Luke’s gospel, we find the Holy Family making one of these yearly Passover pilgrimages. Presumably, this had become pretty routine for them by this point, and so Joseph and Mary feel comfortable letting Jesus – now twelve years old and, religiously at least, an adult – travel in the company of his friends and siblings while they walk with the other grownups. When they finally realize Jesus isn’t in the group, they do what most parents would: initially freak out (probably) and immediately begin backtracking. Their exhaustive searching eventually leads to the Finding in the Temple, where they’re stunned to discover Jesus engaging with the teachers.

Mary, understandably, confronts their son, telling him how much anxiety this has caused her and Joseph. It’s in this line, I think, where we come about as close as we can to hearing Joseph actually speak. While we don’t know exactly what words he used, we know he was a worried, panicked parent. Whatever any of us thinks we’d say in a similar situation, Joseph probably said it, too. I really wonder what went through Joseph’s and Mary’s heads when Jesus responds, basically, that it’s no big deal and they obviously should’ve known where he’d be anyway. I can imagine Joseph thinking, if not actually saying, “Oh, I know exactly where you need to be, mister! At home! With your mother and me! In Nazareth!”

Whatever the exchange, it seems Joseph and Mary’s relief at finding Jesus far outweighs any anger they may have been feeling and, with Mary treasuring all these things in her heart, the three return to their home in Nazareth, where Jesus would spend the rest of his youth “increasing in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.”

This is the last we really hear about Joseph. Scholars figure he probably died by the time we meet Jesus again in his early thirties more than a decade later, as he begins getting ready for his public ministry. But while Joseph may have been physically out of the picture, I think his influence remains present as ever.

I suspect it’s there in the way Jesus gathers his own adopted family of disciples. I also think we catch glimpses of Joseph whenever Jesus shows mercy to people society doesn’t think deserve it, like the Gerasene man afflicted by demons or the woman about to be stoned for adultery. He heals and corrects, but he doesn’t condemn – and I’ll bet he learned that from Joseph, a person we know was both genuinely righteous before the law and profoundly caring toward others. And then there’s Jesus with the little children; and when he calls anyone who does the will of God in Heaven his family. And let us not forget his great priestly prayer in chapter seventeen of Saint John’s gospel, where Jesus makes intercession for all of us (yes, that includes you, me, and everyone else, ever) before God, whom he is completely comfortable relating to as a son, as if he really knows from experience what it’s like to talk with a truly loving father. Then, at last, on the cross, when Jesus tells Mary and John that they’re nothing less than mother and son, and to take care of one another. I think in all these instances, and many more, we feel the far-reaching effects of Joseph’s parental faithfulness toward Jesus.

Much is often made of Joseph’s royal lineage, both in the readings for Christmas and today’s feast, as well as in the substantial popular devotion millions have had toward him over the centuries. But I really think it’s his faithfulness to honoring God by doing what was best for Jesus and Mary (and probably many others) that matters most of all. And that’s good news for the rest of us. Regardless of where we come from, what our socio-economic backgrounds are, or who we’re related to by blood, Saint Joseph shows us that we can – and do! – have a positive influence in the world simply by treating others with the same dignity and love God has for all of us. And in times such as these, that’s more important than ever.

Perhaps it’s worth reflecting on the Saint Josephs in each of our lives: those people who, despite not necessarily having to, nevertheless have chosen at some point or another to accept us as we are, to ‘adopt’ us in a very true sense. These could, of course, be parents who have literally adopted us into their families, as well as teachers, mentors, friends, ministers, co-workers, and even bosses. For me, my first supervisor comes to mind, as well as older and more experienced friends I’ve had over the years who welcomed me into their homes and social circles and made real efforts to support me as I began discovering who I was and how I could best fit in with the world around me. I’m both indebted to and grateful for these Saint Josephs. The wisdom they’ve shared and the lessons they’ve taught remain with me today, and they do have a very real influence on how I’ve come to know and approach God, as well as how I engage with and pray for others.

The story of Saint Joseph is one of loving faithfulness and accountability – both to God, and to others – as well as an example each of us is invited to follow. With the words quoted earlier from the Prayer Book in mind, may we, like Joseph, freely welcome Jesus in all whom God sends our way. And may we all, in supporting and caring for one another, come to fully see ourselves as members of God’s one Holy Family, created out of love and called to increase in wisdom and in years, and in human and divine favor, together. Amen.

Monday, March 16, 2026

The Fourth Sunday in Lent, March 15, 2026

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Daniel Hansknecht, OHC

The Fourth Sunday in Lent, March 15, 2026

Click here for an audio of the sermon

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

“Jesus said, ‘I came into this world for judgement so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.’”

When the Pharisees overhear this, they ask Jesus the question: “Surely we are not blind, are we?”; simultaneously posing the question and suggesting the answer. But if they assume the answer, why ask at all?

One possibility is because there are no good answers. The Pharisees are wary of Jesus, and this guarded perspective makes his statement come across as rather ominous. Either they are currently blind (a designation whose negative stigmas pervade today’s reading), or they do see and this reversal of fortunes will make them blind! More metaphorically, they might find Jesus insinuating revolutionary thoughts, with the rise of the lowly and casting down of the powerful.

Jesus’s response suggests to me that the very nature of their question was faulty. Notably, he doesn’t answer it outright. Instead of stating his own opinion, Jesus implies that their presumption of knowing the answer itself determined the answer. “Now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.” I can envision the opposite scenario where the Pharisees ask more humbly, “Are we blind?” and Jesus says, “It is good that you ask, ‘Are we blind?’ for it is through such questions that God’s works might be revealed.”

Returning to the actual text, it seems like Jesus and the Pharisees are having two separate, albeit overlapping, conversations. The Pharisees, by their words and actions, are focused on concerns of the world. They believe sin to be something external; a modifier which determines our fate and status, even from birth, in the same way that luck, happiness, and good fortune signify God’s good graces. As figures of religious authority, they care about the status quo. They care more about the letter of the law, the Law of Moses, than the spirit of the law, whose purpose is to embetter the lives of the Israelites who follow it. It is out of fear of usurpation, the fear that their role in society is being taken from them, that they focus so heavily on the granular details of the blind man’s recovery; anything they can grab onto to shake the power of Jesus’s ministry.

Conversely, Jesus speaks and acts out of concern for the world. His time with us is limited, and, as he said to his disciples earlier, “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” What does it mean to be the light of the world? I think it is telling that the very next line of text describes the physical preparations which Jesus takes to facilitate the healing of the blind man; the Gospeler going so far as to explicitly mention that Jesus’s actions immediately follow those words. To be the light of the world is to cast out the darkness that blinds us.

As Christians and followers of The Way, we are expected to emulate Jesus. Jesus is the light of the world, and we are children of light. But how do we follow up on actions that are so miraculous? I don’t know about you, but if I spat on the ground, made mud, then rubbed it into some poor soul’s face, I don’t think they’d worship me afterwards. So, I think we’re going to have to be a bit more creative.

Let’s start by breaking down our terms; make them a bit more practicable. What does it mean to be blind? What does it mean to cast out darkness, to be light?

By various definitions, it wouldn’t be inaccurate to say that I am blind. I need glasses. I get into trouble when you start mixing Red with other colors. In other ways too. I know for a fact that I have been blind; and foolish; and clumsily ignorant. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, blind to my own blindness. More broadly speaking, I’d say that the things that blind us are anything that narrows, or cuts off, our vision: adrenaline, fear, lack of oxygen…and, funnily enough, light itself! The very thing that grants us our vision can also strip us of it.

So, what’s the difference between light which illuminates and light which blinds? I would say, acclimation. Have any of you ever hankered for food in the middle of the night? You go down to the kitchen, open the fridge, and are suddenly blinded by the light it emits? Well, the fridge wasn’t trying to blind you! Under normal circumstances, the fridge-lights do their job and make visible the cold recesses of its interior. Or, as Paul says to the Ephesians, “everything exposed by the light becomes visible.” You set yourself up for blindness by wandering around in the dark.

With that in mind, let’s go back and look at my first quote of the day. “Jesus said, ‘I came into this world for judgement so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.’” At first blush, this seems to be a 2-step plan: step 1) heal the blind, then step 2) blind those with sight. Now, however, I’m inclined to think that these are both actually the joined outcomes of a singular action: being the light of the world. Jesus has set himself on this path — teaching, healing, flipping tables — and here he spells out the consequences of this path: both the blinding emotions of fear and anger amongst those threatened by him, and the empowering enlightenment of those he helps along the way.

So, again, what are we supposed to do? Paul advises that we, “Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.” Great – that’s a first step. But for me, it doesn’t give the specific set of directions that I’m looking for. But don’t worry, good people! I, like Jesus, also have a 2-step plan which might end up being a 1-step plan.

Step 1) See with the eyes of your heart.

To give credit where credit is due, Step 1 once more comes from Paul. Although we didn’t hear it today, the following passage is taken from that same Letter to the Ephesians: “with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may perceive what is the hope to which [God] has called you…” This kind of sight is different from our day-to-day vision. It involves, by means of strong empathy and vulnerability, opening our hearts to all of the most impassioned emotions in the world around us: all of the rage, the terror, the desperation, the longing, the fascination, the zeal, the love. We open ourselves to the oncoming waves of these emotions, not to combat them, not to subdue them, or even to agree with them. We open our hearts so that we may see them; these invisible, intangible, sometimes ephemeral aspects of ourselves that our eyes cannot see. We see them with our hearts, and we grant them the dignity of acknowledging their existence as they are. This is the first step to loving anything or anyone: seeing them for who they actually are.

Step 2) Fight against fear.

The 1^st verse of Psalm 27 has been on my mind while writing and preparing this homily. It says, “The Lord is my light and my salvation — whom then shall I fear?” As I mentioned earlier, fear is one of the ways we blind ourselves, focusing our attention on just the source of our fear at the cost of everything in our peripheral. As an emergency tool, fear is great; it keeps us alive. But when we hold onto fear, when we live in fear, that’s when we get into trouble. As somebody famous once said, “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”

Repeatedly throughout the Bible, you’ll hear the angels say, “Do not be afraid.” They have to say this because angels are terrifying! Their sudden appearance, their supernatural nature, and their radiancy shake those who encounter them. But the reason they say this is because, as messengers of God, they have important things to say; things they are worried you will not hear unless you calm down. And so, we fight against fear so that we can be receptive to the will of God.

The reason I believe this 2-step plan is actually a 1-step plan is because I intend it to be cyclical: never ending, as one leads into the other. An Ouroboros of God’s love shaping itself in our lives. In that same way, we could also expand it into a 4-step plan: Step 1) Fight against your own fear, Step 2) See others with empathy and love, Step 3) Teach others to combat their fears, Step 4) Empower the whole world to see with its collective heart.

In conclusion, let me practice what I preach. Please know, genuinely, that I see you. I love you. And I wish for you to go and do likewise. Amen.