Lent 4 C - Mar 6, 2016

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. José Folgueira, OHC
Lent 4 C - Sunday, March 6, 2016

Joshua 5:9-12
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

All is forgiven                                                                                                    

The Prodigal Son - Rembrandt

Ernest Hemingway wrote a short story called “The Capital of the World.”  In it, he told the story of a father an his teenage son who were estranged from one another. The story is set in Madrid, the son’s name was Paco. Spain is full of boys named Paco, a nickname for Francisco. He had wronged his father, as a result, in his shame, he had run from home. In the story, the father searched all over

Spain for Paco to restore their relationship. Finally, in the city of Madrid, in a last desperate attempt to find his son, the father placed and ad in the personal column of the local newspaper. The add read: “Paco meet me at the Hotel Montana, noon Tuesday. All is forgiven. Papa.”

The father prayed that the boy would see the ad; and then maybe, Paco would come to the Hotel Montana. On Tuesday, at noon, the father arrived at the hotel. When he did, he could not believe his eyes.

The police had been called out in an attempt to keep order among eight hundred young boys. It turned out that each one of them was named Paco, they were looking an opportunity to go home to their father and find forgiveness in front of the Hotel Montana.

Eight hundred boys named Paco had read the ad in the        newspaper and hoped it was for them. Eight hundred Pacos had come to receive the forgiveness they so desperately desired.

This story illustrates the great truth that Jesus was driving at today’s gospel, the Parable of the Prodigal Son. The Father has not given up on us. He never gives up on us. He longs day and night for us to come home. And if and when we do, He is overjoyed. He love us. He forgive us. He restores us.

The relationship between the prodigal son and the father is much of what this parable focuses on. And we can see why Jesus shared this parable. He had been accused by the Pharisees and teachers of the law of welcoming sinners and eating with them. He had been eating with the prodigals of society. But Jesus had to remind the Pharisees that He came to find what was lost, to heal what was sick.

The tax collectors and sinners fit the picture of the prodigal son of the story. Whether or not they purposefully squandered their inheritance as God’s children, they recognized that forgiveness was not about them. They knew that their way was not the way God wanted them to live. They need Jesus, and Jesus was there for them.

Forgiveness is not about the son. The son doesn’t come home expecting to receive forgiveness. Forgiveness is not about the father either. The father isn’t thinking about himself when it comes to forgiveness, he is thinking about his son. Forgiveness is not about the obedient son either.

His envy over his prodigal brother blinded his need for forgiveness. And just as forgiveness is not about any of the characters in the parable, the rest of the Bible shows that forgiveness is not about me either.

As that prodigal son, we found ourselves in the same state as the tax collectors and sinners, realizing our wicked ways, and laying ourselves at the mercy of God. But even this is not what forgiveness is about. Forgiveness is not about us, for when we were still a long way off, God saw us, He ran to us, He forgives us, he does not bring our sin up anymore, we are once again children.

The Spirit of of God taught me how everything that is happening to me whether inside or outside, which means my life as a whole, is happening to Him not me. The injustices of this life or how people treat me, it is always directed to Him.

By the same token, everything you and I think about someone else, whether it is a simple murmur, insult or  that we repeatedly hurt someone, it is directed to Him not the person. No matter how deserving the other person is, somehow He is the one that we hurt.

There is a quote that is true and real, from Oswald Chamber, who was an early twentieth-century Scottish Baptist, by the way I get to know about his writings thanks to our beloved Br. Andrew, it says: “No matter what your circumstances may be, don’t try to shield yourself from things God is bringing into your life. We have the idea sometimes that we ought to shield ourselves from some of circumstances; we have to see that we face them abiding continually with Him in His temptations. They are His temptations, they are not temptations to us, but to the Son of God in us.”

Forgiveness is only found in that perfect life and death of our Lord Jesus Christ, forgiveness is not about me.

Forgiveness doesn’t ask anything in return. But the result of God’s forgiveness in me is then reflected in others. Sometimes when we are given an opportunity to forgive, we might act more like the older brother than the father, trying to see what we can get for our forgiving of others. Our forgiveness should not be conditional, because once again, forgiveness is not about me. We are reminded of the words in the Lord’s prayer, “forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.”

For my Lenten reading this year, a friend pass me a gem of a book “Love Alone Is Credible” by Hans Urs Von Balthasar. Towards the end of the book these words jumped off the page. So I leave with these words:

“Once a person learns to read the signs of love and thus to believe it, loves leads him into the open field wherein he himself can love.

“If the prodigal son had not believed that the father’s love was already there waiting for him, he would not have been able to make the journey home, even if his father’s love welcomes him in a way he never would have dream of.”

The decisive thing is that the sinner has heard of the love that could be, and really is, there for him, he is not the one who has to bring himself into line with God; God has always already seen in him the loveless sinner, a beloved child and has looked upon him and conferred dignity upon him in the light of this love.”

Christmas 2 - Jan 3, 2016

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. José Folgueira, OHC
Christmas 2 - Sunday, January 3, 2016

Jeremiah 31:7-14
Ephesians 1:3-6,15-19a
Matthew 2:13-15,19-23

The flight in Egypt

“God is in charge”

In today’s Gospel we see Joseph and Mary threatened by forces too strong for them. They are warned that Herod the Great, a famously brutal ruler, was hunting for them. Like millions of other refugees, past and present, like myself, they had to flee. God’s own Son becomes a transient, homeless, migrant, alien. Like some of us at times in our lives, they had to hurry away from serious trouble. Many of us have known what it means to be in the grip of hands too strong for us. The hands too strong for us can be external; some of us have known mistreatment and various forms of imprisonment. But very often those strangleholds are internal, the grip of fear born from past experience, from trauma or abuse, for whatever reason unmanageable. 

So here is Joseph, a Jewish carpenter by trade. And his viewpoint of it all was one of obedience and willing service, and a sense of the meaning of who Jesus was and that God was at work in redemption for His people Israel. 

The Angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. The angel does not say take thy wife and son; for though Mary was properly his wife, yet Jesus was not properly his son. 

The child is mentioned before the mother, not only because of his divine nature and office, in respect to which he was her God and Savior; but because it was the preservation of the child that was chiefly regarded, and for which the providence of God was particularly concerned.

Joseph understood that he had a great responsibility as the earthly father of this child, to protect him, to rear him, to train him up, to provide for him, and to love and prepare him for whatever was to come in the years ahead.  

This is certainly a story about whom to trust, and fortunately for us, the pagan astrologers know better than to trust the king who claims piety and faithfulness. The powers of the world can never be trusted with the good news of God’s love.

Joseph is a man of God, a man of unquestioning obedience and willing service. He is man of prayer and a man of God’s words. Through faith he recognized the hand of God in the mystery of the Incarnation, the Son of God taking flesh as the Son of Mary. Joseph is a man of action, diligent in the care of his family and ready to do the Lord’s bidding. 
Joseph fearlessly set aside his own plans when God called him “to take to the road” and to leave his familiar surroundings, his home, friends and relatives and the security of his livelihood in order to pursue a hidden mission God entrusted to him as the guardian of the newborn King. God has a plan for each of us. With the plan God gives grace and assurance of his guiding hand and care. Do you trust Him for his plan for your life? Are you willing to sacrifice your own plans for God’s plan? 
Are you willing to give God unquestioning service and to pursue whatever mission he gives you?

We can learn from all this that:
- The safest place to be is where God leads you. The Wise Men followed a star, and it led them to the Christ child, also they followed God’s instructions and they escaped Herod’s wrath. Joseph followed the Angel’s instructions in a dream, and escaped to Egypt, and also followed God’s instructions and they escaped the wrath of Archelaus.
- The safest place you can be, is in the center of God’s will. Whatever path you take in life, God knows where it will lead. How much better to follow the path that He leads you down.

God is in charge. You can always feel safe when you are living in God’s will. That’s not to say that bad things won’t happen to you. But, God is in charge. Everything that happened in the Christmas story was planned by God. You can see His hand in the Christmas story every step of the way. God is in charge.

Joseph and Mary didn’t have their baby in Bethlehem. Their dream of going back to Nazareth to live a quiet and peaceable life, were postponed for a few years. Their life was nothing they had planned or expected.

Guess what? God is still in charge. He didn’t leave Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem to go it alone. He didn’t leave them in Egypt to tuff it out. God still on the Throne. God is still in charge.

“Lord, make me a faithful servant and guardian of your truth and word. Help me to obey you willingly, like Joseph, with unquestioning trust and with joyful hope.”

Amen

Proper 21 B - Sep 27, 2015

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. José Folgueira, OHC
Proper 21 B – Sunday, September 27, 2015

Mark 9:38-50

“Have salt in yourselves”

The look of home-made apple pie...

We struggle to be the way we think we should be. I think of a scene in a movie, about an overworked young mother, in a high-powered job. She realizes late one evening she is committed to bring a pie to her child’s class the next day. She just doesn’t have the time to whip one up, so she runs out and picks one up at the store. But it looks too... well, store-bought, too perfect. So she squishes it a bit around the edges, so it looks a little more home-made. Because heaven forbid any of the other moms would think that this woman didn’t make the pie with her own hands for her precious child’s school. We care about how we appear to others. We want to belong. We want to be approved of by those around us. And sometimes we allow the silliest things, like a pie for a school bake sale, to make us a little crazy in our desire to be seen as fine, normal, upstanding member of our community.

And in that desire, we do things that get in the way of being authentic, honest, ourselves. We squish the edges of the pie. We worry that we are not good enough, so we do odd things that we think will make us look better. In a commencement speech, the author David McCullough names this very pointedly:

In our unspoken but not subtle Darwinian competition with one another, which springs, I think, from our fear of our own insignificance, a subset of our dread of mortality, we have of late, we Americans, to our detriment, come to love accolades more than genuine achievement. We have come to see them as the point, and we are happy to compromise standards, or ignore reality, if we suspect that is the quickest way, or only way, to have something to put on the mantelpiece, something to pose with, crow about, something with which to leverage ourselves into a better spot on the social totem pole.

McCullough may have named the twenty-first century phenomenon, but Jesus’s disciples were just as likely to fall into this trap as you and I are. Remember last week? In the midst of Jesus telling them the most important part of his story, that he was going to be killed by the authorities but would rise again from the dead, what were they doing? Arguing. About what? About who is more important. Completely missing the point, of course. Thinking about the wrong thing, about who appears to have most power and favor.

And Jesus loses his patience with them, as he is continuing to lose patience with them in today’s passage. I can just hear Jesus now: come on guys, how many times do I have to explain things to you before it sinks in. Ok guys let’s try this again.

They have come to him, complaining about somebody who is trying to do what they are supposed to do, to cast demons out. In other words, we thought we were the special ones who get to do this. Nobody else should get to cast out demons but us, because we are special and he is not. And the subtext is, if this guy who is not one of the special disciples does this, then maybe we are not special anymore.

And that is the sort of thing we worry about, isn’t it? What makes us special. What makes us appreciated by others. What sets us apart and makes us appear to be something more than everybody else.

Jesus is telling them, you are not special, you are not the only ones who can do these things. It’s not about the disciples anymore. It’s about everyone. Only loving me and doing the work matters, and anyone who wants to do the work in my name is invited. You need to let go of your need for ego gratification and your worry about what others think of you, and just do the work, and welcome others into the work as well. And it doesn’t make any difference, male or female, Jew or gentile, rich or poor whoever is not against us is for us. 

And then we come to cutting of body parts; what a gospel passage! This passage from Mark is just one of many reasons, I’m not a fundamentalist. As John Crossan put it so nicely, 

Just because Jesus is the Lamb of God doesn’t mean that Mary had a little lamb.

Amputations, gouging out eyes, all that sounds pretty serious. Did Jesus really meant that? Probably not. I think he was trying to drive a point home to the disciples. Sometimes we need to exaggerate to get people’s attention. The point of the lesson is that if there is anything that is causing you to stumble, to distance yourself from God, then do something about it. You need to be willing to go any length, to use any means to do something about it.  

Can you think of anything in your life that you need to get rid of? You are going to find things about yourself that get in the way of loving God. You need to do an attitude adjustment to divest yourself of those things, not because it will make you look better, but because it will make you BE better. And in being better, you will find it easier to share the burden of the work laid before you. It will not be all about you.

The thing that we need to work on are not how we appear to the world, which one of us is richer or more important or prettier, but what we do in the world, how we invite others to join us in the work of making the world a better place, a place that is what Jesus envisions for all of us. We cannot do it alone. We shouldn’t pick and chose who does it with us. And I expect that when we are done, we, like the world, will look a whole lot better, to us and to Jesus.

The Gospel reading, today, ends with some wonderful talk about salt. Let’s take those last verses apart, a bit. “For everyone will be salted with fire.” Wow! First, what does that mean, to be “salted with fire?” As I read it this time, I think it means we will be seasoned with difficulties and pain, that through difficulties and pain we will preserved and perfected, our flaws and selfishness and childishness will be burned away, and we will be transformed. Second note: EVERYONE. No exclusions, none left out. We will all have our turn, one way or another.

In confronting misfortune and injury and illness we confront ourselves, not as we wish we were or imagine we used to be, but as we are. These are the experiences that increase the acreage of our souls. To know that maybe we won’t get completely better, that we need to face some limitations, is to share what Paul called the “thorn in the flesh,” to truly know that God’s power is made more perfect in weakness. Is this not the seasoning? 

And while we would wish to avoid some of the more painful aspects - I know I would - the experience of growing and deepening would not be the same. Life isn’t hypothetical, a mental experiment. Life is lived, in all its messiness and complexity and pain. And while I would never wish misfortune on anyone, I also wouldn’t want to keep this experience of growth and depth from others who will profit from it.

And the Gospel reading goes on: “Salt is good. But if it has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.” I’ve often puzzled over these sentences, but in the context of this difficult fall, I felt a new kinship with them. Perhaps what Jesus is saying is that the very bitterness of salt, the very bitterness of experience is what makes it effective as a teacher, if experience loses its sting, how can it teach us, how can it broaden and deepen us? And how to return bitterness to experience, if that is the goal? And so Jesus says, have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another. Now, perhaps what Jesus is saying is simply that, in the Near East, sharing salt was part of a treaty relationship.

But now, I’m wondering. It could also be that by sharing the bitterness of experience we come to a new peace with one another, a peace that understands the deep ways in which we are all the same.

You see, we are all the same in our fears, in our pain. Ironically, we are all the same, too, in our isolation, in our alone-ness. We are all the same in thinking that there is no one like us. Isn’t it interesting? Our injuries may be different but we are all the same in thinking our injuries are unique. The thing that is common to all of us is the feeling that we are unique.

So, where do we go with that insight? Does it mean that we are all wrong, that we really are all the same? Well, not exactly, although we aren’t, probably, as different from one another as we think. No, we don’t all have the same injuries, but we all have injuries. 

There is quote attributed to Plato and by others to Philo: "Be kind, because everyone you meet is fighting great battle" nonetheless, and that is what we share. We are all fighting a great battle. It may be a battle against being alone, or against relationship. It may be a battle against being a victim or against someone who acts like a victim. We are all fighting a great battle.

We all have been or will be seasoned by the fire at some time in our lives which is another way of saying that we are stewards of the experiences God gives us in our lives. Learning from our experiences, good or bad, happy or sad, is practicing good stewardship with God’s gift of life to us.

Lord Jesus Christ,

who affirmed all who do good deeds in your name,

Even in the sharing of a cup of water,

Grant to us,

the wisdom to see the way forward for your people 

and this planet.

The courage to choose the right path,

and the will to share this way with others.

Amen.

Easter 3 B - Apr 19, 2015

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. José Folgueira, OHC

Easter 3 B – Sunday, April 19, 2015

Acts 3:12-19
1 John 3:1-7
Luke 24:36b-48

Pop-In Jesus

The resurrected Jesus appears to the disciples

In several resurrection appearance stories, Jesus pops in and he pops out. People respond in a variety of ways to his appearances. The variety of responses to Jesus’ popping in throughout all four gospels is hard to miss. Some people worship him immediately. Some don’t recognize him until there is some word, or action that reminds them of their former time with him, a calling of their name, a breaking of bread, a miraculous catch of fish. Some react with a combination of joy and doubt. In Luke the disciples responses to Jesus pop in appearances  vary. Once on the Emmaus road, disciples recognize Jesus in the breaking of bread, with hindsight they say that “their hearts burned” while he talked to them on the road. Yet, a few short verses later, they seem to join the other disciples in responding to his next pop in visit with terror, as if seeing a ghost. After seeing his hands and feet, there was a joy, but still disbelief and wonder. 

Jesus pops in and people worship, tremble with fear, rejoice, wonder and doubt. And, just when they get used to the idea that he is back, he has to leave again. How is that for a pop-in / pop-out appearance?

I have mentioned that people respond to pop-in Jesus in varying ways. He responds in varying ways to them as well, meeting them where they are, with what they need. He offers peace to the fearful. He offers a challenge to the slow of heart and the persistently doubtful. He offers teaching to the uninformed or the forgetful. He offers a blessing and a purpose to those he is about to leave.

When somebody in everyday life has a startling habit of popping in unexpectedly, we are tempted to say to them, “Next time, how about giving me some warning?” When they leave suddenly, we are tempted to say “Next time, how about saying goodbye and not just disappearing?”

In the odd plot of our lives in which people come and go, pop in and pop out, it is good to have one person we can count on and introduce to everyone we know. The resurrection appearances in Luke say to us, in effect: Consider yourself warned. Jesus is coming back at a time we cannot predict. And Jesus has said goodbye only to say hello. Jesus is with us in the presence and person of the Holy Spirit. He only left so he could stay.

Luke’s story of Jesus popping in to his disciples in Jerusalem is less well known, but is equally important. It revolves around a table instead of a tomb.

A meal is familiar territory for Jesus. He is famous for feeding the crowds of five thousands, notorious for eating with tax collectors and sinners. His hospitality reveals his desire to nourish people both physically and spiritually.

At a table, he eats with a Pharisee and forgives a sinful woman and institutes the Lord’s Supper. He later hits the beach to cook a fish breakfast for his disciples. Jesus offers a welcoming table and instructs his followers in the nature of hospitality with the words, “when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind. Jesus welcomes everyone to his table.

Meals are not just about food. They are about companionship. The resurrected Jesus is a hungry Jesus. And Jesus is not hungry because he has been in the tomb for three days, but he is hungry to share a meal and celebrate life, hungry for them to become a new community of faithful, courageous living; hungry for them to break bread together and with strangers everywhere  until strangers are strange no more. This hunk of broiled fish that they offer to Jesus is real and physical and present, it becomes a tasted and smelled symbol of the love that binds them together, the love that binds us together, a sign of how God has gathered us and how God feeds us. And in the breaking of bread together, in the eating together, their eyes are opened, and they see Jesus for who he truly is. 

This resurrection account in Luke was so powerful for the early Church that in many places they seem to have included fish in their celebration of the Eucharist, as part of the resurrection meal. Even after the practice died out, the symbol of the fish became a sign for the resurrected Christ, and altars and church windows are adorned with the fish. Even bumper stickers. 

Every week as we gather here in this place, we live out this story over and over again. We come as friends, as family, to gather around this table, to hear the scriptures and to have our minds opened to new understandings of them, just as Jesus did with the followers in this story. 

When we share the peace in a few moments, we will speak to one another just as Christ does, saying “Peace be with you.” We speak to one another in all of our fear and doubt and disbelief, and we hear that peace spoken back to us in our own doubt and fear, mixed with disbelieving joy. As you reach to shake the hand, look carefully.... the hand you grasp may bear wounds. And then we gather around the table to eat and drink, to share a meal, and in the breaking of the bread and the pouring of the wine, to have our eyes and hearts opened to the ways that the Risen One is truly present among us, showing up to walk alongside us in our journeys along all the roads we travel, even though we do not always recognize him at first.

We gather at this meal for companionship and community, to hear one another’s stories of where we have seen the Risen Christ in the unexpected places in our lives, and to remind one another to look for Christ in the face of the stranger. That is why we include young and old, stranger and friend, in the meal. We eat not because we have already figured out who Jesus is.... we eat so that in in the breaking of the bread, Jesus can be revealed to us in new ways. And then we go out fed, but we also go out with Jesus resurrection hunger, hungry for the same things that Jesus is hungry for. We go out to bring others to the banquet, to feed others both physically and spiritually, and to offer companionship and love and community. We go out to look for the Risen Christ in the face of the stranger, to know him in the breaking of the bread in all of our eating, at this table or at our own. We go out from this table to be witness to the power and reality of resurrection.

Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looksCompassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, not feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looksCompassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

                                                               Teresa de Avila