Proper 27 B - Nov 11, 2012

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Julian Mizelle, OHC
Proper 27 B - Sunday, November 11, 2012

Ruth 3: 1-5; 4:13-17
1 Kings 17:8-16
Psalm 146
Hebrews 9:24-28
Mark 12:38-44

The Public Face of God’s Purpose

Ruth gleaning in the fields of Boaz

In the past I have been quick to note my puzzlement over the choices of scripture readings our Lectionary makes, but this week I marvel at how they collide with our news headlines. As Americans elected not only a President for a new term, but men and women for Congress, Senators, and officials at every level of our government, scripture speaks prophetically to the Church. Psalm 146, our appointed Psalm for today, (which we chanted at Matins this morning) says “Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help. When their breath departs, they return to the earth; on that very day their plans perish.” I think it very wise for us to remember, on this first Sunday after a national election, that in the entire canon of scripture there is only one reference to God laughing. In Psalm 2:4 God laughs at the pretensions of political power. 

I would like to share with you Walter Brueggemann’s poem titled “Post Election Day.”

You creator God
who has ordered us
in families and communities,
in clans and tribes,
in states and nations.

You creator God
who enacts your governance
in ways overt and
in ways hidden.
You exercise your will for
peace and for justice and for freedom.

We give you thanks for the peaceable order of
our nation and for the chance of choosing—
all the manipulative money notwithstanding.

We pray now for new governance
that your will and purpose may prevail,
that our leaders may have a sense
of justice and goodness,
that we as citizens may care about the
public face of your purpose.

We pray in the name of Jesus who was executed
by the authorities.

I proudly joined with my Brothers this past Tuesday in making a pilgrimage to our local poll to exercise the great freedom of casting my vote. And in doing so I give thanks to all of those who have answered a Godly vocational call to public service; from local school boards to Capital Hill I stand with them all in prayer. But I am also reminded by the Apostle Paul that as a Christian we each hold dual citizenship: we are citizens of this world and we are citizens of heaven. Our very Baptismal Covenant calls us to unconditional allegiance to the Gospel. And in the political arena this calls us to stand for what Walter Brueggemann calls “the public face of God’s purpose.” Our Lectionary readings this morning point us to just that public face of God’s purpose.

Psalm 146 continues in telling us “the Maker of heaven and earth” is biased on behalf of the oppressed: He feeds the hungry, frees prisoners, and heals the blind. He lifts up those who are weighed down, he defends foreigners (and I read that as immigrants), protects the orphans, and sustains the widow. Seven categories of people who each face very different challenges yet hold one thing in common. They each are vulnerable to forces beyond their control. 

If we include today’s assigned reading from 1 Kings (our alternate reading from the OT) our lectionary readings tell the stories of 5 widows. 

The book of Ruth is a story of 3 widows -- the Israelite Naomi who fled Israel to Moab to escape famine and her two immigrant daughters-in-law, Orpah and Ruth. After ten years in Moab, and despite Naomi’s protests, Ruth returned with her to Israel. In Bethlehem, Ruth was the foreigner from an enemy country. She was childless. She was widowed from a mixed marriage. In her culture she was one who had run out of options. Yet she vowed to cling to Naomi, to Naomi’s Hebrew people, and to their God. Ruth secured an economic livelihood for Naomi by gleaning fields among the hired hands. She ingratiated herself to Boaz, the owner of those fields she gleaned. In spite of her status as an “outcast immigrant” all of Bethlehem knew this foreign widow as a “woman of excellence.” 

Our optional reading from 1 Kings tells the story the widow Zarephath who lived at a pivotal juncture in Israel’s history. In Daniel Berrigan’s book, The Kings and Their Gods, he interprets the OT books of 1st and 2nd Kings as self-serving imperial records that portray Israel’s kings as they saw themselves and as they wanted others to see them. The unifying theme running through 1st and 2nd Kings is God favors my regime over your and God hates my enemies. To this end the Kings employ “many pathological means of political retaliation with absolute impunity, military might, revisionist history, manipulation of memory and time, grandiose agendas, economic exploitation, virulent nationalism, sanctioning it all with divine approval, legitimation by religious sycophants.” Sound familiar?

The prophet Elijah was the dissenting voice to this imperial power. But the tactic employed to dissenting voices was to silence them as unpatriotic and seditious. But that didn’t stop Elijah from facing down the political powers of his day. Elijah’s story begins with the widow Zarephath who, at great personal sacrifice, cares for him during a severe drought. This narrative of an alien widow and a Hebrew prophet offering each other mutual care accross nationalistic boundaries assumed such sacred importance in Israel’s story-telling that Jesus Himself repeated the story a 1000 years later. This story occurs in Luke’s gospel but this is the important part--the reaction of the people in the synagogue was one of outrage and furious anger. 

That God cares for widows, and that God’s people should too, is one of the most prominent themes throughout the Bible. The Greek word for widow occurs about 25 times in the New Testament alone. 

The widow in today’s Gospel reading from Mark is nameless. She dared to give an offering to the temple treasury that amounted to a fraction of a penny in the presence of many wealthy benefactors making large donations. But whereas the rich gave out of their convenience and surplus, Jesus said this poor widow has given more than all the others. Can’t Jesus add? Doesn’t Jesus know the value of two copper coins? He absolutely does. But he saw her heart and knew she had given out of her poverty. She put in all she had to live on. It was her grocery money, her rent, her gas money, her little bit of security for all of the necessities of life.

I must be honest with you in that this Gospel story has always caused me to struggle. Every time I read it, its most fundamental message seems to be saying if you really love God, if you have really given your life to God, if you are serious about being a Christ follower you will give up all financial security. I’ve never gone to Church and emptied my bank account. I never put an entire paycheck into the offering plate as it went by trusting that somehow God would work everything out. And since I find the notion of doing so just too fearful this story has always left me feeling that my righteousness is not good enough, my piety falls short. It left me feeling inadequate as a Christian. And herein lies the danger of this text.

So I’m asking some hard questions--does Jesus point to the poor widow who gives her last two coins to the temple as a model for how we should give? Or does Jesus point to her because she is a tragic example of how religious institutions can suck the life out of people? There is also a bit of irony here. If we were to keep reading the narrative of the Gospel of Mark we would read that Jesus walks out of this temple with His disciples and almost immediately tells them that this temple is about to be destroyed. “Not one stone will be left.” This poor widow has given her last cent to a doomed religious institution. The larger narrative of Mark puts Jesus at constant odds with Scribes and Pharisees, with all of temple leadership. And here He condemns them for “devouring widows houses.” The institution of the Jerusalem temple had become perverted. While the leadership leads privileged lives, widows, the poor and vulnerable go unprotected. The teachable moment between Jesus and His disciples is that when the widow dropped her last two coins in the treasury box, temple leaders should have run over and taken those two coins and given them back. Then they should have reached in for a larger sum and said “here, you need this. Let us help you out!” 

It is completely true that the widow gave from her heart. Her gift was far greater than a gift of just two copper coins. She gave the whole of her life. And I beleive that Mark uses the story of this poor widow to point us theologically to the Cross, where Jesus is heading and where He will give the whole of His life. It is also true that the Jerusalem temple represents an unjust system that harmed the very people they were called to serve. Today, this Gospel text calls to you and to me to give the whole of our lives to facing down unjust social, political and economic systems. We are called to give the whole of our lives to stand with the oppressed, the hungry, the homeless, the blind, prisoners, immigrants, and widows. The national election has finally ended but our call to put the public face of God’s purpose on this world has only just begun. 

Amen!

Proper 21 B - Sep 30, 2012

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Brother Julian Mizelle, OHC
Proper 20, Year B - Sunday, September 30, 2012



Numbers 11:4-6, 10-16, 24-29
James 5:13-20
Mark 9:38-50

The Mysticism of Open Eyes

In the name of God who calls us to celebration, who calls us to pursue community in our world, and who calls us to compassion in the midst of all human suffering. Amen!

Oh no! Oh no was my first reaction when I read our Gospel text for today. Of all of the gospel passages that would fall to me to preach on this one would be my last choice. This is a text that has traditionally been interpreted to be a series of warnings about male sexual purity. Cutting off hands, feet and gouging out eyes has been viewed as a double-entendre in rabbinic literature to other male body parts. The New Oxford Annotated Study Bible states that this passage is all about men behaving badly, and the reference to causing a child to stumble is really about child sexual abuse. My “Oh no” reaction is not about not wanting to address these subjects but I believe there is a better venue to do so than the pulpit.

All of my Brothers would rightly tell me that we don’t have to preach on the Gospel and that there is a reading from the Epistles and a reading from the Hebrew Scriptures that I could preach on. But at the beginning of this year I made a commitment to dedicate the year to preaching on the Gospel texts. I wanted to dive more deeply into them. And I just can’t let my commitments go that easily. So I decided to give the passage a deeper look.

We begin with demons and an exorcist using the name of Jesus who was not part of the disciples in-group. Jesus offers a corrective to the wrong thinking of the disciples with the wisdom statement “Whoever is not against us is for us.” Then we hear about stumbling blocks, causing the little ones to fall, lopping off limbs and gouging out eyes to avoid the fires of hell. And then the most obscure part of the passage is its ending: being salted with fire, having salt within ourselves so we can live in peace. 

I approach scripture with a fundamental belief that it is a living scripture and even though it was written thousands of years ago it is the thin place where God speaks to our hearts in the present moment. I understand the cultural anthropological references embedded in these verses, I understand that the society of the time was an honor/shame society, and I understand the historical context simply becomes lost in translation for our time. Yet the reason this is scripture is because it can always speak to our hearts and minds in fresh ways.

It is also good to remember when dealing with a difficult text, such as the one in front of us today, that the writer may not have been giving us a single narrative story. Our reading seems to start in the middle of something, and we seem to jump from one disjointed thought to another, ending with a metaphorical reference that holds little meaning for us. Our best conclusion in a situation like this is to know the author of the text may have been recording his memories as he recalled them. He may have never intended to give us a unified lesson. So as I prayed over this text my question became “where is God speaking to me (and to His church today) in this passage?” Am I to condone an exorcist who doesn’t follow Jesus in MY community. Am I prepared to lead one of Jesus’ “little ones?” Am I willing to cut off my hands and feet and gouge out my eyes to gain God’s kingdom? Do I have salt in myself and do I live at peace with all? 

Each of these question quickened my heart. But they also left me flat and feeling as though I wasn’t really hearing with my spiritual ear, the ear of my heart. I finally said “God, I’m missing the point...show me!” And slowly a miracle occurred...my thinking shifted. Yes, I was definitely missing the point because when I read the text I was unable to read it from the point of view of the one who was suffering the most in the passage. There is a character in this text who is rather insignificant. Not only is the character unnamed, but we only know of their existence by deducting their presence by inference. You see the disciples were upset at some stranger who was casting out demons in Christ name because he was not one of them. But what about the person who was being set free from the demon? What about the person who is broken, the person who is wounded, and in need of being made whole. Why don’t we care about them? Why did I have to read this passage thirty times before I even realized that it was the suffering person who Jesus cared most about? Because my eyes needed to be opened to see this through the eyes of those who suffer. 

When we read the Gospels with open eyes and an awake spirituality we are constantly confronted with an exhaustive portrait of Jesus of Nazareth as a figure who was consumed by the victims, by the hurting, by the disadvantaged, and by the wounded that he encountered throughout His public life. In fact, it is these very victims that speak with the real authority through these Gospel narratives. It is those who suffer who move the gospel narratives along in telling us the story of Jesus. 

Now here’s the problem: Religion, for over two millennia, has worked to focus Jesus’ life on the “sins of the other” instead of the suffering of the other. But Jesus was not consumed with sins. That was not the focus of His life. The focus of his life were those who suffer. I believe it is actually easier for us to focus on sins than it is to focus on those who suffer. Focusing on the suffering of our neighbor and the suffering of the world demands us to do something about it. Opening our eyes to those who suffer calls us to a reorientation of our theology and our spirituality. 

Didn’t the disciples understand that if someone was going about casting out demons in Jesus’ name that meant there was someone who was being made whole? There was someone who was being freed and being healed. This was the realization Jesus was pushing His disciples to when He said “whoever is not against us is for us.” As a wisdom teacher Jesus went right to the thoughts of his disciples. He knew this is where the shift must occur. Our thinking must be changed if our behavior is going to change.  And once we begin to see through the eyes of the suffering it becomes no longer possible to practice our theology with our backs turned to those who suffer. 

Simone Weil wrote in Waiting for God that “one of the principal truths of Christianity that goes unrecognized today is that looking is what saves us.” It has been called a mysticism of open eyes. It is this mysticism that gives us a proper Christian response to a suffering world. When we begin to see more, not less; when we become Samaritan’s who do not cross the road to avoid a wounded enemy; and when our prayer, our worship, our pilgrimages, and our spiritual disciplines bring us to act compassionately then we can say we are becoming more like Christ. 

The most fundamental stories and parables of scripture, stories that are engraved into the psyche of all believers, are all pointing us to this mysticism of open eyes, to being awakened from our amnesia. It is the story of the Good Samaritan, it is the story of the Prodigal, it is the story of the Exodus, and it is the story of todays Gospel text: a story calling us to compassion--that primordial sensitivity to the suffering of others and a praxis of taking responsibility for it.

Shane Claiborne calls Jesus an “ordinary radical.” The Buddhist writer Sharon Salzburg says the “most rebellious act we can take is to stand in compassion with others.” And this is what I mean by the mysticism of open eyes, of learning to see more and not less.

Chopping off our hands would certainly cause us to suffer. But it wouldn’t bring us into the kingdom of God. To enter God’s kingdom we must practice the spiritual disciplines of kenosis, the stripping of self, and we must enter into a praxis of mercy. How? Begin by asking three heart-changing questions: what am I doing that crucifies others?, what am I doing to end their crucifixion?, and what should I do so those that suffer can rise from the dead? Our response to this challenge hinges on our capacity to turn toward those who suffer, it hinges on our ability to look with open eyes and see more, and it calls us to the work of removing all of the crucified bodies and taking them down from their crosses. 

When we see through the eyes of those who suffer then we truly become salted with fire.

Proper 9 B - Jul 8, 2012

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Julian Mizelle, OHC
Proper 9 B – Sunday, July 8, 2012


II Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10
(Ezekiel 2:1-5)
II Corinthians 12:2-10
Mark 6:1-13

Preaching the “Gospel?”

“A time is coming,” said the desert dweller St. Antony, “when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, ‘You are mad, you are not like us.’”

St. Antony didn’t fit the mold for his time and certainly didn’t grow into the expected vocation of his day. He was an uneducated Copt born in 251 AD into a Christian family of peasant farmers. When he was eighteen, his parents died, leaving him to care for his younger sister. Six months later he heard the gospel reading of Matthew 19:21: “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” Antony put his sister into the care of nuns, sold all of his possessions, turned away from the corrupt and decadent society of the time and went to live a life of solitude, prayer and fasting in the Egyptian desert. Athanasius, who knew Antony personally and wrote the story of his life, tells us that people thought he was mad.

I was well into my own process of discernment for a vocation to monastic life when I decided I needed to let my parents know what was on my mind. Circumstances didn’t allow for a face to face visit so it was by telephone that I first broke the news to them. “Mom, there is a monastic order that I have gotten to know and I feel God’s call to be a part of them. I have begun the process to join them and become a Benedictine monk.” Silence... “Mom, are you still there...?” “When did you become a Roman Catholic she exclaimed!” I realized I had a LOT to fill her in on. Some months later when I was well into the process of selling everything I owned I noticed a change in attitude about my new vocation. So I asked her about it. And her answer knocked me back. She said, “I was waiting to know if you were really serious about this. And now I know you are.” In the beginning she too thought I was mad.

Jesus’s family thought He was mad. They tried to take custody of him. “He’s lost His senses,” they said. John writes that his brothers didn’t believe Him. The villagers said he was insane and demon-possessed. Boyhood friends in Nazareth tried to kill him. The religious experts said he was a glutton and drunkard who partied with sinners. Many of his closest supporters stopped following Him. And after only 3 short years of ministry, political pundits complained that he told people not to pay their taxes. Then He was executed.

In this week’s gospel, those who knew Him best “took offense at him”—literally, “they were scandalized.” He then sent out His twelve disciples in pairs, two by two, to village after village warning them in advance about what they could expect. These parallel stories are about rejection and missions. It is a story about vocation and evangelization. It is a story about  knowing ones purpose and turning it into outreach. It is the natural evolution on the spiritual journey of what happens when you are in touch with your true self. You have to share it with others. If it is by turning within that we discover our real self, it is only by turning without that we that we live into the full meaning of our discovery. It is why real transformation will not only heal us, it will heal the world. What I am talking about is the “gospel.”

“Gospel!” What a messy word in our society. Just try telling a co-worker when you’re gathered around the water cooler that you would like to share the gospel with them and see what kind of reaction you get. During this past month I made another one of my mini research polls. I asked several of my brothers plus a few of our guest to define the word “gospel” for me. No one had an instant answer. When they did answer everyone went in vastly different directions of thought. The only thing that was consistent in my polling is stating what the gospel is in a clear, concise, and succinct way is not easy. When I started my research on defining the word “gospel” I too was in the same muddied waters.

But this was not always so. There was a time in my life that I could have told you instantly what the gospel is. The plan of salvation expressed in four spiritual laws. I was taught to recite them like they were a magic formula. They boil down to you are a sinner, Jesus died for your sins, pray the sinners prayer and you will go to heaven. N. T. Wright tells us that when the non-churched are asked what the word “gospel” means the common reply is it is about how to know God and how to go to heaven when you die. Is this the gospel according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? It actually isn’t. One need only read the Benedictus and Magnificat to know that these early proclamations of the gospel had little to do with after-life management and everything to do with God’s Kingdom in the here and now. In fact, all four gospelers are not so much telling us how to go to heaven, they are telling us how heaven has come to us.

My point is to not debate my evangelical childhood but to emphasize the post reformation hijacking of the good news of Jesus Christ into the plan of salvation. After the Reformation the gospel gradually was redefined into a plan of personal salvation. And today, the western Church is mired in what I call a salvation culture instead of a gospel culture. Some would ask, “what’s the difference?” The difference is vast. The gospel is so much larger than personal salvation. To equate them as equal is to see only a small portion of the whole.

When we adopt a salvation culture we believe that we can cure poverty by getting everyone born again. Want to put an end to homelessness? Get them born again. Want to bring Haiti out of poverty? Get everyone to pray the sinners pray and poverty will end. Want to fix the drug epidemic? Want to break someone’s addiction? Want to (fill in the blank)...just get them saved. There are a lot of well meaning Christians who think this way. They geniunely believe by getting everyone to become born again all the problems of the world will be solved. I wish it was that simplistic. But that is not the gospel. That is not the good news.

When I did my polling seeking to learn how people define what the gospel is there was one answer that stood out. The answer was clear and to the point: the gospel is about Incarnation. The answer was brilliant. Because it equates the gospel to the Immanuel principle: Immanuel means God-With-Us. God has become man and God is with us in our poverty, God is with us in our brokenness, God is with us in every detail and aspect of our humanity. When we adopt a gospel culture we work to create the Kingdom of God in the world of today. The culture of the gospel takes the secular wisdom of todays world and turns it into the sacred folly of God’s kingdom.

We need look no further than today’s lection to see that Jesus empowered his disciples and sent them out to do the work of the Kingdom. For Jesus, mission, evangelism, and outreach was to go out and change the systems that keep people in poverty, in their brokenness, and in their woundedness. For Jesus, “gospel” meant to go out and enact the Kingdom of God in the here and now.

In a gospel culture no one has to decide between buying food or buying medicine. In a gospel culture everyone gets health care. In a gospel culture we do not profitize someone’s health. In a gospel culture all relationships are recognized as sacred because all relationships are understood as a gift from God. It is also understood that our relationships with others teach us about our relationship with God. In a gospel culture life is lived in balance with nature and is always sustainable. In a gospel culture mercy and justice are the politics of the day. In a gospel culture we live the Beattitudes. In a gospel culture we live as if the Kingdom of God is already here—because it actually is. In a gospel culture we live as if we can bring Christ into the world, because we can.

Jesus sent His disciples out two by two with a mandate for mission, a mandate for evangelism, a mandate to enact the Kingdom of God. When they later returned to Jesus they were exuberant with what they saw happening. They were experiencing what happens when heaven comes to earth.

This is the call of the “gospel.” That we enact the Kingdom of God on earth “as it is in Heaven.” Two by two we are called to go into hospitals and prisons. And two by two we will go. Two by two we will build schools to bring education to the poorest of the poor. Two by two we work for health care for all, fair pay, marriage equality, immigration justice, and mercy for all. Two by two we will go into our voting booths and into our prayer closets. Two by two we will enact God’s politics on earth as it is in heaven. Two by two we will pray and turn within to the Kingdom of God within. And two by two we will turn without to stand with the hurting, the broken, the downtrodden, and the outcast. We will stand with all humanity just as God stands with us in our humanity.

Along the way there will be people who will tell us we are mad because we are not like them. And then we will know we are living the “gospel.”

Amen

Easter 5 B - May 6, 2012

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Julian Mizelle, OHC
Easter 5 B - Sunday, May 6, 2012


Acts 8:26-40
1 John 4:7-21
John 15:1-8

Warning... God Is Love

Several weeks ago I peeked ahead to see what the Lectionary readings would be for today. And to my joy I saw readings that joined together beautifully about the Love of God. I thought “what wonderful readings to be given as sermon texts.” Then this week actually arrived and I began my process of Lectio Divina and praying with the text to discover where I would go with a sermon. Quickly a “sinking feeling” started to churn within me and with each passing day the idea of preaching on the love of God became more and more overwhelming. At one point, in a moment of desperation I turned to the “App Store” on my iPod. Steve Jobs legacy was that Apple would give you an “App” for absolutely everything so certainly there must be an app for God’s love, or abiding in Christ, or even the spiritual disciplines that develop God’s love within us. Well, guess what...there isn’t an app for that! Next I thought about Google. Google, the company that has gone from noun to verb, promises an answer to absolutely every question. So I googled the phrase “God is love” from 1 John 4:8. In less than a second I had over 99 million responses. But guess what...absolutely none of them even tried to speak to the subject about God defining himself as love.  Finally I turned to my trustworthy commentaries knowing they would directly deal with the scriptures at hand and the overwhelming topic that “God is Love.” The commentary begins (and I quote) “Caution: Handle with Care! Warning to readers, especially preachers. This text warrants that warning be stamped all over it.”

I really didn’t need confirmation that my queasiness over the text was justified but now I have it. The idea that “God is Love” is so big, so massive, so fraught with emotion, filled with our pre-conceived ideas about love, our concepts of love, how we love and how we long to be loved, how we were loved (or not loved) in the past, all make this dangerous territory to tread. But the text gives us an additional danger as well. John gives us in both his gospel and in this epistle a soaring testimony to the primacy of God’s love. In fact most would agree that the text of 1 John crafts one of the most powerful texts in all of scripture about the initiative of God’s love. But we live in a culture and time that has trivialized love, even trivialized God’s love, to the point when you proclaim God is Love it falls flat. Literally it becomes saccharine and overly simplistic. We hear it as a glib statement in a long list of glib soundbites: like “Jesus is the answer” or “WWJD”. God is Love...We’ve stopped believing it--or more accurately we’ve become unable to believe it. So the warning is justified at every turn of the text...Caution! Handle with Care!

With stunning brevity John tells us what God is and what God is not. We could have more easily heard that God is power or order or goodness. And if we had heard that God is judgement that would have been easier to accept. After all isn’t it God’s job to control the world and protect us from all harm. And if that is God’s job then doesn’t that mean God will lay down the law, hold everyone accountable, stop the cheaters, and reward the faithful—us. There are plenty in the church that stand ready to tell you about God’s judgment, God’s power, God’s moral authority, and how he plans to use it against those who are not aligned with his principles. But John avoided all of this in his description of God in favor of the simple word “agape” — self-sacrificing love that goes to the very core of God’s being and nature. In short, John shows us who God is, how God choose to manifest God’s self, and how we are strengthened and empowered to do God’s work, and what God’s work is for us. One word answers all of this—that word is LOVE!

Greek scholars will tell you John’s text is written in very simple greek. But its words are tightly woven, even complex. The passage must be taken in its entirety. But for us to better understand it, it needs to be broken down into its parts. And here is how I would do that:

    The passage begins by telling us that love has its very origin in God himself. It is from God, who is love, that all love has its source. What we know as human love is simply a reflection of the divine nature itself. This means that when we love is when we are the closest to God. In a startling phrase by Clement of Alexandria he says that “Christians practice being God.” How? By loving and by being love.
    Love has a double, or twofold relationship to God. It is only by knowing God that we learn to love, and it is only by loving that we learn to know God. On the surface this sounds like a chicken-or-the-egg predicament. It isn’t. The truth being revealed about love and knowing God is that they feed each other. They are inseparable. Love comes from God and love leads to God. Just yesterday I heard Br. Robert share a quote from Alan Jones, former Dean of Grace Cathedral. Alan found that meditating on the phrase “you are my souls delight” gave him the deepest since of knowing God. This is a phrase that beautifully represents the double or two-fold relationship of love. As he prayed “you are my souls delight” he not only experienced God as the delight of his soul but he experienced God saying to him that he is the delight of God.
    When love comes fear vanishes. Fear cannot exist in the presence of love. If you are expecting to be punished, rejected, or shamed the characteristic response is fear. There is a very powerful reason that everyone of us here this morning knows the human emotion of fear. We know fear because we have known the absence of love. The presence of fear becomes the acid test, or the testing of the spirits if you will, to know if what you are hearing or experiencing is from God or not. Fear permeates our culture and is the driving force in our daily news. Look no further than the political dialogue going on in our country if you would like to test what I am saying. If fear is present love has vanished. If love is present fear has vanished.
    To know the love of God, to know that God is love, to know that perfect love that cast out all fear requires something. This kind of love requires Community. Loving God and loving others are inseparable. They are indissolubly connected. In order for the energy of love to freely flow it requires 3 things: God, self and others. Loving our neighbor, loving our enemies, loving our brothers and sisters, loving the other, no matter who the other is, is all part and parcel to loving God. John claims, with crude bluntness, that if you claim to love God but fail to love your brother or sister you’re lying. You’re lying to yourself and you’re lying to God. But John’s analogy goes further than this. It also means if you are not loving the “other” you are not loving yourself. Thomas Merton put it this way: “We cannot be at peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves, and we cannot be at peace with ourselves because we are not at peace with God.” God, ourselves and others...3 inseparable relationships all wrapped up in knowing the truth that “God is Love.” No wonder this subject comes with a warning label.

Each of these four points about love that I have drawn from John’s text is telling us basically the same thing: Love is relational. Love is about relationship. Love is about relationship with God, relationship with ourselves, and relationship with others. Some see this as a triangle: God, ourselves, and others. Some see this as a tripod. If one leg is removed the other two collapse. However you picture the relationship of love, this is what is important. Our ability to understand, to comprehend, and grasp the truth that God is love is the quintessential quantum leap on the spiritual journey. When the truth that God is love becomes reality in your own life this is the moment when everything changes. This is the true meaning of atonement, which would be better pronounced as at-one-ment. This is the power of transfiguration...coming face to face with divine love. Look at all of the parables, look at all of the discourses of Christ recorded throughout the gospels. Their core, irreducible message is God is Love. This is the promise of the gospel because love is the gospel. It is not just the promise of the texts before us but it is the over-arching message of all scripture when it is understood in its entirety. No love, no gospel. Love is our starting place and love is our ending place. Love is why Jesus went to the cross and love is what brought about resurrection and new life.
The meaning of the empty tomb is love. Our doctrines, our beliefs, our theology and creeds, our moral codes can only support and sustain us when they recognize the primacy of God’s love. Under any other context they fail us. Which is exactly why we have such struggles in our churches today. To those who want to begin with a “correct theology” (which is always about their theology) or an adherence to a moral code are terribly upset by the truth “God is Love.” Theology, doctrine, moral codes, do’s and don’ts, none of these answer our human need for purpose and belonging. This is not the good news or the gospel answer to our anxiety, our mortality, or our communal felt meaninglessness. John is telling us, both in his gospel account and in his epistles, that God’s love is primary. Everything else is a distant second. The gospels answer is Love, God’s love.

The truth and reality that God is Love is way too big for Apple to put into an App. Not even Google can handle it. And it is a passage in scripture that rightly warrants warnings and cautions. But the real warning is this: that we not miss out on knowing the love of God.

He Is Risen...Amen!

Feast of St Joseph (transferred) - Mar 21, 2012

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Julian Mizelle, OHC
Feast of St. Joseph, March 19, 2012 (transferred to March 21)

2 Samuel 7:4,8-16
Romans 4:13-18
Luke 2:41-52

St Joseph and child Jesus - an icon by Joseph Brown

exposed in our church with forsythia from the garden

Role Models

I might have been 7 or 8 years old. I might have been younger. My father came to me one day saying get in the car—we’re going to the store—I need to buy a gift. So off we went to Sears. To a small child the gift my Father picked out was dazzling; bright and shiny with lots of gizmos. I was quite excited to see it going home with us. And I waited with eager anticipation for the gift to be opened. What was the occasion? It was my Mother’s birthday. What was the gift? A bright and shinny new Vacuum Cleaner! (Well...it did say “Sears Best” on it.) Things were rather icy and solemn around our home for the next several days. I knew it was a time for me to keep quiet and lay low. But by the weekend another bright and shinny present arrived—a new television, a color one (our very first). And on Sunday evening we all set down to watch Bonanza in color. And once again there was peace in the kingdom.

The experience of seeing my Mother receive a vacuum cleaner as a gift became a powerful lesson to me that one does not show their love or honor a woman’s birthday with a household cleaning appliance. It is not a gift that says “I love you” and to this day I have never given anyone, other than myself, the gift of a vacuum cleaner.

Few of us grow up with perfect role models. Most of us feel challenged to become a role model for others. When an outstanding role model comes along in our society we want to make them a hero. Simply put, being a role model is a daunting task. But in St. Joseph I have found one who is a very powerful role model.

The scriptural record surrounding Joseph is one of powerful silence. There is not one single word recorded in the scriptures that Joseph spoke. We only know him through his dreams and actions. We know that he was a descendant of King David, a carpenter, that he shared intimacy with God through his dreams, and that he was responsive to God through what he discerned, and he was even willing to take risks through his obedience to God. Today’s Gospel reading from Luke is the last time Joseph appears in the chronology of Jesus’ life. Some 20 years later when Jesus begins his public ministry Joseph has simply been dropped from the narrative.

As I ponder the life of Joseph I am asking the question who was his role model? After all no one had ever been married to the Mother of God before. Husbands being jealous of another man have been common in all times and in all cultures. But what do you do when the other man is the God you worship. It must have been terribly conflicting for him. How did Joseph find himself and carve out an identity in such a relationship. Let’s be honest—being married to the Mother of God would simply be intimidating.

Even though the scriptural record is thin we find Joseph fulfilling his role as protector and caregiver in the Holy Family. It was through his sheltering arms that he expressed his deep love and intimacy for Mary. And it was through his obedience to God that he was able to protect the ones he loved, sacrificing his safety for theirs.

If fulfilling his role as husband, protector and caregiver to the Virgin Mother of God was not enough, Joseph also had to find his way to be the earthly father to the Incarnate Son of God, the Christ child Jesus. Today’s Gospel reading gives us the story of a precocious and independent 12 year old lad asserting himself in the temple—the same temple he would cleanse some 20 years later by throwing out the money changers. But over the years many writers have taken great license in creating stories that might have happened (or could have happened) when Jesus was a young child.

Anne Rice tells the tale of a young Jesus getting into an argument with another boy. With a sudden slip of the tongue he curses him and the child drops dead. Realizing the seriousness of what has happened Jesus simply goes over to the child's home and raise him back to life. The child’s parents, not to mention the entire village, are both horrified and mystified by these events. Joseph simply weighs how to navigate through the unexplainable behavior of Jesus. Imagine trying to parent that!

Christopher Moore, in the national bestseller “Lamb, The Gospel According to Biff, Christ Childhood Pal” (and one of my all-time favorite books) takes an even more irreverent approach. The chid Jesus is in the yard playing with a lizard. He discovers that if he bites its head off he can bring it back to life. I’ll spare you the ensuing details.

Both of these stories represent the fertile imaginations of two gifted writers. What these stories do for me is to set my own imagination in motion to imagine what it was like to parent a child who could turn water into wine, walk on water, heal diseases and ailments, and even bring dead people back to life. There was no Dr. Spock, there was no Dr. Phil, there were no parenting guru’s or manuals for Joseph to turn to on how to parent the Incarnate Son of God.

Joseph was self-effacing and humble, strong and reliable. Joseph was a role model for real manhood. He was a godly man who lived above the low expectations of common culture. And he knew the real meaning of honoring and respecting women. Most of all he loved God regardless of the cost. And as with all of the great saints, when we look into their lives, we are pointed back to the life of Christ. We see Christ nature in them. Joseph would have it no other way.

All four of the New Testament Gospelers were talented writers themselves. None of them gave us humorous or far-fetched stories of the childhood of Jesus. However we also know they wrote with an agenda. Their agenda was simply to present to us Jesus the Christ, the Incarnation of God. That fact alone would have made it difficult to give Joseph a prominent role in the narrative. What the life of Joseph does say mirrors the words of John the Baptist: “He must increase, but I must decrease.” What we celebrate on this feast of St. Joseph is the mystery of redemption and how Joseph played a significant role in God’s plan to save humanity through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. God’s redemptive work needed human agents to give their consent and their cooperation. Mary simply said “Let it be!” Joseph said nothing--he just acted and through those actions gave his consent to the divine dream of God’s loving plan.

Amen

Lent 3 B - Mar 11, 2012

Christ the King, Stone Ridge, NY
Br. Julian Mizelle, OHC
Lent 3B – Sunday, March 4, 2012


Exodus 20:1-17
1 Corinthians 1:18-25
John 2:13-22


Three Hidden Truths of Lent

It is a real joy for me to be with you today; to join you in worship and to share in this holy season of Lent. I know so many of you from your visits to the Monastery, from Education for Ministry, from Centering Prayer and now you have welcomed me to your pulpit—you have welcomed me like family and that is a spiritual bond that I truly treasure. And I trust you all know the bond we share goes beyond me. The entire Community of Holy Cross Monastery shares a great bond of affection with you. I bring you their greetings and blessings for the Lord’s Day.

I grew up in the evangelical south in a family of Baptist preachers. You hear a LOT of stories when you’re surrounded by preachers all of the time. I’ll never forget the Sunday morning my step-father took the pulpit gleaming with pride at the completion of the church’s new nursery. It had been a long project. From the capital campaign to the construction, and now they were finally able to better meet the needs of young families with babies. Leaning over the pulpit my step-father said “I want to talk to all of the ladies here this morning. Ladies, if you will just work with me, I promise you together we will fill this nursery.” As the words fell out of his mouth he realized what he said. Turning 13 shades of red and ready to dodge the ire of husbands he wanted to crawl under the pulpit. For years, and I mean years, he got teased about this. It was a story that never died. Long after his retirement people would ask him — “So preacher, hows that nursery coming?”

Br. Julian Mizelle, OHC - portrait by Rachel Mizelle

English is a tricky language. From nuances to shades of meaning right up to double entendre’s it is easy to mis-communicate. In college I had befriended an exchange student from Korea. He so struggled with the double meanings hidden in our language. One day he came up to me quite forlorn over insulting his host at a party the night before. You see he had learned that it was a nice thing to say to someone “you’re cool!”. So when he went up to his party host and said to her, “you know, you’re not so hot!” he was shocked to discover he had totally missed on the meaning of opposites in our language.

Lent is a season filled with the language of double meanings. Ash Wednesday tells us we are nothing but dust. Then immediately we jump into scripture readings that introduce us to an angry, vengeful-sounding and wrathful God. One that calls for blood sacrifice to avenge our wretched sins. The biblical narrative lays down a law that is summarized in the Decalogue—10 commandments that no human being can ever live fully into 365 days a year throughout the decades of a lifetime. You may not be a murderer, and maybe you’ve never stolen as much as a paper clip ever in your life, but at some point you’ve coveted your neighbors donkey, or maybe it was their Jaguar.

For years I have had the habit of reading the Bible through each year. This year it just so happens that the Book of Numbers fell into Lent. Reading Numbers during Lent is not just about slogging your way through a census. But it is interwoven with stories of broken vows, wrongs against self and wrongs against others. When Moses prays to God about what to do with these individuals God’s answer comes back saying “take them outside the camp and stone them!”. It’s tough reading.

But this is the Bible. The Bible is a book filled with conflicts, paradoxes, and even historical inaccuracies. There are no glib one-sentence answers to satisfy these dilemmas. And that is precisely the point. It is by our learning to struggle with the seeming paradoxes of scripture that we learn to grow up.

Now just imagine for a moment if I had come this morning bearing a whip of cords and came into your sanctuary throwing and thrashing about the chairs, overturning every piece of furniture, yelling like a maniac, creating total chaos. (No worries Alison, I left my whip of cords back at the Monastery.) After everyone scattered and ran for cover, no doubt someone would whip out a cell phone to call 911. This is just the scene we enter in our Gospel reading this morning. Jesus was outraged and it was holy havoc. No tables were left unturned and no one was left untouched. Crashing furniture, money and coins bouncing across the floor, animals squealing and running wildly, turtledoves flapping frantically, man and beast ducking for cover. If we only read this through the eyes of our own human experience we get the message that God is angry, fierce and destructive.

Richard Rohr tells us that the Bible is an honest conversation with humanity about where power really is. All spiritual texts, including the Bible, are books whose primary focus lies outside of themselves, in the Holy Mystery. The Bible illuminates our human experience through struggling with it. It is not a substitute for human experience but an invitation into the struggle. We are actually supposed to be bothered by these texts. When God changed Jacob’s name to Israel it was because he had struggled with God. The very word “Israel” means one who struggles with God. So here is the first of 3 hidden truths I want to share with you: it is through our struggle that we come into consciousness. It is through our struggle that we wake up and grow up. It is through our struggle that we meet our real selves. We actually need the struggle.

When I hear this story of Jesus cleansing the temple I see throngs of people who have gathered for the most important religious festival of the year—Passover. They are there following their devotion. And they want to do it right. They want the right sacrifices and they want the right money to pay their temple tax. They are following the customs of their faith and the norms of their culture. They are simply doing what they have been taught to do. They are much like us traveling through this season of Lent following the rituals of Ash Wednesday, maybe giving up chocolate for 40 days, and being more penitent...seeking a greater awareness of sins. Now enters Jesus overturning the tables of our literalism, disrupting our image of who God is, using His whip of cords to cleanse our inner temple. Just when we think we understand the Christian life Jesus enters like a wild man and everything is thrown into chaos: we face a crisis in our health, someone close to us dies, we loose a job, a relationship ends, something happens and the security of normal-ness and routines abandon us.

Daniel Clendenin tells us the cleansing of the temple is a stark warning against any and every false sense of security. Misplaced allegiances, religious presumption, self-satisfaction, and spiritual complacency are just some of the tables Jesus would overturn in his own day and in ours. We so want to have it all figured out. We desperately long to control our lives, even to the extent of controlling God in our lives. And this brings us to our second hidden truth—God is not bound by our ideas of Him. God is not bound to act, behave, or function in the way we expect. God is not bound to following our conventions. He is not even bound to acting consistently to our past experiences of Him. There comes a point in the spiritual journey when God ask us to let go and let God be God—on His terms.

We have domesticated Jesus into a meek and mild Savior. Then the day comes when God enters our lives like a sledgehammer. We’re not comfortable with an angry God. We’re not even comfortable with our own anger. That’s because we’re struggling to learn that anger is a mode of connectedness to others and at its root anger is always a vivid form of caring.

Consider Job for a moment. Job is our model for a Godly life. But in a matter of days he lost all of his possessions, he lost his livelihood, he lost his family, he lost his health, he lost his image of God. The only thing he didn’t loose were 3 friends who hung around telling him that all of these horrible looses were his own fault. But would Job have learned who God really is if he hadn’t gone through the shattering experiences that brought an end to his naive conception of who God is? Would Job have met God in the whirlwind of transformation and restoration if he hadn’t passed through his own “night of the spirit.” Job needed to learn to let God be God on his own terms. And when Job did just that he not only found God, he found himself.

This leads us to our third hidden truth—one way or another God arranges the circumstances of our lives forcing us to take a leap of faith into the unknown. One way or another we have to let go of everything we know, of everything we expect, of everything we have figured out and let God be God.

When theologians consider todays Gospel reading they get weighed down arguing over where it fits chronologically into the gospel narrative. For me, that totally misses the point. Something fundamentally changed when Jesus cleansed the temple. He was shocking His followers awake and into the consciousness that how we know God would change from this point forward. The trappings of our piety only take us so far. To really know God we would need to turn within and find Him on the altar of our hearts. “The kingdom of God is within you” is the breakthrough epiphany that Jesus was acting out. A “temple not made with hands” is what He was pointing His followers to. And if the kingdom of God is within us that means we find the kingdom of God in the other: in the divorcee, in the widow, in the homeless, in the hungry, in the downtrodden, in the jobless, in the sick, in the prisoner. It means we find the kingdom of God outside the walls of sexism, homophobia, racism, classism, and yes even outside the walls of capitalism.

These are just some of the tables that I want to see overturned this Lenten season. But in all honesty it would be wrong of me to use this text as a whip of cords against my favorite injustices. Because this text is deeper than that. This is a text which calls you to take up your own whip of cords to overturn the tables of injustice in your own life. The text pushes you to imagine a Jesus entering your own sanctuary, overturning your own cherished rationalizations and driving you out in the name of God. This is a text that ask you to find God within—within the temple not made with hands. This is a text that calls you into the chaos, into new alignment, into a place of queasiness, into the unknown, into your own leap of faith where everything will change.

This is a text that calls us into our Lenten journey, into resurrection and into new life.

Amen!

Epiphany 4 B - Jan 29, 2012

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Julian Mizelle, OHC
Epiphany 4 B – Sunday, January 29, 2012

Deuteronomy 18:15-20

1Corinthians 8:1-13

Mark 1:14-20

The Scream

Reading the Gospel of Mark is a bit like reading a set of Cliff Notes—and a paired down version at that. It is a fast moving Gospel, details are spotty, and years worth of events get packed into a few sentences. In this opening chapter to Mark’s Gospel we go from the Messianic Predictions of Isaiah to John the Baptist and Christ Baptism, His wilderness temptation, the launch of His Galilean Ministry, the calling of His first disciples and immediately into a series of healings and miracles. These opening 45 verses to Mark’s Gospel gives us a sweeping overview of Christ life and ministry. Reading it is like watching a movie trailer to an action packed adventure. Even those great beings who devised our Revised Common Lectionary seem to understand there would be much to unpack in this core narrative of the Good News. There are a total of six Sundays in Epiphany. However five out of six Sundays give us Gospel lessons from the first chapter of Mark. 

Todays lesson brings us to Capernaum, where we find Jesus teaching in the synagogue. And in the middle of His discourse He is interrupted by a deranged man yelling out at Jesus. The text paints the picture of a demon possessed heckler who is no longer in control of his own body. The evil spirit is now speaking through the man. But we are given the fewest of details and I find myself wishing to know a few more facts to better understand the story.

1. Why was this man in the synagogue?  Demon possession was a sure sign that you are unclean, impure and not worthy of presenting yourself in the synagogue. In the first century those who have mentally lost it lived out by the tombs, in the cemeteries or in the desert wilderness. Most of the demon possessed people that Jesus encountered during His earthly ministry dwelled in one of these “outer” places. In fact these were the places feared and avoided at all cost. When it was time to bury the dead you got in and out of the cemetery as quickly as possible. If you lingered your chances of encountering an evil spirit increased. Or worse yet, you may pick up a demon who goes back home with you.

2. What kind of evil spirit did this man have? What was it nature and character? It isn’t made clear to us what the mans unnatural or pathological state was. Did he suffer addictions or was he bi-polar? Was he completely schizophrenic or did he still have some hold on reality? Was he a victim of abuse? Did he come from a broken home or a loving home? Did he know he was lovable and loved in God’s eyes? Had anyone ever taught him to have self-compassion?

Or maybe it was something simple and far more common—something experienced by all of humanity. Did he suffer from the non-stop commentary, those internal voices of on-going negativity and judgement, running in his head. The Church Fathers called it Sin. The Church Mystics called it Brokenness and The Human Condition. It is the universal fate we have all been born to. Quite possibly our deranged heckler was traversing the dark night of sense and his outcry was more of a cry for help. Edvard Munch’s classic painting of an impressionistic landscaped with a lone dark figure standing in the foreground whose hands cover his ears as if to say stop the inner voices, with mouth wide open is a painting of both stunning beauty and stark reality. The painting is simply titled “The Scream.” And it is a painting that we have all found ourselves living in at some point in our lives.

The Scream - Edvard Munch - 1893 - National Gallery, Oslo, Norway

Our questions could go on. The list of unanswered details are endless. Mark did not write with the agenda of giving us a complete picture. Instead he leaves us with an open invitation. An invitation to write the details of our lives into the story. If this is the story of the “good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God,” then it must be a story we can write ourselves into. It must be a story we can identify ourselves in.

Not that long ago as a green and “wet-behind-the-ears” novice I posed a question to my Novice Master in a novitiate class. I asked “where have all the demons gone?”. The response was a quizzical look, as if to say “what are you talking about?”. Well, in the life and times of Jesus and in the life and times of the early Church there seemed to be a strong focus on Satan and his minions—the demons. But in our post-critical age of scientific enlightenment we don’t talk much about demons. Respectable Anglicans can go decades without experiencing a good smiting of the devil. We don’t even seem to poke fun at the devil in our culture the way we did in times past. Long gone are the days of comedian Flip Wilson and his character “Geraldine” and that classic line “the devil made me do it.” Long gone are the days of Dana Carvey’s “The Church Lady” from Saturday Night Live who week after week had the recurring epiphany “Could It Be Satan?”.

But maybe our consciousness is changing. Earlier this week I was asked by a Princeton Seminarian student if we as a Monastic community ever experience a sense of being up against forces of darkness, principalities and powers that push against us in our ministries. And if so, how do we fight against these forces. (With questions like this you know why we brace ourselves when we have seminarians come for a visit. They’re wonderful and they keep us on our toes.) The truth is the dark forces are never that far away. Our modern day demons include: alcoholism, drug addiction, prejudice and hatred, fear, depression, jealousy and envy, loneliness and isolation, materialism and a drive for power, even boredom and meaninglessness, acedia. These demons do not point to something that has taken hold within us. It would be more correct to think of these demons as pointing to a LACK of something within us. 

Jesus did not take something out of us to make us good. The good news is that he came to make us aware of something inside...truth, love, forgiveness...our central core of goodness. 

Jesus came to the synagogue well equiped to deal with evil spirits. He had just spent 40 days in the desert facing down his own demons. The image of Jesus as exorcist is an image of someone who has experienced his own demons. It is the classic image of the wounded healer. Jesus faced three temptations. They are the 3 temptations of the false self. They are the 3 temptations that we all face in our broken humanity: our twisted needs for control, power and affection. To dismantle the programs of control, power and affection is to dismantle the false self. And when you have dismantled the false self you have authority when the devil, or when life, tries to knock the wind out of you. Jesus only had to speak two words to take authority over the evil spirit. Be Silent, sometimes translated Be Still. They were the same two words He used to calm the raging sea. It has been said that silence is God’s first language. Everything else is commentary. 

“What is this? A new teaching—with authority!” Absolutely right! Jesus not only teaches in parables in the synagogue but He IS the parable of God. From this first chapter of Mark and all throughout the Gospels he appears as an enigma wrapped in mystery. What He actually says seems straightforward enough, at least on the surface. Yet sufficiently cryptic to tempt and tantalize us to be drawn in deeper. 

We are also left without the details of where our deranged heckler went next. What happened to him? What became of his future? His story never recurs in Marks narrative. And once again we are left with the invitation to write in our own story and become the living Gospel. 

Today we are the ones who come to temples, synagogues, churches, houses of worship, and even monasteries seeking transformation. And in two words Jesus becomes our boundary-breaking, demon-dashing, law-transcending Lord commanding us to “be silent, be still.” 

Through His healing silence we go forth with restored meaning to our lives. Through God’s silence all the evil spirits that are wrapped up in our control, power and affection issues are dismantled leaving us in the wonderment of being filled with God’s love. Through the realization of the fundamental woundedness of our humanity is where we discover healing, freedom, transcendence. 

Through Jesus’ own woundedness of battling satan’s temptation in the wilderness he healed this man in the Capernaum synagogue. His woundedness took him all the way to the cross fulfilling Isaiah’s prophetic words, “by His wounds we are healed.” In the woundedness of Christ He became the source of life for all of us—even for you, even for me.

Amen

Advent 2 B - Dec 4, 2011 - Julian

St John's, Kingston, NY --- Br. Julian Mizelle, OHC
Advent 2, Year B - Sunday, December 4, 2011

Isaiah 40:1-11
2 Peter 3:8-15a
Mark 1:1-8

An Advent Wilderness

It is a real joy for me to be with you today; to join you in worship and to share in this holy season of Advent. Honestly, St. John’s feels like my second spiritual home. I know so many of you from the Monastery, from the Education for Ministry program, and your work and ministry with Angel Food. And now you’ve welcomed me to your pulpit, you’ve welcomed me to share my journey in Contemplative Prayer, you’ve welcomed me like family. It is a spiritual bond that I truly treasure.

It is as if we are working backwards through Advent this year. Last Sunday our Lectionary pointed us to apocalyptic events and Christ second coming. Today we have the opening prologue to Mark’s gospel and there are no birth stories to linger at.We meet not one but two prophets speaking to us from the wilderness. This backward movement through the days of Advent may strike us as odd but it will ultimately point us toward the coming of the Christ child. It does point us toward the manger where we will get our first glimpses of light, life and love. It does point us toward new hope, peace, and joy.

But before we arrive at the foot of the manger we must first go through the travail of the wilderness. The wilderness, which can seduce us with its beauty and its majesty, has many faces. In one part of the country it is dense with forest and lush vegetation which delight all of our senses. In another part of the country it is stark and barren and seems to purge us of any affectation. All the while it holds a grandeur that takes our breath away. If you have ever visited some of our great National Parks out west, especially those in southern Utah, you know of the grandeur of which I speak. The wilderness is a place of wonder and exploration. It is also a place of respite and rejuvenation. Unless, of course, we become lost in it. Then it is transformed into a place of dread and terror. A place where all hope can be lost. The wilderness is a place that supports life only if we possess the survival skills necessary to navigate its mysteries. Without those survival skills we are at the mercy of a disinterested, even hostile, environment.

On this second Sunday of Advent the calm of our lives is startled awake by voices from the wilderness. With Isaiah we hear one crying out for the construction of a passable route through the desert; then from an entirely different time, even a different desert, we hear the voice of John the Baptist, our wild and wooly prophet, giving us an unsettling call to repentance. In fact, any honest look at all three of our scripture readings this morning bring us face to face with the issue of repentance.

Trust me, no guest preacher wants to go into a parish his first time and preach on repentance. Any homiletical professor will tell you there is no surer way to loose you audience. Mere mention of the word cause most people to roll their eyes back, shut down their hearing, or brace themselves for an olde time religion that is as worn out as its name. Apparently our attitudes and feelings about repentance are about as popular as they were in the time of John the Baptist and Isaiah: they only preached about it when they were out in the middle of nowhere.

What does this have to do with Advent? Everything! While our calendars may suggest that Advent is the season of preparation for the celebration of the Nativity, the Advent readings broaden our view and insist that we are really preparing for the coming of the reign of God in our lives. This backward march that begins with the second coming of Christ and ends on Christmas Day at the manger points us to the mystery of Advent. A mystery that links the historical coming of the promised Messiah with the coming of Christ into our own hearts and the coming of Christ again at the end of all time. A mystery that will ask us to pause and look into our hearts, our real and honest selves.

We are being called to prepare for a time when kindness and truth will meet, when justice and peace will kiss, when truth will spring out of the earth, and justice will look down from heaven. Now these are phrases that normally make us think of when the world “out there” will finally be set right by God. But I am talking about the world “in here”. I am talking about when kindness and truth will meet “in here”. When justice and peace will kiss “in here”. No I’m not talking about when the wars of distant lands will cease, I’m talking about the wars that rage within our own thoughts will cease. The conflicts, the wounds, the troubles, the hurts, the disappointments, the fears, the self loathing, the self hate—because this is the wilderness that most of us find ourselves lost in today. This is the wilderness where the good news of Christ cries out to touch and change our lives.

Advent is a time serious road construction—and we all know the joy that brings. Isaiah is not describing minor repairs, such as filling in potholes or repairing curbs. He is calling for major reconfiguration of the terrain: filling in valleys and leveling mountains; smoothing rugged land and rough country. He is calling for serious transformation of the landscape of our lives. It is a call to go in a new direction. Or as Fr. Thomas Keating so lovingly tells us it is a call to change the direction from where you are looking for happiness. That is how he defines repentance. It is when we get to that place where we say “this isn’t working anymore” and we turn around and go a new way.

One day I was on my way to Woodstock and came upon road construction and was detoured onto unfamiliar roads. Now I know this must be a guy thing but for some reason I thought I could figure out a better route than where the detour was sending me. After about 45 minutes of going in circles and ending up where I began, still blocked by road construction, I decided I would follow the detour signs. You know what the definition of insanity is? Doing the same thing over and over expecting a different outcome. How many times in our lives have we been trapped by this? It is not really the definition of insanity but it defines the human condition we find ourselves captive in.

This past week I found myself captive of an unexpected wilderness. It was by no means how I had envisioned I would spend my first week of this blessed time of Advent. A season I regular refer to as my favorite time of year. My wilderness sent me off to jury duty. And by wilderness I really don’t mean the interruption that jury duty brings. Changing plans, rearranging schedules, not having time to use it as I want to. I’m not even referring to the drudgery we all feel by the need to perform our civic duty, that task of doing something we “should” when we honestly would rather not.

The wilderness I’m speaking of is when you are called to step out of your own life and into the lives and events that belong to another world. A world where tragic things happened and a series of events have transpired all culminating in bringing a roomful of strangers together in a courtroom. So my first week of Advent was not filled with times of Contemplative Prayer, saying my Rosary, joining my monastic community in our daily celebration of the eucharist, not even joining in the daily office to chant the Psalms. My first week of Advent did not give time for the spiritual reading I had planned or the practice of spiritual disciplines that I look forward to in this blessed season. By Friday I was dry, parched, empty. Mentally exhausted, spiritually drained I said God “why?”. Friday evening I walked out of the court house in uptown Kingston and found myself standing right in front of a monument to Sojourner Truth. That great abolutionist who marched up the very steps of that court house and won the right to a trial which resulted in the return of her son from a slave owner that had hauled her son all the way to Alabama. She got custody of her son back and spent the rest of her life to bring an end to slavery and injustice. The inscription on the monument quotes Sojourner Truth speaking from her own wilderness: “I talk with God and He talks with me”.

“I talk with God and He talks with me”. That is a divine relationship at its very purest. That is the conviction of one who has turned around and walked in a new direction to find her happiness. That is one who went through the wilderness with the only survival skill that will bring you through it: clutching God’s hand. That is one who made a new path and toppled mountains of injustice, even the injustice she found within herself and found the light, life and love within the manger of her own heart.

“I talk with God and He talks with me”.
Have a blessed Advent. Amen.

Advent 1 B - Nov 27, 2011

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY --- Br. Julian Mizelle, OHC
Advent 1, Year B - Sunday, November 27, 2011


Isaiah 64:1-9
1 Corinthians 1:3-9
Mark 13:24-37


Living In-Between

On this first Sunday of Advent, as the Church begins its telling of the Christian story once again, our Gospel reading tells us to “keep awake”.  Honestly, this command to keep awake I find to be a bit annoying.  Most of us do not need to be told to keep awake during Advent.  We are already operating in a state of sleep deprivation.  Instead of being accused of being asleep we are more likely to be accused scurrying through the rush of holiday shopping, parties, and to-do list, being highly over-scheduled, and burning our Advent Candle at both ends.  There’s endless shopping, gifts to prepare, parties to plan, travel arrangements to make, lots of extra cooking and baking.  Squeezed in to our already busy lives will be Christmas pageants, Cantata’s and Lessons and Carols.  The joy of being with family and friends is a gift but it is also a stress.  Visiting relatives and in-laws mean extra work and somehow it all has to get done.  The pressures of the holiday season will be over-shadowed by a constant reminder of how many shopping days left until Christmas morning.  In case you’re wondering you have 27 days and about 15.5 hours.  So it occurs to me that the real pastoral action needed for most of us is not to be told to keep awake, but to pass out sleeping pills with chamomile tea to minister to our over-caffeinated, stressed out selves.

The fact that we are exhausted and stretched to our physical limits is not just a reality of Advent and Christmas -- it’s a reality of our lives all year long.  Sleep, or the need to get more of it, has actually made it onto the list of spiritual disciplines.  This is simply recognizing that it is hard to progress spiritually when we’re exhausted.  James Bryan Smith in his book “The Good and Beautiful God” says that the number one enemy of spiritual formation today is exhaustion.  Many retailers opened their stores this past Friday (Black Friday) at midnight Thursday.  Some even pushed their opening hours earlier and opened on Thanksgiving Day.  We’re loosing the sanctity of setting aside a holiday as a time of resting from our busy lives.

Our culture is caught up in a mad rush of busy-ness that is pointed toward Christmas morning, but it is not pointed toward the coming of the Christ child.  We may not be physically asleep; quite the opposite actually.  But in our wakefulness to the realities of the holiday rush we can fall asleep to the spiritual season of the coming Christ.  So on this first Sunday of Advent Mark’s gospel gives us a wake-up call by telling us that the coming of Christ is both near and at hand.  But which coming of Christ does Mark’s gospel point us to?  Advent is a special season indeed linking the historical coming of the promised Messiah with the coming of Christ into our own hearts and the coming of Christ again at the end of time.

Our lection this morning is known as the little apocalypse and is filled with references to the end of all time.  Not unlike many today the Disciples wanted Jesus to give them a date.  They were ready to mark their calendars.  So Jesus gave them a metaphor -- the Fig Tree.  A fig tree would be a well known reference point for someone living in a Mediterranean world in the first century.  When we encounter figs today they tend to be mashed inside a moist little biscuit.  But for us, is the sign to the end of the age really to be found in a comfort food cookie?  I think not.

For us this is a metaphor pointing to a paradox.  The wake up call in Mark’s gospel is calling you and me to awaken to paradox.  In fact, it is one of the most important paradoxes found in the Gospel.  It is the paradox of already but not yet.

• It is the already but not yet drama of how we live our life with God.
• Christ has already been born but not yet has the world come into His light and love.
• Already Jesus has established the means for our relationship with God, but not yet do we live in complete union with God.
• Already the Prince of Peace has come but not yet have we learned to end our wars.
• Already Christ has taken our wounds but not yet have we been able to let them go.
• Already the realm of God is evident all around us, but not yet is God’s realm fully established in this world or even in our hearts.
• Already God’s economy is at work, but not yet have we moved our hope from Wall St.
• Already God has filled the earth with plenty but not yet have we learned to share it with all.

Jesus was telling His disciples, and through this gospel text He is telling us, we are the one’s living “in-between” His first coming and His second coming.  This already but not yet paradox is how Mark’s gospel breaks right into our lives today speaking to us who live in-between.  Mark’s gospel is not an apocalyptic message for those left behind, it is an apocalyptic message for those left between.  For those living in this challenging meantime between the already and the not yet.

Just like the fig tree that knows how to respond to the seasons of the year Advent calls us to a season to go within.  All of nature moves deep inside and all living things have dug their roots deep into the earth for sustenance and protection.  We too are invited to turn inward during this blessed time of preparation for the Lord’s coming.  This is the season to let Christ be born anew in our hearts, in our minds, in our souls.  This is the season to live fully into the reality that although Christ was born in human weakness, He manifested His divinity to the world.  This is the season to open our hearts to His spiritual coming in our inmost being where Christ is born anew and to let His light shine within us.  This is the season to wait and watch for His final coming at the end of time where He will manifest His glorified being through all creation.

As I was preparing my own heart for the Advent season I was going through my journal and came upon an entry I had written years ago.  The entry has the simple title of “Three Questions”.  I’m not for sure what impressed me to write it down at the time.  But today I would tell you that the Holy Spirit knew I would need it at this point in my life.  I have taken these 3 questions and placed them on the inner tabernacle of my heart.  It is as if they sit in the cradle of my being, the Holy Spirit working them through me as He knows best.  I don’t even try to provide an answer to these 3 questions.  I am simply letting them be within me, allowing my heavenly friend to engraft them into my life.  I will journey with them these next 4 weeks of Advent.  They will be my guiding star leading me to the cradle of my Lord.  I share them with you in invitation for you to journey with them during this season of Advent.

• What needs to be forgiven?
• What needs to be healed?
• What needs to be celebrated?

Three questions that hold and carry us through the paradox of already but not yet of our lives with God.  Three questions that stand with us in solidarity (quite literally) in this in-between place of our Christian journey.  Three questions that we can welcome keeping awake with through this holy season of Advent.

Have a Blessed Advent!  Amen!