The Fourth Sunday in Lent C, March 30, 2025

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Ephrem Arcement, OHC

The Fourth Sunday in Lent, March 30, 2025

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

Click here for an audio of the sermon

Christianity is currently undergoing something of an identity crisis. How can so many who claim the name “Christian” act so unlike Christ? What does it mean that so many churches are now empty on Sunday mornings? And what does it mean that, even then, so many today are searching for new ways to nurture their spiritual lives?

It was Erick Erickson, the twentieth-century developmental psychologist, who coined the phrase “identity crisis.” Before Darwin, he notes, an “identity crisis” wasn’t a thing. But in a world where everything is changing, the question of “who are we” begins to make itself known with alarming urgency. For

Erickson, without a strong sense of identity, the self will struggle to develop and mature. And this is the great challenge that faces us today: how do we find a healthy sense of identity when nearly every sector of life is defined more by a question than an answer?

Well, one way that both society and religion has sought to alleviate this disease of uncertainty and ambivalence is to retreat into the past…to that “safe space” where everything is clear, fixed, and steady…where boundaries and allegiances are maintained. But the fatal flaw of this fundamentalist retreat is that it’s based on an illusion…that life is static and fixed…and that the greatest value of life is to protect yourself from what threatens your sense of self, not what causes your self to grow.

For Erickson, the human person and societies develop into maturity through successive stages, the foundational being what he calls “basic trust.” All of the building blocks to healthy living are founded on the ability for one coming into the world to regard one’s caregiver as one who can be trusted. To the extent that we don’t receive this, we struggle through the course of our lives to find it, usually causing much damage to others along the way!

What results from this predicament are two contrasting, often competing, approaches to our life with God: one that believes that God is to be feared and obeyed above all else, the other that believes that God is to be trusted and loved above all else.

And this brings us to what I consider to be the greatest of all Jesus’ stories in the Gospels: the story of a father’s prodigal love for his wayward son. To set the context…Jesus, we should highlight, was born into a Jewish world that was decidedly on the closed, fear-based side of the ideological spectrum. Her identity was entirely wrapped up in her ability to remain obedient to the law. The religious leaders, the scribes and Pharisees, at least as they are portrayed in the New Testament, were the fundamentalists and legalists of their day. God, was, above all else, to be feared.

But, we should ask, why did so many in Judaism come to have an image of God that resembled more a despotic judge than a prodigally loving father? To put one’s finger on it, it was because Israel interpreted her near annihilation by the Babylonians as a direct result of her disobedience to the law. God’s wrath was unleashed upon her because she behaved badly, and, as a result, her leaders would develop a vision for restoration based on a hyper-sensitivity to obedience to the law. And this would lead directly to the fear-based religious sensibilities we see Jesus confront over and over again in the Gospels. It had everything to do with her inadequate image of God.

Notice what spurs the story on: “tax collectors” and “sinners” were coming near to listen to Jesus, which incensed the Pharisees and scribes. These religious leaders believed holiness to mean “to be separate from” all who are deemed sinful and unclean. How could Jesus be a holy man if he was always hanging out with sinners? This would be a direct threat to the Pharisaical system of holiness, which would threaten the identity and integrity of Israel as God’s chosen people. “We can never allow any compromise to the law to ever cause our downfall again,”in essence they say. It is to those of this fear-based, closed, transactional way of seeing God that Jesus tells his story.

On one level, the two sons represent Israel and the nations. Israel, the elder son, who has always been with God resents that the younger son, the gentiles, has not had to be placed under the same yoke of the law yet still reaps all of the benefits of being God’s son. And not just that, but God seems to take greater joy in the “sinful” son than in the “holy” son who remained “faithful” in his father’s house. The genius of the story is that Jesus subverts our expectations, as he so often does, and shocks us into seeing God in a wholly different light. In a way, Jesus is an iconoclast who tears down the idols of our bad theology and directs us

toward something far more life-giving instead. God is not a tyrant ready with whip in hand to strike us in our moment of stupidity. God is, rather, like a father who completely forgets the foolishness of his son altogether because all he can think about is seeing his son once again. “But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him.” No questions. No rebukes. Just running and embracing, and kissing, and, probably, not a few tears as well. All that matters is that the lost son has returned, and all that the father can do is celebrate.

At this, the elder son is enraged: “Listen! For all these years I have been working as a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command….” Notice, he likens himself to a slave and not a son. His relationship to his father was transactional based on duty, not in love based on trust. And this is what Jesus is most concerned about. We cannot truly know God unless we see God as the prodigal, loving father in this story…and place our trust in his merciful love.

Religion, which literally means to bind together, is meant to be covenantal, not transactional. One life results in singing and dancing…the other in bitter resentment.

From the moment of our birth, we begin forming images of God that will determine how we relate to God, to one another, and to the world we inhabit. There the foundation of basic trust is laid, or not. It is inevitable that there will be cracks in the foundation and that we will struggle to attain this basic trust throughout the course of our lives. What is so revolutionary about the teachings of Jesus is that his theology, his understanding of God, becomes the one thing that can heal, restore, and expose the lies that we have believed about God and about

ourselves for what they really are. No matter how warped our images of God may be and how compromised our foundation of basic trust, when we encounter the truth of the prodigal love of God as we do in this story, our lives become firmly planted on the rock of this love and the rest can just be forgotten.

This is the good news we must both live and boldly proclaim: God is to be loved more than to be feared. That the heart of God is the kind of love that knows no conditions…that is boundless, blind, and ecstatic. That our God is a God who is consumed with the thought of the sight of us…who night and day anticipates us…and that when we finally come to our senses and make our way home, loses it and overwhelms us with a nonsensical embrace. Now this is a God we can trust!

 

And this alone will take us beyond our current “identity crisis” as church and help us find the heart-beat of our faith on which to build our future. Our world, now flailing about in chaos and confusion in its own “identity crisis,” is in desperate need of a church that knows this and that lives this.

The English writer, Hannah More, expressed it this way:

“Love never reasons, but profusely gives,

Gives, like a thoughtless prodigal, its all,

And trembles then, lest it has done too little.”

May we this Lent come to know more convincingly than ever before this profuse, this thoughtless, this prodigal love…and may it flow freely and nonsensically out of grateful hearts that just can’t be contained. Amen.

The Third Sunday in Lent C, March 23, 2025

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Bernard Delcourt

The Third Sunday in Lent, March 23, 2025

• Exodus 3:1-15
• 1 Corinthians 10:1-13
• Luke 13:1-9

 Click here for an audio of the sermon

If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9)

It was not unusual in Jesus’ time for people to think that ordeals happened to people for a reason. Either they, or their progenitors had sinned and the accident or illness that happened to them was a punishment from God.

Even in our own days, we still hear of people who proclaim that an epidemic is hitting a particular group because of their alleged sins. 

In my youth, religious leaders of various convictions proclaimed that AIDS was an expression of God’s wrath on the gay community. 

In the early eighties, in Belgium, I was what was then called and AIDS buddy. I accompanied dying AIDS patients who had been abandoned by so-called friends and relatives. The idea was that they had had it come to them and were not worthy of compassion.

Nowadays, there are still people who accuse rape victims of having provoked the violence that happened to them. Can we keep ourselves from assigning blame to victims? 

Does anyone ever deserve illness or trauma? Jesus’ response to that is a radical “No.” Jesus does not deny that victims of accidents, illnesses and disasters are also sinners. But they are not worse sinners than those who have escaped such evils. We are all sinners, you and I.

Instead of dwelling on assigning blame or guilt, Jesus is quick to turn to those who might do just that.

“No, I tell you, unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.”

Unless we repent, we will suffer ruin or destruction.

So, whether we suffer catastrophe or not, we are all subject to God’s judgment. No matter how blessed we are (or not) in our life circumstances, we are all subject to God’s weighing how well we are abiding by God’s commandments of Love.

None of us are dispensed from repentance. We all need to change our minds and hearts and turn again towards God. And not only in Lent.

The Greek word translated as repentance in our text is “metanoia.” Its literal meanings are “repentance, a change of mind, a change in the inner self.” The Hebrew equivalent often associated with "metanoia" is “shub.” It means "to turn back" or "to return," indicating a return to God and God’s ways.

In Lent particularly, the church encourages us to return to God’s ways. That requires a good bit of introspection to assess where we have strayed. Have we failed to love God or neighbor by our actions, thoughts or omissions? Have we been complicit of evil done in our name or thanks to our lack of opposition to it?

There are sins that are personal and there are sins that are systemic. We are often quick to identify our personal sins. I lied to a family member. I took was not mine to take. But it is trickier to identify how our actions contribute to oppressive systems.

For instance, how does my lifestyle contribute to greenhouse gas emissions? How does my abstaining from calling out sexist or racist comments contribute to those systems continuing to have strength in our society? 

So it takes thinking time to identify how I am enmeshed in sinful systems. But identifying how we are involved helps to figure out ways to reduce or eliminate harm-giving in our life.

And prayer is required to ask how we can return to God who says “I am the way the truth and the life” (John 14:6). You can ask God’s help in figuring out how sin is active in your life.

Then, we can decide to turn back to God’s ways rather than our self-centered ways.

But fear not. God’s judgment won’t result in retaliation on either side of death. God’s judgment will result in deeper self-knowledge and God-knowledge on our behalf. We will see how immense God’s Love is. And we will see more clearly how we had fallen short from embodying and enacting that Love in our lives.

Now, should we wait until the final judgment to find out how we are doing? Can we undertake to gain some of that clarity in self-knowledge and God-knowledge this side of death? That is an enterprise fit for Lent and beyond. You know that procrastination is not our friend.

Our gospel passage today ends with a parable about repentance and how God holds back from final judgement and helps in our returning to God’s ways.

In our parable, the fig tree is not yet bearing fruit after three annual visits from the owner of the garden. I see God represented in both the owner and the gardener in this story. I see the owner as God the creator, the judge of all. And I see the gardener as God the advocate, the redeemer of all.

The owner of the garden is keenly aware of the fig tree’s failings to date. The gardener is aware that with help, the fig tree has potential. The owner lets himself be convinced to show leniency and holds back from sentencing the fig tree to harsher treatment. But we are left with a cliffhanger. Will the tree, with the loving care of the gardener, rise to the challenge of being fruitful in a year? No time for procrastination here either.

With this parable, Jesus leaves us warned of the urgency of repentance. The place and time for repentance is our life, here and now. There is no time to waste in returning to God and God’s ways.

Today, we need to humbly, honestly and realistically look at our own ways such as they are. We need to ask in prayer for God’s insight on how our ways differ from God’s ways. And we need to ask in prayer how we can reform our ways to concur with God’s ways. Ask God for fortitude and perseverance in that endeavor. God will come forth and help you.

And remember God’s nature is to pour grace upon grace on God’s creatures. God’s judgment cuts like a two-edged sword but God is helpful, and God is forgiving. God’s nature is love and mercy, which makes God’s judgment all the stronger. God knows that following God’s ways is often hard. But God is rooting for us.

As Isaiah wrote (Is 55:7b), 

let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them,

 and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.

And I leave you with a pro tip on following God’s ways. As Jesus says in the gospel according to Matthew: … if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. (Matthew 6:14).

Give us loving hearts, o God, and help us to keep returning to your ways.

Amen.

Lent 3 B - March 3, 2024

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Robert Leo Sevensky

The Third Sunday in Lent B, March 3, 2024

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

 

Click here for an audio of the sermon

Growing up in a Catholic tradition which expected regular confession, generally monthly, starting at about the age of eight, I was introduced to the Ten Commandments not only in what were called catechism classes on Saturday mornings, but also through the practice of the so-called ‘examination of conscience’ which was to precede confession.  The main tool in this practice of examining your life to see ways in which you might have fallen short or fallen into sin was usually through a list of questions based on the Ten Commandments. The list was extensive and at times rather creative. Under one or another of the commandments, all sorts of sins or peccadillos were listed. For example, under the commandment which directed that we do not take the name of the Lord in vain were questions such as: have I cursed or used the name of Jesus in anger or frustration? Or have I made fun of holy things, whether it be a passage of scripture or a liturgical peculiarity. There was a certain usefulness to this exercise, but I came to realize that perhaps these many questions are not the point of the Ten Commandments, and that my anguished personal scrutiny was perhaps like looking through the wrong end of a telescope, focusing as it did on the personal and interpersonal world and pretty much ignoring totally the social, political, economic, or cultural landscape.  And really, how much unnecessary worry did I, at age eight, expend over whether I had indeed committed adultery? 

But if the Ten Commandments are not primarily a guide to personal behavior—and I emphasize the word ‘primarily’—then what is their point? Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann offers one possibility. In a podcast posted[i] earlier this past week online and titled “Strategies for Staying Emancipated” Professor Brueggemann connects the Ten Commandments to the liberation of the Hebrews from generations of slavery in Egypt. God gives the commandments to the Hebrew people through Moses towards the end of their years of wandering in the wilderness after leaving Egypt and they mark the covenant and the beginning their life as a self-defining community. If I may quote:

“… the Ten Commandments are strategies for staying emancipated once you get away from Pharaoh. This new strategy, first of all, says you have to honor God—that’s the first three commandments—to the exclusion of every idol, every “ism” such as racism, or sexism, or nationalism, or the worship of stuff that is rare or precious or attractive or beautiful or empowering.

“The new strategy means in the Ten Commandments to take the neighbor with utmost seriousness. So, the last five commandments are all about the neighbor and treating neighbors with legitimacy and dignity and viability and especially disadvantaged neighbors--not to violate the neighbor for the sake of greed.

“And between these two commandments of honoring God and taking the neighbor seriously, at the center of the Ten Commandments, is Sabbath day.  Keep Sabbath: take a break from the rat race of busyness and exhaustion and do not let Pharaoh define your life.” 

In short, for Brueggemann the Ten Commandments are a survival plan for a recently liberated people.  And long before serving for an individual’s examination of conscience, they are a social and communal document, a clarion call away from a mentality of enslavement toward survival and flourishing as a people, as a nation, as a human family, as God's children.

We could easily spend hours—or a lifetime—examining the way this plays out concretely in our shared existence. The demand to have no other God, no idol, but solely the God who liberates is a reminder that we are tempted to seek our security in what will never make for safety or for human thriving in the long run. As Brueggemann says, we are tempted to all sorts of isms. But only in understanding ourselves as journeying under the hand and eye of a liberating God will we find the security we yearn for. And by “we” I mean everyone. And the demand to treat our neighbor with integrity, to honor and preserve life and that which makes life sustainable, the demand to honor relationships and commitments, and the demand to not be enslaved by our desires are the very stuff that makes a healthy human society possible. As is the establishment of Sabbath rest that is not so much about worship as it is about refusing to be enslaved to the ethic of Pharaoh who demanded work 24/7 of his Hebrew conscripts.

All three elements, all three kinds of commandments, are necessary if this is to work. We need to be rooted and grounded in a liberating and loving God, in a transcendent vision and reality, if we're not to ignore our responsibilities to our neighbors and to ourselves. And to do this, we need time—Sabbath time—time to step back and see how this working out, time to catch our breath, and remembering that everyone else is a free person deserving of that same rest. Again, to quote Brueggemann: “These commands might be taken not as a series of rules, but as a proclamation in God's own mouth of who God is and how God shall be ‘practiced’ by this community of liberated slaves."[ii]  And we are all liberated slaves.

Yet another commentator notes that these very terse, very pointed commandments, these directives, need to be fleshed out. They're more like social policy statements than detailed action plans. Our task as human beings and as people of faith is to determine how we apply them to form societies or cultures where people can grow and flourish and where we can shape our own life within that container. There is a long history of case law or casuistry based on the Commandments. You have only to skim the next few chapters of Exodus to see example after example. And if we are awake, we are faced with its challenges daily. How do we apply the commandments in our own day? What, for example, does bearing false witness mean in a society such as ours where “truthiness” has become a substitute for truth and where fake news inundates us. What does stealing or killing or adultery mean in a society and a world where people are denied dignity, and the material means to live a dignified life, and respect for the integrity of commitments and relationships which are its foundation? And just what is coveting anyway? It has taken me a few decades to wrap my mind around that. I now understand it not as simply being attracted to someone or something but becoming fixated on it and obsessed by it, wanting it so bad that you’re willing to do almost anything to obtain it.  Our commandment doesn’t resolve this dynamic for us, of course, but it may serve to warn us: “Watch out!  You’re on shaky ground. This is not the path that leads to life, but to death.”  And not only us but our culture with its emphasis on having, using, possessing no matter what the cost and no matter what the consequences. And just so with all the commandments.

We began this morning's Eucharist with a penitential order where we heard what is often called the Summary of the Law. They are the words of Jesus as reported in Saint Mark’s gospel, though they are not original with him: “The first commandment is this: Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is the only Lord. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself.  There is no other commandment greater than these.”   How true it is that in the end all the commandments, all the advice, all the ethical guidelines, all the rules and goodwill come down to this: You shall love. You shall love God. You shall love your neighbor. As the rabbis would say, the rest is commentary and application.

And our work is cut out for us.

Amen.

---

[i] https://day1.org/weekly-broadcast/5d9b820ef71918cdf2004215/walter_brueggemann_strategies_for_staying_emancipated?fbclid=IwAR15SUSjvUPndG8baHs3pHwSwYXvpPSl7jthFQxUuLZ4T8Dy-5lsPjKyCJI

[ii] The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. 1 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1964), p. 841

Lent 3 A - March 12, 2023

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Bernard Delcourt, OHC

The Third Sunday in Lent - Sunday, March 12, 2023

 

Exodus 17:1-7 

Romans 5:1-11 

John 4:5-42

Click here for an audio of the sermon

 

 

Lord help us!

May we follow your example of reconciliation.
May we reach out to the Samaritan woman in our life.
May we do God’s will as our daily worship.
May we all contribute to the harvesting of your fields.  Amen.

In last week’s gospel, Nicodemus, an established religious insider, came to find Jesus by night and struggled with the teachings he was offered.

This week, in the middle of a hot day, Jesus reaches out to a riff-raff outsider.  He offers her revelation and the wellspring of eternal life, no less; if only she will ask him for it.

These two passages, Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman, are linked in meaning by the good news that “...God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”  Both Nicodemus and the Woman at the well, came to believe in Jesus, even if by different journeys.

This week’s gospel reassures us that no one will be denied who will believe in Jesus.  Jesus “gets us.”  He fully understands all that is good and all that is sinful in us.  In full knowledge, he reaches out and ardently desires us to be saved with him, in him and through him.

But let me set the scene of today’s passage.  As Jesus ran into increasing resistance from religious authorities in Judea, he decided to eschew confrontation and to continue his ministry in Galilee.

Now, the shortest route between Judea and Galilee goes through Samaria.  Most Jews would have preferred the longer route which would have avoided Samaria and its despised inhabitants altogether.

You see, Jews and Samaritans had a centuries-old, intense dislike for each other.  In a nutshell, Jews reproached Samaritans for having lost their Jewish integrity; their religious and ethnic purity.  But Jesus deliberately chooses to travel through Samaria.

Jesus’ encounter with the woman at the well shows us God's desire to free us, each one of us, into a life of integrity; a life in truth and spirit.  There is so much in this encounter that speaks to me.  This morning, I’d like to focus on reconciliation and worship.  

Reconciliation and worship are two great ways to accept Jesus’ invitation to salvation.  Let me tell you a bit more about what I see in today’s gospel about these two aspects of the spiritual journey.

First, it is reconciliation that Jesus brings to the woman at the well.  The Samaritan woman is invited to face herself as she is, there and then.  She is invited to be fully known as she truly is, without social pretenses.  

And she is invited to ask for the gift of grace; the well of living water springing up to eternal life.   She is invited to step into her own salvation.  All that is needed is accepting to be fully known as she is, and to believe.

And it isn't just anyone that Jesus invites in this way; the gender, the social status and the ethnic origin of who he invites shows that God has little interest for our human boundaries of separation.

The apostles, when they return from their errands into the city, are flabbergasted that Jesus would be speaking with a woman, a Samaritan woman. And that is even before they know she is a compromised Samaritan woman!

But, Jesus shows that God's message is for all; for Jews and non-Jews alike; for people in good standing and for outsiders.  God doesn't need to choose the most prestigious and privileged amongst us for salvation to be wrought. In God’s heart, there are no outsiders.

The Samaritan woman goes on to become an evangelist in bringing her own people to God.

The disciples too are invited to step out of their own cultural boundaries here.  Jesus shows them an enlarged mission; their harvest will extend beyond the Jewish people, starting with those Samaritans they grew up to despise.

Through the events of his meeting with the Samaritan woman at the well, Jesus also teaches us about true worship.  True worship is not linked to a place, be it the temple in Jerusalem or anywhere else.  True worship is the lives we live with God, in truth and spirit.  True worship is our lives lived in integrity with God.

You see, worship is that, which we do, that embodies our values.  By showing up in church this morning, for example, you are demonstrating that you give value to the word and the will of God.  Our presence here for the liturgy is a common understanding we have of the word "worship."

But everything we are, and everything we do, can embody what we give value to.  When you insist in your relationships on being truthful, respectful and loving, you are worshiping God in God's creatures.  When you are reusing, recycling and generally reducing your use of physical resources, you are worshiping God in God's creation, for instance.

All of Life can be worship.  Living our lives in truth and spirit is worshiping God in all we are, and all we do.  We worship God when we live life as if everything we do matters.

And Jesus, the Christ, the anointed one, tells us where to look to find the sustenance for our life with God.

Reconciliation and worship start where we meet the Living God; in our innermost heart, in the quiet of willingly being present to all that is. Even in drawing a glass of water for someone.

And there, we are to ask, to receive, and to accept the gifts of God: the well of living water that will spring to eternal life and the food of doing God's will.

But asking, receiving, and accepting are each important steps of this movement of the heart.  Grace is never forced on us. Remember: we are invited.  We have to make ourselves available to grace (possibly with some help). We have to respond to God’s invitation.

The Samaritan woman does not seem to have walked to the well feeling ready and able to accept grace, that day.  And yet, in her, little by little, Jesus created the room for her to receive grace.  Trust that Jesus is making that room for grace in you.

Jesus starts all of these important teachings, by reaching out to a single person; one person whom, by all conventions, he's supposed to not even speak to.  Could this person be me, or could it be you?  

I believe salvation starts with our own self.  I need to accept knowing myself as fully and lovingly as God knows me.  I need to build relationships where we aim to know each other as truthfully as God knows us.  

Salvation starts with any one person you interact with in truth and spirit; it starts with yourself, with God, with any of God’s children.

So hear what the Samaritan woman's story has to tell us.  

Through Jesus, God wants us, each of us, all of us, to be reconciled to him, to ourselves and to each other.

We are invited not to harden our hearts with earthly preoccupations, but to let the living water spring to eternal life in us.

We are invited to be fed in worship; to be fed in doing God’s will through all of what our life is made of.

Come to the well and let Jesus refresh you.  For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life..

Amen.

Lent 3 C - March 20, 2022

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Bernard Delcourt, OHC

Lent 3 C - March 20, 2022

Exodus 3:1-15

1 Corinthians 10:1-13

Luke 13:1-9

Click here for an audio version of this sermon

At the beginning of Lent, on Ash Wednesday, we are reminded of our mortality; “remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” And Saint Benedict, in his rule, enjoins his monks “To keep death daily before one's eyes” (RB 4:47). These instructions are given out of love and not morbidity. They are to remind us of our need to turn around towards God and make progress in that direction while we have a chance. ***** Today’s gospel reminds us that we do not get to choose either the time or the manner of our death. Death comes to us on its own terms. In today’s gospel, Jesus also warns us that the time and manner of our death says nothing on how good we are in the eyes of God. We all shall die some day and we are all sinners. We all fall short of how we could love God and neighbor. But as long as we are alive, we are given new opportunities to turn to God and to consent to God’s healing action in our lives. ***** An “act of God” is a legal term for events outside human control, such as sudden natural disasters, for which no one can be held responsible. It’s convenient shorthand in legal language to name it an act of God, but it is theologically unsound. No act of evil whether natural, political or personal can be imputed to God. God does not cause evil or hurt. Evil causes evil and hurt. Sin happens all the time and sin, by definition, is not God’s will. So whether natural or human-caused, I do not believe that hurtful occurrences are God’s retribution for our sin. It would be tempting to want God to act as a comic strip superhero stopping every evil act or hurtful phenomenon. But in that case, we would no longer have free will. We would no longer be able to freely do what is good. We would no longer be able to embrace God with a love that we voluntarily initiate and direct to God and neighbor. God tolerates evil because he wills that his children freely will or choose to live with him and according to his ways. Being free children of God requires our freedom of choice and our being exposed to all the risks that being alive implies. We are not a puppet on a string and that comes with the risks of having autonomy of will; one of which is the ability to sin and even cause evil. ***** So catastrophes and evil do happen. Bad things happen. The news cycle makes sure we never forget about that. And those things happen to all kinds of people. Good people and “bad people” alike are the victims of catastrophes. We do not need to ask whether they deserved what came to them. And attributing their ill fate to sin is just a way of making ourselves feel superior. We are all sinners anyway. Victims of catastrophes are not worse sinners than we are. They are sinners as we are; on average, no more, no less. When we escape catastrophe, we are not morally better than those who perished or got hurt. We are just lucky. And we receive the grace of living a little longer to bear good fruit in our lives. ***** And that is what the parable of the fig tree can teach us; bear good fruit while you can. We do not know the length of our life. In the light of eternity, our lives are short. We should use every moment well. We are called to live every day as fully as we can. If we lose sight of eternity we can be lulled into thinking that we have plenty of time, that we can reform later, and that for now we can do as we please. Procrastinating is not a good idea though. In the end, God may not look kindly on parasites. The fig tree that year after year produces nothing good, but only takes up space, time, and natural resources is a symbol for willfully unproductive human beings. These are the takers, the consumers, the parasites. They take out resources from the environment, but put nothing useful back in. The world and people exist simply to meet their needs. Does this paint the picture of a society we know? The parable teaches that nothing will survive that merely takes out and gives nothing in return. That is the definition of a parasite. True, we all draw strength and sustenance from a soil not our own by God’s grace, but we are to bear fruit so that others may draw from us. The parable teaches that we may get a second chance, or a third, or more, but eventually comes the final chance. *****

On a personal note, I am an adept of the doctrine of universal salvation. Universal salvation, or Christian universalism, is the doctrine that all sinful and alienated human souls—because of divine love and mercy—will ultimately be reconciled to God. I imagine that our triune Godhead, through the living experience of Jesus, has a deeply human yet divinely infinite mercy and love. In the end, I believe, we will be judged and found lacking, but God’s mercy will prevail. Jesus will be our advocate. He will show how we availed ourselves of his help in our life. He will point out the good fruit we bore. And he will ask for forbearance for our shortcomings. When I was growing up as a little Roman Catholic boy, I was taught about Purgatory. I do not believe in a purgatory, where the souls of sinners suffer in expiation of their sin. But I imagine something like remedial classes in loving like God loves. I imagine that being in the presence of the all-loving God will be enough to make us regret our sins and finally fully turn towards God; call it ultimate conversion, ultimate metanoia. I hope, for the benefit of obdurate sinners, that God will give us our last chance at conversion even beyond death. Those who, even at that stage, will adamantly want to further reject God’s abundant and free love will indeed be removed from the presence of God. And an eternity of that will be hell indeed. But the biblical record is mixed on this issue of salvation and there is also plenty in the bible to support the idea of damnation of some, or even many. So conversion in our lifetime could be a prudent choice. Don’t you think? But even more compellingly for me, we should tread the path of conversion out of sheer love for the God who showers us with his grace and mercy in this life and beyond. So I enjoin you, repent and turn towards the God who loves you beyond all human knowing while you still have your living. It will give you a full and abundant life, even now. Amen.

Lent 3 B - March 7, 2021

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Randy Greve, OHC

Third Sunday in Lent  - Sunday, March 7, 2021

Exodus 20:1-17

1 Corinthians 1:18-25

John 2:13-22

Click here for an audio version of this sermon

If last Sunday’s Gospel from Saint Mark, especially the words take up your cross and follow me, was the Lord’s command to the disciple, the call to individual responsibility and self-giving love, then this week’s reading from the second chapter of Saint John’s Gospel is Jesus’ response to the religious system, the corporate community. The lectionary wisely includes both kinds of encounter during Lent.  We take up our individual cross in solidarity with a community.  We end systemic and communal discrimination when we individually realize that we are complicit in it and decide to stop it.  

The repentance asked of us in Lent is both to us as individuals and as members of systems of belief and practice.  Jesus’ every act is motivated by and the expression of pure love.  That love is action in service to our deepest need at any moment; in tenderness when we are among the sick and outcast, caution when we are entrusted with status and power, and even rebuke when we use our power to exploit and abuse in the name of God. We are culturally conditioned to be in touch with our personal sins, but the communal and systemic sins often hide within norms slowly accepted. The love of Christ works toward the purpose of waking us up and orienting us toward what is true and beautiful about God and ourselves.  Just as Jesus’ love is never passive toward the lonely and outcast, so it is never neutral toward attitudes and practices of religious oppression in God’s name.  Without hearing the call to awaken and sincere turning, we slide slowly into creating a god to serve us, that suits our agenda, that preserves our security and status. If we persist in our pride, we set that god in the marketplace of our possession.  Then we are rattled awake when the tables are suddenly overturned and the currency of our self-preservation start flying.

The titles of stories in the Gospels, long having become commonplace summaries, fail us today.  The “Cleansing of the Temple” is a misnomer. No word remotely close to “cleansing” appears in the story.  The verbs are actually much more interesting than mere cleansing, and stronger: drove out, poured out, overturn.  Jesus was actually making a mess rather than cleaning up a mess.  His behavior is not intended to tidy up a slightly unseemly violation of Temple etiquette.  He disrupts the business of the Temple itself.  The story might more accurately be called “the closing of the Temple”.  If the money cannot be changed and animals cannot be purchased, then sacrifices cannot be offered and the purpose of Passover, of the building itself, comes to a screeching halt.

The people are going about business as usual. This is all just what happens at Passover.  Yet Jesus sees into the spiritual heart of people and a place.  The Temple, the meeting place of heaven and earth, the presence of God to God’s people, to all people, was intended to be an outward and visible sign of God’s covenant faithfulness, the sacrifices and rituals an expression of the obedience and thanksgiving of the people for God’s salvation.  Jesus is angered by the desecration of a place that has forgotten its purpose, grown casual about the God who has authored that purpose.  Rather than the remembrance of God’s mighty acts, of God’s steadfast faithfulness, it has descended into the mere mechanical routine of sacrifice.

Jesus is inherently skeptical toward institutions.  He knows that power in the hands of a few or one bends towards complacency and corruption.  He knows how strong is the lust toward legalism, judgment, and self-preservation that stifles the presence of the Holy Spirit.  He knows our sin takes the form of making places and objects and rituals ends in themselves.  How easily the outward and visible can replace the inward and spiritual.  And yet we need and must have structures to contain our growth.  There is no inward and spiritual grace without the outward and visible sign.  Zeal, then, is the honest willingness to see into how the outward is becoming inward, how things and words and customs are being held reverently and humbly.  

The closing of the temple is about replacement rather than abolition.  Heaven has indeed come down to earth.  God does and will meet us. But not in a building, but in Christ now in our very bodies.  The root of sin is the avoidance of accepting the gift of being God’s temple, the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit within us.  The cry to repent that arises from the wrecked tables and frightened animals and scattered coins is to life, in Christ, as God’s temple.  To repent is to bring back into myself the central place of God’s dwelling and accept the invitation to be incarnate.  Jesus is saying, do not outsource to any person, practice, building, ritual, or institution the role of being God’s temple for you.  Do not give away your identity, avoid your responsibility, seek to appease God with sacrifices, worship the worship – and thus not worship God as the very place where God dwells. Where our lives have become routine, abstract, disembodied, repentance is coming home to ourselves as wondrous, sacred beings.  All the stones of all the churches ever built over two millennia cannot contain, will never possess, the value of each of our bodies.  

Amen.

The Third Sunday in Lent - March 15, 2020

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Robert Sevensky, OHC
The Third Sunday in Lent - March 15, 2020

Exodus 17:1-7
Romans 5:1-11
John 4:5-42

Click here for an audio version of this sermon.

No typescript is available for this sermon. You can listen to the sermon here.

"God of the present moment,
God who in Jesus stills the storm
and soothes the frantic heart;
bring hope and courage to us as we wait or work in uncertainty.
Bring hope that you will make us the equal of whatever lies ahead.
Bring us courage to endure what cannot be avoided,
for your will is health and wholeness;
you are God, and we need you.
Amen."

adapted from A New Zealand Prayerbook

Third Sunday in Lent - Sunday, March 24, 2019

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Bernard Delcourt, OHC
Third Sunday in Lent - Sunday, March 24, 2019

Exodus 3:1-15
1 Corinthians 10:1-13
Luke 13:1-9

Click here for an audio version of the sermon.

We will all die one day. We were reminded of that at the beginning of this Lent, on Ash Wednesday: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust, you shall return.” Today’s gospel reminds us that we do not get to choose either the time or the manner of our death. Death comes to us on its own terms.

But whether we die as obdurate sinners who squander their divine inheritance, or as lovers of All who have persistently turned back to God is up to us to decide. We have free will and can go down either path.

In the end, as the Apostle Paul says “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). We are all dependent on the mercy of God which, thankfully, is infinite and ever-flowing.

In the meantime, we are living and exercising our free will as best we can. As we go about the business of living, suffering is not optional. Suffering is structural to being alive.  All of us, at some point or another, in some shape or form, have, or will suffer. But we do not suffer because we are worse than others.

In today’s gospel, Jesus imparts that great suffering and catastrophic death are no indication of God’s judgment of our lives. Terrible things do happen to good people too.

We are to refrain from wondering if people’s suffering is deserved. In the gospel according to Luke, Jesus confronts those “who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt” (Luke 18:9). Judgment is not up to us. It is God’s prerogative.

And the God we heard of yesterday in the parable of the Prodigal Son is immensely merciful and loving. Yes, God is a keen judge of character and spirit.  As the letter to the Hebrews says: “Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12).

But luckily, we are saved, not by our meritorious works, but by God’s grace enfleshed in Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. As the Apostle Paul says: “They are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:24).

*****

Now let’s look at how the parable of the barren fig tree fits with Jesus’ teaching in the first half of today’s lection.

I see the parable of the fig tree as illustrating the dance between God’s ability to judge and God’s ability to show mercy.

One way to look at this parable makes the owner God the Judge of All and makes the vinedresser God the Advocate.

The owner has a fig tree planted in his vineyard. In the next three years, he comes each year and checks on the tree seeking fruit, precociously as it turns out.

A fig tree would be somewhat out of place in a vineyard. It uses a lot of root space and casts a large shadow where the vines would be unable to bear fruit themselves.

Maybe the owner wanted a shady place for the vineyard workers to rest from time to time. That would be a lavish investment in workers comfort. But still, he would want the tree to pay for its place by bearing fruit as well as providing shade.

Also in Jewish tradition, a fig tree would not have been expected to bear edible fruit for about three years after its planting. Our vineyard owner is somewhat overeager for results.

The gardener (the vinedresser) can be seen as Jesus. The fig tree was a common symbol for Israel and may also have that meaning here. You can also choose to see the fig tree as a Gentile planted amidst the vines of Israel.
But I will choose to see the tree in the parable as a person (Jew or Gentile) who has heard and believed the gospel of Christ.

In any case, the parable reflects Jesus offering a chance for repentance and forgiveness of sin, showing his grace toward his believers. The gardener knows the fig tree, understands the fig tree and wants to give the fig tree its best chance to produce edible fruit.

Some see the three years of growth of the fig tree as referring to the period of Jesus' ministry. I see it as the period it took for a fig tree to bear fruit or, metaphorically, as the period of maturation for a new believer’s faith to bear fruit.

The fig tree was given the opportunity to be in the vineyard where it otherwise should not have been and was also given the needed time to bear fruit. The owner, somewhat impatiently, or is it eagerly, wants to see results.

The vinedresser, who is Jesus, does not see the current absence of fruit as a fatal flaw. Rather than giving in to the impatience of the owner, the gardener advocates for the fig tree. He offers to cultivate the fig tree further in the hope that it will produce fruit.

*****

As with the barren fig tree, so with us. We are given a space in God’s garden even though we take up a lot of space and cast a long shadow.

God is eager to see us bear fruit. God yearns for us to turn to God and bear fruit.

And God is also understanding of our needs for time and nurture to be in right relationship with God and All.

Jesus, in his humanity, empathizes with our frailty and advocates for judgment to be withheld, or to be given with great mercy. And the divine scale between judgment and mercy tilts towards mercy. Thanks be to God!

Still, out of awe and love for such a merciful God, we should all bear the burdens of life, help our fellow humans to bear theirs, and turn to God again, and again, and again. We don’t want to die separated from God by an ill-advised exercise of our God-given free will.

Suffering happens in this life. But God is with us through all of it. God nurtures us with love and mercy no matter what happens in our lives. Let us return that love as lavishly as God provides it.

Amen.

Third Sunday in Lent Year B: March 4, 2018

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Robert Sevensky, OHC

Third Sunday in Lent- Sunday, March 4, 2018

To hear the sermon in its fullness click here.

Br. Robert Sevensky  

Today's Gospel passage, often referred to as the Cleansing of the Temple, might well begin with a warning:  “Spoiler Alert.”

 

The event appears in all four gospel narratives. But in the Synoptic Gospels, it comes just before Jesus is arrested.  Indeed, for these gospel writers, it is this disruptive action by Jesus in the Temple precincts which is the proximate cause of his arrest and ultimately his crucifixion. 

Many scholars and preachers see it as primarily a political event, or at least a prophetic action caught up in a tense and volatile political/religious setting, with disastrous results.

Not so with John's Gospel.  Rather, the event occurs very near the beginning of Jesus' ministry, just after he has performed his first sign by changing water into wine at the wedding feast in Cana.  It follows on the heels of a slightly testy exchange between Jesus and his mother, and I have sometimes wondered if Jesus was just having a bad hair day or was going through a particularly difficult period of transition and growth. Whatever the actual timing, the writer of our Gospel uses the event to let us in on the secret: that Jesus will die and be raised from the dead.  There's the climax of the story, right there at the outset.  I suppose, though, that this was implicit from the very start when John opens his Gospel by telling us:  “In the beginning was the Word...and the Word was God...and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”  The rest is, in a sense, commentary.

In considering this event, I am put in mind of two other stories of Jesus and the Temple, not from John's Gospel, but from Luke's “Infancy Narratives”, those wonderful, fanciful stories of the young Jesus found in the first two chapters of Luke.  Taken together, these three Temple stories tell us something important both about our own faith lives and about Jesus.

The first story, from Luke, is that of the presentation of Jesus in the Temple when he is 40 days old.  In fulfillment of the Jewish ritual Law, Jesus is brought to Jerusalem by his parents and “ransomed”.  It is a tale of surprising prophecies and expectations and warnings given by an old man and an even older woman, and it is all very numinous.  And throughout it, the infant Jesus remains mute.  He does not speak, indeed he cannot. He comes to the Temple vulnerable and dependent and passive, carried, as one hymn has it, upon the throne of his mother's gentle breast, as were we all. He is but an infant. Yet he is the focus of the action and the attention and the hope.

The second Temple story, also from Luke, is that of finding the child Jesus in the Temple. Now at age 12, so still technically a child but on the cusp of manhood, the boy slips away from his family while on a journey home from Jerusalem. After three days of frantic searching, his parents find him seated in the Temple with the religious teachers: “listening to them and asking them questions.”  The Evangelist adds: “And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers.”  In response to his mother's complaint, “Son why have you dealt with us this way?” Jesus says, rather naively it seems to me:  “Did you not know I must be in my Father's house?”  They—his parents—do not understand.  But then who does?

And of course there is today's passage from John who presents us with an adult Jesus entering the Temple and, in anger or sadness or disgust, driving out at least some of those who, for quite understandable religious or cultic reasons, bartered in the goods and services necessary for Temple worship.  It's easy to overemphasize the extent of Jesus' disruption of the Temple system. The temple precincts were huge and a single man, Jesus, could perhaps overturn a few tables at most.  Imagine Yankee Stadium or Grand Central.  Jesus's actions might then be the equivalent of turning over one or two concession stands on the concourse level. Not a total disruption by any means, but enough to make a point and to be noticed and reported to the authorities. Just as it would be today. It was also the opportunity for Jesus to intimate that the future belongs to God and not to the money changers, as the disciples would later remember.

Three Temple stories, two of them somewhat fanciful, one of uncertain timeliness. What do they teach us?

I would suggest that just as Jesus came to the Temple, to his Father's house, in these three ways, so Jesus still today comes to us, who are (as St. Paul teaches us) his Temple, both corporately (together) and individually, in the very same ways.

Jesus still comes to us, God's Temple people, as did the baby at the Purification: helpless and vulnerable.  Jesus comes to us and our world in the person of the voiceless ones, who like him have no way to gain our attention or to make their desperate needs known except through a cry.  He comes in those who are marginalized, disenfranchised, oppressed, unheard, indeed unseen.  He comes in the person of the stranger, the  oddball, the misfit.  He comes, as Mother Teresa says, “in the distressing disguise of the poor.”--in the refugee, the immigrant, the Other, however we define the other, as well as in the familiar but unlovely and unloved.   Jesus is still coming to his Temple in this way.  And we who claim to dwell in the Temple, who are that Temple, are asked to open wide the gates of our hearts and our substance and our privilege.  He still comes.

Jesus comes to our Temple/world with the challenging questions and the listening ears of the young, those on the cusp of adulthood who perceive, perhaps as we cannot, the ever-widening gap between our rhetoric and our realities, both within the church and without.  I think of those students from Parkland and from around our country who are rising up to become the ears and the eyes and the voices of conscience to our nation and who cry: “Enough already!”

And yes, Jesus still comes to us, to our Temple/world, with a whip of cords, overturning familiar patterns of behavior and relationships, driving out distortions from within our systems and our hearts, and the tyranny of commodification, yet never destroying the good structures of creation.  Rather, through his own life-giving death, he renews and transforms them.  His dying, this final act of human hate and ignorance, marks the beginning of the end of the forces of destruction everywhere...or so we pray.

None of these second comings is easy.  I am reminded that on the feast of the Presentation, when we remember the bringing of the baby Jesus into the Temple, we read from the book of the prophet Malachi:

“The Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. … But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?”

It is seldom easy.  We are tempted to faint back or withdraw.  We aren't quite sure we want this Jesus to come, thank you very much.  Perhaps our Lenten prayer now is to ask for the grace to want what God wants, to desire what God wills. To ask for the  grace to welcome this Jesus when he comes to us, his Temple people, in innocence and vulnerability and need; and with his questions and his listening heart; and yes, even with his whip of cords.  And who knows, perhaps in a thousand other ways as well, each bespoke and tailor made for you and for me.  Maybe our Lenten prayer is none other than our Advent Prayer:  Maranatha! Come Lord Jesus!