Feast of the Dedication - October 4, 2022

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

The Rev. Matthew Wright

101st anniversary of the dedication of Saing Augustine's church - October 4, 2022

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One hundred and one years.  The Chapel of St. Augustine has officially now entered its second hundred years of life.  Which is to say that now for over one hundred years, prayer and worship have been maintained in this place.  

“Lift up your hearts.”  “We lift them up unto the Lord.”  “Let us give thanks unto our Lord God.”  “It is meet and right so to do.”  “It is very meet, right, and our bounden duty, that we should at all times, and in all places, give thanks unto thee, O Lord, holy Father, almighty, everlasting God.”

Our bounden duty.  I’ve found myself thinking about duty this morning, as I’ve reflected on the dedication of this place.  Duty is a word we tend to shy away from on contemporary spiritual scene—it’s way too heavy and negative.  In our 1979 prayer book revision, “It is very meet, right, and our bounden duty” of course became “It is right, and a good and joyful thing.”  And my experience of worship is often joyful.  But not always.  And when it isn’t, I still show up, because it’s not always about joy, sometimes it’s simply about offering my bounden duty into the universe.

This chapel was of course dedicated as a monastic chapel from its start.  Which means that it was always intended to carry the Daily Prayers of the Church and to celebrate daily the Holy Eucharist.  And monastics have always understood, perhaps better than others, that while, yes, we may come to our prayers for joy, or peace, or intimacy with our Beloved—we also come out of duty.

A good synonym would be responsibility.  The idea that human beings have a responsibility to offer prayer and praise into the universe, that perhaps somehow our acts of worship are even necessary for the maintenance of the world, is one that the contemporary church has largely lost.  But the best of our theology has always understood that prayer and worship are not just for ourselves—for our own personal growth and development, or for getting that spiritual fix we crave.  They’re also for the sake of the world.

Fae Malania, in her book The Quantity of a Hazelnut, writes, “That is why the Daily Office of the Church matters so much.  This is a prayer we can offer for the merest stranger, for someone we dislike, for a sorrow we haven’t encompassed, a problem we haven’t understood. We can offer it for a world of hungry children our hearts are too small to hold, for the unknown victim of a sin we’ve never even thought of, for peace in a world that fills us with a scared surprise.  We can offer it, over and over again, for people we love, and needs we know.

“Saying the formal psalms and prayers, following in obedience the rich and ordered prayer of the entire Church, adding my small voice to its perfect harmony, I turn the whole river of grace towards those for whom I pray. Not I pray for them. Adam, all Man, prays. The whole Church prays. The whole Christ prays.  Let me remember to find a little time for this, even if it means taking a little trouble.”

This church was built as a place dedicated to that remembrance, to the carving out of that time, the taking of that trouble.  And in doing that work, you hold that possibility alive for all who come here, and for all those who cannot come here.  This is a place where the whole Christ prays, or better, a place where we open to the prayer of the whole Christ for the whole Christ.

  An online dictionary tells me that dedicate means “to devote to sacred use through solemn rites.”  Well what exactly is the sacred use that a church is devoted to?  One of my favorite answers is: inefficiency, sacred inefficiency.  In a world driven by efficiency, productivity, and profit, the Church opens us to a world that refuses to play by those rules.  In her book Things Seen and Unseen, Nora Gallagher writes that the life of the Church “calls into consciousness the existence of a world uninhabited by efficiency, a world filled with the excessiveness of saints, ashes, smoke, and fire; … It tells of journeys and mysteries, things “seen and unseen,” the world of the almost known.  It dreams impossibilities…”

This chapel inhabits that world and invites all who come here to dream impossibilities.  And in the polarized and contracted landscape we currently inhabit, that is crucial work indeed.

In the 1979 liturgy for the dedication of a church, the bishop prays, “Lord Jesus Christ, make this a temple of your presence and a house of prayer. Be always near us when we seek you in this place. Draw us to you, when we come alone and when we come with others, to find comfort and wisdom, to be supported and strengthened, to rejoice and give thanks.  May it be here, Lord Christ, that we are made one with you and with one another, so that our lives are sustained and sanctified for your service.”

May it be here that we are made one with you and with one another.  That is also the work to which this place is dedicated—to be a place where we become more conscious of our oneness with God and one another, a place where the marriage of heaven and earth takes place.  It’s a place where we cultivate both a vertical relationship with God through the awakening of our inner lives, and a horizontal relationship with God, through relationship with, and worship shared with, our neighbor, which of course forms the two beams of the cross, the vertical and horizontal, which mapped over the human body, intersect in the heart.  And so perhaps we can say that a church building is in fact an icon or a sacrament of the heart, that place where we flow into God and God flows into us.

I often have thought of this church in particular as a just such an icon.  Every day as the community gathers for Eucharist, we form a circle around the altar, and the two arms of the circle gradually weave into the center, where they receive the Body and Blood of Christ, and are then sent back out into the world.  It often seems to me in those moments that this church is actually, in a very real and literal sense, the lungs and heartbeat of the Body of Christ, where we join the breath of the Spirit and the rhythm of God’s own pulse.

Cynthia Bourgeault writes, “Mercy is the life blood that flows through the Mystical Body of Christ.”  Well I often imagine that we are all blood cells within the body of Christ, and we come here into this heartbeat, through the Daily Office and the Daily Mass, in order to be oxygenated, infused with fresh mercy, and sent back out into the rest of the Body.

In one of her visions, the 14th century mystic Julian of Norwich saw the blood of Christ flowing copiously throughout all creation.  She writes, “The abundance was like the drops of water that fall off the eaves of a house after a great shower of rain, which fall so thick that no man can number them with earthly wit. [...] This showing was alive and active, and hideous and dreadful, and sweet and lovely.”

And then she says, “And then it came to my mind that God has made plenteous waters on earth for our assistance and for our bodily comfort because of the tender love he has for us, but... there is no liquid that is made that it pleases him so well to give us [as his dearworthy blood], for just as it is most plentiful, so it is most precious…

“And the blood is of our own nature, and all beneficently flows over us by the virtue of his precious love... The precious abundance of his dearworthy blood descended down into hell, and burst their bonds and delivered all that were there... the precious abundance of his dearworthy blood flows over all the earth and is quick to wash all creatures from sin...

“The precious abundance of his dearworthy blood ascended up into heaven to the blessed body of our Lord Jesus Christ, and there it is within him, bleeding and praying for us to the Father... and evermore it flows in all heavens rejoicing in the salvation of all humankind that are there and shall be, completing the count that falls short.”

She sees Christ’s blood circulating throughout all the realms—hell, earth, and heaven.  As if it is coursing through a great inter-realmic circulatory system, flowing through all the worlds with forgiveness and healing and love.  But for blood to flow, it needs a beating heart.  Otherwise, it grows cold and stagnant in our veins.  And that is what this place does.

Which brings us back to duty.  It is our duty as Christians to keep the heart of Christ beating in the world, flowing mercy to all the realms—and we do that by showing up, and lifting up our hearts to God—when it’s joyful, when it’s hurts, and when it’s simply boring.  For it is our bounden duty, and the bounden duty of this place to stay true to work to which it was dedicated: a slow and inefficient work that remains as steady as a heartbeat, as necessary as breathing.

St. Peter and St. Paul - June 29, 2022

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Fr. Matthew Wright

Saint Peter and Saint Paul - June 29, 2022

Ezekiel 34:11-16

2 Timothy 4:1-8

John 21:15-19

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From the Gospel of Luke: “…they seized [Jesus] and led him away, bringing him into the high priest’s house. But Peter was following at a distance. When they had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and sat down together, Peter sat among them. Then a servant-girl, seeing him in the firelight, stared at him and said, ‘This man also was with him.’ But he denied it, saying, ‘Woman, I do not know him.’” And then after another denial, and while still in the midst of a third, we’re told, “At that moment, while he was still speaking, the cock crowed. The Lord turned and looked at Peter. Then Peter remembered… how he had said to him, ‘Before the cock crows today, you will deny me three times.’ And he went out and wept bitterly.” (Luke 22:54-62)

And from the Acts of the Apostles: “[The people] became enraged and ground their teeth at Stephen… and with a loud shout all rushed together against him. Then they dragged him out of the city and began to stone him; and the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul. […] And Saul approved of their killing him.” (Acts 7:54-8:1)

These are, of course, accounts of Peter’s denial of Christ and of Paul’s participation in the violent persecution of the early Jesus movement. Peter and Paul, whom we celebrate today, were not always Saints Peter and Paul. One was a very poor example of discipleship, and the other was opposed to that discipleship entirely. This gives me hope, because together, these two men, who were once enemies, with the help of the Holy Spirit birthed one of the most radically inclusive spiritual visions our world has ever seen.

If I asked you, “Why are you here this morning?” there would be lots of ways we could each answer that question. “Because, as a child, a seed of faith was planted in my heart by my grandmother.” Or, “Because once, when I hit rock bottom, I was desperate and I wondered into a church.” We would all have different answers, and more than one answer, to that question. But one answer that is true for everyone here is, “We are here, all of us, because of Sts. Peter and Paul”—and not because it’s their feast day, but because of their work for the Gospel, and particularly because of the way each of them broke open, and were broken open by, the Gospel.

Peter and Paul, both of them Jewish followers of Jesus, a Jewish rabbi—both of these men had their hearts broken open to a universal vision—a Gospel that transcended race, ethnicity, and even religious boundaries, welcoming Gentiles (and therefore most or maybe all of us in this room) into the fold. It was Paul who wrote, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:28).

These are words that cut right to the heart of the three primary categories that human beings use to divide ourselves—race, class, and gender or sexuality. Human beings are always forming hierarchies along these lines—Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female; race, class, and sex. And Paul saw in all this—although not at first, only after he was shattered by Christ—the way the world assigns value based on either/or, us and them, in and out. We define our worth over and against someone else’s. “If they have worth equal to mine, if God loves them as much as God loves me, then my worth is diminished.”

These categories of division, separation, and hierarchy were deeply ingrained in the world that Peter and Paul moved in (and they are deeply ingrained in our world still today). The Greek philosopher Thales, who lived in the third century before Jesus, is remembered as thanking the gods for three things: “First, that I was born a human being and not one of the brutes [which was a way of referring to slaves]; next, that I was born a man and not a woman; thirdly, a Greek and not a barbarian.”

From the same time period, we also have a record of the following Jewish prayer, attributed to Rabbi Judah: “There are three blessings one must pray daily: Blessed art thou, who did not make me a Gentile; Blessed art thou, who did not make me a woman; Blessed art thou who did not make me uneducated.” Race, gender, class.

These divisions were so taken for granted that it’s astounding that the early Jesus movement said No; in Christ these hierarchies are abolished. In the kingdom of God, we are all of equal rank and value. The community we form in the way of Jesus will not play by these rules. Jesus has shattered all of that. It’s difficult for us to get our minds around just how radical this was. These words weren’t written during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s; they weren’t written during the women’s liberation movement of the 1970s; they weren’t written during the fight for LGBTQ equality in the 90s or now. They were written as our Christian charter 2,000 years ago—and we’re still trying to catch up with them.

Paul didn’t come by this vision easily. He underwent a sudden, blinding encounter with the Light of Christ that broke open his heart and rearranged his mind. And Peter, who walked with Jesus in his earthly life and ministry, struggled initially with this inclusive vision. We see Jesus, throughout the Gospels, working to break his disciples out of dualistic, “us vs. them” thinking. He uses outsiders like Samaritans and Romans—that is, heretics and pagans—as models of faith. He tells the story of the Good Samaritan—a Samaritan, who fell outside of Jewish orthodoxy—and says of a pagan Roman, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith” (Luke 7:9)—that is, “not even in my own religious tradition.” And neither story ends with either the Samaritan or the Roman converting to orthodox Judaism! And still Jesus points to them, telling us to look for the holy outside of boxes and boundaries.

But the full implications of this still had to be worked out in the early Jesus movement, and when Paul pushed to draw the circle wider to welcome in Gentiles who had not already converted to Judaism, Peter resisted such a wildly inclusive approach. Peter and Paul disagreed with each other vehemently, and Paul even writes in his Letter to the Galatians that “I opposed Peter to his face” (2:11)! But Scripture tells us that, in a trance, Peter received a vision telling him to go against his own religious training and eat with “unclean” Gentiles. He would later report to his companions, “The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us” (see Acts 11:1-18). In Christ, there can be no “them and us.”

Peter and Paul came to support each other in this new vision of radical inclusion, reconciling their hearts and visions, and in the Second Letter of Peter we find Paul referred to as “our beloved brother.” The fact that they are celebrated with a combined feast day is especially poignant. They show us that even enemies, even the most polarized people, with a little help from the Holy Spirit, can become the dearest of friends. We need that witness at this deeply polarized moment in our country and our world. Peter and Paul show us that one who persecuted a movement, and another who opposed inclusion in the same movement, can together become apostles of a love that transcends fear and boundaries.

Across the United States and the Episcopal Church we have been celebrating LGBTQ Pride month, and as many of you may know, it was fifty-three years ago yesterday, July 28 th , very early in the morning in Greenwich Village, that an uprising began. In the midst of a violent police raid on the gay community, a black trans woman, Marsha P. Johnson, resisted. The relationship between violence and movements of liberation is complicated, and I don’t want to go there now, but let’s just say that Marsha P. Johnson said, “No. You will not define my value and dignity over and against your own. I belong, we belong.” Others joined her in that resistance, and the modern movement for LGBTQ rights was born.

That current of justice and inclusion is not separate from Gospel vision that broke open Peter and Paul’s hearts. And Marsha P. Johnson’s reality as a queer person of color, as a trans woman, reminds us that our liberation, that the Gospel itself, is always intersectional—we are all bound up together. Women’s rights are not separate from the rights of people of color are not separate from the rights of LGBTQ lives are not separate from the rights of indigenous communities.

As Dr. King reminds us, summing up the essence of this dimension of the Gospel, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.” Or in the words of St. Paul, “all of you are one in Christ Jesus,” and in the words of St. Peter, “The Spirit told me… not to make a distinction between them and us.”

How do we continue to translate this movement of Gospel inclusion into our own time? How do we continue drawing the circle wider, softening our divided and polarized hearts? We might begin by meditating on the icon of Peter and Paul you saw as you entered the church—two enemies, now embracing and kissing as brothers and friends. How did they achieve this? Well, for one thing, they listened to each other. Each was willing to say, “I was wrong,” and to have their hearts opened to new insight and understanding. And each was willing to die for the vision of Gospel inclusion they grew together, and each of them did. In these divided times, St. Peter and St. Paul, pray for us. Help us to carry the Gospel vision of justice, inclusion, and love further in our world, and ever more fully and deeply in our hearts. Amen.

Holy Cross day - September 14, 2021

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

The Rev. Matthew Wright

Feast of the Holy Cross - Tuesday, September 14, 2021

Isaiah 45:21-25

Psalm 98

Philippians 2:5-11

John 12:31-36a

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Today we are celebrating the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross—which is, of course, the feast of title for this community, the Order of the Holy Cross.  And as I’m sure many of you know, what this day actually commemorates is the dedication of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem in the year 335.  Tradition says that the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is built over the sites of both the crucifixion (Golgotha or Calvary) and the burial-place of Jesus, his tomb in the garden. 

 

It was at the site of Calvary that legend tells us the Emperor Constantine’s mother St. Helena unearthed the remains of three crosses.  And to discover which, if any of the three, was the True Cross on which Jesus died, she touched wood from each of them to a diseased woman.  And, of course, when this woman was touched with the wood of the True Cross she was healed instantly.  Or so the story goes.

  

Eventually it would become the practice of the Church in Jerusalem to bring out the wood of the True Cross each year on Good Friday, and the people would be invited forward to offer veneration.  This is recounted for us by Egeria, that holy pilgrim of the fourth century, and she tells us that the wood was placed on a table before the bishop, who would grip and hold one end of it, with deacons standing on either side to guard it.  She writes:

“There is a reason why it is guarded in this manner.  It is the practice here for all the people to come forth, one by one… to bow down before the table, kiss the holy wood, and then move on.  It is said that someone (I do not know when) took a bite and stole a piece of the holy cross.  Therefore, it is now guarded by the deacons standing around, lest there be anyone who would dare come and do that again.” 

 

Nevertheless, splinters did spread over the centuries, becoming relics in churches around the world, including in this church here, thanks be, perhaps, to some now unknown biting bandit.  And now, two millennia later, the strangeness of this act of venerating, kissing, a cross, an instrument of state-sanctioned torture and death, has mostly worn off for us.  We wear crosses around our necks, hang them in our homes, and place them above our altars; we mark ourselves with the sign of the cross.  And little by little the reality of this symbol has been softened, perhaps even cheapened, and worse, commercialized.

And so it’s good now and then to remind ourselves that if Jesus had died in the twentieth century we’d all be wearing little electric chairs or lethal injection devices around our necks, or a couple of centuries earlier, little miniature sterling silver guillotines.  

My father was killed by a driver who was on too much medication and should not have been behind the wheel of a car.  The driver swerved out of his lane and struck and killed my dad and a fellow Department of Transportation coworker.  What would it be like if I kept a broken piece of the bumper of that car that killed my dad, and brought it out every year to kiss on the anniversary of his death?  

It is a strange thing that we do with the wood of the cross.  The power is in fact in that strangeness.  We need to not lose, to not dull, how odd and shocking and counter to our natural emotional instincts it is that we reverence the holy cross.  It would be much more intuitively emotionally normal if we rather spat upon the unholy cross.

But to exalt the holy cross—this is not something to pass over lightly.  What is happening here?  I often pray the rosary, which cycles through three sets of mysteries, or events, from the life of Mary and Jesus: the Joyful Mysteries of annunciation, birth, and childhood; the Sorrowful Mysteries of suffering and death; and the Glorious Mysteries of Resurrection and renewal.

I’ve prayed those mysteries countless times, but a few weeks ago, as I moved through the Sorrowful Mysteries—from the Agony in the Garden, to the Scourging at the Pillar, to the Crowning with Thorns, to the Carrying of the Cross, and finally to the Crucifixion—when I reached that last mystery, I suddenly felt like I was going to throw up.  I found myself saying “No, no, no, no…”  I didn’t want to pray it.  I didn’t want it to happen.  I didn’t want him to die.  Not like this.  And then with tears in my eyes I took up the beads.

I can’t make his death on a cross not be a part of the story.  I can’t make my father’s horrific death on the roadside not be a part of the story.  It’s the claiming, owning, and transforming of such a terrifying and heartbreaking symbol as the cross that makes it so powerful.  The Cross is the horror of Empire on full display.  The violent normalcy of what we call “civilization” on full display.  When early Christians took up the cross and claimed it, it was not so different from any oppressed group today who has taken up the language of their oppressor and re-appropriated it, as we’ve seen done with the n-word or words like queer.  By taking up the evil thing and kissing it, rather than spitting on it, it loses its power; we change the nature of its power; it becomes truly powerful.

What had been the Empire’s symbol, used to strike fear into the hearts of revolting peasants, instead becomes a strange symbol of resistance, of nonviolence, a symbol of new life and of love poured out to the fullest.  St. Paul says in our Epistle reading, “May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  Rather than be embarrassed by the vulnerability and powerlessness revealed on the cross, he embraces it and so it becomes true power.

Not that this symbol would not be coopted yet again by Empire, and used on banners charging into war.  But that brings us to another important part of the story of this feast day.  The feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross entered the calendar of the Western Church in the seventh century after Emperor Heraclius recovered the Cross from the Persians, who had carried it off in 614, fifteen years earlier. And the story goes that Heraclius intended to carry the cross back to Jerusalem himself, with full imperial pomp and regalia, but when he went to lift it, it wouldn’t budge; he could not move it, until he took off all his imperial garb and carried the wood as a barefoot pilgrim.

The True Cross always resists and subverts the forces of Empire, unmasking them for the violence they in fact always are.  One of the greatest theologians of the Cross, in my opinion, is the 14th century English mystic, Julian of Norwich.  In her Revelations of Divine Love she struggles to reconcile a good, loving, and omnipotent God with the harsh realities of sin and evil.

Denys Turner, in his book Julian of Norwich: Theologian, suggests that Julian ultimately finds the solution to this paradox in the Cross.  He writes: “This solution, the Cross, is itself a riddle.  Yet for all its irreducibly paradoxical character, it is the only story that to Julian could be credible.  It is paradoxical that the Cross’s demolition of the intellectually mediating space that explanations seek to occupy is exactly where our salvation is to be found.  There are only two realities for Julian: sin and God’s love.  Nothing mediates between these realities except sin’s defeat of love, that is, the Cross.”

He continues: “...the conflict between sin and love is the final conflict, and the Cross is the final outcome of that conflict.  It is perhaps Julian’s central theological insight that sin wages war against love because sin is of its own nature violent, but love wages no wars at all, not even against sin, for love is absolute vulnerability.  For that reason, then, neither is any subsequent reversal of the Cross’s violent defeat necessary, for it is precisely in that victory of sin over love that sin is defeated.  In its victory over love sin defeats itself.  Sin’s failure to engage perfect love in a contest on sin’s terms of violence and power is sin’s defeat, its power being exhausted by its very success.  For killing is the best strategy that sin can come up with; it is sin’s last resort.  The Resurrection, then, is the meaning of the Cross, the meaning that the vulnerability of love, its refusal of the sword, is stronger than sin’s power to kill.  That is all we know.  That is all we can know.”

And so we kiss the Cross.  Even as it churns our stomachs and breaks our hearts, because the Cross shows us that Love wins by refusing to be anything other than Love.  It is by this Love lifted up on the cross, Jesus tells us in our Gospel reading, that he will draw all to himself.  Our English translation says “all people”; but in fact, the Greek simply says pantas—all.  He will draw all to himself.  

Mother Virginia Brown, a mentor of mine who died last year, loved this passage.   Another friend, Lisa Inman, writes of her, “‘When I am lifted up,’ Virginia quoted John’s Gospel in sermons more than once, ‘I will draw all to myself,’ and she would go on to explain that the passage arguably meant that Jesus would draw not just all people, or all nations, but all: every crumb, every atom, every speck of the dust of stars, everything, into the embrace of God, so that nothing is left over or lost.”

In Jesus’ drawing all to himself through his death on the cross, I imagine his death much like the death of a star in space.  When a star dies sometimes it actually implodes, collapsing in on itself and opening a black hole, a tear in the fabric of space and time that draws things into itself.  Perhaps we can see Christ’s death on the Cross in a similar way—the implosion of his love at that moment so great that it opens a hole in the fabric of the universe and of history that draws all things back into God’s love.

Again, Mother Virginia writes: “The Cross is the true center, drawing all to him who hung there, reshaping all space-time by a kind of gravity of love… and we, as we choose to love in return, are immediately taken up into the Paschal Mystery which surrounds it, rather like a ‘white hole,’ a true Mystery which can’t be comprehended fully, a wisdom looking like folly from the outside of its ‘event horizon’…”

On this Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, may we reclaim that seeming folly, reclaim the strangeness and subversiveness of what we celebrate today, kissing the evil thing, and thereby allowing it to defeat itself, the now Holy Cross opening in the world and in our hearts a love so great that all, every last speck of creation, is drawn back into the Heart of God.

Amen.

St Joseph - March 19, 2021

 Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

The Rev. Matthew Wright

St Joseph  - Friday, March 19, 2021

2 Samuel 7:4,8-16

Romans 4:13-18

Luke 2:41-52

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“I chose the glorious Saint Joseph as my master and advocate and commended myself earnestly to him… When Christ walked this earth, Joseph was his guardian; as a boy, Jesus called him ‘father’ and obeyed his commands.  It seems to me that Christ wants us to know that in heaven he still does everything Joseph asks…

“I wish I could persuade everyone to be devoted to this glorious saint, for I have great experience of the blessings that come through him from God. I have never known anyone to be truly devoted to him and render him particular services who did not notably advance in virtue, for he gives very real help to souls who commend themselves to him.  For some years now, I think, I have made some request of him every year on his festival and I have always had it granted.  If my petition is in any way ill-directed, he directs it aright for my greater good…

“I only beg, for the love of God, that anyone who does not believe me will put what I say to the test, and they will see by experience what great advantages come from commending themselves to this glorious patriarch and having devotion to him.  Those who practice prayer should have a special affection for him always… If anyone cannot find a master to teach them how to pray, let them take this glorious saint as their master and they will not go astray.”

Saint Teresa of Avila, writing in her autobiography.  “Those who practice prayer should have a special affection for him always…”

St. Joseph has been present in a particular way in my own life of prayer for the past eight years or so, after he showed up one day while I was in the “ethnic aisle” at the grocery store.  Somewhere near the Goya products, there were all of those tall votive candles, dedicated to different saints.  And typically my eye would have gone to Our Lady of Guadalupe or some other image of Mary.  But this day it didn't.  Instead, it went straight to Joseph—to this lone, yellow candle bearing his image—San José.  I didn't think much of it at first, but I kept being drawn back inexplicably to that candle and before I could get out of the aisle it had placed itself in my shopping cart.

It didn't take long to realize what was going on, because this was not long after my dad died.  I began to realize that I felt him—my dad—in whatever aura it is that surrounds St. Joseph.  I imagine the two of them were a lot alike—good-hearted, simple, quiet men who worked hard and had calloused hands.  And I realized that I needed Joseph, and my dad, with me in my prayer.  I needed their warm-heartedness and tender, quiet support.  I bought the candle, and lit it every day beside a picture of my dad when I prayed, and I still have the empty votive glass sitting in my office.

So, with my love of Joseph, I was a little annoyed when I first looked at the Eucharistic readings appointed for Joseph today.  We’re given a Gospel text in which he is not even named.  We’re simply told that “his [Jesus’] parents,” following the Passover Festival, discovered after a day’s journey on the road, that “the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem…”  And when they finally find him at the Temple, it’s Mary, not Joseph, who speaks: “his mother said to him, ‘Child, why have you treated us like this?’”  And he submits to his parents, and we’re told that “he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them.  His mother treasured all these things in her heart.”

Hold on!  What is going on here?!  This text is all about Mary and Jesus.  Joseph is quietly, actually silently, in the background.  And then it hit me—Oh, this is the perfect text.  This is what Joseph would want, this is who Joseph is.  It’s not about him, and he knows it, and that’s exactly where his saintliness lies.

Joseph never once speaks in the Gospels.  In Matthew’s account of the annunciation, which focuses on Joseph, an angel tells him in a dream to not be afraid to take Mary as his wife, and the text says, “When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel commanded him.”  With not a word in response; he just quietly, humbly surrenders to God’s will for his life.

In the parallel texts in Luke, in which Mary discovers her role in the unfolding drama, she engages the angel.  She questions before consenting (“How can this be?”).  She sings the Magnificat with Elizabeth.  She is active and vocal and center stage.  But not Joseph.  He recognizes that it’s not about him.  This story is going to be about Mary and Jesus, and his job is to make possible their work, their role, in the story of salvation.

Sometimes in our journeys we’re asked to be Mary—we’re called to question and to sing, to stand out in front.  But sometimes, probably more often, our work is to be like Joseph’s—to quietly nod, to accept the role being asked of us, and step into the background; to be that unassuming tent pole that holds open the space in which the drama unfolds, without taking any credit.  Everyone of us has been supported in this way, at some point, by a Joseph, who may have been so unassuming that to this day we don’t know the quiet prayer and support they gave us behind the scenes.

In Matthew’s Gospel, Joseph is called “a righteous man.”  “Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man…” Matthew says.  The Hebrew word here, behind our Greek text, is tzadik, a just or righteous one, and this is not a word used lightly in Scripture.  It doesn’t mean he was a “good guy.”  It means he stood in an altogether staggering order of holiness, as in “Noah was a righteous man [a tzadik], blameless in his generation; Noah walked with God.”

An understanding of the tzadikim, the righteous ones, develops in the Jewish mystical tradition that says that at any given time, there are always 36 righteous ones in the world, for whom God holds the world into existence.  It’s their hidden prayer and humility that keeps the world turning.  They’re often called the lamed vavniks, the 36, and it’s said that they are so humble that they have no idea they’re one of the 36, and they would never believe it if you told them.  So they remain essentially hidden saints.

Tzvi Elimelech Spira of Dinov, a famous Hasidic rabbi from Poland, wrote that “in every generation, there are great righteous people who could perform wondrous acts, but the generation is not deserving of that, so the stature of the righteous people is hidden and they are not known to the public; sometimes they are woodchoppers or water-drawers.”  Or, perhaps, carpenters from Nazareth.

Of this hidden vocation, carried by St. Joseph, Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet writes, “Among the different vocations, I notice two in the Scriptures which seem directly opposed to each other: the first is that of the apostles, the second that of St. Joseph.  Jesus was revealed to the apostles that they might announce Him throughout the world; He was revealed to St. Joseph who was to remain silent and keep Him hidden. The apostles are lights to make the world see Jesus.  Joseph is a veil to cover Him… [The God] Who makes the apostles glorious with the glory of preaching, glorifies Joseph by the humility of silence.”

This is why St. Teresa of Avila so rightly connects Joseph with the life of prayer, with our hidden, inner life: “Those who practice prayer should have a special affection for him always… If anyone cannot find a master to teach them how to pray, let them take this glorious saint as their master and they will not go astray.”

Joseph’s quiet, humble, and absolute surrender to the Divine Will, his perfect living of the hidden life, I believe invites another reading of Matthew’s account of the angel’s message to Joseph that differs from the one most of us are accustomed to.  We’re told that “before [Mary and Joseph] lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.”

And “Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man [a tzadik] and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.”  So we usually make an assumption here that Joseph plans to dissolve their betrothal because he assumes the child is “illegitimate.”  But there is another reading of these verses that I think is more in keeping with the spirit of Joseph the tzadik.  

So again, the text says that Mary “was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.”  Now Matthew’s account is told from Joseph’s perspective.  So who found Mary to be with child from the Holy Spirit?  Joseph.  Not, “he found her to be with child, and had no idea where the child came from.”  He found her to be with child from the Holy Spirit.  He believes her story from the beginning—that she, his betrothed, has become the tabernacle, the dwelling-place of God, the new Ark of the Covenant.

And in his humility, he accepts that God has other plans for her, far beyond a life in the home of a carpenter from Nazareth.  Who is he to have the Ark of the Covenant reside in his humble dwelling?  And so he’s willing to quietly step out of the story; God has bigger plans for Mary.  “But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘…do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife”—and this is usually translated with a period or a comma at this point—followed by “for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.”  The meaning being something like “Don’t be afraid to take her as your wife, because the child isn’t illegitimate after all”—and so this would then be information Joseph’s getting for the first time.  But we’ve already been told that he discovered she was with child from the Holy Spirit.  And there is no period or comma in this text the Greek, which just as accurately reads, “Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife because, or on account of the fact, that the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.”  

The implication being that Joseph isn’t afraid to take the child into his home because he thinks it’s someone else’s, but because he knows it is conceived of the Holy Spirit, and who is he to take such holiness into his home?  His fear is “the fear of God”—his awe in the face of this tremendous mystery—and the angel says “Do not be afraid”—you in your humility and hiddenness are in fact the very one to carry this task.

I don’t know if this is an accurate reading of the text, but I love the Joseph who emerges in this reading—his humility and surrender becomes even more consistent throughout, and I also love the assurance, that yes, God does want to dwell in a humble carpenter’s home in Nazareth—that the story isn’t moving off to bigger and better things. 

How is this assurance for each of us this morning?  That whether seen or unseen, we are all given a vital role in the drama of God’s story.  And how might we learn from Joseph, the tzadik, the hidden, humble one, in his school of prayer?  Because “those who practice prayer should have a special affection for him always…”  How might we cultivate our own inner Joseph?  Our hidden life with God? 

May we each feel Joseph’s presence, today and always, his prayer and intercession never ceasing, may we be grateful for the Josephs who have quietly supported each of us along the way—you might call one of them today, if you know who they are!—and may we not fear being unseen ourselves or fear bringing the Divine into our own humble dwellings, knowing that we, with St. Joseph, are hidden with Christ in God.

Amen.

Feast of the Epiphany - January 6, 2021

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

The Rev. Matthew Wright

Feast of the Epiphany  - Wednesday, January 6, 2021

Isaiah 60:1-6

Ephesians 3:1-12

Matthew 2:1-12

Click here for an audio version of this sermon

The Feast of Epiphany—the day we tell this very strange story about "wise men from the East" arriving in Bethlehem to adore, to give gifts to, the newborn Christ-child.  An epiphany is defined as: “a usually sudden perception of the essential nature or meaning of something” or “an intuitive grasp of reality through something usually simple and striking.”  And so this leaves us with the question this morning: exactly whose Epiphany are we celebrating?  Whose sudden perception of meaning or intuitive grasp of reality? 

We're told that our wise men, on seeing the rising of a star heralding a new king, set out to pay him homage.  And notably they go where one would expect to go to find a king—to the center of political power in Jerusalem—to the court of King Herod.  “This is where the new king will be; he’s probably the son of the current king.”  Well of course Herod is “King of the Jews” in name only—a Roman client king and despot, he was far from devout or Torah-observant, and whatever power he had actually came from the Roman overlords who appointed him. 

But we see that our so-called wise men, by making this their first stop in Judea, are making an assumption about where and who a king should be.  And this assumption has disastrous consequences.  What they essentially do is walk right into the center of corrupt worldly power and then ask the reigning tyrant if he could please point them in the direction of the new leader of the resistance.  And of course Herod’s all over this, because he wants them to point him to this new leader of the resistance.  And so he asks them, to please, once they’ve found the child, let him know, so he can pay homage also.

 

And the wise men set out again, and this time, rather than following their assumptions about where to find a new king, they follow the star, which leads them away from the center of imperial power in Jerusalem, and instead to Mary and Joseph, two Jewish nobodies, in the little nowhere town of Bethlehem.  And there they present their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.  And we shouldn't miss the clash created by these gifts and their surroundings.  Clearly, these men have expected to make their offerings in a royal court; these are gifts appropriate to that context—gifts a king would give a king.  You've all probably seen the cartoon of the three wise women who arrive at the manger with diapers, a casserole, and a bottle of wine—more helpful and appropriate offerings. 

I wonder how odd our magi felt giving these gifts in this setting to these people.  Their expectations about where to find a king and who he will be have been turned upside down—and this is what Christianity, this is what Jesus, always does—he subverts our expectations, stands the world on its head, and shows us God in unexpected, humble, and innappropriate places.  And so again, whose epiphany are we remembering this morning?  Perhaps it is the epiphany of the wise men, who have their political preconceptions overturned, and then must return home, we're told, "by another road." 

If they had attended only to the star and not gone where wordly logic told them to look for a king, how differently the story might have unfolded.  No slaughter of the holy innocents or flight into Egypt.  How differently might our own present day reality be unfolding, if those of us who claim the name Christian saw through the lure of worldly power , of our modern-day Herods, and had our assumptions overturned by the Gospel? 

But back to our wise men.  Just who are these guys anyway?  In Greek they are called magoi or in Latin, "magi."  And the word itself, and who exactly it points to, is a bit of a mystery.  The Greek historian Herodotus, writing in the 5th century before Jesus, identified magi as "a caste of priests from Persia who could interpret dreams."  And so this has led to a longstanding identification of the magi with Zoroastrian priests, who would have journeyed from what is modern-day Iran. 

A bit more vaguely, Nathan Nettleton writes that magi “were the speakers of the sacred words at pagan sacrifices.  At worst, the term referred to a magician or sorcerer, or even a deceiver.  Magi were people whose activities were repeatedly condemned and prohibited throughout the scriptures and were completely anathema to the people of Israel.” 

Similarly, Eugene Boring states, "The magi are Gentiles in the extreme, characters who could not be more remote from the Jewish citizens of Jerusalem in heritage and worldview."  Ancient Church tradition variously understood them as coming from Arabia, Persia, and Babylon.  And so, Zoroastrian priests, Arabian occultists, Babylonian astrologers—whoever they were, Matthew clearly intends us to understand them as foreigners and outsiders to Israel. 

And yet, Mary and Joseph welcome and receive them.  The arrival of peasant Jewish shepherds to honor the baby is one thing, but uncircumsized pagan foreigners?  This is holding the door open wide.  So again, whose epiphany?  Do Mary and Joseph suddenly realize that the scope of the story they're caught up in is wider than they ever could have imagined?  Matthew's Gospel is the most overtly Jewish of the four Gospels, rooting Jesus again and again in the hopes and longings of Israel, and yet Matthew begins his telling of the story with a first century interfaith encounter—pagans at the manger.  The epiphany that St. Paul will have decades later, that the Gospel is also for the Gentiles, that this Light knows no bounds, Matthew prefigures here at the very beginning of the story.  Paul was only catching up with Mary, Joseph, and the Magi. 

Scott Hoezee says that by opening the Gospel in this way, with these people, Matthew is giving us a sort of “sneak preview” of things to come; he writes: “the Christ Child who attracted these odd Magi to his cradle will later have the same magnetic effect on Samaritan adulterers, [...] prostitutes, [...] tax collectors on the take, despised Roman soldiers, and ostracized lepers.”  In other words, Jesus always attracts the wrong people—outsiders and outcasts; even from his birth, he has refused to play by the rules of wordly power and respectable society.  He is the most unkingly of kings. 

There is an expansion of the story of the wise men, written in the late second century in the Eastern Church.  Titled The Revelation of the Magi, it survives today only in Syriac translation, and was brought into English for the first time in 2010 by Brent Landau; it is a rather fantastic tale.  There we learn that our magi were twelve in number, not three—which has long been a tradition in the Eastern Church.  Matthew's Gospel never actually gives their number; he only tells us that they brought three gifts. 

We're told that they were part of an ancient mystical Order who praised God in silence, and that they were descended from Adam's son Seth, and had for generations passed down the prophecy of the coming of a star.  Well at long last, the star appears to these twelve, first as a column of light that coalesces into a star, and out of it reaches the hand of a child.  And the voice of the star explains that the star itself is the light of the Christ-child, which is to be born as a human being, to, as the text says, "fulfill everything that was spoken about me in the entire world and in every land in unspeakable mysteries"—fulfilling not only the stories and longings of one people, but of all people. 

And so they follow the Light, which they discover not everyone can see, and they make the journey to the cave in Bethlehem.  And the story unfolds more or less as we know it.  They bring their gifts and their reverence to the Child, who is the Light they have followed, and as they set out on the return journey, the Light appears to them once more and says, "I am everywhere, and there is no land in which I am not.  I am also where you departed from me, for I am greater than the sun, and there is no place in the world that is deprived of it...  How much more I, who am the Lord of the sun..."  The Light's own epiphany, its self-revelation, of the Universal within the particular. 

And then comes my favorite part.  They return home, and find when they arrive that the provisions of food in their bags have multiplied.  We know what Jesus does with food.  And so they begin sharing both the good news and this surplus of food with the people, and as the people of this land eat this food, they begin rejoicing and leaping for joy, and then begin to share with each other the visions, the epiphanies, they received as they ate the food.   

One says, "I saw God bearing Godself in the world."  Another says, "I saw a human being, who is more humble in appearance than any man, and he is saving and purifying the world..."  Another says, "I saw something like a lamb hanging upon a tree of life, and by him and his blood redemption takes place for all the creatures of the world..."  And little by little they find that the fullness of the gospel has been communicated to them through this holy meal. 

And so again, whose epiphany?  A final, personal story.  As an undergrad studying abroad in India, I learned how central the Eucharist was to my life of faith.  I had grown accustomed to receiving Holy Communion at least twice a week back home.  But for much of my time in India, I had no access to a church at all.  Well one day, longing for the sacrament—I had just had a conversation with a friend about how hungry I was for it—I left the tea shop where we had been talking and began walking home.  And as I came around a bend in the road, I passed this little Hindu temple and found myself walking towards it.  And as I approached, the resident swami caught sight of me and walked forward in welcome.  He spoke English with a very thick Indian accent, and after we had talked for a few minutes, he asked “Are you a follower of Chris-t?”  It took me a moment to catch his meaning, and then I said Yes, I am a follower of Christ.  And his eyes lit up, and he said so joyfully, “Muslims pray to Allah, Christians to Chris-t, here we pray to Shiva, but we all are one!” 

He explained that he had work to do, and invited me to come back later in the evening.  And as he walked inside, I turned to leave, but he very quickly reappeared, walking towards me with his hand outstretched and his fist closed.  And I instinctively opened my palm, into which he dropped a handful of puffed rice, and said “Eat.”  And I brought it to my mouth; it tasted sweet; and I said thank you and again began to walk away, but he then summoned me towards the shrine area—making sure that I first took off my shoes—and he poured a spoonful of milk, that had been given in offering to God, over the food in my hand to drink, and then he handed me a banana that had also been brought as an offering.  And now I could go. 

As I walked around the curve in the road, eating this holy food that had been offered to God and returned to the people, I was struck with an overwhelming sense of Eucharist, of the Body and Blood of Christ given for me in this moment, in this encounter, in this food.  It was my own Epiphany.  The Gospel was there in that food, given to me by a pagan wise man from the East, Christ showing up exactly where he didn't belong, in puffed rice and milk, as if they were bread and wine.  The Light reminding me, "I am everywhere, and there is no land in which I am not."   

And so again, whose Epiphany do we celebrate today?  Mary and Joseph's?  The Magi's?  Or is it our own sudden perception of reality through something simple and striking?  May the epiphany be for each of us this morning, as we are sent out to follow the Light, and to discover Christ in unexpected, unlikely, and innapropriate places.  May our assumptions be overturned, and may the circle be drawn ever wider.