The Twenty-Third Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 28 C, November 16, 2025

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, New York

Br. Robert James Magliula

The Twenty-Third Sunday after Pentecost, November 16, 2025

• Isaiah 65:17-25
• 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13
• Luke 21:5-19

Click here for an audio of the sermon

            It’s easy to see why some people might think that the world is ending. Just hold up a newspaper in one hand and Luke’s gospel in the other. “Nations will rise against nation”. There will be great earthquakes. In various places famines and plagues. Dreadful portents and great signs from heaven. They will arrest you and persecute you.” Of course that depends chiefly on who you are, how rich you are, what color you are, or where you’re from. Security, peace, and diplomacy have given way to fear, violence, war, and terrorism. It seems like Temples are falling everywhere.

This frightening passage not only looks forward; it also looks back to the many times before now when humanity experienced all these things and believed their world was coming to an end, only it didn’t. The inexplicable delay in the coming of our Lord at the end time was one of the stickiest problems the early church had to face. Jesus himself did not seem to know the answer. “Truly, I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place”, he said, over two thousand years ago.

            He says it as part of his last public teaching. He has come to Jerusalem knowing he will collide with the authorities there. He is sitting in the temple talking with his disciples when some of them begin to admire the place, commenting on how beautiful the stone is, and the gifts dedicated to God. Anyone who knows me would not be surprised that I would be part of that conversation or maybe even initiate it. Then Jesus reminds them that it will all be ruins someday.

            He doesn’t say it to be cruel. He is simply telling them the truth---that the things of this world will not last---that even some place as stunning and holy as the temple will become a ruin when the old world collapses in on itself. The temple was the center of Jewish life. It was what structured their community and gave identity and meaning. It’s the kind of news that makes you look around for someone who can save you---someone who seems to have access to God’s calendar and who will tell you exactly when the ship starts to sink so that you can make it to the lifeboats in time.

            Only Jesus does not recommend that course of action. He warns against it, in fact. “Beware that you are not led astray,” he tells those gathered around him; “for many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and ‘The time is near!’ Do not go after them. When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for these things must take place first, but the end will not follow immediately.” Do not go after them. Do not be terrified.

We all have temples. Some have been given to us, others we have built for ourselves. Sometimes our temples are people, places, values and beliefs, institutions, dreams. They are the things that we think structure and order our lives, give meaning and identity, providing security and stability. At least we think they do, until they fall. We may not like it, we may deny it, we may resist it, but the reality is things are changing. Our world is changing, our country is changing, our lives are changing. These are dark days when change brings loss or the fear of loss. Darkness, I’ve discovered, is often the way we come to see.  It may create the depressions that, once faced, teach us to trust.  It gives us the sensitivity it takes to understand the depth of the pain in others. It seeds in us the humility it takes to learn to live gently with the rest of the universe. It opens us to new possibilities within ourselves.

Change has a way of pushing us into the future. Many people will begin looking for signs about the future. But if we’re not careful, we will be living in a future created in our heads. When Jesus describes things that will happen, he is not asking us to speculate about the future. He is offering signs that call us to be faithful in the present.

According to Luke’s Gospel they are not signs of God’s absence but signs of God’s sure and certain presence. Nothing is going on that is unknown to God---not the things in the news or the things in our lives. God sees them and encourages us not to be terrified. To become terrified is to become part of the problem. God has something else in mind, what Jesus calls endurance. When all that is lovely to you, when all that is holy looks as if it may soon be reduced to rubble, do not lose heart. Do not be terrified. Hold on to one another and follow through. By your endurance you will gain your souls.  Staying in communion with one another---holding onto one another through all the storms that blow around us---that is how we know that God is still with us, no matter what the headlines say. Come injustices, wars, persecutions, earthquakes, plagues, famines, we are to hold on to one another---we are to endure ---because holding on to one another is how we hold on to our Lord.

Sometimes, after our temples fall, we look for a scapegoat, someone to blame or even demonize. We look for someone or a group who does not think, act, or believe like we do. Democrats and Republicans blame each other as do the conservatives and the liberals. Some simply give up and despair. Some become angry, resentful, and fight back. Others will say it’s God’s will or even God’s punishment. Many will look for easy answers, quick fixes, something that will prop up the old structures and ways of doing things. None of these are Jesus’ response.

So, what do we do on the day our temples fall?

Jesus’ response is: Be still, be quiet, do not be led astray. Do not allow your life to be controlled or determined by fear. Do not listen to the many voices that would cause you to run and go after them. Endure, he says. Be faithful, steadfast, persevere here and now. He is calling us to be present and faithful in whatever circumstances we find ourselves. If we cannot find God here, in our present circumstances, even amid our temple ruins, we will find God nowhere. Too often, we believe and live as if the fallen temple is the end of the story. It will be if we run away, scapegoat, respond with anger, or try to put it back together like it used to be. The new story is how we discovered God beside us in the temple ruins and how God rebuilt what we could not. It is the ongoing story of God recreating life out of loss, a story of God rejoicing and delighting in us.

The place of fallen temples is the place in which God, speaking through the prophet Isaiah, declares: “I am about to create new heavens and new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight. I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and delight in my people; no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it or the cry of distress” (Isaiah 65:17-19).

Those promises are fulfilled through our endurance, our stability, by remaining fully present, faithful, no matter how dark or uncomfortable life may be. In so doing we discover that God has always been with us – in the changes, chances, and chaos of life; in the pain, loss, and disappointment; in the destruction of our temples. Endurance, perseverance, stability are the ways in which we offer God the fallen stones of our temples. Stone by stone God will restore the beauty of our life and world. Stone by stone a new temple arises from the rubble, and we are that temple.

Do not be terrified, he said, “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”    +Amen.

The Twenty-sixth Sunday after Pentecost B - November 17, 2024

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Francis Beckham

The Twenty-sixth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 28, November 17, 2024

 

Daniel 12:1-3
Hebrews 10:11-14 (15-18) 19-25
Mark 13:1-8

 Click here for an audio of the sermon

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be pleasing to you, O God, my sustainer and my comforter. Amen.

Yesterday, I returned to Holy Cross Monastery from five days of retreat in a little hermitage. This self-contained monastery-for-one, thoughtfully equipped with a small kitchen, table, chair, bed, bath, and deck, had everything a hermit (even a temporary one) could possibly need, and – thankfully – not a bit more. Perched on a Pennsylvania hillside, its large windows opened onto a densely wooded valley that, though now mostly devoid of leaves, was nevertheless alive – brimming, even – with deer, foxes, squirrels, and hundreds of birds of all kinds.

I spent hours sitting in the corner window nook, coffee mug in hand, surrounded by the sights and songs of these birds as they fluttered from branch to branch and tree to tree. Every now and then, the cardinals especially would alight onto the little deck, where they’d drop whatever bit of food they’d found and quickly gobble it up. I suppose the deck provided a momentary bit of solitude where they could eat in peace, without having to balance on a branch or fend off other hungry diners.

These birds became my unexpected retreat companions. In fact, in a very real sense, they became my retreat directors. They were fully aware of – if completely unphased by – my presence (after all, they couldn’t possibly have been oblivious to my awkward attempts at conversation from the deck). But whatever they may have lacked in interspecies communications skills, they more than compensated through their steady example of mindfulness and presence – an example I’ve been sorely in need of lately.  

Unconcerned about anything aside from the present moment, they simply, yet perfectly, existed as birds, with no thought – and certainly no worry – for either yesterday or tomorrow. I couldn’t help recalling these words of Jesus from the Gospel of Matthew: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry … Look at the birds in the sky; they do not sow or reap, they gather nothing into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them … Can any of you by worrying add a single moment to your life-span?”

These are beautifully reassuring words, but, as we know, they’re not taken from the Gospel reading assigned for today. Instead, the lectionary has given us a noticeably more somber – some might even say apocryphal – reading selection, particularly in the Book of Daniel and in the Gospel of Mark. These are not very comfortable readings. They are, in many ways, quite dire. They abound with warnings of trouble ahead.

It’s fitting reading for this last regular Sunday after Pentecost. I say ‘regular’ because next Sunday – the Feast of Christ the King – is the last actual Sunday after Pentecost, the official crowning of Ordinary Time. But for this week at least we’re still basically in familiar Pentecostal territory, with green vestments and a focus on living into the Reign of God. But unlike most of the previous twenty-six Sundays, whose themes have mainly been the day-to-day teachings and ministry of Jesus, this Sunday’s readings are more of a frantic, last-minute check to make sure we really understand what we’re signing up for.

Probably it was just projection brought on by a case of hermitage-brain, but in reflecting on the Gospel reading I was struck particularly by what I perceived to be Jesus’ markedly troubled mood. (One becomes very aware of moods during extended periods of solitude.) He doesn’t quite seem himself today. His responses to the disciples’ observations about the Temple buildings and their questions about the complex’s impending destruction strike me as a bit distracted. He’s not completely present to the moment. He seems a bit “in his head” and fixated on what’s to come rather than on what’s happening right now.

That’s relatable, don’t you think? For any number of personal and societal reasons, we’re all living lives increasingly marked by anxiety and distraction, weighed down by our pasts and worried about our futures. As a result, there no longer seems to be much of a present. And that’s a big problem, because of the three tenses – past, present, and future – the present is the only place that can truly be said to exist (in the usual human experience of time, anyway) and, therefore, it's the only place where we can truly live our lives.

Of course, unlike Matthew’s birds of the air – or even the birds of the hermitage – we humans do have to occasionally reflect on the past and plan for the future. Otherwise, how can we possibly hope to learn the lessons of our experiences or make provision for legitimate needs that require planning? It’s in a space similar to this where I think we find Jesus today. He and the disciples have just exited the Temple, where he’s pointed out the hypocrisy of the of the powerful and shown them what true generosity looks like through the parable of the poor widow’s contribution. And now, back outside in the light of day, he ponders how best to make the disciples see that these lessons are about to have very real implications for them. Especially since, at this point in Mark’s gospel, his time with them is running short.

“Aren’t the buildings impressive!” the disciples say. “Hmm? Oh, yes, they are,” responds Jesus. “But they won’t be here forever. In fact, there isn’t a single stone of them that isn’t going to be thrown down.” This surely wasn’t a response the disciples were expecting. I can imagine Peter, James, John, and Andrew exchanging questioning glances as Jesus walks on, up to the Mount of Olives. When they arrive, they ask him about what he said back at the Temple. But rather than explaining, “Oh, well, you see, in another forty years or so, the Romans are going to tear the place down,” he begins pouring out what I sense has been weighing heavily on his mind – and heart – for a while now.

“Look,” he says, “you all have to be careful! There are going to be people who will try to deceive you, they’re even going to tell you that I sent them, or that they’re actually me! People are actually going to believe them and be led astray. Don’t let them trick you! And bad things are certain to happen – wars, national crises, political unrest, earthquakes, even famines. But whatever you do, remember what I’ve told you. These kinds of things are inevitable, but they’re going to lead to the future God has promised!”

The sections immediately following this passage, but not included in today’s Gospel reading, sound even less encouraging, including “The Coming Persecution,” and “The Great Tribulation.” We can only imagine the disciples’ reactions to all these things. But Jesus has to tell them what to expect. He’s concerned about his friends and doesn’t want them caught off-guard and unprepared. Continuing his ministry after he’s gone in spite of the dangers surrounding them is going to come at a cost. Defying the prevailing culture by refusing to collaborate with systems of oppression; insisting on speaking out against injustice; demanding mercy be shown to the foreigner and the marginalized; resisting violence and threats of violence for boldly proclaiming God’s love for everyone, especially the people who are targeted and vilified by those claiming to be acting in Christ’s name; and, perhaps most of all, calling-out the complacency, indifference, and hypocrisy of those benefiting from such blasphemy, is going to get them into trouble. Jesus is clear this is not a hypothetical. The disciples – and each of us – must be ready to proclaim the Gospel and bear the costs, the “birth pangs.” Like it or not, it’s our only way of reaching the future God has in store for us.

But to be clear, the warnings of doom and gloom – as essential as they are – aren’t themselves the point. The actual point is the same one that’s been prophesized, promised, and longed-for since the beginning: namely, the ultimate reunion of all creation with its Creator, the Wedding Feast of the Lamb.

Daniel tells us about it first: After speaking of a time of “great anguish, such as has never occurred since nations first came into existence,” he declares that “Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever.” Then, in the Letter to the Hebrews, we hear about the fruits already borne to us through the suffering endured by Jesus, namely confidence, hearts full of true faith, and – above all – hope.

With these assurances in mind, we can take the warnings of trouble for what they really are: way-markers on the road to everlasting life. While not always easy to endure, they are for us a sure sign that we’re living into the Way of Jesus, who has not only endured these same worries and sufferings, but who continues to be with us in own our trials as well. This promise is written in our hearts and in the beauty of God’s world all around us, including in the birds of the air, and in each other.

Grounded in the gift of the present moment, and letting tomorrow’s worries take care of themselves, may we walk confidently with one another into the future where God is already waiting for us, and may peace and all that is good be with us, and all whom we love, today and always. Amen.

Proper 28 A - November 19, 2023

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Aidan Owen OHC

The Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 28 A, November 19, 2023

 

Zephaniah 1:7,12-18
1 Thessalonians 5:1-11
Matthew 25:14-30

 

Click here for an audio of the sermon

The poet Scott Cairns writes “I love the Word’s ability to rise again / from chronic homiletic burial.” No parable in all the gospels is in greater need of such resurrection than this morning’s, which has been used as fodder for stewardship sermons for generations. This is not such a sermon, though you should feel free to make a donation by check, cash, or Venmo at the church door. Let’s get this out of the way at the beginning. This parable is not about using your God-
given talents for personal fulfillment or societal improvement. Although our addiction to power often leads us to find God in the kings, landowners, and masters of Jesus’ parables, we need only examine the behavior of the master here to realize that he does
not represent God. He yells at his slave “You wicked and lazy slave! You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest.” By the way, violating Jewish laws against usury. He then orders the slave to be thrown into the outer darkness, because, as he says, “to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even
what they have will be taken away.”

If the master corresponds to your image of God—and let’s be honest, he might. Many of us still carry around a vindictive and violent God image—I suggest you find a good spiritual director. And I’m not kidding here. Jesus is the antidote to the toxic God-image so many of us carry. Jesus, who heals all who come to him. Jesus, who eats with those on the margins. Jesus, who pours out his life in self-sacrificing love on the Cross, forgiving his murderers. The God we know as self-giving love in Jesus is nothing like the master in this morning’s parable. Rather, the master, and the system he represents, shows us the cruel reality of the world in which we are still living today. The world in which our corporate overlords goad us into frantic activity for their own enrichment. The world in which we are complicit in the devastation of the natural world in order to extract enough so-called resources to maintain our lives of privileged excess. The world in which we judge ourselves and one another based on what and how much we can produce. Our world, the world we live in and the one we help to prop up, is a place where those who have get more and those who have practically nothing, lose even what little they have. But what if, instead of giving the spotlight to the master and his atrocities, we follow Jesus to the margins? For if the Gospel is to be our guide, it is not in the centers of well- lit power that we will find him, but with the outcast slave, in the darkness, with all that weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Following the exiled slave into the outer darkness, stripped of even the nothing he has, we find that God has preceded us there. Jesus, who took the form of just such a slave, as scripture tells us, has already made a place in that darkness to welcome those who have been exiled there. In proceeding us, and all who choose or are forced into the dark, Jesus makes a way out of no way. As Psalm 139 puts it, darkness is not dark to him; the night is as bright as the day. And even when the darkness threatens to shut down around us, we cannot be lost, not because we know the way (small w) ourselves, but because the Way (capital
W) is closer to us than our own heartbeat. The God who fearfully and wonderfully made
us will not—cannot—let us go.

We are living today in a world threatened by the darkness of annihilation. I don’t need to give you the rundown. You all already know it too well. Our systems of domination and control are collapsing, and those who steer them only tighten their grip and increase their pressure on us. These peddlers of power offer us their well-lit certainties and fundamentalisms. They assure us that they know who is to blame and that they have the power to return us to a fabled golden age. Really, they seek to return us not to the
paradise of the garden but to the unthinking sleep of the automaton in a neon-lit nightmare. One of Teilhard de Chardin’s great insights is that God is not a god of the past, but of the future. God draws us out of the well-lit cities into the dark margins of the cosmos, into the unknown future where greater and deeper wholeness awaits us—the fullness of love in the heart of God.

Writer and activist Rebecca Solnit reminds us that the future is always dark, but that it is a darkness as much of the womb as of the grave. That is not to say that we should give thanks for the metaphorical and literal hurricanes and earthquakes. But it is to say that, given the context in which we are living, we can choose to seek the oblivion of the shopping mall or we can move out into the night, where the stars can be our guide. If God seems to be absent or aloof, it may be that our world is too polluted with certainty and light to see the outline of the hidden one. 

Scott Cairns again: 

Suppose the Holy One Whose Face We Seek
is not so much invisible as we are ill equipped to apprehend His grave proximity. 

Say the One is not so hidden as we are kept by our own conjuncture blinking, puzzled, leaning in without result. 

Let’s say the meek, the poor, the merciful all suspect His hand despite the evidence. 

As for those rarest folk, the pure in heart? 

Intent on what they touch, they see Him now.
 

Scott Cairns, “As We See,” in Pilokalia (2002)

There is no place that is separate or hidden or cut off from God’s merciful love. Though sometimes we must consent to our own stripping to stand naked before the one who beheld our limbs yet unfinished in the womb. Sometimes the choice for life is the choice of conscious darkness and unknowing. But the stars are there, even when the world is too bright for us to see them. And the outer and inner darkness shine, too, with God’s radiance, if we have the courage to consent to our own unblinding. Let the master rage. Give him back his talent and be gone. For when his breath his spent and all his worst is wrought, we will already be gone into the long and starlit night of Jesus’ loving Way. Love does not destroy the masters of the world. But love outlasts them. And hand in hand with love, we will do, too.

Proper 28 C - November 13, 2022

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Bernard Delcourt, OHC

Proper 28 C - November 13, 2022

Malachi 4:1-2a
2 Thessalonians 3:6-13
Luke 21:5-19

Click here for an audio version of this sermon

Be not terrified! Not a hair of your head will perish. 

Our salvation lies in good hands, in God’s hands. 

Imposters will come. War and conflict will rage on (31 countries currently at war in some form or another). Natural disasters will be prevalent. But God’s desire will prevail.

*****

To love God is not just talk. And loving God is not always like walking through a rose garden at dusk.

All three texts today encourage us to keep at our work as Christians, no matter what. In case you need reminding, our work as Christians is summarized in the Great Commission and the Golden Commandment.

The commission is …that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in Jesus’ name to all nations… (Luke 24:47) and the commandment is that …we shall love the Lord our God with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our strength, and with all our mind; and our neighbor as ourself… (Luke 10:27)

*****

Apocalyptic literature was a well-known narrative format to the Jewish nation. It kept making a comeback in the Jewish nation’s collective mind whenever they were on the receiving end of international violence in the form of invasion and forced exile. And it made a comeback when it seemed convenient to part with their Jewish identity in order to assuage the difficulties at hand.

Apocalyptic literature is meant to reveal the deeper nature of reality; it tears open the veil that seems to hide God at work in the world; it shows catastrophes and hardships as episodes that we need to endure to enable unity with God.

At the time Luke wrote the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Jewish community (of which the Jesus movement still considered itself an integral part) was reeling from what felt like a world-changing catastrophe. 

The Temple at Jerusalem, the most meaningful center of religious worship, had been destroyed, the city’s population had been massacred after a horrid siege, and the remnant of population had been dispersed in the rest of the Roman Empire.

So it is in keeping with his times that Luke, at the end of the first century of our era, would use the apocalyptic style to emphasize Jesus’ authority.

*****

With today’s gospel passage Luke conveys two important messages to his community.

First important message: Jesus was truly a great prophet. He spoke great truths and some of them came to be realized by the time Luke writes to his people. Two things that Jesus prophesied have by now happened in their living memory or in their present time:

- The Temple has been utterly destroyed,

- The Jesus movement has been, and continues to be, the object of persecutions.

Luke’s gospel a little further than today’s passage assures us that eventually Jesus will return in glory, just as he prophesied. 

So Luke wants us to know that if Jesus was right about the destruction of the Temple and the persecution of his followers, he is also right about his second coming. That is Luke’s first important message to his community. Jesus will come back in glory. You can count on it.

*****

Luke’s second message to his community is to continue its living witness to the message of Jesus Christ, in the meantime.

If earthly powers are doing unjust and unrighteous things, we are not to put the gospel under the bushel. On the contrary, we are to show endurance and fortitude in declaring the gospel. 

We are to persevere in standing for what is right in both word and action. That is how we maintain the integrity of our souls. That is how we live the resurrected life to the fullest.

Should persecutions ensue; so be it. Persecution may actually give us some highly visible opportunities to testify to the gospel.

Suffering as an opportunity for testimony. What kind of testimony does one give in the face of great suffering and great hatred? But Jesus says we need not worry how we will make our case to those who might want to silence us.

Jesus is with us to the end of times and the Spirit itself will speak through us.

Luke is encouraging his community to not be idle while waiting for the Lord’s return. Jesus himself told parables on this theme. Continue to witness with your lives about Jesus, the Way.

*****

The prophet Malachi gives me hope that God will make things good “on the day when God acts”, as he says.

Regardless of how far humanity will have progressed by then and regardless of what calamities will have been endured - On that day, moral ambiguity will disappear and reconciliation will prevail.

Unrighteous success and profit will be unveiled and come to nothing. Then once more you shall see the difference between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve him.

*****

In the meantime, we’ve got work to do. And the author of the second letter to the Thessalonians (probably a disciple of Paul, not Paul himself) gives us further guidance in how to be faithful to God.

Loving God is a work of community and everyone should actively be involved. This work of community gets harder the more people are coasting and running commentary from the sidelines. 

As our writer to the Thessalonians says; “do not be weary in doing what is right” (2 Thess. 3;13).

*****

So what it is that makes these readings relevant today. What makes today’s world an apocalyptic place? What is it that we need to speak out the gospel about?

Is it the overburdening of our planetary weather system? Is it the overconsumption of resources to the profit of the wealthiest and most powerful and at the expense of the rest? 

Is it the use of the justice system to punish rather than to repair, restore and reconcile? Is it the use of industrial and military power to impose worldviews and national agendas on other peoples? 

Is it the pursuit of yet another meaningless pleasure at the expense of deeper connection with our fellow human beings?

For now, the Kingdom of God comes quietly, hidden, unseen. Our very lives are what God gets to use to make God’s Kingdom of Love urgently break into the hardness of the world. 

We are bodies that enable the body of Christ to act in the world. We are part and parcel of the Revelation of God’s Love for creation. God’s Kingdom is also within and among us. It is being revealed also in our contemporary situation. 

*****

“Apocalypse now” is not only a Francis Ford Coppola movie masterpiece; it is one of the themes of the nearing season of Advent. You get a break with the Feast of Christ the King next week, but apocalyptic literature will be back. Let’s get to God’s work of love now.

Proper 28 B - November 14, 2021

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Randy Greve, OHC

Proper 28 B - Sunday, November 14, 2021

Daniel 12:1-3

Hebrews 10:11-14 (15-18) 19-25

Mark 13:1-8

Click here for an audio version of this sermon

One of my favorite New Yorker cartoons depicts Adam and Eve being expelled from the Garden of Eden.  Adam turns to Eve and says, “We are living in a time of great transition.” After the last 18 months, we may relate to their experience.  What time are we living in?  A time when over 750,000 of our fellow citizens have died from COVID-19.  Climate change, gun violence, systemic racism, the tone of political discourse and the shared trust in representative democracy beset us.  

If that were not enough, most churches are facing the challenges of aging and decline. We are beginning to realize that it is too late for “going back to normal”. The way is blocked behind us, it is closed off.  We can only move forward focused on the work of being faithful, loving communities in our stressed, divided, and violent world.  From whence cometh our help?   Do ancient biblical texts, so far removed from our culture and ways of being, have any relevance to our times? If so, what wisdom do they provide, what hope might we find in the promises of God?

Among the great gifts of sharing in the 3-year lectionary cycle of readings for the readings on the Lord’s Day is hearing afresh and being invited into Jesus’ life and teaching.  We conclude our year of St. Mark today. Next Sunday is the Feast of Christ the King with a Gospel from St. John and then readings from St. Luke during Advent to begin Year C.  So it is good to remember what St. Mark, as he has told the story of salvation, has so urgently pressed into our awareness over these many weeks.  It is a Gospel for our time, for this time, that we do well to heed.  He is honest, sometimes graphically honest, about the trials of discipleship.  

The way of Jesus is a stormy sea that involves risk and loss, fear and faith, and the laying down of false power for the way of the cross.  Yet Jesus is always present - teaching, modeling, showing the way.  St. Mark’s community is the most persecuted of the four Evangelists. They are in crisis and tumult. Writing shortly after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD, the first hearers of Mark’s gospel are being treated as trouble-making heretics, estranged from family members, and seeing some of their brothers and sisters martyred.  The urgent questions which inform the telling: Why does salvation involve such pain?  What does this suffering mean? Why bother staying faithful if it costs us so much?  

Is the way of Jesus really true, really worth it?  So we come to this reading from chapter 13 with all of that in the background and with Jesus nigh upon his Passion.  His final message is that when death and destruction and collapse seem to spread unchecked around you and you are tempted to give up and lose hope, do not be surprised, but be steadfast and clear-eyed about what time it is. The reading for today regrounds us in how to be in a time like ours. It has to do with the nature of the power of evil and the power of the cross.

What might this exchange between the disciples and Jesus sound like to us in our own ways of speaking?

“one of his disciples said to him, ‘Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!”

The disciples say, “Teacher, look how lucky Yahweh is to have us!  We have the house for the Messiah, the law, the feasts, and sacrifices, and offerings - now all we need is Messiah himself!  The stage is set, the people are ready, our liberation and freedom is surely coming soon!  When the Messiah comes in power and great glory, the Romans will be struck down and we will finally be the people God has promised we will be. We will be free, mighty, and strong. Then Israel will be made great again!”

Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”

Jesus says, “People raised these stones here and assembled these great walls. People can, and will, take down these same stones. Yes, you claim the law and sacrifices and offerings - and think that in these is your salvation, that God will protect you in your corruption and arrogance and neglect of the poor.  This is not the worship God intended. This is performance. If you believe you can defeat the Romans, that God will fight on your side, then your arrogance is worse than I thought.  All of it will be destroyed. All of it.  The Messiah is here and you are doubting my way of self-giving love. The prophets of violence will have their moment, and they will be defeated. They are always defeated.”

In the baptismal liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer, the candidates are asked, “Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God?”  To renounce is to forsake, repudiate, disown.  The gospel requires the abandonment of the claims of the principalities and powers that violence and domination are the ways of God, is how the kingdom comes.  When we are renouncing evil powers, we are tapping into the greatest power in the universe, which is nonviolent resistance.  We do not ignore evil powers, dismiss them, seek to overcome them on our own - none of that is being awake.   The whole of the gospel of Mark can be read as a response to the zealot movement.  Jesus repeats for emphasis his refutation of this way of power and domination; if any of you want to be great, be servant of all; if you want to be first, be last of all; take up your cross, lay down your life, whoever gains life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for his sake will find it.

The earliest Christian creed was “Jesus is Lord”, which means Caesar, who called himself lord, is not.  Jesus is facing the great fears of all the times.  And the answer to fear is not domination of the other, but a journey into our own souls to the source of hope who is greater than fear and uncertainty: watch, keep alert, keep awake. Do good, love one another, and entrust the end of the age to God’s way and time.  Do not believe false claims and plans of peace and safety.  When all the fears of the day fall upon you, and the prophets of doom harass you with small facts which are either lies or false hopes, do not let them move you. Live as you have been shown. Amen.

Twentyfourth Sunday after Pentecost - Proper 28 A - November 15, 2020

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Bernard Delcourt, OHC

Proper 28 A  - Sunday, November 15, 2020

Zephaniah 1:7,12-18
1 Thessalonians 5:1-11
Matthew 25:14-30

Click here for an audio version of this sermon

Today’s parable is traditionally understood in one of two ways. And I will espouse a third very different way.

*****

In one nutshell, the parable can be read as a representation of what we do between Jesus’ ascension after his resurrection and his return in glory at the end of times.

In another nutshell, the parable can be read as a championing of our capitalist economic system where fructifying your wealth to gain more wealth also gets you God’s approval.

In both of these interpretations, the parable is a positive example of what to aspire to. And it is assumed that the landowner stands in for Christ.

*****

According to the other interpretation I focus on today, Jesus uses the parable as a counterexample of what the Kingdom of God is supposed to be. He exposes instead what the dominant economic system does; it makes the rich wealthier and it impoverishes and marginalizes those who are not so adept at playing the system.

So let me show you why I entertain this third interpretation as a possible understanding of the parable of the talents. I would like to rename this story told by Jesus as the Parable of Wealth Accumulation.

*****

In Jesus’ time, economic views were very different from our time.

First, the material wealth of a society was considered as a finite amount that was distributed among everyone. The only way of getting a bigger share of the pie was to make other people’s share smaller. Those who amassed great wealth were frowned upon as less honorable members of society. It was assumed that, like tax collectors who took their cut from taxes, the rich had acquired their wealth at the expense of others. 

Honor, not material wealth was the measure of a family’s value. 

Most people would have been peasants. The economic elites would have been a small minority; mostly landowners and a small merchant class. Most people would have had no idea of how to exploit a very large opportunity in the merchant economy.

In the odd case that you would have owned a valuable asset digging a hole to hide it and preserve it was considered an appropriate risk management strategy and an honorable way of holding wealth.

Also, usury, the gaining of interest on a loan, was against Jewish law. Putting your money in deposit with a banker in order to earn interest would have been seen as spiritually illicit and dishonorable for both the banker and the depositor.

*****

Then there are the particulars of our rich man.

He’s a very rich man. A talent in this text does not refer to a God-given or an acquired capacity to do something well. Think of a talent as a currency, a very weighty currency. A talent represents the equivalent of 15 years of wages. 

To put it in perspective for us, let us think of 15 times the median annual income of a contemporary American. That would amount to a little over a million dollars!

So, our rich man has, at least, a disposable wealth of eight million dollars to give to his slaves to look after. In Jesus’ time, most great wealth would come from extensive land ownership.

And our rich man, absents himself from his lands for a long time. Enough time, for two of his slaves to double the money he has given them to take care of. We are talking about a landowner that has enough resources to absent himself from his business for several years and has enough able delegates to manage his wealth while away.

Absentee landowners were frowned upon in first century Palestine. They were considered as getting richer at the expense of the wider community, which they were. And that was dishonorable. They became relationally disinterested and disinvested from their community of origin. In the end, they were likely not to care enough for the wellbeing of those communities who supported their enrichment.

*****

So where does that leave us with this Parable of Wealth Accumulation?

I believe Jesus is showing his audience that he understands well the system of economic domination most of his auditors are struggling with. He shows the landowner to be focused on wealth accumulation and not at all on honor acquisition and maintenance. 

The landowner reaps harvests beyond the limits of his fields on the property of his neighbors. This is instead of the honorable leaving of an unharvested margin for poor gleaners to come and gather the rests of the harvest. And the landowner supports usury as a passive investment for his money instead of using his disposable wealth to make interest-free loans to those in need in his community.

The slave who was given a single talent, on the other hand, did the risk-free and honorable thing for his master. He preserved the value of the capital he was given. Was he so irresponsible to think that his eight-million-dollar master was rich enough to not need more enrichment? Was he so irresponsible to accept that managing such a large sum of money was beyond his wits?

One wonders what the master’s reaction would have been to the other slaves if their investments had been unsuccessful and they had returned less than the original capital to their master.

In the end, Jesus puts in the mouth of the master the words that describe how the “system” works. The ways of the world are that: “to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.”

Tell me. Does this landowner act as the God who taught us to love one another, to love our enemies and to care for the least of us?

*****

So, I believe this Parable of Wealth Accumulation is an indictment of the economic domination system of Jesus’ time and a contrast to what the Kingdom of God is.

For present-day Americans, we would do well to consider that income and wealth inequalities have been increasing in our own society for four decades. How does our current system make the rich wealthier and not care enough for the poorer ones among us?

A good contrast to today’s parable is another parable in the Gospel according to Matthew. It is the parable of the vineyard workers (Matthew 20:1-7) where a present and engaged landowner keeps hiring workers throughout the day and pays them each a full day’s wages at the end of the day.

*****

God is not an absent landowner. God is a present and engaged grower of community as well as a grower of the fruits of the earth. Sure, God relishes our use of our God-given talents to do our share of the work. But God wants us all to be provided for according to our needs, not our greed. We can trust in God. We don’t need to enrich ourselves at the expense of others to gain independence from God.

Amen

Pentecost 23C - Sunday, November 17, 2019

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Bernard Jean Delcourt, OHC
Pentecost 23C - Proper 28 - Sunday, November 17, 2019

Isaiah 65:17-25
2 Thessalonians 3:6-13
Luke 21:5-19

Click here for an audio version of the sermon.

The book of Isaiah is the second-most quoted book of the Hebrew Scriptures in the New Testament (after the book of Psalms). If the book of Psalms was Jesus’ book of common prayer, the book of Isaiah was known to him enough that, when handed the scroll of that book, he could find exactly the passage he wanted to read from (Luke 4:17).

In many ways, Jesus’s birth, life, ministry, death and resurrection are the embodiment of prophetic utterances in the book of Isaiah. We are soon to enter a season of expectant hope, Advent. The season of Advent looks both backward and forward to the realizations of such hopes.

Today’s text from Isaiah offers a vision of this expectant hope. God the ever-creative momentum of the universe is about to create new heavens and a new earth. The text is sometimes understood to refer to the end times.

But when God says “I AM,” “I AM about to create” doesn’t that speak of the eternal now, this very instant we are living? God is impatient for this new creation to break into our world. God is not waiting till the end of times for this to be realized.

Jesus himself says the Kingdom of God, this new creation, is in the midst of us (Luke 17:21). God desires us as co-creators of the new Jerusalem. If we consent, we can be instruments of God’s dream for creation.

This new creation that God is about to reveal is not a utopia, as in a dream that has no place in reality. This new creation demands our engagement in the gospel of Jesus Christ every day of our life.

*****

The third author of the book of Isaiah who speaks to us in today’s passage was addressing the Jewish people who were just returning from exile. They were discovering a distraught and destroyed Jerusalem. They had to start anew in very difficult conditions.

They might very well have chosen to weep and mourn former things that were no more. Or they might also stand with the Creator-God, let past things be in the past, and build a new Jerusalem.

And the prophet Isaiah gives us a wondrous list of characteristics of this new Jerusalem. Some characteristics might sound like the electoral program of a presidential hopeful. Mind you, our politicians could do worse than take a leaf out of Isaiah.

First of all, the new Jerusalem is a city. We are not going back to the Garden of Eden where we could be alone with God. We are looking at a civil society where we build our future together. We will relate to God as a community. We will thrive together. We can’t do this alone. God is enrolling every available laborer in this project.

We are no longer going to dwell on our losses and our past glories. We are going to be forward-looking.

We will be healthier, more joyful and more prosperous than we can imagine. We will live out fulfilled lifetimes.

We will have economic justice. All will have fruitful livelihoods and will be able to enjoy the fruit of those livelihoods. There shall not be domination over our lives or exploitation of our labor.

We will be happy that our children get to enjoy what we will enjoy ourselves. We won’t worry about their future being bleaker than our present.

And then, as a fledgling Vegan, I can’t help but rejoice at the thought that wolves and lions are going Vegan too (although I aspire to better than a meal of straw).

Think of all the ways we can engage our present predicaments to move into this direction and usher in the Kingdom of God here and now. You don’t need to cure cancer (but if you can, by all means, please do). You can start with offering a cool glass of water to those in need. Every little action in favor of our common good counts in this endeavor.

And God will cooperate with you every step of the way. God will delight in your consent to build the new Jerusalem with God. God will rejoice in your collaboration.

And with God, you will remove the causes of weeping and distress. Before people cry for help, we will come to their aid. We shall be the answer to people’s prayers.

Of course, some also draw comfort from the thought that no matter how short we fall from embodying the vision, God will complete it in the end. At the end of times, God will make perfect what we have started to accomplish with God.

Well yes, probably, but why wait until then? Insisting on Isaiah’s vision being an eschatological vision, a vision of the end times only, seems like a cop out to me. Why labor at building the new Jerusalem, when God the Creator himself will finish it off in a New York minute at the end of times? Why bother? We don’t know when time will end. My understanding of Jesus’ life, ministry, death and resurrection is that God desires us to try and help in the meantime.

I want Isaiah’s vision to inform my life and that of our Christian community. It is a vision that has universal appeal. We can share it with all of humanity and all of God’s creation. It is truly a vision for the greater common good of all creation.

Remember this vision throughout the coming season of Advent. Etymologically, Advent means “what is to come.” Remember the advent of Jesus of Nazareth, of Jesus the Christ and of the new Jerusalem he prefigures.


Beloved Lord, thank you for Isaiah’s rendering of God’s vision of a new Jerusalem. Thank you for Jesus emboldening us in the building of the Kingdom of God here and now. Help us join the multitude of your laborers no matter how late the hour. We look forward to sharing the fruits of our labor with all and with You. Amen.

Proper 28, Year A: November 19, 2017

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Randy Greve, OHC
Proper 28 - Sunday, November 19, 2017


To hear the sermon in its fullness click here.

Br. Randy Greve

It is his fault. He knew what the master expected. He knew that one day his master would return and demand an accounting. No hole could ever be deep enough to bury his dread. He thought he could get away with it, but the day of reckoning has come – and he is found out. The master has a business to run. He has no time for idle workers. No use for the unmotivated, for anyone who is not as excited about making money as the master. Off the team, out on the street, out of sight, invisible – loser, no good, worthless… worthless. Actually, the master has had a good day. Two out three is not so bad. And those two doubled their money – 100% profit! Mr. Worthless can be replaced soon enough. The master, he has people lining up to work for him. 

He has the best business model in town – a guaranteed formula for growth. He gets his employees so energized and motivated to win, win, and win. Mr. Worthless is not good for public relations – gives the company a bad image. If the master keeps him, people will talk. Besides, the risk is too big, that is why he only got one talent in the first place. He was afraid of this happening. Forget about him. He is outside. He does not exist. Mr. Worthless will have a long time to reflect on his failure. The master did what had to be done. 

The wicked and lazy will never learn – it's how they are. Better to be on the side of the hard-working, rule-following citizens. So look on the bright side – a net profit of six talents! Time to party! We have enough capital to expand the business now, branch out into more territory, and gobble up the weak and the small - become big. The master is on the inside for good. No sadness on the inside – no pain, just joy. Yes, joy all around, joy all the time. Joy, joy, joy. But remember – it is his joy – all from him and for him. Cross him and he is just as likely to throw you out, too. He has to be careful. The competition, the undesirables, the jealous and bitter like Mr. Worthless will come at him now. He needs better security, taller walls. Yes, build a wall!  Are his slaves, I mean employees, really loyal? What if there is a spy among his ranks? 

He will find them; throw them into the darkness alongside Mr. Worthless. The revenge is sweet. The look on their faces when they are grabbed by the throat when the door slams in front of them. They dare not anger the master. Can you believe that?  Calling the master crooked!  He deserves what he got. Let him rot out there in the darkness all alone, with nothing and no one. He brought it upon himself. 

Not everything that Jesus says in the gospels is Jesus speaking as himself. At times he will use the voice of a character, as I just did in speaking as a supporter of the master in the parable. Jesus is not above a bit of hyperbole, irony, or spoof to make a point. In his original Aramaic, this figure of speech is a comparison from lesser to greater. We hear this when Jesus says things like "if you who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things…"  Or the unjust judge who grants the widow's request because she keeps at him. The rhetorical sense is "if even those who are evil recognize faithfulness and reward achievement which is fading away, how much more will your heavenly Father, who loves you inside and out, give you the blessings of the kingdom which never fade away. If the wicked can throw a good party, imagine what the heavenly banquet will be like!

Sadly, most commentaries and interpreters assume that the master is Jesus and the slaves are disciples and the return is the second coming. I say "sadly" because Jesus as the master here is a serious problem. If Jesus is the master, we have to contend with him in his own voice calling the talent-burying slave "worthless". This kind of entitlement exegesis can reinforce a distorted image of God as one who rewards the successful and damns failure, which is not the gospel. 

The parable itself does not require the classic interpretation. On its face, the parable tells of a rich man who entrusts large sums of money to slaves and returns to get an accounting and who rewards or punishes based on performance. My minority reading interprets the parable as a spoof of empire. Empire in this context meaning whatever attitudes, customs, or structures of power designed to preserve the status quo of the powerful. Theologically, an empire is the opposite of the kingdom of which Jesus speaks. Spiritually, empire blinds, empire builds walls, rots the soul, hardens the heart.

Let's set the stage:  Jesus is in the temple area in Jerusalem. It is Wednesday of Holy Week. Matthew has had Jesus enter into these days with a polemic against the abusive and hypocritical religious system of many of the Pharisees and other leaders. Jesus' theme is that the judgment coming will not weigh you on your religious performance or your collusion with the occupying Romans for political status, but the judgment is about your compassion and mercy and the justice that defends and cares for the most vulnerable – precisely those kicked out of the community of the temple - in other words, the judgment is on the basis of what it means to be God's people in the first place. Jesus co-opts the rhetoric of empire, which in his immediate context is Rome and Rome's supporters, and paints the picture of a backward, mirror image nightmare kingdom in this parable. 

If the reward of empire is nothing more but the approval of a brutal and capricious master, maybe it is not as great as you thought. The Pharisees and the other leaders who have cozied up to Rome and thus have been neglecting the poor, harming their souls and betraying the command to love God, will find that the pot at the end of the rainbow is empty, they have been played, Rome will win as Rome always wins and turn on them just as quickly as it has on all those who have resisted it. When you stop producing for Rome, an end will surely come in the destruction of Jerusalem in just a few decades – wake up and get off the road to ruin. 

Jesus' intent is to take his hearers and us to the end of ourselves. In 12-step recovery, this is called "hitting bottom" when the addiction has become so destructive and its delusions so undeniable that the choice is often as stark as "will I live or die?" Jesus' mission is to make that question heard. Jesus is about the kingdom of heaven, the path of life, it is his constant theme. But in order for the kingdom of heaven to be something we can receive and desire, we have to be taken all the way to the bottom of the kingdom of empire. We have to gaze into the abyss of hopelessness in order to wake up to wanting to live. If we say "yes" to Jesus, we have to be just as emphatic about that to which we are now saying "no". His critique is "if you go all out for this life, sell your soul for money and pleasure and security what do you get in the end?"  What's the payoff?  Do you really want to be judged solely on your ability to produce?

Not until he rips the mask off the delusion of all that we think will make us happy, not until he takes us to the end of all of our programs for ultimate satisfaction on our own, can the kingdom of heaven be the answer to our hearts deepest desire and need. Although even as Christians we are people of empire more than we want to see, what we really want, deep down, is more than that. In the parable, the system is rigged to make the slaves prove their worthiness. The first two slaves do just that. They get status and power, they have their reward. Jesus, however, says your infinite worth has been a gift the whole time. 

The last slave, who at first reading seems to be the loser, is actually the hero. The worst thing you could do within a domination system is made yourself an enemy of the system. This fellow is not playing that game. He functions as Jesus himself – shining the light of truth on the tyrant's behavior, daring to say what he has done, tell him who he really is. All the talk of systems and power comes down to a person. The parable begs the question – is the one cast out into the darkness really worthless?  Do I let that label stand?

If he is a precious brother made in the image and likeness of God, then we are seeing with kingdom eyes, we are seeing a brother in whom Christ dwells. What the empire sees as the place of rejection and abandonment, as the last place God would care about, much less visit, Jesus transforms into the place where encounter and hope are born. Next Sunday, Christ the King Sunday, we will hear the charge to care for the needy. The focus will shift from what is to what could be. So the label cannot stand. We must recognize the worth of all, especially those on the outside.

The outcast becomes my ultimate concern. That he is outside is unacceptable. Empire always defines itself by who belongs outside. The master's joy is fleeting and illusory. The kingdom of heaven is made known by the lengths to which its subjects go to provide care and to invite, by who is welcomed in. The true party begins when we have the courage to stand up and say "no", when the lost sheep is found, when the wayward son returns, when the unclean are healed, when the hungry fed, when the sinful outcasts embraced, when the sick made whole, when the outer darkness is empty. Amen.

Propio 28C-13 de noviembre de 2016

Monasterio de la Santa Cruz, West Park, NY
Br. Josép Martinez-Cubero,OHC 
Propio 28C- 13 de noviembre de 2016

VIGESIMOSEXTO DOMINGO EN TIEMPO ORDINARIO
Isaías 65:17-25
2 Tesalonicenses 3:6-13
Lucas 21:5-19

“Vendrán días en que de todo esto que ustedes están viendo no quedará ni una piedra sobre otra. Todo será destruido.”

El género de la porción del evangelio que hemos leído esta mañana pertenece a la literatura apocalíptica de la Biblia. La palabra apocalipsis es de origen griego y significa “revelar”. Lo que principalmente se revela en este tipo de escritura es el fin de la historia y la eternidad que lo seguirá. En otras palabras, la escritura apocalíptica es escatológica (tratando los tiempos del fin). A la misma vez, la escritura se basa en principios que son válidos a lo largo de la historia: el conflicto espiritual entre el bien y el mal y el control soberano de Dios sobre la historia y la naturaleza. El método de descripción es simbólico y visionario, o sea muchos de los detalles se siguen cumpliendo a lo largo de la historia. A mediante de este género de escritura ponemos al mundo en contexto y nos damos cuenta que todo pasa. Sin esta clase de contrapunto corremos el riesgo de tomar a este mundo demasiado en serio, de apegarnos a todo como si fuera a durar para siempre. Nos olvidamos que todo pasa, y todo se acaba.

La lectura del libro del profeta Isaías y el evangelio según San Lucas son escritas a comunidades que han sido sacudidas a la base por decepciones de la vida que ellos ni hubiesen querido ni hubiesen elegido nunca. Isaías le habla a un pueblo que acaba de regresar de exilio en Babilonia. Por muchos años el pueblo ha soñado sobre la Jerusalén que recuerdan, incluso el templo que había sido construido por el rey Salomón, con todo su esplendor. Pero la Jerusalén que encuentran a su regreso es una ciudad en ruinas. Ante ellos se encuentra la tarea monumental de reconstrucción pero sin los recursos que Salomón tenía a su poder. Es un tiempo de profundo pesimismo y desaliento. Pero Isaías nos da una visión para una comunidad de amor y compasión, el nuevo cielo y la nueva tierra que Dios está creando. Cada día, en cada situación, no importa que grande sea la decepción o la perdida tenemos la oportunidad de aceptar que la compasión y el amor de Dios funcionen.

 De manera similar, Lucas le escribe a una comunidad que ha experienciado la devastadora destrucción del templo en Jerusalén y la matanza de sus residentes por el imperio romano. El pueblo conoce muy bien la desesperación que se siente cuando en lo que uno confía muy queridamente ya no puede explicar la realidad en la que uno se encuentra. Recordemos que el evangelio fue escrito alrededor del año 85 d.C., o sea unos quince años después de la tercera destrucción del templo. Se puede decir que el texto no es profecía sino interpretación de historia, la historia que nos enseña que estas cosas se repiten una y otra vez. No obstante esta audiencia busca respuestas. ¿Quién es este Jesús, el que se supone que sea el Mesías, el nuevo rey David mandado para salvarnos de nuestros opresores? ¿Por qué murió? ¿Es verdad que resucitó y vive?¿Por qué Dios permitió que el templo se destruyera? ¿En donde se encuentra Dios en todo esto? El templo y todo lo que conocíamos se encuentra ahora en ruinas. ¿Y ahora qué? El pueblo había construido sus anhelos y sus esperanzas a cuentas del templo. Su imagen de Jesús como el Mesías, el salvador. Ellos como los escogidos y Dios el liberador, protector y la roca en la cual se podían parar. Pero el templo ahora estaba en ruinas.

¿Qué podemos hacer cuando nos fallan las imagines y los ídolos que elegimos para capturar el significado completo de aquél por quien añoramos? Cuando nuestro templo se destruye o la iglesia fracasa. Cuando las teologías son muy límites o las respuestas suenan absurdas o nos dejan queriendo mas. Cuando realidades nuevas se presentan en nuestras vidas. Es entonces que necesitamos el ejemplo de Jesús, quién supo lo que es vivir con las preguntas; rabino judío, maestro, experto en como contestar un pregunta con otra pregunta. Jesús, quién clamó por la justicia y defendió a los marginalizados. Jesús, quién puso a la gente antes de la ley y los animó a resistirse contra la injusticia y sin embargo no quiso usar armas. Jesús, quién desafió el status quo de las autoridades religiosas e insistió que Dios y nosotros somos uno. Jesús, quién insistió que el reino de Dios está aquí en la tierra y ha comenzado. Jesús, el que rompía las reglas y le gustaba las fiestas. Jesús, al que llamaron borrachón y glotón. Jesús, quién lo redujo todo a simplemente el amor, el amor a Dios y el amor al prójimo como sea ama uno mismo. Jesús, el que vivió y amó tan extraordinariamente, dándose completamente a la vida y a la humanidad sin querer desistir aunque sabía que era muy probable que lo mataran. Por eso en él vemos a Dios, la fuente de todo lo que es y siempre será.

 Aquellos de ustedes que tienen cuentas de facebook tal vez vieron, hace unas semanas, la fotografía del letrero de una iglesia que decía: “Cristo viene… y ojalá que sea antes de las elecciones.” Bueno, las elecciones han pasado y hasta la fecha que yo sepa la segunda venida no ocurrió. Todavía estamos aquí, pero ahora tratando de limpiar el desastre de una temporada de elección presidencial que a puesto sobre la mesa todo lo que quisiéramos pensar que no existe en esta nación. Es obvio decir que muchos están deslumbrados, preocupados y hasta con pánico por causa del resultado de la elección presidencial. Para muchos el país se siente completamente destrozado. Pero tenemos que recordar que en nuestra narrativa cristiana de salvación hubieron muchos momentos cuando el pueblo de Dios creyó que todo se había perdido y que no había salida, pero el pueblo siempre fue sorprendido con nueva vida y nuevos caminos emergiendo de circunstancias que parecían no tener ninguna clase de esperanza. (Y también recordemos que Jesús vivió en un territorio sometido al poder tirano del imperio romano que ejercía su dominio.) Ahora mas que nunca tenemos que recordar nuestra identidad como seguidores de Jesucristo y seguir adelante como una comunidad de esperanza, paz, justicia y reconciliación.

Como seguidores de Jesucristo declaramos nuestra confianza en el amor de Dios quien tiene todo el poder. Declaramos esta confianza hasta cuando la iglesia parece no poder contra todo lo que parece estar trabajando en contra del reino de Dios y hasta entre medio de circunstancias que retan nuestro sentido de esperanza. Seguimos adelante, firmes, con estabilidad y fe como insignia de lo que significa ser un creyente. Seguimos siendo testigos de las maravillas que Dios ha hecho, y continuamos aunque parezca lo opuesto. Todo depende en donde y en que centramos nuestro tiempo, nuestro esfuerzo y nuestra visión. Si nos fijamos solo en aquello que es temporario, nos perderemos las cosas que sí duran. Si solo vemos lo que aparenta tener obvia grandeza y esplendor, nos perderemos la belleza de lo que a primera vista parece no ser atractivo. Si nos centramos solo en el daño, lo destructivo, lo que es mortífero, nos perderemos lo que da ánimo, lo que es constructivo y lo que da vida.

Todos esos siglos atrás cuando el templo en Jerusalén se hallaba en ruinas, los seguidores de Jesús se dieron cuenta que Jesús era en realidad el Mesías. En Jesús encontraron el poder del amor. Con el tiempo se dieron cuenta que ese amor nacía una y otra vez en las caras de cada uno de ellos. Así mismo también comenzaron a vivir y amar al máximo, confiando que en Dios, quien es amor, encontrarían nueva vida- vida que es puro regalo.
Como Jesús, vivamos amando, sacrificando, luchando, probando, cuestionando, protestando con dignidad en contra de la injusticia, abrazando cada momento y confiando que Dios, la base de nuestro ser y creador de todo lo que es y siempre será nos sostiene por cada reto y por cada bendito momento no importa lo que venga. ¡Que así sea! ~Amén.