Easter 5 B - April 28, 2024

 Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Samuel Kennedy

The Fifth Sunday of Easter B, April 28, 2024

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

 

Click here for an audio of the sermon

It seems that I’ve opened my last few homilies saying something along the lines of, “today’s passage was a challenging one for me…”  and today’s Gospel lesson continues that theme, which likely says a little more about the homilist than the text.  The Gospel lesson we just heard proclaimed contained the last of Jesus’ I AM statements in the Gospel of John.  And here Jesus’ uses the image of a vine and its branches as a symbol and extended metaphor for the rich life of mutual indwelling that God invites us to.  But before we get to the good news, I think it’s important we acknowledge a few challenges with  this passage.  We should acknowledge that the broader reception history of this passage in the church has, at times been very harmful when it has been used as a tool for anti-Jewish replacement theology.  We won’t dissect that today, but I do want to acknowledge that history and reject that approach.  My own personal reception history is a bit complicated too. I fell in love with Scripture as a young teenager (As I imagine many of us here today did).  That text felt as if it was teeming with life and overflowing with the love of God for me and others, but this passage, in particular, was one of several that brought me more angst than hope whenever I would read it, as I struggled to discern whether I was truly abiding in Christ and producing fruit that endured, or was destined to be lopped off for being an underperformer.  Because Jesus doesn’t just describe deep, mutual interconnection, in this text, but also pruning, and even chopping off and burning of branches that do not bear fruit. 

So just in case there’s anyone here today wrestling with those valences of the text, let's engage with them first.  Is Jesus really saying that if we don’t bear enough fruit, we get lopped off the vine, and is that image meant to convey some sort of ultimate or eternal separation from God?  While it can be easy to read the passage this way (and many of us have been conditioned to do so), we are called to read canonically, and situate this text within the broader message of Scripture and revelation of God.  I believe that when we do this, we can answer that question with a firm, resounding, “no.”  As our Epistle lesson reminds us, “Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.”  Once we have established that resounding “no,” and our security in the love of God, we find ourselves free to get curious about what Jesus might actually be describing in this passage, and in truth it is nothing short of breathtaking. 

John’s Gospel contains seven, stirring and startling “I AM” statements that describe fundamental aspects of Jesus’ identity and the abundant life he invites us to join him in.  “I am the bread of life;” “I am the light of the world;” “I am the door;” “I am the good shepherd;” “I am the resurrection and the life;” “I am the way, the truth and the life;” and, our statement for today, “I am the true vine.” This particular I AM statement  is situated within Jesus’ farewell discourse with his disciples.  And this placement, as you’d imagine, does indeed matter.  Immediately prior to this passage, Jesus has encouraged his friends not to be troubled or afraid, but in almost the same breath let them know that he is leaving them “I am going to the Father,” he said,  and “I will no longer talk much with you.”  Pastorally, this text is situated in a rather fraught moment where the disciples are becoming increasingly aware that something is up, Jesus is leaving, and their hearts are likely yearning for some reassurance of connection with the one they love, and reassurance is precisely what the metaphor Jesus uses is designed to do.

Of all the 7 (Pred. Nom.) I AM statements, this is the only one that has an accompanying “you are” statement.  Jesus tells his disciples that he is the vine and they are the branches. And while it may not strike us as such at first glance, this is an image of a deeply intimate and mutualistic relationship.  The vine provides the structural support, nutrients from the soil, and the vascular system the branches need to survive and thrive.  The branches act as the primary photosynthetic organs for the vine, producing the energy needed to sustain the vine's growth, propagation, and reproduction.  The glucose produced in photosynthesis is used to fuel the plant’s metabolic needs, as a primary component of the cell walls that must be constructed if the vine is to continue to grow, and excess glucose is transported back to the main vine and stored as energy reserves for the next growing season.

This image is full of vulnerable, tender, mutuality that I believe we have become conditioned to miss.  We are radically dependent upon the vine, but in the mystery of God’s humble, self-giving offering of love, this text hints that on some profound level, God has chosen to not flourish without us too.

Another reassuring note in this passage is that the author has Jesus speaking in the present tense.  Jesus is not telling his friends that in some distant future, after they have achieved a certain level of education, enlightenment, detachment, or meditative prowess that they will be intimately connected to him, but rather right now, they are already as intimately interconnected as vines and their branches.  You and I, right now, are as intimately interconnected with Jesus and one another as vines and branches.

“Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.”  Jesus invites us to abide in him.  What might he mean by this invitation?

On one one level, we could say that it is rather impossible for us NOT to abide in the ocean of the love and mercy of God.  Our faith maintains that Christ, through his death, resurrection, and ascension has entered the heart of all things. “It is,” after all…, “ in him that we live and move and have our being.”  Simply by virtue of our existence we have been given the gift of dwelling in the love of God.  

But as always with God, it would seem that there are greater depths we are invited to traverse.  Jesus’ phrasing does seem to indicate that this abiding he has in mind isn’t just ontological; there is a volitional component to it as well.

Paradoxically, it would seem, there is a kind of organic movement associated with deeply abiding in God’s love, and it’s a movement similar to the flow and dynamic interchange of nutrients and energy between a vine and its branches.  Theologian Raimon Panikkar describes the dynamism of abiding with the following words, “I am one with [or abide in]  the Source insofar as I too act as a source by making everything which I have received flow again -- just like Jesus.” 

In Jesus, we see this striking example of the free flow of love.  His life and ministry of opening the eyes of the blind, healing the sick, creating community for the forgotten and listening to those who society said should not be heard -- all of this was a dynamic participation in his deep abiding in the love that flows within the Godhead.  Jesus invites us in this passage to awaken to the fact that we dwell in this flow of kenotic love and are in fact called to participate in it! 

However, if you are at all like me, there may be parts of you that still struggle to believe in our lovability and ability to love and this, I believe, is where the pruning comes in.  

But first, a clarification.  I often confuse pruning and trimming.  Jesus is not saying that the Spirit is going to come along with a hedge trimmer and mow us down and shape us up, into a uniform size and shape approved of by our suburban HOAs.  I’ve learned from a dear friend who is rehabilitating his family’s apple and pear orchards that pruning is a profoundly intimate process where they get to know each plant as a unique individual, with its own needs for growth and flourishing and particular tendencies for fruit production.  His job is to help steward the natural flow of life in that plant, by inspecting nearly every branch and bud and gently guiding it into the most fruitful possible growth by a series of careful snips here and notches there as they clamber among the branches. And so it is with us, the Spirit, carefully tends to us, pruning us with that same posture of respect, tenderness, and deep attentiveness to our individuality.  

Pruning, for us, is the process of being opened up to experience love in the places we’ve never been able to before.  And it is precisely in those places where we have not yet experienced love for ourselves that we struggle to let it flow for others. It probably doesn’t need to be said, but pruning is not always pleasant; it can indeed be painful for moments and seasons, but, to quote the Jesus Storybook Bible, it is intended to open us up to a fuller experience of the immense, “unending, never-giving-up, always and forever love” that God for each of us -- precisely as we are.  

Pruning, then, carefully peels away the falsehoods of who we thought we needed to be to discover who we actually are, and then experience the surprising truth that it is that person -- that real person -- the real you, the real me --  who is connected to the vine.  And that is that person whose life will be able to keep that love flowing, and in so doing, will produce fruit that remains.

What might this process look like?  At times it can be the painful process of discovering that the patterns of behaviors we had once identified as loving on our part, were actually patterns of enabling in a web co-dependence.  Or you may be called to first awaken to your own own beauty and worthiness of love before you can give it to another.  The Spirit may reveal to us patterns of defensiveness in our lives, that keep us from mutually life-giving relationships -- defenses that will only fall as we come to rest in the immense, unending love of God for us.  Whatever our particular case may be, it is when we are able to release into the tender pruning of God that we open up to receive the love of God in surprising and refreshing ways, and as we do that we can then turn and allow that love to flow through us to others.

So may we find hope and joy in the reality that you and I, precisely as we are, are deeply loved and are as intimately interconnected with Jesus and one another as vines and branches.  As we are being pruned to open up more fully to this love, we are being cared for with all the tenderness and wisdom of a master Vinedresser.  And my prayer is that this hope will sustain us with deep, paradoxical, joy and peace that glimmer through the growing pains.  

In the name of God, Lover, Beloved, and Love Overflowing.

Amen.

Lent 4 B - March 10, 2024

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Samuel Kennedy

The Fourth Sunday in Lent B, March 10, 2024

• Numbers 21:4-9
• Ephesians 2:1-10
• John 3:14-21

 

Click here for an audio of the sermon

I found today’s Gospel passage to be a challenging one to work with.  It contains some of Jesus’ most well-known words — words that are beautiful, gentle, and hopeful.  But, if you are like me, it’s hard to hear them afresh and anew, given how they’ve made a near ubiquitous appearance at every major sporting event in this country for at least as long as I’ve been alive, and are so often coopted by troubled and challenging theologies of salvation.  While I don’t think one homily, especially one I’ve written, is going to be able to free this passage from its complicated cultural reception history, I hope we can even momentarily experience it for the breath of fresh, life-giving air it was intended to be.

Jesus begins this portion of his discourse with Nicodemus in a bit of a strange place — with a reference to the first lesson we heard read this morning — a relatively obscure story from the book of Numbers. In our Gospel lesson, we heard Jesus say, “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the son of man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”

The passage from Numbers places us in the middle of the wilderness after the children of Israel’s liberation from slavery in Egypt. The people were exhausted, tired, and not shy about expressing their discontent.  “Why have you brought us out of Egypt to die in this wilderness, without fresh food or water, and the food we’ve got to eat is just miserable.”  In the story as told in Numbers, God gets irritated with the people's complaining and grumbling and sends a plague of venomous serpents among them.  The serpents bite, injure, and kill many of the people.  As their suffering mounts, the people begin to beg Moses for forgiveness, and what God tells Moses to do, to free the people from their suffering — is fascinating. God tells Moses to create a serpent of bronze an image of the agent of their suffering, and if the people would but look upon the image, they would find healing and relief.  
Now the concept we see playing out in this text seems to be based upon a principle commonly held in many ancient systems of medicine where a small amount of a poisonous or virulent substance would be used to counteract a larger dose of the poison or virulent substance itself.  It’s not entirely dissimilar from the concept of vaccines where, we take a a tiny subset of that which would harm us — perhaps a few unique surface proteins from a virus, if you will, to provide us with protection from overwhelming infection.   

Fine and dandy you say, but why is Jesus referencing this principle when he is explaining the way of salvation to Nicodemus, a leader among the Pharisees?
Chapter 3 of the Gospel of John opens with Jesus describing the path of conversion as a process of rebirth.  This metaphor was understandably confusing to Nicodemus, so Jesus tried again here, to describe how the way of salvation he was proclaiming worked.

“Just as Moses lifted the serpent in the wilderness, so must the son of man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life.  For God loved the world in this way, that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him, will not perish, but have everlasting life.”  

It’s a condensed soteriology to be sure.  But before we can discuss the nature of the cure, it would be good to remind ourselves of the malady — the fiery serpents —  we are being delivered from.

A crisis of belonging has “ailed” us since the dawn of our human story — this sense of estrangement that is coupled with a longing to belong —to belong within our community, with our God, and with ourselves.    We see these tensions echoed in our sacred texts as early as the story of Adam and Eve.  A fundamental challenge that we have is that we seem to be nearly hard-wired to conceive of belonging as a limited resource, and we tend to turn our efforts to obtain that limited resource into a zero-sum competition with those around us.
One of philosopher René Girard’s key insights was that we humans tend to build social cohesion — our sense of belonging — on the back of exclusion. And these dynamics work themselves out no matter how large or how small the community is — be it as large as a nation state or as small as a family, or a group of friends.  As rivalry and competition grow within the community (along with their attendant social tensions and, in some cases, violence) human societies will often select a scapegoat —a person or group who is blamed for the turmoil and conflicts within the community. The scapegoat becomes the target for all of that collective blame and hostility, and is often subjected to violence or expulsion as a means of purging the community of its tensions and conflicts.  

This often happens subconsciously, but the striking thing is that this process works — at least temporarily.  For a season, social cohesion and sense of safety in belonging are restored, but in the long run, this mechanism only perpetuates cycles of violence, as the social order, the “sense of safe belonging,” is maintained via cycles of ritual expulsion and violence.  The irony of building community by this mechanism is that one is never actually ever safe — subconsciously we all know that we might find ourselves selected for expulsion at the next round of sacrifice— and this leads to deep, subconscious anxiety at both the group and individual levels.

And we participate, I participate, in these patterns of scapegoating and sacrifice all the time.

“The Gospels show us that Jesus understands this mechanism,” of inclusion via exclusion; (Allison, 152-153) of maintaining social cohesion and order through expulsion, and Jesus understands that the religious and political structures of this world depend on this mechanism and therefore often unconsciously shore up these sacrificial cycles.  Through his life and ministry, Jesus lures the mechanism and these institutions into behaving according to their usual patterns, and that, predictably, gets him killed.  He dies a death of shame and suffering on the edges of the City —lifted high on the beams of a cross.  
Jesus dies, as countless others have and will continue to die — alone, expelled, and rejected. In fact, even at his death he’s surrounded by two others suffering a fate the same as his— a death on the fringes of society, having been sacrificed to the idols of shaky social cohesion and fragile political peace.
But Jesus endures this precisely in order to reveal that the whole exercise is unnecessary — to reveal to us that there exists the possibility of another way of being together. With Jesus’ reference to the story of the fiery serpents, it’s as if he is saying, “My death is going to look like the very thing that plagues you — it is going to look like one more ritual expulsion, one more sacrifice,” but, this time, because the Victim is the very wellspring of life himself, his death strips the sacrificial system of its imagined divine imprimatur allowing it to begin to wither from the roots up.

“For God loved the world in this way, that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him, will not perish, but have everlasting [overflowing, abundant] life.”  

“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

The only One who very rightly could judge us and condemn us via exclusion has done precisely the opposite. Instead of excluding us, he has instead welcomed us into a state of beloved belonging that is grounded securely in the unending flow of the life and love of the Trinity.
We are welcomed into the light of beloved belonging.  

As verse 21 reminds us, it is a bright, revealing light — a light where we are seen for who we are, faults and all, the good, the bad, and the ugly.  But what this light most clearly reveals is just how deeply we are loved.  And because it is the light of beloved belonging, we can stand in that light with hope and rest and freedom from fear.  And now that we are set free from the need to cast others out to secure our own place in this community, we can instead, stand like Jesus did with outstretched arms inviting others off of the sacrificial altars of our own making and into this marvelous light of beloved belonging.  If that isn’t a life that pulsates with the rhythms of eternity, I don’t know what is.
So the next time we see John 3:16 emblazoned on a placard behind home plate, may we remember that we, the real us, the us with all our faults and imperfections stand in that eternal light of beloved belonging and what it reveals most clearly is just how deeply we are loved.

Advent 3 B - December 17, 2023

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Rev. Samuel Kennedy

The Third Sunday of Advent, Year B, December 17, 2023

 

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11

1 Thessalonians 5:16-24

John 1:6-8,19-28

Click here for an audio of the sermon

 

A blessed third Sunday of Advent to you!  It would seem that our liturgy is trying to communicate to us that change is afoot in this liturgical season.  The glow of the wreath is brighter now that we have the third candle lit, our celebrant is vested in rose instead of the solemn purple we’ve seen the last two weeks, and there’s even a gentler, more hopeful tone about our Lessons.

Today we observe Gaudete Sunday, whose name is taken from the first word of the introit that was historically used on this Sunday,”Gaudete in Domino semper.”  “Rejoice in the Lord Always.”  While that introit is based on Philippians 4 and Psalm 85, our Lesson from First Thessalonians 5 passionately reiterates this call, urging us to not merely experience joy on special occasions but rather to "Rejoice always! Pray without ceasing! Give thanks in all circumstances; to not quench the Spirit.

“Rejoice always…” It sounds stirring, yet I can't help but admit that Paul’s imperatives seem a bit tone-deaf at times, even conjuring up images of white-knuckled spiritual bypassing. While I know that’s not being fair to the Apostle, his context, or what we can best discern about his intentions in writing, it is, if I’m honest, sometimes my experience when I read these words, and I believe it is important that we acknowledge that these imperatives from Paul may, at times, feel a bit detached from the realities of life.

This year we are walking through Advent for a second time after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  Today there are approximately ten thousand Ukrainian civilians and over a hundred thousand Ukrainian and Russian military personnel who are dead; no longer able to join us in awaiting the feast of Christmas.  This year, it is they, not we, who are joined by nearly 1500 Israelis and 18,000 Palestinians who have died in the war in Gaza and Israel.  Tragically, we all know that the examples of suffering in our world do not stop there.

The holiday season also often magnifies our personal losses, the void left by those we loved and who loved us.  The holidays can conjure up wistful longing for dreams that still elude us.

In the face of such suffering and grief, can the Church authentically call us to joy? Is it even ethical for us to experience joy when the world (and our hearts are) is in this state? These questions weigh heavily on us (our hearts).  And if we can experience joy, what function does it serve?  What might the Spirit be inviting us to, when it/she invites us to rejoice, even in the midst of the suffering of this world?

As we grapple with these questions, I think it can be helpful to recall the historical context in which these passages, with their attendant calls to joy, were written. The authors, did not live detached, privileged lives, but also faced the crucibles of suffering and adversity, as our beloved Apostle Paul likes to remind is some of his other writings.  So, perhaps the joy that Paul speaks of and calls us to in our Epistle Lesson today is not an oblivious dance around the harsh realities of life, but rather something deeper -- a disposition that flows from a trust that ALL is held within the embrace of the Spirit of God.  A trust that our grief, anger, and longing are not ignored but have a purpose, an end -- a deeper opening of our hearts to participate in the transformative work of the Spirit that we heard described so poetically in our lesson from Isaiah.


The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me
    because the Lord has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
    to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives
    and release to the prisoners…
to comfort all who mourn…
to repair the ruined cities,
    the devastations of many generations


This is, of course, the work of Jesus — the One that John the Baptist points to in our Gospel lesson, the One whom we await this Advent, and who invites us to join him in his work as the adopted children of God.  It is the completion of this work that we await and long for this Advent, and it is this work that the Spirit invites us to participate in.  

However, for us to be able to join God in this work of healing, liberation, and repair, we have to first be willing and able to see the realities of the brokenness around us and within ourselves.  Because we cannot actively participate in the renewal of the things that we cannot or will not see.  But seeing is painful; experiencing the brokenness of this world — and our own hearts — can incline us toward shutting down, walling off, using every tool at our disposal to bypass the pain.

But the Spirit of God, whose work Paul reminds us not to quench, seems to be faithfully about the work of expanding our hearts, of opening them up precisely to perceive and experience, unflinchingly and honestly, that which is true both about the world around us and the worlds within us.
 
And I believe that this may be where joy has an important role to play.

There’s a saying in the Taoist tradition, “When you open your heart, you get life’s ten thousand sorrows and ten thousand joys.”

Dharma teacher James Baraz articulates an understanding of the purpose of joy that I believe resonates with the wisdom of Scripture, and I’d like to share with you. He writes,
“Joy creates a spaciousness in the mind that allows us to hold the suffering we experience inside us and around us without becoming overwhelmed, without collapsing into helplessness or despair. It brings inspiration and vitality, dispelling confusion and fear while connecting us with life. Profound understanding of suffering does not preclude awakening to joy. Indeed, it can inspire us all the more to celebrate joyfully the goodness in life…[experiencing joy does not] mean disregarding suffering; [but] it does mean not overlooking happiness and joy.”  

Joy, then, is not an escape from reality but rather a profound encounter with it. It creates a spaciousness in the mind, a sacred container that allows us to hold the weight of suffering without being crushed beneath its burden. Joy brings inspiration and vitality, connecting us more deeply with the pulse of life itself.  

The Spirit of God that holds us and gives us life connects us to the pain and suffering in our own hearts and in the lives of those around us, but it also connects us to the joys emerging wherever there is life.  The Spirit is present and holds the tragedies in Gaza and the Ukraine and invites us to lament and mourn with those who mourn and to work for just peace. That very same Spirit also connects us to the beauty, awe, and wonder experienced at the birth of a loved child, or the simple heart’s delight at being nuzzled by a beloved pet.

The way that joy seems to function in our lives reminds me a bit of the way one of my very favorite singer songwriters uses music as he composes his songs.  This artist has an uncanny ability to pen the most unflinchingly heartbreaking lyrics, but then deliver those lyrics in a way that we can stomach -- that feels almost gentle because he surrounds them with such musical beauty.  The beauty of the music holds the pain of the lyrics and enables us to endure them and even connect our own pain and loss to the pain expressed in the song.  I believe that joy functions analogously to music in this example — joy holds us as the Spirit broadens our hearts and opens our eyes. It enables us to endure the pain in our own lives and witness and stand alongside others in their own. This opening of our hearts, this beholding, in turn, allows us to begin to connect to the healing, renewing work of God around us and within us.

One of our most beloved Advent hymns captures this tension between joy and mourning well.

O come O come Emmanuel
And ransom captive Israel
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear
Rejoice, rejoice,
Emmanuel shall come to you, O Israel.

May these words remind us that even in the midst of our waiting and mourning, there is room for joy to blossom, and that joy will help further open our hearts to the healing and renewing work of God that we await and long for this Advent.  So may we not quench the Spirit, and may our hearts be opened to experience the 10,000 sorrows and 10,000 joys of this life, so that in those moments when the longed for Son of God appears with healing and redemption in his wings we stand ready to behold and join him in his work.

In the name of God, Lover Beloved, and Love overflowing.
Amen.

Lent 4 A - March 19, 2023

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

The Rev. Samuel Kennedy

The Third Sunday in Lent, Year A - Sunday, March 19, 2023

 

1 Samuel 16:1-13

Ephesians 5:8-14

John 9:1-41

Click here for an audio of the sermon

In the name of God.  Lover, Beloved, and Love Overflowing. As you listened to the proclamation of this week’s Gospel lesson, one of its unique characteristics may have stood out to you – it is quite long!  While a brisk narrative pace is perhaps more a characteristic of the Synoptics than John’s Gospel, we are used to things proceeding at quite a clip – especially in the healing narratives.  The plot we are familiar with proceeds, more or less, as follows:  We will find Jesus on his way to or from somewhere with his disciples when they encounter someone with an illness or a disability.  Jesus will heal the individual, there will be a bit of theological discourse or conflict related to the healing, and then the plot will move on, following Jesus to the next scene in the story.

While our lesson this morning initially appears to take this shape and pace we are accustomed to, we will discover rather quickly both the pace and shape of the narrative changing under our feet.  Our author decides to linger for a bit in this story.  In fact, for quite some time, Jesus drops out of the scene entirely, as John tightens his focus on the man who had this encounter with Jesus, is radically changed by this encounter, and then begins to work out the meaning of this encounter with his community.  

As I worked with this text, I found it was inviting me to change the pace I brought to it.  I wanted the text to move more quickly than it was, I wanted the message to be clearer than I was experiencing it to be.  Instead, I was invited to sit with the story, to watch this encounter with Jesus play out in this man’s life and his community.  I was going to have to slow down.

  

This story begins familiarly enough, Jesus is making his way somewhere with with his disciples, and they see a man, identified to us as one who had been blind from birth.  The disciples, bless them, seem prepped for the standard narrative pace here as well – they jump right to theological deliberation.

“Rabbi,” they ask, “who sinned – this man or his parents that he was born with blindness?”  Blindness, as their question reveals, was a complicated thing in first century Jewish thought.  While the law of Moses required the protection and care of people with blindness, there were limits to their inclusion in Society – particularly in cultic life.  In the popular consciousness of the time, bad things, like blindness, happened to people for a reason – usually sin – either their own or their family’s.  The end result of this, of course, is a degree of objectification of the person with blindness. The man in our story quickly became a canvas for theological/metaphysical discourse and moralistic musing.

And while we might be quick to dismiss the disciples’ question as one that represents an antiquated and ableist perspective, I think we’ll still find similar impulses within us today.  Some part of us seems to long to keep the people in our lives, the world around us, and perhaps most importantly, the world within us in categories that are clear to us, and help make sense of it all.  Such organization of the world is certainly necessary, both internally and externally, and seeking to understand why things are the way they are is an incredibly important human task.  However, from the very beginning our text seems to warn us against getting too settled with those explanations.  It would seem that thinking we understand how it all works can lead us to miss out on the inbreaking of the Divine in our midst.

Jesus’ reply to the disciples can seem a bit problematic as well, if we approach it as a categorical response to the questions of theodicy.  His disciples ask him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”  Jesus replies to them, “neither this man nor his parents sinned; this happened that the works of God might be displayed in him.”  If we try to apply Jesus’ reply too broadly, as an answer to the overarching question of “why do bad things happen?” we’ll find it to be overwhelmingly underwhelming.  I was helped by a commentator here, who pointed out that the grammar would allow for a translation that more clearly reveals the imperative form used here, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, now may the work of God be revealed in him!”

Jesus then stoops down, spits, and kneads together dirt and saliva to make clay, much as John kneads together language that recalls the Creation stories in the Hebrew Scriptures.  Jesus places this clay on the man’s eyes and sends him to go wash his eyes in the pool of Siloam.  The man obeys and we are told that “he came home seeing.”  This is often where the story would end, but in today’s reading, the story is just getting started.  

What are the echoes of this healing in the man’s life?  Is he welcomed into society, his good fortune celebrated by his neighbors and family? After all, the alleged root cause of his exclusion had been removed. Well, no.  His life and everything around him gets thrown into disarray. “His neighbors and those who had formerly seen him begging asked, isn’t this the same man who used to sit and beg?  Some claimed he was, others said, ‘no, he only looks like him.”

Healing can destabilize us, and the emotional and relational systems we inhabit.  We seem to innately resist the idea that an encounter with the Divine might be real enough to change us or those we live or work with.  

The man’s reply in the midst of this confusion is both simple and profound.  He states, “I am the man.”  Here, he is borrowing the formulation used over and over again by Jesus in this Gospel as he identifies with the Divine name, I am who I am.  John appears to be linking the healed man’s growth in agency with his status as an image bearer of the Divine. 

The man’s friends and neighbors, with their own world in disarray, ask for the religious leaders to weigh in on the matter.  We see the same dynamics play out within that community as well.  The leaders interrogate the healed man multiple times, call his family in for questioning, and do their best to force him to fit into their understanding of how the world works.  Throughout it all, the man bears simple, clear, (and at times quite witty) witness to his encounter with Jesus.  The religious leaders, much like his neighbors and family ultimately refuse to make their hearts and minds vulnerable to the shock that this healing offers to their hearts and system, and cast the man out.

Isn’t this so often what we do?  And before we think about this in the framework of the systems in which we live and work – lets reflect first on our impulses toward ourselves.  So often, after our hearts have been touched by an encounter with God, and we begin to shift our way of being with our selves and others, perhaps living with a bit more agency, perhaps taking steps into the freedom of newfound sobriety or just a bit more ease with who we are....when we do this, our internal systems begin to rage and deny this work of God.  Sometimes the systems around us do too.  

The ending of this story is not what we might expect or hope for.  By virtue of this healing, the very thing that was supposedly keeping this man from full inclusion in the life of his community has been removed.  We might hope that those around him would finally adjust and celebrate that.  And perhaps some of them eventually did, but at first, he was even further rejected – utterly cast out of the community.  This can sometimes be the cost of healing; the cost of true encounter with the Divine.  But what we are told is that when Jesus hears that the man had been cast out of his community – the very thing we expected his healing would help resolve – he seeks him out and invites the man into deeper, more abiding relationship with him.

The cost of discipleship, healing, growth in your God given agency can be great, but I hope that our Gospel lesson today can encourage us all that healing is worth the risk.  

May we be given eyes to see the places in our own hearts that God is healing, re-creating, and restoring.  And may God give us the humility we need to watch, ponder, and listen to those around us as they share their own stories of healing.  May we celebrate and uplift that work in their lives even when we don’t fully understand it ourselves.

At the end of our passage, Jesus says, “for judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.”  May we confess our blindness in the hope that we will not miss out on the inbreaking of the Divine in our midst.

Advent 3 A - December 11, 2022

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

The Rev. Samuel Kennedy

Advent 3 A - December 11, 2022

Isaiah 35:1-10

James 5:7-10

Matthew 11:2-11

Click here for an audio version of this sermon

In the name of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit

A blessed Gaudete Sunday to you.  What is it about this Sunday that sets it apart from the other Sundays in our journey through the season of Advent?  There are signs around us that something is changing – something is a bit different.  The warm glow from the advent wreath is a little stronger today -- a bit brighter now with the third candle lit. Our priests are dressed in rose vestments, and if you have one of the traditional advent wreaths at home you may have lit a rose-colored candle this morning as you woke up.

While we the reading from which this Sunday gets its name is not assigned for us this year, our journey through Advent does begin to take a particular turn this Sunday which I believe is very much a cause for joy.  But we are going to discover that cause for joy within a Gospel lesson full of dissonance.

 

In Matthew’s gospel, we continue with a narrative that focuses on the rather fiery and enigmatic character John the Baptist. But whereas last week we met him in the full strength of his ministry in the Jordan valley, in this week’s Gospel, we find him in a dramatically different situation.  He has been imprisoned unjustly by Herod Antipas, and while John may not have known it at this point in his story, we the readers know that his earthly journey is nearing its end.  Nothing about that situation speaks of joy.  

Our Gospel for today opens with John in prison sending a message to his cousin, Jesus.  Our passage reads, “When John, who was in prison, heard about the deeds of the Messiah, he sent his disciples to ask him, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?”

Mind you, this is the same John who had been “all in” on the idea that Jesus was the long awaited One.  The One whom the prophets had foretold.  The One who would come to his people and set them free.  

What had happened to lead John from such certainty about Jesus to this place of doubt?  Was it the fact that he was unjustly imprisoned?  Just some understandable depression? Perhaps. 

But I find it unlikely that a figure as bold and contrarian as John was terribly surprised to find himself imprisoned by corrupt leaders.  After all, he had spent much of his ministry decrying the immorality and hypocrisy of the power structures and leaders of his day.  And while I can only imagine the hardships of life in prison in the 1st century, I would imagine that the asceticism of his life up to that point would have equipped him to be able to live in such a place without falling into deep despair.

It would appear that John’s doubt stems from something deeper than the setting he finds himself in – as terrible as that setting may be.    

Lets take another look at the text, it reads “When John… heard about the deeds of the Messiah, he sent his disciples…” to ask this question, ‘‘’Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?’”

It would seem that there is something fundamental about Jesus’ ministry that has led John to this place of profound doubt.  Jesus, it would appear, is not measuring up to John’s expectations.  

In our Gospel lesson last week we heard John articulate some of his expectations for Jesus’ ministry.  When talking about Jesus he says to his listeners, “I tell you, the ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.  I baptize you with water….but after me comes one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry.  He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.  His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

John expected the promised One to come with righteous vengeance and a measure of wrath, with a winnowing fork and the flames of purification.  And lest we dismiss John too quickly, we must remember that these are not unnatural or even unscriptural expectations.  In our Old Testament lesson which soars with hope and provides an evocative litany of images of transformation – images of thirsty land being transformed into bubbling spring, and of the parched desert bursting into bloom, we also hear the expectation that God will execute vengeance on behalf of the oppressed, “Strengthen the feeble hands”, the text reads,” steady the knees that give way; say to those with fearful hearts, Be strong do not fear; your God will come, he will come with vengeance; with divine retribution he will come and save you.”    

This appears to be what John was expecting; what he was longing to see. And if we are honest, if I am honest, this is sometimes what I long to see.  I want to see those who oppress others, and certainly those I feel are oppressing me, punished.  I want them to experience some sort of retribution.  And quite frankly, on a practical level in this world, the unseating of unjust powers always seems to require a measure of violent power on the part of the oppressed or those who choose to protect them.  It’s just the way this world seems to work.  So, I don’t think John is terribly misguided in his expectation, that the promised One of God, would be ushering in his reign in a decidedly different way than Jesus appears to be living, teaching, and ministering. 

How does Jesus respond?  Well, he doubles down really.  

He replies, “Go back and report to John what you hear and see.  Jesus is reminding John’s disciples that change is truly afoot, and Jesus is ushering it in.  Jesus continues by quoting from our Old Testament Lesson for today, “the blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor.”

Note what Jesus decidedly leaves out of his quote.  He leaves out the hallmark descriptions of Divine violence.  He doesn’t say, take heart John, just a few more days, and I will rally the people to overthrow the tyrants who have imprisoned you.  Take heart John, because in just a few more days I will marshal legions of angels to dismantle the systems of oppression that have subjugated your people.”

No, instead, Jesus indicates that he is doing something very different.  He is starting from the inside out.  He doesn’t begin by eliminating the systems of oppression, but by healing the very wounds that the systems of oppression are built to exploit.  The blind who are helplessly dependent on the seeing -- they have their sight restored.  The lepers who are excluded from the community by virtue of their illness?  They are cleansed and reincorporated into society– free to return to the Temple of their God.  The deaf hear, and even the dead are raised – the power of the sword itself is mitigated.   And this is indeed incredibly good news for all of these poor who have been healed and given new life.

But what we do not hear, is Jesus centering the sword of justice in this his work of restoration.  And Jesus knows this is a conspicuous and scandalous absence.   He knows it isn’t what John expects as he adds to his message, “And blessed are those who do not stumble on account of me.”  

But notice, there is another conspicuous absence in our Gospel lesson today.  And it is this.  Jesus does not condemn John for his doubt or his fundamental misunderstanding about how Jesus was going to usher in the Kingdom of God.  In fact, Jesus goes on to publicly commend John for his faithful work as a prophet who leaned into the winds of oppression and injustice.  Jesus does not swing the sword of condemnation toward his forerunner who is struggling in doubt, confusion, and quite possibly anger, but rather extends to him the gift of love that can expand John’s heart and mind, that can bring to John to the place where he can rejoice in the work of God that extends far beyond anything John had been able to conceive of.

And this is what we are invited to take joy in today, my siblings. As the swirling clouds of the apocalyptic imagery of advent begin to clear, we find the image of this coming Kingdom of God beginning to take shape.  And the shape it takes is challenging but it is cause for true joy.  It is challenging because it will frustrate some of our basic notions about how bad power is disrupted and how the oppressed get lifted up.  But it is cause for joy because this Kingdom that Jesus ushers in, creates change that cannot be undone.  

There is also cause for joy, because this is how Jesus comes to each of us.  Not bearing the sword of vengeance and retribution, but with the powerful touch of healing love.  To set us free from the spiritual blindness and willful ignorance that leads us to participate in these systems of oppression and injustice.  Our participation in these systems is both external and internal, and he also comes to set us free from the spirals of shame that lead us to acts of great internal violence.  

This advent, Jesus does not come bearing the sword of Divine retribution but rather bearing the cross of love.  He comes to heal his people and set us free. And if we can allow ourselves to not be scandalized by this Jesus, I believe we will find that this is indeed great reason to rejoice.

 In the name of God: Lover, Beloved, and Love Overflowing.  

Amen.

Proper 25 C - October 23, 2022

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

The Rev. Samuel Kenedy

Pentecost, Proper 25 C - October 23, 2022

Sirach 35:12-17
2 Timothy 4:6-8,16-18
Luke 18:9-14

Click here for an audio version of this sermon

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.

Our gospel lesson for today contains one of Jesus’ better-known parables.  In fact, one commentator I looked to for help with the sermon rued just how well known and how well-understood the parable is after some 2000 years of reflection on it by the church, and devoted rather little space to it in his commentary. And while nothing we hear today may surprise us, I think this story can serve as a reminder of the message of mercy and hope  that sits at the very heart of Luke’s Gospel.

Our lesson for today picks up after Jesus has begun his final journey to Jerusalem.  This journey in Luke’s Gospel begins with the healing of a group of lepers and then launches into a series of teachings from Jesus about the nature of the Kingdom of God. In the section in which we find ourselves today we find Jesus describes some of the characteristics of life in this Kingdom to help us begin to understand what are the values, the deep rhythms of wisdom that uphold the kingdom of God? What is a Kingdom-dweller’s life supposed to look like?   In last week’s lesson, Jesus taught his disciples about perseverance in prayer, and then this week he further describes some of the essence of Kingdom life by telling a story that is also couched in the imagery of prayer.  Admittedly, it starts out sounding a bit like one of our “a rabbi, a priest, and an imam walked into a bar” jokes, but in the end pierces right to the heart of the Gospel message.

In this story, Jesus tells us that “two men went up to the Temple to pray” – this would have resonated with his listeners as they were journeying with Jesus to do precisely the same thing at the Feast.  One of the men in Jesus’ story was a Religious leader and the other a tax collector.  Our Tradition has wrongly conditioned us to have a bit of an allergic reaction to any mention of Pharisees in the Text, and to think of them as the villains in any story that they may appear.  We would do well to remember that in Jesus’ day, unlike our own, tax collectors were considered far more villainous and suspect than religious leaders.  

But, as you’ve been paying attention to Luke’s narrative style in this Gospel, you are likely already suspecting an inversion of sorts in the moral order of the story.  This is something we know Luke loves to do this in his Gospel -- take our expectations about how the world works and then stand that moral order on its head  -- we think of the Beatitudes or the Magnificat as examples of this.  It’s a sort of extreme literary disorientation therapy that knocks us off our feet to then reorient us to Kingdom values.  Well, if that’s what you came to the text expecting, you won’t be disappointed here.  Jesus does precisely that.

So we’ve got these two fellows on their way to the temple, and the respected religious leader gets there and, I have to hand it to him, at least he doesn’t beat around the bush.  He gets right to the point. “God, I thank you… that I am not like other people.  And just in case God has forgotten who these “other people” are that he should evidently be concerned with, our fellow at prayer is ready to list them off, “robbers, villains, adulterers, -- or even like that guy – the tax collector.”

Now, while this is incredibly relatable and entertaining precisely because it’s so relatable, it’s also clear that this man is not really praying -- at least not to God.  Some of our English translations help tease that point out a bit more than others.  One reads, “The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself.”  This isn’t prayer.  It’s projection.  And that projection is just one element of a framework that helps that leader feel secure in who he is and in his standing in his community and relationship with God.  But as secure as he might feel in that moment, all of that projection is just a thin veneer of plaster over a thick, wall of desperation deep in the human soul.  

It's not just this poor religious leader who does this. We humans are all experts at building frameworks like these to help ourselves feel secure and included.  In fact, one of the fastest ways for us to build a facsimile of community is to first get clear about who we are not like, and build our community over and against the identity of another.  We see silly and rather innocuous examples of this way of creating community all the time.  What’s a quick way to build some rapport with fellow Rotarians? Well, poke fun at the Lion’s Club, of course, and if you’re a fledgling Lion’s Club member what do you do to feel more at home?  Well, crack a few jokes about the Rotarians.

This example of course is rather benign, and we know that kind of behavior is a bit silly even when we engage in it, but the striking thing is that it works.  More seriously, however, as humans, we tend to build cultures and religious communities through these mechanisms of individual and collective “othering” and scapegoating.  Theologian James Alison writes, “We know of no ethnic group anywhere on the face of the planet, no gang in the periphery of any major city which is not inclined to build its unity at the expense of a social other.”  The problem, of course, is that this “othering” is anything but innocuous -- and is the very seed of the division and violence we see all around us.

Perhaps it’s the universality of this tendency to “scapegoat” and “other” that leads Luke to address this story to a unique cast of characters.  In all the rest of his Gospel the groups or individuals engaged in conversation with Jesus are ones we can easily identify: Jesus’ disciples, a group of Pharisees, the young ruler, and so on.  But this story is addressed “to some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else” and it’s quite likely we are supposed to imagine this group as being comprised of both some of his disciples and some of the pharisees.  And if we think about it, this group cuts across every set of diametrically opposed pairs we could hope to name.  And if I’m honest, it cuts a path right to the core of my own heart more often than I would like to admit.

The reality is that the greatest danger to the manifestation of the Kingdom of God in our midst isn’t this cast of villains that the religious leader points to: robbers, evildoers, adulterers, and tax collectors.  In some sense he might as well have been listing Natsha, Boris, and Moriarty, because the real villain he has to face – the real villain I have to face -- is the part of me that is willing to participate in creating a cast of “others” to exclude so that I can feel secure – at least for a moment --  on the inside.  

But in the Kingdom of God, relationships and communities are formed in a radically different way.  Jesus teaches and then inaugurates through his death and resurrection a very different way of being together as humans -- a way of being together in which there is no need of a social other as there’s no scarcity of belonging that we have to compete for.  And as we drop our projections and desperate attempts at creating a place for ourselves over and against another we can finally begin to discover who we are and get relaxed into becoming who we were made to be.  The priest and theologian James Alison has an analogy for this experience that I’ve found helpful and memorable.  He compares this abundance of belonging in the family of God and its effect on one’s soul to the experience of being gently and steadily loved by a kind older relative, “Aunt Mildred,” as he calls her.  Alison contrasts spending time with her and it’s effect on the soul with the experience of meeting with a potential employer for a job interview.  In the job interview we find ourselves in competition for a limited resource – the job – and we are competing with a host of other candidates we suspect are infinitely more qualified than we are.  We don’t know the interviewer, and aren’t entirely sure what the criteria are that they will use to judge us.  So, he writes, we go “as smartly dressed as we can manage, with as polished a CV as the bounds of honesty will admit, and all the wrinkles of our life’s history ironed out.”

This is radically different from spending time with dear Aunt Mildred, where after our visit find ourselves a bit more relaxed, a bit more settled in our own skin, and a bit more free to love.  How is this possible?  Alison writes, “Because we know that Aunt Mildred likes us and wants what is good for us.  So when we are with her we don’t need to impress her, or convince her of our worth.  In fact we can let our masks down and allow ourselves to be teased and our little foibles to be giggled at.  You know her enough to know that she is trustworthy, not out to “get” you and won’t hold things she learns about you against you.”  THIS is a bit like the experience of being loved in the family of God and how it slowly does its work of transforming our hearts and frees us from the perceived need to compete with others for standing, belonging, worth, and value.

And the tax collector in this story?  Well, he seems to get this.   Jesus tells us that his prayer is in resonance with the wisdom of the Kingdom, and it is he who leaves the temple justified, at peace and in harmony with God.  

What is this prayer of his? It is quite simple.  And is one the desert Mothers and Fathers would recommend to us as the heartbeat of our own prayer lives: “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

  

Note that he doesn’t project or point to an external cast of villains or extenuating circumstances.  He just stands squarely, as he is and asks for the mercy that we all need and that God is ever so ready to pour out upon us.  And just as the religious leader’s projection and “othering” is the seedbed for division and violence, the tax collector’s honest prayer for mercy can be the seedbed of hope and healing in our lives and in our midst.

May God, have mercy on us, my beloved fellow sinners.  In the name of God: Lover, Beloved, and Love Overflowing, Amen.