Proper 25 B - Oct 25, 2015

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Sr. Shane Phelan, CMA
Proper 25 B - Sunday, October 25, 2015

Job 42:1-6, 10-17
Hebrews 7:23-28 Mark 10:46-52

Job

Today’s readings seem so reassuring.  They offer us the promise that we long for.  God rewards Job for his righteousness.  Jesus heals Bartimaeus, who then follows him on the way.  What good news!  God is faithful and powerful.  Happy days are here again!

Our passage from Job comes at the very end of the book.  Commentators agree that the beginning and the end of the book were written separately from the long contest that occupies most of the book.  In the beginning, God bets Satan that Job will be faithful no matter what.  He lets Satan take everything from Job: his children die, his livestock dies, he contracts painful diseases.  He is bereft.

Job’s friends come by to “comfort” him, to be “helpful” by telling him what to do.  They insist that he must have sinned, and that if he confesses he will be restored.  Job stands in the truth that he has done nothing to deserve what has happened.  He will not curse God, but he will also not pretend a repentance he does not feel.  God eventually overwhelms him, reminding him who is God and who is dust, but the issue of justice is not resolved.  God never answers Job’s challenge.

Clearly, someone could not stand this dangling ending.  So we get the final chapter, where Job’s fortunes are restored.  Ironically, the author apparently agrees with Job’s friends about what God is like.  He wants us to forget the mysterious, awful, even capricious nature of God in favor of a Disney God.  

That Disney God is always around to tempt us.  When we focus on Jesus’ healing and teaching and forget the cross, we’re in Disneyland.  When we celebrate the messiah and reject the despised and rejected one, we’re in Disneyland.

But I’m not in Disneyland.  I’m in a haunted house, surrounded by ghosts.  Job’s sons and daughters crowd in around me.  With them are all the victims of trauma, all those who can’t forget or be forgotten.  What sort of restoration, what sort of healing, follows from trauma like Job’s?

On the way to raising four children, my mother had five miscarriages.  We carry a genetic defect that causes this.  My sister has two living children, but she has never forgotten Benjamin, who she lost at five months.  Her daughter has not had children yet, but she has lost one.  And I, when I was young, miscarried the only child I was to carry.  For years after that I would imagine my daughter.  I would count the years and think, “she would be in high school now.”  Then college, then law school.  (I don’t know why law school, it just showed up.)  Finally I stopped counting.  I eventually had a liturgy to put her to rest, the child I never knew.

Do you think Job was restored as good as new?
Do you think his wife recovered, having ten more children?
Do you think that Holocaust survivors got over it, that veterans get over it if they come back and find good jobs?

Are you over it?

29 months after Hurricane Katrina, Deacon Julius Lee stood in his yard in New Orleans and said  “The storm is gone, but the “after the storm” is always here.”  Already residents were feeling pressured to move on, to get over it, to show the world that things were normal.  But trauma does not just move on.  Trauma lives on.

In her book, Spirit and Trauma, Shelly Rambo listens to trauma in Scripture and in theology.  Following the growing field of trauma studies, she looks at the ways that trauma lingers and asks how that might shape our understanding of Christian life.  She suggests, I think rightly, that our resurrection story can too often become like Job’s happy ending, suppressing the memory of trauma that the disciples would have experienced. 

Resurrection can’t just meaning getting over the cross.  The cross haunts the Christian imagination, as it must have haunted the disciples even after seeing the risen Christ.  And Bartimaeus’ healing would not mean that his years of suffering were erased.  We do not simply get over our histories.  Bartimaeus has built a whole world around the loss of his sight.  He has spent years shunned or ignored; in fact he is told by the crowd to be quiet even when Jesus appears.  He has strength of will and desire, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t scarred.

So what is his life like on the road, in the wake of his healing?  I imagine he might be a bit suspicious of those who suddenly warm up to him.  Like the friends who return to Job, these new friends might have some work to do to prove their friendship.  And in the midst of their shared excitement and joy on the road, Bartimaeus will have fears and anxieties that the others will not share.  He has knowledge of the world in a way that those who have always seen do not.  Like Jesus, he has scars to mark his trauma.  They just aren’t always visible.

So the happy ending may not be the faithful ending.  It’s not faithful to the reality of human life, or of the ways we encounter God.
Where is God when children are gunned down at school, or die of drug overdoses?  
Where is God when some have no food or shelter, and others walk by them on their way to their BMWs?  
Where is the resurrection in our inner cities?  

Rather than a story of triumph, perhaps the story we need is a story of remaining, of enduring and sustaining.
We are in the hands of a God who is beyond our understanding.  

Job’s story reminds us that creeds and doctrines are not the heart of our faith.  At the heart of our faith is an experience, an encounter with God in Christ.  This encounter can be exhilarating, but it can also be terrifying.  
And, like any true encounter, it is transforming.  The real presence of God exceeds our Disney imagination, even the imagination of our worst fears.  

God is beyond comprehension, but not beyond relationship.

Job’s strength lies in his authenticity.  He does not pretend or try to “be good.”  He does not mouth pieties in order to placate God.  What, after all, can happen to him now?  Job is out on the vast sea of God, beyond nice phrases, and he has nothing but his fidelity.  
But out there, with nothing in the way, he can find God’s presence.  He remains, he endures, and he is transformed.

We owe it to ourselves, to one another, to our children to speak the truth about God. God stands with us in suffering and injustice, but not as one who would magically erase the effects of sin.  God endures with us, and promises to abide with us if we abide with Her. Better than a fairy tale, this opens us to real healing, real insight, real discipleship.  

May we never settle for easy answers, but demand mercy and healing.  
And may God grant us more than we can ask or imagine.

Easter 4 C - Apr 21, 2013

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Sr. Shane Phelan, Companion of Mary the Apostle
Easter 4C - Sunday, April 21, 2013

Acts 9:36-43
Revelation 7:9-17
John 10:22-30

Icon of the Good Shepherd.
From the web site of the Oratory of the Good Shepherd.

I don’t know about you, but I need a shepherd this week.

I need someone to tell me that love continues, that life continues.

I’ve been listening to NPR and reading the New York Times. You might have been watching CNN. I’m grateful not to have a TV this week, because I’d be watching and listening to those voices.

I need to hear my shepherd’s voice.

I need to hear Peter tell me to get up and get back to work.

I need to join the throng before the throne, lifting my voice in response.

To do any of that, I have to fight my way through the other voices. You know those fancy noise-canceling earphones? I want those.

I think of being in an airplane. You get earphones, and you can listen to music or movies, but you never really get rid of the sounds around you in the plane. To do that, to really enter the world of the music and the film, you need special earphones.

I want those.

This week has been unusually horrific for those of us who live in normally quiet places, places with housing and food and some sort of safety. But what we are facing with shock is other people’s everyday life. In Iraq, in Afghanistan, in some neighborhoods in Chicago, people are shot or blown up every day. In Greece, where unemployment is running at 27%, many people are too hungry to study or to work. In places where women are expected to stay hidden, many run the risk of rape or attack just to go to school or work. So this week I grieve for Boston and for West, Texas, but I also grieve for all those places where violence and loss and oppression are normal.

I need to hear my shepherd’s voice.

I’ve been reading Charles Taylor’s magnum opus, A Secular Age. He traces how Western Christendom came to the place where atheism seems not only possible, but reasonable. How did we get to a place where so many can’t hear God in their lives, where God became irrelevant? And what does that have to do with the violence around us?

There have been two stock answers to this question. The traditional, fundamentalist answer is that violence is a result of people turning away from God, that bad things happen either because God is angered (in the case of natural disasters and accidents) or because sinful people do sinful things.

The atheist answer is that religion is a cause of intolerance and hatred, that violence flows out of religion.

These two extremes, which seem like opposites, actually share a conception of God. In that conception, God is angry and quick to punish. God is allied with one tribe and rejoices in the destruction of others. People who hear the voice of that God are indeed likely to justify violence, at least when it comes on their behalf.

But the people who reject that God too often miss the shepherd's voice, the loving voice that calls us all. They put on the noise-canceling earphones, but they don't open the channel to the sound of love.

Taylor suggests that in fact the two sides, secularists and fundamentalists, share a drive to purge the world of evil, to erase the messy parts of us. When that drive is at work, we narrow our world into two categories: evildoers and victims. And that feeds our hunger for violence. The riot of violence on our TV and movie screens, in our schools and in our streets, testifies to the real, deep attraction of violence. Our desire to deny that in ourselves ironically plays into the need to purge, and so we become part of the problem.

As long as we need to purge, we will keep killing. Some will kill for safety, some for honor, some for the sheer adrenaline high. Some will kill in a sick version of religious ecstasy, the only form available in a world where sacred mystery is seen as superstition.

In such a world, we cannot hope to hear our shepherd’s voice.

For Jesus consistently went to people on the wrong side: not only the poor, but to the many who live their lives in a shape greater than evildoer or victim.

He came to Peter, who was not done with weakness and failure.

Through Peter, and through a chain of others, he came to Dorcas.

He came to the throng before the throne, who in their lives heard that voice and answered.

Jesus knew that violence lives in us. He did not seek to purge it. He transformed it. By undergoing violence, he transformed the violence. He overcame the fear of violence not by controlling it for his own ends, but by overcoming fear and offering himself. He faced into the violence with love, and in so doing he changed everything. The shepherd laid down his life for the sheep, and opened the gate to life.

The noise of the world tells us that our safety lies in revenge and extermination. It tells us that we need bigger gates and walls. It drowns out the voices of need, and silences the voice of hope and mercy.

The louder that noise gets, the more we need to listen for the shepherd. We need quiet time, prayer time, time with friends and family. We need to seek out the voices of forgiveness and reconciliation. And we need to add our voices to the choir of worship and praise.

What we do here, in this monastery and in this extended community, is life saving work. Helping people hear the shepherds voice is not just nice. It is part of repairing the world. In a world of meaninglessness and rage, the shepherd calls us to transforming love.

The only sound louder than violence is love.

We don't really need the noise-canceling earphones, as attractive as they can be. We need the ones that let us hear the cries of need, let us hear the chaos of the world, but still send us the sweet sound of our shepherd's voice.

We need the sound of love.

Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor 
and power and might
be to our God forever and ever!
Amen.

Palm Sunday C - Mar 24, 2013

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Sr. Shane Phelan, CMA*

Palm Sunday C – Sunday, March 24, 2013


Isaiah 50:4-9a
Luke 19:28-40

Shane Phelan, Companion of Mary the Apostle

The story is told that St. Teresa of Avila, on one of her many journeys, was crossing a river when she was thrown by her horse into the river. Landing with a splash, she looked up to heaven and said to God, “If this is how you treat your friends, no wonder you have so few!”

It’s not just Teresa who encounters this problem. Jesus enters Jerusalem with blessing, coming in the name of God. Soon he will be dead at the hands of imperial power, abandoned and betrayed by many of those who today pronounce the blessing. No wonder God has so few friends.

But I don’t think God is the one with the problem. I think we have a problem. We have a scandal in our midst. Our faith is centered on one who is blessed, and the blessed one is crucified. What are we to make of that?

We can call it irony, but it’s not ironic. We can call it tragedy, but it’s much more than that. We can call it paradox, which is a nice version of contradiction. But all of those evaluations of this moment rest on a mistake. There’s no irony here, no tragedy, not even really a paradox. There’s simply blessing.

But what, exactly, does it mean to be blessed? Being blessed, like being God’s friend, is both less and more than it often seems to be.

When we hear the word “blessed” in the Bible, we are actually using one word for two distinct concepts. In the Beatitudes, we hear that the poor, the humble, the sorrowful are blessed. That’s a good word. In Greek it is makarios. It means to be happy, joyous. It’s good to hear Jesus tell us that things will not always be as they are, that we can turn around and rejoice, that we will be blessed.

But that’s not the kind of blessing that Jesus gets. When the crowds cry, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord,” the word Luke uses is eulogemenos, one receiving a blessing. The Greek in turn is translating the Hebrew barakh, which means to kneel, to receive a blessing.

Blessing, in this sense, does not make the blessed one happy. It makes them holy. It marks them off, it consecrates them. Our English word, “bless,” comes from the Old German word for spattering blood on the altar. To be blessed is to be a sacrifice.

Jesus was blessed, not as one who gets to have a quiet life with a wonderful family, but as bread and wine are blessed. Jesus was marked as God’s own, as a sign of God’s power, but not for his own enjoyment.

He really meant it. He did not come to do his own will, but that of God. He was blessed.

This is such a hard truth to grasp. Throughout our history we flee from this. We want to believe that virtue brings worldly success. that if we honor God we’ll get what we want. Like a good business deal.

We want the prosperity gospel, not only for the material goods it promises, but because it makes the world line up in an orderly way. It’s not just greed or self-interest that draws us to think like this. It’s just as much the desire for a world that makes sense. We want virtue to be rewarded and injustice to be punished. We need at least the hope of order and justice in the world.

But that’s not what blessing is about. If we honor God, we will indeed find joy and peace, but not in any simple way. If we honor God, we will more likely find ourselves in Gethsemane with Jesus, praying for the peace of the world.

Being blessed means walking into the chaos of the world. It means being a sign of God in the midst of a world that defies the power and love of God.

Being blessed in this sense is not a privilege of those of us who go into places of pain to serve others. Being blessed in this sense begins with those who are there, in the center of the pain. They are the signs of God, walking in the pitiful procession that leads to the cross. We, who the world considers more blessed than they, are in fact the spectators on the journey into Jerusalem. It is the poor, the homeless, the victims of rape and violence, the addicts, who walk in that procession. Jesus rides in on a donkey, not a Mercedes. Soon Jesus will walk back out, in even humbler fashion. And he will still be blessed.

We’ve each been blessed. We were blessed at our baptism, marked as Christ’s own. We may hope for blessings of peace and happiness, but they were not guaranteed in that blessing. We were dedicated to God’s service, like the vessels we will eat and drink from in a minute. We were given to be poured out, like the wheat and the wine. We were blessed. We are blessed.

Being blessed means walking with Jesus into the places he walked into. This week we will remember him in the temple, in the prison, and in the tomb. But remembering him in those places is not enough.

Today there are others who defy the Temple, the centers of religious power that turn toward serving themselves rather than God. We need to walk with them as they call us back to true worship and service.

There are people, faces of Christ, in prison and serving those in prison. We need to walk with them, and sit with them, in the black holes of despair and anger.

There are people on their way to death, victims of state violence and victims of private exploitation to the point of death. We need to walk with them, to protest their treatment, to lift the cross from their shoulders.

And there are people carrying less obvious, yet excruciating burdens, among us and within us. We need to walk with them too.

We need to do this because we have been blessed.

We need not fear this blessing. This blessing is good news. For God goes before us and with us, leading us into places we might rather avoid. God carries us into the darkest corners of the world, and the darkest corners of our hearts. But God goes with us, and gives us what we need to walk this road. We can even celebrate, as God carries us to joy and wonder beyond our wildest dreams. But we only get there by being blessed.

In the 8th century, Andrew of Crete wrote:

It is ourselves that we must spread under Christ’s feet, not coats or lifeless branches or shoots of trees, matter which wastes away and delights the eye only for a few brief hours. But we have clothed ourselves with Christ’s grace, with the whole Christ - “for as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ” - so let us spread ourselves like coats under his feet.

Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.

* You can find out more about the Companions of Mary the Apostle (CMA) on their blog "Standing at the Empty Tomb."