The Feast of the Exultation of the Holy Cross

The Crucifix Cross in the Monastic Enclosure Gardens

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Charles Mizelle, n/OHC

Feast of the Exultation of the Holy Cross, September 14, 2010

Isaiah 45:21-25
Galatians 6:14-18
John 12:31-36a

The Old Rugged Cross of Hollywood

In the name of God who calls us to celebration, who calls us to pursue community in our world, and who calls us to compassion in the midst of all human suffering. Amen!

Los Angeles is famous for its freeway corridors and one of its most infamous is the Cahuenga Pass—the Cahuenga Pass is a 2 mile stretch slicing through the Hollywood Hills connecting the city of Los Angeles with the San Fernando Valley. Traffic moves so slowly through this freeway link you’ll have time to take in some of LA’s most notable landmarks: Universal Studio’s and the City Walk theme park, the Hollywood Bowl, the John Anson Ford amphitheater, and then that celebrity hotspot that will always be near and dear to my own heart, “Charles For Total Image”, the first day spa I ever owned. (It was the 80’s.)

But one of the most notable Hollywood landmarks in Cahuenga Pass is a large white cross, up on a hill, (a hill that could even mimic Golgatha), illuminated at night, impossible for drivers to miss regardless of which direction they are driving, standing silent witness and watching over all of Hollywood.

I lived in LA for over 22 years and I most likely drove by this cross a thousand times. Occasionally I wondered who put there, who cares for it, and why hasn’t some anti-christian, separation-of-church-and-state-fanatic, complained. But I never once heard about this cross in the news. It just endured. Like a patron saint for freeway drivers the cross was always there looking over our frantic lives. And if my recent Google Search was accurate the old rugged cross of Cahuenga Pass is still standing and watching over Hollywood.

Now a bit more than 100 miles outside of Los Angeles stands another cross. This one stands in the middle of absolutely nowhere. It is maybe seen by a handful a people a year. But chances are YOU have heard of this cross. It stands on a small patch of land in the Mojave Desert as a war memorial cross. It has not faired nearly as well as the Hollywood Cross. In 2001 a self-identified Roman Catholic brought a law suit claiming the presence of the cross on a government owned preserve violated the First Amendment. The ACLU got involved and quickly two opposing sides formed: one for religious freedom and liberty, another to remove all images of religion from public places. The saga of the Mojave Desert War Memorial Cross has been covered by national media, the subject of political talking heads, with its destiny ending up at the Supreme Court. Even some last minute wrangling to change ownership of the land where the cross stood met with defeat.

When it comes to symbols of the Christian faith, there is no more powerful of a symbol than the cross. The mere mention of a cross can insight devotion, reverence, hope, even awe, but for others it is despised, maligned, ridiculed, discounted, denied, and yes, hated. For Christians the cross holds an incredible special place in their faith. But I am not so sure the cross belongs to just the Christian community. As symbol the cross is complex, multi-layered, multi-dimensional, and is so much bigger than we can understand.

One symbol of the cross I find most fascinating is the cross as jewelry. Throughout my professional career I had a hobby of noticing how frequently a cross was worn as jewelry. Just about every woman I knew, and many men, have a cross in their jewelry collection. Rarely was it worn as symbol of faith. Maybe it was grandmothers cross, a family heirloom, a gift from a significant other, or just a treasured piece of jewelry from a favorite designer. Crosses are “in” when it comes to jewelry. Part of my hobby in observing this cultural phenomenon is knowing that the crucifixion of Christ on a cross happened in a very small window of time. If Christ had lived only a few decades earlier or later, most likely he would not have been put to death by crucifixion on a cross. Most likely he would had been stoned. The gospels give us several accounts of Jesus slipping through the hands of an angry mob who were ready to stone him to death. Shortly after his death, resurrection and ascension we have the account of Stephen being stoned to death in the book of Acts. So here’s my question: If Jesus had been stoned instead of hung on a cross, would we all want to wear little rocks around our neck? (Maybe I should leave that as a rhetorical question.)

Today is an important Feast Day for us. After all our name is the Order of the Holy Cross. And we celebrate this feast at Holy Cross Monastery. And as Christians the sacrificial act of Christ giving his life on a cross is the center point of our faith. So why am I fascinated with jewelry crosses worn by millions more as a cultural symbol than a symbol of faith and religion? Because it goes to the point that the cross is embedded in our psychic DNA. And when I say “our psychic DNA” I do not mean us as Christians, but us as human beings. The cross is a symbol that reaches beyond the walls of churches and cathedrals into the wider culture. It is a symbol that has permeated all of humankind, both Christian believer and non-believer. When the Red Cross arrives to give aid in an emergency they will be a welcome sight to both Christian and non-Christian. I never heard of anyone refusing to fly SwissAir airlines because their logo is a big white cross. Even the Persian rug in my cell, woven by nomadic peoples of Iran, has a plethora of crosses in it. So many that the cross is actually a dominant design theme of the rug. Think about it--there is no corner of the globe, there is no 3rd or 4th world country you can escape to where the symbol of the cross is not known. Crawl into a cave to see the hieroglyphics of long ago or look at the graffiti of today and you’ll find the symbol of the cross. As symbol the cross is inescapable. It is as if God has impregnated the cross for all time and for all people. Why?

The cross is the great symbol of the Christian tradition but it is also a great symbol of the human experience. Wether you encounter the cross over a freeway or in a desert it says so many things to each of us at the same time it is hard to unpack its full meaning. To a Christian the cross speaks of salvation, redemption, forgiveness, transformation, even union with God. But to all of humankind it speaks to our interconnectedness, our oneness with all. It speaks to our brokenness, to the dilemma of the human condition, and shows the way to hope. Like it or not, accept it on not, the cross is constantly calling to all of humankind to return to our home in God.

Today’s Gospel text from John records Jesus as saying “when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself”. Biblical scholars have always seen this as a direct reference to Moses and the young Hebrew nation lifting a serpent on a cross to bring protection and healing during their 40 years of roaming the Sinai Desert. This pre-Babylonian symbol remains to this day as the symbol (logo) of the American Medical Association. There is another symbol of the cross the Hebrews gave us during their 40 years of being lost in the desert. God instructed them to build a tabernacle, a place of worship, a place to encounter God’s direct presence. Many engineers have tried to replicate the design of the wilderness tabernacle according to the blueprint that God gave to Moses and is recorded in the Book of Exodus. If you have ever launched on a read-through-the-Bible-campaign in a year it is these laborious chapters of Exodus, seemingly filled with only minutia where many give up on trying to read through the Bible. But there is a beautiful gem there that mostly goes unnoticed. God gave explicit instructions as to how the 12 tribes of Israel were to set up their camps around the tabernacle. Three tribes to the north, 3 tribes to the south. Three tribes to the west and 3 to the east. From God’s “arial” point of view this would form the shape of a perfect cross moving through the wilderness. And in the cross section of this human cross was where God tabernacled with His people. The story of the Exodus and the people of Israel wandering through the wilderness is the most frequently repeated story in scripture. And I see it as the first parable of scripture.

Later, the temples built by both David and Solomon followed this design element. In fact, it is a design element that has endured to this day. When you enter a Cathedral, an arial view will reveal it is shaped like a cross with the nave forming the vertical bar, the transept forming the horizontal. The intersection of the two is where you will find the altar, where God wants to tabernacle with us.

Not even a Dan Brown novel could reveal to us all the places the symbol of the cross appears throughout the world. Like the seemingly unnoticed, unbothered, old-rugged cross of Hollywood the cross is always before us. Sometimes it is obvious, sometimes it is hidden. In every land, every culture, every demographic, every time zone and every climate zone the cross of Jesus is there calling us back to God. Calling us to the intersection of life where God waits tabernacle with you and I.

Amen!

RCL - Proper 18C - September 5, 2010

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. James Dowd, OHC

RCL - Proper 18C - September 5, 2010

Jeremiah 18:1-11

Philemon 1-21

Luke 14:25-33

Hating Your Loved Ones

Every time I hear some pious politician talk about “protecting marriage” or “family values” I think of the passage that we just heard from the Gospel according to St. Luke, and I have to chuckle just a little to myself. Nothing like Jesus telling us to hate our families to get FOX News all worked up.

The readings we heard today from our Scriptures are difficult, to say the least. But they are crucial readings for a deeper understanding of the Christian life and, especially in the case of the readings from Jeremiah and Luke, particular insights into the monastic life as well.

Let's start with St. Luke, and that verse that just blares out at me every time I read it or hear it: “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” The notes in the NRSV – the translation of the Scriptures that we use, state that, really, St. Matthew's version of this passage is the more accurate meaning to Jesus' words. Matthew says “Whoever loves father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me...” (Mt. 10:37). The notes in the New Jerusalem Bible say that the word “hate” is a Hebraism, which is defined as a “linguistic feature typical of Hebrew occurring especially in another language” (The Free On-Line Dictionary). This can actually refer to either Hebrew or Aramaic. In other words, the Aramaic word for “hate”, which Jesus would have spoken in, does not translate well into Greek, which is the language St. Luke wrote in, which then got translated into English. Our English word for “hate” just does not mean what the Aramaic word for “hate” means.

OK...that still didn't make me sleep any better this week. This bothers me, and always has. I've heard the explanations many times before and, intellectually, I accept them. But something has always bothered me about how easily we seem to sweep this under the rug. In our time we seem to desperately want to rid ourselves of the meaning of this passage.

A recent edition of The Christian Century (8/10/10) had as its lead an article entitled “Our God is Too Nice.” Its focus was on how we adults are passing along our faith tradition to our teenagers. The emphasis, in this rather progressive bi-weekly, was that in recent decades we have just gone too far in softening up both the language and the message of Christianity, in an attempt to reconcile the language of our ancient faith with the rather contemporary language and message of the therapeutic culture so evident in Western society at this time.

The author of the article, Kenda Creasy Dean is a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, and she quotes the National Study of Youth and Religion that sees “an alternative faith in American teenagers [developing] that feeds on and gradually co-opts if not devours established religious traditions. This faith, called Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, generally does not and cannot stand on its own.” Teenagers would not be getting this stuff if we adults hadn't already, to a large extent, bought into it.

So what is being devoured? Well, Moralistic Therapeutic Deism espouses a philosophy, I'll not call it theology, that teaches that God is nice and wants us to be nice too. It teaches us that the main purpose of life is to be happy and fulfilled, and that most, if not all religions, teach basically the same thing.

Now, let's go back to that Gospel passage. Hate your father and mother. Hate life itself. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. Give up all your possessions.

Doesn't sound very nice to me.

Now the truth is that I don't believe Jesus meant the word “hate” the way we understand the word “hate” in our language. Jesus was clear throughout the Gospel that he had come to fulfill the Law, not break or destroy it, and the Fifth Commandment requires that we honor our father and mother – not hate them. So I am not so hung up on the specific word “hate” but rather on the whole passage. It is not nice, it is not therapeutic, it is not about happiness. And sometimes when I hear this particular passage, like some teenagers I have known, I want to stamp my feet and storm out of the room, yelling “it's not fair, you're mean”. But if I behaved that way, my guess is that the Superior would want to have a little chat with me.

I don't think Jesus is mean, but I do think Jesus is tough. And his call to discipleship is really tough. Nothing about our calling as Christians is meant to be nice or happy. Loving God more than our closest relatives and friends, giving away our cherished possessions, being willing to carry our cross and die, if necessary, is not about our therapeutic needs. It is about being totally immersed in this man-God, this Jesus Christ.

This total immersion is a kind of clinging to God, in Christ Jesus, that enables us to become Christ's Body in the world. This clinging is not of this world, rather, clinging to God in Christ Jesus is an attempt to incarnate the wisdom of the Gospel into our very being. To allow the Word to become our flesh.

Now the monastic tradition has a good deal to say about this. Some examples: About the year 400, John Cassian teaches us in his First Conference that the great desert father, Abba Moses, stated that “to cling to God unceasingly and to remain inseparably united to him...is impossible for the person who is enclosed in perishable flesh.” But he goes on to say “but we ought to know where we should fix our mind's attention and to what goal we should always recall our soul's gaze.” Because it is there, in our very souls, “that the kingdom of God can be established in us.” (Conference 1: XIII.1-2).

St. Seraphim of Sarov, one of the great Russian Orthodox monks who lived in the late Eighteenth and early Nineteenth Centuries was heavily influenced by Cassian and taught that “the true goal of the Christian life consists in the acquisition of the Holy Spirit of God (Boosalis: The Joy of the Holy, p. 35).

In the early Twentieth Century, another monk, this time in the Benedictine tradition, Blessed Columba Marmion, the Abbot of Mardesous Abbey, expanded on this theme when he wrote, rather simply, “never forget this truth, a man is worth that which he seeks, that to which he is attached. Are you seeking God? Are you tending towards him with all the fervor of your soul?” Or, are “you seeking the creature – gold, pleasures, honors...” etc. (Marmion: Christ the Ideal of the Monk, p. 598). That which you seek, you become.

I think that's what St. Luke meant by hating your relatives, giving away all your possessions, carrying your cross and even being willing to die. We are called to cling, to be attached, to one being – Jesus Christ. If we are to be Christ's disciple, then we are to count the cost as one building a tower and that cost can be dear. To cling to Mom or Dad, spouse, children, or even your own life indicates that the relationship you cling to is of more value to you than your relationship with God. To cling to a possession, means that the possession is of more value to you than God. As I said, tough stuff.

Why does God require us to strip away all that we cling to? Well, the way God put it to Jeremiah was to invite him down to the potters house where he could see the potter making a clay vessel, which as it turned out, was spoiled. The potter worked and reworked the clay into another vessel – one that seemed good to the potter.

God is the potter. We are the vessel. The vessel of God. He desires to rework us in such a way that the Word can become flesh within us. He desires to mold us in such a way that in giving up our attachments to all worldly relationships, ideas, and possessions, thus becoming a disciple of Christ, we find the exquisite beauty within our souls, known as the kingdom of God.

The path to letting go of these attachments is prayer. Abba Moses, St. Seraphim, Blessed Columba, and virtually every other monk you could ever meet, will tell you that prayer is the only way to travel this path. Prayer styles and approaches vary from time to time, community to community. But prayer is meant to transform us into the disciples that Christ calls us to be. Our discipleship does not require that we hate our family. Our discipleship does require that we would be willing to give up our life for all of God's family. That could mean literal martyrdom, or it might mean what use to be called a white martyrdom – a dying to self so that Christ could live within us.

In the wisdom of the Gospel, the Good News is that to be Christ's disciple, isn't hate, it's love; and it isn't therapy, it's healing; and it isn't death, it is life. To die for Christ, either figuratively or literally, is for Christ to live in you.

I have struggled, and wrestled and fought with this text for a long time now. And I will continue to struggle, and wrestle and fight with it. This passage from Luke's Gospel is an important one, and I am not willing to sweep it under the rug. I want to struggle with it. I want to come to a deeper understanding of what it means for me to cling only to Christ Jesus, to be willing to die for him. I think this is our call as his disciples. I encourage you, no implore you, to struggle with me as we continue on our journey of love, and healing, and life, together.

RCL - Proper 12C - July 25, 2010

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Scott Borden, OHC

RCL - Proper 12C - July 25, 2010

The passage we heard from Genesis has long been one of my favorite old testament stories. The nerve of Abraham negotiating with God is both astounding and inspiring. The bidding to save the city of Sodom starts at fifty righteous people. By the time we're finished, God has been negotiated down to ten...

Haggling is venerated in many cultures. Our waspy Anglican tradition isn't one of them – when we negotiate, it is through lawyers and it often signals that a relationship has been broken. But in much of the world, a shopkeeper is insulted if you don't want to haggle. Its a sign of a healthy relationship.

Clearly God is not a shopkeeper. Yet here, early on in scripture, we are more or less given a lesson in the value of haggling with God. Look at the success Abraham achieves. Look how far God moves. It signals a healthy relationship and it is a good thing.

Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I have the sense that God enjoys the dialogue – the haggling – with Abraham. After all, God desires to be in relationship with us.

The matching of this old testament passage with the reading from Luke is remarkable. The disciples are asking to be taught how to pray and the passage from Genesis is also a lesson in how to pray. When these two powerful lessons are combined, what are they telling us?

Abraham doesn't need any instruction in how to pray and haggle with God. Perhaps with proper instruction and preparation he would never have dared do what he did... Perhaps if Abraham had been better schooled in how to be subservient and respectful and utterly deferential, he would have been more ready to accept God's judgment against Sodom...

Abraham's is willing to be pushy in his prayer, his relationship with God. We tend to value politeness, deference, subservience, and eloquence in prayer. Abraham's example is one of speaking whats on your mind. It also happens to be a very good lesson in how to negotiate – but that is a different sermon...

Flash forward to the disciples with Jesus – “Lord teach us to pray as John taught his disciples...” The disciples must be a bit disappointed because the answer doesn't sound very much like a John the Baptist answer – John with the fasting, and the locusts, and the sack cloth... No doubt John's prayer practice also severe...

Teach us to pray the way John taught his disciples to pray... but the answer from Jesus is not severe...

Look at the simple prayer that follows. Six short lines... And this is one of those times when its hard to just hear Luke, without other evangelists whispering in our ears... According to Luke this very brief, unembellished prayer is what comes from the mouth of Jesus.

The first two lines, hallowed be Your name and Your kingdom come echo the beginning of Luke's Gospel. There the shepherds have gathered at the manger at the birth of Jesus and they say Glory to God and on earth peace – in other words: hallowed be God's name and let God's peaceable kingdom be on earth.

The third line – give us daily what we need daily. This is when my inner Abraham wants to negotiate... could we work out, for example, a yearly, or at least a monthly plan... but Jesus is truly calling his disciples, us, to live in the present, to live daily. Still, give us this weekly our weekly bread... would that be so bad? The truth is my desire for safety and security comes at a price – I am less present today and,worse, the security I gain will be at the price of someone else's security... I don't hear Jesus being willing to haggle on this.

Forgive us for we ourselves forgive everyone... Do we? Really? When the Lord's prayer breezes by 5 or so times a day in our worship we say “forgive us our sins AS we forgive those who sin against us” - which isn't quite the same. It has conditional possibilities, which I naturally love... If I don't forgive I won't be forgiven... or the method by which I forgive is the method by which I will be forgiven. Or maybe if I don't forgive right away, but savor my righteous indignation for a while and then forgive... Luke offers no negotiating room. “We ourselves forgive everyone.” I may have some work to do in this area...

And finally – do not bring us to the time of trial. If we are going to be forgiven, whats so bad about a trial? But the time of trial is not a courtroom drama. Precious metals, like silver, are tried, that is to say purified, by extreme heat – so that the silver is separated from the dross. Save us from being tried as silver is tried.

We are entitled to speak up in prayer – it makes for a healthy relationship with God and, at least according to Abraham and according to Jesus, it makes a difference in God. We may not get exactly what we want – Sodom was, in the end, destroyed. But throughout scripture we're called into relationship with God. In relationship, there is give and take... there is shared responsibility, and most of all there is honesty.

In Luke's gospel, we are called to simple, direct, immediate prayer. How are we going to live in God's kingdom today? Any desire we have to make our prayer life more complex, more eloquent, more attractive, more severe – we might want to examine where that desire comes from.

The Letter to the Colossians adds one more interesting dimension to the day. “See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and deceit. Do not let anyone condemn you in matters of food and drink... Do not let anyone disqualify you... As you have received Christ Jesus, continue to live in him.”

There are a number of ways we receive Christ – prayer and Eucharist being high on the list. Our Benedictine tradition reminds us to receive strangers as Christ and in doing so we receive Christ – we find the face of Jesus in the face of strangers (and even in the faces of those who are not strangers...). We are continually receiving Christ.

Sometimes our Christian practice seems to be designed to make us worthy to receive Christ – with an emphasis on repenting and rebuking... The truth is we are never worthy to receive Christ. Jesus doesn't come to us because we love him... Jesus comes to us because he loves us.

What I hear Paul saying is don't be so worried about getting ready to receive Christ – we've already done that. We need to be worried about living in Christ – about living in God's kingdom. Issues of what is clean or unclean are not so important. Issues of who is hungry, who is suffering, who is being deprived of justice are the things Jesus puts before us.

Paul seems to be urging us to have the courage of our convictions – even when others, devout and authoritative thought they may appear – are urging us away from our convictions. Too often in our society the way to get by and be effective is to be politically savvy. So we soften our message, take large steps back from where our heart tells us we should be, compromise in oh so many ways. In a political world, that is the way.

But is not the way of Jesus. We may, as Abraham did, negotiate with God. We certainly must engage in prayer. But once we have understood what God is calling us to do, then we must proceed and not worry about reaction of others.

Of course its more complicated than that – we are never in the position of fully understanding God. So humility must be part of the way in which we proceed. And, I believe, community must be part of the way in which we proceed.

Our world, and even our little Anglican part of the Christian Church, is filled with any number of folks ready to condemn, ready to disqualify, ready to distract. Sometimes they are armed with the gospel of prosperity... sometimes the gospel of communism, or capitalism, or consumerism... sometimes they are armed with that most dangerous non-Christian gospel of all, the gospel of the status quo.

And through the din, Abraham says go ahead and talk to God – its not that difficult. And Jesus says honor God's name and live in God's kingdom. And Paul says get on with it.