Lent 5 B - Mar 25, 2012

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Scott Wesley Borden, OHC
Lent 5 B – Sunday, March 18, 2012


Jeremiah 31:31-34
Hebrews 5:5-10
John 12:20-33

A Celtic Cross near the Monastery Church

There are many things we could disagree about when reading the Gospels, but one thing I think everyone could agree on is that there are no extraneous details...  The Evangelists didn't waste words.  Every little detail we come across in the reading from John's Gospel this morning has / is of great importance.

Take for example the very first line: “Now there were some Greeks among those who went up to worship at the feast.” It seems insignificant enough – some Greeks.  We don't learn much about them, just that they go to worship.  This festival of Passover is a Jewish festival and we might assume John means Greek speaking Jews – since they were plentiful.  But there is a different word for Greek speaking Jews, so these were not Jews, they were Gentiles.  And that is the importance of what John is telling us.

Gentiles are coming to worship with Jesus – or put the other way, this Jesus movement is not just for Jews any more.  John underscores the message: Andrew and Phillip are the disciples who interact with these Gentiles...  Andrew and Phillip were the first disciples called directly by Jesus – and the call was “Come and see.”  Now we have an approximate echo from this band of Greeks – “we would like to see Jesus...”

The early church will debate the proper place of non-Jews in the movement, but John seems to be telling us now, before Jesus' crucifixion, that all are invited.  And still today, we struggle with the radical inclusiveness of Jesus.

There is an urgency in John's narrative.  Jesus time on Earth is growing short, so he does not linger on this story.  Instead we move right along with Jesus teaching about his impending death.

Unless a seed dies and falls to the ground, it remains a single seed.  But if it dies and, presumably, sprouts into a new plant, it produces much fruit.  How the many layers of this simple story resonate with death and resurrection.  But the most fascinating thing, to me, is how different the resurrection is.  The “single” seed becomes “much fruit.”  It is not resurrected as another solitary seed.  I think this is not just telling us about proliferation, but about community.  In John's nomenclature, fruit is what we are.  But the image is perhaps a cornucopia, rather than a still life with a piece of fruit...

But we zip along – those who love their life in this world will loose it, but those who hate their life in this world will gain eternal life.  This leaves me with various unanswerable questions.  First among them – did Jesus hate his life in this world?

It is a big question for me.  Jesus does not seem to hate life in this world.  I can surely understand that he sometimes was annoyed, sometimes frustrated, sometimes angry, but I can't read the Gospels without having the impression of a warm and loving person, full of celebration – after all, we must celebrate while the bridegroom is with us.

I don't think Jesus is calling us to hate life, but rather to reject the things of this life... things that our society, our culture, our experience teach us we ought to love.  These are the idols we put in the place of God.  We can not serve two masters.

For example: I love Tudor church music.  Anybody who questions the inspired genius of Thomas Tallis is going to have a fight with me.  Hearing, or better still, singing those exquisite English and Latin anthems that sprang from his pen surely gives me a glimpse of heaven.  But it is not heaven, only a glimpse.

The drive to perform an anthem perfectly quickly becomes a powerful way to push God right out of a worship service.  If I love the things of this world, it leaves little space for me to love God and God's kingdom.

Of course, on the list of hazardous worldly affections, Tudor Church Music is at the benign end.  Further along that continuum there is money, power, greed, comfort, and on and on.  When I am falling in love with money... when I am falling in love with power...  I may not be able to stop myself, but at least at some level I know I am in trouble.  The beguiling beauty of Tudor Church Music, or whatever your pleasure may be, blinds me to the power of the attachment.

Jesus offers no qualifiers – he doesn't say those who love the “wicked” things... or those who love the things of this world “too much...”  We must be prepared to walk away from the lust for beauty as much as from the lust for power.

In Lent, especially this far into Lent, we are perhaps most aware of our need to strip away various lusts that interfere with our love of God, but Jesus puts no time boundaries on this call...  Come Easter, come the resurrection, I will still need to be learning to hate the things of this life.

Jesus continues in a more sorrowful tone – “my soul is troubled...” Jesus is clearly thinking of his pending crucifixion.  If it were me, the pain and agony of this torturous form of execution is probably what would trouble my soul, but Jesus is clearly not troubled by what is about to take place.  “Should I say save me?” No, Jesus' life and soon his death are for the glory of God.

Jesus has, just moments before, instructed us on not being attached to this life, so it it would be strange indeed if he were to pray “God spare me.”  I believe Jesus loved, and loves, very deeply.  God is love, so how could it be otherwise.  Jesus' execution will cause unfathomable pain for those he loves.  No doubt this is why his soul is troubled.  But in Jesus there is no sentimentality.  And loss is part of love.

This section of John's Gospel is pushing one powerful question before us: What does Jesus death mean to us?  Jesus is making his disciples and the crowd face this question – and here we are.

What do the events of Holy Week, which is so nearly upon us, mean for us?

Jesus says “when I am lifted from the earth, I will draw all people to myself.”

Jesus' crucifixion is often viewed through the lens of sacrifice – either a sacrifice of ransom: Jesus dies to pay the price for our sins; or atonement: Jesus suffers the punishment for our sins in our place.  Great theologians over the millennia have explored these ideas – and I must say I am no theologian.  I also have to say both these ideas of sacrifice, ransom or atonement, make me very uncomfortable – in part because of what these ideas say about God, but also, to be honest, because both ask me to consider the depth of my sin.

But here is Jesus in John's Gospel reflecting on the significance of his death and resurrection and sacrifice is not part of the reflection.  As the seed dies and is buried so that it can resurrect into abundant fruit, so Jesus dies and is buried so that he can resurrect into abundant fruit.  And when he does that, he will gather us all, sinful though we be, to himself. This is God's love triumphing over death.

Ultimately in this short Gospel passage Jesus is telling us how we will be reconciled with God.  Jesus gathers us to himself.  It is a reconciliation formed entirely of God's loving grace.

Does that mean my work as a follower of Jesus is done?  I can sit back and receive grace?

Well I can't earn grace, so in that regard there is no work for me to do.  But Jesus calls us to serve and to follow.  And in that regard there is always much work to do.

John Wesley spent a great deal of time reflecting on what it meant to be a follower of Jesus.  He described it in terms of sanctified living.  And his understanding of sanctified living is not that it brings us to grace, but that it is our joyful response to having already received grace.

We are already the recipients of God's endless and unconditional love.  How can we do anything but let that love overflow in our own lives – through love of God, love of neighbor, love of stranger, love of all creation, and, yes, love of our selves.

Amen.

Lent 4 B - Mar 18, 2012 - Br. Robert Sevensky

St. Paul’s Cathedral, Burlington, VT
Br. Robert Sevensky, OHC
Lent 4 B – Sunday, March 18, 2012

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

The Cross lifted up by Archangel Michael

weathervane at the top of the belltower at Holy Cross Monastery

I understand that your theme this Lent here at St. Paul’s Cathedral is the desert or wilderness.  It is certainly a theme of central importance in Scriptures as well as in monastic history and spirituality.  The desert continues to be an image of purification and transformation

It is also easy to romanticize this image.  I have heard people speak of “desert experiences” or of profound solitude or even of the “dark night of the soul” as if they were things lightly to be desired, something generally pleasant and not deeply disturbing, indeed terrifying.

Last week the Archbishop of Canterbury speaking at the ancient Benedictine foundation at Montecassino in Italy addressed this, saying in part:  “…in solitude, we are led to recognize the strength and resilience of our selfishness, and the need to let God dissolve the fantasies with which we protect ourselves.  In the desert there is no one to impress or persuade; there it is necessary to confront our own emptiness or be consumed by it.”   He went on to remind us that such solitude is safely experienced and is fruitful only if it is framed by a common or shared life, one in which we learn and practice “the basic habits of selflessness through mutual service.”   The stripping away by the desert is never for its own sake; it is for the sake of a more radical service in and at the heart of God's body, God's world.

This is not easy to appreciate, even in the monastic tradition.  We find in St. Benedict’s Rule for Monasteries repeated warnings against murmuring, which seems to be the besetting sin of monks.  Murmuratio, a kind of low level constant complaining, is treated with great severity by St. Benedict in a rule otherwise known for its moderation and discretion. He understands how murmuring undermines a community and harms it at every level, not least by harming those who become habituated to such patterns of behavior.  It's a problem not limited to monasteries, as you well know.  One has only to be in some parishes or workplaces or families to see and feel its effects.

And it's a very old problem.  Today’s first reading from the Book of Numbers represents only the latest in a string of complaints from the very people whom Moses is leading out of bondage into freedom:  “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?  For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food (manna).”

God is frankly disgusted with the Israelites and sends fiery serpents that kill many.  Who can blame him?

But the people come to their senses and repent and ask Moses to intercede with God to remove the serpents.  What God does rather is instruct Moses to make a serpent of bronze similar to those that were killing the people, put it on a pole, and “whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.”

This is a very rich image, one inviting reflection and action.

I think of one of the brothers at my monastery who was for many years a hospital chaplain and a trainer of chaplains.  He used to tell his students that the principal pastoral task of the chaplain is to enter into the dragon's lair and name the dragon.  Whatever fear, anxiety, threat, wound or hurt the patient may be experiencing, the first work of the chaplain is to help the patient name it.

But this brother also tells how moved he was to discover in Annie Dillard's book Teaching a Stone to Talk something even more profound than naming:

In the deeps are the violence and terror of which psychology has warned us. But if you ride these monsters down, if you drop with them farther over the world’s rim, you find what our sciences can not locate or name, the substrate, the ocean or matrix or ether which buoys the rest, which gives goodness its power for good, and evil its power for evil, the unified field: our complex and inexplicable caring for each other, and for our life together here. This is given. It is not learned.

Our wounds, our demons, our monsters, our fiery serpents can kill us, but they can also cure us.  And for that to happen they must be named, they must be ridden, they must be looked at in faith, as in today's lesson from the Hebrew Scriptures.

Anyone who has been in therapy or recovery or who has survived adolescence knows this.

Jesus knew it as well.  In today's Gospel Jesus expresses his understanding that, like that bronze serpent in the wilderness, he too must be lifted up and gazed upon.  And he knew that, as for the Israelites of old, that gazing will be the source of life — indeed eternal life — for those who follow him.  This same Jesus who was for many — and let's admit it, so often is for us — a source of consternation and a sign of contradiction and a stumbling block — this Jesus on the cross is also our ultimate healing and blessing.

Over the portal of our monastery in West Park, NY, is a large marble plaque with the words: Crux est Mundi Medicina.  (“The cross is the medicine of the world.”)  It's been there since 1904, though the phrase itself is from a 13th century hymn by St. Bonaventure.

Crux est porta paradisi
In qua sancti sunt confisi,
Qui vicerurnt omnia.
Crux est mundi medicina,
Per quam bonitas divina
Facit mirabilia.

In case your Latin is a bit rusty, let me translate:

The cross is the door of paradise
In which the saints put their hope,
And triumphed over everything.
The cross is the medicine of the world
Through which the divine goodness
Performed miracles.  

The great miracle, of course, is that God so loved the world...and did something about it, gave his only Son.

If we are to love God, love life, we too must do something.  And that is, we must look, we must gaze, we must stare, with eyes wide open.   We must look at the cross, that symbol of the worst that humanity can offer and see there the greatest act of self-giving love, of hope and of human-divine solidarity.  And in the light and power of that cross, we must look with eyes wide open at the demons and serpents and monsters of our own time, whether personal, familial, social, economic, or political.  We must name them and perhaps even ride them until with them and each other we come into the light and peace of that kingdom promised us in Jesus Christ.

There is in the Order of Service for Noonday in The Book of Common Prayer this wonderful collect:

Blessed Savior, you hung upon the cross, stretching out your loving arms:  Grant that all the peoples of the earth may look to you and be saved; for your tender mercies sake.

May we have the grace and the courage to look at the cross and find there eternal life not only for ourselves but for all humankind, indeed for our whole creation.  May we look up and live.

Feast of St Joseph (transferred) - Mar 21, 2012

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Julian Mizelle, OHC
Feast of St. Joseph, March 19, 2012 (transferred to March 21)

2 Samuel 7:4,8-16
Romans 4:13-18
Luke 2:41-52

St Joseph and child Jesus - an icon by Joseph Brown

exposed in our church with forsythia from the garden

Role Models

I might have been 7 or 8 years old. I might have been younger. My father came to me one day saying get in the car—we’re going to the store—I need to buy a gift. So off we went to Sears. To a small child the gift my Father picked out was dazzling; bright and shiny with lots of gizmos. I was quite excited to see it going home with us. And I waited with eager anticipation for the gift to be opened. What was the occasion? It was my Mother’s birthday. What was the gift? A bright and shinny new Vacuum Cleaner! (Well...it did say “Sears Best” on it.) Things were rather icy and solemn around our home for the next several days. I knew it was a time for me to keep quiet and lay low. But by the weekend another bright and shinny present arrived—a new television, a color one (our very first). And on Sunday evening we all set down to watch Bonanza in color. And once again there was peace in the kingdom.

The experience of seeing my Mother receive a vacuum cleaner as a gift became a powerful lesson to me that one does not show their love or honor a woman’s birthday with a household cleaning appliance. It is not a gift that says “I love you” and to this day I have never given anyone, other than myself, the gift of a vacuum cleaner.

Few of us grow up with perfect role models. Most of us feel challenged to become a role model for others. When an outstanding role model comes along in our society we want to make them a hero. Simply put, being a role model is a daunting task. But in St. Joseph I have found one who is a very powerful role model.

The scriptural record surrounding Joseph is one of powerful silence. There is not one single word recorded in the scriptures that Joseph spoke. We only know him through his dreams and actions. We know that he was a descendant of King David, a carpenter, that he shared intimacy with God through his dreams, and that he was responsive to God through what he discerned, and he was even willing to take risks through his obedience to God. Today’s Gospel reading from Luke is the last time Joseph appears in the chronology of Jesus’ life. Some 20 years later when Jesus begins his public ministry Joseph has simply been dropped from the narrative.

As I ponder the life of Joseph I am asking the question who was his role model? After all no one had ever been married to the Mother of God before. Husbands being jealous of another man have been common in all times and in all cultures. But what do you do when the other man is the God you worship. It must have been terribly conflicting for him. How did Joseph find himself and carve out an identity in such a relationship. Let’s be honest—being married to the Mother of God would simply be intimidating.

Even though the scriptural record is thin we find Joseph fulfilling his role as protector and caregiver in the Holy Family. It was through his sheltering arms that he expressed his deep love and intimacy for Mary. And it was through his obedience to God that he was able to protect the ones he loved, sacrificing his safety for theirs.

If fulfilling his role as husband, protector and caregiver to the Virgin Mother of God was not enough, Joseph also had to find his way to be the earthly father to the Incarnate Son of God, the Christ child Jesus. Today’s Gospel reading gives us the story of a precocious and independent 12 year old lad asserting himself in the temple—the same temple he would cleanse some 20 years later by throwing out the money changers. But over the years many writers have taken great license in creating stories that might have happened (or could have happened) when Jesus was a young child.

Anne Rice tells the tale of a young Jesus getting into an argument with another boy. With a sudden slip of the tongue he curses him and the child drops dead. Realizing the seriousness of what has happened Jesus simply goes over to the child's home and raise him back to life. The child’s parents, not to mention the entire village, are both horrified and mystified by these events. Joseph simply weighs how to navigate through the unexplainable behavior of Jesus. Imagine trying to parent that!

Christopher Moore, in the national bestseller “Lamb, The Gospel According to Biff, Christ Childhood Pal” (and one of my all-time favorite books) takes an even more irreverent approach. The chid Jesus is in the yard playing with a lizard. He discovers that if he bites its head off he can bring it back to life. I’ll spare you the ensuing details.

Both of these stories represent the fertile imaginations of two gifted writers. What these stories do for me is to set my own imagination in motion to imagine what it was like to parent a child who could turn water into wine, walk on water, heal diseases and ailments, and even bring dead people back to life. There was no Dr. Spock, there was no Dr. Phil, there were no parenting guru’s or manuals for Joseph to turn to on how to parent the Incarnate Son of God.

Joseph was self-effacing and humble, strong and reliable. Joseph was a role model for real manhood. He was a godly man who lived above the low expectations of common culture. And he knew the real meaning of honoring and respecting women. Most of all he loved God regardless of the cost. And as with all of the great saints, when we look into their lives, we are pointed back to the life of Christ. We see Christ nature in them. Joseph would have it no other way.

All four of the New Testament Gospelers were talented writers themselves. None of them gave us humorous or far-fetched stories of the childhood of Jesus. However we also know they wrote with an agenda. Their agenda was simply to present to us Jesus the Christ, the Incarnation of God. That fact alone would have made it difficult to give Joseph a prominent role in the narrative. What the life of Joseph does say mirrors the words of John the Baptist: “He must increase, but I must decrease.” What we celebrate on this feast of St. Joseph is the mystery of redemption and how Joseph played a significant role in God’s plan to save humanity through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. God’s redemptive work needed human agents to give their consent and their cooperation. Mary simply said “Let it be!” Joseph said nothing--he just acted and through those actions gave his consent to the divine dream of God’s loving plan.

Amen