Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Brother Julian Mizelle, OHC
Proper 20, Year B - Sunday, September 30, 2012
Numbers 11:4-6, 10-16, 24-29
James 5:13-20
Mark 9:38-50
The Mysticism of Open Eyes
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!
Oh no! Oh no was my first reaction when I read our Gospel text for today. Of all of the gospel passages that would fall to me to preach on this one would be my last choice. This is a text that has traditionally been interpreted to be a series of warnings about male sexual purity. Cutting off hands, feet and gouging out eyes has been viewed as a double-entendre in rabbinic literature to other male body parts. The New Oxford Annotated Study Bible states that this passage is all about men behaving badly, and the reference to causing a child to stumble is really about child sexual abuse. My “Oh no” reaction is not about not wanting to address these subjects but I believe there is a better venue to do so than the pulpit.
All of my Brothers would rightly tell me that we don’t have to preach on the Gospel and that there is a reading from the Epistles and a reading from the Hebrew Scriptures that I could preach on. But at the beginning of this year I made a commitment to dedicate the year to preaching on the Gospel texts. I wanted to dive more deeply into them. And I just can’t let my commitments go that easily. So I decided to give the passage a deeper look.
We begin with demons and an exorcist using the name of Jesus who was not part of the disciples in-group. Jesus offers a corrective to the wrong thinking of the disciples with the wisdom statement “Whoever is not against us is for us.” Then we hear about stumbling blocks, causing the little ones to fall, lopping off limbs and gouging out eyes to avoid the fires of hell. And then the most obscure part of the passage is its ending: being salted with fire, having salt within ourselves so we can live in peace.
I approach scripture with a fundamental belief that it is a living scripture and even though it was written thousands of years ago it is the thin place where God speaks to our hearts in the present moment. I understand the cultural anthropological references embedded in these verses, I understand that the society of the time was an honor/shame society, and I understand the historical context simply becomes lost in translation for our time. Yet the reason this is scripture is because it can always speak to our hearts and minds in fresh ways.
It is also good to remember when dealing with a difficult text, such as the one in front of us today, that the writer may not have been giving us a single narrative story. Our reading seems to start in the middle of something, and we seem to jump from one disjointed thought to another, ending with a metaphorical reference that holds little meaning for us. Our best conclusion in a situation like this is to know the author of the text may have been recording his memories as he recalled them. He may have never intended to give us a unified lesson. So as I prayed over this text my question became “where is God speaking to me (and to His church today) in this passage?” Am I to condone an exorcist who doesn’t follow Jesus in MY community. Am I prepared to lead one of Jesus’ “little ones?” Am I willing to cut off my hands and feet and gouge out my eyes to gain God’s kingdom? Do I have salt in myself and do I live at peace with all?
Each of these question quickened my heart. But they also left me flat and feeling as though I wasn’t really hearing with my spiritual ear, the ear of my heart. I finally said “God, I’m missing the point...show me!” And slowly a miracle occurred...my thinking shifted. Yes, I was definitely missing the point because when I read the text I was unable to read it from the point of view of the one who was suffering the most in the passage. There is a character in this text who is rather insignificant. Not only is the character unnamed, but we only know of their existence by deducting their presence by inference. You see the disciples were upset at some stranger who was casting out demons in Christ name because he was not one of them. But what about the person who was being set free from the demon? What about the person who is broken, the person who is wounded, and in need of being made whole. Why don’t we care about them? Why did I have to read this passage thirty times before I even realized that it was the suffering person who Jesus cared most about? Because my eyes needed to be opened to see this through the eyes of those who suffer.
When we read the Gospels with open eyes and an awake spirituality we are constantly confronted with an exhaustive portrait of Jesus of Nazareth as a figure who was consumed by the victims, by the hurting, by the disadvantaged, and by the wounded that he encountered throughout His public life. In fact, it is these very victims that speak with the real authority through these Gospel narratives. It is those who suffer who move the gospel narratives along in telling us the story of Jesus.
Now here’s the problem: Religion, for over two millennia, has worked to focus Jesus’ life on the “sins of the other” instead of the suffering of the other. But Jesus was not consumed with sins. That was not the focus of His life. The focus of his life were those who suffer. I believe it is actually easier for us to focus on sins than it is to focus on those who suffer. Focusing on the suffering of our neighbor and the suffering of the world demands us to do something about it. Opening our eyes to those who suffer calls us to a reorientation of our theology and our spirituality.
Didn’t the disciples understand that if someone was going about casting out demons in Jesus’ name that meant there was someone who was being made whole? There was someone who was being freed and being healed. This was the realization Jesus was pushing His disciples to when He said “whoever is not against us is for us.” As a wisdom teacher Jesus went right to the thoughts of his disciples. He knew this is where the shift must occur. Our thinking must be changed if our behavior is going to change. And once we begin to see through the eyes of the suffering it becomes no longer possible to practice our theology with our backs turned to those who suffer.
Simone Weil wrote in Waiting for God that “one of the principal truths of Christianity that goes unrecognized today is that looking is what saves us.” It has been called a mysticism of open eyes. It is this mysticism that gives us a proper Christian response to a suffering world. When we begin to see more, not less; when we become Samaritan’s who do not cross the road to avoid a wounded enemy; and when our prayer, our worship, our pilgrimages, and our spiritual disciplines bring us to act compassionately then we can say we are becoming more like Christ.
The most fundamental stories and parables of scripture, stories that are engraved into the psyche of all believers, are all pointing us to this mysticism of open eyes, to being awakened from our amnesia. It is the story of the Good Samaritan, it is the story of the Prodigal, it is the story of the Exodus, and it is the story of todays Gospel text: a story calling us to compassion--that primordial sensitivity to the suffering of others and a praxis of taking responsibility for it.
Shane Claiborne calls Jesus an “ordinary radical.” The Buddhist writer Sharon Salzburg says the “most rebellious act we can take is to stand in compassion with others.” And this is what I mean by the mysticism of open eyes, of learning to see more and not less.
Chopping off our hands would certainly cause us to suffer. But it wouldn’t bring us into the kingdom of God. To enter God’s kingdom we must practice the spiritual disciplines of kenosis, the stripping of self, and we must enter into a praxis of mercy. How? Begin by asking three heart-changing questions: what am I doing that crucifies others?, what am I doing to end their crucifixion?, and what should I do so those that suffer can rise from the dead? Our response to this challenge hinges on our capacity to turn toward those who suffer, it hinges on our ability to look with open eyes and see more, and it calls us to the work of removing all of the crucified bodies and taking them down from their crosses.
When we see through the eyes of those who suffer then we truly become salted with fire.
Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Brother James Michael Dowd, OHC
Proper 20, Year B - Sunday, September 23, 2012
Wisdom 1:16-2:1, 12-22
James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a
Mark 9:30-37
Who is Wise and Understanding Among You?
I find myself intrigued by the Letter of James, part of which was our second reading this morning, because of the question that reading begins with: Who is wise and understanding among you? As the Novice Master, I have the great joy to study once again so many of the foundational texts of the monastic movement along with our novices as together we grow in our vocations. And the section of James that we read today seems, to me at least, to be filled with monastic wisdom.
The answer to the rhetorical question that James begins with is to show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom. Show by your good life. That says it all, really. It's not what we say we do, “oh, I'm a great pray-er” or “oh, I really identify with the suffering” or “oh, I'm so detached from everything, I can barely feel my own body!” No, Christianity is about showing, doing, being. When I studied for the theater, one of my favorite classes was Introduction to Play writing, in which, on the very first day you learn the most important rule about either play writing or directing: “show them, don't tell them.” And that seems like a good rule of thumb for the monastic life, indeed, the Christian life.
But it is not just about showing them. It is about showing them with gentleness born of wisdom. And James tells us what that gentle wisdom looks like. It is pure, it is peaceable, it is willing to yield, it is full of mercy and it is full of good fruits. It is, in other words, something that other Christians and non-Christians as well, can see in you.
James also tells us what gentleness born of wisdom is not. It is not envious, it is not ambitious, it is not boastful, it is not filled with lies. There is something quite practical and obvious in both of these lists – and sometimes we need that on our Christian journeys.
But it is the next question that James asks that has had me really reflecting on what it means to live a monastic life, a Christian life. I'd like to read again these few verses to you:
Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts.
If you think of troubles, conflicts, disputes, wars that rage within your own family, in your community, your parish, your workplace, in our nation this election season, or across the world, it seems to me that this could be a highly instructive lesson for any Christian to contemplate.
But it's the word cravings that most stands out to me. Cravings, James tells us, are at war within us. In fact, cravings can and do kill people – and whole groups of people. This past summer I had the great blessing of taking a vacation with my family in Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. On three different occasions, I heard the same story from three different guides on various hikes. They each told us that now that eagles are protected from being hunted, the most common form of death for an eagle out west is by drowning. It seems the talons of the eagle, which are their main tool for hunting, are extremely sharp and dig quite deeply into their prey. When an eagle dives into a river for the purpose of hunting a fish, occasionally the fish is to heavy for them to lift out of the water and, unable to release them, the eagle is dragged under that water and drowned.
And every time I heard that story, I had to think of my own issues with craving. Craving is a theme that is very important to desert monasticism and was in the early days referred to as “the passions” or the “eight principle vices.” In the Middle Ages it would become known as “the seven deadly sins” and very often today they are described as addictions – however many there might be. The first of these cravings, passions, addictions, and the most troublesome for me, is often known as “gluttony,” which in some Twelve Step circles is known as “compulsive eating.”
And ever since my trip to Wyoming, when I think about the eagle drowning because of its own cravings, I can't help but to think of myself and in particular, my own spiritual journey. There have been times, when because of my own cravings, I have been drowning – slowly for sure – but drowning none the less.
This can be agony and it puts me at war within myself. I know that this is not a healthy way to live or a holy way to live, but there are times when the craving overwhelms and I dive for that food that is just too heavy for me to bear. This craving has been such a consistent theme for me throughout my life that there was a time I believed that I would never be able to breathe fresh air again, that I'd drown.
Food is the weapon I choose that makes war on myself, which ultimately causes war to be waged on others as well. While I have never been physically violent with anyone, I have been known, interestingly enough, to wage that war with my tongue. And as we learned from the Letter of James last week, the tongue can set whole forests ablaze. But folks pick all kinds of poison, all kinds of passions – alcohol, drugs, sex, power, work, gambling, shopping, and any number of other addictive behaviors or deadly sins. Whichever way of looking at it you prefer, the result is the same: war rages within you.
But in fact, we are not helpless. There is a path that both our monastic forebears and the disciples of the Twelve Step movement have put forward to help us. James, in fact, enunciates the basics of these steps: “submit to God and resist the devil. And how do we do that? John Cassian, the great monastic teacher, passes down to us in the fifth book of The Institutes that the great Desert Father, Abba Macarius, taught that submitting to God and resisting the devil was to “restrain the movements of the mind (in other words, check your emotions), forget slights, reject sadness, and disdain sorrows and setbacks – as if we were going to die daily.”
In other words, live as Jesus taught us to live. Accept the fact that we do not know when the Lord is coming or when we are going. In contemporary parlance, “live in the moment,” but not “for the moment”. When I have lived in the moment, I have never starved to death – I have never been obsessed with eating. When I live for the moment, I can't wait to get my hands on, and my mouth around, a prepackaged cupcake. The passions, those cravings that are deadly to many of us, are so much easier to be liberated from when we live in the moment, as opposed to living in some real or imagined past when we were drowning because we are so hurt, so lost, so guilty, so adrift.
The control of the passions leads us to cease making war on ourselves and on others. It is a contemplative way of being that is a journey toward health, wholeness and holiness. It is our call as disciples of Christ. And I think this goes beyond the personal to the collective. All of this has implications for not only us as individuals, but as a community, as a nation, and as the human race. Which is something to think and pray about as the shouting of the campaign season nearly overwhelms us. The eagle, our national symbol, can drown when its cravings overwhelm it. As a nation, we crave many things. As I ponder this election, I find myself thinking about that very issue for the nation: what is it that we Americans crave that might drown us? The list seems uncomfortably long to me. As we seek wisdom and understanding, we might want to, as James says, draw near to God, for it is then that God draws near to us. AMEN.
Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Brother Scott Borden, OHC
Proper 19, Year B - Sunday, September 23, 2012
Isaiah 50:4-9a
James 3:1-12
Mark 8:27-38
How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire – and the tongue is a fire... somehow that observation from Letter of James jumps out at me this week.
There are two things that have been on my mind this week – one quite wonderful and the other quite terrible – and both having to do with the work of the tongue.
In a few days Sr Hildegard Pleva from the Redemptoristine Community just down the road will be giving a talk here at the Monastery on Hildegard of Bingen, whom we celebrate tomorrow – and so I've been focusing on the music of Hildegard. That is the beautiful thing.
The other thing is the shocking acts of violence in the middle east – big fires – incited by burning tongues in the United States... tongues which belong to people who call themselves Christian.
“From the same mouth comes blessing and cursing” says James. We bless God in our words, but curse those whom we despise. Yet those we curse are made in God's image. As James says “it should not be so.” A spring can not yield fresh water and foul water. Its a very sobering letter.
Devout Muslims in the Middle East have been reacting this week to a so called film produced in the US. The “film”, The Innocence of Muslims, can scarcely be called a film. It is childish and incoherent... a babbling mess... laughable in almost every way. It has, as its only purpose, to offend. And in that regard, sadly, it has worked its mischief. It has produced violence and even death. I don't say this to excuse or even explain the violent mobs. But as James says, the tongue can set mighty forests ablaze...
It is not enough, I think, for faithful Christians to ignore this film. It flows from a spring of foul water and it curses those made in the image of God. It is a flaming tongue and it must be quenched with the sweet water of God's love or it will continue to set forests ablaze.
What a contrast this vile little film is to the music of Hildegard of Bingen. To watch the film is to be degraded. To listen to the music of Hildegard is to be uplifted... transported... filled with light.
Hildegard was a medieval monastic, Abbess of a Benedictine community in Germany, in the city of Bingen, on the Rhine river. She was a mystic, a prophet, a writer, a composer, as well as an herbalist and healer. She used her skills in music and verse to share her mystical visions with those around her. The spring of her creative spirit brings fourth the purest, sweetest, and freshest of water – as fresh today as it was during her lifetime, nearly a thousand years ago.
Interestingly, tongues of fire featured in her visions. She saw, according to her writings, an image of her tongue aflame, but not consumed. She took that as a directive from God – she was to share what she had seen. There is that letter of James again. The tongue can set mighty forests ablaze. James is not calling us to silence, but rather to use our tongues in Godly ways.
There is a reason why Hildegard is a saint – and why the maker of that nasty little film is not...
As followers of Jesus we have an absolute obligation to tell the good news. We must, like Hildegard, use our tongues, our skills to share the beauty and wonder of God's love – and to share it far and wide... Not to curse those we don't like, don't understand, or don't accept.
The letter of James and the life of Hildegard of Bingen make an interesting prelude to the Gospel passage we heard today. Jesus says if we want to follow him we have to leave ourselves behind. To save our lives, we must loose our lives for the sake of the good news.
This observation by Jesus has the feeling of a zen koan about it... it leads us to paradox. And the Gospel is full of paradox... dying we live... to be fully free we must become totally enslaved... saving our lives means losing our lives...
One function of a koan is to destabilize our thinking. When we think we know the answer, we stop asking the question. If we think we know what it means to be a follower of Jesus, then we are no longer concerned with learning what it means to be a follower of Jesus.
So look what happens: Jesus describes to the disciples what is to come and Peter tells him off. Imagine that... Who would ever think of doing such a thing?... Certainly none of us...
Except that we all do, every day, in ways large and small. When we, as a nation, choose to build bombs instead of healing the sick or feeding the hungry, we are clearly telling Jesus off. When we, as a religious people, worry more about building grand houses of worship than about housing the homeless, we are telling Jesus off – just as Peter did. We can all find ways in which we do this... and we all know what Jesus said to Peter...
We set our minds on human things, not divine.
And so Jesus calls us to die to self – to take our minds off human things. To destabilize our thinking... to begin to learn that our ways are not God's ways...
My human nature loves comfort, loves privilege, loves pleasure... and the truth is my comfort frequently comes from someone else's sacrifice. Peter can't stand to hear Jesus talk about the sacrifice he is preparing to make because Peter can't think about sacrificing himself. Those who would save their lives must lose them... Peter isn't there yet – and neither am I.
Perhaps the most hopeful thing Jesus says in this passage is “If any want to become followers of mine...” He doesn't say “be”, but rather “become”.
I would like to say that I am a follower of Jesus, but anyone who knows me can easily and quickly form a list of all the ways that is not true. But I can say that I am becoming a follower of Jesus – and while I may fail now and then, misunderstand now and then, and be more attached to things of this world than Godly things now and then, I am, nonetheless, a more faithful follower of Jesus than I was a year ago, or ten years ago... we won't even talk about when I was in college... I am becoming a follower day by day. I can be very thankful that God is patient...
I started by reflecting a bit on the vile little film The Innocence of Muslims and the almost unbearable transporting beauty of the music of Hildegard of Bingen and I find they still resonate with me.
The film, to the extent it can really focus on anything (and it is such a confused mess, that is a limited extent), focuses entirely on things of this world – on power and domination – specifically the desire by some so-called Christians to dominate or eliminate other faiths. It calls us to cling to life. It has not the slightest whiff of becoming anything, let alone becoming a follower of Jesus.
Hildegard lifts our eyes to Godly things. If all she did in her life was create a legacy of transcendent beauty, that would be remarkable. But as an herbalist she tended to the sick – in an era when medicine was, to say the least, primitive. She quite literally wrote the book on what herbs could be used to treat what conditions.
Did Hildegard have bad days... was she always, relentlessly uplifting... I suspect she was every bit as human as you and I. But the arc of her life teaches us what it means to leave self behind and to be becoming a follower of Jesus.
Isaiah says it so beautifully – the Lord has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. We are the teachers and at the same time we are the weary. The word that sustains is is Jesus, the very word of God. Our simple, yet lifelong task, is let go of the words that we want to speak and we want to hear, and give ourselves to the speaking and hearing of God's word.
