Epiphany 4 C - Feb 3, 2013

HolyCross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Andrew Colquhoun, OHC

Epiphany 4 C – Sunday, February 3, 2013

Jeremiah 1:4-10
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
Luke 4:21-30



There was a young woman in South Africa who brought groups to the monastery for retreat.  She was not always easy to deal with but we got to like and respect her for her straightforward ways.  Her principal gripe was about people who had decided that their favorite flavor of Christianity was Christianity Lite.

from the cover of the book by the same title, by Glen Berteau

These are the people who want a faith that is pleasant, appealing, refreshing but which carries no weight with regard to their living out the Gospel.  These are folk that want to leave Church after their visit on Sunday feeling better – relieved to have had their dose of Christianity for the week.  Strengthened to read the Times and to tut with dismay at dismal or upsetting stories but strong enough now not to be unduly disturbed by events of most of the world.  If they invite others it’s with words to the effect that they should come with them to Church – it will make them feel better.  You know, “When I skip Church, I just feel something is missing.”

It’s kind of discomfiting to recognize one’s self in this, I hope!  Even the search to discover God can be so tainted – I want to draw near to God because God makes me feel better.  I pray and read the Bible for my own up-building; my spiritual welfare becomes paramount.

It’s a delicate balance, isn’t it?  Is it bad to feel good?  Am I wrong to want the comfort of feeling near to God?  Are my needs and longings to be ignored or put down?

Certainly not!  Scripture and history are full of testimony of the joy that saints have found in their discipleship even through whatever struggles life put before them.

But the gospel for today intrigues.  Jesus has just proclaimed his mission and the villagers liked it – at first.

They spoke well of him – we know this fellow – Joseph’s boy.  He’s one of ours.  I suspect as Jesus did that that their expectation was that this local boy would be a mine of gratuitous help for them.

The trouble was that Jesus knew them too well.  He’d grown up among them after all – and he challenged them.  “Are you the only people with widows or lepers?”

And the tide turned.  Jesus is not willing to be claimed and held by their limitations.  And you just heard the story – they got angry tried to kill him and he left them.

His call is always to the most broken, to the least of these.  His heart is for love and not for ease.  He is driven beyond comfort to the desperate, the crushed, the starving, the lepers of the world.  He’s driven too to the person who can’t get a job, the exhausted single mother, the depressed Veteran, the teenager who’s all confused… fill in the blanks.  And if the truth be told, sometimes your name is in the blank.

And where he leads we follow.

I love I Corinthians 13.  It never fades, this great hymn of love.  But it’s so easy to turn it into Christianity Lite.  To think of Love with a Hallmark veneer.  But Paul’s not talking about the sweetness of affection.  He’s talking about the love he experienced at the hands of the Risen Lord.  Blinded and sent to journey to God knows where to be stoned, imprisoned and finally put to death.  That’s the love he means.

We are on that same path.  We are preparing for the journey here.  Praying, longing for God, drawing into God’s broken heart.  And the nearer we are drawn, the farther out we are expected to reach.

The more we open ourselves to God’s love, the wider the circle becomes.  The more sweetness we know, the more we can taste the bitterness of the world’s sorrow.  The closer to the Cross the deeper the pain of God’s people penetrates our hearts.

There’s another option, of course…  We could just order a great big glass of Christianity Lite – and die of thirst.

Epiphany 3 C - Jan 27, 2013

HolyCross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Roy Parker, OHC

Epiphany 3 C – Sunday, January 27, 2013

Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10
1 Corinthians 12:12-31a
Luke 4:14-21

This homily is about two kinds of response to Jesus’ appearance in the synagogue at Nazareth. The first I call High-Voltage Dedication, the second Expedient Dedication. I believe we’re actually hard-wired for the high-voltage version, but when the circuitry includes resisters we end up with something less.

The appointed Gospel passage stops short of the complete congregational response to Jesus’ proclamation of the Isaiah passage which I’m taking a bit further to make the point.

The readings depict two basic responses to the proclamation of the Word of God. The returned exiles in Nehemiah weep when they hear the scripture; when the congregants of the Nazareth synagogue hear the scripture embodied in Jesus they do not weep. Luke’s story occurs in a section with the telltale title ‘The Rejection of Jesus at Nazareth,’ and you’ll remember the rest: How, after his admirable reading of the Isaiah passage, Jesus’ challenge to his listeners’ cynicism turns everything ugly. It’s intended as an epiphany gospel, but we’ve come a long way from the gold and frankincense and myrrh to the edge of the cliff where they’d like to fling him over, though he slips from their grasp, passing through the crowd in a wondrous kind of way.

For the returned exiles, who for years had been living a life out of suitcases and developing a high-voltage Judaism, it’s as if they were hearing the Word of God for the first time; and so they weep. Their tears express love’s conviction that they had strayed far from that Word and they needed assurance that God’s love for them encompassed and accommodated their failures. They had returned from exile to the territory of Judea, but had not encountered an unambiguous welcome - portrayed as follows: In a town meeting there rose a disagreement between an exilic prophet and the town council concerning the accommodation of Judaism to the governing imperial policy. As they argued the prophet finally proposed: “If I’m right, let that stove in the corner collapse.” The stove collapsed and as the prophet looked meaningfully at the council they replied, “Yes, but that doesn’t matter anymore.” High-voltage Judaism encounters Expedient Judaism.

The congregants of the Nazareth synagogue, another kind of town council, despite their initial admiration of Jesus, could not conceal their disdain for the usurping hometown boy with whom they’d grown up, with whose warts they were all too familiar. This might verge on a sin against the Holy Spirit because the point of Luke’s narrative as an epiphany of the Christ is that Jesus is fresh and brimming from two major encounters with that Spirit - his baptism by John in the Jordan at which the Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove and his period of the testing of that Spirit in the wilderness - a kind of shakedown cruise after its gift in the Jordan to perfect and confirm his possession by the Spirit. In conjunction with this, Luke says three times that the descent of the Spirit is God’s way of telling us that Jesus is God’s son. Initially at the baptism, then in the genealogy, and repeatedly during the wilderness testing. Can’t we just hear the synagogue congregants saying, “Yes, but that doesn’t matter anymore.” Expedient Judaism.

For a high-voltage response to the showing forth, or epiphany, of Jesus on this occasion the tears of the returned exiles symbolize what I see played out by the first disciples when they’re called by Jesus, described by Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s in his book The Cost of Discipleship: “The call of Jesus goes forth, and is at once followed by the response of obedience. The response of the disciples is an act of obedience, not a confession of faith. But how could the call immediately evoke obedience?

The story of the call of the first disciples is a stumbling-block, and it is no wonder that attempts have been made to separate the call and its obedience. Somehow a bridge must be found between them. Something must have happened in between, some psychological or historical event. Thus we get the assertion: Surely they must have known Jesus before, and that previous acquaintance explains their readiness to hear the Master’s call. Scripture is silent on this point, and in fact it regards the immediate sequence of call and response as a matter of crucial importance. It displays not the slightest interest in the psychological reasons for a person’s religious decisions. And why? For the simple reason that the cause behind the immediate following of call by response is Jesus Christ himself. It is Jesus who calls, and because it is Jesus, they follow at once.

This encounter is a testimony to the absolute, direct, and unaccountable authority of Jesus. There is no need of any preliminaries, and no other consequence but obedience to the call. Because Jesus is the Christ, he has the authority to call and to require obedience to his word. Jesus summons us to follow him not as a teacher or a pattern of the good life, but as the Christ, the Son of God. (In the call of the disciples) Jesus Christ and his claim are proclaimed to the world. Not a word of praise is given to the disciple for the decision for Christ. We are not expected to contemplate the disciple, but only him who calls, and his absolute authority. There is no road to faith or discipleship, no other road -- only obedience to the call of Jesus.

And what does Scripture inform us about the content of discipleship? Follow me, run along behind me. That is all. To follow in his steps is something which is void of all content. It gives us no intelligible program for a way of life, no goal or ideal to strive after. It is not a cause which human calculation might deem worthy of devotion, even the devotion of ourselves. At the call the disciples leave everything that they have -- but not because they think they might be doing something worthwhile, but simply for the sake of the call. Otherwise they cannot follow in the steps of Jesus. The disciples burn their boats and go ahead. They are dragged out of their relative security into a life of absolute insecurity.

When we are called to follow Christ, we are summoned to an exclusive attachment to his person. The grace of his call bursts all the bonds of legalism. It is a gracious call, a gracious commandment. Christ calls, we are to follow.”

On this score I relate a little tale of encouragement with which Alan Whittemore used to hearten postulants to the Order, a tale which some of you have heard before, and it goes something like this: Imagine our Lord standing before you, holding out his hand and inviting you to follow him. Will you follow him? He wants you to. Will you take his hand and follow him? He’s inviting you to do so . . . but be careful! There’s a wound in it.

Epiphany 2 C - Jan 20, 2013

HolyCross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. James Michael Dowd, OHC

Epiphany 2 C – Sunday, January 20, 2013

Isaiah 62:1-5 
1 Corinthians 12:1-11 
John 2:1-11

The wedding at Cana

Do Whatever He Tells You To Do

Having been raised in the Roman Catholic tradition, it would be fair to say that I have a devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God. At least in my public persona, that would be true. But deep down, in the privacy and reality of my own spiritual life, I don't think of this so much as devotion to the Mother of God, but more like a relationship with Mary, the Mother of Jesus. This relationship was certainly fostered by my Catholicism, but perhaps even more importantly by the relationship that my mother and her mother, my grandmother, had with Mary, the Mother of Jesus.

Both Mom and Grandma have a great relationship with Mary, the Mother of Jesus. Their approach to the faith is, or was in my grandmother's case, a practical one. For sake of ease here, I will just speak in the present tense, though Grandma went to meet Mary and Jesus many years ago. The more contemplative or ethereal aspects of our faith are not for them, but what they understand to their core is the Christian faith as an act of love. In their cases, as an act of love of a mother for her children or grandchildren. And the fact that love is mostly about action – about what you are going to do to serve God, and serve each other. Love is a hot and delicious meal on the table, night after night after night. Love is staying up all night when one kid after another comes down with chicken pox. Love is teaching your kids to love other people, to be honest, and live in peace with one another.

And I cannot help but to think of Mom and Grandma when I read this Gospel passage from John. In this reading, we find ourselves at a wedding in Cana with Mary, Jesus, and some of his newly gathered disciples. The party is going on, everyone seems to be having a great time, perhaps getting a little sloshed, and we're probably at the point in which the wedding reception has degenerated into everyone doing the Chicken Dance, when Mary notices and alerts Jesus, that the bridegroom has run out of wine.

With Jesus' response of “what concern is that to you and me?” I can't help but wonder if Mary didn't just lose it with her son. I can just imagine her thinking to herself “you've been hanging around the house for thirty years now, always with the praying, the going off to secluded places. When are you going to do something!” And I wonder if she wasn't thinking to herself about the first verse from the reading from Isaiah we just heard: “For Zion's sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest...” It was time to help get these folks out of an embarrassing situation, and, more importantly, time for her son to step forward and shine forth God's glory. And so she moves on to the servants and quietly, but very firmly says, “do whatever he tells you to do.” Done.

And that seems like good advice for us, today's servants of God, to just do “whatever he tells you to do.” I know that sounds dimplier said than done, but sometimes today we make having a faith life seem so complicated, with all kinds of caveats and relativity, that we often forget the simplicity of so much of what our faith is about: love, peace, caring for each other. Do whatever he tells you to do. Go love somebody. Go make peace with somebody. Go take care of somebody who needs help.


There are moments in a lifetime of faith when I think we, as individuals, or we, as the Body of Christ, are faced with the stark reality of one of these simple choices. Moments when we must choose for love and for peace and when, in fact, it is quite simple, though not necessarily easy, to know what it is to “do whatever he tells you to do.” I believe that the Christian community in this country has arrived at one of those moments – a kind of crossroads in time in which we must make a choice to take the road toward non-violence – in which we more fully discover the kingdom of God; or to choose the road of idol worship in which we continue to worship weapons of mass destruction, whether these weapons be held by the government or by individuals. Newtown, CT is that crossroad. We are there and we have paused momentarily as we individually and collectively make the choice.

My brothers and sisters, the crossroad looms and we must make the choice for non-violence. The Firearm and Injury Center at Penn State, which has been studying firearm fatalities and injuries in this country for many years, reports that between 1980 and 2007, the average number of deaths in this country from firearms has been 32,300.1 32,300 of our sisters and brothers dead from gunfire. The number of injuries each year is more than twice that number. 32,300 dead people every year so that we can retain our precious right to collect guns. Are you kidding me? We have passed the point of absurdity and now must make a choice. A choice that is actually quite simple, though not easy. We must remove automatic weapons from our society and work very hard and long on the many other types of guns that people “collect.”

Blood is running in our streets, blood is running down our school hallways, in movie theaters, in our houses of worship, in our workplaces, in our homes. Carnage is all around us, and we do have the means to stop a considerable amount of it. And as Christians, we have an obligation to work toward the elimination of such suffering and the healing of this sickness.

For that is what violence is. A sickness. An addiction. And we Americans have become rabidly addicted to violence. On a global scale we see terrorists around every corner and so we allow a multi-front war to drag on in perpetuity, raining down bombs on innocent people all over the world. Here at home, folks convince themselves that the big bad government is coming for them and so they must arm themselves like paranoid petty dictators. This is insanity. This is a group of people living in a state of panic in a way that has nothing to do with doing “whatever he tells you to do.”

The addiction of violence has to be treated like an addiction to alcohol. In order to get to the underlying issue for the alcoholic, you must get the alcohol out of their hands. It is only then that they can begin that climb to recovery. So to with violence. Yes, violence is more complicated than guns. But in order to really be able to work our recovery, we have to get the guns out of our hands.

I stand before you today, speaking of non-violence, not because I am non-violent, but because I am working my recovery. I have never fired a gun, or used any weapon, I've never even been in a fist fight. But that doesn't mean I don't have violence within me. I hear Mary saying to me now, “when are you going to do something?” and “do whatever he tells you to do.”

The tragedy in Newtown has finally awakened not only me, but many people in this country from the kind of stupor of denial that we have lived in regarding gun violence. I urge you, I beg you, in the name of Mary and in the name of Jesus, do “whatever he tells you to do.” Pray everyday to work your own recovery from violence. Pray that our country will learn to work the program. Then, do something: Write your elected officials, demonstrate, use any kind of non-violent means to communicate to those in power that we insist on putting an end to this insanity which can only result in such evil. Insist, that it is much dimplier than people are making it out to be. Stop the carnage. Stop the bloodshed. Stop the weapons of mass destruction. When we do this we will, like Jesus, shine forth God's glory to all the world. 32,300 people are waiting for us to act this year. God help us if we don't. AMEN.


1 Firearm and Injury Center at Penn, p. 5.