Christmas 1 A - Dec 29, 2013

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Bernard Jean Delcourt, OHC

Christmas 1 A – Sunday 29 December 2013

Isaiah 61:10-62:3
Galatians 3:23-25;4:4-7
John 1:1-18

“In the beginning was the Word” says John,
and “without him not one thing came into being.”

In sweeping poetry, the disciple whom Jesus loved tells us what we need to know to approach and know God.  If we believe in Jesus, God saves us by adopting us as God’s very children.

We cannot know God directly, but Jesus knows God.  Jesus is the fullness of God. And we can know Jesus if we choose to believe in him.  And in knowing Jesus, we know God.

*****

John’s gospel does not start with a Nativity of Jesus but instead it puts Jesus squarely at the Nativity of the known universe.  “In the beginning was the Word” says John, and “without him not one thing came into being.”

We are left in no doubt that before there was anything, there was the Word. And some of those things that were not before the Word are time, space and matter.  

Try imagining existence without time, space and matter. We have a hard time imagining existence without those realities.  And indeed, the very fact of “being” did not exist before the Word.  The state of Being itself is part of Creation.

*****

In his prologue, John powerfully introduces us to a God who is intimately involved with matter as its Creator, and yet is essentially beyond matter and any of its prerequisites, such as time and space.

And John also lets us glimpse that God is a community of relationship; the Word was not separate from God, was indeed God, and yet was also with God.

*****

This foreword to the Gospel according to John is a masterpiece of simple but powerful poetry.  And yet in its simplicity and power, this poetry conveys all the fundamentals of theology.

Before all else there is God and from the beginning, God is loving relationship. For starters, within God’s own nature, God is relationship and love.  The Creator and the Word are one, and yet, at the same time, they also are with one another, without stopping to be one.

If it feels like a mind twister it’s because our minds are of this Creation and not from beyond Creation. Our minds are a grace from God and not on a par with the nature and existence of God.

*****

And the God that John introduces us to in the prologue chooses to simplify everything, chooses to simplify our entering in relationship with him by choosing to enter into Creation on the same footing as his very Creatures.  The maker of all matter, chooses flesh, a very special matter, to reveal himself to his Creation.

“He was in the world” and “He came to what was his own” and “to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.”

Suddenly, adoption by God becomes possible by receiving the Word, by believing in his name, which in Hebrew literally means “God saves” (Yehoshua, Yeshua, Jesus).

Suddenly we no longer need to understand God as God beyond ourselves.  But we are invited to relate to God as amongst ourselves, as one of us, Emmanuel. We are told “No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father's heart, who has made him known.” But God has now been made known to us as our Father and we can cry “Abba, Father” at the prompting of the Spirit of Jesus our Brother, sent by God in our very hearts now and forever.

*****

The flesh of Jesus is powerfully manifest to us here today through the sacrament of the Eucharist. This is one way in which we can today meet God that Saves in the flesh.

Another way is that the spirit of Jesus, the Word, is present through the Holy Spirit of God awakening us to his words in our existence.  The Word, the Wisdom, the Holy Spirit of God can touch us anytime, whether through the words of holy scripture, or the words of God’s creation writ large all around us.

Any human flesh, any human face, any created thing has the power to shine God’s light and life on you. Make sure to notice that more often.

And these means of relationship, the very threads of this existence; time, space, matter, being are all pure gifts by the will of God.  And it is those gifts which enable us to relationship with the Divine by the sheer grace of God.

If God were to will to put an end to time, space or matter, none of our rich relationship with God, within God would be possible anymore.  But if we are learning one thing about God, it’s that God never tires of relationship.  God keeps trying with us.  Thanks be to God.

*****

In the week to come, see if you can sidle up to these 18 verses of the prologue again. Read them aloud a couple of times and see what those words conjure up in you. It is poetry, after all; it deserves to be read aloud and heard to work its charm on our hearts. God is very near to you.

*****

Jesus, you are very near to us.  Beloved Word of God, our Lord, our Redeemer and our God, give us to believe in your Light and your Life through your grace and truth. Amen.

Christmas Eve - Dec 24,2013

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Andrew Colquhoun, OHC
Year A - Christmas Eve - Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Isaiah 9:2-7 
Titus 2:11-14 
Luke 2:1-14(15-20) 

The monastery's St Augustine Church all decked out for Midnight mass.

I’m thinking about all the memories floating about here tonight…and I’m enough of a softy to imagine that most of them are good memories. I’m also enough of a realist to know that some of them are painful and full of aches to some of our hearts. A mixed bag, but all part of the memory and longing that fill each Christmas.

I grew up in Scotland when it was still pretty Calvinist. Christmas was not a holiday for most people…there was a war going on and that made things even more austere. My father always worked.  The Kirk didn’t have services unless Christmas was on a Sunday… popish, you see. We celebrated at home with a good dinner and a clootie dumpling (look it up!) but what we were really looking forward to was New Year – Hogmanay.

I remember well the bleakness of the war years and the lightening up of peacetime. We immigrated to this country on December 21st and I thought America was all light…Christmas trees everywhere, presents wrapped in shiny paper with ribbons (not brown paper packages tied up with strings). Tinsel and bells… and parties with plenty of food.  You people knew how to party.

It took a little while to see beneath the glitter to the ordinary human sorrows. It took some time for me to acknowledge the fear of knowing that underneath I was more different that even my accent showed.  I went to an all white school – class of ’54 and laughed at the boys who wore green on Thursdays with a lump in my throat that somebody would find out.  One of the misfits, one of the lonely ones.

But each year God intruded and  comforted again when the magic, loving time of Christmas came…and I could go alone to Church at midnight and step into the mystery of a love that broke through any darkness the year could have brought, finding comfort in a mothering, fathering God.

So many memories… I’m sure you’re remembering right now, too.  Here in this holy space which is so full of prayer…

But one memory in particular stands out for me. Our first Christmas pageant in South Africa.  Most of the local children had been unchurched when we got there and our Young Adult Service Corps volunteer took it upon herself to organize a pageant.  She worked very hard with those kids.  They had it down pat.  We invited people from the town and the cathedral to see this triumph.  The church was full.

It started off fine -  the narrator set the stage and then Gabriel appeared. She was six feet tall in a bed sheet with a tinsel halo.  Mary was perfect, quiet in blue.  Joseph didn’t know exactly what was going on but then, he never really did anyway!  Gabriel made her announcement -  Mary froze; Gabriel announced again – Mary stayed frozen. And again – frozen.  Finally, Gabriel lost it, swore at Mary, ripped off her halo and threw it at the Virgin. Joseph, God bless him, still didn’t know what was going on.  The shepherds decided to rescue the performance with a dance that made Miley Cyrus look staid.  The director started bawling and the congregation went into hysterical laughter.  Even the mothers were in stitches.

I loved it!  I treasure the memory.  Afterwards, we all had a cup of tea and recovered our composure.

Since then there have been beautiful Christmases.  Since then, we’ve built more memories sharing them together here.  But I go back often to that vivid memory of a bunch of young people who got so lost in and bewildered by a strange story; to the young volunteer who so wanted to do it perfectly and didn’t realize that she had. To the congregation of blacks and whites in rural South Africa who had a raucous good time together all unselfconsciously.

It was perfect because that’s how Jesus always comes.  Not into the sweetness but into the mess of life.  Mary’s there, timid and fearful.  Giving birth away from home and comfort; Joseph holds his little wife clumsily because what does he know?  And like the shepherds of Mariya uMama weThemba we don’t know what to do either and if we have sense we dance and rejoice.  It’s a bittersweet story… of poignancy and tragedy… of refugees trying to get their documents.  People with unknown futures and pasts we often can’t talk about.

We get lost somewhere in the middle of the story…lost with our memories, our sadness, our longing and our loneliness.  And Gabriel pitches her halo at us and says “Glory, Glory – pay attention, people, Glory!”

The world is still a mess.  Children are born under bridges.  Mothers aren’t all lucky enough to have a kindly Joseph.  Fat cats still dominate, wars still destroy the innocent, gun are given as presents.  But the memory of goodness and possibilities and love inexplicable survives and blooms and the promise of this night is that the light will come and a baby’s cry will  break through.  And that cry is the cry of God with us …now , tonight, in this place, in our midst, in our selves.

Advent 4 A - Dec 22, 2013

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Robert James Magliula, OHC
Year A - Advent 4 - Sunday, December 22, 2013

Isaiah 7:10-16
Romans 1:1-7
Matthew 1:18-25

Humanity and Divinity: Joseph and Jesus

  The pressure is growing as we enter the final stretch on this Fourth Sunday of Advent. Both American culture and media have reached a fevered pitch in loading Christmas with false expectations of family harmony and good cheer. Hallmark defines the perfect Christmas, and people spend much time and energy trying to achieve this perfect experience. Among the niceties of the season, we forget just what a scandal the incarnation and birth of Jesus really is. Behind the pretty Hallmark scenes lies wonder alongside of scandal. Today’s Gospel reminds us that God’s work often upsets comfortable social expectations and conventions.

Every third year we hear Matthew tell the story. He writes that Joseph was a “righteous man”. Whatever he believed about Mary, his betrothed, he was not willing to shame her, either by putting her on public trial or trashing her reputation to clear his own. So he resolved to divorce her quietly, without casting blame, choosing the most humane of the customary legal options of his day. He was on the verge of doing so when an angel of the Lord spoke to him---and nothing was ever the same again. Joseph’s sense of right and wrong got lost in the divine shuffle. His righteousness gave way to God’s. He trusted what an angel told him in a dream, and took Mary home as his wife.

Christian tradition has never known quite what to do with Joseph. He disappears from the gospels before Jesus’ baptism and is never heard from again. One legend has it that he was already an old man, a widower with children, when he married Mary. Art, largely commissioned by the Church, supported this image. Paintings portray him as a kindly old man, beyond sexual thought or action, watching the world admire Mary and her child. This neutered version of Joseph certainly tells us more about the Church’s, rather than God’s attitude toward sex. But that’s a different story.

Joseph is usually an extra without lines in the drama starring Mary and the child.  But in Matthew’s Gospel, Joseph is the main character. Gabriel speaks to him, not Mary, as he lies sleeping. “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.” This greeting is important. If the Messiah is to be born the Son of David, then this is the man he must be born to. The prophets said so, and Matthew, writing for a Jewish audience, goes to great lengths throughout his Gospel to persuade us that what the prophets foretold has come to pass in Jesus. So for Matthew it is the annunciation to Joseph, not Mary, which is central. The whole experiment hangs on what happens with Joseph. If Joseph believes the angel, Mary will have a home and her child will be born the Son of David. But if he does not believe, then Mary is an outcast---either disowned or killed by her family for disgracing them and herself by her pregnancy.  

In Jewish law, paternity is not a biological issue but a legal one. Jewish law reads: “If someone says, “This is my son”, he is so attested.” Joseph becomes the child’s father the moment he says so. Joseph’s trust is as critical as Mary’s womb. It will take the two of them to give birth to this remarkable child: Mary to give him life, and Joseph to give him a name. This may all sound very quaint to our modern ears, but the heart of this story is much bigger and more profound---whether from Joseph’s perspective or from Mary’s.

It is about a person who wakes up one day to find their life wrecked: trust betrayed, name ruined, future revoked. It is about a person who surveys a mess not of their own making, and decides to trust that God is present in it. With every reason to disown it all, neither Joseph nor Mary do, they don’t walk away from it in search of a cleaner, more controlled and conventional life. They claim the mess, the scandal and the wonder. Mary gives it her body. Joseph gives it his name. They own the mess---they legitimize it---and the mess becomes the place where the Messiah is born.

Child and Caregiver; Jesus and Joseph

Today Joseph is held up in the story as the one who is most like us, presented day by day with circumstances beyond our control, with lives we would may never have envisioned for ourselves, tempted to divorce ourselves from it all, when an angel whispers to us: “Do not be afraid, God is here. It may not be what you expected or planned, but God may be born here too, if you will permit it.”

That “if” is crucial. God’s “yes” depends on our own. God’s birth requires human partners, a Mary, a Joseph, a you, a me---willing to trust the impossible, willing to claim the scandal and wonder, to adopt it and give it our names. Amidst our less than perfect lives, God is about doing something new and wonderful. And not just in each one of us alone, but the whole Church, surveying a world that seems to have descended into chaos, and proclaiming over and over again to anyone who will listen that God is still with us, that God is still being born in and through the chaos and mess, and among those who will still believe what angels tell them in their dreams.  +Amen.