Lent 2 A - Mar 16, 2014

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Andrew Colquhoun, OHC
Year A - Lent 2 - Sunday, March 16, 2014


Genesis 12:1-4a
Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
John 3:1-17 

Nicodemus visits Jesus at night

It’s interesting to me that since Lent began we’ve had some discussions about the realization that we here in the community are not all dreadfully sure what to do about this season.  Benedict says that the monk’s life should be a perpetual Lent – that seems to mean getting a book to read, cutting back a bit on food and sleep and staying aware of God and life. 

A couple of years ago in the refectory during Lent a guest almost knocked me over getting to the side table – “I’ve given up gluten for Lent” said he.  “Why?” asked I.  “Well, I think it may be healthier. I wondered later whether that was more righteous than giving up chocolate – who knows – he’s still around – I could ask him.
It’s Lent again!

The Lectionary for today shows us two God seekers – neither of whom is to be despised or denigrated.  Abraham gets touted the most, of course, and probably rightly so.  He is the model of faith – monastic in his response to God’s call to leave everything and walk into the unknown. Maybe he heard a voice, maybe he just, like most of us, got a feeling that he needed to go.

My brothers, have heard me on this before but one of my conversion moments came when I heard a saying of Yogi Berra.  He said: when you come to a fork in the road, take it.

A light went on and I remembered all the hours and agonizing times I had spent trying to discern (I almost hate the word now) what God’s will for me was.  How could I figure out what to do and be faithful?  Mr. Berra hit the nail on the head for me – don’t dither at the crossroads, keep going.  Sounds like Abraham maybe.  I can almost hear Sarah, saying “Where?”  Abraham: “We’ll know when we get there but God said we would become a great nation and be a blessing.  Sarah, I hope, said, “Yes, but how much do I pack?”  They went and it was reckoned to them as righteousness.  Abraham got the credit but Sarah did the packing and did most of the work, I bet. And off they went home.

So that’s maybe a Lenten clue… don’t try to figure or manipulate the righteous response – just keep going.  Gluten or no gluten, keep walking faithfully into whatever these strange days will bring to you.

Then there’s Nicodemus.  We criticize him because he doesn’t get it.  Brothers and sisters, I’ve been a disciple for the better part of a century and I don’t get it.  I love Nicodemus because like the good and faithful Jew he was, he argues with God.  He doesn’t take anything at face value.  I don’t think he was so literal minded as we try to make him… that’s how Jews argue about Torah. That’s how they get into the heart of Scripture.  That’s how they plumb the depths of God’s lovingkindness.  They argue and then they pray.  They mourn and then they dance.

Nicodemus stuck with Jesus in spite of his puzzlement.  His longing brought him from the darkness of a place of God’s absence right to Jesus’ presence. I love Nicodemus – he asked the questions I ask.  And I love Jesus because he wasn’t meek and mild, because he looked at this longing human being and said “You’re not getting it.” And he taunts him on closer and closer to the light of God’s heart.

I love that these men didn’t just exchange tracts and agree to disagree. I am grateful that Nicodemus didn’t just say “Thank you, Jesus” and go away empty. I am grateful that Abraham and Sarah plodded on to the maternity/geriatric ward against all sense. And Nicodemus, I’m sure he, like us, was broken open and filled completely when he heard:  "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.  

That’s what Lent is about, then.  Not groveling, not guilt-ridden, not punishment and certainly not emptiness.  But fullness and joy and relief and heading home. 

Giving up gluten and chocolate is a fairly feeble sacrifice…maybe a whole heart and a love overflowing among the poor and the lost and lonely is more what is desirable.

Lent 1 A - Mar 9, 2014

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Robert James Magliula, OHC
Year A - Lent 1 - Sunday, March 09, 2014


Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7
Romans 5:12-19
Matthew 4:1-11

Till and keep the Garden

When we hear the familiar story of Adam and Eve in the Garden, we are tempted to think of it as a story of sin. Hearing the story at the start of Lent makes the connection to sin all the stronger in our minds. A careful reading of this passage, however, reveals a surprise. The word “sin” never appears, and there are no synonyms for sin either. The rest of chapter 3 does not talk about either “punishment” or “the fall.” “ The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to till it and keep it” (2:15). This isn’t just a statement of location where God moves the first human from one place to another. The verse concentrates on the purpose for the human: to till and keep this garden. Human purpose is the focus and it forms the backdrop for what happens in the story.

Many other creation stories of the ancient world depict the creation of humanity as a by-product, an accident, or even a mistake of the gods. Genesis makes it clear that God intended to create people, not on a whim, but for a reason. We are designed and fashioned with something in God’s mind to do. In our day we think of humanity as the apex of creation. We emphasize another part of this story, like having dominion over creation or being fruitful and multiplying, assuring us that we are God’s greatest. We humans have a God-given purpose. We were not created for ourselves, but in order to till and keep the garden.

The phrase “till and keep” may be familiar, but this is not the best translation of these two Hebrew verbs. The first usually rendered “to till” is abad, more often translated as “to serve” or “to be a slave of.” The second, “to keep,” is shamar, which means “to preserve” or to protect.” Being a servant or slave of the earth moves us from the center of God’s creation. God makes us in order to take care of the earth itself, and to look to it’s interest instead of our own. We are responsible for it now and in the future so we must protect and preserve it. Care of the garden, of all God’s creation is not just a purpose, but also a mission as we articulate it in our baptismal covenant. Caring for creation means doing God’s work in the world. This is no pastime, nor is it a strategy for us to feel good about ourselves. Even though this mission is compelling and should be all consuming, we share a human propensity for distraction.

For people of faith, distraction may prove more frequently troublesome than temptation and is most certainly the precursor. This story of mission and distraction begins our journey through Lent. For the Church it is a time of penitence, of recognizing, being mindful, of the ways we have let ourselves be distracted from the identity and mission God intends for us.

In C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters, the author, Screwtape, writes to a junior tempter-in-training named Wormwood. He instructs him that his task is to darken the heart, to train “his patient” to love things worldly and reject God by keeping him self-involved and clueless about who he is. He advises him “to keep him spiritual and not practical, as it is the practical that often brings people to God. Encourage him to pray for tangible, desired ends and so direct his prayers to objects and not to God. Allow him to be oversensitive until everything grates on their nerves. Keep his prayers formless, as they are easier to manipulate. Turn his gaze away from God toward himself. “

The aim is to create a generation of people who are defined by selfishness and insincerity, pettiness and pride, fear and a need to control the things of this world. None of us, especially monastics, are strangers to the temptations Screwtape offers: pride, vanity, selfishness, and apathy---all flowing from distraction from God’s purpose.

We turn the expansive freedom that is ours in Christ into ideologies of freedom that keep self at the center. What we conveniently forget, or mightily repress, is the subtlety of distraction this Genesis passage narrates. Where there is no realistic acknowledgement of our immense capacity for self-centeredness and our ability to rationalize whatever we desire, the result is not human flourishing but brokenness. Yet even then, God responds not with justice but with unexpected mercy.

Lent is the time for adopting and practicing the disciplines of prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and study as avenues of loving more fully with heart, mind, and strength. Closeness to God involves conflict and struggle that will lay bare our deepest passion and loyalty. All have within us a yearning—no matter how much we’ve resisted it or had it socialized out of us---to be in union with God. There are so many detours on this journey into desire. How we long to be seen, known, entered----to come to that place of abiding---of coming home. Some actively respond, others run away for a time, yet the yearning for God enlivens all of us. When we are not afraid to enter into our own center and concentrate on the stirrings of our own soul, we come to know that being alive means being loved.

Matthew considered Jesus’ intentional confrontation in today’s Gospel to be instructive for us. Central to each of the challenges that Jesus faces in his struggle is a single question: To what extent will he trust God to be God and so be himself? In our wilderness, our place of struggle, the question is the same for us. To what extent will I trust God to be God, and so be myself?

Temptation comes to us when we look at others and feel insecure about not having enough for ourselves. It comes in judgments we make about strangers or friends who make choices we don’t understand. It rules us when we look away from those in need and live our lives unaffected by poverty, hunger, and disease. It rages when we allow our temper to define our lives, when addiction to power, influence, vanity, or a need for control defines who we are. Temptation wins when we get so caught up in the trappings of life that we loose sight of life itself.

Lenten penitence engages the dark places of our lives that we may come face to face with them, name them, understand them, and seek forgiveness for them. It is not about guilt. It is about freedom from the control that our fears and insecurities have over us all. It’s about amendment of life and new beginnings. +Amen.

Epiphany 7 A - Feb 23, 2014

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Bob Pierson, OSB
Year A - Epiphany 7 - Sunday, February 16, 2014


Leviticus 19:1-2,9-18
1 Corinthians 3:10-11,16-23
Matthew 5:38-48

“You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

The last time that I preached on this Scripture passage, which was three years ago, I received an official reprimand for my homily from the board of directors of the retreat program I was serving at the time. I was told that I had upset people and that I should not do that in the future.

What did I say? Well, I started by remarking that Christians have always had a difficult time with Jesus telling us to love our enemies. He couldn't possibly have really meant that, could he? As Christianity became more aligned with the civil authority of the day, a just war theory was developed to help Christians determine when it was morally OK to fight with their enemies.

With the just war theory in hand, Christians have been going to war, feeling completely justified in killing their enemies. But it wasn't always that way. In the early church, soldiers could not be Christian. They had to leave their military service before they could be admitted to baptism. And in our present age, the just war theory has been called into question for a number of reasons, the chief one being that modern technology has made it impossible to contain war to killing only other combatants. Too many innocent people get killed.

But even if we accepted the traditional rationale for the just war theory, we would still have to question the morality of some conflicts, like the war in Iraq, for example. The just war theory says it is never OK to be the first to attack, and clearly the United States attacked Iraq first. Religious leaders around the world, including Pope John Paul, condemned the US for starting the war with Iraq. I concluded that homily by saying that we, as Christians, need to question our leaders' judgment when they decide to go to war because they are not always morally justified in doing so.

And that's what got me in trouble. How dare anyone question the decisions of our government and its leaders? Well, the reprimand didn't convince me that I was wrong, and now, three years later I would say essentially the same thing. In fact, I just did. The one thing that has changed for me over the past three years, though, is the fact that I am much more aware of some personal enemies in my life. Now I am faced with Jesus' teaching in a much more immediate way: “God, do you really want me to pray for these enemies, after what they did to me?”

Feeling anger and resentment is completely natural and normal when we have been injured by others, especially when we know that the injury was intended. It's quite natural to want to fight back, to inflict a similar injury on those who have injured us. But it's NOT helpful to act on those feelings.

If we have learned anything from centuries of conflict and killing, it should be that violence only begets more violence, even on the personal level. And sooner or later, someone needs to choose to stop the cycle of violence, and to seek to forgive the other party, even if the other party does not want to reconcile. That's why Jesus calls us to love our enemies and to pray for our persecutors.

As Christians, we are called to go beyond the conventional standards of our day to a higher standard of conduct, to be holy as the Lord our God is holy. And loving our enemies makes sense if we have learned the lesson of the Cross—that the only way to real life, to eternal life, is to accept the suffering we cannot avoid, and to let God transform it into resurrection.

Now, I am not saying that we need to allow others to hurt us. We need to take care of ourselves, and set boundaries where possible, to prevent others from walking all over us. But it does no good to try to return injury for injury. “An eye for an eye” only makes for two blind people.

Paul's words to the Corinthians that we heard a few minutes ago come to mind as I ponder how it is possible to really live Jesus' teaching: “You are God's temple and God's Spirit dwells in you....God's temple is holy, and you are that temple.” Yes, I am God's temple because God dwells in me. But you know, my enemy can also be God's temple because God can dwell in them, too. Their injury of me cannot justify my injury of them. I need to recognize that they are God's beloved children just as much as I am, and that there has to be a better way of settling our differences than blowing each other to smithereens. “Be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy.”

I want to conclude my homily today with a quotation from "In the Eye of the Storm" by Bishop Gene Robinson:

“In refusing to demonize and hate his enemies, forgiving them and loving them to the very end, Jesus shows us the way to reconciliation. If we keep our eyes set on him, and upon his self-giving, self-sacrificing love, then we will know the way forward. Whatever difficulty may come, no matter how hard it gets, we will know how it eventually will end. We need not be afraid. God's fatherly saving grace will not be foiled, God's Son's sacrifice on the cross will not be in vain, and God's Holy Spirit will continue to lead us into reconciliation.” (page 160)