Epiphany 4 C - Jan 31, 2016

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Scott Borden, OHC
Epiphany 4 - Sunday, January 24, 2016

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

No one is prophet in his own land

Television dramas with plots that span weeks often begin with some sort of flash back or recap – Perhaps an announcer solemnly intones “Last week on Lost in Space...” for example. And this week’s reading from Luke needs to use that device... 

Otherwise we're starting in the middle of something. Jesus reads from Isaiah and says – today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing... except we didn't hear what he read… unless your memory of last week is particularly keen. 

So... last week, in the Gospel according to Luke... Jesus read from the Prophet Isaiah...  From the 61st chapter: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

Now here is an interesting thing... Luke tells us that Jesus is reading from the scroll of the book. But for some reason Jesus takes liberties with Isaiah... and I suppose if anyone has that right, it's Jesus... Because of translations both then and now it is a bit murky. But there is no doubt that Jesus has left some things out and put some things in... Isaiah calls for binding up the broken hearted and a day of vengeance for our God. Jesus strikes those, but brings sight to the blind, unlike Isaiah.

These are, on the surface, minor changes, but they shift the meaning of what Isaiah said. God, as known in the Hebrew Scriptures, is often a god of vengeance. But, with the incarnation of God in the man Jesus, we know God in a different way. We know a God of forgiveness, of compassion, and of love. Jesus is not mis-quoting Isaiah. He is updating him.

So that is the thing that leads to this week’s reading... Jesus reads, sort of, from Isaiah, and then tells his listeners that today they have heard this scripture fulfilled. 

OK - so we're not quite ready for this week’s reading... because there is one more "Previously in the Gospel according to Luke" reminder. Luke, at the start of last week’s reading, describes Jesus as filled with the power of the Spirit. It is Luke's own version of the "Previously in the Gospel according to me" device. 

Jesus is filled with the Spirit at the time of his baptism. It is an important detail. The reading from Isaiah begins with "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me..." and for Jesus the Spirit is upon him because in baptism he is anointed. It is not clear if those gathered around Jesus at the moment would have understood the link, but Luke's audience surely would have. 

Jesus is anointed in baptism with the Spirit – just as Isaiah is anointed in the Spirit.

Now on to this week’s reading... 

For some reason I am reminded of a short passage in a fiction book called "Dreams of Sleep" by Josephine Humphries. Life, for the lead character, is more or less falling apart. In a depressed moment she approaches her refrigerator and becomes fixated on the vegetable drawer. It is filled with vegetables she bought in previous weeks with the intention of eating, but there they sit – no longer edible. And she thinks to herself how easily things slip from ripe to rotten... 

Here is Jesus talking to the hometown crowd. They are loving him. All eyes are upon him. Words like "approval" and "astonished" describe the crowd. And then how easily things slip from ripe to rotten... Suddenly words like "enraged" appear. They want to kill him. All this within a few sentences. How can this be?

Well – Jesus has a way of saying things folks don’t want to hear. Jesus has gained a reputation as a healer and the crowd wants Jesus to cure everyone... to fix everything... to be the Messiah that they are longing for. And more than that, they want to share in Jesus’ glory. They know him… they grew up with him… they want to cash in. 

But Jesus is not that messiah. Jesus doesn’t let them down gently. He shatters the illusion – a dangerous thing, but necessary for spiritual growth as much then as now.

There were lots of widows at the time of Elijah in Israel, Jesus reminds them, but Elijah wasn't sent to any of them, but rather to a widow in Sidon... And there were lots of diseased people in Israel at the time of Elisha, but they are all left to suffer while Naaman the Syrian is cured. In case you missed it – both these people are gentiles... heathens... not God's chosen people. And yet they were chosen over the chosen people. How easily things slip from ripe to rotten.

Shattering illusion is painful. When our illusions are shattered we often focus our pain by directing it as anger at the one who has done the shattering. In the arena of our blood sport called politics, there is something approaching lust for the trashing of political leaders. We build them up beyond reason and then watch with prurient interest as they fall back to earth. But they didn’t do anything. They simply are who they are. Our illusion of who we want them to be is the issue.

Jesus is not illusion. Jesus has no part in the illusion. The illusions belong to the crowd, to us. And these illusions have to be shattered because they are not real. And more critically, the illusions stand in the way of knowing the real Jesus. Could Jesus have been more gentle in the disillusioning? I don’t think so. Illusions are powerful and beguiling. A gentle nudge away from illusion is not likely to break the spell of illusion. Jesus rips the band aid, as it were…

Our illusions need to be shattered. Otherwise we cannot be in a meaningful and constructive relationship. Not with Jesus. Not with our spouse. Not with our community. Nothing real can be built on a foundation of illusion. 

Nonetheless it hurts when our illusions are punctured. When it happens we get angry and it seems natural to focus that anger on the object of our illusion… Just exactly as the crowd does to Jesus. Look how far they go. They could simply have gotten up and walked away. But instead they more or less try to herd Jesus over a cliff. Rather than have their illusions destroyed, they seek to destroy the object of their illusions. 

This protects the illusions. If Jesus won’t play along, we can dispose of him and find a new focus for illusion. That way we don’t have to be disillusioned. That way we don’t have to change, to be responsible, to grow… Likewise these days, when Candidate X shatters my illusions, I blame him or her… but the illusions are mind and I need them shattered. 

In this passage from Luke, Jesus puts two big agendas in front of us. First, he has come to release captives – to release us… to restore sight to the blind – to us… to bring good news to the poor – to us… and to declare God’s favor. Second, we are going to have to be in relationship with Jesus, not as powerless dependents waiting to be rescued. That is illusion. But as children of God… as people of God… with Jesus as our brother.

We have to be willing to see. We have to be willing to give up being oppressed and to give up oppressing. We have to be good news to the poor. We have to let go of the illusion that Jesus is some great external power. Jesus is in us. We are the body. 

It is a comfortable illusion that if we are devoted enough, prayerful enough, faithful enough, that God will rescue and protect us and make everything nice. The truth is that if we are devoted and prayerful and faithful, God will walk with us into pain, sorrow, and hardship – for these are in great abundance in our world. In baptism Jesus is anointed – and in baptism we are also anointed. 

Our greatest joy is to bring good news, to bring the love of God to those who need it most.

Epiphany 3 C - Jan 24, 2016

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Roy Parker, OHC
Epiphany 3 - Sunday, January 24, 2016

Neh.8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10
1Cor.12:12-31a
Lk.4:14-21


The paired readings from Nehemiah and Luke present the wondrous event of public speech bringing to pass what it proclaims. In Jesus’ debut in his hometown synagogue at Nazareth he states that the promise of good news brought to the poor, release given to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, freedom to the oppressed, and God’s jubilee year is fulfilled as soon as the words struck home.

What are we to make of this enigmatic statement which produces, first, congregational amazement at the giftedness of the hometown boy, followed by rage upon his identifying them with the hometowners who cannot accept a prophetic message from a fellow hometowner, one of those traits mentioned by Garrison Keillor in stories about his mid West prairie home. In Lake Wobegon it behooves you to diminish your aspirations.

Nevertheless there must be those beside the burghers of Nazareth who are capable of hearing and believing, of suspending disbelief in the presence of this prophet, in whom word and fulfillment coincide. Are we the burghers or do we stand elsewhere? A clue lies in the quality of our expectation; for example:

The first would clearly be the Torah festival described in the reading from Nehemiah. Ezra the priest, fluent in Hebrew, read from the book of the law of Moses from early morning until midday to a large congregation of those who had returned from exile, a specially staged reading over that stretch of time. 

One can see what a command performance this was by surveying the narrative which precedes it - Nehemiah’s plea for the exiles, his dispatch to Jerusalem by the Babylonian king, his inspection of the walls of Jerusalem in total disrepair, the organization of repair despite the formidable hostility of those who’d been excluded from the exile, the establishment of Nehemiah’s administrative ‘creds‘ as the work proceeds in his dealing with oppression and the foiling of hostile intrigue, the completion of the city wall, and, importantly, carefully compiled lists of the categories of returned exiles directly preceding the account of the Torah festival itself. 

It’s as if Israel were freshly reconstituted as God’s people in a second exodus upon its rescue from captivity and was standing at Mount Sinai for the first time, and hearing the law of Moses for the first time, and therefore weeping in realization of their transgression. We can see that the buildup to this is extremely charged and creates an expectation whereby the words proclaimed become a kind of living event. 

Here’s a little commentary on that: On the opening Broadway night of “A Streetcar Named Desire” starring Marlon Brando among others, Tennessee Williams, the playwright, sent Brando this telegram: “Ride out, boy, and send it solid. From the greasy Pollack you’ll someday arrive at the gloomy Dane, for you have something which makes the theatre a world of infinite possibility.” The play, as you remember, was given a half-hour’s standing ovation that night. And there came a voice from heaven, “Ride out, boy, and send it solid!”
Expectation, expectation.

We have it also in the Order’s archives almost beneath our feet.
When Br. Adam and I transported them from West Park to the Episcopal Church’s facility in Austin, Texas back in 1976 and were leafing through some of the boxes deposited there, we came across an advertisement put out by Fr. Huntington for a teaching mission he was about to give. Of course it gave all the info to entice people to attend, but the kicker was its concluding statement characteristic of Holy Cross mission promos of the period which simply said in large type, “Expect Much.”

The emphasis suggests the conversation in the pivotal chapter of Alice Walker’s The Color Purple in which Shug asks Celie if she ever found God in church, reminding her that the only occasions in which she herself found God in church were related to the God she brought into church with her.

It suggests a lesson brought to me on a sunny Saturday morning a while ago in Berkeley, California where I happened to meet Raymond Brown leaving the breakfast cafeteria of the Jesuit School of Theology. Dr. Brown had given a lecture the previous evening, so I recognized him and thought, “Aha! my chance to verify the theory I’d concocted to explain the Feeding of the Five Thousand in the Fourth Gospel.” This in relation to the homily I was to give in a local church the next morning. So I go into this song and dance which I thought pretty good, but which dodged the issue of God’s inbreaking. When I finished, Raymond Brown gazed at me a moment, then practically exploded, “But they were expecting this!”

Another example:
One of the contributors to the 1982 Hymnal of the Episcopal Church is Charles Price who as well as being a gifted hymnologist was an extraordinary theologian and teacher at the Virginia Theological Seminary in the 1980s and 90s, before that the Preacher to the University at Harvard in the 1960s and 70s, the position, in fact, held at one time by James Huntington’s father. I think it’s no exaggeration to say that Charlie Price was esteemed thesalt of the earth in his ministry at Harvard, attracting people far and near to the eleven a.m. Sunday worship in Memorial Church. It was he, incidentally, who hired Peter Gomes onto the church staff in the sixties, where Peter went on to imprint his own indelible mark.

I was one of those who regularly went to hear Charlie preach on a Sunday morning and what I always remember in addition to those sermons delivered with rhetorical elegance is the atmosphere of expectation and waiting which could be cut with a knife inside that spare white Colonial interior looking like a Cistercian house of worship.

Yes, the word of God was amazing, and a catalyst to what we’d brought with us - like the demonstration of a supersaturated solution in organic chemistry which appears as a clear liquid, but if you add only a crystal, the entire solution changes into crystal.

Epiphany 2 C - Jan 17, 2016

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Joseph Wallace-Williams, n/OHC
Epiphany 2 - Sunday, January 17, 2016

Isaiah 62:1-51 
Corinthians 12:1-11
John 2:1-11

The Marriage at Cana, Gerard David, Louvre Museum

Maybe I'm just hearing things? Did anyone else catch all that? Maybe our familiarity with this text makes it hard to catch it all? Maybe this will help: 

• Hospitality and its importance.
• Scarcity and Abundance, 
• It's okay to have a party and a good time.
• Attentiveness and Disobedience.
• Family tension.
• Fear and Shame. 
• Isolation vs community. 

 And I could keep going!!!

I think this text from John's Gospel offers us, three important and timely lessons if we would but listen. The first concerns the issues of the old and the new. The second concerns the power of intercession and the third concerns the topic of obedience.

The Lesson about the Old and the New in the text: The Old wine was still wine, even if it was not the premium stuff. The Old stuff just before it gave out was enough to make them think that all was well and they were still in control. The old stuff gave a sense of security.

Now before I go on I think it important here to say that I love old things. I love studying history.  I love antiques. Most of all I love old people. And anyone who knows me and knows me well will tell you that I have a deep respect for tradition and that I'm also not afraid to challenge orthodoxy with orthopraxis and critical scholarship. 

All that being said I think it is often all of that old stuff, not the total emptiness or rock bottom that obstructs conversion and our way to Christ.

You know all of those:
• Past hurts, grudges and bitterness.
• Unflinching denial.
• Old attitudes and insecurities. 
• Passive aggressive behaviors disg

uised as piety.
• Old habits and ways of coping that if we are honest with ourselves never really worked to begin with.
• Outdated information.
• Artificial smiles and politeness that thinly veil rage. 
• Sexism, racism, homophobia and ageism disguised as prudent advice.
• Lifeless rituals and rules that coalesce to create old, dry religion.
• Just stale, Stinking thinking and pessimism disguised as realistic thinking.

Old and New.

Freshness and Stagnation.

Jesus stretching us making us really uncomfortable.

Jesus working shaping us 

Calling the best out of each and every one of us.


The lesson on the strength and power of Intercession

We are often so in the thick of our emotions and inner stuff that we can’t see the full picture and not know up from down right from wrong or make the distinction between hope and fear. 

Like the people in the story who see the reality of what is about to take place realizing their powerlessness and reached out to someone who is more powerful than they themselves. 

We too need a:
• Praying community.
• A community that is faithful and spirit filled surrounding us. 
• A Community bold enough to speak the truth.
• A perceptive community that will continue to encourage and challenge us to grow more fully into holiness despite our resistance.

And as companions to one another after we have spoken the truth we must like Mary make intercession to the One who has power and authority. 

The quiet confidence she displays in the text comes from, I think, an intimate relationship with the Whom she was speaking to. So Mary is neither upset nor unnerved by the response of her son.  She is confident that he will act in some way to her petition.
So, before she exits stage left and drops the microphone she tells the wait staff to do whatever He tells them.






Which brings us to the lesson on obedience and cooperation with the spirit:

Like that wait staff at the wedding reception we too need to be prepared and willing to do whatever He tells us: By any means necessary!

  But here’s the catch to this risky, radical obedience to the Will of God: What God asks may not make any obvious sense to us at the time. But as my ancestors would say:“ We will understand it better by and by. “

This is where the robber meets the road. This is where actions speak louder than words. This is where real discipleship real obedience is the hardest--when it has to be mixed with deep faith because we know that God provided back then and that same God is faithful, and true now.

The radical obedience of the wait staff in today's gospel reading prepares the ground for Jesus to take an empty and inadequate situation and make the best out of it. And the result is that everyone at the event profit from the obedience of a few. 

All God needs is just a few folk who will do what Jesus says. Just a few folk who catch the vision of what could be, while the many criticize, based on what already is. Just a few folks to be a voice crying in the wilderness.  Just a few people to resist the status quo and opt in to the vision offered by Christ.  Just a few who know where true life is.  Just a few who know where fullness of joy can be found. 
Beloved don't get it twisted numbers can fool you: Big crowds can give a false sense of security and approval and a couple of people can give a false sense of defeat. 
Signs and wonders do not require a large group. All God needs is just a few folk who will follow Jesus and do what he says is plenty 
 Enough. 

The Path of faithfulness and Discipleship is not always fun stuff but it’s definitely the stuff that will make us Saints.