Proper 28 Year C,November 13, 2016

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Randy Greve , OHC 

Proper 28, Year C - Sunday November 13, 2016

“This will give you an opportunity to testify.”

One of the gifts of having four gospels in the canon of Holy Scripture and our three-year lectionary cycle is that we get to journey, during the weeks of the season of Pentecost, with one of the synoptic evangelists and immerse ourselves into the ways our Lord is given presence in such distinct and dramatic ways.  Luke has been a particularly powerful guide and challenge especially this year with news of mass shootings, police killing and being killed, political debate, and now speaking to us on this Sunday after a presidential election.  For Saint Luke, Jesus is, in the parlance of recent politics, the one who “blows up the system” of entrenched customs and prejudices of exclusion, discrimination, and paranoia that characterized much of the way the establishment of Jesus’ time sought to keep power and control.

By acts of compassion and justice across social boundaries and outside the norms of religious purity code, Jesus inaugurates a new community which called the too young, the too old, the poor, tax collectors, prostitutes, lepers, the demon-possessed and all kinds of marginalized persons into the embrace of God’s care and out onto the road of joyful obedience and holiness of life.  To those of the “in” group, the call is to a repentance of humility and generosity reflective of life as God’s abundant gift, not a limited commodity to be hoarded and protected.  Luke illustrates for his non-Jewish audience that whoever you are, whatever your ethnic, racial, class position, whatever you have done or has been done to you, you, too, are summoned into new life in Jesus the Christ.  This Jesus-reigning life is both inner healing, forgiveness and repentance AND new eyes to see neighbor through the eyes of Jesus’ boundless and limitless compassion.
 
Given that context, today’s gospel, which is set in the Jerusalem temple during Holy Week, reveals the extent and shock of Jesus’ message of a new humanity. We are dropped into a world of frightening political, religious, natural, and even cosmic upheaval and breakdown centered on the demise of the temple.  By the time Luke is writing the gospel the temple is already destroyed, so his intent is to place the risen and ascended Jesus into solidarity with the persecuted early Christians.  The destruction of the temple by the Romans in 70 AD is the social and theological turning point which moves the symbol of God’s presence from its physical boundaries to the individual Christian as “the temple of the Holy Spirit” to use St. Paul’s phrase from 1 Corinthians.  God has not abandoned the people in the temple’s destruction, but each Christian now embodies the very presence of God.

We rightly think of Luke as the evangelist of compassion, of the lost being found and coming home, but there is also the prophetic edge aimed at the resistance to new life.  Discipleship is always set within and proved in circumstances of crisis, temptation, and opposition.  There is no real following after Jesus and his way without being thrust into the cosmic battle between love and control, service and status. The wilderness of temptation is the heart, the temple, of each Christian.  A romanticized image which believes that I can love my neighbor and follow Jesus and everyone will love me back and live in peace and light is a dangerous betrayal of all that Jesus says and does.  The call to compassion is a battle against the constant encroachment of our stubborn wills and the social and religious forces which oppose compassion.

To follow in the way of Jesus means that compassion and resistance are partners in the way of reconciliation.  The purpose of the mention of war, earthquakes, plagues, heresy and persecution is to usher the reader into the heart of the moment when one Christian stands before some king or governor to give testimony.  Everything that is taken for granted as stable and secure, all the sources of human flourishing, are smashed – revealing just how tenuous and fragile life actually is.  And revealing what is really inside the soul.

When everything is gone, Jesus is there, giving words and comfort, assuring the suffering of their ultimate salvation in God’s hands.  When all is destroyed, life comes down to my willingness, my exposed and vulnerable soul becoming a vessel for Jesus’ words and power to flow through me and keep loving, keep undermining the power system, even if it is the last thing I do.  The new humanity and community of Jesus is a testifying humanity.

In 2008 the late Phyllis Tickle wrote The Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why which describes exactly what is coming to pass today 500 years after Luther’s 95 theses, which she calls the last great upheaval.  She states that the central question during these one every 500 years events is “Who is in charge?”  We live in a time of shifting definitions and authorities.  The power of office or title doesn’t hold the weight of respect it did even in the recent past.  Who or what defines what is Christian?  How is that definition defended and by whom?  If I simply call myself a Christian, what does that mean?  Must I claim to be a certain kind of Christian?  If many people value individual moral decision-making and interpretations of scripture, what shared values form the basis of community and common mission? These kinds of questions are the new normal.   Definers and categories and affiliations are all jumbled up.

 “This will give you an opportunity to testify.”  Do we despair or testify?  We live in a time ripe with invitations to live our faith with courage, adventure, and creativity.  We need not draw new lines or impose new definitions, but we must testify, we remember and reclaim what is ultimate and foundational even in, especially in, the jumbled chaos.  When structures and security are gone and Jesus is all you have, then you realize that Jesus is all you ever needed.
 
“This will give you an opportunity to testify.”  Testifying has taken on added seriousness since the election – for all of us.  This is our opportunity, whatever your political affiliation, to face the moment.  And what is involved in our moment?  Testify that our ultimate identity is not in party or election, as important as they are, but in the kingdom of heaven.  Testify that the minority, the least, the bullied or dismissed, are those with whom we are to stand just as Jesus did.  Testify that as Christians we cannot sit on the fence. We can no longer rely on being the entitled and privileged people of empire, ensconced in walled churches that ignore the other.  We either live together – all of us - or inevitably tear each other apart.  The church is now a confessing church, a resistance movement against forces on both the right and the left which seek to neutralize or coopt it.  If the gospel was ever a nice story about being a better person, it cannot be that any longer.  The gospel is our blueprint for the transformation of how we are to be and act together.  We testify that the reconciling love of enemies is becoming more difficult in the face of so much invective and suspicion.  We will practice reconciliation.  We will love our enemies.  We testify that we will face insult with longsuffering, persecution with forgiveness.  We will hold out our hand to our neighbor and when it is slapped away we will cry and then we hold it out again because we are people of hope – a hope that will be fulfilled. Testify in hope and for hope.

If Jesus comes to seek and save the lost then that first means each of us.  In those times when we feel anger and want to lash out,  it would be so easy to give up, to give in to fear, Jesus gives power and comfort and words to us and for us.  Jesus finds us and saves us in our confusion and grief.  When the temples fall, when the truth is challenged, when the earth quakes, when the nations war, when our family and friends have left, Jesus is with us.  Then he sends us out into the world as the Word spontaneously speaking within us the love, mercy, compassion, of Christ’s whole life indwelling and empowering us to be him, his body.  “This will give you an opportunity to testify.”  Amen.

Proper 27, Year C - Sunday November 6, 2016

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Scott Borden, OHC 

Proper 27, Year C - Sunday November 6, 2016

Today we find Jesus in this rather odd encounter with Sadducees. And one of the first things we must do is clear our minds of other places in scripture where Jesus is encountering Sadducees and Pharisees. Generally when the Sadducees and Pharisees are involved, it is a trap – they are ganging up on Jesus to try to catch him with some complexity of law. And, just to complete that thought, Jesus always prevails...

But this encounter is different. And perhaps the absence of the Pharisees is our big clue... The encounter begins with a question that sounds to us like a trick. After all, the question is primarily focused on life in the resurrection and Luke begins by reminding us that the Sadducees don't believe in resurrection. Obviously they must be up to something...
But keep in mind that the Sadducees (and Pharisees as well) were sincerely faithful people. In my mind they tend to turn into shallow and cynical folks who exist primarily to challenge Jesus – and in the Gospels that is largely their function. I tend to lump them, Scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, into a group under the general heading Hypocrites. And when I put them under the heading, then I can more or less ignore them. But lets not ignore them now...

In the Jewish tradition at the time of Jesus there was an evolving understanding of the afterlife. A belief in resurrection was coming into general acceptance, but the Sadducees were, as we might say today, traditionalists. The tradition held that the afterlife was not a different life in a different realm, but rather that a person (and by that, they meant a man) lived on through his children and his children's children, and so on.

In this understanding, a man who dies with no children has no afterlife. So it is important, and even commanded in scripture, that his brother step in and produce children with the dead man's wife. This is the practice of levirate marriage – a term derived from Latin, meaning brother-in-law marriage.

Keep in mind that there was no restriction on the number of wives a man could have, so any good brother-in-law could marry his late brother's wife... Indeed he was required to do so.

But look at the urgency and importance of the Sadducees question. They are trying to understand the notion of afterlife in their changing world. In the traditional understanding this sequence of marriages leaves the man with no afterlife because there are no children. In the new understanding there is the possibility of afterlife for the man – you can see why the question is important.

Still, the Sadducees can't escape their understanding that afterlife is somehow child-dependent. In the resurrection who's wife is this? Who's children can she produce? I think they are truly trying to understand. But they don't know how to ask the question.

Mark tells the same story – but in Mark's memory, Jesus snaps at the Sadducees. He says: "Are you not wrong because you do not know scripture or the power of God?" But in Luke's memory, Jesus is more patient. Those who live in this age get married... but in the age of the resurrection people don't get married. And for those Sadducees worried about eternal life he assures them that in the resurrection, people can not die. Reproduction is no the key to eternal life.

And for those anxious Sadducees still not sure that there is any resurrection, Jesus puts forward the greatest authority they know, the one they started with – Moses. God is God of the living. The Sadducees may question Jesus, but not Moses.

What might this be saying to us?

Well certainly the question of levirate marriage is hardly a burning one today. But we do have lots of questions about marriage... I don't think this story answers too many of them, but that may be an answer we need. What Jesus does say is that marriage is of this world – of this age. In the age of resurrection it is not a thing.

For those who have enjoyed loving and deeply life-giving marriages, Jesus' observation that in heaven there is no marriage may be painful. I know many a widow and widower who in some ways looked toward their own death as a way to be reunited with their loved one. It is a deeply comforting thought. Jesus doesn't say they won't be reunited, but he does make clear that the new life will not be just a continuation of the old.

On the other hand, those who have suffered at the hands of an abusive spouse may well find deep comfort and assurance that in heaven they will not be stuck with the abusive spouse...

What I want, and I think many of us want, is some concrete, clear, airtight assurance of how good the resurrection will be. This is the desire I think that motivates the Sadducees. It motivated the disciples when they were chasing after Jesus imploring him to tell them about heaven – and his cryptic reply... heaven is a very big place with lots of room. Don't worry about it. When we want to be assured that heaven is lovely and that our place is reserved, the answer is don't worry about it.

I'm not about to argue that heaven isn't lovely... nor am I about to argue that some of us are heaven bound while others are surely on their way to hell. What I would argue is that our earthly concepts, our earthly desires, our earthly senses can not tell us about heaven. And our quest for concrete certainty only serves to obscure our vision and diminish our knowledge of heaven, just as it did for the Sadducees.

An odd thing happens right at the end. We've been hearing about Sadducees and Jesus has been talking, presumably, to Sadducees. But the very last interchange is not Sadducees and Jesus, but rather Scribes and Jesus. It is the Scribes who say "Teacher, you have spoken well." And it is the Scribes who dare ask no more questions.This may be of little importance... but I want to read a great deal into it. So bear with me.

Scribes and Pharisees are often a sort of short hand for unfriendly inquisitors - those who try to trip up Jesus with loaded questions. In fact, just before today's reading these folks have been trying to trap Jesus with a question about paying taxes. You remember the answer: render unto Cesar what is Cesar's... The purpose of that question was to get Jesus in trouble.

The Sadducees are really asking a question and really seeking an answer. They are not trying to topple Jesus. The nature of our questions determines the direction of the answers. Sincere questions move us toward sincerity while trick questions move us toward trickery.

We can not help but wonder about heaven. To say that we won't is a fruitless endeavor. But when we focus our questions on how good we'll have it in the next world, that moves away from involvement in this world.

Karl Marx famously said: "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people." He wanted to abolish religion because of the false happiness, the opium, it provides. I think Marx understood human nature quite well. I don't think he understood God, or Jesus, or the Gospel.

Dwelling on how marvelous heaven, God's Kingdom, will be is not what Jesus calls us to. Building God's Kingdom here on earth is what Jesus calls us to. We are called to heal the heartless world, not to anesthetize it. God is God of the living and so it is with the living that we must seek to know and to serve God.

I don't hear Marx so much as condemnation, but rather as a warning. If we are honest, there are certainly occasions when people, in the name of religion, have sought to preserve a distinctly unjust status quo with promises of a better life to come – or as one wag put it; There'll be pie in the sky by and by...If there is a problem in the Sadducees' question it is that they are seeking Karl Marx's opium – they want to be assured about eternal life. And Jesus firmly redirects their attention, and our attention to this life... to be faithful to God – the God of the living - here and now.

All Saints’ Day 2016 and First Profession of the Monastic Vow of Br. Aidan William Owen- Nov. 1

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Robert James Magliula, OHC 

All Saints' Day and First Profession of the Monastic Vow- Tuesday,  November 1, 2016

Aidan's Handwritten First Profession of the Monastic Vow. 

What a glorious feast, made even more glorious by Will’s first Profession of the vow!

 Around this time last year, Matthew shared with me a piece written by Cynthia Borgeault about how the Fall offers us a Triduum in All Hallows Eve, All Saints, and All Souls Day. Triduum, which means “three days”, is the name applied to those three days that form the heart of the Holy Week celebration encompassing Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter. The solemn passage through this sacred space is experienced not only as a set of external observances, but also as a journey deep within our own hearts.

Both Spring and Fall Triduums deal in different ways with the Paschal Mystery, that passage from death to life which is at the heart of Christian and all mystical paths. In Spring the days are lengthening, the earth is bringing forth new life.  In the Fall the movement is more inward. The days are shortening, and the earth draws once again into itself. Everything in the natural world confronts us with reminders of our own fragility and mortality. She wrote:

“In the quiet, brown time of the year, these Fall Triduum days are an invitation to do the profound inner work: to face our shadows and deep fears (death being for most people the scariest of all), to taste that in ourselves which already lies beyond death, then to move back into our lives again, both humbled and steadied in that which lies beyond both light and dark, beyond both life and death.”

So in the midst of this season, the days do offer themselves as a journey, a venue for the process of conversion, one that is not so unfamiliar to the inner work with which a monastic cooperates.

All Saints’ is the centerpiece of the Fall Triduum and is the thinnest of the thin places between heaven and earth, the living and the dead. We Christians dare to hope beyond the constraints of mortality. In a culture that seeks its own gratification at any cost, that spends its produce and its people as though there were no tomorrow, we dare to live as though there is a tomorrow and more, a place wherein which, and a people with whom to share that tomorrow.

In The Cloister Walk, Kathleen Norris describes an experience that gets to the very heart of what today’s feast is about. She writes:

“A monk said to me one day, ‘It’s time for you to meet the rest of the community.’ We walked to the cemetery, and through it, and as we passed each grave, he told me stories about the deceased.”

Today we celebrate our unity with the body of Christ throughout time. Each time we worship at the altar, the whole host of heaven crowds the air over our heads. It’s one of the miracles of God’s grace that all of time and space are gathered in that moment. At the altar, in that moment of intimacy, the kingdom, which is to come, is present.  The limitations are lifted, and we are one. For this reason the Church commends this feast as one of the five set apart for Baptism. What an appropriate context it is for Will to be deepening his commitment to the monastic expression of the baptismal covenant today, where we all receive our call to be saints.

In the Letter to the Ephesians, the writer prays that the hearers’ hearts might be enlightened, so that they may know the hope to which Christ calls them. To see with the heart is to imagine the future God is preparing. We are not only shaped by our experiences; we are shaped by our hopes, by the future into which we are living, and by the convictions by which we are living. Hope is best perceived by the eyes of the heart. Hope is best lived within a hopeful community, in the company of saints, both living and dead.

Barbara Brown Taylor reminds us that “To be a saint you don’t have to be famous, or perfect, or dead.  You just have to be you—the one-of-a-kind, never-to-be-repeated human being whom God created you to be—to love as you are loved, to open your arms to the world.” That’s a good description of the inner work of initial formation, and what Will has been tending to these past two years. As a Benedictine he has come to know that this happens in community.

We have all this company—all these saints sitting right here whom we can see for ourselves, plus those we cannot, all of them encouraging us, challenging us, and perhaps most especially, reminding us that we and they are not perfect. We are part of them, and they are part of us. None of us would be here if not for the love and prayers, the guidance and teaching of friends and family, of these saints living and dead, for whose lives we give thanks.

The vow that Will is about to make is extremely counter-cultural. We live in a society that places great importance upon external signs of success. We have to assure ourselves and others that we are valuable and important—because we doubt that we are. We live in an affluent society that’s always expecting more, wanting more, and believes it even deserves more. But the more we own, ironically enough, the less we enjoy. 

The more we project our soul’s longing onto things, the more things disappoint us. Benedict and James Huntington knew this well and addressed it in their Rule. Happiness is an inside job. When we expect to find happiness outside of ourselves, we are always disappointed.

The true goal of all religion is to lead us back to the place where everything is one, to the experience of radical unity with God and all of creation. That’s the monastic quest that Will has been living. When we live consciously we experience that basic connection. Out of that comes a sense of satisfaction and abundance, which makes it easier to live in the truth of who we are. We’re then able to draw from that abundance and share it freely with others. We stop trying to decide who is worthy of it because we know that no one is. It is pure grace and gift! Last month Will posted this in his blog:

“Eventually in every faithful life, we will reach a point–most likely many points–when we realize that we are desperately in need of salvation and, at the same time, totally unable to save ourselves. When this knowledge travels from the head down to the heart, it breaks that heart open. Such experiences are painful. But as we allow the weight of our poverty and need to break open our hearts, there is more room for those same hearts to be filled with Christ’s transforming light and life.”

This lived process he describes requires vulnerability. Vulnerability is the key to ongoing conversion and growth.  It’s a risky position to live in a kind of constant openness to the other—because it means others could, and inevitably will, sometimes wound us. But only if we take this risk do we also allow the opposite possibility: the other might also gift us, free us, and even love us. Benedict and James arrived at this truth by lived experience, which led them to emphasize building community, and crafting a Rule, and a vow that would support it.

The Spirit flows through, out, and beyond us when we live a vulnerable life—the life we see mirrored in a God who is described as Trinity, as three perfectly handing themselves over, emptying themselves out, and then fully receiving what has been handed over. Such a life naturally births creativity and generativity.

It’s been my privilege to witness the work of the Spirit in Will’s ongoing discernment these last years: his cooperation with both the work of his psyche and that of the Spirit, keeping himself vulnerable to life and love, cultivating creativity, and wrestling with all that would destroy it. The ego hates and fears change and failure, but those who are Spirit-led never stop growing. The path to holiness is the same as the path to wholeness. We are never there yet. We are always on the way. There’s no controlling or manipulating it. All we can do is recognize it and tend it. Again, Will named it when he wrote:

“As we learn to surrender this kind of dying and rising action, we allow God to turn our lives into an oblation for the healing of the world. We cannot accomplish this pouring out of our lives. We can only accede to it. In the moments when we do, we find that the crucified life that we seek draws us ever deeper in to the heart of God.”

 As I said last month at Josép’s profession, the religious life is an ever-deepening love affair. This is the only way to make sense of it and faithfully live into it.  In the words of the Order’s great mystic, Fr. Alan Whittimore:

“I have known very many monks and nuns who were successful in love beyond all dreams or imagining. For they have heard in their hearts the whispering of the Perfect Lover. And it has been their deepest passion and their joy to surrender themselves to Him unto death, even the death of the Cross.”

May it continue to be so for you, Will!
+Amen.