Saint Michael and All Angels- September 29

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Randy Greve, OHC
St Michael and all Angels -  Friday, September  29, 2017

Br. Randy Greve, OHC

The paper you have is a photo stolen from Google of the Peace Fountain next to the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York City. There is no water around the sculpture so it is not technically a fountain, and it depicts an angel with a sword and the nearly severed head of Satan, which may not be some folks' image of peace, but that is what it is called! The plaque at the fountain reads thus: "Peace Fountain by Greg Wyatt celebrates the triumph of Good over Evil, and sets before us the world's opposing forces—violence and harmony, light and darkness, life and death—which God reconciles in his peace. When the fountain operates, four courses of water cascade down the freedom pedestal into a maelstrom evoking the primordial chaos of Earth. 

Foursquare around the base, flames of freedom rise in witness to the future. Ascending from the pool, the freedom pedestal is shaped like the double helix of DNA, the key molecule of life. Atop the pedestal a giant crab reminds us of life's origins in sea and struggle. Facing West, a somnolent Moon reflects tranquility from a joyous Sun smiling to the East. The swirls encircling the heavenly bodies bespeak the larger movements of the cosmos with which earthly life is continuous. 

 The Peace Fountain 

Nine giraffes—among the most peaceable of animals—nestle and prance about the center. One rests its head on the bosom of the winged Archangel Michael, described in the bible as the leader of the heavenly host against the forces of Evil. St. Michael's sword is vanquishing his chief opponent, Satan, whose decapitated figure plunges into the depths, his head dangling beneath the crab's claw. Tucked away next to the Sun, a lion and lamb relax together in the peace of God's kingdom, as foretold by the prophet Isaiah."

I know not all my brothers share my enthusiasm and devotion for the aesthetics of the sculpture, but none can deny that its dramatic lines and graphic contrasts are visually arresting and are meant to inspire or even provoke some further reflection. It really merits a visit to see all the way around it. I hope you will take the photo and continue to delve into the mystery depicted in the sculpture.

This feast of St Michael and all angels is unavoidably mystical and homiletically tricky because of the cryptic and symbolic nature of the Bible's language of angels and their activities. The other principal feasts of the Church are celebrations of events in the life of our Lord or his Church or doctrines which tend to lend themselves to some clear themes for preaching. Today's celebration invites a cosmic perspective as a reminder that we are part of an eternal drama that is described in metaphorical language yet also says something concrete about our world and our lives. 

Today we remember that within the mystery and wonder of God's creation exist beings and activities that are beyond our earth and time-bound selves to see or fully understand.That does not mean we can say nothing at all about angels or their interaction with earth, but that we first must be careful not to say too much, not to stretch the texts beyond their intent to fit our preconceived expectations. We can say that angels are created beings, that they are participants in the heavenly praise of God, that they interact with humans as God sends them to communicate and protect, that Satan is a creature, a fallen angel who once knew the life of heaven but who chose to rebel and fight against God and God's creation but who, through the victory of the cross, has limited power to accuse and deceive until the final redemption of the world which will bring about his annihilation.

The event in the sculpture is obviously taken from the reading from the Revelation to John we just heard. I know that the Revelation makes some Christians nervous because its depiction of a violent God pouring out various kinds of wrathful punishment on rebellious humans is not an appealing image and seems inconsistent with the mercy and kindness of Jesus. It seems like there are two completely different stories going on so being the "either/or" culture we are, a choice must be made. While the violence is there and troubling, Revelations' larger agenda is to describe in the most urgent and graphic way possible the triumph of the kingdom over whatever earthly empires, political forces, or systems and acts of evil that seek to thwart it.

The violence, within the narrative, serves to illustrate the reality of sin and evil and the greater reality of a God who alone can overcome it. As heaven witnesses the justice of God, they praise God's intervention in conquering evil and bringing ultimate and eternal peace. Revelation is the bookend, God's answer to what was created for goodness and fell into sin in Genesis. If the earth is formed from formlessness and void and darkness at the beginning, then Revelation is the final and ultimate undoing and overcoming of the forces and systems that have brought pain and alienation. The war in heaven and the casting out of Satan is one more event in this liturgy of redemption and the coming of the kingdom in its fullness.

Our Holy Communion liturgy in the Book of Common Prayer acknowledges the angels by simply saying "with" before we sing "Holy, holy, holy", which is a reference to Isaiah 6 and Revelation 4, the words of angels and the saints in heaven. In the presence of the meeting of earth and heaven we acknowledge and celebrate that we are not alone - we are not only this gathered community but we are joining in the eternal chorus of heaven already in progress that includes the departed and the angels, a vast company that is, in their life beyond time and space, aware of and attentive to our worship.

So the cosmic drama of redemption sweeps us up into its action and voice in anticipation of the coming new heaven and new earth. This feast is a reminder that the worship due and given to God alone is shared by the living and the departed, humans and angels, across time and eternity, and, because it is created and redeemed by God, all creation as well - sun, moon, earth, wind, water, sky, stars, planets, galaxies - all of it joined in one eternal chorus of praise.

The cultural voice is that spirituality is principally about my individual experience with God based on my beliefs and feelings which meet my needs. The challenge of today is the question, what would it mean to recognize the corporate nature of my prayer and move from an exclusive "What about me?" To an entering into being with angels, archangels and all the company of heaven - not just at the altar, but all the time? To do this means that we become aware of that which does not share in the company of heaven - Satan and his angels. We are with the heavenly chorus which is a chorus of victory.

The two qualities of the Peace Sculpture that most attract me are the contrast of St. Michael's arms - one with the sword and the other embracing the giraffe – metaphors for what has been and what will be. The other is the dragon's dangling head. Satan is disabled, mortally wounded, but not annihilated, he is still there. This symbol of God's power and victory over whatever tempts and harms God's people is also a source of praise. The praise is that we are not mere victims of our weaknesses, we are not powerless in the face of trials, but we are victors with St. Michael in a world where sin and evil are still present, but where pain and alienation are not ultimate and do not have the last word. 

When we pray with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven, we join in their song of the victory that is won, yet not yet fully claimed. We join in the celebration of sin's defeat even as we groan for our redemption and lament our own failures to enter this song and this victory.  Both the sword and the giraffe are parts of our praise.  This good news does not deny the presence and problem of evil, but sets it within an eschatological context of victory and hope.

As co-celebrants with the angels in their praise of God and the victory over the dragon, we are not merely observers of this sculpture, but participants in its drama - its story is our story and its hope for a new world is the hope that sustains our praise.  Amen.

Proper 20 A - September 24, 2017

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Bob Pierson, OHC
Proper 20 - Sunday, September 24,2017

Br. Bob Pierson 

In July of the year 2000, I had an opportunity to attend the Church of St. Mary Madgalene in Toronto with a friend one Sunday morning. My friend wanted to go because he had heard that “St. Mary Mag,“ as I think it was called, had the highest Anglican liturgy in Toronto.  My friend was not disappointed, but I was a bit put off by the whole thing, until it came time for communion.

When we picked up the hymnal to join in the communion hymn, I saw that it was one of my favorite hymn texts, “There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy.” I had sung that hymn text to several different tunes over the years, and almost knew the text from memory.  So you can imagine my surprise when, all of a sudden, I found a verse that I had never seen before.  It went:

But we make God’s love too narrow by false limits of our own,

And we magnify God’s strictness with a zeal God will not own.

Wow! In that moment, it was as though I heard the voice of God saying to me, “Pay attention!  I’ve been trying to get this message across to you for years.”  As I reflected on these words, I found myself wondering why I’d never seen that verse before, and when I got home I checked every hymnal I could find, including Hymnal 1982. Each hymnal I looked at had a setting of “There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy,” but none of them contained that particular verse. 

Perplexed by the verse’s absence in Episcopal, Catholic, Lutheran and Methodist hymnals, I decided to check another source, and I googled, “original text of ‘There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy.’”  Up came the original hymn text—all 12 verses, and sure enough there was my mystery verse, verse #11.  Over the years I’ve continued to look for that verse wherever that hymn is included in a hymnal, and so far I’ve only found it twice—in the Church of England hymnal I found at St. Mary Mag and in a Unitarian hymnal.

I can understand why hymnal editors would not publish 12 verses of anything, but why was that verse almost always left out?  I suspect it’s because most of us don’t really want to believe that God is so loving and merciful.  We favor the idea of a just God, a God who strives for fairness and justice just like we do. Today’s Gospel parable really flies in the face of our desire for fairness from God.

The vineyard owner in the parable is not fair.  His generosity goes way beyond fairness and that upsets those who worked all day. It’s only fair that they should get more than those who worked only 1 hour. To run a business any other way is foolish.  How many workers would show up tomorrow at the beginning of the day, if they knew they could get a full days’ wage for working only one hour?

Of course, Jesus’ purpose in telling this story is not to teach us how to run a business but rather to show us what “the Kingdom of heaven” is like.  God’s love and mercy go way beyond what we think is fair and just.  God’s love is “crazy”. It doesn’t fit our expectations; it’s so much more!  We don’t earn God love.It’s unconditional.

And that’s what Jonah was so upset about. He wanted those Ninevites to pay for their sins, and when God forgave them, he was really upset. He threw a huge tantrum, telling God he wanted to die rather than witness God’s tremendous mercy. What an over-reaction!

And we see that same over-reaction today in different ways. One recent example is the conservative backlash over Fr. James Martin’s new book, “Building A Bridge,” in which he talks about the need for the church to treat LGBT people with “respect,compassion, and sensitivity.” The nastiness of the attacks against him have caused others to “disinvite” him to speak on completely unrelated topics. And all the nastiness is supposedly done in God’s name. Indeed, some do “make God’s love too narrow by false limits of [their] own.”

So where does that leave us?  I sometimes think God should smite all those people who are so judgmental and nasty. But then it occurs to me that I’m doing the same thing to them that they are doing to others. God wants to forgive and heal everyone, and God’s love and mercy are extended to even those who would deny that generous love and mercy to others. 

Perhaps Paul has some words of wisdom for us to take away today when he says “Live your life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.” In other words, be God’s love and mercy in the world, and if that means having to suffer a bit, embrace “the privilege not only of believing in Christ but of suffering for him as well….” Jesus struggled to convince His world of God’s great love and mercy, and He calls us to do the same today.  God’s love is not fair; it’s all grace!

Holy Cross Day-September 14, 2017

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Robert James Magliula, OHC

Holy Cross Day - Thursday September 14,2017

Robert James Magliula 

In 1098 St. Anselm wrote his treatise Why Did God Become Human? In it he posited the first systematic articulation of the Cross as payment for sin. His purpose was to provide a rational argument for the necessity of the Incarnation and death of Jesus. He did so with a cultural model drawn from his time and place: the relationship of a medieval lord to his peasants. If a peasant disobeyed the lord, compensation must be made. He then applied that model to our relationship with God. We have been disobedient and deserve to be punished. And yet God loves us and wants to forgive us. But the price for sin must be paid. Jesus as a human, who was also divine, and thus without sin, paid the price.

A few hundred years later, in response to this theory, John Duns Scotus said that Jesus wasn’t solving any problems by coming to earth and dying. Blood atonement was never required for God to love us. The great mystery of Incarnation was not a problem-solving technique, or dependent on human beings messing up. The Incarnation was motivated by love. God’s love was infinite from the first moment of creation. The Cross was to change humanity, not a necessary transaction to change God. The Cross was a pure gift so that humanity could witness God’s love. Even though Anselm’s theory of atonement was not central in the first thousand years of Christianity, it became the primary lens through which the Cross, the Hebrew Scriptures, and the New Testament were read. This violent theory of redemption legitimated punitive and violent problem solving all the way down to our own day.

For all authentic spiritual teachers, their message is the same as their life; their life is their message. This strong emphasis on being saved by Jesus’ death allowed us to largely ignore Jesus’ way of life. All we really needed Jesus for was the last three days or three hours of his life. We still resist seeing the Cross as the pattern for life and a path for our own liberation. If we would imitate Jesus in practical ways, our consciousness would move toward love, nonviolence, justice, and inclusivity. Immature religion actually stalls people at early stages of magical and tribal consciousness, while convincing them that they are enlightened or saved. We generally prefer heavenly transactions to our own transformation.

The way of the Cross looks like failure. In fact, you could say that the Cross is about how to win by losing, how to let go creatively, how the only real ascent is descent. On the Cross, Jesus came to give us the courage to trust and live into the divine within us. He modeled it for us in his life and death.

The cross validates the centrality of paradox at the heart of Christianity. There is a cruciform pattern to reality. Reality is not meaningless and absurd but neither is it perfectly consistent. Reality is filled with contradictions, and so are we. Our faith is not a belief that dogmas or moral opinions are true, but a trust that God is accessible to us—and even on our side. Jesus was able to touch and heal people who trusted him as an emissary of God’s love, not people who assessed intellectual statements and decided whether they were true or false. Rational certitude is exactly what the Scriptures do not offer us. They offer us something much better: an intimate relationship, a path where we must discover for ourselves that grace, love, mercy, and forgiveness are absolutely necessary for survival in an uncertain world. God is to be found in all things, even and most especially in the painful, tragic, and sinful things—exactly where we do not want to look for God. We are all participating—with varying degrees of resistance and consent—in the faith journey that Jesus has already walked. All we can do is make what is objectively true fully conscious for us.

Jesus agreed to carry the mystery of suffering and not to demand perfection of creation.
Those who hold the contradictions—and try to resolve them in themselves—become agents of transformation and reconciliation. The insistence on the perfect is often the enemy of the practical and good. Perfectionism becomes angry righteousness. It contributes to intolerance and judgmentalism. In society, it creates ideologies that tolerate no compromise or ability to negotiate. We must try to be peace and do justice, but not expect to find perfection in ourselves or in the world. Jesus was a realist; he was patient with the ordinary, the broken, the weak, and those who failed. Following him is not a means of creating some ideal social order as much as it is a vocation to love the way that God loves.

To bear the mystery of the cross is to agree to find God in a clearly imperfect world. Unfortunately, we would much sooner have order and control. Most prefer beliefs, dogma and perfect objective morality to biblical faith, because certitude allows us to predict and control outcomes, and to justify rewards and punishments. That is not the message of the Cross or the Gospel.
     
The only things strong enough to break open the heart are things like pain, mistakes, unjust suffering, tragedy, failure, and the general unpredictability of life. Life itself will lead us to the edge of our own resources through such events. This reality was brought home to me again and again in our work in South Africa. We must be led to an experience or situation that we cannot fix, or control, or understand. That’s where faith begins. We hear it when Jesus called out on the Cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me” and then totally surrendered into the hands of the living God.

The Cross embodies the way of descent and mature spirituality leads us to enter willingly, into the dark periods of life. Transformative power is discovered in the dark—in questions and doubts, seldom in the answers. Our cultural instincts and ego prompt us to try to fix or change events in order to avoid changing ourselves. We must learn to stay with the pain of life, without answers, without conclusions, and if we are honest, some days without meaning. Grace leads us to a state of emptiness, to that momentary sense of meaninglessness. It seems some form of absence always needs to precede any deepening experience of presence. Desire makes way for depth.

Thomas Merton expressed the doubt and uncertainty we all face in this familiar prayer:

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

+Amen.