Proper 27, Year A: November 12, 2017

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. John Forbis   OHC
Proper 27 - Sunday, November 12, 2017


To hear the sermon in its fullness click here.

 Br. John Forbis, OHC

We are in a stage of the Liturgical Year where we begin to look at the end before we begin again. If there is anything this morning’s scripture teaches us is that it is not a time to be smug. As Amos tells us, “Why do you want the day of the Lord?  It is darkness, not light.”  As W.B. Yeats comments in his poem The Second Coming:

The darkness drops again, but now I know. That twenty centuries of stony sleep. Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, and what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Why would we want the day of the Lord, indeed?!?! 

 

Certainly, the threat of Amos, Paul’s strange language and five virgins being barred from entering the wedding banquet are obvious reasons for uneasiness. However, these passages raise other questions for me.

Who is Amos really speaking to and why?  And what is Paul really speaking about?  What about the 10 virgins?  Who are they?  Who are the wise virgins and who are the foolish ones?  They are all bridesmaids, friends of the bride after all.

Perhaps the questions I am asking are beside the point. But something tells me that dismissing them too easily might mean missing an opportunity to meet the bridegroom when he comes.

Amos speaks to a people who are in great expectation for the Lord. And yet, he refutes any and every claim that the coming will be pretty. Those who escape a lion are only then to be surprised by a bear. God takes no interest or even pleasure in their “solemn assemblies”. The Lord will not accept anything they have to offer. What the Israelites think is going to get them right with God ends up being exactly what God despises. Who are God’s people now?

Paul writes to the Thessalonians “ … we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord will be caught up in the clouds together with those who have died to meet the Lord in the air …”  What?

The foolish virgins (or in another translation, the silly virgins) compound mistake after mistake. In their desperation, they say, “Give us some oil.”  It was a demand, not a request and they were demanding the wrong thing. They could have figured out that the light of the wise virgins or even more so the bridegroom was enough to bring them to the banquet. Instead, they went on some wild goose chase in the dark and were left outside the door. Even more so the wise ones could have shared their light if not their oil. It seems strange that no one thought of this.

Sure the foolish made their decisions and showed bad judgment, but perhaps the actions of the wise virgins or refusal to act begs the judgment that Amos brings down upon the Israelites. The bridegroom is delayed. Paul thought he would come during his lifetime, during the lifetime of the Thessalonian church. He was wrong. 10 virgins expected him earlier and only 5 were prepared when he finally does come. And Amos … well, Amos describes his coming as not something to celebrate too readily.

Maybe the key resides in the coming being unexpected, surprising, leaving unanswered questions, even throwing us off balance. And so we are kept on our toes, unsettled, uncomfortable, but awake. We are brought through Christ’s death and resurrection in Baptism itself to be people of God, and as people of God, we can no longer be people who are complacent or asleep. We are to be unsettled people, restless people, people who keep watch with love, people who long for justice and righteousness, people who are truly alive. And thus maybe even be people who unsettle as well.

In his book, The Sacred Voice is Calling, John Neafsey, a clinical psychologist and theology lecturer, who has focused much of his work on vocation and social conscience surmises, "… An uneasy conscience may be one of the best places to listen to the whisper of the Spirit that calls us to a better way."

Just when we think we know when the bridegroom is coming or even what he will look like, he shows us something entirely other. This gives us the capacity to show mercy and compassion. Righteousness is not about piety, but it is about empathy and solidarity with those who may feel they have no access to the bridegroom. When we are living in the truth of love, then, our worship truly expresses the mystery and disruption of God’s loving grace. This is not something that the world around us always wants to see. So many in the world would rather snuff that light out.

Let’s face it. We have been in the dark and have barred our own selves from the banquet. We are in need of guidance. But the call in the middle of the night may not be just to meet the bridegroom but to guide others to meet him as well. Then, the community is whole. Then, 10 virgins get into the banquet. Perhaps for this, we are to be prepared.

The true hope of all this apocalyptic literature is that no matter where we are or think we are, in our inadequacy, in our bad decisions and the consequences that come of those, even if we think we are in the dark and are not recognised, the bridegroom comes at any time, even at midnight, to meet us. Justice rolls and righteousness flow like mighty waters. And we are transformed, transformed as though we were caught up in a strong current right up into the air as Paul tells us. Christ draws us into this conversion. The banquet is still open to us and the guiding lamp in the middle of the night, as well as our own, can bring all of us there.

Proper 26, Year A: November 5, 2017

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Roy Parker, OHC
Proper 26 - Sunday, November 5, 2017

To hear the sermon in its fullness click here.

Br. Roy Parker, OHC

Significant portions of these remarks are indebted to the New Yorker magazine of October 23rd, and in their entirety appeal to your intercessory prayer and action for social justice.

The Gospel passage is Jesus’ denunciation of the exploitation of power by a social class deemed prophetic and therefore untouchable. The passage is entitled “Jesus Denounces Scribes and Pharisees,” in this instance comprising the first twelve verses of Matthew 23, but, on closer inspection, practically the entire chapter is dedicated to this indictment of those entrusted with the interpretation and application of religious law in the daily life of Palestinian Judaism, those trustees who cry “Peace” when they have something to eat but declare war against those who put nothing into their mouths.

An extraordinary series of “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” comprises, apparently, the most passionate verbal denunciation by Jesus of anyone in the Gospels. We might wonder, Why does Matthew devote practically an entire chapter to the problem, whereas the other Gospels have only a couple of verses? A good guess may be that Matthew is writing for Jewish-Christians. Therefore we’re presented with a lengthy catalog of indictments against a group whose position as interpreters and teachers of the Torah — the revealed laws upon which Israel's identity depends — confers a privilege and respect which shields it from the censure one would expect. This lengthy catalog is repeatedly marked by the phrase "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!" and perhaps nowadays Jesus would have said, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, scumbags!" Each of those Woes introduces a description of how this privileged class of supposed teachers, who are actually abusers, have perverted the original life-giving revelation into something oppressive and self-serving. In fact, the starkest examples of this perversion appear to be regulations associated with the Temple, giving rise to an observation by Abraham Heschel on one occasion that the most pervasive institutional sin should be called “the sin of the sanctuary,” as true, apparently, of Christians as of Jews. That sanctuaries are a promise and possibility of a portal between earth and heaven would seem the reason.

Therefore, Jesus concludes his list of woes against the scribes and Pharisees, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem . . . how often have I desired to gather your children together . . . and you were not willing. See, your (temple) is left to you, desolate, devoid of God.”

The untouchability of those associated with the sanctuary has, as we know, been compromised by a broad indictment of the priestly caste in the Western Church; it’s differently reflected in an interview between Marin Alsop, Director of the Baltimore Symphony, and Scott Simon of NPR’s Weekend Edition at the time, several years ago, when Maestra Alsop had accepted her appointment as director of the symphony. Scott Simon asked her why the symphony’s board of directors had taken so long to approve her appointment, to which she replied that in the culture of this country there remained the myth of an ultimate male authority figure casting its shadow over the legitimacy of any such female figure. In the time of Jesus, of course,  the myth of an ultimate male authority figure was writ even larger in the popular imagination.

If it’s legitimate to regard these so-called untouchables as abusers of the tradition entrusted to them, a comparison with the current revelations of sexual abuse by other male power figures may be useful as revealing just the beginnings of an undoing of the male mystique which informs American society. Furthermore, I regard the courage of the revealers as not unrelated to the passionate denunciation expressed by Jesus in the Gospel.

We talk about assault as if it were a new phenomenon as if it weren't the people in positions of authority who are so often responsible: lawyers, judges, priests, teachers, police officers, doctors, CEOs. Why do we act so shocked? The subject of sexual abuse is treated like global warming — we think that if we pretend it’s not happening, then maybe it will go away. For years - for centuries - the economic, physical and cultural subjugation of women has registered as something like white noise. Lately, it appears that we’re starting to hear the tune.

What had been a backdrop is now in the foreground; it has become a story with rotating protagonists which never seems to leave the news. Sexual harassment and assault is an issue that crosses all boundaries, political or otherwise. It's about predators in power who know that they are untouchable and the people who enable them. Thanks to mainstream feminism, victimized women have been supported to an unprecedented degree by much of the media and the public. At the same time, political backlash insures hard limits for this support. The increasing narrative clarity about male power does not always translate to progress. For women, it feels, all at once, shockingly possible, suddenly mandatory, and unusually frustrating to speak up.

We should pay attention to the dynamics that make this progress irregular: not all abusers meet with consequences, and not all women can attain firm ground. Men are still more often held to a standard of consistency than of morality. The star abusers were disgraced, in part, because of their hypocrisy; men who never pretended to see women as equals or as worthy of respect can generally just keep on as they were. There are significant constituencies in America who are not yet interested in holding men accountable for abusive behavior. And there are still huge swaths of women - the poor, the queer, the undocumented - who can’t count on the security that feminism has conferred on its wealthier, whiter adherents, or trust that their victimization would even become news.

Nevertheless, the hunger for and possibility of solidarity among women beckons. Recently, women have been posting their experiences of assault and harassment on social media. We might listen to and lament the horrific stories being shared, and also wonder: Whom, exactly, are we reminding that women are treated as second class? 

Being heard is one kind of power, and being free is another. We have undervalued women’s speech for so long that we run the risk of overburdening it. Speech, right now, is just the flag that marks the battle. The gains won by women are limited to those who can demand them. Individual takedowns and social media stories do not yet threaten the structural impunity of powerful men as a group. On one side of the issue, the moral weight is crushing, the energy vital and sincere. On the other side, there is disavowal and retrenchment. In between are plenty of people who would rather we just talked about something else. This type of problem always narrows to an unavoidable point. The exploitation of power does not stop once we consolidate the narrative of exploitation. A genuine challenge to the hierarchy of power will have to come from those who have it.

All Saints Day, Year A: November 1, 2017

All Saints Day 2017

Matthew 5:1-12

The Rev. Matthew Wright

To hear the sermon in its fullness click here.

The Rev. Matthew Wright

“Almighty God, you have knit together your elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of your Son Christ our Lord…”  “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints…”

Today, All Saints’ Day, the Church celebrates the mystery of our interdependence—what our creeds call “the Communion of Saints,” or in the words of today’s Collect, the “mystical body” in which we are all “knit together.”  And the saints, of course, are simultaneously all of us and also, particularly, those great exemplars who show us our full possibility and potential. Those of us on the way of Jesus are at one and the same time his saints, and we are becoming his saints.

Our Gospel for today’s feast is Matthew’s version of the Beatitudes, “Blessed are the meek, the poor in spirit, etc.”  And the word “blessed” we still apply to saints today, the great exemplary ones—“the Blessed Virgin Mary,” “Blessed James Huntington.”  And we get a much better sense of what Jesus was up to with this word if we look at the Aramaic that underlies the New Testament Greek. The word for “blessed” that Jesus would have used in his own language is the Aramaic tubwayhun, which literally means “ripe” or “ready for the picking”—a word from the agrarian culture Jesus grew up in. And when that word is used in reference to people, it can mean mature, integrated, whole, complete.

So right there is a basic Christian teaching—that there’s a trajectory in Christian life towards becoming ripened human fruit, and also the possibility to be unripe, immature. And so our growth into our own “blessed” possibility is our natural ripening process—which means that sainthood and sanctity aren’t something that take us out of our humanity; they’re instead the natural unfolding of a life fully and authentically lived.

And so I encourage you to go back sometime and meditate on the beatitudes as the conditions for human ripening: blessed, ripe, mature, are those who mourn—those who stay sensitive and close to the suffering of the world; ripe, full in sweetness and flavor, are the meek, the merciful, the pure in heart. In the Beatitudes, Jesus is laying out the conditions for our ripening, for our becoming fully human beings.

Significantly, our tradition tells us that this ripening process doesn’t happen in isolation, as individuals, but in communion, in interdependence. One of the more interesting Anglican thinkers of the 20th century who really got this was a man named Charles Williams. He was a member of the Inklings, the literary circle that included C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, and he wrote everything from theology—his book The Descent of the Dove chronicles the history of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Church—to “metaphysical thrillers” like War in Heaven and Descent into Hell.

The golden thread running through everything he wrote, however, is a doctrine he called “Co-inherence”—and along with it a corollary practice that he named “substituted love.”  For Williams, this was another way of understanding everything from the Communion of Saints to the Trinity to the Incarnation. Co-inherence teaches that we are all interwoven, that we co-inhere in each other. This is the teaching at the heart of the Incarnation—the Divine and the human co-inhering. The Trinity, of course, is the co-inherence, the interabiding, that exists within the very life of God. And the Eucharist received is the co-inherence of Christ in us, us in Christ, and God in matter.

Williams taught that our whole life unfolds in this Great Co-inherence, beginning in the womb of our mother, with whom we intimately interabide, and continuing in baptism, when we’re incorporated into a Body that is, God willing, trying to consciously live out this co-inherence. We live this out through acts of “substituted love”—William’s interpretation of St. Paul’s teaching that we are to “Bear one another’s burdens, and thereby fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal. 6:2).

The truth is, it’s simply the nature of things that we bear one another’s burdens, whether we like it or not. Future generations will bear the burden of climate change. Today we bear inherited burdens from a history of slavery and racism. But for Williams, a saint, a Christian, is someone who consciously bears and works to relieve the burdens of another, knowing that someone else is already carrying a burden for you. And he believed that within the Communion of Saints we bear burdens together across time and space and distance. Maybe you, in your life now, are carrying and healing a burden for your grandmother. Or maybe for someone who has yet to be born.

This is the mystery of the Communion of Saints and substituted love. And, of course, Jesus is our Great Substitution in Love—we believe that, somehow, across time, he carries our burdens, and that we, bound up in his Mystical Body, are called to do the same for one another. In this light, I want to share with you a story from Mother Virginia Brown, one of the first women ordained in the Episcopal Church and a founding member of the Rivendell Community. She writes:

"My father, a history professor, had been very ill with Parkinson’s, and toward the end he was quite confused. Yet when I visited him in the hospital, he was intent on communicating something to me, something important. He said he was working on a gift for us, and it was almost finished. He willed me to understand, I thought, that it was the gift of his life. And he told me, “I can look in a certain direction, and see children being fed.”  What I understood by that was that he knew he was doing some spiritual work for others by his patient suffering, and I believe he knew I understood. (It wasn’t something I tried to tell anyone else about—not till later.)

[The day after he died], my friend Cathy, who had also loved my father very much, was driving along the road to Nashville. It was spring, and the median was filled with poppies so gorgeous that she couldn’t take her eyes off them. Suddenly, she told me, she saw my father, there among the poppies. He was sitting down, surrounded by children, and was feeding each of them in turn with a spoon. In his arms he held a baby she recognized:  it was Becky, her daughter whom she had adopted in Haiti, having found her nearly dead of starvation, a six-month old baby weighing five pounds, too weak to move. Becky did live and grow up, and is now an adoptive mother herself—of six children. But Cathy saw her as that emaciated baby—but now, she was being fed, and was smiling and content. Then my father looked directly at Cathy, smiled, and said, “Here, everything is remembered, everything forgotten, and everything known in joy.”

Across the chasm of time and death, somehow, my father’s self-offering, his weakness and suffering, had helped comfort and sustain a Haitian baby on the point of death. Who would have imagined such a thing?  Yet when she told me about it I remembered how he had talked about seeing children being fed, out of the corner of his eye—as though he had been obliquely aware of it, though he couldn’t express it directly." 

We could easily write stories like this off as hopeful, wishful thinking. The hallucinations of a dying man and the grief-induced fantasies of a bereaved woman. But Charles Williams would say this is exactly how the Communion of Saints works—that we are constantly bearing one another’s burdens, in ways visible and invisible, known and unknown, across time and space and distance. And the only difference, we might say, between us and a saint is that a saint consents to bear these burdens willingly, consciously, and joyfully.

There’s great comfort in a teaching like this because it reminds us that we are never alone in our suffering or dying and that our burdens are always shared, even when we may not see or know it. 

Evelyn Underhill, another 20th century Anglican mystic who greatly influenced Williams, put it this way: “When we are confounded by sudden visions of a holiness and self-abandonment beyond our span, our share in the Communion of Saints assures us that other souls will suffer and adore for us, and make up for our deficiencies by their more abundant life. For since the life of the saints is the life of charity, they cannot keep anything for themselves alone. The Life by which they live is shared, communicated from one to another, as the sap of the Vine is given through the greater branches to the less.”

And so may we all grow as branches on the one Vine, bringing forth the ripened fruit of our humanity, and, held in the Great Co-inherence of the Saints, may we bear one another’s burdens consciously, willingly, and joyfully.

The last word I give to Charles Williams: “Blessed be He that He has made us members one of another and all members of Him… Blessed be He that He has quickened among [us] the unity, exchange, and substitution of love which is the pattern of Himself… Blessed be He that He continually makes all things new.”

And blessed be God in the saints. Amen.