The Third Sunday of Easter - April 26, 2020

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Luc Thuku, OHC
The Third Sunday of Easter - April 26, 2020

Acts 2:14a,36-41
1 Peter 1:17-23
Luke 24:13-35

Click here for an audio version of this sermon.

Spirit of the risen Lord, fall afresh on me. Mold me, shape me, enlighten me, use me; that every word that comes from my mouth may be what you want said for the Spiritual nourishment of your people and for the greater glory of your name; you who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

In one of her quotable quotes, Pema Chodron says, "When there is a big disappointment, we do not know if that is the end of the story... It may just be the beginning of a great adventure."

This is true of two of the disciples we encounter in today’s gospel, popularly called the disciples of Emmaus. They are going away from Jerusalem, Mount Zion, the Holy City, the Lord’s ‘holy mountain’, God’s dwelling place, built strongly compact! (Psalm 2:6, 122:3) The disciples are on a descent, both topographical and spiritual, from this very city, the city of God. They are going the wrong way: they have left their hopes in Jerusalem! The two have given up hope of, or at least are disappointed with, the Messiah that they thought Jesus was and are headed back home to Emmaus.

As disappointed people usually do, they are talking to each other about it. As he always does by making the first move, approaching without intrusion, Jesus invites himself to their discussion and journey. One of the disciples has a name, Cleopas, and the other one is nameless. We will come back to these two in a moment. First let us consider some broad thoughts or messages that today’s gospel passage is presenting to us.

One: The story is happening later in the afternoon of the Resurrection Sunday, and death has been defeated, but the news goes unknown and unheeded. The world is mute and filled with fear. Life has made a full circle from Palm Sunday. On Palm Sunday, the city was welcoming a messiah with jubilation and pomp. The Messiah has been crucified and the question is…what now? Unfortunately for them, they were looking and hoping for a different type of a Messiah, one who would reign from the throne of David. They conceive the wrong throne and in their eyes death remains the apparent king. The good news however is that God gives us the Savior we need, not the Savior we want. Israel has just been redeemed, rescued, and saved in a way way bigger than was expected. It can be compared to a teenager expecting his wealthy parents to buy him a used Subaru when he gets his driver's license, but dad buys a Ferrari instead and the kid doesn't know how to deal with the situation...mainly because the responsibility on his part will be bigger!

Two: There is a profound difference between knowing something and believing something. These two gentlemen know their scriptures well. In fact if they are the average Jew, they have the majority of the Old Testament memorized. The issue here is that they know in their mind. The problem is that the movement from knowing to believing is a supernatural act that they were not engaging with. The point of the Bible is not to know the Bible but to know God. You can know something without believing...you can know the resurrection happened but deny it every day with how you live. I can know that sin will kill me but not believe with my being. My behavior will tell you what I believe. There is always a chasm between what I know in my head and the way I walk with my feet. It is therefore understandable when Jesus scolds the two and by extension you and I: "Oh how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared!" Jerome teaches that ignorance of scripture is ignorance of Christ. The Lord affirms the converse: Knowledge of scripture is knowledge of Christ.

In our Gospel today, Luke is wrestling with answering a question that we have found ourselves posing to ourselves… more than once I guess… if we are genuine Christians: How do I know that the resurrection really happened? How is it not a fairy tale like that of the Easter bunny that lays eggs, or the magical man that comes through the chimney bearing gifts at Christmas, or even those of the one eyed giants that were supposed to come and eat us as children if we lived short of expectations?

Luke gives us three discernible marks.

The first one is Scripture. In verse 25 of our gospel passage Jesus, beginning with Moses and all the prophets, speaks to them, all in scriptures written about himself. The point where Jesus starts should tell us something! Another author of quotable quotes, the Presbyterian theologian Tim Keller asks, “If Jesus didn’t think he could live life well without knowing scriptures inside out, why would we?”  Well, if you look carefully at everything from Genesis all through the Old Testament, the ties of activities and stories point to one thing: a life story, a face and a name: JESUS!

One of the Prophets that Jesus quoted at length at the commencement of his public ministry is Isaiah. (And I would imagine Isaiah was Jesus' favorite prophet because he happens to be my favorite, and Jesus and I have a lot in common!) Isaiah gives the people of Israel the hope of redemption by a loving God, who came to redeem us in the form of his only begotten son. This God loves us unconditionally; he is with us and continues with us in and through the small or great things that happen in our day-to-day life. It is he who is reassuring us (in Isaiah  43:1-12, a passage that I would recommend we individually read and do lectio divina on) that we should not fear because he has called us by name, he has redeemed us, we are his! He assures us that when we pass through the waters he will be with us and the waters will not overwhelm us! He tells us that when we walk through fire we shall not be burned and the flames shall not consume us for he is our God, the Holy One of Israel, our savior! He tells us that we are precious in his sight, honored, and loved! He continues to assure us not to fear for he is with us to the end of times. You and I are his chosen Witnesses. We are his servants, the chosen ones; so that we may help others know and believe in him. Before him there was no God and beside him there is no savior. Our two disciples are in for a lecture that doubles up as self-disclosure!

The second discernible point is the Eucharist. In verse 28, we hear that as they approached the village, Jesus pretended to move on but when invited did not decline the invitation. God takes our little gestures of love and makes them occasions for Salvation. He joins them for a meal and then breaks bread and their eyes are opened! When we gather at the table together and invite Jesus in our midst, something happens deeper within us, something mysterious, something mystical, something bordering crazy, something that you and I cannot put a finger on; but one thing it does is to enrich our individual and communal faith. We get courage to do the impossible.

After inviting Jesus and having this intimate encounter that opens their eyes to recognize him. He vanishes from them, yet he only departed in bodily form, for he remained nonetheless present, then as now, under the form of bread. Our two disciples took a seven mile return journey to Jerusalem at night because their doubt, their disappointment, and the fear that doubt and disappointment brings, had been lifted up! The word used for their setting out at once for Jerusalem in Greek is anistanai …"to rise up"... the very same word that describes Christ’s resurrection. They too, like Christ, have been raised to new life and filled with the glorious news, like Mary the mother of Jesus at the Annunciation and the Magdalene earlier in the day at the tomb; they cannot contain themselves! Converted, they make an about-turn and dash off to announce the victory of the Lord.

We hear the same in today’s first reading from the book of Acts. We see Peter also transformed by the resurrection event and of course the Spirit of the Risen Lord to overcome his fear, a fear clearly depicted at the passion, to become bold. He too “rises up” from the death that fear causes and preaches filled with courage, and this led to a mass conversion of about three thousand people! Something happens when we celebrate the resurrection together. Our collective spirit shouts from the rooftops… “He is alive and I know it….not because I have read it but because I have experienced it!”

The third discernible point is that You Meet a Person who has Met Jesus. In verse 31, we hear when the eyes of the two disciples were opened, they recognized him, he disappeared and they asked each other: "Were our hearts not burning within us?" They rose up, returned to Jerusalem and found the eleven and said "It is true; He is alive!" Earlier on, Peter, I guess had said, “I think he is alive,” of course from Mary Magdalene’s account, but seemingly nobody was believing him. The disciples are now confirming: Peter was telling the truth because we had this experience as well!

Now, If I were there when these two guys came back, in my mind I would be saying, Good for you, Peter; good for you, Cleopas; good for you, Nameless guy...but what about me? When do I get to meet Jesus? Maybe some of us are saying the same thing and asking the same question.

The good news this morning, however, is that you have met Jesus, maybe without knowing, because you have met someone who knows the resurrection is real because he or she has met the resurrected Jesus!

If you have never met someone who has met the resurrected Jesus, this morning I want to serve as your proxy. Some of you I know and some of you I don’t know, but I can tell you as certain as the sun will go down this evening and rise tomorrow, that I have met Jesus and the resurrection is real. I will testify about a few times out of many that I have met Jesus and mostly for me it happens when the battle or darkness in my life is at its thickest. However, it is important for you to recognize that it has nothing to do with me. It is all about Jesus. It is all about what he has done in my life, just as he has done in the lives of numerous others including all (or at least most) of you listening to me this morning, and if you haven’t met him yet, I hope today is that great day for you to meet him!

I was with the resurrected Jesus in March 2005 when I was leaving a beloved vocation and religious congregation. All looked bleak, lost and hopeless; but Jesus was there whispering to me all the time that all will be well,  I heard the following words very clearly in my heart one morning after a very agonizing and tearful moment of prayer: "I am preparing you for a life that will draw you even more closer to me because I want your undivided attention!" It never made sense at the time but I believed! Wasn’t my heart burning all the way as he led me to contemplative Benedictine Monasticism!

In November 2009, I had what appeared like a mild stroke and it was diagnosed as TIA (Trans-Ischemic Attack). I was terrified that I would get paralyzed on my left hand side that had weakened considerably. However the main issues were resolved within a week. I did receive a lot of visits at the Hospital and prayers were said almost round the clock by the Missionary Sisters I was working for at the time and by friends and relatives. In the midst of the fear, wasn't my heart burning because deep within me and from those who visited and called I kept hearing the voice of the resurrected Jesus assuring me that all will be well!

I met with the resurrected Jesus about two years ago when I was severely depressed and doubt about matters of faith assaulted me, but my heart was burning within me because he was there assuring me: “I am with you...there is grace for you because I am still here”... Words that seemed to come from nowhere! Wasn't my heart burning within me because I knew he was there and it was HE speaking those words to my heart!

I met the resurrected Jesus about two years back when he gave me a job that proved to be exactly what I needed. Not the money-making endeavor I was hoping for, or the rescue I wanted, but the rescue that I needed; a time of rest and healing combined with serving the needy so that I do not lose focus on the calling he had put in me a long time ago of service to the poor and needy! Wasn’t my heart burning within me throughout the duration I was on the job because he was right there with me and in the midst of it, drawing me back to him and back to his plans for me while I was busy taking the direction to Emmaus rather than persevere in Jerusalem!

Dear people of God, there is a difference between a heartburn and a burning heart! And I know from experience that people and events especially in the world, country and times we are living in at the moment, are capable of giving us both with a lethal dose of the first at times! I am however speaking of the later, a burning heart, that only comes from love or a realization that we are loved even when we don’t deserve it, and unconditionally!

Like Paul, I do not come to you with persuasive words, clever arguments, or anything of substance other than this: I have met Jesus. He is alive. He is risen from the dead just as he said! He is with us, He is in this church this morning and in a moment we are going to acknowledge him in the creed, and encounter, worship and receive him in the Eucharist, because if He is risen from the dead and He is God, we can’t do anything else but adore, worship and celebrate Him!

One question to ponder as we take a moment of reflection this morning and for as long as it lingers is...Is your heart burning within you? And if not, what is holding you back? 

Thine be the glory, Risen conquering son.
Endless is the victory, thou o’er death has won!
Amen.

The Second Sunday of Easter - April 19, 2020

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Robert Sevensky, OHC
The Second Sunday of Easter - April 19, 2020

Acts 2:14a,22-32
1 Peter 1:3-9
John 20:19-31

Click here for an audio version of this sermon.

Day by day, dear Lord,
of thee three things I pray:
to see thee more clearly,
love thee more dearly,
follow thee more nearly, day by day. Amen.

If you have been following the readings for the daily Eucharist and daily Offices appointed for this past Easter Week, that week that the Eastern Orthodox tradition calls Bright Week, you will have heard or read no less than thirteen Gospel accounts of various appearances of Jesus after his Resurrection.  And this is in addition to the passage from Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians that we read on Monday, one the earliest text we have attesting to the Resurrection, where Paul tells us:

“…I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas [Peter], then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.”

Paul adds that sometime later, perhaps several years later, Jesus also appeared to him on the road to Damascus, an event which Paul understands to be of the same nature and magnitude of those Gospel stories and making him an apostle in his own right.

These thirteen accounts overlap and, as you know, the details do not always agree. Through the ages there have been numerous attempts to construct a ‘harmony” of these accounts, to make them orderly, to assign a time and place for each, and to mold them into a coherent whole. But in truth, this is virtually impossible. And to say this is to say no more or no less than that these Gospel narratives of the appearances of the Risen One are exactly what we might expect in ordinary human experience.

I am thinking here of reports of accidents or crimes or other sudden, dramatic events. Those directly involved or even more distant observers often have strikingly divergent accounts of what occurred. It is now generally accepted that people see and remember things differently or fail to see certain things at all or forget or embellish or even create important details.

If you, for example, have taken an introductory psychology course in the past 20 years or so, you have probably been introduced to the Invisible Gorilla. This is a fascinating video test of perception, of its power and its limitations. The subjects are asked to watch a video of two teams of three people each pass around a basketball. They are instructed to be attentive to how many times the team in white shirts did a pass. It lasts for about a minute. And about halfway through, a woman dressed as a gorilla walks into the middle of the group, faces the camera, beats her chest, and then exits. The amazing thing is that, when shown in a classroom setting, about 50 percent of the classroom subjects do not notice the gorilla. They were too busy counting the number of passes. If you’ve never seen this video, you can watch it on YouTube. Just enter “Invisible Gorilla.” You will find yourself asking, as did I: how did they ever not see that?

Another equally famous experiment involves a journalism professor delivering a lecture. In the midst of it, an accomplice enters the classroom, a mildly charged verbal exchange ensues between the professor and the accomplice, who then pulls out a banana, “shoots” the professor and exits. The class is then immediately asked to write down what they saw. And not surprisingly, perhaps, many saw not a banana but a gun. Now admittedly the banana was painted black, but still. What do we really see and how trustworthy are our perceptions? And what do we miss? And when and how often?

And then of course there is the recognized fact that memories can be and are modified and change over time and under certain conditions, often tailored to what we would have liked to have happened or what we think the inquirer might want to hear.  Certainly, the older I get, the more dramatic this appears. I am now often surprised at what my sister remembers of our childhood and at how different it is from my own memories. Hers are often more textured or nuanced and certainly different.

There is an extensive literature in the social, psychological, and medical sciences surrounding this that touches on all areas of our life, from the reliability of eyewitnesses in criminal or civil investigations to community relations to, yes, even biblical truth.

Should it surprise us, then, that the various stories of the Resurrection diverge in details both small and great, and that individual and communal memory over time has shaped and reshaped the narratives of these biblical authors and their sources?  I think not.

In today’s gospel, Jesus tells Thomas and us: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”  Nevertheless, we prioritize seeing. We still say, “Seeing is believing.”  Though again we must ask: what is seeing? Just what kind of seeing are we and Jesus talking about? Are we like those subjects who observe an event and miss the gorilla right in their midst? Or like those who see a gun where there is only a banana? Are there deeper, more adequate ways of understanding seeing and sensing Truth that go beyond crude experiments?

In his weekly column posted on Good Friday, New York Times opinion writer Frank Bruni profiled Cyrus Habib, the young lieutenant governor of Washington state. And in a follow-up newsletter, Bruni reminds us that Habib, who is not yet forty:

“…went blind at age 8, graduated from Columbia University, won a Rhodes scholarship, got a Yale law degree and made a big splash in politics, then decided that ambition was consuming him. He recently announced that he would leave office later this year to begin the roughly 10-year process to become a…Jesuit priest.”

Bruni continues:

“Because of space constraints, there was much about Habib that I didn’t get to share in the column. For instance, I mentioned his trek last year to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro but not his revelatory, gorgeous explanation of what a blind climber experiences in lieu of a conventionally defined view.

“You feel it,” Habib told me. “You feel the whole world dropping away. I have a sense of spatiality, based on acoustics and maybe even other types of senses that I can’t scientifically describe. I can feel when I’m in a huge cathedral. I can feel when I’m in a small bedroom.” At the top of Kilimanjaro, he said, “It felt to me like I was on the moon, because of the thinness of the air. You’re kind of high — lightheaded — and you feel this sense of vastness that’s not just around you but also below you. You can feel it in your body.”

Bruni's title comment for this is: “We see with more than our eyes.”

Cyrus Habib certainly sees with more than his eyes. Mary Magdalene saw with more than her eyes. And so did Peter and Thomas and the other Apostles. And the women at the tomb and maybe even those 500 disciples that St. Paul refers to. And so, my brothers and sisters, do we. Our seeing, our faith is never perfect. We sometimes see guns where there are only bananas and we miss the gorillas. But we do see Jesus, somehow, with more than our eyes, though we may not be able to describe it scientifically. And that seeing is for me, at least, at the very root of faith. That is why I am here today. And probably why you are as well. And that may be enough for us to know now, today in this very strange season.

What then do I say of the Resurrection of Christ? I say: Yes! But what exactly that Yes entails is often quite unclear or downright opaque.  Some days I’m ready to affirm the words of the 39 Articles of Religion that:  “Christ did truly rise again from the dead, and took again his body, with flesh, bones and all things appertaining to the perfection of Man’s nature.”  And on other days, all I can manage is simply to confess that “Christ is risen” and trust that he will, in his tender mercy and at the right time, fill in the details. In either case, however, and in any case, I need to be prepared to see with more than my eyes. And so must we all.  We need to sense with our whole being and, as Cyrus Habib says, feel in our body the advent of the Risen One who comes to us in our upper rooms or on our road to our Emmaus or who meets us in Galilee, wherever that might be. We must keep our eyes open, all of them. We must, to paraphrase the Prologue to Rule of St. Benedict, gaze with the eye of the heart.

Once again I find myself challenged and comforted by the words of Archbishop Rowan Williams who said, “No matter how early you go to the tomb, God has already been there first.”

It’s not about getting up early enough or getting there fast enough, is it?  It’s about opening our eyes to the One who, no matter how early or late we arrive at the tombs or graveyards or dead places in our lives, is there ahead of us preparing a place, longing to greet us, to feed us, to heal us, and embrace us and who is content to abide with us forever.

If only we could see this. If only we could see him. If only we could learn to see with more than our eyes.

Day by day, dear Lord,
of thee three things I pray:
to see thee more clearly,
love thee more dearly,
follow thee more nearly, day by day. Amen.

Easter: The Sunday of the Resurrection - April 12, 2020

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Robert James Magliula, OHC
The Sunday of the Resurrection - April 12, 2020

Romans 6:3-11
Matthew 28:1-10

Click here for an audio version of this sermon.

Augustine called the Great Vigil the Mother of All Vigils. It lets ritual and Scripture do its work on us by recounting our salvation history, unfolding our theology in an experiential way through sacred gestures and acts of ritualized memory, that cannot be exhausted or explained by words alone. The work of sacred rituals like initiation is to situate life in a larger frame, so nature, beauty, suffering, work, sexuality, and ordinary moments are seen to have transcendent significance. They give life meaning— the one thing the soul cannot live without. The integration of heaven and earth is the necessary human and spiritual task, or this world never becomes home.

This morning, as we made our way from death into hope for new life, we let the fire, light, scriptures, water, and gathered community testify to the deep truth of what is sometimes lost in translation. Paul too lets the water do the talking as he uses baptismal practice to convey his theology. There is more than what we see and do, far more than we can say or explain. That’s the truth of the sacraments and the sacramental encounter. Sacraments are gestures of both memory and hope, empowered by anamnesis---remembering. Baptismal language gives definition to the bookends of the Christian life. It marks both the beginning and the end of one’s faith journey. The paschal candle itself, the symbol of the Risen Christ, that once burned bright for a person’s baptism burns again for that person’s funeral liturgy.

The words of Paul’s Letter to the Romans comprise the most potent statement on baptism written in the New Testament. Paul interprets Baptism as an event that joins Christians to Jesus’ death and resurrection. He writes:

“All of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death. Therefore, we have been buried with him by baptism, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:3-4).

This understanding of baptism as the paschal mystery has dominated in the West since the 4th century. It went hand in hand with the emphasis on Easter as the most appropriate day to celebrate baptism. Across cultures initiation is always, in some form, an experience of the tension and harmony of opposites: of loss and renewal, darkness and light, death and resurrection.

Paul insists that it is dying and rising, always held together, inseparable sides of the same life, that constitute a faithful way to make sense of one’s bond with Christ. Sometimes prepositions are the most important words in a Pauline sentence. Here, the prepositions “with” and “in” are critical to following his logic. We die “with” Christ in baptism, and we will be raised “with” Christ at his coming in glory. Between now and then, however, we walk “in” newness of life. We do not die alone, and we do not rise alone. Even the five wax covered nails in the Paschal candle, recalling the five wounds of Christ, remind us that his wounds are ours and ours are his. Six separate times in this letter Paul speaks of our lives being tied up with Christ.

Paul is not naïve about the lingering reality of sin in human experience. For Paul, sin is always in the singular, and its opponent is not forgiveness but the grace of God in Jesus Christ. We are not punished for our sins we are punished by our sins. Suffering was not something Jesus did for us but part of the paschal pattern that he revealed and invited us to share. Many with privilege in the United States are missing out on the redemptive meaning of their own suffering. By trying to handle it through willpower, denial, or medication, they’ve forgotten that we do not handle suffering, suffering handles us in deep and mysterious ways that become the very matrix of new life. God used Jesus’ death to defeat the powers of sin and death.

We proclaim that Christ is risen this morning, although we know full well that we are not. We are keenly aware today of what is not yet true of the world in which we live. We struggle with the forces of evil that continue to torment God’s world. We face the certainty of our own deaths. What has changed in baptism is not the existence of sin and death, but their deadly hold over us. Not only does something die in baptism, but new life emerges. Paul talks of this new life in both present and future tenses. Resurrection is God’s final word and the Gospel’s first word. Easter announces the reality of death but announces the greater reality of life.

Matthew’s version of the resurrection story fits perfectly as the final reading of this liturgy. His Gospel is most linked to our salvation history and the developing story of God’s grace. It also parallels in narrative the darkness to light theme of the Vigil. As we gathered in darkness and moved toward the light, the story has the two women coming in the darkness and moving toward an encounter with the resurrection as the sun rises. Matthew recounts it from the women’s perspective, not only what they see, say, or do, but also what they feel. He conveys how the first Easter is exploding with excitement and urgent energy. They run with both fear and great joy.

Matthew’s point is that there is no merely naturalistic way of speaking of the resurrection. It is not about human capacities and possibilities. It is wholly about God’s capacity and determination. God acts at the boundary of life we call death and does something all together new. Angels and earthquakes are the only way Matthew can make clear that we are confronted with God’s possibilities and not our own. Having dispensed with the guards through overwhelming fear, the angel speaks reassuringly to the women, “Do not be afraid” (v.5). The even more important thing that Matthew says is that Jesus is going ahead of his disciples to Galilee, where he will meet them. Galilee, the place where he first called them, the place of his ministry where he taught the crowds, healed the sick, fed the multitudes, showed compassion on the suffering, welcomed the stranger, blessed the children, challenged the rich, announced a Messiah who would suffer, die, and be raised. The risen Jesus is to be met in the place of his once and future ministry among those where healing, feeding, teaching, and blessing will be carried on by them and those of us who come after.

For us adults today, fears can be more complex and words of reassurance harder to come by. The longer we live, the greater the sense that death eventually claims everyone we love. When an angel or Jesus says, “Do not be afraid,” it is not assurance that nothing can go wrong, because often things do go wrong. It is not assurance that everything turns out for the best, because if we are honest about it, it seldom does. Rather, it is the assurance that, whatever may happen to us, God has the power to strengthen and uphold us; that whatever we must face in the days ahead, we do not face it alone; that nothing we can encounter is stronger than God’s love; that ultimately God gets the last word; that in the end, sometimes even before the end, God’s love is triumphant. +Amen.