All Saints B - October 31, 2021

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Bernard Delcourt, OHC

All Saints B - Sunday, October 31, 2021

Wisdom of Solomon 3:1-9 Revelation 21:1-6a John 11:32-44

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In the name of God, the Lover, the Beloved and the Love everflowing.

I surprised myself by wanting to talk to you about our passage from Revelation today. This book is also known as the Apocalypse. Under that name, it evokes portentous catastrophes and strife between good and evil. The Apocalypse is often seen as predictions of last things; the last things that will ever happen on this Earth as we know it. Whether those predictions are metaphorical or factual depends on who you ask. My sense is that they don’t make sense as literal descriptions of end times.

In fact, the Book of Revelation was written as an unveiling of God’s ultimate purpose for Christian communities contemporary to the writing of the book. Those communities lived throughout the Eastern Mediterranean at the end of the first century of the current era. Revelation was written as a way of encouraging these Asia Minor communities to continue the Christian life in the face of oppression under Roman Emperor Domitian. It was written to encourage them all to be everyday saints.

Most likely there was a pressure for Christians to participate in the imperial cult's religious festivals. This probably involved a threat of punishment or death if they did not partake of the emperor’s cult.

Christians didn’t weigh much in the face of the Roman Empire. After all, they were just members of a heretical wing of a minority faith (Judaism) barely tolerated by a human empire. They were utterly expendable.

*****

Whatever the circumstances in which the Book of Revelation was written, I trust that nowadays it needs to be read as a figurative account of the struggle between good and evil. 

The book has a moral purpose that transcends its immediate circumstances and purpose. That’s why we can still read this book and learn from it today.

This symbolic view of the book is still controversial in many Christian spheres. As Roger Ferlo writes: “The book of Revelation can be a happy hunting ground for bigots and fanatics, and the distortion of its purpose and meanings are as rampant today as they were two millenia ago.”

*****

Today’s passage from the book of Revelation points to the creation of a new community in unmediated communion with God. God will be in the midst of all God’s saints and all saints will be with God.

And the creation of that community is the purpose of history. God is the beginning and the end of history; the Alpha and the Omega. 

We come in-between those points amongst generations of our kind to be instruments of God’s love in building such community. The communion of the whole of Creation with God is the purpose of history. History and time will become irrelevant when that full communion happens.

The apostle John paints a vivid picture of what that community - shall we call it the Beloved Community - looks like. 

Death, mourning, crying and pain will be no more. God wipes every tear from our eyes. Emmanuel is tangibly with us. The Trinity dwells with us. And we dwell within the Trinity. The world, both heaven and earth, are renewed, not done away with. The cosmos is redeemed and perfected. 

The apostle John uses metaphors that rely on time and space because that is what we know and understand. But this renewed reality will be with God in an unmediated way. And God is beyond time and space. 

So the writer can only summon up visions that evoke what it will feel like while using time and space to make us apprehend this new reality. This will not be a restoration of our broken world to its imagined original or virginal state. 

It will be but a transformation beyond imagining. Still, John invites us to imagine what it would be like to live with the Divine as our neighbor in the new Jerusalem.

*****

You see, all creation and all redemption are one eternal movement of God’s Spirit, a movement that exists and has existed in every moment.

It existed from the creation of the universe at the beginning of time; to the Incarnation, Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension of our Lord. It exists to the new creation at the apocalypse.

All these steps of salvation history are part of one eternally present movement of God’s Spirit.

Revelation and unveiling can happen anywhere, any time. Revelation and unveiling are the moments when the absolute reality announces itself to us in the midst of our human lives, when we can see, if only for a brief moment, the luminosity of our own selves and of all the created world. These are the moments when the shining garment of God’s body that is present in all people and all things becomes visible to us, if we only have eyes to see.

And those moments can happen and do happen to any of us at any time. It can happen to exceptional and everyday saints alike.

*****

Today, on the eve of All Hallows, the other name for All Saints, we view existence from the perspective of eternity. All generations are called blessed. They coexist irrespective of time in the same instant of God’s Love.  

Today, we honor saints who have come before us, maybe a few years ago, or centuries ago, whose examples we wish to follow. And also the saints who are alive today, those we know, those we live with and those we don’t. And also the saints who will come after us.

Today, we remember that we belong to the communion of saints, past, present and future, because we all are beloved children of God. In this holy community we partake of the divine today and every day.

*****

Beloved Lord, help us to spot the saints around us; help us to spot the saint in the mirror; help us learn from the saints; that we may see with your light and build your community of Love with You, here and now and forever. 

Amen.

Proper 25 B - October 24, 2021

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Robert James, OHC

Proper 25 B - Sunday, October 24, 2021

Jeremiah 31:7-9

Hebrews 7:23-28

Mark 10:46-52

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The Bartimaeus story in Mark concludes a short travel narrative that bridges Jesus’ Galilean ministry to his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. The encounter itself serves as a concluding bookend to a section in which blindness is a unifying theme. It begins with restoring the sight of the blind man at Bethsaida, and then confronting the spiritual blindness among his closest disciples who seem either unwilling or unable to accept the radical and subversive claim of God’s inbreaking kingdom revealed in the prediction of the betrayal, suffering, and death of Jesus. On his way to Jerusalem, Jesus seeks to cure their blindness and ours. 

Our passage begins as Jesus is on his way out of Jericho, which is only about 15 miles down the road from Jerusalem, with half the town tagging along. A local and known blind beggar, Bartimaeus, cries out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.” This is the first time that anyone, but a demon or a disciple has called Jesus by this title. In proclaiming Jesus, Son of David, he is alluding to the Messiah who is the Davidic king that will restore Israel. This is borne out in the following chapter with Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem. 

Those surrounding Jesus discouraged Bartimaeus from seeking him. They make it difficult for this outsider to get close. However, he is not dissuaded by their rude rebukes. Despite Jesus just talking to the disciples about the first being last, Mark reports that none of the disciples raised any objection when Bartimaeus is ordered to be quiet. Only when Jesus calls him do they offer encouragement. Jesus doesn’t upbraid them for their blindness to someone in need. He simply lets them be. By him having them call Bartimaeus, he points the way for them to be the disciples they need to become. 

Bartimaeus refuses to be defined by his circumstances or the judgements of others. He persists until his shouts are recognized. His persistence sets in motion a wave of mercy, blessing, and change. Jesus calls him. Those around him call him. They become witnesses to and vessels of mercy. The cry of need that caused Bartimaeus to be shunned becomes the occasion for them all to glimpse God’s final intention for all of creation. This glimpse is the miracle. It is what turns our vision to what really matters, pointing beyond the one before us to the One who created all for love’s sake. Bartimaeus throws off his cloak, his most treasured possession, springs up, and comes to Jesus with great hope and disarming clarity. 

Mark locates the power of this encounter in the initiative of Bartimaeus. He calls out. He comes to Jesus. He articulates his desire. Jesus enables the process by asking, “What do you want me to do for you?” It’s not a rhetorical question. He wants to hear Bartimaeus say exactly what he wants, exactly how much he believes Jesus can do. Bartimaeus speaks straight from the heart: “Teacher, let me see again.” Jesus heals him immediately with a word. No mud, no spittle, not even a touch. “Go, your faith has made you well.” “Go”, Jesus tells him, but he doesn’t go. He decides on the spot that Jesus’ way is his way and follows him to Jerusalem. There’s no ambivalence. He’s not only able to see physically but is also granted the grace to see the way of salvation. He’s held up as a model of Christian discipleship.

Physical blindness is something that most of us cannot imagine, what it’s like to live in darkness, or having learned to do that, what it would be like to suddenly see, to have to make sense out of color, depth, distance, perspective, and all those things that most of us take for granted. A book titled Space and Light by Marius von Senden records strange and moving interviews with people who were born blind and received their sight through the first successful cataract surgeries. Not everything was beautiful for these patients. For many, the change they experienced was overwhelming, depressing, and frightening. Some longed to return to the dark safety they had known. After being rescued from a life in the dark, after being hauled into the light and presented with a world full of color, depth, movement, space, sights---it can feel like too much.  

Often for us, change, seeing things about ourselves and others, can trigger the same reactions. The world turns out to be much bigger than we thought, bigger and more complex. We see ourselves for the first time, making us self-conscious. We can choose to stay where we are. We can sit in the familiar dark where all the edges are rounded off so that we will not hurt ourselves, where we need only what keeps us in the dark. We can feel that there is no sense getting our hopes up; no sense seeing ourselves in another way. It can feel safer to stay with what we know, concern ourselves with what is within our reach. 

On one level this is a story about one man who wanted out of his personal darkness. It’s a story that holds clues for those who want the same thing. This is a kingdom story, and we want it for our own: to encounter Jesus, to be called to him, to find words to tell him what we want, and to be made whole. To trade in our spiritual blindness so that we can see again---see ourselves, our world, Jesus clearly, without shadow. What a leap of faith: to cry out, spring up, and ask for our heart’s desire. Are we willing to learn, like Bartimaeus, our way around the obstacles and through the newness of it, into the mystery of it? Are we willing to see everything there is, the good along with the bad, the beautiful along with the ugly---in ourselves, in others, in the world? Having regained our sight, we may, like Bartimaeus, see that our way may no longer look as appealing as Jesus’ way which leads to Jerusalem, through a garden, past a cross, to an empty tomb. 

Take heart, get up, he is calling you.  

+Amen.

Proper 24 B - October 17, 2021

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Scott Borden, OHC

Proper 24 B - Sunday, October 17, 2021

Job 38:1-7, (34-41)

Hebrews 5:1-10

Mark 10:35-45

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The Lectionary for today offers interesting selections... I’m not saying they’re appealing... but interesting. And let me just acknowledge up front, I don’t find the Mysterious Order of Melchizedek in the Letter to the Hebrews particularly interesting. And honestly, I’m not even all that interested in Mark... But Job? Now that’s interesting. 

Carl Jung called Job the most important book in the Bible. It's certainly one of the most disturbing, and the competition in that category is stiff. The Book of Job has been described as the book you need when your life experience outgrows your understanding of God. 

Throughout Hebrew scripture God’s actions are often quite shocking. The destruction of almost all life on the planet in the story of Noah comes to mind. God is not at all shy about ethnic cleansing, incest, patricide, matricide, fratricide, infanticide, genocide... And for those who were interested in defending Biblical Marriage, well – read the bible... Incest, rape, lots of prostitutes... it is not a tidy world. 

One standard remains true through that bloody mess: God’s chosen people are protected. Among the Chosen People, good people get rewarded and bad people get punished. And one of the ways you could tell you were a bad person is because you were being punished. 

Enter Job. Scripture is at pains to tell us Job is a good person – maybe the best person. We can tell because he is blessed. His children are blessed. His children’s children are blessed.  

Then, if you recall, God gets into a what seems like a silly bet with the devil. Satan bets he can get Job to reject God. God takes that bet and the devil sets about to prove God wrong and win the bet at the expense of Job. 

In rapid succession Job’s family is destroyed, his wealth is destroyed, everything he cares about is taken from him and, to add insult to injury, he is afflicted with horrible skin conditions that make him an outcast. He started at the top of the world and within a few short paragraphs, he is sitting in the ash heap of his ruined life. 

Job’s friends have come to console him, in a way. They are on the face of it well intentioned, sympathetic, caring... Job’s neighbor Elihu gives a lengthy discourse on what God does and why... It sounds very good. Job’s sin must be great because his punishment is so great. The only problem is that this friend is entirely wrong. Job has not sinned. Through this entire ordeal Job has never doubted God. 

Now God enters the picture... this is where this morning’s reading picks up. God asks a question: “Who is this that darkens council by words without wisdom?” Well, that would be Job’s well-intentioned friend Elihu who has been holding forth for the past few chapters...  

God knows that Job is not being punished. The “wisdom” that Job’s friends offer is, in fact, made up entirely of words without wisdom. The reading continues with a series of rapid-fire rhetorical questions: Where were you when the foundations of the earth were laid? Can you make it rain when drought has turned everything into dust? Can you hunt in place of the lions, or for the birds? It seems that God is reminding the friends of Job, and by extension us, that we are limited, clumsy creatures, not nearly so capable as many of God’s other creatures. God stops short of saying shut up and go away, but that’s sort of in the subtext.  

It’s not that the friends of Job didn’t have important work to do. That work would have been consoling Job. Job’s life, after all, has been destroyed. But they don’t choose to console. Rather they choose to analyze and assign blame. In their ignorance they make a bad situation worse.  

In this dialogue with God Job says: “Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things to wonderful for me to know.” To the unhelpful neighbors God replies: “I am angry with you because you have not spoken the truth about me as my servant Job has.” 

Of course, we don’t have to go back to the time of Job to observe this dark counsel. We just have to go back to the most recent natural disaster or mass shooting to hear voices offering words without wisdom. Political discourse should get its own category for extreme words without wisdom... 

Page Break

The Book of Job is the book that teaches us that not every bad thing is a punishment from God. In fact, none of the bad things in Job’s life are punishments from God. If this is part of how we understand God, then we need a new understanding. We need council enlightened by wisdom, not darkened by ignorance.  

Let's move on to Mark. Here we find James and John, the scrappy sons of Zebedee, wanting to be rewarded. “We want you to do for us whatever we ask...” Now there is a broad request. Perhaps they want to win the lottery... or live in luxury... But no, James and John just want to be Jesus’ number one and number two guys... That’s not too much to ask... 

Their words, it seems, have been darkened by council without wisdom. They don’t know what they are asking. And Jesus tries to let them down gently. Can you be baptized as I will be baptized? Can you drink the cup that I drink? We know that the cross is close on the horizon for Jesus and that cup is filled with Jesus’ own blood... But James and John are don’t seem to know this. What these two lack in wisdom they make up in confidence... 

The rest of the disciples are outraged. But Jesus responds, as he often seems to do, with a bit of a non-sequitur. Jesus offers a discussion of the role and responsibility of leadership. It is the council of wisdom. 

In the Gentile world, leaders demand great deference. They want to rule over the little people. This, buy the way, should sound familiar... welcome to our world. 

Jesus is revising the way of the world. Job is the book we need when experience requires a new concept of God. Jesus is telling the disciples, and us, that a new concept God will require a new concept of leadership. 

In God’s Kingdom rulers are servants. Jesus is here to serve, not to be served. If we want to follow Jesus, this is what we must do. We must be prepared to give up our lives. The good news for James and John is that they are getting what they asked for. The bad news is that they are getting what they asked for... 

Page Break

In a COVID wearied world I wonder what these stories may be telling us. 

Our journey through COVID tells us how much like the friends of Job we are. We want to respond to tragedy and destruction with judgment. Various government leaders were quick to assure us that COVID came from a failure (or a deliberate plot) in someone else’s laboratory.  

Somehow Bill Gates and George Soros were involved... And various would-be prophets proclaimed that COVID was God’s punishment on us for something wicked – probably something involving the LGBTQ+ community. How susceptible we still are to council darkened by words without wisdom. 

But if COVID teaches us anything, it's that our lives are ever more intertwined, interdependent. You can’t flip on a light switch here without activating a supply chain that wraps around the world. Yet we tell ourselves that independence is more important than anything and that we must maintain it at all cost. This is an illusion, and it is a lie.  

Our God concept and our societal concept have been left in the dust by our ever-changing world. The book we need is Job – and the sooner the better. 

Job teaches us is that we must be ready and willing to allow our relationship with God to grow. God is present with us now and, disinformation notwithstanding, we can hear God speak as Job heard God speak out of the whirlwind.  

God’s message – love. Nothing more and nothing less. Love God, love neighbor, and love self. These three things are in fact one and the same. We just need to break with Job’s friends and neighbors. We need to learn from James and John.  

Jesus’ message to us was, and is, and always will be that we must grow in the way of love.