RCL - Proper 17 B - 30 Aug 2009

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Scott Borden, OHC

RCL - Proper 17B - 30 August 2009

Song of Solomon 2:8-13

James 1:17-27

Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

The Crucifix Cross in the Monastic Enclosure at Holy Cross Monastery

Originally Uploaded by Cloister Walk

Today’s Gospel reading from Mark asks us to take a close look at the way we

live our faith. If Jesus were talking about people who were unfaithful, it

would be easier to hear and ignore this passage. But this is a dispute among

faithful people. The Pharisees were not unfaithful - they were extremely

devout, extremely faithful, just like the disciples. The problems lies in

the way they express their faith.

This passage combined with the letter of James forms a powerful and urgent

message for those of us today who are faithful and devout.

In Mark, Jesus calls us to listen. Jesus is emphatic: “Listen to me, all of

you, and understand...” That should get our attention...

James gives us some very clear instruction on what it means to listen. “Be

quick to listen, slow to speak... be doers of the word... be not hearers who

forget, but doers who act.”

Here is a different translation of James - from Good as New: “Do you think

you’re religious? If you don’t know when to shut up, you’re fooling

yourself. Your religion’s a fake. True religion, what the Loving God

recognizes as genuine, involves caring for all who are suffering hardship,

and not falling for popular prejudices.”

In the living church today there are many who are quick to speak; quick to

judge; quick to condemn; quick to exclude. I can spot those people from

miles, even oceans, away.

It’s a bit trickier when I’m the one too quick to speak, to judge, to

condemn, to exclude. Once we’ve got our mouths running, listening becomes

much more difficult - even for me...

Hearing God’s word is a call to action. We are not passive listeners. James

is quite direct. Hearing God’s word and not acting is like admiring

ourselves in the mirror...

The direction of our action must be love. James tells us that our anger does

not produce God’s righteousness. In my experience, our anger, my anger,

produces self-righteousness. How easy it is for me to spot

self-righteousness in others... how much harder to spot my own

self-righteousness. And yet its there - and it is not Godly. My anger does

not produce righteousness. This is a humbling reality.

Its not that we don’t get angry. Certainly there are many things in this

world that should make us angry. Certainly Jesus got angry. Anger can

motivate us to action, but it can not direct our action. Love must direct

our action.

James tells us to care for the orphans and widows in their distress.

We don’t live with so many widows and orphans these days - and being an

orphan or widow doesn’t mean now what it meant to James. James lived In a

world where family was everything. In that world being an orphan meant being

nothing. Being a widow meant not only being nothing because your family ties

had ended, but worse: being damaged goods, less than nothing...

In today’s world, James might call us, for example, to care for the homeless

mentally ill, or the illegal immigrants - they might have a similar status

to the orphans and widows of James’ day.

With this letter of James ringing in our ears what happens when we go back

to Mark?

It’s a fairly standard set up in Mark - Pharisees are yammering away: “Your

disciples do not love God because they do not keep God’s law... they do not

(insert offense here)...” This time the offense is “they do not wash their

hands before the eat.” (I had a 4th grade teacher who would have quite liked

these particular Pharisees...)

So Jesus tells us how we defile ourselves - not with what we eat, not by

failing to follow rituals, but with what we think... with what is in our

heart.

This is a familiar, well-trodden path. So why do I think the message is so

urgent today?

We wrestle with Pharisees all the time. They are the people who know how

everything ought to be done and are happy to tell us... Some of us easily

spot them among our conservative brothers and sisters. We hear them yelling

that the revisionists are not washing their metaphorical hands - you can

pick from any number of controversies.

Its harder for me to spot the Pharisees among the liberals - that’s my

prejudice - but they are there.

And when I examine my heart, what do you know? There is my own personal

Pharisee. And my personal Pharisee really does know exactly how everything

ought to be done to please God. That is why this message is urgent.

Informing the Pharisee is a code of some sort: A code that defines what God

does and doesn’t like - a holiness code. The duty of the Pharisee is to

clarify the code, to fanatically follow the code, and at every opportunity

to impose the code on others. This is what my personal Pharisee does... each

of us has a Pharisee within urging us on this path.

And we all know how much use Jesus has for Pharisees...

A holiness code is useful in two different ways. First and most important it

lets me know I’m in; I’m up to code; I’m right with God. And second, it lets

me know who else is in and, more excitingly, who else is out. This is very

powerful information.

But again, we all know how much use Jesus has for Pharisees... for holiness

codes...

Yet here in our own Anglican communion, in our own Episcopal Church, we have

people deciding who is in communion and who is not; who follows the code and

who does not; who is clean and who is unclean.

And we all know how much use Jesus has for this.

Jesus gives us no permission to judge who is worthy; No permission to

exclude; No permission to set up barriers; No permission to love the sinner,

but hate the sin... Jesus gives us no permission to develop a holiness code.

Its safe to say that Jesus has no more use for Christian Pharisees than any

other Pharisees. Jesus has no use for my own personal Pharisee.

The more we listen to our Pharisees the less we can hear Jesus... the less

we can be hearers and doers of the word.

And here is what that leads to: We can have an overtly theological debate

about the sanctity of marriage and family while at the same time allowing

children in our own country to go without basic vaccines, without proper

nutrition... These children are our family. We can accept that many of our

senior brothers and sisters have to choose between food and life-sustaining

medication. These seniors are our family.

We honor God with our lips, but not in our hearts.

To hear God’s word is to act on it - we can’t be hearers without being

doers. Who are our widows and orphans? God help us to stop looking at

ourselves in the mirror and to be doers of the word. Let us pray that God

will help us abandon human tradition and hold to God.

RCL - Proper 10 B - 12 Jul 2009

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Randy Greve, OHC
RCL – Proper 10 B – Sunday 12 July 2009

Amos 7:7-15
Ephesians 1:3-14
Mark 6:14-29

Br. Randy ascending toward Fontecolombo on a pilgimage to Assisi
May 2009 - Originally uploaded by Randy OHC

"Amos, what do you see?" The Old Testament lesson from Amos appointed for today which we heard earlier is about the clash of the prophetic word of repentance and justice against the established religious and political attitudes of the status quo. This clash is a recurrent theme in the Bible and continues to be a source of conflict in our day as we ask:
- What is the relationship of Christ and culture?
- How do we maintain our distinct Christian identity while living within our own circles of influence?
- What does it mean today to listen and speak prophetically?
- What might such prophecy cost us?
- What could we achieve by it?
I’ll answer all of those questions (!), but first some context…

One way to characterize this clash is to understand the difference between city and desert. The reference is not so much to literal city and desert, although that is usually how it works. The contrast has its roots in Scripture and carries into Church history. In general terms the city is characterized by reasoned theology, the established powers and authorities, Christian or other, and the preservation of that power and authority.

The desert or wilderness, on the other hand, is characterized by its mystical experience of God and its prophetic challenge to the abuses of those established powers and authorities and as a kind of nagging conscience, reminding leaders through an unswerving obedience to the Gospel that they are ultimately accountable to God. It is from this desert tradition that Amos, John the Baptist, and other prophets burst onto the stage of the sacred text to call the people to remember who they are and turn back to God when they had drifted into disobedience and dullness of heart.

One of the mega-themes of Christian spirituality is the call out of the crowd of unconscious indifference (exemplified in enemy tribes or oppressive empires) and into the light, the awareness, the courage, the risk of prophetic words and deeds that challenge us and challenge the ruling powers to act in service of God on behalf of truth, on behalf of the poor and oppressed, on behalf of something more than their own perpetuation. Again and again we hear the same story; the people make a covenant with God and commit to living within God’s law, then they stray and rebel and become comfortable and lazy and forget who God is, who they are, and slide into slavery - spiritually or literally.

Again and again God sends the prophet, the messenger, the deliverer who wakes them up (or at least attempts to) to get them back on the right path of life and freedom and surrender to God’s guidance, direction and grace. The prophet’s job is to disturb and unmask our false security and to exclaim that we have built our house on sand - we have bought the lie that we can arrive and coast along.

The prophet creates the crisis that gets our attention and makes us aware of how much we need the help of God and the community to wake up. The unsettling blare of the prophet dares to say that we can all too easily seek the easy walls of our own prejudices rather than the constant need for repentance and humility.

While the sacred story includes both city and desert, Scripture is clearly on the side of the desert prophets because God is on the side of the poor and oppressed - those most vulnerable victims of the unjust actions of corrupt power. Amos and others are the mystical and prophetic voices breaking into the conversation in a religious environment dominated by the agenda of the city.

The desert is not a familiar theological place for most American Christians. The world of Amos’ day in the seventh century B.C is so very radically different from our own. The idea that a prophet would speak God’s very words and that those words would bear the news of God’s anger at the people’s sin and the imminent warning of punishment by exile may not fit into your image of God.

As we dare put ourselves in this story perhaps we grope for a way out by thinking- “who does he think he is?” or “that’s fine if he wants to believe that, but I don’t have to!” Amos, John the Baptist and other prophets call the whole people to repent because they knew what we conveniently forget - our silent acquiescence, our passive acceptance of the evil and injustice around us is a participation in it, is an assent to its continuation and makes us just as guilty as if we had committed the act ourselves.

Carrying the themes of city and desert into Church history, while the early church was creating a new city of God - with bishops and councils and processes and procedures, defining doctrine and battling heresies, the desert monks pick up the mantle of the wilderness prophet and through lives of uncompromising obedience to the Gospel keep the focus of the early church’s growing power and authority on the eternal. For Christians both city and desert are important.

Either alone is dangerous. The city preserves the faith and cares for the faithful. The desert spurs them on to deeper commitment and is a corrective to the allure of worldly entanglements. Each has its unique temptations: the city to accommodate and compromise with the secular to retain power and control, the desert to an isolated and formless individualism where experience is the last word.

What does the story of the city and the desert say to us today? Both the city and the desert exist within us. Our spiritual lives are a balanced tension between head and heart, letter and spirit that must be consciously tended. Neither rigid conformity to external structures nor self-centered relativistic individualism is the answer to the longing within us, but a willingness to hear and see reality unfiltered and with our whole selves.

While genuine prophets come along from time to time, the Holy Scripture is our prophetic message and the basis for discerning the truth. When we read or hear the sacred text it is God asking us “What do you see?” - in the text, in yourself, in the world? We have to be willing and open to hear this voice, because it will come at times and in ways we may not expect.

As we cultivate this stance then God will act and speak prophetically through us to the Church and the world. God is inviting us through Amos to step out into the prophetic wilderness and hear God ask us “What do you see?” As monks we hope to claim, embody, and preserve the desert tradition and keep bringing heart and spirit into all of life alongside head and letter.

One of our gifts as monks is to be a prophetic sign and witness to the world around us: to ask hard, unsettling, and challenging questions, to speak honestly, to keep ourselves mutually accountable and responsible, to resist the temptation to compromise the meaning of our lives to be liked. We do this first by a commitment to our own ongoing conversion and through nurturing spiritual freedom, joy, openness, and humility in ourselves and in our community.

While we appreciate the value of the city, we stand outside of it and use our objectivity and distance to look at it with honesty and compassion. We seek to give a real answer when God asks us “What do you see?” and then we find ways to speak what is showing up for us. The prophetic voice is concerned only with speaking God’s truth - not identifying with an agenda, not taking a side, not entering into the institutional squabbles but pointing us back toward the essentials; obedience, compassion, humility, perseverance, boldness, courage, and a clear-eyed commitment to put ourselves on the line to say and do what is right no matter the cost. To our guests we pray that the offering of this place of prayer and stillness and our journeying with you expands your commitment to listen to God, to see opportunities for truth and compassion, and to act by loving your neighbor.

In his book The Way to Love, Anthony de Mello equates love with the desire to see. He says:

The first act of love is to see reality as it truly is. And this involves the enormous discipline of dropping your desires, your prejudices, your memories, your projections, your selective way of looking, a discipline so great that most people would rather plunge headlong into good actions and service than submit to the burning fire of this asceticism. When you set out to serve someone whom you have not taken the trouble to see, are you meeting that person’s need or your own? So the first ingredient of love is to really see the other. The second ingredient is equally important to see yourself, to ruthlessly flash the light of awareness on your motives, your emotions, your needs, your dishonesty, your self-seeking, your tendency to control and manipulate. This means calling things by their name, no matter how painful the discovery and the consequences.

The prophetic alarm is not ultimately about catastrophe and condemnation - it is about conversion, it is an invitation to conversion, a conversion to love. Amos reminds us to listen for God’s question as we look around our church and our world: “What do you see?”

RCL - Feast of St Benedict - 11 Jul 2009

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Scott Wesley Borden, OHC
RCL - Feast of St Benedict - Saturday 11 July 2009

Proverbs 2:1-9
Luke 14:27--33

Brs. Timothy, Scott, and Robert
Originally uploaded by Randy OHC

Today we celebrate the feast of St Benedict. Its an important feast for a number of reasons - not the least because we are Benedictine monks, but also because you could not overstate the importance of Benedictine practice on Anglican worship as it grew out of the English Reformation.

But what catches my imagination this morning is the Gospel passage assigned for this particular feast. What has it got to do with Benedict?

If you don’t pay too much attention to the Gospel passage, it appears to give a useful lesson in task management. Only idiots start projects they can not finish. And only fools start wars they can not win... Its easy for me to hear this Gospel passage as a call to careful planning and due diligence. And what could possibly be wrong with that?

But that’s a mishearing of the Gospel passage. Jesus is calling us to take up the cross and put other stuff down. Building towers and winning wars is about protecting other stuff.

There’s more to this morning’s reading: We are engaged in an enterprise that is entirely beyond us. If we look at what it will take to build the Kingdom of God, we’ll never start. If we assess what we need in the fight against evil, we will make peace with the devil... Due diligence and careful planning will arrest us in our baptized life.

We proceed because we have God - and that is our only hope. The other things that make us feel safe - those are the things we have to leave behind.

To get from the Kingdom of God to Saint Benedict we only need to swap one word: the Kingdom of God can just as easily be called the Community of God... A Godly community is at the very heart of Benedictine living, and we can only proceed to make such a community with God’s help.

Part of the joy in reflecting on the life of Benedict is that we are not encumbered by too many facts. The stories of the life of Benedict are fanciful, though that doesn’t mean they are not true. But since we start in the fanciful, we can add to the fanciful...

Benedict’s first leadership position was a good learning opportunity - That’s what people say of things that don’t turn out well. In the good old days we might have even used the word failure...

Benedict had developed a good reputation and was a highly regarded monk. And a certain monastic community was in need of an Abbot. Not only did they need an Abbot, they desperately needed reform. It was a community in trouble, in chaos and they knew it. They sought out Benedict to be their Abbot... to come and fix their problems.

They desperately wanted to change. And they adamantly wanted to stay just exactly the same. This is a timeless human reality. I want to do what I’m doing now and, through some miraculous intervention in which someone else does all the work, have a better outcome...

Benedict arrives at this troubled community and proceeds to do what they want him to do. He tries to shape them up. He reproves and corrects and scolds them vigorously.

So, naturally, they conspire to kill him. What else could they do? ... They give him venom meddled with wine - you don’t often see that on the wine list... But when Benedict blesses the wine before drinking, the vessel shatters and Benedict’s life is saved.

Before going to war, a smart leader makes an assessment as to whether or not he or she can win - and if the answer is no, then negotiations begin. In this first attempt, it appears that Benedict went to war and lost.

Here is my own fanciful embellishment: a possibility that has no factual support, but could be true.

The rule of Benedict is not the only Monastic Rule. It is not the oldest. And it surely is not the most thorough. The Rule of the Master is far more comprehensive, to say the least. Scholars are unsure which came first, but the Rule of the Master and the Rule of Benedict are closely related. They are, in some ways, shadows of each other.

In the legend according to me... When Benedict entered that first monastery, it was the Rule of the Master that he sought to impose.

Just so that we all have a clear sense of the Rule of the Master, let me read a little bit... Naturally I was drawn to a section called “Whether brothers who have suffered pollution during sleep should receive communion or not.” But, alas, there is no comparable passage in Benedict, so I’ll have to leave you wondering about the answer...

Lets consider instead: “The Porters of the Monastery”

The Lord has replied through the Master (that’s the way all answers begin in the Rule of the Master - which pretty much forecloses flexibility)

Inside near the gates of the monastery a cell is to be built for two brothers advanced in age. Posted there, let them at all times close up the monastery behind those who leave and open if for those who are coming in, and also announce arrivals to the abbot.

Every day during the periods devoted to reading in the monastery, however, these two old men must see to it that they lock the gates and join the community to listen to the readers. In like manner, when the signal for the Divine Office has sounded in the oratory they are to lock the gates and be present at the Word of God in the oratory.

The Master then gives a lengthy discourse on the manual labor that can be asked of these two old men. The Master also tells us where in the refectory these two are to be seated. It’s thorough, detailed, and very specific. Nothing is left to chance or discretion.

Benedict, on the other hand, says “At the door of the monastery, place a sensible old man who knows how to take a message and deliver a reply, and whose age keeps him from roaming about.” He follows this with a short discourse on how the porter is to greet arriving guests, an important ministry of hospitality entirely absent in the Rule of the Master.

In the legend of Benedict according to me, Benedict learns the hard way that too much control is a human thing, not a Godly thing. The instinct to make sure that everybody is doing the right thing every waking moment of every single day, and at night as well, is understandable. It is what the Rule of the Master seeks to do. But it is dehumanizing. It is life depriving.

From that experience, I think, comes the Rule of Benedict which calls us to a thoughtful, responsible way of living; a way of being fully alive, fully human. It is a joyful response to God’s love, not a carefully planned prosecution of the task at hand.

If we think about what it will cost us to live in community, we will never live in community. If we have to work out all the details in advance, we will never build the Community of God. And whatever we build will be ours, not God’s. Sensible, orderly, safe alternatives are simply not on offer.

This morning’s Gospel reading calls us to move forward in faith, not in certainty. By faith we will build the Community of God. By faith we will triumph in the ageless battle against evil. Following Jesus means being faithful, not careful. We must give up our need for control... our need to fortify.

Benedict gives us a framework in which to live into our faith - a way of ordering a community that calls us to creative, faithful life rather than stifled order.

So what a joy it is to celebrate this Saint Benedict’s day in the Order (and occasional disorder) of the Holy Cross, in the order, (and occasional disorder) of the Episcopal Church, in the order (and occasional disorder) of the universal church.