Proper 28B - Sunday, November 18, 2018

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Robert James Magliula, OHC
Proper 28 B - Sunday, November 18, 2018

1 Samuel 2:1-10
Hebrews 10:11-14 (15-18) 19-25
Mark 13:1-8

With something so unexpected that defies explanation, what else was Hannah to do but sing. She sings of the God who turns wrong things right, who judges justly, who delivers the needy and puts down the oppressor, who brings death and makes alive, who blesses the barren with children. Her voice joins that of the prophet Miriam and Mary of Nazareth in praise of a God who works deliverance through extraordinary circumstances. Our understanding of God’s power is born within the struggles of our history.

As elsewhere in Scripture, a story on an epic scale begins with a small domestic scene. Hannah is unable to conceive. In a patriarchal culture, childbearing was a woman’s only unique ability. To be unable to conceive was a cause for great shame. It was often viewed as a sign of divine punishment. Her barrenness is the subject of ridicule from her husband’s second wife. She is accused of drunkenness by the inept and insensitive priest, Eli. She asks God to remember her and she makes a promise that a child will be dedicated to God for life.

Hannah embodies both the patriarchal assumptions of her worth as well as God’s concern for her. Her prayers are sincere expressions of her anguish and her dependence on God. She did not come with formal petition or traditional sacrifice. Hers is a prayer of groaning that comes from a place of utter vulnerability. She comes in loneliness, isolation, and despair. She comes as a human being who knows herself to be known and loved by God. God is responsive and present to her. Her humility and honesty in this relationship allows her to unburden herself. Strength springs from her intense awareness of God’s power. Her connection with God transforms her even before she conceives. She is empowered not by might, or by political influence, but by her intimate connection to God, by being spiritually awake.

Hannah’s song of celebration gives voice to the praise and surprise any of us might feel after a dramatic reversal. She gives birth to her son, Samuel. The birth is not a private wonder but a gift of possibility for all of Israel. Samuel is one of the most significant figures in their history. There’s a strong metaphorical connection between Hannah’s barrenness and despair and the emotions of a nation, not unlike our own today, looking for a way to feel secure and hopeful in turbulent times.

Hannah’s story conveys a strong word of hope and encouragement to us by her bold trust in God, receptivity to God, and her praise for the goodness of God. For a pilgrim people, which is an apt description of Israel and the Church, there will always be need for endurance, perseverance, patience, and hope. God’s people live out of the past and into the future, a future that has been promised but is yet to be fully realized. The vision of reality sung by Hannah invites us to see the world as God intends, to behold what God is bringing about. It’s a vision surprising to some and threatening to others.

As we approach the end of the liturgical year, we’re invited to see our life as God’s people in light of the Song of Hannah. We’re given a fresh vision of the new world that is on its way, a world that is not dependent upon human efforts, plans, or strategies, but a world that is God’s gift. Her song summons us to offer ourselves to the One who alone is worthy of praise.

The letter to the Hebrews also holds up that vision. It’s written to a tired and discouraged congregation. They are tired of trying to live the Christian life in a time and culture that offers no support for it. They’re discouraged about how evil still seems to persist. As a result, they have begun to question the value of being Christian. Attendance at worship has slipped, zeal for mission has waned, and the kind of congregational life that is rich in love and compassion has begun to dissipate. The writer offers an invitation for the community to be organized in a new and living way, by trusting more deeply in Jesus Christ. He reminds them that holiness is a Spirit given ability to live in a posture of confidence before God. It is one lived in hope--- a hope that is not rooted in human effort, but solely in the faithfulness of God. This sanctified life is also lived in community. It is there that we are able to stir up and be stirred up to love and good works. The gift of Christ is not one that we receive and keep to ourselves. It is meant for the building up of the whole body, living in solidarity with others, and living with a sense of urgency.

That urgency is expressed in the eight short verses of today’s Gospel. They’re in Jerusalem in the week of his Passion. As the disciples are leaving the temple, they marvel at the buildings that seem so immoveable. Jesus then predicts the horror of an apocalypse of political unrest, disasters and persecutions. He tells them and us that when chaos comes, not to be worried. Things may seem to have fallen apart and anarchy loosed on the world. Nevertheless, the center will hold. He sets out a way to live that does not focus all attention on the chaos but on trust in God. Today, our focus must not only be on the signs themselves, but rather on the One who enables us to look up in chaos and claim the certainty of blessing. Life in our country today summons us to acknowledge the unfinished nature of what God has set into motion. Our transformation personally and communally is not yet complete. To dwell in that place requires trust and encouragement. If you want to know the whole truth pay more attention to the Gospel you hear than to the evil you see.

Jesus’ call to vigilance is an implicit command to keep following his word and example despite the chaos. Perhaps the most daunting challenge for us in the North American context, so set on instant gratification, is this one left to us by Mark: “Beware…keep awake,” watch, resist, hold out for the coming of the Son of Man. Like Hannah, enter into and experience God’s presence fully, honestly, authentically--- luxuriating in God’s loving acceptance which first requires our own self-acceptance. The freedom of knowing that God loves and accepts us translates into selfless service as we become creative participants in the ongoing saving work of God. +Amen

Proper 27 B - Sunday, November 11, 2018

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Roy Parker, OHC
Proper 27 B - Sunday, November 11, 2018

1 Kings 17:8-16
Hebrews 9:24-28
Mark 12:38-44

For a clearer understanding of the character of the scribes of whom Jesus speaks in this passage it will be helpful to give a description which will allow us a more accurate understanding of the poor widow’s contribution to the temple treasury, some culled from the Anchor Bible commentary.

In Mark, the scribes are the principal opponents of Jesus and they are frequently mentioned — twenty-two times in all,  The present instance is the only recorded example of Jesus inveighing against the conduct of the scribes, as distinct from their teaching. Although the scribes and the Pharisees are linked in the condemnation of legalism in Matthew, it is important to draw a proper distinction.

Whereas the Pharisees had an established position, and an honorable one, as interpreters of the Law and its traditions, and were also regarded as highly patriotic, the scribes as “bookmen” were regarded mainly as recorders or collectors of opinions and less authoritative than the Pharisees. As is often the case with those of lesser status, they are represented in the New Testament as not only argumentative, but given to ostentation to magnify their public image — like a classmate of mine at the Webb School in Claremont, California who, having failed to win an athletic varsity letter — a large red capital E — from his previous school, purloined one and injudiciously wore it to breakfast the day after Webb’s football defeat by the Emerson School.

Beyond the issue of ostentation, Jesus condemned the scribes in that they are held responsible for the exactions which effectively destroyed widows’ estates, all on behalf of a temple still in building and soon to come to an end. One of the salient features of Jesus’ confrontation with the scribes in Mark is the connection made between them and the temple. Though one may protest that the costs of the upkeep of the temple and its round of sacrificial observances were the concern of the clergy, Mark’s gospel firmly lays responsibility for extravagance and excess at the door of the scribes, and they are the enemies of Jesus before the clergy enter the picture. The scribes in and around Jerusalem are quite regularly associated with the clergy. Any challenge by Jesus to the temple system and its clergy is accepted by the scribes as a challenge to their standing.

In this light, we are to understand the charge that the scribes offer long prayers. Not that they are responsible for the worship and the liturgies of the temple, but that they consistently urge upon people the fundamental necessity of keeping the interminable round of observances in being. Perhaps we ought to understand the phrase for appearances’ sake not as an indication of pretense, but as a judgment by Jesus that the observances themselves were but an outward show without substance.

The narrative of the poor widow’s offering is, among other things, a continuation of the previous attack on the scribes and their part, as Mark sees it, in the whole official establishment of Judaism in Jerusalem. The judgement of Jesus is that the scribes were like leeches on the Jewish faithful and not the least of their sins was their insistence on the support of the temple system, and all that it implied, even to the sacrificing of widows’ property. Jesus does not commend the widow at all for sacrificing all she had; rather, the story should be read as a lament for a system which could end in the destitution of a widow.

Part of us is attracted to system while another part harbors an expectation which cannot be satisfied by a system, as in Tagore’s aphorism “While God waits for the temple to be built of love, people bring stones.”  This was brought home to me some years ago on a Saturday morning in Berkeley, California some years ago outside the Jesuit School of Theology. The previous evening Raymond Brown, renowned commentator on the Fourth Gospel, had flown in to give a public lecture, and I just happened to meet him that following morning. It also happened that I was to preach the Sunday sermon at a local church on John’s account of the feeding of the five thousand for which I had figured out what seemed to me  a brilliant explanation which discounted the miraculous.  On spying Professor Brown I thought, “What a perfect opportunity to get a verification of my theory.” Dr. Brown, to be sure, listened carefully, but when I had spoken he contradicted me very forcefully regarding the multiplication of loaves, “But they were expecting this!” “Well,” I thought, “back to rewrite.”

Such expectation is displayed by both widows in today’s readings, marginalized women driven to put all their eggs in the basket of God’s promise, persons acting out of the only abundance they had, an abundance of heart.  As a matter of historical interest, by the way, the advertisements our Founder distributed for his mission talks often concluded with the exhortation “Expect Much.”

When operating at the margins of possibility, you are liable to be more ecstatic than cautious and it might land you in trouble. Like Harry James’ solo on “Life Goes to a Party” in Benny Goodman’s 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert described by the liner notes as “like someone rushing out onto an icy pond and discovering they ain’t got skates.” By that point in the concert, the vibe was so hot that Harry James was possessed by it. This is what Raymond Brown meant: Five thousand people possessed by the vibe of Jesus presiding at Passover — for sure they were expecting this. Once upon a time the philosopher Nietzsche came up with the insight that creation takes place in the realms of music, and so I imagine the expectation of those in the presence of Jesus at Passover might have been a kind of creating musical event, a Passover light opera.

The only formula I can offer for reconciling system with expectation is that they must constantly be wrestled together.

Proper 26 B - Sunday, November 4, 2018

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Robert Sevensky, OHC
Proper 26 B - Sunday, November 4, 2018

Ruth 1:1-18
Hebrews 9:11-14
Mark 12:28-34

To hear the sermon in its fullness click here.

I was recently surfing the internet and came across this headline:  “Tech Community Outraged after SQLite Founder Adopts Benedictine Code of Conduct” The first paragraph of the article reads:

“The founder of the world's most widely used database engine ignited a firestorm in the tech community after it was revealed that he had posted a code of conduct for users based on the teachings of the Bible and an ancient order of monks founded by Benedict of Nursia.”

What he had posted was Chapter 4 of the Rule of St. Benedict:  “The Tools for Good Works.”

The chapter comprises 72 exhortations or commandments, beginning with the Two Great Commandments that we heard this morning in the Gospel:  Love of God and Love of Neighbor, commandments which Jesus quotes from the Torah (Deuteronomy and Leviticus). The chapter goes on to add most of the Ten Commandments and various other behaviors or proscriptions.

Taken together they constitute a thorough moral examination of Christian living, ranging in content from observable, external actions such as relieving the lot of the poor and clothing the naked and burying the dead and not being lazy and not giving way to anger to more interior practices and dispositions that we might term habits of the heart:

• Don't nurse a grudge
• Utter only the truth from heart and mouth
• Do not return evil for evil
• Love your enemies
• Don't be a grumbler or a detractor
• Hate no one
• Don't be jealous
• Don't be proud or arrogant
• Don't love quarreling
• Don't be addicted to wine

There are even some explicitly religious directives:

• Prefer nothing more than the love of Christ
• Love fasting and chastity
• Deny yourself in order to follow Christ
• Keep death daily before your eyes
• Put your hope in God

As you might imagine, this didn't go over big in Silicon Valley...and maybe not with most of us if we are honest.  It's an exhaustive and perhaps exhausting list and would be frankly impossible—is impossible—were it not for the final 72nd tool:  “Never despair of God's mercy.”

Most of these “tools” are not commandments or laws in our usual sense—enforceable dictums--but only in an extended sense, just as the Two Great Commandments that we hear from Torah and from Jesus and which begin this list are not.  But they help me, they help all of us to better understand the content of those two great commandments. They “unpack” them for us, so to speak. And indeed the two are fundamentally and ultimately one.  Jesus invites us to acts of love...acts which are both interior and exterior, internal dispositions of the heart and external observable behaviors.  And unless we have both, cultivate both, our loving is incomplete and weak.  And so are we.

Here in this community, we are fond of quoting a line from the rule of our founder James Otis Sargent Huntington: “Love must act as light must shine and fire must burn.”  This too is not a commandment in the usual sense—a demand or directive. It is rather a description of the very nature of love.  It is not the case that we must first get our act together and then be or do something loving. Rather, it is the very nature or essence or character of love to overflow in acts of love, just as it is of the very nature or character of light to shine and of fire to burn. And this is not original with our Father Founder. St. Ignatius Loyola says as much in his Spiritual Exercises:  “Love ought to show itself in deeds over and above words.”

We rightly say that the God the Holy Trinity Itself naturally overflows in creativity revealing God and Godself in an abundance, and overflow, an outpouring of love.

And what is true of God is true of us...all of us.  All of us are lovers, though few of us love well.

St. Augustine says, “Everybody loves: the question is, what is the object of our love?  In Scripture, we are not urged to stop loving, but instead to choose what we love.”  To choose carefully and wisely and sweetly, with all our whole heart and mind and strength.

There's a quote going around on the Internet and available now in posters and note cards attributed to Pedro Arrupe, SJ, former Superior General of the Jesuits  In fact, he never said it, but—like the so-called Prayer of St. Francis—it seems to me, at least for the most part, true. You may have seen it:

Nothing is more practical than
finding God, than
falling in Love
in a quite absolute, final way.
What you are in love with,
what seizes your imagination, will affect everything.
It will decide
what will get you out of bed in the morning,
what you do with your evenings,
how you spend your weekends,
what you read, whom you know,
what breaks your heart,
and what amazes you with joy and gratitude.
Fall in Love, stay in love,
and it will decide everything.

The Tools of Good Works are finally a commentary and explication of the two great Commandments—which are indeed only one.  They teach us how to love, what love must look like, what shape and texture our loving will have.  They offer us some of the signs and signposts of love. Yes: let us be careful what we love. But let us not fail to love and to love as Christians, guarding and guiding both our hearts and our hands: “Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.”

There is a postscript: SQLite ultimately had to abandon the Rule of Benedict as their Code of Conduct. It didn't meet industry standards. So they re-posted it as their “Code of Ethics,” substituting instead the Code of Conduct from Mozilla, of Firefox fame.  They note however that they and their developers nevertheless pledge to follow the spirit of the Rule of Benedict to the best of their ability and see it as a promise to their clients that this is how we will behave in our community.  They add:  “We will treat you his way regardless of how you treat us.” Not bad.  Not bad at all.

In a hundred years, when Mozilla and even SQLite are forgotten, folks will still be reading the words of Jesus and, I venture to predict, the words of our Holy Father Benedict.  We will still need a school of love, a treasury of tools of good works.  And we will need to be reminded as much as we do today: “Never despair of God's mercy.”

Finally please, if you haven't done so already: vote on Tuesday.”