The Sixth Sunday of Easter - May 17, 2020

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. John Forbis, OHC
The Sixth Sunday of Easter - May 17, 2020

Acts 17:22-31
1 Peter 3:13-22
John 14:15-21

Click here for an audio version of this sermon.

Oh no, he said it!  He really said it!  How many times in my growing up and even into adulthood have I heard these words: “If you love me, you would do what I want?!?!”  For me, punishment is almost easier to swallow than such a manipulation.  But is Jesus really saying the same thing, with the same coercion?  Well … yes and no.

First of all, to get technical, there is a subtle change in verb tenses here.  Jesus says, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”  And later in this passage he comes full circle to say, “Those who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me.”  Yes, he expects his disciples to back up their declaration of love with action, but he uses the future tense, not the conditional.  He makes this statement almost as a foregone conclusion; a fact, or a promise.

What if Jesus’ promise of having and keeping his commandments is less about “toeing the line” as a burden and more about devoting one’s attention and energy toward them?  Jesus’ commandments are so much more than commands.

Toeing the line is a product of a very different mindset.  In a world of “if you love me, you would do what I want,” where someone has to be guilty, everyone is the accused and accuser.  Satan is judge, and we’re all condemned.

Jesus doesn’t want victims or accusers, but followers, followers who freely and actively participate in and commit to Jesus’ commandments, to enter into God’s heart.  There’s no expectation that we have to toe the line as if to earn God’s love or prove our love for God.  Perhaps that’s the kind of “unknown god” to which the Athenians built a shrine and whom we worship so easily, groping for perfection, our idol of gold, silver or stone.  God’s love is unconditional.  We put conditions on love.

God does not need to live in our shrines made by human hands.   All God needs is to give – “to all mortals life and breath and all things” and most of all His living Grace.  If we have to have proof of this, we only need to look to Jesus, his life and ministry and his Commandments, which are all summarized in one commandment:  To love one another as Christ loves us.  He’s asking us to commit to a new Creation in which love is the driving agent, not power or domination.  This Creation is abundant life, immersed in loving God because God first loved us.  The God in whom we live, move and have our being is the source of our love.  This love is God’s gift to us.

Leave it to me to fixate on the opening sentence and hear it as Jesus is sending me on a guilt trip.  Maybe I hear it that way because it distracts me from the responsibility and challenge of love.  I’m engaged where I fail, not who I can and am called to be.  It’s easier to feel I am either a convicted criminal or an accuser.       

As we learned last week, the disciples are listening to this man whom God has appointed and not really understanding a word he’s saying.  Thomas needs to know the way to where Jesus is going.  Jesus points to himself.  Philip needs to see the Father.  Again, Jesus responds, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip and you still don’t know the Father?”

When Jesus is arrested later that night, one disciple betrays him, another denies him three times and the rest scatter.  So Jesus’ promise hardly seems possible, that they will keep his commandments.

But, Jesus talks about another Advocate, which suggests that he is the first Advocate.  This man who will judge the world in righteousness is also a Defense Attorney.  He judges by defending others, but not himself.  His silence at his trial frustrates and baffles Pilate to the point where all he can do to make peace is to turn him over to the crowds who crucify this innocent victim.  This Judge, Defense Attorney becomes the accused so that the world order of accuser and accused is rendered indefensible.  His death on the Cross is the defense for us when we’re put on trial and against us when we put others on trial.  This is Christ’s courtroom.  He can do anything he wants here.  He is judge and the defense.  In this courtroom, mercy prevails. 

Then, he offers more promises.  He will ask the Father, and the Father will give you another Advocate.  A defense lawyer even when we’ve fallen short of Jesus’ commandments to love one another as he has loved us.  We’re neither accuser nor accused.  We are just an unknown God’s offspring, a God who loves us, whom we search for and perhaps grope for him and find him.

How do we find him?  The Second Advocate, the Spirit of Truth, that the world doesn’t know or see and can’t receive.  We know him.  “He abides with you and he will be in you.”  We have the Spirit with us right now before as well as after Pentecost.  This Spirit shows God “who is not far from each one of us”, even now in our isolation, fear and confusion.

With the Spirit of Truth with us and in us, we are not left orphaned.  We see Jesus.  Jesus is alive.  He still even now enters through our locked doors, our lockdown.  We are in union with God.  “I am in my Father, and you in me and I in you.”  All the promises are assured because of this fusion.  Jesus is raised from the dead.  Truth does not end with death.

Another promise is that we will know this.  Thus, we can be assured of the first promise:  If you love me, you will keep my commandments … Those who love me will keep my commandments, and those who love me will be loved by my Father, I will love them and reveal myself to them.”  Being alive in Christ, how could we not keep Jesus’ commandments?  We know from where they come.  We know to where they go.  Besides, the Spirit of Truth, the Defense Attorney, can teach us how to be Defense Attorneys to each other when we fall short of loving as Jesus loves.    

The Fifth Sunday of Easter - May 10, 2020

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Rev. Cari Pattison
The Fifth Sunday of Easter - May 10, 2020

Acts 7:55-60
1 Peter 2:2-10
John 14:1-14

Click here for an audio version of this sermon.

Let your good news come, Lord, not only in word but in power, in the Holy Spirit and with full assurance. Amen.

Maybe it’s because I’m from Kansas, where the “Wizard of Oz” is our formative myth -- but I love the idea of a way. A path to follow that leads to answers. A yellow brick road that is bright and shiny and easy to see, and leads to that which we most desire- a brain, a heart, some courage, and ultimately- home.

Perhaps it is this founding mythology that partly informed my decision to hike the Appalachian Trail last year. The idea of backpacking 2200 miles from Georgia to Maine lodged itself deep in my imagination and would not let go until I set foot on Springer Mountain. So with my over-stuffed pack and not-so-broken-in shoes, I set out on a journey, in some sense to find my way in the uncertain land of mid-life.

In today’s Gospel text, Jesus does not point to a new spiritual road or a magical map to heaven. He simply says that he is the way. The way that leads not to all the answers or to everything our hearts desire- but the way that leads to truth, and life.

But first there is trouble. It is trouble, after all, in the form of a tornado that sweeps up Dorothy Gale and lands her in a place she never intended to be. And there will be trouble along that yellow road- trees throwing apples, mischievous flying monkeys, sedating poppies, and of course a wicked witch.

The trouble Jesus speaks of in today’s text refers to the disturbed look on his disciples’ faces. He has just told them that one of them will betray him, another will deny him, and worst of all, he is about to leave them.

We keep hearing and reading the phrase lately, “In these uncertain times…”

I can’t help but think that yesterday, the snow falling on newly blooming lilacs in May, was a visual illustration of the strangeness of these times. We wonder, “What season are we in?”

Jesus and his disciples know uncertain times.

In the midst of foretelling their failures and of his own looming departure, Jesus says these words often heard at funerals:

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. There are plenty of dwellings in my Father’s house and I’m getting one ready for you. I’m going to come for you, and you know the way to where I am going.”

Philip raises his hand and asks the question on all of their minds, “Lord, we don’t even know where you’re going, so how on earth can we know the way?”

I recall times on the Appalachian Trail last spring when we accidentally took the wrong way. Lost in thought and conversation we followed my friend’s dog, a wonderful border collie mix named Blue, instead of the white blazes that kept us on the AT. She was such a fearless leader for our trail family that we forgot that she did not in fact know the way. She was driven by her sense of smell, usually toward something dead in the woods.

Another time early on in Georgia we got distracted when we left camp in the morning. Intent on doing our first 15-mile day, we made it a mile and a half down the trail before some fellow hikers crossed our path and asked, “Oh, are you south-bounders?” No, we answered. We’re headed to Maine. “Well you’re headed in the wrong direction!” they said.

It can be hard to know the way.

It is hard to know the way right now.

“Do not let your hearts be troubled,” Jesus says.

But there is much to be troubled about.

Already over a quarter of a million people have died of Covid-19 worldwide. Unemployment rates are the highest they’ve been since the Great Depression, domestic violence and mental health problems are increasing by the day, and many of the effects of social distancing pose risk factors for substance abuse and even suicide.

We see pictures of New York City and that first verse of Lamentations rings eerily true: “How lonely sits the city that once was full of people! How like a widow she has become, she that was great among the nations! She weeps bitterly in the night, with tears on her cheeks… she has no one to comfort her.”

It is unimaginable to think that so many of those 250,000 deaths were people dying alone in a hospital bed with no family, friends, or priest allowed to be by their side.

In the midst of the political blaming and hand-wringing and looking to experts for guidance, we wait. We wait for a definitive word on antibody tests and vaccines. We wait for permission to re-open and come out of quarantine. We wait to hug those we love. In the meantime we look for ways to keep one another safe and healthy, for constructive ways to give and help.

Still we find ourselves echoing some version of Philip’s question: “Lord, what do we do? Where are you going? How can we know the way?”

Many have cried out this week, “Come, Lord Jesus,” in the face of a the brutal murder of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery. Ahmaud, doing his regular work-out jog, was a young man shot essentially for “running while black.”

We cry out not only at the horror and injustice of this loss of life, but at the racism stuck in the marrow of this nation’s bones: that the two men now charged with the killing were considered justified and allowed to live free for the past two months- even after authorities saw the video of what happened.

We wonder how many other black lives have been shot down and gone unnoticed? How long, O Lord, will this kind of white prejudice and panic persist?

We echo a version of Thomas’s request:

God, show yourself - show us what to do - and may we never be satisfied as long as your children of color, created in your image, are anything less than fully free.

Do not let your hearts be troubled, Jesus says.

And yet there is much to be troubled about.

Sometimes we as Christian community, need to feel the full weight of the psalmist’s words in the one psalm - 88 - that does not end on a note of hope:

“My soul is full of troubles, and my life draws near to Sheol.”

But the promise of the Gospel here, if I understand it, is that Jesus will not leave us there.

He is going to prepare a place - not just in the heavenly realms - but with him here and now. Jesus says he will bring us to himself. He is here to show us the Father Mother Creator God in the flesh.

In all the works the disciples have seen him do thus far - the water into wine, the Samaritan woman befriended, the officer’s son healed, the crowds of people fed, the blind man given sight, the walking on the water, and the raising of Lazarus - Jesus shows them who God is.

Jane Yarmolinsky writes,

“The whole concept of God taking on human shape, and all the liturgy and ritual around that, had never made any sense to me. That was because, I realized one day, it was so simple. For people with bodies, important things like love have to be embodied. God had to be embodied, or else people with bodies would never in a trillion years understand about love.”

And yet now we live in a time when we cannot connect in the same embodied way we used to. One woman on Zoom retreat with us this week said, “I just need a hug.” As Brother Robert said yesterday - the absence of touch and hugs and handshakes - “is so loud.”

And so maybe we need this word more than ever: That Jesus is the way that leads to truth and life. That he never intended this word to be an exclusionary statement about other faiths, but rather a word of intimate encouragement to his closest friends:

“I know your hearts are troubled. I know these are confusing and frightening times. But I will be your way, your truth, and your life.” Follow this road. Stay on this trail.

Six times in this passage Jesus tells us to believe, to trust in what we have experienced of Jesus, and to go and do works like he did. To embody God’s love to the world. To be agents of welcome, healing, feeding, giving, teaching, comfort, and restoration.

In a time like pandemic, writes Richard Rohr, we are reminded of the African concept of Ubuntu - that “I am because we are.” That we cannot begin to address the pain of our world unless we do it with a heart for one another.

Not unlike Dorothy, our world is swept up in a cyclone of confusion and destruction. There is sickness in body and in bigotry. There is struggle in the climate, in the economy, and in our souls.

Jesus says into all this, “I am coming. I will bring you to me. I will be your way.”

Like the road leading to Oz and the trail leading to Maine, I sometimes wish the way were always clearer and smooth and easy to follow.

But Jesus’ way is the one that leads to a cross. We will not be able to traverse the terrain of our time without the One who is well acquainted with suffering. We will not be able to go it alone, and we will not be able to follow his way without sacrifice.

In closing, I share a story that has been on my heart this week. Not as an example that would lead us to take risks that might endanger our health and the health of others, but as an illustration that might prompt us to pray. That God might show us how to creatively love our neighbor in a time like this.

The story is told of two soldiers during World War I:

Joseph and Jim were lifelong friends and served alongside each other in battle. Outnumbered and suffering heavy casualties, the commander ordered a retreat.

When the company got to safe ground, Jim noticed his friend, Joe, was not with them. He went to the commander and asked permission to go back and look for him.

The commander disapproved, saying that under heavy fire of the enemy, Jim would surely be killed. He told him they would recover the bodies when it was safer to do so.

Jim apologized before he disobeyed the order and ran back to the battlefield.

Minutes later he came back carrying Joe’s dead body. As he lay him down, the company saw that Jim himself was badly wounded now.

The commander was furious: “I told you he would have been killed in the firefight. You foolishly endangered yourself, and now I risk losing another man. What a waste!”

But Jim, now fighting for his own life, calmly spoke to the commander,

“Sir, it was not a waste. When I got to Joe he was still alive. I held him up and propped him on my lap, telling him to hold on. As he gasped for breath, his last and only words were these:

‘I knew you would come.’”

* * * *

Jesus, you are the one
who comes for us,
and keeps coming,
no matter the cost.

Grant us wisdom
and courage
for the facing of this hour -

that we might believe
and live the kind of lives
that show your love
to a hurting world.

Come, our way,
our truth,
our life.

Amen.

The Fourth Sunday of Easter - May 3, 2020

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Aidan Owen, OHC
The Fourth Sunday of Easter - May 3, 2020

Acts 2:42-47
1 Peter 2:19-25
John 10:1-10

Click here for an audio version of this sermon.

In the name of the One God, who is Lover, Beloved, and Love Overflowing. Amen.

Alleluia! Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen, indeed! Alleluia! 

Yes, four weeks in, and it’s still Easter. Thank God.

This Easter may be more like the first Easter than any I can remember. Like the disciples, most of us weren’t able to gather around a Pascal fire to mark the Queen of Feasts. The threats that surround us, and our fear of our own exposure and death have kept us huddled indoors, like those first followers of Jesus. And, like them, many of us Christians may feel defeated, lost, anxious, and angry. Or perhaps we’re unutterably tired and can’t be bothered to work up an Alleluia.

We also, like those early disciples, have the sense that something is forever different, though we don’t know yet what that something is.

Many of our religious authorities, even in so-called “mainstream” Christianity, have sold their souls to the emperor for political gain. Sin and death, nationalism and racism, lies and corruption rule the society in which we live.

This is the context now, as it was then, and, frankly, as it has always been, for the good, improbable, and astounding news that yes, Jesus Christ is risen. Yes, he is risen here, now, and forever. God has already won her victory over the forces of evil, division, and death and has opened the way to abundant life for all of creation.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve heard stories of the first disciples’ encounters with the risen Lord. These encounters lay a foundation for a life lived in the fullness of Christ, a life transformed by God’s promise to bring life out of death. This week, the lections move us from encounter to integration and begin to show us what the resurrected life actually looks like in practice. And what it looks like is sheep.

I would so much rather the resurrected life look like clever crows, beautiful foxes, or fierce wolves. But it would seem God is not nearly as interested as I am in my beauty, cleverness, or courage. In fact, God doesn’t seem to be too interested in my my at all. And that’s one of the lessons of the sheep.

You see, sheep have two defining virtues: their unity with one another and their unity with their shepherd. Sheep huddle together and move as one body. Although individuals have personality, they don’t embody their individuality at the expense of the unity of the flock. In fact, as with bees or forests, it really doesn’t make sense to speak of a single sheep. A flock of sheep is what biologists call a superorganism, a group of individuals who are so in sync with one another that you can only truly speak of the collective as one being made up of many persons.

With sheep, as with bees, that one being—the flock—responds to one other being—the shepherd. And basically to no one or nothing else. Sure, they might collectively run from perceived threats. But they don’t follow anyone or anything but the shepherd. Over time sheep become so attuned to the shepherd that they know his voice. They run to him, follow him, respond to him.

I’ll admit, it’s not a very subtle metaphor. But like the disciples to whom Jesus is speaking, as obvious as the image is, we don’t get it. Or, we don’t get it on a level that moves us to embody it. None of is born or raised a sheep. At the best of times we’re all really wolves, crows, or foxes in sheep’s clothing, trying our best to follow God’s voice, all the while distracted and torn by our various cravings, fears, and hopes.

It isn’t just our cravings, of course, that complicate our integration into the sheepfold. One of the greatest hurdles to transformation in Christ, is our earnest and real desire to be humble and good and to love and follow God. Hidden in this desire for goodness in its various forms, is usually the belief that our goodness will finally complete us. And that, once we‘re complete, we won’t need God anymore. We secretly believe that if we love God, if we strive for goodness and humility, we will get to be perfect versions of ourselves. And that system of belief and striving is one of the subtlest and most insidious kinds of idolatry, and one to which religious folks are particularly vulnerable.

Jesus himself reminds us that only God is good. God is the source and the terminus of all goodness. Whatever is good or true or beautiful in this world is a reflection of God’s beauty, God’s goodness, God’s truth. All our effort to claim that goodness for our own is vanity and pride.

Really, it’s fear. Fear that, if we aren’t good we aren’t anything at all. And fear, too, that God’s promise to bring life from death may not really be true, after all.

Dame Julian captures this dynamic when she writes that

“some of us believe that God is all powerful and may do everything; and that he is all wise and can do everything; but as for believing that he is all love and will [emphasis mine] do everything, there we hold back. In my view nothing hinders God’s lovers more than the failure to understand this.”¹

Our hope in the midst of the darkness that surrounds us today must be in God’s goodness alone. By our own power, we can only, at best, create a kind of resuscitation of the old life we knew. Only God can bring forth from death the life that really is life.

The image of the sheepfold, following the loving voice of its shepherd, is an image of the new creation, of humanity as fully and finally redeemed, brought forth into a new innocence. This innocence is not that of Eden, of those who have never known sin and death and fear. But rather of those who have sinned and died again and again and again, and have, through the mercy and goodness of God, been reborn. It is an innocence that is genuinely wise and humble, because it knows that not only is God all-powerful and all-wise, but that God is also all love, continually shepherding us to new and deeper life.

Julian concludes her thoughts in this passage by saying that “As by his courtesy God forgives our sins when we repent, even so he wills that we [emphasis mine] should forgive our sins; and so give up our senseless worrying and faithless fear.”²

And who knows? In the end, perhaps, we will not all be sheep, for as Isaiah tells us, the wolf and the lion shall lie down with the kid. If for now we remain crows and foxes and wolves, dressed in sheep’s clothing or not, so be it. In God’s own time and in God’s own way we will be reborn into whatever  we truly are. And then we will hear our shepherd calling us each by our true name.

For this much is certain. God is good and that is everything.

And yes, Christ is risen! Alleluia!


1. As quoted in Robert Llewelyn, All Shall Be Well, p. 9.
2. Ibid., p. 10.