Holy Cross Monastery Sermons

Thursday, May 30, 2024

Corpus Christi - May 30, 2024

Br. Randy Greve

Corpus Christi, May 30, 2024

Deuteronomy 8:2-3
1 Corinthians 11:23-29
John 6:47-58

The Bread of Life discourse in John 6 has read to me for a long time as a rough draft in need of a good editor. The repetition especially seems like overkill. But by digging a bit more into the context of the Johannine community, I have come to appreciate the motivation for the emphasis. The scholarly consensus is that the community from which the gospel of John came were settled in Ephesus. Ephesus was an important center of pagan worship with a large temple and the ritual that went along with it. The worship of Artemis provided social identity and cohesion. If we were to go back in time and talk to a typical resident of Ephesus, he or she would describe a world in which the pagan gods were higher and more powerful than human beings and held the right to punish or bless. Seeking through ritual sacrifice to appease the gods was a way to earn favor and avoid hardship and pain. Our imaginary Ephesian believed a great chasm is fixed between the realm of the gods and the realm of humans. They believed that we earthly creatures are defined by our deficiencies - we lack immortality, we lack freedom from flesh and pain and death, we lack freedom.

The gods are our idealized selves, the truly free beings who have real power. By sharing in their benevolence we participate in those attributes and can aspire to escape our dreadful enfleshed state and touch the eternal, our true home. Life is about the hope of escape and freedom from limits.

These beliefs are the backdrop to the gospel of John. The gospels' description of the incarnate Son of God is in every way the exact opposite theology of the pagan gods. This deity does not escape flesh, but becomes it, does not find freedom by ascending above us, but by dwelling among us. When the gospel is read as a renunciation of pagan theology by the revelation of the incarnation, it comes alive in a richer way. The Bread of Life repetition serves a rhetorical and catechetical function. The Son of God is not one more addition to the program of sacrifice and appeasement. The Christ event is an utterly original and reorienting revelation of the nature of God in the world and our human vocation. The minds of the new converts needed to be “de-paganized”, programmed as they were to see the world one way, now in Christ it is revealed as something else, with a truth, beauty, and goodness entered into by belief.

How do I become a clean insider so that I may approach the Son of Man? “whoever believes has eternal life”. Christ is not like that.

My social status and sin exclude me from participation in the life offered by Christ… “whoever eats of this bread will live forever…” The Son of God welcomes whoever.

How can I climb up to reach Christ? “This is the bread that comes down from heaven…” The incarnate Christ comes down to us, we do not go up to him.

This life in Jesus is sent down into the Incarnate One to earth; from divinity, for humanity in whom Jesus is the great Reconciling One. The material and the earthly now become the means of embodying and reflecting life eternal now. Jesus’ words and actions set out the contours of the human and divine relationship. We are made participants in the divine life through the initiative of God - not something we ascend to possess, but life that Christ descends to give freely, without respect for the person. “Whoever” stresses the individuality and particularity of God’s gift in Christ; our true identity, our true home is found as we put ourselves inside this word, “whoever”.

The narrative acknowledges the scandal and the stumbling block of believing and receiving: “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” The scandal is how the life offered is a great equalizer of human worth and value. I cannot increase status or favor or value. The fullness of the divine image is always already present and secured by God and cannot be revoked. In believing, eating, and drinking, we are set into the wondrous glory and limit of being a creature made in the divine image, yet dependent on our creator. Being truly human is cooperation, not competition. To receive this gift is to believe that I am welcomed along with you. The scandal is that I am welcomed no differently, not ever less or more than you.

Christ’s “whoever-ing” of all humanity reveals the essential unity and shared glory of every human person. Even as we differ in gifts, responsibilities, and roles, in Christ we eat and drink from the same gift offered in the same way to each of us. For John and his community, life is not a new legalistic hierarchy of conformity, but a universal invitation of living as brother and sister in Christ.

To the extent that I receive this hospitality in and for me, I am formed to recognize and welcome in my brothers and sisters the same dignity and Christ-indwelt sacredness. This mutual recognition faces difference and conflict in the context of our shared call by Christ and the need of Christ. We express our positions and preserve boundaries and give and receive consequences and solve problems and reach consensus not with the goal of yielding power over the other, but in the assurance that our shared “whoever” is inviolable and that anything that denies or harms our mutual welcome cannot persist in the community.

As enmity, insult, and abuse engulf social discourse, perhaps hearing Saint John’s repetition is necessary. As divisions swirl around us and rivalry would tear at our very humanity, the words of life ring with renewed prophetic hope. To eat and drink and live is to renounce these evil powers and affirm our common dignity.

The Holy Eucharist itself is the eternal now of this common receiving of the one gift of life offered as and by Christ equally with whoever is willing to believe and eat and drink. As we gather as a eucharistic community, we are practicing the reception of one another in the reception of bread and wine. Help us believe in your words, Lord Christ: “Bread of life, living bread, those who eat and drink have eternal life, abide in me, live forever.” Amen.

Sunday, May 26, 2024

The First Sunday after Pentecost/Trinity Sunday - May 26, 2024

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Josep Martinez-Cubero

Trinity Sunday, May 26, 2024

Click here for an audio of the sermon

It is Holy Trinity Sunday.

Time to dust off the Dogmatics.

Speak of God as H-2-0:

water with three parts –

mist, liquid, ice.

Or a three-leaf clover will do

to disclose the Three-In-One.

Why do we bother with

images, icons, projections of God

worthy to be shattered

by the mystery unsolved?

How dare we define the Divine,

Domesticate the Godhead?

Go ahead: Draw your pictures,

Color your triangles,

Speak of the Three-In-One,

And the One-In-Three.

Use the Athanasian Creed litmus test

Of Father / Son / Spirit.

But all the while do not trust

The limit of language,

The confinement of metaphor,

The simplicity of simile.

The Ancients knew

One could not be

In the presence of the living God

And live.

Moses beholds God’s backside,

Jeremiah – God’s fingers in his mouth,

Isaiah God’s robe and a hot coal.

The Christ confined in flesh,

Spirit unmanageable,

Cosmic-Creator.

Expand do not contract God

For God is the Great Iconoclast.

And we at last

With Job

Stand in the Divine Presence

Jaws dropping

In muted wonder.

Kenn Storck / May 25, 2015

Used with permisssion copyright @apoemasunday by Pr. Kenn Storck.

That poem by Lutheran Pastor Kenn Storck best expresses my sentiment about having to preach on this day. It’s not that I don’t like the Trinity, on the contrary, I find it most important and fundamental to the Christian faith, even if baffling. It’s a feast different from other Principal Feasts of the Church’s Calendar because it celebrates, not a Biblical dramatic event like Jesus’s birth, the Resurrection, or the coming of the Holy Spirit, but a doctrine- an approved theological idea.

This theological idea explains the mystery that is God, and the Christ, and the Holy Spirit and the relationship of the three in a clear, organized, and neat way. As a “J” on the MBTI, I love clarity and organization and neatness. At the same time, I’m mindful that we can’t have a completely authentic experience of God if we stay with the clear, organized and neat formulas. As the great 4th century Egyptian Desert monk Evagrius Ponticus (344-399) observed: “"God cannot be grasped by the mind. If [God] could be grasped, [God] would not be God." Similarly, the Syrian monk and bishop John of Damascus (676–749) wrote in his Exposition of the Christian Faith (I.4): "It is plain, then, that there is a God. But what [God] is in [God’s] essence and nature is absolutely incomprehensible and unknowable. God then is infinite and incomprehensible; and all that is comprehensible about [God] is [God’s] incomprehensibility." And the 13th century German Dominican friar, theologian and mystic, Meister Eckhart, dared to pray: “I pray God, rid me of God.” His point being that, not until we rid ourselves of our assured ideas about God do we begin to actually experience God.

The doctrine of the Holy Trinity was ‘created’ to describe, define, and safeguard the human experience of God, as the source of life beyond any limit we can imagine, God coming to us uniquely through the life of Jesus of Nazareth, and God as the ultimate depth of life. For early disciples, encountering Jesus was encountering God directly. At the same time, Jesus spoke of God as both distinct from him (as when he prayed to God or spoke of God as the One who sent him) and “one” with him. Likewise, they experienced encounters with the Spirit as encounters with God directly. At the same time, Jesus spoke of the Spirit as a guiding, challenging presence distinct both from him and from the One to whom he prayed. So Christians sought out ways to express this mystery that God is properly conceived as both Three and One.

What’s interesting is that, Science, once considered the enemy of religion, is now helping us realize that we are in the midst of awesome mystery, and mystery is that which cannot be apprehended by reason, but once apprehended, is not contrary to reason. This Mystery of the relatedness of God’s very being, the multiple-ness of God’s very unity invites us to be at peace in the unknowing. Quantum physics, and cosmology are now helping us look at this Mystery of the Triune God with a new level of understanding. Reality is relational. The Holy Trinity is about relationship, indwelling, and interrelatedness. It is about God within God, mutually depending and dwelling together in a holy unity. And we are invited to be a part of this Mystery through which God relates to us. Rather than an esoteric picture of God “up there”, God is right here with us, creating, redeeming, and sustaining us; a God “in whom we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28).

God is always relating, within God’s self, and beyond God’s self, a love and joy so unimaginable that it cannot be contained. And we are invited to participate in that love and joy of God through Jesus Christ in the Spirit. It is an invitation into relationship. It is Jesus who teaches us through his ministry of love and healing, to live our interrelatedness with God, and with one another. His teaching leads us to a God whose very essence is structured around loving relationship.

In his Commencement Address for Oberlin College in 1965, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “… all life is interrelated. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality; tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly… Strangely enough, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.”

In his short essay, ‘Ubuntu: On the Nature of Human Community’, the late Desmond Mpilo Tutu (1931-2021), who was a Nobel Prize winner, anti-apartheid activist, former archbishop of Cape Town, and good friend of our Order, wrote: In our African…worldview, we have something called ubuntu. In Xhosa, we say, “Umntu ngumtu ngabantu.” This expression is very difficult to render in English, but we could translate it by saying, “A person is a person through other persons.” We need other human beings for us to learn how to be human, for none of us comes fully formed into the world. We would not know how to talk, to walk, to think, to eat as human beings unless we learned how to do these things from other human beings. For us, the solitary human being is a contradiction in terms.

Ubuntu is the essence of being human. It speaks of how my humanity is caught up and bound up inextricably with yours. It says, not as Descartes did, “I think, therefore I am” but rather, “I am because I belong.” I need other human beings in order to be human. The completely self-sufficient human being is subhuman. I can be me only if you are fully you. I am because we are, for we are made for togetherness, for family. We are made for complementarity. We are created for a delicate network of relationships, of interdependence with our fellow human beings, with the rest of creation.

I have gifts that you don’t have, and you have gifts that I don’t have. We are different in order to know our need of each other. To be human is to be dependent.”

On the Vow of Obedience in his Rule for the Order, Father Huntington wrote: “We are to die to our isolation and separateness as individuals, that we may live in the energies of a mystical body wherein the life is one, and that the life of Jesus, our Head. The community is thus our means of entrance into union with our ascended Lord.” For Father Huntington, monastic life is characterized by the interdependence of its members. That means that we support one another in times of need, encourage each other to flourish, and are even willing to challenge one another when necessary. Our common welfare depends on the spiritual health of each member. There is no room in a Spirit-led community for domination, manipulation, controlling others, competition, resentment, envy, or revenge.

Living as related beings means that we seek out the voices in our midst that are not heard. It means we work through all of the barriers that seem to divide us, dismantling power systems based on hatred and domination. It means we treat the Earth, not as a reservoir of food and fuel, but as a dynamic and living organism to treasure and nurture. It means we learn to love the complexity within ourselves, having patience with the parts of ourselves that still need conversion. It means we give thanks for having been created as a part of a web of life and love that pours out of God’s own inner web of love, connectivity and relatedness.

In the midst of all manner of brokenness may we join the joyful dance of unknowing because where it comes to God no creed or doctrine will suffice. All that can really adequately be offered up is silence in the presence of the, One who is, was, and evermore shall be, in the words of Saint Augustine: Lover, Beloved and Love itself. May the Spirit of truth guide us until all will be revealed in the fullness of time. ¡Que así sea en el nombre del Padre, del Hijo y del Espíritu Santo! ~Amen+

Sunday, May 12, 2024

Easter 7 B - May 12, 2024

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Aidan Owen

The Seventh Sunday in Easter B, May 12, 2024

Click here for an audio of the sermon

A few years ago I went to a friend’s ordination to the priesthood at the Cathedral in New York. It was 2019. I’m sure you remember that four-year period we were in the middle of. When it came time for the sermon, the preacher gave a list of all the terrible things going on in the world. And when the list was done, so was the sermon. No Jesus. No God. No encouragement about what it means to be a Christian or a priest in difficult times. I was speechless.

Even more astonishing to me was the response from my fellow clergy. In the sacristy after the service, everyone around me was talking about what a powerful sermon it had been. I wanted to shout, “But where was the good news?” I was put in mind of Friedrich Nietzsche’s great critique of Christianity summed up in the words he attributes to Zarathustra: “They would have to sing better songs to me that I might believe in their Redeemer: his disciples would have to look more redeemed!”

There was a lot of bad news at that time. Arguably there is even more bad news today. But we Christians are called to preach, not the bad news, but the good news. We are called to proclaim the challenging message that even here and now, in the midst of sorrow and devastation, genocide and war, political upheaval and climatic collapse—even here and now Jesus Christ is risen. When the news gets worse and worse, our need to proclaim and model the joy of the resurrection is even more paramount.

Joy is meant to be the characteristic state of the redeemed Christian. But, like its counterpart gratitude, it is hard to maintain, particularly when we believe that our joy is a product of our own action rather than a gift of the Spirit enlivening us. Of course we will be dour when we think the salvation of the world is a matter solely of political and social action and that action rests entirely on our shoulders.

This morning’s gospel reading gives us a section of what we call the High Priestly Prayer or Jesus’ Farewell Discourse. I recently heard someone set the scene thus. Jesus is having a meal with his friends. He knows it will be the last time they are all together like this, and he just can’t bear to part with them, so much does he love them. So he keeps finding other things he needs to tell them. He is doing his best to equip them for the days and years ahead. And maybe he’s also having a little trouble letting go. I imagine we’ve all be there.

And yet, long though it may be, this prayer of love and inspiration contains some of the most exquisitely beautiful passages in Scripture. At the heart of this morning’s passage is the verse “I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves.”

This is what Jesus is up to: praying—interceding with his Father—so that his joy made be made complete, whole, total in us. Here is the first clue to sustaining the joy of the redeemed. It is not our joy. It is God’s joy, initiated by Jesus, and made full and complete in the Holy Spirit dwelling within and among us.

We often use joy as a synonym for happiness. But lightness of spirit, giddiness, being carefree—these are all too anemic to be called joy. Joy is something deeper, stronger, more profound. It is a gift of the Spirit, equal parts acceptance, hope, and love.

Christian Wiman points out that joy must contain sorrow. In fact, he calls sorrow “the seams of ore that burn darkly and beautifully in the midst of joy, and […] make joy the complete experience that it is.” (My Bright Abyss, p. 19) Joy is not a denial of reality, but an embracing of it, a drinking of reality to the dregs.

Joy understands the limitations of our knowledge and trusts that God is working out God’s purpose in the world and in our own hearts, whatever the outward appearance. Joy is a thing of the Cross as much as of the Resurrection.

I’m always surprised at quickly we move from the sadness and somberness of Good Friday into the celebration of Easter. That certainly doesn’t seem to have been the disciples’ experience, if we read the scriptures closely. They were afraid. They were perplexed. They were confused and astonished. So lost are they, that they often don’t recognize Jesus when he appears to them. Instead, their hearts burn strangely within them. We can only celebrate Easter morning because we know the end of the story, or we think we do.

More and more, though, the world seems like that first Easter morning. We have seen the crucifixion of our hopes and loves. We have even laid some of them to rest. And now we’ve come to visit them and found an empty cave and a pile of clothes. We know that something has happened, something immense, something shattering. But what?

I call to mind a section of Christine Lore Webber’s poem “Mother Wisdom Speaks”:

Some of you I will hollow out.

I will make you a cave.

I will carve you so deep the stars will shine in your darkness.

You will be a bowl.

You will be the cup in the rock collecting rain.

I will do this because the world needs the hollowness of you.

I will do this for the space that you will be.

I will do this because you must be large.

A passage.

People will find their way through you.

Sometimes joy looks like being hollowed out like a cave. Sometimes joy looks like allowing the darkness to make its home in us, so that the lines between the light and the dark soften, and we come to know more clearly the unity of all things, to bear that unity in our bodies. Are we willing to be bearers of joy in broken world? Are we are willing to look at the wreck of this world and see not only the rubble but the beauty?

Jesus prays for his joy to be made complete in us. Having ascended into heaven so that, as the letter to the Ephesians put it, he might fill all things, it falls to us to complete God’s joy. Without us, the joy, hope, and love that God means to fill the whole creation is incomplete. Take that in for a moment. God chooses to be incomplete without you and me. And that also means that the world is incomplete without our joy.

If we are shy or guilty about being persons of joy, then why in the world are we Christians? We are people who not only believe but know in the flesh of our bodies that Jesus Christ is risen. The world needs this joy. If we are not to bear it, then who will?

Without joy, we cannot sing the song of the Redeemed. It may be frightening to live in joy when the world prefers chaos. We may feel guilty or shy. But, to quote Rebecca Solnit, “Joy doesn’t betray but sustains activism. And when you face a politics that aspires to make you fearful, alienated, and isolated, joy is a fine initial act of insurrection.”

Even more so for us Christians. Joy is our birthright. So call the banners. Step out of the shadows and join hands. Let the insurrection of the Redeemed begin! Amen.