The Lenten Journey to Non-Violence

For the Fourth Sunday of Lent, I had the opportunity and blessing to be with the good people of St. Mary's - Harlem and preached this sermon. The readings for the day are below. 

1 Samuel 16:1-13
Ephesians 5:8-14
John 9:1-41

The Lenten Journey to Non-Violence

This morning, while there are many approaches I could take with the Gospel reading, I would like to focus our attention on what I call the Lenten Journey to Non-Violence, which I think this particular Gospel passage speaks to quite strongly.

In fact, I actually believe that all the middle Sunday's of Lent, the second through fifth Sundays, speak to this issue of non-violence. From Nicodemus on the second Sunday, to the Samaritan woman at the well last week, to the blind man this week, to the raising of Lazarus next week, what we have is a tangible way to commemorate liturgically the walk to non-violence that Jesus engaged in on his way to the entry into Jerusalem, the Cross and the Resurrection. That walk consisted of inviting all he encountered into the community of those who would make up the kingdom of God.

Community is, of course, key to non-violence. It is what we monastics like to think we know something about. And what Jesus does, throughout John's Gospel is to demonstrate various ways that the community is to be built. All are welcome: from the Establishment figure of Nicodemus; to the ethnic and religious outsider of the Samaritan woman, to the blind man presumed to be a sinner and also, importantly, a poor person; to the dead Lazarus rotting in his tomb. The community is for all: the living and the dead, the powerful and the weak, the sick, the poor, the outsider. All are welcome. All are welcome.

Now, this is what Martin Luther King would refer to as the “beloved community” which is established by four principals that the non-violent work toward. Dr. King would say that first, non-violence is “not for cowards: it does resist.” In other words, the beloved community is not passive, it will take a stand. Second, that “non-violent resistance does not seek to defeat or humiliate the opponent, but to win his friendship and understanding.” Third, that non-violence is “directed against forces of evil rather than against persons who are caught in those evil forces.” And fourth, non-violent resistance “avoids not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit.” Dr. King goes on to say that “at the center of non-violence stands the principle of love.”¹ That principle is the core of the beloved community.

And all along the way, Jesus works to create that beloved community. In John's Gospel, Jesus takes the time to have long conversations with people, who by the rules of his culture, he should not have. And in each case, he invites them into the beloved community. Some accept immediately, some refuse, some take their time to consider. But anyone is welcome to join.

So let's take the blind man of today's Gospel. How do the four principles of the beloved community apply to this story? First, Jesus is not passive in the presence of the blind man. It would have been much easier to simply walk on by. But instead, he acts. He answers the disciples question, he assures them, and by extension, assures the blind man, that he is not responsible for his condition, and then he actually heals the blindness.

Next, Jesus neither seeks to humiliate nor defeat the disciples who asked what could be construed as a cruel or silly question nor the Pharisees who are, after all, out to trap him. Jesus simply states his truth with love and honesty to the Pharisees and leaves it at that.

Third, Jesus directs his action against the forces of evil, and not the man. In this case the evil is represented by the blindness and the resulting economic injustice. He does not blame the man for his condition, he simply heals him. And that point is crucially important to understand this story in the context of non-violence. For as bad as blindness would be, in and of itself, for anyone at any time in history, at this particular time in history, blindness means that the man must beg for his food and for anything else he needs. He is destitute and, in a time of no social services, has to live off the charity of others, which was often not readily given. The act of Jesus giving the blind man his sight is not only an act of healing, but an act of economic empowerment. It turns the class system of the culture – with Pharisees near the top and blind men near the bottom - on its head. It empowers the man not only to see the sun and the moon, the olive trees and the Temple, but to earn his own living. And, as Dr. King wrote, “when the underprivileged demand [or gain] freedom, the privileged at first react with bitterness and resistance. Even when the demands are couched in non-violent terms, the initial response is substantially the same.”² The Pharisees use the fact that this healing took place on the Sabbath as a way to attack Jesus because he is doing a great deal to unsettle and even uproot the established order. This always, in every circumstance, makes those in power nervous. They feel that their way of life might be threatened and react accordingly.

Finally, Jesus works to not only avoid any violence toward the spirit of the blind man, but to heal that which has been caused by the Pharisees. As soon as Jesus sees that the Pharisees have driven the man out, Jesus finds him and assures him that God loves him. He affirms his spiritual life and allows him to worship. This gift of dignity is priceless to the human soul and furthers the healing of the whole man.

And so, what are the implications of this Lenten journey to non-violence for us here today? Well, first, I hope that we can begin to think of non-violence as a way of life, not simply as an approach to a particular issue. When you really study Dr. King's work, that is what he was aiming at, especially toward the end of his life. Non-violence had become for him not just a strategy to gain civil rights for African Americans, but a way of transforming his own life, the lives of his fellow Americans, the Church and ultimately, the world. Later this week, we will commemorate the forty-sixth anniversary of the martyrdom of Dr. King, among the very greatest practitioners of non-violence that our world has ever been blessed with. He is, for me, a great hero. May I suggest that we spend some Lenten time this week, in prayer and meditation on what this journey of Jesus and Dr. King might mean for us. Prayer and meditation are key enabling aspects of how we live more deeply into a non-violent life. We cannot hope to live that life, without prayer and meditation.

Second, perhaps we could begin a discussion on what the beloved community means to us, to this parish, to my monastic community. You have a great reputation as a community of believers that care for the poor and the sick, but as we know, there is always more work to do. And I cannot help but to wonder what it might mean for us today to not just care for the physically or emotionally sick or injured, but to heal them in such a way that the very economic structure of their lives, or of the economic structure of the neighborhood, or of the city, or country might get upended.

Our brother Martin taught us that “a religion that professes a concern for the souls of men and is not equally concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them, and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion.”³ But to pay attention to these issues, and to work on them, while trumpeting to all that they are welcome is to form the beloved community. It is to live more deeply into non-violence.

My other hero of non-violence, Archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Romero, whose thirty-fourth anniversary of martyrdom we commemorated last week, said, on many occasions, and which communicates better in Spanish: “hay que cambiar de raiz todo el sistema”: In other words, we must uproot the whole system in order to bring justice to the poor and peace to our land.

And for us today, here in the United States, I believe we have to do some uprooting ourselves because the cries of the blind, the poor and the powerless rise up from our city streets, our suburbs, our rural areas. Those cries sound to me like whimpers that are slowly but steadily growing into wails.

For example, we have a system of so called justice that has imprisoned young men of color for non-violent crimes in outrageously disproportionate numbers. And then, upon release, these men are dumped on our streets with no jobs, no money, no hope. This is the same as what the Pharisees did – the powerful keeping the poor in their place in order to keep the class system we live with in its place.

We have laws that allow virtually anyone, no matter how inappropriate, to own guns in this country. While our homes, neighborhoods, schools, churches, malls and movie theaters are being shot up like the OK Corral. This is a pharisaic approach to the letter of the law we know as the Second Amendment. Its purpose only to keep gun manufacturers and their allies flush with cash.

We have a foreign policy that uses our young men and women as battlefield fodder to die in wars that never needed to be fought. These “preemptive” wars only enrich the arms makers and their political allies while gravely harming our best and brightest. This is an approach to foreign policy found in some parts of the Old Testament that says we can kill anyone and justify it in the name of God; equating God and flag a most dangerous form of idol worship.

This is a system that needs to be uprooted. Because, yes, if you listen closely, you can hear the cries of the despairing prisoner unjustly incarcerated, the forgotten homeless desperate for sleep under a bridge or in a park, the neglected veteran suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, the children of Newtown. Listen to their cries. Do not drown them out by putting on spiritual headphones. There is no better beloved community than the Church to start digging away at those roots, planting a new garden, while learning to sing a new song.

This morning we heard Christ say that “as long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” Toward the very end of John's Gospel, when Jesus appears to the disciples after the Resurrection, his first words are “Peace be with you...” His next words are: “as the Father has sent me, so I send you.” My sisters and brothers, Christ is still in the world, in each one of you and in me. The light remains, it is up to us to let it grow and glow into a beautiful, beatific, beloved community. This is the call of non-violence. This is the call of the Gospel. AMEN.

1King, Martin Luther. “Non Violence and Racial Justice” Christian Century 2/6/57. From the Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. p. 7-8

2King, Martin Luther. “Pilgrimage to NonViolence” in Strength to Love by Martin Luther King. p. 160.

3Ibid. p. 159.

Icon of Courage

This is my sermon for Lent III, preached at the Cathedral of St. Mark in Salt Lake City. I spent a week with the really great community there leading a Lenten mission retreat. What a great experience! 

Ex 17:1-7
Rm 5:1-11
Jn 4:5-42

Icon of Courage

One of the greatest aspects of Eastern Orthodox monastic spirituality that has begun to spread to the Western Church is the use of icons in both our personal and our communal prayer life. For the Orthodox, icons are a central piece of their faith journey and, over the years, that has become true for myself, as well.

And so I will often spend time not only praying and studying with the Scripture text, but with one or more icons that depict the particular biblical story that I am preparing a sermon for. Now, yesterday, at our retreat day, we spent time with the Western monastic practice of Lectio Divina, which is a particular approach to the prayerful reading of Scripture. This morning, I'd like to emphasize an approach to Scripture through Visio Divina, in this case, the prayerful interpretation of an icon. 

This practice is almost as old as Christianity itself and is allowed for us, as opposed to our Hebrew forebears, because the Incarnation, that is, God becoming human, so revolutionized our way of relating to God. The Incarnation allows us to relate to God in a much more personal way, for God dwelt with us right here on earth.

This mornings passage from St. John's Gospel presents to us the story of the Samaritan woman which is quite a long one filled with many different insights to preach on. Very often, preachers will focus on Jesus' rather unusual actions, for example just speaking to a woman, or a Samaritan, or his demand for the woman to give him water.

But I would like to spend our time this morning focusing on the Samaritan woman, on her courage, and on her modeling for us, how we might live as Christians in the world today.

First of all, the Greek Orthodox tradition has named the Samaritan woman, once she was baptized, Photini, which translates as “Enlightened One.” In fact, they claim that she is the first to proclaim the Gospel because upon her return to her town, Photini converts her five sisters, two sons, and much of the town. And she is remembered by the Orthodox as a “Holy Martyr and Equal to the Apostles.” This is high praise indeed for anyone.

And I have to say, as I have studied the various icons of Photini and of the scene at the well, and delved into John's beautiful writing of this story, I have found myself more and more drawn to Photini and her courage. The icons depict a woman of great courage that has been quite an inspiration to me.

From the story, we know that Photini had gone to the well about noon – a time when no woman would go to any well because of the heat of the day. From archaeological digs, we know that she went to a well further from her town than she had to. So, it is clear that both in the context of the time of day, and the location of the well, Photini was avoiding the other villagers. She was, after all, in the words of the Prayer Book, a “notorious sinner”, having had five husbands and was now living with yet another man. This was wholly unacceptable behavior in her day. No one in that society would have accepted it. She was a sinner and an outcast.

And so she went to a well further from the village than necessary, and at a time when she should not have encountered anyone, to draw water. Often, the commentary is made that she was avoiding the other women of the town, but she may have, in fact, been banned from the well near town because of who she was and what she had done.

But what I love about so many of the icons that depicts this scene is that Photini appears, at least to me, as sassy. That's right – downright sassy. She is often depicted in dialogue with Jesus – not simply listening, but gesturing to Jesus, just as he is gesturing, in a way that does not look to be argumentative, but rather, like I said, sassy. By the rules of the culture, a man should not be speaking to her, a Jew should not be asking her for water, and a stranger could be quite dangerous. But there she is, engaged with Jesus in what appears to me to be a very courageous way. She is speaking her mind, asking probing questions, and then, really listening to Jesus.

And when Jesus tells her that the spring of water that he will “give is a spring of water gushing up to eternal life”, Photini, spiritually parched, truly opens up to Jesus. She does not totally get him at first, who ever does? But she knows that she needs forgiveness. She knows that she needs a Messiah. She knows that she needs this gushing spring to quench the very thirst that is slowly destroying her soul.

And once she drinks from this spring of water, Photini will never be the same. What was courageousness in the guise of sassiness now becomes the courageousness of faith. We know from Scripture that Photini returns to town and begins to tell everyone about the Christ and about the fact that he knows all her sins. That, in and of itself, is courageous. We know from Tradition, that Photini would go on to further evangelize Samaria and throughout the region, finally culminating in her martyrdom by the Emperor Nero.

So what does any of this have to do with us? It just seems to me that in Photini, we have an icon of courage, and therefore an example to us in how we might behave in our day to day lives. First, to be willing to have a real encounter with Christ takes courage. Now this is not just showing up to church on Sunday, but when you do – and when you pray in the privacy of your own lives, really being open to Christ, bringing all that you are – the good, the not so good, the sassy, the frightened, all of it – bringing all of it to Christ is the first courageous step you can take.

The next one is to really, truly listen. Give Christ your burdens, your sins, your fears, and Christ gives back to you his living waters. But not just any old water, no, springs of waters. Not just a drop or two, no, water gushing eternal life in which you will never be thirsty again. It takes courage to listen. And even more to step up for a drink of that spring. And more still, to be gushed all over.

Finally, Photini shows us that an experience of faith is not just for us. It is not a singular event meant for an individual. All faith experiences are meant for the entire community, even though they may only occur to one person. The first thing Photini does after encountering the Christ was to go back to her town – a town in which she was an outcast – to proclaim the gospel. The Good News was so liberating for her that she had to share it with courage and faith.

That is why I think Photini is a model for us today. We all need to encounter Christ more fully, to truly listen to his healing, forgiving message, and to proclaim that to our families, our towns, our world. This Lent, may you have the courage of St. Photini and the blessing of Christ the Living Water. AMEN.

Garden and Desert

During the first weekend of Lent, I was privileged to share time with Trinity Church, Princeton, NJ. This is a very active and alive parish which had a great turn out for a prayer workshop on Friday evening, a Quiet Day on Saturday, and then, of course, Holy Eucharist on Sunday. This is my sermon for Lent I with that community. 

Garden and Desert

In the monastic tradition the images of both the garden and the desert play a strong role in our spirituality. And in today's reading, this first Sunday of Lent, we see why that is the case. Laid out before us are two of the great stories of Scripture, the first, from Genesis, is an attempt to explain the origin of both personal and communal sin. While the second, from the Gospel of Matthew is an attempt to explain how that sin, either personal or communal, can be defeated. And interestingly enough, the garden – where life is abundant and beautiful - is the location that enables sin, while the desert – where life is scarce and treacherous – is the location that enables the victory over the sin.

And this is what Lent is about I think. In a famous sermon for Ash Wednesday, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, perhaps the greatest monastic figure of the Middle Ages, begins his sermon with the sentence: “Today, beloved, we enter the holy season of Lent, a season of Christian warfare.”¹

Warfare? Really? That kind of language does not usually sit well with contemporary congregations. Certainly not of the Episcopalian stripe. And yet, it is commonly found in the literature and liturgies of Lent. There is sin to defeat, that sin is a grave enemy, and we must wage war against it. So what does this all mean? Well, I think by spending time with these two readings from Scripture, we might find a path into Lent that could open us further to the Lord.

Our first reading from the Book of Genesis has caused all sorts of problems from ancient times. One of the few things you could get any Christian to agree to is the fact that sin exists in the world. What almost no one agrees on is how that sin came to be in the world and from whence it came. In many cases, you could not even get Christians to agree on which behaviors or lack thereof are sins and which are not.

In our reading from Genesis, some people want to blame God for the “fall of man” because it was God who created a fruit of a tree that would be so tempting, it would be impossible for Adam and Eve to resist it. Others want to blame the snake, who came to be known as Satan for looking to destroy all that was good in the Garden of Eden and in the lives of Adam and Eve. Others still blame Eve, and by extension, all women, for the “fall of man” because, well, you know, women are just that way. And I've even read some others who want to blame Adam for just standing there and not reigning in his woman more and stopping her from going down a sinful path.

And I think any and all of that totally misses the point of the story. The intention of this very important story is clearly not to assign blame for the origin of sin. The purpose of the story is to acknowledge that sin is real and in what the causes of sin in our own lives and in our communal life might be. And I really believe that is what the total purpose of this story was. We have spent so much time over centuries upon centuries trying to make more of it that we have completely forgotten the point. Perhaps that's even been a way for us to avoid having to delve into the true point of the story, because the consequences of that story are massive. The central lie that the serpent tells Eve is that if she will just eat of the fruit of the tree she “will be like God.”

That is the sentence in Scripture that tells us everything we need to know about the origin of sin. Whomever it came from, this story in Genesis, is a way to help us understand the root cause of sin within any society. And that root cause is pride. The pride of equating ourselves with God. Thinking that the power we wield, or the money we have, or the weapons we wave about, makes us equal to God. That is sin on a profound level. It is so profound that it can rise to the level of pure evil.

This pride is what deceives us into choosing who lives and who dies and is acted out by spending enormous sums of money stockpiling weapons rather than feeding the hungry; or by allowing a tiny number of people to horde the vast majority of the wealth, rather than housing the homeless.

The first effect of the sin of pride after the fruit of the tree was eaten was Adam's and Eve's feeling of shame. Both Adam and Eve became aware of their own nakedness and hurried to cover it up. In other words, as soon as the sin of pride was committed, they knew that they were anything but God. The lies they listened to from the serpent had become their own lies and now they were caught in the act. Caught with their pants down, as it were. Completely exposed as the frauds they had become. The first sin recorded after the expulsion from Eden was the murder of Abel by the hand of his brother, Cain. Murdered by his brother. The sin of pride leads to total destruction. It represents the greatest threat to the spiritual life, and even to life itself.

But Christ shows us a way to respond to the temptations of the devil. But first it is important to remember that in the desert we are looking at a story of Jesus the man. Christ, having humbled himself by becoming human, is presented with three temptations, all of which were an attempt to appeal to his pride. And this is where the image of the desert becomes important. When we speak of the Incarnation – God becoming man – we often use the Greek word kenosis which mean a pouring out. A complete emptying of oneself. A total self-giving. That is what Christ did when he took on our humanity. He engaged in kenosis. Going into the wilds of the desert and fasting for forty days was a way to re-enact this pouring out in order to prepare himself for his public ministry.

In that preparation, Jesus prays and gives of himself totally to God, not as God's equal, but as God's son, as God's creation. As subject to God's will and direction. This total self-giving allows Jesus to resist the temptations of the devil no matter how difficult that forty day fast in the desert had become. It is this kenosis that will allow Jesus to heal the sick, proclaim the kingdom, resist the temptations of many followers to become a military messiah, and to ultimately resist the evil, in a non-violent way, of the Sanhedrin and of Pontius Pilate. To clench life from the jaws of death. To affirm a non-violent way of being that looked past the crucifixion and toward the resurrection.

And this is the paradox of the garden versus the desert. Everything we know of the way the world works teaches us that the garden should be the symbol of life. Abundant, perhaps overgrown, teeming with life it provides everything we need. It makes us comfortable, but that comfort seems to lead us into trouble and perhaps even to violence and death.

The desert, on the other hand, allows for that pouring out. That kenosis that each of us are called to. A pouring out of our need for power, our quest for success, our hording of money, our stockpiling of weapons. God calls us to at least attempt to imitate the example of Jesus. This Lent, I encourage you to give it a shot. What would it mean for you to practice kenosis in just one way. To pour yourself out in service to your neighbors? To this parish? To the poor of Princeton? Or, to pour yourself out in prayer to God? What would that mean? Or, ideally, what would it mean to do both? Service and prayer are the two great pillars of Lent. I encourage you to deepen your experience of both within the context of the desert of your own lives. AMEN.

1Bernard of Clairvaux. Sermon One for Lent. p. 24.   

Ash Wednesday

I had the great privilege of spending time with the Episcopal Church at Princeton (the chaplaincy at the University) for Ash Wednesday and the following few days. Holy Cross Monastery has a growing relationship with this community and it was a great joy to be among them for the beginning of Lent. We look forward to the visit of that community to the monastery in April.  There are present at the University any number of faithful students, faculty and staff, many of whom shared in the Holy Eucharist for Ash Wednesday. This is my sermon for that liturgy.  

Choosing Between Life and Death

In a few minutes, we are going to engage in a rather old and somewhat odd custom of imposing ashes on your heads while saying the words “remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” This action and those words seem to ask us to take heed of this ominous warning and get to work on reforming whatever part or parts of our lives we need to reform. It seems to want to warn us that death is near and that we better listen up and pay lots of attention.

And so given that, I have been wondering about preaching to you a group of mostly young adults who, God willing, are many, many decades away from death and what would it mean to you to hear such a warning. And as I have thought about all of that, it has made me realize that I needed to re-think Ash Wednesday and Lent in general to come to a deeper understanding of what this great liturgical tradition is offering us.

Yes, Lent begins today with a reminder of death. Each one of us will die and that is a fact that cannot be disputed. It is something that is, occasionally, worth thinking about whatever your age is. But this reminder of death is just that, a reminder. It is not a warning or some downer just looking to ruin your day. It is a reminder that death happens.

But it is also a reminder that what follows death is life. Because, you see, Lent ends with a celebration of life. That is the counter intuitive part of Lent. First comes death, then comes life. It goes against everything we are taught about from the time we are young, and yet, there it is. First thing, remember your death. Next thing, now choose to live. Learn what it means to be truly alive in your faith. To live in joy, live in peace, live in faith. Let all those who do not want joy and peace and faith choose death. But we Christians...we choose life. As an aside here, as I use that phrase “choose life” please do not confuse it with the debate around abortion. This sermon has nothing to do with abortion one way or the other.

But that phrase is important. Choose life. It is important because that is what the God who created us, and who conquered death for us, calls us to. No matter our age, no matter our health status, no matter our relationship status, no matter how many papers you have due, God calls us to choose life today, here, in this place, at this time. Yes, it is good to remember that you don't have an eternity here on this earth. And it is good for one reason...to help you to hear the call of life.

And how do we choose life this Lent? This is where today's Scripture readings come in handy. The first reading we heard from the Prophet Joel warns of imminent grave danger coming – a day of clouds and thick darkness, a day when a great and powerful army comes to conquer. But the prophet tells his listeners that it is not to late, that “Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart.”

In other words, it is never to late. Do not worry yourself with rending your garments (an ancient version of giving up sweets). No, rend your hearts. That is quite a graphic image. Rending garments had to do with tearing them and creating big holes in those garments to indicate repentance. But God calls us to much more, God wants us to rend our hearts. To tear open our hearts to become totally available to God.

That, my sisters and brothers, is choosing life. Making ourselves totally available to God to allow God to turn us upside down and inside out. Two weeks ago, yesterday, a very close friend of mine died. Catherine was only 57 years old, a single mother of a 16 year old, an extremely talented psycho-therapist, and a budding spiritual director who was pursuing her Masters of Divinity at Yale. I loved her dearly and really miss her. She died a long, agonizing death from cancer but I know that she is with me here as I preach this sermon to you.

I know she is here because she is the most recent example in my life – and a particularly powerful one at that – of a Christian who knew how to choose life, even under the most dire of circumstances. She had been in the hospital for months and as it became clear that she was not going to be leaving the hospital she continued to say that she was not dying, but rather living, today. Catherine was not in denial. She knew well the various doctor's prognoses. I sat there with her as they told her “just a few more weeks.” She fully understood and said, after the doctors left the room, “then I have weeks to live life the fullest I can.”

And for her that meant spending as much time loving her son Will, talking to me about our friendship and how much that had meant to the both of us, reconciling with her estranged brother, showing great kindness and compassion to nurses, doctors, orderlies and other hospital types, and praying to God in new ways – because the old ways no longer worked, but the new ways did.

So remember that when you receive your ashes. You live not until the day you die. You live until the moment you die. Or at least, you are given that choice. Catherine could have wallowed in her suffering. And it's not that she didn't have her bad days. But she always chose life over death. Love over despair. Service to others over self indulgence.

You see, one the the most grievous theological mistakes that is often made by Christians is that somehow we must earn eternal life. That gift was already given by God, and what God gives, God does not take away. The question then, for us, is whether or not we accept that gift. And, if accepted, what we do with it. Life, for us, is a gift that is given every day, on Ash Wednesday, on Good Friday, on Easter Sunday, and on every other day of the year as well. To choose life is to embrace all that life has to offer and to give back to God, to your community, to the stranger, a heart so perfectly rent that it is open to love in a way that you could not possibly imagine. A heart that is exploding with life. That is what I think it means to remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.

So, my sisters and brothers, as we enter into Lent I want to call each of you, and this community as a whole, to consider what it means to choose life. I would encourage you to not spend much – or any – time on giving up sweets or drinking less beer. These might be great things to do for your health and, if so, do them for that reason. But focusing on those type of Lenten practices is often the modern equivalent of the hypocrisy that Jesus was talking about in the Gospel passage from Matthew.

Instead, what if you were to focus on choosing life this Lent? What would that look like in terms of giving to charity? In terms your prayer life? In terms of fasting? What would it look like for this community to focus on choosing life this Lent? How might that affect your life together as a community? What would it be like to use the example of my friend Catherine for your Lenten practice. That is, not to deny that death will happen one day, one moment – but that every minute God has given you on this earth as beings created in God's image and likeness should be used to embrace life, share love, welcome strangers, care for the poor, and become more fully alive with each and every moment.

Think of what a gift to give back to God that would be this Lent. Remember what the liturgy teaches you: that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return. But remember too, what I am teaching you: you are each beautiful children of God. Choose to live and love each and every day as if you truly believed that. Live to love and love to live. What a beautifully rent heart that would be to offer God this Lent. AMEN.

The Fog Horn of Silence

Advent Greetings to all of you. Here at the monastery we are into our third day of our "Contemplative Days", which are days of silence and a more limited work schedule. These are not so much retreat days as (we do two formal eight day retreats each year) contemplative days in which we have a limited number of guests, we are totally silent, and while we continue to work on projects we have a limited amount of work around the house, no meetings, no retreats to lead, and no spiritual direction. It is good for us to practice what we preach!

Those of you who have been to the monastery know that we sit on a beautiful piece of land right on the Hudson River. It is a gorgeous spot and we are, each and every day, grateful that God has called us to this place. Today, the Hudson River Valley is totally fogged in. The Valley in fog is quite a site to see. It has a kind of mystical appeal that is difficult to describe, but it is one that makes me feel completely at home. It creates a kind of feeling within me that elicits that of being wrapped in a warm blanket, an invitation to sit still, have a cup of hot chocolate, be quiet, and to know that there is a bright shining sun just on the other side of that fog, reveling in the life it fosters and waiting to basked in;  or perhaps a moon-lit night hoping for an admirer to look up and fall in love with it's glow and mystery all over again.

I love the sun and the moon and the river and I love when I can see them all in their glory. But I also dearly love the fog because it captures an aspect of my faith life that must be acknowledged. I know the sun and the moon and the river are there but I'm just not always able to see them. Or perhaps, I'm not always allowed to see them. That feels like my experience of God sometimes. I have an incarnate faith and believing very deeply in that Incarnation, it is sometimes just good to sit in the middle of the fog. I know God is there, I just can't always see God.

I think sitting in the fog simply helps us embrace the mystery of a faith that is all about Emmanuel - God with Us - but is equally about a mystery so deep, so imaginative, so foggy, that you need a fog horn to lead you away from danger and toward the home in which you truly belong.

All day long the fog horns have been blowing on the two ships anchored behind the monastery. These are very large freight ships that have been there for a couple of days, and every thirty-seconds they are giving off two five-second blows of the horn in order to ward off any other ships or boats that can not see them. I promise you, these are very large ships, yet the fog is so thick, that this safety precaution is necessary. Living on such a major river thoroughfare, I have certainly seen (heard) this before, but not quite like today.

And all of this racket in the middle of our silence. Frankly, I love it. All that blowing of the horns has begun to make me think of silence as a kind of fog horn. When we have a lifestyle that includes some periods of intentional silence, with a goal of listening for God, that is a tool that can help us to navigate the river of our life. That tool is God's way of helping us to ward off danger, but more importantly, to bring us closer to our home. Closer to safe harbor. Closer to God.

This Advent, I invite you to listen for the fog horn of silence. Sometimes when we can't see, we need to hear. And when we hear, we know that God is near, very near indeed.

Peace be upon you.

Swords into Food

Swords into Food

A Sermon for Advent I

Holy Cross Monastery
West Park, NY
December 1, 2013

St. Benedict, in his Rule for monks, is famous for telling us that the life of a monk should be a perpetual Lent. I would like to hold out to you the possibility that if Advent had been a fully developed liturgical season at the time that Benedict wrote his Rule, he might have taught us that the life of a monk should be a perpetual Advent.

And here's why: Advent is that season in which we are called to slow down and quiet ourselves in order to awaken ourselves to a new way of life, a new and renewed hope in the God of hope, the God with us. This is, I think, what monastics and those who are inspired by monastic spirituality do. They wait, they watch, they hope. Most of all, they hope.

All of this waiting, watching and hoping is actually quite counter-cultural which, again, a way of being that is, I believe, the mark of a healthy monastic community. Quiet down in December? Yes. Wait, when I've got a million things to do before the holidays? Yes. Believe that in the days to come there will be peace on earth? Yes. Salvation is nearer now more than ever? Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Believing those things is counter-cultural and to be a Christian, in our country at this current moment in history, demands of us, that we be counter-cultural. So here, at the beginning of this blessed season, let us make a commitment to living the life of a perpetual Advent. As St. Paul calls to us from so many years ago, this Advent, let us wake from our sleep; and as Jesus calls to us once awake, we must keep awake. I believe these calls are invitations to waken ourselves to the hope that Isaiah promises in the days to come. And that's what I'd like to talk to you about this morning - that prophesy/hope that Isaiah made in our first reading, one of the most famous of the season of Advent.

In particular, I'd like us to focus on what is perhaps the most well-known verse in the prophesy, verse 4, part of which reads:

...they shall beat their swords into plowshares,

and their spears into pruning hooks;

nation shall not lift up sword against nation,

neither shall they learn war any more.

When I have asked people what they think about this particular verse, I have usually gotten one of three responses. One response is a kind of “that would be nice, but not going to happen in our life times”; another is “yes, but what about the Muslims? Or the Soviets? Or whomever the perceived enemy was at the moment. But the most common response I have heard over the years, and the most dangerous and least hope-filled is the cynical response. The one in which the person says: “Isaiah is a pipe-dream, a naïve and silly approach to world affairs.” This kind of cynicism leads to some realities on the ground that make for an especially un-Advent like approach to our lives.

Because that kind of cynicism is exactly the kind of cynicism that the hope of Isaiah, the hope of Advent, the hope of Christ, should make us reject out of hand. That cynicism is about darkness. And Advent is nothing, if not about light. The light of hope, the light of Christ having come among us, the light of Christ coming again, the light of Christ being right here, right now.

And each week, as we light one more candle on the Advent wreath, slowly, but surely, building the light – it is my prayer, my hope, my expectation, that we will learn what it means to beat swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. That is what it means, I think, to wake up and to stay awake. It is to learn how to accept the invitation from Christ, to be a partner in the building of Christ's light, Christ's reign.

And so what does Isaiah's poetic language mean in real life? Well, to understand that, I think we must start with with text. Isaiah was calling to the people to beat swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks not for poetry's sake, but for the sake of food. Plain and simple.

The constant preparation for war was extremely expensive as it is today. Swords and spears were among the most expensive weapons of war at the time and the money that was raised in order to make these weapons came directly from the people and out of their food budgets. The people were starving to death so that enough weapons of war could be made to defend them from being killed by the enemy. This kind of thinking is what passes for being “realistic” and as a “sophisticated” understanding of world politics. It is nonsense.

Isaiah knew that a sword could be reconfigured into a plowshare by a blacksmith. This is actually something that could be done by any ordinary blacksmith. A plowshare is that part of a plow that is sharpened and actually digs the soil in order to create a space where seeds can be sown. Spears could easily be changed by a blacksmith into pruning hooks, which could then be used to prune fruit and nut trees which would provide healthier trees, which would provide more food. Isaiah knew that a hungry people are a desperate people. Feed people, grow peace.

So a less poetic, but perhaps more direct way to relay Isaiah's real meaning might be: “they shall beat their swords and spears into food.” Food that nourishes, food that gives life, food that allows us to continue to build the light. Food for peace. And remember, this wasn't one-sided. Isaiah says that the nations, plural, will be part of this movement.

One other note about the text. The phrase at the beginning of our reading “in the days to come” is not referring to some magical, mystical, time in the future when the Messiah brings all this great stuff about. Rather “in the days to come” refers to real time, something that will happen in the course of human history, brought about by the peoples of the earth who seek God.

And that got me thinking. And so, to continue my own awakening, I did a little research in the preparation of this sermon. I looked into hunger in our world today. I'd like to do a little visual experiment with you today {count off in sixes, the sixth person raises their hand and keep it in the air}.

Now, please look all around the church. Every person who has their hand in the air represents a hungry person in the United States. One in six persons in the United States, the United States...is hungry.¹ They do not have enough food to feed themselves or their families. These people are not only in the poorest neighborhoods in some forgotten inner city, though they are there. They are also in nice neighborhoods in glamorous cities, they are in suburbs, they are in rural areas, they are, perhaps, right in this church. They are us – and we are hungry. They are us, but we are at war. Just last year, in 2012, that meant that 49,000,000 people in the United States, 49,000,000 of our fellow citizens were hungry.²

In Afghanistan, the World Food Program says the number of hungry is approximately 7,400,000 people who are classified as starving, and another 8,500,000 people who are classified as facing borderline starvation.³ This is out of a population of 31,000,000 people.

Around the world, in the latest figures we have which date back to 2010, the number of hungry is 870,000,000 people⁴ I know these are a lot of numbers, and I'm not really a numbers guy, but I must wake up. We must wake up. Jesus makes it very clear – wake up.

Please be patient with me, just one more set of numbers: Since the war in Afghanistan began in 2001, the United States has spent, as of 5:02 this morning, 677,723,625,603 dollars.⁵ The website for National Priorities keeps a running ticker as to how many dollars we are spending on this war. It moves so fast, that it is difficult to capture any particular dollar amount, but there it is, as of 5:02 AM – over 677 Billion dollars.

In those same twelve years, we have spent a little more than 24 Billion dollars on food aid for the entire planet. So, 677 Billion dollars for war in Afghanistan alone, and 24 Billion dollars for food all over the world. That is a lot of swords and spears, and not much food.

Now what would it look like if we took a percentage of that money – let's say even just 10% of it – over 67 Billion dollars – and spent some of it on emergency food relief and most of it on teaching people how to grow their own food, how to deal with particular realities like droughts and floods over the long term, and how to build infrastructures to make local agricultural efforts more effective. What would that look like? It would look like we were building the light of the Advent wreath. What if we used 50% - 339 Billion dollars? The light would be shining so brightly we need cover our eyes and turn away. Peace would be breaking out all over the dinner tables of the world.

Yes, Isaiah, and Paul, and Jesus are all about hope. And so am I – at least on my best days. So here's my hope for myself, my community, and all of you. 

My hope is that:

In the days to come

the treasury of our country

will be used to feed our own people;

to beat our drones into food for Afghanistan,

and our nuclear submarines into food for North Korea.

In the days to come,

the relative wealth of our monastery

will be used to feed the people

to turn our treasure into food for Newburgh, Highland, West Park;

and to continue to turn our bread into Eucharist for the spiritually hungry.

If you came to the monastery, whether as a guest or as a monk to escape the world, you came to the wrong place. The monastery and monastic spirituality is not an escape from the world, it is a gateway to the world. These beautiful sisters and brothers that God has given to us – sisters and brothers in this church, back home, in Afghanistan, in North Korea, El Salvador and all around the world, are sisters and brothers to be fed and to feed us. They are not to be targets of our swords or spears, our drones or nuclear weapons.

So, in these Advent days to come, I invite you to hope and hope and hope. To watch and to wait by learning what it might mean for you to feed a hungry person, for your community to feed a hungry community, for our nation to feed another nation. In learning those things, we might just not have time to learn war anymore. Spend these next several weeks being quiet enough to learn what it means to build the light in these days that have come. AMEN.

1 www.feedamerica.org

2Ibid.

3www.wfp.org

4www.worldhunger.org

5www.nationalpriorities.org

James Otis Sargent Huntington

Today, November 25th, is the feast of the founder of our Order, Blessed James Otis Sargent Huntington. It is a great feast day for us and, we like to think, for the Episcopal Church as well.

Most feast days of saints correspond with either the date they died or the next "available" date (one that does not already have a feast associated with it). This is not the case with Father Huntington. He died on June 29th in 1935, and that  and that day, already the feast of Saints Peter and Paul is a major red letter day and therefore could not be bumped.

And so the date that was chosen was the anniversary date of Father Huntington's life vows. This was a significant moment not only in our particular history, but in the history of the Episcopal Church, as Father Huntington was the first Episcopal priest to take monastic vows. And so, on this date in 1884, the Order of the Holy Cross was born and with that birth, a new life for many men who would follow Father Huntington into monastic vows, and for so many men and women around the world who have been touched by one of us. It is a day in which to celebrate and to give great thanksgiving for this wonderful man.

We have two fathers in the faith that we look to for inspiration. We are Benedictine monks, and so, of course, we look to St. Benedict, his Rule, and the great 1,500 year tradition that goes with all of that for guidance and inspiration. But St. Benedict is the "Father of Western Monasticism" and one of the most important figures in "Church History". His largeness is both a draw to me as inspiration (I really love being a Benedictine monk) but also a drawback because of intimidation (how am I suppose to relate to the Father of Western Monasticism?).

But Father Huntington is a man I can understand more personally. First of all, even the way I speak of him or to him in prayer, with the words "Father Huntington" is telling. I don't refer to him as Blessed James Otis Sargent Huntington, as he is officially known in "Holy Men, Holy Women", but simply as Father Huntington. That seems to be respectful enough  by using the surname for the founder of my Order, while being intimate enough by using the title "Father".

For that is what Father Huntington is to me: a father. I was truly blessed to have in my own father (Joseph, who died back in 2003) a man who really loved me, my siblings and mother; a man who had my best interest at heart; and a man who gave me guiding principles that have lasted me a lifetime. This is the kind of man I imagine Father Huntington to have been.

On his deathbed, Father Huntington promised us that he would always intercede for us. I believe he has and continues to do so. Whenever I feel like I am drifting in my own vocation, I find myself down in our crypt, where Father Huntington is buried, asking him to intercede for me, to help me remain faithful to my monastic vocation.  The same is true for our entire Order. Whenever I perceive that we need guidance, direction, or inspiration, I find great hope in Father Huntington's promise to always intercede.                                                                                                      
The guiding principle that can probably best sum up Father Huntington's approach to faith is his most famous words:

"Love must act as light must shine and fire must burn."

Love. Light. Fire. Act. Shine. Burn. These are all great words for a monastic vocation and for a life of faith in general. The love that Father Huntington had for God and for God's poor was unbounded. His vision was to "act" in both prayer and service on behalf of the poor whether those people were financially or spiritually (or both) poor. Throughout his life, there was so much light shining from him that it must have seemed like fire to those who encountered him. One of the things I most love about Father Huntington is that he talked about joy a great deal. His understanding of leading a faithful monastic life was that it was based on the love of Christ, prayer, and service and that it would lead to joy. 

And he was right. Being a monk is a joyful thing. An incredibly joyful thing. Back in 1884, Father Huntington set in motion a movement here in the United States that has led to my being able to live the life that God most wants me to live - and it is a life of joy. Thank you Father Huntington. 

I ask you all to please remember our Order in a special way today in your prayer. Ask our God, if you will, to continue to guide us in our vocation, to send us new vocations (there's lots of interest brewing out there), and to always enable us to live in joy as we become more and more faithful to prayer and service. 

And please know that we keep all of you in our prayers each and every day. 

Peace be upon you.