These photos were taken by my parishioner, Larry Palmer-Braak, at my clothing as an oblate novice at St. Gregory’s Abbey, Three Rivers. He attended the clothing with his wife Marion. I am fond of telling Larry that he is the finest contemplative photographer I have ever seen. Included also are some striking photos of Br. John Mark (my fellow oblate novice), the monastery, and the monks themselves.
Everything that exists/happens is material that Christ can work with (including the crucifixion)
God’s vision – “the kingdom of heaven”
Less to do with what happens
More to do with who we are
Christ is establishing a new order, over and against the powers-that-be
Was the cross God’s plan for Jesus?
To say Yes is to accept the unacceptable (“cosmic child abuse”)
Crucifixion was the powers’ plan for Jesus
Prophets expose the sins of the powerful
Injustice, hypocrisy, idolatry
Jesus does this consistently
Shallowness of religious elite
Futility of a political system based on violence
Threatens the power-base with truth
God didn’t need Jesus to die, the powers did
Jesus accepted crucifixion as the consequence of his ministry
Continued to minister anyway
Borg: “The cross is the world’s No to Jesus”
Ironic injustice
He is made to suffer and die because for doing the right thing
They call him “king” ironically, to mock him
But he really is
Jesus “bears their sins” by absorbing their violent hatred without retaliation
“Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.”
They taunt Jesus to come down from the cross
Leaders, soldiers, criminal
They can only conceive of a Messiah that is like them: violent and powerful
Leaders: “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!”
Soldiers: “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!”
Criminal: “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!”
The real irony: these opposing powers are really saying the same thing
But one person gets the irony: the other criminal
“Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.”
Nearing death, giving up hope for survival, he sees clearly the futility of this world’s violent system
Unironically addresses Jesus as king:
“Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
The hopeless loser gets it
In the world today, the “hopeless losers” still get it
They see clearly the futility of the violent world system
But the powerful are blinded by their interests in the system
We don’t want to see the truth because we still hold out hope that the system will work in our favor
Poor and oppressed people see the futility more clearly
Black Lives Matter, I Believe Women
Powerful interests try to silence these movements
Jesus stands in solidarity with them
If we want to stand with Jesus as our King, we must stand with them
Black lives, women’s lives, queer lives, trans lives, Muslim lives, refugee lives, Mexican lives, immigrant lives, disabled lives, mentally ill lives matter… and these lives are being ended by crucifixion today
Church: “Preferential option for the poor”
Like Jesus, we must be prepared to be crucified with them as a consequence of our solidarity
We must be ready to listen to their experiences and suffer with them, especially where we have been complicit in their suffering
This is repentance
Jesus, the most powerful King, stands in solidarity with those who are the least powerful
And he does it without returning violence for violence
This is what it looks like for Jesus to reign as King from the cross
His Church must do the same
Our basis for hope is that crucifixion is not the end of the story
King Jesus ascends the throne on Mount Calvary, but reigns from the empty tomb
In his resurrection, Jesus has conquered death and hell
St. Paul (Ephesians 1:17-23): “I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power. God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.”
Filled with the hope born of this faith (this pledge of allegiance), the Church stands at the forefront of countless movements for peace, justice, and mercy
We do not grow tired, even when the entire world is against us and others give up, because our hope is born of something greater than this world
St. John (1 John 4:4): “Little children, you are from God, and have conquered them; for the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.”
We have even learned to take pride in the cross, the instrument of Christ’s mocking and torture:
St. Paul (1 Cor 1:18-25): “For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.” Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.”
Our response
“Therefore,” (Hebrews 12:1-2), “since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.”
St. Paul again (Romans 12:1-2): “I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God — what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
Finally (Philippians 2:5-11): “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death — even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
This is not liberal idealism; it is Christian hope
Grounded in the mystery of Christ’s Resurrection from the dead
We come to church, week after week, to fed by Word and Sacrament, then sent back out into the world to keep doing this work of standing, with Christ our King, in solidarity with the crucified peoples of the earth.
We need to be reminded of these truths because the world will try to choke that faith out of us
St. John (1 John 4:4): “Little children, you are from God, and have conquered them; for the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.”
The cross was this world’s No to Jesus, but the empty tomb is God’s Yes.
I ask your prayers for Br. John Mark and me (Br. Odo), during our novitiate, as we seek to live the spirit of the Rule of St. Benedict in work, prayer, peace, and hospitality. Pray also for our brothers the monks in this amazing community.
And if you haven’t made it out to St. Gregory’s for a visit, I highly recommend it!
One of the most convincing aspects of Christianity, if we try to see it in terms of our own day, is the contrast between its homely and inconspicuous beginnings and the holy powers it brought into the world. It keeps us in perpetual dread of despising small things, humble people, little groups. The Incarnation means that the Eternal God enters our common human life with all the energy of His creative love, to transform it, to exhibit to us its richness, its unguessed significance, speaking our language, and showing us His secret beauty on our own scale.”
-Evelyn Underhill, The School of Charity, pp.40-41
I spy, with my little eye,
a future agitator
structure-breaker
name-taker
bread baker
hate un-maker.
She is rising with healing
for people she has never met.
She is leavening
for a great measure.
Should we place these hopes
on her small shoulders?
Should we gamble our freedom
on the depth of her faith?
We must.
She will respond.
Poem by my daughter’s pastor, the Rev. Nathan Dannison
Photo retrieved from http://image.mlive.com/home/mlive-media/width960/img/kalamazoogazette/photo/2016/11/15/-4b43013555460f43.JPG on November 16, 2016.
But the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.
It strikes me as odd because it is the very nature of the sea to be covered with water. Without water, the sea would simply be a valley or a large hole in the ground.
In the same way, God is the very nature of the universe itself. Theologian Paul Tillich referred to God as “the Ground of Being”. St. Thomas Aquinas similarly wrote that it is more appropriate to say that God is “existence” than that God is an object that “exists”.
As a self-described panentheist (not to be confused with pantheism), I would agree with Tillich and Aquinas. Here is how I would say it: God is in all things because, more accurately, all things exist in God.
One of my favorite images of God is the pregnant mother. God creates the universe, distinct but not entirely separate from God. The universe is growing within the divine womb.
When a baby grows inside of her mother, it would not be inaccurate to say that her mother is her whole world. Ask a fetus, “Where is Mom?” And the child would answer (if she could), “Mom is everywhere.”
Does this mean that the mother only exists within the child or the womb that carries her? No, that would be an incomplete statement (although it is certainly reflective of the child’s limited experience). It would be more accurate to say the opposite: That the child exists within her mother, who loves her and sustains her growth.
I believe the same to be true of our relationship to God.
We are not wrong to say that “God is everywhere.” In a sense, we are also justified, based on our limited experience, in saying that “God is in all things.” But I tend to believe the opposite, that “All things exist in God,” just as a fetus grows in her mother’s womb.
This, I think, is at the root of Habakkuk’s vision that the divine shekhinah covers the earth “as the waters cover the sea.” This is the fetus waxing eloquent about the mother.
Even more interesting is the context in which this revelation arises.
If the universe exists within the Divine womb, then it must certainly be a troubled pregnancy. The prophet describes a world gone awry, rife with social stratification where the rich have isolated themselves from the poverty they create by their indulgence:
Alas for you who get evil gain for your houses, setting your nest on high to be safe from the reach of harm! You have devised shame for your house by cutting off many peoples; you have forfeited your life.
The entire economic system is founded on violence and indulgence:
Alas for you who build a town by bloodshed, and found a city on iniquity!
He describes it as an act of rape:
Alas for you who make your neighbors drink, pouring out your wrath until they are drunk, in order to gaze on their nakedness!
The destruction extends even to the earth itself. The prophet warns of mass extinction emerging from human exploitation of the environment:
For the violence done to Lebanon will overwhelm you; the destruction of the animals will terrify you– because of human bloodshed and violence to the earth, to cities and all who live in them.
Yet, the central truth remains: That the universe exists within the Divine womb.
We have only forgotten it. Unable to see the mother’s face directly, we have decided that we homo sapiens are the be-all, end-all of existence. We have decided that this womb, the amniotic fluid, the umbilical cord, and our magnificent selves are the product of some unknown, random accident.
Believing ourselves to be the only intelligence in the cosmos, we try to set ourselves in the place of God, and quickly discover that we are bad at the job. Destruction ensues.
Habakkuk invites us to return to our roots by way of contemplation. He writes:
I will stand at my watchpost, and station myself on the rampart; I will keep watch to see what he will say to me, and what he will answer concerning my complaint.
Again:
For there is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end, and does not lie. If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay.
And finally:
But the LORD is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him!
The prophet interrupts his descriptions of violence with repeated calls to “watch” and “wait” in silence. The dual-practice of prayer and meditation empowers us to disconnect from the mindless flow of chaos around us and see reality more clearly.
A fighting couple stop their arguing momentarily to take a deep breath, and suddenly the situation becomes clearer.
Gandhi famously said that, if only one percent of the world’s population would meditate, there would be peace on earth.
The practice of contemplative spirituality might not change the world directly, but it does change those who practice it. It changes our perspective and relationship to the world. It frees us from the endless cycles of violence so that we (as Gandhi also said) can “be the change we wish to see in the world.”
Contemplation reconnects us to the Ground of Being. It increases our conscious awareness of the Divine presence, which “covers the earth as the waters cover the sea.”
This deepened relationship with God is the fruit of contemplative prayer. It is what the prophet refers to as “the knowledge of the glory of the Lord.”
“The Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him!”
I. There are moments in life when the things we depend upon let us down
A. Economy, church, country, relationships: spouse/family/friends, self: body/soul
1. “What the heck just happened?”
B. We get disillusioned
1. Actually a good thing: “Dis-illusion”
2. In these moments, we get to find out where our faith really lies Today’s gospel
II. “temple” “adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God”
A. Center of Jewish life: national/ethnic/religious
B. Literally “House of God”
1. “God (Ultimate Good) lives in this place”
III. Jesus: “As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.”
A. Offensive: Unpatriotic, sacrilegious, blasphemous
B. Unthinkable: “How would all of this work without it?”
IV. Jesus elaborates
A. To the optimists: “Beware that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and, ‘The time is near!’ Do not go after them.”
1. Don’t be tricked by big personalities, making promises they can’t fulfill
B. To the pessimists: “When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for these things must take place first, but the end will not follow immediately.”
1. It’s not the end of the world
C. “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven.”
1. Not an apocalyptic vision
2. Just the way things are in this world: war, natural disaster, poverty, disease
3. Don’t freak out!
D. The believer’s place in all this: “But before all this occurs, they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name.”
1. Expect to be hated
2. Faith in God is always a threat to the status quo
a) Calls into question all the other little idols we are tempted to put our faith in
b) God is the only absolute; everything else is relative
V. “This will give you an opportunity to testify.”
A. Learn to see disillusionment as an opportunity
B. Testify (like a witness in a courtroom)
1. Speak the truth about what really matters (the way it really is)
VI. Testify how? “So make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance”
A. Counterintuitive: Should pastors and lawyers really do this?
VII. Why not? “for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict.”
A. Because the truth you speak does not come from you yourself
1. You didn’t make this up
B. Grounded in reality itself
1. Comes from God, who needs no defender
2. Truth is truth, whether they choose to believe it or not
a) Constant, like the Law of Gravity
VIII. Will they listen? “You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death. You will be hated by all because of my name.”
A. No. People are selfish/sinful; choose to hear/believe what they want to hear/believe
B. In this broken world, all truth is an “inconvenient truth”
B. Matthew 10:28: “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.
1. Fear a meaningless life, based on lies
C. Mark 8:36: “For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?”
X. “By your endurance you will gain your souls.”
A. Spiritually alive, meaningful life, have the life that really counts
B. John 11:25: “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live”
C. Romero: “If they kill me, I will rise again in the Salvadoran people.”
D. Romans 8:35-39: “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? …No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”
1. Why: “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
XI. If you are feeling disillusioned today, do not fear/despair
A. All we have lost is our illusions
B. Christ id inviting you today to “use your disillusion”
C. Disillusionment is an opportunity
1. To find out for ourselves what it is that we really believe in
2. Knowing what we really believe in frees us speak truth to the powerful in the world
XII. Jesus Christ came into this world to show humanity the heart of God
A. But we could not bear to listen
1. When we failed to silence him, we killed him
2. But God raised Jesus from the tomb, demonstrating once and for all (in the words of Desmond Tutu) that “Goodness is stronger than evil, love is stronger than hate, life is stronger than darkness, life is stronger than death. Victory is ours, through God who loves us.”
XIII. All of the lies in the world cannot falsify the truth of God, and all the powers of death in the world cannot overcome the power of God’s love, which has been poured out so abundantly for us in the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord.
XIV. This is how I am able to stand before you today, disillusioned but unafraid
XV. This is how we are able to stand before the dark powers of the world and proclaim the truth, with St. Paul:
A. “I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Hopping Hadrian's Wall 