Sermon 135: Tb 8:4b-8, 10, 13, 15-17; Rm 12:6-19; Mk 24b-34 [27Mar16] “Rock Bottom”

Preached by Brother Luke
Holy Wisdom Church

Stephen Covey, now how many of you remember him? From the mid-1980s to well into the present century he was recognized as a management guru because of his book: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Business, government and many other organizations sought out his expertise. His main time management goal was to convince people to plan ahead and not get caught up in unimportant activities turning the more important tasks into crises. Back in 2001 we invited a good Franciscan friend of ours to come to New Skete to lead a 7 Habits workshop. As a Franciscan he was trained to give this workshop to religious, so he used many examples drawn from religious life. It was an eye opening experience for us. And many of the principles are still a part of our vocabulary and life. Even so, we could use a refresher course, as human nature tends to push us in the opposite direction. How often life seems to be lived in the emergency ward!

Putting off difficult decisions until they can no longer be avoided can happen in any area of life and human institutions. It could be letting go of time-honored practices that we can no longer manage or fixing an aging building before it collapses. I am sure many of you have had to deal with the sad task of convincing an aging member of the family that they need to move from their home into an assisted living facility. No one wants to lose their independence and it may be that unexpected fall and broken hip that makes the decision for them. Human nature is programed to resist change, even though change is inevitable and unavoidable! We have many expressions that spring from this dilemma: being “between a rock and a hard place,” “at our wits end,” “nowhere else to turn” and “rock bottom,” to name only a few.

The phrase “hitting rock bottom” often refers to a crisis that someone has fallen into which is so bad that it cannot get any worse. That issue may be about an addiction. The individual may have lost their job, home, family, friends and so destroyed their life that they are finally forced by circumstances to get help. Sadly, some never escape from that low point. However, many who do reach out for help have found 12-step programs to be beneficial. Addictions are often how people act out while the actual problem prompting the addictive behavior lies elsewhere. The 12-step program requires a rigorous self-evaluation and stock-taking. Through that self-assessment the individual seeks to uncover the factors that led to the addictive behavior. Underpinning all this work is a fundamental principle, to get one’s life back together first requires one to realize that the task is too big to do alone, help from a higher power is needed. Or we would say God.

In today’s gospel story the woman with the issue of blood has arrived a “rock bottom” and is certainly at her “wits end” as she has tried everything she can think of to solve her problem, including spending all her money on doctors. Even so, things have only gotten worse, not better. It is at this point that Jesus Christ enters the scene. We have no idea how she came to know about Jesus, but at this moment in her life she tells herself that if she could just touch the hem of Jesus garment she will be healed. My early experience in the Orthodox Church was in an Antiochian parish where this gospel image was re-enacted at every liturgy. As the priest brought the holy gifts into the church and processed up the center aisle people would reach out and touch the priest’s robes. As with the woman in the gospel story, these people were seeking to connect with the holy in a tactile way.

What does Jesus say to the woman? Your faith has healed [saved] you. He knew that someone had touched him for he felt “the power go out from him.” He did not tell the woman that her actions had saved her, but rather that her faith had saved her. And this is what the story is telling us. Seeking to connect with God is about faith not physical presence. Yes, Christ was physically present to this woman, but that access to the healing power was not about touching Christ’s garment but rather the faith behind that action. The reality to which the physical act pointed: recognizing Christ’s presence everywhere and at all times is the message. We cannot go back and insert ourselves into that scene, rather it is Christ who inserts himself into our circumstances.

And how do we experience Christ’s presence?  People in 12-step programs certainly notice the higher power and I would submit that part of that experience lies in the support that comes from all the others gathered at the meetings. I firmly believe that God is active in our lives and in the world. God sends people to us to help us, even if we don’t realize it and the people involved don’t realize it. Where does the motivation to help come from? What sparks that movement? Sometimes we might think it is serendipity when action and need coincide. For me serendipity is just another word for God.

I can’t tell you how many times my spiritual director has responded to a challenging issue I am wrestling with and pointed to the little church and said take it there, take it to prayer. He knows that I take my meditation time in that church. So he is telling me to go to that place and put the issue in God’s hands. And what happens? Sometimes just the act of passing the issue on reduces the stress. Sometimes a new perspective on the matter emerges. Sometimes, just like in 12-step work, the realization dawns around what I can change and what I cannot change. And the most important insight is the awareness that God is part of the process, present in the moment and always accompanying us on our journey. The ultimate outcome may not change but how we get there does, and that matters.

Each Sunday morning during Great Lent we chant a hymn: “Open to me the gates of repentance O giver of life, for at early morning my spirit seeks your holy presence.” The original text said “seeks your holy temple.” But of course what do you find in the temple but God. This is our quest. Lent is another opportunity to remind us of God’s presence everywhere! 

Feast of the Annunciation

Homily on March 25, 2016


by Sister Rebecca


In today’s Gospel (Luke 1:26-38) we read and hear that stupendous and mind-boggling story leading to the incarnation, and we are invited to reflect on this passage with the eyes of faith, to delve below the surface and see what God is saying to us now.

The Angel Gabriel said to Mary: “Rejoice, so highly favored! The Lord is with you.” The angel appears to Mary as though out of the blue, suddenly and unexpected. Some icons show the angel coming to her like a blast of wind, as though running toward her—a very dynamic approach. In other icons, the visitation is like still life: very quiet, very interior. Perhaps we can relate to this in our own “visitations” by God: a time of an overwhelming sense of God’s Presence; at other times, so subtle that it can go unheeded unless we are in an inner space of silence.

Most icons of the Annunciation show Mary at her work: she is spinning wool. She has a spindle in one hand and yarn in the other. In one icon she actually drops the spindle, so shocked and disturbed is she. Mary does what anyone with a healthy spiritual sense of self would do: “What is going on here?”

The angel reassures her: do not be afraid. “Listen.” She is directed to a deeper awareness of this visitation. And then he tells her: You are to bear a son—not just any son, but the Son of the Most High: God’s son.

Mary said to the angel, “But how can this come about, since I am a virgin?” Mary now goes beyond her initial fear. She finds herself questioning. What steadies her? “Be not afraid.” Is it not fear and its many expressions that cripple us in life and hold us back from living in the present and to the full? Mary listens. She hears; she is attuned to the word of God, to the reality of God in her life. She shifts to a different space within herself. She still holds the question, though: “How can this be?” This is a crucial piece of this conversation with the messenger of God. Mary is not passive. God desires and respects our search for meaning and understanding. This is inner work. She experiences tension, and she wrestles with the question: how can this be?

The angel responds: “The Holy Spirit will cover you with its shadow, and the child will be holy and be called Son of God.” This expression indicates that the very power of God will do what humans cannot. According to the oral tradition and in the non-canonical scriptural texts, Mary was raised in the temple and was taught the scriptures. She may well have made the connection with Genesis 1:1-3:

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

This Light is not the light of the sun but the Divine Energies of God.

In celebrating this feast today at this morning’s matins, we sang the Exapostilarion, which describes Mary as a glowing sanctuary …a lamp wherein the first light of heaven dwelled. This is the primordial light beyond all light—the mysterious energies of God that created all things.

Now Mary says, “Let what you have said be done to me.” She is ready to open herself to that space deep within. She is receptive to what is totally beyond her reason, to what makes no sense. Then she moves to a space of total trust in God, a place where she is open, ready to receive, and the Spirit enables her to utter: “Be it done to me according to your word.” Mary responds to the invitation to be creative, to bring forth, and to empower life.

That invitation is extended to all of us: the invitation to be contemplatives—to go into that silent space deep within, to be attentive to the Word of God, to be awake and aware of God’s plan in our lives and share that experience with others. We are called to find God in everything, moment to moment: in pain, in joy, doubt, despair, hope, and love. That invitation calls for silence beyond our little egos, for us to be of a receptive mind and heart so that by God’s outpouring of grace we may receive an insight, a sense of direction; and from that humble, empty place we may be filled with a life-giving word, gesture, action that reveals God’s presence in this world of ours.

We are all called to be contemplatives, beckoned to becoming attentive to God’s Presence in our life, and to a journey of self-discovery: God discovery. “Know thyself and you will know God.”

Meister Eckhart says:

“We are human beings with seeds of the divine within us.” A human being has so many skins inside, covering the depths of the heart. We know so many things, but we don’t know ourselves! Why, thirty or forty skins or hides, as thick and hard as an ox’s or bear’s, cover the soul. Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself there.” and then “Know thyself and you will know God.” You will experience God and this experience will be as a seed called to produce fruit.

In these uncertain times, perhaps this prayer of Thomas Merton may help us to be open and to recognize the unpredictable beckonings of God in our own lives:

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

Cheesefare-Forgiveness Sunday - March 13, 2016

As preached by Brother Marc

Holy Wisdom Church

Js 3:13-18; Ep 4:22-32; Mt 6:5-15

We are usually not at our best when grief, fear, and desire for revenge hit us. For example, police officers are having a hard time of it these days. One officer, in a debriefing session, said: "I was riding around filled with hatred. This criminal had killed one of my best friends. It was going to feel so good to find him and finish him off. I was ready. I was focused. I had a mission. But as the hours passed, I saw how I was getting caught up in the rage and loss. I was becoming, all that the killer was—a hateful, murderous person. I said, 'I am different. I have to be different. I am more than that. I cannot be pulled into that deadly hate-filled kind of existence. I need to be the trained officer whose duty is to protect and serve; I have to do the right thing.'"

Where is forgiveness in this story? The officer was remarkably able to step back and un–identify with his anger. He freed himself from his vengefulness. He severed his emotional tie to the perpetrator. He did not pay back in kind.

We know we need to forgive and be forgiven because we are followers of Christ, seekers of salvation. We want to wake up to larger realities and the deeper values the world is in dire need of. And so, forgiveness could seem even to be a way of life,especially when we hear “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who mistreat you. If anyone hits you on one cheek, let them hit the other one too; if someone takes your coat let them have your shirt as well.” But, you know, not everyone pays any attention to this.

Maybe what we struggle with is how to practice it. How to move from where we might sometimes find ourselves—feeling hurt, angry, victimized, abused, and alienated--to where we say, "I am more than that. God and my own better self call me out of that?” How to move from obsessing on anger, and hurt to forgiveness? It might very well be a situation like the lost traveler being told “You can’t get there from here.”

We may need a way to begin, and a good starting point. We need a rock-solid experience to motivate us. Today’s gospel makes the connection between forgiveness and prayer. The good Lord directs us not simply to go through the motions and say the right words when we pray. If our life is unexamined and unchanged and if we don’t go deeper, we can very easily begin to look phony and feel hypocritical. Deeper is not more being strict in our practice. It is constantly entering the privacy of our heart. This is not only “thinking things over.” It is not planning our tactics or priorities, calendars and lists. Deeper is closing our door, sitting without music, computer, or i-phone. You might need to use ear plugs and noise cancelling headphones. Deeper is turning down the volume of our five senses and distractions—a scary thought—to become aware of the dark room inside ourselves. Deeper might mean running head on into inner conflicts and uncomfortable contradictions.

Deeper means not falling asleep here in boredom or exhaustion. Fidgeting, and a barrage of thoughts are smoke screens hiding our wakefulness, watchfulness, mindfulness and awareness. Deeper is getting a whiff of a different you, catching a glimpse of what is within me yet bigger than me.

Jesus simply invites us to pray the phrases of the ‘Our Father.’ But then we hit forgiveness. That’s where we stumble. That’s when we decide, “Well, time’s-up—gotta-go,” or we just might get mad and run back to our pressing daily work.

Deeper is the road to "forgiveness from our heart." It is beyond brilliant ideas like, "Well, I can forgive, but I can’t forget," or else "I know I am supposed to love so-and-so, but that doesn’t mean I have to like the person." That doesn’t really sound like forgiveness, but it could be the beginning we need.

Forgiving doesn't mean forgetting. Someone once said "If you can't forgive and forget, pick one." Neither does it mean you've given out the message what someone did was okay. Someone also said "Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future." It just means you've begun to see the possibility some day of letting go of the guilt, the being upset, or the anger towards someone or towards yourself. And that is easier said than done. If forgiveness were easy, everyone would be doing it.

–Brother Marc