Christmas Sermon 2016

Sermon 142 Dec 25, 2016 Mt 2: 1-12; Ga 4:4-7; Jr 23: 3-8 Xmas

Preached by Brother Luke

Holy Wisdom Chapel

          “But they weren’t there!” So, said Fr Paul Harrilchak a few years ago, during a talk here on the Christmas Season east and west. I am always amused by this when I think back on that presentation. He was talking about how the Three Wise Men [or the Three Kings] are depicted in images and stories and in the nativity crèche attributed to St Francis. They missed the birth. They came later. In the gospel passage that follows what we heard this morning, Herod gives us a clue about the timing of their visit in the reference to his ordering the killing of all male infants 2 years old and younger. Yet, maybe this is the ideal point of departure for us, since we too come to this event later, much later.  We celebrate the birth of Christ as if it is happening at this moment, which it is, in our spiritual understanding of this mystery, but historically it was two millennia ago. So, as with the Three Wise Men, we too are coming to this late. But does that matter?

When they came doesn’t matter, what they were seeking does matter. And what were they seeking? A baby? No, scripture says that they were seeking the Messiah. The savior of the world. And it was they seeking him and not the other way around. Jesus wasn’t looking at his watch, tapping his foot and wondering, “so, when are those three kings going to get here anyway!” God’s invitation to all of us to come to him is always available, but we need to initiate the action to seek him.

Sometimes church feasts are assigned dates directly connected to the chronological sequence of the events. March 25^th is the annunciation and 9 months later, December 25^th, the birth of Christ. Then on January 1^st we mark Christ’s circumcision. And yet 5 days later he is baptized as an adult. But then on February 2^nd, the Feast of the Encounter, Christ is a child again, presented to the temple. The manifestation of God is not time dependent. The symbols we choose to use to portray this reality may involve both chronos and kairos images. This entire season of lights which extends from December 25^th to February 2^nd is about the manifestation of divinity in humanity through Jesus Christ.

These feasts of the Church are inviting us to seek the reality of God in all we do and experience in life. Last week at matins we heard a reading from Thomas Keating who said: “Some devout persons think that if their activities at home or their job get in the way of prayer, there is something wrong with their activities. On the contrary, there is something wrong with their prayer.” What this means is that my prayer must infuse all that I do. It is not something separate. The incarnation, the manifestation of divinity in our human reality, brings this perspective to the fore. No matter what I am doing or where I am, I am invited to see God in it all. It is a full integration of this reality with the reign of God that Christ preached. It is one. The more I am able to see this, the clearer the path I am called to follow. Nature, chores, study, leisure, birth, death, all are infused with God’s reality, a reality that extends beyond this life. Celebrating Christ’s birth is like celebrating the planting of a seed that will germinate and grow from a small sprig into a large tree. From Jesus’ humble birth, will grow the reign of God. Something worthy to be sought by kings and by you and I.

Christ is Born! Glorify Him!

Homily Ancestor Sunday 2016

As Preached by Sister Rebecca
Sunday, December 19, 2016

Holy Wisdom Church

Today's celebration of Jesus’ ancestors is very important to the deeper and vaster understanding of the Good News of the Incarnation as taught by Matthew within his diaspora community in the 80’s or earlier, in Syria. 

Jesus was born, lived and died as a religious Jew.  We really need to let this sink in, and reflect on the implications of this reality as we prepare to celebrate this stupendous mystery of God incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ.

There are many Christians who think Jesus was a Jew in the way one would say so and so are Jews, that is, Jewish from a culture point of view. It is most unfortunate that followers of Jesus among our various Christian denominations have pretty much divorced-albeit unconsciously- our Judaic roots except in as much as they see Christianity as supplanting Judaism.  This is not so in the early Christian communities of mostly Jews in Matthew’s community.

Much of the teaching of Jesus, the Gospels, rests upon an implicit and explicit understanding of the Hebrew Bible.  For example when Matthew quotes Jesus saying in metaphor language to build our house on a rock rather than on the sand, he is saying that Jesus is not starting a new religion.  Yet the Word of God ever ancient, ever new needs to be reinterpreted throughout time and place.

I would like to focus on the last 2 sections of Jesus genealogy, the section of 14 generations dealing with the aftermath of the deportation to Babylon and the return to Israel.   During the years in exile the Jews desiring to remain faithful to their God, were faced with the dilemma of how to deal with innumerous laws that were related to the Temple worship that no longer exists.  In fact many exiled Jews were discombobulated in this country of exile where religious practices were so foreign and meaningless to them.  God inspired the prophet Ezekiel to lift and heal their minds and hearts through a vision: the Divine Presence, the Schekinah actually left the sanctuary of the Temple in Jerusalem and accompanied these devastated prisoners of war, wanderers to their destiny in Babylon and continued to remain with and in them.  Of course they wept, hung their harps on the willow branches along the banks the rivers in Babylon and mourned:  how can we sing in this foreign land?  Some of the psalms were composed during this period and upon the return to their devastated land in post exilic times.  Eventually new understanding arose as to how to worship God in Spirit and in Truth as we see in the ps 40:  “You gave me to understand that sacrifice and offerings are not what you desire…not what pleases you.  Then I said “Here I am! As it is written in the scroll, to do what pleases you is my desire, for your law is written in my heart.  The prophet Hosea sums up the whole of the Torah:  ‘You have told me O Lord what is good and what you require of me:  to do good, to love and cling to your presence deep within my heart and to walk humbly with you, my God.’  This and many other passages in the Bible can be practiced no matter where one is on this earth.  This is the whole Torah in a nutshell. They came to see that the true foreigner, prisoner is one who is attached to anything of this early existence even the Temple and particular ways of performing the rituals.   And attachments can be memories, hope and hankering for the way things were done in the past.

Back in their homeland where a second Temple was built, a movement had begun approximately two hundred before Jesus’ birth by sages who realized Jerusalem’s Temple was in jeopardy because of foreign invaders.

They worked to establish new religious practices that would ensure Judaism’s survival apart from the Temple and yet remain true to the commandments of the Torah.

It is in this milieu that Jesus was born and eventually became part of the first century teachers. 

The transitions from the Temple system into what would later be called Rabbinic Judaism was nothing less than extraordinary – and Jesus was at the center of that transformation. 

Jesus does not reinvent religion – he is still part of the Jewish ancestry.  But where are we? Jesus responding to some of his adversaries that accused Jesus of not being faithful to Abraham said “God can raise up stones to be children of Abraham.  The lineage is not necessarily a blood line – in fact Matthew names 4 women all who were foreigners yet became part of Jesus direct lineage.

What makes us part of Jesus’ lineage?  Whoever hears my words and puts them into practice is my mother, my brothers and sisters.

God’s Spirit in and through Jesus lineage tells us: Do not fear; do not worry…embrace, accept the light and the dark with peace of mind and heart and look deeply inside for the light of God to access wisdom to face whatever happens in the future.  And I need to sense that my faith in God is not mine alone and that I do not need to prove anything but to realize I am a leaf on a branch of this tree and by being true to my self and my place I have received and continue to receive the responsibility and grace to contribute to keeping the sap flowing down  into the vast roots that will nourish those that come after me. 

Homily 2016, Dec. 4: Woman with issue of blood. Lk. 8:41-56

++++ Some early traditions called the woman in today’s gospel Veronica or Bernice, but we could call her, simply and with some delicacy, the woman in the crowd. She courageously but unlawfully hid in the crowd to reach Jesus. Some would have stoned her, had they known, for contaminating them and thus ostracizing them, like her, from family, friends and temple. Things are very different today. A writer for America magazine wrote, “After such a long journey, I would have thrown myself in his path, begging him to help me. Instead our wounded and outcast sister "came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak." She had endured for 12 years. In an instant, she received from Jesus what no doctor in 12 years had been able to give her. Had she just stolen a miracle? But the true miracle is what had remained healthy all along from the beginning: her faith and courage. Jesus blest her rather than criticizing her boldness, “Your own faith has saved you; go in peace.” He ignored the old Levitical rules and dispelled her despair and destitution. He was God’s new presence there instead of the temple. For him the human body too is a temple of life as sacred as anything in creation. In the end, he paid the price. But the woman in the crowd and his followers had already found new life, health and salvation in him. Things again are very different today. When we ourselves are ill or falling apart in body, mind, financially and in endurance, it’s probably one thing after another. Author Nancy Burke wrote when she was gravely ill and receiving weekly intravenous treatments for two years, “Somewhere in the middle I lost my courage, and both my soul and my veins collapsed. One day the search for a healthy vein became too painful and I pushed the needle away and cried. A nurse brought to my side a young girl of about ten, who had battled cancer all her life. This child smiled at me and said, ‘You should have got one of these.’ Lifting her T-shirt, she showed me the hole that had been cut in her abdomen for a plastic port to receive her treatments. Then she put her hand, so small and soft, on mine and said, ‘You can take it.’ And I did.” May we, too, be able to do so whenever we run into our own difficult times. May the true miracle of faith and courage remain healthy in us all. May we too be bold, healthy, and blest to “go in peace.”                  –Br. Marc