Pent XXI, Prop 24_C_RCL Oct 17, 2010

St. Benedict’s, Los Osos CA

The Rev. Brian H. O. A. McHugh +

Jer 31: 27-34; Ps 119: 97-104; II Tim 3:14-4:5; Luke 18: 1-8


The answer to prayer – at least “from” the God I have over many decades come to know and understand, and yes, I’ll even say love, though that’s a topic for several other sermons! - is instantaneous. [Look around.] Do I see some of you look dubious? But I now see, and I am saying, that every prayer I have ever offered, every insight I have sought, has been instantly answered.

I can equally say that this has been the consequence of “faith”. The Evangelist Luke asks today at the conclusion of the Gospel reading, “When the Son of Man comes, will He find such persistent faith on earth?” ”Faith” is the issue we are being asked to address first, because what we understand by “faith” is critical. Friedrich Nietzsche allegedly said: “A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything”. What I hear in his comment is contempt for a certain understanding of faith, an understanding which believes, for example, that if sufficiently loved, adored and praised, God will prevent suffering. In my experience, delusional thinking. What God will do is, at the least, suffer with us.

My comment on Nietzsche’s words was, “Faith” is not about trading slave-like submission for a Deity’s condescending favour. Faith, from the Latin “fides – trust”, means diligently adhering, often with difficulty, to a path which gives birth to the Mystery of God Within. The meaning of everything: Life, Death, Wholeness, Love, Joy is at stake. Discerning the authentic Path is the life-work of every person. And I might add that there are many paths that need to be discerned throughout our lives. “Having faith” is always a process of liberation; it is never a process of escaping being human.

I believe, based on experience, that both “faith” and “prayer” are two way-streets: between us and God. To what end? To the end of knowing, of sensing, that God lives at the core of our being, and we live at the core of God’s Being, at least at some level of experience and knowing. Or, as Paul the Apostle puts it, coming to know the “Christ in us” which makes us fully human.

This is the point of the instantaneous answer to Prayer of which I spoke: it is the moment at which we experience, even haltingly, our Unity with God. Prayer, for me, is never “God actively gives, I passively receive” - though the answer to Prayer can sometimes feel like that, especially when we are in the midst of struggle and pain. I believe that the answer to Prayer is always a transformative moment, in which, consciously or unconsciously, our humanity has become more whole – which is to say more God-like.

Jesus makes it clear in the Gospel reading that what is essential in being both a prayerful and a faithful person is Persistence, or Perseverance. And here is the bottom line as I see it: God is unchanging, as I understand God. What changes is our perception of God. It is expressed in that classic hymn – which always makes me laugh because of its rather overdone humility – “We blossom and flourish like leaves on the tree / and wither and perish but nought changeth Thee”. The God I know always seeks to give us what we need for abundant, whole Life, and this includes our understanding of what it means to be mortal, subject to decay and death. It is indeed, in some sense, in the Puritan preacher John Edwards’ rather silly sermon title, a “dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God”.

The work of faith requires perseverance and dogged persistence. NOT so that we can wear God down, until God gives up, or changes Her mind, and gives us what we demand – though it would be easy to misinterpret the parable about the widow and the impious judge in this way. Those who were spiritually unprepared to understand Jesus’ parable would not have gotten the message. But those who are open– and this openness to the message is critical for any transformation – understand that we must persist until everything we have put in the way of hearing the Message is removed. Only then will that moment occur when instantaneously Prayer is answered. The answer to Prayer is instantaneous at the moment when our Self and our Desire begins to merge with God’s Self and Desire.

Two personal examples: One: When I was a Novice in the Order of the Holy Cross, age 21, I had a headache during all waking hours for 7 months. No aspirin or anything else took it away – though a couple of glasses of wine would distract me, or a long walk along the railway tracks along the Hudson River. I assumed it had something to do with my vocation. I prayed a lot, everything from asking that the headache go away (shades of St. Paul!) to understanding why I had it. I persisted for 7 months – discomfort will do that for you! Finally one day, I said to God/the Universe/the Mystery – they all merge for me - “OK, I have no idea why I’m here; You deal with it.” That second, the headache was gone. Yes, it was about that old devil Control, and it’s counterpart Trust. But the “answer” I got was NOT “You aren’t in control, I am, so submit”. I don’t believe in a God who demands “submission”, and I won’t say that horrible line in Eucharistic Prayer B that says, “put all things in subjection under Your Christ”. Rather, the message was, “We’re in this together; trust me and yourself; relax.” I learned a critical lesson about Life – and God.

Second: In 1995, after 9 years of a little congregation in Providence that went from 12 to over a hundred and had a vital ministry to the AIDS community, I took a job I thought would be wonderful: Director of The Oasis, the ministry to the Gay community in the diocese of Newark. Seven months into it, I started having anxiety attacks for the first (and only) time in my life. I prayed about that mightily. One morning I awoke after a bad night, and an inner voice said clearly, “Brian, this job is just not for you. Forget about what others will think; just resign. It’s OK. Not every decision we make is the right one. This setting is not where your gifts are best used. Trust yourself.” Instantaneously, I felt better, and I’ve never had another anxiety attack – though if I do I will know what the message is! I learned that I don’t have to succeed at everything, and to appreciate what gifts I do have, and I’m still learning not to beat myself up.

The answer to Prayer is always, I believe, that we are offered the opportunity to grow and change – and that often is a wrenching process – but it gets easier too! As we take the opportunities, our comprehension of the great Mystery of Life, of God, of Meaning, changes and grows. We set out on the road of isolation at our birth into this Earthly life, and we move towards a sense of unity in our self and with each other and with all Creation and with the infinitely beautiful Power that enlivens it all.

The Message today is: Keep at it! As Winston Churchill once said, “Never, never, never give up”. The great saints are those who first set their hearts on “union with God” - those who like Jacob wrestled with the angel God, until the break of day, and would NOT let go until the angel blessed him. Some of the blessings we receive may seem like a curse – until we recognize we have been freed of things we thought we had to have but which only stood in our way to Freedom.

So in praise of Persistence I leave us with these verses of a very long hymn called Wrestling Jacob, by the great hymnologist Charles Wesley [1742]: [Tune: St. Petersburg, attributed to Dimitri S. Bortniansky 1825]

Come, O thou Traveler unknown / 
Whom still I hold, but cannot see!
 / My company before is gone,
 / And I am left alone with Thee; / With Thee all night I mean to stay, / And wrestle till the break of day.

Wilt Thou not yet to me reveal
 / Thy new, unutterable Name?
 / Tell me, I still beseech Thee, tell;
 / To know it now resolved I am;
 / Wrestling, I will not let Thee go,
 / Till I Thy Name, Thy nature know.

[Sing last verse]

Contented now upon my thigh
 / I halt, till life’s short journey end;
 / All helplessness, all weakness I / 
On Thee alone for strength depend;
 / Nor have I power from Thee to move:
 / Thy nature, and Thy name is Love.

Pent IX, Prop 12_C_RCL

July 25, 2010

St. Benedict’s, Los Osos CA

The Rev. Brian H. O. A. McHugh +

Genesis 18:20-32; Ps 138; Col 2: 6-19; Luke 11: 1-13


I’ve been doing a lot of reading these past months. The history of ideas. Mysticism, including ancient Egyptian and Middle Eastern. Pagan, both Greek and Roman, particularly Plato and Celsus. Christian Gnosticism, particularly Valentinus and Basilides. Early Christian writers, particularly Origen – brilliant man who, of course, strayed too far from the 6th C Roman hierarchy and got condemned as a “heretic” and excommunicated. “Literalist” Christianity, which may be a new term for you, used by Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy in “The Jesus Mysteries” ….. but I won’t get off on that tangent today! I’ve come away with, among a lot of things, a strong sense of how many people think it’s really hard to be and to become a fully human person. One of my favourite cards has a picture of the former Tammy Faye Baker, on the front saying, “Lord, I’m sorry about the money”; inside she says, “Being pretty ain’t cheap.” To paraphrase her, Being a fully human person ain’t easy - and is hard work!

One measure, it struck me, of how hard it is to reach maturity as a human being is the number of persons, philosophies, and religions throughout the millennia that believe in reincarnation ….. including many of the early Christian so-called “Church Fathers” – and a surprisingly large percentage of American Christians, according to a recent poll. Several of those “church fathers”, by the way, of the first two centuries, were Gnostics. Gnostics were exterminated by the Roman Church by the 6th C., but a few have revived; there’s even a Gnostic bishop in – of course! – California/San Francisco.

What I am segueing to is Prayer – and to the fact that Prayer is “hard”, or perhaps better, requires hard work and stamina and persistence. I was going to say, hard until one gets to the point of “becoming Prayer” – which is what I think St. Paul was pointing to when he said, Pray always”. But on second thought, I won’t say that. I suspect that Prayer requires persistence and stamina forever – given my own experience. Why? Essentially because Prayer is about becoming One with the Soul of the Universe. For some of us, getting to that place and holding there may come more easily than for others. Some people are just more inclined to be what mystics call “Awake” or “Awakened” than others. It’s one of the reasons that relatively few people were fully initiated into the ancient Mystery Religions of Egypt, Greece, Rome, Syria, Persia, and other places; you had to be both highly committed and intellectually agile.

Prayer is essentially a context for living one’s Life. The context is Mystery, and the core “posture” of Prayer is Openness. This is reflected by the ancient “orans” position taken by the priest (or any others for that matter) at the Eucharist, the “Holy Mysteries” – arms open to receive or embrace, recalling Jesus on the Cross, and the Egyptian godman Osiris, who was “hung on a tree”. Our mouths are saying formulas, words, with which we do our best to express what we think we understand about the Mystery of Christ’s self-giving, death and resurrection. But the bottom line is, we “see through a glass darkly”. At the heart of Prayer is Openness and Listening with the Inner Ear. When I was young, I was taught an acronym for Prayer: ACTIP. Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Intercession, Petition. But adoration – standing open to the Mystery and wonder of the infinite and Unknowable God – was and is always first. “Adoration” is the setting, into and out of which, all the other activities of Prayer flow. We catch it in the Psalm for today:

I kneel in worship facing your holy temple and say it again: "Thank you!"
Thank you for your love, thank you for your faithfulness;
Most holy is your name, most holy is your Word.

A friend of mine, in an email last week, went on a rant about how boring the Prayers of the People were at his church’s worship. Just rote – a pile of names and issues and causes raced through in order to get through the service in an hour. I opined to him that the Prayers of the People – and the Eucharist itself – are a Sunday morning metaphor, reminding us that the rest of the week is to be spent open to and acting upon what the Mysteries we celebrate together call us to in daily life: ACTIP.

So, when He is asked by his followers to teach them how to pray, Jesus simply reminds them of the context for a Life that is Prayer (This is in the words of The Message):

Father, Reveal who you are.
Set the world right.
Keep us alive with three square meals.
Keep us forgiven with you, and forgiving others.
Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil."

Jesus doesn’t say Pray for others, or Ask God to do something. He says: rest in, become One with, the Holy One; know that God’s will and yours are the same; tend to your whole being, material and spirit; stay One with God and others; keep centered in the Inner Christ in times of trail and evil. Then we act out of your own compassionate, loving, divine Being.

The story of Abraham we hear today reveals what I think is the most exciting dimension of Prayer. We all know the reputation of Sodom and Gomorrah! Wicked, wicked, wicked; rebellious against God; the rich and powerful victimizing the poor and helpless. So God decides to go and see what's going on, and God does not seem pleased. But Abraham - who seems to have assumed that God is going to destroy everyone, stands right up to him, blocks God’s way from leaving, confronts Him. “You’re the judge of the whole World”, he says; “You can’t act unjustly!” Abraham starts at 50 righteous people and works down: 40? 30? 20? 10? He is persistent, acting out of the context of his life of prayer. Finally God agrees; God won’t destroy the city if there are just 10 righteous people.

Most people think that this is a story about God. About God changing Her mind. It isn’t. It’s a story about us. It’s about our Journey into the depth of Mystery of God and the Mystery of our true Selves - which ultimately, so the mystics tell us, are the same thing. It’s about us changing our minds, our perceptions, our understanding. It’s Abraham who sees, step by step, deeper into the Mystery of God’s Justice and Compassion, deeper into the Mystery of what it means to be Human. To put it in Christian terms, what it means “to be as Christ”, to discover , as Paul says, “Christ in us, the hope of glory”. I have no doubt that Abraham would have worked God down to 1, maybe even none!. Perhaps that he only got to 10 is a sign to us that the Journey into God and Self never ends. There is always a deeper layer. Step by step, Abraham was challenging himself, opening himself to a fuller and deeper understanding and experience of God. Asking the Question: “How extravagant, how generous is God’s love and compassion for us?” This story asks us to contemplate the Mystery of both God’s and our infinite capacity for Compassion. It asks us to forge ahead on the Journey of becoming fully Human.

In the Hebrew Bible stories, God “changes”. But the hidden meaning – when we can hear it - is that we change. I have said this before and say it again: No prayer changes God or God’s “mind”. God is perfect Love, and God desires and offers us all we need to grow in truth and love - "will not God give you the Holy Spirit ...?". It is always we who must learn and change, adapt or make choices that reflect the Christ in us. When we make intercession for or petition for others, it is always the first step in taking loving action as we are able.

We have only begun to speak of the Mystery of Prayer. The conversation will continue. Let us remember these empowering words of Joseph Campbell, which I think call us to prayer: “The values and distinctions that in normal life seem important disappear with the terrifying assimilation of the self into what formerly was only otherness”. In other words, rhe intent of Prayer is to become One with God and Others and our Self. There is, in the end, no Other. No separation between you and me, others, and God.

Homily at the marriage of Liz Beaman & Philip Dizard

Address at the Wedding of Liz Beaman & Philip Dizard
The Heinz Chapel, Pittsburgh
Saturday, April 24, 2010 @ 6:30pm


Liz, Philip, and all here today: first let me tell you why I am thoroughly delighted to have been asked to officiate at your wedding ceremony – aside from the fact that I am always inspired when two people are willing to give themselves to each other, and aside from the fact that Darby and Chris were cherished parishioners of mine when I was a parish priest and remain cherished eccentric and always delightfully bizarre friends. Birds of a father tend to flock together. I look forward to adding Liz’s family and friends to the stew.

I revel in diversity. I deeply hold that disrespect for diversity and the attendant unwillingness to learn new truths from the reality of diversity is one of the primary causes of discord and of social fragmentation. There is a wonderfully human stew-pot of diversity here today. I just wish that America could learn to rejoice in it and honour it. We would be a much more nurturing, affirming human community. And, I think, a more, generous, kind nation. My hope – no, more, my challenge - is that this weekend and Philip and Liz’s marriage will be an opportunity to find pleasure in each other’s diversity, and deepen the wonder of being human.

We all know that the so-called “institution of marriage” is fraught with issues in our culture these days. The courage and desire to offer themselves to each other in order to explore and learn the Mystery of Love is a symbol for us all of the possibilities for each of us as a person and as a sharer in family and community. Relationships so often fail. But every time two people have the courage to marry, it raises our hope. This is the gift that Philip and Liz offer us all today.

Liz, Philip: I have read the vows you will make and their preamble many times. They resonate with the deepest principles that I have shaped my life around as a Christian priest, and I believe with other of the great time-tested principles of the World’s religions and philosophies. I am always open to Wisdom, from whatever source, though I will confess that I measure the truth of Wisdom by the great invitations of people like Jesus and the Buddha to Compassion.

You will make vows today, by your own will and choice. I believe this to be the working of the Mystery we often call “God”. Vows are important; their keeping reflects on our integrity. You will work every day of your Life together to sustain the hopes and goals your vows embrace. I hope that I and all here today will continue to support you both on this Journey together. And I would remind you that it is the Journey that is paramount, not the End; the End takes care of itself.

Today I offer you Four Toltec principles – which Don Miguel Ruiz calls “Agreements” - by which to accomplish your vows.

One: “Always be Impeccable with your word.” Your word is the power you have to create. It can also be used to destroy. Your word expresses what you dream, what you feel, what you really are. If you are impeccable in your word, you create beauty, love, heaven on earth. Strive always to use your word impeccably.

Two: “Never take anything personally.” 99.9% of what happens around you and what is said to you is not about you. It is about what lies behind others’ words and deeds. To take everything personally is deeply selfish; everything is not about you. And we are not responsible for everything. Taking everything personally poisons you. Live your own truths. Help each other to see honestly.

Three: “Never make assumptions.” Almost all assumptions are wrong. They cause us to judge people, usually wrongly. They cause us to mistreat each other. If in doubt – and that is most of the time – Ask, talk, be honest or seek honesty. Truth is always the best way to deeper love.

Four: “Always do your best.” Circumstances in Life change. Your best will be different at different times, depending on how you feel and many other factors. But if you both are committed to doing your best, you have a better chance of keeping the other three Agreements. They will all lead to a choice for Love.

And remember: we all fail. So when you do, acknowledge it and start again.

Love is not essentially feelings. Love is essentially an act of the will – the conscious decision to care and be compassionate to the one who will share Life. Spiritually, emotionally, psychologically healthy people give generously – and are never diminished by it.

Liz, Philip, may your journey together bring Wonder, Astonishment, Surprise, Peace. and Joy. I believe there is a Great Mystery of Being at the heart of Life. It is also our deepest Self. Together may you catch a glimpse, and help each other to be fully yourselves.

Easter V, Year C_RCL May 2, 2010

St. Benedict’s, Los Osos CA

The Rev. Brian H. O. A. McHugh +

Here is a wonderful story from the Bhagavata Purana, a Hindu text from about 200 CE:

A dispute once arose among the sages which of the three gods was greatest. They applied to the greatest of all sages to determine the point. He undertook to put all three gods to a severe test.

 He went first to Brahma, and omitted all obeisance. The god's anger blazed forth, but he was at length pacified.

 Next he went to the abode of Siva, and omitted to return the god's salutation. The irascible god was enraged, his eyes flashed fire, and he raised his Trident weapon to destroy the sage. But the god's wife, Pirvatt, interceded for him.

 Lastly, Bhrigu went to the heaven of Vishnu, whom he found asleep. To try his forbearance, he gave the god a good kick on his breast, which awoke him. Instead of showing anger, Vishnu asked Bhrigu's pardon for not having greeted him on the first arrival. Then he declared he was highly honored by the sage's blow. It has imprinted an indelible mark of good fortune on his breast. He trusted the sage's foot was not hurt, and began to rub it gently.

 "This," said Bhrigu, "is the mightiest god; he overpowers his enemies by the most potent of all weapons - gentleness and generosity."

This is why, in the great Christian Myth, Jesus stood silent before Pontius Pilate. Jesus is the One who “overpowers his enemies by the most potent of all weapons – gentleness and generosity”. Jesus chastised Peter for using his sword in Gethsemane, and healed the ear of the man Peter struck. It is why Jesus tried to make it clear over and over that His kingdom was not of the character of this World”. It is why Jesus rejected the Devil’s offer of all the power of the World’s kingdoms. It is why Jesus rejected the role of a military messiah. It is why Jesus is portrayed healing bodies, minds, and spirits. It is why He is portrayed as a raiser even from the dead – Lazarus and the son of the widow of Nain. It is why Jesus accepted the possibility of death in His determination to be faithful to the God of Love He served and loved. Ultimately it is why Jesus is raised from the dead: The Gospel is scandalously determined to make the point that Love triumphs over, is greater than, all things.

I am utterly opposed to making anyone, including St. Paul, the source or arbiter of all truth. But I do think that Paul got it right about the centrality of Love at the heart of the Gospel, at the heart of God, and at the heart of the Jesus he met “in the spirit” on the Damascus road:

If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love.

Jesus said to love our enemies – a commandment that Joseph Campbell thought was the hardest sentence in the Gospel. Jesus demanded of Peter, the deeply faulted man who would lead His followers, only one thing in that role, asking not once but three times, “Peter, do you love Me?” Love had to be the center of Peter’s discipleship – not his goodness or perfection or law-keeping. [The wonderful Verna Dozier once said that this three-fold question of Jesus surely showed His godlikeness; Jesus completely freed Peter from his three-time denial of Jesus. What could be more loving, gentle and generous!]

There was another very important way that Jesus demonstrated the love of His heavenly Father. He challenged the contempt and meanness and indifference of the religious leaders by almost ostentatiously loving His society’s unlovable – just as Gandhi was later to love the Indian dalits, the Outcasts. He loved lepers, and Samaritans, and prostitutes, and tax-collectors, and thieves, and a Roman centurion, and widows and orphans. Constantly He was expanding the boundaries of His own love; people saw it. Many saw themselves criticized by it, their lack of love exposed, their guilt and their anger exposed. Were Jesus alive on the Earth today, He would be in crack dens, and eating with undocumented immigrants, and sitting with refugees in squalid camps, and attending Gay marriages, and in countless places where the rejected and the despised are gathered. He would also be in the White House and in the Kremlin and Robert Mugabe’s palace, and the United Nations , and the World’s Pentagons, gently challenging them in their positions as he did the Pharisees and Herod, and speaking about the ways of the Kingdom. And, when threatened human powers killed Him again – and we would, for the World is little changed - we would again hear Him speak those ominous words, “Father, forgive them”.

I imagine Jesus’ voice somewhat tinged with understanding and perhaps some loving frustration as He gathers with his disciples for the last Passover meal in the Upper Room. Loving them all, including Judas, He says, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." He had tried teaching them for a long time. But it is clear that they “didn’t get it”. Let us sit at your right hand and left they said. Shall we call down lighting to kill them? they said. How dare those peasants be healed on the Sabbath? they said. I think Jesus took stock, saw their human waywardness as He sees ours, and knew that He had to focus them on the heart of His message. I give you a new commandment: Love one another as I have loved you. Jesus would have understood that like all human beings His disciples and we would make a mess of things - making idols of Bible and Church, succumbing to the desire for earthly power and glory, relishing honour and praise.

My guess is that He took a risk. He focused us on the centrality of Love. He hoped that we would “get it” – that we would learn ways to stay focused on Love. Love was the one thing that others would see and recognize the God of Love present among them. Even though being a loving person brings such a sense of Peace and of Happiness, it is amazing how easily we are tempted away from it! You’d think we’d see that His Way blesses us and others more. What contrary, self-destructive people we are!

But maybe the words of Mencius, a Chinese Confucian philosopher and sage of the 4th century BCE, are true. Despite the evidence, I choose to believe he is right. He said:

All [persons] have a mind which cannot bear to see the sufferings of others. If [they] suddenly see a child about to fall into a well, they will experience a feeling of alarm and distress. Let them have their complete development, and they will suffice to love and protect all within the four seas.

I think only one spiritual practice is necessary: it is to mediate daily on the question What is Love? Jesus showed how He loved, showed by His life and teachings what Love, Compassion, truly, authentically is. At the core of our Life as Christians is this Question. We can expand our spiritual practice as we wish, but always our quest is to seek and know the meaning of Love, and our calling is to generate Love around us and within.

The Muslim mystic Ibn Arabi wrote this verse, entitled Whatever Way Love’s Camel Takes; here is his wisdom for us:

My heart has become capable of every form:
It is a pasture for gazelles,
And a monastery for Christian monks,
And a temple for idols,
And the pilgrim's Ka'ba,
And the tablets of the Torah,
And the Book of the Koran.
I follow the religion of Love:
Whatever way love's camel takes,
That is my religion, my faith.

The camel makes it through the desert against great odds. Love will get us successfully through Life’s often treacherous places. Law-keeping will not transform the human heart into the flame of Compassion. My religion is Ibn Arabi’s: Whatever way Love’s camel takes.

Good Friday C_RCL April 2, 2010

St. Benedict’s, Los Osos CA

The Rev. Brian H. O. A. McHugh +

We sing the praise of him who died,
of him who died upon the cross…..

Inscribed upon the cross we see
in shining letters, God is love …..

The balm of life, the cure of woe,
the measure and the pledge of love,
the sinner's refuge here below,
the angel's theme in heaven above.

Words from the Holy Week hymn We sing the praise of him who died.

We do not gather here tonight to celebrate suffering.

To acknowledge it, in Jesus’ life and ours, Yes. To be one with Jesus in the agony of crucifixion, Yes. To be deeply aware of how we and indeed all human beings inflict suffering and sorrow upon each other, Yes. But to “celebrate” suffering, No.

Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ is the modern-day culmination of a theology gone awry, probably since the Middle Ages. The prominence of blood, of Jesus’ body twisted in agony, darkness and weeping so evident in the art of the last several hundred years, culminating in the sacrilege of the unrelieved masochistic horror of Gibson’s film which portrays nothing but horror and pain and nothing of the Gospel message, has perverted the focus and the meaning of what we still dare to call “Good” Friday. They are designed to connect us personally and emotionally with Jesus. They are misdirected. What we need is connection to Obedience and Love.

Good Friday is centered in these two things: in Obedience, and in Love. Christ Crucified is the sign that the two are one. Jesus was not hung upon the Cross essentially by evil or hate or politics, but by His choice to be obedient to the essential nature of His God: that of Unconditional Love and Compassion. The choice for Love has engendered evil and hate and political revenge onto many before and since Jesus. It will continue to do so in a World of human beings who are free to choose self-giving generous Love, or selfish self-interest. And, Jesus’ choice will continue to shape the core of those of us who follow His path.

Phillips Brooks, bishop of Massachusetts in the late 18th century and famous for having written the text for the Christmas hymn O Little Town of Bethlehem has written:

The essence of that by which Jesus overcame the world was not suffering, but obedience.
Yes, men may puzzle themselves and their hearers over the question where the power of
the life of Jesus and the death of Jesus lay; but the soul of the Christian always knows that
it lay in the obedience of Christ. He was determined at every sacrifice to do His Father's will.
Let us remember that; and the power of Christ's sacrifice may enter into us, and some little
share of the redemption of the world may come through us, as the great work came through Him.

The story of Jesus last days are full of hurt and suffering, yes. But it is also full of love. The love of His disciples – perhaps even the misguided Judas who desperately wanted Him to claim His messiahship. The compassion of the woman who wiped his face (a non-Biblical legend) as He staggered under the weight of the crossbeam. The love of his mother and of John and the other women as they stood at the foot of the cross. The love of Mary Magdalene, buying burial ointments and following to see where He would be buried. And of course, Jesus’ love: for His mother watching Him die; for His disciples, especially John; for God’s people, “sheep without a shepherd”; for Jerusalem, rejecting God’s love; for His tormentors, forgiving them for their ignorance; for the thieves crucified with Him; and of course for the God of Infinite Compassion Who was the very heart of His being.

Jesus’ resurrection is the Christian proclamation of a great Mystery of Life: that Love is greater than even Death. It is that Mystery which we, in our baptism into Christ, seek to live out every day of our life. Jesus summed up all Christian action in His “new commandment”:

“Love one another as I have loved you”. “

He emphasized servant-Love by washing His disciples’ feet and telling them:

“As I have done for you, so you are to do for one another.”

The essence of that by which Jesus overcame the world was not suffering, but obedience. …
May we remember that; and the power of Christ's sacrifice may enter into us, and some little
share of the redemption of the world may come through us, as the great work came through Him.

It will – as long as we are faithful in Love. It is the Way of the Cross.

Lent V C_RCL March 21, 2010

St. Benedict’s, Los Osos CA

The Rev. Brian H. O. A. McHugh +

There is in all visible things an invisible fecundity, …… Natura naturans.

There is in all things an inexhaustible sweetness and purity, a silence that

is a fount of action and joy. It rises up in wordless gentleness and flows

out to me from the unseen roots of all created being, welcoming me

tenderly, saluting me with indescribable humility. This is at once

my own being, my own nature, and the Gift of my Creator's Thought

and Art within me ….. (1)

Words of Bruno Barnhart, in his commentary on the Gospel called John. Despite the fact that we are so often unaware of their truth, I believe his perception is accurate.

Next Sunday we begin what the Church calls Holy Week. It is a week filled with emptinesses, with sparseness, with isolation, with betrayals, with pain, with death and burial – though we must not forget the gift glowing at the heart of this week: the gift of Himself that Jesus makes to His disciples at that last earthly Passover celebrated together. Holy Week, by deliberate liturgical planning, is full of what the Collect today calls “the unruly wills and affections of sinners”, full of the “swift and varied changes of the world”.

We latter-day Christians know what comes at the end of Holy Week: a rising from the dead. Resurrection. Strangely and ironically named “Easter”, after the ancient Anglo-Saxon goddess of Spring, Fertility, and New Life, Estre. But I delight in this! It reminds us of what Bruno Barnhart tells us and of which we are often skeptical – that there is in all visible things an invisible fecundity. It reminds us that Life – and our Life – is the ultimate force, and will rise from the ashes of seeming destruction and death. I was reminded of it on Thursday as I drove the Chumash Highway north out of Santa Barbara past last year’s devastation of fire. Tree stumps still stood blackened and empty as they had over scorched earth after the Tea Fire – but now they stood above vibrant green and brilliant wildflowers. How many times in our lives have we known such dying, mentally, physically, emotionally – only to feel new life rising up in wordless gentleness and flowing out to me from the unseen roots of all created being. I have known it many times. As I’m sure you have.

Holy Week is a cursillo, an intense “short course” in the essentials of Being Alive. Jesus’ Holy Week journey is our own; facing opposition; facing doubt; choosing Love; trusting God; staring the various aspects of Death in the face. It is harrowing. We need anchoring. So, the Gospel anchors us on one end with Easter. Perhaps those who devised the Revised Common Lectionary felt we needed an anchor at the other end. And at least in this Year, they have provided it. This Sunday before Palm Sunday – if you will pardon an overwrought poetic image - reeks with what I will call the heady perfume of Generosity, symbolized by Mary’s costly ointment poured over Jesus’ feet. She anoints the One in Whom “true joys are to be found” as we make the journey with Jesus through His Passion – recognizing our own journey of dying and rising in His.

Through the prophet Isaiah, God addresses His people, calling them out of the past, their times of defeat and exile and suffering, into the present, into God’s Present:


Forget about what's happened; don't keep going over old history.

Be alert, be present. I'm about to do something brand-new. 
It's
bursting out! Don't you see it?
 There it is! I'm making a road
through the desert, 
rivers in the badlands ….. I provided water
in the desert, 
rivers through the sun-baked earth,
 drinking water
for the people I chose.

Ever-generous God. Never giving up on us. Shaking us free from the places where yet again we have gotten stuck. Promising and giving new yet time-tested roads through our deserts, ancient life-giving water. As an example: through the challenges of this past year of economic stress, God had been showing us the path of Simplicity and mutual concern and sharing. I hope that the Church will be a faithful witness.

The Psalm confirms God’s generous faithful ways. What could Israel possibly hope for, dragged off into slavery into foreign lands? But God brought them home again. Nations were amazed, Israel herself was amazed, to be freed and brought home. And when it happened again, they remembered God’s generosity, God’s Way, and had the courage to call out for God to help them again:

And now, God, do it again—
bring rains to our drought-stricken lives
So those who planted their crops in despair
will shout hurrahs at the harvest,
So those who went off with heavy hearts
will come home laughing, with armloads of blessing.


Paul knew the Divine Generosity in his life. A persecutor and murderer of followers of the Gospel Way, his words passionately show how God freed him and filled him with a new Life:

Yes, all the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life. …..
I've dumped [all my old ways] in the trash so that I could embrace Christ and
be embraced by him ….. I gave up all that inferior stuff so I could know
Christ personally, experience his resurrection power, be a partner in his suffering,
and go all the way with him to death itself ….. [God] has so wondrously reached
out for me …


Have we followed dead-end ways? You bet we all have. But in a God generous with His Spirit and Love, we have found paths leading to new Life.

The precious ointment that Mary generously lavishes on Jesus is a sign to us that the ultimate generosity of God is seen in Jesus. The costly nard is a sign of the abundant Life that passes to us, is lavished on us, from God - as life passed from Jesus to Lazarus. It is a sign that even if, in our own lives, we lie in our self-made tombs three days as Lazarus did and decay has set in, we can be called forth – and not to our old life but to a deeper and richer and truer one.

As we approach our yearly cursillo in facing Death and choosing Love and trusting the ultimate power of Life, we are securely anchored: on the one end by God’s vast generosity and on the other by the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. We are well prepared to enter unafraid into the Mystery of Christ’s Passion, Death and Resurrection.

Oscar Wilde has said:

Where there is no extravagance there is no love, and
where there is no love there is no understanding.

He is correct. Jesus – extravagant, loving, understanding - is the living proof, along with all who take up His cross and follow.

(1) Bruno Barnhart The Good Wine: Reading John from the Center pp.215-16

Lent II C_RCL Feb 28, 2010

St. Benedict’s, Los Osos CA

The Rev. Brian H. O. A. McHugh +

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets

and stones those who are sent to it!

How often I've longed to gather your children, 


gather your children like a hen, 
her brood safe

under her wings— 
 but you refused and turned away!

Some of the most deeply felt words from Jesus in the Gospels. There are so many echoes, in Scripture and in later writers. One echo is certainly the longing cry of the exiles in Babylon, from the 137th Psalm: (1)

If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
 let my right hand forget its skill.

Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth
 if I do not remember you,

if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy.



Here is a poem by Yehudah Halevi, from the late part of the 12th century:

Would that I had wings
that I could wend my way to Thee,
O Jerusalem, from afar!
I will make my own broken heart
find its way amidst your broken ruins.
I will fall upon my face to the ground,
for I take much delight in your stones
and show favor to your very dust,
to the air of your land!

And finally, bringing us to our own times, words from 20th century Rabbi Abraham Heschel : (2)

Who will fan and force the fire of truth to spread across the world,
insisting that we are all one, that mankind is not an animal species
but a fellowship of care, a covenant of brotherhood?



There is cursing in the world, scheming, and very little praying.
Let Jerusalem inspire praying: an end to rage, an end to violence.



Let Jerusalem be a seat of mercy for all men. Wherever a sigh
is uttered, it will evoke active compassion in Jerusalem.



Let there be no waste of history. This must be instilled in those
who might be walking in the streets of Jerusalem like God's
butlers in the sacred palace. Here no one is more than a guest.



Jerusalem must not be lost to pride or to vanity.



All of Jerusalem is a gate, but the key is lost in the darkness of God's silence.
Let us light all the lights, let us call all the names, to find the key.

On this Second Sunday of the Lenten Journey, we open ourselves to a core theme in the Jewish and Christian faiths: that of Covenant. “Covenant” lies at the heart of our relationship with God. “Jerusalem” becomes, from at least the 5th century BCE, the universal symbol of the goal and destination of Faith. “Jerusalem” is both that place where God and God’s people dwell together, or where, as in the Gospel today, that relationship fails. In her usual eloquence, my friend and colleague Suzanne Guthrie says, bringing us full circle:

In Christian symbolism Jerusalem is everyplace and the ultimate place. Jerusalem
is the conflicted city within our hearts and the hoped for heavenly city of promise.
Jerusalem is Earth herself. We lament over the world and our continual warfare
and our ongoing destruction of land and seas and air. We (3) are the holy place that
kills prophets, healers, sages and innocents in the complex chaos of our passions. (4)

In the Hebrew Scriptures, the word for “covenant” is always berith. The derivation of the word is uncertain. Some think it comes from the Assyrian word beritu, which means “to bind”. This makes sense. But most believe it comes from the Hebrew verb barach, meaning “to cut”. That links us immediately to our reading from Genesis 15, where God establishes His covenant with Abraham, affirming His promise that Abraham, though now childless, will be the “father of many nations”. In the ritual sacrifice that affirms the covenant and binds Abraham to God, the animals are cut down the middle. This ritual will be seen many times in the Hebrew Bible. In Jeremiah 34, God says, “The men who have violated my covenant and have not fulfilled the terms of the covenant they made before me, I will treat like the calf they cut in two and then walked between its pieces.” (5)

Berith can mean a legal contract, a mutual voluntary agreement. But when used of God and us, it is clear that God and we are not equal parties. Berith in this case says more about God’s disposition towards us. Simply, our failing faithfully to keep the relationship does not break the relationship, as a broken contract would. God’s relationship with us is unbreakable. This is clear in God’s promise to Abraham, clear in the covenants with Moses, Joshua, with the whole of Israel – and with us in the person of Jesus.

The knowing, in the mind and heart, that God will never break our relationship, and the knowing that when we abandon God there is always a way back on the path of self-knowledge and repentance – so powerfully depicted in the parable of the Prodigal Son – is the core principle that this Second Sunday in Lent calls us to embrace. It is the rock foundation on which to build our Life. Our life with God is never contractual, never subject to cancellation due to “pre-existing conditions”. It is always Covenantal. “God” is ever-faithful in Love, Justice, Forgiveness.

“Jerusalem” is the living symbol of our life-giving relationship with God. It is extolled in the Song of Solomon, and in the vision of the Heavenly Jerusalem in Revelation. It is hoped for in that overly sentimental but stirring Blake poem set as the hymn “Jerusalem” by Parry – a deep cry for God’s Peaceable Kingdom to come among us: “and is Jerusalem build-ed here / among the dark Satanic mills.”

Our work is to let God build “Jerusalem” in our hearts. To bind ourselves together with God in the covenant of Love. To live our lives out of that radiant core. To build “Jerusalem” stone by stone around us, extending the Covenant Community to all peoples and nations.

Our rallying cry, in this week of our Lenten journey, can be the words of the 18th century Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav: (6)

Wherever I go, I go to Jerusalem.”

+++++

Footnotes:

(1) Ps 137: 5-6

(2) Abraham Heschel: "Israel: An Echo of Eternity"

(3) emphasis mine

(4) The Rev. Suzanne Guthrie, on her website "At the Edge of the Enclosure"

(5) Jeremiah 34: 18

(6) Nachman of Bratslav, 1772-1810