Hebrews 1:10-2:3
Psalm 106:6-12
Mark 2:1-12

Charting a True Course

Behind us are four weeks of fasting, abstaining, and prayer. One month ago, we set off on a journey together headed for the door of a tomb. A few days before us lies the halfway mark in this nine-week trek. In the Western Rite the day of our departure, the first day of the journey, is known as Septuagesima Sunday. This day also marks the beginning of Shrovetide for the ancient West, when you must be shriven, that is confessed and absolved. Elsewise, you are doomed to wander through the world — through the wood of error and its byways. And if you should die unshriven, this wandering takes on a darker dimension. Prince Hamlet's father, you recall in the play Hamlet, is doomed to wander restlessly through shades of night because he died unshriven and unhouseled, that is, he did not receive Eucharist at his death.

Shrovetide is our season for making preparations for the long period ahead of self-examination and self-understanding. You do not hike the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine without making preparation. Or, as we consider the great expanses of ocean that lays all around us here, you do not sail alone in a small boat over a vast ocean to hit a small island thousands of miles away, as the Polynesian navigators hit this island eight hundred years ago, without first determining how to do it.

Consider our Epistle lesson this morning:

We must steer only by Heaven's stars and be constantly vigilant that we not get caught up in the currents of earthly life which pull us away from Heaven's course. For drifting is what humans do best. We have countless ways to do it: we fear change; we do not want to offend anyone; or, worse, we descend into the things that Scripture warns us against: drowsiness, drunkenness, disregard. Any or all of these things can cause us to drift into the earthly currents of worldly life. A spiritual deadness descends on us, and we wander and drift. "Wake up! Do not drift!" the Lord Jesus cries. Only vigilance and devotion and discernment and being fully awake in the love of God will do!

Did we at the Franciscan Hermitage know a year ago that this Shrovetide would mark a momentous departure for a very great journey? It would be a very great departure, requiring faithfulness and courage. Behind us lay more than two hundred years of commitment to the Roman Catholic Church and to the Anglo-Catholic tradition, in which our priest was raised and where the Community made a two-year sojourn. Remaining on our course was not easy. The easy thing would have been to drift, to remain as we were. This also would have been the easy course for our Serphic Father Francis of Assisi. It would have been easiest to accept the status quo in his life, easiest for his family, for his friends, for his priest and bishop, too. But he was driven on by a powerful inner force. His soul was burning for God, and burning, therefore, for the Gospel life, for the Early Church.

We at the Hermitage have always wanted the ancient and the pure. Like Francis, we wanted to travel back in time, back through the racial memory of our Christian ancestors, back to the Gospel beginnings of the faith, in that sense back to the Holy Land, the Holy Earth. For the Holy Land had never seen a missionary in order to learn of the teachings of Jesus. It was here, where Jesus first taught. And the descendants of those people today continue in that same ancient faith.

Ours was not a turning away from Catholic life, but rather a going into, a taking hold of, an owning of who and what we already were. Indeed, being Franciscan vowed religious, we saw that we were making the journey of St. Francis of Assisi our journey and walking it to its conclusion. We saw that his world and the Church of his time were uncannily similar to our own situation today — the very same homosexual mania in the monasteries and dioceses, the very same lust for power in the hierarchy, with the same loss of Gospel life everywhere. He wanted the ancient Catholic Church, the life of the first Christians. He wanted to burn ever bright as a diamond, to feel fully alive in the Kingdom of Heaven. And he just did it. He threw off his affluent clothing. He scraped off the debris of the world that clung to him. And he just did it.

We, too, have scraped the barnacles off of our boat. We have sandblasted the hull. We have stripped away all excesses and have gotten down to the bare essentials. For, like Francis, we set sail on a vast sea alone, with only our essence to navigate with: the soul, which is the only celestial instrument we possess, only celestial instrument within us, which is constantly calibrated by God Himself. Our souls, then, must be cleansed and purified. Our lives must be emptied of debris, which would cloud our Heavenly vision. For we must see Heaven's stars above, or we fail to chart our course to the tiny island, called the Kingdom of Heaven.

As we meditate on our Gospel this morning, we find that Jesus is surrounded! People are pressing in on every side. There is barely room to move, much less to make one's way toward Him. Some men have climbed up on the roof above to lower a paralyzed man down on a pallet. If we are not wary, we are apt to say, "Such devotion! How wonderful! The whole world seeks Jesus, the Lord of Life!" We might ask each other, "How did this Gospel land in the Second Sunday of Great Lent?"

But upon reflection, we ask, "Why? Why do they press in and seek Him?" The scene calls to mind other Gospel passages: Zacchaeus climbing high in a tree that he might see Jesus or the crowd that followed Jesus after the multiplication of the loaves:

Are these not the same men we seeing pressing in on Jesus this morning? Whom do they seek? Who do they say that He is? A healer? A magician? A sorcerer? The founder of a fish-and-bread feast that never ends? More to the point, are they really devoted to Him? Do they love Him? Or are they simply exploiting His love for their own selfish aims? Zacchaeus is greeted warmly, even honored with the Lord's presence in his home, for he seeks nothing for himself, only to see Jesus. To see Him from the top of a Sycamore tree. (Oh, how we love that sentence from John 12:21: "Sir, we would see Jesus!") But what of those who want to see, not Jesus, but rather the Magician, the Exorcist, the Miraculous Healer, or the Magic Chef?

He did heal. He did feed the multitudes. But what were the purposes of these mighty signs? Why did the Advent of Christ happen at all? God sent His Only-begotten Son that the purposes of Creation might be fulfilled. From the beginning, a Kingdom of Heaven would be God's unswerving, primordial vision — at the point of the Creation and ever after. Eden was to be God's kind of world, a world where His precious human creatures, made in His Image, would grow and develop and fulfill this family resemblance. becoming ultimately just like Him. "Oh, you are the image of your Father!" we hear someone rejoice. .... even mysteriously to become Him. For the Son and the Father are One, and they wish that we become One with Them (Jn 17:11). Tragically, this love and vision were not to be requited. Human selfishness and neglect would gain the upper hand. For there were once two people on earth who had everything in the world, the only two who ever had everything in the world. But they wanted more, more than everything in the world. They did not love God, but loved their appetites and selfish desires more.

Yet God never veered from His primordial vision: Heaven on earth. So He made a world where humans might learn about love and devotion and goodness. But, once again, selfishness, even murderous selfishness, and eventually sexual perversion would reign on earth until God saw that He had no choice but to begin the Creation again. The tale is too long to tell in a few minutes — of the Flood, of the Bondage of God's people, of the Land of Promise ... of so many things. Yet, throughout a great story is told, not of a faithful people, but of a faithful God and of His vision for a Kingdom of Heaven. He would send the Prophets to guide His people, to teach them of His ways. But always they drifted, giving in to the powerful currents of selfish desire. So, in the end, He sent the Heir, His Only-begotten Son, into the Vineyard. Surely they will listen to Him! (Mt 21:37).

When God's Son arrived, Who is the Kingdom,

But does anyone say, "Who then Is This?" Does a single person ask, "Who then Is This?"

Jesus did not come down from Heaven to heal. If He had wanted to heal, then with one pass of His hand, the whole earth would have been healed. Indeed, He exhorts people to maim and cripple themselves if it will cost them the Kingdom of Heaven:

We do not need this morning's Gospel to understand this "life lesson." For it is all around us. Do these people crowd in to touch Jesus for purest love, or do they press in to drain Him of His life for their own ends? (And we must not forget that when the woman with a twelve-year hemorrhage touched Him, He felt power, or dunamis, go out of Him.) Do we not know this "life lesson"? The exploitation of purest love? Is it not a byword and proverb all around us? Do we not know of people who pretend to love the lonely, the emotionally needy, and the elderly, in order to drain their estates? (A State Attorney told me that this is one of Florida's chiefest industries as measured in dollars: the felony exploitation of the elderly.) Do we not know of young men who make professions of purest love only to satisfy their animal desires? Do we not read about priests who pretend to love God in order to exploit young people in their thirst for perversion? Love and neglect are so common as to be married to one another!

Is this not the scene that appears in our Gospel lesson today? People race from the west shore of Lake Gennesarat to the east to be healed, to attend feasts, and in the end to hatch a scheme to crown Him king for their own political ends. Perhaps we can comprehend His breaking heart on Palm Sunday as the people crowd in, not to reverence their God, but to set Him up as a rag-tag rival to the local client king. The God of the Universe has sent His Son, the Heir, the Firstborn of all Creation to bring life, .... but each man grasps for whatever he can: for power among His scheming disciples, for more food among the multitudes, for healing among the sick, for exorcism among the afflicted, for political insurrection among the zealots ... It is a record of the Gospels that not a single person says, "Who Is This?! Is this not our God?!" I said, person. The demons kneel before Him .... and tremble.

A moment ago, we read in the Sixth Chapter of St. John's Gospel. The famous crisis in Chapter 6, 6:66, lies just ahead. It will be here, where the Lord of Life will begin to reveal His mysterious identity and will make a demand of His followers. It is the same command He issue to us every morning, and which we shall hear shortly: "Take. Eat. This is my Body. Do this!" And as many reject this Divine Command today, so the first ones who heard it walked away. And ...

Yes, the Twelve remain ... but only briefly. For our tale today is about the gift of the purest love and of its neglect. Our tale is about the collapse of love — a tale about the Lord of all Life, Who gave and He gave and He gave until He was drained of all that He had to give. He poured it out freely, and freely they took by the hundreds of thousands. Multitudes crowded in to be healed. You could not move! Thousands crowded into eat their fill in a single seating. The One "which comes down from Heaven, and gives life to the world" (Jn 6:33) ... this One will be killed by these grasping men and then abandoned by the same multitudes .... who took from Him so freely, who professed their love so easily, so casually.

As He hangs on a Cross, now drained of all life, now utterly alone .... save the grieving company of His Mother, His Beloved Disciple, and a few women .... let us remember that this was the Heir. The Vineyard He sought to save was the Kingdom of God, offered to one and all .... a Heavenly world guided by God's holy ways. And all He asked was that we be faithful to Him and to this Kingdom. It is His teaching to us today. And this morning He warns us, "Do not drift! Do not lose this great salvation! Steer only by Heaven's stars with your purest soul!"

We must follow Him, for He calls to us each and every day. We have seen it so vividly here that we can only conclude that we live in one continuing miracle. And when we do follow, we are surrounded by abundant life ... every single day.

We must follow Him! He calls to each and every one of us. And we must not fail to hear Him!

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.