SSJE: Recent Episodes
SSJE
Br. Jack Crowley
Commemoration of Saint John Vianney
Luke 22:24-30
This evening we celebrate one of my favorite saints of all time, Saint John Vianney. We have a window of John in the back corner of the chapel, so if you get bored during my sermon you can always look at that.
The main reason I love John Vianney so much is he had the gift of reading souls. He was famous for being able to understand people very quickly and guiding them to God. John spent upwards of twelve hours a day in the confessional. People flocked from all over France in the early 1800s to see him.
The stories of people who saw John Vianney follow a similar pattern. They came to John, they confessed all of what they thought they had to confess, and then they stopped. Then the magic happened. John had the ability to lovingly look into the hearts of all who came to him and help them draw out the things they were hiding from God.
I imagine we’ve all had some experience like this – an experience of being known or drawn out of our shells. In my experience, it’s one of the most terrifying and exhilarating experiences we can have. To be seen, known, and loved requires trust. When we stop hiding from ourselves, God, and our neighbors, we step out vulnerably into the unknown. It’s a leap of faith to expose ourselves and trust that God and those around us have our best interests at heart. We give God and those we love the benefit of the doubt and say, “Here I am; do with me what you will.”
This dance of seeing, knowing, and loving is a lifelong tango. We are going to step on each other’s toes from time to time; we will bump into each other awkwardly; and we will certainly get out of rhythm on occasion. The beauty of confession and reconciliation is that they are always inviting us back onto the dance floor. God’s grace knows no bounds.
To this day, hundreds of thousands of pilgrims travel every year to John Vianney’s parish. You might wonder what they are looking for, given that the man is no longer there. Yet that is the very power of human connection: to be joined together in a common spot, seeking God with all their heart.
So if tonight you find yourself in want of God, don’t try to think your way out of it. Don’t hide yourself behind your thoughts. Instead, try exposing your heart to God. As crazy or creepy as that might sound, what do you have to lose? Why not try to be intimate with God? Expose your heart to God and let love do its thing. Remember that Jesus, who knows our hearts so well, is watching us with tender love, inviting us forward, deeper and deeper into that holy mystery.
Saint John Vianney, please pray for us. Amen.
Br. Lucas Hall
Jeremiah 26:11-16, 24
Matthew 14:1-12
We have just heard of two prophets: Jeremiah and John the Baptist. They are both very prominent figures in Scripture. And they both failed.
I don’t say this to disparage them. But John, as we just heard, was killed, overcome by the society he strove so adamantly to change. And Jeremiah escaped martyrdom, but his calls to change went unheeded, and he watched his people reap what they had sowed. They were conquered, and Jeremiah spent the rest of his days in exile and lament.
This is, indeed, a religion for failure. How many crucifixes can you see in this chapel? Why? We have the story of the Resurrection, the Ascension, Christ’s triumphs and glories. Is it some ancient obsession with blood sacrifice? Some medieval holdover of hyper-penitence? No. “We proclaim Christ crucified,” writes Paul to his fellow Christians (1 Corinthians 1:23). A foolish stumbling block to those outside, but central to what we as Christians embrace as the path to salvation.
I have known some of you for many years. I have never met others of you. I promise you all equally: you will fail. I will. We all will. Bodies fail; organs and muscles fail; hearts and minds fail. We fail each other by our errors and omissions. Business endeavors fail; war efforts fail; political, social, and civic movements fail. Church fundraisers fail; evangelistic efforts fail. I promise you, I promise you, it’s coming.
The effort, then, must not be success at all costs. But rather, how might these efforts, whether successful or failing, be an offering to God? I believe there are failures that aren’t offerings. I don’t think it’s enough to idealize yourself into failure, to fall prey to that inclination to be self-righteous, to give all your efforts to impossible flights of fancy, to shun meaningful progress because it is imperfect. If we believe what we say, if we believe that a better world is possible, we have a moral duty to be effective. We can’t just squander ourselves and others for the perceived glory of martyrdom.
So how do we fail well? I cannot answer every specific circumstance, of course. But I’m reminded of how many times this Christ we speak of encountered angry crowds seeking his blood and somehow slipped away because his hour had not yet come. We can interpret this as simply fate, or divine intervention, but I think there’s an active role to play on our part too. Is it our hour? Has our hour come? Is it the time to take that risk, to offer ourselves, even to the point of failure? Sometimes, the answer will be no, and that can be hard. Sometimes, the answer will be yes, and that can be harder. In both cases, if we want our failures to be offerings, we must take an active role in listening. If a child is hungry, we offer them bread, not a stone. When we offer ourselves to God, might we approach God with the same discernment: a desire to actually offer what God is asking of us, rather than what we assume God wants or needs?
We all will fail. Listen for God, look to Christ crucified, and fail well.
Br. Jack Crowley
Psalm 146
Back when I was a postulant and first moved into the monastery, I frequently had a daydream about the door leading from the church into our enclosure. We Brothers process through this door multiple times a day, so we have a lot of experience with it. My daydream was that in the space above the door, kind of where the exit sign is now, there would be a scoreboard. I would daydream that as we Brothers left the chapel, we would each get a score about how well we prayed. I imagined grades like 89 or 92 and wondered how we could bump up to the next level.
What I’ve come to learn since being a postulant is that we don’t get graded on our prayers. In my experience, this can be a source of relief and frustration. It’s a source of relief in that we are not being judged by our praise, but it may also be a source of frustration in that it’s nearly impossible to quantify or qualify how it is we praise God.
It’s with that spirit that I find great comfort in our gradual psalm today, Psalm 146. In particular, the final part of the first verse which says, “I will sing praises to my God while I have my being” (Psalm 146:1). It’s that phrase “while I have my being” that always gets me. “While I have my being” is not a phrase I use in my day-to-day life, but in this context it’s quite beautiful.
“I will sing praises to my God while I have my being.” The psalmist did not say “I will sing praises to my God to the best of my ability” or “I will sing praises to my God better and better each day.” Instead, the psalmist is saying that basically as long as we are drawing breath in this world, we will sing praises to God. You don’t need to qualify it and you don’t need a good reason to do it; you can always sing praises to God.
One of the most important lessons I have learned here in the monastery is that sometimes prayer is an act of getting out of my own head. I am a control freak by nature – I like to know the who, what, when, and why of it all. Yet sometimes this impulse to praise God bubbles up from within me, and it goes beyond whatever thoughts are circling in my head. I have learned to seize those moments – to throw caution to the wind and break that alabaster jar of perfume and grab a foothold of God incarnate. That foothold can be a powerful pivot point from which we can leverage whatever is going on around us into something gorgeous.
Br. Lain Wilson
Matthew 13:36-43
Our Gospel passage this evening is a rare instance of Jesus explaining a parable. This is the parable of the wheat and weeds, which we heard two Sundays ago. As wheat and weeds grow together in a field, the householder orders that they be left until the harvest, when the weeds will be separated and burned, and the wheat brought into the barn. It’s a parable about patience in the face of the persistence of evil and suffering, and faith in God’s future judgment (Matthew 13:36–43).
Jesus clarifies the meaning of the parable to his disciples, and to us. But that clarity doesn’t mean it’s simple, and the urging of patience for the future doesn’t mean that we don’t have work to do in our present. If we can look toward the distant future of this world’s field, we are also directed to tend our own gardens.
We are called to survey our garden’s health, and we are called to be clear-eyed in that assessment. Where do we see weeds taking over? How have we neglected to attend to our garden?
Jesus came preaching repentance and turning back to God, not congratulating ourselves for being perfect. We all have failings. We are all burdened under the weight of sin. We will be called to take stock of our sins in the confession this evening. Don’t let yourself go on autopilot when you say these words. What failing today, what sin in this moment, weighs on your heart? Where is your garden languishing?
Part of this is about recognizing that the fates of what grows are intertwined. So as you survey your garden, learn the names of what grows there. Learn to recognize them, become familiar with them. What are your gifts that are cultivated there . . . and what are the shadows that they cast? Perhaps you have enormous capacity for work and productivity, and enormous impatience for those without. Perhaps you can have a conversation with anyone and everyone, but struggle when it comes time to listen.
Our brightest gifts cast the darkest shadows. When we can recognize them, name them, and become familiar with them, we can be more perceptive as to their impact on us and the world.
And all this – surveying our garden, recognizing what grows there – helps us to know how we may intervene. We can begin to experiment as gardeners. What happens when you water earlier in the day, or use compost?
Our Rule uses the word disciplines in this respect: the practices or habits or commitments that we can put into place, individually and collectively, to help us weather the challenges of vowed life in community. Water and sunlight are pretty high up on my own list (so I’m not all that different from a plant, really), but so too are movement and periods of solitude.
What about your own list? What factors are most important in how you show up to yourself, to God, and to the world? What disciplines – what interventions – might make your own garden healthier?
Confession, discernment, discipline: tending our gardens is hard work. But the good news is that we aren’t alone in this work. Jesus stands with us, giving us the courage to see and speak and do in the work of tending our gardens in the present, and the patience to wait with hope and faith upon the harvest of God’s future.
Amen.
Br. Luke Ditewig
Genesis 29:15-28
Romans 8:26-39
Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52
Jesus teaches with images from everyday life, divine truth revealed in soil and seeds, wheat and weeds, yeast and bread, fish and nets. Though so small a seed, mustard grows into a large plant and then a tree. Hidden yeast infiltrates flour and water, making dough expand for bread. More than just size, these point to what is divinely possible. God may seem hidden or insignificant, but that does not mean God is not present or powerful. God is and will do far more than we now see to restore the world.[1]
Jesus invites us to be patient and to trust God’s hidden actions. The seed will eventually become a tree, spreading out and giving shade. Birds will come to nest in its branches. Like gardeners, be patient in planting and tending. Wait in hope for yield this summer and for the end, when all is verdant and bountiful.
When speaking of yeast, Jesus gives a ridiculous amount for one baker. This likely feeds hundreds of people, bread for everyone in town. The net catches every kind of fish, all included. It is hard to hear the binary of wicked and righteous with a blazing furnace. God invites repentance, change, and following, to live rightly with consequences and punishment in play. The furnace is a striking image. Jesus is the Great Fisher who makes the decisions.[2] Hold this gently with the mustard seed, yeast, and God writ large through Scripture.
God calls flawed people who keep failing, slowly changing and using them for good. Genesis tells the stories of Abraham and Sarah, their son Isaac, and of Hagar and Ishmael, of Isaac and Rebecca with their sons Jacob and Esau. Jacob wrestled from birth, coming from the womb gripping his brother’s ankle. Jacob shrewdly swapped Esau soup for the birthright by a sworn oath. With his mother’s help, Jacob deceived his nearly blind father by smell, wearing Esau’s clothing, giving food like Esau cooked, and covering his smooth arms with animal skins to imitate his brother’s hairy arms. Jacob wrestled away Esau’s blessing from their father.
Esau wanted to kill him. Jacob’s parents sent him off to Laban to find a wife. As we heard today, Jacob fell in love with Rachel and worked for Laban seven years to marry her. After the feast, Laban sent his other daughter Leah in to sleep with Jacob on the wedding bed. Laban deceived Jacob the deceiver with sight and touch.[3] Jacob worked another seven years, marrying both Rachel and Leah. Both bore sons with Jacob, twelve in total, and a daughter. God gave Jacob a new name: Israel.
God worked with and through Jacob and his deceit and the enmity in his fraught and frail family to create a larger people to – as promised to Abraham – bless the whole world. The kingdom of heaven is expansive, reaching beyond our categories, beyond expectation, using us and our families with all frailty and foibles, baggage and brokenness.
We are clearly in need. God comes to save. We are saved by grace, not by what we do but by what God does for us. Paul encourages us, saying that amid any suffering or challenge, nothing can separate us from God’s love (Romans 8:26-39).
Do God’s actions seem hidden or insignificant for you today, given the state of the world, given the state of your life, wounds, and family? Like seeds and yeast, God is present, active, and with great possibility. Hope in God, from whom more will be revealed.
When Jesus told of the mustard tree with birds on its branches making nests, many who first heard it would likely remember something similar from the prophets. Isaiah and Ezekiel foretold of a “World Tree” to bless everyone.[4] Isaiah said: “In days to come Jacob shall take root; Israel shall blossom and put forth shoots and fill the whole world with fruit” (Isaiah 27:6). Ezekiel said: “Under it every kind of bird will live; in the shade of its branches will nest winged creatures of every kind” (Ezekiel 17:23).
Every kind is protected and nourished under this tree. Yeast into dough, not just for a village but a “cosmic loaf” for all people.[5] God promised Abraham his offspring would bless the entire world. Jesus said he would be lifted up to draw all the world to himself.
If God seems hidden or with actions small and seemingly insignificant, first pray your pain. Do not deny suffering. The Spirit helps us in our weakness, groaning with and for us. Hold onto hope. God loves us and is at work in more than we can see or imagine. Like every kind of bird nesting on branches of a huge tree. Like bountiful bread for everyone to eat. Like a net catching all fish. As a king in a manger, on a donkey, and on a cross, God comes on a slant, surprising and subversive, Love from whom we shall not be separated. Amen.
[1] Frederick Dale Bruner, Matthew: The Churchbook (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing, 1990), 36.
[2] Bruner, 51.
[3] Paul Borgman, Genesis: The Story We Haven’t Heard (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2001), 155.
[4] Bruner, 36.
[5] Bruner, 36.
Br. Keith Nelson
Feast of St. James & St. John, Apostles
Matthew 20:20-28
In the collect for today’s feast of St. James and St. John, we prayed: “Pour out on the leaders of your Church that Spirit of self-denying service by which alone they may have true authority among your people.”
I recall a line I love from Matthew chapter 7, when Jesus has concluded the Sermon on the Mount: “The crowds were astounded, because he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes” (Matthew 7:28-29).
Jesus was a humble person who actively shunned personal reward. He was a master at side-stepping the adulation of his personality if that adulation distracted others from the deep truths of the kingdom he came to reveal. His teaching style was holistic: the Gospels portray a person with tremendous sensitivity to how a few words or a simple gesture could communicate as much as or more than a lengthy discourse. What he said had such a ring of truth to it that it awakened a thirst deep inside his listeners for more – even if more was hard to understand and came at great personal cost.
In everything he did, he “came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28).
If the authority of Jesus is the measure by which all Christian leaders ought to gauge their leadership, well, I can only say that I fall very far short. That is true in my ministry as the community’s Superior, but it is also true of the more fundamental leadership to which I am called as a baptized member of Christ’s Body. I stand deeply in need of Jesus to show me where and how I go amiss. And I stand in need of fellow disciples – in my case, primarily my Brothers – who can show me what I can’t quite see about myself. In my case that includes both the sharp edges and the hidden treasures.
I think, by God’s grace, that that was Jesus’ intention for his apostles. Just as his authority came only from his radical dependence on the one he called Father, so any authority given to the members of his Body comes only through radical dependence on his grace in the midst of our frequent failures.
In today’s Gospel reading, James and John fall short in a particularly public way.
These two disciples want something very good: They want to be close to Jesus, to learn from him and to enjoy his presence in the kingdom he has come to inaugurate. We might say they want to become saints. The trouble is that their perception of the kingdom, and the way authority works within it, is conditioned by the values and power structures of worldly kingdoms.
We might pause to ask ourselves: What are the ways we sometimes continue to think about participation in the kingdom of God through the filter of our worldly conditioning – through the values that the world tells us are most important?
Ambition; competition; the posturing and image curation that are standard expectations on social media. The craving for public recognition for beauty, intelligence, business acumen, or net financial worth. There are many other examples.
Though we as the Church are Christ’s mystical Body, we are also a collection of fallible human beings. Our minds and hearts are not automatically immune from the subtle influence of these values and expectations. There is the pressure to be busy all the time, even if we are busy doing good things for others; the pressure to make a virtue of never having an empty calendar; the pressure to find innovative solutions to the many obstacles faced by our congregations and our denomination; the pressure to be available at all times, or to be all things to all people. I am certain you can think of more.
James and John had to face both the disappointment of hearing Jesus’ denial of their intended favor and then the anger of the other ten disciples when they heard about it. In praying with this passage, I noticed that they responded with anger, which seems to suggest several possibilities. The ten may have been angry at their presumption: “Who do they think they are, that they should have that privilege?” may well have been the voice in their heads. They may also have been angry because they carried their own subtle sense of entitlement: “I’m just as worthy of a place next to Jesus as they are, and you don’t see me asking my mom to get it for me!” In the end, then, Jesus’ final words about servant leadership are aimed not just at James and John, but at any one of them tempted to separate true greatness from humble service.
I imagine James and John may have had a miniature meltdown for a few days, but one thing is clear: they didn’t run away, or collapse under the weight of humiliation, or turn against the other apostles in bitterness. They stayed the course, and we remember them as saints. I can only imagine that, however slowly, they saw their mistakes, made humble apologies, and set about learning more of the truth. In God’s time, that would mean drinking the cup entrusted to them by Jesus: participation in the mystery of his life, his death, and his resurrection.
Blessed James and John, Apostles, whom we remember today.
Br. Jamie Nelson
Saint John Cassian
Psalm 70
“O God, make speed to save us. O Lord, make haste to help us.”
If you’ve spent much time here in this chapel, those words will sound familiar. It’s a line from scripture: the first verse of Psalm 70. We recite it at the beginning of most daily prayer services: Noonday Prayer, Evening Prayer, and Compline. The Brother who is officiating chants the first phrase, and the congregation responds with the second.
That monastic ritual has been in place since St. Benedict first wrote his Rule around AD 530. Yet the tradition’s origins are even older than that. St. Benedict included it in his Rule because of the influence of an older monastic author: St. John Cassian, whom we celebrate today.
St. John Cassian was born around AD 360 in the region of present-day Romania. As a young man, he made his way to Skete, one of the early seedbeds of monasticism located in the Egyptian desert. Devout men and women had migrated to the desert to pursue a solitary life of prayer, following in the example of St. Anthony of Egypt a century before. Others banded together into small communities with daily life shared in common, much as we Brothers live out our life today.
Cassian stayed fifteen years in the desert, being formed through prayer, relationship, and daily life with God. After time in the two most influential Christian cities of his day, Constantinople and Rome, he founded a monastic community near present-day Marseille, France, where he lived out his days. The community he founded was a double monastery, with buildings for both men and women, including his biological sister.
If St. John Cassian were to have a stained-glass window in our clerestory monastic founders series, his window would be located between Augustine[1] and Benedict.[2] He was a contemporary of Augustine; the two were born and died within just a few years of one another.
If St. John Cassian were to have a stained-glass window, it would be to honor him as the author of two major works in monastic spirituality, the Institutes and the Conferences. These writings served as key theological and structural roadmaps for St. Benedict as he wrote his Rule. Not only did they inspire the content, in several chapters Benedict directly recommended both works as daily reading fare.
The Conferences are structured as a sort of oral history of the Desert Fathers. It recounts conversations with fifteen elders from Cassian’s desert days, describing the lived experiences, memories, and traditions of a since-vanished community.
One of the elders interviewed for the Conferences, Abba Isaac, shared his wisdom on unceasing prayer using Psalm 70:1.[3] He saw the verse as a universal prayer formula attuned to every human experience, noting, “It embraces all the feelings which can be implanted in human nature, and can be fitly and satisfactorily adapted to every condition.”[4] He advised repeating the verse over and over while going about one’s daily life: while working, walking, or worrying.
You might consider carrying this verse with you this week. Let it accompany you from the time you wake up until you fall asleep at night. For every prayer begins from the same longing: to draw nearer to the God who is already near to us in loving relationship (1 John 4:19).
So join me now by saying: “O God, make speed to save us. O Lord, make haste to help us.”
[1] “Augustine,” SSJE, April 13, 2025.
[2] “Benedict,” SSJE, April 13, 2025.
[3] John Cassian, Conferences 10.10, “Of the Method of Continual Prayer”.
[4] Cassian, Conferences 10.10.
Br. Jack Crowley
Romans 8:12-25
Matthew 13:24-30,36-43
Just to warn you, I’m going to start this sermon with a personal story that makes me look bad. So hold on to your hats.
Back during the COVID lockdown, I joined an online men’s support group. It had about forty men in it, and we met weekly to discuss issues like toxic masculinity, mental health, emotional expression, and so on. Every month one man would volunteer to chair the meetings on Zoom and make sure everything went smoothly.
So one month there was a man, whom we will call Steve, who volunteered to chair the meetings for the following month. Steve was the worst Zoom host I’ve ever encountered. He was frequently a few minutes late, he would constantly forget to unmute himself and start yapping away – if you can imagine the image of forty men on little Zoom boxes gesturing wildly trying to communicate that the host is muted – and what bothered me the most, and what I judged him the most about, was frequently he would be talking to someone off-screen. Sometimes he would even get up and go take care of something in the middle of the meeting.
Now mind you, I could have chosen to focus my attention on the dozens of other men in the group who were alternating between vulnerably bearing their souls and listening intently, but no, I chose to focus on how bad of a Zoom host Steve was. Then finally, on the last night of the month that Steve was the host, at the end of the meeting, Steve expressed his gratitude to the group for letting him be the host that month. He went on to explain that his father with dementia had recently moved in with him and he was struggling to take care of him. He said his father’s symptoms got worse later in the evenings when we had our meetings, but most of the time he could get his father to sit quietly beside him and look at the Zoom screen together. Steve got emotional and explained how he knew he didn’t have much time left with his father and apologized if he had appeared distracted during his time as our Zoom host.
This happened at least five years ago, and I’ve actually never told anyone this story before, but as Steve’s story hit me, all I could think was, “Oh Jesus Christ,” and that month of frustration was flooded over by compassion. I had been so wrong about Steve, and it took a revelation – a burning away of my ignorance – to understand what God already knew.
I’m sure you’ve all had your own moments in life like this, moments when what you thought you knew about someone or a situation ended up being this tiny speck of experience compared to the truth. These are moments when whatever narratives of frustration, judgment, or superiority crumble and we are left humbled, staring at level ground. Of course these moments when we are floored by God are arduous, and they stick with us. These moments when we are decked by revelation can make us feel tiny, like we just want to crawl into a hole. But these moments are also moments when we can learn to be grounded in the Holy Spirit, planting seeds that bear fruit in due season. Fruits of the Holy Spirit like kindness, gentleness, patience, and self-control – fruits I was not offering to Steve in my own ignorance.
But in order to plant these seeds, we often have to spend some time in the weeds. We often have to fall to our knees in the soil of our own foibles. We often have to be so wrong about something that it takes God to right us. We often have to be like Jacob, using a rock as a pillow and learning to call it holy.
As Jesus said in our Gospel this morning, much of our life is spent in the weeds (Matthew 13:24–30). Much of our life is spent trying to distinguish good from bad, what should be done versus what is happening, and how to find God in the midst of it all. Jesus knew full well what he was talking about; he knew how to weed his way through life. How to take what was in front of him and make the most of it, how to appeal to his Father in times of need, how to heal those who were afflicted, and how to live a humble life, fully human, grounded in reality.
Of course we live in a world where the weeds of fear always threaten to strangle the joyful fruits of our labors. Fear, that annoying reminder that we are still human, crops up all too often and wreaks havoc in our garden paradise. We fear that there is not enough to go around – not enough bread for the crowd, not enough wine for the wedding. We fear that we will not be understood, that our deepest hopes and ambitions, our most vulnerable expressions of self will go unnoticed. We fear, and we fear, and we fear until we reach a breaking point and let God into the deepest recesses of our soul, and that is the soil of prayer.
The good news is that like the disciples, we have access to Jesus. We all have access to Jesus in a personal way. Like the disciples, we can approach Jesus in a deeply personal way, seeking understanding, craving communion, and just wanting to get a sense of what is going on here. We must go to Jesus with our deepest fears and express ourselves totally, holding nothing back. We must speak to Jesus on the most intimate and personal of terms, with the brutal honesty of a broken heart or a frustrated soul.
In my experience, what happens next is often miraculous: when we go to Jesus on that personal level and express ourselves, hope springs forth. Hope – not necessarily a solution, or an answer, or optimism, but hope. A sense deep down inside of ourselves that this is all right and holy and this is all happening for a reason. A sense deep down inside of ourselves that more shall be revealed. A sense deep down inside of ourselves that even when the power goes out, we still have the power of God in our souls.
This hope, this energy, cannot be stolen from you. You can keep it in your heart and offer it to the world, and we all know the world needs it right now. Sometimes all we can offer is our own hope. Sometimes all we can offer is our own warmth. Sometimes all we can offer is our own joy. Deep down we all know these offerings go a long way to light up the world.
Amen.
Br. Lucas Hall
Matthew 12:18-21
“Here is my servant, whom I have chosen,
my beloved, with whom my soul is well pleased.
I will put my Spirit upon him,
and he will proclaim justice to the gentiles.
He will not wrangle or cry aloud,
nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets.
He will not break a bruised reed
or quench a smoldering wick
until he brings justice to victory.
And in his name the gentiles will hope.” (Matthew 12:18-21)
This may well be Matthew’s thesis statement. Matthew often gets relegated to being the Gospel about Old Testament prophecy, and how Jesus fulfills it. Compared to Mark, with his rough-and-tumble, ragged Jesus, driven by the Spirit; to Luke, with his beautiful, composed prayers and obvious concern for the marginalized; and to John, with his high Christology and insistence that the gospel is not mere biography, but the story of the Wisdom who made the worlds . . . I don’t know, Old Testament prophecy maybe falls a bit flat. It seems less relevant, less real, more esoteric. But it’s my view that Matthew’s real intention, from the very beginning of his gospel, is to present a Jesus who subverts expectations, and to explain how it is that subversion of the dominant ideas, the unquestioned expectations of the society around him, that both genuinely fulfills the prophetic vision and genuinely is good news. Further, despite Matthew’s delight in provoking these sensibilities, it’s ultimately his goal to assure his fellow Israelites that this subversion is not to be feared, but is the very work of the God they have worshiped from the beginning. And that’s a more interesting, more relevant proposition for us.
Today, we hear of Matthew’s insistence that Jesus acquiring a large and eager following among the Gentiles is not just acceptable, but necessary, for it has long been prophesied that this anointed one of God would bring hope, not just to the people of Israel, but to the whole world, forever. It’s a transgressive idea, especially for a people so used to defining themselves against the surrounding cultures. But it turns out that idea is not just transgressive for Israelites. Paul, in his letter to the early Christians in Rome, insists that the fact that many of his fellow Jews did not embrace Jesus does not represent a removal of God’s covenant from them, and seems to warn the Gentile converts against vaunting themselves above the Jews, insisting rather that hope and grace had come to all, Jew and Gentile alike, and that God had allowed rejection among the Jews so that all alike may be saved not by righteousness but by God’s mercy. This is not the holy-making of one group at the expense of another; all will receive this outpouring of mercy.
Which leaves us here with a rather solemn charge. Is there anyone, anyone at all, any group or individual, in whom we cannot imagine God’s work taking hold? Anyone who we hold in scorn, contempt, dismissal, even deserved scorn, contempt, dismissal? I will answer for all of us: yes. Of course. It does not take much to look at the world, or even at our own interpersonal lives, and find people we just find repugnant on some level. And this is not a cause for panic in itself; “Love your enemies” presupposes you have enemies (Matthew 5:44). What is a crisis, a point at which a crucial choice must be made, is the realization of this enmity. When we recognize those dispositions in ourselves, we must not bury them, and we must not indulge them. We have an obligation to accept what we have heard this day: “Somehow, somehow, even them. Lord, have mercy.”
Br. Luke Ditewig
Isaiah 38:1-6, 21
Psalm 6
Today is our monthly requiem in which we remember the dead, dying, and loss, and our mortality. Sick, dying, and told he would die, Hezekiah prayed asking God to remember how he had followed, and he wept bitterly. Tears express beyond words: fright, distress, sadness, anger, confusion, and distress. God replied: “I hear you and see your tears. I will save you.” Hezekiah recovers and then writes a lament (Isaiah 38:10–20).[1] He pointedly describes hurt and suffering: “My dwelling is plucked up and removed from me like a shepherd’s tent; like a weaver I have rolled up my life; he cuts me off from the loom …” (Isaiah 38:12).
Psalm 6 is similar: “Heal me, Lord, for my bones are racked … My spirit shakes with terror … My eyes are wasted with grief …” (Psalm 6:2–3, 7). The psalmist and Hezekiah describe pain and loss and call for God to listen and deliver. The psalmist ends with trust: “The Lord accepts my prayer. All my enemies shall be confounded and quake with fear; …” (Psalm 6:9–10). Hezekiah ends with gratitude: “the living, they thank you, as I do this day …” (Isaiah 38:19).
How are you in touch today with death, loss, and mortality? What invites your prayer? Perhaps it is the grief of death, someone or something you have lost; or the grief of dying, someone or something changing, being taken away; or the grief of mortality, knowing what you hold today will have to be let go. Remember, too, our non-human neighbors who have died and are dying, or who are endangered and hurting.
Pray with the psalmist. Let a lament be or shape your prayer. Be specific about pain, cry for help, and name trust. Like Hezekiah, write your own psalm with your own metaphors. Tears are a gift. Pray beyond words weeping, groaning, and clenched.
Perhaps you are in the midst. The hard is right now. Perhaps you look back on something before, like Hezekiah after he recovered. Pray your life now and pray back in your life. Trust God hears and sees. “Save us, O God, in your mercy.”[2]
Amen.
[1] We chant this alongside psalms of lament and the Book of Lamentations in Holy Week at Tenebrae.
[2] The repeated antiphon for the psalm of the day.
Br. Curtis Almquist
The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 22C)
Luke 17:5-10
This is one of Jesus’ parables, and I find it deeply troubling. Jesus’ parables are familiar scenes from everyday life. Jesus tells parables to teach his good news. Here he is speaking to his own apostles when he asks the rhetorical question, “Who among you would say to your slave . . . ?” And Jesus tells this parable: It is supper time, and the slave has come in from tending the sheep. Does the slave sit down with the master to eat? No, of course not. The slave is commanded to prepare the meal for the master. Should the master thank the slave? No, the slave has only done what a slave ought to do. And only later does the slave eat, “the worthless slave.”
Here Jesus does not denounce slavery. Rather, he acknowledges the presence of slaves and their required service. Jesus clearly presumes his apostles would understand how a master and a slave deport themselves: “Who among you [apostles] would say to your slave . . .” And the Gospel according to Luke presumes that we also, the reader, would understand the conduct expected between masters and slaves. This is not the only time Jesus tells a parable about slaves.[1] We could ask, how can this be that Jesus is on such comfortable speaking terms with slavery? The “good news” in this parable is elusive.[2] I want to take one step back in history before we search for Jesus’ message for us today.
Slavery was widely practiced in Israel for about 600 years, from around year 200 BCE to 400 CE, and slavery was regulated by Mosaic Law. In the Hebrew scriptures, especially in the Torah, there are many references to slavery: the enslavement of others, being enslaved themselves, and if-and-when slaves are to be emancipated. For example, we read in the Book of Leviticus: “Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you. . . . You can bequeath them to your children as inherited property” (Leviticus 25:44-46).
Meanwhile Jesus’ homeland, Palestine, was occupied by the Roman Empire, where slaves comprised upwards to 30% of the population. For both Jews and Romans, those whom they enslaved was not a matter of their race. Slaves were often prisoners of war, debtors, or those born into slavery. Their work and their conditions varied from master to master, some slaves serving as household servants, some as laborers in bakeries, agriculture, construction; some worked as miners; some were gladiators in the amphitheater. Both the Roman and Jewish cultures were highly reliant on slaves.
Saint Paul lived a generation after Jesus, when slavery was still very much a factor of life, even for followers of Jesus. In his writings Paul makes several references to slavery, which he does not denounce. He addresses both slaves and masters, urging them to treat each other with respect, but Saint Paul does not write as an abolitionist.[3] For example, Saint Paul’s letter to Philemon is focused on a fugitive slave, Onesimus. At some point in Paul’s imprisonment in Rome, Onesimus and Paul met. Onesimus became a follower of Jesus and helped Paul during in his imprisonment. Paul complies with the legal requirement to send Onesimus back to his master, Philemon. Paul writes of his love for Onesimus, who has become like a son, and Paul urges Philemon to treat Onesimus with forgiveness as a “dear brother” in Christ; however Paul does not explicitly ask Philemon to free his slave, Onesimus. Slavery was a constituent part of the culture for both Jesus and Paul.
Why this especially matters to us is because of our own nation’s appalling practice of slavery. You will know how scriptural references to slavery were used in our own country to normalize, condone, and bless the enslavement of African people. Even after the “emancipation” of slaves in 1867, the Jim Crow Laws ravaged the black population, and leaving the residual racism that has only grown over the years. Consider what is going on around us in our country just now in terms of racism, prejudice, and the rampant fear of the “minority” culture, those most vulnerable.
So back to Jesus’ very challenging parable about slavery and what his parable means for us today. Where do we find Jesus’ good news as we try to make meaning of this passage from the Gospel according to Luke? Here is what we know:
- This particular parable of Jesus about slavery appears only once in all the Gospels, the Gospel according to Luke, and that is curious. For one, Luke was a physician. The Gospel according to Luke consistently gives deference to the poor and the oppressed.[4] And it is only in the Gospel according to Luke where we read how Jesus began his public ministry as an emancipator. In a synagogue in Nazareth, Jesus read aloud from the prophecy of Isaiah about freedom: “The Spirit of the Lord . . . has sent me to proclaim release to the captives. . . . to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:16-21, with Jesus reading a scroll of Isaiah 61). Jesus claimed this for himself, he being our savior.
- Throughout the Gospels we read how Jesus associated with the poor, the hungry, the defiled, with children who were considered chattel, and with foreigners and outcasts. He would sit at table and eat alongside most anyone. In a master-slave relationship, Jesus would have been much more attuned to needs and dignity of the slave.
- Jesus himself “became a slave.”[5] That is Saint Paul’s very description of Jesus. Paul uses the very word “slave” (δοῦλος – doulos): a human slave). God the Son, through whom all things were created, became a human being, a slave, to seek us out and save us.[6]
- Saint Paul even calls himself a “slave” (a δοῦλος – doulos) for Jesus Christ.[7]
So what are we missing in this disturbing parable where Jesus heralds the master and puts the slave in their place, which is a very low place? What are we missing?
I don’t know. We sometimes have to struggle with the scriptures to understand what is being revealed. I don’t understand this parable. The only way I know to hear Jesus’ parable about the master and the slave is in the broader context of what we do know about Jesus: who he was, what he taught, how he gave of his life in love as a liberator for everyone. About that we can be absolutely clear. I am also clear about my personal relationship Jesus, who has set me free from the inside out. You may know the same. And I am clear about our vocation as followers of Jesus – as Jesus says – to follow him in “laying down our lives” for one another, which is so crucial during this very frightful time in which we are living.[8]
We continue to see the insidious residue of slavery and racism in our own country and beyond. Where do you see people whose race, or religion, or language or culture of origin, or education stigmatizes them, constrains them, discriminates against them, traumatizes them, incarcerates them? Here is a question for each of us: Who is within our own reach to carry the emancipation of Jesus’ love, and hope, and help? What is our own personal calling, now? In the 19th century, Frederick Douglass, the sometime slave who became the most brilliant orator and abolitionist, spoke some words for us today: “A slave is someone who sits down, and waits for someone to free them.”[9] Who is waiting for us? Who is waiting for you?
[1] Slaves are named in Jesus’ parables: Matthew 18:23-34; Matthew 24:45-51; Luke 16:1-13; Luke 17:7-10.
[2] The Greek word translated into English as “Gospel” is εὐ = good, well + ἀγγέλιον = message, announcement.
[3] Saint Paul writes of slaves, e.g., in Ephesians 6:5-9 and Colossians 3:22-25.
[4] Colossians 4:14; Acts 28:8-9.
[5] The same Greek word δοῦλος (doulos) “slave” is used in the New Testament both literally and metaphorically.
[6] Saint Paul describes Jesus with the very word for slave, doulos: “[God] emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, assuming human likeness. And being found in appearance as a human, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:7-8).
[7] Saint Paul writes, “For though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might gain all the more. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to gain Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I might gain those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not outside God’s law but am within Christ’s law) so that I might gain those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, so that I might gain the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I might become a partner in it” (1 Corinthians 9:19-23).
[8] Jesus calls us to “lay down our lives”: Matthew 16:24; Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23, 14:27. See also Romans 12:1.
[9] Frederick Douglass (1818-1985) escaped from slavery in Maryland in 1838. He became a very compelling social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. He is remembered as the most important leader in the 19th century for African-American civil rights.
Br. David Vryhof
Francis of Assisi
Today we remember Francis, the little poor man of Assisi. There is a lot about him that is worth remembering.
Saint Francis was fascinated by the poverty of Christ – his lowly birth in Bethlehem, his inauspicious upbringing in Nazareth, his wanderings through Galilee and Judea as an itinerant preacher and healer, his terrible suffering on the Cross. He sought to imitate that poverty in his own life, forsaking his family’s wealth to embrace a life of simplicity and suffering. Like Christ, he was drawn to the poor, the sick and the outcasts, and overcoming his initial repulsion, chose to live and work among them.
We remember today his boundless love for God and for God’s Church. He frequently wept at the sight of a crucifix and spent hours and even days in prayer. He was a charismatic preacher and many chose to follow him. Thousands joined the religious orders he founded: friars and nuns and lay people embraced his message and his values. He was a peacemaker, a reconciler, a lover of all.
On this final day of the Season of Creation, we remember especially his love for the whole of creation and for every living creature. In the created order he saw God’s love revealed for all to see, as the psalmist did when he wrote: “The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows God’s handiwork” (Psalm 19:1). Every creature was precious – every living thing offered to God its unique praise and thanksgiving by reason of its very existence. Every mountain and hill, every valley and river, the sun and moon and stars of the sky – they all spoke to him of the majesty, the power, the wisdom, the generosity and love of the Creator. He was in awe of it all and lived each day with a profound sense of wonder and gratitude. He called the sun his “brother” and the moon his “sister.” Every object or force of nature, every creature, was a gift in his eyes, and he recognized his deep connection with them all. How we need his witness today to remind us of the beauty and preciousness of the earth on which we live, and of the sacredness of every plant, every animal, and every person that calls it home. Francis modeled for us a kinship with all created things and vehemently challenged our notion of ourselves as owners with license to use its resources in whatever way we wish.
In 1979, Pope John Paul II declared Saint Francis of Assisi the patron saint of ecologists because of the unique bond with nature he exemplified. His unwavering commitment to simplicity and his renunciation of material wealth, coupled with his desire to live in harmony with every living thing, serve as a timeless example for those who strive for a more sustainable and harmonious relationship with the earth.
Today we remember the little man of Assisi and honor him. But we also pledge ourselves to follow his example: to live simply, to honor and love the earth and all its creatures, to forsake the pursuit of material wealth, to recognize our kinship with all that God has made.
Blessed Francis, pray for us.
Br. James Koester
Nehemiah 8:1-12
Both yesterday, and now today, we have heard short portions of the book Nehemiah. It’s not a part of scripture most of us are probably drawn to. In fact, we might even have a hard time finding it! Yet, even though it is, in a sense, hidden away, it bears some study, for like all scripture, while it was written within a certain context, it speaks to us who are in a very different context nearly three thousand years later.
Briefly, Nehemiah is the cup bearer to the Persian king, Artaxerxes, and finds himself in a place of deep “sadness of the heart” over the fate of “the place of his ancestors’ graves [which] lies waste, [with] its gates . . . destroyed by fire” (Nehemiah 2:2b, 3). Nehemiah is granted permission to return to Jerusalem where he successfully supervised the rebuilding of the city, in spite of tremendous opposition from near neighbors.
With the walls and temple restored, the priests and Levites purified, “and all Isreal settled in their towns,” we come to today’s reading when, with “all the people gathered together [they] told the scribe Ezra to bring the book of the law of Moses. . . . [and] he read from it” (Nehemiah 7:73; 8:1, 3).
In many ways, this is a throw away line of little significance to us, unless of course you understand its significance. The physical reconstruction of Jerusalem, while important, was only one aspect of the task Nehemiah had set himself. The spiritual renewal of God’s people was the point of Nehemiah’s mission, and that began, as it had centuries before on Mt. Sinai, with the reading of the Law of Moses to all the people. It was with the proclamation of the word of God that “the kingdom of God [comes] near” (Luke 10:9) and the people of God are made whole, and holy, once again.
Like Moses, Jesus’ mission was to usher in the reign of God. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” Jesus said in the synagogue at Nazareth, “because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18). It is with the proclamation of the word of God, by Moses, by Ezra, by the disciples, by Jesus, by us, that God’s people are made whole, and are made holy. Today we see that in the reading from Nehemiah, and we experience it as we gather around this altar to hear God’s word and receive holy gifts for holy people. We, like those assembled in Jerusalem nearly three thousand years ago, are those people who are made holy by hearing again the word of God proclaimed to all the people.
Br. Keith Nelson
Saint Michael and All Angels
Revelation 12:7-12
John 1:47-51
“We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.”
In the Nicene Creed, we affirm our faith and trust in God our Creator in these terms. As the earth all around us proceeds from a divine source, so too does heaven: the nearer presence of God to which we are invited for eternity. As the beings and things around us manifest to our senses constitute the “material expression of God’s love,” so too do those unseen beings of the same created order share a mysterious role in God’s unfolding plan for us, albeit one hidden from our natural senses.
This, in a nutshell, is the theological ground of our celebration today: The feast of St. Michael and All Angels. We prayed in today’s collect, “Grant that, as your holy angels always serve and worship you in heaven, so by your appointment may they help and defend us here on earth.” Angels – and angel simply means “messenger” – act as mediators between earth and heaven, the seen and the unseen. The angels point us to the perennial question: “How is God present in the world? And what is our response to that presence?”
The ministries of angels may seem too fanciful or abstract a place for the modern mind to begin, so we can turn first to the ministrations of everyday creatures.
Through this liturgical season of Creation, we have affirmed and celebrated God’s presence to us in the creatures God has made and called “very good”: other humans, but also the sun, moon, and stars; the sky above and waters below; the soil and plants, birds and four-footed beasts. God is present in the world to us through them.
Perhaps you have experienced moments in the presence of God’s non-human creatures when you felt quiet and still, wordlessly available to the simple goodness of that being in its otherness. A plant or a stone, a river or a bird, can indeed minister to us, and we to them. This is not simply human projection, but a glimpse of God’s original intention for creation: a relationship of harmonious companionship, in which our mutual presence lifts one another beyond complexity, difference, and enmity, closer to the heart of the Creator.
I feel this especially when I am in the presence of certain very old trees. An old oak tree, encountered individually in this way, hums with its own distinct life and personality. Yet it also acts powerfully, even selflessly, as an ambassador of its entire species. To encounter one Oak is to encounter all Oaks, all oak-kind. In the life of one is the life of all. This is corroborated not only by global folk wisdom but by modern tree science.
Perhaps angels are not all that different than oaks.
Though today we celebrate St. Michael, and by extension other named angels such as Gabriel, Raphel, and Uriel, the vast majority of scripture’s many angels are anonymous. In the life of one angel is the life of all angels: and this life, in its essence, is a life centered in the nearer presence of God. It is the glory of God, not themselves, that the angels are intent on communicating.
The author of the Letter to the Hebrews asks, “Are not all angels spirits in the divine service, sent to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation?”
Christian tradition has interpreted this to suggest that, as spirits, angels are invisible and immaterial creatures. Summarizing the tradition in the thirteenth century, St. Thomas Aquinas maintains that angels possess individual consciousness, but consciousness that is utterly unlike ours because it is not mediated or organized around a body. As “bodiless powers,” angels have no physical senses, no appetites, and presumably no gender. They communicate and receive communication from God and from one another beyond language, non-discursively, and instantaneously. And they act in response to such communication with an efficacy of will that far surpasses ours.
Tradition holds that they appear to us in forms legible to our senses, and remarkably like our own, because this is the most effective means to inspire awe, to establish relationship, and to draw our minds, hearts, and wills into harmonious alignment and obedience to the divine will.
Perhaps you can see where this is leading: all angels point us toward the mystery at the core of our faith, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus is the greatest messenger of God’s presence. The incarnation of Jesus Christ – God made human – has bridged the divide between heaven and earth in a way no angel could: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of a Father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” Jesus answers most fully the question of how God is present in the world: not simply like one of us, but as one of us; with a body like ours; joys like ours; pain and sorrow like ours; a death like ours; and a resurrection from the dead that has destroyed the power of death. In Jesus, we participate in that resurrection life even now. The first letter of Peter affirms: these are “things into which angels long to look!”
If visible creatures and invisible angels are our neighbors in God’s created order, the demons are, by their own choice and proclamation, our unseen enemies. As the loud voice in heaven proclaims in our reading from Revelation: “Rejoice then, you heavens, and those who dwell in them! But woe to the earth and the sea, for the devil has come down to you with great wrath, because he knows that his time is short!”
The great sin of the fallen angels is pride: not the rightful sense of satisfaction in a job well done, but that spiritual presumption that fails to recognize that no gift is inherently our own, but a gift of the Creator to be used for the good of all creation.
Here is how one early monastic writer, John Cassian, describes the origin of pride in the fall of Satan:
“We see that the angel who, on account of his great splendor and beauty, was called Lucifer was cast out of heaven for no other vice than this one. . . . This thought alone was his first downfall. Because of it he was abandoned by God, whom he did not believe that he needed. At once he lost his balance; he tottered, became fully aware of the frailty of his own nature, and lost the blessedness that he has enjoyed as a gift of God. . . . In his belief that he could attain to the glory of the Godhead by his own free will and effort, he lost even that which was his by the grace of the Creator.”
St. Michael the Archangel (art by Br. Keith Nelson)
I will end with an image. You have before you a small token of today’s feast, an image of the archangel Michael I created based on an early medieval prototype.
In the upper left of the image, we see the cross of Christ, held in the right hand of St. Michael. In and by the cross, every enemy of love and truth is conquered. The cross surmounts a spear. While the tail of Satan, depicted as the dragon of Revelation, raises its own barb at God’s angel, St. Michael fearlessly holds Satan in his proper place and at his proper distance. The spear tip is aimed at the mouth of the dragon, who is is “the deceiver of the world” through the lies he speaks. The truth of God’s salvation in Christ is the antidote to every lie. In his left hand, St. Michael holds a sphere that symbolizes the world, held safe in the hand of God its Creator.
The name Michael means “Who is like God?” The answer of course is: no one is like God. The humility before God at the heart of Michael’s name is the source of his victory.
While most images depict St. Michael and the dragon, Satan, as inverse opposites, there is one telling detail in this image that reveals their common origin: their wings. Unlike later images of Satan, with leathery bat-wings, his wings here are identical to Michael’s. This is a pointed reminder that Satan and his host are fallen angels. In this we find something profound: they are not evil by nature. They have become evil by their own choice to turn from God. Nothing created by God is inherently evil. Genesis declares, “And God saw everything that God had made, and indeed, it was very good.”
Like the angels, we are gathered here before the heavenly throne to pray on behalf of all and for all. Like St. Michael, we are called to hold the world’s evils at the proper distance, rising above it in thought, word, and deed, with God’s help. But with the angelic host we worship a God of unrelenting Love, extending prayers to the farthest depths, where we see only evil, hatred, even antichrist with his many masks. Persisting to the end, we “shall see greater things than these: heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”
Br. Lain Wilson
The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 21C)
Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15
1 Timothy 6:6-19
Luke 16:19-31
When I came to the Monastery three years ago, the big television show at the time was Succession. I loved it. So when I saw that the showrunner had a movie coming out last year, I jumped on it.
Mountainhead, like Succession, is a dark satire of the contemporary ultra-ultra-rich. It’s one of those movies in the genre of “horrible people doing horrible things in a beautiful setting.” Four tech bros gather for a weekend at a mountain retreat. Fellowship quickly descends into sniping at the relative size of each others’ fortunes and disingenuous shows of empathy for a world set on fire by forces at their literal fingertips.
It’s a hilarious and horrifying depiction of power, narcissism, and inhumanity, all reinforced by the distorting and destructive effects of technology. Even the most sympathetic character is just as reprehensible as the others and, at the film’s end, we as viewers frankly aren’t left with much hope either that these men are capable of change or growth, or that they—or the forces they represent—can be a source of healing for our own fragmented world.
Like the film, our parable this morning of the unnamed rich man and the poor Lazarus reveals a society of haves and have-nots: rich and poor, those inside the gates and those without, those with power and agency and those denied both.
Both film and parable pose a similar question: where can we find hope in a fragmented world?
The parable continues a theme we’ve explored over the last several weeks of how Luke foregrounds the materially poor in Jesus’ revolutionary preaching and proclamation of the kingdom. The gate, separating the feasting rich man from the starving Lazarus, acts as the unbridgeable gulf between these two men, echoing the “great chasm” in the afterlife that separates them. Death is a pivot point, reversing their fortunes.
Like our reprehensible billionaires, the rich man of the parable doesn’t change; he doesn’t grow. He attempts to behave in death as imperiously as he did in life, demanding first water to slake his thirst, then a messenger to warn his brothers about his fate. He is not a dynamic character capable of the conversion of heart that Jesus proclaims, or that Paul advocates in his letter to Timothy: “As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment” (1 Timothy 6:17). Jesus and Paul are speaking to living, breathing people, capable of change; their message is meant to effect a conversion of heart in its hearers, including us.
This, then, is the first source of hope in our world: that we are empowered, indeed, that we are commanded to grow and change, that we are called to a conversion of our own hearts so that we can be agents of reconciliation.
How are we to do that?
The parable is fundamentally about how the use and misuse of wealth. But wealth is just one of many power dynamics. So many others exist in our world, that we face or participate in day by day. So many seemingly impassable gates or unbridgeable chasms separate the haves and have nots, those with power and those without. We are empowered in so many ways, expected and unexpected. And we may suffer silently, unseen, disempowered, in so many ways, expected and unexpected.
We can be drawn, entirely unintentionally, in so many ways into complacency and acceptance that we deserve the blessings of our power and the suffering of our powerlessness.
Where do you have power in your own life, maybe even in ways you don’t expect?
How might you, completely unwittingly, be ignoring those who are powerless?
In our conversion of heart, Jesus and Paul call us to break out of our complacency and assumption of deservingness. They remind us that all we have—wealth or ability or power or position or whatever—is a gift, a gift given so we may use it for others, and for the glory of God. When we discern what we have been given, and know that it is not ours, we may begin to fling open our own gates. We may begin the work of constructing bridges.
To hope the conversion of our hearts can be a reconciling force in a broken world is to participate in God’s own kingdom, in God’s own future.
In discerning our power and inviting those denied power, in whatever form, to participate in it, we ourselves participate in God’s own “almighty power,” in the words of today’s Collect, chiefly declared in “showing mercy and pity.”[1]
And in laying the foundation of bridges between haves and have nots, we lay a good foundation for our own future, as Paul puts it, taking hold of “the life that really is life” (1 Timothy 6:19).
But even more than that, in our reconciling work in the world, we express our faith in our ultimate hope as Christians. In working to make the world more just, in even the smallest ways we can with the power entrusted to us, we express our hope, as the catechism puts it, “to live with confidence in newness and fullness of life, and to await the coming of Christ in glory, and the completion of God’s purpose for the world.”[2]
We will soon sing this hope in God’s purposes, in our offertory hymn: “O Master . . . make haste to heal these hearts of pain . . . till all the world shall learn thy love, and follow where thy feet have trod; till glorious from thy heaven above, shall come the city of our God.”[3]
Our first lesson this morning anticipates this hope in God’s redemptive plan for the world. The prophet Jeremiah hears the word of God commanding him, in the middle of the siege of Jerusalem, to redeem the land of his kinsman. The enemy is at the gate, and he is being told to invest in land that may soon pass beyond his control! Why should he throw his money away?
The answer is hope, hope founded upon trust in God: “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Take these deeds, both this sealed deed of purchase and this open deed, and put them in an earthenware jar, in order that they may last for a long time. For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land” (Jeremiah 32:14-15).
Whatever loss you may suffer now—however the world may change, whatever darkness you may encounter—you may dare to hope that houses and fields and vineyards will again be bought. You may dare to hope that God will put it to rights. You may dare to hope—we may dare to hope—because God is faithful.
Jeremiah is commanded—and empowered—to participate, through his actions, in God’s redemptive plan.
And so too are we commanded and empowered, through our own actions, through the use of the power given to us, to participate in the fulfilling of God’s purposes, so that we may be “partakers of [God’s] heavenly treasure.”[4]
We are called to be fundamentally a hopeful people. To be bearers and beacons of hope for those who may sit unseen and unheard outside our gates by using our power to throw open those gates. And to live out our own hope in the confession of—in the conviction of—God’s redemptive purpose for the whole world: “till all the world shall learn thy love, and follow where thy feet have trod; till glorious from thy heaven above, shall come the city of our God.”
Amen.
[1] The Book of Common Prayer (New York, 1979), 234.
[2] Book of Common Prayer, 861.
[3] “Where cross the crowded ways of life,” The Hymnal 1984, no. 609, stanzas 4-5. Words by Frank Mason North (1850-1935), alt.
[4] Book of Common Prayer, 234 (Collect for Proper 21C).
Br. Luke Ditewig
Thomas Traherne
Today we remember Thomas Traherne, a priest from the Welsh countryside known only after his death for his great quantity and quality of spiritual writing. He died at age 37 and his treasures kept being found and published.
Traherne saw and pointed to God in all creation. “Suppose a river or a drop of water, an apple or a sand, an ear of corn, or an herb; God knoweth infinite excellencies in it more than we. . . . O, what a treasure is every sand when truly understood! Who can love any thing that God hath made too much? [God’s] infinite goodness and wisdom and power and glory are in it.”[1]
As you pray, what wonder of creation catches your attention? Stop, stay, and gaze at it. Behold this treasure, like you, created good.
Traherne wrote about how God is revealed in scripture. Traherne wrote of the psalmist for Psalm 105 and 106, “celebrateth the ways of God in former ages with as much vehemency, zeal and pleasure as if they were new things, as if [the psalmist] were present with them seeing their beauty and tasting their delight that very moment.”[2]
As you pray, remember how God has saved, healed, protected, formed you. Recall God’s faithfulness. Retell your story. Recall our story as in Psalms 105 and 106. Feel again the zeal and pleasure of being found, the delight of seeing God act.
Traherne was a theologian in poetry and prose, expressing God is infinite and beyond as well as intimate in flesh as shown in this prayer:
“O eternal wisdom instruct me,
O eternal light illuminate me,
O eternal purity cleanse me,
O thou omnipresent power strengthen me,
O infinite holiness sanctify me,
Immutable love establish me,
Eternal mercy have mercy on me.”[3]
Blessed Thomas Traherne whom we remember today.
[1] Landscapes of Glory: Daily Readings with Thomas Traherne, introduced and edited A. M. Alchin (London, 1989), 41 (from Centuries of Meditations, 2.67).
[2] Ibid., 46 (from Centuries of Meditations, 3.92).
[3] Ibid., 60 (from Bodleian MS, The Church’s Yearbook, 112).
Br. Jack Crowley
Saint Matthew
Matthew 9:9-13
Follow me. Those were the two words Jesus said to Saint Matthew when they first met. Follow me. Saint Matthew heard those words, got up from his tax booth, and followed Jesus.
Now in most situations, if a stranger comes to your place of work and tells you to follow him, it’s probably not a good idea to follow him. Yet, we know Jesus had a way with people. Jesus knew the hearts of humanity, and Jesus knew how to read a room. So when Jesus saw Matthew sitting at his tax booth, Jesus only needed two words to convince Matthew to leave it all behind. Follow me.
I would love to know what was going through the mind of Matthew when he first saw Jesus. I always wonder what kind of day Matthew was having. I mean we’ve all had our bad days at work when we think to ourselves I gotta get out of here.
One time, I was flying on a plane and the man seated next to me started talking to me. I wasn’t wearing my habit but he still opened up his life to me and told me all about it. At one point in the conversation, he said that sometimes he felt like quitting his job and joining a monastery. He asked me if I ever had that feeling. I said yes.
There is also a chance that maybe it was a normal day when Matthew met Jesus. Maybe Matthew just sensed that there was something special about this guy. This down-to-earth stranger who spoke so plainly to him.
Clearly, Jesus and Matthew had a moment. Something happened. We’ve all been there, when you meet someone special and you just know in a way beyond words that something beyond yourself is going on. Something that feels both beneath the surface and heavenly. Who wouldn’t want to follow that feeling?
We all have our own story of how we came to follow Jesus. Trying to put that story into words is close to impossible. Instead, we put words into our story. We do our best to describe and analyze our connection with Jesus, but ultimately we know what’s in our hearts can never be fully verbalized. There are some things that will just be between us and God. Thank God for that.
Like Saint Matthew, we also all have our own little tax booths. Some situation that comes between us and Christ. Some barrier we stay seated behind and watch as our lives go by. We tell ourselves one day I will get up out of this. One day I will fully follow Christ with all my heart.
Every day of our lives, we must get up out of own tax booth. This is hard. It’s always tempting to stay seated in the status quo. Yet throughout scripture, the status quo rarely survives an encounter with Christ.
The good news is that Jesus knows all of this. He knows what we’ve been through, what we are going through, and where we’d rather be in our lives right now. He knows we’ve all missed the mark a few times. He knows sometimes we land in our own tax booths despite our best intentions.
The good news is that Jesus is ready to help us to move. Jesus is ready to help us change. Jesus is not only ready for us to follow him, Jesus wants us to follow him.
We celebrate Saint Matthew because he had the courage to follow Jesus. He left it all behind to follow Jesus. He had no idea what he was getting into, but that did not stop him.
We too must have the courage to keep following Jesus. We must heed the call of Jesus every day of our lives with our own lives. We must get comfortable with depending on Jesus, no matter how uncomfortable it makes us feel.
The alternative is a life built solely on self-reliance. A life stuck behind the tax booth of our own selves. That is an exhausting life. That is a life that gets old quickly.
To radically depend on Jesus is intimidating, yet so many who have gone before us did so. The lives of saints were often built on leaps of faith. I don’t know of any saints who lived a quiet, comfortable life. I don’t know of any saints who lived a life free of challenges.
Saint Matthew followed Jesus all the way to martyrdom. He gave up his life to that call. We all do the same in our own way. Follow that call. Amen.
Br. David Vryhof
The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 20C)
Amos 8:4-7
Luke 16:1-13
In 2021, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists released the “Pandora Papers,” a massive leak of almost 12 million documents that revealed how the ultra-rich and powerful used offshore accounts and shell companies to secretly preserve vast fortunes, to avoid paying taxes, and to hide assets potentially acquired through corrupt means, including bribery, money laundering, human rights abuses, and other wrongdoings. Over 330 politicians and public officials were implicated, including current and former world leaders, as well as celebrities, billionaires and criminals. The report also revealed that several U.S. states, such as South Dakota, Florida and Texas, had enacted laws that promoted secrecy, attracting wealthy overseas clients to hide wealth from their home countries and thereby avoid taxes.
So here’s a question: What would Jesus have said about this?
A surface reading of today’s gospel might leave us wondering if Jesus would praise these shrewd money-managers for their clever maneuverings, as the rich man in the parable praises his dishonest manager “because he had acted shrewdly” to guarantee his own financial security (Luke 16:8).
But we know Jesus, and we know that Jesus’ intent in telling this parable could not have been to condone dishonest or deceitful behavior. The scriptures, both Old and New Testaments, clearly condemn those who take advantage of others to line their own pockets with wealth. Consider our reading from Amos this morning, where the prophet writes,
“Hear this, you who trample on the needy and bring to ruin the poor of the land . . . [you who say,] ‘We will make the ephah smaller and the shekel heavier and practice deceit with false balances, buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals and selling the sweepings of the wheat.’ The Lord has sworn. . . . Surely, I will never forget any of their deeds.” (Amos 8:4-6)
Jesus knew the law and the prophets and knew how frequently they speak against those who exploit and oppress the most vulnerable members of society – especially widows, orphans and “strangers in the land.” He himself is critical of the rich and powerful – even religious leaders – who act with deceit and prey upon the poor. He repeatedly warns his listeners of the dangers of loving money and of building their lives upon wealth. There can be no doubt that he would condemn those whose greed prompts them to use offshore accounts and shell companies to hide their money, to avoid paying taxes, or to cover up their dishonest dealings.
If that is the case, what then is the meaning of this parable, which seems on the surface to approve of devious and self-serving behavior?
There are a number of clues that help us get at the real meaning of this parable. The first clue is that Jesus is telling this parable to his disciples (Luke 16:1); that is, to those who have already chosen to follow him, which suggests that this parable is about more than what’s on the surface. Jesus often used analogies or metaphors to illustrate deeper truths. This is not a parable about business ethics; it aims to teach us something else.
The dishonest manager knows he is about to lose his job and needs to find a way to secure his future. He takes action in his present situation with a future goal in mind. However dishonestly he acts, he uses the resources available to him in the present moment with an eye to the future; his goal is to be financially secure after he has been dismissed as manager.
Jesus suggests that the “children of this age” – that is, those who belong to this world and whose lives are shaped by its values – have a clearer grasp of this principle than do the “children of light.” They understand that what we do now has a direct influence on what we hope for in the future. We can use the riches we now possess – time, talent, possessions, money – to build up riches for the future.
Of course, Jesus is speaking of true riches – that is, of the things that make us rich towards God. He is teaching his disciples to weigh their current decisions with the future in mind.
In doing so, he is underscoring his earlier teaching about building up “treasure in heaven.” In chapter 12, Jesus challenges his followers with these words:
“Sell your possessions and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Luke 12:33-34)
Jesus and his followers have their eyes set on the “kingdom of God.” Jesus is saying, “The children of light (1 Thessalonians 5:4-5) can learn something valuable from the children of this world; namely, to use possessions so as to gain, not lose, their future.” Jesus is well aware of the dangers that riches pose, but he is claiming here that it is possible to manage goods in ways appropriate to life in the kingdom of God.
What do you think that might look like? What would it mean for you to use the earthly treasures you have been given – money, possessions, talents and gifts – with an eye to the future . . . not just your future, but God’s future? How could you use what you have been given to build up the kingdom of God and thus lay up for yourself treasure in heaven?
He says this to his disciples, who are not wealthy. Even the little that they have can become heavenly treasure if they direct it towards the building of God’s kingdom.
“Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much,” Jesus says, “and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches?” (Luke 16:10-11)
Most of us will never possess great power or vast riches, yet each of us has some power and some riches. Like the disciples, even the little we have can be used to extend God’s reign on earth. “Whoever is faithful in little is faithful also in much.”
Act faithfully in the present, act wisely in the present, using what has been given you to build for the future. “Lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven” and become rich towards God. “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
Br. Keith Nelson
Luke 8:4-15
Some truths – about ourselves, about those we love, about the world around us, even truths about God, who is the heart of all Truth – can be very hard to receive.
Sometimes this is because our present perception is based on lesser or partial truths. It can be threatening, destabilizing, or at the very least inconvenient to accept a larger, more complete encounter with truth.
On a global and political level, we might consider the human causes of climate change. In this, we face (or flee) at least two uncomfortable truths: the severity of its consequences and the grief we experience at our complicity.
Everywhere Jesus went, the kind of Truth he offered provoked a response in others.
For some, Jesus offered a challenging but exhilarating invitation into a freedom they had never imagined was possible. Even for those who would welcome it, this grace could be shattering, as when Peter responds to Jesus: “Lord, go away from me, for I am a sinful man.”
For others, the words, the actions, even the simple presence of Jesus felt intolerable – as if a potent allergen had been introduced into their bodies. The force of this presence was so threatening, so destabilizing, so inconvenient that they could only respond by retreating into a willed refusal to see.
Their hearts were like ground where no seed could grow.
The parable of the sower, in both Luke and Matthew’s version, contains a challenging interchange between Jesus and his inner circle. Luke reads: Jesus said, “To you it has been given to know the secrets (or mysteries) of the kingdom of God; but to others I speak in parables, so that, ‘looking they may not perceive, and listening they may not understand.’” These last words are a quotation from the prophet Isaiah, whose mission was to provoke from the people of Israel this allergic response to God’s Truth.
One scripture scholar writes that the parable form “arrests the hearer by its vividness or strangeness, leaving the mind in sufficient doubt about its precise application to tease it into active thought.” Parables introduce uncomfortable questions. Meditating on a parable invites the disciple, in every age, to put on the mind of the master: the mind of Christ. By gradual and partial glimpses, we come to behold more of the Truth, until “we see him as he is.” To that end, the parable is like an irritant: the grain of sand inside the oyster that eventually produces a pearl. We become like him by learning to see the world as he sees it.
But a parable could also diffuse or absorb the unalloyed shock of Truth in the midst of those who, frankly, couldn’t handle it, or simply weren’t ready to change their minds and enter the kingdom, there in their midst, in the person of Jesus.
Jesus always respected the freedom of others to choose what to do next: whether to turn toward Truth or to flee from it. As the Way, the Truth, and the Life, he always intends the discomfort or strangeness he brings to our lives for the purpose of our transformation.
In his company, seed is scattered, with astounding generosity, in every direction, in every condition, on every kind of ground.
Its growth depends on how receptive or resistant we are to Truth.
Br. Lain Wilson
Dag Hammarskjöld
Matthew 16:24-27
“In our era, the road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action.”[1]
So wrote the Swedish economist and diplomat Dag Hammarskjöld, whom we commemorate today. His tenure as the second secretary-general of the United Nations was cut tragically short amid the complex Congo Crisis, when he perished in a plane crash in 1961 on his way to a ceasefire negotiation.
Hammarskjöld’s public life was an active one; there’s no doubt about that. And his journal, Markings, reveals a correspondingly rich spiritual life, drawing deeply on the Christian mystical tradition.
One theme that arises clearly is Hammarskjöld’s own understanding of his call to Christian discipleship, to the Way of the Cross: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24).[2]
In a lengthy meditation on Jesus’ time with his disciples before his crucifixion, Hammarskjöld imagines Jesus preparing to set out on his own Way: “A young man, adamant in his commitment, who walks the road of possibility to the end without self-pity or demand for sympathy, fulfilling the destiny he has chosen—even sacrificing affection and fellowship when the others are unready to follow him—into a new fellowship.”[3]
Seven years later, as secretary-general, he sounds many of the same notes in describing some of the sacrifices his own path entailed: “One of the great sacrifices is exile from the environment by which you have been molded. . . . one simply has to learn that part of the price of this effort is isolation, compensated by the feeling of a deeper and wider solidarity with the many people, known and unknown, who have fully accepted the same demands.”[4] An entry from later that same year is starker: “Didst Thou give me this inescapable loneliness so that it would be easier for me to give Thee all?”[5]
What do the life and witness of Dag Hammarskjöld offer to us today? I think two things.
First, that the Way of the Cross is a way of active commitment, and commitment to action. We all have God-given gifts, God-given power, God-given agency. We are all in the world, with all its suffering and all its need, and we are all called to be coworkers with God in this world.
What are your gifts? What is your power? How does God call you to be God’s agent?
And second, this active commitment, our participation in Jesus’ Way of the Cross, inevitably entails sacrifice. Hammarskjöld is blunt about his own experience: “I realized that . . . the price for committing one’s life would be reproach, and that the only elevation possible to man lies in the depths of humiliation.”[6]
The way of discipleship, the Way of the Cross, entails sacrifice, but we are assured that we do not walk that Way bereft and alone.
“Have mercy upon us,” Hammarskjöld wrote in his famous poem-prayer two months before his death.
“Have mercy
Upon our efforts,
That we
Before Thee,
In love and in faith,
Righteousness and humility,
May follow Thee,
With self-denial, steadfastness, and courage,
And meet Thee
In the silence.
Give us
A pure heart
That we may see Thee,
A humble heart
That we may hear Thee,
A heart of love
That we may serve Thee,
A heart of faith
That we may live Thee,
Thou
Whom I do not know
But Whose I am.
Thou
Whom I do not comprehend
But Who hast dedicated me
To my fate.
Thou—”[7]
Amen.
[1] D. Hammarskjöld, Markings, trans. L. Sjöberg and W. H. Auden (New York, 1964), 122 (entry dated 1955).
[2] R. Lipsey, Hammarskjöld: A Life (Ann Arbor, MI, 2016), 84-89.
[3] Hammarskjöld, Markings, 69 (dated 1951).
[4] Quoted in Lipsey, Hammarskjöld, 334 (letter to the Swedish novelist Pär Lagerkvist, dated January 31, 1958).
[5] Hammarskjöld, Markings, 166 (dated July 29, 1958).
[6] Hammarskjöld, Markings, 205 (dated Whitsunday 1961).
[7] Ibid., 214-15 (dated July 19, 1961).
Br. Luke Ditewig
James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a
Mark 9:30-37
What were you arguing about? Jesus asked. Perhaps best scout for new outreach and lodging sites. Expert at crowd control. Food and goods purveyor. Scripture knowledge. Who is Jesus’ favorite. The greatest disciple.
Playful jostling can turn to comparing power and privilege, background, connection, and status. We wrestle and worry over: what am I worth? Am I enough? What do I have? What if Jesus asked you and me: What were you so anxious about?
Jesus said: “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Servants were last, and the servant of all was the servant at the bottom with the least. This upends us seeking power, access, security, and more than we need.
Jesus “took a little child and put it among them, and taking it in his arms, and [Jesus] said to them ‘Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.’” Like servants, children had no status or power. Let go of ego. Don’t cling to gifts, abilities, or background.
Jesus came to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance. Jesus is the Good Physician for the sick.[i]Jesus-followers have troubles because they are human and needy. James wrote to an early Christian community struggling how to follow Jesus in daily life: Who is wise among you? Show it by how you live.
Imagine what prompted James to write this. Perhaps people thought they were wise, who knew a lot, had ideas, good, no great, ideas, and touted their great ideas, and listed their achievements. “Show wisdom by how you live,” James writes. Envy and selfish ambition lead to trouble. “But wisdom from above”—from God—“is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.”
Who have you seen live this way? Acting peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy. Might they also acknowledge their own need, ask for help, and be vulnerable? Perhaps elders, a parental figure or teacher. How about a child? Peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, dependent, asking for help, vulnerable.
Children and youth surprise with an honest openness. We host youth groups here and tell them about our life. Middle schoolers are the most fun. They ask questions older youth, collegians, and adults shy away from. Children are less inhibited. Elsewhere in the gospels, Jesus tells adults to be like children. Jesus prays thanks that God gives revelation to infants, not to those who think they know it all.
Children have a kind of unencumbered wisdom. They ask for help or cry and flail for help. They then slump receptive to love and care given. Children are also present to the moment, engaged with what right here. Adults have the benefits of impulse control, self-regulation, and self-reflection. To live well we choose to be present, not just think but play and create. We are saved by grace, a gift, not earned or deserved. Children model the receptivity of being saved while adults are born again for a childlike perspective receptive to grace.[ii]
Competition is helpful for creating and improving. Trying to be great and greatest, we often abuse power. We hurt and kill one another both humans and non-human neighbors. “Where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind.” Our fragile mother earth bears the wounds of our ambition as well as the wonder of our Creator.
Welcome the little, last, and least, what we tend to overlook, not see, not stop: people and every creature, every created thing. Take a cue from children. Stop to crouch down on the ground. Attend with all your senses. Those of you in-person were invited to take a small thing as you arrived, a cardamom pod or star anise. Please look at it. Those of you online, gaze any small object near you or look at a plant or leaf. Perhaps hold it in your hand.
With childlike curiosity and wonder, gaze at this. Notice shape, texture, smell, maybe even taste with your tongue. Greet any memories this evokes. Give thanks.
Dear children of God, welcome those who are little and last among all God has made. Doing so, we welcome God who loves us all.
[i] Mark 2:17
[ii] Brian Edgar (2017) The God Who Plays. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, p20.
Commemorating Dag Hammarskjöld (1905-1961)
Br. Curtis Almquist
Micah 6:6-8
“With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? … He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
We commemorate today Dag Hammarskjöld, the much beloved Swedish diplomat and Secretary General of the United Nations. In the church calendar he is called “Servant of Peace,” having been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1961. Hammarskjöld led the United Nations in negotiating the release of U.S. soldiers captured by the Chinese in the Korean War; in addressing tensions in the Middle East, particularly on behalf of Palestinians; in disarming the conflict around the custody of the Suez Canal; in establishing the first U.N. Observation Group in Lebanon; and in negotiating the horrific wars in Southeast Asia which began looming large in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Much of his work he called “preventive diplomacy.” He died in September1961 in a plane crash in central Africa while negotiating a peace accord in the warring Congo.
Hammarskjöld was such a powerful witness to the Prophecy of Micah: “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.” In his journal entitled “Markings,” Hammarskjöld describes his entries as “negotiations with myself… and with God.” He writes, “At some moment I did answer Yes to [God] and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal.”
Saying Yes to God is foundational in our stewarding the life God has given to us. It is possible to live life “kicking against the goads” (to paraphrase Saint Paul): resisting or resenting the hand we have been dealt in life. In saying Yes to God, I am not suggesting our being passive in life, letting life roll over us, choosing to be a “victim” in ways over which we actually have the power and dignity to make changes. I am saying that our life is a gift from God. God is God; God operates in our life. God invites us to co-operate in stewarding the life to which we have been entrusted, to the opportunities afforded us, and to the limitations which surround us. To say Yes to life… which is hugely challenging and, I would say, equally necessary… and quite possible if we are to live a whole life, the whole life that God has given us.
Blessed Dag Hammarskjöld, whom we remember today.
Br. Luke Ditewig
Psalm 139
Today is our monthly requiem in which we remember the dead, the dying, and our mortality.
Psalm 139 says: “Lord, you have searched me out and known me.” Jesus knows everything about us, both what we don’t mind sharing and what we try to hide. Jesus knows our sitting down and rising up, our thoughts, our ways. Jesus knows all the places we’ve gone, all the journeys we’ve taken and where we’ve stopped to rest. God knows all.
But we try to hide. We often shy away from God by denying death, pretending God can’t see or that we don’t need to speak. We like to think “the darkness will cover [us],” but as the psalmist says: “darkness is not dark to you [O God]; the night is as bright as the day; darkness and light to you are both alike.”
God sees all and invites us to risk praying it. What is dark and terrifying for you today? Perhaps it’s the grief of death, someone or something you have lost. Perhaps it’s the grief of dying, someone or something changing, being taken away. Perhaps it’s the grief of mortality, knowing what you hold today will have to be let go. Remember, too, our non-human neighbors who have died and are dying, for those endangered and hurting by our human greed.
Nothing is too heavy or difficult for Jesus. Risk expressing, praying your grief. Nothing is out of God’s sight or reach, certainly not you! Jesus is here with us. Let yourself feel and be seen. Let yourself be shaken and trust yourself to be held. Pray the hard with words such as writing freeform or your writing own psalm. Pray with silence such as coloring, collage, or gazing as light and shadows move. Pray with movement such as literally shaking and clenching, then releasing to stillness. Lean against a wall or lie down feeling your yourself supported and held.
As you pray in the dark, facing death, see the Light. Look to Jesus, the Sun of Righteousness, who has, who is and who will keep rising in triumph, raising us and all of creation to life.
Br. David Vryhof
Micah 5:2-5a
Rom. 8:28-30
Matt. 1:18-25
As some of you know, I was raised in the Reformed tradition of the Church. Reformed churches are among those that emerged out of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century. Central to our particular denomination was a statement of faith written in 1563 called the Heidelberg Catechism. It was composed of a series of questions and answers conveniently organized into 52 sections – called “Lord’s Days.” Each Sunday – that is, each Lord’s Day – the pastor would preach on one of these sections, thus explaining the whole of the faith over the course of a year.
There was one question and answer, the first in the Catechism, that most of us knew by heart. It asked:
“What is my only comfort in life and in death?”
(Think for a moment. How would you answer that question?)
The Catechism’s answer began with these words:
“That I am not my own, but belong with body and soul, both in life and in death, to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.”
Our “only comfort in life and in death,” the Catechism taught us, was that we belonged to Christ. And what a comfort that was – and is – for us who believe.
We are followers of Jesus. We belong to Christ, body and soul. This is our comfort and hope. We have been created by God, we have been rescued from the bondage of sin and death by God, we have been given new life in Christ, we are sustained and protected by God, we are told not to fear – because we belong to God.
This is the theme behind St Paul’s words to the Romans in today’s lesson. He reassures and encourages these early believers – many of whom were facing hardship and persecution – with these words: “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to [God’s] purposes.” (Rom 8:28).
God has called us according to God’s own purposes, says Paul. And why has God called us? Listen carefully. We are called, Paul says, in order that we may be “conformed to the image of his Son.” (Rom. 8:27)
This phrase is the one that most captured my attention in today’s readings. We are called by God; drawn into the family of God; chosen, called, justified and glorified for this purpose: that we may be conformed to the image of his Son, Jesus Christ.
What does it mean to be conformed to the image of Jesus? It means we are to be like him, to act like him, to speak like him, to love like him. It means that we are to be “Christ-like” in everything we do and say.
What is it about Jesus that we should imitate? So much could be said here but let me offer a few suggestions that I believe have direct implications for us today, in our personal lives and in our communities, and in this country, especially as we approach one of the most important national elections in our history.
Jesus taught us that the chief commandment was this: to love God with all our soul, heart, mind and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.
He taught us that our neighbor is not only the person who lives next door to us but everyone we meet, including strangers and foreigners and those we might consider to be our enemies. His story of the Good Samaritan illustrates the kind of compassion we are to have for our neighbors, even when they are different from us. The Samaritan, considered an ‘outsider’ by Jews, was the hero in that story, caring for one who would have considered him an enemy.
Jesus taught us to respect the dignity of all, and to recognize that every human being is created in the image of God and is entitled to respect. Jesus consistently showed compassion and respect to those who were poor or oppressed or outcasts. He associated with the marginalized and treated them with dignity. For those who imitate him, there is no place for maintaining one group’s superiority over another. Nor is there room for denying the human dignity of anyone based on the color of their skin, their sexual orientation or gender status, or their religious faith or lack of it.
In Christ, Paul tells us, “there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal. 3:28)
The “kingdom” that Jesus came to bring – the Kingdom of God – was unlike any of the world’s kingdoms. It was an “upside down” kingdom, in which the first were last and the last first, in which the greatest was the servant of all. It was completely contradictory to the world’s values, which emphasize wealth, power and privilege. Its hallmark was humble service.
Jesus called us to be “peacemakers,” reconcilers – not instigators of conflict and division, mistrust and hatred.
Are these our values as well? Are we being “conformed to the image of Christ,” day by day and year by year? Do those whom we look up to and choose to follow live by these principles? If our purpose is to become more Christ-like, how will that be reflected in how we live, how we relate to others, and how we vote?
We belong to God. God has called us for this purpose, to be conformed to the image of his Son. This is not only our comfort and our hope, but also our purpose and our life’s direction. We live for God.
Mark 7:24-37
Ephphatha. Jesus looked up, breathed out, and said: Be opened.
And the man was opened: brought back from a closed-off place where no words could get in and no meaning could get out. Let through to a wide-open place of many possibilities, where moments before there had been few, and life was merely survival.
How wide can one human heart be opened to the life of God?
This gradual opening of the heart in an ever-expanding trajectory marks the entire arc of Jesus’ life, words, and actions among us. He stood at the center of an ever-widening and expanding circle of relationships. His gospel shows the way toward an ever-widening and expanding circle of participation in the life of the kingdom: the astonishing reality that we are called to direct participation in the inmost life of God.
This is the heart of Jesus.
But this was not – and is not – effortless. It required the deliberate crossing and breaking of boundaries – boundaries that sought to arrest that unfolding momentum at every turn. He met voices that said:
“We determine who has the right to participate in God’s favor.”
“God’s love extends this far; to this shape; to this arrangement – but no farther.”
Jesus was continually saying: No. Stretch even farther.
Put on “the mind of Christ,” as St. Paul urges. This mind has powered the momentum pushing the boundaries of participation outward in every successive age of the church. Stretch farther. Imagine more. Topple yet another wall so the words can get in and the meaning can get out, up, over and through, so that everything that has breath may praise the Creator.
Be opened. Until, in God’s time, the far frontier is found: the consummation of all things, when “Christ will be all in all.” All means all.
This is the largeness – the wide-open horizon of the heart – that comes with humility.
In this Season of Creation, we are called to contemplate the humility of the creature before the Creator. This is a humility with proportions both cosmic and microscopic; it is vast as our expanding universe and it is intimately particular as, say, the community of microbes in your own digestive tract, without whom you would be less of you.
Humility is the spiritual gift of seeing ourselves as we are. It is neither grandiosity nor an inferiority complex. A humble person knows her own wingspan, and is unafraid to unfurl those wings and fly. And a humble person knows how and when to fold his wings – to make space for the flight of another.
True growth is impossible without humility, if only because it takes making mistakes to grow. We cannot see or acknowledge those mistakes to others, and to God, if we are wedded to a vision of ourselves as perfect beings. It is often in admitting our shortcomings and making apologies that we begin to acquire character and form lasting relationships.
The wide-open heart of Jesus was marked by this earthbound humility.
In today’s gospel reading from Mark we encounter a pair of stories that are actually the second half of a series. This is important context for understanding how humility spurs Jesus to break boundaries – including his own – to widen participation in the life of God.
Earlier in Mark Jesus has had encounters with two other figures: Jairus, a male Jewish leader with a 12-year-old daughter in need of healing; and an unnamed Jewish woman with an issue of blood (for twelve years) that makes her ritually unclean. Jesus heals both of them.
Today’s diptych of stories is the sequel, as well as its foil. In the region of Tyre, a Gentile city, an unnamed woman who is not Jewish but a Greek-speaking pagan asks Jesus to heal her daughter. Then Jesus travels to the Decapolis – ten city-states with an overwhelming Gentile majority, and all Greco-Roman in cultural origin – and he heals an unnamed deaf man we can reasonably infer is also a Gentile.
Anyone brought into healing contact with Jesus participated in the life of God which Jesus called the kingdom. We cannot infer any chronological development in Jesus’ attitude toward offering this larger life to those outside the Jewish covenant. But in the literary structure of Mark, the personal attributes of these characters follow a clear pattern, beginning with a Jewish, male, person of honor; then an unclean, Jewish woman, lower in status by her gender; then two Gentiles, lower still in status and unclean by default in the ancient Jewish worldview; the first a woman, and the second a man impaired in hearing and in speech. This cast of characters is arranged in a careful sequence, from most to least likely to participate in the fullness of God’s covenant love.
Jesus’ interaction with the Syrophonecian woman offers a further window into the creaturely hierarchy in the background of all this boundary crossing.
He replies to her request: “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”
She answers: “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”
Jesus concludes the dialogue: “For saying that, you may go – the demon has left your daughter.”
Their interchange evokes a movement downward in space: we imagine a parent bending down to feed a seated child at table; and the messy hands of a child scattering bits of bread even further, to the dirt floor and the waiting mouths of hungry dogs. Children had no social status whatsoever and were utterly dependent on caregivers, though were of course cherished and protected. Dogs were viewed in one of two ways: valued in the ancient Near East as work animals for hunting, guarding, or herding, dogs could rank in the lowest tier of a household, so to speak along with its other domesticated animals. But in ancient Israel, as in many countries today, scavenging, semi-wild dogs also roamed streets or congregated in packs on the outskirts of villages. Dogs were not ritually impure as a species, but touching a corpse transmitted impurity, and scavenging dogs routinely did this. So, the association between dogs and impurity is ambiguous and contextual. Which kind of dog, and in what situation?
I think that ambiguity is crucial in this interchange between Jesus and this woman. Jesus’ reply conjures up a semi-wild scavenger. But the woman’s reply is a pointed reminder that there are dogs who live alongside humans, right there under the table. Are they scavengers? Technically, but of the most benign variety.
The woman insists, in so many words: Though to you I may rank the lowest, I am a member of the household, and my hunger entitles me to my share of the food, however meager.
Taken in light of the entire New Testament, I would even say that the woman’s comment anticipates the words of St. Paul, when he writes in 1 Corinthians, “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’ On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable.” Her reply also anticipates Galatians 3: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”
While it is challenging to imagine a very human, perhaps impatient, culturally conditioned, Jewish male Jesus calling this woman a scavenger, I think his final words to her are meant to underscore Jesus’ great humility. His consent to her request and the extension of healing to her daughter is also a way of saying to her: You are right. I was wrong – I didn’t see the whole picture, and now I see a little more of it. My heart is open to stretching farther.
There are creatures toward whom we, as humans, give only the scattered crumbs of our regard now and again. And there are creatures whom we relegate to the outskirts of our attention, barely conscious that they, too, are held in being moment by moment by God’s creative Word. Yet is it not humbling to think that humans comprise only 0.01% of Earth’s total biomass, while for instance, plants comprise 82.4%? Bacteria comprise 12.8%, trillions of them forming beneficial microbial communities inside each of us, barely separable from our own flesh.
There is a wide-open place of many possibilities to which we can be opened, and to which we can open others, in the household of God’s creatures. We can begin here, in this liturgy, by the ways we lift other-than-human creatures up to God in prayer, in active remembrance that our humanity subsists in relationship to their creaturehood in its astonishing complexity, diversity, and belovedness.
In a few moments, when we celebrate Holy Communion, we will use for the first time a Eucharistic Prayer composed by our Brother Lucas and authorized by our Bishop Alan, especially for this Season of Creation. I invite you to bring your prayerful attention to its expansive language. These are words that seek to shift our human consciousness; to let in the myriad beings beyond these walls who pray without ceasing; and to learn from their unique participation in the feast of Life.
As we renew our human vocation to be servants and priests of creation, may our hearts be opened to the humility of Jesus: true God, true human, and true creature, until the day when Christ is all in all.
Amen.
Br. Curtis Almquist
Psalm 37:1-12
In the portion of Psalm 37 appointed for today’s liturgy, one verb appears several times: “fret.” “Do not fret yourself.” Fretting, which is jealous, angry teeth grinding when we see evil doers, the unscrupulous, the insidiously clever people getting ahead. In just a few verses, the psalmist repeats this mantra three times: “Do not fret yourself.” “Do not fret yourself.” “Refrain from anger, leave rage alone; do not fret yourself; it leads only to evil.”[i] Which is easier said than done when we see in the news every day how good things happen to bad people.
We need good peripheral vision. On the one hand, we need to keep in touch with history and see, in the long view, how the playing field eventually levels. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”[ii] Quite. Remembering how justice will eventually thunder forth can help us claim hope. In the fullness of time, things will come round right, if not in this lifetime, then in the life to come.
With our peripheral vision, we also need to live in the present and to look ahead, claiming our own agency for God’s will to be done on earth as it shall be in heaven. What is our vocation, what is our calling to be and to do amidst somuch that is wrong? To quote again Martin Luther King, Jr.: “We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”[iii]
The psalmist gives us an elixir for living fully alive in a troubled world:
- “Do not fret yourself; it leads only to evil.” The risk, of course, is our becoming the very thing we hate and envy. Detach. “Do not fret yourself.” And then,
- Live in hope. In the fullness of time, things will come round right. And then,
- Seize the moment. Claim our own agency to make for right in what is within our own reach and power, especially on behalf of the powerless and voiceless in God’s creation: people, birds, animals, the sky and sea, mountains and plains. To make for right, what is within our own power.
But do not fret.
[i] Psalm 37:1, 8, 9.
[ii] Martin Luther King, Jr., originally quoted in a 1958 article printed in “The Gospel Messenger” periodical.
[iii] Martin Luther King, Jr., from his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” an open letter written on April 16, 1963.
Br. James Koester,
Superior
Proper 17 B
There is a lot going on today. It’s the Sunday of the Labour Day weekend, a holiday marking the social, economic and political achievements of the labour movement. (As an aside, in the Nineteenth Century, our own Father Field was a great proponent of the move to implement a 5 ½ day work week for child labourers. He created a half-day fund, and each Saturday would take as many boys as he could find, sometimes in the range of over 200, out into the country for an afternoon of games and a picnic, bringing them back to the city in the evening tired, well fed, and happy.) Today is also the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, sometimes known as the Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity. Over this is laid the first Sunday in the Season of Creation, when many parishes, including us, focus their attention on the beauty and wonder of creation, and our need to protect its integrity. Closer to home, I stand before you in the last moments as my time as Superior. Later this morning we will install our brother Keith as our new Superior.
All around us, different things are happening, and it’s hard to know where to look, where to focus. Some things are ending, while others are just beginning. Still others are in mid-course. What is true for the monastery and the church, is no doubt true in your own lives. It is certainly true for the world. So much seems to be changing all at the same time, with some things coming to an end, or even dying, while others are just beginning, and coming to life. Still others are somewhere in between.
But isn’t that what renewal looks like? Renewal is not things simply changing. For renewal to happen, some things must come to an end, while others take their first steps and move into place. The Prayer Book puts it this way,
O God of unchangeable power and eternal light: Look favorably on your whole Church, that wonderful and sacred mystery; by the effectual working of your providence, carry out in tranquillity the plan of salvation; let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord….[1]
This is very much a season when things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new.
This image of ending and beginning, of dying and rising, of the old being made new, doesn’t simply come to us from the imagination of a liturgical scholar working away at their desk. This image, indeed, this process, is deeply imprinted in the human soul. We know the Collect to be true, not because it’s in the Prayer Book, but because we see that process, in our own lives; and in the lives of others around us. We know it to be true, not because we see the coming and going of Superiors. We know it to be true because we see that process in creation itself.
Father Congreve of our Society put it this way:
The stillness of the evening clouds expresses for me the patience of the creature waiting for God: “My soul waiteth still upon God.”[2] Standing there, watching the night fall, as the day dies, listening to the crashing of the waves upon the shore, and everything, he writes seems to be absorbed in the solemnity of divine mysteries, everything seems awake to the infinite, and to breathe the awfulness of eternity… Here God visibly touches nature… We rise and stand upon our feet to hear what He is saying to us, as our hearts burn….[3]**
Who among us has not watched the sky, golden with the praises of a sunset, or blackened by a threatening storm, and not thought silently, it is the Lord? Who has not been saddened at the first sign of autumn, and whose heart has not rejoiced when the first robin of spring is spotted. It is the Lord.
As we watch creation die and renew itself day by day, century by century, eon by eon, humanity has seen in it a revelation of the Divine, who makes all things new.[4] We see this same revelation of the Divine, as creation is renewed today, upon the altar.
Here on this altar, as on altars around the world, the creatures of bread and wine are taken, blessed, broken, and given. Again, as Father Congreve says, Christ the High Priest takes these creatures into His hands and offers them to the Eternal Father; they become the Lord’s Body and Blood, and so they are raised from the sphere of the perishing world, and consecrated to become powers of eternal life, uniting earth and Heaven. These are creatures which have shared our curse (cursed be the ground for thy sake), [now] lifted in the hands of our Lord to an immeasurable dignity.[5] In this way, created matter, this time bread and wine, becomes a revelation of the Divine, and a means and sign of God’s grace and love. By them, and in them, and through them, we hear the voice of God speaking to us and saying, ‘Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.[6]
There is a lot going on today, but in reality only one thing is happening, in creation, in our world, in this nation, here at the monastery, and in each of our lives, and that is that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things [including you, and me, our community, this nation, and all creation] are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, … Jesus Christ our Lord….
And that, my friends, is a cause of hope, for just as creation is being perfected on this altar today, so that it will be for us a revelation of God, so too are you, and I, and we Brothers being renewed and perfected to be a revelation of the Divine who says to all of us, arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.
[1] TEC, Book of Common Prayer, 1979, page 515
[2] Congreve SSJE, George, The Spiritual Order, The Sorrow of Nature, Longmans, Green, and Co., London, 1906, page 53
[3] Ibid, page 54
[4] Revelation 21:5
[5] Congreve SSJE, George, Christian Progress, The Fellowship of Man with all Created Things in Sorrow and in Hope, Longmans, Green, and Co., London, 1910, page 263
[6] Song of Songs 2: 10 – 13
Br. Luke Ditewig
Aidan of Lindisfarne
1 Corinthians 9:16-23
In the seventh century, Aidan, a monk on Iona in Scotland, was sent to establish a monastery on Lindisfarne in northern England. Like Columba who led much missionary work out from Iona, Aidan led great evangelism from Lindisfarne.
Aiden sent monks out, two by two, into the neighboring villages and countryside. He gave two noteworthy instructions: First, travel on foot, not horseback. Second, do not carry a knife or any sort of weapon for defense. Travel then was very dangerous, so this was remarkable.
Aiden instructed ways to live like Jesus not simply speak about Jesus. Walking instead of riding, they went like their neighbors, as equals instead of with additional power and privilege. Without weapons to fight, they resisted violence with vulnerability. Aiden and his monks embodied the gospel, and they were well received. Offered humbly, good news spread quickly.
Paul wrote: “What then is my reward? Just this: that in my proclamation I may make the gospel free of charge, so as not to make full use of my rights in the gospel.” He speaks of being like Jews and other groups in order “win them” for Christ. Paul reached out to people on their own terms, in their own way, to point to Jesus.
Have you experienced people like Aiden and Paul? Who became like you in order to point you to Jesus? Who has welcomed you, curious, honoring your culture, background, and experience? Who has been humble and vulnerable? Give thanks for such people.
How we live is just as important if not more than what we say. Consider your life. How are you engaging others with humility and vulnerability? How might you be distanced with power and protection? What is the invitation for you? May we point to Jesus by how we live. Blessed Aidan whom we remember today.
The Beheading of John the Baptist
Mark 6:17-29
If you were to stand in the south gallery of what used to be the Church of Holy Wisdom, or Hagia Sophia, in Istanbul, you would be standing in the footsteps of emperors and empresses. And in the footsteps of these powerful rulers, you would also be able to see the Deesis mosaic, a monumental icon of the enthroned Jesus, flanked by his mother Mary and John the Baptist, who turn toward him in deesis, that is, in prayer or supplication.[1]
The church’s calendar in this season forms a kind of Deesis as well, with the feasts of the births and deaths of Mary and John braided together through the summer, flanking and pointing toward the Transfiguration. As the eyes of the disciples were transfigured to see Jesus’s true nature, so are the very human lives of mother and forerunner themselves transfigured by their relationship to Jesus.
John’s death by beheading is a striking one. But not only because of the lurid details of a world of luxury and nasty family politics that seems so very far away from the gospel. It’s striking because in the agents of John’s execution—Herodias and her daughter—we have two figures who never, as far as we are aware, have any direct encounter with Jesus—perhaps the only two figures in the gospels who do not.
And this lack of direct encounter is telling, because they provide us the gospel writer’s view of what untransfigured power looks like. Selfish and arbitrary. Relationships built not on love or respect but on deceit and gamesmanship. And, in the figure of Herod, weakness cultivated by his worst excesses. This is far from the power proclaimed by Jesus and pointed to by John and Mary: the power of God’s kingdom.
John called Herod and his family out for their transgression of Jewish law. He used his power as a prophet to stand up and speak truth to those in authority and, like so many other prophets, to be killed for it. Mary proclaimed God’s inversion of the world’s power: “He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly” (Lk 1:52). She who at first glance seems to be the person with the least power, herself bore God to the world in the lowliest of circumstances. A call to repentance, the uplifting of the lowly: this is power, transfigured.
We may not be emperors or empresses. We may not be powerful as the world measures power. But each of us has power. It may be your resources; your voice, advice, or counsel; your work and actions; your physical presence; or, especially for us Christians, your deesis, your prayer and supplication. What is your power?
Recognizing and accepting your power is a first step, a necessary first step because, unlike Herodias and her daughter, each of us has, in our own way, encountered the risen Lord, and in that encounter each of us has been changed, and our power transfigured. How is God using your power? How are you yourself an icon pointing to God’s kingdom?
Amen.
[1] Images of this mosaic are available at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Deesis_mosaic_(Hagia_Sophia).
Br. James Koester,
Superior
Wisdom 9: 1-6
I’ll begin this morning, not so much by putting you out of your misery, but rather to satisfy your curiosity. I’ll begin by saying there is nothing, yet, to announce. The Chapter will meet later this morning to elect a new Superior to succeed me and that of course will initiate a host of things. We anticipate an announcement going out sometime this afternoon. If we have your email address, you should receive something from us later today. If we don’t have your email address, the announcement will be posted on our web site. If you live locally, it’s possible that if you come to the midday Office, there will be a sign on the church door. Having said that, there will now perhaps be a rush on the chapel at 12:15 today!
In all of this we continue to ask for your prayers for us during this significant time of change and renewal.
The election of a new Superior marks the beginning of a new chapter in our life as a community. It’s the beginning of a new day. It’s not that things ever remain static. Things never remain the same. When we as individuals, or communities, or nations stop growing and changing, we die. Even then, in the process of decomposition, things change. Just go for a walk in the woods at Emery House, and they will show you that. Things change. People change. Monastic communities change. Nations change.
We joke in the community that when a Brother who has been living at Emery House returns here to the Monastery to live, by the time he has reached the end of Emery Lane, everything back at Emery House has changed, and it is no longer the place he left, even just 5 minutes before. The same is true today. By Evening Prayer today, and certainly by Evening Prayer on 1 September, after the installation of the new Superior, things will be different, and that’s exciting, and a little scary. But that’s life. When we stop changing, we die. The only unchanging reality is God’s eternal, and abiding love for creation, which of course includes each one of us. O give thanks to the Lord, for [God] is good; for [God’s] steadfast love endures forever.[1] This is the reality of our faith. It’s not some pious hokum, but the experience of countless women and men of faith down through the ages. Even as people, and communities, and nations have looked into what might appear to be a dark future, as people of faith, we have been able to say, the Lord is my shepherd; I shall not be in want.[2]
The reality is that all of us stand on the threshold of new beginnings. The Brothers are not the only ones facing a new future. You who are our friends, stand alongside us in this doorway. More significantly, all of us stand at the threshold of something new, as we look toward the presidential election in just over two months. Come Evening Prayer today, come 6 November, things will be different, and yet we say [fear] the Lord, you that are his saints; for those who fear him lack nothing.[3]
Knowing this, today is not a day for us, and perhaps especially for me, to look back. Rather today is a day to look forward to the future, not with dread, but with hope, knowing the promise of God is to meet us, in whatever that future holds. As the Risen Lord said to Mary Magdelene that first Easter Day, go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.[4]
For the past several months, as I have contemplated our future, this promise of the Risen Lord to meet us in the Galilee of our future, has held a significant place in my prayer. I have imagined myself walking into my future, our future, and hearing God’s promise to Joshua spoken to me, spoken to us: I hereby command you: Be strong and courageous; do not be frightened or dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.’[5]
But how are we to know that God goes before us? How are we to see Jesus as we approach the shore of the Galilee of our future? How are we to make sense of it all, especially as things are changing around us? How can we live in hope, as we look into the unknown, especially if it appears uncertain, and bleak? Isn’t this just wishful thinking?
Listen again to our first lesson:
Wisdom has built her house…She has slaughtered her animals, she has mixed her wine, she has…set her table. She has sent out her servant-girls, she calls… ‘You that are simple, turn in here! …Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight.’ [6]
This house, Wisdom’s house, is the house of God where the psalmist tells us, we will dwell forever.[7]This house, Wisdom’s house, is the many roomed mansion Jesus has prepared for us.[8] This house, Wisdom’s house, is the place, not only of our future, but of our present, for we already abide in that place. We have turned into Wisdom’s house. We have sat at her table. We have feasted on her bread and wine. For by feasting on Wisdom’s bread and wine, we have eaten and drunk Christ’s Body and Blood, and doing so we abide in him and he in us.[9]
We stand on the threshold of a new world, where things will be different. We stand at that threshold full of hope, expecting to see Jesus who has gone there before us. We stand fortified by Wisdom’s bread and wine, and Christ’s Body and Blood. We stand abiding in Christ, who has promised to be with us, until the end of the ages.[10]
Yes, things will be different tomorrow. They will be different for all of us. We will have a new Superior. Soon, there will be a new, or a not so new, President. No matter what the future holds for any of us, we can face it with confidence, not because we are wishful thinkers, but because we are Christians full of hope. That hope which is ours tells us that the God who promises to be with us always, will never leave or abandon us. That hope, which is the mark of a Christian, is nourished here at Wisdom’s table in Christ’s Body and Blood. So, turn in here, and feast on God’s gift of hope, as we cross the threshold into the future, where the Risen Lord promises to meet us. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.
[1] 1 Chronicles 16: 34
[2] Psalm 23: 1
[3] Psalm 34: 9
[4] Matthew 28: 10
[5] Joshua 1: 9
[6] Wisdom 9: 1 – 6
[7] Psalm 23: 6b
[8] John 14: 1ff
[9] John 6: 56
[10] Matthew 28: 8
In my first-grade art class, I remember molding and painting a very rough purplish-gray dinosaur. I was very proud of that dinosaur. It’s still on display a shelf in my childhood bathroom.
I’d like to invite you to remember your own experience of creating something as a child—smudging paint on a piece of paper, building a sandcastle, drawing your family with crayons, or something else. How did it feel?
And what did you do with your creation? Did you keep it to yourself? Or did you run to your friends or parents and show them what you had made, or give it to them as a gift? What did you feel in this sharing or giving?
We as Christians and monks talk about humility a lot. We talk about it as a central virtue, as an antidote to pride, as a way of relating to others as fellow children of God. We talk of humble status, of humble actions, of building or cultivating habits of humility. And all the while, so many of the expectations we face and the performance that is required of us pushes back against that ideal, requiring us to compete against others, to distinguish ourselves. It can be a demoralizing juggling act.
Now, recall your childhood creation. In these memories of creating and sharing and giving, in feelings of joy and contentment and, yes, even pride, I think we can capture not just something of what it means to be a child but also what it feels like to be free in our acts of creation and generosity. What it feels like to be free of the learned limits of expectation and performance.
And, perhaps, what it feels like to be humble like a child. The humility of a child is not about carefully cultivated habits or low status. Rather, a child’s humility is about how it feels to revel in messy finger painting, to dig through drawers for that one perfect but forgotten toy, to go from fighting to playing with a classmate in the playground in the blink of an eye.
A child’s humility is a sharing in God’s own freedom. How, in other words, it feels to bear God’s image in the world—rejoicing in acts of creation, valuing the lost and forgotten, and forgiving again and again and again—unrestricted by expectations or performance or anything other than a desire simply to be God’s image.
In being called to be humble like a child, we are being called to shed so much of what we have learned to feel is valued in the world, and what we have found to be sources of constraint and limit. We are called to recover a childlike freedom, and, in doing so, to discover that we might find there our true being as children of God. And to be proud of that. As proud, even, as we were of our own purplish-gray dinosaurs.
Amen.
John 7:16-18
When we hear “south of France” today, we may think of sunny beaches or fields of lavender. A nice place to go on vacation. But in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries the association was with heresy. Followers of a heterodox form of Christianity, whom history has come to know as Cathars, were prevalent throughout the region. Combatting their beliefs posed a particular challenge for a Church mired in its own problems. Actual combat followed the murder of a papal official in 1208: the Albigensian Crusade was a brutal war to cleanse the region of heresy.
This was the time and region where Dominic, whom we remember today, discovered his own vocation. He had been in the church his entire life, but it was during a trip through the region, before the outbreak of war, that he found his own gifts of preaching and teaching, and his personal asceticism meeting the Church’s need to engage, teach, and convert those caught up in heterodox belief. It is perhaps no accident that in his own life he modeled the very characteristics that were most highly prized by so-called Cathars in the region: he didn’t eat meat, he refrained throughout his life from sexual activity, and he voluntarily accepted simple, even rough way of life.
Twelve years after Dominic’s death, in 1233, nine members of the Order of Preachers, or Dominicans, which he had founded, provided testimony for his canonization process. All focus on his character, and almost all provide some version of the following: “He was always speaking of God or to God, and I never heard any idle or harmful word from him.”[1] This sounds stereotypical—of course a saint would do that—but I think there’s something else here. Dominic was aware of his own gifts for preaching and teaching. He was aware from whom his preaching and teaching came: “My teaching is not mine but his who sent me,” Jesus says—and we can imagine Dominic quoting this verse (Jn 7:16). He was aware that this was a gift of the Spirit, not to be abused but used for God’s glory, both in extraordinary conversions as well as in ordinary, unremarkable interactions with his brethren.
So too for us. If our spiritual life is about the way we live into our gifts of the Spirit, then it is just as much about how those gifts make up who we are, in the ordinary, the everyday, as in what we do with them in the rare or extraordinary.
What gifts has the Spirit given you? Teaching, leadership, companionship, consolation? We each have gifts for ministry—but these are equally gifts of character: equally what we do and how we are. And accepting both, living into both, is how we can live a spiritual—Spirit-filled, Spirit-gifted—life.
Amen.
[1] S. Tugwell OP, ed., Early Dominicans: Selected Writings (New York, 1982), 66-85, passim.
Feast of the Transfiguration
Exodus 34:29-35
2 Peter 1:13-21
Luke 9:28-36
At its heart, the Feast of the Transfiguration is about the revelation of who God is in and through Jesus Christ – and in and through his followers as we are transfigured by this experiential knowledge.
At first, this innermost identity is like a “shared secret” among Jesus’ early followers: it participates in the elusive quality of light, something that cannot be directly named. But after the resurrection, the light of Christ is made manifest in word and deed by those baptized into Christ’s body.
In this way, the transfiguration of Christ is about who we are at our secret core; and about who we claim to be when we tell our full story in broad daylight. On this side of Easter, the Transfiguration is always a foretaste of Resurrection glory; silence dissolves into proclamation, with or without words.
There are two scriptural keys in the New Testament that illuminate our participation in Christ’s deepest identity as God’s Beloved Son.
The first is in the twelfth chapter of Romans, where St. Paul writes: “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.”
The second is St. Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, where he comments directly on the passage from Exodus we just heard: “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another, for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.”
What is most significant in these passages is that the word “transformed” in English is metaphorphe in Greek, the word translated as “transfigured” in the gospel accounts of this miraculous event in the life of Jesus. In Romans and 2 Corinthians, Paul applies this verb to a gradual but dramatic change that happens in us through the grace of Jesus Christ.
What is the nature of this change?
Commenting on the gospel transfiguration accounts, Orthodox scholar Andreas Andreapoulos writes: “Jesus did not change who he was; he was God before, during, and after his transfiguration, as he was during his entire ministry, fully divine and fully human. What changed was the perceptive capability of the apostles. Each of them was given the grace to see and hear differently, and because of that they were able to see Jesus in a different way” (14, This Is My Beloved Son).
This fundamental shift in our perception changes everything.
Our life of faithful practice as we follow the Way yields transfiguring effects. To use just come of the gospels’ other images for this process, good trees bear good fruit; good soil yields abundant wheat; branches that abide in the vine bear much fruit. Like light from a lamp placed on a lampstand, which gives light to all in the house, the good works of those following the Way give glory to their Father in heaven.
No facet of our identity is left untouched by this gradual transfiguration, our progress in holiness in cooperation with God’s grace. Some facets of who we are become relativized; they are no less characteristic of our individuality, but they are no longer ultimate in the way that our baptismal identity is ultimate. Our belonging to Christ is the one identity at the center of all the others we might truthfully claim. “When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone.”
The best stories have the living energy of a “shared secret.” When someone tells you such a story from their heart, there is little room left for agreement or disagreement – there is only another heart’s truth to honor, and the respect and admiration that usually arise in the wake of such vulnerability and risk.
When you tell the story of who you are, how often do you point to Jesus at its center?
Our public conversation around Christian identity in this country has become both two-dimensional and deeply polarizing. There are many words, but the living story that animates what we call the Gospel seems tragically absent in its most visible forms.
What if more of us told the personal story of our faith as part of our public identity – in thoughtful, disarming, and three-dimensional ways?
What would such a story reveal about the storyteller we follow: transfigured on the mountain, hanging from the cross, and risen in glory?
Br. Curtis Almquist
Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15
Psalm 78:23-29
John 6:24-35
Back when I was seven years old I had this wonderful opportunity to attend a symphony orchestra concert for my very first time. I was with my second-grade classmates from school, and we paraded into a vast orchestra hall and settled ourselves into seats that were way too big for any of us. By luck of the draw, I got to sit next to Mrs. Sievers, our teacher. At some point during the concert she leaned over to me and whispered in my ear, “Do you hear it?” Wide eyed, I whispered, “What?!” And she said, “Do you hear the oboe?” I shook my head. I didn’t know what an oboe was. And then, with her hand gently moving in the air, she began to trace the music line being played by a solo oboe. And I heard it for the first time. “Yes!” I whispered. I remember spying out the oboe section, locating the amazing sound coming from this solo oboist amidst a great company of musicians. I have no memory what music the orchestra was playing that day; however I will never forget my discovery: the mesmerizing, alluring sound of the oboe. What had initially been an orchestral company of sound was now identified and personified in this solo oboist, and that made all the difference.
So it is with manna. In our readings from the Book of Exodus and the Psalms, we hear of this food that came down from heaven during the forty years the Israelites wandered in the desert. Manna was described as a flaky bread, as fine as hoarfrost. We read it was like coriander seed, and the taste was like wafers made with honey or cakes baked with oil.[i] The popular etymology for the name “manna” comes from the Hebrew, “What is it?” Manna: “What is it?”: the question the Israelites are reported to have asked one another when they first found manna blanketing the ground.[ii]
Jesus now puts a name to manna. He says, “I am the bread that comes down from heaven.” “I am the bread of life.”[iii] From the earliest days following Christ’s resurrection, the church has put a name to this “bread from heaven,” and the name is “Jesus”: Jesus’ real presence in this “bread from heaven,” the Sacrament of Holy Communion, the body and blood of Christ such as we serve from this altar today.
But there is more. We do indeed receive this bread from heaven here at the altar as we extend our needy hands: Christ’s real presence in bread and wine, his body and his blood. But there is more, yet another way the church has recognized Jesus’ real presence. When we are baptized, we are “baptized into Christ.” That is the language of Saint Paul.[iv] We are “baptized into Christ.” Saint Paul describes his own experience: “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.”[v] We, individually, become this living sacrament, the Body of Christ.[vi] Today from the altar we will repeat the paradoxical words of Saint Augustine from the fourth century: “Behold what you are.” What are you? You are the Body of Christ. You embody Christ. “Behold what you are.” “May we become what we receive.” [vii] What do we receive? The Body of Christ. We become what we receive. We embody Christ.
This is certainly a mystery, not because it is implausible, but because it is so inexplicable. You might find it inaccessible. It is one thing to receive Christ in Holy Communion; it is another thing to embody Christ. If this seems inaccessible, there is reason. And it’s probably because you are less than perfect. Because you learned somewhere, perhaps as a child, that to be loved you always had to get it right. Yet you are less than perfect. There may be something about you that is broken, or inadequate, or prone to failure, perhaps hypocritical or unacceptable. On a bad day you are your own worst enemy. It may seem an impossible stretch to embrace a belief that we – that you – embody Christ, who loves you. You might even say to yourself, “If you only knew…” But Christ does know.
Over the years I have had some of my own versions of this kind of secret self-rejection, sometimes self-loathing. But this is where the bad news turns into what Jesus calls the good news. Where we are powerless to save ourselves, we meet Christ our savior yanking us out of our own hell. Christ does not come to us in an exalted way because we are perfect and fabulous. It’s exactly the opposite. In becoming human, Christ has taken upon himself our wretchedness and our misery, our poverty, and our sins….[viii] “Christ became poor for our sake.”[ix] That’s Saint Paul’s description: “Christ became poor for our sake.” Christ identifies with our own poverty, what we most resent or reject in ourselves.
Jesus becomes “the true bread of heaven.” In our baptism, Christ embodies us. Embodies you. If any part of you resists the truth of Christ’s embodying you, his making a loving home within you, here’s two things that might help:
- Say a prayer to Jesus. A one-word prayer to Jesus. Here is the prayer: “Okay.” Just pray “Okay.” Forget about your feelings about your worthiness. Just pray “Okay,” and take Jesus at his word that he loves you – not who you could be or may think you should be, but who you are. Jesus wants to move in. Pray a one-word prayer to Jesus: “Okay.” Keep praying, “Okay.” You’ll catch on.
- If you not ready to pray “Okay,” this prayer of acceptance, Jesus will wait. Jesus is not in a rush. But he is relentless in his love… for you: Jesus, sometimes called “the hound of heaven.”[x] Jesus has all the time in the world: this world and the world to come to love you.
Behold what you are.
May we become what we receive.
[i] Exodus 16:14, 15, 31.
[ii] Numbers 11:7-8.
[iii] John 6:22-59.
[iv] Quoting Saint Paul in Galatians 3:27.
[v] Galatians 2:20.
[vi] Saint Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 12:27: “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.”
[vii] Saint Augustine (354-430) in his Sermon 57: “On the Holy Eucharist.” Augustine was a Christian theologian, philosopher, and Bishop of Hippo, modern-day Algiers, in what was then Roman North Africa.
[viii] Inspired by Thomas Merton, OCSO (1915-1968) in his The Monastic Journey.
[ix] 2 Corinthians 8:9.
[x] “The Hound of Heaven,” a poem by Francis Thompson (1859-1907).
Matthew 13:54-58
Today’s Gospel lesson isn’t about Jesus.
Rather, it’s not about the Jesus we have come to know, to accompany in his ministry with the disciples. Instead, it’s about another Jesus, one of memory, of presumption, and of misplaced expectation.
In the Rule of our Society, we understand as part of the practice of silence the honoring of “the mystery present in the hearts of our brothers and sisters, strangers and enemies,” a letting go of “curiosity, presumption, and condemnation which pretends to penetrate the mystery of their hearts.”[1]
We can see in our Gospel reading today what this looks like in practice. It is significant, I think, that the only references to Jesus’s “hidden years”—those years of growth and formation between infancy and baptism—in Matthew’s gospel (and Mark’s) is this brief encounter between Jesus and those from his hometown. It’s a relic of a silent period, a family photograph held in the hands of these people, who glance uncomprehendingly between it and the living Jesus standing before them.
Is it any surprise that Jesus “did not do many deeds of power there” (Mt 13:58)? All those who have come to Jesus for healing have done so with the hope and expectation that he will be able to effect their transformation, that he will indeed have power to save them. These individuals from Jesus’s hometown instead hold this still family photograph in their hands, between them and the living Jesus. They expect them to match, and they’re surprised when they don’t. But their mistake is taking as real the image in the photograph.
Each of us has likely experienced this in our own lives. Reunions or weddings or funerals: all bring together memories and presumptions and misplaced expectations about who we are and who we were. My twentieth high school reunion is this year—I am acutely aware not only of the images, the still photographs, of people from my past that I carry with me, but also about those of me that they carry with them. Neither are real.
And each of us similarly carries an image of Jesus. Something from our childhood formation, something from our fear or anger, something that we hold out in front of us and that blocks us from an immediate, fresh encounter with the living Lord. Something that keeps us from being surprised by joy in that fresh encounter.
What is that image for you?
Just as in silence we honor the mystery at the heart of our brothers and sisters, so too in prayer we honor the mystery at the heart of God, letting go of that image, lowering the still photograph and allowing God to reveal Godself to us in new and surprising and, perhaps, unsettling ways. Know that this is the living God, speaking in our hearts, powerful to save.
Amen.
[1] The Rule of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist (Lanham, MD, 1997), 54.
Br. Luke Ditewig
Ephesians 4:14-21
John 6:1-21
When I was a young child, my parents began a sabbath tradition adapting Jewish practice with special prayers and bread at the Saturday evening meal. It is a way to make Sunday special first at home before church the next day.
This includes Dad blessing me and any visiting children, which soon expanded to my parents’ chosen children. Saturday evening is special, all the more when I am home visiting. Dad stands behind, puts his hands on shoulders, and says something simple like: “May you be strengthened. May you know and rest in God’s deep love for you. May you have peace and joy.”
In his letter to the church at Ephesus, Paul gives a blessing. At its heart are these four lines: May you be strengthened in your inner being. May Christ dwell in your hearts. May you have power to comprehend [the expanse] so that may be filled with all the fullness of God. There are other great evocative images: “as you are being rooted and grounded in love” and “know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.”
Imagine a grandparent or favorite teacher or good friend or partner saying: May you be strong remembering whose you are. May you stand firm knowing you belong. May you rest in Jesus who holds the universe and loves you dearly. May you see there is more than you can imagine.
To bless is to pray. It can be to praise as in “Blessed be God” and “I will bless your name.” Blessing is also to pray for others. Intercession, prayer for others, is not to inform God of a need—this person is sick—but rather as we Brothers speak of in our Rule of Life, to join in loving solidarity with the one we pray for which God uses “for healing and transformation.”[i] One we both love is sick. God is not dependent on us. God invites our loving action including blessing.
Similarly, blessing is not asking to make God present but evident. Blessings invite a gift of prayer, awareness of God. The Celtic understanding of a “thin place” is where heaven and earth seem close. For many, monasteries are such places. It is not that God is more present here. “Instead,” Jan Richardson wrote, “a thin place enables us to open our eyes and hearts to the presence of God that goes with us always. A blessing” Richardson continues “invites us to this same opening that we might recognize and receive the help of the One who created us in love … .”[ii]
Just as blessing invites recognizing God, it is not about us. Blessing is about who God is for us. May you be strengthened in your inner being. May Christ dwell in your hearts. May you have power to comprehend. So that may be filled with all the fullness of God.
With loving solidarity, we pray for people in need. We have compassion and share suffering tenderly. That is not what Paul does here. Rather, like much of this letter, Paul describes who God is for and with us. God empowers, lives in, sticks it out with, steadies, and nourishes. God is expansive, abundant, all-encompassing, and overflowing. “… the Father from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. “… comprehend … what is the breadth and length and height and depth.” “… know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
There’s more. “Now to God who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus forever and ever. Amen.”
Paul knows the people to whom he writes and their needs. Paul prays blessing, awareness of God’s abundant, powerful love. Powerful like Jesus walking on water in storm. Abundant like providing food for thousands from a few loaves and fish. Not just a little but expansive and overflowing. Thousands had as much as they wanted. There’s more. After all were satisfied, they filled twelve baskets with more food.
How do you come today? With what pain and loss, stress, or grief, joy and wonder? How do we come as a community of families, neighbors, citizens? God knows, feels, and sees you.
This blessing for the church is still for us and for you.
“… may [you] be strengthened in your inner being with power through the Spirit … may Christ dwell in your hearts through faith as you are being rooted and grounded in love.” May “you have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Now to God who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen.”
[i] SSJE Rule, Chapter 24: The Mystery of Intercession
[ii] Jan Richardson (2016) The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief. Orlando, FL: Wanton Gospeller Press, pxv.
Br. Geoffrey Tristram
Jeremiah 23:1-6
Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
In the year 1919, the poet W B Yeats wrote a poem called ‘The Second Coming’. There is a famous line in that poem which has resonated through the decades. He wrote, ‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.’ The first world war had just ended, and it felt like chaos had descended on the world, with the breakdown of order, of stability, and of the traditional sources of authority. ‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.’ For many, those words well describe our world and our nation today: The recent shocking attempt at an assassination, a deeply polarized and divided nation, a world filled with violence in the Ukraine, Gaza, and frightening weather patterns signaling a planet in crisis. ‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.’
Yet these same words could also have been used to describe the land where Jesus walked. Not only was their land occupied by Romans, but worse, there as a breakdown of moral guidance and spiritual guidance from those who were meant to be their leaders, their ‘shepherds’. In our first reading today from the Book of Jeremiah, the prophet excoriates the religious leaders of Judah, ‘woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture. You have driven them away and not cared for them.’ But Jeremiah then goes on to give to the people a prophesy of hope. ‘The day is coming, says the Lord, when I will raise up a shepherd who will shepherd my people. I will raise up for David a righteous branch and he shall reign as king and execute righteousness in the land.’ That day finally came, when Jesus was born.
And our Gospel reading today is one of the most marvelous descriptions of Jesus the good shepherd in action! It is only a very short gospel reading, but it is so visual, almost cinematic. The disciples have returned from a mission, and they are excitedly telling Jesus all about it. But they are tired and hungry, so Jesus says to them, let’s get in the boat and sail across the lake to a quiet place where we can rest and recover. But as they crossed the lake they are spotted. ‘Jesus is coming!’ and the word spread like wildfire. And before long, crowds and crowds of people, hundreds and thousands of them, were running, hurrying, racing on foot from the towns and villages to meet the boat on the other side. I imagine those tired and hungry disciples must have groaned, ‘Oh no.’ Just when we thought we could get some peace and quiet…’ Perhaps they even asked Jesus to send them away. But Jesus, we read, ‘had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.’ But in Jesus, the crowds recognized the Good Shepherd promised by the prophet Jeremiah, the one who will exercise justice and righteousness in the land. So the crowds kept coming, and they gathered around Jesus, and Mark tells us that ‘he began tot each them many things.’ For although they were likely tired and hungry, what they hungered for above all was a word of life, a word of hope, a word of salvation for their hungry souls.
In Mark’s account, we get this incredible description of all these people scattered all over the countryside, running from every direction, racing to be with Jesus. If you have ever seen Pasolini’s ‘Gospel according to Matthew’, there is a wonderful scene of hundreds of people running, jumping over rocks, like scattered sheep, racing to be with Jesus. It must have been quite chaotic! But after Jesus had finished teaching them something changed. The disciples, whose tummies were probably rumbling by now, reminded Jesus that the crowds were hungry. So, Jesus takes five loaves and two fish and feeds them all, five thousand of them. But actually, Jesus had already fed their souls with his words of teaching – and now they are changed. This disorderly and scattered crowd of people running here and there, like ‘sheep without a shepherd’, are transformed. And Mark describes the scene very carefully and in precise language. Everything is now calm and still. They are sitting ‘on the green grass in groups of hundreds and of fifties.’ Out of chaos Jesus had brought calm and order. With their souls fed, and now their bodies as well, they are sitting in safety and security and in peace, in ‘shalom’. For they had found their shepherd. Or rather, their shepherd had found them.
As I was praying with this Gospel reading, I imagined being there with these crowds and with Jesus. I felt within myself that deep peace which those people must have felt, sitting with Jesus their shepherd. I believe that Jesus wants to give that same peace, that same rest, to each one of us. In a world which seems sometimes to be falling apart, with a center which cannot hold, Jesus the Good Shepherd comes to us and says, ‘Come to me all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.’ In our monastic life, in this community, the most precious part of the day happens each morning, immediately after Morning Prayer. Each brother goes into his cell for an hour of prayer and meditation. We simply sit there with Jesus our Good Shepherd, and allow him to still and feed our souls, and prepare us for the day ahead. I do commend this practice to all of you. It doesn’t have to be an hour – ten minutes, or as long as you can manage. Find a place where you can be quiet and still, and then maybe have a picture or an icon to help center you; perhaps a picture of the Good Shepherd, and allow him to gently restore your soul. Most recently I have been praying with that most beautiful of psalms, psalm 23, which we have just sung together: ‘The Lord is my shepherd: I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, and leads me beside still waters. He revives my soul, and guides me along right pathways for his Name’s sake.’ You might find it inviting to do the same. Read the verses slowly, and imagine that you are there, beside the lake, sitting on the green grass, with the one who knows you and loves you.
For we have found our shepherd. Or perhaps rather, he has found us! Every day he comes looking for us, to save us, and when our earthly days are over, to bring us safely home. ‘For surely your goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.’
Br. Curtis Almquist
Isaiah 7:1-9
Our reading from the Prophecy of Isaiah is an 8th century BC version of what we are seeing every day in our own newspapers and online: a world, including our own homeland, teeming with conflict. For Isaiah, the players were King Pekah and King Remaliah of Israel; King Rezim of Aram-Syria; and Kings Tabeel, then Uziah, then Ahaz, and then Jotham the successive Kings of Judah.[i] For the life of me, I cannot keep it all straight – neither the political players whom we are reading about from the 8th century BC, nor our own present-day news stream: the historic territorial disputes, the ever-changing political alignments, often created by common enemies; the fracturing of treaties and goodwill; the political threats and promises; and the suffering of the innocent. Whether in the 8th century BC or in the 21stcentury of the Common Era, there are so many parallels in strife that span across time.
There is a word of hope buried in this Prophecy of Isaiah, hope for the 8th century BC which also pertains to us in our own day. Isaiah speaks an assurance in the voice of God: “Take heed, be quiet, do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint…” “Take heed, be quiet, do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint…”
These words of assurance do not mean that everything will be just fine. Clearly not. We do not escape suffering in this life. None of us does. I don’t need to tell you that. If anything, suffering takes on a certain poignancy for those of us who are followers of Jesus. You may remember Jesus’ saying that if we want to be his followers, we must “take up ourcross and follow him.”[ii] This signals the cost of our discipleship to Jesus. We are promised the experience of the cross: not taking up Jesus’ cross but our own cross. I imagine that every one of you knows about that: what it is to have been handed a cross in life – at least once and perhaps multiple times – to carry in life.
In almost the same breath that Jesus speaks about our taking up our cross, he also speaks about living in peace… but with a qualification. Jesus does not say we will know peace because all the political turbulence and terror will calm down. Quite to the contrary. Jesus says: “I do not give you peace as the world gives.” The gift of peace Jesus is talking about is from the inside out. Jesus says, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give [peace] to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”[iii] Jesus lived in a time of cataclysmic political strife with the massive occupation of the oppressive Roman Empire, and with the political factions within Judaism being so very fractious and frightening. It is in this context that Jesus speaks of his gift of peace, peace from the inside out.
Jesus’ promise of peace does not preclude our suffering in life. Jesus clearly knew suffering himself. Nor does Jesus’ promise of peace circumvent our mortality, nor the diminishment we will likely experience as we decline with age before we die. Neither does Jesus’ promise of peace mollify our grief from those whom we have lost in life, nor our grief from what we have lost in life. Jesus says, “You will weep and mourn; you will have pain but, he adds, your pain will turn into joy.”[iv] And Saint Paul picks up on this.
The single-most prolific author of the Christian scriptures – the New Testament – is Saint Paul. Virtually everything that he wrote about following Christ was inspired by his suffering and written during his imprisonments. He writes about his floggings, lashes, having been beaten with rods, and being stoned. He writes about being shipwrecked and adrift at sea, about the danger from rivers, danger from bandits, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger from deceivers….” He writes of “toil and hardship, many a sleepless night, being hungry and thirsty, often without food, cold and naked.” He faces capital punishment, and he continues to write. [v]
In the end, what is he left with? Again in prison and on the cusp of being executed, the experience which he writes about, repeatedly, is joy. And in case we miss his point, he writes, “again I say, rejoice!”[vi] Joy is such a great paradox. For Saint Paul, suffering sets the stage for knowing joy: a deep sense of well-being and gratitude in life. One might say that Saint Paul is a little over-the-edge about joy, rather hyperbolic in an unimaginable sort of way… unless you have discovered how joy will so often emerge from and companion grief and loss.
Back to what we heard in our first reading from the Prophecy of Isaiah: “Take heed, be quiet, do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint…” This is about living life peacefully, but not about living life passively. It is not about taking the suffering we experience and witness in life with a saccharine smile on our face. But it is to say that when we find ourself powerless to overcome what we know to be wrong, or when we find ourselves suffering without promise of relief, or when we find ourself reminded of the imminence of our mortality, we are not left alone. We are promised Jesus’ provision of inner peace, his companionship, and his joy. As Jesus says, “that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.”[vii]
[i] In the Hebrew scriptures we read of about 250 different kings in Middle Eastern antiquity. Many of these kingdoms were miniscule in size; however the title “king” usually designated unrestrained power and the divine favor of whomever or whatever the kingdom worshiped.
[ii] Matthew 16:24-27; Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23, 14:27.
[iii] John 14:27.
[iv] John 16:20.
[v] 2 Corinthians 11:21-29.
[vi] See Philippians 4, particularly verse 4.
[vii] John 15:1-11.
Br. Lucas Hall
Mark 6:14-29
One of my favorite films came out roughly five years ago. It’s called A Hidden Life. It’s a Terrence Malick film, if you’re familiar with him. One reviewer called it a “grand cathedral” of a movie. And I agree, because it’s very big. It’s about three hours long. It’s quite quiet, reflective. The story—It’s based on a true story—of an Austrian, alpine farmer, living in a small, rural village during the Second World War. He receives a draft summons to join the Nazi army, and he can’t. His conscience will not allow him to swear an oath of loyalty to Adolf Hitler. He is told repeatedly that it’s merely a formality, that he can be assigned to non-violent, non-combat work. He could even be assigned to hospital work. He could help people, save lives.
No. He refuses over and over again. He is imprisoned. His wife and children are ostracized in their village. He is tortured, beaten, moved around from prison to prison to prison, interrogated. His wife is brought to him to try and convince him, remind him of what he’s giving up. Instead, she agrees with him, and encourages him, and says she will be with him, whatever he decides. So he stands firm. Ultimately, he is executed. That story has a clear hero, a clear main character, but what really struck me about the film was the way it ended with this man’s death. Because he, with a number of other prisoners, was brought to a place of execution, a military installation. It was a gray, cloudy day. They were sitting outside in a gravel courtyard area. One by one, they were brought into a dingy old building with a concrete floor and unceremoniously killed. It wasn’t a heroic setting. It was mundane, normal, dingy, depressing. And each of these people to be executed had no idea whether they were on the winning side or not. There was certainly no hint of it at the end of their lives, powerless against a much bigger foe, and ultimately killed.
I could tell you this man’s name, but I won’t. I think the title of the film, A Hidden Life, speaks as to why. The idea that holiness, that sainthood, that goodness takes place in obscurity, in a hidden way, within contexts much bigger than we know and out of our control—I find that very compelling and very true. I’m convinced that there are more anonymous saints than ones whose names history records.
That brings us to today’s gospel lesson, and I have a question about it. Who’s the main character? There are a number of potentially correct answers. The first, most obvious one is it’s in the Gospel and the opening lines are about Jesus, so maybe it’s Jesus. But he barely appears, and only in reference.
Herod is the one having the reactions, he’s sort of the central figure in terms of what happens in the story. But Herod, zooming out for a second, is a client king on the border of a vast empire. He feels simultaneously captivated and convicted by this holy man’s preaching, and he’s bound by an oath to his daughter that he regrets and does not want to carry out. This man, this king, ostensibly very powerful, if you think about this from his perspective, doesn’t actually seem to have much power.
Maybe the main character is Herodias, Herod’s wife. She’s the one who ultimately requests John’s head. But Herodias as well—she’s a woman in a patriarchal society. She has by marriage finally ascended to a place of relative power and stability, safety for herself and her children. And suddenly, that’s under threat from this holy man who her husband can’t seem to get enough of. I don’t think she’s particularly powerful in that sense either.
And of course, maybe it’s John himself. But John, this prophet, clear about what he believes to be the truth, is struck down before anything he prophesied really comes to pass, a position of real weakness.
My point here is that perhaps thinking of the main character, the main driver of events, isn’t necessarily productive. The narrative tradition of Scripture is often useful, often delightful and wonderful, but we can become too comfortable in that narrative structure with its clear path, its clear heroes and villains, its clear ending, and when we exit that setting, back into our present world, we can be left with a profound sense of unclarity. What do I do now? There’s a lot going on in the world, all sorts of competing factions and interests, and unlike a children’s cartoon, no one really self-identifies as the bad guy. Everyone thinks they’re justified in their actions. What’s the good side? What team am I supposed to be on? How does the story end?
In one way, in a broad sense, we can answer that. As Christians, God’s side is the good side, the winning team, and that victory is how things will end. But that can come with a simplicity that doesn’t fully grapple with our own struggles. How many of us really conceive of our day-to-day lives as great battles between good and evil with a clear outcome? I don’t think that’s common. Sometimes it’s just Thursday. I suspect it’s much more common to think like the figures in today’s gospel reading, a collection of interests and priorities, not really sure how it’s all going to work out, and feeling relatively powerless in the face of forces and events much bigger and more powerful than our own personal struggles.
As John knew he was about to die, I wonder, did he tremble? Did he weep? Did he regret? Did he fear? Was he disappointed that he was not seeing the end of his own prophecy? I don’t think such things are beyond the pale. Jesus himself experienced a lot of them. I can imagine a real sense of unclarity from John himself.
Our reading ends today describing John’s disciples who come to bury his body. That’s the real source of unclarity. If you’ve hitched yourself to a prophetic movement and suddenly the leader is killed, what do you do now? What happens next? Is this the losing side? I am convinced that this struggle, this confusion, this lack of clarity is more a real picture of our day-to-day lives than a clear narrative of good and evil that is obvious to all. And the reality within that is that the example of John in today’s reading confirms that a commitment to what is good, holy, godly, may not result in that clear path, that clarity, that clear sense of a neat and tidy ending. There will be work unfinished, there will be things we didn’t accomplish or see accomplished, there will be forces beyond our own control.
I would be remiss not to mention very recent events in our contemporary society. A near-successful assassination attempt against a major presidential candidate does not give a particular sense of security or confidence. What if it had gone differently? What happens next? Today’s gospel reading, of violence, political figures, moral righteousness, and confusion about the path forward is really quite relevant. What I think we’re meant to hear in this, what I hope I, and you, and all of us, can hear in this is that faithfulness to the call of God does not yield comfort or ease or a neat and tidy life, either personally or all-inclusively. There will be strife and conflict, warfare, violence, and death, and we are still called to live that life of hidden holiness, that life of anonymous sainthood.
We may not know the end, but we are to trust that these confusing things, these things that we can’t clearly parse, will be used to the promised victory of God. I believe that’s why John went into that lion’s den of Herod’s palace. I suspect he probably knew there was a good chance he would die. Certainly that confidence underlies Jesus’s own confidence in going to the cross. We might not be able to see over the horizon, but the pitched battle between good and evil that happens within the very mundane, day-to-day aspects of our lives is one we can take up again, and again, and again. This call to continue that work, I believe, is the hallmark of a life of holiness and it may cost us everything, our lives, our understanding, our sense of clarity, and that offering is holy enough.
Br. David Vryhof
Proverbs 2:1-9
Luke 14:27-33
The author of the Book of Proverbs tells us that there is much value in wisdom. Wisdom is not a given, something that all of us naturally acquire with age and experience. It is instead a treasure that must be desired and earnestly sought after.
“If…you cry out for insight,” the author of Proverbs instructs us, “and raise your voice for understanding; if you seek it like silver, and search for it as for hidden treasures – then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God.”
Wisdom comes from God. “The Lord gives wisdom,” Proverbs tells us, “from his mouth come knowledge and understanding.” But wisdom can be passed along from one person to another. We can learn God’s wisdom from those who have learned it before us; we can seek it from those who have already found it. We can learn to live wisely and well from those who have actually done that.
St Benedict has guided monastics and other seekers along the path toward wisdom for almost fifteen centuries. He is an excellent resource for those who seek wisdom. The wisdom Benedict offers is not for mystics and saints alone. It is not the exclusive realm of those who choose to follow God along the monastic way. It is wisdom for all of us, wisdom that is found and practiced in everyday life. Here are three things Benedict teaches us:
- Listen. Listen to the voice of God, listen to the counsel of your elders, listen to the truth that has been discovered in ages past, listen to the authentic and life-giving voice within yourself. Listening is the key to spiritual growth. Learn to listen and you will soon become wisdom.
- Live a balanced life, with prayer at its center. Work diligently, as if serving God. Read, study and learn. Make God the chief desire of your heart, your heart’s deepest longing. Center yourself in the divine life, and you will become wise.
- Learn to live well with others. Human beings are meant to live in community, to share and grow together, to love and be loved, to give and to receive, to forgive and to be forgiven. Practice humility. Do not count yourself better than others but have a humble opinion of yourself and learn to serve. Practice hospitality. Welcome others as you would welcome Christ.
In such simple ways, in our common tasks, in our everyday interactions, in the routines of our daily life – this is where wisdom is to be found. This is where sanctity is acquired. This is where holiness begins.
Seek wisdom and pursue it.
BENEDICTINE VALUES (Here are some core values of Benedictine spirituality, an interpretation of each, and its reference in The Rule of St Benedict (RB). This list comes from the Benedictine monks of St John’s Abbey, Collegeville, MN.)
AWARENESS OF GOD
To look for God not in the abstract but in the ordinary events of every day.
“We believe that the divine presence is everywhere.” RB 19
COMMUNITY LIVING
To become who we are by our relationships with others.
“Let all things be common to all.” RB 33
DIGNITY OF WORK
To appreciate the dignity of work in God’s creation.
“…they live by the labor of their hands.” RB 48
HOSPITALITY
To offer warmth, acceptance and joy in welcoming others.
“Let all…. be received as Christ.” RB 53
JUSTICE
To work toward a just order in our immediate environment and in the larger society.
“…that in all things God may be glorified.” RB 57
LISTENING
To hear keenly and sensitively the voices of persons and all created beings.
“Listen… with the ear of your heart.” RB Prologue
MODERATION
To be content with living simply and finding balance in work, prayer, and leisure.
“All things are to be done with moderation.” RB 48
PEACE
To strive for peace on all levels: with self, others and God.
“…seek after peace and pursue it.” RB Prologue
RESPECT FOR PERSONS
To respect each person regardless of class, background or professional skill.
“No one is to pursue what is judged best for oneself, but instead, what is better for someone else.” RB 72
STABILITY
To cultivate rootedness and a shared sense of mission.
“To stand firm in one’s promises.” RB 58
STEWARDSHIP
To appreciate and to care lovingly for all the goods of this place.
“Regard all utensils as if they were the sacred vessels of the altar.” RB 31
Br. Luke Ditewig
Psalm 115:1-10
Matthew 9:32-38
I have gotten water in my ear while swimming. Muffled, it took a lot more effort to hear and pay attention. Remember what it’s like to lose part of your perception.
The psalmist tonight says idols, gods which humans make, are not worth worship. “They have mouths but do not speak; eyes, but do not see.” Idols cannot perceive. Don’t trust them, says the psalmist. Rather, “you who fear the Lord, trust in the Lord.”
Likewise, God speaks through the prophet Hosea, not about other nations but God’s own people. “With silver and gold they made idols for their own destruction. … an artisan made it; it is not God.” Focused on what they made, our ancestors did not perceive. It’s like their ears were full, muffled to God’s voice.
We make idols when focusing on something or someone instead of God. We can make an idol out of anything: out of person by overly seeking their approval or appreciation or time, out of work, hobbies, wealth, possessions, or avocation. It’s not so much what but how we use it, or how much we focus on it.
In our Gospel lesson Jesus sees and focuses on people in need. “When [Jesus] saw the crowds, he had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” I keep finding myself like a lost sheep both by the grief and trouble of the world and because I am distracted, not focused on Jesus. I have idols that impair my perception and wounds that hinders me. We keep needing Jesus.
What is on your heart tonight? What hurts? What do you need? What is muffling or getting in the way? The good news is Jesus is alive with power and compassion to nourish and heal again and again. “You who fear the Lord, trust in the Lord.” Jesus is God made flesh, who clearly perceives with love.
Br. Lucas Hall
Matthew 8:23-27
Amos 3:1-8, 4:11-12
“What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?” That question, I believe, strikes at the heart of Matthew’s gospel. Matthew’s intent in all his gospel is to focus on Jesus as the fulfillment of the prophets. He deliberately emphasizes the ways Jesus inverts expectations of the looked-for messianic figure, and seems to quite delight in tying these inversions together. When we compare this with our first reading from the prophet Amos, we see the lines of comparison Matthew draws; he does not view Jesus as simply another prophet. In Amos, God acts, and speaks, and the prophets listen, and prophesy to these acts. Here, Matthew depicts Jesus as the one who speaks and acts. And this message, this action, this intent is not simply to Israel, nor is it simply to humanity; the winds and sea obey, or more literally from the Greek, they hearken, they listen and follow.
It should be no surprise that Matthew views Jesus in this way; the idea that he has command over all Creation puts us in the mind of even the Genesis creation stories, where all is brought into being by the proclamation of God. It should be noted that these creation stories have a highly theological purpose; they closely line up with other similar stories among various contemporary religions, but they affirm the creation comes from a singular God. The various aspects of creation are not treated as individual beings to pay homage to, but equally created, and so equally under the sway, of the one God. And so Matthew depicts Christ in this way.
“What sort of man is this?” I don’t often like to get too in the weeds of the Greek or Hebrew translations of Scripture, but this matters here. The Greek word used is most literally translated as a question about where this man is from. From where, from what country or region or place, is this person, exactly, that he’s able to do something so bizarre? I am put in mind of John’s Gospel narrative, of Jesus before Pilate; when the crowd tells him Jesus claims to be the son of God, the pagan polytheist Pilate is quite willing to accept this possibility. And he, “ more afraid than ever…again…asked Jesus, ‘Where are you from?’ But Jesus gave him no answer.” There is an awe-filled otherworldliness to Jesus in these moments, something tangibly real and tangibly other, not just an ordinary person, indeed, not just an extraordinary person. There’s something deeper, beating at the heart of this man.
I want to point out that these encounters are not comfortable or joyous; they are fearful. We can imagine these people around Jesus with goosebumps up and down their arms, with hair standing on end, with heart hammering in their chest. I worry we, in a wealthy, educated, powerful culture and society, are more liable to forget that aspect of God than most. An encounter with God should push us, at least a little bit. It should surprise us, at least a little bit. It should bewilder us, at least a little bit. An encounter with God is an encounter with power not our own, beyond our own, something that should cause us to stop and pay attention, to be broken open, to kneel. This experience, even if frightening and uncomfortable, should assure us that this God is no mere idol of our own comfortable desires, no mere tool we’ve mastered, but living and active, with evermore to show us, teach us, and welcome us into, even if our steps forward are trembling ones. “Prepare to meet your God!” Amos admonishes. So we do, whenever we take that trembling step.Po
Br. Jack Crowley
Mark 5:21-43
One of the many things I love about Jesus is that he knew how to work a crowd. Jesus dealt with crowds all the time. Crowds to be fed, crowds to be healed, crowds trying to anoint him king, crowds trying to arrest him, and finally a crowd who crucified him. Jesus knew crowds.
These crowds were not just crowded with people, they were crowded with meaning. Everywhere Jesus went, people tried to figure out what Jesus meant. Jesus’ words, actions, and very being were jammed with meaning. The crowds around Jesus unloaded all sorts of expectations, baggage, and misunderstandings onto what Jesus meant. Yet through it all, Jesus just kept on healing.
Jesus kept on healing, because healing cuts through the crowd. Healing has the power to unite a crowd. Healing even has the power to make us love a crowd.
Our Gospel this morning is a perfect example of the power of healing. We are told by the Gospel writer that Jesus was being followed by a large crowd and that the crowd was pressing in on him. That’s a powerful image.
Try to imagine how that must have felt for Jesus. To be walking along and have this frenzied crowd all around you, pressing in on you. It really must have been jolting.
Jesus was not just going for a casual stroll, he was on his way to heal the daughter of a local religious leader. As the famous story goes, a woman who had been suffering from bleeding for twelve years was in that crowd pressing upon Jesus. She believed that if she could just touch Jesus’ cloak, she would be made well, and it worked. It worked. She was made well.
Jesus and the bleeding woman had the same focus, healing. Amid that frenzied crowd, their focus on healing united them, even if just for a moment. Yet that moment of healing was clearly life changing.
We’ve all had some experience like this before. Some brush with the power of healing. It’s an experience that stays with you. It’s important that we hold on to those experiences and cherish them.
I can’t help but remember a bizarre knee injury I had in my senior year of college. I was just a few weeks away from graduating, and I woke up one morning in my dorm room and my left knee had swollen very badly. It was swollen so much, there wereactually no curves to it. It looked as if my thigh, knee, and calf had become one big lump of flesh. I remember leaning over the side of my bed, unable to put much pressure on my leg, and thinking oh boy this isn’t good.
Eventually I ended up in a hospital room with a crowd of doctors poking and prodding me all over. I was scared because it seemed like all the doctors had the same confused look on their faces, which is something you never want to see on a doctor. It felt like every minute that passed, there was a new specialist in the hospital room and the crowd around my bedside kept growing. I was sweating profusely and my head was pounding with a fever.
I just remember growing all tense and getting more and more stressed as the room got more and more crowded and my mind raced. Then something changed. It could have been the painkillers they gave me, but I remember thinking to myself Oh God, heal me. It felt like that prayer came from the core of my being. Oh God, heal me. I remember I focused on the energy behind those words and how it made me feel. It felt like those words were becoming more than words. It was as if they had power that I could feel unfolding.
As I prayed and prayed, that crowd around my bed felt like less of a crowd. It felt more like a group of people who were focused on the same thing I was focused on. Healing. I didn’t know a single thing about them, but for a moment, I knew them.
We are all a part of a crowd. That great crowd of humanity pressing in upon Jesus. Thank God Jesus knows how to work a crowd. He knows what to do with us. He is working through us. He feels us just as we feel him.
We feel Jesus because we want to. It’s a desire deep in our hearts to be closer to God. We want to be closer to God, just as God wants to be closer to us.
We all want to feel well and to be made well. Jesus makes it clear what makes us well. Faith.
Faith is that unrelenting belief in God. That constant returning day after day to the grace of God. That belief that there is something far greater than ourselves, far greater than this crowd of ours.
We abide in our faith because it is our lifeblood. It’s the thing that keeps us going. It’s the thing that makes us feel alive.
This human journey of ours is not easy. God chose to take this journey with us, becoming incarnate and walking the same difficult path through life that we walk. We faithfully walk this difficult path, even when we are exhausted. We faithfully walk it because we know we are on the right path. We know what we are doing is good.
What we are doing is good and the world needs us. We live in a time when confusion and uncertainty are the norm. Stress seems to be in the very air around us. Such a crowded atmosphere makes it hard to breathe.
We do not shy away from these challenges. We are humbly bold and ask God for help. We look to one another, that great crowd of humanity, and try our best to work together and heal.
The Christian life is a life that demands courage and stamina. We will get wounded along the way. Yet we keep healing, and we show off our scars as proof that change is possible.
Br. David Vryhof
Ezekiel 34:11-16
II Timothy 4:1-9
John 21:15-19
We stand today in the presence of two of the giants of our faith: the Apostles Peter and Paul. No one has had a more profound influence on the Christian faith and on the Church than these two men. Both of them have their own feast – Peter on January 18 for his confession of Jesus as the Messiah and Paul on January 25 for his conversion – but they are commemorated together on this day, June 29, because of the Church’s tradition that they both died as martyrs in Rome during the persecution under Nero in the year 64. Today we observe them as martyrs for the faith.
They are very different figures: Peter was a simple man, not highly educated and possibly illiterate, a fisherman from Galilee. Paul was an extremely well-educated, cosmopolitan Jew who was also a Roman citizen. He was from a notable family line and had received an excellent education. The two men didn’t always agree. Peter was the chief ambassador to Jewish believers, while Paul focused his efforts on winning Gentiles to the faith. Peter was centered in Jerusalem and the surrounding area, while Paul’s missions extended throughout Asia Minor and even to Rome. One of their most heated conflicts was around the question of whether Gentile believers ought to comply with Jewish law. Yet, their commitment to Christ and to the proclamation of the Gospel enabled them to overcome their differences. Both were zealous to the end. The tradition holds that Peter was crucified, upside-down, and that Paul, because he was a Roman citizen, was beheaded rather than crucified.
What strikes me most about the two of them is that, despite being “giants of the faith” whose lives and witness were crucial to the early Church’s growth and development, they were both imperfect men, at times fallible and weak.
Peter stands out for his courage and zeal – see him drawing a sword to defend Jesus in Gethsemane’s garden – and yet we know that at times he was afraid. One day he boldly proclaims that Jesus is the Messiah; but the next he denies that he even knows the man. Like the rest of the Twelve, he often doesn’t “get it,” and, like them, he abandons Jesus at the hour of his death. He becomes a bold and fearless witness to the Gospel after Pentecost – but always carried with him the memory of his three-fold denial.
Paul was educated, wise and insightful, a brilliant apologist for the faith and a powerful preacher, yet he could never escape the fact that he was one of the Church’s earliest persecutors. Both men were giants of the faith who had significant blemishes on their records.
That both men were powerful at times and vulnerable and weak at other times, I take as a great consolation for us. We, too, have been zealous believers, perhaps even fearless, at times – and at other times full of weakness, doubt and fear. We have been at times confident and strong in our calling, and at other times wavering and uncertain. We know what it is to act faithfully, and we know what it is to fail to rise up to our calling.
The wonder is that God has chosen us and continues to use us as agents for God’s work in the world, the bringing in of the Kingdom of God. These charismatic figures inspire us by their example and their willingness to suffer for the sake of Christ. They challenge us to take up the mission of God day by day, continually renewing our commitment to Christ and fanning into flames our zeal for the Good News. Today is another day to push forward, to renew the promises we have made, to recommit ourselves to the life and work of a disciple, and to lean wholly on the power of God’s Spirit, who strengthens us for the battle. Humbly but courageously, we press on.
Br. Jim Woodrum
Job 38:1-11
Mark 4:35-41
In 1947, a friend of the composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein suggested that he write a piece of music based on W.H. Auden’s epic poem, “The Age of Anxiety.” Despite critics deeming the poem as Auden’s “one dull book, his one failure,” it won the Pulitzer Prize in 1948. The poem’s subject is four strangers who meet in a New York bar during wartime and contemplate their lives and the human condition.[i] The title of the poem evokes a theme that permeates society, both ancient and modern: anxiety. Just saying the word can make your muscles tense up.
Two definitions of anxiety resonate deeply with me. First: “an apprehensive uneasiness or nervousness usually over an impending or anticipated ill: a state of being anxious.” We’ve all experienced anxiety of this sort, say, before a job interview, exam, wedding, or while awaiting a medical diagnosis and its implications for our future. For me, I remember the anxiety of preparing a meal for thirty people for the first time, my first sermon, or getting the call that my father had suffered a fall while I was away on mission in Texas—a fall that ended his life. What is something that has caused you anxiety in recent memory?
The second definition is derived from psychology: “an abnormal and overwhelming sense of apprehension and fear often marked by physical signs such as tension, sweating, and increased pulse rate, by doubt concerning the reality and nature of the threat, and by self-doubt about one’s capacity to cope with it.” Some of us may relate specifically to this definition, especially those dealing with anxiety that co-occurs with depression, PTSD, or other neurological conditions.
Our first lesson from the Old Testament is another epic poem, akin to Auden’s, that evokes the theme of anxiety. The Book of Job recounts the story of a righteous man named Job who faces severe trials orchestrated by Satan, with God’s permission, to test Job’s faithfulness. Imagine Job’s anxiety as he loses his wealth, children, and health—even though, through it all, he refuses to speak ill of God. Throughout the book, Job and his friends engage in profound theological discussions about suffering, justice, and the nature of God. Ultimately, God appears and challenges Job’s understanding, emphasizing His sovereignty and wisdom beyond human comprehension. God asks:
“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding.
Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
Or who stretched the line upon it?
On what were its bases sunk,
or who laid its cornerstone
when the morning stars sang together
and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?”
This line of questioning, while beautiful and poetic, is intensely articulated. As God continues this dialogue for a significant period, one cannot help but take comfort in the overwhelming evidence of God’s competence in handling all that might make us anxious. In the end, Job humbly accepts God’s wisdom and is restored, receiving double the blessings he had lost. The book explores profound themes of suffering, faith, and divine justice.
In our gospel lesson, Jesus and his disciples are crossing the Sea of Galilee when a mighty storm arises, threatening to break their boat apart. The disciples exhibit textbook anxiety—they are terrified and cry out to Jesus in their desperation. And, what is Jesus doing amidst the chaos? He’s sleeping; sleeping like a baby. They wake him and he speaks a calming word that stills the storm. He questions them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”
In the Prologue to John’s gospel, Jesus is referred to as the ‘Word of God made flesh,’ present before time began and enduring beyond its end. Jesus, the Word of God, remained a calm presence amidst the storm and continued to be so after it passed. He was with his disciples ‘in’ the storm but he was not ‘of’ the storm.
Bernstein went on to compose his second symphony, titled “The Age of Anxiety,” which premiered with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1949 under the baton of Serge Koussevitsky. Bernstein described his symphony in this way: “The essential theme of the poem (and of the music) is the chronicle of our difficult and problematical quest for faith.”[ii]
Indeed, faith could be seen as an antonym to anxiety. If anxiety is “an apprehensive uneasiness or nervousness usually over an impending or anticipated ill,” consider this definition of the word faith: “complete trust or confidence in someone or something.” A quest for faith might thus be seen as a path toward release from anxiety.
Yet, at face value, I experience this as delusive. If we’re honest, we can never be entirely immune from anxiety. When we embark on our journey of faith in Jesus Christ, we expose ourselves to the assaults of Satan, who seeks to undermine that faith. What Bernstein referred to as the difficult and problematical quest for faith (or the anxiety that is produced in that quest) is actually where our intentional commitment to faith is tested. Anxiety does not necessarily indicate a lack of faith.
Sixteenth-century theologian Richard Hooker argued that while spiritual joy often accompanies faith, it isn’t essential, and its absence can even be beneficial. He writes: “Better it is sometimes to go down into the pit with him, who, beholding darkness, and bewailing the loss of inward joy and consolation, crieth from the bottom of the lowest hell, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ than continually to walk arm in arm with angels, to sit as it were in Abraham’s bosom, and to have not thought, no cogitation, but “I thank my God it is not with me as it is with other men.’ No, God will have them that shall walk in light to feel now and then what it is to sit in the shadow of death. A grieved spirit therefore is no argument of a faithless mind.”[iii]
Richard Meux Benson, the founder of our community, put it this way: “The fallen host, although they see us involved in the realm of death, know that we are inheritors of a hope which is not theirs. They come up in every form to struggle with us. We must not expect to walk in peace in our uniform through the camp of the enemy.”[iv]
So, what can we, who live in the age of anxiety, take away from all of this? First, reflecting on our gospel lesson, I find it ironic that Jesus questions the disciples’ faith. Considering that many of them were experienced fishermen and sailors, they concluded they couldn’t save themselves from the chaos threatening to capsize their boat. They called out to Jesus, who saved them with a calming word. Perhaps when Jesus questions their faith, he’s actually asking, “Why are you anxious?”
From the disciples, we can learn to turn to Jesus in prayer first when our emotions overwhelm us, rather than trying to manage everything on our own. When we face anxiety, apprehension, uneasiness, and self-doubt—assaults from “the fallen host”—we should instinctively call on Jesus. Jesus is Emmanuel, “God with us,” who brings calm to our chaos and prevents us from being consumed by anxiety.
Second, difficult and problematical as it may be, we must be bold in confronting the anxiety which tests our intentional quest for faith. When tested, the way we can keep from being consumed by the anxiety is to counter it with charity. Nothing diminishes Satan’s power than to do exactly the opposite. When Jesus was tempted by Satan after his baptism, Jesus countered each of the devil’s temptations by acknowledging the exact opposite: “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God”; “Do not put the Lord your God to the test”; “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.”[v] In following Jesus’ example, we can quell anxiety. When tempted to hurl stones at those who challenge us, be true to the image of God within you and exhibit God’s compassion, mercy, and love.
Mother Teresa of Calcutta is attributed to have said: “If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; be kind anyway. If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; be honest and frank anyway. What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight; build anyway. The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow; do good anyway. You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and your God; it was never between you and them anyway.”[vi]
And last, when you’re feeling anxious, it could be that your simply hungry—or as we say these days, “hangry.” Ask God for nourishment. In a few moments, you will be invited to come forward to receive the sacrament of Christ. Bring your anxiety and offer it to God, and in return, receive a piece of bread and a sip of wine—the essence of God’s compassion, mercy, and love in the presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. Then, step out once again—without anxiety—not on your quest for faith, but on your quest in faith. Amen.
[i] “Leonard Bernstein at 100.” Works | Works | Leonard Bernstein, leonardbernstein.com/works/view/16/symphony-no-2-the-age-of-anxiety. Accessed 22 June 2024.
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Rowell, Geoffrey, et al. Love’s Redeeming Work: The Anglican Quest for Holiness. OUP Oxford, 2003.
[iv] Benson, Richard Meux. A Cowley Calendar. London: Mowbrays, 1932.
[v] Mark 4:1-11
[vi] “A Quote by Mother Teresa.” Goodreads, Goodreads, www.goodreads.com/quotes/7969043-mother-teresa-s-anyway-poem-people-are-often-unreasonable-illogical-and. Accessed 22 June 2024.
Br. Curtis Almquist
Matthew 6:19-23
At the beginning of the Gospel according to Matthew, we learn of the wise men who came from the East to pay homage to the infant, Jesus, predicted to be the “king of the Jews.” We read they bring with them treasure-chests of gold, frankincense, and myrrh as gifts for the newborn.[i] We are never told what happened to all that gold, frankincense, and myrrh; however we can infer something based on this Gospel passage we have just heard. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph did not keep these treasures.
This same Greek word for “treasure” is used by Jesus in the Gospel lesson appointed for today: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth… but rather store up for yourselves treasures in heaven.”[ii] A treasure is what we could supremely value in life. Many things could be treasured, not just tangible things symbolized by the gold, frankincense, and myrrh, but also the treasured intangible things that may come from our race or ethnicity, our gender, our education, our good looks, our age, our fancy title. Whatever. Treasures in life come in many forms.
Two things to remember about life’s treasures:
For one, to bear in mind the source of life’s many treasures: God being the source and we being the temporary custodians of these treasures. We are not the creators of life’s treasures and we have a terminal relationship with every thing in this life. Identifying the treasures in our own life invites our humility, not our pomposity.
And so, secondly, that we cultivate treasures on earth that have a kind of eternal value. Life’s priority is to claim and cultivate the treasures on earth that can follow us to heaven. Saint Paul gives his own list of earthly treasures which are heaven-bound. He calls these earthly-eternal treasures “the fruit of the Spirit”: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”[iii]
Another version of what to treasure in life comes from David Brooks, the New York Times’ columnist.[iv] Brooks makes the distinction between our résumé virtues and our eulogy virtues. Résumé virtues are the experiences, skills, and assets that we bring to the marketplace and that contribute to external success. The eulogy virtues are deeper. Eulogy virtues get talked about at our funeral, the virtues that exist at the core of our being and which are revered. Brooks’ list of “eulogy virtues” sound a lot like Saint Paul’s “fruit of the Spirit.”
And you? Consider making a list of your own treasures, of earth and heaven. How are you to be custodian of earth’s treasures, which are very temporary? And see your earthly treasures in the context of what has eternal value. Focus your life prioritizing, practicing, and praying these heaven-bound treasures.
[i] Matthew 2:1-12.
[ii] “treasures”: θησαυροὺς = thēsaurous.
[iii] Galatians 5:22-23.
[iv] David Brooks in The Road to Character (Random House, 2015).
John 21:15-19
“How’re you doing?”
How do you usually answer this question? “I’m fine,” perhaps, or “I’m okay.” In our daily interactions we get asked seemingly polite questions like this over and over, and we are conditioned to respond politely.
They don’t want to know your whole life story.
Unless they do. But we can’t know their intention—unless they persist, unless they make known their intention.
“How’re you doing?” “No, really, how’re you doing?”
How do you feel knowing that someone else truly cares to know something true about you?
“Peter felt hurt because [Jesus] said to him the third time, ‘Do you love me?’” (Jn 21:17).
The passage is clear here that Jesus’s repeated asking is the cause of Peter’s hurt. But I think there’s something else going on beneath the surface. It’s not just that Peter is hurt because he is being doubted, but rather that there may be some basis for this doubt.
I think Peter’s hurt at the questioning reveals something true about him: that he has been hurting, that he has been grieving, grieving this whole time—grieving his failure, his cowardice in denying Jesus. Perhaps, that he has been questioning his own love of Jesus—or, rather, his own worthiness for that love.
But this repeated questioning is, I think, Jesus saying, “No, really.” Jesus invites Peter to be real, and it is important that these three repeated questions yield the same answers: “Yes, you know I do.”
“You know I do.”
Peter is raw, pleading, and unequivocal—“Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you” (Jn 21:17).
The questions—and the answers—aren’t for Jesus. Jesus already knows. They’re for Peter, who may need that repeated invitation to be real, to bring to the surface his own grief, to know assuredly not only that he loves but that he is loved. And to hear—also, repeated three times—the way that this love will be lived out in the world: “Feed my sheep.”
And these questions are for us, our own invitation to dig deeper, to be real, to be assured in our own claim. To be able to answer the question “Do you love me?” with our own “Yes, Lord; you know I do.” And to live that love out in the world.
Amen.
1 John 5:9-13
John 17:6-19
As your preacher on this seventh Sunday of Easter, I must confess I struggle with a key concept found throughout the gospel and epistles of John.
“The world” in these writings is a multi-faceted term. Its meaning shifts and accumulates layers of meaning every time it appears.
Sometimes the world is simply the material reality around us, the created order. In John’s prologue we hear: “He [that is, Jesus] was in the world, and the world came into being through him.” This meaning aligns with the most ancient usage of the Greek kosmos, which means “a harmoniously ordered arrangement” or even “adornment.” It is a fitting term for creation as Christians understand it, the material expression of God’s love. This kosmos finds its order and beauty in Christ the Word and exists only through him: “All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.”
At other times, it seems as if “the world” is a character in the gospel, a personification of all that opposes Jesus as the Way, the Truth, and the Life. It is the complex web of circumstances, influences, false narratives and outright lies woven by sin and our captivity to sin. It is darkness, the dominion of the Evil One, or even chaos – the antithesis of kosmos in its first meaning.
At still other times, the world as our natural condition of existence is closely aligned with the flesh, which Jesus teaches is incomplete without “being born from above.” It is the two-dimensional life of merely existing here below, skimming the shallows. It is eating bread, drinking water and breathing air that will all perish, without knowing Jesus as true Bread, the one who offers living Water and life-giving Spirit.
Finally, the world is often represented in microcosm by “the Judeans,” the Jerusalem religious authorities who function as the collective antagonists to Jesus and his Galilean disciples. They do as a group what the world does as a system: react to Jesus with hostility and hate, try to kill him, and eventually succeed.
All of those meanings are a lot to hold, and either choose between in context, or read in conversation with one another. This requires knowledge, wisdom, love, and the mind of Christ. What I struggle with most are the ways Christians have often crossed the wires of these meanings. In the process, they (we) have fabricated unholy machines to suit very unchristian agendas.
Christians have often conflated life on earth and life in the world. In that vein, Jesus is interpreted as denigrating the created order or material existence when he says: “I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world.” “Not belonging” to the world in this vein has too often meant rejecting the body, sensory pleasure, or sexuality; shunning political or civic involvement; dissociating from non-Christians; or engaging with any form of culture deemed “secular.” The story that “earth is not our true home” and “we are bound for a better place” has left us alienated from the soil beneath our feet.
How does this square with wholehearted belief that God became flesh for our sake, and sends us to the world?
Christians have often projected all evil and untruth in the world onto people who do not profess Christ as Lord. In that vein, Jesus is interpreted as placing narrow and exacting conditions around the love he offers, or even forsaking whole segments of the human family as beyond the scope of that love, when he contrasts his disciples with the world: “They have believed that you sent me. I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours.”
Faith in Jesus is sometimes portrayed in John or the Epistles of John as automatically and permanently shifting the behavior of Christians onto moral high ground. I have simply not found this to be true, in other followers of Jesus, or in myself. In our Epistle reading, we heard, “Those who believe in the Son of God have the testimony in their hearts. Those who do not believe in God have made him a liar by not believing in the testimony that God has given concerning his Son.” I argue with this text, the same text which proclaims: “Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.”
How does this square with the world of my experience, and perhaps yours, in which atheist friends often show astonishing love, and Christian neighbors use their testimony to propagate hate speech?
I don’t have easy answers to these questions.
If I did, that would probably be artificial consolation, which is not why we are here.
We are here for the good news of Jesus Christ.
All I can share that fits that description this morning is a pair of stories.
When I was seventeen, in the late nineties, I was holding hands with my first boyfriend while we walked down the sidewalk in Birmingham, Alabama. I was from the suburbs, but my boyfriend was from a rural town known mostly for peach farms and Bible churches. His father, a Southern Baptist pastor, had disowned him for being gay. He had huge grey eyes, a talent for music and foreign languages, and deep courage.
At the end of the block stood a man with a placard around his neck and a bundle of tracts under his arm.
I knew what the placard said from the opposite end of the block:
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” (John 3:16)
I knew that it would not include John 3:17: “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” Verses I had memorized in (Southern Baptist) Vacation Bible School, and treasured.
I suggested we cross the street, but it was too late.
The man looked us in the eyes and said, “If the two of you died tomorrow, do you know where you’re going?”
We kept walking, as we heard the man answering the question for us in no uncertain terms until we were well out of earshot. A man whose words did little compared to what we had endured. A man who knew nothing about either of our hearts and did not ask.
“If you died tomorrow, do you know where you’re going?”
I heard my interviewer ask the question, and I had to stifle my flashback.
I should have seen this question coming. It was 2009, and I was in my mid-twenties. I was in a second interview for a position at a small, faith-based, non-profit organization. I was inspired by the work the organization was doing, offering non-religious educational and social services to new immigrants. I was a recent graduate from Harvard Divinity School, and I was hungry for a job doing work I could believe in. I was hopeful that, with some skillful, interpersonal ecumenism, I could stand on common ground with these evangelical followers of Jesus.
I knew that there was a “correct” answer. It is: “Yes. I know that I’m going to heaven because I’ve been saved by Jesus Christ.” I could have said yes. But I knew that for me to say yes in that moment would be to shrink the untamable God I had come to love after years of seeking down to the contours of a theological shoe-box. To accommodate myself to a vision of salvation that strikes me to the core as too easy, too transactional, and too triumphalist. To cast my vote for doctrinal certitude over the transfiguring love I have seen and touched in Jesus, but that far surpasses my understanding.
The Word of God emblazoned on the man’s placard flickered through my mind. For a moment, I desperately wished I could turn back time, sit down with that man, and answer his question in the words that finally came to me.
I took a deep breath, and heard myself say, “I don’t know.”
I continued, “I don’t believe that I can know the mind of God in that way. But I do know that I love Jesus Christ with all my heart, and I trust that nothing can separate me from that love.”
The energy in the room shifted, softened, and opened. My interviewer, who would become my boss, co-worker and sister in Christ, gently closed her eyes and said, “Amen.”
I’d venture that in the final estimate, “the world” is everything that insinuates, intimidates, threatens or pretends to separate us from the love of Jesus.
That is the world to which we do not belong – whose hate has no claim over the mystery of our hearts. That is the world from which we are called, given by the Father to the Son,
and sanctified by the Son in the truth. That is the world to which we are sent. Over and over again. In others and in ourselves. Not to condemn but to love, in Jesus’ name.
Br. David Vryhof
I Corinthians 3:10-14
Matthew 6:19-24
When I was in seminary – now, quite a few years ago – I took a course in preaching. Whether or not it did me any good, I’ll let you decide. One of the things I remember from that class was the professor’s admonition to first seek out the tone and intention of the text, and then craft a sermon that reflects that same tone and intention. In other words, consider the author’s purpose and follow it. If the text is written to encourage its readers, your sermon should be encouraging as well. If the text is hopeful, your sermon should reflect that hope. If the text is condemning of a certain attitude or behavior, you should translate that into a similar warning that modern-day hearers can hear and understand.
The two texts we have before us today seem to share a common tone or intention. They seem to be cautioning us that our choices and our actions, our work and our personal interactions, have consequences that are long-lasting.
The first text, taken from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, uses the metaphor of building. Paul claims he has laid a foundation, which is Jesus Christ, and that others, including us today, will be building upon that foundation. What we say or do matters, because by our words and deeds we will be contributing to the strength of the building or detracting from it. Paul promises that each person’s work will, at some point, be tested by fire. If it is strong and pure, it will survive. If not, it will go up in flames.
Paul’s words are an invitation to us to look at our lives, to examine ourselves whether our lives and our work, our interactions with others, the values we hold and perpetuate, are pure enough and worthy enough to withstand the day of testing. Consider your own life. Will your words and deeds be strong enough and pure enough to survive? Do they build up and encourage others? Do they strengthen the communities of which you are a part? Is what you speak true and honest, loving and uplifting? Do your words and actions have lasting value? Or are you building with straw?
Our second text, drawn from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew, is a warning against the misuse of wealth. Jesus had a lot to say about money. He was very aware of how easily money could become an unhealthy attachment and how easily it could turn us away from things that were truly valuable. He is very clear here: “No one can serve two masters” because either they will hate the one and love the other or be devoted to one and despise the other. Serving God and serving wealth at the same time will simply not work. Our hearts will be divided in a way that will cripple us and limit our effectiveness.
Money is only one thing among many that can capture our attention and distract us from what is good and valuable and right. Once we have set our hearts on something – whether it be wealth or popularity or physical beauty or social status or material possessions or whatever else – our desire for that thing controls our decisions, our interactions with others, our life’s direction. We are storing up treasures on earth, and while they are no doubt enjoyable for a time, they will not and they cannot last. These things are passing away. When we stand before God, our wealth, our popularity, our physical beauty, our social status, our material possessions, will not matter in the least. God looks on the heart and God will see whether we have been loving, compassionate, faithful and true. God looks for the “heavenly treasure” that will not pass away.
As Paul says elsewhere, “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is an excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, thing about these things.” (Philippians 4:8)
Only we can know where our true treasure lies. Where our treasure is, there will our heart be also.
Take heed, then. Build strong. Build to last. Store up heavenly treasure. Pause frequently to examine your heart, your intention, your motivation, your goals, your purpose. Choose carefully what you do. “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
Isaiah 44:1-8
Psalm 92:1-2, 11-14
John 20:1-9
The summer after I graduated from college, I received a phone call. The caller introduced himself as Agent So-and-so, of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
I was struck silent for a moment or two. Not least because I was having a mild panic attack: “What did you do, Lain?!”
After I recovered, I learned that a college friend had listed me as a reference on his application to the FBI. I don’t recall what I said during the phone call, but I do remember two emotions. Profound gratitude—for being thought worthy of this, for being trusted. And a profound sense of responsibility—my testimony, in however a small way, had power.
Testify, witness, confess—these words recur throughout our readings this morning, as does the underlying sense of revealing some truth about God. “You are my witnesses!” God tells God’s people through the prophet Isaiah, after the promise to restore God’s blessings: I will pour my spirit upon your descendants” (Is 44:8, 3). “It is a good thing to give thanks to the LORD,” the psalmist sings, “to sing praises to your Name . . . to tell of your loving-kindness” (Ps 92:1-2). And two millennia later, these words by Robert Herrick, whose poem we sang before the service: “All these, and better Thou dost send Me, to this end, That I should render, for my part, A thankfull heart.”
Each of these texts can stand for countless others in the power of our words to testify, to bear witness, to shout out with thanks and praise the truth of God’s goodness and mercy. We can, with the power of our words, give God an absolutely glowing reference.
But our responsibility goes deeper than that. And the beloved disciple shows us how. Running to the tomb with Peter, and seeing the linen wrappings, he went into the tomb, “and he saw and believed” (Jn 20:8). He saw and believed.
Many, many words will come later, in the writings attributed to the beloved disciple. But here, in the early morning of that first Easter Day, the beloved disciple bears witness to the truth without words, without praise or thanks or even understanding. He bears witness to the truth of Jesus’ resurrection by simply believing, by an act of faith. It is the witness, the testimony, of a human life utterly transformed by God’s loving, saving action in Jesus Christ. Belief is his response to God.
We too are transformed—or rather, are transforming, becoming. This is an ongoing, incomplete process in this life. And a first step—a first step in our own cooperation, our working with God’s transforming us—a first step in a lifetime of first steps—is to stand silent. To stand silent in awe, witnesses to a love that cannot help but strike us silent. Words will follow—but here and now, we can do no better than the beloved disciple did: to stand silent, and believe.
Br. Luke Ditewig
Acts 8:26-40
John 15:1-8
Glorious spring is here with green popping up everywhere. Trees bud and flower with abundant, renewed life. Jesus describes himself as the true vine, us as branches, and God as the vine grower. Abide with me, Jesus says. Dwell, remain, stay connected to receive life from me. “Every branch that bears fruit [my Father] prunes to make it bear more fruit.” Pruning indeed helps bear fruit. It’s letting go in order to live.
Here’s what I was taught to look for when pruning trees. First, water sprouts, new young growth often all over a tree’s trunk and major branches. Second, branches touching or crossing each other. Third, anything growing backward toward the trunk instead of out. Fourth, branches that are actually dead. In all this, clear the center trunk, encouraging outward angled growth with space for each branch to grow.
Pruning lets go what is alive but not growing in a helpful direction. Pruning lets go what is dead but still taking up space. Pruning lets a tree more fully live and bear more fruit. Letting go is hard on trees and in our lives, yet key to living well. We Brothers say in our Rule of Life: “… we are to accept every experience which requires us to let go as an opportunity for Christ to bring us through death into life.”[i]
How might your life need some pruning? Consider the trees. Water sprouts take valuable nutrients from mature branches and scatter them in all directions. Are you preoccupied? Distracted by things that really aren’t worthy of your attention?
There’s a problem when branches cross each other. They push and block. Is there something in your life that’s at cross purposes? A place where you need to make a choice: choose one and let go of the other?
Perhaps something is heading backward toward the trunk. Is there something in you that’s trying to go back in a way that hinders moving forward? Maybe a fear of taking risks into the future and a grasping back to the past?
Sometimes whole branches are in the way because they’re dead yet hanging on in place. Is there something dead in you? Perhaps when alive it was really good and nourishing: a relationship, job, or ability. Now, for whatever reason, it’s dead, now in the realm of memory, which is fine to treasure. But are you clinging?
Maybe you have something that’s not dead, but it’s deadly, harmful, hurting, eating you up: an unaddressed behavior or addiction, a secret, a hatred or self-loathing? We usually need another’s help to face such problems.
Do any of these ring true for you? A preoccupation or priority conflict? Something heading backward? Already dead or deadly? Even the knowing, the awareness of need, is a sing of God already at work in us. We can’t prune ourselves. It’s God’s action and our cooperation. Companions help. As you see new growth, look for our loving Gardener who comes to prune.
Delighting in the beauty of new growth this spring, I notice what could or has been pruned.
I also notice surprising, amazing life, buds on trees fallen down and trees cut back to stumps.
The Book of Job says: “…there is hope for a tree, if it is cut down, that it will sprout again, and that its shoots will not cease. Though its root grows old in the earth, and its stump dies in the ground, yet at the scent of water it will bud and put forth branches like a young plant.”[ii]
Water refreshes and restores even those cut down, having lost much. We read this text on Holy Saturday face-first with death and waiting. Like water to parched lips, soil, and root, the Spirit brings life amid despair, loss, and death. God sends the Spirit to create, renew, and heal. Psalm 104 says: “You send forth your Spirit, and they are created; and so you renew the face of the earth.”[iii] Sent by the Spirit, Philip goes to the excluded Ethiopian eunuch, explains the scripture, shares the Good News of Jesus and baptizes him, renewing with welcome.
What for you is a tree cut down? What is barren or empty? Our Easter hope is that God hears and comes, acting with love in these places. Cry out your need. Come, Holy Spirit, come. Seeing the beauty and abundance of new life this spring, hang onto Jesus, the true vine, and attend to God’s gifts both of water and pruning, so that we may live, bear fruit, and share renewed life.
[i] “Holy Death,” SSJE Rule of Life
[ii] Job 14:7-9. I recommend Elizabeth Goudge’s novel The Scent of Water.
[iii] Psalm 104:31
John 10:11-18
Acts 4:5-12
1 John 3:16-24
Psalm 23
I’ve been thinking this week a lot about a guy named Paul.
Probably not the one you’re thinking of.
He lived about fifteen hundred years ago, somewhere in the eastern Mediterranean.
We know that this Paul, this specific Paul, lived. And we know absolutely nothing else about him.
But we can even know this much because his name appears on a small lead seal, about the size of a quarter.[1] I worked for over a decade with seals like Paul’s.[2] Although they literally sealed, secured correspondence, they also served like an email signature, including information like titles, jobs, devotions, city of origin. Whatever a sender thought was important to signal about themselves, to make themselves known. Or they just included their names, like “Paul.” And that’s it.
Much of my work, effectively, was doing my best to distinguish one Paul from another.
But this work was so rewarding, because that object, and the name that went along with it, are often the only evidence we have that this person lived, the barest glimpse into a life that may have been as rich, in its own way, as our own.
I cannot know this Paul in any meaningful way. And this gap—that he lived and loved and died and I can know almost nothing about him—really brings home to me what Jesus tells us in today’s Gospel: “I am the good shepherd. I know my own and they know me” (Jn 10:14). Even when no one else does, when no one else can, I know my own and I call them each by their name.[3] I call you by your name, your proper name, unique to you, capturing all the textures and contours and colors that define you as fully yourself.
Think about a friend or family member whom you would say knows you. Perhaps they know you with the knowing that comes from decades of partnership, from countless hours of conversation and companionship, from shared interests or hobbies or pursuits.
Think about what they know about you. How they know you.
Now—what don’t they know? What can’t they know, about you, about your innermost self? What desires and needs are unexpressed, what fears or joys unvoiced? How does your proper name, this sign of your unique, irreplaceable self, resonate in your own heart’s chamber? With what richness does it echo back to you the fullness that is you?
Jesus, the good shepherd, knows you this way.
Jesus, the good shepherd, hears the echo of your proper name in your heart’s chamber, and answers.
The psalmist’s familiar, beloved words invite us into this relationship of being perfectly known, of our fears, desires, and needs being perfectly known and answered: “I shall not be in want,” “I shall fear no evil,” “my cup is running over.” Others in this world can only know us partially, incompletely—and long after we have departed this world, it may only know our names, and maybe not even that. In some distant future, when the world forgets our lives and loves and even names, we are assured that our shepherd does not forget us—that we will “dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.”
Isn’t this comforting? Wherever we are on our life’s journey—isn’t it comforting to know that we are known more fully, more completely, more profoundly than we can know even ourselves? That our name, in all its complexity, is heard? And that we are called by that name?
This is all very comforting. But it is also very individual. “The Lord is my shepherd,” “he revives my soul,” “I shall fear no evil.” What Jesus reveals to us today is not about individuals. Unlike Luke’s parable of the lost sheep, Jesus is not speaking singularly here—“sheep” is always plural, and the singular usage, alongside “shepherd,” is a collective one: “there will be one flock” (Jn 10:16)
God does know us, individually, fully. Knows us and calls us by our name. But the point is who we are to and with each other—how we are made one in Christ. One flock. One people. One family.
This word “family” has been used by the author of Acts: among those Jerusalem authorities are “all who were of the high-priestly family” (Acts 4:6). Against them are arrayed the imprisoned apostles, themselves a family. Made a family by their relationship with Jesus Christ, the cornerstone in their own arch. Made a family by the Holy Spirit, given to them at Pentecost. And made a family by their own love and care for one another, by their loving actions: “if we are questioned today because of a good deed done to someone who was sick,” Peter begins (Acts 4:9). “Little children,” says the first letter of John, “let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action” (1 Jn 3:18). We show that we belong to the family of God by belief and action.
And if we are made a family in Christ, so he gives us a family name. Not a name like Smith or Jones, though. Instead, a family name that reveals what matters, what defines us as followers of Christ. A name that reveals the textures and contours and colors of the life in Christ. A name like “Loves one another,” “Does good for another,” “Believes in the name of Jesus,” and “Lays down their life for another.” A name that allows us to be known, and to know each other, more precisely, more immediately, more fully.
This is a family name that we can claim. One that we are called to claim, commanded to claim: “And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another” (1 Jn 3:23). And, like the apostles, this is a family name that allows us—no, invites us—to know especially those whose names we don’t know, whose names we might not even want to know.
Something new happened about a thousand years ago on lead seals like Paul’s. Alongside those that include the standard names and titles and jobs appears a small group that are anonymous. Instead of a name, a short poem appears: “Know whose seal I am by looking at the letter.”[4] It’s not Shakespeare, but it does point to something new. These letters don’t survive, so we don’t even know a simple name. Have we lost even this barest glimpse of a past life? Perhaps. The letter and name may be gone, but the invitation, the intention, survives. An invitation to discover our kinship with someone who will always be anonymous to us, yet fully known to God.
What part of your name, resonating in your heart, do you desire to make known, to be heard? How can you invite others to look into the letter of your heart and read your name written there?
The good shepherd knows us. Knows us and calls us each by name. The good shepherd forges us into a family, a flock. It’s up to us to get to know our fellow sheep.
Amen.
[1] Seal of Paul (sixth century), BZS.1947.2.1577, Dumbarton Oaks, Coins and Seals Collection, Washington, DC. https://www.doaks.org/resources/seals/byzantine-seals/BZS.1947.2.1577 (accessed April 21, 2024).
[2] May Wang, “Behind the Scenes: Cataloguing our Byzantine Seals,” The Oaks News, Dumbarton Oaks, June 29, 2021. https://www.doaks.org/newsletter/news-archives/2021/behind-the-scenes-cataloguing-our-byzantine-seals (accessed April 21, 2024).
[3] Paraphrase of the Collect for the Fourth Sunday of Easter: “Grant that when we hear his voice we may know him who calls us each by name, and follow where he leads.”
[4] For example, Anonymous (eleventh century), BZS.1947.2.1439, Dumbarton Oaks, Coins and Seals Collection, Washington, DC. https://www.doaks.org/resources/seals/byzantine-seals/BZS.1947.2.1439 (accessed April 21, 2024). There are several variations on this inscription. The classic study is N. Oikonomides, “The Anonymous Seal,” Studies in Byzantine Sigillography 4 (1995): 71-79.
Br. Jack Crowley
John 6:30-35
My Brothers know that I love to eat. I eat often and I eat a lot. Every monastery has to have that one Brother who’s always hungry, and I’m that guy. So having said that, I must confess that every time I hear Jesus call himself the bread of life, I get a little hungry.
One of the many things I love about Jesus is he knows what motivates us. He knows our hearts, our minds, and our stomachs. He knows what makes us tick. He knows this for each and every one of us, in our own peculiar way.
Jesus knows that above all else, we crave God. We crave God in the same way we crave food. Deep down, we crave God not one time, but all the time.
This craving for God is good. It’s a good desire. What we do with our desire for God is what matters. How we go about fulfilling our craving for God is what shapes our spiritual lives.
Jesus continually invites us to keep coming back to him with our desire for God. He promises that anyone who comes to him will never be hungry again. We have the freedom to feed on Christ daily. We have the freedom to feed on Christ not just daily, but every moment of our lives.
Think about that for a moment. We have access to God every single moment of our lives. No matter how we are feeling, what we are thinking, or what we are doing, God’s sustenance is available to us.
God is not only ready for us, God is willing to meet us where we are. Our craving for God can be fulfilled in the here and now. We do not have to wait for the circumstances of our life to perfectly align to feed on Christ. Thank God. That’s really good news.
If you keep waiting for the perfect moment to find God, you will keep waiting. There will never be a perfect time to find God, except right now. God is already at work in the present circumstances of your life. You do not have to wait. God is here, God is now, and God is with us.
God is ready for us, even if we don’t think we are ready for God. God is ready to nourish us, even if we do not think we are worthy. God is ready to feed us, even if we don’t think we need to eat.
To be fed by God is a humbling act. It’s like that feeling when you take the first bite of food, and you realize just how hungry you really were. It’s humbling to admit how much we need God, not just one time, but again and again all the time.
To recognize our absolute dependence on God is shocking. It’s uncomfortable. It’s unsettling, but it’s real. Our dependence on God is not something we grow out of, our dependence on God is something we grow in to.
Certainly, in the course of our busy lives and increasingly fuller days, our relationship with God is something that will change. There may be times when we think we have this, we can do it by ourselves. We may let our lives distract us from the giver of our lives. We can take for granted what is right in front of us and forget to give thanks to who holds it all together.
If your experience is anything like mine, inevitably, hunger brings us back to God’s table. The call of God is as unrelenting as a stomach growling. That holy hunger in our soul is impossible to ignore. We must feed it with God.
Br. Curtis Almquist
Psalm 4
1 John 3:1-7
In Psalm 4, which we just sang, there is a wonderful phrase: “You have put gladness in my heart, more than when grain and wine and oil increase.” “Gladness,” in the Hebrew, is often translated as “joy.” Our word “gladness” comes from the Old English meaning “bright, shining, gleaming, joyous.” God has put gladness, joyfulness, into our heart, which is a wonderful elixir when life feels desolating. Gladness, joyfulness, is a gift from God. Which begs the question: How do we cultivate and appropriate the gift of gladness that God has already put into our heart?
For one, you don’t have to wait until everything is peachy. You don’t have to wait until all the bad stuff, all the bad people, all the suffering is over… and then you can get in touch with gladness, with joyfulness. No need to wait. Gladness and joyfulness are “alongsiders.” In the scriptures, so often we read of suffering and joy coexisting, which is a paradox. Often the depth of one’s suffering will forecast the height of one’s forthcoming experience of joy. The psalmist writes, “Weeping may spend the night, but joy comes in the morning.”[i]
In our lesson from the First Letter of John, we are spoken of as “beloved children” of God. And in case you missed it, John repeats himself: “We are God’s children now.”[ii] Children innately live in wonder. Unless wonder has been robbed from a child, a child’s world is wonder-filled. Child of God that you are: reclaim the wonder of childhood. Wonder, joy, and gladness are cousins. One of my favorite books from my own childhood is Winnie the Pooh.[iii] There’s this very endearing scene, which you may know from memory, where Pooh Bear is walking down a path accompanied by his little friend, Piglet.
Pooh asks Piglet, “What day is it?”
Piglet answers, “It’s today.”
And Pooh responds, “My favorite day.”
And why not? Why not lean into today with great expectation, with the eyes of your heart open to the grandeur, beauty, joy, and wonder of life?[iv] I am not denying that the day will also most likely share in suffering. However suffering and joy can coexist in our heart. Don’t let the suffering take over. Let the suffering be companioned by joy: what is so marvelous, so astonishing, so wondrous about the gift of life today.
Today is predicted to be an amazing day for you. The psalmist shouts with the resounding proclamation: “This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.”[v] Today! The English author, G. K. Chesterton, said “the sun rises over and over again because God is enjoying it so much.”[vi] For you to live your life fully, freely, meaningfully, joyfully – for you to have the time of your life – live your life in sync with the Creator of life, and that will make a world of difference. In the Brothers’ Rule of Life, we call our version of this “praying your life.”[vii] Praying your life presumes your whole life matters to God, not just the major encounters and major decisions, not just your cries for help that come out of the depths of your soul, and not just your mountaintop experiences with God. Those extremes of life – the best of times and worst of times – certainly invite our prayer. However most of life is somewhere in the middle, sometimes in the muddle, and even there – especially there – we have an invitation to practice God’s presence, to pray our life.
Prayer is about our relationship with the God. God is the initiator of that relationship. We are always responding to God’s initiative. We may be drawn to pray because of some need – a personal need for help, or healing, or hope – or the need of someone whom we carry in our heart: a loved one, a colleague, someone we meet on the street or read about in the newspaper or online. God is already well apprised of the need. God is God. Our prayer is certainly not a press conference with God, giving God a newsflash, nor is prayer our lobbying efforts towards God. It’s the opposite.
When we are moved to pray, we are not initiating; we are always responding. God has shared with us what God already knows and, in some mysterious way, God is drawing our own heart into the heart of God. Somehow God is using our awareness, our hands, our voice, our presence, to bear the beams of God’s life and light and love into this world. It’s like an underground tunneling project. When we pray, we might think we are tunneling to God, bringing to God some need; however what we discover, with the first shovel-full of dirt, is that God has already tunneled to us. We are simply meeting up with God. God operates; we cooperate. Our prayer is always a response to God’s initiative.
The invitation is to pray our life, the whole shebang. There’s nothing too great or too small. I’ll use some language from our own Rule of Life.[viii] We pray about our cares for the world and its peoples, our friends and families, our enemies and those from whom we are estranged. We pray about our work, our successes and failures, our gifts and shortcomings. We pray about our sufferings and poverty, our passion and sexuality, our fears and resistances, our desires and dreams, our losses and grief. We pray not just in the day, but also in the night, our conscious mind also our unconscious self. After all, we spend nearly a third of our entire life sleeping, which is a God-given need. Use the gift of sleep and rest to pray for God’s ministrations, for God’s direction, for God’s inspiration, for God’s healing, and hope, and replenishment. Pray that God defrag your soul while you sleep. For those of us who are rather strong willed, I think God may sometimes have a better chance getting through to us when we are sleeping, when our guard is down, than when we are up and navigating life in full throttle.
How should you pray? I know that some people judge that how they pray is not the right way. Some people (maybe you?) think they should pray “better,” or pray differently. There was an English Benedictine monk named Dom John Chapman who was a much-sought-after spiritual director. His very straightforward advice about prayer was this: “Pray as you can, not as you cannot.”[ix] Pray as only you can. One of our own predecessors in the Society of St. John the Evangelist, Father Godfrey Callaway, was much revered for his humility and his prayerfulness.[x] He was once asked to describe his own prayer. He said, “Well, I kneel down beside my bed and hope for the best.” And so for you: “Pray as you can, not as you cannot.”
Many of us probably learned something about prayer when we were children. As a child I was taught to close my eyes and fold my hands when I pray. Before bedtime, I knelt at my bedside. You, too, may have memories from your childhood about prayer. But we don’t just want to be stuck in our past prayer. What would be inviting to you now for your prayer? What of praying with an icon, with a candle, with incense; perhaps using prayer beads or praying the Rosary; perhaps praying silently with your tears; praying with your eyes open or with your eyes closed; praying by writing; praying with gestures of your body or with dance; praying with your breath; praying in stillness and silence, or praying with music; praying using Scripture or poetry; praying with words, your words or someone else’s words; praying with your dreams or with the gift of tongues; praying when you are inside a holy place or praying outside in what for you is a sacred space; praying alone or praying with someone else or with a group. There is no “right” way to pray.
Prayer is about our relationship to God, and so our prayer will take on many different forms, and those forms may change over time. Just like in a long-term relationship with another person, the ways you relate – and how those ways have stayed the same, and how they have changed over time – will be the makings of a real relationship, a relationship that is alive. But don’t be stuck just to the archival ways you have prayed in the past. Pray your life now. What is prompting you to pray now, and how? Respond to that invitation, which is God’s invitation. And then, like with every relationship, don’t do all the talking. Listen. Listen up!
If you are “praying your life,” learning to practice the presence of God as you wend your way through your day and through your life, does that mean you don’t demarcate specific times in which to focus your prayer? No, it’s not one or the other. It’s both. I have three suggestions, especially if your life is very busy:
- Pray the “book ends” of your day. At the very the beginning of your day collect yourself in God’s presence. Offer a prayer that acknowledges the gift of your life, your dependence upon God, your availability to God. One of my favorite old movies is “The Blues Brothers,” with John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd. They are absolutely hopeless and hapless until they become absolutely convinced they are on “a mission from God.” And we all are! Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the 16th century founder of the Jesuits, taught that our mission in life is “to know God, and to love God, and to serve God.”[xi] Begin your day with that end: “to know God, and to love God, and to serve God.” Find a prayer or write a prayer to begin your day, because you are on a mission. Saint Paul calls us all “an ambassador of Christ.[xii]
- Likewise, pray a bookend at the close of your day.[xiii] Collect your day and then pray a night prayer to complete the day, calling to mind your awareness of need (yours and others), your sorrow and repentance for where you blew it, your gratitude for the amazing gift of life.[xiv] You may find a written prayer that gives you the language to do this, or you may want to write your own prayer, your own prayer Collect, for the completion of the day. Don’t live your life as a run-on sentence. Punctuate the beginning and end of the day by acknowledging the promise of God’s presence and God’s provision, and your availability to be on a mission from God.
- And then plan for several prayerful interventions in your day. Depending on your schedule, you may be able to demarcate specific times that check the flow of your day – like we do here in the Monastery – or you might simply demarcate several “prayer pauses” in the course of the day. Perhaps these prayer periods may be between appointments or classes or clients, perhaps while you’re walking or driving from point A to point B, or perhaps every time you sit down or stand up. Whatever. Incorporate some kind of prayer cue that you work into the rhythm of your day. I’m not suggesting a long period of prayer. This may only be 30 seconds…. The point is a re-gathering, re-centering, re-collecting where you are and how you are and what you are in God’s presence.
Have the time of your life. Practice the presence of God as you wend your way through the day, knowing that God is always up to something in you and with you and through you. Live your life as an adventure, child of God that you are.[xv] This will give you meaning and deep satisfaction in life, will open the gate to joy and gladness, and it will make a world of difference.
[i] Psalm 30:5.
[ii] 1 John 3:1-7.
[iii] Winnie-the-Pooh, also called Pooh Bear, a fictional anthropomorphic teddy bear created by A. A. Milne, first published in 1926.
[iv] Saint Paul writes: “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.” (Ephesians 1:18-19)
[v] Psalm 118:24.
[vi] G. K. Chesterton in Orthodoxy (1995), p. 59.
[vii] “Prayer and Life”: chapter 22 of The SSJE Rule of Life: http://ssje.org/ssje/category/rule-of-life/
[viii] These descriptive phrases about our invitation to prayer come from SSJE’s Rule of Life: http://ssje.org/ssje/category/rule-of-life/
[ix] Dom John Chapman, OSB (1865-1933) was Abbot of Downside Abbey in Stratton-on-the-Fosse. He is quoted here from The Spiritual Letters of Dom John Chapman.
[x] Godfrey Callaway, SSJE (1867-1942).
[xi] This comes from Ignatius’ “Foundation and First Principle” of his Spiritual Exercises. Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556), was a Spanish knight who, out a wound to his body and soul, became a priest and who, in 1541, founded the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits.
[xii] 2 Corinthians 5:20.
[xiii] Ignatius of Loyola calls this the “Examination of Conscience,” also called the “Examination of Consciousness.”
[xiv] The name of the monastic night prayer, “Compline,” comes from the Old English, “to complete.”
[xv] Jesus’ promise is to give us life abundantly: John 10:10.
Acts 5:27-33
Psalm 34:15-22
John 3:31-36
Have you ever faced a life-or-death situation?
For many of us, the honest answer will be no. Proportionally few of us serve in the armed forces, or are subsistence farmers, or fetch water by walking down long, dangerous roads. Or do as Peter and the apostles did, defying the authorities to preach in the name of Jesus, witnessing to the truth and risking death for it (Acts 5:28-29).
What allows those facing such danger, such precariousness, to go on? Need, for sure—the need to act or harvest or fetch or preach that impels them forward. But more than that. Trust. Trust in training and comrades; trust that the earth will bear fruit; trust that the spring will provide water. Trust, as the psalmist sings, that God is near to the brokenhearted, that God will deliver the righteous out of all their troubles and will keep safe all their bones (Ps 34:18, 19, 20).
And while we may not face life-or-death situations, trust is still embedded deeply in our lives. Trust in government and economies, in safety nets and supply chains, in smartphones and airplane doors. We trust these things will always exist, that they will provide or support or protect. We trust, until something shakes that trust and reveals that we may be closer to life-and-death situations than we think. The chapter in our Rule on “Holy Death” gets at this: in our “hardships, renunciations, losses, bereavements, frustrations, and risks . . . death is at work in advance” in our lives.[1]
But if what results when trust fails—all the bad and scary parts of life—can point us toward death, so can trust that succeeds, trust in what won’t fail us. And that trust points us to a death that is not final but transformed: “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life” (Jn 3:36) and “has passed from death to life” (Jn 5:24). If our daily experiences of loss and failure and frustration prepare us for the certainty of our deaths, our daily experiences of trust—and the hope and joy and love that accompany them—do so as well. The also prepare us for death, show us how death is at work in advance in our lives, but a death transformed by Jesus’s saving work: “In Christ we are still one with [the departed],” our Rule goes on, and we believe, we trust, “that we will be reunited when Christ gathers all creation to himself, so that God may be all in all.”[2]
You may not face a life-or-death situation every day. But our trust that “God is true,” that God hears our cry, that God is near to us, that God saves us, makes every day a death-and-life proposition.
Amen.
[1] The Rule of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist (Lanham, MD, 1997), 97.
[2] Ibid.
Br. David Vryhof
John 20:19-31
Has the Risen Christ ever come to you when you were in a place of need? If so, how did he come?
I’m moved by the resurrection accounts in the Fourth Gospel, in which Jesus returns to his broken-hearted disciples as the Risen One, meeting them just where they are.
Early in the morning of the first day of the week, he appears to Mary Magdalene just outside the tomb.[i] She is confused and desperate, weighed down with grief and loss, and can only imagine that someone has, for reasons incomprehensible to her, removed the body from the tomb and laid it somewhere else. Her teary eyes fail to recognize the One who speaks to her. She assumes he is the gardener and pleads with him to tell her where they have laid him. Then Jesus speaks her name. “Mary.” And her world immediately brightens. Instantly, the weight of grief is lifted from her shoulders; hope springs anew; her teacher is alive!
Recall how Jesus appears to Peter, the faithful and devoted disciple who, swept up in a moment of fear, denied knowing his Lord three times.[ii] Now he meets Jesus on the shores of Lake Galilee, where he has been fishing with the others.[iii] Jesus speaks to him so tenderly. “Peter, do you love me?” Never a word of blame is spoken; Jesus does not criticize or shame. Three times the question is asked; three times Peter affirms his love for Jesus; three times the charge is given, “Feed my sheep.”[iv] Jesus offers forgiveness, accepts Peter’s pledge of love, and restores him to a position of leadership among the disciples. So kind, so tender, so sensitive to Peter’s pain, Jesus absolves him.
And here, on the evening of the Resurrection, with the disciples hiding behind locked doors and fearing for their very lives, Jesus appears to them, gently reassuring them. “Peace be with you,” he says.[v]
He steps into the circle of their fears, without a word of rebuke or blame, and simply shows them his scarred body. His words calm them and offer the assurance they are looking for: he is scarred, but he is not dead. He is alive – more than alive – he has passed through a locked door to be with them! Their fear evaporates instantly and is replaced by rejoicing. “As the Father has sent me, so I send you,” he tells them. Then, he breathes on them and fills them with the Holy Spirit.
How might he have returned to them? Could he not have scolded them for their lack of faith, upbraided them for their fear, reminded them of their failures and weakness, criticized them for abandoning him in his time of need? But he doesn’t. He comes to them humbly, offering the most generous forgiveness, empowering them for the work ahead by breathing upon them the life-giving Spirit. What wondrous love! What tender mercy!
A week later, Thomas is with them. He has not been able or willing to accept their eyewitness report of their encounter with the Risen Lord, just as the disciples could not or would not accept the eyewitness accounts of the faithful women. “We have seen the Lord!” they had insisted. But Thomas will not be moved; he is held fast by doubt. “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”[vi] And so now, in his second appearance in the house, the ever-gracious Lord grants his request, extending to him his wounded hands and displaying the wound in his side, inviting him to see and touch and believe.[vii] How tender Jesus is with Thomas’ uncertainty, how patient he is with his need to see for himself what the others have reported to him.
The Risen Christ comes to us, too – in our fears and in our grief, in our confusion and in our doubt. He comes tenderly and patiently. He does not force himself upon us or compel us to believe; he offers instead his sympathy and understanding. He invites us to put our trust in him and waits patiently for us to let go of our doubts and of our reluctance to believe.
Jesus’ words comfort and console, but they also challenge. “As the Father has sent me, so I send you,” he tells them. He has met them in their need, sympathized with them and relieved their doubts and fears – but now there is work to be done! “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
Why this emphasis on forgiveness? It seems to me that Jesus is very intentional here. He realizes that they cannot carry out God’s work if they are bound by doubt and fear. For this reason, he has appeared to them and shown them his wounds. He has assured them of his love and forgiven them for their past failures. Now he empowers them to forgive others in God’s name so that all may be free from the burden of sin and guilt. Only then will they be able to answer and fulfill God’s call. The power that frees us from fear is God’s Easter power.
I’m reminded of a portion of our community’s Rule of Life, found in the chapter on “Guidance and Reconciliation”:
“We cannot keep pace with the risen Christ who goes before us if we are encumbered by guilt. If we stay estranged in our hearts, we jeopardize the community we have with our brothers and our fellow members of the Body of Christ. Regular sacramental confession enables us to shed the burdens of remembered sin, and to move forward encouraged by the Spirit. We enter the fellowship of the community again with fresh gratitude for the reality of forgiveness.”[viii]
His desire for them, and for us, is that we be liberated, not only from our fears and doubt, but also from our sin and guilt. He wishes to lead them out from behind closed doors, knit them together as one, and empower them to stand boldly in the marketplace, proclaiming the Good News of God in Christ. His will is for them to be a transformed people and for this reason he breathes on them the Holy Spirit
The gospels assure us that we are loved, accepted as we are, forgiven. But they do not coddle us. They challenge us to be ambassadors for Christ, witnesses to his resurrection, bearers of the good news for others. Listen to the boldness of these second-century Christians, none of whom had direct contact with Jesus, but who spoke with just as much certainty and conviction as his first-century followers:
“We declare to you… what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life – this life was revealed, and we have seen and testify to it… we declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us…”[ix]
They witness not only with their words, but by their lives. “Those who believed were of one heart and soul,” Acts tells us, “and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common… There was not a needy person among them…”(Acts 4:32, 34). This is the Church living in resurrection power!
Here… in this moment… today: Let the Risen Lord come to you in your sadness, in your fear, in your confusion or doubt, in your guilt, and assure you that you are accepted, that you are enough just as you are, that you are deeply loved and forever cherished. Let him comfort and heal you. But let him also challenge you, empower and transform you, call forth the best in you, and send you out to be his witnesses in the world, to be his hands and his feet, to be channels of his love and mercy and forgiveness and grace in a world that so needs him.
[i] John 20:11-18
[ii] John 18:15-18, 25-27
[iii] John 21:1-19
[iv] John 21:15-17
[v] John 20:19
[vi] John 20:24-25
[vii] John 20:26-29
[viii] The Rule of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist, (Cambridge MA: Cowley Publications, 1997), p.60.
[ix] I John 1:1-4
Br. Jim Woodrum
John 20:1-18
When I began to pray with this morning’s Gospel lesson from John, I was struck at first by two sentences: “Then the disciples returned to their homes. But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb.” The feeling these sentences evoked for me was kenopsia. In his book of neologisms, author John Koenig defines his word kenopsia as: “the eerie, forlorn atmosphere of a place that’s usually bustling with people but is now abandoned and quiet—a school hallway in the evening, an unlit office on a weekend, vacant fairgrounds—an emotional afterimage that makes it seem not just empty but hyper-empty, with a total population in the negative, who are so conspicuously absent they glow like neon signs” (from Greek, kenosis “emptiness” + opsia “seeing”).[i]
Have you ever experienced kenopsia or “emptiness-seeing?” The sense of kenopsia often takes me back to a memory from April of 2019. My father had just passed away, following my mother’s death 11 months earlier. As the extended family left, leaving me behind after the funeral, I found myself sitting alone in the den of my childhood home. Surrounded by the echoes of my upbringing, I listened to the air conditioner cycle on and off, a sound all too familiar. The house smelled just as it always had, and atop the dryer lay a stack of bath towels, neatly folded, waiting to be placed in the linen closet upstairs—a task meant for a day that never came.
Despite the comfort of familiarity, an overwhelming difference cast a shadow over everything: the absence of my parents. Gone were the aromas of dinner cooking on the stove. The evening news or my mother’s favorite true crime shows no longer filled the air with sound. Though the house was crowded with remnants of my parents’ lives, it felt profoundly empty. This emptiness wasn’t just a lack of presence; it was an active, almost tangible void. The experience was as fascinating as it was sad and unsettling.
In the Gospel of John, when the author describes Simon Peter and the beloved disciple leaving, while Mary remains behind alone and weeping, it conjures for me a sense of kenopsia. Only a week prior, Jesus was alive, passionately teaching all who would listen about the arrival of God’s kingdom on Earth. Then, merely three days before this ‘kenopsial’ moment, Mary witnessed the swift and horrifying trial and execution of Jesus. It was an event so shocking, she might not have believed it had she not seen it with her own eyes. Now, the palpable emptiness left by Jesus’ absence was deepened by the mystery of his missing body.
I often ponder about the duration Mary waited before gathering the courage to look into the empty tomb and confirm for herself that Jesus’ body was truly absent. How long did she dwell in a state of kenopsia, attempting to grasp the significance of these events, before the sight of the empty tomb solidified its reality for her? Her grief must have been so profound that it obscured her awareness of the angelic beings within the tomb. When the angels inquired why she was weeping, her disconnect from Jesus’ prophecy—that he would die and rise again after three days—prompted her to attribute her sorrow to the presumed theft of Jesus’ body. Did she question the presence of beings inside the tomb at all? To her, the reason for her tears seemed self-evident, understandable to any observer. Was Mary delirious in her sorrow?
As a child, I cherished singing “You Are My Sunshine” to my mom, a gesture that held a special place in her heart throughout her life. As a teenager, I would instinctually roll my eyes and plead with her to stop, when she would sing it to me—especially if it was in front of my friends. The day before my mom passed away, we found ourselves deep in conversation when she began to serenade me with those very words: “You are my sunshine.” As she approached the line, “you’ll never know dear, how much I love you,” she peacefully drifted into sleep, leaving the conclusion of the song drifting in the air of poignant memory.
On the Sabbath after I returned to Cambridge following my mother’s funeral, I walked through Central Square, my thoughts heavy with memories of my mom and concerns for my dad, now alone. It was then that an older man, disheveled and likely unhoused, walked past me and randomly began to sing, “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.” While many might dismiss this as mere coincidence, for me, it was a profound message. In that moment, I felt assured of my mom’s presence, and I was enveloped by a warm serenity that I will never forget.
In our gospel narrative, Mary encounters a profound moment similar to my own experience. She is asked once again by a voice near the tomb, “Woman, why are you weeping?” This time, there follows a second question: “Whom are you looking for?” This inquiry carries a nuanced implication. After death, the body of the deceased becomes a ‘what’ rather than a ‘whom’, indicating an object rather than a person. The absence of the soul creates an instance of kenopsia, only this time the hyper-empty place is a body. The question “Whom are you looking for?” suggests the search is for a living, animate being, not a mere lifeless corpse.
Initially, Mary does not recognize the voice. Thinking the speaker is a gardener, she doesn’t even look up as she makes an urgent request for information on the whereabouts of the body. However, when the man calls out her name, “Mary,” she is instantly drawn out of her grief and into the remarkable truth of Jesus’ resurrection. The person before her is not a lifeless entity—the ‘what’—but rather the ‘whom’ she had not realized she was truly searching for. Jesus stands before her–alive, warm, radiant—and meeting Mary’s eyes with a loving gaze. Her reply, “Rabbi,” upon hearing his voice speak her name, reinforces the realization of the miracle she had been taught to expect: Jesus is indeed alive, fulfilling the prophecy that he would be raised from the dead.
It’s suggested that Jesus’ words to Mary might indicate her instinct was to embrace him tightly for a long time. This seems like a natural reaction after overcoming shock. However, Jesus’ directive is interpreted not just as a prohibition against physical touch but against clinging. Different translations highlight this nuance. Theologian N.T. Wright offers insight into this passage. He proposes that Jesus was signaling a change in their relationship. The familiar interactions in Galilee and Judea, like walking together, sharing meals, and having discussions, would cease. Wright suggests that “Don’t cling to me” aptly conveys Jesus’ message, emphasizing a shift from possessing to letting go, in anticipation of Jesus’ ascension to the Father.[ii] Instead, he gives her the apostolic vocation of an evangelist: “’Go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” And so, Mary went back to where the disciples were gathered and said, “I have seen the Lord”; and then recounted all that he had said to her.
How can we engage in prayer with this passage from the Gospel of John during Eastertide? Understanding the moment when Jesus calls Mary by name is crucial. This act signifies a deep connection, shedding light on a core aspect of Jesus’ teachings familiar to Mary as His disciple. Jesus had taught, “The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.”[iii] This narrative emphasizes the intimate bond between the shepherd and his sheep, symbolizing the profound relationship Jesus aims to have with each of us.
How did you find your way into this sheepfold today? Perhaps, like Mary, you’ve experienced the call of Jesus, the Good Shepherd, personally addressing you by name. Reflect on how this encounter has unfolded in your life. How did Jesus come to know you so intimately, and how have you learned to trust His voice? It’s likely that our journey to trust Him uniquely intertwines with our own experiences of kenopsia—the sense of being alone, broken, and profoundly empty. The beauty of hearing Jesus’ voice lies in the promise of being invited into a dynamic, warm, and vibrant connection with Him. He yearns for you to recognize His call and to meet His loving gaze with your own.
Secondly, when faced with kenopsia, it’s crucial to shift our awareness. Mary, engulfed in sorrow and confronted with the profound emptiness of Jesus’ tomb, didn’t realize Jesus was right beside her until He spoke her name. Similarly, we all will endure our own versions of Good Friday—times marked by loss, departure, and profound loneliness. It is precisely in these moments that we should shift our focus to recognize Jesus’ presence near us. Just as He called out to Mary, Jesus invites us to call upon Him, allowing Him to reveal Himself amidst our despair, thus reaffirming His unwavering presence. Whenever you feel overwhelmed by kenopsia, reach out to Jesus, asking Him to make Himself known in the midst of your sorrow, comforting you with the knowledge of His presence.
Finally, be alert to the manifestations of the Paschal mystery around you—the assurance of Jesus’ triumph over death, a promise extended to all of us. The liturgical preface for the commemoration of the dead in the Book of Common Prayer eloquently captures this: “For to Your faithful people, O Lord, life is changed, not ended; and when our earthly dwelling lies in death, an eternal home is prepared for us in the heavens.”[iv] This conviction was brought home to me when I heard my mother’s song, “I am your sunshine,” echoed in the voice of a man I passed by in Central Square. It served as a poignant reminder from Jesus that death does not hold the ultimate power over us.And it is for this reason that we all can say: “All of us go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!!!”[v] Happy Easter and Amen!
[i] Koenig, J. (2021). The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. Simon & Schuster.
[ii] Wright, T. (2004). John for Everyone (Vol. 2). SPCK.
[iii] John 10:2-4, 11
[iv] 1979 Book of Common Prayer, p. 382
[v] 1979 Book of Common Prayer, p. 499
Good Friday
John 18:1-19:42
lanterns, torches, & weapons
a sword
a severed ear
a charcoal fire
a crown of thorns
a purple robe
a cross
an inscription
an untorn tunic
a jar of sour wine
a sponge
a branch of hyssop
a spear
These are the non-human witnesses of the passion of Jesus Christ. Most are what a materialist culture would call inanimate objects, witnesses without agency, intention, or sentience. But these disparate, created things have been joined in the devotional mind of Christians over the centuries under the banner Arma Christi – the weapons of Christ, the things he uses to conquer death. They are listed in litanies, depicted on altarpieces, and cluster around roadside shrines. The cross is given the central place, “an instrument of shameful death” transformed by Christ’s passion and resurrection “to be for us the means of life.”
In a lesser fashion, these other created things also share participation in Christ. Drawn into the purposes of the prince of Peace, these so-called “weapons” become by his passion implements of peace and Life. By their strange constellation in the same place, at the same time around Jesus of Nazareth, their Maker has conspired to set us free.
At the center of all these things stands the one who in John’s gospel is the agent of creation: “All things came into being through him” (John 1). They bear witness to his greatest gift: the delivering up of his life, his breath, his spirit. He who is the source of all true animacy willingly becomes a corpse: an inanimate body. His solidarity with our world of things – seen and unseen, living and non-living – reaches its deepest.
When Jesus had received the wine, he said, ‘It is finished.’ Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
The last breath of Jesus.
Our breath, our breathing itself, is pure process. Yet its constancy is such that human cultures intuitively link the breath with the spiritual essence of a being.
Our breath does not belong to us; it is constantly coming into and going out of us. Yet it is utterly intimate to us and without it, we expire.
Our breathing is particular to our body, our personhood. Yet it is held within a vast matrix of dependency encompassing the beings and elements whose breathing totality we call earth.
The breath that nourished the life of the very human Jesus was no different.
Without the eyes of faith, the last breath of Jesus would seem the least likely weapon – or implement – or tool – or key – to open the immovable door of death. How could something so insubstantial, so easily lost as a dying breath be an instrument of the world’s salvation?
Without the eyes of faith it is easy to interpret the bowing of Jesus’s head and the giving up of his spirit as a gesture of ultimate defeat, a final resignation, a letting go beneath the tidal wave of violence directed against him.
But the breath of Jesus was not lost.
With calm, quiet purpose, the last breath of Jesus was entrusted: to God – and to you and me. Entrusted: handed over with deliberate care in the face of the greatest risk.
The last breath of Jesus is the first moment of the outpouring of the Spirit.
The Jesus of John’s gospel continually reads the signs around him, hears the words of his Father directing him, and is attuned to how each moment does or does not present the opportunity to do his Father’s will.
He knows when to act, and when to refrain from action. He knows when to speak, and when to remain silent. He knows who he is and how God has called him in the midst of each encounter: “For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice” (John 18:37).
He knows far in advance that he will die and he has given his full consent: “For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father” (John 10:17-18).
He knows that he will die by crucifixion and what purpose that death will fulfill: ‘And I, when I am lifted up, will draw all people to myself.’ He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die” (John 12:32).
He knows and carries the terrible weight of all this knowledge for our sake, “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3).
Finally, he knows that after he has passed through the gate of death, the Spirit will be with and among those whom he loved in this world: “This is the spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you”(John 14:17).
When we hear that “Jesus bowed his head and gave up his spirit,” we encounter one of John’s many double meanings. The Spirit is the one who will glorify Jesus as Jesus has glorified the Father. The gospel’s repeated earlier references to this Spirit now resonate alongside what we have come to know of the human spirit of Jesus. Each implies and amplifies the other. It is not yet fully the Spirit’s hour. But for John’s gospel, Jesus inaugurates a new relationship between present and future: “the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth” (John 4:23). Just as the cross reveals the glory that will be made evident in the resurrection, the last breath of Jesus reveals the Spirit that the risen Jesus will breathe forth.
The quiet, calm purpose of Jesus is sealed by the confidence of his final words: “It is finished.” It is finished with great suffering, and with great love. It is completed, whole, and offered up in glory.
With him, at long last, we exhale and are drawn to our knees – not in defeat, but in awe. There is nothing more for us to do, but ask for the spirit of Jesus to aid us as we make a fresh return of such great love.
The final breath of Jesus is a promise from the cross. Drawn into the purposes of the prince of Peace, each last jar of sour wine and branch of hyssop we lay down before him this night can become, by his Passion, a means of grace. Each weapon can become an implement Christ will use to draw us to himself. By our sacred gathering in this place, in this moment, around the Crucified, the Spirit has conspired to set us free.
Br. Jack Crowley
Maundy Thursday
John 13:1-17, 31b-35
Well good evening everyone, it’s so good to see you all. Tonight we start our celebration of a glorious long weekend.
I’ll start this long weekend by asking a simple question. Who’s ready to get their feet washed? Or should I ask, who got their feet ready to be washed?
If you are anything like me, at some point every year on Maundy Thursday, I become self-conscious of my feet. I took a good hard look at my toenails. I ask myself questions like what if my feet smell tonight? Do my feet look weird? What does a normal foot even look like? I know these questions sound ridiculous coming from a man who wears sandals year-round, but it’s what I do.
There’s just something about foot washing that’s provoking. It causes a reaction in us. Knowing our bare feet are not only going to be exposed but also handled by someone else makes us feel vulnerable. These moments of vulnerability can be powerful.
So when Jesus got up from that table at the Last Supper and got down on his knees to wash feet, what a powerful moment that must have been. Every year on Maundy Thursday, I ask myself why, why did Jesus do it? Why did he wash feet at his own Last Supper?
Every year I come back to the same answer. Jesus knew what he was doing. He knew this was it. This was the Last Supper. This was going to be one of his last chances to teach us something.
When we know we’re going to be doing something for the last time, we really do it. Running the last mile of a race, finishing the last page of a book, or saying our final goodbyes to a loved one, knowing the mortality of our moments makes them intense. We forego whatever normal restraints we place upon ourselves and let it all out.
I would have loved to have been there that night. That upper room with Jesus and his twelve disciples. I always try to imagine that one moment when the reality set in for the disciples that Jesus was about to wash their feet.
It’s hard for us to understand what a scandalous act Jesus’ foot washing was. For Jesus, the Master, the Son of God, to be washing feet at his Last Supper, it would have been shocking for the Disciples. Jesus was doing the job a servant should have been doing.
Somehow, Jesus was able to transform this dirty, mundane task into an act of service and humility. In doing so, he showed us a way to love and to be loved. Keep in mind he did this knowing he would soon be betrayed to a painful death.
It’s always tempting to obsess over ourselves, especially in times of stress or vulnerability. One of the many things I love about Jesus at the Last Supper was that his focus was on the people around him. His focus was on how to get them to love one another. Jesus was about to be tortured to death, and he was still thinking of others.
Jesus shows us that to be constantly thinking of others, to be constantly thinking of what you can do to improve the lives of those around you, is fundamentally a good strategy for life. This does not mean you should be a door mat for those around you. This means it’s a good idea to constantly be engaging with those around you.
To do the opposite, to think about oneself all the time, is exhausting. A self-centered life is boring. Selfishness is not sustainable.
The Last Supper was not a table for one. No. There were thirteen very different people sitting down together that night. Their lives were about to be fundamentally changed forever.
We too sit here tonight as all sorts of different people. We all have our stories. We’ve all come from something, are going through something, and are getting ready for something. What we all have in common is this unrelenting pursuit of God. We have all pursued God this far and we want to keep it going.
We pursue a God who loves us and clearly wants us to love one another. The life of Jesus shows us that loving one another can be intimate and real. We start by looking outward at one another and offering ourselves, our whole selves, to this God given and God sustained community of all living things.
We do not have to drown in ourselves. We do not have to be killed by our fears. We are more than our anxieties. We can get over the nasty parts of ourselves and hustle towards God and connect with those around us.
Now we know that the practice of making genuine human connections is a lifelong practice. It’s a practice rooted in the pursuit of God and the greater good. It’s a practice honed by service and refined by prayer.
In Holy Week, we are constantly reminded of the impact we have on other people. We can crucify other people, or we can wash their feet. We can stab a crown of thorns on someone’s head, or we can wash it with oil. We can mock and scourge, or we can listen.
Every day of our lives we face the choice of coming closer together or drifting farther apart. The forces of evil out there are great, but so are the forces of love. What we choose to bind ourselves together with will influence not only the rest of our lives, but the lives of everyone who comes after us.
Maundy Thursday is a reminder that what we do here matters. Our actions have consequences. This is all very real.
One of my favorite parts of the whole liturgical year will happen in a few moments. You will see people you know, people you kind of know, and people you don’t know line up. You will see shoes and socks come off, and pant legs rolled up. You will see bare feet emerge. Things will get a little jolted.
This is life. This clumsy but grace filled shuffle of ours towards God. This is what we get to work with. We are who we get to live with. Somewhere in the middle of it all is God.
Br. Lucas Hall
Palm Sunday
There’s no such thing as a tree.
I’ll explain.
Biologically, we tend to group living creatures, different species, together with their closest relatives. Take birds, for example. There are many different birds, ostriches, hummingbirds, penguins, vultures, the list is vast. But every bird is more closely related to every other bird, than they are to any creatures outside of that group, “birds.” It’s a neat, tidy category.
But that’s not true of trees. When we look at plant genetics, when we look at the fossil record, we see that what we commonly call “trees” isn’t a neat, tidy category of close relatives. Instead, the development of trees, of tall, massive, woody plants, extending up above other plant life, is a strategy, a structure, a way of being, that emerges again, and again, and again, in different plant families over many years. Our much-vaunted palm trees are more closely related to grass than they are to, say, a pine tree.
But, come on. Of course trees are a thing. Of course there’s such a thing as a tree. They’re just not a neat and tidy biological category. Instead, we should think of trees as a phenomenon, a dynamic happening, bubbling up from the substrate of the natural order, erupting forth in any place where this particular mode of being can gain purchase, and thrive, and live.
Which takes us to today, Palm Sunday, the victory procession of Christ into the holy city. When the crowd gathered palms and other branches as banners of tribute to the long-hoped-for ruler of the world. As the Church has commemorated this day, the custom spread of gathering these branches, blessing them, offering them. But, depending on your local climate, palms might not be very easy to come by. So other trees were used, are used to this day: olive, willow, yew, spruce, cypress, fir, and more. In some places it’s not even called “Palm Sunday,” it’s named after the local tree used, or even more broadly, just called “Branch Sunday.”
And that fits. The imagery of the palm, specifically, works well, because in the Greek-speaking world, palms were associated with victorious athletes, champions. To ascribe this sort of victory to Christ with palms makes sense in that culture, while also challenging the notion of victory, as Jesus prepares to die. But it is also the offering of the poor, who afford no more pomp than the produce of the field. It is also the offering of nature, which cries out with the human crowd to glorify the Creator. It is a foreshadowing, of the triumph leading to the crucifixion, where, as the hymn goes, “God is reigning from the tree.” It’s a hearkening to the ancient story, where humanity sought to seize the Tree of Life’s forbidden fruit, and fell into sin, and in this triumph, finally, finally, may we be rescued from our banishment and taste this fruit of the Tree of Life, this Christ of whom we are about to partake this day. This is not a neat and tidy category, something to observe, nod in approval, and put on our shelf; it’s a phenomenon, erupting forth with joyous vigor wherever this mode of being can find purchase in the world.
This day, we begin the central observance of the Church, Holy Week. We have undergone the journey of Lent, and here we are. Maybe Lent was a time of deep prayer, deep connection with God for you. If so, step forward into the observance of Holy Week. Maybe Lent was a real struggle for you, a real awakening to your sin and frailty. If so, step forward into the observance of Holy Week. Maybe Lent, wasn’t much of anything for you, maybe you were distracted. If so, step forward into the observance of Holy Week. It’s more than an invitation; this is the stuff of our very lives, as individuals and as the Church. It will not look the same in every person or place. It’s not a neat and tidy category. But the phenomenon will grow and persevere, the offering will erupt forth, the trees will grow, in whichever heart they find purchase. And from there, Christ beckons, reigning from that very tree, as he always has been, and ever shall be.
Br. Curtis Almquist
John 12:20-36
“Jesus says, “Very truly I tell you…” This is like a teacher getting the attention of the class by saying, “Listen up!”[i] Various other versions of the Bible translate Jesus’ attention-grabber here as “Believe me,” or “I assure you,” or “I can guarantee this truth,” or “I tell you for certain…” Does Jesus have your attention? We are primed to know this is very important what Jesus is about to say; however we have to do some homework to make sense of its importance.
Two things. Jesus describes how a grain of wheat must die to bear fruit. A farmer would tell us that as long as a tiny grain of wheat keeps on being a kernel in the head of a stalk of wheat, it remains just that: a lone kernel of wheat among many such kernels. It’s only when a grain of wheat is detached from the head and buried in the ground that it can germinate and produce a whole stalk of wheat. Jesus describes this process as a grain of wheat “dying.” Of course Jesus is speaking metaphorically. What does Jesus mean? Because he has signaled that this is very important: a grain of wheat needing to “die” to bear fruit? Jesus is speaking both about generosity and about suffering.
There is a paradoxical principle in life: in giving we receive. The one makes the space for the other. This is to practice our life as a gift, a gift we have received so as to be a gift we then share. This is of the essence of life: not clinging to it, not hoarding it, but cherishing it, participating in it fully, and then sharing the gift of our own life with others with great generosity. This is the nature of Jesus’ life and love which he commands us to follow in big and small ways… especially the small daily ways whose opportunities for sharing our life are endless. It is a paradox: living our life by giving our life is the essence of life. It is either one or the other. Our life orientation is either to give our own life, or take our own life. Living life “on the take” – taking our own life – is deadly. Jesus’ example and Jesus’ command we shall hear again on Maundy Thursday is to give our life loving one another.[ii] Jesus’ metaphor for this is the gestation of a grain of wheat that must give its all. It must “die” to bear fruit.
Giving our life in love is not without suffering. Passion – Jesus’ passion and our passion – is both about love and suffering. The German theologian, Dorothee Sölle, says that the New Testament protests against a spirituality without conflict. Dorothee Sölle says we must struggle together against every form of oppression. She refuses to accept pain with passivity, which would only harden our hearts. Sölle says we, the followers of Jesus, must meet pain, confront pain, identify with those who are experiencing pain, and then struggle through it to grow into “a new humanness more capable of both pain and love.” In suffering, a person’s self-protection and isolation are broken, the heart broken open so as to make space for others, which is compassion.[iii] This is the paradox of passion, of love and pain comingling.
Jesus adds to his teaching about the fullness of life some troubling words: “Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”[iv] Hating your life. We would have an easier time with this if we could blame a mistranslation of a Greek word, if we could say that, in today’s English, this word “hate” is better translated as such-and-such. But we cannot do that. The verb here translated as “hate” is just that. The Greek verb is to detest, to denounce. It is an egregious moral choice: “Hate your life.”[v] I find it deeply troubling to hear Jesus say that.
Over the years I have listened to so many people describe how they hate themselves because of who they are, or from where they come, or because of what they do or cannot do. They hate themselves and their lives. And I have told these wounded souls, as I have been told myself: “You may not hate yourself. You may not hate the life to which you have been entrusted.” “You may not hate yourself. You have been created from Love to love.” God is love. So what is Jesus possibly saying about hating life?
I don’t know.
Scriptural scholars are of a very divided mind what Jesus is saying here and why. The best I can make of this is hyperbole. Jesus is speaking with great exaggeration to get people’s attention. The best I can make of this is the old wisdom, “Keep your eye on the prize.” We have been given the gift of life in this world, and in preparation for the life to come, what follows our earthly death. “Keep your eye on the prize.” There is more to life than just life in this world.
In my hearing, Jesus’ statement here about “hating your life” is completely contrary to everything else Jesus says about loving living and living loving. We would not want to do with these troublesome words what sometimes happens in the media when one sentence of a speaker’s statement is lifted out of context and then broadcast alone, completely out of character for the speaker.
We do not have liberty to excise Jesus’ words about “hating your life” from the Gospel canon; however we can and must contextualize these words in a broader understanding of what Jesus was all about in this life and for the life to come. Which is not about hate.
This is Passion Week. Passion is about love, and passion is about suffering. The great mystery of life is how love and suffering coexist, and how they inform each other. Jesus shows us the way.
[i] This Greek word is amēn (“very truly I tell you”) occurs 143 times in the New Testament, 25 of which in the Gospel according to John (1:51; 3:3, 5, 11; 5:19, 24, 25; 6:26, 32, 47, 53; 8:34, 51, 58; 10:1, 7; 12:24; 13:16, 20, 21, 38; 14:12; 16:20, 23; 21:18).
[ii] Maundy Thursday, named from the Latin mandatum (a mandate, a command), from Jesus’ words at the Last Supper (John 13:14). This is the prominent word of an antiphon chanted in the liturgy: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”
[iii] Dorothee Sölle (1929–2003) was a German liberation theologian and the author of many books, most noted being Suffering. Quoted from Rowan Williams’ The Wound of Knowledge; Christian Spirituality from the New Testament to St. John of the Cross (1990), p. 134.
[iv] John 12:25.
[v] The Greek verb “hate” is miséō.
Br. David Vryhof
John 11:45-53
The gospel passage we have before us today wraps up the greatest miracle story in all of the gospels: Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. Other miracles pale in comparison to it, but still, as is so often the case in the gospel accounts, the reactions to this astounding miracle are mixed. Many of the Jews who witness the miracle come to believe in Jesus. But others report Jesus’ words and actions to the priests.
Their report prompts an interesting discussion: Jesus’ increased popularity poses a threat to the chief priests and Pharisees because it risks drawing the attention of the Romans, who, they fear, will crush this populist movement, destroying both their religion and their nation. There’s no reason to doubt the genuineness of their concern for their faith and for their country, but we must note, too, that the chief priests and Pharisees derive what power they have from Rome, so the threat to their livelihoods, their influence and their social status is real.
Caiaphas, the high priest, has a solution: Let this one man, Jesus, die for the nation. The death of Jesus will squelch the movement, he argues, and it is better to have this one man die than to have the whole nation come to destruction. The evangelist John is quick to point out the irony of the high priest’s statement. Caiaphas is speaking from a political point of view when he speaks of Jesus dying for the people, suggesting that Jesus die instead of the people. John, however, understands Caiaphas’ words from a theological point of view. For John, Jesus dying “for the people” anticipates the voluntary offering of his life that will further God’s plan to save both Jews and Gentiles through Jesus’ death and resurrection. He will die on behalf of the people, rescuing them from the power of sin and death, and obtaining for them the precious gift of eternal life.
John sees the Spirit at work here, revealing God’s intention through the words of the high priest. God’s purpose is to gather up all the dispersed people of God – Gentiles as well as Jews – through this great work of grace. John explains it this way: “[Caiaphas], being the high priest that year… prophesied that Jesus was about to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but to gather into one the dispersed children of God.” (Jn 11:51-52).
John’s explanation here recalls Jesus’ earlier statement that he has “other sheep that do not belong to this fold” (Jn 10:16). Its implication is that the kingdom of God extends beyond the usual national and cultural boundaries of Judaism; God is prepared to welcome “outsiders.” In the same way, it implies that we may not limit the work of Christ to a particular people or organization, such as the Church, but instead must ask ourselves, “Who are the scattered people for whom Christ died in order that they, too, might be reconciled with God?” John does not limit the scope of God’s saving grace, and neither must we.
Jesus’ opponents fail to see the power of God manifest in Jesus’ miracle – a power that is stronger than death. They also fail to see what it reveals about God’s purposes and design. Instead, this miracle is the sign that pushes them over the edge: “From that day on they planned to put him to death.” (Jn 11:53).
Save us from a similar blindness, Lord, and open our eyes to discern the height and breadth and depth of your saving grace in our world.
Br. David Vryhof
Psalm 27:1-6
Most preachers, when they reflect on their preaching, will find that they have a few themes that they come back to again and again. For me, one of those themes is the question of what it means to believe. I return to this theme repeatedly because I want to challenge the popular understanding that believing means holding a certain set of statements or claims to be true – statements, for example, about God or Jesus or the Bible or salvation. When we speak of believing in this way, Christianity becomes a matter of the head rather than of the heart.
We know that faith does not spare us from the pain of human existence. Believing does not guarantee that we will never have cancer, or suffer the loss of a loved one, or lose a job, or watch a business fail. Believing does not solve all our problems or make us rich or popular or successful. It does not exempt us from the experience of pain and suffering. It does not make everything right.
But it does make a difference in how we experience tragedy and loss, how we cope with suffering and pain, how we respond to grief and sorrow.
The psalmist knows what it is to believe and trust in God: “The Lord is my light and my salvation,” he proclaims, “whom then shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom then shall I be afraid?”…”Though an army should encamp against me, yet my heart shall not be afraid; and though war should rise up against me, yet will I put my trust in him.”
The psalmist believes in God. Even in the face of danger and trouble, he makes clear his resolve: “I will put my trust in [God].” Real believing is about knowing God and trusting God, even when trouble assails us. It is a quiet assurance that holds us and calms us and comforts us, and lets us know that it is all right, even when things don’t look or feel all right. As the psalmist notes, we need not be afraid.
Christian pastor and teacher Lewis Smedes tells of a visit he made to a friend who was dying of cancer. As their time together came to an end, his friend looked into his eyes and smiled. “It’s all right,” he said. “It’s all right.” Obviously, everything was not all right. His life was ending prematurely. His wife was soon to become a widow, and his children fatherless. His body was wracked with pain. And yet, in some deep place in his soul, faith assured him that God’s grace was sufficient for him even now, in this moment and under these circumstances, and that God’s power was being made perfect in his weakness (cf. II Cor. 12:9). Like St Paul, he was convinced that no hardship or distress or bodily pain – not even death itself – could separate him from Christ (cf. Romans 8:31-39). He was finding that “in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Romans 8:37).
Faith gives us the power to look earthly reality in the face, to acknowledge its sad and tragic edges, to feel its cruel cuts, to join the chorus of voices that have railed against its outrageous unfairness, and still to feel in our deepest being that it is good and right and a joyful thing for us to be alive on God’s good earth. Faith gives us the power to see life very clearly, to admit that sometimes it seems all wrong and still to know that, somehow, it is all right. “All shall be well,” Dame Julian of Norwich assures us, “every manner of thing shall be well.” That is the voice and experience of one who knows God and believes.
Smedes writes, “When I feel that I am loved while everything about me says I am unlovable, then I am believing, really believing. When I feel that life in this valley of death is much worth the living, then I am believing. When I feel gratitude enough to make me glad, then I am believing. When I feel that all is right with me even when everything around me is the pits, then I am actually believing.”[1]
This type of faith comes by discovery, not by effort. It is not a feeling we can manufacture. It comes to us rather as a gift, often unexpected – the simple assurance that God is God, and that if we can just be still and know that God is God, all will be well. We cannot manufacture such faith, but if we have experienced it we can recall it and trust it again and again.
Suffering is part of human experience, and we will not escape it. But we can believe, like the psalmist and like St Paul, in the steadfast love and faithfulness of God, and discover for ourselves that even when everything seems all wrong, it can still be all right.
[1] Lewis B. Smedes; How Can It Be All Right When Everything is All Wrong? p.10.
Br. Curtis Almquist
Season of Creation
Romans 8:19-23
This morning we begin a 5-part Sunday morning sermon series on the Season of Creation. This “Creation” focus for our preaching and prayers is going on with other Christians throughout the world, across the denominational spectrum. In the upcoming four Sundays, the preachers here at the monastery will focus on themes related to “Creation”: to Learn, to Act, to Advocate, to Bless, and, beginning this morning, to Pray.
Emery House, our rural monastery in West Newbury, Massachusetts, is bordered by the Merrimack River, and so a story about the Merrimack, told by Henry David Thoreau, is particularly endearing. In the first two weeks of September 1839, Thoreau set off on a homemade wooden boat with his older brother, John, to explore the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.[i] Later, while living in his sparse cabin at Walden Pond, Henry David Thoreau wrote about this river experience, his first book. The writing project took him 10 years, not because of the length of the book, but because of the depth of his grief. After the river trek, Henry’s beloved brother, John, had cut himself while shaving and contracted tetanus, dying in agony the following week. John was 28; Henry, 25. In his grief, Henry was destroyed… almost.
Henry David Thoreau’s healing, his resuscitation, came at Walden Pond as he intently watched the goings on of flowers and trees, of birds and animals. Observing the natural wonders, he slowly realized that death is not the end of life but rather an intrinsic part of life. He learned from observation that the very process of decay, diminishment, and death is a life process. It is the way that God has created all of the earth, from the life of the tiniest bird and flower to humankind. Thoreau wrote in his Journal, “Do not the flowers die every autumn? …Yet death is beautiful when seen to be a law, and not an accident. [Death] is as common as life. Every blade in the field, every leaf in the forest, lays down its life in its season as beautifully as it was taken up.”[ii]
Two realizations had happened in Thoreau: in his mind and in his heart. In his mind, he came to embrace a “disindividualized” view of life. Thoreau writes, “The individual may die, but the materials that make up the individual do not. They are subsumed into new forms and so live on,” true for every living thing that has ever been created.[iii] And emotionally, Thoreau’s grief in his brother’s death never went away; however his grief came to be companioned by gratitude and wonder. Thoreau’s love for his brother, John, his joy in the life together they had shared, and his many memories had not died. They actually took new form and lived on. Thoreau realized that death is not the end of life but, rather an essential part of life, by God’s design, and this is something we share with everything and with everyone and for all time. Thoreau said that, in a certain sense, there is no death; everything is part and parcel of life. Thoreau’s epiphany brought to my mind what we pray at a funeral, that at death, the life of this departed one “is changed, not ended.”[iv]
So we look to the whole of creation as if it were an icon, a window through which to know God on God’s terms:
- the window of creation opening our eyes to the majestic beauty of God;
- the window of creation opening our eyes to the panoply of the diversity which God creates, multiplies, shares, and invites; in the beginning, God’s creation teems with beauty and diversity, and God said, “it is good”;[v]
- the window of creation – what is the most massive and mighty, and what is the most tiny and delicate – with a lifespan the prepares and provides for what is next. This is why we call it “the created order.” We read in the Book of Ecclesiastes: “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die…”[vi]
We have an invitation and an inspiration for our prayer as we learn from God’s creation that surrounds us and fills us.
- Be still enough, focused enough, close enough to notice, expectant enough to notice the majesty and terminality of creation. You might ask, “Notice what?” To which I would only smile.
- The autumn season is upon us. The colors and fragrances of plants, and flowers, and trees are changing, preparing the way for the next season. Outside in front of the monastery, the sycamores, these elephantine trees soaring into the sky, have decided this is a year to divest their bark, their old bark. Behold, a fresh skin of bark is awaiting. Very soon these great soaring trees will also surrender their leaves… which leave space for new life to emerge in the spring. In our Rule of Life, we write how the autumn of life prepares the way: “Hardships, renunciations, losses, bereavements, frustrations and risks are all ways in which death is at work in advance preparing us for the self-surrender of bodily death.”[vii] Is death an end in itself? Not at all. Death is part of life; death is the portal to the new life that Jesus promises us.[viii]
- See how the creation that surrounds us does not clutch at its life, but rather lives and gives its life. Letting go is an important life practice. I love an ancient word in the church’s vocabulary: oblation, from the Latin meaning an offering, a gift. We live the gift of our lives as an oblation, offering our lives back to God the custody God has temporarily entrusted to us.
We notice, we acquiesce, we participate most fully in life when we live with the terms by which God has created all of life, which is terminal. All of creation is a teacher for our prayer.
We also have an invitation to pray for the creation that surrounds us. So much of creation does not advocate well for itself when faced with human intrusion. One word captures how I, personally, pray for plants and animals, for birds and fish, mountains and meadows. My own prayer word is “channeling.” I pray that I can channel light; I pray that I can channel fresh water; I pray that I can channel the needed nourishment; I pray that I can channel a fresh breeze. I sometimes pray I can channel CO2 to some poor plant. I am placing myself with one hand pointing to the heavens, and the other hand channeling some life I sense this creature, this created thing, needs. I pray, co-operating with the Creator. I pray I can be a conduit of God’s life to this creature in need. If you were to ask me, “So does your channeling prayer do any good?” I would say, “Absolutely!” “Yes, I am quite sure.”
So this is free-form prayer, what captures my heart’s attention in the moment. And yet there are some specific creatures – by creatures I mean plants and animals, trees and meadows, mountains and waterways – some specific creatures that have a particular, ongoing claim on my heart’s attention. Maybe you, also? To what in creation are you drawn to give attention in your prayer? How do you pray to be a channel of God’s light, and life, and love to this creature? How are you drawn to pray? You might not be ready to publish, but I imagine you do have some prayer practice for creation. What is it?
For almost 20 years I have been fascinated with the work of Johannes Fritz, an Austrian biologist, who has devoted his life to saving an endangered bird species, the northern bald ibis. The ibis is a goose-sized black bird with a bald head and an enormous beak. Perhaps you’ve read about Dr. Fritz who feeds and cuddles the baby ibises and then, using his ultralight aircraft, he leads them in flight to a new safer winter migration path that bypasses the Alps. Global warming figures into the urgency of his work. Dr. Fritz has rewilded more about 300 of these ibises. It’s his life’s work. I mention this particular legacy as an amazing example of passion and advocacy. His passion is what I am talking about when I speak of praying for whatever in creation has captured your heart’s attention. Pray as an intermediary. Be like a third point in a triangle, whose two other points are God and the creature that has caught your heart’s attention. Pray your intercession, and then channel the power or provision for what God gives you for this fellow creature. Pray. Do pray.
In our lesson from the Letter to the Romans, we hear Saint Paul say, “For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God…”[ix] Creation is waiting for us to do our own part in the company of fellow creatures.
“i thank You God for most this amazing day, the words of E. E. Cummings:
“i thank You God for most this amazingday: for the leaping greenly spirits of treesand a blue true dream of sky; and for everythingwhich is natural which is infinite which is yes….”[x]**
[i] Henry David Thoreau’s first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, published in 1849.
[ii] From October 1837 to November 1861, Thoreau kept a handwritten Journal. Thoreau’s Walden was first published in 1854.
[iii] Three Roads Back; How Emerson, Thoreau, and William James Responded to the Greatest Losses of Their Lives, by Robert D. Richardson (Princeton Univ. Press, 2023), pp. 53-54.
[iv] The Book of Common Prayer (1979), p. 382.
[v] Genesis 1 – 2:3.
[vi] Ecclesiastes 3:1-2.
[vii] Quoted from SSJE’s The Rule of Life (Cowley, 1997), chapter 48: “Holy Death.”
[viii] John 14:3-10.
[ix] Romans 8:19.
[x] E. E. Cummings (1894-1962):
i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginably You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
Matthew 25:1-13
Are you ready?
The wise bridesmaids in Jesus’ parable are ready when the bridegroom comes. They have foresight and plan appropriately, and so can follow the bridegroom into the banquet hall. They are ready.
Or were they? Or, rather, is this readiness?
In his retreat address on “Readiness,” our founder, Fr. Benson, sounds a seemingly odd note. Readiness is doing your best under the circumstances that face you—which may mean that you fail. It may mean you fail most of the time. But, Fr. Benson continues, “it may be that [your] failure is the way in which most is to be done. It may be that [you] will effect more than another person who might have brought some natural gift to the work and have succeeded in it.”[1]
Readiness, then, is not the preparation and training for success, but rather the presentness of our attention and the immediacy of our response to God’s call. This kind of readiness would have seen wisdom not in bringing extra lamp oil, but in waiting on the bridegroom—waiting and trusting that what he sought was not a lit lamp but a listening heart.
Today begins the Season of Creation. We join with Christians around the world to lament our individual and collective failures to care for God’s Creation, to pray for the healing and renewal of our relationship with other creatures, and to add our voices to theirs in praising the Creator of all: “The Lord is King,” we sing together with all creation, “let the earth rejoice” (Ps 97:1).
The sheer scope of the climate crisis’s impact on both the natural world and human communities, many of which are already socially and economically vulnerable, may lead us to despair that any action we take will matter, will effect change. The emergency daunts us, not just because of its vast scale but also our comparable smallness. Who are we to take it on? We don’t have the expertise or the stature. We haven’t prepared adequately. We aren’t ready, and we may despair that we are destined to fail.
But readiness isn’t about getting it right, of being prepared, of succeeding. It’s about attending to and responding to God’s call, of being present to what God is saying to us now—even if we don’t feel up to it, even if we fear that we’ll fail. In this Season of Creation, God moves us, God prompts us, to pray, to learn, to act, to advocate. God meets us where we are and invites us to partake of God’s blessing and renewal of the whole of Creation. All we need do is listen and respond.
Are we ready?
Amen.
[1] R. M. Benson, “Readiness,” in Instructions on the Religious Life, third series (London and Oxford, 1951), 93. This was a retreat address to the (all-male) Society; for this sermon, I have updated the bracketed pronouns from “he/his” to “you/your.”
“God’s people shout for joy, sing songs of joy, return from the fields in joy. God restores the fortunes of Zion—and their sadness is transformed into joy. Joy is their response, their witness to God’s working in the world.”
Br. Lain Wilson invites us to shout for joy.
“What are your gifts? You are uniquely you, and so are your gifts—no one else will have them in the same combination or proportion or magnitude. What are your gifts, and what fruit can they bear? Make that fruit your prayer today.”
Br. Lain Wilson encourages us to take our unique gifts and make them our prayer to God today.
“We’ve inherited a tendency to fight. Bending over backwards attempting to make others approve of us. Accumulating, trying to fill an aching absence. Commanding and clinging, trying to grab control. The Exodus reminds us of this truth: we cannot save ourselves. We are like slaves in Egypt and dead-end at the Red Sea. We need a Savior.”
Br. Luke Ditewig takes us back to the Red Sea and reminds us that the Lord will fight for us; all we have to do is be still.
“I'm sure I'm not the only one here who has at different times and in different ways been moved to pledge my total allegiance to God, only to find the initial enthusiasm and zeal fading away -- sometimes within weeks or even days. It's not easy to sustain such commitment, just like it's not easy to keep New Year's resolutions, and most of us, most of the time, will find our good resolve fading with time. What's the answer to this?”
Br. David Vryhof encourages us to drop the shame and guilt and simply offer ourselves to God anew.
“We read, “Jesus put before them another parable…” Yet another parable… I can imagine some people in Jesus’ crowds holding their heads and saying under their breath, “Oh dear, another parable…” I wonder if some of Jesus’ mixed reception was because of his steady stream of parables. Parables are not straight talk.”
Br. Curtis Almquist ponders the power of parables and invites us to consider, personally, these timeless treasures which Jesus gives us to unpack.
“Mary Magdalene is, especially for John, the prime example for us of being a Christian. First, Jesus chose Mary and healed her. She followed along and witnessed his teaching. Jesus continued to come, surprise, and reveal including amid deep grief. Jesus sent Mary to share what she knew, first to a small group of men huddled in fear. Mary was apostle to the apostles.”
Reflecting on the witness of Mary Magdalene, Br. Luke Ditewig invites us to consider how we have been chosen by Jesus to be witnesses.
“This idea of going to God with a question, a genuine question, open-handed, neither clinging to something as an expectation nor closed to new things that we might receive and might surprise us, going to God open-handed, genuinely with a question, whatever that is, big or small, presupposes a God who is alive, who communicates, and has these desires and wills, and wants to share them with us.”
Br. Lucas Hall encourages us to free God from our tidy philosophical concepts and engage actively with the Living, life-giving God.
“What is God calling you to today? How does saying yes to God unsettle your life, your sense of security? What are you afraid to risk? Hear Jesus’s words—“have no fear”—and know that he will be with you, always.”
Br. Lain Wilson reflects on fear as our natural human response to the risky call of God.
Matthew 9:14-17 Jesus is using rich metaphors, but very mixed metaphors when talking about the value of what is old and what is new in life. Jesus speaks of life being like new wine, needing to be saved in new wineskin. Jesus came to do a new thing, to make all things new, to give us…
Br. Jonathan Maury
Acts 2:42-47
Psalm 23
1 Peter 2:19-25
John 10:1-10
‘Are you saved? Have you been saved?’—the usual opening lines of the would-be Christian evangelist’s speech when accosting a supposed unbeliever. Sincerely held convictions and good intention usually lie behind these expressions of concern for our ‘spiritual’ well-being. But a ‘one-step’ profession of accepting Jesus as your Savior leading immediately to the state of ‘salvation’ is simplistic and can be dangerously ego-centered. Personally ‘achieving salvation’ is not a check-list item for being ‘admitted to heaven’ when we die.
Listen for a moment to words from an Anglican Communion evangelism document entitled ‘God’s Sovereignty and Our Salvation’: ‘Salvation is at the very heart of the Christian hope and the promise of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is the gift of reconciliation and transformation, given to humanity by God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.’ Salvation as transformation and reconciliation, proceeding from the Triune God who is love and relationship: this understanding and promise signals an ongoing, dynamic, shared process. In this understanding, salvation, ‘being saved’, is a never-ending and ever-deepening relationship of believers with Christ, and with one another.
As the evangelism document goes on to stay, ‘The gift of salvation is understood first and foremost by Christians as given by God through the incarnation, cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ.’ This is the salvation, the being saved, which is boldly proclaimed in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Gospel calls us to examine what it actually means ‘to be saved’; to embrace the fulness of this salvation and to understand its meaning and urgency for our mortal lives and how we shall live, in these present days.
The teachings of our Savior Jesus draw constantly on rich images of salvation in the ancient scriptures. Images which reflect the people of God’s lived experience of being saved abound: The Israelites’ deliverance from slavery in Egypt and exile in Babylon; as well as from famine, attacks from enemies and times of communal and individual suffering. Jesus teaching continues the theme of salvation as deliverance with a focus on liberation from sin, disease and death. Jesus refers frequently to salvation as healing, and as a movement from brokenness to wholeness. Jesus also taught the way of eternal salvation in his own person: in his coming among us, calling us to turn again to God; in healing the sick, providing for the hungry and lost and raising the dead Jesus taught the way of salvation above all by his faithful self-offering for our sake in his cross and resurrection.
Today in the Gospel according to John, Jesus cries out: ‘Whoever enters by me will be saved!’ In images drawn from the breeding and keeping of sheep, Jesus proclaims himself as the savior, the shepherd, the Good Shepherd. Jesus freely mixes together the imagery of being at once the shepherd and the gate of the common sheepfold. He is the one who comes in through the front gate—and not the enemy who sneaks in by climbing over the fence. He is the one who leads the sheep out to pasture for nourishment, and it is he who guarantees the safety of the sheep with his own life. He is the one whose voice the sheep know and can trust. ‘I am the gate’, Jesus declares. Only in the light of the cross and resurrection, can we truly understand what Jesus is saying: After my sheep are in the fold, I will lay my body across the opening. No sheep will step over me to stray, and no wolf can get in without getting past me first. ‘Those who enter by me will be saved.’
I experience here a challenge and an invitation from the Savior Shepherd. I am to follow him in the path of self-offering love and service after his example, whatever the cost. He is the shepherd and gate of the sheepfold who saves me from my wandering self-centered ways. This is the Shepherd who saves me even in the midst of my wrongs and bad choices. The crucified and risen One liberates me from the illusion that I am God—or at least that I am my own god. The eternal presence and action of the Good Shepherd is saving me. He is saving my life, all our lives, by transforming us in his own image and likeness that we may become the beloved of God’s fold, now and for ever.
We will never be abandoned by this Savior. The Good Shepherd has accomplished—and opened for us—the way of salvation. He who laid down his life for us has won and freely offers to us eternal deliverance from sin, disease and death. The grace, healing and protecting love which flow from Jesus’s self-offering still lead us—in and out—through every circumstance of life. By the Savior Shepherd’s power and love, we are being saved now. Salvation is a present reality—though not yet fulfilled in us. We need to be saved again each time each time we believe ourselves to have ‘arrived’ at salvation, either through illusions of our own success, superiority, knowledge—or even supposed goodness.
Our reading from Acts of the Apostles characterizes the community of salvation as one in which baptized disciples of Jesus ‘devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.’ We are being saved today by following the first disciples in this way of Jesus: through radical sharing of resources one with another; by seeing our possessions as the gifts they are; in making provision for all in need; in giving thanks for all things as our praise and proclamation of the Savior Shepherd. ‘And day by day the Lord was added to their number those who were being saved.’
In the beloved community to which we have been called, the Savior dwells within us, each and all. He is ever with us as the gate, giving admission, offering welcome and protection in the fold, and gathering us into his one Body. The good Shepherd is ever in us, living and serving through us, guiding and correcting, caring and nurturing, challenging us to live abundantly by following in his way of self-offering love. Jesus our Redeemer Shepherd is ever present for us, as the daily Bread for which we pray, the true food and drink nourishing us as servants in God’s pastures, the pastures of justice, peace and ever-saving love. Amen.
Sermon for 4 Easter, Year A
Br. Luke Ditewig
John 3:1-15
What’s next? Much anxiety stems from what we don’t know. Fearing uncertainty, we often grasp what we know and have. Nicodemus, a religious leader, came to Jesus sounding confident. “We know who you are.” We know what is possible and impossible. By what you’re doing, “you must be a teacher from God.” Jesus replied, “No one can see the kingdom without being born from above.” How is that possible? Nicodemus asked. “Can one enter the womb again?” Jesus said, “One must be born of water and spirit.” How is that possible? Nicodemus came thinking he knew what’s possible and what’s true. Nicodemus came at night, a sign that he’s in the dark, that he cannot see, and does not know.
We, too, are often in the dark, trapped, thinking we can see. We get trapped by the certainty that someone will act a particular way. We assume from experience and claim our knowledge. Perhaps you’re like me finding yourself grasping with assumptions, holding so tight that you cannot hear another possibility about that person, or about yourself, or about God. Out of anxiety we construct containers of limiting expectations. We grasp at knowing Jesus and like Thomas we want to see. We want evidence and think we know what we must have.
Perhaps “born from above” is Jesus’ invitation to “not knowing,” to not assuming, to an openness to discover more, or to a childlike playful perspective.[i] In play, we’re open to new ideas, and there are endless possibilities. What might happen? How does this work? Let’s try. To play is to act with freedom and inhibition, unconcerned. Playfulness goes beyond knowledge, assumptions, and experience.
A playful perspective honors mystery. There is so much we do not know, and that’s ok. There is always more than we can know about the other. There is more than we will know about ourselves. There is always more, so much more about God than what we know now. As we Brothers say in our Rule of Life[ii]: “The gift of silence we seek to cherish is chiefly the silence of adoring love for the mystery of God which words cannot express. … In this silence we learn to revere ourselves … and to honor the mystery present” in every human being.
We cannot fully grasp God or each other. Playfully pray with God who is mystery and playfully live with one another. Our Risen Lord keeps coming in surprising and unexpected ways along the road, on the beach, on the water, in the ordinary where you are now.
What are you anxious about today? What are you grasping? How might you be trapped clinging to assumptions about another, about yourself, or about God? To what are you holding on so tight that you may not be able to hear well? As one beloved child to another: What else might God be doing? Let’s playfully take a different look. Where is hope here? Look around. Look upside down. Let go. Lie down in silence. Listen. Facilitate creativity by anticipating more. Behold mystery with courageous curiosity. What’s next?
[i] Jean Vanier (2004) Drawn into the Mystery of Jesus through the Gospel of John. New York: Paulist Press, p75.
[ii] SSJE Rule of Life, Chapter 27: Silence
Br. Curtis Almquist
John 20:19-31
The apostle Thomas is often branded as the stooge of the apostles – “Doubting Thomas” – but that is both unfair and inaccurate. In actuality, the opposite is true. There are two encounters in the Gospel, prior to what we’ve just heard, that shed light on the apostle Thomas. One scene was in Galilee, when Jesus first said to the disciples that he would return to Judea because his friend Lazarus had died. Very risky for Jesus. The disciples knew full well about the death threats against Jesus (and probably against them, too). Many of the disciples protested Jesus’ plan to return to Judea. But it was Thomas who really understood Jesus. Thomas pleaded with his fellow disciples not to desert Jesus but to stay with him. Thomas said, “Let us go that we may die with Him!”[i] Perhaps more than any other disciple, Thomas was prepared to abide with Jesus to the end. Thomas had been following a Messiah whom Thomas knew would suffer and die. Not true, it seems, for the other disciples.
The other scene was in the Garden of Gethsemane, just before Jesus was seized. Jesus said, “Let not your hearts be troubled…. I go to prepare a place for you… and you know where I am going….” No. No idea. It seems only Thomas had the courage to admit that the disciples were clueless. “My Lord,” Thomas says, “We do not have the slightest idea where you are going! How can we know the way?”[ii]
Jesus is then crucified. When Jesus, resurrected, first appears to the other disciples who were hiding in the Upper Room, Thomas was not with them: neither hiding his willingness nor his readiness to serve his crucified Lord. What exactly Thomas was doing that evening, when all the other disciples were huddled together, we don’t know. But given the evidence we have in the Gospel, we could well imagine that Thomas was out doing what he had always done with and for Jesus: helping, healing, feeding, speaking in the name and love and power of Jesus.
And that is a much fuller picture of Thomas. That is his story, what we know of it. After Jesus’ crucifixion, when Thomas meets up with the disciples, and they tell him their news that Jesus has appeared to them, alive, Thomas is incredulous. Thomas knows these other disciples: their arguments, their vanity, their betrayals, their blindness, their duplicity, their deafness, their hardness of heart. Could he possibly trust their report? No. Clearly not. He doubted their experience, because their experience was not his experience. With such transparent candor, Thomas says to the other disciples, “Unless I see in Jesus’ hands the print of the nails, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe. I simply cannot believe you…” As we read, it was not until Thomas had personally, physically, undeniably seen and been touched by Jesus was he, Thomas, willing and bold to respond, “My Lord and my God!”
I find Thomas a great hero because of his courage and clarity to value his own experience and needs, and to express them. He was not asking to know about Jesus; he was not banking his life on other people’s experience of Jesus. Thomas knew he needed to experience Jesus’ resurrection personally, in a way that Thomas would be able to believe. Jesus did not have monochromatic relationships with people, then and now. Jesus’ relationship with Thomas was very different from Jesus’ relationship with Peter, was very different than Jesus’ relationship with the Beloved Disciple, very different from Jesus’ relationship with Lazarus and his sisters Martha and Mary of Bethany – not to be confused with Mary of Magdala; nor Mary, wife of Clopas; nor his own mother, Mary. Jesus has uniquely personal relationships with everyone he encounters, then and now. The apostle Thomas gives us a very helpful inspiration.
As much the same as we all are with a very similar needs, common hopes, typical fears, an expected longevity, and virtually-identical DNA, there is one way in which we are not at all the same. I’m drawing on the insight of George MacDonald, a Scottish poet and minister, and a mentor to C. S. Lewis. We are not the same in our experience of God. Each and every person has an indelible and a unique relationship to God. Each person has been created and fashioned by God, like no one else. Each one of us can know and worship God as no one else can.[iii]
Over many decades, as I have had the privilege of listening to people talk about their lives and what matters to them, I have never heard the same story. As I have listened to people talk about their longing for God, their awareness of God, their experience of the love of God and power and mystery of God, every story I have ever heard has been utterly unique and real. We find in the witness of the apostle Thomas a kind of “double faithfulness”: Thomas, being faithful to his own integrity, his own experience of Jesus. Clearly, his experience overlapped with that of the other disciples, but not identically. We also see in Jesus a kind of faithfulness to how we have all been created so uniquely, and with such distinguishing experience. Jesus validated Thomas’ unique experience of him, and so he does ours. So he does yours.
Each and every one of us can know and worship God as no one else can. And for each one of us, God has a different response. Drawing again on George MacDonald: in every person there is a kind of longing, an “inner chamber” which only God can enter. There is also a chamber in God, into which none other may enter excerpt you, the peculiarly unique person you are. There is no one else in the world like you. Never has been; never will be, God knows. There is no one else in the world like you. You are precious, God knows, and God uniquely loves you. Jesus says very intimately, “I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me.” “…I call every sheep by name.”[iv] Jesus has your name. Jesus knows your story.
[i] John 11:11-16.
[ii] John 14:1-7.
[iii] George MacDonald (1824-1905), from An Anthology of George MacDonald, edited by C. S. Lewis (1960).
[iv] John 10:1-5; 14.
Br. Curtis Almquist
Matthew 28:1-10
On this day of resurrection, we all share something with these faithful women coming to the tomb. We also share something with the disciples and with Jesus. We share woundedness. We are all wounded. Jesus is wounded by the scourgings that preceded his crucifixion, and the horrific piercing wounds hanging on the cross. None of these wounds is yet healed. And Jesus’ heart is also wounded by the betrayal and abandonment of his closest friends, the disciples, who literally left Jesus hanging. The women, who were there when they crucified their Lord, witnessed it all, a horrific experience. They are wounded with trauma, with grief, and with fear. Meanwhile we know that the disciples are hiding – hiding in their own fear, and guilt, and shame. So much trauma.[i] On this day of resurrection, everyone in the Gospel story is wounded, and this is likely true for many, if not all of us here. You are bearing your own wounds in body, mind, or spirit: wounds that have come at you from beyond your control, or wounds self-inflicted. You also may know the wounds of the cross, what it has meant for you “to take up your cross and follow Jesus.”[ii] Here we all are on this day of resurrection: Jesus, the faithful women, the disciples, and we ourselves alive, wounded. All of us. We acknowledge Jesus’ resurrection and, at the same time, acknowledge that everything is not all right in our world and in our own lives. We are wounded.
This is why Saint Paul speaks of “the hope of the resurrection.”[iii] He says, we have hope in the resurrection because we do not yet completely experience it.[iv] We hope for the resurrection of the dead: those who have died in old age with disease, or diminishment; and those who have died unexpectedly in tragedy. In the resurrection to come, we have the hope they will be given new bodies and a new life. We have the hope they will know the healing in death that they did not know in this life. We also have the hope that, in our own death, we, too, will be made new and will be reunited with those who have gone before us. In the Book of Revelation, the last word in the Bible, we are assured that in the resurrection, our wounds will be healed. As we read, God will “wipe every tear from our eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more.”[v] This is the hope of the resurrection to come.
This morning we have the joy of baptizing Eva Katherine Heaps. All of us who are witnesses of Eva’s baptism are invited to renew our own baptismal promises.[vi] This renewal is a living reminder of our own personal participation in Jesus’ death and resurrection. In our baptism, we believe that Jesus has come to live within us. We are no longer the sole occupant of our lives. In a very mysterious way, Jesus has come to make a home within each of us. Within you. We are being filled and formed from the inside out by Jesus through his death and resurrection. We are being conformed to Jesus.
The church calls this “the paschal mystery.” The word “paschal” comes from Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek words for the Passover, when death “passed over” the ancient children of Israel.[vii] Paschal. And the word “mystery.” A mystery is a hidden truth that is revealed. Paschal mystery: a hidden truth, revealed. The truth is that life is a paradox. Life comes out of death.[viii] Life is a recurring cycle of loss, then recovery, then transformation.[ix] The paschal mystery: loss, then recovery, then transformation. This paradox can be very difficult to believe, especially if you are now living in the midst of significant loss, if you are now walking through the valley of the shadow of death, if you are grieving.[x]Right now, if you are keenly aware of how wounding or devastating life can be, there is only one way to understand the mystery of how loss, then recovery, then transformation will happen for you. And that is by hope, the hope of the resurrection.
When I say “hope,” I am not talking about optimism. Optimism is based on what we can see. Hope is based on what we can remember.[xi] We draw our hope for the present out of our own past experience of loss, then recovery, then transformation. In the face of many odds, you are still alive. Your life has extended into this new day. It is not just Jesus who is a walking miracle; you also are a walking miracle. You can draw on the hope of the resurrection out of your own miracle memory from the past. We claim our present hope in the resurrection, not from what we see but from what we remember. What you remember.
This morning we arose in darkness. When you are in the middle of a dark night, there is absolutely no clue that a dawning will happen, no reason to even imagine light will ever come again… except if you can remember that, amazingly enough, the dawn has happened before. Out of a dark night, the dawn has come in the past. This memory gives hope that the dawn shall happen again, miraculously.[xii] The resurrection – your resurrection – will dawn on you, as it has before, and that is a promise Christ leaves with us this Easter day.
Franz Kafka, the great European novelist of the 20th century, said: “Everything that you love, you will eventually lose. But in the end, love will return in a different form.” That truth is a version of the paschal mystery, that life comes out of death.[xiii] Not the same old life, but a new life comes out of death. This is the hope of the resurrection. Hallelujah!
[i] See Mark 12:12; John 20:19.
[ii]Matthew 16:24-26.
[iii] Saint Paul is quoted in The Acts of the Apostles 23:6.
[iv] Saint Paul in Romans 8:22-25 – “We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”
[v] Revelation 21:4.
[vi] The Book of Common Prayer (1979), pp. 292-294.
[vii] “Paschal,” from the Aramaic pasha pass over,” corresponding to the Greek, pascha, and Hebrew. pesah: “to pass over.” The English word “Passover” was coined by William Tyndale (1530) in reference to God’s “passing over” the houses of the Israelites in Egypt when the first-born Egyptians were killed (Exodus 12).
[viii] “Mystery,” a religious truth known by divine revelation, a mystical presence of God, from the Latin, mysterium, from the Greek, mysterion.
[ix] “Loss, recovery, transformation,” a formulary of Bishop Rowan Williams, quoted from Rowan’s Rule by Rupert Shortt (2008); p. 152.
[x] A riff on Psalm 23:4.
[xi] See Romans 8:19-25.
[xii] The ancient prayer, “The Exsultet,” is sung at the outset of the Easter Vigil at the lighting of the Paschal Candle: “…How holy is this night, when wickedness is put to flight, and sin is washed away. It restores innocence to the fallen, and joy to those who mourn. It casts out pride and hatred, and brings peace and concord. How blessed is this night, when earth and heaven are joined and [humankind] is reconciled to God. Holy Father, accept our evening sacrifice, the offering of this candle in your honor. May it shine continually to drive away all darkness. May Christ, the Morning Star who knows no setting, find it every burning – he who gives his light to all creation, and who lives and reigns for ever and ever.” The full text for the Exsultet is found in The Book of Common Prayer (1979), pp. 286-287.
[xiii]Quoted of Kafka in Bittersweet; How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole, by Susan Cain (2022), p. 109.
Br. Jack Crowley
Good Friday is a long night. Good Friday is a long night dominated by grief and passion. Good Friday is a solemn start to a glorious weekend.
We all know the joy we are going to feel Easter morning. In about 36 hours, we are going to be right here again. We’ll be ringing bells and proclaiming the resurrection of Christ. We know what’s going to happen.
But tonight, we take the time and space to remember what it was like for those followers of Jesus who didn’t know what was going to happen. We remember what it was like for them on that fateful Friday in Jerusalem when Jesus was crucified. They didn’t know Easter was coming. They didn’t know they would find the stone rolled away from the tomb, they didn’t know they would find folded linen, they didn’t know Jesus was going to come back.
All they knew was that after years of witnessing countless miracles, teachings, healings, feedings… Jesus was dead. Dead. Not just wounded or away on a mountainside, just dead like a plain old human being, and seemingly gone forever.
Try to imagine how devastating that must have been for them. The only begotten Son of God undone by a cross and nails? How could this be? He’s the son of God, he’s supposed to win.
Try too to imagine the grief Jesus’ followers must have felt. All the hopes and dreams that had for and with their life in Jesus, now impossible, killed by the crucifixion. There was nowhere to turn to, no backup plan, no failsafe, this was life now, a life without Jesus.
On Good Friday we gather not to make ourselves feel bad for no reason, we gather together to share in that grief and to share in that passion. We come with our own anxieties, our own frustrations, our own shortcomings, and our own confusion. Tonight we bring these to God and say well what now? What should I do? Help me.
Good Friday may seem morbid, but Good Friday is healthy. Good Friday is a time to get real, a time to get honest about who we are and how we’re doing, a time to get closer to God. Good Friday is not easy, but it’s worth it. We have to take the time to deal with the shadows of our life and faith. How else will we see the light if we haven’t spent some time in the darkness?
I can’t help but remember my first Holy Week here as a monk at SSJE, one of my elder Brothers kindly warned me that seeing the chapel stripped bare on Good Friday might be unsettling. In all honesty, I didn’t think much of his warning. I thought to myself I’m a tough guy, I can handle it, I’ll be fine.
Then at 2:00 AM on Good Friday, I came down from my cell to do my hour at the all-night watch. I came out this door here and turned to bow like I had done so many times before, and suddenly I stopped. There was nothing there. No crucifix, no candles, no linens, no nothing. It was like coming home to found out your house had been broken into. I had this horrifying thought of well what am I bowing to? What am I doing here?
I turned around and saw the church was dark, no light was coming through the saints in the stain glass windows. I looked up and saw the sanctuary lamp empty, I turned and saw the tabernacle undone.
I remember my legs actually shook a little bit, I was wobbly as I walked to the altar of repose. I sat down on a chair in front of the Sacrament and just kept telling myself ok just breath, pray, and focus on God in front of you.
We all have moments like these in our lives. Moments when it feels like the foundation we had so set so firmly beneath us crumbles. Moments when who we thought we were doesn’t quite match up to reality. Moments when what we thought we knew for sure was suddenly in doubt. Moments when we realize we need God more than we can ever express.
Good Friday is a time to pray and express desperate passion for God. A time to acknowledge that we don’t always have it all together, no matter how composed we may appear to be on the outside. A time to acknowledge that there are certain wounds we haven’t quite fully healed from.
Good Friday is a time to remember that we are all carrying our own cross. We are all fighting little wars in our own head. We all have anxiety for the future, guilt over the past, and shame that we are not the person we wish we were. Our journey to Easter is a long confrontation of these hard truths. A long journey with our own cross.
Inevitably on that journey, we will ask ourselves why are we carrying this cross? Why is it so heavy? I thought this would be easier.
Everyone here tonight is struggling with something. Perhaps it is driving you crazy. Jesus struggled too. Jesus struggled just as we do. We are not alone in burdens.
The cross is a reminder that in our walk with Jesus, things get real. The cross is the place where our hopes and dreams meet reality and always survive. The cross is the place where we consider that maybe God’s plans for us is better than our own. The cross is where we let go of bitterness and grab hold of gratitude.
So tonight we venerate the cross in the midst of our own struggles. We venerate the cross not always knowing what we are doing, who we are, or where we are going. We venerate the cross wither we are ready for it or not.
Good Friday is an affirmation of life. Good Friday is an affirmation that we do here on earth matters. Good Friday is also a reminder that one day will be our last day. Our time here is temporary. Let’s make the most of it. Amen.
Br. David Vryhof
John 13:1-17, 31b-35
Some years ago I had the privilege of taking a course with Dr. Stanley Hauerwas, a prominent theologian who was then on the faculty of the Divinity School at Duke University. Dr. Hauerwas, the son of a bricklayer, was a straight-shooting, no-nonsense kind of guy who believed that living as true disciples of Jesus in the world would necessarily put us in conflict with the culture which surrounds us. That was a radical statement to make, but what was even more shocking and unexpected was his insistence that participating in the Eucharist was one of the most radical actions any Christian could undertake. Tonight’s liturgy, I think, can help us understand why this is true.
Tonight, we watch in wonder as the only begotten Son of God, the Eternal Word who was “in the beginning with God” and through whom “all things came into being” (Jn 1:1-3), stoops to wash the dirty feet of his disciples. Tonight, we behold the Incarnate Son of God, the “King of kings” and the “Lord of lords,” tying a towel around his waist, pouring water into a basin, and assuming the role of a servant. Tonight, the King kneels before his subjects; the Master washes the feet of his disciples.
This is not how the world works. In the world there are pyramids of power. At the top are the rich, the powerful, and the intelligent. They set the standards and enforce the rules. At the bottom are the weak, the poor, the vulnerable, the oppressed: all those without power and without a voice. This is true of every human culture. In every human culture there is a pyramid of power.[i]**
Jesus subverts the pyramid of power by taking the place of the least and the lowliest. He stoops to align himself with those at the bottom, those in the last place, the place of servants and slaves.
For Peter this is unacceptable. “You will never wash my feet,” he insists (Jn 13:8). He does not yet understand that the Reign of God which Jesus has come to inaugurate and proclaim is an “upside-down kingdom,” in which the first are last and the last first, in which the greatest are the servants of all. He does not yet see that in this Kingdom, there are no second- or third-class citizens: Every person is valued, every person is honored, every person is loved. Jesus subverts the pyramid of power, turns it on its head.
Instead of a pyramid of power, we are given a new image, the image of his Body. In the body, every member is precious, and each part – whatever its abilities or limitations – contributes to the whole.[ii]
Jesus insists on washing Peter’s feet, not because he is instituting a new ritual in which we all must take part, but because what he is demonstrating here is essential to his message of love. Unless Peter can grasp this, he will have no part to play in the New Community of Christ’s Body.
“I have set you an example,” says Jesus, “that you also do as I have done to you” (Jn 13:15).
‘Just as I have knelt before you as a servant,’ Jesus is saying, ‘so you are to kneel before one another, rendering loving service. Just as I have gazed into your eyes and affirmed your dignity and worth, so you are to gaze into the eyes of the lost and the forgotten, the poor and the marginalized, and reflect back to them their dignity and worth. Just as I have lovingly washed your feet, so you too are to touch the lowly with kindness and gentleness, lifting them to their feet so that they may stand with you, in freedom and dignity, before the God who has created and redeemed us all.’
“I have set you an example.” ‘Seek out the broken and the lost. Listen with compassion to those whose dignity has been trampled upon, who have come to see themselves as failures in the world, who have forgotten – or never really known – what it is to be loved, truly loved, just as they are.’
What a contrast Jesus’ values are to the ways of the powerful, who so often are consumed with protecting and promoting their own interests!
By washing the disciples’ feet, Jesus does not diminish his authority. He is still their “Lord and Teacher” (Jn 13:14). But he has come to show them a new way of exercising authority, a new way of being with others that is characterized by humility, compassion and loving service. He exercises authority not from above, but from below. “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them and their great ones are tyrants over them,” the Teacher said. “It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mt. 20:25-28).
The Church has often lost sight of this call which is so essential to its life and ministry. We have often gotten caught up in the “pyramids of power” that reward the wealthy and privileged, and burden the poor and the powerless. Sometimes we have done so unconsciously. We have not realized the degree to which the structures of society have been organized to benefit some and penalize others. We have not been fully aware of the countless ways in which we and others at the top of the pyramid profit by reason of our race or class, our educational opportunities and our social status. We have not been willing to see and acknowledge that we have allowed others to do the difficult, strenuous work that we ourselves are unwilling to do, often enduring long hours without adequate compensation.
In this country, we cannot escape the fact that our nation’s prosperity is due in large part to the billions of hours of unpaid labor taken from African slaves who were allowed no rights; who worked under the constant threat of violence and/or abuse; who were treated as property to be bought, sold and traded, rather than as human beings with God-given dignity. We have relied on their labor to build our industrialized society, just as the pharaohs of Egypt relied on the labor of slaves to build their pyramids. And we continue to benefit from the labor of those who manufacture our clothing and grow our food, but whose lives are full of suffering. Sometimes we have participated in these structures unconsciously. But at other times we have been fully conscious and have done our best to preserve the status quo, simply because it benefits us. Whenever and wherever the Church forgets that the poor and marginalized are at its heart, whenever and wherever it aligns itself with “pyramids of power” for its own benefit and gain, its witness is compromised and its message is drained of its power to transform human lives, including our own.
To walk in the footsteps of Jesus is to catch his vision and to follow his example. It is to kneel with the lowliest and the neediest, and to raise them up. It is to gather with them around the Table of the Lord, recognizing our oneness and unity. It is to stand together before God as equals, all with our hands outstretched to receive the gift of life that nourishes and sustains us in our struggle to make real the Kingdom of God on earth, as it is in heaven.
Why is participation in the Eucharist such a radical action? Because when we come to this meal, we have a chance to align ourselves with this alternative vision and give witness to its values, which stand opposed to the values of the world. At this table we have an opportunity to pledge ourselves to participate in the subversion of pyramids of power that benefit the strong and oppress the weak. At this table, each of us becomes one with every other sinner on the face of the earth who stands in need of God’s forgiveness, grace and power – not above them or below them, but one with them.
What could be more radical than that?
[i] Source — Vanier, Jean; Drawn into the Mystery of Jesus through the Gospel of John; (New York: Paulist Press, 2004); pp. 223-239.
[ii] See I Corinthians 12:12-31.
Br. Todd Blackham
We have travelled so far with Jesus today. It already feels like it’s been a week since we waved our own palms. Everything all turns so quickly that it’s hard to remember the joy, and excitement, and hope of that Palm Sunday. It reminds me of when I got my driver’s license and three days later I put my car in a ditch. I had planned so I could get it as soon as possible. Applied for my learner’s permit the very day I turned 15 and a half. Made the appointment for my 16th birthday to take the road test, and that was midterms in high school so my first solo drive was back to school to take a German exam. Then, because I was the first of my friends to drive I rallied a crew to go hang out at the mall! A snowpacked dirt road and my own inexperience sent me sailing into a fencepost instead of making the turn I intended. We all survived, and no one was injured but that day ended far differently than any of us had anticipated. It didn’t end my life as a licensed driver but it sure did make me drive differently in the future.
Was it foolishness to think some teenager was safe on the roads? I confess, when I think of how young I was I wonder. Was it foolishness when the crowds, in their longing and hope, broke into shouts of “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” Hosanna! Save us! Was it just a childish, Heysanna, Hosanna parade with a bunch of excitable people who had let their emotions get the better of them?
I don’t think it was. On that Sunday of Palms so many years ago, human hearts had been awakened to hope long dormant, the dawn of promises-realized was breaking and they had to cry out! Despite the trouble that follows, Jesus never told them to stop. Instead, he said that if they kept silent, the stones themselves would cry out! Hosanna! Save us! The entirety of creation swelled and swooned as if to make a long-awaited embrace. Hosanna!
What happened next feels like whiplash. What happens next doesn’t feel like the way things were supposed to work out. What happens next feels cruel and unnatural.
But, what happened next was the answer to that prayer, save us. Jesus was obedient, was willing to answer that prayer even though it wouldn’t unfold the way the people expected it would. But the reactions, the shift in tone, the whiplash is worth paying attention to. What caused everyone to turn so quickly? What made them switch from placing branches at his feet to hefting a cross upon his back?
There is a peculiar, predictable pattern in humankind in which we become inspired, inflamed, and make a show only to back-peddle and retreat. It happens in all sorts of scenarios, an football team rides a wave of success during the season and crescendos into the playoffs, an army will muster and unite an impressive force to respond to a threat, an artist taps into that mystical muse and produces something of genius, and then, they flounder. The team balks, nervous under the lights of the big game. The troops quail when they see that the enemy isn’t immediately backing down, and the artist’s next attempt pales in comparison. Have you ever made big plans and resolutions, made a strong start, then waned in enthusiasm?
In part, it’s just the ambiguity that comes with being human. In our inner worlds, we may grow boldly inspired but when we confront reality it frightens us. It’s a kind of nervous energy that dissuades us from daring. It wonders, am I really up to the task?
But this hesitation is also a response to real opposition. Not just human to human opposition but the opposition of the principalities and powers of this world, attacks of the enemy. There are dark forces bent on separating us from the love of God and each other. The spirit of rebellion that first turned it’s back on the source of life did not stop trying to bring others with it. This is the enemy from whom we need to be saved. Who wages a war between us and within us. And this is the enemy whom Jesus rode into Jerusalem to confront.
And Jesus showed us that a triumphal entry may not lead where we think it’s going. The psalm says: “form a procession with branches up to the horns of the altar.” Not to the throne first, but to the altar, the place of offering, the place of sacrifice, the place of surrender. It is the place where only Christ as king can lead us and make the offering that we are powerless to make.
In Jesus’ willing obedience he gathered up all those palms of praise and in them took the brokenness, fear, and sin inside us and all around us. He took it to the cross and there it died. There is an invitation to join Jesus in this Holy Week to return again to the great acts of salvation and the depths of God’s healing love. It may not be pleasant or feel victorious to encounter anew the barriers within us and among us that keep us from God. It may be hard to accept being loved at such a cost. But as we come to know our need of salvation we will recognize how much we have been saved. Our prayers for salvation will turn again to songs of praise for provision.
So, sing your hosannas and wave your palms, because Jesus is willing to take all of it and make it right. If we take this ride with Jesus we will find ourselves in fearful, painful places because God would not allow us to be in them alone. If we take this ride with Jesus, we will find that our hopes and dreams have dark shadows but the light of Christ will illuminate and brighten them. If we take this ride with Jesus we will find ourselves headed to the altar of sacrifice but that will not be the final destination because if we take this ride with Jesus on this Sunday we will arrive with him in glory next Sunday.
Br. Luke Ditewig
John 9:1-41
One of my friends sees as I don’t. He walks into a room and immediately senses things in others and in me to which I’m oblivious. Sometimes he says: “Don’t you see?” and I reply: “No, you’ve got to tell me. I can’t see.” That’s hard to say, to realize being in the dark while another can clearly see, to discover and experience limitation in the light of another’s ability.
In today’s gospel story, Jesus walks along and sees a person who is blind and who doesn’t ask for help. Jesus doesn’t ask what he wants. Jesus comes and opens his eyes. In response, a flurry of questions by the neighbors and the leaders: How did this happen? Was he really blind before? Who is Jesus? They struggle with question upon question, arguing, accusing, reprimanding, and rejecting. This community is stumbling, groping in the dark, trying to escape the truth that one born blind now sees because of Jesus.
As the community struggles and stumbles, this person grows to see even more. He is honest about limits: “I don’t know where Jesus is. I don’t know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” He also comes to know Jesus. First, he says “the man called Jesus” touched me. Then “he is a prophet.” A bit later “If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” Finally, again face to face “Lord, I believe.” First, he receives literal sight, and second, insight, awakened to Jesus.
All of this is unexpected and unrequested. Jesus saw, came, and healed. Jesus looked to find the one driven out. Jesus sees people in need and goes looking for people rejected, freely giving as the Light of the World. Jesus comes also as the Good Physician, saying: I came to heal not those who think they are well but those who know they are sick. “I have come not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.”[i]
The man knew he was blind. In contrast the stumbling religious leaders are so self-confident, so sure that they can see and are well, that they refuse the plain truth that they are sick and blind. They are like world we experience which focuses on ability, climbing ladders, and covering weakness by getting caught up in rules, barriers, and pointing to splinters in others’ eyes.
In another story, Jesus corrects his followers from being excited by all they had accomplished. Then Jesus prays: Thank you, God, “because you have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants.”[ii] Put another way: you have hidden things from those who think they know and instead revealed them to those just beginning.[iii] Hidden from people who ignore their need and revealed to those who acknowledge their need.
We are all born blind. None of us can see without Jesus shining on us. God does not invite learning self-sufficiency but traveling the way of the cross, growing from a seedbed of need. The first stage of becoming a monk, the novitiate, is about two years, and it is also lifelong. We are always beginners, always returning to basics. Over and over, we return to our need, and that it is God’s power at work in us by amazing grace.
Lent invites this basic return. We Brothers understand our vow of poverty as not only what we do with physical possessions. Poverty also includes acknowledging individual and communal weakness, brokenness, and need. In our Rule of Life, we Brothers say: “The knowledge and acceptance of our fragility preserves us from complacency and illusion, continually throwing us back on the mercy and compassion of God.”[iv]
Dear friends, what is your poverty? Where are you in touch most now with your fragility, your weakness, your need? As to the one born blind, Jesus comes here, particularly in these places, to meet you with power in mercy and compassion.
Sometimes when my friend says, “Don’t you see?” we burst out laughing for we know and accept the truth together. It’s wonderful to be known and loved in our weakness. It’s a gift to be companioned in our poverty, trusting that Jesus meets us here. For accepting we are blind, by God we can see.
[i] Luke 5:30-32
[ii] Luke 10:17-21
[iii] adapted from The Message
[iv] SSJE Rule of Life, Chapter 8: “Engaging with Poverty”
John 4:5-42
Religious art is fascinating, not simply because of what it depicts, but how the artist portrays the subject matter. Art, in whatever form, is about interpretation, and the arts acts as the interpreter, using a particular medium or form to do so, with each interpretation radically different than the next. It is fascinating to see how different artists interpret and portray the same subject.
One such piece of art that fascinates me, and I’ve seen it several times, is a small porcelain figurine that depicts this encounter between Jesus, and the Samaritan woman. [1]
Jesus sits on one side of the well. He is tall, handsome, masculine, with lots of shoulder length hair. He is deep in conversation with the woman. She stands, leaning over with her elbow resting on the wellhead. She looks directly at Jesus. Her hair is loose and flowing, and her dress is falling off one shoulder. Her hand is under her chin, just so. She is enticing, alluring, and attractive.
What this piece of art says about the encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan woman is no mystery. In spite of the fact that these figures are purest white (and perhaps that’s on purpose), the message is in technicolour. There is no mistaking that a seduction is in the process. The women, and Jesus, ooze sexuality. You can’t miss the message.
But then, this is how the story has been told to us over the years. It is, after all, the story of an encounter between Jesus and a woman who has had five husbands, and the one she has now is not [her] husband.[2] Why else would she find herself at the well in the middle of the day, when the heat most intense, and no one else is around? Because of her lifestyle, she is humiliated, isolated and ostracized from her community. It’s clear from the context, and what is revealed about her, that she is someone with few morals. She is someone to avoid.
That’s what the porcelain figurine tells us. That’s what the Fourth Gospel tells us. Or is it? Is it?
In the last generation or so, biblical scholarship, like artists, has been looking at Scripture though different lenes; seeing other possibilities than the ones we have always seen. This is especially true as more women examine gospel texts through the lens of their own experience, as scholars, and as women, and try to discover the experience of the women in Jesus’ inner circle of friends, intimates and disciples.
This is certainly true of this passage, which for so long has been subject of certain stereotypical assumptions about the character of this particular woman.
So how might we read this story differently than the way we have read it in the past?
The same day some Sadducees came to [Jesus], saying there is no resurrection; and they asked him a question, saying, ‘Teacher, Moses said, “If a man dies childless, his brother shall marry the widow, and raise up children for his brother.” Now there were seven brothers among us; the first married, and died childless, leaving the widow to his brother. The second did the same, so also the third, down to the seventh. Last of all, the woman herself died. In the resurrection, then, whose wife of the seven will she be? For all of them had married her.’[3]**
One reading of the text is that she is the unfortunate widow of five brothers, and now finds herself widowed once again, this time with no one in the family left to marry her. No one else in the community dares marry her, fearing she is somehow cursed, having had five husbands die. All she can do is to abandon hope, and seek the protection of any man who would take her in, even if it means living with him outside the bonds of marriage.
Another reading of the text suggests that she is equally unfortunate, having married five men, all of whom divorced her for a variety of reasons.
Some Pharisees came, and to test [Jesus] they asked, ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?’ He answered them, ‘What did Moses command you?’ They said, ‘Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.’ [4]**
Divorce was simple, and while a man could divorce his wife for many reasons, a woman could not divorce her husband. Perhaps childless, her husbands had divorced her one by one, in order to marry another to secure an heir. Whatever the reason, it is not her morals, but her situation which has left her reputation in ruins, and forced her to allow herself to be taken in by anyone who would offer her the security of a home.
In both these more sympathetic interpretations, the Samaritan woman’s visit to the well in the heat of the noonday sun retains its power. Alone, isolated, craving kindness, goodness, sympathy, even intimacy and companionship, she makes her way to the well, and to her surprise she finds sitting there a man, Jesus, who takes her seriously; doesn’t condemn, or demean her; and offers her the one thing necessary,[5] living water. [To] those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.’[6]**
Laying aside for a moment the Samaritan Woman’s husbands; the numbers of them; why she had five and was currently living with one not her husband; and her reasons for being at the well alone, during the heat of the day, what other details in the story bear significance to its meaning as a whole?
There are details in the story that follow the pattern of other gospel stories, especially stories that tell of the call to discipleship.
Then the woman left her water-jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, ‘Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?’[7]**
After the conversation about water and living water, the revelation about her husbands, and the meaning of worship, the disciples return with food. It is at this point that the women leaves her water-jar, and returns to the city telling people to come and see. It’s important to note that in other encounters with Jesus, others too leave things behind.
As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the lake—for they were fishermen. And he said to them, ‘Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.’ Immediately they left their nets and followed him.[8]**
Like other disciples who left all in order to follow Jesus, the Samaritan woman leaves behind her water-jar, in order to call others into an encounter with the Lord. Like other disciples who say come and see[9] she too invites the residents of Sychar to encounter Jesus: Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?’**[10]
While her profession of faith is not quite that of Andrew: ‘We have found the Messiah’[11] or that of Nathaniel: ‘Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!’**[12] Or that of Martha: ‘Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.’[13]** It is none the less a step toward faith, and she begins to see Jesus as the Messiah, and invites others to see him as such.
In this way, the Samaritan woman sets the stage, and invites others into an encounter with Jesus, just as do other disciples.
Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, ‘He told me everything I have ever done.’ So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there for two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, ‘It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Saviour of the world.’[14]**
It’s in this way that the Samaritan woman brings us back to the opening verses of John’s gospel: to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.[15]**
Read in this way, the story of the Samaritan woman is a story of discipleship, of conversion, of confession. It is a reminder that God’s invitation to belief is not for the select few, but rather for all who long to drink deeply from the well of living water and eternal life.
The story of the Samaritan woman is a story of longing for connection and reconnection, not only to the communities from which we come, but a connection to God who calls us from our past, into a future, God’s future, where we know ourselves to be born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.
In this way, the story of the Samaritan woman is a reminder that we too have been invited to become God’s children, and like the Samaritan woman, to come to drink from Jesus, the living water of eternal life. And that is good news, no matter where you are from, your situation in life, or what others think of you.
Lectionary Year and Proper: The Third Sunday in Lent, Year A
[1] For a fuller analysis of the Samaritan woman see the essays by Harold Attridge, Steven Hunt and Peter Phillips in Character Studies in the Fourth Gospel, Eerdmans, 2013, pages 269ff, as well as The Women in the Gospel of John by Judith Kaye Jones, Chalice Press, 2004, page 13 ff, and The Women in the Life of the Bridegroom, by Adeline Fehribach, The Liturgical Press, 1998, page 45ff.
[2] John 4: 18
[3] Matthew 22: 23 – 28
[4] Mark 10: 2 – 4
[5] Luke 10: 42
[6] John 4: 14
[7] John 4: 28 – 29
[8] Matthew 4: 18 – 20
[9] John 1: 46
[10] John 4: 29
[11] John 1: 41
[12] John 1: 49
[13] John 11: 27
[14] John 4: 39 – 42
[15] John 1: 12 – 13
Br. Curtis Almquist
John 3:1-17
When I was a teenager I heard a chaplain say that God’s love for us is “unconditional.” On the surface, this sounded fabulous to me because I was a very mixed bag. Actually, I was a mess. And the thought that God actually loves me – me! – unconditionally was something I desperately (though very secretly) needed to know. By that point I was in high school, and it so happens I had trained to be a lifeguard. In actuality, it was like I who was drowning in my own stuff. I needed to be rescued; I needed to be saved from my self-disdain. That’s an adult term, “self-disdain.” As a teenager, I hated myself. So if it were true that God’s love for me, for us, is unconditional, then sign me up.
God’s love for each of us is vast and so personal. Who we are, what we are, however it is we’ve gotten to be where we are, God knows, God lures, God loves. Rather than calling this God’s “unconditional love,” I now think of this as God’s “conditional love.” Because life is inescapably full of conditions and circumstances, changes and chances, and God’s love for us is neither theoretical nor generic. God’s love for us is real and personal, woven into the fabric of our lives from the very beginning. God so loves our own world.
- God’s love mediated through the parents to whom we were born, whether we were desired by them, whether they stayed together, whether they had enough money, or space, or time, or patience, or praise to raise us… how their love for us was informed by their own needs, and desires, and confusions, whether alcohol was present and a problem, whether our upbringing was for us an experience of liberation, or like a sentence of incarceration.
- God’s love mediated through our siblings and cousins, our teachers, coaches, pastors, therapists, relatives, neighbors, co-workers, friends, spouse or partner. All of these people have shared in our formation or, perhaps in some tragic ways, in our deWhether we learned about courage, or shame, or joy, or perseverance, or fear, or patience, even from our earliest days was very much informed by the conditions in which we were raised.
- God’s love for us known in our experience of joy and forgiveness, of sickness and health, of praise and success, of justice and cruelty, of favoritism and desire, of generosity and discrimination; in our experience of what is dependably old and what is excitingly new, in the tiniest and in the greatest of ways.
- God’s love present in our searching for a vocation and a place called “home,” in discovering that we belong, or where we belong, or if we belong.
- God’s love for us known in our experience of finding our voice, or maybe losing our voice, and in our occasions to travel into worlds otherwise unknown…
These are the conditions in which we experience life, and through which we must survive and hopefully thrive. These are the conditions of life, often times less than ideal. But that’s life.
I see these as the “conditions” for our knowing God’s love because of Jesus who comes to us, stooping low to meet us at our own level. We are no longer talking only about a God of the Law, whose ways were unknowable, whose face was unseeable, whose name was unpronounceable, whose heart and hands were untouchable. Rather, we see Jesus who enters the conditions of this world as an innocent and needy child, just as we have, to reveal the real presence of God’s love. Jesus as God Emmanuel – God with us – is not only God above us or beyond us, but God with us, God with you in the conditions and in the relationships in which you have known life, past and present. We are loved by Jesus, not despite our history but in light of our history. God loves you. God loves you. Like we read in the psalms, “You are the apple of God’s eye,” and God adores you, like none other.[i]
Unless we are on friendly speaking terms with our own past, we won’t be able to recognize God’s call into the future. God looks on us as a whole person which, for most people, includes a broken past. God is very frugal in this way, wasting nothing in our lives, desiring to make use of it all. Most people who are searching for God’s love and God’s direction do so because something is missing, because something is not right in their life. They search for God notbecause they are so bright, not because they are so gifted, or successful, or eloquent. They search for God not because they are so handsome, disciplined, healthy, or secure. It’s not because of their glittering image. Their quest to know God’s love is because something is broken in their life – something about the conditions of their past or their present that is damaged or incomplete or vacuous. That break is often God’s entry point. That break is God’s break, God’s breakthroughto them. The Gospel tells us that Jesus has come to seek and to save the lost: lost childhoods, lost chances, lost hopes, lost relationships, lost needs… and to love us back to life.[ii] .
There’s an old adage that says, “Love is blind.” That is not true. I think it is quite the opposite. Love is eyes wide open. Love sees below the surface, deep inside the other person, a kind of merciful insight. This is the nature of God’s love, God’s love for you. The conditions of your life – who you are, what you are, however it is you’ve gotten to be the way you are – God knows, and God lures, and God loves.
In our Gospel lesson for today, we hear the name that Jesus gives for this love. Jesus calls this “being born again,” which sounded corny and certainly impossible both then and now. But Jesus is obviously not talking about a kind of “body job.” This is about being “born again” from the inside out. It’s being saved from the conditions of our life that have blocked our being loved or lovable. It’s the restoration of our innocence to know we are loved by God through all the conditions that have shaped our life.[iii]
This is Jesus’ mission to each of us, to save us from everyday hell. To love us into the fullness of life. This is the healing work Jesus wants to do, wants to keep doing, in all of our lives every day. It is his work. Our only role is to cooperate with Jesus. One brief prayer, and Jesus does his healing work of love in our lives. It’s probably a repetitive prayer we need to keep praying in life, to keep cooperating with Jesus’ to save us with his love. A very brief prayer to Jesus. Only a one word prayer is necessary. One word: “Okay.”
Lectionary Year and Proper: Year A; Lent II
[i] The “apple of God’s eye,” is an evocative metaphor referencing the pupil of the eye. If you are very, very close to another person, you may see your own face mirrored in the other person’s pupil, a very tender and intimate picture. The metaphor is found in Deuteronomy 32:10; Psalm 17:8; Proverbs 7:2; Lamentations 2:18; Zechariah 2:8.
[ii] Luke 19:10.
[iii] The “restoration of innocence” is a phrase from the Exsultet, an ancient prayer at the Easter Vigil acknowledging the work of the risen Christ in the restoration of innocence. See The Book of Common Prayer (1979), pp. 286-287.
Br. Geoffrey Tristram
Genesis 2:3:1-7
Matthew 4:1-11
Today is the first Sunday in the holy season of Lent. ‘I hate Lent!’ So said Jonathan Swift. ‘I hate Lent, with its different diets and herb porridge, and sour devout faces of people who only put on religion for seven weeks.’ I actually like Lent. Many of my brothers would I think say the same. It’s a time to get serious. Not just giving up chocolate. The Jesuit James Martin wrote, ‘Don’t give up chocolate; give up being a jerk! It’s time to get serious about God and our lives. It’s a time to go into the desert of one’s heart to encounter God. A time for deeper prayer, repentance, silence and solitude. To look with unblinking eyes at the state of our lives, our relationships, our world.
The world we live in is a beautiful gift, God’s gift to us. And yet we know that God’s gift has been ravaged and broken. Our greed has plundered the land and damaged the environment. Millions live in abject poverty and hunger. Our wars, as in the Ukraine right now, have and continue to kill and maim and disfigure millions. Our sin has broken and scarred our relationships with one another, broken up families, divided people of different cultures, races, and beliefs. Our world, God’s precious and fragile gift to us is torn and divided violently at every level.
This terrible process is described in the New Testament as the work of ‘diabolos’ or the devil. That Greek word ‘diabolos’ used in the New Testament, literally means, ‘the one who throws apart’. The work of diabolos is essentially to divide, to break up that which was one.
God sent Jesus into the world to wage a great battle. And that battle begins today. On this first Sunday in Lent, St Matthew tells us that ‘Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.’ For forty days, the devil tries every ruse, every trick, every half-truth, to work his terrible work of division and destruction. In keeping with his nature, diabolos tries to tear apart the relationship between Jesus and his Father. ‘If you are the Son of God command these stones to become loaves of bread. If you are the Son of God throw yourself down, and angels will come to bear you up.’ With his weasel words the devil tries to drive a wedge between the Father and the Son; to break the essential relationship of trust between Jesus and his Father.
It is the same distinctive diabolical tactic as used in the garden of Eden. The devil says to the woman, ‘Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden?’ He has cast doubt, and the woman is now not quite clear what God had said. But she does know that the forbidden fruit looks delicious and is a delight to the eyes, and she desires it. So, when the devil says, that if she tastes it, ‘You will not die,’ she takes it. And she gives some to her husband Adam. By sowing the seeds of distrust, the devil tries to rupture the relationship of trust and obedience between the creator and the created. And he succeeded.
Yet Jesus, the second Adam, throughout his desert experience, throughout all the temptations throughout those forty days of testing, remained utterly faithful to that relationship of trust. He would not allow the devil to tear and destroy his relationship with his heavenly father. The wilderness experience was the first of many battles for Jesus. Over the next few years, during his ministry in Galilee, Jesus would do battle daily with the divisive and destructive work of diabolos. Healing the sick, mending the broken hearted, reconciling and forgiving sinners, redeeming a torn and shattered world.
But the final battle was still to come. The final battle would take place at Calvary. For if the work of diabolos is to divide and separate, the work of Jesus is to reconcile. When he died on that cross, he won the decisive battle. With his arms outstretched, Jesus was mending a broken world, bringing God and humankind together again, and bringing humankind and the whole created world together again. Jesus came for this purpose. Jesus came to mend. Or as St Paul put it more theologically in Second Corinthians, ‘In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself.’ The work of diabolos, the great divider, the great destroyer’ has been defeated once and for all, by the great reconciler, Jesus Christ, through the cross.
On this first Sunday of Lent, God’s invitation to you and to me, is to join in the great work of reconciliation, of mending. St Paul in Second Corinthians says, ‘God has given to US the ministry of reconciliation.’ That is all of us here! Each one of us who has been baptized. For in our baptism we were all marked with the sign of the cross – the sign of forgiveness and reconciliation, and in our baptismal covenant we promised to share in the work of mending. Christianity is really all about mending. That’s what redemption means; mending something that is torn or broken. And that is what each one of us is called to do – to share with God in mending that which is broken. Mending our relationship with God, mending our relationship with one another, mending our relationship with our broken planet.
So, how are you doing with the job of mending? Lent is here; a great time to take stock and ask, ‘What are the gifts that God has given me for this work? We all have them; God gave them to us at baptism. What are yours? We are not always aware of them, and they often seem very ordinary, but can be wonderfully used by God. Maybe you’re a good listener. Maybe you have a great sense of humor, to cheer up someone who is sad. You may just have a word of hope to share with someone in distress. You may be particularly faithful in holding others up in prayer. God may be calling you now, to name and use the gifts that you have been given, to use them to mediate God’s reconciling love to a world longing to be made whole and well.
Maybe you know particular brokenness in your own life? Maybe this Lent you will be challenged to mend a broken relationship? Perhaps it is your relationship with God that needs attention; is God calling you to a deeper intimacy?
Are there other areas of your life that need mending? Places of brokenness, that need the power of Jesus’ forgiving and reconciling love? A torn relationship with a family member or coworker?
Maybe you know brokenness and division within yourself? Maybe some secret or besetting sin, some addictive or destructive behavior? Where do you need healing, forgiveness, reconciliation?
The cross is the place to find it; the place of hope and new life. However broken and torn our lives may be, our world may be, we never lose heart, but look to the cross, for there, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself.
So, at the beginning of this holy season of Lent, I invite you, when you come up to receive our Lord in bread and wine, to ask him for healing for what is broken in yourself and in God’s precious creation. And then to offer yourself, body and soul, to share with God in the great work of mending, to which we have all been called.
Br. Todd Blackham
Exodus 24:12-18
2 Peter 1:16-21
Matthew 17:1-9
Psalm 2 or Psalm 99
When’s the last time you were good and truly dazzled? Was it a big budget movie in a state-of-the-art theater, or the big game on an ultra-high def TV? Was it the majestic beauty of a sunrise or the sparkle in a beloved’s eyes? You know the feeling of delighted awe. But, we live in a culture that chases the next dazzling thing so fast that it’s hard to keep pace. We become bored so quickly that it takes increasingly more to wow us again.
The disciples were good and truly dazzled that day on the mountaintop with Jesus. Something was revealed to them that they had not previously apprehended and they reacted in powerful ways. To describe the phenomenon, the gospel accounts use words like dazzling, brilliant, whiter than anyone could bleach, and one translation uses the word glistering. Like a combination of glistening and blistering. Glistering, it makes me think of something that you can see and feel all at once. There’s a kind of excitement that sets in at first. Peter blurts out excitedly about building canopies to mark the place. That eagerness though is only a first response. Soon something else sets in. As the bright cloud enveloped them they were overcome by fear. This has turned into a very different experience than simple amazement.
Some of the artwork depicts the scene with the disciples gazing with a stoic arm up against the light, but I love the more honest depictions with some of the disciples flipped completely upside down, contorted and sprawled out on the ground, terrified.
When’s the last time you were overcome by fear? Heart racing, muscles clenched, ready to fight or flee, the primal parts of our physiology kick in and organized thought recedes for the sake of self-preservation. I was camping with some of my brothers in the woods near Emery House a while back and just as we were ready to put out the fire and go to sleep we noticed a light off in the distance. We really weren’t that far from the main house but we didn’t recognize the source of the light and our senses were heightened. We tried to work through every logical scenario, drunk teenagers wandering the woods, lost neighbors looking for their dog, police responding to a noise complaint. Nothing really made sense and it was hard to think past the adrenaline. It reminded me of a time my family caught a burglar in our house when we got home one evening. As it all unfolded with shouts down the hallway I remember my legs quaking with fear the way they do in cartoons. I have to imagine it was a feeling more like that Peter, James and John experienced that day. Holy trembling, fearful awe.
It may seem out of place to consider encountering God with a sense of fear. But the real power of God may very well be found in a visceral moment that arrests all our supposed rational thought and keeps us alert an attentive to what comes next. That most basic and primitive part of our brain could react but we grow to learn how to think and respond through it. And yet, it is still an important signal when it occurs. God does not want to leave us in fear but God’s awesome glory may trigger that response. Peter’s exhortation in his letter refers directly to that startling moment when the Majestic Glory spoke. He says, “So we have the prophetic message more fully confirmed. You will do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.”
We would do well to be attentive…
The Psalmist writes, “The Lord is King; let the people tremble; he is enthroned upon the cherubim; let the earth shake.”
Why tremble? Because the glimpse the immensity of God, is far more than our creaturely senses can handle; but we have been joined with God in Christ Jesus who became just small enough to draw us in. To make us real enough to exist in the Divine Presence. God is not trying to intimidate us into his love. But when we perceive a shimmer of the Majestic Glory of God our finite nature cannot help but shudder and hold silence until the voice of love calms, and directs us again.
The transfiguration of Christ was a glimpse at the eternal reality of the true nature of Jesus, the only Son of the Father. It was a foretaste of the glory of the resurrected and ascended Christ that paved the way for their understanding later. The initial shock gave way to profound contemplation and companionship as Jesus completed his holy mission in their midst. We turn our senses to this revelation as we close this season of Epiphany, the manifestation of Christ to all people and the invitation to follow him. And we look now toward the journey into the valley of the shadow of death in Lent.
Perhaps there is a descent back down the mountain with Jesus. But we may rather view this stage not as a descent but as setting off from the base camp of Transfiguration to the peak of Resurrection. Like the base camp of Mt. Everest, which sits at over 17,000 feet above sea level, with another 12,000 feet to the summit.
If we wish to ascend that mountain, to behold the fair beauty of the Lord, we might do well to renew the wonder, awe, and even trembling fear that reminds us of the true magnitude of the Almighty’s nature. We would do well to be attentive. And the way to ascend that mountain is to stay near to Jesus, just as Peter, James, and John did.
Stay near to Jesus. It’s easy to drift away to important work, slogans that inspire, or spiritual satiety. We may need to return to Jesus, our lover and redeemer, not our employer. We might need to expand our language when we’ve let catchy phrases limit our relatedness to the Person of Christ who cannot be easily tamed. And we may need to rekindle our spiritual hunger in the light of God’s immensity. Stay near to Jesus.
Stay near to Jesus in prayer, literally. The great gift of the incarnation, of God becoming human, was to give us access to the divinity in human form. Let your prayer be in the presence of Jesus, pull up another chair and see him sitting there with you, the scarred hand that bespeak his awesome love grasping your hands. It will feel different, more immediate.
Stay near to Jesus, who is the Word of God, by dwelling in Holy Scripture. Read a whole gospel, make a study of the parables, dig into those hard sayings that confound, challenge, and intimidate you. Consider the person of Jesus who is not easily contained by simple summations but always pushes at the boundaries of our definitions.
And stay near Jesus in this Holy Sacrament, consider again the profound wonder of Christ’s body and blood mingling with your human body. “Let all mortal flesh keep silence and with fear and trembling stand, ponder nothing earthly minded for with blessing in his hand, Christ our Lord descendeth, our full homage to demand.” The hymn is from a fourth century liturgy and known as the Cherubic Hymn, sung as the gifts were brought to the altar.
Beloved of God, we are caught up in a holy mystery too wonderful for words, too powerful to remain unaffected, and too dazzling not to stand in awe. In our attentiveness, may the morning star rise in our hearts; that Jesus’ transfigured light might strengthen and transfigure us in holy trembling and fearful awe of the works of God to come. Amen.
Br. Curtis Almquist
John 1:29-42
We could infer from this Gospel account that John and Jesus had met for the very first time the day before, when John baptized Jesus. John had said, “I myself did not know him.” Not so. They did know one another. They were cousins. They would have known each other since their births, their impossible-to-believe births, which had been predicted by angels. Angels, no less! Jesus, born to an unmarried mother who insisted she had not had a sexual union; John born to a mother who was old enough to be his great grandmother.
If it was important enough for Mary, while she was pregnant, to travel the 90 miles from Nazareth to the Judean hills to see her pregnant Aunt Elizabeth, John’s mother, it is unimaginable that they would not have visited each other after the births of their miraculous sons.[i] Visited many times. No one in the world could understand one another like these two couples could: Mary and Joseph, and Aunt Elizabeth and Uncle Zechariah. These two boys, Jesus and John, had to have known one another, and probably looked to each other, befriended each other, confided in each other, shared the burden of their imposed identities with one another. Both of them loved going into the desert. Maybe they camped together? They were cousins, virtually the same age, the only child of their parents. Neither son had married; neither had pursued a profession that was identified; neither, it seems, had found their voice to fulfill the “angelic predictions” until rather late in life. Both of them, at the time of this Gospel account, were about age 30. They had to have known one another. And known each other very well.
But we have to take John at his word. John says, “I myself did not know him.” John had never known Jesus like this! John had clearly experienced something new and stunningly powerful in his cousin, Jesus with his baptism. John, who had initially been resistant to Jesus’ request to be baptized, was undeniably overcome by something that had happened in Jesus’ baptism. John now says for the first time, “I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God.”[ii] What John had now seen and heard absolutely convinced him that the destinies that both he and Jesus had carried all their lives was coming into being. John’s cousin, Jesus, was the Messiah after all!
The next day following his baptism, Jesus walks by John, who is talking with two of his own followers, one named Andrew.[iii] Andrew, and we can assume his companion, were fishermen by trade. Fishermen were a distinct class. They were savvy, but were not known to be literate. Their work was strenuous; they stank; they were typically crude in manner, with rough hands, and rough speech, and rough in their treatment of others.[iv] Except that these two Jewish fishermen – and a host of other people – were on a very earnest spiritual quest anticipating the coming of the Messiah. Which is why John was baptizing people, preparing them for the coming Messiah. So Jesus walks by, the day after his baptism. This is John’s cousin… but he has become much more than just a cousin. John points out Jesus to these two fishermen, naming Jesus, “the Lamb of God.” This would have been a very arresting thing to say to fellow Jews accustomed to the sacrifice of lambs in the Temple: Jesus as “the Lamb of God.” Andrew and his companion set off to track Jesus.
When Jesus notices them, he asks them one of the best questions in the entire Bible, one of the best questions in life: “What are you looking for?” This was at a time when there were many smart but acrimonious factions within Judaism – the Pharisees, the Scribes, the Zealots, the Essenes, and others – who were erudite. But probably not these two fishermen. Jesus asks them, “What are you looking for?” And their answer to Jesus is so disarming, so endearing, and so down-to-earth. Jesus asks, “What are you looking for?” And they respond, “Uhh…” they say, “Uhh… where are you staying?” And Jesus meets them on their terms. He says, “Come and see.” And they spend the rest of the day with Jesus.
We don’t know what they did together, nor what they discussed. I think these two fishermen simply needed to know whether Jesus was real. They had heard from John and so many others the lofty predictions of what the Messiah was to be. They needed to know if he was real. The real deal. Otherwise all this spiritual talk about the coming Messiah – King of Kings, Mighty God, Prince of Peace, Lord of Lords – was way beyond their reach, beyond their interest, beyond their need. They were fishermen, looking for healing, and help, and hope. They needed to know if Jesus, whom John identified as the Messiah, was real and could meet them on their level.
The clinical psychologist and spiritual guide James Finley tells of his first encounter with Thomas Merton.[v] Finley, at age 19, after graduating from high school and surviving an alcoholic and abusive father, entered Gethsemane Abbey, the Trappist monastery in Kentucky. He was assigned to Thomas Merton as his spiritual director. In their first meeting Finley was so intimidated, literally stuttering in Merton’s presence. Merton asked him, “What’s wrong?” Finley screamed at him, “You’re Thomas Merton! What do you think?” So Merton gave Finley an assignment. In addition to his daily round of prayer and worship, of study and silence, Finley was given the work of tending to the abbey’s pigs. A swineherd. Finley tells how Thomas Merton leaned into him and said: “Under my authority, you must meet me each day… and tell me one story that happened that day with the pigs.” Finley thought, “I can do that.” And this began Finley’s long journey to healing from his horrific trauma by talking every day… about pigs.
We have no idea what these two curious, perhaps desperate fishermen talked about with Jesus for the rest of the day, wherever it was he was staying. I assume the conversation included fish talk because that’s what their life was all about. Jesus’ question to them is a good question for us: “What are you looking for?” It’s a profoundly simple question which has successive levels of depth. Plumb the depths. Let that question form your prayer to Jesus. He asks you, “What are you looking for?” And you respond. And then he asks you, “Why?” And you respond. And then he asks you again, “Why?” Keep plumbing the depths in your response, and you’ll eventually get down to what is real, real about you and real about Jesus. It’s what we call “the real presence,” the two of you, really being present to one another.
Lectionary Year and Proper: A – The Second Sunday after Epiphany
[i] John was born to Elizabeth and Zachariah in Ein Karem, Hebrew for “Spring of the Vineyard,” about 5 miles southwest of Jerusalem in the peaceful Judean Hills. Mary and Joseph raised Jesus in Nazareth of Galilee, about 90 miles north of Ein Karem.
[ii] John 1:33-34.
[iii] John 1:40.
[iv] Many of Jesus’ 12 disciples were fishermen (Matthew 4:18-22; Mark 1:16,17; Luke 5:1-11; John 1:43-44).
[v] Dr. James Finley is a prolific author, among whose books are Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps; The Healing Path; A Memoir and an Invitation; Christian Meditation: Experiencing the Presence of God.
Br. Todd Blackham
Isaiah 42:1-9
Acts 10:34-43
Matthew 3:13-17
Psalm 29
John asks an important, honest question, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” He has already recognized what seems like an inappropriate ordering of events. Things are upside down and he doesn’t understand. And Jesus isn’t really going to make things clear to him in advance except by way of confirming that yes, indeed, something extraordinary is at work.
But first maybe we should back up. I mean, we just cleaned up all the Christmas decorations yesterday. The silent night, holy night, wasn’t even two weeks ago and here we are waist deep in the River Jordan on the outskirts of Judea. There was such a long wait for the nativity of our Lord. And then it burst forth suddenly with heavenly hosts singing Gloria. And then begins the Epiphany.
The Epiphany, the manifestation of Christ, is really a collection of vignettes that inaugurate the incarnate life of God. The visit of the Magi, the Baptism of our Lord, and his first miracle at the wedding at Cana, form a kind of triple feast. And each one of them is a scene of the ordinary meeting the extraordinary. Of the natural touching the supernatural, of humanity meeting divinity. They are the opposite of esoteric and vague, they grounded and rooted in human experience in ever widening circles of revelation. The meeting place was here on earth, on this same planet we still use today; in the very human bodies that we still inhabit; all of the senses that we use to perceive this world were turned to perceive another world.
The incarnation happened in an instant but it had been building from the moment creation was spoken into being.
Like kernals of popcorn set over heat to slowly warm and then, without warning one pops open! A burst of soft white flesh amidst the hard yellow kernals. And then another and another, then the rat a tat tat in what seems like a chain reaction. It doesn’t all pop at once but those first little messengers bespeak the rest. Or like the first few explosions of a big fireworks display. A single rocket trailing up into the sky until it breaks wide open in a shower of sparks, then another, and another swelling to a crescendo as a crowd oohs and aahs and applauds. If they all burst at once we could hardly perceive their glory.
The silent night, holy night gives way to some surprising, exciting, even jarring revelations. The visit of the magi must have been a dazzling sort of display to arrive in the rustic accommodations of the couple from Nazareth. Think of the rich fabrics of Persia, embroidered silks flashing and glinting amidst the woolen garb of the Judeans. Consider the heft and sheen of gold, the spice of incense and the thick, potent smell of myrrh next to the fresh clean skin of the infant child. Can you imagine the fancy wrappings of these gifts sitting on the table of a daycare center? This kind of mixing doesn’t ordinarily happen but the extraordinary was being revealed. It doesn’t seem like an appropriate offering at all.
But the flashes of Epiphany are exactly that, the encounter of the supernatural life of God breaking into our world. Father Benson wrote of the call of God as continuous, abiding, and progressive. Of the genesis of it all he says, “Our life is not a supernatural plant which afterwards is to grow with a natural growth. It is supernatural in its origin and supernatural in its development. That same voice of God which called us at the first is ever calling us on, and we must ever be listening for that voice, yielding ourselves to that voice, obeying that voice, acting in the strength of that voice.”
Father Benson would point out that we might need to change our expectations when we perceive that it really is God at work. We can’t keep assuming things are going to develop according to our ideas of the appropriate order. We will be invited to keep attuned, to keep using our senses to listen, yield, obey, and act.
So, when Jesus tells John that “it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness,” he is further revealing the manifestation of the Christ in the only way it could happen. Through the very sensory experience of human life itself. And in the mystical body of Christ, the baptism of our Lord is about our baptism as much as his own, as every baptism that has ever been and all that shall be.
There in those waters on a cloudy day in the wilderness, Jesus approached John and entrusted himself to his arms. He allowed that long-haired prophet to embrace him and lower him into the water up over his mouth, nose, and eyes, his whole body submerged. And then he felt those arms pull him back up, water streaming down his hair and face, breath returning and as clarity returned to his eyes the heavens themselves opened, streaming sunlight down upon him, bright and warm as a dove landed on him and a voice proclaimed, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” Imagine the sensory overload!
The offering made there in that river was the offering of an entire life to the service of God, the submission of Jesus’ will to the self-giving love of the Father. In the manifestation of Christ the whole Trinity of the Godhead was made apparent, practically bursting forth like fireworks. It was an offering that seemed inappropriate, but it was proper to fulfill all righteousness and point towards things to come.
In every sacrament of the church we see the same pattern. We offer to God what is ostensibly foolish, weak, low, and despised and God’s love sanctifies, redeems, and reconciles it. In marriage and holy orders, we offer our finite and flawed lives to abiding faithfulness. In confession we offer our own admitted transgressions to be transformed by the beauty of God’s healing love. We offer our illness, and even our last breaths to God in prayers for healing and last rites so that they might be sanctified to God’s glory. And at this holy table we offer the gifts of bread and wine, which are first and foremost the products of the creation of supernatural God spoken into existence and they become to us the Body and Blood of Christ binding us ever more completely to himself.
Jesus may not have had sins to be washed clean of, but he had his whole will and life to offer to God’s love. I wonder if he remembered the waters of his baptism when his sweat fell like drops of blood to the ground as he prayed, “not my will but yours be done,” and realized that soon his baptism would be complete.
And we were buried with him in our baptism and we rise with him through our faith in the working of God. The working that is supernatural from the start, and goes on supernaturally revealing Christ’s sanctification all things.
Hear again that voice that is ever calling you on. “This is my child, with whom I am well pleased.” Let the waters of this Asperges be the physical sign and seal of your self-offering and receive in the form of bread and wine the holy presence of Christ’s self-offering for you. As you listen, come to yield, obey, and act. Continue to make the offering of your life as paltry as it may seem because it is in fact the manifestation of Christ drawing all people to himself to dwell in the endless love of the triune God. Amen.
Br. David Vryhof
I John 3:1-6
John 1:29-34
“Did you go home for Christmas?” That’s a question you’re likely to hear these days. “Were you at home for the holidays?” “Did the kids come home for Christmas?” It’s a common theme at this time of year. We naturally associate the holiday season with “coming home.” Retailers pick up on the theme, offering us images of families gathered before the fireplace or around the Christmas tree. “I’ll be home for Christmas” plays over the loudspeaker in the grocery store. The idea of being “home” for the holidays appeals to many of us.
But what does “home” mean, really? Is it a place we can return to, or is it more of a longing? For many of us, the word “home” summons up a whole range of things that are past and that cannot be retrieved. The house we grew up in belongs to someone else. Our parents may have divorced – or died. Our siblings may be scattered across the country. The neighbors we once knew have drifted away. For us, “home” isn’t a specific place anymore; it’s more like a whole set of longings… or a collection of special people… or a treasure chest of memories that combine to make us feel safe and loved.
Many of us love the idea of “coming home.” But for others of us, perhaps, “home” was never that fine a place to begin with. Home was the place where mom and dad argued all the time until they finally split up, or where unkind and even abusive words were spoken. For us, “home” wasn’t a place where we felt safe or loved. We’ve had to find our “home” elsewhere – with different people and in different surroundings.
Being “home” for the holidays is important to many of us. But what can the miracle of Christmas teach us about being home?
The opening verses of the Gospel of John remind us that “in the beginning… the Word was with God.” With God. The Word, the Son of God, the one we have come to know as Jesus the Christ, was with God. And not only was he with God, he was God. Once upon a time and before all time, the Word was with God. The Word was, well, home. When God was all that there was and all that there had ever been – and even after God made a universe such that there was something other than just sheer divinity around – even still for the Word of God, to be with God was to be home. In the beginning the Word was home. With God.
But then we read that “he was in the world” (Jn 1:10). In the world. That’s different. That’s not home. The Word took on human form and entered the world to dwell among us (Jn 1:14). He wasn’t home any more. The proof was in the fact that no one recognized him. He blended in with everyone else. Human beings didn’t recognize him and they didn’t receive him.
“The Word was made flesh and lived among us,” says John. The word is literally he “tented” among us. He went camping. Camping is, after all, what you do when you’re not home. You pitch a tent and camp. If it rains, you’re damp in the tent. If it’s hot or cold, so are you. When you camp, you’re not anywhere near “at home” in the usual sense and that’s why people either love camping or they hate it.
In the beginning the Word was with God. He was home, and then he wasn’t. He was in the world. No one recognized him because he was one of us now, living on a kind of extended camping trip, and not a day went by when Jesus wasn’t aware of this. He wasn’t at home. Maybe that’s why, when someone said to him, “I’ll follow you anywhere,” Jesus replied, “Foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no home, nowhere to lay his head.” Maybe that’s why when his mother Mary came to fetch him and pleaded with him to come home to his family, he said, “I don’t have a home or a family, except for those who want to do the will of God.”
In the beginning the Word was with God. So long as he was in the world, he could never be duped into thinking he was home.
Are you going to be at home for Christmas? It’s an odd question when we realize that the One we tout as the “reason for the season” created Christmas by not being home. Christmas is about the homelessness of the Word. Christmas is about the One who knows as keenly as anyone ever has what it means to have a longing for home, to have reason to feel displaced. He was in the world. He made every person in the world, but they didn’t give him the time of day. And he still loved them, to the end.
Are you going to be home for Christmas? He wasn’t. The Word of God wasn’t at home for Christmas, but created Christmas by letting himself be exiled from home. And that’s why there is hope for every one of us who knows that he or she isn’t at home either.
The longing for home is deep within us, but we know we aren’t at home in this world any more than he was. And yet we have hope. Because the Word that was with God and that was God took on our human nature and “camped” among us. He became one of us. So that those who believe could be called “children of God.” (Jn 1:12) Children. Of God. He has given us a Father to whom we can belong forever.
“See what love the Father has given us that we should be called the children of God!” the author of First John exclaims, “and that is what we are!” (I Jn 3:1)
We belong to God. We can never ever be separated from God or from God’s love. We have been given a whole new identity: children of God. That is the good news of Christmas. “The Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth” (Jn 1:14). “No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known” (Jn 1:18). Now we have an identity. Now we have a home.
“Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy” (I Peter 2:10). Now we have an identity. Now we have a home.
Br. Curtis Almquist
The Holy Name of Jesus
Psalm 8
Luke 2:15-21
The federal government tracks a lot of information, including “The Top 10 Baby Names” for any given year.[i]For baby girls, currently the most popular name is Olivia, followed by Emma, then Charlotte, Amelia, Ava, Sophia… and on it goes. For baby boys, currently the most popular name is Liam, followed by Noah, then Oliver, Elijah, James, William… and on it goes.
The naming of a baby is no accident, don’t you know? The child’s given name or names may be the continuation of a family’s heritage, or the opposite: a sign of a family’s wanting to start afresh with the birth of this child. The child’s name may express identity, or dignity, or hope, or gratitude. Sometimes names demarcate a family’s history. One of my nephews has a middle name “Taif,” which is Saudi Arabian, because he was born while his father (my brother) was working in the Persian Gulf. We are known, remembered, identified, and called by name.
As children grow up, they will name their belongings, and they will be in relationship with everything they name. Children will often take on new, imaginary names for themselves, and with the names, new exploratory identities. I remember one summer as a young camper far away from home, I told all my cabin buddies that they should call me “Butch,” because I was tough. (That’s probably hard to imagine….) It worked pretty well for a week at camp, but my new identity disappeared when I returned home to face my little brother. He certainly did not know me as “Butch”; he was still struggling to simply say “Curtis” or “Curt,” which he could not pronounce. What he could say was “Dirt.” “Hi Dirt!”, which hardly suited someone trying to be “Butch.” For names to last, they need to fit.
Sooner or later, most of us as children or adults will suffer the wound of being called a name, a derogatory name, not of our choosing. The name-calling may be associated with our given name which has been twisted into something cruel or comical sounding; maybe it’s a mean name which jeers at some physical trait or mannerism we bear; maybe the name mocks our family, or our ethnic, or racial, or religious heritage; maybe the name-calling is a sign of others’ jealousy. On the other hand, a person might be given an endearing nickname, perhaps a diminutive, as a token of affection. I received an email from an older acquaintance named Edgar who was distinguished person of great stature. His email address was “edgarito” (little Edgar), which is how he was affectionately known as a child. Very endearing.
Our own name is what uniquely distinguishes us from others. However our name also connects us to others because knowing our name marks a relationship. People who know us will call on us by our name. With someone knowing our name, they can identify us, include us, and have a certain claim on their relationship with us. Everything important is given a name. And in the name and in the naming, there is the power of both identity and relationship.
Our psalm appointed for today – Psalm 8 – points to God’s magisterial authority and infinitude, God, whose dwelling place is eternal in the heavens: “O Lord our Governor, how exalted is your Name in all the world!” God, whose name is so exalted, but not speakable: God, whose power, unpredictable; whose distance, unfathomable; whose face, unseeable; whose hands, untouchable; whose name, unspeakable… until now, with the birth of Jesus.
In the calendar of the church, today is designated as the Feast of the Holy Name. The Gospel according to Luke remembers today as the 8th day following Jesus’ birth, when Jesus would have been brought to the Temple in Jerusalem to be circumcised and publicly named.[ii] The God who is Creator of all, who is otherwise beyond our knowing, beyond our grasp, takes on a face, and a form, and a name as a child of Bethlehem. God is re-presented in our world, born just like we are with hands, and a heart, and eyes; with desires, and expectations, and needs, and fears; and given a pronounceable name: Jesus. Jesus has a named family of origin; he is called on by name; he addresses people by name, some of whom he renames. He is eventually mocked by name. The long-awaited Messiah – who had been prophesied to be “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, King of Kings, Lord of Lords” [iii] – is born as a very vulnerable baby and with a human name: “Call him Jesus.” Jesus, a name which both distinguishes him – because his name sets us apart from us – and simultaneously opens the possibility of a personal relationship with us, because we can know him, remember him, and call on him by name, which he invites.
Some days our best prayer, our best plea, and our best praise is simply to “namedrop”: to use the name that God has shared with us: Jesus, which literally means, “saves.” “Yahweh saves.” Knowing Jesus’ name gives you access. Use Jesus’ name. Breathe the name of Jesus as you make your way through the day. Breathe the name of Jesus while you watch, or wait, or worry, or wonder. Knowing his name invites your relationship. Breathe the name of Jesus for others. Call on Jesus by name. Jesus will live up to his name for you to understand you, help you, heal you, give you hope, and save you when you are lost. Namedrop “Jesus.”
“Jesus…” “Jesus…” “Jesus…”
[i] The Social Security Administration’s most current survey of baby names was completed on December 31, 2021: https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/
[ii] Matthew 1:21; Luke 1:31.
[iii] Names for the Messiah, from Isaiah 9:6 – “For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”
Isaiah 40:1-11
Matthew 18:12-14
If you’ve ever gone astray –
If by choice or by chance, you have found yourself separated – from God; from belonging; from the integrity, the dignity, or the honesty that once anchored you;
If you have found yourself in a place bereft of the guidance, the reassurance, or the forgiveness you so desperately needed;
Or from the touch or the glance or the words that would weave you once again into the fabric of connection, relationship, and love…
If yes, the question Jesus poses in tonight’s gospel is meant for you.
Does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray?
What do you think? Jesus asks.
What does your reason tell you? What does your conscience know to be right? What does your heart whisper into the dark?
Of course he does. The shepherd goes in search of the one who needs him.
It is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost.
Throughout 2020, I had the opportunity to pray my way through the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola with a spiritual director. These Exercises clarify a person’s desire for spiritual freedom, and make extensive use of prayer with the imagination.
Because it radically changed my experience of what it means to be found by Jesus, I’d like to share a scene that unfolded in my own prayer as I engaged with this parable.
You might choose to close your eyes and receive these words as the testimony of a lost sheep.
I find myself in an arid, desert landscape, forgotten in a vast expanse of wilderness. I am a young lamb, trapped inside a dense thicket of thorns. My face is free, but my entire body is immobilized. The more I struggle, the more caught I become, and the long, dark thorns tear through my fleece and the tender flesh beneath. I no longer have the voice to cry out and I am on the verge of despair. Vultures circle above me, waiting.
But then I see him, one like a Son of Man coming toward me. Is it a mirage? No, he is here now. I am afraid, but this man is my only hope.
I summon one long, feeble cry that is louder and stronger than I thought possible: it echoes from the cliffs, and in each echo a layer of my sorrow, my regret, my shame, my self-blame for this miserable situation.
The man bends down low. He must get on his hands and knees to reach me. He himself wears a crown of thorns, and his face is marked with streaks of dark blood like tears. He bears this crown with unfathomable grace. He gazes into my eyes and sees me: my fear, my despair. Our foreheads touch, and he whispers: “This isn’t your fault.”
And then; he plunges his strong arms into the heart of the thorn bush and wrenches it open. The thorns that hemmed me in on every side are now an open place, though they gouge the man’s own flesh. With one arm he holds the bush open and with the other he grasps me and lifts me free.
I breathe. I live. This is mercy.
The man hoists me onto his shoulders. From this vantage point, I now see in all directions: bush after thorn bush all the way to the horizon.
Each bush contains a lamb like me, captive and struggling for life.
In a voice clear and resolute, the Son of Man says,
“I will not rest until the last lamb is free.”
“I will not rest until the last lamb is free.”
Jesus said, It is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost.
The Orthodox archbishop Kallistos Ware, who died in August, often returned in his pastoral teaching to a fundamental question and aspiration: “Dare we hope for the salvation of all?”[i] By this, he meant not simply all who confess Jesus Christ as Lord but all – all who have been, and are, and shall be. All who, at the hidden core of their being, long for “the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”
What do you think? Jesus asks. What does the voice of this Shepherd whisper within you?
Though the Truth is God’s alone, the question is meant for each of us. Dare we hope for the salvation of all?
In Advent, we embrace the mystery of God’s plan of salvation. Wrapped in that mystery, we wait. With God’s own humility, we watch. God’s response grows in the deep womb of time, until Christ is all in all.
“He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms and carry them in his bosom.”
We wait to discover just what that means – and we dare to hope for all.
Lectionary Year and Proper: Year A, Second Week of Advent
[i] https://www.clarion-journal.com/files/dare-we-hope-for-the-salvation-of-all-1.pdf
“The destination and end of our walk with Christ is to finally meet God face to face, dwelling in light inaccessible. To know even as we are known. To behold the beatific vision of the Triune God, and there to dwell, to make our habitation. But there is no direct flight, and the trek is often uphill.”
As Advent begins, Br. Todd Blackham invites us to consider where we are on our pilgrimage of faith.
“Again and again in the gospels, we see Jesus perceiving the intentions of the heart, whether for good or for evil, and responding in ways that reveal the truth. The Triune God sees and knows everything about us, even what we keep hidden from others. When we realize that God sees it all and still loves us with an unwavering love, we can risk being honest in our prayer.”
Br. David Vryhof urges us to be truthful with God in prayer, in response to the loving truthfulness with which we are seen and known by our loving God.
“It seems that “softening” and “allowing” are vital elements in the practice of Christian endurance. To put it another way: there is a subtle interplay between striving and trusting, with the accent on trust. Trust calls forth a softening and allowing of reality as it is even as striving calls for a firmness or rootedness in the face of immense pressure.”
Br. Keith Nelson teases out the complex interplay of the Christian call to endurance and striving, which find their fullest expression in trust.
“What will the church look like in a year, never mind five? What will this country look like in a week, never mind a month? What will the world look like tomorrow, never mind the one our grandchildren will inherit? We look at what we have, and long for what we had, and our hearts sink as we gaze at the challenges ahead, knowing full well there are still other hills, still other sets of steep stairs, still other cliff edge paths, that we cannot yet see.”
Looking into an uncertain future, Br. James Koester echoes God's words of comfort and reassurance: take courage; I am with you; do not fear.
“If you are now in a dark night of the soul where pain, despair, loss, or fear are your companions, how very difficult. You need the comfort that Jesus promises us. Presume that your dark night is the eve of the dawning of a new day, and that you are not alone. You are being carried on the wings of the prayers of those who have gone before you and who are looking out for you.”
Br. Curtis Almquist finds companions for our prayer on All Saints Day and the eve that precedes it, All Hallows Eve, Halloween.
“As a follower of Jesus with my own diverse and at times complicated identity, where and how do I belong in this equally diverse and complicated realm of Christianity and the Church? And what does such “belonging” entail?”
“Through faith we can come to know again the original blessing of belonging to God and recover that divine contentment which is God’s desire for us.”
“When we stand in the mess of life with others, acting in love for the sake of Christ, we can get a taste of the divine life now.”
“‘Hey! Do you go to church? Why?’ ‘Are you a Christian? Why? Just tell me in a few words.’ What would you say? If you only had 30 seconds, a kind of ‘elevator speech’, what would you say? ‘I go to church because…’ If you don’t say anything, you may have lost an opportunity. St Peter in this first letter tells us, ‘Always be ready to give an account for the hope that is in you.’ So, what would your 30-second account be?”
Br. Geoffrey Tristram finds inspiration in the witness of Philip, for what makes a good evangelist, and he urges us to be ready to give an account of the hope that is in us.
“We are products of the Enlightenment, so-called, a culture not schooled in the discernment of good and evil. And yet, you can hardly turn a page of the Bible without encountering the battleground of spiritual forces.”
Br. Curtis Almquist reminds us that, today more than ever, we are being fought over between the forces of good and evil.
“Saint Francis’ teaching is about our sharing an intimate relationship with all sentient beings and beyond, and not just other people. Every living being, every element of creation, is a “creature” of God, all of us given a share of God’s magnificent panoply of life.”
Br. Curtis Almquist invites us to take from Saint Francis the inspiration to be in a reverenced relationship with God's gift of life both within us and around us.
“The Climate Emergency we are facing today is a human problem, the result of our plundering the earth for its treasures at the cost of life’s delicate balance. Much of it is the result of human greed. Our greed is destroying the planet, polluting our air and our waterways and oceans, eliminating whole species of animals from the earth, and threatening our very existence. If we continue in this way, we will, before long, render the planet uninhabitable. The Climate Emergency has been caused by human beings, and only human beings have the power to reverse it.”
Br. David Vryhof cautions that money is not the problem; greed is; and that true richness comes when we learn to enjoy God’s world, and live with contentment.
“As Christians, we are as susceptible as anyone else to extreme consumerism: each of us can all too easily get caught up in a whirlwind of needless buying and spending. I am also sure that the most important way that we can begin to heal our planet is to allow God, daily, to heal our hearts; to mend our divided hearts. Pope Francis, in his beautiful encyclical, Laudato Si’ writes, “The emptier a person’s heart is, the more he or she needs to buy, own and consume.” So, fill your heart every morning with God! ”
Br. Geoffrey Tristram shares three contemplative practices that can help us to experience contentment, free us from the desire for more, and help us to love and appreciate what we already have.
“Listen. What is the message from creation that surrounds us? What is God saying through the soil, sprouts, springs, and sparrows? What is God saying through poor and neglected places and peoples? We are invited to listen.”
As we enter the Season of Creation, Br. Luke Ditewig urges us to listen to the voice of creation, and to pray outside.
“Our life’s invitation is to learn to “be silence” so we have space to receive the work and words of God. It is a good thing to cultivate stillness and silence within ourselves.”
Br. Curtis Almquist finds hope in a line from the Psalms, reminding us that our emptiness is actually openness to God.
“How might God be calling you today to be courageous in speaking the truth when you recognize injustice, when you see through the lies and deceptions of the powerful, when you perceive their hypocrisy and deceit? How might God be calling you to speak up when you recognize racism, misogyny, xenophobia or other forms of discrimination? Silence empowers the oppressors. Be bold. Speak truth. And never give up.”
Br. David Vryhof looks to the witness of John the Baptizer for the courage to speak truth to power, whatever the consequences.
“God meets us in our human condition where we are most in need. The New Testament verb for this is “save”: Jesus “saves” us, and that Greek word has the urgency of being “saved” by a lifeguard when someone would otherwise drown. Jesus saves us.”
On the feast of Irenaeus, the great theologian of the Incarnation, Br. Curtis Almquist marvels at how God is united to us in our full – and flawed – humanity.
Luke 9:51-62 “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”[i] This is the line that Jesus gives to a would-be follower. I think this is interesting, because there are three would-be followers in this story today. The next two seem reluctant, and…
“Our redemption is about more than just harnessing a power beyond human strength. It’s about returning to that relationship of self-giving love that is the essence of the triune God. There’s a wideness in God’s mercy that calls people of all sorts to live new lives fit for eternity.”
Br. Todd Blackham reminds us that our salvation and our survival are not unconnected.
“Certainly the sacrifice of Alban is worth remembering today. We recall with awe his unwavering commitment to Christ, a commitment that prompted him to give himself up to torture and death in place of a Christian priest. We stand in awe of the unflinching witness of the martyrs and pray that, if that day should ever come to us, we would be equally steadfast and fearless in the profession of our faith in Jesus Christ.”
Br. David Vryhof challenges us to live mindful of our unspoken witness and its power to change the lives around us.
“Choose life. Every single day we are called to make many choices. They are often very small and unnoticed. But slowly and unseen, over the years, these choices SHAPE our journey through life. The choices we make, however small, set us on a path which may or may not lead to life.”
Br. Geoffrey Tristram invites us, as we navigate the paths ahead of us, to “choose life,” that our hearts may overflow with the delights of inexpressible love.
Luke 8:26-39 Our Gospel this morning is a crazy story. It has stampeding pigs drowning in a lake, a crazy naked guy, demons negotiating with Jesus, and finally a city full of people asking Jesus to leave. If listening to all this makes you feel all over the place, you are not alone. Things get…
“Lucas, in the offering of your life to God today, as a witness to Jesus who is Light, and Life, and Word of God, you are, in a sense, standing in the baptismal tank at St. Philip’s with Bernard. Like Bernard, you don’t know where you will be led, but with him you are saying, O give me grace to follow.”
Br. James Koester and the community celebrate the Profession in Life Vows of Br. Lucas Hall.
“God is always coming to us in “the Sacrament of the Present Moment.” Pay attention to now. God’s presence is always in the present. Now. There will be “thin places” where God breaks through to you, often mysteriously, in here-and-now. Pay attention to now.”
Br. Curtis Almquist celebrates the teaching of Evelyn Underhill and, along with her, encourages us to pay attention to the here-and-now.
“A sense of urgent longing to cross over a frontier from nominal belonging onto a path of transformational belonging within the body of Christ…If Jesus is turning your life upside down but you’re discovering that that’s what you want more of, you’ve felt it. The ways we express this longing, like the zealous of the fourth century, are astonishingly diverse. But they have one thing in common: they are a direct response to the prompting of the Holy Spirit, who “searches our depths” and “searches the depths of God.” It is the depths our hearts long for most.”
Br. Keith Nelson connects our own experience of zeal & the intensity of our commitment to Christ to the mission of one of the early monastics, Basil of Caesarea.
“Today we celebrate the great gift which God poured out upon us all on the Day of Pentecost. When the Spirit came down to those disciples they were changed, transformed. Their spirits were recharged with life and power. They came back to life. And that same promise is made to us, today.”
On Pentecost, Br. Geoffrey Tristram gives us a wake-up call – to pray.
“The witness of the martyrs is powerful, not because we are in awe of what they lose, but because we are inspired by what they have, and we find ourselves wanting it. We see in them a life of courage, inspired by their faith in the resurrection of Jesus. Seeing them, we find in ourselves a desire for the same life of faith and courage, which allows us to stand firm even in the face of death.”
Br. James Koester remembers the martyrs of Uganda, and challenges us to live lives of courage, profoundly marked by faith in Jesus.
“Even when God’s ways are hidden from us, and God seems to be silent in the face of our trouble, we hold fast, believing and trusting in the goodness and power of God, and confident that God’s love will win out over evil. Never stop loving. Never stop believing. Never stop trusting. Work tirelessly. And never, ever give up.”
In the ongoing wake of unspeakable tragedy, Br. David Vryhof points us toward toward love, belief, trust, and hard work. Keep going.
“Mary and Elizabeth lived with ongoing uncertainty and shame by faith. They can inform and encourage us. We hear in Paul’s Letter to the Colossians: “As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, patience … forgiveness … and love … .” Elizabeth and Mary’s tender greetings, calling forth, and months shared together must have invited compassion, kindness, patience, forgiveness, and love. They are a model for us.”
On the Feast of the Visitation, Br. Luke Ditewig steps into the wondrous moment between Mary and Elizabeth and finds in its visit and its welcome a model for us all.
“The promise of God, and the hope of Easter, is not a life lost in loss and grief, but of glory, which is ours, today, even now, even while our life bears the signs and scars and wounds of a crucified world. The promise of God, and the hope of Easter, and the gift of Ascension is that God has taken our sadness and is redeeming it with glory.”
Even in the midst of all the challenges, suffering and grief that beset us right now, Br. James Koester invites us to look at life through the lens of glory.
“What if the awakening of our conscience to profound new layers of the world’s pain is a sign – not of God’s absence, but of the Spirit of God excavating strata of our personhood and our collective attention that we are now called to engage? And what if the path of grief thus sensed could become a sober and conscious choice – claimed and lived, come what may, as the cost of our full becoming?”
“The spiritual skill of discernment enables us not only to resist the lure of those voices that would distract and distance us from God, but also to perceive directly God’s engagement with us in the circumstances of our lives as we navigate the many decisions that crop up along our way.”
“There is an unexpected invitation in our sufferings. This invitation is to know ourselves as participants in Christ’s life and love; to know in the midst of pain that God has not withdrawn from us, but has perhaps instead come closer than we could ever imagine.”
“It may sound crazy to say that I am grateful to God for my stutter, but it is true. Looking back at my life, I can see how God has engaged with me through the challenges I faced.”
“As love goes, this is where things get thorny. Loving God without condition as God has loved us, while a tall order for finite creatures, is something we might readily give ascent to. But, loving each other ‘agape’ style? What does it mean to love each other without conditions: without sex and romance, without stability and provision, without fellowship in exalted experience, or ultimately, without any expectation or transaction?”
Br. Jim Woodrum challenges us to mirror God's unconditional love in the love we show to one another.
“It is too easy to see the Resurrection in human terms, an event that reveals a God whose omnipotence is characterized by all the ways human beings conceive of omnipotence. Yes, God is big and strong and powerful. But not in the ways our hearts have been trained to conceive of such attributes.”
Br. Sean Glenn separates the power of God, revealed in the Resurrection, from those human forms of power that seek to dominate.
“It is God who is the source of our lives, and God who is the end of our lives, and it is God who calls us and desires us to be in union with God forever. It is God who seeks us out, God who has all the time in the world for us. Baptism is an act which anticipates its completion in the future, with a person’s own confession of faith. Baptism is an initiation, not a completion.”
On the joyful event of an infant baptism, Br. Curtis Almquist invites us to see all baptism not as a completion, but as an initiation.
“Are there humble, ordinary gestures that the crucified and risen Jesus has used to show you the nature of God? Have you become distracted from the pattern of light by the dissatisfied ache for an epiphany? Jesus offers a profound reassurance and a further invitation to Philip, and to us, today: 'If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.'”
Br. Keith Nelson beckons us toward Jesus and the long, slow work of conversion as we see, in his prismatic glory, the Light of God.
“It was seeing Jesus’ body, in all its brokenness and woundedness which brought Thomas to belief. But this beautiful story is not a story of proof but a story of love. For me, the story of Thomas is not primarily a story of a sceptic who comes to believe because his list of doubts is answered; not an intellectual assent to something proven. The story of Thomas is rather the story of a man who comes to believe not because he has enough proof, but because he has actually touched the mystery of divine, self-sacrificial love.”
In this sermon on Thomas, Br. Geoffrey urges us to listen to our gut and heart, not our head, as we encounter the Lord.
“We come to Easter this year exhausted, not by our keeping of Lent, but by our keeping on, keeping on. We are exhausted by two years of uncertainty, sadness, and anxiety brought on by a global pandemic. We are exhausted, by two years of blatant inequality and injustice. We are exhausted by fear, that what is going on in Ukraine, will plunge the world into even more chaos, and uncertainty. We are exhausted, by the stink of these past two years, as the pandemic tide ebbs out revealing, what has long been hidden.”
Br. James Koester uncovers the promise of the resurrection to us and to all creation: If God can raise Jesus from the dead, then God can mend, heal, and cleanse a broken, stinking world, making all things new
“We hear proclaimed in our Gospel account that Jesus is resurrected. But one thing has not changed. Even though Jesus is resurrected, Jesus’ heart is still broken.”
Even as we celebrate Jesus' resurrection, Br. Curtis Almquist encourages us to acknowledge our own and the world's woundedness, to allow us to tap into Jesus' resurrection power in the here-and-now. Hallelujah!
“When we approach the spiritual life with the care and attention it deserves, we will arrive at thresholds we cannot cross without our inner lives seeming to get worse rather than better: more painful, more exposed, less manageable in all the old ways we know. God is love, but love is powerful. Love is a crucible that dismantles the self we have cherished.”
Br. Keith Nelson looks to scripture for examples of a profound truth of the spiritual life: we must go go into the darkness to find the freedom that waits on the other side.
“The act of turning aside from the paths we think we know is a theme that runs right through every invitation of the spiritual life, and Lent is a perfect season in which to practice this subtle but life-changing posture."
Br. Sean Glenn invites you to turn your perspective on repentance this Lent.
“This transformation, indeed, this transfiguration, from scarlet to snow, and crimson to wool, from a people utterly estranged from God, and indelibly marked by sin, to the beloved daughters and sons of God, happens when we remember who and whose we are.”
Br. James Koester reminds you of the true nature of God's mercy and forgiveness in this Lenten sermon.
“I wait for the Lord, my soul waits. In God’s word is my hope. I wait with expectation like those who watch through the night wait for the morning. Yes, I wait like that. Not just for the night shift to end but with trust that light will break through the darkness.”
Br. Luke Ditewig invites us into the hope that comes with waiting for God.
“As a foundational stance toward our relationship with God, ask-search-knock calls forth from us an initiative and a willingness to expose our hearts. This is as true in our relationships with human companions as it is with God.”
This Lent, Br. Keith Nelson encourages you to ask, search, and knock to grow in relationship with God.
“As a foundational stance toward our relationship with God, ask-search-knock calls forth from us an initiative and a willingness to expose our hearts. This is as true in our relationships with human companions as it is with God. But on our part, the process of asking, searching, and knocking changes us, just as it changed Jesus.”
Br. Keith Nelson urges us to have the courage, the resilience, the trust, to name our needs aloud, as a child would, in the presence of a loving parent?
Br. Todd Blackham
Isaiah 55:6-11
Psalm 34:15-22
Matthew 6:7-15
Whenever Jesus gives a warning or a woe it’s good to pay attention. Today we hear a warning attached to a crystal-clear positive practice to follow. It is a rare and precious gift. The treasure of the Lord’s Prayer is so vast that Christians have been plumbing its depths since the very first days. It is a pearl of great price, and yet, in its ubiquity, perhaps it has lost its luster.
For as long as I can remember this prayer has formed the backdrop of my spiritual life. I don’t remember sitting down and learning it systematically. It was just in the atmosphere of the family and church community I inhabited.
And so, it usually takes some conscious effort for me to return to the words, the layers of meaning and desire expressed to revivify otherwise dulled, ambient noise.
I can recall encountering slightly different versions; sometimes we ask forgiveness for trespasses, debts, or sins. Sometimes the correct, or at least familiar word seemed really important and other times I was just happy that we were saying it together. And on some occasions hearing the prayer spoken in the various languages of the hearts of people from all over the world has risen like a beautifully rich fragrance to God.
I wonder, did it wash over you as it was just read? Did your mind begin to wander as soon as the familiar words began? Matthew’s version is the more robust form of the prayer that exists in most of our liturgical settings. Whenever I hear the version from Luke, the more sparse, bare-bones, version I’m at least roused a bit to notice what’s not there.
And I hope that we are roused from the stupor of familiarity in the holy season of Lent as we awake and return to the Lord. If there is ever a time to refresh and renew our prayer it is now. This was the time when the early Christians set apart to catechize new believers and to hand on to them the treasures of tradition. The Lord’s Prayer and the Nicene Creed were intentionally given at specific points in Lent as catechumens were prepared for baptism.
The fresh experience of new believers, indeed as the disciples learned this prayer for the very first time was filled with power that captivated early Christians as they began to savor and cherish this precious gift often simply referring to it as THE Prayer.
On the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, the Convent of the Pater Noster stands on the site of 4th C. ruins of a church associated with Jesus teaching the disciples this prayer. The walls inside and out are bedecked with dozens and dozens of 8 or 10 foot painted tile plaques of the prayer in at least 100 languages.
And those plaques, like our own lives of prayer can become dusty and dulled. Some are protected from sun and rain in cloister walks. Others are exposed to the elements where, dust, pollen, and bird droppings accumulate. Little bits of moss and mildew cling to some, others have been adorned by less reverent pilgrims with bits of graffiti. In time, they all need careful cleaning and repair.
What is the state of this prayer in your heart? Could it use some sprucing up?
There is practically never a time when we brothers gather in the Chapel for prayer that we don’t say the Lord’s prayer. But since we’re singing together we can’t each pause when we’d like to dwell on a word. If your primary experience with this prayer is in corporate worship we would do well to set aside time to reconnect with it. To slow down. To take in each word and phrase, to lovingly abide and allow it to shine once more lighting our path.
But, you might find that within the first few words you already notice points of cognitive contention. Why does Matthew say Our, when Luke just launches in with Father? And, depending on your context, simply addressing God with the male, familial title Father can open a can of controversy. If we let our critical functions dominate us there is no end to the ways we might get derailed from actual prayer. If we really want to return in prayer, we might first begin asking for grace, “God, help me to set aside everything I think I know about this prayer that I might have an open mind and a new experience of you.”
Then, let the cleansing work of the Spirit clear away contention and controversy for the purpose of attuning our hearts to God’s beating heart of love. Let those expansive themes unfold, Relationship with God, the Holy name, the Kingdom, the Will, Daily bread, forgiveness, and freedom from temptation. Allow your soul to adore as the words are burnished and restored to a brilliant luster. And being thus renewed and refreshed we can bring this prayer like a sparkling jewel in our hearts to worship gleaming as a lamp on a stand, an offering of incense, fragrant and pleasant as our prayers rise before God. The invitation is yours. Pray then, in this way…
Br. Curtis Almquist
Isaiah 58:9-14
Jesus would have known and practiced this prophecy of Isaiah – perhaps known it by heart – as Isaiah speaks about the sabbath day. “Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy.”
One way to “remember the holiness of the sabbath” is by what you don’t do: not working with your hands; not traveling about. As Isaiah says, “refraining from trampling the sabbath… not going your own ways, serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs.” However sabbath-keeping is also about what you do practice: to abide, to pray, and to share meals with your family and community. But there’s more. Isaiah says, to actually do some very specific kind of work on the sabbath: “to offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted.”
Jesus heard the prophet Isaiah in both of these ways: the holy sabbath being both about restoration of one’s own personal life, and a call to action on behalf of others in need so that they, too, can have a life. This active service in sabbath-keeping is something Jesus practiced on behalf of the poor, the sick, the oppressed, the outcast. And, as we know, it got him into a great deal of trouble because it appeared he was working on the sabbath. He was. He was working, in a principled way, so that others would have enough of a life to be able to practice the sabbath. Jesus could say, “blessed are the poor”… and “blessed are the hungry” because of the responsiveness of God’s people to the poor and suffering in need.[i] Jesus did not say, “cursed are the poor” and… “cursed are the hungry,” but rather, “blessed are the poor”… and “blessed are the hungry” because their needs were being addressed, and work was being done by the faithful… sometimes even on the sabbath.
[i] Jesus’ Beatitudes in Matthew 5:2-12 and Luke 6:20-26.
Br. Sean Glenn
Deuteronomy 30:15-20
Luke 9:18-25
Some of you may know that in a former life, I underwent a significant amount of training for a career in music. This was a rich period of my life. The rigors of my training enriched my understanding of something that had—from the farthest recesses of my memory—called out to the deepest parts of my being. I met people who would become life-long friends. The experience opened my mind to a host of perspectives I had never encountered. And the lessons in discipline, patience, and delayed gratification have served my life in vocation in ways I never imagined possible.
That said, as I moved about the social groups that made up my colleagues in the field of music, I quickly became aware of some ways of being that would eventually drive me away from my ambitions to the higher echelons of professional music. There were pressures of all kinds that I found began to stifle and suffocate my humanity—the pressure for perfection, for self-promotion, and for recognition and esteem in the eyes of both my peers and my audience.
All of these temptations robbed me of the life that music had originally spoken into my soul. The feeling of utter worthlessness I could experience after a harsh criticism or poor performance made me question quite frequently the path in life I had chosen. At times, it was impossible for me to celebrate the accomplishments of my peers—for all I could discern in them was the feeling that none of my hard work would ever get me playing like so-and-so.
There were times when it felt like I had chosen death rather than life. In some cases, (though thankfully none that I experienced personally) these pressures could drive people to do some astonishingly heinous things. While studying composition in New York City, one of my classmates who had done her bachelors at Juilliard related horrifying stories of some of the dangerous and deadly things she had encountered in her peers. I remember one infamous instance where the competitive pressure to succeed had driven one student to hide razor blades in between the keys of pianos they knew other students would be using.
It seems the gods of success and prestige do like blood sacrifice after all.
And so as we hear Moses speak to Israel today on behalf of God, I am put in mind of these experiences. This is a time when Israel is discerning their identity as a nation. And Moses lays these two options before them: choose life; or choose death. Walk in God’s ways, or walk in the ways of the nations that will surround you. For I think Moses knew that Israel would be surrounded on all sides by nations that worshipped different gods—the gods of prestige, success, money, sex, power.
They would end up developing political aspirations. We should be like other nations! We should have a king! This is where they fall into the trap of worshipping these other gods. And we know what happens.
They get their kings.
They get their way.
They get their wars.
They get their exile.
And so what Jesus does this morning ought to catch our awareness. Because, of course, what did any first-century Judean want in a Messiah? A warrior king, who would kick Rome out (violently and quickly). So he hides the nature of his identity. He orders his disciples to do the same. He knows what will happen otherwise.
Peter proves it. He correctly names Jesus as the Messiah; but in another gospel telling of this scene, Peter objects when Jesus describes the rejection, suffering, and death that must befall the Messiah before he is raised on the third day.
The sons of Zebedee prove it. They (or their mother, depending on which gospel writer you ask) petition Jesus for powerful positions at his right and left hand in the Kingdom.
The faithless of the crowds prove it. This man is doesn’t look like a Messiah! He’s from Galilee! Who does he think he is?
The world will expect something different. The world will often ask us to choose death.
Lent is a time when we can take stock of these dualities—these choices—in our lives. This Lent, I think it is worth taking the time to listen and discern where God is giving you life, where God is speaking life into your life. Yet also, where has this life been robbed from you? Where does God invite you to lay aside the worship of these other gods? Where does God invite you to walk back into the larger life that Jesus shows us in his unexpected, socially unacceptable way? Where is God inviting you to take a different path?
Br. Jack Crowley
John 19:25b-27
The Blessed Virgin Mary went through many stressful situations in her life. Think about how stressful those nine months of her controversial pregnancy with the son of God must have been. Then to give birth while traveling. Then to have to flee into Egypt. Then the pressure of raising a son who is the Messiah.
So imagine how Mary felt that fateful Friday in Jerusalem watching her son slowly tortured, mocked, and executed by the authorities of her day. Her son did not die a clean, quiet death. The crucifixion would have been loud, chaotic, and messy. After all the stress Mary had been through in her life, for it to culminate with her son dying on a cross like that feels like a cruel fate.
Mary did not give in to self-pity or despair. Our Gospel this morning demonstrates how Mary endured the stress and trauma of the crucifixion with quiet resilience. The Gospel writer tells us that as Jesus hung on the cross, Mary and the Beloved Disciple stood beside each other. I personally find great comfort in this image, Mary and the Beloved Disciple standing in solidarity focused on Jesus. They were not running away or shielding themselves from the horror unfolding before them. They took it all in. They were able to take the pain together.
The crucifixion marked a fundamental turning point in the relationship of Mary and the Beloved Disciple. The Gospel writer tells us that starting from the very hour of the crucifixion, the Beloved Disciple took Mary into his own home. Again, I find great comfort in this image. Mary and the Beloved Disciple did not let the trauma of the crucifixion split them apart. They did the opposite, they came closer together. This is a beautiful act of rebellion.
We may be tempted in times of stress to hide, to isolate ourselves and try to heal ourselves. Full of shame and self-reliance, we may even try to hide our wounds from God. Mary and the Beloved Disciple show us that we do not have to do that. We can move in with one another and navigate this pain together.
As we round the corner towards Lent, ask yourself if you feel alone in your pain right now. If the answer is yes, ask yourself why. Ask yourself what do you have to lose from exposing your wounds, stress, and trauma to others and God. We’ve all been through something, no one is spared from it. So let us look to Mary and the Beloved Disciple for the inspiration to heal, to move in, and to move on together. Amen.
Br. Lucas Hall
Luke 6:27-38, Genesis 46:4-15
There’s an old story about the author and theologian C.S. Lewis, on his way out for drinks with a friend. Approached by a beggar asking for money, Lewis emptied his wallet and gave the stranger everything. His friend then said to Lewis, disapprovingly, “He’ll only spend it on drink,” to which Lewis responded, “If I kept it, so would I.”
Today’s Gospel reading is about love. More specifically than that, though, it’s about the risk inherent to genuine love. “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. …love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return.” This is not just about doing good and being loving; Jesus is talking here about showing others love even when it is obviously risky, even when it obviously might result in our own pain or loss.
This is not the law and order Jesus many of us may have grown up with, the Jesus who commands us to do what is socially acceptable for the sake of a well-ordered society. Equally, though, this isn’t the Jesus we’re often likely to encounter in progressive, well-educated circles either. I grew up being told not to give money to beggars, because they should get a job. Once grown, and having rejected that teaching, and having moved from a red state to a blue state, I still get told not to give money to beggars, because I should really be giving that money to a shelter, and voting for the right people to enact official homelessness policies, because I don’t want to encourage someone not to use services that may better their situation, and I don’t want to fuel a person’s addiction or irresponsible use of money.
Well-intentioned logic, I’m sure, but so is the logic that they should just get a job and pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. Is any of that, any of it at all, present in Christ’s admonition here? Because I don’t see it. Even when I fall prey to that logic—and I assure you, I’m no saint on this front—I know it’s not consistent with the stark, but pretty simple, pretty straightforward, command I’ve been given.
Risk, real, material risk, is the heart of this reading today. Risk to our own resources and possessions, even our own bodily health, is what Jesus brings forth to us today. This passage contains the famous language, “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” This is often taken on its own, watered down, made into a pretty weak and uncontroversial universal moral creed. In this context, though, there’s real power. Do to others as you would have them do to you, even when they aren’t treating you the same. Do to others as you would have them do to you, even when such action poses a real risk to your own well-being.
Our Old Testament reading, of Joseph in Egypt, is fitting for this moral lesson. Joseph, scorned by his brothers, abused, sold into slavery, has every opportunity, every moral logic, to claim vengeance as justice, when they come to him begging for food. He doesn’t. He offers mercy, giving them provisions and welcoming them as his family, though they betrayed him long ago. The obvious lesson here is that, of course, we should be merciful, even to our enemies. Perhaps less obvious, though, is that through risk—in this case, the extreme risk involved with being enslaved and shipped off to a foreign land—God will not abandon us. We do not cease to be loved and cared for, and we do not cease to be able to do ministry, to work in God’s name, to do good and to love. In fact, Joseph says to his brothers, “it was not you who sent me here, but God.” It should be no surprise that the early Church regularly interpreted Joseph as a type of the coming Christ, rejected by the progenitors of the twelve tribes of Israel, only for them to return to him, and him to offer them mercy and love.
It can be easy for me to talk about risk. I live in a safe place. I’m not individually wealthy, but I have my needs and more provided for. I have at least some degree of social status. Indeed, this applies not just to me, but to everyone dressed like me in this room right now. I can’t go into details, but this was made particularly clear to us, in terms both stark and loving, a little while ago by a friend who has known us for a long time. It has stuck with us. It has begun to bear fruit, and looks ready to bear a whole lot more. I’m happy about that, and I look forward to the risks we take communally, and to the risks we enable each other to take individually, as brothers.
I think it can also be easy to talk about risk in terms of reckless abandon, consequences be damned. For anyone in a position of responsibility for the well-being of others, this is an especially important distinction to make. It’s loving to share a meal with a hungry stranger. Less so, to give your meal away so that your children starve. I’m not interested in creating a flowchart of what risks are morally acceptable in which situations; there are too many shades of gray. But, in principle, I think we in the Episcopal Church need to be challenged in a couple of ways. Socially, I suspect we are, as a group, beholden to a sense of proper channels and institutional thinking. We brothers in our Rule mention “the tendency for communities to harden into institutions, and for officialdom to replace the spontaneity of mutual service.” That tracks with my own experience.
So what about you? Where might your church community, your local community, your political community, your household, be mired in this kind of thinking? More importantly, how might you break free of it? The antidote from Christ does seem to be, pretty consistently, “Stop talking, certainly stop arguing, and do. Go do good.” With all the risk that in entails, put your trust in the Lord, and love your enemies. With all the risk that it entails, put your trust in the Lord, and lend, expecting nothing in return. And, with all the risk that it entails, put your trust in the Lord, and do good.
Br. Jack Crowley
Mark 8:14-21
Our Gospel tonight is full of misunderstanding. Jesus and his Disciples are frustrated, confused, and struggling to communicate with one another. To make matters worse, they are all stuck on a boat. It is an unpleasant situation. This Gospel passage would probably not be the best text to choose for a wedding, profession, or any other happy occasion. However, we do get to witness Jesus navigate through this misunderstanding and we have a lot to learn from how he handles it.
Just like any other misunderstanding, the background to this story is important. Jesus and his Disciples had just been confronted by a group of Pharisees. This group of Pharisees demanded that Jesus perform a sign to prove he was the Messiah. Jesus refused and chastised the Pharisees. Then he got on a boat with his Disciples and sailed away.
We’ve all been in similar group situations like this before, when there has just been a major confrontation and tension is in the air. No one is quite sure what to do or say and everyone is on edge. We are also told by the Gospel writer that the Disciples had forgotten to bring any more bread for their boat ride and there was only loaf of bread to split among the thirteen men. This is when the drama begins.
Jesus, still simmering from his confrontation with the Pharisees, tell his Disciples on the boat to “beware the yeast of the Pharisees”. Jesus is offering his Disciples very practical advice here. Jesus is warning his Disciples that the self-righteous mindset of the Pharisees is contagious, and like yeast, just a little bit of it can go a long way and give rise to all sorts of bad.
The Disciples completely misunderstand Jesus’ words. As soon as they hear the word “yeast”, they think Jesus is talking about literal bread. They think Jesus is admonishing them for not bringing any bread for the boat ride. This is common in tense situations, for group members to internalize what tension is in the air and become very self-conscious about what they have or have not done. Telling ourselves we have done something wrong gives us a narrative to hold on to rather than just sitting with the anxiety the group is experiencing.
Jesus, being the talented teacher he is, immediately picks up on his Disciples’ misunderstanding. He tries to explain himself and how ridiculous it would be for him to be angry about having little bread because he can always multiply more. Jesus reminds his Disciples that they have seen him firsthand multiply enough loaves of bread to feed thousands of people.
We have a lot to learn from how Jesus handles this misunderstanding. First of all, Jesus does not ignore the misunderstanding. Not only does Jesus immediately pick up on what his Disciples are confused about, but he also addresses it right away. It’s always tempting in times of misunderstanding to just not want to deal with it, to say you don’t have the time and energy to work through the conflict. Ignoring misunderstanding only leads to more misunderstanding down the road. Jesus does not do this and that takes courage.
Second, Jesus asks questions. In the span of seven verses, Jesus asks nine separate questions. Asking questions can be a powerful way to channel the aggressiveness we may feel during a misunderstanding. Good heartfelt questions can simultaneously get us closer to the truth while still expressing whatever emotions we are feeling.
Third and finally, Jesus moves on. Right after this Gospel passage ends, we are told that Jesus heals a blind man. Holding on to resentments over a misunderstanding is dangerous and gets in the way of us being servants of God. Jesus shows us that we need to constantly be moving on to stay focused on the work in front us, and that work is the will of God.
So tonight let us pray for the strength, patience, and courage to navigate through the misunderstandings in our lives, all for the greater glory of God, amen.
Br. James Koester,
Superior
Mark 6:30
I love the Gospel of Mark because of its breathless character. We seem to race from one place or event to another, with little time in between, and less time to catch our breath. In a few short chapters, Mark crams in the whole of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.[1]**
That breathless quality is displayed in abundance in this morning’s reading as we race around Galilee, following Jesus and the disciples, after the first apostolic mission, when they were sent out two by two, and [given] authority over the unclean spirits.[2]**
With so much packed into the reading, the preacher or reader would be forgiven if their attention was drawn to the latter part of the passage, the feeding of the 5000. My attention though is drawn to the beginning, to the regathering of the band of disciples with their leader, following their missionary travels. The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught.[3]** That is what arrests my attention this morning. I can see this scene perfectly clearly, because I know from experience what that was like
I must have been 7 at the time. My father had taken my younger sister and me to see the movie, Mary Poppins. When we returned home, Mum asked me about the movie. It must have taken me 15 minutes to tell here everything, as only an excited and totally entranced 7-year-old could, with lots of and then this happened, and oh, I forgot this, and then the best part was. Mum sat there, and listened to everything I had to tell her, as if what I was telling her was the most important thing in her life at that moment.
That’s how I imagine Jesus this morning, listening to the disciples, as if what they were saying was the most important thing in his life at that moment.
It is for me a model of prayer. Each morning, when I return to my cell for the prayer time, I imagine Jesus sitting there listening to me, as if what I have to say is the most important thing in his life at that moment. The problem is that in my prayer I often shift from the entranced 7-year-old, excited to tell every last detail, to the sullen teenager, who when asked how his day was, can only respond, fine, as he heads up to his room, and shuts the door on the world.
The invitation, at least for me this morning, is to remember that Jesus really does want to hear everything I have done, and the things I have left undone. He wants to hear the things I am proud of, and those that I am ashamed of. He wants to hear about what excites me, and what frightens me; the things that get me up in the morning, and the things that keep me awake at night.
There is a lot going on in the gospel this morning, but the thing that grabs my attention, is the invitation to tell Jesus everything I have ever done, knowing, that like my Mum that day, he will listen to me, as if it were the most important thing in his life at that moment.
Lectionary Year and Proper: Year 2, 8 January
[1] Mark 1: 1
[2] Mark 6: 7
[3] Mark 6: 30
Br. Curtis Almquist
Matthew 2:1-12
O God, by the leading of a star you manifested your only Son to the peoples of the earth: Lead us, who know you now by faith, to your presence, where we may see your glory face to face; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
These wise men who had come from the East, who are they? The New Testament Greek name for them is “magi,” which means magicians, fortune tellers, wizards. [i] The Greek name magi also includes astrologers, and so it’s no wonder that they reportedly saw a certain star rising, knew its significance, and followed it.[ii]
The wise men came from “the East,” but whether that is near East, or middle East, or far East is only a guess. St. John Chrysostom, fourth-century archbishop of Constantinople, believed the three magi came from Yemen because, in those days, the Kings of Yemen were Jews. A very early Armenian tradition neither saw them as Jews nor as starting out together but rather meeting up along the way, each of them a king from a foreign realm, each of them following this star: one named Balthazar, a king from Arabia; another was Melchior, a king from Persia; and a third, Gaspar, a king from India. I am speaking of three magi, but we are actually not told how many wizards came to Bethlehem. Three is just a guess: three kings because of the three gifts so no one comes empty handed. The gifts were of gold, the most precious mineral on the earth[iii]; frankincense, a symbol of prayer, as the psalmist says, “let my prayer like incense be”[iv]; and myrrh, the fragrance of heaven, used in the anointing for healing and also in the anointing of the dead (ultimately Jesus’ own body).[v]
The wise men are overjoyed to find the Christ child. They present their gifts, they kneel in homage, and they prepare to depart. But there’s one more supernatural augury: a dream warning them not to go back the way they had come. They had come via King Herod in Jerusalem. They go home another way. “They had come to Jesus who was himself the Way.” These are the words of our founder, Richard Meux Benson, written a century ago. “They had come to Jesus who was himself the Way. None can come to Christ at Bethlehem and go away as they came. Our coming to Christ changes everything, and therefore even to the old scenes we return with changed hearts and new powers. The necessary thing is to set about old things in a new way.”[vi] To set about old things in a new way. And I think they did. I think they were forever changed. But I also think Mary, Joseph, and Jesus were forever changed because of their encounter with the magi.
Jesus begins life as the promised Messiah to his own people, the Jews. Jesus ends his life telling his followers to “Go into all the world and make disciples of all nations.”[vii] When did Jesus’ own identity and mission enlarge to include so many, many people outside his own tradition – the tax collectors, the prostitutes, the lepers, the unclean, the Samaritans, Syrophoenicians, Canaanites and so many others? When and how did Jesus’ world enlarge? We don’t know. We are not told. I speculate something very significant happened to Mary and Joseph in their encounter with the wizards from foreign lands. Mary and Joseph would raise Jesus differently. They had experienced a power to comprehend what is “the breadth and length and height and depth of the love of God, to be filled with the fullness of God” in the visitation of these wise men.[viii]
Were these kings changed because of their encounter with Jesus? We are not told, but I presume so. Is it that they become followers of Jesus? There was nothing yet to follow. These magi were wise, probably old men. So they returned to their homeland, never having heard a word from Jesus – other than the cooing of an infant – and they probably died long before Jesus began his public ministry. But I’m sure they were forever changed in their encounter with Jesus. Was Jesus the Savior for the wise men? Surely yes. Jesus would eventually say, “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold.”[ix] I think the wise men were the first example of this epiphany, this manifestation of God’s saving grace.
What’s not to love about the wise men? Beyond being picturesque and rather exotic in the Christmas crèche, they give us a prodding inspiration about God’s ongoing revelation oftentimes coming to us in very new ways, far beyond all that we could ask for or imagine.[x]
As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen.
Lectionary Year and Proper: 2022 A
Solemnity or Major Feast Day: The Epiphany of Our Lord Jesus Christ
[i] The New Testament Greek name for these seekers is actually “magoi,” or as we say, “magi.”
[ii] The Birth of the Messiah; A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in Matthew and Luke, by Raymond E. Brown (Doubleday, 1977), pp. 166-201.
[iii] Psalm 72:15.
[iv] Psalm 141:2.
[v] Psalm 45:8; John 19:39-40.
[vi] Richard Meux Benson, SSJE (1824-1915) in Spiritual Readings – Christmas, pp. 260-261.
[vii] Matthew 28:19.
[viii] A riff on Ephesians 3:18-19.
[ix] I am appealing here to “prevenient grace.” See John 10:16: “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.” See also 1 John 2:1-2: “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.”
[x] Ephesians 3:20-21: “Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever.”
If the notion of a “spiritual practice” claims your attention, something meaningful is going on within you in your relationship to God. Something has awakened in you a desire to give some of your much-in-demand energy to the life of your spirit. This is wonderful.
And yet, is it necessary? In your rhythm of life, if you find yourself struggling to focus sufficient time, on a daily or regular basis, on your relationships with family and friends, a good diet, adequate rest, physical exercise, stimulation of your mind, enjoyment of a hobby and pastime, a volunteer activity … and a “spiritual practice,” then you may have inadvertently put your relationship with God in a box. If you find yourself “making time for God” in the schedule of your day or week, your practice might be impoverished. It’s not that you need to give more time to your spiritual practice; but rather that you might need to broaden your sense of what a “spiritual practice” is. In the Acts of the Apostles, we read, “In [God] we live and move and have our being” – all of the time. There is no “spirituality” demarcation.
The concept of spirituality or a spiritual practice does not seem to have been in Jesus’ vocabulary. Jesus lived his whole life in God’s presence. Whether Jesus was alone in the wilderness or amongst the multitudes; whether he was sharing a meal or healing a wound, whether he was praying or comforting or confronting, whether he was walking or sleeping, Jesus lived the entirety of his life practicing God’s presence. And Jesus gave his life for us to live our own life “abundantly.” He did not speak of our living an “abundant spiritual life”; rather, Jesus gives us the promise of his presence, and power, and provision in the whole of our life – the whole shebang.
Jesus models for us what this abundant life can look like in his own relationship with the God whom he called “Father.” Jesus claimed his own “oneness” with God, and Jesus invites us into a parallel relationship with himself. He prayed to God that we be one with him: “I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one.” This unity with God extends into every corner of our lives. It has no limits. The adjective “spiritual” – spiritual life or spiritual practice – is much too small. We have been given the gift of life, all of which we are invited to practice in God’s presence.
A French monk of the 17th century is one of my heroes. This is Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection (1614-1691), who had been a young soldier in the Thirty Years War. He survived a near-fatal injury that left him quite crippled and in chronic pain for the rest of his life. He had no formal education and was, by his own estimation and others’, quite clumsy. He entered the Carmelite monastery in Paris, where he became the cook.
Brother Lawrence was soon sought after by monks and outsiders alike, not because of his culinary abilities but because of the beauty of his soul. He practiced the whole of his life in the presence of God, and his countenance teemed with God’s light, and life, and love. We read in a testimony compiled after his death, that he was never hasty nor loitering, but did each thing in its season, with an even, uninterrupted composure and tranquility of spirit. “The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer; and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament.” This is not spirituality; this is the practice of the presence of God in all ways and in all times.
Where the term “spirituality” may be of helpful and creative use is in our doing some linguistic mining. The English word “spirituality” comes from the Latin spiritus: breath. In the Vulgate – Saint Jerome’s fourth-century Latin translation of the Hebrew and Greek texts of the Bible – the Latin word spiritus is used to translate the Hebrew word ruach and the Greek word pneuma, both translated as “the breath of life, the Spirit of God.”
Knowing that the English word “spirituality” draws its pneumatic force from God’s Spirit, and that God’s Spirit is linguistically described in the scriptures as “breath,” the pattern of our own breathing really opens a passageway of experience. We breathe in-and-out, in-and-out, in-and-out, in-and-out… continuously, for as long as God gives us breath. In the beginning – as we read in the Genesis creation account – God breathes into our nostrils, and we become a living being. To be alive on this earth we must breathe unceasingly, and that is as true of the soul as it is of the body. Let your breathing be as an invitation from God, the assurance of God’s presence and sustenance. Take Jesus at his word that he is with us always, to the end. Within this past year I have companioned several beloved people as they breathed their last breath and died. I have taken great comfort in their being ventilated by the Spirit as they moved nearer into God’s presence, from where their life began.
Practice the presence of God. This is the only “spiritual” practice we need. And we need it very deeply, to our core. Let your breathing be a living, ongoing reminder of the closeness of God’s presence with you all of the time: in your waking and sleeping, when you are still and when you are on the move; in times of great gladness and in times of great stress; when you are working, or weeping, or laughing, or waiting. Pray your precious life by breathing in God’s presence. God is with you always, as close as your breath.
“Questioning the faith,” this article’s title, holds within it two possibly contradictory meanings. Consider the paradox implied in the word “questioning”: does it mean questioning in the faith or a questioning of the faith – or both?
And furthermore what do we mean by “the faith”? Is the faith a collection of beliefs and doctrines, the teachings of an organized religion? Or is the faith something more: a series of practices, a tradition, a way of living? When Jesus asked the question, “Who do people say that I am?” Jesus sought to draw both a confession and an act of faith from his disciples, based on his teaching and example. How does Christ now prepare us to respond to such a question? How are we called to engage with the faith that has been handed down to us, especially when our own experience might be as riddled with questions as with certainties?
In this article, I want to share an oft-overlooked treasure for navigating this challenging terrain: “An Outline of the Faith commonly called the Catechism” in The Book of Common Prayer 1979 (pages 845-862). As the opening statement describes it: “This catechism is primarily intended for use by parish priests, deacons, and lay catechists, to give an outline for instruction. It is a commentary on the creeds, but is not meant to be a complete statement of belief and practices; rather, it is a point of departure for the teacher, and it is cast in the traditional question and answer form for ease of reference” (“Concerning the Catechism,” BCP, 844).
The two technical terms catechism and catechist are derived from the Greek verb katecheo which means “to teach or instruct by word of mouth.” Literally it means to “sound down,” i.e. to learn exactly by sounds (meaningful repetition); to learn by nuanced repetition.
In the early Church, a person who hoped to be baptized was received as a catechumen and entered into a period, often three years in duration, of intensive instruction or catechesis. Catechists would teach the seekers in their own words, drawing on their experience as members of the Christian community and its practice: the appropriation of the (Hebrew) scriptures, the received apostolic tradition of Jesus’ first disciples, and the common worship and prayer realized and enacted in the risen Christ present in their midst. Only after such instruction were the catechumens baptized into Christ’s death and rising, and admitted to the Eucharistic Mysteries.
Catechumenal instruction prepared the candidates to speak from their own mouths answers to the questions which would be asked of them in the baptismal rite. Thus, the questions, which the catechumens had brought to their catechists during the time of oral instruction, were asked in turn of the baptismal neophytes anew, as they were washed in water and signed with oil of chrism, sacramentally symbolizing their new life in the Holy Spirit as members of Christ (BCP, 307-308). The rote repetition of questions and answers that we hear in each iteration of the Baptismal Service actually derives, then, from a prior live exchange of real teaching and questioning that the catechumen would have engaged in before being deemed ready to baptized.
In later times, as infant baptism became the norm, catechetical instruction was deferred until “the age of reason” was reached, and such instruction was offered in preparation for the rite of confirmation, which is a personal reaffirmation of Christian belief and commitment accompanied by the laying on of hands for strengthening in the Holy Spirit.
Printed catechisms – cast in question and answer format – came into use as an outline of instruction in the Church’s teaching and practice during the Renaissance/Reformation era. I myself was instructed in the 1928 Prayer Book’s Catechism during a course of catechesis (or “confirmation classes”) prior to my own examination by Bishop John Burgess and “the apostolic rite of laying on of hands in Confirmation” on June 23, 1963, at age twelve.
While my attachment to the Prayer Book Catechism dates to the earlier version, the 1979 Prayer Book has played an even more important role in my own life of formation, as well as in the historical ministry of SSJE. Our own late Brother, Robert (Bob) Greenfield played an important role in combining the 1928 short Catechism with several additional “Offices of Instruction” into the form we find in the 1979 Prayer Book, skillfully employing his personal theological insights and amplifications in this work.
Today, these expanded and enriched texts still guide the sharing of and instruction in the life of faith that govern the practice of preparing candidates for Baptism and Confirmation. This mutual questioning by catechumen(s) and catechist(s) explains, then, how the Catechism is useful in the first half of our paradox: questioning in (into) the faith. As a candidate hears the questions and responds with the answers of the Catechism, the candidate questions their way into the faith.
There remains the other side to the paradox, questioning of the faith, which is brought into play by the concluding portion of “Concerning the Catechism”: “The second use of this catechism is to provide a brief summary of the Church’s teaching for an inquiring stranger who picks up a Prayer Book” (BCP, 844). Yet it is not only the “inquiring stranger” who might find this summary of the Church’s teaching an aid to belief and understanding. I propose that longtime members of the Christian community can also benefit from engaging with this “summary of the Church’s teachings.”
In this regard, the Catechism borrows the method of the Apostle Paul in his letters to the young churches. Paul often asks questions of his converts to prod them to seek new depths and nuances as they grow in the faith of Christ. In the Epistle to the Romans, Paul presents challenging questions addressing the concerns of Christians in an often hostile world filled with many conflicting “gospels.” “Do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” (Romans 6:3). In his own responses to this and other rhetorical questions, Paul provides “answers” from the scriptures, the history of the people of Israel, and his own experience of conversion. His answers parallel the faith life of Christians in every age.
It’s important to note that, in his writings, Paul avoids use of the word “faith” as a noun, as a list of intellectual or philosophical propositions to which assent is made. Paul’s teaching rather reflects on “faith” as entailing active engagement in a personal relationship with the living God in Christ. For Paul, faith is a verb, a word connoting the inward and outward actions by which we respond to God’s initiative of love in bringing us into being and making us a new creation in Jesus Christ.
We often speak colloquially about “believing” in Christ, a word which carries an emphasis on our mental assent to certain beliefs. In the Pauline spirit, I would rather coin the term “faith-ing,” to describe our active response to the questions and questioning which arise as we are drawn into eternal union with divine Being. Faith is active. The never-ending inquiry of our “faith-ing” asks that we continually return to the fundamental questions of being and life which are so graciously interwoven into the Catechism’s teaching. In the Catechism we learn that questioning is not an opposition to faith, but an act of faith. The questions which “An Outline of the Faith” poses are primarily those asked of us and by us as our faith seeks understanding.
The Catechism provides a way into a prayerful and faithful pondering of and responding to ultimate questions in religious belief. Consider how the headings alone provide a theological progression of topics: Human Nature; God the Father; The Old Covenant; The Ten Commandments; Sin and Redemption; God the Son; The New Covenant; The Creeds; The Holy Spirit; The Holy Scriptures; The Church; The Ministry; Prayer and Worship; The Sacraments; The Christian Hope.
In its treatment of each of these topics, the Catechism provides a way, a point of departure, for the ongoing dialogue of “the Faith” with the sciences and cultural diversity, with adversity and strife, with dying and death. To take one example: in Human Nature, human identity as created in the image of God is not tied to a particular creation myth/history or to the concept of “original sin.” Rather human likeness to God is based on a theological anthropology set in the context of freedom “to make choices: to love, to create, to reason, and to live in harmony with creation and with God.” Similarly, in The Christian Hope, the concepts of heaven and hell are removed from traditional cosmologies as “places”; instead they are defined as states of relationship based on choice: “By heaven, we mean eternal life in our enjoyment of God; by hell, we mean eternal death in our rejection of God.”
In these and myriad ways “An Outline of the Faith” offers a structure and foundation for the prayerful questioning of our faith. This resource is one that even the most educated and established Christians might find worthwhile to engage in their own life of prayer and formation. Consider the questions as a starting point for prayer and reflection, a way of opening a dialogue.
Frequent reflective engagement with the Catechism is a worthwhile and rich means for our continuous “faith-ing,” as we seek to question, engage, and live out our faith in confident hope and trust.
Q. What, then, is our assurance as Christians?
A. Our assurance as Christians is that nothing, not even death, shall separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen (BCP, 862).
Br. Geoffrey Tristram
John 1:1-18
Have you heard the news? That question often makes my heart sink, because it’s usually bad news! The year started with the violent attack on the US Capitol. Then all those cataclysmic climate events, racial attacks, mass shootings, a deeply broken and divided nation and world. And perhaps most disheartening of all, the devastating effects of the Covid virus. Such a diet of bad news, day after day, can profoundly affect the way that we see our own lives. We can look back over this year and see only the bad news: bad news for ourselves, our families, our lives.
And if certain newspapers, eager for a story, honed in on you, wanting to dig up some bad news about you, that you’d rather the public didn’t know, I wonder what they would find? They would likely find something sooner or later, because there is bad news about all of us, if you look hard enough: things we have done or said, which we maybe wished we hadn’t, and which we’d hate to be made known.
But today is Christmas. We are here to celebrate GOOD NEWS; wonderful, joyful good news. Not make believe, or wishful thinking. The good news is this: that ‘the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.’ Yes, there is darkness – God knows there is darkness, darkness and all sorts of sinful, hurtful, shameful things in all of us and in our society. But the good news is that when God looks closely at you and at me, he is not like that newspaper looking for bad news. When God looks at us he looks at us with the eyes of love. Just as when you look at the person you love, you see how lovely they are: all that is beautiful and good about them. And when the person we love – our spouse, our children, our partner, our brother – when they are in trouble, or mess up, or fail an exam, or lose a job, or do something stupid or wrong, we don’t point the finger at them, or condemn them, or tell everyone about it. No, we love them even more, and we do everything in our power to help them – because we love them. And when things go wrong we love them all the more.
And when God looks at you and me, and sees how easily we mess up, how easily we fall and sin; how we hurt each other and ourselves, how we damage our beautiful world, our environment: when God looks at his beloved children in Afghanistan, killed and maimed, his beloved children in this country hurting and attacking each other, he doesn’t condemn them, and say, ‘You human beings are bad news. I wash my hands of you.’ NO. God loves us all the more. God so loves us that he sends his only Son Jesus Christ into the world at Christmas. God did not send Jesus to us in order to look for the bad news about us. St. John writes in his Gospel, chapter 3, ‘Indeed God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.’ God sent Jesus into the world at Christmas to share what it is to be human: to experience in his body the terrible and hurtful and sinful things that we can do to each other – and yet to carry on loving us and forgiving us, and redeeming us; restoring us to whom we are meant to be. And that is very good news. However dark life can be, ‘the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.’ However bad the bad news is, the Good News is better, stronger, the Good News will always triumph!
‘The light shines in the darkness’ – even for those shepherds, ‘keeping watch over their flock by night.’ They were ‘bad news’. Shepherds were despised: dirty, unable to keep the law. They kept away from ordinary society, and when others saw shepherds they saw ‘bad news’. But… in the middle of the dark night, the glory of the Lord shone around those shepherds, and the angel said, ‘Behold I bring you good news of great joy for all the people.’
And those wise men in the East, night after night staring up into the dark sky: ‘What will the new year bring – good news or bad? Suddenly a new star shone out brightly, and they knew. This light shining in the darkness would lead them to the Good News too.
I wonder what 2022 has in store for you? Good news or bad? I don’t actually think that is the right question. For the news is not just what we read in the papers. We are not just passive recipients, victims of news from ‘out there’. The truth is that we can make news. The newspapers can numb us into feeling it is all so bad, and it’s all out there. So, what can I do? But bringing light into a dark world begins with me. I love those ancient words, “It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. A few hours ago, I heard the news that Archbishop Desmond Tutu has just died, at the age of 90. Here was a man who spent his whole life lighting candles of hope in a dark world. I remember him when he was living here in Cambridge. He would often slip in quietly to this chapel and sit at the back, praying with us. I will never forget his ‘chuckle’, that infectious laugh which just made you feel better, the assurance that everything was going to be alright. This was a man who in the midst of a world full of bad news, made good news. The Archbishop of Canterbury said of him, ‘He changed the world.’ He was once asked, ‘Are you optimistic about the world?’ ‘No’, he replied, ‘I am not optimistic, but I am hopeful. Because I am a Christian, and so I have hope.’ Amen! May he rest in peace and rise in glory.
At this Christmas time, each of us can, like Desmond Tutu, resolve to make good news this coming year. Each of us can light a candle in the darkness, and bring good news to a world in so much need. So, on this first Sunday after Christmas, a challenge to ‘make good news’. Maybe during this Eucharist today, as we approach a new year, think of at least one way, a practical, tangible way that you will try to light a candle, and bring some good news into the life of another. Is there someone who, when I look at them, I see bad news, I write them off? Perhaps I need to change the way I look at them, and see them with God’s eyes, the eyes of love. Or is there some action I can do in this coming year, something bold, something courageous, that will bring God’s Good News into this broken world which God so loves? Make good news this coming year.
Today we are here to celebrate, to celebrate that the light of Christ is more powerful than the darkest night. “For the light of Christ shines in the darkness and the darkness will not overcome it.” And that is very, very good news.
AMEN
Isaiah 52:7-10
Hebrews 1:1-4,(5-12)
John 1:1-14
Psalm 98
It’s always a wonder to me the way Christmas unfolds each year. There is often a moment that seems to freeze in my mind and I think this is Christmas. And my mind is full of those scrapbook pages of moments, the ghosts of Christmas past. There are lots of them that have that picture-perfect quality. The laughter drenched party with friends. The silent, holy night of Christmas Eve worship. The quiet Christmas morning in the Colorado snow. But, the moments that seem to be surfacing most these days are the ones that are much less tidy. I might describe them as the descent into chaos. It’s when the shine has worn off, when has headache set in, when packages lie eviscerated in a pile of torn gift wrap on the floor. Sometimes I look around and I think “This is Christmas? This place is a mess! My mind is a mess! My heart is a mess!”
And there in that mess, I see the babe of Bethlehem, and it begins to makes sense.
In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. (Gen. 1:1)
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. (John 1:1,2)
There in the formlessness and chaos before time, was God, holy trinity of Persons.
The descent into the chaos is the primal creative act of God. It is the persistent redeeming act of Christ. It is the all-sustaining power of the Holy Spirit.
What chaos, what formless void, what darkness is close to you now?
“All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” (John 1:3-5)
That descent into the chaos was always part of the plan. I know we talked a lot in Advent about preparation and being ready to welcome Christ today. But, the truth is, he was going to come no matter what state you’re in.
Mary hardly had time to say yes to the Angel Gabriel before her womb became the home of the living God. Joseph didn’t even have time to dismiss her quietly much less process his new role as surrogate father to God’s own son. But when that moment came, they said yes.
These days, I hear a lot of people are saying things like, I didn’t sign up for this. This hardship is too much to bear. How am I expected to handle all this loss, all this grief? And my heart aches for us, and God’s heart aches for us. So much so, that God descends into this chaos to meet us.
Whatever role you’re playing that you didn’t sign up for…the author of creation, by the blood of Christ, has signed your name in the book of life.
Whatever hardship you’ve been handed that you didn’t ask for…Jesus was willing to bear the same burden with you as he lived among us.
Whatever you have lost and lack, Christ gave up infinitely more to be with us, to be with you.
There is a particular moment I love to watch in the lives of new parents. After the giddy joy of finding out there’s going to be a baby, after the showers and the planning, when they get ready to leave the hospital and it sinks in…we’re responsible now? Where’s the instruction manual? To see a formerly cocksure young man’s vigor and swagger suddenly marshalled into singular focus on driving that precious, tiny, creature home defending them from all perils that have suddenly appeared. Monstrous potholes, and one thousand speeding cars that weren’t there yesterday. But now, there is danger all around and only he can protect the young child. The way a mama bear roars when her precious young one is threatened.
God who descends into the chaos, has entrusted himself to us in Jesus in deep humility and vulnerability. “to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God” (John 1:12) And the paradox of our faith is made known. Descending into the chaos, God chooses powerlessness in order that we might receive power. And, empowered by God, we bear the light of life in the darkness. “the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14)
Wherever in the chaos you find yourself, Christ has entrusted himself to you this day. To nurture and to bear him in the world. And he came to make us whole, and healed, and hale.
May the songs of the angels give you hope and courage this day. The author of all creation has written his Word into our hearts. The Holy Child of Bethlehem shines in the darkness. And the Spirit of God blows with power and might amidst the chaos. This IS Christmas! Alleluia! Amen!
We have partnered with TryTank – the experimental laboratory for church growth and innovation – to produce a new preaching resource aimed particularly at smaller congregations (those with an average Sunday attendance of 29 or fewer). That said, any congregation can use it. We have also paired it with an adult forum curriculum. From Christ the King Sunday to Christmas Day, we have six sermons each about 12 minutes long. They are based on the Sunday lectionary. The video sermons will be available on the web and can be played as a sermon during the service.
More information and to watch the video: https://www.trytank.org/vpmdec25.html
Br. James Koester,
Superior
Luke 2:1-20
John 1:1-14
There is a reason we celebrate Christmas at the end of December, when the weather is cold, the days short, the nights long and dark. There is a reason we celebrate Christmas at the darkest, coldest time of the year. There is a reason we come out in the dark and cold, and make our way to churches, chapels, cathedrals and monasteries, all over the world.
Our ancestors in the faith knew why. They knew something about night, and about darkness. They who lived in a world lit only by fire, knew that the world, at least at this time of the year, was indeed a dark, cold place. They knew something about the dark. They knew, as we probably don’t, how easy it is to get lost in the dark. They knew, as we probably don’t, that there are indeed things to be afraid of in the dark. They knew, as we probably don’t, that danger lurked in the darkness of the night.
And so they looked for the light. Any light. While darkness represented cold and fear and death, light was the place of warmth, and love, and life. So they looked for the light. They paid attention to the light. They knew that moment in the night when darkness gave way to light; that time of the year when the light began to overcome the dark, if only by a minute.
Our ancestors in the faith knew that on this night, things were beginning to change, and that the light was returning to the world. They knew that soon the days would lengthen, the ice and snow would melt, that light and life would return to the world once more. They could tell this by watching, indeed straining their eyes, for the coming dawn.
But if they knew something about the darkness that surrounded them during this time of the year, they also knew something of the darkness of their own lives. Like many today, they knew the darkness of hunger, fear and despair. Like many today, they knew the darkness of war, disease and death. Like many today, they knew the darkness of poverty, prejudice and disappointment.
And so they looked for the light. Indeed they strained their eyes to see the light.
For many, perhaps for many of you, this is a dark season. Perhaps you have lost something, or someone that gave shape, and purpose, or even hope to your life. Perhaps like many, you have been disturbed by events in this country, or in the world around us. Like our ancestors in the faith you are looking for the light, indeed you are straining your eyes to see the coming dawn, not just in the sky but in your life, in this nation, in our world.
And into this darkness, comes a baby.
In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.’ And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favours!’[1]**
With the birth of this baby, God’s light returns to the world, for in Him God’s light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.[2]**
It is strange that God would come into the darkness of our life as a baby. We imagine that if God is to act and banish the darkness of the world and of our lives, God would do so not as a helpless infant, but in might, and power, and privilege. Yet God comes to us, not in power, but in humility. God comes to us, not by feats of strength, but in the cry of a baby, heralded by angels and worshipped by shepherds. God comes to us in the darkness of the night, the poverty of a stable, in the simplicity of a manger.
The mystery of Bethlehem disarms us, for it reverses our expectations and our experience. It shows us that God does not reject human weakness, frustration or dependence. Is shows us that if we are to look where God is coming to us in our lives, and in the world, we should look where it is dark, and cold, and where we feel most alone. It shows that if we are to look for God coming in our lives, and in the world, we should look where there is the poverty of a stable, the simplicity of a manger. For where it is dark, and cold, and lonely, where it is poor, and simple, there we can see the glimmer of God’s glory, and hear the song of the angels. There we can join the shepherds and kneel in worship.
Our ancestors knew that we need the promise of light, when all around seems dark and cold. Our ancestors in the faith knew that we need the promise of light, when things seem most dark.
This is the reason we celebrate Christmas, the coming of God’s light and life and love into the world, in December. This is the reason we look for God to come, not in the glaring blaze of midday, but at the darkest time of the year while all things were in quiet silence and the night was in the midst of its swift course.[3]** This is the reason we look for God to come in the weakness and vulnerability of a baby.
The mystery of Bethlehem is that God can be known in gentleness, and in weakness. The mystery of Bethlehem is that God can be found in mangers, and in stables. The mystery of Bethlehem is that God can be born in the hearts of God’s people. For God chooses the hearts of those who love Him, in which to be born. God chooses the mangers and stables of our lives, in which to be found. God chooses the places of gentleness and weakness of our lives, in which to be known.
The mystery of Bethlehem is that God comes to us in the dark, and in coming to us in the dark, brings to us the light of God’s presence. The mystery of Bethlehem is that God comes to us, even us, and perhaps especially us, when things seem most dark and cold, and there God brings light, and life, and love.
The mystery of Bethlehem is that it doesn’t matter how dark, or cold things are, Jesus is born, and God’s light breaks through the darkness. The mystery of Bethlehem is that it doesn’t matter how dark, or cold things are in your life, Jesus is born, and God’s light breaks through the darkness of your life. The mystery of Bethlehem is that wherever you are, Jesus is waiting to be born in the stable of your heart, and the glory of God’s light is waiting to dawn in your life. The mystery of Bethlehem is that even in the darkest days of December, Jesus is born, and God’s light breaks forth.
Our ancestors in the faith knew about darkness, and they strained their eyes looking for the light of God, and they found it in the birth of Jesus the Saviour, at Bethlehem.
We too know about darkness. We too know about the darkness of the night in our lives, and in the world. Like those ancestors of ours who searched the night sky waiting for signs of light, we too strain our eyes looking for the light of God’s presence to break forth into the darkness of our world, and like them we see in Jesus, God’s light breaking through the darkness and with the angels we praise God singing: ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favours!’[4]**
Like our ancestors, we too know something about the dark. We know about the darkness of the world, and of our own lives. But so too do we know about the light that shines in the darkness, and the One who is Light, that cannot be dimmed. We know our need of light, and the One who is Light. And so, we come to this place, together with people from all over the world, and we kneel in this stable, gathered around this manger, and know that once again God has been born, and has forever banished the darkness of our world, and of our lives.
The mystery of Bethlehem is that Jesus is born, and the light of God’s love shines upon us once more.
Merry Christmas everyone! God’s light and life and love are shining on you, yes, even you!
[1] Luke 2: 8 – 14
[2] John 1: 5
[3] SSJE Office Book, Antiphon on the Magnificat for the First Sunday after Christmas Day
[4] Luke 1: 14
Luke 2:1-20
I spent a lot of time by myself as a child. It’s not that I didn’t have any friends. I did. And I’d hang out and do stuff with them on plenty of occasions. So that wasn’t the reason. I think I spent a lot of time alone, simply because I enjoyed my own company. I still do. I can occupy myself quite well reading, or working on some kind of project, or even working on something I enjoy. When I was living at Emery House, I could fill an entire day by myself in the chicken coop shoveling chicken you know what, or working with the bees, or weeding the garden, and be totally happy.
One of the things I remember doing as a child, was endlessly drawing maps. It must have been the year geography was introduced to the school curriculum, so was probably about grade 5 or 6. Sitting at my desk, in the family room at home, I’d draw maps of imaginary places. I’d use different colours of pencil crayons to represent different things: blue, obviously for water; green for forests; brown for mountains; yellow for prairies. (In my maps there was always lots of prairie! It was the one landscape I knew firsthand.)
Once I had my map completed, I would trace a journey through it, as my imaginary explorers moved from one place to another, discovering this newfound land of my imagination.
Since then, maps have fascinated me. That fascination was rekindled a number of years ago, on one of my first visits to the Middle East. On that visit I saw for myself what I had often drawn, a small piece of land at the crossroads of history. The sights, and sounds, and smells of Jerusalem are a daunting and exhilarating introduction to cultures and civilizations that come together, meeting, and passing through one another, in a small space. Africa, Asia, and Europe all meet there, creating a confusing and complex intersection of humanity. What I had spent so many hours drawing as a 9-year-old, I was seeing firsthand, as a 40 some year old.
It is that complex history, meeting at the crossroads of the world, which unfolds before us in tonight’s gospel. You already know the story, so close your eyes, and imagine the scene.
In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child.[1]**
There, over 1400 miles away, in Imperial Rome, a decision was made, that thew into turmoil the lives of countless women and men, whose lives were constantly in turmoil to begin with. Rome had occupied Palestine since 63 BC. Before Rome, there had been the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Greeks, and countless others. After Rome, came still others. To control the route to Africa, Asia, or Europe, meant the control of the Middle East. The inhabitants of Jerusalem were familiar with foreign control. Mary and Joseph had in fact, spent their entire lives under the thumb of faraway Rome. Is it any wonder the people of Jerusalem and Bethlehem longed for freedom, for a saviour, for a redeemer, for a messiah, who would liberate them from foreign domination? This dream of freedom and liberation was deeply, deeply ingrained in them. It was the very stuff of their prayer, and of their Scripture.
For the yoke of their burden, *and the bar across their shoulders,
the rod of their oppressor,
you have broken as on the day of Midian.
For all the boots of the tramping warriors
and all the garments rolled in blood
shall be burned as fuel for the fire.[2]*
This dream of liberation and freedom was at the very core of their identity as a people.
I think that longing for freedom is something we understand today, in ways we never before imagined. Who among us, after nearly two years of lockdown, does not dream of liberation, of freedom, of release? We, whose lives have been turned upside-down, by something which, to begin with, we had no control over, long to be set free from the forces of death, disease, and worry, even if only to do something as simple as coming to Church on Christmas Eve. We long to be set free, for a saviour, for a redeemer, for a messiah. How much we are alike, we who long for freedom from COVID, and Mary, Joseph, and the people of Jerusalem and Bethlehem from Rome. Although nearly 2000 years separate us, we are so, so alike. This longing for freedom is now at the core of our identity, just as it was theirs’.
In many ways, that’s what Christmas is about. Sure, it’s about family, and feasting, and festivities. But at its heart, it is about a longing for freedom. Sure, it’s about carols, and ritual, and gifts. But at its heart, it’s about a longing for freedom. Sure, it’s about friends, and trees, and lights. But at its heart, it’s about a longing for freedom.
You and I long for freedom, just as did Mary, and Joseph. And freedom came to them, not by a mighty military army, but in the form of a baby. And freedom will come to us. That freedom came to them, not by a human claiming he alone could fix it, but in the cry of a dependent infant. And freedom will come to us. That freedom came to them, not through might, or power, or privilege, but in the poverty of a child, born in a stable, and laid in a manger. And freedom will come to us.
We long for freedom. And freedom will come. Freedom has come. Just as with Mary, and Joseph, and the people of Jerusalem and Bethlehem, freedom has come to us in the form of a baby, in the cry of an infant, in the poverty a stable and a manger.
Freedom comes to us tonight in Jesus, whom angels praise, and shepherds kneel before in wonder. Freedom comes to us tonight in Jesus, who comes in humility, dependence, and poverty. Freedom comes to us tonight in Jesus, who brings forgiveness, healing, and love.
All of us long for freedom tonight, freedom from death, disease, and worry. And if we open our hands, and our hearts, God will place in them the gift of freedom, in the person of the babe of Bethlehem.
All of us long for freedom tonight, and if we take it, God will place that gift of freedom in our arms, in the person of Jesus, not in might, or power, or privilege, but in humility, dependence, and poverty, that brings forgiveness, healing, and love.
All of us long for freedom. Mary, and Joseph, and the people of Jerusalem and Bethlehem did. And freedom came to them in the form of a baby, born in a stable, and laid in a manger. And freedom’s name is Jesus. We too long for freedom. And freedom comes to us in humility, dependence, and poverty. And freedom’s name is Jesus.
Tonight, freedom is born once again. And freedom’s name is Jesus, who brings forgiveness, healing, and love. All we need do, is reach out and take hold of this tiny, helpless baby, whose name is freedom, and God’s gift of forgiveness, healing, and love will be ours.
Merry Christmas everyone! God’s gift of freedom, whose name is Jesus, is yours this night. All you have to do, is reach out, and take hold.
[1] Luke 2: 1 – 5
[2] Isaiah 9: 4 – 5
“…Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day; he saw it and was glad. Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I am.” – John 8:56, 58
With these words, recounted in John’s gospel, Jesus startles the crowd with whom he speaks by claiming the status of divinity. He speaks of himself as an eternal being, not bound by the constraints of mortal time. He similarly speaks of himself as the fulfillment of the long-awaited hope of the people of Israel, going all the way back to their forefather Abraham.
Understanding the relationship between the New Testament and the Old can be very challenging. It has been a challenge for Christians from the first centuries of the Church; deep misunderstandings gave rise to some of the tropes of various historical heresies, which often still impact our thinking about God and scripture today.
But the whole of scripture is a gift from God. Though it can be daunting and challenging, engaging with the Old Testament as a wellspring of prayer can illumine truths about God, the Church, and ourselves, in ways we may never expect. This article will explore several ways that readers today might draw from the Old Testament treasures both old and new.
Encountering God in the Old Testament
“Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever.” This doxology, in its various translations, is one of the single most common prayers offered throughout the entirety of the Church. It is a refrain chanted throughout the daily cycle of the Brothers’ common prayer. It’s quite a short statement, densely packed with fundamental Christian theology: praise is offered, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is declared, and the eternal existence, presence, and glory of God is proclaimed.
This is instructive for us, as we can look at this doxology and begin to understand the Christian belief about the nature of God. If the Holy Trinity, one God, is eternal, we can look to the Old Testament and expect to find signs of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, at work in the world and in the stories of God’s chosen people.
And this is what we find when we look into the Old Testament. From the first chapter of Genesis, it is God’s Spirit rushing over chaos at the creation of the world. The prophetic vision of the Ancient of Days and the One like a Son of Man in Daniel 7 is universally held by the Church to describe a vision of God the Son. Psalm 139 speaks of one’s inability to flee from God, in which the psalmist asks, “Where can I go then, from your Spirit?” The prophetic literature repeatedly mentions God’s Spirit being put upon the prophets, and those whom they anoint, as an indication of God’s blessing, protection, and power dwelling within a person. It should not surprise us to learn that the inspiration for the Rublev icon of the Trinity – perhaps the single most famous depiction of the Holy Trinity – is taken from an episode in Genesis 18, when heavenly beings (sometimes described in singular, sometimes as three beings) visit Abraham and Sarah to promise them a son, Isaac.
Most fascinating to me, though, is the figure of Wisdom in the Old Testament. She is praised as one to desire, follow, and chase after. She is also described as creating the world alongside God, begotten of God but before all things, a being of simultaneous power and delight in Creation. The Church has long associated this figure with Christ, particularly as seen in the description in John’s gospel of the Logos, or in English, the Word. Listen to the words of Wisdom in Proverbs 8: “Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth … When [the LORD] established the heavens, I was there, when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him, like a master worker; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race.” Compare this with the prologue to John’s gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.”
Both these terms, Wisdom and Logos, refer to a being that may be described as the ordering principle or agent of existence, both from the beginning of creation and into the present, continually guiding and shaping the order of existence. The names themselves, Wisdom and Logos (from which we get our word, logic), share similar meanings. The description of Wisdom as a desirable bride matches well with the description of Christ as a bridegroom. Our understanding that this figure of Wisdom is not some mysterious other being, some bit part in the heavenly drama, but the very same Christ – the eternal Logos, present from the beginning, dwelling with the God from whom he was begotten – begins to illumine a real sense of the eternity of the Trinity. Through careful reading, we see that the Trinity is not some Christian invention, but rather a continuation of the theology for God revealed in the Old Testament.
This understanding opens an invitation for our prayer. Prayer may be many things, but it must include some acknowledgment, some recognition, of the presence of God. Prayer is, first and foremost, about encounter. When we behold these truths and remember the doxology proclaimed so universally throughout the Church, which affirms the eternal reality and glory of God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – we can begin to glimpse that glory, and in beholding, offer that prayer all the more.
Types and Symbols for the Church
Encountering God’s presence in the stories and events of the Old Testament assures us of God’s eternity through the past. But the Old Testament is not solely a documentation of past events. The longed-for hope of God’s victory and salvation is a recurring theme of the Old Testament scriptures; for Christians, this serves to point us back to the truths of the New Testament, and chiefly, the central hope expressed in the Gospel of Christ. This way of reading has been called “typology” throughout the history of the Church. Typology finds in the Old Testament early “types” or symbols for truths that are further expounded in the New Testament. A typological understanding of the Old Testament can provide helpful context and imagery that may enrich or renew our entry into these truths. In my own experience, well-trod parables and passages of the New Testament can become dry, and the infusion of the typology of the Old Testament can bring new and exciting life to truths that have become dulled through repetition. Let’s look at a few examples from the Old Testament to see how they may point us toward the message of Christ’s Gospel, perhaps even with greater understanding.
One of the most well-known types of the Old Testament is found in Isaiah 6, a prophetic vision of the Temple. In this vision, Isaiah beholds seraphim in the presence of God, chanting a song of God’s holiness and glory. The temple fills with smoke, and Isaiah laments, for he has seen God even though he has sinned and has “unclean lips,” and so is in terror. But a seraph takes a burning coal and touches the coal to Isaiah’s lips, and declares that Isaiah’s guilt is no more. These images were, for the Church, clear types pointing to the Eucharist. The song of the seraphim became a Eucharistic hymn, still used today, and the symbol of fire (as the presence of God that purges away the sins of the penitent and restores them to holiness) remains a potent and enlivening symbol of what Christians do and experience in taking communion. In this understanding, the Eucharist is not merely a shared meal, not merely the special privilege of the already-holy, but also a comfort to those who grieve their sins, burning brightly with the love and mercy of God. Further, just as Isaiah is now prepared and urged to speak prophetically to the world, so too are we dismissed at the end of the Eucharist to love and serve God, each of us commissioned for prophetic witness in our own world.
Another famous type in the Old Testament is in Genesis 22, the story of Abraham’s binding and near-sacrifice of Isaac. This is a disturbing story for many, and difficult to understand in light of proclamations of God’s love. But when we see this near-sacrifice of Isaac as a symbol, pointing to the sacrifice of Christ, we might begin to understand. “Look,” the story seems to say, “look with fear and trembling at the horror of sacrificing a child. Behold the faith of both Abraham and Isaac in this story. Trust in these grim moments that God will provide the sacrifice. Trust that God knows the pain of your own sacrifices, for this too is a Father who has offered his Son.” This is how we may understand the stories that disturb us; when we look on the suffering, the self-emptying, the sacrifice of Christ, we can begin to understand anew the anguish of such a thing.
A third example comes in the story of Jael, found in Judges 4 and 5. This is a less well-known story, but one that has both the power to disturb and the power to offer clarity. Deborah, a judge of Israel, and Baruch, her general, lead an army against the Canaanites, led by the general Sisera. The Israelites are victorious, but Sisera flees and escapes, finding the tent of Jael and her husband, with whom he is allied. Jael, an Israelite herself, welcomes Sisera into her tent, where he falls asleep. Upon his falling asleep, Jael takes a tent peg and hammers it through his skull, killing him. When Deborah and Baruch learn of this, Deborah praises Jael and sings a song of the Israelites’ triumph over their enemies. This is challenging. The violence of the story, the subterfuge, the deceit, are difficult to embrace. But a few words in Deborah’s song give us more: Deborah, in praising Jael, refers to her as “blessed among women.”
This is not a common phrase in scripture; it only occurs three times. First, in the song of Deborah. Second, in the book of Judith, whose story is so similar to Jael’s that some scholars regard Judith as a sort of novelization of the older story of Jael. And third, in the first chapter of Luke’s gospel, at the visitation of the Virgin Mary to Elizabeth. This last example, at first glance, seems like the odd one out; the visitation is a joyous story of new life and reconciliation, not one of death and strife. But Luke borrows this familiar phrase deliberately; he is comparing the victory of Deborah and Jael to the joy of Elizabeth and Mary. Like Deborah with Baruch, Elizabeth maintained the strength of faith in the face of Zechariah’s doubt, and they were given a son, John the Baptist. This triumph of faith then gives way to the more hidden, less expected, and greater, more final victory of Mary and her bearing of Christ. Through a subtle linguistic call-back, Mary is positioned not as a docile and passive participant, but as a victor, who, through clever cunning, undermined and defeated the head of the armies who threatened God’s people, just as Jael did. This inversion of expectations, this proclamation of victory in surprising ways, serves to flesh out the theology of the Incarnation. It is not just a joyful surprise, but a great triumph in the battle for God’s people and the whole creation.
This typological understanding of the Old Testament has been a major stream of the theology of the Church from the earliest days. More recently, this method has fallen out of favor to some degree in the Western Church. Concerns of misappropriating Jewish identity as an exercise of anti-Semitism are significant, and come from an admirable place. There are various modern practices – such as so-called Christian seders, the use of the shofar (increasingly common in evangelical circles), and even various hymns in the Episcopal Hymnal 1982 that appropriate medieval Jewish and later Hasidic music for Christian worship – which come from more benign intentions while yielding deeply inappropriate results, representing a colonization of Jewish identity and religious practice. These practices are very clearly not “ours” as Christians. Conversely, the Old Testament scriptures, and our finding the truths of Christianity within them, stem from the maelstrom of conflict and honest disagreement within Israelite religion in the first century. With the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, only two branches of this religion were left standing in any significant numbers: the Pharisees, becoming what we now call Rabbinic Judaism, and Christianity. This resulted in intense conflict that spanned the next few centuries, and this conflict became severe persecution lasting more than a millennium, beginning shortly after the Roman Empire’s adoption of Christianity. We can, and should, lament this evil. But we shouldn’t lament honest disagreement about truth and meaning; indeed, approaching these disagreements with both honesty and charity is how genuine, abiding respect, rather than a distant and polite tolerance, can be forged between those who disagree. And embracing the Church’s own interpretation of the Old Testament without turning it into a cudgel to harm others is a way for Christians to embrace the genuine Israelite roots of our religion without crudely colonizing the religious expression of our Jewish siblings. There is no Church without the Old Testament; it is the story of how the Church has understood itself, as heirs of the covenant, and so as ones who can learn from the stories of the ancient Israelites in their own striving after God.
Stories for the People of God
The Old Testament contains meaningful stories of God’s work in the world, and meaningful signs that gesture toward the fundamental truths of Christianity expressed in the New Testament. Likewise, the Old Testament can be made our own; the stories of God’s people in the past can help us understand our own lives, both as individuals and as the Church.
In his poem, “Batter my heart, three-person’d God,” John Donne, the Elizabethan-era priest and poet, speaks of himself as a town, held by an enemy and longing to be conquered, liberated, retaken by God. In his book, War Songs of the Prince of Peace, our principle founder, Richard Benson, writes of the psalms, “if we recognize Christ as the true Psalmist … the abstract and earthly idea of deliverance from enemies is transformed into the Personal consciousness of the triumphant Redeemer.” Both of these understandings illumine one possible way of approaching these stories of old, of battles and wars and monarchs and prophets: we may begin to think of ourselves, as individuals and as the Church, as the holy land, the temple, Mount Zion, Jerusalem, the dwelling place of God. When we understand ourselves in that way, much of the violence of the Old Testament that is so initially off-putting can be a real reflection of our own strife.
There is one story in 1 Kings 18, of the prophet Elijah, where he competes with the prophets of Baal to see whose God can set a pyre ablaze and prove who is more powerful. Elijah is the lone prophet of the Lord, while there are hundreds of prophets of Baal. Elijah’s God is the victor. Up until this point, the story is relatively benign, if a bit fantastical, to modern ears. But then, Elijah has the spectating crowd seize the prophets of Baal, and put them to death. This is far more challenging. But if we see the land and people of ancient Israel as analogous to ourselves, we can begin to look deeper.
If we speak of our own inner lives, the striking violence here becomes a clarion call. The SSJE Rule calls the Brothers to “ruthless self-examination” in all areas of our life. As we wrestle with our own inner complexity, we can draw strength and comfort from imagery like that found in this scene: the firm faith of the singular prophet, victorious against the idolatrous crowd, itself suggestive of the many voices we may hear within our own hearts day by day. The encouragement, then, comes from Elijah’s actions: to extinguish these voices which draw us to our idols, whatever they may be, and to hold ourselves to account. The promise here is that God will not abandon us, even when we feel outmatched and the circumstances seem dire. By trusting in God, and extinguishing the false flames of the many temptations we may face, our pyre will burn brightly, for all the onlookers to see.
Similarly, an interpretation might be given not for our own personal sins, but for the body of the Church. We are no strangers to the scandals of abuse that have rocked Christian institutions; here we may learn from the uncompromising and confident faith of the prophets, who so regularly held their own people, their own political and religious leaders, to account. They did not do much looking outward, at foreign peoples, but rather focused their attention inward, on their own, so that the offering of the people of God would be a pure one. We too can learn from this, faithful to Christ’s teaching to pluck the log from our own eyes before we judge the speck in the eyes of others. This is the prophetic voice the Church needs in every age. Perhaps it is unsurprising, then, that we may learn to speak prophetically by looking to the example of the prophets.
Go and learn what this means
The Old Testament scriptures are, in many ways, deeply foreign to the contemporary Christian’s life. But this distance should not dissuade us from engaging; it should encourage us. It is our very lack of familiarity with these texts that can make them such a promising avenue for the voice of the Spirit to awaken us through our reading. The shocking circumstances of Christ’s birth, death, and resurrection should confirm to us again and again the need to be challenged, surprised, and disabused of the same expectations we may bring. Delving into the scripture that Jesus himself used in his own prayer, even in his dying breath, may take us to places we didn’t expect, and in doing so, draw us nearer to the One in whom we dwell. If we are prepared to recognize it, the Old Testament can be a ripe opportunity to sit at the feet of our teacher, listening to the word of the one who has spoken from the beginning.
We have partnered with TryTank – the experimental laboratory for church growth and innovation – to produce a new preaching resource aimed particularly at smaller congregations (those with an average Sunday attendance of 29 or fewer). That said, any congregation can use it. We have also paired it with an adult forum curriculum. From Christ the King Sunday to Christmas Day, we have six sermons each about 12 minutes long. They are based on the Sunday lectionary. The video sermons will be available on the web and can be played as a sermon during the service.
More information and to watch the video: https://www.trytank.org/vpmdec19.html
Br. James Koester,
Superior
Luke 1:39-55
In the last several months it has been hard to make sense of what is going on in the world. One has only to read the newspapers to be overwhelmed and confused. The news about COVID, Afghanistan, the environmental crisis, not to mention what is going on in this country, never mind what is happening in each of our lives, is hard to make sense of. It is all so confusing.
In the face of such overwhelming loss, grief, and confusion, words are often feeble at best, and sentimental at worst. What on earth is there to say that doesn’t seem silly, feeble, or sentimental?
Life for two cousins nearly two thousand years ago was not any different than it is for us. Like us, they lived in the face of loss and grief, and probably not a little fear. They didn’t know how to make sense of it all. They knew the stories of random killings, and senseless violence. They had probably seen some of it themselves. They knew about military occupation, disease, lost hope, and tragic death. Like us, they had somehow to make sense of it all. And it was no easier for them. Like us, words for them were often feeble at best, and sentimental at worst. What on earth is there to say?
In just a few days, we will be celebrating Christmas. In some homes reeling from death, loss, and violence, what on earth is there to say? Words are often feeble at best, and sentimental at worst. How on earth can we sing in the face of such overwhelming loss and grief.
Yet Mary and Elizabeth did just that, they sang, not in denial of the world they knew, but in hope of the world that could be. They sang not out of a sense of sentimental wishful thinking, but out of a conviction that God was about to do a great thing, in spite of and because of, it all. They sang, not as a way to turn their backs on the loss, and grief, and fear of their lives, but as a way to stare those losses, griefs, and fears, in the face. They sang and sang and sang.
*My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,
my spirit rejoices in God my Savior; *
for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.
From this day all generations will call me blessed: *
the Almighty has done great things for me,
and holy is his Name.
He has mercy on those who fear him *
in every generation.
He has shown the strength of his arm, *
he has scattered the proud in their conceit.
He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, *
and has lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things, *
and the rich he has sent away empty.
He has come to the help of his servant Israel, *
for he has remembered his promise of mercy,
The promise he made to our fathers, *
to Abraham and his children for ever.[1]*
For some, Christmas is the apex of sentimentality. They forever attempt, and mostly fail, to achieve that Hallmark moment. Yet for others, and I hope for you, Christmas is not a time of sentimental wishful thinking, but a time to sing, not in denial of a world that is, but in hope of a world that could be.
Mary and Elizabeth knew firsthand about tragedy, grief, loss, and fear. And who does not have their version of that?
It seems to me that we have a choice at Christmas. We can either wrap our Christmas in feeble and sentimental words, trying to achieve that Hallmark moment for ourselves and our world, or we can sing. We can sing, not in denial of the world as it is, but in hope of a world that could be, a world of mercy, justice and peace, a Magnificat world.
The promise of God in the Magnificat which Mary sings is not a feeble or sentimental promise, full of wishful thinking, denying that things ever are. The promise of God that Mary sings in the Magnificat is a bold conviction of how things can be. And that is what we celebrate at Christmas, not that things ever were, but how things can be.
This week we sing! We sing in the face of COVID, and racial injustice, and climate emergency. We sing in the face of our own losses, griefs, and tragedies. We sing with Mary and Elizabeth, and the countless women and men, who have sung through the ages, perhaps feebly, but certainly not sentimentally. We sing, not turning our back on a world that is, but facing a world that God is making, even now: a world of mercy, justice and peace, a Magnificat world.
So, let us sing! Let us sing today, and tomorrow, and that day after that, and help God bring about a Magnificat world, a world where God’s dream of mercy, justice, and peace, is not a sentimental dream, but a reality for all the world.
[1] Luke 1: 46 – 55