SSJE Sermons

Br. Keith Nelson

Exodus 32:1-14

Words like “proficiency” often appear in contexts where we are asked to measure our skills: job advertisements, for instance, or standardized tests. Many of you spend a lot of time in church – and we Brothers certainly do. So would you consider yourself a proficient Christian?

Probably not if we think of proficiency through the lens of metrics, benchmarks, or scores. But if we look at the etymology of the word – which simply means advancing, or making progress – the Christian life is emphatically about “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead,” in the words of Saint Paul (Philippians 3:13). We follow Christ on the Way that is Christ, with God’s help – and we are changed “from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18).

Deepening experience of discipleship, in company with other disciples, transforms us. But if we are not invited into both the kind of support and the kind of challenge appropriate to our years or our depth of experience, most of us will stop growing, stop advancing – in our faith, as in other arenas of life.

If you are tempted to imagine that you are not especially proficient and that this sermon isn’t for you, consider a story. And then we’ll dive into Scripture.

When I was twelve my parents made me take karate. I was highly proficient at things like drawing and reading. I also got beaten up an awful lot at school. I did not want to take karate; it was the lesser of two evils. But by the time I turned fourteen, I was a different person. I projected a physical self-confidence unimaginable two years before.

When I was thirteen, a year into my karate training, I was asked to babysit once a week during the summer for a family with three boys: aged four, six, and eight. When they discovered I took karate, a game began. Every image of hand-to-hand combat they had absorbed from every cartoon or movie or video game got tried out, in real time, on my body, with the ensuing question: “Was that karate?”

I could barely answer the question, but I knew what karate wasn’t. Jumping from the couch and landing on my back, unannounced? Not karate. Head-butting me in the groin? Not karate.

Slowly, things got more constructive. In karate, you face your opponent and bow to them before you try to kick them. In karate, you stand up for those who are smaller or weaker than you – that is, your little brother. Relative to the senior students in my karate dojo, who sent me home after tournaments bruised and limping, I was a novice. Relative to these three boys, I was the authority on karate. I was relatively proficient. My point here is that proficiency is a spectrum. All those bruises were adding up to someone I was becoming, inside the dojo and beyond.

In church, we are in a kind of dojo. Every verse of Scripture you read or hear with attention; every hymn you sing with your heart as well as your mouth; every Holy Communion received in faith; every moment of prayer; every act of service; every sin named clearly and confessed to God honestly – the Holy Spirit is using all of these, slowly but surely, to transform you into the likeness of Jesus Christ.

Today’s scripture lessons from Exodus and from Matthew both speak to occupational hazards for those making progress on the way that is Christ – at whatever stage of Christian proficiency we find ourselves. We hear vivid illustrations of God’s desire for us to rise up to spiritual maturity. And we see poignant instances of the choice to forego spiritual growth out of the temptation to prefer something less.

A first choice that impedes our progress is to decline the invitation of God.

Our parable from Matthew this morning is the third in a series of parables directed at the chief priests and the Pharisees. Jesus is not speaking to the people as a whole. He is aiming intense, even drastic words at a social and religious elite in what will be his last major address to them. It is one of several parables to use the image of a wedding banquet, a major community event in the ancient world. The wedding of a king’s son also carried political weight.

The imagery of Proverbs resonates in the background:

“Wisdom has built her house;

In Jesus’ parable, the people in the crowd “made light of it and went away” while some mistreated or killed the messengers (Matthew 22:5). In Luke’s version, those who decline the invitation give more specific excuses: “I have just bought a piece of land, and I must go out and see it; please accept my regrets.” Or “I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to try them out; please accept my regrets.” Or “I have just been married, and therefore I cannot come” (Luke 14:18-20).

The invitation to the wedding banquet – which the author of Revelation will recast as the Marriage Feast of the Lamb of God – is not a one-time event. The typical Anglican answer to the earnest Evangelical question, “Have you been saved?” is: “I have been saved; and I am being saved; and I will be saved.” God seeks our wholehearted “yes” to the wedding banquet of Life in its fullness many times over, and so the invitations arrive each new day. There will always be plausible reasons to prioritize something other than this primary relationship, just as there were in ancient Palestine. Christian proficiency asks us to become adept both at noticing the invitations into God’s intimate presence and in our readiness to say yes, stop what we are doing, and go.

A second choice that stalls our progress in Christ is to worship something that is less than God.

Our passage from Exodus depicts a pivotal incident in the story of the people of Israel as they follow Moses and Aaron through the wilderness to the Promised Land. At the foot of Mount Sinai, they have been waiting patiently for seven chapters while Moses receives the commandments and the covenant. But they get impatient, and impatience turns to panic. Before we are too hard on them, we must remember that they are spiritual beginners, learning how to relate to an invisible God named Yahweh, after the multigenerational trauma of slavery in Egypt. They alternately idolize and resent Moses, as a child might react to a parent, as he forms them to be Yahweh’s people. Like a sympathetic but slightly irresponsible uncle, Aaron concedes to their demand for something less than God. God in fact has a highly detailed plan to establish his presence in the midst of his people: the Tabernacle and the Ark of the Covenant. There is a tragic irony in this: God is revealing that plan to Moses at the precise moment that Aaron is collecting their gold to make a second-rate substitute of their own choosing.

There are moments for all of us when, despite our awareness of the saving grace and liberating power we have come to know in Jesus, we feel as if God is absent. It often doesn’t occur to us that God desires our growth rather than simply fulfilling our every desire. God longs for mutuality and reciprocity with us. In regard to times of God’s seeming absence, we read in our Rule of Life: “In the light of the gospel we know that these are necessary, and that some of them yield more blessings than times when we are filled with devotion and confidence.”1 Christian proficiency enables us to resist the urge to instant spiritual gratification and to trust God’s timescale.

A final choice that can hold us back from advancing on the Way is when we say “yes” with our mouths, but hold something of ourselves back.

Here, we can return to Matthew’s parable. In the final portion of the parable, Jesus presents an interaction between the king and a guest who isn’t wearing a wedding robe. As the parable stands, the king’s actions strike me as illogical, capricious, and severe. Luke’s parallel version doesn’t contain this episode. Many scholars believe that this is an independent parable about readiness for the Bridegroom that has been awkwardly stitched onto the end – which is how I interpret it. Setting these difficulties aside, the Gospel author summarizes the spirit of the parable: “Many are called, but few are chosen” (Matthew 22:14).

This may be a way of saying: The call to transformation appeals to many, but the journey to proficiency – that is, actual change – tests us at every stage.

Few of us would show up to a wedding in our gym clothes, even if we were invited at the last moment. We would honor the occasion by a sincere attempt to present our best. This episode suggests the question: Are there situations when we show up to prayer, to worship, to a relationship, to an act of service unprepared to give our undivided attention and presence? Is there a part of us that fears how going “all in” for Jesus might disrupt the life we know? Jesus repeats the wisdom of his ancestors: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37). The wedding garment would seem to symbolize this total commitment. It is designed for no other purpose than that one occasion.

Spiritual maturity might simply be a good faith effort on our part to continue to grow at every new stage of the spiritual journey. We make endless mistakes, but we never fail to learn from them, and to thank God for the mercy of the next invitation to grow. In the words of the marvelous Shaker hymn:

“When true simplicity is gained,

Br. James Koester

Luke 11:27-28

One thing people notice when they come here for the first time is the number of times we refer to the Blessed Virgin Mary throughout the day. The chapel, indeed the whole monastery, is dedicated to her. There is a smaller chapel also dedicated to her, where you can find her statue along with a bank of candles. People frequently come in to light a candle or leave flowers there. The windows in the chapel depict the mysteries of the rosary. Other windows show her as the central figure, especially the glorious rose window. And we begin Morning and Evening Prayer reciting the Angelus: “The angel of the Lord announced unto Mary… Hail Mary, full of grace.”

There are those who argue all this is very un-Anglican. Yet, I would argue it is very Anglican. One of the distinguishing marks of Anglicanism is our love of Christmas. This is not simply because we love a good celebration, although we do. Rather it is because at the very heart of Anglicanism is a firm belief in the mystery of the Incarnation – the truth that God, in the person of Jesus, took on human flesh, and lived among us. As John’s Gospel puts it: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us” (John 1:14). Stripped to its essence, that is Anglicanism.

How did that happen? A woman named Mary gave birth to a baby. There are those who argue, wrongly I might add, that Henry VIII founded the Anglican Church. Today I’ll claim, only slightly tongue in cheek, that it was Mary who began Anglicanism! And that plants us firmly in today’s short Gospel. While Jesus was saying this, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, “Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you!” But he said, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it!” (Luke 11:27-28).

Some will argue Jesus is putting down his mother here or at least putting her in her place. That is a misreading of the text. It is not a put-down but a raising up, and an invitation for all of us to be like Mary. Mary is significant, not only because she gave birth to Jesus, but because before that, she was obedient to God. She was obedient, not in the sense that she simply did what she was told to do, like a five-year-old, but because she listened deeply to the call of God, and bravely responded with her “yes,” even though she did not understand the ultimate consequences. In that way, we are all called to be like Mary: to listen deeply to God’s call, and to freely say “yes.” “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).

When we like Mary listen deeply to the voice of God speaking within our hearts, and find ourselves saying yes unreservedly, expectantly, assuredly, joyfully, humbly, obediently, then we too will find ourselves the blessed of God. In turn we will take our share in the birthing of the reign of God in our midst.

Mary is all around us in this chapel as a constant reminder that not a moment goes by when God is not drawing us closer to the source of divine love, inviting us to listen, and waiting for us to respond.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death, that we, like you, may hear the word of God, and do it. Amen.

Br. Curtis Almquist

Psalm 34:1-8

In the eleventh century, a teacher and priest named Bruno founded a new monastic order in the Chartreuse Mountains of southeastern France. These monks would be called Carthusians. As new Carthusian monasteries were established, they would be called “Charterhouses,” retaining their connection with their origins in the Chartreuse Mountains.

Bruno was not following the pattern of Benedictine monasticism where the monks live, pray, and work together in a common life.1 Bruno’s monks would be more like the Christian hermits of the fourth century in the Egyptian and Syrian deserts. The Carthusians would be semi-hermitical – that is, hermits, somewhat – monks living alongside one another in small individual cells where they alone, in silence and solitude, would pray, study, tend their garden, eat, and rest.

On Sundays and other festive dates in the church calendar, the monks would come together to worship and to share a meal and conversation. But otherwise, they would be solitary and silent, their life formed by the prayerful contemplation of the love of God and the practice of humility. The Carthusian Statutes describe how, “In the interior and exterior silence of his solitude, the monk lives for God, and for God alone.”2 The Carthusians describe their life as “a tranquil listening of the heart, that allows God to enter through all its doors and passages.”3

Today there are twenty-one Carthusian monasteries around the world, the closest to us here being in Vermont.4 You might find the Carthusian life intriguing; yet their way of life has been much, much too extreme for most people down through the centuries. However, there is one identifying quality of the Carthusian life which you may find inviting, maybe even necessary: the Carthusian monks’ solitude in living their individual life alongside others.

We today live in a very distracted world where insidious advertisements and digital distractions are constantly confronting us, kidnapping us, frightening us, seducing us. And the AI invasion allures us with even more; it’s like the temptation in the Garden of Eden. We face the risk of getting lost by not being really present to life, now. Most important in life is not the new, nor the next, but the now, where now can be enough. The psalm we just prayed reminds us to be present to life: “I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall ever be in my mouth… Taste and see that the Lord is good; happy are they who trust in him!” (Psalm 34:1, 8).

Demarcate some moments every day to pause, quiet down, listen, recollect, be grateful, and experience the wonder of life which God has shared with us to share. Practice the presence of God in the present, and teem with the generosity of God to this poor world, which God so loves.

Blessed Bruno, who died on this day in the year 1101.

Br. Keith Nelson

Feast of Francis of Assisi

Preached at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Cleveland Heights, Ohio

What do we have that we can truly call our own, that is not a gift from God, our Creator?

Gratitude for the gift of life itself, embraced moment by moment, opens us to God’s infinite horizons.

In the same way, forgetfulness that all that we have and all that we are is a gift diminishes our spirits: in attitudes of self-reliance and self-sufficiency; in a mentality of scarcity, competition, or possessiveness; and at its worst, the failure not only to give others their just share but the impulse to take by force, or presumed privilege, what belongs to God.

At its heart, today’s somewhat difficult parable is a pointed reminder of the consequences of this forgetfulness in the face of God’s astonishing generosity.

First, it may help to grasp the thorns of this parable directly.

This passage has been read as a Christian justification of supersessionism: the claim that Christians have replaced Jews as God’s covenant people. This reading casts the vineyard as the house of Israel and its tenant farmers as the Jewish people. This reading must be rejected as both presumptuous and deeply harmful. The history of such interpretations and their consequences must be repudiated.

The key lies in the closing verses: “When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them” (Matthew 21:45). In other words, Jesus – a Jew, with Jewish followers – is here taking aim at a religious and social elite whose privileged status lulls them into forgetfulness that everything is a gift from God. God gives to those who earnestly seek God’s face, with no partiality.

The violence in the parable is also difficult to grapple with. I think this is simply meant to underscore how far these tenants have been consumed by a possessiveness that usurps the place of God. In the end, they fall prey to a tragic false perception: “When the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance’” (Matthew 21:38). While the father is still living, the tenants have no legal right to the vineyard. Perhaps they plan to persist in their current tactics until the landowner himself dies. Knowing that Jesus intends the landowner to represent God, we see the irony that the tenants do not: no human measures, however extreme, can dispossess the Creator of heaven and earth.

We would be right, then, to ask: Why does the landowner continue to send his slaves to those who perpetuate a pattern of violence and reject a covenantal agreement?

Jesus intends here a graphic depiction of God’s inconceivable generosity.

We Brothers, like many Episcopal monks and nuns and those of other traditions, make a vow of poverty. In one of the chapters of our Rule of Life, we describe how we understand the spirit of that vow:

“The poverty we embrace through our vow has its source, supreme example, and eternal home in the being of God, who is a Trinity of Persons. In the Godhead there is no possessiveness, no holding back of self. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are One in mutual self-giving and receiving. Faith sees the cross of suffering and self-giving love planted in the very being of the God revealed to us in Jesus. When God made room for the existence of space and time and shaped a world filled with glory, this act of creation was one of pure self-emptying. But God broke all the limits of generosity in the incarnation of the Son for our sake…”1

How can we possibly respond rightly to such self-spending love?

One answer we find consistently in Scripture is: we cannot. In Psalm 49 the Psalmist acknowledges our human indebtedness to the divine Giver: “We can never ransom ourselves, or deliver to God the price of our life; for the ransom of our life is so great that we should never have enough to pay it, in order to live forever and ever, and never see the grave” (Psalm 49:7-9).

But the staggering knowledge of what this Love has done for us need not overwhelm us with shame or debilitating grief at the chasm between God’s gifts and our meager returns. In and through Jesus, “the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone” (Matthew 21:42): the foundation of a house where we are all guests at God’s table.

One right response that this Love draws from us might be the prayer of oblation, which simply means “offering.” We can cultivate ways of seeing all that we give away as an offering to God’s glory. We give our time to others who need it, spending time with Christ in them. We give our talents in the service of God’s will and our deepest calling, exercising to the full our God-given gifts, not to our own glory but God’s. We give our treasure – the resources we earn and those to which we have access – in a way that meets the needs of others and enables the ministry of the Church to bear the light and life of Christ to the world.

We may even gather all of these up in a prayer of self-oblation – a deliberate act made once or repeatedly that renders our whole life a gift rendered back to the divine Giver.

In the past ten years, we Brothers have revived a practice that was once a norm in the Society, by handwriting a prayer of oblation in the red leather book that records our monastic vows. This prayer is personal – it is intended for the Brother alone to use in private:

“Almighty God, I, [insert full Christian name here], relying upon your infinite mercy, and impelled with the desire of serving you in a life of Poverty, Celibacy, and Obedience, do humbly seek from your goodness by the blood of Jesus Christ, that by the fire of the Holy Spirit you will receive this offering of myself, as a sacrifice of a sweet-smelling savor, through the fragrance of his divine merits; and as you have given me a good will to desire and to offer, so I pray you also to give me the grace to accomplish that which I have promised, through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

I remember how my hand began to shake as I copied out that prayer! It was the fear and trembling we all experience on the threshold of a total commitment. It was wonder that this gift was being made not in my own strength but “through the fragrance of his divine merits”; it was awe at the strength and the tenderness of Christ, who accepts all that we are and uses it for the life of all.

Another right response to God’s self-spending love is the practice of Eucharistic living, seven days a week. Our Rule describes this as a process of transformation:

“As we come to enter more completely into the offering of the Eucharist we learn more and more to offer thanks at all times and in all places. This gift of overflowing gratitude to God, who supplies all our needs, enables us to let go of dependence on possessions and all that is superfluous. In the sacrifice of thanksgiving lies the secret of simplicity of life to which we bind ourselves in the vow of poverty.”2

Like self-oblation, Eucharistic living is for all baptized Christians. As you participate week by week in the Holy Eucharist and in this season of stewardship here at St. Paul’s, it may be liberating to ask what inner or outer possessions have become superfluous in your life. If you’ve begun to take God’s abundance for granted, it may be humbling to give thanks when your true needs are supplied. If your life feels cluttered with complexity, it may be as meaningful as it is countercultural to embrace a renewed simplicity – an identity that does not depend on what you own, but what you choose to give.

Today is the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi, one of the most beloved saints of all time. Francis made of his whole life an oblation to God and embodied a sacramental delight in creation that others found irresistible. By giving away everything, he gained Christ in all things. I close with the prayer attributed to him (BCP 833):

“Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.”

Br. Lain Wilson

Feast of Francis of Assisi

Job 39:1-18

Happy Saint Francis Day, everyone! It’s truly humbling to be able to preach on Francis, a saint who has meant and means so much to so many.

Francis was born into wealth and privilege in the Italian town of Assisi, where his father was a prosperous silk merchant. He lived the life of a pampered young man of the late twelfth century, a period of immense cultural flourishing. Yet, by his late teens and early twenties, the shadows of that prosperity and flourishing began to weigh on him. Stories tell of his giving lavishly to beggars and of selling his father’s property to repair physical churches. He sensed a barrier between the haves and have-nots, the result of a system that benefited his family. This growing awareness all culminated in his great renunciation of his patrimony, where, as one story tells it, he stripped himself naked, casting off the very cloth that was the foundation of his own family’s wealth.

Nakedness appears throughout Scripture in some specific contexts. The original example is, of course, Adam and Eve. Created as the first humans, they were placed naked into the Garden of Eden and there given power over all other creatures. The visible expression of their sin was clothing themselves; that is, adding to their createdness something that they had made, something that made them different from all that surrounded them, with whose care they were entrusted.

Francis’ own act of public nakedness, of stripping himself of the garments that represented his own participation in an economy of difference, dramatically reverses the actions of Adam and Eve. We shouldn’t be surprised that Francis would become the patron saint of ecology, embodying as he did a renewed kinship with all of God’s creation. We will sing his words later as we address brothers sun and fire and sisters moon and water and death and mother earth.

Francis’ words invite us to what, for many of us, might be a new, surprising, and uncomfortable kinship with all these our brothers and sisters.

To that end, Francis also invites us to follow him in stripping ourselves bare, of taking off our (metaphorical) clothes and standing naked before God and the rest of creation.

What does this look like?

It looks like stripping away all our presumptions in trying to play God.

“Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” God begins in his address to Job (Job 38:2). Following the awesome unfolding of God’s ordering of the heavens, God reveals the sheer wildness and unbridled freedom that runs rampant in creation: deer and goats who grow up in the open, the wild ass and ox, the ostrich who laughs at horse and rider. As God gives order to the heavens, God gives freedom to the animals – and both are beyond Job’s comprehension, let alone power.

We are in a different place than Job. We pierce space and time with telescopes; we edit genes; we create facsimiles of intelligence. These aren’t bad things in and of themselves, but we go astray if we imagine that all our knowledge and power somehow make us God. Because, for all our advances, so much remains – and will always remain – a mystery, beyond the horizon of even our most advanced instruments. The voice from the whirlwind reminds us that these limits still exist, even for us, that there will be questions for which our answer will forever be Job’s answer: “I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know” (Job 42:3). This isn’t a statement of despair, but of awe and wonder at that mystery that will forever lie at the very heart of all things.

It looks like stripping away all the ways in which we try to set ourselves apart from, and above, others.

“If those who are nothing think they are something, they deceive themselves,” Saint Paul writes to the Galatians (Galatians 6:3). Rather, the fact of the new creation that Jesus’ death and resurrection inaugurated is the everything: “May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Galatians 6:14). This is a new creation that bridges all divides and flattens all hierarchies.

Each of us has so much that we can boast about. Like a young Francis, we could boast of our wealth and privilege. We could boast of our education and achievements. We could boast of our disciplines and privations. It is hard in our world and our culture to escape this trap of pride. Francis did it in his dramatic renunciation, but he also did it day by day in the reordering of himself to the rest of creation, the expression of kinship he felt not only with the least valued among humanity, but also with his fellow creatures, the heavenly bodies, and the very forces of life and death. If Jesus opens a new creation, Francis gives us a model of what it means to live in it, to live as kin to all.

And, ultimately, it looks like stripping away the story we tell that we can get by in this world with only our own strength: that we don’t need to rely on others – and, especially, not on God. Jesus points out the lie to this in his invitation to “come to him”: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). What Jesus offers here isn’t one choice among many, which we may take or leave, but an invitation to a total and transformative relationship.

Jesus invites us to take off the clothes that divide us, and don instead ones that connect. “Clothe yourselves with Christ,” Saint Paul enjoins the Galatians; clothe yourselves in Christ, in whom all are one (Galatians 3:27-28). Jesus, the second Adam, in redeeming our fallen humanity reminds us that we were created naked in the image and likeness of God. We made our clothing, garments that may serve a purpose and demonstrate how strong and clever we are, but which also impose distance and alienation between us and God and the rest of creation. A part of the call to follow Jesus, which Francis literally epitomizes, is stripping off these human-made clothes.

This isn’t easy work. Stripping ourselves bare and standing naked can be awkward and exposing. What we have to lose is the comfort and familiarity of long-established patterns that remind us of who we’ve made ourselves to be: knowledgeable and powerful, proud, and self-sufficient. It’s hard to lose this. But what we have to gain – a coming to know ourselves as we truly are, made in the image and likeness of God – is beyond price.

Amen.

Br. Jack Crowley

Luke 10:13-16

In our Gospel today, we heard Jesus use the word “reject” four times in one verse. Jesus was warning his disciples that they would experience rejection in their ministry. Jesus warned them that people would not only reject them personally; they would reject their message and the one who sent them. To put it in more vulgar terms, people will reject them and the horse they rode in on.

I’m sure we all have some experience of rejection: professional rejection, romantic rejection, academic rejection, medical rejection, or even familial rejection. It’s nearly impossible to get through life without encountering various forms of rejection. Jesus, whom I admire dearly, dealt with rejection all the time. Jesus did not sugarcoat this reality to his disciples; he knew the rejection he experienced would happen to them as well.

In my experience, both in my own life and in working with others, the actual experience of rejection is quick. A turned-down date, a job interview that leads nowhere, a small envelope in the mail from your dream college telling you “sorry” – these experiences last maybe minutes, yet they have a tendency to rent space in our minds like a noisy tenant. Just think: if you put a few drinks in someone and asked them to tell you about their experience of rejection, or its cousin, betrayal, they could probably go on for hours!

The point I’m trying to make here is that it’s really in our best interest to learn how to navigate rejection and heal from past experiences of rejection.

Start by considering what Jesus did not do in the face of rejection. Did Jesus take rejection personally? Did Jesus change his values when rejected? Did Jesus become resentful and bitter toward those who rejected him? Personally, I think the answer is no.

I would argue that Jesus took rejection with a grain of salt, and we must do the same. Above all else, do not take rejection personally. Acknowledge the humble truth that we are powerless over what other people think of us, and trying to control or even influence how people think of us is like trying to change the weather. Simply accept the trip other people are on and focus with great intensity on the log in your own eye.

Furthermore, with that grain of salt, do not rub it into your wounds of past rejection. Instead, lick your wounds instead of picking at them. If you don’t heal from the wounds of rejection, you run the risk of becoming bitter, resentful, exhausted, and exhausting. As they say, hurt people hurt people.

The good news and bad news is that we will have plenty of opportunities for practice. We will all be misheard, misunderstood, and mishandled. Do not let these misses cause you to miss the mark. Instead, constantly be repenting, rearranging, and reorienting your thoughts toward God, the bullseye of our hearts.

Br. Luke Ditewig

Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels

Genesis 28:10-17

Today we remember angels. Mysteriously other, these outside, beyond, heavenly beings worship before God’s throne, fight evil, and come bearing messages. Ascending and descending, when seen, angels catch our attention. We ask in today’s collect that they “may help and defend us on earth.” We are not alone. Angels help us. They provide and protect. Glimpsing them reminds and reassures us.

When Jacob was afraid, he received a dream. Jacob saw angels ascending and descending on a ladder connecting heaven and earth and heard God speaking to him. God, who had seemed beyond and absent, broke through to be present in voice and with the sight of angels.

Jacob woke from his dream and said: “Surely the Lord is in this place – and I did not know it! … How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven” (Genesis 28:16-17). Jacob made a pillar, poured oil on it, and called the place Bethel, the house of God. In our Gospel text, we hear Jesus referencing this story. Jesus said to Nathanael: “Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man” (John 1:51).

“You will see heaven opened.” This is in the perfect tense. Not that they will see heaven opened merely in the distant future. Rather, Jesus is saying: You will see me. I am heaven opened. I connect you with God and the heavenly realms.1 Jesus connects us to God. Through John we see Jesus intimately close with the One whom he calls Father: “I am in the Father and the Father is in me” (John 14:11). Jesus is also intimately close with us: “I have called you friends” (John 15:15).

Jesus connects heaven and earth. Biblical scholar Dale Bruner writes that Jesus identifies himself by referencing Jacob’s story: “Surely the Lord is in This Place: Jesus. How awesome is This Place: Jesus. This Jesus is none other than the house of God. This Jesus is the gate of heaven.”2

Jesus is the point, and angels point to Jesus. Angels worship, speak, visit, help, provide, protect, and defend – not for themselves, but as servants of God. Dazzling as they may be, they point to Jesus, intimate and other, mysterious Word made flesh.

We are not alone. We may glimpse an angel or what an angel does – be surprised by provision or protection, a stranger who helps when we are most in need. When surprised by the mysterious, give thanks. Many beings are around us and with us. Together with the angels, let us worship the One who bridges all divides, who holds all in his hand and heart, who is heaven opened: Jesus among us.

Br. Keith Nelson

Preached at the Church of the Holy Comforter, Vienna, VA

Matthew 21:23-32

In this morning’s passage from Matthew, we encounter Jesus posing a question. One of Jesus’ distinctive teaching methods is replying to a question with a question.

The chief priests and elders pose the question: “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?” (Matthew 21:23). By this point in Matthew’s narrative, it has become clear that this is not an authentic question, because they are not genuinely receptive to Jesus’ answer. So Jesus skillfully counters the question with a question of his own.

He asks: “Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?” (Matthew 21:25).

Their answer, “We do not know,” is as inauthentic as the question. It is a feigned ignorance in order both to retain their own authority and avoid running afoul of public opinion. Jesus slips from their trap with rhetorical grace. Jesus offers answers – but they come to those who are willing to ask hard questions, and to follow those questions wherever they lead, even to the foot of the cross.

When I first arrived at the monastery twelve years ago, the burning question on my heart was: “Am I really meant to be a monk?”

This is not a question with a quick or easy answer. So before a man even enters the first stage of monastic formation, the novitiate, he lives alongside the Brothers for six months as a Postulant – that is, one who asks questions. And initially there are many questions, from the practical and mundane to the spiritual and existential. The monastery is shaped and ordered by what is called a Rule: a pattern of values and practices that add up to a distinct way of discipleship in the Church. As the Rule and the Spirit collaborate to form the mind of Christ in us more deeply, the questions become more refined. While at first this feels like watching a radish grow, if all goes as it should, the answers take root and grow by trusting the Sower, one day at a time. We discover ourselves by forgetting ourselves, until the response we are meant to make takes shape.

In our reading from the letter to the Philippians, Paul offers a remarkable interpretation of an ancient Christian hymn whose central theme is the mind of Christ. To know – and to receive – this mind is to make Christ the center, the one from whom all Truth radiates and infuses our lives.

But this Truth goes on provoking questions as our capacity to receive more of the Truth grows!

Our Rule captures the dynamism of this process when it states, “Our faithfulness to our calling will be seen by the ways in which we fearlessly subject our life to hard questions in the light of the gospel, resist inertia and rigidity, minister to one another generously as equals, and stay open to the fresh inspiration of the Spirit.”1

According to that vision, the one who receives the mind of Christ continues to grow only in proportion to their readiness to ask Jesus questions, and to change in response to the questions he poses.

In Philippians 2:5-11, we hear:

“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,

What is the nature of Christ’s genuine authority?

For Paul, the key is found in one Greek word: kenosis, or self-emptying. Christ, the Son of God and filled with all God’s fullness and glory, chose a voluntary path of humility. The earliest Christians came to see this not only in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, who was born, lived, and died among them. By reflecting on the pattern of his living and dying, they came to believe that this self-spending is a central facet of God’s nature. By this self-emptying, God made room for time and space to be before the beginning. Jesus listened deeply to this calling to give all that he had and all that he was in imitation of this divine generosity. Once chosen, it was a path he followed all the way to the cross.

This ancient hymn reflects the shape of that cosmic descent. We can imagine an enormous “U,” with “death on a cross” as the absolute lowest point. Jesus is the subject of every verb in that downward sequence. There is a pause, a silence – an emptiness.

The final question Jesus asks in Matthew’s Gospel is: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). It is into this silence and emptiness that the question is directed.

Yet the question is itself a prayer. And there is a reply. The emphatic “Therefore” signals a hinge rather than an ending. Now God is the subject of every verb, every upward step a response to Christ’s free self-offering. The staircase of resurrection rises from the abyss. It is through the free gift of self for the life of the world that the authority of God rests on Jesus Christ.

It is easy to see how starkly this vision of authority contrasts with the self-will, self-augmentation, self-fulfillment, or self-aggrandizement so often at the core of worldly authority. There is again one Greek word at the center of Paul’s critique of this path of egoic upward mobility: kenodoxia. Usually translated vainglory, it literally means “empty glory.” If self-emptying, self-spending love is God’s central motive at work in Christ, vainglory is its inverse. It is all appearance and no substance; the weight of public approval over genuine moral character. It is a house built on sand rather than founded on rock.

There is, of course, a whole spectrum of motivations in the gray space between these two poles. Our task is, on balance, to ensure that the weight of our fundamental selfhood tips in the direction of the new life we find in Christ.

How can we make the authority of Christ the center of all that we think and do and are? And how can that authority become the living heart of a community called together in Christ’s name?

Paul names the ways that he has seen the Philippians begin to make Christ the center: by “encouragement in Christ; consolation from love; sharing in the Spirit; compassion and sympathy” (Philippians 2:1). And he gives them some further keys for gathering up this good beginning in values and practices into the collective offering of a self-emptying community: being of the same mind – the same habitual attitude, “one souled” – and doing nothing with its primary motivation or origin in the small self.

As a monk, I am of course biased. But it is not too hard to imagine Paul suggesting to the Philippians the basic outline of a Rule of Life: the mind of Christ at work in each member drawing its coordinated life, work, and worship into a single mind, shaped by the same core motivation. The fine point of this motivation would have needed reshaping daily by “hard questions in the light of the gospel,” and the humility to follow those questions in the face of the swift, seductive, and expedient answers offered by the surrounding culture at Philippi.

Most Christians will not ever entertain the burning question of whether they are called to be a monk. But many have asked the worthwhile question of whether God is calling them to deepen their self-offering through the daily practice of living under a Rule, a Pattern, a Rhythm. As individuals, it is easy to find the consistency of our prayer, the zeal of our service, or the clarity of our values becoming blurry at the edges. A Rule reminds us: you are not meant to carry the cross of Christ alone.

As you all at Holy Comforter explore the process of creating a Rule of Life that reflects your distinctive way of following Jesus, we Brothers of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist pray that the questions you ask will shape and reshape both your understanding and experience of community in Christ – its challenges, its rewards, and its witness to our world.

Amen.

Br. Luke Ditewig

Saint Matthew the Apostle

Matthew 9:9-13

Jesus selected a small group to teach and transform, an unusual assortment including uneducated fishers, among whom Matthew was a striking choice. As a tax collector working for the occupying Roman Empire, Matthew was considered a traitor, an outcast from the Jewish community.

Especially in Jesus’ day, eating together was a sign of acceptance and belonging. Companion literally means sharing bread. The Pharisees asked Jesus’ disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” Jesus answered them directly: “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice’” (Matthew 9:11-13; Hosea 6:6). Doctors serve the sick. They don’t stay away from the one in need. Jesus said: I came for those who need me, so I do not distance myself from them.

Much of the Old Testament, with its holiness code and history, does seem to invite distancing from foreign people, their practices, and their gods. Biblical scholar Dale Bruner notes that by quoting Hosea, Jesus lifts up a “deeper truth.”1 Rather than primarily “demanding,” moving away and separate from people, God is “gracious,” moving toward and for people.2 How we treat one another is more important than religious ritual. Honoring humanity honors God. Care for the sick. Welcome the stranger. Love and forgive. Don’t condemn. Be kind.

Religious folk were upset, clinging to judgment, assuming barriers. We also get caught being self-confident, serious, and secure, busy doing good works, maintaining religious ritual. For the group and for Matthew, that he was a member and became an influential writer shows Jesus’ mission is mercy – healing unearned rather freely given. How hard it must have been for them – and how hard it is for us – to include and to be included: to include those who hurt us, by whom we feel betrayed; to be included by ones we have hurt, who hurt us, whom we see as other.

Physicians give medicine, and they instruct us how to live, how to engage our healing. Sometimes Jesus healed immediately by touch. Jesus also healed and formed over a long time, teaching and living especially with that small group of disciples. Like a doctor, Jesus models living ways to heal. As students and followers in need, here are three invitations from Jesus’ example: look, honor, and receive.

Look widely. Pay attention, both to those near and close to you – to family, colleagues, and neighbors – and also look to the periphery: acknowledge the outcast, see the invisible person, stranger, enemy. For all you see, ask: What do they need? What do they seek?

Honor mystery. Treat each person with respect. Acknowledge and work to let go of your assumptions. We Brothers cultivate honor with the gift of silence as well as our words and actions. As we say in our Rule of Life: “… we honor the mystery present in the hearts of our brothers and sisters, strangers and enemies. Only God knows them as they truly are and in silence we learn to let go of the curiosity, presumption and condemnation which pretends to penetrate the mystery of their hearts.”3 Pray for people you see. Honor their mystery in silence and in word. Acknowledge, honor, and help.

Receive wisdom. What do others have to teach you? Diversity, including fishers alongside tax collectors, challenges and strengthens. Tension and friction are inevitable, especially with companions we didn’t choose, and this is a gift.4 We help each other grow. Strangers, enemies, family, and colleagues teach about giving and receiving mercy.

Matthew was changed by this deep love. Like Matthew, we follow Jesus by loving others. Look widely. Honor mystery. Receive wisdom. Learn mercy.

Br. Jack Crowley

Exodus 16:2-15

Matthew 20:1-16

Our readings this morning had a lot of complaining. We heard the saga of the ancient Israelites complaining to Moses and Aaron about their hunger in the wilderness (Exodus 16:2-15). We heard the parable of the workers in the vineyard complaining about their coworkers getting equal pay for less work (Matthew 20:1-16). Food, money, and coworkers – I’m guessing everyone here has complained about these things at some point in their lives, maybe even this morning.

When I was a child, I had a golden retriever named Bailey. We got Bailey the summer I was going into fifth grade, buying her from a firefighter in Keene, New Hampshire. Bailey lived from the time I was in fifth grade all the way through my early twenties.

Now if anyone ever tells you that dogs can’t tell time, that means they’ve never owned a dog before. We fed Bailey her supper promptly at 4:30 p.m. every day. At about 4:15 every day, Bailey would inevitably shuffle into the kitchen and stand there, making eye contact with whoever was in there. By 4:25, Bailey would start exhaling loudly and making little grumbles, barks, and whines.

For fifty-one weeks out of the year, our 4:30 p.m. supper covenant with Bailey worked fine. However, every fall, when daylight saving time ended, all hell would break loose. With the clocks turned back an hour, Bailey would begin her routine at 3:15 p.m., dumbfounded that no one was paying attention to her. Bailey’s confusion would turn to fear and then to anger. Hell hath no fury like a hungry dog.

I always remember as a child the look Bailey would give me that first Sunday when the clocks turned back. It was a look of utter betrayal, pain, confusion, and raw anger. I remember thinking I wished I could put my head against her head and communicate to her what was going on. Perhaps God feels the same way about us when we grumble.

I’m thirty-eight years old now, and this all happened a quarter of a century ago, but I still remember my dear Bailey’s whines. The point I’m trying to make here is that these matters of complaining and grumbling stay with us. They lodge themselves deep in our psyche and can stay there like a dormant virus, waiting for a trigger to pull them into our days.

You may have noticed that I have barely mentioned God yet in this sermon. In my experience, that’s often what happens in a state of complaining. We edge out God. We form a wedge between ourselves and God, directing our attention with fear and anger toward our complaints. We think we don’t have the luxury, the time, or the energy to bring God into the situation.

The great irony is that oftentimes in a state of complaining, we verbally call for God. We say things like “Jesus Christ” or “Oh my God.” We often also use violent imagery, saying things like “My coworkers are killing me” or “That sermon was so boring, I just wanted to die.” When it comes to complaining, we quickly take things to the extreme.

So the great question becomes: how do we come back from all this grumbling? How do we find ourselves in God’s good grace when we’ve blown our top or been on the receiving end of a nasty interaction? How do we reconcile the complaints of our lives with the fruits of the Holy Spirit?

First, examine your fears. Behind every complaint, there is fear. Fear is what gives complaints their power. It is an annoying power, but it is powerful. Fear can drive us to do and say things we normally would never even think of. Fear is what caused my beloved golden retriever to look me in the eye with anger and bark in my face. Fear is what caused the ancient Israelites to turn against their beloved leader Moses. Fear is what caused a group of powerful men in Jerusalem to crucify one man rather than risk running afoul of the empire.

After you have examined your fears in the face of your complaints, don’t just sit there. Do not marinate in your complaints; they do not age like wine. Express your grievances with an even heart and a cool mind. Don’t hold back; tell the truth, but do it with love. If you decide to do the opposite, to hold in your grumblings, in my experience, bad things happen. Unexpressed grumblings come out in passive-aggressive ways or, worse, they can ruin our health and our sanity.

One mistake often made in the religious life is confusing stoicism with repression. If you are not able to express your complaints verbally, you will communicate them through other means – or perhaps I should say your complaints will communicate themselves through you. I once had a spiritual director tell me that what you don’t communicate verbally comes out through your body, and those closest to you will know it.

Then, after you have grumbled, move on. Move on, move on, move on, and move on. Let that stuff go. Reliving past grumbles is like cutting open a scar to see if it has healed. I’m not saying you have to forget the past or shun your memories. What I’m saying is, for the good of the order, are you willing to see your grumbles as learning experiences? Are you willing to share how you have healed, how you have come back from tragedy, and how you have reentered day-to-day life with a fresh understanding of things?

If you are ever tempted to stay stuck in your grumbles – and I know I have been – consider if there has ever been a time that Jesus healed someone and told them to keep doing what they had been doing and to keep complaining. No. Most of the time, Jesus emphasized returning to life after healing, not to do the same old thing, but to integrate one’s woundedness and healing into daily life.

Finally, after the storm has cleared, give thanks to God. Even if the only thank you that you can manage is between gritted teeth, it’s much better than nothing. The movement from grumbling to gratitude is like waking a sleeping bear; no one really wants to do it. Yet somewhere in our souls there is always that desire to be reunited with God, even after the grumblings of our souls have torn us apart. Stay on speaking terms with that desire, and know that God looks at us with that same unconditional love a parent has for their child. If you feel too shy or ashamed to return that love, at least open your heart to it and say thank you.

In my experience, our walk with God is a lot more childlike than we care to admit. There’s a lot more crawling and falling than we’d like others to know. There are a lot more hidden moments of confusion and sudden understanding than we can ever express. Our walk with God is not a neatly timed waltz; it’s got its own tempo. Yet somewhere in the chaos of that rhythm of life, there’s a whole lot of beauty to be danced with. If we stay grumbling, we’re going to miss the whole dance.

My dear golden retriever Bailey lived to be nearly a hundred years old in dog years. Toward the end of her life, every time I came home to visit my parents, I knew there was a chance it was the last time I was going to see her. So I had this tradition of taking a moment before I left and putting my forehead against her forehead and putting my hands on her shoulders while I kneeled. I would pause there for a moment, feeling her breath come out of her snout onto the bottom of my throat, and I would tell her how thankful I was for all the years we had together and how I wished her the best on whatever came next. The funny thing is, Bailey was one of those dogs that just kept living, and we did this ceremony probably half a dozen times.

All these years later I can still remember the smell of her fur against my nose and the feeling of my chin on her head. There’s a love there that’s unbeatable. A love that can survive any grumble. Find that love and let it rest in your heart.