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

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

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,

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

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.