Br. David Vryhof

Trinity Sunday

Genesis 1:1-2:4

You may have learned the Bible’s story of creation, as I did, at a very young age. The story describes how God made everything – out of nothing! Each day of creation brought something new: darkness and light, earth and sky, dry land and seas, the sun and the moon, living creatures in the water and on the land, and finally, human beings, made in the image of God. Seven days: that was the period of time it took for God to make everything – out of nothing – one day at a time. On the seventh day, God rested.

At some point in your education, you likely discovered that there are scientific theories out there, such as Darwin’s theory that the world was created by an evolution of species over millions of years; from the simplest cells emerged the diversity of creatures and environments that we have today. And learning this may have given you pause, because that was not how your Sunday school teacher had explained it. The two stories seemed to contradict one another. Did it take seven days or millions of years? How did it really happen?

The original recipients of the biblical story would never have asked that question or considered this a quandary. “How” it happened simply wasn’t of any concern to them. The Israelites were not unlike their neighbors in this. Religions and cults in the ancient Near East typically had stories about the creation of the world; today, they’re called “origin stories.” The Bible describes the origin story of the Israelites. It is mythological, not scientific.

It might be helpful here to remind ourselves that Christianity is not opposed to science, but to scientism. Science is a method for studying the natural world. Scientism is the belief that natural science is the absolute best or only way to understand reality and to render truth. It asserts that the scientific method should be applied to all areas of investigation – not only to chemistry, biology, physics, and astronomy, but also to religion, philosophy, ethics, and the humanities. Scientism often dismisses non-scientific inquiries as subjective and therefore invalid. Christianity’s quarrel is with scientism, not with science itself. We maintain there is truth and meaning to be found in the Bible’s account of creation, while at the same time recognizing that it is not a scientific description.

The Israelites had their own “origin story,” as did most of their neighbors. These stories did not answer the question “how” (at least not in any literal sense) so much as much as they tried to answer the question of “why.”

Why did God create the heavens and the earth? What is the purpose of creation? And inasmuch as we are a part of the creation, “What is our purpose? For what have we been created?”

John H. Walton, professor emeritus of Hebrew scripture at Wheaton College, offers us an interesting contrast to consider. First, he directs our attention to the final chapters of the book of Exodus, which describe how God directs the construction of the Tabernacle in the wilderness. Other religions and cults of the ancient Near East similarly described the construction of their holy places. In the account of the Israelites, as recorded in the book of Exodus, it is clear that God is in charge. Each step of the construction is carried out “as the Lord commanded Moses.”

“The Israelites [did] all of the work just as the Lord had commanded Moses” (Exodus 39:42), the author tells us, and “Moses did everything just as the Lord had commanded him” (Exodus 40:16).

When all the furnishings were in place, the priests moved in to take up their stations, ready to work and to keep the sacred space. This was the second-to-last step. The last step, on the final day, occurred when the deity took its place. In other cultures, an idol was placed in the temple on this final day. In Israel’s account, we read that “the cloud – [which was the sign of God’s presence in the wilderness] – covered the tent of meeting and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle” (Exodus 40:34).

Now Professor Walton returns us to the story of creation. Each day a new creation emerges, God’s spoken word bringing it into existence. Each created thing serves a particular purpose, filling the whole cosmos with splendor and honor. In the second-to-last act of creation, on the sixth day, human beings are created. They move in and take up their stations, ready to work and to keep the sacred space. The creation is complete, and on the last day God moves in. God rests in God’s good creation on the seventh day.

Professor Walton writes, “In the ancient world, temple dedications were often seven days in duration. During those seven days, the functions of the temple would be proclaimed, the furniture and functionaries installed, the priests would take up their role and at the end, the deity would enter and take up his rest. If the cosmos is being viewed as a temple, Genesis 1 can be understood as presenting the creation of the cosmos in terms of a temple dedication.”1

What does seeing the cosmos as God’s temple mean for us? What does it reveal about why God created the heavens and the earth? First, it suggests that God created the heavens and the earth and all that inhabits them as a dwelling place for God, a place completely dedicated to worship and to the glory of God.

Why, then, did God create humankind? Because the upkeep of this Temple requires priests, especially attuned to the presence and activity of God in this sacred space. Here is a way of understanding the end for which we were created and the purpose for which we were made: we are keepers of God’s sanctuary, servants and priests in God’s dwelling place.

We were created to know God, to love God, and to serve God. Think of it: Of all the creatures God has made, only human beings have the capacity to know God. The scriptures make it clear that God wants not only to know us, but to love us, and to have us return that love. We are invited by God into a covenant of love. The knowledge and love of God prompt us to serve God, by offering God our worship, and by serving our neighbors. To know God, to love God, and to serve God: that is the purpose for which we have been made. Everything God has made is given to us to help us realize this purpose.

We are created to be the keepers of God’s sanctuary, the heavens and the earth, and all that they contain. We are to care for the creatures that move on the land and swim in the sea, the birds of the air; for the rivers and oceans, the mountains and fields; and for human beings, created in God’s own image. We are servant priests appointed for the upkeep of God’s Temple, honoring the creation and revering the image of God reflected in every person.

How then shall we live? With wonder and awe, with reverence and respect. We are to know, love, and serve God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength, and to use all that is given us to that end. We are to approach one another, especially those who are different from us, with curiosity and wonder, recognizing that each of us reflects the image of God and is precious in God’s sight. We are to fulfill our function as keepers of God’s creation, priests of God’s sanctuary, with respect and humility and a spirit of service, honoring the whole of God’s creation and helping it to fulfill the purpose for which God made it. Above all, we are to live in love: love for God, for one another, for ourselves, for every living and non-living thing, in order that God may be rightly praised and glorified. Embracing the purpose for which we have been created is not only the way to abundant life, but also our greatest joy.

1. The researcher noted the citation based on work by the Rev’d Meg Junista, a staff member of the Center for Excellence in Preaching, whose insights inspired much of the content for this sermon.

Br. Jack Crowley

Mark 10: 46-52

No matter how I am feeling, the stories of Jesus’ healings always grab my attention. Happy, mad, sad, or glad – stories of healing have a way of interrupting and refreshing whatever kind of day we are having. Stories of healing often leave us with a different perspective on life, often a softer, gentler, and more compassionate perspective.

We just heard the story of the blind beggar from Mark’s Gospel. My favorite detail from this story is when the blind man asks Jesus, “Let me see again.” It is that word “again” that always gets me. It implies that at one point in the past, this blind man was able to see. Although he is blind, presumably he still has memories of what it was like to see clearly.

Personally, when I am not doing well, I often feel like this blind man. I know I am not seeing things clearly, and I know at some point in the past I was able to. I often ask not necessarily for my problems to be solved, but at least for the ability to see them clearly.

The important thing to remember is that the blind man in this story had the courage to shout out to Jesus. He shouted out in the dark. He could only go on what he could hear and feel, yet he used those instincts to pull himself towards healing.

We live in a culture that does not necessarily pull us towards healing. Instead, we are pulled more towards polarization and conflict. We are often blinded by how much there is to take in – outrages, wars, calamities, scandals. Healing can often take a backseat when it feels like catastrophe is driving.

Personally, I need the healing of Jesus to grab my attention, to interrupt whatever anxiety-filled narrative I have in my head, to hold me tenderly but firmly and tell me to orient myself towards healing. To turn back to healing when I am tempted to turn my back to the world. To see, when I would rather keep my eyes down.

Whatever you have going on in your life right now, ask yourself what it would be like to take a posture of healing. To allow Jesus to mold you, to adjust you, to pivot you into a firm yet flexible position of healing. A posture of health and sanity, breathing in fresh air and good spirit, spreading whatever love we feel embering inside us.

Pray to allow God into your wounds on a painfully personal level. Pray with that healing grace we all know in our hearts. Pray with that spirit of love and compassion that unites us in a way beyond our understanding.

Br. Curtis Almquist

Saint Augustine of Canterbury, the Ambassador

“So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; look, new things have come into being! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself… So we are ambassadors for Christ.”

— 2 Corinthians 5:17–21

In the calendar of the church we remember today a sixth-century monk named Augustine, who was Prior of a monastery in Rome. Augustine was chosen by Pope Gregory the Great to lead forty monks on a journey to England to be “ambassadors for Christ” – Saint Paul’s language – to the Anglo-Saxons. The monks arrived in Kent in the spring of 597 carrying a silver cross and an image of Jesus Christ painted on a board, their icon.

The King of Kent, Ethelbert, had married Queen Bertha, a Christian from France, and she convinced her husband to let the missionaries enter Canterbury and occupy a small, dilapidated church. The church dated from the Roman occupation of England, which had ended a century earlier.1 Augustine and his companions did not go looking for converts. They strove to assimilate into the culture with their choice of diet and lifestyle, with their language and liturgy, and with their prayers, welcoming any who would choose to join them. And it happened. Within four years the king and his retinue asked to be baptized. About this same time Augustine was ordained bishop and named the first Archbishop of the English Nation.

A surviving piece of correspondence between Pope Gregory and Augustine expresses the pope’s esteem of outliers and his respect for diversity of practice within the church. From the time of Jesus, his followers had come from many different cultures, classes, and lifestyles. Augustine’s vocation was what Saint Paul called a “ministry of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:18).

I was pondering this recently as I walked in an old cemetery. All those grave markers of people with such different lifespans, from so many different ethnic, political, and religious traditions; different education and vocations; different access to privilege, or not; each one an amazing, fallible mortal who passed through this life for only a brief span of time: “earth to earth, dust to dust, ashes to ashes.”2

Did they all get it right? In terms of their religious tradition – if any – did they all believe and belove the right thing, practice life in the right way, then go to their grave? Who is to judge, unless I make myself the arbiter: my own beliefs, my own practice, my own tradition being the only way. But I am too small to be the arbiter. Are we not all?

Why not live out our lives cherishing what we believe, meanwhile bequeathing to others respect, dignity, curiosity, and humility? Children of God we all are. God is love. Of that we can be certain. In the beginning, we read in the Book of Genesis, God created life with such great diversity, such splendid, magnificent diversity in every possible way. And God called it all “good” (Genesis 1:31). In the end, the Book of Revelation, we read of “a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne of God” (Revelation 7:9). Archbishop Augustine knew about this.

Blessed Augustine of Canterbury, whom we remember today.

1 Britain was under the rule of the Roman Empire 43 CE – c. 410 CE.

Br. Keith Nelson

The Seventh Sunday of Easter

In the calendar of the church’s cycle of worship, we find ourselves this morning in Ascensiontide – the ten-day period at the end of the Easter season, after Jesus’ ascension into heaven on the fortieth day and before the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the fiftieth day, next Sunday.

Just now we heard a reading from Acts that we also heard on Ascension Day – the lectionary’s version of recapping a previous episode. And in 1 Peter we heard a preview of coming attractions: The Holy Spirit is coming soon … to a monastery chapel near you!

For now, we are gathered in a strange in-between time: it is awesome, glorious, mysterious, and a bit challenging to preach about. A vocational hazard in the preaching life and in the monastic life can be overfamiliarity with things awesome, glorious, and mysterious. When that happens to me, I tend to return to my prayer journal to see what I can glean from a slightly younger, fresh-eyed version of myself.

When I was a novice, I spent a considerable amount of energy in prayer cultivating a relationship with God as a Trinity of persons. Perhaps because I was raised as a Southern Baptist, a close, personal relationship with Jesus had always come instinctively to me. But because of the insinuation of some bad theology, I had a relationship with God the Father that stood in need of healing. I am not sure I could have called my relationship with the Holy Spirit a relationship. The Spirit seemed something more like an intriguing but abstract force. So I spent time asking Jesus to show me more of his relationship with the Father and the Spirit, and I often did so by praying with art, one of the languages of prayer I have loved since childhood.

“Christ in Prayer” by El Greco (1541-1614)

The painting of Jesus with his eyes gazing upward, by the Spanish painter El Greco, could be an illustration of many moments in the gospels. But it is particularly apt for this morning’s reading from John: “After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, ‘Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son, so that the Son may glorify you’” (John 17:1). I found in this image an icon of Jesus’ relationship with his Father – and so a doorway into my own.

I discovered something frustrating about gazing at the face of a person I loved while his gaze was turned elsewhere. But this also provoked a curiosity to know more about whom he saw, and to see the Father through Jesus’ eyes. I recalled beautiful hikes in the woods with a beloved friend who is an avid birder. “Look! Look right over there! Do you see it?” she would squeal with glee. “Um … what am I looking at?” I would reply. Over time, these moments became opportunities to learn more than the names of birds. They were opportunities to see the world through the eyes of a friend seeing something, someone, she loved and longed for me to love.

Me looking at Jesus looking at God the Father also stirred the question: Who was this unseen Father looking at? Was he returning the gaze of his Son, or was he perhaps gazing at me – his adopted son by my baptism – somehow completing the circle?

“Christ in Silence” by Odilon Redon (1840-1916)

The second painting is by a French painter named Odilon Redon, who participated in the Symbolist movement in nineteenth-century art. These artists strove to find a visual language that could evoke the mysterious depths of human experience in a way that they felt was flattened and trivialized by naturalism and realism. Redon’s paintings are saturated in mythological and dream imagery, but he also painted many portraits of Christ. “Christ in Silence” depicts Jesus with his eyes closed, his head covered in his prayer shawl, and his hand raised to his lips. The fluid blue and gold background against the earthier hues of his face and body appears to me like a window into Christ’s interior life – the aura or ambience that emanates from his presence.

It reminds me of the words in John 3: “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). I also now find it resonates for me with the words from 1 Peter: “… you are blessed, because the spirit of glory, which is the Spirit of God, is resting on you” (1 Peter 4:14). This rest can ground us in God even in the midst of great suffering.

Praying with this painting, Jesus showed me more of the Holy Spirit by inviting me to be with him while we both closed our eyes and gazed within, gathered in God’s indwelling presence. The Holy Spirit in the space between us soon took on a more vivid life of its own. But for that to happen, I had to turn my gaze away from Jesus and trust in a different set of senses.

Odilon Redon was not a Christian, nor was he conventionally religious. Nonetheless, his paintings of Christian subjects bear witness to the deepest spiritual impulses of the human heart, the subtle movements of the Spirit in all people and indeed all creatures. As a monk of another community once said to me, “As the church, we can say with confidence where the Holy Spirit is: in our midst the Spirit has made a home. But we cannot say where the Holy Spirit is not.”

In John 17, Jesus prays to the Father, “And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3). To know God – to be brought into a relationship of abiding intimacy – is not just the means to eternal life. The relationship is that Life itself.

The kingdom of God, this Life that is truly Life, is given to us now in part and not yet in its fullness. God’s fullness is always seeping into time as most of the world knows it, but most often in glimpses, in a gradual unfolding. That is good news, because it is given to us in the measure we can receive it; God reveals only as much of God as we can endure.

The ministry of artists is particularly appropriate to celebrate during Ascensiontide. Like the Greeks who came to the apostle Philip, we wish to see Jesus, the “image of the invisible God.” Some art has the capacity not only to reveal God or spiritual realities, but to move our gaze beyond the visible in the direction of truths that images cannot contain. Icons in the Eastern Church do this in a very intentional and programmatic way, but a venerable lineage of Western artists participates in a similar approach to sacred art. They invite us to gaze until our spirits are filled and moved, but then they say, like that pair of men in white robes: “Why do you stand looking upward into heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11).

If things awesome, mysterious, and glorious have lost a bit of their luster for you, praying with sacred art may help undomesticate familiar images of God and open a fresh perspective. Perhaps the crucified, risen, and ascended Christ is inviting you to pray your way through a museum, to search out the image of God in creative works both explicitly religious and otherwise. You may also feel prompted to gaze afresh at art made by friends or by your own hand, and to see it with renewed sight and insight.

St. Bernard of Clairvaux wrote:

The soul at prayer should have before it a sacred image of the God-man, in his birth of infancy or as he was teaching, or dying, or rising, or ascending. Whatever form it takes, this image must bind the soul with the love of virtue and expel carnal vices, eliminate temptations and quiet desires. I think this is the principal reason why the invisible God willed to be seen in the flesh and to converse with men as a man. He wanted to recapture the affections of carnal men who were unable to love in any other way, by first drawing them to the salutary love of his own humanity, and then gradually to raise them to a spiritual love.

The ministry of sacred art trains our gaze to look for Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in all people, places, and things – and to give praise to the Divine Artist, their Maker and Source.

Br. Jamie Nelson

Acts 18:23-28

Today’s reading from the eighteenth chapter of Acts paints a vivid picture of the networks of relationship by which early Christian communities grew and developed, and invites us to think about how we embody that growth today.

It is easy for us present-day humans to get access to basically everything we might want to know about being Christian. We have Bibles at our fingertips, which collect the teachings of Jesus and stories about his early followers. We can easily look up the history of the Christian tradition and find out what two millennia of scholars have taught about matters of doctrine.

That was not so for the early followers of Jesus. Their growth in faith came out of relationships, not from mass-market published books or YouTube videos by popular influencers. It was person-to-person human connection and mentorship that fed the growth of first-century Christianity.

We see this play out in Acts 18, where we meet Apollos, a man of passionate faith and a desire to preach in the Christian gatherings of the city of Ephesus. Apollos is mentioned briefly in the New Testament, both here and in Paul’s letters. However, we never hear from him in his own words.

Originally from the Jewish community of Alexandria, somewhere along Apollos’s journey from Mediterranean city to city he had learned about Jesus of Nazareth and come to believe that Jesus was the Messiah. He had also learned about the baptisms that John conducted in the Jordan River, perhaps even having undergone the ritual himself.

However, he had not learned about something that other Christians in Ephesus knew about, even if they had not been present when it first happened: the day of Pentecost and the enduring power of the Holy Spirit. I do not blame Apollos. He did not have issues of Christianity Today to read, or a monastery ordo to ground him in the traditions of the church year. He just had his own life experience of following Jesus to preach from, and by all accounts he did a good job at it.

So Paul’s colleagues Priscilla and Aquila took him aside. They privately shared with him the miraculous events at the harvest festival of Pentecost in Jerusalem, when the Holy Spirit had descended upon a group of Jesus’s followers with a sound like a mighty wind, with divided tongues of fire resting on each person, enabling them to preach the gospel in many languages.

Priscilla and Aquila did not shame Apollos or tell people not to listen to him because he had not heard the whole story. They recognized his giftedness and his potential and were committed to his growth and development as an evangelist. They saw Apollos as someone to mentor, not as their competition or an upstart to put in his place.

And we do not hear about any pushback from Apollos. He does not seem to have been defensive or threatened by learning that his message was incomplete, and he definitely does not quit preaching the gospel.

Instead, after receiving guidance, he is sent to preach in another region, Achaea, three hundred miles away by sea, with the full support of the Ephesian church. We hear that his work there made a considerable impact in those churches, which the Apostle Paul later summed up by saying, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth” (1 Corinthians 3:6).

In our modern-day context, we often feel pressure in our work lives to appear polished, certain, and fully informed. But today’s reading reminds us that it does not have to be that way in our lives of faith.

We can be talented, effective, and still have many things to learn. We do not need to have it all perfectly figured out to begin. Instead, we can remain open to learning and growing, and look for God’s grace to be revealed through networks of relationship.

Br. Jack Crowley

Ascension Day

Luke 24:44-53

Back in my twenties, I taught English as a second language. I had the pleasure of meeting thousands of people from around the world. There was one particular summer when I had a group of students all from Germany, and I think they spoke English better than I did. Frequently, they would show up early to class and we would get to talking before class started.

One morning, out of the blue, one of the German men asked me if my grandfather had been in World War Two. I could see the other students stiffen up a bit. I smiled and said yes. I told him I had one grandfather who was a Marine and served in the Pacific, and my other grandfather was in the Air Force and served in Europe. I asked the student about his family’s experience in the war, and he nodded and inhaled and proceeded to tell me that in World War Two his grandfather was in the Air Force as well. There was a long, awkward silence as our eyes met, and then we both kind of nodded at each other with a knowing smile and looked upward, as if to say: here we are – our two grandfathers flew against each other in a world war, and their grandsons are in a classroom together speaking a common language. Now certainly, we did not achieve world peace in that classroom that morning, but some progress was made.

I think we have all had moments like that, when we look skyward and know something greater than ourselves is at play. Something greater than ourselves is at work. The comedy and tragedy of our life, the joys and challenges, the ups and the downs, somehow coming together full circle – and we can look up in wonder.

Tonight we celebrate the Ascension of our Savior Jesus Christ. Every year on this date, I always spend more time than usual looking upward. I try to put myself there with the disciples, imagining Jesus lifting up his hands, closing my eyes, Jesus blessing me, and when I open my eyes, Jesus has ascended. I am often reminded of the feeling I have gotten when someone close to me who is advanced in age has passed away peacefully, and I have this overwhelming sense of peace imagining them floating off to the next adventure.

One of the great challenges of our lives is how to stay in touch with this feeling of ascended glory. To hold in one hand the truth that God is gloriously shaping our lives, and to hold in the other hand the truth that there is suffering in the world and we will go through times of desperation. We are caught somewhere in the middle, holding these two truths, waiting for an answer.

So the question becomes: how then do we live with these questions? What do we do after the glow of the Ascension has faded? What do we do when it feels like we are just left with one another?

First, do not be embarrassed by any feelings of confusion, fatigue, anger, angst, anxiety, or boredom. When we look down from the heavens and meet the world in the eye, we are all going to have different reactions day to day, moment to moment. When we see the concrete realities before us – or in our monastery’s case, when the concrete is being jackhammered outside our door – it is natural to have a reaction. We are human, after all.

Second, soak in your desire for God. Hold fast to those memories of intimacy with God, times when it felt like everything made sense, times when it felt like you could see God so clearly it was as if God were standing right in front of you. Those memories will sustain you when the well goes dry.

Third, look for the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is present in every moment. Look for the Holy Spirit in every situation in your life. If you cannot find it, at least be open to it. Jesus promised his disciples they would be clothed with power from on high. Allow God to dress you with that power – to dress you and address you, to call you and send you where you need to go, whether that be a literal place or a state of mind.

Fourth, always remember that we have one another. That could be a good thing and, or, a bad thing. For better or worse, we are all stuck on this earth together. We must ask ourselves: what on earth should we do, and what should we do on earth? Do we want to express ourselves with bombs and bullets, or do we want to learn a common language? Do we want to heal generations of trauma, or do we want to continue the insanity of violence? Do we wish to work together, or do we wish to drift apart?

One thing I learned in all my years in the classroom is that deep down, people really do want to work together, but fear gets in the way. Fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of being betrayed, fear of being abandoned – all these fears add up and calcify, leaving us hardened, a stiff-necked people unable to loosen up and join in. Sometimes all it takes is a smile, a nod, a wink, an exhale, a lifting up of the head, and you can communicate so much with so little.

Always remember that the forces that pull us together are stronger than the forces that push us apart. Deep down, we all want to be reconciled, we all want to learn multiple languages, we all want to understand what someone else is saying – and those tongues of fire inspire us all.

Finally, always remember that after the Ascension, the disciples returned to Jerusalem with great joy. Never lose touch with joy. Find it at the core of your being and let it flow. I wish you a glorious Ascensiontide. Amen.

Br. David Vryhof

I Corinthians 3:10-14, Matthew 6:19-24

The great spiritual leader of India, Mahatma Gandhi, once said, “We become what we yearn after. Hence the need for prayer.”[1] What could he have meant by this?

“We become what we yearn after” does not mean that we will get whatever we desire. I may yearn to become wealthy or popular or successful, but this is no guarantee that I will become any of those things.

What it does mean is that the things I yearn after will invariably shape and form me. If I yearn after wealth, for example, my desire to become wealthy will influence everything: the friends I choose, the neighborhood I want to live in, the type of work I am willing to do, the material possessions I work to acquire, and the people who matter most to me. I will choose those things that will enable me to become wealthy, and I will leave aside the rest. I am likely to overlook the beggar sitting outside my gate. This yearning for wealth will shape who I am and what I will become.

“Hence the need for prayer.” Since this is the case, Gandhi suggests, we need times of prayer to examine ourselves, our motives, our goals, the ways we relate to others, and our vocation or calling in life. Only when we look at our lives through the lens of God’s values and God’s purposes can we see what is worthwhile, what will endure, and what choices will best reflect the purpose for which God has made us.

“We become what we yearn after; hence the need for prayer.” Our desires will shape and form the type of person we become; hence the need to examine and reflect on our deepest values, our priorities in life, and our motivation for making various choices.

Gandhi, who was not a Christian, valued the teachings of Jesus and would have assented to the truth of Jesus’ words in our Gospel text today: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matthew 6:19-21). See also Luke 12:33-34 and Matthew 19:21.

With these words, Jesus invites us to reflect on the difference between “treasures on earth” and “treasures in heaven.” Earthly treasures are temporary material possessions – money, property, goods – that are subject to decay and theft, while heavenly treasures are eternal rewards gained through good works, generosity, and faith. Jesus calls us to spurn the first in order to embrace the second. Earthly treasures pass away, but heavenly treasure lasts forever. It is not subject to corruption or theft; it endures beyond the grave.

In our lesson from 1 Corinthians, St. Paul suggests that we are builders who must “choose with care how [we] build.” For there will come a day when what we have built using our time and our talents will be put to the test, to see whether it will last or whether it will be consumed.

So choose wisely. Choose prayerfully. Choose to put your time and effort into those things that will endure.

[1] Mahadev Desai, diary entry quoted in Krishna Kripalani, ed., All Men Are Brothers (New York: World Without War Publications, 1972), s.v. Gandhi.

Br. Luke Ditewig

The Sixth Sunday of Easter

John 14:15-21

Easter was six weeks ago. Should we be confident in the Resurrection by now? The first disciples were not. Their dream of Jesus had shattered. Seeing him alive was not an immediate fix. They often did not recognize him.

Near the empty tomb, Mary thought Jesus was the gardener. On the road to Emmaus, two followers had a long talk with Jesus, thinking he was a stranger. While fishing, others did not realize that it was Jesus speaking to them on the beach. The frightened followers locked the doors when they gathered. Why were they so excited? Had they not heard correctly? Had they made a huge mistake? What in the world should they do now?

When Jesus appears, the disciples are terrified. Jesus says, “Peace be with you” (John 20:19; Luke 24:36). Jesus says this over and over to reassure them. Resurrection scenes echo Holy Week, with Jesus reassuring them. Our Gospel lesson today comes from the last great conversation on Maundy Thursday. Jesus speaks to his followers, frightened in Jerusalem, where death threats loom heavily. Though afraid, they do not know what is about to happen. Jesus is about to be arrested and killed. Jesus does know, and he prepares them.

While Matthew, Mark, and Luke move through this evening rather quickly, focusing on instituting the Lord’s Supper, John spends five chapters on it. As Eugene Peterson wrote, John slows the reader down, inviting us to listen: listen to Jesus love and teach his followers to love.[1] Listen to Jesus reassure, encourage, and prepare them for his leaving.

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). Jesus began the evening showing love, visible and tactile, in washing feet. Love touching deeply, feet first. Be humble and tender in serving. Be vulnerable in receiving. Figuratively, feet are our fragility, fears, wounds, and heartaches. “Follow my example,” Jesus said (John 13:15). Love by washing each other’s feet. This is the “new commandment” – love one another in this way. Let yourself be seen and heard. Receive help, and care for others. Love one another tenderly.

“I am with you only a little longer.” “Where I am going you cannot follow.” Jesus prepares them for his absence, both in death and in resurrection. Jesus comforts and encourages them with the promise of the Spirit. “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever” (John 14:16). What? How? Though true, Jesus is not particularly understandable in this long discourse. What he says raises questions. Peterson wrote that Jesus “is not making things clear, smoothing out ambiguities; [rather, Jesus] is making them vivid, pulsing.”[2] When someone comforts or encourages you, what is most apparent? What do you most remember? Coherent words or plans? We remember presence, soothing, slowing, one being with us.

Vivid now and after leaving. Promised presence beyond absence. Slowing pulse. When we touch and hug, our bodies calibrate breathing and pulse. We can slow down with and by another body. Breathing. Pulsing. Soothing. Standing with to withstand.

Jesus reassures us with promised presence. “I will ask the Father, who will give the Spirit. I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. Because I live, you also will live. You will know that you are in me and I in you” (John 14:16-20). This is tender love. Jesus is further washing feet. This is teaching a song to sing, ways to move, sowing seeds for resurrection, and poetry to live in coming grief.

The Spirit is here, hovering, mending, working resurrection even unseen. Receive God’s touch and pulse, and share them by loving one another. Practice being, listening. Amid heartache and much to do, pause to be.

Someone shared with me the joy of a relaxed reading of a novel. They noted a new, relaxed presence instead of shifting and skimming: joy at being present to the characters, plot, pace, the gift of story. As a new retiree, they are intentionally seeking more such being.

Susanna Wesley, mother of Methodism, had ten children, including the famous John and Charles. She sat or knelt in the kitchen and pulled her apron up over her head. All knew not to interrupt when the apron was up, because for those few minutes she was alone with God in prayer. Amid a noisy, full life, Susanna cultivated stopping to be, if only briefly.

“Because I live,” Jesus said, “you also will live. You will know that you are in me and I in you” (John 14:19-20).

Pause to be, feel, and follow the pulse of the Spirit. Receive and share. As promised, God loves with tender presence.

[1] Eugene H. Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2005), 235.

[2] Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, 237.

Br. Lain Wilson

Julian of Norwich

The fourteenth century was a lousy century. Famine, plague, war. Absolutely lousy.

You wouldn’t know it reading Julian of Norwich, whom we remember today.

Julian would’ve been about six years old when the Black Death swept through England. She likely didn’t have any, or many, memories of this devastating event, and would’ve likely heard stories as she grew up. But we don’t know what she thought of it, or of any of the other horrors of her time. Her “Showings,” which testify to a series of visions she received in 1373, at around the age of thirty, are fundamentally optimistic.

 “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well,” Jesus assures Julian, and so she assures us, several times throughout, when so much of what was going on around her would’ve argued against that.

Optimistic, maybe, but not naive. Julian does not expect only good things to happen, but rather that the goodness of God enfolds the bad in love and mercy, that the light of God’s loving care is what allows us to see our sins and faults and failings: allows us to see them and, in seeing them, know that they are forgiven.

For Julian, this is an expression of what she calls God’s courtesy: “Our Lord in his mercy reveals our sin and our feebleness to us by the sweet gracious light of his own self, for our sin is so foul and so horrible that he in his courtesy will not reveal it to us except by the light of his mercy.”[1]

God’s courtesy shows that we fail, but that we aren’t our failings; that we sin and do horrible things, but that we are not those things. God’s courtesy assures us that we are loved, loved for all of who we are, which is known fully and completely only by God.

We who cannot know the full truth of ourselves, let alone that of others, can nevertheless partake of God’s own courtesy. We can do that by showing kindness and grace, especially toward those whom we do not know, whose stories we cannot know. This isn’t about being nice (or just about being nice), or turning a blind eye toward fault, but rather acknowledging that God is at work in their lives in ways unknown to us, that the experience of frailty and failure may be the place where God is reach out to enfold them in love, and that the simple act of kindness from us may be what they need to accept that love in that place of great vulnerability. In our act of kindness, we recognize God’s courtesy at work in them.

“All shall be well,” indeed.

Amen.

[1] Julian of Norwich, Showings, trans. E. Colledge and J. Walsh (Paulist Press, 1978), 332 (ch. 78).

Br. Curtis Almquist

John 14:27-31a

Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid” (John 14:27).

This word “peace,” which we hear in our Gospel lesson, is not the mere absence of acrimony and conflict in the world that surrounds us. That would be the peace the world gives, which, of course, is desperately needed in our very torn world. However, Jesus is here talking about peace from the inside out. He’s talking about being at peace in the storm. This entails two things.

For one, our own inner peace comes from surrendering to the terms by which God has given us life. It is otherwise possible to live rejecting, or resenting, or regretting one’s whole life long, or to live one’s life in complaint or comparison, which is no way to live. Don’t wait until the end of your life for peace, when you hope to rest in peace. Receive now this gift of peace Jesus promises us. You may need help with this. Many people, certainly I, have needed help to receive Jesus’ gift of peace. Get help. You’re worth it. Get the help you need so that you can receive and unwrap Jesus’ gift of peace, which Jesus has promised us.

There’s also Jesus’ promise of peace for other people: the desperate need for peace for those near and those far away. This gift of peace is not a standalone. Peace for our world can only come as an outgrowth of justice. In the absence of justice, “peace” can be a form of oppression, the strong imposing virulent obedience on the weak. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.” [1]

The peace Jesus promises us is addressed in Greek with a plural second-person pronoun. Jesus is saying, “Peace I leave with you all; my peace I give to you all. I do not give to you all as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” [2] This is how we can understand the coupling of peace with justice, peace-receiving through justice-making. This is where we have agency. This is where we must act in some way within our own reach to redress, in Jesus’ name, in Jesus’ power, and in Jesus’ love, the egregious injustice that surrounds us, and “to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence.” [3] Then we – we all – can fully appropriate the gift of peace Jesus has given us. [4]

[1] Martin Luther King Jr., Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Oslo, 10 December 1964.

[2] The Greek pronoun is ὑμῖν, plural, “you all.”

[3] Martin Luther King Jr., Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Oslo, 10 December 1964.

[4] See James 2:14-17.