SSJE Sermons

Br. Luke Ditewig

The Second Sunday after Christmas Day

Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23

If the Christmas story was a family picture album, what would be first? Luke begins with Zechariah and Elizabeth, an old, barren couple. Matthew begins with a genealogy notably including four courageous women: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba. Their stories and that of sinful husbands Judah and David are scandalous. The four are foreigners. Jesus’ bloodline is not only Jewish but also Canaanite, Moabite, and Hittite. They show Jesus came for the world from the world, from diverse peoples.[1]

Matthew’s next picture is of wise men from the East, magi, foreign astrologers who come to worship Jesus by what they have learned by studying stars, not scripture. Like the four women, they were outsiders. As Ray Bakke wrote, God came through a mixed-race family with a foreign welcome party, God in flesh for all humanity.[2]

When the magi leave, God tells Joseph in a dream to flee to Egypt to save his family. This echoes to the Old Testament. From Egypt, Joseph saved his family. Hidden in Egypt as an infant from Pharaoh, Moses grew up to lead Joseph’s numerous descendants out of Egypt in the Exodus. Matthew shows Jesus’ birth echoes God’s larger story and the prophets.

Matthew quotes prophet Hosea 11:1: “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.” Matthew writes Jesus fulfills this. Jesus embodies it further. God chose and loved a people—Israel—to bless the whole world. Then more encompassing God sent Jesus to bless and save the whole world. The Exodus from Egypt was the highlight of God’s saving power for Israel. Now Jesus is saved from Herod by coming out of Egypt.

When Joseph and family left Egypt, God directed them twice by dreams. Joseph took Jesus and Mary to Israel planning to return to Bethlehem of Judah. But when they heard Herod’s son was ruling, they went up north to Galilee to the small, little-known village of Nazareth. Matthew writes: “so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, ‘He will be called a Nazorean.’” We don’t know the source of this quotation.

Some suggest Matthew refers to Isaiah as Matthew does elsewhere describing Jesus humble and lowly.[3] Isaiah wrote: “For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. . . . he was despised, and we held him of no account” (Isaiah 53:2, 3b).

Dale Bruner suggests Nazareth is the dry ground from which Jesus came up with nothing appealing and of which people expected nothing. [4] We know Nazareth because children took the name of their birth, and so Jesus of Nazareth. Yet it was very small and obscure from which little was expected. As Nathanial said, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” (John 1:6).

Like being laid in a manger, being from Nazareth was humbling. By fleeing oppression, losing home, restarting in new places including far from where one wanted to be, Jesus grew up, as we sang: “with the poor, the scorned, the lowly.”[5] Jesus identifies with us in our diversity, obscurity, and vulnerability. The Incarnate Christ comes humbly, meeting all children of Eve in our suffering, poverty, and weakness, in our losses and grief. This is God who comes so closely, who fully identifies with us and gives grace, unmerited favor.

As when lifted high upon the cross, Christ comes like this to draw in the whole world to himself (John 12:32). In this birth, grace comes amid scandal and sin. Grace comes amid diversity, obscurity, and messy stories. Grace is shared through improbable people: courageous grandmothers and surprising visitors, unexpected neighbors and strangers in Egypt and Nazareth.

Christ comes further this Christmas amid our violent and needy world, amid our suffering and vulnerability. Behold and see, the One comes for us, who identifies with what we need, and gives grace. Whether at home chosen or fled to, with whatever we lack, behold Christ Incarnate, here with grace for all.

[1] R. Bakke, A Theology as Big as the City (Downers Grove, IL: 1997), 125.

[2] R. Bakke, A Biblical Word for an Urban World: Messages from the 1999 World Mission Conference (Valley Forge, PA: 1999), 54.

[3] F. D. Bruner, Matthew, A Commentary, Volume 1 (Dallas, 1987), 62.

[4] Ibid., 61.

[5] “Once in royal David’s city,” The Hymnal 1982, no. 102, words by Cecil Frances Alexander (alt.). This is our Entrance Hymn today.

Br. Curtis Almquist

1 John 3:1-6

The opening verb in our reading from the First Letter of John is revealing: “See.” “See,” also translated as “Behold,” which is to look, to notice, to pay attention, to remember![1] Remember! If we do not draw on memory from our past, we are vulnerable to living our lives superficially, simply reacting to the bombardment of media and advertisements and requests coming at us all the time. Living our lives reactively is whiplash to the soul.

Rather, living our lives reflectively, meditatively, responsively draws from a much deeper well. The English word “meditation” comes from the Latin, meditari, which is to rehearse one’s lines. “Meditation can be seen as a kind of rehearsal for the unknown future.” I’m drawing here on the insight of the Dominican, Simon Tugwell.[2]  Reserving space every day to meditate in God’s presence will make a world of difference. It’s to listen to, reflect on, consider, devise, rehearse one’s lines in the face of life, regardless of what stage on which we find ourselves. Make space every day, make some space however brief or long, to meditate in God’s presence to find your way.

So our reading from the First Epistle of John begins with, “See what love the Father has given us.” “See!” “See!” Notice God’s presence now. Of course, God’s presence is always present, even in our past. God is always now. God’s presence is always present. To meditate will mediate our life. Meditating on the gift of our life – which is remembering, retrieving, rehearsing God’s presence in our past and into our present – will help give us our lines and show us the way as we follow Christ into the future.[3]

[1] This Greek verb ἴδετε (“see” or “behold”) appears nine times in the New Testament.

[2] S. Tugwell, OP, Prayer: Living with God (Springfield, IL, 1975).

[3] To meditate is to remember, recover, retrieve, rehearse our lives, e.g.: “Their delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law they meditate day and night” (Psalm 1:2); “when I think of you on my bed, and meditate on you in the watches of the night” (Psalm 63:6); “You shall put these words of mine in your heart and soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and fix them as an emblem on your forehead. Teach them to your children, talking about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise” (Deuteronomy 11:18-19); and “The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you” (John 14:26).

Br. Jack Crowley

The Holy Innocents

Matthew 2:13-18

Today we observe the Feast of the Holy Innocents. We remember all the children slain by King Herod in his attempt to murder Jesus. I know to observe this feast in the midst of the twelve days of Christmas can feel like emotional whiplash, but in my experience, it is always healthy to remember and respect the blood that has been spilt for us to be here today.

In my own prayer life, every year on this feast, I take some to reflect on fear. I think it’s safe to say that King Herod was filled with fear. King Herod feared a baby. I know for a grown man, never mind a king, to fear a baby sounds ridiculous, but it is true. Herod feared that the baby Jesus would grow up and take away his power. King Herod acted on that fear, and the consequences were horrific and violent.

We all deal with the consequences of fear. We deal with the consequences of own fears and the fears of those in power. Fear coupled with power can result in violence. This violence has shaped the course of human history, and affects our own lives on a daily basis.

Every year on this day, I turn inward and try to find, confront, and heal the King Herod inside of myself. I ask myself when I have been so full of fear that my heart hardened and turned toward violence? When in my thoughts and my feelings have I been so full of fear that the chatter of my soul was violent? When I have acted like my own little tyrant, seeking to control everything and hold on to every ounce of power that I have?

You may have noticed in all these questions, God doesn’t appear a single time. That’s one of the worst, if not the worst, consequences of fear. In times of fear, we often forget about God and focus on ourselves. We need to be reminded to remember about God. That is the only way we can begin to heal from all this fear.

Every day in my own prayer life, I also take some time to pray for the leaders of the world, especially the ones I did not vote for. I pray that they be given the same opportunities for healing from fear that God has given me in my own life. I pray that whatever traumas they have endured, whatever fears they hold in their hearts, and whatever world view they have that may be warped by violence, that they all may be softened by the grace of God.

It’s important to remember that King Herod had the violent power of a first-century-CE army, but two thousand years later, our leaders have access to nuclear bombs. The potential for the violent consequences of fear mixed with power has never been higher. The importance of our prayer life and our continual turning toward peace and God have never been more important.

Above all else, remember that from the cradle to the crucifix, powerful people were bent on destroying Jesus. They all failed. The power of God is beyond us all. Thank God for that.

Br. Curtis Almquist

Saint Stephen, Deacon and Martyr

Acts 6:8-7:2a, 51c-60

The first generation of Christians in Jerusalem was comprised of two groups of Jews: the native Palestinians, and those who were outliers, sometimes called “the Dispersion” because they had been born and raised while “dispersed” into other countries. Their native tongue was Greek, and so they were called “the Hellenists.” Rivalry existed between these two groups, and converts to Christ brought their respective history with them. The Greek-speaking members were convinced that their widows and the other poor were not getting a fair share of the community’s food and financial support. To resolve the problem, the apostles appointed seven of the Hellenists to administer the Church’s resources and to care for its poor. Among the appointees was young man named Stephen. He ministered as a deacon in the Church.[1]

Stephen is described in the Acts of the Apostles as “a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit.”[2] He was an administrator, he preached, and he exhibited a charismatic authority. His ministry was miraculous. It was also conflictual. He came into conflict with the Jews who shared his own Greek-speaking background. They accused him of blasphemy, and dragged him before the Council which enforced the law of Moses. Stephen denounced them. He was silenced by being stoned to death, and he is remembered as the first martyr of the Church.

Here’s the after-story. Stephen’s martyrdom caused an enormous fear among the Christian community in Jerusalem, and many fled from Jerusalem. For the first time, the Gospel of Jesus Christ began to spread worldwide. Good came out of this undeniably tragic circumstance, which is a redemption. The English word redemption comes from the Latin, redemptio, which is when something that has been spent, lost, used, broken, wasted, or seemingly dead comes back to life in a new way. Stephen’s shed blood proved to be a life stream for the young church.

Redemption was also evidenced in the life of a conspirator who was present and consenting to Stephen’s murder: a Pharisee named Saul. Saul was deeply affected by Stephen’s death. Saul converted to Christ, was given a new name – Paul – and became the most ardent missionary and most prolific author of the entire New Testament scriptures. We see evidence of redemption when Paul writes about the suffering he both caused and later personally experienced. Paul asks, rhetorically, “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? . . . We are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.” His answer. Nothing, nothing, nothing will separate us from the love of God shown in Christ Jesus our Lord. [3]

Where does redemption figure into your own life story? In my own experience, many of the strongest formative influences in my life seemed deformative at the time. In earlier years, my sense of loss, fear, uncertainty, anguish, or anger was too consuming for me to see how many-an-insufferable circumstance could ever come to any good. And yet, looking backwards, I realize so many gifts have come from what only had seemed like debris, and I am so thankful.

And for you. Dust off your memory. You may discover in the discarded rubble of your past there are some precious gifts to be claimed from your earlier life. That would be redemption. I am not suggesting to smile on tragedy; however, I am saying that life’s cure is very slow, and that thankfulness is most appreciated and most appropriated when we turn around and look backwards on our life.

Blessed Paul, who learned from blessed Stephen, both of whom giving witness and encouragement to us about the gift of redemption.

[1] Saint Stephen’s history informed by S. J. Reynolds, For All the Saints: Prayers and Readings for Saints’ Days (Toronto, 1994), 228-29.

[2] Acts 6:8-7:2a, 51c-60.

[3] Saint Paul writes, “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? As it is written, ‘For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we are more than victorious through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:35-39).

Br. Lain Wilson

The Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ: Christmas Day

John 1:1-14

Merry Christmas, everyone! It’s such a delight to have you all with us today.

Christmas can be overwhelming. Joyful. . . and overwhelming. Decorations and lights everywhere you look; the smell of baking or, in the Chapel, incense and beeswax; bells and beloved carols; the taste of familiar foods at dinner; the gentle pressure of hugs with family and friends. We all have these sense memories that tell us, finally, yes, Christmas is here!

But Christmas, too, invites us to engage another sense – our sense of wonder.

I remember one night several years ago going to an observatory in Northern Virginia for a kind of astronomy “open house.” I didn’t really know what to expect. I sat waiting in line for one of the larger telescopes, a bit cold, a bit tired, a bit ready to be away from there. But when I put my eye to the scope . . . well, the planet Saturn was just there. Right there, rings and all, cold and perfect, right before my eye. It was . . . wondrous. I don’t really have a better word. It was wondrous to see this planet, this being, brought vast distances across the expanse of space and made present.

This is the kind of wonder with which we should look upon the enormity of the gift revealed to us today. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . And the Word became flesh and lived among us” (John 1:1-2, 14). If the lights and music and cooking smells can threaten to overwhelm us with nostalgia, how much more should the mystery of the Incarnation—that God should take on human flesh and live among us, that the Word from before time and space should come and be present to us – how much more should this mystery overwhelm us with awe!

The wonder of it, the joy of it, is that when we look upon this awesome mystery, what looks back upon us, what becomes present before our eyes, even here, even now, is not the cold perfection of remote space, but the overwhelming abundance of life and light and love. “What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. . . . ‘For God so loved the world that [God] gave [the] only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life’” (John 1:3, 3:16).

We are filled with wonder today, that Jesus’ birth in a tiny town two thousand years ago was God coming into the world; that God’s taking on the material stuff of humanity was God’s descending to us so that we might ascend to God; and that God met our constant turning away – our choosing again and again death and darkness and hatred – with life and light and love.

If we are filled with a sense of wonder, though, we are also invited to be clearsighted about our reality, and be filled with a sense of purpose. The Word came into a world that needed to be saved, and one that was bent on rejecting the gifts the Word offered. This was true two thousand years ago, and it’s still frustratingly true today. Death and darkness and hatred continue to run rampant in our world.

So what are we to do?

In the face of death, choose life. Affirm the value of all life that God has created. Look upon those around you – family and friends and strangers and enemies; rocks and rivers and trees; birds and deer and even the rabbits that eat your flowers – look upon all those around you as gifted by God with life, a sign of the creator of all, given to the world, given to you, and called very good. “What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people” (John 1:3-4).

In the face of darkness, choose light. When so much conditions us to hide or hoard or turn inward, when so much tells us to shut the doors of our hearts, fling them wide open. Our humanity dies in darkness. Against the darkness of ignorance and prejudice, against the willful blindness of all that is unfamiliar or different, let the light shine into your heart, and let your own light shine out for others. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” (John 1:5).

And in the face of hatred, choose love. It’s so easy to hate, to write people off, to say that they aren’t worth the effort. It’s so, so easy. And it can be so hard to love. When everything that surrounds us seems to drive our divisions, when the horizon of our world almost inevitably seems to get narrower and narrower, turning outward and building bridges and breaking free from what binds us by choosing love may be the most countercultural, against-the-grain, confounding-the-expectations thing that we can do – as confounding of expectations, perhaps, as that God would choose to enter this world, to be born as a baby in a country under foreign occupation, all for a love that knew – and that continues to know – no bounds. “Love came down at Christmas,” begins one of my favorite carols. “Love shall be our token; love be yours and love be mine, love to God and neighbor, love for plea and gift and sign.”

Today is Christmas, when we welcome the birth of our Savior, when we look on with wonder at this enormous mystery, and when that wonder transforms to purpose, the resolve to carry forward, in our own lives, Jesus’ mission to bring life and light and love to our aching world. To receive the gift of Jesus and bear him to others.

Merry Christmas to you all! Amen.

Br. Keith Nelson

The Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ: Christmas Eve

Isaiah 9:2-7

Merry Christmas!

It is likely that you are here in this chapel tonight because you seek an encounter with Jesus, whose humble birth we celebrate with awe and joy. Perhaps you are also here because you hunger for meaningful tradition in the midst of life’s changes and chances. You may be here because your mother or spouse or best friend loves coming here, and you came because you love them; or because you love gazing at the flickering candles and singing familiar, beloved carols, and why not? It’s Christmas!

Whatever the reason, you are most welcome. To be led through our doors by any one of these reasons has drawn you nearer to the ground of your humanity, in which God delights. And to be drawn there is to be drawn nearer to the heart of God: God who on this night, in Jesus, became truly human for our sake, to “center our senses in himself,” in the words of one ancient Christian writer.

Each Christmas has a tendency to summon up all the Christmases we have known, like Dickens’s ghost of Christmas past. Recalling some of them may bring painful memories, experiences that sadden or haunt or even imprison us, memories of people we loved deeply who have died, or whose paths in this life have diverged from ours in some permanent way. Other Christmases past bear in their wake some of the most innocent and spontaneous joy we have ever known. We feel more generous, more connected, and more alive recalling them for even a moment.

These Christmas memories also rehumanize us: they soften our hearts and open us to the joy and pain of others. To be human is to be bound up with others, to have meaning in someone else’s existence.

So I will do what preachers do, and remind you of something your heart knows, yet the world wishes you would forget: You are not a number, or a data set, or an algorithm. You are not a product or a service, a demographic, or a subscription. You are not a birth certificate, a social security card, a passport or a green card. You are not a salary figure or an insurance policy or a student loan balance or a piece of real estate. You are a person: a human creature of God our Creator, fearfully and wonderfully made, irreplicable and irreplaceable.

We live in a society that at present strategically and insidiously erodes the gifts that make us most human. Seen in this way, your presence in this chapel tonight, full of your human desires, motives, and memories, is an act of resistance. However small, it is to resist the great dehumanization of the world.

Jesus was born, lived, and died in just such an era of history:

“In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered.”

In other words, a census was announced for the purpose of taxing each individual. Each human represented one denarius, a coin stamped with the face and title of the Emperor. As if for emphasis, Luke repeats the word three times in just five verses.

Mary and Joseph lived in a time when imperial control was increasingly consolidated and brutally enforced in places far from Rome, like Syria-Palestine. The vast capital of the world’s greatest power stocked its granaries, erected its monuments, maintained its roads, and swelled its markets with luxury goods paid for with taxes. These taxes disproportionately benefited the imperial household, the Roman military, and Roman citizens over non-citizens, like those who lived in occupied Judea. In a sprawling and corrupt infrastructure, local tariffs and extortion from tax-collectors made the system that much more dehumanizing.

Jesus, born in the midst of his parents’ fulfillment of this imperial obligation, is laid in a manger: a trough from which animals ate. The manger, perhaps affixed to the wall, was presumably the only safe and secure place to lay a newborn, in a crowded room practically overflowing with people and animals.

A little box, in a little room, in a little town.

A family being watched, named, and numbered by a powerful occupying force.

This was the sign declared by angels, by which the shepherds would recognize, “in the city of David, a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.”

Roman soldiers and princes, then and now, look for the Son of God on imperial thrones and imprinted on coins.  But the Christian life is an unavoidable call to watch for a very different sign – this boy in the manger who will become the man on the cross. It is a call to read this sign etched into the details of our days and the struggles and joys of others, especially those most different from ourselves, and especially those most subject to exploitation and erasure by the imperial machinery of our own time.

Our finitude; our dependence upon others; our ignorance of God’s ultimate plan and purpose; our inability to walk by our own light or rebound from tragedy in our own strength; our injuries and illness; our anxiety, depression, or disability; our aging and diminishment; our mortality:

These are the mangers of our lives that must receive, again and again, the newborn Christ.

The maker of heaven and earth desires us whole, with nothing hidden or discounted. Our most intimate Friend, who knows us inside and out, rejoices to lay his head in the tangled pile of straw in that overcrowded stable that is my life, and yours. His presence there will make it – will make you – a temple, a home for the divine presence in our midst.

If what you have been waiting for this Christmas has not arrived, or not in the form you expected or hoped; if the approach of Christmas summons ghosts from the past or fears for the future; if you find yourself on the verge of falling apart or losing hope as the manic lights twinkling around you blur in a wash of tears; if the sugar, fat, and alcohol leave you overstimulated and exhausted, angry or disappointed at everything and nothing; if any of these “ifs” ring true:

This is your moment. You possess many mangers in which to lay this infant Savior.

Christmas presents us with a yearly invitation to accept, or renew, our commitment to become truly human. This is not an admission of all the things we have failed to become, much less a groveling before a cosmic judge.  It is rather a joyful and liberating acceptance that Yes, we are fragile, complex, and incomplete beings . . . and thus ideally suited to be the raw material for God’s transforming work.

In embracing that call we begin to reflect God’s true purpose for us as followers of Jesus.

Our fragility becomes suffused with his strength, our complexity with his simplicity, and our incompleteness with his wholeness, in God’s time and by God’s grace. Our true worth is recognized and recorded forever in a wholly different census than that designed by the powers of this world.

The word “register” that Luke used three times to describe the census of the Emperor Augustus is used a fourth and final time in the New Testament, in the Letter to the Hebrews. There we hear these words:

“You have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood which speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.” (Hebrews 12:23-24)

You are enrolled in heaven, written permanently on God’s heart.

A helpless infant waits for you to embrace him as the prince of peace, whose kingdom knows no end.

Come, let us adore him. Amen.

Br. Jonathan Maury

Saint Thomas the Apostle

John 20:24-29

As this year’s Advent season draws to a close, we may well find ourselves  questioning where God is present or even if God is present in the frightening chaos of our time. Yes, the Word’s coming among us in human flesh at Christmas still promises the restoration of wholeness, abundant new life and the future of divine glory for all creation. But in the midst of a fearful, world apocalypse of injustice, violence, cruelty, oppression, untruth, and greed – we may have our doubts.

It seems apt then, fortuitous even, that we should celebrate the image of Christ in Saint Thomas, the so-called “doubting” apostle. For just when the eternal Light seemed to have been extinguished, Thomas found faith and hope to be rekindled in the midst of his doubts.

If we are honest, the path to faith of “doubting” Thomas is in some measure shared by us all.

By Jesus’ choice, Thomas was brought into community of the disciples as Twelve. It seems to me, that Thomas’s charism, his particular gift of the Spirit, was to ask the questions most of the others would not or could not ask.

The “doubt” which I believe is Thomas’s gift should be understood as a component of his coming to faith. This “doubt” plays a part in coming to fullness of belief and commitment for each of us.

The seeds of hope, of faith in things not yet seen, must be sown in the soil of just such questioning and doubt. The Greek word for this doubt connotes a wavering or hesitation in faith – of belief already here. Doubt is not the negation of faith – but an integral part of the way to its fulness.

Within the community of believers and seekers, we must question, even doubt, that the promises of God in Jesus can possibly be realized in our world – and the world to come. It is only in such wavering and hesitation together that we are freed from the fear which binds us corporately and individually.

There are two places in the gospel of John, where “doubting” Thomas’s rootedness in this common sharing of faith is highlighted:

When Jesus has decided to raise his friend Lazarus from the sleep of death, his purpose will take him again to Judea, where the authorities seek to arrest and try him. The disciples – likely including Thomas – try to dissuade Jesus, doubting or hesitating with the prudence of his intended course of action. Yet it is Thomas, perceiving that Jesus will go, who says to the others, “Let us go also, that we may die with him.” (John 11)

At the supper on the night of his betrayal, Jesus speaks of his leaving the disciples and going to prepare a place for them and of his coming back to take them with him. Amid the ensuing confusion and worried uncertainty, it is Thomas alone who asks the question, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” (John 14)

To this, Jesus replies, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.” Though not fully in that moment, Thomas’s questioning doubt will at last open him to faith in the relationship which God will always share with us in Jesus.

When we hear of Thomas’s skepticism at the other disciples’ experience of the risen Christ, we would do well to remember the clear trauma and despair that that Thomas carried from Jesus’s condemnation, torture and execution. “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

Yet it is faith, manifested in the midst of hesitant doubt, that brings Thomas back to the company of the disciples from whom he had previously absented himself. And this return becomes the occasion for the resurrected Jesus’ to show himself to Thomas in the only way this particular disciple can truly see the One for whom he has been watching.

The same applies for us in these last days of Advent: Jesus seeks to show and give himself to each of us and to all the world – to see and know in God fulness of faith, life and hope – as Christ is continually born anew in each moment. So I ask as I invite you to ask, What doubts, wavering, hesitation, resistance, or missteps are impeding, slowing down my readiness in following Jesus and the living of my life in God?

I pray that God will reveal these things and also the abiding presence of Jesus to us in the company of others in praying, worshipping, and serving in Christ’s name. May we welcome Jesus to show himself to the eyes of our faith.

It may perhaps be in the oppressed and needy stranger, in the child of refugee parents in exile from their homeland, in seekers who are seen as outsiders – or in sharing with another our doubts and thereby giving them leave to express their own.

All these may be channels leading from doubt into faith, so that may be made ready to see Christ Jesus when he shows himself, to cry aloud with blessed Thomas, “My Lord and my God!” Amen.

Br. Curtis Almquist

Advent 4A

Psalm 85:7-13

Today we have lighted the last candle in the Advent wreath, the fourth and final Sunday in the season of Advent. Today is also the winter solstice, when the days begin to lengthen and the sun rises higher in the sky. This anticipates a holiday season of light, with festal candles adorning dinner tables, and lights aglow in windows and shops and on Christmas wreaths and trees. These lights we see all around this time of year actually have a Christian history, but not a Christian origin. Followers of Jesus in the first centuries wanted the celebration of Christ’s birth to coincide with or to rival the winter solstice festival of the Roman Empire, which was on December 25th, the day the empire called “the birthday of the unconquered sun.”[1] The early Christians were convinced that Jesus, not the emperor, was the light of the world. In later years, the Gospel writers remembered Jesus’ saying of himself, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (John 8:12).

Whether or not we understand the history and symbolism of festal light this season, we do innately crave light. Whether we suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder, whether we are afraid of “things that go bump in the night,” or whether we simply feel that we are “in the dark” about the mystery of our own life, we crave light and enlightenment. The candles and strands of light we see most everywhere in the season of Advent and in the coming Christmastide are reminders of how common and how deep this craving for real light actually is, and from the depths of our souls.

I’ll tell you a couple of stories about light, and then I’ll confide in you.

In the First Letter of John we read that “God is light, and in God there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). At moments you may feel in the dark about your life, God is not in the dark. God is light. It will make a remarkable difference in your day, in your life, to face God’s light. It’s not unlike on a sunny day in the winter when it feels so good to have the sun shine on your face. Simply do that. Face God, who knows you, who looks upon you, and who sees into you not in a critical light but in an adoring light. Let the light of God’s countenance shine on you. No need to look away. God knows you, and the only way you will know how much God loves you is to face God, who is the source of all light and love. Saint Paul describes this as having “the eyes of your heart enlightened.”[2] Face God; receive God’s adoring love for you.

And then be dazzling! Mirror God’s light into the face of others, and with the extravagant generosity of God.[3] William Blake writes, “We are put on earth a little space, that we may learn to bear the beams of love.” Presume the reason you are yet alive, for as much as one more day, is to participate in the light and love of God. We are a living mirror to reflect the beams of God’s light and love. Look upon others and radiate God’s love for them.[4] They may otherwise never know how much God loves them. And what shame to go through even a day without being reminded how much God loves you. Mirror God’s light and love into the face of others, and with the extravagant generosity of God. Jesus said, “You are the light of the world! . . . Let your light shine before others” (Matthew 5:14-16).

And then . . . I will confide in you. I believe everything I have just said about God’s light; however, this is not what is going on in my soul just now. It is as if the light is eclipsed. I witness so many people right now – maybe you? – living in a very hard time, where any sense of God’s inner light is elusive. I look out at so many people who are suffering, living in fear, experiencing injustice, being treated with indignity, prejudice, vindictiveness, and hanging onto a ledge of life. So many people have lost their health, mental or physical, or have lost or are losing a loved one. So many people are imprisoned, quite literally, or imprisoned emotionally by their memories.  On so many fronts the world o’er it’s as if the light is eclipsed, from my vantage point. You many know your own version of this.

I ask, where is God in all this? You might wonder whether I’ll confess becoming an agnostic?

No. It’s actually the opposite. I think I am being invited into the heart of God. You and I being invited into the heart of God. What must it be like to be God who so loves the world, and all that is in it . . . but consider the cost of that love in the face of such suffering, injustice, and prejudice particularly against the least and last and lost of this world? People and all the other creatures of God’s creation suffering so greatly. My experience of the eclipse of God’s light is, I think, an invitation into the heart of God. It must be very difficult to be God.

If you, too, can relate to this, here are two things that may be helpful to you. For one, pray a lament. The psalms are full of laments. A lament is a prayer of deep sorrow and grief. A lament does not have a fix. A lament is not a prayer of intercession – like what we will share momentarily, where we are praying for help or healing, or for protection or provision. A prayer of lament is without a solution. A prayer of lament may be words or may be tears of sadness, not unlike a deeply distraught child who simply needs to be held. Do you remember how the grown-up Jesus said to his disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane, “stay with me, wait with me.” (Matthew 26:38). So with you. Pray your lament, which is a way to claim your place in the heart of God.

Secondly, cling to hope. We don’t hope for what we can see, Saint Paul reminds us. And yet, he says, “in hope we are saved” (Romans 8:24). If you have ever personally known anything about the gift of hope, go backwards in your memory. Follow the breadcrumbs that lead you back to hope you have known. Or if you come up short in your own memory, look to the experience of others whose lives were sorely tested and yet who lived with hope. One such person to whom I regularly look and listen is Martin Luther King, Jr. Remember his saying that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Who can help you with hope? Look for how hope can be awakened in your life.

As you well know, we anticipate the celebration of Christmas in a few days. So what about the Christmas music, all the familiar hymns that proclaim joy, and wonder, and gratitude, and light. Should we really be singing those hymns? Should you? Absolutely! We should sing our hearts out. The wonderful Christmas music will be a conduit to hope, helping us reclaim our past, when life seemed more innocent, and helping us claim a future where all will be well.

Light the candles.

Ring the bells.

Cling to hope.

[1] Natalis solis invicti.

[2] Ephesians 3:14-21.

[3] Matthew 5:16.

[4] Psalm 34:5.

Br. Jack Crowley

Matthew 21:28–32

Tonight we heard Jesus say to the chief priests and elders “Truly, I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.” Ouch. How do you come back from that? Those are humbling words.

One rule I follow in praying with scripture is, no matter what the context, I try to imagine Jesus speaking his words to me personally. I try to imagine Jesus’ tone and words matching what someone close to me would say to me today. So for tonight’s passage, I imagine Jesus looking me in the eye and saying “Jack, seriously, tax collectors and prostitutes are getting into heaven before you.”

I’m always left humbled by Jesus’ words. Humbled, not humiliated, but humbled. Humbled to know my place in line.

The good news is there’s never a bad time to be humbled. Humility is always a good response when you have no response. Humility works when nothing else does.

However, there is a price to be paid for humility. That price is honesty. To be humble with God is to be honest with God. Honest with God about what we are going through, what we are thinking, what we are feeling, and most importantly, honest with God about what’s causing us pain. Pain forces us to be honest. It’s a brutal price, but it is worth it.

One way or another, we will all learn humility. Life has a way of shattering us. We will all go through situations that will break us. Humbling situations that we will have no control over. Humbling situations that will shatter who we think we are, where we are going, and what the arc of our life is to be.

These humbling situations make us who we are. These humbling situations make us reach out to God with an earnestness we never thought possible. Think of the deepest, most heart felt, tear-soaked prayers of your life, those were humbling moments. It is in those moments that we find God in such a personal way that we can never fully explain with words.

When we find God in that personal way, we find love. God love us. God personally loves us. God loves us right through whatever masks we wear to get through the day. God loves us right through the band aids and duct tape that keep us together.

Above all else, remember we are humble servants of God, no better or worse than any other human being. No matter who we think we are, we are still children of God. So let us be humble, and carry on the work God has given us to do.

Br. Keith Nelson

Advent 3A

Isaiah 35:1-10

In my senior year in college, I took a linguistic anthropology course. One lecture seemed to summarize much of my life’s experience. The topic was direct and indirect communication, and the cultural dimensions that shape our often unconscious use of one or the other in public situations.

I had spent the first nine years of my life in southern New Jersey, then age nine to eighteen in central Alabama. In very general terms, U.S. culture as a whole favors direct communication, along with countries like Germany and Australia and all of Scandinavia. But the northeastern and Atlantic states, as well as the Western U.S., especially typify direct speech. People say what they mean; clarity and efficiency are priorities; the manner of speaking is more informal. Indirect communication characterizes places like Japan, China, the Middle East, Latin America, and the south of England: places where people often infer or imply what they really mean using understatement; where avoidance of social conflict is a high priority; and where speech tends to be more formal.

Lots of exceptions apply: the individual, the context, the class, race, and gender of those speaking. But generally: New Jersey and Alabama fit those contrasting patterns.

In my first year of school in Alabama, a teacher asked me a simple question, to which I gave a polite but simple, “Yes.” She smiled and said, “Yes, what?”

I repeated my reply. She again said “Yes, what?,” but her smile began to look a bit more . . . forced.

I could not imagine what additional information to add. So I said, “Yes, yes.”

The class erupted in laughter, and she asked to see me after class. She explained that “Yes ma’am,” was the response she expected, because that’s how polite people in the south talk. I apologized, but added that in New Jersey, that would sound rude.

Roughly speaking, direct communication risks offense to ensure understanding, while indirect communication risks potential misunderstanding to avoid offense.

St. John the Baptist may be the New Testament’s archetypal direct communicator, and in this scene from Matthew’s gospel, he also faces a situation of dire need and a question of grave significance. The entirety of his life’s calling – to prepare the way for the coming Messiah – seems to hang in the balance. So he gets to the point to avoid all ambiguity:

“Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”

In reply, Jesus gives an incredibly indirect answer.

He could have said: “I am the one: your waiting is over.”

Instead, he tells the messengers to tell John what they see; he alludes to two separate quotations from the prophet Isaiah; and he adds a somewhat mystifying afterthought: “Blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”

The direct communication of John the Baptist and the indirect communication of Jesus, at least in this verbal exchange, point to something characteristic about each of their ministries. Each approach illuminates something about the Messiah we seek to follow. Somewhere between offense and misunderstanding, we start to speak the same language.

When Jesus says “Blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me,” this reads a bit like a stray verse from the Beatitudes intended just for John. The Beatitudes in Matthew’s sermon on the mount allude directly to the prophets: “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

But Jesus is not the kind of Messiah who is going to ride into Herod’s fortress, slip past his guards, and rescue John from prison. It may be that John still clings to a hope that this may come to pass. If Jesus came to liberate the captives, why not John the Baptist? Jesus seems to anticipate that this may well cause John grave disappointment.

This Greek work translated as offended is literally “to be tripped” or “snared” by a trap, or metaphorically, a “stumbling block.” It is to encounter an obstacle, and fall.

Such taking offense or tripping up seems to be about a fundamental mismatch between an expectation concerning the Messiah and the reality of who and how Jesus truly is.

Matthew 11 sets the stage for another telling use of this word. In Matthew 13, Jesus returns to Nazareth, his hometown, to teach in the synagogue. These people, his extended family and neighbors, “were astounded and said, ‘Where did this man get this wisdom and these deeds of power?” Nonetheless, they cannot square this wisdom and this power with the humble reality of Jesus’ origins: “Is not this the carpenter’s son?” And thus: “They took offense at him.”

Jesus uses language that is scathingly direct when he critiques the pious posturing and in-group assumptions of the Judean religious establishment. He calls the pharisees “hypocrites” and “white-washed tombs” to their faces. He is unafraid to say what he means, just like his older cousin John.

But when Jesus teaches about the kingdom of heaven, there is a distinct pattern of indirect speech: he tells his listeners what it is like. He accompanies his words with physical demonstrations, in the form of healings. He uses metaphor and parable. He offers arresting inversions of customary logic: The one who would save their life will lose it, and the one who loses their life will find it.

His indirection is motivated partly by a need to make the most of his short time on earth: if he says too much too directly, the force and shock will lead to verbal and physical confrontation too quickly with those who resist his message. He needs time to introduce the kingdom into his followers’ lived reality gradually, like slow-release medicine.

But Jesus also communicates indirectly because he is imparting Truth: the truth of who God is, and how God acts, and the boundless nature of that Love, which cannot be contained in language.

Emily Dickenson captures this brilliantly:

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —

Where Jesus is, there is the kingdom: this unprecedented new reality in intimate relationship with God that is both now and not yet in its fullness. The vision of the prophet Isaiah captures this in-breaking reality in ways that clearly captivated Jesus. The desert, the place where flowers are least likely to bloom, produces life extravagantly and spontaneously through no human effort. All is by the sheer grace of God. This is what will unfold at the end of all our creaturely waiting, seeking, and yearning. Yet in some measure, this impossibly life-giving place can be our home now, if we die to the self and the ways we have known, like the Messiah we follow.

If direct speech risks offense and indirect speech risks misunderstanding, we see both in response to Jesus the living Word. Jesus would end up offending those closest to him in his earthly ministry, and they would not grasp the heart of his message until after his death and resurrection.

Likewise, we can and do come to Jesus with preconceived notions of who or what can save us, heal us, or make us whole. The actual Jesus may or may not conform to those expectations. How we choose to respond in those moments, or seasons, of our journey is crucial to following Jesus faithfully over the long haul.

We, like the first disciples, need to remain open to more and more of the truth, adjusting our always partial understanding to keep up with each new glimpse. We learn slowly to walk the narrow way until that great day when, in the vision of Isaiah, we find ourselves on a highway where “no traveler, not even fools, shall go astray.”