SSJE Sermons

Br. Keith Nelson

Luke 11:37-41

Jesus said, “Give for alms those things that are within; and see, everything will be clean for you.”

The study bible I use has a footnote: “Interpretation difficult.”

Verse 42 of Luke 11, which we did not hear, gives us further information. It is not that the pharisees are not generous; it seems that their generosity is simply myopic. Jesus goes on to say: “But woe to you Pharisees! For you tithe mint and rue and herbs of all kinds, and neglect justice and the love of God.”

One direction I find helpful when I find Jesus’ words perplexing is to ask myself what other things Jesus said that remind me of the passage in question.

Fortunately, there are several similar things Jesus says using imagery of inside and outside:

In similar passages in Matthew and Mark, Jesus insists that unwashed hands do not defile a person. In Matthew 15 we hear: “What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles.”

And just before today’s passage in Luke 11 we hear this: “Therefore consider whether the light in you is not darkness. If then your whole body is full of light, with no part of it in darkness, it will be as full of light as when a lamp gives you light with its rays.”  The suggestion seems to be: everything will be bright for you.

How do these passages help us to make sense of the enigmatic saying at Luke 11:40: “Give for alms those things that are within; and see, everything will be clean for you”?

There is a clear pattern in the teachings of Jesus that draws the attention of his listeners to consider their inner life. In several places, Jesus names the center of this inner experience “the heart,” as in Luke chapter 6: “The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good.”

Always an incisive observer of human behavior, Jesus names clearly a very human reality: the habitual patterns of thought and feeling that we feed, that we cultivate, that we invest energy in will eventually become manifest in our words and actions. This is true of anxiety and worry. It is true of anger and resentment. And it is true of trust, faith, hope, and love.

Jesus says to the Pharisees, “inside you are full of greed and wickedness.”

But he does not categorically dismiss the whole of their inner life. In saying, “Give for alms those things that are within,” he indicates his certainty that “justice and the love of God” are also there within them to be offered to a world that needs them.

Rather, Jesus is calling them to reframe their priorities. The fine details of outer observance, especially motivated by a disproportionate concern with what is clean or unclean, mean nothing without that inner transformation that renders us, slowly but surely, more faithful, more hopeful, and more loving.

I’ll end with a somewhat vulnerable confession: A simple intention I am cultivating is to smile more often! One thing I know about myself is that my resting facial expression can give the predominant impression that I am intense and serious. Well, I am those things, I think! But those who know me well also know the joy and lightness of being that are equally a part of who I am. I have a slight allergy to smiling as a social mask, but smiling authentically, spontaneously, feels amazing. It’s a gift to everyone that works in two directions: it “gives alms” to others outwardly even as it causes joy inwardly.

Maybe the perspective that that feeling brings is a bit like what Jesus had in mind when he said, “See, everything will be clean for you.”

Br. Jack Crowley

The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 23C)

Luke 17:11-19

“Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” Those were the words called out to Jesus by the ten lepers in our Gospel this morning. Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.

You can feel the desperation in their words. These lepers were sick and not getting better. They were outcasts.

We are told by the Gospel writer that these lepers kept their distance from Jesus. It’s one of the most heartbreaking details from this story. Most of Jesus’ healing encounters in scripture are up close and personal, usually with Jesus laying his hands on those he healed. Yet in this story of healing, there is distance between Jesus and the lepers.

I’m sure we’ve all had that feeling of distance before. Maybe you’ve suddenly felt aware of a distance from those closest to you. Maybe you’ve even felt distant from God. It can be an awful feeling. Distance in any relationship breeds the fear of abandonment.

So how did these lepers bridge that distance between Jesus and them? They cried out. The King James translation of this story says that they lifted up their voices. They called out and pled to Jesus. They voiced how they felt and how desperate they were for help. Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.

I’m sure we’ve all been there before too. Times of desperation, frustration, and pain, when we just want to shout out to God. When we want to say things like, “Jesus Christ, give me a break, have mercy on me, I’ll do anything, just make it better.”

In those times of extremes, we may feel so far from God. We may feel so far from God that we shout out as if we were a lost person begging to be rescued. We cry out to God out of instinct. Just think of all the times in your life when you’ve been so frustrated that you’ve said, “Oh my God.” That plea to God comes from such a deep part of ourselves. It’s an honest plea. It’s rarely pretty, but it’s honest.

These honest and heartfelt pleas to God come in the darkest moments of our lives as well as the funniest. Just as we can shed tears in grief, we can also laugh so hard that we cry. We all seem to have this instinct to appeal to God in the highs and lows of our life. When we laugh and when we cry, we often say something like “oh God.”

A few years ago, I had minor hand surgery. It was surgery for trigger finger on my right pinkie. In all honesty, I didn’t think the outpatient surgery or the recovery afterwards would be a big deal. Famous last words.

As I left the hospital that afternoon after my surgery, the kind surgeon calmly explained to me that as the local anesthesia wore off I would feel some pain. He also warned me that with the stitches just underneath my pinkie, I would inevitably hit or touch my palm against something that was going to hurt. He encouraged me to use my left hand as much as possible. So as I walked back home to the monastery and felt the pain kicking in, the first thing I did in all my genius was wrap my right hand around a door handle and turn it hard, only to feel the metal handle wedge itself in my stitches. I remember feeling that jolt of pain and saying, “Oh my God.”

For the next week or so, this tragicomedy replayed itself over and over again. I told myself to use my left hand, but I am not the sharpest tool in the shed, especially in the morning; you can ask my Brothers. So nearly every time I rushed and picked up my water bottle, or put my hand down too fast on a railing, or grabbed a hymnal too quickly, I had to relearn my lesson. Let’s just say that each time I felt that jolt of pain in my palm, I bridged that distance between Jesus and myself with a heartfelt plea, not always a holy plea with good clean language, but it was an honest plea. I did make up for it the following Lent by giving up swearing.

The point I’m trying to make here is that it is okay to appeal to Jesus in times of pain, in times of comedy, and especially in times of healing. Not only is it okay to appeal to Jesus; in my experience, it is necessary. The truth is I am not strong enough to handle life on my own. I need Jesus. My shoulders may be broad, but they cannot carry the weight of my own existence. I need Jesus.

I need Jesus just as much if not more than those ten lepers needed Jesus. I, too, have my own version of leprosy; I think we all do. That feeling deep inside of ourselves that tells us we are not good enough or haven’t accomplished enough to merit feeling whole and sound. That feeling that something is fundamentally wrong with us. That feeling that we should keep our distance from ourselves, other people, and Jesus. That feeling that we should keep our distance because if those people really knew who we really are, they, too, would keep their distance from us.

So how do we heal from all this? How do we move past all these feelings of insecurity and fear? How do we plea to God with desperation?

Start by closing the distance. Be up front and personal about how you feel with yourself, your loved ones, and God. Don’t hide your pain. Get in touch with your deepest, darkest self and bring it to the surface. Let Jesus have a good look at it. If you feel embarrassed, remember: chances are Jesus has seen worse. Jesus loves us and wants to heal us.

We also heal with all the good things we already know in our hearts: love, respect, affection, forgiveness, honesty, and, of course, hard work powered by the grace of God. We heal with the prayers of our lives. These prayers, these pleas, these come to Jesus moments are brutal but also beautiful. These moments help turn our wounds into scars. We can show off these scars proudly. Grey hairs, wrinkles, cracking joints, and all the fender benders our souls have endured: we’ve earned them, they are marks of glory mothered by mercy.

Always remember that we smile, we cry, and we laugh as one body in Christ. We are not alone as we stumble through these weird days. We are not alone as we keep coming back to Jesus, our Lord and Savior. He is the holy one. Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.

Br. James Koester

Philip the Deacon

Acts 8:26-40

This week in the refectory we’re reading Lost in Translation[1]. It’s fascinating and gets behind some of the words we use in Scripture, unearthing what they meant in the original Hebrew, and in a very different context. We all know words, over time, change meaning. What a word means today may not be what it meant one hundred years ago, never mind two thousand. Consequently, what might have shocked someone then, no longer shocks today. Had we heard this story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch when it was originally told our reaction would have been one of horror. Today it elicits mild curiosity. So, what’s going on?

What we know is that our nameless court official was an Ethiopian eunuch who had come to Jerusalem to worship. On the one hand, that’s not much. On the other hand, it’s enough to make us sit up and take note. The description begs questions.

Was he Jewish, part of the Jewish diaspora known as the Black Jews of Ethiopia or the Falasha?[2] Is that why he was in Jerusalem, and later found studying the prophet Isaiah? If not, he was certainly a foreigner and that, as our book reminds us, was someone who had no rights, especially when it came to religious observances.[3] While foreigners were allowed to observe the Temple rituals from the Court of the Gentiles, they weren’t allowed beyond this outer courtyard. Had our official come, as it were, to observe things from a distance. More intriguingly, Luke tells us he was a eunuch. This alone raises many questions.

Laying aside how and why he became a eunuch, we know from Leviticus and Deuteronomy that eunuchs were excluded from both the priesthood and from entering the assembly of the Lord.[4] Eunuchs were unclean and impure.[5] While most could go through a rite of purification to become clean, and thus participate in the sacred rites of the Temple, a eunuch could never become pure. By definition they were always excluded from doing anything that required ritual purity.

However, into all of this comes Isaiah, the very thing our eunuch was reading. Curiously, three chapters from the spot we find the eunuch reading,[6] Isaiah says this: “Do not let the eunuch say, ‘I am just a dry tree.’ For thus says the Lord: To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off” (Isaiah 56:3c-7).

The promise of God is not a life of exclusion and isolation. It is the promise of welcome, of inclusion, of being brought home, of being given an everlasting name.

At some point in your life, you will feel excluded, alone, isolated, even impure. That’s not the life God wants for you. It’s not the life Jesus offers you. Our Rule reminds us that “the source of hospitality is the heart of God, who yearns to unite every creature within one embrace. Only in the fullness of time will God gather all things in Christ, yet God’s boundless welcome is something we already enjoy here and now in the Eucharist.”[7]

We see this hospitality of God played out in the story of the encounter between Philip and the eunuch. We know it as played out in each of our lives. We experience it as we say with the eunuch, “Look, here is water. What is to prevent me from being baptized,” welcomed, accepted (Luke 8:36)? Standing here with the eunuch, dripping with baptismal water, in a few moments we will stretch out our hands and be fed with the very life of God, which is promised to all, even to you.

[1] J. S. Baden, Lost in Translation: Recovering the Origins of Familiar Biblical Words (Minneapolis, 2025).

[2] The origins of the Black Jews of Ethiopia, or Bet Isreal, are unclear. Were they descendants of Jews who emigrated at the time of King Solomon or are they one of the fabled lost tribes? Cut off from the rest of Jewish tradition they developed a pre-Talmudic Jewish practice of their own. Persecuted, and often forced to convert to Christianity, in 1977 Israeli authorities determined they were Jews and therefore had the right of return. Today about two hundred thousand Jews of Ethiopian descent reside in Israel. Falasha is a term often used to describe members of Bet Isreal that means wanderer or stranger.

[3] Baden, Lost in Translation, 109ff.

[4] Leviticus 21:20; Deuteronomy 23:1.

[5] Baden, Lost in Translation, 73ff.

[6] The passage quoted in Luke is from Isaiah 53:7-8.

[7] “Hospitality,” ch. 34 of The Rule of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist, 68.

Br. David Vryhof

Luke 11:14-26

All four of the gospels reveal that as Jesus’ popularity increased, so did the opposition to his message. His teachings and miracles drew crowds but also brought him into conflict with the religious authorities. We see this in today’s gospel reading from Luke 11:14-26.

The triggering event in this case is an exorcism. The exorcism itself is sketched out very briefly and matter-of-factly: “Now he was casting out a demon that was mute; when the demon had gone out, the one who had been mute spoke” (v. 14). That’s it. No further details are given. What is emphasized is not the miracle itself, but the response to it. Three responses are described:

Jesus refuses to give this third group the sign they were requesting (v. 29), but he does address the challenge put to him by the second group. Spirits, both good and evil, were thought to be active in Jesus’ day and it wasn’t always clear which kind of spirit was responsible for a person’s mental or physical condition, or for their misfortune. In this case, an evil spirit has caused this man to be unable to speak, but in the case of Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, it is God’s spirit that causes him to be mute for several weeks before his child is born.[1]

Jesus responds to the criticism that he is casting out demons by the ruler of demons in three ways. First, with logic: “Satan would not work against himself by casting out his own demons, would he?” Second, with a comparison: “If I am casting out demons by the power of Beelzebul, by whom do your exorcists cast them out?” Third, by a challenge: “If it is by the finger of God that I cast out the demons, then the kingdom of God has come to you” (v.20). (In other words, if you admit that this is the work of God, why won’t you acknowledge that the kingdom of God has come?)

The truth is, says Jesus, that Satan is strong but now he is being overthrown by a stronger power. Jesus’ work and that of his disciples marks the beginning of the end for the forces of evil. There will continue to be skirmishes between good and evil, but there is a sure and certain hope that Satan will be conquered in the end. It calls to mind Jesus’ vision in the previous chapter, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning” (Luke 10:18).

It’s an encouraging word for Jesus’ listeners and for us who live in these challenging times when evil seems to be so hard at work. Recall Jesus’ words, “I watched Satan fall from heaven,” and put your trust in God’s strength and God’s assurance of victory.

[1] Luke 1:20.

Br. Curtis Almquist

The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 22C)

Luke 17:5-10

This is one of Jesus’ parables, and I find it deeply troubling. Jesus’ parables are familiar scenes from everyday life. Jesus tells parables to teach his good news. Here he is speaking to his own apostles when he asks the rhetorical question, “Who among you would say to your slave . . . ?” And Jesus tells this parable: It is supper time, and the slave has come in from tending the sheep. Does the slave sit down with the master to eat? No, of course not. The slave is commanded to prepare the meal for the master. Should the master thank the slave? No, the slave has only done what a slave ought to do. And only later does the slave eat, “the worthless slave.”

Here Jesus does not denounce slavery. Rather, he acknowledges the presence of slaves and their required service. Jesus clearly presumes his apostles would understand how a master and a slave deport themselves: “Who among you [apostles] would say to your slave . . .” And the Gospel according to Luke presumes that we also, the reader, would understand the conduct expected between masters and slaves. This is not the only time Jesus tells a parable about slaves.[1] We could ask, how can this be that Jesus is on such comfortable speaking terms with slavery? The “good news” in this parable is elusive.[2] I want to take one step back in history before we search for Jesus’ message for us today.

Slavery was widely practiced in Israel for about 600 years, from around year 200 BCE to 400 CE, and slavery was regulated by Mosaic Law. In the Hebrew scriptures, especially in the Torah, there are many references to slavery: the enslavement of others, being enslaved themselves, and if-and-when slaves are to be emancipated. For example, we read in the Book of Leviticus: “Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you. . . . You can bequeath them to your children as inherited property” (Leviticus 25:44-46).

Meanwhile Jesus’ homeland, Palestine, was occupied by the Roman Empire, where slaves comprised upwards to 30% of the population. For both Jews and Romans, those whom they enslaved was not a matter of their race. Slaves were often prisoners of war, debtors, or those born into slavery. Their work and their conditions varied from master to master, some slaves serving as household servants, some as laborers in bakeries, agriculture, construction; some worked as miners; some were gladiators in the amphitheater. Both the Roman and Jewish cultures were highly reliant on slaves.

Saint Paul lived a generation after Jesus, when slavery was still very much a factor of life, even for followers of Jesus. In his writings Paul makes several references to slavery, which he does not denounce. He addresses both slaves and masters, urging them to treat each other with respect, but Saint Paul does not write as an abolitionist.[3] For example, Saint Paul’s letter to Philemon is focused on a fugitive slave, Onesimus. At some point in Paul’s imprisonment in Rome, Onesimus and Paul met. Onesimus became a follower of Jesus and helped Paul during in his imprisonment. Paul complies with the legal requirement to send Onesimus back to his master, Philemon. Paul writes of his love for Onesimus, who has become like a son, and Paul urges Philemon to treat Onesimus with forgiveness as a “dear brother” in Christ; however Paul does not explicitly ask Philemon to free his slave, Onesimus. Slavery was a constituent part of the culture for both Jesus and Paul.

Why this especially matters to us is because of our own nation’s appalling practice of slavery. You will know how scriptural references to slavery were used in our own country to normalize, condone, and bless the enslavement of African people. Even after the “emancipation” of slaves in 1867, the Jim Crow Laws ravaged the black population, and leaving the residual racism that has only grown over the years. Consider what is going on around us in our country just now in terms of racism, prejudice, and the rampant fear of the “minority” culture, those most vulnerable.

So back to Jesus’ very challenging parable about slavery and what his parable means for us today. Where do we find Jesus’ good news as we try to make meaning of this passage from the Gospel according to Luke? Here is what we know:

So what are we missing in this disturbing parable where Jesus heralds the master and puts the slave in their place, which is a very low place? What are we missing?

I don’t know. We sometimes have to struggle with the scriptures to understand what is being revealed. I don’t understand this parable. The only way I know to hear Jesus’ parable about the master and the slave is in the broader context of what we do know about Jesus: who he was, what he taught, how he gave of his life in love as a liberator for everyone. About that we can be absolutely clear. I am also clear about my personal relationship Jesus, who has set me free from the inside out. You may know the same. And I am clear about our vocation as followers of Jesus  – as Jesus says – to follow him in “laying down our lives” for one another, which is so crucial during this very frightful time in which we are living.[8]

We continue to see the insidious residue of slavery and racism in our own country and beyond. Where do you see people whose race, or religion, or language or culture of origin, or education stigmatizes them, constrains them, discriminates against them, traumatizes them, incarcerates them?  Here is a question for each of us: Who is within our own reach to carry the emancipation of Jesus’ love, and hope, and help? What is our own personal calling, now? In the 19th century, Frederick Douglass, the sometime slave who became the most brilliant orator and abolitionist, spoke some words for us today: “A slave is someone who sits down, and waits for someone to free them.”[9] Who is waiting for us? Who is waiting for you?

[1] Slaves are named in Jesus’ parables: Matthew 18:23-34; Matthew 24:45-51; Luke 16:1-13; Luke 17:7-10.

[2] The Greek word translated into English as “Gospel” is εὐ  = good, well + ἀγγέλιον  = message, announcement.

[3] Saint Paul writes of slaves, e.g., in Ephesians 6:5-9 and Colossians 3:22-25.

[4] Colossians 4:14; Acts 28:8-9.

[5] The same Greek word δοῦλος (doulos) “slave” is used in the New Testament both literally and metaphorically.

[6] Saint Paul describes Jesus with the very word for slave, doulos: “[God] emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, assuming human likeness. And being found in appearance as a human, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:7-8).

[7] Saint Paul writes, “For though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might gain all the more. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to gain Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I might gain those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not outside God’s law but am within Christ’s law) so that I might gain those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, so that I might gain the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I might become a partner in it” (1 Corinthians 9:19-23).

[8] Jesus calls us to “lay down our lives”: Matthew 16:24; Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23, 14:27. See also Romans 12:1.

[9] Frederick Douglass (1818-1985) escaped from slavery in Maryland in 1838. He became a very compelling social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. He is remembered as the most important leader in the 19th century for African-American civil rights.

Br. David Vryhof

Francis of Assisi

Today we remember Francis, the little poor man of Assisi. There is a lot about him that is worth remembering.

Saint Francis was fascinated by the poverty of Christ – his lowly birth in Bethlehem, his inauspicious upbringing in Nazareth, his wanderings through Galilee and Judea as an itinerant preacher and healer, his terrible suffering on the Cross. He sought to imitate that poverty in his own life, forsaking his family’s wealth to embrace a life of simplicity and suffering. Like Christ, he was drawn to the poor, the sick and the outcasts, and overcoming his initial repulsion, chose to live and work among them.

We remember today his boundless love for God and for God’s Church. He frequently wept at the sight of a crucifix and spent hours and even days in prayer. He was a charismatic preacher and many chose to follow him. Thousands joined the religious orders he founded: friars and nuns and lay people embraced his message and his values. He was a peacemaker, a reconciler, a lover of all.

On this final day of the Season of Creation, we remember especially his love for the whole of creation and for every living creature. In the created order he saw God’s love revealed for all to see, as the psalmist did when he wrote: “The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows God’s handiwork” (Psalm 19:1). Every creature was precious – every living thing offered to God its unique praise and thanksgiving by reason of its very existence. Every mountain and hill, every valley and river, the sun and moon and stars of the sky – they all spoke to him of the majesty, the power, the wisdom, the generosity and love of the Creator. He was in awe of it all and lived each day with a profound sense of wonder and gratitude. He called the sun his “brother” and the moon his “sister.” Every object or force of nature, every creature, was a gift in his eyes, and he recognized his deep connection with them all. How we need his witness today to remind us of the beauty and preciousness of the earth on which we live, and of the sacredness of every plant, every animal, and every person that calls it home. Francis modeled for us a kinship with all created things and vehemently challenged our notion of ourselves as owners with license to use its resources in whatever way we wish.

In 1979, Pope John Paul II declared Saint Francis of Assisi the patron saint of ecologists because of the unique bond with nature he exemplified. His unwavering commitment to simplicity and his renunciation of material wealth, coupled with his desire to live in harmony with every living thing, serve as a timeless example for those who strive for a more sustainable and harmonious relationship with the earth.

Today we remember the little man of Assisi and honor him. But we also pledge ourselves to follow his example: to live simply, to honor and love the earth and all its creatures, to forsake the pursuit of material wealth, to recognize our kinship with all that God has made.

Blessed Francis, pray for us.

Br. James Koester

Nehemiah 8:1-12

Both yesterday, and now today, we have heard short portions of the book Nehemiah. It’s not a part of scripture most of us are probably drawn to. In fact, we might even have a hard time finding it! Yet, even though it is, in a sense, hidden away, it bears some study, for like all scripture, while it was written within a certain context, it speaks to us who are in a very different context nearly three thousand years later.

Briefly, Nehemiah is the cup bearer to the Persian king, Artaxerxes, and finds himself in a place of deep “sadness of the heart” over the fate of “the place of his ancestors’ graves [which] lies waste, [with] its gates . . . destroyed by fire” (Nehemiah 2:2b, 3). Nehemiah is granted permission to return to Jerusalem where he successfully supervised the rebuilding of the city, in spite of tremendous opposition from near neighbors.

With the walls and temple restored, the priests and Levites purified, “and all Isreal settled in their towns,” we come to today’s reading when, with “all the people gathered together [they] told the scribe Ezra to bring the book of the law of Moses. . . . [and] he read from it” (Nehemiah 7:73; 8:1, 3).

In many ways, this is a throw away line of little significance to us, unless of course you understand its significance. The physical reconstruction of Jerusalem, while important, was only one aspect of the task Nehemiah had set himself. The spiritual renewal of God’s people was the point of Nehemiah’s mission, and that began, as it had centuries before on Mt. Sinai, with the reading of the Law of Moses to all the people. It was with the proclamation of the word of God that “the kingdom of God [comes] near” (Luke 10:9) and the people of God are made whole, and holy, once again.

Like Moses, Jesus’ mission was to usher in the reign of God. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” Jesus said in the synagogue at Nazareth, “because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18). It is with the proclamation of the word of God, by Moses, by Ezra, by the disciples, by Jesus, by us, that God’s people are made whole, and are made holy. Today we see that in the reading from Nehemiah, and we experience it as we gather around this altar to hear God’s word and receive holy gifts for holy people. We, like those assembled in Jerusalem nearly three thousand years ago, are those people who are made holy by hearing again the word of God proclaimed to all the people.

Br. Keith Nelson

Saint Michael and All Angels

Revelation 12:7-12

“We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.”

In the Nicene Creed, we affirm our faith and trust in God our Creator in these terms. As the earth all around us proceeds from a divine source, so too does heaven: the nearer presence of God to which we are invited for eternity. As the beings and things around us manifest to our senses constitute the “material expression of God’s love,” so too do those unseen beings of the same created order share a mysterious role in God’s unfolding plan for us, albeit one hidden from our natural senses.

This, in a nutshell, is the theological ground of our celebration today: The feast of St. Michael and All Angels. We prayed in today’s collect, “Grant that, as your holy angels always serve and worship you in heaven, so by your appointment may they help and defend us here on earth.” Angels – and angel simply means “messenger” – act as mediators between earth and heaven, the seen and the unseen. The angels point us to the perennial question: “How is God present in the world? And what is our response to that presence?”

The ministries of angels may seem too fanciful or abstract a place for the modern mind to begin, so we can turn first to the ministrations of everyday creatures.

Through this liturgical season of Creation, we have affirmed and celebrated God’s presence to us in the creatures God has made and called “very good”: other humans, but also the sun, moon, and stars; the sky above and waters below; the soil and plants, birds and four-footed beasts. God is present in the world to us through them.

Perhaps you have experienced moments in the presence of God’s non-human creatures when you felt quiet and still, wordlessly available to the simple goodness of that being in its otherness. A plant or a stone, a river or a bird, can indeed minister to us, and we to them. This is not simply human projection, but a glimpse of God’s original intention for creation: a relationship of harmonious companionship, in which our mutual presence lifts one another beyond complexity, difference, and enmity, closer to the heart of the Creator.

I feel this especially when I am in the presence of certain very old trees. An old oak tree, encountered individually in this way, hums with its own distinct life and personality. Yet it also acts powerfully, even selflessly, as an ambassador of its entire species. To encounter one Oak is to encounter all Oaks, all oak-kind. In the life of one is the life of all. This is corroborated not only by global folk wisdom but by modern tree science.

Perhaps angels are not all that different than oaks.

Though today we celebrate St. Michael, and by extension other named angels such as Gabriel, Raphel, and Uriel, the vast majority of scripture’s many angels are anonymous. In the life of one angel is the life of all angels: and this life, in its essence, is a life centered in the nearer presence of God. It is the glory of God, not themselves, that the angels are intent on communicating.

The author of the Letter to the Hebrews asks, “Are not all angels spirits in the divine service, sent to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation?”

Christian tradition has interpreted this to suggest that, as spirits, angels are invisible and immaterial creatures. Summarizing the tradition in the thirteenth century, St. Thomas Aquinas maintains that angels possess individual consciousness, but consciousness that is utterly unlike ours because it is not mediated or organized around a body. As “bodiless powers,” angels have no physical senses, no appetites, and presumably no gender. They communicate and receive communication from God and from one another beyond language, non-discursively, and instantaneously. And they act in response to such communication with an efficacy of will that far surpasses ours.

Tradition holds that they appear to us in forms legible to our senses, and remarkably like our own, because this is the most effective means to inspire awe, to establish relationship, and to draw our minds, hearts, and wills into harmonious alignment and obedience to the divine will.

Perhaps you can see where this is leading: all angels point us toward the mystery at the core of our faith, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus is the greatest messenger of God’s presence. The incarnation of Jesus Christ – God made human – has bridged the divide between heaven and earth in a way no angel could: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of a Father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” Jesus answers most fully the question of how God is present in the world: not simply like one of us, but as one of us; with a body like ours; joys like ours; pain and sorrow like ours; a death like ours; and a resurrection from the dead that has destroyed the power of death. In Jesus, we participate in that resurrection life even now. The first letter of Peter affirms: these are “things into which angels long to look!”

If visible creatures and invisible angels are our neighbors in God’s created order, the demons are, by their own choice and proclamation, our unseen enemies. As the loud voice in heaven proclaims in our reading from Revelation: “Rejoice then, you heavens, and those who dwell in them! But woe to the earth and the sea, for the devil has come down to you with great wrath, because he knows that his time is short!”

The great sin of the fallen angels is pride: not the rightful sense of satisfaction in a job well done, but that spiritual presumption that fails to recognize that no gift is inherently our own, but a gift of the Creator to be used for the good of all creation.

Here is how one early monastic writer, John Cassian, describes the origin of pride in the fall of Satan:

“We see that the angel who, on account of his great splendor and beauty, was called Lucifer was cast out of heaven for no other vice than this one. . . . This thought alone was his first downfall. Because of it he was abandoned by God, whom he did not believe that he needed. At once he lost his balance; he tottered, became fully aware of the frailty of his own nature, and lost the blessedness that he has enjoyed as a gift of God. . . . In his belief that he could attain to the glory of the Godhead by his own free will and effort, he lost even that which was his by the grace of the Creator.”

St. Michael the Archangel (art by Br. Keith Nelson)

I will end with an image. You have before you a small token of today’s feast, an image of the archangel Michael I created based on an early medieval prototype.

In the upper left of the image, we see the cross of Christ, held in the right hand of St. Michael. In and by the cross, every enemy of love and truth is conquered. The cross surmounts a spear. While the tail of Satan, depicted as the dragon of Revelation, raises its own barb at God’s angel, St. Michael fearlessly holds Satan in his proper place and at his proper distance. The spear tip is aimed at the mouth of the dragon, who is is “the deceiver of the world” through the lies he speaks. The truth of God’s salvation in Christ is the antidote to every lie. In his left hand, St. Michael holds a sphere that symbolizes the world, held safe in the hand of God its Creator.

The name Michael means “Who is like God?” The answer of course is: no one is like God. The humility before God at the heart of Michael’s name is the source of his victory.

While most images depict St. Michael and the dragon, Satan, as inverse opposites, there is one telling detail in this image that reveals their common origin: their wings. Unlike later images of Satan, with leathery bat-wings, his wings here are identical to Michael’s. This is a pointed reminder that Satan and his host are fallen angels. In this we find something profound: they are not evil by nature. They have become evil by their own choice to turn from God. Nothing created by God is inherently evil. Genesis declares, “And God saw everything that God had made, and indeed, it was very good.”

Like the angels, we are gathered here before the heavenly throne to pray on behalf of all and for all. Like St. Michael, we are called to hold the world’s evils at the proper distance, rising above it in thought, word, and deed, with God’s help. But with the angelic host we worship a God of unrelenting Love, extending prayers to the farthest depths, where we see only evil, hatred, even antichrist with his many masks. Persisting to the end, we “shall see greater things than these: heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”

Br. Lain Wilson

The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 21C)

Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15

When I came to the Monastery three years ago, the big television show at the time was Succession. I loved it. So when I saw that the showrunner had a movie coming out last year, I jumped on it.

Mountainhead, like Succession, is a dark satire of the contemporary ultra-ultra-rich. It’s one of those movies in the genre of “horrible people doing horrible things in a beautiful setting.” Four tech bros gather for a weekend at a mountain retreat. Fellowship quickly descends into sniping at the relative size of each others’ fortunes and disingenuous shows of empathy for a world set on fire by forces at their literal fingertips.

It’s a hilarious and horrifying depiction of power, narcissism, and inhumanity, all reinforced by the distorting and destructive effects of technology. Even the most sympathetic character is just as reprehensible as the others and, at the film’s end, we as viewers frankly aren’t left with much hope either that these men are capable of change or growth, or that they—or the forces they represent—can be a source of healing for our own fragmented world.

Like the film, our parable this morning of the unnamed rich man and the poor Lazarus reveals a society of haves and have-nots: rich and poor, those inside the gates and those without, those with power and agency and those denied both.

Both film and parable pose a similar question: where can we find hope in a fragmented world?

The parable continues a theme we’ve explored over the last several weeks of how Luke foregrounds the materially poor in Jesus’ revolutionary preaching and proclamation of the kingdom. The gate, separating the feasting rich man from the starving Lazarus, acts as the unbridgeable gulf between these two men, echoing the “great chasm” in the afterlife that separates them. Death is a pivot point, reversing their fortunes.

Like our reprehensible billionaires, the rich man of the parable doesn’t change; he doesn’t grow. He attempts to behave in death as imperiously as he did in life, demanding first water to slake his thirst, then a messenger to warn his brothers about his fate. He is not a dynamic character capable of the conversion of heart that Jesus proclaims, or that Paul advocates in his letter to Timothy: “As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment” (1 Timothy 6:17). Jesus and Paul are speaking to living, breathing people, capable of change; their message is meant to effect a conversion of heart in its hearers, including us.

This, then, is the first source of hope in our world: that we are empowered, indeed, that we are commanded to grow and change, that we are called to a conversion of our own hearts so that we can be agents of reconciliation.

How are we to do that?

The parable is fundamentally about how the use and misuse of wealth. But wealth is just one of many power dynamics. So many others exist in our world, that we face or participate in day by day. So many seemingly impassable gates or unbridgeable chasms separate the haves and have nots, those with power and those without. We are empowered in so many ways, expected and unexpected. And we may suffer silently, unseen, disempowered, in so many ways, expected and unexpected.

We can be drawn, entirely unintentionally, in so many ways into complacency and acceptance that we deserve the blessings of our power and the suffering of our powerlessness.

Where do you have power in your own life, maybe even in ways you don’t expect?

How might you, completely unwittingly, be ignoring those who are powerless?

In our conversion of heart, Jesus and Paul call us to break out of our complacency and assumption of deservingness. They remind us that all we have—wealth or ability or power or position or whatever—is a gift, a gift given so we may use it for others, and for the glory of God. When we discern what we have been given, and know that it is not ours, we may begin to fling open our own gates. We may begin the work of constructing bridges.

To hope the conversion of our hearts can be a reconciling force in a broken world is to participate in God’s own kingdom, in God’s own future.

In discerning our power and inviting those denied power, in whatever form, to participate in it, we ourselves participate in God’s own “almighty power,” in the words of today’s Collect, chiefly declared in “showing mercy and pity.”[1]

And in laying the foundation of bridges between haves and have nots, we lay a good foundation for our own future, as Paul puts it, taking hold of “the life that really is life” (1 Timothy 6:19).

But even more than that, in our reconciling work in the world, we express our faith in our ultimate hope as Christians. In working to make the world more just, in even the smallest ways we can with the power entrusted to us, we express our hope, as the catechism puts it, “to live with confidence in newness and fullness of life, and to await the coming of Christ in glory, and the completion of God’s purpose for the world.”[2]

We will soon sing this hope in God’s purposes, in our offertory hymn: “O Master . . . make haste to heal these hearts of pain . . . till all the world shall learn thy love, and follow where thy feet have trod; till glorious from thy heaven above, shall come the city of our God.”[3]

Our first lesson this morning anticipates this hope in God’s redemptive plan for the world. The prophet Jeremiah hears the word of God commanding him, in the middle of the siege of Jerusalem, to redeem the land of his kinsman. The enemy is at the gate, and he is being told to invest in land that may soon pass beyond his control! Why should he throw his money away?

The answer is hope, hope founded upon trust in God: “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Take these deeds, both this sealed deed of purchase and this open deed, and put them in an earthenware jar, in order that they may last for a long time. For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land” (Jeremiah 32:14-15).

Whatever loss you may suffer now—however the world may change, whatever darkness you may encounter—you may dare to hope that houses and fields and vineyards will again be bought. You may dare to hope that God will put it to rights. You may dare to hope—we may dare to hope—because God is faithful.

Jeremiah is commanded—and empowered—to participate, through his actions, in God’s redemptive plan.

And so too are we commanded and empowered, through our own actions, through the use of the power given to us, to participate in the fulfilling of God’s purposes, so that we may be “partakers of [God’s] heavenly treasure.”[4]

We are called to be fundamentally a hopeful people. To be bearers and beacons of hope for those who may sit unseen and unheard outside our gates by using our power to throw open those gates. And to live out our own hope in the confession of—in the conviction of—God’s redemptive purpose for the whole world: “till all the world shall learn thy love, and follow where thy feet have trod; till glorious from thy heaven above, shall come the city of our God.”

Amen.

[1] The Book of Common Prayer (New York, 1979), 234.

[2] Book of Common Prayer, 861.

[3] “Where cross the crowded ways of life,” The Hymnal 1984, no. 609, stanzas 4-5. Words by Frank Mason North (1850-1935), alt.

[4] Book of Common Prayer, 234 (Collect for Proper 21C).

Br. Luke Ditewig

Thomas Traherne

Today we remember Thomas Traherne, a priest from the Welsh countryside known only after his death for his great quantity and quality of spiritual writing. He died at age 37 and his treasures kept being found and published.

Traherne saw and pointed to God in all creation. “Suppose a river or a drop of water, an apple or a sand, an ear of corn, or an herb; God knoweth infinite excellencies in it more than we. . . . O, what a treasure is every sand when truly understood! Who can love any thing that God hath made too much? [God’s] infinite goodness and wisdom and power and glory are in it.”[1]

As you pray, what wonder of creation catches your attention? Stop, stay, and gaze at it. Behold this treasure, like you, created good.

Traherne wrote about how God is revealed in scripture. Traherne wrote of the psalmist for Psalm 105 and 106, “celebrateth the ways of God in former ages with as much vehemency, zeal and pleasure as if they were new things, as if [the psalmist] were present with them seeing their beauty and tasting their delight that very moment.”[2]

As you pray, remember how God has saved, healed, protected, formed you.   Recall God’s faithfulness. Retell your story. Recall our story as in Psalms 105 and 106. Feel again the zeal and pleasure of being found, the delight of seeing God act.

Traherne was a theologian in poetry and prose, expressing God is infinite and beyond as well as intimate in flesh as shown in this prayer:

“O eternal wisdom instruct me,

Blessed Thomas Traherne whom we remember today.

[1] Landscapes of Glory: Daily Readings with Thomas Traherne, introduced and edited A. M. Alchin (London, 1989), 41 (from Centuries of Meditations, 2.67).

[2] Ibid., 46 (from Centuries of Meditations, 3.92).

[3] Ibid., 60 (from Bodleian MS, The Church’s Yearbook, 112).