SSJE Sermons

Br. Jack Crowley

Saint Matthew

Matthew 9:9-13

Follow me. Those were the two words Jesus said to Saint Matthew when they first met. Follow me. Saint Matthew heard those words, got up from his tax booth, and followed Jesus.

Now in most situations, if a stranger comes to your place of work and tells you to follow him, it’s probably not a good idea to follow him. Yet, we know Jesus had a way with people. Jesus knew the hearts of humanity, and Jesus knew how to read a room. So when Jesus saw Matthew sitting at his tax booth, Jesus only needed two words to convince Matthew to leave it all behind. Follow me.

I would love to know what was going through the mind of Matthew when he first saw Jesus. I always wonder what kind of day Matthew was having. I mean we’ve all had our bad days at work when we think to ourselves I gotta get out of here.

One time, I was flying on a plane and the man seated next to me started talking to me. I wasn’t wearing my habit but he still opened up his life to me and told me all about it. At one point in the conversation, he said that sometimes he felt like quitting his job and joining a monastery. He asked me if I ever had that feeling. I said yes.

There is also a chance that maybe it was a normal day when Matthew met Jesus. Maybe Matthew just sensed that there was something special about this guy. This down-to-earth stranger who spoke so plainly to him.

Clearly, Jesus and Matthew had a moment. Something happened. We’ve all been there, when you meet someone special and you just know in a way beyond words that something beyond yourself is going on. Something that feels both beneath the surface and heavenly. Who wouldn’t want to follow that feeling?

We all have our own story of how we came to follow Jesus. Trying to put that story into words is close to impossible. Instead, we put words into our story. We do our best to describe and analyze our connection with Jesus, but ultimately we know what’s in our hearts can never be fully verbalized. There are some things that will just be between us and God. Thank God for that.

Like Saint Matthew, we also all have our own little tax booths. Some situation that comes between us and Christ. Some barrier we stay seated behind and watch as our lives go by. We tell ourselves one day I will get up out of this. One day I will fully follow Christ with all my heart.

Every day of our lives, we must get up out of own tax booth. This is hard. It’s always tempting to stay seated in the status quo. Yet throughout scripture, the status quo rarely survives an encounter with Christ.

The good news is that Jesus knows all of this. He knows what we’ve been through, what we are going through, and where we’d rather be in our lives right now. He knows we’ve all missed the mark a few times. He knows sometimes we land in our own tax booths despite our best intentions.

The good news is that Jesus is ready to help us to move. Jesus is ready to help us change. Jesus is not only ready for us to follow him, Jesus wants us to follow him.

We celebrate Saint Matthew because he had the courage to follow Jesus. He left it all behind to follow Jesus. He had no idea what he was getting into, but that did not stop him.

We too must have the courage to keep following Jesus. We must heed the call of Jesus every day of our lives with our own lives. We must get comfortable with depending on Jesus, no matter how uncomfortable it makes us feel.

The alternative is a life built solely on self-reliance. A life stuck behind the tax booth of our own selves. That is an exhausting life. That is a life that gets old quickly.

To radically depend on Jesus is intimidating, yet so many who have gone before us did so. The lives of saints were often built on leaps of faith. I don’t know of any saints who lived a quiet, comfortable life. I don’t know of any saints who lived a life free of challenges.

Saint Matthew followed Jesus all the way to martyrdom. He gave up his life to that call. We all do the same in our own way. Follow that call. Amen.

Br. David Vryhof

The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 20C)

Amos 8:4-7

In 2021, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists released the “Pandora Papers,” a massive leak of almost 12 million documents that revealed how the ultra-rich and powerful used offshore accounts and shell companies to secretly preserve vast fortunes, to avoid paying taxes, and to hide assets potentially acquired through corrupt means, including bribery, money laundering, human rights abuses, and other wrongdoings. Over 330 politicians and public officials were implicated, including current and former world leaders, as well as celebrities, billionaires and criminals. The report also revealed that several U.S. states, such as South Dakota, Florida and Texas, had enacted laws that promoted secrecy, attracting wealthy overseas clients to hide wealth from their home countries and thereby avoid taxes.

So here’s a question: What would Jesus have said about this?

A surface reading of today’s gospel might leave us wondering if Jesus would praise these shrewd money-managers for their clever maneuverings, as the rich man in the parable praises his dishonest manager “because he had acted shrewdly” to guarantee his own financial security (Luke 16:8).

But we know Jesus, and we know that Jesus’ intent in telling this parable could not have been to condone dishonest or deceitful behavior. The scriptures, both Old and New Testaments, clearly condemn those who take advantage of others to line their own pockets with wealth. Consider our reading from Amos this morning, where the prophet writes,

“Hear this, you who trample on the needy and bring to ruin the poor of the land . . . [you who say,] ‘We will make the ephah smaller and the shekel heavier and practice deceit with false balances, buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals and selling the sweepings of the wheat.’ The Lord has sworn. . . . Surely, I will never forget any of their deeds.” (Amos 8:4-6)

Jesus knew the law and the prophets and knew how frequently they speak against those who exploit and oppress the most vulnerable members of society – especially widows, orphans and “strangers in the land.” He himself is critical of the rich and powerful – even religious leaders – who act with deceit and prey upon the poor. He repeatedly warns his listeners of the dangers of loving money and of building their lives upon wealth. There can be no doubt that he would condemn those whose greed prompts them to use offshore accounts and shell companies to hide their money, to avoid paying taxes, or to cover up their dishonest dealings.

If that is the case, what then is the meaning of this parable, which seems on the surface to approve of devious and self-serving behavior?

There are a number of clues that help us get at the real meaning of this parable. The first clue is that Jesus is telling this parable to his disciples (Luke 16:1); that is, to those who have already chosen to follow him, which suggests that this parable is about more than what’s on the surface. Jesus often used analogies or metaphors to illustrate deeper truths. This is not a parable about business ethics; it aims to teach us something else.

The dishonest manager knows he is about to lose his job and needs to find a way to secure his future. He takes action in his present situation with a future goal in mind. However dishonestly he acts, he uses the resources available to him in the present moment with an eye to the future; his goal is to be financially secure after he has been dismissed as manager.

Jesus suggests that the “children of this age” – that is, those who belong to this world and whose lives are shaped by its values – have a clearer grasp of this principle than do the “children of light.” They understand that what we do now has a direct influence on what we hope for in the future. We can use the riches we now possess – time, talent, possessions, money – to build up riches for the future.

Of course, Jesus is speaking of true riches – that is, of the things that make us rich towards God. He is teaching his disciples to weigh their current decisions with the future in mind.

In doing so, he is underscoring his earlier teaching about building up “treasure in heaven.” In chapter 12, Jesus challenges his followers with these words:

“Sell your possessions and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Luke 12:33-34)

Jesus and his followers have their eyes set on the “kingdom of God.” Jesus is saying, “The children of light (1 Thessalonians 5:4-5) can learn something valuable from the children of this world; namely, to use possessions so as to gain, not lose, their future.” Jesus is well aware of the dangers that riches pose, but he is claiming here that it is possible to manage goods in ways appropriate to life in the kingdom of God.

What do you think that might look like? What would it mean for you to use the earthly treasures you have been given – money, possessions, talents and gifts – with an eye to the future . . . not just your future, but God’s future? How could you use what you have been given to build up the kingdom of God and thus lay up for yourself treasure in heaven?

He says this to his disciples, who are not wealthy. Even the little that they have can become heavenly treasure if they direct it towards the building of God’s kingdom.

“Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much,” Jesus says, “and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches?” (Luke 16:10-11)

Most of us will never possess great power or vast riches, yet each of us has some power and some riches. Like the disciples, even the little we have can be used to extend God’s reign on earth. “Whoever is faithful in little is faithful also in much.”

Act faithfully in the present, act wisely in the present, using what has been given you to build for the future. “Lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven” and become rich towards God. “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Br. Keith Nelson

Luke 8:4-15

Some truths – about ourselves, about those we love, about the world around us, even truths about God, who is the heart of all Truth – can be very hard to receive.

Sometimes this is because our present perception is based on lesser or partial truths. It can be threatening, destabilizing, or at the very least inconvenient to accept a larger, more complete encounter with truth.

On a global and political level, we might consider the human causes of climate change. In this, we face (or flee) at least two uncomfortable truths: the severity of its consequences and the grief we experience at our complicity.

Everywhere Jesus went, the kind of Truth he offered provoked a response in others.

For some, Jesus offered a challenging but exhilarating invitation into a freedom they had never imagined was possible. Even for those who would welcome it, this grace could be shattering, as when Peter responds to Jesus: “Lord, go away from me, for I am a sinful man.”

For others, the words, the actions, even the simple presence of Jesus felt intolerable – as if a potent allergen had been introduced into their bodies. The force of this presence was so threatening, so destabilizing, so inconvenient that they could only respond by retreating into a willed refusal to see.

Their hearts were like ground where no seed could grow.

The parable of the sower, in both Luke and Matthew’s version, contains a challenging interchange between Jesus and his inner circle. Luke reads: Jesus said, “To you it has been given to know the secrets (or mysteries) of the kingdom of God; but to others I speak in parables, so that, ‘looking they may not perceive, and listening they may not understand.’” These last words are a quotation from the prophet Isaiah, whose mission was to provoke from the people of Israel this allergic response to God’s Truth.

One scripture scholar writes that the parable form “arrests the hearer by its vividness or strangeness, leaving the mind in sufficient doubt about its precise application to tease it into active thought.” Parables introduce uncomfortable questions. Meditating on a parable invites the disciple, in every age, to put on the mind of the master: the mind of Christ. By gradual and partial glimpses, we come to behold more of the Truth, until “we see him as he is.” To that end, the parable is like an irritant: the grain of sand inside the oyster that eventually produces a pearl. We become like him by learning to see the world as he sees it.

But a parable could also diffuse or absorb the unalloyed shock of Truth in the midst of those who, frankly, couldn’t handle it, or simply weren’t ready to change their minds and enter the kingdom, there in their midst, in the person of Jesus.

Jesus always respected the freedom of others to choose what to do next: whether to turn toward Truth or to flee from it. As the Way, the Truth, and the Life, he always intends the discomfort or strangeness he brings to our lives for the purpose of our transformation.

In his company, seed is scattered, with astounding generosity, in every direction, in every condition, on every kind of ground.

Its growth depends on how receptive or resistant we are to Truth.

Br. Lain Wilson

Dag Hammarskjöld

Matthew 16:24-27

“In our era, the road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action.”[1]

So wrote the Swedish economist and diplomat Dag Hammarskjöld, whom we commemorate today. His tenure as the second secretary-general of the United Nations was cut tragically short amid the complex Congo Crisis, when he perished in a plane crash in 1961 on his way to a ceasefire negotiation.

Hammarskjöld’s public life was an active one; there’s no doubt about that. And his journal, Markings, reveals a correspondingly rich spiritual life, drawing deeply on the Christian mystical tradition.

One theme that arises clearly is Hammarskjöld’s own understanding of his call to Christian discipleship, to the Way of the Cross: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24).[2]

In a lengthy meditation on Jesus’ time with his disciples before his crucifixion, Hammarskjöld imagines Jesus preparing to set out on his own Way: “A young man, adamant in his commitment, who walks the road of possibility to the end without self-pity or demand for sympathy, fulfilling the destiny he has chosen—even sacrificing affection and fellowship when the others are unready to follow him—into a new fellowship.”[3]

Seven years later, as secretary-general, he sounds many of the same notes in describing some of the sacrifices his own path entailed: “One of the great sacrifices is exile from the environment by which you have been molded. . . . one simply has to learn that part of the price of this effort is isolation, compensated by the feeling of a deeper and wider solidarity with the many people, known and unknown, who have fully accepted the same demands.”[4] An entry from later that same year is starker: “Didst Thou give me this inescapable loneliness so that it would be easier for me to give Thee all?”[5]

What do the life and witness of Dag Hammarskjöld offer to us today? I think two things.

First, that the Way of the Cross is a way of active commitment, and commitment to action. We all have God-given gifts, God-given power, God-given agency. We are all in the world, with all its suffering and all its need, and we are all called to be coworkers with God in this world.

What are your gifts? What is your power? How does God call you to be God’s agent?

And second, this active commitment, our participation in Jesus’ Way of the Cross, inevitably entails sacrifice. Hammarskjöld is blunt about his own experience: “I realized that . . . the price for committing one’s life would be reproach, and that the only elevation possible to man lies in the depths of humiliation.”[6]

The way of discipleship, the Way of the Cross, entails sacrifice, but we are assured that we do not walk that Way bereft and alone.

“Have mercy upon us,” Hammarskjöld wrote in his famous poem-prayer two months before his death.

“Have mercy

Give us

Thou

Amen.

[1] D. Hammarskjöld, Markings, trans. L. Sjöberg and W. H. Auden (New York, 1964), 122 (entry dated 1955).

[2] R. Lipsey, Hammarskjöld: A Life (Ann Arbor, MI, 2016), 84-89.

[3] Hammarskjöld, Markings, 69 (dated 1951).

[4] Quoted in Lipsey, Hammarskjöld, 334 (letter to the Swedish novelist Pär Lagerkvist, dated January 31, 1958).

[5] Hammarskjöld, Markings, 166 (dated July 29, 1958).

[6] Hammarskjöld, Markings, 205 (dated Whitsunday 1961).

[7] Ibid., 214-15 (dated July 19, 1961).

Br. James Koester

Edward Bouverie Pusey

Matthew 13:44-52

In many ways today’s commemoration of Edward Bouverie Pusey, is like remembering the life of a favorite uncle. A generation older than our own Father Benson, it was Pusey who deeply influenced Benson when he arrived in Oxford.

These of course were the days when Oxford was buzzing with what was to become known as the Oxford Movement. In 1833 John Keble had preached the Assize Sermon, National Apostasy, which is regarded as the beginning of the Movement. In the same year Pusey, Keble and Newman began to circulate the Tracts for the Times. In 1843 Pusey preached a sermon drawing attention to the doctrine of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. In 1845, when Newman converted to Rome, Pusey’s adherence to the Church of England was for many, a sign of stability. The following year he preached another sermon which sparked the revival of the use of sacramental confession within the Anglican Communion.

Though his teaching and preaching was thoroughly rooted in the tradition of the early Church and the Church Fathers, Pusey was condemned. After his sermon on the Eucharist, he was prohibited from preaching for two years. Unable to preach, Pusey turned his powers in another direction and was instrumental in establishing the first community of Sisters in the Church of England since the Reformation.

This was the atmosphere that was circulating in Oxford when Benson arrived in 1844. He immediately fell under the influence of Pusey. Twenty years later, when another young man arrived in Oxford, this time from America, it was Pusey who sent Father Grafton to meet Benson in the vicarage at Cowley. The rest, as they say, is history.

The results of the encounter between Benson and Pusey, and later between Benson and Grafton, at the behest of Pusey, are something we live with day after day. Without those encounters, while we may still be here, we would be very different. Our deep and abiding confidence in Christ’s Real Presence in the Sacrament of the Altar is one of the gifts Pusey has given to us through Father Benson. The awareness that in the sacramental rite of Reconciliation we encounter Christ again in the places of our brokenness and poverty, and allow him to bind up our wounds and set us on our feet[1] is another.

They are gifts, however, which come to us, not from a fascination with the past, but from a deep understanding of the present. Pusey understood that if faith was to be real, the power and presence of God needed to be known, felt, and experienced. For him, for Father Benson, and now for us the power and presence of God are made manifest, not in bread and wine, but in Body and Blood. They are made manifest in the words: [the] Lord has put away all your sins.[2] They are made manifest in community as we bear witness to the social nature of human life as willed by our Creator. Human beings bear the image of the triune God and are not meant to be separate and isolated.[3]

In each of these, Pusey reached into the past and brought out of his treasure what is new and what is old (Matthew 13:52) so that the power and presence of God in Christ may be known, felt, and experienced in our lives, in this place, today.

[1] “Guidance and Reconciliation,” in The Rule of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist (Lanham, MD, 1997), 60.

[2] The Book of Common Prayer (New York, 1979), 451.

[3] “The Witness of Life in Community,” in SSJE Rule, 8.

Br. Curtis Almquist

Ninian

Psalm 96:1-7

Today we commemorate the life and witness of a monk and bishop named Ninian, born in the latter half of the fourth century in southern Scotland. And we only know this because the venerable historian named Bede, four centuries later, very briefly wrote about Ninian. Legend has it that Ninian was educated in Rome and greatly influenced by Saint Martin of Tours. Ninian followed Jesus’ words to “go and make disciples,” becoming a monk-missionary bishop to the Celts and Picts of Scotland in the fifth century.

Unless you are Scottish, you may never have heard of Saint Ninian. This is actually true about most saints. The church universal does remember some saints in boldface – Saint Paul, Saint Mary Magdalene, Saint Patrick among them; however most saints are only known in the recesses of our own hearts. The word “saint” comes from the Latin, sanctus, meaning holy, someone experienced as close to God. Saints have a heroic quality, at least to us personally. My paternal grandmother was a saint. You would not know her, but I do. Recollecting her always brings tears of gratitude to my eyes. You will know your own saints: people who symbolize hope, people who give you a moral compass, people who are real, and whole, and holy.

We all need big people in our lives: people who point the way how to live, people whom we admire and perhaps revere, people who influence us, whom we want to emulate. Life is so uncharted, and we need a great deal of help to find our way. Which is why Jesus’ words, “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” arrested people, past and present. We need help finding our way.

Don’t let this innate need for “big people,” for heroes, be filled in your own mind and heart by people who have amassed power and authority in disingenuous or disreputable ways. We need to keep a repository in our own souls of people whom we know – past and present – who have influence and authority that teems with God’s life, and light, and love. Holy people, holy in our own eyes. And we need to be these very people to others. Our life vocation is to emulate kindness, generosity, dignity, beauty, love in ways which we can uniquely share and show. We need heroes. And we need to be heroes to those within our reach. It’s an innate need.

Blessed Ninian being one such soul from ages past.

Br. Luke Ditewig

Holy Cross Day

Behold the cross. Love that makes no sense yet is for us all.[i] Look and pray with each of the Gospel writers.[ii] With Matthew, remember Judas’ betrayal, Peter’s denial, and Pilate washing his hands.[iii] Remember our betrayals, denials, our faults and lies, our thirst for power and revenge. Remember how we have cried “crucify” in word and deed, with silence and inaction. Pray with humility saying: Forgive.

With Mark, pray Jesus’ lament—“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”—with its trust—My God—and agony—in feeling abandoned.[iv] This is the first line of Psalm 22 of which Jesus knew the rest. “[Why] are you so far from my cry and from the words of my distress? I cry in the daytime but you do not answer, by night as well, but I find no rest. Yet you are the Holy One, enthroned upon the praises of Israel. Our forebears put their trust in you; they trusted, and you delivered them.”[v]

Pray specifically your pain and hurt and remember back how you have received love. Cling to God’s past provision as hope in today’s desolation. Pray both pain and trust.

With Luke, pray Jesus’ compassion: “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing” and as Jesus said to one crucified beside him: “Today, you will be with me in Paradise.”[vi] Bless, and do not curse. For those hurt and oppress, ask for grace and mercy. For us in blindness to how we hurt, ask for grace and mercy.

With John, pray Jesus’ sovereignty: “I, when I am lifted up, will draw all people to myself.”[vii] Death and evil are conquered. Jesus reigns, reaching, hearing, and holding all. On the cross Jesus bore the weight, the weight of the world. Hold yourself trusting that Jesus has the whole world, including you, in his hands.

Behold the cross. Love that makes no sense yet is for us all. What do you see? What do you feel? Pray with Jesus. Love like Jesus.

[i] Jennifer Strawbridge, Jarred Mercer and Peter Groves (2019) Love Makes No Sense: An Invitation to Christian Theology. London: SCM Press.

[ii] Raymond E. Brown (1986) A Crucified Christ in Holy Week. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 71, in Frances Taylor Gench (2007) Encounters with Jesus. Louisville: WJK Press, 127.

[iii] Matthew 26-27

[iv] Mark 15:34

[v] Psalm 22:2-4

[vi] Luke 23:34, 43

[vii] John 12:32

Br. Lain Wilson

Psalm 150

In a time of oppression and division, of political violence and fear, of extreme wealth inequality, of competing claims to truth, of state power brought to bear on the least powerful, I imagine that hearing and praying psalm 150 could be as stark and striking an experience as it is in our own time.

“Praise God in his holy temple; praise him in the firmament of his power. Praise him for his mighty acts; praise him for his excellent greatness.” (Ps 150:1-2)

There are any number of psalms that we can and do pray—songs of lament, of abandonment, of joy—songs expressing all that is possible to express in conversation with God, all that is needed to communicate to God all that is in our hearts as we encounter a world that seems so wrong.

And there’s no doubt that there is so much wrong with the world. The psalms give us the prayerful vocabulary to bring these wrongs before God.

Each psalm speaks to us in its own way. But this quintessential song of praise points to a substrate in our reality. Whatever we encounter and experience, however we may be divided, whatever we may lament, whatever we grieve—underneath all that is the truth of our common vocation, a truth St. Ignatius of Loyola asserts in his Spiritual Exercises: “The human person is created to praise, reverence, and serve God as Lord.” Even more strongly, this praise is the common vocation of all creatures, as we hear in our hymn today: “Praise God, from whom all blessings flow; praise him, all creatures here below; praise him above, ye heavenly host: praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.”[1]

In times of division and turmoil and fear, this fundamental truth of our common vocation calls us all to a unity that may seem, and frankly may be impossible in this life. But in this unmitigated praise of God, we can make present now the new creation inaugurated by the death and resurrection of Jesus, when all divisions are erased. In this unmitigated praise of God, we can experience now a foretaste of God’s promised future.

“Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Hallelujah!” (Ps 150:6). Amen.

[1] The Hymnal 1982, no. 380, stanza 3 words by Thomas Ken (1637-1711).

Br. James Koester

The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 18C)

Deuteronomy 30:15-20

You may have heard that recently the Pope predicted that AI would be the next industrial revolution. At the same time, he called upon the Roman Catholic Church to apply its social teachings regarding human dignity, justice, and labour to this new AI industrial revolution as it has done consistently since a previous Pope Leo issued an encyclical entitled On Capital and Labour in 1891. That earlier Pope Leo laid the foundation for modern Roman Catholic social teaching that has endured for more than a century, and which includes Pope Francis’ encyclical On Care for Our Common Home.

If the Pope is correct, and many believe he is, then this would be the fourth industrial revolution the world has experienced since the eighteenth century, and the third since the late nineteenth century. These revolutions have seen the world shift from hand tools to steam, from steam to electricity, from electricity to the digital age, and now from the digital age to the age of AI. Underpinning these industrial revolutions were first the scientific revolution of the sixteenth century and the enlightenment of the seventeenth century. Each of these revolutions has resulted in a shift in our relationships, both with one another as humans, and equally significant, in our relationship with the rest of creation.

It is important to keep all of this is mind as we read today’s passage from Deuteronomy, for embedded in it is an understanding of creation lost to us under centuries of industrial and intellectual revolutions. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today….[1]

For our ancestors in faith, especially for those who lived before any of these intellectual or industrial revolutions, heaven and earth were not merely things, sources of raw material to be extracted, but living entities capable of laughter, joy, and praise. Where were you, God asked Job when I laid the foundation of the earth … [and] the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?[2] This is not a case of anthropomorphizing the stars. It is a recognition of, as Father Congreve of our Society said, a real fellowship of all created things, a unity of [humanity] with all creatures in the purpose to which the Creator formed them[3] which is to give praise and glory to God. In this way, Deuteronomy recognizes something we fail to see, a relationship of creatures between humanity and the cosmos which exists to praise God the Creator.

That relationship between fellow creatures, where one could act as witness in a legal sense, for or against the other in a court of law, is not simply poetry. It is a theological statement. It reminds us that we are but dust.[4] It is our dust-ness that makes us one with creation and which our Creator has declared good. For God saw everything that [God] had made, and indeed, it was very good.[5]

Yet despite our common creatureliness, our dust-ness, and our inherent goodness, there is something we do not share with the rest of creation, and that is our ability to choose. See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity…. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you….[6] It is our freedom to choose life or death, good or evil, right or wrong, that both sets us apart from the rest of creation, and makes us dependent on creation in order to receive God’s immeasurable love in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ; for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory.[7]

The history of redemption from Genesis to Revelation and beyond is the story of how humanity has separated ourselves from both Creator and creation by rejecting the Creator and placing ourselves in the centre of creation and then abusing creation itself. It is also the story of how the Creator has been clothed in creation through the incarnation of the only begotten Son. As the word was made flesh[8] in Jesus, humanity’s fellowship with the rest of creation is restored and all creation shimmers with the glory of God.[9] In Christ, creation becomes a sign and sacrament of God’s very being. At the same time, as bread and wine and water are brought [to the altar] and blessed [,] Christ the High Priest takes these creatures into His hands and offers them to the Eternal Father; they become the Lord’s Body and Blood; and so they are … consecrated to become powers of eternal life, uniting earth and Heaven.[10] In that way, creation in the form of Christ’s sacramental Body and Blood, becomes for us the means of grace.

Since that first act of disobedience, when Adam and Eve reached out to grasp the forbidden fruit,[11] we have denied and rejected our fellowship with the rest of creation, believing ourselves to be the creator. Each revolution since the sixteenth century, the scientific, the intellectual, the industrial, the electrical, and the digital, while they have brought many benefits, have further alienated us from the rest of creation as we have tried to claim for ourselves the role of creator. If we are not careful, the same will be true with the AI revolution.

How different things might be, both for us and our planet, if these revolutions were the means not to destroy, but to restore our fellowship with creation and help us to see creation again as the sign and sacrament of God’s very being and to know creation to be a means of grace. If that were so, we would see in creation God’s immeasurable love for us in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ.

The thing is, such a vision of our fellowship with creation restored is possible and it begins here, at this altar. Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation, through your goodness we have this bread to offer: fruit of the earth and work of human hands, it will become for us the bread of eternal life. Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation, through your goodness we have this wine to offer: fruit of the vine and work of human hands, it will become for us our spiritual drink.[12]

As the dignity of creation is renewed and restored here at this altar Sunday by Sunday, and day by day, when creation itself becomes the Body and Blood of Christ, we have the opportunity once again to choose life, that we may live. In choosing life our fellowship with creation is restored. It no longer is a thing to be exploited. We discover it to be a revelation of God’s love, and a means of God’s grace. We hear again the morning stars singing, and the heavenly beings shouting for joy. And we come to know in all its profundity, that we and all creation have been declared by the Creator to be good, and that is a cause of hope, as God’s glory is being revealed in, and by, and through all created things, which for us, as we gather around this altar, is the means of grace and hope of glory.

[1] Deuteronomy 30:19

[2] Job 38:4, 7

[3] Congreve SSJE, George, The Fellowship of Man with All Created Things in Sorrow and In Hope, Christian Progress, Longman, Green, and Co., London, 1910, page 259

[4] Psalm 104:14b

[5] Genesis 1:31

[6] Deuteronomy 30:15, 19c-20

[7] TEC, Book of Common Prayer, 1979, page 101

[8] John 1:14

[9] See Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem God’s Grandeur

[10] Congreve, page 263

[11] See Genesis 3

[12] These are the offertory prayers of the Roman Rite and are used in some Provinces of the Anglican Communion.

Br. David Vryhof

Luke 5:1-11

The call of God comes to us in a variety of ways. Sometimes it seems to come from outside of ourselves; God “breaks into” our lives, perhaps quite suddenly and unexpectedly, to reorient and redirect us. Think of St Paul on the Damascus Road or of St Matthew summoned from his tax collector’s booth. At other times, the call of God seems to grow within us over a period of time. We can’t point to a single day or hour when God’s call became clear to us; we experienced instead a growing attraction to Jesus and a deepening desire to participate in God’s mission in the world.

How has God’s call come to you? Perhaps you had a life-changing encounter with Jesus, or perhaps the call manifested itself to you over the course of time. To what were you being called? And what convinced you to follow him?

Each of the four gospels contain a story about Jesus calling his first disciples. In Matthew and Mark, Jesus summons Simon Peter and Andrew his brother, along with James and John, the sons of Zebedee – all Galilean fishermen – from their work. We are surprised when they respond without delay, since it seems they have not previously known him. We read, “immediately they left the boat… and followed him” (Matt 4:22, also Mk 1:18, 20). In John’s gospel, Jesus invites two of John the Baptist’s disciples, one of whom is Andrew, to “come and see” where he is staying. Andrew then invites his brother, Simon Peter, to meet the Teacher and they become his disciples. Again, we are not told what compels them.

Luke’s gospel differs from these accounts in that by the time that Jesus summons Simon Peter and the sons of Zebedee, he has already established a reputation as a teacher and healer. He has preached in the synagogues of Galilee and Judea. He has demonstrated God’s power by healing Simon’s mother-in-law and a man with an unclean spirit.

Now, in chapter 5, we read that he is standing beside the lake of Gennesaret (Luke’s name for the Sea of Galilee) and “the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God” (v.1), so that he has to step into Simon’s boat and ask him “to put out a little way from the shore” in order to address the crowd from the boat (v.3). When he finishes speaking, he tells Simon to “put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch” (v. 4). Remarkably, after they had caught nothing all night, they draw in a tremendous catch of fish. Here, in Luke’s gospel, Simon and “all who were with him” have plenty of evidence that this Jesus is a remarkable teacher and healer and have good reason to choose to follow him.

What caused you to become a follower of Jesus? And what is it that compels you to follow Jesus today? If you were to picture Jesus standing in front of you this day, what might he say to you? To what would he summon you? Where and to whom would he send you?

Father Benson has taught us that the call of God is continuous and ongoing; it persists throughout the whole of our lives. What are you aware of today?