SSJE Sermons

Br. Luke Ditewig

Saint James and Saint John, Apostles

Matthew 20:20-28

From a life on the sea with nets and fish, Jesus called James and John. Immediately they left their boat and father Zebedee and followed. In a diverse group of unlikely students, they traveled from village to village as Jesus taught and healed. They learned by walking, listening, witnessing miracles, seeing scripture come alive, personally touched by love, hearing and seeing others changed. Jesus sent them out to preach, heal, and cast out demons. They learned to fish for people.

With Peter they climbed a mountain with Jesus and witnessed him transfigured. When traveling through Samaria, folk long excluded by Jews, residents didn’t receive Jesus and his disciples. In reply, James and John asked Jesus if they should call down fire from heaven on them! For jumping quickly to such extremes, Jesus nicknamed them Sons of Thunder.

Similarly, they sought special privilege, honored positions of power. Their mother asked, but Jesus saw through and spoke directly to the brothers. “You don’t know what you are asking.” Asking for power upset the other ten disciples, a striking but probably not new occurrence. Jesus clearly and graciously corrected their excess temper and ambition.

Jesus washed his students’ feet and called them friends. Jesus invited Peter, James and John to accompany him further when praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. Instead of striving up, Jesus said: Whoever wishes to be great must be the servant of all.

Jesus also said: “You will indeed drink my cup.” King Herod had James killed, becoming the first martyr. We don’t hear that of John. John began the line of non-blood martyrs, people, like us, killed over and over by suffering though not literally, invited to trust through the hard.[i]

Like Peter and Mary Magdalene, like you and me, Jesus chose James and John as they were, thunderous and stumbling, eager and leading. Jesus patiently loved them, taught them, into more. How has Jesus has called you? How Jesus has loved you, especially how Jesus has washed your feet, your weakness and wounds. What’s the invitation now? Give thanks for the journey of becoming long loved into life as with Blessed James and John whom we remember today.

[i] Bruner, Frederick Dale (2004) Matthew: A Commentary. Volume 2, Revised and expanded edition. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, p330.

Br. Lucas Hall

Saint Mary Magdalene

John 20:11-18

In 2009, a discovery was made by archaeologists working near the sea of Galilee. They had uncovered what would become known as the Migdal synagogue, one of the earliest known synagogues in the world. Indeed, to this date, the Migdal synagogue is one of only 10 known synagogues from before the destruction of the Second Temple of Jerusalem by the Roman Empire in the year 70. That destruction would have profound ramifications for the religious scene in the area of Judea; before the destruction, a great variety of sects had existed, leading to rather vibrant debate among them. After the destruction of the Second Temple, only two remained: the Pharisaic movement, which would develop into the Rabbinic Judaism we know today, and the early Christians.

Many scholars have argued that, before the destruction of the Second Temple, synagogues had existed, but they weren’t terribly common, and were not considered to be particularly sacred. They were gathering places, places of discussion, education, and debate, but they weren’t specifically holy. The argument goes that this sense of the sacred was instead limited to the Temple in Jerusalem. But the discovery of the Migdal synagogue opened up a challenge to that line of reasoning. Within the synagogue was a large carved stone block. The carvings on this block are remarkable, because they’re full of imagery from the Temple. Scholars have some disagreements about exactly what some images depict: some see the Inner Altar of the Temple on one side, while others dispute this. Similarly, on two of the sides are a series of arches, but between the arches, there are curved lines which could be sheaves of wheat, depicting a grain offering, or that could be distant arches in the background, referencing the mysterious entrance to the Holy of Holies. Unanimously agreed, though, is the depiction of the Temple menorah, the seven-branched candleholder of pure gold that lit the Temple. This stone is noteworthy for a couple reasons. First, because it existed before the Temple’s destruction, it was likely carved by someone who had actually seen the Temple and the objects within. And second, this stone, and its central location in the synagogue, seem to challenge the idea of synagogues as mere gathering places. To move the central, sacred imagery of the Temple to the local synagogue was likely intended to establish some of the Temple’s own sacredness in that synagogue. This movement of sacredness from a particular place to the communal gathering-place, wherever that may be, would soon be very important; the particular place of the Temple, in its sacredness, was soon to be gone. Only those Jewish religious movements that emphasized a personal and universal approach to God, not dependent on a specific place but on the intention and pattern of life of the individual and community—that is, the Pharisees and the Christians—would survive the Temple’s destruction.

Today is the feast day of St. Mary Magdalene. If it was not already apparent, this Migdal Synagogue and its famous stone—the Magdala Stone—are located in the ancient town of Magdala, where Mary was born. This town, too, would be destroyed by the Romans in the same war that destroyed the Temple. But Mary lived just a few decades before that. We don’t know much about her until her adulthood, where she first encountered Jesus. He is said to have healed her, freeing her from the clutches of seven demons. She financed his ministry out of her own pocket, and remained present for his crucifixion and burial, bringing myrrh to anoint his tomb. And, as we have just heard, she came to his empty tomb, at first heartbroken, then elated to discover the resurrected Christ. She was sent by him to tell the disciples, and as such is often referred to as “the Apostle to the Apostles.”

There is one part of this whole narrative that often causes people surprise, or confusion, and bears explaining. When Mary realizes she is speaking to Jesus, she grabs onto him. You might, too, if a loved one who had died was suddenly alive again. But Jesus tells her not to do so. “Do not hold on to me,” our reading tonight says. Conveying the sense of the original Greek, a more urgent verb might be used, “Do not cling to me.” Some have seen this as a somewhat insensitive retort to an awestruck friend. Some have seen in this a particular sexism, especially when compared to Jesus’s reaction to Thomas, beckoning him to touch his wounds, or at least Jesus’s adherence to gender norms around physical contact. But I don’t think that’s what’s really going on here.

Soon, we will all be invited to receive communion. In doing so, we customarily receive the bread in our hands, in a cupped, open position. This symbol of open-handed receptivity is of practical use, certainly, but more than that, it is instructive. It shows us how we should approach, and receive, God. Namely, we are not to cling. To cling is to close one’s hands. Doing so does not permit letting something go, even when necessary. It similarly does not allow receiving some new thing, even when sorely needed. The posture of closed-handed clinging is a double “no” to the power of God to take away that which is no longer what we are called to, and to give what God is calling us to anew. In short, to cling is to miss God’s purposes, to substitute whatever it is that is the object of your clinging, a passing thing, for God, and the things of God, the things that endure.

I do not believe Mary was inordinately clingy. But I do believe she was human, and therefore, prone to clinging to things. Perhaps she clung to her demons, those things Jesus liberated her from; maybe that sounds harsh, but I don’t mean it to be so. How many of us have seen someone clinging to a mindset, a behavior, a wound, a certain interpretation of past or present or future, that has been destructive to them? How many of us have been that person, clinging to something that is not giving us life? I have.

Mary did not seem to have a problem clinging to money or material goods. Indeed, she seemed to have a significant amount of wealth, and to be very generous with it. A woman in those days would rarely be able to control such wealth herself, and may have been understandably unwilling to part with it. But Mary doesn’t seem to struggle with that. Maybe the lesson here is that God doesn’t just call us to be challenged. Sometimes God does call us to use our strengths and learn from them. We brothers here, from time to time, switch jobs around the monastery. I often tell people there are three types of jobs: “We gave you this job because we think you’d be really good at it,” “We gave you this job because we don’t think you’d be very good at it, but it will give you an opportunity to improve a skill you need to work on,” and finally, “We gave you this job because you’re a warm body and we just need someone to do it.” I’ve had all three types. And managing money, it seems, fell into the first category for Mary. Not a struggle, but a chance to excel in the work of God.

But what of the tomb? What teaching about clinging was happening there? I believe this to be the final lesson, the capstone class for this long course in clinging and letting go. Because who would have expected Christ himself to tell his most faithful followers to let go? Not to hold on? It’s a surprise, to be sure. But he is able to say in this that he has more work to do, that is, his Ascension. There’s more coming. And to Mary, he is giving the ultimate lesson: “You have experienced me so much in this bodily way, your teacher, your friend, very near to you, in a way that is tangible. Don’t cling to that. It was good. But it will not last. Do not cling to an experience of God as if the experience itself were God. Do not pin your hopes on a particular feeling, or thought, or sensory experience, even one from God. Do not cling to me, Mary. These things are passing away. Instead, hold on to the things that endure.”

Jesus ascended; God’s love endured. The Temple passed. God’s faithfulness endured. War and sickness and poverty and strife rear their head. God’s justice endures. May we, with Mary, learn this hardest lesson, not to cling to passing things, even if those things are good and holy and dear. May we hold on to the things that endure.

Br. Curtis Almquist

Colossians 1:15-28

If I were to ask you “Who is Jesus to you?” you could probably say something right on the spot. You might not be ready to publish… however, there is something you could readily name about Jesus’ identity or your relationship to Jesus that you could express. That’s my hunch. “Who is Jesus to you?” You might speak of Jesus’ miraculous birth; or perhaps to his being Savior of the world; or to his miracles past and present; or to his being crucified, resurrected, ascended; or perhaps to his Real Presence in Holy Communion. However, my hunch is that you would not make reference to a particular phrase which appears in the Nicene Creed, which comes momentarily.[i] The phrase you will probably not use in your brief description of Jesus is, “Through him all things were made.”

That phrase first appears not in the Nicene Creed, but in Saint Paul’s Letter to the Colossians, the passage we just heard read, which is called “The Creation Hymn.” The phrase – “through him all things were made” – hugely enlarges the picture of “God the Son,” whom we know in earthly life as Jesus. Here is Saint Paul’s attention grabber: Jesus, who is God the Son, is the agent of creation. It is through the Son that “all things were made.” Trace your memory back to the beginning of the Book of Genesis, the creation story. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth…” God the Son. “And God saw everything he had made, and indeed, it was very good.” [ii] God the Son is the agent of creation. All that has been created for evermore in this world and in the worlds of interstellar space and the galaxies of the universe has been created by the Son of God. Saint Paul continues, saying that the Son of God humbled himself to take on earthly life.[iii] The Creator became the creature.

The Welsh poet and priest, R. S. Thomas, wrote an apocalyptic poem entitled, “The Coming.” The poem describes what had gone awry on earth with the appalling suffering and the desiccated hopelessness and despair. In the poem, we witness the Trinity: God the Son conferring with the Father and the Spirit. The Son, as he looks down upon earth, says, “Let me go there.”[iv] And God the Son, the Creator, is born a human being among us. This is Jesus. Saint Paul describes Jesus as “the image of the invisible God.”[v] The English word “image” is the translation of the Greek word “icon.” Jesus is the icon of the invisible God. In Jesus we can see, and hear, and feel, and know, and name the eternal, invisible, seemingly-distant God. Jesus entered the world to redeem world and to restore it to life.

In The Narnia Chronicles, C. S. Lewis captures a scene in “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” where everything in Narnia is trapped in a 100-year-old winter night. This frozen lifelessness has happened because of collusion with the evil White Witch who has cast the icy spell. And then a miracle begins to happen. The great lion Aslan – who is the Christ figure – appears “on the move” in Narnia. Everything begins to thaw and springtime begins. “The mist turned from white to gold…. Shafts of delicious sunlight struck down onto the forest floor and overhead you could see a blue sky between the tree-tops.” Aslan comes as the rescuer and redeemer of the lost world.

In Jesus, God the Son comes into our world not just for the “spiritual salvation” of people. There is much more. Jesus comes to us because “God so loved the whole world.”[vi] The Greek word used for the “world” is cosmos. Jesus is the Savior of the cosmos.[vii] The breadth of Jesus’ saving intervention of love includes everything that has been created: people, to be sure, created in the very image of God, as well everything else that has been created and that suffers. Jesus is the “Savior of the cosmos.”

What is our personal calling, our vocation? Saint Paul calls us “ambassadors of Christ.”[viii] We are emissaries of God’s light, and life, and love. We are missionaries both to people and to the rest of creation which Saint Paul says “groans” in its suffering and estrangement.[ix] With so much suffering that surrounds us now, we live in a very opportune, crucial time to be God’s ambassadors. None of us has a global outreach; however all of us are within arm’s reach of some practice of restoration, or renewal, or adoption. We are all within reach some act of justice-making on behalf of God’s creatures – people, as well as earth, sky, and water; flowers and plants and trees; animals of the earth; birds in the sky; fish of the sea, these voiceless creatures who suffer so much devastation from our hands through things we have done, and things we have left undone, and things done on our behalf.

Where can we give our voice and muscle on behalf of some constituent part of creation that suffers injustice, discrimination, abuse, or neglect? To what people and for what other members of God’s creation can you and I take a stand? That is God’s invitation and God’s request. When I hear Jesus say, “as you have done to the least of these my brethren, you have done to me,”[x] I am thinking about people… but more than just people: about the whole of creation. We have duty!

God the Son, whom we know as Christ Jesus, has a vested interest in being Savior of the world, the whole cosmos. God the Son is the Creator of everything that has been, is now, and shall be. We believe that in our baptism Christ comes to live within us. And he instills in us the vocation and the power to co-operate in his work of saving the world. We must be on with it!

[i] The Nicene Creed attests: “…We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father. Through him all things were made…” The Book of Common Prayer (1979), p. 358.

[ii] Genesis 1:1-31.

[iii] Philippians 2:5-7.

[iv] R. S. Thomas (1913-2000) in “The Coming”:

And God held in his hand

                      On a bare

[v] “Image” = εἰκὼν (icon): Colossians 1:15.

[vi] John 3:16.

[vii] Jesus is “the Savior of the world κόσμου”: John 4:42.

[viii] 2 Corinthians 5:20.

[ix] Romans 8:22-24.

[x] Matthew 25:40-45.

Br. James Koester

Macrina of Caesarea

Mark 3:20-35

A few weeks ago, we remembered one of the great Eastern saints of the church, Basil of Caesarea. Today we remember another member of that remarkable family, his sister Macrina. I use the word remarkable to describe this family on purpose, because not only are the siblings Basil and Macrina regarded as saints, but so too are their grandparents,[1] parents,[2] two other brothers,[3] and a sister![4] Pity the other four siblings whose names we don’t know, and who are not counted among the saints of the church!

While it is through her brother Basil and his writings about his sister that we know of her, it is clear that her impact on him, and consequently on the church at large, is significant. The defining moment in her life was the death of her fiancé. This, coupled by a profound belief in the resurrection, shaped the rest of her life, which was focused on her expectation that she would be reunited with her fiancé in the next life. Basil tells us in his Life of Macrina that her hope of reunion with her fiancé was in fact a striving toward union with her true bridegroom, Jesus Christ.

Determined not to marry, Macrina established herself, along with her mother Emmelina, on one of their country estates. There she gathered around her a community of women, thus establishing one of the first monastic communities in the church and setting the standard of holiness for early Christian women. This community was made up of women from aristocratic and non-aristocratic backgrounds. All members of the community were free, and all had the same rights and obligations, including the slaves on the estate. The focus on caring for their neighbours, especially the poor and sick among them, and their virginity, was said to reflect the radiant purity of God.

Reflecting of Macrina, two things stand out for me. One is how her belief in the resurrection shaped her entire life. We see this not simply in her determination not to marry someone other than her deceased fiancé, but also in the way she ordered her life and her relationships with others. This can only be described in terms of a life of radical equality. It is this radical equality which in turn connects us to the gospel for today: Who are my mother and my brothers? … Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.[5]

We live in an age of radical inequality. Macrina shows us another way, and in doing so, returns us to our roots as Christians, a profound and profoundly radical belief in the resurrection as well as a profound and profoundly radical notion of the equality of all people, that are not interesting add-on to our life, but the things that shape us, and results in our lives becoming reflections the radiant purity of God.

[1] St. Macrina the Elder

[2] St. Basil the Elder and St. Emmelina

[3] St. Peter of Sebaste, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and St. Naucratius

[4] St. Theosebia the Deaconess

[5] Mark 3:34-35

Br. Lain Wilson

Matthew 12:1-8

Our gospel lesson today may sound very familiar to some of you. We heard Mark’s version of Jesus’s encounter with the Pharisees last night at Evening Prayer (Mk 2:23-28). Moreover, today at Morning Prayer we heard the account from the life of David that Jesus refers to (1 Sam 21:1-15).

These echoes are not incredibly common, and when our lectionaries line up lessons like this, I like to imagine God saying to me, “Hey, this is important! Pay attention!”

So what’s important about this encounter?

In this story, Jesus runs up against a rigid interpretation and application of the Law, of what it means to keep Sabbath. At issue is a basic human need—the disciples are hungry! And if this were not enough to respond to the Pharisees’ objections, Jesus invokes the precedent of David and his companions, as well as the very practice of priests serving in the temple on the Sabbath. Human need, sacred history, and the Law all provide license for what the disciples do.

Now I can’t imagine that the Pharisees didn’t know this. They knew their Scripture. But one of the realities they faced—and indeed, one that we all face—is a tendency toward rigidity, toward inflexibility as a defense against the messy contingency of life and human relationships. Our Rule expresses something similar when it speaks to “the tendency for communities to harden into institutions, and for officialdom to replace the spontaneity of mutual service.”

We all face this pressure—to normalize, to rationalize, to conform. Especially now, in a time of such numbing conflict and polarization, it is so easy to set boundaries, red lines, purity tests. God had to harden Pharaoh’s heart in the book of Exodus; we do it to ourselves all too easily. We are uncomfortable with exceptions, with things that come at us slantwise, that break our neat and tidy categories, because they reveal all too well that this desire for order, for control, for us and them, is a desire that fails to account for, or ignores completely, our very humanity: messy, contingent, needful.

And not only that: it fails to account for the actions of the God of mercy, of grace, of love in the very midst of our messy, contingent, and needful lives.

Where do you notice your own tendency toward rigidity and inflexibility? How is God challenging this?

As Jesus shows us today, it is precisely where our human imposition of order and clarity on a messy world is challenged that we find God inviting us to join God in doing the work of the kingdom. It is in these places that we are called, as the prophets exhorted, “to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with [our] God” (Mic 6:8). It is precisely in encountering the world as it truly is, and not just as we’d like it to be, that we are able to encounter the God of mercy, of grace, and of love at work.

Amen.

Br. Luke Ditewig

Matthew 11:20-26

When saying, teaching, and showing the same thing over and over, it’s frustrating when your children, students, friends, or audience don’t listen or understand or respond or rise to the invitation. It’s hard to be ignored and misunderstood. Jesus knows that firsthand.

John the Baptist prepared the way for Jesus, introduced Jesus to the crowds and baptized him. But lingering in prison and not seeing expected change, John doubted. John asked: “Are you really the Messiah or should we wait for another?” Jesus replied: Yes, I’m doing what you said. Remember Isaiah; I’m healing and liberating, just not as you expect. John, who perhaps knew Jesus best, misunderstood him.[i]

Jesus did most of his early work, including healing, calling his disciples and feeding five thousand in three little villages near each other: Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum. These people who most saw the signs and directly heard Jesus ignored him. They didn’t repent. Jesus confronts, saying: Woe. You are worse than infamous Sodom. The indifference to God is more a problem than notorious evil by their neighbors.[ii]

Then Jesus prays. “At that time,” Eugene Peterson points out, misunderstood and ignored, Jesus gives thanks: “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants.”

Jesus knows this misunderstanding and indifference do not impede God. The so-called wise and intelligent are limited to the surface. Down beneath, hidden to them, divine power surges onward. [iii] God reveals and works through infants and children through unexpecting and hidden people and means. The surface makes Jesus sad. Jesus responds and confronts. Jesus trusts and gives thanks that is God with us and grace continues.

What’s happening in your life? Which friends or family are troubling you? What evil, active or indifferent, makes you mourn? What tempts you, rational or not, to despair?

With simple, child-like faith, listen down deep: God is with us, God loves all, and God is healing. At this time, perhaps feeling ignored or misunderstood, or weighed down by grief and upset at injustice, join Jesus in deep trust that grace continues saying: “thank you.”

[i] Eugene Peterson. (2008) Tell It Slant: a conversation on the language of Jesus in his stories and prayers. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, p198-199.

[ii] Eugene Peterson, p200.

[iii] Eugene Peterson, p201-202.

Br. Jamie Nelson

Luke 10:25-37

Who here remembers watching Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood?

For those who need a refresher, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood was a children’s television show that aired from 1968 to 2001. Mr. Rogers, the titular character, was a silver haired man with a gentle smile. Each episode began with him welcoming viewers into his home, then removing a businesslike suit jacket and putting on a comfortable handknit cardigan while singing the show’s theme song, “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”

The lyrics go like this:

It’s a beautiful day in this neighborhood

… Please, won’t you be my neighbor?

The show’s content wasn’t overtly religious, but Fred Rogers was an ordained Presbyterian minister, and it showed. His deep faith was the source of the show’s emphasis on kindness and community for its young audience.

The lyrics touch on questions at the heart of today’s reading from the gospel according to Luke: who is our neighbor, and how might we act as a neighbor to others.

But the reading doesn’t start talking about neighbors. Before it gets there, it starts out with a different question, posed by a scholar of religious law.

“Teacher,” the scholar said, addressing Jesus, “what must we do to inherit eternal life?”

The gospel writer tells us that the scholar is testing Jesus, using a standard question that served as a theological litmus test to determine where Jesus stood on key religious matters. Instead of answering, Jesus responded by asking the scholar to answer for himself.

The scholar quoted from the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, giving the standard response that a Torah scholar would give:

To love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself.[1]

Jesus affirmed his response. By agreeing, Jesus showed that his ministry and the gospel message he proclaimed were in line with, not contrary to, the traditions of their shared faith.

But the conversation didn’t end there. Seeking to justify himself, the scholar responded with another question: “And who is my neighbor?”

Jesus – as was typical – didn’t respond directly. He told a story instead: the Parable of the Good Samaritan.

It’s a parable found only in Luke’s gospel, a book which puts extra emphasis on God’s compassion, forgiveness, and mercy.[2]

The setting of the parable was the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. It’s a 17-mile walk, a winding, curving downhill journey through a narrow canyon peppered with blind curves, perfect places for bandits to take unsuspecting travelers by surprise, rob them, then quickly disappear into the hills.[3] Even until the 20th century, robbery was common on that isolated stretch of road.[4] Jesus’s listeners would have understood the danger of the journey.

The main character is a traveler. Rather than seeking the safety of a caravan as many of his fellow travelers did, this traveler set out alone on the risky journey. Predictably, he was attacked by robbers, injured, and left for dead.

The first person who happened upon him was a priest, who, rather than helping the injured traveler, crossed the road to the other side and continued on his way. Due to religious purity laws, touching a dead body would have made him ritually unclean for seven days, so it’s possible that the priest didn’t want to risk having to miss work because he’d checked on the injured man.

The second person to walk by was a Levite. He, though not a priest, also had responsibilities in the temple, and thus was likely also keeping in mind the religious purity laws. He also crossed the road to avoid the injured man and passed by without stopping to help.

Finally, a Samaritan walked past. The Samaritan didn’t turn away from the man’s suffering, he noticed it, walked towards it, and offered the injured man compassionate care. He gave the man 1st-century first aid with oil and wine and ensured that he’d be cared for as he recovered.

You may recall that Samaritans and Jews didn’t hold each other in high regard in Jesus’s time, to the degree that pilgrims traveling from Galilee to Jerusalem would routinely add 3-4 extra days of walking to their journey to avoid going through Samaria. Thus, Jesus’s audience may have thought the Samaritan was an unlikely hero.

Jesus asked the religious scholar to identify which of the three men had been a neighbor to the injured traveler. His answer: “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus ended by encouraging the audience to “Go and do likewise.”

It’s easy for us as listeners to imagine ourselves onto these characters. Perhaps a memory or personal story came to mind when you heard the passage proclaimed just now. If so, which character did you identify with, given your story?

Being a human is complicated. I imagine most of us have has moments where we behaved like each of the parable’s characters. Perhaps there was a time when you were able to emulate the Samaritan and act with compassion and practical care for another. But sometimes we may behave more like the priest or Levite, and our sense of duty or fear overrides our capacity to act with mercy. And then there may have been a time when you found yourself in circumstances like the traveler, lying injured on a lonely road and needing help. But Jesus gives us here a compass direction to follow.

So what message is Jesus sharing with us in this passage?

Notice that Jesus didn’t actually answer the scholar’s question, “Who is my neighbor?” He didn’t draw tidy boundary lines between neighbor and other. Jesus erased those boundary lines instead, thereby eliminating the category of “other” altogether. In God’s kingdom, Jesus revealed, we are all neighbors to one another.

So how can we be a neighbor to others? Here are several possibilities:

One way is to pray with the front page news. There’s a quote attributed to 20th-century theologian Karl Barth: “We must hold the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.” Stay informed about the suffering of our neighbors across the globe, across this continent, and in our own cities. Pray for them, let this shape your compassion.

A little closer to home, you might pray as you walk around your neighborhood. Yes, Jesus wants us to remember than our neighbors are not just the people whose lives are visible to us, but also, we can strengthen our neighborly muscles by remembering them before God.

You might also use the parable as a format for praying an examen. For instance, you could ask yourself:

On television, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood offered a visible parable of neighborliness to viewers.

When the show began, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had recently been passed, making the racial segregation of public facilities illegal in the United States. But segregation was still in effect in many places. And in places where segregation wasn’t an official policy, many public swimming pools were unofficially Whites-Only due to both interpersonal and structural forms of racism.[5]

On the May 9, 1969 episode of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, Mr. Rogers invited Officer Clemmons, the character played by African American actor François Clemmons, to cool off on a hot day by joining Mr. Rogers in submerging his feet in a wading pool.[6]  And so he did, and there the two men sat, one Black and white, sharing the pool in neighborly companionship.

It’s a beautiful day in this neighborhood

… Please, won’t you be my neighbor?

Officer Clemmons and Mr. Rogers showed us how to be neighbors.

May we go and do likewise.

[1] These verses come from Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18.

[2] Ottati, Douglas F. “Luke 10: 25-37 – Theological Perspective.” Essay. In Feasting on the Gospels–Luke, Vol. 2, 296–296. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2015. Take, for example, the story of the prodigal son, another story found only in Luke. There too, Jesus offers a story that demonstrates the extravagance of God’s mercy.

[3] Peterson, Eugene. Tell It Slant: A Conversation on the Language of Jesus in His Stories and Prayers, p.41. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008.

[4] Barclay, William. The Gospel of Luke, p.165. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1977.

[5] The impacts of swimming pool segregation continue to the present. A study completed earlier this year found that over 60% of African American children have not learned to swim: https://www.usaswimming.org/news/2025/02/24/deep-dive–a-look-back-on-the-desegregation-of-pools-in-america Related, African American children between ages 5-14 are 3x more likely to drown than white children in the same age group: https://www.cdc.gov/drowning/health-equity/index.html

[6] A fuller treatment of the episode can be found here: https://www.biography.com/actors/mister-rogers-officer-clemmons-pool

Br. Curtis Almquist SSJE

Matthew 10:24-33

What is going on with Jesus’ curious, rhetorical question, “Are you not of more value than many sparrows…?” Hmmm. Sparrows? It would have been one thing if Jesus had said, “You are of more value than gold, frankincense, and myrrh.”[i] But no, he says, “You are of more value than sparrows.”

In Jesus’ day, a provision was made for the poor in the sacrificial offerings they made at the Temple in Jerusalem. If one could not afford to sacrifice a lamb, then an offering of sparrows was an acceptable alternative. Two sparrows were sold for one Roman penny. Two Roman pennies made a farthing. A farthing was 1/64 of a denarius. And a denarius was the average laborer’s wage for one day. So a common laborer’s daily wage would buy about 130 sparrows.

Hidden in this metaphor, comparing us with this most common, everyday bird, is a word of comfort. When you look on the streets and in the media, the endless numbers of people who are living with appalling suffering and often with egregious injustice, and with every reason to be afraid, when you see these multitudes of people who are nameless to us – so many, and with such monochrome and harrowing suffering – they could appear to us not unlike sparrows, one suffering face indistinguishable from the next. But they do have such great value. Each one, individually, has an inestimable worth. Each one is known and loved eternally by God. Like sparrows to us, they may seem indistinguishable; to God they are known and loved by name.[ii]

We should remember God’s eternal and personal love as we witness the masses of suffering people: how we pray for them and act on their behalf, on behalf of at least some of them. God knows them and loves them each by name. We among them.

Some day you also may feel like a lonely sparrow in a great flock as you face your own suffering – suffering that is piercing, or suffering that is frightening, or suffering that is endless. There may be for us all, sooner or later, a comforting reminder in this metaphor about the value even of sparrows: God knows and loves each us of all by name and sees in us something distinctive, precious, and of eternal worth.

[i] A riff on the magi’s gifts to the Christ child as remembered in Matthew 2:1-11.

[ii] Psalm 91:14, 139:1-3; Isaiah 43:1, 45:3-4, 49:16; Jeremiah 1:5; John 10:3, 14-15, 27.

Br. Lucas Hall SSJE

Benedict of Nursia

Today is the feast of St. Benedict. He is one of the most influential people in Western history, certainly in the Church. Benedict, having learned from teachers in the Greek-speaking East, was one of a few sources in the West bringing forth the tradition of communal monasticism. He wasn’t the first, but he quickly became the most popular, setting the stage for a solid millennium of Benedictine monasticism being the primary form of Christian intentional community.

There is much to explore about Benedict, but I believe right now that his theology of community is possibly the most helpful. Monasticism in general is built on an idea of asceticism, a willingness to deliberately give things up, to go without something that would be more comfortable, easier, more pleasurable, as a path of spiritual development, of learning to rely more fully on God and God alone. Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury and Benedict enthusiast, has argued that in Benedictine monasticism, the chief expression of this ascetical theology is in communal living. Benedict’s Rule puts forth as necessary the idea that we cannot simply wish others away when things get difficult. The common line of thinking, “things would be so much easier if only I didn’t have to deal with that person,” must be uprooted. Not suppressed, not relegated to a private, unspoken thought, but uprooted. Killed, if you will, a death to self out of love for the other, a cross to bear.

For Benedict, your fellow community members are essentially the means by which you yourself are formed, shaped, honed, a source of productive friction. Without that productive friction, a tool becomes dull and less useful. The friction, often uncomfortable, is the very thing that keeps things moving in the right direction. That friction allows us to discover our own rough edges, our own pointy bits that may be in need of smoothing down. Williams argues that there is a serious lesson here, in a Western world so prone to think in terms of individual rights and the boundaries between them. When we’re so focused on our individual rights, we only ever have to think of other people in terms of what they impose upon us, how they burden us or violate our boundaries. This kills community.

But if Western society can idolize individualism to the point of death, there does exist a corresponding idolatry of the community, that can also lead to death. Benedict also advises against this. More gently, he encourages communities to develop the skills and abilities of the individual members, stating that if a member is skilled in some craft, they should be allowed to practice it, and given support in doing so. But more starkly, Benedict refers to individuals within a community whose behavior is destructive. He encourages forgiveness and understanding, to a point, but if a community member is so destructive and cannot receive correction, Benedict uses the rather harsh-sounding language of cutting the cancer out. We may bristle at referring to another person as cancerous, but our own contemporary language of toxic behavior is not much different. And the reason Benedict uses such language is precisely because of how cancer kills: it takes up more and more space, it drains more and more resources and attention, until eventually the system simply cannot sustain itself, and the whole thing collapses. This happens with bodies; it also happens with communities.

Ultimately what unites these two approaches, the need for putting up with others and the need for removing others, is humility. To put up with others in all their flaws and foibles, we must not seek to reform them on our own terms; we must remember our own flaws and foibles, and allow that friction to offer some mutual formation, in the hands of the God who forms all. But to remove others is to assess that someone else’s pride is not allowing them to endure that same sort of friction, an ability to cause friction but not receive it back. This does not mean the individual in question is irredeemable or evil, but in the current context, such a person takes up more space, more attention, more communal resources, and in doing so, risks the whole body.

So as we strive to heed the prayerful example of Benedict, it is worth remembering how central his sense of community was to his own vocation and in the legacy he has left us. Not an idealized version, not an abstract, but the roughness and friction of real, mundane life, lived with others, in the mutual striving after God.

Genesis 32:22-32

One of my favorite contemporary poems is “The House of Belonging,” by David Whyte. The speaker in the poem awakens one morning and ponders a series of truths in the quiet of the house he calls home – the home he has made as an adult. Here are the closing words:

This is the temple

There is no house

It’s clear that the house is physical, but it has awakened something that is inseparable from the speaker. He seems to speak from a place that is both precarious, but also deeply secure in its foundations.

At this pivotal moment in the life of the patriarch Jacob, I see both the sharp edge of this aloneness and the fruit of belonging waiting to be revealed.

“Jacob was left alone … and a man wrestled with him until daybreak.”

I imagine the scene as a stage play: The stage is crowded with Jacob’s wives, their children, their maids, and with the invisible presence of Esau, the brother from whom Jacob stands self-alienated. He now prepares to meet that off-stage character, around whom so much anticipation and dread have gathered.

Jacob wants nothing more than to return home, the home from which he fled when he stole his father Isaac’s blessing from Esau by deception. In that longing and that terror, the protagonist stands alone … with a shadowy figure, whose identity is never precisely revealed.

Who is it?

The Christian scholar of Hebrew scripture Walter Bruggemann writes, “It is part of the power of the wrestling that we do not know the name or see the face of the antagonist. To be too certain would reduce the dread intended in the telling. It is most plausible that in the present form, the hidden one is Yahweh. On this way to his brother, whom he wants to appease, Jacob must deal with his God to whom he had made intercession (32:9-12) … But if it be Yahweh, we are shown something other than the promise-filled aspect of Yahweh known in the daylight … The power of the stranger is as much in his inscrutability as in his strength.”

Jewish scholar Aviva Zornberg notes that this story begins a unit of Torah readings that continues with Jacob’s reconciliation with Esau but is followed by a season of deep suffering: the rape of Jacob’s daughter Dinah by the prince of Shechem; the revenge exacted on Shechem by Jacob’s sons Simeon and Levi. The joyful birth of his son Benjamin introduces hope, only to be followed by the death-in-childbirth of his beloved Rachel and the death of his father Isaac.

In other words, the mature man Jacob faces life’s consequences rather than engineering other outcomes from the sidelines. Previously, he has survived by manipulation – borrowing or even stealing the power of others. At times consciously, but largely unconsciously, he has refused to use his own power – with all the attendant risk and vulnerability that comes with it.

That is, until he wrestles a divine antagonist, prevails over him, is wounded by him, and receives his blessing.

He becomes Israel, and from that moment onward – come what may – he “belongs to his aloneness as he belongs to his life.” He knows what he must do, with whom he must seek reconciliation, how he must endure hardship. He lives in the house of belonging, which is ultimately the heart of God.

Our Rule of Life contains only few direct references to Hebrew scripture, yet this is one of them. In the chapter “The Mystery of Prayer” we read:

“There are many conflicts on the way into the experience of divine love. Sinfulness originates in a deep wound to our humanity which hinders us all from accepting love. As the Spirit exposes it to Christ’s healing touch in prayer we shall often have to struggle with our reluctance to be loved so deeply by God. Christ himself will strive with us, as the angel strove with Jacob, to disable our self-reliant pride and make us depend on grace.”

The name given by the angel, Israel, means “one who strives or struggles with God.”

The fruit of Jacob’s struggle is a face-to-face encounter with God: “I have seen God face to face, yet my life is preserved.” The cost of that struggle is his limp.

The “strength made perfect in weakness” that confronts our self-reliant pride from the pages of the New Testament has its roots spread deep in the Old Testament revelations of God, with whom our ancestors in faith argued, bargained, grappled, spoke as a friend, and sometimes walked away limping, but blessed and re-named nonetheless.

Likewise, we who stand in their lineage through our Lord and Rabbi Jesus learn again and again what it means to obey God not only by acts of gentle consent, but by faithful wrestling. With him we bear the wounds where we have been nailed to his cross. The fruit is that, come sunrise, we rise with him from every tomb.