SSJE Sermons

Br. Luke Ditewig

2 Kings 5:1-14

Big voices, big egos, big money to pressure, prod, and profit. The proud posturing of the powerful who think they are great versus children, the poor, foreigners, and the marginalized unseen, unheard, hurt. In such a world and week, we have the story of Naaman.

A great man in high favor, the military commander of one of Israel’s enemies with a skin disease. A young girl captured from Israel says there’s a prophet in Samaria who could cure him. Naaman goes off asking but the king of Israel doesn’t know or acknowledge that such power could be in Israel. He supposes the enemy is trying to provoke. For what human cures such a disease? The powerful are in need and don’t know. They listen and follow the young girl, away from her people, who knows and speaks truth.

Naaman comes to Elisha’s house with gifts of money and clothing. Elisha sends a messenger to say: “Wash in the Jordan river seven times.” “Who me?” Naaman replies. “I’m great. Elijah should greet me, pray, and wave his hand to heal me. Just wash in a river? I’ve got better rivers at home. Why would I wash in one here?”

Naaman almost misses out, almost leaves in arrogance. His servants encourage reconsidering. Washing is simple. “If you were asked to do something great or difficult, you would. So why not try this?” The great man swallows his pride and washes in the foreign river, an ordinary lowly act, a vulnerable posture presenting his body, washing as receiving. Having done so, he is made well.

God heals a proud, powerful foreign military commander through a young girl, a prophet, servants, the Jordan River. Surprising expansive blessing. Grace to all the last, least, and lost—among us, sure—but grace to the proud enemy? This story may frustrate. Why bless them? We have stories of being saved from enemies as in the Exodus and against Goliath. Here God heals.

When Jesus returned to visit Nazareth, he read from Isaiah in the synagogue: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me 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.” Initially people marveled at his words and teaching. Jesus said this is an expansive call. Like other prophets, they wouldn’t welcome him home.[i]

Jesus said: “There were many widows in Israel during a time of famine, but Elijah was only sent to widow in Sidon. There many with leprosy in Israel during the time of Elisha, but only Naaman of Syria was cleansed.” Those who heard this were enraged and tried to throw Jesus off a cliff.[ii]

Jesus recalls Naaman to show God’s good blessing and grace is expansive and abundant, not something we can claim as just ours. Through prophets like Elijah and Elisha, God did certain miracles only outside Israel. Jesus continues God’s unbounded love.

In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus sends seventy out ahead of him to announce kingdom of God. There were seventy elders in Israel and in Genesis seventy nations in the world.[iii] Seventy may symbolize all. Go to everyone with good news. The harvest is plentiful. God is a reckless gardener sowing seed everywhere for every opportunity.[iv] A wild abundance welcoming all people.

Jesus sends out the seventy with instructions. Don’t take supplies with you. Receive others’ hospitality. They will provide for you. Eat food offered to you. Like washing in a river, be humble and vulnerable trusting in God’s power.

The seventy return with joy amazed with power they received. “Even the demons submit to us.” Jesus replies, “Don’t rejoice at this but that your names are written in heaven.” God calls you beloved. You have been blessed. Rejoice in that. From the gratitude and joy of receiving, share and extend blessing. That’s our story back from Abraham, blessed in order to bless the whole world.

Stop to remember. How have you been blessed? What’s the invitation now to bless others? Consider the characters in today’s story as portraits of God blessing and us receiving and sharing. How do you identify with each of them?

The girl who knows and names truth of her own culture and people though seemingly powerless and alone in a foreign land. Elisha who trusts God’s power, resists the push of wealth and prestige, who invites vulnerability and shares God’s grace. Naaman’s wife and servants who share what they hear and encourage humility. Naaman who assumes or demands how Elisha and God should act, who acts entitled and seeks to buy his way, who almost refuses a simple invitation, and who then accepts and receives.

God brings down the proud, lifts up the lowly, speaks through the little, and showers abundant love. Blessed and healed, humble and vulnerable, we have good news to keep sharing with everyone.

[i] Luke 4:16-24

[ii] Luke 4:25-29

[iii] Exodus 24:1; Genesis 10

[iv] Luke 8:4-15

Independence Day (United States)

Matthew 5:43-48

For several years, I was a member of a rowing club. It was an intensely competitive atmosphere—we competed during tryouts, practices, scrimmages, and races. We even competed to bake the best apple pies.

But, as I reflect back on that time, I must admit I’m surprised to remember that that spirit of competition did not engender a culture of vituperation, of backbiting and undermining. It easily could have, but it didn’t. Our culture, our shared language, the “currency” of our community, as Donald Nicholl puts it, was instead mutuality: mutual growth and thriving, love of the sport and commitment to integrity.[1]

In our Gospel lesson today, Jesus speaks to this sense of common language, or currency, for his followers: “Love your enemies” (Mt 5:43). It’s easy to love those you already love—those you agree with, those you share something in common with. It’s a lot harder to put “love” into circulation for those who have set themselves against you.

Saint Benedict, in his Rule, picks up on this command and shows why it’s so important. Toward the end of a listing of “tools” in the monastic “workshop” are the following: “To pray for one’s enemies in the love of Christ” and “To make peace with one’s enemies before the sun sets.”[2]

These tools are for the cultivation of a stable common life, and they point to the vital project of peacemaking within a community. It’s not then, just about love, but about how love, the love of Christ, serves as a binding, integrative force. The exercise of love attends to what Rowan Williams calls “the daily discipline of mending” and challenges the notion that conflict is a “default position” in the common life.[3] Instead of anger and resentment, Jesus, and Benedict, challenge us to let love and respect become our currency of exchange.

On this Independence Day in the United States, we may well ask ourselves what the currency of exchange in our nation is. What do we talk about, and how do we talk about it? I think that many of us would list very highly outrage, hostility, anger, fear, and denial of humanity.

These emotions are real. The denial of the humanity and dignity of so many of our siblings is real. And because of this, so too is our responsibility to put new, Christ-centered currency into circulation. Jesus’ command is not saccharine or sentimental, but deadly earnest. Benedict’s injunction to his monks isn’t about papering over conflict, but about acknowledging it as real while asserting that it is not all. Love is all.

None of us is likely in a position to change our national currency of outrage, hostility, anger, fear, and denial of humanity on our own. But Jesus and Benedict both make clear that we have agency, we have responsibility, in doing our part, even in small ways. We can’t change the currency we receive, but we can choose what we put into circulation.

What is your community? It may be a family, a work team, a friend group, or a congregation. What is that community’s currency of exchange? How is God calling you, in even these small and local ways, to inject new currency into circulation.

When so many are bent on tearing things up, how is God calling you to the “daily discipline of mending”?

When so many accept conflict as our “default position,” how is God calling you to be a peacemaker?

Amen.

[1] Discussion cited in R. Williams, “‘Shaping Holy Lives,’” in The Way of St Benedict (New York, 2020), 17.

[2] Cited in ibid., 16.

[3] Ibid., 16-17.

Monthly Requiem

Psalm 116:1-8

Today we remember the Brothers of the Society of St. John the Evangelist who have died in the month of July since we were founded in 1866, our Monthly Requiem. The word “requiem” comes from the Latin, “to repose, to sleep, to rest.”[i]  At the time of someone’s death we pray:

“Depart, O Christian soul, out of this world…

May your rest be this day in peace.”[ii]

This practice of celebrating a Requiem is important to us Brothers. It may also be a helpful practice for you, personally, to intentionally remember people who have figured importantly into your own life, and who have died.

We pray for rest in peace for the departed one. Most people depart this life quite broken: their body, enfeebled; their mind, diminished; their relationships, torn. At least some relationships quite torn. So we pray for them, for healing in death, “where God will be with them [and] will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more…” These are words from The Book of Revelation.[iii] This is the last word of the Bible, the promise of eternal rest, and healing, and peace.

In the Requiem, we also pray for ourselves who have been formed by departed people: formed or deformed by significant people who have died. Though they have departed this life, they may still be very much alive in our memory and in how we navigate our life. We pray our gratitude. We may need to pray for inner liberation or healing – ours or another’s – in any relationship that was imprisoning or wounding. We may also need to pray for forgiveness.

And we pray for our own agency. Jesus said a very mysterious thing: “…Whatever [we] loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”[iv] What does that mean? Over the centuries, biblical scholars have never agreed: “Whatever [we] loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Jesus is our intermediary. If there is a residue or bondage in our relationship with someone departed, we implore Jesus “to set the captive free,” whether the captive be we ourselves or someone departed.[v] We take Jesus at his word, that he is the Savior of the world, always with us and with the departed, until the end.[vi] How long would we pray such a prayer of healing and liberation? Long enough.

[i] Requiem from the Latin: “rest (after labor), repose.”

[ii] A phrase found in a Prayer at the Time of Death, and in a Commendatory Prayer, and at the Vigil where we pray  that the departed “rest in peace”: The Book of Common Prayer (1979), pp. 464-465.

[iii] Revelation 21:3-4.

[iv] Matthew 18:18.

[v] Jesus is here quoted in Luke 4:18-21 where Jesus claims to be the fulfillment of the Prophecy of Isaiah 61:1-3ff.

[vi] Matthew 28:20.

Br. James Koester

Canada Day

Colossians 3:12-17

Some of you will know that one of my favourite bits of Scriptures comes from II Peter: Thus he has given us…his precious and very great promises, so that through them you…become participants in the divine nature.[1] This theme is picked up in the wonderful collect for Second Sunday after Christmas: Grant that we may share the divine life of him who humbled himself to share our humanity.[2] We Brothers pick it up again in our Rule of Life when we say that hope assures us that every act of witness, prayer, and service that draws others into the life of divine love builds up the eternal city of God.[3]

The question that is posed, however, regarding becoming participants in the divine nature is, what does that look like? How do I know it when I see it? How do I tell if I am participating in the life of God?

I think the letter to the Colossians gives us a hint as to how we might answer those questions. Colossians tells us that as God’s chosen ones, we are to clothe ourselves in: compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forgiveness, and love. [4] We are to clothe ourselves in these, because they are the very attributes of God that we see in Jesus, who is himself the very reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being.[5]

In other words, when we participate in the divine nature, share in the divine life, and draw others into the life of divine love, we participate, share, and are drawn into the life of Jesus which is marked by compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forgiveness and love.

Oh great, you say. What a load of sentimental, pious, gobbledygook. But the call of God is not to a life of sentimentality. It is not to a life of niceness (although many Christians believe that). It is not gobbledygook. The call of God is to life through death. God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.[6] No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you…that you may love one another.[7] The call of God is to life through dying to self and living for others. That dying and living happens when our lives are marked as was Jesus’, by compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forgiveness and love.

The problem is that loving like Jesus, is an invitation to die like him. Forgiving like Jesus, is a way of life that forgives not seven times, buy seventy times seven.[8] Being patient like Jesus, means standing at the gate day after day, scanning the horizon, waiting for the return of the prodigal.[9] Being meek like Jesus, means developing callouses on our knees, as we wash others’ feet.[10] Being humble like Jesus, means giving up our life on the cross for the sake of others.[11] Being kind like Jesus means a willingness to ask, ‘what do you want me to do for you?’[12] Being compassionate like Jesus, means to enter into the mystery of another’s suffering, in order to heal and be healed.[13]

Such a life as this, which shares the marks of Jesus, and participates in the divine nature is a life laid down, so that it may be given back. It is a life of dying, in order to rise and live. And that is no easy, pious, sentimental, nice, gobbledygook. It is hard, painful, and smelly work. Just as we should have the fragrance of new life filling the air we breathe, so too should we have the stink of death about us,

The problem is that people are not interested in dying, so that others may live. What people are interested in is killing. The world is on fire with killing. This country is on fire with killing. And we kill, not just with bombs, and guns, and knives. We kill with words, and deeds, and actions. We kill by what we say, and what we don’t say. We kill by deeds we do, and the deeds we don’t do. We kill by actions taken, and actions not taken. The world and this country are on fire, not with dying, but with killing.

And into this comes the message of the gospel: as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other, just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.[14]

The world and this country are burning, because is it easier to kill another with bombs, and guns, and knives, with words, and deeds, and action, than it is to die with the marks of compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forgiveness and love on our hearts, our knees, and our hands. It is however from those marks that we and others will know that we are participating, sharing and drawing others into the divine life of God and therefore building up the eternal city of God.

Let us love as Christ loved, and so be filled with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forgiveness and above all, love.

[1] II Peter 1: 4

[2] TEC, Book of Common Prayer, 1979, page 214

[3] SSJE, Rule of Life, The Hope of Glory, chapter 49, page 99

[4] Colossians 3: 12 – 17

[5] Hebrews 1: 3

[6] John 3: 16

[7] John 15: 14 – 16

[8] Matthew 18: 22

[9] Luke 15: 11 – 32

[10] John 13: 3 – 17

[11] Philippians 2: 8

[12] Mark 10: 51, Luke 18: 41

[13] See any of the healing stories in the gospels, as well as Matthew 9: 36 and Matthew 15: 32

[14] Colossians 3: 12 – 14

Br. Lucas Hall

Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Apostles

There is a common trope, that the people most worthy of leadership and authority are those who do not want it. I disagree. I believe, generally speaking, that if a person tells you they don’t want a job, you should believe them. To do otherwise creates a perverse incentive: I want power, but people only want to give power to people who don’t want power, so I have to pretend like I don’t want power. This can become almost codified as a cultural expectation. The current Ayatollah of Iran, when he was first nominated for the position, vociferously objected and debated, insisting that “my nomination should make us all cry tears of blood.” He, of course, eventually accepted.

We see this cropping up in the history of the Church as well. One of my favorite saints was a man named Ephrem. He was a deacon, and a sort of proto-monk known in his culture as a “son of the covenant,” and he composed a great deal of theological hymns. The Church, especially in the East, but now increasingly in the West, has viewed him as an extraordinarily gifted theologian. The Church has also wondered, “How can such a man of extraordinary talents, recognized in his own lifetime, have been just a deacon? Surely, surely, such a man should have been made a bishop!” And so a story soon developed that he had been repeatedly offered that role of leadership, that role of authority, and Ephrem in his great piety and humility, refused the office. Wow, what a great guy. Of course, we have no evidence this happened. In all likelihood, Ephrem, and those around him, collectively discerned that he was called to the diaconate.

Some may say that’s a less interesting story, but again, I disagree. Maybe I’m weird, but stories of people doing the difficult work of discerning around leadership and authority, of doing what is necessary to make a functional community, however big or small, of doing that difficult work, and continually taking up the charge of doing so, are exciting to me. They’re not exciting like a roller coaster. But they’re exciting because they offer a path forward in real life. Not a pious performance of humility, but the real humility of taking a question, an issue, a problem seriously and doing the real, honest work of trying to contribute to making things better.

Stepping outside the realm of Church for a moment, I read a book a few years ago, by Tufts political science professor Eitan Hersh, provocatively titled Politics is for Power. It was essentially an argument by a white progressive person that white progressive people in the United States in their political participation have often avoided the moral obligation to be effective in favor of symbolic posturing and gratifying self-expression. It’s a lot more thrilling to go to a big rally than it is to join your local advisory board on bicycle lane implementation, but the latter is significantly more likely to accomplish something tangible and good.

Why am I talking about all of this? Well, it’s because I think it’s important. It’s because I think it’s relevant to our current lives and the national and world political moment we currently inhabit. But also, crucially, it’s the feast day of St. Peter and St. Paul. And we cannot speak about either of them without speaking of their leadership of the Church. They were called to positions of leadership among those earliest Christians. And I think we have a lot to learn from how that happened.

Unlike the trope of not wanting power, Peter and Paul, on some level, both did want to lead. Both insisted on their unworthiness, but this did not preclude them from seeking authority. Peter regularly spoke on behalf of his fellow disciples, often suggesting a course of action when the rest seemed confused. It is Peter who gives the correct answer to who Jesus is, and therefore gains the name Peter. It is Peter who suggests building a tabernacle at the Transfiguration. It is Peter who says that he must wash Jesus’s feet at the last supper, and when rebuffed, insists that Jesus should wash all of his body, not just his feet. It is Peter who insists that Jesus as the Christ cannot possibly be killed. He’s not shy about proclaiming, deciding, and acting. He sometimes gets it right and sometimes gets it wrong, but he wants to lead.

And Paul, I mean, come on: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. A Pharisee, son of Pharisees. Brought up in Jerusalem at the feet of Gamaliel, educated strictly according to the ancestral law, being zealous for God. This is a middle class, educated, upwardly mobile young man, quick to repeatedly break out his resume to all who would listen or question him. He’d do very well in Cambridge, actually.

My point is, these men were not engaged in the pious practice of performative humility. Even Peter’s insistence that Jesus must wash all of him, and not just his feet, is not performative; he’s just learned he’s wrong about him needing to wash Jesus’s feet, and he’s adapting and correcting, if a bit overzealously. And that’s the point. He learned that he was wrong, so he changed.

What I believe unites Peter and Paul’s leadership is that they are fundamentally marked by error, by enduring the pain and humiliation of learning that they were wrong, and growing from that. Both men discerned, with the help of those around them, including God, that they were called to some leadership. And both men learned, often from those same people around them, including God, that in their leadership they would screw up, sometimes quite badly. And this is important, because it answers the concerns expressed in that trope, that the best leaders are those who don’t want power. Because the people who say that are coming from a place of correct skepticism of those who are power-hungry, who fantasize about being in charge. It’s a bad thing, almost the definition of that biblical phrase, being “puffed up.”

From this, we might discern a Christian theology of leadership. Not the pious performance of self-deprecation, nor the puffed-up power-seeking of the prideful, but humble honesty. Honesty about whether one feels called to a position of power in the first place. Honesty about what that might look like. Honesty about why one leads in a particular way, why a leader is doing what they’re doing. Honesty publicly, and honesty with oneself, the capacity to actually examine one’s reasons and motives. And finally, perhaps most importantly, the humble honesty of accepting criticism, or as the Psalms say, “being smitten by friendly rebuke.” Maybe it comes from on high, and maybe it comes from those who one leading. But to lead in the Christian sense is to recognize that one’s actions, and motives, and plans, are and will be laid openly, nakedly before God. Pride and deceit won’t work there. And to embrace the sort of leadership offered by Peter and by Paul, one must give no quarter to that pride or to that deceit. They won’t last, and they won’t suffice. All will be revealed. And the honesty to which we all have been called will do the Church and the world a lot of good.

The Sacred Heart of Our Lord Jesus Christ

Hosea 11:1, 3-4, 8c-9

In just a brief perusal of the headlines, we can quickly come to feel like integrity is in short supply. It’s hard to know who to trust. People we thought we knew well for decades may suddenly reveal an inner darkness. Narratives may change suddenly, inducing whiplash. Outright dishonesty and obfuscation may set us adrift, uncertain of our bearings. Where do we stand, when everything around us can feel mutable, negotiable?

Our feast today—the sacred heart of Jesus—reveals something fundamental about Jesus’s integrity, something true about the faithfulness and reliability of Jesus, of his, of God’s, love for us. And it is an invitation to us to let our own hearts be transformed, to find our own integrity in integrity of Jesus’s heart.

British philosopher John Cottingham notes the link between integrity and self-knowledge: “We cannot act with integrity until we know who we are.”[1] In life, Jesus knew himself to be sent by the Father as a revelation of God’s love in and for the world. In our Gospel lesson this evening, detailing the immediate aftermath of Jesus’s death, Jesus’s own outpouring of that love on the cross finds almost sacramental expression in the pouring forth of blood and water from a spear wound (Jn 19:34). Water and blood: the very means of our own initiation into the new life and abiding with Christ, in baptism and the eucharist, and a continued revelation, even in death, of who Jesus was and knew himself to be. I think it is equally significant that this same spear wound would be, for Thomas, a point of recognition, transformation, and conversion after the Resurrection (Jn 20:27-28). The wound to his flesh, to his very heart, reveals in both episodes how Jesus extends an invitation to be loved, to be welcomed, to be known.

This self-giving love reveals the very integrity of the God who is Love. It reveals the God of Hosea, who turns from fierce anger and wrath and “led them with cords of kindness, with bands of love,” who was “to them like those who life infants to their cheeks,” who “bent down to them and fed them” (Hos 11:4, 8-9). It reveals the God of Isaiah, who persists in loving us, who is eternally faithful and trustworthy: “Surely, it is God who saves me; I will trust in him and not be afraid” (Canticle 9). It reveals the God who sent the only Son into a world, and a people, that God loved so much. It reveals the love of the Holy One who is in our very midst, in our very hearts.

The self-giving love of God, which we celebrate today, allows us to know fundamentally who we are: God’s beloved children. But integrity is not just about self-knowledge—that is, understood simply as the quest for autonomy or authenticity—but rather about our buying into something beyond ourselves. “Becoming what I am meant to be,” Cottingham goes on, “requires me, whether I like it or not, to bring my life into line with true and enduring objective values that I did not create, and which I cannot alter.”[2]

Even more than helping us to know who we are, then, the integrity of God’s love for us is that true, enduring objective value that provides us a reference point, a place of stability. “I pray that . . . Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith,” the writer to the church at Ephesus notes, “as you are being rooted and grounded in love,” that you may “know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge” (Eph 3:16-17, 19). The love of God, very simply, gives our lives shape and meaning, and equips us to live them out in a world that God loves, but a world that persists in turning away from that love.

So what are we, the beloved of God, rooted and grounded in God’s love, to do in this resistant world?

I think we can do no better than do as Isaiah enjoins us: “Make [God’s] deeds known. . . . Sing the praises of the Lord. . . . Cry aloud . . . ring out your joy” (Canticle 9). With our prayer and voices, our bodies and intellects, our reason and imagination, our acting and our resting . . . with all that we are, with all that makes us who we are, in the integrity of our own beloved and loving lives, we can do no better than testify to the integrity of God’s love—ever-faithful, ever-offered—present in our very midst, in our very hearts.

Amen.

[1] J. Cottingham, “Integrity and Fragmentation,” Journal of Applied Philosophy 27.1 (2010): 8.

[2] Ibid., 13.

Br. Jack Crowley

The Nativity of St. John the Baptist

Luke 1:57-80

So much happens before we are even born. I know that’s quite an understatement, but it’s true. So much happens before we are even born.

No one is born into a blank story. We are born into ongoing stories that are well under way by the time we take our first breath. These are the stories of our parents, the stories of our ancestors, and the stories of the age we live in. We are born into a story already filled with characters.  We are born into a story so full of meaning that it takes a lifetime to understand it.

Tonight we celebrate the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist. To put it simply, the story of his nativity is awesome. John was born of a couple seemingly too old to conceive. By his birth alone, John the Baptist shows us the amazing power of God to make life happen when it feels impossible. Out of seemingly nothing came not only something, but something awesome.

My favorite part of this story is about John’s father Zechariah. Zechariah  is struck mute by the angel Gabriel shortly before conceiving John. As a result, Zechariah  cannot speak for the entirety of his wife’s pregnancy. Just think about that for a moment, that’s nine months, three whole seasons, of not speaking. Imagine if walking home tonight you were struck mute by an angel and couldn’t speak until next March. I’m guessing a lot would build up in your head during that time.

Finally, Zechariah ’s tongue is loosened shortly after John’s birth and he is filled by the Holy Spirit and delivers an epic prophecy about the life of his son. This prophecy describes the story that Saint John the Baptist was entering into. This was a story of God. A story full of mercy and forgiveness. A story of how John would lead the way for the author of our salvation.

The story of John’s life is not an easy one, but it is an awesome one. John helped out so many people and got the world ready for what was to come. The end of the story of John’s life on earth is brutal and violent. His end came with his head on a platter, but that is not the end of the story of our salvation.

We all know we work out the story of our salvation with fear and trembling. Every day of our lives we add a new chapter to that story. Every morning, when that dreaded alarm clock goes off, we start telling ourselves that story. Pay attention to that story. Is it a story full of stress and anxiety? Is it a story of healing and hope?

We may long to escape the story we are in. We may long to turn the page or skip a few chapters. We may wish for a new author or even a new protagonist, yet inevitably we end up right here again in the middle of it all.

No matter what your story is, keep turning back to God. Repent, rearrange, reorient, reintroduce, review, renew, re-whatever yourself back to God. Saint John the Baptist was emphatic about this: we must keep turning back to God.

We must do our best with God’s help to stay present, centered, and engaged with the God-given stories of our God-given lives. Of course this is easier to do when things are going well. The challenge, the cauldron of our faith, is when our stories stop making sense.

If your life and the world around you seems to be full of chaotic stories that don’t make sense, you are not alone. We are all struggling in this time to find a coherent meaning to what’s going on around us. In such times of chaos, it can be hard to find the thread, that awesome thread of the Holy Spirit that links all this insanity around us into something that makes sense. It’s that holy clue that leads us out of this maze of darkness and into the light.

If right now you don’t have a clue what you are doing, keep searching. Pray hard and pray often. Keep examining your life with brutal honesty and always be on the lookout for God. Find that thread and follow it with everything you have.

Trinity Sunday

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31

Several years ago, I enrolled in a drawing class. I am not a creative person, but I thought it would be good to exercise that part of my brain. In my first class, the instructor gave us a stick of charcoal, put us in front of a piece of blank newsprint, and told us to draw anything.

Did I mention I’m not a creative person?

Honestly, I just froze. Absolutely nothing came to mind. I stared at the blank sheet, mildly panicking, and feeling very powerless and very alone.

The class got better, and I did learn to draw. I don’t think I became any more creative, but what I did gain was a fresh perspective, a way of looking through what seemed to be a new set of eyes. I learned to see shadow as well as line, the spaces in between as well as familiar forms.

Today is Trinity Sunday. And on this Trinity Sunday, we are being invited, more than ever, to see with a new set of eyes. As we celebrate the mystery of God as Trinity; as we rejoice in our creation, redemption, and sanctification; as we lift our voices in hymns and praise; we cannot but be aware of what surrounds our celebration. War and political violence, fear and insecurity, petty vindictiveness and hollow posturing. Whether we read it in the news, see it with our eyes, or feel it in our bodies, we are all aware of the overwhelming wrongness that surrounds us, in our country and in our world.

But I think this celebration is exactly what these troubled and tumultuous times calls for. This celebration today of the triune God has so much to say about who God is for us, who we are for God, and who we are for each other. We are invited to see the Trinity afresh, and that seeing encourages us to see others with new eyes.

We praise today God our Creator. Our Rule of Life expresses one central way to understand the Trinity: “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are One in mutual self-giving and receiving.”[1] The very act of creation, of our creation, of the world’s, an act of “pure self-emptying,” is an expression of who God is.

Our creation was in the image and likeness of this self-giving God; sin—turning away from God, again and again and again—eroded this image, making it harder and harder for us to see that God-shaped pattern that we were created with. Disobedience and murder took place in the first two generations of humanity’s primordial story. Each age confronts the consequences of sin in its own way. In ours, dislocation and isolation, convenient violence, demonization and dehumanization. The denial of the inherent, God-given dignity of all of our neighbors, fellow children and creations of God.

Remembering God our Creator today draws our attention out from ourselves: “O Lord our Governor, how exalted is your Name in all the world!” (Ps. 8:1). It draws our imaginations up: “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars you have set in their courses” (Ps 8:4). And it reminds us of our own dignity as creatures: “What is man that you should be mindful of him? The son of man that you should seek him out? You have made him but little lower than the angels; you adorn him with glory and honor.” (Ps 8:5-6).

How does this exalted language strike you today?

Praising God our Creator today, as we encounter so much hardship, so much anxiety, so much uncertainty, alerts us to the gap between the glory and honor promised us and the sorry state we so often find ourselves in—and the help we need.

And so today we praise God our Redeemer, who meets us in that sorry state, who empties himself and takes on our human nature. “God proves his love for us,” Saint Paul writes to the Church in Rome, “in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8); and it is through him that “we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God” (Rom 5:2).

Remembering God our Redeemer today draws our gaze back down to earth, to our daily struggles and afflictions and inadequacies, to all the ways in which we daily fail to live up to the promise of our creation—draws our gaze to all of that, and makes us know that that failure is not the last word.

What are you carrying today?

Remembering God our Redeemer today reminds us that whatever failures or disappointments or setbacks we face, no matter how bad the world and our own lives get, that is not the last word. The last word is that God has freed us through Jesus Christ, and that God remains with us always.

And so today we praise God our Sanctifier, guiding us who have been created and redeemed through a world that can still so often feel hostile. In the face of injustice, of violence, of overweening pride, of sin—of all that is not God—God our Sanctifier surrounds and upholds and strengthens us with the daily, the hourly, the constant assurance and hope of God’s unfailing love and presence. “We also boast in our sufferings” (Rom 5:3)—what Saint Paul asserts here, as Joseph Fitzmyer notes, is that “suffering and affliction become precisely the point at which hope is encountered and proves itself.”[2] “Hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts” (Rom 8:5).

If for us God is Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier, what, then, are we to God? We are God’s beloved, and we are God’s delight. “What is man that you should be mindful of him?” What is man—what is humanity—who are we—but God’s beloved creations, fallen and redeemed, God’s image and likeness in the world, God’s children in whom God delights. “I was daily his delight,” Wisdom speaks in the book of Proverbs, “rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race” (Prov 8:30-31). And so equally today when we praise God our Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier, we can only be humbled by our own high calling—God’s beloved, God’s delight, the apple of God’s eye.

How does this feel to you today? Do you accept it? Do you struggle with it?

How wonderful, how strange, to know ourselves to be God’s beloved, to come to know and feel in our very bones that we are God’s delight . . . while still seeing all that is wrong around us.

I feel that this may be as much of a mystery as the Trinity is.

If the mystery of the Trinity, even only imperfectly understood, elicits in us praise and celebration, the mystery of our own salvation by that same Trinity—Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier—can only—should only—elicit in us a response of humble thanks and determination to adopt a fresh perspective, to see with new eyes. To see all our neighbors with the eyes of the Trinity: as beloved siblings, in whom is found cause for delight, who suffer in ways that may be hidden from us, and who share in the same hope of God’s future, when all will be one.

Amen.

[1] The Rule of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist (Lanham, MD, 1997), 12.

[2] J. A. Fitzmyer, Romans, The Anchor Bible (New York, 1993), 397.

Br. Luke Ditewig

Saint Barnabas the Apostle

Acts 11:19-30; 13:1-3

Barnabas was a Jew from Cyprus named Joseph. He was living in Jerusalem when he joined the follower of Jesus. The apostles give him the name Barnabas which means son of encouragement. He sold a field of his and gave the money to the apostles to help provide for the community. Barnabas encouraged and provided for the poor financially, possibly sacrificially, as well as how he led relationally.

After Saul saw Jesus on the Damascus road, Barnabas introduced him to the apostles in Jerusalem, vouching and affirming he was now a believer and bold preacher.[i] When many believed the good news of Jesus in Antioch, the apostles sent Barnabas “a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith.”

Barnabas went to find Saul and brought him to Antioch where they taught together. As Ray Bakke wrote, consider what it took for Saul to heal and change. Barnabas recruited and mentored Saul to lead with him. Having been a notorious persecutor of believers, Saul needed further embodied forgiveness, safety, and encouragement to rebuild as a new kind of leader. Barnabas risked embracing Saul to enable this kind of healing and formation.[ii]

The Holy Spirit kept sending Barnabas and Saul out to share good news with others, the first missionary journeys. They took others to help them including Mark. On one such journey, Mark withdrew and left them. Later when Barnabas and Saul were setting out for a new journey, Saul refused to include Mark. Barnabas and Saul split over this. Barnabas took Mark and Saul took Silas.[iii]

Was Saul just hot-headed about Mark’s previous failure? I keep learning with conflict there is truth on both sides. A big challenge is in the face of true faults, what is a loving response? For Barnabas it was to include Mark, his cousin, even as the expense of parting ways with Saul then known as Paul. Barnabas risked embodying grace, trusting that Mark would learn, grow, and further become.[iv]

Who has risked being there for you? Who trusted you could get through, heal, and further become? Who has embodied grace for you? Who is this for you now?

Mark did grow and mature including in the sight of Paul. At the end of his letter to the Colossians, Paul gives greetings from fellow gospel workers including “Mark cousin of Barnabas, concerning whom you have received instructions – if he comes to you, welcome him.”[v] He is traditionally understood to be the writer of the gospel that bears his name, and he went on a later missionary journey to Alexandria, Egypt. Millions of Egyptian Christians continue to give thanks for Mark.[vi]

For many of us teachers, preachers, and caregivers, formation is part of our vocation. We also need to receive. Paul and Mark needed mediated healing and encouragement. Barnabas was at and on their side. The generativity of being an elder, mentor, companion, or friend on the way has deep impact. Give thanks for those who encourage you, like St. Barnabas whom we remember today.

[i] Acts 9:26-28

[ii] Ray Bakke (1997). A Theology as Big as the City. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, p. 149.

[iii] Acts 15:36-40

[iv] Bakke 1997, p. 150.

[v] Colossians 4:10, in Bakke 1997, p. 151.

[vi] Bakke 1997, p. 151.

Br. James Koester

The Day of Pentecost

Acts 2:1-21

I must confess that I have always been envious of those who are able to acquire another language. I have always struggled to learn first French, then Latin, before being completely defeated by Greek.

As a child my parents enrolled me in private French lessons, but when French became available at school, it was like starting over again. Each year was the same. I struggled all year to learn a few basics. I’d scrape by with a pass at the end of the school year and then forget everything over the summer. Each Fall I would have start again from square one. I finally dropped both French and Latin in high school. In the first year of seminary, I enrolled in New Testament Greek. Early in the term the professor arranged for us all to take a language aptitude test. My years of struggling to learn another language all came together with that test. Finally, everything made sense.

If you have taken the language aptitude test, you will know that it is based on learning a few simple elements of Kurdish. The idea is to see how quickly you can learn and retain it and then answer some questions. A week or so after the test, I sat in the professor’s office to hear my results. He began by telling me he didn’t understand why I was having such difficulty learning Greek, as I had a perfect aptitude for foreign languages. Suddenly he stopped in his tracks. Mumbled oh and said to me, sorry James, I see why you are having such difficulties. I was reading the score backwards. You have absolutely no aptitude to learn a second language

I don’t know exactly how that language aptitude test works, but after years of trying to learn French, Latin and then Greek, I didn’t need a test to tell me what I already knew. There is something about my brain that simply can’t absorb languages. I joke that even after over thirty years in this country, I still don’t understand and can’t speak American. It has been explained to me countless times what freshman, sophomore, junior and senior mean, but it needs to be explained to me again each time someone uses those phrases. And please don’t tell me you are a rising sophomore because that will just confuse me even more!

With my inability to learn another language, I’m always amazed by this story from Acts. For no apparent reason, suddenly everyone was speaking a different language, and more to the point, others could understand them. I confess, I am more than a little jealous.

Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, ‘Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.’ All were amazed and perplexed.[1]

It is interesting to note, however, that it was not the speaking, but the comprehension that amazed and perplexed the visitors to Jerusalem that day, for the ones who were speaking were Galileans, but those who comprehended were from all over the world and heard in their own native languages.

Was the gift of tongues given at Pentecost in the speaking, or in the hearing? It’s not clear. What is clear is that the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost was not so much the gift of speaking foreign languages, but the gift of comprehension that resulted in unity and understanding. That is the gift that brought about amazement, and even healing.

Today the world and this nation are perhaps more divided by mistrust, enmity, even hatred and fear, than ever before. The gifts of trust and comprehension feel elusive, and impossible to attain. Yet those are the very gifts given, when God poured upon those early disciples the gift of the Holy Spirit.

The thing is, Scripture is not Plimouth Plantation, a museum forever frozen in time. Rather it tells stories of the past, not to freeze them in time, but so that we can recognize their realities in the present. The gift of the Spirit of Pentecost was not given once, never to happen again. It is not just a story of a few Galilean fishmen who could suddenly speak other languages. It is not even a story about the ability to speak other languages. Yes, Pentecost happened that day long ago in Jerusalem. But that is not the end of the story. The story of the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost is the story of the gift of trust, comprehension, unity, and understanding, as it is being given today. Every time trust, comprehension, unity, and understanding happens, God’s Holy Spirit is poured out upon the world once more, and what is more, truth, compassion, love, and healing follow.

We live in a time when the story we constantly hear is the story of fear, suspicion and inequality. Is it any wonder then, that hostility and hatred are our daily diet? The world is griped by fear, suspicion, hostility, and hatred. But the answer to fear is not guns, and the answer to suspicion are not tariffs and laws. The answer to suspicion is not defunding education, and the answer to hatred is not deportation. The answer to fear, suspicion, hostility and hatred is the Spirit of God who pours out upon this hostile, divided, and alienated world, comprehension, unity, and understanding, which turn into compassion, love, and healing.

The difficulty is that comprehension, unity, and understanding, require patience, and generosity. Those too are of the Spirit, for as St Paul reminds us: the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.[2]

It is easy for us to get sidetracked today by the images of rushing wind, flames of fire, and the speaking in tongues. But we lose the real gifts of Pentecost when we do. The real gifts of Pentecost are not tongues, but tolerance, not flames, but faithfulness, not wind, but wonder.

How different our world is when we approach one another, not with fear and suspicion, or with hostility, and hatred, but with wonder, faithfulness, and tolerance. When that is the case, it is truly be a Pentecostal moment and the gift of the Spirit is poured out once more. In those moments, all are amazed to see that love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control follow, and give birth to the comprehension, unity, and understanding we so desire.

The vision of God for humanity, is that we are multilingual, speaking the language of God, which is the language of compassion, unity, and understanding. Each time that happens, the Spirit of God is revealed in our lives once more.

The wonder of Pentecost then, is not that people suddenly spoke in foreign languages. The wonder of Pentecost is that people suddenly spoke in the language of God, the language of compassion, unity, and understanding. And like those early disciples, the gift to speak the language of God is ours for the asking.

Come, Holy Spirit, come, and enkindle our hearts with the fire of your love.

When we truly are people of the Spirit, we will be people of compassion, unity, and understanding, speaking the language of God, and the world will be amazed and astonished, once more. And my goodness, do we ever need the gifts of compassion, unity, and understanding today, because fear, hatred, suspicion and hostility are tearing our world, and this country apart.

Come, Holy Spirit, come, and enkindle our hearts with the fire of your love.

[1] Acts 2: 6-12

[2] Galatians 5: 22 – 23