Br. David Vryhof

Ignatius of Loyola

Genesis 32:22-31

We have before us today three examples of what I would call “committed, determined, all-in discipleship.”

The first is the image of Jacob wrestling with “a man” along the River Jabbok.  Jacob is on his way to meet Esau, his elder brother, the same brother he deceived by stealing his birthright. He is afraid, justifiably. Jacob helps his family to cross the river, then returns alone to the other side to pray and prepare for his encounter with Esau. There he confronts a mysterious stranger and the two engage in a wrestling match. The man bestows on Jacob a new name – “Israel” – signifying a new role and purpose in his life, but he refuses to reveal his own name. Jacob refuses to give up, wrestling with the stranger through the night, insisting on receiving a blessing from him. Finally, as day breaks, the man relents and grants Jacob’s request.

The man reveals to Jacob that he has, in fact, been wrestling with God and Jacob expresses wonder that he has been able to see God and live. The story raises a number of questions: Who was this man and what prompts him to fight with Jacob? Who actually prevails in the struggle? What is the blessing that Jacob so desperately wants from the man? Why does the man leave Jacob with a hip injury?

Regardless of the unknowns, the image of Jacob engaged in an all-night, all-out struggle with God is a powerful one. We admire his determination, his commitment, his clinging to God until he receives the blessing he is seeking. The image of whole-hearted engagement in the struggle can be a powerful inspiration for us.

A second example comes from our Gospel text, where Jesus encounters three would-be disciples, all of whom are eager to proclaim their devotion to him but none of whom follow through and actually follow him. Each has an excuse for turning away, and they are not unreasonable excuses, but they fall short of what Jesus expects of them.

As is often the case, Jesus is using hyperbole to exaggerate his point. The story makes clear that he is seeking disciples who will devote themselves whole-heartedly to the life and work of the Kingdom, without considering the cost to themselves. Whole-hearted discipleship is costly.

The third example comes from St. Ignatius of Loyola, whom we remember today. Ignatius was a soldier – proud, vain and totally consumed with himself – when he met Jesus. That encounter changed his life and led him to devote himself whole-heartedly to the cause of Christ. His utter devotion is captured in the prayer you have in your hands. It is called the “Suscipe” – from the Latin word meaning “receive” – and invites us to likewise consider offering God our all.

Let’s pray it together:

Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding and my entire will; all that I have and call my own. You have given it all to me. To you, Lord, I return it. Everything is yours; do with it what you will. Give me only your love and your grace; that is enough for me. Amen.

Retreatants, brothers, friends: Take Ignatius’ prayer to heart. Learn it, ponder it, embrace it. Allow it to challenge and inspire you. Let it be for you a summons to whole-hearted devotion and commitment, which is what Jesus asks of each of us.

Br. Jack Crowley

Matthew 13:36-43

One challenge of modern-day life is knowing when to be serious. There is the challenge of knowing when to be serious, the challenge of how serious you should be, and the challenge of communicating how serious you are about something.

There is also the challenge of how to be serious with God. The challenge of knowing how we should speak to God when we really need to know something. How do we approach God in such a forward manner while still being respectful? How do we break through our day-to-day pleasantries with God and boldly ask for the truth?

In our Gospel tonight, we heard the wonderful story of the Disciples approaching Jesus directly. The context here is important. Jesus had just left a crowd of people after teaching them through a series of parables. Jesus is finally alone and inside a home after being surrounded by people.

I think we all know that feeling of coming home after a long event full of people. There’s that mixture of lingering excitement with fatigue setting in. There’s also this feeling of intimacy now that everyone has gone home. So the Disciples approach Jesus in this very specific context and ask very directly what he meant by his parable. They want the truth, the real deal, or maybe even they think there is something extra Jesus will tell them alone.

Like the Disciples, we must find the time and the mood to approach Jesus with a mix or urgency and intimacy. That serious desire for knowing must bubble up from deep within us and lead us to seek out Jesus wherever we can. We must also have a mixture of humility and boldness as we approach Jesus. We can be humble in our attitude towards the Son of Man but also be bold and authentic in our desire to know more through him and with him.

The point I’m trying to make is it is ok to get real Jesus. Not only is it ok, but maybe Jesus is also eager to meet you at that level of seriousness. What if Jesus is already there? Even after a long day, what if Jesus is waiting for you to approach him with your whole authentic being?

Try speaking to Jesus face-to-face in your own way with your own words. If you feel embarrassed to do so, ask yourself what do you have to lose? Amen.

Genesis 18:20-32

At about 1 AM the pager for the on-call hospital chaplain pierced the silence. I was the on-call hospital chaplain that night – or at least, I was the next best thing: the chaplain intern whose turn it was to carry the pager. The nurse picked up my call quickly and asked, “Are you in the hospital now? We have a stroke patient who is dying.” I explained that on-call chaplains drive in from home, but that I thought I could be there in twenty minutes.

As I sped through the darkness on the way to the hospital, I reviewed the evening so far. I had gone to bed at 10, having already driven back to the hospital once that evening to sit with a patient whom my supervisor had asked me to visit. This patient was also dying – but not imminently, and his end of life experience was bringing out some of the worst in him, especially in the evenings. All of his feelings – anger, resentment, fear – manifested as needs and demands and ultimatums to everyone who came near him. I knew he had been a regular churchgoer, so faith was also there somewhere. Beneath all the bluster, it seemed that he was bargaining for something he desperately needed, whimpering one moment then growling the next. I prayed God would help him find it. After two hours, I helped the nurses bring him all the spare pillows on the unit, then went home.

When I arrived at the hospital the second time, the new patient lay motionless in the bed: an elderly African-American man. The nurse explained that he had died just moments ago. His wife sat calmly beside him, and an elderly white couple sat against the wall, neighbors who had driven the couple to the hospital. I turned my attention toward the wife of the patient, said I was aware that she was a person of faith, and that I was there to be helpful in any way I could. She thanked me, and asked me to pray. I do not remember anything of what I said, but I invited her to add her own prayer. For the next fifteen minutes, she offered up one prayer after another, dense with quotations from scripture, in a voice that was direct, dignified, and as unselfconscious as it was authoritative: prayers for her neighbors, for me, for the doctors, for her departed husband, for their family. It was the prayer of a person who was used to talking to God without holding anything back. When she finished, I thought: If I were God, I’d sit up straight, pay attention, and get to work.

In today’s gospel passage from Luke, Jesus tells the parable of two friends in the middle of the night, to enjoin upon his disciples a particular quality in their prayer.

‘Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, “Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.” And he answers from within, “Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.” I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his ________ he will get up and give him whatever he needs.’

Our English translation uses the word “persistence,” but a more literal translation would be “shamelessness.”

The fear of social embarrassment or ridicule was a major incentive to moral behavior for the cultured Gentile audience that Luke often writes for. Jesus here slyly commends the opposite in our relationship with God. Instead of carefully sifting and choosing your words, Jesus seems to say: Go ahead and say anything, at any time, and in any place. Ask for everything that you need, however unreasonable or ridiculous. This “shamelessness” is a lack of restraint; even a lack of that internal filter we have learned to develop in polite, adult conversation.

In my experience, there are situations when we are brought to our limits or our defenses are down when most of us are able to simply say exactly what’s in our minds or on our hearts. When we are brought close to death, or at the death of a loved one – as with those two hospital patients. When we are awakened in the middle of the night – before waking consciousness asserts its boundaries.

But there are also relationships that help us practice this totally unselfconscious quality.

Imagine the person that knows you most intimately – and the ways you are able to communicate. In developing an intimately personal relationship with God in prayer, we begin with the kind of intimacy we have known (or have glimpsed, and want to know better).

That is how Jesus teaches – he dives right into the middle of everyday life. Prayer, as Jesus teaches prayer, begins with human reality. In his parables, this is often a springboard for teaching about divine realities. “If you then, who are evil (relatively evil – in relation to the limitless goodness of God) know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

For Jesus, God was most like a very attentive and loving parent. This is not the only human relationship Jesus uses as a springboard to illustrate divine realities, but it does seem to be the one he appropriated most personally. What that means for Jesus’ self-identity is that he is a child. Yes, is the Son, the Heir of all the belongs to the Father, which is very grand and awesome. But at heart, Jesus of Nazareth is the little boy with the totally unselfconscious lack of filter or embarrassment who just names aloud every little thing he needs or wants. This cycle of asking and receiving transforms both the child and the parent by creating a deep bond of trust for the child, and for the parent, the witnessing of an unfolding miracle: a baby slowly becoming the person they were created to be.

As disciples of Jesus, when we pray we are standing in the place of Jesus before God. As his Body, our prayers come forth through his mouth. God wants and anticipates that those prayers, over time, will sound and feel more and more like the prayers of his own only-begotten child. Through them, we become more like the person God created us to be.

So what’s stopping us?

Maybe some of the following thoughts will sound familiar to you:

What if I ask, and my request is denied – or even worse, met with a deafening silence? What if I search and I come up empty-handed, exhausted and looking like an idiot for investing myself in such a lost cause? What if I knock until my knuckles bleed and the door doesn’t budge? Then where will I be?

These are supremely reasonable responses if we take our vulnerable human experiences of denied requests, fruitless searches, and closed doors and project them onto our life with God – particularly our life of prayer. These “what ifs” might even cause us to forsake prayer. Or we might prefer always to pray for the needs of others. Or we might prefer to rest in a form of pseudo-contemplation that says, “Whatever you want, God” rather than actively stay put in the excruciatingly particular vulnerability of our needs.

In the opposite direction, we might discover that we are asking, searching, and knocking for what we perceive to be our needs with an insistent and frenzied energy. On the surface, this might look like exactly what Jesus is commending to us in today’s gospel reading. But our petitions might just be so closely shingled that they block out the sunlight of self-awareness, or as reactive as the appetites of children. The spaces, silences, or even pauses that God might use to breathe in us, to disclose to us our deeper needs, will be filled up with our persistent requests. We may even lose precious opportunities to examine what God has given, has revealed or has opened while we have been so busy asking.

God always responds to prayer. But sometimes the response is to gently lead us into a thick patch of ambiguity and uncertainty rather than a breezy clearing of clarity and certainty. In one of the chapters from our Rule commenting on our vow of poverty, we read, “By our vow of poverty we recognize that in our own spiritual lives there will be seasons of shadow, experiences of dryness, waiting, obscurity, or the seeming absence of God. In the light of the gospel we know these are necessary, and that some of them yield more blessings than times when we are filled with devotion and confidence.” And in a chapter entitled “The Mystery of Prayer,” we read: “Our love must be purified and tested by many times of darkness, loss, and waiting.” Like a wise parent, God gives us the Holy Spirit – who often arrives in forms we did not ask for, not only to satisfy or console, but to lead us into all truth.

Let us pray:

Jesus – You shed all shame before your Father to take away the burden of our shame.

Jesus – We stand in your place now and pray with your voice.

Jesus – Teach us to pray by starting with reality as it is, letting our need to dress it up or get it right fall by the wayside that, like you, we may never cease to be children and receive your Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Br. Lain Wilson

Matthew 13:24-30

Several years ago, I stood staring at a twenty-five-foot row of seven-foot-tall weeds. “You can take all of it out,” I was told. “All of it except a lilac bush that’s in there.”

That all seemed clear . . . except I had no idea what a lilac bush looked like. So I spent the next several hours checking and rechecking that this plant that looked like ragweed, that in fact looked like the dozens of ragweed stalks I had just pulled out, was, in fact, ragweed.

I eventually found the lilac, which looks nothing like ragweed.

The distinctions between “wheat” and “weeds” in today’s gospel are in fact much subtler than ragweed and lilac, so much so that they were nearly indistinguishable as young plants. Separation happened after harvesting, indeed, after threshing, when differently colored grains could be clearly discerned.[1]

Our parable today thus speaks to the patience that farmers would have shown in a familiar situation. It’s a patience Jesus asks his followers to demonstrate as they see all that is wrong around them, all that cries out for judgment: “Let both [wheat and weeds] grow together until the harvest” (Mt 13:30).

This parable speaks to the end of things, the “harvest.” But Jesus also speaks to his listeners, to his disciples and to us, in the here and now. The parable of the weeds reveals to us a necessary posture of compassion, forgiveness, and humble honesty.

It is very easy and natural for us to notice and call out the weeds around us – those who are different than us, who hold different priorities and go about their lives in different ways. It is easy for us to want to condemn them – want to see them come to judgment. But if Jesus urges patience, he also reveals that the distinction between wheat and weeds is subtle, surprising, and, perhaps, indiscernible to our eyes. We Brothers speak in our Rule of Life of “honor[ing] the mystery present in the hearts of our brothers and sisters, strangers and enemies. Only God knows them as they truly are.” Even those we hate, who seem to stand for everything we are opposed to, whom we would just as soon see as weeds to be gathered and burned, deserve our compassion and forgiveness as fellow creatures, known and loved by God.

Where do you notice resistance in yourself to exercising compassion and extending forgiveness?

Just as importantly, this parable speaks to the humble honesty we must turn on ourselves. Russian novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn famously wrote that the “line separating good and evil passes . . . right through every human heart.” We, each of us, bear within ourselves wheat and weeds. We, each of us, have the work before us of a lifelong conversion. The humbling part is that, like the weeds of our parable, we may not always be able to discern what needs to be converted. The humbling part is recognizing that and praying to God, as the publican did, “Be merciful to me, a sinner!” (Lk 18:13). The humbling part is that this honesty may be how we are best able to cooperate with God’s work in the world.

In the end, we can only trust. Trust that God is merciful. Trust that we will be forgiven as we have forgiven others. Trust that God knows our hearts infinitely better than we ourselves can. And trust that, when we come to the harvest, God will gather us in.

Amen.

[1] W. Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew, rev. ed. (Philadelphia, 1975), 2:73.

Br. Jamie Nelson

Matthew 13:10-17

In today’s gospel passage, Jesus has just finished preaching the Parable of the Sower to a large crowd gathered alongside the lakeshore. When we enter the story, his disciples have come to him privately to ask why he spoke to the crowd in parables.

I wonder if the disciples’ question masked feelings of disappointment.

I wonder if they felt that Jesus’ choice of teaching tool had squandered a great opportunity. Perhaps their own plans had been for him to relate to the crowd like a politician at political rally – pumping up the people with an inspiring message and building up a base of support for his Messiah movement.

I wonder if they would have liked him to perform a miraculous healing on command. That would demonstrate credibility for his claims to messiahship.

I wonder if they were hoping to pick up a few new guys for the discipleship road crew.

But instead, Jesus left out an inspiring call to action and told the crowd a confusing parable about seeds.

So what are parables, and why did Jesus choose them as a teaching tool?

I can give you an answer for the first question. Parables are deceptively simple stories that illustrate complex spiritual truths using everyday situations and settings. Parables are like icons – their images point to a deeper reality underneath the story.

As to the second question, why did Jesus choose to speak in parables – Jesus’ explanation about why is about as confusing as the parables themselves.

This gospel passage, and Jesus’ frequent use of parables, points to a complicated truth: that God is ultimately uncomprehensible to our limited human capacity for understanding. That the beauty, goodness, and power of God will stay beyond our knowing in this lifetime.

So why use parables?

Parables create space for wondering and for wrestling with God.

Parables offer nuggets of mystery to mull over.

Parables invite further seeking, they don’t set up tidy answers to regurgitate on command.

Parables plant the seeds of the kingdom.

Have you ever felt disappointed by God, unable to trust in the good news or to live in hope? Sometimes life is downright disappointing, and looking to Jesus’ words in the gospels can be confusing.

Jesus’ use of parables reminds us that God’s work is often hidden, mysterious, and silent. It’s easy to give in to the temptation to live as if human action is what brings salvation. However, the sowing and harvesting is ultimately God’s work, theologian Mark Burnham cautions us.[1]

Over and over, Jesus reminds his disciples that his messiahship isn’t going to look like what they’re used to. He doesn’t fit neatly into the box of Promised One born to overthrow Rome through military might, destined to restore glory and freedom to his people.

What he does offer is a kingdom that enters our world through stories. Through stories as seeds that grow into moments of insight and understanding, mercy and love.

Theologian Michelle Voss Roberts writes: “Jesus plants parables in the imaginations of his hearers to do the work that Scripture and theological language are supposed to do: take root, mature, and bear fruit.”[2]

But seeds take time to germinate, to take root, mature, and bear fruit.

So how to live in the in-between?

The poet Rainier Maria Rilke wrote this word of advice to a younger man that he was mentoring in poetry and in life:

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now.”[3]

Jesus’ parables are like those unsolved questions that Rilke writes about.

So let us follow his invitation and live the questions now.

[1] Mark R. Burnham. (2015) “Matthew 13:10-17 – Pastoral Perspective.” Essay. In Feasting on the Gospels – Matthew, Vol. 1. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, p360.

[2] Michelle Voss Roberts. (2015) “Matthew 13:10-17 – Theological Perspective.” Essay. In Feasting on the Gospels – Matthew, Vol. 1. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, p360.

[3] This quote is from Letter #4 of Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet: https://rilkepoetry.com/letters-to-a-young-poet/letter-four/

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.