SSJE Sermons

Br. Jack Crowley

Psalm 16:5-11

In any journey of faith, there is always the question of what it looks like to ask God for help. Asking God for help comes in many forms. We are all familiar with foxhole prayers. Prayers asking for help in times of overwhelming stress. There are also the day-to-day prayers of people asking God for help to just function. Other times, we approach God with a problem we think of as so complicated that no one else would ever understand.

It’s with that spirit of looking for help from God that makes me love the first half of the 7th verse of Psalm 16, our gradual psalm today. The Psalmist prays “I will bless the Lord who gives me counsel.” I’ve always loved how the psalmist is plain spoken in saying that the Lord does in fact give him counsel. The psalmist is not making a qualified, sort of, kind of, statement. It’s a bold statement that God does in fact offer counsel in our lives.

To seek, listen, and follow the counsel of God may be humbling, but it is worthwhile. It may be humbling to admit that we cannot get through life, or maybe even a single day, alone and without God’s help. However, if that is the truth for you, as it is for me, then there’s no avoiding it.

I need God’s help every single day of my life. I can stand here and deny it. I can try to live a life fueled by complete self-sufficiency. A life in which I can try to figure out every detail of every problem of every moment of my life. In my own experience, at some point this becomes unsustainable. I need God’s help. Then I desperately seek God’s counsel.

There is no shame in seeking God’s counsel. Much of our lives are spent stumbling through half understood situations – full of confusion, doubt, and anxiety. We don’t have the time or energy to understand it all. We never have the power to fully control it, even if we really wish we did.

We live our lives in the middle of seeking God’s counsel and doing our best to follow it. That is the most we can ask of ourselves and our fellow human beings. We answer the never-ending problems of our lives with the same answer we have in our Baptismal Covenant: “I will, with God’s help.”

The Martyrs of Uganda

Matthew 24:9-14

“The one who endures to the end will be saved. And this good news of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the world, as a testimony to all the nations” (Mt 24:13-14).

Today we commemorate the martyrs of Uganda, a group of young pages in the court of the king of Buganda, who were executed for refusing to recant their Christian faith. This faith provided these men, who were caught up in overlapping power struggles, with another choice, an alternative power, a way of naming a truth and an allegiance that was greater than powers of chiefs or kings or empires.

The very bodies of these martyrs were sites of claims of personal power. The king had power over the use of their bodies, up to their deaths. In denying the king his traditional prerogatives, they undercut his very claim to authority over them. Their martyrdom signaled the king’s very failure of power.

They were also subject to generational rivalries. As younger men at court, future tribal leaders, they represented a threat to older and entrenched authorities. Their Christianity was weaponized as a pretense to dispose of rivals. In persisting in their confession of Christian faith, they acknowledged an authority higher, and an allegiance greater than what they had previously known. Their confession drew their gaze upward and outward.

Finally, they were caught up in transcultural encounters. Their conversion was the result of the intertwined projects of mission, colonialism, and empire. And yet, their very act of martyrdom led to the spread of Christianity and eased the way toward integrating it with traditional values: “By demonstrating to young people that Christianity could demand the highest courage,” historian John Iliffe writes, “the martyrdom was an important stage in breaking the heroic culture’s resistance to the new religion.”[1]

Faithfulness to their confession thus allowed the martyrs of Uganda to transform the network of power in which they found themselves enmeshed: to free themselves from bodily control by the king; to overcome courtly and tribal rivalries; and to use the instruments of empire to demonstrate that Christianity was also an African religion.

I’m sure many of us have experienced what it means to be caught in the middle of forces that we can’t understand, let alone control. Being unfairly judged, without recourse. At the whim of faceless bureaucracy, without leverage. Witnessing appalling injustice with no power to meaningfully effect change. With no tools, no weapons, no help except for a simple affirmation of faith, the sure knowledge that God is with you, bearing all of that with you now. And that God will give you the highest courage to endure, to persevere, and to know that your own simple, persistent affirmation of faith matters more than you can possibly imagine.

Amen.

[1] J. Iliffe, Honour in African History (Cambridge, 2005), 173-74; cf. Lesser Feasts and Fasts (New York, 2022), 258: “The martyrs had left the indelible impression that Christianity was truly African, not simply a white man’s religion.”

Br. Jamie Nelson

Acts 18:1-8

In today’s reading from the Book of Acts, we hear a story about a time when the Apostle Paul faced disappointment and seeming failure in his work spreading the gospel, yet that failure wasn’t the last word for God.

We hear the story of Paul’s arrival in Corinth, a Greek city where people of many cultures, languages, and religions passed through or made the city their home.

Some of those people were Jewish refugees who had recently been expelled from their homes in Rome due to a decree of the emperor Claudius. Paul, a fellow Jew, became close with two of those refugees, a married couple named Aquila and Priscilla, and worked in their canvas and leatherworking business.

Paul worked in their shop during the week, and he spent the Sabbath in the city synagogue preaching and teaching about Jesus – an evangelism strategy he’d used with success in previous cities. But other than his friends and benefactors Priscilla and Aquila, he didn’t find much initial success sharing the good news about Jesus the Messiah to the Jewish community.

We hear that time and again, Paul’s testimony was met with opposition and resistance. Finally pushed beyond his limit, Paul responded by shaking the dust from his clothes and announcing that he was done butting heads with people in the synagogue community. Henceforth, he would preach to the Gentiles of Corinth.

Have you ever found yourself in a similar place to Paul?

A situation where you have taken time to prepare and sought wise counsel until you arrived at a sense of clarity about how to proceed, yet your best efforts just weren’t bearing fruit. Maybe it’s a situation in your work where a project isn’t going as planned due to factors outside your control. Or maybe it’s a relationship where you’ve shown up, tried your very best, and still things just aren’t working out. It’s easy to get disillusioned and ready to give up when that happens, to feel like you’ve failed.

I wonder if Paul felt like he’d failed at his God-given mission, since the very people he came to reach had turned away. But he kept on sharing the good news of Jesus, this time with Gentiles.

And then something unexpected happened: Crispus, the leader of the synagogue, the very place Paul had left in frustration, came to faith in Jesus. Not just him, but his household, and many others in Corinth. And as we know from Paul’s letters to the Corinthians sent after his departure, the church he planted became a robust Christian community.

So what can we learn about God through the conclusion to that story?

Failure and resistance don’t mean God’s not at work.

Paul may have been finished with the people he met through the synagogue, but God wasn’t. The seeds that had been planted took root beneath the soil. God continued to be at work in the community, opening hearts to Jesus.

So if you’re facing resistance and failure or something in your life isn’t unfolding the way you’d hoped, trust that God is still at work. That what feels like rejection can create a space for a new direction, that what looks like a closed door can actually be the threshold to something new.

Trust that failure and disappointment isn’t the end of God’s story for you.

Br. Luke Ditewig

Ascension Day

Luke 24:44-53

Gathered together, the disciples and friends are amazed Jesus had appeared to Peter. The two who walked to Emmaus just returned and told of meeting Jesus in breaking bread. As they speak, Jesus stands among the gathering. “Peace be with you,” Jesus says. “Look, it’s me. Look at my hands and my feet. Remember my wounds. Watch me eat. I’m alive. Everything written about me must be fulfilled. Good news is to be proclaimed to everyone. You are witnesses of all of this.” Then Jesus leads them out to nearby Bethany and is carried up to heaven.

Jesus ascending into heaven is part of the resurrection story. Risen and ascended go together. The Word became flesh and lived among us as a human infant who grew into an adult, living, loving, losing, dying, rising, and ascending. God with us.

As our neighbor The Rev. Jarred Mercer wrote: “The ascension is simply the completion of the first movement of the incarnation.”[i] “As in the incarnation divinity was introduced into human life, so in the ascension humanity is introduced into the divine life. The human condition now inhabits heaven, the eternal presence of God.”[ii]

Jesus is God embodied. When born, Jesus was fully vulnerable as an infant. When risen, Jesus kept and showed his wounds. Resurrection didn’t magically restore Jesus to pre-crucifixion. Returning to heaven didn’t diminish Jesus’ humanity.

Jesus ascended with wounded hands and feet, needing food and companionship, vulnerable to and for love and heartbreak, grief and trust. “The human condition now inhabits heaven.” Mysteriously wonderful. Loving us humans, God comes all the way down to restore all, and God takes all up. Our condition and identity God loves, embraces, and heals with all the limitations. The good news is that all will be healed, all will be fully loved.

The pain and suffering now are real and so very hard. At the same time, God has power over all. God saves. Love has already and will ultimately win. We see this in Jesus. Again, from Mercer: “The ascension is the realization of our salvation: humanity has been exalted to enjoy the perfect love of God. Ascension is hope realized.”[iii]

One day we will fully enjoy the love of God where there will be no more weeping, where there will be no need of lamp or sun for the Lord will be our light. Amid the pain and hardship of today, we are not alone. Gaze and grasp and be still with Jesus, God who was a child, a teen, a friend, who was hurt, confused, who loved and lost, who lived and died, rose, and ascended.

Pray your pain and gratitude to God who is fully with us and who loves without limit. Look forward in hope for all to be healed. Rejoice with our risen and ascended Christ, wounded and triumphant.

[i] Strawbridge, Jennifer, Jarred Mercer, and Peter Groves. Love Makes No Sense: An Invitation to Christian Theology (2019) London: SCM Press, 103.

[ii] Ibid, 104.

[iii] Ibid, 104.

Br. Jack Crowley

John 10:22-30

How long will you keep us in suspense? Of all the questions Jesus was asked in his life, this is one of my favorites. How long will you keep us in suspense?

Despite all of Jesus’ miracles, teachings, healings, and feedings, people kept wanting more from Jesus. People kept wanting more signs and more explanations. No matter what Jesus did, it was not enough for some.

One unfortunate tendency we have as human beings is to find something we enjoy and then squeeze the life out of it. We place unrealistic expectations on the things that make us feel good, and then when our expectations are not met, we get resentful. We end up crucifying that which we once loved.

To live a sustainable life with Christ requires balance. If we demand too much, too often, we will burn out. On other hand, if we are too passive, we will never build an authentic relationship with our savior.

An authentic relationship with God is something you cannot fake for too long. Inevitably, the frustrations of life will catch up to you and you will end up saying to God how much longer will you keep us in suspense?  The answer to that question at times will be a brutal and painful silence. Yet, it is in these hard questions and harrowing moments of acceptance that we gain intimacy with Christ. We understand our own suffering so much more in the light of he who suffered so much for us.

So how much more proof do you need that God exists? How many more religious experiences do you need until you believe that God is already at work in your life? For me oftentimes, the answer is more. I am human after all.

Much of our life we are kept in suspense, waiting for one thing to end and another thing to begin. We often believe that once this one thing ends and the next thing begins, then life will really happen, then and only then will we truly find God. So what if God is meant to be found in the meantime?

What if we were to let go of our feelings of suspense? What if we were to say that God is here, now, in the present, in the very details of our days? An act of faith like this takes courage – the courage to a be a human and the courage to be a Christian.

Psalm 23

Whatever your feelings about it may be, sheep-and-shepherd imagery is an inescapable facet of Christian tradition, which finds its roots in scripture. This body of imagery plays a prominent role in the Christian imaginary – imaginary used as a noun, rather than an adjective. One literary scholar defines an imaginary as “the creative and symbolic dimension of the social world, the dimension through which human beings create their ways of living together and their ways of representing their collective life.”

I grew up in an American suburb, and so the only place outside the Bible I encountered sheep were the ones made of cotton balls proudly displayed outside our Church nursery, and the ones that frolicked safely and sweetly in our Southern Baptist hymnody. It was hard to translate the gap between the Church’s imaginary and my personal reality in a way that felt real.

In 2020 I had the opportunity to pray my way through the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola with my spiritual director. These Exercises clarify a person’s desire for spiritual freedom, and make extensive use of prayer with the imagination.

Because it radically changed my experience of the sheep-and-shepherd imagery in Scripture, I’d like to share a scene that unfolded in my own prayer as I engaged with Luke’s parable of the lost sheep, as a doorway into unpacking this morning’s passages from Revelation and the gospel of John.

You might choose to close your eyes and receive these words as the testimony of a lost sheep:

I find myself in an arid, desert landscape, forgotten in a vast expanse of wilderness.

I am a young lamb, trapped inside a dense thicket of thorns. My face is free, but my entire body is immobilized. The more I struggle, the more caught I become, and the long, dark thorns tear through my fleece and the tender flesh beneath. I no longer have the voice to cry out and I am on the verge of despair. Vultures circle above me, waiting.

But then I see him, one like a Son of Man coming toward me. Is it a mirage? No, he is here now. I am afraid, but this man is my only hope.

I summon one long, feeble cry that is louder and stronger than I thought possible: it echoes from the cliffs, and in each echo a layer of my sorrow, my regret, my shame, my self-blame for this miserable situation.

The man bends down low. He must get on his hands and knees to reach me. He himself wears a crown of thorns, and his face is marked with streaks of dark blood like tears. He bears this crown with unfathomable grace. He gazes into my eyes and sees me: my fear, my despair. Our foreheads touch, and he whispers: “This isn’t your fault.”

And then; he plunges his strong arms into the heart of the thorn bush and wrenches it open. The thorns that hemmed me in on every side are now an open place, though they gouge the man’s own flesh. With one arm he holds the bush open and with the other he grasps me and lifts me free.

I breathe. I live. This is mercy.

The man hoists me onto his shoulders. From this vantage point, I now see in all directions: bush after thorn bush all the way to the horizon.

Each bush contains a lamb like me, captive and struggling for life.

In a voice clear and resolute, the Son of Man says,

“I will not rest until the last lamb is free.”

In my own prayer life, sheep-and-shepherd imagery has been rehabilitated and refreshed by assembling the disparate images of sheep in Scripture into a single flock, as it were, and letting them speak to one another. This is exactly what the lectionary intends when it corrals Psalm 23, Revelation 7, and John 10 together.

The Lamb of the Revelation to John is a powerful and paradoxical image of the crucified and risen Christ.

The Church has represented the Lamb of God in countless media, from big, elaborate altarpieces to delicate embroidery, but usually in a more domesticated form – with a victory banner and a tidy wound, from which a tidy stream of blood flows cleanly into a chalice.

In Revelation, we first behold this Lamb in chapter 5. One of the elders around the throne announces that “the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered,” and so we are primed to expect the king of the beasts – long associated with the power of monarchs and deities alike.

What John hears and what he sees stand in stark contrast: “Then I saw between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders a lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth.”

This Lamb inhabits a disruptive, dream-like imaginary that John intends to startle us into serious contemplation and conversion of heart.

In another contrast between hearing and visionary seeing, earlier in Revelation 7 John records, “And I heard the number of those who were sealed, one hundred forty-four thousand, sealed out of every tribe of the people of Israel.”

But then, “After this, I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.” In John’s vision, the sheep-and-shepherd image is lifted from its imaginary in the culture of one people and made the central figure in a universal imaginary – a collective life in which all may find a place.

In John’s chapter 10, Jesus introduces the image of himself as the good shepherd who does not run but stands firm in the face of wolves who snatch and scatter sheep. In verses 28-30, we hear, “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one.”

Jesus alludes here to a mystical reality he will flesh out further in his last supper discourse – the intercirculating, interabiding love between Father, Son, the disciples, and the promised Spirit, the Advocate. But here, the image I find most arresting is that the disciples – and by extension, we ourselves — are the Father’s gift to the Son, a gift that is “greater than all else.”

In her Revelations of Divine Love, Julian of Norwich elaborates upon this image:

“…through his Father’s courteous gift we are his bliss, we are his reward, we are his glory, we are his crown – and this was an especial marvel and a most delectable vision, that we are his crown! What I am describing is such great joy to Jesus that he counts as nothing all his affliction and his keen suffering and his cruel and shameful death.” (Ch. 22)

The Orthodox archbishop Kallistos Ware, who died in 2022, often returned in his pastoral teaching to a fundamental question and aspiration: “Dare we hope for the salvation of all?”[i] And his consistent answer was Yes. By this, he meant not simply all who confess Jesus Christ as Lord but all – all who have been, and are, and shall be. All who, at the hidden core of their being, long for “the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” The Lamb at the center of a multitude no one could count is surely the same Shepherd who seeks with undaunted compassion until the last Lamb is free.

What does it mean, then, to place this bleeding, fragile, glorious creature at the center of God’s throne?

What does it mean for us “to wash our robes and make them white” in his blood?

What is it like to see ourselves as sacrificial lambs, “standing as if slaughtered” and yet untouched by all that stands opposed to God’s love?

To esteem ourselves as priceless gifts given from Father to Son, and from the Son back to the Father?

We will spend a lifetime and longer laying hold of the answers, but for today, perhaps it means:

that the fragility and vulnerability we so often seek to disguise from others is the part of us Jesus loves most;

that there is no clothing more radiant than our unabashed and costly loyalty to him;

that together, we are held safely in the circle of a Love that draws all creation toward its final purpose;

and that when we see ourselves, one another, and every creature as pure gift, it is with God’s eyes of love that we seek, we suffer, and we see.

[i] The following article by Kallistos Ware is a cogent and insightful summary of the works of several theologians in the history of the Church who have held this position: https://www.clarion-journal.com/files/dare-we-hope-for-the-salvation-of-all-1.pdf

Br. Luke Ditewig

John 6:41-51

We usually serve homemade bread at both altar and supper table. One guest told me: “Your bread is substantial and satisfying. Here at the monastery, I’ve experienced Jesus as substantial and satisfying.”

Bread is ordinary, daily, necessary nourishment, and a key symbol in our salvation story. God provided ancient Israel with bread from heaven in the wilderness for forty years. Wandering in the desert, our parents asked: “What is it?” God said: Take a measure of this every morning. More will come tomorrow. Don’t hoard it. I will give you enough.[i]

Jesus asked his disciples how to feed the crowd that followed them. They replied: “Six months wages would not buy enough bread.” Another said: Here are five loaves and two fish. Jesus gave thanks and distributed the loaves and fish feeding thousands “… as much as they wanted.”[ii] We similarly question how we will live and focus on seeming scarcity. God invites us to trust provision beyond what we imagine.

Jesus said: “I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven. … I am the living bread that came down from heaven.” The Jews dispute it. How can he give us his flesh? Jesus says: I am the true bread of heaven. You need me to live.

Jesus is more than manna in the wilderness, and more than a meal for 5,000 from a few loaves and fish. “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.” Jesus offers himself as sustaining nourishment to be received and savored daily.

What questions concern your heart? What weight or burden do you bear? What is your need? “Come to me,” Jesus says. “I am your provision. Trust me.” Substantial and satisfying, enough for today, and promised for tomorrow: Jesus, the true bread of heaven.

[i] Exodus 16

[ii] John 6:1-14

Julian of Norwich

Psalm 27:1-9

“One thing have I asked of the Lord; one thing I seek; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life; to behold the fair beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.” (Ps 27:5-6)

The psalmist’s words take on special resonance today, the feast of the English anchoress, mystic, and theologian Julian of Norwich. I am thinking particularly of the way the psalmist’s expression of desire finds fulfillment, in an unexpected way, in Julian’s own experience.

In her sixteenth and final revelation, or “shewing,” Julian writes that the Lord opened her spiritual eye, and she saw her “soul as wide as if it were a kingdom . . . it seemed to me as if it were a fine city.”[1] In the midst of the city, Julian sees Jesus sitting, “handsome and tall, honorable, the greatest lord.” She beholds the Lord’s fair beauty.

In this encounter, Julian finds Christ himself dwelling within her: “The place which Jesus takes in our soul he will nevermore vacate, for in us is his home of homes, and it is the greatest delight for him to dwell there.” In “seeking him in his temple,” Julian finds that temple, the home of the Lord, to be her soul, her very inmost self, her vast inner kingdom.

Julian’s own age was marked by chaos and daily struggle distinct from what we ourselves experience, but for all that she speaks to the certainty, the never-failing promise of hope and love and joy of Jesus dwelling with us, in us, in the very midst of whatever chaos and struggle we encounter. Julian’s experience of divine love, of this certain presence, invites us to go inward, to explore our own vast inner landscape, to seek Jesus who dwells there, and to hear him say to us, as he said to Julian: I am here. I take delight in being here. And whatever you encounter, whatever trials you come to, whatever winds of chance and change blow in your life, “you will not be overcome.”

Amen.

[1] This and the following quotations are from Julian of Norwich, Showings, chap. 22 (short text); trans. E. College and J. Walsh (New York, 1978), 163-65.

Br. Lucas Hall

John 6:25-40

We hear, in today’s Gospel reading, a claim that is at once familiar and bizarre. “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” If you’ve been going to church long enough, it’s easy to gloss over this language. It’s all just so bible-y. But we shouldn’t let our eyes glaze over too much, because this is Jesus’s own response to a pretty reasonable question: “What sign are you going to give us, so that we may see it an believe in you?” Jesus’s answer is twofold: first, it compares his own coming to the manna, the bread from heaven, given to the Hebrews in the Exodus story, and second, it asserts that this coming, his coming, itself is the sign.

When we speak of this manna, we should note some peculiar properties. It feeds people in the midst of desperation, confusion, anger, and regret. It cannot be stored up, but is instead gathered day by day; indeed, if any is left remaining, it is described as quickly rotting and melting away.

When Jesus describes himself as this manna, as this bread from heaven, I think we can learn about how to approach him from this example. The food given, the bread of heaven, this Christ, is offered to those lowly, sick, weak, and sinful. And this manna is not something to be encountered a single day and horded up, but rather sustenance to gather in the course of each and every day.

The season of Eastertide fascinates me, because, it’s a rather mysterious one. We get lots of stories from Acts, of the Apostles boldly going out, but that’s not chronologically what happens. That going out only really happens at Pentecost, at the very end of Eastertide. Until then, the followers of Jesus were in this liminal state, this mystery, this place of learning and receiving wisdom from the resurrected Christ. It is good to act, but if we are too eager to do acts, we might miss the reality of the resurrection, we might fail to sufficiently inhabit, to sufficiently eat and drink of, this mystery. “Do the work,” this reading seems to say. “Do the hard work of believing, of being transformed, of beholding the Church that is Christ’s Body.” Do not horde it up for yourselves to go out and do other things; gather it daily.

The resurrection did not eliminate all confusion, frustration, uncertainty, and anger from the disciples. Easter does not magically make those feelings go away. Easter does not eliminate all sin and grief, within us or among us. What Easter did, what Easter does, is fulfill the promise that, even amidst these trials, we will be sustained. The season of Easter is all about life. So eat. Drink. Do the things that are necessary for life. Resurrection is not merely an event that happened, after which we all go on with our lives; it is the initiation, the first fruits of life made new, about which we still have a great deal to learn.

Br. Jack Crowley

John 21:1-19

One Friday afternoon many years ago, my boss called me into his office. Of course, immediately I thought I was being fired! I had only been working at this school for a few weeks, and on that particular week, I had made a minor mistake. It was such a minor mistake that I honestly don’t even remember what it was, but what I do remember is that silent walk from my classroom to my boss’s office. All the students had gone home and most of the teachers had left.

That walk from my classroom to my boss’ office took maybe all of fifteen seconds, but in the course of those fifteen seconds, it felt like my whole life flashed before my eyes. I thought I was going to get fired, I thought about updating my resume, I thought about spending the weekend sending out job applications… I thought and I thought and I thought and I still can’t believe how much thinking I jammed into those fifteen seconds of silence.

When I finally sat down in front of my boss, he smiled at me and took a long inhale, and said something like “Jack, just wanted to say how glad I am we hired you. Things really seem to be going well with you working here.” I don’t remember exactly what he said, but we chatted for a while, and he told me to have a good weekend. I just remember leaving his office thinking to myself oh thank God, I still have a job.

The point I’m trying to make with this story is that our minds can go crazy in silence. When we don’t know the whole picture or know what’s coming, silence can cause a whole lot of problems. In silence, our minds can warp, distort, project, assume, and catastrophize whatever is going on in our lives. In our walk with God, we have to learn how to deal with silence. If we don’t learn how to deal with silence, we run the risk of never being fully present to God.

Our Gospel passage this morning has one of my favorite examples of silence in scripture. This was actually the passage I chose for my life profession. The story goes that Jesus has been resurrected from the dead and appears to his Disciples on the shore when they were out fishing on a boat. The famously naked Simon Peter hears that Jesus is on the shore, puts on clothes and jumps into the water to swim to Jesus. Then the rest of the Disciples come to shore on their boat to see Jesus at a charcoal fire with fish and bread.

We are told by the Gospel writer that none of the the Disciples dared to ask Jesus who he was because they knew it was the Lord. I love that line. I love trying to feel that stunned silence on the beach with Jesus, that smell of charcoal smoke in the air with that weird feeling of having breakfast after being up all night. I always try to imagine what I would say to Jesus in such a moment, but I always come back with stunned silence. The thing I love most about this scene is Jesus reaches across the silence to feed his Disciples breakfast. He does so without saying a word. I always imagine Jesus here exuding this warm, inviting, and loving silence.

I’m sure we’ve all experienced different kinds of silences in our lives. The sacred silence of an empty church, the awkward silence of a fumbled conversation, the tense silence following a confrontation, or that delightful comfortable silence we can have with loved ones. Here in the monastery, it feels like we run the spectrum of silences on a 24-hour cycle.

Our journey with God is punctuated by a spectrum of silences. Sometimes these silences are so welcome. They amplify our mood and make us feel loved and safe. Other times, these silences make us feel cold and abandoned.

So how do you deal with silence on your walk with God? How do you deal with the urge to fill it? It’s one of the best and worst urges we have. We can fill that silence with love, praise, and gratitude. We can also fill that silence with fear, resentment, and guilt.

Whenever I feel overwhelmed by noisy silence, I return to that image of the resurrected Jesus sitting by the charcoal fire. I imagine Jesus looking at me, and me knowing that Jesus knows everything that’s going on in my head. I imagine Jesus still looking at me with love and a knowing eye, reaching across the chatter of my mind to invite me to breakfast in silence.

In our own journey into silence, we must seek the loving presence of God even when it feels like there is nothing there. When we seek the presence of God, then we can be present with God. To be present with God does not have to be earth shattering, it can be as down to earth as a simple breakfast on the beach. To be present with God can be as mundane as to say God give me the strength to get me through this day.

Our journey into silence brings out the best and the worst of us – the worst of our fears and the best of our hopes. Like my walk to my boss’ office, silence can make us feel like our life is over. Like Jesus by the charcoal fire, silence can also make us feel like life is possible again, that everything that has happened up until now is all worth it and is a part of a greater plan with a glory greater than we can ever understand.

We must act like those Disciples around the charcoal fire. We must have the courage to abide in that stunned silence in the presence of God. We must have the faith of those early morning hours to know that even though we do not fully know what will happen in the day in front of us, we at least break our fast in the presence of God. We look to God for nourishment after a long, hard night out at sea. We land on the radical notion that God does in fact love us and that God wants us to love one another, no matter how difficult a task that may seem.

We abide in the silences of our lives because at this point there’s no turning back. We’ve all met God and we all seek to follow God no matter what the cost. No matter how crazy we may feel in our heads, we have not been fired, we still have a job to do. Thank God. Amen.