SSJE Sermons

Judas, Judas – the name Judas has a lot of power. If someone calls you Judas, you know it’s not a good situation. There are few other first names that you can call someone that instantly have such a negative meaning. Whenever we hear the name Judas, we automatically think of nasty things like greed, betrayal, and guilt. We all have our own experiences with these. We cannot get through life without encountering our own little Judases along the way.

In the context of Holy Week, Judas has a lot of power. One of the most jarring experiences of Holy Week is the emotional whiplash going from the triumphant glory of Palm Sunday to the desolate grief of Good Friday. It always begs the questions what went wrong? How could so much change in the course of a few days? Judas, and all that he represents, lies somewhere in the middle of it all.

As we heard in our Gospel passage tonight, Judas is frustrated on many levels. After Judas witnesses the Anointing of Jesus by Mary, which in my opinion is one of the most beautiful and intimate scenes in the Bible, Judas responds by verbally expressing his frustration. Judas said that the perfume used to anoint Jesus could have been sold and that money could have been given to the poor. We are told by the Gospel writer that Judas is lying, he is really frustrated because he would have stolen some of that money. No matter what the actual source of frustration was for Judas, the fact is that he went on to betray Jesus not long after this incident.

Every Holy Week, I take some time to pray with this scene. I try to get in the heart and mind of Judas as he witnessed Mary take her hair and wipe Jesus’ perfumed feet. I try to imagine Judas filled with frustration as the air filled with a gorgeous smell. I try to think the same frustrating thoughts Judas must have had – thoughts of money, schemes, and feigned righteousness. I try to follow that frustration all the way to that fateful kiss Judas shared with Jesus at Gethsemane.

Every year, I emerge from my prayers of this scene with the same conclusion, frustration is dangerous. Frustration is dangerous and contagious. Frustration makes us do things we would not normally do. Frustration makes us forget who we are and blindly focus on what we want to happen. Frustration is the seed of betrayal.

So what do we do with frustration? How do we stop our frustration from spreading? How do we keep the devil at bay in a world often fueled by frustration?

Start by being honest with God, brutally honest. Ever since Adam tried to hide in the garden, we human beings have a weird tendency to hide ourselves, or at least parts of ourselves, from God. The funny thing is we think we can get away with it. Judas was not honest with Jesus and Jesus knew it. Jesus knew full well what Judas was really up to.

So be honest with God about your frustration. God already knows how you feel so you might as well be honest about it. Trying to hide it or deny it will only make things worse.

Second, check your greed at the door. I’m not just talking about greed for money, power, status or whatever, I’m talking about the greed we all have for what we want to happen. Frustration is born in the gap between our desires and reality. Our desires and reality will never fully meet and how we react to that gap determines so much of our life with God. Develop a habit of obedience in accepting the way of Jesus, especially when your way of doing things doesn’t match where God is calling you.

Finally, submit your life to the cross. Frustration is crucifying. Frustration is painful. Frustration pins us down and lifts us up exposed to the elements. The good news is that if you can take the pain and abide in the cross, you will be unbeatable.

Always remember that people have been trying to stop Jesus since before he was even born. They have all failed. We gather here tonight in victory. We know the power of God’s love is stronger than the power of evil.

Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

Unsettled and uncertain, disoriented, lost,

These lines, from a newly composed hymn we’ll sing together at the end of this service, speak so clearly to the sense that so many of us have today. Disoriented, lost, without means of discerning where we are—let alone where we’re heading. The expectation that our daily life—our routines, or waking up and going to work and returning home and going to sleep and everything in between—can provide some measure of meaning and stability threatened. Loss of livelihood, fear, the invasion of actions and principles that are so contrary to what we hold dear: we all too easily find ourselves in a place where “no confidence consoles us or trust in anyone.”

As clearly as these words speak to our own circumstances, I can’t help but see reflected in them also the figure of the prodigal son. I can’t help but imagine him taking his share of the inheritance and going to a far-off country and encountering there . . . well, disorientation and uncertainty, a life unmoored and confounding. That he had agency, that this situation resulted in part from his own poor choices, is true, but secondary to the forces beyond his control that made the effect of these choices so dramatic.

While we may not make the same choices as the younger son, I’m sure that many of us can sympathize with his plight because many of us have been to a similar place. Away from comfort and familiarity, risking the new, we may encounter forces beyond our control that make even trivial bad decisions seem catastrophic.

But if in the words of the hymn I can see the younger brother, I can also see in them the elder, the one who stayed. He decided to stay—with the familiar, if not always comfortable—and his expectation of reward, or even just meaning, for doing so is seemingly threatened by another force outside his control—not a severe famine, but a father’s love. A father’s love and care and welcome for another, love and care and welcome that he feels has been withheld from him.

If many of us can sympathize with the younger son, I’d dare to say that many of us may identify with the elder son. The loyal employee who sticks with a company long beyond their own self-interest is served; the loving spouse who has sacrificed their career; the dutiful child holding off on living their own life. These and so many others like them are stereotypical characters—stereotypical, but relatable and familiar, because so many of us have or will come to see ourselves at least in part in them.

For the elder son, the confounding of daily life comes when it seems to him that his decision to remain is not enough, that his slaving away in the fields will never make him worthy. If the younger son experienced the shock of adverse circumstances during a severe famine, the elder confronts something more terrifying: that his entire life may have been built on a mistaken assumption of what gives that life meaning.

Talk about unsettled and uncertain.

Both these brothers experience a “coming back to self.” Feeding pigs, dreaming of eating what they eat, the younger brother remembers the food provided to his father’s hired hands. He acknowledges his need to eat, and he determines to say to his father that he has repented of his sins and to ask to be brought on as a hired hand.

The elder brother experiences his own coming back to self: his sudden awareness that the assumptions of his life may have been wrong. He is angry and resentful: “For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command.” I stayed. Where’s my celebration?

If the younger brother recognizes his need for material security, the elder recognizes something more profound: the need to know that what he has chosen in life, what he has done, all his labor and toil, matters.

Where I think so many of us—here in this Chapel, in our city, our country, our world—find ourselves this morning is understanding that these two brothers aren’t competing ways of life but complementary articulations of our own hunger: hunger for some measure of happiness and security, and hunger to know that, for all our failings—whether through bad decisions or mistaken assumptions, through self-serving confession or anger and resentment—to know that, for all our failings, our lives and what we do in them matter.

The good news is not that we won’t make mistakes, not that we won’t be selfish, not that we won’t be angry or resentful. The good news of this parable, the good news of the Gospel, is that it is in those very failings that God meets us, as the father meets his sons—meets his sons in love, and bids them be transformed by love. The good news is knowing that this welcoming and transforming love, in an unsettled and uncertain world, is absolutely primary.

 “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you,” the younger brother begins, “I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” He can’t even finish his rehearsed confession. But it doesn’t matter; what matters is that he has returned, and been met by love. His father is already calling for the finest robe and the fatted calf to welcome his son home, his wayward, prodigal son, the son who left, the son who died and is alive again.

And to the elder son, in his anger and resentment, the father confirms that his  entire life is built on a mistaken assumption—the assumption that he ever had something to prove, that he ever had to do something to make himself worthy, that he ever had to do anything other than being absolutely himself: “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.” What devastating, heartbreaking honesty. What devastating, heartbreaking, welcoming love, welcoming his son to a transformed understanding of what it really means to remain, to abide.

As the father exhorts his older brother to “celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found,” so does God bid us to be beacons of welcoming and transforming love. To lay aside our anger and resentment toward those whom we feel have wasted their chance, whom we feel don’t deserve welcome. To look on them with the eyes of love, with whom we abide and who is always with us, whose all is already ours. Knowing ourselves to be loved, knowing them to be, too. And as “ambassadors for Christ,” attempting, in the final words of our hymn, “day by day to live the holy promise of what we sing and pray.”

“Day by day.” We will go astray, we will operate under mistaken assumptions, we will come to ourselves and return and confess and rage against unfairness. We will be met by love and be charged, day by day, to take love as our chart and compass in this unsettled and uncertain world. And we will be challenged to learn, day by day, to look through love’s eyes, to see a universe full of creatures waiting to be welcomed and transformed.

Amen.

[1] “Unsettled and uncertain,” words by Carl. P. Daw Jr., © 2025.

Br. Jamie Nelson, SSJE

Luke 18:9-14

“Comparisons are odious.”

Have you heard that old proverb before? It’s meant to remind us that weighing our own lives against other people’s lives is harmful and ultimately has negative consequences for both parties.

We all have moments when we compare ourselves to others. And in “we all,” I certainly include myself. On the one hand, we say, “at least I’m not like them;” on the other hand, we say, “if only I was like them!” The former leads to a false sense of superiority by looking down on others; the latter, to a false sense of inferiority by looking up to others.

The gospel writer recounts Jesus telling a parable about two men praying in the Jerusalem temple. One man meets the external markers for righteousness and knows it, and the other man falls far short and knows his need for God’s mercy.

The first man’s prayer is not so much a prayer to God as it is an opportunity for the man to sing his own praises. He recounts his zealous accomplishments – fasting far more and giving far more than his religious tradition mandates.

To be clear, almsgiving, fasting, and praying are all good practices when used as expressions of devotion to God and love for neighbor – that’s why they’ve traditionally been emphasized by the church during Lent.

The question at stake, though, is why is this man fasting and almsgiving? Is it out of devotion to God and love of neighbor, or is it to seek validation in his peers’ eyes?

He then builds up his ego by comparing himself to thieves, adulterers, and his fellow worshipper, the second man.

The second man is not comparing himself to the first, for he knows where he stands before God. He is a sinner, and he recognizes it. He makes his living by collaborating with the Roman occupation and by exploiting his fellow Jews. Unlike the first man, the second man is not proud of what he’s done. In his great humility, he is conscious only of his desperate need for God’s great mercy.

Jesus shared this parable with a particular audience. We are told that he was speaking with “some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt.” Sounds rather like the first man, wouldn’t you say?

What do you think Jesus’s invitation to them might have been, upon hearing the parable?

What invitation do you hear as you listen to the parable today, in Lent 2025?

Let us give thanks for a God who knows us, loves us, and is ever ready to share mercy and grace with us.

Amen.

Br. Curtis Almquist

Psalm 95:6-11

In our first reading the prophet Jeremiah is speaking to ancient Israel more than 2,600 years ago; however, the church has remembered these words in the Canon of Christian scripture because of their timeliness and authority for us today.[i] Jeremiah’s words are not just about from where we have come. They are God’s words to us now, coming to us from God’s future.[ii]

Jesus does not nullify Jeremiah’s prophecy; Jesus embodies Jeremiah’s prophecy in real time. Jesus affirms we are to obey God’s voice and walk only in the way God commands. If so, God will be our God and it will be well with us in our own day. But look around. It is not well with us today. Jeremiah’s prophecy has a cogency for us:

Jeremiah prophecies, that is, he speaks on God’s behalf: “This is the nation that did not obey the voice of the Lord their God, and did not accept discipline; truth has perished…”[iii]

Jürgen Moltmann, the much-esteemed German theologian, reminds us that there are two Latin words for the future: futurum and adventus.[iv] Futurum is a future that we project, such as the cacophony of “news” that fills our media every day about what is happening, or might happen, or will happen if so-and-so does such-and-such. Futurum. Whereas the word adventus is a future that comes toward us from beyond ourselves. Adventus is about the future of God. Adventus is about our own vocation, our own calling, to participate in the future of God. Which is how we are to hear the prophecy of Jeremiah. Our participating in the future of God: adventus.

What is God about? What is the future of God? Momentarily, when we pray the Lord’s Prayer that it “be on earth as it shall be in heaven,” how shall it be in heaven? How does that inform what we are to be here on earth… now? It an important question: What are we to be, now? We must listen to God so that our hearts be tender, open, and receptive, not hard and cynical.[v] What are we to be, now, as we participate in God’s future? And that clarity, that calling, will inform what we are to do “on earth” in these very troubled and opportune times.

[i] God’s call to young Jeremiah to be a prophet came in the 13th year of King Josiah (Jeremiah 1:1-7; 25:3), about year 627 bce.

[ii] Our orientation to the future of God is named is the SSJE Rule of Life, chapters 3, 14, and 39: https://www.ssje.org/worship/rule-of-life-resources/

[iii] Jeremiah 7:28.

[iv]Jürgen Moltmann (1926-2024), a German professor of systematic theology and prolific author, is particularly remembered for his Theology of Hope.

[v] Psalm 95:8-9.

Feast of Saint Jospeh

Luke 2:41-52

Occasionally we Brothers are asked which of our three vows is the hardest to follow. Most people think we are going to say celibacy. The correct answer, in my experience, is obedience.

Obedience is always harder, more nuanced, and more unpredictable than you think it will be. Obedience lives in that tricky intersection of listening for God’s will, searching your own conscious, and then living your life as best you can. Saint Joseph, whose feast we keep today, lived in this intersection.

One of the most mysterious parts of Saint Joseph’s obedience is that we really do not know how he felt about it. We literally never hear from Joseph. He doesn’t have a single word of dialogue in scripture. Although we never verbally hear from Joseph, his life and his obedience speaks for itself. As our collect of the day says, Joseph is known for his uprightness of life and his obedience to God’s command. Saint Joseph knew what his vocation in life was, to be the guardian of God’s incarnate son, and he did just that.

The life of Saint Joseph reminds us that much of the work we do in obedience to God is done in silence. Much of what we do internally will never be known to anyone but ourselves and God. Much of our plans, our thoughts, and our emotions will never go beyond our own head, but that does not mean they are not important. When we are trying our best to be obedient to God, all that work is important.

In today’s world, the notion of a quiet, disciplined, and obedient life is almost countercultural. There are times in today’s world in which whoever is the loudest, gets the most attention, and says the most ends up gaining a lot of power. To do the opposite, to know and live with humility, and to respect the balance of speech and silence, is not easy. Yet we must always ask ourselves what does God want from us? To make a lot of noise or to do God’s will?

Finally, whenever we talk about obedience to God, it is important to remember that God loves us. God’s love knows the intentions of our hearts and what we are trying to do with our lives. God’s love knows and understands when we have fallen short and been disobedient. The important thing is to keep coming back to that love of God and to keep listening for what God’s will is for us, and to have the courage to be obedient to that call.

Saint Joseph knew the importance and the challenge of obedience. His vocation was important beyond words. He lived through the challenges of what he was called to do, may we have the grace to do the same. Amen.

Br. David Vryhof

Matthew 23:1-12

Preachers love to repeat the gentle words of Jesus that assure us of God’s love and faithfulness.  It’s not as easy to listen to his critical words, especially when they are directed at religious leaders.

In our gospel reading tonight, Jesus denounces the Scribes and Pharisees, the religious leaders of his day.  The criticism can be understood on three levels.  First, the gospels reflect the real conflicts that Jesus had with religious leaders in his own day, many of whom were not Pharisees.  Second, they also reflect the real conflict that the early Church had with Jewish authorities.  When Matthew wrote his gospel towards the end of the first century and following the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 C.E., the Pharisees had risen in power and often were in conflict with early Christians.  Third, this portion of Matthew’s Gospel is also aimed at early Church leaders, lest they fall into the same traps the Scribes and Pharisees did.[i]

What is it that Jesus is criticizing here?

First, it is that these religious leaders do not practice what they teach.  Jesus is not faulting them for thinking carefully about how to keep the law or for passing along their tradition to others.  “Do whatever they teach you and follow it,” Jesus says, “but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach” (v. 3).  The words coming out of their mouths are right, but their code of conduct runs contrary to what they teach, and their bad example negatively impacts the lives of those they lead.  Having witnessed the unfaithfulness of Church leaders in our own day, we know that nothing undermines the gospel more quickly than the scandalous behavior of religious leaders.

Second, they have made the law burdensome and use their authority to find fault with others rather than showing sympathy and support.  In doing this, they contradict the very purpose for which the law was given.  God’s laws are intended for our good, as individuals and as a community.  They are not arbitrary or superfluous but are meant to build up the community and its people by safeguarding health and wholeness for everyone.  Instead, these leaders have made them to be burdens that weigh people down.  They have become exacting and harsh towards the people over whom they have authority, and their teachings no longer give life.

Third, these religious leaders are hypocrites who seek the adulation of others rather than the glory of God. Their focus is on looking good. They strut around in ways that draw attention to themselves; they hunger for honor and prestige. The attention and praise they receive leads them to expect preferential treatment.  Maintaining their image becomes a way of life. “They do all their deeds to be seen by others,” Jesus says (v 5).  “They love to have the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have people call them rabbi” (v. 6-7).

But it shall not be so among you, Jesus says.  Leadership in the community of love that Jesus is bringing about is characterized by humility rather than pride, by the service of others rather than by the cultivation of praise and adulation.  The community of love is based on mutual encouragement and support and its leaders are servants of its members.  Its focus is on God and its leaders point others towards God, assuring them of God’s love and goodness, and supporting them on their journey to God.

All of us are susceptible to these faults that Jesus names in regard to the Scribes and Pharisees.  We can, at times, become enamored of our own selves, puffed up with our own importance, tempted to think more highly of ourselves than we ought.  Jesus calls us to live out our call with humility, love, kindness, truthfulness and authenticity.  We are to imitate Christ, who “came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Matt. 20:28).

[i] Hare, Douglas R.A., Matthew (Interpretation Commentary); (Louisville KY: John Knox Press, 1993), p. 264-5.

Br. Luke Ditewig

Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18

God had promised Abram a son. But years passed and no son. God comes again in a vision and says: “Don’t be afraid.” Abram replies: “What? You haven’t given me a son! So my heir will have to be Eliezer, a slave born in my house.” Maybe Abram blows up more than that and shakes his fist. Maybe he slumps, dejected. Perhaps both. We don’t know the tone. Abram thinks he will have to make do with his own alternative.

God replies with gentleness and grace: No, it won’t be Eliezer. You will have your own son. Look at the stars and count them.  Your descendants will be that numerous. Every night, look up, and you’ll see a reminder of me and my promise. Wait for me.

Beyond Abram’s comprehension, amid confusion, grief, anger, and questions, God kept coming. Later in old age, Sarah bore their son Isaac.

Jesus laments that Jerusalem kills the prophets, God’s messengers, and resists him. Jesus says he is like a mother hen. He longs to gather and shelter us. A mother hen will also confront an enemy with claws to protect her young. Preparing for bed at Compline, we pray: “Hide us under the shadow of your wings.”[i] Even as we run, push, ignore, and fight, God comes to protect, gather, hold, and embrace. As heavenly parent to wayward, confused, and frustrated children, God keeps desiring and gently calling.

Is this your image of God during Lent, one who keeps coming and calling with fortitude and gentleness? Many of us have received an image of God who is a harsh and stern authority          with a pointing finger demanding an apology. Kneeling on marble and fasting might trigger that image.

Remember how we began. “Blessed be the God of our salvation: who bears our burdens and forgives our sins.” “Let us come to the Lord who is full of compassion” Lent does not begin with confession. Lent begins with love. Lent is like a retreat with the purpose to reclaim, renew, and refresh our identity as children whom God loves.

Last Sunday’s gospel recounted Jesus’ long retreat and his temptations in the desert. Jesus went out there from his baptism, where God said: “You are my son, my beloved, with you I am well pleased.” Retreat, Lenten fasting and discipline, and our different order for Lenten worship is all rooted in the love of God who calls us beloved.

From the experience of being loved, we kneel and confess sin. In response to love, we give something up or take something on. In response to love, we let God touch and heal our wounds. Even then, we may still run or fight the risk. Watch what happens. God desires us and keeps coming.

We Brothers say in our Rule of Life: “we shall often have to struggle with our reluctance to be so loved so deeply by God. Christ himself will strive with us … .”[ii] Jesus offers a variety of images to grasp and through them touches us. Try praying with a loving image.

Perhaps a hen as she gathers her young. Imagine God as a hen who gathers us under strong wings in safety. Imagine yourself as a lost lamb with a divine shepherd who calls you by name, searches, finds, and carries you home. Gaze at the stars. Remember other places and seasons gazing at the expanse. Recalling grace in those places and times, trusting God’s grace here and now.

If not chickens or sheep or stars, what image evokes feeling loved for you? Spend time with it trusting, imagining, and asking for a revelation of God’s love.

Hold that imagine in mind in the silence before worship and as you kneel to confess. If giving up something this Lent, remember that loving image as you fast or refrain. If taking on something new, hold that loving image as you do it. Letting go and taking on, kneeling and confessing, are all in response to Love, response to One creatively comes, gently calls, and invites.

Lent begins with love. Soak in it, resting under the wings of hen or climbing on a sturdy rock, being held by a shepherd or embraced by family or friends.            Responding to Love, dare to listen, kneel and confess, pray with images and trust for more. God loves you. God desires you and keeps coming.

[i] Psalm 17:8

[ii] SSJE Rule of Life, Chapter 21: The Mystery of Prayer

Br. Jamie Nelson, SSJE

Matthew 6:7-15

What comes to mind when you hear the word acme?

For people who’ve spent time watching American cartoons, one image that may come to mind is the fictional ACME Corporation found in the story lines of Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner.[1] You may recall that the ACME Corporation’s product line included a jet-propelled pogo stick, rocket-powered roller skates, and other specialized devices.

The cartoon’s use of the word ACME meant “the best in its class,” but the original Greek word referred to the highest point of a mountain, the pinnacle of the peak.

In Matthew’s retelling of the story of Jesus, the gospel passage we just heard recounts Jesus teaching the Lord’s Prayer to a large crowd of people during the long discourse known as the Sermon on the Mount – Mount as in mountain, because it took place on top of a hill. Since the passage occurs in the very middle of the Sermon on the Mount, you might say that the Lord’s Prayer serves as the acme of the story.

So – prayer is at the core of Jesus’s teaching, as prayer is at the core of our spiritual lives.

Prayer is where our relationship with God grows into something real, where it moves from separation and distance into connection and community.

Jesus displays that sense of closeness, scholar & theologian Eugene Peterson writes (Peterson 2008, 168–69), by beginning the prayer with the pronoun “our.”[2] Instead of saying “THE God who is far away,” he says, “Our Father,” thereby personalizing the relationship. He locates God in relationship with us.

And beginning with the word “our” reminds us that we are not alone in our prayer. “Our” means we pray as part of the community centered around Jesus and his teaching. We pray with Jesus and with each other when we pray the Lord’s Prayer.

The body of the prayer consists of six petitions. The first three, which go like this:

“Hallowed be your name,

Your kingdom come,

Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”

place God first. The words orient us to direct our thinking upwards towards God in heaven, recognizing God’s power and holiness, and asking that God’s kingdom may come to earth.

The next petition, “give us this day our daily bread,” requests that we may receive the sustenance that we need in the present moment, just as we will when the kingdom of God Jesus taught about is present in our midst.

In the final two petitions of the prayer, we pray that we may live out that kingdom vision in our lives by forgiving others just as we are forgiven by God and by experiencing protection from the forces and trials that test our reliance on God.

In this story, Jesus teaches us to start our prayer by pausing to remember who God is to us. And once fed out of that relationship of inexhaustible love, we then ask for the strength to live out that love in relationship with others.

In just a few short moments, we will pray the Lord’s Prayer together. As we pray, listen for the invitation – what words or phrases stand out to you tonight?

And here are several suggestions for how to pray the Lord’s Prayer in the future:

First, if reciting this prayer is so familiar to you that it’s easy to overlook the meaning behind it, consider writing it out.

If you speak multiple languages, try praying it aloud in a language different that the language you normally pray it in.

And if this prayer is new to you or still unfamiliar, what a gift you are holding as you explore the words for the first time! Jesus is teaching you about himself through these words that he prayed with us and for us.

Any way you pray it, reciting the Lord’s Prayer shapes us, re-forming us to be part of bringing God’s kingdom to earth.

At the acme of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches us the Lord’s Prayer. May the prayer be for you like the unforgettable view from a mountaintop summit, a relivable memory that guides our lives as followers of Jesus.

Amen.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wile_E._Coyote_and_the_Road_Runner

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

Luke 4:1-13

It feels to me as if a great unraveling is underway in our world – and especially in our own nation.

Perhaps it began years ago, but the recent stripping away of structures and protections that safeguard basic features of our democracy is a sign of its acceleration in recent weeks.

Knowing just how to respond – skillfully, lovingly, and faithfully – is no easy task. There are many temptations to wander down paths that don’t lead to larger life. On the one hand, there is the temptation to “doom scroll”: in the quest for genuine information and analysis, we may end up marinating our hearts in a froth of anger, fear, despair, and cynicism. On the other hand, the temptation may be to tune out entirely, insulating ourselves from the endless, terrible news so that we can simply face the day ahead of us in relative peace.

For most people I know, the predominant feeling is helplessness: a feeling of utter impotence to effect change or stem the tide of so much that is being lost. “What can we actually do?,” is the question I hear the most. It is a question at the center of my own prayerful discernment, and in our discernment as a community.

Part of what we can do – the central part, for us, as followers of Jesus – we are already doing. We are here. You came here this morning with some measure of hope in your heart and a need for God’s mercy and truth. Every warm body and heart counts, and every scrap of hope and ounce of need builds up the Body of Christ.

What does our gospel give us in the midst of this helplessness – here at the beginning of Lent? And how can it reconnect us with our inherent and inalienable power?

From one perspective, we see a Jesus full of strength, conviction, and purpose: filled with the Spirit and driven into his solitary sojourn in the wilderness. After the divine affirmation Jesus has received in his baptism at the river Jordan – complete with a voice from heaven (“You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”) – Jesus seems destined to go from strength to strength, upheld by God’s favor. If this were a retreat before making a Life Profession, we Brothers might say that the primary purpose would be simply confirmation of the call: to settle and deepen into the rightness and confidence of God’s will as it is revealed more and more clearly.

But then there’s Satan. Although Jesus is empowered with a deep and clear intention, he is brought in these forty days to the lowest point of his own human limits and faced with his own barrage of temptations. Being “God’s beloved Son” does not shield him from this foe. To the contrary, it seems to ignite a deeper resentment on the part of the Enemy. Satan levels all his diabolical ingenuity at Jesus, who represents the one true threat to his dominion over the hearts of humankind.

Save for his utter reliance on God, Jesus is quite helpless.

But Jesus chooses to abide in that place. For forty days, he makes his home there – with all who have ever known helplessness, hunger, loneliness, and the temptation to succumb to impulses that would disfigure the divine image within. Rather than exercise divine power in accordance with the insinuated purposes of the Enemy, Jesus abides, resists, and emerges true to God’s plan for him.

The earliest monastics who made their home in the deserts of Egypt, Syria, and Palestine would draw much inspiration from Jesus’ call to abide and resist. They did not simply believe in demons, the way nearly all ancient peoples did. Rather, they knew demons by direct experience: those minions of Satan who manipulate our innermost thoughts and feelings to lead us down paths that do not lead to life. They also knew the power of speaking aloud words that correctly named the offending demon, and the words of Scripture to weave a net of protection and blessing in response to each habitual thought that might ensnare, distract, or even persecute them.

 This may seem like inaccessible or advanced spiritual technology. For some, the desert fathers and mothers are so far removed in space and time that they might as well be Jedi.

Here are a few practices that are imminently possible, and practical:

Cultivate spiritual friendships.

Do you know one other disciple of Jesus whose faith you admire; whose values and way of living reflect the gospel; and to whom you can speak freely and in confidence? Ask that person for help when you are in the midst of trial and temptation. Take the risk of expressing freely the thoughts and feelings that tie you down and leave you less free to fulfill God’s will. Make it clear that the help you are seeking is primarily a listening ear, an open heart, and a companion in prayer – rather than someone to offer well-meaning solutions or commiserate with your worst impulses. You may find the idea terrifying, humiliating, or exposing. Ask yourself why. Is this a protective impulse of your ego? Is Satan deploying the demon of pride to convince you to keep those thoughts and feelings to yourself – where they can consume your spirit under cover of darkness? When they are named for what they are, externalized in the presence of another Christian, these habitual thoughts shrink back to their actual size – much smaller and far less powerful than the soul who clings to Jesus.

Spiritual direction or sacramental confession are more formal versions of this kind of trustworthy encounter, with a person who has been trained and authorized within the church to provide such listening as a ministry. Your primary need may be to know God’s forgiveness, but you can’t seem to find that broad, open place of Resurrection without help. Receiving it in the private and confidential rite of reconciliation– mediated through the words of another humble sinner like yourself—can lift untold burdens from our souls.

One practice in which I have participated and been trained to lead is a Truth Mandala, or Truth-Telling Circle. The Truth Mandala’s purpose is to create a safe and well-contained space to ritually express challenging and heavy emotions around the state of our living earth. In the center of the circle are four objects: a heavy stick, a stone, a pile of dead leaves, and an empty bowl. The stick signifies our anger; the stone, our fear; the pile of dead leaves, our sorrow; and the empty bowl, our need and emptiness. A piece of fabric signifies any other feeling they are in touch with. One by one, each participant comes forward, grasps whichever object they choose, and voices these feelings aloud, while the circle bears silent witness. In the Truth Mandala, polite elderly women raise their voices and stomp their feet. Stoic-looking men accept permission to open the floodgates of their tears. Young people voice profound fear of an earth their unborn children will not be able to inhabit.

Guiding this exercise with a church group yesterday, one young woman simply grasped the dead leaves with both hands and wept for several moments in silence. We wept with her. Participants learn that they are not crazy for feeling as they do; that there are many, many others; that speaking truth unlocks hidden power; and that in speaking these truths, they speak for all life. The other face of our anger is our passion for justice. The other face of our fear is the courage it takes to speak it. The other face of our sorrow is our love – we only grieve what we are losing if we have come to love it. And the other face of our emptiness is open space for new possibility to emerge.

The desert monastic Evagrius of Pontus wrote: “The monk is one who is separated from all and united to all.” We read in our Rule of Life, “The pioneers of monasticism believed that the monk was called to the margin of society in order to hear within himself the deepest cries of humanity, and to discover a profound unity with all living beings in their struggle to attain ‘the freedom of the glory of the children of God.’

In whatever form you are called to abide and resist, the contemplative life of spiritual struggle with Satan is always politically subversive. Self-awareness, sharpened and refined by patient hours of self-offering to God, produces people who cannot be coerced by the powers of this world. They are rooted in a much higher Power and breathe the air of the Spirit.

Far from a self-absorbed withdrawal from the pain of the world, to accept the call to follow Jesus into the desert asks that we open ourselves wider than we thought possible to the suffering of all.

In this season of Lent, join Jesus in his helpless, desert fast. Join your helplessness to his. And in doing so, watch and wait for the tide of your spirit to turn, as you realize: You are not helpless. You are endowed with power that is not your own, but it flows through you. God empowers you to use it. We all need your power now.

I conclude with a poem by the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke:

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,

then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,

Go to the limits of your longing.

Embody me.

Flare up like flame

and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.

Just keep going. No feeling is final.

Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is a country they call life.

You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

Br. Curtis Almquist

Isaiah 58:9b-14

During Lent, the Hebrew scriptures continually remind us of the words of the prophets. In ancient Israel, the prophets were tolerated, sometimes. The great rabbi, Abraham Joshua Heschel, said: “To the patriots, [the prophets] seem pernicious; to the pious multitude, [the prophets seem] blasphemous; to those in authority, [the prophets seem] seditious.”[i]

The prophets, such as Isaiah, hear God’s voice and look at the world from God’s perspective. The prophets speak of God’s personal and intimate relationship to the world, how God is deeply affected by humankind. God is full of compassion, tenderness, and sorrow for what has gone awry in our world.[ii]

Secondly, the prophets remind us that God is never neutral. God is always partial to justice.[iii] So we hear from Isaiah’s prophecy a qualifier whether God is with us, whether we will know God’s presence. Isaiah prophesies, “You shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and God will say, Here I am… if.  “If you cease to speak evil, if you offer your food to the hungry, and if you satisfy the needs of the afflicted…”  Then. Then…!  Then we will experience God Emmanuel, God with us. God is always partial to justice for the poor and afflicted, for the homeless and hopeless.

Of course Jesus was formed by the prophetic witness. The very words Jesus speaks to begin his public ministry he quotes from this prophecy of Isaiah.[iv] Jesus’ attention is galvanized around the needs of the least, and the last, and the lost.

To quote again Rabbi Heschel: God is “the most moved mover,” who is deeply affected by human life. God is emotionally engaged with us. God suffers when human beings are hurt, so that when I hurt another person, I injure God.[v] Injury – whether we injure or whether we are injured – informs or deforms our relationship with God. Isaiah and the other prophets consistently speak to this.

In our baptism we explicitly recognize that God has come to live within us. We are God’s temple.[vi] And our values must be God’s values.

Meanwhile, there are spiritual forces in this world that rebel against God, and evil powers which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God.[vii] Look at what’s happening all around us! We today must look; we must pray for protection, our own and others’; and we must act with the presence and power of God within us. How are we to act? Each of us has a different reach. But we must reach.

[i] The Prophets (1962), by Abraham Joshua Heschel, p. 23. As a young man, Rabbi Heschel (1907-1972) was arrested by the Gestapo and deported to Poland, where much of his family died in concentration camps. Heschel escaped, eventually arriving in the United States. Heschel believed that the teachings of the Hebrew prophets were a clarion call for social action. He worked in civil rights, marching in Selma alongside Martin Luther King, Jr.  As an academic he was a prolific author. He emphasized the mutually dependent relationship between God, humankind, and all the rest of creation.

[ii] Heschel called this the divine pathos, i.e., sympathy or pity.

[iii] Heschel, p. 298.

[iv] The Gospel according to Luke 4:16-21remembers Jesus’ saying that he fulfills the prophecy of Isaiah (61:1-9ff).

[v] Heschel, p. 375.

[vi] 1 Corinthians 6:19-20.

[vii] The Book of Common Prayer (1979), p. 302.