SSJE Sermons

Genesis 1:20-2:4a

This past weekend, I took advantage of the winter storm and went snowshoeing for the first time in my life. The day was clear, and the blanketing of snow transformed the woods into vast expanse of white interrupted only by naked trees, meandering creeks, and animal prints.

And two parallel tracks, left by a cross-country skier, cutting through the woods expertly and daringly along paths I would never have thought to take on my own. But I did take them, obliterating the delicate imprint of skis with my own large and cumbersome tracks.

The great account of humanity’s creation by God in the book of Genesis notes that we were made in God’s “image and likeness” (cf. Gen 1:26, 27) These two words, image and likeness, have been subject to all kinds of interpretation, but for me the most compelling is understanding them in terms of pattern and imagination. That humanity was created with a God-shaped pattern that allows us to imagine God, to relate to God, rightly. The consequence of sin and all the ways that we lead ourselves away, or are led away from God, is to erode that pattern, or to impose on it patterns of our own creation. The imprint of snowshoes wiping away or marking over the ski tracks.

If in the creation account in Genesis we hear of humanity’s promise to bear the image of God, our Gospel lesson from Mark is a sobering reminder of what so often happens when we bring to bear our own limited humanity on the things of God. “Why do your disciples not live according to the traditions of the elders?” (Mk 7:5). Why do they eat with defiled hands? Why don’t they follow time-honored rules?

Jesus’s response draws their attention from human creations to God’s creation: “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition!” (Mk 7:9). His point is ethical, especially on the honoring of parents, but following the Genesis account this evening, I see it also as imaginative. If our human creations—our ways of doing things, of talking about things, of relating to things . . . our footprints in the snow—so elide God’s creations, so “void the word of God,” (Mk. 7:13) if they so distract us from the commandment of God, then how are we to imagine God rightly, to bear God’s image?

I’d like to suggest that we can start with ourselves, by recognizing in fact how limited, how impoverished our imaginations are now, compared to the greatness with which we were created: God has made us “but little lower than the angels” and has adorned us with “glory and honor” (Ps 8:6). Psalm 8 can be embarrassing to hear because its vision of humanity’s place in creation feels so much grander than we have any right to. How can we claim this great place when we see the smallness and pettiness that surround us and threaten to bury us? How embarrassing is it to hear that we are given mastery, or “dominion” in the language of Genesis (Gen 1:26, 28), knowing our depressing track record of authority and dominion—whether five hundred years ago or five days ago? It can feel embarrassing, because with everything we know about who we are, how could we possibly merit this grand vision?

But if this grandness embarrasses us, it also challenges us, challenges us to imagine humanity’s place in the context of God’s great creative vision, and not our own: “O LORD our Governor. . . . When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars you have set in their courses, what is man that you should be mindful of him?” (Ps 8:1, 4-5). Who are we, that God should be mindful of us? And God is mindful of us. What does that say about us?

God sees us—sees you, sees me—as so much more than we may imagine ourselves to be. We worry and stress and fight and see and experience the worst in each other, and in ourselves, because we cannot imagine that our smallness and pettiness and limitations are not who God created us to be, but who we have created ourselves to be.

God has created us to be so much greater.

And though we may be satisfied to tromp through the woods in snowshoes, God has created us to ski.

Amen.

Br. Luke Ditewig

Presentation of our Lord

Luke 2:22-40

I didn’t know what it was at first, a small movement caught my eye. In the dusk at Emery House, across the field in the chapel beyond, the flame of a single candle flickered. Small yet powerful it was visible much further than I expected. The Light of Christ. Thanks be to God.

Today we celebrate the Presentation of Jesus in the temple, forty days after Christmas. The law of Moses gave rituals for the new child and mother forty days after birth. Mary and Joseph went to the temple for these. They were amazed by two patient, persistent, long-faithful saints, Simeon and Anna. Over a long life, they trusted God’s promises and looked forward with hope These two were gifted to recognized Jesus as the Messiah and spoke about him, praising God.

Imagine an elderly man holding an infant with joy. Simeon rejoices not in what he accomplished but in God’s actions by coming in Jesus and letting Simeon witness. Like Mary’s Magnificat, Simeon’s prayer Luke records as a prayer for the church. We end Compline, our bedtime prayer, with The Song of Simeon. Mary responded to the angel’s news that she would bear Jesus by saying “Let it be with me according to your word.” Here Simeon prays the same line. “You are dismissing me” or “you have set me free according to your word.” Accepting the impossible and the natural, that the Savior of the world comes as an infant and to them. Anna, a prophet devoted to prayer shows long commitment and insight echoing Hannah, mother of Samuel.

Classic images portray this scene with full bodies of the key adults. In the bulletin and up front is a recent image by Lauren Wright Pittman. Have a look.[i] We mostly see Jesus with Simeon’s hands and arms and Anna’s hands pointing to Jesus.

“The Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory … .”[ii] God came down into the world through an old barren couple Zechariah and Elizabeth, through a young, poor, disgraced couple Mary and Joseph, welcomed by outcast shepherds, elderly prophets, and foreign wizards. The Savior of the world comes as a vulnerable child amid oppression and tyranny.

Jesus comes to liberate not grabbing power and wealth but identifying with the poor and needy. Jesus proclaims good news of mercy, compassion, and forgiveness. From infancy, Jesus’ path leads to the cross. Lent is coming. Simeon blesses Mary and says “a sword will pierce your own soul too.” You son will die before you in a tragic way.

Jesus is, in Simeon’s words, God’s salvation for the whole world “a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.”       The “true light which enlightens everyone … .”[iii] Today’s feast is also called Candlemas from this text of Jesus as the light. We use many candles for our prayer. They break through the dark and as for me out on a field can be seen further than we expect. More than cozy, or personal, or for safe keeping, candlelight is for sharing.

As Jesus said, one doesn’t light a lamp and put it under a basket. One puts it out on stand to give light to a whole room. Jesus told to his followers: “You are the light of the world. … Let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”[iv] God told Abraham, you are blessed to be a blessing for all peoples. Following Jesus, we keep receiving God’s healing, saving work. As we will sing: “fill me radiancy divine.”[v] We help manifest Good News: that others perceive with their senses. “Let your light shine.”

Amid the darkness of these days, amid fear and chaos, may we be faithful like Mary and Joseph, Simeon and Anna, persistently trust in God’s salvation coming further. Continue to share the light by standing up to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly.[vi] Speak the truth. Weep with those who weep. Be kind and compassionate. Welcome the stranger. Fix your eyes on Jesus, the true Light, who is here for us and the restoration of the whole world.

[i] https://sanctifiedart.org/advent-and-christmas-prints/center-christ?rq=center%20christ We printed this in the bulletin with a one-time license. Thanks to A Sanctified Art for their great ministry.

[ii] John 1:14

[iii] John 1:9

[iv] Matthew 5:14-16

[v] Christ whose glory fills the skies. The Hymnal 1982 #7

[vi] Micah 6:8

Br. Jamie Nelson, SSJE

Mark 4:35-41

Have you ever visited a church which had a model ship hanging from its ceiling?

Such ships can be found throughout coastal parts of Western Europe, particularly where people have traditionally made their living from the sea.[1] These wooden offerings testify to safe returns from perilous voyages and serve as tokens of gratitude for God’s protection and mercy.[2]

We may not have a model ship hanging from the ceiling here in the monastery chapel, but other features of this space still invite us to ponder the image of a boat. Here’s what I mean:

If you hang around Episcopal churches long enough, you likely have heard someone referring to a location in the church called the nave. That word, “nave,” is the name given to the central part of a worship space where the congregation is seated. Nave comes from the Latin word navis, which means “ship.” [3]

So where is the ship in a nave? If you are sitting in the monastery chapel and look up, you can see our chapel’s vaulted ceiling with its wooden trusses.  The shape is designed to call to mind the inverted hull of a large vessel, signifying the Church Universal, symbolically carrying us and all Christians across the turbulent waters of life on a voyage towards God’s redeemed world. In our chapel, the symbolism is reinforced by the builders’ choice to use stout beams repurposed from an old bridge which carried our neighbors of yesteryear safely across the Mystic River.

In today’s reading, a swift and terrible storm struck while Jesus & his disciples crossed the Sea of Galilee. The disciples’ fear of the storm wasn’t unfounded; it came from a lifetime of experience. Four of them made their living by fishing that lake. They knew the dangerous power of strong waves stirred up by fierce winds coming off the eastern hills. They likely had grieved for friends or family who drowned after their ship sunk in a similar squall.

Yet despite the deadly peril, their teacher remained asleep in the stern, exhausted after teaching the multitudes. The disciples’ cry was one of frustration, likely even anger at Jesus – “Do you not care that we are perishing?”

How often have you found yourself in a time of deep desperation and felt like God was asleep in the stern, that God didn’t appear to notice your suffering?

I know I’ve been there.

But Jesus did notice, and he did act. He asserted his power over the storm, and reminded his followers to let go of fear and hold on to faith.

It might feel like we are in a terrible sudden storm of our own this month, buffeted about by the winds and waves of wildfire, war, political upheaval reducing people’s lives to expendable political capital, and all the other sources of suffering close to our hearts and in our prayers.

Amidst it all, Jesus reminds us to place our trust in him. Jesus, who is our Savior, is always ready to support us, offering strength, hope, and the peace which passes our understanding.

Can you think of a time when Jesus’s gift of strength, hope, and peace has been made visible in your life?

Is there an event from your past which might have inspired you to hang a model ship from the chapel ceiling?

Amen.

[1] See photos here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Models_of_ships_in_churches

[2] Such offerings belong to a category called “ex-votos,” from the Latin ex voto suscepto, “from the vow made.” They take different forms across cultures, such as crutches left behind by healed Lourdes pilgrims, Mexican folk art votive paintings, etc.

[3] This same Latin root is where the word “navy” comes from.

Hebrews 10:32-39

One mid-December evening, I remember passing through the sanctuary of my former parish, and stopping dead in my tracks. In the darkened building, amber light streamed through the window, falling delicately on the wood of the pews. I was certain that in this glimpse of gentle and beautiful light I was experiencing God’s presence, a quiet revelation of God’s own Beauty. I’ve never forgotten it, and I frequently pray with the memory.

In this season after the Epiphany, we hear about and celebrate God’s other self-revelations, in the person of Jesus Christ. His Baptism, the wedding at Cana, the Transfiguration—all moments that revealed God’s presence and activity in the world, in a particular place, at a particular moment in time.

For many of us—perhaps, even most of us—we will encounter God in quieter, in subtler ways than a voice from heaven, or transformed water, or a vision of glory. We will instead encounter and experience and know God in fleeting and ephemeral moments—in the fall of light, or a sound faintly heard, or a memory or intuition briefly held. Our attention to—our noticing of these moments comprise our lifelong pilgrimage, not in a quest for thin places but in our attentiveness to thin moments.

This noticing, this attentiveness, of God’s presence and activity in our world and our lives is vital, because times withoutmay threaten to overwhelm us. Our Rule notes that we all will experience periods of dryness in prayer and the seeming absence of God. Our noticing and recalling of those thin moments give us strength and assurance that in those inevitable times of dryness and seeming absence, God is with us.

But it’s not only that. In our own time, when we face uncertainty and fear and suffering from so many directions, our reading from Hebrews is so helpful for framing what our own attentiveness to God’s presence and activity means not only to us and to others. “Recall those earlier days when, after you had been enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to abuse and persecution, and sometimes being partners with those so treated” (Heb 10:32-33). Our assurance that God is present with us gives us the strength and courage to endure, and gives us the strength to be present to others.

How have you noticed these thin moments in your life? And how has that noticing helped to make you present for others in their time of need?

Amen.

Br. Curtis Almquist

Thomas Aquinas, Friar and Theologian

The Wisdom of Solomon 7:7-14 

Thomas Aquinas, whom we remember today, personified what Jesus called a “scribe trained for the kingdom of heaven.”[i] Aquinas was born in Italy in year 1225 and died at just under 50 years old. He became a Dominican Friar, and was a scholar, theologian, philosopher, and prolific author. He had a photographic memory and mind.[ii] In 25 years, he dictated 50 folio volumes, about 50,000 pages, the equivalent of 500 short modern books. All of this was done with the quill pens of his scribes.

His most famous work, the Summa Theologica, probed the nature of God and God’s creation. Creation reflects God’s glory, God’s beauty, God’s order, God’s meaning. For Aquinas, God’s revelation was not just in the past, nor just in the present. God’s revelation is ongoing and continues into the future. So we must keep our minds open to God’s continual revelation. There is always more. And because of this, Aquinas did not see any inconsistency or disharmony between reason and revelation. God will continue to enlighten us if we will only be attentive.[iii].

How then should we live? Aquinas said, with “virtue,” which is certainly not a word in our everyday vocabulary. However “virtue” has a cogency for our own day when so much and so many are lost. How then shall we live? With virtue. What Aquinas called “Cardinal Virtues”: moral qualities we can and should develop:

Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, and Temperance.

Aquinas also wrote extensively about “Theological Virtues,” which are not to be developed, but rather to be welcomed and received as gifts from God: the gift of Faith, the belief in God and God’s revelations on earth; the gift of Hope, which is the desire for life beyond this life, that is, eternal life; and the gift of Love, the love of God and love of our neighbor. Who is our neighbor? Everyone. God’s gifts to us all: Faith, Hope, and Love.

A few months before he died, Aquinas  had a profound mystical experience of Jesus in the celebration of the Holy Eucharist. For Aquinas, it was a foretaste of heaven. He experienced the infinite glory of God which far transcended his own scholarly work about God. Aquinas stopped writing. His life’s work, his Summa Theologica, would be left unfinished. Which proved a fitting conclusion to someone so committed to God’s revelation being ongoing. There would always be more, including much more than Aquinas could ever summarize. Aquinas said about his own life’s work: “Compared to what I have now seen, everything I have written looks to me like straw.” What had he seen? God’s glory. He experienced God.

In the end Thomas Aquinas claimed his identity not as a scholar but as a child of God. Aquinas asked aloud, Do you know the delight of a child tossing a ball into the air? That delight is what God experiences whenever God looks at you, Aquinas said. In the end, Thomas Aquinas’ revered intellect was melded by his childlike experience of God’s love informing his whole being.[iv] And so for us. God’s presence, God’s desires, God’s love are present and knowable. God’s revelation will come to us through the whole of creation if we will only be attentive. Open your mind, open your eyes, open your heart to God’s real presence, now.

Blessed Thomas Aquinas, whom we remember with thanksgiving.

[i] Matthew 13:52.

[ii] Biographical detail by Peter Kreeft, A Summa of the Summa: Essential Passages of Aquinas (1990).

[iii] See Ephesians 1:15-23.

[iv] Inspiration from The Inner Eye of Love; Mysticism and Religion, by William Johnston (1978), p. 20.

Sermon for Religious Life Sunday

1 Corinthians 12:12-31a

There is a dark red, leather book in the closet of the monastery vesting sacristy, in which Brothers of this Society handwrite their vows in the days before their Profession. The book is placed upon the altar and, in the rite of Profession, the Brother and the Superior sign the page at the bottom. The page reads:

“Before the whole company of heaven and in the presence of this congregation, I [insert full Christian name here], reaffirm the commitment I have made, and now make my profession and promise to Almighty God, and to you, my brother, the Superior of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, and to your successors in this office, that I will live in the life-long observance of poverty, celibacy, and obedience, according to the Rule of this Society.”

The same words repeat themselves on every page, yet the handwriting and the name on each page is new, distinctive, flowing with its own personality and life and the courage and surrender of that promise. Every page is the same – and no two pages are the same.

A monastery or convent is a place bristling with these paradoxes. Twelve pairs of plain black shoes – whose wearers each make a different pattern of sound as they descend the enclosure stairwell. Two hallways of cells with the same white walls and beige carpet — imbued with the distinctive life and simple beauty of each successive Brother who has laid his head within it.

If it is fulfilling its deepest purpose, a monastery is a place where individuals go to lose themselves: in a life of poverty, celibacy, and obedience; in a common round of work, worship, and prayer; in a shared vision, discipline, and duty. It is a place where individuals go to lose themselves in God.

Yet the great mystery of this weird, excruciating, joyful, transfiguring way of life in the Church is exactly what Christ promised: Those who lose their life for my sake will find it. An individual life lost in a monastery is a life given back one hundredfold. It is a life no longer principally defined by all the outward elements the world calls “individuality,” but it is radiant with a distinctive life hidden in God from the foundation of the world. It is given gradually, almost imperceptibly, through seasons of consoling light and the most desolating shadows imaginable. It is given each new day, each hour, sometimes each moment, often most fully at the moment that it is least obvious to our outward senses. It is given by a Savior who lost himself in the monastery of our frail and common humanity and was raised to become the Life of the world.

So, why all this talk about monks today?

Today is Religious Life Sunday, a day to honor this distinctive vocation in its various forms within the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion. Despite the reality that communities like ours have existed in the Anglican Communion since the mid-nineteenth century, it is still common to encounter Christians of all sorts, including Episcopalians, who have no awareness of this rich heritage within Anglicanism. Today is a day to share that knowledge, so I hope you will take every opportunity to be an evangelist on our behalf, and on behalf of our brothers and sisters in the U.S., Canada, England, and throughout the world.

Our gospel passage from Luke captures an interpersonal dynamic in the life of Jesus that I think illustrates a core dimension of the religious life.

 In Luke chapter 4, we read, “The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, ‘Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’” That scripture, from Isaiah, on the lips of Jesus, is used with deliberate intention. It is a bold move, to begin with the prophet’s words: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me…”

We are not given the text of the sermon Jesus preached on Isaiah in the synagogue that day. But though Jesus identifies himself as God’s Anointed here, and the attention and expectancy are focused on his human personality and eloquence, the heart of the passage he reads is crucial.

Why has the Lord anointed him?

“…to bring good news to the poor; to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the lord’s favor.”

Jesus is the singular object of everyone’s rapt attention, yet in reading this passage in particular, Jesus sends a clear but paradoxical message. The message he has come to proclaim, and thus his essential vocation, is not about him. And, in not being about him, this message and vocation are about what God will do through him, and uniquely through him. Jesus is directing his listeners’ gaze through and beyond himself to the Lord and to the Lord’s downtrodden and hopeless. But because they are human, invested in all the outward elements of personality the world calls “individuality,” his listeners make this about him. They make this about their attachment to him as one of their own, whose vocation must conform to their image and standards, rather than reflect the image of God.

Consecrated religious life exists in the Church to remind every baptized member of Christ’s Body that our common vocation, like that of the Teacher and Savior we follow, is self-offering. Self-offering: self-giving, self-spending, self-effacement in the service of God and one another. The theological term is oblation, which the Prayer Book Catechism defines as “an offering of ourselves, our lives and labors, in union with Christ, for the purposes of God.”

In the past ten years, we have revived a practice that was once a norm in the Society, by handwriting a prayer of oblation in that same red leather Profession book I mentioned earlier. This prayer is personal – it is intended for the Brother alone to use in private. The prayer reads as follows:

Almighty God, I, [insert full Christian name here], relying upon your infinite mercy, and impelled with the desire of serving you in a life of Poverty, Celibacy, and Obedience, do humbly seek from your goodness by the blood of Jesus Christ, that by the fire of the Holy Spirit you will receive this offering of myself, as a sacrifice of a sweet-smelling savor, through the fragrance of his divine merits; and as you have given me a good will to desire and to offer, so I pray you also to give me the grace to accomplish that which I have promised, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

What words would you use to write a prayer of oblation: a prayer collecting and distilling the essence of your own self-offering as you are called to live it, day by day?

If you are still discerning your vocation, or a facet of vocation within vocation, or seeking a sharper edge to a vocation that may have grown dull with use over time, it may help to hold something in mind regarding this posture of oblation.

One somewhat muddled approach to discernment of vocation begins with the question, “What kind of life will make me most happy that also aligns with God’s purposes?” The theological emphasis is: “God desires my happiness.” That is absolutely true! But it is only half of the story. Discernment of vocation within the Church begins with a theological emphasis on Christ’s mystical Body, of which we are each a part. The question women and men asked for centuries, especially as they discerned the call to religious vows, did not begin with self. It did not begin with self-fulfillment, or self-realization, or self-discovery as its primary reference point. It began with the question: “How can I best offer my life back to God in a form of service that will best glorify God in the world?” There is always fullness of life on the other side of that question, but it comes by way of self-offering.

A common question asked of religious brothers and sisters under fifty goes something like this: “You’re rather young to have chosen this life. Do you think monastic life is likely to die out in your lifetime?” It can be a hard question to face over Sunday dinner. As a recently elected, forty-two year old Superior of a small monastic community, I would be lying if I told you that that question didn’t occasionally keep me awake at night.

But that’s not how I answer the question in the moment. I have made it my practice to say, with as much equanimity as I can: “I don’t know.”

The answer the questioner is looking for – and sometimes the questioner is me — belongs to the sociologist of religion or the expert on demographic trends or the religious news journalist. Who am I to venture the prediction: “No”? And if the answer were “Yes,” would that change anything about the clear call of God to me, to us, to this Society, and to communities like ours?

But the question always brings to mind a powerful memory. I found the Episcopal Church and my adult faith in Christ was re-awakened by this Society in my mid-twenties. I had only recently begun attending worship here. I was listening to a recording of a sermon by the man who would become my Brother David, whose primary message was profoundly simple: When your heart gives itself without reserve to the love of Jesus and your heart is set aflame with that love, you can face anything the world has in store for you. And I wept, and wept, and wept as my heart broke open, and I began to name – with deep fear and deeper awe – the possibility that I just might be called to this weird, excruciating, joyful, transfiguring way of life in the Church.

I will conclude with a heartfelt request.

If you are hearing (or perhaps reading) these words, if you are a single man between the ages of 22 and 45, and if even the dimmest glimmer of curiosity has flickered through your heart about this life, we welcome, with our whole hearts, the privilege to look at that glimmer with you in the company of Jesus.

If the immediate next thought you have is, “That’s preposterous! How could I do that?,” simply know that not a single one of us who chose this life and choose it daily has not had the same thought. It is no more or less preposterous than a man who was nailed to a cross being raised from death to become the Life of the world.

If you support, love, and cherish us, but your vocation or gender or age preclude you from the above (the vast majority of you in this chapel this morning), I have a plea for you as well:

The Society’s greatest priority at this time is renewing our attention to attracting vocations to this life. We have created a two minute video about this life and why we chose it, which you can view today and all week on our home page, www.ssje.org. Please watch it, say a prayer, and then forward it to one person who doesn’t know about us and hasn’t heard of this vocation in the Episcopal Church. And ask them to pray it forward in the same way.

Let us pray.

Lord Jesus Christ,

Br. Geoffrey Tristram

Conversion of St Paul

Acts 9:3-9

Some years ago, I spent a week in southwest France at Lourdes. I had wanted to go to Lourdes for many years, to see what it was like, and to try to understand why so many people have found it a place of healing and hope. Among all the experiences I had there. There was one which moved me more than anything else. It was the sight of hundreds of men and women in wheelchairs, being pushed with such respect, kindness and gentleness, by mostly young men and women, some students, from all around the world. What was so clear and rather wonderful was that here at Lourdes, those who were weak, sick, broken, disabled, were honored and really given pride of place. In our own country, where this week we have witnessed a display of power and wealth being so highly exalted, the sick, broken, disabled, and weak are so often marginalized and even hidden away. But not at Lourdes.

It made me think back to my teens, when I was considering Christianity. What most attracted me to the Christian faith, was that it could embrace and make sense of suffering, sickness, failure and weakness. Humanism couldn’t really explain it at all. Worshiping with men and women in wheelchairs, laughing and joking with them over a glass of Guinness, listening to their stories of faith and trust, and frankly getting in touch with my own weakness and need for healing, was I think at the heart of the extraordinarily powerful sense of holiness I felt there. UnforgettableWhy was I surprised by this? I shouldn’t have been, because I had read St Paul. He would have known exactly what I experienced, that the palpable sense of holiness came from my proximity to what he called ‘the power of the Cross.’  He wrote these words to the Corinthian church, ‘God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength. Indeed, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.’

Of all the dialectic in Paul’s writings, there is perhaps nothing so paradoxical and challenging as his conviction that in weakness lies strength. ‘I will boast of my weaknesses’, he says, ‘so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. I am content with weakness, insults, hardships, persecutions, calamities, for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak then I am strong.’  And this from a man who first, had an impeccable academic pedigree – trained under the renowned Gamaliel; secondly all the right connections- of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews, and a Pharisee, and a Roman citizen.

 Yet, this whole secure social and intellectual background was thrown into turmoil with his extraordinary encounter with Jesus Christ.  ‘Because of Christ’, he writes to the Philippians, ‘I have come to consider all these advantages that I had as disadvantages.’  Today we remember and celebrate that life changing encounter with Jesus on the Damascus Road. What has always struck me as most poignant about the account of Paul’s conversion is what happened immediately after his vision. This powerful man had been blinded, and had to be led into the city. He was weak, blind, and in need of help, led by the hand by another.  This would be a metaphor for what his life would now be; a life handed over to God, to be led by Christ, so that he could say to the Galatians, ‘It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.’   Of course, Paul is reflecting a paradigm of weakness which runs right through the Old Testament: God deliberately choosing the poor, or ‘anawim’ of God, the weak, those without power, but who put their trust in God, to be the agents of our salvation.  And this reaches its climax in the choice of Mary, one of the anawim of God, to be the mother of Jesus. ‘For he has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly.’

In our conversations, we brothers often ask ourselves why God has called us into a life, a ‘vocation’ which so often searingly exposes our own weaknesses and limitations. I recognize, although not always willingly, that it is for my own conversion. If you are like us, you may well recognize that Christ breaks through to you, not in those places where you are strong, where your skills are well honed and developed, but precisely in those areas in your life where you know failure, weakness. For it is there that you come close to the power of the Cross. It is precisely there that God is waiting to meet you, longing to offer you forgiveness, strength and renewal, to live and work not in your own strength but in the strength of Christ. ‘I will boast of my weaknesses’, says Paul, ‘so that the power of Christ may dwell in me,’

On this day, as we give thanks for the conversion of St Paul, how might you in your prayers, draw on the language of weakness? Looking back over your life, remember again those times when you have experienced Christ’s strength and sustenance when you were feeling weak or discouraged.   How might Christ be inviting you now, to experience once again the power of the Cross in your life?  Where are you in need of forgiveness? Where do you need healing? Come to Christ just as you Re, in your need. ‘For I will boast of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. For whenever I am weak, then I am strong.’

Mark 3:13-19

We don’t always get to choose the people in our lives. Classmates, coworkers, bosses, neighbors…most of these people just kind of show up without our say so. We do not choose these people, yet they form a huge part of our lives.

In our Gospel today, we heard the beautiful story of Jesus calling twelve of his followers up to a mountaintop to appoint them as apostles. It’s one of my favorite images of the apostles. These twelve followers of Jesus – some of them are related by blood, some of them who had known each other for a while, and some of them who were strangers until they started following Jesus, all making their way up that mountain together. I try to imagine how they must have felt in that moment, that mixture of excitement and anxiety knowing that their mission was about to begin.

I think it is fair to say that the Apostles were successful in their mission. These twelve human beings learned to live, work, and pray together while spreading the good news. Here we are about two thousand years later, a product of their mission, and still learning how to live, work, and pray together, but now with our eight billion fellow human beings.

The Apostles did not all choose one another, yet for the most part, they made it work. At every stage of our life, we will be continually confronted by a similar challenge. The people we will deal with will not always be those we would have chosen to deal with. This is true in the business office, the Divine Office, and the Oval Office.

We will continually be affected by the actions of other people and we will continually be confronted by circumstances beyond our control. We will feel powerless over so many things, but that does not mean all hope is lost. We have the God given gift of free will. We have the ability to choose our response to the turmoil of life. We have the power to try our best to communicate with one another and navigate our way through the messes we inherit. We have one another and our shared experiences.

Certainly these times are rough and fear is in the air. We must do our best to keep breathing. These times are not beyond the salvation of God. We continue our apostolic mission one day at a time.

We also have God. That’s good. It’s easy to lose sight of God in our hikes up and down the mountain of life. Above all else, we must take time, or at least take a time out, to remember why it is we are here, to serve God. Amen.

John 2:1-11

This past fall, I attended my best friend’s wedding. Over two decades, I’ve come to know him and his family pretty well.

And if at the wedding I had pointed out that wine had run out . . . well, I can guarantee that I wouldn’t be standing here in front of you today.

Today’s Gospel lesson, the wedding at Cana, serves as a point of transition at the beginning of John’s Gospel. It caps off the prologue and calling of the first disciples and initiates the “book of signs,” John’s narration of Jesus’s miracles and teaching. Looking both backward and forward, the scene marries themes of identity, creation, and abundance.

It is striking that, in this first of Jesus’s miracles, Jesus himself is not the first-named figure. “There was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there” (Jn 2:1). Almost parenthetically, we learn that Jesus and his disciples have also been invited. What’s going on here?

The wedding at Cana is the third in a series of episodes where we encounter Jesus obliquely through the perspective of other characters. First, John the Baptist and his disciples see Jesus coming from afar (Jn 1:29). Next, the disciples themselves approach Jesus. In each, they spend more time talking about Jesus than with the man himself. Finally, we meet Jesus’s mother; Jesus may perform the miracle, but his mother drives the action in today’s scene.

What each of these episodes has in common is Jesus’s identity—who is this man? We as hearers of the Gospel have learned who Jesus is from the Prologue: he’s the eternal Word who took on humanity. And now we learn how other figures see Jesus: “Here is the Lamb of God”; “this is the Son of God”; “Rabbi”; “We have found the Messiah”; “You are the King of Israel” (Jn 1:29, 34, 38, 41, 49).

What John and his disciples have done is named Jesus. In naming him they have attributed to him the web of history and expectations that they have built up in their own minds and hearts, in their hopes and dreams. And in doing so, they have invited Jesus to name them in return. It is significant, I think, that Jesus’s first action in John’s Gospel is an act of naming: “You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas” (Jn 1:42). Jesus will continue this process of naming throughout the Gospel: he will name his disciples his friends (Jn 15:15), he will name his own mother and the Beloved Disciple mother and son to each other (Jn 19:26), and, in the series of “I am” statements, he will even name himself.

This act of naming is a creative one. “You shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the Lord will give,” Isaiah writes of Zion. “You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate; but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her, and your land Married” (Is 62:2, 4). The new name both effects and reflects a changed reality.

If there is no act of naming in the wedding episode, there is yet the expectation that underpins such names. What, after all, did Jesus’s mother think Jesus could do about the lack of wine? What does she know? What is her history? She may not say “Son of God” or “Messiah” or “King of Israel,” but her statement carries with it a comparable weight of expectation.

And if there is no act of naming in this episode, there is yet an act of creation. A recent commentary on this story notes that, compared to other “gift miracles,” such as the multiplication of the loaves, the wine miracle is unique in not having “a small amount of existing material that is . . . simply multiplied.”[1] Further, from the text, we have no idea how the change was effected: there is no prayer or blessing, no physical contact; we don’t even know at what point the water waschanged. I’d like to suggest that we can see Jesus’s miracle at Cana not simply as an act of transformation, of water into wine, but one of creation, the working out in our world, in history, at a wedding in a small town in Galilee, of the cosmic mystery that the Word engaged in at the beginning.

At the culmination of questions of naming and identity and expectations, Jesus, then, in a miraculous act of creation, shows who he in fact is—the creating Word. But this “first sign,” this first revelation of a new creation, does even more than that. It’s not just that Jesus creates wine, it’s that he creates wine in abundance. What was previously lacking now fills jugs to the brim, and is of the finest quality. Jesus’s establishment of a new creation is not just enough, or sufficient, but vastly beyond what is expected, encompassing all, welcoming all in. His very being is evidence of this—“God so loved the world,” with a love that “reaches to the heavens” (Ps 36:5), “that he gave his only Son” (Jn 3:16)—and so is his mission: “I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. . . . I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (Jn 10:9, 10).

We may not be attending weddings anytime soon, but we are, each of us, called to take the lessons of the wedding at Cana to heart. Each of us is invited to name Jesus—to find our own name that best expresses the needs of our hearts—and to be named in return, to be created anew. And we do not participate in a new creation that is impoverished, but one that abounds with gifts beyond counting or imagining—both at the end, when we will “feast at the banquet prepared from the foundation of the world,” and in the here and now.

Now, this may seem too optimistic. I am aware of, as are most of you, and I would be remiss to neglect mentioning the change in our own country that is taking place and will reach a milestone tomorrow at the presidential inauguration. And whether you are hopeful or apprehensive of what the next years hold, we cannot close our eyes to all that seems to be going very wrong around us. Where is God’s love in a world beset by war and violence? Where is God’s promise of abundance in a world beset by famine and poverty?

I think Saint Paul gives us a way forward. The abundance of the gifts of the Spirit, of this new creation established through Jesus Christ, are given to us “for the common good” (1 Cor 12:7). In the here and now, in this world that God so loves and that we see crying out in so much need, God gives us gifts to stand up and be God’s agents. The lesson, I think, of the wedding at Cana is not just that Jesus revealed himself as God, but that, as followers of Christ, we have been equipped by God to respond—even if in only small and seemingly inconsequential ways. God has equipped us with gifts so we can follow in the way of loved embodied and established by God. God has equipped us to respond when someone comes to us, saying, “There is no wine.”

Amen.

[1] J. Beutler SJ, A Commentary on the Gospel of John (Grand Rapids, MI, 2017), 80.

Br. Curtis Almquist

Confession of Peter

Acts 4:8-13

In the calendar of the church we remember today the confession of Peter. We could ask, which confession, because we know of at least three confessions. We learn in this Gospel lesson appointed for today that Peter was the first of Jesus’ followers to confess Jesus as the Messiah. So it is, the word “confession” is a declaration of what someone knows to be true. Peter makes a confession of faith, a personal affirmation.[i]

But then comes Peter’s repudiation. After having traveled the way with Jesus throughout Galilee, having witnessed and shared in Jesus’ closest confidences and in his miraculous ministry, Peter stands with his fellow disciples while Jesus is being crucified. Peter is identified as a companion of Jesus, which Peter publicly denies. Peter confesses that he does not even know Jesus.[ii] Peter feigns to simply be a spectator. So we have Peter’s two discordant confessions: first an affirmation, then a repudiation.

In the end we witness Peter’s confession of guilt implicit in his meeting up with Jesus along the Sea of Galilee following his resurrection.[iii]  This leads to Peter’s reconciliation and restoration when Peter confesses, confesses again and again, that he knows and loves Jesus.[iv]

Jesus chose to build his church upon Peter’s leadership, not because Peter was so strong – strong though he was – but because Peter was also so weak. Pathetically weak, ultimately a broken man, in great need. Peter’s brokenness became Jesus’ real breakthrough to him… which is where all of us figure into this Gospel story: how Jesus knows us and can use us. Michael Ramsey, sometime Archbishop of Canterbury, said that “the strength of the Church is… the strength of Christ who forgives us, humbles us, and can do something with us. So no one is excluded who is ready to [confess], ‘I am sorry. God help me, a sinner.’ In the final crisis all that Saint Peter could say was, ‘I am sorry,’ and Christ made him the rock man of the Church.”[v]

i] John 1:20; Hebrews 11:13; 1 John 4:2f.

[ii] Matthew 26:69-75, Mark 14:66-72, Luke 22:54-62, and John 18:15-18, 25-27.

[iii] Matthew 3:6; Mark 1:5; Acts 19:18; James 5:16; 1 John 1:9.

[iv] John 21:15-25.

[v] Michael Ramsey in The Christian Priest Today (2009).