SSJE Sermons

Br. Luke Ditewig

Aidan of Lindisfarne

1 Corinthians 9:16-23

In the seventh century, Aidan, a monk on Iona in Scotland, was sent to establish a monastery on Lindisfarne in northern England. Like Columba who led much missionary work out from Iona, Aidan led great evangelism from Lindisfarne.

Aiden sent monks out, two by two, into the neighboring villages and countryside. He gave two noteworthy instructions: First, travel on foot, not horseback. Second, do not carry a knife or any sort of weapon for defense. Travel then was very dangerous, so this was remarkable.

Aiden instructed ways to live like Jesus not simply speak about Jesus. Walking instead of riding, they went like their neighbors, as equals instead of with additional power and privilege. Without weapons to fight, they resisted violence with vulnerability. Aiden and his monks embodied the gospel, and they were well received. Offered humbly, good news spread quickly.

Paul wrote: “What then is my reward? Just this: that in my proclamation I may make the gospel free of charge, so as not to make full use of my rights in the gospel.” He speaks of being like Jews and other groups in order “win them” for Christ. Paul reached out to people on their own terms, in their own way, to point to Jesus.

Have you experienced people like Aiden and Paul? Who became like you in order to point you to Jesus? Who has welcomed you, curious, honoring your culture, background, and experience? Who has been humble and vulnerable? Give thanks for such people.

How we live is just as important if not more than what we say. Consider your life. How are you engaging others with humility and vulnerability? How might you be distanced with power and protection? What is the invitation for you? May we point to Jesus by how we live. Blessed Aidan whom we remember today.

The Beheading of John the Baptist

Mark 6:17-29

If you were to stand in the south gallery of what used to be the Church of Holy Wisdom, or Hagia Sophia, in Istanbul, you would be standing in the footsteps of emperors and empresses. And in the footsteps of these powerful rulers, you would also be able to see the Deesis mosaic, a monumental icon of the enthroned Jesus, flanked by his mother Mary and John the Baptist, who turn toward him in deesis, that is, in prayer or supplication.[1]

The church’s calendar in this season forms a kind of Deesis as well, with the feasts of the births and deaths of Mary and John braided together through the summer, flanking and pointing toward the Transfiguration. As the eyes of the disciples were transfigured to see Jesus’s true nature, so are the very human lives of mother and forerunner themselves transfigured by their relationship to Jesus.

John’s death by beheading is a striking one. But not only because of the lurid details of a world of luxury and nasty family politics that seems so very far away from the gospel. It’s striking because in the agents of John’s execution—Herodias and her daughter—we have two figures who never, as far as we are aware, have any direct encounter with Jesus—perhaps the only two figures in the gospels who do not.

And this lack of direct encounter is telling, because they provide us the gospel writer’s view of what untransfigured power looks like. Selfish and arbitrary. Relationships built not on love or respect but on deceit and gamesmanship. And, in the figure of Herod, weakness cultivated by his worst excesses. This is far from the power proclaimed by Jesus and pointed to by John and Mary: the power of God’s kingdom.

John called Herod and his family out for their transgression of Jewish law. He used his power as a prophet to stand up and speak truth to those in authority and, like so many other prophets, to be killed for it. Mary proclaimed God’s inversion of the world’s power: “He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly” (Lk 1:52). She who at first glance seems to be the person with the least power, herself bore God to the world in the lowliest of circumstances. A call to repentance, the uplifting of the lowly: this is power, transfigured.

We may not be emperors or empresses. We may not be powerful as the world measures power. But each of us has power. It may be your resources; your voice, advice, or counsel; your work and actions; your physical presence; or, especially for us Christians, your deesis, your prayer and supplication. What is your power?

Recognizing and accepting your power is a first step, a necessary first step because, unlike Herodias and her daughter, each of us has, in our own way, encountered the risen Lord, and in that encounter each of us has been changed, and our power transfigured. How is God using your power? How are you yourself an icon pointing to God’s kingdom?

Amen.

[1] Images of this mosaic are available at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Deesis_mosaic_(Hagia_Sophia).

Br. James Koester,
Superior

Wisdom 9: 1-6

I’ll begin this morning, not so much by putting you out of your misery, but rather to satisfy your curiosity. I’ll begin by saying there is nothing, yet, to announce. The Chapter will meet later this morning to elect a new Superior to succeed me and that of course will initiate a host of things. We anticipate an announcement going out sometime this afternoon. If we have your email address, you should receive something from us later today. If we don’t have your email address, the announcement will be posted on our web site. If you live locally, it’s possible that if you come to the midday Office, there will be a sign on the church door. Having said that, there will now perhaps be a rush on the chapel at 12:15 today!

In all of this we continue to ask for your prayers for us during this significant time of change and renewal.

The election of a new Superior marks the beginning of a new chapter in our life as a community. It’s the beginning of a new day. It’s not that things ever remain static. Things never remain the same. When we as individuals, or communities, or nations stop growing and changing, we die. Even then, in the process of decomposition, things change. Just go for a walk in the woods at Emery House, and they will show you that. Things change. People change. Monastic communities change. Nations change.

We joke in the community that when a Brother who has been living at Emery House returns here to the Monastery to live, by the time he has reached the end of Emery Lane, everything back at Emery House has changed, and it is no longer the place he left, even just 5 minutes before. The same is true today. By Evening Prayer today, and certainly by Evening Prayer on 1 September, after the installation of the new Superior, things will be different, and that’s exciting, and a little scary. But that’s life. When we stop changing, we die. The only unchanging reality is God’s eternal, and abiding love for creation, which of course includes each one of us. O give thanks to the Lord, for [God] is good; for [God’s] steadfast love endures forever.[1] This is the reality of our faith. It’s not some pious hokum, but the experience of countless women and men of faith down through the ages. Even as people, and communities, and nations have looked into what might appear to be a dark future, as people of faith, we have been able to say, the Lord is my shepherd; I shall not be in want.[2]

The reality is that all of us stand on the threshold of new beginnings. The Brothers are not the only ones facing a new future. You who are our friends, stand alongside us in this doorway. More significantly, all of us stand at the threshold of something new, as we look toward the presidential election in just over two months. Come Evening Prayer today, come 6 November, things will be different, and yet we say [fear] the Lord, you that are his saints; for those who fear him lack nothing.[3]

Knowing this, today is not a day for us, and perhaps especially for me, to look back. Rather today is a day to look forward to the future, not with dread, but with hope, knowing the promise of God is to meet us, in whatever that future holds. As the Risen Lord said to Mary Magdelene that first Easter Day, go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.[4]

For the past several months, as I have contemplated our future, this promise of the Risen Lord to meet us in the Galilee of our future, has held a significant place in my prayer. I have imagined myself walking into my future, our future, and hearing God’s promise to Joshua spoken to me, spoken to us: I hereby command you: Be strong and courageous; do not be frightened or dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.’[5]

But how are we to know that God goes before us? How are we to see Jesus as we approach the shore of the Galilee of our future? How are we to make sense of it all, especially as things are changing around us? How can we live in hope, as we look into the unknown, especially if it appears uncertain, and bleak? Isn’t this just wishful thinking?

Listen again to our first lesson:

Wisdom has built her house…She has slaughtered her animals, she has mixed her wine, she has…set her table. She has sent out her servant-girls, she calls… ‘You that are simple, turn in here! …Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight.’ [6]

This house, Wisdom’s house, is the house of God where the psalmist tells us, we will dwell forever.[7]This house, Wisdom’s house, is the many roomed mansion Jesus has prepared for us.[8] This house, Wisdom’s house, is the place, not only of our future, but of our present, for we already abide in that place. We have turned into Wisdom’s house. We have sat at her table. We have feasted on her bread and wine. For by feasting on Wisdom’s bread and wine, we have eaten and drunk Christ’s Body and Blood, and doing so we abide in him and he in us.[9]

We stand on the threshold of a new world, where things will be different. We stand at that threshold full of hope, expecting to see Jesus who has gone there before us. We stand fortified by Wisdom’s bread and wine, and Christ’s Body and Blood. We stand abiding in Christ, who has promised to be with us, until the end of the ages.[10]

Yes, things will be different tomorrow. They will be different for all of us. We will have a new Superior. Soon, there will be a new, or a not so new, President. No matter what the future holds for any of us, we can face it with confidence, not because we are wishful thinkers, but because we are Christians full of hope. That hope which is ours tells us that the God who promises to be with us always, will never leave or abandon us. That hope, which is the mark of a Christian, is nourished here at Wisdom’s table in Christ’s Body and Blood. So, turn in here, and feast on God’s gift of hope, as we cross the threshold into the future, where the Risen Lord promises to meet us. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.

[1] 1 Chronicles 16: 34

[2] Psalm 23: 1

[3] Psalm 34: 9

[4] Matthew 28: 10

[5] Joshua 1: 9

[6] Wisdom 9: 1 – 6

[7] Psalm 23: 6b

[8] John 14: 1ff

[9] John 6: 56

[10] Matthew 28: 8

In my first-grade art class, I remember molding and painting a very rough purplish-gray dinosaur. I was very proud of that dinosaur. It’s still on display a shelf in my childhood bathroom.

I’d like to invite you to remember your own experience of creating something as a child—smudging paint on a piece of paper, building a sandcastle, drawing your family with crayons, or something else. How did it feel?

And what did you do with your creation? Did you keep it to yourself? Or did you run to your friends or parents and show them what you had made, or give it to them as a gift? What did you feel in this sharing or giving?

We as Christians and monks talk about humility a lot. We talk about it as a central virtue, as an antidote to pride, as a way of relating to others as fellow children of God. We talk of humble status, of humble actions, of building or cultivating habits of humility. And all the while, so many of the expectations we face and the performance that is required of us pushes back against that ideal, requiring us to compete against others, to distinguish ourselves. It can be a demoralizing juggling act.

Now, recall your childhood creation. In these memories of creating and sharing and giving, in feelings of joy and contentment and, yes, even pride, I think we can capture not just something of what it means to be a child but also what it feels like to be free in our acts of creation and generosity. What it feels like to be free of the learned limits of expectation and performance.

And, perhaps, what it feels like to be humble like a child. The humility of a child is not about carefully cultivated habits or low status. Rather, a child’s humility is about how it feels to revel in messy finger painting, to dig through drawers for that one perfect but forgotten toy, to go from fighting to playing with a classmate in the playground in the blink of an eye.

A child’s humility is a sharing in God’s own freedom. How, in other words, it feels to bear God’s image in the world—rejoicing in acts of creation, valuing the lost and forgotten, and forgiving again and again and again—unrestricted by expectations or performance or anything other than a desire simply to be God’s image.

In being called to be humble like a child, we are being called to shed so much of what we have learned to feel is valued in the world, and what we have found to be sources of constraint and limit. We are called to recover a childlike freedom, and, in doing so, to discover that we might find there our true being as children of God. And to be proud of that. As proud, even, as we were of our own purplish-gray dinosaurs.

Amen.

Profession of Jack Crowley SSJE in Life Vows

John 21: 1-14

When you told me the other day Jack, that you wanted to use the same gospel reading for today’s profession, as you had for your initial profession three years ago, I thought, well that makes my life easy, I’ll just use the same sermon! After all I reasoned, some here today weren’t here in 2021, and so won’t have heard that sermon. Others will have forgotten it by now. For those few who do remember it, I could simply express shock at the very idea I would repeat myself. But as you know, life isn’t that simple. While I don’t disagree with anything I said back then, today is a different occasion. You and I are in different places. Different things resonate with me. And for the last year or so, as I have thought about this moment, and prayed for you, one word has been constantly present and that has changed how I am thinking about today. The word which resonates with me today is risk.

Having lived with us now for six years, you’ll be familiar with that word, both as we use it in the Rule, and live it day by day. It’s a word that appears in one form or another, 11 times in the Rule, most notably in the chapter on life profession. There we say, [the] life profession of a brother inspires us with awe as well as joy; we wonder at the risk of such an irrevocable choice … Only by depending on God for the grace of perseverance, fixing ourselves by faith in God’s unwavering commitment to us, can we risk taking vows which bind us forever.[1]

What you are doing today is a huge risk. You know it. We know it. Those who are here supporting you know it. And our Rule very clear, this life, and your free choice to cast in your lot with this community, for life, is a risky choice. It is perhaps the riskiest thing you have ever done, and I say this to you Jack, a man I know who is not afraid to take risks.

In that way, you are not unlike the disciples we heard about in this morning’s gospel, one that so obviously means an enormous amount to you.

After these things Jesus showed himself again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias; and he showed himself in this way. Gathered there together were Simon Peter, Thomas called the Twin, Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples. Simon Peter said to them, ‘I am going fishing.’ They said to him, ‘We will go with you.’ They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.[2]

We’re not here talking about a group of buddies piling into a motorboat, with a case of beer, and some fishing poles, out for a lark, more interested in the beer and having a good time, than in the fish. We’re talking about seasoned, weathered, fishermen, who knew the risks and challenges of earning a living, fishing the waters of the Sea of Galilee, a lake notorious for sudden storms. I am sure nothing was more terrifying and riskier for them than being caught out, at night, in a storm, on the Sea of Galilee. And the disciples would have known that. It had happened before.

As Matthew tells it, when [Jesus] got into the boat, his disciples followed him. A gale arose on the lake, so great that the boat was being swamped by the waves; but he was asleep. And they went and woke him up, saying, ‘Lord, save us! We are perishing!’[3]

The combination of the weather, the design of the flat bottom, shallow draft boats used at the time, making them easy to drag up on shore, but unstable on the water, with the weight of over 100 feet of fishing nets dragging through the water, and the need for some men to be in the water maneuvering the nets, meant that fishing was a dangerous, risky occupation. Like any band of fishermen who make a living by fishing, the disciples would have known any number of their friends who had drowned, after being tangled in the nets, fallen overboard, or when their boats had capsized in a storm. Fishing was, and is, a risky occupation. You could, and many did, lose their life. And the disciples knew this.

Curiously Jack, that is exactly what Jesus is asking of you today.

For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.[4]

The disciples in the boat that night knew something about risking their lives. They probably also knew more than they wanted about losing their lives. No doubt they had lost friends in these very waters. They had certainly lost a friend not many days before on that hill outside Jerusalem. Now it seemed they had even lost the ability to make a living doing what they thought they knew how to do, fish, for that night, they caught nothing.[5] But those were the risks they took when they first became fishermen. That was the risk they took when they first answered the call of the stranger to follow.

As [Jesus] walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the lake—for they were fishermen. And he said to them, ‘Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.’ Immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him.[6]

Responding to the call of God is a response to an invitation to risk all for Christ, who risked and gave all for us.[7]

To be a follower of Jesus is to live a life full of risk. Like him we must be willing to take the risk of speaking with those deemed unworthy, touching those considered untouchable, breaking bread with those who are despised by others, breaching the walls of respectability. As followers of Jesus, we must take the risk of encountering life where it is lived, and not where we are comfortable.

And that Jack, is what will happen as a life professed member of this community. You will take the risk of living life where it is lived, which will often be outside your comfort zone. Through the vow of poverty, you will discover the readiness of others to confide in us their own experiences of suffering, grief and loss. By opening ourselves to the pain and weakness in the lives of our brothers and sisters…they will find in our company a holy place of acceptance and under­standing where they can wait for God to bring strength out of weakness and resurrection from death.[8] In the vow of celibacy you will learn to embrace[your] sexuality as a divine gift, and draw upon it as a source of energy and creativity, [and thus] bring hope and encourage­ment to many who meet [you].[9] By the vow of obedience you will lean to be resilient and prompt in responding to the Lord in the here and now.[10] Your example will be a sign [to] the Church of what it means to be a living branch of the true vine.[11]

In all this you will risk leaning to die, and in so dying, find life.

Week by week we are to accept every experience that requires us to let go as an opportunity for Christ to bring us through death into life. Hardships, renunciations, losses, bereavements, frustrations and risks are all ways in which death is at work in advance preparing us for the self-surrender of bodily death. Through them we practice the final letting go of dying, so that it will be less strange and terrifying to us.[12]

That night long ago Jack, those disciples risked their lives as they got into the boat. But by doing so they were able to see again the stranger on the shore, and knew this time, that it was the Lord.[13] Today Jack you are risking your life by getting into the boat of this community. My prayer for you is that in the days and months and years ahead, you too will see, not a stranger on the shore, but the Lord calling to you, Come, and have breakfast,[14] and in joining him there by that fire, sharing a simple meal of bread and wine find the abundant life he promises to all who follow him.[15]

[1] SSJE, Rule of Life, Life Profession, chapter 39, page 79

[2] John 21: 1 – 3

[3] Matthew 8: 23 – 25

[4] Matthew 16: 25

[5] John 21: 3

[6] Matthew 4: 18 – 22

[7] See Rule, The Spirit of Poverty, chapter 6, page 13

[8] Ibid, Engaging with Poverty, chapter 8, page 17

[9] Ibid, The Witness of Celibacy, chapter 11, page 22

[10] Ibid, The Spirit of Obedience, chapter 12, page 25

[11] Ibid, Obedience in Practice, chapter13, page 27

[12] Ibid, Holy Death, chapter 48, page 97

[13] John 21: 7

[14] John 21: 12

[15] John 10:10

John 7:16-18

When we hear “south of France” today, we may think of sunny beaches or fields of lavender. A nice place to go on vacation. But in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries the association was with heresy. Followers of a heterodox form of Christianity, whom history has come to know as Cathars, were prevalent throughout the region. Combatting their beliefs posed a particular challenge for a Church mired in its own problems. Actual combat followed the murder of a papal official in 1208: the Albigensian Crusade was a brutal war to cleanse the region of heresy.

This was the time and region where Dominic, whom we remember today, discovered his own vocation. He had been in the church his entire life, but it was during a trip through the region, before the outbreak of war, that he found his own gifts of preaching and teaching, and his personal asceticism meeting the Church’s need to engage, teach, and convert those caught up in heterodox belief. It is perhaps no accident that in his own life he modeled the very characteristics that were most highly prized by so-called Cathars in the region: he didn’t eat meat, he refrained throughout his life from sexual activity, and he voluntarily accepted simple, even rough way of life.

Twelve years after Dominic’s death, in 1233, nine members of the Order of Preachers, or Dominicans, which he had founded, provided testimony for his canonization process. All focus on his character, and almost all provide some version of the following: “He was always speaking of God or to God, and I never heard any idle or harmful word from him.”[1] This sounds stereotypical—of course a saint would do that—but I think there’s something else here. Dominic was aware of his own gifts for preaching and teaching. He was aware from whom his preaching and teaching came: “My teaching is not mine but his who sent me,” Jesus says—and we can imagine Dominic quoting this verse (Jn 7:16). He was aware that this was a gift of the Spirit, not to be abused but used for God’s glory, both in extraordinary conversions as well as in ordinary, unremarkable interactions with his brethren.

So too for us. If our spiritual life is about the way we live into our gifts of the Spirit, then it is just as much about how those gifts make up who we are, in the ordinary, the everyday, as in what we do with them in the rare or extraordinary.

What gifts has the Spirit given you? Teaching, leadership, companionship, consolation? We each have gifts for ministry—but these are equally gifts of character: equally what we do and how we are. And accepting both, living into both, is how we can live a spiritual—Spirit-filled, Spirit-gifted—life.

Amen.

[1] S. Tugwell OP, ed., Early Dominicans: Selected Writings (New York, 1982), 66-85, passim.

Feast of the Transfiguration

Exodus 34:29-35

At its heart, the Feast of the Transfiguration is about the revelation of who God is in and through Jesus Christ – and in and through his followers as we are transfigured by this experiential knowledge.

 At first, this innermost identity is like a “shared secret” among Jesus’ early followers: it participates in the elusive quality of light, something that cannot be directly named. But after the resurrection, the light of Christ is made manifest in word and deed by those baptized into Christ’s body.

In this way, the transfiguration of Christ is about who we are at our secret core; and about who we claim to be when we tell our full story in broad daylight. On this side of Easter, the Transfiguration is always a foretaste of Resurrection glory; silence dissolves into proclamation, with or without words.

There are two scriptural keys in the New Testament that illuminate our participation in Christ’s deepest identity as God’s Beloved Son.

The first is in the twelfth chapter of Romans, where St. Paul writes: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

The second is St. Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, where he comments directly on the passage from Exodus we just heard: “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another, for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.”

What is most significant in these passages is that the word “transformed” in English is metaphorphe in Greek, the word translated as “transfigured” in the gospel accounts of this miraculous event in the life of Jesus. In Romans and 2 Corinthians, Paul applies this verb to a gradual but dramatic change that happens in us through the grace of Jesus Christ.

What is the nature of this change?

Commenting on the gospel transfiguration accounts, Orthodox scholar Andreas Andreapoulos writes: “Jesus did not change who he was; he was God before, during, and after his transfiguration, as he was during his entire ministry, fully divine and fully human. What changed was the perceptive capability of the apostles. Each of them was given the grace to see and hear differently, and because of that they were able to see Jesus in a different way” (14, This Is My Beloved Son).

This fundamental shift in our perception changes everything.

Our life of faithful practice as we follow the Way yields transfiguring effects. To use just come of the gospels’ other images for this process, good trees bear good fruit; good soil yields abundant wheat; branches that abide in the vine bear much fruit. Like light from a lamp placed on a lampstand, which gives light to all in the house, the good works of those following the Way give glory to their Father in heaven.

No facet of our identity is left untouched by this gradual transfiguration, our progress in holiness in cooperation with God’s grace. Some facets of who we are become relativized; they are no less characteristic of our individuality, but they are no longer ultimate in the way that our baptismal identity is ultimate. Our belonging to Christ is the one identity at the center of all the others we might truthfully claim. “When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone.”

The best stories have the living energy of a “shared secret.” When someone tells you such a story from their heart, there is little room left for agreement or disagreement – there is only another heart’s truth to honor, and the respect and admiration that usually arise in the wake of such vulnerability and risk.

When you tell the story of who you are, how often do you point to Jesus at its center?

Our public conversation around Christian identity in this country has become both two-dimensional and deeply polarizing. There are many words, but the living story that animates what we call the Gospel seems tragically absent in its most visible forms.

What if more of us told the personal story of our faith as part of our public identity – in thoughtful, disarming, and three-dimensional ways?

What would such a story reveal about the storyteller we follow: transfigured on the mountain, hanging from the cross, and risen in glory?

Br. Curtis Almquist

Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15

Back when I was seven years old I had this wonderful opportunity to attend a symphony orchestra concert for my very first time. I was with my second-grade classmates from school, and we paraded into a vast orchestra hall and settled ourselves into seats that were way too big for any of us. By luck of the draw, I got to sit next to Mrs. Sievers, our teacher. At some point during the concert she leaned over to me and whispered in my ear, “Do you hear it?” Wide eyed, I whispered, “What?!” And she said, “Do you hear the oboe?” I shook my head. I didn’t know what an oboe was. And then, with her hand gently moving in the air, she began to trace the music line being played by a solo oboe. And I heard it for the first time. “Yes!” I whispered. I remember spying out the oboe section, locating the amazing sound coming from this solo oboist amidst a great company of musicians. I have no memory what music the orchestra was playing that day; however I will never forget my discovery: the mesmerizing, alluring sound of the oboe. What had initially been an orchestral company of sound was now identified and personified in this solo oboist, and that made all the difference.

So it is with manna. In our readings from the Book of Exodus and the Psalms, we hear of this food that came down from heaven during the forty years the Israelites wandered in the desert. Manna was described as a flaky bread, as fine as hoarfrost. We read it was like coriander seed, and the taste was like wafers made with honey or cakes baked with oil.[i] The popular etymology for the name “manna” comes from the Hebrew, “What is it?” Manna: “What is it?”: the question the Israelites are reported to have asked one another when they first found manna blanketing the ground.[ii]

Jesus now puts a name to manna. He says, “I am the bread that comes down from heaven.” “I am the bread of life.”[iii] From the earliest days following Christ’s resurrection, the church has put a name to this “bread from heaven,” and the name is “Jesus”: Jesus’ real presence in this “bread from heaven,” the Sacrament of Holy Communion, the body and blood of Christ such as we serve from this altar today.

But there is more. We do indeed receive this bread from heaven here at the altar as we extend our needy hands: Christ’s real presence in bread and wine, his body and his blood. But there is more, yet another way the church has recognized Jesus’ real presence. When we are baptized, we are “baptized into Christ.” That is the language of Saint Paul.[iv] We are “baptized into Christ.” Saint Paul describes his own experience: “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.”[v] We, individually, become this living sacrament, the Body of Christ.[vi]  Today from the altar we will repeat the paradoxical words of Saint Augustine from the fourth century: “Behold what you are.” What are you? You are the Body of Christ. You embody Christ. “Behold what you are.” “May we become what we receive.” [vii] What do we receive? The Body of Christ. We become what we receive. We embody Christ.

This is certainly a mystery, not because it is implausible, but because it is so inexplicable. You might find it inaccessible. It is one thing to receive Christ in Holy Communion; it is another thing to embody Christ. If this seems inaccessible, there is reason. And it’s probably because you are less than perfect. Because you learned somewhere, perhaps as a child, that to be loved you always had to get it right. Yet you are less than perfect. There may be something about you that is broken, or inadequate, or prone to failure, perhaps hypocritical or unacceptable. On a bad day you are your own worst enemy. It may seem an impossible stretch to embrace a belief that we – that you – embody Christ, who loves you. You might even say to yourself, “If you only knew…” But Christ does know.

Over the years I have had some of my own versions of this kind of secret self-rejection, sometimes self-loathing. But this is where the bad news turns into what Jesus calls the good news. Where we are powerless to save ourselves, we meet Christ our savior yanking us out of our own hell. Christ does not come to us in an exalted way because we are perfect and fabulous. It’s exactly the opposite. In becoming human, Christ has taken upon himself our wretchedness and our misery, our poverty, and our sins….[viii] “Christ became poor for our sake.”[ix] That’s Saint Paul’s description: “Christ became poor for our sake.” Christ identifies with our own poverty, what we most resent or reject in ourselves.

Jesus becomes “the true bread of heaven.” In our baptism, Christ embodies us. Embodies you. If any part of you resists the truth of Christ’s embodying you, his making a loving home within you, here’s two things that might help:

Behold what you are.

May we become what we receive.

[i] Exodus 16:14, 15, 31.

[ii] Numbers 11:7-8.

[iii] John 6:22-59.

[iv] Quoting Saint Paul in Galatians 3:27.

[v] Galatians 2:20.

[vi] Saint Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 12:27: “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.”

[vii] Saint Augustine (354-430) in his Sermon 57: “On the Holy Eucharist.” Augustine was a Christian theologian, philosopher, and Bishop of Hippo, modern-day Algiers, in what was then Roman North Africa.

[viii] Inspired by Thomas Merton, OCSO (1915-1968) in his The Monastic Journey.

[ix] 2 Corinthians 8:9.

[x] “The Hound of Heaven,” a poem by Francis Thompson (1859-1907).

Matthew 13:54-58

Today’s Gospel lesson isn’t about Jesus.

Rather, it’s not about the Jesus we have come to know, to accompany in his ministry with the disciples. Instead, it’s about another Jesus, one of memory, of presumption, and of misplaced expectation.

In the Rule of our Society, we understand as part of the practice of silence the honoring of “the mystery present in the hearts of our brothers and sisters, strangers and enemies,” a letting go of “curiosity, presumption, and condemnation which pretends to penetrate the mystery of their hearts.”[1]

We can see in our Gospel reading today what this looks like in practice. It is significant, I think, that the only references to Jesus’s “hidden years”—those years of growth and formation between infancy and baptism—in Matthew’s gospel (and Mark’s) is this brief encounter between Jesus and those from his hometown. It’s a relic of a silent period, a family photograph held in the hands of these people, who glance uncomprehendingly between it and the living Jesus standing before them.

Is it any surprise that Jesus “did not do many deeds of power there” (Mt 13:58)? All those who have come to Jesus for healing have done so with the hope and expectation that he will be able to effect their transformation, that he will indeed have power to save them. These individuals from Jesus’s hometown instead hold this still family photograph in their hands, between them and the living Jesus. They expect them to match, and they’re surprised when they don’t. But their mistake is taking as real the image in the photograph.

Each of us has likely experienced this in our own lives. Reunions or weddings or funerals: all bring together memories and presumptions and misplaced expectations about who we are and who we were. My twentieth high school reunion is this year—I am acutely aware not only of the images, the still photographs, of people from my past that I carry with me, but also about those of me that they carry with them. Neither are real.

And each of us similarly carries an image of Jesus. Something from our childhood formation, something from our fear or anger, something that we hold out in front of us and that blocks us from an immediate, fresh encounter with the living Lord. Something that keeps us from being surprised by joy in that fresh encounter.

What is that image for you?

Just as in silence we honor the mystery at the heart of our brothers and sisters, so too in prayer we honor the mystery at the heart of God, letting go of that image, lowering the still photograph and allowing God to reveal Godself to us in new and surprising and, perhaps, unsettling ways. Know that this is the living God, speaking in our hearts, powerful to save.

Amen.

[1] The Rule of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist (Lanham, MD, 1997), 54.

Br. Luke Ditewig

Ephesians 4:14-21

When I was a young child, my parents began a sabbath tradition adapting Jewish practice with special prayers and bread at the Saturday evening meal. It is a way to make Sunday special first at home before church the next day.

This includes Dad blessing me and any visiting children, which soon expanded to my parents’ chosen children. Saturday evening is special, all the more when I am home visiting. Dad stands behind, puts his hands on shoulders, and says something simple like: “May you be strengthened. May you know and rest in God’s deep love for you. May you have peace and joy.”

In his letter to the church at Ephesus, Paul gives a blessing. At its heart are these four lines: May you be strengthened in your inner being. May Christ dwell in your hearts. May you have power to comprehend [the expanse] so that may be filled with all the fullness of God. There are other great evocative images: “as you are being rooted and grounded in love” and “know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.”

Imagine a grandparent or favorite teacher or good friend or partner saying: May you be strong remembering whose you are. May you stand firm knowing you belong. May you rest in Jesus who holds the universe and loves you dearly. May you see there is more than you can imagine.

To bless is to pray. It can be to praise as in “Blessed be God” and “I will bless your name.” Blessing is also to pray for others. Intercession, prayer for others, is not to inform God of a need—this person is sick—but rather as we Brothers speak of in our Rule of Life, to join in loving solidarity with the one we pray for which God uses “for healing and transformation.”[i] One we both love is sick. God is not dependent on us. God invites our loving action including blessing.

Similarly, blessing is not asking to make God present but evident. Blessings invite a gift of prayer, awareness of God. The Celtic understanding of a “thin place” is where heaven and earth seem close. For many, monasteries are such places. It is not that God is more present here. “Instead,” Jan Richardson wrote, “a thin place enables us to open our eyes and hearts to the presence of God that goes with us always. A blessing” Richardson continues “invites us to this same opening that we might recognize and receive the help of the One who created us in love … .”[ii]

Just as blessing invites recognizing God, it is not about us. Blessing is about who God is for us. May you be strengthened in your inner being. May Christ dwell in your hearts. May you have power to comprehend. So that may be filled with all the fullness of God.

With loving solidarity, we pray for people in need. We have compassion and share suffering tenderly. That is not what Paul does here. Rather, like much of this letter, Paul describes who God is for and with us. God empowers, lives in, sticks it out with, steadies, and nourishes. God is expansive, abundant, all-encompassing, and overflowing. “… the Father from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. “… comprehend … what is the breadth and length and height and depth.” “… know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

There’s more. “Now to God who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus forever and ever. Amen.”

Paul knows the people to whom he writes and their needs. Paul prays blessing, awareness of God’s abundant, powerful love. Powerful like Jesus walking on water in storm. Abundant like providing food for thousands from a few loaves and fish. Not just a little but expansive and overflowing. Thousands had as much as they wanted. There’s more. After all were satisfied, they filled twelve baskets with more food.

How do you come today? With what pain and loss, stress, or grief, joy and wonder? How do we come as a community of families, neighbors, citizens? God knows, feels, and sees you.

This blessing for the church is still for us and for you.

“… may [you] be strengthened in your inner being with power through the Spirit … may Christ dwell in your hearts through faith as you are being rooted and grounded in love.” May “you have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Now to God who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen.”

[i] SSJE Rule, Chapter 24: The Mystery of Intercession

[ii] Jan Richardson (2016) The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief. Orlando, FL: Wanton Gospeller Press, pxv.