SSJE Sermons

Br. Lain Wilson

The Dormition of Saint Mary the Virgin, Mother of Our Lord Jesus Christ

Isaiah 61:10-11, Luke 1:46-55

Today we celebrate the feast of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Specifically, we celebrate her “dormition,” that is, her “falling asleep” in death. “Dormition” isn’t just a pious euphemism, but speaks to the peaceful quality of Mary’s death that tradition records, unlike the martyrdoms of so many other followers of Jesus.

The phrase, though, captures something more. The eighth-century patriarch of Constantinople Germanos writes that Mary “had to undergo [her] passage from this world as an awakening to [her] own reality as Mother of Life.”1 Mary’s death wasn’t just a passing away, but a falling asleep into life and a waking up into joy.

Mary is a witness to the joy of the gospel. “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my Savior” (Luke 1:46-47). Joy lies at the heart of Mary’s response to God, her witness to God’s working in the world and her hope of the world to come.

Joy for all that God has done personally for her. “For he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. … for the Mighty One has done great things for me” (Luke 1:48-49). She rejoices. But we don’t ever read that Mary was simply happy. Her actions in the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles are varied: she was perplexed, pondered, treasured in her heart, set out with haste, searched, waited outside the door, stood near the cross, and was devoted to prayer. Hers sounds like a very human life, with uncertainty, fear, disappointment, and loss doled out alongside contentment and resolve. It sounds very much like our lives. Her rejoicing is an important model for us: of joy less as an emotion than a response.

Joy, crucially, isn’t about simple happiness, but has the quality of resilience that comes from deep certainty in the presence and faithfulness of God. “Rejoice in the Lord always,” Saint Paul is able to write from prison; “Rejoice … The Lord is near” (Philippians 4:4-5). The psalmist writes similarly: “When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion … then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy” (Psalm 126:1-2).

Our mouth; our tongue. Mary is a witness, too, to this joy, the communal joy in the restoration of God’s people. Our reading from Isaiah this morning closes chapter 61. Its beginning verses are quoted by Jesus at the beginning of his own ministry: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me 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” (Luke 4:18-19; Isaiah 61:1-2).

Mary’s yes to bear God to the world is fundamental to this work – Jesus’ work – which will “cause righteousness and praise to spring up” (Isaiah 61:11). This is restoration for the whole people, beautifully described in the prophecy of Jeremiah we heard last night: “Again I will build you, and you shall be built. … Again you shall take your tambourines, and go forth in the dance of the merrymakers. Again you shall plant vineyards on the mountains of Samaria. … I will turn their mourning into joy” (Jeremiah 31:4-5, 13). With Mary, we rejoice not only in all that God has done for us individually, but for us communally as the people of God. We can rejoice in all that God has done not least because we believe – we trust, we have faith – that God will be faithful, that God will continue to restore a world that still so desperately needs healing.

Finally, Mary’s witness is not only to the joy we find in this life, but the joy we find in life eternal. “‘It is time, my Mother,’” Patriarch Germanos imagines Jesus saying, “‘to take you to myself. Just as you have filled the earth and all who dwell within it with joy … come, make the heavens joyful once again.’”2 Mary’s falling asleep into life alerts us to the continuity of life in this world and in the next: that both are a response to God, a pilgrimage further into the infinite mystery that is God’s very being.

Twice a day, we Brothers entreat Mary in the Angelus, the devotion of the Incarnation: “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.” These two points – now and the hour of our death – are “the meeting points with God”3 that will eventually converge at the time of our own death, when Christ takes us to himself, and when we will continue our pilgrimage into the heart of God. Pray for us, Mary, that at that time we, like you, will fall asleep into life and wake up into joy unending.

Amen.

1 Germanos of Constantinople, “Homily I,” in On the Dormition of Mary: Early Patristic Homilies, trans. B. E. Daley SJ (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1998), 158-159.

2 Germanos of Constantinople, “Homily II,” in On the Dormition of Mary, 170.

3 Phrase of theologian Yves Congar, quoted in Charles Cummings OSCO, Monastic Practices, rev. ed. (Liturgical Press, 2015), 198.

Br. Curtis Almquist

Psalm 39:11-15

Today we remember the Brothers of the Society of St. John the Evangelist who have died in the month of August, back to when our brotherhood was founded in 1866. This is our monthly Requiem. The word “Requiem” comes from the Latin, “to rest” or “to sleep.”1 At the time of someone’s death we pray over their body: “Depart, O Christian soul, out of this world … May your rest be this day in peace.”2

This practice of celebrating a Requiem is important to us Brothers. It may also be a meaningful practice for you, personally, to intentionally remember people who have figured importantly into your own life and who have died.

We pray for rest in peace for the departed one. Most people depart this life quite broken, whether their death came by violence, or their death came by diminishment: perhaps their body, enfeebled; their mind, dulled; or their relationships, torn or broken. So we pray for them, for healing in death. The Book of Revelation, the last word of the Bible, speaks of the promise of eternal rest, healing, and peace for the departed, “where God will be with them [and] will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more …” (Revelation 21:3-4).

In the Requiem, we also pray for ourselves in our relationships with departed people, whether we were formed or deformed by people who have died. Though they have departed this life, they may still be very much alive in our memory and in how we navigate our own life. We pray our gratitude for them in every way we can. We also may need to pray for liberation and restoration – for ourselves or for a departed one – in a relationship experienced as wounding or imprisoning (Matthew 18:18).

Jesus began his public ministry declaring he would fulfill Isaiah’s prophecy “to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners” (Luke 4:16-21; see Isaiah 61:1-3). We take Jesus at his word, that he has come to heal us and to set us free: all of us, in every way, in this life and in the life to come.3

1 Requiem from the Latin: “rest (after labor), repose.”

2 A phrase found in a Prayer at the Time of Death, in a Commendatory Prayer, and at the Vigil where we pray that the departed “rest in peace”: The Book of Common Prayer (1979), 464-465.

3 The Apostles’ Creed affirms how the crucified Jesus “descended into hell.” The Christian understanding of anastasis – Jesus’ resurrection from the dead – is remembered iconographically as Jesus’ “yanking” people out of hell, Adam and Eve first in line.

Br. Lain Wilson

Matthew 14:22-33

The disciples must have been absolutely exhausted.

Our Gospel reading today omits a word at the beginning that connects it to what has come before: “immediately.” Matthew is precise in his time markers: this episode immediately follows Jesus and the disciples feeding the five thousand. Even if it was just carrying baskets around throughout the meal, five thousand is a lot of people to serve. And immediately after, they are put in a boat and sent out onto the sea, where they are soon battered by waves and facing an adverse wind. We don’t hear that they sleep at all, and they are certainly awake “early in the morning,” that is, roughly between 3 and 6 a.m., when they see Jesus walking toward them on the waves.

I don’t know how the disciples felt, but I know that if I were there, I would’ve been absolutely exhausted.

Several years ago I had a coach who would tell us toward the end of practices before big races to “empty the tank.” This always came after miles of rowing, when we had already put so much energy and focus into practice. And I always remember thinking to myself, well, I need to cycle home, and I haven’t had dinner yet, so I need to make that, and so on and so on. “Empty the tank” for me always got translated into, okay, got it, but what little bit do I need leftover for myself?

So I held some part of myself back.

But I remember the first time in a race I heard the coxswain call us to “empty the tank.” I remember how tired I felt, my lungs and legs burning. I remember feeling my core clench as I anticipated the pain of the final sprint. But I also remember hearing the three men behind me, putting in everything they had to get us across the finish line, and feeling in that moment a surge of assurance: that though this will hurt, that though I may end up crawling off the dock, I can do this. I actually can empty the tank because what we’re doing, what I’m asked to do, is not just about my own power.

Many of you will also have experienced the kind of exhaustion that the disciples felt: the exhaustion of a student at the end of the semester pulling a desperate all-nighter to study for a final; the exhaustion of a parent with a newborn, waking up again and again throughout the night; the exhaustion of someone seeking work and sending one application after another off into the digital void; the exhaustion of a friend who has nothing left to give of themselves to their troubled loved one.

You may have experienced something similar. But you push through and persevere until you’ve given everything you have, and you’re running on empty … and you know in that moment, in that very moment, that the strength that will get you through isn’t just your own. In that moment, your exhaustion becomes a place of surrender, of encounter, and of assurance.

In my prayer with today’s reading, this is Peter’s story. He’s doubtless exhausted by the demands of ministry and controlling the boat all night on a storm-tossed sea. Any one of us who has been overwhelmed by the demands of work, family, commitments, or emergencies can both appreciate and marvel at the strength and persistence that Peter and the other disciples show here. And into this place of endurance and exhaustion steps the Son of God, saying, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid” (Matthew 14:27).

There are many ways of hearing Peter’s response to Jesus’ assurance. Certainly trust: “If it’s you, command me to walk on the water.” But my ears, attuned to Peter’s own weariness, hear something more. I hear Peter’s surrender. I’ve emptied myself here, I imagine Peter saying, and I’m surrendering totally to you so I can do something I know is impossible. Tell me to walk toward you, and I’ll do it, because at this point, it’s all you. It’s all your power.

And Peter does the impossible … until he doesn’t.

“You of little faith, why did you doubt?” I know that Jesus is speaking here about Peter’s doubt that he could continue walking on the waves like Jesus. But I can’t help but wonder. I can’t help but wonder if the doubt that Jesus refers to could also be that Peter, frustrated in his own attempts to do the impossible, might doubt further, might doubt that Jesus would save him from sinking. “You of little faith,” I imagine Jesus responding, “did you think that I wouldn’t save you? Did you think that I’d let you sink?”

Peter cries out hoping to be saved – and perhaps fearing a bit that that salvation won’t come. But Jesus demonstrates to Peter, and to us, that our hope isn’t in vain, that our cry doesn’t fall on deaf ears, and that we aren’t left to sink. Above all, though, Jesus shows us that our faith and hope need to be resilient: that we will face frustration and disappointment, that we will be exhausted and running on empty, but, despite all that, we aren’t bereft. We may start sinking into the waves, but Jesus calls us to have faith that we will find a hand reaching out to draw us up and a firm foundation beneath our feet.

The fourteenth-century English mystic Julian of Norwich concludes the account of her sixteenth and final revelation with a similar expression of assurance: “[Jesus] did not say: You will not be assailed, you will not be belaboured, you will not be disquieted, but he said: You will not be overcome. God wants us to pay attention to his words, and always to be strong in our certainty, in well-being and in woe, for he loves us and delights in us, and so he wishes us to love him and delight in him and trust greatly in him, and all will be well.”1

The good news is that we have so much work to do in this world – mountains to move and sheep to tend and hearts to turn and lost to find – more work than we can possibly do in our own power … and we will not be overcome. We have an impossible task to accomplish – as impossible as walking on water – and we may even start to sink under the weight of it all … and we will find there Jesus drawing us up. And we will be called again and again in this work to empty our tanks, to surrender and turn it all over to God … and to discover that, even then, we are in fact far from powerless, for God’s own power “at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine” (Ephesians 3:20).

Amen.

1 Julian of Norwich, Showings, chap. 22 (short text), trans. E. Colledge and J. Walsh (Paulist Press, 1978), 165.

Br. James Koester

Luke 9:28-36

You may be familiar with Michelangelo’s statue of Moses. Michelangelo regarded it as his most lifelike creation. Once finished, he is reputed to have struck it with his hammer and exclaimed, “Now, speak!” To this day you can see a chip where Michelangelo’s hammer hit.

The story is fun, but when I first saw the statue, that’s not what drew my attention. What drew my attention, and what I found curious, is that Moses had grown horns. Yes, there are two stubby horns emerging from Moses’ head, like horns emerging from the head of a goat. Moses has horns. What on earth is that about?

One of the most important teachings of our Founder, Father Benson, is that he reminds us every encounter with God changes us. He says:

“None can come to Christ … and go away as they came. … Our coming to Christ changes everything … therefore even to the old scenes we return with changed hearts and new powers … It is … a greater thing to return to the old world by a new and heavenly life, and to live therefore, in the world as those who have been with Jesus, than it is to enter upon new spheres of life but with an old heart.”1

To live in the world as those who have been with Jesus! Wow! But we might ask, what would that look like? What would it look like to live as one who had been with Jesus? Well, to take a cue from Father Benson, everything would be changed. The way we look at the world would change. The way we act would change. Even the way we look would change. None can come to Christ and go away as they came. Our coming to Christ changes everything.

As Christians, that encounter with God in Christ began long ago. It began not at our baptism, or even at our birth. That encounter began not at the first Christmas, or even the beginning of time, but in the eons before time. Our very first encounter with God began the moment God conceived of us, and in that moment, long, long, long ago, before sun, moon, or earth were born, we began to change.

“For those whom [God] foreknew [God] also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, … And those whom [God] predestined he also called; and those whom [God] called he also justified; and those whom [God] justified he also glorified” (Romans 8:29-30).

How have we been changed? We were glorified, and our clothes became dazzling, and our faces shone, and … we grew horns. Well, not exactly, but sort of.

Michelangelo based his statue of Moses on St. Jerome’s translation of Exodus, which tells us that when Moses came down from the mountain, rays of light radiated from his face like, well, like horns.

Like us, Moses’ encounter with God changed him, so that when he came down from the mountain, having entered the cloud of God’s glory, and spoken with God as one speaks to a friend (Exodus 33:11), his face shone with the radiance of God’s glory.

It is this same glory we see radiating from the face of Jesus on another mountain, in another place, for “while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white” (Luke 9:29), and from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him” (Luke 9:35). There in that brief, shining moment, we see Jesus as he truly is, and always has been: the Beloved Son of God. In the same way, the Israelites saw Moses as he truly was, and always had been, not just as the one who led them out of Egypt, but in all his glory, as the beloved friend of God.

In those moments when God’s glory shines in the face of another, we see them as they truly are, and always have been, with unveiled faces, the beloved of God, being changed from one degree of glory to another (2 Corinthians 3:18). The same is true for us, for the Transfiguration is not an idea. It is not a story. It is not a fable. It is a lived reality. You and I are truly the beloved, the chosen of God, and our faces shine with the glory of God. They shine with the glory of God because, like Moses, we truly are, and always have been, the friends of God. Like Jesus, we truly are, and always have been, the beloved, chosen of God. When we know this, and perhaps especially when we are unaware of it, light radiates from our faces, well, like horns, and we are shown to be God’s friends, God’s beloved children, with whom God is well pleased. When we know this, and perhaps when we are least aware of it, we live as those who have been with Jesus, and we are changed.

Today, we encounter God again. We encounter God in gathered community, and Word proclaimed, Bread broken, Wine poured. We encounter God in forgiveness given, Peace shared, in Blessing, and Sending. We encounter God in prayer and praise. And, we are changed. That change, which began when we were first conceived of by God, eons before the beginning of time, continues today as we are changed from one degree of glory to the next, and our faces shine with the splendour and glory of God.

Look about you. Can you see it? Can you see in the faces around you God’s glory shining? Can you see the light of God’s glory radiating from the faces of those around you? You should. For we truly are, and always have been, God’s friends, and our faces shine with the splendour and glory of God. We truly are, and always have been, God’s beloved, God’s chosen, and our faces shine with the splendour and glory of God. And God’s glory shines through us, just as it did Jesus, just as it did Moses.

We may not grow horns, as St. Jerome imagined of Moses, but we do shine, and that, Father Benson reminds us, changes everything.

“None can come to Christ … and go away as they came. … Our coming to Christ changes everything.”

So, go home and look in the mirror. You might be surprised to see how much you really do shine. And that’s because you are God’s friend, God’s beloved, and even now you are being changed from one degree of glory to another. And maybe, just maybe, you’ll see that you are growing horns.

1 R. M. Benson, Spiritual Readings for Every Day: Christmas, 260-261.

Br. Jack Crowley

Commemoration of Saint John Vianney

Luke 22:24-30

This evening we celebrate one of my favorite saints of all time, Saint John Vianney. We have a window of John in the back corner of the chapel, so if you get bored during my sermon you can always look at that.

The main reason I love John Vianney so much is he had the gift of reading souls. He was famous for being able to understand people very quickly and guiding them to God. John spent upwards of twelve hours a day in the confessional. People flocked from all over France in the early 1800s to see him.

The stories of people who saw John Vianney follow a similar pattern. They came to John, they confessed all of what they thought they had to confess, and then they stopped. Then the magic happened. John had the ability to lovingly look into the hearts of all who came to him and help them draw out the things they were hiding from God.

I imagine we’ve all had some experience like this – an experience of being known or drawn out of our shells. In my experience, it’s one of the most terrifying and exhilarating experiences we can have. To be seen, known, and loved requires trust. When we stop hiding from ourselves, God, and our neighbors, we step out vulnerably into the unknown. It’s a leap of faith to expose ourselves and trust that God and those around us have our best interests at heart. We give God and those we love the benefit of the doubt and say, “Here I am; do with me what you will.”

This dance of seeing, knowing, and loving is a lifelong tango. We are going to step on each other’s toes from time to time; we will bump into each other awkwardly; and we will certainly get out of rhythm on occasion. The beauty of confession and reconciliation is that they are always inviting us back onto the dance floor. God’s grace knows no bounds.

To this day, hundreds of thousands of pilgrims travel every year to John Vianney’s parish. You might wonder what they are looking for, given that the man is no longer there. Yet that is the very power of human connection: to be joined together in a common spot, seeking God with all their heart.

So if tonight you find yourself in want of God, don’t try to think your way out of it. Don’t hide yourself behind your thoughts. Instead, try exposing your heart to God. As crazy or creepy as that might sound, what do you have to lose? Why not try to be intimate with God? Expose your heart to God and let love do its thing. Remember that Jesus, who knows our hearts so well, is watching us with tender love, inviting us forward, deeper and deeper into that holy mystery.

Saint John Vianney, please pray for us. Amen.

Br. Keith Nelson

Matthew 14:13-21

Followers of Jesus are called to do as Jesus does.

There are two prominent ways of interpreting this expectation.

As we learn more and more about how Jesus behaved – the words he said and things he did in the Gospels – we strive to conform our behavior to his. This is the ethical dimension of doing as Jesus does.

But we also learn to open ourselves and allow the life of Jesus to act through us, as members of his Body in the world. We become the eyes, the mouth, the hands, the feet of Jesus. “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,” writes Paul in Philippians (Philippians 2:5), and in Galatians we hear him say, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). We might call this the metaphysical or the mystical dimension of doing as Jesus does.

Perhaps the clearest scriptural example of this is in John, chapter 14: “Very truly I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father” (John 14:12). But Jesus clarifies in John 15 that the works to be done are not the fruit of some new superhuman capacity conferred upon the disciples: “Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).

We draw closer to Jesus by doing the things he did, by a conscious effort of the will, as his followers. But this is often the preparatory work for drawing even closer by allowing him to act through us. We are called to surrender that same will to the work of God’s grace – to become “participants of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4).

From what I have witnessed in others and in myself, this second manner of doing as Jesus did comes to us and through us in those moments when we recognize that our best efforts can carry us no farther. It is a recognition that arrives often against our will. The relationship between the doing and the doer shifts. If we consent – and God always waits for our consent – we become a conduit for God, “the doer of all that is done,” in the words of Julian of Norwich.

In our reading from Matthew’s Gospel this morning, Jesus says: “They need not go away. You give them something to eat” (Matthew 14:16).

The disciples reply, “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish” (Matthew 14:17).

Many of us can probably identify with this assessment of our own situation in any given moment.

We reach the limits of our own capacity: we cannot be any kinder to our hostile neighbor; we cannot effect measurable change in our community; we cannot give any more time or energy to a broken system or a broken world. We are poised on the threshold of giving up.

But sometimes, by some counterintuitive impulse, we give it up, we give everything up – to God. There is a moment of free fall, or melting, or the sinking feeling that everything is slipping through our fingers like sand. But then a measureless power takes it, breaks it open, and multiplies our offering in a new form “greater than we could ask for or imagine” (Ephesians 3:20).

Five loaves and two fish are not, in fact, nothing. They are very little – but they are something. Jesus says, “Bring them here to me” (Matthew 14:18).

It seems to me that when we feel our offering, our faith, our inner or outer resources are too meager, our first impulse is often not to bring them to Jesus, but to hide them in shame or avoidance until we have more to show for ourselves.

In my experience of offering spiritual direction, and seeing a spiritual director myself, the last fifteen minutes of a session open a window in which many of us finally put our five loaves and two fish on the table. “Have you brought these to Jesus?” my own spiritual director will ask. Have I? I ask myself. Have I really and truly?

What’s stopping me?

What may be stopping you?

I have also seen what the action of a higher and deeper power looks like in an ordinary human life when I have witnessed moments of genuine inspiration.

In some of the world’s greatest creators of art, music, and literature, as well as some of the world’s great scientists, the moment of inspiration for a creative work or a scientific theorem is often described as pure gift. The individual has certainly spent years of study, practice, preparation, observation, and profound listening to the world around them. Yet without that ineffable spark to set their creativity on fire, their labors are only a pile of human striving.

One such artist was Vincent van Gogh. Van Gogh is one of the most popular and beloved artists of all time today but was widely unappreciated and misunderstood in his own time. What is less well-known is that Van Gogh had an intense belief in God and a profound relationship with Christian Scripture that suffused his receptivity to both his artistic subjects and his ways of depicting them. He wrote: “I think sometimes I see something deeper, more infinite, more eternal than the ocean in the expression of the eyes of a little baby when it wakes in the morning” … “All nature seems to speak. . . . I do not understand why everyone does not see and feel it; nature or God does it for everyone who has eyes and ears and a heart to understand.”

In one of my earliest childhood memories, I am standing in the parking lot of a shopping mall with my mother. My mom and a kind stranger are talking. My mom buys a crystal chandelier from the stranger – a very old, broken, beat-up chandelier that looks like it belongs in a dumpster. When we get home, I watch as she dismantles the many glass prisms; cleans them thoroughly; wires them together in new shapes; and slowly transforms them into Christmas ornaments for our tree. As I gaze up at the tree, rainbows of light bounce and skitter across the ceiling – and I can barely breathe, because I have witnessed utter magic.

I cannot believe that this came from that. A tree of rainbows grown from a tangle of wire and old glass bound for the landfill.

But I begin to believe because this kind of thing becomes normal in a household suffused with my mom’s unique combination of creative ingenuity and trust in the world’s abundance.

In John’s version of the feeding of the five thousand, the apostle Andrew says, “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?” (John 6:9). The addition of the boy rings true to me: a child who instinctively offers what he has in hope and trust that something, even though small, is greater than nothing.

The inner realist, the Andrew in all of us, often wins the day as we grow older and lose touch with a world more fluid with mystery and pregnant with possibilities.

But that world is the kingdom to which we are called.

Br. Lucas Hall

Jeremiah 26:11-16, 24

Matthew 14:1-12

We have just heard of two prophets: Jeremiah and John the Baptist. They are both very prominent figures in Scripture. And they both failed.

I don’t say this to disparage them. But John, as we just heard, was killed, overcome by the society he strove so adamantly to change. And Jeremiah escaped martyrdom, but his calls to change went unheeded, and he watched his people reap what they had sowed. They were conquered, and Jeremiah spent the rest of his days in exile and lament.

This is, indeed, a religion for failure. How many crucifixes can you see in this chapel? Why? We have the story of the Resurrection, the Ascension, Christ’s triumphs and glories. Is it some ancient obsession with blood sacrifice? Some medieval holdover of hyper-penitence? No. “We proclaim Christ crucified,” writes Paul to his fellow Christians (1 Corinthians 1:23). A foolish stumbling block to those outside, but central to what we as Christians embrace as the path to salvation.

I have known some of you for many years. I have never met others of you. I promise you all equally: you will fail. I will. We all will. Bodies fail; organs and muscles fail; hearts and minds fail. We fail each other by our errors and omissions. Business endeavors fail; war efforts fail; political, social, and civic movements fail. Church fundraisers fail; evangelistic efforts fail. I promise you, I promise you, it’s coming.

The effort, then, must not be success at all costs. But rather, how might these efforts, whether successful or failing, be an offering to God? I believe there are failures that aren’t offerings. I don’t think it’s enough to idealize yourself into failure, to fall prey to that inclination to be self-righteous, to give all your efforts to impossible flights of fancy, to shun meaningful progress because it is imperfect. If we believe what we say, if we believe that a better world is possible, we have a moral duty to be effective. We can’t just squander ourselves and others for the perceived glory of martyrdom.

So how do we fail well? I cannot answer every specific circumstance, of course. But I’m reminded of how many times this Christ we speak of encountered angry crowds seeking his blood and somehow slipped away because his hour had not yet come. We can interpret this as simply fate, or divine intervention, but I think there’s an active role to play on our part too. Is it our hour? Has our hour come? Is it the time to take that risk, to offer ourselves, even to the point of failure? Sometimes, the answer will be no, and that can be hard. Sometimes, the answer will be yes, and that can be harder. In both cases, if we want our failures to be offerings, we must take an active role in listening. If a child is hungry, we offer them bread, not a stone. When we offer ourselves to God, might we approach God with the same discernment: a desire to actually offer what God is asking of us, rather than what we assume God wants or needs?

We all will fail. Listen for God, look to Christ crucified, and fail well.

Br. Jack Crowley

Psalm 146

Back when I was a postulant and first moved into the monastery, I frequently had a daydream about the door leading from the church into our enclosure. We Brothers process through this door multiple times a day, so we have a lot of experience with it. My daydream was that in the space above the door, kind of where the exit sign is now, there would be a scoreboard. I would daydream that as we Brothers left the chapel, we would each get a score about how well we prayed. I imagined grades like 89 or 92 and wondered how we could bump up to the next level.

What I’ve come to learn since being a postulant is that we don’t get graded on our prayers. In my experience, this can be a source of relief and frustration. It’s a source of relief in that we are not being judged by our praise, but it may also be a source of frustration in that it’s nearly impossible to quantify or qualify how it is we praise God.

It’s with that spirit that I find great comfort in our gradual psalm today, Psalm 146. In particular, the final part of the first verse which says, “I will sing praises to my God while I have my being” (Psalm 146:1). It’s that phrase “while I have my being” that always gets me. “While I have my being” is not a phrase I use in my day-to-day life, but in this context it’s quite beautiful.

“I will sing praises to my God while I have my being.” The psalmist did not say “I will sing praises to my God to the best of my ability” or “I will sing praises to my God better and better each day.” Instead, the psalmist is saying that basically as long as we are drawing breath in this world, we will sing praises to God. You don’t need to qualify it and you don’t need a good reason to do it; you can always sing praises to God.

One of the most important lessons I have learned here in the monastery is that sometimes prayer is an act of getting out of my own head. I am a control freak by nature – I like to know the who, what, when, and why of it all. Yet sometimes this impulse to praise God bubbles up from within me, and it goes beyond whatever thoughts are circling in my head. I have learned to seize those moments – to throw caution to the wind and break that alabaster jar of perfume and grab a foothold of God incarnate. That foothold can be a powerful pivot point from which we can leverage whatever is going on around us into something gorgeous.

Br. Lain Wilson

Matthew 13:36-43

Our Gospel passage this evening is a rare instance of Jesus explaining a parable. This is the parable of the wheat and weeds, which we heard two Sundays ago. As wheat and weeds grow together in a field, the householder orders that they be left until the harvest, when the weeds will be separated and burned, and the wheat brought into the barn. It’s a parable about patience in the face of the persistence of evil and suffering, and faith in God’s future judgment (Matthew 13:36–43).

Jesus clarifies the meaning of the parable to his disciples, and to us. But that clarity doesn’t mean it’s simple, and the urging of patience for the future doesn’t mean that we don’t have work to do in our present. If we can look toward the distant future of this world’s field, we are also directed to tend our own gardens.

We are called to survey our garden’s health, and we are called to be clear-eyed in that assessment. Where do we see weeds taking over? How have we neglected to attend to our garden?

Jesus came preaching repentance and turning back to God, not congratulating ourselves for being perfect. We all have failings. We are all burdened under the weight of sin. We will be called to take stock of our sins in the confession this evening. Don’t let yourself go on autopilot when you say these words. What failing today, what sin in this moment, weighs on your heart? Where is your garden languishing?

Part of this is about recognizing that the fates of what grows are intertwined. So as you survey your garden, learn the names of what grows there. Learn to recognize them, become familiar with them. What are your gifts that are cultivated there . . . and what are the shadows that they cast? Perhaps you have enormous capacity for work and productivity, and enormous impatience for those without. Perhaps you can have a conversation with anyone and everyone, but struggle when it comes time to listen.

Our brightest gifts cast the darkest shadows. When we can recognize them, name them, and become familiar with them, we can be more perceptive as to their impact on us and the world.

And all this – surveying our garden, recognizing what grows there – helps us to know how we may intervene. We can begin to experiment as gardeners. What happens when you water earlier in the day, or use compost?

Our Rule uses the word disciplines in this respect: the practices or habits or commitments that we can put into place, individually and collectively, to help us weather the challenges of vowed life in community. Water and sunlight are pretty high up on my own list (so I’m not all that different from a plant, really), but so too are movement and periods of solitude.

What about your own list? What factors are most important in how you show up to yourself, to God, and to the world? What disciplines – what interventions – might make your own garden healthier?

Confession, discernment, discipline: tending our gardens is hard work. But the good news is that we aren’t alone in this work. Jesus stands with us, giving us the courage to see and speak and do in the work of tending our gardens in the present, and the patience to wait with hope and faith upon the harvest of God’s future.

Amen.

Br. Luke Ditewig

Genesis 29:15-28

Jesus teaches with images from everyday life, divine truth revealed in soil and seeds, wheat and weeds, yeast and bread, fish and nets. Though so small a seed, mustard grows into a large plant and then a tree. Hidden yeast infiltrates flour and water, making dough expand for bread. More than just size, these point to what is divinely possible. God may seem hidden or insignificant, but that does not mean God is not present or powerful. God is and will do far more than we now see to restore the world.[1]

Jesus invites us to be patient and to trust God’s hidden actions. The seed will eventually become a tree, spreading out and giving shade. Birds will come to nest in its branches. Like gardeners, be patient in planting and tending. Wait in hope for yield this summer and for the end, when all is verdant and bountiful.

When speaking of yeast, Jesus gives a ridiculous amount for one baker. This likely feeds hundreds of people, bread for everyone in town. The net catches every kind of fish, all included. It is hard to hear the binary of wicked and righteous with a blazing furnace. God invites repentance, change, and following, to live rightly with consequences and punishment in play. The furnace is a striking image. Jesus is the Great Fisher who makes the decisions.[2] Hold this gently with the mustard seed, yeast, and God writ large through Scripture.

God calls flawed people who keep failing, slowly changing and using them for good. Genesis tells the stories of Abraham and Sarah, their son Isaac, and of Hagar and Ishmael, of Isaac and Rebecca with their sons Jacob and Esau. Jacob wrestled from birth, coming from the womb gripping his brother’s ankle. Jacob shrewdly swapped Esau soup for the birthright by a sworn oath. With his mother’s help, Jacob deceived his nearly blind father by smell, wearing Esau’s clothing, giving food like Esau cooked, and covering his smooth arms with animal skins to imitate his brother’s hairy arms. Jacob wrestled away Esau’s blessing from their father.

Esau wanted to kill him. Jacob’s parents sent him off to Laban to find a wife. As we heard today, Jacob fell in love with Rachel and worked for Laban seven years to marry her. After the feast, Laban sent his other daughter Leah in to sleep with Jacob on the wedding bed. Laban deceived Jacob the deceiver with sight and touch.[3] Jacob worked another seven years, marrying both Rachel and Leah. Both bore sons with Jacob, twelve in total, and a daughter. God gave Jacob a new name: Israel.

God worked with and through Jacob and his deceit and the enmity in his fraught and frail family to create a larger people to – as promised to Abraham – bless the whole world. The kingdom of heaven is expansive, reaching beyond our categories, beyond expectation, using us and our families with all frailty and foibles, baggage and brokenness.

We are clearly in need. God comes to save. We are saved by grace, not by what we do but by what God does for us. Paul encourages us, saying that amid any suffering or challenge, nothing can separate us from God’s love (Romans 8:26-39).

Do God’s actions seem hidden or insignificant for you today, given the state of the world, given the state of your life, wounds, and family? Like seeds and yeast, God is present, active, and with great possibility. Hope in God, from whom more will be revealed.

When Jesus told of the mustard tree with birds on its branches making nests, many who first heard it would likely remember something similar from the prophets. Isaiah and Ezekiel foretold of a “World Tree” to bless everyone.[4] Isaiah said: “In days to come Jacob shall take root; Israel shall blossom and put forth shoots and fill the whole world with fruit” (Isaiah 27:6). Ezekiel said: “Under it every kind of bird will live; in the shade of its branches will nest winged creatures of every kind” (Ezekiel 17:23).

Every kind is protected and nourished under this tree. Yeast into dough, not just for a village but a “cosmic loaf” for all people.[5] God promised Abraham his offspring would bless the entire world. Jesus said he would be lifted up to draw all the world to himself.

If God seems hidden or with actions small and seemingly insignificant, first pray your pain. Do not deny suffering. The Spirit helps us in our weakness, groaning with and for us. Hold onto hope. God loves us and is at work in more than we can see or imagine. Like every kind of bird nesting on branches of a huge tree. Like bountiful bread for everyone to eat. Like a net catching all fish. As a king in a manger, on a donkey, and on a cross, God comes on a slant, surprising and subversive, Love from whom we shall not be separated. Amen.

[1] Frederick Dale Bruner, Matthew: The Churchbook (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing, 1990), 36.

[2] Bruner, 51.

[3] Paul Borgman, Genesis: The Story We Haven’t Heard (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2001), 155.

[4] Bruner, 36.

[5] Bruner, 36.