SSJE Sermons

“If we desire to know God as we are known by God, we must learn to recognize and focus on the good shepherd, trusting that he will lead us back into union with God as God’s beloved children—created in God’s image and likeness. Through this understanding, we realize our capacity to love, nurture, and guide others to the sheepfold where all may be fed, loved, and protected. Just as God called Jesus from a shepherd to sheep, Jesus is calling us from being sheep to becoming shepherds—an embodiment of God’s love and provision for all.” Br. Jim Woodrum considers how we are called to be both the sheep of the Good Shepherd and shepherds to others we meet on our path.

“I ask you: What labor of love has God asked of you, only to bear fruit far different than expected or imagined? How has your desire been distilled in response? Trust, allow, distill. This is how God prepares and purifies our desire, beginning with our most modest hopes and needs and gradually enlarging our hearts to encompass more and more of the world’s suffering and joy. Until one day, we awake to find we desire nothing less than the Day of the Lord.” Br. Keith Nelson weighs – against his own recent and upcoming experience – the sometimes conflicting Advent exhortations toward waiting and hard work, in preparation to meet the coming Christ.

“We find ourselves this Advent in a world that seems to be breaking down. A litany could encompass all ills and lands and peoples, and still feel incomplete. We find ourselves, this Advent, hurting, injured, crying out. Crying out for hope. Crying out for hope in God’s promise of healing.” Br. Lain Wilson reminds us that, even in the midst of a challenging Advent, we don't have to wait for the healing God has promised.

“Will we choose the narrow and hard way or the wide and easy way?  Will we heed the good prophets or the false ones?  Will we be trees that bear good fruit or bad fruit?  Will we do God’s will or won’t we? Will we act on what we have heard, or will we dismiss and ignore it?” Br. David Vryhof studies the signposts on the way that leads to life.

“Looking to the heavens, I imagine that these sparkling nebulae, which we can barely see, are asking for attention. Seeking our attention. I imagine these celestial creations want to be noticed, they as much as the star of Bethlehem. These mysterious galaxies surrounding us are fellow creatures of God, and they may help give focus for us in this season of Advent.” Br. Curtis Almquist invites us to open our hearts for more room for this world, the vast configuration of God's creation.

“Wake up! The effect of Advent on us should be like the blast of a cold shower after we have gotten out of bed, sleepy and bleary eyed. Wake up, sleepy head.  In Advent God is trying to wake us up. I don’t want you to sleepwalk through life, drift aimlessly through life. I want you to wake up and be fully alive. Wake up!”

As Advent begins, Br. Geoffrey Tristram urges us to wake up, to look for signs, and to be ready for Jesus to come among us again.

“Even when it seems too late, God still hears our cries and comes. This parable gives warning but not to fear. It urges to live for the party, not just to plan to attend later, but to live now alert and generous. God’s kingdom, the new way of living, is not a ticket to exit later, but a life of celebrating through sharing now.” In a parable that might be cause for fear, Br. Luke Ditewig finds a cause for rejoicing and an invitation to be wildly generous with life.

“Like so much else in Scripture, food exists, not simply to fill our bellies, although it does. Scripture speaks of food as a sign, a symbol, a sacrament, of something much larger.” Br. James Koester urges us to accept God's invitation to the feast.

“Of all the young women God could have chosen, God chose Mary. And what is the first thing we find out about her? That she hears the angel’s news, is perplexed, ponders over his words, and questions him. The first thing we find out about Mary is that she responds to God by using her own God-given faculties of reason and intelligence.” Br. Lain Wilson celebrates how, like Mary, what we offer back to the Lord is our unique response to God, our unique way of bearing God into the world.

“We are people in need, all of us and all of our lives. Remembering that, practicing that will invite the gift of humility to grow. Along the way and in the end, humility is giving up.” Br. Curtis Almquist invites us to fall into humility, which is our true human condition.