SSJE Sermons

“Each time we receive God into ourselves from this cup, we say yes– we say yes to the one who sensitizes our conscience, the one who sharpens our spiritual senses, and the one who turns up the light – and the heat – in our soul.” Br. Keith Nelson considers what happens when we sip from the cup of Truth.

“In the face of all that confronts us as lost, dead, barren, or forsaken—in the world outside and in the universe within our hearts—God bids us change our perspective.” Br. Sean Glenn looks to Abram for evidence of how God invites us to hold the impossible in our hearts and know it is drenched in God’s purpose and love.

“What if I ask, and my request is denied – or even worse, met with a deafening silence? What if I search and I come up empty-handed, exhausted and looking like an idiot for investing myself in such a lost cause? What if I knock until my knuckles bleed and the door doesn’t budge? Then where will I be?” Br. Keith Nelson considers the vulnerability of prayer and concludes that God always responds to prayer.

“I am the guy who gives up craft beer for Lent and by week two I have succumbed to the desert heat and am quenching my thirst with a cold, refreshing IPA straight from the devil’s hand! In my frustration and disappointment with myself, I try to make myself feel better by thinking of something I can give up the next year where I might actually have success, like perhaps, asparagus. Nothing banishes temptation quite like asparagus.” Br. Jim Woodrum considers Lenten disciplines and discovers – with some help from the Desert Fathers – how temptation can actually be a tool to help us to better know ourselves and draw near to God.

“The transfiguration isn’t just some story about who Jesus is, it’s also a story about who we are as God’s beloved. It is a story about the ways in which God reveals OUR glory for all the world to see. It is a story about us and our relationship to the Father. It is a story about where we have come from, and where we are going.” Br. James Koester marvels at the amazing truth (if not the historical factuality) of the stories of Scripture.

“Someone asked Antony, founder of desert monasticism, 'What must one do in order to please God?' Antony said to stay focused on God, live according to Scripture, and 'in whatever place you find yourself, do not easily leave it.' Then and now we are prone to leave. There is a hunger for and wisdom in stability: remain, stick it out, and keep finding God here.” On the feast of Saint Matthais, Br. Luke Ditewig encourages us to embrace the wisdom of stability, trusting God will provide for us here.

“Why come to church? In an era of declining membership in mainline churches, in a time when more and more people – not just young people – are exercising the option not to attend church services, why do we keep coming back?” Br. David Vryhof ponders the outrageous, impractical, unrealistic, impossible stance of being Christian in today's world.

“Healing often takes time, and that includes the healing of our perception. How you see things now is probably very differently from how you saw things then. Jesus seems to have all the time in the world for us… and for others. He is not in a rush. Healing takes time, maybe a lifetime, maybe this lifetime and the next.” Br. Curtis Almquist offers encouraging words as we face the truth of our blindness and anticipate the new heart and new eyes promised by the resurrected Christ.

“In the sea voyages of life, it is easy to forget, or to choose not to remember. Whether sealed, like Noah, in the cramped and crowded stench of the ark or struggling to navigate more familar waters, the passage between seasons of gracious sustenance can feel equally perilous. Where is the sun? Where is the wind? Will I have enough food? Will the waters ever recede? Will I see dry land again? Where am I going? Where is my God?” Br. Keith Nelson explores the essential, strange practice of sacred storytelling, which answers God's call to remembrance.

“We have no reason to fear when the heat comes, when the drought comes, because when we love our God with all our heart, we fall in love with Love, and we begin to see the world as God sees it. Nourished by the river of Christ’s Light, we let ourselves rest in the Oneness of God’s being. And then we find God’s presence everywhere, whatever the weather of the world happens to be doing.” In this poetic sermon drawing on scriptural images of trees, Br. Nicholas Bartoli invites us to put down our roots and drink deep from the eternal river of Christ's Light.