SSJE Sermons

Br. David Vryhof

Ezekiel 37:21-28

During the time I served the community as its Novice Guardian, I often encouraged the newer brothers to articulate their vision of monastic life. I asked them to reflect on why they had come to the monastery, what it was they hoped to become here, what principles and values they treasured in their hearts that life in this community might help them realize. It was that vision, I believed, that would keep them going when times were tough.

It’s important to have a vision that sets out for us a clear direction and focus for our lives. “Where there is no vision,” the author of the book of Proverbs reminds us, “the people perish.” (Proverbs 29:18, KJV)

The prophet Ezekiel lays out such a vision in the passage we heard read today. It is a vision of a restored Israel, in which a divided people are brought together by God as one nation and people. God cleanses them from their sin and removes idols from among them so that they can become a consecrated people under one Shepherd, God’s servant David. In this vision, they live in the land forever, in a covenant of peace with God. “I will be their God,” God promises, “and they shall be my people.”

And there are times when the vision becomes reality, when Israel lives in union with God and in restored fellowship one with another; but there are also times when this vision unravels, when they prove unfaithful towards God, when God withdraws the blessings they have been promised. Then, like the psalmist in Psalm 85, they need to ask God to restore them again:

“Lord, you were favorable to your land; you restored the fortunes of Jacob. You forgave the iniquity of your people; you pardoned all their sin. . . . Restore us again, O God of our salvation, and put away your indignation toward us. . . . Will you not revive us again, so that your people may rejoice in you? Show us your steadfast love, O Lord, and grant us your salvation.” (vv. 1-2, 4, 6-7, NRSV)

It is important for us to have a vision, but it’s also important that that vision be renewed and restored from time to time, especially when the vision seems to be unraveling before our eyes and we find ourselves calling out to God for help and for hope.

What is the vision that inspires you and gives you hope? What is the vision that propels you forward with confidence into the future?

Whatever our vision is – of God, of the human communities of which we are a part, of ourselves – we will from time to time need this vision to be restored, through prayer, through the support and encouragement of others, through the grace of God that permeates this world and the next.

Our vision may need not only to be restored, but also to be extended. Is our God too small? Is it difficult to imagine a God who is greater than the problems we face in this world? If we have lost sight of the God who can unite divided peoples, who can gather us under the protection of peace, who can be our God in every trouble or difficulty . . . If we have lost sight of this God, we need to lift up our hearts once more and ask God to restore our vision and renew our hope.

Cling to the vision. Keep it always before you. Renew and strengthen it whenever it falters or fails. And remember always that “where there is no vision, the people perish.”

Br. James Koester

The Fifth Sunday in Lent

John 11:1-45

You can’t walk there anymore. One morning, on my first visit to Jerusalem, nearly 30 years ago, I walked from East Jerusalem, where I was staying, over the Mount of Olives and on into Bethany. I was going to visit the tomb of Lazarus and the home of Mary and Martha. A few years later that walk was impossible. The security wall had been constructed, separating Bethany from Jerusalem. Now, the only way between the two communities is to drive several miles out of your way, through various checkpoints, and then loop back on the other side of the Mount. What took a couple of hours to walk, now takes a couple of hours to drive. What had been a pleasant walk there and back, has become a frustrating all-day drive.

It is that walk I remember. Once I got off the main road, I mostly had the way to myself. When I arrived at the tomb of Lazarus, I had it all to myself. I could sit there quietly and feel the emotion that was so evident in the place, as I heard in my heart the weeping of those gathered there that day long ago. It was just 6 months after my father had died, and my own grief was still fresh. As I sat there with my grief, I remembered Jesus’ grief for his beloved friend. John (11:35) tells us that “Jesus wept.”[1] I did not, that day, find his tears hard to imagine, as my own were just below the surface. Clearly the crowds noticed. See how he loved him! the crowds whispered among themselves. See how I loved him, as I thought of my own father.

Tears can be signs of many things: love, loss, disappointment, frustration, even anger and rage. We have all shed tears for many reasons. I certainly have. Jesus’ tears on this day were a manifestation of his very real love, and we are told that, in the gospel: “Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus” (John 11:5), so his tears should not surprise us. These three were clearly precious to Jesus, and it showed, and he wept. He wept, not simply because someone had died. He wept because someone precious to him had died. Imagine that! Imagine God weeping when someone precious to the heart of God dies. Yet weep God does, because as Isaiah (43:4) reminds us, “[we] are precious in [God’s] sight” . . . and God loves us.

This is the good news of the gospel, that we are all precious in the sight of God who loves us, not in a general way, but in a particular way; in the way that Jesus loved Lazarus. Imagine that! Jesus loves you in the same way he loved Mary, and Martha, and Lazarus. And if that is true for you, it is true for every single person alive today, for every single person who has ever lived, and for every single person who will live in the future. Every single person is precious and loved by God, no matter what. You are precious in my sight . . . and I love you. That being the case, I find it impossible to reconcile some of the things we have heard recently, with what Scripture tells us.

Last September at Charlie Kirk’s memorial service, Donald Trump stated, “I hate my opponents, and I don’t want the best for them.” Yesterday he said, “Good, I’m glad he’s dead,” in a social media post about Robert Mueller’s death. Two weeks ago, Pete Hegseth promised to “rain death and destruction from the sky” on the people of Iran. Two days ago, he asked that we all pray “every day on bended knee, with your family, in your schools, in your churches, in the name of Jesus Christ” for members of the armed forces, whose task it has become to rain destruction on Iran from the sky. To date between 3,000 and 4,000 people, mostly civilians, including hundreds of children, have been killed in Iran, Lebanon, and Israel as the promised destruction has rained down upon them. How any of this reflects the Christian values this administration purports to uphold, is beyond me.

How we as faithful Christians, in whose name this evil is being said and done, can respond, is however something entirely different. That is not beyond me. So, what can our response be to this culture of hate and death in which we are entombed?

First, we can weep. Jesus was not ashamed of his tears, and nor should we be of ours. We need to give ourselves permission to shed tears of frustration, grief, repentance, and even rage. But mostly, we need to shed tears of love for the world which God loves, for “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:16-17). Our tears can be our prayer.

Second, we can love. Jesus did not stop loving because Lazarus had died. Indeed, it seems he loved him more, so much so that the crowds noticed. See how he loved him, they said. Our love should not be limited to what we can control, and God knows there seems to be no control today, when a war can be begun simply because someone had a gut feeling. As Christians we are called to love until our hands are bleeding, and our knees aching, even when we have been betrayed. Our love, even in the face of evil and betrayal, can be our prayer.

Finally, we can act. “Unbind him, and let him go” (John 11:44). The world is in the grip of death and hate. The burial shroud immobilizes us. The stench of decay lingers in our nostrils. Yet all is not lost. Into this Jesus cries out, unbind them, and let them go. So it is with us. Just as Lazarus needed to be unbound by others from the trappings of death, so too does our world. Any action, great or small, that loosens death’s grip on the world, can be our prayer, and allow us to emerge once again unrestrained and free, from the tomb. Our action to unbind can be our prayer.

And it all begins with the simple recognition that you are precious in God’s sight, and that God loves you, just as Jesus still loves Lazarus. If we know this, death and hate will loosen its grip on your heart, your life, and the world. And that friends is good news, and will one day, lead us out of the tomb in which we find ourselves today.

[1] AV/KJV; “Jesus began to weep” (NRSV).

Br. Lain Wilson

Jeremiah 11:18-20

Here in the Chapel, you will never hear chanted portions of several psalms, or even the entirety of two. Our Society’s practice follows other monastic communities in “mak[ing] provision for optional omissions of imprecatory verses” as an expression of hospitality.[1]

Imprecatory, meaning “to invoke evil upon” or “to curse,” certainly captures the thrust of much of my prayer as I look out on our troubled world. I see evil and suffering, and find myself wanting those perpetrating it to suffer in return. I’d like to say that I’m above that, but I’m not. It has been shockingly easy for me to get there in my prayer. I’ve found a real invitation in praying imprecatory verses – not to discover new horrible things to wish on others, but to discover that what I feel is distinctly human.

Jeremiah, in today’s short passage, echoes the language of our psalm (7) in calling on God as righteous judge to exact retribution on those who have planned evil against the prophet. The word translated “retribution” is often also translated as “vengeance”; it’s the same word that appears in the stunning opening verse of psalm 94: “O Lord God of vengeance, O God of vengeance, show yourself. Rise up, O Judge of the world; give the arrogant their just deserts” (vv. 1-2). This word appears in Jeremiah more often than in any other book of scripture and there signals punishment for an action that is incompatible with, or transgresses, God’s sovereignty, rather than personal revenge.[2] We might think of this as God’s messenger asking God to punish these men for ignoring diplomatic immunity.

The important thing here is that Jeremiah knows; God has revealed the situation to him.[3] By contrast, most of us, maybe all of us, will lack this firm assurance of what the sides truly are. We may be reassured by imprecatory verses that we aren’t alone in feeling these very human feelings in our prayer, but we are equally convicted by the inadequacy of our own knowledge and understanding, and the shackles that inadequacy place on us.

Nicodemus recognizes this when he replies to the Pharisees’ fierce questioning of the temple police and denunciation of the crowd: “Our law does not judge people without first giving them a hearing to find out what they are doing, does it?” (John 7:51). We don’t have all the facts, and therefore we can’t exercise judgment.

This is the crux of the matter. What we can know for sure is so limited in this life – our understanding of God and God’s plan for us; our perception of the “mystery present in the hearts of our brothers and sisters, strangers and enemies,” as we say in our Rule; indeed, our awareness of the movements of our own hearts. Only God can know, and when we rush to judgment, when we find ourselves desiring a sentence to be imposed, we are putting ourselves into the place of God. “Beloved, never avenge yourselves,” Saint Paul writes to the Romans. “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. . . . Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:19, 21).

Jesus surely models Paul’s exhortation. “When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, ‘Father, forgiven them; for they do not know what they are doing’” (Luke 23:33-34). God is the righteous judge . . . and Jesus, who of anyone who has ever lived had the right to demand retribution from that judge, instead asks his Father to forgive. Jesus sees the shackles of their own ignorance and urges compassion.

This may be beyond our own power. We do not know or understand, and we will still be limited humans and desire and pray for vengeance and violence and suffering. . . and Jesus, who suffered from that very same human impulse, and who redeems all human experience, redeems even that.

Jesus, the Savior of the world, saves us, day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute, from the shackles of our own short-sighted ignorance, offering us freedom in the example of his own life and death.

Amen.

[1] “About the Daily Office Psalter,” in SSJE, The Ordo for the Daily Office and Holy Eucharist.

[2] The Hebrew word neqamah appears in the book of Jeremiah 11 times, out of a total of 27 occurrences in the Hebrew Scriptures. On its meaning in Jeremiah: W. L. Holladay, Jeremiah 1 (Philadelphia, 1986), 374, citing an article by Mendenhall: “‘It is a command that the sovereign authority of Yahweh should be placed in action in order to punish/redress an action that is incompatible with the sovereignty of that same ultimate authority.’”

[3] Jeremiah 11:18: “It was the Lord who made it known to me . . . [who] showed me their evil deeds.” Holladay (ibid., 363) underscores Jeremiah’s God-given knowledge in his rendering of the conclusion to verse 20: “for to me you have revealed my adversaries” (commentary at 374).

Br. Luke Ditewig

Ezekiel 47:1-9, 12

What’s the vision? How does it help living now?

After Jerusalem was conquered, the temple destroyed, and people taken far away in exile, amid much loss and grief, God sent prophets to renew and prompt the people. God gave Ezekiel a five-chapter detailed vision of the Temple restored, where God dwells. The vision prompts looking with faith to what cannot be seen, God restoring all.

As we heard tonight, it’s not just a restored building or dwelling but water flowing from it, water that expands and deepens into a large river ankle-deep, knee-deep, waist-deep and beyond. Water, the source of life, in the desert where it is most valuable. A living river that brings the dead to life. It flows into the Dead Sea where most fish and plants can’t live and changes it into fresh water “where every living creature that swarms will live . . . and everything will live where the river goes.” Not only live but thrive and far more than usual. Healthy trees along the river bear fruit and not only in harvest season but every month. Fruit for food and leaves for healing.

It’s a bountiful, glorious vision. God will dwell in a restored temple from which living waters flow bringing new and abundant life. What image comes to your mind for such bountiful vibrancy where everything will live where the river goes? Ezekiel pulls from imagery like the Garden of Eden and like Psalm 46: “There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High.”

Jesus goes to a man who had been ill 38 years near a pool of water known for healing. “Do you want to be made well?” He replies: I have no one to take me to the water. Long-suffering. Resignation. Trapped. Despair. How have you experienced this?

Jesus goes to people personally and directly with mercy and compassion asking, listening, and freely giving. “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” How have you experienced such mercy and compassion?

Like water soaking into parched ground. Like fresh water entering stagnant water and restoring it fresh. “Everything will live where the river goes.” Psalm 46 says: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” Jesus comes personally with mercy. Asking, listening, and freely giving. God comes amid our loss and grief, ravaged in exile.

What’s the vision? God will heal and restore all. Cling to the vision as one way of experiencing refuge and help. We believe in the restoration! God will heal and restore all. Like water soaking into parched ground. Like fresh water entering stagnant water and restoring it fresh. “Everything will live where the river goes.”

Br. Curtis Almquist

The Fourth Sunday in Lent

Psalm 23

Our psalm appointed for today, Psalm 23, is for many people the most familiar of the 150 psalms in the Hebrew Bible. Psalm 23 is the first psalm I memorized as a young child – maybe also true for you? – and it has been the last psalm I have prayed aloud with those who are “walking through the valley of the shadow of death.” The comfort and veracity of Psalm 23 has been tested across the millennia.

Jesus knew Psalm 23. Jesus would have known this psalm from his earliest childhood.[1] He would have sung Psalm 23 in his participation in high holy days at the Temple in Jerusalem, and in his weekly attendance in the synagogue on the sabbath.[2] Jesus grew up in a culture which lived much closer to the ground than we do. Sheepherding abounded in Palestine, sheep being a necessity for Temple sacrifice, an important meat in the Jewish diet, and their wool, a staple for clothing and blankets. There are more than three hundred references in the Bible to sheep and shepherds.

How Psalm 23 begins – “The Lord is my shepherd” – is not an exactly a compliment. Sheep are very dependent creatures and require an enormous amount of care and work from the shepherd, day and night.[3] Some years ago my Br. David and I spent several weeks living alongside a shepherd. The shepherd was constantly looking and listening, being attracted by a certain bleating sound, by the wandering of a stray sheep, by a limp, by a lamb’s being separated from their mother, by conflict shown in head-butting, by the circling of a hawk in the air or a predator on the ground. The ewe would allow our friend, the shepherd, to hold a young lamb. The shepherd’s perceptive care was never ending. We were in the presence of a good shepherd who knew the needs and vulnerabilities of the beloved flock of sheep.

Sheep are prone to get lost, and to be lost. No bearings. Quite clueless. If the shepherd takes their eye off the sheep, sure enough, they will wander. They get stuck on brambles. They fall into ditches and ravines. Which is why the shepherd’s rod and staff are absolutely essential. The staff – which is a shepherd’s crook – is used to hook either a back leg or hook the neck of the sheep. The shepherd will use their staff to rescue the sheep from rocks or thickets, or to catch a sheep in need of care because of sickness or a wound. The rod, which is a straight pole, is used to prod the sheep along. The rod also serves as a long club to ward off predators. Except for head-butting, sheep have no ability to defend themselves.

It is revealing that the psalmist does not say, “your rod and your staff, they protect me,” nor “your rod and your staff, they rescue me.” The psalmist is saying something more: “Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” Why comfort? Because of the shepherd’s interventions. Incessant, necessary interventions every day. Some of these interventions can be difficult, even painful for the sheep, and yet they’re ultimately for the sheep’s good. “Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” Do you remember the etymology of the English word “comfort”? com + fortis; fortis is strong (like in “fortitude”). Comfort, which is “with strength.” This is about the shepherd’s tough love. So it is also for us “human sheep.” The good shepherd will intervene to rescue us when we need it. Loving interventions may sometimes be quite difficult for us, even painful for us, too. We will ultimately find comfort, find strength, in the good shepherd’s intervention in our lives with the rod or staff.

Sheep are hopeless without help. Sheep are so dependent on the shepherd, not only for protection but also for provision. Sheep do graze and move on to wherever the pasture seems greener. But if they are confined, or if the “greener” grass is gone, sheep will gnaw the pasture clean, right down to the roots and thereby destroy the pasture. And sheep have no ability to find water on their own. The shepherd must lead the sheep to water, to “still water,” as we just prayed in Psalm 23. If the water is not still, they will not drink. If sheep are fearful, or hungry, or thirsty, they will not rest; they will refuse to lie down. For sheep to lie down in a green pasture, “they shall not be in want” or otherwise they remain standing and bleating. [4]

The Middle Eastern scholar, Dr. Gary Burge, writes how shepherds know their sheep intimately.[5] “Shepherds don’t simply know the terrain, they know how the flock will react. They understood the endurance of particular sheep. They know if any are ill or wounded. . . . They listen with skilled ears, knowing when the flock is agitated or when it is at rest. And when they lead, they sing to them or play a flute, and the sheep are comforted by the familiarity of these sounds.”

Jesus ultimately says of himself: “I am the good shepherd.” “I go ahead [and] my sheep follow me because they know my voice. They will never follow a stranger; in fact they will flee because they do not recognize their voice” (John 10:4-5, 14). I once asked a shepherd why sheep will follow? The shepherd answered, “The sheep will follow me because they know and trust me.” I heard another shepherd say: “My hunch is they follow because they think I am one of them,” which, of course, makes for a very good sermon. Jesus ultimately said about himself: “I am the good shepherd. I know my own, and my own know me” (John 10:14).

The good news about Jesus’ ultimately claiming his identity as our good shepherd, is the assurance that Jesus will seek us out and find us when we are like a lost sheep. Lost sheep do not find themselves; they are found. Jesus will find us – will find you – when you are lost.

You can get lost in childhood and adolescence.

You can get lost in the academy or in your work.

You can get lost in a midlife crisis.

You can get lost in the terror of war, persecution, and discrimination.

You can get lost in old age and in the face of death.

The Prophet Isaiah reminds us, “All we are like sheep” (Isaiah 53:6). We have in Jesus, our good shepherd: his power, and provision, and protection. Jesus incarnates – that is, makes real to us – the promise that he prayed, that we pray, in Psalm 23, that God Emmanuel is with us. Psalm 23 ends with a picture that spans eternity: “Surely your goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.”

“A sheep found a hole in the fence.” This is a parable told by the Jesuit priest, Anthony de Mello.[6] “A sheep found a hole in the fence and crept through it. It wandered far and lost its way back. Then the sheep realized they were being followed by a wolf. The sheep ran and ran, but the wolf kept chasing, until the shepherd came and rescued the sheep and lovingly carried the sheep back to the fold. In spite of everyone’s urgings to the contrary, the shepherd refused to nail up the hole in the fence.”

We are like sheep, and that dependency will never change. We are rescued and provided for by the good shepherd. We will need that help for the whole of our life, God knows. The name for that help is love. God’s love for us all, who are like sheep. Receive God’s love. Our life’s vocation is then to participate in the work of the Good Shepherd in our country and world which is so full of need and so encompassed by predators.[7]

[1] References to Jesus as shepherd and us as sheep are found, e.g., in Matthew 2:6, Matthew 9:36, Matthew 25:32, Matthew 26:31, Mark 6:34, Mark 14:27, John 10:2, Hebrews 13:20, 1 Peter 2:25, 1 Peter 5:4, and Revelation 7:17.

[2] Luke 4:16 – “When [Jesus] came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom.”

[3] The shepherd and sheep metaphors appear repeatedly in the scriptures, e.g., Psalm 79:13 – “For we are your people and the sheep of your pasture; we will give you thanks for ever and show forth your praise from age to age.” See also Psalms 78:52; 95:7; 100:2; 119:176. Jesus ultimately calls himself a good shepherd: “I know my own and my own know me” (John 10:14-16).

[4] Insight drawn from W. Phillip Keller, A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23 (Zondervan, 2007).

[5] G. M. Burge, The Bible and the Land (Zondervan, 2009).

[6] “The Lost Sheep” in A. De Mello, SJ, The Song of the Bird (Image Books, 1984).

[7] Matthew 7:15.

Br. Lain Wilson

Luke 18:9-14

One thing I struggle with is getting out of my head when I’m trying to talk with God. I’m sure that may be familiar to some of you as well. I’ve found something helpful is checking in with my body – how I’m feeling, what my posture is. I find that it often mirrors what’s going on in my own heart and in my soul.

One thing that always strikes me when I hear this familiar parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector is that we are given details, not only of what is on their lips and in their hearts, but what they are doing with their bodies.

The Pharisee stands upright. We can imagine him with his shoulders back, chest up, chin square; his chiropractor would be proud. And what is on his lips and in his heart is upright and proud – he’s doing pretty well, fasting and tithing. Both good things. His error is in couching them in terms of competition, lording his own actions over others. It is as though this man has forgotten what, or rather who, allows him to stand upright.

The tax collector, meanwhile, is afar off, looking down. We might imagine him hunched over, feeling on his shoulders the weight of his sin. He confesses and asks God for mercy. Both good things. And his very posture captures something true and fundamental of our relationship with God – that it is by God’s grace and mercy that we can come through all that weighs us down, all the burdens that cling to us or that we drag behind us; that it is God, and not our own actions or achievements, that makes us worthy to stand upright.

The image I come back to again and again in prayer with this passage is from chapter 19 of John’s gospel, of Jesus on the cross seeing his mother and the beloved disciple standing nearby. Those of you on retreat with us this weekend will have seen this image several times, as it’s depicted on the icon currently in the Holy Spirit Chapel. I can’t imagine what strength would’ve been necessary to stand while one’s son and beloved friend was dying on a cross. I can only imagine that this strength had to have come from God.

I come back to this image, because while the parable of the Pharisee and tax collector is about right relationship before God and neighbor, and it’s about humility, it’s also about more than that. It’s about what the true source of our strength is when everything is going wrong, in our world and in our hearts. Our Collect today puts it this way: “O God, you know us to be set in the midst of so many and great dangers, that by reason of the frailty of our nature we cannot always stand upright.”[1]

How does your body feel today?

Do you feel tall and proud? Recognize how God’s grace is working in you, and ask how you might bear others up with that strength.

Or do you feel hunched over and withdrawn because of the weight of sin or the burden of anxiety? Hand it over to God, hand it all over to God, who will give you strength and courage and allow you to stand upright.

Amen.

[1] Weekday Eucharistic Propers 2015 (New York, 2017), 33.

Br. Jack Crowley

Mark 12:28-34

A friend of mine got married right around the same time I joined the monastery. Over the years we’ve chatted about the ups and downs of vowed life. Although he is married and I am celibate, we still have a lot in common. We are both in love, we both live with other people in close quarters, and we both have our own shortcomings that make the vowed life rocky at times. I asked him once if he had just one piece of advice to give to someone in the vowed life, what would he say? He looked me in the eye and said the key to a successful marriage is knowing that not every day will be a home run.

I often think about that quote when I hear our Gospel passage from today, especially when Jesus tells us to love God with all our hearts. Yes, I do follow Jesus’ commandment here, but I’m not gushing, head over heels in love with God every day. Not every day is a home run, some days are just quiet days at the ballpark, and I’ve grown to love that.

On the days that Jesus’ commandment to love God with all my heart is just too much for me to bear, I ask myself can I at least be attracted to God? Can I at least be curious about God? Can at least lean towards God?

When we are worn out, tired, stressed, and busy, loving God with all our heart can feel like just another thing on the to do the list. We may even feel shame as if we haven’t kept up our end of the bargain with God. We may feel distraught that we haven’t fully shown up for God in the way we wanted to.

The good news is that God loves us unconditionally, which means no matter what condition we show up in, God’s love is there and fully available to us. God’s love is available to us in sickness and in health, good days, and bad days, and even after our inevitable quarrels.

Some days when I’m not head over heels in love with God, I just spend time with God. I say God, here I am, stay with me buddy.

Sometimes just being with God is loving God, in the same way that spending time with someone you love is a form of love. It doesn’t have to be a big deal, God knows when we are trying our best. After all, isn’t that all you can ask of someone you love?

Jesus knew the importance of love. Jesus knew the power of love. Jesus knew that love, no matter what the circumstance, propels us towards God. Love is a force beyond our understanding, yet in the best of our moments, we always seem to be on the verge of understanding it all.

Finally, remember that the pursuit of love is a lifelong adventure. It’s a cat-and-mouse game in a house with many rooms. Keep searching, keep trying, keep praying, and keep loving. Amen.

Br. David Vryhof

Matthew 18:21-35

It’s no wonder that Jesus made such a big deal of forgiveness in his teachings and in his parables. Forgiveness is essential to healthy human relationships. The French Jesuit and theologian, François Varillon, once said, “People cannot live together unless they forgive each other just for being who they are.” We all need to forgive and be forgiven, over and over again, if our life together is to be life-giving, and if we are to be the agents of healing and reconciliation in the world that Christ calls us to be.

Sometimes it’s easy to forgive. We find no difficulty in setting aside the incident and moving on. But at other times we may find it extremely difficult to forgive the one who has hurt us. We may believe that we should forgive; we may even want to forgive. But we recognize that our heart is so full of anger and pain that we cannot yet say, “I forgive you,” and mean it. A declaration of forgiveness at this point would be dishonest and premature. In circumstances like these, we can at least set ourselves on a path towards forgiveness, recognizing that arriving at forgiveness is a desirable and necessary goal, not only because we are commanded to forgive one another “seventy times seven,” but also because forgiveness will rid our hearts of the toxic presence of resentment, anger, and bitterness.

Why is it so important to forgive? First, let’s consider the costs of withholding forgiveness. “When you hold resentment toward another,” Catherine Ponder writes, “you are bound to that person or condition by an emotional link that is stronger than steel. Forgiveness is the only way to dissolve that link and get free.” Without forgiveness, the hurt we have experienced is perpetuated and passed on to others. Anger, bitterness and resentment take root in our hearts and gradually change us from within. We stay mired in the past and lose our ability to be present in the moment and to be hopeful about the future. We may become bitter and cynical, or we may be tempted to seek revenge, which will lock us into a cycle of violence that will bring on a whole series of disappointments and misfortunes. Withholding forgiveness is not a healthy option.

Second, let’s consider the benefits of forgiving. Forgiveness is essential to our spiritual well-being; it is the necessary outcome of loving one another as God has loved us. “Forgive us our sins,” we pray, “as we forgive those who sin against us.” Jesus commands us to forgive, repeatedly, just as we have been forgiven. Forgiveness allows our broken hearts to heal and sets us free; it enables us to cultivate a loving heart towards others. It will afford us a clear conscience and bring us peace. There is every reason to set out on the path to forgiveness.

There are several important caveats that we have to mention in regard to forgiveness.

First, it is essential at the outset to rule out the possibility of taking revenge. Even if we feel that revenge is justified, in the end it will lead only to further misery and guilt, and will deepen our resentment, hostility and anger. We must do our best to avoid it at all times. So before you start on this path, rule out the possibility of taking revenge.

Second, remember that this path leads to forgiveness, but not necessarily to the restoration of the relationship as it was before. Sometimes we realize that we cannot and must not try to restore a relationship. If it was abusive, we must not risk putting ourselves back in a vulnerable place. We can still forgive the person; but we can choose not to allow that person back into our life.

Third, we must put a stop to the offensive actions of the other. As long as the offensive behavior continues there can be no possibility of forgiveness. Forgiveness does not mean giving up our rights or cowering before the offender. Putting an end to offensive behavior may mean confronting the person, or seeking outside assistance, or even appealing to the justice system. But their hurtful actions must stop.

Forgive then, even if your offender accepts no responsibility for the offense, expresses no remorse for their actions, and refuses to change. Forgiveness is not dependent of their words or actions.

Forgive, even when you know you cannot return to the way things were.

Forgive, because it is necessary for your own health and well-being, and because withholding forgiveness poisons your soul.

Forgive, even when you recognize that at present you can only begin the journey. You want to arrive at a place where you can recall the one who hurt you and feel the power to wish them well. But it may take time to get there. Keep moving forward, keep trying to arrive at forgiveness. The rewards are well worth the effort.

“We love because God first loved us,” the author of 1 John reminds us. So, too, we forgive because God has first forgiven us. Remembering that God has forgiven us gives us the power to forgive one another.

Br. Geoffrey Tristram

The Third Sunday in Lent

John 4:5-42

“Give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty.” The story of Jesus and the woman of Samaria is one of my favorite Gospel stories. One of the great moments of my life was when, on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, I went to that same well where Jesus met with that woman of Samaria. Jacob’s well is now in the modern town of Nablus, near the Biblical site of Shechem. Archeologists affirm that the very same well has been there, and in daily use, for almost four thousand years, ever since the land had been purchased by Jacob. Having bought the land, the first task was to dig a well to find water. It must have been a Herculean task, for it was dug through bedrock, and it is 151 feet deep, which is the height of a 15-story building! Of all the places in the Holy Land, it is probably the one exact spot where we know that Jesus stood. I will never forget the overwhelming feeling that Jesus had actually stood right here, where I am now!

I was invited to drink some water from the well, and so I dropped a small bucket on a chain down the well shaft. It went down and down for several minutes, until far away I heard the bucket hit the water. And then slowly, I pulled the bucket up to the top again. It was full of water, and I put a cup into the bucket and drank. The water was very smooth, and cool, and delicious, especially as everything around me was barren and dry.

Having a well in that dry land was the difference between life and death. So this well became the center of the community. People would gather around the well, the source of life, to draw water, to drink, to cook, to water the animals, and just to chat and pass the time of day. Some of the great encounters in the Old Testament took place at a well or a spring or other source of water. Moses first saw his wife Zipporah as she drew water to feed her father’s sheep, in the land of Midian, and it was at a well in Haran that Jacob first sees his wife Rachel, as she watered her father’s sheep.

So, gradually, throughout the Old Testament, these places of water gushing up from the earth to give life, came to symbolize the life that God longs to give his people, and especially the life that the long-awaited Messiah would give. So, the Psalmist sings, “For with you is the well of life,” and the prophet Isaiah proclaims, “With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.” God’s people were longing for the coming of the Messiah. And they would recognize him because he would, in some profound sense, be, himself, a source of life-giving water.

And so it was, that Jesus came to Jacob’s well. It was 12 noon, the hottest part of the day. Jesus is hot, tired, and thirsty, and so he makes for the well and sits down. But the well water was 151 feet down, and Jesus had no bucket. But just then, a Samaritan woman appears at the well, about to draw water. So Jesus asks her to draw him some water. But she hesitates. A man, and a Jewish man at that, even talking to a Samaritan woman was unheard of.

But now the real electricity happens! He says to her: “If only you knew what God is offering, and who it is who is saying to you, ‘Give me something to drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” Then, pointing to the well, Jesus says, “Whoever drinks this water will be thirsty again. But whoever drinks the water that I give will never be thirsty again. The water that I give will become in them a spring of water, welling up to eternal life.” What an amazing image. I like to think that at that moment Jesus gave her what she most longed for, the gift of eternal life.

It was a moment of transformation for her, a moment of conversion. She logs for the life Jesus is offering her. And she responds very simply and very directly, “Give me this water that I may never be thirsty.” I like to think that at that moment Jesus gave her what she longed for – the gift of eternal life.

Jesus offers us that same gift of living water, Jeus promises us that we too can taste of that water which will quench our deepest thirst forever, and which will well up in us for eternal life. Do you long for that kind of life? Perhaps this Lent you could ask Jesus for it, in the very words of the Samaritan woman: “Give me this water so that I may never be thirsty.” What a bold thing to ask. Jesus in the Gospels loves people to ask what they want, very specifically. To the blind man he asks, what do you want me to do for you? I think Jesus responded to her bold and clearly expressed desire: “Give me this water.” Jesus, I think, likes us to ask him exactly what we most yearn for. Lord, give me living water. Make me come alive. I often pray using the opening words of Psalm 42. It’s a wonderful psalm: “As the deer longs for the water brooks, so longs my soul for you O Lord. My soul is athirst for God, athirst for the living God.” Then I pray again and keep on asking. Don’t give up!

In my prayers, I have been imagining; imagining Jacob, and how he never gave up. He fought with the angel and would not let him go till he blessed him. I imagine Jacob buying this piece of land near Shechem. What he needed more than anything else was water. So, he and his men dug a well. They dug with faith. Surely God would not have provided this land if there was no water. And so, they dug, and dug, no water. They dug with primitive tools, and with faith. They longed for water. They cried out to God for water. They didn’t give up. They dug down, 151 feet (15 stories), into the bedrock. And finally, they struck water, smooth, cool, delicious water, welling up to eternal life. God honored their persistence, their faith, their trust, and blessed them with the gift of life-giving water.

And I believe God will do the same for us. If you long to be renewed in the Spirit, here are three things which may help. First, get in touch with your deepest desire, your deepest thirst. What is it that you long for in your very souls? But also notice the lesser desires which keep tempting us, and which try to lure us away from the one thing, the pearl of great price. We can recognize these lesser desires, because ultimately, they do not quench our thirst but leave us thirstier than ever. Rather, get in touch with that deepest of all desires which God himself has planted in our hearts – the desire for God. Focus on that desire, that thirst. And then secondly, like the Samaritan woman, express your deepest desire very directly to Jesus. She said, “Give me this water, so that I shall never be thirsty.” Tell Jesus, in clear, simple terms what it is you most desire. “What do you want me to do for you?” And then thirdly, like Jacob, don’t give up. Don’t give up digging the well. Keep on asking, keep on praying. If you want to experience new life, if you long to be filled afresh with the Spirit, don’t give up, keep asking, keep praying. Don’t let Jesus go till he blesses you!

These three things; firstly, what do you most desire? Then secondly, ask Jesus for it. Then thirdly, keep digging and don’t give up!

And then finally, take Jesus at his word; trust that great and magnificent promise that Jesus makes to us in John’s Gospel (7:38): “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me! Let anyone who believes in me drink! And out of your heart shall flow rivers of living water.”

Amen

Br. Jamie Nelson

Luke 15:11-32

In their original manuscript form, the gospels did not assign titles to Jesus’ parables. But over the centuries, today’s gospel passage has acquired a well-known title you’ll find in many Bibles today: The Parable of the Prodigal Son.

There are several noticeable weaknesses with this title, as Biblical scholars have pointed out.[1] For instance, there are three characters in the story, but only one, the younger son, the Prodigal, is referenced. The father and the older son get no press despite their essential roles in this family melodrama.

And here’s another weakness: there are actually two prodigals in the story, not one. The word prodigal means wasteful or extravagant. Yes, the younger son spends his inheritance in recklessly wasteful and extravagant ways. No one can dispute his prodigal habits.

But there’s someone in the story who acts even more prodigal: the father who demonstrates extravagant compassion, mercy, and love towards both beloved sons. This is a parent who ran to embrace his long-lost younger son, who killed the household’s fatted calf for a feast and dressed the son in the best party clothes in the closet, the attire befitting the guest of honor for this lavishly catered homecoming celebration. This is a parent who left the party to beg & plead for his older son to join in the joy.

Titles function as signposts for the perspective we are encouraged to take while hearing a story. If we were to workshop a new title for the parable, there are multiple perspectives we could take. We could call this The Parable of the Two Lost Sons – given that this story concludes a trinity of three parables about lost things in Luke chapter 15 (lost sheep, lost coins, and lost kids), it makes sense. But the title I suggest we consider today is The Parable of the Father Offering Grace.

At its core, this story is about grace. The Book of Common Prayer’s catechism describes grace as “God’s favor towards us, unearned and undeserved” (p. 858). The freely given and undeserved favor of God is like a fountain eternally overflowing with the living water of forgiveness, transformation, and new life. Both sons learned something about grace through their father’s words and deeds.

What did they learn? A lesson about economics. The word “economy” refers to the system of producing, distributing, and consuming goods, services, and resources through exchanges of value. It originated from the Greek word oikonomia, which referred to the household management of a family estate, similar to the family estate depicted in our parable.

The two sons are operating in an economy based on scarcity, consumption, and merit. The younger son treats his inheritance as something to be consumed. The older son treats love as something to be earned and proportionally distributed according to performance.

However, the father operates in a vastly different economic system, one based on abundant grace freely given and received. In this economy of grace, relationships, reconciliation, and rejoicing erase the record books of consumption and merit. Free and undeserved favor is given regardless.

You may have heard of a gift economy. In a gift economy, gifts create relationships, giving is not tracked for exact repayment in kind, and value circulates through generosity. God’s economy of grace works similarly.[2] In a grace economy, everything begins as a gift from God, earning and deserving are replaced by belonging and relationship, and abundance supersedes scarcity-based thinking.

So how can we participate in this grace economy? We’re doing it right here, right now.

The sacraments are defined as “outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace” (Book of Common Prayer, 857). By participating in the Eucharist, we are participating in experiential training on grace-based economics. Eucharist is a gift offered, received with thanks, broken open, and shared. Fed with the bread of life and cup of salvation, we are reminded that God’s love is an inexhaustible gift.

So take, eat, and go forth in grace, beloved children of a Prodigal God.

[1] Among others, A.-J. Levine,“Titles Matter,” in Short Stories by Jesus (HarperCollins, 2014), 30-32; W. Barclay, Daily Study Bible Series: The Gospel of Luke (Westminster, 1977), 243-45.

[2] Kathryn Tanner’s book Economy of Grace (Fortress Press, 2005) develops this concept.