Br. James Koester

Edward Bouverie Pusey

Matthew 13:44-52

In many ways today’s commemoration of Edward Bouverie Pusey, is like remembering the life of a favorite uncle. A generation older than our own Father Benson, it was Pusey who deeply influenced Benson when he arrived in Oxford.

These of course were the days when Oxford was buzzing with what was to become known as the Oxford Movement. In 1833 John Keble had preached the Assize Sermon, National Apostasy, which is regarded as the beginning of the Movement. In the same year Pusey, Keble and Newman began to circulate the Tracts for the Times. In 1843 Pusey preached a sermon drawing attention to the doctrine of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. In 1845, when Newman converted to Rome, Pusey’s adherence to the Church of England was for many, a sign of stability. The following year he preached another sermon which sparked the revival of the use of sacramental confession within the Anglican Communion.

Though his teaching and preaching was thoroughly rooted in the tradition of the early Church and the Church Fathers, Pusey was condemned. After his sermon on the Eucharist, he was prohibited from preaching for two years. Unable to preach, Pusey turned his powers in another direction and was instrumental in establishing the first community of Sisters in the Church of England since the Reformation.

This was the atmosphere that was circulating in Oxford when Benson arrived in 1844. He immediately fell under the influence of Pusey. Twenty years later, when another young man arrived in Oxford, this time from America, it was Pusey who sent Father Grafton to meet Benson in the vicarage at Cowley. The rest, as they say, is history.

The results of the encounter between Benson and Pusey, and later between Benson and Grafton, at the behest of Pusey, are something we live with day after day. Without those encounters, while we may still be here, we would be very different. Our deep and abiding confidence in Christ’s Real Presence in the Sacrament of the Altar is one of the gifts Pusey has given to us through Father Benson. The awareness that in the sacramental rite of Reconciliation we encounter Christ again in the places of our brokenness and poverty, and allow him to bind up our wounds and set us on our feet[1] is another.

They are gifts, however, which come to us, not from a fascination with the past, but from a deep understanding of the present. Pusey understood that if faith was to be real, the power and presence of God needed to be known, felt, and experienced. For him, for Father Benson, and now for us the power and presence of God are made manifest, not in bread and wine, but in Body and Blood. They are made manifest in the words: [the] Lord has put away all your sins.[2] They are made manifest in community as we bear witness to the social nature of human life as willed by our Creator. Human beings bear the image of the triune God and are not meant to be separate and isolated.[3]

In each of these, Pusey reached into the past and brought out of his treasure what is new and what is old (Matthew 13:52) so that the power and presence of God in Christ may be known, felt, and experienced in our lives, in this place, today.

[1] “Guidance and Reconciliation,” in The Rule of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist (Lanham, MD, 1997), 60.

[2] The Book of Common Prayer (New York, 1979), 451.

[3] “The Witness of Life in Community,” in SSJE Rule, 8.

Br. Curtis Almquist

Ninian

Psalm 96:1-7

Today we commemorate the life and witness of a monk and bishop named Ninian, born in the latter half of the fourth century in southern Scotland. And we only know this because the venerable historian named Bede, four centuries later, very briefly wrote about Ninian. Legend has it that Ninian was educated in Rome and greatly influenced by Saint Martin of Tours. Ninian followed Jesus’ words to “go and make disciples,” becoming a monk-missionary bishop to the Celts and Picts of Scotland in the fifth century.

Unless you are Scottish, you may never have heard of Saint Ninian. This is actually true about most saints. The church universal does remember some saints in boldface – Saint Paul, Saint Mary Magdalene, Saint Patrick among them; however most saints are only known in the recesses of our own hearts. The word “saint” comes from the Latin, sanctus, meaning holy, someone experienced as close to God. Saints have a heroic quality, at least to us personally. My paternal grandmother was a saint. You would not know her, but I do. Recollecting her always brings tears of gratitude to my eyes. You will know your own saints: people who symbolize hope, people who give you a moral compass, people who are real, and whole, and holy.

We all need big people in our lives: people who point the way how to live, people whom we admire and perhaps revere, people who influence us, whom we want to emulate. Life is so uncharted, and we need a great deal of help to find our way. Which is why Jesus’ words, “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” arrested people, past and present. We need help finding our way.

Don’t let this innate need for “big people,” for heroes, be filled in your own mind and heart by people who have amassed power and authority in disingenuous or disreputable ways. We need to keep a repository in our own souls of people whom we know – past and present – who have influence and authority that teems with God’s life, and light, and love. Holy people, holy in our own eyes. And we need to be these very people to others. Our life vocation is to emulate kindness, generosity, dignity, beauty, love in ways which we can uniquely share and show. We need heroes. And we need to be heroes to those within our reach. It’s an innate need.

Blessed Ninian being one such soul from ages past.

Br. Luke Ditewig

Holy Cross Day

Behold the cross. Love that makes no sense yet is for us all.[i] Look and pray with each of the Gospel writers.[ii] With Matthew, remember Judas’ betrayal, Peter’s denial, and Pilate washing his hands.[iii] Remember our betrayals, denials, our faults and lies, our thirst for power and revenge. Remember how we have cried “crucify” in word and deed, with silence and inaction. Pray with humility saying: Forgive.

With Mark, pray Jesus’ lament—“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”—with its trust—My God—and agony—in feeling abandoned.[iv] This is the first line of Psalm 22 of which Jesus knew the rest. “[Why] are you so far from my cry and from the words of my distress? I cry in the daytime but you do not answer, by night as well, but I find no rest. Yet you are the Holy One, enthroned upon the praises of Israel. Our forebears put their trust in you; they trusted, and you delivered them.”[v]

Pray specifically your pain and hurt and remember back how you have received love. Cling to God’s past provision as hope in today’s desolation. Pray both pain and trust.

With Luke, pray Jesus’ compassion: “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing” and as Jesus said to one crucified beside him: “Today, you will be with me in Paradise.”[vi] Bless, and do not curse. For those hurt and oppress, ask for grace and mercy. For us in blindness to how we hurt, ask for grace and mercy.

With John, pray Jesus’ sovereignty: “I, when I am lifted up, will draw all people to myself.”[vii] Death and evil are conquered. Jesus reigns, reaching, hearing, and holding all. On the cross Jesus bore the weight, the weight of the world. Hold yourself trusting that Jesus has the whole world, including you, in his hands.

Behold the cross. Love that makes no sense yet is for us all. What do you see? What do you feel? Pray with Jesus. Love like Jesus.

[i] Jennifer Strawbridge, Jarred Mercer and Peter Groves (2019) Love Makes No Sense: An Invitation to Christian Theology. London: SCM Press.

[ii] Raymond E. Brown (1986) A Crucified Christ in Holy Week. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 71, in Frances Taylor Gench (2007) Encounters with Jesus. Louisville: WJK Press, 127.

[iii] Matthew 26-27

[iv] Mark 15:34

[v] Psalm 22:2-4

[vi] Luke 23:34, 43

[vii] John 12:32

Br. Lain Wilson

Psalm 150

In a time of oppression and division, of political violence and fear, of extreme wealth inequality, of competing claims to truth, of state power brought to bear on the least powerful, I imagine that hearing and praying psalm 150 could be as stark and striking an experience as it is in our own time.

“Praise God in his holy temple; praise him in the firmament of his power. Praise him for his mighty acts; praise him for his excellent greatness.” (Ps 150:1-2)

There are any number of psalms that we can and do pray—songs of lament, of abandonment, of joy—songs expressing all that is possible to express in conversation with God, all that is needed to communicate to God all that is in our hearts as we encounter a world that seems so wrong.

And there’s no doubt that there is so much wrong with the world. The psalms give us the prayerful vocabulary to bring these wrongs before God.

Each psalm speaks to us in its own way. But this quintessential song of praise points to a substrate in our reality. Whatever we encounter and experience, however we may be divided, whatever we may lament, whatever we grieve—underneath all that is the truth of our common vocation, a truth St. Ignatius of Loyola asserts in his Spiritual Exercises: “The human person is created to praise, reverence, and serve God as Lord.” Even more strongly, this praise is the common vocation of all creatures, as we hear in our hymn today: “Praise God, from whom all blessings flow; praise him, all creatures here below; praise him above, ye heavenly host: praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.”[1]

In times of division and turmoil and fear, this fundamental truth of our common vocation calls us all to a unity that may seem, and frankly may be impossible in this life. But in this unmitigated praise of God, we can make present now the new creation inaugurated by the death and resurrection of Jesus, when all divisions are erased. In this unmitigated praise of God, we can experience now a foretaste of God’s promised future.

“Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Hallelujah!” (Ps 150:6). Amen.

[1] The Hymnal 1982, no. 380, stanza 3 words by Thomas Ken (1637-1711).

Br. James Koester

The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 18C)

Deuteronomy 30:15-20

You may have heard that recently the Pope predicted that AI would be the next industrial revolution. At the same time, he called upon the Roman Catholic Church to apply its social teachings regarding human dignity, justice, and labour to this new AI industrial revolution as it has done consistently since a previous Pope Leo issued an encyclical entitled On Capital and Labour in 1891. That earlier Pope Leo laid the foundation for modern Roman Catholic social teaching that has endured for more than a century, and which includes Pope Francis’ encyclical On Care for Our Common Home.

If the Pope is correct, and many believe he is, then this would be the fourth industrial revolution the world has experienced since the eighteenth century, and the third since the late nineteenth century. These revolutions have seen the world shift from hand tools to steam, from steam to electricity, from electricity to the digital age, and now from the digital age to the age of AI. Underpinning these industrial revolutions were first the scientific revolution of the sixteenth century and the enlightenment of the seventeenth century. Each of these revolutions has resulted in a shift in our relationships, both with one another as humans, and equally significant, in our relationship with the rest of creation.

It is important to keep all of this is mind as we read today’s passage from Deuteronomy, for embedded in it is an understanding of creation lost to us under centuries of industrial and intellectual revolutions. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today….[1]

For our ancestors in faith, especially for those who lived before any of these intellectual or industrial revolutions, heaven and earth were not merely things, sources of raw material to be extracted, but living entities capable of laughter, joy, and praise. Where were you, God asked Job when I laid the foundation of the earth … [and] the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?[2] This is not a case of anthropomorphizing the stars. It is a recognition of, as Father Congreve of our Society said, a real fellowship of all created things, a unity of [humanity] with all creatures in the purpose to which the Creator formed them[3] which is to give praise and glory to God. In this way, Deuteronomy recognizes something we fail to see, a relationship of creatures between humanity and the cosmos which exists to praise God the Creator.

That relationship between fellow creatures, where one could act as witness in a legal sense, for or against the other in a court of law, is not simply poetry. It is a theological statement. It reminds us that we are but dust.[4] It is our dust-ness that makes us one with creation and which our Creator has declared good. For God saw everything that [God] had made, and indeed, it was very good.[5]

Yet despite our common creatureliness, our dust-ness, and our inherent goodness, there is something we do not share with the rest of creation, and that is our ability to choose. See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity…. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you….[6] It is our freedom to choose life or death, good or evil, right or wrong, that both sets us apart from the rest of creation, and makes us dependent on creation in order to receive God’s immeasurable love in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ; for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory.[7]

The history of redemption from Genesis to Revelation and beyond is the story of how humanity has separated ourselves from both Creator and creation by rejecting the Creator and placing ourselves in the centre of creation and then abusing creation itself. It is also the story of how the Creator has been clothed in creation through the incarnation of the only begotten Son. As the word was made flesh[8] in Jesus, humanity’s fellowship with the rest of creation is restored and all creation shimmers with the glory of God.[9] In Christ, creation becomes a sign and sacrament of God’s very being. At the same time, as bread and wine and water are brought [to the altar] and blessed [,] Christ the High Priest takes these creatures into His hands and offers them to the Eternal Father; they become the Lord’s Body and Blood; and so they are … consecrated to become powers of eternal life, uniting earth and Heaven.[10] In that way, creation in the form of Christ’s sacramental Body and Blood, becomes for us the means of grace.

Since that first act of disobedience, when Adam and Eve reached out to grasp the forbidden fruit,[11] we have denied and rejected our fellowship with the rest of creation, believing ourselves to be the creator. Each revolution since the sixteenth century, the scientific, the intellectual, the industrial, the electrical, and the digital, while they have brought many benefits, have further alienated us from the rest of creation as we have tried to claim for ourselves the role of creator. If we are not careful, the same will be true with the AI revolution.

How different things might be, both for us and our planet, if these revolutions were the means not to destroy, but to restore our fellowship with creation and help us to see creation again as the sign and sacrament of God’s very being and to know creation to be a means of grace. If that were so, we would see in creation God’s immeasurable love for us in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ.

The thing is, such a vision of our fellowship with creation restored is possible and it begins here, at this altar. Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation, through your goodness we have this bread to offer: fruit of the earth and work of human hands, it will become for us the bread of eternal life. Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation, through your goodness we have this wine to offer: fruit of the vine and work of human hands, it will become for us our spiritual drink.[12]

As the dignity of creation is renewed and restored here at this altar Sunday by Sunday, and day by day, when creation itself becomes the Body and Blood of Christ, we have the opportunity once again to choose life, that we may live. In choosing life our fellowship with creation is restored. It no longer is a thing to be exploited. We discover it to be a revelation of God’s love, and a means of God’s grace. We hear again the morning stars singing, and the heavenly beings shouting for joy. And we come to know in all its profundity, that we and all creation have been declared by the Creator to be good, and that is a cause of hope, as God’s glory is being revealed in, and by, and through all created things, which for us, as we gather around this altar, is the means of grace and hope of glory.

[1] Deuteronomy 30:19

[2] Job 38:4, 7

[3] Congreve SSJE, George, The Fellowship of Man with All Created Things in Sorrow and In Hope, Christian Progress, Longman, Green, and Co., London, 1910, page 259

[4] Psalm 104:14b

[5] Genesis 1:31

[6] Deuteronomy 30:15, 19c-20

[7] TEC, Book of Common Prayer, 1979, page 101

[8] John 1:14

[9] See Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem God’s Grandeur

[10] Congreve, page 263

[11] See Genesis 3

[12] These are the offertory prayers of the Roman Rite and are used in some Provinces of the Anglican Communion.

Br. David Vryhof

Luke 5:1-11

The call of God comes to us in a variety of ways. Sometimes it seems to come from outside of ourselves; God “breaks into” our lives, perhaps quite suddenly and unexpectedly, to reorient and redirect us. Think of St Paul on the Damascus Road or of St Matthew summoned from his tax collector’s booth. At other times, the call of God seems to grow within us over a period of time. We can’t point to a single day or hour when God’s call became clear to us; we experienced instead a growing attraction to Jesus and a deepening desire to participate in God’s mission in the world.

How has God’s call come to you? Perhaps you had a life-changing encounter with Jesus, or perhaps the call manifested itself to you over the course of time. To what were you being called? And what convinced you to follow him?

Each of the four gospels contain a story about Jesus calling his first disciples. In Matthew and Mark, Jesus summons Simon Peter and Andrew his brother, along with James and John, the sons of Zebedee – all Galilean fishermen – from their work. We are surprised when they respond without delay, since it seems they have not previously known him. We read, “immediately they left the boat… and followed him” (Matt 4:22, also Mk 1:18, 20). In John’s gospel, Jesus invites two of John the Baptist’s disciples, one of whom is Andrew, to “come and see” where he is staying. Andrew then invites his brother, Simon Peter, to meet the Teacher and they become his disciples. Again, we are not told what compels them.

Luke’s gospel differs from these accounts in that by the time that Jesus summons Simon Peter and the sons of Zebedee, he has already established a reputation as a teacher and healer. He has preached in the synagogues of Galilee and Judea. He has demonstrated God’s power by healing Simon’s mother-in-law and a man with an unclean spirit.

Now, in chapter 5, we read that he is standing beside the lake of Gennesaret (Luke’s name for the Sea of Galilee) and “the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God” (v.1), so that he has to step into Simon’s boat and ask him “to put out a little way from the shore” in order to address the crowd from the boat (v.3). When he finishes speaking, he tells Simon to “put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch” (v. 4). Remarkably, after they had caught nothing all night, they draw in a tremendous catch of fish. Here, in Luke’s gospel, Simon and “all who were with him” have plenty of evidence that this Jesus is a remarkable teacher and healer and have good reason to choose to follow him.

What caused you to become a follower of Jesus? And what is it that compels you to follow Jesus today? If you were to picture Jesus standing in front of you this day, what might he say to you? To what would he summon you? Where and to whom would he send you?

Father Benson has taught us that the call of God is continuous and ongoing; it persists throughout the whole of our lives. What are you aware of today?

Br. Jonathan Maury

The Martyrs of New Guinea

Revelation 7:9-12

On this day, the Church honors the Martyrs of New Guinea who gave witness to Christ by their deaths during the Japanese invasion and occupation of New Guinea in 1942 and 1943. 333 Papuans and clergy, teachers, and medical staff from a range of denominations, men and women, were killed by the invaders. These include nine Anglican missionaries and two Papuan martyrs who died while serving the material and spiritual needs of their friends in Christ.

When war in the Pacific began in 1941, civilian populations of European descent were evacuated from Australia’s island territories. Many Christians however voluntarily chose to continue in their ministries despite the danger. The Bishop of New Guinea exhorted  his flock, writing, “If we all left, it would take years for the Church to recover from our betrayal of our trust. If we remain—and even if the worst came to the worst and we were all to perish in remaining—the Church would not perish, for there would have been no breach of trust in its walls, but its foundations and structure would have received added strength for the future building by our faithfulness unto death.”

In the Gospel of John, Jesus teaches us of the sacred trust which is Christian friendship:

“No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.  You are my friends if you do what I command you.”

The SSJE Rule of Life reminds us brothers that “no honor exists that could be greater than Jesus calling us his friends. The more we enter into the fullness of our friendship with him, the more he will move us to be friends for one another… The Spirit uses the demands of friendship to further our conversion; struggles are inevitable as well as rewards… Fear can hold us back.  In these struggles we have the constant companionship of Christ to give us courage and joy.”

But Christ’s faithful trust and self-offering friendship is not imparted to only a select few but to all who give themselves to Jesus in faith. Friendship with Jesus is also implicitly the call to share the same friendship and trust with all of Jesus’ friends after his example: “Love one another as I have loved you.” Christ’s circle of friendship exists to bring eternal life in union with God to all creation. As such it requires the radical acceptance of everything which the world would have us regard as “separate” or “outside.” It requires the surrender of self in ways great and small for the life of the “other” who is also God’s beloved.

Living in faithful friendship with Christ’s beloved gave courage to the martyrs we remember today and ensured the vibrant faith and devotion of Papuan Christians of all churches witnessed to the present. We honor the English-born priest Vivian Redlich who forfeited his life in order to celebrate the eucharist with his people one last time. We celebrate Lucien Tapiedi, the Papuan catechist regarded as an apostle by his people, who gave his life in defending fellow Christians making an escape from ambush by native collaborators. Lucien’s witness and love extended into the future with the conversion of his murderer to faith in Christ. The martyrs’ witness of faithful friendship later resulted in the Anglican Church of Japan’s gift of bamboo crosses erected in the parish churches New Guinea as a mark of contrition.

And now what of us who follow in the martyrs’ steps as Jesus’ friends? To what new depths and tests of our “loyalty and faith” to Christ and to one another as friends of God are we invited?

Carrying these questions in our hearts, let us ask grace to hear Jesus’ response as with open hands we receive his risen Flesh and Blood. In communion and friendship with the Martyrs of New Guinea, we even now join that “great multitude that no one can count, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.”

Let us pray.

Jesus, fill us with your Holy Spirit that at our hour of faithful witness in laying down our lives in friendship we may fearlessly know what we ought to be, to say and to do. Amen.

Br. Geoffrey Tristram

The Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost (17C)

Luke 14:7-14

“Oh, I just love Luke’s Gospel!” So many people have said that to me over the years. And it probably is the most popular of all the gospels. I love Luke; all those beautiful stories; the Prodigal Son, the Good Samaritan, and of course the beloved accounts of the Nativity. But this gospel, when you read it, is hard hitting and quite uncompromising. It should actually make you quake!

It’s very hard to hear, unless you are poor. It is a gospel above all for the poor. It is about about God’s love for the poor and the marginalized.  Jesus tells us quite clearly, in chapter 4, why he has come. He stands up in the synagogue and proclaims: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.” Then in chapter 7, when John’s disciples come to try and find out who Jesus is, Jesus tells them to look and see what is happening: “The blind receive their sight… the deaf hear… and the poor have good news brought to them.” And then, in chapter 6, in the first of the Beatitudes, Jesus says, “Blessed are you who are poor” (not poor in spirit, that’s Matthew). “Blessed are you who are poor, yours is the Kingdom of God.”

All through Scripture, in both the Old and New Testaments, there are the poor. They are marked out, they are special, because, we are told, time and time again, that the poor are especially loved by God. God loves and is full of compassion for the poor. In the Old Testament, they are called the anawim of God. The word literally means “those who are bowed down.” They are bowed down through grinding poverty, but also in humility, in meekness and in trust and faithfulness to God. They do not have worldly wealth, so they rely on God for provision and for deliverance. They are the vulnerable, oppressed, marginalized, and God loves them. Among their number was Mary of Nazareth. God chose Mary, one of God’s beloved anawim, poor and bowed down, to be the mother of his beloved Son. Her response to this stunning news was to utter the sublime song of the anawim: “My soul does magnify the Lord…for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. He has lifted up the lowly…he has sent the rich empty away.” But there was an even greater mystery and wonder than this. For in order to save us, Mary’s son Jesus freely chose to become one of God’s anawim. Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians chapter 9, “You know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.”

So when the poor man of Nazareth started to preach, his words were as provocative and as challenging as they are today. How brave Jesus must have been to make himself poor and vulnerable and then willingly to enter into the arena with the rich and powerful religious leaders. And our gospel reading today is just one episode which shows what courage he had. It is the sabbath, and he has been invited to eat a meal at the house of one of the leaders of the Pharisees. The place is full of lawyers and Pharisees, and we are told, “They were watching him closely.” This “watching” is definitely unfriendly. Just two chapters earlier, chapter 11, he was invited to another Pharisee’s house and, “They were very hostile to him, and cross examined him, lying in wait to catch him in something he might say.” And so it was with eyes wide open and with great courage that Jesus accepted their invitation, and the scene is set for conflict.

As soon as Jesus arrives, he can’t help noticing that all the guests were quickly moving towards the dining table, and started jockeying for position, grabbing the best seats, the higher up the table the better. The closer they sat to the host, the more honored they felt, and could look down smugly at those seated further away. Jesus could not remain silent. So he told them a parable. At first it sounded like he was telling them some good advice about etiquette. Be careful about placing yourself too high up the table just in case someone of clearly higher rank arrives, and the host asks you to move down to make room for him. How humiliating! And the other advantage of placing yourself lower down, is that you might have the great delight of publicly being moved up the table by the host. But as these words of Jesus begin to sink in, his listeners soon realize that he’s not giving them some tips about dining etiquette. This is a parable, and it’s about God and it’s about judgment. It’s about how in God’s Kingdom, everything is reversed. That at the judgment day, “Those who exalt themselves now will be humbled, and those who humble themselves now will be exalted.” This is the divine reversal which runs right through Luke’s Gospel. Jesus, the poor man of Nazareth is the agent of this reversal, of this divine judgment. It is this divine reversal, this divine judgment which Mary proclaims in her song of the anawim: “He has lifted up the lowly. He has sent the rich empty away.” The religious leaders must have been furious. But Jesus doesn’t stop there. He now specifically talks to them about the poor. When you give a dinner don’t just invite your friends or rich neighbors, because they can easily respond in kind. No. Rather invite the poor, including the crippled, the lame and the blind. In the New Testament, the poor are honored, as are the anawim in the Old. Luke calls them the ptochoi, and it is for them that the Gospel is such good news. That word ptochoi is a very broad word. It also means the destitute, the socially oppressed and helpless, and the marginalized. So when Luke’s Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor,” he is also saying blessed are the destitute, blessed are the socially oppressed and helpless, blessed are the marginalized. Because God loves them.

When Jesus, the poor man of Nazareth called his first disciples, he called them to a life of poverty. One of my favorite paintings is the Call of Matthew by Caravaggio. There is Jesus standing in great authority in the house of Matthew the tax collector’. There is Matthew in fine robes, sitting with his friends, counting his money, and Jesus points to him, with a magnificent and commanding gesture; “Come follow me!” As your eye moves down the picture you see the simple robe Jesus is wearing, and on his feet, worn sandals, the attire of the poor. This is the life Matthew is being called to. It is no wonder that over the centuries, the great saints from Antony of Egypt to Francis of Assisi, il Poverello, Charles de Foucauld, have felt the need to divest themselves of their riches to follow Jesus.

So what about us? If we want to follow Jesus’ call more radically, if we long to draw closer to Jesus, we can be sure it will involve some kind of poverty, some kind of self-emptying, like Jesus, some kind of renunciation and dying to self. It may involve a degree of material poverty, a denying of our selves. If you feel God is far away, and you want to awaken your life of prayer, ask yourself whether perhaps you are sated. In our consumer society we can fully satisfy all our appetites, and we can feel so full that there is no room for God. The psalmists can be a great model for us. They pray the Psalms from a place of longing, they come before God with their desire, their thirst, their yearning. Their prayer does not come from a satiated place, but from a place of emptiness and need. Perhaps we have too much, and need to divest ourselves of what keeps us from knowing our need for God. Perhaps we need to become poor, that Christ can make us rich.

And then secondly, what about those in our country at this time whom the New Testament would call the ptochoi: the poor, the destitute, the socially oppressed, the helpless, the marginalized? They are very precious to God. They are especially close to the heart of Jesus. So, in drawing near to them in some way, we also draw near to Jesus. “In as much as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you did it to me.” How might we serve the poor and those who have least? Every time we read the news we can feel overwhelmed by so much suffering and injustice in our land. What can I do? Well perhaps we can start by asking, who do I know in my life now who is poor, and whom I can serve? Who do I know who is “bowed down” like God’s anawim? It may be economic poverty, or it could be that poverty of spirit has left them empty and bereft. Something has happened in their lives which has impoverished them. Perhaps they have experienced loss or diminishment. The gift of yourself, your loving care, your presence, could make all the difference. When we draw near to the poor, so we draw near to Jesus and his heart of love and compassion.

Today’s Gospel from Luke is a huge challenge to each one of us, to examine the inner movements of our hearts. Where am I still filled with pride? Where do I still jockey for position in life, still chase the highest seats? Still seek more?

Where do I neglect or shun the poor in our midst? Where do I lack compassion?

But perhaps most profoundly, how can I learn true humility from God’s poor? For I believe the deepest and most enduring truth from our Gospel today is that the seat which matters most is the one beside the least.

Br. Curtis Almquist

Charles Chapman Grafton

Revelation 5:6-10

We commemorate today Charles Chapman Grafton, one of the three principal founders of our Society of St. John the Evangelist, this in Oxford in 1866.[i] Charles Grafton was born in Boston in 1830 and he graduated from Harvard Law School in 1853. His intent to practice law was supplanted by his conversion to Christ and his vocation to the priesthood, being ordained at age 28.

At the age of 35 he traveled to England to be formed by the Oxford Movement, the Anglo-Catholic renewal within the Church of England. He knew that the glory and power of God were to be experienced not only in the resplendent prayer and worship of the church, but also manifest in the teeming needs of the poor. He saw so many faces of poverty in Oxford, in the countryside, and on the London Docks, and served people both Holy Communion, the bread of heaven, and also their daily bread.

After seven transformative years in England, he returned to the States in 1872 to become a rector here in Boston. The Civil War had just ended, but not the residual poverty of suffering and need. As a pastor he was described as an “evangelical at heart, while in belief a liberal Catholic.” Eventually he was elected Bishop of Fond du Lac in Wisconsin. Bishop Grafton with his Boston pedigree and very fine Harvard education was now in rural Wisconsin. He was serving destitute people living in agrarian poverty, white Americans and Native Americans.

A phrase which was forever on his lips was, “Press on the Kingdom!” Not God’s kingdom in heaven. That was in fine shape. “Press on the Kingdom” was about God’s kingdom on earth. His consuming passion was about God’s real presence to be manifest both within the church and through the church to the world. God’s presence, God’s power, God’s provision should change everything now. And that’s exactly what happened in the transformation of people’s lives.

Bishop Grafton was also convinced that since the church was God’s living body on earth, it must be comprised of diverse members. This devotion to the church’s essential diversity inspired his tenacious work in ecumenism, which literally attracted the world’s attention. His capacious ministry was directed to “every tribe and language and people and nation,” as we heard read from the Book of Revelation. He served as bishop for 23 years.

At the end of his life he recollected that much of his conversion had sprung from struggles with his own “imperious temperament,” which had to be humbled. And he realized his own struggle with pain and disappointment was a way of being near to Christ crucified.[ii] And that made all the difference.

Blessed Charles Chapman Grafton, whom we remember today with thanksgiving.

[i] SSJE’s principal founders were Richard Meux Benson, Charles Chapman Grafton and Simeon Wilberforce O’Neill. Father O’Neill set off on mission to Indore, India in 1874. He was truly a living sacrifice, dying there in 1882 at age 45. Father Benson served as the Superior General until 1890.

[ii] “Charles C. Grafton, Bishop and Theologian,” by the Most Rev. Arthur Michael Ramsey. Lecture at Nashotah House Theological Seminary, September 26, 1967; published in Nashotah House Quarterly Review, nd, pp 7-21.

Br. Lain Wilson

The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist

Matthew 14:1-12

Last week, while camping in western Massachusetts, I experienced something completely unexpected. Two nights in a row, in the middle of the night, I was seized by overwhelming, crippling terror. I honestly don’t know if I was dreaming or awake. As I lay in my tent, I felt frozen in place, trapped, unable to move. I remember wanting to sit up, to open the rain fly and look out into the dark, but I could not move.

We all feel fear. Some may experience that same crippling terror; others, perhaps the more typical fears of failure, pain, rejection, aging, or death. We all fear something—and most of us, many somethings—and we all respond differently to those fears.

Herod is a fearful man. Matthew and Mark’s gospels both note this, and Matthew crucially adds that his fear hinders him from acting as he desires. He wants to kill John the Baptist, a thorn in his side, who is denouncing his unlawful marriage. Herod wants to kill John, but he’s afraid of the crowd, who views John as a prophet (Mt 14:5).[1]

Underlying this, I suspect there’s another kind of fear. “Fear pervades his whole life,” Plato writes of the tyrant.[2] Herod fears what all petty tyrants fear: the voice of a courageous man speaking the truth. It’s a fear that all too easily gives way to the tools of the tyrant: silencing and suppression, intimidation and violence.

Standing against him is a single, courageous man. Our text doesn’t tell us that John is afraid when facing this petty tyrant and the political theater of the court. He may or may not be afraid of the death he is heading toward. But I suspect that John, standing in the tradition of the prophets, does experience a different kind of fear: the fear of God.

The Scriptures are full of references to the fear of God, or the fear of the Lord. Proverbs notes that the “fear of the Lord is life indeed; filled with it one rests secure and suffers no harm” (Prov 19:23). In Luke’s gospel, Mary sings that God’s “mercy is on those who fear him” (Lk 1:50). This fear isn’t terror, but rather the awareness of God’s glory, the awe-filled trust in God’s faithfulness, the conviction of abiding presence, safety, and security. “For you are my hope, O Lord God, my confidence since I was young,” we hear in today’s Psalm (Ps 71:5).

But I think most important here is Isaiah’s depiction of the ideal king: “His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. . . . Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins” (Is 11:2, 5). The fear of God is an integral part of life in the Spirit—as integral as justice and righteousness and faithfulness. The fear of God is about being obedient to the true self that God has created each of us to be.

We all experience fear. There’s a lot to be afraid of. Some of that fear is healthy; most of it is not and brings out what is worst in us. The fear of God, the conviction of God’s abiding faithfulness and provision, the trust that God is our refuge through it all, offers a path of freedom through and past our fear. “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom then shall I fear?” the psalmist sings. “The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom then shall I be afraid?” (Ps 27:1).

What are you afraid of? What fear is freezing, trapping, or dominating you?

The fear of God offers us a path of freedom from fear so we may respond in faith, so we may act with justice, so we may be courageous in speaking truth.

As in so many other things, John the Baptist points the way.

Amen.

[1] Mark states this differently: Herod’s wife Herodias wants to kill John, whom Herod fears and protects (Mk 6:19-20).

[2] Republic 9.579e, trans. R. Waterfield (New York, 1993), 325.