Virtues – SSJE

Br. Jack Crowley

Matthew 23:1-12

Many years ago, my confessor gave me a tough homework assignment. My assignment was to get over myself. To get over myself and pray with the last line from our Gospel passage tonight, where Jesus tells us, “all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

My homework assignment came after I had spent a long time waxing poetically with my confessor about my sins, my shortcomings, all the mistakes I had made in the past, and so on. My confessor looked me in the eye and asked if I thought that God wanted me to think about myself as much as I did, especially my past. I must admit I was tongue tied in my response.

I’ve always been grateful for that homework assignment because it led to years of me praying about humility. What I’ve come to learn in my time as a monk and in especially with getting to meet so many people here, is that genuine humility is not what I thought it was.

To humble yourself is not an invitation to beat yourself up. To humble yourself is not an invitation to be a doormat for other people to walk over and never stand up for yourself. To humble yourself is not an invitation to obsess over yourself.

To humble yourself is to have a genuine and realistic understanding of who you are. To come to know that we are all somewhere in the middle, neither too high nor too low. As boring and unexciting as this may seem, genuine humility creates space for us to serve God. When we are not busy dredging up our past or stuck in our own heads playing our mistakes on repeat, there’s a lot more room for love.

Jesus, who knows the hearts of all people, knows what we think about ourselves. He is right there with us in our journey toward genuine humility. He is there to lift us up when we are down and bring us back down to earth when we fly too high.

To live life somewhere in the middle can feel countercultural. In today’s world, we often crave superlatives, to be the best, the greatest, the most liked, the most viewed, etc. To live in the middle with God is to skirt the temptations of the extreme. This is a boundary we establish in our hearts and live out with our daily lives.

In all honesty, I’m not sure if I ever really completed my homework assignment or if that’s even possible. What I do know is that our walk with God lasts for a lifetime. One day, I will take my last breath, and this servant will be set free. Until then, I intend to serve God.

Luke 16:9-15

This lectionary excerpt begins with the tail-end of a parable unique to Luke that is fairly universally acknowledged to be one of his most baffling parables, called the parable of the dishonest manager. It’s one of those passages that makes a preacher pray: “Oh, Jesus…what do you mean here?” What follows is a series of short teachings strung together that further elucidate Jesus’ teachings on our relationship with money – already, of course, an intrinsically challenging subject for many.

The point seems to be that money – of all the things human culture deems necessary – most easily becomes dishonest or unrighteous if its use is not channeled and directed by our ultimate allegiance to God, to whom all things belong. This spiritual allegiance relativizes the value of money, knocking it from its pedestal as a would-be master over us.

Jesus calls us into a perspective which offers freedom. When we have access to plenty, this is the freedom to be generous for the sake of good. When we have access to less, this is freedom from incapacitating worry.

At the same time, Jesus calls us into active engagement on both a personal and systemic level so that there are none who do not have enough. For those who have much, Luke’s gospel in particular encourages a periodic and searching question: Do I have too much?

As brothers bound by a vow of religious poverty, all the money to which we have access comes from others. None of us earn a wage within this country’s economic system; we are dependent on many who do. We are sustained because the work we do – and most days we work pretty hard – is deemed valuable by other followers of Jesus who earn a living by trading their time and talent for money. When Jesus asks: “If you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own?,” there is a double meaning I cannot avoid. Because the resources that sustain us are all gifts, they do not belong to me. And because all things belong to God, they do not belong to me. This is doubly sobering when I consider our vow, and my own degree of faithfulness or unfaithfulness in small things.

As the newly elected Superior of this community, I have more regular, immediate need to think about circles of giving and receiving in the course of each day, and more regular contact with generous individuals who sustain our life and ministry. One married couple who regularly support us embody for me the spirit of freedom to which Jesus calls us. Before I became a brother, I was a guest at their wedding about twelve years ago. After the toasts at the reception, each guest received a small card with the name of three charitable organizations. As a gift to each of us, we were invited to circle one of these charities, to which they would make a significant gift on our behalf. The whole room was palpably touched by this offering. As we were participants in a joy that was about them on their wedding day, they invited us, by their generosity, to become participants in a joy that was about others. This magnified the outward ripple of joy in relationship a hundredfold.

I call that experience to heart each time I am tempted to claim a resource as my own. Today you might also ask yourself: How free am I from the would-be mastery of wealth? And how might I use what I have to foster relationships that will endure?

Br. Geoffrey Tristram

Job 1:1, 2:1-10

I was talking with a friend recently about the situation in the Middle East, and he said he felt so much darkness right now that he found it hard to know how to deal with it. I knew exactly what he meant. You may feel it too, overwhelmed by the images of violence, death and destruction. How do you pray, what words of prayer do you use, how do you focus your love amidst such images? How do you remain faithful and hopeful? For me, I have tried to focus on individual families who I have read about, and prayed for them by name. I have read about individuals who have shown extraordinary bravery, resilience and self-sacrificial love; mothers with their children who have lost everything but hope. Where do they get this hope, this strength? God bless them.

Munther Isaac is a Palestinian theologian and he’s the pastor of the Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem. He gave an interview last week which greatly moved me. He said, ‘When I talk to my friends in Gaza I have no idea how they are surviving. It is really hell on earth there. What kind of strength do these people have, and where do they get it?’  The same question may be asked of those Israelis, whose loved ones are still being held as hostages. What an excruciating time of waiting and hoping. Where do they get their strength? Or of those Lebanese whose homes have been destroyed, and loved ones bombed. ‘What kind of strength do these people have and where do they get it?’

Munther Isaac goes on to say, ‘I am convinced that people undergoing harsh realities experience God in a more real way than we can imagine. We hear it from those pulled from the rubble, who still say, “We thank you God. We rest our case before God”. The faith they exhibit in God is so strong’, he says. ‘We pray for deliverance, but the Bible doesn’t promise deliverance. It promises that God will be with us.’

When I was in my teens, I began, I imagine rather pretentiously, to ask deep questions about the meaning of life, about the mystery of being human. About who I am, why am I here, and about the human condition. At that time the news, every day, would be about the endless violence and killings in Northern Ireland. I tried to understand why there is so much suffering in our world. My parents would take me to church sometimes, despite my sullen resistance. What I heard there didn’t really answer, or actually even address any of these questions. One day, I was perhaps 16, I came across some engravings that rather blew me away. They were by the poet and artist William Blake. There were twenty-two illustrations of the Book of Job. I found them quite staggering. You may know them. One in particular stood out for me, and it is called ‘Job’s despair’. And it depicts what we heard read today in our first lesson. God has allowed Satan to afflict Job with every kind of suffering in order to test him and see whether he will maintain his integrity before God, or whether in his agony and despair he will curse God.  In this engraving Job is sitting on the ground, and we see that he is covered from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head with loathsome sores. His three friends, his ‘comforters’, sit around him with their heads bowed to the ground as in wailing or deep grief. But Job himself sits upright. His face, despite his sorrow, is actually rather beautiful. In despair he lifts his arms up towards the heavens. We hear him crying those words , ‘Let the day perish wherein I was born.’  But as you stare longer at the engraving, those same arms stretch up in a kind of triumph of trust and faith in God. Just as some of those pulled from the rubble in Gaza can still say, ‘We thank you God’, so Job, in the midst of his terrible suffering can still utter those extraordinary words in the 13th chapter of the Book of Job, ‘Though he kill me, yet will I trust in him.’  I didn’t understand this at the age of 16, but I knew this was serious business.  I don’t claim to ‘understand’ it now either, but I know that here we are on holy ground. There is a deep silence pervading the engraving, and as you look longer at Job’s friends, they are bent over, their heads touching the ground not only out of grief, but out of awe. God is in this place.

Munther Isaac, the Lutheran pastor, in his interview, asks, ‘What kind of strength do these people have, and where do they get it?’ Contemplating Job, as he sits in despair but refusing to curse God, we might ask the same question. What kind of strength did Job have, and where did he get it? But we might well ask the same question of ourselves. What kind of strength do I have, and where do I get it? Think of a time in your own life, it might be now, when you were going through a great trial; a time when things were very dark. Perhaps a loss or a bereavement, perhaps an illness; perhaps even an experience of despair. How did you get through it? What strength did you draw on, and where did you get it?  Over many years of pastoral ministry, I have had the great privilege of sharing in the inner lives and struggles of many men, women and children, including in this congregation. I would say that Job is not some strange and alien figure from the past. I have known many Jobs: Many, who in the face of great suffering and trials have shown heroic patience, fortitude and perseverance, and whose faith and trust in God have frankly put my own faith to shame. I bet you know some Jobs in your own life; those whose faith and resilience have amazed you, and caused you to ask, ‘Where do they get their strength from?’ It can be very humbling.

Meditating on the William Blake image of Job, with his arms raised to heaven, draws us of course to another image, that of Christ on the Cross. Christian theologians through the centuries, from Gregory the Great onwards, have seen in Job an Old Testament prefiguring of Jesus.  Two figures who amidst terrible suffering, showed such unwavering, unflinching faith and trust in God. Nailed to the cross Jesus’ body is covered from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head, not with loathsome sores, but with the terrible wounds of his passion. Just as Job raised his arms to God in despair but also in a kind of triumph of trust and faith, so Jesus extends his arms to his Father in agony, but also in a kind of triumph and victory of trust and faith. In the midst of his sorrow, Jesus’ face is strangely beautiful. At his feet are his mother and close friends, who bow down or stare up in anguish. There is this deep silence. The figures at his feet, as well as the angels, look on in despair but also in awe and wonder. This is holy ground. Throughout his trials, Job remained faithful to God; ‘Though he kill me, yet will I trust in Him;’ and God vindicated him. Throughout his passion and suffering on the cross, Jesus remained faithful to his Father: ‘Into your hands I commend my spirit.’ And God raised Jesus from the dead, and opened the gate of heaven to all who put their trust in him. That is the Good News that we proclaim, that however dark the night, the light of God will always be brighter. For us who believe in Jesus, the Cross is surely where we get our strength. It is our hope and our anchor. If you are feeling overwhelmed with the sorrows of our world, if your heart is filled with compassion for all who are suffering, in the Middle East and beyond, bring your sorrow, your love and your prayers to the foot of the cross, and allow Jesus to bear them and offer them for his work of redemption.

May God give us strength and courage and perseverance, in all our trials, may God give us hope and faith, that even in the darkest day, we may proclaim with Job those luminous words, “I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the last day upon the earth, and then, in my flesh, I shall see God.”

Judith 9:1, 11-14

We encounter tonight two very different women.

The first prays to God for the success of her plan of deception to save her besieged city.

The other, a young woman, stands weeping by an empty tomb.

What connects these two women—the one, daring all to save her people; the other, alone and bereft, met in the garden by her savior?

Faith, for sure. But something else—courage.

This is of course obvious with Judith. During the siege of her city, she goes out alone, seduces the Assyrian general Holophernes, and while he sleeps uses his sword to strike off his head. Hers is a story of plotting and brutal action.

Courage is less obvious with Mary Magdalene, whom we remember today. But if we let ourselves encounter this familiar passage anew, we will find it there, too. On that first Sunday, Mary has come to the tomb and found the stone removed. “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him,” she cries to the other disciples (Jn 20:2). We can imagine Mary following behind Peter and John as they race to the tomb, confused and grief-stricken. The other disciples leave, “but Mary stood weeping outside the tomb” (Jn 20:11).

And this is where I see her courage. Not the courage to take up a sword, but to stand, to remain in her grief and loss and fear. To simply be in the hurt and uncertainty. This is also courage, a common, unheroic kind of courage—the vulnerable courage of waiting and trusting when hope seems gone, when we have no other hope than that God will provide.

Judith, too, displays this courage, in her prayer to God: “you are the God of the lowly, the helper of the oppressed, the upholder of the weak, protector of the forsaken, savior of those without hope. Please, please, God my father . . . hear my prayer” (Jth 9:11-12). Please, please, God, hear my prayer. It is the courage of the psalmist: “I pour out my soul when I think on these things. . . . Put your trust in God” (Ps 42:4, 7). And it is the courage of Mary, standing weeping in the garden, and hoping that this man who comes up to her may know where Jesus’s body has gone.

Some of us may be called to uncommon courageous actions like Judith’s. I expect that many of us will not. But all of us are called to exhibit the Mary’s common courage of simple faith, hope, and trust—the common, vulnerable courage to stand in our grief, to wait in the face of the unknown and uncertain. To simply be, abiding, waiting to find God—and assured that God is already meeting us there, calling us by name.

Feast of Irenaeus of Lyons

2 Timothy 2:22-26

“And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kindly to everyone, an apt teacher, patient, correcting opponents with gentleness” (2 Tim 2:24-25).

I’m not sure “gentle” is how I’d first characterize Irenaeus, the second-century theologian and bishop whom we remember today. In his great work Against Heresies, he sought to combat the heterodox versions of Christianity that surrounded him in a point-by-point refutation of their beliefs. At the same time, he laid out a Christian vision that affirmed the authority of the apostolic tradition and succession, the goodness of creation, and the relevance of the Hebrew Scriptures, a vision that would largely carry forward into the era of councils and creeds and orthodoxy of subsequent centuries.

The heresies Irenaeus faced are different than those that face us, but I think he speaks to us today in two important ways.

First, the truth matters, and it is worth arguing for and defending. We, like Irenaeus, live in an age of contested truth. Irenaeus makes clear his intent to address this head-on in the opening sentence of Against Heresies: “Inasmuch as certain men have set the truth aside, and bring in lying words and vain genealogies . . . and by means of their craftily-constructed plausibilities draw away the minds of the inexperienced and taken them captive, [I have felt constrained, my dear friend, to compose the following treatise in order to expose and counteract their machinations].”

But why we argue for truth also matters. Irenaeus makes clear his purpose: that, turning heretics into “the haven of truth,” his work may “cause them to attain their salvation.” This closely echoes our reading this morning from 2 Timothy: “God may perhaps grant that [opponents] will repent and come to know the truth, and that they may escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will” (2 Tim 2:25-26).

Irenaeus was relentless in his point by point, line by line refutation of the heresies he treats, and his defense of what he recognized as Christian truth. But, in his own words, the purpose was to free them from the captivity of false belief.

And this is important, because we are all captives, in some way or another. Maybe not captives to a heretical Christian sect, for sure, but captives to forces and narratives and patterns that largely lie outside our control, and therefore often beyond our awareness. We can too easily take these as given. We all have our own blinders and biases.

The lesson Irenaeus imparts to us is to be fearless in challenging these when we see them—but just as fearlessly to let ourselves be made aware of how susceptible we are to them. To be fearless in moving forward, together, into freedom and truth.

Amen.

Br. Luke Ditewig

Acts 1:15-26

St. Matthias

Today is the feast of St. Matthias who replaced Judas among the twelve apostles. Matthias had been with them since John baptized Jesus in the Jordan. He witnessed Jesus’ ministry with the crowds, heard the teaching, witnessed healings, had his own personal and communal experience of Jesus. Probably he was one of the 70 whom Jesus sent out and later was at the crucifixion. Hardly anything is written about him. The apostles selected two candidates. They drew lots thereby choosing Matthias.

The group probably wasn’t seeking a big personality. They already had that in Peter, James, and John. Now they were amid grief and change as Jesus had ascended back to heaven. Instead, they likely sought stability, one who had stuck it out with them and whom they trusted would remain. Remaining with through grief and loss is hard.

In language from the gospel, Matthias chose “to abide in Christ” and this company of friends. Abide can mean to live in, to make yourself at home. Abide also means to remain or to stick with through challenge. Jesus says the Father stuck with me. I’ll stick with you no matter what. Abide in my love, Jesus says. Remain with me.  

Remaining doesn’t mean being static, staying the same. Benedictine Michael Casey wrote: “Stability is not immobility. It’s the knack of remaining constant in the midst of change.”[i] Constancy comes through the little things, daily habits of showing up, being kind, giving thanks. Being gracious with our frailty and the imperfection of those around us. Constancy is all the little choices day by day choosing to stay and seek God here amid grief and waiting for what comes next.

God empowers us by grace to abide, to stick with each other, remaining through the hard, being constant in the little things. I imagine the apostles chose someone with whom they had experienced this. Blessed Matthias whom we remember today.

[i] Michael Casey (2005) “Perseverance” in Strangers to the City: reflections on the beliefs and values of The Rule of St. Benedict. Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, p191

John 12:24-26

“Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy” (Ps 126:2).

“Joy.” The psalmist repeats this word three times in this great poem of restoration. God’s people shout for joy, sing songs of joy, return from the fields in joy. God restores the fortunes of Zion—and their sadness is transformed into joy. Joy is their response, their witness to God’s working in the world.

In the calendar of the Church we remember today the third-century martyr Laurence of Rome. As archdeacon, he was given care of the church’s treasury for distribution to the needy. The story goes that after he was arrested during a periodic persecution of Christians, Laurence negotiated for a few days’ respite to gather the church’s wealth. During that time, though, he instead rapidly distributed it to the poor. When asked to hand over the church’s treasure, Laurence pointed not to gold or gems but to the poor.

Laurence, whom some traditions venerate as the patron saint of comedians, pulled a fast one on his tormentors, subverting their expectations, as all good comedians do. Our readings do something similar. Nebuchadnezzar thinks he’s in control of the situation, but maybe not: “Was it not three men that we threw bound into the fire? . . . But I see four men unbound” (Dan 3:24, 25). And Jesus shows his disciples that the kingdom of God will confound all we think we know: “Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life” (Jn 12:25). You thought you had everything under control, Laurence seems to say; you thought you knew what you were asking for.

And like all good comedians, in subverting expectations Laurence reveals a fundamental truth. The Church, after all, is people, not property, a truth we forget to our peril. And in losing his life for witnessing to this truth, Laurence bore fruit, providing us a model of what it means for us to be witnesses.

Most of us will not face a martyr’s death. But we too can be martyrs—literally, “witnesses.” As the psalmist tells us, our joy is one way we can witness to that work. Joy in seeing God overturn and confound our expectations. Joy in being restored as God’s people. Joy in recognizing others—and ourselves—as the treasures of the Church.

Blessed Laurence, shout for joy with us.

Amen.

Br. Keith Nelson

James 4:1-10

I want to crack these scripture passages open by sharing some things I’ve gleaned lately about ethics from a rather unlikely pair: a wildly popular content creator on TikTok and an early eighteenth century Quaker. Bear with me!

Alexis Nicole Nelson is a foraging expert and an advocate for growing and eating local food based in Columbus, Ohio. She creates irresistibly funny videos, and her sense of wonder for the earth is contagious. But Nelson, who is a Black woman and a vegan, also offers powerful insights about the complex relationship between our food choices, our privilege or lack of privilege, and the ethical conundrums we all face as consumers in an industrial society.  As she points out, the adoption of moral self-righteousness around what we choose to eat or not eat is woefully misguided because when it comes to balancing harm of other humans, harm to animals, and harm to the environment, no food choice is ethically perfect. And yet, Nelson continues to passionately educate others about harm reduction in relation to food-ways, because while perfection is impossible, doing better is attainable. We can continue to improve our own choices and build a lower-impact food culture while remaining humble and empathetic.

John Woolman was an early eighteenth century Quaker abolitionist who would have agreed wholeheartedly with Nelson’s ethic of harm reduction, as well as her generous recognition of our moral interconnectedness. Woolman spent his life learning about, then resisting and educating others to resist the transatlantic slave trade. He renounced land-ownership; he gave up wearing dyed clothing in an age when the dying process relied heavily on slave labor; he declined to receive hospitality in the households of slave-owners. All of these choices set him deeply at odds with the culture of colonial New England and the elites of old England to whom be brought his message. And yet, like Nelson, Woolman had little patience for a posture of self-righteousness. He won over his opponents with respect, empathy, and wholehearted commitment to practicing what he preached, however inconvenient. While he felt that moral purification was at the heart of what it meant to follow Jesus Christ, he recognized that a final state of moral purity was not possible for anyone. For Woolman, purification was a dynamic force that compelled a person to listen to conscience over custom, rather than being lulled into an easy friendship with the world.

In Mark’s gospel, we encounter Jesus’ familiar words about striving to be greatest and first. It’s easy to see how his teaching applies to overt friendship with systems that put profit over people and that further embed structural violence as a way of life. I don’t think that the disciples, who had given up everything to follow Jesus in his path of downward mobility, were intent on being first and greatest in that particular way. And yet as those who are seeking the kingdom are drawn inevitably into a spiritual counterculture, there is a different striving to be greatest and first which can insinuate itself.

This can take the form of a moral self-righteousness that turns every ethical choice into a black-and-white decision, and then signals its own virtue with a litany of the right decisions made or attitudes adopted.

What is so refreshing and empowering to me about the wisdom of Alexis Nicole Nelson and the witness of John Woolman are the ways they live out their respective messages with both integrity and with an abundant recognition of moral finitude. This term comes from the philosopher Brian Henning, who argues that we need a better term than hypocrite to describe everyone who falls short of every moral goal. He writes: “[T]hose who earnestly pursue but fail to achieve their moral ideals are morally finite.” In contrast, a hyprocrite contradicts their own values but easily accepts the gap between moral ideals and moral actions. To know moral finitude is to be intimately acquainted with the “troubled spirit” that the Psalmist describes as the “sacrifice of God,” and the “lamenting, mourning, and weeping” encouraged by the Letter of James: “Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.”

But perhaps it is also akin to the finitude and limitation known by a child, the exemplar Jesus sets before those who would be first and greatest in their righteousness. It is a child’s blissful unconcern with the status and virtue signaling of the world that Jesus commends, and a child’s dependency that must make the most of circumstances utterly beyond her control. To be last of all is to be acquainted with those who are most vulnerable to harm, whether in daily life or by choices of compassionate solidarity. Jesus teaches a humility and an empathy that has its priorities right, and leads to more freedom and more joy.