Br. Luke Ditewig

Psalm 139

Today is our monthly requiem in which we remember the dead, the dying, and our mortality.

Psalm 139 says: “Lord, you have searched me out and known me.” Jesus knows everything about us, both what we don’t mind sharing and what we try to hide. Jesus knows our sitting down and rising up, our thoughts, our ways. Jesus knows all the places we’ve gone, all the journeys we’ve taken and where we’ve stopped to rest. God knows all.

But we try to hide. We often shy away from God by denying death, pretending God can’t see or that we don’t need to speak. We like to think “the darkness will cover [us],” but as the psalmist says: “darkness is not dark to you [O God]; the night is as bright as the day; darkness and light to you are both alike.”

God sees all and invites us to risk praying it. What is dark and terrifying for you today? Perhaps it’s the grief of death, someone or something you have lost. Perhaps it’s the grief of dying, someone or something changing, being taken away. Perhaps it’s the grief of mortality, knowing what you hold today will have to be let go. Remember, too, our non-human neighbors who have died and are dying, for those endangered and hurting by our human greed.

Nothing is too heavy or difficult for Jesus. Risk expressing, praying your grief. Nothing is out of God’s sight or reach, certainly not you! Jesus is here with us. Let yourself feel and be seen. Let yourself be shaken and trust yourself to be held. Pray the hard with words such as writing freeform or your writing own psalm. Pray with silence such as coloring, collage, or gazing as light and shadows move. Pray with movement such as literally shaking and clenching, then releasing to stillness. Lean against a wall or lie down feeling your yourself supported and held.

As you pray in the dark, facing death, see the Light. Look to Jesus, the Sun of Righteousness, who has, who is and who will keep rising in triumph, raising us and all of creation to life.

Br. David Vryhof

Micah 5:2-5a
Rom. 8:28-30
Matt. 1:18-25

As some of you know, I was raised in the Reformed tradition of the Church.  Reformed churches are among those that emerged out of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century.  Central to our particular denomination was a statement of faith written in 1563 called the Heidelberg Catechism.  It was composed of a series of questions and answers conveniently organized into 52 sections – called “Lord’s Days.”  Each Sunday – that is, each Lord’s Day – the pastor would preach on one of these sections, thus explaining the whole of the faith over the course of a year.

There was one question and answer, the first in the Catechism, that most of us knew by heart.  It asked:

            “What is my only comfort in life and in death?”

(Think for a moment.  How would you answer that question?)

The Catechism’s answer began with these words:

“That I am not my own, but belong with body and soul, both in life and in death, to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.” 

Our “only comfort in life and in death,” the Catechism taught us, was that we belonged to Christ.  And what a comfort that was – and is – for us who believe.

We are followers of Jesus.  We belong to Christ, body and soul.  This is our comfort and hope.  We have been created by God, we have been rescued from the bondage of sin and death by God, we have been given new life in Christ, we are sustained and protected by God, we are told not to fear – because we belong to God.

This is the theme behind St Paul’s words to the Romans in today’s lesson.  He reassures and encourages these early believers – many of whom were facing hardship and persecution – with these words: “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to [God’s] purposes.” (Rom 8:28).

God has called us according to God’s own purposes, says Paul.  And why has God called us?  Listen carefully.  We are called, Paul says, in order that we may be “conformed to the image of his Son.” (Rom. 8:27)

This phrase is the one that most captured my attention in today’s readings.  We are called by God; drawn into the family of God; chosen, called, justified and glorified for this purpose: that we may be conformed to the image of his Son, Jesus Christ.

What does it mean to be conformed to the image of Jesus?  It means we are to be like him, to act like him, to speak like him, to love like him.  It means that we are to be “Christ-like” in everything we do and say.

What is it about Jesus that we should imitate?  So much could be said here but let me offer a few suggestions that I believe have direct implications for us today, in our personal lives and in our communities, and in this country, especially as we approach one of the most important national elections in our history.

Jesus taught us that the chief commandment was this: to love God with all our soul, heart, mind and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.

He taught us that our neighbor is not only the person who lives next door to us but everyone we meet, including strangers and foreigners and those we might consider to be our enemies.  His story of the Good Samaritan illustrates the kind of compassion we are to have for our neighbors, even when they are different from us.  The Samaritan, considered an ‘outsider’ by Jews, was the hero in that story, caring for one who would have considered him an enemy.

Jesus taught us to respect the dignity of all, and to recognize that every human being is created in the image of God and is entitled to respect.  Jesus consistently showed compassion and respect to those who were poor or oppressed or outcasts.  He associated with the marginalized and treated them with dignity.  For those who imitate him, there is no place for maintaining one group’s superiority over another.  Nor is there room for denying the human dignity of anyone based on the color of their skin, their sexual orientation or gender status, or their religious faith or lack of it.

In Christ, Paul tells us, “there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal. 3:28)

The “kingdom” that Jesus came to bring – the Kingdom of God – was unlike any of the world’s kingdoms.  It was an “upside down” kingdom, in which the first were last and the last first, in which the greatest was the servant of all.  It was completely contradictory to the world’s values, which emphasize wealth, power and privilege.  Its hallmark was humble service.

Jesus called us to be “peacemakers,” reconcilers – not instigators of conflict and division, mistrust and hatred.

Are these our values as well?  Are we being “conformed to the image of Christ,” day by day and year by year?  Do those whom we look up to and choose to follow live by these principles?  If our purpose is to become more Christ-like, how will that be reflected in how we live, how we relate to others, and how we vote?

We belong to God.  God has called us for this purpose, to be conformed to the image of his Son.  This is not only our comfort and our hope, but also our purpose and our life’s direction.  We live for God.

Mark 7:24-37 

Ephphatha. Jesus looked up, breathed out, and said: Be opened.

And the man was opened: brought back from a closed-off place where no words could get in and no meaning could get out. Let through to a wide-open place of many possibilities, where moments before there had been few, and life was merely survival.

How wide can one human heart be opened to the life of God?

This gradual opening of the heart in an ever-expanding trajectory marks the entire arc of Jesus’ life, words, and actions among us. He stood at the center of an ever-widening and expanding circle of relationships. His gospel shows the way toward an ever-widening and expanding circle of participation in the life of the kingdom: the astonishing reality that we are called to direct participation in the inmost life of God.

This is the heart of Jesus.

But this was not – and is not – effortless. It required the deliberate crossing and breaking of boundaries – boundaries that sought to arrest that unfolding momentum at every turn. He met voices that said:

“We determine who has the right to participate in God’s favor.”

“God’s love extends this far; to this shape; to this arrangement – but no farther.”

Jesus was continually saying: No. Stretch even farther.

Put on “the mind of Christ,” as St. Paul urges. This mind has powered the momentum pushing the boundaries of participation outward in every successive age of the church. Stretch farther. Imagine more. Topple yet another wall so the words can get in and the meaning can get out, up, over and through, so that everything that has breath may praise the Creator.

Be opened. Until, in God’s time, the far frontier is found: the consummation of all things, when “Christ will be all in all.” All means all.

This is the largeness – the wide-open horizon of the heart – that comes with humility.

In this Season of Creation, we are called to contemplate the humility of the creature before the Creator. This is a humility with proportions both cosmic and microscopic; it is vast as our expanding universe and it is intimately particular as, say, the community of microbes in your own digestive tract, without whom you would be less of you.

Humility is the spiritual gift of seeing ourselves as we are. It is neither grandiosity nor an inferiority complex. A humble person knows her own wingspan, and is unafraid to unfurl those wings and fly. And a humble person knows how and when to fold his wings – to make space for the flight of another.

True growth is impossible without humility, if only because it takes making mistakes to grow. We cannot see or acknowledge those mistakes to others, and to God, if we are wedded to a vision of ourselves as perfect beings. It is often in admitting our shortcomings and making apologies that we begin to acquire character and form lasting relationships.

The wide-open heart of Jesus was marked by this earthbound humility.

In today’s gospel reading from Mark we encounter a pair of stories that are actually the second half of a series. This is important context for understanding how humility spurs Jesus to break boundaries – including his own – to widen participation in the life of God.

Earlier in Mark Jesus has had encounters with two other figures: Jairus, a male Jewish leader with a 12-year-old daughter in need of healing; and an unnamed Jewish woman with an issue of blood (for twelve years) that makes her ritually unclean. Jesus heals both of them.

Today’s diptych of stories is the sequel, as well as its foil. In the region of Tyre, a Gentile city, an unnamed woman who is not Jewish but a Greek-speaking pagan asks Jesus to heal her daughter. Then Jesus travels to the Decapolis – ten city-states with an overwhelming Gentile majority, and all Greco-Roman in cultural origin – and he heals an unnamed deaf man we can reasonably infer is also a Gentile.

Anyone brought into healing contact with Jesus participated in the life of God which Jesus called the kingdom. We cannot infer any chronological development in Jesus’ attitude toward offering this larger life to those outside the Jewish covenant. But in the literary structure of Mark, the personal attributes of these characters follow a clear pattern, beginning with a Jewish, male, person of honor; then an unclean, Jewish woman, lower in status by her gender; then two Gentiles, lower still in status and unclean by default in the ancient Jewish worldview; the first a woman, and the second a man impaired in hearing and in speech. This cast of characters is arranged in a careful sequence, from most to least likely to participate in the fullness of God’s covenant love.

Jesus’ interaction with the Syrophonecian woman offers a further window into the creaturely hierarchy in the background of all this boundary crossing.

He replies to her request: “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

She answers: “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”

 Jesus concludes the dialogue: “For saying that, you may go – the demon has left your daughter.”

Their interchange evokes a movement downward in space: we imagine a parent bending down to feed a seated child at table; and the messy hands of a child scattering bits of bread even further, to the dirt floor and the waiting mouths of hungry dogs. Children had no social status whatsoever and were utterly dependent on caregivers, though were of course cherished and protected. Dogs were viewed in one of two ways: valued in the ancient Near East as work animals for hunting, guarding, or herding, dogs could rank in the lowest tier of a household, so to speak along with its other domesticated animals. But in ancient Israel, as in many countries today, scavenging, semi-wild dogs also roamed streets or congregated in packs on the outskirts of villages. Dogs were not ritually impure as a species, but touching a corpse transmitted impurity, and scavenging dogs routinely did this. So, the association between dogs and impurity is ambiguous and contextual. Which kind of dog, and in what situation?

I think that ambiguity is crucial in this interchange between Jesus and this woman. Jesus’ reply conjures up a semi-wild scavenger. But the woman’s reply is a pointed reminder that there are dogs who live alongside humans, right there under the table. Are they scavengers? Technically, but of the most benign variety.

The woman insists, in so many words: Though to you I may rank the lowest, I am a member of the household, and my hunger entitles me to my share of the food, however meager.

Taken in light of the entire New Testament, I would even say that the woman’s comment anticipates the words of St. Paul, when he writes in 1 Corinthians, “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’ On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable.” Her reply also anticipates Galatians 3: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

While it is challenging to imagine a very human, perhaps impatient, culturally conditioned, Jewish male Jesus calling this woman a scavenger, I think his final words to her are meant to underscore Jesus’ great humility. His consent to her request and the extension of healing to her daughter is also a way of saying to her: You are right. I was wrong – I didn’t see the whole picture, and now I see a little more of it. My heart is open to stretching farther.

There are creatures toward whom we, as humans, give only the scattered crumbs of our regard now and again. And there are creatures whom we relegate to the outskirts of our attention, barely conscious that they, too, are held in being moment by moment by God’s creative Word. Yet is it not humbling to think that humans comprise only 0.01% of Earth’s total biomass, while for instance, plants comprise 82.4%? Bacteria comprise 12.8%, trillions of them forming beneficial microbial communities inside each of us, barely separable from our own flesh.

There is a wide-open place of many possibilities to which we can be opened, and to which we can open others, in the household of God’s creatures. We can begin here, in this liturgy, by the ways we lift other-than-human creatures up to God in prayer, in active remembrance that our humanity subsists in relationship to their creaturehood in its astonishing complexity, diversity, and belovedness.

In a few moments, when we celebrate Holy Communion, we will use for the first time a Eucharistic Prayer composed by our Brother Lucas and authorized by our Bishop Alan, especially for this Season of Creation. I invite you to bring your prayerful attention to its expansive language. These are words that seek to shift our human consciousness; to let in the myriad beings beyond these walls who pray without ceasing; and to learn from their unique participation in the feast of Life.

As we renew our human vocation to be servants and priests of creation, may our hearts be opened to the humility of Jesus: true God, true human, and true creature, until the day when Christ is all in all.

 Amen.

Br. Curtis Almquist

Psalm 37:1-12

In the portion of Psalm 37 appointed for today’s liturgy, one verb appears several times: “fret.” “Do not fret yourself.” Fretting, which is jealous, angry teeth grinding when we see evil doers, the unscrupulous, the insidiously clever people getting ahead. In just a few verses, the psalmist repeats this mantra three times: “Do not fret yourself.” “Do not fret yourself.” “Refrain from anger, leave rage alone; do not fret yourself; it leads only to evil.”[i]  Which is easier said than done when we see in the news every day how good things happen to bad people.

We need good peripheral vision. On the one hand, we need to keep in touch with history and see, in the long view, how the playing field eventually levels. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”[ii] Quite. Remembering how justice will eventually thunder forth can help us claim hope. In the fullness of time, things will come round right, if not in this lifetime, then in the life to come.

With our peripheral vision, we also need to live in the present and to look ahead, claiming our own agency for God’s will to be done on earth as it shall be in heaven. What is our vocation, what is our calling to be and to do amidst somuch that is wrong? To quote again Martin Luther King, Jr.: “We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”[iii]

The psalmist gives us an elixir for living fully alive in a troubled world:

1. “Do not fret yourself; it leads only to evil.” The risk, of course, is our becoming the very thing we hate and envy. Detach. “Do not fret yourself.” And then,
2. Live in hope. In the fullness of time, things will come round right. And then,
3. Seize the moment. Claim our own agency to make for right in what is within our own reach and power, especially on behalf of the powerless and voiceless in God’s creation: people, birds, animals, the sky and sea, mountains and plains. To make for right, what is within our own power.

But do not fret.

[i] Psalm 37:1, 8, 9.

[ii] Martin Luther King, Jr., originally quoted in a 1958 article printed in “The Gospel Messenger” periodical.

[iii] Martin Luther King, Jr., from his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” an open letter written on April 16, 1963.

Br. James Koester,
Superior

Proper 17 B

There is a lot going on today. It’s the Sunday of the Labour Day weekend, a holiday marking the social, economic and political achievements of the labour movement. (As an aside, in the Nineteenth Century, our own Father Field was a great proponent of the move to implement a 5 ½ day work week for child labourers. He created a half-day fund, and each Saturday would take as many boys as he could find, sometimes in the range of over 200, out into the country for an afternoon of games and a picnic, bringing them back to the city in the evening tired, well fed, and happy.) Today is also the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, sometimes known as the Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity. Over this is laid the first Sunday in the Season of Creation, when many parishes, including us, focus their attention on the beauty and wonder of creation, and our need to protect its integrity. Closer to home, I stand before you in the last moments as my time as Superior. Later this morning we will install our brother Keith as our new Superior.

All around us, different things are happening, and it’s hard to know where to look, where to focus. Some things are ending, while others are just beginning. Still others are in mid-course. What is true for the monastery and the church, is no doubt true in your own lives. It is certainly true for the world. So much seems to be changing all at the same time, with some things coming to an end, or even dying, while others are just beginning, and coming to life. Still others are somewhere in between.

But isn’t that what renewal looks like? Renewal is not things simply changing. For renewal to happen, some things must come to an end, while others take their first steps and move into place. The Prayer Book puts it this way,

O God of unchangeable power and eternal light: Look favorably on your whole Church, that wonderful and sacred mystery; by the effectual working of your providence, carry out in tranquillity the plan of salvation; let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord….[1]

This is very much a season when things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new.

This image of ending and beginning, of dying and rising, of the old being made new, doesn’t simply come to us from the imagination of a liturgical scholar working away at their desk. This image, indeed, this process, is deeply imprinted in the human soul. We know the Collect to be true, not because it’s in the Prayer Book, but because we see that process, in our own lives; and in the lives of others around us. We know it to be true, not because we see the coming and going of Superiors. We know it to be true because we see that process in creation itself.

Father Congreve of our Society put it this way:

The stillness of the evening clouds expresses for me the patience of the creature waiting for God: “My soul waiteth still upon God.”[2] Standing there, watching the night fall, as the day dies, listening to the crashing of the waves upon the shore, and everything, he writes seems to be absorbed in the solemnity of divine mysteries, everything seems awake to the infinite, and to breathe the awfulness of eternity… Here God visibly touches nature… We rise and stand upon our feet to hear what He is saying to us, as our hearts burn….[3]

Who among us has not watched the sky, golden with the praises of a sunset, or blackened by a threatening storm, and not thought silently, it is the Lord? Who has not been saddened at the first sign of autumn, and whose heart has not rejoiced when the first robin of spring is spotted. It is the Lord.

As we watch creation die and renew itself day by day, century by century, eon by eon, humanity has seen in it a revelation of the Divine, who makes all things new.[4] We see this same revelation of the Divine, as creation is renewed today, upon the altar.

Here on this altar, as on altars around the world, the creatures of bread and wine are taken, blessed, broken, and given. Again, as Father Congreve says, 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 raised from the sphere of the perishing world, and consecrated to become powers of eternal life, uniting earth and Heaven. These are creatures which have shared our curse (cursed be the ground for thy sake), [now] lifted in the hands of our Lord to an immeasurable dignity.[5] In this way, created matter, this time bread and wine, becomes a revelation of the Divine, and a means and sign of God’s grace and love. By them, and in them, and through them, we hear the voice of God speaking to us and saying, ‘Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.[6]

There is a lot going on today, but in reality only one thing is happening, in creation, in our world, in this nation, here at the monastery, and in each of our lives, and that is that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things [including you, and me, our community, this nation, and all creation] are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, … Jesus Christ our Lord….

And that, my friends, is a cause of hope, for just as creation is being perfected on this altar today, so that it will be for us a revelation of God, so too are you, and I, and we Brothers being renewed and perfected to be a revelation of the Divine who says to all of us, arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.

[1] TEC, Book of Common Prayer, 1979, page 515

[2] Congreve SSJE, George, The Spiritual Order, The Sorrow of Nature, Longmans, Green, and Co., London, 1906, page 53

[3] Ibid, page 54

[4] Revelation 21:5

[5] Congreve SSJE, George, Christian Progress, The Fellowship of Man with all Created Things in Sorrow and in Hope, Longmans, Green, and Co., London, 1910, page 263

[6] Song of Songs 2: 10 – 13

Br. Luke Ditewig

Aidan of Lindisfarne

1 Corinthians 9:16-23

In the seventh century, Aidan, a monk on Iona in Scotland, was sent to establish a monastery on Lindisfarne in northern England. Like Columba who led much missionary work out from Iona, Aidan led great evangelism from Lindisfarne.

Aiden sent monks out, two by two, into the neighboring villages and countryside. He gave two noteworthy instructions: First, travel on foot, not horseback. Second, do not carry a knife or any sort of weapon for defense. Travel then was very dangerous, so this was remarkable.

Aiden instructed ways to live like Jesus not simply speak about Jesus. Walking instead of riding, they went like their neighbors, as equals instead of with additional power and privilege. Without weapons to fight, they resisted violence with vulnerability. Aiden and his monks embodied the gospel, and they were well received. Offered humbly, good news spread quickly.

Paul wrote: “What then is my reward? Just this: that in my proclamation I may make the gospel free of charge, so as not to make full use of my rights in the gospel.” He speaks of being like Jews and other groups in order “win them” for Christ. Paul reached out to people on their own terms, in their own way, to point to Jesus.

Have you experienced people like Aiden and Paul? Who became like you in order to point you to Jesus? Who has welcomed you, curious, honoring your culture, background, and experience? Who has been humble and vulnerable? Give thanks for such people.

How we live is just as important if not more than what we say. Consider your life. How are you engaging others with humility and vulnerability? How might you be distanced with power and protection? What is the invitation for you? May we point to Jesus by how we live. Blessed Aidan whom we remember today.

The Beheading of John the Baptist

Mark 6:17-29

If you were to stand in the south gallery of what used to be the Church of Holy Wisdom, or Hagia Sophia, in Istanbul, you would be standing in the footsteps of emperors and empresses. And in the footsteps of these powerful rulers, you would also be able to see the Deesis mosaic, a monumental icon of the enthroned Jesus, flanked by his mother Mary and John the Baptist, who turn toward him in deesis, that is, in prayer or supplication.[1]

The church’s calendar in this season forms a kind of Deesis as well, with the feasts of the births and deaths of Mary and John braided together through the summer, flanking and pointing toward the Transfiguration. As the eyes of the disciples were transfigured to see Jesus’s true nature, so are the very human lives of mother and forerunner themselves transfigured by their relationship to Jesus.

John’s death by beheading is a striking one. But not only because of the lurid details of a world of luxury and nasty family politics that seems so very far away from the gospel. It’s striking because in the agents of John’s execution—Herodias and her daughter—we have two figures who never, as far as we are aware, have any direct encounter with Jesus—perhaps the only two figures in the gospels who do not.

And this lack of direct encounter is telling, because they provide us the gospel writer’s view of what untransfigured power looks like. Selfish and arbitrary. Relationships built not on love or respect but on deceit and gamesmanship. And, in the figure of Herod, weakness cultivated by his worst excesses. This is far from the power proclaimed by Jesus and pointed to by John and Mary: the power of God’s kingdom.

John called Herod and his family out for their transgression of Jewish law. He used his power as a prophet to stand up and speak truth to those in authority and, like so many other prophets, to be killed for it. Mary proclaimed God’s inversion of the world’s power: “He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly” (Lk 1:52). She who at first glance seems to be the person with the least power, herself bore God to the world in the lowliest of circumstances. A call to repentance, the uplifting of the lowly: this is power, transfigured.

We may not be emperors or empresses. We may not be powerful as the world measures power. But each of us has power. It may be your resources; your voice, advice, or counsel; your work and actions; your physical presence; or, especially for us Christians, your deesis, your prayer and supplication. What is your power?

Recognizing and accepting your power is a first step, a necessary first step because, unlike Herodias and her daughter, each of us has, in our own way, encountered the risen Lord, and in that encounter each of us has been changed, and our power transfigured. How is God using your power? How are you yourself an icon pointing to God’s kingdom?

Amen.

[1] Images of this mosaic are available at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Deesis_mosaic_(Hagia_Sophia).

Br. James Koester,
Superior

Wisdom 9: 1-6

I’ll begin this morning, not so much by putting you out of your misery, but rather to satisfy your curiosity. I’ll begin by saying there is nothing, yet, to announce. The Chapter will meet later this morning to elect a new Superior to succeed me and that of course will initiate a host of things. We anticipate an announcement going out sometime this afternoon. If we have your email address, you should receive something from us later today. If we don’t have your email address, the announcement will be posted on our web site. If you live locally, it’s possible that if you come to the midday Office, there will be a sign on the church door. Having said that, there will now perhaps be a rush on the chapel at 12:15 today!

In all of this we continue to ask for your prayers for us during this significant time of change and renewal.

The election of a new Superior marks the beginning of a new chapter in our life as a community. It’s the beginning of a new day. It’s not that things ever remain static. Things never remain the same. When we as individuals, or communities, or nations stop growing and changing, we die. Even then, in the process of decomposition, things change. Just go for a walk in the woods at Emery House, and they will show you that. Things change. People change. Monastic communities change. Nations change.

We joke in the community that when a Brother who has been living at Emery House returns here to the Monastery to live, by the time he has reached the end of Emery Lane, everything back at Emery House has changed, and it is no longer the place he left, even just 5 minutes before. The same is true today. By Evening Prayer today, and certainly by Evening Prayer on 1 September, after the installation of the new Superior, things will be different, and that’s exciting, and a little scary. But that’s life. When we stop changing, we die. The only unchanging reality is God’s eternal, and abiding love for creation, which of course includes each one of us. O give thanks to the Lord, for [God] is good; for [God’s] steadfast love endures forever.[1] This is the reality of our faith. It’s not some pious hokum, but the experience of countless women and men of faith down through the ages. Even as people, and communities, and nations have looked into what might appear to be a dark future, as people of faith, we have been able to say, the Lord is my shepherd; I shall not be in want.[2]

The reality is that all of us stand on the threshold of new beginnings. The Brothers are not the only ones facing a new future. You who are our friends, stand alongside us in this doorway. More significantly, all of us stand at the threshold of something new, as we look toward the presidential election in just over two months. Come Evening Prayer today, come 6 November, things will be different, and yet we say [fear] the Lord, you that are his saints; for those who fear him lack nothing.[3]

Knowing this, today is not a day for us, and perhaps especially for me, to look back. Rather today is a day to look forward to the future, not with dread, but with hope, knowing the promise of God is to meet us, in whatever that future holds. As the Risen Lord said to Mary Magdelene that first Easter Day, go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.[4]

For the past several months, as I have contemplated our future, this promise of the Risen Lord to meet us in the Galilee of our future, has held a significant place in my prayer. I have imagined myself walking into my future, our future, and hearing God’s promise to Joshua spoken to me, spoken to us: I hereby command you: Be strong and courageous; do not be frightened or dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.’[5]

But how are we to know that God goes before us? How are we to see Jesus as we approach the shore of the Galilee of our future? How are we to make sense of it all, especially as things are changing around us? How can we live in hope, as we look into the unknown, especially if it appears uncertain, and bleak? Isn’t this just wishful thinking?

Listen again to our first lesson:

Wisdom has built her house…She has slaughtered her animals, she has mixed her wine, she has…set her table. She has sent out her servant-girls, she calls… ‘You that are simple, turn in here! …Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight.’ [6]

This house, Wisdom’s house, is the house of God where the psalmist tells us, we will dwell forever.[7]This house, Wisdom’s house, is the many roomed mansion Jesus has prepared for us.[8] This house, Wisdom’s house, is the place, not only of our future, but of our present, for we already abide in that place. We have turned into Wisdom’s house. We have sat at her table. We have feasted on her bread and wine. For by feasting on Wisdom’s bread and wine, we have eaten and drunk Christ’s Body and Blood, and doing so we abide in him and he in us.[9]

We stand on the threshold of a new world, where things will be different. We stand at that threshold full of hope, expecting to see Jesus who has gone there before us. We stand fortified by Wisdom’s bread and wine, and Christ’s Body and Blood. We stand abiding in Christ, who has promised to be with us, until the end of the ages.[10]

Yes, things will be different tomorrow. They will be different for all of us. We will have a new Superior. Soon, there will be a new, or a not so new, President. No matter what the future holds for any of us, we can face it with confidence, not because we are wishful thinkers, but because we are Christians full of hope. That hope which is ours tells us that the God who promises to be with us always, will never leave or abandon us. That hope, which is the mark of a Christian, is nourished here at Wisdom’s table in Christ’s Body and Blood. So, turn in here, and feast on God’s gift of hope, as we cross the threshold into the future, where the Risen Lord promises to meet us. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.

[1] 1 Chronicles 16: 34

[2] Psalm 23: 1

[3] Psalm 34: 9

[4] Matthew 28: 10

[5] Joshua 1: 9

[6] Wisdom 9: 1 – 6

[7] Psalm 23: 6b

[8] John 14: 1ff

[9] John 6: 56

[10] Matthew 28: 8

Br. Curtis Almquist

The Dormition of Saint Mary the Virgin, Mother of Our Lord Jesus Christ

Galatians 4:4-7
Luke 1:46-55

We find nothing in the Bible about the Dormition of the Blessed Virgin Mary, whom we celebrate today. The word “dormition” is from the Latin, dormitio, from which comes the English word “dormitory.” Dormitio is the act of sleeping.[i] Since the early centuries, this is how the church has remembered the death of the Blessed Virgin Mary. She simply “fell asleep” and was miraculously taken up into heaven. Mary has been heralded the saint of the saints: her death as mysterious as the birth she gave to Jesus.

If you were raised in an Eastern Orthodox or Roman Catholic tradition, today’s celebration will likely be familiar and comforting. If you come from a Protestant tradition, or no church tradition, today’s celebration may be quite foreign, perhaps quite inviting. There is an “assumption” of meaning around Mary which has grown through the centuries, where many have found Mary’s life story worthy of veneration, and a channel of help and hope. Over the centuries the Blessed Virgin Mary’s importance has grown for two reasons: because of recollection and because of revelation.

The church’s recollection traces back to the ancient predictions about the long-awaited Messiah. Centuries prior to Jesus’ birth, Isaiah had prophesied: “For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”[ii] But this does not fit Jesus’ pedigree. Jesus was born without title. Neither were his mother Mary nor his “stepfather,” Joseph, of noble lineage. Jesus’ birth to Mary would not only have been a disappointment to some, she could have been a scandal. Mary is a peasant, and she is unmarried. Mary clearly knows this. When she received the announcement from the angel Gabriel that she was to bear the Christ child, Mary was both afraid and incredulous. “How can this be?” she cries out.

Mary would have known the ancient Messianic prophesies about the greatness of the long-awaited Messiah. But no, she learns that the Messiah was not going to appear on the horizon, a fully formed and fully empowered adult with regal authority. The angel Gabriel’s announcement was that the Messiah would be born to Mary as an infant. “How can this be?” she asks. I can only imagine this same question revisiting Mary as her child, Jesus, grew into adolescence and manhood: “How can this be?” Jesus was about 30 years old before he publicly showed signs that he was, indeed, the Messiah. Thirty years for a mother watching and waiting, and perhaps worrying. “How can this be?” was surely a question that kept visiting both Mary and Jesus as he grew up.

And it also took the church several centuries to recollect, that is, to make sense of what had been prophesied about the coming Messiah, what then had been revealed to Mary and Joseph, and what had finally come of Jesus: his birth, his death, his resurrection, his parting gift of the Holy Spirit, and his ascension to heaven. Momentarily we will repeat what the church concluded in the 4th century as we confess the Nicene Creed.

Down through the ages, the church has imagined Mary cuddling Jesus as an infant, observing Jesus as he grew up, holding Jesus’ slain body as an adult – Michelangelo’s Pietà[iii] – then imagining Mary’s being received into the heavens, taken into the arms of Jesus. An ancient Greek title given the Blessed Virgin Mary is Theotokos, translated as “Mother of God,” or “Godbearer.” Jesus, in his humanity, is Mary’s son; Jesus, in his divinity, is Mary’s Savior. I’m calling this the fruit of recollection, how the church has recollected the lives of both Jesus and Mary.

Alongside this recollection of Mary has also been the revelation of Mary: how the Blessed Virgin Mary has been seen, heard, and experienced down through the centuries, throughout the world. Mary’s appearances have been just as mysterious and miraculous as her own conception of Jesus. One’s imagination cannot stretch too far concerning Mary, when our starting point is at the announcement of the Angel Gabriel that the most unimaginable event would happen with and through Mary.

In the Anglican tradition, the Blessed Virgin Mary is always in relationship to Jesus. She does not stand alone. You may find in Mary an invitation to an enlarged relationship with Jesus which includes his mother. Mary will not get in the way. She will point to the way, Jesus.[iv] You may find the Blessed Virgin Mary’s companionship a real grace in your experience of life and in your practice of prayer.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you.
Blessed are you among women
and blessed is the fruit of your women, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God:
Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.[v]

i] The Eastern Orthodox Churches have continued to call this day of remembrance “The Dormition of the Mother of God.” Since the late Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic Church has called today’s remembrance “The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven.”

[ii] Isaiah 9:6. Isaiah chapters 1-39 are thought to have been written by the prophet Isaiah in the 8th century bce.

[iii] La Pietà is a marble sculpture by Michelangelo (1475-1564) of Mary holding Jesus’ slain body at Golgotha.

[iv] Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.…” John 14:6.

[v] From the “Angelus,” Latin for “angel,” a devotion named for the angel Gabriel’s announcement to Mary, “The Annunciation.” The “Angelus” commemorates Christ’s becoming human – his Incarnation – and is prayed aloud in the SSJE chapel twice every day.

In my first-grade art class, I remember molding and painting a very rough purplish-gray dinosaur. I was very proud of that dinosaur. It’s still on display a shelf in my childhood bathroom.

I’d like to invite you to remember your own experience of creating something as a child—smudging paint on a piece of paper, building a sandcastle, drawing your family with crayons, or something else. How did it feel?

And what did you do with your creation? Did you keep it to yourself? Or did you run to your friends or parents and show them what you had made, or give it to them as a gift? What did you feel in this sharing or giving?

We as Christians and monks talk about humility a lot. We talk about it as a central virtue, as an antidote to pride, as a way of relating to others as fellow children of God. We talk of humble status, of humble actions, of building or cultivating habits of humility. And all the while, so many of the expectations we face and the performance that is required of us pushes back against that ideal, requiring us to compete against others, to distinguish ourselves. It can be a demoralizing juggling act.

Now, recall your childhood creation. In these memories of creating and sharing and giving, in feelings of joy and contentment and, yes, even pride, I think we can capture not just something of what it means to be a child but also what it feels like to be free in our acts of creation and generosity. What it feels like to be free of the learned limits of expectation and performance.

And, perhaps, what it feels like to be humble like a child. The humility of a child is not about carefully cultivated habits or low status. Rather, a child’s humility is about how it feels to revel in messy finger painting, to dig through drawers for that one perfect but forgotten toy, to go from fighting to playing with a classmate in the playground in the blink of an eye.

A child’s humility is a sharing in God’s own freedom. How, in other words, it feels to bear God’s image in the world—rejoicing in acts of creation, valuing the lost and forgotten, and forgiving again and again and again—unrestricted by expectations or performance or anything other than a desire simply to be God’s image.

In being called to be humble like a child, we are being called to shed so much of what we have learned to feel is valued in the world, and what we have found to be sources of constraint and limit. We are called to recover a childlike freedom, and, in doing so, to discover that we might find there our true being as children of God. And to be proud of that. As proud, even, as we were of our own purplish-gray dinosaurs.

Amen.