Sermon
Point Together – Br. Luke Ditewig
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Br. Luke Ditewig
Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels
Today we remember angels. Mysteriously other, these outside, beyond, heavenly beings worship before God’s throne, fight evil, and come bearing messages. Ascending and descending, when seen, angels catch our attention. We ask in today’s collect that they “may help and defend us on earth.” We are not alone. Angels help us. They provide and protect. Glimpsing them reminds and reassures us.
When Jacob was afraid, he received a dream. Jacob saw angels ascending and descending on a ladder connecting heaven and earth and heard God speaking to him. God, who had seemed beyond and absent, broke through to be present in voice and with the sight of angels. Read More
How Much More – Br. Lain Wilson
Br. Lain Wilson
Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels, transferred
Preached at St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church, Issaquah, Washington
Genesis 28:10-17
Revelation 12:7-12
John 1:47-51
On behalf of my brother Jamie Nelson and the rest of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist, I am delighted to be here with you this morning. I am particularly honored to be given the hospitality of your pulpit on this day, the feast of Saint Michael and All Angels, your patronal feast day.
When I was very young, maybe four or five years old, a family friend told me about an experience she had had. One of her sons had died as a young man years before. She told me that, while she was grieving her loss one day at home, a young man appeared, offering reassurance that her son was in a good place, was home with God, and that she didn’t need to grieve anymore. Read More
Matthew and Mercy – Br. Luke Ditewig
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Br. Luke Ditewig
Saint Matthew the Apostle
Jesus selected a small group to teach and transform, an unusual assortment including uneducated fishers, among whom Matthew was a striking choice. As a tax collector working for the occupying Roman Empire, Matthew was considered a traitor, an outcast from the Jewish community.
Especially in Jesus’ day, eating together was a sign of acceptance and belonging. Companion literally means sharing bread. The Pharisees asked Jesus’ disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” Jesus answered them directly: “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice’” (Matthew 9:11-13; Hosea 6:6). Doctors serve the sick. They don’t stay away from the one in need. Jesus said: I came for those who need me, so I do not distance myself from them. Read More
Stumbling and Grumbling Towards Love – Br. Jack Crowley
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Br. Jack Crowley
Our readings this morning had a lot of complaining. We heard the saga of the ancient Israelites complaining to Moses and Aaron about their hunger in the wilderness (Exodus 16:2-15). We heard the parable of the workers in the vineyard complaining about their coworkers getting equal pay for less work (Matthew 20:1-16). Food, money, and coworkers – I’m guessing everyone here has complained about these things at some point in their lives, maybe even this morning.
When I was a child, I had a golden retriever named Bailey. We got Bailey the summer I was going into fifth grade, buying her from a firefighter in Keene, New Hampshire. Bailey lived from the time I was in fifth grade all the way through my early twenties.
Now if anyone ever tells you that dogs can’t tell time, that means they’ve never owned a dog before. We fed Bailey her supper promptly at 4:30 p.m. every day. At about 4:15 every day, Bailey would inevitably shuffle into the kitchen and stand there, making eye contact with whoever was in there. By 4:25, Bailey would start exhaling loudly and making little grumbles, barks, and whines. Read More
The Treasure of Christ’s Real Presence – Br. Curtis Almquist
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Br. Curtis Almquist
Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and reburied; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind…” (Matthew 13:44-48).
In the calendar of the Church, we remember today Edward Bouverie Pusey, born near Oxford, England, in 1800, where he was educated and subsequently became Regius Professor of Hebrew and Canon of Christ Church Cathedral. Beginning in 1833, he would become the acknowledged leader of the Oxford Movement, the Anglo-Catholic renewal of the Church of England. Pusey was a writer of tracts; however, he was a most powerful communicator as a preacher: catholic in content and evangelical in zeal for the conversion of souls. Read More
Planting Seeds at the Cross – Br. Lain Wilson
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Br. Lain Wilson
Holy Cross Day
There is a fundamental and inescapable absurdity to what we celebrate today.
Part of this is the simple fact that we celebrate today something that was once a tool of state execution. The cross was a brutal presence in Jesus’ world, and in Jesus’ life. It reveals a world that was broken and unjust. In this respect, the cross of Jesus is an enduring testimony to the brokenness and injustice that persists – and has persisted throughout the centuries – in our world and our hearts.
The world, despoiled and dominated, cries out for healing. The Cross planted into the heart of creation bears witness to all the ways in which this world, because of our actions and inactions, has gone off-kilter. Read More
Learning a Different Pattern – Br. Keith Nelson
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Br. Keith Nelson
Genesis 50:15-21
Matthew 18:21-35
The agrarian poet Wendell Berry wrote:
We depend upon other creatures and survive by their deaths. To live, we must daily break the body and shed the blood of Creation. When we do this knowingly, lovingly, skillfully, reverently, it is a sacrament. When we do it ignorantly, greedily, clumsily, destructively, it is a desecration. In such desecration we condemn ourselves to spiritual and moral loneliness, and others to want.1
We are each radically dependent upon our Creator, who holds each creature in life every moment. And we are horizontally embedded in a web of dependence, one creature upon another, simply by being alive. Berry uses the poignant language of sacrament or desecration to characterize our response to both God and the creatures on whom we depend. How we live in response to the continual gift of creation may either lead us closer to or further from its Giver.
The gospels routinely use the language of indebtedness to name both our vertical dependence upon God and our horizontal dependence upon other people and creatures. Read More
What Shall We Return to the Lord? – Br. Jamie Nelson
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Br. Jamie Nelson
Today is our monthly requiem mass, a time we dedicate to remembering the members of the Society of St. John the Evangelist who died during the month of September.
Later in the service, we will pray for them by name. But beyond their names, I want to offer now a small bouquet of the details of their lives plucked from their obituaries that we read at Compline: five were veterans of the great World Wars;1 four died during this century;2 three were known for their musical talents;3 two were sons of priests;4 and one was a talented tinkerer who could fix almost anything mechanical.5
These 11 men were much like every member of SSJE: distinct individuals in so many ways, yet similar in essentials. They served in almost every place SSJE has had a presence: in Canada, England, India, Scotland, South Africa, and the United States. Together, they tallied 380 years of professed life. I marvel at the vast expanse of that span of years saturated with prayer, worship, and service, and give thanks to God for their lives. Read More
The Mystery of Loving Providence – Br. Jack Crowley
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Br. Jack Crowley
The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary
In April 1892, an illiterate dairy farmer from Ireland named Patrick Crowley boarded a steamship with his wife, Catherine, his father-in-law, Thomas, and their six children. One of their children, John Crowley, is my great-grandfather. He was nine years old when he boarded that ship, probably holding on to his mother’s hand.
One of my favorite moments in my family’s three-thousand-mile journey across the Atlantic to Boston came about halfway through the ten-day trip. My great-great-grandmother, Catherine Crowley, celebrated her forty-fifth birthday. I always try to get inside her head as she turned forty-five in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, with her father, husband, and six children by her side. Catherine had been born in 1847, a year many Irish historians call Black ’47, as it was the worst year of the Great Hunger, also known as the potato famine. I wonder how she felt in the middle of the Atlantic, most likely the farthest away from home she had ever been, dreaming of a better life for her children in these United States. Read More
The Poor Man of Bethlehem, Nazareth, and Calvary – Br. James Koester
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Br. James Koester
One of the problems with God, and if I am honest, there are many problems with God, is that God does not always act or behave like God. This is especially true of Jesus. And that’s a problem. It was a problem for many in his original audiences. It was a problem for the others as well, whether they were followers of Thor, or Baal, or Zeus, or any number of contemporary secular gurus. Indeed, it was and is such a problem, that many did, and continue to reject, not only the idea of God, but the person of God, just as Jesus was rejected, for “many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him” (John 6:66). We see inklings of this today, “Why are you doing what is not lawful on the sabbath?” (Luke 6:2).
Because Jesus does not behave the way we think God must or should, some reject him. Others recreate him, and we get Christian nationalism or the prosperity gospel. We cannot bear to have a god who does not follow the rules. Yet that is the point of Jesus. He forces us to come to terms, not with how we think God should or must act, but how God does act. Read More