The Human Condition
Light in the Darkness – Br. James Koester
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Br. James Koester
We used a pretty strong word this morning. In fact, we said it three times within a single prayer, and then, it appeared in our reading from Isaiah. We said, “We repent of the evil that enslaves us, the evil we have done, and the evil done on our behalf.”[1] Shortly after, we heard Isaiah say, “If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil . . .” (Isaiah 58:9b).
Few of us, I hope, would describe ourselves as evil, but we have just said that evil enslaves us, and that we do evil things. More boldly, we have admitted that others do evil on our behalf. So, while you and I may not be personally evil, evil surrounds us. We cannot escape it. The news, and our lives, are full of evil. Read More
Mulling Matter Over – Br. James Koester
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Br. James Koester
Cyril and Methodius
This morning, we conclude the sermon series “A Lifetime of Developing Response.” Over the last few weeks, we have heard from each of the senior Brothers, as we have reflected on our years as members of the community. Today it is my turn. Now, don’t read too much into that. I am not sure that my having the last word is meant to signify anything of great importance! But you never know.
I must admit, I find it difficult to comprehend that I am one of the senior members of the community. Yet the reality is that when I came to the community, those who were then the senior members, were not that much older than I am now, and the things we say in the Rule about the gifts and challenges of old age were written with them in mind! So, like the others who have preached on these Saturdays, I find myself in the odd situation of discovering myself where I least expected to be. Read More
Jesus Who Comes – Br. Lain Wilson
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Br. Lain Wilson
The Presentation of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Temple
Today we commemorate a feast of many names: the Presentation of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Temple, the Purification of the Saint Mary the Virgin, Candlemas, and the Hypapante, or “meeting.” But set amid other scenes of angels and miraculous pregnancies and wise men and voices from heaven, the events celebrated today can easily get lost.
These events are, on one level, commonplace. Joseph, Mary, and Jesus would’ve been just one family of many who made the same journey to fulfill the same religious obligations, even that same day. They could’ve been just one among many who could only afford a pair of turtledoves for sacrifice. This story could be the story of any number of young boys in first-century Israel-Palestine.
But of course, this isn’t the story of any number of young boys, but of one particular boy. Read More
To Be Made Truly Human – Br. Keith Nelson
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Br. Keith Nelson
The Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ: Christmas Eve
Merry Christmas!
It is likely that you are here in this chapel tonight because you seek an encounter with Jesus, whose humble birth we celebrate with awe and joy. Perhaps you are also here because you hunger for meaningful tradition in the midst of life’s changes and chances. You may be here because your mother or spouse or best friend loves coming here, and you came because you love them; or because you love gazing at the flickering candles and singing familiar, beloved carols, and why not? It’s Christmas!
Whatever the reason, you are most welcome. To be led through our doors by any one of these reasons has drawn you nearer to the ground of your humanity, in which God delights. And to be drawn there is to be drawn nearer to the heart of God: God who on this night, in Jesus, became truly human for our sake, to “center our senses in himself,” in the words of one ancient Christian writer. Read More
When in Doubt, Be Humble – Br. Jack Crowley
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Br. Jack Crowley
Tonight we heard Jesus say to the chief priests and elders “Truly, I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.” Ouch. How do you come back from that? Those are humbling words.
One rule I follow in praying with scripture is, no matter what the context, I try to imagine Jesus speaking his words to me personally. I try to imagine Jesus’ tone and words matching what someone close to me would say to me today. So for tonight’s passage, I imagine Jesus looking me in the eye and saying “Jack, seriously, tax collectors and prostitutes are getting into heaven before you.”
I’m always left humbled by Jesus’ words. Humbled, not humiliated, but humbled. Humbled to know my place in line.
The good news is there’s never a bad time to be humbled. Humility is always a good response when you have no response. Humility works when nothing else does. Read More
Between Offense and Misunderstanding – Br. Keith Nelson
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Br. Keith Nelson
Advent 3A
Isaiah 35:1-10
Matthew 11:2-11
In my senior year in college, I took a linguistic anthropology course. One lecture seemed to summarize much of my life’s experience. The topic was direct and indirect communication, and the cultural dimensions that shape our often unconscious use of one or the other in public situations.
I had spent the first nine years of my life in southern New Jersey, then age nine to eighteen in central Alabama. In very general terms, U.S. culture as a whole favors direct communication, along with countries like Germany and Australia and all of Scandinavia. But the northeastern and Atlantic states, as well as the Western U.S., especially typify direct speech. People say what they mean; clarity and efficiency are priorities; the manner of speaking is more informal. Indirect communication characterizes places like Japan, China, the Middle East, Latin America, and the south of England: places where people often infer or imply what they really mean using understatement; where avoidance of social conflict is a high priority; and where speech tends to be more formal.
Lots of exceptions apply: the individual, the context, the class, race, and gender of those speaking. But generally: New Jersey and Alabama fit those contrasting patterns. Read More
Labor and Prayer – Br. Jack Crowley
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Br. Jack Crowley
The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. I’ve probably heard this sentence a few thousand times in my life. The truth is I’ve never known if it is good news or bad news. It always feels like both.
One of the best and worst parts of being a human being is labor. We labor with our hands and minds, we labor with God, we labor with one another, and we do the emotional labor of our lives as best we can. The best part of all that is we all have opportunities to do good work in our lives. The worst part is that something always gets in the way. Our labor is always limited by some obstacle, and is never as ideal as we first thought it would be. The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.
The good news is that Jesus knows our human nature. Jesus knows we have this drive within us for labor. Jesus knows when we look at the woes of the world, we are often filled with compassion and want to do something. We want to labor for a better world. Read More
The Illusion of Certainty – Br. Jamie Nelson
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Br. Jamie Nelson
Spoiler alert: there’s no prediction about the date or hour of Jesus’ return in this sermon. If you looked up the gospel reading and came to the service today specifically to hear calculations based on this passage, I’m sorry to disappoint you.
However, given a well-publicized practice in some traditions of contemporary Evangelical Christianity to apply a predictive lens to this passage and others like it, to draw connections between particular Bible verses and current events as signs that can be decoded to predict that Jesus’s second coming is drawing near,[1] when we hear Jesus talking about fire and sulfur raining down from heaven and repeating phrases like “one will be taken and the other left” (Luke 17:34b, 35b), listening to today’s gospel likely brings to mind whatever images or associations you carry with you about the End Times.
But instead of wandering down that path, I want to get curious with you about a different part of this text, specifically, verse 33, which reads: “Those who try to make their life secure will lose it, but those who lose their life will keep it.”
What I hear Jesus offering in these words is acknowledgement that life is rife with uncertainty and change, that all our efforts to control the things outside our control are ultimately futile. Read More
The Chained Leopard – Br. Keith Nelson
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A few years ago, on the way to a conference, I spent several free hours alone at the Art Institute of Chicago, a place I had always wanted to visit. Free to absorb the experience at my own pace, I spent nearly an hour engrossed in a series of six panel paintings by the Renaissance artist Giovanni da Paolo. They had been part of an original series of twelve for a folding altarpiece depicting the life of St. John the Baptist.[1]
Da Paolo’s vision unfolds with the narrative flare of a graphic novelist or a cinematographer. The human figures are set within strange landscapes and fantastical buildings. There are inexplicable details scattered throughout that make the entire series feel like fragments in a dream sequence. One such detail became, for me, the interpretive key to the entire work.
In the scene of John speaking to his disciples through his prison window, there in the courtyard outside sits a tired, old leopard chained to a wall, gazing forlornly over his shoulder through an archway at a distant figure in blue walking toward us through the fields.
God’s Urgent Call – Br. James Koester
Br. James Koester
Preached at St. Paul’s, Newburyport
Luke 9:51–62
Galatians 5:1, 13–25
I don’t know, and I don’t need to know, how the algorithms on YouTube work, so I have no idea what I watched in the first place to cause an old Carol Burnett clip to pop up on my computer the other day. Those of us of a certain age will remember The Carol Burnett Show, and perhaps you saw this one. It was her riff on Gone With the Wind when she appears wearing a gown made from the curtains, complete with the curtain rod extending from her shoulders. I still laugh when I see it. Oddly, I actually saw the Carol Burnett take off, or perhaps I should say take down of Gone With the Wind, before I saw the movie with Vivian Leigh. It was when I saw the movie, that I realized how terribly funny Carol Burnett’s version was!
If you know the movie, you’ll know that the subplot is Scarlett O’Hara’s repeated schemes to ensure that Rhet Butler falls in love with her, mostly because of his wealth. Her persistence is remarkable, as attempt after attempt fails. The movie ends with the famous line, I’ll think about that tomorrow. Tomorrow is another day.
This notion of thinking about that tomorrow, has rooted itself in our culture, although in many ways we have misremembered Scarlett’s persistence (and her motives), and it has become an excuse for not thinking about something today, or even ever. We have become a Scarlett O’Hara people, avoiding thinking about something today, especially if it is unpleasant or difficult, and putting it off until tomorrow, if that.