Posts Tagged ‘Acceptance’
Gifts of Character – Br. Lain Wilson
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When we hear “south of France” today, we may think of sunny beaches or fields of lavender. A nice place to go on vacation. But in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries the association was with heresy. Followers of a heterodox form of Christianity, whom history has come to know as Cathars, were prevalent throughout the region. Combatting their beliefs posed a particular challenge for a Church mired in its own problems. Actual combat followed the murder of a papal official in 1208: the Albigensian Crusade was a brutal war to cleanse the region of heresy.
This was the time and region where Dominic, whom we remember today, discovered his own vocation. He had been in the church his entire life, but it was during a trip through the region, before the outbreak of war, that he found his own gifts of preaching and teaching, and his personal asceticism meeting the Church’s need to engage, teach, and convert those caught up in heterodox belief. It is perhaps no accident that in his own life he modeled the very characteristics that were most highly prized by so-called Cathars in the region: he didn’t eat meat, he refrained throughout his life from sexual activity, and he voluntarily accepted simple, even rough way of life. Read More
Embodying Jesus – Br. Curtis Almquist
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Br. Curtis Almquist
Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15
Psalm 78:23-29
John 6:24-35
Back when I was seven years old I had this wonderful opportunity to attend a symphony orchestra concert for my very first time. I was with my second-grade classmates from school, and we paraded into a vast orchestra hall and settled ourselves into seats that were way too big for any of us. By luck of the draw, I got to sit next to Mrs. Sievers, our teacher. At some point during the concert she leaned over to me and whispered in my ear, “Do you hear it?” Wide eyed, I whispered, “What?!” And she said, “Do you hear the oboe?” I shook my head. I didn’t know what an oboe was. And then, with her hand gently moving in the air, she began to trace the music line being played by a solo oboe. And I heard it for the first time. “Yes!” I whispered. I remember spying out the oboe section, locating the amazing sound coming from this solo oboist amidst a great company of musicians. I have no memory what music the orchestra was playing that day; however I will never forget my discovery: the mesmerizing, alluring sound of the oboe. What had initially been an orchestral company of sound was now identified and personified in this solo oboist, and that made all the difference.
So it is with manna. In our readings from the Book of Exodus and the Psalms, we hear of this food that came down from heaven during the forty years the Israelites wandered in the desert. Manna was described as a flaky bread, as fine as hoarfrost. We read it was like coriander seed, and the taste was like wafers made with honey or cakes baked with oil.[i] The popular etymology for the name “manna” comes from the Hebrew, “What is it?” Manna: “What is it?”: the question the Israelites are reported to have asked one another when they first found manna blanketing the ground.[ii] Read More
The Capacious Heart of Bishop Hilary – Br. Curtis Almquist
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Br. Curtis Almquist
Hilary of Poitiers
In the calendar of the church we remember today a fourth-century bishop named Hilary of Poitiers, what is now central France. Hilary was pilloried. Bishop Hilary was rejected and betrayed by a good many people, including those closest to him. Bishop Hilary was convinced that the love of Jesus and that Hilary’s own love for Jesus needed to be capacious to encompass all those whom Jesus loves, including those who so meanly rejected Hilary.
The Greek word “epiphany” means manifestation, which is a clear revelation. The church’s observance of the season of Epiphany is inspired by the wise men from the east who visited the Christ Child.[i] They were foreigners, most likely not Jewish, and yet they were received, honored, and remembered. From the very start, Jesus consistently bequeathed dignity and showed the warmest welcome to the widest cast of people, not just to kindred spirits, not just to those with gold, frankincense, and myrrh, but also to those among the least, and the last, and the lost. Lepers come in many forms, and Jesus was at home with everyone. Read More
Humility, Allowing Our Hearts to Soar – Br. Curtis Almquist
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Br. Curtis Almquist
A little more than twenty years ago Philip Simmons died from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis: ALS – or Lou Gehrig’s disease. He was a young professor of English at a Chicago college, married, the father of two children. At the same time Philip Simmons was dying from the cruel ravages of ALS, he was more alive than he had ever been. [i]
He writes about learning to fall. He speaks of falling, quite literally, because of the ALS; he also writes about falling as a figure of speech. We fall on our faces, we fall for a joke, we fall for someone, we fall in love. He asks, in each of these falls, what do we fall away from? We fall from ego, we fall from our carefully-constructed identities, we fall from our reputations, from our precious selves. We fall from ambition, we fall from grasping to control… And what do we fall into? We fall into passion and compassion, into terror, into unreasoning joy. We fall into emptiness; we fall into oneness with others whom we realize are likewise falling. Ultimately it’s a falling into grace, falling into the real presence of God.[ii] The name for this falling, the gateway into this mysterious presence of God, is humility.
In our Gospel lesson appointed for today, we hear Jesus speak of humility: “All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.” The English word “humility” comes from the Latin humilis: “lowly,” or “near the ground.” Humility is the opposite of feeling oneself to be high and lofty, above and beyond all the people whom we find inadequate. The English words “humility” and “humus” are cousins, “humus” being the organic component of soil. Humus is what makes soil rich. The autumnal leaves falling from the trees compost into humus, which is essential to life. Read More
Speaking the Language of God – Br. James Koester
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I must confess that I have always been envious of those who are able to acquire another language. I have always struggled to learn a second language.
As a child my parents enrolled me in private French lessons, but when French became available at school, it was like starting over again. Each year was the same. I struggled all year to learn a few basics, scrape by with a pass at the end of the school year, and then forget everything over the summer. I would start again from square one, once again, each Fall. I finally dropped both French and Latin in high school. In the first year of seminary, I enrolled in New Testament Greek. Early in the term the professor arranged for us all to take a language aptitude test. My years of struggling to learn another language all came together with that test. Finally everything made sense.
If you have taken the language aptitude test, you will know that it is based on learning a few simple elements of Kurdish. The idea is to see how quickly you can learn it and then answer some questions. A week or so after the test, I sat in the professor’s office to hear my results. He began by telling me he didn’t understand why I was having such difficulty learning Greek, as I had a perfect aptitude for foreign languages. Suddenly he stopped in his tracks. Mumbled oh and said to me, James I see why you are having such difficulties. I was reading the score backwards. You have absolutely no aptitude to learn a second language
I don’t know exactly how that language aptitude test works, but after years of trying to learn French, Latin and then Greek, I didn’t need a test to tell me what I already knew. There is something about my brain that simply can’t absorb languages. I joke that even after thirty years in this country, I still don’t understand and can’t speak American. It has been explained to me countless times, what freshman, sophomore, junior and senior mean, but it needs to be explained to me again each time someone uses those phrases. And please don’t tell me you are a rising sophomore because that will just confuse me even more. Read More
No Stumbling Blocks! – Br. David Vryhof
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Mark 9:38-50
(for contextual notes about this passage in the arc of Mark’s Gospel, see the end of this sermon)
Picture this: Jesus and his disciples are traveling on a hot and dusty road from Galilee – the territory in the north where he was raised and where he has been teaching and healing – to Jerusalem, the holy city in the south that is the center of Jewish faith and practice. He has deliberately set out to go there, “setting his face towards Jerusalem,” knowing full well its dangers, and the opposition he is certain to face there.
Along the way, he has revealed to his disciples that he must suffer and be put to death by his enemies, but that God will raise him to life again. These words confuse and frighten them and they repeatedly demonstrate their failure to understand not only the meaning of this prediction, but also who he is and what he has been teaching them. They seem not to have grasped at all the concept of the “kingdom” of which he has been speaking – an “upside-down kingdom” in which the first are last and the last are first, in which to lose one’s life is to gain it, and in which the greatest is the servant of all.
Just now they have been arguing amongst themselves over who will be the greatest in the kingdom which they are sure he will establish once he arrives in Jerusalem and defeats his foes. Jesus corrects them and tells them plainly that in God’s kingdom “whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Then, we are told, “he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, ‘Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me’” (Mk 9:35-37). For Jesus, children are a sacrament of God’s presence and of his presence and are therefore to be protected and loved. Read More
It's Not "Us" and "Them" – It's Just "Us" – Br. David Vryhof
Luke 18:9-14
He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: 10‘Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax-collector. 11The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax-collector. 12I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.” 13But the tax-collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” 14I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.’
I’ve sometimes wondered what it would have been like to have seen Jesus in person, but I’m not sure I would have always enjoyed being part of his audience. Read More