Posts Tagged ‘encounter’
A Transformational Response – Br. Lain Wilson
I have always heard about the fast-changing weather in the New Hampshire White Mountains, but actually experiencing it was something else entirely. Last summer I spent about a week up in the White Mountains, beginning with three days in the Pemigewasset Wilderness. We got up to the tent site shortly before dark, and had daylight enough to summit the nearby Mount Lincoln. The evening was clear and somewhat cool, and we could see for miles in all directions—but especially north and east, toward our goal for the next day’s hike.
This is some of the most stunning scenery in New England. So naturally everything changed the next day.
Fog settled heavily on the ridgeline, and we weren’t able to see much more than a hundred feet or so in front of us for most of the morning. Peak after peak passed with little more than a gray blanket enshrouding us, oppressive and damp. It was a stunning reversal. Whereas the day before I had measured my view in miles, today it was in feet—checking the granite rocks just in front of me, looking ahead for the next blaze, the next turning. This was the same landscape I had looked down out on yesterday, but it was as though I had been transported to another place entirely.
We all face challenges, seeming reversals of what we thought we knew, radical shifts in the weather of our lives. I had one on my hike, the disciples had theirs in their daily following of Jesus, and I’m sure you’ve had your own version—maybe a crisis at work, or a challenge at home, or a seeming block in prayer. If we’re being honest, we can face these each day as we are invited into fresh encounter: “New every morning is the love our wakening and uprising prove,” John Keble writes. What I think unifies these experiences is that they pose to us three fundamental questions: What am I doing? Why am I doing it? And who am I to be doing it? Read More
Family Photographs – Br. Lain Wilson
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Today’s Gospel lesson isn’t about Jesus.
Rather, it’s not about the Jesus we have come to know, to accompany in his ministry with the disciples. Instead, it’s about another Jesus, one of memory, of presumption, and of misplaced expectation.
In the Rule of our Society, we understand as part of the practice of silence the honoring of “the mystery present in the hearts of our brothers and sisters, strangers and enemies,” a letting go of “curiosity, presumption, and condemnation which pretends to penetrate the mystery of their hearts.”[1]
We can see in our Gospel reading today what this looks like in practice. It is significant, I think, that the only references to Jesus’s “hidden years”—those years of growth and formation between infancy and baptism—in Matthew’s gospel (and Mark’s) is this brief encounter between Jesus and those from his hometown. It’s a relic of a silent period, a family photograph held in the hands of these people, who glance uncomprehendingly between it and the living Jesus standing before them. Read More
What sort of man is this? – Br. Lucas Hall
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Br. Lucas Hall
Matthew 8:23-27
Amos 3:1-8, 4:11-12
“What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?” That question, I believe, strikes at the heart of Matthew’s gospel. Matthew’s intent in all his gospel is to focus on Jesus as the fulfillment of the prophets. He deliberately emphasizes the ways Jesus inverts expectations of the looked-for messianic figure, and seems to quite delight in tying these inversions together. When we compare this with our first reading from the prophet Amos, we see the lines of comparison Matthew draws; he does not view Jesus as simply another prophet. In Amos, God acts, and speaks, and the prophets listen, and prophesy to these acts. Here, Matthew depicts Jesus as the one who speaks and acts. And this message, this action, this intent is not simply to Israel, nor is it simply to humanity; the winds and sea obey, or more literally from the Greek, they hearken, they listen and follow.
It should be no surprise that Matthew views Jesus in this way; the idea that he has command over all Creation puts us in the mind of even the Genesis creation stories, where all is brought into being by the proclamation of God. It should be noted that these creation stories have a highly theological purpose; they closely line up with other similar stories among various contemporary religions, but they affirm the creation comes from a singular God. The various aspects of creation are not treated as individual beings to pay homage to, but equally created, and so equally under the sway, of the one God. And so Matthew depicts Christ in this way. Read More
Meeting Us Where We Are, and Sending Us Out – Br. David Vryhof
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Br. David Vryhof
Has the Risen Christ ever come to you when you were in a place of need? If so, how did he come?
I’m moved by the resurrection accounts in the Fourth Gospel, in which Jesus returns to his broken-hearted disciples as the Risen One, meeting them just where they are.
Early in the morning of the first day of the week, he appears to Mary Magdalene just outside the tomb.[i] She is confused and desperate, weighed down with grief and loss, and can only imagine that someone has, for reasons incomprehensible to her, removed the body from the tomb and laid it somewhere else. Her teary eyes fail to recognize the One who speaks to her. She assumes he is the gardener and pleads with him to tell her where they have laid him. Then Jesus speaks her name. “Mary.” And her world immediately brightens. Instantly, the weight of grief is lifted from her shoulders; hope springs anew; her teacher is alive!
Recall how Jesus appears to Peter, the faithful and devoted disciple who, swept up in a moment of fear, denied knowing his Lord three times.[ii] Now he meets Jesus on the shores of Lake Galilee, where he has been fishing with the others.[iii] Jesus speaks to him so tenderly. “Peter, do you love me?” Never a word of blame is spoken; Jesus does not criticize or shame. Three times the question is asked; three times Peter affirms his love for Jesus; three times the charge is given, “Feed my sheep.”[iv] Jesus offers forgiveness, accepts Peter’s pledge of love, and restores him to a position of leadership among the disciples. So kind, so tender, so sensitive to Peter’s pain, Jesus absolves him. Read More
The Joy of Friendship – Br. James Koester
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Aelred of Rievaulx, Monastic and Theologian, 1167
We remember today, Aelred, the twelfth century abbot of the Cistercian monastery of Rievaulx in northern England, who died on this day in the year 1167. Aelred is most remembered for his writings on the gift of friendship, hence the marvelous collect that we once prayed on this day:
Pour into our hearts, O God, the Holy Spirit’s gift of love,
that we, clasping each the other’s hand, may share the joy
of friendship, human and divine, and with your servant
Aelred draw many into your community of love….
The gift of friendship, both human and divine, which we celebrate today, is perhaps one of the most debased gifts of our time, for we can friend any number of people, many of whom we have never met in person, with the click of a computer key. At the same time, we can un – friend them just as easily. People also speak of friends with benefits, or hook – ups, by which they mean people who enjoy physical intimacy, without the problem of emotional intimacy or commitment. Aelred, I think would be appalled by it all.
For Aelred, friendship was a sacrament of God’s love. It is a way, not the only way, but a way in which you and I can taste here and now the mystery of God’s love for us. God has not friended us with the mere click of a computer key, and nor will God un-friend us with the click of the same key. At the same time, God does not regard us simply as a friend with benefits without the complexity of emotional intimacy or commitment.
What many regard as friendship today, is not what Aelred wrote about, when he described friendship as the medicine of life for friendship, Aelred says, heightens the joy of prosperity and mitigates the sorrows of adversity by dividing and sharing them. Hence the best medicine in life is friendship.
It is only in true friendship that we can know and be known in ways that heal our sorrows and multiply our joys. Such friendship takes hard work and a level of emotional commitment not found solely on a keyboard. While a computer may help to nurture such a friendship over time and long distances, it cannot replace the face – time that true friendship requires to survive and thrive.
In the same way, God longs for face – time with us, not the cursory click of a keyboard, or the fleeting acknowledgement that often passes for prayer, or a friend with benefits relationship that carries with it no degree of emotional honesty, intimacy, or commitment. To paraphrase John, and Aelred, for God so loved us that he gave his Son that we, clasping each the other’s hands, human and divine, might be friends with one another, and our joys heightened, and our sorrows mitigated.
Recognizing the Lord – Br. Geoffrey Tristram
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Br. Geoffrey Tristram
Sirach 48:1-11
Matthew 17:9-13
The prophet Elijah is one of the great figures of the Bible, and straddles both the Old and New Testaments. In our first reading today from the Book of Sirach, we have this great paeon of praise for Elijah: ‘How glorious you are Elijah in your wondrous deeds’. There is also a profound hope that he would come again, to prepare the way of the Lord. This hope grows through the Hebrew scriptures, and culminates in the very last verses of the Old Testament, in the Book of Malachi: ‘Lo I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes.’ And to this day, when Jewish families celebrate Passover, they leave a place at the table for Elijah, and at one point a son goes to the front door to see if Elijah has come.
In our Gospel reading from Matthew, the disciples Peter, James and John are coming down the mountain having just experienced the glorious Transfiguration of Jesus. At the Transfiguration they saw Elijah, as well as Moses, who were talking with Jesus. As the disciples walked down the mountain they questioned Jesus about Elijah. They wanted to know why Elijah had not come earlier, as promised in scripture, preceding the coming of Jesus. Jesus told them that Elijah had already come, but that people did not recognize him. ‘Then the disciples understood that he was speaking to them about John the Baptist.’ John came preaching repentance and prepared the way for the promised Messiah. In this way, he was fulfilling the role of Elijah, but the religious leaders simply did not recognize him. They did not recognize him. The scriptures are full of this theme of failing to recognize the one who is in their midst; of not truly seeing; of spiritual blindness. Of course, Jesus’ enemies did not recognize who he was. Remember all those chapters in John’s Gospel, where the Pharisees keep asking him hostile questions about his identity. ‘Where are you from? Who is your family? How do you know so much – you’ve never been taught. You are not yet fifty; how have you seen Abraham?’ Finally, in chapter 8: 25 in exasperation, ‘Who are you?’ as the prologue to John puts it, ‘He was in the world, yet the world did not know him,’ Read More
Conceived for Glory – Br. James Koester
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Feast of the Transfiguration
One Christmas, rather than giving individual presents to members of my family, my aunt gave my family several posters to hang in our basement room. That fall we had built a very 1960’s “rec room” where my siblings and I could invite our friends and not have to worry about either noise or mess and my parents could then reclaim the living room as their space. So, my aunt decided to help us decorate the space, and hence the posters that Christmas as her gift to all of us.
There were several posters, but the one I remember best was of Michelangelo’s statue of Moses. I remember it, not because even then I was a budding theologian, but because I found it so curious. Created in the early years of the Sixteenth Century, Michelangelo’s Moses was regarded by the artist himself as his most lifelike creation. Once finished he is reputed to have struck the statue on the knee with his hammer and exclaimed Now, speak! To this day you can see a chip in the marble on Moses’ knee where Michelangelo’s hammer is said to have hit.
But that’s not what I found so curious about this image. It wasn’t the chip in the marble. It wasn’t the power and force of the figure. It wasn’t the lifelike quality of the statue. No, none of these drew my attention. What drew my attention, and what I found so curious, and what I did not understand until many years later, and you may know this, but what drew my attention is that Moses had grown horns! Yes, there are two stubby horns emerging out of Moses’ head like horns emerging out of the head of a maturing goat! Read More
Palm Sunday, a melodrama ignored… or not? – Br. Curtis Almquist
Br. Curtis Almquist
What’s in the news? What political calamity is happening? On the cusp of Palm Sunday, what garners the attention of the general public is not Jesus, but rather the reports from various sources about all the political machinations – who is in and who is not – and the endless conflicts between various camps. Meanwhile the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. Truth be told, Palm Sunday hardly gets noticed by most people, including the Roman and Jewish authorities.
I’m talking here about the original Palm Sunday, two thousand years ago. What garners the attention of the general public is not Jesus, but rather the reports from various sources about all the political machinations – who is in and who is not – and the endless conflicts between various camps. Meanwhile the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. Truth be told, Palm Sunday hardly gets noticed by most people, including the Roman and Jewish authorities. Read More
Mary’s Yes, Our Yes – Br. Lain Wilson
The Transfiguration closes the season after the Epiphany, and bookends, in language and details, Jesus’s baptism, which opened it. Jesus ascends—from the water at his baptism, and up a mountain now. A voice recognizes him as “my Son, the Beloved.” But between the two events, Jesus has invited people to follow him; he has called his disciples to be with him and to share in his ministry.
These disciples have had glimpses that Jesus is more than just a man. But here, glimpses give way to full vision. The three disciples see Jesus transfigured, his clothes becoming “dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them.” They are terrified. Peter doesn’t really seem to know what’s going on. They see Jesus, their teacher, their friend, their Messiah—and they see him changed.
But we might ask, “who was changed? Who was transfigured?” Was Jesus changed—or were the disciples? Was it, perhaps, that the eyes of the disciples were opened so that they could see the reality behind the reality?
That reality, ultimately, is that both their visions of Jesus were true. Jesus was both the man in homespun clothing and the shining figure in resplendent white. Jesus is both human and God. Read More
What Are You Looking For? – Br. Curtis Almquist
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Br. Curtis Almquist
We could infer from this Gospel account that John and Jesus had met for the very first time the day before, when John baptized Jesus. John had said, “I myself did not know him.” Not so. They did know one another. They were cousins. They would have known each other since their births, their impossible-to-believe births, which had been predicted by angels. Angels, no less! Jesus, born to an unmarried mother who insisted she had not had a sexual union; John born to a mother who was old enough to be his great grandmother.
If it was important enough for Mary, while she was pregnant, to travel the 90 miles from Nazareth to the Judean hills to see her pregnant Aunt Elizabeth, John’s mother, it is unimaginable that they would not have visited each other after the births of their miraculous sons.[i] Visited many times. No one in the world could understand one another like these two couples could: Mary and Joseph, and Aunt Elizabeth and Uncle Zechariah. These two boys, Jesus and John, had to have known one another, and probably looked to each other, befriended each other, confided in each other, shared the burden of their imposed identities with one another. Both of them loved going into the desert. Maybe they camped together? They were cousins, virtually the same age, the only child of their parents. Neither son had married; neither had pursued a profession that was identified; neither, it seems, had found their voice to fulfill the “angelic predictions” until rather late in life. Both of them, at the time of this Gospel account, were about age 30. They had to have known one another. And known each other very well. Read More