Posts Tagged ‘Joy’
Eureka! – Br. Lucas Hall
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Br. Lucas Hall
Saint Andrew the Apostle
Today we observe the feast day of St. Andrew, the first-called disciple, brother to St. Peter. Well, technically his feast was Sunday, but the first Sunday of Advent bumped him. Honestly, I don’t think he’d mind; if your brother is St. Peter, you probably have a pretty thick skin about not getting top billing.
You may have noticed the signs at the entrances to the chapel, in the wooden frames with the candles, one at the front entrance and one at the guesthouse. We put those signs out on the larger feast days of the year, just to give people coming into the chapel a little context about why our liturgy may look and sound a bit different than normal. Each sign has the collect of the day, as well as a piece of art from somewhere in the Christian tradition, depicting the relevant figure or scene. So, naturally, today’s sign had to have St. Andrew. Read More
God’s Purpose for Us is Joy – Br. Keith Nelson
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The only shepherd I have ever met outside the pages of Scripture is a Navajo elder with a heart on fire for Jesus. I’ll call him Edward.
At the end of six weeks of crosscultural ministry with Navajo Episcopalians last summer, my supervisor invited me to spend several days helping Edward tend the sheep on her family sheep-camp. I spent time in a hogan, a traditional, eight-sided, dirt-floor dwelling reserved for ceremonies. In the sweltering heat of midday and early afternoon, I sat in silence, listened to the creatures around me, prayed, and wrote about what I had learned. The rest of the time, I followed Edward around. I siphoned water for the sheep from a huge tank into long metal troughs twice a day. I accompanied Edward in his ancient Chevy pickup along a circuit of bumpy dirt trails, watching the sheep with binoculars and listening to Dolly Parton on cassette tape. At the hottest times of the day Edward would materialize in my doorway with an orange popsicle, or an ice-cold bottle of water.
And when it grew dark, Edward brought light.
I remember most vividly my first night there. I had prayed Evening Prayer at the top of a ridge overlooking a dry creekbed, and I lingered as the stars came out, followed by swooping owls and bats.
As I made my way back to the camp, I was astonished to see the ramshackle outbuildings and sheep corrals had been utterly transformed: thousands of solar-powered Christmas lights and garden lanterns, invisible by day, now laced the deepening darkness. They were the only lights for miles, as if the stars above each had a twin here below, blinking and dancing amid the chicken-wire fencing, the rusty rain barrels, and the sleeping sheep. Read More
Rejoice – Br. Luke Ditewig
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Br. Luke Ditewig
Zephaniah 3:14-20
Philippians 4:4-7
Luke 3:7-18
In Advent we wait, preparing to celebrate how God came as human in Jesus Christ. We also await God’s final triumph, accomplished and not-yet. Advent is more than these weeks before Christmas. Karl Barth wrote: “What other time or season will the Church ever have but that of Advent?”[i] Leaning toward the Word Made Flesh and the restoration of all is our life.
The prophet Zephaniah spoke to the people of Judah during the reign of King Josiah. Most of the book warns of coming judgement and destruction to Israel for turning away from God and for Israel’s enemies. Like other prophets, it’s a call and warning is to change behavior, to return to right living. There’s a dramatic change at the end including today’s text. The last word is not warning but instead joy and restoration. God “will rejoice over you with gladness” and “renew you in [God’s] love.” God says: “I will remove disaster from you,” “gather the outcast,” “change shame into praise,” “bring you home,” and “restore your fortunes.”
From prison, Paul encourages the church in Philippi again and again to rejoice. Rejoice in all circumstances, in suffering, even in chains. Celebrate. God is near. Act rightly by being gentle. Don’t be anxious. Pray your whole life—gratitude, grief, and desire—because God loves fully. We belong to God. God holds us as we are, including loss, grief, and in captivity. God’s peace, the wholeness here and not-yet, the restoration of everything that is beyond our understanding, will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Read More
Turn Back – Br. Jamie Nelson
Br. Jamie Nelson, SSJE
Have you ever gotten lost in the woods?
Back in my college days, one of my classes went on a weeklong field trip to a national forest in central Idaho. Late one afternoon, the group of us were deep out on Forest Service land when we realized our classmate Tyler was missing. We waited a few minutes, but Tyler didn’t reappear.
Eventually we decided to search for him. We organized ourselves into a line, two arm’s length between each person, and divided our group in two to search a grid pattern down either side of the gravel road, backtracking the way we’d traveled. We called out Tyler’s name over and over as we carefully picked our way through and under and over and around the rough wooded terrain.
The search seemed to last forever, long enough that a twinge of despair had begun to creep into our hoarse voices as we called for him.
Then we heard a shout. The news spread from person to person: Tyler had been found and was ok.
We regrouped and Tyler told us what had happened. Without telling anyone, he had slipped away for a moment to take a bathroom break, certain that we’d still be in sight & he’d easily catch up with us when he returned. But he was mistaken.
When Tyler returned, we were no longer in sight. And somehow in that moment, he got his bearings turned around. He started going in the wrong direction. And thinking we must be just out of sight around a corner, he just kept going & going.
Eventually, he realized that he’d gone the wrong way and that he needed to turn back. Read More
Of This We Can Be Certain – Br. Curtis Almquist
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Br. Curtis Almquist
Our first reading is from Saint Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, Galatia being in modern-day Turkey. This is where Paul was born as a Roman citizen, one generation after Jesus’ birth.[i] In Paul’s letters he describes himself as neither eloquent nor handsome,[ii] and he was not married.[iii] He earned his livelihood as a tentmaker,[iv] and he was literate in Hebrew, the language of his Jewish heritage; in Latin, the language of commerce and diplomacy; and in Greek, the language of culture and higher education. All of his life he personally suffered from something significant – we know not what – which he called “a thorn in his flesh” which never healed.[v] We know that he identified as a devout Pharisee, Pharisees being the largest and most influential religious-political party in Jesus’ own day, and they strongly opposed him. The name “Pharisee” means “separated one.” The Pharisees separated themselves from society to study and teach the law.[vi] Paul was an accomplice in the murder of a man named Stephen, a prominent follower of Jesus.[vii]
We read of a mysterious, life-changing encounter Paul had with Jesus along the road to Damascus. This surreal encounter was after Jesus’ crucifixion, and resurrection, and ascension. Paul unmistakably recognized Jesus as the Messiah, the Christ. We could call this the moment Paul’s conversion to Christ; however this was actually only the very beginning of his conversion.[viii] We know this for two reasons.
For one, in the years following, Paul makes a confession. He writes very transparently, “For I know that nothing good dwells within me… I can will what is right, but I cannot do it…”[ix] And yet Paul is full of hope and praise, what he even calls “boasting,” that he continues to be saved by Jesus, Jesus’ strength, he says, coming through his own ongoing weakness.[x] His name for this ongoing miracle in his life is “grace,” a word that Paul uses 80 different times in his epistles in the New Testament. Paul’s conversion was life-long.
We also know that following his mystical Damascus Road experience with Jesus, Paul virtually disappears. Paul immediately went off to the desert of Arabia for a period of time, and then to Syria for three years, and then for fourteen years he lives a life virtually unrecognized and unknown to members of the growing churches. So it was likely almost twenty rather hidden years before Paul returns to Jerusalem to begin his public ministry as a follower of Jesus Christ. Twenty years of his ongoing conversion… which never ended.
Saint Paul’s Christian formation was really in a crucible of suffering. He writes that he lived through afflictions, hardships, and calamities; experienced beatings, imprisonments, riots, and sleepless nights; of often being without food, and of being cold and naked; of suffering from bandits, from danger at sea and shipwrecks, and from betrayals by those whom he trusted.…[xi] At the end of his life, imprisoned and facing capital punishment because of his allegiance to Jesus, his last word is almost unbelievable. He writes, “rejoice!” In case you might misread his handwriting, he writes, “Again, I say, rejoice!”[xii] The words “joy,” and “rejoice” are words Paul uses relentlessly in his writings, and always in the context of suffering, which is such a paradox.[xiii]
Paul was a very complicated person, by his own admission. I have often wondered whether Paul would write today what he wrote 2,000 years ago? I imagine that he would have some other things to say, especially if he knew thirteen of his epistles – maybe he thought they were simply letters – would become part of the Canon of Holy Scripture, eventually carrying a similar weight to the Hebrew scriptures which had so decisively formed his own thinking, praying, and practice.[xiv] But we have no way of knowing how Saint Paul would write today.
What I believe we can cling to with absolute confidence is Saint Paul’s conviction that nothing, absolutely nothing can separate us from God’s love. “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” he asks. It may seem like a rhetorical question. It’s actually Saint Paul’s memoir:
“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, ‘For [Christ’s] sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.’
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” [xv]
So be it!
[i] Acts 22:22-23:11.
[ii] 1 Corinthians 1:17; 2 Corinthians 5:12; 10:10; 11:6.
[iii] 1 Corinthians 7:1-7.
[iv] Acts 18:1-4.
[v] 2 Corinthians 12:7.
[vi] Galatians 1:13–14; Philippians 3:4-6.
[vii] Acts 7:51-60, where “a crowd dragged [Stephen] out of the city and began to stone him; and the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul.”
[viii] The story of Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus is told in Acts 9:1-19, and retold by Paul in Acts 22:6-21 and Acts 26:12-18.
[ix] Romans 7:18-20.
[x] 2 Corinthians 12:9.
[xi] 2 Corinthians 6:1-10; 11:23-30.
[xii] Philippians 4:4-7.
[xiii] The words “joy” and “rejoice” appear 49 times in Paul’s epistles.
[xiv] Most scholars believe that Paul personally wrote seven of the thirteen “Pauline epistles” (Galatians, Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Philemon, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians). Scholars debate whether the other six epistles were authored by Paul, or whether he was honorifically attributed as being the author by disciples who knew his mind and heart.,
[xv] Romans 8:35-39.
And We Are Glad Indeed – Br. James Koester
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Initial Profession of Lain Wilson SSJE
Ruth 1: 16 – 18
Psalm 126
1 Peter 1: 3 – 9
John 20: 11- 18
I think it’s safe to say Lain, you are the only person I have ever heard describe themselves as a palimpsest. Now I must confess I have only ever used this word two or three times in my entire life, and the first time I did, was while reading aloud in the refectory. After the meal someone very kindly, but definitively, corrected my pronunciation. It’s not a word used very often in casual conversation. I’ve never heard it spoken at the dinner table, so when you spoke of yourself as a palimpsest at the end of our community retreat, my ears perked up, and I took note of what you were saying.
Now lest any of you are getting yourself into a flutter, worried that Lain has a bad case of pimples, or that he has an unspeakable medical condition, I’ll enlighten you. A palimpsest is a technical, scholarly term describing a piece of parchment or tablet that has been used on more than one occasion, the surface having been scraped bare between each use, in the same way we would use an eraser. The thing is, just as we can sometimes see what has been erased from a page, scholars are often able to determine what lies under the surface writing, and discover a whole new document, hidden in plain sight below the surface text.
From the academic and scholarly, we can shift to the human. What I heard Lain, was the expression of your own awareness of the multiplicity and diversity of the various layers and aspects of your person which makes you, you. You are Lain, because of all the different layers and aspects that make up your personality. Many of those aspects are complimentary. Some no doubt are contradictory. Several are obvious to the observer. Some only you will know. Others will be hidden, hidden to you, but observable to us; some hidden to us, but known by you, and some hidden to you, and to us alike.
Whether hidden or known, from you or to you, from us or to us, all these layers are part of the wonderful mix that makes you the person who stands before us today, offering your life to God through the vows of poverty, celibacy, and obedience as a professed member of this community. As the psalmist says, I will thank you because I am marvelously made; your works are wonderful, and I know it well.[1] While this is true for all of us, it has particular relevance today for you Lain, because in making your profession of vows, you are acknowledging the wonderful gift that God has given you in your life, that is full of a multiplicity of layers and a diversity of aspects like, well, like a palimpsest.
I hope it doesn’t come as a surprise to you, it certainly won’t to those who love and know you what some of those layers are. For those who don’t know, before Lain came to the community he was a Byzantinist, whose specialty was lead seals of Byzantine military officials from the Seventh through the Twelfth Centuries. There is one layer: scholar. Some will know that Lain was an avid rower, relaxes by running marathons, cycling long distances, and is in the process of walking the Appalachian Trail. There is another layer: athlete. Those who have listened to Lain over the last few years, will know that he is a gifted preacher, so we add another layer to our palimpsest: communicator. To these I can add loyal friend, devoted son, brother and caring companion.
Now Lain’s head is going to be swollen enough by the end of the day, after all this attention, so I’ll stop here. But you get the point. Lain, in fact all of us, are wonderfully and marvelously made mysteries of which we only know a part, until the day we fully know ourselves as we are fully known.[2] All of us are made up of a diversity of layers and aspects. All of us are parchments, which over time new texts are added, as old ones scraped away.
This scraping, those sometimes painful, is necessary, making space, making room, making the possibility of something new to be written on the parchment of our lives. We see that today as the One who says ‘See, I am making all things new,’ [3] is at work adding new layers to the already rich variety of layers and diversity of aspects that make up Lain.
So, what is the text that God is writing on your life today?
You have already told us.
The story of God being written on your life with this profession is a story of joy. It is a story of hope. It is a story of trust. It is a story of abiding. With fresh ink, overlaying what is already there, God is writing something new.
The parchment of your life Lain is a text filled with joy. Yes, it is a joy for us as a community who rejoice when a new brother is ready to make the vows of poverty celibacy and obedience.[4] More importantly, it is a story of joy for God who has shouldered like a sheaf of grain and carried home into God’s Sacred heart, to abide there in thankfulness and joy. There in God’s holy heart, your mouth is filled with laughter and … tongue with shouts of joy.[5] Psalm 126 is bursting with joy and gladness as God’s people are restored, not simply to their homes, but to their land of promise, fulfillment, and hope. You have found in this community Lain, your land of promise in the heart of God and you are glad indeed.[6] So Lain on the parchment of your life, allow God with new and fresh ink to write joy over all that has been before.
As the parchment of your life Lain is a story of joy, it is also a story of hope. The word hope has become much debased in our culture of wishful thinking. We hope for all manner of things: a sunny day; to win the lottery; to recover from an illness. Hope has become kind thoughts and wishful thinking, much like the thoughts and prayers of so many politicians. But there is nothing kind or wishful about Christian hope. For the followers of Jesus, faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.[7] By your profession of the vows of poverty, celibacy and obedience Lain, you are staking your life on things that you cannot see but know with certainty to be true. With Peter, by this act of self-offering, you are boldly proclaiming, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given [me] a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for [me], who [is] being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.[8] What you are doing today Lain is not wishful thinking for a happy future, but a bold proclamation about something you cannot see, or perhaps even express in words, but know to be true. Today you are staking your life in the hope that through your faith in Jesus, you are even now receiving the salvation of your soul.[9] For some Lain, that is wishful thinking. For you, it is the gift of hope being written upon the parchment of your life.
As you make these vows today, and allow God to write a new story upon the parchment of your life, you do so for only three years in order to give time for the community and [you] to make certain that God is calling [you] to the life of our Society. You do so with the aim towards a life commitment.[10] This aim towards a life commitment is a sign of your desire to abide, not simply in this place, among these men, but in the place God has called, and we believe, is calling you to abide.
By abiding, and not simply living in this place, and among these men, you follow the example of Ruth, who, not simply out of devotion and loyalty to her mother-in-law Naomi, declared these famous words: ‘Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.
Where you die, I will die—there will I be buried. May the Lord do thus and so to me, and more as well, if even death parts me from you!’[11] Like Ruth, Lain, in your promise to abide you are declaring you hope and trust, not in this community, but in God who has called you here. Ruth’s declaration of hope and trust resounds through the ages, and echoes off these walls as you say, before the whole company of heaven…I…give myself to Almighty God. What a declaration of trust, what a sign of hope, what a conviction in things unseen. On the parchment of your life, God is adding a new text, full not only of joy and hope, but of confident trust that in this place of abiding you will hear the Risen Lord speaking your name. And that of course is what this all points toward.
To abide in a life where God is adding new layers of joy and hope and trust, to the multiplicity and diversity of layers that already exist on the parchment of your life, is a thing full of wonder and awe. It is in that place Lain, the place of wonder and awe, that you will see the Lord Jesus in all his risen glory. That is what God is promising you today, a vision of Christ’s risen glory so that as you abide in this place, filled with the gifts of joy, hope and trust, you will be able to say, I have seen the Lord![12]
Making a commitment, any commitment, but especially this commitment, is a thing full of wonder, especially now. That you are doing so, fills us with awe. That you are desiring to abide here, in the heart of God, brimming with joy, filled with hope, and trusting in the goodness and mercy of the Risen Lord, is truly a sign that God is doing great things for us, and we are glad indeed.[13]
1] Psalm 139: 13
[2] See 1 Corinthians 13: 12
[3] Revelation 21: 4
[4] Op cit., Initial Profession, chapter 38, page 76
[5] Psalm 126: 2
[6] Ibid., v4b
[7] Hebrews 11:1
[8] 1 Peter 1: 3 – 5
[9] I Peter 1: 9
[10] SSJE, Rule, Initial Profession, page 76
[11] Ruth 1: 16 – 17
[12] John 20: 18
[13] Psalm 126: 4b
Good News Amidst Bad News – Br. Curtis Almquist
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Br. Curtis Almquist
Our reading from the Prophecy of Isaiah is an 8th century BC version of what we are seeing every day in our own newspapers and online: a world, including our own homeland, teeming with conflict. For Isaiah, the players were King Pekah and King Remaliah of Israel; King Rezim of Aram-Syria; and Kings Tabeel, then Uziah, then Ahaz, and then Jotham the successive Kings of Judah.[i] For the life of me, I cannot keep it all straight – neither the political players whom we are reading about from the 8th century BC, nor our own present-day news stream: the historic territorial disputes, the ever-changing political alignments, often created by common enemies; the fracturing of treaties and goodwill; the political threats and promises; and the suffering of the innocent. Whether in the 8th century BC or in the 21stcentury of the Common Era, there are so many parallels in strife that span across time.
There is a word of hope buried in this Prophecy of Isaiah, hope for the 8th century BC which also pertains to us in our own day. Isaiah speaks an assurance in the voice of God: “Take heed, be quiet, do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint…” “Take heed, be quiet, do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint…” Read More
Overlightened by Good News – Br. Jack Crowley
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Br. Jack Crowley
Don’t worry, each of these sermons is only five minutes long. You won’t be here all day. There will be plenty of time for the garden party.
One of my favorite parts of today’s Gospel passage is how it is overshadowed by good news. Overshadowed is probably not the right word, so I’ll make one up, maybe overlightened would be better.
The good news of Jesus’ resurrection overlightens the bad news of how this Gospel passage starts. That morning started really dimly. The only thing the Beloved Disciple knew that morning was that Jesus was dead and his body was missing.
So he ran. The Beloved Disciple ran, but he did not run away. He did the opposite. He ran to the tomb.
I always try to imagine how the Beloved Disciple’s felt during that run to the tomb. At some point in life, we all get acquainted with that feeling of anxiety and excitement swirling together. That feeling that makes your leg wobble, but you keep moving because sometimes that’s the only thing you can do.
The race to the tomb was an act of desperation, an act of faith, and an act of life. We all have our own race to the tomb. More importantly, we all have our own race to the resurrection. Our own jagged journey to the realization that life continues after death. This is not it. This thing of ours keeps going after we die.
Can you imagine the joy the Beloved Disciple must have felt when he realized what had happened? The good news that Jesus had in fact risen. The Beloved Disciple realized not only what had happened, but what Jesus’ resurrection implied. We too will rise again.
Until we get there, we too have lives to live. Lives mixed with action and contemplation. Lives full of running and realization. The good news is that we know the good news. We have time. We have time and more than a lifetime to figure it all out. What we cannot get done now, we will get done on the other side of this life.
Of course this does not mean we get to be lazy. The Christian life is a demanding life. It’s a life that demands meaning, and for us to make that meaning with God, ourselves, and one another. We must do this every day of our lives and beyond.
The Making and Meaning of Life – Br. Curtis Almquist
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Br. Curtis Almquist
In Psalm 4, which we just sang, there is a wonderful phrase: “You have put gladness in my heart, more than when grain and wine and oil increase.” “Gladness,” in the Hebrew, is often translated as “joy.” Our word “gladness” comes from the Old English meaning “bright, shining, gleaming, joyous.” God has put gladness, joyfulness, into our heart, which is a wonderful elixir when life feels desolating. Gladness, joyfulness, is a gift from God. Which begs the question: How do we cultivate and appropriate the gift of gladness that God has already put into our heart?
For one, you don’t have to wait until everything is peachy. You don’t have to wait until all the bad stuff, all the bad people, all the suffering is over… and then you can get in touch with gladness, with joyfulness. No need to wait. Gladness and joyfulness are “alongsiders.” In the scriptures, so often we read of suffering and joy coexisting, which is a paradox. Often the depth of one’s suffering will forecast the height of one’s forthcoming experience of joy. The psalmist writes, “Weeping may spend the night, but joy comes in the morning.”[i] Read More
Joy in the Midst of Grief – Br. Lain Wilson
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Luke 18:9-14
Psalm 30
Philippians 1:15-20
Just over 1600 years ago, a young couple dreamed a dream:
“One night we went to sleep, greatly upset, and we saw ourselves, both of us, passing through a very narrow crack in a wall. We were gripped with panic by the cramped space, so that it seemed as if we were about to die.”
This young couple was Valerius Pinianus and his wife, Melania. They were two of the super-rich of the later Roman world. They were also Christians. And at this period in history these two things, wealth and Christian faith, were increasingly at odds with one another.
Pinianus and Melania, along with many of their contemporaries, were uncomfortable with their vast wealth. They grieved what their wealth afforded them. The open vistas of estates, the splendor and ostentation, the luxury of free time, had become for them a “narrow crack” and a “cramped space.” They grieved the weight of wealth on their souls. And this grief prompted them to make an unprecedented renunciation of their worldly wealth.[1] Read More