Posts Tagged ‘mercy’
Matthew and Mercy – Br. Luke Ditewig
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
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
River Vision – Br. Luke Ditewig
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Br. Luke Ditewig
Ezekiel 47:1-9, 12
Psalm 46:1-8
John 5:1-18
What’s the vision? How does it help living now?
After Jerusalem was conquered, the temple destroyed, and people taken far away in exile, amid much loss and grief, God sent prophets to renew and prompt the people. God gave Ezekiel a five-chapter detailed vision of the Temple restored, where God dwells. The vision prompts looking with faith to what cannot be seen, God restoring all.
As we heard tonight, it’s not just a restored building or dwelling but water flowing from it, water that expands and deepens into a large river ankle-deep, knee-deep, waist-deep and beyond. Water, the source of life, in the desert where it is most valuable. A living river that brings the dead to life. It flows into the Dead Sea where most fish and plants can’t live and changes it into fresh water “where every living creature that swarms will live . . . and everything will live where the river goes.” Not only live but thrive and far more than usual. Healthy trees along the river bear fruit and not only in harvest season but every month. Fruit for food and leaves for healing. Read More
Kindness, Mercy, and Justice – Br. James Koester
Br. James Koester
Preached at the Church of St. Augustine and St. Martin, Boston, at the annual Homecoming Service.
Martin of Tours
It should come as no surprise that I have been thinking a great deal about St. Martin over the past week. In part that’s because I’m preaching today as we keep his feast. In part that’s because I have spent many hours in our archives pouring over our collection of material related to this parish. That, I admit, has been more fun than working on the sermon!
In the back of my mind, as I have been looking at old photographs and various documents, there are several questions. One is obvious. Who are some of these people? I hope when you see them, you can help answer that one. The other question is, Why Martin? Augustine, I get. We founded two parishes in South Africa: St. Philip’s and St. Cyprian’s in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, about the same time as this parish. Philip was instrumental in introducing the Ethiopian court official to the Christian faith, and Cyprian, like Augustine, was a bishop in north Africa. (It was this Philip, by the way, who was this parish’s first patron. The Sunday school room opened in 1882 on Beacon Hill was called St. Philip’s Mission. The name was later changed to St. Augustine’s.) But why Martin? Read More
Joy in the Midst of Grief – Br. Lain Wilson
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
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
A Severe Mercy – Br. Curtis Almquist
Br. Curtis Almquist
The prophet Malachi could not be using more extreme language. The messenger for the Messiah will come “like a refiner’s fire and like fuller’s soap.”
- A refiner’s fire is a metallurgy process dating back to antiquity. A refiner’s fire is a crucible that heats precious metal, like gold and silver, to a molten state from which the dross – the impurities – are skimmed off. It is a searing process that yields the pure, precious metal.[i]
- The fullers were the launderers. Fuller’s soap is a caustic cleansing agent, made from lye and other repugnant chemicals.[ii] Fuller’s soap was used to purify fabric and make it white. The fullers stamped on garments with their feet or used wooden bats in tubs of this blanching soap. The stench from this soap was so great that the fullers had to work outside the city walls of Jerusalem.
God Does Not Acquiesce; God Celebrates – Br. Curtis Almquist
Br. Curtis Almquist
We have here two prodigal sons, the word “prodigal” from the Latin meaning “wasteful.” The younger son having wasted his share of his father’s resources and his family’s good name; the older brother being wasted by resentment because life is not fair. This is a made-up story which Jesus tells, not because it is historical, but because it is true. I suspect most everyone can relate to both of these two brothers, how we can get so twisted up in life wasting all kinds of time and stuff, and harboring resentments towards others. It is comforting, is it not, that Jesus obviously knows this? Is this story about the sons in any way Jesus’ own story? We don’t know. The story is certainly autobiographical when Jesus speaks of the magnanimous father who knows and loves both sons, without qualification.
The church has remembered this story down through the centuries because the story rings true. This is our story. We are these two children, sometimes more one than the other. And the father in the story represents the God whom Jesus calls “Father. Read More
Best Gifts – Br. Luke Ditewig
Br. Luke Ditewig
Clement of Rome
You’ll get what you give, Jesus says. Forgive and be forgiven. Judge and be judged. Compassion. Accusation. There’s reciprocity in relationship. Don’t give what you don’t want to get, especially with feedback, correction, or teaching, acknowledge your own needs. Keep at own work first. “Take the log out of your own eye so you can even rightly see the speck in your neighbor’s.” You might need help. Logs are heavy. Jesus gives a direct word because community is hard work. We need each other. It’s easy to find fault, to hold onto hurt, distance, and cut off.
Today we remember Clement of Rome, an early church leader. There was division at the church in Corinth when some younger leaders convinced the whole to remove the ruling elders. Clement wrote a pastoral letter calling the community to stick it out and abide together, to keep and listen to its elders. Clement called for maintaining hierarchy and for balance with mutuality. For a couple centuries, some included Clement’s Letter to the Corinthians in the New Testament. Clement wrote: “All work together and are mutually subject for the preservation of the whole body.” Read More
Grief and Gratitude – Br. Luke Ditewig
Br. Luke Ditewig
As colors turned and leaves fell, trees beckoned us. I often stopping to look and sometimes stretched up mirroring their limbs. For God’s creation is good and wondrously made. Wow. Thank you. As branches also broke, limbs fell, hanging down or collapsing on the ground. I also stopped to look and sometimes let my arm bend, droop, and hang, feeling the weight of what is broken. O God, have mercy. Bodies hold it all, our diverse and competing truths. As I pray with my body, trees are teaching me to pray both gratitude and grief, including at the same time. [i]
Among the calamities of 2020, a plague of locusts caused a food shortage for millions of people across dozens of countries in the Middle East and Africa. The prophet Joel wrote to people who had experienced such crisis. Joel describes locusts “like the crackling of a flame of fire devouring stubble, like a powerful army drawn up for battle. Before them, people are in anguish, all faces grow pale.”[ii] Joel wrote that the long awaited Day of the Lord would come like such a frightening plague.
“Blow the trumpet in Zion, sound the alarm on my holy mountain! … Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; rend your heart and not your clothing. Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.”[iii] Read More
Sin, So Tedious; Love So Enduring – Br. Curtis Almquist
Most of us, most of the time, do not need anyone else’s help for us to judge ourselves poorly. We are well apprised of how we have missed the mark, perjured ourselves, once more done or said those things we have ought not to have done or said, and not done or said those things we should have. Momentarily we will be invited to make a personal, corporate confession of our sin. We will just plough ahead with this. What is so pathetic is we need not be asked for a show of hands, whether time for confession would be helpful. The ancient liturgy of the church – without benefit of having personally surveyed either you or me – presumes the state of things in our soul, and that, yet again, our personal confession of sin would be both helpful and necessary for most all of us. The distinctive quality of confessions, in my experience, is that they are so tedious and boring.
Jesus judges this woman about whom we hear in today’s Gospel lesson. Jesus judges her. Jesus puts a face to God’s judgment, and it is a judgment of love. It is not a judgment of ridicule, or rejection, or hopelessness, or boredom, or eternal condemnation, but rather a judgment of love.
This woman is a known person. It’s her again. We can presume that Jesus is also a known person. It’s him again. She did not pick Jesus at random. She knows something about him, most likely has heard him teaching, seen him healing before. What she is doing, down on her knees, is making her confession with alabaster oil and tears. It’s an extravagant confession, as is her known sin. No words from her are recorded. What’s to say? It’s her again. Most significant in this Gospel story is not whether Jesus bears God’s love, nor whether Jesus bears God’s love for this woman. Jesus has said that before, and she has heard it. The question – her question – is whether Jesus still loves her? Yes, he still loves her. He still loves us.
Show Mercy – Br. Luke Ditewig
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Jesus visits his dear friends Martha and Mary in their home. Martha is upset that Mary sits listening rather than helping her with the work as host. Some hear this as about work versus prayer or balancing action and contemplation. Paul Borgman points to parallel structure. This story is right after the lawyer who tries to test Jesus by asking “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” and “wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus ‘Then who is my neighbor?’”[i] The lawyer and Martha are both anxious and trying to justify themselves.[ii] I am doing what is right, am I not? I know and follow the law. I am upholding our virtue of hospitality. “Do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself?”
Jesus replies to the lawyer with a story of a man robbed and left for dead. A priest and a Levite both pass him by, but a despised Samaritan stops to cares for him. Which one was a neighbor? The one who shows mercy. Jesus says: “Go, and do likewise.”[iii]Jesus replies to Martha. “You are worried and distracted by many things. … Mary has chosen the better part.” What does it mean to inherit eternal life? Listen to God’s Word like Mary, and do it like the Samaritan.[iv]
How are you relating to Jesus? Like the lawyer and Martha, where are you anxious? How are trying to justify yourself? What good is getting in the way?
Jesus shows mercy to one who tried to test him and to Martha. Jesus also comes to us as a friend, into our homes, knowing our hearts, listening with compassion, and redirecting us on the way to life. Read More