SSJE Sermons

“In Advent, we embrace the mystery of God's plan of salvation. Wrapped in that mystery, we wait. With God's own humility, we watch. God's response grows in the deep womb of time, until Christ is all in all.” Br. Keith Nelson shares a powerful image from his own prayer: the testimony of a lost lamb, rescued by the Son of Man.

“The destination and end of our walk with Christ is to finally meet God face to face, dwelling in light inaccessible.  To know even as we are known.  To behold the beatific vision of the Triune God, and there to dwell, to make our habitation.  But there is no direct flight, and the trek is often uphill.” As Advent begins, Br. Todd Blackham invites us to consider where we are on our pilgrimage of faith.

“Again and again in the gospels, we see Jesus perceiving the intentions of the heart, whether for good or for evil, and responding in ways that reveal the truth. The Triune God sees and knows everything about us, even what we keep hidden from others. When we realize that God sees it all and still loves us with an unwavering love, we can risk being honest in our prayer.” Br. David Vryhof urges us to be truthful with God in prayer, in response to the loving truthfulness with which we are seen and known by our loving God.

“It seems that “softening” and “allowing” are vital elements in the practice of Christian endurance. To put it another way: there is a subtle interplay between striving and trusting, with the accent on trust. Trust calls forth a softening and allowing of reality as it is even as striving calls for a firmness or rootedness in the face of immense pressure.” Br. Keith Nelson teases out the complex interplay of the Christian call to endurance and striving, which find their fullest expression in trust.

“What will the church look like in a year, never mind five? What will this country look like in a week, never mind a month? What will the world look like tomorrow, never mind the one our grandchildren will inherit? We look at what we have, and long for what we had, and our hearts sink as we gaze at the challenges ahead, knowing full well there are still other hills, still other sets of steep stairs, still other cliff edge paths, that we cannot yet see.” Looking into an uncertain future, Br. James Koester echoes God's words of comfort and reassurance: take courage; I am with you; do not fear.

“If you are now in a dark night of the soul where pain, despair, loss, or fear are your companions, how very difficult. You need the comfort that Jesus promises us. Presume that your dark night is the eve of the dawning of a new day, and that you are not alone. You are being carried on the wings of the prayers of those who have gone before you and who are looking out for you.” Br. Curtis Almquist finds companions for our prayer on All Saints Day and the eve that precedes it, All Hallows Eve, Halloween.

“God is not a theory. God is not a formula. God is personal—so personal that the restrictions our human desire for control creates—whether around worship or any other part of life—simply will not do.” Br. Sean Glenn reminds us that God's mercy overflows our expectations and undoes all our theories, formulas, and patterns.

“‘Hey! Do you go to church? Why?' ‘Are you a Christian? Why? Just tell me in a few words.' What would you say?  If you only had 30 seconds, a kind of ‘elevator speech', what would you say?  ‘I go to church because…' If you don't say anything, you may have lost an opportunity. St Peter in this first letter tells us, ‘Always be ready to give an account for the hope that is in you.' So, what would your 30-second account be?” Br. Geoffrey Tristram finds inspiration in the witness of Philip, for what makes a good evangelist, and he urges us to be ready to give an account of the hope that is in us.

“We are products of the Enlightenment, so-called, a culture not schooled in the discernment of good and evil. And yet, you can hardly turn a page of the Bible without encountering the battleground of spiritual forces.” Br. Curtis Almquist reminds us that, today more than ever, we are being fought over between the forces of good and evil.

“Allowing ourselves to be loved by God, as Jesus did, also requires some degree of just sitting there, as Mary of Bethany did in Jesus' presence. But consenting to this transformation at the core of our being is anything but passive: it is our single greatest challenge. To the world, that process looks like nothing. But to Jesus, it is the one thing necessary.” Br. Keith Nelson revisits the familiar story of Martha & Mary to discover the one thing Jesus asks of all of us: the single-hearted, undivided commitment of discipleship.

“Saint Francis' teaching is about our sharing an intimate relationship with all sentient beings and beyond, and not just other people. Every living being, every element of creation, is a “creature” of God, all of us given a share of God's magnificent panoply of life.” Br. Curtis Almquist invites us to take from Saint Francis the inspiration to be in a reverenced relationship with God's gift of life both within us and around us.

“The Climate Emergency we are facing today is a human problem, the result of our plundering the earth for its treasures at the cost of life's delicate balance.  Much of it is the result of human greed. Our greed is destroying the planet, polluting our air and our waterways and oceans, eliminating whole species of animals from the earth, and threatening our very existence.  If we continue in this way, we will, before long, render the planet uninhabitable.  The Climate Emergency has been caused by human beings, and only human beings have the power to reverse it.” Br. David Vryhof cautions that money is not the problem; greed is; and that true richness comes when we learn to enjoy God's world, and live with contentment.

“As Christians, we are as susceptible as anyone else to extreme consumerism: each of us can all too easily get caught up in a whirlwind of needless buying and spending. I am also sure that the most important way that we can begin to heal our planet is to allow God, daily, to heal our hearts; to mend our divided hearts.  Pope Francis, in his beautiful encyclical, Laudato Si' writes, “The emptier a person's heart is, the more he or she needs to buy, own and consume.” So, fill your heart every morning with God! ” Br. Geoffrey Tristram shares three contemplative practices that can help us to experience contentment, free us from the desire for more, and help us to love and appreciate what we already have.

“Listen. What is the message from creation that surrounds us? What is God saying through the soil, sprouts, springs, and sparrows? What is God saying through poor and neglected places and peoples? We are invited to listen.” As we enter the Season of Creation, Br. Luke Ditewig urges us to listen to the voice of creation, and to pray outside.

“Our life's invitation is to learn to “be silence” so we have space to receive the work and words of God. It is a good thing to cultivate stillness and silence within ourselves.” Br. Curtis Almquist finds hope in a line from the Psalms, reminding us that our emptiness is actually openness to God.

“How might God be calling you today to be courageous in speaking the truth when you recognize injustice, when you see through the lies and deceptions of the powerful, when you perceive their hypocrisy and deceit? How might God be calling you to speak up when you recognize racism, misogyny, xenophobia or other forms of discrimination? Silence empowers the oppressors.  Be bold.  Speak truth.  And never give up.” Br. David Vryhof looks to the witness of John the Baptizer for the courage to speak truth to power, whatever the consequences.

“God meets us in our human condition where we are most in need. The New Testament verb for this is “save”: Jesus “saves” us, and that Greek word has the urgency of being “saved” by a lifeguard when someone would otherwise drown. Jesus saves us.” On the feast of Irenaeus, the great theologian of the Incarnation, Br. Curtis Almquist marvels at how God is united to us in our full – and flawed – humanity.

Luke 9:51-62 “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”[i] This is the line that Jesus gives to a would-be follower. I think this is interesting, because there are three would-be followers in this story today. The next two seem reluctant, and…

“Our redemption is about more than just harnessing a power beyond human strength. It's about returning to that relationship of self-giving love that is the essence of the triune God. There's a wideness in God's mercy that calls people of all sorts to live new lives fit for eternity.” Br. Todd Blackham reminds us that our salvation and our survival are not unconnected.

“Certainly the sacrifice of Alban is worth remembering today.  We recall with awe his unwavering commitment to Christ, a commitment that prompted him to give himself up to torture and death in place of a Christian priest. We stand in awe of the unflinching witness of the martyrs and pray that, if that day should ever come to us, we would be equally steadfast and fearless in the profession of our faith in Jesus Christ.” Br. David Vryhof challenges us to live mindful of our unspoken witness and its power to change the lives around us.

“Choose life. Every single day we are called to make many choices. They are often very small and unnoticed. But slowly and unseen, over the years, these choices SHAPE our journey through life. The choices we make, however small, set us on a path which may or may not lead to life.” Br. Geoffrey Tristram invites us, as we navigate the paths ahead of us, to “choose life,” that our hearts may overflow with the delights of inexpressible love.

Luke 8:26-39  Our Gospel this morning is a crazy story. It has stampeding pigs drowning in a lake, a crazy naked guy, demons negotiating with Jesus, and finally a city full of people asking Jesus to leave. If listening to all this makes you feel all over the place, you are not alone. Things get…

“Lucas, in the offering of your life to God today, as a witness to Jesus who is Light, and Life, and Word of God, you are, in a sense, standing in the baptismal tank at St. Philip's with Bernard. Like Bernard, you don't know where you will be led, but with him you are saying, O give me grace to follow.” Br. James Koester and the community celebrate the Profession in Life Vows of Br. Lucas Hall.

“God is always coming to us in “the Sacrament of the Present Moment.” Pay attention to now. God's presence is always in the present. Now. There will be “thin places” where God breaks through to you, often mysteriously, in here-and-now. Pay attention to now.” Br. Curtis Almquist celebrates the teaching of Evelyn Underhill and, along with her, encourages us to pay attention to the here-and-now.

“A sense of urgent longing to cross over a frontier from nominal belonging onto a path of transformational belonging within the body of Christ…If Jesus is turning your life upside down but you're discovering that that's what you want more of, you've felt it. The ways we express this longing, like the zealous of the fourth century, are astonishingly diverse. But they have one thing in common: they are a direct response to the prompting of the Holy Spirit, who “searches our depths” and “searches the depths of God.” It is the depths our hearts long for most.” Br. Keith Nelson connects our own experience of zeal & the intensity of our commitment to Christ to the mission of one of the early monastics, Basil of Caesarea.

“Today we celebrate the great gift which God poured out upon us all on the Day of Pentecost. When the Spirit came down to those disciples they were changed, transformed.  Their spirits were recharged with life and power. They came back to life. And that same promise is made to us, today.” On Pentecost, Br. Geoffrey Tristram gives us a wake-up call – to pray.

“The witness of the martyrs is powerful, not because we are in awe of what they lose, but because we are inspired by what they have, and we find ourselves wanting it. We see in them a life of courage, inspired by their faith in the resurrection of Jesus. Seeing them, we find in ourselves a desire for the same life of faith and courage, which allows us to stand firm even in the face of death.” Br. James Koester remembers the martyrs of Uganda, and challenges us to live lives of courage, profoundly marked by faith in Jesus.

“Even when God's ways are hidden from us, and God seems to be silent in the face of our trouble, we hold fast, believing and trusting in the goodness and power of God, and confident that God's love will win out over evil. Never stop loving.  Never stop believing.  Never stop trusting.  Work tirelessly.  And never, ever give up.” In the ongoing wake of unspeakable tragedy, Br. David Vryhof points us toward toward love, belief, trust, and hard work. Keep going.

“Mary and Elizabeth lived with ongoing uncertainty and shame by faith. They can inform and encourage us. We hear in Paul's Letter to the Colossians: “As God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, patience … forgiveness … and love … .” Elizabeth and Mary's tender greetings, calling forth, and months shared together must have invited compassion, kindness, patience, forgiveness, and love. They are a model for us.” On the Feast of the Visitation, Br. Luke Ditewig steps into the wondrous moment between Mary and Elizabeth and finds in its visit and its welcome a model for us all.

“The promise of God, and the hope of Easter, is not a life lost in loss and grief, but of glory, which is ours, today, even now, even while our life bears the signs and scars and wounds of a crucified world. The promise of God, and the hope of Easter, and the gift of Ascension is that God has taken our sadness and is redeeming it with glory.” Even in the midst of all the challenges, suffering and grief that beset us right now, Br. James Koester invites us to look at life through the lens of glory.

“Take these days before the Ascension to ask God to renew the imagination of the church and to build up the Body so that it might rise to the present crisis. To learn from people and bodies and stories and creatures we often disregard. There, Jesus—risen, glorified, wounded, will meet us in the midst of life, in the midst of our asking.” Br. Sean Glenn invites us to discover "rogation" and what this historic word – and its practice – can mean for our faith.

“As love goes, this is where things get thorny. Loving God without condition as God has loved us, while a tall order for finite creatures, is something we might readily give ascent to. But, loving each other ‘agape' style? What does it mean to love each other without conditions: without sex and romance, without stability and provision, without fellowship in exalted experience, or ultimately, without any expectation or transaction?” Br. Jim Woodrum challenges us to mirror God's unconditional love in the love we show to one another.

“It is too easy to see the Resurrection in human terms, an event that reveals a God whose omnipotence is characterized by all the ways human beings conceive of omnipotence. Yes, God is big and strong and powerful. But not in the ways our hearts have been trained to conceive of such attributes.” Br. Sean Glenn separates the power of God, revealed in the Resurrection, from those human forms of power that seek to dominate.

“It is God who is the source of our lives, and God who is the end of our lives, and it is God who calls us and desires us to be in union with God forever. It is God who seeks us out, God who has all the time in the world for us. Baptism is an act which anticipates its completion in the future, with a person's own confession of faith. Baptism is an initiation, not a completion.” On the joyful event of an infant baptism, Br. Curtis Almquist invites us to see all baptism not as a completion, but as an initiation.

“Are there humble, ordinary gestures that the crucified and risen Jesus has used to show you the nature of God? Have you become distracted from the pattern of light by the dissatisfied ache for an epiphany? Jesus offers a profound reassurance and a further invitation to Philip, and to us, today: 'If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.'” Br. Keith Nelson beckons us toward Jesus and the long, slow work of conversion as we see, in his prismatic glory, the Light of God.

“It was seeing Jesus' body, in all its brokenness and woundedness which brought Thomas to belief. But this beautiful story is not a story of proof but a story of love. For me, the story of Thomas is not primarily a story of a sceptic who comes to believe because his list of doubts is answered; not an intellectual assent to something proven. The story of Thomas is rather the story of a man who comes to believe not because he has enough proof, but because he has actually touched the mystery of divine, self-sacrificial love.” In this sermon on Thomas, Br. Geoffrey urges us to listen to our gut and heart, not our head, as we encounter the Lord.

“We come to Easter this year exhausted, not by our keeping of Lent, but by our keeping on, keeping on. We are exhausted by two years of uncertainty, sadness, and anxiety brought on by a global pandemic. We are exhausted, by two years of blatant inequality and injustice. We are exhausted by fear, that what is going on in Ukraine, will plunge the world into even more chaos, and uncertainty. We are exhausted, by the stink of these past two years, as the pandemic tide ebbs out revealing, what has long been hidden.” Br. James Koester uncovers the promise of the resurrection to us and to all creation: If God can raise Jesus from the dead, then God can mend, heal, and cleanse a broken, stinking world, making all things new

“We hear proclaimed in our Gospel account that Jesus is resurrected. But one thing has not changed. Even though Jesus is resurrected, Jesus' heart is still broken.” Even as we celebrate Jesus' resurrection, Br. Curtis Almquist encourages us to acknowledge our own and the world's woundedness, to allow us to tap into Jesus' resurrection power in the here-and-now. Hallelujah!

“When we approach the spiritual life with the care and attention it deserves, we will arrive at thresholds we cannot cross without our inner lives seeming to get worse rather than better: more painful, more exposed, less manageable in all the old ways we know. God is love, but love is powerful. Love is a crucible that dismantles the self we have cherished.” Br. Keith Nelson looks to scripture for examples of a profound truth of the spiritual life: we must go go into the darkness to find the freedom that waits on the other side.

“The act of turning aside from the paths we think we know is a theme that runs right through every invitation of the spiritual life, and Lent is a perfect season in which to practice this subtle but life-changing posture." Br. Sean Glenn invites you to turn your perspective on repentance this Lent.

“This transformation, indeed, this transfiguration, from scarlet to snow, and crimson to wool, from a people utterly estranged from God, and indelibly marked by sin, to the beloved daughters and sons of God, happens when we remember who and whose we are.” Br. James Koester reminds you of the true nature of God's mercy and forgiveness in this Lenten sermon.

“I wait for the Lord, my soul waits. In God's word is my hope. I wait with expectation like those who watch through the night wait for the morning. Yes, I wait like that. Not just for the night shift to end but with trust that light will break through the darkness.” Br. Luke Ditewig invites us into the hope that comes with waiting for God.

“As a foundational stance toward our relationship with God, ask-search-knock calls forth from us an initiative and a willingness to expose our hearts. This is as true in our relationships with human companions as it is with God.” This Lent, Br. Keith Nelson encourages you to ask, search, and knock to grow in relationship with God.

“The fresh experience of new believers, indeed as the disciples learned this prayer for the very first time was filled with power that captivated early Christians as they began to savor and cherish this precious gift often simply referring to it as THE Prayer.” This Lent, Br. Todd Blackham invites you to refresh how you pray the Lord's Prayer.

“Jesus heard the prophet Isaiah in both of these ways: the holy sabbath being both about restoration of one's own personal life, and a call to action on behalf of others in need so that they, too, can have a life.” Br. Curtis Almquist invites us to consider Jesus' practice of sabbath-keeping as a way to care for those in need.

"This Lent, I think it is worth taking the time to listen and discern where God is giving you life, where God is speaking life into your life. Yet also, where has this life been robbed from you?” This Lent, Br. Sean Glenn invites you into reflection about where God is calling you to choose life over death.

“We may be tempted in times of stress to hide, to isolate ourselves and try to heal ourselves. Full of shame and self-reliance, we may even try to hide our wounds from God. Mary and the Beloved Disciple show us that we do not have to do that. We can move in with one another and navigate this pain together.” In this season of Lent, Br. Jack Crowley considers Mary and the Beloved Disciple as models for handling stress.

“Risk, real, material risk, is the heart of this reading today. Risk to our own resources and possessions, even our own bodily health, is what Jesus brings forth to us today. Do to others as you would have them do to you, even when they aren't treating you the same. Do to others as you would have them do to you, even when such action poses a real risk to your own well-being.” Br. Lucas Hall consider the true risk inherent in Jesus' teaching and invites us to step from safety into the good work to which God calls us.

“It's always tempting in times of misunderstanding to just not want to deal with it, to say you don't have the time and energy to work through the conflict. Ignoring misunderstanding only leads to more misunderstanding down the road. Jesus does not do this and that takes courage.” Br. Jack Crowley watches how Jesus handles misunderstanding among the disciples, and draws three practical lessons for how we can apply them in our own lives.

“Each morning, when I return to my cell for the prayer time, I imagine Jesus sitting there listening to me, as if what I have to say is the most important thing in his life at that moment.” Br. James Koester invites us to trust that, in prayer, Jesus listens to us the way a mom might listen to her child.

“What's not to love about the wise men? Beyond being picturesque and rather exotic in the Christmas crèche, they give us a prodding inspiration about God's ongoing revelation oftentimes coming to us in very new ways, far beyond all that we could ask for or imagine.” Br. Curtis invites us to re-experience the transformative significance of the Magi on the feast of the Epiphany, as we celebrate the manifestation of God's saving grace.