Isaiah 50:4-9
James 2:1-5,8-10,14-18
Mark 8:27-38

The prophet Isaiah in our first reading reminds us of two truths of life: life is difficult, and God is always there with us in the difficult times and is stronger than our problems. In the second reading, James reminds us about the difficulties in life; he alludes to the fact of poverty. He makes it plain that we should not add to the suffering of the poor by treating them as less worthy than rich people. Rather, we should prove we are on God’s side by doing what we can to ameliorate other people=s problems. In the gospel story, Mark reminds us that God chose to suffer and die along with us as a human, and if we want to follow Jesus, we must also be willing to suffer and die.

Jesus does not say that suffering and death are in themselves good. He says that losing our lives for his sake and for the sake of the gospel is good. There must be a reason behind the suffering to make it a good thing. There must be a reason to take up our cross, and maybe that reason is because if we don’t take it up, it means that someone less able to avoid it will have it added to his own already heavy and deadly cross. This is a good thing for us middle class Americans to ponder. We ought not feel guilty about enjoying such good fortune, but we do need to examine our way of life so that we are not causing others in the world to suffer because of our greed or laziness or chauvinism (whether or not any of those things are intentional).

God could have avoided the crucifixion of Jesus, but that would not have put him in union with all the others who had been and would later be crucified in Jerusalem, and had he not died, there would have been no resurrection. We have that same opportunity to not use our fortunate circumstances to run away from the plight of the rest of the world. We can do with less so that others can have more. We can stop shouting about how righteous we are so that others can let us know how we can all learn from each other. That seems so painful to us because we are so spoiled, but if we jump off that cross of pain and death, we miss our chance at joy and resurrection.

Of course we can always ask the age old question of why God doesn’t just make life sweet for everyone. We can ask all we want, but it won’t change the fact that God doesn’t do that, at least not right now. Right now we have the opportunity to be like God, standing with people in their difficulties and giving them strength to face the world as it is. We also have the opportunity to allow others to stand by us in our troubles, as Jesus was surrounded by the women at the cross. God loves us all, but life is still difficult. May we help others as best we can, whether they are near or far. May we always be sure that God is with us, going through our difficulties with us. May we be willing to take up our cross with Jesus, so that we may one day be resurrected with Jesus.   AMEN

Proverbs 9:1-6
Ephesians 5:15-20
John 6:53-59

Our first two scripture readings today are both pleas and exhortations to live wisely. The first was from Solomon, telling us that Wisdom is calling to us to the banquet she has prepared for anyone who chooses to come to her house. The second is from Paul, telling us that since God has given us a new life in Jesus, we ought not to go back to our old selfish ways, but should wisely make the most of our lives by being thankful for everything God has given us. These two pleas for us to live wisely come from two very different settings: Solomon was a powerful and wealthy king; Paul was a powerless and poor preacher. The two lived a thousand years apart from each other, although they both spent time in Jerusalem. In many of Solomon’s writings, one gets the hint that he believed that some are born wise and others are born foolish, and that can’t be changed; in Paul’s writings, the predestination of the wise and foolish is sometimes hinted at, although some people have made a lot more of that hint of predestination than others.

The aspect of wisdom that is common between the two authors is the fact that wisdom is a gift from God, whether or not we are born with it or are offered it later in life as a choice to make by our own free will. Wisdom is not something that we can produce. Most people now would agree that wisdom is something that all people are offered, and most people would also agree that although it is a gift, it is not fully functional when it is given. We have to show our gratitude and appreciation of God’s gift of wisdom before it can work in us. We have to be diligent in listening to other wise people and in calmly and humbly taking criticism from others, whether or not that criticism is meant to be constructive or destructive (sometimes we can learn more from destructive criticism than from the constructive kind, because even though it is meant to harm us, it is usually true, so we should be grateful for it and do what we can to help the person trying to hurt us). We also have to keep our appetites for food, sex, alcohol, and partying in check, because even though they are good gifts from God, they can easily take over our lives and cause us to be harmful to ourselves and the people around us if we are not careful. All four of these disciplines of gratitude, listening, humility and moderation are based on the truth that we are not the center of the universe and getting what we want when we want it is not the most important thing in the world. True wisdom consists in living the truth that God is the center and source of everything.

Each of us is only a part of God’s wonderful world, but that does not negate our importance, because without everyone living their parts to the fullest, we are all impoverished. Our world is a fallen world because when we choose to put ourselves in the center, we throw everything off-balance and leave a hole in our spot so that others can’t receive what they need from us. God has not built the world around himself because he wants or needs attention. God has built the world around himself because that is the only way the world can be built, and God does not want it to go to waste by being the only one to experience it. The problem for us is that the universe is so wonderful, we want to claim it as our own. There is no need for that, because there is more than enough to go around, and when we are so busy trying to run the world our own way, we forget the joy of watching God run it the way it should be. We deserve more than the tiny universes we create for ourselves; that is why God made the infinite one for us. God gives us the world, as well as the wisdom to realize how wonderful and beautiful it is, whether or not we can ever begin to understand how it works. Our job is to take the wisdom offered to us and live our lives in such a way that it can grow in us and help us live wonderful and beautiful lives in harmony and peace with all the other elements of creation.

God not only gives us the world, God gives us his own self (that is what our third reading from John’s Gospel is all about). We will soon gather around the table up here to be fed by God’s own being. All the wisdom in the world won’t ever help us to understand how that is possible, but wisdom will let us know that we need it. We might not be the center of the universe, but the center of the universe wants to be in us. God loves us so much that he wants to be taken into us. We are offered God’s own life as we gather together at God’s table. Just as we cannot produce wisdom on our own, so we can not produce life on our own. We have to take it from God, who thinks we are worth enough for him to give his own life for us and to us. Taking the center of the universe into us should be a much higher goal than trying to create our own tiny universes revolving around us. One important step to that higher goal is to realize and remind ourselves that the center of the universe desires to be in everyone else gathered around the altar with us also. With God’s gift of wisdom, we will slowly learn to live, think, and speak that truth. It all comes from God, but we have the choice of accepting it or denying it. We will waver between the two every day and every moment, but by admitting that life and wisdom are solely gifts from God, God will help us take those gifts and make our lives better than we could ever have imagined on our own.   AMEN

Amos 7:7-15
Ephesians 1:1-14
Mark 6:7-13

Many times, guests come to the monastery to spend time trying to discern the path that God wants them to take. Sometimes they are so concerned about doing the thing God wants them to do that their lives are crippled and at a standstill because, since they can’t figure out their exact calling, they simply do nothing out of fear of going against God’s will. They want to hear a definite call like Amos in our first reading, or like the twelve apostles in our gospel story. But for most people most of the time, our vocations fit more with our second reading: we are simply called to live and grow in Christ and spread his kingdom in our own normal daily lives. That reading (from Paul’s letter to Ephesus) describes our vocation as normal daily Christians, and it quickly becomes apparent that our seemingly unglamorous calling really has cosmic dimensions and implications: “…he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world…he destined us for adoption as his children…according to the riches of his grace that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and insight he has made known to us the mystery of his will…as a plan for the fullness of time…having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel…”

So even though sometimes, and for certain periods, we might discern specific instructions from God like Amos, Paul, and the twelve apostles did, even when we don’t discern those instructions, we can be assured that our lives are more meaningful than we might ever know. We need to always be open to specific calls from God, and we also need to be open to the fact that they might never come. But we can always use the many opportunities presented to us in our daily lives to be apostles and prophets to the small corner of the world where we find ourselves. We can be assured that by doing just that, we are fulfilling our vocations and being obedient to God. No need for agonizing and doing nothing out of fear of disobeying God’s will. God does have a plan for each of us, but it is probably not nearly as specific and detailed as some people would lead us to believe. The parameters of God’s plans for us are as wide as God’s love for us. The instructions for following those plans are as specific and detailed as our every breath. All we need to do is base every thought, word, and deed on love and respect for ourselves, our neighbors, and God. Of course, we don’t do that, and that is why we always need to admit our need for God’s grace to live our vocations as God’s children. We will fail to follow that path as God’s children every day, and God will forgive us of that failure every day.

There is a book in our library that opens with the statement that the most important question we can ask ourselves at the end of each day is: “Have I loved?” Of course the answer is always yes and no, because throughout each day we both succeed and fail in our vocations. And so we pray every day for God to help us be better apostles and prophets. We read scripture and let it slowly form us into better apostles and prophets. And we come here to gather at God’s table to allow God to feed us with himself as he makes us just what he wants us to be – no more, and no less. God calls us every day and every moment, and that call can be answered every day and every moment by simply living our dull, daily lives with faith, hope, and charity as we spread God’s kingdom in our own dull, daily worlds.   AMEN

Exodus 3:1-6
Romans 8:12-17
John 3:1-16

On May 9^th (the yearly remembrance of the dedication of this church building), we read about Solomon constructing and dedicating the temple in Jerusalem. Solomon admits that God could not be contained in the temple, or even in the whole of heaven and earth. But Solomon also realizes that the temple can be a focal point for people to encounter God, and so asks God to hear the prayers of those praying in or toward the temple. Today we celebrate the construction and codification of a system of beliefs about God. Like Solomon, we need to remember that God cannot be contained by words, or even in any religion or philosophy anywhere at anytime. But we can remember that our historical trinitarian creeds (just like the temple in Jerusalem) can be a place for us to encounter God and grow in our relationship with God.

Solomon was guided by God in building the temple, as were the church councils in building our orthodox, catholic, trinitarian creeds. But just as the temple was built using human hands, hearts, and minds, so were our creeds. Being human constructs, both the temple and the creeds are therefore imperfect and incomplete. That does not mean that they are wrong; it simply means they are not perfect and complete. Only God is perfect and complete, and only God is truth. Anything else can only be a tool to reach truth.

Creeds, confessions, prayerbooks, catechisms, and councils have sparked violence and hatred throughout history. Maybe one day we will be over that phase. We don’t have to (and shouldn’t have to) believe every theory of God that is put forth, but we can see if pondering them can strengthen our own beliefs, and we can politely disagree with people while not condemning them. We can also be more comfortable with letting the mystery of God remain a mystery rather than always trying to systematize and coordinate our beliefs. The church councils were made of men who were necessarily products of their time and culture – steeped in the philosophical framework of their day, no matter how prayerful and holy they also were. If the creeds were to be hammered out by church councils today, they would be different, because even though the Holy Spirit would be guiding the framers, those framers would be products of a different time and way of thinking. That doesn’t mean they would be wrong; it just means that they mystery of God would be expressed using different concepts, and the unspeakable would be spoken of using different words.

We should be grateful for the work our ancestors did in hammering out the current orthodox understanding of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But we must always remember that it is God who is to be worshipped, not our system of belief. Just like this church building or the temple in Jerusalem, a codified system of belief is meant to be a tool to bring us closer in our union with God, and to constantly strengthen that union. We must never misuse the tools God gives us. We must never use them to harm others or to bar them from God. With prayer, thought, and work, we can use our official doctrines to help bring even those who do not accept them closer to God. Instead of the all-too-common abusive pattern of using them to hurt people, we can instead choose to use them to help bring the healing, joyful peace of God to the people around us. That is why we are here and why we say we believe what we believe. We are worshippers of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – the creator, redeemer, and sustainer of us all and the entire universe – the God who loves us all dearly, no matter our ability or inability to put our love into formal statements.   AMEN

Acts 4:23-37
I John 3:1-8
John 10:11-16

Our readings from John this morning speak of knowing and seeing ultimate reality, and both acts hinge on Jesus. In the gospel, Jesus says: “I know my own, and my own know me, just as the Father knows me, I know the Father.”, and in the Letter from John, the author speaks of our relationship to Jesus, saying: “when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.” Putting the two together, we can make the conclusion that by coming to know Jesus, we come to know God and ourselves. As we pray more and live more like Jesus, we slowly learn the meaning of life.

That knowledge of God, Jesus, ourselves, the universe and everything in it that we obtain from living in God is not really intellectual or academic knowledge, although that is a part of it. It is existential knowledge – built into our bones and our soul; it is experiential knowledge – something we do; it is intimate knowledge – like the Biblical term for sexual union; it is instinctual knowledge – like knowing how to breathe; and it is habitual knowledge – like learning how to ride a bicycle or play a musical instrument by practicing so that one eventually does not need to think about it in order to do it.

The knowledge and vision we receive from abiding in God and following Jesus is the knowledge and vision of reality, because God is the basis of reality. God is the only means of existence. Everything else exists because God brings it into being, and so the only way to ever experience truth is by seeing God as the source and basis of everything, including ourselves. The more we come to know God, the more we come to know ourselves, because we are made in the image of God. So as this existential, experiential, intimate, instinctual, and habitual knowledge grows in us, the more we become like God (our origin). We become more peaceful, joyful, and creative as we become more like the creator and source of peace and joy. We become more loving, merciful, and tolerant even while keeping the highest standards of morality as we become more like the loving, merciful, and tolerant judge of the universe who expects mature behavior from us and yet knows firsthand from his incarnation as Jesus how hard it is to always exhibit it.

As we grow in this knowledge and vision of Godliness and humanness, all the fear and falsehood that we put between ourselves, God, and each other slowly melts away as we realize there is no need for fear. We become more like God and more our true selves. We are not God, and we do not become God – that would be short-changing our humanity. We are beautifully human and will become more proud of and grateful for our humanity the closer we grow to God. Sometimes it seems like we grow too slowly, or even regress. We can’t control our growth (only God does that), but we can foster the growth that God gives us, and we can avoid those things that we know will cause us to regress. God has a high enough opinion of us to give us the freedom to discipline ourselves, rather than forcing maturity upon us. If God’s opinion of us is so high, ours should be, too. As Jesus says: “I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.” John tells us what Jesus and the Father know about us: “Beloved, we are God’s children now”. He goes further and tells us what we need to always remember about ourselves: “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.”

One way to purify ourselves is to stop living the lie that we and others are not good enough for each other, for ourselves, or for God. We are God’s children now. We don’t need to wait to start acting like that. We can be grateful for and respectful of our lives and the lives of those around us. We can honor our common humanity and encourage each others’ maturity as we all struggle with the temptation to stop growing or even regress back to an infantile state. God is with us the whole way. We are worth enough for God to call us his children, and we are worth enough to call ourselves and each other that, too.   AMEN

Jeremiah 31:31-34
Hebrews 5:1-10
John 12:20-33

Emphasis on the death of Jesus as the act that brings about the forgiveness of our sins and puts us in union with God leaves a bad taste in many mouths. That is not surprising; it seems to make God a fan of death. Another reason for the growing lack of enthusiasm for so much importance placed on the death of Jesus as the source of our salvation is the fact that it has been a dominant theme for several generations, and so we feel the human need to swing the pendulum away from it and on to another way of thinking, just like we tend to do in the areas of politics and fashion. Swinging back and forth between what are often termed “theories of atonement” has been common in Christian history, and that can be surprising and unsettling for some people who insist on the need to believe in a set doctrine explaining exactly how “Jesus Saves”.

If one wants to get a glimpse of some of the theories of atonement that have been presented throughout church history, there are books in our library that carry that information, and they can be interesting and edifying. To be honest, I like some of the theories and dislike others, but what I really believe is that some of the truth is probably found in all of them. Theories don’t save; “Jesus Saves”, and maybe the important thing is not how but what and why. The what is a covenant between us and God, written in our hearts, stating that we and God belong to each other, as we heard in our first reading from the prophet Jeremiah. That covenant is ratified by Jesus as our priest, as we heard in the second reading from the Letter to the Hebrews. The why is God’s love for us and the desire to bring us closer to God’s self, as we heard Jesus say in the gospel reading: “I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” Jesus was lifted up from the earth on a cross, and we must admit that hanging from a cross is quite a way to get someone’s attention. Even with all the other thousands of people who had been crucified before and have been crucified since, God got our attention with that one, and has been drawing people to himself ever since.

The death of Jesus is an important aspect of God’s gift of forgiveness and reconciliation. It is important because death is a part of life, and God lived and still lives a full human life as Jesus. We might not ever understand all the facets of all the “theories of atonement”, but that is ok, because our union with God is not dependent on our understanding. Our salvation is dependent on God, who has already given us eternal life, joy, and peace. God wants us to have a relationship with him, not with a theory. So he lives with us, dies with us, and enters a new eternal life with us. God is here with us – his Holy Spirit is praying through us, binding us together with each other and with God’s self; God is here with us as we gather to be fed by God; God is with us as we leave the church and go about our daily lives. God is hanging on a cross, drawing us to himself, and God is risen from the dead to be with us always.   AMEN

I Kings 19:9-18
II Peter 1:16-21
Mark 9:2-9

Our scripture readings have at least two themes in common. One is that of being on a mountain. The other is that of the human tendency to wrongly assume and presume. In the First Book of the Kings, we have Elijah on the run because he has just destroyed the prophets of Baal, and so he is afraid of what King Ahab and Queen Jezebel will do to him if they find him. He finally makes it to Mount Horeb, where our story takes place. In the Gospel according to Mark, we have Jesus taking Peter, James, and John up a mountain where he is transfigured and meets with Elijah (making his second mountaintop appearance this morning), and Moses (who is known for his mountaintop conversations with God on Mount Sinai or Mount Horeb, where we just met Elijah). Then, in the Second Letter from Peter, we hear Peter recalling the transfiguration of Jesus on the mountain that we heard about in the gospel reading. That takes care of the first common theme.

The second common theme, that of God combating the human tendency to wrongly assume and presume, is a little more subtle. When Elijah finally meets with God on the mountain, the prophet complains that he is the only one left who is loyal to God. God tells him that is not true; there are seven thousand worshippers of God left. When Peter, James, and John are coming down from the mountain after the transfiguration, Jesus warns them to not tell anyone about it until after his resurrection. That seems an odd thing to say, and Jesus says that same thing to people throughout the Gospel of Mark, but as the abbot mentioned in a sermon a month ago, maybe Jesus did not want people to wrongly assume that he was who they wanted and expected him to be, because they would get it wrong. Jesus was and is different from and more than anyone could have ever thought. Just as Elijah had jumped to a wrong conclusion until he was corrected by God on the mountain, so would have the disciples had they not been silenced by Jesus.

It is the same with us; our experiences with God can cause us to jump to wrong conclusions about God, ourselves, and the people around us. That doesn’t happen because we are stupid. It happens simply because compared to God, our perspective is so small that we can see only a small glimpse of the infinite. We need to compare our experiences and understanding of God with others’. They won’t be the same, because just as everyone is different, so will their relationship with God be different. But we do need to be sure that our assumptions and presumptions about God are not totally out of bounds. As Peter says in his letter this morning: “…no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation…”.

So we need to be always open to others’ interpretations of and understanding of God. We don’t have to blindly accept everything anyone says, and we can honestly and politely let people know when our beliefs differ from theirs and we think they are wrong, but we ought to be open to the fact that they may be on to something – whether or not they are of a different opinion, a different denomination, or even an entirely different religion. We can do that by listening to others and allowing them to listen to us. We can also do it by reading works by people from different cultures and times. More specifically we can do that by being open to the Holy Spirit as we meet together here; seeing Jesus shining through each other, in the scriptures read, in the psalms sung, in prayers offered, and in the food on the altar. So let us go to the mountain of the Lord – the table where we meet with God individually and as a group, and let us not forget that every time we are up here, we are with everyone else at every other Holy Table with Jesus around the world and throughout time. The Lord is here to feed us individually and as a group. We all have much to learn from each other and from God.   AMEN