All of these sermons were delivered in the Abbey Church. To make it easier to find a certain topic or lectionary day, click one the blue tags below (Holidays, Sundays Year A, Sundays Year B, Sundays Year C). The sermons are posted in order of their calendar date, so not all in the same lectionary year are together – keep scrolling down, and you will find more from earlier calendar years.
Many of Abbot Andrew’s sermons are posted on his blog.
Isaiah 55:10-13
Romans 8:1-11
Mathew 13:1-9
Good Soil
July 12, 2020 Abbey Church Abraham
Everything we have is a gift – that’s “Grace”. We have to take what we are given and build a life out of it – that’s “Works”. Grace vs Works has been a topic throughout Christian history, and unfortunately, many times people have lived as if the two can not exist together. They can and should, and monastic life is a good example of the fact that grace should be a catalyst for good works, and good works are met with grace.
We have been given the opportunity to live here in a monastery (Grace). We then have to use monastic life intentionally and mindfully for it to come to any good (Works). All the tiny rules of refectory jobs, all the discussions, all the early mornings in church followed by gathering in the church throughout the day, all the private prayer and scripture reading, all the do’s and don’t’s, and all the grating characteristics and habits of the other monks: all of that is an opportunity to clear away the rocks and weeds of our own pettiness and whininess so that the seeds of God’s love can grow in the good soil of our cleansed hearts.
It takes a long time, and is tedious, and we can’t see our own progress, so the tools of perseverance and not comparing ourselves with others are important helps in preparing the soil of our lives. We will progress at times and fail at other times, but we won’t give up, because God never gives up – that’s Grace. May we work with the grace that is given to us. We are worth it. AMEN
Jeremiah 31:7-14
Ephesians 1:3-6,15-19a
Luke 2:41-52
January 5, 2020 Abbey Church Br. Abraham
It has taken two generations of stars to make us humans. In the words of Chrissie Hynde: “we’re special…so special”. But instead of treating ourselves and others and the world around us as the amazing stardust that we are, we so often treat each other like dirt. We don’t even treat our dirt very well. Still, God thinks we are special enough that he became one of us. We share DNA with God! God inhabits the material universe, making all of it a holy temple! Infinity flows throughout finitude! God is transcendent, immanent, and embedded in our world!
And we did not like that, so we killed Jesus. So, God solved that by raising Jesus from the dead, pulling us up into his resurrection. We are special because of creation, incarnation, and resurrection.
We need to remember that, and stop treating ourselves, others around us, and the things in our world so poorly. When we see someone whose life, words, and actions are causing others pain (bullies, business people, political figures, religious tyrants), we need to not only do what we can to stop the wrongdoing, but also have compassion on all involved (victims as well as perpetrators). Dehumanizing and damning the wrongdoer is in itself wrongdoing. After all, they are just as special as we are, and are caught in the same web of fear and sin as we are. They need help escaping evil just as much as we do.
God has wonderfully created, and yet more wonderfully restored, the dignity of human nature. May we take that to heart, and live as if it were true – because it is. AMEN
Isaiah 11:1-10
Romans 15:4-13
Matthew 3:1-12
December 8, 2019 Abbey Church Abraham
In our first reading this morning, Isaiah tells of a golden age of peace and happiness that will come when one of Jesse’s descendants brings righteousness and faithfulness to us. We identify that person as Jesus, and we look to him to bring the golden age to our private lives and the entire world. However, all we need to do is take a quick look around to realize that we are not in a golden age in our private lives or in the rest of the world. It is not here yet, as much as we pray for it and work for it. Paul knows this as he writes to the Christians in Rome, as we heard in our second reading this morning. He tells them to keep living in harmony and to keep believing, and especially to keep hoping.
We also heard from John the Baptist in our gospel story this morning, telling us to not only hope for the golden age, but to do something about it: “repent…prepare…bear fruit…”. John warned the people that the person coming to bring the golden age might not be what they were expecting, and what he was bringing might not be what they expected. John tells the religious people who were coming to him that their piety would not stand up to what the messiah was bringing. We often think of John the Baptist as someone who merely yelled at people whom he considered hypocrites. Maybe we should really think of him as someone who cared about people and so warned them when he thought they were in danger of missing out on the truth.
But still, those warnings would have come as a shock to all the religious people coming to hear him. The warnings would not only be a shock, they would have seemed unnatural and wrong because they weren’t the same as their religious viewpoint told them the way the world should be. The coming of Jesus should shake us up just as much as it shook them up. The things he brings should make us squirm in our smugness and self righteousness. The prophet Isaiah this morning is a good example this: wolves, leopards, lions and bears are not supposed to pal around with lambs, kids, calves, and cows (they are suppose to eat them). Children are not supposed to play around asp and adder dens, because the natural things those snakes are suppose to do is bite children. Isaiah is telling us that the unexpected one will do unexpected things, so it is in our best interest not to have a list of jobs for Jesus to take care of. He will do what he sees fit when he sees fit.
That might sound scary to us because it takes things out of our control. But really, it should make us feel safe and secure, because it means everything is in Jesus’s hands. There is no place safer than that. So, we need to make sure we are in those hands, instead of always trying to escape because we think we know better than Jesus. By trusting Jesus, the golden age is already within us, because with Jesus, every moment is an eternity of heaven. Then in our turn, we can take that heaven and give it to the world around us.
We are not there yet – that could not be more obvious. So, we wait. Tom Petty says: “the waiting is the hardest part”, so as we wait, we also prepare: we hope and pray, and make peace. We take ourselves out of the center of our petty lives and put God in the center (which in turn makes our lives not-so-petty). Jesus comes on Christmas Day. He can also come into our lives everyday and every moment. All of those comings involve unexpected things, but that is good, because it gets us ready for his next coming. AMEN
Sirach 10:12-18
Hebrews 13:1-8,15-16
Luke 14:1,7-14
September 1, 2019 Abraham Abbey Church
The “Wrath of God” is a common expression. Aunt Esther used it while hitting Fred Sanford on the head with her Bible and purse, Carrie’s mother probably used the term when warning her daughter about having any kind of fun, and many people reading our scriptures this morning would describe what happens to the people who ignore the advice given as the “Wrath of God”. The first reading actually describes some of the bad things that happen to people who “forsake the Lord”.
But there might be a better take on who or what causes all the problems that come about when we sin. Problems do indeed come about when we sin – always. Sometimes it is just not we who experience the problems, or sometimes we do feel the consequences after a long time of thinking we have “gotten away with it”, and of course, sometimes the effects are immediate and land right on our own heads. But sin does always cause problems (“wrath” if you want to call it that). But it just does not seem that the God shown to us by Jesus is someone who sits around waiting to smite people who break the rules he seems to love making so many of. Maybe the reason there are so many rules is because the foundation of the universe is love, and when we do unloving things we are throwing a wrench in our little corner of the cosmos, making it not work properly for us and the people around us. So maybe all the rules are God’s way of reminding us to do everything in love so that we do not cause harm for ourselves and others. In other words, the rules are there to prevent us from making wrath and bringing it upon ourselves and others.
Sin is simply doing unloving things: prideful government (as in our first reading), being inhospitable, adulterous, and greedy (as in our second reading), and giving things with strings attached (as in our gospel reading). Building lives of sin simply means that we are putting ourselves in the center of everything rather than living in the already established truth that God is the center of everything. When we live with God in the center, we and those around us simply fit in the mix and can go about our daily lives with gratitude and joy, knowing full well that we are not the sources of our own existence. When we try to make ourselves the center of our universes and live as if we are the sources of our own existence, things don’t go well, because we cannot hold it together. Things become fouled up and wrath is created. The wrath is our own fault and our own creation.
So, maybe humans should stop blaming God for all the bad consequences we ourselves have been causing ever since we have been around. Jesus is not here to send us to hell; his job is to pull us out of the hell we make for ourselves and those around us. Why not make the job easier by making less wrath? We can do it. The grace of God is all we need to do it, and the grace of God is the surest thing in the world. AMEN
Ecless 1:2, 12-14,2:18-20
Col 3:1-11
Luke 12:13-21
August 4, 2019 Abbey Church Abraham
“We came into this life unsheltered and all alone. That’s how we came and for sure that’s how we go out.*” That’s what the great theologian Grace Slick sings, and she’s right. And she’s not being sad about it, and Solomon (the author of our first reading this morning) needs to listen to her and cheer up. Things don’t last. People don’t last. So it is all the more important that we love the things and the people around us while we can, because some day, they will be gone, and we will be gone.
Things are good, because they are made by God. But things aren’t God, so as much as we should love the things and people around us, we should love God even more, because God will last. In fact, God’s being is infinitiely more than our being, so we should love God infinitely more than things. More than that, because God’s being is of such a different order than our being, we should love God in a different way of loving than we love people and things.
The more we love God, the more we realize the goodness of the world God has made, and the more we realize that everything receives its integrity and legitimacy solely from God, never from us. Everything is a gift from God. In the eyes of the universe, we have no rights to anything – everything is a gift. So we take it, love it, take care of it for awhile, and then give it back with joy and gratitude.
There is no need for greed or fear. The world does not need to function the way we insist that is does. We are just riding along the edges of creation along with everything else, swirling around God. When we try to make ourselves the center and have things swirl around us, it only causes dangerous eddies that hurt us and the people around us.
So, love deeply and let go gratefully. “We came into this life unsheltered and all alone. That’s how we came and for sure that’s how we go out.” AMEN
* “That’s For Sure” from the 1974 album DRAGONFLY by Jefferson Starship