December 7, 2025

You know that old adage about a stopped clock or a broken clock being right at least twice a day? So for years, the house I grew up in, the house my parents moved to in Arkansas, we’ve had a framed quotation prominently displayed somewhere in the house. And it’s a quotation attributed to Calvin Coolidge. And I bring that up because Coolidge is considered by some lists to be one of the worst presidents that we’ve ever had in the United States. And yet, this quote offers some profound truth:

"Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not. Nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not. Unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not. The world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent."

And I dare say that there is a sense in which this has been kind of a defining feature of my family's life story, of my own story throughout my own life. My grandparents, as I’ve talked about many times before, who I spent significant time with growing up, who deeply shaped and formed me, all four of them had come from very difficult and challenging backgrounds and achieved great things in their lives. My parents, both of them, completed PhDs simultaneously, together, and had my younger brother in the middle of all of that.

And then in my own life, I’ve had a lot of different times of trial, of struggle, of places in which I have had to put my head down and simply push through and persevere. And I think, looking back on it, that was something that significantly connected me here to St. Anne’s. Because I think our faith journey as a community has been, in a very fundamental way, a story of persistence, of perseverance in times of great difficulty and challenge.

And you might wonder where that connects with anything today. But I want to offer that reality as a part of what John [the Baptist] is saying in this wilderness space east of the Jordan River. I think the most striking phrase in the whole of the gospel passage today is his admonition to these Pharisees and Sadducees: “You brood of vipers! Who told you to flee from the wrath to come?”

So often, in our settled, comfortable, easy lives, when struggle is before us, it is so very easy to run away. So very easy to seek solace, to find the escape. In the weeks after the world shut down in 2020 with the pandemic, one of the outlets that Julie and I found to stay sane was a group of friends who we would get together with on Zoom, and we started a book club. And, appropriately, fittingly, the very first book we read was The Decameron, this mid-century, 16th century work of Italian origin about a group of people facing the plague who run away into the countryside. To forget the ills of the world. To live life in ease and luxury. While everything else is collapsing and falling down.

But truly, honestly, in those moments of great chaos and tumult, as Christians, as people of faith, we are called to be in the muck and the mire. First century Israel was a place of great tumult and chaos. The Pharisees and the Sadducees were very much involved in some of the major political divisions and debates of the day. And for them to come seek John is to leave all of that behind. And I think that’s instructive for us. Because we laud and celebrate what John is doing as the forerunner of what Christ will do. So in a way, they’re appropriately responding. They’re coming to receive this baptism. They have a vision of the light.

But they are taking advantage of that light. They’re, instead of using it as a place of grounded and foundational orientation, they’re using it as an excuse to get away from the difficulties that they are facing. Now, I’m reading into that a little bit. But I think that may be what John’s getting at in his criticism of them. Because even as they may be doing what we might perceive as right, seeking his counsel, his baptism, the transformation that he is preaching, what does he do but send them right back from where they came? Who told you to escape? Who told you to give up on the places that God has placed you?

I was very profoundly moved just a couple of weeks ago when I went to our clergy day retreat. When Brother James Dowd, an Episcopal Benedict, and I referenced him last week as well, said, and he’s a gay man who lived even before he joined the order in New York City in the 80s. He said, “This is the second pandemic of my life.” He said the 1980s for us in New York had the same uncertainties, the same fears, the same traumas that all of you have now experienced in the pandemic. I’ve done this two times now. And how very powerful that was. Granted, I was born in 86, so I have the vaguest memories of that time. But there’s a sense. There’s a sense in which so many of us stood by, sat by, while so many struggled and were in pain and were dying.

And so today, when we look at the needs of the world around us in our present circumstance, what does it mean for us to stay in the muck and the mire? How do we continue to live lives of service even as we work on ourselves and deepening and developing our connection to the kingdom? What does it mean to both await, as we do in this season of Advent, and to act? How do we do those two things simultaneously?

Well, one approach, one response, I think, is the gift of the Benedictine tradition that I have been sharing with you all over the course of the last few weeks. As I mentioned, we are journeying in our formation offering between the two services in a reflection over this period of Advent on how the Benedictine gift, the tradition of Benedictine life can help deepen and shape our sense of what it means to live this tightrope of action and awaiting.

One of the most significant sections of the whole of the Rule of Benedict is Chapter 7, which is the virtues of life that we are to cultivate when we embrace Benedictine spirituality. And one of the principal virtues, maybe the singular principal virtue, that Benedict identifies, is the virtue of humility. And yet he immediately then goes on to describe humility in ways that we as modern hearers might think quite abrasive and problematic. Humility as an act of humiliation, of self-denial to the point that we let others abuse or oppress or step on us.

The great 20th century Benedictine nun and spiritual writer Joan Chidester, in her commentary on the Rule of Saint Benedict, I think helpfully describes this balancing act. And she wrote this. I want you to hear. This is a little bit of a long paragraph. But she wrote this in 1993, 30 years ago. Over 30 years ago. And yet how prescient it is for us today too. She writes:

"The Roman Empire in which Benedict of Nursia wrote his alternative rule of life was a civilization in a decline not unlike our own. The economy was deteriorating. The helpless were being destroyed by the warlike. The rich lived on the backs of the poor. The powerful few made decisions that profited them, but plunged the powerless, many, into continual chaos. The empire expended more and more of its resources on militarism designed to maintain a system that, strained from within and threatened from without, was already long dead. It is an environment like that into which Benedict of Nursia flung a rule for privileged Roman citizens calling for humility: a proper sense of self in a universe of wonders. When we make ourselves God, no one in the world is safe in our presence. Humility, in other words, is the basis for right relationships in life."

"Later centuries distorted the notion and confused the concept of humility with lack of self-esteem, and substituted the warped and useless practice... of self-neglect. The warped and useless practice of humiliation. In other words," she says, "it is the basis, again, for right relationships in life."

I want us, as we think this morning, about what it is that we are hearing called to in John’s admonition, to consider what it means for us to respond with humility in a time of waiting. Because it’s not just about living our lives in our little bubbles in our echo chambers in a better, more Christ-centered way. But humility, humility is also, when we embrace it fully, a call to action, a call to life lived in the public square.

Later on in the Rule of Saint Benedict and then in the Benedictine tradition, we have this concept of fidelity that gets developed. In Latin, conversio morum, a conversion of manners or a conversion of life. And it’s not just a conversion that happens. Our English doesn’t really do this very well—happens in a once-off situation where it’s done and we move on—but it is an eternal present, an ongoing conversion of life that happens every moment of every day, a constant process of living newly. As we talked about last week, that Benedictine adage that we always begin again.

And I think it’s in that space then, in humility, that we are able to see the goodness of the world even in times of great brokenness. That we have someone like Calvin Coolidge, one of our least liked presidents, offering such a profound observation on the power of persistence and perseverance. When we consider anew what John is calling us to, the admonition against running away, the call to stay in the muck and the mire.

We have a call to be present. Prayerfully. Humbly. Committedly. To the needs and challenges that we face in the world around us. Even when things seem difficult. We have a call to stay. To await. And to work.

So friends, on this Second Sunday of Advent, as we continue this journey of awaiting, as we continue to seek the light and await the light in a time of darkness. May we hear this invitation to humility anew. Refresh our commitment to our call to walk with humility. And to ever more focus and center ourselves on the actions of compassion, love, and work of renewal that God is calling us into in this time and always. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.