Archives for March 2019
Under the Wings
God will draw all creation under wings of death-defeating love. There’s no point in fighting it or rejecting others from it. So live in God’s embrace!
Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Second Sunday in Lent, year C
Texts: Luke 13:31-35; Philippians 3:17 – 4:1
Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
Something doesn’t add up here.
Jesus’ grief that God’s people have rejected him is heartbreaking. But Jesus doesn’t say that the people rejected his teachings. Or his miracles. Or who he said he was. He says: “How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings and you were not willing!” Jesus mourns that Jerusalem – standing for all of Israel – has rejected Jesus’ maternal love, and therefore rejected God’s maternal love.
And that doesn’t make any sense. Who doesn’t want to be gathered under God’s wings, safe, beloved?
If we start by asking that of Jesus’ time, we see that it was for reasons he doesn’t mention here.
Jesus attracted lots of those he longed to draw under his wings. The crowds that followed him loved him. He had less success with the leaders of his people.
And they did reject his teachings. Like teaching that living in God’s love was more important than keeping one of God’s laws, if the two were in conflict. Or teaching that God was more interested in sinners who repented than folks who thought they were good enough they didn’t need repentance.
They rejected his behavior, especially his spending time with “sinful” people. Prostitutes. Tax collectors. Poor, uneducated people. Lepers. He even spoke with women publicly. These weren’t the “right” people.
They rejected his embrace because they rejected everything he stood for. If people followed his teachings, lived as he lived, believed what he believed, all their authority and power would be gone.
So even when they saw miracles right before their eyes, they opposed Jesus. He was too much of a threat for them to see clearly.
Now, this is becoming a nice little morality tale, and that’s exceedingly dangerous.
We comfortably talk about how bad the authorities were in Jesus’ time. Thinking, “what’s wrong with them,” happy that we’re different. End of story, end of sermon. Be wary of that conclusion.
Today, Paul cuts far too close to this line, too. There are “those people” whom Paul confidently says live as enemies of the cross, whose “god is the belly,” whose minds are set on earthly things. As we just did with the authorities, Paul has fallen into “we” and “they” language. He would have done better to include himself and the Philippians amongst those who sometimes get focused on earthly things over heavenly. So would we.
Such “we” and “they” language overpowers honesty about yourself and your life with lies. It keeps the truth at arm’s length, applied only to others, which might feel safe, but it’s a false security. Because we miss the truth about our own path, our own prejudice, our own reality. We miss the probability that we might be among those who reject the wings of Jesus’ embrace. And if we miss that, we miss everything.
Our problem is the same as these religious leaders. Notice the pattern in what they rejected:
It was the people Jesus embraced, more than anything else, that turned them away. Jesus’ proclamation of God’s love was unabashedly for all. Sinners. Broken people. People who didn’t darken the door of a synagogue. People who were unacceptable from birth: women; non-Jews; even the hated Romans. Jesus welcomed and embraced them all.
Jesus’ actions, his teachings, and most deeply, his death and resurrection, were his embrace, his enfolding of God’s wings around God’s people. And it’s pretty clear that some couldn’t handle just how broad the category “God’s people” really was.
Jesus would say to Paul here, “I know you think these others are wrong, that they’re focused on worldly things, that they even seem to be my enemies. But know this: I love them enough to die for them, too.”
And this exposes a sensitive nerve in us: how very anxious we are about who else is invited into the enfolding wings of God’s love, the embrace God the mother hen so longs to place around the world. We don’t want to share space under the wings with certain people any more than these authorities did.
Christians have always struggled with this.
The history of Jesus’ followers is littered with the bodies and lives of people Christians have deemed “those people,” people who don’t belong in God’s embrace. From the Crusades to the Inquistion, to Christian support of racism and slavery that still exists, Christians regularly oppose Christ and put people into groups, labelling them.
And once you do that, as Hitler taught us well, you can reject without much effort. If you think God hates Muslims, you can easily conclude that you don’t have to worry much about how they’re treated. If you think God can’t welcome people who do or think certain things that offend you, you can easily believe that you don’t have to have any compassion for them.
If Jesus were doing public ministry here in person, as he did 2,000 years ago, he’d welcome folks that some of us would be very uncomfortable with, maybe even people we know well. But when you close your heart to anyone, you close your heart to God. When you reject anyone God loves, you reject God.
Here’s an interesting truth about chickens.
Someone whose family had a farm once told me about how they’d use brood hens to nurture and care for baby chicks that arrived from the hatchery. But sometimes the hens wouldn’t accept the unknown chicks. They’d ignore them. Her father then would take the handle end of a hammer, and gently tap the hens on the head, stunning them. When they woke up, they’d see the same baby chicks and think they were their own. They’d bring them under their wings.
This flips the image from Jesus as hen to us as hen, but there’s an important truth here. Maybe the love and grace of Jesus is your tap on the head. Paul says people often have their minds on earthly things, worldly issues. Rejecting certain people because of who they are or what they do is certainly an earthly thing. The heavenly thing is to realize God’s love is so astonishingly broad it covers all creatures in an embrace. But something has to wake you up to see differently.
We often deny God’s love for others when we have difficulty believing we ourselves can be loved by God.
If you’ve faced the darkness of fear that you aren’t loved, if you don’t feel certain God really loves you, it’s hard to extend a love you don’t feel you have to people you don’t like or trust.
Well, God loves you infinitely. With a love that destroys death. A love that looks at all your failure and pain, all your sin and bad thoughts, all your things you wish no one knew about, and sees a beloved child of God who needs to be brought into God’s embrace.
Now, isn’t that a tap on the head? Does it change what you see in others?
Enjoy your place under God’s wings. They’re there to surround you and strengthen you for this hard world, and prepare you for the joy of the next. They’re a shelter in your storms, a comfort in your pain, a warmth when you’re cold.
But look around: sure enough, there are others under those wings you don’t like. Maybe they don’t like you, either. But the wings are for them as well as you. Can you see that? It’s part of the deal with God’s love.
And for that you can give eternal thanks.
In the name of Jesus. Amen
Midweek Lent, 2019 + I AM WHO I AM Is My Shepherd
Week 1: You lead me beside still waters . . . you anoint my head with oil . . .
Belonging
Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
Texts: Psalm 23; John 10:1-5
Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
Who are you? Where do you come from? Where do you belong?
People all over the world are sending their DNA to a number of companies, hoping to find out who they really are. Your DNA can tell you the percentages of your ethnic roots, say where your earliest ancestors lived, even follow the movement of your family around the world. There are rich and diverse cultures and languages, a tapestry of racial and ethnic identities among the humans that God has made and placed here. People seem to want to know where they fit in, that they belong to a family.
But in the 23rd Psalm, which we’ll be focusing on all Lent, we have a promise of belonging that’s made to all the people of the earth. Whatever your DNA tells you about where you’ve been and who your ancestors are, you – and all creatures – belong to the God who made all things.
When Moses heard a voice in a burning bush, that voice identified itself as the God of Moses’ ancestors.
Moses belonged to the family of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The God of those ancestors spoke, calling him to go to Egypt and free God’s people. But when Moses asked for a name, so he could tell the people who sent him, God moved beyond a family god. God said, “I AM WHO I AM.”
This name, which sounds like breathing in and out when spoken, became known to Israel as the name of the one true God who made all things. The God who spoke to their ancestors actually was the God of all nations. Throughout their Scriptures God made this claim. In an age where most gods were seen as tribal, national, belonging to one people, one ancestry line, remarkably the God of Israel said, “I AM WHO I AM,” I am existence, and all creation belongs to me.
Israel was God’s chosen people, not for their own sake, but to witness of this true God to all peoples.
David, the Shepherd King, begins Psalm 23 with this true name of God.
Singing of belonging to God as a sheep belongs to a shepherd, David named the name of the God Who Is. We sing “the LORD is my shepherd,” because in English we follow the Jewish practice of not naming God’s true name aloud. We substitute “LORD,” in small capital letters, to remind us of the name behind the word.
But it is the God whose name means existence, being, “I AM WHO I AM,” whom David called Shepherd. Not a tribal god, not a god that belonged to one country or people. In naming “I AM” as Shepherd, David did a profound thing. He offered to the whole creation this God as Shepherd.
When you pray Psalm 23, sing it, you claim this Shepherd for yourself.
So when you trace your DNA, when you remember your great-great-great-grandmother and where she came from, remember this: even before the earliest of your ancestors walked on earth they, and you, were in the mind and heart of God.
In our world that is fraught with racial prejudice, nationalism and hatred of people who look or speak or dress or behave differently, this is a powerful truth to remember. We can’t and shouldn’t avoid the hard conversations, the careful listening to those who have been oppressed and still are harmed because of their race or culture. We rejoice in the diversity of cultures and languages and races that God delighted to create on this planet.
But our best hope for going forward is also remembering that the true God, “I AM WHO I AM,” is God of all peoples, all creatures, all creation. The God who led David to green pastures beside still waters, providing all David wanted or needed, this God desires green pastures and still waters, abundance, for all creation.
In these still waters, we are reminded of our baptism.
Obviously David didn’t know baptism. But we can’t help but be drawn to that image and remember the waters that claimed us as God’s own. But do we claim in our Baptism that we are somehow God’s special ones, we alone are loved by God? We can’t. It goes against everything Scripture says about how the God named I AM loves and cares for the whole creation.
Now, David didn’t know our baptism, but he did know about anointing. Samuel poured oil over his head, anointing him king. He was set apart as God’s anointed, which in Hebrew is “Messiah.” In Greek, “Christ.” And there we find our answer.
3,000 years later we still anoint heads with oil, setting people apart as God’s anointed ones.
After the washing of baptism, oil is placed on the head, claiming this person as God’s Christ for the sake of the world, just like David. Just like Jesus himself. And in this psalm, David remembers that gift: “you anoint my head with oil,” he says. This isn’t a random line. This is David’s recalling of his being sent as God’s witness in the world.
And that’s our truth. Baptism is our anointing for service in this world, not a sign of our special favor with God. In baptism you are made God’s Christ and sent out to proclaim God’s good news.
I AM WHO I AM is your shepherd, and now sends you out to witness to all.
That’s the grace of your calling. You belong to the one, true God, who provides you green pastures and still waters. But that same true God longs for all the creation to find green pastures and still waters. Hope and life. Food and shelter. Love and welcome.
Your Shepherd has anointed you and called you to tell the whole world in all its diversity that they belong. That whatever their DNA might say about their past, their deepest DNA is that of the God who made all things. That God, their Shepherd is, as Jesus claimed, no stranger, but the One who knows their name and loves them forever.
Let us go forth, wet once again with the water of the font, and living in our anointing as Christ for the world. It’s time to tell the creation the good news of their Shepherd God.
In the name of Jesus. Amen
The Olive Branch, 3/13/19
Seeking Wilderness
The Spirit wants to lead you into the wilderness, away from distractions, so God can speak clearly to you and strengthen you for your ministry and life as Christ.
Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The First Sunday in Lent, year C
Text: Luke 4:1-13
Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
If God wanted to speak to you, how would God get through?
Today Jesus walks away from the Jordan, wet from baptism, and the Holy Spirit leads him into the Judean wilderness, a harsh landscape. There he fasts for forty days, faces temptation, and at the end of his time in the desert, steps back into the world and begins his ministry.
If this story we hear every first Sunday in Lent is to be more than just an historical curiosity, if it’s supposed to mean anything to your life, then let’s be clear: Jesus intentionally enters the wilderness.
This isn’t a story about how life is sometimes a wilderness, how we can face threats, struggles, difficulties, and survive. This wilderness was completely avoidable. Jesus could’ve left his baptism and immediately begun teaching, walking his way back north to Galilee. But the Spirit led him another way.
Because the Son of God, needed to listen, needed to be connected into the life of the Triune God. The crowds, the noise, the world were all awaiting him. But first he needed to get away.
This was a critical time for Jesus.
We have no idea what it meant for the divine inner relationship of the Trinity to have the Son in human flesh. But we do know Jesus prayed. He spoke to the One he called Father and was filled with the One he called Spirit. Being in the wilderness, focused, listening, helped Jesus know clearly who he was, what he was meant to be, and what path he would be walking as he left the wilderness.
Every temptation, every challenge he faced in the wilderness, returned in his ministry, and most clearly in Gethsemane that night before his death. Would he take advantage of his divine power to help himself? Would he try to win the world over by force? Would he trust the Father and the Spirit to be with him even if he were threatened with death? This isn’t the last time he’d face these questions, nor the last time he’d get away to pray and listen. But from here, Jesus knew how he would answer them.
If God wanted to speak to you, how would God get through?
If Jesus, the very Son of God, needed to get away from distractions and noise to focus, listen, and be prepared and strengthened by the voice of God for the life he would live, don’t you also need that? But how will God get through the distractions?
What’s the last thing you see at night – is it the light of your phone screen? Is it the television, putting you to sleep? How quickly after you rise in the morning do you reconnect with news, music, social media? How often is your house or office or car quiet of any noise – radio, music, television?
Certainly some here don’t live by the light of a smartphone, that’s a generational thing. For some, rather than the noise of small children or the bustle of getting ready for work, the tiredness of coming home late and crashing on the couch for something mindless, for some perhaps the day is filled with too many empty hours, with too little to do. But what do you do with those hours? Do you fill them with distractions?
In our chaotic world we’ve lost any sense of still places, of going aside from the day even a few minutes, simply to listen. We don’t often speak to each other of seeking wilderness, places to listen to God’s voice for the day, or find time for it.
This isn’t meant to be a guilt trip. But ask this again, “If God wanted to speak to you, how would God get through?” Would God be able to get you to put aside the latest news, turn off your favorite program, stop your rushing or sleep-walking through the day and get your attention?
And if God can’t get through, then ask this: “Whose voice am I listening to every day? Who really leads me?”
It’s complicated, because everyone might need a different wilderness.
I’ve learned more of my need as I’ve gotten older. I’ve always struggled with the traditional fifteen or thirty minute “devotions” in the morning. It’s hard for me to remember it, and I often fall asleep. But I’ve learned silence in the morning as I walk around and prepare is deeply helpful. I also read and contemplate on a daily email devotion. But I’ve recently realized how often the last minutes of my day are spent with a lighted screen in my face, and I need to consider if that’s how I want to end each day.
A number of years ago I discovered that I loved walking as an exercise. But it has also become my best wilderness. For nearly an hour almost every day I can walk in silence – no music or podcasts – and listen to the world, listen to God. The walking becomes prayer, give and take with God, listening and speaking. It’s harder to find silence walking in winter – due to the weather I do it inside, and the gym is noisy – but it’s still a wilderness walk for me.
I don’t have a prescription for each of you. But consider Jesus’ experience and look at your day with new eyes. And pray – the Holy Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness and longs to lead you as well. How might the Spirit help? Are there places you can set aside time from distractions and other things? Can you start with five minutes of simply being open to God’s voice – perhaps beginning with reading Scripture or a devotion? Two of the classic Lenten disciplines – fasting and prayer – could be especially helpful. And whatever discipline you find, seek something you’ll continue after Easter comes, not just something for these forty days.
But we don’t have to overthink this, either.
The wonderful poet Mary Oliver, who died recently, had this wisdom to share:
It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak. [1]
“A silence in which another voice may speak.” That’s what Jesus was looking for as the Spirit led him into the desert. Where can you find such a silence? As the poet says, it doesn’t have to be elaborate or complicated. Just pay attention – even to weeds or small stones or piles of snow – find a space in your day where you are able to notice what is around you and learn to focus, a space where you aren’t filling it with any outside noise or internal anxiety. And listen.
We could help each other, starting with this Lent.
We could share, “here’s how I listen to God; here’s where my spirit is fed and I’m strengthened.” Certainly our worship here each week is a shared time apart, a wilderness to seek and listen for God. But the more of us that share our wisdom with each other about our daily walk, the more chances there are you’ll hear of possible paths into the wilderness that could help you hear God’s voice.
So if you have ways you’d like to share, talk to me. We could put these in the Olive Branch, either written by you for the community, or given to me to write up. And if you wonder about other people’s practices of seeking wilderness, ask them. Trust each other that we’re all desiring a faithful path, and we’re all struggling to find it. Trust that God has already planted a lot of wisdom in this community. Let’s take advantage of that to help each other in this path.
Because here’s the Good News, the great news of this story of Jesus’ temptation for you: God most definitely wants to speak to you and draw you into God’s life.
The Holy Spirit desires to take you into a wilderness, to connect with the Triune God who loves you and knows you and dreams for you. The Spirit says, “Come, find a place of silence where another voice may speak to you.”
You know you are sent into the world as Christ. But what you need, what I need, is to be as prepared as Jesus was for that sending. To be so joined into the life of the Triune God that when setbacks or temptations or suffering or frustration or boredom come, you are strong because God is in you and you can hear God, speak God into what assails you. You are clear about your purpose, and Who sent you and Who still walks with you.
So, come. Let’s help each other find wilderness. Let the Spirit lead you into a place where you can hear God’s voice and be strengthened to re-enter your life’s mission as Christ.
In the name of Jesus. Amen
[1] Mary Oliver, “Praying,” from Thirst, Beacon Press, 2006, p. 37.