Archives for November 2019
Take Courage
It is easy to see the world and despair, or fear, or do nothing. But take courage, God is with you, and you will be strengthened to be a part of God’s healing.
Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 32 C
Texts: Haggai 1:15b – 2:9; 2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17; Luke 20:27-38
Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
They couldn’t see how to restore what was once so beautiful.
The Jewish exiles returned home from Babylon to disaster. Jerusalem’s walls broken, homes burned, and, worst of all, God’s Temple destroyed. Being home was wonderful, but what now? How can they imagine starting over?
The Thessalonians couldn’t see a possible future. First, they’d become terrified when their loved ones still died as they had before, even after believing in Christ. So Paul had to reassure them. Now apparently they got another letter, claiming it’s from Paul, warning them that the end of the world was at hand. How do you live with that fear hanging over?
The Sadducees couldn’t see the hope Jesus offered. They didn’t believe in resurrection, and Jesus, like the Pharisees, did. In spite of his wisdom, his teaching, his acts of divine power and mercy, they couldn’t see anything in Jesus except someone to be mocked, someone to be trapped into saying something ridiculous, if possible.
So the Judeans turned inward; they took care of themselves.
They rebuilt their homes, started picking up rubble, made a life in the midst of devastation. But as we hear Haggai speak, 18 years have passed since their return, and the Temple still lies in ruins. They haven’t rebuilt their house of worship, the house of God.
The Thessalonians fell into frightened inactivity. If our loved ones are dying, what’s the point of faith? If the world’s going to end, what’s the point of doing anything? Some apparently stopped doing work entirely.
And the Sadducees respond to their inability to see what God is doing in Christ with cynical baiting. They make up a horrible story based on Jewish law that mocks anyone who believes in the resurrection from the dead, trying to trick Jesus. They don’t seem to want enlightenment, just entertainment. Or worse, evidence for a trial.
Sometimes our readings seem to speak directly to our situation. Today is such a day.
The Church has long ended the Church Year with readings about the end times, apocalyptic Scriptures. Today, that seems fitting. The anxiety of all these people feels like our own.
We haven’t returned from exile, but as we look at the state of our beautiful earth, how we’ve destroyed it, how so much is in ruin, we despair. Even if everyone in this country agreed to start working on ending our contribution to climate change, even started trying to reverse it, finally joining the rest of the world in this task, we have no idea if we’re too late. We don’t know if we’ve ruined our home permanently and irreversibly. And we still can’t even get everyone to agree it’s a disaster.
Our cherished institutions of democracy and government seem to be on the verge of failing, too. Things we took for granted – rule of law, decency, the idea that there are facts, truths, that exist beyond personal opinion – we seem to be in danger of losing forever. We don’t know if we can restore any of this, even if we could get others to agree it needed to be restored.
So, like the exiles, we are tempted to despair at the sheer amount of work to be done, and turn inward, taking care of our own needs. Like the Thessalonians, we are tempted to do nothing, to sit out all these problems. If it’s all crashing down, what’s the point? And we are tempted to take the Sadducees’ path, mocking what we don’t understand, hiding our anxiety behind cynical criticism, pretending we’re not worried or despairing.
But did you hear what else was in our readings? Did you hear God’s voice?
God speaks in all these readings with hope and promise in the midst of the despair, the fear, and the feigned indifference.
Jesus – the Triune God’s Word in the flesh – ignores the cynical question and goes straight to reassurance: the point of resurrection, Jesus says, is that it is God’s life that makes you alive. You are children of the resurrection, children of God. What life after death will be like, don’t worry about that, Jesus says. Just know that right now, already, you are resurrection children, God’s life in you.
And that, Paul says, is where your hope comes from. God “loves you and through grace gives you,” Paul says, “eternal comfort and good hope.”
And Haggai brings it all together: “take courage,” he says three times, “take courage, says the Lord, for I am with you. My spirit abides among you; do not fear.” I am with you. My spirit lives in you. Don’t be afraid. That’s God’s answer to your despair, your fear, your confusion, even your inability to act.
And that’s not an empty promise. God’s Spirit is in you. You are not alone. That means things can change.
Paul says that the God who “loves you and by grace gives you eternal comfort and good hope” will also now “comfort your heart and strengthen it for every good work and word.” All this Christ-work, this servant work we’ve heard Jesus call us to this summer and fall, all that is ours to do, but it’s ours to do with the comfort and strength of God in our hearts.
So, Haggai says to his people, you can rebuild the Temple. God will be with you, and it will happen. Paul says to the Thessalonians, you can do your calling as followers of Christ, get out of your idleness, step up and be Christ, because you are not alone, God is with you. And Jesus’ calling to you and to me is grounded in our reality of being resurrection children. As Paul said to the Ephesians last week, the same power that raised Jesus from the dead now works in you.
And that’s how this world will be changed. That’s how God will restore all things.
It’s all about the heart, it turns out.
“Take courage,” Haggai says. Courage, literally heart-strength. That’s God’s gift to you. And that’s good news to all who suffer from injustice and oppression, all who despair over the devastation of this world, all who are torn from their families by our own indifferent and wicked leaders, all who struggle to be heard and seen for who they are, all who in any way wonder where God is, and whether God sees any of this, and whether God is going to do anything. God says, I am here. You are not alone. And in these my children – in you, God means! – I am bringing healing and life.
Dear friends, God is with you, giving your heart courage, and you are needed to make a difference. If God can raise Jesus, God can bring life to anything that is dead. And you will be a part of that. And so will I, and all God’s children, until the whole creation sings again.
In the name of Jesus. Amen
The Olive Branch, 11/6/19
The Body of Christ
The church, full of beloved saints, is the living body of Christ, called to God’s mission in the world.
Vicar Bristol Reading
All Saints Day
Texts: Ephesians 1:11-23; Luke 6:20-31
Beloved saints of God, grace to you and peace, in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The closest I have ever been to the body of Christ was at the place where that body died, Calvary, the site of Jesus’ crucifixion.
In Jesus’ day, Calvary was a rocky hill just outside the city gates of Jerusalem, where criminals were put to death. Today, it’s buried underneath an enormous, ornate church in the Old City. When you visit Calvary, you wait inside that church for hours alongside hundreds other religious pilgrims from all over the world. One by one, you kneel beneath the lavish gold altar that has been constructed over the spot. You have to get down on your hands and knees and actually crawl underneath it, and then you reach your hand into a hole in the floor under the altar, and at the bottom of the hole, you can touch stone, the ground that was beneath the cross of Christ.
You have traveled for days and waited for hours, but your chance to touch this particular stone lasts for only a few seconds. And, if you’re like me, you spend those few seconds trying to imagine that this very stone that you are touching with your body was once touched by the body of Jesus. You try to feel some kind of physical closeness to Christ, to reach underneath everything that humans have piled on over the years. And you think, “Maybe Jesus was here, right here. Maybe his feet, his hands, his blood touched this stone. Maybe this is the closest I’ll ever be to the real body of Christ.” And then your turn is over and you move on so another pilgrim can reach the very ground touched by God.
While I was away visiting the place where Jesus died, back home in Chicago my seminary advisor died.
Gordon was my wise teacher and trusted friend, an encourager and confidant in my journey as a ministerial leader. His death was unexpected, and it was jarring to receive this news on the other side of the world. The last time we’d spoken, neither of us had known he was sick, so we hadn’t said goodbye. For months after, it felt surreal that he was really gone, and I struggled to say out loud that he had died. But this morning, almost exactly ten months since his passing, I am ready to hear it out loud. I added Gordon’s name to the Book of Saints, so he will be lifted up in prayer, alongside all the precious ones we remember today.
There are countless stories about who these saints were and the impact they had on your lives. There are countless memories – of joy and sorrow – that fill this room as their names are read. We speak their names because there is power in naming. There is power in remembering. We remember the saints who have gone before us because their faithfulness inspires us to live faithfully. The way they embodied Christ to us, moves us to embody Christ in the world now.
We call these departed siblings in faith “saints,” not because their lives were flawless but because their lives were beloved.
They were – and are – loved by you, and they were and are infinitely loved by God. Sometimes we fall into the trap of thinking that one has to earn the designation of “saint,” by living a perfect life of selfless service. But in our tradition we name all the faithful as saints, knowing that we are all imperfect and we are all forgiven. Certainly we should do our very best to embody God’s compassion in our actions. Jesus tells us more than once that we are all called to care for any who are in need and to love even our enemies. But – it is not human actions that make saints. It is God’s action: God’s boundless love, God’s unlimited mercy, that’s what makes saints of us all. Each life, marked by both weeping and laughter, is seen and valued by God. Every person, simultaneously saint and sinner, is held in God’s grace forever. No life is too broken, too painful, too sinful for God to be fully present. Everyone, no matter their circumstances, can be transformed by the Spirit for the sake of the Gospel.
Jesus’s words in Luke are a reminder of this; Jesus says that those who suffer are the inheritors of the riches of God’s kingdom.
Those who are poor, hungry, and excluded are called “blessed” in God’s reign. Blessing, then, doesn’t always entail feeling good or avoiding struggle. Blessing doesn’t equate to worldly success. If you measure the value of a life by what the world considers successful, you will miss the ways God’s spirit is at work in all people, no matter how successful they look according to the world’s standards. When we name and remember the saints who have gone before, we don’t remember their worldly success, we remember their faithfulness to God. Likewise, when we name and celebrate the saints who are newly baptized, we don’t claim for them the gift of wealth or comfort, but the gift of God’s Spirit and the call to God’s mission. The true blessing that is given to all the saints is the gracious love of God, abundant in this life and the next. An inheritance that is sure. A treasure that is eternal. It cannot be undone or taken away, not by hunger, not by poverty, not by suffering, not by death – thanks be to God!
And because that inheritance is sure and that treasure is eternal, you are freed.
You are freed by love of God, and freed to love your neighbor. You are sent out to proclaim the Gospel, the good news, with your words and with your deeds. And the good news is this: Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again. Resurrection is the good news! God makes life possible where life seemed impossible. Christ’s death on the cross at Calvary was not the final word.
So the place where Jesus died was not the closest I’ve ever been to the body of Christ, because Christ’s body is not there on that rock of Calvary, because Christ’s body is not dead.
God’s resurrecting power is stronger than death, and has redeemed all of creation. And Paul tells us that the very same power that raised Christ from the dead is still at work in the world… in you. You are the living body of Christ. You, the saints of God, the ones marked with the seal of the Holy Spirit, the ones sent into the world to serve, you are Christ’s body. The body of Christ is here, right here, alive in the faithful saints of God: saints that have passed into eternal life, saints that are living out the mission of the Gospel right now, and saints that are being baptized into new life every day. The church, full of beloved saints, is the body of Christ that is being made new again and again. That is the power of resurrection, and that is the power of God in you.
Amen.