Where you are right now in this world and all the turmoil: blessed are you, because that’s where God is, too.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fourth Sunday after Epiphany, Lect. 4 A
Texts: Matthew 5:1-12; Micah 6:1-8; 1 Corinthians 1:18-31

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

This is our time, our moment, to be Christ.

Perhaps never before have we in our own lives seen so clearly and close by Christ’s sheep, God’s beloved, who need love, care, food and shelter, protection from the wolves.

But this is also your time, your moment, to hear perhaps more clearly than you ever have before, what Jesus, God-with-us, who loves you beyond comprehension, needs you to know and trust.

Because you have moments of despair in these days.

You wake up in the morning, eager for a new day, or you’re doing something enjoyable, and suddenly it hits you like a blow: this is the world we live in. This is the fear our neighbors face. It’s hard to see how and when this could ever end. Your spirit feels impoverished, and in those moments you can’t find hope.

But beloved one, you are blessed, Jesus says. When your spirit is poor you are exactly where you want to be, in God’s reign. God isn’t found in those who think these the best of times, who haven’t any love or empathy for anyone but themselves. Your despair means you care about the ones God cares about and you long for healing. God’s cross-shaped love says God’s reign is found amongst all whose spirits are low, where you are.

And you are feeling grief in these days.

Grieving for Renee and Alex, persecuted for righteousness’ sake, killed for righteousness’ sake, like prophets of old. Grieving for their loved ones and families. Grieving for the loss of so much, grieving over a government growing ever more cruel and fascist.

But beloved one, you are blessed, Jesus says. Your mourning means you’re exactly where God is, your heart pouring out for people who are suffering, disappearing, and dying. God isn’t found in those who rejoice at masked, armed, anonymous federal thugs grabbing five-year-olds and shipping them to vile detention centers, executing people who are trying to protect neighbors. Your mourning means you share God’s heart. A heart that went to the cross to break evil and sin in this world by loving it out of existence, a heart that says God isn’t with the violent but with their victims. Be comforted by this, Jesus says.

You long for hope and promise in these days, for justice.

It’s like a hunger and a thirst, Jesus says, wanting righteousness and justice to come to our streets, our city, our nation.

Beloved one, you are blessed in that hunger and thirst, Jesus says, because God shares it, and God promises to fill that hunger, quench that thirst. God isn’t found in those who warp the law to benefit themselves, who spit on constitutional rights while claiming to be on the side of “justice.” Who use power to harm the weak and the vulnerable. God always operates from below, Paul says today, bringing righteousness and life and wholeness to the least, the frightened, the powerless. Your longing is God’s longing, and so you will be filled.

And your heart for those who are hurt and crushed, your acts of mercy and gentleness, are God’s pure heart.

You’re not just wishing good, you’re doing good. Getting groceries to those afraid behind doors, walking the streets to protect those threatened, calling your government to account, seeing and loving your neighbor, all this mercy that comes from your heart of love, Jesus says, is God’s gentleness and mercy and heart.

So, beloved one, you are blessed in this, Jesus says. God isn’t found in the cruel and cold, the destructive and hateful. God chooses what is weak in the world, Paul says, to shame what is strong. When you are merciful and gentle and acting from God’s heart inside you, you are blessed. And you will see God in this.

You are angry in these days, yes. But you and thousands more choose to act in peace, not in violence.

To seek peace, with justice, and stand with those who are threatened and alone. To be a voice that others around the world are noticing, not returning violence for violence, but shouts and chants and songs. Not returning bullets for bullets, but whistles and car horns.

So, beloved one, you are blessed, Jesus says. You are exactly what God hoped for when you were created. God cannot support violence and abuse, killing, abduction, teargassing, warmaking. God went to the cross and allowed humans to do what we would, even execution, rather than fight back. And in the foolishness of such love and forgiveness, God shows how worthless the wisdom of this world is. In your peacemaking, your prayer for peace, your work for peace, you are God’s child.

This is the foolishness of the cross Paul proclaims, God’s foolishness that is life for you.

In these words today, Jesus gives you hope and comfort that where you are right now, what you hope for, dream for, are working on, is what God is hoping for, dreaming for, working on. Weakness, despair, grief, gentleness, kindness, mercy, love are things this world sees no value in. It says be strong and powerful and get what you want, hurt who you want.

But what the Triune God who made all things knows is that such power can’t be sustained in the face of God’s way. A way that grieves and despairs when needed, yet finds hope and comfort to move on and keep loving. A way that seeks kindness and mercy and peace because they’re the basis of life and healing. And all these so-called weak things, God shows in Christ’s death and resurrection, in Christ’s teaching and calling, are powerful enough to cast the mighty from their thrones. Powerful enough to bring life and hope and healing to this world.

So keep doing what you’re doing. You are blessed, beloved, and none of it is in vain.

Do justice. Love kindness. Walk humbly with God. It doesn’t get any simpler or clearer than what Micah said millennia ago.

But when you do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God, when I do, when thousands do, as we’re seeing right now, God’s blessing isn’t only yours. It’s for the whole world.

God sees things very differently from the way of the world. But your joy is that it turns out you see things very differently from the way of the world too. It turns out that God is walking right next to you.

And imagine what that will mean for your life. And for the life of this world.

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

You and I are called – the whole point of faith is that you and I go out as God’s love in the world, for the healing of all things.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Third Sunday after Epiphany, Lect. 3 A
Texts: Matthew 4:12-23; Isaiah 9:1-4

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

This week our Minneapolis Bishop Jen Nagel recalled Dietrich Bonhoeffer in a message she sent to our rostered ministers.[1]

She said Bonhoeffer identified three ways that the church can respond to oppression: “by holding our government and leaders accountable to their commitments, by tending to the direct needs of those being crushed under the wheel of oppression, and finally by driving a spoke into the wheel itself.”

We are under an occupation here. There’s no other way to describe it. Yesterday’s sickening public execution of intensive care nurse Alex Pretti just underlines it. We are under occupation by government sanctioned bullies and thugs who are defended at the highest levels, completely unaccountable. These people delight, take joy, in brutality, cruelty, and humiliation, going far beyond anything law enforcement has ever been permitted to do in our nation. And so our neighbors stay locked behind doors. Preschool children are snatched in arrests or gassed in their parents’ car. People are disappearing. We are the people walking in deep darkness looking for light that Isaiah speaks of.

But our bishop is right. Bonhoeffer is right. There are these things we can do: hold our government and leaders accountable. Tend to the direct needs of those being crushed under the wheel of oppression. And drive a spike into the wheel wherever we can.

Which actually brings us to this scene by the lakeshore with four people who fish for a living. Because there’s a lot more to this story than you might think.

To see it, we need to help Matthew a little with his fellow Evangelists.

See, Luke starts this story earlier than this moment we heard. Peter and Andrew have fished all night, caught nothing, and when they come into shore, Jesus asks to use their boat for a pulpit. When he’s done teaching, he tells Peter to cast his net one more time. Peter does, and the net’s so full it nearly swamps their boat, and James and John have to help. And that’s when Jesus calls them to fish for people.

John provides the next crucial part of the story. After Jesus’ resurrection, a few disciples return to Galilee and go fishing while they wait for Jesus’ instructions. Once again they catch nothing. In the morning, someone calls from shore, and tells them to throw out their net one more time. Once again, the net fills to overflowing. John recognizes it’s Jesus, Peter swims to shore. And Jesus serves them all breakfast. And that’s when Jesus reveals what their calling truly is.

Because Jesus always called people for a purpose.

He didn’t come to start a club, or seek members to something. Or invite people to believe in God so they’d know they were somehow on the right side.

He always called them to a vocation. Every time. He said, “follow me, and I will have work for you to do.” With these four, he used fishing – their livelihood – to help them understand: I’ll send you out to fish for people. To draw people into God’s love by dragging a huge net of welcome and teaching and love through the world, catching as many as you can.

The faith Jesus invites in people is always the way for them to become who God needs in the world, for the sake of others, not an exclusive possession. So they, so we, radiate God’s love in our own bodies and voices and actions and words. Like Jesus. To draw all God’s children into the abundant life and love of God. That’s why Jesus came.

But this doesn’t seem to be how many understand Christian faith these days.

For many Christians today faith is something you own, it’s personal, centered on a hope in heaven in the next life, and it’s not about how you live here, not a calling. Many Christian voices today proclaim a way of life so radically divorced from Jesus’ teachings it’s apparent that what Jesus said, what he taught, how he lived, loved, died, doesn’t matter much to them. If you know you’re a Christian, that’s apparently enough.

But not for Jesus. He calls people to follow him so that they become God’s love in their lives. Sending out a dozen, then 70, while he’s still teaching. Filling hundreds with the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and sending them out to bear God’s love.

If your faith is only for your own good, your trust is in something completely different than Christ.

John’s part makes this all clear.

These four fishermen have no clue what’s coming when Jesus first calls them today at that lakeshore. They follow, but they know nothing of what this Teacher is going to ask of them.

But by this second miraculous catch of fish, they’ve seen God’s love in person, teaching with love, healing with love, welcoming all kinds of people into God’s heart who weren’t considered worthy. They’ve seen God’s love go to the cross and suffer and die. They’ve seen God’s love rise from the dead. Now Jesus can show what “fishing for people,” what this calling really is.

Three times after that breakfast Jesus calls Peter – and you and me and everyone else who follows – to this calling: If you love me, feed my lambs. Tend my sheep. Feed my sheep. Three times, the call is to care for the ones Jesus cares for. Jesus’ sheep who need to be tended. Fed. Protected. By you. By me.

That means what people are doing in these awful days to care for all God’s children is exactly what they are called to do. What you are called to do.

With all these terrible things happening to our neighbors, Jesus says: Care for them. Feed them. Protect them. Be my love for them. In person. That’s why I called you.

And all three of Bonhoeffer’s things are how we will answer that call. And all three are being done right now, in this city. Holding leaders accountable, tending to the direct needs of those crushed, finding ways to put a stick into the wheel itself. That’s the amazing thing. Tens of thousands gather Friday in peaceful protest downtown, thousands sing in the streets day after day, or stop abductions of neighbors, including one in our neighborhood Friday. Hundreds drive, feed, care for their neighbors in any way they can. Millions refuse to believe lies and instead believe what they see and know as wrong and evil and then find a way to be love.

That’s caring for Jesus’ sheep. Doing what you’re called to do. The whole point of your faith. A calling to be God’s love in this world, outside your own self interest and for the good of the world.

But don’t forget the bursting nets.

The call is to put the nets out into the world. God’s power filled them then and will fill them now. The call is to love God’s sheep. God’s love will empower that care and protection all around the world.

This is our time, our moment, to be Christ. Perhaps never before have we in our own lives seen so clearly and close by Christ’s sheep, God’s beloved, who need love, care, food and shelter, protection from the wolves.

Follow me, Jesus said, and care for all my beloved ones. And in your loving faith and trust, and mine, and countless more, God will break the rod of the oppressor as Isaiah promises. In your love, and mine, and countless more, God will fill the nets to overflowing.

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

[1] Email to Minneapolis Area Synod (ELCA) rostered ministers, Wednesday, January 21, 2026.