We are called to die in our baptism to all that keeps us from hearing Ishmael’s cries, to all that leads us to disregard others in the family, and in Christ’s resurrection we are given the life to do this.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Third Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 12 A
Texts: Genesis 21:8-21; Romans 6:1b-11; Matthew 10:24-39

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

Ishmael laughed.

That was his “crime.” He laughed, exactly like Sarah. He laughed, the same word as his brother Isaac’s name. Ishmael laughed. And Sarah, now finally able to laugh with a promised son, and Abraham, the father of both boys, drove Ishmael and his mother into the wilderness.

Both Jewish and Christian tradition often claim Ishmael’s laughter mocked Isaac. But the text doesn’t support that. The verb with the “mocking” sense is similar, but not the same, to the word used here that’s always translated “laughing.”

Ishmael’s crime was his existence. Now that Isaac was born, Ishmael was a threat to his inheritance. Maybe he wouldn’t challenge Isaac inheriting all. Maybe he would. But this child of a slave is thrown out of the only family he’d ever known, sent to die in the wilderness.

That’s the important truth in this story.

Yes, God blesses Ishmael, saves him and his mother. Makes him a great nation in his own right. But that doesn’t change that he was thrown away from his family.

Maybe Sarah was worried about Ishmael’s influence on Isaac; she admits she was worried about the inheritance. But that doesn’t change that she cut off her son from his life.

Sure, Abraham sent water and bread with Hagar. But that doesn’t change that he rejected his first-born son, and justified it by saying God was OK with it.

When George Floyd’s life was being choked out in those eight minutes and 46 seconds of horror, near the end he cried out for his mother. It’s unbearable. In the wilderness, when the water and bread ran out, Hagar put Ishmael under a bush and walked away to sit. She couldn’t bear to watch the death of her child.

That’s the true story here: one child is loved and favored, and one child is trash to be thrown away, where only his mother cares whether he lives or he dies. And God.

We can’t judge Sarah and Abraham. But we must learn from this for our own lives.

That the tradition justifies throwing Ishmael and Hagar away should be a warning to us how easily we justify our beliefs and our actions, even when they harm another. Seeing the actual, horrible truth of Ishmael’s story as the Bible reveals it, is the only honest way to see this story.

And the same is true today. We need to clearly see the truth of our world and our part in it. That in the United States nearly 1,000 people are killed by police every year, compared to ten or fewer a year in other Western countries. That unarmed people who are black are killed by police in the United States at a rate four times that of unarmed people who are white. That the voices of Ishmael in our society cry out in anger and frustration and grief at yet another death, day after day, week after week. Parents of children, sons of mothers, brothers, husbands, are killed with impunity, cast out from the family into the wilderness to die.

We need to see this. We need to hear this. But it will take the death of some things in us.

This is what Paul needs the Romans to understand.

He tells them that in baptism they were buried with Christ, that their baptism is into Christ’s death. There is something in them that needs to die for them to live as Christ, to walk in “newness of life.”

The Roman churches had Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians at odds with each other, not eating together, breaking fellowship. Both sides knew they were right and the other side wrong. But Paul says, you are one in Christ, the only identity that matters.

So go ahead, Gentile Christians, Paul says, don’t keep kosher, and freely eat meat that might have been offered to idols. But your belief that you’re right and your siblings are wrong, your looking down on them for what you see as ignorance, your willingness to break this community: that needs to die in Christ.

And go ahead, Jewish Christians, Paul says, follow the laws of Moses and keep kosher. But your belief that you’re right and your siblings are wrong, your looking down on them for what you see as unfaithfulness, your willingness to break this community: that needs to die in Christ.

Your baptism into Christ’s death and resurrection, Paul says, means the death of all that keeps you from seeing and treating others as family – even in your diverse differences.

Now you also see why Jesus says what he does today.

Jesus knows that following him, taking up your cross, being willing to die to what in you is not of Christ will mean dying to important things. It might separate you from others, even close relationships. Matthew’s community lived this, experienced the rupture of families over following Christ, and needed these words of encouragement by Jesus in their Gospel.

And that’s our hard discernment ahead. What does God need to die in us so that we can walk in newness of life and see and treat all God’s children as family? Today it’s more than just the body of Christ at stake. We can’t break family ties with any of God’s children. Will we take up our cross even if that dying costs us whatever it costs us? Loss of being right, loss of having the answers, loss of a comfortable existence? Loss of income? What are we willing to let die to ensure all in the family are kept alive and well?

What this will mean for Mount Olive is hard to fully know right now.

But we can’t just go on letting our siblings of color die week after week with no answer or no commitment to change. We can’t turn away as Ishmael grieves every day in the wilderness, dying while we laugh with our families.

We’ll have to be willing to let go of our need to make ourselves feel better – even our need to help in ways that might not be what our siblings need. We’ll have to take hard looks at how we use language, how we live as a community, to see the pieces of white supremacy that exist in our life together. That sounds harsh, but as we listen to our neighbors, that’s what we hear. That this society is built to endorse and support white people at the expense of others, and that this is even in our community of faith.

There is much we need to learn together. But many in our midst can help.

For those of us who are like me, white, identifying as male, and straight, we must be silent and listen. Every door has opened for us all our lives, and most of us haven’t been thrown out into the wilderness. But many of our community have, and can help. Those of us who are women, you know what it is to be discriminated against, to be objectified and threatened, to be paid less for the same work, to be mansplained by someone less smart than you. You can help us all hear and see Ishmael now, too.

Those of us who are LGBTQ, you know what it is to be marginalized, thrown out of families, even have your life threatened or treated as trash. The Pulse nightclub shooting was only four years ago this week, and even though you can now be married and the Supreme Court made an important ruling this week, you know the pain of the wilderness. You can help us all hear and see Ishmael now, too.

And those of us of our community whose skin isn’t white, you know firsthand what it is to fear and to grieve, you, most of all, can help us all hear  and see Ishmael’s cries in the wilderness right now.

Because that’s what’s missing in the story from Genesis today, Ishmael’s voice. We hear Sarah and Abraham, Hagar, even God. But we don’t hear Ishmael as he’s thrown out of his family and left to die.

We need to hear him, and together we will.

Ishmael laughed. And God heard.

Ishmael means “God hears,” so God heard the one named “God hears” and saved him. God still hears Ishmael’s voice. God doesn’t throw anybody out of the family.

And following Christ, taking up our cross, means we learn to hear what God hears, see as God sees. We see and hear the Ishmaels who cry out as brothers, sisters, family. We listen together for what needs to die in us so that all might remain in the family, loved and safe.

And the good news is that this is all possible because of Christ’s resurrection. Resurrection life is poured into us in baptism, so as the old dies, the new is able to come. Paul says Christ is raised so that we all might walk in newness of life right now. For the sake of Ishmael. For the sake of the world.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

God’s promised justice, mercy, and peace will surely come to pass, and today it is you and I who are sent to be a part of it.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Second Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 11 A
Texts: Genesis 18:1-15, 21:1-7; Matthew 9:35 – 10:8

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

Sarah laughed.

She wasn’t supposed to be listening, but what she heard was so ridiculous she couldn’t hold it in. She, ninety years old, would become pregnant by hundred-year-old Abraham?

But was her laughter amused? Or was it bitter? The promise God made to them decades before was so ancient now, her body bent and dry, her bones aching, this was laughable even to talk about. But not very funny. If God had meant to give her a baby with Abraham, God would have done it.

God heard her laughter, and understood. But God said, “yet surely I will do this.” Laugh if you must. Disbelieve. Say, now it’s too late. But I will be back to visit you, and at that time you will have a son.

Sarah laughed, but we don’t.

This earth has waited so long for God’s promised justice and mercy and peace, it’s not funny. The idea of a ninety year old woman having a baby is more realistic to us some days than the thought that what we see in our city and in our country could change, could be transformed.

So instead of laughing, we lament at the pain and suffering we see and hear in our city, the systems of oppression that crush people of color in our society, systems that seem unassailable. And those of us in our Mount Olive community who are white also lament our sinful part in this suffering of others, that we have not always heard this pain, pain caused by systems that benefit those of us who are white.

God hears the cries of God’s children as certainly as God heard Sarah’s laughter, and understands. But God says, “yet surely I will do this.” Say it’s been too long, and it’s too late. Disbelieve that I can do this if you must. But my justice and mercy and peace will come to this earth.

God’s promise has a long timeline, true. But at each step, hope is found.

Baby Isaac does arrive, and is given the name “laughter.” Now Sarah’s laughter is joyful, because God did the unbelievable. It took her whole life to see God’s promise, but see it she did.

But Isaac is more than a baby for a longing mother. Isaac is another step in God’s long plan leading directly to today. Without Isaac, there is no Israel, no Jesus, no Incarnation in our human flesh as we know it. This baby is the start of God coming to be with us.

Jesus’ coming is also just a step in the plan. An enormous, God-sized step, as Jesus is the face of the Triune God for the world. But not to instantly create a world of justice and mercy and peace for all. In the wisdom of the Trinity, the only path to God’s promise is to grow it in the hearts of each of God’s children, one by one, until all live in God’s way. And each time one steps into this way, hope is found.

Today, right now, it’s our turn to take that one step of hope toward God’s promise.

What we do in our city, in our world, today, and tomorrow, from our perspective might seem very small. But like Isaac’s birth, what we do as Christ is advance God’s promised justice and mercy and peace a step further into God’s world.

There’s a huge shift between verses 1 and 2 of Matthew 10 today. In verse one, Matthew says Jesus called out twelve of his disciples and gave them authority to cast out demons and heal the sick. In verse two, Matthew says, “these are the names of the twelve apostles.” In a few words, the disciples – followers – are changed into apostles – ones who are sent.

That’s the move Christ needs in you. To move from following Christ to going out as Christ. To do, as these initial twelve did, the work of Christ in the world. That’s how God’s justice and mercy and peace will eventually reign in this world.

Like the twelve, you and I are sent, Jesus says, “to proclaim the good news, that the reign of heaven has come near.”

The reign of heaven, God’s promised justice and mercy and peace, has come near. Is here. Is happening. Even if it’s hard to see.

And right now, in these days, being Christ, proclaiming that the reign of heaven has come near means walking with our siblings in pain. For those of us who are white, it means listening to how we’re a part of the problem. Offering our love and our ears, and our commitment to be a part of the solution. That’s living the reign of God on earth as in heaven. And in our compassionate listening as a whole community together, honoring all suffering, honestly searching our own hearts for where God needs us to change, we are signs of God’s reign coming near. And another step toward God’s promise.

“When Jesus saw the crowds,” Matthew says, “he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”

As you might know, the word translated “compassion” is literally, “torn up in your guts.” Jesus’ guts are torn up over his flock, over their harassment and helplessness, their lack of a shepherd.

And that gut-wrenching compassion of the Triune God now laments over the suffering of God’s children in our city and in our world.

But it is that gut-wrenching compassion of God that is the hope of the world. It drives God’s plan for justice and mercy and peace. It leads God to inhabit all God’s children, to make the promise a reality.

You are no longer just a follower. You are an apostle. A sent one. The Triune God’s life in you fills you with the same gut-wrenching compassion God has, and gives you the courage and strength to walk with all who are in pain and, as signs of God’s reign coming near, partner with all to bring about today’s step toward God’s promised justice and mercy and peace.

But know this: God surely will do this. And then all creatures will be able to laugh with joy.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

God’s Spirit is poured out on all flesh, all people. That is our challenge to embrace and to end where this truth is denied. It is also the only hope for our world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Day of Pentecost, year A
Texts: Numbers 11:24-30; Acts 2:1-21; Psalm 104: 24-34, 35b

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

God spoke through the prophet Joel, saying, “I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh.”

That’s what’s happening here, Peter proclaimed at Pentecost. The psalmist sings today, “the eyes of all look to you, O God, . . . you send forth your Spirit, and they are created, and so you renew the face of the earth.”

Meanwhile, when God desires to help Moses bear the burden of leadership, sending the Spirit upon seventy elders, something goes wrong. 68 do as they’re told, and gather at the Tabernacle. Two remain in the camp. God’s Spirit pours out on all 70, and the two in the camp prophesy there, instead of at the Tabernacle with the others. Joshua urges Moses to shut them down. Moses speaks well before Joel, before the Psalmist, before Simon Peter, and longs for what they all claim: “Would that all God’s people were prophets,” Moses says, “and that God would put the Spirit on all of them!”

Moses longs for it; Joel declares it; the Psalmist celebrates it; Peter witnesses to it: the Holy Spirit of the one, true God is poured out on all people, all flesh, all God’s children. Without exception. Every single person breathes in and out with the Spirit of God.

So the horror we have seen this week asks this: how can one who breathes the Holy Spirit choke the breath out of another who breathes the Holy Spirit?

How did Derek not see a brother in George? How did he not recognize the God-given breath they both shared, and how could he, minute after terrifying minute, squeeze it from his brother? Cain stopped seeing Abel as his brother, and so was able to kill him.

When I wrote to you Wednesday about George’s murder, the email came in the form we use when one of our community has died. I called George our brother, without qualification or explanation. Some of you were confused by this, because you’ve reached out to me, asking “was he a member of Mount Olive?”

But that’s our problem. If I call him our brother, but say, “he wasn’t a member,” I separate him from me, from you. I don’t know what his faith was. But the identity that matters to Moses, to Joel, to the Psalmist, to Peter, and to the loving and Triune God, is that George and I are are filled with God’s Holy Spirit. God breathed life into George’s body and into mine. Into yours. He is our brother in the only way that matters.

But the society we’ve built, the structures we’ve created, systematically exclude many of God’s Spirit-filled children from breathing freely and justly.

Our society kills people of color with impunity and all are not equal. Our city is burning outside these very windows as proof of this, led by agitators, including white supremacy groups, many from outside our state, who seek to stop any reform or change that will allow all to live and breathe with justice in our city. Every group protesting George’s murder has decried the violence and destruction (which has harmed our most marginalized neighbors more than any) and pled for peaceful, non-violent protests to bring about change. But the resistance to true justice is deep and hateful. Denying Spirit-filled children of God the right to live and breathe freely with justice is embedded in our structures and systems.

Pentecost’s grace and the Scripture’s witness give us only one option: to see God’s Spirit in everyone.

This is not saying, “God doesn’t see color,” or “all lives matter,” hoping to make this not about the racism that it is. This is all about color, and all lives don’t matter in our society.

God sees color. God loves color – look at the rich diversity of skin tones among God’s human creatures! Then look at the rest of the resplendent, kaleidoscopic creation. Diversity isn’t God’s problem, it is God’s joy.

Diversity is our problem. We live in a culture and a society that systematically work to kill God’s delightful diversity. George’s murder was no accident, nor was it isolated. For four hundred years people of color in our country have been tortured, maimed, lynched, often with the participation and support of law enforcement.

And this is only the beginning of the list. We have so many Spirit-filled siblings who also are systematically denied the ability to breathe freely as God’s children: women – all our sisters, and those whose gender isn’t either male or female, those who have immigrated here for a better life and look and speak differently from white people, those who are poor and work their lives to the bone and can’t earn enough to feed their family or keep a roof over their heads, and so many more. The identity that matters in all of these to God and to all God’s witnesses today is that the Spirit of God is in all of our siblings.

Will you see this? Not reluctantly, like Joshua, but longingly, like Moses? And seek to live as you see?

Joshua was concerned about controlling who was authorized to be Spirit-filled. Moses listened. He heard Eldad and Medad prophesying in the camp. He recognized God’s Spirit in them, and sighed deeply his hope that all would receive this gift.

Those of us who are white cannot imagine we know what our siblings of color experience or need changed. We need to ask, listen, and then act as they invite, not believe we have answers.

And if in our siblings we encounter anger, impatience with delay, frustration, grief, we must find the empathy of Christ to love our Spirit-filled siblings in their pain.

God said: “I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh.”

This is the great hope of Pentecost for the world, that the Spirit breathes in every single child of God on this earth. Because if God’s Spirit is indeed in all of God’s children, then the Spirit is with us in our dialogue, and we also know what our prayer needs to be:

“Holy Spirit, stir in us, in all of your children, every person on this planet, and change what needs to be changed so all your children breathe freely and justly. Be in our dialogue. Give us ears to listen and humble hearts to receive. Give birth in each of us to the longing and courage to be a part of God’s life and justice and hope for all.”

Amen

Jesus prays within the life of God that we all be one – even our own community here at Mount Olive – and in that prayer we find hope in this time apart.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Seventh Sunday of Easter, year A
Texts: Acts 1:6-14; John 17:1-11

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

Jesus prayed that “they” all be one, even as he and the Father are one.

Think of that. Jesus, the Incarnate God-with-us, God’s Word in our flesh, the eternal Son of God, prays within the life of the Trinity that we (if we’re part of Jesus’ “they”), that we be one even as God is One within that life of the Trinity.

But who is the “they” Jesus prays about? The Scriptures declare, as we learned last week, that all things, all people, will be drawn up into the life of God in Jesus’ death and resurrection. This is God’s will, and it will be done.

But in this particular prayer, Jesus prays specifically for his followers, those who trust him as God’s Anointed. Here, Jesus prays within God’s life for all Christians to be one, a important and needed prayer.

But in this time we’re apart, we could also take the “they” one step closer to home. Our community of Mount Olive is also dear to the heart of the Triune God, and in this prayer, the Son is also praying that we, the people of God who come together as Mount Olive, might be one, even as the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are One.

But how can we be one when we can’t even be together? That weighs heavily on my heart. In a hymn we love to sing, we pray: “Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, for the living of these days.” That is our deep need, right now.

There’s a joy in the community of believers we hear of today that is hard to see.

In these days between Christ’s Ascension and the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost, the believers gather together. The closest inner group – the remaining eleven, some of the women (Jesus’ mother is named, and we can be sure Mary Magdalene was there), and even Jesus’ brothers – this inner group of leaders gathered in the Upper Room. They devoted themselves to prayer together, Luke says.

Just that simple. They wanted to be together, so they were. They wanted to pray together, so they did.

We can’t even imagine that right now. We worship in our homes, and God blesses that, but we deeply long to be together. Our ministry with our neighbors is sharply limited. We do church business by meeting remotely, but the simplicity and ease of understanding that comes from meeting face to face is kept from us.

This is right and good. Opening ourselves to being a hot spot where the virus can rapidly spread and kill would be irresponsible and sinful. But the oneness of these believers, the ease with which they gather and live in community, is painful to see right now.

We’ve taken for granted how easily we were able to find each other in community.

Around 225 of us gather together on any normal Sunday. There are people you see every week in the pews you always sit in, your regular neighbors. You come, knowing you will likely see them. There are others you see in the greeting of Christ’s peace, others you know you will likely see at coffee hour. Think of how many of this community you might see on any given normal Sunday. And we used to need to do nothing for this except get dressed on a Sunday morning and come to church.

What those in our community who are homebound already knew, we all know now. To come to church whenever you want is an astonishing grace. It means sharing life with whoever is there, whether for worship or community meal or meetings or Bible study or shared ministry. You don’t have to look at a directory and decide who you’ll meet. It just happens. Until you can’t come.

Now our challenge is to learn how to be one, together, while we are apart. When it’s not easy. “Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, for the living of these days.”

The wisdom and courage we need from God is to be intentional and creative in how we can stay together while apart.

Since you can’t just see people randomly, you’ll need to think. Who are your pew neighbors? Have you spoken recently? Whom do you see in the hallway on the way to coffee that you love to catch up with? Could you send them a note? I rejoice to hear of those in the congregation who are calling and writing to each other, just to stay connected. We all need to find that joyful intentionality.

There are other creative things you can do. A group of members who live near each other shared in a recent Olive Branch that they have a virtual dinner regularly. They all eat a shared meal, but all in their own homes, while on a video call. Are there Mount Olive neighbors near you that would want to do this? Are there other “virtual groups” you can start? Some are doing remote cocktail parties or coffee times.

Your leaders at Mount Olive are working on this, too. We already have a group of intentional callers, and could always use more. Now we’re dreaming of other ways we can maintain our community as these months apart stretch on. Perhaps a virtual coffee hour at a certain time on Sunday mornings, or helping organize remote neighborhood gatherings. I’m hoping to get another Bible study written so we can see each other remotely and listen to God’s Word together. There are many things we can do.

We pray, “grant us wisdom, grant us courage, for the living of these days,” because our lives depend on this community.

We meet and know the Triune God when we are with each other. And to know God is eternal life, Jesus prays today.

Eternal life – something we for centuries have reduced to only life after death – also means knowing the Triune God who comes to us in Christ in this life! Since God is embodied in us, when we’re together as a community, we know God better. We find eternal, abundant life. You and I see the face of God in each other, know the hands and voice of God from each other. This community of faith is a sure sign of God in our lives.

It’s vital that we creatively and intentionally work together to maintain our community in this time apart, lest we lose the abundant life of knowing God now, in each other, that is one of God’s greatest gifts.

We can’t risk each other’s lives, or plan events that risk our safety. We can’t see each other face to face, or hug each other. So, we need to find out how we can be God for each other, in those creative, yet safe ways. “Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, for the living of these days,” we pray.

And that’s the Good News for today, too. Because we’re not the only ones praying that.

Jesus prayed that “they” all be one, even as he and the Father are one.

The unity of all God’s children is on God’s heart and mind, and part of the Triune God’s inner prayer and love and discussion.

And so is the unity of those who are called together as Mount Olive in this time and place. Our life together matters to God as much as the life of all God’s children matters. The wideness in God’s mercy, as we also love to sing, has room for thousands of worlds such as this. And the love of God can even devote prayer time for our little band of siblings in Christ as we seek to remain one while apart.

And God promises to make this oneness happen, too, that’s what Jesus’ prayer really means. God’s inner prayer is our hope and our life, because the courage and wisdom we need to do this together will be granted, for the living of these days. This is most certainly true.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen