God invites you to a life of abundance and joy, living in God’s way for your life and for the life of the world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 19 C
Texts: Luke 12:32-40; Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16; Isaiah 1:1, 10-20

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

A few weeks ago we heard the disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray.

One thing he taught them: pray, “your kingdom come.” Today we hear this marvelous promise from Jesus: “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

Ask for God to rule in your life, Jesus says, and know God is delighted to make that happen.

So if we’re unaware of God’s kingdom in our lives, if we’re not following God, it’s not because we haven’t asked. We pray the Lord’s Prayer all the time. And it’s not because God doesn’t want to give this; this is God’s dream, God’s pleasure.

So, maybe our problem is that we don’t want to live under God’s rule right now. Martin Luther, teaching the Lord’s Prayer in the Small Catechism, said God’s kingdom, God’s reign, surely happens without our praying for it, but in this prayer we ask that it come to us.

Maybe we don’t have it because we just don’t want this gift.

God’s Word today is very helpful for this, because we hear exactly what God’s kingdom is.

Jesus can be confusing when he talks of God’s rule and reign. Sometimes he speaks as if it’s the life to come after we die. Sometimes he says it’s near, within us right now. Sometimes we can’t tell which he means.

Today we see the truth: God’s kingdom isn’t a geography, a place you go to. It’s simply everywhere God’s will is done, everywhere God rules and reigns. Calling God’s kingdom the “reign” of God might be more helpful, because we see we’re not talking about either here or there, but a quality of life, a way of obedience, that exists now and of course in the life to come after death.

Remember Jesus’ prayer: “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven.” God reigns wherever God’s will is done. Both now and forever. On earth and in heaven.

And today, God’s Word gives clear signs of what God’s reign looks like, when God rules as God wills.

Our first vision begins with Isaiah, who shares a message with a number of the Hebrew prophets.

God’s prophets, including Isaiah today, knew most certainly that God’s reign is anywhere justice prevails. God’s reign exists when those who are most vulnerable are protected and cared for. God’s reign exists when no one is poor or hungry or in need. This we also get from Jesus today. Jesus’ first command for living in God’s reign is to free yourself from the tyranny of your possessions, and share with those in need until no one is in need.

It would be nearly impossible to miss this vision in Scripture unless you deliberately wanted to avoid the truth. God’s longing for a world of justice and peace, abundance and life, safety and joy, fills both the Hebrew Scriptures and the writings of the New Testament. Again and again God raises up prophets like Isaiah to call God’s people to live in such a way that they look like God is truly in charge.

Today, Isaiah joins several prophets in condemning the worship life of Israel. But Isaiah and the others condemn people acting as if worshipping God is living in God’s reign. The prophets are clear: live in God’s reign first, care for those who are poor, do justice, be kind, share all you have. Then, in that life in God’s reign, your worship is worth doing, and blessed both to you and to God.

Another way to recognize God’s reign is that those who live in it live for others, not themselves.

This is what happens when you start living in justice, sharing all, loving as God loves, as Isaiah calls. Your life is focused on caring for others, looking out for others’ needs. This is God’s reign.

Jesus’ parable of the alert servants doing their jobs while their master is away is all about this. Jesus says that if you choose to live under God’s reign, you willingly put yourself under God’s service. You choose God’s work above all. And God’s work is always serving others.

Again, it would be impossible to miss Jesus’ modeling of this, or his call to his followers to be servants to each other, unless you were trying to avoid seeing it. It’s one of the deepest taproots to Jesus’ understanding of discipleship, and a clear sign of God’s reign.

The last view we see today is this gift from Hebrews: living in God’s reign doesn’t always mean seeing it in full.

This beautiful meditation on faith reminds us that faith isn’t believing in specific teachings, it’s trusting God, living in relationship with God, and following.

But living in God’s reign means trusting in God’s goodness and promise, even if you don’t see it bearing fruit all the time. The long list of faithful followers Hebrews begins today with Abraham, continues in next week’s reading, and it has one thing in common: these all relied on God and followed in trust, even though none lived to see God’s promise in Christ fulfilled.

This is the real treasure in heaven Jesus talks about. You might not see everything healed, everything restored, God’s way of justice and peace in all things, as you faithfully live into God’s reign. The fulfilling of God’s dream of a world of blessing, justice, abundance, and peace, might not happen in your lifetime. But your treasure is that God is good, and Christ will bring about this reign that God dreams for.

And as Hebrews says, it doesn’t matter what you actually see fulfilled. Just be faithful and rely on God. Or, as Jesus says, just always be about God’s work. Or as Isaiah says, learn to do good. That’s enough.

Don’t be afraid. God’s pleasure is to bring you into this reign of God, welcome you into this way of being that brings life.

The Triune God dreams of a day when this will be true in all this world, with all creatures. But God’s reign and rule are very different from earthly rule. God has no police force to keep you in line or punish you when you live otherwise. God has no army to defend God’s way of life.

God rules by invitation, and by empowering. By sending people to you to call you to this way, in hopes that you’ll see it’s the only way to find abundance and joy, even in this painful world. By going to a cross, not using power and might even to stop the death of God’s Son, so that you and the universe could see that such vulnerable love destroys evil’s power and brings unstoppable life. By sending you the Holy Spirit to empower your servant life under God.

The invitation is yours: Come, live in the joy of God’s reign, for your sake, and the sake of the world. What will you do with it?

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

Just pray as Jesus teaches you, instead of talking about it, and you will know the life and love of God’s Holy Spirit in you.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 17 C
Text: Luke 11:1-13

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

Maybe we need a different word for what Jesus calls prayer.

Comparing what we mean by prayer and what Jesus means, we could be talking about completely different things.

When we hear the word “prayer” we nearly always think of specific moments where we speak or think specific things. Kneeling by a bed at night-time, saying thanks at a meal, praying pre-chosen words together. All situations where we think the point is to ask things of God.

At least that’s how we talk about prayer. Countless conversations about whether prayer “works,” that is, you get what you ask for. As if God were a great vending machine. Great platitudes about prayer. “God sometimes says no,”, or, “God knows better than you what you need,” we quickly repeat. And that’s our best effort. How often have people in pain been given the impression that if they’d had more faith, or if they’d prayed better, they would have gotten what they wanted?

We probably can’t find a better word to use than “prayer.” But at least the disciples had the right idea. They didn’t ask Jesus for a theory of prayer, or explanations why it does or doesn’t “work.” They didn’t want to talk about prayer, like it was some object of study.

They said, “please teach us to pray.”

That’s what we want, too.

Jesus has been praying by himself when the disciples asked. He did this a lot, went off to quiet places to be in prayer. And rabbis generally would teach their disciples to pray.

But here’s why Jesus is the one we want to teach us: he prayed, but he was the Son of God. One with the Father and the Spirit in the Trinity. If prayer is only asking God for things, why would the Son need to pray? How can God ask God for things? Unless prayer is something deeper.

When Jesus the Son prayed, he re-entered the inner dance of the Trinity. We can’t know what it’s like to be both human and part of the Triune God, but clearly Jesus regularly needed to reconnect, to commune with the Father and the Spirit within God’s life as he had done since before creation.

So there’s Jesus’ first lesson: open yourself to being in the presence of God. That’s prayer. No rules, no platitudes about outcomes. Just get away and be open to God. And the second lesson is that Jesus says the answer to every prayer, the outcome of every connection we have with God, is the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Of course, the Holy Spirit is always within us.

But prayer is opening our hearts and our minds to that truth. Being aware of it. Living in it.

This is why Paul tells the Thessalonians to pray without ceasing, and the Ephesians to pray in the Spirit at all times. If prayer is limited to you or I saying particular words in a particular posture at a particular time, and only asking for things, there is no way to pray all the time.

But if prayer is being open to the gracious, loving Spirit of God that is within you, literally every second you could be in prayer.

Teach us to pray, we ask Jesus. And he shows you: open your heart and mind to the Holy Spirit of God in you. Know that no matter what, God is with you and loves you. Live with God, talk, be silent, dream, complain, laugh, cry, or delight to live in awareness that God is in you and will never leave you.

Now you’re praying, Jesus says.

And Jesus shows three paths to enter this openness to God’s Spirit within: ask, search, and knock.

“Ask” easily traps us, of course, in our limited view of prayer. It’s what we mostly think prayer is. And Jesus says asking is good, he encourages it. But Jesus instantly refocuses us by saying the answer to every ask is the Holy Spirit. Whether you pray for the health of others, the pain of the world, your own struggles, God’s answer every time is “I am with you.” Does God intervene, bring healing, ease people’s burdens? Certainly. But that’s God’s call, and on God’s time. So ask, Jesus says. But when you do, your answer is to know God loves you and is always with you.

“Search” is a wonderful grace note in this list. When was the last time you spoke of prayer as “searching”? But Jesus is clear: search for God and you will find God. Since the Spirit is always God’s answer, you will find God literally in your heart. And if your search is for meaning, purpose, guidance, hope, direction, all the better. You’re on that journey, that search, with the loving Spirit of God at your side, encouraging, strengthening, giving wisdom, comforting, laughing, crying. You will find when you search, Jesus says. But the journey with the Spirit will also be wondrous grace.

And please “knock” on God’s door, Jesus says. It will always be opened to you, and you’ll rediscover that God is living inside you in love and grace. God’s door you’re knocking on is the door into your own heart, where you connect to the life of the Triune God through the grace of the Spirit.

Whenever we talk about prayer, we miss the point. Just pray, Jesus says. You’ll get it.

Whether it’s formal time you set aside with carefully chosen words, or communal prayer such as we do here, or the profound prayer of our silence in worship, or the times you simply walk in your days in awareness of God with you, prayer is lived, not talked about.

And when you stop talking about prayer and step into the reality of the Holy Spirit in your life and heart, all the questions and anxieties we all want to put on prayer go away. You learn to trust in God’s goodness and love, and find God’s grace in all outcomes.

Because what more do you need than to live your life in the dance of God’s life, with the Holy Spirit in you, loving you and guiding you all the way?

Teach us this, O God, until we learn it in our bones and live it in our heart.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

“In the stillness within the action sits the Beloved who is not distracted by many things, but only wants to sit awhile with you.” (Steve Garnaas-Holmes)

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 16 C
Texts: Luke 10:38-42; Amos 8:1-12; Psalm 52

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

Don’t pit these sisters against each other.

Both love Jesus, and both have the unspeakable joy of having Jesus in their home with them, loving them in return.

But the two sisters are important to us. For many of us, Martha’s experience is our own. We are busy beyond belief in our lives, anxious and troubled about many things, not having enough time to do what needs to be done, or even knowing what needs to be done. Having a few moments to sit quietly and listen to the voice of Christ sounds wonderful; but for many of us, it feels unrealistic to expect it.

So what is the “better part,” that “one thing” Mary chose that Jesus encourages Martha to choose?

In a poem for Martha called “One Thing Is Needed,” pastor and poet, Steve Garnaas-Holmes gives us a glimpse.

There will be the clutter and clatter of pans
the rumble and jumble of traffic and trains
the brambles of papers and lists and calls
the beaten paths, the errands, the chores.

You don’t have to rattle and run with them.
You can do one thing at a time.

You can stop
and sit at the feet of the moment,
pay reverent attention to whatever it is,
and listen to the silence beneath the hum,
and simply be
in the presence of the presence.

In all your doing that you surely must do,
you still can just be.
And your being
will become what you do.

In the stillness within the action
sits the Beloved
who is not distracted by many things,
but only wants to sit awhile with you. ¹

This is what Martha’s missing: Jesus’ presence in her busyness.

She’s doing what she must do: hospitality demands the guest be served, cared for. Jesus just sent out 70 women and men in this very chapter and invited them to seek hospitality, to be open to people welcoming them into their homes and feeding them. Martha is doing the right thing, the good thing.

But she’s “pulled away” from Jesus by her work, Luke says. She’s anxious and troubled. She’s doing the thing the poet says she “surely must do.” But she’s unhappy.

Jesus invites her to see that in that doing, in that “clutter and clatter, rumble and jumble, beaten paths, and errands, and chores,” she can find Christ with her by listening to the “silence beneath the hum.”

Martha was missing where her spirit was in that good work she was doing. She missed the presence of Jesus in her home. She missed listening to God’s voice in the midst of her busyness.

In the stillness within the action
sits the Beloved
who is not distracted by many things,
but only wants to sit awhile with you.

This is God’s gift: in the stillness within the action your beloved Christ is waiting. And we need this.

We hear Amos today decrying the destruction of the poor and the needy by the powerful, and we share his anger.

What our nation, founded on the values of freedom and justice for all, is doing to our siblings, to God’s own children, at the border, is a crime against humanity, a sin against God, and a horror that future generations will pale at hearing.

Amos speaks what we sometimes wish would happen, what we shouted with the psalmist we wanted to happen: God’s utter judgment against the perpetrators of this, and the ruin of all who trample on the vulnerable.

But if you and I do nothing, we know Amos would say we are complicit. But what can we do? All we know how to do is be angry and frustrated, while feeling powerless to effect change.

What if in the midst of all that we could find the one thing Jesus offers Martha? Listen in the midst of our impotence and frustration, for the still voice of Christ calling to us? Find the silence beneath the noise and hear God?

In the stillness within the action
sits the Beloved
who is not distracted by many things,
but only wants to sit awhile with you.

This is God’s gift: in the stillness within the action, your Beloved Christ will give you answers, and guidance for your loving service.

It’s not just the terrible things happening in our country, either.

Today, being busy is the new status symbol, not how much money you make. In social media, among friends, everywhere in this country, people are running themselves ragged and bragging about it. People are filling every hour of every day with activity, working overtime, barely finding any rest, drawn away and troubled by all that needs to be done. As if their value comes from being overworked and overdrawn.

Just as Jesus loved Martha in her stress, so Jesus loves you in yours. But Jesus also suggests that if your life is keeping you from hearing God’s voice, you’re missing the one thing you need.

Whether it’s taking fifteen minutes a few times a day to sit and be quiet, without phone or internet or television, or saying “no” to some things simply to give yourself the gift of time, there are places in the midst of the frenetic busyness where you can stop and listen for God. And even in the middle of the busyness that you have to do, you can, like Martha, keep your eyes and ears open.

In the stillness within the action
sits the Beloved
who is not distracted by many things,
but only wants to sit awhile with you.

This is God’s gift: in the stillness within the action, your Beloved Christ will give you rest.

And notice, part of Martha’s problem is anxiety. We know about that, too.

On top of the world’s pain and our hectic lives, many of us also are anxious about many things. Whether it’s depression, or clinical anxiety, or a general dread, it’s hard to find peace when you’re carrying such burdens. Some of us struggle with grief over missing loved ones, fear of future problems, sadness at broken relationships. Sometimes those voices are so loud you can’t even hear yourself, let alone God.

In the stillness within the action
sits the Beloved
who is not distracted by many things,
but only wants to sit awhile with you.

This is God’s gift: in the stillness within the action your Beloved Christ will give you peace.

We do get Mary moments, too.

Every Sunday here is a respite of a few hours apart from whatever brings anxiety and troubled hearts. Here we literally sit at Christ’s feet and are blessed and filled and loved. We remember we are forgiven. We remember we are not alone. And we remember that together we hear answers for how we are called and sent to be God’s love in this world of suffering and pain.

But Martha is often our everyday life, and that’s your joy today: in the stillness within whatever overwhelms you, causes you anxiety and fear, God only wants to be with you. And in that stillness, help you find your way forward.

And either way, Martha or Mary, Jesus is for you. Jesus is in your house. That’s the one thing, the only thing, worth knowing.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

¹ Steve Garnaas-Holmes, “One Thing Is Needed,” published in the Shalem Institute’s 2017-2018 annual report, page 9. https://shalem.org/about-us/annual-report/ 

 

You are sent with specific tasks of evangelism to prepare people for the Spirit’s coming: God does all the rest of the work.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fourth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 14 C
Texts: 2 Kings 5:1-14; Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

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

The most important person in Naaman’s story is also the most insignificant person to everyone else in it.

This little Israelite girl, torn from her family by war, like so many children today. Not a refugee, she’s a captive, living apart from her loving family, in a foreign land, with foreign customs, and foreign gods, and a foreign language. But she sets in motion the movement of kings and prophets and even the God of the universe.

All she does is see her master’s suffering from a horrible skin disease, and quietly say to her mistress, “The God of Israel could heal my master.”

That’s it. And the ripples of her witness changed the course of her master’s life, and very nearly the affairs of nations.

Maybe she opens a door for us into this sending Jesus does.

Jesus sending out seventy women and men to proclaim God’s reign causes us a lot of anxiety. In our pluralistic society we just don’t know what to think about our call to be evangelists anymore.

It’s good many Christians are no longer comfortable with the centuries-long arrogance of the Christian Church claiming that those who do not know Christ are condemned forever. For more than a millennia and a half the call to share Christ’s Good News with the world has been warped by our need to control others and dominate them. The Church endorsed war, colonization, appropriation of indigenous lands, and destruction of rich, beautiful cultures all over the world in the name of “making disciples.” It is good, wonderful, that some of us at least have moved past that.

But if we aren’t doing evangelism to save others (because only God saves), or to control them (because Christ says we must not), how do we know what to do? With neighbors who are Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, atheist, and any number of other positions of faith or spiritual paths, we know our job as the love of Christ is to be gracious and kind neighbors. To respect differences, honor other peoples’ faith, seek dialogue between faiths.

But is that enough? Do we run from this Gospel story just to be good neighbors? A better question is, can this little slave girl help us hear Jesus’ call better? She knew the God of Israel could heal her master, so she told her mistress. She had no other goal than sharing the grace of God.

And if you look at the four things Jesus actually asks the 70 to do, it’s pretty much the same.

The first thing they are to do, every time, is speak a word of peace.

To greet the people in whatever house they enter with “Peace to this house!”

Isn’t that beautiful? Our Muslim friends do this. They greet others with this instinctively: “Salaam-alaikum,” “Peace be upon you.” And they respond: “Wa-alaikum-salaam,” “and peace be upon you, too.”

Why have Christians abandoned this key part of Jesus’ instructions? How might Christian witness in the world have been different if our first words wherever we went were “Peace be with you”? At the very least, maybe it would have prevented the Church from killing millions of people over the centuries.

What would it mean for you? Begin there with your neighbors. Offer the gift of peace to whomever you meet. Jesus says sometimes it will be returned, and that’s a blessing. Sometimes it won’t, but Jesus says the peace of God will still be with you, even then.

How do you be an evangelist? First offer peace.

The second instruction sounds a little strange as an evangelism tactic.

When you go anywhere, Jesus says to eat what is set before you. Receive your neighbor’s hospitality. Don’t bring anything, he says. Don’t have money, or you’ll be tempted to offer to pay, and act as if you’re the benevolent one. You’re not in control. Receive whatever you get. Receive their customs, their blessings, even if it’s strange for you.

That alone would be a new thing, for us to literally let our neighbors feed us, love us.

But it also is true figuratively. Take what is given you, and don’t bring anything, Jesus says. So, set aside your prejudices and pre-conceived notions and just let your neighbor be who they are. Set aside for now the theology that feeds you, and just receive what you’re given.

We’re so used believing evangelism is having something to give others. What if the Church had done what Jesus says here instead of triumphantly bringing in our culture and ideas and teachings as if we were the benefactors of all? It would change the world today if we could set aside our own stuff and simply let our neighbor offer us kindness and hospitality. Sometimes you won’t be welcomed or given anything, and Jesus says that’s OK. Keep going until you’re offered sustenance, and then stay there. Live in relationship. Let the love of your neighbor be a blessing to you. That’s evangelism, according to Jesus.

So, speak peace. And receive love. Next, Jesus says, heal and drive out evil, where you can.

This must have been frightening to these women and men. They’d seen Jesus heal and drive out evil. Now he expected they would be able to do such things.

But imagine if this had been the goal of evangelism for the whole Church throughout the years: to be the ones who offer healing. To be the ones who stand against evil. Now, many Christians in history did exactly that, and changed their world. Far too often, though, the official approach was domination and control. What kind of a witness to God’s love in Christ could we have made if everyone had done what Jesus says here, not just some?

This is such a clear place for us to work. Whether it’s working with all our neighbors of all faiths to dismantle systems of oppression and violence, or standing individually against evil or embracing our neighbor with healing kindness, there is no end to work we can do. Evangelism is being out in the world as God’s love, both as communities and individuals in Christ, bringing hope and courage to face evil, bringing love and grace to heal the hearts of those who suffer.

Finally Jesus says, say, “God’s reign is near to you.”

This is the last piece of the disciples’ evangelism task. Say what the little girl said: “God is near and can heal. God’s reign is real and will make a difference.” Say, God has come to this world of evil and war and hatred and grief in person and is offering life and hope and grace.

The first three things are how you do this. Offer peace, receive hospitality, work against evil and bring healing: these are visible, real signs of God’s reign being near. In your body and life you witness in this way. Just as Jesus witnessed in his body and life – teaching, loving, even dying and rising.

And it doesn’t matter if you’re rejected, Jesus says. He will be. Even in rejection, you still do all these things and always declare this good news: God’s reign is near. God’s love is near. God’s peace is near.

That’s it. these are your instructions as an evangelist. The Triune God will do the hard work.

You see, Jesus sent these 70 to places he himself intended to go, to prepare people for his coming. Now it’s the Holy Spirit who’s going. But you’re still sent ahead to do those things to prepare people for the Spirit.

Naaman actually ends up converted from his former faith, and worshipping the God of Israel exclusively. It’s lovely. But the slave girl never intended that. She just said God could heal him.

Likewise, your job is not converting. It’s not making any theological assumptions about anyone’s eternal status. Your job is to be part of Christ’s advance team with all of us, someone who by your grace and love opens a door for the Spirit to enter and bring people into the resurrection life of God.

Now that’s evangelism that’s not only faithful to Jesus’ calling and to the hope of God’s love we know in Christ, but one that’s respectful and gracious to our neighbors of all kinds as well.

Funny, isn’t it, how Jesus always knows how best to do things, if only we’d listen?

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

Paul’s miraculous claims are too often not our reality, but God in the Spirit is making it happen; pray that it happen for you, for us, and then go, tell others about it.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Second Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 12 C
Texts: Galatians 3:23-29; 1 Kings 19:1-15a; Luke 8:26-39

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

Here’s what’s not startling today: how people reacted to demonic or evil powers.

The king and queen of the northern kingdom, Israel, want Elijah dead. They’ve been systematically killing God’s prophets, and Elijah’s target number one. So he runs away. The Gerasenes have this strong man who is possessed and violently lashes out. So they chain him up, guard him. Running away from evil or locking it up, that makes sense to us.

What is startling is how people react to God’s evident power over demonic and evil forces. Ahab and Jezebel have just seen the God of Israel’s power on Mount Carmel. Fire from heaven consumed Elijah’s waterlogged sacrifice, even the wet wood and stones. All the people there acclaim the God of Israel is the true God, not Baal. But the king and queen would rather kill Elijah than acknowledge the true God. The Gerasenes witness their neighbor freed from his possession, fully clothed, in his right mind, and they beg Jesus to leave. How do these responses make sense?

But given the history of the Church, what the Church looks like today, we shouldn’t be startled by this. They’re not much different from us.

Paul’s proclamation today of God’s miraculous action makes this clear.

These words from Galatians are breath-taking words of inspiration to believers for two millennia. Paul claims that God in Christ has broken through all human barriers and divisions and created one Body from these diverse parts.

Paul’s communities include people of different cultures, people who are both enslaved and free, people of all genders. These communities thrive with the conviction that they have a deeper unity in Christ that transcends all divisions. There are still slaves and free people. But it’s not their core identity in Christ, Christ is. Men and women are still men and women. But their deeper truth is their oneness in Christ. Greeks don’t need to be circumcised or eat special foods, and Jews are free to practice their Jewish rituals and traditions, because the thing that joins them is not their cultures but the love of God in Christ.

And unlike Elijah’s miraculous heavenly fire, or the healing of the demoniac, Paul’s miracle is not only repeatable, it’s expected. This is God’s new reality. We’re supposed to expect this among us in the Body of Christ.

But look at our response to this marvel God has done: Two thousand years later these are still pretty words. But meaningless, too, judging from our reality.

Paul didn’t advocate the end of the institution of slavery. But his claim that within the community of Christ, the slave and the free person were equal and one together planted seeds that even bore fruit in Paul’s life. He called his friend Philemon to recognize his runaway slave Onesimus as a freed brother in Christ and welcome him as such. Yet it took over 1,800 years for the Church to take that insight and begin serious opposition to slavery.

Paul shared Jesus’ radical view of women as equals. He had female co-workers, leaders of communities, missionaries. But by the end of the first century the Church embraced the old standard of patriarchy, and pretty much eliminated women in leadership. It took 1,920 years for even a fraction of the Church to restore what Paul and Jesus did at the beginning. And we’re still a significant minority: maybe a couple hundred million among the world’s 2.2 billion Christians have women in leadership. It was easier for the Church to agree on ending slavery than equality among genders.

Paul’s cross-cultural unity is astonishing. Paul assumed multiple cultures could co-exist and thrive in congregations, find their oneness in Christ while still living with their diversity. But the vast majority of Christian history has been Christians siloing into their own cultural reality and claiming that’s the true Christianity. Ethnic and cultural groups promoting their way of being, speaking, dressing, doing worship as the only true way, that’s been the norm for most of the Church’s life.

In truth, Paul’s proclamation never became the norm and still barely exists 2,000 years later. We’ve rejected God’s healing oneness.

Paul says today that before we learned to trust God in Christ, we were imprisoned, locked up in fear of the law, in fear of the other, in fear of everything. The tragic thing is, Paul thought this was a past problem.

But we still live in the same fear. It took 1,900 years to agree that Christians were opposed to slavery because we were too afraid of the economic and social impact of freedom. We’re still rooted in patriarchy in the Church because we’re locked in our assumptions and thoughts and won’t envision a new way of being Christ together.

And the cultural divide, whether it’s black-white, rich-poor, north-south, Lutheran-Pentecostal, Christian-Muslim, will never be crossed if we’re the ones to cross it. It’s just too frightening to let go of the way we think things should be and admit others have equally legitimate ways of thinking, being, doing.

We may not be possessed by demons, but the chains that bind us, the prison we’re stuck in, can only be opened by God.

And good news: that’s what God offers.

God says today you need not be captive to your fear. God can break any chains that bind you or others, knock down any dividing walls, even the ones you secretly want to reinforce. The Triune God has come to the world in Christ Jesus, and shown the power of the Spirit to break through all these barriers and create a new reality. A body of Christ, a community of God, that transcends all our divisions.

Yes, it’s frightening to think of losing some of your security blankets. But with security in God’s love, and in the embrace of billions of siblings in Christ, who needs blankets? Yes, it’s frightening to feel the ground shaking as the wall protecting you from others starts to crumble. But if you let God break through that wall, you’ll find a loving family across this planet.

Paul’s words are the only reality worth living. A reality where there’s neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, but all are one in Christ Jesus. A reality that reveals a path to the healing of all nations. God is already doing this. But as Luther reminds you, you want to ask that God do this in you.

Because then you find your true place in these stories.

Once you are freed from these chains of fear, you’re sent back out into the darkness, into the brokenness, into the pain, to witness to what God has done. God told Elijah he couldn’t stay hiding in his cave, he needed to go back, face the evil, keep telling what God was about. The healed man wanted to stay with Jesus, the one who gave him life. But Jesus sent him back to his frightened neighbors, who wanted to be rid of him, to tell them what God had done.

That’s where you come in. As Paul’s new reality becomes your truth above all others, you’re sent out. To go into the world of fear and chains and walls and declare in your body and life what God has done.

But first, like Elijah, have a bite to eat. Let God refresh you in this meal that is prepared for you. Be graced by God’s forgiveness in Christ, be fed by God’s meal of life. As the angel said to Elijah, it’s going to be a tough journey. Eat up, so it’s not too much for you.

Then go, and tell others what God has done. For you. For the world.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen