God, and God’s servants, human and angelic, will defeat all the powers of evil. Just not in the way you might have thought.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The feast of St. Michael and All Angels
Text: Revelation 12:7-12

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

“Holy God, holy and mighty, holy and immortal: surrounded by evil and bordered by death we appeal to you.”

These words open our Eucharistic prayer each week in October and November. As the Church Year draws to a close and our seasons in the north move toward dying and the end of growth, the lectionary focuses more on life in the end times, on evil and good and God’s place in that.

We’re starting this prayer a week earlier this year. Today, the 29th of September, the Church celebrates God’s angelic messengers, those spiritual beings who work for God’s good in a world surrounded by evil and bordered by death. It’s good to remember them as we approach the Table of God’s welcoming grace. And all year, at each Eucharist, in the Great Thanksgiving an invitation is sung to the faithful to join “all the choirs of angels” in singing praise to the thrice-holy and ever-living God.

You don’t have to believe in little devils clothed in red with pitchforks and horns to comprehend, even in our scientific age, that there are powers of evil at work that cause evil far greater than can be accounted for by just bad human decisions. Institutions have collective powers, mobs attain a collective mind and do horrifying things. Even a nation, as we’ve learned to our deep grief, can collectively become an agent of evil even if the majority are trying to do good and love neighbor.

So today we celebrate that the complexity and beauty of God’s creation includes spiritual powers who serve God, who work for good. You don’t have to believe in fat little half-naked cherubs with too-small wings to comprehend, even in our scientific age, the possibility of God’s grace in having spiritual servants to help God and to help humans in our need. To work for God against evil, and rejoice when the lost are found.

But listen carefully to how God’s servants, angelic and human, actually defeat evil.

The great war in heaven John speaks of in his Revelation today can evoke all sorts of blood-lust unseemly to those who follow the Prince of Peace. It’s a great temptation for Christians.

The disciples, despite Jesus’ warnings, weren’t prepared for the idea of a suffering and dying Messiah. That the Incarnate God-with-us would reveal the depths of God’s love for the creation by dying in humiliation, revealing what true love that heals all things looks like, isn’t just surprising to us. Jesus’ intimate followers also were shocked.

But their problem, and ours as well, is that after the resurrection, it’s tempting to view the cross as just a temporary setback, well put in our rear-view mirror. We didn’t see that coming, but we understand: the Messiah wouldn’t drive out Rome with armies. But now that he’s risen, surely we’re back in business. Surely now we can start dreaming of the time Christ will return and really clean house. Drive the devils out of heaven, wipe evil from the earth, rule over all things.

But that completely misses the point of the cross.

God’s dying and rising love is the only way God will heal all things. If Jesus wouldn’t use twelve legions of angels to defend himself in Gethsemane, he’s not saving those angelic armies for a future pitched battle with flaming swords against the powers of evil.

Just as the disciples were wrong when, after Easter, they asked Jesus if now he would restore Israel and drive out Rome, so, too, we are wrong if we think that God will change plans and now start using power and force to drive evil from this world. We need to stop expecting God, or the angels, to dramatically or powerfully or magically or militarily defeat evil for us.

It turns out, we need to see how John sees this ultimate victory in his Revelation. It’s not what you think you just heard. He talks today about a war between Michael and God’s angels and the great Rebel and his angels. But listen to what he actually says defeats the powers of evil forever:

John saw this future: God’s angels conquer Satan by the blood of the Lamb.

That’s the great war. God’s angels simply point to the blood of the Lamb of God. The sacrifice of God’s Son, the great outpouring of self-giving love by the Triune God on behalf of the creation.

The center of John’s Revelation is the Lamb who was killed and now lives and is adored, because the Lamb, the vulnerable and victorious Christ, is God’s ultimate and only plan. If evil is going to be defeated, John says, the only thing that will do it is the self-giving love of God at the cross. And that will end it for good.

John saw this future, too: it is the word of their testimony that conquers the powers of evil.

That’s how the armies of angels use the blood of the Lamb to defeat evil. They testify to it. They witness to the utter love of God for all things that caused the God of life and creation to offer everything, even the life of the Son of God, to win back the creation.

And it’s not just the testimony of the angels, but also that of the hosts robed in white around the throne John has already seen. Those faithful who witnessed by their lives to the love of God in Christ, who are gathered in heaven. The word of their testimony is critical to the defeat of evil, pointing to the blood of the Lamb as the end of all evil’s power.

And John saw this future: they win because they didn’t cling to life, even in the face of death, and evil could not stand against such trust.

Both angels and we who are mortal, we who are filled with Christ, who love as Christ, defeat evil when we don’t cling to life, even in the face of death. When we don’t worry about the cost of following but follow the heart of God that beats in us in our baptism, no matter the cost. When we don’t make decisions out of fear and anxiety over what might happen to us but out of the love the Spirit of God pours into our hearts. When we bear God’s vulnerable, sacrificial love in our own lives and words and bodies, and so witness to how God will defeat evil.

Rejoice today: God is working against the powers of evil, human and otherwise, that surround and assail us and all the world.

Just know that the battle isn’t what you thought it would be, and the victory has already begun at the cross. It’s a strange kind of victory, certainly unexpected.

But Jesus would have you focus less on demons being defeated, just as he says to the disciples today, and more on rejoicing that your name is written in heaven. Your life is bound up in God’s eternal love. Your hopes for the world to be free of evil and to be a place of hope and life for all God’s creatures and all God’s creation are found in this dying and rising love that not only writes your name in heaven but the names of every living thing.

Against such love – from the Triune God, from God’s angels, and now from you and all God’s children – what chance do any powers of evil have?

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

If you’re lost but don’t know it, Jesus has a story for you, and a hope, and a promise.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 25 C
Text: Luke 16:1-13

Note: In many ways this sermon follows directly on last week’s sermon, “Found,” from 15 September 2019, and that sermon might be a helpful introduction to this one. – JGC

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

But what if you’re lost, but you don’t know it?

Jesus actually tells five parables about the lost being found. Today we’re continuing in the same scene from last week, even if someone centuries ago said a new chapter starts here. The same players are still here: Jesus, a group of people on the margins who are drawn to him, a group of religious leaders who are offended that Jesus welcomes those marginalized folks, and a group of Jesus’ disciples.

In response to the religious criticism, “you welcome sinners and eat with them,” Jesus told the leaders three parables, about lost, precious things. A lost sheep, a lost coin, and two lost sons. (We only heard the first two last week.) And in these parables, except for the coin, the lost ones eventually knew it. We assume the sheep realized it couldn’t get home, wherever it was lost. The brothers had to learn it. The younger brother figured it out in the muck of a pigsty. The older brother figured it out when the resentment over his life and his belief that he wasn’t loved overwhelmed him in anger.

Now, Luke says, Jesus turns to his disciples to tell a fourth parable. And unlike last week’s parables, a key problem today is that no one in this parable thinks they’re lost. And everyone is.

Listen to this, my followers, Jesus says. Listen.

In this strange story, everyone is dishonest. Everyone.

The owner is dishonest, because he knows his manager has cheated him, and all he can do is chuckle in admiration at his self-serving dishonesty? The manager’s dishonest. He squandered property he was supposed to steward, and when caught, doubled down and squandered more, hoping to entice one of his bosses’ debtors to give him a job. And those debtors are dishonest, delightedly agreeing to cheat their creditor by as much as half of what they owed.

They’re all playing by the rules of the world’s game, Jesus says. They know the rules and they play it well. Get what you can for yourself, throw ethics out the window if you have to. Don’t worry about harming others, you take care of you. Vote for politicians who pander to you rather than those who want all to do well. Ignore your neighbor’s problems because they’re not yours. That’s the game, and they think they’re winning it.

But Jesus says, they’re actually surrounded by wolves, they’re stuck in the pigsty, they’re deeply lost. They just don’t know it. The world’s game they’re supposedly winning is a game of death.

This is what Jesus turns from the leaders to tell the disciples.

It’s as if he thinks they’re the ones in trouble. The lost ones who don’t know it. He’s worried.

These followers have been with him a long time, have heard a lot about living as a child of God, a child of the light, as Jesus says today. But as his impending death looms ever closer, Jesus sees they’re still not getting the challenges of following the way of God’s reign, the way of the children of light.

I’ve told you, he says to them (as we’ve heard all summer and fall), to count the cost before following me, don’t start this project if you can’t finish. But I don’t think you’ve counted at all. I’ve told you, don’t start plowing if you’re going to look back, but your rows are like a toddler’s drawing, lines and circles everywhere. I’ve told you to stay awake for God’s coming in your life, and you’re sleeping through all this. I’ve warned you about building silos for the gain you hope to get, as if you’re in control, and your wealth will protect you, but you’re still playing that game.

You want to keep playing the world’s game and only partly follow me? he says. Fine, but this story is what that game looks like. And if you want that, then you have to trust the world to bring you to whatever eternal homes their game gets you. The fifth parable, about a rich man who ignores a poor man outside his door for years, shows that the eternal homes of the world’s game are, well, suboptimal.

But you do know the way of the children of light, he tells his disciples.

You’ve heard it all, Jesus says, and this summer and fall, so have we. Children of light go into the ditch to help those thrown aside like highway trash. Children of God go into the world declaring God’s peace on all they meet, with their lives and their words showing God’s reign has begun. Children of light, of God’s reign, live out that God’s grace overrides the law, offer healing even when some find it inappropriate or wrong. And most of all, children of light, children of God, are lost ones who are found and who then rejoice in seeking and finding all God’s lost ones, all the time.

Life as a child of light is a very different game than what these dishonest creeps in my story live, Jesus says, because it’s not a game. It’s life, and it’s joy, and it’s peace, and it’s fulfillment.

But it’s hard. And if you don’t want that, Jesus says, if you still want to keep your hand in the world’s game, you’re actually lost, in the pigsty, and the tragedy is, you don’t even know it.

But, . . .  if after hearing this story, now for the first time you realize you’re lost, trapped in the world’s game, know this, too: you will be found.

That’s the glory of Jesus’ grace, the welcome of the Triune God he comes to bring. Jesus wants his disciples to be found; today’s parable was meant to shake them up a little to see it. To come to the realization of the younger brother in the pigsty and the elder brother outside the welcome-home party. Jesus, God’s Christ, wants to find you and bring you home into God’s love.

He was a little worried you might not think you were one of the lost ones. Hence this story.

But now here’s the question arising out of your joy at being found: what’s next? In these first four parables, Jesus leaves that open. That sheep might get lost again. Maybe the woman always loses her coins or her keys. We don’t know if either brother goes on to live in contentment and peace in his father’s love. And as far as we know, today’s cheaters just keep cheating.

But now that you know God finds you, wants to bring you into the light and love of God, what’s next for you? Will you still hold back and try to stay in the world’s game, just in case? Will you go back to the pigsty or simmer in your resentment, or whatever it is that got you lost, and pretend you’re just fine?

Just remember, Jesus says, the world’s game ends in the woods with wolves, in the pigsty, in being outside the party. The world’s path ends in eternal homes that aren’t anywhere you want to spend eternity.

Or, Jesus says, you could stay in the light, even though it’s a challenging way to live, and live in God’s reign, even though it looks like a harder path than the world’s path. You could be found, and live in joy.

Before you decide, remember that Luke has more story to tell you.

It’s not just the warnings we’ve heard from Luke about how hard following God’s way is, or the joy of what children of light are like. Luke is the only evangelist to tell the Pentecost story, the only one to write a sequel. Because Luke believes what happened after Easter is also deeply important for your life today, as much as the story of Jesus that led to Easter.

That story tells of Jesus, the Son of God, filled with the Holy Spirit from conception onward, Spirit-empowered to do wondrous things, even rise from the dead. But Luke says, wait: there’s something else you should know. Pentecost means you all will be filled with the Spirit just like Jesus.

All the things Jesus did, all that God’s Spirit-filled children do, finding the lost, going into the ditches, proclaiming and living peace, all that is yours to do with the power of God’s Spirit in you. The way of light, the way of God, is your gift from God’s Spirit, so you are able to live it.

And that, Luke says, that’s the book of Acts. And that’s your life!

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

No matter how lost you are, and in what ways, God will find you.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 24 C
Text: Luke 15:1-10

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 fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

“Sinners.” That’s all they saw.

This isn’t like saying “we’re all sinners.” These leaders saw some people as different from everyone else. These who came to hear Jesus aren’t named, identified by gender or occupation (except the tax collectors), or anything else. Whatever they’ve done, they’re publicly shamed enough in the eyes of their community that the title “sinners” is the only thing their leaders see, the only thing that matters.

But Jesus welcomes them. Eats with them. That’s his problem. If he’s supposed to be a godly teacher, showing God’s reign, if he’s supposed to be this great rabbi the crowds adore, how can he publicly welcome people whose worth is seen only as “sinners,” share a meal with them?

Well, Jesus sees them differently. He looks at these folks and sees “precious.” “Beloved.” “Children of God,” not “sinners.” Yes, he sees whatever sin it is they’ve done, that they’ve found themselves apart from God and apart from community. They’re people who are lost in one way or another.

But since Jesus sees “precious” and “beloved” when he looks at them, his only goal is to find those lost precious ones, welcome them, and, as the face of the Triune God for the world, love them back home to God, even if he has to give his life to do it.

But the leaders can’t see as Jesus sees. So he tells them stories.

Stories of precious, beloved, lost things. One sheep out of a hundred. One coin out of ten. Two beloved sons, in the familiar story from this chapter we didn’t hear today, both lost, both desperately loved.

Two stories reveal God’s love as ridiculous and foolish. No shepherd worth anything would abandon ninety-nine sheep to wolves and wilderness to seek a lost one. Cut your losses and be glad you still have ninety-nine. No father would be so generous with love to two sons, forgiving both of great things, giving all he had to both, without strings or accountability.

Jesus says open your eyes and see that God loves you with the same foolish, ridiculous, senseless love.

The middle story needs more attention. It’s very different. This woman’s desire to find the coin isn’t ridiculous or foolish; she can ill afford to lose any of what little she has. And, unlike the sheep and the sons, you can’t take a moral lesson from the coin. It didn’t get itself lost, it’s inanimate. It can’t find its way home, it’s inanimate. All it can do is be found.

Jesus says open your eyes and see that you are so vital, so important to God, God can’t afford to lose you. And you need do nothing to be found. God is looking for you under every dresser and bed, behind every couch, inside every cupboard, and won’t stop until you are found.

This is hard for the leaders to hear, maybe because they fear not being good enough themselves.

Some of God’s beloved, God’s precious ones, want to do good, feel in their bones they must be perfect, to please God. They follow the rules as best they can, and are deeply judging of others who don’t seem to care as much or try as hard. But that judgment only masks this fear: the time in the dark of night when the voices in your head say, “You messed up today, you’re not good enough. You never will be.”

If you ever feel like this, if this is where you get lost and afraid, know this: you are God’s beloved, no matter how perfect or imperfect you are. And God promises you: you will be found.

Now, some of God’s precious ones believe they’re not worthy of being loved.

These dear children of God are convinced they simply don’t have value compared to other people. Some have a deep-rooted sense of worthlessness, or a sense that no one truly loves them, that they have no significance. Others fear being seen as incompetent and then dismissed. The fear in the dark of night for these isn’t that you haven’t done perfectly, but that ultimately it doesn’t matter, since you don’t matter.

If you ever feel like this, if this is where you get lost and afraid, know this: you are God’s precious one, you matter to God, you have value and worth. And God promises you: you will be found.

Some of God’s beloved children fear they are alone, unnoticed.

This is a little like those others, but different. These dear ones feel outside everyone else, as if they don’t belong anywhere. They wonder if anyone is there who will help them when they’re lost, support them when they need it. They’re always on the outside, looking in. The fear in the dark of night for these is that if they somehow disappeared, or didn’t show up, no one would notice, no one would come looking.

If you ever feel like this, if this is where you get lost and afraid, know this: you are God’s beloved, and God sees you where you are, notices your every breath, every hair on your head; you belong to God. And God promises you: you will be found.

And some of God’s precious ones feel trapped and unfulfilled, or controlled by others, or by life itself.

These dear ones don’t feel they have choices over their life, too many things are out of control, or they’re stuck and can’t get out. Some experience others trying to control and direct them, and they have no say. The fear in the dark of night for these is that desperate sense of feeling in a trap, unable to move or decide or be free.

If you ever feel like this, if this is where you get lost and afraid, know this: you are God’s precious one, and you are free. God is your strength, and will take you by the hand and help you find the path to life. And God promises you: you will be found.

And there’s another flock of God’s beloved, who often aren’t seen.

There are those dear children of God, some in this room today, many in our world, who do not experience the world the way the majority do because in one way or another they are different. In our culture, different isn’t welcomed. Some of these are ones who have had even the Church, followers of Christ, condemn them as outside of God’s love because of who they are and who they love. And some are ones who because of the color of their skin or the gender they present to the world, whether female or another way, are treated differently and unjustly, unlike those who are white and those who present male. All these dear children have systems of oppression built up over centuries to keep them lost. Centuries of Church theology, or a broken criminal justice system, or unjust wages and benefits, or hidden barriers to where people are permitted to live, systems like these, and others, crush God’s beloved children.

Their fear isn’t just in the dark of night, it’s a daily struggle to live, to be noticed, to be treated as significant and valued and loved and worthy.

If you are one of these children, if this is where you are lost and afraid, know this: you are God’s precious one, and beloved, and God sees you and loves you. And God promises you: you will be found.

“Can you see each other as I see you?” Jesus asks.

If you can hear that you are precious and beloved, that God will tirelessly seek you and find you, pour out everything in that love, can you believe that, and find peace?

And then, and this is Jesus’ deepest hope, will you become part of God’s search team? God will find and bring home into God’s love and grace all God’s precious and beloved children. But God needs arms that can hug, hands that can hold, voices that can both comfort and advocate, hearts that can love. God needs a search team that can see children of God, not sinners, or categories. God needs people so confident they are found and loved they can’t imagine anyone not knowing that, can’t tolerate having a single beloved of God be lost. Ninety-nine percent isn’t good enough for God. God needs search teams who believe the same thing, who are willing to risk everything, just like God.

Because the Triune God came among us as a human being for one thing only: to welcome sinners and eat with them. Until no one is lost, no one is afraid in the dark, all are found and brought home into the abiding love of God that has been waiting for them for so long.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

Note: Thanks to the writers and composers of the musical Dear Evan Hansen, for the structural idea and the thought of repeating the refrain, “you will be found.”

 

The path of Christ is having God give you the humility of Christ – not a false humility, not self-abuse, but true joy in seeing all, and yourself, as the image of God.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 22 C
Texts: Luke 14:1, 7-14; Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16; Jeremiah 2:4-13

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

Be careful, very careful, with this Gospel reading.

Once again, Jesus is speaking of life in the reign of God, something we’ve heard all summer. But today’s Gospel is as tricky as any we’ve had. There are side paths that are easy to stumble into, paths which lead away from the path of Christ, if you’re not paying attention.

Jesus doesn’t intentionally set a trap here. In fact, he’s very consistent with the flow we’ve heard from him for months.

The problem is human nature. The particular thing he’s talking about, humility, cuts really close to a nerve in how we live, and makes it hard to hear and follow. Judging by the common way people usually talk about these verses and live them out, most of us have gotten lost on these side paths.

So listen carefully. Keep an eye on Jesus’ lead as closely as you ever have.

Now, our problems with social order and class are a little different from this story.

We don’t have a strict social and class order that’s reflected in how people are seated at the table, but we do have deep problems with social order and class. We’re very familiar with judging and with jockeying for position.

But when Jesus says take the lowest seat, and let others go before you, or, those who humble themselves shall be exalted and those who exalt themselves shall be humbled, we seem to consistently miss the point and take the side paths.

The first is the path of false humility and expectation of reward, one of the main Christian responses to this. Let others go first and pretend you’re humble. But inwardly, we hope someone notices, hope to be invited forward, to be commended. We can even be ridiculously proud of how humble we are. This isn’t a path of humility, it’s a path of pride and deceit. Please hear this clearly: do not leave worship today believing humility means Jesus wants you to pretend to be lower than others, hoping to be commended, resenting when you’re not. Nothing is further from the truth.

The other side path of Christian response is the path of self-devaluing. To hear Jesus saying you have no value, your gifts are of no account, you’re worthless. Everyone is better than you, you deserve no attention. This response has been drilled into the faithful for centuries, particularly by the powerful onto the marginalized and the powerless. This isn’t a path of humility, it’s a path of self-hate, of self-abuse. Please hear this clearly: do not leave worship today believing Jesus says being humble means you have no value, you aren’t worthy of a seat at the table. Nothing is further from the truth.

To find truth, we need to overturn our understanding of the word “deserve.”

So, some believers think they deserve more praise, more attention, are more important, but act as if they’re not because they think it’s how the game is played. The truth is, it may look nice to let someone go ahead of you, but if inwardly you think you deserve more attention, you’ve missed the whole point.

Some believers feel they deserve no praise, they’re worth nothing, deserve being sent to the bottom. This also may look humble, but if inwardly you think you have no value, you’ve also missed the point.

Instead, Jesus is describing an entirely new upside-down world order. Everyone deserves love, everyone deserves praise. From chapter one of Genesis to now God has tried to tell you that all are created in God’s own image. Are worthy of the love of the Triune God who made all things.

Jockeying for position isn’t the problem. Believing there is such a thing as position, that there are people who rank higher, are more important, that’s the problem. Jesus calls for a complete transformation of the heart’s values. Seeing everyone as precious in God’s eyes, including yourself, including the ones who are outside your empathy, those you look down on. Having the mutual love for all Hebrews talks about today, and welcoming strangers not because they might be angels, but because they are the image of God.

Jesus told a parable to show this reversal. But they already had the only parable they needed.

The eternal Word of the Triune God, one with the Father and the Spirit from before creation itself, was at this dinner. The One whom all creation should honor and adore and kneel before watched other people scramble for the important seats.

Jesus is the parable. The One who created billions of galaxies, worthy of all honor and praise, did not, as Paul reminds you in Philippians 2, cling to divinity, but this Son, the Word, humbled himself and took on human flesh, and by this said, “You are beloved, and precious, and worthy.”

That’s Jesus’ vision of God’s reign. It removes any distinction between people. If the God of all time deigns to become a human being, then simply being a human being made in God’s image is glory and honor enough for anyone. For each and every one.

Why have social order and class when we can look at each other in equal joy, recognizing God’s face in each other’s faces?

But going from where we are to living this vision can’t be done in an instant.

That’s where we get lost. There’s no switch to flip that we suddenly know in our hearts we’re all equal, or instantly care for the people whom we don’t care for, or think better of the people we disdain. We can’t suddenly see as Jesus sees, love as Jesus loves, live as Jesus lived. It takes God time to shape us.

So today Jesus names just the first steps toward this reality. Think of what he’s saying this way:

When you were a child and you hurt someone, your parents likely told you to say you were sorry. But if you’re like most children, you might not have truly felt it. There might have been a touch of sullenness and reluctance to your “sorry.”

But one day, the goal is you’d become a person who genuinely felt sorry when you hurt someone, who said, “Can you please forgive me?” Not sullenly, not because you were told to, but because that’s how you viewed the world and all people. Because you loved this person.

Likewise, Jesus says humility’s first steps are: “take the lower seat. Be humble. Don’t put yourself above others.”

But this isn’t the end of the path, the goal of Christian life. These instructions aren’t full life in God’s reign. They’re just the first baby steps of following Christ’s path of humility, a path that leads to the cross.

Sadly, the Church is and has been full of adults of all ages who live frozen at these baby steps. Who never let the Spirit transform their heart and eyes to feel and see as Jesus does. Who are forever children when it comes to this truth of God’s reign. So they – we – toddle off on the side paths of immature humility that only lead to death and pain and sadness. Remaining at the basic level of Christ’s humility for one’s whole life is unhealthy, even deadly, because is shows a dry, empty heart. It’s rejecting God’s fountain of living water, Jeremiah says today, and building yourself a cracked cistern that holds no water.

It’s time to start growing up. To move to solid food, real nourishment, and a deeper understanding of the life in Christ.

Once you leave today’s baby steps and take full, grown strides down Christ’s path, you’ll find the true glory of God’s reign.

It’s a chaotic joy of a table that has enough seats for everyone, and everyone’s getting up and switching seats, sharing food and laughter, telling stories, embracing tears, rejoicing in good news. A reign of God with no hierarchies, no privilege, no rankings, where all look at each other with glad and shining faces, recognizing the image of God in the other because all see it in themselves, too.

That’s what Jesus was hoping to get started at that dinner party, a path that opens up to such chaos and delight and wonder.

To see this in your life, you’re going to want to pray today’s prayer of the day often: Give me, O God, the humility of your Son. Make this joyful reality, this new heart, these new eyes, mine always. Because God delights to give that to you.

And if this is what God models in Christ, and what God wants to make happen in you, and in all God’s children, why on earth or in heaven would you want anything less?

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

All of us are bound tightly by whatever we call them – spirits, passions, vices – and God in Christ has come to set us free.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 21 C
Text: Luke 13:10-17

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 poor woman suffered for 18 years, bent over double.

But she didn’t come to the synagogue for healing. That was Jesus’ idea, unlike many of his healings. He called her over and said she was set free from her ailment.

After 18 years, this woman probably didn’t ever expect or hope to be better. She just thought, “this is how I will always be, hurting, struggling to breathe, to move.” Today would be just like every other day.

But this day, she was set free. For the first time in two decades, her Sabbath was restful, peaceful, joy.

This physical healing was her great gift. But not for us.

In Jesus’ wonderful healings we don’t really know where we fit in the story. When we, or others we love, are ill, suffering, we pray for healing. We hope for healing. We even demand it at times.

But we also know it’s not as simple as that. Sometimes God has healed loved ones of physical and mental disease. Sometimes the healing given isn’t what we asked for. So centering our worship with these stories, as the Gospel of the Day, is a practical problem. How do they apply to us?

But this story is different. Because Jesus uses language in this episode that opens a door for us to enter this healing. Oddly enough, it’s language we sometimes are too sophisticated and modern to take seriously.

Ancient people often attributed illness to evil spirits, and Jesus’ day did, too.

This woman has painful scoliosis, caused by who knows what. But Luke says she had a “spirit of disease” for 18 years, that’s why she was bent over double. And Jesus goes with this. He doesn’t say, “Be healed.” He says, “you are set free.” The same word describing freeing a prisoner from a cell, or freeing someone from crushing debt.

When the synagogue leader protests this Sabbath healing, Jesus keeps the image. He defeats his fellow rabbi in a classic Jewish debate, declaring that if the lesser thing – untying an ox on the Sabbath for water (one who had only been tied up over night) – is permitted in Torah, then clearly the greater thing – setting free a woman kept in bondage by Satan (one who had been tied up for 18 years) – is also permitted. The rabbi lost, and he and his friends know it. They’re “put to shame,” Luke says. The crowd of common folk hoot and holler at Jesus’ Jewish wisdom and skill.

But here’s your open door: Jesus, God’s Son, has the compassion and power to set free God’s children who are bound. What Jesus did, even if it uses the language of evil spirits, that’s the hope. Because if you can be set free of something you’ve come to believe will always bind you, wouldn’t that be life?

What ties you up, holds your life, and has done for so long you really believe this is the way you will always be?

The ancient Christian desert fathers and mothers shared the same belief in the presence of evil spirits. But they also had a wisdom that could be a great blessing to us.

They developed an understanding of nine spirits of temptation that afflicted people. They believed these spirits could bind us, hold us in their grasp. A few centuries later, Pope Gregory I codified a list of seven of them, unfortunately mislabelling them deadly sins. But the wisdom isn’t about sin that needs punishing. The wisdom is recognizing forces that trap us and shape us.

The list varied, but mostly it was anger, pride, deceit, envy, avarice, fear, gluttony, lust, and disengagement (sometimes called sloth.) Any of us at any time can be bound up by these evils, our forebears taught. They can hold our hearts and minds, affect our behavior, cripple our spirits, break our will.

Now, some of us in this room, in our community, have physical and mental ailments they’d like to be freed from, but not all of us. But everyone in this room, in our community, has at least one of these spirits.

And today Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God, can set you free.

If “evil spirits” sounds a bit superstitious, think of them as controlling passions.

Is anger always lurking behind your heart, resentment at hand, ready to burst out and make a mess of your life, or to hurt others?

Are you trapped by needing to think pridefully of yourself, ready to manipulate things so you come out on top?

Does your vanity bind you, so you lie not only to others but even to yourself, to make yourself look better?

Does the melancholy you feel about your life lead you to envy what others have and who they are?

Is your need for security such that you cling tightly to things, unable to share, greedy for more?

Are you so afraid of life, so anxious, that you live a life of doubt, sometimes unable to move?

Or is something of a good thing never enough, you never feel fulfilled, needing more and more and more?

Do you see others as objects, trying to control them and the world, finding yourself using others?

Or is the world so fractured, so complex, you see no point in acting, no point in engaging, but fall into the boredom of being and doing nothing?

These are the passions that can bind us all, and everyone finds themselves trapped somewhere in these. That’s the wisdom of our forebears.

But God has come in Christ to set you free. Whether you ever thought it possible or not. Whether you came here looking for it or not. Just because God loves you.

That’s your hope: you don’t have to be bound by these.

Naming what binds you, watching for it, so that you know how and what to pray, that’s a good beginning. Once you know your captor’s name, you can learn new ways of thinking and being that lead to wholeness and life, not the bondage of these afflictive passions.

But beginning, middle, and end of it all is asking your God to free you in Christ. Recognizing you have no more power over the passion that binds you than over physical disease, ask God to set you free. To lead you to serenity instead of anger, humility instead of pride, truthfulness instead of deceit, emotional health instead of envy, non-attachment instead of greed, courage instead of fear, sobriety instead of gluttony, vulnerability instead of dominance, and action instead of disengagement.

The Triune God has sent you the Holy Spirit to live in you and give you life, to break any chains that bind you, trap you, block you from the abundant life God intends you to know. Nothing can separate you from God’s love in Christ, not even that thing that has held you so long.

That’s the joy the leader missed seeing.

Keeping Sabbath pales in comparison to God freeing someone from what binds and holds them. Rather than being indignant, he could have rejoiced with this woman, with the crowds, that God had done such a glorious thing.

And so can you. You can not only ask God to set you free, every day. You can also be one who sets others free, rather than binding them. Give an ox a drink, or a cup of water to someone thirsty. Call an old woman over to love her in Christ. Look out for the ones who are bound and find a way to give them hope, or, if you can, untie them. You can bear God’s freeing grace in your actions, your words, your love, and your witness to what it’s like to be freed.

Unlike this woman, being set free from these things takes a lot of time. A lifetime. We’re all in the state of being freed, and all in the business of helping others find the freeing touch of God in Christ. Until all, oxen and humans, are set free: to live, and drink water, and stand up straight, and praise God’s goodness together.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen