Taking Jesus seriously here is both promise and challenging diagnosis, but ultimately reveals a path to life in this world and the promise of life in the world to come.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 28 B
Texts: Mark 10:17-31; Hebrews 4:12-16

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

What do I have to do? That’s the question.

This unnamed man wants to inherit eternal life. He’s looking for a promise of life after death and thinks Jesus might have an answer.

We know Jesus sees eternal life as a both/and reality: both life after we die and life in this world. In this encounter, Jesus distinctly offers both.

Pay attention to that. It’s too easy, like this man, to focus only on one – life after death – to the exclusion of the other.

So: imagine this man is carrying luggage as he approaches Jesus.

That might make it easier to see what’s going on. He’s got the full backpack, the big roller bag with another one strapped on top, and two Samsonites he’s wrestling with. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt. He’s a good man, keeps the commandments, tries to be faithful. But he’s worried: what if I haven’t done enough to secure eternal life?

Jesus looks at him, loves him, and says, “first off, you’re going to want to drop all that stuff. It’s dragging you down. Sell it and give to those who need help.” Notice this is not conditional. Jesus doesn’t say letting go of his wealth and possessions earns him eternal life. He says, “You’re carrying too much around; let go of it, share it, and trust that you have treasures in heaven.”

But once you’ve dropped the luggage, then come follow me, Jesus says. Having let go of all that you value so much, trusting in the gift of life after death, now you’re freed to really walk alongside me. Even to the cross.

And here Jesus offers a second grace: whatever luggage our guy sets down, whatever he sells and gives to those who are poor, he will receive a hundredfold more graces in this community that’s also walking with Jesus. Countless houses where he’s welcome wherever he goes, more siblings, parents, more life than he can even imagine, Jesus says.

But the man is deeply sad. He grieves. He says, “I can’t do that.”

In this he differs from Lutherans. We say, “We don’t have to do that.”

But the end is the same: the letting go, the dropping of that which drags us down, the sharing, doesn’t happen. Our “we don’t have to do that” too often leads to not walking the path of Christ. We don’t walk away grieving, though. We’ve convinced ourselves that just believing in Jesus is the thing. Because Jesus’ death and resurrection establish the promise of life with God after death, because what we do doesn’t earn that love from God, we easily talk ourselves out of doing what Jesus says, out of following.

“The Word of God is living and active,” we heard, “sharper than any two-edged sword.

“It pierces until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”

Today’s Gospel is that sword Hebrews promised this morning. We try to soften this encounter with Jesus, explain it away, use God’s forgiveness and grace as an excuse to hold all our possessions and wealth and privilege.

But – and I’m as sorry to hear this as I am to say it – God’s Word cuts right through our self-justification and our desire to say we are not this man. This Gospel reading will not let us off the hook.

If this man – living under Roman oppression in a backwater part of the world in the first century – is rich, what are we? By any measure, every one of us here is in the upper percents of the one percent on this planet. Even if we led simpler lives, we’d have a lifestyle billions can’t begin to imagine. We spend so much of our lives accumulating wealth and things, protecting ourselves with locks and insurance, resisting any claim of Jesus that this is dragging us down and depriving others. We rarely think about at whose expense it was that our wealth was accumulated, whose stolen land it is that we are buying and selling, whose lives are harmed by our growing portfolios.

We rarely let Jesus’ call to “sell what you own, give the money to the poor; then come, follow me” haunt us, or bother us.

Here’s another uncomfortable truth: the early Church believed Jesus really was talking about our wealth, our possessions.

They understood Jesus saw faith as something lived concretely in the world, not just thought or believed. They embraced a shared abundant poverty that took Jesus seriously. We can easily find repeated calls for this kind of letting go of wealth and possessions throughout the entire New Testament.

And though the Church developed power and social respectability that led to centuries of theology plastering over Jesus’ words, there have been voices since those first years that kept saying, “I think Jesus meant what he said, and we need to follow him.”

The desert mothers and fathers left the cities believing they could not live faithfully in power and wealth. St. Francis of Assisi literally dropped everything to follow. Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement in the 20th century followed that call, as did Archbishop Oscar Romero in El Salvador, whom our Roman Catholic siblings will declare a saint today. There are always voices calling us to hear Jesus and take him seriously. To really follow.

We’re a lot like this unnamed man. Overall, we think we’re pretty good.

We think of sin only as bad actions we do, and forgiveness as avoiding punishment. So as long as, like him, we keep the commandments, act decently, are “good” people, we pretend we don’t have to worry about Jesus’ words. But some in the Church have heard in Jesus a different message, seeing sin more as a disease, ailing our whole body and soul. It is seen in actions, yes. But it’s a deeper problem that needs healing.

That makes sense in this case: our addiction to wealth and privilege and power is so deeply embedded, given where we were born and where we live, and our centuries of denial that we have any more than anyone else, it really is like a disease.

There are enough spare rooms and bathrooms amongst the people of Mount Olive, in all our homes, to close down the homeless encampment today, and give every one in those tents a place to stay. That you and I don’t even consider that possibility, even recoil from the idea, is a sign of how deeply the sin of wealth infects our whole being.

Now we understand the disciples’ despair: “then who can be saved?”

But hear Jesus’ answer: “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.” As Hebrews also says today, because of Jesus entering as God into our lives and facing our suffering, our testing, our human reality, and bringing that into the life of the Triune God, we can approach God’s “throne of grace with boldness, seeking mercy, and grace to help in time of need.”

Grace to help in time of need: our disease of sinful addiction to our wealth and possessions is so deeply in our every breath, only God can do what needs to be done to end it, to change us. Give us courage to drop our luggage, face our addictions, and find the freedom to follow Jesus’ path.

Jesus offers the grace of life now and forever; let’s seek both.

To trust, because of God’s endless love, and the life won at the cross and empty tomb, that life with God after our death is our sure and certain hope. We Lutherans are right on this – there’s nothing we need do to earn that, it’s pure gift.

But to then recognize how tightly we’re holding to our luggage here, how it harms us and others, and let it go, so we are free to follow Jesus down his path. Our wealth and possessions so claim us, it’s not going to be easy even to see baby steps in dropping these bags. But we trust that for God, all things are possible, and that working in us, together as a community, God will help us simplify, let go bit by bit, share so all have what they need, and gradually find that hundredfold abundance in this communal life promised to all who follow Jesus’ path.

Jesus really is serious here. He means what he says, hopes we follow, and he also intends the grace he announces. Thanks be to God who makes possible our following, and abundant life here and in the world to come.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

Dependent, vulnerable, without control: this is how we find life and hope in God’s reign in this world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 27 B
Texts: Mark 10:2-16; Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:5-12

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

Children are complicated.

You long for them to learn words, then they never stop talking. You eagerly await their first steps, then they become a running blur. They’re full of love and kindness but can rapidly turn to anger and harsh words. They change quickly, outgrow clothes astonishingly fast, and can be really challenging to be around when they’re learning to exercise their own authority and voice and opinion. Children are amazing gifts and blessings. But they are complicated.

So when Jesus says to enter into God’s reign you need to become like a child, it’s perplexing. What does he mean? Innocent? Yes, children are. But they’re also capable of sinfulness and manipulation. Trusting? Yes, but no one asks “why” better than a child. Children often need hard evidence to be convinced. In fact, children are just like adults, only smaller. Similar emotions, needs, desires, opinions, arguments appear in people of all ages.

But these truths don’t apply to most adults: children are utterly dependent on others for everything, they’re exceedingly vulnerable, and they have control over almost nothing.

That’s our entry point into God’s reign, Jesus says. Not imagining some attributes of children that aren’t true, and trying to recreate them in ourselves. But instead admitting how completely dependent, vulnerable, and without control we also are in this world.

The clues are in today’s story itself.

The disciples control access to Jesus. They’re the adults, they’re in charge. For some reason, they decide these parents can’t bring their children to Jesus. (Notice that the parents also control their children. We don’t know if the children wanted to be brought to Jesus.)

Jesus is outraged (“indignant” is too light a translation). He reaches out to these children and says two critical things: first, God’s reign belongs to vulnerable ones like these. And second, if you want in, you need to be like them.

Clues also appear in the testing the Pharisees just set. They believe Jesus doesn’t honor God’s law or teach it. They make a big mistake in choosing as a test case one of the laws Jesus considers deeply unjust. Men under Jewish law at the time could basically throw their wives away in divorce for little cause, simply by issuing a certificate of divorce. Women had no such option. So Jesus answers their harshness with harshness. If you live by the law, Jesus says, be careful. You’ll get burned by the law.

Again, Jesus’ outrage is at people in strength and authority riding roughshod over those who are vulnerable, in this case vulnerable women in a patriarchal society. An outrageous reality that still exists today, as we’ve witnessed these past weeks in Washington.

That’s not the reign of God Jesus came to create.

Jesus reveals a reign of God that is only good news to those on the bottom.

God’s reign is marked by forgiveness and grace, not by rule-keeping. It’s a reign, Jesus preaches, where the least are the greatest, where everyone is willing to serve others, where life is found in letting go of domination and control.

Jesus announces good news to those who are poor and those who are oppressed, those who are downhearted and those who are sinful. Jesus goes out of his way to welcome into God’s reign people the so-called “good” people have written off.

And today Jesus takes a child into his arms to make it absolutely clear: “This is how you come to God.”

If you want to come to God and maintain control over your life, if you think that you don’t depend on anyone, not even God, if you are determined to protect yourself and your things and your opinions and your rights, you will learn it is impossible to understand or receive God’s reign.

But if you’re willing to admit you’re as vulnerable and dependent as any child, or as those women they were debating throwing away like so much trash, if you’re willing to admit you control nothing of importance in your life, that you are weak, well, Jesus says, I’ve got good news for you. I came for people just like you.

I have come that you might have life, Jesus says, but life isn’t found in control, and independence, and invincibility. When you admit your weakness, your dependence on my mercy and love, I will take you into my arms, I will always forgive you, and I will set you down again with the strength and courage to love God and love neighbor with every breath of your being.

You will know life, then, like you’ve never known it before.

That’s the true Good News of God the Son of God wants you to know.

To show you this, Hebrews says today, in Christ the Triune God became the most vulnerable and dependent of all. Christ relinquished all control and self-protection. Instead of supporting those who would crush others by their self-righteousness, Christ Jesus tasted death, Hebews says, suffered completely to become the pioneer, the guide for your healing, your saving.

Jesus also revealed that being vulnerable and dependent on God means being vulnerable and dependent on each other. While that opens you up to all sorts of pain and loss and daily death, the risen Christ has also revealed this is a path of life, even now.

When you’re willing to become one of the least, to let go of control, you find the true God has already gotten there ahead of you, and you begin to understand: God’s love can only happen where God is, and that’s always with those who are lost, those who are the least, those who are stepped upon in our midst. Those who are vulnerable and dependent, who control nothing.

Love of neighbor begins there, too, when you see everyone as a neighbor to be served, everyone as worthy of your love and care.

This is also the Good News the world has desperately needed for so long.

The healed, whole world the Triune God desires, begun by taking on our human life and continuing by making us all new, is found when we become children again, utterly dependent, utterly vulnerable, and utterly loved and graced.

The reign of God belongs to such as these, Jesus says.

And isn’t it a relief? A relief to let go of your need to prove your righteousness, to let go of your fear of failure? A relief to not have to be in charge, to find life in depending on God and your neighbor, to find healing and hope in vulnerable love and life?

You are a beloved, blessed child of God. Good news: that’s exactly what you need to be to enter into God’s reign of life and love.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

There is more than enough Spirit of God for all, so we pray for a share of God’s Spirit and imagination, that we might join the whole creation in abundant life in God now and forever.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 26 B
Text: Mark 9:38-50

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

It’s troubling how well we understand John.

John saw someone doing exorcisms in Jesus’ name, and wanted to stop him, “because he wasn’t following us.” Not one of the dozens of disciples following Jesus through Galilee. Someone the insiders didn’t recognize was doing God’s work. We know this attitude; it can creep up in our own hearts.

Former ELCA presiding bishop Mark Hanson shared a story at the Bishop’s Theological Conference last week that he’s often told publicly, so I think I can share it. When then Senator Obama was running for president, he called together a group of around 30 Christian leaders of all the major denominations and faith organizations to hear their concerns and have a dialogue. Many of this group were not supportive of his candidacy, or later of his presidency.

One of the well-known evangelical leaders asked him directly if he believed that Jesus was the way, the truth and the life, the only way to salvation. Bp. Hanson says Sen. Obama replied that yes, he was a Christian, and said what he believed about Jesus. But then the senator paused for a few seconds, and said, “But who am I to limit God’s imagination?” He then talked about how, if God chooses to draw others to God by different ways, it wasn’t his place to limit God.

Who am I to limit God’s imagination? It’s exactly what Jesus needs John and the others to hear. It isn’t theirs to limit whom the Spirit of God reaches, or to decide if someone else is in relationship with God or doing God’s work.

Jesus needs us to hear this, too.

“Give us a share of your Spirit,” we prayed this morning.

Listen to what we assumed in this prayer: there’s enough of God’s Spirit to go around, and we ask that we share in it. That God’s Spirit would move in our hearts, shape our lives, and strengthen us for our Christ path. “Empower us to bear Christ’s name” we prayed.

But who are we to limit God’s imagination? If the Holy Spirit works with other people, how is that our concern? If the Spirit moves in people with different theology, who are labeled as “different” faiths, how do we have say over that?

All we can do is pray, “Please also give us a share of your Spirit.” A share. Not control of the Spirit. Not exclusive rights to claim the Spirit’s grace. God’s abundance of love for this creation is so great, there is more than enough Holy Spirit to fill every atom of the universe.

I could stop right here. But Mark and Luke add something else Jesus said they believe is connected.

Unlike Matthew, they place Jesus’ harsh sayings about stumbling right after this episode.

This is about as graphic as Jesus gets. Millstones around necks and cutting off body parts tends to catch our attention. Which is what Jesus means to do. The early Church never took Jesus literally here, nor should we. But we must take him seriously. This is so critical Jesus uses shocking hyperbole to get us to pay attention.

Mark and Luke tie the question of causing others to stumble, or stumbling ourselves, to the issue of control of the Spirit. Trying to keep God’s Spirit for yourself, drawing lines on who’s connected to God, might cause others who believe in God to stumble. And Jesus said, it’s game over if you do that. As with all his teaching drawing all people into God’s love and prohibiting any exclusion, Jesus says it’s literally a matter of life and death if your actions or attitude cause others to fall from their belief.

But there’s only one statement about causing others to fall. There are three about causing yourself to fall. That means the question of sharing the Spirit, or unwillingness to do that, directly affects your faith, your relationship with God, your walk in Christ. And, Jesus says, emphasizing it in three ways, if that’s the case, you’ll need major surgery.

These three are no less powerful or clear when we hear Jesus’ words as metaphor.

If your hand causes you to stumble, if there are things you do, actions you take, decisions you make, that hurt others, or trip you on your path of Christly love, get rid of them. Cut them off. Some behaviors or words might be so ingrained it will feel like surgery removing them. But falling out of your relationship with God in Christ will hurt much more.

If your foot causes you to stumble, if there are places you go, directions your mind takes, that move you off the path of following Christ, change your direction. Cut off the paths that lead you to death. These might be so familiar you’ll be pained to stop walking them. Perhaps the path of self-interest, putting your needs first above all. Or the path of self-righteousness, believing you never take a wrong turn. It’s hard to change direction. But much harder, Jesus says, to stumble away from God’s love.

If your eye causes you to stumble, if there are ways you see the world, or other people, that are unhealthy, if there are people whose sin you see clearly while blind to your own, Jesus says, cut off that vision. Get new eyes from the God who loves you, eyes that can see the truth about yourself and the world, eyes that look with God’s love.

Ways of seeing the world, your life, and others are deeply rooted, and it will be painful to remove them. But far more painful, Jesus says, to miss seeing God’s transforming grace lighting up the world and your life.

If you want an easy way to walk in life, Jesus isn’t for you.

Even John the beloved disciple doesn’t understand how deeply Jesus intends to embrace every child of God. So don’t be discouraged if you’re also frustrated by how intensely Jesus asks you to follow in his footsteps.

But remember: all these disciples stuck with Jesus when others didn’t, because they found life in him. They heard words of hope about God and their lives they never heard anywhere else. After they saw him brutally killed, destroying their hope and faith, they met him alive again and realized that this challenging path of God’s love for all things, where all are included, was a path of life and joy. A path where it mattered to them deeply that they not cause others to stumble, that they remove things that tripped themselves up.

No Christian since the resurrection ever said Christ’s path was easy. But they have said it was worth it, that on this path they have found life abundant in God’s self-giving love here, and the promise of life abundant in a world to come.

So let us pray again: “Give us a share of your Spirit, and empower us.”

This is yet another grace of God’s undying love we see in Jesus’ resurrection: if Christ is alive, then God can send us and all people the Holy Spirit for our lives and faith and journey.

This is our prayer because this is our hope: as challenging as following Jesus is, as hard as cutting away things will be, as much as we want to believe that it is a path of abundant life in God’s deathless love now and forever, we don’t walk this faith alone.

The Holy Spirit longs to fill your heart and give you courage and wisdom, to bring hope when you despair, to whisper “you are loved” when you feel deepest guilt, to make your heart sing when you don’t even know the words, to make your spirit leap when you can’t find the energy to take one step.

Who are we to limit God’s imagination? But we can pray that we have a share in that imagination, that God’s Spirit will come to us now and always and change us, that we might know this abundant life. Then our lives will witness to this Spirit, until all people find themselves in God’s embrace, walking the road together.

In the name of Jesus. Amen

 

Christ calls us to look to the cross, and understand both God’s love and our own path. Let’s not be afraid to ask for understanding.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 25 B
Text: Mark 9:30-37; James 3:13 – 4:3, 7-8a

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

The disciples didn’t understand what Jesus was saying.

But they were afraid to ask him.

Of course they were. The last time Jesus predicted his death, Peter challenged Jesus as to the propriety of a Messiah being killed. No one needed a reminder of how devastating Jesus’ rebuke of Peter was.

Now Jesus predicts his death again. No one wanted to ask. Instead, they argued on the road about which one of them was the greatest.

Do you see the irony? Jesus speaks of giving himself up, and they talk about who’s most important among them. They act as if he didn’t say anything about suffering and dying, and get distracted by something else.

But hear Jesus’ response.

Jesus answers Peter’s criticism by calling everyone who follows him to take up a cross, to deny themselves, to be willing to lose all. We heard Jesus say last week that if you don’t think Messiahs should take this path, then know this: it’s not just for me. It’s for all who follow me.

Today Jesus responds to frivolous chatter about which of them is greatest in a similar way. Jesus says if you really want to be first among my followers, be last. Be a servant of all.

It’s clear they don’t understand this any better. But do we? And if we don’t, or perhaps don’t want to, are we also afraid to ask, afraid that then Jesus would become all too clear?

We’ve been hearing sayings like this from Jesus all our lives. So what are we Christians nattering about as we walk along the way?

Like the disciples, we’re talking about a lot. Unlike them, it’s mostly important things. Churchwide debates over Biblical authority, church order, sexuality. Church meetings in this city about how to address homelessness and poverty and starvation of far too many of God’s children among us. Workshops and meetings about the church’s problem with racism. Handwringing about membership decline in mainline churches, and proposed strategies.

Many of these things are important. We want to be faithful to God’s hope for the world. So we focus on how to do that, on strategy and plans, marketing and awareness.

But when was the last time you ever heard of a Christian group – national, local, congregational – have a focused debate, workshop, or strategy, on servanthood? We have committees at Mount Olive caring for our property, our worship, our stewardship, our ministry with youth and families, our mission, and more. All are important tasks.

But we don’t have a committee for cross-bearing. A director for servanthood. People to lead this congregation in understanding what Jesus asks of his followers, people to help us learn openness to the Holy Spirit so that God might change our hearts into servant hearts in every aspect of our lives.

They didn’t understand Jesus, and were afraid to ask. Can we learn from this?

If we read the New Testament, issues like the ones that dominate Christian thoughts and planning and strategy are deeply important, but are secondary to a greater understanding of what Christ came to do and to call us to be. Each of the three times Jesus predicts his death, he then calls his followers to a servant life like his. After his resurrection, he keeps at this core to his preaching and teaching. The New Testament writers all echo this center.

Jesus says two things in these predictions: Look to the cross. Understand what God is doing there. And then, follow the same way.

We struggle to understand how the cross and our following with a cross is the heart of everything for Jesus. When we think of the cross, it’s rarely to consider our daily decisions and actions. But that’s where Jesus always goes with it.

And thanks be to God, these disciples eventually did understand, and in the writings in the New Testament, they share what they’ve understood about this call of Jesus to follow, so we can understand. Today we hear from James.

It’s a wisdom from above, James says.

This servant heart is given us in the Spirit, comes from God. It is pure, peaceable. Gentle. Willing to yield. Full of mercy and good fruits. It has no trace of partiality or hypocrisy.

The New Testament describes this kind of wisdom again and again, and gives concrete ways to recognize when one is living in it. These writers take Jesus’ call and help us see how it might look to live that way.

And they help us see that all the things we talk about, those concerns of God for the world that we want to help with, flow from this new reality. That if this was the wisdom you sought from God, you’d be changed in such a way that doing the work God needs in the world would come naturally. If you asked to be made peaceable and gentle. If you asked the Spirit to teach you to be willing to yield to others, and to be full of mercy. If you asked God to take away any partiality you had or hypocrisy.

When we are changed into servants, cross-bearers, then we become part of God’s healing of all things. That’s the plan.

Do you understand? Are you afraid to ask Jesus if you don’t?

That’s OK. Jesus has a lot of experience with disciples who get distracted, who misunderstand. Like all the other lists that describe the path of Christ in Scripture, this is a vulnerable place to go, a vulnerable place to be. Jesus said it today, “be last, not first. Be servant to all.” It will take courage – heart strength – to do it, which comes only from God.

But that’s at the center of all of this: God wants to give this to you, James says. The love shown by the Triune God at the cross – where Jesus keeps telling you to look – isn’t just a model. It’s the power of God to enter your life and help you, change you, so you actually follow the model.

And remember: You’re not in this alone. Joined together in Baptism and God’s love, with the Spirit’s help, we can help each other lose our fear of asking, get the clarity we need from God, and the courage to take the path of Christ ourselves.

That’s something worth talking about as we walk this road together.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

Don’t claim Jesus as Messiah if you’re not willing to follow the Messiah path – a path of vulnerable, self-giving love that leads to abundant life for the creation.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 24 B
Text: Mark 8:27-38

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

“Do as I say, not as I do.”

When has that ever worked as an exhortation by a parent? It’s a cliché because it’s all too often our truth. We say things are important to us, valued by us, we say there are behaviors we expect in others. But when we don’t live like any of this, our words are hollow, our actions empty.

“Don’t tell anyone that I’m the Messiah,” Jesus “sternly” orders today. The crowds might think Jesus is Elijah or one of the prophets, or even John the Baptist, come back to life. But Peter and the disciples know the truth. Jesus is God’s Anointed One.

But Jesus doesn’t want them to tell anyone this until they understand what it means to follow the kind of Messiah Jesus is. If they don’t know what it means for their lives as well, he doesn’t want them proclaiming him Messiah and implying they are faithful followers.

Would that the Church had heeded this command more frequently over the millennia.

Far too often the Church has loudly proclaimed Jesus as the Christ while living in opposition to that very title.

The Church began as a movement from the underside of society. Jesus’ proclamation of God’s love for all, inclusivity of all peoples and genders, love of enemies, nonviolence, peacemaking, drew all sorts of people who didn’t have power or social status. Jesus’ Gospel was a liberating word of Good News for all, from those who were poor to those who were wealthy, from those who were outcast to those who were insider.

Once the Church became the dominant political force in the Roman Empire, the life of Christ, the path of self-giving love, the way of God Jesus came to teach and invite us to follow, went by the wayside. Jesus’ teachings were used to protect power and support social structures and order. Christians went from people who wouldn’t participate in war to an established Church using armies to advance its power. The cross, the sign of divine sacrificial love, became a military talisman painted on shields.

And so the Church did the Crusades, the Inquisition, countless heresy trials and executions and wars and massacres. It grew more powerful than emperors, with more armies and castles and wealth than kings dreamed of.

Don’t tell anyone I’m the Messiah, Jesus sternly ordered his disciples. Because this is what he feared would happen. Peter’s opposition to a Messiah who would willingly face death would flourish into a Church responsible for more death and destruction than almost any other institution.

“Who do you say that I am?” is more than an information question.

Jesus says that your answer to his question determines your path. If you say he is Messiah, you admit that God’s Christ went to Jerusalem, was arrested, and was brutally executed on a cross. And you claim that path for yourself.

“Don’t say who I am,” Jesus says today. “Do who I am. Live who I am.” That’s the frightening thing about today’s Gospel. If you say that Jesus is God’s Messiah, you have only one option for following, to live and love as he lives and loves. Following Jesus is denying yourself. Following Jesus is losing your life. Following Jesus is taking up a cross.

How did we ever think this was optional? There are no other paths. So, Jesus says, if you don’t want to follow me, please, please don’t tell people I’m the Messiah, lest they think you’re my followers.

Jesus’ dying on the cross isn’t an accident that Easter erases. It’s God’s path for the healing of the world.

On Friday, Holy Cross Day, we heard Paul’s claim that the cross is foolishness to the world but it is God’s deepest wisdom. God’s wisdom that this universe is created and sustained by self giving love, beginning with God’s own self-giving love in creating all things. But the cross is God’s deepest self-revelation.

The love the Triune God poured out for the world on the cross is the only love that can and will heal all things. Only self-giving, vulnerable love, given from one creature to another, brings life. Jesus’ path today isn’t a theory, it’s Jesus’ absolutely clear proclamation of how God will heal all things. Beginning with Jesus and continuing with us.

This path of losing goes against everything we think we want.

To lose our life for Jesus’ sake, as his followers, means losing things we’d rather keep close to us, protect.

Losing your life means letting go of respectability, of being well thought of, for the sake of bringing love wherever it is needed. The vulnerability of not worrying what we look like.

Losing your life means letting go of being right, of having all the answers, for the sake of being love with God’s other children. That kind of vulnerability is really hard when you’re used to winning arguments and proving others wrong.

Losing your life means letting go of being perfect, when forgiveness and grace is the only way to healing relationships. That kind of vulnerability – to admit you fail, to be willing to forgive others who fail you, no strings attached – is really frightening.

But this losing, Jesus says, is for the sake of the Good News. It leads to life.

That’s what we forget. In God’s creation, life is only found in love that gives itself away completely. The only path for a follower of Jesus is a path that is shaped like a cross. But it’s also the only path to life.

And we know because we’ve seen it. Alongside the record of the Church’s grasping for power and doing great wickedness we also have centuries, millennia of stories of followers of Christ who proclaimed the Messiah by their cross-shaped lives, their sacrificial love for others. We can’t deny the sins of the Church, but we also mustn’t forget the grace and healing that people who took the losing path for the sake of the Good News brought into the world.

They also witnessed to us the peace of mind, the gentleness of spirit, the joy of life that is only found on such a path. Think of those who have modeled this path of sacrificial love for you, who had a serenity and hope and trust that the other paths in the world can’t even dream of. These saints in our lives, and the saints the whole Church recognizes, are bright stars on this Christ path, singing to us of the abundant life we will find when we follow.

“Do as I say, not as I do” just doesn’t work for Christ people.

Jesus would tell you that it would be better not to claim who he is at all, if you don’t want to follow his path.

But if you do see that he is God’s Anointed, if you have come to know the undying love of God through Jesus’ words and grace and sacrifice, if you’ve found hope in his teaching, wisdom in his dying, and joy in his living, then take a leap, like Peter, and say, “You are the Messiah.”

And then follow on the only path where this Messiah is found. It will look a lot like losing. It will mean the death of things you may not be ready to let go of. It will feel terrifyingly vulnerable.

But trust Jesus. He’s the Messiah, after all. And this path, this cross-shaped Christ path, will bring you and all people to abundant life, and the restoring of the whole creation.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen