God’s abundance is enough for all; how will we live as if we truly believed that?

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 17 B
Texts: John 6:1-15 (16-21 saved for next week); Ephesians 3:14-21; 2 Samuel 11:1-15

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

I gave away well over half of my clothes last week. I didn’t plan to.

I meant to go through my closet and drawers and give the things I never wear anymore to Central Lutheran Church’s Free Store. I cling far too hopefully to clothes I used to fit into, far too sentimentally to clothes I think I might wear again. But after 35 years of adulthood, I finally took the time to thin out. I couldn’t believe how much it ended up being. Shirts, jeans, socks, belts, shoes, dress clothes. 205 pieces of clothing.

I don’t tell you this as a point of pride, or for your praise. You would do better to wonder what it is about your pastor that makes him stubbornly refuse to act for over four decades of John the Baptist’s urging every Advent, and give one of his two coats to someone who has none. Or why when so many have nearly nothing, your pastor accumulated more than twice the clothes he needed, but didn’t wear them for years.

A simple reason is that I could.

Mary and I had lean years, especially when the children were young, but we were blessed that we always could provide for the family. As we both grew older, both with steady incomes, more and more I didn’t have to decide not to buy that pair of jeans (even though I had some already) or that shirt. Over time, bit by bit, I accumulated.

But there is also something in me that doesn’t want to let go of things. A subtle fear that one day I might need it, or regret not having it. In this land of great abundance, I act as if have a deep-rooted fear of scarcity. What if one day I don’t have what I want?

This story of abundant food shared with thousands, revealing Jesus as God-with-us, says there’s a different way to be. I could live in this abundant world as if there is nothing to fear, no need to hoard. I could become someone who doesn’t wait forty years to find the freedom and lightness of not clinging to things that others could find life in.

Today Paul says God, by the power at work within each of us, is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine.

This story of thousands fed by a meager lunch proclaims God provides more than enough resources here to feed and clothe everyone. Our weak imagination matches the disciples’. We see only limits to what we can do, with the resources available, to feed everyone, let everyone live a full and abundant life. But God-with-us takes what looks like nothing and feeds everyone. “As much as they wanted,” John says.

This story of thousands fed proclaims God also provides abundant community. These thousands came from all social strata, but now they are at table together, sharing a meal. We limit who is in our family, whom we will eat with. But God-with-us makes a table big enough for all to gather, and share, and know each other as blessed and loved. No one is alone.

This story of an exhausted Jesus feeding thousands also proclaims that God has abundant love, abundant grace, abundant God for all. This act of self-giving love foreshadows the love for the universe that will be revealed on the cross. We limit God’s love and grace, sometimes for ourselves, many times for others. But God-with-us sees no limits, not even the limit of death, and pours out love for the whole creation.

If this is true, why do I cling so tightly to things, and to my social circle, and even to God’s love?

I can’t speak to whether all this is true for you, but it is for me. This is a trap of privilege. Living a privileged life means I can hear of God’s abundance shown in a massive feast and spiritualize it, keep hoarding my possessions, give away a little to feel good. I can limit who’s in my community, and not face that people suffer because of me. I can imagine God only loves those I love, or who see God as I do. And my culture would call me respectable in all this.

Privilege means you can have all you want, and not have to worry about what cost that brings to another person. This terrible story of King David’s rape of a neighbor woman and murder of her husband begins with his abuse of royal privilege. Next week we’ll hear God speak through Nathan and say to the king, “I gave you everything, I made you king. If that had been too little, I would have given you more. But you still destroyed these people’s lives for your own greed.”

Jesus came that all might have life, and have it abundantly.

But Jesus doesn’t promise believers will become rich people, isolated people. Jesus promises walking his way leads to a life that is actually rich, not in possessions and self-centeredness, but in a life that’s truly full and joyful.

In our abundant land, with many of us having more than enough to eat, 40 percent of America’s food gets thrown away. And millions starve in our own country. Jesus’ way is that everyone has as much as they want to eat, and then he has the disciples gather the leftovers, so nothing is wasted. Which is a world you’d rather live in?

In our privileged lives we can pick our friends and acquaintances, and ignore, if we choose, anyone we we don’t want to deal with, anyone we don’t like, anyone who doesn’t share our faith. And millions are lonely, millions suffer under the eyes of those doing well, and religious hatred is destroying our world. Jesus’ way is that every one of God’s creatures are in this together, all belong, all are fed, all thrive, all are loved by God. Which is a world you’d rather live in?

Our new loan program here follows Jesus’ way. When you have more than enough, you don’t build a wall, we’re saying with Longer Table Lending. You build a longer table.

Because that’s where abundance is found. In the freedom and lightness of sharing – your possessions, life, and even God’s love – with all your neighbors. It’s more than just finding abundant food and resources. It’s finding abundant numbers of your community. It’s finding an abundant scope to God’s love.

This story of God’s abundance poured out on thousands is a great challenge to me. Maybe to you, too.

I could leave here today and do nothing. See what Jesus did and what it means, and fall back into my old habits. As if I deserve it.

If you’re like me, so could you. Today’s sermon could be like any other you heard and then did nothing. God’s rich abundance of resources, community, and love, intended for all could be something you delight in but that doesn’t change anything about you.

I know myself well: if I’d been in the crowd that day, hungry, and heard they were giving out food, for much of my life my first thought would’ve been “I’ll bet that basket doesn’t get all the way over here.” I’d worry about getting my share. The fact that I have every reason to be thankful to God every minute of my life for my blessings makes that reaction obscene. But the grace of the Spirit’s working in me over these years means I’m learning to let go of these old ways and find abundant life in Jesus’ way.

So it comes to this: God is able to accomplish for you and for this world abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine. I could walk away and do nothing about how my life reflects that. So could you.

The question is, will you?

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

The world is a frightening place, and our call is frightening, too. But find a quiet place to listen for God, pray, and then get back out there to serve, because God is with you.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 15 B
Texts: Mark 6:14-29 (30-32 added); 2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19; Psalm 24

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

There’s a striking difference in the strategy John the Baptist and Jesus used proclaiming God’s reign in the world.

John was fiery. He called those who came to hear him “families of snakes” and threatened them with divine destruction. He publicly called out a corrupt, sexually promiscuous ruler for his immorality.

Jesus did have a few angry moments, but mostly didn’t preach fire and brimstone. He spoke of God’s love. He called people to follow God with their whole lives, their hearts as well as their bodies. He spent time with those considered worthless or unredeemable.

But both of them were killed for their preaching and ministry. John was beheaded by a weak king who couldn’t bear to have people make fun of him. Jesus was executed by a weak governor who couldn’t stand up to threats of going over his head.

It’s risky living God’s Good News in the world.

Standing up for what’s right and just and holy gets you into trouble. Even today, people get arrested for it. Get beaten up by mobs. Or law enforcement officers.

“People” do. But do we? Are we even scratching the surface of following Jesus if we’re not getting into any difficulty for it? And what should we do – follow John’s blazing model? Jesus’ one-person-at-a-time way?

What does God need us to do, us, we who are here right now, in a world in which too many of God’s children are starving, oppressed, and abused, in a nation where families are separated from each other to prove a paranoid political point and children are traumatized, in a city where racial tension and inequity are constantly with us?

Our answer begins with Jesus’ reaction to today’s horrible story.

This is a turning point for Jesus.

After hearing of John’s death, Jesus and the disciples go to a deserted place by themselves. Jesus needed that time apart to contemplate and reflect on his path, in light of John’s brutal death. “If they kill John for preaching against the king, what will they do to me?” And he insists on his disciples coming. They, too, needed time to pray and think. John’s death made this very real for everyone following Jesus. If anyone thought this was just a walk in the park, now they knew it wasn’t.

So Jesus and the disciples separate from the crowds, pray, find quiet room to contemplate what they’ll do next.

And Jesus doesn’t decide to change his path. He decides to re-engage.

When the crowds eventually find him and the others in their quiet place, out in the wilderness, by the end of that day they’re all hungry, thousands of them, and have no food.

So Jesus does what Jesus does, he feeds them. He preaches God’s rule and reign. He does miracles. He calls people to follow. He also starts losing lots of disciples, but keeps at it.

He could have quit. Sent all the disciples home. If death happens to those who preach God’s reign, it will likely happen to Jesus. He knows this now, and soon starts predicting his own suffering and death. But he and some disciples keep going, in spite of the consequences they now understand. And that’s our entry into this story.

This is also our turning point.

Like Jesus and the others, we can have different strategies. Any of us might feel called, like John the Baptist or Dr. King, to stand up and cry out against rulers, against injustice. That’s always a faithful way of following, the prophetic way.

But then there’s Jesus’ strategy. He calls individuals to attend to their inner truth, their hearts. Jesus changes hearts, one by one, calls people to be transformed from within until they look like the love of God in their lives and actions. Jesus believes transformed people, people whose lives are not their own but are shaped by God’s powerful love, will change the world in ways that can’t be resisted. A society that is just and free, where all thrive, all have enough, all live in love with each other, and all care for the creation, a society that God dreams about, is seen as an idealistic impossibility by a cynical world. But Jesus knows if people’s hearts are actually changed, such a society and world are not only possible, they’re the only probability.

To put it in terms for today: we can protest tearing children away from their families at the border, and shame the president into rescinding the order and returning the children. That’s happening. That’s important. But a society filled with people shaped by God’s love would never use children as pawns to fuel paranoia and hatred and racism in the first place. That’s Jesus’ goal. Not only band-aids to fix individual injustices. A dramatic renewing of the heart of all God’s children for the healing of all things.

We see how things are now, like Jesus and the others. It’s time to find a quiet place and listen for God.

Because some kind of path needs to emerge here. Some strategy. As many have reminded us, deciding to do nothing is still deciding something. Doing nothing is saying all’s right with the world, and there’s nothing needed, no change, no justice, no peace. Doing nothing says we’ve never heard of God’s astonishing love for the world and God’s dream for a holy, healed, safe place for all God’s children to thrive.

Here each week it’s one of our quiet places to reflect on our role in a world that has terrifying stories like today’s Gospel as front-page news nearly every day. But it would be wise for you to find other places, too, to get away in prayer, to be with others who walk with you in faith. To reflect, pray, contemplate on what it is God needs of you this week, and what transformation God has done in you already that gives you the ability to do that work.

And then, when the crowds, when life finds you in that deserted place (and it will), go and do. Act. Engage.

But do it with King David in mind. The ark of the covenant, the sign of the presence of God, stolen years ago, is finally brought back to Israel’s heart, the tent of worship.

And David dances. He dances for joy in front of the ark as it comes up the roads, the joy of knowing God is in the midst of the people. That’s the conviction that sent Jesus back out, and the disciples. And now you.

You have met Christ Jesus and have been changed. He’s called you to follow, started to transform your heart to be in beat with God’s and is showing you a path to proclaim God’s Good News with your life.

And God is with you on the path. Whatever happens, whatever consequences you might face for faithfully serving God in love and mercy, for working for justice and God’s healing, know this: you can dance. Every day. Because God is with you in your serving, and will never leave you. Because God will make justice and righteousness flow down like waters as more and more hearts are changed. And because when you know God is with you, what else can you do but dance?

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

It is only through our weakness and “thorns in our flesh” that God will heal the world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 14 B
Texts: 2 Corinthians 12:2-10; Mark 6:1-13

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 we miss the point of the cross of Christ because of how we look at it?

We make that scene outside Jerusalem into something to behold, an epic tableau for our creative skill. Massive movies, paintings in all media and sizes, deeply moving music, sculptures of marble and gold, countless novels and stories, there’s no limit to our imagination of that day.

The cross is for us the turning point in history, when the God of all time and space endured humiliation and death. We’ve pondered and argued and fought for two thousand years over the theological meaning of this moment on that Judean hillside. This image is the center of our faith.

But that makes it really hard to understand individually what we’re to be doing when Jesus calls us to take up our crosses and follow him. It’s more than just that none of us will ever be hung on a cross. Our dramatizing and idolizing this moment makes it exceedingly difficult to grasp what a cross would look like for you. For me. What does it mean to walk the path of the cross, when “the cross” is such an enormous image for us?

But there’s hope.

When the cross is seen in the eyes of Jesus himself, or of the apostle Paul, and they speak of our lives following that path, all the grandeur and spectacle fades out, and the real truth about the cross remains clear. You can see what you are called to be and do. What your cross might look like.

Christ says today: “My grace is sufficient for you. For my power is made complete in weakness.” That’s your path.

The experiences of Jesus and Paul today reveal this truth.

Jesus is riding a wave of popularity. He’s healing, drawing crowds, teaching with wisdom and authority no one heard from the official teachers. And then he goes home. And it’s a disaster. All they can see is Mary and Joseph’s kid who grew up there. They’re amazed, but they discount him, they’re offended by him. And astonishingly, Jesus can’t do any works of power there. He is literally weakened by their unbelief.

We think of Paul as the Church’s greatest apostle. But this second letter to Corinth is riddled with his anxiety and insecurity. His own churches have criticized him, accused him of deceiving them. Other more impressive apostles have come to Corinth. They dress well, speak beautifully, let the Corinthians pay for them. By contrast, Paul was awkward, paid his own way, didn’t speak terribly well, didn’t dress nicely. So now they’re rejecting him.

But in Paul’s pain and sadness he finds the opportunity to remind his people that this is always the way of Christ. We are clay jars, flawed, he says. I get it, I’m not impressive. But it’s God’s power working in my weakness that’s the grace you need.

Now, Paul did ask God to stop his pain. He wanted this “thorn in his side” removed. Maybe it was his lack of impressive speaking skills, or how easily his people seemed to turn on him. But what Paul learned instead is what Jesus learned in Nazareth: God’s power is only complete in weakness.

It’s impossible to overstate how important this is.

After Jesus’ disgrace in Nazareth, remarkably then he sends out his disciples. Not exactly when they’d feel most confident in their ability to serve God as Jesus served, right after he fell on his face in failure. Yet he sends them. Right then. On top of it, he sends them without support, no food, no bag, no money. Nothing but God’s good news and their weakness.

And so he sends you, like them, because that’s the whole message. God’s power will only be known in weakness, not strength. In failure, not success.

Following Jesus is an exercise in accepted humility, as disciples realize their flaws and weaknesses, as they look at the enormous, daunting tasks of healing needed in this world with dismay. That’s precisely when disciples, when you, are able to see God at work.

That’s the point of the cross. God’s mission in the world only happens at the point of brokenness and loss. In everyday weakness God will heal all things.

These weaknesses, these thorns in your side, are the true sign of God’s grace at work.

Is your thorn self-doubt? You don’t have skills to make a difference for God in your life? There are so many more powerful people, more talented people? God can’t use you with your flaws? My power is made complete in weakness, God says. I can work with your doubt.

Is your thorn pride? Are you horrified to think of following Christ in a way that makes people laugh at you, think less of you? Are you unable to love and forgive some because you don’t want to be seen backing down? My power is made complete in weakness, God says. I can work with your pride.

Is your thorn fear? Are you afraid to love as Christ loves? To reach out to your neighbor in pain because you don’t know how it will be received? To speak up in that coffee shop or workplace when someone is mistreated, because you don’t want to get in trouble? Do you fear what would happen to your comfortable life if you took seriously Jesus’ commands to love, to give away your wealth, to put your neighbor’s needs first? My power is made complete in weakness, God says. I can work with your fear.

Weakness and failure aren’t something we might experience. They’re the whole point of Christ’s path. Look at how the first disciples were sent out. True love for the other always loses, always lets go, always gives away. It is out of his weakness and shame that Paul found the cross’s deepest promise and gives it to us, the best we could ever have as flawed people who desperately want to follow Jesus but don’t know how: “My grace is sufficient for you,” Paul heard and shared with us. “My power is completed in your weakness.”

This is God’s way and it works. Even if the Church often misses the point.

The Church typically thinks the way to be faithful is to run the world. Control the kingdom, or the democracy, have the armies, get the power. We did that for centuries and look what we made: crusades, inquisitions, oppression, suffering, killing.

This is never Christ’s way. Yes, as citizens we should vote, absolutely. Get engaged politically: we need to start fixing things. Christians of skill and talent should serve in public office. But control’s not our main strategy. Or God’s.

The strategy is that every day, every hour, followers of Christ love as Christ loves. Through weaknesses displayed for everyone to see. Vulnerable to mocking or distrust, to attack and hatred. You have some place today that needs you to be God’s love. Even in your flaws, your weakness. Every healing God has done in Christ in the world, every change Christians have made in society happened when they followed Christ in weakness and vulnerability and God worked through that to bring life.

Maybe the paintings and sculptures and movies were always the problem.

Don’t get me wrong, Michelangelo’s Pieta is one of the most moving things I’ve ever seen. But if we spent less time idolizing the scene at Calvary and more time understanding the failure at Nazareth foreshadowing the cross, we’d be less confused about our own paths.

So go, be Christ as you are called. As you’ve been baptized to do. What love-mischief can you and God be up to today for the healing of the world?

But make no mistake, it will happen in your weakness and failings, in what you lack, more than anything else. That’s when Christ’s disciples really start looking like their Master. And that’s when the world really starts knowing the truth about God’s healing and transforming love.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

We walk by faith, not by sight. But God is bringing the harvest. So we do not lose heart.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fourth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 11 B
Texts: 2 Corinthians 5:6-17 (with reference to other parts of this section, before and after); Mark 4:26-34; 1 Samuel 15:34 – 16:13

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

“So we do not lose heart.”

We’ve heard this encouragement in the past weeks as we’ve heard Paul write to the Christians of Corinth. You might feel fragile, not strong, like jars made of clay, Paul said two weeks ago. But you do this ministry by God’s mercy, he said, and you carry the extraordinary power of God’s love in that fragile, clay jar. So don’t lose heart.

You might feel the weight of your mortality, or the struggle of this life, Paul said last week. But God is preparing a life for you beyond death. So don’t lose heart.

Paul doesn’t deny our experience of how challenging it is to follow Christ. He understands you worry about what you can’t do for the world, on how impossible it is that all the problems the world faces can be helped. I don’t need to list them again, we know them well, we talk about them with each other all the time. As people of God we see so much in our world, our society, our city that needs God’s healing and grace, and we know we’re called to be a part of that.

But if you’re like me, or like Paul, some days you despair, and wonder what you could possibly do to make a difference. Today Paul gives an astonishing answer: always be confident, for you are a new creation, and God will accomplish much through you.

You are the person God is making new to be a part of God’s healing.

That is to say: you are God’s new creation. You are exactly the child of God needed for where you are in your life in this world. You not only carry God’s love within you to witness and live in the world. God is making you new, healing your fragility, strengthening your weakness, until you are God’s creative force for healing in the world around you. Everything old is passed away in Christ’s death, Paul says. All is made new in the life of Christ’s resurrection. And in the verses following today’s reading, he says it’s all for God’s reconciliation of all things.

But, Paul says, we walk by faith, not by sight. So don’t be surprised if you don’t look in a mirror every morning and see this new creation.

That’s what Jesus says in these parables about seeds.

In one parable, there is planned, cultivated sowing of seeds: agriculture. In the other, wild, random seeds, cast into the world by wind and birds. Both are mystery.

The farmer, who knows which seeds to plant and when to plant them, doesn’t know exactly how they grow. The seeds are sown, and faith takes over. Work is done in the meantime, of course, tilling, tending. But the harvest is mystery.

The lowly mustard seed, growing in a ditch with no one to plan for it or tend it, likewise grows to its potential, a bush big enough to make shade. No one knows how. Even today we can explain the growth of seeds scientifically, but the mystery of their spark of life eludes us.

Jesus says that’s what God’s reign is like. A new creation. But it starts very small, and grows to be a blessing. Whether planned or seemingly random, growth happens. Some days it’ll look like nothing is happening. But we walk by faith, not by sight. So we don’t lose heart.

Which brings us to the young shepherd, David.

Despite our writer’s adoration, who says David was ruddy, handsome, and had really pretty eyes, the truth of this story is David is overlooked. Whether Jesse knew why the great judge and prophet Samuel wanted to see his sons one by one isn’t clear. What is clear is that his response was to bring seven of his sons. Not the kid out back watching the sheep.

God takes this opportunity to remind Samuel that God ignores outward appearances and looks into the heart for the truth of a person. Something in David drew God. David, forgotten by his own father, becomes Israel’s greatest king. And yes, he’s flawed. He does horrible things along with the good. But at this point, David is the mustard seed. Not seen to have much value.

But we walk by faith, not by sight. So we don’t lose heart.

We can trust God with this mystery. We’ve seen this often.

Long before there was a statue of him on the National Mall, Martin Luther King, Jr. was just a pastor in the city of Montgomery. When Rosa Parks was arrested, he was the one local leaders chose to lead the boycott. A local minister, just trying to be faithful to Christ in his city.

Rosa herself wasn’t always a hero. She was a hardworking African-American woman asked to do what she did, to stand up to the oppressive Jim Crow laws. A regular person, just trying to make a difference in her own city.

Long before she became Mother Teresa, beloved international symbol of Christian life and ministry, Teresa was simply a nun from Albania who saw a need in one of the most desperate places in the world and went to Calcutta to be of help. Just a servant of God, trying to be faithful to Christ.

And a rich Italian playboy of the thirteenth century would have been unnoticed by history or anyone else except that he had a spiritual awakening and decided to follow the path of Jesus. Now there are statues of St. Francis of Assisi all over the world, and the movement of teachers and servants he founded has done wonderful ministry. But he was just an ordinary person, trying to be faithful to Christ.

These are beloved saints to us, people we admire and respect. The harvest of their lives is magnificent, and continues to have a great impact. But we’re looking back, from the harvest. The seed planted for their new creation was just as small as any of us to start.

We walk by faith, not by sight. So we do not lose heart.

It’s not likely we’ll produce such a famous harvest.

Those are remarkable people who somehow connected with their times and found a bigger stage. We probably won’t be remembered beyond our lives here except by those closest to us.

But that’s not the point. You are a new creation. The seed of God’s grace and love has been planted in you. You are growing into a force for God’s healing in your world, and if you’d look back at your path right now, you’d see that growth.

Like the farmer, you don’t know how it happens. But like Martin, and Rosa, and Francis, and Teresa, and millions of others, the fact that you’re just one person in a complicated, broken world, means nothing. God’s mystery is that you are needed, and you will be able to do what is needed.

We walk by faith, not by sight. So we do not lose heart.

You are a new creation. The seed is planted.

And you don’t have to wait for the harvest to hope, Jesus says. First the shoot breaks through the earth. Then there’s a stalk, then a head, then the full grain in the head. There might be long periods of time you can’t see growth, hope, promise. But watch: there will be signs.

And the promise will be fulfilled. There will be a harvest one day, feeding the world, breaking down walls of hatred and violence, healing all people. At some point the farmer sees the harvest is ready and gets the sickle. At some point there’s enough shade under the mustard bush that some birds decide to nest there. At some point the kid caring for the sheep becomes God’s leader for the people. At some point the person who saw a need in their own neighborhood changes something for the better. The harvest will come.

How, that’s a mystery. That’s in God’s hands.

But it will come: we walk by faith, and not by sight. So do not lose heart.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen