Going through temptation, learning the hard task of repentance (turning toward God), this is how we come to find the Good News of God Jesus found.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The First Sunday in Lent, year B
Text: Mark 1:9-15

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

It’s a rough entry into ministry for Jesus.

Wet from the water of baptism, the heady words from the Creator, whom Jesus calls Father, still warming his heart, “You are my Son, the beloved; with you I am well pleased”, now Jesus is pushed out by the third Person of the Trinity. “The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness,” Mark says.

No gathering disciples, not yet. No preaching to the crowds, not yet. No signs and wonders, not yet. The Spirit says to the Son, “Get out there, into the bleak Judean desert.” Forty days without food. Temptation by the Great Accuser. Wild beasts all around.

But Jesus comes out of it, goes up to Galilee and it begins. He preaches: “The time is fulfilled, the reign of God has come near; repent, and believe in the Good News.”

Whatever happened in the temptation, the hunger and heat in the wilderness, Jesus comes out of it saying, “I’ve got good news for you to believe.”

Except there’s a little word that comes before believing: Repent.

That’s Jesus’ signature line, what the Gospels say he began with, and said throughout Galilee. It’s what drew followers to him, including the twelve. Repent, and believe in the Good News.

Turn your mind around. Turn your heart around. Turn your life around. That’s what he means. You can’t keep walking on the path you’re walking if you want to find the good news, Jesus says. Finding good news, believing good news, starts with repentance.

We don’t talk much about repentance with each other. Maybe it sounds too negative. Maybe it’s church-talk that we don’t really know what it means for our life anymore. But it was a cornerstone for Jesus’ preaching, the beginning to everything. Jesus comes and says “you’re going the wrong way! Turn around! Then you can believe in good news.”

There’s tremendous good news from God that Jesus brings. But Jesus had to go through the temptation in the wilderness to find it.

Temptation’s another word we’ve put aside. We usually draw it out only for our obsession and shaming around food. When did you last think of temptation in any context other than eating another doughnut or cupcake? When did you last have a serious discussion with someone about your struggles with real temptation?

Temptation of the order Jesus faced is real for us, and is tied to repentance. Temptation is the pull we have to take a path other than the path of Christ in our journey of faith. When Jesus calls us to turn our minds, hearts, and lives around, he’s revealing the temptation we face to keep our minds, hearts, and lives going the way we like.

We’ll only find God’s Good News if we go into the wilderness ourselves, like Jesus, and face our temptation.

Temptation as Jesus faced, as we face, is the challenge between what is easy and what is hard, between what is truth and what is lie.

Mark doesn’t include Jesus’ specific temptations. But let’s consider as an example the first one in Matthew and Luke. Jesus is fasting, really hungry, and is tempted to turn stones into bread. But he says no. You don’t live by bread alone.

Think about that. A famished Jesus says there are worse things than being hungry. For him, it’s using his power, his privilege, to benefit himself. So when he’s arrested and facing the cross, he has already learned here there are also worse things than dying. He sets aside his power.

So many things tempt us toward the lie, toward the easy. All the problems that plague our society – racism, poverty, oppression, systemic violence, climate change, and on and on – all these things can be changed by people taking difficult paths turned toward God’s way. The temptation is always to take the path that’s easy, the path that takes away our pain, the path that everyone else says is logical. To avoid changes in our way of life, to believe the lie that we’re not really able to make a difference. And the good news can’t be found.

We face these challenges every day. How often do we take the path of repentance, the turning toward God?

In the wake of the Florida school shooting, everyone is saying the same things they always do. We’re shocked, saddened, angry. We rage about impotent leaders who do nothing. People post on social media, shout with their friends. Of course, the leaders are also saying and doing nothing different. But that’s not who Jesus is interested in. He wonders about us.

Because ranting and being saddened and talking to our friends is little different from politicians offering “thoughts and prayers.” All of our anger has done nothing. Something like 80% of Americans want significant gun control. How don’t we have it?

Well, are we doing anything other than ranting? Are we pressuring our elected officials? Organizing with others for effective campaigns? Joining existing ones and putting our money, our letters, our votes where our mouth is?

This is the way temptation works: we’re always offered the easy way out. Turn these stones into bread. Rant about the idiots in Washington. But Jesus’ real path was setting power aside and letting us kill him. Our real path is getting off our high horses and actually working to make something change. If 80% of Americans finally rose up and said, “No more,” no gun lobby, no paid-off politicians could stand in the face of that. And the good news could be found.

This is our Lenten learning as we see Jesus come out of the wilderness with good news.

We learn that repentance, turning to God, is facing all the temptation we have to stay the same, to take the easy way, to live as we’ve always lived. We could think of hundreds more examples than just this one.

But we also learn from Jesus that through the trials and testing of temptation we find God’s good news. God’s time is fulfilled, Jesus says. God has come to rule and reign in our hearts and in the world. When we struggle with our temptations, and resist with God’s help, God’s love breaks out in our lives and heals the world. Change happens, hope happens, grace happens. Jesus dies, but rises from the dead and destroys death forever. We lose, we sacrifice, but life and hope come out on the other side.

Jesus’ resistance in the desert only looks easy because we read about it after the fact. In reality, it was 40 days of suffering and pain and challenge that he needed to learn the truth. We shouldn’t expect an easier path ourselves.

We can learn this Lent to embrace being in the wilderness, struggling to be faithful, dealing with temptation. It’s only through these challenges that we’ll find the good news. Only through learning what it is to lose ourselves for the sake of others will we find the joy of loving, true connection with others. Only through learning the pain of sacrificial love will we find the heartwarming truth of real, vulnerable, gracious love with others.

“Repent, and believe the Good News.”

That’s our path: to struggle through whatever is before us in order to turn our minds, our hearts, our lives toward God’s path of life and love and hope.

But Christ put us on this path together. Let’s risk telling each other of our temptations and challenges and fears. There’s so much more wisdom among us than any one of us can have alone, so let’s share it with each other. There’s so much more encouragement among us than any one of us can have alone, so let’s lift each other up.

And because God’s Spirit is in each of us, we are the angels Mark says ministered to Jesus during his trials. We are the love of God for each other as we learn what it is to turn around. We are the blessing of God for each other as we each face our particular temptations and struggles. God lives in and through us, so none of us are ever alone.

The time is fulfilled, Jesus says. God’s reign is now. Let’s walk this desert together, and find the good news that God will bring.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

We are mortal, our life is limited. But our life is bound up in God’s love and life, so we are free to boldly seek to become Christ, shaped to look like the one who loves the whole world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
Ash Wednesday
Texts: Isaiah 58:1-12; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

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

You’re going to die. You know that, right? So am I.

Once a year, on this day, we remind ourselves of our mortality, we face this truth: none of us is living through this.

You’d think we’d know by now, given how much death we see. But as this past weekend once again reminded us, we’re still shocked and surprised when someone we love dies. We don’t seem to learn. What we know in our heads doesn’t convince our hearts and our hopes.

So today we tell the truth: you’re going to die. I’m going to die. We can’t change that. I’ve had the juxtaposition of putting ashes on a 95 year old head, reminding that sister that she will die, and moving to the two month old in his mother’s arms next to her, and telling him for the first time, ashes on that brand-new face with no cares or wrinkles, that he, too, will die. That’s the truth.

This day is about honesty: honesty about our sinfulness. Honesty about our mortality. As we begin our Lenten journey, we begin with the truth. And that’s because, as Jesus said, the truth will free us. Free us to live a life worth living in the time we have left.

People who know they are about to die often find freedom to live.

With nothing to lose, with only the months or days the doctor has given, people let go of lots of baggage they’ve carried most of their lives. Grudges long held. Anxiety over the future. Frustration with failed attempts to improve. All can be dropped. When you know you’re in the final stretch, that truth frees.

So, if we know we’re going to die, what do we have to lose? How do we want to live? By clinging to possessions, to habits, to sinful ways of being that hurt us and others? By lugging around fears and worries? Today’s honesty is a gift: now we know we’re on a countdown, we can focus.

This is a brilliant way to start our Lenten journey. Not to be reminded of our mortality as a scare tactic. To be reminded of our mortality as a life tactic: how do you want to live the remainder of your days? That’s what our Lenten discipline helps us learn.

The discipline of Lent is the discipline of a freed life. We’re shaped into something new and different.

Consider a flowering vine you’d like to cover an arbor in your garden. When you plant it, you gently tie the stems to the structure. As it grows, you keep connecting it to the pattern. One day you’ve got a green, flowering, beautiful gate into your backyard. In one of our houses Mary trained a rose bush over an archway; it was amazing when it finally got there.

Christ is our pattern, the frame, the trellis. Our Lenten discipline is the discipline of life shaping us to that pattern. Disciples are those trained into a new shape for a new purpose. Through this discipline, our wayward vines and stray flowers, our feelers and outgrowths, are nurtured and connected to Christ our frame, and eventually we become a beautiful thing. We look like Christ.

Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount provide the Church with the shape of Lenten discipline: sacrificial giving and works of love, prayer, fasting. And repentance, the turning around of our hearts and lives into God’s way. These are the tools that will shape us into beautiful growths of God in the world.

And that’s the point of our discipline. Not so others will notice or appreciate it.

Isaiah’s people have a huge complaint: God doesn’t appreciate all the fasting and liturgy they’re doing.

What’s the point, God, if you’re not giving us any credit? they say. We’re fasting, and you don’t see. We’re acting humble and praying, and you don’t notice.

This isn’t a wise approach. Because God says through Isaiah: “Let me talk to you about fasting. The fasting I want is freeing the oppressed, sharing your bread with the hungry. How about doing that? The worship I want is bringing the homeless into your house, and giving clothes to the naked. But you serve your own interests when you worship, you leave prayer and get into fights, your lives oppress other people.”

God’s righteous outburst reveals why we do what we do, and joins Jesus’ words today. We don’t do liturgy to draw attention to ourselves. We don’t practice Christian discipline to get credit from God or from others. If our ritual and liturgy and worship and prayer don’t train us into Christ, shape our lives into people who bear God’s love in the world, there is no point to them.

So what if our Christian discipline is unnoticed, unpraised, unappreciated? That’s not the point.

We’re all going to die. That’s the point. And Christ is what we want to look like in the time we have left.

We don’t give sacrificially, give alms as Jesus says, to get God’s notice or impress people. That attention is worthless. We give of our selves, our lives, our wealth, for the sake of others. So those who are hungry are filled, those who lack shelter are brought in from the cold. But also so we are shaped into Christ, whose love for the least and lost and forgotten is eternal. That’s the reward: looking and loving more and more like Christ.

We don’t pray so others can praise our words and our piety. There’s no value in that. We pray so that we might be connected to the Giver of Life, the Spirit who moves in us and shapes us into Christ. We pray that we might have eyes and hearts opened to the needs of those whom God loves and cares for. That’s the reward: living intimately with the Triune God.

We don’t fast, or put on ashes, so others can think we’re great Christians. There’s no reward in that. We fast, remember our mortality, turn our lives back toward God, to learn the discipline of letting go and losing for the sake of others. We let go of things for certain times to learn what it is to let go of things for our whole lives, baggage that drags us down and keeps us from being Christ. That’s the reward: living a life free of the brambles and weeds that would choke out our hope and our love.

Look, we’re all going to die. We might as well face that truth.

But we literally have nothing to lose because our lives and our deaths are bound up in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ Jesus. When we all die, we will be brought into life we only glimpse in pieces in this life.

So: we’ve only got so much time here. We know what awaits us when our time here ends. So let’s make the most of what we have, risk a little, that we might look on our outside, in our lives and words and actions, what God already sees on our inside: beloved children of God, embodied witnesses of God’s eternal love. That’s a life worthy of the time we have left.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

The only way people know of God’s love for the weak and faint and weary and lost and oppressed is through us: when we embody God’s love in the world. That’s the whole point of it all.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fifth Sunday after Epiphany, year B
Texts: Isaiah 40:21-31; 1 Corinthians 9:16-23; Mark 1:29-39

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

“Have you not known? Have you not heard?”

How should we hear Isaiah’s tone? Frustrated? (How do you not know this already?) Or excited, breathless? (Have you heard? Do you know?)

Isaiah asks if we’ve heard and known two huge, seemingly opposing, things about God. First, God is the unequalled creator of all, sitting above the heavens, to whom the stars are like a fabric God can spread wherever needed.

Following that, the second “have you not known?” is hard to grasp. Have you not heard, Isaiah says, that God cares for the most vulnerable? God gives power to the faint, strength to the powerless. Those who wait for God will lose their weariness, will run, be lifted up like eagles.

God is so great we’re tiny grasshoppers, Isaiah says. Yet God notices when we stumble, when we’re so exhausted we can’t move. This is the consistent witness of the Hebrew Scriptures: however great and mighty God is, God sees all pain and suffering and struggle of God’s people, and comes in love, giving life and hope and healing.

But what tone of voice should we use to hear Isaiah? Surprise, that people still don’t know this truth about God? Or maybe sadness: “Haven’t you heard? Don’t you know?”

Because, given how God’s people, people bearing Christ’s name, act in the world today, it’s fair to wonder how anyone would know Isaiah’s astonishing good news about God.

We despair almost daily at the witness we hear from Christians today.

People bearing Christ’s name vote enthusiastically for child molesters and defend sexual predators, claiming they and the people they vote for are godly people. People bearing Christ’s name work overtime to create laws that crush the poor, laws that destroy families in the name of safe borders, laws that benefit wealthy white men while depriving the neediest of essentials for living. We make the sign of the cross on ourselves, it hangs prominently in our worship, yet people still use this sign of God’s undying love as a sign of hatred and terror, still burn it on neighbors’ lawns, use it to frighten those of different faiths.

If you’re looking for Christians to help, this is a country where you’d better not be weak, or weary, or faint, or exhausted; it’s not a country where you’d want to be a stranger, or to be different from others.

How could anyone know? How could anyone hear? That’s the more sensible question. As people of faith, who bear Christ’s name, it’s deeply painful to see the kind of God that our fellow Christians controlling our current political climate trumpet across our country. If people who knew nothing about God listened only to the loudest Christians in our country, they’d run in the opposite direction.

But listen, my sisters and brothers: there is still great hope.

See our Gospel today: the Incarnate Son of God acts just as Isaiah says to expect. If Isaiah’s God came and took human flesh, it would look just like Jesus. Healing a mother-in-law of fever. Standing in the midst of a huge crowd after sundown, healing all who come.

In Jesus, God’s Christ, we see the truth about God’s love for the weak and weary and broken of this world.

And notice something else: Jesus doesn’t work alone.

Remember a couple weeks ago, a little earlier in chapter 1 of Mark, we heard Jesus promise to teach his followers to fish for people? Look what they’re doing. They’ve got it down.

The disciples know Simon Peter’s mother-in-law is suffering, so they tell God-with-us, who heals her. That’s not all. Sometimes crowds find Jesus, just show up where he is. Not here, not in Capernaum that day. Andrew and John, Simon and James, whoever else is following, they bring people to Jesus.

As soon as Sabbath was over, “they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons,” Mark says. It’s these followers who witness to the healing love of God in the world, who bring those who suffer to the God who cares, the God who heals.

This is the way God will bring healing, and the only way people can know, through us.

It’s the way of Christ, from the beginning. Paul today talks about how he puts himself in the shoes of whomever he’s reaching, whether they’re Jews or Greeks, strong in faith or weak, to better reach them. He might be a little over-confident that he can be all things to all people, but he’s doing the job we’re all called to be and do: bring people to God’s love and healing.

And these folks don’t just hand them off to Jesus. These first followers became God’s embodied love themselves as they traveled the land after Pentecost. They didn’t proclaim God’s good news in Christ to gain members of churches. They proclaimed God’s love because they wanted everyone to know, everyone to hear. They wanted everyone to be able to answer Isaiah’s questions with yes.

God lifts up with wings like eagles through our love and care. God strengthens the powerless through our vulnerable giving and loving. God raises up the exhausted, feeds the hungry, heals the sick, breaks the systems that oppress, through us. That’s how people hear and know.

This is why we are anointed as Christs ourselves. It’s the whole point.

What we despair seeing done in the name of Christ today has been done by Christians for a long time.

But there have also always, always, been Christs in the world living the love of Christ at the same time, through whom people heard and knew of God’s love. Christians invented the Holocaust and executed it, but there were also Christs throughout Europe embodying the sacrificial love of God who stood against such hate. We might not be at that level yet in our country, but we all still have this calling, this gift: you are Christ. We are Christ. We can make a difference.

And we already have. People have heard and known God’s truth already, through us. Through many others around the world. Through you others have learned God’s compassion, have experienced God’s healing, have found welcome, and rest, and nourishment, and hope.

So we’re not starting today. We’ve been at this awhile.

But today, like every time we worship, we are re-centered in Christ’s love, we’re lifted up and our weariness is taken away. We leave here refreshed and ready for another week of being the embodied love of God in our broken world.

There are always going to be plenty of people who take their own hate and fear and prejudice and try to bless it with the name of God.

Thanks be to God, there are also lots of us, here and across this world, who try to do the opposite. Who have learned the joy of self-giving love, of vulnerability, of sharing. Who have been so shaped by God’s forgiveness and grace that it flows out of our words and actions. We fail sometimes. We might not be as loud. We don’t make the headlines (but God never meant for that, anyway).

We just go out with the heart and eyes and hands and love of God, and start spreading the news in our bodies, voices, and lives that the God of all time and space actually cares about the least, the weak, the weary. And when we show up, as Christ, that’s when people will know. That’s how they’ll hear.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

Christ’s authority isn’t imposed or enforced: it is in his very being as God-with-us, the God who astonishingly and foolishly and improbably loves us beyond death.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fourth Sunday after Epiphany, year B
Text: Mark 1:21-28

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

“He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him. What authority!”

These good folks in Capernaum hear an authority in Jesus’ teaching they’ve never heard before. He spoke in their synagogue and they were astounded.

But then, when the unclean spirit possessing this man recognized the same authority, and obeyed Jesus, these people were amazed beyond description. They “kept on asking one another, ‘What is this?’” You can imagine the buzz, neighbor turning to neighbor, trying to comprehend this new authority they’re witnessing.

But notice they say, “He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” “Even” they obey. That implies others recognize Jesus’ authority, too, and are also obeying.

That doesn’t seem to be very common among Christians these days. Obedience isn’t a word we often use.

Do you remember the last time you obeyed someone?

Did something because someone told you to? We certainly tell children to obey lots of authorities, parents, teachers. Did we resent obeying so much when we were young that we don’t want to talk about it as adults? Even the law is disregarded by more and more. So many believe obedience is required only when there’s a risk of being caught in disobedience.

But it also seems rare to hear people in the church decide a course of action by saying simply, “this is what God commands, and we need to obey.” It certainly happens. Maybe many of us here have that as part of our decision-making. But to listen to the way Christians often deliberate, one might think obedience was the least of our concerns.

Maybe the problem is that we don’t permit anyone, not even God, to have ultimate authority over us. Because these people of Capernaum knew what they saw: it was Jesus’ authority, whatever that was, that the unclean spirits obeyed.

But do we like “authority” any better than “obedience”?

Does anyone have authority over your life? Anyone who’s word you must obey? Obviously if you work, your supervisor. But in your daily life?

Law and the government are institutions of authority we are privileged to create and change by election and citizen involvement. But they largely work as authority only because they can back their commands with threats of punishment. Even when we stand up to their authority on moral grounds, when the institutions act unjustly, or do evil, there is a good chance we’ll face punishment.

The Church used to be an authority, with temporal and eternal punishment as the threat. But in the last century many Christians have set aside the Church, whatever they mean by that, as ultimate authority over their actions. Centuries of abuse of that authority certainly contributed to this. But there’s also this modern idea that we each are our own authority, the buck stops with each of us and no one else, and no one can ultimately tell us what to do. That’s effectively ended the Church’s ability to act as authority in people’s lives.

And there’s still the question of God’s authority over us. Must God also step aside in the face of our self-interest, our desire to do what we want, our need to be who we are without change? Must God also be included among those whom we say cannot tell us what to do?

Of course, our answer should be no. As believers, we acknowledge the Triune God has authority over us.

But do we live that way?

It’s hard to separate the authority of God from the authority of the Church. For centuries we’ve been taught they were one and the same. Those in the Church who make pronouncements over people’s lives usually cloak them with God’s authority. So when people start rejecting the Church’s right to tell them what to do, God’s authority also gets left behind.

But Martin Luther taught us that each of us is given God’s Word in its written form, the Scriptures, that we might hear it ourselves, and follow God’s living Word, Christ Jesus our Savior.

The people of Capernaum heard, and were astounded, and agreed Jesus had authority. His authority over unclean spirits was recognized by those spirits and they obeyed him. This story suggests that the others at least were considering their own obedience to this new authority. Maybe we can start there, too.

Now, Mark significantly doesn’t describe Jesus’ authority by explaining his methods of teaching or his style.

That suggests Jesus’ authority came from inside him, not from his rhetoric or technique. Something he carried within himself that was evident when he spoke, when he read Scripture, when he declared God’s will for the people.

We know the rest of the story, so we know what was within him. Jesus was and is God-with-us, the Son of the Triune God in human flesh, who set aside all divine power and glory to become one of us, become family with us. The God who faced death on the cross, rose from the dead, and has begun a new life in the Spirit in all who believe and follow.

Jesus’ authority didn’t come from threats of violence and punishment, either. It also didn’t come from a legal status or a government position. It wasn’t imposed on others. Jesus’ authority was simply who he was. God-with-us, who loved humanity enough to come and be with us, even to the point of dying for love of us.

So Jesus’ authority is the authority of a forgiveness that rejection cannot stop. It is the authority of light that darkness cannot overcome. It is the authority of love that hatred cannot extinguish. It is the authority of life that death cannot destroy.

This is the authority who says, “Follow me.” Obey me.

Because that’s what “follow me” asks. In Christ we see the astonishing, improbable, foolish love of the Triune God for the whole creation, for each of us. That is Christ’s authority. And that authority now says, “Follow me.”

We know what we are asked to do, what obedience is desired. We know the commands. Love. Forgive. Trust God, not wealth or power. Set aside anger. Seek reconciliation. Care for those in need, don’t walk by on the other side. We’ve known what following means for a long time. What’s left for us today is the question of whether we’ll obey.

Maybe, like those unclean spirits, we needed the proper authority to inspire our obedience.

We’ve grown weary of institutions and people seeking to control us, make us do things, weary of such so-called authority.

But now that we see true authority in our midst, Christ’s authority, it’s a different question. Because if the Light that darkness cannot overcome is calling us to follow, when we obey, we’ll find ourselves walking in light, not in darkness. If the Love no hatred can extinguish is calling us to follow, when we obey, we’ll find ourselves bathed in love, shaped in love, not hate. If the Life no death can destroy is calling us to follow, when we obey, we’ll find life in a world that looks like death is winning.

You see, once you recognize the true authority of divine, undying love standing before you, you realize obedience is the path to joy and abundance of life, not a path of drudgery or fear.

This is truly a new teaching, what Jesus offers, with authority. Even unclean spirits obey. What will we do?

In the name of Jesus.  Amen