Together we are made into Christ’s body, and together we stand at the crossroads of life, find Christ’s path together, and walk it for the life of the world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 22, year A
Texts: Romans 12:9-21; Matthew 16:21-28; also Jeremiah 6:16 (not appointed for the day)

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

A few chapters before today’s reading, Jeremiah declares: “Thus says the LORD: Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.”

But the people said to Jeremiah, “We will not walk in it.” (Jeremiah 6:16)

This is a major crossroads for Peter and the others. As we heard last week, perhaps for the first time, someone following Jesus openly linked him to the promises in the Hebrew Scriptures that God would anoint another David, someone to lead God’s people to restoration. Peter claimed Jesus was God’s Anointed. God’s Christ. God’s Messiah.

But Peter’s enlightenment was shrouded in confusion. At this crossroads, Jesus had a path to take as God’s Christ that the disciples didn’t understand. At this crossroads, the same path was theirs, too. They didn’t understand that, either.

But the question for Peter isn’t whether he made a mistake at this crossroads.

He certainly did. Jesus called him “Satan,” the “adversary,” the anti-Christ, seeking the opposite path God’s Anointed must walk.

But the real question for Peter is whether he wants to learn to take the right path. Jeremiah’s people rejected the crossroads entirely, rejected looking for God’s ancient way of life. What will Peter, what will the other disciples do? Do they want to discover the true path of God’s Christ? Learn that it is also their path?

Do we? Not do we try to discern Christ’s path at the crossroads, which is hard enough. Do we even want to walk in it at all?

Stand at the crossroads and look: the path Jesus takes as the Christ is the hardest path.

Jesus says Peter’s right, he is God’s Messiah. But he’s going to suffer and die. That’s the path of God’s Anointed.

Can we accept this is how God always acts in the world? Giving up power, rejecting violence, offering love until God loses everything?

Forget about what kind of Messiah the Jews of Jesus’ day were expecting. What kind of Messiah do we expect?

We’ve got 1,700 years of Church history where we’ve acted as if God’s way is power and manipulation, control and oppression, as if God is exclusive and violent. 1,700 years of worshipping a conquering, military Christ.

We don’t see the cross as God’s continued path. We treat the cross as a past event, as our get out of jail free card, or as a chance to cluck against the religious leaders who rejected Jesus. We see the resurrection as reversing the whole point of the cross, seeing Jesus as a poor victim instead of a suffering God.

But the path of the cross is the only path God will take in healing this world. Ever. That’s what Jesus is saying. If we’re honest, too often we’re the ones taking Jesus aside, saying, “Don’t talk like that. It’s not going to work in the world to go that way.”

Well, now we know how that conversation will turn out. Assuming power and strength are the way of Christ, supporting and endorsing violence in Christ’s name, rejecting those who do not accept Jesus as Son of God, treating the Christian Gospel as our own personal salvation ticket, refusing to see God’s path of sacrificial love as God’s only way: all that is the way of Satan. Jesus has said so.

Stand at the crossroads and look more: the path Jesus takes as the Christ is the path his followers are called to take. Or we’re not following.

Being “Christ” is always more than Jesus. At the crossroads, Jesus always takes the path to the cross, and he always invites us to follow. It’s the very next thing he says here: “if you want to follow me, take up your cross, too. Deny yourselves. Lose your lives.”

Will we accept that we are also God’s Christ? God’s Anointed? God’s Messiah? Because the path of Christ is the path of the cross. That’s the only option. If we’re doing Satan’s work by trying to keep Jesus from this path, or using God’s sacrifice at the cross to endorse our worldly ways, whose work do you think we’re doing if we refuse to walk the hard path ourselves?

This is the hardest thing the Church ever faces. It’s why we’ve failed at the crossroads so often. Jesus’ path as Christ, one we don’t like to think deeply about or endorse, is also our path as Christ. Any other way is, as Jesus says, Satan’s way.

Paul today shows what the path of the cross actually looks like.

Paul’s talking about a very hard path of sacrificial love here. Genuine love, he calls it.

Hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good, he says. No justifying or explaining. Evil is evil. Good is good. And don’t repay evil for evil, return good every time. If it’s hard for us to name what is evil in us or in our society, and not excuse or ignore it, how much harder will it be to always stand against evil with good? Paul says such goodness will overcome evil. But this is a frightening path.

Contribute to the needs of the saints, Paul says. Show hospitality to strangers. These sound doable. But somehow, we don’t often choose a life lived for others. The path at the crossroads that makes us feel secure is the path we like better.

Rejoice with those who rejoice, Paul says. Even if you aren’t rejoicing yourself, share their joy anyway. Weep with those who weep, Paul says. Even if years after their suffering they still grieve, don’t say, “get over it.” Weep with them until they are done weeping. If this weren’t difficult, we’d see this a lot more.

Don’t be haughty or think you’re wiser than you are. The opposite of the world’s ways. This is the path at the crossroads that challenges our ego, our pride, our self-sufficiency.

Don’t seek vengeance, but as far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all, Paul says. There’s no excuse for violence of speech or action, and no divine endorsement of the violence of the state. Peacemaking and non-violence are Christ’s only path at the crossroads.

After Paul, now maybe we understand the reaction of Jeremiah’s people a little better.

But stand at the crossroads and look again: Christ’s path is the path that leads to life.

Imagine a world where Romans 12 is the way of all. No one takes revenge, and all live peaceably. All love is genuine. All seek to honor and lift up others, and no one thinks they’re better than others.

Think of a world where, if evil happens, it always is returned with good. Where all love each other with mutual affection, and all strangers are welcomed and loved.

The secret to the Christ path at the crossroads is that it’s a path that looks hard, and is costly, but is filled with abundance of life and love. The other paths look easier, but cost far more in the end.

If Paul’s vision in Romans 12 was actually lived by all, we’d have a very different world. That should tell us something. There’s a reason Jesus said the paths that oppose Christ are Satan’s paths. They look good, but are rotten and deadly. And lead to more and more evil. But the paths of Christly love, of self-giving, always bring life, even at the start.

But there’s one more thing we need to do whenever we’re at a crossroads: look around.

Stand at the crossroads and look around you: the path of Christ is a path we take together.

All Paul’s words today follow last week’s words, so they all describe the transformed body of Christ we are together. It is together that we become Christ, together that we are saved. And yes, every pronoun and verb in Paul’s exhortations today are plural.

We stand at the crossroads together and look for the path of Christ, the path of the cross. All of these – genuine love, outpoured honor, shared joy, shared tears, peacemaking, the offering of good in the face of evil – all these we do together.

Alone, any one of us could make Peter’s mistake at the crossroads. Together, with the life of the Spirit in us, we strengthen each other, guide each other. Think of the shared wisdom we have together, the many eyes to see, the many hearts to love! Together we look for the path of costly love, and together we take it.

Last week Jesus said that even Hell’s gates couldn’t withstand the love of the transformed body of Christ. What chance does our fear of walking Christ’s path, our reluctance to face that challenge, have against this transformed body in which we live?

Stand, and look. Put out your hands and hold on. Together, with the grace of the Spirit, we will walk God’s ancient path that leads to life for the whole world.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

Transformed, together, into the living, loving, generous, compassionate, faith-filled, diligent body of Christ through the grace of the Spirit, no evil or hate or oppression or violence can prevail against such bodily love.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 21, year A
Texts: Romans 12:1-8; Matthew 16:13-20

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

These days, sometimes we just want a place to hide.

With news 24 hours a day, seven days a week, we can’t keep up. With the wickedness sweeping through our world, some days we don’t want to catch up. We know the litany – racism, oppression, ecological devastation, sexism, starvation, poverty, war, greed, homelessness, systemic prejudice, broken governing bodies – we know the litany, and that it’s much longer than that. Only one of these would be a huge challenge to correct. Together, they seem insurmountable.

Then we open the Scriptures and we still can’t hide. The Triune God who made all things apparently cares about the healing of all things, including the end of all things on that litany. Everywhere in Scripture we find that God desires justice, peace, non-violence, love, the end of racial, gender, ethnic, class or any other dividing walls between people. We read that God passionately cares that the hungry are fed, the homeless find shelter, the lost are found.

We come here for peace, and we can’t hide in worship, either – those same Scriptures speak here, our hymns call us to love what God loves, our fellow members lead us in prayer that calls us out of our hiding place. Even the pastor won’t ignore these problems, and reminds us of what the Scriptures say about God’s priorities and our lives in this broken world.

We know we can’t have integrity as God’s children and hide. But today God’s Word gives us powerful hope that the things on that litany have an expiration date, they can’t survive. Hope that when we come out of hiding, we’ll find God’s life in us, healing the world. But to see this hope, we need to change two ways we’ve dealt with these readings.

First, we seriously undervalue the meaning of the body of Christ, making it nearly irrelevant to our faith.

We’ve dipped our toe into the waters, but haven’t dived in and swum. In First Corinthians, Paul talks about the various body parts, comparing us to eyes, ears, hands, feet. We’ve gone this far and recognized the individuality of members of Christ’s body. The toe can’t say it’s not important, all parts are important.

But Paul’s point is the body, not the parts. To the Romans today he says, “individually we are members one of another.” Salvation is in the connection, not the difference. We know the toe can’t function on its own. But the toe’s connection to the body means there is no separation in the body. No barriers between the toe and the eye. The same blood flows between them, the same air gives oxygen to them. If the toe gets hit by a hammer, the eye weeps.

So it is with Christ’s body. We know we belong to Christ. But Paul says we also all belong to each other. We cannot exist apart from each other. Our individual egos, needs, desires, are less critical to our lives than our connection with Christ’s body. There is no barrier between God, and us, and neighbor. The blood that flows between us is God’s love and the breath we take together is the Spirit’s life. “We” is more important to our salvation than “I”.

Look at what Paul says here: “Be transformed.” But he’s talking to the whole body.

English doesn’t show the plural as Greek does. But Paul is encouraging the transformation of the entire body of believers. God intends to save the world by bringing all people together in one body, and transforming us, together, into God’s healing, life-giving love.

The gifts Paul talks about are the way the Spirit empowers the whole body to move and work in the world. It isn’t a body conformed to the world’s way: self-interest, greed, and all the things that have led to the pain the world is in today. A body could conform that way, we’ve seen it. We’ve seen Christian groups become embedded in the world’s ways and become unrecognizable as Christian. We’ve seen a nation with great ideals become ever more hateful to the most vulnerable, ever more self-centered. When more and more start shifting a body toward the ways of the world, it becomes easier and easier to give in.

But the transformed body of Christ is shaped by God’s Spirit, transformed into Christ. It has gifts, Paul says, of faithful prophetic word speaking God’s concerns to the rest. It has gifts of generous giving, so all share in the bounty of the creation. It has gifts of diligent leadership, so people are constantly lifted up who help the body move to where it is called to move. It has gifts of cheerful compassion, so no one is left behind, all are joined into this love of Christ. Most of all, it’s a life of sacrificial living and loving, where all lose themselves so others can be found.

That’s what Paul says is Christ’s vision of salvation. Salvation is living in this transformed body, where all belong, all are needed, and all are changed into Christ, together, for the sake of the world.

Second, Christ promises that the gates of Hades won’t prevail against this transformed body, this church.

But Jesus isn’t describing a gated community. Too often we’ve envisioned Christ’s body on the wrong side of the gates, inside, sheltered, where no one can hurt us.

It’s the exact opposite. We’re called out of the world to become Christ’s body, and sent back into the world to live as that transformed body. And nothing can prevail against such love. We are sent out as one body to break down the gates that keep people in, loose the bonds that grip them, break the chains that enslave them, Jesus says today.

That whole depressing litany stands no chance against such a transformed body of Christ. Walls of hate, walls of violence, walls of greed, walls of ignorance, this body shaped in love will break those walls with love. When any walls keep us from others, this body will break them down and welcome those others in, to share the same blood of God’s love, the same breath of the Spirit’s life, to join in this life together. Until all God’s children, every being on this planet, is part of this transformed body of God’s love.

What chance do even the gates of hell have against that? The gates of death? The gates of fear? What systems, what rooted prejudice, what global evil can prevail against such love?

It’s not time to hide. It’s time to join together in Christ, and invite the Spirit to transform us.

This is how God will heal the world, how God’s priorities become reality. Now we no longer fear God’s alignment with justice, peace, non-violence, sacrificial love and life because we’re aligned with God and each other in that commitment.

This is how we live, together, as God’s faithful people and find the healing of salvation, when the Spirit transforms all people of faith into this body that includes all, breaks down all walls that divide, and fills the world with God’s love and healing.

So let’s get up out of our hiding places, join arms and hands and voices, and, transformed by the Spirit, follow where Christ leads. A broken, fearful, suffering world awaits the news that God’s healing and wholeness and love is coming, and nothing can stop it.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

There are no boundaries to God’s love, and our calling as Christ in the world is to proclaim this, and name and take down any boundaries anyone puts up, anyone, until all know the embrace of God’s love.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 20, year A
Texts: Matthew 15:(10-20) 21-28 [also read 1-9]; Isaiah 56:1, 6-8; Psalm 67

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

There are no boundaries to God’s love, no national borders, no ethnic distinctions. All people are within God’s healing love.

That’s the joy of God’s Word. Today Isaiah tells God’s chosen people Israel that the LORD God also welcomes foreigners to the holy mountain, to the Temple, which will be a house of prayer not just for the Jewish people but for all peoples. The psalmist invokes God’s way and saving health over all nations, to the ends of the earth.

This is not the normal way of religion, something Jesus addresses with the Pharisees today. Religion is good at insider/outsider language, setting up boundaries between those who can be loved by God and those who can’t. Isaiah and the psalm are challenging words to any who believed God’s love for Israel meant God couldn’t love anyone else.

But it’s more than this. God’s boundary-free love flows throughout the Scriptures, and throughout Christ’s whole ministry.

From the beginning, outsiders were included in Christ’s mission.

In Matthew’s birth story, Magi, foreign astrologers, came to this child with rich gifts. God’s Jewish Messiah was already reaching beyond that ethnic boundary.

At this point in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus has already driven a legion of demons out of two foreigners into a herd of pigs in Gentile territory. At this point, he’s already healed the slave of a Roman centurion, a hated oppressor of the Jewish people. Today Jesus challenges the Pharisees’ human rules for religion, claims God’s love isn’t limited by Jewish law, and heals another foreigner of demonic possession.

All this leads directly to the love the Triune God shows at the cross, taking on all of human sin and evil and pain and death to draw all people – all people, Christ says – into God’s heart.

There are no boundaries to God’s love, no such things as foreigners and aliens, no unacceptable ones, none who are excluded. That’s the Good News of Christ that fills us, includes us, shapes us into Christ for the welcome of all God’s children and the healing of the world.

But listen carefully, now.

Everything these readings teach us, everything we’ve ever learned from Christ Jesus, everything the Holy Spirit has changed in my heart, every bit of Christly love that’s been given me, cringes at the racist words Jesus uses towards this woman. Using a common Jewish insult for foreigners, he says she’s not a child, she’s a dog.

This is what neo-Nazis and white supremacists paint on signs they bring to Charlottesville. Classify another human being as non-human, and they’re no longer your concern. That’s what Jesus is saying: “I came for the Jews, not for foreign dogs.”

This is extremely distressing to hear. But you’ve called me among you to listen to God’s Word and speak God’s truth, to proclaim God’s Good News, to help you understand the Scriptures and the heart of God for you and for the world. And I say to you that everything I’ve learned from Jesus himself, everything I know from Genesis to Revelation about the heart of God for this world, cries out at these words Jesus uses.

We’re tempted to try and explain them away.

Some suggest he was trying to teach the disciples that this anti-foreign prejudice was wrong. I’m a flawed, evil human being, and I can think of several ways Jesus could have done that without dehumanizing her.

Some suggest Jesus was challenging her faith, encouraging her to stand up for herself. There are a number of ways he could’ve done that without a racist epithet.

Some say Jesus was just quoting an old saying. Well, my maternal grandmother once said to me, in absolute seriousness with no irony or humor, “you can trust a Swede to cheat you every time.” I’m sure she learned that from her forebears. But I don’t believe it or repeat it, and I’m sinful.

Some suggest Jesus needed to learn his mission as Messiah was broader than the Jewish people. But Matthew’s told us, and Mark and Luke agree, that by now he’d already crossed that boundary several times, apparently without problem.

There’s no excuse that has integrity with the rest of Scripture, or makes sense in light of the cross, no excuse that’s tenable or credible. Nothing can wash over the picture of a man dismissing a woman, a person of power humiliating a vulnerable person, one human calling another human a dog. Jesus himself says today that what defiles is what comes out of the mouth, not what goes into the mouth. What excuse can override these horrible words coming from Jesus’ mouth?

Now, we’re flawed human beings. Jesus may have reasons we don’t know, and, like Job, we’ll have to let that be. But we can’t find an excuse.

There is a light in this story, though. Look at this woman. Try to take your eyes off of her. She is the Good News of God shining from this text. And she shows a path to hope.

In my senior year at seminary, Mary put food on our table and a roof over our heads by doing in-home child care.

Hannah was 17 months when the year started, and this enabled me to finish seminary and Mary to stay home.

One of the necessary things we taught this little flock of kids was not to hit each other. Now, Mary and I chose not to spank our children, seeking other, non-violent, ways to discipline. But one day I lost my temper with my daughter and gave her a sharp spanking on her bottom. And this 20-month-old child looked up at me with clarity and truth and said, “Daddy, we don’t hit.”

She only knew that truth because of her parents. She called me to account for my own heart, my own teaching, and said, “this isn’t right, and you taught me that.”

That is the courage of this woman, standing up to the Son of God, holding him accountable to himself. She joins a great line of biblical people who, in fear and trembling, called God to account, demanded God be true to God’s own way. Abraham, overlooking Sodom and Gomorrah, says to God that God’s own justice and love are offended by the plan to destroy those cities. Moses in the wilderness argues with God that God’s care and love, God’s saving these people from slavery, means God can’t throw them away.

We can only say Jesus is wrong here because of Jesus himself. He may have had his reasons. But we have to say, “This is wrong, and you taught us it was wrong.”

Because if we can’t name such words as wrong just because Jesus said them, how can we face our own hidden prejudice and racism?

The harder we look for justification for something that makes our hearts sick, the more we need to face it, even here. I know you people. You care about racism and prejudice, you are a people who include all in God’s love. But even here, there are things we need to face.

We need to face that we can live many days and months without thinking about how our systems oppress people of color, aliens among us, those who speak other languages, have other faiths. That we don’t try every day to change our society that permits such things to exist, even in the heart of our judicial system and our police forces.

We need to face that we all have unbidden, unwelcome thoughts about people come to our minds, whether it’s moving to the other side of a sidewalk when approaching a person different from us, or assuming things about others by how they look, or dress, or speak. We need to stop excusing ourselves, and name that we have work to do.

We need to face that the white supremacy, neo-Nazi movements reflect a truth about our nation far deeper than just their hate and violence. We’re a country that values individualism over the common good, a country founded by slave-owners that in every generation rejects immigrants, people of different ethnicities, people of different faiths. We were founded by people looking for freedom for their religion, but not that of others. Fringe groups are only the boils and pustules breaking out on the surface. Until we hold ourselves and our politicians accountable to the ideals of our founding documents, the ideals on the Statue of Liberty’s base, we will never be rid of this deeper sickness.

Until we stop looking for excuses, we’ll never start the hard path to healing. Until we find the courage of a 20-month-old child or a foreign woman and speak up, even to God, and certainly to ourselves, we’ll never be open to the powerful, expansive, non-exclusive, all-embracing love of the Triune God for the whole of the creation.

There are no boundaries to God’s love, no national borders, no ethnic distinctions. All people are within God’s healing love.

That’s the joy of the Triune God for this creation. That’s the joy throughout the Scriptures in God’s saving love for all peoples. That’s our joy when we, too, are included in this love.

Christ has come to break down all dividing walls, all barriers and prejudices that keep people apart, to bring all people out of darkness into marvelous light. To witness to the heart of God for the whole creation.

Let us ask God for the grace to open our hearts and our eyes to see the truth, however hard it may be, and name it, and for the Spirit’s grace and strength to then take the path of Christly love that draws all people together. God give us grace to pray, as we did at the beginning of this liturgy:

“God of all peoples, your arms reach out to embrace all those who call upon you. Teach us as disciples of your Son to love the world with compassion and constancy, that your name may be known throughout the earth.”

Amen, Gracious God, make this so.

 

Mary models for us the dropping of all boundaries with God, and shows us a path of union with God that brings us life and the world healing.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The feast of Mary, Mother of Our Lord
Texts: Luke 1:46-55

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

She could have said “No.”

God’s intention to join with humanity and bring us into the life of God in the flesh was never going to be forced. Mary’s yes, which utterly changed her life, was needed.

Sometimes we sentimentally imagine that the desire for God’s Messiah was so great among the Jewish people that young women dreamed of being the mother of Christ. That’s highly doubtful. Even if Christ’s coming was longed for, for everyday people in those days it would be as it is for everyday people of our day. You live your life, you make your plans. You sleep, work, eat, love. They knew God promised to come, but it’s not likely that Mary, or any girls of her time, daydreamed about this role.

Because it would be for anyone in this position a loss of everything she had hoped and planned for her life. Facing her parents and her fiancé with the news, risking ostracism and possible death, was just the start. From this moment, her life wasn’t wholly her own anymore. She welcomed God into her own body, she committed her life and her heart to loving this child and teaching him, she put herself on a path that would lead to a place at the foot of a Roman cross.

She could have said “no.” God would have moved on. But she didn’t.

Mary’s “yes” is hard for us to say. It means letting down all sorts of boundaries with God, and we’re not comfortable with that.

Maybe only a pregnant woman can teach us this. From the moment of conception, a pregnant mother shares her body with another being. There isn’t a breath taken that isn’t shared. Blood runs between the two. Food eaten, physical movement, all affect both. There is distinction between the two, but the boundaries are almost non-existent.

This is what God asked of Mary: to let down all boundaries and join with God for the healing of the world. To say, “let it be as you will,” and let God into her life wherever God needed to be.

That’s not something we’re eager to do. As much as we desire God’s presence in our lives, God’s grace in our hearts, there are often places inside us where we have a “no admittance” sign, places where we say to God, “this far, and no further.”

I don’t want you to challenge that preconception, that way of thinking. It’s mine to keep.
I don’t want you to prod at that sin, that habit that hurts me or others. It’s comfortable to me.
I’m not ready for you to change me fully into Christ, to set aside my ego needs. I like being number one in my plans.
I don’t want you to open my heart fully to love you and love others. So much vulnerability terrifies me, and I’d rather limit my love, protect myself.

These are the answers we often give to God. And God will let us say them.

But if Mary could have said “no,” if God allows that, what does that suggest about the Magnificat?

This powerful, brave, joyful song to God’s overturning of the world pours out of this young woman and still thrills us. God will cast down the mighty from their thrones. God will send the rich away empty and scatter the proud. God will lift up the lowly, fill the hungry with good things. God will bring healing and wholeness to the entire creation.

But if God inspires this song of praise by inviting a teenage girl to bear Christ into the world, and if God waits for her “yes” before proceeding, is it possible this is how God intends to fulfill Magnificat’s promise?

Mary wasn’t forced into her “let it be.” Why would she sing a song that envisioned God forcing anyone else, either? When Mary’s child grew to an adult, Jesus invited people into God’s realm, called people to lose everything to find God’s life. The Son of God was so committed to not forcing humanity to follow, so committed to invitation rather than coercion, that he let us torture and kill him, rather than take up force against us.

The Magnificat isn’t a manifesto for God’s forcing the world upside down. God’s approach to Mary, the Son of God’s consistent approach in preaching and teaching, dying and rising, suggest this is also the only way God will accomplish Magnificat.

So this song is God’s invitation to us to say “yes,” God’s invitation to us to bear Christ in the world.

We who are mighty, powerful, aren’t threatened by God’s armies. We’re invited by God’s sacrificial love to step down from our thrones of privilege and lift up those who are trodden down. We who are full, rich, sated with plenty, are invited to empty ourselves, to step away from the buffet table, so that all can feast, all are fed and housed and clothed. We who are proud, self-centered, who act consciously and unconsciously more out of self-interest than we care to admit, are invited to scatter all that pride, all those self-satisfied thoughts, and let go of our ego. So we can truly become Christ.

This won’t be easy. That’s why we hesitate. Mary’s “yes” led her to great joys, but also pain and suffering. Dropping all boundaries and letting God enter in, for the healing of our world, and for the healing of our own souls, always has risk, cost, loss. A world turned upside down means we move down. God will not force that on us.

But Mary shows us that in spite of all we fear losing, what we gain is life and love in the heart of God. And we join God’s healing of all things.

Today we learn to model Mary, not marvel at her.

Mary doesn’t stand before us to be worshipped, she stands alongside us, urging us to join her in answering God’s invitation. Her willingness to open herself completely to God’s work, even if it meant her world turned upside down, is our model and our hope.

There is grace for us in her experience, too. This turning, this becoming Christ, doesn’t happen in a moment. Neither the fullness of the sacrifice nor the fullness of Christ in us arrives at once. Mary didn’t stand at the cross on the day she said, “Let it be.” She had time to get used to the child inside her. She had morning sickness before she had the backache of the ninth month. She had scraped knees to kiss before she had to face nails pounded into her son. She had time with God to learn this path.

So we can join her in “yes” today and take the path, as she did, a day at a time. Trusting that the Triune God will give us, as God gave her, the grace and courage we need to live into our “let it be with me according to your will.”

And Mary’s path didn’t end at that cross, either.

She was there in those confusing, glorious days after Easter, able to take her beloved son into her arms again. She saw him ascend to his Father. And she was there with about 120 women and men on that day, fifty days after he rose, when the Triune God came to all the believers with the same question Gabriel brought to Mary. She was there when the whole Church was invited to welcome the Holy Spirit into their hearts and lives, to drop all boundaries, to join with God, bearing Christ for the healing of the world.

Pentecost is our Annunciation. The Spirit will change us, if we say yes, but it will be a change for life and joy and hope. Whatever we let go, whatever we are asked to lose, be it power and privilege, wealth and lifestyle, pride and ego, we will soon come to realize they are nothing compared to the joy of bearing Christ. We will find life and love on this path.

And Mary will walk alongside us, holding out her hand, saying, “All will be well. Come, let’s walk together.”

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

It is enough for the healing of this world when God and we work together; then miracles happen in God’s divine grace and our human partnership.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
   The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 18, year A
   Texts: Matthew 14:13-21; Isaiah 55:1-5

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

The crowd was overwhelming.

We’ve heard 5,000. That’s a lot. But Matthew very clearly counts 5,000 men, apart from women and children. If there were at least as many women as men, if half the people brought one child, both conservative guesses, there were at least 15,000 people fed that day. 15,000 people among whom Jesus walked and healed and blessed. 15,000 people with deep needs, in poverty, struggling with illness, suffering under oppression.

Overwhelming might be an understatement.

And it feels familiar. Millions suffer in our world, close by in our city and nation and far away on the other side of this planet. Oppression, war, violence, racism, sexism, all the systemic things people do that harm and kill others. Starvation, loss of home and life from climate change, poverty, homelessness, inequal distribution of resources, all the particular sufferings that afflict the creation and all within it. It’s hard to know where to begin, or if our puny efforts do anything. Overwhelming is an understatement.

Overwhelming is our link to this story. What happened in this encounter between overwhelming need and Christ and his followers offers hope when we, too, face overwhelming need and recognize that we, too, are Christ’s followers.

The ultimate hope we have, the ultimate plan of God, is that the world, like the crowds, is fed, satisfied, whole.

Not just for a day. But for good. God has entered the world to fill it with steadfast, sure love, as the prophet says today, the only thing that really satisfies. A few verses later, we’re promised that God’s Word will always do what God wants it to do. So God plans on bringing healing to this world, not just for one meal, but true healing, justice, and peace for this creation. And God will accomplish this.

But what we learn in this story of bread and fish and thousands of needy is how this healing will be accomplished. We learn it will not be enough, the healing will not satisfy, until we understand and live out what Jesus is trying to teach the disciples today. If we understand how God’s Word does what God needs.

Our first learning begins by hearing what Jesus tells the disciples.

The disciples, facing massive, hungry crowds, and the end of a long day, ask Jesus to send them away for food. Instead, Jesus says, “you give them something to eat.”

The disciples weren’t out of line. They had tiny resources, two fish and five loaves. There were thousands in need. It was reasonable to send them away.

Sometimes we look at our meager resources and at the overwhelming problems of the world and also think, “they should really go somewhere else.” But Jesus says, “you give them something to eat”. It’s our problem to solve.

God didn’t come into this world in Christ to heal it by being a divine vending machine, solving all problems. Jesus did miracles out of compassion. But his mission was to draw all people into God’s life, into the role of Christ, so the people of the world help solve the problems of the world.

God isn’t satisfied, it isn’t enough, fixing all things for us.

To be fair, the disciples didn’t ask Jesus to feed the crowds. But too often the Church sees the overwhelming problems of the world, sits on our collective hands, and says, “God, do something.”

People look at the world’s problems and conclude either God isn’t loving or God doesn’t exist. Rarely do they consider a third option: God exists, and God is loving, but God wants us to be a part of the healing of this world.

Jesus desires that all his followers become Christ for the healing of the world. It’s how all will be reached, and how Christ’s followers grow into who we’re meant to be. Popping something out of the divine vending machine at each crisis might miraculously fix all things. But God’s people won’t become who God dreams.

God knows we have all we need to feed and house everyone, end war and violence, build a just society. God needs our hands and wisdom and strength to use what we have been given to heal the world, and become who we are meant to be.

Nothing less will satisfy God.

But sometimes we have the opposite problem. We get out into the crowds and forget that Christ is still with us.

Sometimes we act as if solving all of the world’s problems is our burden alone. We don’t take it to Jesus, like the disciples did.

In the past half-century or more the Church has done a remarkable turn-around, taking on God’s core issues of justice and peace for all. We’ve moved from a view of church that exists solely for members to have certainty of heaven after death to a Church whose calling it is to be Christ in the world, to end injustice and oppression and poverty and all the world’s problems.

Except we often forget God is still involved in the healing. Jesus said, “you give them something to eat,” but he also poured divine power into this supper and provided a miraculous meal. Surely some there also had brought their own food and shared. But that doesn’t explain the astonishing twelve basketsful of leftovers, far more food than could be accounted for by anything but God’s miraculous action.

We are sent as Christ into the world, but we’re not solely responsible for Christ’s work. No matter how meager our five loaves and two fish seem, God always transforms our scarcity into abundance for all.

In fact, this story teaches us that God’s love is the beginning and the ending of all healing.

Do you see? It’s Jesus who walks the crowd during the day, healing, blessing. We only hear of the disciples in the evening, when they raise the question of supper. And when this meal was over, first Christ sent the disciples away, then dismissed the crowds himself.

Christ’s love and compassion for the crowds preceded and succeeded the disciples’. God’s love for the suffering and dying of this world precedes and succeeds ours. God’s love for Mount Olive was here before any of us, and will be here well after us. There is no pain of this world into which God hasn’t already invested far more than we.

The Triune God is there in the overwhelming pain and suffering already, is coming with us, and will be there after we’re done. These overwhelming problems aren’t ours to solve alone. God will ensure healing happens. While also saying, “you heal them. You feed them. You make peace.”

Nothing less will satisfy the world’s needs.

This is God’s path to the world’s healing. And our path.

When we’re neither satisfied sitting back waiting for God, nor deluded into thinking the world’s overwhelming weight lies on our shoulders alone.

When Christ draws us into the heart of God, into the life in Christ that is ours, and together we go out into the crowds and are Christ. And they are Christ to us.

And when God’s mighty power in us and in the world turns death into life, despair into hope, scarcity into abundance. Until all are satisfied. All have enough. And God’s whole creation is healed.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen