Pr. Joseph Crippen

The Shape of Love

March 29, 2018 By Pr. Joseph Crippen

This night the Son of God shows us the full shape of love, the way God envisions the whole world living and moving, the path of our life and hope.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
Maundy Thursday
Texts: John 13:1-17, 31b-35; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26

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

“Do you know what I have done to you?”

Hands still wet from washing his followers’ feet, Jesus asks his most important question ever. “Do you know what I have done to you?”

No question is more critical to life. Do you know what Jesus has done? Do you know what God is doing in Christ? Do you know what this week means for your life, your faith, for the world? All Christian theology begins and ends with Jesus’ question on the night of his betrayal.

Jesus opens up this question with two deepenings. First, he says he is setting an example. What he does, you do. This is always the center of Jesus’ message: Follow me. Do as I do. Walk where I walk.

Second, it is this night when Jesus makes his great commandment. Only in the context of the events of these painful days does he make this absolutely clear: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”

“Do you know what I have done to you?” he asks. I have set you an example. I have commanded you to love as I love. Do you know what that means?

Everything Jesus does tonight leads to the answer. So watch, see, learn. And then follow.

Watch Jesus tonight: he shows you that love serves.

The Son of God, God’s Eternal Word, kneels before his followers and washes their feet. Those not preparing the meal arrived at the upper room, tired and dirty from the road, arguing an old fight over which was Jesus’ favorite. Even children know to wash for dinner, to use the basin and pitcher at the entrance. Everyone knew dirty feet needed to be cleaned before eating.

Yet the Master shows what love is. Putting aside any hierarchy, or proper order, not chiding his disciples for their neglect, Jesus simply loves them. Jesus becomes a servant, a slave, and carefully, gently, washes their feet.

Do you know what I have done to you? he asks. I have shown you the shape of love. To love as I love is to see yourself the servant of all your sisters and brothers. To love as I love is to set aside what’s right and who’s first and what you think you’re owed, and offer yourself as servant to all.

Watch Jesus tonight: he shows you that love offers itself completely.

After this washing, they moved into the meal. It was Passover, so they drank four cups of wine at the prescribed places. They passed around unleavened bread, remembering their ancestors.

But in the middle, Jesus gave them a way to understand what would happen tomorrow. The cross at this point isn’t a surprise to Jesus, but his disciples don’t know it. So, stepping away from the words of the Seder, he said “this bread is my body. Take it. Eat it.” “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, a drink of forgiveness. Drink it.”

They couldn’t have understood. Even the next day, as they saw him horribly killed, they didn’t get it. But after Easter they started to remember, and understand.

Do you know what I have done to you? he asks. I have shown you the shape of love. To love as I love is to offer yourself fully to the other, to be vulnerable, to risk everything, even death. The one you love takes in all you offer and is changed, like this bread and wine will fill you with my body and blood and life and love and forgiveness and all I do on this cross.

But also, Jesus says, do this to remember this death, to remember what love really is. “As often as you eat of this bread and drink of this cup,” Paul says, “you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” To love as I love, Jesus says, is to remember this death, and to offer yourself fully to the other, as gift, as forgiveness, as vulnerable grace.

Watch Jesus tonight: he shows you that love surrenders to God’s vision.

We leave the supper to go to Gethsemane. Here Jesus will face his betrayer, be arrested, and begin the humiliation that leads to torture and death.

Before that, he will pray to his Father. In the internal mystery of the Triune God, the Son will ask the Father if it is possible to avoid this death. The Son came as one of us to reveal God’s heart to us, to draw you into the heart of God, and the cross will be the moment of deepest revelation. But now there is this moment of hesitation.

Do you know what I have done to you? he asks. I have shown you the shape of love. Love is not unafraid, and love isn’t free of doubt. Love is often terrified of following through, wonders if there are easier ways to be.

But not my will be done, that’s what I said, Jesus tells you. Love is always shaped by God’s vision for how the world works. Not by your own real needs, or self-concerns. Love follows the path of servanthood, of vulnerability and loss, and now chooses to be shaped by God’s will.

To love as I love, Jesus says, is to trust God and follow. No matter the cost. No matter the fear. No matter that you can’t see how this will be a good thing.

“Do you know what I have done to you?”

This is the only question that matters. We long for love, for connection with others. We struggle to know if we are loveable, valued. We seek ways to fill our emptiness inside.

But here you have looked at your feet and seen the God of all time and history kneeling there in love. Here you have looked toward a cross and seen the God who made all things facing death out of love for you. Here you have watched a struggle within God’s own Triune life over living out this love, and have seen the Son of God choose to love you, even if you would kill him for it.

Here you have seen the shape of God’s love, and have found yourself forever wrapped up in it.

So, now: Jesus has set an example. Will you do as he does? Jesus has commanded you to love as he loves. Will you follow this love you have seen, this love that has changed your life and given you faith and hope?

Because when you love in this way, follow this example, you will be a witness to Christ. You will begin to understand what it is Jesus has done to you, and to the world.

And eventually, God’s deepest vision will come to pass, that the whole creation will know of God’s love and live it, for the healing of all things.

In the name of Jesus. Amen

Midweek Lent 2018 + A Cross-Shaped Life

March 21, 2018 By Pr. Joseph Crippen

Week 5: The discipline of salt and light

“Noticeable”

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
Texts: Matthew 5:13-16; Ephesians 4:25 – 5:2

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

Are you a disciple of Jesus for your own sake? That is, is your faith just meant to benefit you?

Many seekers would probably say yes. People seek connection with God, however they define God, for their own good. It’s not necessarily selfish. People look for faith experiences or faith communities or faith teaching to meet their deep need for God.

Christians, too. Christian faith is often thought to be a personal question. Are you strengthened by it? Does it help you make sense of your life?

But on Wednesdays this Lent Christ has shown us a different view of discipleship: to see others as Christ sees them, to love others sacrificially like Christ. Two of our weeks – the discipleship of repentance and of emptying – could become self-centered. Empty yourself spiritually to be renewed and filled; repent and turn to God so you’re better. But we’ve seen them more deeply, as paths to see and love others as Christ.

But Jesus’ words today can only mean one thing. Jesus proclaims the influence we have in the world. Jesus clearly says we are disciples for the sake of others, not for ourselves.

You are salt, he says. You are light. And neither exist for themselves.

Salt is the universal seasoning, used by and essential to every culture.

Found all over the world, salt makes food palatable, brings flavor and life to what gives us nourishment.

Salt is also universally used as a preservative. It keeps things from getting rotten and decayed. It permits people to survive climate crises and the normal flow of seasons by keeping food when food is hard to find.

But salt does nothing for itself. Salt by itself isn’t edible. Its value is influencing something else.

Light is the same.

As our planet rotates on its axis, half the world is in darkness while the other is in sunlight. For all the peoples of the world of all times, bringing light into the times when they couldn’t see has been a priority.

The smallest amount of light can fill huge darkness. Fires flickering on cave walls enabled some of the earliest human visual arts. Human ingenuity realized that the wax made by bees or the oil of olives could feed a wick and burn slowly, and candles and lamps powerfully helped human development. Light shining in the darkness became a strong symbol of hope.

But light doesn’t do anything for itself, either. Light’s purpose is to enable things to be seen.

Jesus declares we are the same, made for the sake of others.

We are changed by the Spirit into something different than our world and culture. Something that brings flavor and enhances goodness, preserves things from decay. Something that brings light to a dark world.

You are salt. You are light, Jesus says.

In the Sermon on the Mount, where this comes from, Jesus describes many challenging, cross-shaped ways his followers are different from the world. We don’t hold on to anger with each other. We pay attention to our inmost thoughts that harm others. We don’t worry about the future. We are peacemakers. We are non-violent, which is what he means by “the meek”. Paul’s list in Ephesians today of how we live continues Jesus: we are imitators of God, shaped by kindness and forgiveness, not bitterness and anger.

So Jesus says, influence the world with what you already are in Christ.

Be salt. Be light. Be what you are, Jesus says.

Jesus is opening our eyes to how different the way of Christ is, and encouraging us not to be afraid of that. If we follow, do what Jesus teaches and walk where he leads, we are salt and light. We are an influence of God’s grace in the world.

So let your light of God’s love that fills you shine out in your words and actions, so people see that light and are led to God. Make a difference in the darkness that surrounds us.

Let your alternate reality as a follower of Jesus, your different way of understanding love and grace and forgiveness, salt the world that you walk through. Let it enhance what is good and make it better, and bring an end to rottenness and corruption.

We don’t follow Jesus for our own sake. Christ came as one of us to call us all to the same path of the cross that he walked. So that the world might be brought back to God.

So, be what you are. Be salt. Be light. And eventually all people will know the eternal love of God that we know.

In the name of Jesus. Amen

Seeing Jesus

March 18, 2018 By Pr. Joseph Crippen

We see the face of God in Jesus, so that means we see the depth of God’s love in the cross, and our own path to life and witness.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fifth Sunday in Lent, year B
Text: John 12:20-33 (with reference to other verses of John)

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

“We want to see Jesus.”

That’s all they asked, these Greek Jews. Finding a disciple who spoke Greek, they said to Philip, “Sir, we want to see Jesus.”

Isn’t this a beautiful opportunity for a follower of Jesus? Such a simple request. But it’s kind of complicated, isn’t it?

Jesus’ very strange response shows that. John doesn’t say he greeted or acknowledged the seekers. He starts talking about his anticipated time being upon him. He talks about a single grain of wheat that will remain a dead seed unless it is buried, planted into the earth. Only then can it live, become the beauty it was meant to be.

We want to see Jesus, like them. But we also see someone talking about dying and rising. About being lifted up. Unlike these Greeks, we know that means the cross. John, our narrator, fills us in: “he said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.”

“We want to see Jesus” is anything but a simple request.

But it’s a request the very beginning of John’s Gospel promises we’ll have answered.

John says it’s good to want to see Jesus, because to see Jesus is to see the face of God. Jesus is God’s Word, God’s Logos, God’s Blueprint, God’s Pattern for the Universe, the shape of the very nature of the creation, now among us as a human being.

John says Jesus, the Son of God, who is at the heart of God, makes the Father known to us, and Jesus, the Son of God, who comes among us, makes the Spirit known to us.

We want to see Jesus because Jesus is the face of the Triune God for us. Everything we need to see about God we see in Jesus. But we’re still stuck wondering: why does seeing Jesus mean seeing death and burial? Why is he talking about seeds dying and about being lifted up in the air?

Maybe because he knows we’ll soon see him that way.

John says he wrote his Gospel so all could see Jesus for themselves, and believe he is the Son of God, the Christ, and in believing, have life in his name. (20:31) From the beginning of his book, John gives us signs to help us see Jesus.

And from the beginning the greatest sign is the cross. Unlike the other Gospels, John foreshadows the cross very early. He says the Son shows us the Father’s heart in chapter 1. In chapter 3, as we heard last week, he says that God’s heart is love for the whole cosmos, so the Son came to heal, not to judge. But already there Jesus says that love will be seen when he is lifted up, like the snake Moses put on a stick in the wilderness to heal the people.

Now again today, Jesus promises he’ll be lifted up.

So seeing Jesus is going to be relatively easy. He’ll be up on a hill, raised higher than everyone and everything else. Zacchaeus won’t need to climb a tree. People won’t have to tear a hole in a roof and lower a friend down. Judas won’t need to give a secret signal in the dark. Everyone will see Jesus very soon. Hanging in pain and suffering, dying on a cross.

To see Jesus is to see the truth of the seed that dies only to live.

Mary of Bethany saw this. Just before today’s Gospel is Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem with palms, and just before that, Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, took extravagantly expensive perfume and anointed Jesus’ feet, wiped them with her hair. Some of the disciples criticized the wastefulness. (12:1-8)

But Jesus knew. He knew that after he entered Jerusalem in triumph the next day, even his disciples would see a ruling king. Maybe even some foreigners, Greek Jews would be impressed enough to come looking for him. But he also knew that his hour was coming.

So did Mary. She saw the face of God in Jesus. She saw that the love of God Jesus revealed to her and the others was leading him to death. Rather than waiting to anoint him after his death, Mary prepared him for it. She saw clearly.

For the rest, for you, for me, Jesus has to tell the mystery of a seed dying to live. Maybe we haven’t sat at his feet long enough like Mary to see through our own fears and doubts, or our beliefs about how God should be.

But now Jesus’ strange reply about the seed makes sense: you need to see me like Mary sees, he says. You need to see that the outcome of my love is you’ll have me killed. Faithful to the heart of God, Jesus loves us enough to be willing to lose everything.

If you want to see Jesus, look up. Look at the cross.

When we see Jesus as Jesus really is, we not only see the depth of God’s love, though. We see the path to our life.

Remember, Jesus is the Logos, the Blueprint, the Word, the Pattern of God for the universe in our human flesh. The seed that dies only to live is the pattern of life that really is life.

Seeing Jesus face death, and rise from the dead in love and grace, the believers realized that his path of dying to live really was a true path of life. They understood why, when speaking of his own dying, he invited them to lose their life to find it as well. To embody God’s heart, too, and live as that heart the way Jesus did.

It’s your invitation, too, you heard Jesus today. Lose your life to keep it. Let go of everything that keeps you from being filled with God’s love. Maybe it’s a sense of not being of any value. Or anxiety about life and the future. Maybe it’s selfishness and pride. Or guilt and shame. Maybe it’s a need to control life and others. Or a sense of being out of control and helpless. There are many more possibilities.

We’re all seeds, wrapped in what is killing us. But when with the Spirit’s help we let go, die to those things, bury them and us, like the old self Luther said needs to die every day, then we’ll discover what it is to live. We find winning by losing. Gain by letting go. Life by dying.

“I came that you might have life and have it abundantly,” Jesus said. (John 10:10) This is how you find it.

Now you see what Jesus meant that in being lifted up, he’d draw all people to himself.

On the cross, Jesus not only made it possible for the whole world to see God’s love. Being lifted up on the cross, Jesus also draws all people’s attention to what our love, true love really looks like. What God’s pattern for abundant life in this world really is.

Not power or strength or control or domination. Not hoarding or saving or securing. Not taking care of yourself before and excluding all others. Not dismissing or hating yourself.

No, abundant life is found when we love the same love, vulnerable, giving, sacrificial. When we die to what is in us that is not of that love. Jesus, lifted up on the cross, shows us all how we find life that is rich and real.

“We want to see Jesus.” You do, don’t you? Well, look up. Sit at Jesus’ feet for awhile until you see. And wonder, ponder, dwell in what you see. Until you begin to look like Jesus, too.

Until all people can see, all are drawn to God’s love. And the world is healed, as God has so long desired.

In the name of Jesus. Amen

Midweek Lent, 2018 + A Cross-Shaped Life

March 7, 2018 By Pr. Joseph Crippen

Week 3: The discipline of emptying

“Have the Same Mind and Love”

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
Texts: Philippians 2:1-8; Mark 8:31-37

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

Emptying, self-giving love is God’s blueprint for how the universe works.

Here’s how we know this: in the beginning, God made room within God’s own self for the creation. God risked losing everything by putting human beings in the creation who could disobey, destroy, reject. God’s emptying love is the basis for creation.

But there’s more. John says that Jesus is God’s eternal Logos, that is, Word of God, present at creation, one with God, and now in human flesh. But Logos is more than Word. It’s Pattern, Blueprint, Logic. God’s pattern, God’s logic, God’s blueprint is now knowable, seeable, in Jesus.

So Jesus, in teaching, healing, welcoming, loving, suffering, and dying, reveals the shape of God’s pattern. In Jesus, love is always giving up oneself for the other, emptying, and finding filling on the other side. That is, death and resurrection.

So if Jesus is God’s Blueprint in the flesh, and that’s what Jesus revealed, then self-giving love is the blueprint for how the universe is supposed to work. It’s the pattern of God and the pattern of creation. Dying to live. Losing to win. Letting go to receive all things.

We’ve already seen this in the creation. The whole universe thrives and grows on dying and rising.

Stars collapse and die, and new planets and galaxies are born. Plants die and decay, feeding the earth. Seeds effectively die, only to be born into new life. Animals die, giving life to other animals and plants.

Even our bodies follow this pattern. Except for our brain cells, which last our lifetime and aren’t replaced when they die, every other cell in our bodies has a life span. Skin cells live for about two weeks, die, and are replaced by new ones. Colon cells last about four days. We’re constantly dying and living. If cells don’t do this, don’t die to provide new life, we call that cancer. They persist and grow and take over the rest of the body. They don’t follow God’s blueprint for life.

If this is God’s blueprint for the creation, we need to re-think death and loss.

We’re used to seeing dying as the enemy, to resist losing. We live competitively, see winning and success and strength and power as the goals of life.

But if that’s just cancer in human-sized form – and to judge by the shape the world is in right now, that’s a good analogy – then to find life we need to embrace God’s way, the other way.

God’s design is: life is found in dying, gain is found in letting go, winning is found in losing. This provides life to the whole universe. Since this is radically different from the world’s view, if we’re going to see differently, live differently, we’ll need help. And that’s what God gives us. God’s Logos, God’s Blueprint, Jesus, took on flesh, to call us back to God’s design that gives us life.

Be of the same mind, having the same love, as Christ Jesus has, Paul says.

Take up your cross and follow me, Jesus says.

This is the whole point of Jesus’ coming, to re-teach us the meaning of life. To call us back to the way of divine Love, the pattern of all things. The way humans are living and doing things leads to destruction and pollution and brokenness, without life or love or hope. But God’s way, the universe’s pattern, is a path that gives life and hope and healing. Jesus’ emptying his divine glory and facing the cross is our model for our lives. Jesus’ resurrection proves that this path leads to life.

So follow my cross path, Jesus says. It’s what you were designed to be. That’s the discipline of following me, he says, the discipline of emptying. Be ready to lose everything. If you cling to all you think you need, you’ll really die. You’ll miss the joy and hope of abundant life. When you let go, lose, yes, it will feel like dying. But you’ll find life and wholeness and healing.

Read all the teachings of Jesus. This is where they lead.

So Paul says, be of the same mind, have the same love as Christ Jesus. That’s the path to life.

This letting go, this emptying, looks different for each of us.

Often the Church describes this in terms of pride and humility: let go of your pride and find the humility of Christ. But that’s only a problem if pride is what you’re clinging to, what fills your life and your heart. Since powerful men with pride issues have controlled much of the theology of the Church in the West for centuries, it’s little surprise that’s the common take on emptying. But everyone has different things to let go of, different things to die to.

If you’re filled with self-doubt and anxiety about your value, that’s what you need to let go of to walk this path. If you’re filled with fear and dread about the future, about your life, that’s what you need to let go of. If you’re obsessed with security and making yourself or your loved ones safe, or if you’re centered on doing things your way, trying to control your life and others, those things are what need emptying.

There’s no room for God’s life to fill us if we’re filled with something else.

God wants this for us because God wants us to find the fullness of life.

When we share Christ’s mind and love, learn what crosses we each are taking up, what emptying of ourselves we each are doing, when we start living as we were designed to live, we find what Jesus calls abundant life. Jesus says today that those who lose their life for his sake, and for the sake of the Good News, will heal their life. Will find what it is to be truly alive.

When we let go of all that fills us but doesn’t satisfy us, we find we’re able to be filled with God. God’s life now has room to come into every corner of our hearts, every room of our soul. Luther called this letting the old self die every day and asking God to raise the new self. It sounds contradictory, but as we’ve seen, it’s the pattern of the universe. The more we empty ourselves the more we are filled with God’s love and peace.

It’s true of our relationships with each other, too. Love isn’t love if we control it, if we fill our hearts with fears and anxieties and greed and control and gain. There’s no room in there for anyone or anything else. Love happens when we let go of what we cling to and make room for the other. When we lose. Become vulnerable, able to be wounded. Empty ourselves. This is how “love your neighbor as you love yourself” is really lived out.

It’s hard to really hear Jesus’ words today.

To dwell on what he means by us losing our lives to find them. To contemplate what it would be like to have the same mind and the same love as Christ.

But it isn’t required that we understand this all at once. In the living, the letting go, the losing, the vulnerability, that’s how we learn more and more what Jesus is about. How we find our true divine design. As we journey together, we help each other discover our own particular baggage, and help each other find the courage to let it go.

Eventually, we begin to know in our bones, in our hearts, that this is life for us. Life like God really meant us to live, life we see so clearly in Christ’s resurrection, life that really can heal this world.

In the name of Jesus. Amen

But to those . . .

March 4, 2018 By Pr. Joseph Crippen

Christ Jesus is the new Temple, where we meet God, and at the cross reveals the uncontrollable, unstoppable nature of the true God’s love: a scandal, foolish, but when we find this healing, it becomes life and wisdom.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Third Sunday in Lent, year B
Texts: John 2:13-22; 1 Corinthians 1:18-25

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

Religious leaders, people like me, often try to put God in a box.

For thousands of years, human beings have called out people from their midst to speak to and of God in the community, to help the rest explore and face the mysteries of God.

But such religious leaders often create ways to control this. We build boxes – temples, churches – and say they’re the only places to meet God. Once God is well-boxed, we make theology about what God says and does, controlling God for the people.

We typically try to control the people, too. To decide who gets in and who doesn’t, who’s beloved of God and who isn’t, who’s worthy of notice and who can be ignored.

We religious leaders, and, let’s be honest, many religious people in general, can be fiercely protective of our God-boxes, of our right to have the final say about God, to control access. It’s a huge temptation, and we don’t like being challenged about it.

The Temple in Jerusalem was just such a box, like all made by peoples throughout history. Its leaders controlled the God-message, and access to God, and taught that in this place alone the true God was found.

Enter Jesus of Nazareth. Being the Son of God, a conflict with this box’s leaders was probably inevitable.

So Jesus challenges the way they’ve cared for this God-box.

They’ve made a market out of a holy place, he says. Necessary things for sacrifice in the Temple are bought and sold within. Lambs sold for sacrifice, money changed from Gentile currency to Hebrew, and folks are making a profit. And the Son of God will have none of it. This isn’t what the house of God is for, he says.

This challenge to their authority, the driving out of animals, spilling of coins, and unmistakable rebuke is – no surprise – not well received. We religious people don’t like that.

But Jesus was only getting started. If it was scandalous to criticize how the Temple was run, the real scandal was coming.

Jesus declares that the time of God-boxes has passed, and the Temple is now found in his body.

Hardly anyone, disciples included, understood him at the time. But it was profound. If Israel met God at the Temple, the true Holy Place, with the Holy of Holies, now Jesus claims that he is the new Holy Place.

Jesus is the intersection between God and humanity, the house of God. God is now with us, in human flesh, able to be loved, touched, embraced. God’s Love is embodied in Jesus.

This moves God out of protective custody, breaks human control over what God says or does. This means Jesus is the face of the Triune God for us, how we know God.

This threatens religious institutions. If our business is to control God and access to God, Jesus just shut us down.

But he’s not done with scandal.

Jesus declares that this Temple, his body, will be destroyed, and on the third day be raised up.

If Jesus is now the Temple, the Holy Place, where all God’s people meet God, surely the first order of business would be to protect himself. Keep safe, so God can continue to be with us in this personal, intimate way.

But that’s not the plan. The plan for God-with-us, Jesus, is to love us back to God in person. Even if that love threatens our need to control and box up God, until finally someone with enough authority kills God-with-us.

This is the deep foolishness, the scandal Paul is talking about. God’s unstoppable, eternal love for the creation and all creatures, embodied in Jesus, will not stop loving. Power, glory, strength, winning, all these proper “divine” things, none of that is how God will act in human flesh.

Paul’s right, whatever your religion or ethnicity, this is a problem.

It’s a stumbling block if you want to control God. In Christ’s death on the cross we realize we don’t control God. No boxes, no altars, no dogmas can contain such a God who isn’t threatened even by our violence and rejection.

It’s a stumbling block if you want to control other people’s access to God. If God’s love is able to face death on a cross and rise to new life, if God’s love – a love John says embraces the whole cosmos – is so pure and constant it’s not tempted to use power and might against us, no one can control such love.

Scandal, stumbling block, foolishness, that’s what this looks like, Paul says. Unless you’ve found healing in this love.

But for those who are being healed, Paul says, it’s all different. Once we release the need to control God, or decide for God what’s going on, we find ourselves open to the astonishing Good News that if in Christ Jesus all people have access to God, so do we. That if in Christ Jesus all people are loved, so are we. That if in Christ Jesus life and healing are for the whole cosmos, they’re for us, too.

When we find such healing in God’s love in Christ, such grace from the cross and resurrection, we see everything differently. We look at weakness, and see its power to heal all things. We look at rejection and suffering, and see the beauty of such true love for all. We look at foolishness, and see a wisdom that makes all things clear. We look at death, and see life that cannot be controlled or limited.

This is our deep mystery and joy: once we stop trying to control God, trying to tell God what to do and whom to love, trying to decide which people God can reach, we find our own inclusion and healing and love and life.

There is one more scandal left.

Once the Holy Spirit started flowing into the believers at Pentecost, those who followed this Holy Place of God, this risen Temple, suddenly realized they, too, were Holy Places. Intersections between God and humanity. Temples of the Spirit of the Living God. They were sent, on God’s behalf, into the whole world. So are we.

But remember: because we follow Christ, we know from him that to be God’s Temple in the world is to risk everything for the sake of those whom God loves. To walk Christ’s path, to sacrifice with our love, our lives, our hearts, our hands. Even to die, if it comes to that.

So we gather together in this box, this place of worship, this place that we don’t control that is filled with the life of a God we also don’t control, for no other reason than that here we’ve found this life, here we’ve been healed by this love, here we’ve been fed to our depths with this grace, here we have met this God.

And from here, we are sent with this Good News, so that all might also find this healing and life, might find that God is with them, too.

In the name of Jesus. Amen