You already have a Shepherd, and it’s not you. But this Shepherd guides you, knows you, loves you, gives you life, and now calls you to follow, doing the same, for the healing of the world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fourth Sunday of Easter, year B
Texts: John 10:11-18; 1 John 3:16-24; Psalm 23

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

Over the years, I’ve learned a number of truths about serving faithfully as a pastor that I now teach to our vicars.

The one I teach first and often, is: “Your people already have a Savior, and it isn’t you.”

Everything I know and do as a pastor is helped by this. Whether it’s relieving the anxiety of carrying the weight of people’s needs, or it’s pulling me from the temptation to see myself as the only one who can do something, remembering that you all have a Savior and it isn’t me has saved my life in ministry more times than I can remember or count.

So hear this truth your Savior gives you today: You already have a Shepherd, and it isn’t you. This is also good news. With the overwhelming problems of the world, anxieties about our families or our lives, fears that we aren’t doing enough, aren’t good enough, aren’t . . . whatever enough, we seem to believe we’re the Shepherd to fix it all, make things right. We carry the weight of others, the weight of our lives, the weight of the world, and forget that maybe we have help.

Well, you do. You have a Shepherd. And thanks be to God, it isn’t you.

And today your Shepherd claims to know you as well as God knows God.

Let that sink in for a moment. Can you grasp it? Within the life of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Spirit live and dance and move in love. Love, according to Scripture, is the essence of what holds God together. So how well do you think God knows God within that love? The inner knowledge of God begins before the universe began, so at least more than 15 billion years ago. Can there still be secrets within God? Hidden actions? Unknown stories?

But the Son of God, your Shepherd, says: “I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.” Just as God knows God, your Shepherd knows you. And loves you.

How many people actually know us as we truly are?

We don’t help with this. We put on appearances, worrying about what other people think. We keep our fears to ourselves, believing others would ridicule them. We keep our sin and brokenness inside, certain others would turn away if they knew. We keep our inadequacies locked away, not wanting others to realize how inept we feel. We keep our doubts hidden, not wanting our friends who share our faith to think less of us. We sometimes don’t even let our sadness or grief be known, fearing no one will care.

Yet your Shepherd knows you fully. All these things, and more. As well as God knows God, within God’s Triune life, your Shepherd knows you. Loves you. Calls your name.

What might that mean for you, for your life, for today, for tomorrow, to realize this?

Hear this, also: your Shepherd wants to guide you.

The complexity of the world today is almost beyond comprehension. Now that we understand there are many, many systems of brokenness, simply knowing what to do is really hard. We used to think sins were just bad things we did. Now we know it’s more, that we’re also involved in systems of racism, prejudice, oppression, violence, and countless others, sometimes without knowing. For people who care about faithfully serving God, loving as Christ, how can we ever know what to do?

Well, your Shepherd wants to guide you in that. Lead you to green pastures that all can share, along paths that are right and good, for your life and the life of the world. Everything your Shepherd teaches you in the Gospels is meant to lead you, is the loving voice calling to you. Even when the path winds through valleys of death and pain, suffering and fear, you are never alone, your Shepherd’s staff is guiding you.

Decisions about how to be faithful and loving and Christlike aren’t going to be easy in this complicated world. But you can trust that Jesus, your Shepherd, is helping and guiding, through the grace of the Holy Spirit.

But your Shepherd not only guides you. Your Shepherd gives you life.

In this Easter season our ears still ring from the Alleluias that broke out in the darkness of our fear, and we once again walk in awe of this mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection.

Today, remember where your Shepherd has walked. Through the valley of the shadow of death, into death itself, and out on the other side, now alive and loving and calling to you.

Your Shepherd who knows you better than you know yourself isn’t stopped even by death, lays down his life and takes it up again, all to offer you abundant life, life that is full and rich with love, life that doesn’t even end at death.

What might this mean for you, for your life, for today, for tomorrow, to know this?

This is all good news. But your Shepherd says one more critical thing today: The people of the world already have a Shepherd, too. And it isn’t you.

This is one of the most remarkable things Jesus ever said. “I have other sheep that don’t belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.”

There are other sheep unknown to us. Other folds. Others whom Jesus knows fully, as God knows God. Others whom Jesus loves, and calls, and guides, and gives life to.

We don’t know anything about this. He might be talking about other faiths. Other nationalities. Other planets and beings, even. There is a cosmic breadth to your Shepherd’s embrace, and it will be reached. There will be one flock, one Shepherd.

And you and I have no say over any of it. How much energy have we wasted wondering about people of other faiths, or of no faith, and their place in God’s love, or about what sins are forgiveable? How arrogant have we Christians been about a truth we don’t own?

But your Shepherd says, that’s none of your business. That’s my job, my Shepherd work. And the only thing you need to know is, they’re mine, and I love them as much as you. And one day, I’ll bring all together.

This is your Shepherd, and this is the life your Shepherd wants for you. And all those other strange sheep.

What would life be like if you trusted your Shepherd with all this? First John today suggests it would be radically different. People who follow such a Good Shepherd, he says, really follow. If the Shepherd lays down his life for others, so do the sheep. If the Shepherd’s love abides in the sheep, then they love other sheep. “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses to help?,” the elder asks today. “Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.”

That’s what’s next. Our lives, transformed by the presence of our Shepherd knowing, loving, guiding, bringing life, now follow the same path. Not as The Good Shepherd to our sisters and brothers. That job’s taken. But as anointed followers, copying the life and love and teaching of our Shepherd. Not because we will save anyone. Again, that job’s taken. But because our Savior and Shepherd chooses to touch others with our lives. With our love and grace in actual deeds and life.

This is how your Shepherd will heal this world, fill all creation with life and love, and bring together one flock.

So now it’s time to follow.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

Love isn’t love if it’s a theory. Love is only real when it’s embodied, and that’s true for God’s love, seen in the crucified and risen Christ’s life, and now seen and embodied in us.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Third Sunday of Easter, year B
Text: Luke 24:36b-48

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

Love isn’t love if it’s a theory.

No one ever was healed by teachings about love, or comforted by the idea of love, or blessed by a diagram of love.

Love is only love if it’s carried in a body. If it has arms to embrace, or lips to kiss, or hands to hold, or shoulders to support, or a voice to comfort, or a lap to enfold. Love is only love if it is lived. If sacrifices are made, or encouragement is given, or wisdom is shared, or forgiveness is poured out.

Love isn’t love if it’s a theory.

The eternal and Triune God is as aware of that as we are. Becoming incarnate as a human being among us was the only way God could truly show us love, shape us into people who love. No prophetic declarations, no visions of seers, no words from on high could love us in a way that would change our hearts. God tried all those things. But coming to us in the flesh was the deep plan from before the beginning, because it was the only way for God to truly love us so we could know. And so we could love.

That’s why it’s so important that Jesus ate a fish on that first Easter night.

Last week John told us of this night; today we hear Luke. Both agree.

Whatever else the disciples experienced in that upper room, Jesus, their beloved friend and teacher, was physically present with them. His body which was cold and dead now was alive and warm. They knew it was his body: it still bore the wounds his love accepted. Nail marks were still in his hands, John said. The gash the spear cut into his side could still be seen and felt.

Luke agrees with all that, and then says, “Oh, and by the way, he ate a fish.”

Here’s what happened. His disciples, locked away, now see Jesus in front of them, and they’re shaking, terrified. Sensibly, they think they must be seeing a ghost.

Thomas wasn’t there this first night. But Luke says that night everyone got Thomas’ gift. Jesus said to all of them, as he did to Thomas the next week, “Touch me, and see.” He showed them his hands and his side. (And, by the way, if Thomas’ friends told him that they touched Jesus’ wounds, embraced his body, little wonder he wanted the same they got if he was going to believe.)

And then Jesus looked at the remains of the meal on the table, and said, “Are you going to eat that?” Actually, Luke says he asked if they had anything to eat. But what a vision of a loving family! A loved one arrives after all have finished eating and asks if there’s anything left. It’s a moment of pure delight for we who read this story.

Love isn’t love if it’s a theory. And life isn’t life if it isn’t real, lived, physical, touchable.

You can believe whatever you want about Christ’s resurrection. But the witness of the very first to meet Jesus alive was that he was really there. In person. In flesh. Still wounded. Still loving. Breathing on them. And eating. We sometimes have a habit of seeing Scripture stories as pristine tableaux. Jesus reaches out his hand, saying, “touch my wounds,” and disciples demurely place their fingers on them.

That might have been the start. There was definitely hugging next. Kissing. Laughter. And more eating and drinking.

This is the truth of that first night: Jesus, risen from the dead, ate a fish. His disciples saw him. Touched him. And they knew the world had changed.

It was this physical reality of their risen Lord that broke open their lives.

Slowly they started unlocking the door. They began to go out and tell other people. When the Holy Spirit poured into them at Pentecost, their boldness increased and they spread over the whole world. Even though they were arrested and tortured and killed, they never feared the authorities again. Christ is risen, they said, and we saw him. Touched him. Hugged him.

But starting on this first night, they understood that if love isn’t love if it’s a theory, meeting God’s love embodied in a risen Jesus was only the beginning. Again, the Gospels agree that after easing their fear and inviting their touch, and after blessing them with peace, Jesus repeatedly named them as the embodiment of love sent into the world.

You are witnesses of this, he said. As we heard from John last week, he said they would bear God’s very own forgiveness in the world in their bodies. He told them, gathered on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, that they now were to love those whom he loved, feed those whom he loved, care for those whom he loved.

Now all his teachings started to make sense, in these forty days of joy, walking with Jesus once more. Love isn’t love if it’s a theory, only if it’s embodied. So God became embodied as a human being. And now the Risen Son of God makes us embodied love for the world.

No one will be changed by God’s love solely by preaching or teaching or any words.

Only embodied love is love. Reveals love. Creates love. So that’s our calling now.

When you offer undeserved forgiveness to someone you embody God’s love. And God’s love is real to them. And healing happens.

When you embrace someone different from you and love past your prejudice, you reveal God’s truth. And God’s love is real to them. And healing happens.

When you set aside your needs and offer yourself to another without strings attached, you are the physical, living presence of the risen Christ. God’s love is real to them. And healing happens.

And yes, you might be taken advantage of. You might not have love returned. It might cost. If love were a theory, you could make all sorts of arguments about how that could be love’s shape, love’s cost, love’s reality. But they’d be worthless.

Instead, God, embodied in human flesh, loved you, and the whole creation all the way to dying on a cross. You’d never have believed love could look like that unless someone showed you. None of us could.

It’s funny how important that little piece of fish really is.

Because now we know, now we’ve seen, that love, even if it loses everything, even if it dies, can’t be killed. As a theory, it makes no sense.

But this is no theory. This is embodied truth. And just as Jesus, the risen Son of God, in his body still bore the wounds his love accepted, so will our bodies and our hearts. Our wounds are part of the love, part of the sign, part of the story, part of the truth.

Love isn’t love if it’s a theory. And now the world can know God’s love for itself. For you and I will now bear this love in our bodies and hearts and lives. It’s the only way God could heal this world, and it’s already happening now.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

God’s love cannot be stopped by anything we fear: Christ is risen, God’s love is for the whole world, and we are witnesses with our love to this great news.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Resurrection of Our Lord, year B
Texts: Mark 16:1-8; Isaiah 25:6-9

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 electric lights in the tunnels now.

But the air is bone-chillingly damp. Deep under Rome in the Catacombs of Priscilla, you can sense how frightening it would be in such darkness with only your torch or a few oil lamps.

Step down off the tunnel into a small family tomb. In the dim light you can see three frescoes on the back wall – on the left, a young woman and man being married; on the right, the same woman with a child in her lap; in the middle, this woman standing with arms raised. These pictures are deeply moving, speaking to us from between 1,500 to 1,850 years after her death.

And she was a Christian. Look up to the ceiling at the fresco of the Good Shepherd, with a sheep over his shoulders.

Now, turn to your right in this very small space, to a fresco of three young men in flames; above them, a dove with an olive branch. And on your left, a fresco of an old man, a young boy holding a bundle of sticks on his back, and a ram. Now, turn to leave and you see it on the ceiling near the opening: a long sea-serpent, coiled and deadly, with a man partially out of its mouth.

These are the images this faithful woman’s family painted on her tomb – in the center, Jesus the Good Shepherd, surrounded by three Hebrew stories of deliverance from death – Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who should have died in the fire but were saved by God; Abraham and Isaac with wood for the sacrifice, and the ram who died instead of Isaac; and Jonah, being spit up after three days in the belly of the fish.

But they painted a great sea-serpent, not a fish. Because the Jewish translators from Hebrew into Greek didn’t use the words “great fish” as the Hebrew does. No, the Greek Old Testament has the same word in Jonah that was used in Job 3 to translate Leviathan – the great sea-monster of the deep, the symbol of chaos and destruction.

And it’s not just this faithful woman’s tomb. These images are spread throughout early Christian sites.

Jonah’s picture survives in 60 frescoes in Roman catacombs. Isaac’s redemption survives in 23, and the three young men 22 times. When these ancient Christians contemplated death, and remembered the saving power of Christ’s resurrection, they chose images of great terror where God intervened and brought life out of the mouth of death.

And that is exactly what we need. In our world, cute bunnies and duckies at Easter won’t cut it. We need to know if God can be trusted. We need to know that there is no terror, no chaos, no destruction, that can stop God’s love for us and for the world.

Because this world is filled with death, and we’re terrified.

We fear facing our own death, avoiding that it’s our future. And every day death spreads across this planet with no boundary, no limit.

Human sin has brought greater suffering and pain in the last century than we can begin to understand or deal with. Thousands die every day of hunger and hunger related disease. Thousands are killed every day in wars all over the planet. Uncountable people are touched by suffering, illness, pain, grief, loss, in every corner of the globe. Systems and structures become agents of death, crushing lives without pity.

And death’s touch infects our own lives: our hearts, our relationships, even our faith.

Isaiah today describes our world with painful accuracy: he sees a death shroud stretching over the entire planet. A burial sheet enwraps our earth in death.

But in our fear, we find companions this morning in the faithful, dear women who came upon a frightening scene in Sunday’s early hours.

When Mark tells the Easter story, he ends his Gospel there, abruptly, in fear.

Mark says that after being told Jesus was risen, the women left the tomb seized by trembling and amazement, and said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.

They weren’t afraid of their own death. They were shaken and terrified by all that had happened since Thursday, and by all they now unexpectedly found: a stone rolled away, a strange person in white telling them news they couldn’t begin to process in their shock and grief and loss.

And their fear silenced them. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.

Now, Mark knows this didn’t last. Writing years after the Resurrection, everyone knew the women broke their silence. They found the other disciples, told them, started a morning-long run back and forth to the empty tomb.

But ending this way, Mark places us with these women in our fear. Mark says they were frozen, they couldn’t do anything out of terror. So Mark is saying to you: what’s your next step? Will you live in fear? Or can you live as witness to a God whom death cannot stop?

Go back into that family tomb beneath Rome once again.

Facing the death of a beloved mother, her family claimed God’s power to bring life out of death, claimed hope for a life to come.

But those images aren’t limited to confidence about our future after we die. They are images promising what God can do right now to bring life into a world filled with death. We need these images to help us live our lives now.

Isaiah’s proclamation about the planetary death shroud is just such an image. Because his promise is that in days to come God will destroy that sheet spread over all peoples and nations. God will swallow up death forever.

This is the God to whom you belong. A God who doesn’t supply a ram for a sacrifice, but becomes the sacrifice. A God who, in human flesh, lives divine life into this world, and serves you in love, drawing you into God’s heart, until you kill him on a cross.

But this God isn’t stopped by fiery furnaces. This God isn’t stopped by great sea-monsters or chaos. This God isn’t stopped by planet-sized death shrouds. And this God cannot be stopped even by death.

This is the marvel we celebrate this morning: the love of God that takes the path through death and explodes into new life. Christ is risen, and now you know death has no power over life, over you, over anything. So you don’t need to remain immobile in fear.

This is why Mark stands us with these beautiful Easter women.

As afraid as we are of so many things, so were they. Whether it’s our pain, or the pain of the world, we know fear, like they did. And yet, filled with God’s love and courage, they began to speak. Disciple after disciple heard the good news, and started losing their fear. Jesus himself appeared to them and breathed the Spirit into their lives and hearts.

And they began to live as God’s embodied love in this world, unafraid. Because if God can’t be stopped by furnaces or monsters or shrouds or even death on a cross, then nothing is impossible for God. Love can heal this world. Life can rise out of death and renew your heart, renew families and relationships, renew whole cities and nations and cultures. Jesus himself, risen from death, meets you in Word and Meal, giving you courage and strength for your journey of faith and life.

What would life be if you lived without fear? If you trusted in such a God, with such a love for you and for the whole world?

What would change? And what’s stopping you from joining these women and living as if Christ really is risen, and death is dead, and God’s life is healing all things?

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

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