Forgiveness is non-negotiable to God, and that’s our hope for ourselves. It’s also our challenge as we grow into Christ in our lives.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 24, year A
Texts: Matthew 18:21-35; Genesis 50:15-21

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

Forgiveness is never about the math.

Forgiveness can’t be calculated or negotiated, measured or limited, written up in codicils. There are no loopholes. Forgiveness is all or nothing.

That’s what Jesus says.

We’re always negotiating forgiveness, framing it, setting boundaries. This parable shakes that all up and frightens us to the core. Just as the Lord’s Prayer makes us wince. “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us”? We have to pray that? Forgive from the heart as you have been forgiven, or you have no part in God? That’s what this parable says?

Virtually every conversation among Christians about forgiveness immediately moves to negotiation and compromise, rules and boundaries, seeking any options other than Jesus’ clarity.

Because Jesus is perfectly clear here: forgiven people forgive. Period.

We can negotiate all we want. We just won’t be talking about forgiveness then.

There’s no negotiating with Jesus about how often to forgive.

Peter seems reasonable. Seven times forgiving someone who repeatedly hurts you? Maybe James keeps making fun of him for that “Rocky” nickname. How many times does he have to forgive that nonsense? Who but a saint would forgive seven times?

No, seventy-seven times, Jesus says. And this isn’t a negotiation. But it is an insight into human nature. If you start counting to that kind of number, you’ll keep forgetting your forgiveness count.

So, unlimited forgiveness. No loopholes or opt-outs. No matter how often someone hurts us, if we are following Christ, if we are Christ, God asks us to forgive them.

There’s no negotiating with Jesus about forgiving but not forgetting.

Somehow this ridiculous phrase always comes up with us. But where does it ever say in Scripture that we’re asked to forget as well as forgive? The only one in the Scriptures who forgives and forgets is God. So we can’t dodge forgiving using this excuse.

This is another place for Jesus’ seventy-seven times. Every time we remember someone has hurt us, every time we see their face, we’re hurt all over again. We forgive, but then we think of it again. We forgive, but remember that we still hurt.

So, Jesus says, forgive it again. And again. And again. Seventy-seven times. As long as it takes for the hurt to be lost to you, unimportant, nothing. No keeping score or nursing past wrongs. If we are following Christ, if we are Christ, God asks us to forgive every time we remember the hurt.

There’s no negotiating with Jesus about commanding others to forgive.

The Church has long hurt people with this. People in power smugly tell someone who is abused that they have to forgive. People with no grasp of the pain involved glibly tell someone they’re sinful if they don’t forgive who hurt them. All in the name of Christ.

Listen: Jesus doesn’t permit this. Look at his story. Forgiveness is between the king and his slave, no one else. The king needs to deal with this man’s inability to forgive.

It’s not our place to tell others they have to forgive. As Joseph says, we’re not in the place of God. Forgiveness is God’s call, and only God can draw any of us into a new heart able to forgive. If we are following Christ, if we are Christ, we don’t get to tell others how to forgive. Only God does.

There’s no negotiating with Jesus on a proper order for forgiveness to happen.

We love this tactic. We’d be glad to forgive, if and when the other repents. If and when the other apologizes. If and when we think they’re sincere. There’s an order to this. First, they repent. Then they ask forgiveness. Then, and only then, we forgive.

But that’s not Jesus’ command. Jesus says, “Forgive your brother or sister from your heart.” Period. We’re never told to wait for them to do something. Jesus says, “love one another as I have loved you.” Period. Jesus never gives preconditions for our self-giving love.

If we are following Christ, if we are Christ, God commands us to forgive, regardless of what the other one does.

And in fact, our whole life now and forever depends on this. Because the Triune God in Christ has utterly destroyed our neat little forgiveness plan, and saved our lives.

The cross overturns it all.

At the cross, the Son of God, carrying our lives in his body and filled with the life of the Triune God, forgives the entire cosmos. Without anyone asking or doing anything.

At the cross, God says, “first, I forgive you. First, I love you.” Jesus didn’t look out from the cross and say, “before I die for you all, have you all repented? Are you all sincerely sorry?”

This is God’s pattern of forgiveness, the 10,000 talent forgiveness of the parable: God loves us beyond comprehension and dies to prove that love. Dies to break our hearts. Dies to forgive and heal us.

Then, risen from the dead, the Son of God does what the Son of God always does: invites people to follow that love and repent, invites people to love, invites people to become Christ themselves.

If we follow Christ, if we are Christ, this is our pattern. Forgive first, because God does. Love first, because God does. If the other repents, asks forgiveness, tries to do better, or doesn’t, it doesn’t matter. The healing act that saves us is God flipping our negotiation on its head and forgiving us into life. The healing act that will save the world is when we do the same.

This is God’s truth that changes us forever.

This is what Christ wants us to see at the cross. That once we grasp the astonishing love of God for us, how beloved we are, how God forgives before we even figure out our mess, once that actually touches us, it will be impossible for us to act like this person in the story.

Our hearts of stone are thus replaced with hearts of love, just as we prayed at the start of this liturgy. We’ll have no interest in doing forgiveness math, negotiating limits or boundaries. Instead, we’ll find such joy in offering forgiveness that we’ll understand why it’s God’s way, too. It’s how relationships are healed, life between people is restored, and hope is brought into reality.

Replace our hearts, O God, with hearts of love, that we might become Christ’s forgiving love to others, and find our true joy.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

The way of Christ, the way of the cross, is the pattern, the blueprint for our truly human lives and the pattern, the blueprint for the life of the whole cosmos.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen 
Holy Cross Day
Texts: John 3:13-17; 1 Corinthians 1:18-24 (also with reference to John 1, other parts of John 3, and Philippians 2)

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

In the middle ages many important churches had an ornate, precious box with a splinter inside.

It was believed to be a piece of Jesus’ actual cross. In the 380s, the pilgrim Egeria saw the whole cross at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. It was encased in silver to prevent pilgrims who came to venerate the cross from biting out pieces to carry away. Somehow churches in Europe still often ended up having tiny pieces of wood reverently coffined for pilgrim prayer and adoration. Some suggest that if every piece on display in those churches were brought together, you’d have enough wood for Noah’s Ark.

We might chuckle at such naiveté to trust the holy origins of one’s special toothpick. But we might have similar problems with our view of the cross.

Having a relic suggests a value in the past, that clinging to a physical piece of history connects one to that history. Is that different from a theology of the cross that focuses only on the past? Many of our hymns that speak of the cross could lead one to assume that our focus on Christ’s cross is that of a remembered history, a past event that secures our place in heaven. We might not cherish tiny bits of wood, but if the cross is only a history to us, confirming a promise of heaven when we die, we’re not very different from our medieval forebears.

But if we read John’s witness, we see the grace of a cosmic, present, eternal, and transformative view of the cross that shapes not just our lives but the life of the universe.

John teaches us that the way of the cross, the way of Christ, is also the way of all things.

The Son whose death on the cross is the heart of John 3 is also the Logos, the Word of God present at creation in John 1, now enfleshed as one of us. As John uses Logos, it carries the meaning of pattern or blueprint. So God’s Blueprint present at the creation, God’s Blueprint who is also God, is now Jesus, the Christ, the human. So the way of Christ, what we see in Jesus, must also be the pattern, the blueprint for the Creation.

That means the blueprint of the universe is that power is only found in weakness, in letting go. The blueprint of the universe is that beauty is found in what is broken. The blueprint of the universe is that wisdom is found in what looks foolish. The blueprint of the universe is that life is found in dying.

Had Jesus lived another time, the symbol of this pattern might not have been a cross. But John claims that the deeper pattern is always God’s sacrificial love for creation. This is God’s heart John says the Son of God reveals for us, so this self-giving, dying, powerless, broken love is also the way the world is meant to work.

And who are we to deny this?

Every evil done since time began has been done by power, violence, domination. By people seeking their own good above others, forcing others into their way. And every good ever done since time began arose out of love, and true love is always self-giving. Everything holy and good has come from people offering themselves to others for hope and life.

Paul agrees that this pattern is not only God’s way. In Philippians he explicitly says it is our blueprint, too. To have the same mind and heart as Christ Jesus and empty ourselves out of love for the other, love for the world. This is how God means the world to work.

We can’t say God’s wrong until we start to live this path ourselves. Allow our world view of might makes right, be in control, take charge, all that pattern, to fall away, and open ourselves to the pattern of losing to win, dying to live. The Son of God went to the cross to prove this is God’s path and our path for the life of all things.

And it is all things John is talking about. Everything is part of this pattern. So everything is part of God’s love.

John’s Gospel claims that the cross is the sign of the heart of God for the whole universe.

Much like our theology of the cross is often too narrow, so often is our view of John 3:16. Painted on signs at sports venues, plastered on car bumpers, this verse has become an invitation to a personal view of salvation. “God so loved you,” not “God so loved the world.”

But John actually says “God so loved the cosmos” here. It means what you think. John 3:16 is about God’s love for all the universe. John declares that in the cross of Christ we see God’s love for the whole of creation, all galaxies and stars, all cells and mitochondria, all things. The cross proves God’s love for everything God has made.

So not only is God’s self-giving love the pattern for how the universe works, it’s the heart of God for all things. Any view of the cross and resurrection that doesn’t account for God redeeming the entire creation in all its breadth and depth is just not big enough. It’s like having a piece of wood in a fancy box, instead of living in a healed creation, now and forever.

Paul figured this out. And he knew it would meet resistance.

The world’s ways of power and exclusion and control can’t cope with an all-powerful God who gives up power, a God of life who offers to die to show the universe its pattern and hope.

Some will call it foolishness, Paul says. Others will trip over this, and won’t accept it.

But we are gathered tonight to remember that the Triune God who made all things took on our bodies and carried such self-giving, foolish love to death on the cross. We celebrate a meal based on that death, certain that this same Son of God is risen, thus proving that this pattern of the cross brings eternal and present life.

We might fear it’s foolish. We might stumble over it. But we’re here. Because we know it’s true.

And so tonight, we ask only to be shaped to this pattern.

We seek the Spirit’s new birth, also promised in John 3, to make us new beings formed to God’s blueprint of self-giving love.

Because when we’re lined up to God’s pattern, we’re in harmony with the pattern of the universe. And our lives begin to vibrate and sing the song of the undying sacrificial love of the Creator who turns every worldly expectation upside down because we’ve actually been upside down all along and want to be turned back to God’s way.

So we remember our Lord’s death tonight, as we do each Eucharist. We make the sign of the cross tonight, as we do each Eucharist. We do it to remember God’s blueprint, the pattern of the Christ, the pattern of the universe, the pattern of abundant life that God wants all to know.

And that’s a pretty good reason to celebrate the feast day of the Holy Cross, come to think of it.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

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.