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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do you remember the last time you obeyed someone?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But do we live that way?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

Listen: Christ is calling you, calling me, to follow, and our lives will be changed. That will be our witness. That will be the sign that God is in the world in love and light and hope.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Third Sunday after Epiphany, year B
Texts: Mark 1:14-20; Jonah 3:1-5, 10

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

How many times had these four met Jesus before this, do you think?

It’s nearly impossible to believe this was their first encounter. A strange man, a teacher, walks up to them at their work, and says, “Follow me. I’ll teach you how to fish for people.” And off Simon and Andrew go. Then James and John, leaving Dad in the boat holding the nets.

John’s Gospel describes a previous encounter to this call. Andrew and John are disciples of the Baptizer, who points out Jesus as the Lamb of God. They start following Jesus, and Andrew runs to tell his brother Simon they’d found the Messiah.

Today’s story makes more sense if John’s story came first. Because if this is their first encounter, this is a stunningly spontaneous and even shocking thing these four men do.

It’s an important question, because it’s fair to ask how many times we’ve met Jesus, how often we’ve heard him, and whether when he calls we are ready to follow. Jonah today is easy to count: this is round two with God. Andrew and Simon, James and John, really early in their time with Jesus, drop everything to follow him. They utterly change their lives.

Why does that seem so foreign to us?

Maybe we’re a little awestruck by their changes, these Galileans and Jonah.

Jonah leaves house and home and, after running away, heads to the heart of the enemy to deliver God’s message. The four fishermen leave house and home, leave one of their fathers literally holding their business in his hands. These are dramatic life changes as a result of God’s call.

We like these kinds of stories. Some of us here have families who did the same thing: moved across the world in response to God’s call, uprooted home and family, went to strange islands or continents. These are inspiring stories.

But maybe we’re distracting ourselves from what’s important, focusing on such big-picture accounts. Most of us haven’t made changes in our lives remotely close to what our stories today tell, or what missionaries and their families can tell.

But if the only way Christ can call us to follow is by asking us to literally move our lives to another geography, then only a small number of Christ’s followers are actually called to follow.

That just doesn’t make any sense.

We’ve known Christ a long time. Some for over half a century or more.

How long do we have to know Christ before we start listening for our call to follow? Every day Christ comes to us in our home, at our work, with our hands in whatever it is we’re doing, and says, “Follow me. I’ll teach you how to fish for people.” This isn’t a call for others. It’s a call for you, for me.

We are called to reach people with God’s love in Christ, most of us – most of us – in our own worlds, homes, workplaces, not in faraway lands. But apart from the geography, our call is the same as any who packed their things and got on a boat or a plane. Once you’re where God needs you, whether Madagascar or Minnesota, the work’s the same.

We witness to God’s love in Christ by our lives that look like God’s love in the world. Created in the image of God, now in Christ the Spirit is shaping us to bear the likeness of God in the world. So our outside lives match our inside truth, our inner godliness.

Remember why God came to us in person: to make us like God, children of God.

To help us become in practice what we already are, images of God. Everything Jesus taught intends to help us find that likeness, to be like Jesus. Love as I have loved you. Forgive completely, as God forgives. Do to others what you would have them do to you. If your neighbor is hungry, feed her. If your neighbor is thirsty, give him a drink. Don’t let anger control you, but be reconciled with each other. Be careful not to look at people as objects. Don’t worry about food or drink, don’t seek wealth and riches, don’t trust in your own ability: put your lives in God’s hands.

We know all these teachings, and many more. Following Christ, dropping what we’re doing and heading up the beach with our God, is pretty simple. We just follow this way that’s summed up in love of God with all our being and love of neighbor as ourselves.

And let’s not fool ourselves: when we follow this path, walk in these teachings, everything will be changed.

Just try to do one of them every day, in every encounter, you’ll see. Just a month or so ago I was telling my spiritual director how frustrating it was to live in a self-giving way. I was trying to put my needs second to others, and in some circumstances, that meant that people were taking advantage of me. My mistake was trying to follow Christ as if that were a strategy: I’ll act this way, and then others will respond.

What he reminded me was that we don’t have a strategy when we follow Christ. Simon and Andrew, James and John, there was no master plan. They followed, and learned as they went. Jonah went with no plan. Letting go of my needs for the sake of the other, that’s the plan. Whether anyone responds in a way that I like is irrelevant. Follow me, Jesus said. Don’t worry about the rest.

When we follow this way, we are dramatically changed. When we decide we will no longer justify our unkindness or selfishness or lack of love by blaming others, or saying we can’t be anything other than we are, our lives are forever different, even if we never move. When we look at today, just today, as the day we try forgiving, loving, giving of ourselves, our lives are utterly changed.

Maybe people will notice. Maybe they won’t, at least at first. Over time, there will be a witness, in our changed natures, our softening and kindness. We will look more and more like the God who loved us into this new life, more and more reflect the divine image that is already in each of us.

And let’s not be discouraged by the seeming smallness of the light we’re asked to cast in the world.

These disciples we know and remember thousands of years later, they’re like bright torches. That’s why we remember their stories thousands of years later. Our sacrifices, our changed lives, the witness you and I make, these are candles in the dark, not blazing torches. But they are the light that is needed, and they are God’s grace for our world.

It doesn’t matter if we’re each the only ones who can see how our lives are changed. The point is being ready for the change, when God calls for it, and asking the Spirit for strength to follow through.

It will be the small candle of our changed lives, our grace, our forgiveness, that witnesses to Christ, fishes for people. It will be our changed nature when dealing with others, our kindness, our love when others are unloving, that will be the flicker of light and hope that tells others God has not abandoned this world.

Maybe we’ve waited long enough. Listen: Christ is calling. Will we follow, and be changed forever?

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

You are already filled with the Spirit of God, who moves in you with every breath, filling you, changing you, leading you into the life God has always wanted for you and for this world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Baptism of Our Lord, year B
Texts: Genesis 1:1-5; Acts 19:1-7; Mark 1:4-11, with references to 1 Corinthians 6 and 12

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 beginning, God breathed on the waters of chaos.

God’s Spirit, like wind, moved over the waters, and, as light was separated from darkness, land from waters, God opened a space for the creation.

In that beginning, God created humanity in God’s own image, and God breathed again, into these frail creatures. God’s breath filled them, and as they took breath, they breathed in God. God still breathes into the creation, into us. Our every breath breathes in God’s Spirit, exhales God’s Spirit.

When Jesus rose up out of Jordan’s waters, baptized, and saw the Holy Spirit descending, this wasn’t the Spirit’s arrival in his life. Human, like us, from his first breath he breathed God’s Spirit. Yes, Jesus was also God’s Son, the Second Person of the Trinity, one with the Father and the Spirit, yes, that, too. But in his humanity, he was filled with the Spirit. We all are.

So what happened at the Jordan? The presence of God’s Spirit was witnessed publicly. Jesus saw the Spirit, heard his Father’s voice, was confirmed as God’s beloved Son. So as Jesus headed into the desert and then his ministry, he went reassured that the Spirit was with him.

In the beginning, God breathed life into us. But that doesn’t always mean we know it.

In Acts today, Paul comes to Ephesus, and finds disciples of Jesus. But when he asks them if they received the Holy Spirit when they became believers, they say, “We haven’t even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” We haven’t even heard that there is a Holy Spirit!

Yet with every breath the Spirit of God had always moved in them. They just didn’t know it. So Paul teaches them, and baptizes them in the name of Jesus. Then, as always in Acts, after their baptism Paul lays hands on them, and the Holy Spirit fills them. As at Pentecost, they spoke in tongues, they prophesied. They knew the Spirit was in them.

But the Spirit had always been with them. Naming that, calling it out of them, opened them to see the Spirit’s presence and gifts, just like Jesus.

It isn’t just Genesis that says this about the Spirit. Paul knew it, taught it. Maybe even shared it with these disciples.

Paul told his friends at Corinth in his first letter that faith itself is evidence of the Spirit’s presence. He said no one can confess Jesus as Lord if the Holy Spirit isn’t with them. (12:3) So the fact that these Ephesian disciples believed in Jesus proved the Holy Spirit was already there.

But he also could’ve told them a deeper wonder: God is never “out there,” but within. He could have said, as he also did in that first letter to Corinth, “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit?” (6:19)

Their very bodies are where the true God lives! That’s always been their reality. They just didn’t know it.

“We haven’t even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.”

Is this our problem? Lutherans talk a lot about Jesus, the Christ, about the cross and resurrection. We talk about and pray to the Father and the Son a lot. But the Spirit doesn’t often get much attention from Lutherans.

That may be because the Holy Spirit is God’s wild card. The Spirit is the uncontrollable God in the world, who moves where she wants, fills whom she wants, does what she wants. The Spirit breathed over the waters of chaos at creation, and still breathes into this world, and there’s nothing we can do about it. She will fill all people, no matter what they believe, will inspire and give gifts to all people, no matter who they are.

We’ve always been a little afraid of this unpredictability of the Holy Spirit. It’s easier to nail down doctrinal truths, tighten up our theology. There you can feel a little secure.

But calling on the Holy Spirit, who can’t be controlled? You’d have to be a little reckless even to try.

But don’t you know, Paul says, that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit?

How have we let that truth be buried, this astonishing, miraculous proclamation of Paul? We spend our lives looking for God. We talk about God, make theories about God, we try to get all our teachings in order.

But in our dark hours of the soul, when we’re lost and afraid and can’t see through the brambles of the woods that have overgrown our path, none of that helps at all. When you’re terrified, or despairing, or angry, or grieving, or desperately lonely, or feeling guilt, words and theories do nothing. You need to know if God is with you, and nothing more.

But don’t you know, Paul says, that God is in you already? That your body is God’s temple? There’s no place to “go” for God. The Spirit of God lives in you, Paul says. The Hebrews say, you know this in your every breath.

In the beginning of your life, God breathed into you, and you were filled with the Spirit. You became God’s house.

But no, you say, we know science. Breathing, respiration, that’s a natural function. All animals do it. You take in oxygen, it feeds your body, you exhale carbon dioxide. It’s a mechanical function of a living organism.

OK, say our Hebrew ancestors. Maybe so. But this is also true: your breath is God’s breath. Your spirit is God’s Spirit within you. God has taken up residence inside us, has always been there. There’s no other temple.

John might not have been right about his baptism.

He distinguishes between his – a symbolic washing away of sin after confession – and the baptism in Christ, which, he says, is a baptism in the Holy Spirit.

But if the Holy Spirit was in all those people who came to John at the Jordan, if she brought them there in the first place, John didn’t realize the Spirit was also in his baptism.

Our baptism, like John’s, is also a washing away of sin and evil, and every day we renew that washing, every day we seek God’s forgiveness and cleansing, we start afresh.

But unlike John, in our baptism, the Church, as in Acts, asked the Holy Spirit to come upon us. The Spirit of wisdom and understanding. The Spirit of counsel and might. The Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. The Spirit of joy in God’s presence.

But the Holy Spirit isn’t waiting for this asking, waiting to enter a person until the Church says so. We ask the Spirit to come knowing she’s already here, so we name that, recognize that anew. We need to hear that there is such a thing as the Holy Spirit in us, and then we are able to see what happens.

So breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe of God.

You’ve been doing it your whole life, but now, like those folks near Ephesus, you know what you’re doing. You are living in God, and God is living in you.

Your baptism was the public announcing of this grace. Your washing in the waters of God, the waters God breathes upon, wasn’t the first time you were forgiven, either. But it is your washing, your cleansing in God. Just as it’s a sign that God’s Spirit is in you.

So breathe of God. Exhale into God. You are never alone. You are God’s beloved child, and God is well pleased with you. With each breath, the Spirit is moving in you, even when you don’t know it. The Spirit’s gifts are yours, as close as your breathing and sighing.

And now, following Jesus’ steps, it’s time to move from the waters, cleansed of sin, filled with the Spirit, with God’s voice still ringing in our ears, to do our work and life as God’s beloved children.

But not alone. Never alone. Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit?

In the name of Jesus.  Amen