God’s grace and goodness is hard to see with our bad eyesight both to the truth of God’s love and the truth of our brokenness; but God can heal eyes.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 25, year A
Texts: Matthew 20:1-15; Jonah 3:10 – 4:11

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

Does my being good make your eyes sick?

That’s what the vineyard owner really asks. Jesus uses a common expression, and the translation, “Are you envious because I am generous?” is a fair interpretation. In that world, to have a diseased eye, an evil eye, a sick eye, was to be jealous or envious.

But stick with the colloquialism: it cuts to the heart of our problem with God. We simply don’t see as God sees. Maybe we don’t want to. Maybe we can’t. But our eyesight is diseased, clouded, and we don’t see God’s astonishing grace. We don’t see the truth about ourselves. We don’t see that God’s way is better than our way.

And so we don’t see a world that looks like the world God intends.

So what’s wrong with our eyesight, anyway?

Well, we can’t see this parable clearly.

First, we always reduce it to a moral tale about heaven after we die. How many times does this parable inspire the question, “You mean you could live your whole life however you wanted, and if on your deathbed you asked forgiveness, God would forgive?” The answer is, yes, of course. But that question itself exposes our eye disease.

Second, we’re pretty sure we’re the early workers in the day. We don’t often hear this with a sigh of relief, saying, “I feel like I got to this whole Christian life thing really late; I’m so grateful God’s love is fully for me.” We don’t see ourselves as latecomers to God’s work.

Third, whenever we hear this parable, we immediately criticize God’s economic sense. The first thing we think is, “fine – but what’s going to happen tomorrow? This guy’s not going to get anyone to work at six a.m., that’s for sure.” We can see all the problems such a way of doing things would have in the “real” world.

But this parable is about God’s realm now, about God’s justice today.

The parables envision life in God’s realm which exists here, now, wherever people follow God’s way. Heaven, where God’s realm also exists, can literally wait. Jesus has more important things for us to consider.

So we can’t dismiss this parable’s economic system. Maybe this is exactly how God means the world to work. What is right for this vineyard owner is that every worker gets a full day’s wage, every one of his workers’ tables gets food that night. Regardless of work hours. But, we protest, that just wouldn’t work.

Oh, yes? God says. Tell me, how well is your system working? Is everybody fed in your economic system? Everybody have a roof over their heads? Everyone have a job? Our system works well for those of us who, to borrow an old political barb, were born on third base and think we hit a triple. We were born in the richest country in the world, with an economy that’s pretty good for the middle class, even if we have worries. We’re pretty hard workers. But in the world economy, we’re definitely the folks that show up at 5 p.m and get all we want. Most of us have no comprehension of what it means to work harder than humanly possible to feed our family, to watch children suffer and die because we can’t provide. To work three shifts a day and still not have enough.

If we had healthy eyes, we’d see that for God, justice is when everybody eats tonight. When no child goes to bed aching with hunger. When all are satisfied by the world’s abundance. If we don’t see this as viable, that’s how diseased our eyes are.

We can’t see Jonah’s story clearly, either.

So here’s some context. Nineveh is the capital of Assyria. Assyria was no worse than other ancient world empires, but it was plenty wicked. It destroyed Israel, the northern kingdom, and subjugated Judah. Lots of innocent people were killed in Assyria’s wars, and Jonah’s people rightly hated them. So God asks Jonah to go into the heart of the beast, the capital city, and declare to them their sins.

You know what’s wrong with our eyesight? We don’t see that we’re Nineveh in this story, not Jonah.

Modern day Mosul, in Iraq, actually sits just across the river from where Jonah sat under his bush. After 9-11, in retaliation for the murder of nearly 3,000 innocent people in our country, we went to war with Iraq. There was and is no evidence they were responsible for 9-11. But because, like Assyria, we have serious military power, we killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians. Hundreds of thousands of innocent people. Even if Iraq had planned 9-11, hundreds of thousands for 3,000 is hardly just retaliation. This region continues to be unstable, and many in the Middle East would say we are the great enemy of their people.

Imagine God found a Jonah in Iraq today, and said, “go into the heart of the beast.”

“Go to Washington, D.C., and declare to that wicked people that God is judging them for their sin. Call them to repent.” If Jonah could even get through immigration here, how do you think he’d be received? Would we Americans do what the Ninevites do, admit our sin, repent in dust and ashes, ask God’s forgiveness? What do you think?

Now we can understand ancient Jonah’s desire for God to crush Nineveh. Imagine modern Jonah coming here, remembering his burned out village, the dead children in the streets. The destroyed hospital. How would today’s Jonah react if God said, “You know, I’m going to forgive these people”?

The harsh truth that we are Nineveh is even harsher when we realize how blind we’ve been, you and I. For the past 16 years we’ve gone about our lives, doing our things, trying to be good, helping where we could, and never really owning up to what our country did. We are good people. But we go about our days as if none of this really happened, as if we’re not individually to blame. And Iraq is only one of our great sins.

But here’s our hope: If we are Nineveh, God’s words to Jonah about Nineveh are God’s words about us.

“Should I not be concerned about America, that great country, in which there are more than 324 million persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?”

Our blindly ignoring our participating in what we have done to so many other peoples is like not knowing our right hand from our left. And, thank God, there are lots of animals here. And, thank God, God won’t give us up. Much to Jonah’s rightful dismay, God can’t stop loving.

But it is worth remembering that Nineveh repented. They sought new eyes to see the truth, and new lives to live the truth. The cross tells us that God’s love comes first, even before we repent. But how can we live with ourselves once we start to see the truth, if we don’t also turn back to God?

We need God to heal our eyes, so our lives can also be healed.

Heal our eyes to see that God’s love is for all people, all animals, all creation, and it has nothing to do with who deserves what.

Heal our eyes to see how quickly we assume we deserve God’s love and how easily we assume others don’t.

Heal our eyes to see that our economic system is unjust and wicked, and that we stay blind to this because as long as we benefit, we don’t have the energy to change it.

Heal our eyes to see the truth about our nation so we can work with each other to make this a nation that lives up to our ideals of justice for all.

Heal our eyes to see as God sees, unable to throw anyone away, not even us, always reaching out in love, even if it costs everything.

Heal our eyes to see the truth and repent, turn back, begin to live in God’s realm, God’s way.

It’s hard to argue that we see a better way.

Imagine a world where everyone earned a full day’s wage, no matter if they were male or female, no matter the color of their skin, no matter where on the planet they were born. Where no child ever went to bed crying for the pain in their stomach. Where all had homes to shelter in.

Imagine a world where there was no revenge, no retaliation, no destruction of enemies. Where the cycle of hatred and killing finally stopped, broken, no further steps. And reconciliation and love broke out between all peoples.

I’d really like to live in a world like that. I’d really like to see a world like that.

So would the Triune God. It’s what God’s realm on this earth is meant to be.

So, let us pray God give us eyes to see, and wills to do, that God’s realm would actually come among us.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

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.

 

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

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

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

She could have said “No.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

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

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

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

The crowd was overwhelming.

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

Overwhelming might be an understatement.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nothing less will satisfy God.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nothing less will satisfy the world’s needs.

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

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

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

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

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

Jesus gives us pictures that open up God’s realm to us when we contemplate them and hold them in our minds and hearts: God’s inseparable love is the treasure beyond price that we find.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 17, year A
Texts: Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52; Romans 8:26-39

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

Understanding how God works and rules in the world isn’t easy.

We know how the world has worked for thousands of years, how power is kept and used. People claim power, use it to benefit themselves, people tend toward self-centeredness and self-interest. Whether we’re talking about people controlling their families or at work, or even how we rule politically, it’s the same “get what you can for yourself” kind of pattern that repeats endlessly over time and cultures.

We might assume that God rules in this world the same as we. Many Christians claim that. But the Son of God came to us from the heart of the Triune God, wore our flesh, and showed us that God’s way of rule is dramatically different from our way. Jesus taught us of the realm of God, how the Triune God works and rules in the world, how God is in charge.

Sometimes Jesus gave us ideas: that God’s realm is found in love of God and love of neighbor; that forgiveness is the center of God’s relationship with the world and our relationships with each other.

But sometimes words aren’t enough, so Jesus used pictures. Parables. Images of what God’s realm is like. Today we have five such pictures. Rather than converting them into neat and tidy teaching, let’s use them as Jesus intended, as windows into the mystery of God’s rule. The images themselves are the gift, they’re what we want to take away from today. When we contemplate these pictures, we’re drawn deeper into Christ, into the heart of God. We begin to see the truth of God’s rule and realm in this world, and the life God offers all things through it.

Now, the world’s way demands instant gratification, immediate achievement of goals, with minimal sacrifice or effort.

No matter how complicated a problem, we want results now, from cosmetics to politicians. Even if a better solution exists, if it takes time and sacrifice, we take the quicker option.

But consider the mystery of a seed, Jesus says. Everything the plant will be is inside it already. The tiniest of seeds can grow to enormous, shading plants. But you wouldn’t know either of these by looking at that dead seed. That’s how God rules in the world.

Envision a seed, then, when your faith is tiny or weak. See that the full child of God in Christ you are meant to be is already within you, contained in God’s planting. See that a seed has no visible power, but it can break apart concrete and reach the sky.

What else can you see in the seed?

Or consider yeast, Jesus says. Without it, you’d have a lump of paste. But these tiny organisms eat and ferment and produce carbon dioxide, and empower a golden loaf able to feed those who hunger. That’s how God works in the world.

Imagine yeast, then, when you feel that the good you do in the world is insignificant, a tiny contribution. Consider how these tiny beings affect many things around them and make growth and healing far greater than their size. Consider what happens when there’s no yeast.

What else can you see in the yeast?

Again, in the world, we cling to our tribes and clans, and judge those not like us, to feel safe and secure.

Whether family or ethnicity or belief system or even the human species, we judge who is in with us and who is out. Whether it’s genocide or destructive pollution, shunning of a family’s black sheep or ignoring the suffering of those who aren’t us, this is how the world works.

But look at someone fishing with a net, Jesus says. The net drags through the water and picks up everything in its path. Not just fish, but trash, driftwood, everything, Jesus says. Look and see: God’s realm is this net, so we’re in the net, not in charge of it.

Contemplate this, Jesus says, that God holds the net, and all things – not even just people – are included. Ponder that God alone decides what to keep and what to throw. Who knows if the One who draws a net through the world can use an old boot, sees beauty in a broken wheel?

What else can you see in the net?

We already know how God will value all things in the net.

At the cross, Christ gave his life for love of the whole creation, the cosmos itself, to draw all things into the heart of God’s love. Paul tells us today that nothing in all creation, not present or future, not any powers or evil, nothing can separate us from God’s love in Christ Jesus our Lord. Nothing. And Paul shares Jesus’ inclusive vision, declaring that the whole creation is being brought into this heart of God, this inseparable love. Not just our kind of humans, not even just humans themselves, the whole creation.

For the One who draws in the net, the judgment over all things inside is “this is good and precious to me.” The Netminder has need for all things in it, broken or whole, ugly or beautiful, strong or weak. No matter how we might judge what jostles alongside us, or they us, the only judgment that counts is the inseparable love of God in Christ for the whole creation. God’s inclusive net is where our true safety and security is found.

Now, we know our world values much that we’re taught will satisfy us, make us happy, but don’t.

We don’t get to take our wealth with us in death. We don’t find happiness in selfish gain. If we need more things to be satisfied we never will be. All we’re taught to strive for ultimately leaves us empty.

But see this realm of God? Jesus says. When you dwell on the seed and yeast and dragnet, do you see this treasure? If you were looking the world over for the most precious thing, like an enormous pearl, and you saw this realm of God I’ve shown you, you’d stop immediately, sell everything, to have that treasure of inseparable love and subversive grace.

Or maybe you weren’t searching, you just happened on this treasure of God, Jesus says, when you weren’t hoping to find anything. Like walking in a field and being surprised. You’d still immediately give anything for this treasure.

When we hear Jesus, see his love at the cross, when our eyes open to the image of a seed planted that will shade the world, a tiny growth that will produce bread for all, a net that will bring all things into God’s love, when these images sit in our hearts and minds, we begin to grasp what real treasure is.

And when we contemplate these images, we also see the path of the cross.

The path of the cross is a way of patience and trust in hidden growth, subversive grace, an enduring of “already but not yet” in our personal faith and spiritual lives, in the life and healing of the world. There aren’t quick answers, but seed and yeast show God will give growth and life.

The path of the cross is a way of learning God’s eyes of judgment instead of our own. There’s patience here, too, as we bump in this net alongside all sorts of things and people we neither like nor understand, whose value and worth elude us. Because all are loved by God, we are asked to love all, and that’s costly and painful. But contemplate the great joy that we, too, are in this net of inseparable love.

The path of the cross is a way of letting go of all that keeps us from the true treasure. Dying to the ways of the world, letting go of our selfishness and self-centeredness. Our habits that hurt the world and others. Our need to be right. Our need to be in control.

As we turn our eyes to this pearl, the treasure of this astonishing love of God, nothing else matters for us and for the world. Once we see the treasure of God’s realm, meant for the whole creation, no sacrifice or loss is anything compared to being drawn into that love.

God’s realm in this world is deep mystery.

There are few easy explanations, we rarely have a moment where it’s all clear.

But if we contemplate these simple pictures, take them home, bring them into our hearts and minds in prayer, the Spirit will open our eyes. That’s Christ’s promise. We’ll see growth from seeds planted in us and the world, rising dough creating food, the joy of sharing God’s net of inseparable love. We’ll see ever more clearly the precious treasure of life within God’s heart that Christ is offering the whole creation.

And the best treasure of all? We don’t need to understand the seed’s mystery to enjoy shade, or understand science to delight in bread. We don’t need to understand why God’s judgment is always love to be swept up into the net of life in Christ. God’s realm will be, even if it remains mystery to us.

This is what God’s realm looks like. Seed. Yeast. Net. Treasure. This is how God is working and ruling in the world. God give us eyes to see.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

God’s Word will do what God purposes, always. That’s our ground for living and hope for healing of ourselves and the world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 15, year A
Texts: Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23; Isaiah 55:10-13

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

For today, let’s set aside the interpretation we just heard.

We understand why the Evangelists included it. The early believers struggled with why sometimes their work bore good fruit, people joined Christ’s way, and sometimes no matter how faithfully they shared the Good News, it wasn’t received or rooted. Jesus’ interpretation helps face that frustration.

But Jesus didn’t tell parables that had only one interpretation. When he needed to speak that clearly, he did. “Love one another as I have loved you” is direct speech needing little explanation.

But some truths about God and the world aren’t easily packaged in a simple teaching. So Jesus also told parables. Stories, pictures revealing a deep wisdom about God’s reign. Every parable Jesus told is a jewel that, if held to the light and turned, or held in a different light, reveals further facets of God’s truth and wisdom. This interpretation here is only one facet.

Today we heard this parable alongside God’s word to the prophet Isaiah. In that light, when we turn it carefully, a whole new grace in these words is revealed to us.

God declares a promise to Isaiah that transforms our faith.

God says: you see the rain and snow fall, water the earth, and help life grow and sprout? That’s like my Word that I speak into the world. Like rain and snow, it will always bear fruit. “My Word that goes out from my mouth shall not return to me empty,” says the Lord, “but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.”

How have we forgotten this? This gives hope to all our attempts to be obedient and faithful, confidence to our footsteps and our voices, encouragement to our hearts. God’s Word will accomplish what God wants, always.

Now, what does this tell us about Jesus’ parable?

Suddenly what we thought was certain about this story isn’t.

In Isaiah’s light, God’s Word is the rain and snow, not the seed. So if God’s Word always nurtures the fruit God needs, can we hear this parable as not about the visible harvests at all?

Isaiah’s light focuses us on the Sower, not the harvests. Jesus describes a Sower who walks over the ground, throwing seed everywhere and anywhere. This looks careless, but that’s how seed was then sown. Today, agriculture has eliminated the obvious problems of this Sower. Farmers long have removed the rocks, killed the weeds, prepared the ground. And none of them, for centuries, has run their planter over the road.

But what if the Sower isn’t careless at all? What if the Sower knows birds will eat the seeds on the path, and the sun will wilt the plants in rocky ground, and weeds will challenge the new growth in places, and still plants seeds there?

If God’s Word always bears the fruit God wants, always accomplishes what God wills, we know two things about the path, the rocks, and the weeds. We know we can’t see how planting seeds there is helpful or good. But we also know God sees something important in that planting, and that at some point God’s rain and snow will produce what God needs there.

This has profound implications for our lives in the world and our own journeys of faith.

We struggle with the crises of our world, and our involvement in them, but we might have forgotten Isaiah’s word.

Systemic racism, the devastation of climate change and the injustice and oppression it causes, the wicked systems that create rich and poor and deepen those realities almost without conscious thought or effort, the evil distribution of resources that forces millions to die of hunger every year, all these cause us great anxiety and stress. We struggle to know how to begin to turn these into paths of healing.

But God says, “My Word will accomplish what I purpose, and succeed in that for which I sent it.” Do we not believe this? Hasn’t God promised over and over to draw all races and nations together? Hasn’t God not only called us to do justice and care for the poor but also said “I myself will care for the poor and needy, and feed the hungry”? We can’t read God’s Scriptures without seeing God’s promise to personally bring justice and peace.

Of course we still follow our own call to serve. But now we do it with the confidence that God’s promise is to heal all things. God’s seed will bear fruit, the rain of God’s Word will see it happen.

We struggle with being Christ in our own lives, but again may have forgotten God’s promise.

The more we listen to Christ the more we realize the challenges of Christ’s path. We realize our own implicit, unthinking racism, our embeddedness in a capitalist culture that benefits us while harming others, our sinful thoughts and words and actions even to those we love. We long to be Christ, to love as Christ, to witness to Christ’s love. But we stumble in our Christly, self-giving love, and sometimes despair at that.

Have we forgotten God’s promise? “My Word will accomplish what I purpose, and succeed in that for which I sent it.” Isn’t the Bible full of promises of God to change us, make us holy? Aren’t we joined to Christ’s vine, with the Spirit’s fruits borne in us? Hasn’t God promised through Paul that we are new children of God, a new creation? We can’t read God’s Scriptures without hearing God’s promise to make us new, to make us Christ’s love in the world.

Of course we still heed our call to walk Christ’s path. But now we walk with God’s hope and courage, knowing we will become what we are meant to be. God promised. And God’s promises always, always bear the fruit God needs.

Seen in the light of Isaiah, this jewel Jesus gives us reminds us that we can’t always believe what we see.

We look at a dead Son of God hanging on a cross, and can’t see how God’s love can heal the world. But Christ is risen, and love defeats death, and Isaiah was right. God’s Word will always do what God intends.

So what we think we see isn’t always truth. The birds eat seed, rocks push plants into the sun, weeds choke. The world rolls on, systems take deeper root, our efforts to be Christ fail.

But if God’s Word always succeeds, we don’t know what we’re really seeing. In the devastation of any of the world’s problems, in the grief and frustration we find in our failure to be Christ, we see only one piece of God’s strategy. Just because we can’t see how God will make life out of death, hope out of despair, joy out of sorrow, doesn’t mean God won’t. The cross taught us that. Justice will prevail, healing will happen in our hearts and in the world, those who are poor will be restored, those who are hungry will be fed, and God’s reign of peace will heal this universe. God has promised it.

The Sower knows what the Sower is doing, and we shouldn’t be distracted when we don’t think we see results. God’s Word will always do what God needs it to do.

This transforms everything.

Even our understanding of God’s grace. Grace isn’t just needed when we fail. It’s our beginning. The Great Sower begins with grace, our lives are born in God’s grace. God’s grace is the source, the font of life, the rain and snow that water the earth. All is born in God’s grace, and that changes everything. All we fear, all we struggle against, all we have to do as Christ, all that work is born from the womb of God’s eternal grace and love.

If we begin Christ’s path supported by God’s grace, how can we fail? If we follow our call to heal this world supported by God’s promise, how can we fail?

“My Word will accomplish what I purpose, and succeed in that for which I sent it.” That’s where we always begin. And end.

So, let’s get to work.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen