God’s freedom and redemption are meant for all people, and we’re called to be a part of it.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Presentation of Our Lord
Texts: Psalm 84; Luke 2:22-40

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

We once had a bat in church in a former parish.

Bats are wonderful, but swooping down over worshippers’ heads, veering around the altar, these behaviors raise anxiety. So Psalm 84, which began our liturgy, is confusing. It delights in finding refuge, healing, and hope in God’s house, like finding an oasis in the desert. But then the psalmist gushes: “even the sparrow has found a home [here], and the swallow a nest where she may lay her young, by the side of your altars, O God.”

I’ve never met an altar guild who’d be thrilled at a bird’s nest adorning the side of the altar. Having birds take shelter in here isn’t an obvious sign to us of God’s love and care.

Maybe it should be. Here we find refuge and healing, sanctuary from a world of fear and danger. Here we find community and welcome, a place to rest, to pray, to be with God in God’s house.

But this psalm says our refuge in God is refuge when everyone has it. Even birds find safe harbor in the Temple, that’s how you know it’s God’s house. No one’s safe until everyone is safe.

Today we celebrate Jesus’ presentation in that Temple.

This coming to the temple wasn’t about refuge. It was a normal thing for Jewish families then, honoring tradition and God’s law. But two servants of God meet this new family and everything changes. One, Simeon, declares this baby to be God’s Christ, God’s Messiah, a light to non-Jews, and the glory of Israel. Simeon says that in Jesus all peoples are in God’s care. No one is left behind. And Simeon rightly says this means Jesus will cause problems, will be opposed, will expose people’s inner thoughts about God and the world.

Then Anna speaks about this child to “all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem,” Luke says. Naturally. She’s spent decades living in the Temple, centering her life on the God of Israel. But she seems to affirm only half of Simeon’s promise: this child will be the one to free Jerusalem. The glory of God’s people Israel, as Simeon said.

But Anna’s saying something very different, that, once we see all Jesus did and taught, will challenge us to re-think the whole idea of redemption and freedom. What it looks like, how God will accomplish it.

Throughout Jesus’ ministry, and if we’re honest, throughout Christian history, there’s been tragic confusion about God’s intentions and plan.

Anna’s people, “those looking for the redemption of Jerusalem,” could’ve hoped for to overthrow Roman occupation and politically free God’s people. This hope dogged Jesus even after the resurrection. When the Emmaus couple talk with the risen Jesus unawares, they sadly say, “we’d hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.” To free us. In Acts 1, the disciples still asked if now he was going to restore the nation.

Christians have followed this path far too often. Whenever we get political power, Christians and Christian leaders try to cement control over it, assuming if we’re running things in Christ’s name it’s all good. But it’s usually led to destruction, oppression, slaughter, discrimination, inquisition, war, violence. Inevitably in world history if Christians make Jesus a political Messiah, trying to rule in his name, we’ll be doing some kind of evil.

Including today. Right wing Christianity in this country barely acknowledges the teachings of Jesus, the center of his mission and call, favoring making him a god-mascot whose image gives them permission to be in charge. To control others in his name, to do whatever benefits them with impunity and with the passion of believing God on their side. What they’re doing is an old, old game, using Christ as permission to act as power-hungry people, to cover up well-known human desires and need for control.

But at Emmaus Jesus doesn’t answer the couple, “Now I’m alive, I’ll take over.”

He opens their hearts to the Scriptures instead, to show what God’s plan actually is. And when the disciples want him to restore Israel he says to wait in the city for the Spirit to come upon them. Not so they can control others. So they can witness to God’s mission and love for the world.

The mission and love that is evident every time you open God’s Word. God’s care for those who are poor and oppressed fills the words of the whole Bible. God’s welcome to all who are outsiders, aliens, strangers, outcast, is everywhere. God’s healing grace for all who are broken, sad, grieving, sick, in pain, is central to God’s will throughout the whole of Scripture.

That’s what redemption means for God. The redemption of Jerusalem, Anna’s proclamation, is always only part of God’s promise. In the Torah, in the prophets, in the psalm today, in Simeon’s words and Jesus’ ministry, Israel is the start and all God’s people are the final goal.

And it’s not political freedom or power God promises. It’s freedom, redemption, to be the loving people God made in the first place. People who embody God’s care, God’s welcome, God’s healing grace. Who have the same no boundaries approach to any who are in need. Who are shaped by the Spirit to the same self-giving, vulnerable love the Triune God has repeatedly shown to the world.

Until everyone is safe, no one is safe. Until everyone knows God’s love, no one knows love.

And you know that, even when you come here to God’s house for refuge and healing. Even though you wish some days you could just make sure you were OK and didn’t have to think about all who are hurting and being hurt. Because as a pastor once said to me, “Once you know the grace of God is yours, how can you live knowing there are others who don’t know this for themselves?”

Even birds are welcome to nest in God’s house. All God’s creatures need to know God’s love. Only then can God’s dream of justice, love, and peace for all come to be.

What this will look like for our ministry here together, or for your own walk in Christ we need to talk about and listen and discern in these hard days. The answers will not always be obvious, but they will come. They won’t always be easy, but we are assured God’s Spirit will guide us and hold us in all things.

And little step by little step we’ll see with wonder how God’s home is broadening and embracing more and more into life and hope and justice and healing. Until our eyes, like Simeon’s, are able to see God’s salvation come into being.

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

Christ’s love ligaments us together as one Body, inseparable by us or anyone else, with diverse gifts and realities sent by the Spirit in mission to the world to bring healing and life.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Third Sunday after Epiphany, Lect. 3 C
Texts: 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a (adding 13:1-13); Luke 4:14-21

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

Religion isn’t much in favor these days.

With so much violence and hatred levied by religious people in the world, including lots of Christians, many simply reject the idea of being a part of any religion. For awhile now polls have shown a growing number of people who identify as “spiritual, not religious.” Given the history of how religious people have acted, created destructive institutions, and harmed so many, it’s hard to blame anyone for walking away.

And yet here we are, openly Christian people, gathering to worship a God who created and loves all things. We’re clearly part of a religion, and yet we’d say we’re also spiritual. How is our faith practice life-giving for us – and, we hope, for those we care for in Christ’s name – if it’s part of a religion?

Maybe we should start with the word.

The root origins of the word “religion” are unclear, and there are various ancient theories. But in the third and fourth centuries Christian teachers St. Augustine^[1] and Lactantius^[2] argued that it derives from re-ligio, literally to “reconnect.” (Ligio gives us our word ligament.) Religion calls us to re-ligament, to remember what binds us to God, connects us to each other and to the world.

And suddenly we’re talking like Paul today. What if the word “religion” reminded us of this Body of Christ, of the ligaments that make us inseparable from each other and from God? Doesn’t that sound very different, maybe hopeful?

That’s the power of Paul’s vision of the Body of Christ.

The eye can’t say to the hand “we don’t need you,” or worse, the ear can’t say to itself, “I don’t belong in this body.” Paul says none of us can exclude ourselves or others from Christ’s Body. A body can’t be separated and still exist.

And Paul doesn’t mean “don’t separate yourself or exclude someone else.” He means “you can’t. I can’t.” It’s impossible. The Spirit has joined us together in this Body in baptism with each other and all Christians, and Paul’s promise is that in Christ we cannot separate ourselves, even if we wanted to.

And Paul envisioned a unity of this Body transcending diversities within the Body.

We see him call all his congregations to understand this vision. A unity that doesn’t wash away the diversity, melting it down into sameness. No, the diversity of the members is critical to the life of the Body, and needs to be honored, delighted in, respected. And it’s more than just diversity of spiritual gifts. Often that’s all we hear in these verses. You’re good at some things, I’m good at others, we’re all needed. And of course the varied gifts we have that differ are important.

But there’s an existential diversity deeper than that, which is what caused problems with this vision in all Paul’s congregations. In verse 13 of chapter 12 Paul reminds that in one Spirit they were all baptized into one body – Jews, Greeks, slaves, free. It’s not just their gifts that differ. It’s their culture, their language, their traditions, their political status, their ethnicity. Eyes, in Paul’s example, are completely different from ears. Hands and feet have different structures and realities. The diversity in the Body goes to the root of who you are, who I am, no matter the category. Today we might add gender fluidity and diversity of sexual orientation to Paul’s list, among others. And in his letters Paul repeatedly says those differences are beautiful and vital to the whole Body.

But over all this diversity is our oneness in Christ. Never can our diversity cause us to split away, to exclude others, or to assume we don’t belong.

And it’s because of the ligaments that bind us, the word religion says.

And the ligaments are Christ’s love.

The love Christ Jesus repeatedly commands of us as the fulfilling of all God’s law. The love of the Triune God Christ revealed at the cross and empty tomb. That’s what joins us. That’s how Jews and Greeks can be one together and still be Jews and Greeks. How straight and queer folks, trans and cisgendered folks, can belong to each other and rejoice in each other’s reality. How people of all colors and cultures are joined together while embracing and respecting each other’s beauty and grace.

Christ’s love ligaments us together. A love that doesn’t erase another’s truth but embraces it. A love that joins astonishingly different people into one Body, one mission, one grace, one hope for the world.

A non-negotiable love in this Body that is patient and kind. Never boastful, arrogant, or rude. Never insisting on its own way. Rejoicing in the truth, not in things that are wrong. A love that bears, trusts, hopes, endures all things.

These ligaments bind you and me together in this community, and bind us to the Body of Christ around the world. And because ligaments also help the body move, these ligaments of love empower what this Body of Christ is meant to be in this world.

The same Spirit Jesus claims today is the Spirit poured out on you and me that ligaments us into one Body.

So our mission is the same as Jesus’: to bring good news to those who are poor, proclaim release to those who are captives, help those who cannot see to see, and free those who are oppressed.

This won’t be easy. As our sister Bishop Mariann Budde found, when you ask for mercy, love, and graciousness to those most vulnerable, you face criticism, scorn, and hatred. In these days we should expect that if we act as Christ’s Body to protect the vulnerable and the fearful, to stand for those who are being trampled, we will also face blowback. Jesus anticipated that, saying that you are blessed if “people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad – they always do that to the prophets,” he said. (Matthew 5:11-12)

See that’s the other grace of being in the Body: the ligaments of Christ’s love that bind us to people like Bishop Budde, to each other, to all those protecting and offering mercy and hope, cannot be broken by anyone else, either. Together, in Christ, in the power of the Spirit, with all our diverse truths, realities, and gifts, we can do amazing things as one Body for the healing of God’s world.

And if that’s a gift that the word religion can remind us of daily, I’m not so eager to let go of it.

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

[1] St. Augustine (354 – 430 CE), City of God X.4 (https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120110.htm)
[2] Lucius Lactantius (c. 250 – c. 325 CE), Divine Institutes, IV.28 (https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/07014.htm)