We are all called to the path of Christ together, sustained and transformed by the love of Christ who leads and is beside us on the path.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 24 B
Texts: Mark 8:27-38; Isaiah 50:4-9a

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

“God has trained my tongue so I may know how to sustain the weary with a word.”

That’s what Isaiah claims, and what a gift that would be for any of us dealing with each other in this world. Because we are often weary.

We’re weary that there is so much polarization and so much anger and so much entrenched opinion in the world, while our neighbors here and around the world are still suffering. We don’t know what to do. It’s wearying to wake up every day and face that helplessness.

And we’re weary that as much as we know the call to love our neighbor, even to pray for our enemies, as much as we hope to bear God’s love in the world, we struggle doing it. It’s wearying to wake up every day and face disappointment over how we live.

So if there is a sustaining word in our Scripture today, it would be worth knowing.

Instead, we hear Peter rebuked by God’s Son, called Satan, told he’s in the way. It’s not a terribly sustaining Gospel reading. Especially when it ends with God-with-us talking about being ashamed of us.

But there’s a lot more to this story than rebuke and shame.

To begin with, Peter isn’t rebuked for failing as a follower but for blocking Jesus.

Peter’s just proclaimed Jesus as God’s Anointed, God’s Messiah. Jesus sternly orders him and the others to keep quiet about that. And proceeds to say his path is leading toward Jerusalem, toward rejection and death. And yes, toward resurrection, but Jesus kind of buries that lede.

So Peter takes Jesus aside and says, “that’s not the way a Messiah should go.” Whatever Peter understood when he called Jesus the Anointed, he was pretty sure it didn’t involve humiliating death.

And that’s when Jesus rebukes Peter. Because Jesus is going to go on this path, whether anyone likes it or not. Jesus, God-with-us, is going to bear the love of God for the world, reject violence and power, and keep bearing that love even if he is killed by those that love threatens.

And nothing can get in his way. In Matthew’s account, Jesus adds that Peter is a stumbling block. That’s what “Satan” means in Hebrew: someone who opposes and obstructs. And Jesus can’t have anyone stop him from this path of self-giving, vulnerable love. Not even one of his trusted leaders.

Of course, if Jesus is going on this path, he’s going to invite folks to follow.

Peter might’ve only reacted to how Jesus understands he will be Messiah, but very quickly Jesus says, “where I go, you go. That is, if you’re going to follow me.”

Now, we don’t know what drew Peter to follow Jesus in the first place. We don’t know why Peter and Andrew dropped their nets, or why the sons of Zebedee did. We don’t know what motivated Susanna or Joanna to follow Jesus, or Thomas or Philip. We intuit Mary Magdalene’s reason – Jesus healed her of demonic possession. And maybe Matthew followed because he was treated with respect and kindness by a Jewish rabbi, something he as a tax collector wasn’t used to.

But here Jesus says to the women and men who are his disciples, whatever reasons you had for following, for being here, now we need to get on the same page. There might be 40 or 50 or more following Jesus at this point, with 40 or 50 or more reasons. Now there is only one: to take up the cross of suffering love, of sacrificial love, that God-with-us is taking, and follow.

No matter if they came for the meals or the miracles, or if they really loved listening to Jesus talk. If they’re going to keep following, this is now their shared path.

But that’s also our first sustaining word.

Because it is first Jesus’ path. This love that heals the world, a love of forgiveness, grace, and welcome, a love that crosses boundaries and sees all as God’s children, that sacrifices comfort and safety to embrace a neighbor in need, this cross-shaped path of being Christ is the path Jesus first walked and wouldn’t be stopped from. So Jesus – now risen from the dead – can walk with you and me and give us strength and courage for our journey.

Morning by morning, Isaiah declares today, God wakes me up and teaches me, opens my ears to listen, shows me the way. And the way Isaiah describes is very much Jesus’ cross-shaped path: not fighting those who strike you, not hiding from those who despise you and spit at you. But Isaiah says the God who teaches you, morning by morning, day by day, will make sure you’re not disgraced, will vindicate and strengthen you so no one can stop the love of God you bear.

Yes, if you follow Christ on this path it’ll be hard. You’ll struggle and fail at times. But you have God’s guidance and strength and grace with you. Christ transforms you with the Spirit’s courage and always walks at your side. And through your love on this path, and mine, the suffering that makes us and the world so weary will be changed and healing will come.

Now, go back to Peter and you’ll find even more sustaining hope.

If I’d been a disciple and was called Satan, an obstruction to God’s way, by Christ himself, I’d have been devastated. I imagine Peter keeping to the fringes of the crowd surrounding Jesus, keeping his head down. Apart from the humiliation, believing you’ve failed and been publicly called out had to be brutal.

But only six days later, as Jesus prepares to go up a mountain in prayer, where he will be transfigured, as early that morning he walks among all these women and men who love and follow him, he taps James and John and Peter and says, “Come along with me. I need you.” Can you imagine Peter’s relief? He was still important to Jesus, an amazing grace and welcome.

See, no matter how often you stumble, no matter how frustrated you are at your discipleship, or dismayed on the days you seem to take two steps back, Jesus still needs you. Loves you. Wants you by his side on the path. Christ may challenge you at times, but always in love. And will always invite you to follow once again, transforming you in the Spirit as you go.

Morning by morning God wakens you, to open you up to listen and follow.

So today you’ve woken, you’re listening for God. What do you hear? How is God calling you to this path of Christ just for today? However it goes, you’re embraced in God’s love and given what you need to do that. And tomorrow God will waken you again.

But this is Jesus’ urgency today, that we all come together on the same page as Christ’s people on Christ’s path, no matter how we started. But that means we’re all in this together, transformed together. And nothing can stop the love of God in Christ from healing this world. Even when you and I carry it.

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

To be saved is to act as a neighbor, because you are forever bound up and embraced by the non-negotiable love of God.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 23 B
Texts: James 2:1-10, 14-17; Mark 7:24-37; Isaiah 35:4-7a; Psalm 146; and using Luke 10:25-37

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

“What do I have to do to be saved?” a lawyer once asked Jesus.

Since this was a religious lawyer, an expert in God’s law, Jesus said, “you tell me.” “Love God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself,” the lawyer replied. “Great,” Jesus said. “Do that and live.”

“And who is my neighbor?” the lawyer asked.

Now, this isn’t our Gospel today. But James’ words kept calling me into Jesus’ Samaritan story. See, Jesus tells a story as an answer and completely reverses the lawyer’s question. He tells of a man beaten and left for dead, of a priest and a Levite who walk by on the other side of the road, and of a Samaritan, one the nearly dead man would have looked down on, regarded as lesser, even as enemy, who binds his wounds, and gets him to a safe place.

And then Jesus asks the only question he thinks matters: “Who acted as a neighbor?”

And James chimes in with a hearty, “Amen, brother.”

James sees the partiality, the prejudice, his people are living with, judging others by their looks, clothes, wealth, status, and treating those who impress them with care and consideration. Those who don’t are ignored, treated as lesser.

And James can’t understand how people who claim faith in Christ Jesus could act that way. You’re doing well, he says, if you keep Christ’s law, “love your neighbor as yourself.” But when you pick and choose who gets to be your neighbor, you’re breaking that law.

For James, it’s clear: if you say you trust in Christ Jesus, and you don’t act in a changed way, a way of divine love, there’s no point. If your faith doesn’t make you into Christ, loving as Christ, serving as Christ, he doesn’t think it’s worth anything other than a quick burial.

Here’s where we clutch our Lutheran pearls to our chest and sink down in a faint.

Isn’t James mixing works with grace? we ask. If being saved means loving your neighbor, acting as a neighbor, what about God’s free grace? Aren’t we just throwing that away?

It’s time we stop that nonsense once and for all. It is the clear witness of Scripture, of Christ Jesus himself, that you and all people are beloved of God now and always. The Triune God revealed that love in person in Christ Jesus, taught it, showed it, carried it to the cross and broke death with it. God’s love for you, for me, for all people is non-negotiable. Always.

But we have it on the authority of God-with-us, Jesus himself, that being saved is more than the reality of God’s love. The Triune God’s non-negotiable love is the truth of the universe, the reality behind all things, the foundation, the air, the atmosphere of a saved life, a saved world.

But a life that is saved, according to Jesus himself, is a life lived in love of God and love of neighbor. When you love your neighbor you know salvation, or healing, as the word also means in Greek. When you act as a neighbor, that is, act as the God who loves you, you know what it is to be healed and whole.

“Who acted as a neighbor?” Jesus asks. “That one knows salvation.”

And James adds, “and that one knows no distinctions.”

This is the challenge of the saved, healed life: to end all our distinctions between people and see as God sees, love as God loves. To see beyond wealth and nice clothes. To give more than words to someone who is hungry and actually feed them. To love enemies and pray for them. To see God’s face in all people. To make no distinctions between whom you will care for and whom you won’t, because God doesn’t, and the question is never “who is my neighbor?”, but always “who acted as a neighbor?”

And if you think it’s hard, you have company. Even Jesus struggled with this. Luke and John tell a different story, but in Matthew and Mark, Jesus seems to have to learn this. This woman who insists on having Jesus see her and her daughter is one of the most important persons in the history of the Church, according to Matthew and Mark. She’s the wedge who forever cracks open the Son of God to expand the mission to all God’s people, not just the Jewish people.

And here’s the true grace in all this:

We belong to the one who “does everything well,” as the people marvel about Jesus, “who even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.” Jesus is the longed for coming the psalmist and Isaiah promise today: “God will come and save you, open the eyes of the blind, and the ears of the deaf, and heal the limbs that are lame.”

Now do you understand? The Triune God in Christ heals you, saves you, by making you into God’s love in the world. God opens your blinded eyes to see all of God’s children in need as your concern. God unplugs your deaf ears to hear all the cries of God’s children, even the ones you don’t like, so you can act as neighbor. God cures your paralysis, your lameness, and gets you up off your couch and empowers you to go into the world as God’s love and do something. Do something. Be a neighbor.

So, “be strong, do not fear,” Isaiah says.

This is the heart of God’s grace. The non-negotiable love God has for you and for all people is also the power that heals you to be a neighbor and bring God’s love wherever you go.

And when you act as a neighbor, as God’s love, the same love that holds you and surrounds you and feeds you and gives you breath, you will know what the Triune God means by saving you.

And then, Isaiah says, look out. That’s when water breaks forth in deserts, when people start leaping for joy, singing like they’ve never sung before. That’s when God’s dreamed-for healing of this world really starts to happen.

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