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

The gift of the Triune God in Christ is abundant, eternal life here and now, and life to come after we die, and all need to be brought into this abundant grace.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 20 B
Text: John 6:51-58

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

“I came that you may have life, and have it abundantly.”

That’s Jesus’ whole reason for coming, he says in John 10: that his sheep may have abundant life. Later (20:31), the Evangelist says that’s why John’s whole Gospel was written. So that you might come to trust that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and through trusting that you might have life in his name.

Life, abundant, in Christ’s name. It’s a life transformed by the love of God, a life lived in relationship with God, a life lived loving God and loving neighbor. That’s what it means for Jesus to save. Today he calls that life “eternal life.” He also calls it life in God’s reign. And it’s clearly a life all who trust in Christ can experience right now.

You know this because of one tiny word in today’s Gospel: “And.”

“And” changes everything.

For the second time in this discourse, Jesus says what he gives those who trust in him, who eat of his body and blood: they “have eternal life,” he says, “and I will raise them up on the last day.”

They have eternal life. It’s reality here and now for those who trust in Christ. “And” – there’s a second gift: life in a world to come after we die. We can live in God’s reality right now, the eternity of God’s existence, the reign of God, the abundance of God. And when we die we know we have a resurrection life. These are two gifts of God in Christ.

But Christians have too often omitted the “and,” combining the two gifts into just one, life after death. Every time we do that, devastation follows.

Because if you’re only hoping in Christ for resurrection after you die, faith is very individualistic.

If “Jesus saves” only means Jesus forgives you and raises you to life after death, the only thing that matters is are you going to heaven or not. If you love other people, you might care whether they’re going to heaven, too. But you wouldn’t have to. Even with our Lutheran insistence on the full and free grace of God, making Jesus’ salvation transactional like this is deeply individualistic. The only thing that matters is your final destination. Not your neighbor’s pain. Not the world’s suffering.

And it also means you aren’t challenged by Jesus’ teaching. You don’t need to change your heart, check your biases, confront your prejudice. You can do what you want and paste the name of Jesus on it, if you think the only thing Jesus cares about is heaven, and you think you’ve got a ticket.

All because you took away the word “and.”

This helps explain right wing Christian Nationalism in our country.

We despair at the evil proclaimed by these Christians who care nothing for the suffering of the poor, the refugee, the oppressed. Who resent children being given free breakfast and lunch at school. Who seek to control the bodies of other people, who absolutely reject and abhor anyone not like them, including those who understand their gender differently, or choose to love someone these Christians can’t tolerate. We wonder, how can Christians do this, believe this? How are we so close to creating a fascist dictatorship in this country and with of it driven by people who bear the name Christian?

Well, if the only thing that matters is that you are saved, and if saved only means life after death, then you don’t have to worry about anything else. That’s how Christians killed millions in the Crusades and countless wars over time. That’s why we had the Inquisition. That’s why people were burned at the stake because of their beliefs. It’s all because of missing the word “and” and assuming there’s only one thing about salvation that matters.

Of course, to believe that you have to ignore literally everything Jesus ever taught. His whole ministry was an invitation into the first gift, into the reign of God, into the eternal life of God lived here, into the abundance of life that following Christ is.

And Jesus teaches us that this abundant life, this eternal life now, cannot be abundant and eternal if anyone is excluded.

This is Jesus’ heart, and unless we’re prepared to delete the bulk of the Gospels and most of the New Testament, we need to take it seriously.

Love your neighbor, love even your enemy. That’s abundant life. Feed those who hunger, clothe those who are naked, find homes for those without. That’s eternal life. Care for those who are sick, welcome the stranger and alien. That’s life in God’s reign. See the face of God in every other person. That’s what Jesus came to invite you and me to live and know. Right now. And it’s abundant, eternal life.

But you can’t know God’s full eternity in your life right now if others are still suffering and oppressed. You can’t know God’s full abundance if others are still destitute and starving. That’s what Jesus the Christ says, and you and I know in our hearts it’s true. Until everyone, every child of God, knows this eternal abundance and can rejoice in it, none of us fully have it.

By all means cherish Jesus’ promise after the “and.”

You will have resurrection in Christ Jesus as God’s free gift: when you die you’ll be raised to new life.

Just cherish the “and” even more. Lean into the first gift, that the Triune God most deeply wants all God’s children to have life and have it abundantly now. To know the joy of God’s eternal love and life in their hearts and souls right now. To be fed and cared for and safe, all living in God’s dream of justice.

When we see the fullness of what Jesus means to do when he saves us, everything matters, everyone matters. And when we start living that way in the world, with our neighbors, with our enemies, when we all become part of that eternal abundance, this world will one day fully rejoice in this gift and grace. All of it.

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