We do not belong to ourselves, individually: we are one together in Christ for our good and for the good of the world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 24 A
Texts: Romans 14:1-12 (13); Matthew 18:21-35

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

In the beginning, when God began to create, our hebrew forebears say God didn’t think it was good for us to be alone.

God made more than one human, so we wouldn’t be alone. God constantly encouraged human beings to love each other. Because we need each other to live. So we form communities, families, build relationships. Now, all of us need alone time, too, to varying degrees. But none of us would survive long all by ourselves.

And the necessity of human community is the first key to understanding the forgiveness and restoration in our Scriptures today.

The second key is to remember that communities shape the people in them.

The truth that forms a community, their reason for being together, can lead to people who do good and people who do evil. Today the power of evil emanates from all kinds of communities who are bound together out of fear, or out of hate, or out of greed, or out of prejudice of all kinds. In those communities, people are formed to the evil that gathers them.

But a community grounded on love, or centered on justice, such a community can also transform the people within it. If you belong to a group who shares values of wholeness and mercy, who works for justice among people, you will be shaped by that community to those values.

Our community is bound by Christ.

There are lots of differences between us, and lots of similarities, how each sees the world, understands themselves, lives their life. We’ve had our differences over the years, some serious. Some here you might call your friends; others might irritate you. But that’s OK, you probably irritate someone here, too. But none of this is as important to this community as what joins us: we are baptized into Christ, called into the Body of Christ to be loved by God and learn to love each other. In this community you and I have found welcome, and home, and companionship, and love, and grace. And it has shaped you and me for good.

And now we’re ready to hear about the Romans.

The Roman church was a messy and beautiful church just as our vicar described last week. They were a group of Christian congregations connected to Paul, perhaps founded by him. There are Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians together. But they’re seriously at odds.

It seems at this time the Jewish Christians have less influence, they’re weaker. The Gentile Christians seem to be in charge. The Jewish Christians keep kosher, follow the Torah. The Gentiles – never having been Jewish – do not. They eat all kinds of foods and don’t keep the Jewish festivals.

And they’re fighting with each other. Each group mocking the other, calling them wrong-headed, unfaithful. They’re not loving each other. And Paul is deeply dismayed.

You see, Paul had a beautiful vision he got from Christ in his calling.

In this vision of the church, diversity is beloved, cherished, a gift of God. All who come to Christ can keep their cultural treasures, their patterns and blessings, their ethnic distinctions, even if others don’t share them. Jews can be Jews, Gentiles can be Gentiles, but all are called together under the greater unity of Christ.

But this vision barely got off the ground. The communities we know in Scripture, such as Rome, Corinth, the Galatian churches, all seemed to struggle mightily with it. There’s scant evidence it survived Paul himself; we see very little in the history of the Church.

But it is Christ’s vision for the Church. And it’s still possible with the grace of the Spirit. Today Paul explains it again: In your community of Christ, love each other in your differences. Rejoice in them. Respect them. If you have to do your thing, good. But don’t do it for you. Do it for Christ. If all serve Christ with their habits and life, a community of love and grace can exist in joyful diversity.

Paul says we do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord. If we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. That’s the key.

And that, Jesus says, is why you and I are called to forgive. Why we’re given the task of reconciliation. Why restoration of community is the heart of how we live as Christ. Because we’re bound together in Christ. And we’ve been changed here. Forgiven infinitely by God.

Jesus’ parable brings this home: the whole community has a stake in forgiveness.

It isn’t just about the slave who’s forgiven millions who couldn’t forgive a thousand dollars in turn. At the heart of this story is this line: “When the other slaves saw what happened, they were greatly distressed.” This breach, this absence of forgiveness, affected everyone who knew them. Threatened the community.

Forgiveness and restoration are crucial to our community because if any are at odds, everyone is hurt. If you withhold forgiveness from another person here, another sibling, all of us suffer.

And in this community of Christ, gathered together by the Triune God’s sacrificial, death-breaking love, our whole life depends on being God’s forgiveness to each other.

But there is a deeper implication to Jesus’ parable and Paul’s plea.

Our love for each other, our forgiveness and restoration, or lack of it, will be our witness to more than us. The Church is meant to be a blessing to the world. So are you. So am I. And if we’re not – and you know this because you see it happening in our world and despair – if those who carry Christ’s name carry it in hate and spite and wickedness, then the world will be greatly distressed at it, or worse, see our witness as fraudulent and harmful.

So we do not live to ourselves even here. If, with the Spirit’s grace, we are changed here, learn to forgive as we’ve been forgiven, to be a part of God’s restoration among us, it is so that we leave here to be a part of the same outside, with whatever diverse people we can form a community with who share our values of justice and peace and mercy.

And just imagine what might happen in our city or world when God sends us out on the road.

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

The path of Christ is foolishness, a stumbling block, nonsense, and we know that from the beginning. It is also the only way to life for us and the creation?

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The feast of the Holy Cross
Texts: 1 Corinthians 1:18-24; John 3:13-17

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

You have to admire Paul’s honesty.

He starts his letter to the Corinthians calling his promise, his proclamation, his witness, foolish. Deluded. Making no sense to the Jewish people or any other people on earth.

“We proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,” Paul says. From the start let’s be clear, he says. What we say about Christ isn’t going to connect with just about anyone.

He could actually have named two other groups. What he often calls the flesh, or the world, what we might call our culture, our way. And second, the very Church itself, born out of the cross of Christ and gathered by the Spirit’s fire. Both also struggle with the cross.

So Paul says: look honestly at the truth of our proclamation. And know that it’s in opposition to nearly everything everyone expects about the way the world works.

But it’s what Jesus proclaimed.

Jesus said, “The Son of Man must be lifted up, so whoever trusts in him might have eternal life.” The path to God’s life starts at the cross, where we see our Savior lifted up for the life of the world. Lifted up, as Jesus proclaims later, to draw all people to himself, all things into God’s embrace. (John 12:32)

And Paul says this way of the cross is clearly opposite to the way most desire. But it will save the world. All things will be healed, saved, brought into God’s life and love through this sacrificial love. And as those who see Christ lifted up allow themselves to be lifted up, cut down, walked on for the sake of others, then the world of power over others, of domination and might, will crumble and eventually fall.

And that’s where the rubber meets the road. When the historical event of the cross makes a demand on how people live their lives, how they they think things work.

It’s where all these groups struggle.

They just don’t know what to do with the cross.

The proclamation of Christ’s cross was a stumbling block to Jews because they couldn’t envision the one true God, the maker of all things, so debased, so lowly as to assume human form and die.

The proclamation of Christ’s cross was foolishness to Gentiles because they’d ridicule a pathetic group of believers who followed someone who ended in a humiliating public execution.

The proclamation of Christ’s cross is nonsense to our culture because the world can’t comprehend an all-powerful Creator of all things giving up that power in love. If you’ve got power, wield it, use it, the world says.

And the proclamation of Christ’s cross largely appears to be irrelevant to the very Church Christ called. The Church has learned to live as if the cross is unimportant to its life, sharing a bed with military and political power for centuries, calling it God’s will, a practical way to preserve the institution. And because we like power, being winners.

So, Paul says, let’s be honest. Name at the start what’s at stake.

The path to God’s life is the path of stumbling, foolish, irrelevant nonsense.

Can you see the stumbling block? he asks. You don’t get to tell God what to do, you only get to decide if you’re going where God has already gone, into disreputable places and places of loss. To love those who would hurt you.

Can you see the foolishness? Paul asks.  To stop defending the church, our congregation, yourself, even God. This path doesn’t lead to impressive, powerful things people have to respect.

Can you see the nonsense? he asks. To move out in vulnerability and weakness, offering only love and grace in your words, actions, and decisions, instead of fighting to make sure you win or the church wins.

Can you see how this might appear irrelevant to your life? Paul asks. If people always need to adjust to you, if your needs are always foremost, if your trust in God depends upon whether you have success and security, if being right is the most important thing, if sacrificial, vulnerable love is something you’re unwilling to do, what does that tell you? he asks.

That’s the honesty Paul calls for.

But such honesty is why you and I are here tonight.

Tonight, and at every Eucharist, when we gather at the Table of Christ and claim those visceral gifts as our own, Christ’s Body and Blood, we declare Paul’s words from later in this Corinthian letter: “When we eat of this bread and drink from this cup, we proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” (1 Cor. 11:26)

This isn’t some morbid obsession, to stop and proclaim Christ’s death at every Eucharist. It is declaring the truth each time, so we remember this is our way. So we continually focus on the path we walk with Christ, a path of loss and death that gives life.

The cross marks our lives, our worship, our rituals, our gestures, our faith, precisely as a reminder of Christ’s path, and ours. And with this sign we commit to our path.

“The message of the cross is foolishness,” Paul says . . . “but to us who are being saved it is Christ the wisdom of God.”

We seek wisdom in foolishness, because that’s where God’s way is. We seek power in powerlessness, because that’s what God does. We seek strength in weakness, because that’s how God works. We seek victory in losing, because that’s how God wins. This foolish, nonsensical, stumbling block truth about the way the Triune God really works in the world is life. Millions before us have learned this and found life for themselves and for the world.

So with God’s help let’s walk this foolishness together, catch each other when we stumble, help make sense of the nonsense together, and find the relevance of this way for our life and the life of the whole universe.

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