Life in God, abundant life as Christ offers, is a lived reality, not a thing to have or hold; living in love of God and neighbor is living in God’s new life.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 15 C
Text: 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

You can’t inherit eternal life. It’s not a thing to be possessed.

You can’t receive it or hold it. You can’t get it with a ticket, or own it. Eternal life, the abundant life Christ Jesus wants for you and me and the whole creation, isn’t a thing, a noun. It is only lived, experienced. It’s a verb.

So our friend today is mistaken at the start. He wants to know how to obtain something he thinks Jesus can give. But look at Jesus’ answer.

Love God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and love your neighbor as yourself. Do, this, Jesus says, and you will live. Do this, live this, and you will be living in this life from God you want.

Our friend, and so many like him, including you and me sometimes, believe you do what God wants so you’re rewarded with something.

No, Jesus says. This life isn’t a thing to be won or given. Do this – this love of God and love of neighbor – and you have it, right now, here. In that doing, you will know God’s abundant, eternal, new life.

We recognize our friend’s confusion from other things.

Take physical fitness. That’s not a reward, a present, something you can inherit or buy. No magic pills or tickets will give it to you. Exercise and eat healthily, and you’ll get there. Breaking free of addiction is the same. You can’t order it online or ask someone for it. You find support and guidance, and learn new ways of being, and you live into sobriety, and health.

But both of those things mean big changes in your life, one day at a time. And our friend is smart, like us. He knows that love of God and neighbor will mean changes in his life. Profound changes at times. And that’s not easy. So, rather than focus on the broad, complete love of God and neighbor and all that might mean for his actions, he tries one more time to make a noun the important thing, not the verb, not the doing. Even though doing it will give him exactly what he wants, he decides to limit the category of neighbor instead of focusing on his love.

Let’s talk about who you mean, Jesus. Who is my neighbor? Let’s describe that noun. Then maybe I can find a way to do this.

Well, you can’t trick Jesus.

Jesus sees clearly what he’s doing. Since our friend didn’t respond well to direct teaching, Jesus tries another way. “Let me tell you a story.” A story of someone beaten and left for dead in a ditch, a story of some who walked by and one who didn’t, who helped, who loved.

And Jesus refuses to classify neighbor. The categories mean nothing – priest, Levite, Samaritan, unknown guy in the ditch. What he asks at the end is, who acted as neighbor? Who loved someone here? The only question that matters this moment, this afternoon, tomorrow, next month, next year, is: am I acting in love or not?

Caring about the nouns, the categories we make, instead of the verbs, what we do, has nearly destroyed our world.

For almost half a millennium, racism has existed here because people who looked a certain way ordered their world by defining who was their neighbor, the person they cared about. They decided those of different skin color and culture were not neighbor, not even human, therefore could be enslaved, abused, killed. They were a noun, a thing. Property.

The legal system of this country and our social norms and customs and our cultural understanding have been shaped for hundreds of years on that ordering. We shouldn’t be surprised that we find embedded biases and prejudices in our own hearts and minds. We’ve been cooked in it for centuries.

And for millennia in the Western world, those who identify as male have been in charge. And they ordered their world by defining who was their neighbor, the person they cared about. They decided that everyone who wasn’t male was not neighbor, not fully human. They said that women weren’t capable, weren’t worthy of respect. Didn’t deserve equal pay or rights. Often they were property. A noun, a thing to be controlled. As the highest court in our land just reinforced.

Horrors are done for centuries because no one – especially, tragically, no one who’s been running everything all these years – ever stops and says, “the only thing that matters here is are we loving. Do we love all others as we love ourselves?

But when you focus on the verbs, on what you’re doing, everything changes.

Four decades ago, when Mount Olive began to be a safe, welcoming place for those who were LGBTQ, this community quit playing with nouns. All of the anguish and hatred and fighting over sexual orientation always focused on the nouns – who’s doing what with who, what physical parts belonged with what other ones, who gets to be with whom? Defining people and declaring what that means for the life they can live.

But this community – and thankfully many others – realized the only question was: is loving visible here? Can you see living in faithful, committed ways? Is there forgiving? All verbs. No definitions of the partners needed. The verb is everything, truth is seen in the doing.

What we learned here could change the world. When the only question in voting, in public policy, how you treat people at home, at work, out in the community, when the only question in thinking and acting on what’s wrong with our society and culture is: is this loving?, everything can change. Am I living in the love I know from God? Is our society acting in love? Is this policy a loving thing or not? Are we still objectifying people so that we don’t have to ask the love question?

The verbs are everything, Jesus says. Love God, love neighbor. Do this, and you’ll live. Right now. And so will this world.

Do you want God’s eternal life, God’s abundant life? It’s yours in your living in love of God and neighbor. And when you and I start living this abundant life, and others do, and others do, then this world actually becomes what God has always dreamed. This world will live, right now. Things will change, right now. Joy and hope and healing will begin, right now.

Start with loving your God with everything you are and have. Because when you dive fully into love of God you will find to your joy that you are beloved to God. You will know in your heart and soul and mind and strength how precious you are, how important you are, how much God will risk to live in love with you. That’s eternal life, right there.

And then, filled to the brim with that love in and from God, love of neighbor’s the only natural action. It pours out from you and me, and changes the world. That’s abundant life, right there.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. And love your neighbor as yourself. Do this, and you will live.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

God is reaching out to free all God’s children, declare them clean, and clothe them in mercy and love. When you see this, experience this – tell someone!

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Second Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 12 C
Texts: Luke 8:26-39; Galatians 3:23-29

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

This was the first time they’d seen him clothed in years.

That’s how his friends and neighbors knew he was better. He wasn’t naked anymore. They chained him up for his own safety – he’d throw himself against the rocks to injure himself – but he broke the chains. He took shelter in the tombs outside the city, naked, frightening, destructive.

But not anymore. Now he was clothed and in his right mind. And because of a truly unlikely person.

Jesus went everywhere a respectable Jewish rabbi shouldn’t go: into the territory of unclean foreigners, among unclean tombs, with an unclean possessed person, around unclean pigs. He crossed all those boundaries, broke this man free of the inner chains that bound him, and washed and clothed him.

Paul understands the power of what Jesus did here.

Paul proclaims to his Galatian congregations – made of Jewish and Gentile Christians – that they have been freed and washed in baptism and clothed in Christ and that makes them one people, beloved children of God. No boundaries exist between them anymore. No barriers of culture, of ethnicity or wealth or gender or social class, all are one in Christ.

Imagine if Paul’s right. What if God in Christ really is capable of breaking the chains that bind you, and me, and this world, and making clean what was unclean, and clothing you, and me, and all people with garments that make us one with each other, all offspring and heirs of God’s love and mercy?

Now, it might be hard to see your need for this, if you’re not in the dire straits of this man.

This man was obviously troubled, so troubled that it’s possible his friends and neighbors in the city thought he was the only one who had need of freeing. But all do. God came in Christ to break all God’s children free of whatever binds them, whether it’s obvious to outsiders or not.

God wants to break the chains that are those ways of thinking that lead us into repeating the same harmful behaviors, or hamper every attempt to make things right with another person. The chains that are those prejudices and biases we wish we could sweep away but keep cropping up and harming.

God wants to break the chains that bind our whole world with systemic evil that grips our culture now, an evil that goes beyond bad individual choices and simple answers, and is ingrained in the very bones of our society.

God wants to break the chains of our inability to see every human being as a beloved sibling and as divinely blessed.

And God wants to break the same chains as this man had, mental illness that binds so many today who deal with anxiety, depression, and other mental diseases that just seem to embed ever deeper.

You don’t have to be naked and living in caves to need the healing grace of God in Christ breaking you free. Everyone has chains to be broken, freedom and new life to find.

But Christ doesn’t seem to act as immediately anymore.

This man suffered for a long time, but the moment he met Christ, he found healing and wholeness.

That doesn’t happen in our day, not that rapidly, not that noticeably. Our inner chains can bind us for years. Our society seems to be taking five steps back for every one forward. Those celebrating the emancipation of Juneteenth today see ever stronger chains of racism and oppression binding God’s children and our society. All these chains that bind seem to be stronger than God can handle.

But look from a different perspective. Look back on your life. Can you see a thread of God’s healing hand over time? Where were you a year ago, or ten? Can you see that God has been at work breaking some of those chains already?

And in this world, we can look at the pain and suffering we see repeatedly and despair that anything is happening. But we can also look for signs that chains are being broken and life from God is emerging. There are signs of hope today, if only we can look for them, and tell each other when we see them.

And Paul’s witness is that, while we’re being freed, we’re already clean and clothed.

Paul’s Galatians were in a lot of difficulty. Deep division between Jewish and Gentile Christians caused a lot of stress and emotional anguish, even to Paul.

But Paul didn’t say “one day you’ll be one in Christ.” He said, “all of you are one in Christ Jesus. These things that seem to divide you, ethnicity, gender, class, privilege, these are not your deepest truth. You are one.”

Jesus crossed the sea and clothed a foreigner, a non-Jew, with the same healing he offered Jewish people. Paul created communities of multiple cultures and backgrounds, proclaiming their oneness in Christ. That’s the clothing that you already have. You, and I, and all the baptized, and Oren today, are already clean and clothed as God’s beloved children, our true identity, even while we are being freed. And God’s reign in Christ is for all God’s children, regardless of what they do or don’t believe. God sees no boundaries of any kind to reaching people and freeing them. God’s love in Christ declares all clean, clothed with love and mercy and wholeness.

If you do start to see this, experience this, what can you do?

This man, freed, washed, clothed, wants to go along with Jesus on the road and be with the one who saved his life. But Jesus says not everyone is sent away to serve God. He’s told to go home, free, and clean, and clothed, and do one thing: declare how much God has done for him.

For most of us, most of you, that’s our call, too. Return to your home, your life, and tell someone how much God has done for you and the world. So they can hope. So they themselves can start seeing chains breaking. And so all can live in the joy of being clothed in God’s mercy, and one with each other as beloved children of God.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen