The Triune God loves you and welcomes you and invites you into the feast of love that is in God’s life. Come and see.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
Feast of St. Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist
Texts: Matthew 9:9-13 (and referencing Matthew 11:2-6)

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

Jesus just said, “Follow me.”

He didn’t ask Matthew to confess his dirty tax collecting secrets. He didn’t ask Matthew to promise never to cheat again. He didn’t give a talk on honesty.

He just said “follow me.” No preconditions. No lecture. No criticism. Just welcome.

That’s what made the leaders angry. Jesus didn’t just eat with tax collectors and that group lumped together as “sinners.” He welcomed them, spent time with them. Treated them as God’s beloved. No preconditions. No lectures. No criticism.

And when the leaders challenge Jesus, he can’t hide his irritation. He brusquely dismisses them, basically saying “go do your homework before wasting my time talking about what God wants.” See, he quotes Hosea 6 to these biblical scholars (who should have known it), and says “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’” And he turns away from them and goes back to the party.

But it wasn’t just Jesus’ opponents who were unsettled by his open welcome and love.

John the Baptist was pretty concerned. In prison, nearing execution, John sent some of his own disciples to ask Jesus if he really was the One from God, or whether they should look for another. John’s whole job was to point out God’s Christ, and at the end he’s worried he messed that up.

Because John preached with heat and anger. He talked about axes ready to chop down fruitless trees, and fires ready to burn those branches. He preached repentance first, and never seemed to get to God’s welcome. He assumed the religious leaders who came for baptism were hypocrites because he couldn’t imagine they’d be repentant. So he called them a family of venomous snakes.

But Jesus offered love and welcome. He healed people. Proclaimed a reign of God that was here now and that was for all. Invited people to follow, commanded people to love, even their enemies. Welcomed all kinds of people, even ones others thought sinful. Ate with them. Often broke God’s law. How could Jesus be the One? John fretted.

Jesus’ reply? Tell John what you see here – blind people now see, deaf people can hear, lame people walk again, and the poor find Good News from God. Don’t be offended at me, John, Jesus said. If I’m doing these things, who do you think I am?

Know this, though: your life depends on Jesus being who he says and how he acts.

You can only be certain of God’s love for you if it’s given to you freely. Your only chance is to stand with Matthew and realize the Son of God is looking you in the eyes, loving you, and saying “follow me.” No preconditions, no lectures, no criticism.

Maybe you never feel you’re good enough. A lot of us are in that boat. But God loves you fully and sees you as more than good enough. Even if you can recount your failures and your sins and assume God does. God sees you and loves you, period. Not in spite of you.

Others of us feel as if they’re different from everyone else and no one can understand them. Well, God does and God loves you, period. Some of us need lots of affirmation to feel as if they’re good, and God affirms you every moment of the day with love. Others fear the challenges of the world, whether they’ll be able to withstand them, and God promises to walk with you through fire and flood always, you’re never alone.

Whatever it is that makes you feel you can’t be loved by God, God doesn’t even see that. God looks at you and says, “I love you so much. You are my child and I am well pleased with you.”

Most of us have been sold a bill of goods about this.

We’ve been taught by Christians who feared that Jesus could just sit down with sinners and eat with them, laugh with them, love them. Even well-meaning Christians fear that open welcome with no preconditions, lectures, or criticisms just leads to people keeping on doing bad. No one learns, they say, if you don’t first tell them to straighten up.

Don’t believe that for a minute. Look, it’s a normal human fear. We especially bring it out when we think of others. We offer Jesus’ welcome, but with preconditions, lectures, criticisms.

Well, I’m going to take my stand with Jesus. My only hope of God’s love is that God loves me for who God sees I am, no matter what I’ve done or what I haven’t done. So I’m going to the party. I’m going to eat with Jesus here today and rejoice that he welcomes everyone, even ones others label as “sinners.” I’m going to trust God’s love can never be taken from me, and I’m going to try to offer God’s love as freely to others. Because frankly, the other way is death. And I’ll take Jesus’ way of life every time. Christ who died and rose from the dead to show me and all of you God’s love. Christ who loves me and doesn’t see sinner. Just beloved child of God.

Here’s my challenge to you: try trusting that joy for just two hours.

For two hours just keep repeating “I am God’s beloved, I am in God’s welcome” without asking “what about how I live and act? What about sin?” Just take Jesus at his word and actions without the fear and the judgment and the other stuff. Then if you can do that, see if you can learn to hold it for longer and longer.

It’s not that Jesus doesn’t call you to love, to be Christ. To love enemies and persecutors, to care for those who are hungry and sick and thirsty and naked and imprisoned and strangers. Jesus just has no interest in lecturing you into that, or making that a precondition to God loving you.

What the Triune God trusts is that if you start trusting you’re a beloved child of God, feeling God’s welcome, eating with God at your side, embraced by God who sees you as precious, when you actually trust that, the rest will come, the loving as Christ.

Jesus says to you, “follow me.” “Come to me.” “Let’s have dinner together.”

If you need any love from God, rejoice! You’re invited to the party. God doesn’t see “sinner” when looking at you, and God isn’t holding the divine nose over your stink when God embraces you.

The Triune God simply loves you. As you are. Sees only beloved and good. And says, come to me. Be with me. Follow me.

So, what if you ignored all the Christians and their piety and just listened to Christ for once? Might it change your life? Transform you into God’s powerful love in this frightened, broken, hate-filled world? God thinks so. And what do you have to lose? Only your fear and anxiety.

Get up and follow. And see for yourself.

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

God’s only way is to draw you into the cross, to become that sacrificial, self-giving, non-violent, peacemaking, world changing love. And things will be healed.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
Feast of the Holy Cross
Texts: 1 Corinthians 1:18-24; John 3:13-17; Numbers 21:4b-9

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

Easter really did a number on us.

Because of Easter we’ve created a serious misunderstanding of the cross.

We know the women and men who followed Jesus were stunned, dismayed, almost broken by the cross. But then he rose from the dead and it seems clear they thought it was back to business as usual. As if the cross was just an unpleasantness best put in the rear-view mirror.

Because before the Ascension they asked: “now will you restore Israel?” It’s as if they admit they made a mistake not expecting the cross, but now that he’s alive, “back to plan A, right? Destroy Rome, make us number one?”

We’re the same, though. We’ve made the cross into a logo to put all over our things and we think of it as a past event. For centuries the Church taught that in the cross of Christ we are forgiven and given life after we die, and that’s the end of it. As if Good Friday is a one-off thing, that if you believe in it you’ve got your ticket to salvation. Many think that’s exactly what Jesus is saying today in John 3.

Paul begs to differ. For Paul, the cross is still real and active. Good Friday is every day for those joined to Christ.

Paul’s words today make no sense in the way we usually think of the cross.

Paul believes it’s the current stumbling block and scandal of the cross that’s the threat. The current foolishness of the cross that drives people away. Not what Jesus did long ago, but what God is still doing today and what we’re called to do today.

For Paul the cross is still the main thing. The only thing. The point of it all. The cross is God’s love, period. The cross is the love you are asked to love, period. It’s risky, self-giving, vulnerable, sacrificial. It makes no sense to people who want to protect themselves at all costs, it’s foolish. It’s offensive, a scandal, to people who want to believe God dominates with power, and so should they.

For you, then, is the cross a symbol of a past event, a logo you carry and wear? Or is it your reminder, your job description, your mystery, your calling? The current and only word on God’s love? Whether you wear it, bow to it in worship, make its shape on your body or not, the only thing that matters is if the cross is still real to you. Still active. Still the only thing worth knowing about the Triune God, and the only way God works even now.

That is, is the cross is your idol, or your marching orders?

If we weren’t celebrating Holy Cross today, we’d have heard the story of the golden calf as our first reading. Israel wanted less of a relationship with God and more of something controllable. Less of a God who scared them and gave out commandments and more of a beautiful gold thing they could hold and pray to, but didn’t ask a lot of them.

And Moses’ bronze serpent that Jesus also mentions? Six or seven hundred years later King Hezekiah of Judah, reforming after a number of evil kings, had to destroy it. Israel had kept it all those years. But instead of seeing it as a reminder of God’s grace, they came to worship it as an idol.

Yet Jesus still links himself to that story. Maybe he’s giving another chance to focus on the God who comes to heal and save, so that no one will perish, instead of on a symbol or a statue.

If we make the cross our idol instead of seeing a constant reminder of the love of God that is broken for the world, the love of God that draws all people and all things into God’s heart, the love of God that you and I are called to bear and live and be in the world, we’re just playing the same old game. We’d be better off tearing down our crosses and destroying them.

Find the foolishness and you’ll see. Trip on the stumbling block and you’ll see.

Please do trust that at the cross God’s love is for you and brings you healing and salvation in this world and after you die. That’s absolutely your promise and the promise for all God’s children.

But if that’s the end of it, you’re no better off than before you heard that promise. You’re like those who paint the cross on shields and armor and warplanes, who wear it visibly while doling out violence and oppression and hatred. Who use Christ’s cross as their own personal talisman which, they believe, makes them strong and leads them to disdain the weak.

But you can hold the cross as sign of your salvation and also focus on the cross as your guide, your calling, your only job. Then you’ll see. You’ll see how foolish it feels to let go of things you cling to for the sake of loving others. You’ll see how quickly you’re scandalized that God loses in order to win, and asks you to do the same. How easy it is to trip over your fears, your anxieties, your need for security, your prejudices, and not love as God loves.

But when you find that foolishness, that scandal, rejoice. It means you’re on the right path. You’re finally hearing the cross, seeing the cross, embracing the cross. The cross that shows God forgives all your stumbling and rejection, and then constantly carries you forward to more foolishness and scandal.

But what’s the good of all this? How does this help this world?

Will it stop the bloody proliferation of guns and violence in this country? The hatred spilling from our leaders for the weak and vulnerable? The terror of so many on the margins here that their lives are in danger? All the pain and suffering we see? Not immediately. But all the pain and suffering we’re experiencing comes from a world in love with violence and power and domination. That seeks self-interest above all things. A country increasingly devoted to might makes right. That’s how we got into this mess.

And God says the only way out is to draw you into the cross. Draw me into the cross. Draw God’s children, one by one, into the cross. So that we become that vulnerable, self-giving, non-violent, peacemaking, world changing love. And things will be healed, eventually.

Starting with those closest to you. Begin with what’s foolish about this love, scandalous about this love when you’re asked to love those closest to you, or at work, or next door. You’ll see how hard that love will be. But you’ll also be amazed at the healing it brings when you just do it.

There’s nothing wrong with Easter, by the way.

Easter is the promise that when you risk the cross, live the cross, embrace the cross as the shape of your love and life, nothing can stop that love. Not even pain and death. Easter says the path of cross-shaped love always ends in life, even if most of the time it feels like losing. Christ’s resurrection is the gift of life in the Spirit that empowers you to go back to Good Friday every day and learn what you can learn there from God. See what you can see. Find the path to that hill that is your path.

And don’t be afraid. Look to the shape of God’s love and be drawn into it for your life and the life of the world.

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