See the cross through the teaching of Jesus and know that it is the shape of the life in Christ, the way for the healing of all.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
Holy Cross Day
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

What do you see when you look at the cross?

When you put a cross on a chain and place it around your neck, what are you saying? When you bow to the cross as it is carried into our worship, what are you thinking?

This feast of the Holy Cross has its origins in commemorating the fourth century finding of a beam of wood, excavated from a hill in Jerusalem, that the one leading the search, Helena, mother of the emperor, believed was the true cross of Christ. By Luther’s day there were enough pieces of the true cross in reliquaries across Christendom you could build Noah’s Ark from all of them.

So: is the cross a relic for you to adore? Is it a talisman when you wear it, where you feel protected? Do you wear it openly to declare your faith? Is it a reminder that Christ died for you and your sins?

All of these are very personal, individual understandings of the cross. As if Christ’s death was for each individual believer to own. Some of our more beloved cross hymns, like “When I survey the wondrous cross,” and, “Beneath the cross of Jesus I long to take my stand,” come from that personal perspective, using “I,” and “me,” viewing the cross primarily for the suffering and agony of Jesus on it, and the personal forgiveness of sins that are given through it.

But what if, when you looked at the cross, you held with you the words and teaching of the One who died on the cross? Jesus had a very particular and consistent focus that the cross reveals to you and me. We might want to pay attention to that.

I talk a lot about the “cross-shaped life,” and sacrificial, vulnerable, love as the way of Christ.

That’s because this is the guiding focus and thread of Jesus’ teaching. Jesus, the face of the Trinity for us, clearly called humanity to follow a self-giving path of love for neighbor and God that is sacrificial, vulnerable, focused on losing for the sake of the other.

So, can you look at the cross not only for your own sake, but as a call to a way of life, as Jesus meant it to be, the path Jesus has laid out for all who wish to follow?

There’s real danger in making the cross only your personal salvation talisman.

First, it implies that God’s plan of salvation is individualistic. If the only thing that matters is that I believe that Jesus died to save me from my sins, I don’t really ever have to think about the life and suffering and reality of my neighbor. The only concern I have for my neighbor is if they know they also are “saved” by the cross.

Second, this focus implies that the cross is only about a single, one-time transaction – Jesus died for me – and doesn’t necessarily lead to the life in Christ Jesus talked about. All I need to know is that I’m “saved,” that I get life after death. I don’t have to think about the shape of my life, because Jesus died to save me. Too often this creates a Christian life that bears little resemblance to Jesus’ teaching and command.

Here is the truth the Scriptures proclaim with joy: the Triune God pours out God’s life in love to show humanity the same path.

The true healing of the cross begins with the suffering and death of God’s Son and continues with my suffering love and yours, our willingness to lose our lives to find them. Jesus came to identify once and for all the way of Christ, the way God has always been calling God’s people to walk. Jesus models this way, teaches this way, and lets himself be killed to show that this way is the only way God will love the creation back into the life God intended for us.

Easter then is the great triumphant Life of God breaking through suffering and death, showing that this cross-shaped path of Christ, while difficult, is filled with life and hope and resurrection.

That’s what Jesus and his followers whose words are in Scripture have taught. It’s the wisdom that makes life rich and abundant, and leads to the healing of all things. But, as Paul says today, God’s wisdom in the cross is a wisdom that looks like foolishness to many. So let’s be sure we keep our eyes on Jesus, and our ears, too.

“When I am lifted up,” Jesus said, “I will draw all people to myself.” (John 12:32)

Yes, the cross is for you, and yes, your sins are fully and freely forgiven. But it is also for all, because God’s love is for the whole cosmos, Jesus proclaims today.

And seeing that when you look at the cross, the love of God in Christ flows in you through the Spirit and you are strengthened and fed to follow the same path of Christly love that the cross began. To look at the cross around your neck, or carried in worship, or hanging on your wall, and remember you are blessed to shape your life, your love, your whole being the same way.

And in this, Jesus’ hope to draw all people into Christ’s love will be realized.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. Whether we live or whether we die, we belong to Christ. And if we belong to Christ, we belong to each other.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 24 A
Texts: Romans 14:1-12; 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

We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves.

Whether we live, or whether we die, we are the Lord’s, Paul says. And if we all belong to Christ, we all belong to each other.

That means that in Christ, there are no individual believers, you on your own, I on my own. All in Christ are interconnected. What hurts you, hurts me. What gives life to you gives life to me.

You can’t understand Paul without realizing how central this is to everything for him. You can’t understand Jesus without it, either. But it’s not what you and I were taught in our culture of American individualism. So there are things we need to hear and learn.

One of them is this: belonging to each other in Christ doesn’t mean you and I and everyone else is the same.

Paul’s Roman Christians are divided between Gentile and Jewish Christians, and the community is falling apart. Some kept kosher and observed Jewish festival days. Others didn’t believe they had to. Both groups derided each other, and Paul urgently calls them to live into their deeper oneness in Christ.

And hear this: Paul believes diversity is blessing and gift and isn’t erased by unity in Christ. Eat what you will, celebrate when you will, or don’t, Paul says today, as long as what you do is done in honor of Christ. Our disagreements, if they are done in Christly love and for the sake of Christ, are part of the gift of the community, Christ’s Body, our primary reality.

Do you see how different that is from what we’ve learned? Maintaining and celebrating our diversity – whatever it is, if it’s theological, or cultural, or ethnic, or genetic – is assumed in Christ, all under this deeper reality: we do not live to ourselves and we do not die to ourselves. Whether we live or whether we die, we belong to Christ. And if we all belong to Christ, we all belong to each other in all our diversity or our disagreement.

Belonging to each other in Christ also means that the community can’t afford to lose anyone.

In Matthew 18, Jesus describes a vision of God’s beloved community, where the central reality is that no one is lost. Everyone belongs.

So in the verses before today’s parable Jesus says these things:

• God’s will is that not a single one be lost.
• All 100 sheep – for God, 99 ½ won’t do, as the spiritual delights – all 100 must be together.
• Causing another to stumble in their trust in God is one of the worst things you or I could do.
• Reconciliation within the community between those who are hurt and those who did the hurting is Christ’s work in our midst.

Which leads Jesus to today’s parable.

Jesus says once and for all today what he’s said in many ways and places: forgiveness is the life of the community and it’s non-negotiable. The ruler in the story loves both servants, but one cannot forgive the other. The ridiculously high debt he had in this story was wiped away, and he thought that was just about him. But forgiving his debt came from the king’s gut-level compassion for all the king’s people, and the king expected that the forgiven one would share in that same compassion. Everyone belongs inside the grace.

This forgiveness is all about the community. Jesus’ last line literally says, “So my heavenly Father will do to you all if you all do not forgive each individual sibling from your hearts.” Jesus speaks to the plural: the community must be the source and place of forgiveness. Or the community, together, will suffer.

This isn’t an individual thing, where if you fail to forgive someone it’s between you and them. Where if you are forgiven by God that’s all that matters to you. Forgiveness belongs to Christ’s community, happens in the community, and a broken relationship between any of us affects all of us. Because we do not live to ourselves and we do not die to ourselves. Whether we live or whether we die, we belong to Christ. And if we all belong to Christ, we all belong to each other.

We have not lived this well in the West, even as Christians.

Most indigenous American cultures and indigenous African cultures live with the community as the central identity. A death or suffering affects all. A birth brings joy to all. Problems are solved together.

But in Western cultures, the individual rules supreme. Individual rights, no one gets to tell you what to do, everyone for themselves, this is the code the dominant culture in the West has lived by for centuries.

It will take you and me much prayer and contemplation together to learn a different way of being in Christ.

We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. Whether we live or whether we die, we are God’s own.

It’s all here, in Jesus’ teachings, and in all Paul’s letters. We have all we need to begin to let go of our individualism and find the joy of belonging, of interconnectedness with all our siblings in Christ.

And if we can live this, we can also bear this truth as yeast in our culture, witnessing in this polarized, “live in your own bubble” world that all people belong to each other, and no one can be lost, or we all are lost.

And that could change even a country divided as deeply as ours. Because whether we live or whether we die, we all are God’s. And God’s Spirit binds together all God’s children on this earth.

And when all God’s children start to live that way, we will all see what God has dreamed all along.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen