God invites you to a life of abundance and joy, living in God’s way for your life and for the life of the world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 19 C
Texts: Luke 12:32-40; Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16; Isaiah 1:1, 10-20

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

A few weeks ago we heard the disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray.

One thing he taught them: pray, “your kingdom come.” Today we hear this marvelous promise from Jesus: “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

Ask for God to rule in your life, Jesus says, and know God is delighted to make that happen.

So if we’re unaware of God’s kingdom in our lives, if we’re not following God, it’s not because we haven’t asked. We pray the Lord’s Prayer all the time. And it’s not because God doesn’t want to give this; this is God’s dream, God’s pleasure.

So, maybe our problem is that we don’t want to live under God’s rule right now. Martin Luther, teaching the Lord’s Prayer in the Small Catechism, said God’s kingdom, God’s reign, surely happens without our praying for it, but in this prayer we ask that it come to us.

Maybe we don’t have it because we just don’t want this gift.

God’s Word today is very helpful for this, because we hear exactly what God’s kingdom is.

Jesus can be confusing when he talks of God’s rule and reign. Sometimes he speaks as if it’s the life to come after we die. Sometimes he says it’s near, within us right now. Sometimes we can’t tell which he means.

Today we see the truth: God’s kingdom isn’t a geography, a place you go to. It’s simply everywhere God’s will is done, everywhere God rules and reigns. Calling God’s kingdom the “reign” of God might be more helpful, because we see we’re not talking about either here or there, but a quality of life, a way of obedience, that exists now and of course in the life to come after death.

Remember Jesus’ prayer: “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven.” God reigns wherever God’s will is done. Both now and forever. On earth and in heaven.

And today, God’s Word gives clear signs of what God’s reign looks like, when God rules as God wills.

Our first vision begins with Isaiah, who shares a message with a number of the Hebrew prophets.

God’s prophets, including Isaiah today, knew most certainly that God’s reign is anywhere justice prevails. God’s reign exists when those who are most vulnerable are protected and cared for. God’s reign exists when no one is poor or hungry or in need. This we also get from Jesus today. Jesus’ first command for living in God’s reign is to free yourself from the tyranny of your possessions, and share with those in need until no one is in need.

It would be nearly impossible to miss this vision in Scripture unless you deliberately wanted to avoid the truth. God’s longing for a world of justice and peace, abundance and life, safety and joy, fills both the Hebrew Scriptures and the writings of the New Testament. Again and again God raises up prophets like Isaiah to call God’s people to live in such a way that they look like God is truly in charge.

Today, Isaiah joins several prophets in condemning the worship life of Israel. But Isaiah and the others condemn people acting as if worshipping God is living in God’s reign. The prophets are clear: live in God’s reign first, care for those who are poor, do justice, be kind, share all you have. Then, in that life in God’s reign, your worship is worth doing, and blessed both to you and to God.

Another way to recognize God’s reign is that those who live in it live for others, not themselves.

This is what happens when you start living in justice, sharing all, loving as God loves, as Isaiah calls. Your life is focused on caring for others, looking out for others’ needs. This is God’s reign.

Jesus’ parable of the alert servants doing their jobs while their master is away is all about this. Jesus says that if you choose to live under God’s reign, you willingly put yourself under God’s service. You choose God’s work above all. And God’s work is always serving others.

Again, it would be impossible to miss Jesus’ modeling of this, or his call to his followers to be servants to each other, unless you were trying to avoid seeing it. It’s one of the deepest taproots to Jesus’ understanding of discipleship, and a clear sign of God’s reign.

The last view we see today is this gift from Hebrews: living in God’s reign doesn’t always mean seeing it in full.

This beautiful meditation on faith reminds us that faith isn’t believing in specific teachings, it’s trusting God, living in relationship with God, and following.

But living in God’s reign means trusting in God’s goodness and promise, even if you don’t see it bearing fruit all the time. The long list of faithful followers Hebrews begins today with Abraham, continues in next week’s reading, and it has one thing in common: these all relied on God and followed in trust, even though none lived to see God’s promise in Christ fulfilled.

This is the real treasure in heaven Jesus talks about. You might not see everything healed, everything restored, God’s way of justice and peace in all things, as you faithfully live into God’s reign. The fulfilling of God’s dream of a world of blessing, justice, abundance, and peace, might not happen in your lifetime. But your treasure is that God is good, and Christ will bring about this reign that God dreams for.

And as Hebrews says, it doesn’t matter what you actually see fulfilled. Just be faithful and rely on God. Or, as Jesus says, just always be about God’s work. Or as Isaiah says, learn to do good. That’s enough.

Don’t be afraid. God’s pleasure is to bring you into this reign of God, welcome you into this way of being that brings life.

The Triune God dreams of a day when this will be true in all this world, with all creatures. But God’s reign and rule are very different from earthly rule. God has no police force to keep you in line or punish you when you live otherwise. God has no army to defend God’s way of life.

God rules by invitation, and by empowering. By sending people to you to call you to this way, in hopes that you’ll see it’s the only way to find abundance and joy, even in this painful world. By going to a cross, not using power and might even to stop the death of God’s Son, so that you and the universe could see that such vulnerable love destroys evil’s power and brings unstoppable life. By sending you the Holy Spirit to empower your servant life under God.

The invitation is yours: Come, live in the joy of God’s reign, for your sake, and the sake of the world. What will you do with it?

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

When idols take up too much space in our hearts, we can neglect our relationship with God, who remains faithful even in the midst of our unfaithfulness and continually calls us back in love.

Vicar Bristol Reading
The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 18 C
Texts: Hosea 11:1-11, Luke 12: 13-21, 32-34

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

‘Idolatry’ is one of those words that sounds really biblical and serious, but also a little archaic and obscure.

When we speak of idols today, we’re usually referring to pop culture icons, people to be adored and emulated. We think of “American Idol” before we think of statues of foreign gods. But the biblical writers took idolatry seriously.

This morning we read from Hosea, a Hebrew prophet who was highly critical of idolatry in ancient Israel. Wanting to ensure that their families and their fields were sufficiently fertile, the Israelites had taken to offering sacrifices and incense to Baal, a tribal fertility god whose popularity was on the rise during the Hosea’s life. This was a betrayal of Israel’s covenant with God, who had clearly commanded them to worship no other gods. Hosea tried to convince his people that God was not very pleased about their behavior. He used his own fractured family as an allegory for the strained relationship between God and the people. We heard last week the story of Hosea symbolically naming his children Lo-Ruhamah, which means “No-Mercy,” and Lo-Ammi, which means “Not-My-People.” In one translation God says to Hosea, “Name your child Nobody, because you’ve all become nobodies to me and I, God, am a nobody to you” (Hosea 1:9, The Message).

This is the impact of idolatry: We start paying a little more attention to idols, and a little less attention to God.

We start trusting idols a little more than we trust God. These objects of adoration and devotion become a source of life and meaning, and eventually God become a nobody to us. Now maybe you and I have never experienced a Canaanite fertility god having such an impact on us, but Baals aren’t the only kinds of idols.

The apostle Paul reminds us in Colossians that greed is also idolatry (Colossians 3:5).

The insatiable desire to have more and more material stuff, the secret envy of other people’s lifestyles and possessions, the endless endeavor for wealth and success… These are idols with which we are more familiar. They can start to take up too much space in our hearts, to demand an ever-increasing percentage of our effort and focus. Greed is idolatry because enough is never enough. When we get caught up in the idolatry of greed, we can end up like the wealthy landowner in Jesus’ parable, achieving material security but disregarding our dependence on God. This man has forgotten his own mortality, and all the supposed ‘treasure’ he has stored up is good for nothing when he comes unexpectedly to the end of his life. The problem is not that he paid attention to his physical life; it’s that he neglected his inner life. The problem is not that he was financially successful; it’s that he did not address his spiritual poverty. The problem is not that he became a somebody in his community; it’s that he let God become a nobody in his life. He let his wealth and savings play a role that only God can play. He found his identity in his own merit, instead of his being a beloved creation of God. And in the end, those idols left the landowner empty-handed.

At the conclusion of the parable Jesus says, “Where your treasure is, your heart will be also.” So make sure the treasure you give your heart to is the real deal.

Don’t commit your time, your energy, your loyalty, your adoration, your trust to treasures that can wear out or be stolen – treasures that need bigger and bigger barns just to store them. In the end, those things cannot be depended on. Eventually idols leave us wanting, Whatever our particular ‘treasure’ looks like – career success, personal appearance, intellectual knowledge – These can be good things in our lives, but they cannot be God over our lives. We can’t stake our lives on anything but God.

When we allow idols to take the place of God, God is heartbroken.

Hosea’s description of God’s response to the people’s idolatry is striking. He expresses God’s heartache as that of a parent whose children have betrayed their relationship. God is like a fiercely protective father, remembering how he held his children’s hands as they learned to walk, lamenting that the children have now rejected his care. God is like a tender mother, reaching down to feed her children, keeping them safe at every moment, grieving that her children have now forgotten that it was she who sustained them and raised them.

Hosea’s words describe a God who is devastated by the people’s unfaithfulness, and yet, this is what God decides: “I could never give up on my children. I could never destroy them.”

This is not a God of destruction and punishment, but a God of life and forgiveness, a God who has wrestled with the reality of human brokenness and has decided to be a force of grace and healing. Those people who chose idols over God, they aren’t called “Not-my-people” after all. They are called “Children of the living God.” They aren’t called “No-Mercy.” They are called “Complete Compassion.” God roars like a lioness calling her cubs back to her. No matter how far away from her they run, she will guide them home. God’s faithfulness is not like the faithfulness of humans; it never wavers. God never leaves. “I am the Holy One in your midst,” God declares (Hosea 11:9). God always desires to be in deeper relationship with us and continually draws us back.

We need to notice the things in our lives that crowd out God’s loving voice, that strain our relationship with God, and to stop giving those things so much attention and power.

What are the idols that are gaining too tight a hold over your heart, the things that are being treated like precious treasure but will never actually be as satisfying as they claim to be? Don’t build bigger barns to give those things more room in your life.

Invest instead in the parts of your life that make you more aware of the presence of the Holy One already in your midst.

Be attentive to God’s voice in your heart. Nurture the habits that help you deepen your relationship with God who loves you – whether that’s silence, worship, prayer, fellowship, service, or just… rest… God, the source of abundant life, is always with you. God, will never leave you, and will never leave you empty.

Amen.

Just pray as Jesus teaches you, instead of talking about it, and you will know the life and love of God’s Holy Spirit in you.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 17 C
Text: Luke 11:1-13

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

Maybe we need a different word for what Jesus calls prayer.

Comparing what we mean by prayer and what Jesus means, we could be talking about completely different things.

When we hear the word “prayer” we nearly always think of specific moments where we speak or think specific things. Kneeling by a bed at night-time, saying thanks at a meal, praying pre-chosen words together. All situations where we think the point is to ask things of God.

At least that’s how we talk about prayer. Countless conversations about whether prayer “works,” that is, you get what you ask for. As if God were a great vending machine. Great platitudes about prayer. “God sometimes says no,”, or, “God knows better than you what you need,” we quickly repeat. And that’s our best effort. How often have people in pain been given the impression that if they’d had more faith, or if they’d prayed better, they would have gotten what they wanted?

We probably can’t find a better word to use than “prayer.” But at least the disciples had the right idea. They didn’t ask Jesus for a theory of prayer, or explanations why it does or doesn’t “work.” They didn’t want to talk about prayer, like it was some object of study.

They said, “please teach us to pray.”

That’s what we want, too.

Jesus has been praying by himself when the disciples asked. He did this a lot, went off to quiet places to be in prayer. And rabbis generally would teach their disciples to pray.

But here’s why Jesus is the one we want to teach us: he prayed, but he was the Son of God. One with the Father and the Spirit in the Trinity. If prayer is only asking God for things, why would the Son need to pray? How can God ask God for things? Unless prayer is something deeper.

When Jesus the Son prayed, he re-entered the inner dance of the Trinity. We can’t know what it’s like to be both human and part of the Triune God, but clearly Jesus regularly needed to reconnect, to commune with the Father and the Spirit within God’s life as he had done since before creation.

So there’s Jesus’ first lesson: open yourself to being in the presence of God. That’s prayer. No rules, no platitudes about outcomes. Just get away and be open to God. And the second lesson is that Jesus says the answer to every prayer, the outcome of every connection we have with God, is the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Of course, the Holy Spirit is always within us.

But prayer is opening our hearts and our minds to that truth. Being aware of it. Living in it.

This is why Paul tells the Thessalonians to pray without ceasing, and the Ephesians to pray in the Spirit at all times. If prayer is limited to you or I saying particular words in a particular posture at a particular time, and only asking for things, there is no way to pray all the time.

But if prayer is being open to the gracious, loving Spirit of God that is within you, literally every second you could be in prayer.

Teach us to pray, we ask Jesus. And he shows you: open your heart and mind to the Holy Spirit of God in you. Know that no matter what, God is with you and loves you. Live with God, talk, be silent, dream, complain, laugh, cry, or delight to live in awareness that God is in you and will never leave you.

Now you’re praying, Jesus says.

And Jesus shows three paths to enter this openness to God’s Spirit within: ask, search, and knock.

“Ask” easily traps us, of course, in our limited view of prayer. It’s what we mostly think prayer is. And Jesus says asking is good, he encourages it. But Jesus instantly refocuses us by saying the answer to every ask is the Holy Spirit. Whether you pray for the health of others, the pain of the world, your own struggles, God’s answer every time is “I am with you.” Does God intervene, bring healing, ease people’s burdens? Certainly. But that’s God’s call, and on God’s time. So ask, Jesus says. But when you do, your answer is to know God loves you and is always with you.

“Search” is a wonderful grace note in this list. When was the last time you spoke of prayer as “searching”? But Jesus is clear: search for God and you will find God. Since the Spirit is always God’s answer, you will find God literally in your heart. And if your search is for meaning, purpose, guidance, hope, direction, all the better. You’re on that journey, that search, with the loving Spirit of God at your side, encouraging, strengthening, giving wisdom, comforting, laughing, crying. You will find when you search, Jesus says. But the journey with the Spirit will also be wondrous grace.

And please “knock” on God’s door, Jesus says. It will always be opened to you, and you’ll rediscover that God is living inside you in love and grace. God’s door you’re knocking on is the door into your own heart, where you connect to the life of the Triune God through the grace of the Spirit.

Whenever we talk about prayer, we miss the point. Just pray, Jesus says. You’ll get it.

Whether it’s formal time you set aside with carefully chosen words, or communal prayer such as we do here, or the profound prayer of our silence in worship, or the times you simply walk in your days in awareness of God with you, prayer is lived, not talked about.

And when you stop talking about prayer and step into the reality of the Holy Spirit in your life and heart, all the questions and anxieties we all want to put on prayer go away. You learn to trust in God’s goodness and love, and find God’s grace in all outcomes.

Because what more do you need than to live your life in the dance of God’s life, with the Holy Spirit in you, loving you and guiding you all the way?

Teach us this, O God, until we learn it in our bones and live it in our heart.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen