Live your witness of peace and hope, even in suffering wounds for your faith; others will see, and ask, and you can say, “It’s yours if you want it.”

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Seventh Sunday of Easter, year C
Texts: Acts 16:16-34; Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21

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

What in the world happened to that jailer?

Working for the Roman authorities in Philippi, one night he goes to bed as usual, and before sunrise, he and his entire family are baptized Christians. Joining Lydia and her friends in the newly born congregation.

What happened? You know the basics: Paul and Silas in prison, singing hymns at midnight, an earthquake, all the cells opened, chains unfastened. The jailer sees open doors and despairs. Taking his own life would be preferable to what punishment awaited him for failing his duty to Rome.

Paul and Silas’ assurance that all are present and accounted for should end the story. He secures the chains, relocks the doors, and wipes his brow in relief.

But that didn’t happen. He fell trembling before Paul and Silas, brought them outside, and called them his masters! “Masters,” he asked, “what must I do to be saved?”

What did he see in Paul and Silas, in this bizarre early morning, that prompted that question?

You need to remember once again what his question means.

The word translated “saved” means “saved.” But it also means “rescued, healed, kept from harm.” We’ve got centuries of practice restricting our hearing of the English word “saved” to life after death. We’re so deeply ingrained in seeing salvation exclusively that way that our gut reaction to this translation rarely opens us to a deeper reality. This is often just told as a story of someone saved from damnation.

But here’s something absolutely clear: Nothing Paul and Silas show this jailer speaks of life after death. This time they’ve been beaten and jailed for disrupting the local economy, not for their theology. Freeing an oppressed slave woman from being the organ-grinder’s monkey for her owners led the owners to get Paul and Silas arrested. Paul took away the goose that laid their golden eggs.

The jailer knows nothing of their theology. He didn’t even hear their midnight hymns; the earthquake awakened him.

“Masters, what must I do to be healed, to be rescued?” can only refer to one thing: what he sees in that moment in Paul and Silas. That tiny glimpse of their lives makes him say, “I want what you have.”

And what did they have?

As the jailer comes onto that broken-open cellblock, and hears Paul saying, “Don’t hurt yourself, we’re all here,” he sees two beaten, bleeding men at peace, calm, and somehow in control of all the other prisoners.

Do you see how remarkable this is? Paul and Silas respond to an illegal beating and jailing with prayer and song that mesmerized the other prisoners. How much pain must they have been in, and yet, their trust in Christ led them to beautifully and calmly sing hymns during the night.

Somehow, their peace and calm radiated to the others even after all the doors were opened. Paul speaks for the prison now – “we’re all here.” He’s in charge, not the jailer. They took control of the prison without whips or rods, keys or chains.

And no one ran. That’s nearly unimaginable.

The jailer hasn’t ever experienced anything like this. Anyone like these two. All his rules about how people act, all his confidence in his office and authority, even all his fear at being accused of dereliction of duty, fall at his feet like the prisoners’ chains. Here is true authority, these two bleeding men standing with hope and confidence, everyone following them.

Of course he said, “I want what you have.”

Can you imagine being such a witness to God’s love in Christ?

Not witnessing by trying to convince others of something you believe. Witnessing by your very trust and confidence in the midst of your great suffering. The jailer saw peace and faith and hope in Paul and Silas he never imagined was possible.

Can you imagine living your faith in such a way that you disrupted a local economy of oppression and servitude? Can you imagine living your faith in such a way that you got pushback from the authorities, and even suffered? Can you imagine living your faith in such a way that without you saying a word, people noticed, and wanted what you had?

What would it take for someone to come to you and say, “I want that. What do I need to know, what do I need to do, to find such healing and peace, rescue and freedom?

This is the result of following Christ: the love we know from God is known in us.

This is what Jesus prays today, that we be so joined into the love of God we have known in Christ, so joined to the life of the Triune God, that our lives witness even without words to this inner hope, this inner peace, this inner love, that is ours regardless of circumstances.

Maybe you won’t be beaten for your witness, lying wounded in a prison cell, your feet chained. But you will be wounded for your witness of Christly love, in other perhaps less visible ways.

That’s the time to sing your hymns. To pray. To rejoice in the Spirit of God that is with you always, no matter what. To live in praise and hope. Not so others will notice. But like Paul and Silas, because that’s where your heart is. Filled with the peace of the Spirit of God, so you live that, radiate that.

And even if you don’t do it for others to see, it’s very possible someone might come to you and say, “How can I get what you have?”

And then here’s your joy: you get to say what Paul and Silas said.

“If you want it, it’s yours.” That’s it. No test for the jailer’s theology. Trust in Christ Jesus and you’ll find a life we know, they say. The jailer will even learn to trust that this life won’t end with death. But for now, all he needs is to trust Christ and he will know the life Paul and Silas know.

Today we heard the very last words of the Bible, the final witness: “Let everyone who is thirsty come. Let everyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.” There are no exclusive rights to the Tree of Life, no rules for who is written in the Book of Life. The Spirit and the Church simply say, “Come.” It’s yours.

That’s evangelism worthy of the word. To live a life of faith and trust that causes others to recognize their own thirst and ask for a drink. And then to say, “Come, it’s all yours. Come, find life.”

Pray this happens in you, in us. So everyone knows this life is theirs now and forever.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

In the Ascension, the Triune God draws human life into the inner life of God and makes it possible for the Spirit of God to live in our humanity, joining us with God forever.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Ascension of Our Lord
Texts: Luke 24:44-53; Acts 1:1-11; Ephesians 1:15-23

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

It’s strange: what God does today is opposite of what we think.

Look at Luke’s second Ascension account, in Acts. Jesus is “lifted up,” a “cloud [takes] him out of their sight.” And the disciples stand there, gaping up at the sky.

And why not? The focus of their life for three years, God’s presence in their lives, has just . . . well, they don’t quite know what he just did. So there they stand.

Until two beings in white robes appear and ask the obvious: “what are you doing staring into heaven?”

But for most of human history, people stared up into the sky for God.

We know “heaven” isn’t a location reachable by space shuttle, above a sky dome that keeps the waters of creation at bay. But before our age, nearly every human culture who worshipped gods envisioned their home as “up”, above the clouds, on top of mountains.

And even with our scientific understanding, we’re still looking up for God. Humanity still tends to view whatever god they worship as “apart,” somehow far away. Even Christians too often default to this.

Now, the Church claims that God took on human flesh in Jesus of Nazareth. Came near.

In this Palestinian human male of 2,000 years ago, we believe the Creator of all things is found. As a human being, Jesus was the focus of the lives of all who followed him. He was their beloved Master, their gifted Teacher. He bore God’s healing and creative power. He embodied God’s love and forgiveness. In his brutal crucifixion and utterly astonishing resurrection, Jesus’ believers ultimately saw him as not just human, but God Incarnate.

Having him back in these forty days after Easter was a grace and a blessing. Still teaching, still loving, Jesus was back and all was well. They knew where God was again – in Jesus. Once again, Jesus was their focal point.

And then he was carried away. Gone. For a brief moment, God was with us. And now we’re back to looking at the sky. We’re back to God up there, us down here, just as we’ve always thought.

“You’ve completely missed the point,” those white-robed messengers say.

It’s not a question of God’s presence leaving you, it’s the opposite. Just wait, and God’s Spirit will come upon you, just like with Jesus.

This is the first astonishing truth about the Ascension: in taking Jesus, the embodied, Incarnate God-with-us, away from walking on earth, the Triune God will no longer be embodied in just one person, but in all of humanity.

This is foundational to Luke’s understanding. Everything he claims about Jesus comes from the Holy Spirit of the Triune God flowing into Jesus, from his conception to his baptism, to his ministry, to his death and resurrection. And in Acts, Luke says God’s Spirit is doing exactly the same thing with the Church. As Jesus is the Incarnate One, filled with the Holy Spirit, so now is the Church.

This is the heart of God’s plan.

As long as Jesus remains here, only he could be the focal point of faith, and only where he was in person. Even raised from the dead, everyone would look to Jesus for help, or to do what God needs doing.

But God lifted Jesus back into the inner life of the Triune God, Paul says, made Jesus the Christ, so Christ’s body now could become the Church, and the Incarnation now could happen in humanity.

In all the diversity of human race and gender, gifts and cultures, God is known. We don’t have to look up, or believe God has gone away. Paul says we are given the Spirit of wisdom that reveals to us God working in all things, embodied in all people, with more hands and voices and feet and skills and gifts than we can count, bringing God’s grace and love to all.

But there’s another mystery about the Ascension.

Jesus of Nazareth, God-in-human-flesh, is lifted up into the life of the Triune God.

That means not only is God embodied in humanity through the Holy Spirit in the Church. Humanity is embodied in the life of God.

This is such deep mystery that we can’t look at it without confusion. In the Ascension, the Triune God has not only brought the Christ back into in the inner dance of the Trinity, the seat of divine love from which Christ came. The Triune God has brought the Incarnate Jesus into the life of God.

Jesus doesn’t lose his body when he ascends, leaving it lying on the ground. That’s all we know. We don’t know what that truly means in the life of the Trinity. But Jesus, the Christ, crucified and risen, still bearing the scars of his torture and death, was carried into the life of God. Human life in some way has been brought into the life of God for eternity. And surely even God is changed.

You see why it’s a waste of time to look anywhere for God, other than amongst us?

In the Ascension God made the Church possible. We are literally the body of Christ, the Incarnation, in this world. We’re not witnessing to something that happens “out there,” apart from us, when we speak of God’s love and grace and salvation and healing. We witness it with our very bodies and hearts and voices and hands.

And somehow, in ways we dare not try to imagine, in the Ascension our humanity lives in the heart of God. We are so joined to God that nothing can separate us.

Today’s not a day of farewells and absence. It’s the day when humanity and the Triune God fully join together in the new creation God is planning, in the healing of all things God so deeply desires.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

God needs to crack your heart – the center of all you are – open, and pour God’s word of love inside; then everything is transformed.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Sixth Sunday of Easter, year C
Texts: Acts 16:9-15; John 14:23-29

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

Consider a new sidewalk, six inches thick, six feet wide, a stream of solid concrete running the length of a block.

There’s no green; whatever warm earth was there is covered up by cold, hard, walking surface. But during the winter the earth resists, heaves, and a tiny crack is made. A seed falls into that crack. In spring, against all odds, a plant rises from the midst of that barrenness, eventually breaking it. Life happens. Green reaches to the sun.

That’s what God did to Lydia on the banks of the river. Luke says God “opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul.”

God opened her heart. Now, the ancients understood this better than we do. We divide heart from head, often pitting them against each other. For the Greeks, the heart was the center of your being, where everything – mind, spirit, emotions, thoughts – dwelt. God opened Lydia up at her very center, to make her eager to hear Paul.

That means this conversation with Paul wasn’t merely a question of convincing Lydia’s mind; her whole being was opened to hear. Her mind, her feelings, her desires, her hopes, everything that made Lydia Lydia was opened to hear about Christ and the Good News of God’s love.

There is a Hasidic story that speaks of this.

“The disciple asks the rabbi, ‘Why does Torah tell us to “place these words upon your hearts”? Why does it not tell us to place these holy words in our hearts?’ The rabbi answers, ‘It is because as we are, our hearts are closed, and we cannot place the holy words in our hearts. So we place them on top of our hearts. And there they stay until, one day, the heart breaks and the words fall in.’”^[1]

If we stop separating heart from head, stop acting as if we are divided beings instead of the unified, beloved children of God that we are, we can understand the rabbi. Whether it’s a closed mind, or a closed-off love, we know what it is to be resistant to God’s Word.

We need God to break open our hearts – sometimes through suffering, sometimes through compassion, sometimes through confusion, sometimes through insight; there are many ways God does this – and open us up to eagerly hear what Christ is calling to us.

We need God to break us open like Lydia so God’s Word of grace and life and love falls into our hearts. When that happens, when we are broken open and God’s Word drops in, when we realize we follow a vulnerable God, whose own heart was broken open for the world, whose very woundedness heals the universe, we grow into people willing to be broken open for the sake of the world.

And when God does this, everything changes. Healing begins. Our lives are transformed.

Look at Lydia. She’s an outsider, a “God-worshipper,” someone who’s found hope in the God of Israel, but isn’t yet Jewish. Together with other women – probably both Jewish women and God-worshippers like Lydia – she comes to the river to pray because as women they aren’t considered part of the synagogue, they didn’t count, and weren’t welcome to pray there. God has already opened her heart to know God through these other women, and now as Paul and his companions come, God opens her even more.

And see what she becomes: this story is the birth of the Philippian congregation, and Lydia almost certainly is the head of that congregation. The congregation Paul loves so much, whose letter is still beloved to us, all this rises from Lydia’s openness. From her heart, her being, cracked open by God, the life in Christ that grows from there.

This is the transformation we saw with Peter and Paul last week, too.

Their whole beings were cracked open by God in Christ to see things differently, to center their lives on following the Spirit of God, wherever the Spirit led. Jews and non-Jews, all were loved by God in Christ, they learned. And Christ’s mission exploded across the Mediterranean world.

Even today, Paul’s center, Paul’s heart is broken open again. This wasn’t a head decision to go to the women gathered by the river. There’s no strategic advantage in that culture for Paul to convert women. He could have, as he often did, just gone to the synagogue. But he goes here, is opened to these women, and God makes a new congregation that becomes a source of deep love and grace for Paul in his later imprisonment.

You can’t know what your transformation will be like until you’re open to God doing it at all.

So today pray for these two things: first, that Christ give you the peace he promises the disciples today, a harmony that will bring your whole being – mental, spiritual, emotional, physical – into one center, one heart.

And then pray that God crack open that center, that heart, breaking through both your rational and your emotional objections, anything that is closed off, so you can, like Lydia, “eagerly hear” what Christ is calling to you. The breaking of your heart will hurt. Vulnerability isn’t always fun. Having all your defenses knocked down and your protections moved aside will be frightening. But the opening made in your heart will allow God’s Word of life and love, sitting on the outside, to fall through the cracks into your center and start to grow and blossom.

Lydia had the right idea: let’s find a beautiful place, maybe by a river, maybe in this room, and pray together. And God will make an opening for the Word to flourish in you, for your healing, and the healing of all things.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

[1] Jacob Needleman, as told to Parker Palmer, and related by Palmer in “The Broken-Open Heart: Living with Faith and Hope in the Tragic Gap,” Weavings XXIV:2, May/June 2009.