We know God because God has come to us, invited us into the life of the Trinity, to be changed into the radiant love that we find there.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Holy Trinity, year C
Text: Romans 5:1-5

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

Look closely at the picture. There’s a place for you.

Nearly 600 years ago the Russian iconographer Andrei Rublev wrote an icon depicting the visit of three heavenly strangers to Abraham and Sarah. The Bible claims this was a visit of God, that they actually spoke to God in these beings.

In time, the Church wondered if this was somehow a vision of the Trinity. So this icon, printed on our service folder, is often called “The Holy Trinity,” as well as “The Hospitality of Abraham.”

But look closely. The figure on the right, representing the Holy Spirit, holds her hand out toward the open space, inviting a guest to the meal. You. The one looking at the picture. Some believe a mirror was originally attached where that square is on the front of the table.

Isn’t that lovely? Looking at this visitation of God, you see yourself invited to join God’s presence.

This is the only way you can know God.

We now have 1,600 years of theological reflection since the Nicene Creed on how God is One God, yet Three Persons. None of that reflection actually lets you know God.

It’s God’s invitation to come, enter God’s life, that lets you know God’s truth, God’s reality, God’s essence. You can only really know another person by having a relationship with them, talking with them, loving them, and you can only know God that way.

In fact, our whole idea of the Trinity began with the invitation of the Incarnate One, Jesus, not with theological constructs. Jesus showed us in person the face of God, the heart of God. In Jesus, God came to you, to the world, and said, “Come, let’s know each other better.”

This is where the Church first met God’s deepest truth. It’s where you will.

Today Paul says we have access to God through Christ Jesus. Jesus welcomes you into the life of God.

Look first to Jesus, then. Hear his teachings, listen to his voice proclaiming God’s unlimited forgiveness and love for you and for all creatures, for the whole creation. Eat his meal of grace and life for you and for all. Wonder at the signs of utter welcome, the crossing of human boundaries of law and exclusion, the breaking of taboos of culture and religion, that you see in God’s Son.

And stand in awe at the inexpressible mystery of God’s love on the cross, dying to bring you and the cosmos back into God’s life. Rejoice, as we have this past Easter season, in God’s destruction of death and hatred and evil.

Jesus is the face of the Triune God for you, so you know God is good, God is loving, God is for you. Paul says today you have been declared righteous by God in Christ. God looks at you in person in Jesus and sees good, and holy, and blessed. And always says, “Welcome, beloved one. Come, know me.”

Meeting the Trinity first in Jesus then leads to a deeper joy.

You’ve heard for weeks Jesus’ promise that the Spirit of God would come to you, fill you. So, you are not alone, Jesus says, God is in you. You need not be confused or lost, God’s Spirit will guide you. And Paul says today, God’s love is poured out into you through the Holy Spirit.

Jesus, the Incarnate One, sends you God’s Spirit to make you filled with God, too. To make you an Incarnate One. To intertwine your life into the life of God forever.

How many times has Jesus said in these weeks that he and the One he called Father were one, united, and that in the Spirit of God you would be united with God yourself? Coming to this world in human flesh was the first step in God’s plan to bring you, and me, and all creation into the heart of God’s life.

So listen for the voice of the Spirit in you. As Jesus promises today, the Spirit will teach you what you need to know when you’re ready to know it, just as the Spirit teaches the Church in the same way.

This is the grace of the Holy Trinity: you are welcomed to join the Triune God’s life forever, to take your place in the circle, and the Spirit makes that happen.

That means a couple wonders, Paul says today.

First, you now have peace with God.

When humans try to imagine God it’s usually a distant, powerful, often judging god. At least in the patriarchal cultures in which we’ve spent the past 3,000 years. So when suffering and pain and evil happen, it’s easy to blame this imaginary god we’ve created, or fear this god is our enemy.

But you know God intimately now, you are filled with God’s Spirit. So you can be at peace with God. When you face suffering, you know God has suffered, too, and knows your pain. Because God’s Spirit is in you, you know that God is with you always, no matter what. And as Paul says, that’s where your hope comes from. Not that all suffering ends, but that when you grow closer and closer to God, filled with God’s Spirit, you have God’s love and strength to face it and thrive.

And as the Spirit fills us all, we together can even face the great suffering and pain of others, bringing God’s hope and love ourselves, trusting that God is working in us to bring life, even if we can only seemingly take tiny steps at a time. We are one body in Christ, across this planet. So we trust that God, working in all the body of Christ, is moving this world toward justice and mercy and peace.

And, Paul says, you also share in the glory of God.

Freed from following a god made in your own image, now that you see you have a place in the Triune God’s life, Paul says you also will share in God’s glory. In the radiance, the brightness of the life of God. In the beginning, God said, “Let us make humanity in our own image.” And now, in Christ, as you take your place in God’s life and heart, that promise begins to be fulfilled in you.

You start to look like God in your love and grace. Your heart begins to beat as God’s, in compassion and love for all who struggle. Your hands become creative like God’s, embracing like God’s. And together, as Christ’s body, we bring God’s life to this whole world.

“Come in,” the Trinity says to you, “come join us in our life. There is room for you in our dance.” So come. Enter into the life of God and be changed, be healed, be made new.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

This is the great surprise of Pentecost: the Spirit is in you, in me, making us the body of Christ, to do the ministry of Christ in the world. It’s us now.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Day of Pentecost, year C
Texts: John 14:8-17, 25-26; Acts 2:1-21

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

I think the Holy Spirit was a great big surprise for the disciples.

Not just what happened on Pentecost, though that must have been quite the eye-opener. And not what they saw in Jesus, either. In his first sermon in his hometown, Jesus declared the Holy Spirit was within him.

But on the night before his death, Jesus promised to send them the Holy Spirit, that God’s very Spirit that was in Jesus, would be in them. Would teach them, remind them of Jesus’ teachings, too.

I doubt they were expecting that at all. We forget, we read the Scriptures after the fact, and through the narrator’s eyes. We know from Acts that the Spirit who filled Jesus filled the disciples, sent the Church out into the world. The disciples couldn’t know all that. Nothing prepared them for the idea that the Holy Spirit would be God’s gift to them.

What those women and men did up till this was pretty common. They followed a teacher who spoke truth.

This was normal. A teacher would attract disciples by their teaching, and show them a way of living, reveal insights, help them understand their lives, and often God. Jesus drew these disciples to believe and follow. He showed God to them. So they focused their lives, their faith, their hopes, their dreams, on Jesus. When he was crucified and raised, they found new understandings, believed more than ever he was God as well as human.

What they didn’t realize was that Jesus was just the start. God’s plan now was to send the Spirit into them. God’s plan now was that they would do Jesus’ ministry. Be what Jesus was. Pentecost was the first evidence of this promise being fulfilled. It just exploded from there.

We, at least, should expect this. Today Jesus says something we’ve heard often: that we will, in our faith, and with the Spirit in us, do greater things than even Jesus did.

Let’s be clear, though. Jesus is talking about more than miracles.

We turn Jesus’ promise into an endless loop of conversation with little insight, talking about whether we can do healings like Jesus, and if we can’t, how can he promise greater things? We realize miracles happen every day in hospitals and clinics, that we see great things even our grandparents would call miraculous.

But if Jesus is only talking about miracles, how is it possible that we could do greater things than he? Even if we count modern medicine, even if we have stories of prayer ending someone’s disease, that’s not greater than Jesus, it’s exactly the same. Something else is promised here.

But what can we do that’s greater than Jesus himself?

Well, this surprising gift of the Spirit has made us into the body of Christ ourselves. Made you Christ. God’s anointed. Me, too. And billions more, all one body of Christ. Christ is no longer just one person who lived 2,000 years ago. Since God’s Spirit is poured out into you and me, into the world, Christ’s body is infinitely greater than just Jesus.

That means God can reach more people than Jesus did on earth, through the billions of Christs the Spirit has birthed over these 2,000 years. God can directly love more people in the flesh than Jesus did on earth, touch their lives, embrace them, feed them, heal them.

That means this body of Christ, born of the Spirit across this planet, can offer its life to the world with the same sacrificial, vulnerable love that God showed on the cross, and transform the world. This body, in such love, can dismantle systems of oppression and hatred, break down destructive patterns of racism and sexism, lead peaceful revolutions, alter the course of history, effect change that lets all God’s children live with the same rights and privileges, in peace and justice, well-fed and educated, productive and happy.

There’s nothing small about feeding thousands with two fish and five loaves. But what God can do in us, the body of Christ in the world, is so much greater, so much more transformative, so much more planetary, you can understand why Jesus says what he does.

Maybe we don’t expect this Spirit gift, either.

We can fall into a pattern of worshipping Christ Jesus and praying and focusing all our energy on what Jesus did long ago, and miss the very point of this Pentecost we now celebrate.

But the Spirit is wise, and patient, and has been working in you and in me all along, planting calls to serve, giving insights, making us into Christ’s body. You are being born into a new creation, ever more visibly a child of God, to be a part of these greater things God will do in this Body.

If Pentecost reveals anything, it’s that you are needed, you are anointed, and God’s Spirit is in you, giving birth to this Christ that we are called to be together in the world.

So don’t be surprised. Expect this. Be open to the Spirit’s moving. That’s when great things, amazing things, really start to happen.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

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