You are already filled with the Spirit of God, who moves in you with every breath, filling you, changing you, leading you into the life God has always wanted for you and for this world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Baptism of Our Lord, year B
Texts: Genesis 1:1-5; Acts 19:1-7; Mark 1:4-11, with references to 1 Corinthians 6 and 12

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

In the beginning, God breathed on the waters of chaos.

God’s Spirit, like wind, moved over the waters, and, as light was separated from darkness, land from waters, God opened a space for the creation.

In that beginning, God created humanity in God’s own image, and God breathed again, into these frail creatures. God’s breath filled them, and as they took breath, they breathed in God. God still breathes into the creation, into us. Our every breath breathes in God’s Spirit, exhales God’s Spirit.

When Jesus rose up out of Jordan’s waters, baptized, and saw the Holy Spirit descending, this wasn’t the Spirit’s arrival in his life. Human, like us, from his first breath he breathed God’s Spirit. Yes, Jesus was also God’s Son, the Second Person of the Trinity, one with the Father and the Spirit, yes, that, too. But in his humanity, he was filled with the Spirit. We all are.

So what happened at the Jordan? The presence of God’s Spirit was witnessed publicly. Jesus saw the Spirit, heard his Father’s voice, was confirmed as God’s beloved Son. So as Jesus headed into the desert and then his ministry, he went reassured that the Spirit was with him.

In the beginning, God breathed life into us. But that doesn’t always mean we know it.

In Acts today, Paul comes to Ephesus, and finds disciples of Jesus. But when he asks them if they received the Holy Spirit when they became believers, they say, “We haven’t even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” We haven’t even heard that there is a Holy Spirit!

Yet with every breath the Spirit of God had always moved in them. They just didn’t know it. So Paul teaches them, and baptizes them in the name of Jesus. Then, as always in Acts, after their baptism Paul lays hands on them, and the Holy Spirit fills them. As at Pentecost, they spoke in tongues, they prophesied. They knew the Spirit was in them.

But the Spirit had always been with them. Naming that, calling it out of them, opened them to see the Spirit’s presence and gifts, just like Jesus.

It isn’t just Genesis that says this about the Spirit. Paul knew it, taught it. Maybe even shared it with these disciples.

Paul told his friends at Corinth in his first letter that faith itself is evidence of the Spirit’s presence. He said no one can confess Jesus as Lord if the Holy Spirit isn’t with them. (12:3) So the fact that these Ephesian disciples believed in Jesus proved the Holy Spirit was already there.

But he also could’ve told them a deeper wonder: God is never “out there,” but within. He could have said, as he also did in that first letter to Corinth, “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit?” (6:19)

Their very bodies are where the true God lives! That’s always been their reality. They just didn’t know it.

“We haven’t even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.”

Is this our problem? Lutherans talk a lot about Jesus, the Christ, about the cross and resurrection. We talk about and pray to the Father and the Son a lot. But the Spirit doesn’t often get much attention from Lutherans.

That may be because the Holy Spirit is God’s wild card. The Spirit is the uncontrollable God in the world, who moves where she wants, fills whom she wants, does what she wants. The Spirit breathed over the waters of chaos at creation, and still breathes into this world, and there’s nothing we can do about it. She will fill all people, no matter what they believe, will inspire and give gifts to all people, no matter who they are.

We’ve always been a little afraid of this unpredictability of the Holy Spirit. It’s easier to nail down doctrinal truths, tighten up our theology. There you can feel a little secure.

But calling on the Holy Spirit, who can’t be controlled? You’d have to be a little reckless even to try.

But don’t you know, Paul says, that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit?

How have we let that truth be buried, this astonishing, miraculous proclamation of Paul? We spend our lives looking for God. We talk about God, make theories about God, we try to get all our teachings in order.

But in our dark hours of the soul, when we’re lost and afraid and can’t see through the brambles of the woods that have overgrown our path, none of that helps at all. When you’re terrified, or despairing, or angry, or grieving, or desperately lonely, or feeling guilt, words and theories do nothing. You need to know if God is with you, and nothing more.

But don’t you know, Paul says, that God is in you already? That your body is God’s temple? There’s no place to “go” for God. The Spirit of God lives in you, Paul says. The Hebrews say, you know this in your every breath.

In the beginning of your life, God breathed into you, and you were filled with the Spirit. You became God’s house.

But no, you say, we know science. Breathing, respiration, that’s a natural function. All animals do it. You take in oxygen, it feeds your body, you exhale carbon dioxide. It’s a mechanical function of a living organism.

OK, say our Hebrew ancestors. Maybe so. But this is also true: your breath is God’s breath. Your spirit is God’s Spirit within you. God has taken up residence inside us, has always been there. There’s no other temple.

John might not have been right about his baptism.

He distinguishes between his – a symbolic washing away of sin after confession – and the baptism in Christ, which, he says, is a baptism in the Holy Spirit.

But if the Holy Spirit was in all those people who came to John at the Jordan, if she brought them there in the first place, John didn’t realize the Spirit was also in his baptism.

Our baptism, like John’s, is also a washing away of sin and evil, and every day we renew that washing, every day we seek God’s forgiveness and cleansing, we start afresh.

But unlike John, in our baptism, the Church, as in Acts, asked the Holy Spirit to come upon us. The Spirit of wisdom and understanding. The Spirit of counsel and might. The Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. The Spirit of joy in God’s presence.

But the Holy Spirit isn’t waiting for this asking, waiting to enter a person until the Church says so. We ask the Spirit to come knowing she’s already here, so we name that, recognize that anew. We need to hear that there is such a thing as the Holy Spirit in us, and then we are able to see what happens.

So breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe of God.

You’ve been doing it your whole life, but now, like those folks near Ephesus, you know what you’re doing. You are living in God, and God is living in you.

Your baptism was the public announcing of this grace. Your washing in the waters of God, the waters God breathes upon, wasn’t the first time you were forgiven, either. But it is your washing, your cleansing in God. Just as it’s a sign that God’s Spirit is in you.

So breathe of God. Exhale into God. You are never alone. You are God’s beloved child, and God is well pleased with you. With each breath, the Spirit is moving in you, even when you don’t know it. The Spirit’s gifts are yours, as close as your breathing and sighing.

And now, following Jesus’ steps, it’s time to move from the waters, cleansed of sin, filled with the Spirit, with God’s voice still ringing in our ears, to do our work and life as God’s beloved children.

But not alone. Never alone. Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit?

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

“God meets us where we are, as we are, and speaks to us in words we can understand. Christ’s star shines differently in each of our lives, leading us to where God calls. 

Vicar Jessica Christy
The Day of Epiphany
Text: Matthew 2:1-12

They watched the stars for their signs. They spoke the language of constellations and comets. They believed they could read the movements of the heavens to better understand events on this earth. We call them Wise Men, or Magi, but they were astrologers, and they came to Judea because they saw something unusual in the sky. These men bearing gifts for the newborn king were foreigners, with a foreign religion, and strange, foreign ideas about how to make sense of the world. The idea that there could be anything right or real about their astral predictions seems absurd, even blasphemous. We think astrology is silly now, but back then, it was evil to the people of Israel. The Bible repeatedly condemns those who claim to be able to discern God’s will by looking at the sky. The Magi weren’t just different; their difference was dangerous. And yet – they were looking at the stars, so God came to them through the stars. God had a plan for them, so God met them where they were, and spoke to them in a language they could understand. God called to Zechariah in the temple, to Mary in Nazareth, and to the Magi in a star chart.

This might sound unsettling, that God announced the birth of Christ through pagan divination, but it is an act that is full of promise for us. It says that God comes to us where we are, as we are. We don’t need to be more righteous, or more pious, or more learned, or more faithful to see Christ. We don’t need to be someone else in order to have a relationship with God. We only need to be ourselves, and Christ will find us, and speak to us in words that we can hear. We see this when Jesus explains the kingdom of God to peasants in Galilee using parables about things from their daily lives, teaching about eternity with seeds and sheep and weddings. We see this on Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit allows everyone in the crowd to hear the good news being proclaimed in their native language. We see this when Paul stands on the Areopagus, and defends the Gospel to the leaders of Athens using the terms of Athenian philosophy. We see this in scripture itself, where the words of Jesus, who spoke Aramaic, are preserved in Greek, so the good news could spread like wildfire across the Greek-speaking world. And we see this with startling clarity when God speaks to a group of foreign astrologers through an unusual star.

And today, God speaks to each of us in our own lives, using the language of our own hearts. We know that we meet God in this place, in our worship and the sacraments, but the Spirit is not bound by these walls. The God who made all things is present in all things and calls out to us through all things. Parents can meet God in their children. Musicians can meet God in their music. Scientists can meet God in their research. Lovers of literature can meet God in poetry. We find God in art, and in nature, and in our vocations, and in our relationships with each other. The light of Christ can flash forth out of anything. And so, the star that rises in my life to lead me to Christ is not going to look the same as the star that God sends for you. We all encounter God in different places, and hear God’s call in different words. It can be disorienting to realize how many paths there are to God. We can get distracted by jealousy or judgment when we see that someone else’s star shines differently than our own. We can be suspicious and possessive, wanting God to speak in only the language we understand. But in the end, it is a joyful thing that God is revealed to us in so many ways, because it means that all of us are surrounded by signs of God’s love, no matter who we are or what we do. It means that no one is unworthy, no one is unreachable. It means that we all can see God at work in our lives, if only we are willing to look.

But God doesn’t do all the work for us. Even though God meets us where we are, wherever we are, God doesn’t let us stay there. When God gives the Magi a sign in the stars, they have to get up and travel down a long road to see the promised child. They leave the comfort of their homes with no confirmation, no advance word, just the inner certainty that something special has been revealed to them. They’re willing to be strangers in a strange land so that they can pay tribute to the new king themselves. And that experience transforms them. God defies the expectations that they had at the beginning of our journey. Because as it turns out, the Wise Men don’t read the stars quite right. They head in the right direction, but they take a wrong turn at the very end. They’re looking for a king, so instead of going to Bethlehem, where the star points, they go to the palace in Jerusalem. They think they’re seeing the star clearly, but their sight is distorted by their bias. They need to change if they are going to understand the message that God is really revealing to them.

But they do change, despite their initial mistake. When the star leads them to an ordinary house in an ordinary little town, they aren’t confused or dismayed. Matthew says that they are overwhelmed with joy. What God is doing in them is bigger than their preconceptions. The revelation that God is giving them is far better than anything they expected to see. Instead of clinging to their assumptions, they’re delighted to discover that they were wrong. These proud, wealthy men who once looked up at the sky and claimed mastery of its movements now fall to their knees before an unremarkable child. These are powerful people. Mere days before, they marched into a foreign city and announced their desire to see the newborn king, apparently with every expectation that their wishes would be obeyed, but now they gladly hand over their riches to a little boy who has no obvious glory or grandeur. Instead of a star, they now see Christ, the light to all nations, and their understanding of the world is forever changed. The king they first met is exposed as a fearful tyrant, and the real king is a poor boy with no crown but the crown they have seen for him in the heavens. God has touched their hearts and transformed their lives – and they return home by a different road.

Finding God in our lives is only the first step. It’s a big and wonderful step, but it’s just the beginning. If we’re going to know Christ, we can’t just observe his star from a distance then move on with our lives. Like the Magi, we have to respond. We have to be ready to learn and to change. The real question is not where we will see God, but if we will follow where God leads. Will we have the courage to leave the lives we know, so we can get up and go see the promised king? Will we have the faith to keep following the road, even when it doesn’t lead where we thought it would? Will we be able to set aside our expectations and our pride to kneel before the Christ child, and offer up our gifts in service? It’s a tall order, but the good news is that we don’t just get one chance at this. Christ is always being born in us and around us, and God is always inviting us to witness to his presence. His star will keep rising for us, again and again, until we at last come to Bethlehem, where we will lay down our treasures before Christ, and find ourselves overwhelmed with joy.

In the infant Christ, God is so powerless that Jesus cannot even name himself. The name that is above every name must be breathed into being by someone else. Christ became helpless for us, and meets us in our places of greatest weakness.

Vicar Jessica Christy
The Feast of the Name of Jesus
Texts: Philippians 2:5-11; Luke 2:15-21 

The Apostle Paul was in prison when he wrote his letter to the church in Philippi. He had crossed the wrong people as he shared the gospel, and now he was in chains, waiting to learn his fate. He didn’t know if he would live or die – and the traditions of the church say that the epistle to the Philippians was the last letter that Paul wrote before his execution in Rome. The words in this letter may come from the apostle’s last days on earth. He is completely at the mercy of others. But in spite of his captivity and his helplessness, Paul writes about gratitude and joy. Philippians is his happiest letter. He is thankful for all that he has experienced in witnessing to Christ, and he has made his peace with whatever happens to him next. Either he will die for his faith and join Christ in heaven, or he will walk free and continue his work. Whatever is coming, whatever relief or whatever suffering, it will be for the glory of God, and so he can write about joy from a jail cell.

It’s an amazing attitude for him to have, but Paul doesn’t have to find this peace for himself. He says that he has learned it by following the example of Jesus. And he finds strength in that example by recalling the words of a familiar song. That’s what we read from Philippians today. It’s called the Christ hymn, and it may well be one of the very first statements of the Christian faith. Paul is quoting it, and Paul’s letters are the oldest writings in the New Testament, so these words have to be one of the very earliest Christian documents that we have. It’s not long, but it says what it needs to say. It tells of Christ’s preexistence with God, his birth as a human being, his death on a cross, his exaltation from the grave, and his glorious reign over all creation. It’s a familiar story. But the first stanza uses some compelling language that didn’t make it into any of our creeds. It says that although Christ Jesus “was in the form of God, he did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave.” Before entering this earth, Christ had all the power in the universe. All things were his to command. All mysteries were his to know. He could have held fast to this power, could have used it for his own advantage, could have forced all of creation to bow before him. But the hymn tells us that’s not how God views power. The misuse of power belongs to humans, not to God.

We all know how naturally we human beings exploit power. In the public realm and in our private lives, we have all seen people pursue power just for the sake of being powerful. And the state of our world testifies to how rarely that power is used wisely. All of us could easily name people who we’ve seen misusing their status to benefit themselves and hurt those below them – but we can’t just point fingers at others. It’s safe to say that all of us have, at some moment, abused power ourselves, even if it was a just childish impulse like laughing at a less popular kid on the playground or bossing around a younger sibling. Our world is full of hierarchies, and we are so anxious to protect our place within them. Falling down a pecking order is embarrassing at best and dangerous at worst, and so we cling to what we have.

Even the gospel can be a means by which we try to set ourselves above one another. As Paul writes to the Philippians, “Some proclaim Christ from envy, rivalry, and selfish ambition, not sincerely or out of love.” In our grasping hands, even the good news can be a tool for declaring who’s in and who’s out, who’s righteous and who’s sinful, who wins and who loses. We can use Christ to try to get ahead, to prove that we are better than others, to show that we and those who think like us are the real Christians. That’s obviously missing the point, but the church has long demonstrated how easily we turn the gospel into a cudgel for beating others into line. If we can gain advantage from something, our instinct is to take advantage of that thing, and the gospel is no exception.

It’s all because we’re afraid. Life is so tenuous. Everything we know can be upended in a single moment. Power is how we try to run from our frailty. We flee helplessness with everything we have. We run from the thought that our fate could be outside our control. But we all know that’s how it really works. All of us are under the control of countless forces that give us little say in how we live our lives. We’re subject to the demands of our fragile bodies. We’re enmeshed in economic systems that dictate our fortunes. We live under the authority of the planet, and geopolitical powers, and social trends, and the whims of the people around us. So little about our lives is truly under our control. And we hate that. We want to be autonomous, invulnerable, free. So we strive and strive to hold on to something that will make us the masters of our own destiny. For some of us, that thing is the pursuit of physical fitness. For others, it’s money. It might be influence, or knowledge, or professional success, or the perfect family – whatever it is that makes us feel like we’re in control of our lives. But nothing can free us from our vulnerability. Nothing can free us from our mortality. So we keep on trying, and are never satisfied.

But Paul shows us that we can be free of all this anxiety. We all know that Paul wasn’t a perfect man, but when push came to shove, when his life was on the line, he found peace. Remembering that Christ made himself helpless, even to death on a cross, he discovered the grace of helplessness for himself. Because helplessness is where we find Christ. Paired with this letter written by a man in prison, we read a story about Christ being named and circumcised as a tiny infant. We think of the newborn Jesus as sweet and beautiful, and of course those things were true of him as they are true of all babies, but here we are called to witness his absolute vulnerability, his absolute dependence on others. The second person of the Trinity, the living Word who existed before time itself and through whom all things came into being – that God made flesh has given up the ability to even name himself. It’s absurd. The Word cannot say his own name. The name that is above every name must be breathed into being by someone else. This is how God chose to come to us. This is how we meet Christ, and how Christ meets us: weak, fragile, human.

Christ was equal with God, but he poured himself out and became equal with us. He embraced our weakness for himself. He experienced our birth and our life and our death for himself. And then, when God raised him up from death, Jesus lifted up the rest of us with him. It is in Christ that our human weakness is known and loved, and it is in Christ alone that our human weakness is overcome. The way out of our fear is not in grasping for power that can hold our weakness at bay, but in following the path of Christ and choosing to embrace our vulnerability. We want flee from our frailty, our vulnerability, our mortality – but we don’t need to run away, because our helplessness is where God knows us best. We have to open ourselves to weakness, even to death, to feel Christ at our side. But when we learn to humble ourselves is when we can sing for joy in spite of our frailty, in spite of our fear, in spite of our chains. That’s when we know Christ is right there with us, holding us in love, and promising us that weakness is the way to God’s true power, and that the way of the cross is the way to eternal life.

The only time we have to live is right now, in this present moment, where God comes and fills the time with grace and love; so will we be kind, will we love, will we be Christ, today, right now?

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The First Sunday of Christmas, year B
Texts: Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:21-40

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 December 31^st, Two thousand seventeen. What direction are you looking?

Are you looking to the past today? It’s the day to do it. Websites, news organizations, magazines, everyone does their lists this time of year. The best and the worst of 2017 are chronicled and numbered for our entertainment, and sometimes our depression.

But are you also doing a list for 2017? Regrets, loesses, bad decisions? Remembrance of loved ones? Joys, love found, moments of happiness?

It’s December 31^st, Two thousand seventeen. Are you looking forward?

That’s usually tomorrow’s job, January 1st. Are you joining millions of others making resolutions for 2018, plans for being a different person this time? Are you looking forward with dread over impending personal crises or what might happen in the world?

Or are you looking forward in hope? Are there things planned you can’t wait for, coming events that will bring you joy?

Time is tricky.

We think we live time in one direction, past to present to future. But often we get trapped outside of our present moment. We linger on the past, or dwell on the future, and don’t live in our present. So on this arbitrary day that someone decided ended our 365 day trip around the sun, we’re either focused backward or forward. But it’s often how we live our whole lives.

What if we learned to really live in the present?

In the fullness of time, Paul says, God was born among us.

Actually, Paul says “When the fullness of time had come,” so he’s saying the birth of Jesus happened at just the right time in world history, when everything was ready, at exactly the right moment for God’s Incarnation among us.

But maybe there’s more we can see here. Maybe “the fullness of time” isn’t just a question of a moment in history.

What if Paul is saying that God fills time by coming? That is, the timeless God from before even the birth of the universe enters our time, our history, in this moment, and fills it with God?

Time itself would be transformed. There’d be no past, no future, there’d just be now, filled with God.

We know a little about this, because we find that fullness here.

There is a mystery about our worship here. Externally, there’s a certain amount of time it takes. We rarely finish Eucharist before one hour and fifteen minutes. This is longer than a lot of other Christians, and some wonder why we do this.

Because: when we’re in here we lose track of time. That is, we lose track of the chronology of time. In this place, we live in time that is filled with God, and we don’t perceive how the clock is running. We don’t check our watches, we don’t drum our fingers on the pews. (Well, maybe once in a while some of us do; we’re human.)

But in this place when we worship, we are here. We’re not living in the past. We’re not living in the future. In this moment we are simply here.

In this place, for this time, we are filled with God. It is the fullness of time here. It is all the time we need. It is outside of chronological time. And in this space, opened up by God in our midst, we meet God’s fullness. God is born among us. We receive God Incarnate in Word and Meal, in each other, in prayer and song. We are filled.

But if God comes to us in the fullness of time here, could we experience this outside of these walls, too? Simeon must have.

Simeon lived with a promise that transformed every moment of his life.

However old he was when he heard it, he lived confident that he would not die until he saw God’s Messiah.

Think of that. Every day might be the day. For however many years, however many decades, this day might be the one. Every day he’d look into each face, treat everyone with grace and compassion because, who knows, this could be the Messiah.

Imagine what a full life that would be for us!

Every day you get up with joy, because this could be the day. Every person you see, you love and respect, because this could be the one. Every moment you are aware of who you are, where you are, what you are, because you don’t want to miss the coming of God’s Christ in the world.

There’s no time to regret the past. No time to worry about the future. Just the joy of being in a world where God is coming to bring life and love, and knowing you’ve been promised to see that coming.

What do we miss when we don’t live such a life?

If we spend our days living in the past, dwelling on past losses or victories, fretting about past actions or missed opportunities, what are we missing in the fullness of the moment we actually are living in?

If we spend our days anxious about what is to come, or anticipating a good thing, or wishing we could become someone we aren’t, what are we missing in the fullness of the moment we are actually living in?

If we spend our days in a present that isn’t really present, distracted by entertainment or news or whatever else we’re chasing, what are we missing in the fullness of the moment we are actually living in?

And not just what. Who are we missing? Who are we not listening to, or loving, or being kind to, or simply being with, when we’re not “here” in our present? Are we missing Christ?

It’s December 31^st, Two thousand seventeen. Today, right now, is the fullness of time.

And we are promised what Simeon was, that we will see God-with-us.

Today, right now, this is the day that the Lord has made. In this moment, in this fullness of time, God is here, blessing us with hope and life and light.

The past can teach. We learn from mistakes, remember loved ones, recall graces. But we can’t live there. The future can direct. We hope for good, plan to grow and change, look forward to what God is doing. We can’t live there, either.

But we can be Simeon today, right now, and watch every moment for Christ’s coming. We can be love right now. We can show compassion and do kindness, right now. We can look in every face for the face of God’s Christ, right now.

Today, in the fullness of time, is all the time we know we have. And here, filled with God, right now, is the only time we can really know what it is to live.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen