Blog – Page 271

(Not Yet) Revealed

November 5, 2017 By Vicar at Mount Olive

“What we will be has not yet been revealed.” On this All Saints Sunday, how do we live in the mysterious “not yet” of our life together with God? And what do we know about God’s presence with us now?

Vicar Jessica Christy
All Saints Sunday, year A
Texts: Revelation 7:9-17; Psalm 34:1-10, 22; 1 John 3:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12

Let us pray. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of every one of our hearts be acceptable to you, our rock and our redeemer. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Beloved, what we will be has not yet been revealed. But what we do know is this: when God is revealed, we will be like God.

That seems like a strange sort of promise for us to hear, on today of all days. On this festival when we celebrate the communion of all saints, it would make sense for us to proclaim with as much as much certainty as we are able what it will be like for us to experience full union with God. Mystery is unsettling, especially in the face of eternity. We long for certainty about what awaits us after death. We want a clear picture of what has happened to our departed loved ones. And yet we read 1 John and are confronted with a great mystery of faith. We know what we will become, but the fullness of that has not yet been revealed. Our faith promises the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting, but scripture gives us precious few details about how we will experience that fulfillment. In hope, we await perfect peace and joy and praise in God’s presence, but the rest is hidden from our gaze.

For centuries, much of the church has acted as though the purpose of the gospel were to teach us the right way to get into heaven, and what to expect once we make it there. But if that was really meant to be the center of Jesus’ teachings, he didn’t do a great job of communicating that. He seemed a lot more interested in how we live with each other here, how we participate in God’s reign on earth. When Jesus died, he broke open the jaws of Hell, ascended to heaven, and returned to Earth, but he didn’t then grab his disciples to tell them the essential facts they needed to know about the afterlife. Instead, he forgave them, and fed them, and told them to go forth and do likewise. The work of faith is to love God, love each other, and trust that God will take care of the rest. Christ’s promises of heaven light our way, but they do not shine so bright as to blind us to the world around us. It might not always seem that way, but the mystery of heaven is truly a gift. We have been given the gift of mystery so that we can live together more fully on Earth. And we have been given the gift of mystery because we know that what awaits us is more wonderful than we could ever comprehend.

So what we will be has not yet been revealed – but we know what we are now, and that knowledge is amazing. As 1 John tells us, we are God’s beloved children, now. The great God of the universe, the God who lights the spark of distant galaxies and who breathes life into all the secret places of the earth, that source of all being knows me, and knows you, and calls us child. “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God.” See what love, that in this vast cosmos we should be made in God’s own image and loved as God’s dearest creation. And also we know that, when God carefully created each and every one of us, God placed something of Christ within us, something shining and eternal that flashes forth whenever we encounter the living Trinity. John says that when God is fully revealed to us, we will discover that we are like God, for God has been alive within us all along. We can’t begin to imagine what that will be like, but we know that it is already true, just waiting to be unveiled. And because we know these things, we know that nothing – not sin, not sadness, not even the grave, can separate us from the love of God. We are God’s children now, and we will be God’s children forever.

What we will be has not yet been revealed, but we know that we are embraced by God’s blessings. When Jesus pronounces the beatitudes, it’s the first time in the book of Matthew that we see him really speaking to his disciples. He has called them, and performed miracles in their presence, but these verses are his very first teachings. They eagerly follow this new wonder-worker to a mountaintop to hear what he will tell them, and he says: blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are the meek, the merciful, the persecuted, and all those who hunger for a better world.

In the places of weakness, dissatisfaction, and despair where the world sees only curses, Jesus proclaims blessings. He says that the kingdom of heaven is found in the lives of those who live in the service of others. Not “theirs will be the kingdom of heaven” but “theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” When we see peacemaking and justice-seeking, we know that God is with us. When we see gentleness and mercy, we know that God is with us. And when it feels like all is lost, Christ comforts us with the promise that our places of helplessness and sorrow and fear are the places that God attends to with the greatest care of all. When it’s joyful and when it’s painful, we know that our life together is blessed.

What we will be has not yet been revealed, but we know that we are members of the risen body of Christ. Not only do we know this, but we experience it every week when we gather around the table for communion. The shared body and blood of Christ knit us together, all of our different lives and bodies into marvelous, divine union. In Christ, all the walls that separate us from each other are breached, and we become one. Here, we find wholeness in each other.

But it’s more than that. It’s not just the people we see here and now around us. The body of Christ transcends all space. At the table we are part of the same body and blood as believers around the world. People we have known for our whole lives and people we will never meet. People who sit beside us and friends who are far away. People we love with all our hearts and people we’d honestly rather have nothing to do with. All of us are part of one another. John’s vision of the faithful gathered before God’s throne gives us a glimpse of the glory of this universal communion, when Christ joins us to every nation and language on earth.

And the body of Christ transcends all time. That same body and blood that Jesus shared on the night he was betrayed is shared here today, just as it is shared each time Christians gather for the meal. In Christ, we are joined to every saint who ever has been and ever will be. The disciples who heard Jesus first say the words, “This is my body, given for you” – they are here around the table. Every martyr, missionary, and mystic enters into our midst through the Eucharist. People of ages past, popes and reformers, farmers and kings, all share the Lord’s Supper with us. Our loved ones who have gone before us are also members of the living body of Christ. Bob, Donna, Ed, Catherine, and all the other beloved saints we remember today – they are truly present whenever we break the bread and pass the cup. And unknown generations to come, they too are here in the mystery of this meal. Across every age, all of us are members of the same body, sharing the same communion. Death is no barrier. We do not yet know the fullness of eternal life, but eternal life is already here. It always has been here for us to taste and see.

What we will be has not yet been revealed. We do not know what we will be, but we know what we are now, and for now, that is enough. We are the beloved, blessed body of Christ. In Christ, nothing can separate us from God, and nothing can separate us from each other. We are one people, knit together in one communion, in the mystical body of Jesus Christ. So come to the table. Everyone is invited – and everyone is here.

Amen.

The Olive Branch, 11/1/2017

October 31, 2017 By office

Click here to read this week’s issue of The Olive Branch.

Freeing, Not Freedom

October 29, 2017 By Pr. Joseph Crippen

Christ’s death and resurrection break all the powers of the world, break the chains that bind us and all people: it’s time to look at our current chains and pray for the truth that will free us.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
Reformation Sunday
Text: John 8:31-36

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

When Martin Luther despaired whether he was worthy of God, his confessor sent him to God’s Word.

Luther’s anxiety over God’s judgment, his fear that he’d never be good enough to find salvation in Christ, persisted until his confessor and superior, Johann von Staupitz, ordered him to become a professor of the Scriptures. His job now demanded him to read deeply of God’s Word, and his confessor knew that in God’s Word, Luther would find freedom.

“If you continue in my Word,” Jesus says, “you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” Luther found freedom in Christ when he began to “continue” in God’s Word, abide in it, live in it. The chains of fear and doubt that bound him, and bound many in the Church, were broken by the truth of God’s Good News in Christ. Five hundred years later we stand here in the joy of God’s love, knowing it is unearned and freely given, because Martin lived in God’s Word until he found the truth that freed him, and millions since.

But Jesus says, “The truth will make you free.” It still is freeing.

Later in John, Jesus promises the Holy Spirit will come and teach us new things, when we are ready to bear them. Jesus understands that God’s truth frees continually, over time, even centuries. That’s why we’re asked to continue in God’s Word ourselves, live in it.

Our freedom from the chains that bind us – our sin, our fear, death itself – comes from Christ’s resurrection life that still breaks the world’s powers. But, as with all the work of the Holy Spirit, this is still happening. Luther wrote that we are not yet righteous, but we are being made righteous. We are not yet healthy, but we are being healed. In the same way, we are not yet free, but we are being freed. God is still working on us.

Freedom, therefore, is not a past event, a static idea we hold on to, package, print on signs and bumper stickers. This is a real problem in our country. In the name of freedom we do all sorts of wicked things that deprive others, including ourselves, of true freedom. We don’t understand our political freedom as an ongoing, living thing, a process of becoming free, that ever needs truth to break new chains.

It’s also our problem in the Church.

We’re tempted today to loudly proclaim Luther’s great insights, to box them up as our truth. To act as if these truths that give us life are all the truth there is, all we need. But over five hundred years the truth of God’s free grace, received by us in faith, has often become a formula for who’s in and who’s out rather than a freeing gift. Over five hundred years we’ve defended these theologies at all costs instead of living into them as continuing ways God frees us.

This also leads us to act as if there are no new freeing truths God intends for us. Five hundred years ago, when Luther began to find truth in God’s Word, one of the first things he did was post 95 theses, questions for debate and discernment. We date the beginning of the Reformation to that moment when Luther began to raise for the whole Church the truth he was finding in Scripture.

But there are other chains still binding us today, chains binding God’s people, binding the Church, binding the world. There are still more truths in God’s Word that call us out. There are still more things we need Christ’s resurrection life to break open, so life and healing can happen, so all people are free.

So when are we going to start posting our theses?

We hesitate to do this. We’d rather celebrate a truth of 500 years ago. Maybe because we fear what might happen. The Church splintered into hundreds of fragments because of Luther and the other Reformers. Good people on both sides struggled with the changes, even feared them. The cost of lifting up these freeing truths from Scripture was the disruption of communities and parishes, families and nations. Even war and killing. Maybe war won’t come if we raise God’s truths, but we don’t know the consequences.

But it’s time we realized that, like Martin, we need to go back into God’s Word and live there. If we truly abide in God’s Word, Christ promises we’ll hear truth from God that will be freeing, just as then. That will bring Christ’s Church into newness of life, just as then. And that will also run the risk of being perceived as threatening, something to be shut down, just as then.

What theses do we need to raise up today?

Here are some I think are overdue for conversation and discerning.

It’s time we took seriously the radical nature of the Triune God as the Scriptures proclaim and face the sin of our patriarchal use of language for God here at Mount Olive and across God’s Church. Our stubborn clinging to an ancient and careless use of language risks both heresy and deep exclusion. God’s truth in Scripture is that the Triune God is beyond gender, and includes all gender. When we persist in speaking and singing language using “he” and “Lord” and “King” when speaking of God’s fullness, when speaking of the Triune God, we deny God’s truth. It is also true, even if some here have not experienced this, that many women find such patriarchal language a barrier to experiencing or hearing God’s Good News of love and grace in Christ. We cannot misrepresent God. And we cannot leave up barriers to people finding God’s love and grace. So we need live in God’s Word and discern God’s truth meant to free us from these chains.

It’s time we admitted the Church’s deep and abiding relationship with structures of power, and our permitting that culture to shape our Gospel life. We willingly adopt the world’s power structures as if they were Christian, God-given, instead of modeling at every level of our lives the Scriptural truth that those who follow Christ give up power, lose themselves for the sake of others. We can no longer remain silent in the face of powers that oppress and kill and destroy, or we are endorsing them, as we long have. But we also can no longer ignore when our own life operates by the same rules, instead of by the way of Christ’s cross. We need to take seriously what it would be to be peacemakers. We need to take seriously what it means to divorce ourselves from our marriage to money. We need to take seriously our own power abuses, our own oppressive acts, in the name of the Christ who frees us.

It’s time we had an intentional conversation about the place of Christian faith in a pluralistic world. We cannot live in a defensive posture with people of other faiths, or live as if the important question is that we’re right and others are wrong. Not with God’s expansive desire proclaimed throughout Scripture to draw all peoples, every child, every creature, into God’s life. As Christians this won’t be easy, but if we live in God’s Word, Christ promises we will find freeing truth.

These are just three that I would nail to a door for discussion. There are certainly more, and many that people here could name. On this five hundredth anniversary of Martin Luther raising questions for discerning, let’s all abide in God’s Word and raise new theses, based on what we find in God’s Word. Let’s raise these for us and for the whole Church, and never stop, so God’s truth can keep making all free.

We’re not fully free yet. But the Holy Spirit is freeing us, by God’s Word.

If Christ is risen from the dead, not even death has power over us. No chains can cling to God’s children on earth – not the chains of racism, or sexism, or classism, not the chains of hatred or oppression, not the chains of abusive power or wealth, not the chains of violence and killing – none of these chains need bind the people of earth.

Because they can all be broken through the life and love of God in Christ. We have Luther to thank that we know, more than anything else, that God loves us eternally. That at the cross, and then the empty tomb, we see the deepest truth about God’s love for us and for the world.

And we have Luther to follow as an example, that we all find our way back into God’s Word and live there, abide there, dwell there, praying that the Holy Spirit guide us to truth that will free all people. Until the whole world finds healing and hope and freedom.

In the name of Jesus. Amen