We are all dying, and today we face that so that we never forget it in the days to come; in that truth we discover the deeper truth of God’s life and grace that, in the cross, raises us now and always into God’s eternal love.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
   Ash Wednesday
   text:  2 Corinthians 5:20b – 6:10

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

So, how quickly will you wash off the cross of ashes from your forehead?

It’s always the question, isn’t it?  Will you be where you don’t want people looking at it?  Do you care?  Our children always had an eagerness to get washed off pretty soon after church.

I’m not sure it matters.  But this does: how quickly will you forget that you had a cross of ashes on your forehead?  How soon will “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return” be shunted to the attic of your brain, not to be thought again?

Our world is terrified of that truth.  So terrorists have power over whole nations: we’re afraid to die and they threaten us with death.  So billions of dollars of profit are made by companies all over the world promising pills or creams or foods or clothes or cars they say will make us young, invincible.

Yet we come here today and have burnt ashes drawn in the shape of a torture device on our foreheads.  How strange is that?  We come here today to be told we are dust, we are going to die.  We don’t think like the world.

Unless we wash this out of our minds as quickly as off our foreheads as soon as we get home.  Our challenge is to understand and embed in our hearts and lives what it is we do today, why that cross, those words, need to stay with us as if they were permanently visible not only to us but even to others.

The world considers such talk of death morbid.  It’s really the opposite.

Living in a culture and society where every single person will die one day, every one, yet where our emotional, financial, physical, and mental energy is expended in vast amounts to deny that reality, that’s morbid.  If you’re on the Titanic and it’s going down, it’s not morbid to recognize something’s amiss.

For us, there is joy and hope in what we do today.  To look at a little child with a cross of ashes on her forehead next to an octogenarian with the same is to see that both share a humanity, a life, that is finite.  That’s truth.  But to look at those two together is also to see in that cross shape that this life they share is grace and light.

Placing a cross of ashes on ourselves doesn’t make us mortal, it reminds us we are.  Facing or not facing our mortality isn’t an option, whether we die young or old, of natural causes or violent tragedy.  We are going to die.  There is great freedom accepting this truth.  Then we can learn how to live with it.

Paul talks of reconciliation with God: our acceptance of our mortality is also reconciliation with truth.

Whether or not the Triune God came to the world in Christ Jesus and ended the power of death, death has always been reality.  It’s part of God’s creative process: things live and die and return to the earth to feed other things that live and die.  Denying this only leads to anxiety, frustration, fear.  Today we reconcile ourselves to the truth that we are mortal, we die, and we accept that.  We began in dust, we return to dust.

Yet we belong to the Triune God, creator of all that is, who knows what to do with dust and ashes, who creates life out of dust and ashes from the beginning.  In the reconciliation Paul talks about, this God did enter our deadly existence, took on our reality, dust to dust.  Ashes to ashes.  When Jesus was born he was born into our death, well before the cross.

But our great mystery is the cross, the shape of the ashes on our forehead.  In willingly taking on an evil death, God somehow killed death.  That’s what we realize at the empty tomb: our truth is still there, we die.  But it is all changed now.  Jesus takes our mortality, our sin and brokenness and death, and dies with it.  When he rises from death, he brings us, too, joining us to the immortality of the Triune God.

We still die.  But we die as people joined to the eternal life of the Triune God forever, so death isn’t an end but a beginning.

That’s our joy today.  Knowing the whole truth, we can live.

We are marked with a cross of ashes in the same place we received a cross of oil at the font, the same place we mark a cross of water each time we remind ourselves of our baptism.

This cross marks our whole lives, not just our foreheads: in ashes, for we are dying.  In oil, for we belong to the Triune God.  In water, for we are washed and made new.  And everything’s different.

Paul describes the suffering and difficulty the believers have faced: afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, sleepless nights . . . it’s a long list.  Yet in this reconciliation in Christ’s death and resurrection, we live that list very differently.  We face the same pains and tragedies anyone does.  But we face them as people willing to accept them, as people who know these are not the final truth about us.  They have no power over us.

We are seen as impostors, then, Paul says, as people who live as if there is a greater truth others can’t see.  And there is, so we are not false but true.

We are unknown to the world, Paul says, confusing, odd, because we live both in the truth of our mortality and in the truth of God’s eternal love.  But we’re well known to God.

We look as if we have nothing, yet we have everything; we face sorrow head on but are rejoicing.

And we are dying, we claim it, accept it, but we are really alive in God now and always.

The cross is always on our forehead, on our bodies, on our lives.

There’s a story, I don’t know if it’s true, that some church used lighter fluid to burn palms for their ashes, and the petroleum residue gave slight burns to the people’s skin, so that even after they washed there was a bright red cross for a day or so.

We won’t have that bright red mark after we wash.  But the cross on us is just as indelible.  It reminds us that our journey of faith travels through suffering and hardships, even to death, with God’s grace and hand supporting us, giving us life.  Our cross reminds us that the cross of Christ transforms our deadly truth, so we find hope in despair, light in darkness, life in death.

This cannot be washed off of us, thanks be to God.  The waters of baptism have covered us forever in this life in the midst of death, this green shoot out of our ashes.

So we rejoice, and hope, and live.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

We are all dying, and today we face that so that we never forget it in the days to come; in that truth we discover the deeper truth of God’s life and grace that, in the cross, raises us now and always into God’s eternal love.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
   Ash Wednesday
   text:  2 Corinthians 5:20b – 6:10

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

So, how quickly will you wash off the cross of ashes from your forehead?

It’s always the question, isn’t it?  Will you be where you don’t want people looking at it?  Do you care?  Our children always had an eagerness to get washed off pretty soon after church.

I’m not sure it matters.  But this does: how quickly will you forget that you had a cross of ashes on your forehead?  How soon will “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return” be shunted to the attic of your brain, not to be thought again?

Our world is terrified of that truth.  So terrorists have power over whole nations: we’re afraid to die and they threaten us with death.  So billions of dollars of profit are made by companies all over the world promising pills or creams or foods or clothes or cars they say will make us young, invincible.

Yet we come here today and have burnt ashes drawn in the shape of a torture device on our foreheads.  How strange is that?  We come here today to be told we are dust, we are going to die.  We don’t think like the world.

Unless we wash this out of our minds as quickly as off our foreheads as soon as we get home.  Our challenge is to understand and embed in our hearts and lives what it is we do today, why that cross, those words, need to stay with us as if they were permanently visible not only to us but even to others.

The world considers such talk of death morbid.  It’s really the opposite.

Living in a culture and society where every single person will die one day, every one, yet where our emotional, financial, physical, and mental energy is expended in vast amounts to deny that reality, that’s morbid.  If you’re on the Titanic and it’s going down, it’s not morbid to recognize something’s amiss.

For us, there is joy and hope in what we do today.  To look at a little child with a cross of ashes on her forehead next to an octogenarian with the same is to see that both share a humanity, a life, that is finite.  That’s truth.  But to look at those two together is also to see in that cross shape that this life they share is grace and light.

Placing a cross of ashes on ourselves doesn’t make us mortal, it reminds us we are.  Facing or not facing our mortality isn’t an option, whether we die young or old, of natural causes or violent tragedy.  We are going to die.  There is great freedom accepting this truth.  Then we can learn how to live with it.

Paul talks of reconciliation with God: our acceptance of our mortality is also reconciliation with truth.

Whether or not the Triune God came to the world in Christ Jesus and ended the power of death, death has always been reality.  It’s part of God’s creative process: things live and die and return to the earth to feed other things that live and die.  Denying this only leads to anxiety, frustration, fear.  Today we reconcile ourselves to the truth that we are mortal, we die, and we accept that.  We began in dust, we return to dust.

Yet we belong to the Triune God, creator of all that is, who knows what to do with dust and ashes, who creates life out of dust and ashes from the beginning.  In the reconciliation Paul talks about, this God did enter our deadly existence, took on our reality, dust to dust.  Ashes to ashes.  When Jesus was born he was born into our death, well before the cross.

But our great mystery is the cross, the shape of the ashes on our forehead.  In willingly taking on an evil death, God somehow killed death.  That’s what we realize at the empty tomb: our truth is still there, we die.  But it is all changed now.  Jesus takes our mortality, our sin and brokenness and death, and dies with it.  When he rises from death, he brings us, too, joining us to the immortality of the Triune God.

We still die.  But we die as people joined to the eternal life of the Triune God forever, so death isn’t an end but a beginning.

That’s our joy today.  Knowing the whole truth, we can live.

We are marked with a cross of ashes in the same place we received a cross of oil at the font, the same place we mark a cross of water each time we remind ourselves of our baptism.

This cross marks our whole lives, not just our foreheads: in ashes, for we are dying.  In oil, for we belong to the Triune God.  In water, for we are washed and made new.  And everything’s different.

Paul describes the suffering and difficulty the believers have faced: afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, sleepless nights . . . it’s a long list.  Yet in this reconciliation in Christ’s death and resurrection, we live that list very differently.  We face the same pains and tragedies anyone does.  But we face them as people willing to accept them, as people who know these are not the final truth about us.  They have no power over us.

We are seen as impostors, then, Paul says, as people who live as if there is a greater truth others can’t see.  And there is, so we are not false but true.

We are unknown to the world, Paul says, confusing, odd, because we live both in the truth of our mortality and in the truth of God’s eternal love.  But we’re well known to God.

We look as if we have nothing, yet we have everything; we face sorrow head on but are rejoicing.

And we are dying, we claim it, accept it, but we are really alive in God now and always.

The cross is always on our forehead, on our bodies, on our lives.

There’s a story, I don’t know if it’s true, that some church used lighter fluid to burn palms for their ashes, and the petroleum residue gave slight burns to the people’s skin, so that even after they washed there was a bright red cross for a day or so.

We won’t have that bright red mark after we wash.  But the cross on us is just as indelible.  It reminds us that our journey of faith travels through suffering and hardships, even to death, with God’s grace and hand supporting us, giving us life.  Our cross reminds us that the cross of Christ transforms our deadly truth, so we find hope in despair, light in darkness, life in death.

This cannot be washed off of us, thanks be to God.  The waters of baptism have covered us forever in this life in the midst of death, this green shoot out of our ashes.

So we rejoice, and hope, and live.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

We cannot often see the true child of God within ourselves; our companions on the journey witness to what they see as together we all are being transformed into the likeness of Christ.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
   The Transfiguration of Our Lord, year B
   texts:  Mark 9:2-9; 2 Kings 2:1-12; 2 Corinthians 4:3-6

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 was a really bad week for Simon Peter.

“Six days later,” Mark says today.  Well, six days ago Peter declared his Master, Jesus, was the Messiah. Moments later, having told his Master that Messiahs can’t suffer and die, Peter was called Satan, a stumbling block.

He must have felt sick that week.  One of the inner circle, a leader of the twelve, we imagine him keeping scarce at the back of the group, avoiding eye contact with Jesus.  How do you recover from such a blow?  What kind of a person did Peter think he was in those painful, sad days?

Now, six days later, as Peter woke on this day, his Lord called to him, and James, and John.  Just like always.  “Come with me.”  Tell me: what does Peter feel about himself now?  Elated to be included again, as if nothing had happened?  There must still have been fear and doubt.  His confused speech up on the mountain later that day showed he was still unsure, still misunderstanding Jesus’ mission.

The real question is less what Peter thinks of himself, and more what Jesus thinks of him.  Peter’s misery, self-doubt, sense of failure are only his point of view.  Yes, Jesus rebuked him when he tried to block him from the path that Jesus must walk.  Apparently that didn’t mean Jesus despised or rejected him.  Jesus saw his true value and worth; so he kept coming back to Peter, calling him to lead.

This day reveals true identities.

Jesus is shown in his divine glory; his truth as Son of God is witnessed by three disciples.  Peter’s true identity is leader of the twelve, a rock Jesus trusts.  At this point, convinced he’s a failure as a disciple, Peter doesn’t see it, but Jesus does.  So when Jesus needs his three leaders with him on the mountain, of course he brings Peter.

Jesus isn’t changed on this mountain, his true identity is revealed.  So is Peter’s.  Peter needed Jesus to see him for who he truly was.  It may also be why Elisha, knowing his master was leaving with the Lord, needed to stay with Elijah, so he could have assurance he was the true successor.  We need others to see us for who we truly are when we can’t.

What is the truth about Peter, then?  Elisha?  You, me?  Who knows it?

We often worry about how we fail, convinced we’re not good enough, that others are better.  Is this our truth?  Many times we feel as if others judge us, don’t think well of us.  We’re never too far from that child within that remembers such fear from our school days, fear we’re the only one who doesn’t fit.  We can pretend – and we do – that we don’t have problems, but most of us know that dark night of self-doubt and sense of failure.  Is this our truth?  Peter’s experience of those six days is familiar to many.

Yet Jesus saw the truth about Peter when he couldn’t.  Elijah saw the truth about Elisha when he couldn’t.  Who sees the truth about us?  Our answer emerges on this mountain, both who we truly are and how we see that truth ourselves.

It all has to do with who is with us.

We need sisters and brothers in faith to look at us and see the child of God we are, to see what God sees.

Jesus knows he’s headed to the cross, but today he goes up a mountain, shows his true glory, and speaks with the two great leaders of Israel, Elijah and Moses.  Jesus needed this, strength and encouragement from the great prophet and the great law-giver for the path to the cross that is ahead.

So why bring three relatively incompetent disciples along?  Not so they can tell others, he makes that clear.  Not until the resurrection, he says, but even then they don’t do much with it.  After the resurrection this is pretty unimportant.  A mountain light show is nothing compared to the Lord rising from the dead.  The early preaching Luke records and the earliest writing we have from Paul, don’t mention this day on the mountain, only the cross and empty tomb.

What if Jesus just needed these three as companions, to see the truth about him?  The truth about who he is, before his path takes him to a place that doesn’t look at all like God’s glory?  He’s preparing Peter and the others to face the truth of the cross by giving them a glimpse of his true glory.  Now, whenever they look at Jesus, no matter how awful it gets, they can remember who he really is.

That seems to be our role as companions to each other in this journey of faith.  We look at each other and no matter what we see outwardly, we look deeper and see a blessed child of God.  Then we witness to that, so it can be known.

This is how Jesus helps us when we think poorly of ourselves in our darkest hours: we are given each other to see the real truth.  So when any of us despairs because we’re sure we’re not good enough, not cutting it, someone here can look at that one and remind them they see a glorious child of God.

You see, we are being transformed into people who look like Christ Jesus.

That’s the promise Paul makes in the verses a little before our second reading today, words the Cantorei are singing for us.  Yet, just as with Jesus’ transfiguration, it’s not really that we are being changed.

We already are people who look like Christ Jesus, people who in baptism are made into the image of God.  At least, we look like that to the Triune God who loves us.  God sees the fullness of who we are, of what we are becoming, as Jesus looked at Peter and saw a great leader, a special disciple, essential to spreading the Good News.

Our job is to remind each other of this, to look for this image of God in each other, even if it’s not easy to see outwardly.  Jesus had every reason to look at Peter’s failings, his cowardice, his confusion, but he looked deeper to the real truth.

So we look at each other.  Beyond the failings, beyond the sin and brokenness, we look into the eyes of our sisters and brothers and see the image of Christ.  We as a community look at each other with the eyes of God, the loving eyes of the One who died for us and now lives.  We share these loving eyes of God and call out this joy we see in each other.

As we are transformed into Christ, more and more people will be able to see this in us.

God sees us this way fully, but of course none of us show this to the world fully yet.  As we learn to see Christ in each other, we begin to expect it in each other, and even start to see hope ourselves that it is our real truth, not that other that binds us.  When this happens, our truth of being the image of Christ will become more and more obviously visible on the outside.  God’s forgiveness truly heals us and changes us into better people, people like Christ, and we learn to see this.

The more we see, the more it becomes real to us.  The more it becomes real to us, the more the rest of the world can see it.

Paul says God shines in our hearts to give us knowledge of the glory of God in the face of our Lord Jesus Christ.  That same divine light shines in our hearts to help us see this transformation and glory in each other.

We might feel like Peter many days.  But thanks be to God, who gives us companions in our journey of faith here, with God’s light in their eyes and God’s love in their hearts, people who see us for who we truly are, until, with the grace of the Holy Spirit, that’s exactly what we see in ourselves, and it becomes our visible witness we live in the world.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

We cannot often see the true child of God within ourselves; our companions on the journey witness to what they see as together we all are being transformed into the likeness of Christ.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
   The Transfiguration of Our Lord, year B
   texts:  Mark 9:2-9; 2 Kings 2:1-12; 2 Corinthians 4:3-6

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 was a really bad week for Simon Peter.

“Six days later,” Mark says today.  Well, six days ago Peter declared his Master, Jesus, was the Messiah. Moments later, having told his Master that Messiahs can’t suffer and die, Peter was called Satan, a stumbling block.

He must have felt sick that week.  One of the inner circle, a leader of the twelve, we imagine him keeping scarce at the back of the group, avoiding eye contact with Jesus.  How do you recover from such a blow?  What kind of a person did Peter think he was in those painful, sad days?

Now, six days later, as Peter woke on this day, his Lord called to him, and James, and John.  Just like always.  “Come with me.”  Tell me: what does Peter feel about himself now?  Elated to be included again, as if nothing had happened?  There must still have been fear and doubt.  His confused speech up on the mountain later that day showed he was still unsure, still misunderstanding Jesus’ mission.

The real question is less what Peter thinks of himself, and more what Jesus thinks of him.  Peter’s misery, self-doubt, sense of failure are only his point of view.  Yes, Jesus rebuked him when he tried to block him from the path that Jesus must walk.  Apparently that didn’t mean Jesus despised or rejected him.  Jesus saw his true value and worth; so he kept coming back to Peter, calling him to lead.

This day reveals true identities.

Jesus is shown in his divine glory; his truth as Son of God is witnessed by three disciples.  Peter’s true identity is leader of the twelve, a rock Jesus trusts.  At this point, convinced he’s a failure as a disciple, Peter doesn’t see it, but Jesus does.  So when Jesus needs his three leaders with him on the mountain, of course he brings Peter.

Jesus isn’t changed on this mountain, his true identity is revealed.  So is Peter’s.  Peter needed Jesus to see him for who he truly was.  It may also be why Elisha, knowing his master was leaving with the Lord, needed to stay with Elijah, so he could have assurance he was the true successor.  We need others to see us for who we truly are when we can’t.

What is the truth about Peter, then?  Elisha?  You, me?  Who knows it?

We often worry about how we fail, convinced we’re not good enough, that others are better.  Is this our truth?  Many times we feel as if others judge us, don’t think well of us.  We’re never too far from that child within that remembers such fear from our school days, fear we’re the only one who doesn’t fit.  We can pretend – and we do – that we don’t have problems, but most of us know that dark night of self-doubt and sense of failure.  Is this our truth?  Peter’s experience of those six days is familiar to many.

Yet Jesus saw the truth about Peter when he couldn’t.  Elijah saw the truth about Elisha when he couldn’t.  Who sees the truth about us?  Our answer emerges on this mountain, both who we truly are and how we see that truth ourselves.

It all has to do with who is with us.

We need sisters and brothers in faith to look at us and see the child of God we are, to see what God sees.

Jesus knows he’s headed to the cross, but today he goes up a mountain, shows his true glory, and speaks with the two great leaders of Israel, Elijah and Moses.  Jesus needed this, strength and encouragement from the great prophet and the great law-giver for the path to the cross that is ahead.

So why bring three relatively incompetent disciples along?  Not so they can tell others, he makes that clear.  Not until the resurrection, he says, but even then they don’t do much with it.  After the resurrection this is pretty unimportant.  A mountain light show is nothing compared to the Lord rising from the dead.  The early preaching Luke records and the earliest writing we have from Paul, don’t mention this day on the mountain, only the cross and empty tomb.

What if Jesus just needed these three as companions, to see the truth about him?  The truth about who he is, before his path takes him to a place that doesn’t look at all like God’s glory?  He’s preparing Peter and the others to face the truth of the cross by giving them a glimpse of his true glory.  Now, whenever they look at Jesus, no matter how awful it gets, they can remember who he really is.

That seems to be our role as companions to each other in this journey of faith.  We look at each other and no matter what we see outwardly, we look deeper and see a blessed child of God.  Then we witness to that, so it can be known.

This is how Jesus helps us when we think poorly of ourselves in our darkest hours: we are given each other to see the real truth.  So when any of us despairs because we’re sure we’re not good enough, not cutting it, someone here can look at that one and remind them they see a glorious child of God.

You see, we are being transformed into people who look like Christ Jesus.

That’s the promise Paul makes in the verses a little before our second reading today, words the Cantorei are singing for us.  Yet, just as with Jesus’ transfiguration, it’s not really that we are being changed.

We already are people who look like Christ Jesus, people who in baptism are made into the image of God.  At least, we look like that to the Triune God who loves us.  God sees the fullness of who we are, of what we are becoming, as Jesus looked at Peter and saw a great leader, a special disciple, essential to spreading the Good News.

Our job is to remind each other of this, to look for this image of God in each other, even if it’s not easy to see outwardly.  Jesus had every reason to look at Peter’s failings, his cowardice, his confusion, but he looked deeper to the real truth.

So we look at each other.  Beyond the failings, beyond the sin and brokenness, we look into the eyes of our sisters and brothers and see the image of Christ.  We as a community look at each other with the eyes of God, the loving eyes of the One who died for us and now lives.  We share these loving eyes of God and call out this joy we see in each other.

As we are transformed into Christ, more and more people will be able to see this in us.

God sees us this way fully, but of course none of us show this to the world fully yet.  As we learn to see Christ in each other, we begin to expect it in each other, and even start to see hope ourselves that it is our real truth, not that other that binds us.  When this happens, our truth of being the image of Christ will become more and more obviously visible on the outside.  God’s forgiveness truly heals us and changes us into better people, people like Christ, and we learn to see this.

The more we see, the more it becomes real to us.  The more it becomes real to us, the more the rest of the world can see it.

Paul says God shines in our hearts to give us knowledge of the glory of God in the face of our Lord Jesus Christ.  That same divine light shines in our hearts to help us see this transformation and glory in each other.

We might feel like Peter many days.  But thanks be to God, who gives us companions in our journey of faith here, with God’s light in their eyes and God’s love in their hearts, people who see us for who we truly are, until, with the grace of the Holy Spirit, that’s exactly what we see in ourselves, and it becomes our visible witness we live in the world.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen