God’s people have often lived in deep darkness, in the time of Herod, so our hope is their promise: God’s light still shines, and now in and through us.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Epiphany of Our Lord
Texts: Matthew 2:1-12; Isaiah 60:1-6

Beloved 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 time of King Herod.” That’s all Matthew needs to say.

And now all Matthew’s readers know this story of the visit of eastern strangers to the Christ child won’t end well. It happened in the time of a tyrannical, paranoid despot who saw threats everywhere, and ruled by violence and fear.

There is a little hope in the story. The magi are warned to take another road home. Joseph is warned to flee to Egypt with his family. The Magi are safe. The Child is safe.

But. This is the time of King Herod. Vulnerable, weak, powerless people are never safe. And the town of Bethlehem weeps at the death of their children, mothers and fathers inconsolable.

Darkness shall cover the earth, in our lives, Isaiah says, and thick darkness the peoples. It’s reality.

Nothing Isaiah says is news to us.

Our ancestors in faith, from the Hebrew people to the early Church lived under various Herods, under unjust governments, threatened by people who abused power and worshipped violence.

Our nation is defined by this. Today’s threats to immigrants and people of other faiths, disdain for those who speak truth about what is happening, organized attempts to disenfranchise, outright and open attacks of hate on people who are different, are deeply embedded in our history. Ask the Cherokee and Choctaw nations whether King Herod can be trusted. The president on our twenty dollar bill forcibly removed nearly 60,000 Native Americans from their homes, forcing 13,000 Cherokee and 17,000 Choctaw to march from the east coast to west of the Mississippi, and thousands died on those Trails of Tears.

Or ask our Black siblings in our country who in our history always have had to keep an eye on King Herod, from slavery to lynching to Jim Crow to redlining to today’s disenfranchisement.

Darkness will cover the earth, Isaiah warns, and thick darkness the peoples. Expect this, Scriptures say.

And yet Isaiah also declares a wonder: Arise, shine, for your light has come!

God enters this thick darkness and brings light through this Christ to enlighten all peoples. This is our hope tonight. But this is critical: remember how God’s light shines. It shines in darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it, John says. But it’s still darkness where the Light shines.

Jesus escaped Herod, but the children of his village did not. King Herod lived at least a few more years after these events. Christ’s coming didn’t stop him.

But Isaiah says: lift up your eyes and look around. God’s light shines, even in the darkness, even if it looks weak. Even if this child escaped King Herod only to run into the power of Rome and a Roman cross. Even if this child fled Israel for Egypt only to be turned over by his own people for death. Even so, we declare that this Christ, this light, still shines. Even in persistent darkness.

That paradox is our hope.

God chooses the way of the weak to come to us, Paul has said, and shames the way of power. God’s true power is revealed in that cross, in that vulnerable refugee family fleeing Herod. God’s light is seen not as a day of sunshine but as a lone candle shining in a vast place of darkness.

But that one light is enough to see by. When you’re walking on a path in the dark with a candle, there’s a lot you can’t see. But you can see the two steps in front of you, and you can take those steps. And if someone joins you with their candle, there’s a little more light, and more wisdom about which steps to take. And if you are joined by more and more and more, the darkness has no chance of stopping you.

This is the way God is bringing light to overcome the darkness of this world. And from the beginning of his life, this is the only way Jesus operates, under constant threat of the Herods, by being light. And when Jesus is finally killed, God stuns death by breaking free of its hold. God’s light cannot be extinguished by darkness, not even by death.

And so Isaiah says, “See and be radiant.”

See God’s light in the darkness. And be radiant. Shine yourself.

You are the light of the world, Jesus said. It is who you are. So you leave here and when you see the darkness, you don’t pretend it isn’t real, or despair that there’s no light from God. You don’t have to fear the time of King Herod.

You leave here as light. Maybe tiny, weak, trembling, but that’s the way God’s light works. Even a tiny candle can be seen from a long distance in the dark. You are a light someone else might see, and be drawn to. Like those strangers from the east, someone might come to you and say, “We have seen this light from a distance, and have come.” To find God. To find hope.

And imagine what others could see when you and I join our lights, when we all join all our little lights together. We may not see the end of darkness in our days. But we witness by our light that it cannot overcome God’s light, its days are numbered.

Lift up your eyes and look around: it’s already happening.

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

Christ has made God’s heart known to us, so now you know, you see, and you can act as God’s beloved child in this world, for the healing of all things.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Second Sunday of Christmas, year ABC
Texts: John 1:1-18; Ephesians 1:3-14

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

God’s will isn’t as complicated as we sometimes say.

When we see evil done in God’s name, we know that’s not what God wants. When the Church acts cruelly or with rigid lack of love, when Christians spout racism and hatred and demonize others in Christ’s name, we know this is not God’s will.

But when it comes our lives, we sometimes act as if what God wants is a mystery. God’s will is complicated, hard to discern, we say, and life is complicated too. So, we say, sometimes things are just the way they are. This is convenient, because if we don’t want to try and understand something we don’t have to. We don’t have to see anything we don’t want to see or do anything we’re uncomfortable doing.

But today John pops that bubble.

John proclaims the unknowable Triune God, the Creator of all things, is now known to us fully. Everything we need to know, everything that is in God’s heart is now evident to us.

“No one has ever seen God,” John writes. “It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made God known.”

If we know the Son, the Word made flesh, if we know Jesus, we know God. If we know Jesus, we know the heart of God.

So here is God’s will, from that heart.

The Son of God, the Word-made-flesh, God-with-us, said peacemakers are blessed and will be called children of God. And said the heart of God is that we pray for our enemies and love them.

That means we can’t play around anymore with the idea of justified war, or condone violence of any kind and say it’s what God wants. Non-violent resistance isn’t passive or cowardly, it’s Christ’s way. Now we know this, we can’t pretend we don’t.

The Son of God, the Word-made-flesh, God-with-us, said God’s full law is completed when we love God with everything we are, and love our neighbor as ourselves. We can’t justify not loving some people anymore, or say we’re not sure how God wants us to act towards some. The One who knows God’s heart opened “neighbor” to mean all people, even those we disagree with, even those who aren’t like us. Now that we know this, we can’t pretend we don’t.

Knowing God’s heart for the world means we see and act through God’s heart.

We don’t see things as we’ve always seen them, now that we know they are destructive and broken and harm God’s children. Seeing through God’s heart means seeing the evils of systems that oppress while making others like us rich, instead of saying “it’s more complicated than that” and letting ourselves off the hook. Seeing with God’s heart means seeing those who are hungry, or thirsty, or sick, or naked, or imprisoned, or a stranger and seeing God’s face. The Word-made-flesh told us to see the ones the world considers the least and the last and we’ll see God.

And if we want to be with God, we will be with them. Because if we can see through God’s heart we are called to act through God’s heart. That also means acting as peacemakers in our personal lives. In all our behavior. In how we challenge our leaders. In how we pray for those who hate us or whom we want to hate. In how we work to change systems that make life impossible for so many. Even if that means loss for us.

Now that we see with God’s heart, we know we have to act as God’s heart.

And the good news is that God wants to give you and me the ability to do this.

Jesus, the Word-made-flesh, said that peacemakers would be blessed and called children of God. But John today says that same Jesus, the Word-made-flesh, the Light no darkness can understand or overcome, will give those who trust in him, trust in that Light, the power to become children of God.

Paul says today that we’ve been adopted into God’s life as children and heirs, born in the Spirit of God. And in the Spirit of God, John says, we are given God’s strength and courage, the power to become children of God who know and see and do all that God’s heart wants done in this world.

Now it’s clear from Scripture that all people are God’s children. And many who aren’t Christian have been led to live as God’s heart by the Spirit. But for you and me, baptized into Christ, this is our calling, John and Paul say. Your calling. To bear God’s heart in the world, to make peace, to heal, to feed and clothe and shelter others, to welcome strangers and to love enemies. To live into the truth of your being a child of God and blessing the world with the love that is the heart of God.

Jeremiah says when God’s heart’s desire comes to be, the world will be full of life.

It’ll be a watered garden, young and old will rejoice to dance and be merry. God will turn the world’s mourning into joy, give gladness for sorrow, and all people will be satisfied with God’s bountiful abundance. This isn’t a pipedream of some impossible future. It’s what will happen when the Triune God gets what God’s heart desires.

And now you know. Now you can see. Now you can act. And you have the power of God-with-us in the Spirit to make you fully the child of God you’ve always been. The one to be a part of the healing of this world. The one who will make God’s heart known to all who meet you. The one God needs you to be where you are in this world.

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

God’s way of making the world safe for children is to risk becoming a child and leading us into the way of peace.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The First Sunday of Christmas, year A
Texts: Matthew 2:13-23

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

This is a brutal story. A violent, paranoid king murders children to calm his fear.

It doesn’t help to say “at least Jesus survived.” It’s still a terrible story that’s not very welcome just days after celebrating Christmas. But every three years we hear this story on the First Sunday of Christmas. And this year, this Sunday falls on December 28, which actually is the feast of the Holy Innocents on the calendar.

This story hits far too close to home. The death of the children at Annunciation this past year was in our neighborhood. But there are so many massacres of children and adults all over this country on such a regular basis it’s hard to keep them straight. And in these days, to see a particular population targeted mercilessly by a ruler, well, that hits pretty close to home, too.

So why do we have to hear this now, at this time of year? Who cares if the tradition is that we do – can’t we just focus on “all is calm, all is bright” and have a respite?

We could. Except that misses the whole point of Christmas.

This world isn’t safe for children, or for the vulnerable. It’s incredibly dangerous.

And that’s why God came to us this way. God risked the salvation of the entire world on becoming one of us as a child in a world dangerous for children. God came to live with us, to grow as we grow, to bring about a healed world. Not to take over the world and fix it by force. But to lead the world back into love of God and love of neighbor. Even if the world killed the Son of God.

God cannot force us to be good. All the power to create a universe can’t do that. God can only lead us to be good. Lead us to be loving. Invite us to be our true selves, as God made us. Reveal the true power of self-giving love.

And the stakes are enormous. It’s entirely possible that this plan will fail, that people will go on being evil and the world will never get better. The last 2,000 years haven’t been promising.

But what if we’re missing the truth the good news, right in front of our ears?

You know when a baby or a young child has a meltdown, full volume?

It’s nearly impossible to hear yourself think. You can’t talk them through it, they’re screaming too loud. You can’t reason with a young child in such a state, either.

That’s God’s problem with us. Our noise, our conflict, our unwillingness to be changed, make it nearly impossible to hear what God is doing. Nearly impossible for God to get through to us.

There’s a stanza in “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear” that mostly gets omitted from hymn books. But that stanza, the one usually omitted, speaks as none of the others do to the pain and suffering of a world that is dangerous for children, a world full of oppression and wickedness. It says:

Yet with the woes of sin and strife the world has suffered long;
Beneath the heavenly hymn have rolled two thousand years of wrong;
And warring humankind hears not the tidings which they bring.

For 2,000 years the world has suffered in spite of the angels’ song of peace on earth, good will to all. The noise of our chaos, our fighting, our self-centeredness, our fear, overwhelms the song of the angels. Our need for God to be what we want God to be instead of who God really is closes our ears.

To be fair, from our point of view this plan isn’t a good one.

It’s inefficient, it’s risky, it makes little sense. It would have been neater and cleaner for God to take over the world and bring peace by force. And some days we wish God would do that. That’s our noise, too, our yelling – we can see only the way we would make things right. Anything else seems weak and ineffective.

But what if we actually stopped our complaints long enough to hear what God is doing, and has done? To understand that God has come to be in our hearts, to live with us and to change us. To bring peace to our lives and world through you. Through me. Through all who listen.

Love that is forced is not love. But love that is given, love that is willing to lose everything, that love has the strength to face the suffering and evil of this world and transform it into the peace on earth the angels promised. The peace on earth God always intended.

This is how God will make this world safe for children. And for you.

By putting you and me in front of them with our love. By changing our hearts so we work to make this world safe for them. By leading you, and me, and all people by the hand, until all are living in love of God and neighbor. That’s always the plan. And if you listen deeply, you’ll hear that in fact this love and peace has spread around the world in spite of all the evil and pain. It has touched you. It has touched others through you.

And if you can’t hear that, well, here’s the last line of that omitted stanza:

“Oh, hush the noise and cease your strife, and hear the angels sing.”

That’s where you can start today. Hush the noise of your complaining that God doesn’t come like you want and listen to the joy that God is already here. Hush the noise of your struggles with yourself and with others, the noise of self-centeredness, the noise of shouting at each other, the noise of hatred, the noise of wars, the noise of your fears, the noise of your mind overwhelmed by so much.

Hush all that noise and listen to the peace God is actually giving you. And all people. Listen to how this will actually work. Listen to the angels sing. They’ve got something very important to say.

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

If you want to see what the Triune God is really like, look at Jesus. If you want to know what you could really look like, start there, too.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Nativity of Our Lord, Christmas Day
Texts: Hebrews 1:1-4, John 1:1-14 (adding v. 18) (also referring to Luke 2:1-20 and other Scriptures)

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

We assume God is in disguise on this day.

The almighty and eternal Triune God hides all that glory and God-ness inside a little baby, born to a poor refugee family in the Middle East. The Trinity hides in a human infant, with human DNA, vulnerable, weak, threatened. As Martin Luther taught us to sing and to wonder: “O Lord, you have created all! How did you come to be so small, to sweetly sleep in manger-bed where lowing cattle lately fed?”[1]

But today the writer to the Hebrews declares a different wonder: “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory,” they write, “and the exact imprint of God’s very being.”

The Triune God isn’t in disguise in Jesus at all. In Jesus everything true about God is known.

It isn’t how we’ve usually understood Christmas, for good reasons.

One is John’s proclamation: the Word of God from before all time, through whom all things were made, without whom not one thing was created, took on human flesh, lived among us. Isn’t that God hiding all God’s glory in that little baby?

And Paul has told us that Christ did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped but took on our human flesh, became obedient even to death. (Philippians 2) Isn’t that God setting aside all God-things to become one of us?

Hebrews doesn’t quarrel with either John or Paul. What Hebrews declares is that being born among us is not God changing, or hiding God’s true essence. It is God revealing the exact truth about God. “Not regarding equality with God as something to be grasped” is actually God’s deepest nature, not a new thing. God taking on human flesh, living among us, is the only way to truly know and see God. John tells us that himself today.

Because the Son is the exact imprint, literally the exact engraving, of God’s very being.

If you want to see what God looks like, Hebrews says, look at Jesus. Look at this vulnerable, weak, poor, oppressed baby – it’s the exact imprint of God. It’s who God is. Follow this vulnerable baby to adulthood and see Jesus, the one who guides all to the heart of God. Who continues to be vulnerable, and apparently weak. Who reveals God’s deepest love in dying on the cross. All this is God’s true identity.

And, Hebrews says, the Son is – is – the reflection of God’s glory. Not a hiding of it. Not something we have to wait till Transfiguration to see. Risky, vulnerable, self-giving love, willing to die for another, willing to trust us enough to be a fragile baby in our midst, that is – is – the reflection of God’s glory, not a disguise covering God’s glory.

This completely changes our talk of God.

Everything that we wonder about God, ask about God, fear about God, are confused about God, is answered in Jesus, the Son, Hebrews says.

So, is God just? Look at Jesus and you find the answer: yes. Does God care for and identify with those who are on the margins, those who hunger and thirst both physically and spiritually? Look at Jesus and you find the answer: yes. Can God forgive and love those who hurt and harm, who sin, even greatly? Look at Jesus and you find the answer: yes.

Does God believe power and force and violence are the way to heal the creation, make things right? Look at the baby Jesus and you find the answer: no. Look at the adult Jesus, the life he taught, the path he walked, and you find the answer: no. Can God overcome evil and death without power and force and violence? Look at the crucified and risen Christ and you find the answer: yes.

The Son reveals the truth of the Trinity.

This completely changes how you can see yourself, too.

In Genesis 1, God says, “let us create humanity in our image, according to our very being.”

You are, I am, all people are, made in the very image of God, too, created according to God’s very being. When you see Jesus, you see the completion of that image, God in God’s fullness. The exact imprint, the reflection of God’s glory.

But you, and I, and all people, are created according to that same divine blueprint, that same divine Logos as John calls it. And God said, “it is good,” when God made us, remember?

We certainly live in ways that debase that image, that aren’t good. The evil humans have done grieves us and grieves God. It builds up and corrupts over time to the point where this world is overrun by systems and structures that perpetuate evil and oppression. And each of us is capable of doing our own harm, our own evil. Living against our true nature.

But never forget: you are made in God’s image. Your true nature cannot be denied.

And if you’ve covered up that image, or marred it, or need to remember what God really looks like and what you could really look like, well, start today.

In the manger. Here you see the exact imprint of God’s very being. The reflection of God’s glory. All you need to know about the Triune God is shown here. And in the love and path Jesus taught and walked all the way to the cross, all you need to know about your love and path are shown. In rising from the dead, the Son revealed God’s vulnerable, self-giving love can never be overcome. Not even by death. Not even by you.

God’s not in disguise today. Neither does your God-image need to be hidden. Look to the manger and see God’s glory. See God’s truth and yours. And rejoice, because God only can be known in someone small and fragile and weak like you. Like me.

It’s who God really is. And who you really are. And it will change the world.

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

[1] From ELW 268, “From Heaven Above,” stanza 9, Martin Luther, 1483-1546; tr. Lutheran Book of Worship, copyright 1978.

We’ve known for two millennia the kind of rule God intends to establish on this earth: a rule won heart by heart, in the most powerless places, until life is full and abundant for all.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Nativity of Our Lord, Christmas Eve
Texts: Luke 2:1-20

Beloved 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 always Bethlehem, not Jerusalem.

In Jerusalem, in the seat of power, the great Herod fretted over news that another king was born. No divine announcement came to him. In Rome, not even the Emperor knew anything was happening.

But on a hillside outside a tiny little town in the Judean wilderness, bright messengers of the One True God announced to outsiders that a child was born who was the Anointed One, who would rule the world in peace for all, not just a few.

It was never going to be Jerusalem where God would come. Always Bethlehem.

We just seem to forget this.

Maybe because the Jerusalems, the Romes, the Washingtons, run our world.

People with power oppress and dominate others to get what they want. The world has worked this way for so long, it’s not surprising this way of the true God gets missed or ignored, even by those of us who claim to follow this Child.

People like the trains to run on time. We like to be comfortable, not messy. We like order, not chaos. We want to feel safe, and that means people in every generation are willing to let whoever’s running the show run the show. As long as we think we’re OK, don’t ask too many questions.

And so systems get built over centuries that keep the majority of the world’s people in poverty and suffering while a small number prosper. Colonialism and capitalism, terrible bedfellows, still control others at will, and those in power remain the same, some ruling in subtler ways than Herod, and some ruling with just as much open wickedness as his. Bethlehem today can witness to this. So can so many of our neighbors.

So if this Child is the way God is coming to rule this world, it can be hard to see how.

But if we’d been paying attention, we could have known.

From the beginning, it was Bethlehem, not Jerusalem, where God would come.

Micah’s truth of Bethlehem says it: Bethlehem is one of the little clans of Judah, but from that smallness will come God’s ruler. Matthew changes it to say Bethlehem is “by no means” the least. He’s wrong. Bethlehem actually was small and insignificant. That’s the point.

The world’s seats of power, where people run the show, are ignored when God comes to rule. God comes to a small town, overlooked by the world, and is born among us. The people who come and see are the small people, the ordinary.

That’s where we will be, too, if we want to follow.

From the beginning, it was in poverty, not wealth, in weakness, not power, that God would rule.

Like the majority of the world’s peoples, this family from Nazareth lived day to day, as best they could, always on the edge.

The wealthy have built a world that protects their wealth. They think they’re in charge, and since many of us are also people of wealth, sometimes we think the same. We might consider letting go of a little for others. But we never quite do the overthrow it would take to make all people be able to live.

God wants nothing to do with people of wealth who want to control, who won’t let go of what they have while others starve. The true God-with-us is born into a family with no influence or control, no wealth or power.

That’s where we will be, too, if we want to follow.

From the beginning, it was in a refugee family relying on the kindness of strangers that God would save.

This little family is pushed around by foreign powers just before the birth, and treks to Bethlehem. Just after the birth, their own ruler wants the child dead, so they become refugees, fleeing to another country. They are homeless, like so many of our neighbors today. Refugees, like so many who are being rounded up as animals today, without benefit of law or due process.

While those in charge rail against such people as a threat, because Herod is still ruling today, this is the way God chooses to come to us. To identify with the outsider, the alien, the refugee, and become an outsider, an alien, a refugee. Setting aside heavenly power, fleeing as a family from earthly power, dying at the hands of earthly power, God shows the truth about power: it’s a lie, and destructive, and leads to death. We could have known this all along, too; because our God rules from a cross.

This is Christ’s path. It will be ours, too, if we want to follow.

We have known this from the beginning, if sometimes we’ve forgotten.

God’s whole plan of rule is to win over our hearts, one by one, by coming among us as the least, and showing us that identifying with the least and the last is the way of life for the universe, and for us. When we give our hearts to such a God, we follow the same path of vulnerability and weakness for the sake of the world. The path that Herod today mocks as one for losers.

But when we follow such a God with all our hearts, the reign of God actually comes to be in this world. One at a time, as people give their hearts to this upside-down God, this ruler of stables and refugees, the world is changed, and we find hope.

It’s always at Bethlehem, not Jerusalem, where we find Christ, God-with-us. In small, not great. And slowly, surely, God’s healing life spreads from there to all people. From you to all. Because to you, to all, is born this day a Savior who is the Christ, the Lord.

And this will be a sign for you: you will find God as a little baby, lying in a manger.

Go, look for Bethlehem. You’ll see.

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen