Our readings for Reformation Sunday invite us to reconsider what Christian freedom is. When a Christian understands that they are freed from sin, lies, and other burdens, they become free to love and serve their neighbors with open hands.

Vicar Erik Nelson
The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 23 C
Texts: Amos 6:1,4-7a; Psalm 146; 1 Timothy 6:6-19; Luke 16:19-31

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

“You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”

“So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”

As people in the United States, we hear a lot about freedom. It’s one of those loaded words that carries a lot of meaning, depending on your own experiences in this country. And as our country’s 250th anniversary approaches, I think we’ll hear more and more of that word being thrown around.

So I think this is as good a time as any to get ahead of the curve and start thinking about freedom, and how it relates to our Christian identities. In the months I’ve been here, we’ve talked about how our allegiance is first to God’s family. What does freedom mean in that context?

I’ll take a risk and say that Christian freedom, what Jesus calls us to, couldn’t be further from what our culture tells us freedom is.

American freedom, as it’s been defined for most of my life, has been primarily used to describe freedom from things. Freedom from taxation, freedom from being told what to do, freedom from obligation, generally.

But the Christian message of freedom is bad news for that American idea of freedom.

Christian freedom is simultaneously the freedom that Christ describes here, a freedom from lies and sin, (pause) and also a freedom to serve our neighbors. Because we have been freed by Christ and welcomed permanently into his family, we are freed to love and serve God and our neighbors … to live a life of freedom, and obligation.

American freedom is often just self-centeredness … Christian freedom leads us to serve our neighbors.

This calling to service with open hands starts with rightly understanding today’s scripture readings, and our place in them.

As I read these passages, I see how God is the actor in all of them.

In Jeremiah, God is the one who writes the law on our hearts. In the Psalm, God is our refuge; God is the one who melts the earth and breaks the bow and shatters the spear. In Romans, God is the one who justifies, taking away any of our arrogant boasting or self-righteousness. And in John, God in Christ is the one who sets us free, welcoming us into the household of faith forever.

Because God has acted in this way, setting us free, we are freed from our obligations to ourselves, to our self-interest, to our own stubborn independence … and we gain obligations to the family of God.

Martin Luther spoke rightly about freedom when he said, “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.”

This paradoxical statement tells us the truth that because Christ has set us free, we are no longer subject to the burdens that others place on us. People tell us that you have to look or act or love a certain way in order to be welcomed into the family of God, and in this gospel reading, we are reminded that we have already been freed from other’s expectations and welcomed into the family of God forever. We have been welcomed into this family not because of our own earning or righteousness, but because of the love of God.

Because we have received everything from God — life, love, a home, a family, wholeness — we go forth to share that with the world.

Luther, knowing he was freed in Christ, was able to make his stand when he went before the rulers of the church and empire, and say, “here I stand, I can do no other. God help me.”

Luther was able to know that he had received the abundance of God’s grace, and had no fear of what the rulers could do to him. He knew what it meant to be freed from the limitations others put on God’s love. And because we’ve been freed, we live lives surrendered to Christ, committed to service.

Lutherans at our best have understood this, creating things like Lutheran World Relief, Global Refuge, and Lutheran Social Services. Serving with open hands, knowing we’ve been freed, going out to free others.

But when we forget that God is the one who frees us first, through God’s own action, we lose sight of the abundance that God gives to all. At our worst, Lutherans have waged war against Catholics. Lutherans have thrown Anabaptists into rivers. Lutherans have put Native Americans and Sami people into boarding schools.

I think these examples are times when Lutherans have lost sight of the abundance that comes with our freedom. They gave into a mindset of scarcity, that says that my freedom, my identity, my security is threatened by your presence, your difference.

When we give into this scarcity mindset, we cling too tightly to the things that should make us free, and in the process, let go of our Christian freedom.

At our best, we live in abundance, knowing our place in the family is not dependent on our own work … God has given us a permanent home … we can live without fear and so we go out to serve with joy.

When we lose sight of that, when we think God is so small that God needs us to fight … when we see others as enemies to be conquered rather than as neighbors to love and serve, we destroy others and lose ourselves in the process.

But thankfully, we aren’t defined by our worst days. And also, we aren’t defined by our best days. We are defined by Jesus’ words for us here in John 8.

“You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”

“If the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”

Because the Son has made us free, we refute Luther’s writings against the Jews. We apologize to Sami and Native communities, and seek to make reparations. We work for reconciliation with Catholics and Anabaptists.

Because our first, primary, only identity is beloved children of God.

The Son has made us free, and we are free indeed. We are freed from the baggage of the past, good and bad, and we are freed to enter into new life with our neighbors

As we commemorate Reformation Day this week, let’s also consider the ways that it can be Reconciliation Day, to come together with our Christian siblings.

or Repentance Day, as we refute the harms done in our name.

or Revival Day, as we pray for the Holy Spirit to come down and renew us.

Or we could just remember it as Reformation Day, as this church of the Reformation is always reforming. Let’s reform our church to follow the Holy Spirit’s leading into freedom and service, wherever She goes.

Because what matters most is not our Lutheran identity, as much as I might love being Lutheran, or our favorite hymns or the Small Catechism, but instead the fact that Christ has made us free.

We have the freedom that comes from a permanent place in God’s family, a place that no one and nothing can take away.

Thanks be to God.

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

God’s the one who needs to wrestle with you and me in prayer, to call us to do God’s justice in this world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 29 C
Texts: Genesis 32:22-31; Luke 18:1-8

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 initiated this fight.

Jacob wrestles on a riverbank with someone the writer calls “a man,” who by the end is revealed as God. But Jacob didn’t start it. God showed up on the riverbank looking for a quarrel.

We sometimes say prayer is a wrestling with God. We struggle to be heard, to say what needs saying. We struggle with God’s apparent silence, we wrestle with God over the world’s problems and God’s apparent inactivity. Like Jesus’ widow, we’re invited to persistently bring our concerns to God, even if it means wrestling all night.

But what if God initiates the wrestling? What if God says “I’ve got an issue with you”? What if we’re the ones with the problem ears, the lack of action, and God has to wrestle with us to change us?

Jacob certainly needed a shake-up if he was to be God’s chosen successor as leader.

He’s been a complete jerk up to this point. Cheating his brother and uncle, treating his wife Leah as second class. Now, on his way back home with a wealth of flocks, eleven children, two wives, and a couple maids, he hears his brother is coming to meet him with 400 armed men. The last they saw each other, Esau wanted to kill Jacob.

So Jacob acts the ultimate coward. He sends his wives, maids, children, and flocks across the river to be the front line of his entourage, and he hides in the back. Knowing nothing of Esau’s current state of mind, fearing his brother’s army, Jacob says, “women and children first. I’m not facing that threat.”

Not who God needs to head this family that is meant to bless the world with knowledge of the one God who loves and cares for all. So God finds him cowering in the back, on the other side of the river, and has it out. They wrestle all night.

In the morning God blesses Jacob and gives him a new name, Israel, “the one who strives with God.” God needed to challenge Jacob, struggle with him, to make him into who God needed him to be. And what if that’s what Jesus is saying, too?

This parable seems clear in meaning.

Describing someone cold and unjust who ultimately does the right thing, Jesus says, as he has before, “how much more will God” – who, we’re meant to understand, isn’t cold or unjust – “how much more will God answer you when you persist in your prayer?”

But Jacob’s night by the river raises a different thought: what if God is the widow?

This is a parable, after all. Jesus taught directly sometimes, statements of truth, command, wisdom. But sometimes he told stories that invited the imagination to ponder, dwell, consider. If he wanted to tell us to pray persistently, he could have. And did. But he also told this story.

And Jesus’ parables are like jewels that, when you pick them up and turn them in the light, cast all kinds of different rays. There’s no reason not to take this story and consider it from Jacob’s perspective.

What if God is the widow here?

That makes you and me the ones who don’t fear God or respect people.

The ones God comes to again and again and again and again, asking, “grant me justice.”

God sees the pain and suffering of this world with eyes older than yours and mine and with a heart breaking for this beloved creation, for these beloved creatures. God sees the oppression, the racism, the hatred of strangers, the threatening of the most vulnerable, the destruction of fair government, the breaking down of protections for those in need, and wonders, “who is going to do my justice?”

It’s so easy to blame God, to be dismayed that God lets bad things happen. But maybe it’s God who is dismayed at us. God who is frustrated with us. God who comes to you and me again and again and again and again and asks, “when will you do my justice? When will you save my children?”

It’s hard to argue we don’t need a little shake-up, too.

We get stuck, fail to act. We go about our ways doing what we want, without facing that even the smallest decisions we make every day affect this world and its problems.

What if prayer is God needing to get your attention? God needing to wrestle with you and say, “what will it take for you to get going, to work with others, to realize that the justice that needs to happen is my dream, my vision, my desire, but it won’t happen without you?”

In our Prayer of the Day we prayed for a softer version of this wrestling, “inspire us to seek your enduring justice for all this suffering world.” Inspire us. Not “wrestle with us.” Maybe we fear a wrestling match, but are open to inspiration from God. Either way, the path forward is pretty clear.

There’s no mystery what God desires to happen in this world.

Scripture is full of it. And lots of wise, caring, godly people have lots of good ideas to bring God’s justice, mercy, and peace to this world. Even the threat of a U.S. government that will be authoritarian and not democratic is stoppable if enough people stand up and are counted, if enough people say, “no more,” at the ballot box, at protests, with letters and statements and action. And if enough people said “no more” to hunger and oppression and racist systems in this country, they’d collapse very quickly.

That’s what God wants to wrestle out with you and me: you are needed, as you are, with what you can bring. And all that’s left is for you and me to decide if we’re finally going to answer God’s persistence or, like the judge, keep ignoring it, hoping God will go away.

The beautiful thing is that the result of God’s wrestling is blessing, and a new you.

God and Jacob have it out, and God blesses Jacob, names him, and sends him off to be the leader God needs. The widow finally breaks the judge’s indifference and receives the justice she needs.

And so God wants your attention, needs to wrestle with your objections, your resistance, your fear, your reluctance, your confusion, your lack of self-confidence, to convince you that you are the answer to God’s prayer. And somehow in that wrestling, you are made new. Your ears are opened to God’s needs, your whole being embraces God’s sending you out as the one God needs for justice to happen in this world.

Obviously, it will take more than you, more than me. But that’s God’s to deal with. When it comes to Jacob, or the judge, or you and me, God needs individual attention, an individual wrestle.

And, blessed by God, you and I will be God’s blessing for the justice God so deeply desires to see in this world.

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

All people and creatures are bound together in Christ in healing and life.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 28 C
Texts: 2 Kings 5:1-15c; Luke 17:1-11

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

They weren’t alone.

Sure, in one sense these ten suffering from a terrible, contagious skin disease were alone. They were banned from contact with loved ones, neighbors, the world, having to shout “unclean” when any came near.

But they had each other. They walked with each other, they made a community. Ten people who understood suffering and pain, loneliness and rejection, sadness and fear, and shared that life with each other when no one else could.

Naaman also had community. A servant girl, a hostage of war, who cared enough for him to suggest a possible cure. A king who valued his leadership enough not to exile him but to generously enable his cure attempt. Servants who loved him enough to insist that he consider trying the prophet’s treatment.

And so it is with us.

Our community here is made up of people suffering from many different things. This community embraces a deep sense that no one here is unbroken. We have no expectations that any here have it all together, that any have no sin, that any have no pain, that any here haven’t suffered rejection or loss or sadness. I’ve never heard anyone say about another in this community, “That’s just not normal.” We expect we’re all in need, and we love each other because of it.

It takes years of a community learning to love those who are hurting, who’ve been turned away elsewhere, who suffer silently, to understand that here woundedness is our normal. You don’t have to pretend you’ve got it together, not here. You don’t have to lie to yourself that people won’t love you if they knew the messes you made, not here. You don’t have to fear that if your truths were told you’d no longer be welcome. Not here.

Our shared sense of need for God leads us here, to this place.

Here is where we are healed, together. Here we meet a scarred, wounded Christ at this table and are given love and life, together. Our little band of sick people shows up here on a Sunday morning and together, like these ten, says, have mercy on us, God! Hear our prayer, and come heal us!

And the healing we receive here, God’s welcome, God’s love and forgiveness, teaches us to love each other, to band together with each other, to be Christ to each other.

And this, too: the healing you receive here, the healing I receive, teaches us to always be ready to welcome others into this group of wounded, sinful, needy people who seek God’s healing and life.

Today we see Syrians and Samaritans included in God’s healing, too.

Not just the chosen ones. All are beloved. Christ draws all people, all things, into the life and heart of the Triune God at the cross. No boundaries, no exceptions.

And the Christ who heals you asks you: what if you learned to see everyone – not just folks here, everyone – with the same understanding as those you know here, the same compassion, expecting all to be wounded as well, wanting to walk with them and help and be helped?

When you understand this breadth of God’s love and healing, all sorts of Jesus’ teachings become clearer. This is why you’re commanded to pray for and love your enemies. Then you admit they’re part of you, they belong, so they can’t be enemies. And empathy for their pain leads you to pray for the removal of their hate, so they can be whole and healed in God, too.

This is the heart of Christian life: all suffering belongs to all of us, all pain matters to all of us, all people are part of us because all are in God’s loving embrace.

And Jesus invites you to see healing is deeper than just physical health.

Jesus says to the thankful one, “your faith has saved you,” or, “your faith has made you well.” For Jesus, being saved is being healed in God’s love and in God’s community even if some ailments remain. God’s healing and wholeness is real even when individual pains aren’t taken away, because in Christ we find the healing of our spirit, our heart, our mind, our life, together.

So Paul can be content in any and all circumstances, even after praying that his suffering be removed and not having it removed, because he is part of Christ, part of Christ’s family, and knows Christ’s peace.

And so we, who know so many whose physical or mental illnesses aren’t removed, who know that everyone here, and all God’s children, are wounded, inside or out, who know that the pains and suffering of this world will not all be fixed in our lifetime, we find salvation and wholeness in the deeper healing of God’s love that has made us one and whole in Christ with all creatures.

We haven’t talked about gratitude yet. Maybe we don’t need to.

Naaman overflowed with gratitude for his healing. One of the ten who was healed broke from the group and ran back and gave thanks to Jesus. We don’t know about the other nine, but they’re not the point.

When you know the amazing gift of healing and wholeness you have in Christ and in each other, you don’t need to be reminded to be grateful for it. Not a day goes by without me being thankful to God for all of you, for this community of wounded people who walks with me in my woundedness, and are Christ to me, who, with me, gathers at this Table seeking forgiveness and life and wholeness.

And the more we understand the connectedness God has made between us and all God’s children, and everything else in creation, the more we see the place of this broken, troubled, wounded world in God’s heart and life, gratitude comes pretty easily.

You belong, always, to this fellowship of broken ones. And everyone, all people, even the hard ones, do too. And in that community God’s healing comes. In this world, and even in a life that is to come.

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

Faithfulness, not faith, will be how you change the world in Christ.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 27 C
Texts: Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4; Luke 17:5-10 (with ref. to Matthew 8:23-27)

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

The storm terrified even these experienced sailors.

This couldn’t be the first storm they’d seen on the Sea of Galilee. These were home waters, but winds rose so high they feared they’d be swamped and all would drown. Meanwhile their beloved Teacher is sound asleep on a nice cushion, oblivious to the chaos and their terror. They wake him up, charging that he doesn’t even care if they perish.

And Jesus says, “Why are you afraid, ‘Littlefaiths’? and calms the storm. (Matthew 8:23-27, with some detail from Mark 4)

Normally translated “you of little faith,” it’s just one word, like a nickname: “Littlefaiths.” Maybe it’s a nickname he’s used before. It could be insulting. Except for Jesus’ words today.

He says the size of your faith isn’t relevant.

Maybe you are good old “Littlefaith,” afraid most days, doubting yourself, wondering if God cares about your life, this world. But today Jesus says “Littlefaith” is just enough.

With just a little faith you could move a mountain, Jesus says, as Matthew tells this story. Here, in Luke, Jesus says with just a little faith you could uproot a mulberry tree and fling it into the sea. When Jesus calls you “Littlefaith,” it’s a term of endearment, a nickname of hope: because if you had even a little faith, you could do amazing things.

Thing is, we’re in a world where a massive storm threatens to overwhelm everything, and it sometimes feels we’re in this mess alone, God isn’t doing anything. “Don’t you care that we’re perishing?” many of us have cried out to God in these days. Healing this world’s pain feels far more serious than tossing trees into the ocean.

Habakkuk agrees.

Habakkuk cries out just like the disciples did in the boat, wondering how long he has to call for help while God doesn’t listen. Destruction and violence are everywhere, he says, the law is slack, and justice never prevails. The wicked surround the righteous. And Habakkuk is frightened. Tired of asking God for help that never comes.

Once again it’s stunning that words written thousands of years ago seem to have been written and saved up for just this time, our world, this pain and oppression and violence and injustice we know. So we tiredly wait alongside a prophet most of us hardly remember is in the Bible, wondering what God will say.

And God’s answer sounds a lot like our Gospel reading.

There is a vision for the healing, God says to Habakkuk. If it seems to be delayed, wait for it, because it’s surely coming. And then God says this: the righteous will live by their faithfulness.

Now, Martin Luther loved this verse, and understood it to say the righteous will live by faith. He tied that into his deep insight that we are saved, made whole with God through faith alone, by God’s grace alone.

But the word is better translated faithfulness. That is, it’s not whether you have enough faith. It’s whether you’re being faithful. Which is exactly Jesus’ point today. It doesn’t matter what the master does or doesn’t do. All that matters is that you are faithful in your serving.

So for you and me, Littlefaiths all, it’s not about asking to have our faith increased, as the disciples did today. God’s answer is that we find just enough faith to be faithful. To do our calling in this world. Even if the storm is still raging. The mountain standing. The tree rooted.

See, that’s the challenging part. There’s no promise the storm will calm right away.

God tells the prophet that God’s healing is coming, but he might have to wait. The mountain of evil and oppression and injustice that we hope to remove from our world is a mountain. It will take time. The roots of racism, sexism, prejudice, self-centeredness grow deep into the heart of our world, and our hearts. That tree will not easily be uprooted and thrown out.

And worst, Jesus seems to treat slavery as normative here. Nothing in the parable says “end slavery now.” Words like these became powerful ways for white slaveholders to keep their feet on the backs and necks of the people they abused and oppressed.

But that’s not the end of the story.

The Way of Christ, the way of faithfulness, has changed the world profoundly.

Slaves certainly heard this parable when Jesus said it. He attracted people at the margins and loved them in God’s name. The early church drew heavily from people who were slaves, impoverished, oppressed. They found hope in a God who cared for them enough to become one of them, who called them beloved even if others saw them as dirt.

And those followers of the Way, with their faithfulness, eventually broke slavery around the world in most places where they lived. It took centuries. Far too long, many would say, and they’d be right. But the tree was uprooted nonetheless.

So you look at a deeply rooted tree and say “how could anyone make that come out of the ground and fly into the ocean?” But notice: Jesus never says you can’t use tools. He never says how much time it will take or how much patience it will need. He just says with a little faith you can do amazing things with your faithfulness.

God’s way of healing the world needs God’s people. That’s how God works.

And if you have just a little trust, enough faith to say, “I’ll try to be faithful as Christ today, work at those roots, dig at the problems however I can,” you will see things change. Even if very slowly.

But you know that already. Over hundreds of years, so many mountains have been moved, so many trees uprooted for the life of the world.

Now we’re facing our own. And when you focus on faithfulness as your way you will find hope. And you, beloved Littlefaith, will be a hope that others can cling to.

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

Jesus tells a powerful parable that leads us to reconsider our relationships to one another. Jesus’ image of the chasm speaks into our lives, as a terrifying symbol of all our divisions and separation. God’s Word reminds us that God desires to close the chasm, bringing reconciliation to the whole creation.

Vicar Erik Nelson
The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 23 C
Texts: Amos 6:1,4-7a; Psalm 146; 1 Timothy 6:6-19; Luke 16:19-31

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

This story used to terrify me. When I was little, I had awful dreams about the fires of hell and eternal torment. When I heard this story, I would get caught up on this horrible vision of hell that I missed what Jesus was trying to say. We’ve let Dante’s inferno overshadow Jesus’s whole point here.

The point of the story is not flames or eternal torture or the topography of the afterlife. The point is the chasm. The separation.

Christian tradition has talked about hell as separation from God, but as we see from this story, it’s more than that. Hell is also separation from each other.

In a way, the rich man was already living in hell. His wealth made him feel insulated from the suffering of the world. He heard the message of the prophets that call us to care for the poor and scriptures that reject the love of money. He heard those lessons, but let his heart become hardened because of the gilded cage in which he lived. He saw Lazarus every time he walked through his gate. He encountered Lazarus enough to even know his name, and yet his love of riches kept him from seeing Lazarus as a fellow child of Abraham, another bearer of the Image of God.

Even before he had died, the rich man separated himself. He chose the chasm.

When we look at the headlines today, we see countless examples of people choosing the chasm … choosing the void. We see school and church shootings. We see rising political violence, in our own city and far beyond. We see families divided, father against son, brother against sister.

As I look at the world, my heart hurts to see us choosing the chasm. I see all the ways, big and small, we choose our own way over the way of God.

All the readings this week, together, tell us about the way of God. In this passage, we see Lazarus named, but not the rich man. In our Psalm, we hear that God “keeps promises forever,” “car[ing] for the stranger, sustain[ing] the orphan and widow, … frustrat[ing] the way of the wicked.” Throughout the Bible, God names the poor and lifts up the lowly. To this day, God sides with the outcast and the forgotten.

There are times that like the rich man, our hearts become hardened, and we choose the wrong side of the chasm. Rather than following God into a world of justice and mercy, we choose our petty kingdoms and gilded cages.

As we hear the parable this week, we hear the voice of God offering us the opportunity to follow God’s way. Hear God say that it’s not too late. Jesus’ hyperbolic parable isn’t intended to terrify us into compliance, but it’s an invitation to God’s way. To reject the chasm.

I’m convinced that more than anything, God wants to close the chasm. The reading says “a great chasm has been fixed,” but it doesn’t say by who. Contrary to what you’ve heard, this story doesn’t say that eternal separation is God’s desire. I believe with all my heart that God wants to close the chasm. God wants to end all division and separation. The will of Christ is that all would be reconciled in him. 

There are parts of this text that still terrify me. I no longer think of hell as the place where God torments us forever. But what scares me is the idea of the rich man staying on that side of the divide. Even when he sees Lazarus finally receiving comfort and rest, the rich man’s only thought is “what can I get out of Lazarus?” He asks Abraham to send Lazarus as his servant to the rich man’s household. He still doesn’t get it.

And many people who read this story are still not going to get it. I think of people whose faith becomes entirely about who’s in and who’s out. That’s how we usually interpret this story, right?

I think when we see how vast and wide God’s love is, a love that encompasses the whole universe, an embrace that welcomes in the people we most hate … I am scared that that might feel like hell. When we see others receive what we think we deserve … when we realize the worthlessness of our little empires … that might feel like hell.

I’m afraid that that is the torment on the other side of the chasm. That’s the offense of the gospel — that it’s not the know-it-alls who go to heaven or the people who always do the right thing or have the nicest clothes. The ones who do get there, the ones who rest in God’s embrace, are there because they’re the ones who God loves. Not because of anything they did or any of their own deserving, but because of God’s scandalous love.

And that’s true for me, and you, and it’s true for the people we like, and the people we love, and it’s especially true for the people we most hate.

That’s a hard word for a world that loves the chasm.

God’s will is that the chasm be closed. And God invites us to join in the healing work. And we don’t do it alone. We do it together.

We do it, following Christ, who in his dying on the cross, stretched out his arms to show us how wide his embrace is, wide enough and deep enough and high enough to embrace the whole world.

In his rising from the dead, Jesus shows us that even death cannot separate us from God’s love.

And in his ascension and promise to come again, Jesus reminds us that our divisions, our chasms that we choose now, are not forever. He will return and make all things right, closing the chasm, once and for all.

Thanks be to God.

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