There is grace here: Christ, the bridegroom, willingly takes a door-slam in the face alongside us, and is with us as we seek to prepare our lives for God’s healing grace in the world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 32, year A
Texts: Matthew 25:1-13; Amos 5:18-24

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

This has been a heavy, exhausting twelve months.

It’s so tiring, all the time, isn’t it? I’m tired that there isn’t a single day without depressing news, or worse, despairing news. Almost hourly we hear of the latest shenanigans or wickedness from our highest leaders. Almost daily we hear news of shootings and killings, and our Congress, bought and paid for by the NRA, refuses to address it. Natural disasters are no longer natural, aided and abetted by climate change, city after city is pummeled by storms like we’ve never seen.

And it’s more than the news. More than any before us, we’re aware of the complex systems that cause suffering and pain, and we can’t keep up. Seemingly insoluble problems that require all our energy and creativity, embedded systems that we participate in even without knowing. We’re used to confessing our individual sins and trying to do better. Now on top of them there’s an endless list of mountains we need to work on. Just one would take great effort. But there’s not just one. Climate justice. Racism. Devaluation and objectification of women across the culture. Violence and a gun culture. Oppression of the poor in our own nation. And so many more. If we didn’t care, it would be easier. But we do. And God cares. There’s so much our care compels us to deal with. It’s overwhelming. Exhausting.

And this heaviness, anxiety, and tiredness seems to be rising among many of us who care deeply about this world and about serving God in this world.

It would be a help if we could find some relief for this weight.

Here at worship we often find God’s peace. But this past year has been Matthew’s year, and that’s contributed to the weight. This year I’ve had a number of conversations with folks here about Matthew, and how judgmental his Gospel can feel. And the lectionary creators chose a lot of prophetic witness to pair with Matthew this year, so it hasn’t been an easy year to find lightness and joy in our Scripture texts.

Just look at these next three weeks, starting today. To finish the Church Year we’ve got three very hard parables from Matthew 25 and three very angry prophets, Amos, Zephaniah, and Ezekiel. At this point, that seems more weight than we can bear.

But God has promised to bless us with grace when we gather. So we’re going to struggle with these readings until we get it. We’ll emulate Jacob at the river Jabbok, who wrestled an angel, maybe even God, all night, and refused to let go until he got a blessing. With the Spirit’s help, we’re not letting go of these heavy readings in a heavy year until we hear God’s good news.

Our wrestling reveals we’re not being completely fair to Matthew.

It’s true, Matthew’s the kind of student that, just before the bell rings, raises his hand and reminds the teacher she forgot to give homework. Matthew’s a disciple that wants to learn. He packs his Gospel with Jesus’ teachings. And we’ve heard those teachings, week after week, till we feel like all we’ve heard this year is how messed up we are and how much work we have to do.

But it’s not Matthew’s fault we don’t read his whole Gospel every week. We can’t hear all the teachings and skip Matthew’s framing truth and complain we don’t like Matthew.

If we read all of Matthew every week, we’d remember that Matthew starts his Gospel with Jesus’ family tree that includes flawed people, even naming four women. Jesus comes from broken folks just like us. It’s Matthew who says that Jesus’ true name is Emmanuel, God with us, who ends his Gospel with Jesus’ promise to be with us always. The whole Gospel is about God being with us. Matthew’s the only Evangelist that tells us that Jesus said God wills that not a single person be lost. God wants to save everyone. And unlike Luke, who heard that the Roman officer who crucified Jesus said, as Jesus died, “truly this was an innocent man,” Matthew says the officer said, “Truly this was the Son of God.”

So here’s Matthew’s Good News: Jesus is the Christ, God-with-us, born of flawed human stock, who desires to save all, and who is publicly known and proclaimed as God’s Son only when he’s dying, humiliated, on a cross.

We can’t read this parable and ignore Matthew’s greater truth.

Now, obviously the Bridegroom today is meant to be Jesus.

In most of the parables we’ve heard since September, there’s been a figure that seems clearly to stand as God. Or the Son of God. Vineyard owner, ruler, master. That’s true these three weeks, too. Today, the Bridegroom. Next week, the master. Last, the returning King.

But if Matthew is focused toward that critical witness at the cross – truly this is the Son of God – then we have to re-think all those parables. God isn’t where we thought God was in them. God-with-us is dying on the cross. And that changes everything.

Because if it’s God’s Son who’s dying as a criminal, here’s what really happens in today’s parable: the Bridegroom himself has the door slammed in his face. He’s told “I don’t know you,” and is thrown out with the rest of us foolish, unprepared ones. If the Son of God dies on the cross, then this parable doesn’t end the way Jesus said it would.

Now, Jesus told this parable right before Holy Week. Matthew 26, the next chapter, begins the Passion account. Whatever was threatened here, in Holy Week the opposite happened. The Bridegroom was thrown out, along with everyone else who didn’t properly prepare. And the Bridegroom was killed.

This is the astonishing grace we find when we struggle and don’t let go till we hear good news: God-with-us is out in the darkness with us.

God joins us in our foolish lack of preparation, our paralyzed inactivity in the face of such challenging things. There is no greater news. I’ve never felt that I’d be one of the prepared ones. I leave things till the last minute too often. How do any of us know if we’re ready for Christ?

But if God is with us in our struggle to be prepared, it’s a different world. Now we can hear the message of this parable – be ready, get your oil, face what needs facing – with the joy that we aren’t preparing alone.

Amos shows us the oil we need to have ready: justice that rolls down like water, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. That’s what fills our flasks, what lights our lamps. It is God-made, and God-given. And with God-with-us at our side, we can fill up with God’s justice and righteousness and be ready for whatever mountains and suffering and work are before us.

It’s a heavy path ahead. This year has taught us that. It’s going to be heavy for a long time. But we’re not alone. God is here. So we can go on.

There’s one more grace in all this, maybe the best of all.

If God’s justice and righteousness are the oil for our lamps, what will happen when they are lighted? Our preparedness has little to do with life after we die. In Christ’s resurrection we will be borne into new life, and there’s nothing we can do to make that happen. So what are we preparing for?

African slaves in America sang “Keep your lamps trimmed and burning” to each other. They meant it as more than encouragement about life after death. It was also a prayer for God to change the world. As our lamps of justice burn, the darkness itself is lightened. The world is changed. As our lamps of righteousness burn, even if we can only do a small flame, this world begins to see again, and God’s true healing happens. Mountains start coming down. Even in this world. Maybe even in our lifetimes.

We can’t deny that more often than not we’re the foolish ones in this story, unprepared for the challenges we face.

But hasn’t Paul reminded us that the truth of the cross is that God chooses the foolish to shame the wise? That God chooses to save through the foolishness of the cross? It makes no sense for the Bridegroom to allow himself to be shut out of the party, even killed for the sake of the likes of us. But sensible or not, that’s exactly what Christ does.

And that foolish death was just the beginning. For Christ is risen, and all the foolish are restored along with the wise. In the light of the resurrection, the wedding feast of God and humanity can finally begin, even now, and change the world. It’s a feast with no doors to slam, no faces excluded. Where everyone is known and loved by name.

We taste of that feast today and at each Eucharist. We are fed with God’s justice and righteousness, we have our jars filled here each week, so we can be prepared for whatever is to come.

But best of all, God-with-us, Emmanuel, never leaves us. That is the light we’ve been longing to see in all this darkness.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

“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 feast of the marriage of God and humanity is a joy and a filling and forgiveness and an abundance of life: why would we refuse the invitation?

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 28, year A
Texts: Matthew 22:1-14; Psalm 23; Isaiah 25:1-9

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

This doesn’t make any sense.

Why would anybody reject an invitation to a royal wedding? It comes in the mail, heavy paper, elegant embossing, and you’re in, invited to a wonderful event. Even here in the States, where we rejected royalty centuries ago, we’re fascinated by royal weddings. But not just one person turns it down. The entire guest list makes fun of the invitation, and some do horrible things to the messengers.

Jesus likes starting parables with ridiculous scenarios like this. It’s his thing. No father would sell his house, empty his savings and give half to a younger son, then watch him head into the sunset. No shepherd in the world would abandon 99 sheep to wolves and injury and cold to go looking for one lost sheep. It’d be hard to find a farmer or vineyard owner who’d pay a full day’s wage to workers who only put in an hour’s labor.

But Jesus has deeper truths, greater wisdom, we can only get to by breaking down all we think is true. We can’t imagine rejecting a royal invitation. So, Jesus says, what do you reject? If this is like God’s realm, what invitation are you tossing into the recycling bin?

To crack this open, we need to know what the invitation is. What feast are we talking about?

Jesus tells a story of a wedding of a king’s son. It’s Holy Week when he tells this parable, along with others that use the image of an important father and his son. Obviously Jesus is talking about himself, the Son of God, and his relationship to the One he called Father.

But that it’s a wedding is also important. Whenever wedding imagery is used in the New Testament, pay attention. It’s not accidental. The Church has understood it to mean that we, the Church, are the bride of Christ. That in Christ’s death and resurrection the Triune God and humanity are joined in a new covenant, a new testament, a marriage. In this covenant we are married into to the life of the Triune God, restored, forgiven, and transformed.

This parable’s wedding feast is the wedding feast of humanity to God. It’s a joyful celebration of God’s love and forgiveness, God’s eternal marriage promises of faithfulness and care. It’s a celebration that we know now and that continues into the life to come. When we come to this Table in this liturgy, we eat of this marriage feast, taking in God’s food for life and wholeness and salvation. Why would we ever reject this?

We might not be terribly fond of the rest of the guest list.

Anxiety around seating charts at receptions seems to haunt many wedding planners; apparently whom we sit next to at a wedding matters. Maybe we don’t want God’s invitation because of who’s at our table.

David sings of a feast prepared in his enemies’ presence. The way the Hebrew Scriptures speak of the feast of God, including Isaiah today, suggests that David’s feast is a reconciliation meal. The feast is spread amongst enemies, so they’re also at the table.

Isaiah proclaims the great feast in the life to come, when death is destroyed, but it’s the same inclusive vision. All peoples, all nations, will come to this feast on God’s mountain, and all will be fed. This marriage of humanity to the Triune God that Christ creates will join all people to God. We’ll be cheek and jowl with everyone.

Now, this congregation lives with the belief of full inclusion in God. We experience it repeatedly: here all are welcome, all are seen as loved by God, no matter who they are, what they look like, what quirks they have. Still, most of us wouldn’t need much time to make a list of individuals or groups that we don’t want next to us at God’s wedding feast, either in the life to come, or at the marriage feast in which we live in this life.

We also might not really want to be married.

Marriage joins for life, so you’re together. A lot. If it’s the Triune God making this covenant with us, then God’s planning on taking up residence with us. Living in our lives. There, all the time. Maybe we reject God’s invitation because we’re not ready for that marriage.

As beloved as the 23rd Psalm is, there’s an uncomfortable intensity of relationship there. The Shepherd anoints us with oil at baptism, brings us through those waters, provides all in abundance. The Shepherd leads us on the paths of God, not our paths. The Shepherd restores our soul, walks with us through dangers, feeds us at the Table, accompanies us all the days of our life.

That’s a lot of closeness with God. When the path winds through valleys of shadow and fear, we certainly want our Shepherd. No one wants to face wolves alone.

But all that guidance, directing of our paths, walking with us all day, being with us while we sleep, maybe that’s more than we’re ready for. We like our own paths, seeking out satisfaction that we want, even dangerous things. At our core, we resist walking with God daily because we can never get away, or run wherever we want.

We also might not want to come to the marriage feast on God’s terms.

We love the idea of receiving God’s grace, God’s eternal love, without earning it. But at the same time we often hope that somehow we’re probably doing well enough to earn some of it. Better than others we could mention, we think.

But the final wedding guest list in the parable is populated by “both good and bad,” whoever could come. All are worthy because the king said so, not because of what they did. As people are brought in from the streets, the pickpocket and the one whose pocket got picked are both guests. We’re worthy because God says we are, not because of us. We don’t always like that very much.

And we resist what it means to be brought into God’s grace. The Scriptures say that when we’re loved by God through grace we are transformed into Christ. Whatever we are, good or bad, is utterly changed. We’re made worthy by the Spirit’s transformation.

That’s the problem of the wedding garment. In a culture where poor people didn’t have two sets of clothes, Jesus imagines that the king provided clothing for all guests. A rack of tuxedos and evening gowns were inside the entrance hallway, in all sizes.

In Colossians, Paul says our transformation into Christ is like being dressed in Christ’s clothing, putting on love, forgiveness, patience, as a garment. (Colossians 3) Being dressed to be someone we aren’t yet. And like the guest in the parable, we’re not always ready for that. Why do I need to be made to look like Christ? Don’t I get to be myself?

But none of these reasons actually make any sense, do they?

After all this, we’re still back at our principal objection: why would anyone ever turn down God’s invitation? Even with such reasons, once we see God’s feast spreading in this world now and forever, once we learn what God plans marriage with us to be, there’s nothing we want more.

We want communion and grace with God, even if it means God in our lives all the time, every day. Because it means God in our lives all the time, every day.

We want the joy of feasting in God’s love and forgiveness, even if it means having enemies or those we don’t like feasting alongside us. Because it means reconciliation with enemies and those we don’t like.

We want the blessing of being clothed in God’s love and grace, covered with the garments of salvation, even if it means letting go of our clothing, our ways. Because there is nothing we want more than to look like Christ, to love like Christ, to live like Christ.

The invitations are out, and you’re invited to the wedding feast of God. So is everyone. It’s time to RSVP, and start living in this new life, at this feast, in the marriage love of God now and forever.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

Our texts today give us the comforting picture of God as a farmer tending to a vineyard, but they also contain ominous words about God breaking things down. What does it really mean for us to be broken by God?

Vicar Jessica Christy
The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 27, year A
Mount Olive Lutheran Church
Texts: Isaiah 5:1-7; Psalm 80:7-15; Matthew 21:33-46

Loving and living God, 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.

It’s hard to find the good news on a week like this.

This is one of those weeks when we share stories that confront us with judgment and violence. In both Isaiah and the psalm, we read about the Assyrian invasion of the Promised Land. The psalmist cries out for help, begging God to save Israel from a terrible foreign power: “Turn now, O God of hosts, look down from heaven; preserve what your right hand has planted!” But we know from history that God didn’t show up to save Israel. The northern kingdom was conquered. Its tribes were lost forever – and many of the people of Judah were also killed or enslaved. So we look to the Gospel reading for some comfort, but in Jesus’ parable, we encounter a tale of greed, betrayal, and murder. And just to make matters worse, Jesus’ explanation of the parable has been misused for centuries to hurt our Jewish brothers and sisters. There isn’t a lot of hope shining out of texts like these.

And this is also one of those weeks where it’s hard to see the good news at work in the world. Our nation has been hit with a series of heartbreaking disasters, but it’s not just the human suffering that’s hard to bear. It’s the fact that none of this is inevitable. We don’t have to live in a world with so much injustice and violence, but it’s the world we keep choosing for ourselves. From where we stand this week, it looks like storms are going to keep getting worse, and our responses are going to be insufficient to meet the needs of those most vulnerable to a changing planet. It looks like guns are going to maintain their chokehold on the spirit of our nation, and they’re going to be used to end human lives. It’s hard to find healing when we have every reason to believe that we’re going to let all of this happen again. It’s one of those times when it rings a little too true when we read that God “expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry.” It’s hard to find the good news on this kind of week.

But there is good news here. There is always good news here, and we see that in the faith of Isaiah, because as disaster looms, Isaiah tells us that God is a gardener. The prophet is staring down the world’s most fearsome army, and even though he believes that the coming invasion is a sign of God’s anger, he describes God not as a judge, nor a warrior, nor a king, but a humble tiller of the earth. And he calls this gardener his beloved, and sings about God’s marvelous works. Isaiah is sad and scared and full of fury about how things have gone wrong in his nation, but even then, he addresses God with a love song. He tells us that God looks like a farmer who sweats and toils in the hope that life will emerge from the promise of the fertile soil.

And the psalmist goes even further than Isaiah. The author of Psalm 80 doesn’t just talk about God preparing and tending a vineyard; he remembers how God once brought the vine of Israel out of Egypt. It’s this beautiful, intimate image of God’s hands gently holding the beloved community. God, the creator of the universe, personally carried them out of slavery so they might flourish in peace and freedom. Even on the brink of losing everything, the psalmist reminds the people of the promise that they are carried in love.

We too are like that little vine. We are so fragile, so very vulnerable to the elements and to those who would harm us. The good things we create together are so easily destroyed. All too often we don’t produce the good fruits that we hoped to make for the world. But God holds us in love, and cares for us, and gives us all a chance to grow. We feel our gardener’s love in the richness of the soil. We feel our gardener’s love in the unfurling of tender leaves. We feel our gardener’s love in the sun and the turning seasons, in the world’s abundant beauty that surrounds us and sustains us and brings peace to our troubled spirits. Because we have a God who gardens, we know that we are never alone.

Now, that promise doesn’t magically erase the fear that these stories carry for us. We can’t escape the fact that Isaiah, the psalmist, and even Jesus all use some violent words to describe God’s work. Today, we hear of God tearing down the wall around the vineyard, leaving it vulnerable to the world outside. We hear of God’s cornerstone breaking those who stumble on it, crushing anyone who gets in its way. Those are hard words. It’s much easier to sing about a God who heals than a God who breaks.

But what does it really mean to be broken by God? To answer that question in faith, we must look to the cornerstone, to Christ. When Jesus broke those around him, did he bring justice down on the heads of his opponents? Did he kill, or injure, or seek revenge? No! He broke down the self-righteousness of those who thought they were without sin. He broke open the lonely, corrupt lives of tax collectors like Matthew and Zacchaeus. He shattered the worldview of the Roman centurion, who could look at a criminal hanging dead on a cross and proclaim, “truly, this was the Son of God.” He broke down the divisions between male and female, Jew and Greek, slave and free. He gave up his own body to be broken, and in the end, he broke open the tomb, freeing us all from the jaws of death, forever.

In Christ, we see that even the boundary between God and humanity was forever destroyed, for when God became human in Christ, we learned that God is not just the gardener, but also the true vine that abides in us every day. Christ is with us and in us, teaching us that brokenness is how God brings life. The spirit breathes hope into the world’s most broken places, and breaks apart its callous triumphs. Like a farmer tilling the unyielding earth, God is at work in us, turning over our hard, unforgiving places until they are transformed into gentleness and possibility. When we try to close ourselves off, to harden our hearts, God is cracking us open to new realities, new relationships, new ways to live.

None of us want to be broken. In a world that demands success and strength, we hate the idea of letting ourselves be torn down. We are taught to hate the way of the cross. We might say we love the cross, but our world tells us to despise it, and we are very good at listening to the world. We want to keep our walls high and strong. We greedily hold on to the parts of ourselves that we know need to be pruned. Even when we can barely live with ourselves, we are afraid of letting go of what we have and living into what we could be. Change is a fearful thing, so when we hear that God is transforming us, we’re tempted to hear that as a threat and not as the promise that it is. We think that, in changing us, God is going to take things away from us, but that’s not right at all. The Gospel tells us that God is giving us the chance to give ourselves away. We want to flee the cross, to flee weakness and loss, but it is only in losing ourselves that we will find Christ growing in us. God is inviting us to see that the cross is the tree of life.

When we feel God tilling our hearts, we are being given a chance to let go of our defensiveness, to be free of our fear. We can hold tight to our hardness, we can choose to produce bitter fruit, or we can become the garden we were meant to be. We can delight in this beautiful vineyard Earth that God has planted for us. We can rejoice in the abundant mercies that sustain our every breath. In the living vine of Christ, we can grow fruit to feed the world, and in giving ourselves away, we can be fed with all our souls desire. We can let the good news burst through the life we have known, and nurture us into something more wonderful than we could ever imagine.

Sometimes it is hard to find that good news, but we know that, no matter what, we have a gardener who is making all things new. Out of our brokenness, God will let us grow. Out of our brokenness, God is already growing.

Amen.