Jesus draws us into the life of God and into the life of community. United in a common witness to God, we ourselves become witnesses for one another.
Looking the Wrong Way
Christ Jesus goes away on this day so that we can be filled with the Spirit and continue the ministry of self-giving, wounded love that is the only way the world will be healed.
Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Ascension of Our Lord
texts: Acts 1:1-11; Luke 24:44-53
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
Having Jesus around was great for the disciples.
Whenever there was a crisis, Jesus could handle it. If decisions needed to be made, Jesus would make them. If someone needed help, bring them to Jesus.
It was good. These women and men spent their time being taught by God’s Messiah, surrounded by God’s grace and love. They didn’t have to worry about much if they stayed close to Jesus.
The crucifixion was a horrible blow to this peace of mind. But then Jesus was alive, raised from the dead. They had him back. All would be right again with Jesus in charge.
This is to say, it makes sense that after Christ ascended into heaven, the disciples, women and men alike, stood on the Mount of Olives gaping at the sky. “He’s leaving? What are we supposed to do? What do we do now when things get challenging?”
And that’s precisely the point.
The Church from the beginning has struggled to grasp why God became human.
We want answers as in the days of Jesus’ ministry, answers that neatly give God all the world’s problems, answers that say, when someone comes to us we can turn to God and say, “here you go,” answers that say, in a crisis we can look to the sky and say, “now what?”
Except the point of God taking on human life and living among us was to show us in person God’s way, the way of love of neighbor, so that we would do it. To teach us in person how we could love as God loves, so that we would do it. To save the world not through a transaction over sin but through a transformation of human hearts, healing the creation through us, who from the beginning were supposed to be caring for this creation and for each other.
And if that was the point of the Incarnation, there would have to be an Ascension. At some point, the Son of God would have to return into the full life of the Trinity and say, OK, folks, now it’s up to you.
The Church also has an enormous problem understanding God’s role in suffering and evil.
We usually set this scenario and despair: “if God is all-loving, and if God is all-powerful, and if there still is horrible suffering and pain, then God’s the problem.” There are lots of ways Christians rationalize and explain this, sometimes in defense of God, sometimes in prosecution of God. None help. Because there’s a fundamental flaw in the whole argument: the equation is incomplete.
Yes, God is all-loving. Jesus taught us that again and again. Yes, God is all-powerful. The Triune God made all things, universes, galaxies, mitochondria. That’s a lot of power. And yes, there’s enormous suffering and pain in this world that causes us, and all people, to feel grief, sadness, anger.
What’s missing in the equation is how God understands power and how to use it. We assume that since God has the power to make a universe, God has to use that power to deal with human suffering, sin, and evil. When we see all that causes pain to so many, we look up at the sky and say, “Where is God?”
But we already saw God’s answer to human suffering and pain when we looked up at the cross.
On the cross, the God of the universe set aside all that power and became vulnerable, helpless, before human evil.
The Triune God set aside all weapons, chose not to exercise brute force, and, bearing our own body, faced humiliation, torture, and death.
We get angry with God for not intervening in human suffering because we imagine the only way God would intervene is the way we would: by exerting force, domination, punishment.
But on the cross the God who can do all that says, “That’s not my way.” My way is to redeem all things by offering myself. My way is to save you by loving you until you destroy me, and then coming into life again and continuing to love you. My way is to show you in my very life and death that this is how all of you will also end human suffering and pain. By taking it on yourself. By standing with those who suffer. By loving those who hate. By getting in the way of evil to keep it from someone else. By being my loving presence to those who are in pain.
We may want God to act as we would act if we had all God’s world-making power. But we cannot say that God has not acted just because God chose a different way. We can only try to understand, and see if we are drawn to follow.
This doesn’t mean we can’t ever look up at the sky and yell at God.
We don’t need to defend God or God’s choices to anyone, and God’s big enough to handle any criticism. Sometimes God does intervene, and miracles happen, and sometimes God doesn’t. It’s legitimate to scream our frustration to God when that happens. If Jesus, the Son of God, could do it, as he did on the cross, it’s fair game for us.
But we don’t stop there. Because there’s always that angel from God standing next to us who, at some point, will say, “Why are you just looking up to heaven? Go back to the city and wait, and God will give you what you need to change this. To begin the healing of the world.”
That’s the grace Jesus gives in leaving: the Triune God is sharing this world-making power with all of us, to heal all things.
In Christ’s ascension, we, like those first women and men, wonder “what now?” We, like they, ask: Who’s going to help these people? Who’s going to figure out what to do in this next crisis? Who’s going to sort out the problems that we have?
And today God’s answer is, “well, you are.” That’s been the plan all along. That we would be so changed by God’s power-relinquishing love that we would bear the power of God’s love into the world on God’s behalf. We would carry God’s vulnerability, God’s willingness to be wounded, into the world to bring life to our sisters and brothers in pain. We would share God’s strange way of using power by setting it aside.
Christ trusts us a lot in leaving us in charge. We’re going to mess up some of these crises. We’re going to find wrong answers to problems sometimes. We’re not always going to know what to do to help someone who comes to us. But Christ trusts us with this ministry. And that’s enough to go on.
And there’s one more grace we have.
Those women and men were sent back to the city and told to wait, because the Holy Spirit was going to fill them with the power from God they needed to do this work their beloved Jesus had begun.
We have ten days until our celebration of Pentecost. We’ve already experienced the coming of the Spirit, all our lives, so it’s not exactly the same for us. But these ten days are a good reminder that sometimes we have to wait before we receive all we need from God. And they’re a reminder that we’re not in this ministry alone, ever. That the Triune God’s answer when we look to the skies is to send us the Spirit so we can have the strength and grace we need to carry on as God’s love in the world.
Jesus once told us it was to our advantage that he went away, so that he could send us the Advocate, the Holy Spirit. (John 16:7) That’s the gift. By leaving us to continue the healing of the world, Christ also makes it possible for us to do it by coming in the Spirit. And we also get this: in taking on this ministry of wounded love to save all things, we get to become the people we were always meant to be.
So wait, and listen: you will be clothed with power from on high in the Spirit, and then, well, anything can happen!
In the name of Jesus. Amen
Unconditional Peace
We find peace in Christ when the Spirit comes to us, reminding us, teaching us, empowering us, to be the peace of God in the world.
Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Sixth Sunday of Easter, year C
texts: John 14:[add 15-22] 23-35; Revelation 21:10, 22 – 22:5
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
Jesus offers us peace the world cannot give, he says. Given the utter lack of peace we experience in the world, is this actually peace the world cannot have?
Peace between nations, peace in our cities, peace within families, peace of heart and mind: do we know such peace? From the depths of our hearts to the breadth of this planet, do we see it? Christ may be Prince of Peace, but is that just a pretty title?
The peace he promises today he gives on the night of his betrayal, Thursday night. Three days later, Sunday night, risen from the dead, his first words are “Peace be with you.” In between was heartbreak, suffering, death. There was little peace for these followers those three days.
So of course Christ would re-gift peace to them after all that. But this blessing, the “peace the world cannot give,” he gave before the worst three days of their lives.
The world gives deeply conditional peace. Peace of heart is only possible, the world says, if all things are well and we’ve got all we ever wanted. Peace between people is only possible, the world says, if everyone agrees, if no one raises questions of injustice, if the ones in charge stay in charge and everyone goes along.
If Jesus offers a peace that endures horrible things, as he gave his friends, that is a peace the world cannot, does not, give.
The question is, does Christ give it either?
If we struggle to be at peace in our hearts because of all we face in our lives, because of the lack of peace in our family, the lack of peace in the world, we are not alone. But if we come here and have to pretend that what we see out in the world isn’t important, or hide that we might not feel at peace inside, we’re building our faith on a lie.
The gift Jesus gives us is that here we see clearly he’s aware of our our anxiety and doubts and fears. Twice in this discourse he offers peace. Twice he says “do not let your hearts be troubled.” On Palm Sunday, and now here, he says “do not be afraid.” Jesus is tuned into the hearts of his followers, and knows they’re struggling with what is happening, and will struggle more ahead.
Even with this terrible thing coming, he honors their concern, feels it. And he reassures them and us that he can and will still give peace.
That night and the next two days they must have thought the opposite was true. But when they met Christ alive again, they began to understand. Their circumstances, and the circumstances of their world, still didn’t look like peace. But as they entered deeper and deeper into life in Christ, they found a peace that transcended circumstances, and had the power to change them, even change circumstances. They found a peace that was without conditions.
Now, if we could only find that so we’d actually be at peace.
As it turns out, our Lord has taken care of that, too.
Today Jesus promises he will send the Holy Spirit to be with us, to remind us of all he has said. Listen: “The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I give to you.”
Christ’s peace comes directly from this gift: we don’t have to keep everything straight that we have learned and known in Christ. The Holy Spirit will teach us along the way, and remind us of all Jesus told us that we so often forget.
Don’t underestimate this. We so often talk about discipleship and faith in ways that make us more anxious than at peace, because we struggle to be what we keep hearing we are called to be. But we have a Lord who helps us, who sends us the Spirit of God, to gently remind us of all that we have known but that we sometimes lose along the way.
This is an astonishing gift. And here is what the Spirit reminds us:
The Spirit reminds us that we are not alone.
A lot of our fear is that we don’t have Jesus ready at hand in a way we can easily see. So much of these followers’ anxiety in these verses is related to him leaving, and them fearing being alone. So Jesus takes care of that. “I will not leave you orphaned,” he says. As if it’s his job to make sure we’re OK, that we’re not feeling isolated and lost.
We aren’t alone, that’s the first reminder. The Holy Spirit comes into our hearts and minds every day, and that is the source of a true peace regardless of circumstances. In fact, Jesus promises that he and the Father will make a home with us, too. That the Triune God will live with us.
There is peace in this: whatever we are facing, God never abandons us.
The Spirit also reminds us of how to love like Christ.
Jesus’ words last week brought great anxiety over the implications of his command to love in our lives. It’s too easy to forget how clear Jesus is about love of neighbor, how insistent he is that it is the shape of our lives, it’s too easy to turn inward. So we are filled with worry about this.
We’re also distracted by the problems of life, by the problems our neighbors, even our family, create for us, and to lose track of our call to love as Christ loves.
But the Holy Spirit is our teacher and reminder not only of what Christ has taught us, but what it means for our lives. We don’t follow a God who gives a job description for “Servant Disciple” and leaves us to figure it out. Our Lord has a job, too, to gently nudge and move us into love. To teach us the ways of love we too easily forget. To remind us when we’re distracted of what our calling is.
And the Spirit also empowers us in this love. A little later Jesus talks about us staying connected in him, like a branch to a vine, so we can have the strength to love as we are called to love.
There is peace in this: the Holy Spirit will remind us what we learned and help us live as we are called.
And the Spirit reminds us that our Lord is coming back for us, that there is a new creation being made.
Just as the Holy Spirit opened John’s eyes to a revelation of the world to come in the new creation we just heard, so the Spirit opens our eyes to see that the world is going to be brought into a new life.
The Spirit, the Comforter, gives the peace that God has not abandoned this world, no matter what we see, and is even now making things new. Preparing a new creation that will be, as we heard today, a gift and blessing for all nations and peoples. For us, and for all, there is room in God’s house.
There is peace in this: in our darkest hours, we have hope that God is still working for the healing of all things.
We often speak of God’s unconditional love. Today Jesus promises unconditional peace.
This is the deep peace those who are in Christ have known for millennia, a peace that Paul tells us “passes understanding,” a peace that transcends our current situation. It is a peace without conditions, a peace given us by the Triune God through the Holy Spirit, a peace that doesn’t have to wait for everything to be perfect to be real and life-changing.
This peace is ours when we know we are not alone, but walk with the Spirit beside and within us.
This peace is ours when we are guided and empowered by the Spirit to live abundant, loving lives.
This peace is ours when we are reminded by the Spirit of the healing to come for all people.
When our hearts have this peace, we much more easily become Christ in this world that knows little peace. We become peace-bearing people who bring God’s justice and peace to our families, our city, our world. At peace in Christ, we become beacons of the Good News by our very lives. And other people find peace in God through meeting us.
Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. Our God is bringing peace. And in fact, it’s already here.
In the name of Jesus. Amen
Step by Step
We are being made new in Christ, but it’s a process, begun in the love we have from God, and led step-by-step by the Holy Spirit, who holds our hand and teaches us what it means to live that same love in the world.
Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fifth Sunday of Easter, year C
texts: Acts 11:1-18; John 13:31-35 (add 36 – 14:3); Revelation 21:1-6
Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
It’s hard to understand some things without someone walking us through them.
Like learning to tie shoes. Watching someone do it seems magic if you don’t know the steps. So we’re taught it one step at a time.
Our life in Christ also needs step-by-step instruction. We need help learning to follow Christ Jesus, to obey his new commandment of love.
Peter understood that. Confronted by disciples unready to expand the community to Gentiles, Peter carefully walked through it, “step by step,” Luke says in Acts.
It wasn’t easy for Peter. He had step-by-step help, too. In this episode with Cornelius the Roman, which he retells, the Holy Spirit helped Peter learn the next steps of loving discipleship. But we also heard a few extra verses from John today than were assigned, because two familiar and beloved sections of John, today’s command to love, and Jesus’ promise of rooms in the Father’s house, are linked by Peter’s struggle to understand Christ’s new command.
So Jesus helped Peter, step-by-step. Peter helped his friends, step-by-step. Today, step-by-step, with the grace of the Holy Spirit, we, too, can grow deeper into Christ and the love that is our call.
Step one: you are loved by God forever.
We can’t grasp Christ’s new commandment without these key words: “As I have loved you.” Every time we are commanded to love we begin with the truth that we are first loved by God.
And we do nothing to earn it. Peter eagerly wants to prove he’s worthy of Christ’s love, that he’ll lay down his life. Jesus knows he won’t, at least not that night.
But immediately after telling Peter he’ll fail, Jesus says, “Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God. Believe also in me.” He reassures Peter that God’s love is non-negotiable. Peter, Thomas, all of us are grounded in the reality of the immoveable love of God that is ours in Christ.
There’s plenty to fear as we follow Christ. The love revealed in the next steps challenges us, scares us, makes us want to put up walls, barriers. But listen to our Lord Jesus: “Do not let your hearts be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me.” Our life of love lives in this unchanging reality: you are loved eternally by the Triune God who made all things and who broke the power of death out of love for you. Whenever we struggle with the next steps, we breathe in the Holy Spirit, ask for calm hearts, and trust in Christ’s love that is ours forever.
Step two: Loved by God, you are placed in Christ’s community where Christ’s love is the standard.
Christ’s unconditional love places us into a family of faith, and the new commandment says our Christly love begins in love for sisters and brothers in the community. Our love for each other witnesses to the world Christ’s Good News.
The appalling disunity of Christians in this world reveals we are not fully in Christ, and have much growing and changing to do. Those Christians we feel justified in disliking, who speak in ways we see as opposed to Christ’s call, they are the first ones we’re commanded to love.
If we can’t love other Christians as Christ has loved us, there are no more steps. We’re no longer witnessing to the Good News of God’s death-defeating love for all. We’re witnessing to a love limited to those whom we like and agree with. Christ commands that our standard for love is no longer those we choose to love, it is to love all whom God loves, starting with those in our Christian family.
Step three: Loved by God in community, turn outward to others outside the community.
Even though Christ begins here with love inside the community of faith, that always led him to command a love for the other, outside the community. When he sums up all of God’s law in love of God and love of neighbor, Jesus also repeatedly breaks open what love of neighbor means.
We learn from the Good Samaritan that love of neighbor is loving those different from us. Those who look different, think differently than we, believe differently from us. Those whom we distrust, or think less of. When we love who God loves, we erase all lines between people.
We learn from Jesus that love of neighbor loves those who hurt us, and not just unintentionally. God’s love for the world – we see this in Christ on the cross – loves through inflicted pain, loves those who are enemies, those who hate us.
Loving others in Christ’s family is hard. Harder still is loving people who are so different from us, or loving those who want to harm us. But these are the new eyes we are given in Christ, to see as God sees, to love as God loves.
Step four: learn the implications of these new eyes. If you love whom God loves, as God loves, it will mean changes.
This is what Peter needed to learn. At this point in Acts, after Easter, after Pentecost, Peter is already a bold leader, fearlessly preaching the resurrection of Christ and the life of faith. But he’s still limited. He doesn’t yet realize Christ is for the whole world, without distinction.
Today Peter took his next step into Christ. “You can’t call profane anything God has made clean,” he hears. Your categories of “other,” of “those who are in and those who are out,” are irrelevant in the new life in Christ.
And Peter’s actions show us this is not a theoretical exercise. These are real people we are called to love in real, concrete ways. These are real people carrying different labels, names of different faiths, some without faith, whom we must love and reach out to, if we are in Christ.
These are real people, our neighbors, who challenge all our assumptions and whom we have no option but to love and embrace, if we are in Christ.
These are real people who haven’t experienced what we have and who cry out that they are suffering, sometimes because of how we live our privileged lives, and we have no choice but to stand with them and seek justice, if we are in Christ.
Real people need real love, not theology and theory, Peter shows us.
Step five: discover the joy of saying, “Who am I to hinder God?”
Peter has become unafraid to defend his actions to those who don’t yet see and love as God sees and loves. The Holy Spirit came upon these Gentiles, so Peter baptized them. He ate with them, shared his life with them, even though they weren’t Jewish as he was. Because God’s love had already crossed the barrier, Peter did, too, and it filled him with confidence and joy.
That’s the goal of this love Christ has given us. That, embraced in the love of the Triune God, we lose all our individual barriers and fears and doubts and live in the joy of loving as God loves, seeing all people as delight and grace, living in Christ, not in ourselves.
There is no fear in love, the elder writes in First John, because completed love, perfected love, drives out all fear. So we joyfully say, “Who are we to get in God’s way? If God’s love goes there, that’s where we will go.”
This is where the Holy Spirit is leading us.
This is where we are going. And it is a process. “See, I am making all things new,” Christ the Lamb says in Revelation today. We, and the whole world, are being made new. Step by step it is happening.
We begin where we live, surrounded by the life-giving, eternal love of the Triune God. From there, hand-in-hand with the Holy Spirit, we take our steps into obeying this new commandment.
And so we move ever deeper into life in Christ and the love that will make us and all things new.
In the name of Jesus. Amen
Unnecessary Understanding
Faith in Christ Jesus as our Life and Hope isn’t about getting all our questions answered, it’s trusting in Christ enough that we can keep asking while we walk Christ’ path in faith, knowing that our answer isn’t words, it’s the One we walk beside.
Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fourth Sunday of Easter, year C
texts: John 10:22-30; Psalm 23; Acts 9:36-43
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
“Jesus used this figure of speech with them but they didn’t understand what he was saying.”
That’s John’s earlier comment (10:6), after Jesus first calls himself the Good Shepherd. Even though his hearers were more confused than enlightened, he kept at this image, risking more confusion by even calling himself the gate of the sheepfold.
We see why some reached the end of their patience today. “Tell us plainly, are you the Messiah?”, they said. Enough with the confusing words: if we follow you will we find life with God?
That’s our question. We already know Christ’s path is hard. Jesus calls us to a life of sacrificial love, following his lead. This will change our lives a lot. How do we know Jesus is leading us to life?
Today we sing an ancient song of faith we love dearly, the 23rd Psalm. But do we know enough to trust Christ Jesus and sing this hymn confidently as we walk through life? We sometimes wish we had more clarity. More understanding.
But what if that’s not offered?
It’s encouraging we’re not the only ones confused by this shepherd thing.
Even people living in Jesus’ time had difficulty, apparently. You’re a shepherd, we’re sheep? Not people? What?
We can know all we want about sheep and still wonder what Jesus is talking about. Fine, sheep are dumb, they need constant guidance, we’ve heard it all. Bottom line, we still need to know if we trust Jesus is the right guide for us.
But in answer today Jesus goes right back to shepherd-sheep language, implying that if we were his sheep we would have faith. How is that helpful?
The problem is deeper than a confusing metaphor.
Is Jesus trustworthy to be our Messiah, to be life for us? In John’s Gospel especially he makes these huge claims that, if true, are the best news we could know. “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” “I am the Resurrection and the Life.” But what if we still have questions?
Questions about pain and suffering. About God’s will and desire for us. About life and death.
The last two weeks we’ve heard John tell us that what he’s written is given us so we can believe, and in believing have life in Christ’s name. But what if, even after reading John, and the other Gospels, we still don’t understand? Even today’s story about Tabitha, a beautiful, hopeful story, only heightens our anxiety. None of us have seen such a thing happen. So if we can’t expect such miracles in our lives, what then?
If we can’t trust Christ, why would we want to take his hard path?
What about Jesus’ answer to our friends today? Could it be helpful?
When they asked him to speak plainly, Jesus tells them that, in a way, he already has. Look at my works, he says. They are my testimony.
If he means the healings he does, or even the healings some of his disciples did, like Peter today, what are we to do with that? We’re afraid even to ask for healing from God because we’ve convinced ourselves the chance of a miracle is slim, and don’t want to get our hopes up.
But is Jesus talking about more? What if he means us to look at everything he is? Then we see something worth seeing. We see someone who lived, breathed, and taught the unconditional love of God for us and all people. Who uncompromisingly stood with people the world discarded, people whose failures were beyond what “good” people could tolerate. Who reached out in love and compassion to all who were in pain, outcast, neglected. That’s who invites us.
And there’s more. If Jesus’ works are testimony, we’ve just seen the heart of that witness. Our journey to the cross with Jesus, leading to the empty tomb we celebrate this Easter season testifies to us: Christ Jesus is the embodied Love of God that cannot be killed by death. That’s who invites us to follow the hard path of love of God and neighbor.
And that invitation doesn’t include understanding everything.
We’re conditioned to want the answer to everything. We’re frustrated whenever we’re told something is complicated, whether it’s our doctor, or honest political leaders, or friends. But this world rarely has black and white answers that end all our questions, and we rarely have the clarity we’d like.
What if that’s just reality? If Christ Jesus is the Son of God, who gives the world life, he won’t be able to answer everything for us. It’s not how the world works. Explaining everything is impossible.
But if we really look at Jesus’ works, like he tells us today, we see something encouraging. He often doesn’t give the understanding we seek. But he’s always willing to have us ask anyway. He never turns away a questioner. He usually answers with, “follow me.” But our Lord is willing to hear questions in love and care.
And that’s what this path can be when we walk it singing David’s hymn on our lips and in our hearts.
We sing, “The LORD is our shepherd, we have all we need.” Even with questions about how God provides, we follow the only One who can lead and guide us to fresh water and green pastures, and show us how to help others find the same.
We sing about our Shepherd’s hard path because we trust the One we follow. It’s a path of righteousness and goodness, and even though we have questions and fears, the One who brings life out of death is our guide.
And we sing even when we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, that we fear no evil. We’re frightened of death and all that causes the world pain; we have questions. But we’re not alone, and that’s better than having all the answers, or every miracle we seek. Whatever happens, we are walking with our risen Shepherd on this path. That’s all we need.
Understanding everything doesn’t matter if we trust the One we follow.
We don’t need all the answers if we’re walking with God’s Answer. We are invited to find faith in the life Christ is for us and the world. Not faith based on knowing everything. Faith in Christ, trust that he is, in fact, our Good Shepherd, and there’s nothing else we need.
That’s the step before us. And it’s OK if we take baby steps. One tiny step of faith today is enough. We’re on the path, then. And it’s OK if we hold hands. We’ve got each other to help watch the road, to pick us up, to encourage us.
And to help us see the One we’re following.
If we’ve still got questions, well, it’s a long road. We’ve got time. And our Lord’s a good listener. We can keep asking while we follow. We might even learn some things. After all, sheep don’t have to forever remain clueless.
In the name of Jesus. Amen
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