We come to Christ Jesus looking for a way of life in the life of the Triune God, and we find not only the way but both grace to forgive and strength to walk.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 26 A
texts:  Philippians 2:1-13; Matthew 21:23-32; Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32

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

Sometimes things can be clear and obvious, but, expecting something else, we can’t see them.
It’s the “can’t see the forest for the trees” problem.  We’re so used to hearing and thinking that the whole point of faith in Christ is hope for life after death, we read that into everything we see in Scripture, even today.  But if you take the time to look at these readings again, you’ll see that’s not at all what’s being said.

Ezekiel is speaking to people who believe they’re suffering in exile because their parents and grandparents messed up, sinned.  God speaks through the prophet and says “nonsense.”  Everybody suffers their own consequences.  If you want to find real life in me, get a new heart, a new spirit, quit doing the things you’re doing.  I don’t want the death of anyone, so turn to me and live, now.  Nothing about life after death there.

Paul’s talking to the Philippians about learning together a new way of being, of living.  A way like Christ Jesus, who gave up everything to save the world.  Paul invites them to work at this, at having the same mind with each other; the same love, being in full accord.  Work on this with the appropriate fear and trembling because it’s a hard path to lose yourselves for the sake of others.  To look to others’ interests before your own, to live humbly and consider others more important than you.  This is all for this life, this community, this path they’re walking together.  Not life after death.

Jesus is the clearest if we read properly.  Life in the kingdom of God is doing God’s will.  There are folks who say they will serve God and don’t, he says; there are folks who say they won’t and do.

So the religious leaders, the second son of the story, claim to want God’s ways, to know God’s ways, but don’t live them.  When they hear the Son of God they reject him.  Meanwhile, the tax collectors and prostitutes never claimed to be righteous or godly, but when they heard the Son of God talking of a new way of life in God, they followed, started living in God’s ways, living a new life.

That’s why Jesus says the tax collectors and prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of the religious leaders.  Because they’re already there.  They’re living in the kingdom with the Son of God now, in this life, while the leaders are carping on the outside.

Do you see how we’ve tied ourselves up into knots like these leaders?

We know, because of Christ’s death and resurrection, that we have this astonishing promise of life with God after we die, of resurrection of the dead.  But we’ve become so focused on that as our only goal, we don’t recognize plain speech when we hear it.

No one’s denying this new life promised after we die.  But no one in the New Testament saw that as the primary preaching point.  It was about life in Christ here and now, as a sign of the Triune God’s rule and reign.

Now, if you’re down and out, at the bottom, you’ve messed up badly and are pretty sure God’s not pleased with you, and a prophet comes proclaiming God’s grace and love for you, showing you a way to live in love and grace with others, you’re going to follow.  That’s what the “sinners” did with Jesus.

But if you’re on top, pretty sure that while not perfect, you’ve probably led a decent life, and you think God would agree with that, if a prophet came preaching God’s grace and love for sinners, calling you to a new way of life in love and grace with others that might require you to let go of your own self-interest, admit your own sin and need, well, that’s when you ask the prophet for credentials.  That’s what the leaders do here.

So what do you want from Jesus?

A promise of life after death?  Done.  Easy.

Do you want more?  Are you looking for a relationship with Jesus, and so with the Triune God?  Does something about a relationship with a community of faith pull you here, make you feel more connected to God?  That’s where it gets complicated, in relationship.  That’s when Jesus puts a claim on your life, asks you to love God and love neighbor.

Because that’s the way of God, the way of life, the way to life.  Ezekiel knows it, Paul knows it, Jesus knows it, millions of believers have known it.  Those disciples didn’t follow Jesus because they hoped for heaven after they died.  That understanding came much later.

They followed him because he spoke of a way that seemed better than their life.  He showed a new way of living with God and walking with each other that was worth hearing more about, worth learning, worth following.

Because it means sharing the mind and love of Christ, that is, losing for others, letting go of ourselves, we get pretty uncomfortable with this.  We hide our discomfort in theology, worrying about confusing grace with works, whether we’re implying we’re trying to earn God’s love.

That’s just silly.  If we hear what these folks are saying with open minds and hearts, we’ll see how silly it is.  Silly to think that Jesus’ only goal was to save us from death.  He could have done that without ever becoming human.  The Triune God could, by will, forgive us all, ending death forever.  You make the universe, you make the rules, and decide how to enforce the rules.

Instead the Son of God came here among us, and the reason – and people have understood this for 2,000 years – the reason was to call us into a new way of life.  It’s time we stopped dancing theologically around our discomfort that Jesus might actually want to change us, for our own good.

There’s something else important here.

If you read all of these again, you’ll notice it.  Ezekiel, Paul, and Jesus assume there is a vital and real relationship between God and the people.  This path to life is lived in the presence of God.

This journey we make together, reminding each other daily of this new life, helping each other find what it means for each of our lives, being fed and graced at this table for that journey, this journey is lived and walked and breathed, every step of the way, in the presence and grace and strength of God.

Turn to me, and live, God says through Ezekiel.  Follow me, Jesus says.  Work out your way of salvation, Paul says, but know God is at work in you already, working it so that you can will and work for God’s good pleasure.

If you want grace, there it is.  Not only are we forgiven in Christ Jesus through his death and resurrection, we have the Spirit of God working in us to do this path, this way, this life.

The challenge is getting ourselves out of the way so we can honestly seek this path together and walk it.

If these three ask anything of us today it is that we grow into a new maturity together as a community in Christ.  That we learn to admit we really don’t know a way to live our lives that leads to abundance and joy, but really do want to follow this way of Christ that does.

The humility, the losing, the putting others first, we need to stop letting our fear of those control our minds, our choices, our hearts.  Look, the love of the Son of God is so great he was willing to die for the people of this world, for us, for you.  He won’t lead you into a way of life that isn’t rich and abundant; he loves you too much for that.

But he also won’t lie and say he doesn’t hope for this new life in us.  He won’t stop calling us to the way of the cross with each other.  He won’t quit pulling at the depths of our hearts through the Holy Spirit to desire this new way.

Walking our path together as a people of God, learning Christly love and sacrifice as a sign to the world of God’s love, helping each other on this path, we know this is the way to life.  It’s why we keep coming here week after week: in our hearts we know there’s more to this life than we’ve found on our own.

It’s time we just admitted it to each other joyfully and started focusing on what this way, this path, this journey might be if we really trusted God’s power at work in us to make us new.  It’s how we’ll discover life for us and the world like we never before suspected could exist.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

We come to Christ Jesus looking for a way of life in the life of the Triune God, and we find not only the way but both grace to forgive and strength to walk.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 26 A
texts:  Philippians 2:1-13; Matthew 21:23-32; Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32

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

Sometimes things can be clear and obvious, but, expecting something else, we can’t see them.
It’s the “can’t see the forest for the trees” problem.  We’re so used to hearing and thinking that the whole point of faith in Christ is hope for life after death, we read that into everything we see in Scripture, even today.  But if you take the time to look at these readings again, you’ll see that’s not at all what’s being said.

Ezekiel is speaking to people who believe they’re suffering in exile because their parents and grandparents messed up, sinned.  God speaks through the prophet and says “nonsense.”  Everybody suffers their own consequences.  If you want to find real life in me, get a new heart, a new spirit, quit doing the things you’re doing.  I don’t want the death of anyone, so turn to me and live, now.  Nothing about life after death there.

Paul’s talking to the Philippians about learning together a new way of being, of living.  A way like Christ Jesus, who gave up everything to save the world.  Paul invites them to work at this, at having the same mind with each other; the same love, being in full accord.  Work on this with the appropriate fear and trembling because it’s a hard path to lose yourselves for the sake of others.  To look to others’ interests before your own, to live humbly and consider others more important than you.  This is all for this life, this community, this path they’re walking together.  Not life after death.

Jesus is the clearest if we read properly.  Life in the kingdom of God is doing God’s will.  There are folks who say they will serve God and don’t, he says; there are folks who say they won’t and do.

So the religious leaders, the second son of the story, claim to want God’s ways, to know God’s ways, but don’t live them.  When they hear the Son of God they reject him.  Meanwhile, the tax collectors and prostitutes never claimed to be righteous or godly, but when they heard the Son of God talking of a new way of life in God, they followed, started living in God’s ways, living a new life.

That’s why Jesus says the tax collectors and prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of the religious leaders.  Because they’re already there.  They’re living in the kingdom with the Son of God now, in this life, while the leaders are carping on the outside.

Do you see how we’ve tied ourselves up into knots like these leaders?

We know, because of Christ’s death and resurrection, that we have this astonishing promise of life with God after we die, of resurrection of the dead.  But we’ve become so focused on that as our only goal, we don’t recognize plain speech when we hear it.

No one’s denying this new life promised after we die.  But no one in the New Testament saw that as the primary preaching point.  It was about life in Christ here and now, as a sign of the Triune God’s rule and reign.

Now, if you’re down and out, at the bottom, you’ve messed up badly and are pretty sure God’s not pleased with you, and a prophet comes proclaiming God’s grace and love for you, showing you a way to live in love and grace with others, you’re going to follow.  That’s what the “sinners” did with Jesus.

But if you’re on top, pretty sure that while not perfect, you’ve probably led a decent life, and you think God would agree with that, if a prophet came preaching God’s grace and love for sinners, calling you to a new way of life in love and grace with others that might require you to let go of your own self-interest, admit your own sin and need, well, that’s when you ask the prophet for credentials.  That’s what the leaders do here.

So what do you want from Jesus?

A promise of life after death?  Done.  Easy.

Do you want more?  Are you looking for a relationship with Jesus, and so with the Triune God?  Does something about a relationship with a community of faith pull you here, make you feel more connected to God?  That’s where it gets complicated, in relationship.  That’s when Jesus puts a claim on your life, asks you to love God and love neighbor.

Because that’s the way of God, the way of life, the way to life.  Ezekiel knows it, Paul knows it, Jesus knows it, millions of believers have known it.  Those disciples didn’t follow Jesus because they hoped for heaven after they died.  That understanding came much later.

They followed him because he spoke of a way that seemed better than their life.  He showed a new way of living with God and walking with each other that was worth hearing more about, worth learning, worth following.

Because it means sharing the mind and love of Christ, that is, losing for others, letting go of ourselves, we get pretty uncomfortable with this.  We hide our discomfort in theology, worrying about confusing grace with works, whether we’re implying we’re trying to earn God’s love.

That’s just silly.  If we hear what these folks are saying with open minds and hearts, we’ll see how silly it is.  Silly to think that Jesus’ only goal was to save us from death.  He could have done that without ever becoming human.  The Triune God could, by will, forgive us all, ending death forever.  You make the universe, you make the rules, and decide how to enforce the rules.

Instead the Son of God came here among us, and the reason – and people have understood this for 2,000 years – the reason was to call us into a new way of life.  It’s time we stopped dancing theologically around our discomfort that Jesus might actually want to change us, for our own good.

There’s something else important here.

If you read all of these again, you’ll notice it.  Ezekiel, Paul, and Jesus assume there is a vital and real relationship between God and the people.  This path to life is lived in the presence of God.

This journey we make together, reminding each other daily of this new life, helping each other find what it means for each of our lives, being fed and graced at this table for that journey, this journey is lived and walked and breathed, every step of the way, in the presence and grace and strength of God.

Turn to me, and live, God says through Ezekiel.  Follow me, Jesus says.  Work out your way of salvation, Paul says, but know God is at work in you already, working it so that you can will and work for God’s good pleasure.

If you want grace, there it is.  Not only are we forgiven in Christ Jesus through his death and resurrection, we have the Spirit of God working in us to do this path, this way, this life.

The challenge is getting ourselves out of the way so we can honestly seek this path together and walk it.

If these three ask anything of us today it is that we grow into a new maturity together as a community in Christ.  That we learn to admit we really don’t know a way to live our lives that leads to abundance and joy, but really do want to follow this way of Christ that does.

The humility, the losing, the putting others first, we need to stop letting our fear of those control our minds, our choices, our hearts.  Look, the love of the Son of God is so great he was willing to die for the people of this world, for us, for you.  He won’t lead you into a way of life that isn’t rich and abundant; he loves you too much for that.

But he also won’t lie and say he doesn’t hope for this new life in us.  He won’t stop calling us to the way of the cross with each other.  He won’t quit pulling at the depths of our hearts through the Holy Spirit to desire this new way.

Walking our path together as a people of God, learning Christly love and sacrifice as a sign to the world of God’s love, helping each other on this path, we know this is the way to life.  It’s why we keep coming here week after week: in our hearts we know there’s more to this life than we’ve found on our own.

It’s time we just admitted it to each other joyfully and started focusing on what this way, this path, this journey might be if we really trusted God’s power at work in us to make us new.  It’s how we’ll discover life for us and the world like we never before suspected could exist.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

Go and learn what this means, Jesus says, “I desire mercy;” saved by God’s grace alone, that is our identity, our way, our life, and our lives are made in Christ to be mercy as we look at others in the world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The feast day of St. Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist, Sunday, September 21, 2014
   texts:  Ephesians 2:4-10; Matthew 9:9-13

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

Let’s get one thing clear from the start.

Matthew was, in fact, a tax collector.  We can assume, given what such folks did, he probably cheated his neighbors while collecting taxes for the Romans.  No one in the Gospel denies who Matthew is, what he’s done.

The rest at dinner were also either tax collectors or, in a simple catch-all, “sinners”.  Again, this is not in dispute.  We don’t have to think too hard to imagine what kind of sin got a person the public label “sinner”.  But once more, let’s be clear.  No one has ever claimed that these people with Jesus weren’t who they were, weren’t people who’d done things wrong.  In fact, they specifically had done things wrong that attracted public notice, public comment.

What’s troubling is that this encounter doesn’t seem to matter to us.

We’re comfortable criticizing the Pharisees for criticizing Jesus.  We’re even happy to talk about following a Savior who hangs out with sinners, not holier-than-thou types.  We fail to realize that in such attitudes, we are the Pharisees.

Jesus is addressing us today.  “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’  For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”  He’s quoting Hosea, who says no worship, no temple sacrifice supersedes mercy, literally, “steadfast love,” for others.  He’s sending the Pharisees away, telling them they have biblical homework to do.  They need to go and learn something, bring it into their lives, their actions, their thoughts.  Go and learn what this means, “I desire steadfast love, mercy.”

He is speaking to us.  We’re pretty good at the theoretical, the head stuff.  We know all sinners can be forgiven; we can list all sorts of sins and admit that yes, God can forgive them.  But we act as if our heart’s in a very different place.  We have become a people, a culture, who live and breathe the Pharisees’ judgmentalism.  Somehow we’ve convinced ourselves it’s not the same for us, though.

Really? Jesus says.  Go and learn what this means, I desire mercy.

We don’t make people wear a scarlet letter identifying their sin anymore, as Hawthorne famously related.  But we are the same people who did.

When our ancestors wanted to publicly address certain sins, the identified sinners would sometimes be put into stockades in the public square, for taunting and the throwing of abuse both verbal and physical.  You needed to know who the real sinners were.

Now we do it on Facebook.  We do it at coffee, over lunch, at dinner in our homes.  We do it at office water-coolers.  We declare someone to be worthy of judgment, worthy of mockery, worthy of shaming, certain we are right to do so.  They are food for our conversation and our thought.  We “tut tut,” and we “oh my,” and we “did you hear that?”

This week we had one close to home, a beloved local sports figure accused of hurting his child.  Having once idolized this person, the public now demonizes him, our favorite game with public figures.  People smugly post opinions on Facebook, share photographs, titter or are indignant with family members and friends about the scandal.  This isn’t new.  There will be another in a month or so; there always is.  Because that’s truly the kind of people we are.

Now remember, the question is not about the sin, not for Matthew, not for today.  In this case, the state of Texas and the state of Minnesota are doing their duty to sort out if laws were broken and what punishments should apply.  They are doing what they should do to protect the child and make sure it doesn’t happen again.

But what kind of people are we to believe we can sit over anyone, as our entertainment, our small talk, our judgment, our every day life?

What does that make us?  I don’t just mean this case, I could give you a dozen other recent examples.  Is it so we feel better about ourselves?  Are we better for it?  Whatever good this person may or may not have done in his life, there are many who, from this point on, will think only ill of him, for this one thing.  It’s a bad thing, that’s why an indictment was handed down.  But when we do this to anyone, label them in our minds and in our hearts as “sinner,” how are we not the Pharisees?

Most examples of this are public figures; sometimes we justify our judgment on those grounds.  They should live up to higher standards, we say.  Is this the kind of people we want to be, people who feel it is our right to set people up or tear people down?

What of the other people in our lives to whom we do this who are not public figures, where their mistake, their problem, becomes the thing we think of when we think of them, the thing we talk about?  When they become the someone we mock, judge, or use to entertain others with our wit?  My sisters and brothers, as your pastor in Christ I tell you I have seen this among us, between us, and beyond, against family and co-workers, against brothers and sisters here.  Again, I’m not disputing wrongs are done.  I’m wondering about our self-righteous smugness.

Go and learn what this means, Jesus said.  I desire mercy, steadfast love.

Perhaps true mercy begins with self-examination and honesty.

Is there anyone here who would like to take their worst moment, photograph it, and have it publicized for the world to see?  Their worst moment as a parent, a partner, a friend, a human being?  Who would like themselves to be identified forever after not as the person they are but as that sinner?  Would we want that to be what people thought whenever they looked at us?  I can think of enough moments in my life, enough negative characteristics, bad judgments, wrong actions, that I would be crushed if people saw any of them as the defining truth about me.

Could we learn mercy by first recognizing our own need for it?  Recognizing that each of us lives moderately good lives but with plenty of moments to regret, be ashamed of, even fear that others might discover?  Plenty of things we, and God, call sin?

I came to call not the righteous, but sinners, Jesus said.  Could we begin to learn mercy by realizing how good it is to know that about Jesus?  How important to our very lives it is that he looks at all people, including us, and sees us, not our sins?  That he looked at Matthew and saw a potential disciple, not a cheater?

This is the gift of the Son of God, that he came for all, sinful as all are.

Paul’s beautiful song of grace in Ephesians is also stark and honest.  Like Jesus, he doesn’t deny that sin exists in us, he names it.  He says it is like death to live with such a weight of sin in our hearts.  To live in fear we’ll be judged not by our good but by our wrongdoing.  That we’ll forever carry the label “not good enough,” “sinner,” “bad person.”

You have been saved by God’s grace, Paul says.  Not by your doing.  Not by carefully denying the bad snapshots of your past, or erasing them from existence, or doing enough good to overbalance them.  You are loved by God in Christ Jesus, and in his dying and rising from death have been given new life.  A new identity, “forgiven child of God”.

But notice Paul’s plurals: “you all have been saved”, he says, not just you individually.  God “made us alive together with Christ.”  “We are what he has made us.”

I came to call not the righteous but sinners, Jesus said.  All of them.  All of them.  Together.

What does that mean for our lives?  Does it change us?

We are made for good works to be our way of life, Paul says.  We have been saved by grace so that we are people of grace and mercy, not people of judgment.  Does it matter if the person we’re judging smugly is public or private, guilty or innocent?  Isn’t the real question, what kind of person did Christ Jesus make us to be?  How does he call us to love?

What if mercy became how we lived?  If we studiously worked at learning the mercy of Christ, the steadfast love of God, and held ourselves to that standard?  That we would try, and we would pray God’s Spirit to help us look at others and see them as who they are, not identifying them by what bad they might or might not have done.  That we would seek the Spirit’s grace to close our mouths and open our hearts, so that we’re not passing gossip or judgment or mockery or shame on anyone.

Because God so loved the world he sent his only Son, to save it, not to judge it.  Go and learn what that means, Jesus says.

Go and learn how that is your life, your path.  You want to talk about the way of the cross?  This is it.  If we truly desire to be who we are made to be in Christ, that is, to be Christ, we have some learning to do.  Our hope and our promise is that the Holy Spirit is ready and willing to be our teacher, strength and guide.

God is showing steadfast love and mercy to all the people of this world, who have been made alive together with us.  Let’s go learn, together, what such mercy means.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

Go and learn what this means, Jesus says, “I desire mercy;” saved by God’s grace alone, that is our identity, our way, our life, and our lives are made in Christ to be mercy as we look at others in the world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The feast day of St. Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist, Sunday, September 21, 2014
   texts:  Ephesians 2:4-10; Matthew 9:9-13

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

Let’s get one thing clear from the start.

Matthew was, in fact, a tax collector.  We can assume, given what such folks did, he probably cheated his neighbors while collecting taxes for the Romans.  No one in the Gospel denies who Matthew is, what he’s done.

The rest at dinner were also either tax collectors or, in a simple catch-all, “sinners”.  Again, this is not in dispute.  We don’t have to think too hard to imagine what kind of sin got a person the public label “sinner”.  But once more, let’s be clear.  No one has ever claimed that these people with Jesus weren’t who they were, weren’t people who’d done things wrong.  In fact, they specifically had done things wrong that attracted public notice, public comment.

What’s troubling is that this encounter doesn’t seem to matter to us.

We’re comfortable criticizing the Pharisees for criticizing Jesus.  We’re even happy to talk about following a Savior who hangs out with sinners, not holier-than-thou types.  We fail to realize that in such attitudes, we are the Pharisees.

Jesus is addressing us today.  “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’  For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”  He’s quoting Hosea, who says no worship, no temple sacrifice supersedes mercy, literally, “steadfast love,” for others.  He’s sending the Pharisees away, telling them they have biblical homework to do.  They need to go and learn something, bring it into their lives, their actions, their thoughts.  Go and learn what this means, “I desire steadfast love, mercy.”

He is speaking to us.  We’re pretty good at the theoretical, the head stuff.  We know all sinners can be forgiven; we can list all sorts of sins and admit that yes, God can forgive them.  But we act as if our heart’s in a very different place.  We have become a people, a culture, who live and breathe the Pharisees’ judgmentalism.  Somehow we’ve convinced ourselves it’s not the same for us, though.

Really? Jesus says.  Go and learn what this means, I desire mercy.

We don’t make people wear a scarlet letter identifying their sin anymore, as Hawthorne famously related.  But we are the same people who did.

When our ancestors wanted to publicly address certain sins, the identified sinners would sometimes be put into stockades in the public square, for taunting and the throwing of abuse both verbal and physical.  You needed to know who the real sinners were.

Now we do it on Facebook.  We do it at coffee, over lunch, at dinner in our homes.  We do it at office water-coolers.  We declare someone to be worthy of judgment, worthy of mockery, worthy of shaming, certain we are right to do so.  They are food for our conversation and our thought.  We “tut tut,” and we “oh my,” and we “did you hear that?”

This week we had one close to home, a beloved local sports figure accused of hurting his child.  Having once idolized this person, the public now demonizes him, our favorite game with public figures.  People smugly post opinions on Facebook, share photographs, titter or are indignant with family members and friends about the scandal.  This isn’t new.  There will be another in a month or so; there always is.  Because that’s truly the kind of people we are.

Now remember, the question is not about the sin, not for Matthew, not for today.  In this case, the state of Texas and the state of Minnesota are doing their duty to sort out if laws were broken and what punishments should apply.  They are doing what they should do to protect the child and make sure it doesn’t happen again.

But what kind of people are we to believe we can sit over anyone, as our entertainment, our small talk, our judgment, our every day life?

What does that make us?  I don’t just mean this case, I could give you a dozen other recent examples.  Is it so we feel better about ourselves?  Are we better for it?  Whatever good this person may or may not have done in his life, there are many who, from this point on, will think only ill of him, for this one thing.  It’s a bad thing, that’s why an indictment was handed down.  But when we do this to anyone, label them in our minds and in our hearts as “sinner,” how are we not the Pharisees?

Most examples of this are public figures; sometimes we justify our judgment on those grounds.  They should live up to higher standards, we say.  Is this the kind of people we want to be, people who feel it is our right to set people up or tear people down?

What of the other people in our lives to whom we do this who are not public figures, where their mistake, their problem, becomes the thing we think of when we think of them, the thing we talk about?  When they become the someone we mock, judge, or use to entertain others with our wit?  My sisters and brothers, as your pastor in Christ I tell you I have seen this among us, between us, and beyond, against family and co-workers, against brothers and sisters here.  Again, I’m not disputing wrongs are done.  I’m wondering about our self-righteous smugness.

Go and learn what this means, Jesus said.  I desire mercy, steadfast love.

Perhaps true mercy begins with self-examination and honesty.

Is there anyone here who would like to take their worst moment, photograph it, and have it publicized for the world to see?  Their worst moment as a parent, a partner, a friend, a human being?  Who would like themselves to be identified forever after not as the person they are but as that sinner?  Would we want that to be what people thought whenever they looked at us?  I can think of enough moments in my life, enough negative characteristics, bad judgments, wrong actions, that I would be crushed if people saw any of them as the defining truth about me.

Could we learn mercy by first recognizing our own need for it?  Recognizing that each of us lives moderately good lives but with plenty of moments to regret, be ashamed of, even fear that others might discover?  Plenty of things we, and God, call sin?

I came to call not the righteous, but sinners, Jesus said.  Could we begin to learn mercy by realizing how good it is to know that about Jesus?  How important to our very lives it is that he looks at all people, including us, and sees us, not our sins?  That he looked at Matthew and saw a potential disciple, not a cheater?

This is the gift of the Son of God, that he came for all, sinful as all are.

Paul’s beautiful song of grace in Ephesians is also stark and honest.  Like Jesus, he doesn’t deny that sin exists in us, he names it.  He says it is like death to live with such a weight of sin in our hearts.  To live in fear we’ll be judged not by our good but by our wrongdoing.  That we’ll forever carry the label “not good enough,” “sinner,” “bad person.”

You have been saved by God’s grace, Paul says.  Not by your doing.  Not by carefully denying the bad snapshots of your past, or erasing them from existence, or doing enough good to overbalance them.  You are loved by God in Christ Jesus, and in his dying and rising from death have been given new life.  A new identity, “forgiven child of God”.

But notice Paul’s plurals: “you all have been saved”, he says, not just you individually.  God “made us alive together with Christ.”  “We are what he has made us.”

I came to call not the righteous but sinners, Jesus said.  All of them.  All of them.  Together.

What does that mean for our lives?  Does it change us?

We are made for good works to be our way of life, Paul says.  We have been saved by grace so that we are people of grace and mercy, not people of judgment.  Does it matter if the person we’re judging smugly is public or private, guilty or innocent?  Isn’t the real question, what kind of person did Christ Jesus make us to be?  How does he call us to love?

What if mercy became how we lived?  If we studiously worked at learning the mercy of Christ, the steadfast love of God, and held ourselves to that standard?  That we would try, and we would pray God’s Spirit to help us look at others and see them as who they are, not identifying them by what bad they might or might not have done.  That we would seek the Spirit’s grace to close our mouths and open our hearts, so that we’re not passing gossip or judgment or mockery or shame on anyone.

Because God so loved the world he sent his only Son, to save it, not to judge it.  Go and learn what that means, Jesus says.

Go and learn how that is your life, your path.  You want to talk about the way of the cross?  This is it.  If we truly desire to be who we are made to be in Christ, that is, to be Christ, we have some learning to do.  Our hope and our promise is that the Holy Spirit is ready and willing to be our teacher, strength and guide.

God is showing steadfast love and mercy to all the people of this world, who have been made alive together with us.  Let’s go learn, together, what such mercy means.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

The way of the cross is only foolishness if we truly see it as our way, our path, not as a sign of dominance and power over others, or a mark of our rightness, our correct faith; Christ’s cross saves us and the world by calling us to the same giving up of power in order to love.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The festival of the Holy Cross, Sunday, September 14, 2014
texts:  1 Corinthians 1:18-24; John 3:13-17

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

“The message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

In 312, the Roman general and tetrarch Constantine, fighting a civil war to consolidate his sole imperial rule, looked into the sun and saw the sign of the cross.  That night in a dream, God told him that with this sign – “in hoc signo” in Latin – he would defeat Maxentius the next day in battle in the city of Rome.  His soldiers won that battle with the sign of the cross painted on their shields.

There is much of legend to this story.  What is not in dispute is that Constantine began a whole new era for Christianity.  Under his rule, Christianity became the state religion of the empire, and very quickly developed a taste for power, military might, control.  A once marginalized group of believers following an executed Savior, who shared things in common, who consistently held that Christians could not take up arms, could not kill, who had allegiance to God alone and to no earthly ruler, became the power behind and in front of one of the greatest empires the world has known.  Rules for just war replaced committed peacemaking.  Seven centuries later, Christian knights with the cross painted on their shields and emblazoned on their surcoats laid a path of destruction and death across Europe and the Near East in holy wars.

“We proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.”

The world doesn’t think it foolish to bear the cross as a symbol of power over others.  If you’ve got something that gives you power, wield it, use it.  The Church has justified its shared bed with military and political power for centuries, sometimes saying it is God’s will, sometimes as a practical way to preserve the institution, sometimes because we like having power and might, being winners.

The proclamation of Jesus’ cross was a stumbling block to Jews because they couldn’t imagine the one true God so debased, so lowly as to assume human form and be tortured to death.  It was blasphemy, horrific.  Their theology couldn’t permit God to do such a thing.

The proclamation of Jesus’ cross was foolishness to Gentiles because they would see it hysterical that this pathetic group of believers were following someone who didn’t have enough sense to avoid a humiliating public execution. Their philosophy couldn’t permit such ridiculousness.

To the extent that we can’t see the stumbling block of the cross to our theology and understanding of God and God’s will, to the extent that we can’t see how foolish it is compared to the way we work in the world, to that extent we are no longer hearing the message of the cross.

“Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?”

How can we tell if we live by the wisdom of the world, are bound to our view of God?  If we find ourselves always needing people to adjust to us, find it difficult not to think of our own needs before those of others.  Or if we cannot conceive of faith in a God who does not bless our every move, or in a God who would ask us to let go of things we think give us security.

If we believe everything we have is ours, and deserved, and if we feel gracious and good, we might share a little.  Or if, when anything bad happens, we blame God for not preventing, not protecting properly, as if we are entitled to good because we believe in God correctly.

If we seek security in providing for ourselves what we think we need, wealth, protection, barriers to those in the world we fear.  Or if we expect God’s primary job is to ensure we never have to worry about losing anything.

That’s how we can tell.  We don’t need to carry shields with the cross on them to act as if being a Christian somehow entitles us to the best of everything, without fear of tragedy.  We don’t need to carry a sword to live with a world view that we should be in charge because we belong to Christ Jesus, and that way we will impose on our families, our community, our world.  We don’t even need a cross on our flag, because we’ve found a way to wrap the American flag around the Christian faith and march it into the world as if we really don’t hope for an eternal life yet to come; this country is God’s greatest dream.

Maybe we’re not always so extremely bad off.  But is there anything about how we practice our Christian discipleship that others can mock as foolish or naïve?  Is there anything about how we believe in God that challenges a hope in God as a divine vending machine of favor?

If our way of Christian discipleship starts making sense to our culture, starts sounding like every other get rich scheme, every other way to dominance, we know we’ve lost our path.  If we say things like, “that’s going to cost us,” or, “won’t we be taken advantage of,” we’ll know we’re on the right path.

“The Son of Man must be lifted up, that whoever believes in him might have eternal life.”

This is how we know we’re on the path of true discipleship: if it leads to the foot of the cross, to where we look up and see our Lord lifted up for the life of the world.  Not lifted up as a triumph over all the wrong people.  Lifted up, as he will say later, to draw all people to himself.

The way of the cross is opposite to the way of the world, but it will save the world.  Because as those who see him lifted up allow themselves to be lifted up, cut down, walked on, for the sake of others, then the world of power over others, of domination and might, will start to crumble from below and eventually fall.

Do you now see the stumbling block?  We don’t get to tell God what to do and what not to do, we only get to decide if we’re going where God has already gone, into disreputable places and places of loss.  We’re often unwilling to lose even with those we love most, in our families, to say nothing of the world.

Do you now see the foolishness?  We stop caring about protecting our institution of the church, our congregation, ourselves, even God.  We lose interest in winning arguments or proving that we’re right or forcing others not to mock us.  This path doesn’t lead to an impressive, powerful institution people have to respect or fear.

But given that any good Christians have done in the last 2,000 years has come from believers willing to lose all for the sake of the other, and most evil Christians have done in the last 2,000 years has come from believers trying to work by the world’s rules of power and might, by a theology of a dominating, crushing God, does that tell us anything?

“When we eat of this bread and drink of this cup, we proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”

The cross marks our lives, our worship, our faith precisely as a reminder of Jesus’ death, and ours.  It’s not our prize to wave in the world’s face.  It is our life, it is our salvation.  But Jesus makes abundantly clear it is also our path.

So when we bow as the cross is carried before us in procession, is it to a magic talisman, a sign of our triumph and rightness?  No, it is in humble recognition of the path it lays before us.  It is a sign of our willingness to walk this path.

When we mark ourselves with the cross with our own hands is it some sort of protective charm, hope of God’s favor?  No, it is drawing on our very bodies the shape of the life we are called to live, so we don’t forget.

When we proclaim at every Eucharist the death of Christ Jesus is it some morbid obsession?  No, it is our way.  Regular reminder is the only way to continually focus ourselves on the path we walk with Christ, a path of loss and death.

“The message of the cross is foolishness . . . but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

We seek power in losing power, because that’s what God does.  We see strength in weakness, because that’s how God works.  We see victory in losing, because that’s how God wins.  It’s foolishness.  But this foolish, stumbling block truth about the way the Triune God really works in the world is life.  We know because we have seen it.  Felt it.  Been moved by it.  Perhaps only in little glimpses, in moments of clarity, or in seeing it lived in another person.  But in those glimpses we saw truth and life.

What we need is for God to help us get beyond our longing to be like the world and go where our heart knows we belong.  To make the death of Christ not be our insurance card but, in the resurrection, a life from God that shapes us from within into cross-people like Christ.  So we can foolishly and eagerly walk the path of life for the sake of the world.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen