We are the image of God.  It’s time to start living that way, time for us to seek the Spirit’s grace in maturing and growing up in faith that we might see God’s way as our way of life and the way of life for the world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen, Seventh Sunday after Epiphany, year A; texts:  Matthew 5:38-48; Leviticus 19:1-2, 19-18; 1 Corinthians 3:10-11, 16-23; Psalm 119:33-40

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

I wonder what would happen if the Church started to take seriously the Biblical claim that we, that humanity, are created in the image of God.  What it would look like if we – you, I, this congregation, the Church – if we actually expected that to be true, and lived into that truth.  If we let that reality shape our teaching, direct our decisions, even make a claim on our individual lives and presence in the world.

We certainly don’t seem to show much desire to do this yet.  While I doubt you would find any Christian who would deny that we are made in God’s image, the depths of what such a truth actually means seem far beyond our willingness to dig or dive or probe.

What would it mean for this world if that were not our way?  If we acted as if we believe that the Triune God was serious about this, and about what it means for us?  We hear this from God’s Word today: “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.”  And from Jesus, the Son of God himself, today: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  What would it mean if we embraced these commands instead of wincing at them, hiding from them?  What would it mean if we took God’s Word seriously – as, by the way, we claim to do – and saw such claims on our identity as our hope and our future, not as something from which we run?  If we found joy in such commands, as our psalmist does today, not seeing them as something we need to parse and dissect until they don’t mean for our lives what they clearly seem to mean?

These weeks with the teachings of Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount, alongside various similar teachings from the Torah and the prophets, have been calling us to find a greater growth in our faith and lives, to recognize that we can often persist in an immaturity when it comes to the way of life God has set before us, and so we miss the fullness of life God intends for us.  Today we face the full scope of that call to “grow up”: that we learn to find joy in this promise of our identity as the image of the living God, and learn to eagerly seek the Spirit’s strength in living into that identity, for the sake of the world.

Today we see a powerful glimpse of what this image of God looks like across the Scriptures.

We begin with the words of Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who describes a way that is God’s, but that is laid out as our path as well.

The path Jesus describes is one where we resist evil and violence not with more violence and evil, but with the strength of standing in the face of it non-violently, peacefully, strongly.  A way where we never retaliate when wronged.  Where if someone wants to deprive us of something, even by taking us to court, we get ahead of them and give freely.  A way where if someone needs something, we give it to them.  And a way where we stand against the way of the world and treat our enemies with love, where we lift them up in our prayer as much as we lift up those who are dearest to our hearts.

Now you can see what I mean about our problem as the Church.  Does this look at all like the public face of the Church in the world?  The center, driving force behind our teaching, our life, our work, individually and collectively?

But Jesus, the Son of God, only continues in the great tradition of God’s people Israel, for we hear much the same from the LORD God in Leviticus today.  To be holy as the LORD God is holy looks like this:

It is to live with wealth in such a way that we do not consume all, but share with those in need: here it’s sharing the edges of fields, the grapes of the vine we do not need, but we can supply the metaphors that work for our way of life.  That we do not rapaciously consume what we have and what resources the world provides as if it is our right and ours alone, but see ourselves as one with all and the resources we have as shared, communal.  This is the way of the LORD God.

And God’s way also looks like this: that we do not cheat or steal or lie to one another.  That we live justly, giving laborers a fair wage and not keeping it ourselves, that we do not profit from the blood of another.  That we do not take vengeance, or even bear a grudge against anyone, but love our neighbor as we love ourselves.

Not surprisingly, Jesus sounds very much like this, and not surprisingly, this is also not the way, the image, we see in ourselves and in the Church.

Let’s keep this very simple today: clearly we fail to live as the image of God shown here.  But there are different ways to fail, and that difference is critical.

One way to fail to live in this way is simply to fail to live in this way.  That is, to live in such a way that the fullness of this graciousness isn’t always how we act and react, how we present ourselves.

And if there is anything in what we heard from Leviticus and Jesus that you realized you didn’t live into fully, you know what I mean.  We call this sin; we could call it failure.  It’s a truth about our human nature that we do not always live in the way we are called to live, the way we were created to live.  We know this, and when we are honest, we confess such failings, such sin, and seek God’s grace and forgiveness.

Another way to fail is a truly problematic one, though, because it is a failure of intent and desire and design.  This is the way that fears the law of God, that seeks to mitigate it, reduce it, explain it away.

To say, “Jesus might have preached non-violent resistance to the evil of the world, but we live in a real world where sometimes you just have to fight back and harm.  Where war can be justified.”  (As if Jesus, the Son of God who was present at creation, doesn’t know about the “real” world.)

Or to say, “realistically, you can’t run an economy where people share equally and there is no profit incentive, where people aren’t allowed to accumulate capital; in fact, that way, we say, will eventually lift all to a better standard of living.”  (As if the God who created all things doesn’t know what to do with the gift of creation, doesn’t know what’s best for the creatures so lovingly made and planted on this earth.)

We do this kind of thing all the time with the teachings of Jesus, the way of God.  We cut them, shape them, cleverly explain why they can’t work fully, why the Bible really didn’t mean that anyway.

Do you see why this way of failing to reflect God’s image is the dangerous one?  In the first way we fail, but we know it.  We seek forgiveness that we might continue to learn the better way, God’s way.  In the second, we don’t even have it as a goal.  We find any number of ways to avoid facing the truth that the Triune God lays before us about what we actually look like in the world and what God would have us look like.

And for we who are Lutheran, there is an especially potent temptation to this second path, ironically.  We proclaim so loudly that we are saved by God’s grace, forgiven of our sins, but we can easily let that become for us only the thought that we are out of trouble, we’re not punished.  When in fact the Biblical model of forgiveness is restoration to relationship with God so that we might once again live as people of God, become the image of God in the world.  Sometimes we forget that, and rejoice in forgiveness as if it’s the end goal, crisis averted, punishment set aside.

But it’s not the end goal.  It’s the beginning of new life.

The Good News for us today is that God’s Word tells us that not only are we created in God’s image.  God will also continue to shape us to be so.

This is the promise our Lord gives through the working of the Spirit: we will be made new, changed into people who look like our God once again.  We don’t have to do this alone.

And so we gather weekly to hear God’s Word because that’s how we are shaped and made new.  By hearing it again and again and finally having it sink in, “this is God’s way”.  By speaking it to each other, teaching each other, listening together, discerning together, so that we never forget these words, this call, this claim God has on us, and so that we continue to understand better and better what it might mean.

And we gather, we gather: we come together in community because we need each other and God works through the community to shape us into the image of God.  We need each other because we pray for each other, encourage each other, support each other as we all seek to reflect this image in the world.  We especially need the community because we each need people who are truth-tellers to us, who can name the behavior of the community, or our behavior as individuals, or the direction of the Church, when any stray from God’s image, move into ways that are not of God.

But the truly deep mystery is that we are shaped as we gather to worship through the very grace of God we come to find, and are made into the image of God.  It is no coincidence that we see the community of the Church as the Body of Christ and we gather to be fed by the Body of Christ, because the latter creates the former.

As we are fed and nourished by these gifts of grace, and by God’s Word, we become what we are given.  We become the grace of God, the body of Christ, the image of the Triune God in the world.  So we leave here and our Lord says to the world about us: Take these, they are my body broken for you.
And we will be broken, let’s not pretend otherwise.

One of the reasons we sometimes run from the command to be like God is that to be like God is to lose, to give away, to let go, to love even when no one thinks we should.  You know this, if you’ve ever forgiven someone who truly hurt you, forgiven and loved them.  That costs, that hurts.  It’s what happens when we are like God.

You know this if you’ve ever stood with love and grace in the face of evil and been run over by it, hurt by it.  That costs, that hurts.  It’s what happens when we are like God.

Make no mistake, there’s plenty of reason for us not to seek this.  If we are called by God to be like God, we will find great cost in many ways.  But what we need to hold before us this: where else do we ever want to be but with God?  What life could we ever imagine being real without God?

A life lived fully as Leviticus and Jesus speak today, a community, a world, shaped like this would be astonishing to see.  Life-giving, rich, abundant.  Living with the Spirit of God inside us, as if we were a temple of God, as Paul describes today, is not just the way we are given the power to be new people, it is a place of joy and hope and grace for us, because God is with us and in us, and that is life.

This is where we want to be, even if it costs us everything.

It did, after all, cost the Son of God his life, too.  And it is in his resurrection life we most dearly wish to live, even now.  It’s tempting to run from this, because it can seem hard, too much.  Because we realize how much we fail at this.

But we can grow up, mature, with God’s help.  As we do, as the Spirit lives in us and moves in us, more and more we see this light as the way we need to go, the way we want to go.  More and more we learn that the cost is negligible compared to the alternative, not being with the God whose love for us and for the world is overwhelming and is life.

We are the image of God.  That’s the truth.  God give us the grace and strength, and forgiveness, and courage, to actually start looking like it.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

The way of life is the way of God; following in the way set before is grace and gift, though we too often see it as the opposite.  The grace of Christ invites us to know this way as the way we want to walk, the way we want the Spirit’s help to live.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen, Sixth Sunday after Epiphany, year A; texts:  Matthew 5:21-37; 1 Corinthians 3:1-9; Psalm 119:1-8; Deuteronomy 30:15-20

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

“Brothers and sisters, I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but rather as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ.  I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food.  Even now you are still not ready.” (1 Corinthians 3:1-2)

Paul, we just heard you say this in your letter to our sisters and brothers in Christ who once lived in Corinth, and it troubles us.  So we have a question for you:  What about us, Paul?  Are we ready for solid food?  Or are we still only able to take in milk?

Sometimes it seems as if we have grown, matured in faith.  But then we come upon a proper meal, filling, fiber-laden food for our hearts and our minds, rich, tasty food that requires some chewing, and serious digestion, and we back away.  We hear Moses today, and Jesus today, and we flinch, even grumble.  Why is that, Paul?  Are we only still infants?

You said to the same Corinthians a little later in this letter, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.”  (1 Corinthians 13:11)  Is that our hope as well?  And if so, Paul, how will we know when we have grown?  How will we know when we can handle solid food, not just thin gruel and milk?

Moses and Jesus, we need to ask the same of you, too.  How can we be certain that the choice you set before is life and death, Moses?  Can’t we just go on as we are, not choosing God’s way or our way, but muddling somewhere in between?  And Jesus, this way you describe seems so daunting, so over the top, making the commandments so complete, so full, that we cannot begin to see how we could live by them.  Is this really necessary?

Or is this what solid food looks like?

My friends, what we have before us today is witness from Moses, the psalmist, Paul, and our Lord Jesus, the Son of God, that holds out a sophisticated, deep, completed way of living in the world according to the way of the Triune God.  It is not easy to digest.  It is not sweetened with extra sugar.  But Moses has said, and the others agree wholeheartedly, that this is the way of life.  That any other way is a way of death.

So I ask you: is it possible that we might find a way to grow up and see such food for the life-giving grace it is proclaimed to be?  Must we remain as children in our continued resentment of the law of God, not wanting anyone to be the boss of us, or is it possible that we might seek the Spirit’s help in growing up enough that we can take the solid food of life our gracious God is giving, and see it for the grace and hope it truly is?  So that we can look even at Jesus’ words in our Gospel today and see them for what they are: life, and grace, and gift?

When we only want milk, the idea of loving God’s law seems absurd.

God’s law, we think, is to be feared, because we can’t do it, we fail at it.  So we resent it.  We don’t want to face that it might actually speak truth about our lives.  We find ourselves arguing like children with God, and with the law: why do you tell me to do that?  It’s too hard.  I don’t want to.  It’s too confusing.  I’m not able to.

Love your enemies?  That’s ridiculous.  Who loves an enemy?  Give of our hard-earned money to the poor, to others?  Who can afford that?  We can take any law of God and find any number of reasons why we don’t think it’s worth our time.  It’s unrealistic.  Impossible to achieve.  Unfair.  Nobody’s perfect, so why should we try?

When we are ready for solid food, however, we begin to appreciate the grace – the grace – God’s law really is.  Moses makes sense to us, this is a choice of life over death.  The psalmist’s joy in keeping God’s laws actually sings in our hearts.

We know we are ready for solid food when we look at God’s law and see it as a way of life which would make life worth living, rich, full, abundant.

Just as with any command our parents gave us when we were little that we resented or feared then, but now do of our own free will because we know it is good for us, life for us, so growing into taking God’s solid food can become a joy and a gift.

We could play in traffic still, but fortunately we grew up and realized how dangerous that is.  We could never wash our hands or our faces, but fortunately we grew up and realized how good and healthy it is to be clean.

We likewise could hate our enemies, and ignore the poor, and not do anything of what God asks of us, but fortunately we can grow up with the Spirit’s help and see that a world where there are no enemies, and no poor, and no selfishness would be nothing short of paradise.

There is life in the way of God that is given us.  When we’re ready for solid food, we’ll see that.

When we only want milk, we think that only actions matter, and only some actions: that as long as we don’t do the really bad things, then the lesser things, and the things that we only think in our minds really aren’t a big deal.

We categorize sins, the breaking of God’s law, making some worse than others so that we might pretend that we’re just fine.

So when Jesus claims that hating, being angry, calling others names are a violation of the Fifth Commandment and as serious as murder, we find that ridiculous.  As ridiculous as claiming that thinking about adultery is breaking the Sixth Commandment.

Everybody knows killing is worse, we say.  Actually committing adultery, cheating on your spouse, that’s far worse than just thinking it, we say.  Who can control their thoughts? we say.

This is because we’re still thinking like children.  When we are children, no matter what we do that is wrong, as long as there is someone else who’s done worse, we loudly proclaim that.  When we are children, no matter what we do that is wrong, as long as there is some extenuating circumstance that explains it to our minds, we loudly proclaim that.

How is it fair to judge thoughts, if we hate someone, or lust after someone?  How is that right? we say.  I can’t help getting angry: you should see what he did to me, we say.

But when we’re ready for solid food, we begin to understand the depth of the problem of our sin, that it runs to our core, and that all things are related.

We understand that anger, left to fester, makes ever-widening cracks in relationships, in community.  That hatred for another must be fed, nurtured, sustained to stay alive, and that drains energy and joy from our lives.

We learn that if we indulge our thoughts toward things that lead away from life, even if we don’t do them, we incur a cost to our well-being, to our sense of feeling good about the kind of person we are, and the vibrations of our hearts actually get picked up even by others.

That is, we learn that if, for example, we hold someone in disdain and hide it as best we can, it’s not only that our heart begins to wither under that emotional drain.  But that sense inside also never really remains within us, and the other begins to feel it, even if it’s unspoken.  And the relationship suffers.  This is true of all our thoughts, they can never stay hidden.

When we’re ready for solid food, we realize that Jesus here is giving us a great gift of grace to speak the truth about how our lives are affected by even our thoughts and attitudes.

We realize that all he’s doing is exactly what we already heard in the Ninth and Tenth Commandments, commandments that have nothing to do with action, only intention: coveting is an internal sin, a sin of the heart, that leads us to dissatisfaction, broken relationships, a dismal sense of what good we have.  Jesus here is only saying the same thing.

When we’re ready for solid food, we see that were we to live by such a way as Jesus describes, our lives in community would be enriched, the world would be beautiful, as God intended.

When we only want milk, we think that there’s only black and white, right or wrong, Godly or ungodly.

Our objection to any law of God is that we can’t do it perfectly, so we want nothing to do with it at all.

We want to hear only of God’s forgiveness, not realizing how ridiculous that is if there is nothing to forgive.  If we haven’t done anything wrong, why do we need forgiveness?

But we do this because, as drinkers of milk, we can’t get our minds around the idea that it’s not either/or, this living in God’s way.  We think too often that if we can’t live up to it at all times, we will have nothing to do with it.

So we justify why we get are who we are, saying God can’t expect us to be perfect.  We justify whenever we go against what it’s pretty clear God wants, because no one could live like that, we say.

But when we’re ready for solid food, we hear these words of Jesus, Paul, and Moses for the good news they are, in every respect.  Good news, because they are the way of life, as we’ve said already.

But good news, because we are talking about growing up, not being grown up.  One does not become mature in an instant.  It takes time, a lifetime.  It takes patience, and the long view.

So, just to take anger as one example, if this is our particular sin, we don’t get rid of that in one moment, but by regularly attending to our anger, regularly asking God’s help to move us past it, regularly reminding ourselves that it is not the path of life.

And many years later, we might have the joy of looking back on the road we’ve walked and realizing that in fact we are different now.  That for all that prayer and work of the Spirit, we are less angry, more like Christ.  With much more growth to go, yes, but we can see that we’ve come a ways.  This is true of anything we need to remove in order to walk God’s ways.

And of course we hear these words as good news in light of Christ Jesus’ death and resurrection.  None of this law of God comes to us apart from the reality of our being forgiven and loved completely by God in Christ Jesus.

When we fail, when we struggle to walk this path of life, we are forgiven and blessed to be put back on it.  But that’s the point, isn’t it, that everyone’s trying to tell us today: even forgiveness is ours so that we can once more get back on the path to life, not the path to death.

The grace and forgiveness of God in Christ Jesus that we are so overjoyed to know and have only makes sense in seeing God’s law as a path to life as well.  Then, when we fall and are picked up by our Lord again, we know exactly the direction we want to take, the road that leads to life.

So Paul, we have to say this to you: we think we might be ready for solid food.

And so we pray:

Gracious and holy God, so deepen our hearts and lives into the mature faith you wish to see in us, that we see your path as the path of life.  By the love of your Son, forgive us when we stray.  And with the strength of your Spirit, shape our lives into this way of life until that day when we start a new journey with you in the world that is to come, through the same Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

Amen

Christ Jesus became one of us to begin a relationship between us and the Triune God, a relationship of love which shapes our love of God and love of neighbor and makes complete all God’s intention in the law.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen, Fifth Sunday after Epiphany, year A; text:  Matthew 5:13-20

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

“Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

How are you doing with that?  How is it sitting in you, in your heart, in your mind?  Those are harsh words, scary words.  How do we go on when our Gospel reading ends with such words?

Sometimes you can speak the same language and hear the same words and completely misunderstand what is said.  These words of Jesus are clear English, and are well-translated from the Greek.  We think we know what Jesus is saying.  It frightens us.  Sometimes it makes us angry.  Sometimes we would like to walk away from what those words seem to mean and deny their truth.

But what if we’re misunderstanding what he’s saying?  What if, as we consider all of who Jesus is as the Christ, the Son of God, and we consider all of what he said when he was with us, what if, in that light, these words don’t mean what we thought they meant?

Words can always be taken out of context, in a number of ways, but the context that always matters is the person who says the words.  How can we hear these words clearly without stepping back and seeing who is saying them, looking at the whole of what we know about our Lord?  Sometimes, maybe a lot of times, we take Jesus’ words away from Christ Jesus himself, and understand them apart from his suffering and death, his resurrection, even apart from claims he repeatedly makes about what he wants us to know and do.

“Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Why aren’t we asking Jesus what he means by these words?

We can ask him, you know.  That’s the gift of this Incarnation, that the Son of God is approachable, accessible.

This written Word of God, these Scriptures call out with God’s longing to have a relationship of love with us that is reciprocated by us and shared among all people.  Through Abraham and Sarah and their family, through judges, priests, and prophets, God sought better acquaintance with us, with all God’s children.

The coming of Jesus, the Son of God, whom believers after the resurrection began to realize was eternally one with the Father and the Spirit, who was present at creation, the coming of Jesus as one of us quite literally made relationship with God humanly possible.  He was a human being, this Son of God.  He could talk with people, love people, hug people, rebuke people, teach people, heal people, and they could respond back.

Maybe Jesus became Incarnate among us because we can’t understand relationships in the abstract.  For all the Triune God hoped for in having a relationship, maybe being one of us was the only way we could understand it.

Now, there’s truth that gleams from that, isn’t there?  The key to understanding Jesus’ teachings may be to hear them in relationship with him, and to hear them as God’s call to a new relationship.

We sometimes package salvation as some kind of abstract concept, usually centered around whether or not we go to heaven when we die, and we understand Jesus’ teachings through that lens.

But if the Son of God is telling the truth, that wasn’t the main point of God coming to be with us.  God came to be with us to bring us back into a relationship with God and with each other.  Coming in person was the way we’d be able to see, touch, feel, know, hear, understand God’s love in concrete ways, something humans had longed for and dreamed of.

Understanding Jesus’ goal as Jesus describes it sheds an interesting light on our Gospel today.  We see some juxtapositions of truth in that light: one truth answered by another.  Seeing these for the truth they are makes all the difference in how we understand what Jesus is saying, all the difference in how we live, whether in hope or fear, whether in relationship with the Triune God or in a different place entirely.

The first juxtaposition of truth is this:  checklists don’t make good relationships, but righteousness isn’t about checklists.

Checklists don’t make good relationships, but righteousness isn’t about checklists.

The scribes and Pharisees don’t understand this.

They’re good people.  We need to remember that.  They are people who try their hardest to live every aspect of God’s law, and who live their lives with the vocation of teaching others to do the same.  They’re doing their best to keep up a checklist of what God wants, and making sure they check off boxes regularly.  “Just tell me what I need to do and I’ll do it,” that’s what they say.

It’s hard not to admire that.  Not everyone cares about God’s law that much, or works that hard at keeping God’s law.

But this isn’t how true relationships work.

You don’t give your loved ones checklists to accomplish so that you will love them, or so that you will not punish them, or anything like that.  None of us wants our loved ones to be with us under those terms, to be people obsessed with keeping track of what we want and when we want it.  And doing just that, no more, no less.  Looking for loopholes wherever possible.  “Just tell me what I need to do and I’ll do it” sounds horrible from someone we love.  We’d rather they did what they did because they wanted to, because they knew it would please us, because they loved us.

Why would God be any different?

God seeks righteousness from us, yes, to “be made right with God,” have God’s “right-ness.”  But not from a checklist.

We know this from the Son of God, who reminds us often that all God seeks is that we love God with all we are and that we love our neighbors as ourselves.  This, he tells us, sums up all the law and the prophets.

Yes, the law was a list, given to God’s people to show them the way to live with God.  But in coming in person (and actually hundreds of years before Jesus Jeremiah said this would happen), in coming in person God said, “Lose the lists and do it all from your heart.”

“Love God with all your heart, soul mind and strength.  Love your neighbors as yourselves.  “Do this, and you’ll know what life really is.  Do this, and you’re doing all I ever asked.  “Do this, and you’ll be living in the relationship with me and with each other for which I’ve longed for centuries.”

That’s what the Triune God says to us through the Son.

The second juxtaposition of truth is this: seeking reward doesn’t make good relationships, but the kingdom of heaven isn’t a reward.

Seeking reward doesn’t make good relationships, but the kingdom of heaven isn’t a reward.

This is our greater difficulty.  We’re not so worried about lists these days.  But we don’t want to miss out on the lottery prize.

So much of the Church seems to motivate people to live by God’s rules that they might get a good place in death rather than a bad one.  Follow God’s laws, do everything commanded, so that your reward isn’t lost.  The motivation is purely self-centered: I don’t want to go to hell.

But this isn’t how true relationships work.

Which of us wants our loved ones to do whatever they do for us and with us solely for a prize, a reward?  To have someone spend time with us because they’re being paid, or they’ve got a promise of later gift?  To have someone act toward us only that we might give them something?  We’d rather they loved us honestly, openly, truly, not for profit.

Why would God be any different?

God promises that the reign of God, the kingdom of heaven is ours, is something we can enter, something deeply valuable, it is life-giving, life-sustaining, yes.  But it’s never a reward for a good life, it’s never withheld due to a bad life, it’s not even an end of life issue.

We know this from the Son of God, who spoke of the reign of God, the kingdom of heaven as being with us now, inside us, near us, real to us.  The kingdom of heaven is when people live in loving relationship with God and with each other as God intended from the beginning.  So it can be real now, and will certainly be real in the life to come.  It’s not a prize to be earned or won, it’s a gift of life that we can live in right now, this moment.

In coming in person, the Son of God said, “walk with me, love with me, love God and each other, and you will find life.”  When we live as the Triune God made us to live, in such loving relationships, we are already living in the kingdom, we already have the prize.

This what God teaches us through the Son.

“Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Ah, Jesus, now we understand: living in love of God and love of neighbor would be complete righteousness.  And entrance into the kingdom of heaven, the reign of God: you’re not talking about a reward but the reality that living in such a relationship is living in the kingdom.

Jesus is telling us the truth, that when we live fully as God’s law had hoped to describe, when our love for God is with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, when our love for our neighbor is as for ourselves, we have already entered the kingdom of heaven.

And we have found a righteousness that far exceeds anything a checklist can give us.  Because it is a righteousness of our heart, a forgiven and restored spirit, given by the One who in dying and rising actually fulfilled all this already, and now makes it possible for us.

Do you see?  He came not to abolish but to fulfill, that we might also fulfill and not abolish.  More than anything, this we see in Christ Jesus, the Son of God: that he fulfilled love of God and neighbor in offering himself fully to us, to the world, even unto death.  But he is risen from the dead, and gives us the same Spirit of God that we might be able to walk the same path, and so live even now in God’s kingdom, God’s reign.

No, nothing can be removed from what God asks of us: this is complete love, not from a checklist but from our heart, and it is a love that calls us to serve, to give away, to lose ourselves both to God and to others, even to die.  Jesus is right in giving a warning that he’s not removing anything.

But that’s only because he knows where real life is lived, in such loving relationships with God and neighbor, and deeply desires each of us to know it, too.

It does make a difference who’s saying this to us.

It makes all the difference in the world.  Because this is life.  The only life.  It’s not easy, it’s not casual, it’s not dismissable.  But it is life.  Christ Jesus give us hearts able to live this now and always.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

In the story of Simeon and the Presentation of our Lord, God assures us that God keeps promises. We can wait for God to fulfill God’s promises to us and to all of creation with courage and hope.

Vicar Emily Beckering; The Presentation of our Lord; text: Luke 2:22-40

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

“Could this be the day?” He wondered. “Will it happen today?”

This is the way that he started every morning: wondering, waiting, hoping.

“Could it really happen today?” He tingled at the thought of it.

“Might this be the hour?” he pondered often throughout the day, every day.

It certainly was not a relaxing life: constantly attending to what might be, always alert, living on the lookout, but he had been given a promise. The promise was his purpose and the promise was his pursuit. He could not have rest until it happened, this he knew. And so he watched and he wondered, and he waited.

The story of Simeon is a story of waiting: a story of living in the promise, living in that in-between time.  The time between a promise given and a promise fulfilled.

We, like Simeon, live in an in-between time: the time in between receiving God’s promises to us in Christ and seeing the full realization of these promises. 

The expression: “we walk by faith” is true for us because we have experienced God’s presence with us and care for us, and yet there is still so much that we cannot yet see or understand clearly. There is so much for which we still wait.

As Paul writes in his letter to the Romans, we who have the first fruits of the Spirit wait for the redemption of our bodies, not only we, but all of creation groans to be set free from its bondage to decay. We, with all of creation, are waiting for that time when an end will come to suffering and pain and death. We are all waiting for the day when we no longer feel any distance between us and God. We are all waiting to be reunited with the ones who have gone before us.

While we wait with all of creation for these things in this in-between time, there are also things for which we each wait in our lives that have been promised to us in the midst of this relationship with God.  Part of the witness of Simeon’s story is that God really does enter into our lives and speak promises to us.

What are God’s promises for which you are waiting?
What is it for which you are still longing to be revealed?

It is into this time—our time of waiting and anticipation and longing—that God’s word comes to us today. 

And thanks be to God for this because waiting is no easy task. Waiting for God’s promises to us to be fulfilled is difficult because in this in-between time we see glimpses but not the full picture. As Paul writes, we see in a mirror dimly, and only know in part, but we wait for when we will see face to face and understand fully.

In this space, in this in-between time, there is so much room for doubt.

We may doubt the promise itself: Did we hear the promise correctly? Was that really what God promised? Was the promise really for us?

We may doubt ourselves and our ability to recognize or to receive the promise, especially if we are waiting longer than we anticipated for God to keep God’s word: What if we somehow missed it? Is there some way that we could mess it up or prevent the promise from being fulfilled?

We may doubt the One who has given the promise. It is difficult to wait because it is difficult to trust: will God be faithful to God’s word?

Perhaps for some of us, the problem is not doubting the promise, but not knowing what it is that we are promised. We are not certain what God’s word is for our lives. How can we trust if we do not even know what it is for which we are waiting?

In response to each of these fears which often seem to hold so much power over us, we are given the witness of Simeon so that we might wait with good courage. 

At first, we might scoff at this witness and think: “Ha. It was easy for Simeon! He had a direct word from God. He knew exactly what God had promised him and what he was supposed to do about it.” Maybe it’s harder for us because it’s not always clear to us what God has promised to us, how God is at work in us, or where or to what God is calling us.

But the key to hearing the good news in this story today is to recognize that the God who spoke to Simeon and led him to the temple is the same God who has claimed us and is at work in our lives. 

It is evident from Simeon’s witness that this God is a God who loves us deeply and acts out of this love. God cares so tenderly for Simeon that God the Father makes the promise to Simeon through the Holy Spirit. God the Son fulfills this promise. God the Holy Spirit ensures that Simeon gets to see the promise fulfilled.

So much of our difficulty with waiting arises from the fear that we have been abandoned, and that we must have somehow imagined the promise or screwed it up. But God doesn’t just make a promise and then step aside or sit back. God is intimately involved in Simeon’s life, so much so that the Holy Spirit rests upon Simeon so that God may dwell with him. By this Spirit, Simeon is guided at just the right time to meet the Messiah promised to him.

It is clear that just as the Triune God is committed to the saving purpose of redeeming Israel, so too is God committed to ensuring that Simeon, whom God also loves, is able to witness the fulfillment of this promise.

God is a God who keeps promises. God was faithful to the promise made to Simeon. God was faithful to the promise made to all of Israel. God will be faithful to the promises that God has made to us.

What is more, the same promises that were given to Simeon and to Israel are also given to us. We have also seen our salvation. In Jesus, God has given us God’s own heart. When Simeon was led to the temple by the Holy Spirit, he was met by his savior. We were led here today by the Holy Spirit where we are met by our Savior. When we take the Eucharist, we take Jesus into our arms. The same love, the same life, the same freedom that Simeon realized was offered to him, to Israel, and to all people is ours. The same Spirit that rested upon Simeon has been poured out onto us in our Baptism.

Just as the Triune God tenderly cared for Simeon, ensuring that Simeon heard the promise, was led to the one promised to him, and recognized it when the promise was fulfilled, the Triune God is at work in our lives, guiding us and giving us what we need to be formed into who God has promised until that time when we experience the fullness of all that God has promised.

When we hear the story of the presentation of our Lord, God is taking us up into God’s arms and saying: “Look what I’ve done for Simeon. Look what I’ve done for Israel, for the world, and for you. You can trust my promises.”

When we cling to this word from God, then we too, like Simeon, can live in the promise.

Two things emerge for us from Simeon’s witness about what this looks like.

First, we are to keep waiting.

Simeon expected God to fulfill God’s promise to him, so he lived watching and waiting—living on the word given to him. God also asks us to wait, to watch, and to listen. We live in the promise when we live on the lookout for Jesus to meet us, and when we listen for how the Holy Spirit is nudging us, drawing us closer to the fulfillment of God’s promises in our lives.

We are to wait and watch and listen, even for the unexpected. The promise might not be fulfilled precisely in the way that we expect. Is it likely that Simeon expected the deliverer and savior of his people and every nation to come to him as a baby? The fact that God’s promises are often fulfilled in unexpected ways is made clear to us not only in this story, but throughout the gospels. Think of the rich man who did not anticipate that the Messiah would ask him to give up all of his possessions to follow him, and how he went away sad because he had great wealth. Think of the Pharisees who could not accept a Messiah who broke bread with sinners. Think of the disciples who were filled with fear because they did not expect their Messiah to suffer and die.

God may not fulfill promises to us in the way that we expect, but with open hearts that listen for the Holy Spirit to guide us, God will see to it that we are led to where we need to be, that we are formed into who God would have us be, and that we can recognize God at work.

We are also to wait and watch and listen even when it takes longer than we thought for God’s work in our lives to be fulfilled. Think of Anna: the prophet who never left the temple but worshipped night and day. Think of all the nights and days and weeks and years that she waited for the promised redemption of Israel before she got to see that promise fulfilled before her eyes.

It might take longer than we want for God to fulfill what God has promised for us and for the world, but God will see to it that it is accomplished.

The second thing that God asks of us today is to respond when we are called.

When the Word was given to him to go to the temple, Simeon got up and followed. By following the Word given to him, Simeon encountered his Messiah and witnessed the fulfillment of God’s promises. We hear from Simeon’s song, however, that following the Holy Spirit caused Simeon to come closer to his own death, for once he met his Messiah, he knew that he could now pass away. Yet, being faced with his death also meant coming face to face with the one who had come to set him free from the power of death.

In the same way, we are not told that living according to God’s promises or following the Holy Spirit to where Jesus is will be easy. Simeon’s prophecy warns us alongside Mary and Joseph of opposition, rejection, and suffering. But what we are promised is that by the power of the Holy Spirit, God will be with us as we follow the call to follow.

Although waiting, watching, listening and following where the Holy Spirit leads us in this in-between time is not easy, we know that the Triune God who held Simeon in tender care also holds us. It might take longer than we would like, and it might not happen in the way that we expect, but God will be faithful to God’s promises for our lives. To this we can cling. That is living in the promise.

Darkness covers our lives in different ways but in Christ Jesus God has entered that darkness with light; now, whether it is light or dark, we know God’s grace is always with us.  And now, we tell others of the light we have seen.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen, Third Sunday after Epiphany, year A; texts: Isaiah 9:1-4; Psalm 27:1, 4-9; Matthew 4:12-23

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 people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness – on them light has shined.”  Such a powerful word of promise, Isaiah’s grace note.  This note, this song has continued to ring through centuries, a melody of hope in a world of darkness.  A note which Matthew heard before we heard it, and upon looking at Jesus, the Son of God, realized, “Ah: this is what Isaiah sang.  This is the light shining in the darkness.”  A melody which John the evangelist heard and also named as Jesus when he sang of the light no darkness can overcome or understand.  A song Andrew and John, James and Peter heard that was so compelling they left their work and their lives so they could walk with this light, and eventually sing of this light to others in the midst of deep darkness.

The joy of hearing such a word, such a song, comes if one has experienced the darkness.  If all is sunshine and light, such a word, though still beautiful, somehow seems like a lovely but unimportant, distant song.  “The people who walked in darkness?”  They knew they had no light.  For them, light shining meant everything.

So are we ever in the dark?  Does Isaiah’s song sing to us?

We need to know what darkness is.  If it’s literal darkness, the absence of physical light, we live in an age unlike any other in the history of the world.  We never need be in darkness, we have lights everywhere, on all the time.  Even in this building there are lights in hallways that never, ever turn off.  Unless we are in the wilderness, when can we walk and be in darkness, what with all the street lights, porch lights, car lights, sign lights?

From space, our planet looks like a great Christmas light.  We have to be told by scientists that sleep is better served by full darkness because even in our bedrooms we have so many lights hardly anyone knows what it is to be completely in the dark.  Isaiah’s song might be meaningless to us.

But maybe we’re obsessed with keeping lights on at all times because we can’t cope with darkness, true darkness.  Maybe there’s another reason that we don’t ever, ever turn all the lights off.  Maybe we, more than any other age in human history, have truly become afraid of the dark.

Like a child’s game of peekaboo, where if she closes her eyes, nothing exists, but in reverse, maybe we pretend that if we never have to face darkness we won’t have to think about true darkness, it won’t be real.

Because that’s the truth about Isaiah’s song, isn’t it, that it sings not of physical darkness, the absence of light waves and particles, but of metaphorical darkness, the dark night of the soul, the fears and worries and sadness and confusion and pain and all that which we call darkness?

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light, and we’re not talking about the sun, or the moon, or candles, or 5,000 watt spotlights.  The reason this note of grace has sung in the depths of human hearts for centuries is that true darkness has nothing to do with light switches.  Darkness has long been an image which helped us describe our lives without God.  And it still works.

And we’ve played with words of light to try to describe how this works in our lives.  We’ve talked about being enlightened, said, “I see,” when we meant we understood.  We’ve talked about having “insight” when our confusion was pierced with grace.

So, if that’s true darkness, then is it real to us?  Is this truth about our lives?  Because if it isn’t, then this song will also not ring true, nor will it be necessary.

Isaiah said, “the people who walked in darkness.”  If you’re walking in darkness, you’re stumbling around, bumping your shins on all sorts of things, feeling lost the further you go.  You know there’s a problem.

Matthew, strangely, changed it a little.  He said, “the people who sat in darkness.”  If you’re sitting in darkness, you’ve either given up or you are frozen in indecision.  You’re not going anywhere, you’re not seeing anything.  You’re just sitting.  In darkness.

If this is not foreign to us, well, then, there is some very good news.

When the early believers saw Jesus, they said: God has come into our darkness.

This real darkness that pervades our lives, our fears, our confusion, all that, seems to dissipate in the presence of Christ Jesus for us, too.  His words, his grace, what he does for us, all are the same song Isaiah began 3,000 years ago.  The word of God’s forgiveness and love breaks upon us like a light in the deepest darkness.

And we see, we see.  We find clarity where once we were confused.  We find calm where once we were anxious, gladness where once we were sad, comfort where once we were in pain, hope where once we were afraid.  Life where once we were dead.

Because we know true darkness, this light of Christ is deeply real and life-giving for us.  And because of Christ, we begin to understand other things about darkness and light.  We begin to see that God is there in both places, now that we’ve come to know God is with us at all.

Psalm 139 begins to make sense to us in ways we hadn’t known when we thought all was dark.  “If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night,’ even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.”

That now makes sense, because of course our fears come back, our confusion returns.  Our pain, or new pain, strikes once more, and anxiety rears its head just when we thought it had gone.  And death always looms.

But now, now we know the truth: we are not alone, and God has brought light into this darkness.  So even when it seems dark again, we have a secret to which we can cling and find hope.  We have become children again, and our heavenly parent has turned the lights on in our room and said, “See – it’s all safe, it’s all fine.  It’s only a coat sitting over a chair that you were afraid of.  And when the lights go off again, now you know: I’m here, and it’s all going to be fine, even if for awhile it will be dark.”

That now is our life and our joy: now the darkness cannot truly frighten us anymore.  We can sing, “the LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?” and know that to be true.

Darkness will come again, it always does.  But now we know the truth, and more, we know where the light is.  Who the light is.

And now we can look at Andrew and the others for a moment.

This call of Jesus to them we just heard is different perhaps than we thought.  After hearing John’s account last week we now see differently what really happened on that beach.  We see that this call of Jesus wasn’t a cold call to these four, wasn’t their first encounter.

First Andrew and John, then Simon Peter, met Jesus and learned the truth about who he was.  Then they went about their work and lives.  Until the day Jesus came to them at their place of work and said, “Now we need to go, and I need you to help.”

They knew what darkness was and in Jesus they saw light.  They saw what they were looking for, hoping for.  So when he came to them later and asked them to follow, they were ready, they were willing.

They were willing to go into dark places with others on his behalf.  Probably not at first.  Probably at first they followed because he was light and they were in darkness.  But later, after the resurrection, they all did it.  They all, like Jesus, entered the darkness in which other people sat, or walked, and brought light.

And that, of course, is our call, too.  To follow, not just so that we can see light always, even when it’s dark.  But so that we can be light-bearers to others in darkness.  So we can listen to others in their darkness and speak of the light.

So we can sing Isaiah’s song to them by our very presence with them.  So we can say, though it is fearfully dark, “I have seen a light, and I will walk with you in that direction until you can see it, too.”  And so we can sit with those who cannot yet imagine how to walk or even to get up, and by being with them, be the light of Christ in their darkness.

As much as we talk about witnessing, this is the real gift, the real thing.  We know what light in the darkness really is, what God has really done.  We are the ones, the only ones, who can hold that light for someone else in darkness.

We prayed in our Prayer of the Day today this confidence: “Lord God, your lovingkindness always goes before us and follows after us.”  Let that be our witness.

Because we know it is true: darkness is not dark to God, darkness is as light, and so before us and after us, wherever we walk, God’s light is with us.

We might not have any other thing to offer someone else in darkness, any other skills.  But we have seen this light.

That, that we can share.  That, that is our gift to offer.  And in the dark, it’s all you need.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen