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

Our call is pretty simple: if we’ve seen the grace of God in Jesus, if this is life to us, we are asked by our Lord to tell others, to say “Come and see!”  Even if we don’t think we’re that important to the enterprise.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen, Second Sunday after Epiphany, year A; texts: John 1:29-42; Isaiah 49:1-7

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

It’s interesting how much we Christians like the apostle Peter.  It was one of his two feast days yesterday, the Confession of St. Peter.  The Conversion of St. Paul is next Saturday, and then the two of them share a day, June 29.  Peter’s the star of the twelve, isn’t he?  Confesses that Jesus is Messiah, leads the twelve, along with James and John.  Becomes, as tradition tells it, the first bishop of Rome.  Two New Testament letters are attributed to him, even if it’s possible he didn’t write them, and even Mark’s Gospel has sometimes been attributed to Peter’s teaching and message.

We love his faults, too.  Every time Peter stumbles, sticks his foot in his mouth, or doesn’t understand a word of what Jesus is saying, we rejoice a little.  If even the great St. Peter can be such an idiot, perhaps there’s hope for me.  Plus, Peter provides terrific comic relief in many of the Gospel stories.  Peter’s great.

And then there’s his little brother, Andrew.  St. Andrew only gets one feast day, not two, and since November 30 is almost always in Advent, it doesn’t get celebrated much.  Overshadowed by a much more colorful and famous brother, Andrew is kind of one of the forgotten of the twelve.  If he wrote any letters, none have survived, none have been attributed to him and made the canon.  The three leaders of the disciples were Peter, James, and John.  It might sometimes escape our notice, but the four Gospels do agree that the first four disciples called by Jesus were the two sets of brothers: Peter and Andrew, James and John.  Somehow, Andrew slipped into second-rate status.  He’s didn’t make the Big Three.

But did you see what happened in John’s telling this morning?  There are two disciples of John the Baptist who take note of his witness to Jesus as the Lamb of God.  Two disciples, Andrew, and an unnamed one, whom we assume to be John, the brother of James and the one from whom this Gospel finds its source.  Andrew and John follow Jesus, and then, at the end of the story, Andrew runs and finds his brother Simon.  He tells Simon that they’ve found the Messiah, and he brings his brother to Jesus.  Jesus promptly changes Simon’s name to Peter, and the rest, as they say, is history.  Andrew steps aside for his brother, probably not for the first time and certainly not for the last, and Peter assumes his starring role.

But do you know what sticks out to me in this story?  The one who doesn’t stick out.  I can’t stop looking at Andrew in this story, and in the ministry of Jesus.  Because maybe we’ve been modeling ourselves after the wrong brother.  Maybe we need to pay attention to the one who draws no attention to himself.

Maybe the good news of this story, and of the twelve, is that we are more like Andrew than Peter.

There are several things that we notice once we start looking at Andrew.

First, though he remains in the background, always, he’s also always an access point to Jesus.  Today, he brings Simon Peter to Jesus, and starts the path of a deeply important disciple, someone Jesus needed very much.  Andrew is the reason his brother believes.  Because Andrew brought him to the One he saw, he recognized, as Messiah.  Peter’s confession doesn’t happen without Andrew’s confession.

But when we look for Andrew in the Gospels we find him pretty much only on lists.  Except in John’s Gospel, drawn from the teaching of the one of the twelve who apparently was Andrew’s best friend, John, John’s Gospel tells this one, and then two other stories of Andrew.

Do you remember the great sign Jesus gives, feeding well over 5,000 people with a couple fish and five barley loaves?  Of course you do.  Do you want to hazard a guess as to which disciple actually had made friends with a little boy who’d brought a lunch, and was able to tell Jesus they had at least a little food?

That’s right.  It was Andrew.  Maybe he didn’t make friends, but it sure looks like Andrew was the guy who paid attention to people; who, because he wasn’t dominating the scene, was able to see things others didn’t.

And a little later, there are these Greek-speaking believers who want to meet Jesus, so they talk to Philip.  Philip is a Greek name, so presumably Philip was a Greek-speaking Jew, probably from a family of Jews who had lived in the diaspora.  But Philip doesn’t take them to Jesus.  Philip takes them to Andrew.  And Andrew leads them to Jesus.

It’s becoming familiar, isn’t it?  Andrew, whom we hardly think of, keeps on bringing people to Jesus.  Andrew, who’s not important, is someone people can come to if they want to know Jesus.

Second, Andrew, according to John, is the first who recognized what he was seeing, who looked at Jesus and saw he was the Anointed One, the Messiah.  He sees, in just one day, what Jesus is all about.  At first he only calls him “rabbi,” “teacher.”  But after he and John stay with Jesus for an evening, the next day he runs to his brother Simon and says, “We have found the Messiah!”

This is the first time Jesus is called the Messiah in John’s Gospel, and this confession of Andrew predates Peter’s by several years.  Andrew’s encounter with Jesus causes him to see the truth.

And third, Andrew witnessed to what he saw.  Just like John the Baptist.  “Seeing” and “looking” are important themes in John’s Gospel.  Again and again, people are looking for truth, looking for God, are invited to see.

But what is important here is telling others once you’ve seen.  John sees something new about his cousin Jesus, so new he says he didn’t really know who Jesus was, he sees that he is, in fact, the Son of God.  The Lamb of God.  So he witnesses to it.

Andrew, not knowing Jesus at all before this apparently, also sees this truth.  And tells his brother.  Actually, he does more than tell.  He brings Simon to Jesus.  Just like he brings the little boy with a lunch.  Just like he brings the Greek-speaking believers.

Andrew’s not content simply to know who Jesus is in his life.  He needs to let others know, too.

This, then, is our model: if we have, like Andrew, seen something, it’s time to tell others.

We are made to be servants of God in our baptism, called to witness to what God is doing.  To tell people what we’ve seen.  All so God’s salvation, God’s light, can reach to the end of the earth, Isaiah says today.  Which will only happen when those who have seen tell others to “come and see,” like Andrew did.

Like Andrew, our relationship with our Lord Jesus causes us to see who he is, to know his grace and hope in our lives.  We gather here each week to meet the Triune God who has come to us in this Anointed One, and to be blessed and fed by the grace of God we have come to know.

That is what we have “seen.”

And it’s worth remembering that if we don’t share this, then others won’t see themselves.  What would the Church be like without Peter?  Well, without Andrew, there is no Peter.  If Andrew had kept it to himself, what would have happened?  If Andrew hadn’t been approachable, how many wouldn’t have known Jesus?

If people are to hear and believe, and know God’s saving love, then we, too, need to follow our call.  We need to copy Andrew.  Because how will anyone hear if we’re so involved in our own issues and lives that we forget to invite others, to say “come and see”?

How will anyone know if we act in our lives toward each other and in the world as if the coming of Messiah means little or nothing to how we speak and act in the world?

How will anyone see if we simply keep the Good News of our inclusion in God’s love and the reality that is in our lives to ourselves and don’t share?

If we model ourselves after Andrew, we find that this witness can happen in different ways.  It can happen in our speaking, in telling the Word, as he did: we have found the Messiah, this is the Son of God!  As believers, we have lots of opportunities to speak the Good News to others, to tell them of the joy we know from God.  To tell them they are loved by God.  To do Andrew’s work.

It can happen in our inviting to come, too, bringing people with us to worship, to meet the Lord in Word and Supper, in the community of faith.  This happens around here, probably more than in many places, but we could all take a page from this faithful disciple and take it as our primary role, our call.  We have the privilege of inviting people to come and see God in our midst, in Word, Meal, Community, and to know and see what gives us life.

And, last, like Andrew, our telling can happen in our lives of love and service, being the presence of the Messiah to others.  Something about him led people to trust him and come, hoping to see Jesus.  As we live in love toward each other, live lives of concrete and active love in the world, live transformed lives, we witness again and again, “come and see” what we have found!

Andrew’s greatest gift to us, though, may be the ability to see our importance in spite of seeming evidence to the contrary.

Andrew models faithfulness, not success.  He is the first to confess the Messiah, but Peter gets all the fame, all the notice.  Having grown up with volatile, exuberant Simon, surely he had to know what would happen if he became a disciple, too.  Still, Andrew goes and tells his brother anyway.

Like John the Baptist, who loses disciples to Jesus once he points him out as Lamb of God, as they immediately abandon him, that’s Andrew’s way.  Andrew brings Peter to Jesus, and immediately assumes second (or third, or fourth) place.

Our call is not to “success” in life, in faith, but to faithfulness.  It’s hard to know, but it seems as if Andrew doesn’t mind.  Maybe Andrew already understood what two others of the Big Three, James and John, had to be taught by Jesus much later.  When they wanted honor and privilege and important seats, they were told that being faithful, even unto death, was what being a disciple was all about.

Maybe Andrew already knew that.  Be that as it may, what matters for us is that we faithfully witness to all we meet that we have seen the Messiah.  Not that we’re a success, whatever that means anyway.

It isn’t important that any of us are important.  Because what Andrew knew was that it would be the Messiah himself who would take care of the giving of faith.  You see, he just brought people to Jesus.  Jesus took care of the rest.  Like turning a small lunch Andrew found into a massive feast.  He didn’t think he was a savior, he didn’t think he was a big deal.  But he did know what he had seen, and that he wanted to share.

And that’s our path, too.  It is the Spirit of Christ who will bring others to faith, to life.  All we can do is, if we’ve seen something, tell someone.

It seems kind of simple when we think about it.  Just tell folks what we’ve seen.

But from Andrew’s viewpoint, it’s a source of joy.  He saw God’s Messiah.  And he told people.  And people saw him and trusted him, and through that, they came to Jesus.

And no, he didn’t make the Big Three.  He’s hardly mentioned in the Gospels.  But I suspect that’s what makes him the best model for us.  We, who will likely never make the history books as the greatest evangelists of our age, we who think we aren’t very good at it.

If we follow the little brother here, we learn that’s not the point.  If Messiah is come, that’s all the strength and talent we need, right there.  Our job is just to point and say, “look at that!”  “Come and see!”

It’s not a hard job.  But it is critical.  And all of us can do it.  That’s what Andrew says, anyway.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen