In the waters of Baptism, God has claimed us as God’s own children, joined us with the communion of saints and promised eternal life in the future and the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives now. We belong to God now and forever. Because we belong to God, the Holy Spirit will equip us to live out the Beatitudes in Luke. 

Vicar Emily Beckering, All Saints Sunday; texts: Luke 6:20-31, Ephesians 1:3-23

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

Are there any who are poor? You are blessed because God’s kingdom belongs to you. Are you hungry or empty? You are blessed because God will fill you. Have you found yourself weeping lately? You are blessed because God will bring you laughter. Do people criticize you, hate you, or exclude you? Jump for joy because your reward is great in heaven.

But what if we are sitting with more than we need? What if we have full bellies, smiles on our faces, and other people’s praise tingling in our ears? Should we be worried? Have we somehow lost God’s blessing? Must we be poor, mourning, and hated in order to have God’s favor?

The poor, the hungry, those who are grieving or depressed: these are the people who, according to our standards, are at the very least, down on their luck. At our worst, we say that they are the ones who have failed, or floundered, or have caused their own suffering. Not so, Jesus says, there is a special place in the heart of God for these ones.

But the ones who Jesus warns, on the other hand, these are the ones who we believe have it all together! Wealth, success, influence, good times, the best parties, and the love and admiration of all. Who doesn’t want that? These people have everything! Or do they?

According to Jesus, things are not as they seem. Jesus takes everything that we think we know about life and about God and flips it upside down. We have lived our lives according to certain rules, expecting to find ourselves on the right side, come to find out that the ones who we think are cursed are not cursed after all and the ones who we are certain are blessed are not, in fact, blessed.

So when we hear Jesus speak the warnings, “Woe to you,” we may begin to squirm. Is that us? We may also be tempted to think that we must be of a certain status or find ourselves in particular conditions to be loved by God. We may wonder if God’s very blessing and love is conditional.

But Paul tells us something quite different in Ephesians. In the extended reading of Ephesians today, we hear just what God thinks of us. We hear just what the Triune God has done, continues to do, and will yet do for us. God the Father, out of great love for us, chose to adopt us as children. God the Son has bought us back from the power that death and sin once had over us, forgives us for our sins, and through him, we are given the promise of eternal life. God the Holy Spirit has sealed us with these promises and continues to empower and send us to do God’s work on a daily basis. It was God’s great pleasure to do this: God rejoiced at choosing to be in relationship with you and now no condition—nothing—can take away that relationship.

We are not saints, or holy or blessed because of what we have, have done, or hear said about us. We are part of the communion of saints because God has called us Holy and Blessed and claimed us as God’s own. Yes, God has made a decision about us. God has decided to be our God and that we will be God’s people.

To confirm this, we do not look to our bank statements, or our GPA, or the titles added to our names, or the amount of people who want to come to our parties, or whether or not our plans for ourselves work out. We look instead to the waters of our baptism, for it is here that we know for sure that our God is a God of love and mercy, a God who gives all of God’s self to those who have little, who turns weeping and mourning and shame into joy, who transforms our longing into fulfilled promises, our hunger into satisfaction, hatred into love and death into life. God washes us with these promises and says: “You are baptized in my name. I am your God and I will never let you go. All I have is yours and I give it to you freely and with joy and great pleasure because I love you.”

God is, was, and always will be your God so that no grave will ever be able to hold you: God will raise you and all the saints from the dead. And so, it is here in baptism that we are joined with Christ and brought from death into life; here that God claims us as God’s own children and makes us members of Christ’s church and heirs to our inheritance in Christ which is life with God in eternity and the seal of the Holy Spirit. With that seal, comes the power of the Holy Spirit at work in our lives now, forming us to live as Christ for the sake of the world. The Holy Spirit equips us to do all that Jesus asks in his sermon in the gospel for today.

Jesus is describing the life of the saints here and now. Jesus is doing for us exactly what was promised to the Ephesians. He is enlightening our hearts, showing us what it means and what it looks like to live out of his love, so that, as Paul writes, we may know the hope to which we are called, the riches of our inheritance as saints, and the immeasurable greatness of God’s power in our lives. Jesus is not casting us aside for how we have been living; he is inviting us all back in: the poor and the rich, the hungry and the content, the mourning and the rejoicing, for he died for all.

In this invitation, as a loving parent, Jesus calls us back to his side to recall the promises that we have received in him. Jesus does not say, “in order to belong to me,” but “since you belong to me, live differently. Now that you know that you are mine, live as mine.”

Because we have been sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with Christ’s cross forever, our very lives will be marked by Christ and his cross. Christ was poor, Christ was hungry, Christ wept, Christ was hated and rejected, and so shall we be.

Because we belong to Christ and the Holy Spirit is at work in us, we will accept with open arms the people who exclude us and rally against us. Because we belong to Christ and the Holy Spirit is at work in us, we will encourage those who criticize us. Because we belong to Christ and the Holy Spirit is at work in us, we will pray for God to care for those who discount us, offer our forgiveness to those who only deal out hurt, and give away freely from the abundance of what God has given us.

And this work of bringing us from death into life that God has done in our baptism continues to be lived out daily in the lives of the saints. In Jesus’ words today, the Triune God is at work once again to bring light where darkness has crept in and life where death has tricked us into feeling its icy chill. Here in this place, through Jesus’ words, God is putting to death the fears and behaviors that lead us to destruction, that cause us to wreak havoc on our neighbors and ourselves, and make us doubt the love of God.

When we hear, “Blessed are you who are poor, hungry, weeping, and hated,” the Triune God is putting to death our assumptions about who is in, and who is out, where God is at work, and who has value. For those of us who have lived in misery, who know well the bitter taste of suffering, who are ridiculed, and ignored, and cast aside because we do not succeed in ways that the world values, for those of us who have begun to wonder whether there is any hope, the Triune God is putting to death the fear that we have been abandoned, and is raising up actual hope: you have a special place in the heart and in the life of God. Jesus is saying, “Nobody declares your value but me, and to me, you are precious, you are blessed, and you are mine.”

For those of us who have many friends and who find security in our comfortable lives, the Triune God is putting to death our assumptions that we have all that we have because we have God’s favor. Jesus warns, “Be careful who and what you let have power over you. Being rich or successful or influential or well-liked doesn’t make you count in my eyes. You are blessed, but know why. You are blessed because I have called you by name and made you my own: nobody declares your value but me and to me you are precious, you are mine.”

This is the promise that God gives not just to us, but to all, for everything will be gathered to God. Nothing and no one can take away this promise, not even our own tendency to live as if we still belonged to sin and death instead of to the risen Christ.

And so, may these tendencies to live as if sin and the fear of death still ruled us: that is, the tendency to accrue wealth and experiences for ourselves even though we are fully aware of those who are struggling, the tendency to meet our needs at the expense of others, to chase after approval and recognition no matter who we take down in the process, and the tendency to base our value on the world’s standards rather than on who God says that we are: may all these harmful patterns die. And may God raise us up anew, to live out of the Spirit’s power and out of the hope that our story does not end here, for we have a place in God’s story.

In the fullness of that story, an end will come to poverty, and hunger, and pain, and weeping, and hate, and we and all the faithful dead will be united with God.  But here and now, God is in our very midst putting to death our harmful beliefs and behaviors and raising us once again by the power of the Holy Spirit to live as Christ—to fill and be filled by the hungry, to weep with the weeping, to return hate with love, to forgive and lift up before God those who hurt us, and to give of ourselves and our resources for the joy of being apart of what God is doing. When this happens, all around us the clouds part and God’s future breaks in now.

This God who chose to make us his own and freely poured out on us the gifts of eternal life, forgiveness, and the power of the Holy Spirit, this God who has made us saints and called us blessed, will continue to call us back, to put to death harmful patterns, to raise us again to live as Christ, and to remind us whose we are until that time when before the throne with all the saints in light, we will know in complete fullness, the God to whom we belong.

Amen

God’s grace is permanently inscribed on our hearts and it re-forms us from within, shapes our hearts and lives into new ones for service in the world, a change which can be threatening to our sense of security in the status quo.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen, Reformation Sunday; texts: Jeremiah 31:31-34; Romans 3:19-28; John 8:31-36

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

Tattoos fascinate me.  In the last decade or more, they have become more prevalent, and much more mainstream.  People of all ages and backgrounds get them, not just people in biker gangs, even a fair number of folks here at Mount Olive.  I find it so interesting that people are capable of making a decision to mark their bodies permanently.  Mostly because I can’t imagine how I would pick exactly what art I wanted displayed on my body for the rest of my life – how could a person make that choice?  Of course, a whole industry has also arisen around tattoo removal, for those who have second thoughts about that girlfriend’s name they chose, or about the design which seemed so daring at age 18 but somehow seems to be hindering job interviews at age 38.  It seems it’s a painful and lengthy process, though.  It’s probably best to think of tattoos as permanent when considering whether you want one.

So I don’t have a tattoo yet.  If ever.  But something like it is described in the words of the prophet Jeremiah today.  Through the prophet the LORD God says “I will put my law within [my people], and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”  This is the new covenant the Triune God is making with Israel, with us, a covenant fully realized in Jesus, God’s Son.  It’s a covenant, a promise, of forgiveness and love from God, and a covenant where God’s ways are inscribed permanently on our hearts, like a spiritual tattoo.

There’s a powerful sense of transformation in that image alongside the sense of permanence.  This heart-writing God does actually changes us from within, makes us new, shapes our very hearts and lives, marking us as God’s forever.

This is what Jeremiah proclaims: God’s promise of grace is imprinted on our hearts and we will never be the same again.

It’s an astonishing image: God literally writes on our hearts this amazing love we know in Jesus, and a way to live in that love.  It’s now part of our spiritual genes, so to speak; we act the way we’ve been marked.  Much as our own genes shape how we are.  It’s as if in writing on our hearts, God is re-writing our DNA and making us new from within.  We will look different, act different, be different because of this marking, this writing.

I was recently looking at a picture of my 13 year old nephew, my sister’s son, alongside pictures of him when he was small, and it was remarkable how much he now looks like his father, but how when he was younger he looked like some of my siblings when they were little.  It’s so interesting in families to see those traits, those shared looks, and how they change.  Sometimes it’s almost uncanny how someone can channel a grandparent’s face, or an uncle’s turn of phrase.  We are what our genes have made us to be, what our biological parents gave to us genetically.

And now, according to Jeremiah, God has done the same thing to us, has marked us to look like our heavenly parent.  That’s the real power of God’s image here: that the imprint of God’s grace changes us.

It would be a great deal just to know God’s love and ways because they’re written in our core, on our hearts in baptism.  Imagine how different the world would be if every person knew in their hearts that God loved them with a love death could not destroy.  That all knew they were forgiven by God forever, that God forgets all their sins.

But it’s a far deeper promise: having God’s Word tattooed on us, we’re changed by it, transformed into new people.  This vision of Jeremiah is that in having such heart-writing all would know the LORD and live by God’s ways, rather than needing written covenant or stone-carved law.

This is the core of Christian ethics, throughout Scripture: you are, I am, we are a new creation, made into new people in tune with God.  Like King David in Psalm 51, we asked for clean hearts and we now find that God is going us one better.  God’s remaking our hearts into new ones.

We should also note that God’s plan of heart-writing is for all God’s people.  it’s a group thing, not just an individual thing.

God speaks of all the people as getting this imprint, all getting a heart tattoo of grace and a way of life.

This is more than just saying all are important.  It’s about the experience of God’s grace and how it’s fully to be known and lived.  Key to God’s inscription is that we all have it, we all share it, and we become God’s love to each other and to the world.

So when God wants to write the Word on our hearts, it’s as a group.  Together we discern those ways, together we help make decisions about our lives, together we live in the covenant promise of God, and witness it to the world.

Together the heart of our community, of the Church itself is tattooed by God so we “know the LORD,” and so live in the world as people shaped by God’s DNA, as signs of this new covenant, ambassadors of this grace and love and justice God intends for the whole world.

But be very careful: we may not want this re-formation that God’s writing on our collective and individual hearts accomplishes.

Oh, part of these readings today certainly sound good, to think that God’s making a new covenant with us, especially the parts about God’s forgiveness and forgetfulness that mark that covenant, the parts about the Son freeing us from sin.  To think of justification by God’s grace, Paul’s words for what this covenant looks like, as removing our guilt and our sin, this seems like a good thing.

That is, if we don’t read the rest of Paul’s words today, or the main part of Jeremiah today, or anything Jesus says today.  It sounds good, that is, if we don’t consider all those things we’ve just been considering.

You see, if God writes on our hearts, and re-writes our spiritual DNA, we will be different, not just forgiven.  Individually and collectively we’ll become a new creation, different people.

We’ve said that.  But do we want that?  Like those considering a real tattoo, we should be careful we’re ready for this change.

To be justified is not just to be forgiven.  It is to be straightened out, fixed, made right, as much as justifying a paragraph in a text is, whether left or right or center.  You straighten it out.  It is as Jeremiah says, to be re-made into the image of God we were meant to be.

St. Athanasius [1] understood the fall of humanity to be like a gradual de-creation, that humanity more and more was becoming less and less the image of God.  Moving further and further into something completely unlike God.  According to Athanasius, the Incarnation of the Son of God, the Son who was there at the original creation, arrested that falling, that degeneration, that de-creation, and began to restore humanity back up into the image of God we were intended to be from the start.

That’s a beautiful thought.  But it can be plenty threatening.  Whatever we might think about what it would mean to be made a new creation, what is clear is that we cannot be who we were.  We will become more God’s image, not our image.

All those comfortable sins, all those lovely habits – even the ones we think we want to be rid of – these things define who we are.  We know our vices and our virtues, and the truth is, those vices sometimes are part of what we like about ourselves, part of what we are reluctant to release.  And if they’re gone and we’re different, will we even be recognizable as ourselves?  As our congregation?  As the Church?

That is to say, if the Son sets us free, as Jesus promises, and if the same Christ makes us into God’s way of righteous, as Paul promises, and if God re-writes our hearts as Jeremiah promises, who then will we be?  Are we ready to be something new and different?

I actually believe we could be ready, as long as we remain aware of our tendency to resist this change, this re-formation. 

It is a part of our broken human nature to want to cling to even the things that are not of God, because they are ours, because they are familiar, because we fear not knowing what we’d be like without them.  We can’t let ourselves remain naïve to our desire to thwart God’s transforming grace in our lives and in our congregation and in the Church.  If we can be aware of this tendency, we can also ask God’s help to overcome such resistance.

Because this promise of a heart-writing that will transform us individually and collectively into a new creation, God’s own people, is the only source of our joy and hope.  Our prayer today and always is that as God uses us to renew the world, and to continue to renew the Church, we more and more live with an awareness of our new identity and inscribed hearts, and let our lives show that love and transform the world.  Let our lives truly be re-formed, renewed, made different.

Then God’s promise in Jeremiah can really come to pass: “They shall all know me, from the least to the greatest,” says the LORD, and they all, all, will be my people and I will be their God.”  And all will be part of this new creation, this new grace that both frightens and thrills us.

Make it so, LORD God, make it so.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

[1] In his treatise “On the Incarnation of the Word,” http://www.ccel.org/ccel/athanasius/incarnation.html

Faith, living in trust with the Triune God whose Son showed us a depth of grace, life, forgiveness and love for all God’s children, no matter how lost: that’s where we want to be, in such faith, in such trust.  Because that’s where true life really is found.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen, Time after Pentecost, Lectionary 28, year C; text: Luke 17:11-19

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 if we could once and for all quit thinking the point of Luke telling this story is to inspire thanks, to call forth gratitude?  For over 65 years in this parish this gospel reading was appointed for Thanksgiving Day of all days; since ELW in 2006 we’ve at least only had it one in three Thanksgivings.  I suppose the lectionary preparers imagine that one can hear this story as an exemplar of gratitude, and I suppose it can be seen that way.  But it’s hard to avoid the fact that most often the way the story is heard and discussed, the point seems to be: “Look at this one, he gave thanks.”  “Shouldn’t you, too?”  This is hardly the most creative assignment of a text to a situation we’ve seen.

Seriously, though, at some point we hope to mature in faith as disciples of our Lord Christ, don’t we?  And this isn’t even a very effective parental strategy, to say nothing of mature discipleship: to guilt someone into thanking, or to compare thankful people to unthankful people in hopes of eliciting thanks.  It’s not a terribly high standard for which to aim.  And for goodness’ sake, not even Jesus does that here.  He just ponders the meaning that a foreigner took the time to return to give thanks to God.  He wonders where the other nine are.  But there’s no reason for us to assume they didn’t find a way to thank God.

What is interesting to Jesus and to us, though, is that one of them returned.  It’s not interesting to me as a question of thankfulness.  It’s easy to imagine any number of scenarios where the other nine who were healed didn’t find their way back to Jesus, many of which would include them being thankful to God.  But this one did return, did come back to Jesus.  And something new and different happens to him, too, something he didn’t receive, or at least wasn’t promised, the first time.

If we want to understand why he returned, we have to say that it isn’t very obvious that there are great differences between the one and the nine.

All ten were lepers, victims of a terrible skin disease.  All ten asked Jesus for help.  And all ten were made clean by Jesus.  Sometimes that gets lost in the shuffle: all ten are cured of their leprosy.  Cleansed.  Nothing in the story hints that because nine didn’t return their healing was taken back.  And the only reason given for the one leper’s return is that he noticed he was, in fact, healed.  But we can only assume the others figured this out, too.

And we also know this: all ten had faith enough to ask for help from the one who brought healing from God.  The act of faith was when each of them said, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”

“Have mercy,” they pray.  In Luke’s Gospel, only three times does anyone ask for mercy like this, and they’re all in these three chapters after the Luke 15 parables of grace.  In Jesus’ parable in chapter 16, the rich man, suffering in hell, asks Abraham, in heaven, to have mercy and send Lazarus, the poor man, with a drink of water.

In this story in 17, ten unknown lepers ask for mercy from Jesus.  And in chapter 18, a blind man, sitting by the side of the road, asks Jesus for mercy twice, calling him “Son of David” both times.

In the middle of these events is Luke’s telling of Jesus parable about persistent prayer.  Given the location, after the parables of grace, and that centering encouragement to pray always, even if results aren’t what we expect, we might wonder if this is significant.  Is Luke saying that if God is in fact gracious and merciful and welcoming, as the father, the woman with the coin, and the shepherd, the wise among us will seek mercy from such a God ourselves?  The rich man’s too late, but the others receive healing from Jesus.  It might be worth keeping this in mind for a moment.

And oddly, these ten call Jesus “master,” a word that can be translated “overseer,” “supervisor.”  Most times if the Gospels say “master” it’s the word for Lord, kyrios, that is translated.  Here it’s a different word, one that’s found only in Luke and even then only six times.  And in the other five times Luke uses it it’s always disciples of Jesus who speak it.  Not here.  These are strangers, but they call Jesus master as if they are disciples.  They recognize his authority.

So what is different with the one who came back?  Well, clearly, he’s a foreigner.  Jesus points that out, he’s a Samaritan.  But he might not have been the only one of the group.  We can’t know how many of the others were Jewish or Samaritan or anything else.

We’re left with the only obvious thing: what’s different is simply that he came back.  So the real question is still “why”?  What was he looking for, hoping for?

Is it too much to think that this man just wanted to be with Jesus?

Think about it – he’s healed, he can return to his family after being certified clean by the priests and going through a waiting period.  His life is his again.  But he wants more.  He wants to go back and thank and praise the one who gave the gift.  And to praise God publicly.

And that is an act of relationship – he wants to look into the eyes of the one who gave him life.  Maybe it’s not something he thought about, he just did it.  It’s probably putting too much into his action to claim much of anything about it.  But what we do know is what Jesus says to him.  And that’s the real eye-opener.

What Jesus says to him is this: “your faith has made you well.”  Now remember, we don’t think the other nine had their healing rescinded.  But what happened to them was different.  On the way to the priests, Luke says, “they were made clean.”  Cleansed, purified, the word means, and it has to do with disease and also with ritual purity, both of which were affected by leprosy.  They were cleansed of their illness.  That is sure.

But Jesus says to this one: “Go on your way; your faith has made you well.”  And that word is very different.  The word Jesus uses here shows up over 100 times in the New Testament, half in the Gospels.  And for 40 of those 52 or so in the Gospels, our translation reads “saved,” not “healed” or “well.”  80% of the time.  Including at the cross, where they say “he saved others, let him save himself,” and in John 3, where Jesus says the Son came to save the world.  The twelve times it’s translated “healed” or “well” are in situations of physical healing of course.  But it’s the same word.

For Jesus life, real life, is always more than physical health.  When he tells people whom he’s healed of disease that they are now “saved,” “well,” he means more than just being cured.

He’s saying that their faith reveals that they are now in a new life, having been rescued from destruction, saved from danger, not just healed from illness.  He claims for them a life, a relationship, of love and grace with God that is the only life worth living.

And that’s the truth for the one returner, isn’t it?  He is cleansed, sure.  But now he can be with the one who did it, and find the welcome and grace that the Incarnate Son of God is offering to all.  His faith didn’t earn his healing; we often misunderstand this phrase of Jesus.  His faith is his wellness, his saving, it is his life of trust in the Son of God who gives him life.

That’s why the point of this story for Luke is not to tell us to be thankful, though we can certainly keep that in mind if we want.

The point of this story is to lift up the depth of healing that this Jesus brings to the world as the Incarnate One.  He brings welcome and healing to Jews and non-Jews throughout Luke.  And it’s always more than physical healing.  It’s release to captives, sight to blind, justice to oppressed, and life to the world.

It is a new relationship of trust in the True God who’s always looking, always searching, and always welcoming back.  And in this story, one of the ten actually has a chance to learn that for himself.  Because he came back.

To turn to Christ and say, “Jesus, Lord, have mercy on me” is to seek a healing that is deeper and more real than any physical one.  It is to recognize that there is healing available that can only be called salvation, that only words that carry that weight, that importance, can describe.

It is to recognize that the important thing is not specific healing but being with the Son of God who welcomes us in love and mercy no matter how far or how long we’ve been or are lost.

It is to recognize who it is who is that life and say, “Master, have mercy.”  And expect to be heard and forgiven and welcomed home.

The other nine, they were returned to their homes, doubtless certified clean by the priests, and given back their lives.  This is good.  This is grace.  But this one recognized that it was Jesus, the Lord, who was the important thing, and went back, praising God.  Went back in faith.

And that’s the possibility this story raises for us.  The possibility that we recognize that the grace of the Triune God we receive in this place, and in our lives in the world, in and of itself is only part of the gift.  The true gift is that we can trust our Lord Jesus and live in that relationship of life-giving faith always.  That we can be in that mercy and grace in all things and at all times.

“Have mercy, Lord,” the ten said.  And so we say.  Because we believe.

And we also constantly pray for that same faith, that we might throw ourselves on the mercy of God and find the life that really is life.  That we might see beyond any specific needs for healing we might have into the eyes of the True Healer himself and know that is where we need to be, always.  That we might trust in our Lord Christ for our all.

We can come to God for graces, and ask for help, and we can receive it.  And it will be a blessing.  But the tenth leper shows us that a better path is to seek to be with God always, and so live in that faith always.

And while we’re on our way with Jesus, sure, let’s give thanks.  But let’s do it the way the healed leper did.  Let’s “praise God with a loud voice” as we turn to God.  Because if we’re loud enough, then, maybe, we can let others know about the One from God who gives life, who wants a relationship of love and grace with all God’s children and always welcomes them home.  Maybe then we can find the full joy of the whole creation turning to Christ with delight in their eyes and praise on their lips, knowing that this is the only place we’d ever want to be.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

Jesus comes to us as the worthless slave in order to put to death our dependence on the strength of our faith, our knowledge, and external affirmation for our worth; our worth comes from Christ alone. Secure in Christ’s love, we can serve as he has commanded and shown us to do. 

Vicar Emily Beckering, Time after Pentecost, Lectionary 27, year C; text: Luke 17:5-10

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

These words from Jesus are hard to hear. They may leave many of us wondering where the good news is. How can this parable be Jesus’ response to the disciples’ plea? Where in this parable is the Jesus who was anointed to bring good news to the poor, was sent to proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and to let the oppressed go free? Who is being set free in this parable? Where is the Son of God who brings down the powerful and lifts up the lowly? Are we really supposed to call ourselves worthless?

This is particularly troubling because worthlessness already seems to be at the core of the disciples’ demand: “Increase our faith!” That sounds like doubt: doubt in Christ?

Perhaps. We are no strangers to doubt. Faith is never certain; doubt in God’s promises, in God’s love is a part of being human. But perhaps the disciples are also struggling with self-doubt, and we know well what it feels like to doubt ourselves. We hear this story and perhaps think of mulberry trees in our own lives whether they are personal or societal and how try as we may, we feel as though we will never be able to budge that tree even an inch. We doubt that maybe, maybe we do not have what it takes to follow Jesus after all. Maybe we do not have the strength to do what Christ demands of us. If only we trusted more, could throw ourselves completely on the Lord, then maybe, maybe we would have enough faith to be faithful, enough to be true disciples, enough to live in eternity.

The disciples’ doubts echo in our own hearts: “I hope I have enough faith.” “Do I have enough, Lord?” “How much faith is enough?” With arms outstretched we cry with the disciples: “Increase our faith, Lord!”

To which Jesus responds, “No. No. Don’t you see? It’s not about size. Even a mustard seed is enough. It’s not the size that matters, but the One in whom you have the faith, the One in whom you trust, the One in whom you are in this relationship with; that is what moves the mulberry tree.  Don’t worry about the size of your faith, just do your job; be a servant.”

The nagging in our hearts does not stop there, though. No. There is more to the disciples’ prayer for faith: even after following him and hearing his teaching and seeing him heal, they still feel lost; they still do not understand who Jesus really is or what he will do or what is expected of them. “Increase our faith,” is also a plea to understand, to have clarity, to know what they are supposed to do and when they are supposed to do it and to know who Jesus is for them.

So doubt takes another form: do we know enough? How can we truly be faithful if we have more questions than answers? What if we do not know what to say or what to do? What if we do not understand?

To which Jesus responds, “No. Don’t you see? It’s not about how much you know, understand, or about gaining perfect clarity. You do not need to have all the answers to know what you should do. Just do your job; be a servant.”

But we still are not content. Another piece of the parable makes us uneasy: Jesus tells us that we are to do our job, that God calls us to serve and not to expect thanks or praise. And now that self-doubt rises up again; now we feel scared. “But Lord, that praise, that thanks is how I know that I am doing well, that I am faithfully serving you and your people, that you really have called me.” “How will I know that I am being faithful if the people whom I’m serving don’t tell me?” “How will I know that I am doing what I am supposed to do if I won’t get thanked for it?”

To which Jesus responds, “No. Don’t you see? You are not going to base your faithfulness or your service or your call on whether or not people praise you or recognize you; you aren’t always going to receive thanks. In fact, you should not even expect it. You will never get enough affirmation, thanks, or praise to satiate you or to convince you that you are enough. Just do your job; be a servant.”

And now with this, Jesus pushes us even deeper to the real heart of the matter, the source of our pain and our fear and our doubt: our worth. If we do not trust enough, know enough, receive enough affirmation, then are we really enough? “Am I enough, Lord? Am I enough? No, I am not, and that is the whole problem with this parable, Lord. I already feel worthless. I am worthless.”

But Jesus asks, “How do you get your value? If you have faith strong enough? If you know enough? If people like you? Think of all that you sacrifice when you live this way; think of the people that you may ignore, that you may use, or trample on, or run ragged—including yourself—to get the affirmation on which you depend. Your worth is not dependent on the strength of your faith, or how much you know, or external affirmation. I would rather you just serve because I have called you. Do your job, and don’t expect to get praised.”

To which we may wish to retort, “Yes, yes, I get it! I will do my job, but I still feel worthless. I still am not enough.”

Maybe, maybe what we really need to ask Jesus is, “Well what then? How will I know? How will I know that I’m doing all right in your eyes? If I can’t measure my worth by the strength of my faith, or the amount that I know, or by the praise that I receive, then what shall I measure it in? Where do we get our worth?”

And most surprisingly, Jesus has given us the answer in this parable of the slave and the master. In this parable, we do hear the good news from Jesus’ own lips. Jesus is saying to us:

“Don’t you see? I am the worthless slave in the parable!
I am the Son of God among you as one who serves!
I am the One at your feet, taking care of you!
And I am preparing a place for you at the table!
I am the one washing your feet and headed to the cross for you because I love you!
Does that tell you how precious you are? Does that tell you where your worth comes from? It is from me, from my love.
That is why it is not about the size of your faith; because I am the One who moves the mulberry tree. So depend no longer on that external affirmation of your service, or your knowledge, or your contributions, or your cleverness for reassurance of your worth.

You have me and my love, and all that I have is yours. I have called you. You have enough; you are enough.”

What if we believed Jesus’ words to us? That he makes us enough. What would that mean for us as disciples and as servants? How might that shape our relationships with our families, our colleagues, our friends, even people whom we find it difficult to love? If we bring Jesus’ parable and Jesus’ words to us into each part of our lives, what will happen?

In our families, might trusting that Christ makes us enough mean that we can turn from being dependent on the approval and forgiveness of our partner, spouse, children, siblings, or parents, and give approval and forgiveness freely instead?

If the table that Jesus speaks of in the parable is our school, or place of work, or where we volunteer, then might trusting that Christ makes us enough mean that we can stop maneuvering and elbowing our colleagues for the places at the table that we think that we deserve and invite them to the table instead? To cease insisting, “wait your turn” but serve those around us first instead? To stop pushing ourselves to the top of the ladder or the class in order to gain the recognition that we think we need but open up space to recognize others’ contributions instead? To make decisions that are the best for people—inside and outside of the company—rather than on what will reap the most profit or earn us the greatest praise? To befriend those who will not gain us any popularity?

In conversations, might trusting that Christ makes us enough break the cycle of one-upping one another to prove our intelligence, competence, or credibility?

Since Christ makes us enough, then we are the ones set free by the parable. So In committees and organizations that we serve in, we are set free from going along with the crowd and saying what will win us friends, praise, and love and instead say what must be said; what the Holy Spirit nudges us to say.

Since Christ makes us enough, might we be able to cease cutting others down when they insult or criticize us—returning violence with violence when we are threatened—and see instead their aggression as an expression of their insecurity which is not all that different from our own? Might we see that Christ is at work in both of us to heal the brokenness that we share? Might we be able to see their worth as Christ looks back at us through their eyes?

We know that these are the things that we ought to do because of what Jesus Christ has done for us. The One who asks all of this of us—the One who has called us to serve—is the One who shares the table with sinners, the One on the way to the cross, and the One who will reach for the towel to wash the disciples’ feet. This is the One at our feet and the One whom we meet at this Table, preparing a place for us, and He invites us here today: “Come and taste and see again just how much I love you. Come here at once and take your place at the table. Then go out and do your job.”

Amen.

The creation is far greater than we can sense or know, and the celebration of the gift of God’s angels, servants of God as are we, reminds us not only of the splendor of the Creator but is a promise of the work of the Triune God against evil through all the servants of God.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen, feast of St. Michael and All Angels; texts: Daniel 10:10-14; 12:1-3; Psalm 103:1-5, 20-22; Revelation 12:7-12; Luke 10:17-20

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

“We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.”

We live in a rational, scientific world where we believe things to be true that can be proven, studied, tested, examined, seen, touched, sensed in every way.  Yet we come to worship the almighty, Triune God every week, something that in itself is not easily proven, if at all, by any evidence lifted from any of those methods.  And it’s not just our faith in an invisible Deity who created and redeemed and inspires the creation that is outside that rational, scientific sense.  Whenever we come here for worship we enter into a world of language that speaks of supernatural things, events, realities as if they are matter-of-fact, a world of images that many who do not claim to believe in God would call fantastical, mythological, fictional.  We speak easily and hopefully of miracles, of a divine, Holy Spirit who comes to us, of a divine Word who literally took on our flesh, died, and rose from the dead, and we consider this all to be truth, reality, the core of our hope and our life.

This is something true about us: whatever the challenges of integrating our confidence in science and intellect and the human ability to study and understand, with our faith in God, whatever difficulty that incurs, it is who we are, it is what we do.  Unafraid to use our minds, thrilled by the ability of humanity to learn and understand amazing things, we are also unafraid to open our hearts to what we cannot easily explain, what we cannot often see, what we only can trust is truth.

It’s important that we say this on this day.  Because, after all, we do confess that “we believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.”

And on this day the Church says, remember that this God, then, is also maker of angels, heavenly messengers, spiritual beings.  Things unseen.  But of God’s creation.  So if there is a part of us that winces at saying we believe angels are real – and for some that is never a concern, for others it is a very real concern – if there is a part of us that wonders if this is all fairy tale language, this talk of Michael and archangels and wars in heaven, this celebration of all the angels, if there is any of that in us, we might wish to remember that there are other far more wondrous and improvable things which we claim easily and without apparent difficulty.

Lutheran church historian Philip Pfatteicher has said, “As All Saints’ Day . . . is a reminder of the size of the one church in heaven and on earth, so this feast of Michael and the angels is a reminder of the breathtaking size of creation, seen and unseen.  The feast teaches an understanding that there are aspects of reality beyond what can be grasped with the senses.  Angels, like mortals, are children of the infinite imagination of God.” [1]

You see, it would be supremely arrogant for humanity to assume that we are the pinnacle of all the creation of the infinite Majesty, and that the vastness of creation’s reality is limited strictly to that which humans can study, explain and diagram.  Celebrating the angels on this day puts us in our place, you might say.

But as the readings assigned for this feast indicate, there is a richer value for us in honoring God’s creation of the angels beyond simply making us mindful of God’s multifaceted creation and our smallness in it.  The Church also remembers the angels and gives thanks for them because in their service to God they give us hope in a world which often seems rent by pain and hatred and wickedness.  They provide a promise that we are not the only ones called to stand for God’s grace in the face of evil, we are not the only ones working for good, and we are certainly not the only ones praising God’s goodness and shining it into the universe.

From the beginning the Church has recognized that there are powers at work beyond what we can explain.  Something we also understand.

We don’t need much convincing to believe that there are forces of harm in the world far beyond our ability to see or understand.  Forces that work through institutions, armies, mobs, governments to cause evil and pain which seem to be greater than the sum of poor human decisions.

Ideas which receive the “ism” ending often seem to carry a life and a power of their own, such as classism, sexism, racism.  Or their cousins, ideologies of hatred and oppression, philosophies of power and domination.  Groups act in ways that seem to magnify the power of the wickedness beyond the individual actions of the members.

It isn’t necessary for us to think of little demons running around in red to recognize these many powers which seem to be at large in the world and beyond our vision and our ability to stop them.

In the face of this reality, the Scriptures and the Church, as well as the Jewish and Muslim faith traditions, proclaim that God also has spiritual servants who have not fallen, who are not working evil, but in fact are doing God’s grace and will for us and for all.  These varied but related traditions speak of God creating an order of spiritual beings who do God’s bidding, who do not have our physical bodies.

Jesus says that they watch over children, and throw parties in heaven when sinners repent.  They watch over us, according to the psalmist, that we not stumble or fall.  The Bible tells us they speak the mysteries of God to humanity, they witness great miracles, and they lead us in praise of the Eternal God.

In these readings today about one of those angels, Michael the archangel, great comfort is taken in the ability of the angels to defeat evil.  Another angel, probably Gabriel, tells Daniel of his fellow angel Michael’s struggle with an angel assigned to protect another nation, but promises that Michael will arise in the end days to protect the people.  And John the seer has a vision in Revelation of Michael leading the angels in war against the great Deceiver, the chief among the fallen servants of God.  Even Jesus says that when the disciples were casting out demons he experienced seeing Satan fall from heaven at their work.

These readings are intended as comfort to those suffering in evil, difficult times.  Do not be afraid, we are told: there may be powers at work to do harm, but God’s angels are also at work and they will ultimately prevail.

And there’s no mistaking that this is a comforting thought, God’s angels running roughshod over the powers of evil that befuddle, frighten and confuse us, powers over which we feel we have little or no control.

However, it might be needful to step away from the military, war-like imagery.  In fact, we might not even be understanding the Revelation properly when we think of this struggle as we think of human war.

In the first place, the angels, just like humanity, are servants of the Most High God, who, when he took on human flesh explicitly refused to fight evil with power and strength.  The Incarnate Son of God, in the garden of Gethsemane on the night of his betrayal, refused the help of the heavenly armies.  As Matthew tells it, Jesus said he had twelve legions of angels to fight for him, 72,000 spiritual beings, if he wanted it.  But he had decided, the Triune God had decided, that only by the Son of God facing evil with his own being and letting it do its worst to him could it be defeated.

This is the center of our hope and life, this willing setting-aside of power that Christ Jesus does, for in dying he did not lose.  Rather, he rose from the dead and emptied evil of all its ultimate power.  But since this is the crucial center, literally, the center of the cross around which all our faith is shaped, we cannot then hope that God’s new plan is to have a huge heavenly battle to decide all.  As thrilling as that might be, that’s not what Christ Jesus calls us to be, nor is it the way he modeled for us.

And it turns out, it’s not really what John saw in his vision, either.  What John sees is that this defeat of Satan, the great Enemy, is accomplished by three things that are very different from swords and weapons of any kind.

First, they conquered him by the blood of the Lamb, John says today.  That is, they recognized that the victory was already accomplished in the sacrificial death of the Son of God and his subsequent resurrection to his eternal throne.  It was that power-releasing willingness of Jesus to face the cross, John says, that was the downfall of evil.  And the center of the whole book of Revelation is that picture of the Lamb who was slain, sitting on the throne of God.

And John says, second, it was the word of their testimony to this work of Christ that also conquered evil.  The testimony of the angels, the testimony of the saints who have died, the speaking of the Good News of God’s victory over sin, death, and the devil, the proclamation of God’s reign of grace, this is what brings evil to its knees.  Not weapons.  Witness.

And last, John says, and we have to assume he means this to apply to the saints around the throne perhaps even more than the angels, they conquered evil by the fact that “they did not cling to life even in the face of death.”  The willingness of the servants of the Crucified One to also offer their lives is the turning point in the struggle against evil.

When you do not fear dying, you can be a powerful force of good in the world.  Consider the difference between those who in genocide and war hide their neighbors who are being slaughtered and those who inform on their neighbors and ensure their slaughter.  The former are not willing to cling to life in the face of death, not when they can do good.  The latter are afraid of death for themselves, so they sacrifice someone else.

But there’s one more thing.  While the angels do their work, we are still needed to do ours.

You may have noticed in our consideration of Revelation that there was not only a sense of the angels’ struggle, but a gradual movement to our involvement.

As powerful as it can be to trust that God has created spiritual beings who are also working against evil in this world and who by their testimony to the blood of the Lamb and their willingness to lose in order to win will help God conquer evil, as good as that is, we must remember this: they have their jobs to do.  We have ours.

There are spiritual forces of evil and God has spiritual servants to work against them.

And there are human forces of evil and God has human servants to work against them.

And with the same things we will be a part of defeating all evil: with the blood of the Lamb which has washed us and made us whole, and which saves all God’s children, with that surrounding us, with our witness to God’s Good News in Christ for all, and with our willingness to face death without clinging to this life, evil will stand no chance.

That’s the great gift of this Revelation: hope that there are others struggling for God is given to us so that we can be encouraged for our struggle.

And so today we celebrate this great unseen company, this glorious companionship we have with our angelic cousins in service to God.

All of God’s creation is needed in resisting the evil which would destroy all things.  The wonderful good news is that we are not alone, and that they are struggling, standing against evil alongside us in ways we might never see.

But best of all we are not alone because, like the angels, we are surrounded by the strength and grace of the Crucified and Risen One who has overcome the world, overcome evil, overcome death – even if they don’t know it yet.  And that’s all we need for the courage to stand the ground on which we are planted, in the name of the grace and love of the Almighty God who made all things, seen and unseen, and whose love will ultimately bring all creation to wholeness and life.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

[1] Philip H. Pfatteicher, New Book of Festivals and Commemorations, Minneapolis: Fortress Press © 2008; p. 477.