sermon – Page 16

The Real Blasphemy

June 9, 2024 By Vicar at Mount Olive

The scribes thought Jesus might be using the power of a demon, but spiritual evil can’t produce life and wholeness and community–that’s what the Holy Spirit does.

Vicar Lauren Mildahl
The Third Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 10 B
Texts: Genesis 3:8-15; Mark 3:20-35; also Luke 6:27-28 and Romans 12:21

God’s beloved, grace to you and peace in the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

It’s only chapter 3, but Jesus has been very busy!

So far in Mark’s gospel, Jesus has been baptized and has seen the heavens torn apart and Spirit descending on him like a dove, he has withstood the temptation of the devil in the wilderness, and has come out proclaiming that “the reign of God has come near.” He has called the fishermen Simon Peter and Andrew and the sons of Zebedee, to leave their boats and follow him. He has cast out demons, healed the fever of Peter’s mother-in-law, and healed a man with skin disease. He has forgiven the sins of a paralytic man who was lowered through the roof by his friends, and also healed his paralysis. He has called Levi the son of Alphaeus, and has eaten with tax collectors and sinners. He hasn’t fasted when he was supposed to, and he has plucked grain and healed a withered hand on the Sabbath when he wasn’t supposed to. And he has gathered crowds so enormous that he had to preach to them from a boat off shore and he has found time in there somewhere to appoint the twelve apostles.

No wonder Jesus went home for a rest!

But he doesn’t get one. For one, the house is too crowded with followers for him even to sit down to get a bite to eat. And for another, some scribes, some religious authorities, have come down from Jerusalem and started throwing out accusations that Jesus is possessed by, or even in league with, spiritual evil.

“He has Beelzebul,” they say, “and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.”

Which can seem, to us, like a ridiculous thing for them to say.

Demons don’t tend to be part of our daily vocabulary. When was the last time you talked about Beelzebul the Lord of Flies? And even the more familiar figure Satan is more likely to inspire ridicule than terror. Our cultural image of the Devil is one of red tights and a silly goatee and horns and a pitchfork and that makes it all the easier to mock anyone who starts talking about the Devil or demon possession.

Oh those silly scribes. Imagine believing in Beelzebul. Imagine worrying about the Devil.

And I don’t want to get too bogged down in spiritual metaphysics. The fact of the matter is that the people of Jesus’ day thought about the underlying forces of the universe very differently from us. Our instinct, so often, is to lean away from the spiritual and toward the scientific. But what we assign to the random chance of a chaotic universe, the people of Jesus’ day usually assigned to spirits, busy at work in the world for good or for evil. But this pre-scientific worldview – that’s not what makes this accusation ridiculous.

Because though we may think of them in different ways and call them by different names, we do know the forces of evil. And they aren’t silly.

We know the hurts that turn into hate – the houses divided against themselves.

We know the fears that fuel isolation and violence.

We know the voids so vast and empty that they begin to consume everything.

We know the greed that destroys and sucks dry in the name of amassing more, and more, and more.

We know the spiritual evil that surrounds us. That possesses us. That binds us. That plunders us.

To use the metaphor that Jesus uses, we know the strong man that lives in our house.

And, like these scribes, we know what it’s like to think that the strong man’s game is the only game in town.

When these critics of Jesus thought of power, they thought of the strong man’s power, the power they had experienced at the hands of their oppressors. That was the kind of power they knew – the power to make others afraid and poor and hopeless. That was the kind of power that changed things.

And here was Jesus – changing all kinds of things.

So, it must be “by the ruler of demons that he was casting out demons,” they thought. Jesus must be fighting fire with fire, wielding the weapons of the strong man. That must be where this power was coming from.

And, you know, it is tempting to use the strong man’s power.

It’s tempting to want it and to even think that maybe even some good could come from it.

It’s tempting to think that if that one guy you can’t stand was just out of the way, that then you might have peace.

It’s tempting to think that if there was just one more zero at the end of your bank account balance, that then you could afford to be generous.

It’s tempting to think that if that one person who wronged you were shamed and shunned and hurt, that then you might be healed.

It’s tempting to think that if you just eat that good-looking fruit that the snake is offering, that then you might be like God.

It’s tempting to think that you could fight fire with fire, that you could destroy the master’s house with the master’s tools.

Even Jesus was tempted.

But it’s a fantasy. In fact, it’s ridiculous. Actually ridiculous to think that you could use hate to heal. That fear or greed or violence could produce love or joy or peace.

That’s the real blasphemy.

The real unforgivable sin. Not unforgivable because it is so heinous or because God’s forgiveness has limits. But unforgivable because there is no forgiveness in the world of the strong man. There is no power to redeem or to reconcile. Just hurt upon hurt, hate upon hate, centuries of division and anger and revenge and plunder.

And that’s not the reign of God. That’s not what life in the Holy Spirit looks like. Life in the Holy Spirit looks like everything that Jesus has been so very busy doing over these three chapters. It looks like wholeness: healing fevers and skin diseases and paralysis and withered hands. It looks like redemption: forgiving sins and facing those life-sucking demons so that life can flourish every day of the week. It looks like community: reaching out to those on the margins, to the poor and the outcast and to traitors and the immoral, calling them and gathering everyone in a crowd so big and so brimming with new life and hope and joy in the reign of God, that the house is overflowing.

Wholeness, redemption, community: you can’t get those using the power of the strong man.

You can’t get life by wielding the weapons of Beelzebul or Satan or Demons or whatever you want to call the forces that hate and hurt and destroy. You can’t fight fire with fire. That’s the real blasphemy.

You fight fire with water. You fight hate with love. You fight fear with joy. You fight separation with connection. You fight death with life. And you end wars by waging peace.

This is what Jesus desperately wanted the scribes to understand – wanted all of us to understand – that when you are drenched in the Holy Spirit, when the Holy Spirit courses through you – then you start doing what the world thinks is the most ridiculous thing of all: you “Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat you.” You won’t “be overcome by evil but [will] overcome evil with good.”

And you will start catching glimpses of the reign of God.

There is spiritual evil in our world. We know it. But we do not lose heart. Jesus has overcome the world, has tied up the strong man, and freed us life in the Spirit.

Freed us from blasphemy. Freed us to fight fire with water.

In the name of the Father, of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Shabbat Shalom

June 2, 2024 By Pr. Joseph Crippen

Sabbath is God’s gift to you and your neighbor: seek it, find it, live it.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Second Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 9 B
Texts: Mark 2:23 – 3:6; Deuteronomy 5:12-15

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

The Sabbath is God’s gift to you and to your neighbor.

It is precious and life-giving. Little wonder Jesus chose to follow Jewish wisdom and heal a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath. He offered him life, respite from the daily pain of his existence, just as God intended. Just as, Jesus points out elsewhere, the rabbis approved for a person whose child or ox fell into a well on the Sabbath, or whose donkey needed to drink on the Sabbath. Jesus’ opponents want a reason to criticize him, but in their tradition they’re on shaky ground.

But this argument is completely irrelevant to you and to me. We, and our culture and society, barely give the idea of Sabbath a second’s worth of time. Probably only for Christians when it comes up in a Gospel like this. But nitpicking over what’s permissible on the Sabbath? Nothing is further from our minds and hearts.

“Observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy,” as we heard this morning, is one of the Ten Commandments.

Yet we, who claim to follow Scripture and shape our lives by God’s Word, barely conceal our disinterest in following this commandment.

Lutherans could blame Luther himself. Luther swings and misses badly on Sabbath in the Small Catechism. He says it’s about going to church and hearing God’s Word. Now, our life-giving Sabbath practice is to gather here for worship, to be fed at Christ’s Table, to be shaped and led by God’s Word, to pray and share fellowship with each other.

But that’s a practice we do on Sabbath. It’s not Sabbath itself. And whether it’s Luther’s fault or ours, it’s where we are. When was the last time you consciously took time away from your life and called it Sabbath? Can you even imagine a day that was completely unproductive? Restoring?

And yet, Jesus says it’s God’s gift to you. To your neighbor.

The Sabbath was created for humanity, Jesus says, not humanity for the Sabbath. Yes, it’s a commandment, it’s in the top ten. But it’s the commandment solely intended for the grace and refreshment of all people.

And our Jewish siblings who keep Sabbath can testify to this gracious gift. No food is prepared, no cars driven, no phones or computers used, just to name a few among a number of restrictions. There is time for reading and conversation, for communal worship and prayer in the home. For those who live it, these restrictions open up a day of wholeness. Jews greet each other with “Shabbat shalom,” the “peace of Sabbath,” offering each other the hope that this will be a day of shalom.

Shalom means peace – peace from war, peace with God. But in Hebrew it means so much more: completeness, safety, health, welfare, friendship. Shalom is all these. Shabbat shalom wishes the fullness of human life in this time of Sabbath, complete wholeness as God’s children.

Sabbath is God’s gift of shalom to you and to your neighbor.

Look at Jesus’ healing of this man, and maybe you can see this. The Sabbath Jesus gave freed him to be fully what he hoped to be. Sabbath breaks whatever it is that binds you, restricts you, grinds you down, and leads you to wholeness. We are as fragile as clay jars, Paul says today, and we’re facing challenges that can crush us. All God’s children are, some have constant pain and affliction. We’re all people who need the shalom of Sabbath.

Whether you live under self-imposed rules or have the oppression of systems and structures laid upon you, you need a moment of respite. Sabbath. Whatever it is that traps you, binds you, weighs heavy on you, Sabbath is letting go of that for a time. To find shalom.

So what might Sabbath be for you?

Well, do you spend every waking hour always doing something, never feeling your work is done, even at home? What if one day a week you let go of all that and simply existed? Didn’t worry about being unproductive? Or took a nap and didn’t apologize to yourself or others?

Or, this: how much does technology bind you up and trap you? Could you go 24 hours without your phone? Without watching television or using your computer? What if you didn’t have to hear or see every bit of news or entertainment that’s pouring into the world, just for one day? What might that be like, to find that quiet?

And what if, one day a week, you consciously made shalom your priority over all things, looking for health, wholeness, peace, welfare, shalom mentally, physically, spiritually? And for your neighbor, too?

And what of your neighbors? If Sabbath is a gift to all God’s children, can we make this world pay fairly for work done, so our neighbors don’t need to work three jobs seven days a week to keep their home and put food on the table? Could we finally become passionate peacemakers so true shalom can exist in this world and war become obsolete? How might you be a part of giving Sabbath to your neighbor?

Maybe this sounds too complicated.

The world and all its problems are overwhelming. So is changing things in your life. We have limited time to get things done. But ask this: would a Sabbath respite be something you’d really love to have?

So start where Jesus starts: Sabbath is God’s gift to you and to your neighbor. God wants to open up a spaciousness in your life where you can simply be, exist, dream, live. Once a week. Where you step off the treadmill or pull your car off the interstate, or whatever metaphor works for you, and sit still. Where you let go of the things that bind and entrap your mind, your body, your heart.

Where you release yourself from whatever expectations you or others have imposed on you. And listen to God’s voice saying you are beloved, and so are all your neighbors. Where you seek shalom in all its fullness. And remember what it is to breathe. To smell. To see and taste and touch. To be refreshed and rested. To sleep.

Look, according to Scripture, even God needs a Sabbath. How about you? And how about your neighbor?

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

Sharing Life

May 26, 2024 By Vicar at Mount Olive

All of our words and images fall short of perfectly describing the ancient and difficult doctrine of the Trinity, which is at its heart a description of shared life, shared within the divine and shared with us.

Vicar Lauren Mildahl
The Holy Trinity, year B
Texts: Isaiah 6:1-8; Romans 8:12-17; John 3:1-17

God’s beloved, grace to you and peace in the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

We start every sermon that way.

In the name of the Triune God. Not just on Holy Trinity Sunday – every Sunday! And we end every sermon that way too. But since it is Trinity Sunday, since this is the day that we devote to this ancient and sometimes difficult doctrine, it’s worth pausing a moment on that familiar formula.

Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It’s not perfect. This language has contributed to the unfortunate and inaccurate depiction of the Trinity as “two white guys and a bird.”

And we could say it in other ways.

We could try some gender-neutral language: In the name of the Parent, and the Child, and the Bond Between.

Or we could emphasize the different roles within the Trinity: Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer.

Or we could give it an Augustinian flare: In the name of the Lover, the Beloved, and Love.

Or we could lean into the languages of the Bible: In the name of Abba, Christ, and the Paraclete.

Or we could go pure Metaphysical: In the name of the Source, the Word, the Spirit.

And I’m happy to lean in and explore these alternatives, they are all thought- provoking and helpful in their own way, but none of them really solve the problem that since ancient times, we’ve been searching and failing to find the right words to pin down an ineffable mystery.

And it is a mystery.

A mystery we often ignore or argue about or try to explain away. You know, a significant number of the major heresies of the Christian Church have about the doctrine of the Trinity, as the church has, over the centuries, attempted to demystify it or remystify it, and created leagues of heretics along the way. It makes a preacher nervous.

So what can I say? How can I approach this mystery?! It makes the question that Jesus asked Nicodemus hit a little too close for comfort: “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?” Guilty! It makes me want to throw up my hands like Isaiah in God’s throne room: “Woe is me! I am lost.”

But actually, I think Isaiah is a good place to start.

Because there is something about his encounter which deeply resonates with me and which helps us get to something important about the Triune God.

Isaiah sees God and despairs. And it seems that that despair is fueled by an overwhelming feeling of apartness. He witnessed God in God’s full glory in the community of celestial beings and all Isaiah can think is, “I don’t belong here. I’m just a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips. There’s no way I could dream to be a part of this. I’m lost.” He feels alone, separate, apart.

But all of those feelings – alone, separate, apart – those are impossible in a Trinity.

As mysterious as the three-in-one and the one-in-three are, they point to a truth that divine life is inherently communal. Connected. Relational. When we strip away the words upon words we have heaped upon the Trinity, when we abandon the paradoxes and the paracletes and everything that’s problematic about the formulations and the anathemas and the analogies: what we are left with is Relationship. That the life of God is a shared life. And it is a shared life that wants to share even more.

Isaiah despairs, until the burning coal touches his lips, until he is told that he doesn’t need to carry around his guilt and his sin and everything real or imagined thing that’s keeping him apart. And I don’t think there is anything magical about that coal. I don’t think it really “did” anything at all. Except that somehow, that experience, and the reassurance from the seraph, helped Isaiah realize that he already belonged. He always did. He was always connected to God, he was always sharing life with the God that shares life. He was never lost.

And that’s what gives Isiah the confidence to speak up, to throw his hand up when God asks for a volunteer.

“Here I am!” He says, “I belong here and I’m a part of this too. Send me!”

Isaiah joined the dance. The dynamic dance of mutuality and shared life which we imperfectly call the Trinity based on the witness of countless ages, who experienced God in different ways and used different words to name those experiences, but which all pointed to the truth that the Divine is deeply connected to the Divine and deeply connected to us.

Like Isaiah, we are already connected. We already belong. We are not lost.

Like family, Father and Son–that imperfect language we borrow for the trinity–that’s the image that Paul uses: “The Holy Spirit is bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God!” Sharing life in the Holy Family. Adoption is the metaphor that Paul uses in Romans, but in the gospel reading Jesus chooses an even more intimate metaphor when he is speaking with Nicodemus: “You must be born from above,” Jesus says.

Birth. I mean, talk about shared life!

Nicodemus is often mocked for taking this image too seriously: “Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” But I wonder if that’s why Jesus chose it, because he wanted us to take this metaphor seriously. To understand the deep connection that exists within the life of God and between God and creation. Like a mother sharing life in her womb. Connected and distinct. Two persons, 1 being.

Now, that analogy isn’t perfect. No analogy of the Trinity is. Or can be. I’ll concede that it is definitely missing an element of mutuality, not to mention the third person. But as an example of a life-giving relationship, a relationship of shared life – it’s hard to find one that is more on the nose.

Nicodemus was afraid. He was so afraid that he came by night, and yet he recognized the connection that Jesus had with God: “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with that person.” And I hear in that statement an unspoken question, an echo of Isaiah’s despair, “How can I ever be connected to God like that? I am lost!”

And Jesus tries to show him.

You are already born of the Spirit, Nicodemus. You must be. You are already more connected, more intimately related to God than you could ever imagine.

Jesus wanted Nicodemus to fully experience the God who so loved the world that she shared life. Wanted Nicodemus to hear the Holy Spirit bearing witness to his spirit, groaning and murmuring to him, touching his lips with the hot coal of truth that he is a child of God. Just like you are.

You are a child of God.

You are a child of God, the creator, the author and source of all life, who makes room within herself to share that life with the universe.

You are a child of God-With-Us, the Word made flesh, the God who entered into our finite lives, lived at our side and shared our life the way we share it.

You are a child of God, the presence that is the bond of sharing. Who produces life-giving fruit within you and shows you why life is worth living. Who whispers in your soul that you are not lost. That you belong. And who asks “whom shall I send?” and sends you.

You are born from above, beloveds. Children of God.

You share life with the God who shares life.

And you are sent to share life in the name of the triune God, however you name the name: the Source, the Word, the Spirit; Abba, Christ, Paraclete; Lover, Beloved, Love; Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer; the Parent, the Child and the Bond Between…

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

What Can You Bear?

May 19, 2024 By Pr. Joseph Crippen

Christ promises the Spirit will lead us into all truth when we can bear it: let us pray that we say we’re always ready to bear whatever is needed for the life of the world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Day of Pentecost, year B
Texts: John 15:26-27, 16:4b-15; Acts 2:1-21, referencing vv. 41-47

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

“I still have many things to say to you, but you can’t bear them now.

“When the Spirit of truth comes, she will guide you into all the truth.”

What hope this promise gives us for the life of the Church, the life of the world! Jesus knows there are so many more things those who trust in him need to know if they’re going to follow the way of Christ. So many more challenges, so many more questions.

So he says, “there’s a lot you can’t bear right now, but the Spirit will lead you into all the truth.” And this promise has been fulfilled over and over again.

With the guidance of the Spirit’s wisdom, Christ’s Church has changed.

In our own recent history, the Church finally declared definitively that no human being could enslave another, that all God’s children were precious in God’s sight. Just fifty years ago many in Christ’s Church restored women to any and all leadership positions in the Church. And more recently, many Christian churches have been led by the Spirit to not only welcome LGBTQ+ siblings but embrace and cherish them as God’s beloved children.

The Spirit moves and shapes and teaches things now that at one time the Church wasn’t ready to bear.

But were we really not ready? Or just unwilling?

Did the Church, shaped by the sacrificial love of God at the cross for all humanity, really need over 18 centuries to recognize all humanity as equal and beloved in God’s eyes, and finally forbid human slavery? There were Spirit-led voices throughout those centuries who called for this. But the whole Church just wasn’t ready until the 19th century?

Jesus and Paul raised up women as leaders in the community. Paul had women colleagues who were heads of faith communities. By the end of the first century, the Church backed away from that, and became deeply patriarchal. Did we really need another 1,800 years to reverse that sellout? And even now, those Christian churches who have women as leaders are definitely the minority. Does the vast majority of the Church still get to say they’re not ready to bear women leaders?

And did the Church of Christ’s radical love need 2,000 years to recognize their LGBTQ+ siblings as beloved children of God? Such children have been a part of God’s rich diversity for as long as humans have existed. We weren’t ready to bear that until now? And again, Christian churches who do embrace these siblings are the small minority.

If Christ’s promise is that the Spirit will teach us new things when we’re ready to bear them, and the Spirit clearly taught people for 2,000 years things only recently accepted by larger groups, then are we hiding behind the wall of “we’re not ready to bear such things?” Maybe we just don’t want to do them.

Because if you look at that first Pentecost, the early Church seemed ready to bear some amazing things right away.

People were filled with awe at the signs and wonders the believers did. The community was transformed: they each sold everything they owned and shared all their wealth in common. Everyone had what they needed. And they worshipped together daily in the temple, and shared meals with each other. And every day more and more became a part of the community. Can you imagine us living that way as this faith community?

So they were ready to bear such a communal life, and now, 2,000 years later we’re not?

The truth is, we can actually see the seeds of this in the book of Acts itself. This new way started falling apart. Disputes started to happen, some people didn’t get enough food, some hid away their money.

So even the early Church struggled with bearing what the Spirit taught. They grasped it at first with joy. But it became more and more a burden to keep up this new way.

Clearly humans easily say “we’re not ready,” when the truth is more that we don’t want to.

So, on this day of Pentecost, what is the Spirit trying to lead us into, to teach us, that we’re dragging our heels on? There are lots of things to consider, but we could start with how we live in this world as a community of faith.

There’s a group here working on how Mount Olive can better know our indigenous neighbors and walk alongside them. If you’re interested in helping shape that conversation, there’s room at that table. But what are we willing to bear? Would we consider reparations as a regular part of our budget? If the Spirit raises challenging paths, would we be open to her guidance? Or are we not ready at this time?

Nearly every day during the week neighbors of all God’s diversity come through our doors for help: African Americans, African immigrants, Native Americans, new neighbors from all the countries south of our border, and we offer help. If you’re able to help during the week as we engage with these neighbors, we’re always in need of hands. But what are we willing to bear beyond that? What might the Spirit be calling Mount Olive to be and do as a community in this city to bear Christ’s love with all these neighbors? Are we willing to hear the Spirit’s call, wisdom, teaching, if it leads to new challenges, financial, physical, social? Or will we say once again, “maybe we’re not ready yet.”

Jesus’ promise is not an excuse to avoid growing, changing, becoming Christ.

Our task at Mount Olive is to keep listening to the Spirit together and then talking with each other, discerning what paths might be opening up in lots of areas. Because the Spirit will be inviting us to serve in our life in this world. To learn new things. Face new challenges. Be transformed into what God needs us to be.

So let’s commit on this Day of Pentecost to seek conversations amongst ourselves as much as we possibly can and listen to the Spirit together. And let’s also commit to helping each other listen to where the Spirit might be calling us each individually to take a different path, to be shaped by the Spirit’s wisdom, because that’s part of Jesus’ promise, too.

Most of all, on this day of Pentecost, let us pray.

Let us pray that we are always ready for the next thing the Spirit needs us to hear and learn. Let’s even boldly pray that the Spirit ignore whether she thinks we can bear something or not. That she let us stumble or fall rather than hold back guidance because we’re afraid or unwilling. Let’s ask the Spirit to remove the words “we’re not ready for that,” and teach us to say with joy, “ready or not, here we come.”

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

Unrecognizable

May 12, 2024 By Pr. Joseph Crippen

If you truly are made holy to love and live as Christ, you will be a threat to the world, like Jesus was; but you will also be a part of God’s healing of all things.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Seventh Sunday of Easter, year B
Text: John 17:6-19

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

God came to us as a human and was unrecognizable.

Jesus is God’s creating Word in our human body, and we didn’t recognize or want him. John says, “The Word was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. The Word came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.” (1:10-11)

And in this prayer on the night of his betrayal we heard today, Jesus names that. “I don’t belong to this world,” he says. And since God’s Word in our flesh was so unrecognizable to us, so problematic, so challenging, we had to get rid of him.

But the real problem is that in this prayer, Jesus trusts the same is true of us.

In this beautiful mystery of a conversation within the life of the Trinity, Jesus the Son says we also don’t belong to the world because we are Christ. We are shaped into God’s life and live as Christ’s love in the world. So the world won’t recognize or accept us either, Jesus assumes. That’s why Jesus asks that we be protected in this alien world.

I just wonder if Jesus is right about us.

Are we actually unrecognizable to the world?

Jesus absolutely was. His teaching, radical interpretation of Scripture, insistent boundary-breaking for the sake of God’s love, his welcome and inclusion of all, especially those on the margins, was so offensive to the authorities he had to be taken out.

But is there anything about our lives, about how we live in our neighborhood, or at work, or in relationships, that looks so much like Christ people just don’t know what to do with us? Does your love of God and love of neighbor so change you that people can’t relate, or are bothered or annoyed, or even angry at you? Does my life in Christ mean any risk for me at all?

We spend so much energy and attention on what others think of us, as if it would be horrifying if our life in Christ marked us as different, as if we fear that.

So the first question is, do we even want to be different like Christ?

It should be obvious, shouldn’t it? This community cares deeply about this world and the pain and suffering in it. We often wonder how we could help with any number of problems, from our racist systems to a societal structure that reinforces poverty and homelessness and inequality to our desperate helplessness in the face of war around the world.

Jesus says you and I can make a difference in our own places. That the more we look like Christ, love like Christ, the more we find the path Jesus first walked, we can heal what is wrong with our world.

And it sounds good until you have to make a stand. Or I have to talk to someone who disagrees with me. Or you have to reach out to your legislator. Or I need to actually love a neighbor I don’t even like. Or you have to recognize your own latent racism or sexism or classism, and actually try to change it, break it down. Or we have to make decisions that risk our wealth and security.

The cost of being Christ, the cost of loving, the cost of kindness, the cost of sacrificing some of our well-being, the cost of being seen by others as strange or naïve or just wrong, it’s a high cost.

But there’s good news. You have Christ’s grace in the Spirit to be changed, if you want it.

The Son speaks within God’s life and says, “I’m sending them out into the world, just as I was sent.” And Jesus adds, “so make them holy in the truth, in your Word.”

Remember, Jesus is the Word-made-flesh. And Jesus said, “I am the truth – it’s not abstract, truth is alive in my very being.” And, for Jesus, being holy is always love of God and love of neighbor. So here Christ says, “we’ll make that happen in you. You will become me. You won’t hold the truth as a weapon or fight over it, but you’ll embody it, live the truth of God’s love for all.”

If we want it, God will do it.

And when that starts to happen in you and me, the other part of this prayer helps deal with the cost.

Because when it starts to happen, you and I are going to start standing out in the world, looking different. We’re going to become more like Jesus and less recognizable as people who belong to this world. We’ll rub people the wrong way. We’ll risk our security and our ease of living. We’ll learn the feeling of going against the stream, we’ll increasingly realize we need to do something different, make new choices, live another way.

And when that happens, it will be hard. It will cost. But the joy is that Jesus asks here that you are always cared for in God’s arms. No matter what happens, even death, you don’t have to be afraid of becoming Christ, because God is with you.

And when it happens, when you and I become Christ as we were called to be in Baptism, we’ll become a real problem for this world. Like Jesus. And that’s the Triune God’s hope for the healing of all things.

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