We look to Jesus for life and salvation, but we are to look not in miracles and amazing acts, rather in the life with the Triune God he comes to initiate and teach and into which he longs to draw us.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen, Time after Pentecost, Lectionary 10, year C; texts: Luke 7:11-17 (18-23); 1 Kings 17:17-24; Psalm 30; Galatians 1:11-24

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

One of the many iconic moments in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz occurs after Dorothy and her friends return to the Emerald City at the end.  They’ve done all the wizard asked, and now he is brusquely sending them away without the promised gifts.  While Dorothy protests, her dog Toto trots over to the side of the audience hall and pulls aside a curtain, behind which stands a man talking into a microphone and working many gears and levers.  “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain,” the voice of Oz booms out.

Of course – and I apologize if this spoils the movie for those who haven’t seen it yet, but really, it’s been out for 74 years, so you’ve had plenty of time – of course it turns out that the Wizard of Oz isn’t the huge, frightening head with the booming voice and the special effects that hovers above the throne.  The wizard is the very ordinary man behind the curtain, and the “Wizard of Oz” that everyone has known and feared is all projection and mirage.  He has no actual magical talent.  “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” has become a byword for things that appear to be greater than they are but which are really illusion and deception.

Which makes Jesus all the more interesting and compelling.  Because Jesus, it seems, is the opposite of the wizard.  Jesus actually has power, is able to do amazing things.  He can even raise people to life who once were dead.  But if we listen to Jesus, the message we hear is “pay attention to the man behind the curtain.”  Jesus repeatedly seems to refocus people away from his miraculous actions and toward himself, his teachings, the life he is calling people to live.  The miracles, the wonder, these seem incidental to Jesus’ mission and goals.

It’s refreshing, actually, compared to the world experience in which most of us are well used to being told not to look too carefully behind any curtain.  But it’s no less challenging.  The miraculous things Jesus actually does can be so compelling to our interest, we can often think they’re the only point, and never get to know the man behind the curtain.  Never get to talk to him, listen to him, and learn what he really came to do.  Never fully commit to following him, walking with him throughout our lives.

Actually, on a Sunday where all four of our readings from God’s Word speak of miraculous transformations, it’s pretty powerful to realize that in at least three cases, those transformations point to something far more important behind the curtain, and invite us to come and see ourselves.

In all four of these readings, the miracle leads to praise of God, and even more, in three of them it leads to listening to the truth God needs heard.

When Elijah raises the woman’s son, she praises God (which is good, since she blamed God when her son died), and says she knows the truth about Elijah now.  “You are a man of God,” and – and this is the important thing – “the word of the LORD in your mouth is the truth.”  Now everything Elijah has told her about God is something she can trust.  She can believe that he tells the truth, because God has used him to raise her son.

The same happens with Jesus.  Because he raises this young man, people praise and glorify God for sending such a prophet.  They see Jesus the way the widow sees Elijah, confirmed now as a servant of God.  And when word of this gets to John the Baptist in prison, he decides to follow up.

It’s a little odd at first to consider why John has to ask.  After all, he’s the one who pointed Jesus out first as Messiah, the Lamb of God.  It was his job.  But it’s likely because it was his main job that he needs to act on his doubts.  He’s in prison, and probably aware that it’s likely Herod will have him killed at some point.  And Jesus isn’t preaching the fire and brimstone John preached.  He’s preaching grace and inclusion along with his call to repentance.

For Jesus, the reign of God is extending to non-Jews and Jews, and welcomes even “sinful” people.  But he’s doing miracles, too.  So John wants to know the truth.  That’s why I had us hear those verses – the appointed Gospel ends with the miracle.  But we also need to hear the rest, the truth.

Jesus starts out his answer to John by saying, “Go and tell John what you see and hear.”  And he gives the laundry list of miracles: the blind see, the deaf hear, even the dead are raised.  The implication is that who else would he be, if he’s doing things like this.

But the final statement is the real answer: “the poor have the Good News preached to them.”  This is the whole point for Jesus.  Look at the signs I’m doing, sure.  They’ll tell you I have power from God.  But the important thing is that I’m bringing Good News from God to the poor.

This preaching I’m doing, the way I’m showing is of God, this is Good News, John.  Blessed are you if you don’t take offense at it.  It’s not fire and brimstone, it’s not axes and judgment.  It’s grace and welcome, and yes, invitation to sin no more.  But it’s Good News: to the poor, to the Jew, to the Gentile, even to the wealthy.

The miracles are not the point, not even this amazing resurrection.  The point for Jesus is this: God is now among you, and is calling all of you, all people to a new reign of God, to the Good News of God’s way.  It’s the way to life.  It’s more important than anything else.  Even than having a child raised from their coffin.

Jesus isn’t ignorant.  He knows this is going to be the sticking point for many.

We all like a good miracle.  We all know the desperate desire for such things.  And he provided them, again and again.  But if you look at the record, not only does he often downplay and even discount his miracles, telling people to keep quiet about them.  He most often doesn’t seem to plan any of them.  They just happen.  Usually because he’s the Son of God and loves people and can’t walk past suffering.

Look at today’s story: he comes to the city of Nain for who knows what reason and just runs into a funeral procession.  Because he feels compassion for the bereft widow who now has no son to support her, he raises her son.  It almost feels like an accidental encounter.

This is important to understand because of our desperation.  When I first preached this text it was in my first parish, and we had just experienced a horrible event in our very small town of 600 people.  One of the recent high school graduates, who was also even the prom queen, had been killed in a traffic accident a week after graduation.  She belonged to another parish, but there were only three churches in town, and everyone, everyone was grieving.  You hear a Gospel like this on the next Sunday and the only question is, “Why doesn’t God do that anymore?  Why doesn’t God raise dead children anymore?”

And with the number of children who have died tragically in only the past six months, from Newtown to Boston to Oklahoma, or the tens of thousands who have died of hunger and disease and war, this is no small concern.  Add to that our concern and love for the suffering of all sorts of other people, loved ones, people on the other side of the planet, people of all kinds.

If our proclamation about Jesus is that he heals all these things, we’re back to the Wizard of Oz, because while he certainly can heal all these things, there are millions of times that he doesn’t.  And if such miracles are the point of his coming, then either he’s not very good at what he is supposed to be, or he doesn’t care about us like he did the people of his day.

But in fact, the miracles were never the point.  They were the outflowing of love from the Incarnate Son of God because he couldn’t walk past pain.  But the point of his coming was to show us God, to be with us as God in person, and to lead us into a life of love and faith with the Triune God in whose hands all life rests.  To show us a way of life which can live in a world of tragedy and pain and find abundance and joy.

To show us that even in this world we can know grace and hope, even if all our requests for miracles aren’t granted.  And in dying and rising, to forever give us the Good News that no matter how or when our lives end, or the lives of anyone, that is not the end, and there is life in a world to come.

But Jesus wants us to follow him, not his miracles.  To commit to him.  Because with him there is life.

His miracles only help establish his credentials, so we can trust our lives to him.  Like Elijah, because we can see what he has done, including rising from the dead, we know he is from God.

But the point of that knowing is then to follow him.  To invite him to lead us in our journey of life, guide us, show us a way of life.

It’s the same thing Paul is doing in this word from Galatians.  He tells of his miracle, that one who violently persecuted Christians was transformed by God into a great preacher for Christ.  And look what he says: “they glorified God because of me.”  Once again, the miracle leads to praise of God, not the person.  And the reason Paul tells it is to establish his credentials for the Galatians so they will listen to him and do what he says.  Not so they’ll be amazed at the miracle.  So they’ll trust that he brings them the truth from God.

Just as the widow trusted Elijah.  Just as Jesus invites John, and all of us, to trust him.

This isn’t an easy lesson for us to learn.  We long for the ending of all suffering and pain, and if God can shortcut that through the power of the Son of God, we’re all for it.  But we can’t avoid the truth that very Son repeatedly wants us to hear: life with God is possible and real and available, and it isn’t about getting or not getting miracles.

It’s about – and this is a wonder beyond wonders – it’s about living in a full, life-giving relationship with the Triune God who made all things and who loves us.  It’s about having God’s grace as a constant companion in our journey of life, sustaining us even in our suffering, giving life and meaning and purpose to our existence.  It’s about walking with the man behind the curtain and learning his way, and finding it’s a way of rich, abundant life.

I think Jesus would understand our desire to see such miracles as these all the time.

His compassion is likely pulled greatly at the suffering we inflict upon each other and this planet.

But that’s the reason he needs us to pay more attention to him than to these things.  The way of God he brings us will lead to life for all, and bring grace and healing to this world in profound ways.  We know this.  We’ve seen it happen before, and will again.

And we’ve seen that the salvation we have in Christ Jesus is something we can experience and know every moment of our lives, even as we rejoice in the hope of the life that is to come.  Following him, committing to this Way, that’s our path.  And it’s the path of life for us and for the world, the way that turns our wailing into dancing, and clothes us with joy.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

We can come up with plenty of reasons why we are not worthy to be loved by God, forgiven by God, welcomed by God.  But Christ, whose love defeats death and our own unworthiness, calls us beloved.  Worthy.  And it is so.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen, Time after Pentecost, Lectionary 9, year C; text: Luke 7:1-10

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

George Herbert, an early seventeenth century Anglican priest, gives us this poem:

Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
                        Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack
                        From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
                        If I lack’d anything.

A guest, I answer’d, worthy to be here:
                        Love said, you shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,
                        I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
                        Who made the eyes but I?

Truth, Lord, but I have marr’d them: let my shame
                        Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
                        My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
                        So I did sit and eat. [1]

There is a question of worthiness that flows through this story.

This centurion, assigned to Capernaum by the occupying Roman government, is a remarkable man.  The Jewish elders of the town plead his case, plead his worth to Jesus.  “He loves our people.  He built us our synagogue.  Help him, if you can.”  This centurion might not be unique in supporting local religion that is not his own faith; the emperor Augustus recommended such behavior because it helped keep people in order.

But there’s more here, isn’t there?  “He loves our people,” they said.  This is no cynical bureaucrat, seeking to appease a restless populace.  The community of people whose oppression is visibly symbolized by his very office argues on his behalf to one of their own, a miracle worker of the Jews.

So why doesn’t he see that same worth, at least not when it comes to what he asks of Jesus, recognizes in Jesus?  Is it just that this centurion honors Jewish custom by not asking Jesus to risk becoming unclean by entering a Gentile home?

Like Naaman the Syrian, whom Jesus mentions in Nazareth a little earlier, the centurion sends people as go-betweens, respecting Jesus’ authority.  Unlike Naaman, he seems to consider himself unworthy of direct contact with the Jewish prophet.

The first group of advocates, the Jewish elders, speak of his worth.  But then he sends his friends, who downplay his worth.  “I’m not worthy to have you come under my roof,” he asks them to convey to Jesus.

This is such a strange, unexpected thing to hear from the representative of an occupying army.  Where’s the arrogance?  Where are the demands?  No, this one doubts his worthiness to receive Jesus.

But there is third assessment of worth here, that of the Incarnate Son of God.  Jesus heals this man’s slave, he sees worth and value in the centurion, even if the centurion does not.  He made the slave.  He made the centurion.  And he says, “worthy.”

We’re getting used to hearing this from Luke about Jesus, but it’s still surprising.  When Jesus preached for the first time in his hometown he emphasized God’s grace to foreigners.  His friends and neighbors were enraged.  Why would he say that about unworthy people?

But this goes back even to before his birth, Luke tells us.  And when Jesus was a baby, Simeon said that he would be a light to bring light to the nations, and the glory of God’s people Israel.  All would be in this love of God, this kingdom he was bringing, Jews and non-Jews.  So Jesus declares even this foreign soldier and this unknown slave worthy of God’s grace and love and healing.

And there is also this: even though he felt unworthy, he did trust Jesus’ decision and authority.  “If you say this will be so, it will be so.”  And Jesus says he is worthy.

This question of worthiness flows through the Rev. Herbert’s poem.

Love, who is Christ, bids welcome to a feast, but the speaker holds back, feeling guilty, sinful.  When Love notices the hesitation, the speaker claims there is no guest worthy to be here.

What follows is so beautiful, as Love argues with the speaker about his own worth.  “I made you.”  “Yes, but I’ve messed that all up.”  “But I took that blame.”  “Then I should serve you for that.”

But Love insists: no, you must let me serve you.  Feed you.  Come, sit, and eat.  In spite of any perceived unworthiness, the speaker is invited to face this fact: he is loved by Love himself, by the Christ whose love saves all.

The only one who can declare someone worthy is the One who made and redeemed that one.  And Love, Christ, says, “you are worthy, indeed.”  So the speaker relents, and eats.

So again, there is this: though he feels unworthy, he trusts in Love’s invitation.  And Love says he is worthy.

This question of worthiness seems to flow through the heart of our lives.

It’s dangerous to imply that everyone at all times feels similar things, because that’s not true.  But I suspect that there are few people who, when they consider God, always and at all times believe themselves to be worthy.

We come here because we long for God’s love and grace and healing.  Because here, in this place, we have felt welcomed by God’s grace.  People here speak of Mount Olive being a place where many who have been wounded by the Church and by the world have found healing and grace in the love of God.  I doubt there are any here who can’t identify with feeling such grace and welcome here.  I know I can.

But it’s not always easy to believe we’re deserving of that.  How many of us would like every thought, every action, every personality trait we have to be brought into the open amongst the people here?  I wouldn’t.  How many of us, when we confess our sins in silence before liturgy are grateful that it is done in silence?  I am.

We long to hope that we are welcomed with open arms by the Triune God, even by others here, but in our inmost hearts we aren’t always sure we can ask for that.

There are times the law of God needs to come to us from the outside, breaking through walls of denial, but many times at our core, we can feel the sting of God’s law without even being told, we can hear an inner voice saying that we’re not what we should be, what we were meant to be.  That maybe we’re not worthy to be here this morning.

It used to be the stereotype that churches were full of holier-than-thou types, people who insisted on their own righteousness.

That has not been my experience as pastor.  Again and again, when I talk to people I get a sense that there’s at least a part of everyone that recognizes the view of that poet, a part that recognizes the fretting of the centurion.  Even the most holier-than-thou person typically uses that bravado to cover up an inner fear of not measuring up.

Simply, we desperately want to know if God’s face is turned to us in love or against us in anger.  We want to know if we’re worthy of God’s love and grace.  But like the poet and the centurion, we might be tempted to turn away, or avoid seeing Jesus in person, just in case the answer is what we fear it might be.

But then we come here, and are welcomed by the very Son of God.  We begin to see in Christ that the face of God is love toward us and toward the world.

It’s almost more than we can grasp: we come to this altar, to the Meal spread before us, and are welcome.  We hear the voice of the Incarnate Son of God, who made us, say “you are worthy of my love.  My forgiveness.  My healing.”  Worthy to bear the same flesh the Word of God put on himself.  We hear the voice of the Crucified Son of God, who died for us and rose from death, say, “I have made you whole, healed what is sinful, taken away your judgment.  And I love you.”

No one can say we are truly worthy but the One who made us and redeemed us.  And here we find that he says, “worthy.”

And in this place, Love, the Christ, speaks through all these people around us, these faces who say to us in our deepest fears: “you are worthy of God’s love and grace.  You are loved.”  Who serve now as Christ to us, and to the world.  In whose eyes we see love and welcome, not judgment.  Who take seriously the Word of God, the Incarnate, Crucified and Risen One, and repeat his words to us again and again and again until we believe them: “You are worthy.  You are welcome.  Come, and eat.  Be healed.”

So then there is only this remaining for us: Can we accept this?  Can we, too, though unworthy, trust Jesus’ command?  Trust his judgment?  Can we trust Love’s invitation?

Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
                        Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack
                        From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
                        If I lack’d anything.

A guest, I answer’d, worthy to be here:
                        Love said, you shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,
                        I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
                        Who made the eyes but I?

Truth, Lord, but I have marr’d them: let my shame
                        Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
                        My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
                        So I did sit and eat.

Amen and Amen.

[1] George Herbert, from The Temple, 1633.  George Herbert: The Complete English Works; Everyman’s Library: Alfred A. Knopf: New York, London, Toronto; copyright 1908, 1974, 2005; p. 184.

The Triune God is like a riddle and a mystery that we cannot fully comprehend. And like all good riddles it is in the mystery itself that we are drawn to God.  In this mystery we proclaim that through the Triune God all things are possible.

Vicar Neal Cannon; The Holy Trinity, year C; text: John 16:12-15; Romans 5:1-5

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

Today is Holy Trinity Sunday, and being as how the Trinity is one of the most complicated concepts of the Christian faith I thought that we should do some mental stretching with a couple of riddles.

What gets wetter and wetter the more it dries? A towel.

I can run but not walk. Wherever I go, thought follows close behind. What am I? A nose.

What goes around the world but stays in a corner? A stamp.

Some of you may like riddles, others not so much. But for all of us riddles are like a bug in our brain that we can’t get out. We humans have an intense desire to know the answer, to solve the problem. But if you are like me, then knowing the answer to the riddle is far less interesting than being in the mystery of the riddle. In fact, for me, actually knowing the answer makes the riddle seem silly, maybe even a little bit boring.

Our God is a little bit like an unsolved riddle; mysterious and sometimes cryptic. Our God is a God that is impossible to figure out, box up, or define. The Old Testament is full of references to God’s unknowability.  For example, when Moses asks for God’s name, God responds to him, I AM WHO I AM or in some translations, I WILL BE WHAT I WILL BE. How’s that for a riddle?

Later Moses approaches God again and asks to see God’s glory. And God infamously responds, “‘I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.’  But, he said, ‘you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.’”

As Pastor Crippen said in his sermon last week, this is not a God that we can control. And what’s more, in many ways this is not a God that we can fully know. This is a God who shows us God’s back, wrestles with us in the dark, and whose face we cannot look upon and live.

On this Holy Trinity Sunday there seems no greater riddle in all the Old and New Testaments than the fact that we Christians claim a God that is Triune in nature; three and one. This is to say that we believe in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as completely separate and individual, yet completely One God. Solving this riddle seems impossible.

Recently I saw a great satirical YouTube video about the Trinity, where two cartoon Irishmen ask St. Patrick to unravel the mystery of the Trinity with a simple analogy.  Every time St. Patrick tries to define the Trinity as a three leaf clover or as how water exists as both ice, vapor, and liquid, in a bantering kind of way the Irishmen explain exactly how these analogies are a heresy of one kind or another. Ultimately, St. Patrick resorts to merely reciting the Athanasian Creed, essentially throwing his hands in the air and admitting there are no adequate human analogies, rather The Trinity JUST IS HOW IT IS.

It feels like God often chooses to come to us in mystery and cloud, and darkness. It feels like God often comes to us in a riddle, only it’s a riddle that we can’t solve and don’t fully understand.

And I can’t help but think that God comes to us in mysterious ways because the more we realize that we don’t understand God, the more we actually want to know God. The more of a riddle that God is to us, the more we desire to be close to God’s very presence. Maybe, God actually desires to be a mystery to us.

This is not to say that we can’t understand anything about God. Our Scriptures, creeds and doctrines actually tell us the story of those things that God has revealed to us. But understanding that God never fully reveals Godself to us simply admits that we don’t know everything about God. God is Triune because God is I AM. We say that while we don’t fully understand how, we believe that God revealed Godself in Jesus Christ, and God continues to reveal Godself in the Holy Spirit who comes to us now.

This means that God has mercy on whom God has mercy, and God will have compassion on whom God will have compassion. It means that the Spirit goes wherever the Spirit goes and reveals whatever the Spirit reveals and we as humans can’t control it, don’t understand it, yet say that it’s true.

After all, in the Gospel of John Jesus tells us that there are some things that we are not ready to hear, and then tells us that when the Spirit of Truth comes the Spirit will guide us into all truth; meaning that right now, we don’t have all the answers and we don’t own the truth. There are things that we haven’t been able to understand and there are things that God is still telling us about what God’s plans are in the world.

Despite this, many branches of Christianity expect that we have perfect doctrine and that we know all the right words and have said all the right prayers in order to be accepted by God and communities as “true believers.” So Christians for centuries have tried to rationalize their beliefs about God and put the infinite in a neat little box. For example, many Christians even today insist that the world is 6,000 years old despite scientific evidence to the contrary. And so when dinosaurs were discovered many Christians claimed that God was merely testing our faith. And, at one point in our history the Pope put Galileo under house arrest for claiming that the Earth was not at the center of the universe, because it went against doctrine.

And it’s not that other Christians are the only ones unable to hear the Spirit of Truth. We have to ask ourselves, what am I unwilling to hear? Are we really ready to know who made our iPhones and Nike shoes? Do we really want to know where our food comes from, or are we content with how things are?

The point is that God is always bigger than our imaginations, bigger than us; that God has done, is doing, and will do things in this world that we have not yet even imagined. And so maybe the Triune God, who comes to us in mystery, wants us to embrace mystery itself.

Embracing mystery is much harder than embracing easy answers. Embracing mystery means not relying on ourselves or our own knowledge or works, but rather relying on something we don’t understand and sometimes isn’t fully here yet. For example, Paul writes in his letter to the Romans that we are justified and forgiven not by our own works, but through Jesus Christ. And in our reading today, Paul says something that is rather peculiar, Paul says, “And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”

Now think about who Paul is talking to for a minute. Paul is addressing the early Christians who are being persecuted by the Romans for their beliefs and essentially tells them to hope. What’s odd about this, is that hope, by its very definition is not certain. We hope that someday we’ll win the lottery, but we don’t know that we will. We hope that we’ll have nice weather this summer, but we don’t know that it’s coming. We hope that two years from now we’ll be promoted or still have our jobs but the truth is, we don’t know.

Note that Paul doesn’t try to explain their suffering and evil. He doesn’t tell them that they are suffering because they are sinful or because of a particular ideology. Too often in the world Christians have tried to explain evil as if God allowed 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina to happen because of one group or one sin. What’s more, Christians have used the Scriptures as a way of saying all the things that God can’t do – slaves can’t be free, women can’t be pastors, gay men and women can’t be married – rather than submitting ourselves to all the things that God can do. But the truth is that explaining evil is just another way that we try to put God in a box by explaining things that we don’t understand.

Paul doesn’t do this. Instead, Paul opens our imaginations to hope in what God does through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Paul says that because the Son of God suffered, died, and rose for the world, we learned something about God. We learned that this mysterious God isn’t seeking to destroy us, but desperately wants us to be in community with the Trinity.

And so when tragedy, and death, and sadness enter our lives – when tornadoes destroy and bombs explode and jobs are lost – Paul says that we too can have certain hope even when we can’t answer the question, “Why is this happening?” We don’t have to search for answers and blame evil on certain “other” groups or on ourselves. No. Because of what God has done we can say that evil exists AND the Triune God’s love for us is certain, even if we don’t understand how. As Paul says later in I Corinthians, “For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.”

And it is in the riddle of God’s Triune mystery and in these words, that the Holy Spirit dares us to see God as bigger than our imaginations, bigger than our limitations, and yes, even bigger than our creeds and doctrines. In these words we admit that we see God only in part and submit ourselves to the not yet imagined things that God is doing in the world.

So through this Spirit we see the unexpected things that God has done, slave and free are equal, women preach and prophesy as men do, and gay and lesbian couples can love and be loved by God and the world in the same way as straight couples. Therefore, let us open our hearts and minds to the infinite possibility of God.

I AM WHO I AM, says the Lord.  What a great mystery.

The Holy Spirit leads us to the truth of God: Jesus our Savior, God-with-us, who calls us to bear God’s love to the world.  However, we are not capable of controlling where the Triune God works, nor are we called to that task.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen, Day of Pentecost, year C; texts: John 14:8-17, 25-27; Acts 2:1-21

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

One of many impressions I had of the recent vote for marriage equality in our state’s legislature is the image of impassioned Christians on both sides of this issue, and the sense that to a large degree this was an internal Christian debate overlaid upon a civil question of equal protection and rights under the law.  This is, no doubt, due to the fact that Christians are still the majority religion in this state.  But still, it was striking to me how often senators and representatives invoked God’s will on their points of view on a public, civil issue, and specifically the will of the Triune God, because most claimed to be Christian.  At one point a senator who was opposed to the measure cried out that voting for this bill was a vote against religious freedom.  What was clear by her argument, however, was that for her, religious freedom was the state enforcing and endorsing her own religious views, her own understanding of Christian teaching, in spite of the fact that some Christians, people of her own faith, passionately disagreed with her view of Christian teaching.  Likewise, when a senator argues on the floor of the State Senate that he is more interested in being on the “right side of eternity” as opposed to the right side of history, we have a conversation that has been hijacked from the realm of civil discourse into the realm of inter-Christian discourse.  It was disconcerting, to say the least.

But it is not a new thing.  Christians in power tend to use that power against each other as well as against people of other faiths with whom they disagree.  We fight over what we consider to be the truth, God’s truth, and if we get political power, it can become very ugly.  Only the protections of our federal and state constitutions keep us from falling into the sins and errors of our ancestors, who took this enforcing of their sense of God’s truth on others to sometimes violent and tragic extremes, such as the Inquisition or the Crusades.

Jesus promises today to send us the Spirit of truth.  At the birth of the Church, that same Holy Spirit filled the believers and they preached the good news of Jesus’ resurrection.  3,000 people became new believers that day.  How do we get from there to Inquisition and Crusade?  From there, to what we see in America today, some Christians arguing for what essentially would be a Christian state, for a nation where there’s no room for those who are not true believers?  From there to denominations in fights with each other and with other denominations over who has the truth and who really believes the right things?  If the Spirit of God is supposed to lead us to truth how do we listen over the din of our fighting?

It is true that because of our constitutions, we are not talking about persecution on the scale of past Christian abuses.  But we really must not forget our past.

In fact, I found myself remembering a particularly horrible incident this past week, from the 13th century.  In particular, the Inquisition against the Cathars in southern France, something the Church itself called a Crusade, though it was a crusade against others who claimed to be Christians.

This was actually the time when the Inquisition officially began.  A chronicler of the early 13th century records that as the forces of the French nobles and the Pope were attacking a city in what is now southern France, Béziers, when Abbot Arnaud (the papal legate), leading the army both spiritually and militarily, was asked whom to kill (because there were also orthodox Catholics in the city) he said, “Kill them all.  The Lord will recognize his own.”

And they did.  They burned the city, a large one for those days, to the ground, and slaughtered all within, men, women, children, all.

Now, of course, this is far more serious than any public debates in the United States.  I am not saying anything like that these things have equal standing.  But we wouldn’t be truthful if we didn’t note that actual violence and even killing has been done by American Christians against others in this country whom they deemed sinful, wrong, on many different issues including racism, slavery, sexuality, doctrines and others.  Some of my direct ancestors sent public letters of support and encouragement to the leaders of the Salem witch trials.

We cannot pretend that we are much more civilized.  And we cannot be so foolishly naïve as to think that Christian hate rhetoric doesn’t have a seriously negative impact on our effectiveness in witnessing to Christ’s love for the world.

And there is a piece of this 13th century story that still won’t go away for me.

You see, it is also recorded that while the soldiers were attacking or besieging a city during this crusade, bent on total destruction, the priests and bishops and monks who always marched with the “Host,” as they called the army, would sing “Veni Creator Spiritus” to encourage the troops in their holy cause.

Maybe you don’t recognize the Latin.  “Come, Creator Spirit,” is how that is translated, and it’s a hymn which dates to the 8th century, both music and text.  It’s number 577 in Evangelical Lutheran Worship, and we’re singing it next.  Our translation begins “Creator Spirit, Heavenly Dove,” but it’s the same hymn.

Now, here at Mount Olive we value using the gifts of 2,000 years of Christians in our worship, singing words and music that are created in praise of God in the past year as well as 1,500 years ago.  It enriches us tremendously.  But here we have this beautiful hymn, whose words are deeply important to our lives, misused by our ancestors to justify terrible things.  We can’t pretend that isn’t important for us to consider, any more than the truth that the Scriptures, which are God’s Word for our lives, have also been so misused.  The juxtaposition of the abbot’s statement and the singing of the hymn to the Holy Spirit and the wholesale slaughter of neighbors in the name of the Spirit chills me to the bone.

And it’s not just ancient texts and hymns.  We’re singing a relatively new text, set to a familiar tune, at communion today.  “God of tempest, God of whirlwind.”  It’s a powerful text, and has been a good addition to Lutheran hymnody in the past few years.  But here is stanza 2: “God of blazing, God of burning, all that blocks your purpose, purge!  Through your church, Christ’s living Body, let your flaming Spirit surge!  Where deceit conceals injustice, kindle us to speak your truth.” [1]

Wow.  Now it’s true, that stanza does not need to be interpreted as a hymn inviting destructive crusades and inquisitions.  It’s true that the error the hymnwriter lifts up in this stanza is injustice, not heresy.  Nonetheless, it’s striking how easily language of the Spirit and fire can be interpreted to exclude, drive out, ostracize, and even destroy others.

The problem most likely lies with our need to control God.

It’s a basic part of human nature.  It’s not enough for us to believe what we think is true.  We almost always want to control it, too.  And control others.  We believe Jesus is God’s Son, risen from the dead, offering life now and life forever.  We believe that because of our Lord Christ’s gift we have new life in the Spirit as children of God.  But then we want to control that.  We want to make sure that only those who think and believe the right things are part of the in group, part of the saved.

We take the gift of God given us freely by the Spirit without any work on our part, and try to control access, try to control God, try to control who’s got it and who doesn’t.  We even like to believe that we can decide who is filled with the Holy Spirit and who is not.

But the very reality of the Holy Spirit is that the Triune God cannot be controlled.  The Spirit blows like the wind, Jesus says in John 3, where she will.

So the Triune God is working in people in ways we cannot see or know.  God is leading people to things we may not have imagined or planned for, things we cannot control.  God is filling the people of the world with the Spirit, even if they haven’t heard of Jesus yet.

That’s something that frightens a lot of Christians, and leads to hurtful and even awful things, not just crusades, but think about it for a moment.  If Christ Jesus is who we say he is, the risen Son of God; if God is Triune, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, as we say the Scriptures proclaim; and if this God loves the whole world; is it not the height of arrogance for us to assume that the Triune God either can or will only listen to those who know this truth about God?  The height of arrogance to assume that the Triune God will not bless even unbelievers with the Spirit, even if they don’t know it?

Even though we believe we have the deepest revelation of God’s will for the world in Jesus, we cannot rule out that the risen Son of God, Christ himself, will find and is finding ways to connect through the Holy Spirit even with those who do not believe in him or know him.

So what does this mean for our lives with others who do not share our faith?

It leads us to humbly being kind neighbors in the name of the One in whom we have life and love, Jesus Christ.

One of the many tragedies of that Crusade of the early 1200’s is that in that southern area of what is now France and most of the Spanish peninsula, people of many faiths were living peacefully with each other.  Jews, Muslims, orthodox Catholics, and these Cathars.  These people lived together for centuries in peaceful coexistence for the most part.  Then the Church decided that the heresies needed to be stamped out (and this was as much a political land and power grab as anything else).  And they destroyed thousands of lives, hundreds of homes and villages and cities.

Now there’s no question the Cathars had moved away from some central Christian teachings.  They didn’t believe in the Trinity, or that Jesus was really a human being.  They didn’t value the Sacraments, they rejected the rituals of the Church.  They really weren’t Christians by definition.

But they lived good lives, were good neighbors.  They followed Jesus’ teachings, actually; they believed in God’s love and they cared for each other and their communities.  Whether they had the truth or not, they certainly didn’t deserve slaughter and death, and being wiped off the face of the earth, which is what happened.  Any more than any of the peoples slaughtered by the many Crusades in Jesus’ name deserved their fate.

And that’s what I think the Spirit is leading us to hear today: our job is not to enforce the truth of God as if we are the controllers of it.  It is to love the world in Jesus’ name, to be the love of Christ.

If people do not know the truth about the Triune God, then we can tell them by our words and actions.  By our Christly love.  It’s a truth worth telling, a world-changing and life-giving truth, and it’s our anointed call by Christ to tell it.

But as important, we have to remember that only God will sort out in the end what that means for them.  I suspect God’s love is great enough to accommodate all; Christ seems to say that.  But I know it’s not our call to decide this or know this.  In fact, the truth of the Spirit that our Lord Christ has sent us leads me to hope that we can reverse the abbot’s statement as we consider our Spirit-filled call: “Love all of them.  The Lord will recognize his own.”

And the gift of the Holy Spirit is that we are given the power and ability to do all this, become models of God’s love.  That’s the kind of power we pray for today.

When we sing, “Creator Spirit, Heavenly Dove,” “come, Creator Spirit,” it’s not a prayer inviting destruction of those who do not believe.  It’s a prayer inviting God’s Spirit to keep leading us to truth, correcting us when we err, guiding us, together, to God’s truth, which is Christ, showing us who God is.

It’s a prayer inviting God’s Spirit to bring forth the fruits of the Spirit in us: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

It’s a prayer inviting God’s Spirit to make us like Christ Jesus, who never led a crusade, armed or otherwise, but simply loved the world in God’s name and called the world to the same kind of love for each other.

God’s love for the world in Jesus goes to the world in us.  That’s the reality of Pentecost.  That’s the gift of the Holy Spirit.  And that’s our hope and our joy, and the world’s hope and joy as well.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

[1] Text by Herman G. Stuempfle, Jr., b. 1923.  Copyright © 2000 GIA Publications, Inc.  Evangelical Lutheran Worship, no. 400, st. 2.

We live our lives much with the same sense as the disciples’ lives were lived between the Ascension and Pentecost, in between.  But in this meantime, our truth is that Jesus is with us in the Spirit, even while praying for us to God.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen, Seventh Sunday of Easter, year C; texts: John 17:20-26; Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21

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

Now what do we do?  What do we do now that Jesus is gone again?

Our celebration of Jesus’ ascension was Thursday, and now it’s Sunday, and Jesus is gone.  Also, in these 18 days we’ll celebrate half of the Church’s six major festivals, but this Sunday isn’t one of them.  Pentecost and Holy Trinity are the next two weeks, not today.  So today we’re between festivals, Jesus is gone, and this is the last Sunday of Easter this year, the last day of Easter paraments, the last day we conclude our liturgy with “Christ is risen, indeed, Alleluia!”  When this run is over, it’s back to normal.  And what are we supposed to do?

Of course, we’re aware that even though we celebrated Easter six weeks and seven Sundays ago, Jesus really wasn’t raised again, that happened long ago.  But that’s the funny thing about the Church Year.  By celebrating each year the events of Jesus’ life and ministry, his death and resurrection, we almost forget that it happened 2,000 years ago and we live as if it were still happening.  In fact, our liturgical life is meant to help us live these events anew each year.  So on Christmas we’re filled with joy, we’re taken back in time and find ourselves wondering at the side of a manger and a little baby.  And even though we know what happens on Easter, living the liturgies of Holy Week does bring us through the pain and sadness of our Lord and of the disciples, if even second-hand.  So when we sing Alleluia for the first time at the Easter Vigil, there is a very real sense that it is as if we are hearing the good news for the first time: he is risen!  He is risen, indeed!

And that makes this Sunday in many ways a hard Sunday for us, just as it must have been for the disciples.  Having Jesus back after his terrible death was thrilling for them, but now 40 days later they had to say goodbye again.  On this Sunday 2,000 years ago he had been gone for three days, and they were still a week from Pentecost.  Just as we are.

It’s funny that the times we can easily identify with the feelings of the disciples are the difficult times, such as in the times they were dealing with the absence of Jesus.  Their reality after the Ascension is our reality every day of our lives: Christ Jesus is in heaven with the Father, and we wonder what we’re to do, how we’re to live, how we’re to know what Jesus would say to us.  Or if he is there at all.

A major issue in our lives is what do we do when we feel that God is absent.

It’s a struggle people often have with great tragedies or disasters.  Where is God here?  Why isn’t God doing something?

But the truth is that we struggle so often with knowing where God is even in our daily lives.  I can stand up here and say, “God is with you always,” and you might believe it.  Sometimes.  But in the dark night of the soul, in the pain of everyday living, in the sadness of depression, in the fear of a frightening world, in the struggle of poverty, in the emptiness of modern materialism, it is awfully hard sometimes to know where God is.  Too many times for too many of us there is just an empty wall we face in prayer and then the wondering begins: Is God really there?  Is Christ Jesus, who is supposed to be God-with-us, real for me, or just wishful thinking?

So again, what do we do now?  How do we go on in this time of Christ’s apparent absence?

Well, we have a gift from John the evangelist.  John’s Gospel, more than the others, spends a lot of time on the goodbyes Jesus gives the disciples.

We’ve been hearing from some of these in the Gospel readings for this Easter season.  For five chapters, from 13 to 17, Jesus is saying goodbye to the disciples.  All these words take place in John’s Gospel the night of Jesus’ betrayal, before his death.  But for we who are Easter people (and this is likely why these words were assigned to our Easter weeks), we hear these words most helpfully as we deal with his absence after he ascended to the Father.

And what Jesus tells the disciples and us is that he is going away, but that he will still be with us.  And that we have work to do in the meantime.

So on Second Easter he gave us the gift of peace, and said “as the Father has sent me, so I send you.”  (John 20:21)

On the Third Sunday of Easter he said, “If you love me, feed my sheep.”  (John 21:15-17)

Then on Fourth Easter we heard him say that all who are his sheep know his voice, and none can be taken from his hand.  (John 10:27-28)

On the Fifth Sunday of Easter he told us that while he will be with us only a little longer, he is giving us a new commandment, that we love one another as he loved us.  (John 13:33-34)

And then in words spoken in the chapters between that word and today’s Gospel, he promises several things: “I’m going to prepare a place for you,” he says, “in my Father’s house.”  (John 14:1, 3)  “I won’t leave you orphaned, I am coming to you,” he says.  (John 14:18)  “I will send you an Advocate, the Holy Spirit, to teach you and be with you and give you peace,” he says.  (John 14:25-27)  And he tells us it is to our advantage that he leaves us, otherwise the Advocate, the Spirit, will not be able to come to us.  (John 16:11)

In all these last words, these farewells, Jesus is saying some very important things about his absence.  First, that he is not leaving us alone: he is sending the Spirit of God to us to be with us and guide us and strengthen us.  Second, that we are sent as he was sent, to be the love of God in the world.  And third, that he is coming again at the end of all days to take us with him.  We also heard that from the Revelation today: Jesus said, “Surely I am coming soon!”

So this is where we are on this day between days, in our lives lived in the meantime: we are not alone, and we have much to do.

The promise of the Advocate, the Spirit actually is better than we could have hoped.  Christ Jesus leaves because he has things to do for us and the world: a place to prepare for us, sheep that are not of this flock that he has to find.  And as for us, one resurrected man could not be with all people at all times, but the Holy Spirit can fill each of our hearts and be with us.

And even better for us, today Jesus prays to the Father for us, and Scripture tells us that Christ’s prayer continues for us even now.  Christ Jesus returns to the Father so he can continue to speak for us.  He prays continually that we become one as his children.  Prays that we do not feel alone.  Prays that we stay in faith and continue to love each other.  Prays that we share an intimacy with the Father that he has.  He knows the pain we feel, the sense that we sometimes don’t know where God is.  He’s been there with us.  And so he prays for us.

And all this is to strengthen us for the mission we are given, to be the anointed ones of God bringing Christ’s resurrection love to the world.  Sometimes it’s like we don’t really pay attention when Jesus says things like, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”  Or when we hear, as we will in a week, Luke tell us that the same Spirit which filled Jesus for his ministry now fills the Church to overpouring?  We have the love of Christ to share, the forgiveness of Jesus to offer, and the work of God’s healing of the nations to undergo.  We are not alone, and we are given this gift of the Spirit so that we can become who we were meant to be.

And as we say farewell to this season of Easter, we welcome the new life in the Spirit that the season of Pentecost will show us.

So, in the meantime, what are we to do now?

Well, we can live in love with each other and God as Jesus asked.  We can realize that we are sent to do the work of God in the world and we can pray that the Spirit give us the strength to do this.

When we eat and drink the Meal of his body and blood we are united with our Lord in the deepest way.  When we gather as the body of Christ we see our Lord in the most profound way we can.  And when together the Spirit sends us out to be Christ in the world, we are the presence of God in a world that desperately wonders where God is.

It turns out that for Jesus, goodbye is only for a very short time.  He is here, for he is risen, just as he said.  And he will be with us and the world always, until the end of the age, until this resurrection life fills all God’s creation.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen