God’s written Word, the Scriptures, shape us in the relationship the Triune God is creating in us through the life, death and resurrection of the Son.  Ancient and strange as these words are, they lead us to our Lord Jesus and to life.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen, Third Sunday after Epiphany, year C; texts: Nehemiah 8:1-10; Psalm 19; Luke 4:14-21

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

We are a strange and peculiar people who do a strange and peculiar thing.  I don’t know if you noticed it or not, but we just did it, right now.  The difficulty is that we’ve seen it done so often we’ve come not to consider it odd.  You and I heard three people read from an ancient Book.  We gathered together today and asked three people, a lector, an assisting minister, and the presiding minister, to open and read from a book that in its newest part is nearly 2,000 years old, but in its oldest is closer to 4,000 years old.  We also sang together a song from that book that has been sung pretty continually by human beings for nearly 3,000 years.

More to the point, we asked people to read these old words to us today because we have agreed amongst ourselves, and with people like us in the world, that these elderly texts are actually words from the God who made all things.  We asked people today to read these words because we also have decided and believed, along with many like us in the world, that these ancient readings matter to our lives.  And you have called me to the task of now speaking to you about these words, as if these words should and do matter to us in our lives.

But do we understand how strange and foreign this is?  How unusual we are?  We Christians are not people who find God by gazing at our navels.  We don’t find God by using mind-altering substances.  We don’t find God in the desires of our heart, even, or in our hopes and dreams.  In fact, we Christians do not believe we even find God.  We believe the God who made all things finds us, seeks us out, and does this in a large part through these ancient words.  Though these words are millennia old, we believe they also were written for us.

And so, we are people of the Book, as are our Jewish and Muslim sisters and brothers.  We are connected most tightly to the belief not that God is found anywhere, but that God, and God’s plan, and all we need to know about God, can be found in a two to four thousand year old book.  And that is very strange.  And unfamiliar to the secular world in which we live.

If we’re not able to stop for a moment and recognize how utterly different from the culture what we do here is, what we do when we open a Bible in our homes or study it, when we seek out preaching, we risk taking for granted that we actually believe these words will change us, move us, matter to us.  And we risk losing the very truth to which these old words will lead us.

When we consider Ezra and Jesus, however, we see a familiar sight, and begin to understand once more.

In Nehemiah 8, the scribe Ezra stands on a wooden tower built over the people and reads to them from the law of God.  (Which sounds a lot like what I’m doing right now.)  This is after the exile, as we heard this morning, “the people of Israel [were now] settled in their towns.”

Ezra and Nehemiah are among those scribes who are determined to help Israel correct the problems which led to Babylon’s destruction of their nation and their Temple.  To do this, they need the people to hear God’s Word again, and since the people speak a different dialect or even language, and since they want all to be sure to understand, they intersperse the crowd with interpreters, other scribes and Levites, to help people know what’s going on.

The people are so overwhelmed by hearing God’s Word, they weep.  But Ezra encourages a different reaction.  He encourages them to be filled with joy, for they are hearing from God, and this joy should provide them great strength.  Ezra wants them to hear and obey, and they do.  But he also wants them to see the joy of having the Word of God read to them, and explained.

And look what happens when Jesus comes to his hometown, early in his ministry.  He goes to synagogue on the Sabbath, as was his custom, Luke reminds.  But notice this: at the synagogue, the people, his neighbors and friends, people who saw him grow to adulthood, do not ask, “Jesus, tell us about your view of the world.  Tell us what you’ve been doing, your experiences.  Tell us what you think of life.”

No.  They give him a scroll, and say, “read it.  Read it.”  They ask him to give them the Word.  They are Jews, after all.  They say, “read this to us.”  And so he does.  And remarkably, like the people of Ezra’s time, they expect that it will be important to them.  They wait afterward, like with Ezra, for preaching to come, for explanation, based on that Word.  These ancient words are central to what they want from Jesus.

And so it is with you, and your expectations of me.  You did not call me to come here and share my views of the world.  To philosophize and share my wisdom.  When you come here on Sundays, you don’t want me to read my latest essay on the human condition.  There are lots of folks who write blogs on the Internet or essays in papers online and in print, people who say what they think about life and the world.  Some are good, others not.

But that’s not what you have called me to Mount Olive to do.  No, when I first came here, and now even today, you gave me a book.  You gave me the Bible.  You called me to be your pastor because I am ordained a minister of Word and Sacrament.  And you said to me, and still say, “read this Book, this Word to us.  Then, help us to know it better.”

We are people of the Book.  God’s Book.  Nothing bothers us more about preaching than when we hear a sermon where the pastor preaches with no reference to the Scriptures at all.  We want to hear these ancient words.  And then we want the preacher to help us understand them, like Ezra, like Jesus, because we believe they matter to our very life.

And that’s because, unlike any other words, we believe these words not only bring us life, they lead us to God.

This is very different from other words, new or ancient, and other readings.

Three years ago Mary and I visited Hannah in Nottingham, England, where she was studying for a year.  We were able to join her and her other classmates from Luther at a production in the town of Stratford-on-Avon, at the theater of the Royal Shakespeare Company, a production of one of Shakespeare’s comedies.  It was wonderful.  These skilled actors spoke 500-year-old words and made them alive, they brought life and light to our evening, laughter and tears, joy.

This was a night we’ll remember for a long time.  But though we heard these ancient words and found good in them, it was and is a very different thing from how we come before the written Word of God.  Literature, essays, plays, movies, drawings, photographs, sculptures, many human creations and art forms inspire and move us.  I’ve seen some beautiful art in my life, read some transformative works.

But while they teach us about the human condition, about ourselves, about life, even about good and evil, while they help us grow and become better people, while they challenge us in many ways, there is one thing that we do not claim about them.  We do not claim or believe that they are God’s revelation to us which leads us to know definitively what God is doing in the world.

That, however, is what we claim about this book we call the Bible.  There isn’t time here to fully consider why Christians, like our sisters and brothers of other faiths, attach such meaning to these particular ancient words.  It’s worth a conversation, though, and worth our thought and consideration.

But for today, what we can say is that we continue in a line of believers that stretches back over 3,500 years or more, who have seen and experienced in these words the very voice of God.  Who have claimed that the God of the universe speaks to us through these words and leads us to life and salvation, calls to us, challenges us, judges us, loves us.

We stand in the same line as Thomas Cranmer, whose collect from the 1552 Book of Common Prayer is appointed as our Prayer of the Day today, which says that God has given us these Scriptures for our nourishment and life.  And so we ask God to help us “hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them.”  That we take these words literally to heart, to our guts, to the core of our very being (for as the psalmist says they taste sweeter than honey), so that they might change us and shape us.

And the primary reason we need these words to do that is that it is these words which lead us to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, the Living Word of God who saves us.  Each of the books of the Bible works together with the others ultimately to show us what the Son of God was and is doing in the world for God’s creation.

There’s an old Communion hymn that didn’t make the cut from the green book to our new worship book, which begins “Here, O my God, I see thee face to face.”  That’s why these words are different from any other for us.  That’s why we gather week after week to hear them.  That’s why we pick up our Bibles for study and daily prayer, something we never do with Shakespeare, beautiful as his writing may be.

Because here, in these words, as we encounter them daily, we see our Lord face to face and find his love for us, his grace, his invitation.  These become words by which we live and die, words which change everything for us.

We are a strange people.

We are strange people, we with this book we call God’s Word.  And though it may seem strange to the rest of our society, it is the place where we can find our Lord, just as the people of Nazareth saw him, revealed as the anointed One of God who brings healing and life to the world.

But now, of course, the real work begins.  Knowing that we agree this is the Triune God’s voice for us, leading us to the Son, now we must read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest together.  We will disagree at times about what we are hearing from God.  We will not always understand.  But such is the power of this written Word of God, this gift the Spirit helps us with, that when we do make mistakes of reading, of understanding, of interpretation, the Word continues to work in and among us and correct us, to bring us back to God’s path.  It has done so often in the past, and will continue to do so with the help of the Spirit.

So we do this together, and with sisters and brothers in the Church around the world, and trust that our Lord the Living Word will open our hearts and minds to know what we need to know for life.

So strange as it may seem, this is why we do what we do.  Because the God of the universe has spoken to us in these words, and led us to the Son of God who gives life to us and the world.  There is nothing more important for us to know, to hear, to take in.  It is our blessing to do this.  It is our blessing to share this with the world.  Thanks be to God for this gift!

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

The abundance of God’s grace is revealed to the world in the Incarnate Son of God who first reveals that abundance in the changing of water into wine, the bringing of the extraordinary joy of God’s presence to the ordinary things of our lives.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen, Second Sunday after Epiphany, year C; texts: John 2:1-11

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

There is sometimes a spirit among the people of the United States (and perhaps other peoples, but this is where we live and have experienced it) that seems to be afraid of not having enough.  Perhaps it comes from the shaping of the Great Depression, but we seem too easily to step into the trap of thinking we’re tight on what we need, that things are short, and we’d better look out for ourselves, despite our having so much more than the majority of our fellow human beings.  This spirit shows itself in a fierce hatred of taxes among some, even if those taxes make life better for all citizens (building roads and schools, for example), and especially if those taxes help others in deeper need than we ourselves.  It shows itself in a meanness of self-centered concerns in voting, in a selfish withholding of grace and forgiveness to others, as if we diminish the supply if we pour it out on people we don’t think deserve it, and in a fear of losing what we have so that we cling to our ways and our things with white-knuckled hands.

Yet others, even many among us in our country and in our midst, somehow have a sense of abundance, even in times of want.  These are people who amaze and astonish us with their graciousness, their open-handedness, in material and spiritual things.  People who always seem to have something to share with another person, even if they themselves seem deprived.  People whose joy at being forgiven and loved compels them to love others no matter what.  These people inspire us to consider that perhaps, with a different way of seeing and thinking about our lives and our world, we, too, could know such joy and peace.

Today we celebrate the third manifestation of Epiphany, a manifestation the Church has long linked to the other two we’ve celebrated the past two weeks, which is why we decided to extend our Epiphany white an extra week into the green season.  In this manifestation the adult Son of God reveals his glory.  In making a party more abundant.  In making sure there’s enough wine to extend the joviality and festivities.  There are many who wish to dismiss this action as trivial, trying to understand why Jesus would do such a thing, for in the big picture of the suffering of life, who cares about having enough wine?  But John the Evangelist says this is pivotal, this is the “first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and [he] revealed his glory.”  John suggests we pay close attention to this raucous party, and particularly to our Lord’s participation in it.

There’s a lovely moment in this story when the steward says about this new wine, “this is the good stuff.”  Perhaps that’s what our Lord invites us to see as we encounter this, the first revelation of his glory.  Perhaps our Lord needs us to see the “good stuff,” the abundance that God has given us and the world, rather than continue to grumble that we might run out of what we need some day.

John seems to be speaking of more than just the first sign among many miracles when he says, “this was the first.”  Because in John’s Gospel, when the Incarnate Son arrives, abundance flows, and it’s always far from unimportant.

At Cana, this first sign is excessive and beyond what is needed: even if a party is running out of wine, even if it is, as were wedding feasts in those days, a three day affair, would they really need between 120 and 180 gallons of wine?  And wonderful wine at that?

But that’s the best part of the story, isn’t it?  (Well, apart from the wonderful give and take that Mary and her son Jesus have.)  But this is the glory of this sign: the groom and his family need more wine so as not to be embarrassed before their neighbors and friends.  Jesus gives them more wine than they could begin to consume in weeks of celebrating.  So the glory revealed here is that when the Triune God, Incarnate in the Son, comes to a party, there’s not only enough for all.  There’s beyond enough.  And it’s all good stuff, fine vintage.

But such abundance anchors the entire Gospel of John, beginning, middle and end.  Central to the story of Jesus’ ministry in John is the story of the feeding of 5,000 plus, a story all four Evangelists tell, but one which only John expands into a deep, critical meditation on the gift of Jesus himself.

But to start with, it’s a Cana party, all over again.  There’s no food, well, except for a little boy’s lunch, and many are hungry.  The disciples, in the role of Mary, ask Jesus what is to be done.  And just as at Cana, Jesus acts as if he doesn’t know what he will do, here questioning Philip as to what he thinks should be done.  But then he has the disciples seat the people, and feeds them from five loaves and two fish.

Nothing is said about the quality of the sandwiches, as was said at Cana about the wine, but as at Cana, there’s not just enough for all.  There’s far more than enough.  Twelve baskets are filled with the leftovers.  These are hungry, poor people.  If there are that many leftovers, it is only because they were satiated, satisfied, filled.  And once more, the glory revealed here is that when the Triune God, Incarnate in the Son, comes to a picnic, there’s not only enough for all.  There’s beyond enough.

When we move to the end of the Gospel of John, once more we see a sign like this, after Jesus’ resurrection.  Seven disciples have left Jerusalem and returned to Galilee, for reasons John doesn’t explain.  They fish all night, at Peter’s insistence, and catch nothing.  Luke tells a similar story at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry.  But John says the same thing happened here.

Because when they start rowing to shore in the morning, with empty nets, they see Jesus on the shore (though they don’t know it is he.)  And he once more acts as if he doesn’t know what will happen, and asks them if they’ve caught anything.  When they say no, he invites them to try the right side of the boat.  And they catch so many fish they aren’t able to haul the net in.

When they come to shore, Peter having swum in since he now knows it’s Jesus, they have breakfast with their Lord, using these fish they caught.  But John adds a detail which I used to think odd: he says they caught 153 large fish.  Why, I have wondered, does the number and size matter?

But in the light of Cana, and the feeding of 5,000, I think I understand: once again we not only have enough, we have more than enough.  Eight people for breakfast, 153 large fish.  That’s what the Son of God does.  Once again, the glory revealed here is that when the Triune God, Incarnate in the Son, comes to a fishing expedition, there’s not only enough for all.  There’s beyond enough.

So if, in spite of this abundance of stories about God’s abundance, we still have that sense that we don’t have enough, maybe that’s because we aren’t seeing properly.

In all three of these revelations of abundance, there are people who can’t see what’s happened.
Only the disciples and the servants know the truth about the wine, not the bridegroom, nor the steward, nor the wedding guests.

In John 6, Jesus spends a great deal of time talking about the feeding of the 5,000 and it’s clear that even the disciples don’t really realize what happened there, and certainly not Jesus’ opponents.

And whatever the seven disciples in Galilee thought about the breakfast on the beach after Jesus’ resurrection, I never fully understood the 153 fish until now, in spite of the fact that this encounter is one of the stories that norm and shape my faith and life.  It just seemed an odd detail to include.

So the question in our lives seems to be not “do we have enough,” but “are we actually sure we’re seeing clearly what we have?”

And our vision is related to our expectations.

If we have an idea of how much money we need in the bank to be secure, and we don’t have that much, we will be insecure.  If we, however, can see how to get by on much less than we normally would think, then we have a completely different vision along with a different attitude.

If we have an idea that all things need to be good and happy and whole for us to be happy and fulfilled, then when things are hard or broken or painful, we will feel miserable.  If, however, we recognize the promise that God is with us always, even in our hard times, our painful times, then whether we are rich or poor, whether all things are going well or all things are falling apart, “whether we live or whether we die,” as Paul says, we realize we are the Lord’s.

If we have an idea of what the “good stuff” is that is based on the world’s evaluation – the best of things money can buy, the finest things in the world – then if we aren’t able to have such things we will be dissatisfied with our life and our lot.  But when a man dying of thirst in a desert finds a pool of brackish water that most would consider unfit to drink, it tastes like the finest spring water, cool and refreshing.  It’s all about one’s point of view.  What God provides us is far more than brackish water.  But if we are expecting the world’s standard of “good stuff,” we might miss the incredible abundance of riches God actually gives.

What Jesus’ manifestation at Cana invites us to do is see God’s action differently, and begin to lose our fear.

And so as we gather here once more to worship the Triune God, we gather to be fed with an embarrassment of abundance.  To be blessed by the gracious Word of God in speech, song, and prayer, filling us with the good news of God’s love for us and the world.  A good news which transforms our lives forever.

We gather to be blessed by the Meal of Life our Lord gives us, filling us also with the good news of God’s love for us and the world.  Once more, Jesus transforms the ordinary, this bread and wine, into the extraordinary grace of his crucified and risen life, his forgiveness, life and love that is ours and the world’s in this meal.

We gather to be blessed by the presence of our Lord himself as promised in these people around us, yet again filling us with the good news of God’s love for us and the world.  That the abundance of God’s love and grace abide in us and in each other and that we are sent, filled, graced, loved, to fill, grace, and love the world in God’s name, abundantly and eternally.

And when we see God acting in such abundance, abundant grace, abundant goods, abundant life, we also begin to live as if there will always be enough, instead of fearing we are falling short.  We learn to rejoice at the many ways God cares for us and the world, and learn to see abundance where it really is.  And let our fears subside by opening our hands to share. And so we become part of God’s abundance in our fearlessness.

So we see that in each of these abundance stories, the people bring something to God, share something, which is then blessed to expand in dramatic, ridiculous ways.

Jars are filled to brimming with water, the stuff of life, and Jesus transforms it into glorious wine, flowing beyond belief.

A boy has a small lunch to share, nothing, really, but the stuff of life for him, and Jesus transforms it into food for all, and more to spare.

The disciples work all night and catch nothing, but offer their work one more time at Jesus’ instruction, and Jesus transforms an empty net into a net bursting with goodness and food, more than they could begin to eat.

And so it is with us, when we have learned to trust God to provide, we offer what we have to let God so transform it that the world is filled to the brim with God’s goodness.  We are a part of God’s astonishing abundance by wasting less, taking less, learning to share with our sisters and brothers so that all might have enough, learning not to be afraid, beginning to see God’s abundance for all.  Through our new vision and lack of fear, God works not only to fill us to the brim, but to fill others as well, that all might live.

The “Good Stuff” is everywhere when the Triune God, Incarnate in the Son, is among us.  That’s what we see today and always.

May God open our eyes to see this revelation, this manifestation which continues in our midst, that we might see the abundance God has poured out on us and on the world.  And may the Spirit of God so empower us that we become signs of that foolish, frivolous, and life-giving abundance to all we meet and see, signs of the love of the Incarnate Son among us, who, when he comes to a party makes it so there’s not only enough for all.  There’s beyond enough, astonishingly so.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

Water, wind and fire have the power to kill, and the power to bring new life. In Baptism, we encounter the power of those elements and are given peace with God and strength to face our challenges in the world.

Vicar Neal Cannon, Baptism of our Lord, year C, texts: Luke 3:15-22, Psalm 29, Isaiah 43:1-7

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

Every outdoorsman knows that we are subject to the elements. Wind, water, and fire can be your best friend, or your worst enemy.

During the summers in college I worked at a Bible Camp called Camp Vermillion in northern Minnesota. Along with their regular day-camp program, Vermillion also led trips into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. One Summer I decided to become a BWCA canoe guide. I wanted to have adventures in the wilderness.

I had never been an outdoorsy type person before, so I was nervous about this, but I had taken a few staff trips into the BWCA and loved it. I loved dipping my toes into a crisp, cool, glassy lake in the mornings. I loved the feeling of a strong breeze at your back as you dig your paddle into the water and pull yourself forward towards your next campsite. And I loved warming my feet by a fire at the end of the day as you sit with good friends and share a story.

But as I quickly learned as a guide, you know there is another side to the elements that can be challenging as well.

That strong wind that started at your back becomes a gale force howl in your face, or worse, at your side. And all of a sudden the cool crisp waters that you found so refreshing in the morning become rough and choppy wakes that threaten to tip your canoe into icy cold water. And so you dig your paddle in the water, but each stroke feels like you’re stirring cement and for every inch you propel forward, it feels like you go two inches back.

And then when you finally get to your campsite, the rains begin, and in the distance you hear a faint rumbling and you pray it doesn’t come any closer. Because of the rain, there will be no fire tonight, unless of course a stray branch of lightning hits an area of the blow down a hundred miles to the north, and starts a dangerous forest fire.

Of course, you don’t have to be an outdoorsman to realize the power and awesomeness of nature. This spring in Duluth one colossal rain storm flooded the city so badly that entire streets sank. And on the news we’re always hearing the story of how a hurricane leveled a city or how a fire burned an entire community to the ground.

The elements are powerful. They have the power to aid and sustain us, but they also have the power to destroy and hinder us.

That’s what strikes me most about our text today. There is this sense that the elements are threatening us at times, aiding us at other times, but our God is Lord of it all. As our Psalm tells us,

“The voice of the LORD is over the waters; the God of glory thunders, the LORD, over mighty waters. The voice of the LORD is powerful; the voice of the LORD is full of majesty. The voice of the LORD flashes forth flames of fire. The voice of the LORD causes the oaks to whirl, and strips the forest bare; and in his temple all say, ‘Glory!’ ”

Today is the Baptism of our Lord and this baptism is full of the elements. For example, when John the Baptist is asked by the people if he is the Messiah, he responds, “I baptize you with water. But one who is more powerful than I will come, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”

John sets the stage for us here. He’s basically saying, “if you think I’m good, there’s someone coming who’s better. If you think being baptized with water is powerful, then wait until you’re baptized with fire.”

But sometimes, I think that John is selling short the power of baptism with water. We often think of water and baptism in kind terms. Water cleanses us. Water sustains us. Water gives us life.

But we forget that water also destroys. We drown in water. Water can destroy our homes and roads. Too much water ruins fields and crops. Water can be deadly.

Martin Luther understood the power of water in baptism. He once wrote, “These two parts, to be sunk under the water and drawn out again, signify the power and operation of Baptism, which is nothing else than putting to death the old Adam and after that, the resurrection of the new man.”

Luther says that baptism kills us and brings us to life. It’s not that John didn’t understand this. John wanted to kill our sinfulness through baptism. He’s known for saying things like, “Repent and be saved all ye sinners!”  John wants our sinfulness to die. But it seems as though John expects the Messiah’s baptism to kill our sinfulness even more as he says in our text today, “The grains of wheat he gathers into his barn, but chaff the Messiah will burn with unquenchable fire!!!”  And we’re left wondering, “Am I the grain, or the chaff?”  To hear John tell it, the Messiah will bring more fire and anger and judgment into the world. So this makes me wonder if John understands fully the power of fire.

When we think of fire, we often think of its destructive power. Fire burns, fire destroys, fire melts. But often we don’t consider the positive elements of fire. The campfire dries our socks by at night, fire from the sun warms our planet, fire cooks our food. Without fire, there would be no life.

Plus, the image of fire in the Bible is often used in an empowering, not destroying context. During Pentecost we will hear the story of the tongues of fire coming down on the apostles, and in the Old Testament God appears to Moses in a burning bush that is not consumed by the fire.

So when John says that the Holy Spirit will come to Jesus with fire, he talks about the power of that fire to destroy, but neglects to mention how that might also give us life.

Then at the end of the reading, we learn something interesting. The Holy Spirit, the same fire that John mentions, comes to Jesus in the form of a dove. Now there are a couple of significant things about this.

In the Bible, the dove is a sign of good tidings. When God floods the world, Noah sends out a dove from the ark and when the dove comes back with an olive branch in its mouth, Noah knows that the waters are receding from the earth and God will save them. Thus the dove is a sign of peace, between God and humanity.

This is ironic because John says the Messiah will bring more judgment and instead, he brings more peace. What’s more, in the New Testament, the word for Holy Spirit is pneuma (nooma). While this is usually translated as Holy Spirit, the more literal translation is actually wind, or breath.

It’s where we get the term pneumatic device, or a device that transfers air or gas from one object to another. So when we’re talking about the Holy Spirit, what we’re actually talking about is the breath of God or the wind of God being like a dove of peace being transferred from God into Jesus.

In Jesus’ baptism, the breath, and wind, and fire of God descend on Jesus from heaven like a dove when he is baptized with … water. These elements symbolize death and life and they are sealed with a sign of peace. And in this baptism, Jesus is empowered to begin His ministry on Earth.

This happens for us too.

One thing about being in the wilderness is you become keenly aware of how you are transformed by the elements. You become inexorably changed and shaped to go out into the world once you’ve passed through wind, water and fire.

Some of my best and most challenging moments in the BWCA were fighting with my group to get across the lake on a gusty day or huddling with the group on the side of a hill as the thunderstorm passed overhead.

At first, you feel like the elements are going to kill you, your muscles ache from paddling, a bolt of lightning strikes nearby, but then, by the grace of God, you make it to your campsite, and the storms pass overhead, and the skies clear.

You are reminded that the water, and the wind and the fire didn’t kill you, they made you stronger. And this takes away your fear so that the next day when the winds come, and the rain pours, and the lightning crashes, you’re ready to face the challenge again.

This is what baptism is doing in our life. It is killing our sinfulness and our fear and in? its place we’re strengthened daily to overcome the next obstacle and go on our next adventure. And it’s in these moments that the words of Isaiah are especially potent in our lives.

“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.”

What I love about this verse from Isaiah is that you get this sense that God searched us out, and is searching us out. God is calling our names and finding us in our struggles.

So in those moments when we feel depressed, sad, alone, confused, those times in life where we feel like for every inch we move ourselves forward, we’re pushed two inches back. Then we remember that God brings us through the water and fire and wind to be redeemed. We remember that God gives us the Holy Spirit in baptism and Jesus dies for us on the cross. The Trinity crosses rivers and oceans and fires to bring us to salvation.

In this we’re given the strength to believe and hope that we can overcome anything that life throws at us. God never lets us go backwards, but continually draws us deeper into the Trinity with the promise that he will see us through to our salvation.

Remembering our baptism in this way helps us to face our fears, and our trials.

For example, have you ever had that moment in your life where you worried whether or not you were going to heaven?  You’re scared that you’ve done something so wrong that God would never forgive you?

What if every time we passed that baptismal font we were reminded that we were given the Holy Spirit as a dove, and a sign of the peace that God has made with us.

What if we marked ourselves with the sign of the cross to remember that God has crossed oceans to be with us, and there is nothing we can do to separate ourselves from him.

Or have you ever felt like you’re too weak to take on the next challenge?

Maybe you’re in a toxic relationship that you need to get out of or maybe a life-giving one you can get into.
Maybe you need a new line of work, or to rededicate yourself to the old.
Maybe you’re scared to talk about your faith with people because you’re afraid of how you’ll be perceived.

Then, just maybe, touching that water would remind us that the same water, and fire and Spirit that strengthened and prepared Jesus Christ for ministry … is with us.

Do not fear, says the LORD, for I have redeemed you.

This is the promise of Baptism – that whatever trials we are facing in our lives, whatever it is we fear in our death, that the Triune God is redeeming us, bringing us new life.

So go forward with the confidence that the LORD sits enthroned over the elements. So when the fires come you will not be burned, when the waters rage you will not drown. And when the winds blow, you will not be pushed back. And know in your baptism the Triune God gives you strength and peace to face your next challenge, and begin your next adventure.

Thanks be to God.

The celebration of the Epiphany leads us to see the light of the star which points to God’s love for us known in our Lord Jesus, a light which is ours for guidance and help, should we remember to look for it and know what to do with it.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen, The Epiphany of Our Lord; texts: Matthew 2:1-12, Ephesians 3:1-12; Isaiah 60:1-6

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

I used to lock up the building each night at St. John’s, my previous parish.  It was a separate job we hired out, but traditionally one of the staff had it.  It got so that I knew the building so well I could and would walk through it without a flashlight and check all the doors, even in pitch darkness.  One night Hannah, probably a junior in high school at the time, was locking up with me, and we were heading through the social hall.  Now someone had moved some of the chairs around, and one was where it shouldn’t have been, and I smashed my shin against it, hard.  I might have said something I didn’t want my teenage daughter to hear.  I straightened up, walked on, and not two steps later I hit another chair that wasn’t supposed to be there, even harder.  Remarkably, for any of you who have come to think I possess a modicum of intelligence, I repeated this event a third time.  Each time, it was harder to hold back not only language, but anger and irritation at whoever hadn’t put the chairs back.  As I stood there in pain, rubbing my shin, wondering at the coincidence that it was the same shin all three times, my very intelligent daughter said quietly, “Um, Daddy, maybe we could turn a light on.”

I thought of this last week when I read Isaiah’s powerful promise we just heard.  “Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you.  For darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the LORD will arise upon you, and his glory will appear over you.”  If you are walking in thick darkness, “gross” darkness, as the King James version has it, it is good news that light is coming, and if the darkness is the darkness of a world without God’s love and grace, then light from God arising is also very good news.

Unless you persist in walking in darkness and banging your shins against the evils of this world.  On Epiphany we celebrate the bringing of the light of God in Jesus to people who were not of the chosen people of God, broadening the Good News of Jesus’ birth beyond just one race of people.  Magi from the east, outsiders, foreigners, see a star and follow it to the place where Jesus and his family are.  And they see the gift of God to the world in that little child.

The only problem is, too often we don’t emulate the Magi, and so we miss the star that leads us to our Lord Jesus.  Even though Epiphany is about the light of God shining into our darkness, we end up wandering in the darkness of our lives without the benefit of God’s light.

The gift of light into darkness is an important image of the seasons of Advent and Christmas, but it becomes the main focus of the season of Epiphany.

The image of light in darkness is so powerful.  Think of absolute darkness.  Then think of lighting a single candle.  Isn’t it amazing how the darkness dissipates?  How when you open a door in a room that is pitch black and there is light on the other side of the door, the light removes the darkness, not the other way around?  Little wonder that John’s Gospel speaks so hopefully about the Light which the darkness cannot comprehend or overcome.

The promise we’ve been celebrating is that God has come into the thick darkness of the world and brought the light of Jesus:  a Prince of Peace to lead us away from violence and war; a Great Physician to heal our pain and suffering; a Savior to free us from our sinful ways and make us new; a risen Lord to give us life eternal in the face of ever-present death.

There is no question that we know darkness in our lives, that the world seems often shrouded in darkness.  And no question as well that we want the light of God to dispel that darkness.  But somehow we still miss out on it.

We so often live our lives from moment to moment, without a clear purpose or direction, or desire to change.  Our lives get busy and complicated, so we just take things as they are, and as they come, even though light is available should we want it.

We allow ourselves to fall into bad habits of not praying regularly and seeking God’s will and wisdom.  We don’t stay connected deeply to God’s Word and try to learn how it can and should shape and guide our lives.

We seem to run after all sorts of things in this world that don’t satisfy us, and don’t take the time to stop and look for God’s direction or light.  We too easily fence God off from the bulk of our lives, our decisions, our planning, our introspection, even our resolutions for a New Year, as if we can live most of our lives without God.

And then we wonder why the darkness confuses us, harms us or others, pervades our world.  But we don’t change our daily existence very often.  It’s sort of like we just keep banging our shins and hoping it won’t happen next time.

If things are going well, we might not notice that this is a problem.  But when darkness comes, we can find that we’re unprepared, and lost.  When a loved one falls ill, people don’t know what to do, don’t know where God is, don’t know where hope is.  When our bad choices lead us to problems, individually or collectively, we blame others, or God in our fear.  When a job is taken away, or a house is foreclosed, people are terrified and confused.  When tragedy strikes close to home, and in our modern world, even when it strikes folks far away, people are angry and lost.  Where is God in all this darkness? we wonder.

So we have this disjunction between what we know and what we do, between this reality of the modern world and our proclamation today that God has come into our world to bring light to our darkness.

We say we believe that this light brings hope in every place of darkness in our world.  Hope in the face of all the difficulty and tragedy that fills the world, that God has come to transform that and heal it.  Hope also that this light of Jesus shines on our pathways of life and leads us to a new way of living, a way that is the way of God, re-directing us and guiding us to a life of meaning and purpose and direction.

The distressing thing is, the Church has known this for 2,000 years, and we have more Christian people lost than ever before it seems.

It might be worth our while to look at the Magi today, since they’re the main actors in our story.  It turns out they’re very important to us, because they remind us to look for the star.  To turn on the lights instead of stumbling in darkness.

What the Magi teach us is to look for the light and know what it means.

They say to Herod:  “We have seen his star in the East, at its rising, and have come to worship him.”  Remember this: there were lots of people who saw that star who didn’t know what it meant.  The Magi studied the stars and believed they gave signs and direction to people on earth.  When they saw the star, they knew what it meant: a king for the world was born to the Jewish people.  Many others who saw that star didn’t know what it was about.

You see, all the light in the world isn’t going to help us if we don’t know where it shines, and don’t know what it means for us.  The headlights on our cars are most useful when we know they are intended to light up the road in front of us, instead of leaving them off, or thinking they’re decorative lights to be used to brighten up our garages.  This means knowing where our light, our star is, and knowing what to do with it.

There are several stars, several lights which God gives us to shine in our darkness, and all are powerful if we only know to look for them.  We are given the Word of God, the Sacraments, the gift of each other, the Body of Christ, and all shine God’s light in our lives.  But let’s just consider the one of these three which teaches us about the others, the light to our path that is the written Word of God.

The Magi teach us today to know our light.  Study it, so we know what it is telling us.  So they would say, study God’s Word.  Read it regularly.  Worship regularly also, so we hear it (a key way Martin Luther believed the Good News comes to us).

Will it always enlighten our lives?  Not in obvious ways every time.  But study and learning takes time.  The Magi studied the stars for years before finding one which led them to God’s life and light.  And so it is with God’s written Word.  There are passages that made little sense to me ten years, twenty years ago that now seem very clear and helpful.  And I hope in another 10 years, or 20 years, the Word will be even more clear to me.

And the more we are immersed in God’s Word, the more we meet the Living Word of God to which it points, our Lord Jesus, and the more we are shaped.  It becomes less a proof text kind of thing where we’re looking for a direct answer to a specific problem, and more a shaper of our lives, a light for our path, as Psalm 119 says, a direction for us to follow, and the voice of Jesus our Lord.  And since the Magi studied stars all their lives, we can expect the learning of God’s Word will take us at least that long.

But the Magi also teach us another, very important thing, the message my daughter gave me in the dark: if you know where the light is, then do something, follow it.

The Magi said, “we have seen his star in the East, at its rising, and have come to worship him.”  The second half of that sentence teaches us this second thing we learn from the Magi.  Once you see the light, you follow it.  There were probably other astrologers in Persia, or wherever the Magi came from, who understood what the star might mean.  But it’s doubtful they all came.  And only the ones who came saw the light of God in that little child.

So, too, it is with us.  There are plenty of Christians who have heard the truth about God, and own Bibles, who come to worship, but who are lost in the darkness of the world.  Ourselves included, sometimes.  So the challenge of the Magi is that once we have begun to be immersed in the study of God’s Word, we then must learn how it can and will change us, lead us somewhere, lead us to see the true face of God for us.  The Magi call us to let God’s Word truly guide us to change how we live, how we walk in this world, how we know God.

This is the mark of a Christian who knows where the light of God is: that person lives in the light.  Their lives are different, shaped by God.  They make choices based on the Triune God’s will for their lives and based on what is good and right in God’s eyes, not based on spur-of-the-moment thinking, or selfishness and greed, or anything else.  They don’t stumble aimlessly through life, but live always seeking God’s light to brighten the path ahead.  Which means that though they still might stumble from time to time, because they can see they’ll know where to walk to get out of the mess.

And they live in the presence of the God the star-revealed Child now reveals to us all, in the love of a God who loves us beyond death.

Our hope on Epiphany is that we have the chance to let God’s written Word do what God wants it to: lead us to the Lord of life, and to a life of following the Lord.  A life lived in God’s light, even in a world of darkness and pain.  A life which shows us God’s grace in all things.

It’s a miraculous gift that God brings light into our lives.

Epiphany, the season of light, always reminds us and recalls us to that gift.  If we ignore and neglect the gift of God’s light, we will stumble in darkness.  And there is no need for us to do that.

So today, let us ask God to make us like the Magi of old: people who each day learn more and more about God’s Word and plan for us, and so know God’s light in our darkness; but also people who then follow that light and are changed by it.

We have seen his star.  Let’s follow it and worship him, and walk as children of light.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

The coming of the Son of God into the world as a human child signifies not only the coming of God to be one of us, among us, but also begins God’s process of bring us back to be with God and like God.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen, The Name of Jesus; texts: Numbers 6:22-27; Psalm 8; Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:15-21

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

There was an article in the Star Tribune on Sunday that disturbed some of our members, who mentioned it to me after worship.  I hadn’t read it then, but I did when I got home.  It was about a nationally-known local pastor who was retiring, and who has a reputation for fiery preaching, for proclaiming God’s wrath on people in order to call them to confession of their sin.  Included in his preaching over the years has been his attributing of disasters, tragedies and attacks to God’s just wrath on those who suffered them.  For this pastor, this theology is rooted in understanding the sovereignty of God.   God is in charge, therefore all things are attributed to God’s will and plan, even such things some might classify as human evil or natural disaster.  This is in keeping with his theological tradition, and we certainly have heard that from others of that tradition.  Also central to his preaching has been his belief that, according to what he said to the interviewer, “if you try to throw away a wrathful God, nothing in Christianity makes sense.  The cross certainly doesn’t make sense anymore, where [Jesus] died for sinners.” [1]  In this, he’s in line with one of the theologies of the atonement the Church has sometimes held, that Jesus’ death appeases the just and righteous anger of the Father in our stead, substituting for our punishment.  Without Jesus, according to this theory, then the wrath of the Creator would pour out on us like flames of destruction.

C. S. Lewis reminds us that theories of the atonement aren’t necessary to receive the benefits of the work of Jesus in his death and resurrection, just as one doesn’t need to understand how food is good for us to be nourished by eating.  While this is true, how we understand God’s attitude toward us and the world is an important part of how we live our faith.  If we believe God’s attitude and reason for coming among us was love and a desire to bring us back through love, then we might also be open to the possibility of a relationship with God, that is, if God wants such a thing.  If we believe the coming of Jesus was to deflect from us the just wrath and anger of the Father, then we’ll love to be with Jesus, but God the Father might possibly remain a frightening presence to us, which raises all sorts of questions about faith in a Triune God, or at least loving a Triune God instead of one of the Three apart from another.  So while we don’t need to know how the Triune God effects our salvation through the life, death and resurrection of the Son as long as such salvation is accomplished, it might affect our lives as disciples profoundly to try and understand just what God was and is doing.

To that end, listen to this alternate understanding of the reasons for the coming of the Son of God among us, in this ancient antiphon sung by the Church on this day, the eighth day of Christmas, the day of Jesus’ circumcision and naming:

“O admirable exchange: the Creator of human-kind, taking on a living body, was worthy to be born of a virgin, and, coming forth as a human without seed, has given us his deity in abundance.”

O admirable exchange, or as the Latin would say, “admirabile commercium,” a marvelous transaction.  Here the understanding is that there is a deep mystery in the coming of Jesus which entails an exchange, a transaction: the Creator takes on human flesh, and in turn, gives us divine attributes, divinity itself.  Echoing Paul in Romans 3, who said that God’s righteousness becomes our own righteousness when God takes on our sinfulness, this is a view of God that is very different from a wrathful Father who is appeased by the Son’s death.  And on this feast day of Jesus’ naming, the Church chose to sing about this wonder, this mystery, that the coming of the Son was God’s loving attempt to restore us to what we were meant to be.  Eight days after Christmas, where we celebrated God’s coming among us as a human child, now we are reminded of the second half of the transaction, that we in turn are given deity, are made godly, by this coming.

Of course, beautiful or no, the question for us is, is this true?  Does the wrath of God have anything to do with us?

There’s no question that the Scriptures speak of God’s wrath and sovereignty.  Many times God is described as furious with our sinfulness and wandering.  You don’t have to look very hard in the Old Testament to find examples, going all the way back to the story of the flood.  God is described as hating human sin.

And likewise, God’s always making claims to be in charge, to be in control of the world.  As the Creator of all, the Scriptures attribute all things to God’s will and plan.  God punishes in Scripture, God forgives in Scripture.  But God does it.

Yet this only tells part of the Scriptural story.

It only tells half of God’s attitude toward the world and fallen humanity.  It misses the constant reminders of God’s love and grace toward us, even in our sin, as we see throughout the Old Testament, like when in Hosea God waxes greatly in anger and then ends with poignant love and forgiveness.  It misses the grief of God after the flood which leads to God’s new plan to lead a family into a relationship with God that will eventually bless the whole world.

And it only tells part of God’s sovereignty, missing the reality that God leaves us to choose our own sin or goodness and doesn’t always intervene.  Cain kills Abel, and that is not God’s will.  Human sin is so great, and not of God’s will, that the flood happens.  David has Uriah killed, against God’s will.  Talking about divine sovereignty is far more complicated than claiming all things, evil and good, to be part of God’s plan and will.  Sometimes, the Scriptures say, God limits God’s own sovereignty.

So the point would be finding an understanding of God’s view of us that encompasses all of what the Scriptures say about God and humanity.  That would require a great deal more time than we have for a sermon, so what if we just look at the readings assigned for today and see what we can see?

Today the message of Scripture speaks not of appeasing wrath, but of divine searching, divine loving, and divine inheritance.

Whatever we might say about God’s wrath over our sin, the psalmist this morning has a different view of God’s attitude.  The psalmist is filled with wonder that God loves us, even that God notices us at all.  Compared to the grandeur of creation, who are we?, we sang today.  Yet, the psalmist believes that in fact, we are so loved by God that we are lifted to the status of highest of the creation, higher even than the angels.  It causes us the same wonder and awe, but the first hint of God’s attitude toward us today is that somehow, against all odds, God loves and cares for us.

Paul takes us beyond awe into stunned silence, however, for Paul describes God’s action toward us as even more than exalting us to be above other creatures.  Paul says that we are in fact so loved by God we are adopted as children of God.  Paul addresses the wrath of God: we are under the law, we are under God’s judgement.

But for Paul, God’s answer is to send the Son, in the fullness of time, to redeem us by adopting us as children, not to appease God’s anger.  By joining us to the Triune God in such a way that we share the same relationship to the Father that the Son does.  So the attitude of the Father toward our sin is that it cannot stand, but the answer is not wrath which the Son needs to deflect.  The answer is sending the Son to work our salvation in order that we can be adopted as children of God.

Heirs of God, Paul says.  People who receive divinity as an inheritance, godliness from the Triune God, even as the Son receives humanity and sinfulness and brings it into God’s reality.  And now we begin to see the theology of the miraculous transaction, don’t we?

But let’s not forget the gift of our first reading, our blessing by God with a name.  When you adopt a child, you give it a name, and in Numbers that name is declared to be God’s name.

When we say, “The LORD bless you and keep you,” we are substituting, as do the Jewish people, the title “LORD” for the proper name of God as Israel knew it, Yahweh, thus avoiding even threatening to break the second commandment.  That is the name, however, God intends to be laid upon the people as a blessing.

But in Jesus we have revealed to us a deeper proper name of God, a name veiled in mystery because we cannot fully grasp it, but a name of life and hope for us: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  And even as the LORD, in giving a benediction to be used by Aaron and the priests, a benediction we use to this day, says that this benediction is the gift of the LORD’s name as blessing on the people, even so is this new name of God given us in blessing.

It should be no surprise that we receive it when, as Paul promised, we are adopted, for we receive it when we are baptized.  And in that baptism we are covered with the name of the Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and linked to the life and love of God in a profound way.

And we are entered into this commercial transaction God is doing, which is a wonder to us.

O admirable exchange, the Church has sung on this day.  Our joy is that it is not only a beautiful thought, but that it is also true.

It’s the only way to comprehend the full breadth of the message of the Scriptures about God’s answer to our sinfulness, about God’s reason for coming as a child among us, about God’s hopes for us as a result.

If it sounds familiar to some of you, it may be because Luther was deeply fond of this image and used the expression on several occasions.  Though it is true that at least once he understood the exchange to be a little more like the substitutionary model, that Jesus takes our punishment and we go free, in Luther’s theology the predominant way he understands this is the joyful reception of God’s righteousness that we receive in exchange for God taking on our sinfulness.

The beauty of this is that it also takes into account the Trinity as being one God, not Three individual actors who are not of one mind, one will.  This idea not only accounts for the love of the Son for us, it also accounts for the love of the Father, and the gift of the Spirit to make our adoption alive, real, to give us our inheritance fully.

And it becomes our joy this morning on the octave of Christmas, that we begin to have our eyes opened to the full truth of what God is about for us: coming to be with us as one of us that we might come to be like God, as children of God.

It is a wonder, a marvel, a miracle.  And it is the source of our joy now and always.

Now, in the fullness of time, this is our hope and our life.  May God continue to work our adoption in us, working in us that which is good and pleasing, giving us the godliness we need to look more and more like the children of God we are, more and more like this Son of God who began the transaction, who began God’s plan to bring life to us and to all the people of this world, so that God’s joy might be fulfilled.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

[1] “Fiery pastor leaving the pulpit,” Star Tribune, 30 December 2012, section B, p. 4.