James tells us how we can know if our faith is alive.  He teaches us that our faith, while a gift, is a dead possession if it is not producing new life and healing for the world, to all people, regardless of who they are.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen, Time after Pentecost, Sunday 23, year B; texts: Mark 7:24-37; James 2:1-17; Isaiah 35:4a-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

With the benefit of hindsight, it’s obvious.  Jesus is clearly from God, God’s Son as proclaimed.  It’s very simple when you have Isaiah and Mark, both in the same book, held in one hand.  Isaiah promises that when God comes to save – and these were needed words, important promises to the chosen people who feel separated from their God – when God comes to save, says Isaiah, the deaf will hear.  The blind will see.  The lame will leap like deer.  And in Mark we see Jesus do just that – the deaf hear.  The blind see.  The lame walk.  Jesus is God’s promised healing.  That’s obvious.

What’s also obvious is this.  Though we have the advantage of the Scriptures completely telling the story of Jesus and his love for us and the world, telling of his death and resurrection, promising us new life now and life after death in a world to come, though we have 20-20 hindsight on all the people of the Bible, we are more often than not living like the desperate chosen people to whom Isaiah speaks.  We act as people of faith who are still worried.  People who are fearful.  People who wonder when and if God will come to this world, to us, and make a difference.  And people who act as if faith has no connection to the way we live.

And it’s odd.  We use words again and again that sound like we believe Jesus is risen and offering us love and life.  We speak of grace, of Gospel, of Good News.  We claim that the Church is God’s gracious ambassador to a broken world, offering life in Christ to all.  We speak of our faith as if it’s something precious to us.  But too often we live with each other and in this world as if we haven’t ever really received such grace, such Gospel, such Good News.

Well, it may be partly because we haven’t spent enough time with the letter of James.  You know what they say, Brother Martin didn’t like it.  His famous observation that James is a letter of straw has led Lutherans to discount it, ignore it, act as if we needn’t pay attention to it.

But James talks about visible signs of one’s faith.  How you can see if faith is real, if faith is alive.  Luther, understandably, got nervous about mixing up works that we do with the grace and love of God that is ours freely.  But if you look at his criticism, he may have been missing James’ point, and even he saw great value in James.  It certainly can be argued that we Lutherans have missed the point of James all this time at any rate.  And that it has cost us.

Because without James’ reminder, faith can become abstract, a concept, a doctrine.

And that’s our great temptation as Lutherans – we can talk about faith until we’re blue in the face.  But we don’t share our faith very well, or very often.  And it doesn’t always shape our lives in the world.

And so we find it endlessly important to debate the smallest of points with each other.  Now, we should value intelligence and good understanding.  But we have made bickering an art form.  Because we have made faith and grace “concepts” instead of realities in our lives, we even fight to the death, almost.  People feel they are defending God, defending truth.  So Lutherans who otherwise seem sane can justify any unkindness, any mockery, any slander, any abuse on the grounds that they are fighting for the truth.

And what’s worse than that, too often we’ve valued such “right thinking,” such “knowing” far more than living our faith.  As long as we’ve got our understanding in order, all is well.  Even if it doesn’t change who we are.  How we live our lives, how we treat others.

Here’s all that James is saying.  This is very simple.  He says, “Faith is good.  It is gift.  But if it is received, if it is real, if you know it, you will look different.  Act different.  Be different.”

James is not substituting works for grace.  Not even remotely.  He’s just saying that once you’ve lived in Graceland (to use a phrase a friend of mine finds helpful), once you know that you are loved completely by God, you will be different.  Nothing will be the same.

James is criticized for not teaching anything of the cross and resurrection of Jesus, but we know nothing of what he would say about that, because that wasn’t the point of his writing.  His point is to challenge people to see that their faith is dead when people are hungry, when people have no clothes, when people don’t know God’s love, and all Christians want to do is talk to them.

Simply, for us as Lutherans, it means this:  If we believe in grace, we want to live in grace, and with grace, and through grace.  Faith as concept says, “God loves all.”  Or argues about that.  Faith as reality lives God’s love for all in the world.  That’s the difference.

It turns out that James and Jesus are in full agreement with how faith is lived.

We see this in other kinds of healing Jesus did, healing that wasn’t necessarily the physical healing promised and fulfilled in Isaiah and Mark today.  Jesus took proud people, people who knew everything, people who were on top, and helped them see that they were loved by God simply for who they were, not for what they had or did, something James sees as well.  And that healing led them to share all they had with the poor and needy, to see them as sisters and brothers.  People like Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, important leaders, became servants of Jesus, even caring for his body and its burial and serving the Church after the resurrection.  People like Paul, highly educated, a Roman citizen, a leader among the Pharisees, who became Jesus’ apostle of grace after being a persecutor of the early Church.

Jesus took no-account people, people who were stepped on, downtrodden, and lifted them up with love, something James exhorts his people to do today.  They, for the first time, knew they were important.  And look what they became.  Mary Magdalene, the first apostle and preacher of the Resurrection.  Joanna, Susanna.  All the women who were key leaders.  And poor fishermen, illiterate peasants, who became inspired sharers of the love of the risen Christ in the world, who gave their lives to tell that love, who left fear behind in the joy of faith in Christ.

But we have to take a moment now and look at one odd part of today’s Gospel, because it appears that even Jesus might have had to learn to look for broader consequences of the love he came to bring, changes to his idea of who will get it than what he began with.

It’s a strange story, and we’ll never know if Jesus was just testing this poor Gentile woman whose daughter was possessed, or if he genuinely was focused only on Israel at that point.  But because of that incredibly brave foreign woman, we are able to see something astonishing.  Jesus, this Jewish Messiah, begins doing among the Gentiles what he was already doing among the chosen people.  The deaf man healed today was in Gentile territory, so likely a Gentile himself.  And Jesus next does another miraculous feeding with loaves and fish, but this time in Gentile territory.

Whatever the reason for Jesus’ apparent partiality, it’s gone now.  And suddenly it becomes clear: the grace of God in Christ is for all people, no matter what.  There are no divisions, there is neither slave nor free, Jew nor Greek, male nor female, but all are one in Christ Jesus, as Paul would teach the Church.  And this leads someone like James to chide his people for acting as if they have faith, but living in such a way that it isn’t clear they follow such a Jesus, serve such an inclusive God.

So this is how we know that Jesus is real, Jesus is God’s Son, Jesus is God’s eternal love for us and the world.  By how we are changed by our faith in him.  And by how we live.

It’s how we know our faith is alive, James says.  When like Jesus before us, we open our arms to all who need God’s grace and healing, we’ll know.

So, when people who think that the only way they can be OK with God is to get it right, and they’re convinced that they always are getting it right, when they are changed, we’ll know.  When these people realize instead that they are loved by God for who they are, not for their perceived rightness, and that they are called to love in return, then we’ll know.

And when people who have been told all their lives that they are worthless know God’s love, we’ll know.  People who have been put down and sent away, who can’t believe they could be loved by anyone and so often are not able to love others themselves, when these people realize instead that they are loved, and blessed, and important, and begin to share that love in return, then we’ll know.

And finally, this: when each one of us is healed of the things that block us from living in love, we’ll know.  When that which prevents us from acting in love, giving of ourselves in love, is removed, and we begin to share the love of God that we first saw clearly on the cross – a love that knows no limits, that has no fear, that trusts and gives and changes the world by giving – when we see these things happen in us, and love starts to flow from us, then we’ll know.

This is how we’ll know our faith is alive, when we are changed by it.

And we do not need to be afraid.  If we make mistakes in our loving – and we will – we’ll trust that God will forgive us, just as we trust in God’s forgiveness of anything else we have done.  If we face fear in our lives, such as facing pain or suffering or even death, we’ll know that we are not alone, because the God of the universe holds us firmly by the hand.   And when we see someone hungry, we won’t argue about what faith is.  We’ll live in our faith and give them some soup.

In Barbara Kingsolver’s book The Poisonwood Bible, she tells that at one point the Southern Baptists had spent a whole convention debating over a very important theological doctrine: they were debating the size of heaven, how many cubits wide it was, and so on.  What made me want to weep in her story was the response of a little girl.  All she was afraid of was this: once you are done measuring, will there be enough room for me?  That’s the concern of our woman for her daughter today, the concern of the world as they hear our proclamation but look at our lives, the concern of James for the lives of his people.  If our failing to live the Good News causes any little one to wonder if there’s room for them in God’s love, we don’t have any reason to believe we even know what Good News is.

Let’s not be afraid to live grace, live faith, instead of keeping them as concepts.  When we do, we will find the healing love of Jesus that has no end, and we will wonder how we ever lived any other way.  Once you’ve lived in Graceland, there’s no place else that will do, for anyone.  Because it’s for everyone.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

Our baptism anoints us for a life being Christ in the world, where we live lives which fully integrate our hearts, our heads, our hands, and our voices to bring the Good News of God’s grace into the world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen, Time after Pentecost, Sunday 22, year B; texts: James 1:17-27; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

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’ve had a rash of horrible violence again this summer, where we barely process one shooting spree when another one comes along.  What’s strange about the aftermath, beyond the obvious ridiculousness that we apparently still aren’t permitted to have a rational debate on gun control in this country, no matter how many of these incidents occur, is that the media instead spends a great deal of time trying to sort out whether anyone could have predicted that this person would do such a thing.  Somehow we seem to want to know that there was something wrong here, that a normal person wouldn’t do this, that the signs were all there if only someone had seen them.  In the case of the Marine veteran this past week, apparently he didn’t keep it a secret and even posted online that he was going to do something horrible.  But in many cases, including the one in Colorado, it seems we get the standard line, “He was really quiet, a nice person; no one had any idea he could do something like this.”  How many times have we heard it in any number of different tragic scenarios: “He was a nice neighbor, he helped the kids”?

Clearly there is something about the human nature which permits us to show one side to other people, while feeling and thinking something very different inside.  In literature, Robert Louis Stevenson explored this idea with the case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, who have become iconic emblems of this phenomenon.  But even in our own lives, where we’re not turning into nightly monsters or going on shooting sprees, we have a tendency to not have integrity between our inner selves and our outer lives.  Whether or not we admit it about ourselves, when someone whom we trust or love, a friend or a family member, or someone to whom we look as a trusted authority, someone whom we have come to admire, shows that they are not as good a person as we thought, we feel betrayed, let down, we consider ourselves foolish to have allowed ourselves to be duped.

The point is, we know this phenomenon exists.  So when Jesus and James today begin questioning our integrity, when they speak of hearts being in different places than words or actions, we understand what they’re talking about.  We may not agree they’re speaking of us; that we must consider today.  But this is not uncharted territory.  And given how badly we feel when we encounter this in others we have trusted, perhaps we can understand the intensity with which this point is made in both these readings today.

James and Jesus actually come from opposite sides of the same metaphor to say the same thing, to call us to an integrated life in Christ.

We’re going to spend all of September hearing from the letter of James in our worship, and this theme we hear today will continue in various ways in the next weeks.  Today he speaks of being doers of the Word, not just hearers.  Next week he’ll talk about our faith only being worth anything if it’s seen in our works, in caring for those who need help.  On Sept. 16 we’ll hear his admonitions on our words, our tongue, and how we speak in the world.  In the fourth week he turns to the problem of conflict and antagonism between sisters and brothers in the same community.  Finally, we’ll hear some comforting words about how we might pray for and support each other in our need and suffering, even illness and death.

But today he sets it all up by describing people who “deceive” their own hearts by thinking they’re religious but not living or acting in that way.  Along with admonitions to put aside wickedness and to be quick to listen and slow to speak, setting aside our anger, he comes to the main point:  “Be doers of the word and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.”

James is speaking to disciples who have heard the Word of God but for whom it isn’t evident in their lives.  For James, they’re saying that their hearts and minds are with God, but their actions aren’t showing it at all.  So they’re deceiving their own hearts.

Jesus, on the other hand, sees the same problem from the other direction: people whose actions are good, but whose hearts are wicked.  This is part of a long section where Jesus challenges the leaders of the people on their criticism of his disciples for not following proper rituals, of handwashing, of which foods to eat, and so on.

It’s important to note that Jesus isn’t necessarily criticizing the rituals themselves.  Each of the ritual actions and structures the Pharisees helped set up were intended for good, as ways to be sure the people of God kept the law of God.  The laws in the Torah are many and complex.  So many systems, including a special ritual handwashing before meals, were set in place to keep people from sinning.

Jesus doesn’t seem interested in shutting these down.  Rather, he’s bothered by the hearts of the people who are criticizing his disciples’ practice.  So he tells them that instead of worrying about all these externals, they might want to look into their hearts, because that’s where all the bad stuff is found.  Fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly.

It’s a standard first century list of vices.  But Jesus says that the source of such evil is inside.  And he challenges his disciples, and the Jewish leaders, to pay attention to where their hearts are.  Just doing the rituals God has commanded, or even the ones people have set up to help obey God’s laws, is no substitute for having our hearts cleansed and changed.  Because the state of our inward lives is far more indicative of who we really are, Jesus says.

Both Jesus and James help us see the disconnect in our own lives, the gaps between our inner selves and our outer lives, and they call us to honesty about who we really are.

And for both of them, the key question is one of deceit, lying to ourselves.  We might be feeling very good about our faith and our lives, and where our heart is, but if we’re not acting on that to care for others, there’s no point to our religious lives at all, James says.  Ultimately, he says, we’re deceiving our hearts to think that we need do nothing.  He goes so far as to say that if you want real religion, care for orphans and widows and keep your lives clean, and that’s enough.

On the other hand, we might find ourselves doing lots of things that look Christian, like worship, prayer, even Bible study, but our hearts might be in a completely different place, Jesus says.  If what we do in this room each week doesn’t change our hearts, make us new people, cause us to be different in the world, there’s no point to it, Jesus would say.  Then we’re only honoring Jesus with our lips, but our hearts are far from him.
So the question is, can we be honest with ourselves, about our own lives and about the life of the congregation and the greater Church, to seek God’s healing and restoring of an integrated life?

We will be confessing our sins before each liturgy this month, in part because of James’ pointed concerns and the importance he makes of our integrity, and our need for honest assessment of our broken reality.  So when we confess, when you confess, when there is that silent time, what goes through your mind?  What do we consider?

Are we merely looking for a divine “Get out of jail free” card, hoping that if we’ve done things wrong we won’t be punished?  Do we, as we considered last week, seek forgiveness from God but without wanting God to change or transform us in any way?

James tells us today that every perfect gift, every generous act of giving, is from above, from our heavenly Father.  His whole letter is about such generosity, such giving, and he starts by saying its source is God.  What if in our confession we not only confessed things we’d done, but we also confessed our lack of integrity, the gap between our thoughts and our actions, our hearts and our words, and asked God to bring these together?  If we considered our confession not only as a series of things we did wrong that need to be wiped out, but a whole state of our being – whether individual, or the congregation, or the whole Church – which needs not only forgiveness but transformation?

Were we to confess in that way, we’d better be ready for what happens next.  We’d better be ready to be changed, and become new people.  Because that’s the gift God has prepared for us.

What we hear today is that we are not what we are meant to be, but the first step is happening, the recognition of the truth about ourselves.

Today we admit that we do not have the integrity of our lives that is meant to be our gift in our baptism.  That we have hidden agendas, gaps between our inner selves and our outer lives.  And that we are called to integrate our whole selves into the kind of person Jesus was, the kind of person we want to be.  Into the kind of institution the Church could be, but rarely is, the kind of congregation which could change the world were it to exist.

It’s a question of lining up our hearts and voices, our hands and minds, that they all reflect the grace of God which gives us life and hope and joy, the grace we come here each week to receive, praise, celebrate, eat, sing, and share.  If this experience each week does nothing to our hearts and lives, nothing to bring us to integrity of life as a congregation and as individual people, then Jesus’ criticisms are apt and true.

But in fact, we have already experienced that change, that transformation as we worship and are fed.  With the help of James and Jesus, we know there is much more God needs to do, there is integration yet to come.  But with hearts cleansed in confession, souls fed with Jesus’ body and blood, and voices filled with the grace of God which surpasses all understanding, we go from here each week joyfully anticipating what God will do next, what the Spirit will continue to do in us, until hearts, hands, voices, and minds are joined in bringing God’s Good News to all the world.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

What we eat and drink changes our bodies, changes who we are from within.  Today Jesus invites us to take him in, be filled with him, eat him – and we also will be changed, from the inside out, into different people, people like Jesus.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen, Time after Pentecost, Sunday 20, year B; texts: John 6:51-58; Ephesians 5:15-20; Proverbs 9:1-6

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

This is where it gets really difficult, isn’t it?  For some weeks we’ve been working through this sixth chapter of John, and a grouping of Jesus’ teachings about himself and his life for the world.  We’ve heard people compare him to Moses who gave them manna, and we’ve heard his response that he isn’t Moses, he’s the bread from heaven, the new manna.  He’s called himself the bread of life, and said that those who come to him will never be hungry.  All this after miraculously feeding thousands with only a few loaves and fish.  This has challenged us.  But today’s words really cross a line.

Now he says that the bread he will give is his flesh.  And then he says, “very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.”  Five times today he tells those who follow him that they are to eat him.  Even drink his blood.  And in Greek, the verbs change from a regular verb for eating in the first instance to later uses of a verb that is better translated “gnaw, crunch, munch.”  So the language gets more intense as the passage goes on.  Don’t just eat and drink me, Jesus says, chew on me, gnaw on me.  This is really hard stuff to hear, to comprehend, to understand.

Now, it seems obvious that we tie this passage to our understanding of the Eucharist.  Surely this is what we mean in the Lord’s Supper when we say that we eat and drink the body and blood of our Lord.  We use this language.  It seems likely that John’s community, for whom this Gospel was written, would have made connections of their own to their practices of sharing the Lord’s Meal when they heard this.  But it may be too easy and too quick to jump to the Eucharist right away.  Martin Luther, in a sermon on John 6, says this cannot refer to the Sacrament because Jesus promises eternal life in this eating and drinking and some people have eaten of the Sacrament and still faced damnation. [1]

Well, that may not be an argument we want to make.  But I do want to hold off thinking of Holy Communion for a moment and focus on this very real, very disturbing, but potentially life-giving image Jesus is laying before us.  What does it mean to eat him, drink him?  Why such visceral language here?  It’s so powerful, such strong language, that perhaps it is meant to signify something equally powerful, equally strong, and worthy of our attention.

We have this expression, “You are what you eat.”  And we know from science that is literally true.

Originally it seems to have come from nineteenth and twentieth century healthy food initiatives.  People were encouraged to eat healthily so that they would also be healthy.  There wasn’t a sense that you became the thing that you ate, though.

But increasingly I’ve read of studies which show that what we eat actually does have a serious effect on us, changes us.  The chemicals we take in our food, for example, show up in our cell structure, and change our systems, from our immune system to our nervous system.  We know that if we eat fatty foods, we’ll have fatty deposits in our blood vessels.  But now it looks like some things we ingest literally change our body into something different.

I’m now straying to the edge of my scientific knowledge on this subject, but here’s my point: if in fact what we eat changes us even at a cellular level, maybe that’s our inroad into what Jesus is saying, to his metaphor today.  And while we hold that thought, let’s consider the drinking imagery of the other readings for a moment.

In Proverbs, Wisdom personified offers a feast, a rich banquet, for those without sense, those who are immature.  And she invites them to drink of her wine she has mixed.  To take in Wisdom’s wine in this image is to become wise, to become mature.  To become what you drink. But just as we’re thinking we’ve been told to have a little wine, Paul slams that door shut in Ephesians: “Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery.”

So Wisdom says, “come, drink my wine.”  And Paul says, “Don’t get drunk on wine.”  But this inspires a little word play.  It seems that what these two readings offer is a distinction between intoxication (being drunk) and inspiration (being filled with the Spirit of Wisdom.)

Intoxication has the word “toxic” in it – it means that we are literally poisoned, filled with toxins to the point of inebriation, where we act differently than normal, we are different.  It’s easy to see why Paul would advocate against it.

But inspiration is being filled by the Spirit to the point of becoming something different, too.  Only instead of poison we are filled with God’s Spirit of life, and so we are acting differently in a way that brings life and grace.  To use Proverbs’ image, we’re filled with wisdom when we drink of Wisdom’s wine.  We are given a new mind, not new knowledge, but wisdom to know how we are to be in the world, to know and trust in God’s providence for the world, wisdom to see God’s hand in all things.

So the question before us today seems to be: what is it we take in ourselves of Jesus that gives life, and what is it we take in ourselves of the world that leads away from life, to death?

Surely this is the critical point Jesus is making here: we are invited to be reshaped from within by him, and not by the world.

If we think of what we eat and drink, or, more broadly, what we consume in the world that is not healthy, the list is long.  And it’s not just food, though that’s on the list.

We fill our minds with media that may or may not be edifying and uplifting.

Our society obsesses on commercialism and a consumer culture, where we are bombarded, and truthfully we permit ourselves to be bombarded by endless messages of what we lack, what we need, why our lives would be better if we only had this thing.  And so we live in abundance as if we lack everything.

We’re constantly spending our time and our lives on things that do not bring us to God, that distract us from the needs of the poor and needy, that fill us but only last minutes after the fill, and we need more and more.

When Paul cautions against drunkenness, he certainly would look at such a list and call it the same thing.  The prophet Isaiah named this nearly three millennia ago, when he said, “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? (Is. 55:6)  Why, indeed?

Let’s change metaphors to see if this helps.  We can consider what happens when a computer gets a virus.  Software is written which runs a computer, tells it what to do, when to do it.  Modern software can have a computer do marvelous things.  But someone can write a virus which if implanted in the computer completely rewrites its programming and tells it to do things differently.  Even to the point of destruction.

What do we consume, seek, spend our lives and time on that does that, re-writes how we think, act, live in the world?  And is it good, or ill?  Of the Spirit or toxic?  That’s the question.

So when Jesus invites us to eat him, drink him, he’s really saying that we are to take him in us in such a way that we are changed at the cellular level, at our core software, at our deepest roots.  To take in his teachings, his wisdom, his grace, his love, his warnings, his life, his very person, and be changed by it.  What he’s saying is that following him is not following an abstract idea, a good set of teachings.

It’s taking him into ourselves until we look like him.  Until we are him.

So this is what Jesus means by “abiding” in him, something he says a lot in John’s Gospel.  And it’s a matter of life and death, that we abide in him until we become him.

We know this because he says it today: “The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”  That’s what’s at stake here, the life of the world.  Take him into yourself and you will have life.  Or don’t, and you will find death.  And that life is meant to restore the whole world.

But of course being changed into Christ is a matter of life and death, too.  We know this.  If our spiritual DNA is rewritten by Jesus, if our internal programming is reformatted, if our cells are changed in their composition by taking Jesus in – whatever metaphor we want to use, we are changed.  We lose things, even while we gain.  Why else would Jesus describe discipleship as “losing one’s life to save it”?  (Matt. 10:39, 16:25 and parallels)

What we gain is life, eternal life now and always, abundant life now and always, life lived in the grace and love of the Triune God.

But we will be changed.  Our selfish natures will be transformed into giving natures.  Our destructive natures will be changed into creative natures.  Our hateful natures will be re-made into loving natures.  All that sounds good, but let’s not underestimate our desire to cling to some of those bad natures and what they seem to offer us.

And now we can finally come to the Lord’s Table.  Because even though we Lutherans teach that our Lord Jesus is truly present in, with, and under the bread and wine, is truly present in his Body and Blood, I’m not sure in practice we don’t fall into the habit of thinking it only a symbol.  We don’t imagine crunching or gnawing Jesus when we come to the Table, even though he uses those words.  We’ve sanitized it to the point of even getting nervous about crumbs going in the wrong places.

But in fact, Incarnation, flesh, is messy.  God becoming flesh for us was incredibly messy.  Even bloody, as Jesus was crucified for us.  Maybe we need to open our minds and eyes to consider the truth that Jesus gives: we are eating and drinking him.  In all the messiness that implies.  And in so doing, we are taking in his very essence and are being changed, bit by bit, day by day.

We are becoming what we eat, and what we drink.

I realize that this is an uncomfortable thing to think about this way.  But that’s what Jesus has left us with, this graphic image.

And in the end, it actually is so powerful an image it’s the only thing that conveys properly what Jesus expects to happen.  That we become changed from the depths of our being into him, into children of God, into the people God had in mind from the beginning.  Let’s not fear the changes Jesus will make.  Let’s eat, and drink, and welcome the transformation in store for us and for the world.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

[1] Martin Luther, Luther’s works, vol. 23: Sermons on the Gospel of St. John: Chapters 6-8, p. 118.  (J. J. Pelikan, H. C. Oswald & H. T. Lehmann, Ed.) Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House.

In baptism we are washed into Christ, into love that lets us begin anew.  And in baptism we are given work to do, our mission in Christ to love God, to care for one another, and to serve our neighbors.  We need the bread of life, Jesus Christ, who strengthens us to take on our baptismal call together, following the cross of Christ, and serving in the world around us.

Vicar Erik Doughty, Time after Pentecost, Sunday 19, year B; text: John 6:35, 41-51

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

Baptism, bread of life, life together, mission and service.  That is what the texts and the liturgy bring to us today.  Children of God, eating this bread of life you will live forever; and so now how will you live?

We prayed last Sunday for farmers in drought, for the hungry poor, for all those in need.  And as we were praying, a misguided man was headed to a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, to do terrible violence.  Meanwhile, the Olympics is going on, dedicated to the potential of humanity in sport.  Curiosity landed on Mars, sending back data and photos.  We are a human family with incredible potential, and with terrible weaknesses.

We understand that combination, that reality of our humanity, not just from the news but from our own journeys in life.  Along the course of our lives, including our lives in the church, we know of the absolute transcendent moments of music, of liturgy, of relationships; and we become aware, if we weren’t before, of the faults, weaknesses, and sins within us as individuals, within our congregation as a whole and within our entire society, our world.

We become aware of our fear of other people, our hunger to be in control or our wish to completely abdicate responsibility.  We realize our own racism, sexism, we see the assumptions we make about other people and at the same time we see how difficult it is to change; and we experience how slowly society changes – and when society changes, or even when our liturgical practice changes, we get anxious.  We get mad.  We feel somehow betrayed, we focus in on our fears and wants, and we get defensive, possessive.  “Curved in upon the self,” is one apt description . . . of our brokenness.  Our sin.  Our need to begin fresh.

Our journey together in Christ begins at baptism, then.  With Water and Word, we wash away that selfish, control-minded, other-blaming, defensive, shamed and anxious self; we are washed right into the arms of love; Christ’s arms, holding us close with pierced hands.  We’re flooded with the presence of the whole Triune God, sheltered under the savior’s Holy Wings.  And it is wonderful there, safe and warm, at home with the love that brought us to life, to which we will be borne at death, back to that holy love with all the sinner-saints, Olympians of the faith and average everyday folks too.

But you know, eventually you – we – have to leave that warm nest, to go out on our own road.  Once washed with grace and warmed with divine love, we are given a baptismal vocation, a mission, a job to do.  As simple as a lemonade stand and as complex as a visioning process, there is always something we are invited to do:  “Your mission, should you choose to accept it . . .”  Feed the poor.  Learn Spanish and welcome the neighbors in their own language.  Teach about liturgy.  Pick up trash along Franklin Avenue.  Give the homeless guy sleeping on the church lawn a cup of coffee.  Help somebody afford diapers or a load of laundry.  Or maybe Christ will happen across your path as someone who needs a listening ear; as someone who is depressed; as a couple of guys who want to be legally married to one another; as a drug addict; as a friend saying, “Can I talk to you about something?”  Or Christ may show up in your path as someone who names your life as a blessing to them, when you did not realize it.

Christ is always in our path in the friends and sojourners here at Mount Olive; and also in our neighbor, Christ asking us to follow, calling us to love and serve; giving us opportunities to practice the sort of life Paul talks about in Ephesians.  The sort of life where we live together in love; where we avoid speaking evil; life together where we put away bitterness, wrath, and slander.  Life together where we forgive.  Life together where we remember we are sealed by the Holy Spirit for redemption, members of one another in Christ.
All of this is much easier said than done.  Life together is work!

You and I are on an in-between place; we are still walking together on the journey of life together.  We have begun, in baptism into Christ.  The end – the homecoming, and the great reunion with all who belong to love, all whom Christ wills blessing and marks with the cross – is sure; but in the meantime,  the road does go off into the horizon.  Our sister Katie is preparing to teach at Valpo in Indiana; I am going back to school at Luther Seminary, and in the process leading toward ministry of word and sacrament.  Your next vicar, Neal Cannon, is preparing for his wedding and his vicarage here, soon.  You surely have stuff going on in your own life!  And this whole congregation, just yesterday, began thinking and praying and discerning what life on the path together; what mission – what baptism! – means.

Here are the questions before us:  What does it mean for us, for Mount Olive, to be a faithful community of the baptized, working at life together, to eat bread of life that is given for the life of the world?  What does it mean for us to be those whose lives together are held in love, washed in Christ, bearing the bread of life for the life of the whole world, here at this corner in the city?  I don’t know; God knows, you are in the beginning process of discerning it, together.  But it will take all of your prayers and all of your service and all of your gifts and all of your failures; it will take all of you, to work, intentionally, cognitively and prayerfully, liturgically and lovingly, to serve Christ in the poor and needy of this neighborhood, to serve one another as you build community on this corner in Christ, to figure it out faithfully.

Now in this visioning process you together can say,”Yes, by the help of God, we will undertake this mission, working for the kingdom of God and the love of God and the love of neighbor,” here, now.  Reverently, radiantly, musically, gladly.  Life together in Christ, bearing the bread of life to this neighborhood and one another will mean that you cannot be curved in upon the self – the individual self, or the “self” that is Mount Olive.

It will mean you will have to face down the spectre of Death, and hopelessness, and cynicism.  It will mean we say to our neighbors in our neighborhoods, and our neighbors in this neighborhood, at least two things:

First, You Are Welcome.  And Second, life in Christ, life fed by the bread of life, is life in community – life together.

So we who are in Christ just have to forgive.  We have to build one another up.  We have to share with those hungry in need of bread; we have to share with those hungry who need the bread of life.  We have to check in with, and take care of, one another.  We have to serve the neighborhood around us.  We do all this because of our faith; we do all this in response to the grace of our baptism; we do all this because the bread of life from heaven has made us strong enough to go out and do it!

There is no other way to accomplish our baptismal call, our vocation as Christians alive in Christ, together in the world.  The life of service formed in faithful, forgiving, gracious and welcoming community, centered on baptism and Eucharist – It is what the life of the Church, the life of the baptized-into-Christ, is.  It is discipleship and mission, the journey of the communal, baptized body of Christ, which we are washed into at the font.  That is the life Elijah John will begin with us today.

All of us, together in Christ, need something to sustain us, or the journey will be too much.  So we journey into this holy space, led by the life-giving cross.  We come to gather around grace in water, in the Word proclaimed, in bread and wine.  We eat the bread of life at this altar, it nourishes us into forgiven and strengthened children of God; and we process back out, still following the life-giving cross of Christ.    Following with purpose: to serve the Lord individually and together, one in our baptismal mission in Christ.

Right now, we are, along with friends and sojourners, on that path of life together behind Christ’s cross.  Right now we are gathered with all our gifts and needs, with one another.  Take and eat, beloved, because you all need your strength; and more important you all need Jesus Christ, the bread of life.  This bread of life, Jesus Christ, will nourish you and me unto our next steps, through our next challenges.  It will give to us Christ’s own life.  It will make us strong enough to enter into faithful mission, together and apart.  Christ’s body becomes ours; we become Christ’s body in the community here and beyond these doors.  Baptism was the gracious beginning; now Christ’s mission is waiting for Elijah John and for you, too.

Children of God, eating this bread of life you will live forever; and so now how will you live?  This bread of life from heaven is for you and for all, Jesus for the journey.  Take and eat.  Live and serve, together in Christ’s mission and grace.  Amen.