We read the Scriptures as disciples of Jesus, the living Word of God, and are guided in our reading and understanding by our fellowship with the Triune God that Jesus has given, and by the love of God Jesus has revealed to us and called forth from us.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen, Time after Pentecost, Sunday 27, year B; text: Mark 10:2-16

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

If you want, you can blame Martin Luther if you’re feeling a little uncomfortable with that Gospel reading, or if you wish you’d been warned we were going to hear hard words from Jesus before coming today.  If Luther hadn’t insisted that each Christian ought to be able to have their own copy of the Scriptures, in their own language, and be able to interpret for themselves God’s Word for their lives, we’d not have this problem.  And if he hadn’t insisted on the Scriptures being read in the people’s language at worship, you might not read these words or hear them at all.  But here we are, with a second week of hard words from Jesus.

I think we need to take this opportunity and consider how we interpret the Scriptures.  What Jesus said about divorce, remarriage, and adultery couldn’t be clearer.  Yet I’m sure that if I announced from this pulpit today that from this moment on I would not preside at a marriage involving divorced people, and that I was beginning a campaign to get the ELCA to remove divorced clergy from the roster, I might be in danger of losing this call.  I expect that a lot of you would be angry and hurt by such a proclamation.

Now this is what we must understand together, and what each of us must individually consider.  I’ve no intention of making such an announcement.  But if it would anger you, or cause you to want me not to be your pastor, I’d like you to try and think why.  Why.  Because Jesus is pretty clear here.

Now, I’d say there are few, if any, people at Mount Olive who do not take the Bible seriously as a norm and guide for life.  Yet we disagree on things, even amongst ourselves here.  How is this possible?  And how do we read what Jesus says today and act differently than what he says, and still claim the Bible as our norm for faith and life?

We need to take a moment to recall how Lutherans interpret the Bible.

We don’t ignore anything, everything is considered God’s Word.  This is really important as a starting point.  So we can’t skip this passage.  We look at this passage, like all of them, very carefully.

But we look at it with at least three basic interpretive lenses:

First, Jesus is the living Word of God, to whom the written Word, the Bible points.  Therefore, Lutherans would say, everything in Scripture must lead to a deeper connection with our Lord and Savior and an understanding of God’s amazing grace in Jesus’ death and resurrection.  We call this a canon within the canon – Lutherans read the Bible through the lenses of God’s free grace in Christ, and consider those many powerful passages about God’s grace not only most important but also the ones which encompass the whole purpose of the Bible and shape its message for us.

Second, Lutherans read the Bible with a sense of context – both the context of the times in which the book was written and the people to whom it was written, but also the context of any passage within the whole of Scripture.

Third, leading from that, Lutherans let Scripture help interpret Scripture.  We try very hard to understand the connection of the whole of the Scriptures to any text, and use the Bible to help interpret itself.  That means that at our best we don’t proof-text.  We don’t take one verse out of any context and make grand claims for its ability to norm us.  We try to use the whole of Scripture.

An example is a seminary classmate of mine who’s a woman and a pastor, who once told me she wouldn’t have accepted ordination if the only reason the church did it was by ignoring the passage that says women should be silent.  What made her feel she could answer God’s call were the many passages describing women in pastoral ministry, the many places where the equality in the family of Christ was proclaimed, and so on.

So how do we read these verses today using these lenses?

First, these are Jesus’ words.  Jesus said them.  And we know Jesus very well.  Jesus, the Living Word of God, is risen from the dead and gives us life even though we are broken people, living too often as opponents of God.  He offers grace and forgiveness to all, even criminals crucified next to him.  So when a couple comes into my office, with one or both of them having been divorced, and they are seeking marriage, my sense of Jesus’ grace, of all that Jesus asks of me as a pastor and a disciple, throughout all of the Gospels, calls me to be open to that request.

We can’t read these words apart from our full knowledge of everything he is and all that he models for us, or from our full understanding of how Jesus then calls us to live, to pray, to love.  In just this small section, we see Jesus indignant that children are being kept from him.  That indignant Jesus, who wants no one excluded from God’s grace, is the same Jesus who says these hard words.  And that matters.

Second, there is a context here.  Jesus is actually protecting women in this passage.  We discover this when we explore the divorce practices in Jesus’ times.  Women could be divorced summarily by their husbands under Jewish law, by the husband simply declaring several times that he divorced his wife, and then handing her notice.  In this culture, if the woman didn’t have a son to protect and support her, divorce would leave her destitute, a beggar, an outsider.

And notice Jesus’ last sentence:  “If she divorces her husband . . .” and so on.  This is eye-opening.  Women didn’t even have the right to divorce their husbands then.  Yet Jesus assumes an equality of standing, even in his prohibition.  Women and men are equal under God’s law, a radical departure from tradition.

And last, Jesus is speaking here to support marriage, to underscore its divine approval, to strengthen families.

Third, Scripture helps us interpret Scripture.  It’s true Jesus is clear here.  Just as he is also clear throughout the Gospels that we are not to judge others.

Just as he is clear when he tells us to forgive each other in unlimited ways.

Just as he is clear when he says the sum of the law of God is to love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves.

Given this repeated mandate, I believe we simply have decided not to make a bad situation, or a painful situation, worse, by refusing to give second chances.  We’ve decided to offer forgiveness in Jesus’ name and to be gracious.  This doesn’t mean we like divorce.  I don’t know many Christians who’ve been divorced who do.  But it does mean we’re honest about it.  I still teach new couples that they should plan never to divorce, or else it will come too easily.  It still is not God’s will for marriage.

But we also know that sometimes divorce is the only option that seems possible, sometimes it’s tragically imposed, and sometimes it even must happen if a spouse is abusive.  Divorce is not always the worst evil in every situation.  There are simply too many times when we do not feel capable of being judge over each other on this.

But that doesn’t mean we’re ever completely certain that we are right in how we consider divorce.  And that’s important to remember.

Because of Luther, each of us can interpret the Bible for ourselves.  And as the Church, we collectively discern and interpret the Scriptures.  It’s a great gift.  But it’s also a huge responsibility.  We always interpret prayerfully and carefully, asking the Spirit to lead and guide us, and show us what we are called to be and do.  But we can still be wrong.

That’s why we belong to communities of faith, why we pay attention to what others in the greater Church are saying, why we find places where we are gathered together by the Holy Spirit.  So we check our interpretation with each other.  So we can struggle together, whether as a small group in a congregation or a council of bishops and leaders of the whole Church, or anything in between.

That can correct us when we falter.  But it also can be that, even within a community of faith like Mount Olive, and even in the greater Church, we will not agree on the proper way to do things, the godly thing to do.  As in this case, where the way most U. S. Lutheran congregations deal with divorce is not universally accepted as legitimate across the whole Church.

And that means we must know when it’s OK to disagree and when it isn’t.  What Lutherans have said is that we make our distinction based on whether it is central to the Good News that the Triune God has saved us in Jesus the Son.  The Augsburg Confession says that it is enough for unity in the Church that the Gospel is preached in its purity and the Sacraments are administered according to that Gospel.  What that means is that anything that affects our teaching and hope in the death and resurrection of Jesus for all people and for us is central.

All the rest is not essential for agreement.  It doesn’t mean other things aren’t important.  But it does mean we do not necessarily have to agree in order to remain together.  And ethical stances fall into this category more often than not.  Whether we accept and re-marry divorced people does not affect our salvation in Jesus.  Therefore we can and do disagree on this in the greater Church.

So what do we do if we’re ever wrong?  What happens then?  Well, it’s always good to ask that question of ourselves when we interpret Scripture.  I always try to keep a part in the back of my mind that says, “Keep listening, just in case you’re wrong on this one.”  It’s healthy for us to have that humility before God and before this Word, and before each other.  And so we keep listening to each other, and to the Church as we go, in case we’re wrong.  We’re not all going at this solo, and we need to listen to the Church Jesus has given us.

Even so, we might individually or as congregations or denomination, disagree with the rest of the Church.  If it’s not on an issue of central importance to the Gospel, even that can be OK.  But when we do, we must take extra care that we believe we’re listening clearly to the Spirit’s guidance.

But finally, it’s important that we learn to pray, read, discern, and then make our decisions and act.  We can’t just sit still and never act or do.  If we’re right, we thank God, whether we’re acting as individuals, congregations, or as the whole Church.  If we’re wrong, we trust in God’s gracious forgiveness and guidance to get us back on the path, individually or collectively.  As the Reformation showed, even the Church sometimes goes collectively astray and needs to be brought back.

But we know this is true, because Jesus, God’s Son has shown it again and again: The Triune God will not abandon us in our wrong decisions.  And please hear this:  the only way any of us will have eternal life is by Jesus’ forgiveness of all we have done.  If after prayer, conversation, and discernment, for example, I make a wrong call, I absolutely trust that Jesus will be able to forgive it as much as any other sin I have committed in my life.  I’ll have plenty in my bag that will need to be forgiven when I come to those gates; anything additional that I didn’t know about I’ll still need to trust to Jesus’ forgiveness.  And so will the whole Church.

God has given us a great gift in this written Word that leads and guides us.

And I’m convinced the more I do this ministry that Jesus meant it when he said the Spirit of God would lead us into truth when we’re ready for it.  As we live together in this community and as a part of the greater Church, let us always pray for God’s guidance and direction through the living Word, our Lord Jesus, to better understand what the Scriptures would tell us about how to live faithful lives as disciples and share God’s love with the world, and to fully live the abundant life he offers through this.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

Baptized into the life of the Triune God, we do not seek control of where and how God works, nor do we seek to limit those for whom and to whom God gives grace and welcome; we faithfully follow where the Spirit leads.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen, Time after Pentecost, Sunday 26, year B; texts: Mark 9:38-50; Numbers 11:4-6, 10-16, 24-29

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

One of the many admirable things about the 12 step recovery programs that are available to people struggling with addiction is their grounding in the giving up of control.  The first step is to admit one has no control over one’s life and one’s addiction.  This is a wisdom which transcends addiction recovery and is worthy of all to consider: ultimately we have no control over our lives, over what truly matters, and as our readings today remind us, certainly not over God.  Which leads to steps 2 and 3 in the recovery programs: recognizing that a Power greater than ourselves exists who can restore us to life, and turning our lives over to the care of that God.  If you’re not familiar with these 12 step programs, there’s no attempt to define who God is, who that Power is.  The focus is on each individual recognizing their own faith and need for God.  But there is again much wisdom in this, even for all of us who are baptized into the Body of Christ, marked with the name of the Triune God.

Joshua and John are who got me thinking about this.  Both of these great men are concerned about who’s in control, and are trying to get Moses, in Joshua’s case, or Jesus, in John’s, to share their anxiety and concern.  Remarkably, Moses and Jesus do not.  Rather, they open our minds to the possibility that we have no control over where God acts in the world, and we should be happy about that.

It seems that both the great prophet Moses and the Son of God, our Lord Jesus, are inviting us to a recovery of our own, a recovery from our addiction to determining who is in God’s care and love, our persistent need to control things that are beyond our skill, beyond our wisdom, beyond our compassion.

We begin with these Scriptural issues, the question of control and stumbling blocks.

In both the first reading and the Gospel, there are people who are acting under the grace of the Spirit of God whom faithful followers don’t recognize as authorized to do so.  Moses receives help from the LORD to do his work, with 70 people anointed with the Spirit.  They were all supposed to gather in one place; two of them stayed in the camp.  But the Spirit came upon all 70.  Joshua’s concern is that Eldad and Medad didn’t come to the meeting place, and yet they’re back in the camp prophesying anyway.  Moses wisely recognizes that the Spirit of the LORD goes where she will go, and tells Joshua not to worry about it.  In fact, he expresses his desire that the LORD would so anoint everyone with the Spirit, with no limits to who’s used by God to serve in the world.

In Jesus’ case it’s a little different.  Apparently someone who wasn’t officially part of the larger group of his disciples (not just the twelve) was doing exorcisms in Jesus’ name anyway.  John’s very concerned.  This person hasn’t heard the teachings, he’s not actually following Jesus as a disciple.  Someone should stop him.  Jesus wisely recognizes that if someone is doing good in his name it’s not likely they’ll turn against him, and tells John to let it be.  In fact, he goes so far as to say that if people aren’t against him, they’re as good as for him.

But he then he goes on to warn the disciples not to be a stumbling block to anyone, any of these “little ones,” not necessarily speaking only of children, but of all who would come to him.  It’s not only that the disciples shouldn’t try to control whom God uses as leaders; they’re also warned not to do anything which would drive away potential followers.

So it’s pretty simple: God gets to decide where grace and life go, and the Spirit will flow when and where she will.  This has tremendous implications for us in a pluralistic society and world.  We’re hearing that it doesn’t matter if we necessarily agree with people who are not of our group, or even those whom we perceive as outsiders, unauthorized people in our group.  The Spirit may come upon them nonetheless, and we’re not in control of that.

Now granted, in both cases today, this isn’t an argument for respecting other faiths.  It was Israelites and disciples of Jesus, and even the unknown exorcist was doing it in Jesus’ name.

But that respect is certainly applicable to our world situation.  Though we believe that God is truly known as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that Jesus is the Son of God, the Word Incarnate among us, and that he died and rose to give us and the world life, though this is the truth about God’s action in the world, this faith itself commits us to another truth: if God is who we believe God to be then by definition we cannot believe that we control where the Holy Spirit will work and do things.  So it would be folly for us to assume or assert that people of other faiths are not also being influenced by the Triune God through the work of the Holy Spirit, even if they don’t know it.  If there’s anything Jesus and Moses are saying today it’s that we’re not in charge of God.

This warning is necessary because the need to control is widespread in every facet of society.  For today we can simply stick with people of faith.

Somehow we’ve gotten so arrogant in our faith claims as a human race (perhaps because we’re also fearful of being on the wrong side) that we make faith an article worthy of war as we seek to control others and defend what we believe.

It’s easy to look to our Muslim brothers and sisters in the Middle East and decry this sinfulness, but it’s patently clear that it’s our sin as well.  It’s been a long time since Christians waged the Crusades against both Muslims and Jews, but we’re still acting like we’re at war.

This is the chief problem with the proposed marriage amendment, as I see it.  Clearly our practices at Mount Olive are in opposition to what the amendment proposes, and that’s a problem for many of us here.  But the real problem with the amendment is that it is an amendment proposed by one religious group to codify their particular religious beliefs into the state constitution, where they have no place.  It isn’t enough for them to believe what they will; they want the constitution to state that all must believe so.  They want to control how other faith groups view marriage.  Or at least, control whether such views should be recognized by the state.

Regardless of whether or not anyone in the state agrees with the premise of the amendment, then there is this reality: it is fundamental to our life as the United States is the principle that no religious group gets to create laws which restrict or infringe on the beliefs and practices of another religious group.  To say nothing of our constitutional commitment not to discriminate against particular groups of people in constitution or in law, which this amendment also does.

So this call to relinquish control comes to us in a world where we see Christians and other faiths consistently seeking to control others who believe differently.  Whether they exercise that need to control by attacking people militarily or by seeking to marginalize them in constitution and law, it’s the same problem.

But it’s not just the larger groups.  Each of us individually struggles with this control issue.  Whenever we wish that others would do things our way, whenever we’re angry because something doesn’t work the way we want it to, whenever we feel threatened by someone else’s views, we’re struggling with this issue.

So following Jesus and Moses, how might we live as faithful Christians and give up our attempts to control God and others?

First, it would be good if we could remove ourselves from the need to defend God, the Scriptures, the Church, or to determine who is serving God.  There seems to be a tendency, especially in recent years, for people increasingly to fear that God or the Scriptures need defending against those who might disagree.

Yet we’re not called to defend the Triune God anywhere in Scripture.  We are called to believe, to love, to witness to God’s grace.  And it’s good if we have theological debate and try to best discern God’s will for us, for the Church, for the world.  But should we meet those who believe other than we, even those of our faith who disagree with us, it’s not necessary that we work to shut them down or to restrict them.  We’re called to love them and treat them with respect.

Imagine what the environment in the world would be if simply the people of faith acted with the confidence that God’s in charge and we don’t need to fight to protect or defend God or God’s messengers.

In the same way, should some seem to speak with the Spirit of God whom we don’t know, or of whom we have not approved, it isn’t our place to try and stop them.  As Gamaliel said to the other Jewish leaders in the book of Acts when considering what to do with the early apostles, if we wait we’ll see the fruits.  If they’re with God, we don’t want to be working against them, and if they’re not, it will become evident.

Second, as baptized children of God we are called individually and as a congregation and part of the greater Church to seek to break barriers to God’s grace, not set them up.

Jesus’ chilling declaration that we’d be better off tying stones around us and jumping into the sea than to cause someone to stumble, to fall away, is a powerful word today.  Every community of any kind, every group, every institution, has its own culture and tendencies, and those can often seem to exclude others.  Some of these are intentional, some are not.

The Church is no exception; neither is Mount Olive.  What is different about the Church, and this congregation, is that we know we are shaped and called by the One who gave his life for all the world, and therefore we must always be vigilant to how we welcome, how we help others come to God’s grace in Jesus, how we hold ourselves in the world.

And what does this mean for us?

It means we’re called to stand for those who cannot stand for themselves, speak for those who have no voice, and work for justice for those who have no access to it.

It means that our words, actions, decisions, and life as people of God should always be held to this standard.

It means we never ask “what’s in it for me, what’s in it for us,” but rather, “who are the last, the least, the Christs among us who need our help breaking through a barrier, stepping over a stumbling block”?

It’s risky living this way, of course.  It means we can’t control what others do to us because that’s not our job.  But it also means that we’re living as Jesus would have us live, and we’re reaching the ones he needs us to reach, and that’s worth everything.

In the end, Jesus is asking us to lose control by trusting his love.

To give up our need to be in charge of anything related to God and the mission of Christ, and obediently seek to follow wherever the Spirit leads.  Even if the Spirit is working in people we wouldn’t choose, in groups we don’t recognize.  Even if there are some things that we lose by welcoming those whom Jesus has asked us to welcome.  Since God’s grace and plan are beyond our ability to grasp fully, and beyond our skill and wisdom to control, all we can do is be faithful in the place we are sent.

And the only way to lose control like this is to throw ourselves trustingly upon the astonishing love of God Jesus has shown us, and let our lives live in that love, shaped by it, called by it, renewed by it, that all might be reached by such love, and that the Good News be lived in this world to the farthest corners of the creation.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

Jesus Christ’s preference often seems to be for the last and least in our society.  Jesus himself chooses place himself on the cross, the last place anyone would want to be.  From Jesus we learn the value of placing ourselves last and least in the world.

Vicar Neal Cannon, Time after Pentecost, Sunday 25, year B; texts: Mark 9:30-37; James 3:13-4:3, 7-8b, Jeremiah 11:18-20

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

Something you should know about me, your new vicar, is that I am very competitive person. I hate to lose. Growing up, my brother and I would play basketball against each other in the driveway at home. It always started friendly, but on more than one occasion ended with a black eye, or some bruised ribs. I’d like to think that as an adult I’ve got this under control. But then I start playing cribbage against my wife … and I start seeing myself fall farther and farther behind on the board … and my blood starts to boil, and I get a little bit quiet. At least when I lose to her, only my ego is bruised. Maybe you can relate.

I’ve known people in my life that aren’t like this. My Mom, for example would tell me after my basketball games in high school that she rooted for a tie because she didn’t want the other team to feel bad. Which of course, just made me more angry when I lost.

And I always thought that was a bit extreme, but Jesus in our story today takes this to a whole other level. He says, if you want to be first, you must be last. I think as Christians, we think we get it. We’ve heard it before. Serve your neighbor, welcome the stranger … yeah, yeah, vicar, we know.

But if we really think about how that’s lived out in our lives … I think we’ll realize that we don’t actually agree with Jesus all the time … because being in last is the worst! You don’t want to be last in line for tickets, nobody wants to get picked last, and you’ve probably heard the phrase, “nice guys finish last …” Come on… Jesus. Get with the program.

So what is with Jesus’ fascination with being last?

The Old Testament text and the Psalm don’t seem very helpful at first to answering why Jesus chooses to be last. In fact, Jeremiah and the Psalmist want to defeat their enemies, they want to win.  “Let me see your vengeance,” says Jeremiah, “in your faithfulness, destroy them,” says the Psalmist. “Yikes!” says the Vicar, “how am I supposed to preach on that?”

Sometimes it seems like the God of the Old Testament has nothing to do with Jesus … until we look a little closer.

For our Old Testament lesson today, we are thrown into Jeremiah today and we’re in the middle of a story. You see, Jeremiah was being persecuted for telling his people the truth, he was telling the people that God was angry. The people were creating idols of wood and stone and jewels, and as Jeremiah tells us earlier in his book, people were sacrificing their children to these idols.

No wonder God was angry… and Jeremiah was angry too.

And in response to Jeremiah telling Israel that God is angry and they need to change their ways, the people plan on killing Jeremiah. So Jeremiah says to God, “God, I want your justice visited upon them! All I did was tell them the truth, I told them what you told me and now they want to kill me!” And God says, “You’re right. They’re wicked, they have evil hearts, something drastic must be done.”

But then something interesting happens in the following chapter. Jeremiah asks God why do bad things happen to good people like me? And, why do bad people flourish while the righteous die? If God is “just” then good people would be winning and bad people would be losing. It’s that simple. Right?

And God’s reply is a bit cryptic. God agrees that the people are doing evil deeds and that must stop, but God also says that Israel is the beloved of God’s heart and God’s heritage. It’s like God’s mourning their loss, not celebrating a victory.  God even implies that things will get worse for Jeremiah when his people are suffering.

So who’s the winner here? It seems like the people are going to suffer, and Jeremiah is going to suffer, and God is going to suffer along with them.

And at this point … the winner in me just wants to yell, “God, you just won! Why are you putting your head down?” You beat the bad guys! It’s like God can’t stand it when anyone loses.

What’s more, later in Jeremiah God says, I will remember their sins no more. But here’s the problem. If God doesn’t remember what they did, how can they be punished? How do we know who the righteous and unrighteous are if God makes, everybody righteous? Who’s the winner, and who’s the loser here? Jeremiah and our Psalmist get what winning is all about. They are eager for God to strike down their enemies. Why isn’t God?

This got me thinking, I wonder if we’re asking the wrong question. Maybe the question isn’t, whose winning, and whose losing, or why do bad things happen to good people. Maybe the question we need to ask is, what does winning look like to God?

God helps us when he says to Abraham all the nations on Earth will be blessed by your offspring. He doesn’t say, all your children will be blessed by what you’ve done. He doesn’t even say that his country will be blessed by his offspring. No. He says that the whole world will be blessed. And I wonder, is that what winning looks like to God? That everyone is blessed?

Then we of course have to ask, what does losing look like to God?

In the Beatitudes, God blesses all the losers. I don’t mean to say this glibly, but seriously, God blesses those who we might consider to have lost. God blesses those who mourn, or those who have lost a loved one. Jesus says the meek will inherit the Earth: since when have the meek won anything? Don’t the meek get steamrolled by Donald Trump on The Apprentice? Yet our God says they are blessed.

At another point in the New Testament, Jesus tells us a parable us a parable of a Shepherd watching over his Flock. And Jesus tells us that when one sheep wanders away from the Flock, that the Shepherd leaves the 99 in search of the one …

It seems to me that God can’t stand it if even one person loses.

God is telling us something. God hates it when anyone loses. So much so that when we have lost, or that we are lost, that God will find us, and bless us even in our darkest hour.

I think our New Testament and Gospel readings today give us some more clues as to what winning looks like to God. Our text from James says, “17 But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.”

I find this statement to be fascinating for our lives today. Think about this, how often are we really willing to yield? How often can we put aside an argument or a fight and really listen to what the other person is saying and care about our enemy in spite of our differences.

This is not about being right or wrong, this is about giving up the fight for the sake of loving the person in front of you. This summer I was a chaplain at Good Samaritan in Minneapolis, and my job was basically to go from room to room and visit with residents, all of whom had extreme mental and/or physical illness. One of the first things they taught us and one of the things I had the hardest time learning, was to put aside your own opinions and beliefs and quit trying to fix people. You see it is easy to give people answers. Eat better, quit smoking, pray more … but our job was to sit with people, and listen to them, and share with them what they were going through.

And I think that is what James was talking about here. He’s asking if we can put ourselves aside, if we’re willing to yield to people for love’s sake and the sake of the gospel. So when James says that God’s wisdom is “without prejudice” he means that true wisdom that comes from God shows mercy and compassion to another without any regard for that person’s status, what they’ve done, or even for the person’s moral character. God shows compassion, to his friends and his enemies, to the people that we want to lose, and to the people we hope will win.

So finally we come to our Gospel lesson today and we find Jesus again telling his disciples that he will be killed and in three days he will rise again. And the disciples don’t get this. Dying on the cross is equivalent to losing their battle. They can’t lose. The good guys just started winning. The blind can see, the deaf can hear, and the word is being proclaimed! How could Jesus lose now, just when it seems victory is in hand? And as if they wanted to prove to Jesus that they didn’t get it, they start arguing with each other about which of them is the best. So he says something that seems backwards. He says, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”

What the disciples don’t understand, and what we still struggle with today, is how Christ’s loss becomes the world’s gain. Because when you choose to lose, it destroys our me vs. you world view, and creates a world about us, and we don’t know what that looks like.

And he picks up a little kid, and by the way, kids are in the lowest place in ancient Jewish society below even servants and slaves, and he says, “whenever we welcome a child, whenever we feed the hungry, whenever we speak up for the marginalized, whenever we love our enemy, whenever we welcome whoever is last and least important in our eyes, we welcome God.”

Today, I hope we consider that winning and losing is not what God is about. And even if we’re in the right and we are the good guys, like Jeremiah and the Psalmist were, it shouldn’t be about me verses you it should be about us. You see, I think for Jesus and for God, it is not enough for a few people to win. It’s not a real victory for God and Christ unless everybody wins. Because the cross that Jesus takes up is about forgiveness, and love, and mercy. It is for the healing of the world.

Thanks be to God.

Jesus modeled God’s selfless, other-centered love in becoming one of us, dying and rising; followers of Jesus are called likewise to set themselves out of the center of life, the center of reality, and look to the good and need of the other.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen, Time after Pentecost, Sunday 24, year B; texts: Mark 8:27-38; Isaiah 50:4-9a

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

In 1543, as he lay on his death bed, we are told that astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus had placed in his hands the newly-published copy of his life’s work, a radical re-thinking of the place of Earth in the heavens.  Copernicus argued that in fact the Sun was the center of the heavens, not the Earth, and the Earth orbited the Sun, along with the other planets.  His theory wasn’t immediately rejected by the Church, but nearly 75 years later it was declared to be “false and altogether opposed to Holy Scripture.”  Of course, with the later help of others like Sir Isaac Newton, it eventually became accepted that he had gotten it right.  Except for the idea that the Sun was the center of the heavens.  By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, astronomers began to realize that even our Sun was simply one star among many, and now we understand that our Sun is at the edge of a huge galaxy of stars called the Milky Way, a galaxy which itself is not very close to the center of the universe.  So in less than 500 years, Earth has been moved in human thought from the very center of all that exists to a tiny planet on the fringe of all that exists.

It’s a hard blow to realize that we’re not the pinnacle of creation.  One of the reasons the Church always seemed to resist such data as scientists discovered it over the centuries was in part because of our understanding of the Incarnation.  Surely if the God who created the universe blessed our existence so much by becoming one of us, then we must be the best, the brightest, the highest of all creation.  To consider that we might be living in the boondocks of the universe, to say nothing of the idea that we might be only one of millions of other species of intelligent life scattered across millions of light years can be threatening to some people of faith.

But if that Incarnate One himself, Jesus our Lord, is to be believed today, it’s not merely foolish that we ever thought so highly of humanity.  According to Jesus, his coming as one of us was such an act of self-giving, of losing of one’s self on the part of the Triune God, that it calls those of us who would follow Jesus to the same kind of self-loss, self-sacrifice.  Rather than see our discipleship as a sign of favor and importance, Jesus invites us, urges us, to see our discipleship as the beginning of the moving of ourselves from the center of our universe, and a changing of our focus instead to looking to the reality, the needs, the pain, the suffering of others before our own.

This is such an important point for Jesus, and it’s so often missed.  But it’s core to what Jesus himself experienced.

It’s tempting to think that we’re a big deal because God became one of us.  But perhaps it’s the opposite.  Surely we can say with confidence that the Triune God thought enough of us to become one of us.  John 3 makes that clear, that the Son came because of the Father’s love for us.  A love so powerful it hoped to bring us all to healing, to salvation.

But perhaps we might want to realize how unlikely such attention by the Creator of all things this really is.  Consider the size of the universe, the immensity of space, the uncountable galaxies that exist, let alone stars.  We could learn a lot from the psalmist of Psalm 8 who, in the face of such contemplation, said, “Who are we that you would care for us?”  That the Creator of all that is cared about the bipedal beings on a planet on the edge of the universe enough to become one of us in order to bring us back is nothing short of astonishing.

Yet it is also, from God’s standpoint, a huge step down.  When I was young, people would say: “Think of how different we are from ants.  If you were to imagine what God did, it would be like us becoming ants, so the ants could understand what we really were like, and so on.”  That kind of made sense to me.  But given the expanse of the creation, surely it’s more like comparing us to single-cell amoebas.  Or something even smaller, less coherent.  In the life of this world, we’re actually closely related to ants.

And yet . . . and yet.  The Triune God was willing to lose all to become one of us.  To join our existence, take up our lot, all for the sake of bringing us back into love with God and each other.  To suffer our indignities, to be limited like we are.  And ultimately to permit us to kill him.  This is the One, the Son of God, Jesus, whom we follow.

And so Jesus calls us to do the same.  If we see this reading from Isaiah today as one of many referring to Jesus, and his willing suffering on our behalf, Jesus today invites us to see it as referring to us.  “If I’m willing to lose everything to be with you, teach you, love you, even my life, then I need you to follow that way,” Jesus says.  To be willing to lose all.  That’s what discipleship is.

What Jesus says is clear: following him is not a path to self-aggrandizing, not a path to wealth, not a path to importance.  My followers, he says, become the least, not the greatest.  They turn their cheeks to those who strike them, as he did.  They lose instead of trying to win.  They don’t think of themselves first, but they think of others.

His is not a message for those who would make governments enforce particular religious beliefs by constitutional amendment or by law, or those who would declare that the ultimate goal is that Jesus’ followers rule the world.

He says, “take up your cross,” be willing to face the worst in following me.  Be willing, as I was, to lose everything.  Because – and this is the key – because to bring the healing he needs, the love God envisions, the grace Jesus’ death brings, it will take all of Jesus’ followers to reach all who need such gifts, and those followers will need to be willing to let go of all their needs to accomplish this mission.

But what we are being called to discover is not a false humility or self-denigration, nor is it an explanation for various sufferings we might have.

Too often we’ve taken the expression “take up your cross” and applied it to daily pains and annoyances.  Even real suffering.  We’ll say, “that’s just my cross to bear,” speaking of whatever it is that causes us difficulty.  But as real as pain and suffering are, that’s not at all what Jesus means by this expression.

In “taking up our cross,” Jesus means us to take up suffering and loss for the sake of others and for the sake of the world.  If any of us do bear a cross, it’s when we move ourselves off of the center of our lives and look to where we can be God’s grace and love to others.  It’s certainly not the unlooked for and uncontrollable suffering that exists in the world, hard as that might be.

But a worse problem is the false sense of martyrdom that this call sometimes evokes in Christians, the manufactured humility.  As much as I’m amused by Garrison Keillor, I’m increasingly tired of his caricature of Midwestern Lutherans.  And it’s probably because it’s an accurate assessment of the reality.  There is in us a tendency to talk down about ourselves, minimize our accomplishments, act as if we’re called to think poorly of ourselves in order to follow Jesus.

But even though it’s an accurate take, I think it’s dangerous for us to admire it, or to consider it a virtue, which seems to be an element of our reaction to such humor.  If we were to take the best of what Keillor offers, we would use his humor to laugh at a situation as a way to start changing who we are.

Jesus isn’t asking us to play the part of martyrs, sighing and letting others have their way, while being certain that it is noted by all how much we’ve given up.  Nor is he calling us to think ill of ourselves, knock ourselves down, act as if we’re worthless, crummy people.  Jesus loved humanity enough to become one of us and die for us – that’s honor beyond anything in the universe.  And lastly, we’re not called to play-act humility, to pretend to be humble and lowly as if others can’t see through it.  We’ve all seen that in others, and it’s revolting.  It’s just as bad when we do it, but we often can’t see that as clearly.

And none of these ways of acting out Jesus’ call today look at all like what Jesus is doing, or calling out in us.

In fact, what we are called to do is to see the world without ourselves as the center, the focus, the important thing.  To have our own internal Copernican revolution.

It’s actually as simple as that.  Jesus says, “What if you didn’t filter everything you experience through the question of what’s in it for you, how it affects you?  What would that be like?”  It’s a call to transcend ourselves and learn a way of life where we don’t focus our thoughts, plans, hopes, dreams on what we want and need, but on what God needs, and what God’s world needs.

Every once in a while the Holy Spirit saves time and doubles up on inspiration.  That happened this week, when both your cantor and your pastor were walking down this path separately.  When we met to talk about hymns on Wednesday, and I was telling David where I thought this sermon was heading (much of which you’ve now heard), so he could think about what hymns would work with that, he said that was something he’d been thinking a great deal about with regard to worship and music.  You can see his reflections in the Olive Branch which just came out on Friday.

And he’s right: in worship we are at our best when it’s not about “me” but “us.”  When we put our selves aside for the sake of us.  And even more deeply for the sake of the God around whom we are gathered to worship.

Because that’s the deeper truth here: we move ourselves off the center of our lives and put the Triune God there, where God belongs.  We learn this best in worship, but it’s a learning Jesus today calls us to take with us every moment of our lives.  If the God who made all that is, who loves us with a death-defeating love, who fills us with life and grace, if this God is the center of our thoughts and being, then we will also be focused where God needs us, on those whom our God loves.  Until we’re able to free ourselves from self-centeredness we cannot truly love God as God loves us, and we cannot truly follow the Son of God as disciples.

It’s just as shocking to understand this as it was to begin to see that the Earth might not center all things.

But once we move ourselves off of center, we begin to live the way we were meant to live, and we see its abundance.  We find the joy of self-giving, the hope of being able to see ourselves as given to the world for healing and life.  Best of all, we begin to see how we might actually follow Jesus fully, because we begin to understand how he lived for others, for us, for the world.

Let us pray that the God who once gave up everything for us would help us likewise shake free of our self-centeredness, our antiquated view of our internal universe, and move our lives to circle the astonishing, loving, and gracious Triune God who made all things.  And let us pray that in so doing, we become fully disciples in the mission to bring all the creation back into place, and all God’s creatures into the life and grace God intends for all.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

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