sermon – Page 19

This Is My Body

March 24, 2024 By Vicar at Mount Olive

In the care given to Jesus’ body after death, we glimpse how God comes close to us in the every death.

Vicar Lauren Mildahl
Sunday of the Passion, year B
Texts: Mark 11:1-11; Mark 14:1-15:47

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

By now the palm branches should be feeling strange in your hands.

Were we just celebrating? It seems like a long time ago – like a dream. How did we get here? How did we get from Jesus, vital and assured, riding into Jerusalem to the sound of cheers and singing, all the way to the dull thud of the stone being rolled in place, enclosing the corpse of God?

I can’t stop thinking about that. Because of the beautiful and tender conversations we’ve been having in Adult Forum for the last few weeks, I can’t stop thinking about the corpse of Jesus – and about how preciously it was cared for. I keep thinking about the unnamed woman with alabaster jar of very costly ointment, and how she did what she could, she broke it and poured it out to anoint Jesus’ body for its burial.

And I keep thinking about “Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council who was himself waiting expectantly for the reign of God,” and how he “went boldly to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus.”

He asked for the body of God.

God’s body, which was completely–and unfathomably–helpless. God’s body which, as we heard in Mark’s brutal account, had been beaten and bound and spat upon and mocked and flogged and struck and derided and nailed to a cross until it was just limp flesh, without breath or warmth or life. Just a broken body.

But Joseph went to Pilate “boldly” and asked for it —perhaps out of that stubbornly hopeful expectation that it still wasn’t too late for the reign of God. Or perhaps because he just couldn’t bear to see that broken body hanging there. He had to care for it. To tend it. To wrap it in linen and lay it to rest in a safe place. To respond to the love of God–shown at its most extreme—with his own love in return.

And imaging those moments of tenderness and care for the remains of a loved one revealed a new depth of this story for me.

We say so often that the story of the cross is the story of Christ coming close, meeting us in our very deaths. But our deaths–those are still abstract for us – we don’t know what experiencing death is like yet. But the story of the cross is also the story of Christ meeting us in the deaths we have experienced, the deaths of those we love. When we tend their bodies, when we anoint them with costly ointments, when we attempt to memorize their faces, when we sing them to their rest. When we wash and arrange and bury their bodies – Jesus is there.

Every dead body is also Jesus’ dead body.

Christ is there in the body that has died in peace, surrounded by loved ones, and Christ is there in the ones that have died alone in fear or pain. And Christ is there in every single body strung up or blown apart by violence and cruelty and hatred. And Christ is there in the bodies of those taken too soon. Every dead body is also Jesus’ dead body. And every single body is a site of sacred love come close.

God came to us in a body and God still comes to us in bodies.

We bear the life of Christ to one another and we hold the death of Christ in one another as well. In the care and kindness we show one another in life and death and in the memories and wisdom that are passed down from our loved ones. One of those souls whose beloved memory we keep in our congregation is Susan Cherwien, whose words in so many hymns and writings still soothe and challenge us. And her words about death have been echoing in my mind as well. She once remarked that the soul does not inhabit the body, the body inhabits the soul.

And in Christ, we are not souls inhabiting separate bodies, but bodies inhabiting one soul – the very soul of God.

The soul that holds us all in astounding love – that comes near and meets us where we are – that loves through life and death.

In a few minutes we will celebrate the Eucharist. We’ll see the bread and cup, Christ’s body and blood for us, wrapped tenderly with linen. We will hear Christ’s words, spoken once more, “Take; this is my body” – the body that lived and died. The body that cared for others and was also tenderly cared for. That came close and still comes close to us in every death and holds for us the promise of the resurrection and restoration of all creation. The body that showed us the love of God at its most extreme.

Today, like the unnamed woman, we respond to love with love. And we join Joseph of Arimathea, as we come boldly and ask for the body of Christ and we wait expectantly for the reign of God.

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

As One Who Serves

March 20, 2024 By Pr. Joseph Crippen

Midweek Lent, 2024 + Love One Another + Week 5: Serve One Another

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
Texts: Luke 22:14-27; 1 Peter 4:7-11

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

“I am among you as one who serves,” Jesus said.

This might be the most challenging “one another” we’ve looked at this Lent. “Serve one another” is very different from the other ways we’re called to love. To live in harmony, without judging, encouraging one another and confessing our sins to one another, these are actions we can do.

But serving is about being. “I am among you as one who serves,” Jesus said. A servant is who Jesus is, not what he does. And that’s what he calls those who follow him to be.

Jesus lived in a different world. But not so far different from ours.

As is common in human history, in Jesus’ day there were people who were servants by their class and birth. (Slavery was a whole different thing.) Those who served at table, if they weren’t slaves, were a different class from those who sat at the table.

If you remember “Downton Abbey” or “Upstairs, Downstairs,” you saw this kind of class system. Those below-stairs were seen and saw themselves as different to those above-stairs. They were servants. They didn’t make decisions all day whether they were going to serve someone. It was who they were, how they lived.

With as many divisions as our country has along racial and gender and wealth lines, we can’t argue we don’t have class stratification. Poverty spans generations in families, and we have chasms between the rich and poor. Racism and sexism have kept huge numbers of people on the wrong side of opportunity. That’s our version of the British class system. And it’s just as pervasive, contrary to the American myth that anyone can break free of their starting place and become who they want to be.

So from our perspective, it’s the same as in Jesus’ day: he calls us to willingly become someone who sees themself as servant to all others. To step away from the idolatry of your rights being paramount to all else, and saying, “I am here as one who serves.”

This is what the early believers learned and understood from Jesus.

It shook their world to see the Son of God kneeling before them as a servant.

As Jesus points out in our Gospel reading from Luke, everyone knows the one who sits at the table is greater than the one who serves at the table.

And then he says: “but I am among you as one who serves.” This teacher whom they believe is God’s Son, God’s Messiah, and whom they’ll see risen from the dead in a few days, should be worthy of all honor. People should be serving him, washing his feet, bringing him fresh wine.

“But I am among you as one who serves,” Jesus says. Jesus doesn’t make individual decisions during the day whether he’ll help someone, or carry someone’s burden, or care for their needs. It’s who he is.

And that’s how it will be with you, Jesus says. You who follow me will live in the world not thinking you’re the greatest, worthy of others’ attention and praise, deserving to be served. You will live in the world as a servant like me. You will rise a servant and go to bed a servant. It will be your identity as it is mine.

Don’t underestimate how hard that will be.

If we’re honest about our lives, we can look back and see that. How easily we take offense when things aren’t done properly for us. How quickly we’re upset when someone takes advantage of us. How we struggle to get first in the cashier line, or ahead of that car driving in front of us, how frustrating it is when we have to wait for others. How our thoughts of helping others are shaped by how it’s going to affect us and our bottom lines of how much money we have, how much time it will take, how much inconvenience it will be to be of service to that other person.

But if you’re a servant, you can’t be taken advantage of, it’s your job to be of service, no matter the cost. Your time isn’t your own, it belongs to the one you serve. Inconvenience is what you try to keep away from the one you serve; yours is irrelevant.

Do you see how hard this is?

But here’s some grace to notice: First, you’ve seen this in others.

There likely are people in your life who embodied this kind of being. Who acted as if their reality was to be of service to other people, people who never seemed inconvenienced, who didn’t appear to consider the cost to them or their lives. You know the kind. The ones people would say, “he’d give you the shirt off his back,” or “she’s always there for you.”

These are the witnesses that help you see it’s not just Jesus who can be a servant. They’re a sign of grace and hope.

Second, if you’re willing to become a servant, God is ready to help.

“Create in me a clean heart,” we sing, and “put a new and right spirit within me.” A new and right spirit. That’s God’s gift.

That if you want to follow Jesus, which means becoming a servant to all, you will get the new spirit to become that, a right spirit that orients you to a new way of seeing your neighbor, your loved ones, your world. God will calm your anxiety, take away your irritation over inconvenience, ease your fear of time costs or wealth costs. The Spirit will give you a new spirit, to be a servant.

And ultimately, remember what Jesus said: “I am among you as one who serves.”

Even as you become a servant, you look down at your feet and see God’s Son, at your service. No matter the inconvenience or cost, Christ is in your life to serve and bless you.

And so are others. If you look, you’ll see others serving you, caring for you, embodying Christ’s servanthood in their generosity of time and help and love. Let them do that. As the Spirit gives you grace, you’ll have your chances to serve them, too.

And if you look at God’s big picture, can you see how this will heal all things? If everyone born on this planet saw themselves as servants to each other, all would be whole and well, with abundance and life for all.

That might sound impossible. But it’s God’s dream. And it starts with you and me becoming servants to each other and the world. God will take it from there.

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

Unless a seed dies . . .

March 17, 2024 By Pr. Joseph Crippen

There is abundant life in you, God’s dream for you, that only needs to have its shell, its husk die and break apart for you to bloom and grow as God’s gift to this world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fifth Sunday in Lent, year B
Texts: John 12:20-33; Jeremiah 31:31-34

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

Seeds don’t die when they’re planted.

Pretty much everyone who plants seeds knows they contain within them the life of the plant to come. They’re not actually dead. Jesus certainly knew this, too.

That means he’s doing something with this metaphor. Stretching our imaginations, to see something different, something vital. Something about dying and rising.

That’s definitely not a new topic for Jesus.

This is the central idea of Christian discipleship for Jesus, and also the New Testament. Jesus constantly speaks of self-giving, of sacrificial love, of being vulnerable, as the path of Christ, his and ours. Again and again, including today, we hear of losing our lives to find them, of letting go as central to our walk of faith.

But notice: this way is always described positively by Jesus and the others. Lose your life, and you will find it. Die to this way of being and you will live. Die like a seed and you will see much fruit. Scripture believes that self-giving, sacrificial living as Christ is the path to the abundant life Jesus came to bring.

We make it out to be a negative thing.

We live in a society and culture based on acquiring, finding security in wealth and in things, no matter how unsustainable it is across this planet. We live in a country founded on equal rights, though still not yet for all. But somehow our culture individualized rights so that we’ve each been taught to believe for ourselves that what I want, who I am, what I have, is the paramount thing to care about and protect.

So, it’s hard to hear Jesus’ call, no matter how often he makes it, without wincing a bit. Voices like these often speak in our hearts and minds: “I don’t want to lose, because winning feels better. I don’t want to give of myself, because I might lose what I’ve acquired, or someone might take advantage. I don’t want to be wounded, because that hurts, and why would I want that?”

Maybe that’s why Jesus stretches the seed metaphor. Though a seed doesn’t technically die, it is profoundly changed. There is an outer shell, a husk, that, when the buried seed is watered and begins to germinate, is cracked open and left behind. If it stays intact, the plant can’t grow.

What if Jesus is asking what needs to die, be broken open in us for our true new life to begin?

Now, Jesus says the seed also applies to him.

So did something need to die in Jesus for him to be God’s Christ, to be what he was meant to be?

Certainly fear. Today he speaks of his troubled soul, which will worsen in Gethsemane. Jesus feared the cross, the suffering, and wasn’t sure he could do it. That fear needed to die, be broken open, so his courage to be the sacrificial love of God for the whole cosmos could bloom and grow.

And what of Jesus’ need to control? The eternal Word of God who participated in the creation of all things must have struggled not to control what happened in this earthly ministry. Satan thought so in his temptations, and in Jesus’ relationships with stumbling disciples and angry opponents, his need to control had to die so he could trust that what happened would lead to life.

And maybe we wouldn’t call it pride, but for the Son of God to willingly suffer the humiliation of the cross, something had to die in him. That sense of being one with the Father and the Spirit in the Trinity, that joy of his divine existence and power, had to die so he could let them hang him in public shame for all to see. So he could draw all things into the life of God.

So what husk is trapping-in your life, your future?

What if your fear could die and be buried? Your fear of the future, or fear of not belonging? Your fear of not being enough? Your fear of failure? What kind of courage could grow in you if that fear was dead and gone?

What if your greed died? Your need to have, to acquire, to find security in money or things. If that were dead and buried, what contentment could flourish in you and even bear fruit that would start changing the balance of privilege and oppression in this world?

Maybe shame is a shell around your true life. What if that were broken open, dead? Can you imagine a life trusting you were worthy of love, God’s and others’? What if you didn’t have to worry anymore about what others think?

And what if your need to control things could die, too? To live knowing that since important things, like life and death, were beyond your control, why try to control all the other things? Can you see yourself with such happy freedom?

There are so many more possible husks. But do you see what Jesus is offering you? A chance to bury the thing clamped around your life, your heart, your soul, and so find abundant life. Eternal life, right now.

When I am lifted up, Jesus says, I will draw all things to myself.

Jesus promises that in his dying and rising you will be drawn into God, to be like Christ. And so you’ll be given what you need to die and rise daily yourself. This isn’t a bar for you to get over, this is a gift of God for you.

God promised to write this covenant love in your heart, Jeremiah proclaimed, so you’ll have the ability to let all these hindrances embedded in you die. You will know in your heart, in your being, the way to life.

And the Holy Spirit will help dig the hole for these husks, too, even while breathing life into that newness inside you, gently watering it and drawing it out into the light of day.

And while Jesus is talking about seeds, remember that growing seasons take time.

No seed immediately becomes a huge corn stalk bursting with cobs. This new life, this dying of the husks and shells that are keeping you from living, this takes time. So ask the Spirit for patience, too. It will take your whole life to live into this growing.

But you’ve already begun. There are husks of whatever it is that needs to die in you that have already been broken open, and you’ve seen signs of the fruit to come. Maybe only a glimpse or two. But this life is already at work in you.

Unless a seed dies, it stays a tiny thing. But when it dies, it bears much fruit. Trust this, and live.

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

God’s Got This

March 13, 2024 By Vicar at Mount Olive

Midweek Lent, 2024 ☩ Love One Another ☩ Week 4: Encourage One Another

Vicar Lauren Mildahl
Texts: I Thessalonians 5:4-14, John 16:12-15, 32-33

Beloved children of God, grace to you and peace in the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

For the last three weeks, we’ve been diving into some of the tougher aspects of the command to Love One Another.

We’ve talked about agreeing with one another, confessing our sins to one another, and not judging one another. We’ve been dealing with brokenness in our relationships – broken by conflict, and isolation, and superiority.

But this week, we finally get a fun one: “Encourage one another!”

This is the kind of instruction that a smiling, optimistic, positive person like me can really get into. I even like all the different ways that you can encourage. You can give compliments, reminding people of their unique gifts: “You’re amazing! You’re so strong!” You can offer optimism, sharing your faith in the restoration that God promises: “Everything will turn out all right! It gets better!” Or you can really lean into the confidence we have as God’s beloved children: “You’ve got this.” “You can do it!”

These are nice things to say and really nice things to hear. Who wouldn’t want to spend their time offering encouragement and being encouraged? It almost seems silly that we would need to be commanded to do it. And even Paul admits that the Thessalonians are already on it: “Encourage one another,” he writes, “as indeed you are doing!”

So what am I going to preach about?

Well, unfortunately, there is a darker underbelly here.

Because just like you don’t need to be told to agree unless there is conflict, and you don’t need to be told to confess unless there is violation, and you don’t need to be told not to judge unless you are judging, you don’t need to be told to encourage one another unless there is discouragement.

Because even in a community of faith–even as we are experiencing the love of God, the grace of Jesus Christ and the communion of the Holy Spirit–we sometimes feel discouraged. Dis-courage-ment.

Sometimes we are robbed of our courage.

Often by fear–fear of losing the people or the things we love. Fear of the unknown, fear of pain, fear that there won’t be enough, fear of guilt or fear of judgment–we are anxious and afraid and dis-couraged.

Or sometimes it’s doubt that discourages. Doubt in ourselves and our ability to bear the weight of living. Doubt in each other – will you all really be there for me? Or doubt in God. Doubt in God’s promises or God’s love or even uncertainty about whether God is there at all. And when we doubt in this whole project of faith and hope and love and life, it seems a lot safer to look out for ourselves, to retreat from each other. Doubt robs us of the courage to believe that God will use the hands of those around us to catch us when we fall.

And sometimes it’s despair that discourages. On days when it’s hard enough just getting out of bed, how can we stand boldly in faith and face it all? When everything seems so hopeless–we keep hurting each other and burning the Earth and we know we’re doing it but nothing ever changes–what’s the point of courage? It’s all lost anyway.

That’s the dark underbelly: Fear and Doubt and Despair.

That’s why we need our courage back and why we need each other to be en-couraged.

And we need real encouragement. En-courage-ment isn’t just plucky pick-me-ups or stock sayings about silver linings–maybe that can buck us up when our hearts are a bit faint, but what about when our hearts aren’t even in our chests anymore, but have fallen all the way to the ground?

Compliments and optimism and “You’ve got this”–those things don’t really work then. Not when fear and doubt and despair shatter our illusion of control. Because no matter how many times I tell you that “you’ve got this,” the truth is, you don’t. And you never did. No matter how many times you tell me “you can do it,” the truth is, I can’t. I never could. We were never in control. And no matter how many times we are told we are children of the light, we still fall asleep.

But we have a God who never sleeps. And that’s where the real courage comes from.

I remember two things about the summer camp I went to in high school. 1) I hated doing the high ropes course. 2) I loved rappelling. Which seems weird. Both of those activities involved heights, involved wearing a harness and a helmet, and all of your friends standing around on the ground staring at you, shouting, “You can do it! You’ve got this!”

In both activities you are up high, strapped in, and completely safe. But I remember clinging to the high ropes course, shaking and trying to will my feet to move for what felt like hours, absolutely petrified, and then the next day, leaning over a cliff to rappel down the side of a mountain in seconds, with no trouble at all.

Because the crucial difference is that with rappelling, you can feel the rope holding you the whole time. From the very first moment you lean back over the cliff, you feel the rope tighten and support you. With high ropes – you only feel the rope when you fall off. The rope is the back up, to jerk you to a stop when you fail. And most of the time you are supposed to pretend it’s not there, and just trust in your own strength and balance – and I hated that.

Either way the rope was there. But only one of them gave me courage.

And it wasn’t the one that held me so loosely that I was supposed to forget about it as I figured out how to get through the course under my own power. It was the rope I could feel the whole time, trusting it with my weight as I descended. That gave me courage.

God is our rope – but much better than a rope. God will not let us fall. And the best, real encouragement that I can give you, that we can give to each other, is not “You’ve got this!” but a resounding “You don’t got this! God’s got this.” That was the encouragement that Jesus offered his followers, in their last conversation before he died: “In the world you will have distress and trouble, but take courage: I have overcome the world.” I’ve got this. And it’s the same encouragement Paul offered the Thessalonians: “whether you are awake or asleep you live with him.” It doesn’t matter what you do – whether you’ve got it together or you’re falling apart – you live with Jesus. Who’s got this. Who’s got us.

So, we need to offer one another better encouragement than just retelling each other the myth that we can do it on our own, that we can be in control.

The myth that we’ve got this. Because we’ll just need to be jerked back up again when we fall. Instead let’s encourage one another, let’s hoist one another up in the Spirit, reminding each other that to lean back and feel the rope, to let the God that will not let us go take all the weight, until we feel lighter than air.

Until we relax into the peace of Jesus, who has overcome – overcome all the fear, all the doubt, and all the despair that the world can throw at us.

Dear siblings, this is your encouragement: You don’t got this. God’s got this.

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

Look – And Live

March 10, 2024 By Pr. Joseph Crippen

The Triune God is always about healing: come into God’s light, look, and live.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fourth Sunday in Lent, year B
Texts: John 3:14-21; Numbers 21:4-9; Ephesians 2:1-10

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

Nicodemus came to Jesus at night, John says. We don’t know why.

But Nicodemus was a leader of his people, part of the ruling Jewish council, prominent, respected. By the end of this Gospel he and his friend Joseph of Arimathea publicly show their allegiance to Jesus by taking his body for burial. So, many assume this early conversation was at night because Nicodemus was afraid of being seen by his colleagues, wasn’t ready to out himself as interested in Jesus.

Nicodemus seemed to think Jesus was fully in line with Jewish teaching and the Scriptures. A few verses earlier he says Jesus is clearly a teacher sent from God. That was the division among the Jewish people: some thought he was from God, a rabbi and prophet steeped in their tradition, and others thought otherwise.

But Jesus ends his little sermon to Nicodemus reflecting that some are willing to come into the light and be seen, while others hide in the darkness so that who they are and what they do is unseen. Hard for Nicodemus to miss that point.

But Jesus raises this to all of us: are you hiding in the dark from God, and do you know why?

If God knows all about you, or if others could know all about you, what things do you wish you could hide in the dark? Maybe sins long past, or thoughts you’re thinking today. It might be shame over things you’ve done or neglected to do. It might be opinions you have, or feelings you carry. It’s rare that any of us can say we don’t feel guilt over things deep inside, or wouldn’t be horrified if others knew some of those deepest thoughts, past history, truths, that lurk inside us.

What would you rather keep in the dark, hoping that even God can’t see it?

And how might you learn to trust Jesus, as he invites, to open even that deepest heart to God’s light?

Because Jesus gives Nicodemus good news in his fearful night skulking.

God loves you, Nicodemus, Jesus says. In fact, God loves the world, literally the cosmos, the universe, so much that God’s Son came in the flesh, to save you, to heal you, Nicodemus, not to judge you. Come into the light, you have nothing to fear from God, Jesus says to our friend. You are wholly and fully loved.

Amen, Paul says to his Ephesians. God loves you in the depth of your wrongdoing, and raises you up in Christ to a whole new reality. God has saved you, healed you, by God’s grace alone, Paul says, without your doing anything. Come into the light.

That’s what Jesus and Paul promise you, today, too. God fully forgives you out of love and grace. Wipes away your shame out of love and grace. Holds you in the light in an embrace of love and grace. Come into the light.

But what if you’re in the dark for other reasons?

Maybe you hide in the dark from God because you’re afraid you’re not worthy. Just because of who you are.

Maybe you fear you’re one of those Jesus mentions who don’t trust, because you struggle with your faith, you have doubts, and you don’t know why, you sometimes look at the world and wonder where God is.

Or maybe you don’t fit in anywhere, so, you think, why would God want you? Why would God be different? Best not to expect there’s light to be found, you think. You’re not strong enough, or wise enough, or confident enough, and God will see that right away. Why risk it? Where’s the proof, Paul? Jesus?

Well. Now you’re ready for the heart of Jesus’ promise.

Jesus says the Triune God is all about healing, not destruction. Not judging.

That’s actually God’s Word in all our readings today. Jesus starts by reminding Nicodemus of that terrible episode in the desert where God’s people were beset by an appalling number of venomous snakes and God offered healing. All who looked up at the bronze serpent would find healing from God and live.

But didn’t God send the snakes in the first place? Well, the narrator says so. But the only word God speaks in these verses is the word of healing. Clearly the people complained and argued against God, ran into a valley of snakes, and thought God sent them. But the fact that God didn’t remove the snakes as requested (since they thought God sent them), but offers healing instead, hints that the snakes were just part of the pain of living in this world. And God never asks God’s people to repent first, then look. Just look, and live.

That’s certainly how God’s Son reads the story. Moses’ serpent is the sign Jesus gives Nicodemus to show God’s whole operation is healing. He calls himself the Son-of-Humanity, an ancient Jewish term Nicodemus would certainly recognize, and says he’ll be lifted up just like that serpent, so all can look and live.

That’s what sets up John 3:16 and following: they depend on that context.

“For God so loved the world,” Jesus says. God’s love is why the Son is lifted up, just as it is why the serpent was. That lifting up, Jesus says to Nicodemus and to you, is because God so loved the world. That lifting up, which is the cross, is the proof God’s love is true and real. God is offering a way to healing for all who look at that lifting up, just as in the past.

Except now it’s not just God’s people in the desert. Now it’s all things, all creation, the whole cosmos, as Jesus will make even clearer in our Gospel next week. God’s love embraces all reality.

So come out of the darkness into God’s light: you’ll be welcomed with love, and grace, and healing.

Just look up at the cross and you’ll see God’s own life poured out in love for you, and the whole creation. That’s how you can trust Paul’s confidence in God’s free grace, why you can trust Jesus’ promise of God’s undying love that came to heal, to save, and not to judge. Just look up, and live.

And remember, Paul says you are saved, healed, by God’s grace so you can do all the good in the world God has planned for you. Or, as Jesus says, you’ve been loved, so now you can do all your deeds and thoughts and actions out in the light, for all to see. You can be the one who by how you live, how you love, how you walk with God in the light, points others to God’s love lifted up from the earth and invites them into the light.

You are loved. You are graced. You are bathed in the light of that. Now walk in that light into the shadows of evil and pain in this world so all can come safely into God’s light.

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