sermon – Page 29

The End of the Story

October 8, 2023 By Vicar at Mount Olive

When we read the parable of the Wicked Tenants with the resurrection in mind, we can see both a warning for those that think they own the vineyard, and the reality of new life for the whole vineyard.

Vicar Lauren Mildahl
The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 27 A
Texts: Isaiah 5:1-7, Philippians 3:4b-14, Matthew 21:33-46

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

It’s been a crazy few days for the Jewish religious leaders.

Passover is coming up, which is always a busy time, and worshippers are arriving in Jerusalem from all over Judea. And just yesterday there was a huge commotion when some rabbi from Nazareth rode into the city on a donkey, like he was some kind of Messiah. The people thought he was a prophet and they didn’t check with the chief priests and the Pharisees – they just started spreading their cloaks in front of him and waving their palm branches, and singing “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” A huge disruption and a great way to catch the eye of the Roman occupiers.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, this Jesus went straight into the temple and started turning over tables! What were those chief priests supposed to do when Jesus chased out the money changers and the dove sellers? When he threatened and condemned the whole temple economic system that they relied on? And then Jesus had the audacity to park himself there all day, healing the sick, with no regard for the proper procedure of their sacred spaces. And the children wouldn’t stop singing that chorus, over and over again.

And the chief priests and Pharisees had had enough. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be, they thought. We have systems. This is OUR temple!

And so when Jesus came back the next day, they confront him. Last week we heard them, summoning all their bluster, practically frothing at the mouth, “By what authority are you doing these things?” The thing is, they don’t really want an answer to the question. They want to maintain their power, and the status quo. They want their tables back in their places.

And Jesus is pretty frustrated too. I imagine that he still smelled a little bit like donkey, that he still had splinters in hands from the tables he was tossing around, that he still had the words of the song the children were singing stuck in his head. And he can see the path that he is on, and where it will lead by the end of the week. And here are these chief priests and Pharisees, the ones who absolutely should know better, the ones who should have understood what was going on, and they are quibbling about authority.

So Jesus tells them a story.

A story about a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a winepress in it, and built a watchtower. And then leased to tenants. And not very good ones as we soon find out. He tells a story that is pretty harsh. With some uncanny similarities to what is about to happen. A story that doesn’t end well.

This is a story meant for specific people.

Not only is it directly addressed to the chief priests and Pharisees, it is a story that was deliberately constructed for them too. It was clearly meant to be heard by those who really knew their scripture. Right off the bat, Jesus makes an allusion to Isaiah 5, the Song of the Unfruitful Vineyard, in which God sings about planting a vineyard, digging a winepress, and building a watchtower. In that passage, the prophet Isaiah is warning the people of Judah. “You may be God’s cherished garden, but God will not abide your rotten grapes forever.”

The religious leaders would have picked up on this, would have realized that by invoking Isaiah 5, Jesus meant the parable to be a warning. In fact we are told explicitly that they knew that Jesus was speaking about them. They knew that they were the wicked tenants.

But they couldn’t bear to give up the idea that the vineyard was theirs.

Of course, the kingdom of God wasn’t theirs and deep down they probably knew it. But they were so resentful of the fact. They wanted it to be theirs. Just like we sometimes have to remind ourselves that this isn’t our vineyard. It’s God’s. It’s not our kingdom, it’s God’s. It’s not our church, it’s God’s. We aren’t even the tenants.

We are the vineyard.

We are a vineyard that doesn’t always produce good grapes. But we are beloved and cared for and lovingly tended by God. We are the vineyard that God plants and builds a watch tower over and agonizes over. The vineyard that God would send the Son to claim and save. The vineyard that the Son would die for.

And if only the chief priests and Pharisees had taken a moment to consider, wait a minute, what if we don’t have to be the tenants? What if they had given up their claim to the power and the systems they were clinging to? What if they embraced their place as part of the vineyard? They might have produced some good fruit.

And at this point, we have to talk about the end of the story.

At the end of this parable it seems like the tenants win. The Son is dead. With no grapes to show for it. But we know that’s not the end. Jesus died, but he didn’t stay dead.

The resurrection has to change the way we read this parable.

It takes the rhetorical question asked in Isaiah, “What more could I have done for my vineyard?” and answers it forever. God sends the Son, the Christ, God’s own self to be with us. And not just to die, but to live! To create life where there was no life. To restore and renew everything! When we read this parable with the resurrection in mind, we can see that it isn’t about God’s wrath, it is about God’s closeness. It is about the Gospel that comes as a person to be close to us. A story about a God that is so close that you could trip over him, like a stone you didn’t see and stumbled over. And it is a story about how easy it is to trip and fall on that stone if your eyes are set on protecting your own power.

This parable is a warning to all those who think that they own the vineyard, but it isn’t a categorical rejection of the chief priests and Pharisees, because that’s not the end of the story. Punishment comes, yes, but so does reconciliation, because God came to save the whole vineyard, including the Pharisees. And we know that because a Pharisee who wrote half of our New Testament!

Paul was one of the very people that this parable was meant for.

He rattles off his entire pedigree to the Philippians: “circumcised on the 8th day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee, as to zeal a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.”

Before he met Jesus, Paul thought the vineyard was his. Maybe he even thought he was doing God a favor by persecuting the church, when all he was really doing was protecting his own position. Paul thought he knew it all. Until he stumbled right over the stone that the builders rejected on the road to Damascus. When Paul meets the Son who died and rose for the vineyard, he realizes that all of those credentials, everything that he might have boasted about, everything he knew before – it’s all rubbish. The real value, the surpassing value, is knowing Christ and the power of his resurrection.

The resurrection makes all the difference.

For Paul and for us. This is the end of the story. The end that is just the beginning. New life in Christ. For everyone. For disciples and for Pharisees. A beautiful, beloved vineyard, built on the cornerstone of Christ.

This is the Lord’s doing. And it is amazing in our eyes!

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

Sermon for the funeral of Eunice Hafemeister

October 7, 2023 By Pr. Joseph Crippen

Nothing in this life can separate you from God’s love in Christ. And of course, not even death itself.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The funeral of Eunice Ruth Hafemeister

Texts: Romans 8:31-39; John 14:25-29; Isaiah 61:1-3

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

Paul’s promise to the Romans is the best news we could hear today.

Talking about the challenges and suffering of our lives and of the creation, he says: “nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” And he specifically says even death can’t. Death cannot keep you from God’s love in Christ. And in his death on the cross and resurrection to new life, Christ made this absolutely clear and trustworthy and certain.

Today we carry our sister Eunice to her rest, and it’s tempting to focus only on this amazing promise: death cannot separate us from God’s love in Christ. So Eunice, who has died, is in God’s arms now, in the life to come. That’s what we came here to hear and trust.

Except it’s only part of the promise. And only part of the truth.

Paul included a whole lot of other things in the “nothing”: life can’t separate you from God’s love in Christ either, he said. What’s happening today can’t, what happens tomorrow can’t. Except for death, everything else on Paul’s list happens in this life. Paul’s promise is mostly for here. Here, you are always in God’s love.

So while Eunice absolutely is in the arms of God right now, that’s nothing new. Because life, and the present, and the future, and nothing in the whole creation could separate her from God’s love in Christ, she has always been in the arms of God.

And she knew that. She’d want you to know that you are, too.

Dear friends, this gift of God in Christ is for you now.

The promise of God’s peace Jesus makes in our Gospel today is for you and for now.

He says so specifically. He’s going away, but he wants those who trust in him to know that they will not be alone, they don’t need to be afraid of this suffering world, and they don’t need to have troubled hearts.

God is with them. So God is with you. And that peace that the world can’t give, because the world lives in selfishness and anxiety and fear, that peace from God is yours now. You can be confident in that.

If you knew Eunice you heard this witness from her.

Of course she was human like us. She had doubts and fears and anxieties, and I’m probably not the only one who talked with her about her God questions.

But she had a deep and abiding confidence that God loved her always, and loved this world. She lived her life fully in that confidence, traveling, going on adventures with friends and family, always being of service to God and others. She taught countless people and shared her wisdom and faith with them. She lived every minute of her nearly 97 years as gift from God and was a blessing to her huge family of siblings and cousins and aunts and uncles, and even more to her family she raised with Lester.

This is her witness she leaves behind for us: that life can be lived trusting God is with you, giving you peace and hope that makes this life worth living. And also peace and hope for the life that’s yours to come.

Today, Eunice is just where she trusted she would be, where she was confident God was taking her.

We grieve because she’s no longer here with us. But we grieve with joy for her.

And the witness of God’s Word is that you don’t need to be anxious about you or your life or this world, either. Nothing that has happened to you or will happen, no matter how painful or difficult, can keep God from loving you in Christ. And giving you peace through God’s Spirit.

Living in this trust, life becomes a blessing with a joy and hope that transforms you. Life becomes a gift to live. As Isaiah says, you get your faint heart, your faint spirit, strengthened in God’s love and you become like a great oak tree.

But don’t just take my word for it. Or Eunice’s. Or even Paul’s.

Christ gives you the Holy Spirit who speaks in your heart and teaches you what you need to know to find God’s peace in this life. Reminds you of God’s love when you doubt or are afraid. Listen for that Spirit. God’s Spirit lives in you so you’re not alone, and God’s love shapes your life here. And gives you confidence in a life to come that is yours.

Trust God on this. Where else do you think Eunice got all her faith and trust? She got it where we all get it, from God living in her. And God now lives in you.

Nothing in this life or the next can separate you from God’s love. Nothing. So live in that peace now. Until you, too, go to that wonder that is to come that Eunice now knows fully.

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

Willing Spirit

October 1, 2023 By Pr. Joseph Crippen

You belong to God in the love of Christ and the Spirit will join your heart and mind to that of Christ for the healing of all things.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 26 A
Texts: Matthew 21:23-32; Philippians 2:1-13

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

We did not have a vineyard to tend. But we had a big yard.

It had a lot of sticks and twigs. Our trees shed them like a dog sheds hair. And Saturdays, before I was old enough to have a paying job of my own, I knew the command was coming: go pick up sticks. That meant hours, often on hands and knees, picking up every single twig.

See, my father had a manual mower, the kind with a reel of blades. It constantly jammed if there were sticks. The job needed doing.

I definitely recognized my father’s authority to order me out of the house on a Saturday morning. I didn’t ever question that or stay inside. And there was no mystery what was expected, what the job was.

Both those things center Jesus’ parable today.

At least one son acknowledged his father’s authority.

The non-working son clearly didn’t recognize his father’s right to command him. He said the right things but didn’t do them.

The chief priests and elders don’t want to recognize John’s authority or Jesus’ authority, but they’re too cowardly to admit it. Jesus exposes that they claim to acknowledge the authority of the God of Israel, but they’re not doing God’s will or recognizing those who do it, even with their vast knowledge of Scripture

Like their ancestors before them whom the prophets challenged, they say yes to God, but act as if their answer is no.

Those who say no but act yes already live in God’s reign, Jesus says.

The tax collectors and prostitutes Jesus mentions were seen as unrighteous because they broke God’s law. But they’re in God’s dominion before the religious leaders because they came to recognize God’s authority to direct their lives.

In the utter love and welcome and grace and forgiveness that Jesus, God-with-us, offered them in his person, they found a home when they had belonged nowhere. They found life when the world and their faith leaders offered death. So they’re living in God’s reign already, followers and obeyers of God’s Son, workers in the vineyard with Christ.

So which way of this divergence are you? The one where you know God has asked you to go into the vineyard, and you say the right God things, but you’d rather do your own thing, be the boss of your own life? Or the one where you are so overwhelmed by God’s love and grace and welcome that is yours in Christ, that you willingly answer Christ’s call to the vineyard to the best of your ability?

The problem isn’t not knowing what the job is, either.

There was no doubt for the sonswhat the vineyard work entailed. Or my yard work for me. Or the work Christ needs done in the vineyard of the world. The need is abundantly clear throughout Scripture. For today, just see Matthew, our Gospel partner this year.

God doesn’t want to lose anyone, we hear. So here’s the job: Love God with all your being and love your neighbor as yourself. Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. Rejoice in the abundant forgiveness God has given you by offering abundant forgiveness to others. Delight that God’s forgiveness and grace are going to all. Be light in a world where the shadows of evil abound. See Christ’s face in everyone who is hungry and naked, and ensure all can eat and be clothed and sheltered. Care about those in prison, and about the injustice of our prison system while you’re at it. Be good stewards of the gift we’ve been given, including the gift of the creation which we’ve damaged so badly and be a part of that healing. Welcome the strangers among us with open arms, don’t cage them or threaten them or send them back to be killed.

We could go on, but we don’t need to. The work of the vineyard has always been clear, even what you can do specifically. The call to work has always been clear. So – if you recognize God’s authority to ask such things of you in your life – are you going to go out into the vineyard or not?

Here’s good news: Paul says it’s not only a question of your will to work in the vineyard.

He urges this life in Christ in his letters, but today he shows how. Have the same mind in you that is in Christ Jesus. Be joined with Christ so Christ’s will is your will, Christ’s hopes are your hopes, Christ’s urgency is your urgency.

Yes, Paul says Jesus gave up his divine nature to become human. We can’t do that. But the love God poured out on the cross is the true relinquishing for Paul. And that love is the love that claimed you in the first place.

And with the gift of the Holy Spirit living in you, as Paul says so often, that love, that mind of Christ, changes you. Infuses you. So you become Christ’s love. And so it is God who is at work in you, Paul says today, enabling you to both to will and to work for God’s good pleasure.

So of course you’re going into the vineyard to work. You share Christ’s mind and heart.

So much of our walk with the Triune God is on the edge of mystery.

We don’t have clear answers to lots of things. Today’s readings are not one of those mysteries. Today God’s love for you is clear and God’s call to you is clear. There’s no mystery to what God wants to happen in the creation and how God sees you involved in that.

Because God is at work in you, and you share God’s heart and mind, you can even see the vineyard for yourself and see how much work is needed for the healing of all. And your heart, bound with Christ, wants that healing. In that clarity, let’s go out together into the vineyard to do what we can do as Christ for the good of all.

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

New Math

September 24, 2023 By Pr. Joseph Crippen

God’s grace and love are yours, and are for all: when they shape you and form your life, you will rejoice that no one is excluded.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 25 A
Texts: Philippians 1:21-30; Jonah 3:10 – 4:11; Matthew 20:1-16

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

Aren’t these two beautiful miracle stories today?

An entire city, notorious for its wickedness, repents and turns from its evil. Everyone confesses, and pledges a new life. And God – who was angered and saddened by their sinfulness – joyfully forgives them and relents from punishing.

A vineyard owner, desperate to get the harvest in, goes down to the local workforce center multiple times in the day. At the end of the day, this owner generously pays everyone a full day’s wage. Everyone feeds their families that night, all the children’s bellies are full.

These unexpected outcomes are miraculous. Or maybe “miracle” wasn’t the first word that came to your mind.

Maybe you kind of agreed with Jonah, considered sharing his seat outside the city.

Wicked people should be punished, we sometimes think. It’s not uncommon for us to see some horrible behavior and maybe wish Dante was right about the circles of hell.

Notice, however, before you fully commit and sit down, what Jonah really wanted. This wasn’t about hell. Nineveh’s threatened punishment was utter destruction here and now. Sodom and Gomorrah level. Except, unlike Abraham, who negotiated with God to avert destruction, Jonah wants to see it burn.

Now, Nineveh might have been wicked, but it was also the capital of Israel’s greatest enemy. Enemy capitals are commonly stereotyped as all evil and wicked. Even if Nineveh was worse than your average city, surely, just as Abraham pleaded about Sodom and Gomorrah, some in Nineveh must have been righteous. Loved their children. And, as God points out to Jonah, there were a whole lot of animals.

So, if you want to sit down and pout with Jonah that God forgives people who don’t deserve it, remember Jonah wants genocide.

OK, you say. Forget Jonah. Can I just agree with the hard workers who got ripped off?

Fair enough. They’re not calling for genocide. They’re grumpy that slackers who showed up at 5 in the afternoon got a full day’s wage.

But before you join their picket line, notice a few things. Jesus’ story doesn’t cast any judgement on the latecomers, or give a reason why they weren’t hired earlier. Maybe this landowner had poor strategic planning skills, only picking up a group at first, then throughout the day realizing more and more were needed. The workers might have been waiting all day for a job.

And second, the owner was fair and generous to the first ones. As a temp worker back then, there were likely plenty of employers who’d cheat you out of a day’s pay for a day’s work. You’re subject to the whims of the employer, with no Department of Labor to protect your rights.

And last, these are all hungry people. Day laborers have no confidence they can feed their family from day to day, they depend on getting hired each day. The owner simply gave the latecomers miraculous, compassionate, generous grace. He made sure they’d all survive the night. Everyone got what they needed, including the complainers. So, if you want to join the complainers, why?

Matthew’s community struggled with how to live in God’s grace.

The teachings of Jesus we’ve heard in the past few weeks, the process of reconciliation, the parable of the unforgiving slave, and today’s parable of the workers, are only in Matthew. It seems Matthew needed his community to hear Jesus’ thoughts on a critical problem they had with God’s grace.

The last two weeks the problem was, if you’re forgiven completely by God, why is it so hard to offer the same love and forgiveness to others? Today it’s even more baffling: if God chooses to offer complete and utter love and grace to all, why would you be angry? This time it isn’t whether you forgive, Jesus says. Now it’s whether you resent God forgiving someone else.

You could see this parable as talking only about life-after-death. If you do, and agree with the first workers, you’re saying some people don’t deserve to go to heaven. Why? What’s at stake in it for you?

But there’s also a risk of resenting God’s grace for all people still living in this world. There’s a way to read the parable for this time, right now. That God’s love and generosity and abundance are for all who are living, so all are safe and secure and full, whether or not you think they deserve it. And if you think they don’t, again, why?

Jesus leaves the question open: are you envious because I’m generous? Do you not like God’s new math?

That’s really the issue, isn’t it? God doesn’t count the way you and I do. God sees all God’s children as worthy of love and grace,not wanting to lose even one. Even if they’re wicked, God dreams they’ll turn and become people who love and make a difference. God’s absolutely against having an accounting department to track who deserves how much of what. Everything to everyone. It’s God’s simple math.

And it’s Gospel math. If the good news that the Triune and Holy God who made all things became human, lived and loved and taught and healed and died and rose from the dead, all to bring you and me and all things back into God’s love and life is true – and we live and die trusting that it is – then there is no accounting. Jonah doesn’t have to pay for his rebellion and desertion. You don’t have to pay for your failure to live and love as Christ calls you, or for any sins, great or small.

And no one – no one – gets less or more love from God depending on when they started following faithfully. Everything to everyone. And if that’s hard for you, Paul would like a word.

Paul wouldn’t comprehend the complainers in Jesus’ parable.

How anyone could rejoice in God’s unconditional, transforming love and want anyone else to be deprived of that. In this world or in the next.

So he urges his beloved Philippians, “live your life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.” Paul lived and proclaimed a life in Christ in all his letters, where, living in Christ’s Spirit, love and peacemaking and forgiveness and generosity and goodness and self-control and all these blessed things shape everything about you, inform and fill everything about you.

Until you’re so happy that you’re loved by God you can’t imagine anyone else not knowing that they are. Until, with the Spirit’s grace, you delight in God’s generosity rather than resent it. Until God’s love infuses your heart and life and becomes the shape of your heart and life. And you live your life in a manner worthy of the Gospel of Christ: no accounting, full generosity, love to all.

Now that’s a miracle worth praying for.

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

Not To Ourselves

September 17, 2023 By Pr. Joseph Crippen

We do not belong to ourselves, individually: we are one together in Christ for our good and for the good of the world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 24 A
Texts: Romans 14:1-12 (13); Matthew 18:21-35

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

In the beginning, when God began to create, our hebrew forebears say God didn’t think it was good for us to be alone.

God made more than one human, so we wouldn’t be alone. God constantly encouraged human beings to love each other. Because we need each other to live. So we form communities, families, build relationships. Now, all of us need alone time, too, to varying degrees. But none of us would survive long all by ourselves.

And the necessity of human community is the first key to understanding the forgiveness and restoration in our Scriptures today.

The second key is to remember that communities shape the people in them.

The truth that forms a community, their reason for being together, can lead to people who do good and people who do evil. Today the power of evil emanates from all kinds of communities who are bound together out of fear, or out of hate, or out of greed, or out of prejudice of all kinds. In those communities, people are formed to the evil that gathers them.

But a community grounded on love, or centered on justice, such a community can also transform the people within it. If you belong to a group who shares values of wholeness and mercy, who works for justice among people, you will be shaped by that community to those values.

Our community is bound by Christ.

There are lots of differences between us, and lots of similarities, how each sees the world, understands themselves, lives their life. We’ve had our differences over the years, some serious. Some here you might call your friends; others might irritate you. But that’s OK, you probably irritate someone here, too. But none of this is as important to this community as what joins us: we are baptized into Christ, called into the Body of Christ to be loved by God and learn to love each other. In this community you and I have found welcome, and home, and companionship, and love, and grace. And it has shaped you and me for good.

And now we’re ready to hear about the Romans.

The Roman church was a messy and beautiful church just as our vicar described last week. They were a group of Christian congregations connected to Paul, perhaps founded by him. There are Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians together. But they’re seriously at odds.

It seems at this time the Jewish Christians have less influence, they’re weaker. The Gentile Christians seem to be in charge. The Jewish Christians keep kosher, follow the Torah. The Gentiles – never having been Jewish – do not. They eat all kinds of foods and don’t keep the Jewish festivals.

And they’re fighting with each other. Each group mocking the other, calling them wrong-headed, unfaithful. They’re not loving each other. And Paul is deeply dismayed.

You see, Paul had a beautiful vision he got from Christ in his calling.

In this vision of the church, diversity is beloved, cherished, a gift of God. All who come to Christ can keep their cultural treasures, their patterns and blessings, their ethnic distinctions, even if others don’t share them. Jews can be Jews, Gentiles can be Gentiles, but all are called together under the greater unity of Christ.

But this vision barely got off the ground. The communities we know in Scripture, such as Rome, Corinth, the Galatian churches, all seemed to struggle mightily with it. There’s scant evidence it survived Paul himself; we see very little in the history of the Church.

But it is Christ’s vision for the Church. And it’s still possible with the grace of the Spirit. Today Paul explains it again: In your community of Christ, love each other in your differences. Rejoice in them. Respect them. If you have to do your thing, good. But don’t do it for you. Do it for Christ. If all serve Christ with their habits and life, a community of love and grace can exist in joyful diversity.

Paul says we do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord. If we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. That’s the key.

And that, Jesus says, is why you and I are called to forgive. Why we’re given the task of reconciliation. Why restoration of community is the heart of how we live as Christ. Because we’re bound together in Christ. And we’ve been changed here. Forgiven infinitely by God.

Jesus’ parable brings this home: the whole community has a stake in forgiveness.

It isn’t just about the slave who’s forgiven millions who couldn’t forgive a thousand dollars in turn. At the heart of this story is this line: “When the other slaves saw what happened, they were greatly distressed.” This breach, this absence of forgiveness, affected everyone who knew them. Threatened the community.

Forgiveness and restoration are crucial to our community because if any are at odds, everyone is hurt. If you withhold forgiveness from another person here, another sibling, all of us suffer.

And in this community of Christ, gathered together by the Triune God’s sacrificial, death-breaking love, our whole life depends on being God’s forgiveness to each other.

But there is a deeper implication to Jesus’ parable and Paul’s plea.

Our love for each other, our forgiveness and restoration, or lack of it, will be our witness to more than us. The Church is meant to be a blessing to the world. So are you. So am I. And if we’re not – and you know this because you see it happening in our world and despair – if those who carry Christ’s name carry it in hate and spite and wickedness, then the world will be greatly distressed at it, or worse, see our witness as fraudulent and harmful.

So we do not live to ourselves even here. If, with the Spirit’s grace, we are changed here, learn to forgive as we’ve been forgiven, to be a part of God’s restoration among us, it is so that we leave here to be a part of the same outside, with whatever diverse people we can form a community with who share our values of justice and peace and mercy.

And just imagine what might happen in our city or world when God sends us out on the road.

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