God heals you, saves you. God is with you. That’s all you need to know.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The feast of the Name of Jesus
Texts: Luke 2:15-21, plus references to Matthew 1

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

“Good news of great joy for all the people.” That’s what the shepherds were told.

Today we get the end of the Christmas Gospel from Luke, because Luke only speaks of this day of Jesus’ circumcision and naming in one verse. That’s a short Gospel reading.

But it’s good to recall the shepherds today, and even angels from before today’s reading, to remember something vitally important for you: God’s coming in Christ – a coming that continues to this day – is good news of great joy for you and for all people.

It’s important to remember because it’s easy to get lost in the problems of the world.

On the Fourth Sunday of Advent we heard Gabriel tell Mary that God was with her. But that led Mary to contemplate a huge upheaval in her life, the impact of following God and bearing Christ into the world.

You’re all well aware of that upheaval, the challenge to follow Christ, be Christ, with your life. You know how intricately you’re connected to all God’s creatures, that every moment you could ask, “What’s the Christ thing to do here?” You know well that “sin” is far more than just specific evils or wrongs you do, but extends to harm you might do – even unknowingly to people you’ll never see or meet – by hundreds of random decisions or actions or words each day.

And you truly are trying to follow Christ, asking God’s help. Whether it’s racism or sexism or classism, you’re trying to change biases inside you that are not of Christ. When it comes to injustice and oppression and the pain so many endure, you’re trying to make a difference, make decisions that don’t have negative impacts, put your life into the lives of others. I know you are doing this. I see it all the time.

And it’s exhausting some times. Your spirits are willing, and I know you find joy in it, too. But it is tiring every day, every moment, to think about who and what you are and do because you belong to God.

So for today, the first day of a new year, just be God’s beloved.

Hear the good news of great joy that God’s coming in Jesus is also your blessing and your truth.

You know it from the name the eight-day old infant received: Jesus. “God saves.” Call the baby Jesus, the angel told Joseph, “because he will save his people from their sins.” Or also, “because he will heal his people from their sins.”

Good news: God has come to heal you. Heal you of your sins – all those things you know are sin, things you do, things systems you support do, all the things that grieve you – this baby’s name says that God will heal you, give you new life without that sin.

And God in Christ will heal your heart when it suffers loneliness, loss, grief, and pain. Heal your mind when it’s troubled and anxious, when you can’t seem to get it under control. Heal your relationships that are broken.

God is healing you in Christ and you are God’s beloved. Your work as Christ remains, but let that be tomorrow. Just be God’s beloved today.

Jesus got another name, too – Matthew says he will be called “Emmanuel.”

Which means “God is with us.”

God is with you. Let that be your truth today. Not Mary’s implications, the overturned life of following. That turning will come, but let it come tomorrow.

The deep and abiding truth of Jesus’ coming is the promise that God has come to be with you and is always with you. End of sentence. Full stop.

You are never alone, beloved of God, because God is with you. You are always enough, beloved of God, because God loves you and is with you. You are always beloved of God, because God is with you.

And yes, some days it’s hard to believe this good news, hard to find great joy.

God’s healing sometimes seems to be slow – both in your life and in the world. God’s presence sometimes seems to be hard to find or sense – both in your life and in the world.

But today we celebrate that an eight day old baby is named “God heals and saves” and “God is with you,” and will fulfill that in his life, death, and resurrection. It’s hard to see that truth in an infant. It took some time for that to be fulfilled, even in the Son of God.

But it was fulfilled. And it is true. God saves you, heals you, always. And God is with you, always.

Be at peace. Rest in God’s loving embrace. This is your good news of great joy.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

The fullness of time is right now, and God is here, with you – follow Simeon and Anna and see!

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The First Sunday of Christmas, year B
Texts: Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:21-40

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’re almost done with it. 2020 is nearly finished.

It’s been a year most would rather forget. But I saw a headline in a newspaper online that said, “What makes you think 2021 will be any better?” I didn’t have the heart to read the article. Still, 2020 is nearly finished, and it’s time, most of us think. Well past time. New hope, new realities, are possible, we dream, in this new time.

Paul says today that “in the fullness of time” God sent the Son, born of Mary. That moment, that year, month, day, hour, second, was the right time for Jesus, the Son of God, to be born.

Or, maybe that’s not what Paul’s saying at all.

Because we count time in a line, we sometimes think all things operate that way.

There is past, there is present, there is future. Jesus’ birth, God’s coming, is in the “past,” we say. We take great pains to locate that arrival in our time line. The ancient proclamation of the birth of Christ, sung every Christmas around the world, and also at Mount Olive, gives a number of links to our line of time. Dating from creation, from Noah’s flood, from Abraham and Sarah, tied to the year of Augustus Caesar’s reign, and to the years of the Greek Olympiad, the proclamation places Jesus in our history. On that date, we joyfully proclaim, God was made flesh in Jesus.

But don’t forget: God’s time is outside our time, above and beyond all timelines. So maybe the fullness of time Paul’s talking about means more than we thought, more than just that moment 2,000 years go.

If all times are in God, and God is above and beyond all times, then it’s always potentially the fullness of time.

In fact, it’s God’s coming into our time that fills it. The eternal and Triune God enters our time whenever God so chooses, and fills the space with God’s presence. All the saints of the past who met God, saw God, heard God, and followed faithfully, were in the fullness of God’s time.

Coming in Jesus was a focal point of universal history, to be sure. God in our flesh, in person, Jesus shows us the face of the Trinity. But God had been building up to coming in person for centuries, touching people with God’s Spirit. And after Christ Jesus was crucified and rose, and ascended into heaven, the Triune God, through the Holy Spirit, has kept on coming to God’s people, showing them the light of God, calling them to a path of love and blessing, being Incarnate in many now.

Everywhere Christ is now, there is the fullness of time for God. Even today, as we near the end of 2020.

Simeon and Anna were blessed to see God’s fullness in their time.

Simeon was a faithful servant of God, “righteous and devout,” Luke says, and filled with the Holy Spirit. The Spirit once told him that he wouldn’t die before seeing God’s anointed. He listened to the Spirit throughout his life, and when he was told “it’s today!” he went to the Temple and saw God’s fullness.

Anna was also a faithful servant of God, a prophet, Luke says. She lived as a widow for decades, maybe 60 years, after her husband’s death. She spent every day of those five or six decades in the Temple. And because she was there, when Joseph and Mary came with Jesus she also saw God-with-us, and rejoiced.

These two aged saints wonderfully show you different ways to be in God’s fullness of time and see God.

Simeon says it’s worth listening to the Holy Spirit when she plants a seed of hope in you that God is coming to bring life and healing. Whether or not 2021 is better than 2020, if God’s Spirit gives you any promise, listen like Simeon. And then keep your eyes and ears open. When the Spirit nudges you, says, “look, over there, there God is,” you want to be ready to see, like Simeon.

Anna’s even more helpfully a model. We know of no promise from God’s Spirit to her. But she spent her days in God’s presence, in prayer, in fasting. She went to the Temple every day, expecting God would be there. And because she faithfully walked with God her whole life, she was there to see God’s Son. Imagine that life for you: every day putting yourself into the mindset, opening your heart to the possibility that God might fill that day for you with healing and hope. Stay joined to God and you will, like Anna, see God’s fullness.

Now, right now, is the fullness of time. Because God is here.

It may take patience and keen eyes and ears to see, but Simeon says you can do that. It may take years of practicing being in God’s presence quietly and listening to God, but Anna says you can do that.

God has come to this world, joined our time, and filled it with grace. So even if the world ends up just as hard next year as it was this year, in you, in me, in so many of God’s children, God’s grace will fill the earth and bring joy.

Because it’s the right time for it.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen