sermon – Page 3

How do we know? How do we trust? How do we discern? These are the questions we ask as we look outward into our communities and inward into ourselves to witness to the Word of God active in our lives.

Vicar Andrea Bonneville
The Thirteenth Sunday After Pentecost, Lectionary 21B
Texts: Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-18, Ephesians 6: 10-20, John 6:56-69

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

Does it challenge you and make you think and act differently?
Does it change your perspective of your neighbors?
Does it make your heart break open again and again from the injustice and suffering of the world?
Does it tell you that you are beloved and that you have received grace upon grace?
Does it lead you, protect you, comfort you, and guide you?
Does it show you love and hope?
Does it give you life?

If so, then it is the Word of God.

Not just the literal words of the Bible, but the embodiment of the Word being made flesh, the Holy One of God that is moving, and stirring, and breathing life and hope and love into our world.

But how do we know life and love when we look around us and see violence, climate disasters, illness, racism, houselessness, and poverty? How do we trust in this love and hope and life that has been shown to us, told to us, and passed down through generations? How do we discern what is the Word of God in the world versus what is evil and filled with wrong doing?

Perhaps these are the questions that the disciples are asking in today’s Gospel reading. The same questions that many of us carry with us every day. The questions that we bring into this community.

How do we know? How do we trust? How do we discern?

Peter’s answer is that we don’t fully know, but through the transformation that has taken place in his life and the ways that he has witnessed to Jesus’ ministry he discerns the path forward is with the Triune God because he trusts it will lead him to abundant life.

Joshua’s answer is similar. Gathering the people who he has been with for 40 years in the wilderness and asking them if they are ready to make a proclamation. A proclamation that they will trust and serve the Triune God who has been their hope and their protection.

Paul’s answer is that we have to continue to wrap ourselves in that protection and be ready to discern what is lifegiving in this world by walking in peace, sharing the love and grace of God, and praying at all times.

What’s your answer?

I know you have one.

I see the joy on your face when you come to this place to Worship. Feel the love when you talk about your family, your friends, and this community. Know your heart aches from all the pain and suffering in your life and all around us. I notice the discernment as you think about how you can continue to grow in serving your neighbor and give up privilege for the sake of equity. I hear your song, your prayers, and see your tears as you proclaim God’s love and faithfulness that has carried you this far.

You have an answer to how we know, trust, and discern the love of God because you have been transformed by God’s love and you are an embodiment of God’s love. You are the answer, this whole community is the answer.

Living as an example of God’s love and proclaiming the ways you see God’s presence in your life. Moving where the spirit is calling you to serve—at your job or at school, on the playground or in the grocery story, in the car or on the street—so that God’s love is known through you.

Discerning the ways that we can use our bodies, our voices, and our gifts to impact our community so that others can know and trust the life and hope and grace and love that is found in Christ.

It doesn’t mean that it is going to be in easy, rather it is going to be difficult and confusing and it is going to disturb our lives. It will make us look at the world around us an discern what truly is lifegiving—even questioning things that have provided life before. Perhaps we will even want to turn away or things will hold us back.

But we must actively work to put away the forces that try to convince us that power, and wealth, and comfort are more important than unity, empathy, and love. Rid the shame and judgement that have filled us to make room for the nourishment our bodies crave.

We continue to be filled with the Bread of Life and when we are filled with God’s love and justice, we have the conviction to proclaim it. Not because we have all the answers or because we fully understand it, or that we are perfect at it, but because we trust that it has the power to transform.

Look around you right now and you will see it, walk in the community and you will see it, look toward nature and you will see it, look in the mirror and you will see it.

The Word of God active in our lives.

It challenges us, it changes us, it pushes us out of our comfort zone, it nourishes us and fills us with hope and love.

And all of this is going to lead us to abundant life.

Amen.

Mary sees it; Isaiah sees it; Jesus sees it. God wants to overturn the world and bring about a new creation. This causes Mary to rejoice. What will it do to you?

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The feast of St. Mary, Mother of Our Lord
Texts: Isaiah 61:7-11; Luke 1:46-55

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

Some of us have a problem of self-deception. We praise people while living in opposition to what we praise.

We honor Martin Luther King, Jr., even have a federal holiday to remember him. His vision of a just society where all are treated with dignity and respect and have equality is a beautiful thing. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, we muse, if his vision was reality? But we keep living in ways that make it impossible to exist.

We say we follow Jesus, the Christ, the Son of the living God. His call to love of God and neighbor, to be non-violent peacemakers, to live lives of reconciliation and forgiveness, is a beautiful thing. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, we muse, if Jesus’ vision was reality? But we keep living in ways that make it impossible to exist.

Each year, Mount Olive celebrates Eucharist on August 15, remembering Jesus’ mother, Mary, on her feast day, and we sing her Magnificat. We delight to sing of God scattering the proud, filling the hungry, sending the rich away empty, bringing down the powerful. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, we muse, if Mary’s beautiful vision really happened? But we cling to our lives of comfort and ease, deny our power over so many who suffer, forget we’re the rich who keep others from eating, protect our place on the top of the very pile Mary says God is going to overturn.

One of the ways we fool ourselves is by claiming what they taught was unique, far beyond what the average person can think or do.

Church fathers have long praised Mary for her theological wisdom in Magnificat, that she had this brilliant insight into God. Well, Mary was amazing. Her courage to say yes to God, her willingness to be a part of God’s turning the world upside down, is admirable and wondrous.

But she wasn’t a theological genius. She just knew her Bible. She heard the prophets, knew the law of Moses. Mary simply took God seriously, and when this invitation to bear a child for God came, she realized this was part of what God had long promised. Everything Mary sings is self-evident to anyone who actually reads the Bible.

And she isn’t alone. Her son didn’t invent a new way. Jesus lived what his Hebrew forebears had heard from God, modeled, taught, embodied. Today we heard Isaiah rejoice at the same kind of overturning justice of God that Mary proclaims, and Jesus himself claims as his mission. Mary wasn’t even the first mother to sing something like this. Hannah, the mother of the prophet Samuel, sings a nearly identical song to Magnificat as she rejoices in her coming child and God’s work through him.

But if it’s so obviously God’s dream in Scripture, why do we avoid it?

Is it because some of us have more to lose? Mary was Jewish in a Roman-controlled province, female in a patriarchal culture, poor in a world that always honors the wealthy. Ethnically, biologically, economically, she was in the back row, the bottom of society’s pile.

From that place, as she listened to God’s prophets, heard the stories of God’s acts for her people, she believed them. God does liberate, make gardens in the desert, bring justice, desire peace. God does care for the widows and orphans, those who are oppressed, those who are pushed to the margins. This was good news for Mary and most of the folks she knew.

But if you have power and wealth, if you build an institution like the Church, or even a congregation like Mount Olive, if your society protects you and benefits you, if armies and police forces kill to keep you safe, if you are rewarded for your gender identity, maybe you don’t want to hear God’s priorities.

If we treat Scripture’s consistent witness as a nice but unrealistic dream, maybe it’s because we’re afraid of what’ll happen if God’s priorities actually come to pass.

If Isaiah’s right and God is about freeing captives and setting oppressed free, about loving justice, we who have none of those problems are at risk of losing something. If Mary’s right and God intends taking down the powerful and sending the rich away empty, feeding the hungry and scattering the proud, to the degree you or I are powerful or rich or proud, we’re going to be affected.

So we put Mary’s vision, and the clear witnesses of Scripture, into beautiful cases to admire and adore, where they can’t actually affect my daily life, or your choices. We limit following Jesus to just ensuring life after death, not seeking God’s transformation of the world into God’s new creation.

But then what’s the point of our faith? Why admire Mary and Jesus and all these others but actively live against what they dreamed and lived and called for? How long can we persist in praising those who call us to align with God’s priorities while resisting that alignment, and still deceive ourselves that we’re being faithful?

Here’s a possible hope: Mary didn’t fear what God wants to do. She rejoiced in it.

My spirit rejoices in God who heals, she sings. I will greatly rejoice in God, Isaiah sings. This overturning, this radical change of society – all things we know need to happen, but fear – Mary and Isaiah saw as a reason for joy.

Joy overcomes fear of change, fear of losing status, fear of unsettling realities. When we can see God’s way as Mary sees it, we can stop fearing what we’ll lose and see the joy of God’s world as God intends it.

A world where all systems we’ve built that crush and oppress are broken apart. Where we stop dividing and harming people based on skin color or gender or whatever arbitrary categories we invent. Where peace between peoples exists alongside justice between them, where we solve our problems without violence or power over others. Where all cultures and languages and viewpoints and ethnic songs and heritage and story and faith aren’t melted together in a homogenous pot, but woven together in a colorful, joyful quilt of God’s humanity.

What if, instead of holding this vision at arm’s length, framed in a beautiful case so we can’t touch it, we embraced it fully into our hearts, no matter the cost?

That’s what God’s been calling us to through Scripture for over 3,000 years. Mary knew it. Jesus knew it. Isaiah knew it. Hannah knew it. Martin knew it. Paul knew it. And all rejoiced at this new creation God wants to make in humanity.

Because it sounds pretty wonderful. It sounds like the answer to all the problems we care about and want changed in our world.

My spirit rejoices in the God who heals me and all people, Mary sang. Your spirit could rejoice, too. Let Mary help you find that joy and set aside your fear and actually live into this new way God is making.

In the name of Jesus. Amen

Discerning Servants

Seeing Joy