See what God sees as blessed, not the world, and you will be. Act as God acts as holy, as you are set apart, and you will live as a saint.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
All Saints Sunday, year C
Text: Luke 6:20-31

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

Don’t trust what you think these words mean.

We sing of blesséd saints today, and hear “blessed” and “saint” and think, “that’s not me.”

We think “saint” means perfect people, always kind, loving, good to all. “She’s a real saint,” we say, and know what we mean.

We also hear “blessed” in a particular way. People are blessed if they’re doing well financially, their families are in health, they have good jobs. If things are going well for them.

But God-with-us, Jesus the Christ, says that for his followers, neither of those words mean that. And every saint whom you remember today who is in the life to come, every one for whom you lit a candle, every capital letter S saint listed in our worship book for commemoration, every one of them would tell you what Jesus does today. So trust the blessed saints, not the world.

It’s also important that Jesus is speaking to his disciples today.

All the blessings and woes and challenging actions are insider-directed. These words aren’t meant for all, only for those who have chosen to follow Jesus, to walk the path of the reign of God.

That means Jesus isn’t making patronizing, blanket statements about poverty. He’s looking at poor people who are his followers and saying, “you are blessed.” When he says “woe to you,” that’s not condemnation, it’s empathetic compassion. But again, Jesus is specifically talking to some of his wealthy followers, saying it’s hard to be a disciple with that burden.

And Jesus isn’t prescribing a way of action for all toward those who hurt them. He’s saying to these couple dozen women and men following him at this point, and to you and me and all who are followers, if we want to follow the path of the reign of God, this is how we will live and act and pray.

Today Jesus says “blessed” for followers of Christ is a way of seeing and valuing differently, and “saint” is a way of acting differently.

Jesus uses the word “blessed” (which also means happy, and even lucky) this way:

He sees his impoverished disciples and says, “lucky you. Happy you.” The world says “blessed” people have wealth and possessions and security. Jesus says, “that’s not how I see it.” So he says to his wealthy disciples, “that stinks for you, and makes following me hard.”

Jesus sees his disciples who are perpetually hungry, and says, “lucky you. Happy you.” The world says “blessed” people always have enough, and more, of what they want. Jesus says, “that’s not how I see it.” So he says to his disciples who do have all they want, “that stinks for you, and makes following me hard.”

Jesus sees his disciples who’ve experienced rejection or abuse for following him, or who’ve been harmed by others, and says “lucky you. Happy you.” The world says “blessed” people are always liked by others, have a good reputation. Jesus says, “that’s not how I see it.” So he says to his respectable disciples, “that stinks for you, and will make following me hard.”

If you’re following me, Jesus says, you have to completely re-define who and what you believe are blessed. You need to see as God sees, what God believes is the way of happiness and blessedness.

These new eyes lead to living with joy and hope on the path of God’s reign.

Jesus isn’t promoting poverty or hunger, or abuse. He’s saying, “my values are different.” So he says to his poorer followers, “you lack wealth, but you have God’s reign in your life. You’re physically hungry, but I fill you up inside with strength and hope in all things. You’ve been hurt or abused, but you are always my beloved.”

And he’s saying to some of his other followers, “the risk with your wealth is that you’ll think it’s your savior. You’ll depend on it, seek it, worry about it, and you’ll end up having nothing to show for it. And if you always get what you want when you want it, you’ll focus only on getting more, and you’ll make that your priority instead of God’s abundance shared with all. And you’ll be hungry in the places that really matter. And if people talk well of you and you’re popular, beware. You’ll value that so much you’ll base your decisions on it, not on what God needs in the world. And you’ll miss everything of value.”

Jesus warns you: Wealth easily becomes an idol. Fullness easily shapes priorities. Being liked easily drives decisions. And that means missing living in the reign of God and being a part of God’s healing.

Now, a saint is literally someone who is holy, which literally means “set apart for God’s work.”

Being a saint isn’t being perfect, always happy, well-behaved. You are anointed a saint in baptism and set apart as God’s holy child to make a difference in the world. Being a saint is acting as God acts.

So to those of his disciples “who will listen,” Jesus says: Be the person who ends the existence of enemies by loving yours. Who ends the cycle of hatred by doing good to everyone who hates you. Who blesses and prays for even those who curse and abuse you. Who ends the cycle of violence by not retaliating when others harm you. Be the person who ends the cycle of retribution by giving away even more when someone steals from you. Who ends the cycle of greed by giving to everyone who begs from you. Who ends the cycle of “they did it to me first” by doing to everyone exactly as you would have them do to you.

All that kills our world can be traced back to these patterns.

Multiply payback, hatred returned for hatred, inability to share goods, by seven billion people and you get the world we live in.

You and I and all the saints are set apart to start a new way of living. To live as God lives. To offer ourselves, body and soul and all that is ours, to breaking the cycles of evil and pain that are destroying this world and our lives and the lives of all of God’s children.

And don’t worry about everyone else, Jesus says, just focus on you. “Live as I’ve set you apart to live, as my saint, and you will bring healing and hope to where you are. That’s all I ask.”

Today, trust the blessed saints as you consider Jesus’ words.

Every saint whom you remember today who is in the life to come, every one for whom you lit a candle, every capital letter S saint listed in our worship book for commemoration, every one will tell you the same as Jesus: See what God sees as blessed, happy, and you will find joy and hope in your life, no matter the circumstances. Act as a saint, as one set apart for God’s work, and you’ll be a part of God’s healing life in this world.

Trust these saints in this, too: you’re not going to be perfect. You can see as God sees, but you’ll have blind spots. Times you forget and look at the world in the old way. Don’t fret, these saints say to you. We all had days like that. Trust God’s love for you, and God’s Spirit, and your vision will clear up.

And you’ll have times you don’t turn the other cheek, or decide not to give to those who ask of you, times you cling to hatred or anger at another. Don’t fret there, either, they say. We all had days like that. Trust God’s love for you, and God’s forgiveness, and you’ll be set on the right path again.

See as God sees. Live as God lives. And you’ll know the joy of God’s reign. You are a blessed saint, after all. God says so.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

Life in Christ starts with a leap of action, not of faith. It is the doing that will lead to the believing and the living and the joy and the delight.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
Reformation Sunday, Lect. 31 C
Text: Luke 19:1-10

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

Zacchaeus has so much joy. It’s beautiful.

Whatever he expected when he climbed that tree, when Jesus invited himself over for a night’s stay, Zacchaeus exploded in joy.

Or: maybe the joy really came when he chose his new life. A chief tax collector, Zacchaeus was the top of the pyramid scheme. Whatever the others he managed stole, Zacchaeus stole more, accumulated more. Now he decides to divest himself of half of his wealth. The Torah demanded that if you defraud another, you owe them the amount you stole, plus 20%. Zacchaeus in his joy decides to give back 400% instead of 120%. And he couldn’t be happier.

We’ve seen this joy before. Levi, also known as Matthew, in chapter 5 is called from his tax booth to be one of Jesus’ inner circle. Imagine the disbelieving delight he felt as he followed. In Jesus’ parable of the two lost sons, the younger son had the joy of being embraced by the father he wronged, welcomed home in honor. Wouldn’t it be amazing to know such joy?

Because not everyone found it.

When Matthew leapt from his tax booth, the good and righteous people of the town complained Jesus was choosing the wrong kind of people. When the younger of the two lost brothers celebrated with his father at that party, the elder lost son refused to go in, refused to be happy. And the good people of Jericho, the the privileged and faithful ones, were not at all pleased Jesus chose to honor the traitor, the thief, the despicable Zacchaeus.

What makes the difference?

When he was criticized about Matthew, Jesus said only the sick need a doctor. He came to call sinners, not righteous people. When the good people complained that he welcomed sinners and ate with them, Jesus told stories of the lost being found. Talking to people who, Luke says last week, had persuaded themselves they were righteous, Jesus told of a good, righteous person praying thanks for that life alongside a traitor tax collector begging mercy. And Jesus declared the wretched one righteous. Today, after complaints about Zacchaeus, Jesus again says he’s only come to seek and to heal the lost.

Do you see? If you think you’re fine, you won’t want Jesus. If you think your heart and spirit and life are in the right place and you don’t need God’s healing, you won’t want Jesus. If you think that you’re doing pretty well, are godly and righteous, and have a life you want to keep and protect, you won’t want Jesus. It’s the privileged, wealthy, good people who don’t know what to do with Jesus.

Their problem is Jesus’ Good News involves a complete transformation.

A reformation of the heart and soul and mind and strength. Those who followed Jesus were changed. Zacchaeus utterly dismantled his wealth and made reparations to those whose backs he stepped on to have his life. Matthew abandoned his oppressive occupation. Most disciples left their lives behind and gave up everything. Joanna and Susanna brought their wealth and followed Jesus, supporting his ministry financially, whatever their families thought.

People who think they’re fine, good, righteous, don’t see a need to be changed, and often are scared to imagine change. You and I come here and actually do admit we need God’s grace, want God’s healing. But we don’t easily seek to be changed, either.

So, do we avoid the change, the reformation God seeks in us, because we’re afraid?

Or are we waiting for the conviction and joy of Zacchaeus? Matthew’s boldness in following? Waiting for some magic feeling from Jesus that will give us the clarity of all these who were drawn to Jesus and changed? Was that what the righteous people were missing?

The truth is, you’ll find Zacchaeus’ joy and transformation when you act like Zacchaeus. If you want to live in loving relationships, act in loving ways. If you want to live in a just society, act in justice. Do what God’s reign looks like and you’ll know it, live in it. And be changed.

None of those who were transformed, re-formed, by Jesus waited for absolute certainty. They dropped their nets and followed. They gave away their wealth. They left their tax booth. And they lived new lives.

Zacchaeus saw that in the reign of God Christ came to bring people weren’t cheated and defrauded by others. So he gave back what he’d stolen. That’s when salvation came to his house, Jesus said. Healing came to him. When he took a leap of action. It is the leap of action that leads to faith and trust, and to reformation, not the other way around.

We know what God needs us to do.

Far too much of what we own and cherish came on the backs of our neighbors. When we each individually consider the wealth we hold in property and pensions and IRAs and actually let some of it go we would see what the reign of God really is. Sure, it’s a frightening step. But Zacchaeus must have also taken a deep breath before his decision.

We know that community reparations are also a huge subject these days. This beautiful place is on Native land, stolen from those who lived here. Some of our sibling congregations in this synod in this city already have a budget line item paying reparations to peoples who lived on their land. They’re living in God’s reign already in that, are being changed.

We can’t wait, individually or as a community, for the bolt of lightning to hit and all our confidence to come before we decide to do something like that. It is the leap of action into the reign of God that leads to the faith we seek. To the reformation we need. And to the joy we so deeply desire.

We can stand outside the party and mope, or take the risk and go in.

We can ponder what a good response could be until we’re dead and gone, or we can act, in our own lives and as a community, as if the reign of God Christ is making in this world actually exists.

Get out of your tree, go into the party, step away from your tax booth. You’ll find the joy. And the love of God will give a true re-formation of healing for you in your life, and me in mine, and ours together as God’s people in this place.

And then we will be able to say with Jesus, today salvation has come, healing has come to this house.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

Your will be done: in doing God’s will to love God and neighbor, our trust deepens and God brings healing to all.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 27 C
Texts: Luke 17:5-10; Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4; 2 Timothy 1:1-4; Psalm 37:1-9

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

This is a horrible parable.

Jesus’ parable is deeply embedded in a slave culture and appears to endorse the evil oppression that slaves lived under. American slave-owners in the 17th to 19th centuries must have heard this parable as God’s approval of them. And we live in a society marred and bent and shaped into oppression by four centuries of slave-owning and its aftermath. Why are we reading such a story in worship?

But consider a couple things. Jesus tells a parable, like always, to open his hearers’ imagination to see a deep truth about God and God’s people. And he always uses a metaphor familiar to his hearers. Slavery was real, and horrible, in Jesus’ day. But everyone lived alongside it or in it. They knew it. Especially Jesus’ audience.

Because Jesus didn’t tell this parable for people like us. Don’t forget, privileged and wealthy people like us by and large didn’t care for Jesus or his preaching, apart from a handful, like Joseph of Arimathea and Susanna, or Nicodemus and Joanna. Jesus proclaimed a reign of God where, as his mother sang, the hungry were fed and the rich were sent away empty, so you and I are always going to be challenged by Jesus in ways we won’t like. The ones who were drawn to Jesus and loved him came from the bottom of the social order, the ones who longed for God to overturn the world. Thousands of slaves became Christian in the first centuries of the Church. Virtually everyone who heard this parable live never had a slave in their life. And many likely were slaves.

Also, consider Jesus himself.

The Jesus telling this will, on a Thursday evening to come, strip off his robe, put on a towel, and act as a slave to his beloved followers, washing their feet. None of them ever had anyone else do that. Regular people washed their own feet. But they saw exactly what he was doing. That’s why Peter was so upset.

But Jesus said, “Yes, I’m your Lord and Master. But I’ve come to you to be your slave.” And on the cross he completed that serving, the all-powerful God of the universe enslaved to God’s own creatures. And Jesus said, if you follow me, you also must choose to be slaves to each other.

This is key to understanding this parable and where we fit in all this.

But first, why’d Jesus tell this to his poor listeners, even to slaves in the crowd?

Do you remember that other parable that would have landed funny on his listeners, the one about the shepherd and the one hundred sheep? That every shepherd in that crowd would have seen the parable as ridiculous? No shepherd in their right mind would abandon ninety nine to seek one. Exactly, Jesus said. That’s God’s ridiculous love.

He’s doing the same thing here. Slaves in his audience would’ve heard the first half of the parable and laughed bitterly. Yeah, like any master would ever pat your back after you worked all day, and invite you to sit down and be served. Good one, Jesus!

And after the second half they’d say, now you’ve got it right. More work after more work, and they still think you’re worthless. You come in beaten and exhausted and you still have to prepare a meal and serve the master. You’re telling the truth, Jesus.

But if Jesus has just perfectly described the evils of being a slave to people who already knew them, how can this open their imaginations to what God is doing in the world?

Well, this all started with the request, “Increase our faith.”

They wanted to learn how to trust God with their lives. Like Habakkuk today, who’s struggling to trust God is aware of the world’s violence and evil and will do something, these followers also struggle in a world that permits slavery and oppression and poverty.

Jesus says if they even have a tiny bit of faith, like a little seed, they could command a tree to plant itself in the ocean. And then he tells them this parable. But unlike us, they know exactly what is expected of slaves. Do your duty, expect no reward.

And Jesus says, that’s how it is with God. You’ll find your trust in God, the faith you seek, when you do God’s will without expecting reward. “Your will be done,” he taught them to pray. That’s your call. Choose to act as God’s slave – this isn’t forced on you – loving God and loving neighbor, and your trust in God’s restoration will grow.

It’s the answer Habakkuk gets. Stand your post, do your job, and you’ll see God’s healing. It’s what Timothy is urged. Remember your mother’s faith and your grandmother’s, but you’ll find yours when you live and act in the spirit of love and self discipline. Do your duty as Christ, and your trust that God’s mercy and justice are coming will grow.

And that’s our cue.

Over a thousand years the Church has proclaimed Christian faith as a rewards-benefit program, with incentives and disincentives. Be a Christian and do good and go to heaven, or do bad and go to hell, millions were taught over hundreds of years.

That’s nonsense to Jesus, God-with-us. It’s an evil carrot and stick model the Church taught. Living your life to get rewards or in fear of losing them has nothing to do with following Christ.

Jesus proclaims the path of Christ is when we choose to do God’s will because it’s our call, not for any reward. Because we are God’s slaves. But this is not the slavery of this world. We’re slaves to the God who became a slave to us to save our lives. And to save the creation. We serve the all-powerful Triune God who became subject to human abuse and torture and, in our human flesh, offered up divine life and love on the cross to love us all back home.

And true life, and the faith and trust we seek, is when we do the same. Offer yourself sacrificially in love for others, not for reward, but because it’s your job as Christ. Say, “your will be done” with every breath and every action. Because it’s your duty as Christ. As we sang in the psalm: commit your way to God and put your trust in God, and you will see what God will do.

I don’t have much interest in seeing a mulberry tree get planted in the sea.

But I do long to have my faith deepened. To grow in trust of God’s love for this world and this creation, and for me. I do hope, with Habakkuk, to see an end of oppression and violence and wickedness, including all the evils that slavery has embedded in our world.

Sometimes I can’t imagine how any of that can happen, any more than I can imagine a tree jumping up and rooting in the ocean. But God can. And God says, love God and love neighbor and I’ll make this all happen. Nothing is impossible for me, you’ll see.

And I can only say, “Yes, dear God. Your will be done. And help me do it.”

In the name of Jesus.  Amen