Life in God, abundant life as Christ offers, is a lived reality, not a thing to have or hold; living in love of God and neighbor is living in God’s new life.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 15 C
Text: Luke 10:25-37

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

You can’t inherit eternal life. It’s not a thing to be possessed.

You can’t receive it or hold it. You can’t get it with a ticket, or own it. Eternal life, the abundant life Christ Jesus wants for you and me and the whole creation, isn’t a thing, a noun. It is only lived, experienced. It’s a verb.

So our friend today is mistaken at the start. He wants to know how to obtain something he thinks Jesus can give. But look at Jesus’ answer.

Love God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and love your neighbor as yourself. Do, this, Jesus says, and you will live. Do this, live this, and you will be living in this life from God you want.

Our friend, and so many like him, including you and me sometimes, believe you do what God wants so you’re rewarded with something.

No, Jesus says. This life isn’t a thing to be won or given. Do this – this love of God and love of neighbor – and you have it, right now, here. In that doing, you will know God’s abundant, eternal, new life.

We recognize our friend’s confusion from other things.

Take physical fitness. That’s not a reward, a present, something you can inherit or buy. No magic pills or tickets will give it to you. Exercise and eat healthily, and you’ll get there. Breaking free of addiction is the same. You can’t order it online or ask someone for it. You find support and guidance, and learn new ways of being, and you live into sobriety, and health.

But both of those things mean big changes in your life, one day at a time. And our friend is smart, like us. He knows that love of God and neighbor will mean changes in his life. Profound changes at times. And that’s not easy. So, rather than focus on the broad, complete love of God and neighbor and all that might mean for his actions, he tries one more time to make a noun the important thing, not the verb, not the doing. Even though doing it will give him exactly what he wants, he decides to limit the category of neighbor instead of focusing on his love.

Let’s talk about who you mean, Jesus. Who is my neighbor? Let’s describe that noun. Then maybe I can find a way to do this.

Well, you can’t trick Jesus.

Jesus sees clearly what he’s doing. Since our friend didn’t respond well to direct teaching, Jesus tries another way. “Let me tell you a story.” A story of someone beaten and left for dead in a ditch, a story of some who walked by and one who didn’t, who helped, who loved.

And Jesus refuses to classify neighbor. The categories mean nothing – priest, Levite, Samaritan, unknown guy in the ditch. What he asks at the end is, who acted as neighbor? Who loved someone here? The only question that matters this moment, this afternoon, tomorrow, next month, next year, is: am I acting in love or not?

Caring about the nouns, the categories we make, instead of the verbs, what we do, has nearly destroyed our world.

For almost half a millennium, racism has existed here because people who looked a certain way ordered their world by defining who was their neighbor, the person they cared about. They decided those of different skin color and culture were not neighbor, not even human, therefore could be enslaved, abused, killed. They were a noun, a thing. Property.

The legal system of this country and our social norms and customs and our cultural understanding have been shaped for hundreds of years on that ordering. We shouldn’t be surprised that we find embedded biases and prejudices in our own hearts and minds. We’ve been cooked in it for centuries.

And for millennia in the Western world, those who identify as male have been in charge. And they ordered their world by defining who was their neighbor, the person they cared about. They decided that everyone who wasn’t male was not neighbor, not fully human. They said that women weren’t capable, weren’t worthy of respect. Didn’t deserve equal pay or rights. Often they were property. A noun, a thing to be controlled. As the highest court in our land just reinforced.

Horrors are done for centuries because no one – especially, tragically, no one who’s been running everything all these years – ever stops and says, “the only thing that matters here is are we loving. Do we love all others as we love ourselves?

But when you focus on the verbs, on what you’re doing, everything changes.

Four decades ago, when Mount Olive began to be a safe, welcoming place for those who were LGBTQ, this community quit playing with nouns. All of the anguish and hatred and fighting over sexual orientation always focused on the nouns – who’s doing what with who, what physical parts belonged with what other ones, who gets to be with whom? Defining people and declaring what that means for the life they can live.

But this community – and thankfully many others – realized the only question was: is loving visible here? Can you see living in faithful, committed ways? Is there forgiving? All verbs. No definitions of the partners needed. The verb is everything, truth is seen in the doing.

What we learned here could change the world. When the only question in voting, in public policy, how you treat people at home, at work, out in the community, when the only question in thinking and acting on what’s wrong with our society and culture is: is this loving?, everything can change. Am I living in the love I know from God? Is our society acting in love? Is this policy a loving thing or not? Are we still objectifying people so that we don’t have to ask the love question?

The verbs are everything, Jesus says. Love God, love neighbor. Do this, and you’ll live. Right now. And so will this world.

Do you want God’s eternal life, God’s abundant life? It’s yours in your living in love of God and neighbor. And when you and I start living this abundant life, and others do, and others do, then this world actually becomes what God has always dreamed. This world will live, right now. Things will change, right now. Joy and hope and healing will begin, right now.

Start with loving your God with everything you are and have. Because when you dive fully into love of God you will find to your joy that you are beloved to God. You will know in your heart and soul and mind and strength how precious you are, how important you are, how much God will risk to live in love with you. That’s eternal life, right there.

And then, filled to the brim with that love in and from God, love of neighbor’s the only natural action. It pours out from you and me, and changes the world. That’s abundant life, right there.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. And love your neighbor as yourself. Do this, and you will live.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

God is reaching out to free all God’s children, declare them clean, and clothe them in mercy and love. When you see this, experience this – tell someone!

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Second Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 12 C
Texts: Luke 8:26-39; Galatians 3:23-29

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 was the first time they’d seen him clothed in years.

That’s how his friends and neighbors knew he was better. He wasn’t naked anymore. They chained him up for his own safety – he’d throw himself against the rocks to injure himself – but he broke the chains. He took shelter in the tombs outside the city, naked, frightening, destructive.

But not anymore. Now he was clothed and in his right mind. And because of a truly unlikely person.

Jesus went everywhere a respectable Jewish rabbi shouldn’t go: into the territory of unclean foreigners, among unclean tombs, with an unclean possessed person, around unclean pigs. He crossed all those boundaries, broke this man free of the inner chains that bound him, and washed and clothed him.

Paul understands the power of what Jesus did here.

Paul proclaims to his Galatian congregations – made of Jewish and Gentile Christians – that they have been freed and washed in baptism and clothed in Christ and that makes them one people, beloved children of God. No boundaries exist between them anymore. No barriers of culture, of ethnicity or wealth or gender or social class, all are one in Christ.

Imagine if Paul’s right. What if God in Christ really is capable of breaking the chains that bind you, and me, and this world, and making clean what was unclean, and clothing you, and me, and all people with garments that make us one with each other, all offspring and heirs of God’s love and mercy?

Now, it might be hard to see your need for this, if you’re not in the dire straits of this man.

This man was obviously troubled, so troubled that it’s possible his friends and neighbors in the city thought he was the only one who had need of freeing. But all do. God came in Christ to break all God’s children free of whatever binds them, whether it’s obvious to outsiders or not.

God wants to break the chains that are those ways of thinking that lead us into repeating the same harmful behaviors, or hamper every attempt to make things right with another person. The chains that are those prejudices and biases we wish we could sweep away but keep cropping up and harming.

God wants to break the chains that bind our whole world with systemic evil that grips our culture now, an evil that goes beyond bad individual choices and simple answers, and is ingrained in the very bones of our society.

God wants to break the chains of our inability to see every human being as a beloved sibling and as divinely blessed.

And God wants to break the same chains as this man had, mental illness that binds so many today who deal with anxiety, depression, and other mental diseases that just seem to embed ever deeper.

You don’t have to be naked and living in caves to need the healing grace of God in Christ breaking you free. Everyone has chains to be broken, freedom and new life to find.

But Christ doesn’t seem to act as immediately anymore.

This man suffered for a long time, but the moment he met Christ, he found healing and wholeness.

That doesn’t happen in our day, not that rapidly, not that noticeably. Our inner chains can bind us for years. Our society seems to be taking five steps back for every one forward. Those celebrating the emancipation of Juneteenth today see ever stronger chains of racism and oppression binding God’s children and our society. All these chains that bind seem to be stronger than God can handle.

But look from a different perspective. Look back on your life. Can you see a thread of God’s healing hand over time? Where were you a year ago, or ten? Can you see that God has been at work breaking some of those chains already?

And in this world, we can look at the pain and suffering we see repeatedly and despair that anything is happening. But we can also look for signs that chains are being broken and life from God is emerging. There are signs of hope today, if only we can look for them, and tell each other when we see them.

And Paul’s witness is that, while we’re being freed, we’re already clean and clothed.

Paul’s Galatians were in a lot of difficulty. Deep division between Jewish and Gentile Christians caused a lot of stress and emotional anguish, even to Paul.

But Paul didn’t say “one day you’ll be one in Christ.” He said, “all of you are one in Christ Jesus. These things that seem to divide you, ethnicity, gender, class, privilege, these are not your deepest truth. You are one.”

Jesus crossed the sea and clothed a foreigner, a non-Jew, with the same healing he offered Jewish people. Paul created communities of multiple cultures and backgrounds, proclaiming their oneness in Christ. That’s the clothing that you already have. You, and I, and all the baptized, and Oren today, are already clean and clothed as God’s beloved children, our true identity, even while we are being freed. And God’s reign in Christ is for all God’s children, regardless of what they do or don’t believe. God sees no boundaries of any kind to reaching people and freeing them. God’s love in Christ declares all clean, clothed with love and mercy and wholeness.

If you do start to see this, experience this, what can you do?

This man, freed, washed, clothed, wants to go along with Jesus on the road and be with the one who saved his life. But Jesus says not everyone is sent away to serve God. He’s told to go home, free, and clean, and clothed, and do one thing: declare how much God has done for him.

For most of us, most of you, that’s our call, too. Return to your home, your life, and tell someone how much God has done for you and the world. So they can hope. So they themselves can start seeing chains breaking. And so all can live in the joy of being clothed in God’s mercy, and one with each other as beloved children of God.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

The Triune God, who lives in a relationship of love within God’s life, invites you and the whole creation into that relationship, promising to keep teaching and guiding and opening up new paths for a life of love and healing of all things.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Holy Trinity, year C
Text: John 16:12-15

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

Nearly 2,000 years ago, Jesus told his followers that he “still had many things to say” to them, but they weren’t ready.

He promised that the Holy Spirit would continue to be with them and guide them into whatever truth they would need whenever they would need it. Or be ready for it.

Instead of expecting these new things, starting nearly 2,000 years ago, Jesus’ followers began a pattern of trying to lock down for all time things they knew about the Christian faith. They developed the canon of the New Testament, choosing books and letters that were achieving nearly universal use among the congregations of Christians. That was and is a blessing. But it also created a line between “official” Scripture and writings that didn’t make the cut. If Christ was still trying to say new things to the Church, those new things weren’t going to make it into the Bible.

And in the first few centuries, they developed creeds, statements of faith.

These definitively stated Church teaching, mostly about the nature of the Triune God and the death and resurrection of Christ. These creeds are still a blessing to us, truths the Church has cherished and passed on for millennia.

But they also can inhibit believers from hearing new things Christ might want to teach the Church through the guidance of the Spirit. In the first place, they say nothing concerning the teachings of Jesus, the heart of his ministry. Never mind future new things, they don’t affirm what Christ says in Scripture. Jesus didn’t seem to care much that we understand his divine and human natures, but he definitely wanted us to be filled with the Spirit and love our neighbors, our enemies, and to offer our lives to God. Our creeds ignore that completely.

And worse, if you were among those who didn’t get your views in the creeds, suddenly you were a heretic, when before you simply had a disagreement with others about God’s nature. The Church could now say anyone who doesn’t agree with everything here is outside, not inside.

Where, in such statements of faith, is there room for Christ to teach us new things, things that perhaps the Church wasn’t ready for in the 4th century but might be ready now? Are there even openings for the Spirit to guide and lead us, if we proclaim we know everything we need to know?

On this feast day celebrating the Holy Trinity, let’s seriously ask those questions.

This day, on the calendar since the 15th century, began much earlier as an attempt to reinforce the insider/outsider boundary once again. Believe these things about the Triune God, this day said, or you’re not a true Christian. Now, not a single Christian in history ever has understood a fraction of the truth about the Triune God’s nature. Even those at Nicaea couldn’t know for certain they were right, they just won the votes. Using this day as a way to weed out the false Christians is a pretty bad idea.

Thank God for Scripture. Just when you think you’ve got the truth about God in a box and you can see who’s in and who’s out by whether they like your box, the Scriptures happily take a hammer to the box and say, “Well, it’s more complicated than you think.”

Whatever you and I say about the Triune God’s nature, whatever our beloved, ancient creeds say, we all stand down at the words of our risen Lord and Savior: “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.”

Christ Jesus says the box is open, the book is never closed, and the understanding of faith will continue to grow and expand. That’s the joy to celebrate on this feast of the Holy Trinity.

We understand that God is Triune from the teachings of Jesus.

How God is Trinity, how it all works, Jesus couldn’t care less if we understand that. But that you and I can connect with the Triune God in all three Persons, Jesus deeply wants you to trust that and rejoice in that.

Jesus taught us that we have complete access to God in all three Persons of the Trinity. We can pray to the One Jesus called Father with complete confidence and joy, trusting we are heard and loved. And we have access to the Trinity through our brother Christ Jesus who leads and guides us on our path of life and promises to always be with us. And Jesus taught us that the Holy Spirit is our deepest access to the Trinity, living in you and me, giving birth to faith, filling us with fire and love, guiding, teaching, comforting, reminding.

Jesus also invites us to live, abide in the mystery of a Triune God, not to understand it.

Jesus said repeatedly that he and the Father were one, abided in and with each other, and that the Spirit also abided with both of them. God exists as loving, abiding relationship, a dance of love within God’s own life.

And the Son of God proclaims this dance of God’s life is an open dance, a relationship of love and grace the Triune God wants to welcome you and all creation into, to live in God’s life, live in God’s love, abide in God’s loving, changing, alive, active, growing relationship.

That’s why we can’t put God in a box. The Triune God still has many things to say to you and me and the Church and the world. And that teaching will happen as we live within God’s life together, in relationship with God and each other, blessed by the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, she will guide you into all truth.”

This is one of Christ’s greatest gifts to the Church, to be able to expect new communication from the Triune God through the Spirit’s guidance, to be able to hope for new clarity, new direction, new love we need to bear, new paths as we continue to live in a challenging and suffering world.

What if you and I and the Church lived our lives expecting this? To have the joy that when we’re confused, or lost, or threatened, or afraid, or mistaken, or sinful, we can expect the Triune God to give us clarity, direction, hope, answers?

The box is open, the book is never closed, and our understanding of faith will continue to grow and expand. That’s a promise from the God who lives in a Triune relationship of love within God’s life and who today invites you and me and all creation to live in that same relationship within God and with each other, for the healing of this creation and the life of all God’s children.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

None of us know what is happening next in our discipleship, what callings and challenges are ahead, but we are known by the Triune God whose Spirit fills and empowers us all.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Day of Pentecost, year C
Texts: Acts 2:1-21; John 14:8-17, 25-27

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

Mary Magdalene had no idea. Neither did Andrew or Thomas or Joanna.

None of the one hundred and twenty believers gathered in Jerusalem knew what was going to happen as they woke up that morning.

Jesus had told them to wait in the city and they would receive power from the Holy Spirit.

But this? They had no idea they’d all be filled with God’s Spirit just like Jesus, and that because of them thousands would come to trust the new life God had made in Christ’s resurrection. They had no idea they had the ability to preach and teach and witness. None of them had the language skills to speak clearly to at least fifteen different language groups. And none of them had any idea what would be asked of them in the years to come, what being a disciple of Christ would cost them, what they would be called to do, even how they were going to learn how to do it.

None of these four who are affirming their faith in the Triune God and committing their lives to serving God have any idea, either.

It may not be wise to ask people in their teen years to affirm the promises made at their baptism, to affirm that they share the faith of the Christian Church, and to promise to be active and engaged in Christian community and in service to God’s justice and peace. Many adult Christians might struggle with that. But, wise or not, we will ask these four wonderful young people to do just that today.

And four years of study, of walking with mentors and family, of being prayed for by those who love them, doesn’t mean these four know what it will mean for them to be a disciple of Christ. They don’t know if they’ve got the skills, language or otherwise, to serve God; they don’t know what that service will look like. Careers are far in the future, opportunities yet to come to witness by their love and actions are still unknown. None of these four know what being Christ’s disciple will ask of them in the years to come, what it will cost, what they will be called to do, even how to learn how to do it.

You want to know the truth? Most of us here don’t know any of that, either.

But none of you here need to be afraid of not knowing these things.

Today, Jesus repeats his assurance that, within the mystery of God, he, the Son, is deeply connected to God the Father, there is a life that lives between the two. But Jesus tells a deeper joy: there is another within God’s life, the Spirit of God, who also dwells with the Father and the Son, who will be sent to you. To me. To this world.

This Spirit actually already lives in you, gives your own spirit birth into God’s new life. And not just you four: everyone in this room, in this world. God’s Spirit knows you intimately: your life, your fears, your hopes, your dreams, your brokenness, your joys, your sadness.

And because the Spirit knows you, Jesus says she is your Advocate, who speaks on your behalf within God’s life. God’s Spirit is called alongside you, to walk with you, live in you, never leave you. God is as close to you as your own breath. Which is why Advocate is also translated Comforter. The one who embraces you, and me, and all God’s children, and breathes God’s words of love and grace to you.

It doesn’t matter what you don’t know about what’s next. You are deeply and wholly known.

But be ready for the fire, too.

All of you here today, not just you four, be ready: today we’re going to ask the Spirit to stir up in all of you. To inflame you, inspire you, fill you, and send you out to be God’s Christ in the world.

What that will mean for any one of you on any given day, you’ll receive from the Spirit when you need it. God’s Spirit will teach and remind you about the Way of Christ, love of God and neighbor, love of enemies, working for justice for all God’s children, so you’ll know the path to walk. The Spirit will keep you up to speed if you listen. And if you need gifts, you’ll get them. If you need guidance, direction, it’s yours. If you need courage, support, you have it.

Be ready for the Spirit’s fire. Listen to God’s voice speak in your heart and call you to whatever it is that is needed. However old or young you are. However gifted or ungifted you think you are. However weak or strong you believe yourself to be. Whatever doubt or concern any of you here have about your adequacy, your faith, your calling, your path, the Spirit’s fire is for all. Including you.

None of us know what’s ahead. But we are fully known. That’s the beautiful reality of Christian life.

In the Spirit, God has called you all to ventures that you cannot yet see the ending of, to walk paths you have not yet trodden, to go through perils you do not yet know.

But God’s Spirit fills you and knows you and walks with you and will give you the faith and trust and fire you need to go out with good courage, not knowing where you go, but only that God’s hand is leading you and God’s love supporting you in Christ our Lord.

Come, Holy Spirit. Fill these four. Fill all in this room. Fill your world with your comfort and courage and fire, until your new creation is completed in us and by us all through you. Amen