You are fully known and fully loved by God, and that love – as Paul so beautifully describes it – will open you to see it shared with and blessing everyone and everything.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fourth Sunday after Epiphany, Lect. 4 C
Texts: 1 Corinthians 13:1-13; Luke 4:21-30

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

Jesus’ neighbors thought they knew him, and they admired him.

Then they wanted to kill him. That’s a big shift.

Luke says they were “amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth,” and they spoke well of him. So when they said, “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” it probably wasn’t “Who does he think he is?” It was more likely hometown pride that this kid they all knew was now an impressive rabbi.

So what happened?

Well, Jesus knew his neighbors, too.

The good people of Nazareth weren’t any different from any group of people in any towns and villages in history. Most probably cared for their neighbor, cleaned up after their dog, obeyed the law.

To these good folks, Jesus claimed – we heard his preaching in last week’s Gospel – that he fulfilled the Scriptures, that the Spirit anointed him to free the captives, to bring sight to those who couldn’t see, to proclaim good news to those who were poor. His neighbors loved that.

But Jesus knew them like he knows you and me. He knew that it’s one thing to admire someone. It’s a completely different thing to follow them, act on their words. He knew they weren’t ready for the full implications of what God’s love and healing meant for the whole world.

Because he knew them, he provoked them. And they got angry.

He reminded them that God’s love would be for all people, all nations. This wasn’t news to them. The prophets of Israel had long declared that God’s Anointed, the Messiah, even God’s people, the chosen ones, would be a blessing to all nations, all peoples.

The stories of Elijah and Elisha were known to them, too, of course. But Jesus pointed out that in those beloved stories God brought healing outside Israel.

Jesus’ neighbors could have rejoiced in God’s love extending to all. But they could find only rage.

Jesus said he’d give sight to the blind. He meant a lot more than physical healing.

He came to open the eyes of God’s people to see as God sees, to know as God knows. To rejoice that God’s love is not exclusive to one group of people but is for all. And to live that love.

In Luke’s Gospel, this promise begins at the beginning. God’s love is a light to the non-Jewish nations, Simeon sang (and we’ve sung every Sunday this Epiphany season), and also the glory of the people of Israel. Peace to all God’s people on earth, the angels sang to the shepherds.

This is what Jesus knew his neighbors would struggle to see and live, but needed to see if they were truly going to live in the warmth of God’s love.

For a moment they thought they saw God clearly in Jesus, face-to-face. But they weren’t ready for what he showed them about God. They were actually seeing him dimly, to borrow Paul’s words, as if in a mirror, distorted from the real truth.

True sight is needed to understand Jesus today – and Paul.

Paul’s beautiful truth is that nothing of what you or I do or think or value or build means anything if we’re not shaped by Christly love for all, infused with it, breathing it.

This is life or death for you, Paul says. The only thing of any value to your existence is dwelling in a love that is patient, kind. A love that’s not envious, boastful, arrogant or rude. A love that doesn’t insist on its own way. A love that isn’t irritable or resentful. A love that rejoices in truth, not in wrongdoing. A love that bears all things, a love that trusts all things, a love that hopes all things, a love that endures all things. A love that never ends. Christly love.

Imagine what your life would be like if that love was your center, your heart, your reality. Not some fanciful list of unlikely what-ifs, but how you lived and moved all the time.

We’re not there yet. Sometimes we’d rather admire Jesus than follow him. We see him dimly, not face-to-face. We only know God partially, not fully. We may not want to kill Jesus. But we often ignore him when he inconveniently asks love of us we don’t want to do.

Here’s something that can open your eyes.

Paul says God fully knows you, even if you don’t know God fully. God fully sees you even if you can’t see God. That never ending love God hopes from you is in fact the never ending love God has for you. Even if you can only see God’s love in a mirror, dimly, even if God’s ways of loving all are hard for you to understand, you are fully seen by God, fully known by God, fully loved by God.

One day, Paul says, you will see fully and know fully, too. But he wrote this because even here, with our spiritual blind spots, we can start seeing, start knowing, start loving. If nothing can separate you from this love of God in Christ Jesus, that very love will be the thing that heals you, teaches you, opens your eyes.

Which, if you’ve been listening to Jesus, you already knew.

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” he told us and Nazareth last week, “because the Spirit has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Jesus always promised to give you the sight you needed, to free you from anxiety and fear that keep you captive, to break you from any oppression that holds you. Jesus always promised that wherever you were poor, he was your good news.

He just needs you to know that everyone gets that, too. For you to see the Triune God in Jesus face-to-face and rejoice that all are embraced by God’s love in Christ. And to live that.

Paul’s right: now we see dimly, and know partially.

But Luke’s promise in Acts is that the same Spirit who anointed Jesus to this work has anointed you and me to the same. And the Spirit moves wherever she wants, and this is what she wants to do. Open your eyes and your understanding and your heart.

You can be outraged that you have to share this love with every one and everything. Or you can rejoice that this love is so great all God’s creation will be blessed by it. But Paul is certain that without this love, your life won’t have much meaning or use. Living it, you’ll be blessed beyond anything you can imagine.

In the name of Jesus. Amen

You are God’s beloved child, and God knows you by name, and is with you in all things, good and bad. Now God sends you to share that good news with all God’s children.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Baptism of Our Lord, Lect. 1 C
Texts: Isaiah 43:1-7; Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

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

“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by name, you are mine.”

Hear that again: God, the creator of the universe calls you by name, and you belong to God.

Jesus heard the same thing at his baptism, as the Holy Spirit came upon him in the waters: “You are my beloved Son.” Nels will hear the same thing today, too, as he comes through the waters of baptism: “You are my beloved child. You belong to me. I know you by name.”

But this is your gift, too, always: as the Holy Spirit comes upon you in your baptismal waters, God says to you, “You are my beloved child. I have called you by name, you are mine.”

Let that sink into your heart and mind.

The Triune God who placed the stars, created the planets and galaxies, knows your name. “You are precious in my sight,” God says to you today, “and I love you.”

What if you could live every day in the joy that the God of the universe has claimed you, knows you by name, loves you? That you are precious to God? If you could cling to that promise, you wouldn’t need to be afraid anymore. That’s worth hoping for. When was the last time you weren’t afraid of something?

Because maybe you don’t feel precious to God very often, or beloved.

You might feel abandoned by God sometimes, as if God were absent. You might feel you’re not worthy of God’s love. Maybe you’re burdened by the weight of guilt and regret, the pain of things you know you’ve done wrong.

We can live under heavy weight these days – a weight of “might have beens” and “should have dones”. Especially in this broken world where so many of us are awakening to realities we didn’t understand before, awakening to our involvement in other peoples’ suffering even without wanting to be. Lots can make you fret about God’s love for you.

But God says – don’t be afraid. Don’t carry that weight. I have redeemed you, God says. I came to you in my beloved Son, to show you a way of love that will transform you and the world. To take all of the hurtful things you and all my children do, and draw them into my love to be forgiven and forgotten. To carry the world’s brokenness and suffering through death into my risen life that can heal all things.

When God says to you today, “I love you, and you are precious to me,” God means it. So you really don’t need to be afraid.

And know this, child of God, known to God by name, redeemed of God: nothing in this world can take you from the arms of the God to whom you belong.

God says to you today: when you pass through the waters, the floods, you will not be overwhelmed. Don’t be afraid.

When you pass through the fire, through the suffering in this world, you will not be burned. Don’t be afraid.

Did you hear? God says, “when” you pass through the flood, “when” you pass through fire. God expects bad things can and will happen. But whatever happens –  flood, fire, death, tragedy, pain, suffering – God says, “do not be afraid, for I am with you.”

God promises far better than a life free of suffering and pain. God promises to always be with you, no matter what happens. Even if it’s death: God in Christ has broken death’s power. Even there you are safe with God.

Like Jesus, you are God’s beloved child. And, like Jesus, there’s one more thing to know.

After his baptism, Jesus went out into his ministry as God’s beloved Son, to let all God’s children know who they are, too. And so you, and I, and all God’s beloved, are sent out as God’s children in the world to let all the others know they’re precious to God and known.

Just before today’s words in Isaiah, God tells the same people in exile who are promised God’s eternal love that they also will be sent into the world. “I will give you as a light to the nations,” God says to them – and to you – in chapter 42. I need you to free prisoners from their chains, to heal those who are sick, to be a sign of my covenant promise of love for all my children.

In a couple weeks in our Gospel we’ll hear Jesus claim those words of Isaiah 42 as his own call. But in Acts, Luke says they’re your call and mine, the call of all who are filled with God’s Spirit, all who are God’s children.

It was that way for Jesus after his baptism. So it will be for Nels. And so it is with you.

You don’t need to be afraid. You are God’s beloved.

You don’t need to be afraid. God knows you by your name, and you belong to God. You don’t need to be afraid. You are precious to God, and God is always with you.

Now take that love and grace into your world. To those who are going through the waters and the fires but don’t know God is with them. To those who are in pain and in need, wherever they are. To those who are oppressed, or captive, or sick. So they know they don’t need to be afraid, either. So they know that God knows them by name and they are beloved and precious to God.

Go, now, and do this. It’s what God’s beloved ones do. It’s who we are. So that all can know this joy themselves.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

God calls us to get up and go from our comfortable places, to be stretched in our ways of thinking and being, and we will see God’s light dawning in the world’s night, bringing life and hope.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Epiphany of Our Lord
Texts: Isaiah 60:1-6; Matthew 2:1-12

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

The Magi weren’t Jewish.

Maybe that’s obvious. But these astrologers, likely from Persia, had a very different belief system than Judaism. They didn’t study the Hebrew Scriptures, either.

But they did study the skies. And something there told them a new ruler was to be born for the Jewish people. Born far to the west of them. Far from their culture, their faith, their practices.

And they followed that heavenly phenomenon, traveled long distances, both from their country and from their faith. Because something drew them. We would say that God led them. Even if they didn’t know the one God of all creation the Jewish people trusted.

The Holy Spirit filled them and drew them far from their comfort zones, their families and neighbors, their base of knowledge, their cultural touchstones.

Now, we claim Jesus is the Messiah promised to the Jewish people.

He was a Jew himself. His first disciples in the first years of the early Church were mostly Jewish. But today Isaiah proclaims that God’s light is dawning for all, not just for the Jewish people. He promises that other nations and rulers will also be drawn to this light and come. Something will shine in the world’s night that God will use to draw all people to see what God is doing.

And those early Jewish Christians, including Matthew our evangelist, claimed this promise was fulfilled. When Jesus was a young child, non-Jewish strangers from the east, foreigners, were drawn to him by God. Saw God’s light shining in him.

Do you see the wonder of these two things?

That people completely unfamiliar with Judaism and the Hebrew Scriptures would uproot themselves and travel a long way to a faith unknown to them, give up the comfort they had in their lives and go see the mystery that was drawing them.

And that the Jewish people they came to also stretched themselves from their certainty to trust that God’s light wasn’t theirs exclusively.

These are both beyond remarkable things.

For most of us, if God wants to show us something, God needs to do it in our context.

We’d prefer it to be within doctrines we understand, using language we find comfort in, in places we’ve grown to love.

Can you imagine feeling the Spirit’s pull and heading off on a journey to another country where people have never heard of Jesus, let alone of Lutherans, not to tell them you’ve got the answers, but because you heard God say, “I will be there, go look for me among those people”?

On this day of Epiphany, if you’re going to see God manifested in the world, the Magi tell you, be ready to go where God leads you. And it might be strange lands, or strange neighborhoods, to people unlike you. But there you will meet God.

The Magi fell on their knees in joy when they saw God in this baby. They’d never have seen anything if they hadn’t gotten up to go where they were led.

As daunting as it was for the Magi to get up and go, don’t underestimate how hard this challenge was for the Jewish people.

God’s chosen ones were asked to understand God’s choosing of them wasn’t meant to be exclusive. It’s not enough for God just to save Israel. “I will give you as a light to the nations,” God declares in Isaiah 49, “that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” They were chosen, but to be a blessing to all nations, to welcome all into God’s light.

We hear Jesus proclaim that at the cross he will draw all things – not even just all people, but all things, the whole cosmos – into the life and love of God. But how often have we wondered about that breadth, that inclusion? How often have we doubted God’s expansive love included people unlike us? How often have we acted as if God’s love had limits and that if others were included, perhaps that meant there’d be less love for us?

On this day of Epiphany, if you’re going to see God manifested in the world, Isaiah and Matthew challenge you, celebrate God’s light dawning in the world without restricting where God can be, who God will be with, who might show you a truth about God you’d never known before.

The Magi were the first to witness to the Jewish people that their true ruler was now born. Those who came to believe in Jesus never would have found that joy without being open to God’s inclusive ways.

Today the good news is that the light of God has come, is revealed in Christ.

Morning is dawning on the long night of evil and suffering this world has been in. But to see it you’ll have to go look where God leads you. How far might you be willing to go from your comfort to see God revealed in the world?

And to see God’s light, you’ll need to look at the stranger beside you with God’s eyes of love. How much are you willing to let God stretch you out of your ways of thinking to see God’s light where God is shining it?

This day promises you: when you let God’s Spirit send you out, and stretch you within, you will see God’s light in Christ dawning over the whole creation, bringing life and hope to all.

And then you, too, can be overwhelmed with joy.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen