You are God’s holy, precious child, and are called by your sibling, Christ Jesus, to be about your Heavenly Parent’s business.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The First Sunday of Christmas, year C
Text: Luke 2:41-52

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 Church has a longstanding Father problem when it comes to language about God.

For a very long time, and in many parts of the Church, even today, the name “Father” has been by far the predominant image used to evoke the reality of God in people’s minds and hearts. And for many, including here, it’s a precious one.

But as Christians who believe in the One, Holy, and Triune God, “Father” can never fully substitute for God. It is part of the name of God given in Matthew 28, and we use it, along with Son and Holy Spirit, when we invoke God, as part of our nearly 2,000 year tradition. But “Father” is too often carelessly used to refer to the entirety of God’s reality. For we who confess a Triune God, that’s close to heresy.

Even now, when people are asked to image God, God is an old, white man in a robe with a long white beard and long white hair, not a mystery we call the Trinity, a relationship of love between Three Persons who are yet at the same time One God. That’s a huge problem.

Worse, the Church for many centuries was – and continues to be in many places – a patriarchy run exclusively by men in power. Perpetuating an image of a solely male Deity conveniently keeps everyone who isn’t male (or who disagrees with the powerful) in their place. And if they want to be controlling and judging, claiming those as characteristics of a Father God also conveniently lets those in power act as they want, using God’s wrath and judgment as an excuse.

There’s also the very real problem that many human beings sadly don’t have a happy or wholesome image of what a father is like because of their experience with fathers. Many people hear “God the Father” and feel trauma because of their life experience.

It’s enough to wonder if the name is at all redeemable.

But there is this one thing. Jesus taught us to use and trust that name.

Today we see the twelve-year-old Jesus in the Temple, teaching and challenging and amazing the teachers of God’s law. When he’s finally found by his parents, he says, “Why are you surprised at what I’m doing? Didn’t you know I must be about my Father’s business?”

But be alert now. Now we tread into mystery. We confess this human child, Jesus, is also the Son of God, that Jesus, the Christ, the Anointed, Crucified, and Resurrected One, is also fully God. And within the mystery that is the life of the Trinity, this One we call God and human experiences his relationship to the First Person of the Trinity in a way he describes as father. (Stay with me now – this is mystery.)

So the Trinity is not Father. But within the inner life of God, the one we know as the Son calls this other One Father, at least for our sake. There is a relationship within God’s life that Jesus can only describe for you and me in parental terms.

This Jesus whom we have learned to trust with our lives and our deaths, wants us to know something about the Trinity that is blessing and gift within God’s life and for us. Within, because there is a joy of this relationship within the life of the Triune God that Jesus wants us to know about. For us, because, as Jesus taught us to pray, we can know this Person of the Trinity in the same way. We can also have a relationship of child to parent within the Trinity.

This is mystery and hard to grasp. But Luke, our Evangelist today, makes all this much simpler. Luke shows what this could mean for you.

Luke tells you things no other Evangelist does, and they’re astonishing.

Luke gives breathtaking glimpses of what a relationship with the Trinity that is like father and child could be for you.

Luke is the only one to tell Jesus’ parables revealing a prodigal God who so desperately wants to bring wandering humanity back, God will do whatever it takes. That story of a father who lost a son and got him back is a wonder. All-powerful, male gods in human history tend to demand vengeance and punishment. They don’t sit on the front step day after day after day looking down the road, waiting for sight of their lost ones so they can prodigally welcome them back with robe and song and feast. They don’t turn their houses upside down like an old woman looking for her lost precious one, rejoicing when they are found.

When the Son of God is brutally crucified, only Luke says that Jesus’ words as he was being nailed to the wooden beam were a prayer to the One he called Father, asking forgiveness for those hammering, for those who caused this, for those who betrayed him.

For Luke, the image of Father he knows from God is one of endless, foolish love, willing to be taken advantage of, instantly and always ready to welcome back all who stray. For Luke, the image of Father he knows from God is one who could even forgive those who have done the worst things imaginable to God’s own Child.

There are many rich and beautiful images for God in Scripture, and we always need to seek them, use them, rejoice in them.

In our song and prayer and preaching here at Mount Olive we try hard to use the whole palette of grace-filled images God’s Word gives us for God and they bless us.

And though we must never substitute “Father” for the entirety of God, Jesus in Luke gives us a precious gift: one of the ways the Trinity comes to you, to me, is as a loving, forgiving parent. A parent who cares more for you than you can ever imagine, who will do anything to love you, even risking everything. If “father” is too hard for you to recover, Jesus’ll OK with that. Use “mother,” or “parent”. But this is too important a relationship, too blessed a gift, to lose.

You are God’s beloved child You’ve heard this often from this pulpit, from God’s Word, from our hymns and prayers. That’s what the 12-year-old Jesus is talking about. That’s the business of God he came to be about: to show God’s parental love is real and precious.

And like Jesus, you and I are called to be about our Heavenly Parent’s business.

You and I and all God’s children are asked to be prodigal in our loving, radical in our welcoming. This is God the Father’s business, according to Luke. That we look in every nook and corner for any who are lost to find them and bring them home to the God who loves them. That you offer to all who hurt you, just as Stephen did, the risky, transforming forgiveness of a God who will go to a cross to change that evil into life and love.

Jesus teaches you today as a child, and later as an adult, to be about your God’s business, to be like your Heavenly Parent, with the same wisdom, the same relentless love, the same searching heart for all who are lost. To be the kind of person no one will be surprised to find being about God’s holy, loving business in this world.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

The world is unsafe for all the creation, so God enters it, risks all that is unsafe, to bring healing through the creation, as we learn to risk, to be unsafe, for the sake of all.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Eve of the Nativity of Our Lord
Text: Luke 2:1-20

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 not a safe world.

And you know it. We gather tonight and sing “all is calm, all is bright,” “glory to the newborn King,” knowing very little is calm, or bright, or glorious in our hearts, our society, our city, our culture, our world.

This is not a safe world, and you know it. Even worshipping here in this place tonight, something we missed so dearly last year, we can’t be one hundred percent sure we’re safe. We vaccinate, wear masks, keep distance. But even with these best protections, over two years of pandemic uncertainty have taught us any decisions to leave our homes for any reason are judgment calls with risks.

This is not a safe world, but God knows it, too. So God entered this unsafe world as one of us. The Incarnate God is already out there, in the unsafe world. That’s the wonder of this night.

And tonight that Incarnate One calls you out into the darkness and cold, into the noise and fear, into the sickness and pain. Where God-with-us truly is. Where God-with-us, Emmanuel, hopes you will be, too.

The birth of this child shows God’s willingness to risk everything, to be unsafe.

This is a story that begins at creation, a story of the eternal God who desperately loves this God-made world of beauty and life but is pained beyond belief at the destruction we, God’s own children, have made of it by our own actions, our own lives.

This is a story of the Triune God who answers that brokenness and destruction by risking everything to draw the creation back into God’s life and love. God enters an unsafe, cold, hateful, sick, broken world to transform it from within. To become completely vulnerable to it, rather than destroy it. To say to us, to all God’s children, “I’m in your hands,” hoping that from that vulnerable love we might also learn to love.

This child is meant to draw us into this story of God’s unsafe love for the world.

Babies are born without power and protection, at risk from any number of dangers. This baby, born into a world which already had no room for him, was at risk from the moment of his conception. In this birth God says, “I come to you without any power or might, so that you can hear me, know me, love me. Follow me.”

But beginning as a vulnerable, weak baby, God also is saying, “Know me, follow me . . . or kill me if you have to. Reject me. Walk away. But I will come to you in this way. It’s the only way to life for this world.”

Which means, on this holy night, you’re faced with a decision.

What will you do with this baby? You can love the story, the idea of a baby in a manger, and imagine this is all sweetness and light. But then you’ll go out into that unsafe world with little more than a lie. Because if this beauty, this quiet, this peace in here has nothing to do with reality out there, what’s the point? If God is actually doing something for this unsafe world in this birth, loving this story does nothing.

But if you can see that this vulnerability, this risk of God is the whole point, this baby becomes very important. Then you see that this baby is the beginning of God’s answer to this broken, cold, unsafe world.

Without power, without weapons, without defenses; without strategy, without plan of attack, without manipulation; this is how God enters the pain of this world. The Triune God’s wisdom is at once astounding and troubling, that the only way to make this world safe and whole is to risk being broken and unsafe, even though God has the power to make and unmake universes.

This baby is only the beginning of God’s answer to an unsafe world, though.

The cross and empty tomb continue that answer, showing how God’s life rises from sacrificial love. But this God-with-us, Emmanuel whose birth we celebrate, made it clear: you and I and God’s children are the rest of the answer. We are called to embrace God’s way of healing the world and no other.

God’s unsafe way is now offered as your way. It’s kind of easy to think you go into this world powerless and defenseless, since you’re not the eternal God of creation. You probably feel powerless often enough. But you and I still have power, still cling to our self-built protections, build barriers, try to pretend we can be safe. There’s enough risk in following God’s unsafe path that we need to hear what Christ taught us in his words, in this birth, in that death and resurrection.

That the only way to healing, to light, to warmth, to wholeness, to peace, is for you to enter the pain, the darkness, the cold, the brokenness, the struggle and be willing to put yourself wholly into it. For me to do that. For all who hear God’s voice to do that. In that risking, the world will be healed.

God’s path goes straight into the unsafe.

But it’s the only way for God. So it can be the only way for us.

So keep your eyes tonight on this baby who is the God of all creation, heaven and earth contained in such a little space, such a vulnerable place. This baby means God is already walking in this unsafe world, walking the path Christ now calls you to. So you are never alone on this path, even when it leads into danger and cold, into unsafe places.

And if you are with such a God on this path, then you are also given the courage and strength to risk as God has risked and be a part of God’s healing of all.

And that is truly tidings of comfort and joy.

In the name of Jesus. Amen

Joy is found both in receiving God’s promised restoration and healing and in being a part of that healing by repenting as John calls.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Third Sunday of Advent, year C
Texts: Zephaniah 3:14-20; Philippians 4:4-7; Luke 3:7-18

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

Today is Gaudete Sunday – “Rejoice” Sunday.

Historically today’s Introit in Western Christianity was Paul’s words to the Philippians we just heard: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice!” In the current lectionary, Zephaniah joins Paul today and urges the faithful to “rejoice and exult with all your heart,” for God has come to bring them hope and healing. Today we pause in our Advent waiting to rejoice in what God has done and is doing in Christ for the world.

Two things make this challenging. First, John’s second appearance in two weeks is not the most joyful Gospel reading one could add to the others’ urgings of joy.

But, more deeply, if you listened carefully to Zephaniah, you might have grasped that perhaps you’re not the one being comforted. That someone else needs Zephaniah in ways you do not.

Zephaniah’s call for rejoicing is specifically for those oppressed, outcast.

“I will remove disaster from you,” God declares, “and I will deal with all your oppressors at that time. I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth. I will bring you home.”

From my privileged place in this culture, I know I’m not the one offered joy here. But there are many for whom this would be good news. If God really will deal with oppressors and restore the outcast, then for our neighbors of color who deal with systemic oppression daily, that’s something to hear, maybe even find hope in. For our indigenous neighbors whose voices are constantly ignored in our society and who’ve been systemically excluded, marginalized, their culture and lives and homes intentionally demolished for four centuries, perhaps God’s promise brings joy. If they see God is doing it.

Many, many more, including some here today, know oppression and marginalization. Rejoice, then, Zephaniah proclaims: God is with you.

But if you’re more like me, you might find yourself elsewhere in today’s readings.

Some of us are more at home on the Jordan’s banks today.

Whatever you feel about John’s harsh tone and unflinching words, people flocked to him. Maybe they saw in him the signs of a true prophet of Israel. Maybe, like some of us, they recognized a need to find their way back to God.

But John insists that repentance – turning to God – isn’t real if it doesn’t bear fruit worthy of it. Something visible, tangible, effective in the world. So we join the earnest seekers by the river – setting aside Rejoice Sunday for now – and ask John, “what does that look like? What should we do?”

John gives very practical and world-changing answers.

He answers by implying a question, one he hopes you and I will ask ourselves.

Do you have two coats? John asks. Well, you can’t wear both at once, and some have no coats. Give one of yours to one of them.

Do you have enough food? John asks. More than enough? Well, you can’t eat all you have, and some have no food. Give some of your food to some of them.

John speaks directly to those of us who are not in need, who often realize one of our biggest problems is we’ve accumulated too much and need to simplify. Who look at our organics bin at so much more food than we need just thrown out after sitting in our refrigerators too long.

John gives a blueprint for a society where all are blessed to have enough to eat, to wear, to be safe and healthy. But the blueprint is only followed when we who have far more than enough find the satisfying grace of enough.

To the inquiring tax collectors and soldiers, John gives another answer deeply relevant to our lives.

John’s replies to these two groups are relatively simple for them to understand. Tax collectors are asked to do their jobs without cheating others, effectively stealing from their neighbors. The soldiers are asked not to threaten others and steal from them, and to be satisfied with their pay.

Here John also speaks directly to those of us who find it difficult to live ethically in our complex world. Our changes are much more complicated and challenging than theirs, but just as critical. Live ethically and compassionately in all your behavior, John says, lest you steal from your neighbor. All our participation in the harmful systems of our world, whether it’s what and where we buy, how we vote, whether we work for change that benefits others, to all of this John says, “stop doing things that steal from others, that threaten others, that hurt your neighbor.”

John gives a blueprint for a society where all are blessed with justice and true peace, where all livelihoods are respected and cared for by all, where all our life choices are made for the common good. But the blueprint is only followed when we who are involved in these systems to our benefit discern and change our behaviors for the sake of our neighbor.

After John, for many of us, Rejoice Sunday feels anything but.

It feels that the gift of a day to simply rejoice in God’s goodness for us is more than some of us can ask. But that is not true. Paul’s encouragement clearly is for all, especially any who have anxiety. “Don’t worry about anything,” Paul says. Rejoice in God. That’s for you, too.

But Luke thinks even John’s whole episode today is reason for joy for you and me. After all this challenging encounter that brings a lot of us anxiety over our own lives and behavior, Luke adds a tagline none of the other Evangelists say: “So, with many other exhortations,” Luke writes, “John proclaimed the good news to the people.”

John’s preaching is Good News. Gospel. Good news for the fearful middle class people on the riverbank. Good news for the cheating tax collector and the extorting soldier.

That’s the secret of Advent you want to find today.

Somehow, all of this blueprint for God’s reign, this asking a great deal of you and me is Good News. Gospel.

It’s definitely good news for others when we live John’s fruits. When you are satisfied with enough and share all the rest, you fulfill Zephaniah’s promise. Those in deep need can rejoice because Christ has changed you from a hoarder into a joyful fellow participant in God’s abundance for all. Those who suffer from oppression and injustice can rejoice in God’s Gospel when you carefully change your behaviors that harm your neighbors. When people like us bear such fruit it is Good News to many.

But it is also Good News, Gospel, for you. Living a life sharing God’s abundance is a life of joy and hope for you. Living a life ethically and compassionately is a life of joy and hope for you.

Look for that joy. Luke’s let you in on the secret that living as John asks, as Christ models and teaches, is the surest way of living joy and hope you will ever know. It is Good News. Gospel.

 And it will certainly bring joy and hope to many, many more through you.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen