God’s true essence is vulnerable love, that binds the Trinity together and opens to invite the whole creation into that love.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The feast of the Holy Trinity, year B
Texts: John 3:1-17; Romans 8:12-17

Ruth revealed God’s true nature to me this past week.

On Tuesday, when the governor called for a state-wide time of silence at 1:00 p.m. to remember George Floyd, those of us in the church building sat in the nave with lighted candles. I sat in my favorite place in the nave: outside aisle, lectern side, so I could see Ruth in the south gallery, my favorite window in our building.

As I sat in silence, thinking about George Floyd, and that day, and our world, and looking at Ruth, I remembered Ruth was also marginalized, oppressed, even threatened because of who she was biologically and ethnically. As a widow with no sons, she shared Naomi’s destitution and desperation in a patriarchal society where women’s only value came from men in their lives. She and Naomi were also both outsiders, foreigners in each other’s country. As I prayed and thought about our own siblings and neighbors who are marginalized and oppressed, I realized Ruth and Naomi understood the plight of George Floyd and people of color in our society far better than I do.

But these two women saw family in each other. Formed a bond of love that became inseparable. A love so strong Ruth left her place of familiarity, where she might have found a husband from her people, and willingly became a foreigner and outsider to be with Naomi.

And Boaz, the respectable Bethlehem farmer and citizen, also saw these two outsiders and saw them as family. Brought them into his family in love, marrying Ruth and ensuring that Naomi wouldn’t starve to death. They belonged.

It’s the Sunday of the Holy Trinity, and this wasn’t in our readings.

But it’s all you need to know about the Triune God. Ruth, Naomi, and Boaz lived with the love that God created in them, the love that is God. They crossed borders, saw kinship with people who were not like them, and made a family. They lived the only reality of God that matters. That is, if you care what Jesus thinks and teaches and models and lives.

Jesus didn’t explain the mystery of God’s internal make-up. He revealed the heart of God. He spoke of the Father and he being one in each other, one in love. He spoke of sending the Spirit who is also one with the others. A few centuries later, believers came up with the idea of the Trinity as a way of doing justice to these revelations of Jesus, and to Paul’s proclamation. Driven by political realities and anxiety over varying teachings, shaped by Greek philosophical terms, the formal doctrine of the Trinity was developed.

It’s just not something Jesus seemed to think we needed to have clear. What Jesus wanted clear about God, what the early Church wrote repeatedly in the New Testament, is God’s true nature is love.

God’s primary essence, God’s reality in the universe, is self-giving love.

God’s self-giving love is a cosmic love, Jesus says today. Out of love for the cosmos, the Trinity sent the eternal Word out of the inner dance of God’s life to become a human being. To risk everything, even being lifted up on a cross, to bring the creation back into God’s life.

God’s self-giving love is a birthing love, Jesus says today. In love, the Trinity sends the Spirit from the inner dance of God’s life to give new birth to all people, to enliven and renew the whole world with the essence of God’s love.

The love that Ruth, Naomi, and Boaz knew and lived for each other and their world. You can’t write that love into a doctrine.

The only thing you need to know about the Trinity, then, is that God is held together by the bonds of self-giving love.

As Jesus revealed it and New Testament writers proclaimed it, the relationship between Father, Son, and Spirit, is abiding love that offers itself and receives itself again and again.

You don’t need to be able to do the math on the Trinity. Just trust that the heart of God revealed when the Son came in person and when the Spirit gives birth to life within you, that the heart of God for you and the cosmos is this vulnerable love.

What more would you ever need to know about God?

And living in the way of the Trinity is living in the same way of love as God.

If God’s heart for you and all creatures and the cosmos is this self-giving, transformative love, then you are, as Paul says, all of us are, children of God. Heirs of God through the Spirit, joint heirs with Christ.

You don’t need to write a dissertation on ethics to know how to live. Just trust that you are in God’s heart and in God’s family, and the way that binds that family together is love. The way that family lives is love. Love that gives of itself. Love that crosses borders. Love that sees all people as beloved of God and will not rest until they are treated that way in our society and world. Love that both embraces your heart so you know you are beloved but also gives you the courage to be love in a world of prejudice and oppression and violence. So you can follow the family way and be the change God wants to see in the world.

What more would you ever need to know about how to live in God’s family?

This divine love is costly, though.

It cost Jesus his life. It cost the Trinity so much in centuries of suffering love over the destruction of the creation and the hatred that the beloved creatures inflict on each other. Paul says being an heir to God’s family also means being an heir to God’s suffering. So living in the family way of God’s beloved ones might mean suffering for you. Jesus always said it could.

But you are in the family of God, a family that is bound together in the Triune God’s love that creates universes, breaks death, knows the smallest sparrow’s falling, even the hairs on your head. Any suffering you might come to as you live in the family way of the Triune God is embraced and healed and held in the love that made you and called you and treasured you in the first place.

Ruth lived God’s love. Millions have. So can you.

The living and Triune God has opened up the dance of love that makes up God’s true essence and life and invited the whole creation into it. So that the whole creation, and even you, will be bound together and shaped and inspired and renewed and given life by this love, the only thing about God that really matters.

And the best part is, when you find yourself loving as God loves, you’ll realize you are truly home, truly alive, truly loved. You’ll know all you need to know. And you are Ruth and Naomi and Boaz to someone else. Who might even find they are beloved of God, too.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

Pentecost is the next and final piece of God’s plan in Christ: called alongside you and me, our community, and the whole creation to bring life and hope and healing.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Day of Pentecost, year B
Texts: John 15:26-27, 16:4b-15; Romans 8:22-27; Acts 2:1-21; Psalm 104:24-34, 35b

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

“Paraclete.” It’s a strange word the Greeks left us.

It’s a beautiful word, with such richness of meaning that translators keep trying new ways to express the depth and breadth our predecessors would have sensed in hearing it.

The King James translators used “Comforter.” The Revised Standard Version and New International Version, solid 20th century translations, used “Counselor.” The New Revised Standard Version, our current mainstay, uses “Advocate,” but in the footnotes the translators offer an alternative: “Helper.” All these are part of the cloud of meaning, as are Mediator and Intercessor.

But Paraclete literally means: “Called alongside.” The Holy Spirit, Jesus says, is the one “called alongside” us, which of course explains all the meanings the Greeks heard in the word and our translators have used. So, ponder this: God now calls the Holy Spirit alongside you!

Today is Pentecost, and we celebrate that the Holy Spirit still comes to empower us and send us into our lives as Christ.

Acts tells the story of Spirit-filled believers spreading everywhere proclaiming God’s life and love. We rightly call Pentecost the birthday of the Church, as what began there continues through the gift of the Spirit.

But today we heard that God also has other purposes for sending the Holy Spirit. “It is to your advantage that I go away,” Jesus says. That sounds wrong. But it’s because in the plan of the Trinity, the Spirit now takes her turn on the earth. She is called alongside us, a Paraclete, in this life we live.

Pentecost isn’t just about power and sending. It’s about God’s Spirit walking alongside you every step of your life, doing really important things.

The Spirit is called alongside you to guide and teach.

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

Like children, we need to grow and learn, come into who we are made to be. Sometimes it takes painful centuries for humanity to learn lessons. Sometimes it will take a whole lifetime for a person. And sometimes we’re not ready to hear things personally or as a community.

So God calls the Spirit alongside you, and our community, and the whole creation, to reveal new truths from God when we’re ready to bear them, and guide us every day into new life.

The Spirit is also called alongside you to speak on your behalf.

“Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness,” Paul says, “for we don’t know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.” Last week our joy was that God’s Son prayed for us, lifted the needs and pains of us and of the world into the life of God. Now our joy explodes, because the Spirit is called alongside us to continue Jesus’ prayer always.

In our weakness, the Spirit is called alongside to carry sighs too deep for words from your heart so God can hear them. To carry sighs too deep for words from our community so God can hear them. To carry sighs too deep for words from our world and the whole creation, so God can hear them.

Living in one human body, God couldn’t do all this. That’s why Jesus says this is all to our advantage.

In God’s great plan, as the Son returns, the Spirit is called alongside us to make the Incarnation real in you, in our community, and in the whole creation.

In you: as the Spirit is called alongside you to share your joy and pain and speak for you into God’s life. To guide you, and reveal things you need to know and are ready for, as you grow into Christ.

In our community of faith at Mount Olive: we seek to be faithful in this city, to address the evils of the world and our participation in them, to be Christ’s love as a community. So, the Triune God graciously calls the Spirit alongside us to speak for us into God’s life, guide us to truth, reveal new things when we’re ready for them.

And in the whole creation: the psalmist today proclaims that God sends the Spirit to renew the face of the earth. Paul calls that renewal a birth process. The creation creaks and breaks under our destructive habits and pollution, suffers as it is filled with creatures who hate and kill and oppress each other. The Spirit is called alongside to give birth to a new creation, with all the labor pains that means, all of us the Spirit is transforming.

Pentecost is the final part of the blessing of God coming into this world.

Begun at the creation and born into the world in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, the final piece of God’s plan to heal all things is the Spirit of God alongside us. Alongside you. Alongside the world, so that you, and we, and the whole creation, might be birthed into God’s life and love.

Sometimes it feels like more struggle than answers, more pain than resolution, more difficulty than we can handle, but these are the birth pains. The Spirit is giving birth to something amazing. Just look alongside you, and you’ll see.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

Here is your great blessing and joy: God knows the struggles you have to follow Christ in a threatening world, and shelters you in love, giving you grace and strength to follow.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Seventh Sunday of Easter, year B
Text: John 17:6-19

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 you see what a blessing and gift this prayer is?

Look, Christ’s call is always clear. Open almost any page of the Gospels and you’ll see Jesus, God Incarnate, calling you to follow, to live in God’s way of love, to be transformed into Christ yourself. In fact, last Thursday, we saw that the Ascension handed the job of bearing Christ in the world to us, to those who follow Christ.

But that’s a really difficult job in an overwhelmingly challenging world. Look at the problems that our society and political systems have that crush life out of so many, or at our complications living into our relationships, or at your dealing with your own internal struggles, mental suffering, spiritual lostness, self doubt. This isn’t an easy calling. To be God’s love for yourself, and in your relationships, and in the world: it’s easy to feel inadequate. To judge yourself, even to despair.

But did you see this blessing today, this gift Jesus gives you?

Today, Jesus reveals a wonder: God knows exactly how hard this all is.

This is an overlooked blessing of the Incarnation. The Triune God entered into our human life and lived all we did. Experienced grief, the death of loved ones, challenging relationships, and a society with poverty, oppression, war, violence, hatred, even faced death.

Today Jesus names that following his path in this world is really hard for us, that sending us to be Christ’s love in the world is daunting, and Jesus carries in-person knowledge and experience of this into God’s heart.

Of course God sees all, and knows the world is hard for those who seek to love God and neighbor, and even for those who don’t. But because of Jesus’ life here, your struggle to be Christ, to be God’s love, is now known in the very center of the life of the Trinity.

And Jesus also shared this as prayer. Consider that gift.

The Son lifts up to the Father, with the Spirit dancing alongside, that those of us who follow are going to have a hard go of it in a world with evil and suffering. And in this prayer, Jesus says, “We have to help them.”

“As you have sent me,” he prays, “so I have sent them into the world. I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one.” Jesus prays, “Let’s hold them together and protect them as they live their life as Anointed Ones in the world. Let’s be on their side.”

That means whatever you struggle with to be Christ, you are now and always wrapped in God’s love.

Whether you’re struggling with your family, dealing with your internal grief or anguish, anxious about the health or well-being of those you love, overwhelmed by the problems of the world that you don’t know how to change, ashamed by your own sin or wrongdoing, whatever it is, you are sent out into this world protected, watched, forgiven, cared for, sheltered in God’s eternal love as you are sent to be Christ.

It’s fair to ask: does that really make a difference to your life?

Well, having someone understand us in our struggles is huge. When someone else knows what you’re going through and empathizes with you, that can transform you. You’re not alone, suffering and struggling unnoticed while the world rolls by. So, anything, anything, you share with God in prayer is something God already experienced and knows you’re dealing with. That’s deeply comforting.

But this prayer means the Triune God commits to actively help you, protect you, bless you. Jesus, this same Thursday night, promised to send the Holy Spirit as a comforter and advocate, literally as someone who walks alongside you. The Spirit brings you peace, guidance, and wisdom, and is with you always. That’s Jesus’ gift and blessing today.

And the end goal of all of this for God is shared joy.

Last week Jesus promised that abiding in his love will complete our joy. Today Jesus prayed the same, for completed joy in all who follow. In this prayer, and the sheltering love of God that surrounds you, the door is opened for you to find God’s joy.

That’s God’s ultimate desire for the whole creation, Scripture says. Yes, God wants to end poverty and oppression and all that is evil in how we live together, and create justice and peace. Yes, God wants to heal your heart and spirit, and your relationships. Yes, God wants to draw all into a life of love of God and neighbor. But all those things serve God’s deeper goal: to draw the whole creation into the joy of abundant life in God now and forever.

Don’t fret if you don’t feel complete joy now. That’s where Christ’s abundant life is drawing you, making in you and in the creation. It may be that you and I won’t know “completed” joy, “end-goal” joy, until the life that is to come after we die.

But Jesus came so that you might have abundant life now. That you might walk through the door opened in God’s sheltering love to find joy even in a world that’s threatening and confusing and overwhelming, with the Spirit giving you the courage and strength to follow Christ’s path ever more faithfully.

That’s what God will do, and is already doing, for the joy of all creation.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

Christ Jesus goes away on this day so that we can be filled with the Spirit and continue the ministry of self-giving, wounded love that is the only way the world will be healed.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Ascension of Our Lord
Texts: Acts 1:1-11; Luke 24:44-53

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

Having Jesus around was great for the disciples.

Whenever there was a crisis, Jesus handled it. If decisions needed to be made, Jesus made them. If someone needed help, they brought them to Jesus.

It was good. These folks spent their time being taught by God’s Messiah, embraced by God’s grace and love. They didn’t have to worry about much if they stayed close to Jesus.

The crucifixion was a horrible blow to this peace of mind. But then Jesus was alive, raised from the dead. They had him back. Jesus in charge again, and it’s good.

That is to say, it makes sense that after Christ ascended into heaven, the disciples, women and men alike, stood on the Mount of Olives gaping at the sky. “He’s leaving? What are we supposed to do now? What will happen when things get challenging?”

And that’s precisely the point.

In times of crisis, we often look to the skies for God.

We get angry with God for not intervening in human suffering, and we’ve seen a lot of it this year. We want to neatly hand all our problems and the world’s problems to God and say, “here you go.”

Except the point of God taking on human life and living among us was to show us in person God’s way, the way of love of neighbor, so that we would do it. To teach us in person how we could love as God loves, so that we would do it. The Son had to return into the full life of the Trinity so we could be left in charge.

This doesn’t mean we can’t ever look up at the sky and yell at God.

We don’t need to defend God or God’s choices to anyone, even to ourselves, and God’s big enough to handle any criticism. Sometimes God seems to intervene, and miracles happen, and sometimes God doesn’t. It’s legitimate to shout our frustration to God when we have it. If Jesus, the Son of God, could do it, as he did on the cross, it’s fair game for us.

Even so, there’s always that angel from God standing next to us who, at some point, will say, “Why are you just looking up to heaven? Go back to the city and wait, and God will give you what you need to change this. To begin the healing of the world.”

This has always been the plan. Good Friday and Easter revealed it, but Ascension gave it to us.

In Jesus, the Triune God said, “I will show you in my very life and death that this is how all of you will also end human suffering and pain, and I will transform your hearts as you join in my resurrection life. So when you are doing this yourselves, you can take on human suffering and pain. Stand with those who suffer. Love those who hate. Get in the way of evil to keep it from someone else. Be my loving presence to those who are in pain. In this way I will heal the whole creation through you.”

The world needs God’s healing love, and will receive it when we carry God’s vulnerability, God’s willingness to be wounded, into the world to bring life to our siblings in pain. When we share God’s strange way of using power by setting it aside.

Christ trusts us a lot in leaving us in charge. We’re going to mess up some of these crises. We’re going to find wrong answers to problems sometimes. We’re not always going to know what to do to help someone who comes to us, or change massive systems of evil. But Christ trusts us with this ministry.

And gives us one more grace.

Those women and men were sent back to the city and told to wait, because the Holy Spirit was going to fill them with the power from God they needed to do this work their beloved Jesus had begun.

We have ten days until our celebration of Pentecost. We’ve already experienced the coming of the Spirit, all our lives, so it isn’t exactly the same for us. But these ten days are a good reminder that sometimes you have to wait before you receive all you need from God. And they’re a reminder that you’re not in this ministry alone, ever.

The Triune God’s answer when you look to the skies is to send you the Spirit so you can have the strength and grace you need to carry on as God’s love in the world. It’s always been the plan, and God has you covered. Just look around you and see.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen