sermon – Page 53

Together

October 3, 2021 By Vicar at Mount Olive

Created to be together, we join in the collective work of God’s healing and love.

Vicar Andrea Bonneville
The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 27 B
Texts: Genesis 2:18-24; Mark 10:2-16

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

What God has joined together, let no one separate (Mark 10:9).

Yet there is so much division and destruction. Walls being built, both metaphorically and physically, to keep people apart. Laws created to separated families and communities of people. Systems of privilege creating a hierarchy and forcing segregation based on race, economics, employment, housing, geography. Judgement and perceptions from within that create and us vs. them mentality, pitting individuals and groups of people against each other as if competition and achievement mean more than kindness and love.

It is not good that the human should be alone (Genesis 2:18).

Yet there are so many individualist and egocentric ways of thinking. Keeping humanity at the center of the created world while the rest of creation suffers. Individuals competing for their own success rather than joining in our collective work of shared progress.

Not to forget what we often forget about which is the significant loneliness people experience because of strained relationships, changes in both physical and mental health, underemployment, or just not being welcomed into a place where they can be their full selves.

We are continuing to learn what the Triune God learned as the Spirit, the very breath of God, brought forth life from dust creating a human. Learning that a human was never intended to be alone, but that this human needed another human to join together in what would become their shared humanity, their life together with God and with all of creation tending to the needs of the earth, the concerns of their community, and the commitment to future generations.

Hearing the Holy Scriptures for today stirs in us all sorts of different perceptions about what it means to be in relationship. Listening to it makes us think of the strained relationships in our lives and in our families, the broken relationship between humans and creation and the restorative work ahead, the ways that we have experience the beauty of the relationships that go beyond a male and female binary, the loneliness that we experience remembering a partner or hoping one day for a union.

Even in all the challenges, we hear the overarching promise from God that starts at the very beginning our story, the promise that we will never be alone. A story that starts at the beginning of creation, traveled through the wilderness, proclaimed by the prophets, and embodied in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.

A promise that invited even the most vulnerable in our communities, like children, into the loving and healing embrace of Christ reminding us that the promise of God’s reign, was never intended for just one group of people, but for each and every person created in the image of God.

A promise that will shake the core of what we know in this world as healing takes place in unexpected places and unexpected people, as rulers are suffocated of their power, where the rich are made poor and the poor are made rich, where the table extends even beyond our reach to where the people of God in all walks of life can come to feast on this life-giving meal at Christ table.

Our work then continues to be the work of reconciliation and caring for all who are vulnerable in our midst. It becomes to listen to the stirring of the Spirit in our lives as she leads us toward the division and loneliness of our community bringing unity and hope.

Today’s teachings are challenging, particularly because of the interpretations from both well intended and no so well intended people that have only created further division. But at the heart is the reminder that human relationships are complicated and that being in community will always take tending and nurturing just like we are created to tend to and nurture the earth. And that our lives together don’t fall on conditional promises but are united through the unconditional love and promise of God.

Reminding us, that for the most part, we are better when we are together.

Better when we are in partnerships that are respectful, honest, and loving. Better when we are in communities and can show up as our full vulnerable selves loving who we love, sharing our passions and energy. Better when we are in creation listening to the birds, hearing the crashing of the waves, watching the changing leaves remind us of the change to come.

Better when we are learning and being challenged to grow in community. Better when we are caring with and for our neighbors. Better when we are actively serving God bringing forth God’s reign in which forgiveness, healing, and love are at the center of who we are and what we do.

Going out into our communities with grace over law, love over rule, and compassion beyond anything that we can comprehend. Breaking bread that unites us together. Joining in the work our Creator has created us to do.

Amen.

Holy Unauthorized

September 26, 2021 By Pr. Joseph Crippen

Because of Christ, we don’t claim to have it all together – we trust God has it all together and we are simply living in God’s love for all.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 26 B
Text: Numbers 11:4-6, 10-16, 24-29; Mark 9:38-50

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

Joshua and John had a problem with God’s behavior, not other people’s.

Joshua claimed to be upset at Eldad and Medad for prophesying in the camp. They were the only two of the 70 chosen to receive God’s Spirit who didn’t go to the Tent of Meeting as instructed.

But God told Moses to gather 70 elders so they could be given a share of the Spirit that Moses had and so ease Moses’ burden. And God sent the Spirit on all 70. Joshua’s problem is with the God of Israel who poured the Spirit into those two.

John claimed to be concerned about this unknown person casting out demons in Jesus’ name. He was unauthorized and needed to be stopped.

But Scripture says God drives out demons, not human skill. John’s problem isn’t with this guy, it’s with the God who answered his cries for deliverance.

We’re learning Jesus’ servant path, the path of self-giving love, in these three chapters of Mark we’re focusing on most of these autumn weeks. Today’s lesson is, if your concerns are with God being overly generous with the Spirit to others, maybe don’t complain to God’s Son. Or to God’s Spirit-filled servant, Moses.

This is another thing Christians have struggled with forever.

We’re not alone. Lots of people of faith – whatever their faith – find it challenging to see God blessing people who aren’t part of the in-group. Humans seem to want to accept God’s love and gifts ourselves, but once we feel we have that, to roam the outer boundaries making sure others are kept out.

But if we’re to learn something today from God, notice that the Triune God doesn’t care one bit about Joshua’s or John’s concerns. God’s giving the Spirit to all 70 and that’s it. God’s driving out demons afflicting God’s children, and that’s it.

So maybe that’s the real lesson today: whatever control you think you have over God’s work in the world, you don’t. God will do whatever God wants to, whether you and I are on board or not.

But there’s more to this lesson as we seek to be shaped to Jesus’ path.

Moses and Jesus agree: you and I don’t get to tell God where to send the Spirit. But both turn on their trusted, beloved followers, and say: you’ve got a bigger problem than you know.

Moses tells Joshua not only is he not upset at Eldad and Medad, he wishes God would pour the Spirit on all God’s people. You’re worried about those two guys going off-book, Joshua? My dream is that everyone is Spirit-filled. How will you control that?

Jesus dismisses John’s concern that this is an unknown person, and says if they’re doing good in Jesus’ name, leave them alone. But then he turns to John and the others and says, “If any of you put a stumbling block in front any of these folks who trust in me, you’d be better off tying a millstone around your neck and jumping into the sea.”

Jesus’ fear is more that John might have done something to hurt the faith of this poor fellow, not that his credentials are murky.

Can you imagine our witness if we took Jesus and Moses to heart?

If we rejoiced when we saw God working in others – whoever they are – instead of worrying about their credentials? How much blood and anger and violence have been poured out by people of faith killing or hating or rejecting other people of faith because they believed different things?

God’s Word says if God is sending the Spirit into the world, you don’t control where that goes. So if you see the fruits of the Spirit Paul describes in your Jewish neighbor, or your Muslim colleague, that’s God’s issue. If God’s Spirit moves in Hindus and Buddhists, and even in atheists without their knowing, what say over that do you and I have?

Moses longs for all to be Spirit-filled and speak God’s prophetic word. Jesus believes that if people are doing good in God’s name, that’s a grace. What if we embraced that?

God’s not asking us to tolerate others who differ from us. Toleration is insipid, weak sauce. The Son of God and Moses speak of longing to experience God in whomever we see, even if they follow different rules or beliefs or if we don’t know them.

But if you can’t yet rejoice that God is in another, for God’s sake – literally – at least don’t harm their trust in God.

That’s Jesus’ deep concern. God-with-us has no interest in our theological purity, and rejects our need to classify some as in and others as out. But God-with-us absolutely forbids us hurting another’s faith.

What if we always made sure we weren’t putting any stumbling block in the way of others’ trust in God? That our highest concern wasn’t getting our theology right and making sure everyone else did, it was protecting and nurturing the faith of all those who trust in God, whatever their faith. And, in an age where those who claim no faith are more known to us than before, maybe we should make sure we don’t do anything harmful to those siblings, either, even if we think they don’t have faith we can trip up.

That’s the servant path Jesus calls you and me to walk. The Church hasn’t been good at these lessons in, well, forever. But Jesus is always hopeful some of us might learn and live them.

This doesn’t mean the Good News that we trust about what God is doing in Christ doesn’t matter or shouldn’t be shared with the world.

The Bible is clear that your life is to witness to God’s love in Christ, your love of God and neighbor, the fruits of the Spirit you bear, are meant to lead people to know God’s love for themselves.

You and I just can’t tell God whom to love or whom to fill with the Spirit. We can’t claim anyone is outside of God’s embrace. And you and I absolutely can’t cause others to stumble in their faith. God’s love in Christ as we trust and live it forbids that.

It is precisely because we follow the crucified and risen Christ and trust in God to bring life to the world that we leave all of that life in God’s hands. Because God’s unauthorized and overly-generous love is the only reason you and I have hope, too. Would that all God’s people knew this!

In the name of Jesus. Amen

Awakening Journey

September 19, 2021 By Pr. Joseph Crippen

We live in the confusion and fear of the disciples who struggle to follow Jesus in Mark 8-10, but are called together and re-centered and enlightened by Christ who leads us on this path of servanthood.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 25 B
Text: Mark 9:30-37 (plus 38-40)

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

It was all going so well, this following Jesus.

Dozens of disciples followed this rabbi from Nazareth and experienced wonders. Teaching that brought God close to them. Miracles defying explanation. A sense that God was in Jesus, so you could even hope for a new world, a restored Israel. The prophets’ promise that God would one day spread a table for all, so none went without, seemed to be happening, as thousands were fed in one amazing evening.

Sure, there were unhappy people. Some of the leaders of the local synagogues, even some teachers from Jerusalem, seemed angered by their teacher and his way of interpreting God’s law, threatened by his popularity. But as they traveled, in every village more and more people flocked to him for healing and guidance. Minor opposition couldn’t stand against such acclaim.

That’s what the first half of Mark’s Gospel feels like. Then chapter 8 arrives. As we heard last week, Jesus casts a cloud over the sunny hopes and dreams of his followers. He says he’s heading to Jerusalem to be killed. He asks those who follow him to also lose their lives for his sake and for the sake of this Good News they’ve been so happy to hear and experience.

This cloud covers the rest of the Gospel until Jesus’ death, with the disciples trying to get their hearts and minds around this new thing that Jesus says is the central thing, the servant path.

Today we heard the second of three predictions Jesus makes about his death in Mark.

In chapter 8 and chapter 10, Jesus makes a single statement. But here in chapter 9 it’s an ongoing conversation. Mark says Jesus takes his large group of followers away from the crowds and repeatedly teaches them he’ll be betrayed, killed, and, three days later, rise.

In these three chapters are some of the hardest teachings of Jesus, many of which we’ll hear in the next few weeks. In these three chapters, the disciples swim in a sea of doubt and confusion, as Jesus keeps making it clear that his path leads to death and resurrection. That he is offering his life and they are asked to offer theirs. That he will be a servant to them, and that his followers are called to be servants of each other and of the world.

The disciples don’t do well with this shift. We heard Peter’s fall from grace last week, called “Satan,” literally, “the adversary,” for trying to stop Jesus’ talk. John hears the call to servanthood and, as we heard today, responds by bragging about shutting down some people who were casting out demons in Jesus’ name, because they weren’t part of the authorized group. We’ll hear the chapter 10 prediction in our Gospel in about a month, and after it, John and his brother James ask Jesus for the seats of honor in God’s coming reign.

Following Jesus made sense to the disciples when it looked like he was a winner. It was a lot more challenging for these women and men when he said he was walking a path that led to losing, to serving, to offering himself.

The Church basically lives in the struggle of these three chapters of Mark and always has.

Our conflict between wanting to follow a winner, when Jesus persistently won’t let us see him as that, is centuries old. Ever since Christianity got imperial protection as the state religion 1,700 years ago, the Church has been tempted by the lure of power and wealth and domination. From the Crusades to the Inquisition to the 30-years’ war in Europe to the deadly alliance of evangelism and colonialism, Christians often seem to like the first half of Mark’s Gospel better. Today it’s manifest in the modern American myth of an exclusively Christian nation where Christian teachings are protected by laws and a strong military, and those of other faiths are marginalized and demonized.

Never mind that for 2,000 years Jesus has insisted that his way, God’s way, is the way of servant love, of offering oneself for neighbors and even enemies, of sacrifice so the Good News of God’s love can reach everyone. The Church has always found ways to lift up Jesus the Winner and artfully ignore Jesus’ teaching, tweak interpretation, turn his clear words into ways to manipulate and oppress others.

You and I also struggle with this conflict. But our faith practice, our worship, fatally undermines our attempts to bypass Jesus’ clarity. Thank God for that!

See, we continue to read the Gospels – from beginning to end – in our worship, blissfully appointing a reading like today’s, forgetting the Word of God is alive and active and won’t let us go.

Today we come to worship and once more Jesus sneaks in under our denial and self-protection, our unwillingness to let go of privilege and status and wealth, and calls out to us as he did to those women and men 2,000 years ago.

If we really didn’t want to hear Jesus or follow his call to sacrificial love and servanthood, we shouldn’t have let the Gospels be read to us again and again.

But it’s life-saving Good News that we keep making that mistake. Taking up our cross, losing ourselves for others, will never be easy. But as long as we keep letting Jesus talk, so we keep hearing God’s voice of love and call speak in our worship, God will make cracks in our denial and avoidance. Keep planting seeds of a new life. Give us courage to be servants to each other and the world, and to let others be our servants in turn.

We’re always journeying through the difficult awakening in chapters 8 to 10, sometimes making wrong turns in our discipleship.

Just like these folks. And we’re already doing what they did, keeping on listening to Jesus, reading these Gospels at home and in worship. That’s what led them to faithfulness in the end.

But we can avoid their critical mistake in today’s Gospel. They were silent in their confusion and fear to the one person who could have helped. “They didn’t understand what Jesus was saying,” Mark says, “and were afraid to ask him.” They spread their confusion and fear amongst themselves without ever turning to Jesus and saying, “This is really hard. Can you help us?”

We don’t have to make that mistake.

We’re already listening to Jesus. Let’s learn to ask him things, too.

As we worship and hear from the Gospels week after week, from Paul and the New Testament writers, from the Hebrew Scriptures, we faithfully put ourselves in the way of God’s Word, letting God’s voice speak into our worship and lives. When you read your Bible at home you do it, too.

But learn to pray as you hear and as you read. When you struggle with something Jesus asks of you, when God’s Word makes you confused about your divided loyalties or embedded biases or about the right way to go in that moment, learn to ask Christ to help you. Learn to say, “Help me understand this. Help me not run from this. Help me do this.”

And learn to use your community, too. If the disciples hadn’t argued on the road by themselves but had asked Jesus to help them, they could have all learned together. So can we. If we help each other listen and ask.

This path Jesus leads us on is hard, no question. But it also gives us hope.

Hope, because we have each other on our journey, to learn servanthood, to encourage each other, to be honest and open together about our struggles, and so find grace as we go out as God’s servants into this world.

Hope, because Jesus always walks with us on the road through the Spirit, opening the Scriptures to us, encouraging and guiding us in our servanthood.

Hope, because this path of servanthood and self-giving love will end all the deep-rooted problems that plague our society and plague our hearts. Racism, classism, patriarchalism, oppression, systemic poverty, war and violence, have no chance of surviving a world full of servants of God who live God’s self-giving love.

Come, let’s journey together, learn from Christ together, and, with God’s help, take our place among God’s servants who are healing this world.

In the name of Jesus. Amen

Signs of Love

September 14, 2021 By Vicar at Mount Olive

We look to the cross and our neighbors as signs of God’s love and healing in the world.

Vicar Andrea Bonneville
The Feast of Holy Cross
Texts: Numbers 21: 4b-9, John 3:13-17

They needed a sign.

Journeying through the wilderness away from everything they knew, experiencing pain and exhaustion and grief and loss, trying to figure out how to be in community with each other, learning what it means to be God’s beloved.

The Israelites needed a sign to show them that God was really with them and that God was going to lead them into the Promised land. They needed to know that there was a future beyond the dry dangerous desert they were living in.

First, they needed food and then manna and quail fell from the sky. They ate their fill and continued on with their journey. A sign that God was listening to their plea. But it wasn’t enough.

Eventually they needed water so they complained to God until water poured out of a rock. It sustained them for a part of their journey but it also wasn’t enough.

And then they needed safety and healing, so they got a serpent on stick. A visual reminder of God’s presence and protection that was with them and leading them on their journey. But it still was wasn’t enough.

No matter what happened in the wilderness, the people of the Triune God, struggled to trust that God was really going to lead them into an abundant life. And to this day, the people of the Triune God continue to search for signs of God’s presence in our wilderness journeys.

Especially as we see and experience death and destruction and sin and suffering all around us. Looking for signs that show us what is good verses what is evil, signs that point us to rest and nourishment, signs that lead us into lives of service and love.

Just like the people who were wandering in the wilderness, we too need signs of God’s love and presence in our lives and in our world.

So on this day, we celebrate the feast of the Holy Cross to remember and discern how Christ’s sacrificial love and transformative power on the cross is the ultimate sign of God’s enduring love, care, and presence in our world.

Christ incarnate born into our world in an unexpected place, teaching us a new way of life that puts love and grace at the center of who we are and what we do. Christ on the cross, taking on all of the sin and suffering of the world, so that we may hope and trust in abundant life, both here on earth and in heaven.

Christ’s death on the cross is a sign of God’s self-sacrificing love showing us that oppression and injustice, suffering and illness, destruction and death went to the grave and out of the grave came abundant life and love and forgiveness and healing.

The cross is our sign that God comes to us in our pain and brokenness and transforms us into people who embody God’s love. Not because we are perfect or we’ve done all the right things, but because of who God is and the promise that God has made with all of creation.

John writes, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who trusts in him may not perish but have abundant life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” (John 3:16-17).

The promise God continuously makes throughout scripture to never leave us or forsake us is shown to us through God’s love on the cross. The cross is the ultimate sign of God’s enduring and steadfast love for each and every one of us.

And God’s love doesn’t just stay on the cross. God’s love resurrects and enters into our lives and becomes woven into the DNA of who we are as God’s beloved. Living our lives holding onto the promise God makes with us in our baptism. Taking seriously that through our baptismal waters, we embody the cross of Christ on foreheads for everyone to see.

That through us God is actively working in the world feeding and nourishing, serving and loving, caring and healing. Each of us as the body of Christ resurrected in our communities to do what we have been created to do. To Love. To Heal. To Forgive.

So when we feel like we are perishing, struggling to discern where God is active in our lives and communities. We look for the signs… in creation, in art, in music, in each other, in the unexpected, in the pain and suffering. We look to see where God is entering our humanity in order to bring wholeness.

And when our seeking eyes and discerning minds our weary, we come together with open hands and open hearts to Christ’s table clinging closely to the promise of Christ. Feasting in the meal in remembrance of Christ. A sign that will nourish us and transform us and a sign that will continue lead us into abundant life here and now and with all the saints forever and forever.

Amen.

Sustaining Yoke

September 12, 2021 By Pr. Joseph Crippen

God in Christ enters the world’s weariness and pain, and yours, and helps carry them, while inviting you and me to do the same.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 24 B
Texts: Mark 8:27-38; Isaiah 50:4-9a (also using Matthew 11:28-30, and 2 Corinthians 1:3-4)

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

“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)

Are you weary of the weight of the world’s problems, the suffering of a global pandemic, the crises of our society? Are you burdened with personal concerns and anxieties, fears for your future?

Good News, then: Jesus, God-with-us, says, “Come to me, all you that are weary, and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. I will yoke with you and help carry the load.”

When Jesus said this to those first believers, they remembered Isaiah’s words we heard this morning: “The LORD God has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word, and listen as one who is taught.” That’s Jesus, they realized. That’s what he said! God’s promise in Isaiah has come to us now.

And that’s your hope and mine in this weary world.

In Christ, God entered the world’s suffering in person, to help carry the weight of all that burdens life.

The world needs this promise more than ever. Nearly everyone is exhausted right now from the stress of the pandemic, the social crises and upheavals, the need for healthy change and transformation of our society. And everyone continues to have their own personal burdens, for them or those they love: concerns about health, about dying, about losing jobs, about struggling to make ends meet, about holding a family together in the midst of conflict or crisis.

Into this weariness and weight, Isaiah says, God comes to you in person – and yes, to all people, but to you, too – to ease your weariness, help you carry whatever burden you are carrying. The Triune God comes with shoulders already wearing a yoke, Jesus said, so that all that overwhelms you can be carried in tandem with God.

And that’s the point of Jesus’ path to the cross that Peter reacts against today.

Jesus didn’t go to the cross because he somehow wanted to suffer pain. Jesus, God-with-us, went to the cross to take the pain of the world onto God’s shoulders and bear it, even pain that the world inflicts on God. He allowed himself to be struck, spat on, insulted, as Isaiah says in this Servant Song today, to take the weariness of the world and heal it.

At the cross God shows you that you are not alone in your weariness or suffering. That God, as the prophets long promised, will be with you, hold you, bear you up. Give you hope that there is healing on the other side, even if sometimes that healing comes with death and resurrection.

At the cross God shows you that weariness and suffering aren’t to be avoided or feared, but shared. And when they’re shared, the burden is lighter, and hope is easier to find than when you’re drowning alone.

At the cross God shows you that there aren’t simple answers to what wearies you or the world, no easy solutions to suffering. But God’s answer is to come to you and the world and help bear the suffering, and so transform it into life.

What’s really beautiful is that Isaiah’s Servant Songs, like the one we heard today, were never meant to only be about one person, one Messiah.

If you read them carefully, they call the whole community to be the ones who know how to sustain the weary with a word, who offer themselves out of love for the sake of others. In our funeral liturgy, we claim this with Paul’s words from Second Corinthians, saying that “God comforts us in all our sorrows so that we can comfort others in their sorrows with the consolation we ourselves have received from God.” (2 Corinthians 1:3-4)

Isaiah says today that God has given you the tongue and listening ear of a teacher, that you may know how to sustain the weary with your word. With your embrace. With your sigh. With your self-giving love. That’s why Jesus asks you and me to take up our cross, to follow Christ’s path: take the comfort and consolation I give you as God-with-you, Jesus says, and share it with each other. Take the yoke over my shoulders onto your own, but then invite someone else under it, so you can share their burden.

Yes, that means sacrifice for you and me, Jesus says. Losing one way of life for the sake of the other way. But when we suffer with each other we reach the depths of what love is. Love shared in a community transforms burdens into grace, into life.

Peter was right. The path of the cross – for Jesus and for those who follow – doesn’t sound like a path worthy of a Messiah, a Christ, the Anointed of God.

Peter’s no different from any of us. The world always gets confused and thinks that winning is most important, that if you struggle or suffer you must have failed somehow. But the world’s way always results in more suffering and more pain and more oppression and more violence, and even the ones who think they’ve won really have lost.

But God has a plan that can actually bring healing to this world. Salvation. God has come, and still comes, to share the weariness and pain in the world, to offer rest to you.

And to all people, through you, you who also are Messiah. God’s Christ. God’s Anointed. Because this is the way God will save the world. And save you, too.

In the name of Jesus. Amen