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

You were created to bear God’s love, complete God’s love, in the world, and Jesus invites you to rejoice in the pruning God needs to do to help you become your purpose and meaning.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fifth Sunday of Easter, year B
Texts: John 15:1-8; 1 John 4:7-21

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

I discovered the importance of pruning in my first call.

Mary had planted spirea in front of the parsonage, and I learned that in late fall you need to cut the bushes back to only about 6 inches. It all looked wrong – these beautiful shrubs reduced to short stick bundles. But the next spring, the spirea came back rich and full and flowering. Without the pruning, the bushes would grow long and leggy and look terrible.

That’s the sum total of my plant lore. Mary is definitely our plant specialist. But I’ve never forgotten the wonder of both the painful-looking cutting back in late autumn and the lush beauty that came from it in the spring.

Sometimes you have to have things trimmed away to produce the true blessing that the plant can be.

It’s the same with you folks, Jesus says today.

To bear the fruit you were created to bear, Jesus says, you might need occasional trimming back, cutting away. There are two important truths here.

First, this means you’re meant to bear fruit. It’s your purpose, your reason for being. The elder in 1 John says that fruit is love: abiding in God’s love (like a branch joined to a vine) means you also love with God’s self-giving, sacrificial love 1 John proclaims today. In fact, the elder says that God’s love is only made complete when it is lived out in your love and in my love. Without our fruit, God’s love isn’t fully what God needs it to be.

The second thing is that Jesus does speak of cutting away, removing things that draw away from what makes fruit in you. And that might be painful. I don’t know if bushes and trees feel pain, but you and I should be prepared for some pain in being pruned.

You also can’t prune yourself, God does it.

That’s because pruning requires someone with the right knowledge, vision, and skill. I’ve been told that lilac bushes need pruning so they can blossom even more fully the next year. You can’t just cut them back whenever you like, though. Lilacs begin to set buds for the next year’s flowers not long after this year’s flowers are done. So you have to prune them right after the spring flowers are finished, or you might be sacrificing next year’s flowers. And you have to know what to cut.

Point is, we need someone who knows us better than we ourselves to see and cut away the things that keep us from loving as God made us to love.

So this could be your prayer, to ask the Spirit to open your eyes to what needs changing in you and also to do that pruning. To bring you healing for when it hurts, courage to face what needs facing.

And wisdom to still see yourself as God’s beloved, even as God works on you to become more like Christ.

But what does Jesus think needs pruning?

Jesus gives a huge hint today: “You have already been pruned by the word that I have spoken to you.” He says this pruning has already begun in the word he brought the disciples. So listen to Jesus’ teaching, his words that give life. That’s where we’ll see what he means.

One of the things Jesus hopes to prune away is fear. Fear shuts down your ability to bear love in the world. What happens if you risk? What if someone takes advantage? What if you are rejected or harmed? But Jesus’ word is constant: “don’t be afraid.” You are beloved of God, always. God can trim that fear away from you and open the way to love’s fruit.

Jesus also wants to prune away bias and prejudice. People didn’t use those specific words 2,000 years ago, but Jesus constantly called followers to see with God’s eyes and love with God’s heart. He called them to let go of their preconceived notions of outsiders and aliens, of people who struggle with obvious sins, their views of gender and patriarchy and legalism and privilege, and even race. God can trim away any bias or prejudice in you, remove any blindness to privilege or status you might have, and open the way to love’s fruit, which will lead to justice and peace in this world.

Jesus also wants to prune away hatred and enmity.

Those who hurt you, those who cause you pain, even those that others teach you to call “enemies,” Jesus knows that if you allow yourself to hate them, wish them ill, hope for their harm, you won’t be able to love as you were made to love. This is a hard pruning God needs to do; we far too easily relegate people to this place outside our hearts. But God can trim even your hatred and dislike away and open the way to love’s fruit. Even for that now-former enemy.

If you listen to Jesus, there are many more things that need pruning away for God’s love to emerge and be visible in our lives. Stick with Jesus’ word and you’ll see what needs cutting and also learn to trust God to do it for the love God knows is ready to flow from you.

There’s one more joy: your fruit and my fruit might not all look alike.

1 John is clear, all the fruit you and I bear is love, love like God’s. But just as there are Honeycrisp and Granny Smith apples and they’re both the same and different, so God loves diversity in what you and I bear in the world. What needs pruning in me or in you will sometimes be the same, but sometimes not. Likewise, you and I will both produce the fruit of God’s self-giving love, but how it works, and looks might be very different. God’s love has to address all the things that need it in the world, in whatever way needed. God will make sure the right fruit gets to the right place.

Just remember this: it’s pruning time, and that’s going to be a blessing to you and the world. You don’t need to be afraid. This is what you were made to be. To be God’s love. To complete God’s love. God just needs to do some things to help that happen.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

You are beloved of the crucified and risen Good Shepherd, and so are all: in that love, learn to see as your Shepherd sees and love as your Shepherd loves.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fourth Sunday of Easter, year B
Texts: John 10:11-18 (with reference to John 12); 1 John 3:16-24; Psalm 23

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 are God’s beloved. You have a Good Shepherd who loves you now and always.

That’s the most important truth you need to know today.

Jesus, God’s Anointed, the Son of God, knows you by name, and willingly laid down his life for you, dying and rising to draw you into God’s embrace of life and love.

Your Good Shepherd also promises never to abandon you or run away in danger or threat, or even when you fail. There are lots of people like the hired hands he mentions, who you don’t trust will be there if things get bad. But your Good Shepherd, who guides you to still waters and green paths, walks with you through the shadows of death, fills your inner spirit’s cup to overflowing, will never leave you.

Trust that. Your life and freedom depend on it.

They also depend on this: Your Shepherd has other sheep.

This is inseparably part of the same important truth you need to know today. “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold,” Jesus says, “and I must bring them also, so there will be one flock, one Shepherd.” Other sheep not in your fold, your group, so you probably don’t know them. But your Shepherd does, and urgently wants you today to open your eyes and your heart to see these other sheep.

Here are some of the other sheep your Shepherd knows and loves: George Floyd. Daunte Wright. Adam Toledo. Ma’Khia Bryant. There are so many more living and dead who are marginalized and thrown aside because of the color of their skin that Jesus knows and loves, that you may not know. But today start with saying these names to see with your Shepherd’s eyes and love with your Shepherd’s heart.

Because your life and freedom depend on the love and care of the Good Shepherd, so they are bound up with the life and freedom of the Shepherd’s whole flock.

Naming your fellow sheep makes them known to you, not some “other.”

Now they are your siblings, your cousins, your children, your parents, same flock as you. If some of us view a police traffic stop as an irritating annoyance, your Shepherd needs you to see that some of your children, your parents, your siblings, your cousins see police traffic stops as terrifying threats to their lives. If I wake up and hear of another person of color shot during an arrest, my Shepherd needs me to feel that my family suffered that loss.

And here are some other sheep of your Shepherd: Derek Chauvin, Thomas Lane, Tou Thao, Alexander Keung, Kim Potter. Whatever they have done, they must be held accountable, yes. But they are also beloved sheep of the same Good Shepherd who holds you forever. If I can’t see them as part of the same flock, my family, my Shepherd needs me to learn to see better, feel more truly what my Shepherd feels.

That’s the challenge of being part of a flock. The Shepherd gets to choose the sheep. And Jesus knows the names of all of these as well as he knows yours. And needs you to know and care for them as your own, too.

Somehow we who follow Christ got it into our heads that we get to decide who to care about.

We see oppression and systemic racism and injustice and too easily re-focus on our own lives, not thinking about what we can do, or even talking with others about what we can do. Today our Good Shepherd says “start seeing those suffering these things as part of you. You belong to me, they belong to me, so live as if you all belong together.”

We see people who oppress and use power to hurt and destroy, who actively participate in injustices we deplore, and too easily write them off as evil and worthless. We are glad of Derek Chauvin’s conviction because it is the right accountability, and it’s a baby step to beginning the change of how we police our cities. But the Good Shepherd cannot rejoice that Derek is now suffering, cannot hate him. Because he, too, is a sheep of the flock. You belong to me, our Shepherd says, and he belongs to me, so live as if you all belong together.

Nothing can take you from your Shepherd’s arms. Rejoice in that. Just also remember how broad those arms are.

Our work for justice and peace in this world isn’t done from guilt and shame. If, like me, you’re white and privileged, there’s much we need to be aware of and let go of and unlearn. There are uncomfortable, painful truths people who look like me have to face, sins to confess. But I and people who look like me are still beloved of the Good Shepherd, too.

That’s our starting place for following the Shepherd: we begin by knowing we are beloved, always, embraced and wrapped in God’s life-changing and life-giving love, always. As beloved sheep we find the courage to see what needs changing in our lives, the courage to face our participation in injustice, the courage to speak out and demand change for the sake of our family – because, the Shepherd says, all who suffer are your family, my family, Jesus’ family.

If you are beloved, and all are beloved (Jesus was lifted up on the cross to draw all things into God), then joyfully setting aside fear, we can start talking about what needs to be changed.

This is what the elder of 1 John says today.

We know God’s love because Christ laid down his life for us. But if you are filled with God’s love, the elder says, and have goods and wealth, and see a sibling in need and refuse to help, how does that make sense? And the key word here is “sibling.” Can you see the one in need is a member of the same beloved flock as you? Your child. Your cousin. Your sibling. Your parent.

See as I see, love as I love, the Good Shepherd says, and you’ll figure out what to do. You won’t avoid conversations about changing policing because they’re too hard, and people get riled up. You’ll be led by love for all involved to say, “we need this conversation and we need to use our love and wisdom to find a better way.” Even if that hard conversation is with a member of your family you don’t like talking with about it.

The same goes for all that ails our world – racism, poverty, oppression, sexism, violence, guns, war, climate destruction – we have enough imagination and creativity and genius and ability among all the people of the world to fix all these things right now. But only by seeing and listening to each other as one family can we have the heart, love, and compassion to join together to do it.

What does this mean for Mount Olive’s little part of the great flock?

I don’t know. But our Good Shepherd has given us the place to start the conversation. Not out of guilt or shame, but out of the joy of being God’s beloved, always, and the equal joy of opening our eyes and hearts to how broad and deep the group of God’s beloved really is.

Because here’s the miracle your Good Shepherd is doing: Christ changes you and me and all who desire it from hired hands who don’t care for all the sheep, just some, and run at the first sight of trouble, into sheep who stick around and help the whole flock find the good water and green pastures and safe pathways, who walk with each other through the shadows of death and the places of evil. Who make room for everyone in God’s life and love so all can know God’s goodness and mercy all the days of their lives.

There is one flock, one Shepherd. Let’s start living that way.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen