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

These things are given you so that you might see God’s Christ, and trust that God’s life is healing this world, giving you and all creation abundant life.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Second Sunday of Easter, year B
Text: John 20:19-31

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’s easy to understand Thomas.

How could he trust in God? The last he’d seen of the Son of God he was dead, hands and feet and side and back and head covered in blood. Even if his friends said they’d seen Jesus alive, the evidence of his own experience, eyes, heart, was too much to ignore.

We know that feeling. Wherever you get your news, you could spend hours daily witnessing the pain and suffering of this world, of your neighbors. Every problem – and there are so many! – is a challenge to solve, and you doubt we’ve got the power or energy or wisdom or imagination or courage to handle even one of them. Trust God is bringing life to this world? Some evidence would help.

The problems of your daily life also pile on your heart. The illness or struggle of loved ones, your own struggles and fears, all can often seem unchangeable. Trust God is healing your mind, your body, your heart, or that of those you love? Some evidence would help.

It’s easy to understand Thomas.

It’s hard, though, not to resent what Thomas received.

His struggles with trust happened in the week between the Sundays, when he rejoined the others. But the risen Jesus was still walking around, and the next Sunday Thomas saw Jesus alive for himself.

He got to reach out and touch those scars of love. Thomas found his evidence, saw God’s life in Christ was real, and found the ability to trust.

But we missed both Sunday nights in the Upper Room, even the second, when Thomas got his chance. We’re still in the place of doubt and fear, with no way to have the physical and personal experience of seeing Jesus alive as Thomas did.

That’s why John is so compelling today.

He says, “Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written,” John goes on, “so that you may come to trust that Jesus is the Anointed One, the Son of God, and that through trusting you may have life in his name.”

John says you have a chance to reach out and touch Christ’s scars of love like Thomas, and trust for yourself. Trust that Jesus is risen, and can give you and the world life.

That’s worth looking into.

We think we can’t touch Jesus’ wounded and risen body in person, see for ourselves that death cannot stop God’s love.

But look at what Jesus does here. He gives the disciples God’s peace that he knows and lives within the Trinity. He sends them just as the Father sent him. He breathes the Holy Spirit into them that breathes in him.

Jesus’ disciples and friends met God in Jesus, saw God’s face. He was filled with the Holy Spirit, sent by the Father, the divine Son embodied as a human being.

But what Christ does that first Sunday night is confirm that God continues to be an embodied God, just not only in Jesus. He sends out his followers as new Anointed Ones, children of God, bearing God in their bodies, breathing God in their spirits, loving and touching others as God’s love and touch.

That means you can have what Thomas had.

Christ’s anointed ones have been offering their lives for the sake of the world ever since this moment in the Upper Room. Allowing themselves to be wounded as they love in God’s name. Risking their own comfort, even their own lives, to work in the world as God’s love, God’s Body, God’s hands, feet, voice, arms, heart.

If you want, you can only look at all the evil in the world, the bad news, the things you fear, the systemic injustice, the broken society. You can dwell on what seems like the rule of death in this world.

Or you can look for Christ working in the world. See the healing life and love happening in the world because Jesus is risen and has anointed followers, and filled them with the Spirit. You can reach out and touch scars of love in people who bear God in their lives for you, and to change the world. Maybe only what looks like a tiny piece of it to cynical outsiders, but that tiny change, that minute hope, is the seed for the healing of the whole creation.

And once you see and touch, you can learn to trust that God is alive and working in the world, and find abundant life here, even in the midst of all that can seem overwhelming.

Jesus gives you another gift, too.

There are times when it’s really hard to see the Christs working and loving and being wounded for God’s love in the world. Days, weeks, months, even years can go by where you’re overwhelmed by your pain or the world’s pain and you’re back with Thomas between the Sundays, doubting, wishing for evidence.

But Jesus says that if you can learn to trust without seeing in those times, that will bless you. One way to learn such trust is to remember the times when you did see. Call them to your mind, let them renew your hope and trust.

But the community of Christs around you are also tremendously important. Let us see for you when you feel blind. All around you is God’s wounded Body, scarred with love, and they can help you find trust until your eyes are restored.

Remember this, though: you are also sent.

You are also God’s Anointed, God’s wounded Body, filled with the Holy Spirit and with God’s peace. Your scars of love, your willingness to be wounded for the sake of your neighbors and the world, to offer yourself as God’s love where you are, these are signs to the other Thomases. Let them reach out and touch you, so they can see, and trust God’s life, too.

Because this is the path to abundant life for you, for all who suffer, and for the whole creation.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

Your life in Christ is lived in what Mark left open – chapter 16, verse 9, where you, like believers for centuries, let go of your fear and witness to God’s life in the world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Resurrection of Our Lord, year B
Text: Mark 16:1-8

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 women went out and fled from the tomb . . . and said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.”

Yes, that’s how Mark’s Gospel ends. Fear and silence. If there was more written after verse 8, it was lost very early on. Little wonder that by the second century some scribe added in his verses 9-20. But our best and most ancient manuscripts don’t include them.

Of course, we’re celebrating Christ’s resurrection 2,000 years later. Someone told. Matthew, Luke, and John fill in what happened. The other disciples’ fear was so great they stayed locked up that morning, but these brave, frightened women re-discovered the courage that first got them to the tomb in the early morning hours, and began telling the good news that spread that Sunday morning and afternoon. They overcame their fear and witnessed to what God had done in Christ, witnessed to God’s resurrection life.

These women created and lived their own verse 9.

Maybe Mark had good reason to end at verse 8.

He knew that the women soon told others. So, what if Mark intentionally stopped where he did? Mark called his story “Good News” in chapter 1, giving us the word “Gospel” itself. What if Mark believes this story only becomes Gospel, “Good News,” when you and I live our own verse 9, overcome fear, like these women, break our silence and witness to God’s resurrection life, like these women?

Maybe Mark is asking, how will you end this story? Will you remain in fear and silence? Or do you have a verse 9 that you can live?

To move on from verse 8, start by letting go of your fear of dying.

That Sunday the believers began to grasp just what it meant that Jesus was alive. They knew beyond doubt that he had been killed, buried. As the day unfolded, it began to dawn on them: death has no power over God’s Christ. That meant they didn’t need to fear dying, either. Death was just a doorway their beloved Master had opened to a new life.

Their witness to God’s raising Jesus from the dead poured out in this new awareness. They faced death and deprivation, imprisonment and torture, and yet they proclaimed loudly wherever they could go. They learned to live and witness without fear of dying.

What would your verse 9 be if you truly believed that death is no threat to you? Would living confident in God’s resurrection life for you change your life? If you learned to face anything, even your own imminent death, with peace, knowing you were secure in God’s love?

Imagine your witness to others if every day you lived as if it were your last, but you lived that day with joy and love and grace unafraid of what was next.

That’s what living verse 9 can look like for you.

Next, you can learn to let go of your fear of living.

If God can bring you through death into life, the early believers realized, all of Jesus’ promises of abundant life here are also true. The fear that led most of the disciples to betray and run away on Thursday was replaced by joy in this life with God, peace of mind and heart no matter the circumstances, in great difficulties, even suffering.

What would your verse 9 be if you released all the things you cling to in fear, and found a path to simplicity and joy in simply being alive? All our grasping for possessions or security, all our belief that faith means we’ll have no problems, all can be let go in Jesus’ resurrection life, and you can find true life here and now.

Imagine the witness your life would be to others if you lived free of the things that cause the world anxiety, and you witnessed with joy – even in serious difficulty and suffering – to God’s life living within you.

That’s what living verse 9 can be for you.

You could also learn to let go of your fear of loving.

When God’s resurrection life fills you, and you release your fear of dying and fear of living, the fear of loving is next to go. Those early believers lived into an abundant life in Christ and became vulnerable with each other in their love. Love shaped their community. At first, they shared everything in common, no one went without food or shelter, all were cared for.

It didn’t last, because this fear is tenacious. Allowing ourselves to be vulnerable to others in sharing what we have, in love, in forgiveness, risking being wounded by others, is frightening. But what would your verse 9 be if God removed the bondage of this fear and you gave of yourself for others in ways you never thought possible?

We’re watching and longing for justice from the Chauvin trial, we see in our nation persistent racially-motivated violence such as recently in Atlanta, we know the ever-present inequities and injustices in our society. We also know our relationships are fragile and we can harm even those closest to us. There is deep need for this love Christ calls out of us. When God’s resurrection life removes all your fear of loving with Christ’s self-giving, sacrificial, love, you participate in God’s healing and justice that vulnerable love creates.

Imagine the witness your self-giving love could be to others, joyfully letting go for the sake of your family, your neighbors, as you follow Christ’s example and calling.

That’s what living verse 9 can be in you, and it will bless the world you are placed in.

From today, this could be your path: live out your verse 9 with God’s Spirit as guide and strength.

Freed from fear of dying, fear of living, fear of loving by the Good News that God has broken death’s power over you and the creation, you can witness to this resurrection life in all that you do.

Mark has left open the rest of the Gospel for you to write. To live. Go, be verse 9 and show your world why this is Good News indeed.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen