The disciplines of Lent are the shaping of your whole life to live in the grace and love of God for you and share it with the world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
Ash Wednesday
Texts: Isaiah 58:1-12; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

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

When was the last time you fasted and disfigured yourself so everyone would know what you were doing?

Or when did you last make your offering in a public way, announcing to all what you were giving? Do you have a problem with praying out loud on street corners so people know you are faithful?

These are the things Jesus critiques today, and it makes us wonder if they even apply to us. Isaiah’s criticism is easier to grasp: his people are fasting and putting on ashes as a sign of repentance, but they aren’t changing their lives. And they’re disappointed God isn’t impressed with their rituals.

But fasting, giving, and praying are disciplines that believers have found deep grace and help in practicing, and in which they’ve experienced the Holy Spirit’s power to transform them. And, every Ash Wednesday, the liturgy invites us to the “disciplines of Lent,” “self-examination and repentance, prayer and fasting, sacrificial giving and works of love.”

These disciplines may not always be things we hold in our hearts on a daily basis, whether in or out of Lent. But they can be a tremendous gift on our path of faith that the Holy Spirit can use to shape us as Christ, the calling we each received in our baptism. That’s Ash Wednesday’s invitation to you.

The discipline of fasting may be the most important one we could learn today.

Isaiah says fasting is far more than intentionally going without food for a time. The fast God seeks, Isaiah says, is nothing less than loosing the bonds of injustice, undoing and breaking the yokes that bind people in oppression, and freeing those people.

All these systemic problems in our culture and world that we’ve been awakened to see over the last number of years and most especially since the trauma this past year in Mount Olive’s city and neighborhood, all these, Isaiah says, must be broken apart and ended. That’s true fasting. And it’s a huge job. How can anything you or I do on Ash Wednesday, or ever, loose the bonds of injustice and break yokes of oppression?

Fortunately, in the next verse Isaiah makes it simpler. The fast God wants is for you to offer your bread to someone who’s hungry. Invite someone who has no house into your home. Provide clothing for someone who’s naked. Concrete, personal acts will show God where your heart is. And as each of us do such concrete, personal acts, the greater systems start to fall apart, too.

Most of us don’t have the spiritual habit of fasting to compare to Isaiah’s turn.

But even if many of us may not fast, a lot of us have gotten into the habit of giving up something for Lent. Use that as your entry into Isaiah, and exercise the discipline of self-examination and repentance here.

What if you quit thinking about giving up something for Lent and began to consider what you could give up for life that could draw you closer to your path as Christ?

No one is helped if I don’t eat chocolate for six weeks. But if I learn to let go of things that draw me from God, behaviors, privilege, assumptions, or even material things like food and possessions, many others could be blessed.

Because Isaiah says that true fasting, in addition to engaging personally with hunger and homelessness and poverty, is ultimately not hiding “from your own kin.” Fasting is seeing all people as your family – siblings, cousins, beloved – and your life as affecting all. When you let go of something you cling to, for the sake of someone else, you will be God’s blessing in ways you can’t imagine.

This might suggest a different way to practice the discipline of giving, too.

Mount Olive is a deeply giving congregation. Just in this past year we saw so many generously give food and time and energy over the months we had a food distribution in the parking lot, to help those who lost access to stores in the unrest. A number of times, word was sent out that we had a neighbor in need, and within a couple days supplies, furniture, household goods, all that was asked was given abundantly by you. This is good and a blessing, as is all that is given by Mount Olive’s people financially for God’s ministry here and around the world. This answers what Isaiah proclaims God is seeking.

But what if we imagined giving as also part of fasting? For example, what if fasting meant for you that you were willing to spend more money and more time to get what you need because it supported local businesses which paid local workers a just minimum wage, or because it avoided businesses that harmed their workers or the environment? If you “fasted” from convenience and cheap prices for the sake of the other? That both gives food and clothing and homes to those without and also starts breaking down the yokes of oppressive business practices and unjust economic realities.

What fasts might you be called to undertake, for the sake of God’s children, your siblings, in need?

The discipline of letting go, either for a time or permanently, can shape your life in profound ways. Your behaviors and attitudes, even prejudices and assumptions that seem written in, can be let go and changed. And such a discipline can be a blessing far beyond the confines of the Lenten season. It can continue past Easter, to the rest of your life. That’s the point of Lent, isn’t it? To learn patterns and disciplines of living our baptism that we can carry with us through the joy of Easter and into the life of God that flows in us always.

The mystery of these disciplines is they bring joy.

As daunting as the social problems are in our world, as much as we think we fail to faithfully deal with the systems of injustice and oppression, hunger and homelessness, being disciplined into becoming God’s blessing isn’t a burden. Isaiah says it’s a path filled with God’s light where you also become God’s light to others. Living these, you’re like a garden planted by a spring, and God’s Spirit pours into your life what you need to thrive and be filled, while blessing others through you.

And, Isaiah says, when we do these, we’ll even raise up ruined cities, repair breaches in our society, restore streets to live in. You and I are invited to renew our discipline today, that God’s Spirit might open that path of life for all God’s world.

And the great joy is, you get to be a part of God’s grace in bringing life and hope to this world, too.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

“Give me a share of the Spirit,” you pray with Elisha, so that you might be God’s light to all who live in darkness.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Transfiguration of Our Lord, year B
Texts: 2 Kings 2:1-12; 2 Corinthians 4:3-6; Mark 9:2-10

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

Jesus. Moses. Elijah. That’s a powerful gathering.

Moses, Israel’s greatest leader and great law-giver, who woke them from slavery in Egypt and, with God’s Spirit, led them to freedom. Elijah, Israel’s greatest prophet, faithful in the midst of widespread rejection of the true God, who did marvels through God’s Spirit, and for whom a seat is always left in waiting at Passover meals around the world even today.

And Jesus, the Incarnate Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity, God-with-us, in our human flesh, who reveals his divine glory, his clothes dazzlingly white, the Triune God’s light shining from him.

Peter – still reeling from the shame of Jesus’ rebuke a week earlier, and the brothers James and John, witness this. Little wonder they’re terrified. But the offer to build dwellings makes sense. If Jesus is God’s Anointed, God’s Christ, then with the affirmation of great Elijah and great Moses, all would be convinced. Why not reveal this to everyone?

We know that didn’t happen. Within moments, Jesus was alone again, the four headed down the mountain, and Jesus commanded their silence about all this. From here, Jesus headed to Jerusalem and the cross.

But there’s something else you need to notice.

As impressive as these three are, they all handed off their ministry to others.

Moses didn’t lead forever, Joshua took over, and many more after him. Elijah didn’t remain God’s great prophet forever, as we heard today. Elisha took over, and then many more prophets after that.

Jesus didn’t stay on earth forever. He called Peter, James, John, Mary Magdalene, Martha and Mary, Andrew, and millions more up to today, to carry on his ministry.

God’s servants always eventually pass critical ministry on to others, and that means to you, and me, and whoever else hears God’s call today.

But it’s intimidating, isn’t it, to follow such giants?

You can see why Elisha asked for a double share of God’s Spirit that filled Elijah.

Elisha wasn’t greedy. He likely saw all the wonders Elijah did, the trials and sufferings he faced, his faithfulness, and thought, “I can’t do that without a lot of help from God’s Spirit.”

Joshua was also blessed by God’s Spirit after taking over from Moses. And you know about those who first followed Jesus: the Holy Spirit flowed into them and gave them the power and courage and wisdom and gifts to do what God needed them to do.

It is the Spirit of God that empowers the servants of God, not their impressive gifts or resumes. That’s what you need to ask for. Because now God needs you to carry on the ministry of God’s Good News.

Paul declares this, and Elijah, Moses, and Jesus would heartily agree.

Paul says today that people are blinded by the “god of this world” and can’t see the light of the Gospel of Christ, the image of God. The challenges, sufferings, fears, and temptations of this world keep people from seeing the Good News that God has come to the world in Christ to bring life and healing.

But, Paul says, you and I witness to God’s coming by God’s light shining from us. God shines in our hearts to give light to those who can’t see it, by our love, our kindness, our work, our prayers.

Just after these verses, Paul reminds us that God’s Spirit in our hearts is a treasure held in clay jars. We’re fragile, weak, flawed. We make mistakes. We never imagine ourselves to be like Moses or Elijah, let alone Jesus.

But we carry God’s treasure in us, and so, Paul says, “we do not lose heart.”

And that’s really important to remember.

Because it isn’t only Jesus who leaves this mountain to face the cross, suffering and death. All his followers faced great difficulties as they faithfully took up God’s ministry. So did Elisha, and Joshua, and all who are called.

The path of Christ leads the servants of Christ through self-giving love and vulnerable caring for others, through risk and sacrifice. Knowing we are clay jars filled with the treasure of God’s Spirit not only helps you as you know your own weaknesses and flaws. It’s also comfort in the struggles that faithfully serving as Christ will bring you to know God’s Spirit is always within you.

So, you’re going to need Elisha’s prayer for God’s Spirit.

Paul says God doesn’t expect you to be Moses or Elijah or Jesus. God just needs you to be you. God will fill you, and me, and all who wish it, with the Holy Spirit.

And God’s Spirit transforms you to shine with God’s light into a world that is beset by so many things that would crush it. Shining God’s love and grace, God’s justice and hope for all God’s children, with your words and actions and presence.

So, go ahead and ask for God’s Spirit to fill you. You’ll find God’s already within you, God’s light is already shining out of you. People have already seen God’s love through you, flawed as you might be.

And so through you, and me, and so many more, God’s light will continue to shine, and even spread.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

God sends us into the darkness as agents of God’s wholeness and healing, having experienced it ourselves, to reach all God’s children.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fifth Sunday after Epiphany, Lect. 5 B
Texts: Isaiah 40:21-31; Psalm 147:1-11, 20c; Mark 1:29-39

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

That was a really long night for Jesus.

After a long day, as we heard last week, ending with an exorcism in the synagogue, today we hear that as soon as Jesus and the others left the synagogue and went to Peter and Andrew’s house, he had another person to heal, Peter’s mother-in-law.

And then the sun went down, Mark says, and people started lining up. Word was out. “The whole city” gathered outside the door, Mark says. So Jesus healed “many” who were sick, and cast out demons. You have to wonder how late into the night he went, and if he slept.

Then, in the morning when it was “still very dark,” Jesus got up to go to a quiet place to pray and re-center. But the disciples thoughtlessly searched him out in the dark and told him the crowds were back.

It was still very dark. Jesus had been working most of the night. And they still wanted more.

And what of all those waiting in the darkness with sick loved ones?

It was a long night for them, too, ending in deep disappointment. Because Jesus didn’t go back to heal the others. He went to the next town, leaving behind a huge, sad crowd, still in the dark, waiting for God’s healing.

Isaiah asks, “Have you not known? Have you not heard? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? God is the great one who made all things. Don’t you trust that?”

And a lot of people today say, “No, I haven’t heard. I haven’t seen God. I don’t know where God is in the mess of this world. I’m in the dark, wondering if light will come. I’m at the back of the crowd hoping for healing and no one’s there to help me,” many would say to Isaiah.

Isaiah asks, “Why do you say ‘my way is hidden from God, and my right is disregarded by God?” “Because,” many, many people today would answer, “it sure feels that way to me.”

It might even feel that way to you. That it’s still awfully dark out there. And you know what it is to wonder where God is and what God is doing.

That’s why today’s readings are important.

They do what the Bible does so often: re-focus us on what God cares about and whom God wants to help. God gives power to the faint and strengthens the powerless, Isaiah says. God’s not impressed by success, the psalmist sings but rebuilds broken cities, gathers exiles, heals the brokenhearted and binds their wounds. And Jesus embodied this care, bringing healing when he saw suffering, proclaiming God’s desire for a new creation of love and justice.

Today’s Scripture reminds us that the reason we care about ending racism, or eliminating poverty, or cleaning up and restoring the environment, the reason we want to rebuild and heal our broken society until all are treated justly and given the chance to thrive, is because God cares deeply about these things. And God – as we know well from Jesus – will deal with them through you and me. We are God’s answer to those who cry in the darkness for God’s wholeness and healing, who don’t see or hear where God is.

So the most important person in today’s Gospel might be Peter’s mother-in-law.

Jesus healed her of a fever, and she got up and served them. That might feel awfully sexist, but this was her gift to give.

I only remember a handful of times in over 50 years of going to my Grandma’s house where anyone used the front door. You went into that house – family or friend – through the kitchen door. And Grandma always had food ready. You’d be invited in, and she’d put things in front of you. If she’d been lying in bed with a fever, and Jesus came to the house and healed her, I guarantee she’d have gotten up and said, “You need something to eat.”

You see? If you’re waiting all night in the dark for healing, hoping for God to act, and you experience in any way God’s healing grace in mind, body, or spirit, this woman says, “well, get up from your healing and see what you can do for others.”

That means for the second week in a row, our Prayer of the Day reveals our path.

Last week we prayed “God, bring wholeness to all that is broken, and speak truth into our confusion.” This week we prayed what’s next: “Make us agents of your healing and wholeness, that your good news may be known to the ends of your creation.”

Today we hear God’s priorities, and are re-focused. And, as ones who’ve been given wholeness and healing from God, we’re asked to work on those priorities. God’s care for the faint and powerless, the brokenhearted and wounded, comes through those whose faintness and powerlessness and woundedness have found God’s healing.

And you’re only asked to do what you can do. Peter’s mother-in-law knew how to do hospitality. As our vicar preached a couple weeks ago, the four Galilean fishermen somehow had skills as fishermen that Jesus needed for God’s work.

You, too, have what you need to be an agent of God’s wholeness and healing, if you’ve ever experienced it yourself. No matter how isolated you feel right now, or how incompetent you think you are to serve Christ, in every interaction you have with someone you could be a sign of God’s wholeness and healing. You can be grace. And love. You can help those who feel exiled by being God’s home for them, bind up the brokenhearted and wounded by being God’s healing presence for them, maybe only for a moment. But that’s enough.

Because it’s still awfully dark out there, isn’t it?

There are so many daunting things, we can’t even count them, so many people hurting, sometimes even we ourselves, so many systems that need to be dismantled, we can’t imagine how to help or start.

But God counts the number of the stars, sings the psalmist, and calls them by their names. God knows all the faint and powerless, all the people of the world by name, Isaiah says. All the broken cities and exiles, all the brokenhearted and wounded, all of these God sees. Even in the dark.

And what God needs to reach them all is you, and me, and many more, as agents of God’s wholeness and healing to whomever we are with.

Don’t worry you’re not enough. You’ve got what God needs to bring wholeness in your place, and so do all God’s children, so that God’s good news can, as we prayed, finally reach the ends of God’s creation.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

God in Christ still comes to you and me and brings wholeness to all that is broken and speaks truth in our confusion, for our healing and life.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fourth Sunday after Epiphany, Lect. 4 B
Texts: Mark 1:21-28

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

Maybe we modern people are too clever for our own good.

Today we hear Jesus drive out a demon and look right past it. We’re “scientific,” “up-to-date,” and don’t believe in demonic possessions anymore. Or at least, if any of us might wonder about them, our culture and our church dismiss them as superstition. We might even find it a little embarrassing that our own Martin Luther believed demons were real and plagued people’s lives.

And some of Jesus’ exorcisms look a lot like the healing of diseases we recognize. Sometimes the person shows all the symptoms of epilepsy, others seem to have a personality disorder of some kind. So we can easily pretend the Gospels aren’t really talking about actual demons.

But what if discounting the power of evil that the Gospel writers assumed was real means missing real grace from God, real healing?

Our modern critique of what Jesus did might show a way to find that grace.

If some of Jesus’ exorcisms were actually healing of epilepsy, for example, what if we reconsidered all the things that cause us pain, that might also have been seen differently in an unscientific age?

We and all people suffer from many illnesses of the mind and spirit. Depression. Anxiety. Grief that won’t go away. Dread of the future. Fear of just about anything, depending on the person. Addiction, again to just about anything. And the deeper, more intractable mental illnesses like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and so on, that plague so many.

There also are those evil patterns of thought and behavior that we’ve learned to see in us and want to root out, but it’s deeply difficult: our implicit biases against certain groups or people; our harmful actions and thoughts shaped by the privileged lives many of us live; our involvement – unintentional or not – in so many systems in our culture that destroy others, whether it’s racism or poverty or sexism or whatever.

Like with demonic possession, some of these can feel as if they come from the outside, like evil’s moving against us.

When someone is overwhelmed with anxiety to the point of being unable to move, we even call it a “panic attack,” as if something has taken over the mind, against the will.

This is important, because mental and spiritual illnesses still carry a stigma that others don’t, yet afflict us like any physical illness. If you get cancer, everyone supports you and encourages you. But often people who seek mental or spiritual health hide it, as if we’re afraid to be seen as weak because we’ve allowed such things to take root in our lives.

Maybe we don’t have to call these things demonic, or even imagine them as possession. But if God in Christ revealed a power over such “unclean” spirits, as Mark says today, and that power is still something God wants to offer you, wouldn’t you want to know it?

We began worship today praying this: “Compassionate God, bring wholeness to all that is broken and speak truth to us in our confusion.”

What if we actually believed that prayer?

Jesus’ exorcisms were some of the earliest signs to the people of that day that he came from God. The authority he had to drive away invisible, evil things that plagued people’s lives, to heal not just legs and ears and eyes but minds and spirits, astounded people. And people flocked to him because, like us, nearly all of them needed God’s healing.

The good news is that you and I already know that God still does this.

We live in this amazing time of science and medicine where the brains and imaginations God gave all people have taught us so much and brought so much healing.

And that applies to healing for our minds and spirits, too. If you’re clinically depressed, suffer from debilitating anxiety, are bipolar, or many other things, there are medicines to help. Therapists are able to help with so many illnesses of the mind and spirit, too. And ancient, holistic treaments bring relief. God heals in all this.

And God heals through the grace and blessing of those who love us. If we’re sad, or anxious, or depressed, or afflicted in any way mentally or spiritually, family and friends can be a part of the healing and hope, through love and kindness and presence.

But the great wisdom of the ages says God also heals from within.

The witness of millions of believers from the time of the Bible to today says that the Holy and Triune God walks with you in all things, “above you, beneath you, behind you, ahead of you, beside you and with you,” as the Celtic Christians prayed. And these millions of witnesses, including some in your own life, tell you that walking with God brings tremendous grace and healing in the midst of your pain. Learning this can begin by simply opening yourself up to God for a few minutes in each day, and giving your pain and suffering and need to the God who loves you, to carry for you.

It doesn’t always mean the illness or internal struggle is immediately taken away. The apostle Paul often prayed for a “thorn” of suffering to be removed, and God didn’t. But the same Paul witnessed that he learned to be at peace and content in all circumstances, even in suffering, because God was with him.

This is what today’s Prayer of the Day gives you: words to invite God to come to you and embrace you in love and grace. To help you learn to live in God, let God’s breath breathe in and out of you, even in your pain. To trust that God will bring wholeness to all that is broken in you, and speak truth into your confusion.

God has come in Christ with authority even over unclean spirits!

That’s the astonishing Good News of Mark’s Gospel. Don’t be afraid to name your need, your pain, those inner things you struggle with, the evil that afflicts you. You don’t have to deal with them alone.

You are God’s beloved child, and in so many ways, whether by medicine or family and friends, and certainly by living within you, God is able and willing and hoping to bring healing to all aspects of your life: mind, spirit, and body. To drive out evil from your life, and bring you to the fullness of life God has dreamed for you.

And God wants this for all God’s children, until, as we prayed, all creation knows God’s healing and life.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen