sermon – Page 57

Songs of Praise

February 2, 2021 By Vicar at Mount Olive

We join our songs of praise with all of creation as we praise God active in our world.

Vicar Andrea Bonneville
Presentation of the Lord, Year B
Text: Psalm 84 and Luke 2:22-40

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

Everyone has a song to sing.

Mary sings, “my soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior… (NRSV, 1:46).”

Simeon sings, “my eyes have seen your salvation which you have prepared in the presence of all people.”

Anna sings praises to God and praises about the child to all who were looking for redemption.

Our Psalmist sings, “how lovely is your dwelling place, O LORD of hosts! My soul longs, indeed it faints for the courts of the LORD; my heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God.”

I suspect even the birds were singing as they found their home and built their nests at the altar, a place to lay their young.

When reading the psalm, I wondered why the psalmist would write about birds. I learned that it is likely the psalmist was referring to real birds making nest in the walls of the temple.

During that time, the absence of birds was often seen as a sign of divine absence or disaster. Birds building nests were a sign of assurance of divine presence to the people. Not only do they build their nests, but it is also where they lay their eggs. A sign of hope for the future.

Birds continue to be a sign of hope for people. We look for birds as a sign that spring is coming. We learn about creation from migration patterns of the birds. Birds build their nests all over the world, a sign that God’s presence is everywhere.

There is a row of houses near a patch of woods in my neighborhood that has bird feeders at every step. It’s a temple, if you will, for many birds and of course many squirrels. They gather there and sing all day long.

My whole body stands in awe and wonder as I listen to their songs. It takes me back to my childhood when birds were my musicians and teachers. My grandparents taught me how to identify birds by their song. I remember sitting for hours on my grandparents’ deck or running around their yard listening and looking for birds.

The sweet songs of birds warm my heart during these cold winter months. I love listening to their songs.

Birds sing for a variety of reasons. Some reasons are more practical, like to claim and protect their territory for their young. Some more relational, like to be able to attract a mate or communicate. Yet some birds sing for joy, simply because they enjoy their song and like to sing along with other birds.

But what I find so interesting about birds is that it takes a lot of courage and energy to sing. It seems like they sing so naturally and freely, but when I bird sings it burns a lot of calories to produce a loud and clear song. Also, when birds sing they make themselves known in the predator/prey world and they make themselves vulnerable.

It takes courage, energy, and vulnerability for us to sing our songs. I imagine it took a lot for Simeon and Anna to sing praises when Jesus was presented in the temple.

Simeon, who was anointed by the Holy Spirit, sings praises as he proclaims Jesus as God incarnate, the one who has come to redeem the nations.

His song confirms what Mary has already sung, that this baby will transform the world. Yet, Simeon sees that the baby’s life is not going to be all songs of praise. He tells of how people will reject Jesus and reject the message of mercy, justice, and steadfast love that he proclaims. Simeon even tells of the terrible pain that Mary will experience.

His song echoes throughout the temple and Anna joins with her song. She had been in the temple every day. I suspect she had built close relationships with people in power, yet she sings about a baby who will challenge all power systems.

We remember that we to have been anointed by the spirit to sing our songs of praise. It is going to take energy, courage, and vulnerability. Yet, we still sing knowing there will be days when we have a hard time mustering up the strength. On those days, we look to Mary, Simeon, Anna, and the birds as they take the lead and we hum along.

Because despite trepidation, Simeon sings and praises for he knows the joy of his song. For the joy of the hope to come and redemption of nations rests in his arms as he holds the baby and sings praises.

And despite the risk, birds sing because the joy of the song and to be in community with others outweighs the risk of singing. Besides, when a bird is hatched it only learns its song by listening to its flock.

The songs that we hear today intertwine with songs that have been and continue to be sung, proclamations and praise to the living God. When we hear these songs, we tune in with our voices and praise God who transforms our world.

Amen.

Bring Wholeness

January 31, 2021 By Pr. Joseph Crippen

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

Now is the Time

January 24, 2021 By Vicar at Mount Olive

Jesus calls some of the first followers to live out of their identity as fishermen and join in God’s mission of healing. Now, God call each of us out of our beloved identities to join. It is the urgent task of our time.

Vicar Andrea Bonneville
Third Sunday after Epiphany, Year B
Text: Mark 1:14-20

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 are we waiting for? Now is the time.

This is the urgency that Jesus uses as he comes out of the wilderness and begins his public ministry. It is the urgency present on the shores of the Sea of Galilee as as he calls some of his first followers to join in his ministry, in his mission.

In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus’s mission begins with an epiphany. A sudden and surprising statement that calls for people to repent, meaning to turn their lives around and open their hearts, and to trust and believe in the good news. The good news that God’s reign has come near and that God is active in the world working through people and systems and creation to bring forth a new creation that demands healing, justice, and love.

This epiphany rocks the world. Shakes and quakes reverberate throughout the land all the way to the Sea of Galilee as Jesus rocks the boats of this first followers, proclaiming “follow me.”

This epiphany demands immediate action from the fishermen. People who are talented in the art of patience and waiting, feel the urgency like the pull of a big fish, and drop what they are doing to join in the mission of Jesus. I suspect their hearts were probably racing as they stepped out of their boats, a place that had become their comfort zones, to begin to learn a new way of fishing.

Jesus calls the fishermen to “fish for people” which has traditionally been used as a metaphor for evangelism and conversion. But what if the fishermen are called to fish for people because the identity of fishermen is who they are and the act of fishing is what they have prepared their whole lives for.

An immediate transformation takes place on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, but the fishermen maintain their identity. For them, and for us, following God means to fully become ourselves, to fully become who God created us to be, to fully live into our identity as beloved children of God with God’s mission set on our hearts.

The first followers demonstrate to us that faith is to have bold confidence in God’s mission, even if there is a cost, even if we have to step out of our comfort zones. Because believing in the good news that Jesus proclaims and living our lives in a way that trusts this good news, even though sometimes have doubts, continues to transform the world.

Fishing for people in Mark’s Gospel is about casting out demons, denouncing evil structures and systems, holding leaders accountable to care for all people, and healing—a whole lot of healing. As Jesus’s ministry begins, the first work of the disciples is to witness to and be a part of this ministry of healing.

Healing was the urgent task then and healing is the urgent task now.

As long as there is suffering, healing needs to happen. And as long as there is a need for healing, epiphanies, large and small, are going to rock our world and jolt us into action.

We, like the first followers of Jesus, must change our directions and transform our lives while we live into our identities of who God uniquely calls us to be. We must step out of our comfort zones and learn new ways of doing things that puts care for our neighbors who have been marginalized by systems and structures of oppression at the center of our who we are.

We as the church fully become ourselves when we become a place and a presence of healing and transformation. A community of diverse people all with unique identities and vocations working together to witness to God’s healing and aid in bringing this healing to our world.

Healing that regenerates that natural world, diminishes the power of white supremacy, mends the broken hearts of all who grieve.

Healing that restores identity to those who have been invisible in our society, repairs the harm of the failures of the Christian church, rebuilds our systems and structures, and reconciles our communities.

Healing that soothes the world by forming a balm; mixing with God’s mercy, justice, and steadfast love with our beloved identities and compassion. A healing balm for all of creation.

We join in the work of healing and know that we also need healing. Healing within our personal lives and healing in our communities. Healing through God’s forgiveness as we confess ways we have benefited from systems that oppress our neighbors. Healing as we work to love all of our neighbors, even the ones who are difficult to love.

Healing is to remember the past with our eyes focused on creating a new future, a future filled with mercy, justice, and love.

During the inauguration on Wednesday, Amanda Gorman, the youngest inaugural poet, recited her poem “The Hill We Climb.”[1] Her powerful words, a reaction to insurrection just two weeks prior, quickly became a healing balm for our nation and an epiphany that rocked our world.

I will share with you a few of her words with you now, but I encourage you to revisit all of her work.

She spoke to the world:

When day comes we step out of the shade,
aflame and unafraid
The new dawn blooms as we free it
For there is always light,
If only we’re brave enough to see it
If only we’re brave enough to be it

The time is now to see the light and be the light.

God calls poets and fishermen; teachers and engineers; nurses and accountants; parents and grandparents; children and students; musicians and politicians; factory workers and grocery cashiers […] beloved children of God like each and every one of us to step into the light, to step out of our comfort zones, for an urgent task is at hand: to bring healing to our world.

What are we waiting for? Now is the time.

Amen

[1] Amanda Gorman, “The Hill We Climb”, Recited at Presidential Inauguration, Washington D.C., January 20, 2021 https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/20/amanda-gormans-inaugural-poem-the-hill-we-climb-full-text.html

Known, Loved

January 17, 2021 By Pr. Joseph Crippen

You are fully known by God, and fully loved by God. That is enough.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Second Sunday after Epiphany, Lect. 2 B
Texts: Psalm 139: 1-6, 13-18; John 1:43-51; 1 Samuel 3:1-10

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

It’s tempting this Sunday to focus on God calling us to work in the world.

Every year after celebrating Jesus’ baptism, we hear call stories, Jesus calling people to become disciples. Today we hear Nathanael’s call. This year we also get Samuel’s beautiful and mysterious call story, a young boy serving in the temple, hearing an unknown voice.

And both Samuel and Nathanael answer their calls, Samuel becoming Israel’s last judge and a great prophet, Nathanael joining Jesus’ inner circle.

But this time something else shone out, and drew my heart into joy: These are stories of people known intimately and lovingly by God.

God knows them before calling them.

The God of Israel, I Am Who I Am, wasn’t often honored in the days of Eli, and visions from God were rare. Samuel didn’t know I Am Who I Am before this, God hadn’t spoken to him yet.

But God knew Samuel and loved him, even before hearing his mother Hannah’s prayer and answering.

Nathanael didn’t know Jesus as God’s Incarnate Son. He could only scoff at Jesus’ hometown.

But God’s Son knew Nathanael and loved him, knew before meeting him that he wasn’t capable of lying or treachery, even had a vision of him talking to Philip.

Samuel and Nathanael didn’t know God enough to recognize when God was reaching out to them. But God knew them and loved them enough to call them.

Soaring beautifully above these two stories is the Psalmist’s song of being known and loved by God.

Psalm 139 is a marvelous outpouring of awe by a child of God who recognizes that the true God, the one called I Am Who I Am, knows her in the deepest and most profound ways. When she sits and when she gets up, when she journeys and when she rests.

God knew her before she was woven in her mother’s womb, through all her life, and into the future. In the middle verses we weren’t appointed to sing today, the singer marvels that there is no place she can go where God isn’t, no way she could ever get lost from God, not even in the deepest darkness.

My friends, you get to sing this song, and it is your truth. God has searched you and knows you just as thoroughly, just as deeply, just as intimately.

But that isn’t always good news, is it?

Being known fully and deeply means things inside your heart that you hope remain hidden become known. Secret sins, thoughts and actions you haven’t forgotten but hope no one ever knows about, not even God.

There isn’t a human being who doesn’t have places inside them they hope no one ever sees, who doesn’t try to disguise what they fear cannot be loved.

When the psalmist sings “Where can I go to flee from your presence?” that can be terrifying instead of comforting. Because if God knows you that thoroughly and deeply and intimately, is it possible God could ever truly love you?

And yet. And yet. Our deep human longing is to be fully known and loved.

That’s our wretched pain. We want to keep our secrets, hide our flaws, hope nobody sees our sins. But we also dream of being enough, being worthy of love, in spite of those sins and secrets and flaws.

So if God searches you out, and knows you thoroughly and deeply and intimately, that could be good news indeed if God also loves you.

And that’s exactly what the Holy and Triune God has said.

Last week we heard God’s voice say to the Son, “you are my beloved child, and I am well pleased.” That’s also your voice to hear. In your baptism, God says, “you are my beloved child, and I am well pleased.”

Jesus, the Son of God, made this clear in everything he did, from teaching to healing, through dying and rising from the dead. You are God’s beloved, and God will do anything, even face suffering and death, to bring you, and me, and all God’s children, and the whole creation, back into God’s loving embrace. Nothing can separate you, or me, or the whole creation, from God’s love.

God knows you thoroughly and deeply and intimately. Everything. From before your conception to beyond your death. Your journeying and your resting. Your words and your silence. And God loves you. Without conditions. God’s love is broad enough to forgive whatever it is you try to hide even from God. God’s love is potent enough to shape you into the child of God you already are.

You are known. You are loved. And yes, it must be said, you are called.

There is pain and suffering in God’s good creation, and God needs your love and grace, your hands and feet, your voice. Like Samuel and Nathanael, you are necessary to God’s healing of this world.

But God has called you, knowing everything about you. So, if God says you have gifts to make a difference, God knows you, and it must be true. You can be God’s hope in your part of the world, even if you doubt it.

And God has called you, knowing everything about you and still loving you. If you doubt your goodness or your wisdom, or are anxious about your biases, or weep at your repeated sins, God knows you and loves you. Let that calm your heart and give you courage to go where you are needed.

You are known and loved and called by the Holy and Triune God who made all things, and who entered our world to restore all things. You will always be enough.

In the name of Jesus. Amen

God’s Breath

January 10, 2021 By Pr. Joseph Crippen

God’s Spirit still breathes into the chaos and darkness of this world and brings life and hope and creation – in you, and in the world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The feast of the Baptism of Our Lord (First Sunday after Epiphany, Lect. 1 B)
Texts: Genesis 1:1-5; Acts 19:1-7; Mark 1:4-11

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

In the beginning, the Spirit of God moved over the waters of the void.

God breathed over chaos and darkness and brought light into being. Worlds, stars, beings of all kinds were breathed into life by God. And that creation, filled with the very Breath of the eternal God, embodied God’s being.

In the Jordan, the Son of God was baptized and God’s Spirit breathed into him. Filled with the Spirit, beloved by the Father, the Son showed us the Triune God’s face. He called us to return to God’s love, to love God and each other. He lived and proclaimed God’s way of life for all, a way of justice and love and peace like that first creation. Even when the way led to a cross, Jesus, filled with the Spirit, walked it. Through that death, he broke the power of chaos and death and revealed God’s life for all.

When the Holy Spirit, the breath of the Triune God, breathes into this world, beauty and justice and hope and love and life happen.

But does the Holy Spirit still breathe into the chaos and darkness of our world?

As we watched the insurrection last Wednesday, the chaos of people, enraged by a web of lies they live in as if it were reality, attacking the Capitol, trying to overturn a fair election, seeking to establish a dictator in the United States, it was hard to believe. These were the things, we smugly thought, that happen in other places. Not here.

And when these protesters with guns, intent on intimidation, spread their destruction and rampaged with little opposition, it was hard not to remember peaceful protesters with no guns and no attacking that were shot at, gassed, arrested, beaten down this past year. Apparently in this country, if your skin is white and your cause is preserving a dictator, you can attack peaceful institutions with deadly weapons and be allowed to leave when you’re done.

God breathes over chaos and a beautiful creation is born. God breathes into Jesus and a mission to heal and save the world is begun.

Will God breathe into our world today?

Finding an answer begins with a moment in the reading from Acts.

Paul goes to Ephesus and finds a group of believers who knew of John the Baptist, believed in Jesus, but didn’t know much else. When Paul asked if they received the Holy Spirit when they were baptized, they astonishingly said, “No. We haven’t even heard that there is a Holy Spirit!”

So Paul baptized them, laid hands on them, prayed for the Holy Spirit. And just as at Pentecost, these believers were filled with the Spirit.

But know this: the Holy Spirit was already with them, already in the world. Just because they didn’t know it makes no difference. From the beginning, God’s Spirit has been breathing in and through the creation, bringing peace and light and life.

So, if you despair at the chaos and hatred and violence spreading across our nation, trampling the vulnerable, and wonder where God’s Spirit is now, remember: just because you don’t see the Spirit all the time doesn’t mean God isn’t breathing into our world today.

Still, Paul taught them about the Holy Spirit, and prayed for the Spirit to fill them.

Not because the Spirit wasn’t there. But so they could see God’s breath more clearly, be open to the Spirit’s transformation in their lives, be changed.

Paul believes the Spirit of God continues to breathe into the chaos of our lives and transform us. Again and again in his letters he promises that in the Spirit we are made into a new creation, we become Christ. It’s how we break away from the old way of living and being, the way of destruction, that this world is trapped in, into the new way of Christ that brings life and hope to all creation.

The Spirit moves wherever she wants, in all people, whether they know Jesus or not, whether they know there’s a Holy Spirit or not. But knowing means you can ask God to breathe in you and transform you into Christ, means you can see the Spirit’s movement better.

Because you will be changed.

Your eyes will be changed and you’ll see the Spirit’s work in so many in our world who stand against chaos and violence and hatred and put their lives on the line in love and kindness and grace. You’ll see the Spirit’s breath in them and find hope.

Your own heart will be changed as the Spirit moves over your chaos, the prejudices and sins and wickedness that crop up in your heart even when you don’t want it and sometimes when you do, and brings forgiveness and healing. Changes you.

And since your baptismal promise is the same as the one Jesus has, as the Spirit breathes into you, you’re sent out into your mission of love, making God’s new creation in this world’s chaos.

Is this enough in a frightening and destructive world? Will anything change?

Yes, it is enough. And yes, the world will change. Because when God breathes into chaos a marvelous creation emerges. Even if you and I don’t always see where it’s happening.

So, pray that God breathes into this chaotic world today and always. Pray that the Spirit opens your eyes to see signs of the Spirit’s breathing in the world, signs of hope and truth. And pray that the Holy Spirit breathes into your chaotic heart and mind and brings peace and focus, and transforms you into Christ in your world.

Because then you will become a sign to others that the Spirit is real and breathing life into this world even now, a sign of hope for all the people of this world.

In the name of Jesus. Amen