Christ is always with us, even if two are gathered, and that means God is at work in all the world’s suffering and pain, not just us.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 23 A
Text: Matthew 18:15-20

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 overwhelming crises of our time, on top of our own anxieties and problems, we may be forgetting something really important.

I’ve been in conversations with Christians for decades about all sorts of societal and church problems. Nearly always, the conversation centers on what God calls us to do as Christians, what actions we should take.

Do you know what’s almost always absent? Any talk of the Triune God’s actual presence in our work, God actually doing anything. When God is mentioned – I’ve seen this at all levels of this church – it’s nearly always in terms of what God wants of us.

In personal pastoral care, my job is to ask the God questions and help listen for God’s answer: where do you see God in this? What is God’s prayer for you? How might God be able to help or heal? But those questions are critical any time we’re considering suffering – including communal – and our call to be Christ in that suffering.

If we’re not considering what God is doing with and for us, we’re missing the key to everything. Jesus shows us this today.

Today’s verses are well known, usually to people who know how congregations do excommunication.

Jesus says when someone in your faith community sins against you, go to them individually, then, if needed, bring a couple others, then take it to the whole community. Many congregational constitutions make this the process to remove someone from membership.

Jesus means the absolute opposite. Listen to him: “where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” If there’s a breach in the community, the hurt person is to go to the hurter, and talk. But then two are together, aren’t they? Which means Christ is right there, among them. Do you see?

Reconciliation isn’t done by you or me following these steps. It’s done when you or I, alone or in larger groups, go to the person with Christ Jesus present among us. Only the presence of the Crucified and Risen Christ in the midst of the two, or three, or community, makes reconciliation possible.

And Jesus wants more than reconciliation.

In our midst, the powerful grace of God will work on all we face. Jesus’ promise here is open-ended: “where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”

So, in reconciliation – you are not trying to reconcile alone, I am there with you, Christ says. In problems with your life, when you walk with another person – you’re not facing your life crisis alone, I am with you, Christ says. In the massive problems of our society, whether systemic racism or poverty or oppression or destructive self-centeredness masked as governing, if even two of us gather in Christ’s name to consider what we can do personally, or as a congregation, or a nation, “I am there with you,” Christ says.

That means we should expect to be able to break the power of racism, even in our own hearts. We should expect to be able to end poverty and hunger. We should expect to be able to create a just society. We should expect to be able to cope with our own suffering and pain and find hope and healing, even in the face of death. Because none of this is something you and I face alone. The power and grace of Christ is in our midst and working to bring life.

And these aren’t just feel-good words.

The Scriptures are full of specific promises of what Christ brings when Christ is with us.

Christ brings insight and wisdom when you and I are stuck with an intractable problem. Christ brings peace and stillness of heart when you and I are in pain and struggle for hope. Christ brings forgiveness when you and I face our brokenness and sin together. Christ brings strength and courage when you and I are trying to work for God’s mercy and justice, or tempted to give it up. Christ brings guidance and direction when we’re lost. Christ brings resurrection life when death seems to have the final word.

God’s word is clear: in our midst, Christ’s presence changes everything, transforms minds, hearts, lives, the whole creation.

But when can we gather – even as two or three – in a pandemic?

Oh, some of us can be with one or two people from time to time. But many live alone. And even if there is some contact, it’s distanced, and we still spend lots of hours isolated. No worship in the same space. Fewer times to gather and talk, eat, laugh, cry together, have someone be a listening ear or comforting hug.

But we are baptized into Christ, so there is never a time we are not gathered together. The Body of Christ spans the planet, spans time, so even those who have died and live in Christ’s resurrection are with us. This was true 1,500 years ago, true 500 years ago. It is true now.

As with the ancients, even while physically apart, we are always together in the Spirit. But with modern technology, we can actually experience this more easily. We can talk to or see each other even at a distance, through phones and computers. COVID-19 can’t prevent the Body of Christ gathering.

And if we are together in the Spirit even when apart, that means Christ is always among us.

Whether it’s the work Mount Olive is called to in these troubled times or just your path of life that sometimes winds through dark woods and treacherous ground, know this: you are not alone. Nor do you and I do our discipleship alone.

Because Jesus, the Christ, the face of God, promises: when you are with others in my name (and you are always with others in the Spirit), I am with you. I give you wisdom, guidance, strength, courage, forgiveness, hope, and you will see healing. You will be able to deal with whatever you’re facing, because my grace and power are there with you, too. Always.

And that will make all the difference.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

God sees, hears, and knows the pain of this world, and calls you and me to be God’s hands, God’s voice, God’s instrument for healing and deliverance.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 22 A
Texts: Exodus 3:1-15; Romans 12:9-21; Matthew 16:21-28

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

The God WHO IS said to Moses: “I have seen; I have heard; I know; and I have come.”

Moses’ people are in bondage in Egypt; Moses has fled a crime and is hiding in the wilderness. He’s married, and is tending his father-in-law’s sheep. Does Moses ever think of his people’s suffering?

But God comes to him in this burning-but-not-consumed bush and says, “I have seen the abuse of my people in Egypt. I have heard my people’s cries. I know their pain and suffering. And I have come down to rescue them.”

God sees, God hears, and God knows. And God comes to deliver, to rescue, to bring healing. And back then, God’s people were brought out of slavery into freedom. But consider this: in our world today, where the many problems and struggles and sufferings and abuses and pains are so evident, the Triune God sees all this suffering and oppression, too. The Triune God hears the cries of all God’s children who are in pain, knows they suffer from injustice. And today, God says, “I have come to deliver my children.”

But in these readings, God comes by calling Moses. And the Roman Christians today.

God comes in the burning bush for one reason, to call Moses to be God’s hands, God’s voice, God’s instrument to deliver the people.

Paul’s Roman Christians are likewise called. Everything Paul urges today is God’s response to what God has seen, heard, and known, with the Roman Christians as God’s means of deliverance. By holding fast to what is good while resisting evil. By loving each other as siblings, even with their great differences. By rejoicing in hope, patiently suffering, persevering in prayer. By contributing to the needs of those siblings and offering hospitality to those strange to them. By blessing persecutors and enemies, setting aside vengeance, and above all, being people of peace even if others aren’t.

God sees, hears, and knows, and calls regular people to be God’s coming.

Which is why Jesus is calling you and me to a cross-shaped life today.

Paul’s words today are exactly what taking up your cross might look like in your life. It will be challenging, frustrating, overwhelming. You might be tempted to give up. You will have to stand in the face of evil with only your trust in God at your side. You will be asked to be vulnerable in many ways.

That sounds a lot like what happened to Moses when he followed the call, doesn’t it? It sounds a lot like what happened to these first disciples who also became witnesses by their very lives offered for the world.

This is both Good News and frightening news: God sees, hears, and knows the pain of this world. And God comes to deliver, to rescue, to heal.

But God won’t do it without you. Without me. To love. To embrace. To make peace. To stand against evil, even if it means saying to the Pharaoh of this land, “God says, let my people go.”

It actually comes down to what kind of rock you’ll be.

Simon got a new nickname last week. “Peter,” meaning, “Rock.” His trust and love became part of the bedrock of this new community of faith Jesus is building. So do yours and mine, as we heard last week.

But this week, Simon the Rock is compared not to a bedrock foundation, but to a rock that sticks up in the road and makes people trip. “You are a stumbling block to me,” Jesus says, “working against my coming to deliver, to rescue, to heal.”

These are both possible for you and me. Will you let the Spirit transform you into Christ, that your fear, love, and trust in God become part of the foundation of God’s Church, that you, like Moses, like the Christians in Rome, become part of God’s coming to deliver, to rescue, to heal?

Or will you be a stumbling block to God’s rescue, planting yourself in your place, refusing to risk, to love, to make peace, because of whatever reason you have? Maybe it’s fear of being hurt that plants you or me in the road. Or our stubbornness that we don’t want to change, or be challenged. To live as Paul describes would require for each one of us dramatic changes in how we relate to others, especially to those who are strangers to us and those who are enemies.

But our refusal to follow Christ with our lives of vulnerable love trips up God’s plan of salvation. Becomes not an instrument for God’s rescue, but a hindrance to it.

So will you take up your cross and follow Christ?

Everything is at stake. Literally. Everything. This world is in flames, and filled with fear. God sees this, hears the cries, knows the pain, and wants desperately to come and bring deliverance, rescue, healing.

Will you take the time to turn to the burning bush and hear God call you? Will you listen to your brother Paul urge you to find a completely new map to how to live your life as Christ? Even if, as God’s Son tells you today, it will be costly, sacrificial, vulnerable?

Because if, with the strength and courage of the Spirit, you and I answer and follow, then Jesus’ words today will be fulfilled: there are people here right now who will not die before they see Christ’s reign.

Because such following in this path would create a world where no one weeps alone, where more and more work for peace even if others fight, where mutual love and respect abound, where strangers receive hospitality and siblings in need are cared for, too, where revenge is non-existent, and even enemies are loved. Such a world is the reign of Christ. And it could be now.

God sees, God hears, God knows. That’s astonishingly Good News.

And now God says, “I need you, because I have come to deliver my children, to bring rescue to my world. I will be with you, as I was with Moses, and those first disciples, and, like them, you can and you will be my hands, my voice, my instrument for justice and mercy and healing in this world, so all will know that I see, and I hear, and I know, and I have come.”

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

In fear, love, and trust of God, we are transformed into Christ and sent into the face of evil to midwife God’s love into the world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 21 A
Texts: Exodus 1:8 – 2:10; Romans 12:1-8; Matthew 16:13-20

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

They feared God, these Hebrew midwives.

Twice Exodus reminds us that these brave women feared God, and simply would not obey the Pharaoh’s genocidal command. They would not kill half of the Hebrew babies, as they were born.

The rabbis say that if you save a life you save an entire world. These brave women saved a nation, because they feared God and did what was right in the face of evil.

Be transformed into Christ, not conformed to this world, Paul tells his Roman churches today.

These midwives would not conform to a world where a ruler could order the death of half their people’s children. They lived lives transformed by their fear of the God of their ancestors who hadn’t yet saved them from their centuries of bondage. (This is before Moses was born; the Exodus is years in the future.) Still, they feared God. And did what was right.

Paul urges the Romans to be formed into Christ, to be transformed by the renewing of their minds – their attitudes, their way of thinking and being – and in the next few chapters he’ll describe what a Christ-formed life looks like.

But today simply consider this possibility these midwives model for us: what if we are like they were? If we didn’t conform to the brutal evil of our world, even if our leaders order it. If we didn’t conform to systems and structures that crush our neighbor. If we didn’t conform to the cultural attitude of “me first.” What if we asked the Spirit to transform our minds, our attitudes, our way of thinking and being, to be like that of Christ?

Could we, like these midwives, save the world?

Without a doubt. Because we have more than fear of God to work with.

Fear of God is a proper thing, Luther taught us. To be in awe and reverence of the Triune God who made the whole universe, stars, galaxies, is the only wise position to take. Only a fool says such a God isn’t to be feared.

But we’ve met Jesus, whom Peter proclaims today is the Son of that Living God, God’s Anointed. We’ve seen Jesus’ face, and Jesus’ face is a face of love and grace and forgiveness. It is the face of the Triune God for us. For you. For the creation.

We’ve learned from the Son of God not only that the Triune God is worthy to be feared. We have learned to love God. To trust God. As Luther taught us in the catechism: we fear, love and trust God above all things.

So if, like these midwives, you see a world filled with evil that works against God’s good will, you have more than fear of God to inspire you to seek transformation. You know God loves you, so you can love God. You know God saves you with life and grace now that will extend even beyond death, so you can trust God. And if you fear, love, and trust God – imagine what you can do in this world, transformed by the Spirit into Christ!

This could be the rock Jesus promises to build the Church upon.

Yes, Simon gets a new name, “Rock,” “Peter.” But what if the rock Jesus will build upon isn’t Simon Peter himself, but his trust in Jesus? His love for Jesus? That would mean, then, that the Church is built on more than just Peter. That your trust in God, your love of God, even your fear of God, become part of the strength of the Church. Mine do. All Christ’s disciples’ do.

Paul certainly believes we’re all part of the rock Jesus builds upon.

His breathtaking vision of the Body of Christ – with each of us, even you, individual members of the greater Body – shows this. Every single member, small or great, is critical to the Body’s life.

These midwives didn’t lead Israel out of Egypt. All they did was simply help babies be born. And we’re still talking about them three thousand years later, astonishingly remembering two of them by name. Whether you think you’re important or not, you have gifts as a transformed Christ, Paul says, to change the world.

Your job standing against evil might be as simple as making sure you vote this fall and vote early. It might be as quietly unnoticed as kindness to a neighbor. It might be an unseen sacrifice you make to be Christ’s love to your family, or your willingness to support policies that cost you but benefit your neighbor.

Like the midwives, as a person transformed into Christ, anchored in your fear, love, and trust of God, you simply need to see what is before you today, and do what is right. Or, as Paul says, what is the will of God, what is good, and acceptable, and perfect.

No more is asked of you than this. No less, either.

And Jesus promises that no evil can withstand such a transformed Body of Christ.

Jesus sends you into the world bearing your anointing, transformed in your mind, your attitude, your way of thinking and being, to be Christ. And Jesus says, wherever you encounter the gates of Hades, they will crumble. Multiply that by millions of Christs.

Pharoahs and rulers will be impotent in the face of such Christ love. Systems and structures that crush and kill will collapse like a house of cards when Christ’s Church approaches them, transformed and loving.

If you save a life, you save an entire world. Be transformed into Christ, and become another midwife for God, helping to birth God’s healing grace and love into existence, and saving the world.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

This Canaanite woman shows us the power of persistent faith in God’s abundant mercy that is for all people. Despite Jesus’ reaction to her, she courageously trusts that he shows the face of that divine compassion.

Vicar Bristol Reading
The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 20 A
Text: Matthew 15:21-28

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

Sometimes when we read stories in the Bible, we wonder: Did it really happen like that? Did Jesus really say those exact words? When we hear this story from Matthew, about Jesus dismissing a woman begging for his help, comparing her to a dog, we might be tempted to say, “No way. Someone misheard him or wrote it down wrong. Jesus certainly didn’t say that.”

Interestingly, some Bible scholars think that unflattering stories about Jesus are actually more likely to be historically accurate. Why would Jesus’ own followers invent stories that make him look bad? And, let’s be honest: this story makes Jesus look bad. It makes him look indifferent at best, and downright cruel at worst.

But Matthew isn’t the only Gospel writer who tells this story; Mark does, too. Jesus did and said a lot of things during his thirty-some years on earth that didn’t get written down, didn’t get passed down to us in scripture. But this did. So we are invited to ask: what do we learn about God through this passage? If Jesus shows us the face of God, what face do we see here?

For one thing, we learn that Jesus was human. In this story, as in others throughout the Gospel, we see some of the emotional experience of Jesus, who was a real person. A person who got tired, angry, sad. A person who ate, wept, bled. It can be easy to forget that. In light of the “fully divine,” it can be easy to forget the “fully human”

In the context of this story, Jesus is worn down. He’s been clashing with authorities, and recently, his relative John the Baptist was publicly executed. Jesus has been trying to get some time away to process his grief, but he’s in high demand, so he’s been caring for people constantly, healing and feeding and teaching. Maybe he’s just tapped out, and he doesn’t feel he has the capacity to help this woman.

This woman who is also a very real person. That can be easy to forget, too. We learn so little about her; we don’t even get her name. We learn only where she’s from and that she’s a mother to a daughter, who is also real, and is suffering acutely.

If you’ve seen the news this past week, you’ve seen faces that look just like the face of this nameless woman. In the text she’s called a ‘Canaanite,’ or a ‘Syro-Phonecian,’ names of ancient empires that sound foreign and far away. But the region where she lives, near the cities of Tyre and Sidon, is about 40 miles south of Beirut, in present-day Lebanon.

This week, as Lebanese faces have flashed across my screen – faces in shock from a massive explosion that should have been prevented, faces enraged by the corruption and neglect of their government, faces desperate for help as they navigate an economic collapse, faces covered by masks in an attempt to survive a global pandemic – as I’ve seen these faces, I’ve wondered: Are any of these very real people the descendants of that woman who knelt before Jesus, descendants of her daughter who survived thanks to her tenacious faith?

Because, you know, in some ways, it is as easy to forget the realness of those people as it is to forget the realness of this nameless woman who lived 2000 years ago. It is easy to turn off the news, to turn away from those Lebanese faces, to think to myself, “We have plenty of our own problems here, plenty of our own shock, and rage, and need. We have our own economic collapse and rampant pandemic to deal with. I do not enough compassion or charity left to offer to those foreign faces, when I am already struggling to meet the need in my own neighborhood.”

And then I know something of how Jesus might have felt when he said, “It isn’t fair to give to the Gentiles what belongs to the Israelites.” Except he didn’t say it quite so diplomatically.

He’s been clear that his mission is to the Israelites. When he sent out his disciples as missionaries, he told them: “Don’t even bother to go to Gentile cities; we’re focused on the ‘lost sheep of the house of Israel.’” And they repeat that now. This woman is not a sheep of Israel. She’s a Gentile. It’s as though Jesus and his disciples tell her: “It’s not that we don’t care, but there isn’t enough to go around. We have our own problems, and you’re not our people.”

In some ways, it isn’t Jesus’ statement that’s shocking. Jesus might have expected ‘Canaanites’ like this woman to think just as dismissively of him, a Jew. The antagonism and suspicion between these groups was mutual and longstanding.

And don’t we know what that’s like. 2000 years and a world away isn’t enough to make the reality of prejudice seem surprising. Don’t we know how cultural, racial, geographic, economic, political barriers can seem obvious and intractable. Don’t we know how easy it is to treat someone who looks different than us, who speaks a different language, who practices a different religion, to treat them like they are not our people so they are not our problem. Or, even worse, to treat them like “dogs,” not just with our name calling, but with our actions. In many ways, Jesus’ statement to this woman is not the surprising part of the story. That’s the part we already know, in our own context, our own lives.

The surprising part of this story is her. This woman, who knows when shout and when to kneel. This woman, who knows that, despite her social status, she matters. Her daughter matters. Their lives matter. This woman, who knows that the pull she feels in her heart, to go toward Jesus, to reach for him, is good and right and true. She knows a savior when she sees him. And even when he ignores her, denies her, derides her, this woman knows that God’s mercy is abundant. When Jesus says, “There’s not enough for you,” she says, “Oh yes there is! There is always enough.”

She may not have heard Jesus tell the parable about how the kingdom of God is like yeast that catalyzes rising dough. She may not have seen Jesus’ feed thousands with only a few loaves of bread. But still she knows that even crumbs at God’s table are more than enough. The bread of life does not run out.

That is the shocking part of this story, and boy is it good news. Despite all the challenges of this passage – the questions it raises, the discomfort it causes – the good news sings out anyway, in the voice of an nameless woman: God’s abundant grace is for everyone, and there is always enough to go around!

As soon as he hears it, Jesus knows she’s right. Of course, of course he has healing for her daughter. He says her faith is “great,” and it is great: admirable, heroic, steadfast, resolute. One might even say dogged. Her dogged faith, her persistence before Jesus, tears down any barrier that might have stood between him and her. There is no ‘his people’ and ‘her people,’ Just people, real people. Like the faces we see in need in our own neighborhood, like the faces we see in need across the world.

May we, too, have faith dogged enough to tear barriers between people. That doesn’t mean that we have to respond to every disaster you see on the news. Even when we’re not navigating a pandemic, compassion fatigue is real, and right now, everything feels exhausting. That also doesn’t mean that we have to love this story about Jesus. You can always keep wrestling with scripture. God is big enough for all your questions.

What it does mean to have dogged faith is that you never give up on living as though God’s grace is abundant for every single person, because it is. When you hear the message that “There’s not enough to go around. There’s not enough h for her, or for her, or for her” you say, “Oh yes there is! Through God there is.”

Jesus leaves this conversation with the woman revived and recommitted. He immediately heals and feeds so many people that there are mass conversions. The woman’s great faith was well-placed after all. Jesus was who she thought he was: the savior of the world, the bread of life that never runs out, the incarnate one who shows us the face of God. And God is not prejudice or rejecting. God’s mercy abounds and overflows into the whole world. God loves the whole creation, no exceptions.

This nameless woman knew that truth. She saw that love shining in the face of Jesus, and, despite the pain in her life, despite the reality of her circumstances, and she trusted that love. We can trust that love, too.

Amen.

God’s way is the right-side-up way, and Mary follows it, inviting us to join her.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The feast of St. Mary, the Mother of Our Lord
Texts: Magnificat, Luke 1:46-55

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

Mary doesn’t sing of the world turned upside down in the Magnificat.

She sings of the world turned right-side up.

When the Triune God asked Mary to bear the Incarnate Word into the world, it was to begin restoring the creation to God’s way. Mary sings of the hungry being fed, the rich emptied, the mighty set down, the lowly lifted up. That’s the way God meant the world to be from the beginning.

We turned it upside down.

We’re created in the image of God, Genesis says.

When God takes on human flesh in Jesus, we see humanity the way it was meant to be, God’s true Image. In Jesus’ teachings, compassion, and most vividly in his vulnerable love, willing to die at our hands to love us back into life, Jesus reveals a way of life that seems upside down. But it’s right-side-up to God.

God created this universe to live in peace and harmony, with all creatures loving each other and God, even human creatures. In God’s design, power isn’t used to harm others, and in fact, “power” itself is vulnerable love.

Look at how the Triune God created humanity. We were given the freedom to choose our path, the freedom to love or hate, the freedom to obey or disobey. God’s vulnerable love exists from the moment we took breath. God risked everything hoping we’d become the loving, caring creatures God envisioned.

But, created in God’s image, we also have the temptation God must have felt.

Surely God was tempted to control humanity, tempted to use power to make us good creatures. Instead, the Triune God chose vulnerability and openness, risking all, even death on the cross.

Humanity chose differently. We’re the only creature that manipulates our environment to the degree we do, that has an impact on all creatures that share this planet with us, and often that manipulation and impact harm our fellow creatures. We use power to control others, we hide our fear of vulnerability behind aggression and greed. We build systems and cultures and structures that consistently benefit those in power while equally consistently crushing those who don’t have power.

What we see in our world today has been repeated throughout history. People go hungry because others hoard resources. People are killed because others violently maintain power. People live in poverty because others create systems to generate wealth for those controlling the systems.

But Mary sings that in this child, God is starting to turn the world right-side up again.

And God achieves this the same way as at creation: through vulnerable love.

Scattering the proud, removing the powerful from power, filling the hungry, sending the rich away emptied of their wealth is not done by divine power and might. God still will not force the creation to follow God’s right-side-up way.

Instead, God comes as a vulnerable baby, born to a vulnerable woman willing to sacrifice her hopes and dreams to be a part of God’s healing.

This is why we honor Mary: not to put her on a pedestal, but to see her as our forebear, our leader, our mother.

She lived into the image of God she was, dreamed of God’s right-side-up world, and bore a child to bring that world into being.

Jesus, of course, taught us God’s “right-side-up” way very clearly, the way to justice and peace through vulnerable love and sacrifice for each other, even letting us destroy his life, in order to break open our hearts to God’s way.

But Mary is our sister, who walks ahead of us, first to follow in Christ’s way. She is our mother in this life of Christ, whose giving birth makes it possible for all of us to walk Christ’s path, whose willing “let it be as you will” is our model for our own response to God.

In God’s way, no one is hungry.

No one is oppressed. No one is trampled upon. No one holds power over another. No one is rich, but all have what they need.

Mary shows us we can live this way, we can say, “let it be so with us.” And when we, and eventually all creatures, follow this way, the world will turn right-side up as God dreamed all along.

And then our spirits, like Mary’s, will truly rejoice in God’s healing of all.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen