The fullness of time is right now, and God is here, with you – follow Simeon and Anna and see!

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The First Sunday of Christmas, year B
Texts: Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:21-40

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

We’re almost done with it. 2020 is nearly finished.

It’s been a year most would rather forget. But I saw a headline in a newspaper online that said, “What makes you think 2021 will be any better?” I didn’t have the heart to read the article. Still, 2020 is nearly finished, and it’s time, most of us think. Well past time. New hope, new realities, are possible, we dream, in this new time.

Paul says today that “in the fullness of time” God sent the Son, born of Mary. That moment, that year, month, day, hour, second, was the right time for Jesus, the Son of God, to be born.

Or, maybe that’s not what Paul’s saying at all.

Because we count time in a line, we sometimes think all things operate that way.

There is past, there is present, there is future. Jesus’ birth, God’s coming, is in the “past,” we say. We take great pains to locate that arrival in our time line. The ancient proclamation of the birth of Christ, sung every Christmas around the world, and also at Mount Olive, gives a number of links to our line of time. Dating from creation, from Noah’s flood, from Abraham and Sarah, tied to the year of Augustus Caesar’s reign, and to the years of the Greek Olympiad, the proclamation places Jesus in our history. On that date, we joyfully proclaim, God was made flesh in Jesus.

But don’t forget: God’s time is outside our time, above and beyond all timelines. So maybe the fullness of time Paul’s talking about means more than we thought, more than just that moment 2,000 years go.

If all times are in God, and God is above and beyond all times, then it’s always potentially the fullness of time.

In fact, it’s God’s coming into our time that fills it. The eternal and Triune God enters our time whenever God so chooses, and fills the space with God’s presence. All the saints of the past who met God, saw God, heard God, and followed faithfully, were in the fullness of God’s time.

Coming in Jesus was a focal point of universal history, to be sure. God in our flesh, in person, Jesus shows us the face of the Trinity. But God had been building up to coming in person for centuries, touching people with God’s Spirit. And after Christ Jesus was crucified and rose, and ascended into heaven, the Triune God, through the Holy Spirit, has kept on coming to God’s people, showing them the light of God, calling them to a path of love and blessing, being Incarnate in many now.

Everywhere Christ is now, there is the fullness of time for God. Even today, as we near the end of 2020.

Simeon and Anna were blessed to see God’s fullness in their time.

Simeon was a faithful servant of God, “righteous and devout,” Luke says, and filled with the Holy Spirit. The Spirit once told him that he wouldn’t die before seeing God’s anointed. He listened to the Spirit throughout his life, and when he was told “it’s today!” he went to the Temple and saw God’s fullness.

Anna was also a faithful servant of God, a prophet, Luke says. She lived as a widow for decades, maybe 60 years, after her husband’s death. She spent every day of those five or six decades in the Temple. And because she was there, when Joseph and Mary came with Jesus she also saw God-with-us, and rejoiced.

These two aged saints wonderfully show you different ways to be in God’s fullness of time and see God.

Simeon says it’s worth listening to the Holy Spirit when she plants a seed of hope in you that God is coming to bring life and healing. Whether or not 2021 is better than 2020, if God’s Spirit gives you any promise, listen like Simeon. And then keep your eyes and ears open. When the Spirit nudges you, says, “look, over there, there God is,” you want to be ready to see, like Simeon.

Anna’s even more helpfully a model. We know of no promise from God’s Spirit to her. But she spent her days in God’s presence, in prayer, in fasting. She went to the Temple every day, expecting God would be there. And because she faithfully walked with God her whole life, she was there to see God’s Son. Imagine that life for you: every day putting yourself into the mindset, opening your heart to the possibility that God might fill that day for you with healing and hope. Stay joined to God and you will, like Anna, see God’s fullness.

Now, right now, is the fullness of time. Because God is here.

It may take patience and keen eyes and ears to see, but Simeon says you can do that. It may take years of practicing being in God’s presence quietly and listening to God, but Anna says you can do that.

God has come to this world, joined our time, and filled it with grace. So even if the world ends up just as hard next year as it was this year, in you, in me, in so many of God’s children, God’s grace will fill the earth and bring joy.

Because it’s the right time for it.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

If you want to see what the Triune God is really like, look at Jesus. If you want to know what you could really look like, start there, too.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Nativity of Our Lord
Texts: Hebrews 1:1-4; John 1:1-14; Luke 2:1-20 (also references other Scriptures)

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

We love to think of God in disguise on this day.

The almighty and eternal Triune God hides all that glory and God-ness inside a little baby, born to a poor family in the Middle East, soon to be political refugees. The Trinity hides in a human infant, with human DNA, vulnerable, weak, threatened. As Martin Luther taught us to sing and to wonder: “O Lord, you have created all! How did you come to be so small, to sweetly sleep in manger-bed where lowing cattle lately fed?”[1]

But today the writer to the Hebrews declares a wonder: “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being.” Maybe the Triune God isn’t in disguise in Jesus at all. Maybe nothing’s hidden.

It isn’t how we’ve always understood Christmas, for good reasons.

One is John’s proclamation: the Word of God from before all time, through whom all things were created, without whom not one thing was created, took on human flesh, lived among us. Isn’t that God hiding all God’s glory in that little baby? A baby surely doesn’t really look like God?

And Paul has told us that Christ did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped but took on our human flesh, became obedient even to death. (Philippians 2) Doesn’t that sound like God setting aside all God-things to become one of us?

Hebrews doesn’t quarrel with either John or Paul. What Hebrews declares is that being born among us is not God changing, or hiding God’s true essence. It is God revealing the exact truth about God. “Not regarding equality with God as something to be grasped” is actually God’s deepest nature, not a new thing. The Son reveals that God is never about power and might and dominance. And God taking on human flesh, living among us, is the only way to truly know and see God. John tells us that himself.

Because the Son is the exact imprint of God’s very being.

Literally, Hebrews says, the exact engraving of God’s own being. If you want to see what God looks like, Hebrews says, look at Jesus, look at God’s Son. Look at this vulnerable, weak, poor, oppressed baby – it’s an exact imprint of God. Follow this vulnerable baby to adulthood and see Jesus, the one who leads all to the heart of God. Who continues to be vulnerable, and apparently weak. Who reveals God’s deepest love in dying on the cross, ending all other sacrifices by God’s own self-sacrifice. All this is God’s real truth.

And, Hebrews says, the Son is – is – the radiance of God’s glory. Not a hiding of it. Not something we have to wait to Transfiguration to see. Risky, vulnerable, self-giving love, willing to die for another, willing to trust us enough to be a fragile baby in our midst, that is – is – the radiance of God’s glory, not a disguise covering God’s glory.

This utterly changes our talk of God.

Everything that we wonder about God, ask about God, fear about God, are confused about God, is answered in Jesus, the Son, Hebrews says.

So, is God just? Look at Jesus and you find the answer: yes. Does God care for those who are on the margins, those who hunger and thirst both physically and spiritually? Look at Jesus and you find the answer: yes. Can God forgive and love those who hurt and harm, those who sin, even greatly? Look at Jesus and you find the answer: yes.

Does God believe power and force and violence are the way to heal the creation, make things right? Look at the baby Jesus and you find the answer: no. Look at the adult Jesus, all the way to the cross, and you find the answer: no. Can God overcome evil and death without power and force and violence? Look at the crucified and risen Christ and you find the answer: yes.

The Son is the perfect revealing of the truth of the Trinity.

This utterly changes how you can see yourself, too.

In Genesis 1, God says, “let us create humanity in our image, according to our very being.”

Do you see? You are, I am, all people are, made in the very image of God, too, created according to God’s very being. When you see Jesus, you see the completion of that image, God in God’s fullness. The exact imprint, the radiance of God’s glory.

But you, and I, and all people, are created according to that same divine blueprint. God said, “it is good,” when God made us, remember.

We certainly live in ways that debase that image, that are not good. The evil humans have done grieves us and grieves God. It builds up and corrupts over time to the point where this world is overrun by systems and structures that perpetuate evil and oppression. And each of us is capable of doing our own harm, our own evil. Living against our true nature.

But never forget: you are made in God’s image, even if you’ve marred or hidden that image. Your true nature cannot be denied.

And if you’ve covered up that image, or marred it, or need to remember what God really looks like and what you could really look like, well, start today.

In the manger. Here you see the exact imprint of God’s very being. The radiance of God’s glory. All you need to know about the Triune God is shown here. In the love and path Jesus taught, walked even to death on the cross, all you need to know about your love and path are shown. In rising from the dead, the Son revealed God’s vulnerable, self-giving love can never be overcome. Not by death. Not even by you.

God’s not in disguise today. Neither does your God-image need to be hidden. Look to the manger and see God’s glory. See God’s truth and yours. And rejoice, for God only wants to be known in someone small and fragile and weak like you. Like me.

God can only be known this way. It’s who God is. And you, too.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

[1] From ELW 268,“From Heaven Above,” stanza 9, Martin Luther, 1483-1546; tr. Lutheran Book of Worship, copyright 1978.

“The Lord is with you”: words that will change your life, and change the world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fourth Sunday of Advent, year B
Texts: Luke 1:26-38, 46b-55 (the latter verses, the Magnificat, are appointed as today’s psalm)

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

Gabriel’s greeting “greatly agitated” Mary, Luke says.

It doesn’t look so alarming. “Hi,” the angel literally said, using a common, everyday word of greeting. True, you aren’t called “most favored one” every day. But then Gabriel gave another common greeting: “The Lord is with you.” Or, as we might say, “The Lord be with you.”

“The Lord be with you.” We greet each other with that all the time. “And also with you,” we reply. Are you ever greatly agitated by this, and so led to ponder what sort of a greeting it might be, as Mary did?

We blithely say, “God is with you,” as if that were something simple, something normal, something common. Mary, not yet aware of the reason for Gabriel’s visit, sensed that it was the opposite of simple, normal, common. What might this greeting mean for me? she pondered, all stirred up.

She was right to be agitated. Everything would change in that moment.

If she said yes, she would be impregnated by the Holy Spirit, begin the arduous and joyful process of growing, bearing, rearing a child, sending that child into the world. Her life would be turned upside down.

But this simple girl also learned something about God while pondering. If this child is who Gabriel says, Mary thought, God is doing something astonishing to this world, not just to me.

So Mary sang: God’s favor on me, God’s being with me, terrifying and agitating at first, has taught me something. God is turning the world upside down. Born from a poor woman of no status, this child will cast down the mighty from their thrones for God, overturn those who are proud and full of themselves, and lift up all those who are low. Born into poverty and need, this child will fill those who hunger with good things, on God’s behalf, and send away those who are satiated and full, with empty hands.

“The Lord is with you”? Mary says that changes everything.

Do you feel her agitation yet? If I said to you right now, “The Lord be with you,” would you be concerned?

You should ponder Mary as your forebear in all this. Because when this not-yet-conceived child grew to be an adult and preached, healed, loved, died, and rose, all who met him had their lives turned upside down. Some because they rejected him. But some because they saw God in this simple rabbi, and followed him, women and men, and were forever changed. We put the name “Saint” in front of all their names now – Mary of Magdala, Peter, Susanna, Andrew, the whole lot of them – but they were all like you once. Ordinary people.

Then someone said, “God is with you,” and they believed it. Trusted it. And through them, God started turning the world upside down.

Maybe we’ve become too comfortable with “the Lord be with you.” It’s too familiar.

Maybe it doesn’t agitate you anymore. And though Magnificat is beautiful to sing, maybe we’re not ready for the transformation Mary promises there, at least at the cost to us it might mean.

But Mary knew what she meant when she sang it. She carried God inside her when she sang it. She went from greatly agitated to overwhelmed with joy that she was a part of God’s turning the world upside down.

Because, make no mistake, Mary knew that “God is with you” is not a greeting to be taken lightly. Mary says, if God is with you, then everything will change. For you, and for the world.

And that will be the hope for this world, as it turns out. A hope we actually do long to see fulfilled.

God is with you. That’s your greeting today.

Are you willing to have the Holy Spirit plant God’s new life in you today? Will you carry that life inside you until you painfully bear Christ into the world? Will you then nurture that Christ in your life, your actions, your love, until in time you come to fully grasp the letting go of yourself that the Triune God models in Jesus, the Christ? ^[1]

Because, beloved ones of God, if you all are possible Marys, if God really is with each of you, the world truly can and will change. Everything that grieves you, harms others, oppresses, destroys, tramples down, will have no ability to withstand millions and millions of Marys bearing God’s life into the world.

It’s worth some pondering. It’s deep mystery, that God is with you. Maybe even a little agitating.

But do say yes to God, to God’s transformation. Sing with Mary your joy and hope of God’s restoring this world into the new creation of life and hope God always wanted to see here.

The Lord be with you.  Amen

^[1] Inspired by Ronald Rolheiser’s reflection on Mary: “Our task too is to give birth to Christ. Mary is the paradigm for doing that. From her we get the pattern: Let the word of God take root and make you pregnant; gestate that by giving it the nourishing sustenance of your own life; submit to the pain that is demanded for it to be born to the outside; then spend years coaxing it from infancy to adulthood; and finally, during and after all of this, do some pondering, accept the pain of not understanding and of letting go.” Ronald Rolheiser, O.M.I., “Mary as a Model of Faith,” reflection on Luke 11:27–28 (December 7, 2003). http://ronrolheiser.com/mary-as-a-model-of-faith/

Rejoice! for God is working in the dirt and our seeds are beginning to spout.

Vicar Andrea Bonneville
The Third Sunday of Advent, year B
Texts: Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11; Psalm 126; 1 Thess 5:16-24; John 1:6-8, 19-28

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

I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, my whole being shall exult in my God; For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations (Isaiah 61:10-11).

The prophet Isaiah proclaims the promise that God will cause sprouts of goodness and joy. This is exactly the hope that we need in this bleak midwinter.

We are together in our waiting and anticipation asking when God’s transformation will happen and wondering how it will take root. Transformation that will alter our personal lives and the world we live in.

This transformation makes me think of a poem that is accredited to Saint Oscar Romero. The poem says:

This is what we are about. We plant the seeds that one day will grow. We water the seeds already planted knowing that they hold future promise.[1]

Being patient gardeners is what we are about. Tending soil and anticipating growth. It may be hard to imagine yourself as a gardener, especially in December, but you have already planted seeds.

As we heard in our Psalm for today, those who go out weeping [bear] seeds for sowing (Psalm 126:6).

Through our laments and through our crying out against injustice, we have planted seeds. Maybe it was last week, or a month ago, six months ago, ten months ago. We have planted seeds of prayer, action, and hope.

We have been tending to the seeds. Watering. Watching. Waiting. Aside from providing the seeds with care and comfort, the growing of the seeds has been practically out of our control.

We don’t know what is happening in the soil. For our seeds have been planted in God’s garden.

What do we know about the Triune God’s garden?  That the Holy Spirit is at work in the dirt and the soil is rich in nutrients of healing, justice, and peace.

And now Beloved, God’s garden is doing what it is created to do. It is doing what it has done for many generations. God’s garden is beginning to sprout again.

The seeds that have been growing under the soil for some time now are beginning to reveal themselves to us.  A sign that even in our waiting, God has been tending to the soil transforming our seeds into sprouts of joy.

Can you see them?

It is okay if you are having a hard time seeing them.

I must admit that I tend to have a hard time seeing sprouts of joy. When I look at a garden, I often think more about the seeds that have not sprouted, or focus too much on the weeds, or don’t know how to discern between a weed and a sprout. At times, I need the community of Christ to show me where sprouts of joy can be found.

The community has led me to Rejoice!

As creation has been healing. Many countries are reporting cleaner air, there is now a new plastic-eating super-enzyme that breaks down plastic in a matter of days rather than hundreds of years, and many near extinct species are making a comeback, such as the endangered blue whale.

Rejoice!

as work is being done to create temporary shelters and support is being given to encampments around the city through mutual aid and more and more affordable and attainable housing is becoming available in our communities.

Rejoice!

as we learn the COVID vaccine is about to arrive in MN and that the first priority groups will receive a vaccine before the end of the year, and that conversations are happening about how to build up our communities again in new and creative ways.

Rejoice!

As leaders from minority communities are appointed to local and national leadership and bring their voice to places that never listened to them before. Leading and guiding to make change to some or our most destructive systems.

Rejoice! God is doing great things! 

Like John in our Gospel reading for today, we must witness and testify. We must witness and testify to the sprouts of joy. Proclaiming that once the first seeds sprout, more seeds are going to sprout. And the sprouts are going to grow into plants. And by God’s grace and mercy, the plants will eventually produce a harvest.

We must not be disheartened that our sprouts are not producing a harvest yet. Of course, we would like to see the fullness of the harvest of God’s reconciliation and healing for all of creation. But we must put our trust in God who will bring forth a harvest greater than any of us can imagine.

As the poem attributed to Saint Oscar Romero reminds us,

We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the [gardener]. We are [gardeners], not master builders; ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future that is not our own.[2]

We may never see the harvest of the seeds that have been planted, but God’s promise to us is that God will cause sprouts of righteousness and praise to spring up!

So let’s grab our gardening tools and get back to watering, waiting, and watching. For Paul reminds us that God who calls [us] is faithful and God will do this (1 Thessalonians 5:24). 

Amen.

[1] https://www.bread.org/blog/prayer-oscar-romero
[2] https://www.bread.org/blog/prayer-oscar-romero

Be comforted, the exile is ending. Know that God’s Word holds your fragility together. And know this, most of all: God is with you, with this world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Second Sunday of Advent, year B
Texts: Isaiah 40:1-11; 2 Peter 3:8-15a; Mark 1:1-8

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

“Comfort them. Speak to their heart. Cry out: prepare. Cry out God’s presence. Lift up your voice with strength.”

It isn’t often the preacher is given such clear preaching directives in Scripture. Seven times in these words from Isaiah I am commanded to proclaim, and I’m given what needs proclamation.

So, on this Second Sunday of Advent, I will do what God commands.

I proclaim to your very heart, to your inner being, this grace: Be comforted. Your exile is going to end.

For the first time for many of us, we now understand the ache of exile, the pain of separation, that God’s people knew in Babylon. We’ve willingly put ourselves into exile to care for our neighbor. We’ve kept away from gathering with loved ones. We’ve kept from worshipping together in person, a pain that is deeper because this also deprives us of God’s grace and strength we’ve relied on receiving in that worship.

But hear this: your exile won’t last. This comfort is a future hope. Israel didn’t go home immediately on hearing the prophet. But the comfort, the hope, the promise, is that the end of exile is coming.

There are now effective vaccines. This last Friday news of the first 24,000 doses coming to Minnesota was reported. Not enough yet, certainly. But two months ago we didn’t know when, if ever, vaccines would be found. Now we know there is light ahead.

You have served your term, your deliverance is coming, beloved of God.

Today I cry out to you this truth: God has something to say about your fragility.

I’m told to say you’re right when you feel how vulnerable you are, how vulnerable we are as a society, how vulnerable this world is. Surely the people are grass: the grass withers, the flowers fade, and so do we. You know this now.

Perhaps you know vulnerabilities you’ve never experienced before. The utter lack of ability to control your life, in the presence of something as destructive as a pandemic, especially since you can’t control what others do. The weakness and frustration of having a loved one whom you cannot be with to assist, to help, to protect. The reality that young and old, weak and strong, all potentially die from this. Even the realization over recent years that our institutions of democracy are vulnerable to collapse if we don’t keep watch.

But listen: God says, yes, you know how vulnerable you are now, if you didn’t before. You know you are like the grass. But I became vulnerable to death, to your human fragility, to show my life cannot be stopped by anything. Ever.

My Word, your God says on this Second Sunday of Advent, my promise of love for you in Christ, my grace that is sufficient for you, will stand forever. Will never be broken.

I climb high today, not in a pulpit because of our exile, and not on a mountain, but I stand and declare to you this day: Your God is here.

God is coming and has come into your life, into this world. As promised.

In the millions of people working for justice for all God’s children, for the dismantling of systems of violence and oppression, for the ending of the racism and sexism embedded in our society, in these, your God is and has been feeding God’s flock like a shepherd, as promised.

In the millions of care-givers and front-line workers, those working on vaccines and those dedicated leaders who seek to keep us all safe, keep you healthy, in these, your God is and has been carrying God’s flock in God’s own bosom, as promised.

In the millions who care for their neighbor in so many ways, who deliver goods and services to all who need it, who watch for any who slip through cracks (like those who used Mount Olive’s kitchen on Thanksgiving Day to feed 700 homeless people in encampments across the Cities), in these, your God is and has been gathering God’s lambs into God’s own arms, as promised.

And I say to you who are hearing this by yourself on a CD, or watching this on a computer alone in your place, or reading this a few days from now in your mailing, know this: you might feel alone and isolated. But your God is with you. Your community is praying for you, knows you, loves you, and is there for you. In these, your God is and has been with you. As promised.

And since your God is here, I proclaim this to you all: be prepared for God’s coming.

This is what our brother Peter says to you today: What sort of persons ought you to be in your patient waiting for God’s coming? People who lead lives of holiness and godliness, which will hasten God’s coming because you’ll become God’s blessing to others, a sure sign of God’s presence, God’s shepherding, in their lives.

John the Baptist calls this repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Out of your grace from God, out of your love from God, you turn from ways that harm and destroy, you straighten the crooked and level the uneven, and live into that grace and love in a new life. It’s sharing that extra coat, carrying another’s burden, John says elsewhere.

This is the highway you make in the wilderness of this world: the life of love you live because of the love you know from God, opens your eyes more and more to see God’s glory in your life, and witnesses more and more to others that God has come to them, too.

I need to repeat brother Peter’s word, though: be patient.

God is coming, but in a timing different from ours. God’s dream that all this shepherding and feeding and gathering of the lambs of God will be done through you and me and the others of God’s children means it’ll take more time than we’re always ready to be patient for. But Peter says, that’s because God wants all to come home, not by force but willingly, and will take all the time needed.

But good news: your patience is not in vain. God’s already doing this work, and you can know this glory and see it: Your exile is coming to an end. God’s Word holds your fragility together securely. And God is here, with you, and me, and this world. So be comforted.

And now this work Isaiah gave me today is given to you.

On this Second Sunday of Advent, you are now commanded to take up the cry, proclaim the comfort, the grace, and the presence of God to all God’s children.

So, get up to that mountain, or porch, or wherever you are called, and lift up your voice without fear, lift up your loving actions without doubt, and say, “Here is your God!”

In the name of Jesus.  Amen