Pr. Joseph Crippen

We are nonconformist to this age, and transformed by the Spirit in one mind together, one Body in Christ, and through God’s grace, it is that Body that will bring God’s healing and life to the world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 21 A
Texts: 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

“Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief.

Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work. Neither are you free to abandon it.” [1]

These words paraphrased and expanded from a Talmudic teaching by Rabbi Rami Shapiro have become precious and strengthening to many of us here at Mount Olive. Some members recently commissioned artist Aaron Silver to create a work of art portraying the last two sentences of the saying in his beautiful cut paper renderings of Hebrew script, and we celebrated its arrival here last week.

This wisdom gives us encouragement in a world filled with grief and pain, human evil and suffering, and great injustice. It may seem overwhelming, the rabbis say, but Micah had it right: do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with God. You don’t have to do it all. But you also can’t walk away.

Today, though, Paul’s beautiful words suggest adding a final sentence to this rabbinical wisdom. “You are not obligated to complete the work. Neither are you free to abandon it. And you can’t do it alone.”

We live in a culture that’s long emphasized the individual over the community.

True, the indigenous peoples who’ve lived on this continent for millennia certainly had and still have a communal ethos, villages, tribes care for each other, see kinship, share the challenges of life together. And the many who flocked to these shores these past 400 years, some willingly, some desperately, some dragged here in chains, also had communities that cared for each other, helped each other face difficulty.

But the American ethos has a dominant self-reliance/independence tone. We are shaped by a culture that values not depending on others, on sorting your own life out. That far too often values individual rights over the needs of the many. A culture that privatizes faith expression, resists collaboration, idolizes competition, praises self-made people.

And this costs us. We have difficulty witnessing to our faith because instinctively we feel it’s a private thing. People who are elderly, or suffer from disabling challenges, or simply have greater needs than others, often say they don’t want to be a burden on anyone. Even though the very definition of being loved by another means you are a burden to them. It’s how love works, and it’s beautiful. Far too often we believe we’re on our own in facing our own life challenges, and don’t let others know. And then there are the world’s overwhelming problems that often lead each of us to doubt we can make any difference.

Because of this, when Paul speaks of the Body of Christ, we often focus mostly on the individual parts and differences.

But for Paul, it’s all about the Body. To the Romans today he says, “individually we are parts one of another.” To borrow language from Paul’s first Corinthian letter where he also speaks of the Body, the toe’s connection to the whole body means there is no separation in the body. No barriers between the toe and the eye. The same blood flows between them, the same air gives oxygen to them. If the toe gets hit by a hammer, the eye weeps.

So it is with Christ’s Body. In Christ we all belong to each other. We can’t exist apart from each other. There is no distance between God, and us, and neighbor. The blood that flows between us is God’s love and the breath we take together is the Spirit’s life. Even our individual callings to be Christ can’t be lived apart from this Body in which we live in Christ. We are called together. Christ together.

When Paul says today “be transformed,” he’s talking to this whole Body.

“Conformed” and “transformed” are plural in the Greek. “Don’t be conformed to this world, you Body of Christ.” “Be transformed, you Body of Christ.” Paul speaks not of my transformation or of yours, but the transformation of the entire Body of believers.

So the gifts Paul talks about are the way the Spirit empowers the whole Body to move and work in the world. It isn’t a Body conformed to the world’s way: self-interest, greed, and all the things that have led to the pain the world is in today. A body could conform that way, we’ve seen it. We’ve seen Christian groups, even our own, become embedded in the world’s ways and become unrecognizable as Christian. We’ve seen a nation with great ideals become ever more hateful to the most vulnerable, ever more self-centered.

But the transformed Body of Christ is shaped by God’s Spirit, transformed into Christ. It has gifts, Paul says, of faithful prophetic word speaking God’s concerns to the rest. It has gifts of generous giving, so all share in the bounty of the creation. It has gifts of diligent leadership, so people are constantly lifted up who help the Body move to where it is called to move. It has gifts of cheerful compassion, so no one is left behind, all are joined into this love of Christ. Most of all, as Jesus will tell us next week, this Body lives a life of sacrificial loving, where all lose themselves so others can be found.

And not even the gates of hell can stand up to this transformed body, Jesus says today.

Jesus isn’t describing the Church as a gated fortress, sheltered, saying no one can hurt us. It’s exactly opposite. Yes, the word “church” here is “ecclesia,” those called out of the world to become Christ’s Body. But then Jesus sends this Body to the gates of hell to bear God’s love. To break down the gates that keep people in or out, break the chains that enslave them.

Walls of hate, walls of violence, walls of greed, walls of ignorance, this Body shaped in love will go to them and break all barriers with love. Until all God’s children, every being on this planet, is part of this transformed Body of God’s love.

What chance do even the gates of hell have against that onslaught of love? Or the gates of death or fear? What systems, what rooted prejudice, what depressing litany of the world’s grief and evil could prevail against such love?

So, dear family of God: let’s not be conformed to this age, but be transformed together by God’s grace.

Let us do justly now, together. Love mercy now, together. Walk humbly with our God now, together. Transformed together, with the Spirit’s grace, we will do what God needs done. And not just in this Body here at Mount Olive, but the far more challenging Body of Christ of which we are a part across this planet. Even the parts that make us disgusted and angry. Paul says we can’t discard them. Christ has put us all together.

And through God’s grace, it is this transformed Body that will bring God’s healing and life to the world. And nothing will be able to stop the love of God this Body incarnates.

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

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[1] Rabbi Rami Shapiro, paraphrase and trope on a portion of the Pirke Avot (Sayings of the Fathers, Talmud); from Wisdom of the Jewish Sages: A Modern Reading of the Pirke Avot (Bell Tower, 1993)

There are no insiders or outsiders in God’s love, and through God’s grace, your heart, like Jesus’ heart, can be changed to bear the fruit of such love in your own life.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 20 A
Texts: Matthew 15:10-28 (adding in vv. 1-9); Isaiah 56:1, 6-8

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

“No outsiders!” We heard our brother Bruce powerfully proclaim that here in July.

In God’s love and welcome no one is an outsider. And then today’s readings are all about insiders and outsiders again. The Pharisees criticize the disciples for omitting a ritual handwashing before eating. This isn’t your mother’s admonition to wash up. This is a ritual washing again of clean hands right before the meal. The disciples didn’t do it, making them outsiders.

Jesus then accuses the Pharisees of breaking the fourth commandment by vowing an offering to God and so refusing to support their parents financially because that vow is binding. The Pharisees are acting outside the covenant, Jesus implies.

And then Jesus uses a terrible racial epithet toward a foreign woman asking for help and says he came only for the insiders, the covenant people of Israel.

All of these insider-outsider convictions come from rules that someone has or has made, rules that are important to the one upholding them. Less so to others.

But before we glibly criticize the Pharisees for their obsession with silly rules, let me take a moment to defend rules.

Rules help us keep good order and make wise decisions. Good rules can create a healthy, flourishing society, rules can guide when confusions come. Orthodox Jews I know don’t regard this ritual handwashing as ridiculous or onerous. It’s a sign of their covenant with God, their belonging, washing in thanks for God’s goodness.

Over the years I’ve developed 38 rules for being a faithful pastor and another 20 more for my leading of worship, rules that are embedded in my heart and life. These rules help shape my heart to be like Christ’s. They are life-giving and have guided me all these years. I teach them to each vicar and encourage them to find their own.

Here at Mount Olive, we’ve got many patterns, practices, that we cherish and that give us life in our worship, from gestures and postures to how we sing (including why we always sing all stanzas). Without them our worship would not be the life-giving blessing it is. We would be diminished in our ability to meet the Triune God here together. And yet, some of our fellow Lutherans might say that a lot of things we do are nonsensical, overly complicated, and completely unnecessary. When they’re not your rules, you often misunderstand and criticize unfairly.

So we’re not against rules. But Jesus says today that what is more important is the heart behind those rules. The heart those rules are supposed to shape. And if the rules take over the decision-making to the detriment of the heart, that’s when you have problems. That’s when insiders and outsiders start to appear.

So, Jesus’ harsh words are jarring because Jesus seems to contradict himself.

The last two times I’ve preached on these texts here I’ve taken a lot of time dealing with Jesus’ words and why they’re so hard to hear. We don’t need to go through all that here again today. But the important thing is that we can’t whitewash his racial slur in hopes of defending Jesus. The very heart Jesus gave you and me, the love he calls us to, recoils at these words.

But today let’s look at how it all ends, and what changes in Jesus. Because by the end, Jesus is fully on the “no outsiders” bandwagon and never leaves. We should understand why.

But notice: signs of God’s open arms were there before this moment.

We just heard from Isaiah that foreigners would be welcome to God’s holy mountain, that God would make them joyful in God’s house of prayer. No outsiders even in the Temple. And Jesus knew Isaiah well.

And while both Matthew and Mark’s gospels make this moment with the Canaanite woman a turning point for Jesus, in Matthew’s Gospel the doors are cracking open before this.

Magi, foreign astrologers, came to the infant Jesus and worshipped. By this point, Jesus has already driven a legion of demons out of two foreigners into a herd of pigs in Gentile territory and healed the slave of a Roman centurion, a symbol of the hated oppressors. So it’s hard to understand his reluctance here.

What is absolutely easy to understand, however, is that the bravery of this unnamed woman changes Jesus. The disciples wanted to drive her out, Jesus says he’s not for her, only for Israel. Then Matthew says, “but she came.” She persisted. She plowed through the crowd and came right up to Jesus. She asked what she needed from him, from God.

And she changed Jesus.

Or, perhaps more accurately, she reminded Jesus of his own words about the Pharisees and the heart. That he said his ministry isn’t about the rules, about who’s insider and who’s outsider. That what matters comes from the heart, not what goes into the body. Not the external things. That we are truly known by what our hearts produce in us.

And in this woman’s powerful trust in Jesus to have a good heart, Jesus’ heart changes. Whatever he meant by saying he was only for Jewish people, that’s gone. He praises her faith, her trust, heals her daughter, and from here on out there are no insiders or outsiders for this Messiah, only beloved children.

And, astonishingly, that means our hearts don’t have to be permanently one way, either.

Your heart can be changed.

If your heart carries implicit biases, prejudices, if you hold tightly to your opinions and to being right, if you value rules over people, doctrine over love, getting it right over lifting up your neighbor, all is not lost. Even if your heart generates the things Jesus warns about – evil intentions, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander – even then, your heart can be changed.

Your heart can be changed by the Holy Spirit to produce a whole different set of fruits, the ones Paul proclaims to the Galatians: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. If the Son of God needed to learn things, to have his heart changed, there’s hope for you and me.

So let that be your prayer.

That the God whose love, whose heart, broke at the cross for the whole universe but who, as one of us, had that heart shaped and changed at times, might so do the same to you.

It might be through persistent people like this woman, who don’t back down from your exclusion, who love you enough to challenge you. Jesus would advise you to listen, take them seriously. They mightuse your own words of love and faith to call you to change your words and actions inconsistent with your love.

But be of good cheer. There are no insiders or outsiders, so you also are beloved and in God’s embrace. And as the Triune God changes your heart through the Spirit you will be witnesses to that same love by the fruits that come from your new heart. And as with this woman’s love, yours will change everything.

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  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: Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52; Romans 8:26-39

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

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, the Triune God’s true Image. In Jesus’ teachings, compassion, and most vividly in his vulnerable love, Jesus reveals a way of life for us and the world 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, 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 and all life 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. People are oppressed because others who are threatened by them use their power to control their lives and never worry if harming someone else to benefit themselves is a problem.

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. A baby who will fulfill his mother’s vision and his divine heart and invite people to follow God’s right-side-up way, willingly, lovingly, and join God in re-shaping the world.

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

Jesus very clearly taught us God’s right-side-up way, 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’s 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 start turning the world a little right-side-up in our own places. And when we, and eventually all creatures, follow this way, the world will turn fully right-side up as God dreamed all along.

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

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen