Pr. Joseph Crippen

You and I are called-out and sent as God’s anointed in the world, anchored on the moving foundation of God’s love in Christ; and even death can’t stop such a church.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 21 A
Texts: Isaiah 51:1-6; 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

Listen to me, you people who pursue righteousness, Isaiah says.

Listen, you who seek the God-Who-Is. You who long for God to take the beauty and wonder that we see every day in the creation and apply it to the barrenness and devastation we also see in our world, apply it to our society and culture and life together on this planet. Listen, Isaiah says: to find that, look to the rock you came from, the quarry from which you were cut. The Rock that is your God.

Then God’s voice takes over: Listen to me, God says. I will bring salvation, deliverance, justice as a light to all people. What you hope for, I will do, God says. This is the rock our hope stands on.

And today the Son of God seems to repeat that promise. The rock on which I build my church, says Jesus, God-with-us, is so strong nothing can prevail against it.

But Jesus may be seeing it differently.

Jesus speaks of the “church,” the ecclesia, literally “the ones called out.” He says the gates of Hades cannot prevail against such a called-out community of God’s people. Hades to the Greeks is like Sheol to the Hebrews – not a place of punishment, just the place people go when they die. So Jesus says here the church will be sent to the very gates of death itself and break them. The church is moving, according to Jesus.

So, we are built on a rock, the trust we share with Peter that Jesus is God’s Christ, God’s anointed. But we’re not supposed to huddle up as church in our fortress on that rock, defending ourselves there. To be church is to be called out and sent. So we’re on the offense here, riding on a moveable foundation – the rock of our trust in God’s Anointed One – to bring God’s light and love and healing to the places of death and shadow and pain in this world.

To do this, Paul says God will transform you for this work, if you allow it.

Paul urges, “don’t be conformed to this age,” and that makes sense. If you and I are called out and sent into the suffering and pain of the world to bring God’s healing and restoration, we have to be different than what causes that suffering and pain. It does no good if we’re sent out and act in ways that perpetuate oppression, violence, suffering, the death we are sent to break through. We need to be different.

And that’s the hope: you can be transformed by God in Christ. So can I and all who follow Christ. Be transformed, Paul says – it’s not something you do, it’s done to you by God in Christ. Be made different, Paul says. Let God make you into Christ. And you will be part of God’s restoration and healing as Isaiah sees.

And every single transformed child of God is needed, Paul says.

You and I, and all anointed to be Christ in the world, are all part of one body, the Church. The called-out ones.

But we’re also all different, and that diversity is gift and blessing. To bring about the restoration God promises, it will need all kinds of people, all kinds of gifts. This is a world-changing plan.

So, Paul says, God needs people with compassion. And God gives some that gift. God needs people who are good at encouraging. God gives some that gift.

God needs people who are prophetic, who hear God and speak that word. God needs people who can teach, people who are generous in their giving, people who are able to minister to others. And God gives all those gifts, as needed for the plan. And many more gifts are needed, and are given – Paul’s list is only partial.

So our diversity, your difference, is critical, absolutely necessary to the plan of healing all things.

Now, we don’t hear it today, but this calling out and sending is a difficult path.

We only heard the first half of this Gospel story and the first half of Paul’s proclamation to the Romans. Next week we’ll hear the next parts of both. Next week Jesus will say he will suffer and die to break the gates of death, and asks all who follow to be ready to take up their lives of love sacrificial, too. Next week Paul will put a shape to the transformed life, a life of self-giving love, of honoring others, of peace-making. All very challenging, all costly.

Peter’s problem with this suffering path is evident next week. But we all have those moments where it seems too much for us to handle. So remember it’s fully part of what today’s readings call us to be and do.

For now, though, hear the joy.

You who pursue righteousness, who seek the God-Who-Is, rejoice. God is restoring and healing all things. Through your transformed mind and heart, and your specific gifts and calling. Through mine. Through all God’s anointed Christs in the world. And the gates of death can’t stop this – no oppression, no evil, no structures, no systems – nothing can stop the called-out anointed ones who bear Christ in the world.

And maybe you’ve realized what this also means – if the gates of death can’t keep out this love in this life, they’ve got no chance to stop God’s love in your death or mine. This promise of God we trust is also the foundation that moves with you through your death into the life that is to come. So you never need to be afraid.

Because nothing harmful can prevail against such transformed servants of God, against the love of God in Christ Jesus that is moving out into the world for the life of all things.

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

You have a voice, God hears you and will answer; but everyone else has a voice, too, all are welcome, so you’ll want to get on that path.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 20 A
Text: Matthew 15:(10-20)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

This is absolutely clear and certain: from very early in the Church’s life, the mission was to all people, Jews and non-Jews.

It began with Jesus, God-with-us, who reached out inside and outside Jewish boundaries, and it continued in the early Church with the ministries of Philip and Paul, and then beyond. This wasn’t without conflict and tension. Many of Paul’s communities struggled to live into this multi-cultural life in Christ. The Jewish Christian leadership in Jerusalem needed convincing. But from nearly the beginning, the mission was to all people on earth.

The question is, when did Jesus know that? Luke and John suggest this was the plan from the start, John reaching back to the creation itself, Luke foreshadowing it before Jesus’ birth, and making it clear in Jesus’ first sermon. But Matthew and Mark seem to see it differently. Before this, there’s a healing of a centurion’s servant in Matthew, and in both Mark and Matthew a Gentile demoniac is healed. But the mission is overwhelmingly to the Jewish people so far.

Only Matthew and Mark tell today’s story, and it feels like a turning point. In their narratives, this is when Jesus truly embraces a new path, re-focusing the entire Christian mission in the world.

Which means this woman is the one you really need to be looking at.

She’s Canaanite, not Israelite. She’s definitively outside every boundary Jesus and his followers have. She has no standing with them, no voice, no power, no reason they should heed her. Yet she’s heard enough of this Jewish rabbi that she knows this man might have an answer to her desperation over her daughter’s mental and spiritual health. So she comes and asks for help.

First Jesus seems to ignore her. Then, when the disciples want her sent away, he appears to affirm them, saying, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” In effect, “she’s not my problem.”

But she won’t have that.

2,000 years before “and yet, she persisted,” Matthew anticipates that bravery. He starts verse 25: “But she came.” She came? She was already there. Which means after verse 24 and Jesus’ declaration, the disciples started moving her out of Jesus’ presence. But she came. Pushed them aside. Did what she had to do.

She claimed her voice, her right to ask. And in response, Jesus uses an unmistakable racial slur, saying you don’t take children’s food and give it to dogs. You don’t need to grasp ancient idioms to hear how horrible and indefensible that is. It would be just as insulting and awful for anyone to compare human beings that way today. And people do that today.

But she came. Even when Jesus called her a dog, this marvelous, beautiful woman claimed her voice again, said, “fine, call me a dog. But even dogs get crumbs.” And she broke Jesus. For the second and last time in Matthew, Jesus praises someone’s faith, and once again it’s a Gentile. Second time’s the charm, because now Jesus is changed. She reminds him of his love for all God’s children, and that she herself is a beloved child of God. He hears her. He heals her daughter.

And the floodgates open.

From here, Jesus immediately continues around the north side of the Sea of Galilee, in Gentile territory, and does all kinds of healings and exorcisms. Then he feeds another huge crowd, this time 4,000 or more, all Gentiles. The abundance of God’s bread of life is now for all the world.

She started that. She might be the most important person in the history of the Church. And if you’re troubled by Jesus’ language, and you should be, please note the very rare thing Jesus does: he hears the powerless person and changes his mind and direction. The insult, the rejection of someone who isn’t his concern, people in power do that all the time. But Jesus listens, and this woman changes his mind. And the world was never the same.

There are two things to note:

First, if you’ve been marginalized, oppressed, your voice has been disregarded, she’s your hero.

If people’ve ignored you, your gifts, your thoughts, your opinions, if your suffering or experience has been discounted because of who you are, or because you were raising inconvenient and threatening things to people in power, this woman says, just keep coming.

Claim your voice. Ask your question. Tell your truth. Even if followers of God’s Christ push you away, ignore you, marginalize you, even if God seems to, don’t let them. Be the one of whom the narrator says, “but she came.” Because God will hear you, and you may even change God’s mind. Your voice counts, you count, and you are beloved child of God.

But if you’re a follower of this Christ, God-with-us, learn from this.

If you’re following Jesus, and wish he’d send away all the people with inconvenient voices, all who don’t believe as you do or think as you do or look like you or act like you, watch Jesus carefully here.

If you’re tired of people saying they’d like you to use different language to refer to them, tired of people calling you privileged, tired of people talking about their suffering and saying they experience a very different world than you; if you’re tired of those saying they don’t feel safe with the same police you’ve always trusted; if you wish all these voices would go away so you could just be with Jesus, watch Jesus very carefully here.

Because this is where God-with-us takes a fork in the road. And that path is going to lead further and further away if you miss the turns he makes.

The road of Christ divides here, whether it was new to Jesus or always the plan.

The Triune God who lived among us as Jesus, the Incarnate One, and now lives among us as the Holy Spirit in each of us, is also living and moving in all people. Because all people are God’s children, not dogs.

This is the mission. And the one you’re following is going on this divergent road. Along with all those voices that are inconvenient and challenging, with all those who change God’s mind from time to time. There’s every reason in the world to follow Jesus on his fork in the road and absolutely none to stay in the other direction. One way leads to life for you and for all. The other leads to death, because there is no hope or love or joy on it.

And remember: the good news is for all. Even if you’re worried about taking this diverging road, even you can come to God, claim your voice, and be heard. Because you, and all, are beloved children of God.

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