Pr. Joseph Crippen

The path of Christ is a path of self-giving, vulnerable love, and you are called to that path, not with promises of safety but with confidence that the great Self-Giver is on the path with you in all things.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The feast of St. James, Apostle
Texts: Mark 10:35-45; Acts 11:27 – 12:3a; 1 Kings 19:9-18

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

Fear and anxiety. That’s behind Elijah’s behavior. James’ and John’s, too.

And it’s legitimate in both cases.

Elijah’s hiding in a cave because the people of Israel have forsaken God’s covenant, torn down God’s altars, killed a number of prophets, and want to kill Elijah. God asks Elijah, “what are you doing here?” Elijah thinks it should be obvious: he’s trying to keep safe.

James and John ask a favor from Jesus that offends the others. But Jesus has just told his followers three separate times that he’s heading to Jerusalem to be killed. Maybe James, whose martyrdom we remember today, and his brother John, were trying to ignore the thought “we’re following someone on a path to certain torture and death and that might mean danger for us.” So tell us, they say, that it will be safe and we’ll be honored if we follow you.

God’s surprising answer to these concerns has nothing to do with being safe.

God says to Elijah, ignoring the doubled litany of fears, “fine, but I need you to go out and anoint a couple kings, and anoint your own successor.” There’s no reassurance that all will be well. No promise of safety. Just a mission God needs done.

And when God-in-our-flesh runs into James and his brother’s nervous hope for reassurance, the message is the same. If you’re following me, you have a path that goes through the same place mine does. It means being a servant to others, not rewards or safety. After all, the two honored places on Jesus’ right and left will be filled very soon by two criminals executed with him.

In short, Jesus says what he always says: my way is a way of self-giving, vulnerable love. If you want to follow me, that’s your way, too.

Now, I wonder: are you weary of always hearing about self-giving, vulnerable love?

You’d certainly be justified thinking that you hear it from this pulpit a lot. My only answer is, I’ll stop preaching it when Jesus stops calling us to it. Self-giving, vulnerable love is quite simply the thread that ties the whole Scriptures together, from the Hebrew Bible to the writings of the early Church. And Jesus’ teaching and modeling centers it all. The way of following Christ is love of God and love of neighbor, period. And God’s love for the cosmos, and each individual creature and creation, including you, is the shape of that Christly love. A love willing to lose all, to be wounded, even to die – that’s the line that weaves throughout all Scripture.

And Jesus gave his followers fair warning of this. Three times he gave them a stop sign: hold on, folks. I’m going to be killed on this path. Stop and consider whether you want to keep following. But, like Peter after the first one, James and his brother blew through all these warnings and, instead, asked for safety and security.

God’s call to you is to live your vulnerability and love in the world to change it. That, Elijah, and James, and the others learned, isn’t negotiable.

What is, of course, negotiable is whether you want to follow such a call or not.

It’s doubtful any who hear this sermon will be killed by a sword for their faithfulness, like James. But there are costs to this servant life God-with-us calls you to take.

Those of us who live with the privilege our society affords certain skin colors or gender identifications or social status and wealth, need to step away from that so we’re one with the rest of God’s children. Every part of that stepping away will cost. It will cost in the changing of the mind, changing of habits, changing of lifestyle. It will cost. It will hurt. It will not feel safe.

And everything else Jesus calls us to is the same. Forgiving someone close to you fully and freely will cost. It will hurt. It will not feel safe. Risking kindness and love to those whom you hate or who hate you, will cost. It will hurt. It will not feel safe. Participating in God’s justice and peace, including actively working against racism and violence and patriarchalism and climate abuse and all that ails our world, will cost. It will hurt. It will not feel safe.

And, as our vicar reminded us a couple weeks ago, even the Holy Spirit stirring in your heart is going to be unsettling at times. If the Spirit is changing you from within to be more like Christ, that’s going to cost in a lot of ways. It will hurt. It will not feel safe.

That’s your stop sign, the warning to those who wish to follow Christ.

But be careful not to blow through it and hope it’s all OK. That happens if you hear this call to Christly self-giving, vulnerable love week after week, and read it in your Bible, and it doesn’t change how you think of your life, your path, your choices.

God doesn’t give me the option to ignore this call and then pretend I’m still following Christ. God doesn’t give you the option of hearing the call and going back into your cave of safety untouched and then pretending you’re still following Christ.

You and I can definitely try to find a safe way to live our lives. A way that doesn’t challenge. A way that doesn’t commit us to being servants to others instead of being in control. A way that doesn’t ever affect how we live our day, make our choices, treat our neighbor, think about our world. We can hope for the good seats at God’s table or hope that if we hide in our bubbles we’ll be fine. That’s certainly an option.

What’s not an option is calling that way a faithful one. It is not discipleship. It is not of Christ. Elijah’s fears are met with a new job. James and John were warned that what happens to Jesus will likely happen to them. All could have avoided the danger. But then they wouldn’t be following God.

That’s the honesty God-with-us asks today. Take whatever path you choose. But be truthful – to yourself and to God at least – if you’re not willing to follow Christ’s path.

But remember: you and I are called to be servants, offering our lives for the world, by the God who is the great Servant.

The Triune God who made all things entered the creation and offered God’s life in self-giving, vulnerable love, showing this is the path to healing and life for each person, each creature, the whole creation. The one calling you to be a self-giving, vulnerable servant to all is the Servant kneeling at your feet, washing them in love, offering you life and hope and healing. That’s the wonder of Christ’s call.

If we follow, we do it with strength and grace and courage from the One who already walked this path. This path will cost you. It will hurt you. It won’t be safe. But you’ll never be alone on it, and nothing can separate you from the love of God in Christ. James and so many others witness to this truth on the path of Christ, and to the healing of the world that God will do through you when you follow it.

In the name of Jesus. Amen

Christ has already reconciled all things into God’s life and love, breaking down all walls; now it’s up to the Spirit to help us live into the one humanity that God sees, in truth for all to see.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 16 B
Texts: Ephesians 2:11-22; Mark 6:30-34, 53-56; Jeremiah 23:1-6

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

Paul’s vision of what God is doing in Christ might be the answer to all our problems.

Christ transformed Paul on the road to Damascus, and sent him, an educated, brilliant Pharisee, faithfully observant in Judaism, into Gentile territory as the one chosen to speak to non-Jews.

And Paul proclaimed a breathtaking vision. He saw in Christ God reconciling the whole cosmos into God’s life. Paul proclaimed, as we heard today, that Christ in his own flesh broke down the dividing wall, the hostility, between the two peoples, creating “in himself one humanity instead of two, thus making peace.” In this new humanity in Christ, all are siblings, all belong to each other, all owe each other only love.

Paul knew Jews and Gentiles had little in common. They differed in religious beliefs and laws and rituals, in their ways of eating and dressing and living. But Paul said, “in Christ, these can live together in love. In peace. In respect.” In Christ, Paul said, your particular cultural habits and practices are fine to keep, as long as they don’t divide you from those who are different.

This new creation in Christ connects diverse peoples into one without destroying their diversity! Can you imagine the impact of this vision if it were lived today?

The tragedy is that from the start, followers of Christ struggled tremendously living this oneness.

Even before Paul preached, the church in Jerusalem found a communal life, where all believers shared everything. But that lasted only a few months, it seems. Already by Acts 6, the Greek widows of the community were being neglected, not getting their fair share. In Galatia, Paul’s churches fought over requiring circumcision. In Rome and Corinth, struggles over acceptable foods to eat and over Torah observance threatened and even fractured communities of faith.

It’s actually hard to tell if any of Paul’s communities were able to live as one in Christ.

Today, the distinctions between people are even more divisive.

Christians have split into hundreds of faith traditions based on culture and doctrine, often enemies of each other. Followers of Christ have fought and killed millions who share the same baptism and millions more who hold a different faith stance.

In our country, for four hundred years we’ve constructed arbitrary divisions based on skin color, institutionalizing and systematizing them to put those called “white” above those who have more melatonin in their skin, building a world where people of color are oppressed, beaten, arrested, red-lined, killed, and suffer countless other injustices. We built a system rewarding the wealthy with more and more, while making the gap between the comfortable and those who struggle with poverty larger and larger. For millennia in the cultures of the Western hemisphere those who identify as male have built patriarchal systems of justice, language, pay, employment, and many other things, keeping everyone else in secondary places in the culture.

If God in Christ is reconciling the world into God’s own life, we seem to be fighting just as hard to resist that reconciliation, building dividing walls, weaving barriers, and embedding division into every piece of our culture and society.

But there is Good News today: Paul’s vision of what God is doing in Christ might be the answer to all our problems.

Paul says it today to the Ephesians: Christ is our peace, not us. Christ Jesus, in his own flesh, breaks down dividing walls and hostility between peoples. Christ makes one new humanity in place of what existed before, reconciling all groups “to God in one body through the cross, putting to death that hostility through it.”

Even as Paul desperately wrote letters to his communities urging them to remember they are one in Christ, this was his great hope: Christ, in his death and resurrection, has already broken down all divisions, and ended all hostilities.

Jesus today looked on suffering crowds and was torn up inside with compassion, seeing them as sheep without a shepherd. He took that compassion, and offered God’s life to the world on the cross, showing a path of compassion carved out by God’s self-giving love. A path that brings reconciliation to all things, all peoples, as they learn and live that love.

Do you see why this is Good News?

To those of us who, in Christ, see the need to dismantle any one of our systemic sins built to divide and separate God’s people, benefitting some while harming others, just that one is daunting work. All of them together is beyond overwhelming.

But God in Christ has already broken down everything that needs breaking down. The reconciliation between God and all God’s people has already happened. So, as Paul kept challenging his congregations, the question is whether we, as God’s children, will live in that reconciliation.

To live into Christ’s new humanity as it already exists, means several things.

First, can we recognize the reconciliation is already real and true in Christ? Each child of God on this planet is one in God’s reconciliation. Nothing divides us except what we create and act on. And God in Christ still works to draw all people together through the Holy Spirit. If you look, you’ll see it.

Second, can we share the same compassion of God we see in Jeremiah? The gut-wrenching compassion that led Jesus, God-with-us, to offer himself as shepherd not just to the lost and frightened crowds of today’s Gospel but to the whole world? If there’s Christly compassion in your heart for all God’s children, so you see your sibling, your beloved, in all who suffer, you’re living in Christ’s reconciliation.

Third, sharing Christ’s compassion, can we commit to God’s shepherding revealed today? That is, looking for any and all who are lost, so that none will be missing, as the prophet says. If you settle for nothing less than blessing and safety and peace for all God’s people on earth, you’re living into the reconciliation of Christ. Because the One who reconciled all things in his death and resurrection settles for nothing less than all, and if you follow this Christ, neither will you.

Paul says to you today: you are no longer strangers and aliens, but citizens and members of God’s household.

But if you don’t understand how God in Christ is reconciling all people regardless of culture or language or even religious differences, that doesn’t matter. God so loved the whole cosmos, Jesus says. This reconciliation isn’t stopped or divided by any walls or barriers we put up.

But we pray this: that the Holy Spirit keep changing our hearts, changing your heart, to beat with the rhythm of the Triune God’s heart. That God empower you to live a compassion that reveals this one humanity in Christ, created from all that divides us. That, living in that one humanity, we celebrate our differences in the joy of our oneness in Christ.

Until everyone knows they’re not strangers and aliens, but citizens and members of God’s own household.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

God’s failure is our model for our own ministry: in our wounded, vulnerable love God will bring healing to the world. Just not necessarily in ways the world will praise as a success.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 14 B
Texts: Mark 6:1-13; Ezekiel 2:1-5; 2 Corinthians 12:2-10

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 was a failure. There’s no point denying it.

When Jesus came home early in his ministry, he failed for the first time. He had healed, preached God’s Good News, driven out demons, calmed storms, and people flocked to him. Some of the religious leaders opposed him early on, and his family, too, but he drew adoring crowds wherever he went.

Then he came to his hometown. He preached there, and impressed them, until they started to think about who he was. This was just the local kid, they knew his family. They said, “Where’d he get all this? This wisdom, this power? We knew him when he was nothing.” And they were offended at him.

But the true shock is that, for the first time in this Gospel, Jesus was limited in his divine power. Mark says he couldn’t do deeds of power in Nazareth due to this reception.

And that’s the moment Jesus decided to send disciples to do the same things he was doing.

Think about that. Jesus fails, and then says to the twelve, “Go and do likewise.”

How confident could they be? For the first time they saw Jesus show weakness, an inability to do “deeds of power,” and that’s when he said, “I think you’re ready.”

This might have been intentional. After all, Jesus was heading for the most epic failure for any movement leader: he’d be publicly humiliated and executed, hang naked and bleeding for all to see. Jesus’ ministry, by the world’s standards, ended in failure.

Maybe he sent the twelve now, after this mess in Nazareth, so they didn’t think they were supposed to be big successes. He sent them with his authority to heal, but with no guarantees they’d receive a better welcome than he got. He told them to expect rejection, and to simply move on when they got it.

We need to hear this and take it into our hearts.

Too often the Church falls for the world’s message about success. We judge our work by the standards of wealth and power. But we follow a failed Messiah who had all God’s power and allowed himself to be crucified. One who could heal even at a distance but was limited when people rejected him.

How will we know at Mount Olive if we’re doing our job, if we’re following faithfully? Not by any metrics the world uses. Can we tell how we’re doing if we have more people at worship, or fewer people, larger or smaller membership lists? Those numbers tell us nothing about our faithfulness, either way. Jesus says faithful witness in the world will very likely be rejected by a good number of people.

Will we know we’re doing well if our budget grows each year, and our giving, or if our endowment increases? Will we be unfaithful if they all fall? Not according to Jesus. Worldly standards are irrelevant to the mission we’re placed here to do.

And if we focus on such standards, we risk doing all sorts of evil protecting ourselves or our institutions rather than being faithful witnesses.

We’ll know we’re being faithful when we do what we’re called to do.

Our Prayer of the Day says it beautifully: “Give us the courage you gave the ones who were sent, that we may faithfully witness to your love and peace in every circumstance of life.” Just as the twelve were asked to do today. Go out into the world and faithfully bear God’s love and peace.

Some may refuse you, Jesus warns. You might have the hardest time witnessing to those who know you best. No matter, Jesus says. “Nazareth wanted to kill me. My own family thought I was losing my mind.”

And we’re not told to bring all the supplies we need, either – take no bread or bag or money, Jesus says today. That is, we don’t carry tons of abilities and talents as we go, or accumulate wealth. We just go out bearing God’s vulnerable, wounded love in our lives.

And even in failure, God’s love gets through.

Mark says Jesus couldn’t do “any deed of power” in Nazareth, “except that he laid hands on a few sick people and healed them.” That’s not nothing! The disciples, sent out expecting rejection, drove out some demons and even healed some who were sick.

God’s love gets through, when we faithfully and courageously bear it in our lives. We may look like we’re failing, but that was never the test. Easter life always breaks the power of death. By our broken struggles to be loving, our limping efforts at being peacemakers, our weak attempts to end injustice, God brings love and peace and healing to individuals, to our broken society and culture, to our wounded and suffering world. God takes our weakness, Paul says today, and completes God’s work in Christ.

In the end it doesn’t matter if the world praises us as a success here, or if we have any evidence we made a difference.

We plant seeds of God’s love and peace in the world, and they will sprout and grow and bring healing to our world. To our neighbors in pain. To our own lives and suffering.

In your lifetime you might just see the tips of the growth you planted, or none. It may seem that all your efforts are dead and buried, and you made no difference to anyone. But you belong to a God who simply won’t stay dead and buried. Who takes buried seeds and brings them to great fruit for the healing of the world.

“Go, and do what I do,” Jesus says. “I’ll be with you all the way. Don’t worry about the stumbles. Just be my love and peace, and I’ll take care of the success part. And if you can,” as he told the twelve today, “take someone along with you for the journey. It will help.”

And so, we walk this path together, trusting the One who sent us.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen