Pr. Joseph Crippen

Mary sees it; Isaiah sees it; Jesus sees it. God wants to overturn the world and bring about a new creation. This causes Mary to rejoice. What will it do to you?

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The feast of St. Mary, Mother of Our Lord
Texts: Isaiah 61:7-11; 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

Some of us have a problem of self-deception. We praise people while living in opposition to what we praise.

We honor Martin Luther King, Jr., even have a federal holiday to remember him. His vision of a just society where all are treated with dignity and respect and have equality is a beautiful thing. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, we muse, if his vision was reality? But we keep living in ways that make it impossible to exist.

We say we follow Jesus, the Christ, the Son of the living God. His call to love of God and neighbor, to be non-violent peacemakers, to live lives of reconciliation and forgiveness, is a beautiful thing. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, we muse, if Jesus’ vision was reality? But we keep living in ways that make it impossible to exist.

Each year, Mount Olive celebrates Eucharist on August 15, remembering Jesus’ mother, Mary, on her feast day, and we sing her Magnificat. We delight to sing of God scattering the proud, filling the hungry, sending the rich away empty, bringing down the powerful. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, we muse, if Mary’s beautiful vision really happened? But we cling to our lives of comfort and ease, deny our power over so many who suffer, forget we’re the rich who keep others from eating, protect our place on the top of the very pile Mary says God is going to overturn.

One of the ways we fool ourselves is by claiming what they taught was unique, far beyond what the average person can think or do.

Church fathers have long praised Mary for her theological wisdom in Magnificat, that she had this brilliant insight into God. Well, Mary was amazing. Her courage to say yes to God, her willingness to be a part of God’s turning the world upside down, is admirable and wondrous.

But she wasn’t a theological genius. She just knew her Bible. She heard the prophets, knew the law of Moses. Mary simply took God seriously, and when this invitation to bear a child for God came, she realized this was part of what God had long promised. Everything Mary sings is self-evident to anyone who actually reads the Bible.

And she isn’t alone. Her son didn’t invent a new way. Jesus lived what his Hebrew forebears had heard from God, modeled, taught, embodied. Today we heard Isaiah rejoice at the same kind of overturning justice of God that Mary proclaims, and Jesus himself claims as his mission. Mary wasn’t even the first mother to sing something like this. Hannah, the mother of the prophet Samuel, sings a nearly identical song to Magnificat as she rejoices in her coming child and God’s work through him.

But if it’s so obviously God’s dream in Scripture, why do we avoid it?

Is it because some of us have more to lose? Mary was Jewish in a Roman-controlled province, female in a patriarchal culture, poor in a world that always honors the wealthy. Ethnically, biologically, economically, she was in the back row, the bottom of society’s pile.

From that place, as she listened to God’s prophets, heard the stories of God’s acts for her people, she believed them. God does liberate, make gardens in the desert, bring justice, desire peace. God does care for the widows and orphans, those who are oppressed, those who are pushed to the margins. This was good news for Mary and most of the folks she knew.

But if you have power and wealth, if you build an institution like the Church, or even a congregation like Mount Olive, if your society protects you and benefits you, if armies and police forces kill to keep you safe, if you are rewarded for your gender identity, maybe you don’t want to hear God’s priorities.

If we treat Scripture’s consistent witness as a nice but unrealistic dream, maybe it’s because we’re afraid of what’ll happen if God’s priorities actually come to pass.

If Isaiah’s right and God is about freeing captives and setting oppressed free, about loving justice, we who have none of those problems are at risk of losing something. If Mary’s right and God intends taking down the powerful and sending the rich away empty, feeding the hungry and scattering the proud, to the degree you or I are powerful or rich or proud, we’re going to be affected.

So we put Mary’s vision, and the clear witnesses of Scripture, into beautiful cases to admire and adore, where they can’t actually affect my daily life, or your choices. We limit following Jesus to just ensuring life after death, not seeking God’s transformation of the world into God’s new creation.

But then what’s the point of our faith? Why admire Mary and Jesus and all these others but actively live against what they dreamed and lived and called for? How long can we persist in praising those who call us to align with God’s priorities while resisting that alignment, and still deceive ourselves that we’re being faithful?

Here’s a possible hope: Mary didn’t fear what God wants to do. She rejoiced in it.

My spirit rejoices in God who heals, she sings. I will greatly rejoice in God, Isaiah sings. This overturning, this radical change of society – all things we know need to happen, but fear – Mary and Isaiah saw as a reason for joy.

Joy overcomes fear of change, fear of losing status, fear of unsettling realities. When we can see God’s way as Mary sees it, we can stop fearing what we’ll lose and see the joy of God’s world as God intends it.

A world where all systems we’ve built that crush and oppress are broken apart. Where we stop dividing and harming people based on skin color or gender or whatever arbitrary categories we invent. Where peace between peoples exists alongside justice between them, where we solve our problems without violence or power over others. Where all cultures and languages and viewpoints and ethnic songs and heritage and story and faith aren’t melted together in a homogenous pot, but woven together in a colorful, joyful quilt of God’s humanity.

What if, instead of holding this vision at arm’s length, framed in a beautiful case so we can’t touch it, we embraced it fully into our hearts, no matter the cost?

That’s what God’s been calling us to through Scripture for over 3,000 years. Mary knew it. Jesus knew it. Isaiah knew it. Hannah knew it. Martin knew it. Paul knew it. And all rejoiced at this new creation God wants to make in humanity.

Because it sounds pretty wonderful. It sounds like the answer to all the problems we care about and want changed in our world.

My spirit rejoices in the God who heals me and all people, Mary sang. Your spirit could rejoice, too. Let Mary help you find that joy and set aside your fear and actually live into this new way God is making.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

God-with-us offers eternal life – a meeting and filling of all human needs in this world, an abundant life for you and for all God’s children.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 18 B
Text: John 6:(15-23) 22-35 (36-40)

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

My mother taught me the wisdom of trusting my own body.

When we had the stomach flu, at some point we’d begin to be hungry again. My mother believed our body knows what it can handle. So, if we felt hungry for any particular thing, she said we’d likely be able to keep it down. And she was right.

But somehow, in much of our lives, we’ve lost the ability to listen to our body, our spirit, our mind, and know what is needed. We eat things we know aren’t good for us. We do things we know are harmful. We ignore pains and warnings – mental, physical, spiritual – and pretend we’re fine.

So, instead of listening to what we need, we fill the hole inside with other things.

We long for something deep and true, but instead we try to acquire more things, or seek financial security, hoping that will answer. We need wholeness and peace but fall into addictions that promise peace while leading us deeper into suffering. We feel loneliness and ache for connection, but fill our lives with distractions like phones and computers and podcasts and work, even sitting with others we love while remaining inside our own bubbles.

Today Jesus once again offers us the deepest filling of what we need. God-with-us says “I am your eternal bread. I can fill you so you’re never hungry.” But how can we know that kind of satisfaction?

Well, to start with, we do know what the main human needs are.

All human beings have certain physical needs that are basic and critical. We need food, we need shelter, we need clothing appropriate to our climate, we need safety in all its dimensions. Without these, it’s hard to tend to the others.

Beyond such physical needs, to be whole and well, all human beings also need to know we are loved. We need to be able to love. And we need a purpose for our lives.

Today Jesus promises to give God’s children a life that meets those needs.

Jesus calls this gift “eternal life.” Over the centuries Christians mostly have confused this gift with another gift, resurrection life after we die. So we hear Jesus today and think he’s talking about life after death.

But in the few extra verses we read today at the end of our Gospel Jesus says this: God’s will is that “all who see the Son and trust in him may have eternal life; and I will raise them up on the last day.” (John 6:40)

God-with-us offers us eternal life. And a promise that we’ll be raised from our death into the resurrection life. Two gifts. Maybe Christians are so often spiritually starving, struggling with fear and anxiety, chasing addictions, seeking comfort in wealth and distractions because we’re convinced the whole point of God coming in Christ is only to ensure our resurrection life and has little to do with today.

But God-with-us wants you to have eternal life. Abundant life. Life now, where your deep human longings and needs are met. Could you try to learn to trust the second gift – trust you will live after you die – so instead you can focus on this other gift that you and the world need, and God longs to give?

In this eternal life, God’s first desire is to meet the physical needs of God’s children.

From Moses and the prophets to Jesus, the Triune God’s will is that all God’s children are fed, and sheltered, and clothed, and safe. God’s consistent calls for justice and the end to poverty and oppression and violence all show this desire. Jesus fed the crowds before any of his talk of eternal food.

Jesus’ call to his followers to feed his lambs gives this work to those who follow Christ. We experience God’s eternal life when we participate in God’s justice and peace, ensure that all are filled and sheltered, that systems of oppression and injustice are dismantled, and that the society and structures we build protect the physical well-being of all God’s creatures.

In fact, God-with-us reminds us that we can’t be filled or satisfied, if any of our siblings in our city and world aren’t cared for. Our place of privilege means most of us here don’t struggle with most of these physical needs. But abundant, eternal life only happens when all share that privilege.

Once physical needs are met, it’s easier to see the other blessings in God’s eternal life.

God-with-us comes to all God’s children, and offers the life of God for the sake of the world. In Christ, God is clear: you are loved, you are worthy of being loved. Whatever anxiety you have over your brokenness or your sins, whatever grief or shame or fear you have, all are washed away in the self-giving love of God for you in the cross and resurrection. Eternal life with Christ answers your ultimate question: you are God’s beloved, always.

And knowing that love, swimming in it, breathing it, means you become someone who can love. God’s love restores your heart and makes loving relationships with others possible. In Christ’s abundant life, loving relationships grow and thrive, overcoming brokenness with forgiveness, hardships with compassion, distance with embrace.

And eternal life in Christ means you have a purpose in this world, a meaning to your existence. No matter how old or young you are, no matter how competent or useless you feel, every day this is your reason to get up: you are needed. At home alone, or living with family, or at work, or meeting neighbors, God needs you to be God’s love and healing in the world. Even the the systems of oppression and violence we’ve built that separate and divide, that crush millions for arbitrary and cruel reasons while blessing others, can be broken down by your love and mine, by the love of all who follow Christ.

Christ Jesus is the eternal bread that fills you with this eternal life.

In Christ you are loved, and you can love, and you have a purpose in this world, to be a part of God’s eternal life for others.

If you are hungry or naked or oppressed; or . . . if you are anxious, or lonely, or sick, or depressed, or frightened, or ashamed, or lost, or confused, good news: God can fill you up with what will truly answer those pains and sufferings, and give you what you need to find abundant, whole life in whatever circumstance you find yourself.

Whoever comes to me, God-with-us says, will never be hungry. Whoever trusts in me will never be thirsty.

That means you. And we work and pray that soon all God’s children will know it means them, too.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

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