The Heart of It
Christly love is costly love, and even though we’re not at the start of our journey of faith, Jesus’ words remind us that there will be costs ahead in our walk of faith.
Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 23 C
Texts: Philemon; Luke 14:25-33
Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
Jesus’ words are a bit too little and too late for us.
In the Gospels, sometimes Jesus talks to believers, actual disciples, as in the parables of Matthew 25. The parable of the bridesmaids and the others there are words to the inner circle of disciples, who’ve been with Jesus longest.
Sometimes, though, like today, Jesus talks to folks who’ve just showed up to hear this teacher or seek a miracle. Today’s hearers are at the starting line of following. So he warns them to estimate the cost of following first, using examples of building towers and waging war. He tells them they might need to split with their families, or give up everything they possess, even life itself.
Jesus obviously isn’t much of a marketer. But he wants it clear that following him takes on a burden of love as serious as a cross of execution. He doesn’t want anyone to think a life of faith and love in Christ will be easy.
But it’s too little and too late for us. We’re well past the starting line. We’re committed.
We’ve got the foundations of our tower built already.
Some of us even have walls and roofs, and are finishing the insides. It’s a little late to be told to consider before we start if we can afford to follow Christ.
We who were baptized as babies never got a chance to get estimates of cost. Someone chose the path for us. At confirmation, yes, some of us agreed to this path ourselves. But we were mostly in our teens, hardly aware of what costs might come later. And we’d already been living in this life for years at that point; it’s hard to break from the familiar.
For most of us, it’s like we signed a mortgage and all the accompanying paperwork and just trusted the lawyer sitting next to us to have understood all the implications. We clicked on the software agreement page without reading the fine print, just to get at the program.
This isn’t necessarily a problem.
We have advantages over new folks. The people we remembered last week, who led us to faith, who showed us Christ’s way, who brought us to baptismal water and God’s claiming of us, who were Christ’s wisdom and grace to us, they’ve already shaped our choices and our lives irrevocably. Because of them, we’ve already made sacrifices and paid costs for following Christ.
Because we’re not starting today, we’ve got experience, too. We’ve learned costs of discipleship others don’t know; some are now instinctive to us. There are many examples, personal and congregational, of things we’ve learned about the cost of following Christ, of sacrifices we all make almost without thinking. For that we thank those who led us here.
Because we’re not starting today, we can also see more of this house of faith God is building in our hearts. Some of us have been at it for so long, the house is nearly complete. This is also good.
But Jesus does say things today that even we who are not starting fresh need to hear.
Jesus’ words alert us that there may still be bills coming on this heart-building, costs ahead in discipleship, that will be pretty big.
We can’t choose not to start; that time has passed. But Jesus says we haven’t seen the full amortization of what following Christ will be in our lives. Because many of us have been walking this path for years, and know no other way, we may think it should be easy. We might be more inclined to struggle than a new believer when the costs of loving as Christ loves seem too high.
After all, Jesus says that the costs to following are total. Everything. All our possessions. All our life. Maybe even walking away from our closest family. That’s what he means by carrying the cross; that we imitate fully the Son of God whose love led him to lose everything for the people he loved, all people.
It’s limiting to only see the cross of Christ as a model. The Incarnate Son of God facing death for the world’s sake gives us far more than something to imitate. The mystery of the cross and resurrection of Christ Jesus means God’s love can never be overcome, not even by death.
But we can’t miss that Christ also wanted the cross to be a model for us of what it costs to love. We can say “love God with everything, and love your neighbor as yourself,” quite easily. Today Jesus says, “Be careful.” Such utter love, such self-giving, will cost. Maybe cost everything.
Our comfort level with Christian life can lull us into complacency. And just when we think we’re in smooth sailing, someone like Paul sends us a letter and presents us with a bill we weren’t quite ready to pay.
Philemon looks more like us than do Jesus’ hearers.
He’s wealthy and privileged enough to provide room in his house for a church to meet, and to own slaves. He’s a faithful Christian whose love for the Church and for Paul is remarkable. Paul gushes how thankful he is for Philemon, for his love, and that he is Paul’s brother.
In the midst of his faithful, wealthy life, where he’s walked Christ’s path and been a gift to many, Philemon receives notice of an unanticipated cost. Standing in front of him in person, holding Paul’s letter, is Onesimus. Onesimus is the shape of the particular cross Philemon’s now asked to carry.
Paul simply asks him to welcome back his runaway slave as a brother in Christ. Onesimus has become a Christian, and has cared for Paul in prison. Paul doesn’t want to ignore this outstanding debt, though, and asks Philemon to forgive it and love Onesimus as a brother, rather than punish or execute him as a runaway slave.
It’s a huge price. Philemon’s in the right legally. He probably feels in the right morally. He’s the offended party. He’ll lose economically both Onesimus’ price and his value to the household. He’ll have to give all that up to do what Paul wants, what Paul says Christ wants. And this is a public request, addressed to Philemon and the church that met in his house. He can’t privately refuse this and go on without risking the scorn Jesus talked about today. Whatever he decides, everyone will know. His sisters and brothers who love and respect him are watching.
For we who walk in Christ, who are past the starting line, Philemon’s story is our story.
Imagine you were a Christian slave-holder in the nineteenth century United States, and a dear Christian friend challenged you to read Philemon and consider what it meant for you to own slaves. Suddenly Jesus’ words become real. It would feel like hating your family to end a practice that their livelihood depended on. It would be giving up a huge part of your possessions. Your life, your way of living, would be at risk. Your decision would be public and noted by friends and fellow Christians.
This is how it happens. We follow Christ with our lives, and find ourselves faced with costs that the love we know, the love we want to be, will incur. Costs that could change our lives a great deal, feel like loss, be big sacrifices. They’re often public, where all can see, because we live in a community of faith. And we rarely can foresee what these will be ahead of time.
Philemon, and so many others, stand before us as a reminder that loving God with all we have and loving our neighbor as ourselves is never cost-free. We belong to the Triune God who loved us enough to go to the cross to bring us life and restoration. Now God’s Son reminds us that such love is our call, and such a cross could be our future.
We’re not the first to face this challenge.
Philemon wasn’t, either. Peter and the others fell into following Jesus without a clear understanding of what he was asking of them. Sure, some left businesses or homes, and some of the women risked reputation and respect by following him. But like us, they only gradually began to understand the costliness of following Christ’s love and life.
But there was that one moment, after Jesus fed 5,000. His teachings started to offend people, and thousands were slinking or stalking away. Jesus finally looked at those women and men closest to him, the only ones left, and asked them if they, too, were going to leave. Peter spoke for us all: “Lord, where else would we go? Your words are eternal life for us.”
That’s our only answer. Costly as Christly love might be or become, we can’t imagine not being alive in Christ, filled with forgiveness and grace. Jesus’ words are too little and too late because there’s no estimate of cost, no bill to be paid, no loss incurred that would make us want to walk away from the heart of God’s love that centers and fills us and calls us to love.
Where else would we go? Here is love and life in the Triune God. That’s worth everything.
In the name of Jesus. Amen
The Olive Branch, 8/31/16
Click here for this week’s issue of The Olive Branch.
Weekly publication resumes with the September 7 issue, published next week.
Within, Wisdom
Christ draws us into the deeper wisdom of seeking and seeing a world of mutual love, care, and grace for all, a world really worth living in, hoping for, becoming part of.
Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 22 C
Texts: Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16; Luke 14:1, 7-14; Proverbs 25:6-7
Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
Consider which of these worlds you’d prefer to live in:
There’s the world we know very well.
In this world, you take care of yourself, because no one else will. You love yourself first. You make sure you have what you need, and acquire as much wealth as you can. Your rights are most important. If you want a good seat, take it. If you’re in a hurry, cut ahead of others, because your need is important. In this world, there are fears: fear of losing, fear of others, especially strangers, because they might take what you have, fear of death, because you can’t control that. In this world you watch other people because you never know if someone’s going to take what you have. The way of this world is proclaimed loudly by big voices, celebrities, politicians, advertisers. This way dominates our culture.
Then there’s the world described in Scripture today.
In this world, you look out for others, because mutual love is the way of life. You make sure that others have what they need, and you’re free of the love of money. The rights of everyone are important. You don’t worry about the seat you sit in, and if someone needs to get ahead of you, you let them. In this world fear is faced by sharing it, burdens are lessened by everyone helping. If someone is in pain, everyone feels it; if someone rejoices, everyone does, too. Strangers are welcomed with hospitality as if they were God’s angels. In this world you see people, you don’t watch them. The way of this world is proclaimed quietly, by wise voices, elders, teachers, guides. This way pervades the life of faith in the New Testament.
So which of these would you rather live in?
Seeing them side by side, the way of this world that our society seems to be rushing toward ever more quickly, and the way of life described today and throughout the Scriptures, is eye-opening.
Because then the contrast is unavoidable. For me, I know that I can be self-centered, and make choices that put myself first. There are lots of things in the culture and world that pull at me, and some of the loud voices can be convincing.
But seeing these two side-by-side, there’s absolutely no question where I want to be. I hear Hebrews today and my heart leaps. That’s a life worth living. That’s a world worth being in. I hear Jesus’ story and long for a world where all are welcome, so I don’t have to worry about my welcome. Or my seat. Where I don’t have to be afraid that if I’m in pain, no one will care, or ashamed that if I’ve made a mistake, no one will forgive. Where I don’t have to get ahead because we want everyone to arrive safely.
If you feel the same, let’s pay close attention to that. Sometimes we complain about our culture as if we have no choice. Yet if we look carefully at these two worlds, there’s no reason to accept the world as it is. If we listen, we’ll discover the way of wisdom is to follow Christ into a life that looks like that second way.
The writer to the Hebrews calls Christ “the pioneer and perfecter of our faith,” (Heb. 12:2) the one who walks ahead on this other path to show us the way.
God’s eternal Word, sharing in the creation of all things, Christ took on our life, became one of us, to teach us this way, to lead us to this wisdom. With each invitation to follow, Christ helps us break through the barriers to this wisdom, the ways of the world, starting with our own self-centeredness, and leads us to a life of mutual love, self-giving, gracious living.
With no limits to such self-giving, the Triune God took this love all the way to the cross, to break our hearts completely and draw us ever deeper into the life of Christ.
In Christ Jesus we see and know the only life worth living: a life where we’re forgiven and blessed when we fail to love, when we live the way of this world. Where we’re given strength in our times of pain, and a community that surrounds and holds us. Where we’re loved completely and forever, even through and past death.
We could reject all this and go the way of the world. But if we’d rather live in a world like Hebrews describes, and if we know the love of the eternal God who makes all things new through Christ, why would we want anything else?
That’s why our writer tells us this morning to “Remember our leaders, those who spoke the Word of God to us.”
That’s how we found this wisdom in the first place. It’s how we will find it again. Who are those leaders, the ones who taught you the Word of God? The wise, quiet, gracious voices who taught you of this different way? Remember them, we’re told. Think of them. Were they parents? Your spouse? Grandparents? Teachers? Aunts or uncles? Friends?
These are the saints who truly surround us in a cloud of witnesses (Heb. 12:1), those faces and voices who lovingly took us in and helped us see this new way of life and love. After all, every single one of us is here today because of someone else. Every single one of us has come to worship on a Sunday morning because one of these taught us, led us to worship, showed us by their life that this way of Christ, though hard and challenging, is the way of life we’ve hoped for, longed to see.
So “consider the outcome of their way of life,” we’re told. How did they live? How did they die? The world’s loud voices say all sorts of things we’re supposed to care about. But these saints’ actual lives are true witnesses. Their calm in the face of storm, their joy in the midst of pain, their trust in God in the face of death, their ability to love even the unloveable: they lived this second way, knew it. Consider that, our writer says. What does that tell you?
Perhaps it tells us the thing the writer says next: imitate their faith. If these wise ones knew this life of love and joy, maybe we want to imitate them. And in fact, we’ve already begun to.
The good we are today has come from such remembering, considering, and imitating.
We are who we are because of these “leaders,” as Hebrews calls them, this cloud of witnesses.
We are hospitable because someone showed hospitality to us, welcomed us.
We bear the pain of others, their burden, because someone helped us with our pain, our load.
We make relationships with others that end up costing us, because someone reached out to us and made a relationship, even if it obligated them.
We are forgiving because someone once forgave us, many times forgave us.
We live in Christ because someone once was Christ to us.
And these ones became our leaders because of their leaders, their witnesses, all the way back to the first believers. And every step of the way, every generation, every link in that chain, is taught and led and transformed by the pioneer, the first leader, Christ Jesus.
Christ’s way, the way of mutual love, is the Triune God’s dream for the world.
This is what we are becoming as the Spirit draws us ever deeper into the wisdom of God, deeper into Christ. If we have lived any part of this way it’s a sign our new life in Christ has already begun.
Eventually, we won’t need Jesus’ parable, or those words from Proverbs. We’ll be embedded so deeply in Christ’s wisdom we’ll just be delighted that everyone gets to come to the party, all are welcome at the banquet, and we won’t care who sits where.
And as we are filled with the Spirit’s wisdom, as we draw closer to this life, we begin to learn that quiet voice to guide others. Of course, we’re not going to be aware that’s what we’re doing. That’s the way of wisdom, that the truly wise know they are not at all wise. But in the grace of God, others will learn from us, too. And the world will more and more become like this way of Christ, this way of mutual love. As it was always meant to be.
In the name of Jesus. Amen
Rising Light
Our actions reveal who and what we love, and often they are not the ones God truly needs us to love and care for. It’s time to listen to Isaiah and Jesus and not pretend we don’t understand what they really mean for us to know and do. It’s time to trust that God’s light can shine through us and break through this world’s darkness.
Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 21 C
Texts: Isaiah 58:6-14 (6-9a added back in); Luke 13:10-17
Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
It’s pathetic to love your donkey more than your crippled sister.
That’s Jesus’ point.
A week ago Nicholas Kristof, a writer for the New York Times, shared his sadness on social media at the death of his beloved 12 year old Golden Retriever. That same day he published a column in the Times calling for “greater international efforts to end Syria’s suffering and civil war, which has claimed perhaps 470,000 lives so far.” [1] In a column this past Thursday, he wrote that he received a torrent of compassion and loving comments at his dog’s death. But the outpouring of comments he received the same day about his article on Syria were mostly devoid of compassion, best summed up as “why should we help them?”[2]
It’s pathetic to love someone else’s dog more than your dying brother’s children.
That’s Jesus’ point.
This week a haunting photo of a Syrian boy in an ambulance went worldwide like wildfire over the Internet. Taken from a video, the photo shows him sitting, stunned, dead-eyed, bloody, only a few years old. It’s heartbreaking. It was like the photo of a dead Syrian child in the surf of the Mediterranean that likewise went global a year or so ago. But like that previous photo, I doubt the photo of this boy will do more than make a lot of us feel sad. Maybe if Golden Retrievers were dying by the thousands in Aleppo we’d actually want to do something about it.
This isn’t a question of people not wanting to do God’s will.
Isaiah’s people know what God commanded them to do for worship. They’re doing it the best they can, the fasts, the festival days, the sacrifices. The leader of the synagogue scurrying around the edges of the crowd today knows God’s commands about Sabbath. As he tells people to go away and come back on another day for healing, he’s trying to do God’s will.
But they’ve only picked up on part of God’s law. They’re keeping the parts that are easier to track, worship times and rituals, work on Sabbath. They’re failing to see the heart of God’s law, repeated throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, that God loves the poor, the hungry, the widow, the orphan, the dying, and commands the people of God to likewise care for them.
These people’s problem isn’t that they don’t want to obey God. It’s that what they love and care about isn’t aligned with God’s heart or God’s law.
Isaiah and Jesus aren’t creating new policy, or changing God’s law. They’re simply following God’s heart.
Isaiah doesn’t care about the people’s complaints in previous verses that God seems to be ignoring their worship. All Isaiah can see, all that fills his heart and mind, is that people are homeless and no one is taking them in. People are hungry and no one is feeding them. People are naked and no one’s offering them a cloak. He never says they should stop worshipping God. He doesn’t have time for that debate. He just says God would prefer fasts and rituals that also involved them taking care of people. Powerfully, he says to avoid helping people in pain is like hiding yourself from your relatives. “These people belong to you,” he says. “Do something.”
Jesus isn’t overturning the Third Commandment, either. He simply couldn’t look away from this woman in pain. He didn’t have room in his heart or mind for theological debate with the leader at that moment. He knew where his love, his loyalty, his energy, his help, needed to go.
And like Isaiah, Jesus claims this woman is a significant relationship. She matters, she’s a relative. He calls her “daughter of Abraham.” So she’s sister to this synagogue leader. To all the people there. You don’t hide from relatives in need so you can obey God’s law. That would be pathetic.
The question is not whether we want to do God’s will. The question is, will we hear Isaiah and Jesus when they unequivocally declare what God’s will is? If we’re going to debate about God’s law in these two scenarios, we’ll have to do it by ourselves. Isaiah and Jesus don’t have time for that, not when people are in pain.
Jesus’ comment about donkeys and oxen cuts to the heart of our neglect.
We will take care of the things we think matter. To the faithful of Jesus’ time it’s not a Sabbath-breaking question to care for your animals, lead them to water and food. Even if they didn’t love their donkey or ox, it was vital to their life, their self-interest. They broke the literal sense of Sabbath law because they wouldn’t turn away from their livestock’s need.
The hypocrisy Jesus and Isaiah decry is that we do everything we can for those we care about, we work hard for those things we value, we always take care of business. We will sacrifice what we need to for what matters to us. If we want something, we’ll save until we can get it, or use credit to get it now. We make all sorts of allowances in our lives for things that matter and never think twice.
Yet millions are dying, refugees are turned away everywhere, and we do nothing. People haven’t got enough to eat, even in this rich nation, and we refuse to work for good paying jobs for all. Too complicated. It needs debate, we say.
But if we’re not finding shelter for the homeless, food for the hungry, clothes for the naked, then Jesus and Isaiah only point out it’s clear we care for other things more than these.
And notice this: we can’t even fall back on our old faithful excuse, that the problems are just too big to solve.
Because Isaiah doesn’t tell his people to end homelessness. He says “how about bringing a homeless person into your house?” He doesn’t say that a program to eradicate hunger is commanded. He says “how about sharing the bread you have with your neighbor who is starving?” Jesus isn’t solving all health care issues. He’s just bringing healing to a suffering sister, even if technically it’s against the law.
Do you see? These are close-up solutions to massive, intractable problems. These are actually things we could do. No one’s asking us each to come up with worldwide answers. Isaiah and Jesus just wonder why we love and care for so many other things while people who belong to us, our relatives, are suffering, and we can’t see them. Why we try so hard to make these words of Scripture not really apply to our actual lives and decisions and use of wealth and time.
In the midst of all of this, Isaiah tells us to stop pointing the finger. That might be the most important word today. It’s time for us to stop pointing at all the other people who are making a mess of things, to stop pointing at others as the problem. Once we put our finger down, we’re faced with the only answer that makes sense: we are the problem, too.
But here is our hope: when we stop pointing fingers, Isaiah says, when we take in a homeless person or share our bread, our light begins to shine.
These are dark, frightening times. The problems do seem too huge to take on. So Isaiah and Jesus simplify it. They invite us to put down our pointing fingers, and start seeing the people around us as relatives, kin, sisters and brothers, daughters and sons. And to see their pain and care about it more than we care about the things that usually command our attention and energy. And then, simply, do whatever we can.
Perhaps this will also teach us that we can make a difference on bigger problems too, by working together in our city, by calling on our leaders who can tackle even bigger things, like that Syrian boy and his destroyed world, to do that.
Then, Isaiah promises, our light will start to rise in this dark world. God begins to work in us. And that might not seem like a lot. But imagine if the light starts rising out of each one of us here, and then from each of those we encounter who learn from us. Pretty soon you’ve got enough light to see by. Pretty soon streets begin to be restored, ruins start to be rebuilt, breaches become repaired. Pretty soon you’ve got reason for crowds to rejoice at all these wonderful things happening, just as they did with Jesus.
In the name of Jesus. Amen
[1] Nicholas Kristof, New York Times online, Aug. 18, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/18/opinion/but-what-if-my-dog-had-been-a-syrian.html
[2] Kristof, op. cit.
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 241
- 242
- 243
- 244
- 245
- …
- 346
- Next Page »