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Inviting Christ
Inviting Christ into our lives means clearing out, not entertaining, things that lead us away from Christ, but in such invitation we find the joy that Christ Jesus has already invited us into the life and love of God.
Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 16 C
Texts: Luke 10:38-42; Colossians 1:15-28
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
Martha’s second invitation caused all the trouble.
Her first one is also the first thing Luke tells us. He began with Martha welcoming her friend, her master, Jesus, into her home. She invited him to dinner with her family, her sister Mary and brother Lazarus.
Her second invitation is less obvious, but it led to her pain. Her second invitation was to harsh thoughts about her sister. She invited them into her heart, offered them a seat, gave them something to eat and drink so they would stay around.
Martha’s good news is that her first invitation to Christ helped her deal with this second one. It’s good news for us, too. From Martha we learn it matters whom we invite into our hearts and lives.
We need to understand both these invitations. Because Martha first did exactly what she was supposed to do.
Welcoming even a stranger into her home, let alone Jesus, was a sacred responsibility. Every woman in Bethany would have done the same. Given that it was her beloved Jesus, she must have delighted to make him a meal, as we do with those whom we love.
Remember also there were few meals in that household, if any, where both sisters weren’t involved in preparing and serving. That’s how the work was divided. The sisters handled the household, the meals, the serving. Every woman in Bethany did the same.
But something wasn’t normal on this day. This time, Mary was sitting at Jesus’ feet, listening. Martha was doing what she normally did, what Mary normally would have helped her do.
And that’s when Martha invited in those thoughts.
But this second invitation sounds very normal to us.
This scene is a snapshot of a moment we all have experienced if we have lived in a family. Martha’s irritation likely had less to do with what Mary was doing, and more to do with their being sisters. Maybe they’d had a stressful week. Maybe Lazarus had begun his illness and caring for him was tiring them. It could be anything. Two sisters living to adulthood in the same home are going to have history. How often do we snipe at someone in our family over a surface issue when it really had nothing to do with that, we were just being irritable and unkind?
Jesus sees that. He doesn’t criticize Martha for cooking and serving and cleaning. He receives her welcome and hospitality gladly. Jesus calls her out for being “worried and distracted about many things.” All these other thoughts she’s let into her heart and given room to sit and stick around and fester.
Jesus isn’t pitting the two sisters’ choices against each other. He’s concerned that Martha’s loving gift is marred by her distracted, irritated thoughts.
This story is deeply significant for us.
Like Martha, every day we have unhelpful, unhealthy thoughts cross the doorstep of our hearts: jealousy and anger; temptation and selfishness; fear and prejudice; lust and laziness. Our defensiveness, our self-justification. Our ego, our sense that we are who we are and no one can tell us otherwise. Our inability to face our own mistakes and sin. Our unwillingness to hear someone else’s point of view. These all come from our broken human nature, from our own emotional lives, even from the outside.
If all these become houseguests sitting at the table of our heart, that leaves no room for anything healthy, no seats for those who give life.
We can’t control if these things show up. But Jesus says we don’t have to invite them in, sit them at the table of our hearts, and offer them something to eat. We literally don’t have to entertain those thoughts. We have a choice as to whether we’ll invite them in or let them pass by, whether we’ll nurture and feed them, or say that our cupboard is bare and they’ll need to go elsewhere.
When we copy Martha and invite Christ into our hearts while letting the rest out the door, we find life.
That’s what Martha shows us: those whom we invite into our hearts shape who we are. We want to fill those seats at the table of our hearts with those who give us life. Starting with Christ Jesus. Because he was at her table, Jesus was able to love Martha into a new way of being. And that’s what he will do when we invite him in.
When Christ sits in our heart he loves us with God’s life-giving love. No life we know makes any sense without Christ’s gift of God’s love centering our being, focusing our actions, giving us peace.
But Christ will also remind us when we are distracted by things we’ve let into our lives that lead to death.
Christ will look across the table and say, “are you sure you want that there? Is that good for you, to invite that in?” It must have been very hard for Martha to hear Christ’s criticisms. But in facing her distractions, letting them go, she found the path to deeper life in Christ, something we see in her later, at her brother’s graveside. Like Martha, it won’t be easy for us. It might even feel like dying, to let go of these guests in our heart we’ve become so attached to. But it will lead to life.
This is also the only way our world will be healed. The problems that overwhelm us and seem so threatening, racism, injustice, poverty, war, anger, hatred, all these begin to end when one person’s heart starts changing. When the thoughts and feelings and opinions that lead to such destruction are shown the door, and Christ comes in with the love of God and a helpful broom to keep cleaning house. Heart by heart, person by person, this is how God intends to heal this world.
But there is deeper mystery. The true first invitation is given to us.
We meet the Triune God in Christ Jesus and are invited into life, into grace, into joy. Face-to-face in baptism we are washed of all these resentments, hostilities, sins, frustrations, prejudices, all the houseguests that keep trying to make room in our heart.
This is mystery: when we invite Christ into our hearts we find Christ is already inviting us further into the life of God, deeper into the love that holds all things together.
This is mystery: in facing death for us Christ Jesus has taken away the power of all those things we’ve had in our hearts that seemed to be in control, seemed impossible to disinvite, all those things we’ve wished we could show the door.
This is mystery: in taking away their power, Christ Jesus is, as Paul says, reconciling this whole world back into God’s life and love. One clean heart and changed life at a time, from Martha, to us, to the world, until all things are whole and well in the love of God.
In the name of Jesus. Amen
Get Off Your Donkey
Christ calls us to act, to move, to love, to do; the only question that matters to our Lord is “who acted as a neighbor,” who loved in deed not just in thought.
Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 15 C
Text: Luke 10:25-37
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
This Gospel story is our story.
We are the religious lawyer approaching Jesus looking for life. Like him, we’ve known since we were young what God wants of us. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and [love] your neighbor as yourself.” Like him, we’d pass Jesus’ test. We’d get an A. Like him, Jesus would say to us, “Now go do this, and you’ll know the real life I’m offering.”
If only we could stop there, and do what Jesus says. But we don’t. Because we are this lawyer. We want clarity about what “do this” means. We want to know that what we’ve done so far, and will do next, fulfills Jesus’ command. We want to justify ourselves.
So we ask, “OK, who is my neighbor?” Who deserves my care and concern? Whose pain is my pain? Could you describe for me the groups of people I should love?
Our problem is our grammar. Parts of speech. We’re focused on the wrong one.
We hear, “love your neighbor as yourself,” and wonder about nouns. Who is my neighbor? What sorts of people are in that group? We spend countless hours wondering about who gets to be that noun, “neighbor.” We mean well, so did this lawyer. But it’s all justifying not having to love everyone fully.
Meanwhile, Jesus changes the question. After his parable, Jesus asks, “who was a neighbor?” Who acted as a neighbor, did neighborly things? Jesus cares about the verb. Acted love matters. Everything else is worthless.
We know this story so well, and miss this point again and again. We’re overwhelmed by the events of this week. Yet instead of doing the verb, instead of acting in love, we argue and posture and wonder who our neighbor is. We justify ourselves.
We can keep doing that, of course. We can mourn, we can yell, we can despair. We can pray. We can keep reacting in horror each time. We can keep talking and doing nothing. When we do that, though, we need to recognize we’ve answered our question. We’ve decided that those who are dying are not our neighbors.
Because if our neighbors were being killed, if our culture was destroying our neighbors, if there were things we were doing that harmed our neighbors, we’d do something about that.
We need to actually listen to Jesus’ story. We need to hear the verbs.
It’s amazing how little interest Jesus has in the first two people.
They’re nothing to him, cardboard cutout characters, just nouns. A priest. A Levite. We’re given no more information.
Jesus also doesn’t give a single excuse for their behavior. Scholars and theologians have figured out all sorts of reasons why they might not have stopped. But if what Jesus thinks matters to us, he’s absolutely uninterested in any reason whatsoever that these two passed by. By giving no detail to their decisions, Jesus powerfully says there is no excuse.
If what Jesus thinks matters to us, that they didn’t stop to help is the only pertinent thing. The one detail he gives is damning not excusing: they didn’t just walk by. They moved away, passed by on the other side, actively avoided any contact.
But Jesus spends the bulk of his story describing what the Samaritan does in detail.
Jesus wants us to notice each movement, each action. It’s all about the verbs. Over half the words in this parable focus on the specific actions of this Samaritan. Step by step the Samaritan acts, saving this man’s life. He is moved with pity. He touches the man, washes him. Detail after detail describe the one thing that matters: the Samaritan showed this beaten man mercy.
There’s also a racial component here. That a Samaritan – someone his audience would have had strong racial prejudices against – would be the hero, would have shocked Jesus’ hearers. We need to learn what that means for us.
But we first need to hear Jesus’ deeper focus: whatever the race or status of the three coming along the road, only one actually did something. He was moved with pity, and got off his donkey, and helped. He showed mercy. He made a difference.
That’s the only thing Jesus cares about in this story.
We face massive crises, far too many people dying by the side of the road, and if Christ has anything to say it’s, “Get off your donkey and love.”
Our country is being destroyed by systems of injustice and racism that we support and defend by our silence and inaction. If we only pray, and say pious words of sorrow, and continue to do nothing, Christ says, “I don’t care about your prayers. They’re worthless to me.”
Our country is being destroyed by our culture’s love affair with violence and guns that we support by not holding our leaders accountable to change the laws. If I preach this sermon and talk about this evil, and do nothing more, Christ says, “I don’t care about your sermons. They’re worthless to me.”
People are dying every day in our country and we argue about who deserves more attention, the police or our sisters and brothers of color. People are dying every day in our country and we let a small group of lobbyists buy our leaders’ silence on guns. People are dying every day in our country and we throw enough food away to feed nations. People are dying every day in our country and we refuse to pay living wages and build affordable housing. If we spend any more time, and I mean any more time, wondering whom we should care for – concerned about nouns, about “who is my neighbor?” – instead of doing – the action of verbs, acting as neighbor – Christ has no use for us. We’re just walking by on the other side like we always do.
What we can do? That’s the question, isn’t it?
We could imitate the Samaritan. He saw someone in need and he helped. We can do that. We can stand with those who are suffering, dying, and offer our love and compassion and help. If we’re in the position to make sure the road from Jerusalem to Jericho is safer, so people don’t keep getting beaten and left for dead, we could do that, too. Meaning, we could find ways together to change this society so people don’t keep getting killed, left behind for dead.
Doing means we need to learn to listen instead of to speak. When we do all the talking, we’re not helping. We need to listen to our sisters and brothers in pain – whoever they are, but most especially our sisters and brothers of color – and we need to stand with them and listen for where we can help. If they say we are doing things that are causing them that pain, even if we didn’t mean to, we need to stop. We need to shut our mouths, our justifying, and listen, so we can stop doing things that kill people. We can find no answers except by hearing those who are suffering, and responding. Having pity. Acting. Loving. Showing mercy.
Even at the cross Christ Jesus cared about the verbs.
As he was nailed to the cross, he didn’t think, “These people aren’t my neighbors now. Not those friends who betrayed me. Not these soldiers who are killing me. Not those leaders who put me on trial.” No, the Son of God acted as a neighbor. He loved. He said, “Father, forgive them; they don’t know what they are doing.” He had pity on them all. Compassion for them all. He showed mercy.
This is our model, yes. This is how Christ calls us to live, to show mercy, to act, instead of justifying ourselves. To love all people as our neighbor, even if it costs us dearly. Because it will. If we choose not to live this way, then let’s set aside any pretense that we’re Christian or that we seek to live in Christ.
But this moment of mercy at the cross is also our only hope. When we truly face what is going on, and how little we have done to change things, how much we have done to cause this, when we realize we’ve spent so much time justifying ourselves, we haven’t loved, our only hope is we belong to the Son of God who won’t classify us any more than anyone else. When the Son asks the Father for forgiveness for those who don’t know what they’re doing, that’s our hope, for that’s who we are.
So we do not lose heart.
We are still loved with a love that death cannot destroy. The Triune God has taken on all our hate and evil and inaction and will transform it to love and good and healing, offering us forgiveness instead of destruction, a new chance.
But if we want to walk with Christ on this path of life, we can’t continue to ignore his clear commands. We’ll be forgiven and restored when we do, but it’s dishonest to pretend we don’t have to listen to Christ or to our neighbors, or to think we aren’t involved, or to think someone else will take care of our brother or sister who’s lying by the side of the road half dead.
We know our path, we have for a long time: love God with everything we have. Love our neighbor as we love ourselves. We know now that such love for neighbor is only real when we actually show it, do it, act it, bring it. We need to lose our instinct to justify ourselves.
So let us now pray a different prayer. A prayer asking for forgiveness. A prayer asking for changed hearts, and courageous spirits. A prayer asking for wisdom to listen and understand. A prayer asking for the Spirit’s prod to get moving, acting, doing, showing mercy.
Christ couldn’t be clearer: “Go and do likewise.” God grant us grace to do just that.
In the name of Jesus. Amen
The Olive Branch, 7/6/16
Of Faith and Doubt
Thomas witnesses to us a life of honest self-awareness, of trust in Christ and not in ourselves, a life open to questions and therefore open to becoming something completely new in Christ.
Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The feast of St. Thomas, Apostle
Texts: John 14:1-7 (with references to John 11 and John 20)
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
Where is it written that doubt is bad, a sign of weakness?
Why did we ever believe that, beat ourselves up for that?
Today we celebrate the life and witness of our brother Thomas, Apostle. Witness. Martyr. Saint. Doubter.
Let’s proudly claim that title, St. Thomas the Doubter. We’re used to “doubting Thomas” as an insult. Sometimes we’ve understood his doubt. We’ve said, “sometimes doubt happens to the best of us.” But we’ve rarely claimed doubt as important. Today we say doubt is good. Without doubt, there’s no faith.
Thomas’ doubt helped him become all those other things, apostle, witness, martyr, saint. Thomas’ doubt led him deeper into life in Christ and into faith. Thomas’ doubt reveals truth to us. Thomas’ doubt gives us courage to be drawn into who we are becoming in Christ.
Now, Thomas isn’t an important disciple, which helps us.
Matthew, Mark, and Luke only mention Thomas once each, in their list of disciples. He’s nowhere near the leadership group. He’s an ordinary, everyday follower, about whom, if we didn’t have John’s Gospel, we would know nothing.
Thomas is us. None of us are likely to be famous or remembered beyond our immediate circle of those who love us. The work of God each of us does in the world will be a blessing, but it’s not likely hundreds of years later someone will write a book about the good we did. That’s not bad. Most of the good done in Christ’s name for 2,000 years, most of the sharing of the good news, most of the healing of the sick and preaching of God’s grace and love has been done by people like us, unknown to any but their closest group.
Today we celebrate one of us. And thanks to John, we know a little bit more about Thomas than many of the other anonymous saints of God. In three brief glimpses that take place only in a period of maybe a month, John shows us truth about our brother that can change everything we thought we understood about faith and following Christ.
We first meet Thomas in John 11.
Thomas isn’t central to this story, he’s just his normal, unimportant self. Jesus is in Galilee. His dear friends Mary and Martha in Bethany, near Jerusalem, send a message that their brother Lazarus, his friend, is dying.
Jesus stays two more days, then announces they’re heading to Judea, to Bethany. This is only a few weeks before the crucifixion, and in these latter days of Jesus’ ministry the opposition among Jewish religious leaders has become a real threat. So his disciples speak up and say he’ll be killed if he goes south. They’re right. Coming to Bethany was the beginning of the end for Jesus, and led directly to the cross.
Jesus was going to go whether his disciples approved or not. But it’s anonymous Thomas who speaks for them: “Let’s also go, that we may die with him.”
Listen to him! The leaders of the twelve are afraid. Thomas has to be afraid. But he knows only one thing, he’s following Jesus. If Jesus dies, well, he’ll die, too. Thomas is the only one who speaks up in faith and so he’s the one, not the leaders, who emboldens the others to follow Christ’s way, not theirs.
The next time we see Thomas is today’s Gospel.
Once again, Thomas isn’t a lead player, he’s one of the folks in the crowd. Peter’s already bragged he’ll die with Jesus and has heard the horrible truth that he will in fact betray him. So, Jesus urges Peter and the others not to let their hearts be troubled, to believe in him. Then he starts talking.
Now, this night has been emotionally charged for these women and men, gathered for Passover. They can feel all the tension in Jesus, and in the streets and city about him. Jesus has washed their feet and called them to do the same. He’s fed them the Passover, saying it was his own body and blood. And now he’s going on about rooms in Father’s houses and going away, and coming back for them, and he says, “you know the way to where I am going.”
We know these words so well. We’ve heard them at so many funerals of loved ones and have found comfort and hope in them. But it’s hard to imagine any of them, not even Mary Magdalene or John, had a clue what Jesus was talking about.
But anonymous, unimportant Thomas, is brave enough, courageous enough to say what everyone else was thinking: “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Jesus. Could you please explain? We don’t know where you’re going, how can we know the way?”
For the second time in only a few weeks, Thomas’ courage gives us a gift, because Jesus explains what we didn’t know, either. “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except by me.”
We may still have questions about what Jesus means, but if Thomas doesn’t ask Jesus, if Thomas doesn’t admit his ignorance and confusion, would we ever get these powerful words of hope we’ve clung to for 2,000 years?
The third time we meet Thomas he’s a lead actor in the story, in John 20.
The risen Christ appears to all the disciples on Easter, the women in the morning, and all of them, men and women, in the Upper Room in the evening. All but Thomas. When he arrives, he’s overwhelmed by their excitement that Jesus is alive again.
He says something to them that could blow away a lot of bad Christian theology if only people actually listened. He says, “Look, any talk of a risen Jesus is worthless, any story of God raising our Lord is meaningless, if I don’t see wounds. I might not know anything, but I know I saw our beloved Lord wounded and killed. That’s the only way I’ll recognize him.”
Thomas’ doubt is based on a certainty: he will only know his Master by the wounds his Master bore for him. He doubts any other story that tries to understand what God is doing in this terrible suffering without dealing with the wounds.
A week later, when Jesus shows up and Thomas is there, he sees those wounds. And anonymous, sidekick Thomas is the only one in all the Gospels to declare this truth about Jesus. “My Lord and my God,” he says. “I know you. You’re my Lord, the one I will follow and obey always. And you are God, my God, who was wounded and killed and now lives.” Thomas declares the truth that changes everything about our faith in Christ, that in the risen Jesus’ wounds we recognize him as God.
Thomas is the model of faithful following.
He is the antithesis of the arrogant, smug person of faith who knows all the answers, who never doubts, who can always package up in a neat box with a bow all the truth about God.
Thomas is the person of real faith, a faith that draws on the strength of God through Christ Jesus, not on his own strength. A faith not based on him having it all together, but on his trust that God in Christ has it all together and that’s enough for him.
This is the heart of what we learn from Thomas: only openness to our not knowing, our fears, our doubts, will lead us into the heart of Christ. When we think we have all the answers, and know the path, when we never admit we’re afraid or lost or confused, we’re not walking the path of Christ, we’re making our own. Our doubts and questions are what make us open to centering our lives on the Triune God rather than ourselves.
Thomas never trusted himself to know what was going on. But in trusting Christ Jesus, he showed a path that all people of faith can follow.
But today, on his day, Thomas would want to speak to us.
He would say, “Remember it’s not about me. I’m not important. The only thing I really knew was that I trusted in Christ Jesus, the Son of God.”
He would say: “Walk the path with Christ, knowing you will lose, even die to yourself. It’s Christ’s way, not your way, and on it is life and love and grace.”
He would say: “Ask your questions, even if you think they sound dumb. God will show you Christ’s truth, which becomes your truth. And you’ll bless everyone else who had the same question but was afraid to ask.”
He would say: “Remember when you struggle with suffering and pain – yours or anyone else’s – that any answer that forgets the wounds God suffers with us isn’t worth anything. Resurrection life, Christ’s life, which is now yours, comes through God sharing our suffering and death.”
Thomas would say to us today: “Don’t look at me, look at Christ. Then you’ll also recognize your Lord and your God. You will find the way, the truth, and the life.”
In the name of Jesus. Amen
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