sermon

You’re afraid, we all are, but the women show us we can bravely share our lives – still afraid, but filled with joy in God’s risen life in us.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Resurrection of Our Lord, year A
Text: Matthew 28:1-10

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

They were so scared, they looked dead.

These tough guards at the tomb, armor-clad, carrying weapons, were terrified. They shook and fell to the ground. Like dead men.

Give the benefit of the doubt. Earthquakes are scary. And an angel of God showed up in the middle of it. That dropped them like trees. This being from heaven sits on the stone that used to cover the tomb. The tomb they were supposed to be guarding instead of being frozen, curled up on the ground, like dead men.

We know something about being frozen in fear.

These times are so overwhelming, and not just because we had a couple months of violent federal occupation of our cities, our homes, our schools, that’s lessened visually but still is ongoing. It’s the disastrous war in the Middle East, the relentless assault on the lives of vulnerable people, the fear of wondering which of our democratic processes and systems and even allies will remain after a couple more years of this.

We’re not frozen by fear of seeing an angel or an earthquake. We’re frozen by fear of what we can’t control, things that overwhelm and threaten. Sometimes in our immobility we might even look dead.

But something else freezes us, too.

We’ve just walked with Jesus through these Three Days and have seen him demonstrate with his own body and blood what the path of God’s love, will mean. It means sacrificing ourselves in love for others. Even Jesus struggled with this when he prayed in Gethsemane.

There’s a reason so many Christians in every generation reduce the faith to simply believing the right things, having correct theology. It’s fear of the alternative: that Jesus meant Christian faith to be a life fully engaged in costly relationships of love, vulnerability, and self-giving, with God and with neighbor.

We might have to face our own prejudice and privilege and lose some comfort to follow Christ. We might have to dare to allow ourselves to live on less so others can live. We might have to have our dearest opinions and convictions and biases challenged and broken open. We might have to risk being hurt.

It’s much easier to act as if faith is thinking things right, and not being someone new. When we do this, we look dead.

But there were others experiencing that earthquake, seeing that angel.

There were some women there. Disciples, followers of Jesus. Unlike the other disciples, they came out of hiding to go to the tomb and be near Jesus’ body, early. Before dawn.

And they’re terrified, too. But they don’t fall to the ground like they’re dead. They keep their eyes open. They stay standing.

And so they hear this frightening angel tell them news they never could have hoped to hear: Jesus is alive. And the angel sends them out to tell the others.

They keep their eyes open still. They start walking. And they meet Jesus on the way! They get to hold him. Love him.

These women were just as afraid as the guards, just as afraid as you and I can be. But they held it together long enough to see the joy of what God was doing in this frightening moment.

And they don’t freeze in this moment of joy.

Both the angel and Jesus send them to go and tell others. They can’t go home and live with this news alone, with warmth in their hearts. This faith in the risen Jesus isn’t something you keep inside.

No, they are sent out to be vulnerable, just as Jesus always said. They’ll risk being disbelieved. They’re women, so they’ll also risk being discounted and ignored. They’re sent to witness with their vulnerable, self-giving lives that servanthood and sacrificial love, even to death, always ends in resurrection and abundant life. That this path they’ve all been called to walk looks scary and filled with loss, but ends in the earthquake of God restoring life that has been freely given for others.

And of course you and I are also sent. If you want to follow Jesus, it means taking this joy of God’s Easter life and letting it break your immobility. It means going into the world to be Christ. To be self-giving love.

But are you still afraid? Do you fear this sending Jesus gives you?

That’s OK. Take one more look at Matthew’s Gospel. Do you see how the women left the tomb to witness? They went, Matthew says, “quickly, with fear and great joy.”

They were still afraid. But they were filled with joy. They didn’t know what the future would be for them, and that still frightened them. But now they knew this path was filled with God’s abundant life and love, a life that can’t be stopped by death, a love too strong to stay in a grave. And that gave them great joy.

It’s the joy of God’s Easter life that swings the balance for you, gives you just enough courage – it doesn’t take much – enough courage to outweigh the fear you have of being out there, vulnerable, as Christ, in the world.

If you want to follow the risen Christ, just follow these women. They’ve got the right idea. Fear and great joy, with enough resurrection courage to get moving. And Christ will meet you on the way and help you with all the rest.

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

You belong to a God who made all things, brings amazing healing and life to the world and still is doing it in you and all people; trust this God for your life.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Great Vigil of Easter
Texts: The Vigil stories, including the resurrection

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

There’s a lot to process here tonight.

These massive stories we heard make astonishing claims. There is a God who created all that is out of chaos, made all this beauty, and called it good, again and again. This same God acted in anger at the wickedness on this planet and flooded it all higher than mountaintops, saving a family and a bunch of animals, then repented of that destruction and promised never to do it again.

This same God rescued a particular beloved group of people from slavery and dramatically parted a sea in two. And rescued three faithful servants from a horrible death by protecting them in the heart of a flaming furnace.

And we’re asked to believe all this, outlandish as the stories might seem, stories that anyone who isn’t a believer would scoff at.

And then there’s this last one: this same God became a human being like us, lived, loved, taught, and was executed. But then rose from the dead, was seen by beloved friends and disciples. Now we’re talking about dead people not staying dead.

How do we understand these stories when all around us people will say they couldn’t be true?

Well, you’ve already done the hardest part of faith: believing in God’s existence at all.

And once God’s in the picture, there’s no keeping God out. Author Morris West wrote, “Once you accept the existence of God – however you define God, however you explain your relationship to God –you are caught forever with God’s presence in the center of all things.”[1]

Once we accept God’s existence, no matter our theology, God is potentially involved in everything. If you believe in God at all, miracles like these stories are always possible. If you don’t believe in God, nothing can prove such miracles to you.

So tonight to believers like us, these stories promise that God can do anything, therefore God can do these things.

And if God can do these things, God can do anything.

In the catacombs of Priscilla underneath Rome, there’s a tomb of a Christian woman from the late third century. And painted on the wall of her tomb is a picture of a long sea serpent with a person sticking out of its mouth, and one of three men standing in the middle of flames.

These were the pictures this faithful woman’s family wanted to see at her tomb. A God who can pull Jonah out of the mouth of a beast, who can save three people cast into a fire. Any God who can do that can be trusted to raise their beloved from the dead, too.

So for us tonight, if God can rescue a whole people from slavery, God can break oppression and injustice today, and free people from their bondage.

If God can be with people in a great flood or a fiery furnace and keep them safe, God can be with you in your trials and afflictions and hold you.

If God can raise someone from the dead, God can give you life right now.

And since God’s promised in Christ to do just that, that’s your hope tonight.

You belong to a God who is alive and active in this world and capable of bringing amazing life and healing. Far beyond reason and rational thought.

You belong to a crucified and risen God who is in the center of all things and who promises to bring life to you and to all, now and forever. To a Triune God who can create a universe, save a whole people, protect in the midst of crisis, and raise the dead, bringing life and healing to you and your neighbors and the world is pretty basic.

You’ve already done the hard thing, believing and trusting in the God Jesus reveals to you and the world. So live in the trust that such a God is love for you and for all as Jesus said, and nothing will stop this God from bringing life and healing to you and to all things.

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

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[1] Morris West, The Clowns of God, prologue (alt.), © 1981 Hodder and Stoughton/William Morrow.

As Jesus is crucified in a garden, we are invited to look to him and see how life and death are intertwined.

Vicar Erik C. Nelson
April 3, 2026
Texts: Isaiah 52:13-53:12; Psalm 22; Hebrews 10:16-25; John 18:1-19:42

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

One of the Bible’s favorite places to take us is into gardens. The book starts with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The book ends with a description of the eternal city of God, full of trees and water and plants. The eternal city of God is not a concrete jungle, but a garden city.

The Bible starts and ends with gardens. And so does tonight’s reading. It starts with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, after he has just finished praying for his disciples. And this is the place where Judas leads the soldiers and police to arrest Jesus.

And when it gets to the end, after he’s been crucified, when he’s being taken down from the cross, it says, “there was a garden in the place where he was crucified.” Which was a surprise to me because when I think about Golgotha, or Calvary, the Place of the Skull, I often think of a barren, empty mountaintop. But John the Evangelist tells us that there was a garden right there.

Gardens are a powerful image and setting throughout Scripture because of the beauty and delight that you find there. But a garden is even more powerful tonight because it’s a place where life and death are intimately intertwined.

Think about how trees and bushes are kind of always dropping leaves. The compost we use to make plants grow is the remains of other dead plants. When you pick a flower, you kill it.

Life and death are fully co-mingled in a garden. And that’s something we often overlook because we just admire the beauty and the nice smells.

But Good Friday is a time when we can’t ignore the death in the garden. We can’t look away. Jesus Christ, the eternal God of the Universe, dies on a cross tonight. God gets the final piece of the human experience: death. In that death, we are reminded of our own death.

In that death, we are reminded of our sins that separate us from God and from one another. And we see the extreme lengths God went to overcome our separation. God entered the universe as a human being, lived a full, beautiful, complicated, difficult life, and experienced the suffering, the pain, that we all know all too well.

And even though we all know we will die, even though we know suffering, our society tries to make us forget. We don’t talk much about it. But we do talk about anti-aging creams and uploading our consciousness to the cloud and putting our bodies into cryosleep.

I think we hide from death because if we acknowledge its reality, we’re afraid we’ll just get stuck in a spiral of despair and hopelessness. If we acknowledge the reality of death and suffering, we won’t be able to stop seeing it all around us.

So we sit in our own gardens, dulling our senses and numbing out, because it’s too hard to look death in the face.

And yet this is what God invites us to tonight. As we remember our Lord’s suffering and death, we have an opportunity to be honest. To be honest about our own sin, the ways that we cut ourselves off from God and one another. The ways we don’t love our neighbors or ourselves.

We can be honest about the intolerable suffering in the world. We look at the ways that there are countless little crucifixions happening every day, in every country, every city, every neighborhood.

And that can be overwhelming and fill us with dread. But that is why God came into the universe. That is why Jesus died on the cross. That is why we’re here tonight.

Because the gardens remind us that even when there is death all around us, there is new life as well. As Jesus is dying on the cross, he sees his mother there. As he saw her heart being broken, I’m sure it broke his heart as well.

So he did a little miracle there. He brought his mother and his beloved disciple together, giving them to one other, making a new family, new life, in the midst of pain and death.

And after he died, his side was pierced, and out flowed water and blood. Many traditions have arisen connected to this moment, pointing out that blood and water also often accompany birth.

And together with the Word of God, water brings us into God’s family in baptism and wine becomes the Blood of Christ, shed for us, in the eucharist. In the midst of death, even after Jesus’ own death, he is making new life. Giving new life to us.

Because Jesus’s death was like ours but also entirely unlike ours. He died as a man, but that’s not all he is. He is the Lord of Life, the uncreated Second Person of the Trinity, the eternal Word of God. He died like us, but his death shows us that death never gets the final word. It feels dark and gloomy tonight, but the Lord of Life has something else coming.

This pain, this grief we feel tonight is familiar because we live in a world where it often feels like death is winning. It can feel like God is far off, just watching from a distance, unable or unwilling to intervene.

So I say, if you’re wondering where God is in our suffering, in this broken world, look to Jesus in the garden.

Look to Jesus in the garden, praying for us, even as we betray him. Look to Jesus in the garden, with his own broken heart, grafting his mother and his friend into one new family.

Look to Jesus in the garden, dying a death like ours, so that we might join his eternal life. Look to Jesus in the garden, being buried in a tomb … our tomb … so that death … our death … cannot have the final word.

May it be so.

Christ Jesus on his knees isn’t just an example, a model. It’s an offer of shared servanthood with you for the sake of the world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
Maundy Thursday
Text: John 13:1-17, 31b-35

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

“Do you know what I have done?” Jesus asked.

Obviously, he’d shockingly acted like a slave and knelt and washed the disciples’ feet. What more was there to know?

But Jesus asked, “do you know what I did? Why I did it?” He then went on, “I’ve set you an example. You call me Teacher and Lord, and yet I’ve just served you. Do you get it?”

Maybe we understand all too well what Jesus has done.

See, all images of the faithful path we see this week involve loss.

Jesus on his knees, washing the feet of his disciples and saying, “do this.” Let go of protecting your dignity and pride, get on your knees and serve each other.

Jesus giving bread and wine and calling it his body and blood, joining the meal to his death. Every Eucharist tells this sacrifice, is shaped by this death.

Jesus in the garden tonight, setting aside what he wants and willingly choosing his Father’s way. Refusing to call down angelic armies, rejecting the use of violence.

And Jesus tomorrow on the humiliating cross of Rome, enduring suffering and death to love all.

And each of these losses was a chosen loss, an intentional path.

So tonight Jesus looks at you, at me, and asks, “do you get it? Do you know what I have done? Do you see what lies before you?

If you wish to follow Jesus, your calling is to take the same path of loss, every time. Not necessarily being asked to literally die for another person. That may never be a choice before us. But Jesus says kneeling before his friends is his example. Yes, Jesus died on a cross, the ultimate end of the path he chose. But before then, he was on his knees, washing filthy feet. He considers them the same sacrifice. And asks, “Do you get it?

But that question is far deeper than you think.

It’s not just about following an example. See, this is God-with-us, the face of the Triune God, kneeling at your feet as a servant. You think you look up to see God, and it turns out God is kneeling at your feet, washing them, offering God’s own life to you in love.

That’s the thing to understand tonight. You’re not asked to follow as a servant as if it were a job to do. God-with-us, kneeling at your feet, asks, what if you joined me here?

God-with-us, dying on a cross, asks, what if you joined me here?

Jesus is still doing sacrificial love now, and invites you to join in it. To live your life, starting in your closest relationships, losing yourself for the sake of the other. Dying, even. Dying to getting your own way. Dying to “being yourself” and acting however you feel like acting. Dying to being centered on yourself that you might focus on others.

You could be a part of God’s transforming love, too, Jesus says.

When you get what Jesus is doing. Jesus, God-with-us, on his knees saying, “trust me – this is how we’ll make the world new together.” This is only working plan God has for the healing of all things. The ending of oppression and hunger and homelessness. The stopping of war and violence.

And this is the risen Christ’s job even now. Even if you don’t join Christ on the floor in self-giving love, Christ is still on his knees. Even if I refuse, Christ will still be loving this way, transforming hearts, serving through someone else. Through many others. And this servant way will bring about God’s new creation, one kneeling servant at a time.

Now do you know what Jesus has done? And what will you do now?

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

Christ Jesus is absolutely the King, the ruler of all, who rules in giving up power for the sake of love, and healing the creation through that.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Sunday of the Passion, year A
Texts: Matthew 21:1-11; 26:14 – 27:66

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

When David wanted Solomon crowned as the next king, he commanded that Solomon ride David’s mule.

Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet led Solomon on the king’s mule in procession and anointed him as his father’s successor. Riding on the king’s humble beast was unmistakably kingly. Solomon’s brother Adonijah, who also sought the throne, fully understood and despaired at what this action meant.

So when Jesus entered David’s city on a donkey in a procession, the crowds cheered and called him “Son of David.” They got it. Matthew underscores this for us with the prophet Zechariah’s promise that the true king would come riding on a donkey. Today Jesus showed himself heir to the great David’s throne.

Millions gathered across our country yesterday in “No Kings!” rallies, protesting authoritarianism and the usurping of democratic processes by our president, and many more will gather today across our country for the Palm Sunday Path faith rallies, with the same protest but in the context of this day Jesus acted as a king. People protest because we threw off the monarchy in this country 250 years ago and don’t want anyone acting as king or dictator over us.

So what do we do with Jesus’ overt claiming of the role of King today?

The answer lies in the fullness of what we do today.

From the earliest centuries, faithful followers of Christ gathered on this day and remembered the kingly entrance of Jesus, waved palms, told the story. And then, just as we do, they gathered to hear the story of the Passion of this King, his suffering and death.

These aren’t two different things we’re cramming together, they’re one story. Only together can we fully understand what’s happening. Jesus enters Jerusalem unmistakably showing himself the King of Israel. And then he proceeds to act very oddly for a king. He doesn’t assemble an army to take over, he does his usual teaching, gets into his usual trouble. But he’s now in the heart of the religious establishment who oppose him, so he gets arrested. Then he willingly allows himself to be tried and executed.

And that’s the only kind of king Jesus will ever be. One who loves his people to the fullest, offering his life as a witness to that divine love that lives in him, the love of the Triune God for the universe that will die rather than overpower, lose everything rather than force obedience.

This way goes against all assumptions about power and rule.

 Our politics have evolved to people seeking office not to govern but simply to be in power and retain that power by any means necessary including violence and oppression and lawbreaking. Even in our daily lives, we often assume being strong and in control is important.

But clearly Jesus isn’t controlling or acting strong as he lives into his kingship this week. He gives no sense of worldly power or rule. Look at the mocking thrown at him on the cross: “He saved others, he can’t save himself. He’s the King of Israel; let him come down from the cross now and we’ll believe in him.” They assume no proper King would let himself be killed as a criminal.

The world has no way to comprehend the servant kingship of Jesus.

Because Jesus proclaims and lives a reign of God that turns the world upside down. Or as has been said, Jesus comes to us standing up, but we’ve been standing on our heads so long we think he’s the one who’s upside down. In the kingdom of God, the greatest are the least: the weak, the wounded and broken, the children, the oppressed. And the King, the Son of God, is the lowest, the servant – down in the dirt with the people, suffering on a cross to love the creation back to God.

And that’s exactly the king we really need. A King who invites you to follow his way and live only by love.

Because the world’s alternative isn’t a way you’d want to live.

 To control others, dominate others, manipulate others. A life fully lived that way would be terrible. I’ve never gotten my way by force or coercion and been happy about the result, never. Exercising power over others will ultimately corrupt, and leave empty victories. Something we’re seeing in our nation and world so much today. Destruction, death, power over people, abuse, hatred, and we’re getting further and further from a world of justice and hope for all people.

So can you see Jesus as the true king he actually is?

Can you look at what seems like a losing way, a dead end, a dying King, and see hope and life? We know so much more than the crowds in Jerusalem that Sunday and Friday. We know Christ is risen and is the ruler of the universe.

But even risen from the dead, Christ still rules from the cross, through suffering, through self-giving love. And life in God’s reign is following our King in servanthood and love, giving, sharing, caring, forgiving, losing like our King loses. Christians who live this way know the joy of life in ways no one in the world’s power game will ever know.

And God promises to fill you with such faith and trust in our servant King, and strength and grace to follow, that you will find abundant life truly worth living, now and always, and become a part of God’s bringing that abundant life to all people and the whole creation.

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

The Triune God sees you as precious and beautiful, scars and all.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fifth Sunday in Lent, year A
Text: John 11:1-45

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

There’s something troubling in this story.

Jesus responds to news of his dear friend’s illness saying that it won’t lead to death, “rather it is for God’s glory,” he says, “so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”

So, Lazarus got sick so Jesus could be glorified? Is that what Jesus is saying? It sounds like what Jesus said last week about the blind man: “he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.” So this poor unnamed man spent his whole life blind, as a beggar, so on this day God’s works might be revealed?

What are we to do with this? Scripture doesn’t describe the Triune God as One who targets people with suffering to achieve some divine end. Certainly people throughout history have believed that, assumed that about God.

But that’s not the God we know in Jesus, or in Scripture. It’s not how Jesus dealt with suffering. When he meets the sisters later he has deep empathy with them, weeps with them, shares their grief. He’s not manipulating a friend’s pain to put on a show for the crowds.

So is there another way to understand this?

The Japanese have a beautiful art form called kintsugi.

It’s the art of repairing broken pottery by mending the broken places with lacquer mixed with powdered gold or other precious metals. Rather than throwing out a treasured piece of pottery because it’s broken, it’s mended.

The beautiful thing is the gold. The mended pottery openly shows all its cracks where it was broken. It gleams with bright gold lines crossing its surface.

Brokenness isn’t a reason to throw a thing away. Brokenness is the way of this world. And there is beauty in that brokenness, beauty where the mending isn’t hidden away but shown to the world as part of that beauty. The glory to be praised isn’t the skill of the mender. It’s the beauty of the thing mended.

Like a man who now can see after a lifetime of blindness. Or a man raised from the dead and returned to his family. That’s the glory Jesus means. Neither were put through suffering to help Jesus show off who he is. The glory of God is that God sees them as beloved before and after the healing. Their brokenness, their need, is part of their beauty.

It depends on how you think God sees you.

In our Western branch of Christianity, we tend to understand God as judge, who sees our brokenness – especially our actions, thoughts, tendencies to separate from God – as sin. And God’s wrath needs to be appeased, we’re taught. God is perfect, we sin, therefore God must be angry with us and see only the sin.

But what if we trusted the Bible? Certainly, there are places where God is angry, where the people’s sin is decried. No one doubts that. The question is, how does God view us, all people? As sinners who are worthy of destruction unless somehow someone saves us?

Or, as Jesus and Paul and the prophets repeatedly show, as beloved ones, even in our brokenness, even in our sinfulness? So precious there’s no question of God throwing us away. So beloved, God endures suffering and death to show us God’s true heart.

We belong to a Triune God who was broken at the cross and still bears those scars in the resurrection. Even God has broken lines, cracks, that have been healed. And because we find life in those scars, we see God’s scars as beautiful.

But what if you could see your scars, your wounds, as not something to be hidden away? Loved by a scarred God, can you see your wounds, your scars as as beautiful as you see God’s scars?

The glory of God is in God’s love for broken people God sees as precious.

Lots of blind people in Jesus’ day didn’t receive their sight. The glory of God seen in this man was God’s love for him his whole life, not just that moment of physical healing.

There were lots of grieving families in the same week as today’s story, maybe even in the same town. The glory of God isn’t that one of them was raised from the dead.

No, the glory of God is that God loves you and me in every part of our lives. If we’re angry at God for not stopping a tragedy, like Martha, God-with-us will hear our anger and promise us life now, with God at our side. Martha has no idea Jesus is going to raise Lazarus till the very last minute. Her beautiful statement of faith is simply that living with the brokenness of her grief knowing that God was and is with her is enough.

If we’re weeping or in despair, the glory of God is the Son of God simply weeping with Mary, loving her, deeply sad himself at the death of his friend. Mary also doesn’t expect Lazarus to be raised until he is. But it is enough for her that God-with-us is with her, weeping. And Jesus mends all their cracks – the brokenness of their anger, their grief – gold. They’re still there, even after Lazarus is raised. But they’re not a sign of failure or a flaw. They’re part of their beauty.

The Holy and Triune God looks at you and sees beloved, beautiful.

From Genesis 1 onward this is your truth. John 1 once again confirms it. Your cracks, your scars, your sins, your brokenness, are part of your beauty. Some will be mended in ways no one can see. Some scars will remain for others to see the rest of your life. But those scars are golden, beautiful, because God has healed them or is healing them still.

That’s the glory of God. That you, too, are glorious in God’s eyes, and so precious that God’s forgiveness is always yours, for the healing of your sin. So precious that God’s Spirit is always yours, for the healing of your spirit. So precious that God’s touch is always yours, in whatever places you are broken, to make those scars beautiful. Because they are in God’s eyes. You are, in God’s eyes.

Will you tell God otherwise, beloved one?

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