sermon

Your eyes and heart, how you see and love, are precious to God because they directly affect the joy of your life, and God desires abundant life for you now and always.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 25 A
Texts: Matthew 20:1-16; Jonah 3:10 – 4:11

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

What’s baffling is that everyone in these stories shares the same situation.

None of the people who, in Jesus’ story, came to the little village marketplace looking for day jobs woke up knowing if they’d be able to feed their families that day. Everyone hoped someone was hiring that day, hoped somehow they’d get hired. As the last ones hired said, they weren’t working only because no one had hired them all day. And as 5:00 approached, they despaired that even if they did get hired, the money wouldn’t provide the day’s meal.

All these workers would have known each other. Known their children. Shared an existence on the edge of survival. So why do the early workers resent that their neighbors’ children would also get to eat that day?

As for Jonah, hatred for your enemy, centralized on their capital city, is so common in human history as to be hardly worth mentioning. Of course Jonah hates the Ninevites; all good Israelites probably did.

But Jonah’s real anger is at God forgiving them of their wickedness. Even though Jonah himself has just disobeyed God so significantly he was thrown into the sea during a raging storm and swallowed by a fish as punishment, and then experienced God’s forgiveness. Why would he be angry if others received that, too?

Matthew’s community clearly struggled with how to live in God’s grace.

In the past few weeks, we’ve heard Jesus teach a process of reconciliation, tell a parable of an unforgiving slave, and today a parable of these workers.

The last two weeks the problem was, if you’re completely forgiven by God, why won’t you offer the same love and forgiveness to others? Today it’s even more troubling: if God chooses to offer complete and utter love and grace to all, why would you be angry? It’s not only about whether you forgive, Jesus says. It’s also whether you resent God forgiving someone else. Loving someone else. Blessing someone else.

And if you think someone doesn’t deserve that, if you resent that, why? What’s at stake for you in someone else’s grace? Jesus asks.

These stories hit far too close to home.

We live in a deeply polarized society. The divide between people on so many things, the inability to have civil conversations even with family in these days, is as great as many of us have ever experienced.

It’s not new that we disagree with other people over policy questions, the direction of government, over safety nets versus bootstraps. That’s always been the political reality in this country, in public or at home.

What is viscerally different now is that hating the other person is now our society’s way. It’s not enough to disagree. People loathe those on the other side of issues, mock them, attack them. They nurse that hatred and spew it in social media, on street corners, even in family conversations. Like Jonah, they’d like to sit and watch God’s destruction come on them. Like the early workers, they wish people would get their fair deserts.

I say “they” do this. Let’s be honest. We do this. If any two of us here sat down and talked about this, we’d likely both realize there were people in this country whom we despise, hate. Even wish ill on.

So, Jesus and Jonah’s author are actually talking about Jesus’ hardest commandment: “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you – or others.” If someone enrages you so much you can’t think well of them, you don’t want good to happen to them, that person is precisely who you are commanded to pray for. To love.

And our problem with such love is an illness of both our eyesight and our hearts.

“Are you envious because I am generous?” is actually a paraphrase.

Jesus literally says “is your eye evil because I am good?” Is your eye bad, diseased because of my goodness? And the owner genuinely wants to heal the eyes of the early workers. He explains they got a full day’s pay, as agreed. They and their children will eat tonight. But he wants them to see, to understand, that he wants everyone’s family to eat that night.

And God tries to help Jonah see why God doesn’t want to destroy a city of 120,000 people and a bunch of animals. God hopes Jonah will see in his sadness over the loss of a shady bush how God might see the loss of such a city. God wants Jonah to understand. To see as God sees.

And in both stories, the hearts of Jonah and the early workers need healing.

God really wants Jonah to care about the Ninevites as much as he cares about his little shade bush, to have empathy for these people who are repenting, turning to God. The owner really wants the first workers to care about their neighbors, to imagine what it would have been like had they not been picked early and had to sit in the square all day, desperation climbing with every passing hour.

When Jesus says “love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you (or others),” he really wants your eyes and your heart to be changed.

Now, you know God’s promises well enough to know God gladly will heal you.

God will give you vision to see as God sees, God will create a clean, new heart in you. That can be your prayer, your desire from God.

But you might ask, “why would it be?” What difference does it make if you or I hate someone who we think clearly deserves it? Who cares if we secretly wish God’s punishment on someone? We’re good people, we love our friends and family, do good in the world. Why would we need or want such healing?

Because God cares about your heart and eyes. If they are not well, you are not well and that matters to God. If you have corners of hate in your heart, they will eat away and gradually deaden you. If you have bad eyesight, you will see less and less like God. And eventually you will be diminished, less than you could be. And that would break God’s heart.

Don’t you remember how all these words began a few weeks ago? God is a shepherd who cannot abide losing even one of one hundred sheep. “Some” of God’s flock safe and healthy and whole is just not enough. Your eyes and your heart are precious to the Triune God, because you are precious to God.

We know that faith in Christ isn’t an individualized proposition.

We hear again and again from Scripture that we are called into a faith community, we are called to be Christ for the sake of the world. And that is all true. But for today, just trust this, too: You are precious to the Triune God, and beloved. And if you’ll let God heal your eyes and give you a new heart, you will find the life God has dreamed for you since before you were born. The abundant life Jesus came to bring, filled with joy in all God’s children being held in God’s blessing and love. And yes, you’d even be a blessing to others with God’s grace as well.

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

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The foolishness of God’s reconciling, forgiving love is from the beginning of time, and in the cross we see it most fully and are changed to become that love.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The feast of the Holy Cross
Text: 1 Corinthians 1:18-24

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

Paul says that the heart of our proclamation is God’s foolishness.

A foolishness seen in the cross of Christ.

But in fact, God’s foolishness began far before then. As Paul says a little later, this foolish wisdom of God has been the plan from “before the ages.” (2:7)

God’s foolishness begins at the beginning, creating human beings in God’s own image and then giving us the trust to live into that image. The vulnerable love of God that created the universe is no more vulnerable and at risk than in God’s trusting and hoping that humanity will become who they are made to be.

And we’ve proven the foolishness of that plan ever since.

But God doubled down on the foolishness.

Every time people failed to live up to the trust, let God down, sinned against God or against each other, God’s decision – apart from the story of the flood – was to forgive them. Even in our Hebrew forebears story of a garden and a first couple’s sin, God forgave. The story says they were told if they ate of the fruit, they would die. But they didn’t die. They were given forgiveness and grace to live and do better.

When God created a relationship with a chosen family, God’s foolish forgiveness and reconciliation continued. Abraham was unfaithful to God several times; God forgave. Jacob blundered and lied and sinned his way through life; God forgave. When the people were rescued from slavery and on their way to their new home, they repeatedly broke covenant with God; God forgave. Even when the sin of the people led to their exile, God forgave and restored them. The harshest of the prophets still include a message of hope in God’s love and forgiveness in their fiery words.

Forgiveness and reconciliation are the very heart of the Triune God. And that’s foolishness in a world that includes people like us. Paul says God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and we’ve learned to trust that. But there’s no mistaking that God’s way looks like a fool’s way in worldly terms.

The cross of Christ, then, is the only logical next step in foolishness. The likely outcome of God’s way.

Now, there could have been a reality where God’s utter vulnerability in coming as a human being among us didn’t end with the cross. All people could have seen the face of the Triune God in Jesus and followed his call to repentance and new life, to love of God and love of neighbor. We wouldn’t have had to kill him.

But given human nature is what it is, the cross was probably the only way this was going to end. With Jesus embodying God’s foolish love, disregarding even laws of God to extend that love, proclaiming God’s reign in everyone who embodies that love themselves, Jesus’ cross was likely unavoidable.

So this raises a question. If forgiveness and reconciliation are the heart of the Triune God, and therefore God doesn’t need the cross to forgive, yet still faced it, why?

The first answer is what Paul proclaims.

The cross, while not necessary for God to forgive, is an unmistakable sign of God’s forgiveness and love. The eternal Christ, the Son of God, loved humanity fully in our flesh, and continued God’s covenant promise not to use violence and destruction against us, a promise that goes back to the aftermath of the flood. A promise that led to his death.

In showing that use of power and force isn’t God’s way, love is, even if that means God dies to prove it, Jesus shows clearly how deep and powerful God’s love actually is. The resurrection of Jesus only confirms that a vulnerable, sacrificial, self-giving love cannot be stopped by any power of evil. Not even death.

This may be a stumbling block to some people’s faith, Paul says. It may be foolishness to others’ sensibilities. But the cross of Christ, the love of God willing to die out of love for the universe, is God’s true power and wisdom. It is the unmistakable proof that you are loved always, that forgiveness will always be God’s way with you.

The other answer is the cross is an example for you and me and all who see it.

The Son of God who hung on the cross literally said, “I’m giving you an example for you to follow.” He said that on his knees, with wet hands wiping on a towel, and then commanded love for one another as he loves them. Loves us. Loves you. Loves all.

And the servant love he shows in washing feet on Thursday, Jesus completes in his death on the cross. So his command stands: this is the love I call you to follow. Self-giving, sacrificial, vulnerable love for each other and the creation. “Love to the loveless shown that they might lovely be,” the hymn sings.

The cross shows you and me the path of our life as Christ.

This is all foolishness, no question.

A power-hungry, violent world mocks such a love. As Paul says a little after these verses, the powers of this world never understand it.

That’s because this is the love that is the life and breath of the universe. The love that God has been hoping to see in you and me from before creation. The love God risked never seeing by foolishly trusting humanity to live into the image of God we were made to be.

The love that is yours in Christ Jesus, that nothing can separate you from, and that will shape and mold your heart until you live and breathe God’s foolishness and find the wisdom of life and hope and healing in it. For you. And for all.

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

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The heart of the Triune God is and always has been utter forgiveness and reconciliation, and it is that heart that will replace yours to be the same.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 24 A
Texts: Matthew 18:21-35; Genesis 50:15-21

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

Listen to what God says:
“[A]fter those days, . . . I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. . . . [T]hey shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, for I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.” (Jeremiah 31:33-34)

In these treasured words from Jeremiah, God’s true nature is revealed to us. From the beginning of Scripture, from the life of our Hebrew forebears through our own, the Triune God’s heart is set on reconciliation and forgiveness. As we’ll consider tomorrow at our Eucharist on Holy Cross Day, God’s forgiveness doesn’t start at or depend on the cross of Christ. It’s quite literally always God’s whole heart.

That’s why forgiveness isn’t optional when you follow Christ.

It’s literally a command of the One on whose life and death our own lives and deaths depend, the One whose heart saves us and shapes our own heart.

And like Peter, that’s a challenge for us. So, like Peter, we negotiate. How much forgiveness? How often? Who deserves it? Virtually every conversation among Christians about forgiveness quickly moves to negotiation and compromise, rules and boundaries, seeking any options other than Jesus’ clear meaning.

Because Jesus is perfectly clear here today: forgiven people forgive. Period. We can negotiate all we want. We just won’t be talking about forgiveness.

If we are following Christ, if we are Christ, Jesus commands us to forgive.

But there’s another challenge in Jeremiah’s word of God.

Did you hear the last bit? God says, “I will remember their sin no more.” God covenants with us not only forgiveness, not only that we, that you, belong to God forever. God promises even to forget your sins and mine.

God wants nothing to do with “I can forgive, but I can’t forget.” The forgetting completes the forgiveness. And we struggle with that. We might be able to imagine forgiving someone for a wrong they’ve committed against us. But releasing that wrong from our head, out of our memory, that’s hard. Every time we remember someone has hurt us, every time we see their face, we’re hurt all over again. We forgive, but then we think of it again. We forgive, but then we remember and feel the pain all over again.

So today Jesus says, forgive it again. And again. And again. Seventy-seven times. Or seventy times seven times if you have to. As long as it takes for the hurt to be lost to you, unimportant, nothing.

If we are following Christ, if we are Christ, God asks us to forgive every time we remember the hurt. Until it’s gone.

As long as we’re counting ways this command is hard, here’s another.

We’d be glad to forgive, we say, if and when the other person repents. If and when the other apologizes. If and when we think they’re sincere.

But Jesus commands, “Forgive your brother or sister from your heart.” Period. We’re never told to wait for them to do something. Jesus commands, “love one another as I have loved you.” Period. Jesus never gives preconditions for our self-giving love.

Look at Joseph and his brothers. Their father has died, and they’re convinced Joseph only held back from punishing them for their evil against him because Daddy was still alive. Now that he’s gone, they’re worried. A lot.

But they don’t repent. They lie and say that Jacob, before he died, had commanded them to tell Joseph to forgive them. And Joseph will have none of that. He weeps, he forgives them, he promises to always provide for them and their little ones. He acts like Jesus would act.

If we are following Christ, if we are Christ, God commands us to forgive, regardless of what the other one does. Because forgiveness is about your heart, not the other person’s.

All these together seem overwhelmingly impossible.

We are commanded to forgive. We are told to forgive as often as we need to until we forget the offense. And it doesn’t matter if the other ever regrets, repents, apologizes, asks forgiveness. Who could ever do this? How is it possible?

Well, this truth about God changes us forever. God’s heart of forgiveness, the 10,000 talent/billion dollar forgiveness of this parable, changes your heart. God loves you beyond comprehension and even dies to prove that love. Dies to break your heart. Dies to show you forever that you are always forgiven and loved. Then, risen from the dead, the Son of God does what the Son of God always does: invites you to love, to become Christ yourself.

When we follow Christ, when we are Christ, this is the pattern God shapes in you and in me. Forgive first, because God does. Love first, because God does. The healing act that saves you and me is God forgiving us into life. The healing act that will save the world is when we do the same.

Once you grasp this astonishing love of God for you, anything is possible.

Once you can trust how beloved you are, how God forgives you before you even figure out your mess, once that actually touches you, it will be impossible for you to act like this person in Jesus’ parable.

Your heart of stone is replaced with a heart of love, just as we prayed at the start of this liturgy. You’ll lose interest in doing forgiveness math, negotiating limits or boundaries. You won’t wait for the other to repent or feel sorry. Instead, you’ll find such joy in offering forgiveness, such healing of your heart, that you’ll finally begin to understand why it’s God’s way, too. It’s how relationships are healed, life between people is restored, and hope is brought into reality.

May God replace our hearts of stone with hearts of love, that we might become Christ’s forgiving love to others, and find our true joy.

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

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Following Jesus means loving others in ways that reflect heavenly priorities, not just earthly ones. In Romans, Paul helps us imagine what this cross-shaped love looks like on earth.

Vicar Emily Hagen
The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 22 A
Texts: Jeremiah 15:15-21; Psalm 26; Romans 12:9-21; Matthew 16:21-28

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

Most of us have found ourselves in Peter’s position at least once. We can imagine the rush of fear, sadness, and confusion that Peter felt when he learned that he was about to lose his leader, his dear friend—the one he had just acknowledged as the Son of God. Throw in the crushing news that his beloved teacher was walking knowingly and willingly toward a painful, shameful death, and we might have joined Peter in imploring Jesus to change the plan, driven to panic by the depth of our love and our dependence on his leadership. We too might have begged, as Peter did: “Stay with us, beloved teacher. We who love you cannot bear for this harm to befall you, and we cannot face a future without you. Stay with us.”

But it was not to be. Jesus rebuked Peter soundly, calling him the Opponent, the Adversary—the one who gets in the way. Jesus made it clear that his path served heavenly purposes, not earthly ones. He challenged us, his followers, to take up our crosses and follow Him, that we may lay down our lives… and yet find them.

His words sound rather bleak, even to twenty-first-century disciples who have already celebrated an empty tomb on Easter morning. But in these words, Jesus made a promise that can comfort his followers in every age. Jesus promised that the love and guidance that Peter so feared losing were not about to die on the cross. Until the end of time, Christ’s presence would abide within, among, and through his followers who have the courage to take up our own crosses and follow Him.

Of course, loving like Jesus is not as easy as it sounds. While we live in earthly bodies surrounded by earthly suffering, our call to love and serve as Christ requires us to bear a cross-shaped love… a love that practices humility, that forgives, speaks difficult but necessary truths, walks beside those on the margins, and returns good for evil.

In Romans, Paul describes one version of this cross-shaped love—a love that places heavenly things above earthly things, but also has the courage to stand up for what is right in this world. It calls us to love one another enough to tell the hard, deep truths—to do the difficult work that allows healing to begin and community to flourish.

Paul doesn’t shy away from naming the difficult ways we will be called to love one another. For example: “bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.” This one is hard. But for some of us, myself included, an even harder version might read: “bless and do not curse those who persecute your loved ones.” When we see earthly injustice, bigotry, or cruelty prevailing and the vulnerable suffering, it becomes so hard to live out a cross-shaped love, even in small ways.

It is not easy to respond with humility when we are called out for an action that exposes our own bias. It is hard to take the deep breath before responding when a high school friend reposts some infuriating political talking point that cuts us to the heart every time because we know the relentless harm that those words cause our loved ones. It feels impossible to pray for blessings on powerful people who advance policies that deeply harm us or people we love. We see our dear ones’ faces in our minds, and it becomes so hard to respond to injustice with love—even though the emotion driving us is love. We get stuck between the desire to put our adversary in their place with a few well-researched facts and a smug parting comment for good measure… and social pressure to keep the peace, which lures us into silence under the guise of being the bigger person. After all… when online, it’s best not to feed the trolls.

Thankfully, Paul’s words reassure us that living into cross-shaped love does not mean suffering injustice in silence. The act of taking up our cross does call us to respond to persecution, not with curses, but with the love that overcomes evil… love that refuses to ignore the humanity within the enemy, and the need or fear—or even love—that might be driving them, when all we can imagine in their hearts is hate. Even when our righteous anger is fully ignited, we can speak powerful truth in a spirit of love and healing—and leave vengeance for God, the One who knows all hearts and sees the painful emotions that lie behind our friends’ hurtful Facebook comments. Their painful guiding emotions will not be healed by earthly vengeance—and neither will ours. They will not even be healed by performative kindness, the sort we might offer to enemies out of spite just to enjoy, as Paul puts it, heaping burning coals on their heads. We can only be healed—and our communities restored—in one way: through the authentic, transformative, cross-shaped love of Jesus. This is the self-giving love that refuses to curse, to condemn, to push away and instead draws others in by listening first. It speaks powerful truth calmly, and it leans in.

Sometimes this kind of love fails. But Paul has a second piece of good news for the righteously indignant. His words help us to find the boundaries of our earthly responsibility. Paul writes: “If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.” We can show love in all those things that depend on us, but when we do, we are not ultimately responsible for the actions of others. We can’t make other people accept the loving truth or kindness that we offer. We can’t force others to agree with us, even if we are speaking powerful words of Christ’s restoring justice.

When Peter begged Jesus to stay, he showed us why this sort of love does not always succeed on earth. A cross-shaped love often doesn’t make sense to the people around us—maybe even those closest to us, as in Peter’s case. Jesus’ love violates our social expectations by building real peace where there has been false peace—one that relies on someone being quietly exploited. And sometimes that work has consequences, big or small. Sometimes telling a loved one the truth really hurts and requires some healing time. Sometimes relationships do break because despite our authentic love, the other party is not willing to budge an inch, let alone meet us halfway. We might even risk arrest, injury, or worse when we choose to peacefully advocate for the human rights of others.

Fixing our minds on heavenly things places love of God above personal comfort and public status in ways that can test us fiercely. And yet, in Jesus’ closing words to Peter, which at first seemed so stark and so laden with risk, there is also such deep reassurance. While we carry a cross, we do not travel alone. We will lack neither guidance nor love, because Jesus goes before us and is present among us and within us. In our cross-shaped love for one another, we recognize the love of Christ, which Peter so feared losing. And when we commit to setting our minds on heavenly things… when we make Jesus’ priorities our own priorities… we find the guidance that we need to join Peter and all the disciples in the continuing work of the church. In those challenging words Jesus spoke to His disciples, we can take comfort knowing that the beloved teacher abides with us. There could be no better authority to guide us and there can be no deeper love to receive us.

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

We are nonconformist to this age, and transformed by the Spirit in one mind together, one Body in Christ, and through God’s grace, it is that Body that will bring God’s healing and life to the world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 21 A
Texts: Romans 12:1-8; Matthew 16:13-20

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 not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief.

Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work. Neither are you free to abandon it.” [1]

These words paraphrased and expanded from a Talmudic teaching by Rabbi Rami Shapiro have become precious and strengthening to many of us here at Mount Olive. Some members recently commissioned artist Aaron Silver to create a work of art portraying the last two sentences of the saying in his beautiful cut paper renderings of Hebrew script, and we celebrated its arrival here last week.

This wisdom gives us encouragement in a world filled with grief and pain, human evil and suffering, and great injustice. It may seem overwhelming, the rabbis say, but Micah had it right: do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with God. You don’t have to do it all. But you also can’t walk away.

Today, though, Paul’s beautiful words suggest adding a final sentence to this rabbinical wisdom. “You are not obligated to complete the work. Neither are you free to abandon it. And you can’t do it alone.”

We live in a culture that’s long emphasized the individual over the community.

True, the indigenous peoples who’ve lived on this continent for millennia certainly had and still have a communal ethos, villages, tribes care for each other, see kinship, share the challenges of life together. And the many who flocked to these shores these past 400 years, some willingly, some desperately, some dragged here in chains, also had communities that cared for each other, helped each other face difficulty.

But the American ethos has a dominant self-reliance/independence tone. We are shaped by a culture that values not depending on others, on sorting your own life out. That far too often values individual rights over the needs of the many. A culture that privatizes faith expression, resists collaboration, idolizes competition, praises self-made people.

And this costs us. We have difficulty witnessing to our faith because instinctively we feel it’s a private thing. People who are elderly, or suffer from disabling challenges, or simply have greater needs than others, often say they don’t want to be a burden on anyone. Even though the very definition of being loved by another means you are a burden to them. It’s how love works, and it’s beautiful. Far too often we believe we’re on our own in facing our own life challenges, and don’t let others know. And then there are the world’s overwhelming problems that often lead each of us to doubt we can make any difference.

Because of this, when Paul speaks of the Body of Christ, we often focus mostly on the individual parts and differences.

But for Paul, it’s all about the Body. To the Romans today he says, “individually we are parts one of another.” To borrow language from Paul’s first Corinthian letter where he also speaks of the Body, the toe’s connection to the whole body means there is no separation in the body. No barriers between the toe and the eye. The same blood flows between them, the same air gives oxygen to them. If the toe gets hit by a hammer, the eye weeps.

So it is with Christ’s Body. In Christ we all belong to each other. We can’t exist apart from each other. There is no distance between God, and us, and neighbor. The blood that flows between us is God’s love and the breath we take together is the Spirit’s life. Even our individual callings to be Christ can’t be lived apart from this Body in which we live in Christ. We are called together. Christ together.

When Paul says today “be transformed,” he’s talking to this whole Body.

“Conformed” and “transformed” are plural in the Greek. “Don’t be conformed to this world, you Body of Christ.” “Be transformed, you Body of Christ.” Paul speaks not of my transformation or of yours, but the transformation of the entire Body of believers.

So the gifts Paul talks about are the way the Spirit empowers the whole Body to move and work in the world. It isn’t a Body conformed to the world’s way: self-interest, greed, and all the things that have led to the pain the world is in today. A body could conform that way, we’ve seen it. We’ve seen Christian groups, even our own, become embedded in the world’s ways and become unrecognizable as Christian. We’ve seen a nation with great ideals become ever more hateful to the most vulnerable, ever more self-centered.

But the transformed Body of Christ is shaped by God’s Spirit, transformed into Christ. It has gifts, Paul says, of faithful prophetic word speaking God’s concerns to the rest. It has gifts of generous giving, so all share in the bounty of the creation. It has gifts of diligent leadership, so people are constantly lifted up who help the Body move to where it is called to move. It has gifts of cheerful compassion, so no one is left behind, all are joined into this love of Christ. Most of all, as Jesus will tell us next week, this Body lives a life of sacrificial loving, where all lose themselves so others can be found.

And not even the gates of hell can stand up to this transformed body, Jesus says today.

Jesus isn’t describing the Church as a gated fortress, sheltered, saying no one can hurt us. It’s exactly opposite. Yes, the word “church” here is “ecclesia,” those called out of the world to become Christ’s Body. But then Jesus sends this Body to the gates of hell to bear God’s love. To break down the gates that keep people in or out, break the chains that enslave them.

Walls of hate, walls of violence, walls of greed, walls of ignorance, this Body shaped in love will go to them and break all barriers with love. Until all God’s children, every being on this planet, is part of this transformed Body of God’s love.

What chance do even the gates of hell have against that onslaught of love? Or the gates of death or fear? What systems, what rooted prejudice, what depressing litany of the world’s grief and evil could prevail against such love?

So, dear family of God: let’s not be conformed to this age, but be transformed together by God’s grace.

Let us do justly now, together. Love mercy now, together. Walk humbly with our God now, together. Transformed together, with the Spirit’s grace, we will do what God needs done. And not just in this Body here at Mount Olive, but the far more challenging Body of Christ of which we are a part across this planet. Even the parts that make us disgusted and angry. Paul says we can’t discard them. Christ has put us all together.

And through God’s grace, it is this transformed Body that will bring God’s healing and life to the world. And nothing will be able to stop the love of God this Body incarnates.

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

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[1] Rabbi Rami Shapiro, paraphrase and trope on a portion of the Pirke Avot (Sayings of the Fathers, Talmud); from Wisdom of the Jewish Sages: A Modern Reading of the Pirke Avot (Bell Tower, 1993)

There are no insiders or outsiders in God’s love, and through God’s grace, your heart, like Jesus’ heart, can be changed to bear the fruit of such love in your own life.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 20 A
Texts: Matthew 15:10-28 (adding in vv. 1-9); Isaiah 56:1, 6-8

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

“No outsiders!” We heard our brother Bruce powerfully proclaim that here in July.

In God’s love and welcome no one is an outsider. And then today’s readings are all about insiders and outsiders again. The Pharisees criticize the disciples for omitting a ritual handwashing before eating. This isn’t your mother’s admonition to wash up. This is a ritual washing again of clean hands right before the meal. The disciples didn’t do it, making them outsiders.

Jesus then accuses the Pharisees of breaking the fourth commandment by vowing an offering to God and so refusing to support their parents financially because that vow is binding. The Pharisees are acting outside the covenant, Jesus implies.

And then Jesus uses a terrible racial epithet toward a foreign woman asking for help and says he came only for the insiders, the covenant people of Israel.

All of these insider-outsider convictions come from rules that someone has or has made, rules that are important to the one upholding them. Less so to others.

But before we glibly criticize the Pharisees for their obsession with silly rules, let me take a moment to defend rules.

Rules help us keep good order and make wise decisions. Good rules can create a healthy, flourishing society, rules can guide when confusions come. Orthodox Jews I know don’t regard this ritual handwashing as ridiculous or onerous. It’s a sign of their covenant with God, their belonging, washing in thanks for God’s goodness.

Over the years I’ve developed 38 rules for being a faithful pastor and another 20 more for my leading of worship, rules that are embedded in my heart and life. These rules help shape my heart to be like Christ’s. They are life-giving and have guided me all these years. I teach them to each vicar and encourage them to find their own.

Here at Mount Olive, we’ve got many patterns, practices, that we cherish and that give us life in our worship, from gestures and postures to how we sing (including why we always sing all stanzas). Without them our worship would not be the life-giving blessing it is. We would be diminished in our ability to meet the Triune God here together. And yet, some of our fellow Lutherans might say that a lot of things we do are nonsensical, overly complicated, and completely unnecessary. When they’re not your rules, you often misunderstand and criticize unfairly.

So we’re not against rules. But Jesus says today that what is more important is the heart behind those rules. The heart those rules are supposed to shape. And if the rules take over the decision-making to the detriment of the heart, that’s when you have problems. That’s when insiders and outsiders start to appear.

So, Jesus’ harsh words are jarring because Jesus seems to contradict himself.

The last two times I’ve preached on these texts here I’ve taken a lot of time dealing with Jesus’ words and why they’re so hard to hear. We don’t need to go through all that here again today. But the important thing is that we can’t whitewash his racial slur in hopes of defending Jesus. The very heart Jesus gave you and me, the love he calls us to, recoils at these words.

But today let’s look at how it all ends, and what changes in Jesus. Because by the end, Jesus is fully on the “no outsiders” bandwagon and never leaves. We should understand why.

But notice: signs of God’s open arms were there before this moment.

We just heard from Isaiah that foreigners would be welcome to God’s holy mountain, that God would make them joyful in God’s house of prayer. No outsiders even in the Temple. And Jesus knew Isaiah well.

And while both Matthew and Mark’s gospels make this moment with the Canaanite woman a turning point for Jesus, in Matthew’s Gospel the doors are cracking open before this.

Magi, foreign astrologers, came to the infant Jesus and worshipped. By this point, Jesus has already driven a legion of demons out of two foreigners into a herd of pigs in Gentile territory and healed the slave of a Roman centurion, a symbol of the hated oppressors. So it’s hard to understand his reluctance here.

What is absolutely easy to understand, however, is that the bravery of this unnamed woman changes Jesus. The disciples wanted to drive her out, Jesus says he’s not for her, only for Israel. Then Matthew says, “but she came.” She persisted. She plowed through the crowd and came right up to Jesus. She asked what she needed from him, from God.

And she changed Jesus.

Or, perhaps more accurately, she reminded Jesus of his own words about the Pharisees and the heart. That he said his ministry isn’t about the rules, about who’s insider and who’s outsider. That what matters comes from the heart, not what goes into the body. Not the external things. That we are truly known by what our hearts produce in us.

And in this woman’s powerful trust in Jesus to have a good heart, Jesus’ heart changes. Whatever he meant by saying he was only for Jewish people, that’s gone. He praises her faith, her trust, heals her daughter, and from here on out there are no insiders or outsiders for this Messiah, only beloved children.

And, astonishingly, that means our hearts don’t have to be permanently one way, either.

Your heart can be changed.

If your heart carries implicit biases, prejudices, if you hold tightly to your opinions and to being right, if you value rules over people, doctrine over love, getting it right over lifting up your neighbor, all is not lost. Even if your heart generates the things Jesus warns about – evil intentions, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander – even then, your heart can be changed.

Your heart can be changed by the Holy Spirit to produce a whole different set of fruits, the ones Paul proclaims to the Galatians: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. If the Son of God needed to learn things, to have his heart changed, there’s hope for you and me.

So let that be your prayer.

That the God whose love, whose heart, broke at the cross for the whole universe but who, as one of us, had that heart shaped and changed at times, might so do the same to you.

It might be through persistent people like this woman, who don’t back down from your exclusion, who love you enough to challenge you. Jesus would advise you to listen, take them seriously. They mightuse your own words of love and faith to call you to change your words and actions inconsistent with your love.

But be of good cheer. There are no insiders or outsiders, so you also are beloved and in God’s embrace. And as the Triune God changes your heart through the Spirit you will be witnesses to that same love by the fruits that come from your new heart. And as with this woman’s love, yours will change everything.

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