sermon

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

Doubtful Witness

Pastor Joseph G. Crippen
Texts (from the daily lectionary for today): Isaiah 60:17-22; John 20:24-29

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

It’s my turn now.

Last Wednesday our vicar described the challenge that the texts assigned in the weekly lectionary gave him. It seemed like a vision of God – God calling God’s people worthless, for example – that was inconsistent with the witness of Scripture and of his own understanding of God.

The texts assigned for today challenge in the other direction. Isaiah brings light and joy and hope to people who have experienced exile. Verse after verse is wonder: violence will no longer exist, devastation and destruction are gone. The days of mourning are ended, and all people, all, will be righteous. Peace and Righteousness will be the rulers of the land.

So when is this going to happen? How can we hear this in a world where violence reigns, where our rulers abuse and hate and kill, and create and promote devastation and destruction. Mourning isn’t ended, people all over are dealing with grief over the suffering inflicted in our nation and world. And Peace and Righteousness aren’t in charge here.

At what point do we ask, “how can we trust this?

And the assigned Gospel isn’t a lot of help.

We jump from Lent to a week after Easter. Everyone’s seen Jesus alive except Thomas. They’re excited, filled with joy and wonder. But Thomas says, “I really need to see this to trust it.” After years of hoping in Jesus ended in such tragedy, he wasn’t ready to trust something he couldn’t see.

And here’s the hardest part of this Gospel: Jesus says: “blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to trust.” That’s the challenge. Trusting in God’s goodness, God’s healing of all things, God’s promises of peace and righteousness, when we can’t see them.

But notice this.

Jesus says, “Blessed are those who trust without seeing.” He doesn’t say “blessed are those who never doubt.”

Somewhere we got the message that having doubts was a sign of weakness, alack of faith. But if we look at all the people of faith in the Bible and in the years since, doubt seems to be a pretty regular companion.

So what if we embraced our doubt as a normal part of faith? What if instead of fearing doubt, or despising it in ourselves or others, we admitted it, were open about it? Some days we feel stronger in faith than in doubt. Other days it’s the other way around. Wouldn’t it be good to just accept that as our reality and live with it?

And that might be a help to more than just us.

If we could admit there were days we didn’t feel secure in our faith, days we had more questions than answers, what kind of witness might that be for others? Mother Theresa’s lifelong doubts and struggles with faith were revealed after she died, and I, for one, was very glad to hear of them. If the great saints can admit their doubts, it gives the rest of us room to breathe as well.

We are those blessed Jesus talks about who have not seen and yet trust in God. In God’s love. In God’s healing of this world. Even though we have doubts and struggles with that trust every day.

Could we share this with others who don’t trust that God’s love is for them, that God is working in this world for good? Those who want to trust but don’t know how? Or who struggle for answers to the pain and suffering of life and don’t see how God could be real?

That’s what we can share. Our faith. Our doubts. It’s what we know.

Because even in our deepest doubts we have found that God comes to us with life and grace and resurrection. Even when we felt most lost the risen Christ has reached out and found us. Even when we look at the world and despair at it being healed, we have seen God’s hand working and bringing life, signs of Isaiah’s promises.

And wouldn’t that be something to share? To say to someone who has more questions than answers not that we have all the answers, but rather that we’ve been found by the One who is the Answer, who we trust to truly give us and the world life, now and forever. We could do this – so that they too might find life in Jesus. Doubts and all.

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

An encounter with Jesus changes our lives and sends us out to serve others and tell everyone about him.

Vicar Erik C. Nelson
March 15, 2026
Texts: Jeremiah 2:4-13; Ephesians 5:8-14; John 8:46-51

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

If I had the ability to add one person to our church’s calendar, that would be Eric Norelius. And his day would be today, March 15th, the anniversary of his death.

If you aren’t familiar with Eric Norelius, he was known for being one of the founders of the Augustana Synod, which is one of the predecessor bodies of the ELCA. He was a Swedish pastor who came over to the U.S. and worked hard to help connect Scandinavian immigrants together into a network of congregations.

His work still continues to this day, through the congregations he helped start. He helped start First Lutheran in Saint Paul and Augustana in Minneapolis, both of which themselves planted several other churches, including Messiah, San Pablo, and Calvary in our neighborhood.

He also helped start Gustavus Adolphus College in Saint Peter, a school still committed to training students for leadership and service.

But one of the biggest pieces of his legacy was the children’s home he started in Vasa, Minnesota, that then grew into what we now know as Lutheran Social Services, one of the largest social service networks in the United States.

Eric Norelius’s life was marked by first knowing Jesus as a friend, as a brother, knowing the love of Jesus deeply. And then he turned to go share that love with others in a way that makes a difference in people’s lives.

In our readings today, we hear this story that we’ve heard many, many times, about the man born blind who experiences healing. In this story, we hear a similar pattern.

The man encounters Jesus, who sends him to the pool of Siloam, and after his healing, he goes out to tell people about Jesus and about the real, tangible difference that Jesus made in his life.

One thing that sticks out to me in this story is that Jesus had just left the temple grounds at the end of the previous chapter, the highest point in the city. And then he encounters this blind man and sends him to the Pool of Siloam, the lowest place in the city and back. I imagine it wouldn’t be an easy journey for anyone, especially someone who can’t see the way.

So I imagine that on that journey through the city and down the steep valley, the man probably had people helping him, maybe looking at him weird for the mud on his eyes, but letting him know which way to go. This healing, like many of Jesus’s healings, wasn’t just by one person for one person. It was with the help of many people, in order to bring this one person into the community in a new way.

He went to the pool, washed, and then came back able to see. But instead of celebrating with him, the people he encountered on his return challenged him and said that his healing was the work of demons. But I love his response.

Instead of engaging too much with the theological and philosophical debates, he simply shares his experience. “He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see.” His life was changed by an encounter with Jesus, and he just wants to share it with others.

And I love the line that, after managing their theologizing and debating, he sees they’re obsessed with Jesus, and he just asks if they want to follow him too.

I see this as an example of a person living with a soft heart and open hands. Someone who refuses to harden his heart, someone who does not engage in the cynicism of the world, and instead knows the love of God, and that love of God flows out through him.

He’s someone who would just be discarded, according to the ways of the world. But in the reign of Christ, the people on the outside become the insiders.

We see this again in our Old Testament reading, with this very well-known line, “For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”

Of all these brothers who could have been chosen to be the king, God chose the youngest brother, David, who was out with the sheep. He probably was stinky. He was small and young. There was nothing about him that would say that he would be a great king for the nation.

But instead, he was, as we know, from his writing in the psalms and other places, he was sensitive. Psalm 51, which we’ll sing later, “Create in me a clean heart, O God,” is attributed to David. He had a soft heart. And this is the way that God works in the world, among God’s people. With soft hearts and open hands.

God calls us to be sensitive with one another and caring. And God wants us to serve together for the good of others.

This is something we see in the life of Eric Norelius and his legacy. He and his fellow immigrants were kept at a distance and not trusted. These Swedes with their strange language and unfamiliar liturgies were the outsiders in this land.

And yet they built these congregations and institutions for the good of their neighbors, for their city, for the state and the whole country. LSS isn’t only for Swedes. It’s for everyone. And think about how many millions of dollars of grocery and rental assistance have flowed through San Pablo, Augustana, Calvary, and Messiah in the last several months. Think about how many immigrants and marginalized Americans that LSS has helped in the last 150 years.

Today’s reading is a reminder that God does care about our lives. God cares about the ways we physically encounter the world and one another. And God’s hand of healing is always extended to us.

Thanks be to God.

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