sermon

Christmas isn’t the same as when we were little. And that’s a blessing, a joy, as we grow ever more deeply aware of and living in God’s coming into our broken world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Eve of the Nativity of Our Lord
Text: Luke 2:1-20

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

Christmas isn’t the same as when I was a child.

Tonight was magic: dinner at Grandpa and Grandma’s after the church Christmas program, opening presents after waiting what seemed like hours for the grownups to wash the dishes, the drive home, the falling asleep in anticipation. The magic was darkness and music, waiting, family, a paper bag with peanuts and candy and an orange from the church, driving home and looking at Christmas lights.

It’s not like that anymore. Grandma, who lovingly made the meals, is gone; so is Grandpa. Uncle Ray and my mother, who made the night so magical, are gone. The house belongs to someone else. I don’t know who has the dining room table, or the hutch I always sat in front of. Even driving and looking at lights doesn’t have the wonder it did as a child.

Christmas just isn’t the same.

And you know what? That’s a good thing.

The magical Christmas I knew as a child wasn’t big enough to deal with the world as it is.

My parents protected me from a hard world, where many suffered and struggled. Now, my mother organized a distribution of boxes of groceries for a Christmas feast those who were needy in our town, and I helped, putting frozen turkeys in every box in the hall, distributing the abundance of donated food into each as well. I’d ride along with our mother to deliver boxes to those who couldn’t come in person.

But I knew little about war, true poverty, oppression, racism. I didn’t understand my privilege I hold in so many ways that others do not enjoy. I knew little about the evils people do to each other. I didn’t yet know the grief of the death of loved ones. The idea that God needed to enter this broken, hurtful, killing world to change it, to heal it, to bring all humanity back into God’s love, wasn’t part of the magic then.

It is now. It’s not the joy I remember. It’s better joy. Deeper magic. As I got older, and saw more, and experienced joy and sorrow, understood more pain and suffering of my neighbor, I also grasped more and more the wonder of the holy and Triune God entering into our world to bring peace and healing and hope.

I wonder if remembering this day changed for those who were there.

Can you imagine the shepherds going back to their work after this? It was a night of being stunned, overwhelmed, excited, confused. But what about years later? Did they still hold this hope that God had come? Did they let it go over their hard lives? Were they changed?

Luke says Mary pondered all these things in her heart. Imagine just how her understanding changed in the first nine months. And there was more to come – a beautiful but ominous blessing by Simeon in the temple, an escape into Egypt. The life this child led, his ministry. And the horror of the cross, the wonder of Easter, the inrushing joy of Pentecost. Mary’s grasp of what her son’s birth meant changed dramatically as she walked her journey. And that changed her.

If Christmas is going to make any difference to you, it has to change, too.

So many of us have people we love who will not be with us at Christmas. We can’t go back in time. That magic can’t be recreated. And that’s true of all memories of Christmases past. If we bask in nostalgia and try to remake what we think we remember, we’ll just be disappointed and sad.

So if celebrating God coming to you as one of us will mean anything to you and your life, to this world and its pain, it needs to be big enough to handle your grief. Your loss. Your loneliness. Your confusion. Your fear. Your pain. It needs to be able to embrace all the pain and suffering of this world, and bring a healing hope to that. Christmas needs to be that big, or it needs to change.

Pondering this birth in your heart, as Mary did, letting it grow, deepen, sit with you over the years, will change Christmas for you. And that will change you as well.

Because you’ll learn what God’s coming really means.

You’ll remember this baby was threatened from the beginning, and, after teaching of God’s love, healing, drawing people into God’s reign, was executed. God’s coming as a vulnerable child became God-with-us vulnerably offering his life. Embrace this baby tonight and remember to touch the wounded hands and side, and you won’t be the same. You’ll learn God’s wounded answer to the world’s suffering and pain is hope and life for all.

And you’ll remember when this baby was grown, he said that you, and I, and all God’s children, were bearers of God in this world. That God’s Spirit that filled him would be in you, and me. So that we could bear the same vulnerable love into a world of pain and sadness and oppression and violence, and make a difference, even in our small circles. Your grace to that grieving person this Christmas is God’s grace. Your acting in justice and mercy in your life and your voting and your care for your neighbor is God acting in this world for healing.

When you remember that each year as you walk your journey, Christmas will change.

And with God’s grace, you’ll be changed to even more deeply recognize the need for God to come to this world in our human body, including your human body and mine. With God’s grace, you’ll be changed to appreciate more and more how God’s coming actually can bring peace to you and to a world longing so deeply for it. With God’s grace, you’ll rejoice more and more with each passing year that God continues to work in you and me and so many, and we can see it sometimes, feel it, know it.

Christmas just isn’t the same as it used to be. But neither are you. And neither am I. Thank God for that. Thank God for coming to us in this child. And thank God for coming in you and me and all God’s children, so we can embrace God as God really is, be God’s love even as we receive God’s love, and be the miracle, the magic, of God’s coming wherever we are.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

When the Triune God enters the world to bring healing and life, it’s inconvenient, it’s unexpected, it looks foolishly weak, it stirs up our lives. But it is still God with us, and it is our life.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fourth Sunday of Advent, year A
Text: Matthew 1:18-25

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

Be careful what you pray for. You might get it.

Each week in Advent we’ve prayed for God to stir up things (God’s power, our hearts, our wills), and come to us, that, as we prayed today, we might be freed from the sin that hinders our trust, or, as we prayed another day, that we might walk in God’s way, the way of God’s healing.

But what if God answers our prayer? Are you ready for that? For God to be with us? With you?

God’s coming inconveniently changes lives. It’s unexpected. Looks weak. And depends on us.

We want God to be the Great Fixer, cutting through all red tape and making things right. We may not admit it, but part of that hope is that we don’t have to do anything to make a difference, we’re off the hook.

Unfortunately, God’s plan is very different. God looks at the pain and suffering in this world and says, “I need to be with them.” But not as the Great Wizard who instantly forces things into different shapes and realities. God’s way is to come as one of us, in this baby Joseph’s trying to understand today, who is God’s Christ. And in each of us, God’s children, so each of us is God’s Christ, God’s anointed, God’s Messiah in the world.

Remember that when you pray God to come and stir up things. The first thing God stirs up is your life.

God’s coming turned Joseph’s life upside down.

We don’t know if the everyday working person in Israel had a lot of time to hope for Messiah, or if Joseph prayed with that expectation. Whatever he wanted, though, was lost once Mary got pregnant. Hope for a settled life with this woman to whom he was betrothed. Hope for a firstborn of his own, maybe a son to teach his livelihood. Mary’s announcement utterly changed Joseph’s life.

First he had to trust that this baby came from God, not from a neighbor. But he also now faced all the challenges of being a father, on top of fleeing from political persecution to save the baby’s life. This baby was inconvenient, unexpected, weak, dependent upon Joseph’s skill and energy and effort. God’s plan was going nowhere without Joseph’s life.

We could say the same about our own lives.

Whether or not we like it, like Joseph, we are faced with the reality of God’s coming being exceedingly inconvenient, unexpected, weak, and dependent upon us.

We’d rather God didn’t involve us. The problems we face just in our own lives, let alone the horrors that the world endures, are often daunting beyond our ability to grasp. We wake up in the night and realize our worry again. We see the news and fret, get angry, feel despair.

But when we say, “Stir up things, God, come and be with us,” God says, “I am. In you. You have my Spirit.” And we realize our lives are God’s answer, God’s stirring, God’s healing.

And we rarely have God’s view of the big picture.

If Joseph could have seen the whole story of this baby, from birth to life to teaching to healing to the cross to the resurrection and ascension, maybe he’d have a perspective of hope and expectation.

But like us, all he could see was what changed that day. That moment. His life was now on a different path, a harder path, one he probably didn’t want, certainly didn’t expect. A journey he could not see the ending of. And that sounds familiar to us when we hear God calling.

But here is why we pray in Advent, “Stir things up, God.”

Here’s why we hope, why we say, “Come to us, O God.” Because we know we want God to be with us.

Yes, God’s coming is often inconvenient, and unexpected, and we are weak and dependent. We don’t often know how we can help or even if we want to.

But we know the Spirit of God in our hearts, and we know the love of God in our lives. We know the grace of being forgiven and restored. We know the comfort of being guided on our path, and having our eyes opened to ways we can be God’s Christ. We know the joy of God’s community of faith, where we meet God in each other.

And we’ve seen God’s plan actually working. Unlike Joseph, we can see how important he was. We can see countless followers of Christ Jesus the same way, living as Christ over the centuries. We can see God brought healing and life through them. We don’t always see the inconvenience it caused them, or the suffering, or the fear they weren’t enough. But we know they felt it, since we do.

And like us, they knew God was with them. They lived, as we do, in that hope.

God is with us. That’s the promise. That’s the hope.

You and I are the coming of Christ in this world for our time, along with billions more. That will mean changed habits, challenging moments, fearful days. We might, like Joseph, wish for a simpler, calmer life, where God just took care of things and we lived as we wanted to.

But you don’t always get what you think you want. The grace is you always get what you really want.

You get God, who comes. You get the joy of living in God’s love with each other and with the world, filled with God’s Spirit, never alone. You get the hope of God’s healing coming to the world, even through you.

Compared to that, what’s a little inconvenience, a little stirring up, a little change? Or even a lot? God has heard your prayer, and is come. In you, in me, in Christ throughout the world, God will heal all things.

That is a prayer worth praying.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

God’s Spirit is the gift to help you turn toward God’s path of life and hope, and stay in it.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Second Sunday of Advent, year A
Texts: Matthew 3:1-12; Isaiah 11:1-10

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

We hiked a lot in state and national parks last summer.

There were wonders around every twist of the path. But every path is well marked and maintained, so it rarely feels like exploring. Even where there are forks in the path, there are usually signs.

But a couple times there were uncertain places, which was fun and also a bit concerning. The trail seemingly petered out in a meadow. The forest looked like it had dozens of possible paths. A couple times I walked for about ten minutes and realized I had to backtrack.

We weren’t going to really get lost in a state park, and there was little danger to taking a wrong turn even if we did. Still, if someone at those turning points could’ve kindly pointed the way, that would have been a blessing.

Imagine that your life is a journey.

Some days the path is well-marked, and all is well. Some days you don’t know where to turn, what attitude to choose, what action or inaction to take. And unlike the park systems, if you take a bad turn in life, it could end up as a real problem.

That little activity might, because of your genetic makeup, end up being an addiction in ten years. That minor rift in a relationship could widen over time until you’re so far apart you can’t see a path back. That small unkindness to someone could develop into patterns of cruelty. That slight resistance to being changed could become full-blown, harmful rigidity.

Wouldn’t it be good to have someone who could give you counsel, share wisdom about the path ahead? Who could accurately predict the outcome of what seems like a small decision, one that over time you might regret? Wouldn’t it be a blessing if someone said, “Turn around – you’re going the wrong way”?

That’s John the Baptist.

He shows up once again in Advent crying “repent, for God’s reign is near.” “Turn around, God is coming to you and you’re going the wrong way.” At our best, we feel challenged by John, perhaps shamed, worried, but we want to turn our lives. At our worst, we’re annoyed at his strident, threatening tone that gets on our nerves.

But John is your great gift. He’s the one you need on your life journey. He’s the one saying, “Go to the right at the next tree – it’s a better road.” Saying, “repair that breach in your relationship before you’re so far away you can’t even see them.” Saying, “if that becomes a pattern, a habit, you’ll deeply regret it. And people will be hurt.”

John’s as blunt as a rock, socially challenged, and unaware of the niceties of language. But he’s your life-saver. He will always tell you the truth you need to welcome God with you.

So there is always hope in his message.

John’s words sound like permanent judgment. They’re not.

He calls these leaders children of snakes, because he’s convinced of their hypocrisy. He believes they’ve come to to condemn him, or criticize him, not to listen and perhaps be turned toward God. They’re walking a path that leads to death and separation from God’s love, John believes.

But there is hope for them, and for all who hear John. “Bear fruit worthy of repentance,” he says to them. Even if you’re a hypocrite, there’s hope: just turn around. Go on the path of God. And that will show in your behavior, your words, your living, your loving. Your fruit. There is hope for all: fruit for healing is found in turning to God’s way.

The path of turning bears the fruit of God’s justice and mercy.

Of love of God and love of neighbor. The fruit of giving away excess so all have God’s abundance. Of putting neighbors’ needs above your own. The fruit of non-violence, as Isaiah proclaimed last week, changing our weapons – physical, emotional, or verbal – into life-nurturing tools.

When God reigns in Christ, Isaiah says today, the fruit is that the wolf will take a nap with the lamb, alongside the leopard and baby goat. The basic nature of God’s creatures will be transformed. Predators will be changed to eat differently. The bear will eat grass next to the cow. The lion will belly up to the manger with the ox and snack on straw.

As unimaginable as such scenarios are, the prophet says that’s how it will be for people as well. That’s the fruit. No one will hurt or destroy in God’s reign, Isaiah says, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of God. Everyone will be turned onto the path of love and peace and mercy and grace, and be changed.

Such transformation, such repentance will be hard. And that’s John’s other blessing.

John says he’s not enough. His call to repentance, and baptizing people in the water as a sign they’re turning their lives around, isn’t enough. But there is One coming who will baptize them with the Spirit and with fire. What we really need.

You’ll need God’s Spirit to find the right path, have the courage to take it, and the strength to keep on it. And fire to keep you warm and passionate for the new way. And that’s exactly what God-with-us, Jesus, gives you.

Which is why the Church did the absolutely audacious thing that it did.

The Church born of the Spirit and fire at Pentecost claimed the blessings Isaiah promised to the Messiah.

We said the Spirit of God that was upon the shoot from Jesse’s tree who came to bring healing to all, belongs to all baptized into the name of God, in water, the Spirit, and fire.

I have laid hands on more heads than I can count and prayed Isaiah’s words, “Pour out your Holy Spirit, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.” I have said in that prayer, “as with Jesus, so with this child. So with these confirmands. So with these people of God in this place.” Every young person in this room at their baptism, every confirmand, every one of you, have had this prayer prayed over you as if you were the Messiah, God’s Christ, because you are.

And that Spirit will turn you and guide you on God’s path as God’s Christ.

The Spirit of wisdom and understanding.
Wisdom to discern what’s at stake in your decisions and actions, to see paths of hope and healing and take them. And understanding, to see the point of view of another, to feel their pain and suffering, to grasp your place in the world as one of many beloved, not over anyone.

The Spirit of counsel and might.
Counsel so we can advise each other at crossroads, saying, “turn this way,” to each other and to the greater world. And the Spirit’s power, never power over, but rather empowerment, lifting your heart in courage to endure the challenges on God’s path.

The Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD.
Knowledge to grow and discover and learn, alongside all God’s children, tempered with the fear of God that tells you just because you know how to do something doesn’t mean you should.

John shows there’s a path to life and healing in God’s reign.

And a path to death and destruction away from it. And he says, “Turn toward God’s path, always.”

And he promises the Spirit of God is coming – has come – to empower and guide your turning, your choices, your actions, your life. To give you all the courage you need not only to choose the right path whenever it opens up, but to walk it and stay the course. And even to help the rest of us find our way, for your healing and the healing of the world.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

We are the second coming of Christ. It’s time to wake up and live that way.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The First Sunday of Advent, year A
Texts: Isaiah 2:1-5; Romans 13:11-14 (adding 8-10); Matthew 24:36-44

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 time we stopped waiting for Christ and started living as Christ.

At this entrance to the Church Year, we always hear words of Jesus calling us to be ready, even in the middle of the night, for Christ’s return. Jesus says today, I’m coming like a thief in the night (hardly a warm image). In the other two lectionary years, Jesus also says stay awake and read the signs in the earth and skies. I’m coming unexpectedly.

Advent, we say, is a time of practicing waiting for that unexpected time, that coming. “Come, Lord Jesus,” we pray.

But we’re past any time for waiting. Christ has already returned. The Second Coming is already here. And it’s you and me and all who bear Christ’s name.

Paul says that it’s time to live that way.

Today he sums that life up for us: “Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. . . . Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.”

And now is the time to live that way, Paul says. There’s no waiting. Now is the day, so live in the light. Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, he says, and live in love, now. Rejoice with those who rejoice, now. Weep with those who weep, now. Show hospitality to strangers, now. Wake up and live as the Christ you are, now.

This profoundly changes our Advent. And it’s not just Paul who does.

Advent means “coming.” If we truly heard the Advent Gospels we’d never think that meant waiting for Christ to come again. Because in the next two weeks John the Baptist is going to show up as he always does and call us to repentance and newness of life. He says that in Jesus the reign of God is already here.

That means our Advent prayer needs to be: come, Lord Jesus, in us. Right now. Cover us with yourself, your life, your love. Fill us with your Spirit. So that we can be the coming of Christ right now. Each of us one day will run out of days to serve in this life and will move to the life to come. But right now it’s daytime. Christ is already here. What are we waiting for?

Now, listen to Isaiah again and ask the same question.

“In days to come,” the prophet says, God’s mountain will be lifted up and all people will see it, flock to it. And God will teach all people the way of God’s reign. And everyone will convert their weapons of war into farming implements. They’ll stop making death and start growing life. They’ll stop teaching their children to fight and kill and start teaching them to nurture and love. All will walk in God’s light.

Well, these are those days to come. And you are God’s Christ, anointed to bear God’s mercy into your world. Why would you or I or anyone hear of swords being beaten into plowshares and say, “well, hopefully, some day.” Why do we persist in hearing everything Jesus teaches and saying, “wouldn’t that be nice? But it’s not realistic right now. Some day.”

There’s no “some day,” Paul says. It’s day right now. Even if no one else lives this way, he tells his Romans, you are to live peaceably with all. With everyone.

What are we waiting for? Jesus to return in the clouds and make peace, destroy weapons for us? He’s said that’s not how he operates. God-with-us comes to people and changes them from within, and so changes the world.

But we seem to always hope and wait for a different way of God.

Christians have killed more people in world history than any other group you can name. We’ve spent too much time waiting for Christ instead of being Christ.

The first disciples began the problem. After Jesus rose, they completely misunderstood the cross. They asked Jesus if now he was going to drive out the Romans, lead the rebellion, restore Israel. No, Jesus told them. They would be filled with the Spirit to go as Christ to all the world, vulnerable and loving witnesses. That’s the plan.

Why would we expect Jesus to do anything different now or in some future return? Jesus promised to return, and has. For 2,000 years people have been made into Christ and sent into the world to make peace. To bring mercy and love and grace. To destroy swords and guns, and end violence by living non-violent, passionate lives of peacemakers and love-bringers.

When the Church obsesses over a superhero Christ sailing in on the clouds to fix everything that we can’t be bothered to fix or change or heal, we act exactly as Christ and Paul tell us not to. We become children of the night, seeking power and control. We don’t see our personal lives as relevant to God’s plan of healing all things, and resist change. We start trying to dominate the world and protect our institutions instead of being a little yeast in a large batch of flour, a tiny seed in a massive field. And evil is done, again and again.

Let this be your Advent: pray, “Come to this world, Lord Jesus, in me.”

Night is over, and it’s the day. While you have breath, be the coming of Christ you are meant to be. When you pray “Come, Lord Jesus” that way, things will change.

Because when you and I and all who carry the name of Christ start living as Christ, putting on the Lord Jesus, draping ourselves with love and compassion and patience and hope and making peace in our hearts, in our families, in our world, then Isaiah’s vision would happen now. War would be over. Violence in our families would be done. Attacks in our streets would be a thing of the past. People of faith hating those who disagree with them would be ancient history. Hunger and poverty and oppression all would disappear. All this, Christ says, could be our world right now.

Wake up. It’s already morning, and you are what you’ve been waiting for. Now live it, with the Spirit’s grace, for the sake of all things. And for your sake, too.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen