sermon

The Triune God, who lives in a relationship of love within God’s life, invites you and the whole creation into that relationship, promising to keep teaching and guiding and opening up new paths for a life of love and healing of all things.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Holy Trinity, year C
Text: John 16:12-15

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

Nearly 2,000 years ago, Jesus told his followers that he “still had many things to say” to them, but they weren’t ready.

He promised that the Holy Spirit would continue to be with them and guide them into whatever truth they would need whenever they would need it. Or be ready for it.

Instead of expecting these new things, starting nearly 2,000 years ago, Jesus’ followers began a pattern of trying to lock down for all time things they knew about the Christian faith. They developed the canon of the New Testament, choosing books and letters that were achieving nearly universal use among the congregations of Christians. That was and is a blessing. But it also created a line between “official” Scripture and writings that didn’t make the cut. If Christ was still trying to say new things to the Church, those new things weren’t going to make it into the Bible.

And in the first few centuries, they developed creeds, statements of faith.

These definitively stated Church teaching, mostly about the nature of the Triune God and the death and resurrection of Christ. These creeds are still a blessing to us, truths the Church has cherished and passed on for millennia.

But they also can inhibit believers from hearing new things Christ might want to teach the Church through the guidance of the Spirit. In the first place, they say nothing concerning the teachings of Jesus, the heart of his ministry. Never mind future new things, they don’t affirm what Christ says in Scripture. Jesus didn’t seem to care much that we understand his divine and human natures, but he definitely wanted us to be filled with the Spirit and love our neighbors, our enemies, and to offer our lives to God. Our creeds ignore that completely.

And worse, if you were among those who didn’t get your views in the creeds, suddenly you were a heretic, when before you simply had a disagreement with others about God’s nature. The Church could now say anyone who doesn’t agree with everything here is outside, not inside.

Where, in such statements of faith, is there room for Christ to teach us new things, things that perhaps the Church wasn’t ready for in the 4th century but might be ready now? Are there even openings for the Spirit to guide and lead us, if we proclaim we know everything we need to know?

On this feast day celebrating the Holy Trinity, let’s seriously ask those questions.

This day, on the calendar since the 15th century, began much earlier as an attempt to reinforce the insider/outsider boundary once again. Believe these things about the Triune God, this day said, or you’re not a true Christian. Now, not a single Christian in history ever has understood a fraction of the truth about the Triune God’s nature. Even those at Nicaea couldn’t know for certain they were right, they just won the votes. Using this day as a way to weed out the false Christians is a pretty bad idea.

Thank God for Scripture. Just when you think you’ve got the truth about God in a box and you can see who’s in and who’s out by whether they like your box, the Scriptures happily take a hammer to the box and say, “Well, it’s more complicated than you think.”

Whatever you and I say about the Triune God’s nature, whatever our beloved, ancient creeds say, we all stand down at the words of our risen Lord and Savior: “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.”

Christ Jesus says the box is open, the book is never closed, and the understanding of faith will continue to grow and expand. That’s the joy to celebrate on this feast of the Holy Trinity.

We understand that God is Triune from the teachings of Jesus.

How God is Trinity, how it all works, Jesus couldn’t care less if we understand that. But that you and I can connect with the Triune God in all three Persons, Jesus deeply wants you to trust that and rejoice in that.

Jesus taught us that we have complete access to God in all three Persons of the Trinity. We can pray to the One Jesus called Father with complete confidence and joy, trusting we are heard and loved. And we have access to the Trinity through our brother Christ Jesus who leads and guides us on our path of life and promises to always be with us. And Jesus taught us that the Holy Spirit is our deepest access to the Trinity, living in you and me, giving birth to faith, filling us with fire and love, guiding, teaching, comforting, reminding.

Jesus also invites us to live, abide in the mystery of a Triune God, not to understand it.

Jesus said repeatedly that he and the Father were one, abided in and with each other, and that the Spirit also abided with both of them. God exists as loving, abiding relationship, a dance of love within God’s own life.

And the Son of God proclaims this dance of God’s life is an open dance, a relationship of love and grace the Triune God wants to welcome you and all creation into, to live in God’s life, live in God’s love, abide in God’s loving, changing, alive, active, growing relationship.

That’s why we can’t put God in a box. The Triune God still has many things to say to you and me and the Church and the world. And that teaching will happen as we live within God’s life together, in relationship with God and each other, blessed by the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, she will guide you into all truth.”

This is one of Christ’s greatest gifts to the Church, to be able to expect new communication from the Triune God through the Spirit’s guidance, to be able to hope for new clarity, new direction, new love we need to bear, new paths as we continue to live in a challenging and suffering world.

What if you and I and the Church lived our lives expecting this? To have the joy that when we’re confused, or lost, or threatened, or afraid, or mistaken, or sinful, we can expect the Triune God to give us clarity, direction, hope, answers?

The box is open, the book is never closed, and our understanding of faith will continue to grow and expand. That’s a promise from the God who lives in a Triune relationship of love within God’s life and who today invites you and me and all creation to live in that same relationship within God and with each other, for the healing of this creation and the life of all God’s children.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

None of us know what is happening next in our discipleship, what callings and challenges are ahead, but we are known by the Triune God whose Spirit fills and empowers us all.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Day of Pentecost, year C
Texts: Acts 2:1-21; John 14:8-17, 25-27

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

Mary Magdalene had no idea. Neither did Andrew or Thomas or Joanna.

None of the one hundred and twenty believers gathered in Jerusalem knew what was going to happen as they woke up that morning.

Jesus had told them to wait in the city and they would receive power from the Holy Spirit.

But this? They had no idea they’d all be filled with God’s Spirit just like Jesus, and that because of them thousands would come to trust the new life God had made in Christ’s resurrection. They had no idea they had the ability to preach and teach and witness. None of them had the language skills to speak clearly to at least fifteen different language groups. And none of them had any idea what would be asked of them in the years to come, what being a disciple of Christ would cost them, what they would be called to do, even how they were going to learn how to do it.

None of these four who are affirming their faith in the Triune God and committing their lives to serving God have any idea, either.

It may not be wise to ask people in their teen years to affirm the promises made at their baptism, to affirm that they share the faith of the Christian Church, and to promise to be active and engaged in Christian community and in service to God’s justice and peace. Many adult Christians might struggle with that. But, wise or not, we will ask these four wonderful young people to do just that today.

And four years of study, of walking with mentors and family, of being prayed for by those who love them, doesn’t mean these four know what it will mean for them to be a disciple of Christ. They don’t know if they’ve got the skills, language or otherwise, to serve God; they don’t know what that service will look like. Careers are far in the future, opportunities yet to come to witness by their love and actions are still unknown. None of these four know what being Christ’s disciple will ask of them in the years to come, what it will cost, what they will be called to do, even how to learn how to do it.

You want to know the truth? Most of us here don’t know any of that, either.

But none of you here need to be afraid of not knowing these things.

Today, Jesus repeats his assurance that, within the mystery of God, he, the Son, is deeply connected to God the Father, there is a life that lives between the two. But Jesus tells a deeper joy: there is another within God’s life, the Spirit of God, who also dwells with the Father and the Son, who will be sent to you. To me. To this world.

This Spirit actually already lives in you, gives your own spirit birth into God’s new life. And not just you four: everyone in this room, in this world. God’s Spirit knows you intimately: your life, your fears, your hopes, your dreams, your brokenness, your joys, your sadness.

And because the Spirit knows you, Jesus says she is your Advocate, who speaks on your behalf within God’s life. God’s Spirit is called alongside you, to walk with you, live in you, never leave you. God is as close to you as your own breath. Which is why Advocate is also translated Comforter. The one who embraces you, and me, and all God’s children, and breathes God’s words of love and grace to you.

It doesn’t matter what you don’t know about what’s next. You are deeply and wholly known.

But be ready for the fire, too.

All of you here today, not just you four, be ready: today we’re going to ask the Spirit to stir up in all of you. To inflame you, inspire you, fill you, and send you out to be God’s Christ in the world.

What that will mean for any one of you on any given day, you’ll receive from the Spirit when you need it. God’s Spirit will teach and remind you about the Way of Christ, love of God and neighbor, love of enemies, working for justice for all God’s children, so you’ll know the path to walk. The Spirit will keep you up to speed if you listen. And if you need gifts, you’ll get them. If you need guidance, direction, it’s yours. If you need courage, support, you have it.

Be ready for the Spirit’s fire. Listen to God’s voice speak in your heart and call you to whatever it is that is needed. However old or young you are. However gifted or ungifted you think you are. However weak or strong you believe yourself to be. Whatever doubt or concern any of you here have about your adequacy, your faith, your calling, your path, the Spirit’s fire is for all. Including you.

None of us know what’s ahead. But we are fully known. That’s the beautiful reality of Christian life.

In the Spirit, God has called you all to ventures that you cannot yet see the ending of, to walk paths you have not yet trodden, to go through perils you do not yet know.

But God’s Spirit fills you and knows you and walks with you and will give you the faith and trust and fire you need to go out with good courage, not knowing where you go, but only that God’s hand is leading you and God’s love supporting you in Christ our Lord.

Come, Holy Spirit. Fill these four. Fill all in this room. Fill your world with your comfort and courage and fire, until your new creation is completed in us and by us all through you. Amen

The Triune God now knows what it is to live as a human, and we know what it is to be God’s love in the world, for the life and wholeness of all.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Ascension of Our Lord
Texts: Acts 1:1-11; Luke 24:44-53, also adding Hebrews 4:14-15, Hebrews 9:24

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

What we celebrate today seems to be the last thing we want to celebrate.

Today, 40 days after Easter, Christ Jesus ascended from the earth, returning into the life of the Triune God, whatever that means in the life of God. But the immediate impact of this ascension was a sense of abandonment by those closest to Jesus. These women and men felt lost, gaped up at the sky thinking, “now what?”

Today we’re reeling from the slaughter of innocents in a Texas elementary school, the slaughter of innocents in a Buffalo grocery store, the slaughter of innocents at a church in Southern California, God’s beloved children of all ages and colors and backgrounds. We’re reeling from the constant barrage of such horrors in our nation, again and again and again and again. Celebrating the absence of a physical Christ Jesus in the world when we’re living with such repeated pain doesn’t feel comforting. We understand gaping up at the sky looking for God.

And we know that 90% of Americans want more controls on guns, and comprehensive background checks, that we’re being held hostage by politicians who repeatedly refuse to deal with this evil to preserve their power, who even proclaim the same messages of hate these shooters espouse in their killing. We also know that we hold responsibility for this world, this culture, and need to be continually engaged, to work for change.

But it would be good to know as well that God is with us. That God feels this pain. That somehow Jesus’ ascension isn’t a sign of God abandoning us to our brokenness and evil.

So let’s hear another perspective on Christ’s ascension.

The preacher whose sermon is called the letter to the Hebrews has this to say:

14 Since, then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession. 15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are. (Hebrews 4:14-15)

24 For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made by human hands, a mere copy of the true one, but he entered into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. (9:24)

Christ the High Priest is standing for us within God’s life, and that means this: because Christ Jesus is like us, was tested like us, knows our pain, our sorrow, our fear, can sympathize with our weaknesses, even while being at the same time the divine Son of God, Christ now has carried our truth into the Holy of Holies that is God’s life. In God’s Son, we have someone who knows us better than we know ourselves sharing that knowledge within God’s life.

That means the Triune God now understands us fully and truly.

In Christ Jesus, God-with-us, we know God better, have seen God’s face, know God’s love.

But now Christ is also Us-with-God, so the Triune God also knows us better, in ways God never could without taking on our flesh. Knows our fears and pains. Understands what it is for a mortal human being to see as we see tragedies and evil unfold, to experience as God’s children here do such grief and pain in a broken world, to know how it hurts to feel helpless to do anything. You and I and all God’s children are now known and understood by the Triune God as deeply as we can be.

God has not abandoned us at all. And now, knowing us all fully this way, God’s way of healing this world becomes much clearer, makes sense.

In Christ’s ascension, the Triune God now enters us to change this world.

As Christ returned to the life of God in a new way, Christ gave this promise, which is also a calling: you will be filled with power from on high, with the Spirit of God, so you can be witnesses to God’s love in the world.

As we face evil and horrors and unspeakable tragedy, as we look at a world threatened by hatred and violence against the most vulnerable, even as we sometimes despair that nothing can be done, the risen and ascended Christ says: I give you the Spirit’s power to be witnesses of God’s love. Witnesses in our words and actions, Spirit-filled, trying in whatever way we can to make this world more just and safe and whole for all God’s children.

The road of Ascension goes both ways, our lives witnessed and lived in the life of the Trinity, God’s life witnessed and lived in our lives. And in that beautiful reality, we can dare to hope for the healing of this world to finally begin.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

Do you want God to bring wholeness and health to you and the world? That’s all God in Christ is asking.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Sixth Sunday of Easter, year C
Text: John 5:1-9 (including v. 4, omitted in NRSV)

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

Thirty-eight years he lay by that pool.

Most of this man’s life was spent lying on a mat, surrounded by maybe hundreds of others, day after day, waiting for healing that never came. Four decades.

If he had hope once, it was long gone. So he didn’t answer Jesus’ question. Someone who could give him what he wanted stood before him and asked, “Do you want to be made well?” Literally, “do you want to be made sound, healthy, whole?”

It’s a simple question, one he’d have an answer for. Instead, he just named his problem: I don’t have anyone to help me when the water stirs, and by the time I’ve struggled over to the pool someone always gets in there first.

Jesus must have been tempted to say, “That’s not what I asked you.” But Jesus told him to stand up, pick up his mat, and walk.

When you wait years for something good to happen, hope to arise, restoration to come and it doesn’t, it’s hard to imagine it ever will.

For 530 years, since the arrival of European settlers on this continent, the lives and culture of those who lived here has been systematically destroyed, the consequences still crushing our indigenous siblings. Five centuries! For 400 years, since the beginning of the African slave trade, what we did to the lives and culture of those dragged here, abused, killed, sold against their will, has shaped a racist reality that abides in the core of our nations’ institutions, culture, and society, the consequences still crushing our neighbors. Four centuries!

Our community of faith here is full of people who join many in our country and long for those centuries of oppression and violence to be ended, for justice to come, people who hear the cries of our neighbors, feel deep anger and sadness at yet another killing, deep depression at the rise of totalitarian rule led by a white supremacist minority and fueled by right-wing Christianity.

But if Christ were standing here today saying, “Do you want this city, this nation, to be made sound and whole, to become healthy?” would we answer as this man did? Saying: “It’s so deeply engrained, and every time we see a step forward there are ten backward, and the polarization and rage in this country seem to be increasing and nothing ever gets better.”

But then Christ would say, “That’s not what I asked you.”

Can we answer Christ’s question?

Do we want this culture healed, this city made whole, this nation to become sound, where all live in justice and peace, with mercy for each other and care for this creation? God’s not asking whether we think it could ever happen. God’s asking, do you want it?

Too often people of good will who hear God’s call for justice in Scripture, whose hearts are shaped by Christ’s love, assume fixing the world is all on us. And if for years nothing seems to improve, what’s the point?

But justice and peace and mercy aren’t just God’s words in Scripture, they’re God’s full desire and intent for this creation. God promises to make this world new and whole and sound. It is God’s mission we are asked to join, not our mission to create and do.

And that’s very different. God in Christ is asking us, “do you want all this to be made sound and whole?” Because my hand is working on that.

And God came among us in Christ not just for the big picture, the whole world.

In Jesus, God’s care extended individually to the smallest child, to the most marginalized person, to all who felt lost or abandoned or wounded or oppressed or afraid or anxious. Jesus cared not just about the forest, we might say, but also the individual trees.

Which means God in Christ cares deeply for you, and asks, “Do you want to be made well? Sound, whole, healthy?”

And how many of us would answer like that man? Saying things like: “What I’m dealing with has been so long and it never really gets better and that’s the way it is. Or: My depression is too deep-seated. Or: This relationship is too frayed. Or: Spiritually I feel dry and alone. Or: My mental health always seems fragile.”

But that’s not what Christ asked you. The question is, do you want to be made well, sound, whole?

Can you answer Christ’s question?

It’s not a question of whether you hope that a specific illness or pain or struggle is completely taken away. We know often physical ailments aren’t fully healed, and mental and spiritual illness can last indefinitely. Even the apostle Paul long had a suffering that never was fully removed.

But the question is, do you want God’s hand in your life to bring you wholeness, peace, and soundness? Even if the outer circumstances don’t seem to change, do you want God to calm your heart, bring you hope, help you cope with whatever afflicts you or those you love?

Because so many witnesses of faith can tell you God comes to them in the Spirit and gives them hope and life in whatever situations they find themselves. They find wholeness in the broken pieces of their lives, soundness in the frayed and fragile places, health in the wounded places. God cares even for the smallest sparrow, Jesus, God-with-us, said. Do you want God to care for you like that?

Answering Christ’s question is enough to go on for today.

There’s work for you and me to do. God’s mission to serve, our lives to live. But for today, do you want to be made well? Do you want this city, this nation, this creation, to be made well?

If so, Good News. God is even now working in this world for the wholeness and health of all things, and you’ve even seen in you, in others, in this world, God’s hand bringing life. God is even now working in you for your wholeness and health, calming your heart and spirit with the news that you are beloved and nothing can separate you from God’s love.

The One who makes all things new wants to bring you and the world wholeness. Stand up, pick up your mat, and let’s walk together into that new future.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

God’s love in Christ is for all God’s children, no exceptions: will we remain witnesses of that love in our actions and life together?

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fifth Sunday of Easter, year C
Texts: Acts 11:1-18; John 13:31-35

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

At first, Peter didn’t fully grasp what Jesus was commanding.

When the disciples first heard “love as I have loved,” they didn’t know what it would mean. Their night of betrayal and denial, Jesus’ horrible death and amazing resurrection, the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, were all still to come.

Today we meet Peter after Easter, after Pentecost, and see what’s really at stake for him and the others in this command. Peter’s core beliefs about being a child of God, covenanted with God as God’s people, are now challenged. We 21st century Christians too often ignorantly dismiss this crisis as unimportant. It was anything but.

Remember, at this point, every disciple of Jesus was still Jewish.

These women and men believed that Jesus was God’s Anointed, God’s Messiah promised in their Scriptures, now risen from the dead, and that they had life in his Spirit.

But at their core they were still God’s chosen people, living under the covenant God made with their ancestors more than a thousand years before. They kept going to Temple, to synagogue, celebrated Sabbath, ate according to Jewish laws. Being followers of Christ’s Way didn’t stop them being Jewish. Being Jewish was how they’d always made sense of the world and God, and God’s relationship to them.

Now a Roman soldier and two Gentile slaves knock at Peter’s door, sent by a Roman centurion, Cornelius, saying their master was visited by God’s angel and told to go get Peter, who would give him and his whole household news of their salvation. They said God wanted Peter to go to a Gentile home, unlawful for faithful Jews, and proclaim Christ’s name.

Love as I love, Jesus said. Now the implications shatter Peter’s reality. Can God’s love in Christ extend beyond Judaism? he wondered. Is being circumcised, following Jewish food laws, practicing Jewish worship and community life, not necessarily a requirement to joining Christ’s Way? Is everything I hold dear about who I am and who God is something I can even let go?

At stake here was whether Peter and this new movement were still living in the way of Christ.

Without question God now included non-Jewish people in God’s love in Christ. Peter had a triple vision just before these men arrived, of animals God’s Word previously declared unclean. But in that vision God declared them all clean. Then God’s Spirit spoke directly to Peter when these men arrived and said not to make a distinction between them and him, where previously faithful Jews were taught they were completely distinct from Gentiles.

Now, Jesus said “love as I have loved.” So God’s new Way shouldn’t have been a complete surprise. Peter certainly knew that Jesus fed a group of thousands of Gentiles with some bread and fish just as he’d fed another group of thousands of Jewish people. That Jesus praised the faith of another Roman centurion while healing his slave. That Jesus listened to the plea of a Syrian woman, expanded his mission beyond Jewish people, and healed her daughter.

But the final proof for Peter was, after going to visit Cornelius and proclaiming Christ, the Holy Spirit poured out on all these non-Jewish people just as Peter and the others with him experienced at Pentecost. At that point, Peter realized he couldn’t hinder God in any way.

But here’s what was at stake: Peter and the others were sent by Jesus to represent God’s love in Christ in the world. If they refused to baptize Gentiles, or forced them to become Jews first, that didn’t change the fact that God’s love was already with these non-Jewish people. God’s Spirit already filled them. But it would mean this new Church no longer represented God’s love in Christ faithfully. God’s love would move forward and this new Church would no longer be relevant, no longer faithful, no longer apostles of God’s love in Christ.

So, is someone knocking at our door, sent by God, asking us to consider whether God is moving in a new direction?

What deeply held ways and beliefs is God’s new way calling us to face and reconsider?

How is God’s Spirit lifting up for us the evils of racist laws and systems and structures that force our siblings of color to prepare their children how to avoid being killed by police, that disempower millions of God’s children from living where they want and earning what is fair and right? What is God asking you, and me, and especially this community of faith here at Mount Olive, to let go of? To do? Should we be talking about reparations, and how would that look? Other things? How are we concretely, truly, loving all whose skin color is not white as Jesus loves them?

How is God’s Spirit lifting up for us the evils of prejudice based on gender identity, systems and laws that give rights to some of us that others don’t have? Laws that threaten our young people who don’t fit into the tight categories of gender our culture has normed, targeting them literally as fair game for assault and discrimination? Systems that marginalize any not identifying as male, whether through pay disparity or lack of opportunity? What is God asking you, and me, and especially this community of faith here at Mount Olive, to let go of? To do? How are we concretely, truly, loving all God’s children, whatever gender, as Jesus loves them?

How is God’s Spirit lifting up for us the evils of the genocide some of our ancestors inflicted on the peoples who lived here, so that now we’re all living on stolen land, even worshipping today on stolen land? What is God asking you, and me, and especially this community of faith here at Mount Olive to let go of? To do? How are we concretely, truly, loving our indigenous siblings as Jesus loves them?

The Scriptures are as clear to us as God was to Peter that day.

God’s love is on the side of those oppressed and marginalized, those crushed into generations of poverty, those who increasingly are even targeted by powerful political leaders in our country. God’s love is for all God’s children, whatever they believe or don’t believe, whatever they look like, however they understand themselves. God’s love in Christ is clearly for all, and ignores all categories we make.

The only question for Peter, for you, for me, for this community at Mount Olive is this: will we remain on the side of God’s love in Christ? Will we continue to call ourselves witnesses of the resurrection, bearers of God’s love in the world? God’s love for all is reaching out and picking up everyone God can find, not asking for ID or conformity or anything like that. Will we be left standing by the side of the road, watching as God’s love spreads without us, irrelevant to God’s mission in this world?

Love as I love is still Jesus’ command.

Your leaders here have already begun thinking about how following Christ’s love might call us to new paths at Mount Olive. This will take prayer and contemplation from all of us. It will take listening to God and to our siblings around us. It will have to lead to action.

So today, let us pray together. Let us come to this Meal of life that gives us love and grace and healing and ask Christ to make us his body and blood for the world. Let us listen, like Peter, to when God speaks, whether through the knock on the door, or the Spirit’s voice inside our hearts or through Scripture, or even a vision.

God’s love for all in Christ is absolute. May the God who loves us dearly and forever help us get on board, however God needs us to do it. For the sake of all God’s children. But also for our own sake, that we might remain faithfully God’s people in this world.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen