Mount Olive Lutheran Church

sermon

Right, Duty, Joy

In our weekly celebration of the Eucharist, we affirm that it is right, our duty and our joy to give thanks and praise to God.  The Samaritan man who is healed of his skin disease might have said the same thing if he had been asked why we went back to say thank you to Jesus. 

Vicar Lauren Mildahl 
Thanksgiving Day
Text: Luke 17:11-19 

God’s beloved, grace to you and peace in the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.  

It is right to give God thanks and praise! 

It is indeed right. 

Our duty. 

And our joy. 

That we should, at all times and in all places give thanks and praise to you, 

Almighty and merciful God, through our Savior Jesus Christ. 

If you have worshiped here or in another ELCA church, those words should sound pretty familiar.

They are some of the first words of the celebration of the Eucharist, which if you’re rusty on your Ancient Greek, means “Thanksgiving.”  So, it seemed like the best place to start, as we are gathered together today, on our national holiday of Thanksgiving, because it is a good reminder of how, for us, every time we celebrate the Eucharist, every Sunday is Thanksgiving. And how every time we celebrate the Eucharist, we proclaim that it is indeed right for us to give thanks to God. Not only right, it is our duty and it is our joy. Not just on Sundays, but at all times and in all places.  It is right.

And it struck me that the Samaritan man who was healed of his skin disease in our gospel reading, if he had been asked, “why did you go back to give thanks?” he might have answered with these same words. 

“It was right!” he might have said. Right to give thanks! After all, this is the story of Jesus miraculously making things right. The ten men in this story had been suffering from a torturous skin disease. We aren’t sure exactly what it was, but it is clear that it was a malady that was a painful and slow killer, which had separated them from their families, from their communities, maybe for years or even decades. So they had pleaded with Jesus, begging him from a distance, “Master, have mercy on us!”  Make things right!

And Jesus did.  Healing their bodies, yes, but also sending them to the priests to complete the necessary rituals of restoration, so that not only their health was restored, but so were their families, and so were their communities that had missed them. So that everything was made right. 

And so, “of course” the Samaritan might say, “of course I gave thanks!” Not just for the healing, but for the rightness, because he saw, for a moment, the world restored to wholeness, wholeness he never expected, wholeness that felt like God’s perfect and complete and abundant life.  So perfectly right.  And his part? To see it, to witness and recognize it, and rightfully, to give thanks for it.

“It was indeed right,” the Samaritan might say, “and it was my duty!” 

He felt it was not simply his responsibility, but the only thing he could do. And it wasn’t even what Jesus had told him to do. Jesus had told him to go to the priests, but the moment he saw his disease had been cured, he realized that he didn’t need the priests to be his bridge to God’s goodness. God was right there in front of him. What else could he do but his duty, and fall at the feet of the Great High Priest?  

“And it was my joy!” the Samaritan might say.

A joy so overwhelming, so abundant, so profound, it couldn’t be kept in. He shouted! He ran! He hurled himself toward Jesus.  Maybe he couldn’t decide if he should hug him or dance with him or just tackle him, but in the end all he could do was throw himself to the ground. Bowing prostrate at the feet of Jesus, with what I imagine was the biggest smile he had ever smiled – just radiating joy. 

What an experience!  It’s so enticing to imagine. 

But it’s something that most of the time we have to imagine. 

We don’t really get to experience anything like this on an everyday basis. Or, at least I don’t.  I can’t think of many moments when it was so obvious that God had acted, putting the world to right.  I think the moments probably happen all the time, but I just don’t notice, and maybe you don’t either. 

And I really hope you do have a moment, soon, when you see, you witness, you recognize God putting something to right, something you had given up hope on.  And that when you do see it, I hope that you can’t help but fall on your knees, grinning from ear to ear, shouting or maybe just whispering, a fervent thank you that bubbles up out of the sheer joy of it.

But even though we say that it is indeed right to give thanks at all times and in all places, we know that we can’t always maintain such intense, continual joyfulness that erupts in spontaneous thanksgiving.  Especially when instead we are overcome with all the ways the world isn’t right, all the ways it is broken and dying – how do we feel gratitude? When we are separated from our loved ones, when we are crying out to Jesus to have mercy – how can we give thanks?

And here’s the secret – we do it anyway.

And it’s why we return, Sunday after Sunday, to our own great thanksgiving.  That’s why we say the words every week.  That’s why in 1863, in the middle of the bloodiest war our country had ever experienced, when it seemed that nothing was right and no joy was to be found, President Lincoln declared a new national holiday – a Day of Thanksgiving.   

Because when we give thanks anyway, a funny thing happens.  It’s Joy! 

It can be so easy to fall into the trap of thinking that we have to feel the joy before we can really give thanks, that the only authentic kind of thanksgiving is the Samaritan’s spontaneous outburst – but the secret is that it also works the other way around. Joy produces thanksgiving – and thanksgiving produces joy. Our rituals of gratitude, when we take the time to notice and acknowledge the ways that God is working in the world – that produces joy.  

There is joy when we gather in the spirit of thanksgiving, whether we gather in our homes around tables packed with family or friends, or whether we come to God’s table, where everyone is invited. Where Jesus seeks out every single person, always and forever asking, where are the others? Wanting them at the table too. There is joy.

Thanksgiving produces joy!

Whether we pass around the plates of food that remind us to give thanks, our turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes and pie or whatever foods you will eat today, or whether we feast on the indescribable gift of God’s own body and blood, the bread and the wine that are our tangible signs of God’s surpassing grace. 

Thanksgiving produces joy, whether we are feeling happy or whether we are mourning all those that should be at our tables but won’t be, whether everything happens exactly as planned or whether everything is on fire, whether everything feels right or whether it feels broken beyond repair. 

Because God does have mercy on us. God sees what is broken, God acts to make it right, and God is doing it in all times and in all places – and when we take the time to notice, when we take the time to cultivate gratitude in our hearts, when we take the time to “Eucharist,” we enter in to God’s abundant love for us where there is peace and, you guessed it, joy. 

Cheesy and corny as it may be, I’m thankful for Thanksgiving. For our holiday today and for every time we gather at God’s table of grace.  I’m thankful for these rituals that open our eyes to the ways that God is putting the world right. And it is right that we respond with thanks and praise. It is indeed right, our duty, yes, and our joy. 

In the name of the Father, of the  ☩  Son, and of the Holy Spirit. 

Fearless

Don’t be afraid: your talents and abilities are needed and you are eternally loved.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 33 A
Texts: Matthew 25:14-30

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

So the third slave turned out to be right.

When given a share of money to care for in the master’s absence, he buried it. Because he was afraid. Afraid, as he said, that his master was a harsh man, and would take any profit from whatever hard work the slave put in.

But he had no idea how harsh. He didn’t commit any crime. He gave back every penny he received, in full. And the master threw him into the “outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

It’s a terrible story. And somehow you and I are supposed to learn something about God’s reign.

Can we make any sense of what Jesus is saying?

We could see it from a perspective that doesn’t make the returning master a stand in for the Son of God. There are interpretations from impoverished people that see Jesus as the third slave who refuses to go along with the capitalist oppressor.

But the context makes that hard to claim. Matthew 24 is a long discourse on the surprising, unexpected, and inevitable coming of the Son-of-Man at the end of time, ending with a parable about faithful slaves who are ready for their master’s return. These next three parables in chapter 25, with a bridegroom, a master, and a king, are told in that context, assuming they’re Christ. Let’s proceed with that assumption.

Some suggest Matthew added the judgment parts to these parables, that Jesus doesn’t act on them after Easter because he never said them. But there’s no way to prove that. No one recorded Jesus. So Jesus could have said these parables in their entirety, including judgment. Which means something happened that changed Jesus’ mind, that is, changed the mind of the Triune God. So, let’s proceed with that assumption, too.

And there is precedent for this in Scripture.

There are plenty of places in the Hebrew Bible where God is angry and wants to punish God’s people and decides not to. The best known is when God, in the wilderness, tells Moses the people of Israel have disobeyed too often and will be destroyed. Moses will become the new Abraham, the father of a new people. Moses tells God that would be a bad look, to take your people into the desert and kill them. And God relents.

So it’s possible that Jesus, as he got closer and closer to the danger against him, was angry and frustrated at his disciples’ mistakes, and maybe even their unwillingness to serve. The letter to the Hebrews says Jesus was tested exactly as we are, that’s how he is able to help us. Jesus could have considered punishing the unfaithful. We certainly would.

If that’s so, then Jesus did change his mind. We’ve been looking at these parables with an Easter lens, understanding them from the perspective of the risen Christ, who doesn’t act on these judgments. But there’s another point of view to consider, a different set of lenses, that could enlighten us as to what happened.

Go to the Mount of Olives, to a garden called Gethsemane.

Jesus, the Son of God, God-with-us, praying while his followers lie asleep, makes a critical decision. It wasn’t a foregone thing that he would choose what he called “the cup” before him. That is, to allow himself to be captured, tortured, and killed.

There is much mystery here for us. This conversation happens within the life of the Triune God, between Jesus the Son and the One he called Father, so this is fully a God decision to make. It was anguished, it was hard. But in the end, Jesus chooses a path. In the language of this parable, Jesus decides “I will go myself into the outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. I won’t send anyone there. I will bear the eternal love of God with which I created all things and let them kill me on the cross, and it will destroy all outer darkness, all hate, all evil, at its core.”

In the end the Son of God chooses to go the place of pain and suffering and death to transform the world. To open the reign of God by the love of God taking on all evil and breaking it.

So you can trust Christ with your life now and forever.

And this parable becomes like the others: a simple invitation to those whom Christ loves to follow. To live in God’s reign and continue bearing the love of the Triune God into all the places of pain and suffering and death.

To use your talents you’ve been given, your gifts, your wealth, your abilities, to make a difference in the world. This story is nothing more for you, no threats, no fear. Just a call to use your gifts that you’ve been given to be Christ in the world, and not bury them.

That includes your wealth. Today we’re pledging to each other what we will share for the ministry we’re doing together here at Mount Olive in 2024. We’re not pledging to the Vestry, or to the congregation as an institution. We’re saying to each other, “here’s what I will share so we can be Christ here, together.”

And it’s more than wealth. Talents were a unit of currency, but for us they are also gifts and abilities, and we also gladly share them.

There’s one more lovely thing.

This parable is one of Jesus’ patented hyperboles. One talent was about $500,000 of our money. So the first one got $2.5 million dollars to use. Jesus’ hearers couldn’t have imagined anyone with that wealth. Could you imagine being given a half a million dollars to care for and use for good? And that’s just one talent.

So if you think your talents, abilities, wealth, gifts, are far less valuable than others, listen again. You’re sitting on a fortune. You are central and critical to God’s work in this world. You might be the one person in the right place at the right time who makes a world changing difference to another person, or even beyond, as we share our ministry. And that’s priceless to God.

Don’t be afraid.

There is no outer darkness, no weeping and gnashing of teeth. That decision was made in Gethsemane. Christ Jesus has ended that threat forever. You are safe in the love of the Triune God now and always.

So what will you do with your talents, your wealth, your gifts, when you live unafraid?

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

What If?

What if you lived your life as if you trusted that you were absolutely, indisputably, unquestionably safe in the love of the Triune God, now and forever, no matter what?

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 32 A
Texts: Matthew 25:1-13; Amos 5:18-24

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

Are people of faith at their core really just living a rewards game?

There are plenty of people today who don’t believe in a god of any kind who say that those of us who do are solely motivated by the reward of heaven or fear of hell. These critics will often say, “I don’t need a fear of some god to motivate me to do good to my neighbor, to be decent. It’s just the right way to be. You all seem to be in a faith only for the reward.”

And if you look at most of Christian proclamation over the past centuries, these critics have a point. We’ve been selling this rewards game for a long time.

Even we Lutherans. We’re supposed to believe we’re saved by God’s grace alone. But when we read parables like today’s, our grace theology collapses like a cheap card table, and we get right to moralizing, threatening punishment.

But what if you trusted that you were absolutely, indisputably, unquestionably safe in the love of the Triune God now and forever, no matter what? What would you do with your life, then?

These parables are hard, no question.

Chapters 24 and 25 of Matthew are filled with threatening stories about the end of time, with some welcomed into a new reality and others shut out. They all seem to motivate by threats and fear.

In the Gospels, Jesus’ proclamation of God’s reign is much more heavily about the here and now, the life we live in this world, than the end times. But these parables, which Matthew places during Holy Week, are pretty clearly in the context of those end times.

So why you shouldn’t be afraid? Why shouldn’t you hear today’s parable and all its friends as they seem to be saying: straighten up and fly right or the door is slammed in your face and God will say, “I don’t even know you.”

You can fairly ask, “why would I trust that I am absolutely, indisputably, unquestionably safe in the love of the Triune God now and forever, no matter what?

But hear these parables as if you’re part of the group of original disciples.

By now over 100 people, women and men, were disciples of Jesus, and Jesus spoke these parables to them, the ones already part of Jesus’ community. If you hear today’s parable as they did, for the first time, one thing is clear. This really is a minor failing. The “foolish” didn’t expect to need extra oil, and they get shut out from the celebration at the end of time? That seems an overreaction.

And if these parables were told in the few days before Good Friday, what these disciples did next makes forgetting a little oil seem even more silly to worry about. Most of them fell apart. Ran away in terror and abandoned Jesus. Denied Jesus with curses. Betrayed Jesus to his enemies. Except for the women disciples and John, most failed Jesus miserably.

So meeting the risen Christ while remembering these parables, must have been terrifying. This is when the door gets slammed in our face, they must have thought. This is when Jesus says, “I don’t even know you.” This is when he rejects all his unfaithful disciples, keeps the women and John, and goes out looking for better disciples.

But that didn’t happen.

There was no door slam or exclusion. They locked themselves behind a door, but the risen Jesus came right through it. And said, “Oh, there you all are. Be at peace. I’m sending you out with the Spirit of God in you, to share my love.”

And Christ didn’t say to any of them, “I don’t know you.” He knew them deeply and well. What they did that weekend wasn’t a surprise. Christ knew their flaws and weaknesses and failings, and loved them. And Christ knew their value, too. Christ knew he needed Peter, warts and all. Knew that all of them were necessary for God’s grace and love to get to the whole world.

No one got thrown aside or shut out. Instead, they all heard, “do you love me? Then feed my lambs.”

So again, what if you trusted that you were absolutely, indisputably, unquestionably safe in the love of the Triune God now and forever, no matter what?

How would you live your life? What would motivate you? If your place in the reign of God after death is safe, what does this story tell you about living here?

Surely there’s only one possibility that blesses everyone: share the oil. If all ten run out, who cares? They all fell asleep anyway, and had to be wakened for the party. What if they trusted the love of the bride and bridegroom and everyone laughed – the late bridegroom apologizing for tardiness, the shadowy bridesmaids apologizing for unlit lamps – and all went into the party?

I’m often foolish, by the standards of this parable. Plenty of times I didn’t anticipate something would be needed for me to do. Sometimes I prepare ahead, I’m “wise,” according to this. But I’ve got enough blind spots to feel more solidly in the foolish camp. And I want to be in the party of God’s reign that’s happening here. Doesn’t everyone?

Wouldn’t this have been a better wedding if the oil was shared and people trusted in each other’s love?

You can live in fear of the slammed door, of not being recognized, if you want.

Amos gives you plenty to be afraid of – the end times come, and it’s like being bitten by a snake or eaten by a bear. But fear and threats can’t change your heart. They won’t help you do justice, or show mercy, or love God and love your neighbor.

And you don’t need to be afraid. The actions of Christ after Easter tell you all you need to know to live in God’s reign right now, in joy and hope. Why tremble at the door waiting for it to slam when God’s already propped it open? Why worry about being excluded when the Risen Christ says, “I know you, I love you, and I need you?

What if your motivation to bring enough oil and to help others who forget to bring enough is so all can be at the party, right now? A party that includes all God’s children, with abundant food, good shelter, clothing, well-being, life and hope: this is the reign of God Christ Jesus wants so much to see here.

So what if you lived your whole life as if you trusted that you were absolutely, indisputably, unquestionably safe in the love of the Triune God now and forever, no matter what?

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

Emerging Sight

God in Christ is making new eyes in you, to see others and yourself as the beloved of God you and all God’s children are.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
All Saints Sunday, year A
Texts: Matthew 5:1-12; 1 John 3:1-3

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

Jesus once did a healing that didn’t take at first.

Mark says people brought a man who was blind to Jesus. Jesus did that strange thing he’d done elsewhere, took some of his spit and spread it on the man’s eyes. But when the man opened his eyes, things were blurry. “I can see people,” he said, “but they look like walking trees.” Jesus touched his eyes again, the man looked around, and saw everything clearly. The result was good, but at first this poor man must have thought the healing was a failure. (Mark 8:22-25)

I know that feeling. I first got glasses at age 7, and was very nearsighted, with an astigmatism. I hated wearing glasses. So about 20 years ago I had the LASIK procedure done. It was over quickly, and I was told to keep my eyes closed for a couple hours, so I took a three hour nap.

When I woke up, I panicked. Everything was blurry. I thought something must have gone wrong. Then I put my hand over each eye in turn. Both times the open one saw perfectly clearly. The problem was my brain hadn’t yet figured out how to process the new input. In a few hours my brain miraculously adjusted, and I was seeing 20-15.

This feels like how we live into Jesus’ words today.

The elder in 1 John today says we’re not yet fully revealed as God’s children, even though we are already God’s beloved children. You’re going to be like Christ, the elder says, but you’re not quite yet in focus. Either as you look at yourself, or as others encounter you.

And that blurriness is what Jesus’ words today feel like. In these beautiful verses, he describes a clear way of seeing and understanding people. Clear to him as God-with-us, God’s anointed, because it’s the Triune God’s way of seeing.

But when we look at what the Triune God sees so clearly, to our eyes it’s fuzzy.

For example, there are people who just don’t seem to have it in them. Faith is hard for them. Spiritual gifts seem to be lacking. They struggle to keep afloat mentally or spiritually. And we are taught to see such people as weak. Even in the Church, a struggle with faith is sometimes seen as a failing.

But God looks at people who are poor in spirit and says: they’re closest to my heart. They’re in God’s reign right now, even if they don’t know it. They are the blessed ones of God.

We all know people who grieve, who mourn. All of us have been there, and some of us, on a day like today, are in the midst of it. And we also grieve deeply for all those who are suffering and dying around the world. And while we are taught in this world to pity those who mourn, even pity ourselves, those who grieve are subtly pressured to get beyond it. Get over it. As if it’s a failing.

But God looks at people who are grieving and says that gives them a special gift. They know they need comforting, and so they will have it. What a blessing that is.

We live in a world, and if we’re honest we sometimes see things this way ourselves, that sees gentleness as a weakness. That sees mercy as a flaw. That sees peacemaking as naïve. We might call it being realistic, we might not even realize we’re doing it. But this world praises toughness, praises judging and hating, even praises violence – if it’s deemed necessary. And so often we call it necessary.

But God looks at people who are gentle with others and with the earth as the ones to whom the earth really belongs. It’s the way to life here. God sees those who show mercy as living in God’s heart. God sees those who make peace in their own lives and families as well as the world as the ones who are living most truly as God’s children. What a blessing they all are.

Do you want Christ to heal your sight so you can see as God sees?

It won’t happen overnight. Like Jesus’ odd two-part healing, changing your eyesight into God’s eyesight will take time. It might take your whole life. It’s the reality of life in a broken world. You might hear Jesus today and say, “I kind of see what you’re seeing, but it’s blurry. Sometimes I really do value strength and power and dominance, maybe because I’m afraid of what will happen if I don’t act in those ways. Because I’m afraid to trust that this is really my path, that this weak and vulnerable way is the way of life and hope. The way of the blessed.”

But be patient. You are already God’s beloved child, the elder says, even if you’e not fully revealed as Christ to others or even to yourself. Your healing has already begun. You’ve got God’s eyes to see, but maybe your brain hasn’t yet caught up, or your heart, or your actions. But with the Spirit’s grace, all will become more and more clear to you. Your heart will be made pure and you will even see God.

Because you are hungering and thirsting for this righteousness, and Jesus says you will be filled with it.

This is a difficult path in a world of loud, angry, hate-filled voices who lust for power and control.

If you see how this world sees, embracing the Triune God’s vision looks risky. Admitting you’re lacking a strong faith, or trying to be gentle or merciful or peaceable, or standing firm in your love of your neighbors near and far, all can expose you to ridicule from others. Or from yourself.

But not in this place. Here we’re all getting new eyes. Here we’ve met the God who is gentle and merciful and pure in heart, who hungers and thirsts for righteousness in you and in me and in this broken world, who longs for peace in this creation, who even faced a crisis of faith on the cross, who mourns for the suffering of all God’s children.

This is the God who sees and loves you as you are. Who wants you to see and love all as God does. Who is even now touching your eyes again to keep bringing things into focus. Until all are seen and loved and are themselves able to love and see.

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

Labor of Love

We so often approach the commandment to love God and love your neighbor as labor, leading to exhaustion or despair. But it becomes easier when we remember the crucial insight of the Reformation and mystics:  that it’s actually about God’s love for us! 

Vicar Lauren Mildahl 
Reformation Sunday, Lect. 30 A 
Texts: Leviticus 19:1-2, Psalm 1, Matthew 22:34-46 

God’s beloved, grace to you and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

We hear this morning “the greatest commandment” – the very center of Jesus’ teaching.

And it’s pretty simple. Love God and love your neighbor.  That’s it. 

This wasn’t some secret that Jesus revealed. The two parts of this commandment are both pulled straight from the Torah, God’s gift to the children of Israel, which we often call the law.  It’s what God had been saying all along.  “Love me and love each other.”

And I really do believe that it is a gift. And that if I could just do that, just really get good at loving God and loving my neighbor, my life would be better. I could be so happy, like it says in Psalm 1. I could be like a tree planted by streams of water, bearing the most beautiful fruit in due season.

And I feel like I should be able to do it.

I feel like I should be able to love the Lord my God with all my heart, with all my soul, and with all my mind and to love my neighbor as myself.  But then, I start to think about actually doing it and all of a sudden, my anxiety ratchets up, because that’s a lot!  My brain immediately goes into problem solving mode and I think maybe if I break it up, try just one of the pieces at first.  Maybe if I just focus on the easier one to start with, that might help! Okay, Well. Which one is easier?

Is it easier to love God who sometimes feels so far away?  Or is it easier to love my neighbor, who, you know, a lot of the time feels way too close?

Either way, it’s not so easy.

Either way, it feels pretty hard. A labor of love with an emphasis on the labor. It feels like work. 

It’s hard work to love a God whose sheer vastness I can’t hope to comprehend! Hard work to love my neighbors who are so small and petty (and so am I). 

And I start to wonder, how can I possibly love God with my entire self, my heart, my emotions, my center… With my soul, my being, my identity… With my mind, my intellect, my understanding? And how can I do it when I’m afraid that if I really did love with all of that, with all of me, there wouldn’t be any left of anything else?

And how can I hope to love my neighbor as myself, when I have such a hard time loving, or even liking, myself?

It’s exhausting! And so easy to despair.  And that’s the bad news. 

Not the commandment itself, that is a gift, but the way I tend to approach it as a checklist. How I experience it as a burden, as labor.  The way I obsess over all the ways I think it’s too hard, impossible even.  The way I let the tree from the psalm be withered, instead of watered.

But here’s where the good news comes in.

It’s hiding in plain sight, in the very verse from Leviticus that Jesus quotes, although he stops before he gets there.  But in the Torah, it says: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.”  I am the Lord. 

So often, we don’t say the last few words of this verse, focusing so much on the imperative (you shall love), that we miss the declarative: “I am the Lord.”  But these words ought to resound, like a bell, calling us back to the Great I Am, the source of all life and all love. 

It’s about God!  This is the good news! It’s not about how hard we work, how much we labor to love.  It’s not about all the shoulds and should nots or our insecurities over whether we are loving enough or the right way.  This little refrain (“I am the LORD”) is our reminder that it’s actually and always about what God did and does. How God has loved and will love and always loves.  

The same good news that the writer of I John captured so eloquently and succinctly: “this is love: not that we loved God, but that God loved us.”

And it’s the same thing Martin Luther was trying to tell everyone. 

The reformers of 16th Century Germany that we celebrate today recognized how easy it is to get caught up in the fear and the anxiety of doing the labor of love. And how toxic and depleting that approach is and how often it leads to despair.  Their remedy was to insist that it isn’t about us doing work, isn’t about us doing anything – it’s all about God.  Because God saves, we are saved. Because God is faithful, we can have faith.  Because God loves, we can love. 

The crucial realization, or maybe we should say recentering, of the Lutheran Reformation wasn’t earth-shattering because it was a new insight. It was earth-shattering because God’s love is earth-shattering. 

After all, many people throughout time, the medieval mystics in particular, have experienced the earth-shattering love God has for us. Often in evocative and sometimes frankly erotic terms, they have written about how God loves us with God’s whole heart, soul, and mind. 

I want to stay on that image for a moment.

To take a cue from the mystic imagination, and play with the idea of how intensely and passionately God loves you. Let’s imagine God’s heart –whatever that might be – that it aches.  I imagine God’s heart aches for you, composing love letters and poetry for you, sending you messages of every kind, hoping someday you’ll respond. 

I imagine God’s soul – God’s very being – warming at the thought of you, itching to embrace you, leaning with longing toward you.  

I imagine God’s mind – and God is head over heels in love, utterly fascinated and mesmerized by you, hanging on to every word you say. 

That’s the kind of love that kindles reformation. On the scale of Christendom – and also deep in each person, deep in me, and deep in you. 

Because when you accept God’s outrageous love for you, it changes the way you hear this commandment. 

It’s not an order to try harder, piling up greater and greater labors of love.  It’s an invitation to relax, relax into God’s love, like sinking into a warm bath. Not just around you but inside you too. The love of God in Christ through the Holy Spirit dwells in you and wells up in you, warming you from the inside and spilling over to others. 

God’s love around us and within us frees us and transforms us.  That’s what allows us to love as God loves, in a way that is abundant and abiding, and a tiny bit absurd.  Because when we are snuggled in the warm, fuzzy blanket of God’s love, we experience the commandment like Luther did, who said that “the heart draws joy from the commandment and warms itself in God’s love to the point of melting.”1  

Melted in the furnace of God’s love, suddenly it isn’t labor any more.  

Suddenly it is an exquisite joy to love God back, heart for heart and soul for soul and mind for mind, a perfect dance of desire and longing.  Suddenly it’s easier to love ourselves, to turn down the volume of our anxieties and fears and self-consciousness because we are too busy blushing at God’s tenderness toward us.  Suddenly it’s a delight to love our neighbors – because we know God is absolutely crazy about them as well. 

This is reformation. And it’s on-going and it’s happening in you. Every time you remember how utterly and completely God loves you.  Every time you are reminded that this commandment isn’t a to-do list, it’s a love letter.  Then your heart, and soul, and mind are re-formed, made new, every day by God’s love. 

So, relax.  And be loved into love. 

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

1. Martin Luther, “The Third Commandment,” Treatise on Good Works, 1520.

Alive and Illimitable

God is alive and beyond our control: but the Good News is God is working for the healing of all things and needs you and me.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 29 A
Texts: Isaiah 45:1-7; 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10; Matthew 22:15-22

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

Is God doing anything in this world? How would you know if you saw it?

Israelites in Babylonian exile saw God’s hand in a foreign general, Cyrus of Persia, who destroyed Babylon’s power and made an edict that they could return home, to Judah, and rebuild. Isaiah says God-Who-Is, the one, true God, anointed Cyrus Messiah to save Israel. Israel trusted God enough to have the imagination to see God working in ways beyond their comprehension.

The Pharisees seem to lack the imagination of their ancestors. They defended God’s law, and were good at it. And this rabbi from Nazareth played a little too fast and loose with it. He challenged their authority, questioned their interpretation, didn’t clear things with them before saying them. In these last days of his life, they tested him again and again. Even though, as we’ll see next week, the center of his teaching, summing of all God’s law into love of God and love of neighbor, was taken straight from the Torah itself.

The question behind this is, do you get to decide where and how God is working?

Maybe some ancient Israelites had doubts about calling a foreign emperor Messiah. But they saw what happened and concluded God was behind it. The Pharisees can’t see Jesus as from God because he’s outside their control.

That’s the real issue. It’s not about choosing Caesar or God, Cyrus or Jesus. The question is do you get to control God? But surely a God whom you can control is no god at all.

Today Paul praises the Thessalonians’ trust in a living God, not in idols.

“In every place,” Paul says, “your trust in God has become known, how you turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God.” We can control idols because we make them. In ancient times, idols were made in human images, animal images; today they’re reflections of our wants, our desires. Reflections of us.

But we can’t make a true God. It is the very truth that we do not control God that tells us we’re connected to the true God. If we create our gods, there’s nothing we don’t know about them, nothing we can’t explain or control. And there’s nothing real about them.

The true God creates us, comes to us from the outside, and we can’t always know what God is doing. And we can never control what God is doing.

But that makes life in a painful world challenging.

There’s no shortage of people who know for sure what God is doing in international affairs and politics, sure their view of God’s law and ways should be forced on everyone, sure they know who’s with God and who isn’t. People of most faiths can often act as if they’re in charge of God. And need to control things to make sure their view of God prevails. So they feel comfortable.

But when we live with the humble certainty that we’re not in charge, and we look at the wars in the Middle East, in Ukraine, in Sudan, at the oppression and violence that shape our world, at the paranoid politics that infect the spirit of our nation, at the violent rhetoric that just keeps on a crescendo, and we know we don’t have all the answers, we do wonder: what are you going to do, God? Do you care? Is there a plan?

And in the imagination of the ancient Israelites, we find an path. They trusted God was working in the world, and had promised restoration. And they trusted God worked through people to do that restoration. Even unexpected people. Even through God’s people themselves.

What if we follow their lead?

Theologian Tom Wright has said, “Because of the cross, being a Christian, or being a church, does not mean claiming that we’ve got it all together. It means claiming that God’s got it all together; and that we are merely, as Paul says, those who are overwhelmed by [God’s] love.” [1]

If we trust God’s got it all together, and we don’t, we can trust God’s promise, that God is working to bring hope and life to this world. Even to the most devastating of places and scenarios. That every act of grace and kindness, every step away from the usual human violence and hatred and retaliation and revenge, is inspired by and led by God. That can be our hope and prayer.

And if God can use a Persian emperor to bring about restoration, God also can use you. That’s central to Jesus’ hope. He called people to follow, to become like him, to be shaped by love of God and neighbor, because God needs as many hands as possible to bring about the healing that is needed.

And yes, we feel we aren’t up to the task. We feel helpless here, in our place. We don’t elect every leader in Congress, we don’t have the ability to shape foreign crises personally. We can’t even fix our own city. We despair that it seems we lack the ability to help in anything that really matters.

But Jesus seems to think you’re critical to all this. That you, with a changed, new heart, filled with God’s Spirit, will make a difference that will tip the scales. That your love of neighbor, your careful voting, your engagement with your neighborhood, your prayer and supplication, your ability to hold in tension seemingly contrasting truths and find hope, all this makes a difference. You make a difference, Jesus thinks. Even if you can’t see it.

Like Paul’s Thessalonians.

Their trust in a living God whom they can’t limit or control, instead of whatever idols they’ve had, made them into people of grace and hope and healing that became known all over the region. They had no ability to control the Roman emperor, or probably even affect much beyond their own towns and villages. And yet Paul says the word got out: these people are living as Christ in the world and making a difference.

And since you are loved by God in Christ, since you are made in the image of God – that’s the image printed on you, not Caesar’s – when you give to God what is God’s, you give yourself, and you, too, will change the world. And even if you can’t see it, God can.

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

[1] N. T. Wright, For All God’s Worth, p. 20; Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, MI; © 2007.