Midweek Lent, 2025 + Love Does No Wrong to a Neighbor +
Week 5: Love does no wrong to a neighbor

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
Texts: Romans 12:1-3, 13:8-10; John 8:2-11

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

This is a disturbing scene.

A group of religious men, authority figures, have dragged a woman into the grounds of the Temple and thrown her at Jesus’ feet. They lurk in a semi-circle around Jesus and this woman for all the public to see. The salacious details are they’ve caught her in the act of adultery. But where’s the person she was committing adultery with? If they truly cared about sin, there’d be two people brought to Jesus.

But they’ve got a bigger fish to fry. They want to expose Jesus as someone who doesn’t care about God’s law. They want him to prove publicly and beyond doubt that he is against the Torah. And they’ll threaten this woman’s life to do it. It’s a revolting sight.

So Jesus changes the visuals.

He kneels down and starts writing in the dirt. Far too much speculation focuses on what Jesus wrote in the dust at their feet. But that literally misses the bigger picture.

A group of men hovers over a woman cringing in submission and fear, knowing her life is on the line. And Jesus, who is standing, kneels. Now he’s lower than the woman, lower than her accusers. He will not stand over her. And he shames them in their standing.

Jesus utterly turns the tables. Suddenly the accusers are the uncomfortable and embarrassed ones. Suddenly they’re on trial instead of Jesus, or the woman.

If we’ve learned anything these Lenten Wednesdays, it’s that nothing can get between us and loving our neighbor.

Poverty, different faiths, our own discomfort with connecting with people, sickness, hunger, our privilege and wealth, none can keep us from this love we are called to give.

This isn’t news to these scribes and Pharisees. It’s core to their Scriptures, the heart of God’s Torah: love God with your whole heart, mind, soul, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.

So the picture of people who claim those Scriptures trying to keep those Scriptures by destroying their sister is awful. Keep that scene in your mind. No sense of right and wrong, no understanding of sin, can ever lead you to stand over another person in anger clamoring for their punishment.

Paul says today that love does no wrong to a neighbor, therefore love fulfills Torah. This is the only acceptable stance for a follower of Christ. If what you do, think, pray for, act on, decide, leads to harming your neighbor, you have to stop. No faithfulness to God you can claim overrides the command “do no wrong to your neighbor.”

There’s no question this woman sinned, if in fact she was caught in adultery.

Jesus seems to prove the leaders right about his view of Torah. He doesn’t appear to care that she broke God’s law. He cares a lot that they want to kill her so they can catch him in a trap.

So Jesus says, “If you’ve never sinned, you can throw a stone.” He instantly reminds her accusers, and everyone in the crowd, and us, that selective judging of sin is a lie. Everyone has done things contrary to love of God and love of neighbor, everyone has sinned.

Jesus doesn’t say what the woman did was right. He says if sin is the excuse you use to do wrong to a neighbor, then you should be honest about your own sin.

And doesn’t that hit home? How easy it is for us to pick and choose which sins we want to call out, which wrongdoing we’re indignant about? We judge some people harshly. These times we’re in have proved that. We let others get a free pass. And if we look at ourselves with Jesus’ words, can any of us hold our stone? Aren’t we all humbled, needing to drop the stone and shuffle away as quietly as we can?

Nothing can get in the way of your love of God and love of neighbor. Not even your neighbor’s sin. Or yours.

And to love this way, we need to be changed.

The only way we can love as Jesus calls us to love is if we become like him. We can’t understand or live in Christ’s way if our minds think as they normally think. So, “be transformed by the renewing of your minds,” Paul says, “that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” Be transformed, Paul says, changed by the Holy Spirit into the Christ you are called to be.

Then you become someone who finally, simply, consistently loves God and neighbor with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. Who doesn’t argue with God about this, or test God about this, or petulantly try to preserve a tiny piece of your own self-righteousness. You become a new creation.

At the end, the woman walks away, standing straight, no one attacking her.

Jesus recognizes her sin, but doesn’t condemn her. He just says, “now go and stop sinning.”

And that’s our gift. Jesus’ words today call all our own sins to our mind, and we slump in shame. But the Son of God’s answer to that shame and sin is the same as in this story: I don’t condemn you. Go, and don’t sin anymore. Let me transform you. Let me make you new, so you are like me.

So, whatever you might imagine that woman felt as she walked out of the Temple grounds that day, that’s Christ’s gift to you.

And in the Holy Spirit you are transformed. To become God’s true love in this world. For your neighbor. For all.

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

God’s new way is one that will ultimately change you from within, into a new person. But you start with your perception of it, and take that first step.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fifth Sunday in Lent, year C
Texts: Isaiah 43:16-21; Philippians 3:4b-14; John 12:1-8

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

God asks a hard question. It almost seems unfair.

Forget everything I’ve ever done, God says in Isaiah. In fact, forget that I brought you through the sea, stopped armies, and gave you an exodus, a path to new life. Forget your greatest story of salvation because I’m about to do a new thing. Don’t you perceive it?

As Christians, we say God’s new thing is fulfilled in Jesus, who called us to a path of life in God. But what if you aren’t sure you can see that, perceive what that means for your life?

Once again we’re looking at the path of Christ.

We’ve often talked of how hard Christ’s path is, the sacrificial, vulnerable love we’re asked to share for the sake of the world. But we also heard a couple weeks ago that the path is like rich food, rewarding, a way of life like nothing else.

Today we meet people who do perceive God’s new thing, God’s new path. People who find insight, truth, that changes them from inside out. They’re never the same after it. They don’t have to think about walking Christ’s way, it’s the only way they know. They don’t have to wonder if it’ll be hard or life-giving. The life they know in Christ is in their bones, and they can’t imagine going their old way.

We’re talking about Mary and Paul.

Paul tells the Philippians he is embedded in Christ’s new way. He once lived a life of joy and hope in following Torah, living as a faithful Jewish person. His life in Judaism was exemplary and fulfilling to him. But now, he says, none of that matters to me compared to knowing Christ. Paul found life in Christ and threw everything into following. All that matters to him now is knowing Christ ever more deeply, sharing Christ’s suffering and resurrection, and living as Christ.

Mary found God’s new way in Jesus, too. And today, at this dinner party, Mary can feel something from Jesus, the one she loves, who just brought her brother to life again. She senses his grief and anxiety. Maybe even his coming death. And she takes perfume that costs a year’s wages and pours it on Jesus’ feet, wiping them with her hair in love.

Mary and Paul perceive God’s new thing. It changes them completely, so now they act with new instincts, as if they’re already in the new way. Because they are.

But is this helpful to you? Can either of them explain how this helps? Not so much.

In these verses Paul tries to explain what it means for him to be so in Christ that his old ways don’t matter anymore, but he fails. Twice he tries, and twice he corrects himself, as if to say, “no, those aren’t the right words, either.”

And no one understands what Mary did except Mary and Jesus. The other disciples are dismayed. All they see is math. That much perfume costs this much, and this is a huge waste. They don’t get Mary at all.

So it’s not surprising we’re not sure how Mary and Paul help us, either.

They do because neither knew much more than you when they first perceived God’s new thing.

Paul was changed on the road to Damascus, but he didn’t have his theology yet, his proclamation. He couldn’t describe the way of Christ if you drew him a map. He just took a first step, then another. He listened to other Christians. And he met Christ. Not just on the road, at every step. Until he passed a point where he was no longer the person he was before. He sacrifices everything of his past life because step by step Christ drew him to this realization, this letting go, this life.

Mary didn’t give her perfume away on day one. However she first met Jesus, she didn’t know the new way fully. But step by step she followed until she was changed. She sacrifices financial security, faces the scorn of her friends. Because step by step Christ drew her to this realization, this letting go, this life.

So there’s your invitation: if you sense anything in Christ that pulls you with hope or gives you light or heals your heart, focus on that.

And take a step toward it. And another step. And if something you value pulls you back, ask for God’s help to let it go.

Mary and Paul had a lot to learn. But for both, it started with a moment of perception. That sense in you that says “these are words of life.” Maybe you’ve had that, too. So if Mary and Paul have anything to say it’s, “try that first step and see. Let go a little and see.”

This is God’s way in Christ. God’s new thing. Do you perceive it?

If you do, even in the smallest way, rejoice. And pray that the Spirit gives you courage to take those steps, one at a time, toward the light. Toward the hope. Toward the love. And courage to start dropping your old ways, no matter how precious, along the road. Until they’re not even in sight anymore.

That may sound like sacrifice at the start. But Mary and Paul say you’ll get to the point where it’s just the natural thing to do. Where God’s way so infuses you that it’s your new instinct, your only way to be and think and love and do.

God’s doing a new thing, to heal the world. You already know this. God now give you the heart to follow until you are changed, and you can’t even remember that you’d gone a different way before.

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