Through Christ’s love and forgiveness for all, we seek to follow Christ’s commandment to love all, even when it is challenges us. 

Vicar Andrea Bonneville
Maundy Thursday, Year B 
Texts: John 13:1-17, 31b-35

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

It doesn’t make sense.

Perhaps this is what Peter was thinking as Jesus began washing the disciple’s feet. Why would Jesus wash my feet? I am the one that should be washing his. Why would Jesus serve me? I know there are people who need this far more than I do. Why me? It just doesn’t make sense.

This is the dialogue I imagine is running through Peter’s head as Jesus prepares to wash his feet. It doesn’t make sense so Peter resists it, at first. It seems to me like we’ve all been in Peter’s position before, struggling to make sense of or resisting an act of service and love, even when the source of love and service comes from God.

As Peter resists having his feet washed, Jesus says, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” Peter hardly has time to process Jesus’ words and actions before Jesus, the face of the Triune God, invites all the disciples to share in God’s healing and reconciliation in the world that is shown through Christ’s love and service.

The phrase “it doesn’t make sense” is what we say sometimes when we seek further clarification or we don’t fully understand what is being explained to us. And it is what we say when something is truly incomprehensible. It’s a response to shock when we look at a situation are not able to answer why? Or how?

There is a lot that doesn’t make sense in our world, our communities, our lives. It’s likely that we have made some peace with this. Peace with the idea that there are a lot of things we don’t know and even more things that are out of our control. 

We make peace.…  and then a pandemic happens and it shakes our core… then police brutality and gun violence happen and they shake our core…  something always comes along and leaves us putting fragmented pieces together trying to makes sense of the sin, violence, and oppression in us and around us.

We hear from the thirteenth chapter of John today, when Jesus gathers with his friends even with Judas who will eventually betray him. We hear about this last gathering, but the lectionary cuts out the betrayal of Judas. We don’t hear the story maybe because it doesn’t make sense. Why would Jesus wash Judas’ feet? How can betrayal and unconditional love exist at the same time? How do we show such love as washing our betrayer’s feet? It doesn’t make sense. It’s almost unimaginable.

We live in a world that suggests we should be able to rationalize everything. We are told that certain people don’t deserve unconditional love, that even we, at times, don’t deserve love and forgiveness Christ brings.

But Jesus puts aside what makes sense and helps us imagine how life will look like when we live out of our identity as God’s beloved.  We live out of Jesus’ love, because the reality of our life is this:  healed people heal people, forgiven people forgive people, and loved people love people.  We don’t just hold one part of this identity, but this identity encompasses all of who we are.

Healed, forgiven, loved. By Christ, who shows us and commands us to be the embodiment of God’s love even when it doesn’t make sense.

Jesus says: Do you know what I have done to you?  I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love on another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

The commandment is to love as Christ has loved us.  How do we do this?  We do this through service and caring for our neighbors. We do this by embodying God’s love and proclaiming that God’s love is for all.  We imitate Jesus’ love and action regardless if we understand why or know how the Holy Spirit is working within it.

The commandment to love doesn’t come with a condition.  It comes with an unconditional promise. The triune God’s encompassing love on the cross, it just doesn’t make sense, not because we don’t understand what it means on the surface.  But because the cross is going to lead us into places in which we don’t have all the answers, places that filled with suffering, places that challenge what it means to be a Christian community.

Today and in the days ahead, God’s indescribable and unconditional love for us with be shown for all of creation. God’s love pours out for all of us regardless of who we are because God created us out of love, to be loved, and to share love. There is nothing more central to the identity of who we are or who God is. 

Christ’s love is for you, Christ’s love is for all.

Proclaim this because with God it will always make sense.

Amen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We look for Jesus, the face of the Triune God, in our lives and our communities hoping to see God’s healing and forgiveness. 

Vicar Andrea Bonneville
Fifth Sunday of Lent, Year B
Texts: Jeremiah 31:31-34  John 12:20-33

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

“We want to see Jesus”

It really is a simple and common request. We ask to see Jesus in our lives through our prayers, scripture reading, worship, and service.  We ask to see Jesus as we move throughout our day seeking to see the work of the Triune God in our lives, our communities, and our world.

How? Or when?  Did you ask to see Jesus, the face of the Triune God, this past week?  

In today’s Gospel reading, we hear a request to see Jesus.  It isn’t the first time and it won’t be the last time that the people of God plea for the presence of the Triune God to be known to us.

We don’t know the whole story behind why the people want to see Jesus, but I imagine they all had a different hope for what they would see if they saw Jesus. Whatever their reason, they probably weren’t expecting the response they received.

Jesus doesn’t walk out into the crowd and greet the people who seek him.  Instead, a transformation in Jesus’ ministry is happening and soon people aren’t going to see Jesus in the ways that they have been taught or told.  Soon, they are going to learn a different way of being in relationship with the Triune God.

John’s Gospel alludes to when Jesus will be lifted up in front of the crowds on a cross and that Jesus will fall into the earth and resurrect out of the earth. “We want to see Jesus” is the request, and the response is that Jesus soon will be seen on the cross for the sake of all creation for the reconciliation of all humanity.

The people gathered to see Jesus will learn the insight that has already been made know to us through Jesus’ death on the cross and resurrection. 

To see Jesus is to see the Triune God in the midst of the sin and suffering of our world in ways and places that we don’t expect to see life, love, and forgiveness.

II

A few years ago, I traveled to El Paso, Texas to participate in a border immersion program to learn, see, and listen to the immigration experience. I didn’t know what I expecting to see, but my heart was searching to see Jesus. For me, seeing Jesus was to see the embodiment of God’s love, forgiveness, and transformation happening in a place where all I had heard about was the oppression of people seeking a new and safe future for their families.

One of the days, we had the opportunity to visit with a member of the congregation leading this program. Anna had lived in the US for about 25 years, coming here to seek medical care for her daughter who needed surgery. She was able to seek asylum her with her daughter, but the rest of her family were denied.  She hasn’t been able to see her family for 25 years because if she did, they would all be at risk of extreme violence.

I remember being invited into Anna home and listening to her story. I was drawn into her story, but I found myself putting up a guard, turning my eyes and ears away because listening to her story broke my heart.  Maybe you have had an experience like this?  Wanting to lean into listen, but then realizing the pain was too great so you turn away. If you are like me, you might turn to wanting to fix the problem rather than just sitting and listening.  While I was busy trying to fix the injustice of the entire immigration system in my head, I turned away from Anna’s story while Anna continued to share with us her experience.

Pain and suffering were only part of Anna’s story, but it wasn’t what consumed her.  Through Christ, she explained, she found the strength to proclaim God’s steadfast love for her family and grace towards the powers that oppressed her and her family.  She shared about the passion she had for providing care and support to young immigrant parents and their families, about serving food to her neighbors, and about teaching Sunday school.

Out of her love for Christ, Anna embodied the love and service of Jesus. Reminding me and teaching me not to turn way from looking for the ways the Triune God is transforming our hearts, our lives, and our communities.

III

We are constantly looking for Jesus. It’s easy to live by the way of this world and let destruction, violence, and sin have the final say, but the promise is that Christ is present our suffering and the suffering of the world.

When we look for Jesus, we look for Jesus on the cross, not because it’s Jesus’ permanent residence, but because the cross is the ultimate place where forgiveness and reconciliation happen, when all creation is drawn to the forgiveness of Christ.

It is where we experience unconditional love and forgiveness so that we can move outward and see the presence of God and be the presence of God as an act of radical hope and promise.

Seeing Jesus in unexpected places transforms our world. Because seeing Jesus, as the face of Christ in others, moves us to extend compassion and empathy and forgiveness that can really bring healing to our communities.

And when we see the face of Christ in our neighbor, it makes it really hard to hate or fear or turn away from the pain our neighbor.  And when we see the face of Christ in our ourselves, it is hard to dislike ourselves and turn away for the calling God has placed on our hearts.  

Five-hundred years before God entered this world in human flesh, God was speaking through the prophet Jeremiah to people who knew deep in their bones the pain and suffering caused by oppression, violence, and destruction from the powers of this world.

God says through the prophet Jeremiah, “for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest […] for I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.”  This divine forgiveness is the foundation for how God enters into relationship with all of creation.

Forgiveness, rooted in unconditional and steadfast love, is the law, the instruction, that God engraves on our hearts.  So that with every beat of our hearts, this love and forgiveness flows throughout our entire body.  

To see Jesus is to be bold and dare to look within the suffering of this world and proclaim “Christ is here”. Hoping for and opening our lives to see and bring forgiveness and healing.

Amen.