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Reflection on 3 Lent A (as we miss gathering)

March 15, 2020 By Pr. Joseph Crippen

It’s Sunday morning. Why am I not with the church?

Beloved in Christ,

This just feels wrong. Sunday morning and I’m drinking tea, and I am not with the body of Christ that surrounds and fills me and gives me life. I’m not at church at 6:00 a.m., greeting James, getting ready to greet you all. Pray with you. Eat and drink God’s life with you. Sing and talk and listen for God with you. Share peace with you. This happens on vacation, yes. But this is not vacation.

Sometimes the right decision doesn’t feel right in some important places of the heart. This is one of those times. It’s still the right decision. But that doesn’t mean we don’t feel deep sadness at what we miss when we’re not together.

So here are some thoughts on the Third Sunday in Lent in year A. Not a sermon; those are preached words, they’re shaped differently, too. Not worship; that’s much more than words, and what we do together isn’t replicable online any more than preaching is. But your staff is already working on some creative and imaginative ways to connect online with song, proclaiming Word, prayer, in ways that might bless us all and keep us connected. Watch for that (and thanks for the ideas some of you have already sent.)

In the meantime, it is 3 Lent, and the Gospel for today is John 4:3-42. Go ahead and get out your Bible and read it. (Out loud would be really helpful.) I’ll wait.

Are you back? Good.

Here’s my question: is Jesus being a little mean to this poor woman?

She’s hot and tired, hauling water at noon. She has to be thirsty. Now she has to deal with a Jewish man breaking rules and interacting with her. As a man, he’s not supposed to talk with an unrelated woman in public. As a Jew, he’s not supposed to share vessels with a Samaritan. He’s a bother. And he asks her for a drink.

But here’s the strangest thing. He tells her that if she knew who he was and what he could give, he’d give her living water. A phrase that could be used to speak of a spring or a brook. Running water, maybe. She’s thrilled she might be able to avoid all this dragging of water in the heat of the day. Then he says, “No, I’m not talking about water like this. I’m talking about something inside you, connecting you to God’s life.”

Well, that’s just fine. But it’s not what this hot, tired, thirsty woman needs. And it seems a little unkind to tease her with the idea of helping her physical need and then saying he’s got spiritual help instead.

We like to spiritualize this story, but we can’t skip over the bodily needs so quickly.

Imagine if you or I were sitting on the steps of Mount Olive this morning, with the doors locked, sad that we are reduced to staying away from people we love so that we don’t make people we love sick. Imagine Jesus came and sat down, and said, “If you knew who I was, you’d ask, and I’d give you an anti-viral agent that would mean you’d never get sick again.”

Wouldn’t that be amazing? We’d say, “Yes, please, give us that. So we don’t have to worry about COVID-19 or anything else like it ever again.” And we’d even think how we’d share it with the world. But what if Jesus then said, “Well, I mean, I’m not talking about a real anti-virus to keep this or any other disease from you. I’m offering you an anti-virus for your spirit, for inside you, to keep you whole and healthy where it matters.”

I think we’d be at least as disappointed as that poor woman. It seems a little cruel to hint at a thing we desire deeply and then pull it away at the end.

But don’t mistake Jesus here: he cares deeply about her bodily, physical needs.

The Triune God came into our world and took on our human body. Incarnation means God cares about our bones and blood and cells and organs and breath and pain and sleep and all that makes us animals, bodies, cares enough about all that to put God’s own self into such a body.

There are people who are thirsty and have no access to water. People who are hungry and don’t know if they’ll eat today. People who are sick and cannot get health care. Even our neighbors in this city, to say nothing of the world. The Incarnate, Triune God cares deeply about them. About you.

Which is why Jesus sends us out, as his follower James wrote in his letter, as Jesus himself said often, to feed and clothe and care for God’s beloved. You, and I, and all in the Body, are asked to make sure this woman gets real water if she needs it. We are not sent out to tell people with real physical needs that they just need to know God’s love and they’ll be fine.

God in Christ cares deeply about this health crisis. About all the people infected, about the isolation that keeping safe imposes, and how that isolation might harm people. No one on this planet is outside of God’s care in this. And you and I, and billions more, are God’s agents to work to mitigate this crisis, help each other, care for the sick, pray for all. We’re not at worship together today because as Christ we need to make sure we don’t hurt each other or our neighbors by spreading this virus.

And here’s the truth: this woman has a lot of needs, and only one is that she’s thirsty for literal water.

She’s in grief of some kind, over the loss of five husbands. Whether by divorce or death, she had no choice in ending any of those relationships, and she must still feel that pain. She’s possibly an outsider in her village. We don’t know, but it’s odd that she’s getting water alone, at noon, instead of early morning and twilight with the other women. She’s theologically hopeful, longing for a day when God’s Messiah would come and answer her and others’ deep questions and hopes.

If Jesus had made running water possible in her home, she’d still have all those other unmet needs.

And you and I, this city, this world, have more needs than an anti-virus for COVID-19, as real as that need is. We, too, have grief that needs comfort, fear that needs assuaging (whether of this disease or many other things), hopes and dreams that need God’s guidance and answer, longing for community that needs God’s embrace in other people. If God would miraculously end this health crisis this moment, all those other needs you have would still be unmet.

So while we help each other with the physical needs, what Jesus says to you today is: I can actually fill you up inside.

I can give you a spiritual anti-virus that protects your heart with God’s love and fills you with trust that nothing can separate you from God’s love. I can fill you with the life of God’s reign that I long for you to have, abundant life, even when viruses or death or loss or suffering happen. Even then, you’ll have life in me, hope inside, trust in God.

One of the biggest reasons we’re sad when sitting at home right now and not getting together is that we know that we get this spiritual anti-virus, this living water, this abundant life, when God meets us in our worship together. We come into that space expecting to meet God wherever we are in our lives. We don’t expect to leave with all our problems solved. But we do expect, because God is faithful and has given us this so many times, that God will be there in Word and Sacrament, and in the body of Christ around us. We know we will meet God’s love. We will sing God’s love. We will be filled with God’s love.

We always still need lunch after. Water. Some of us will take our medicines. But God’s living water, abundant life, unceasing love, will fill us to our core. And we know we are well. This we know, because this God has given week after week after week.

That’s what we’re missing this morning. But Jesus has good news for you.

It is Sunday morning. But I am, you are, actually with the Church right now.

Just as Jesus doesn’t offer a quick and easy solution that means we all can go to Mount Olive right now, Jesus also doesn’t abandon us.

You are Christ’s Body. So am I. And you and I are together, right now, in that Body. I am with the Body of Christ after all. Not physically, of course. But we know all about that. We know already that our loved ones who have died still gather at God’s Table when we do, and that in the mystery of the Eucharist the whole Church of all times and places gathers in song and is fed. Every time we eat the body of Christ and drink the cup of God’s salvation, we know we’re not just doing it with those we can actually see and touch.

This is why Jesus needs you to trust this living water he offers. You are embedded in God’s resurrection love, always, and if God’s Spirit is moving in you, and God’s Spirit is moving in me, and God’s Spirit is moving in all of us, we can never be alone.

This water Christ gives is “gushing up to life” in you, in me. Life in God’s new reign and reality. We just can’t physically see or touch each other right now.

But we are together.

Beloved in Christ, trust that. You are filled with life in God’s Spirit. In the prayers each of us offers this morning, we sing and pray together. And until we get to physically gather together in worship, since nothing can separate us from God’s love, nothing can separate us from each other, either.

God’s peace and grace be with you all.

In Christ’s love,

Joseph

Midweek Lent 2020 + Meeting Jesus

March 11, 2020 By Vicar at Mount Olive

Week 2: An unnamed woman is known, seen by Jesus

“Life From Death”

Vicar Bristol Reading
Texts: John 8:2-11; Romans 8:1, 11-17

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

The stakes here are life and death.

This Gospel story does not present a moral quandary, or a theoretical scenario. This is a person facing the possibility of public execution. This ‘woman caught in adultery’ – who is presented as nothing more than the wrong she has done – is an individual. She has a name, a hometown, a family, a history. We don’t hear any of those things about her, though. She has an identity, but it has been reduced to nothing more than her guilt. For her, for this woman, this is a life and death situation.

And the obvious outcome is death.

The scribes and Pharisees have hauled her before Jesus because she has committed a sin that is punishable by death, according to Mosaic law [Leviticus 20:10; Deuteronomy 22:22-24]. The stoning they’re proposing isn’t an out-of-control mob killing. They’re talking about a sanctioned execution with a trial and eyewitnesses. But all the formalities seem to have already been taken care of.

She was ‘caught’ in the act. She’s guilty. She’s violated one of the ten commandments! Death by stoning is appropriate in this situation. And truthfully, they haven’t brought this woman to Jesus to ask permission to kill her. They’ve already decided to do that.

They’ve brought her to Jesus set a trap for him.

The Gospel writer tells us they’re testing Jesus, trying to manufacture a charge they can bring against him. Jesus can either condone her death, or he can challenge the law. Either response will be problematic for his authority. With such a huge crowd gathered to witness, that puts Jesus between a rock and a hard place.

So the woman is really just the bait in the trap they’ve set. The details of her life have been ignored, and now even her death won’t really be about her. She has already been erased from her own story, and that story ends here, in a painful, humiliating death.

Except her story doesn’t end that way because Jesus intervenes.

At first Jesus says nothing, at least not out loud. For a minute he’s just… silent, writing on the ground. Who knows what happened in that silence? Perhaps Jesus prayed. Perhaps the woman prayed. Perhaps the accusing Pharisees glared indignantly. Perhaps the crowd of onlookers squirmed uncomfortably.

But in that silence, something shifts. And when Jesus speaks, he chooses neither the rock nor the hard place. He doesn’t dismiss the law or condone her death. “Anyone who has no sin can throw the first stone,” Jesus says.

This reframes the requirement for her execution. In the face of this woman’s guilt, Jesus shines a spotlight on the guilt of others. In the question of whether this woman should be killed, Jesus asks who will actually kill her.

Jesus’ words remind the people that they are involved in what’s happening. They’re responsible for this woman, their neighbor. They can no longer see themselves as distant or different from her. They, too, are individuals with names, families, stories. They, too, have made mistakes, broken commandments. What will they be saying about themselves if they choose to throw that first stone?

Unable to bear Jesus’ scrutiny, the elders and the crowds leave, and at last the woman gets a role in her own story.

Jesus sees her as the individual person she is, a beloved child of God. He speaks directly to her, and says out loud what she has already seen become reality: she is not condemned. She will not die here.

But even more than that, she is invited into transformed life.

Jesus tells her, “Go on your way, and do not sin again.” This isn’t a threat; it is a reminder that renewed life is always possible. The transformation of true repentance is always available. God’s mercy is always overflowing, no matter what mistakes have been made.

“Go and do not sin again.” And so she goes: alive, forgiven, freed. The death that had seemed so certain, so unavoidable, has somehow been made into new life. The shame that seemed so overwhelming has been eclipsed by grace.

In Jesus, this woman has encountered the one who makes a way where there seems to be no way, who brings redemption to what has been completely broken, who heals even the deepest of wounds. It is because of who Jesus is that this has been made possible for her.

Because this is what God in Christ is all about: bringing life from death.

Certainly that’s what God in Christ will be about on the cross. But that’s also what God in Christ is about during Jesus’ ministry. Jesus’ teachings, healings, feedings, miracles – these are continuous invitations to transformed, abundant life. These personal encounters we are hearing about this Lent – these are invitations to transformed, abundant life. This moment between Jesus and the woman freed from condemnation – is an invitation to transformed, abundant life.

Not just life in heaven but life here, on earth. God’s way is a way of goodness and fullness even in the midst of all the complications of what it means to be human.

This woman didn’t go from the temple and cease to make mistakes. She likely did sin again. And when she did, the invitation to come back to God’s way would still be waiting for her. Every time, in every mistake, she could find freedom in God’s endless mercies, made new every morning.

Avoiding this public execution didn’t mean that she would physically live forever. But when it did come time for her to face her own mortality, she could do so knowing that no death would have the final word on who she was: a beloved child, seen and known by God, always, in this life and the next.

The woman was not the only one who left the temple that day invited into transformed life. The Pharisees and scribes who had brought this woman before Jesus: they, too, have been offered a different way of living. Jesus’ words and actions call them to let go of their desire to control their religious tradition, to let go of their legalistic interpretation of what’s right and wrong, to let go of their tendency to use another person for their own gain.

It will be challenging and painful to give them up, but they can be freed from those burdens and welcomed into restored relationship. By letting those behaviors die, they can step into renewed life. That’s the kind of new life that’s possible through Christ!

The same transformation that was possible for the woman, for the Pharisees, is possible for you.

The power of God to bring new life is already in you! Paul writes in Romans that the very same spirit that raised Jesus from the grave is dwelling in you. The same spirit that breathes life into places of death where no life seems possible has set up residence in you. That spirit is already at work in your heart and your life: freeing you of your burdens and transforming you for renewed living; interceding for you, even in moments of silence when all seems lost; and bearing witness to your indelible identity as a beloved child of God. No death can ever change that.

Amen.

The Olive Branch, 3/11/20

March 10, 2020 By office

Click here for the most recent issue of The Olive Branch.

Birth

March 8, 2020 By Pr. Joseph Crippen

You can only know what God is doing in Christ when God gives you new birth to see, hear, breathe, and walk in God’s love.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Second Sunday in Lent, year A
Texts: John 3:1-17; Psalm 121; Genesis 12:1-4a

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

I don’t remember, but I wonder if the light shocked me.

Embraced inside my mother’s warm darkness for nine months, her heartbeat flowing through me, the light I saw as I was born probably surprised me most. I imagine this because even today I don’t like to wake up to bright lights. I much prefer a gradual increase of light as I awaken.

But really, coming from sound muffled through my mother’s body to hearing with my new ears directly in the air, or breathing air into new lungs that had never been asked to stretch until now, both could have also shocked my relatively new existence.

That’s what Jesus invites you to consider when you think of where God is in your life and what God is doing. Jesus says to Nicodemus, it’s like being born. Birth is an enormous threshold from one existence to another. But it’s the only way Jesus can answer what Nicodemus is really searching for.

There’s a reason Jesus is hard for Nicodemus to understand.

Nicodemus is an important man in his society, privileged, respected. He’s an authority, serving on the governing council of the Sanhedrin. He’s come to Jesus by night, maybe because many of his colleagues, other men in authority, dislike Jesus, are offended by or even fear him. He’s intrigued, though, wants to know more.

But Nicodemus comes with his teacher’s perspective, his authority, his credentials, to find out if Jesus really comes from God. Surely only God could give Jesus the teaching authority he has or the power to do the things he does.

But Jesus says something utterly confusing to Nicodemus. He tells him, “you really can’t understand anything about me if you don’t start seeing God as your mother.”

Jesus says, “Your question isn’t whether God is with me or has authorized me. Your question is whether God is with you. And to answer that, you need to be born, Nicodemus. From above, from God. God will have to mother you into this truth, give birth to a new you.”

Jesus isn’t insulting Nicodemus when he asks how he, a teacher of Israel, doesn’t understand these things.

He’s saying, “your frame of reference doesn’t work with what God is doing here. Your privilege, your authority, your questions, won’t get you anywhere. God is doing something simpler yet more profound than you think. You need to drop your credentials and let God give you new birth.

“You will need newborn eyes to see what God is doing in different ways, Nicodemus. As radically different as what your eyes saw in the dark of your mother’s womb compared to the light of day they saw at your birth. You will need newborn ears to hear what God is doing in different ways, Nicodemus. As radically different as the sound you heard through your mother’s body compared to the brightness of sound as you began life in the air. And you will need newborn lungs to breathe the Spirit’s life and be filled with what God is doing, Nicodemus. You’ve lived and breathed God before now as if in the womb, but the unused lungs inside you need to stretch and open to the breath of the Spirit, and take that breath into your very life for good.”

Can you see why this was hard for Nicodemus to understand?

Knowing God as mother isn’t an alternate image. It’s absolutely central to how Jesus understands what God is doing in the Spirit.

You can’t understand the third chapter of John without this. God births children into new life in the Spirit. New eyes, new ears, new lungs. To know and live in God’s expansive, astonishing motherly love.

A love for the cosmos that is so wide and deep that no one, no creature, no piece of creation, is outside of it. A love that, as Jesus says today, moved the Trinity to send the Son from the inner dance of God’s life to rescue the creatures of this planet, so none will be lost. A love that comes to heal and save, not to judge. A motherly love that cannot imagine life without all her children in her embrace.

A motherly love as in Psalm 121 today, that, like so many of our mothers, never sleeps deeply after her child is in the world, but is always awake to their movement, their life. Their going out and their coming in. Who fiercely protects them in the sun of day and in the moon of night.

Nicodemus’ image of God makes him wonder if Jesus is authorized to do and say what he does. If Jesus can be approved as officially God’s servant. Only by letting go of all of his preconceived notions can Nicodemus grasp the Mother’s heart within the Trinity Jesus deeply wants him to know.

Only by letting his eternal Mother give him new birth can Nicodemus see and hear and breathe in the heart of God’s astonishing and expansive love for him. And for all.

This is your promise, too, you know.

Birth is an enormous step from one existence into another. A step into the unknown. A step like Abraham and Sarah were asked to take today. A step like Nicodemus took. The only way Jesus can describe God’s abundant life for you is by calling you to a birth from one existence into a completely new one.

Luther often spoke of baptism as a daily death and resurrection. That’s a wonderful image. But today Jesus invites you to think of your baptism as a daily birth in water and the Spirit. A daily moving from one reality into a new life God births in you. And even though the new birth, the new reality is into the unknown, mysterious, unexperienced-yet, your heavenly Mother will always be with you in it, leading, guiding, loving. Not falling asleep.

This is the joy Jesus longs for you to know, to seek: letting the Spirit give you new birth every day.

New eyes to see God, so you can see where God is and where God is leading you. New ears to hear God, so you can hear God’s voice of love calling you, guiding you. New lungs to breathe God anew and let the oxygen of God’s transforming grace enter every cell of your body, every corner of your reality until you are a new creation. And new feet and hands, to learn to walk and touch – baby steps at first, small gestures at first – in ways that transform your world with God’s love.

And at first it’s going to be a bit of a shock, the light, the sound, the breath, the steps. It might be painful, too, this move from one identity to a new one. These things are always part of the birth process. Just let go, let your heavenly Mother’s embrace, your Mother’s breath of the Spirit, surround and fill you.

You won’t be led astray. You are safe in God’s arms. Because remember, in God’s maternal love no one gets lost or left behind. Not you. And not those you meet who might need you to draw them toward the birth God longs to give them.

In the name of Jesus. Amen

Note: in this week’s video we’ve included the singing of the Hymn of the Day to connect with this sermon. (The silence after the sermon and the chorale prelude before the singing are not included.) The hymn is in Evangelical Lutheran Worship, no. 735. Text by Jean Janzen, based on Julian of Norwich.

Midweek Lent 2020 + Meeting Jesus

March 4, 2020 By Pr. Joseph Crippen

Week 1: Andrew meets Jesus, brings others

“Come”

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
Texts: John 1:35-42, 6:5-9, 12:20-22; Romans 10:13-17

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

John’s hopes for his Gospel are simple: he wants you to come to trust in Jesus as God’s Anointed One, and in that trust, find life in Jesus’ name. (John 20:31)

He claims from the start that Jesus is the face of the Triune God for you. In Jesus you see God’s heart, God’s truth, God’s life. To help you find abundant life in Christ, John tells stories which invite you to place yourself within them and experience Jesus yourself. Stories with rich characters, all who meet Jesus and are changed. Some find life; others reject it.

On Sundays and Wednesdays this Lent we’ll meet Jesus in these stories through the eyes and reactions of those people to see if we can also find abundant life in Christ now and forever.

Andrew is a wonderful beginning to this.

Unusually, we read from three chapters in one Gospel reading, to see the three key Andrew episodes. Andrew isn’t the best known of Jesus’ core leaders, the twelve. He’s a little higher in our recognition than say, Thaddaeus, but nowhere near as famous or known as big brother Peter.

But Andrew might be the disciple you really want to emulate. What we see in Andrew in these three little vignettes is enlightening, and encouraging. Even inspiring to you to find Andrew’s path to Jesus, and so find life.

When we meet Andrew, he’s searching for life from God.

Andrew and his friend John (who remains unnamed by the Evangelist) are actually disciples of John the Baptist. Two Galilean fishermen have apparently abandoned their elder brothers in the north and traipsed down around Judea to follow this desert prophet.

They’re searching for something. Because when their rabbi, John, points to Jesus as “the Lamb of God,” they immediately leave the Baptist and walk after Jesus. They go where he’s staying, and presumably listen to him.

Unlike some of the others in this Gospel, what Andrew sees in Jesus, how he believes Jesus is God’s life for him, God’s Messiah, we don’t know. But we know this much: Andrew is looking for life from God and goes out searching for it. He leaves his comfortable, known world, and risks much. He listens. Looks. He finds life in Jesus. And his life is changed forever.

But here’s a joy: Andrew then shares what he’s found.

This might be one of the greatest things about Andrew. He’s the one you need if you’re looking for Jesus. He first comes to his older brother Simon, and tells him he’s found the Anointed One. Clearly whatever he and John talked with Jesus about profoundly shaped Andrew’s faith and journey. He had to get Simon in, too.

Later, Jesus faces thousands who are hungry and tests his disciples to see if they understood yet what he was about. Andrew’s the one who brings someone forward. Anyone could have. But Andrew ran into a young boy with a small lunch. What Andrew thinks Jesus is going to do with it, who knows? But Andrew’s the guy who sees people and brings them to Jesus. And Jesus feeds thousands with that little lunch.

And when Greek-speaking Jews talk to Philip, looking for Jesus, Philip’s first move is to get Andrew. Anyone could have helped; Philip knew Andrew was good at bringing folks to Jesus. Helping others find life that Andrew knew.

Here’s why you really might want to emulate Andrew.

He’s not important or famous. He’s always in the background. Now, without Andrew does the great Peter even become a disciple? Do James and John? Can you imagine the twelve without the four Galilean fishermen?

But when the Gospels show Jesus taking key leaders with him in important moments, like the Transfiguration or the Garden of Gethsemane, it’s Peter, James, and John. Three of the Galilee four. Why not Andrew? Those three might not even be there without Andrew.

Maybe that’s just fine with Andrew. He knows he’s found life from God in Jesus. He’ll keep bringing people to Jesus to find life themselves, even if that means some of them outshine him, like his big brother. That makes him a wonderful model for the likes of you and me.

Andrew’s path of faith in Jesus is one you can actually do.

You can search with your life, your heart, even take risks and leave your comfort zones, to find God in Jesus. You can listen carefully to Jesus, and follow with your life, and watch for chances to bring others to see for themselves.

And you can share his humility and not worry about not being famous, or seen as important. You can just faithfully be behind-the-scenes, doing what Christ has called you to do. Being who you know you are in Christ. And making sure others can find what you’ve found. Abundant, full, life with God in Christ.

Paul wonders how anyone can know life in Christ if no one takes the time to reach them.

Andrew gets that. He’s the one who brings good news, who proclaims with his life and his grace and his hope and his kindness that he has found the Messiah. Who wonders if others might want to find that, too. Who says, “Come and see!”

You could be Andrew. What will you do with this life in Christ that you’ve found?

In the name of Jesus. Amen