Week 5: Mary Magdalene finds home in Jesus

“Home”

Pastor Joseph G. Crippen
Texts: John 20:1, 1-18; Romans 8:31-39

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

Mary Magdalene shows you where your home is.

St. Augustine prayed, “Our hearts are restless, till they find their rest in you.” That’s Mary’s life in Christ. She found her rest, her home with the Triune God, in Jesus.

But it was more than a restless heart for Mary. Luke tells us seven demons tore through Mary’s mind, broke her life, her relationships, filled her with pain. Until she met Jesus. He gave her life back, raised her from a life of death. He brought her home.

Literally, of course. As someone possessed, she likely didn’t live at home, but on the fringes of her society. Possessed or mentally ill people were often shunned, sent away from their families. Torn from all the ties that gave them life and joy. When Jesus restored Mary, he gave her both home and family back.

It isn’t hard to grasp the enormity of this gift. We all are affected by the pain and suffering of mental illness, whether our own or that of ones we love. Maybe Mary literally had evil spirits within her. Maybe she was dealing with a devastating and debilitating mental illness. In either case, can you imagine the joy of having your own thoughts and mind back? It would be resurrection.

But Mary doesn’t go back to her former home. “Home” is now wherever Jesus is.

That’s why she’s still there at the end. At the cross, watching that horror, when so many of his friends and followers ran. Waiting and watching as Nicodemus and Joseph carefully took his body away and put it in a tomb. Being the only one whom all four Gospels agree was at the tomb Sunday morning. The person who meant the most to her, who was her home, her life, was dead. And though she couldn’t do anything about it, she wanted to be where he was. Cling to him. Cling to home.

And isn’t this what the others we’ve met in John’s Gospel experienced, too?

Or were offered? Nicodemus, the woman at the well, the accused woman, Thomas, Mary and Martha of Bethany, the blind man – they all found in Jesus God’s love and healing and an invitation to a new way of living and loving others in the life of God. A life at home, wherever they were.

Living in God’s abundant life now, John says, is being at home, for all who trust that Jesus is God-with-us. The Incarnation is restoration of that loving relationship with God our Creator had in mind from the beginning, a loving relationship that then transforms how we live with each other, with our neighbor. Loving as we have been loved.

Like Mary, you have healing of mind and heart from Jesus. Jesus is your true home.

When you pray, read Scripture, live in our community of faith, when we worship the Triune God together, you are palpably at home. The more your life centers around the undying love of God for you, the more you cling to God in Christ through the worst of life, the more you know God’s life. The more you know home.

It might feel in these times as if you’re separated from everything that matters to you. It’s not just that we can’t have liturgy all together in that holy space that so calls to us. It’s everything. Fear of loved ones getting sick, of the death toll rising, of the length of this crisis, of the possibility of more waves of it.

But isn’t that where Mary was on that early Sunday morning in the garden? She didn’t know how God was going to be with her. She thought she’d lost everything that tied her to life, to home.

But because she stubbornly clung to Jesus’ side, even when he was dead behind a stone wall, she was first to see what changed everything. She saw Christ Jesus raised from the dead. She heard her name called and knew she was home again.

She knew she was still loved by God, still called to be that love in the world.

Mary shows you where your home is.

As she invited the other disciples to see Jesus alive for themselves, she invites you: Come and see!

Come and see – the risen Christ is your true home in God, where you’ll find God’s abundant life, be filled with resurrection love, and God’s Spirit will pour through you, making you a living witness to that love by your life.

So that everyone will one day know they, too have life, and unlimited love from God. A true home.

In the name of Jesus. Amen

Week 4: Thomas learns to follow Jesus

“Faithfulness”

Vicar Bristol Reading
Texts: Romans 8:18-28; John 11:7-16, 14:1-6, 20:26-29

Today, we encounter Jesus through the experience of Thomas, one of Jesus’ disciples. We hear three different conversations from three chapters in John. It’s truly a gift to read these separate passages together because it gives a fuller sense of who Thomas was and what his relationship with Jesus was like.

In the first conversation, Jesus tells the disciples that he wants to go back to Judea because his beloved friend Lazarus has died.

The disciples are concerned about this plan because Jesus had recently been forced to flee from Judea after angry mobs attempted to arrest and stone him. Jesus would be risking his life to go back, so his disciples advise against it.

But not Thomas. Thomas is willing to go with Jesus. He is willing to face danger, even death, to follow his teacher, friend, and Lord. Thomas speaks up and declares that he wants to go where Jesus goes. So Jesus returns to Judea and the disciples go with him. And just as they’d feared, danger and death await Jesus. Powerful people in the region are plotting to kill Jesus.

This is the setting for the second conversation we hear.

In the midst of a tense and fearful time, Jesus speaks calmly and lovingly to his disciples. “Don’t let your hearts be troubled,” he says, “Trust me.” He tells them that soon he will have to go somewhere else, but that someday they can go there, too.

That makes Thomas worried. “How can we know the way?” he asks. He’s afraid that Jesus might go somewhere that he cannot follow. That, too, does come to pass. Jesus is arrested and executed and buried. The disciples, still under threat themselves, huddle together in fear, wondering what to do next, without their leader.

Then, one day, Jesus miraculously shows up – a living, breathing, speaking Jesus who wishes them peace, empowers them with the Holy Spirit, and sends them out to continue ministry. What an incredible moment!

Except Thomas wasn’t there. He happened to be somewhere else that day. When the disciples told him what he’d missed, he must have been devastated.

This is the part of Thomas’ story that most people know: how he insists on seeing Jesus himself before he’ll believe.

But maybe Thomas’ words aren’t defiance but grief. They aren’t doubt but commitment. Thomas – who loved Jesus, who would have faced any danger for Jesus, who would have died for Jesus – Thomas wants to be where Jesus is, to go where Jesus goes. How heartbroken he must have been to hear that the other disciples had somehow managed to be near Jesus, but he had not. He says, “I won’t be close enough to Jesus until I can to touch him with my own hands.”

And this leads to the third conversation.

Thomas may not be able to get close to Jesus, but Jesus comes to him – a living, breathing, speaking Jesus who wishes him peace. And just as he’d hoped, Thomas is near enough to Jesus that he can reach out and touch him. He can finally declare his faith in Jesus, in person: “My Lord and my God!”

In response to Thomas, Jesus offers this promise: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to trust.” Jesus speaks this promise to Thomas and the other disciples, who are trying to understand what his physical absence will mean for them. And Jesus speaks this promise to all future disciples, a reminder that it is faith, trust in God, that matters. This word of comfort is an answer to Thomas’ question: How will we know the way to follow Jesus? The answer is to trust Jesus, who is the way.

Of course, faith doesn’t protect you from danger or death, but it roots you in the peace of Christ, no matter what you face.

When you look to Jesus, who is the way, who is the resurrection and the life, you are reminded that even death does not bring an end to God’s promises.

The apostle Paul wrote to the church in Rome: I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not even worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed.

Living as a human, a finite being, entails waiting, longing, pain, and death. But that is not cause for hopelessness, because you can trust in God’s redemption of the whole creation, and that includes you, a beloved creature within that creation. Living with hope means trusting even when you cannot see, when you cannot fully understand, when you do not yet know the way.

You are still called to live for God’s purpose with every day of your life.

That’s what it means to “love God,” Paul writes. To love God is to be called according to God’s purpose, to reveal God through your words and actions, in any and all circumstances.

And when those circumstances involve suffering, even death – you can remember that you are never left to face that alone. God-in-Christ knows those experiences intimately, as we see in Jesus on the cross. And as Paul so eloquently expresses, God’s spirit knows your heart, upholds you when you’re weak, and sighs with your deepest longings.

Whatever your prayer is right now, God hears it. If your prayer is “How will we know the way?” Or “I desperately long to be closer to Jesus!” Or simply, “My Lord and My God!” God hears you, faithful disciple, and loves you right where you are.

Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in the God who loves you and gives you peace.

Amen.

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.

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