The only thing that matters in the dark places of our hearts and minds is not our nature but God’s, not our heart but God’s.  And God’s heart is incessantly and always love willing to lose all to draw us in.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
   The Fifth Sunday in Lent, year B
   texts:  Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 51:1-12; John 12:20-33

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

What if I’m not worthy of being loved?

What if I’ve not been good enough to be loved?

If people knew the truth about me, would they still love me?

These frightening thoughts are deeply rooted in our hearts.  Even the most confident-looking have inward darkness of unworthiness haunting their outward boldness.  We all want to be loved.  We all need to be loved.  We often find it hard to believe we can be.  And if we are loved, we fear it can be taken away.

Whether we are loved by other people is enough to make us anxious.  As people of faith, even more troubling is the question of God’s love.

This steady talk of God’s covenant promises we’ve heard this Lent raises in us feelings of anxiety, guilt, shame, fear.  We know we are not always what God hopes for us.  We can say God is not our enemy, and God’s law is a good for us, not to be feared.  It is true, God has said so.

That doesn’t mean we easily believe it.

We struggle as if it’s all about us, our failings, our weakness, our unlovability.

There’s truth in that.

If we fear there are things in our heart others find unlovable, things God doesn’t want to see, it’s because we know it’s true.  We can’t easily look into the heart of another; we have to live with our own hearts, and we know them, we know the flaws.  It’s not outlandish to fear we’re not worthy, not good enough.

As to God, we’ve made centuries of theology describing how broken we are, how sinful, how our human nature is warped.  We talk about our relationship to God most often from the perspective of how messed up we are.  As if there’s only one nature that matters, our human nature, which is no good.  As if there’s only one heart that matters, our human heart, which is turned away from God.

Our problem isn’t that we don’t know the truth about ourselves, our failings.

Our problem is we’re often forgetting a deeper truth, the only one that matters.

The Scriptures tell us about the nature of God, about God’s heart, as if that’s what’s important.

Our readings today aren’t about our unfaithfulness; they’re about God’s intractable love.  Jeremiah’s people are in exile, their homeland destroyed, their hope in tatters.  From the words of their prophets to the knowledge in their own hearts, these people know they failed God.  They know they were unfaithful to God’s covenant promises, their sinfulness led to their downfall.

But Jeremiah declares an astonishing truth: The LORD, the God of Israel, can’t let go of them.  Yes, God kept every covenant God made with them and they broke every one.  It’s true.  They were and are unfaithful to God, not living as God dreamed and hoped.

None of that matters, Jeremiah says.  God still wants to create a relationship of love with them.  God’s going to try a new covenant.  God says, I won’t write this one on stone or scroll, but on my people’s hearts.  They will know me and love me, and know and love each other, from the least to the greatest.

This is the stunning revelation of Jeremiah: The only thing that matters about human sinfulness, about your brokenness, about our unfaithfulness is one thing: the God who made all things loves you, loves us, with an incessant, unexplainable love.  The heart of God is irrevocably turned toward you, toward us.

Hear this again: God loves you completely and eternally, no exceptions.

We often say, “God loves you anyway.”  “God loves you in spite of your sin.”  “God loves you even though you are a failure.”  We are doing God’s love a great injustice.

Jeremiah says, “God loves you.  Period.  End of sentence.”  No “anyway”s, no “in spite of”s.  But, . . . we sputter, what about all that bad inside us, what we regret, fear, are ashamed of, what about our sinful human nature?

Jeremiah says, You’re not listening.  God loves you.  And that’s that.  There’s nothing you can do about it.  You are worthy because God says so.  You are good enough because God thinks so.

This is made abundantly clear in God’s final statement: “I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.”  For the first time God builds into a divine agreement the promise of forgiveness and forgetfulness.

This is not Sinai, where God saved the people and said, “Now, here’s how you will live.”  This is not Abraham and Sarah, where God promised land and blessing and family, and said, “Now, follow me and be faithful.”

Here God says, I will make a covenant relationship with you and I will change your hearts.  And built into my part of the bargain is my forgiveness and my forgetfulness.  Before you even think about failing, I promise to forgive you.  That’s what God’s love truly is.

God wants this to be so clear it’s tattooed on our hearts.

The new heart David asked for is what God now promises.  This heart will be marked with the love of God, “I love you eternally” written on every surface.  Forgiveness from God isn’t about avoiding punishment.  Forgiveness from God transforms us, gives us heart transplants, makes us new.

Now we are closer to Jesus’ mystery today.  “When I am lifted up, I will draw all people to myself,” says the One who is God-with-us.  Once again, the only heart that matters is the heart of God that will not rest until all people are drawn in.  But God will have to die, be “lifted up,” to make it happen.  God’s heart of love will break in order to break ours and begin to make ours new.

This willingness to lose everything for love of us is at the center of this new covenant first promised in Jeremiah and now fulfilled in Jesus: if the loving relationship comes with a guarantee of constant forgiveness, it will cost God dearly to keep that promise.

In God’s willingness to die out of love for us, we find our path.

God says, “Follow me into this loss.”  Like a seed that must die when it is planted before it can become what it is meant to be, getting this new heart will be death for us.

But everything that will die is what we want gone: all our deepest wrongs, all those things in our heart we don’t want known, all our failings, all our stubborn resistance, all these die away when we are drawn into God’s love.  Shame, fear, guilt, anxiety, they die, too.  They’re tossed away, the shell of the old seed that gets discarded while the new growth comes forth.

The new heart made in us will be like God’s, willing to break for love of others, willing to begin and end with love and forgiveness, no matter what.  The only way we get to that kind of heart is this path God’s heart makes possible for us.

Sometimes the truth that really matters isn’t the one we fear, no matter how true it is.

The only truth that can save us is the relentless, obsessive love of God for us and for the world.  God’s is the only heart, the only love, strong enough to change our own hearts.

We will soon see at the cross how much it costs God.  We begin to see in our own lives what it costs us to be so changed in heart.  But today we rejoice that such unbreakable love is ours, always, and cannot be taken away, not even by those things we think only we know about.

God loves you.  Period.  End of sentence.  And you will never be the same for it.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

The only thing that matters in the dark places of our hearts and minds is not our nature but God’s, not our heart but God’s.  And God’s heart is incessantly and always love willing to lose all to draw us in.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
   The Fifth Sunday in Lent, year B
   texts:  Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 51:1-12; John 12:20-33

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

What if I’m not worthy of being loved?

What if I’ve not been good enough to be loved?

If people knew the truth about me, would they still love me?

These frightening thoughts are deeply rooted in our hearts.  Even the most confident-looking have inward darkness of unworthiness haunting their outward boldness.  We all want to be loved.  We all need to be loved.  We often find it hard to believe we can be.  And if we are loved, we fear it can be taken away.

Whether we are loved by other people is enough to make us anxious.  As people of faith, even more troubling is the question of God’s love.

This steady talk of God’s covenant promises we’ve heard this Lent raises in us feelings of anxiety, guilt, shame, fear.  We know we are not always what God hopes for us.  We can say God is not our enemy, and God’s law is a good for us, not to be feared.  It is true, God has said so.

That doesn’t mean we easily believe it.

We struggle as if it’s all about us, our failings, our weakness, our unlovability.

There’s truth in that.

If we fear there are things in our heart others find unlovable, things God doesn’t want to see, it’s because we know it’s true.  We can’t easily look into the heart of another; we have to live with our own hearts, and we know them, we know the flaws.  It’s not outlandish to fear we’re not worthy, not good enough.

As to God, we’ve made centuries of theology describing how broken we are, how sinful, how our human nature is warped.  We talk about our relationship to God most often from the perspective of how messed up we are.  As if there’s only one nature that matters, our human nature, which is no good.  As if there’s only one heart that matters, our human heart, which is turned away from God.

Our problem isn’t that we don’t know the truth about ourselves, our failings.

Our problem is we’re often forgetting a deeper truth, the only one that matters.

The Scriptures tell us about the nature of God, about God’s heart, as if that’s what’s important.

Our readings today aren’t about our unfaithfulness; they’re about God’s intractable love.  Jeremiah’s people are in exile, their homeland destroyed, their hope in tatters.  From the words of their prophets to the knowledge in their own hearts, these people know they failed God.  They know they were unfaithful to God’s covenant promises, their sinfulness led to their downfall.

But Jeremiah declares an astonishing truth: The LORD, the God of Israel, can’t let go of them.  Yes, God kept every covenant God made with them and they broke every one.  It’s true.  They were and are unfaithful to God, not living as God dreamed and hoped.

None of that matters, Jeremiah says.  God still wants to create a relationship of love with them.  God’s going to try a new covenant.  God says, I won’t write this one on stone or scroll, but on my people’s hearts.  They will know me and love me, and know and love each other, from the least to the greatest.

This is the stunning revelation of Jeremiah: The only thing that matters about human sinfulness, about your brokenness, about our unfaithfulness is one thing: the God who made all things loves you, loves us, with an incessant, unexplainable love.  The heart of God is irrevocably turned toward you, toward us.

Hear this again: God loves you completely and eternally, no exceptions.

We often say, “God loves you anyway.”  “God loves you in spite of your sin.”  “God loves you even though you are a failure.”  We are doing God’s love a great injustice.

Jeremiah says, “God loves you.  Period.  End of sentence.”  No “anyway”s, no “in spite of”s.  But, . . . we sputter, what about all that bad inside us, what we regret, fear, are ashamed of, what about our sinful human nature?

Jeremiah says, You’re not listening.  God loves you.  And that’s that.  There’s nothing you can do about it.  You are worthy because God says so.  You are good enough because God thinks so.

This is made abundantly clear in God’s final statement: “I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.”  For the first time God builds into a divine agreement the promise of forgiveness and forgetfulness.

This is not Sinai, where God saved the people and said, “Now, here’s how you will live.”  This is not Abraham and Sarah, where God promised land and blessing and family, and said, “Now, follow me and be faithful.”

Here God says, I will make a covenant relationship with you and I will change your hearts.  And built into my part of the bargain is my forgiveness and my forgetfulness.  Before you even think about failing, I promise to forgive you.  That’s what God’s love truly is.

God wants this to be so clear it’s tattooed on our hearts.

The new heart David asked for is what God now promises.  This heart will be marked with the love of God, “I love you eternally” written on every surface.  Forgiveness from God isn’t about avoiding punishment.  Forgiveness from God transforms us, gives us heart transplants, makes us new.

Now we are closer to Jesus’ mystery today.  “When I am lifted up, I will draw all people to myself,” says the One who is God-with-us.  Once again, the only heart that matters is the heart of God that will not rest until all people are drawn in.  But God will have to die, be “lifted up,” to make it happen.  God’s heart of love will break in order to break ours and begin to make ours new.

This willingness to lose everything for love of us is at the center of this new covenant first promised in Jeremiah and now fulfilled in Jesus: if the loving relationship comes with a guarantee of constant forgiveness, it will cost God dearly to keep that promise.

In God’s willingness to die out of love for us, we find our path.

God says, “Follow me into this loss.”  Like a seed that must die when it is planted before it can become what it is meant to be, getting this new heart will be death for us.

But everything that will die is what we want gone: all our deepest wrongs, all those things in our heart we don’t want known, all our failings, all our stubborn resistance, all these die away when we are drawn into God’s love.  Shame, fear, guilt, anxiety, they die, too.  They’re tossed away, the shell of the old seed that gets discarded while the new growth comes forth.

The new heart made in us will be like God’s, willing to break for love of others, willing to begin and end with love and forgiveness, no matter what.  The only way we get to that kind of heart is this path God’s heart makes possible for us.

Sometimes the truth that really matters isn’t the one we fear, no matter how true it is.

The only truth that can save us is the relentless, obsessive love of God for us and for the world.  God’s is the only heart, the only love, strong enough to change our own hearts.

We will soon see at the cross how much it costs God.  We begin to see in our own lives what it costs us to be so changed in heart.  But today we rejoice that such unbreakable love is ours, always, and cannot be taken away, not even by those things we think only we know about.

God loves you.  Period.  End of sentence.  And you will never be the same for it.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

God never promised that life would be easy, or go according to our plans, but God did promise that God would be faithful to the covenant, and that suffering and death will not be the final word. And this promise is revealed in the suffering and death of Jesus on the cross.

Vicar Meagan McLaughlin
   The Fourth Sunday in Lent, Year B
   Texts: Numbers 21: 4-9, Psalm 107, Ephesians 2: 1-10, John 3: 14-21

Grace and peace to you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

On Sunday, March 7, 1965, Bloody Sunday, several hundred people began to march from Selma to Montgomery to claim the right to vote and equality under the law for Black Americans. They were attacked that day with tear gas and billy-clubs, and several people died, but they did not give up, because they believed that, eventually, the discrimination and violence they faced would end. They trusted that God would ultimately see them through.

Last Sunday, fifty years later, members of Mount Olive joined people of all ethnicities and faiths all over the country to remember that day. We marched to celebrate how far we have come. We marched to remind ourselves that we still have a long ways to go. We hear in the news this week of police officers shot in Ferguson, and messages of hate from an Oklahoma fraternity, and we know we have a long ways to go. On Sunday, we sang and prayed to the God we believe will ultimately see us through, knowing we aren’t there, yet.

The Israelites journey from Egypt to the Promised Land had been really long, and, like the march to Montgomery, not exactly easy. They had been walking in the desert for literally years, and nearly starved before God provided Manna for them, and when some of them were taken captive by the Canaanites, they had to fight to defeat them. And they still weren’t there yet. Their walk continued, and after all that time, they were getting really sick of eating only Manna.

When things are going well for us—financial success, career success, health, family, friends—it is easy for us to see these things as signs of God’s faithfulness to us without even realizing it. And when challenges arise, we are almost wired to see it as a vacuum of God’s care, evidence that God is not providing for us, or that maybe we or someone around us aren’t doing the right things.

At the very least, poor health or loss of a job or the death of a loved one feels like an interruption to “what is supposed to be happening” in our lives. There is never a good time, is there? We are not supposed to be going to doctor’s appointment after doctor’s appointment, having tests, and waiting for results. We are not supposed to be living through a loved one’s last days, or planning a funeral, or grieving. We aren’t supposed to be without a job, working on resumes or interviews, and struggling financially, unless of course, that’s what WE had planned.

So often, we move along in our routines, things happening more or less as anticipated, until we find ourselves expecting that this is how life should be. Work gets done, bills paid, vacations taken, decisions made, perhaps with some bumps along the way, but more or less predictable. And when things happen to make life difficult, our first response is typically to complain, as the Israelites did. The food is not good or hot or fast enough. The internet keeps cutting out on us, right in the middle of that e-mail we’re sending. We have to wait too long in traffic, or the doctor’s office, or the grocery store.

The Israelites were sick of Manna, and they complained, and they soon found themselves facing something much bigger than bad food. Poisonous snakes came into the camp, and many of them died. Suddenly the food didn’t matter, and they realized how foolish they had been, thinking that God owed them anything. They realized their sin, and told Moses to ask God to have mercy on them. And in the minds of the Israelites, mercy meant removing the snakes that were biting them.

God didn’t remove the snakes, but God did show mercy. Interestingly enough, the proof of God’s mercy looked just like the thing the Israelites feared most—the snakes. By looking at the bronze serpent raised in their camp, the Israelites saw that their God was bigger than a few poisonous reptiles. God assured them that God was with them, even in the midst of the snakes. The snakes remained, but the people lived, in spite of that. A source of pain and fear and death for the Israelites was transformed into a symbol of God’s faithfulness and triumph over death.

Often, the big challenges in our lives—unemployment, illness, death—are not removed either. These things are not interruptions to the life we are supposed to live, although they can certainly feel that way. Nor are they, as the Israelites felt, punishment from God for sin, although at times, if we are honest, it can feel like that, too. The truth is, the challenges of life are all a part of human experience, and our life is meant to be lived in their midst. Sometimes these challenges are of our own making, or someone else’s, and they are truly the results of choices made, natural consequences of our sin. And sometimes, difficult things just happen. Life is not always easy, and it is certainly not what we might think of as fair. But either way, the struggles and pain we experience does not mean that God has abandoned us.

God never promised that life would be easy, or go according to our plans, but God did promise that God would be faithful to the covenant and always be with us, no matter what happens. God did promise that suffering and death will not be the final word. And the proof of that for us as Christians is revealed in another symbol of pain and humiliation and death—the suffering and death of Jesus on the cross. As we make our way through Lent, we remember not only the reality of Jesus’ death, but that because of the resurrection, the cross, like the bronze snake, is transformed into evidence that God has power over everything, even death.

Our encounter with the cross of Jesus does not take away the challenges of our lives, but it transforms them—it transforms us. When we are finished with our complaining, our questioning, our blaming, God is still right there with us, and the cross of Jesus is proof of that promise. The cross reminds us that the little things in life—long lines, or spotty internet service, or cold food—are not really that important. And the big things, the real pains and struggles of life, are not too much for God to handle.

We are created by God to live this life as it comes, knowing God is with us. God created us to bring good and beauty into this world, and we can trust God to make it possible for us to do that, even when things seem so dark that we don’t see how we can possibly make a difference. The Israelites, and centuries later, the marchers in Selma, lived out that trust in every step they took. We, too, are called to march on, carrying the light of faith in the darkness.

When we in our humanity fail, as we are bound to, the cross reminds us that God is still there, giving us the courage and the strength to face the ways we have caused or contributed to the struggles of this world. We look to the cross, acknowledge our sin, and ask God for forgiveness and help. And we are renewed for the journey.

And when we are in pain, the cross is a symbol of the promise that even death is not the final word. We have a God who answers prayer, if not in the ways we might expect. God has promised to be with us even in the darkness, to lead us through to the light when we can’t see the way.

God will not break the covenant, no matter how we stumble. From the Israelites in the desert, to the marchers in Selma in 1965, to each of us today, God loves, forgives, and strengthens us. Nothing is too much for God to handle. And every time we see the cross, we are reminded of the lengths God will go to keep that promise.

Thanks be to God!