God is doing a new thing in Christ, an extravagantly loving drawing of the whole creation into God’s life and love: do you perceive it?

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fifth Sunday in Lent, year C
Texts: Isaiah 43:16-21; 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 says: I’m about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

This is the God who made a way in the sea, Isaiah says, rescuing Israel from slavery, but God’s people are told to forget all that. “Don’t remember the former things. I’m about to do a new thing,” God says.

But do you perceive this, my people? God asks. Do you see my extravagant love for you and the creation, a love that makes even the Exodus story forgettable by comparison? A love that will restore the creation, pouring rivers into desert dryness, creating lush abundance that feeds and nurtures all? A love that ensures all God’s children, even the foolish ones, God says elsewhere, will live safe and whole and in love with each other and God? Do you perceive this, my children? God asks.

And now, look into the Bethany house of Jesus’ dear friends, days before he will be arrested, tortured, crucified, buried. God’s new thing is right there, in that dining room. In that week of suffering to come. God’s restoration of the world is right there, for you. Do you perceive it?

Because right now, only two people in this dining room do perceive it, Jesus, and Mary.

Mary’s extravagance cannot be overstated.

And it all flows from her perceiving God’s extravagant love unfolding before them.

As far as we know, only Mary senses what’s about to happen. Maybe not Easter’s surprise. But this One who is God to her, who raised her brother to life, who constantly filled her heart with God’s extravagant love as she sat at his feet, this One, she knows, she perceives, is about to die for that extravagant love.

And she in turn offers an astonishingly extravagant gift: a pound of pure essence of nard, the equivalent of tens of thousands of dollars’ worth. Unheard of wealth to most of her day.

And she gives the gift with equal extravagance. Days before Jesus washed the disciples’ feet as model and command, Mary poured her love on Jesus’ feet, with this essence used to anoint the bodies of beloved dead. She applied it with her hair, not her hands. She offered her whole self in love. And the house was filled with the scent of her extravagance.

Mary perceived God’s new thing, even though what she saw for Jesus was suffering and death. She responded to such love with this love, to surround him in his death. No matter what happened after.

But others didn’t perceive the new thing.

Judas doesn’t perceive what God is doing in Jesus. Or why Mary responded as she did.

In Mary’s response all he sees is utter waste. Of course, his suggestion that the perfume be sold and donated is sheer nonsense. The perfume was never his, or Jesus’, or the disciples’ to decide over. They didn’t own this jar of perfume; they had no vote as to what to do with it. It was always Mary’s, and her extravagant pouring out was entirely hers to offer. Or hers to keep on a shelf if she chose.

To be fair to Judas, this lack of perception was likely more widespread. Matthew and Mark say it was “the disciples” that objected to the waste, not just Judas. And if you have a limited ability to rejoice in Mary’s extravagant love, there’s likely some limit to how you perceive the extravagance of God’s love she was responding to.

So does that mean that our evangelist also has a perception problem about God’s new thing?

That sounds ridiculous.

John’s Gospel is the one that says God so loved the whole cosmos that the Son of God came. This Gospel of the Johannine community tells us Jesus said that when he was lifted up on the cross he would draw all things to himself, into the abiding life he knows within the Triune God. This Gospel tells us Jesus wants abundant life for all God’s children and no one can snatch any sheep from his hands. Surely John’s Gospel perceives God’s new thing as clearly as any we can imagine.

But apparently Judas isn’t included in that expansive love. All the evangelists list Judas among the 12 and mention he would betray Jesus. All tell a version of the betrayal, from the authorities to Gethsemane.

But John’s Gospel slanders Judas throughout the telling in ways the other three don’t. In John, Jesus ominously warns early in his ministry that, while he chose all 12, one of them was “a devil.” This Gospel not only singles Judas out for criticizing Mary, it adds that Judas was a thief from the common purse, something no one else tells. Only this Gospel says Judas was “destined” to be the betrayer. It seems clear that Judas was a despised figure in the Johannine community decades after these events.

So, the author of John perceives God’s new thing, this act of vulnerable love that lifts all creation into God’s abundant life. But one part of that creation seems left out of the extravagance, Judas.

Pay attention to these blind spots John’s author and Judas have.

Do you rejoice in God’s extravagant, abundant, vulnerable love for the creation, for you, for all God’s children, but have some people you don’t see God’s love embracing? People that you know that you’d rather avoid? Groups of people you can’t get your heart to accept God loving in Christ’s new thing? If the author of John can have a blind spot, you and I can, too.

And pay attention to Judas. Not just because we’ve betrayed God’s new thing in Christ before and probably will again. But because whatever Judas’ reasons for betrayal, would it have happened if he perceived that God’s new thing in Christ, this extravagant love, included him? If he can believe himself outside of God’s love, you and I can, too.

Mary knew three things this day: One, Jesus was nearing his death. Two, Jesus loved her utterly and completely. And three, she needed to respond to that love with her love, to that extravagance with her extravagance. If Judas could have trusted Jesus’ utter love for him, maybe he wouldn’t have betrayed Jesus.

Today’s Prayer of the Day is the lifeline you want to cling to.

“Open our hearts to be transformed by the new thing that you are doing, that our lives may proclaim the extravagance of your love given to all through your Son,” we prayed. Whether your blind spot to God’s extravagance leaves others out or leaves yourself out, your prayer is that the Spirit will open you up to see God’s new thing as all-inclusive, all-embracing, and transform your life to be that extravagant love to all.

Because in the end the only hope you have, the only hope I have, the only hope all God’s children have, the only hope this creation has, is that the new thing God is doing in Christ is just as extravagant as Mary believed, as extravagant as John’s Gospel proclaimed, as extravagant as the cross and empty tomb proved.

“Open our hearts, O God, to be transformed by the new thing that you are doing, that our lives may proclaim the extravagance of your love given to all through your Son.”

Amen, is all we can say. In the love of Jesus, Amen.

God desires that you know and have abundant life, and urgently begs you to turn toward that life, while patiently giving you all you need to thrive in it.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Third Sunday in Lent, year C
Texts: Isaiah 55:1-9 (adding 10-11); Luke 13:1-9

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

Do you have whiplash from that Gospel?

First Jesus clearly says God doesn’t cause tragedy or violence to punish people for their sins. But then Jesus just as clearly says if you don’t repent you’ll perish as those victims did.

Next, still with ominous tone, Jesus begins a parable with a fruitless tree whose owner is ready to chop it down. Then the gardener steps in with patience and love, offering to nurture the tree and help it bear fruit.

This short reading swings widely between implying divine judgment and punishment, and saying God doesn’t operate that way but patiently works for a different outcome. What are you and I supposed to feel, or think, or respond?

This whole section of Luke’s Gospel feels this way.

After the Transfiguration in chapter 9, Luke contrasts severity with grace in his telling. Stories of healing are alongside stories of people rejecting Jesus. A parable about a rich fool who dies with full barns is followed by encouragement to trust God for all your needs. Parables about faithful servants are paired with parables about unfaithful ones.

Jesus tells parables of mustard seeds and yeast in these chapters, promising growth in God’s reign, while warning about taking the narrow door that many will not be able to enter. He breaks the Sabbath a couple times by healing surrounding last week’s Gospel, God the Mother Hen who wants to gather all her chicks but they won’t. Then warnings about taking good seats at a dinner lead to a parable about a great feast where all the highways and byways are searched to get everyone to come.

All of this leads up to next week’s Gospel in Luke 15, the great story of a father’s senseless prodigal love for his two sons who somehow don’t trust that love.

So, should we be frightened about not being faithful, about God throwing us out? Or should we trust the loving wings of God the Mother Hen, the loving arms of God the Welcoming Father?

The key to this whole section really is Jesus’ warning today, “repent or perish.”

Now, remember, here Jesus categorically rejects the idea that God causes people’s suffering as punishment. Whether accident (like the falling tower) or evil (like Pilate’s massacre), it wasn’t because the people sinned. “Repent or you will perish like they did” has to mean something different.

Jesus’ call to repentance is a turning into new life and bearing fruit, into a new way of being from an old way. The severity of the calls to repentant turning in this long section of Luke comes from the urgency of Jesus’ journey to his death that began at the Transfiguration. Jesus knows he has little time left to teach all his followers the new way, and they have little time to start turning around.

In “repent or perish,” Jesus isn’t threatening a punishment. He just said that’s not how God works. God embraces. God forgives. Jesus is describing the consequences of a life lived outside of God’s way. If you don’t turn around soon, he says, you’re going to be stuck in your path of destruction and ruin.

Repentance is life, Jesus says.

The way of Christ is challenging and hard – love of God and neighbor, vulnerable love, these aren’t easy things. The turn of repentance, letting go of selfishness and stubbornness, confessing failures to love, seeking to do better, these aren’t easy things, either.

But Jesus says this is the way where you find abundant, full, rich life. Life trusting God provides growth and grace, life under God’s loving wings, life where God breaks God’s own rules to give hope and healing.

Turn to that, Jesus says. Turn to God and find life. Abide in me. Live in me, and you will bear fruit and have abundant life.

But maybe calling our Christly love fruit is part of the problem for us.

Jesus and Paul and others loved to use the fruit metaphor for the gifts of the Spirit, the life in Christ that God works in you and me. But fruit-bearing plants bear fruit for others to find nourishment and joy, not for themselves. Their fruit’s seeds are also for others, starting new plants that bear fruit. Maybe that’s not much incentive for us, that our fruit from God mostly benefits others.

But if the Triune God truly desires you to know life abundantly, fruit’s a wonderful metaphor. A tree or bush or vine that bears fruit is healthy, whole, vigorous. Beautiful from bud to ripeness. Plants not bearing fruit are often sickly looking, even dead.

That’s the secret to the life in Christ. You and I are created to bear fruit of love in our words, actions, lives, for the sake of others, yes. But in that bearing, we’re alive. Healthy. Beautiful. From John the Baptist to Jesus to Paul to James, the New Testament says when you bear the fruits of repentance in your life it’s a sign to others that the Spirit is working in you, filling you, blessing you. And it’s how you know you’re alive, too.

There isn’t a conflict in Jesus’ message at all.

Yes, Christ urgently wants you and me to turn our lives toward God and find life and hope and love and healing, and to be that for others. And he’s certain that if we don’t turn, it will be ruinous for our lives.

But if you trust that Jesus is the face of the Triune God for you and the world, then this persistent truth Jesus wants you to know is the only truth: God’s love for you is never-ending, cannot be taken from you, and, Jesus says today, it is also patient.

God will take time, patiently nurturing you, fertilizing you with the Spirit’s grace, pruning away the problem bits, until you bear great fruit. Because Isaiah promises God’s Word will always do what God intends, bearing the fruit God wants in the world. Always.

Today, once again, all you’re hearing is our regular, simple Lenten invitation: turn to God, and live.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

God’s loving wings are wide open to embrace you, and there is no reason not to go  in and find warmth and healing and life.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Second Sunday in Lent, year C
Text: Luke 13:31-35

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

We almost lost our little dog Maggie this week.

She snuck out as I was leaving for work. She’s pretty fast, and must have darted out through the garage while I wasn’t looking. She’s broken free before in the summer – she loves to run. We know she’ll always come back, but there are coyotes nearby and if there’s a squirrel, she wouldn’t stop for a car.

It wasn’t summer, though, it was bitterly cold, and we didn’t know she was gone. A few hours after I left, our neighbor found her barking outside her door. Fortunately, our neighbor and her wife put our packages in the garage for us, and we for them, so she knew our code and took Maggie home.

Our fear after this is not the same as Jesus’ despair at his own people being unwilling to let him draw them all under the loving wings of God’s embrace. Maggie’s only a dog, not a whole nation.

But there is this: Maggie broke out of the loving, warm place that embraced her, to run free. And pretty soon, she likely regretted her decision, and longed for safety and warmth over that freedom. Maybe Jesus’ reluctant chickens have regrets, too.

Jesus proclaimed God’s grace and love for all people.

He had compassion on all who suffered, or were lost, crushed by life, looking for God. And lots of people let him embrace them in the loving wings of God the Mother Hen. But lots did not. Why?

Well, Jesus also called people to a new way, to repent of what they were doing, to change direction. To love God and love neighbor as their Scriptures had long proclaimed, to live in God’s reign that was theirs now, not just in heaven. For some, maybe that was a reason not to follow. Or even to have him killed.

But all the leaders that wanted him out of the way trusted in God, knew the Scriptures, heard their call to love of God and neighbor all their lives. They knew the prophets, and God’s deep concern for those who were poor and in need, the ones most attracted to Jesus. Whether or not they believed Jesus was God’s Son, they ought to have been glad to hear him, support him.

Why would they be unwilling to be drawn into the love of God Jesus embodied and preached? More to the point, since all these people are dead long ago: why would you be unwilling?

Maggie suggests that seeking freedom to do whatever you want isn’t always the best thing for you. But we want it.

If little chicks in the farmyard are running wherever they like and the mother hen tries to gather them, it’s for a reason. Maybe a storm is coming, or a fox is near. She wants her babies safe under her wings, doing it her way. But what does a chick know about foxes or storms? Running’s more fun. Maggie certainly hadn’t read the weather forecast that day.

Freedom to be what you want to be, do whatever you want to do, is intoxicating, even for us. No one gets to tell you anything. Just because we’re here doesn’t mean we always want to do things Christ’s way. But if you accept the embrace of Christ the Mother Hen, you accept the way of Christ. The Mother Hen wants you to live in a way that is abundant and good for you and for all. The way of love of God and neighbor, the path of vulnerable love. That’s the path of healing and God’s warm embrace of you.

So when you go under those wings, you give up your freedom to be and do whatever you want, to find freedom to be God’s love in the world. Maybe you’re not willing to do that.

And of course, the Mother Hen decides who else is under those wings.

That was a lot of the resistance to Jesus’ ministry and proclamation. He attracted all the wrong kinds of people. People that some simply called “sinners” – not calling them by name or occupation, just naming their whole identity as something they did wrong. Some of those drawn to Jesus were beggars, people with mental illness, hated tax collectors. Even enemies, whom Jesus said also were worthy of love and prayers.

It’s good to know you are loved and embraced under God’s holy wings, gathered into the never-ending forgiveness of God for you, snuggling your spirit into the warmth of your acceptance by God.

But look around you under those wings. How long will it take to see someone you don’t want to share the space with? Someone you think no one should love, let alone God? Inside or outside Christianity, we all have some we could name.

You might not be willing to share God’s embrace with some of them.

But life is under those wings. Warmth, healing, hope.

It’s because Jesus welcomes sinners and hypocrites and people who struggle that you know you have a place. Every single one of us is welcomed under God’s maternal wings of love solely because God loves us, not because we deserved it.

And a life free to do whatever you want becomes a life of pain and misery, because no one wants to be with anyone that selfish, that hard, that uncaring of the needs of others. That path seems fine until you realize how bitterly cold your life has become and you wonder where the warmth of love can be for you.

All Jesus, the Son of the Living God, wants is to draw all God’s children into the warm embrace of God’s love.

And put them on a path where that embrace is shared with more and more. Until all are under the wings. All know God’s healing touch and life. All are warm and cared for.

There’s absolutely no reason for you to stay away. And if you do, you’ll learn at some point what a mistake it was to value your own stubborn way over a way of grace and healing, or to value staying away from those you don’t want to be with over a place of warmth and life.

“How often I have desired to gather you together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing,” Jesus says.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen