God’s new thing in Christ’s resurrection is very hard to comprehend, because everything is changed – but take heart. Others have gone before and show you the way.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Resurrection of Our Lord, year C
Texts: Luke 24:1-12; Isaiah 65:17-25; 1 Corinthians 15:19-26

For the second time in three weeks, Isaiah proclaims to us God’s new creation.

Once again, the Creator of all says, “do not remember the former things,” rather “be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating. A new heavens and a new earth.”

Nature itself is changed in God’s new thing, Isaiah declares. People who die at 100 years will be considered just a youth. War and violence won’t exist: if you build a house and plant the vineyards, you can live and enjoy that fruit.

We hear in Advent, from chapter 11, that the wolf and lamb will lie down together, but here God promises they will eat supper together. So again, nature itself is changed in God’s new thing – wolves have an entirely new nature. It is literally a new creation, with new rules and ways that the world works.

But it’s really hard to grasp such utter newness.

God’s new creation isn’t a friendly amendment, changing a little. Everything we believe is true about how the world works is upended. Predators and prey become beloved to each other. Weeping and death are no more. Peace and justice and safety are absolute: all can live in their homes and prosper.

We who trust in Christ believe this new creation began today, the day of Christ’s resurrection. Everything changed when Christ Jesus broke the power of death. Everything he taught that seemed so impossible by the rules of the world – loving your enemies and neighbors, knowing you are always loved by the Triune God, God’s children living in Christ transforming the whole world into peace and justice through love – all these things are now possible. Real. Because Christ is risen.

If we aren’t a little shaken by Easter’s truth, confused, startled, we need to listen to the Scriptures more deeply. Everything changes today. Everything.

So give these disciples a little slack.

They’ve had a week of seismic changes in how they understood the world to work.

Sunday was exhilarating; Thursday was perplexing, changing to terrifying; Friday was devastatingly unimaginable. Saturday was overwhelming lostness, trying to rebuild some idea of where to go from here. When Jesus died, every hope they had for who he was and what God was doing in him died, too.

So when the faithful women come to the tomb of Jesus and find it open and empty, of course they’re confused. The heavenly messengers sort of unfairly ask why they’re looking for the living among the dead: they couldn’t imagine he was alive. And forgive the male disciples, too, for doubting their sisters. The human mind can only go so far before shutting down.

How could any of them process yet another shift? Friday’s devastating loss forced a total re-evaluation of everything. And now this empty tomb, with the word that Jesus was actually alive?

But they did process it. We can see that from Paul’s words from twenty years later.

“If for this life only we have hoped in Christ,” Paul says, “we are of all people most to be pitied.” He’s talking about the promise of life after death, but hold that for a moment.

“If for this life only we have hoped in Christ” means that some of these Corinthians had faith in Christ for this life alone. That’s what these women and men who first found an empty tomb passed on to the world: everything Jesus taught them about life in Christ here was true. Real.

If Jesus is alive, then self-giving love cannot be stopped even by death. Loving enemies and praying for those who hurt you is possible and will change the world. God’s undying love for you that always searches until you are found is true. Jesus’ promise to be with you always in the Spirit is real and fills you with life and purpose.

They were confused at first, these disciples. But they eventually lived a whole new life, where the rules of how people deal with each other were completely new, changed. It was so different they called it the Way. The Way of Christ – loving, peacemaking, sharing, compassion, self-giving – this was what they found in the risen Christ. Reason to live and to hope here.

So twenty years after the Resurrection, people were coming to faith in Christ for this life, here.

Apparently many didn’t yet believe in a life after death. Paul’s Thessalonians and Corinthians both struggled with this. They had faith in Christ as a hope for this life. And they lived it in Christ. They loved it.

But here Paul says, if the joy of living this new creation Christ in this life – a good thing! – is all you have, you’re missing something. Because in those twenty years, some of the believers began to understand another profound joy of Christ’s resurrection: if Jesus broke death, it was broken for everyone.

And so we, 2,000 years later, come to Easter expecting part of our joy is this promise: death is not the end. Every year, some of us come here with new wounds at the death of someone we love, the pain of their absence, mourning a loss, looking for hope. And once again we hear Paul’s confidence, that Christ is only the first fruits of those who have died. All who die in Christ are raised to new life.

There’s actually hope for you today in the confusion and misunderstanding of these people.

Be patient with yourself if you don’t fully grasp God’s new creation in Christ. If twenty years after the Resurrection the Church was still coming to grips with the utter newness of what God is doing in Christ, don’t be hard on yourself if it takes you time.

But do be ready for everything to change. In a new creation, even wolves have a different nature. The dead don’t stay dead. God’s Spirit inhabits God’s children and they do amazing things.

So take heart: your prejudices and habits that are harmful, the vestiges of the old rules of a racist, sexist, elitist world that some of us find so hard to eliminate, they will be broken down and removed by God’s Spirit. It might take some time. But do know that the old rules have to go in God’s new creation. The struggles to love, especially those who hurt you, and to forgive, these will take time for the Spirit to resolve, but God will. Because those old ways have to go in the new creation. They all do.

And when you doubt God’s love in the face of death, the Spirit will help you trust in the promise of resurrection for all who are in Christ. Including those you love whom you miss so much.

Having everything turned upside down in God’s new creation is a challenge. So is unlearning how the world and our society say things have to work.

But now you know not to look for life in dead places like this world’s way. Now you know that Christ is risen, and everything is changed.

And now you have the comfort that if you and I are a little slow on the uptake, struggling sometimes to see this new creation and live in it, we’ve got good company in these faithful ones who first saw the risen Jesus. And now they’re standing on the sidelines cheering us as we walk our journey into God’s new creation, learning as we go, holding each other’s hands in hope.

Because nothing has ever been the same since that tomb was broken and Christ stepped out. It never will be, thanks be to God.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

Do you know what I have done to you? Jesus asks. May Christ open our eyes and hearts and transform us both to know and to do as Christ does.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
Maundy Thursday
Text: John 13:1-17, 31b-35

“Do you know what I have done to you?” Jesus asked the disciples Thursday night.

What Jesus did is more than just what happened that night, with the meal and the footwashing. “Do you know what I have done to you?” can be asked of every step the Son of God took in these Three Days.

And now on this night, Jesus asks you the same question. Everything rests on your answer. And mine. And that of all who wish to follow Christ.

After washing their feet, Jesus asked: Do you know what I have done to you?

His disciples knew in their guts that what Jesus did was profoundly shocking. Our translation unwisely cleaned up the word John uses here. Jesus took the place of a slave, not a servant, John says. Paul likewise told the Philippians that Christ Jesus emptied himself, taking the form of a slave.

And we wince. We don’t want to hear ugly talk of slavery because we carry as a nation and a people the ugly stain of racism built for hundreds of years on dehumanizing millions of our siblings from Africa and other places, and committing genocide on millions of our siblings who were native to this land.

But Jesus doesn’t talk about it, either. Jesus, God-with-us, lives it, not identifying with the leaders and the privileged and the wealthy, or even his followers’ status, but taking the lowest place in his society, the place of a slave. Stripping down to his underclothes and taking a towel and bowl to the feet of the women and men gathered with him for supper.

Do you know what I have done to you? Do you know yet what it means that the God of all creation took on all human oppression and prejudice and stands with the lowest?

After the meal, Jesus could have asked: Do you know what I have done to you?

Jesus took the Passover bread and called it his body. He shared wine and called it his blood. Do you see what he’s doing? Again, we’ve watered down the language, this time by over familiarity. “The body of Christ, given for you. The blood of Christ, shed for you.”

But Jesus is hours from having his body nailed to a cross, his blood poured out on the dusty stones of Jerusalem. All for love of you and all the creation. Jesus says that’s what you eat and drink here.

Eat his body, chew on Jesus’ vulnerable love, let it enter all your cells, change your DNA. Drink his blood, take his sacrificial love into your bloodstream and let it bathe your lungs for breathing and feed your limbs for moving. You are what you eat. So eat me, Jesus says. Drink me, Jesus says.

Do you know what I have done to you? Do you know yet what it means for the God of all creation to pour out love like this, to be wounded and tortured and killed out of love for you and all God’s children?

In the Garden, Jesus could have asked: Do you know what I have done to you?

Go to Gethsemane and see Jesus – God-with-us, the Word who created all things – set aside all power and dominance and allow himself to be taken, betrayed, arrested.

Once more, we’ve domesticated the language. We easily recite, “Not my will but yours be done.” But do you know what that means?

Jesus, the Son of God, says once and for all that God will not use power over people. Manipulation and force and violence and getting what you want might be tools you’re encouraged to use, but the Triune God who made the creation and you will have none of it. Ever. God’s will is to resist all evil and hatred through non-violent love, not through power and might.

Do you know what I have done to you? Do you know yet what it means that the God of all creation will not fight you, force you, overpower you, or anyone else?

If you understand the bowl and towel, the bread and wine, the agony in Gethsemane, the death on the cross, you will realize there are inevitable consequences for all who follow Christ.

You cannot be an oppressor, benefiting from a racist, sexist, elitist system, if you follow Christ Jesus. The ruler of creation became a slave, the oppressed one. That is where God’s love always is.

So, hear this: on this very night, Jesus commanded his followers, do what I did. Be slaves to each other and the world. Only then will systems that oppress and marginalize and crush be dismantled.

You cannot eat and drink the vulnerable love of God and separate that from following Christ wholly with your life. God’s sacrificial love flows in your veins and transforms your cells because God wants to make you into that love.

So, hear this: on this very night, Jesus commanded his followers, love as I love. Be vulnerable to each other, offering your lives for each other and the world. Only then will hatred and abuse and destruction be ended.

And you cannot use the power and privilege of this world for yourself if you follow Christ Jesus. The One who by will and desire created the universe does not will that your life be built on the backs of others, enforced by your weapons or anyone else’s, or by violence, or threats.

So, hear this: on this very night, Jesus commanded his followers, put away your swords. Find your power in your non-violent love. Only then can evil and violent structures and societies be broken down and all people live in justice and peace.

Do you know what I have done to you?

You know the stories. But if you struggle with this deeper understanding that transforms the world, perhaps you could pray with me this night:

Christ Jesus, open my eyes to see you kneeling in subservience at my feet and bend my back to offer myself wholly and fully in service to all others as you did.

Loving Christ, open my heart to receive your suffering love in this Meal and widen my arms to offer myself wholly and fully in vulnerable love to all others as you did.

Prince of Peace, break my pride and insecurity so I recognize you setting aside power and violence to heal this world, and mold my will that I might offer myself wholly and fully and nonviolently as an agent of your peace and justice to all others as you did.

On this very night you said to us, “If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.” Blessed Jesus, give us the grace to know and to do, and, with you, to bring your healing to all.

Amen

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.