Midweek Lent, 2025 + Love Does No Wrong to a Neighbor +
Week 5: Love does no wrong to a neighbor

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
Texts: Romans 12:1-3, 13:8-10; John 8:2-11

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

This is a disturbing scene.

A group of religious men, authority figures, have dragged a woman into the grounds of the Temple and thrown her at Jesus’ feet. They lurk in a semi-circle around Jesus and this woman for all the public to see. The salacious details are they’ve caught her in the act of adultery. But where’s the person she was committing adultery with? If they truly cared about sin, there’d be two people brought to Jesus.

But they’ve got a bigger fish to fry. They want to expose Jesus as someone who doesn’t care about God’s law. They want him to prove publicly and beyond doubt that he is against the Torah. And they’ll threaten this woman’s life to do it. It’s a revolting sight.

So Jesus changes the visuals.

He kneels down and starts writing in the dirt. Far too much speculation focuses on what Jesus wrote in the dust at their feet. But that literally misses the bigger picture.

A group of men hovers over a woman cringing in submission and fear, knowing her life is on the line. And Jesus, who is standing, kneels. Now he’s lower than the woman, lower than her accusers. He will not stand over her. And he shames them in their standing.

Jesus utterly turns the tables. Suddenly the accusers are the uncomfortable and embarrassed ones. Suddenly they’re on trial instead of Jesus, or the woman.

If we’ve learned anything these Lenten Wednesdays, it’s that nothing can get between us and loving our neighbor.

Poverty, different faiths, our own discomfort with connecting with people, sickness, hunger, our privilege and wealth, none can keep us from this love we are called to give.

This isn’t news to these scribes and Pharisees. It’s core to their Scriptures, the heart of God’s Torah: love God with your whole heart, mind, soul, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.

So the picture of people who claim those Scriptures trying to keep those Scriptures by destroying their sister is awful. Keep that scene in your mind. No sense of right and wrong, no understanding of sin, can ever lead you to stand over another person in anger clamoring for their punishment.

Paul says today that love does no wrong to a neighbor, therefore love fulfills Torah. This is the only acceptable stance for a follower of Christ. If what you do, think, pray for, act on, decide, leads to harming your neighbor, you have to stop. No faithfulness to God you can claim overrides the command “do no wrong to your neighbor.”

There’s no question this woman sinned, if in fact she was caught in adultery.

Jesus seems to prove the leaders right about his view of Torah. He doesn’t appear to care that she broke God’s law. He cares a lot that they want to kill her so they can catch him in a trap.

So Jesus says, “If you’ve never sinned, you can throw a stone.” He instantly reminds her accusers, and everyone in the crowd, and us, that selective judging of sin is a lie. Everyone has done things contrary to love of God and love of neighbor, everyone has sinned.

Jesus doesn’t say what the woman did was right. He says if sin is the excuse you use to do wrong to a neighbor, then you should be honest about your own sin.

And doesn’t that hit home? How easy it is for us to pick and choose which sins we want to call out, which wrongdoing we’re indignant about? We judge some people harshly. These times we’re in have proved that. We let others get a free pass. And if we look at ourselves with Jesus’ words, can any of us hold our stone? Aren’t we all humbled, needing to drop the stone and shuffle away as quietly as we can?

Nothing can get in the way of your love of God and love of neighbor. Not even your neighbor’s sin. Or yours.

And to love this way, we need to be changed.

The only way we can love as Jesus calls us to love is if we become like him. We can’t understand or live in Christ’s way if our minds think as they normally think. So, “be transformed by the renewing of your minds,” Paul says, “that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” Be transformed, Paul says, changed by the Holy Spirit into the Christ you are called to be.

Then you become someone who finally, simply, consistently loves God and neighbor with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. Who doesn’t argue with God about this, or test God about this, or petulantly try to preserve a tiny piece of your own self-righteousness. You become a new creation.

At the end, the woman walks away, standing straight, no one attacking her.

Jesus recognizes her sin, but doesn’t condemn her. He just says, “now go and stop sinning.”

And that’s our gift. Jesus’ words today call all our own sins to our mind, and we slump in shame. But the Son of God’s answer to that shame and sin is the same as in this story: I don’t condemn you. Go, and don’t sin anymore. Let me transform you. Let me make you new, so you are like me.

So, whatever you might imagine that woman felt as she walked out of the Temple grounds that day, that’s Christ’s gift to you.

And in the Holy Spirit you are transformed. To become God’s true love in this world. For your neighbor. For all.

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

God’s new way is one that will ultimately change you from within, into a new person. But you start with your perception of it, and take that first step.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fifth Sunday in Lent, year C
Texts: Isaiah 43:16-21; Philippians 3:4b-14; 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 asks a hard question. It almost seems unfair.

Forget everything I’ve ever done, God says in Isaiah. In fact, forget that I brought you through the sea, stopped armies, and gave you an exodus, a path to new life. Forget your greatest story of salvation because I’m about to do a new thing. Don’t you perceive it?

As Christians, we say God’s new thing is fulfilled in Jesus, who called us to a path of life in God. But what if you aren’t sure you can see that, perceive what that means for your life?

Once again we’re looking at the path of Christ.

We’ve often talked of how hard Christ’s path is, the sacrificial, vulnerable love we’re asked to share for the sake of the world. But we also heard a couple weeks ago that the path is like rich food, rewarding, a way of life like nothing else.

Today we meet people who do perceive God’s new thing, God’s new path. People who find insight, truth, that changes them from inside out. They’re never the same after it. They don’t have to think about walking Christ’s way, it’s the only way they know. They don’t have to wonder if it’ll be hard or life-giving. The life they know in Christ is in their bones, and they can’t imagine going their old way.

We’re talking about Mary and Paul.

Paul tells the Philippians he is embedded in Christ’s new way. He once lived a life of joy and hope in following Torah, living as a faithful Jewish person. His life in Judaism was exemplary and fulfilling to him. But now, he says, none of that matters to me compared to knowing Christ. Paul found life in Christ and threw everything into following. All that matters to him now is knowing Christ ever more deeply, sharing Christ’s suffering and resurrection, and living as Christ.

Mary found God’s new way in Jesus, too. And today, at this dinner party, Mary can feel something from Jesus, the one she loves, who just brought her brother to life again. She senses his grief and anxiety. Maybe even his coming death. And she takes perfume that costs a year’s wages and pours it on Jesus’ feet, wiping them with her hair in love.

Mary and Paul perceive God’s new thing. It changes them completely, so now they act with new instincts, as if they’re already in the new way. Because they are.

But is this helpful to you? Can either of them explain how this helps? Not so much.

In these verses Paul tries to explain what it means for him to be so in Christ that his old ways don’t matter anymore, but he fails. Twice he tries, and twice he corrects himself, as if to say, “no, those aren’t the right words, either.”

And no one understands what Mary did except Mary and Jesus. The other disciples are dismayed. All they see is math. That much perfume costs this much, and this is a huge waste. They don’t get Mary at all.

So it’s not surprising we’re not sure how Mary and Paul help us, either.

They do because neither knew much more than you when they first perceived God’s new thing.

Paul was changed on the road to Damascus, but he didn’t have his theology yet, his proclamation. He couldn’t describe the way of Christ if you drew him a map. He just took a first step, then another. He listened to other Christians. And he met Christ. Not just on the road, at every step. Until he passed a point where he was no longer the person he was before. He sacrifices everything of his past life because step by step Christ drew him to this realization, this letting go, this life.

Mary didn’t give her perfume away on day one. However she first met Jesus, she didn’t know the new way fully. But step by step she followed until she was changed. She sacrifices financial security, faces the scorn of her friends. Because step by step Christ drew her to this realization, this letting go, this life.

So there’s your invitation: if you sense anything in Christ that pulls you with hope or gives you light or heals your heart, focus on that.

And take a step toward it. And another step. And if something you value pulls you back, ask for God’s help to let it go.

Mary and Paul had a lot to learn. But for both, it started with a moment of perception. That sense in you that says “these are words of life.” Maybe you’ve had that, too. So if Mary and Paul have anything to say it’s, “try that first step and see. Let go a little and see.”

This is God’s way in Christ. God’s new thing. Do you perceive it?

If you do, even in the smallest way, rejoice. And pray that the Spirit gives you courage to take those steps, one at a time, toward the light. Toward the hope. Toward the love. And courage to start dropping your old ways, no matter how precious, along the road. Until they’re not even in sight anymore.

That may sound like sacrifice at the start. But Mary and Paul say you’ll get to the point where it’s just the natural thing to do. Where God’s way so infuses you that it’s your new instinct, your only way to be and think and love and do.

God’s doing a new thing, to heal the world. You already know this. God now give you the heart to follow until you are changed, and you can’t even remember that you’d gone a different way before.

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

Midweek Lent, 2025 + Love Does No Wrong to a Neighbor +
Week 4: Faith without loving action is dead

Vicar Natalie Wussler
Texts: James 2:1-17; Psalm 113:2-8; Luke 16:19-31

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

Nothing says “partiality” quite like a school lunchroom.
The cool kids at one table, nerds at another, various cliques siloed off, and the sidelined many anxiously trying to find their place. Maybe you, like me, felt hopelessly alone sometimes because you didn’t fit in, and had bullies reminding you of it. Maybe you spent your school years frantically figuring out which group would finally accept you. Or maybe you’ve been part of a friend group and you’ve felt suffocated by the expectations of who you should be, and worried that if you go against the grain, you could end up on the outside–perhaps again. Maybe you’ve felt partialities creep up in your professional life or even in your family. And whatever your experience with partialities, it’s easy to see why James condemns them so passionately. 

Partialities hurt.
They dictate who we should and shouldn’t care about and love. And it’s because of partialities that kids bully each other, that discrimination thrives, that oppression keeps people stranded on the margins, that wars erupt between nations, that hatred exists between people who don’t look the same or speak the same language or worship the same god, that the rich man either doesn’t notice Lazarus or decides Lazarus is not worth his time. This way of life alienates us from God’s beloved children, our siblings, and keeps us sitting in our prescribed places.

But Psalm 113 gives us another way.
The Psalmist tells us that in God’s reign the poor sit next to rulers, making space for each other, valuing each other. Sharing meals and sharing life. God knocks down the divisions between us and welcomes us to see each other as God sees us. In God’s reign, all people can sit together at a crowded table that has enough room for every person, where everyone is served, everyone is loved. Where we pull out chairs for each other and extend the table so everyone has a good seat. It’s a community where you and I are radically, unconditionally welcomed, where we can experience true belonging. 

I’ve seen it, like in the youth group Jake and I led, where the homecoming queen and the president of the anime club became friends. In the world of school lunch tables, these students would basically be on different planets. But because God was present, they laid down the ways they’d been divided and made space for each other and built a home where everyone belonged. We see God breaking down barriers when people of all different races, genders, sexualities, and life experiences stand together advocating for a kinder world that values all people, even with the threat of backlash. And God is doing it here and in so many communities like this one, where all people who walk through our doors are treated with dignity, respect, and love.

And because we belong to God, and have a seat at this wide and crowded table, we also belong to each other and all people and they belong to us–and that’s the hard part, isn’t it? It’s the pulling out chairs and expanding for all people that gets in our way. God calls us to extend this unconditional, radical welcome to all people, and we don’t always want to do this because there are people out there that need a welcome to the table that are perpetuating evil. There are people out there that are inconvenient for us to invite. And there are people that we worry would affect our reputation if we extend a welcome to them. But we’re on the hook. If we trust in the Triune God to make space for us and all people, we have no option but to live this reality out. We cannot stay on the sidelines. 

“Faith without works is dead” says James. Us Lutherans might cringe at this verse. But this isn’t a works-based theology of salvation that goes against our understanding of grace. But it is a call to us to let God’s love flow from us to all people because of our faith in the God that widens tables. Our faith cannot be stagnant, James says. It should move us toward seeing the work that needs to be done, and then doing it–like sitting with the person who’s alone, or having difficult conversations that lovingly confront our siblings who do evil, or doing the hard work of forgiving, or welcoming a stranger, actively loving the widow, the orphan, the poor, and the outcasts, or advocating for the basic human rights of the marginalized even in the face of major resistance. God’s love doesn’t just stay with us, it’s desperate to be shared with the whole world. 

And it’s hard work.

Because as we start to widen God’s welcome, we see all these prejudices have become great chasms that are too wide to cross by ourselves, as Abraham tells the rich man. They’ve been formed and reinforced by years of neglect, like in the case of the rich man’s relationship with Lazarus. They’re influenced by fear and hatred that festers between people and strengthens the partialities that keep us apart. We can’t bridge these gaps by ourselves. Because when we do, we can become overwhelmed by the depths of division or get caught up in our own biases or fear backlash and resistance. And we grow tired and weary by ourselves, and we can lose hope in this chasm-crossing mission.

But God can do it.
God already crossed the chasm between Godself and us through life, death, and resurrection of Christ and broke down any barriers between us so much so that God’s Spirit dwells within us, and commissions us to continue building a world where chasms and prejudice turn into bridges and beloved communities. It’s hard and heavy work, but we can rely on the Holy Spirit, to expand our ability to love those we’d rather not, to give us patience, grace and mercy that sustains us when we feel like giving up. The Holy Spirit leads us to communities like this one, full of people committed to crossing chasms and breaking down barriers, where we become the Spirit’s nourishing to each other. We hear each other out on days it feels too difficult, on days when we lose hope that the barriers will ever be broken. And we encourage each other to keep going. We embrace each other with unconditional and radical belonging. We share stories of how our lives change after we were told we genuinely belong and are beloved. We help each other recognize we’re in this together. We remind each other why we do what we do. And, together, you and I are sent out, by the power of the Holy full of faith, to break down partialities and cross chasms, to invite all God’s children to the crowded table.

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

God’s dream is to reconcile all people, all things, into God’s life and toward each other in love: you are now an ambassador of that dream.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fourth Sunday in Lent, year C
Texts: Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32 (ref. to 4-11 as well); 2 Corinthians 5:16-21

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

This is not a moral story of a kid who messed up, repents, and is forgiven.

Jesus doesn’t tell that story.

The two preceding parables we didn’t read, the ones Luke adds a moralistic repentance tagline to, have nothing to do with repentance. The lost sheep doesn’t repent, the shepherd finds it. The lost coin can’t repent (it’s an inanimate object), the woman finds it.

But this third parable broadens the problem of lost ones. Jesus tells of two lost sons who also show no repentance. If the younger son had repented, he’d have said, “I really messed up. I need to see if my father will forgive me.” But he calculates how to get three square meals and a roof. And nothing the elder brother does in this story reveals repentance.

So this is also a story of lost and found. And Jesus tells these three parables to two groups at once: people that others called “sinners,” including tax collectors, and righteous religious leaders who actually care about doing God’s will. Both are there, and there’s a message for both: God loves you all extravagantly. Will you love each other?

This is reconciliation. And these two sons need it.

The younger son won’t stay another minute in the family house. He wants now what he’d inherit when his father dies. Then he’s out of there.

And all the servant tells the elder is that his brother returned and his father’s throwing a party. For all the elder knows, his brother came back wealthy. He assumes the worst: his brother wasted all his wealth, and on prostitutes. Prostitutes were never mentioned in the story until the elder brother started imagining.

Jesus’ audience has the same problem.

The group stereotypically called “sinners” is outcast and hated by “good” people. Jesus’ welcome might have been the first sign of God’s love they’d heard. The religious folks likely have anxiety about doing what God wants. But they’re certain how bad the others are.

But Jesus is declaring the reign of God. All are welcome, loved, blessed. As long as these beloved children of God listening to Jesus don’t love each other, aren’t reconciled, God’s not happy. So Jesus tells a painful story of a father who loves his sons and wants them both at the party, loving each other. He wants reconciliation.

Paul powerfully trusts this is God’s heart.

God’s ministry in Christ is reconciliation, Paul says, reconciling the world to God’s own self. And therefore, Jesus says here, reconciling the world, God’s children, to each other. Reconciliation of the creatures and the creation has been God’s dream, our Jewish siblings have told us, since creation. Ever since a brother killed a brother, starting a world of violence that thrives today, God has longed for this.

In Christ, God’s reconciliation is embodied. Jesus doesn’t slap the religious leaders. He loves them. He wants them to remember what they already know from their Scriptures, they are loved forever by God. And that all God’s children – even these they call sinners – are part of that love and welcome. Jesus needs them to find this reconciliation with their siblings.

He needs that other group to find it, too. They certainly have no reason to love the “good” people who judge them and marginalize them. Jesus wants them to know it’s not enough to know the love of God. God needs them to love even those who despise them.

This is the reign of God Christ reveals.

Christ rules through love and reconciliation, and here’s Paul’s surprise: you and I are ambassadors for this realm, for God’s reign. We are ambassadors of God’s reconciliation.

Take that word seriously. Paul uses the same word used for legates of the emperor, envoys of rulers. And an ambassador is not a free agent. The ambassador acts on behalf of the one who sends them. They only convey the message they are given to convey. They can’t abandon it, or change it, or apply it only to some. Their only job is to perform their diplomatic mission faithfully, as it is given.

So Paul has jumped us way past the end of this parable. He’s given us the answer – God’s dream of reconciliation – and said, “you’re on the job now. You’re reconciled with God, now go out and be an ambassador of reconciliation.” But it’s God’s way, not ours. So as ambassadors, we have to do it God’s way, not ours.

And that creates a particular challenge for our ambassadorship in these times.

It’s not about either of Jesus’ groups. It’s about American Christians who are now saying empathy and compassion are toxic and not of Christ, and need to be rejected. Christians who’ve acted against Christ for years and now have power to harm, cause great suffering, even to kill. We don’t have the authority to kick anyone out of Christ’s body. In fact, as ambassadors of God’s reconciliation it’s our job to love these siblings, pray for them, seek reconciliation with them. It’s God’s way.

But as baptized ambassadors of the God who died and rose to bring reconciliation to all people in Christ, whose love is comprehensive, extravagant, even foolish, for all, we also have to find the courage to name this evil and wickedness. To say “what you are proclaiming is not of Christ” whenever we can. When friends ask us how we can still be Christian when Christians act that way, we have to boldly tell our friends that these people are acting against Christ, against Scripture. When we have a chance to speak with someone who believes these things we have to have the courage to be an ambassador of God’s reconciliation and declare with love that hatred and bigotry and exclusion and rejection of any of God’s children is not of Christ.

We definitely need the Spirit’s help, strength, and wisdom with this. But if we don’t find the courage to love these siblings and to challenge them, then who in this country will be ambassadors of God’s reconciliation?

Jesus doesn’t end this story, or say what the brothers do.

He leaves it open, with longing. Jesus hopes that both will come to the party, love each other, know their father’s love. So, if you’re in any doubt of your place in this story or in God’s love, ponder that hope, and pray that the Spirit will draw you into the party of love God wants you to join with all God’s children.

And then it’s time to take on the role of ambassador of God’s reconciliation, proclaiming God’s love in your words and actions and your very life. This is your job. This is my job. Let’s get out there and let the world know of this reconciliation in Christ that will bring the whole planet into life and hope and healing.

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen