Even as they are killing him, Jesus’ accusers are half-hoping to witness a miracle – some kind of marvel that will help them “see and believe.” In Mark’s Passion, Jesus has no more teachings or miracles, but the cross shows us a God worthy of our faith.

Vicar Jessica Christy
Sunday of the Passion, year B
Text: Mark 14:1-15:47

Even as they were torturing and killing him, they were hoping to see a miracle.

Throughout his ministry, people were drawn to Jesus because of his power. Massive crowds in search of healing and hope chased him across the Galilee. The press of people was so eager that they forced him to preach from boats and to retreat to remote places. They were desperately hungry for a demonstration of God’s might.

Even though the crowds have turned against him by the time he is arrested, things haven’t really changed. “Prophesy!” his tormentors shout as they beat him. “Prophesy!” – show us your power, if you are so powerful. And then as he is being executed, they jeer, “Save yourself, and come down from the cross! Let the Messiah, the King of Israel, come down from the cross now, so that we may see and believe.” Yes, they’re mocking him with these words. They’re taunting the helplessness of this man who said he would forever change the world. But in his final moments, they show their hand, and reveal that there is a core of truth in their taunts. As Christ is dying, he cries out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” and the people who have gathered to gloat over his death mishear those words. “Elahi, Elahi” – “My God, my God.” They think he’s calling out for Elijah. And this excites them. Suddenly, they rush to try to prolong his life, saying, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to bring him down.” They despise him, and yet they can’t look away because they still think that Jesus might show them God in a marvel. They’re still looking and longing for something to see and believe in.

Jesus, of course, doesn’t give them the show that they’re half-hoping to see. Not only does he deny them signs and wonders, he barely even speaks. Pilate is amazed by his refusal to say a single word to defend or explain himself. In Mark’s Passion, Jesus has no more teachings, no more wonders, no more prophecies. If the people at the Crucifixion are hoping to witness something that will help them believe, they will only see an ordinary criminal dying a shameful death.

As we enter this Holy Week, what are we hoping to see? What are we hoping to believe in? Because if we are hoping to encounter Christ in great marvels and miracles over these next days, we are going to be disappointed. Jesus will be revealed to us in the ordinary – in struggle and in suffering. We will see Jesus anointed for death by an unnamed woman. We will see him breaking bread with his disciples, then going to pray in sorrow in the garden. We will see Jesus abandoned by his friends to die alone and in agony. And even on Easter, we will hear the good news, “He is risen!” but Mark will deny us a glimpse of the risen Christ. There is little glory to see in this story. If we call on God’s power, we will find a God who chooses to be powerless. If we call on God’s eloquence, we will find a God who chooses to be silent before his accusers. If we call on God’s salvation, we will find a God who refuses to save himself. The only Son of God that we can proclaim will be the one who subjects himself to suffering and death on the cross.

This might sound like a bleak picture, but it is far better news than any God of power and majesty, because in this week, we see a God who knows us. We meet God in weakness and despair because that is where God comes to meet us. We are reminded once again that there is nowhere we can go in this life where Christ cannot journey with us. There is no fear that is foreign to him, no hurt that he cannot bear for our sake, and for the sake of the whole world. Christ intimately knows our worst pains and sorrows, and takes them on himself so that he might raise us to new life. A God of perfect, shining glory couldn’t do that. Only a king who wore a crown of thorns and a savior who emptied himself on a Cross could know and love us like that. But that’s not all that we see; we see a God who knows what it means to suffer betrayal and humiliation and death at our hands, and who forgives and saves us anyway. We see a God who would rather be broken than break us. We see a God who has promised to never abandon us, even in the moments when we turn from God. We see a God who would do anything – suffer any indignity, endure any pain, harrow Hell itself – anything to bind up our wounded world.

This is the Son of God we can expect to meet. It isn’t going to look like much, at least not to the eyes of the world. There is no wondrous spectacle, no heavenly proofs to win us over. There is just incomprehensible love, and the promise that Christ can make even the worst instrument of death blossom into the tree of life. This is what we can see. This is what we can believe. And this is how we can live.

Amen.

We see the face of God in Jesus, so that means we see the depth of God’s love in the cross, and our own path to life and witness.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fifth Sunday in Lent, year B
Text: John 12:20-33 (with reference to other verses of John)

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

“We want to see Jesus.”

That’s all they asked, these Greek Jews. Finding a disciple who spoke Greek, they said to Philip, “Sir, we want to see Jesus.”

Isn’t this a beautiful opportunity for a follower of Jesus? Such a simple request. But it’s kind of complicated, isn’t it?

Jesus’ very strange response shows that. John doesn’t say he greeted or acknowledged the seekers. He starts talking about his anticipated time being upon him. He talks about a single grain of wheat that will remain a dead seed unless it is buried, planted into the earth. Only then can it live, become the beauty it was meant to be.

We want to see Jesus, like them. But we also see someone talking about dying and rising. About being lifted up. Unlike these Greeks, we know that means the cross. John, our narrator, fills us in: “he said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.”

“We want to see Jesus” is anything but a simple request.

But it’s a request the very beginning of John’s Gospel promises we’ll have answered.

John says it’s good to want to see Jesus, because to see Jesus is to see the face of God. Jesus is God’s Word, God’s Logos, God’s Blueprint, God’s Pattern for the Universe, the shape of the very nature of the creation, now among us as a human being.

John says Jesus, the Son of God, who is at the heart of God, makes the Father known to us, and Jesus, the Son of God, who comes among us, makes the Spirit known to us.

We want to see Jesus because Jesus is the face of the Triune God for us. Everything we need to see about God we see in Jesus. But we’re still stuck wondering: why does seeing Jesus mean seeing death and burial? Why is he talking about seeds dying and about being lifted up in the air?

Maybe because he knows we’ll soon see him that way.

John says he wrote his Gospel so all could see Jesus for themselves, and believe he is the Son of God, the Christ, and in believing, have life in his name. (20:31) From the beginning of his book, John gives us signs to help us see Jesus.

And from the beginning the greatest sign is the cross. Unlike the other Gospels, John foreshadows the cross very early. He says the Son shows us the Father’s heart in chapter 1. In chapter 3, as we heard last week, he says that God’s heart is love for the whole cosmos, so the Son came to heal, not to judge. But already there Jesus says that love will be seen when he is lifted up, like the snake Moses put on a stick in the wilderness to heal the people.

Now again today, Jesus promises he’ll be lifted up.

So seeing Jesus is going to be relatively easy. He’ll be up on a hill, raised higher than everyone and everything else. Zacchaeus won’t need to climb a tree. People won’t have to tear a hole in a roof and lower a friend down. Judas won’t need to give a secret signal in the dark. Everyone will see Jesus very soon. Hanging in pain and suffering, dying on a cross.

To see Jesus is to see the truth of the seed that dies only to live.

Mary of Bethany saw this. Just before today’s Gospel is Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem with palms, and just before that, Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, took extravagantly expensive perfume and anointed Jesus’ feet, wiped them with her hair. Some of the disciples criticized the wastefulness. (12:1-8)

But Jesus knew. He knew that after he entered Jerusalem in triumph the next day, even his disciples would see a ruling king. Maybe even some foreigners, Greek Jews would be impressed enough to come looking for him. But he also knew that his hour was coming.

So did Mary. She saw the face of God in Jesus. She saw that the love of God Jesus revealed to her and the others was leading him to death. Rather than waiting to anoint him after his death, Mary prepared him for it. She saw clearly.

For the rest, for you, for me, Jesus has to tell the mystery of a seed dying to live. Maybe we haven’t sat at his feet long enough like Mary to see through our own fears and doubts, or our beliefs about how God should be.

But now Jesus’ strange reply about the seed makes sense: you need to see me like Mary sees, he says. You need to see that the outcome of my love is you’ll have me killed. Faithful to the heart of God, Jesus loves us enough to be willing to lose everything.

If you want to see Jesus, look up. Look at the cross.

When we see Jesus as Jesus really is, we not only see the depth of God’s love, though. We see the path to our life.

Remember, Jesus is the Logos, the Blueprint, the Word, the Pattern of God for the universe in our human flesh. The seed that dies only to live is the pattern of life that really is life.

Seeing Jesus face death, and rise from the dead in love and grace, the believers realized that his path of dying to live really was a true path of life. They understood why, when speaking of his own dying, he invited them to lose their life to find it as well. To embody God’s heart, too, and live as that heart the way Jesus did.

It’s your invitation, too, you heard Jesus today. Lose your life to keep it. Let go of everything that keeps you from being filled with God’s love. Maybe it’s a sense of not being of any value. Or anxiety about life and the future. Maybe it’s selfishness and pride. Or guilt and shame. Maybe it’s a need to control life and others. Or a sense of being out of control and helpless. There are many more possibilities.

We’re all seeds, wrapped in what is killing us. But when with the Spirit’s help we let go, die to those things, bury them and us, like the old self Luther said needs to die every day, then we’ll discover what it is to live. We find winning by losing. Gain by letting go. Life by dying.

“I came that you might have life and have it abundantly,” Jesus said. (John 10:10) This is how you find it.

Now you see what Jesus meant that in being lifted up, he’d draw all people to himself.

On the cross, Jesus not only made it possible for the whole world to see God’s love. Being lifted up on the cross, Jesus also draws all people’s attention to what our love, true love really looks like. What God’s pattern for abundant life in this world really is.

Not power or strength or control or domination. Not hoarding or saving or securing. Not taking care of yourself before and excluding all others. Not dismissing or hating yourself.

No, abundant life is found when we love the same love, vulnerable, giving, sacrificial. When we die to what is in us that is not of that love. Jesus, lifted up on the cross, shows us all how we find life that is rich and real.

“We want to see Jesus.” You do, don’t you? Well, look up. Sit at Jesus’ feet for awhile until you see. And wonder, ponder, dwell in what you see. Until you begin to look like Jesus, too.

Until all people can see, all are drawn to God’s love. And the world is healed, as God has so long desired.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

Moses’ bronze snake was a good gift from God…until it became an idol. That’s what we do with so many of God’s gifts: we worship them as false gods. What are some of the idols ruling over us today? And how can we find our way out of idolatry?

Vicar Jessica Christy
The Fourth Sunday of Lent, year B
Texts: Numbers 21:4-9; John 3:14-21

It began as such a good thing.

When poisonous snakes attacked the people of Israel in the wilderness, they prayed to God for forgiveness and help. God answered their prayers by telling Moses to craft the image of a serpent, and to lift it up high, so that people could look at it and be healed. It sounds strange, but it worked. Everyone who saw it was made well. The aggressive snakes didn’t disappear, but they no longer held the same terror for God’s people. There was now a way forward, leading them out of death and despair.

We know that this bronze snake was dear to the people because the book of Kings tells us that, hundreds of years later, it was still in Jerusalem. Faithful people preserved this vehicle of God’s grace not only through the wilderness, but through the conquest, through the time of the Judges, through years of wars and civil wars until it finally found its home in the holy city. This object, this bronze snake, told the story of those hard years wandering in the desert. It symbolized salvation in the midst of danger and pain. It was a reminder that God’s mercy is always greater than God’s anger. And it was made by Moses’ own hands. Of course it was honored. Of course it was well-loved.

But something went wrong. By the time of King Hezekiah, around the year 700 BCE, the symbol had become twisted into something ugly. People forgot what the bronze snake really meant and started worshipping it as an idol. Devotees burned incense to it, as if this old piece of metal could accept their sacrifices or answer their prayers. They took this good gift from God, and turned it into a false god. So Hezekiah took this sacred object, this symbol of salvation forged by history’s greatest prophet, and he smashed it. It started as a bridge between God and the people, but now it was a barrier, so he broke it into pieces.

It’s a bit heartbreaking that that’s how the story of the bronze snake ends, with idolatry and loss. But isn’t that what we always do? God has given us so many good things in this life for our enjoyment, for our flourishing. Our world is overflowing with abundance and beauty and delight. We are surrounded by good gifts that please our bodies, lift our spirits, and engage our minds. And we so easily turn these things that God has given us into our idols.

Take food, for instance. It is a truly marvelous thing that we can take such joy in nourishing our bodies. Meals don’t just keep us alive – they excite our tongues, stretch our imaginations, and strengthen our relationships. This is pure gift. And yet, we so often treat food as if it is the center of our lives instead of something that serves our lives. How much does our culture teach us to fixate on what we put in our bodies? How powerfully are feelings of virtue and shame tied up in what we put in our shopping carts, as if our worth could be measured by our menus? What if we, as a society, put half as much energy into serving God as we put into thinking about our diets? Because this idolatry comes at a great cost. When we let food become our god, it is not a kind master. It inspires obsession, anxiety, self-doubt. When we turn this gift into a god, it takes and it takes – sometimes until there is nothing left.

Or consider knowledge. God gave us these brains, the wonder of which we are just now beginning to understand, and filled us with endless curiosity. Our lives sparkle with the joy of discovery as we learn to understand the world around us. But then we can turn simply knowing things into an ultimate good. We use it to posture over each other, to glorify ourselves instead of learning to better love our neighbors. Or we treat athletic or artistic talents as though they were the sole purpose of our lives. Or we obsess over our possessions, enjoying good things but then demanding more and more until they own us instead of the other way around. Whatever they are, we all have our idols. Things that God has given us to enjoy on this earth become our ultimate concerns. The bronze snakes that were meant to lead us to healing and wholeness sometimes just leave us more broken.

This is particularly true for the church. How often, in the history of our faith, have we loved our ideas about God more than we have loved God? It seems absurd to think that anything as wonderful and sacred as our theology, or our worship, or our Bible could become an idol – but that’s probably what people thought about Moses’ bronze snake. It is so very easy for us to mistake our tradition for God, and to act as though our specific understanding of faith is the thing that needs to be loved and served. Or we get so attached to our institutions that we can’t recognize when they’re no longer serving our relationship with God. Instead of striving to do the work of the Gospel, we work to defend the things that we have created. Or we become so set in our interpretation of scripture that the words on the page make it hard for us to hear what the living Word is saying to us today.   Over and again, we can say we’re worshipping God when we’re really paying all glory, laud, and honor to ourselves and our own work. Again, the earthly things of faith that we love are good, and God-given, and filled with grace – but they are not God. Sometimes we need to put them back in their proper place. Sometimes we might even need to break them apart so we can encounter God anew.

But there is good news here. For all that we turn God’s gifts into idols, God gave us one more gift that we know can lead us safely through the wilderness. It’s a gift that we might misinterpret or misuse, but that can never be corrupted or destroyed. For God so loved the world that God gave the only-begotten Son to show us the way to eternal life. Christ is the greatest gift this world has ever known, and he shows us the way out of all our idolatry. When our longing for certainty and stability turns good things into false gods, Christ shows us that we only find ourselves when we give ourselves away. When our desire for knowledge turns good things into false gods, Christ tells us that God’s wisdom is found in folly. When our love of power turns good things into false gods, Christ shows us the way of the Cross, and empties himself of all the power of the cosmos for our sake. And when our sense of inadequacy turns good things into false gods, Christ shows us that we are loved – absolutely and unconditionally, no matter who we are.

For as long as we are on this earth, we are going to misuse the things that God gives us. We’re going to make sacrifices to false gods. But we know where we can look to see our true God, and we know that when we look to Christ, we will find life. No matter what dangers surround us, no matter how far we have gone astray, we will find life.

Amen.