Watch
With Ezekiel, Paul’s Romans, and Mary and Martha, the disciples, and the crowd, we wait for God’s promised life to come, and see God’s face saying, “Do you trust me to watch for this and give you life?”
Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fifth Sunday in Lent, year A – recorded for preaching online during COVID-19 restrictions
Texts: John 11:1-45; Ezekiel 37:1-14; Psalm 130; Romans 8:6-11
Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
My soul waits for God more than those who keep watch for the morning. More than those who keep watch for the morning.
Today the psalmist has such longing within, such waiting for God, that it needs to be sung twice or it’s not enough: My waiting is like sentinels who sit for hours in darkness watching for the sun to come up. Like sentinels who sit for hours in darkness watching for the sun to come up.
And so is our waiting. We wait for when this “stay at home” order will be lifted. We wait for when we might be able to gather together again for worship, even gather with our families and friends. We wait for these things more than those who watch for the morning. More than those who watch for the morning.
But we wait for so much more. We wait for the relief from other pain and suffering we or those we love endure, beyond this virus. We wait for when our society will be just and whole for all. We wait for when our national government will serve all people and honor the rule of law. We wait for these things more than those who watch for the morning. More than those who watch for the morning.
And everyone we meet in God’s Word today shares our painful longing.
Ezekiel and the other Jewish exiles long for God to bring them home. Paul longs for his Roman churches to experience the truth of being Christ together and so heal their divisions, set aside their self-righteousness. Mary and Martha wait for Jesus with pain that we can still feel 2,000 years later.
When will morning come? Can you see it?
Well, there is a glimmer of the dawn in today’s Word.
The psalmist assures Israel that with the God who is named I AM WHO I AM there is steadfast love and redemption.
Ezekiel sees a vision of a field full of dry bones. No hope, no possibility of life, and he’s asked: “can these bones live?” And he sees a possible new life for God’s people, a making of living, breathing, bodies from the bones of their exile.
Paul sees what being the body of Christ could be for his Roman friends, bringing different cultures together not by diluting into sameness, but by honoring and loving their differences in the deeper truth of their being one in Christ.
Jesus does show up for the Bethany sisters. He asks, “Do you trust me? I am Resurrection and Life, right now, for you.” He asks what God asks Ezekiel: do you think the dead can live?
My soul waits for God more than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning.
Today there is a promise of something worth watching for.
Today God’s word asks you: can you trust the GOD WHO IS to give you life?
Three times Ezekiel is told that by God’s restoration “you shall know that I am the ONE WHO IS, who has spoken and who will act.” If they will trust God, Ezekiel and his people will know God’s life.
Paul is convinced the Spirit who raised Jesus from death lives in his people, has made them the body of Christ. Even in their mortal bodies, in this life. Right now. If they will trust the Spirit in them, they will know God’s life.
Jesus invites the disciples, Mary and Martha, and the crowd today, to see in him the life the Triune God is pouring into the world. Martha already trusts what you and I trust, that her brother will live again on the last day. But Jesus says, “right now, I can be abundant life for you.” If they all can trust Jesus to be that, they will know God’s life.
My soul waits for God more than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning. God’s Word tells you today if you watch for what God is doing, right now, you could trust not only that morning is coming, but that even in the darkness you can have God’s life in you. A life that restores dry bones, knits a community together, even raises the dead.
What will it take for you to trust that God is worthy to watch for, that morning is coming, that even in the night you are not alone?
Before you answer, notice that in today’s Word, knowing and trusting are invited before any healing happens. Ezekiel’s people are still in exile, and all Ezekiel has is a vision. The Roman churches are still divided, and all Paul has is a vision. Martha and Mary are still in mourning, the disciples and crowd are still confused, and Jesus stands before them as a vision of God’s life.
If you are waiting for God more than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning, know this: you’re like all people of faith everywhere. You’re asked to trust that your life, the world’s life, is in the Triune God’s loving hands, even if there’s little evidence yet.
That’s where you are, where we all are, on this day.
So hear this: The Triune God is the GOD WHO IS. Who has spoken love and acted love for you and the creation. Christ is alive, death has no power and God’s Spirit lives in you. You are loved forever by God.
So keep watch. This health crisis will abate, and we’ll be back together. Your other pains and sufferings may last the rest of your life, but they are held in God’s compassion and grace. Our society and world are being healed and brought together through God’s people of many faiths, through you acting as Christ. You may not see the full morning of any of this now. But if you look, there’s a glimmer on the horizon.
And yes, that glimmer can be as hard to see some days as a path out of exile. As hard to hope for as the healing of a community in division. As hard to trust as life when a loved one dies.
But the Triune God’s face looks at you through the eyes of Jesus, and says, “I can be life for you now, even in this world filled with death. I can fill you with morning light even in the darkness of your reality. Do you trust me, dear one?”
In the name of Jesus. Amen
Midweek Lent 2020 + Meeting Jesus
Week 3: Mary of Bethany pours out her love for Jesus
“Heart”
Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
Texts: Romans 12:1-2, 9-13; John 12:1-8
It was easy to criticize Mary.
She took an astonishingly expensive thing and poured it out. If the value really was 300 denarii, that’s worth nearly a year’s wages for a common worker. Whatever you might think of Judas, he has a point. It’s doubtful the disciples’ common purse ever had three hundred denarii in it. Many could have been blessed with that.
It’s easy to criticize Jesus, too. He seems to devalue caring for those who are poor in favor of caring for him. “You always have the poor with you” sounds a little callous.
But the criticism is easy only if we don’t enter Mary’s heart and Jesus’ wisdom. Paul pleads with his Roman churches to live with transformed minds, being completely different people in the life in Christ that the Spirit gave them. Lives filled with genuine love, care for each other, patience, joy, generosity for each other and for strangers.
Mary is living such a transformed mind because her heart was re-made. This pouring out was the only response she could make from her heart. Jesus knows that, sees this new heart. And publicly gives thanks for it.
Mary’s heart and mind were transformed by her life with Jesus.
Transformed by her time sitting at his feet listening, soaking in his grace, the love of God he lived and proclaimed. Transformed by her life with him as his friend, hosting him in the home she shared with her sister Martha and her brother Lazarus. Transformed by her profound experience at her brother’s death, when this beloved Master and Healer wept with her, shared her grief. Opened his heart to her, which she had come to know was the heart of God.
Mary lived in the abundant life Jesus came to bring all. She experienced new life when she was with him, the life in God’s reign Jesus said was now in the world. When she came to this moment, her heart was different and her understanding, her mind, was transformed.
Mary’s new heart gave her deep empathy.
This is a week before Jesus’ death. He’d warned the disciples, and John tells us they feared he’d be killed if he came to Jerusalem. But they seem oblivious to what Jesus is feeling.
Not Mary. Does she know he will die soon? Maybe. But she clearly senses his inner pain, his fear. Her new heart is drawn to his heart, and she feels his grief. She gets this costly perfume and pours out her empathy, her love, her heart, over his feet, and wipes them with her now-fragrant hair.
Living in Christ’s abundant life, with new heart and transformed mind, the only thing she knew to do was to love Jesus in the most abundant and gracious way she could. Little wonder others were confused and even critical. If they didn’t share her heart, how could they share her love?
Mary’s new heart also gave her new math, new values.
Seen logically, pouring nearly a year’s wages on the floor for any reason is criminally wasteful. These were not wealthy people. The math doesn’t work. If you care for those who are poor, and share your wealth with all so that all have enough, whether friend or stranger in need, this gift doesn’t add up.
But Mary’s new heart and transformed mind have a completely different value system, not driven by cost figures or rational argument. When you see differently, understand differently, feel in your heart differently, your priorities and values add up differently.
Far differently than some of her fellow disciples. It’s as if she was speaking a different language, acting according to a different set of cultural expectations. Not just marching to a different drummer, but singing with an entirely different set of musical rules and structures and voices.
This new heart and mind is your gift in the Spirit, too, if you want to live in it.
Meeting the heart of the Triune God in Christ, walking with Christ, transforms your mind, re-makes your heart.
In that new heart and mind, you share Mary’s empathy. Feeling not only God’s pain over the world’s suffering, but the suffering of all God’s children. That’s the wisdom Jesus has in his words about the poor. Mary only had that one week left to care for Jesus. But he made it clear that caring for all those in need, “the least of these,” as he said, from then on was where his followers would care for him. With transformed mind and re-made heart, you have Christ’s empathy, can pour yourself out in love for others whose needs will always be with you. Your Christ heart can feel that pain and offer healing perfume and loving abundant grace.
And in that new heart and mind, you have Mary’s new math and values. We’re learning that in this current health crisis. Suddenly doing things the way we want, the way we like, just isn’t good enough. We sacrifice things that are deeply important to us because we carry Christ’s heart for our neighbors and friends. But we’ve been learning this all along, too. That wealth we share for the sake of others is always a blessing, far beyond tax breaks or investment strategies. That helping someone might not make good business sense but always makes sense in our hearts. That seeing abundance instead of scarcity gives us courage to share in ways others might not understand, might criticize.
I appeal to you, Paul says, be transformed in Christ.
Let the Spirit open your mind to new possibilities, remake your heart into one like the Triune God’s. It’s a whole new world, but it’s life abundant, Mary reveals. And it’s what Christ longs for you to know and pour out into this frightened and broken world.
God’s peace be with you, beloved, in this time we are apart, but still together in God’s love.
Reflection on 3 Lent A (as we miss gathering)
It’s Sunday morning. Why am I not with the church?
Beloved in Christ,
This just feels wrong. Sunday morning and I’m drinking tea, and I am not with the body of Christ that surrounds and fills me and gives me life. I’m not at church at 6:00 a.m., greeting James, getting ready to greet you all. Pray with you. Eat and drink God’s life with you. Sing and talk and listen for God with you. Share peace with you. This happens on vacation, yes. But this is not vacation.
Sometimes the right decision doesn’t feel right in some important places of the heart. This is one of those times. It’s still the right decision. But that doesn’t mean we don’t feel deep sadness at what we miss when we’re not together.
So here are some thoughts on the Third Sunday in Lent in year A. Not a sermon; those are preached words, they’re shaped differently, too. Not worship; that’s much more than words, and what we do together isn’t replicable online any more than preaching is. But your staff is already working on some creative and imaginative ways to connect online with song, proclaiming Word, prayer, in ways that might bless us all and keep us connected. Watch for that (and thanks for the ideas some of you have already sent.)
In the meantime, it is 3 Lent, and the Gospel for today is John 4:3-42. Go ahead and get out your Bible and read it. (Out loud would be really helpful.) I’ll wait.
Are you back? Good.
Here’s my question: is Jesus being a little mean to this poor woman?
She’s hot and tired, hauling water at noon. She has to be thirsty. Now she has to deal with a Jewish man breaking rules and interacting with her. As a man, he’s not supposed to talk with an unrelated woman in public. As a Jew, he’s not supposed to share vessels with a Samaritan. He’s a bother. And he asks her for a drink.
But here’s the strangest thing. He tells her that if she knew who he was and what he could give, he’d give her living water. A phrase that could be used to speak of a spring or a brook. Running water, maybe. She’s thrilled she might be able to avoid all this dragging of water in the heat of the day. Then he says, “No, I’m not talking about water like this. I’m talking about something inside you, connecting you to God’s life.”
Well, that’s just fine. But it’s not what this hot, tired, thirsty woman needs. And it seems a little unkind to tease her with the idea of helping her physical need and then saying he’s got spiritual help instead.
We like to spiritualize this story, but we can’t skip over the bodily needs so quickly.
Imagine if you or I were sitting on the steps of Mount Olive this morning, with the doors locked, sad that we are reduced to staying away from people we love so that we don’t make people we love sick. Imagine Jesus came and sat down, and said, “If you knew who I was, you’d ask, and I’d give you an anti-viral agent that would mean you’d never get sick again.”
Wouldn’t that be amazing? We’d say, “Yes, please, give us that. So we don’t have to worry about COVID-19 or anything else like it ever again.” And we’d even think how we’d share it with the world. But what if Jesus then said, “Well, I mean, I’m not talking about a real anti-virus to keep this or any other disease from you. I’m offering you an anti-virus for your spirit, for inside you, to keep you whole and healthy where it matters.”
I think we’d be at least as disappointed as that poor woman. It seems a little cruel to hint at a thing we desire deeply and then pull it away at the end.
But don’t mistake Jesus here: he cares deeply about her bodily, physical needs.
The Triune God came into our world and took on our human body. Incarnation means God cares about our bones and blood and cells and organs and breath and pain and sleep and all that makes us animals, bodies, cares enough about all that to put God’s own self into such a body.
There are people who are thirsty and have no access to water. People who are hungry and don’t know if they’ll eat today. People who are sick and cannot get health care. Even our neighbors in this city, to say nothing of the world. The Incarnate, Triune God cares deeply about them. About you.
Which is why Jesus sends us out, as his follower James wrote in his letter, as Jesus himself said often, to feed and clothe and care for God’s beloved. You, and I, and all in the Body, are asked to make sure this woman gets real water if she needs it. We are not sent out to tell people with real physical needs that they just need to know God’s love and they’ll be fine.
God in Christ cares deeply about this health crisis. About all the people infected, about the isolation that keeping safe imposes, and how that isolation might harm people. No one on this planet is outside of God’s care in this. And you and I, and billions more, are God’s agents to work to mitigate this crisis, help each other, care for the sick, pray for all. We’re not at worship together today because as Christ we need to make sure we don’t hurt each other or our neighbors by spreading this virus.
And here’s the truth: this woman has a lot of needs, and only one is that she’s thirsty for literal water.
She’s in grief of some kind, over the loss of five husbands. Whether by divorce or death, she had no choice in ending any of those relationships, and she must still feel that pain. She’s possibly an outsider in her village. We don’t know, but it’s odd that she’s getting water alone, at noon, instead of early morning and twilight with the other women. She’s theologically hopeful, longing for a day when God’s Messiah would come and answer her and others’ deep questions and hopes.
If Jesus had made running water possible in her home, she’d still have all those other unmet needs.
And you and I, this city, this world, have more needs than an anti-virus for COVID-19, as real as that need is. We, too, have grief that needs comfort, fear that needs assuaging (whether of this disease or many other things), hopes and dreams that need God’s guidance and answer, longing for community that needs God’s embrace in other people. If God would miraculously end this health crisis this moment, all those other needs you have would still be unmet.
So while we help each other with the physical needs, what Jesus says to you today is: I can actually fill you up inside.
I can give you a spiritual anti-virus that protects your heart with God’s love and fills you with trust that nothing can separate you from God’s love. I can fill you with the life of God’s reign that I long for you to have, abundant life, even when viruses or death or loss or suffering happen. Even then, you’ll have life in me, hope inside, trust in God.
One of the biggest reasons we’re sad when sitting at home right now and not getting together is that we know that we get this spiritual anti-virus, this living water, this abundant life, when God meets us in our worship together. We come into that space expecting to meet God wherever we are in our lives. We don’t expect to leave with all our problems solved. But we do expect, because God is faithful and has given us this so many times, that God will be there in Word and Sacrament, and in the body of Christ around us. We know we will meet God’s love. We will sing God’s love. We will be filled with God’s love.
We always still need lunch after. Water. Some of us will take our medicines. But God’s living water, abundant life, unceasing love, will fill us to our core. And we know we are well. This we know, because this God has given week after week after week.
That’s what we’re missing this morning. But Jesus has good news for you.
It is Sunday morning. But I am, you are, actually with the Church right now.
Just as Jesus doesn’t offer a quick and easy solution that means we all can go to Mount Olive right now, Jesus also doesn’t abandon us.
You are Christ’s Body. So am I. And you and I are together, right now, in that Body. I am with the Body of Christ after all. Not physically, of course. But we know all about that. We know already that our loved ones who have died still gather at God’s Table when we do, and that in the mystery of the Eucharist the whole Church of all times and places gathers in song and is fed. Every time we eat the body of Christ and drink the cup of God’s salvation, we know we’re not just doing it with those we can actually see and touch.
This is why Jesus needs you to trust this living water he offers. You are embedded in God’s resurrection love, always, and if God’s Spirit is moving in you, and God’s Spirit is moving in me, and God’s Spirit is moving in all of us, we can never be alone.
This water Christ gives is “gushing up to life” in you, in me. Life in God’s new reign and reality. We just can’t physically see or touch each other right now.
But we are together.
Beloved in Christ, trust that. You are filled with life in God’s Spirit. In the prayers each of us offers this morning, we sing and pray together. And until we get to physically gather together in worship, since nothing can separate us from God’s love, nothing can separate us from each other, either.
God’s peace and grace be with you all.
In Christ’s love,
Joseph
Birth
You can only know what God is doing in Christ when God gives you new birth to see, hear, breathe, and walk in God’s love.
Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Second Sunday in Lent, year A
Texts: John 3:1-17; Psalm 121; Genesis 12:1-4a
Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
I don’t remember, but I wonder if the light shocked me.
Embraced inside my mother’s warm darkness for nine months, her heartbeat flowing through me, the light I saw as I was born probably surprised me most. I imagine this because even today I don’t like to wake up to bright lights. I much prefer a gradual increase of light as I awaken.
But really, coming from sound muffled through my mother’s body to hearing with my new ears directly in the air, or breathing air into new lungs that had never been asked to stretch until now, both could have also shocked my relatively new existence.
That’s what Jesus invites you to consider when you think of where God is in your life and what God is doing. Jesus says to Nicodemus, it’s like being born. Birth is an enormous threshold from one existence to another. But it’s the only way Jesus can answer what Nicodemus is really searching for.
There’s a reason Jesus is hard for Nicodemus to understand.
Nicodemus is an important man in his society, privileged, respected. He’s an authority, serving on the governing council of the Sanhedrin. He’s come to Jesus by night, maybe because many of his colleagues, other men in authority, dislike Jesus, are offended by or even fear him. He’s intrigued, though, wants to know more.
But Nicodemus comes with his teacher’s perspective, his authority, his credentials, to find out if Jesus really comes from God. Surely only God could give Jesus the teaching authority he has or the power to do the things he does.
But Jesus says something utterly confusing to Nicodemus. He tells him, “you really can’t understand anything about me if you don’t start seeing God as your mother.”
Jesus says, “Your question isn’t whether God is with me or has authorized me. Your question is whether God is with you. And to answer that, you need to be born, Nicodemus. From above, from God. God will have to mother you into this truth, give birth to a new you.”
Jesus isn’t insulting Nicodemus when he asks how he, a teacher of Israel, doesn’t understand these things.
He’s saying, “your frame of reference doesn’t work with what God is doing here. Your privilege, your authority, your questions, won’t get you anywhere. God is doing something simpler yet more profound than you think. You need to drop your credentials and let God give you new birth.
“You will need newborn eyes to see what God is doing in different ways, Nicodemus. As radically different as what your eyes saw in the dark of your mother’s womb compared to the light of day they saw at your birth. You will need newborn ears to hear what God is doing in different ways, Nicodemus. As radically different as the sound you heard through your mother’s body compared to the brightness of sound as you began life in the air. And you will need newborn lungs to breathe the Spirit’s life and be filled with what God is doing, Nicodemus. You’ve lived and breathed God before now as if in the womb, but the unused lungs inside you need to stretch and open to the breath of the Spirit, and take that breath into your very life for good.”
Can you see why this was hard for Nicodemus to understand?
Knowing God as mother isn’t an alternate image. It’s absolutely central to how Jesus understands what God is doing in the Spirit.
You can’t understand the third chapter of John without this. God births children into new life in the Spirit. New eyes, new ears, new lungs. To know and live in God’s expansive, astonishing motherly love.
A love for the cosmos that is so wide and deep that no one, no creature, no piece of creation, is outside of it. A love that, as Jesus says today, moved the Trinity to send the Son from the inner dance of God’s life to rescue the creatures of this planet, so none will be lost. A love that comes to heal and save, not to judge. A motherly love that cannot imagine life without all her children in her embrace.
A motherly love as in Psalm 121 today, that, like so many of our mothers, never sleeps deeply after her child is in the world, but is always awake to their movement, their life. Their going out and their coming in. Who fiercely protects them in the sun of day and in the moon of night.
Nicodemus’ image of God makes him wonder if Jesus is authorized to do and say what he does. If Jesus can be approved as officially God’s servant. Only by letting go of all of his preconceived notions can Nicodemus grasp the Mother’s heart within the Trinity Jesus deeply wants him to know.
Only by letting his eternal Mother give him new birth can Nicodemus see and hear and breathe in the heart of God’s astonishing and expansive love for him. And for all.
This is your promise, too, you know.
Birth is an enormous step from one existence into another. A step into the unknown. A step like Abraham and Sarah were asked to take today. A step like Nicodemus took. The only way Jesus can describe God’s abundant life for you is by calling you to a birth from one existence into a completely new one.
Luther often spoke of baptism as a daily death and resurrection. That’s a wonderful image. But today Jesus invites you to think of your baptism as a daily birth in water and the Spirit. A daily moving from one reality into a new life God births in you. And even though the new birth, the new reality is into the unknown, mysterious, unexperienced-yet, your heavenly Mother will always be with you in it, leading, guiding, loving. Not falling asleep.
This is the joy Jesus longs for you to know, to seek: letting the Spirit give you new birth every day.
New eyes to see God, so you can see where God is and where God is leading you. New ears to hear God, so you can hear God’s voice of love calling you, guiding you. New lungs to breathe God anew and let the oxygen of God’s transforming grace enter every cell of your body, every corner of your reality until you are a new creation. And new feet and hands, to learn to walk and touch – baby steps at first, small gestures at first – in ways that transform your world with God’s love.
And at first it’s going to be a bit of a shock, the light, the sound, the breath, the steps. It might be painful, too, this move from one identity to a new one. These things are always part of the birth process. Just let go, let your heavenly Mother’s embrace, your Mother’s breath of the Spirit, surround and fill you.
You won’t be led astray. You are safe in God’s arms. Because remember, in God’s maternal love no one gets lost or left behind. Not you. And not those you meet who might need you to draw them toward the birth God longs to give them.
In the name of Jesus. Amen
Note: in this week’s video we’ve included the singing of the Hymn of the Day to connect with this sermon. (The silence after the sermon and the chorale prelude before the singing are not included.) The hymn is in Evangelical Lutheran Worship, no. 735. Text by Jean Janzen, based on Julian of Norwich.
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