Pr. Joseph Crippen

The Triune God sees you as precious and beautiful, scars and all.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fifth Sunday in Lent, year A
Text: John 11:1-45

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

There’s something troubling in this story.

Jesus responds to news of his dear friend’s illness saying that it won’t lead to death, “rather it is for God’s glory,” he says, “so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”

So, Lazarus got sick so Jesus could be glorified? Is that what Jesus is saying? It sounds like what Jesus said last week about the blind man: “he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.” So this poor unnamed man spent his whole life blind, as a beggar, so on this day God’s works might be revealed?

What are we to do with this? Scripture doesn’t describe the Triune God as One who targets people with suffering to achieve some divine end. Certainly people throughout history have believed that, assumed that about God.

But that’s not the God we know in Jesus, or in Scripture. It’s not how Jesus dealt with suffering. When he meets the sisters later he has deep empathy with them, weeps with them, shares their grief. He’s not manipulating a friend’s pain to put on a show for the crowds.

So is there another way to understand this?

The Japanese have a beautiful art form called kintsugi.

It’s the art of repairing broken pottery by mending the broken places with lacquer mixed with powdered gold or other precious metals. Rather than throwing out a treasured piece of pottery because it’s broken, it’s mended.

The beautiful thing is the gold. The mended pottery openly shows all its cracks where it was broken. It gleams with bright gold lines crossing its surface.

Brokenness isn’t a reason to throw a thing away. Brokenness is the way of this world. And there is beauty in that brokenness, beauty where the mending isn’t hidden away but shown to the world as part of that beauty. The glory to be praised isn’t the skill of the mender. It’s the beauty of the thing mended.

Like a man who now can see after a lifetime of blindness. Or a man raised from the dead and returned to his family. That’s the glory Jesus means. Neither were put through suffering to help Jesus show off who he is. The glory of God is that God sees them as beloved before and after the healing. Their brokenness, their need, is part of their beauty.

It depends on how you think God sees you.

In our Western branch of Christianity, we tend to understand God as judge, who sees our brokenness – especially our actions, thoughts, tendencies to separate from God – as sin. And God’s wrath needs to be appeased, we’re taught. God is perfect, we sin, therefore God must be angry with us and see only the sin.

But what if we trusted the Bible? Certainly, there are places where God is angry, where the people’s sin is decried. No one doubts that. The question is, how does God view us, all people? As sinners who are worthy of destruction unless somehow someone saves us?

Or, as Jesus and Paul and the prophets repeatedly show, as beloved ones, even in our brokenness, even in our sinfulness? So precious there’s no question of God throwing us away. So beloved, God endures suffering and death to show us God’s true heart.

We belong to a Triune God who was broken at the cross and still bears those scars in the resurrection. Even God has broken lines, cracks, that have been healed. And because we find life in those scars, we see God’s scars as beautiful.

But what if you could see your scars, your wounds, as not something to be hidden away? Loved by a scarred God, can you see your wounds, your scars as as beautiful as you see God’s scars?

The glory of God is in God’s love for broken people God sees as precious.

Lots of blind people in Jesus’ day didn’t receive their sight. The glory of God seen in this man was God’s love for him his whole life, not just that moment of physical healing.

There were lots of grieving families in the same week as today’s story, maybe even in the same town. The glory of God isn’t that one of them was raised from the dead.

No, the glory of God is that God loves you and me in every part of our lives. If we’re angry at God for not stopping a tragedy, like Martha, God-with-us will hear our anger and promise us life now, with God at our side. Martha has no idea Jesus is going to raise Lazarus till the very last minute. Her beautiful statement of faith is simply that living with the brokenness of her grief knowing that God was and is with her is enough.

If we’re weeping or in despair, the glory of God is the Son of God simply weeping with Mary, loving her, deeply sad himself at the death of his friend. Mary also doesn’t expect Lazarus to be raised until he is. But it is enough for her that God-with-us is with her, weeping. And Jesus mends all their cracks – the brokenness of their anger, their grief – gold. They’re still there, even after Lazarus is raised. But they’re not a sign of failure or a flaw. They’re part of their beauty.

The Holy and Triune God looks at you and sees beloved, beautiful.

From Genesis 1 onward this is your truth. John 1 once again confirms it. Your cracks, your scars, your sins, your brokenness, are part of your beauty. Some will be mended in ways no one can see. Some scars will remain for others to see the rest of your life. But those scars are golden, beautiful, because God has healed them or is healing them still.

That’s the glory of God. That you, too, are glorious in God’s eyes, and so precious that God’s forgiveness is always yours, for the healing of your sin. So precious that God’s Spirit is always yours, for the healing of your spirit. So precious that God’s touch is always yours, in whatever places you are broken, to make those scars beautiful. Because they are in God’s eyes. You are, in God’s eyes.

Will you tell God otherwise, beloved one?

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

Doubtful Witness

Pastor Joseph G. Crippen
Texts (from the daily lectionary for today): Isaiah 60:17-22; John 20:24-29

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

It’s my turn now.

Last Wednesday our vicar described the challenge that the texts assigned in the weekly lectionary gave him. It seemed like a vision of God – God calling God’s people worthless, for example – that was inconsistent with the witness of Scripture and of his own understanding of God.

The texts assigned for today challenge in the other direction. Isaiah brings light and joy and hope to people who have experienced exile. Verse after verse is wonder: violence will no longer exist, devastation and destruction are gone. The days of mourning are ended, and all people, all, will be righteous. Peace and Righteousness will be the rulers of the land.

So when is this going to happen? How can we hear this in a world where violence reigns, where our rulers abuse and hate and kill, and create and promote devastation and destruction. Mourning isn’t ended, people all over are dealing with grief over the suffering inflicted in our nation and world. And Peace and Righteousness aren’t in charge here.

At what point do we ask, “how can we trust this?

And the assigned Gospel isn’t a lot of help.

We jump from Lent to a week after Easter. Everyone’s seen Jesus alive except Thomas. They’re excited, filled with joy and wonder. But Thomas says, “I really need to see this to trust it.” After years of hoping in Jesus ended in such tragedy, he wasn’t ready to trust something he couldn’t see.

And here’s the hardest part of this Gospel: Jesus says: “blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to trust.” That’s the challenge. Trusting in God’s goodness, God’s healing of all things, God’s promises of peace and righteousness, when we can’t see them.

But notice this.

Jesus says, “Blessed are those who trust without seeing.” He doesn’t say “blessed are those who never doubt.”

Somewhere we got the message that having doubts was a sign of weakness, alack of faith. But if we look at all the people of faith in the Bible and in the years since, doubt seems to be a pretty regular companion.

So what if we embraced our doubt as a normal part of faith? What if instead of fearing doubt, or despising it in ourselves or others, we admitted it, were open about it? Some days we feel stronger in faith than in doubt. Other days it’s the other way around. Wouldn’t it be good to just accept that as our reality and live with it?

And that might be a help to more than just us.

If we could admit there were days we didn’t feel secure in our faith, days we had more questions than answers, what kind of witness might that be for others? Mother Theresa’s lifelong doubts and struggles with faith were revealed after she died, and I, for one, was very glad to hear of them. If the great saints can admit their doubts, it gives the rest of us room to breathe as well.

We are those blessed Jesus talks about who have not seen and yet trust in God. In God’s love. In God’s healing of this world. Even though we have doubts and struggles with that trust every day.

Could we share this with others who don’t trust that God’s love is for them, that God is working in this world for good? Those who want to trust but don’t know how? Or who struggle for answers to the pain and suffering of life and don’t see how God could be real?

That’s what we can share. Our faith. Our doubts. It’s what we know.

Because even in our deepest doubts we have found that God comes to us with life and grace and resurrection. Even when we felt most lost the risen Christ has reached out and found us. Even when we look at the world and despair at it being healed, we have seen God’s hand working and bringing life, signs of Isaiah’s promises.

And wouldn’t that be something to share? To say to someone who has more questions than answers not that we have all the answers, but rather that we’ve been found by the One who is the Answer, who we trust to truly give us and the world life, now and forever. We could do this – so that they too might find life in Jesus. Doubts and all.

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