You Are Mine

I preached this sermon as my good-bye sermon to Salem UMC, where I interned for two years, but I also preached it as my final in my preaching practicum, got some good feedback, and made some good changes. You can click here for the lectionary scriptures for this morning, which include Paul on the road to Damascus and Jesus' commission to Peter to "Feed my sheep," but my primary text is Isaiah 43:1-7. I also talk a lot about The Rainbow Fish. Some of you may know it. 

You know, I remember the first time I stood in the pulpit at my home church. It was a lessons and carols service and one of the readers hadn’t shown up, so my choir director hands me a piece of paper and says, “Will you read this?” I take it and nod and he says, “Now?” and so I get up before God and creation and walk up to the pulpit and read this lesson from Isaiah. The part that most of the people from my church back home remember is that I wasn’t wearing any shoes at the time, but what I remember was the sense of purpose I had when I approached the pulpit. I had a job to do and I was going to do it. 

And now, I wonder what I’ll remember from this moment, the last time I stand in this pulpit, in this place that has taught me so much about who I am and what it means to be a pastor. I’m much more prepared now than I was back then—I’ve got my shoes on and everything—but, I guess, at the end of the day, I still have a job to do and I’m going to do it. For this morning’s sermon, I’d like to share an important lesson I learned during these past two years, but before I do that, would you pray with me? 

God of hellos and God of goodbyes, God of learning and God of teaching, thank you for bringing us to this time and this place. Be with us here today. And may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable to you, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen. 

There were two words that I was wildly unfamiliar with when I began seminary. They weren’t big, fancy theological words like hypostatic union or homoousion or obscure liturgical words like ambo and alb. They were simple, words that I think everyone knows. Words that were so easy, they made them into a children’s book. Here, let me find them. Ah yes. 

I. Can’t. 

I can’t.

See, I read The Rainbow Fish as a kid and I loved it. A modern-day parable if ever there was one. I loved the shiny scales and I loved the colors so much so that they’re still the dominant color scheme in my decorating, all blues and greens and purples. 

But I also took the message to heart. This book is one of those stories that I read so often and so early that it made its way into how I understand myself. I learned that the only way you make friends is by giving them things, sharing with them. 

Like the Rainbow Fish, I have precious things about myself that I can give away. I can share what I’ve learned, I can share my time, I can share my effort, and I can share my skills. I can do plenty of things, and so “Yes, I can!” became the shiny scale that I gave to anyone who asked for it. And, like the Rainbow Fish, this giving kept me happy. 

At least it did, for a good long while. 

You all know probably know what’s coming. There came a day when I had no more scales to give. Somewhere, between going to school, going to my internship, working as a librarian, nanny, tutor, and editor, and investing in my relationships, friendships, and family, I gave away my last shiny scale. I reached back to pull out another and came back empty handed. There came a day when someone asked me for something and I said, “I can’t.” 

It shattered me.

Because, it turns out, when you build your self-worth on what you can give to other people, the moment you don’t have anything left to give, you become worthless in your own eyes, and that is a hard thing to come back from. When you think you’re worthless, all sorts of unkindness will seep into your spirit. For me, to say “I can’t” once made it hard for me to say “I can” again.

Now, I'm not blaming my tendency toward overcommitment and burn-out on a children's book. There were a lot of life-long factors at play and honestly, I had forgotten this book until someone gave it to the kid I nanny and I read it to him a couple of months ago. But when I read it again, I recognized something about the book that I hadn't seen before. 

The Rainbow Fish wasn't written for me. 

The Rainbow Fish wasn't written for the kid prone to self-giving and low self-esteem. It was written for the kid who needs to learn how to give. It’s teaching a lesson I didn’t need to learn.

This happens sometimes in our scriptures and our theology too. We talk so much about pride as our fundamental sin, the sin that most other sins sprout from, that we forget that many of us can't muster up any pride at all. When it's assumed that pride is our primary sin, we're told to think of ourselves less and to think less of ourselves, which is the opposite of someone who struggles with self-worth needs to hear. When you misdiagnose the sickness, you prescribe the wrong cure.

You may have experienced this too. You’ve shared some of your faith stories with me and I can guess that there’s at least one other person in this room who has struggled or is struggling with a cure prescribed by scripture that wasn’t meant for them, or at least, not meant for them at this point in their life. 

But the beautiful thing about our scriptures, our theology, and our tradition, if we spend time with them, is that they know that not everyone struggles with the same problems all the time. 

Jesus speaks comfort to the rest of the disciples but challenges Peter; he is preparing all of them for their ministries to come, but he knows who needs to be pushed and why. 

And Paul, when he first hears from Jesus, receives a convicting message rather than the encouragement he receives later. 

Isaiah is full of woe for the powerful who are not looking after God's people as they should but he speaks strong words of consolation to those who need it. “You are mine,” God says to God's people in our passage from Isaiah. “You are precious in my sight. I would trade the world for you. I will gather you to myself and I will love you.”

Now, you may find yourself as a disciple or Peter, as Paul before Damascus or as Paul after, as someone God is trying to convict or as someone God is trying to comfort. If you’re like me, if you’re someone struggling with “I can’t,” you’re likely in need of some comfort and a new orientation. That’s the cure for the sickness we suffer from. When you have grounded yourself in what you can do for others and suddenly find yourself unable to do what you have always done, you have to find solid ground somewhere else. 

These words from Isaiah are that solid ground for me. They’re what I say to myself to remind me who I am. Be not afraid, for I have redeemed you. Be not afraid, I have called you by name. You are mine. You are precious in my sight. 

Knowing that I am loved by a God who unshakably loves me became my new way of understanding myself. It's my new solid ground and that's the lesson that I learned at seminary that I want to share with you today: my worth does not come from what I can do for others and so I am free to do work for others. I am wrapped up in the love of God and daily sustained by God's grace and that is all I need. If I never did another thing for anyone else for the rest of my life, I would still rest in God's love. I don't need what I do to make me worthy. God’s love does that for me. I can say “I can’t” and the world will spin on. 

But because I am loved by so great a love and because I am grounded in that love and grace, I can give what God has given me to others. See, the Rainbow Fish is not diminished by giving away his scales— the ocean is lit up by them. When we are freely giving out of the abundance that God has given us, it lights up the world around us. We only get to do that free, abundant giving, though, if we are resting in God's love. 

And that is my charge to you today: rest secure in God's love and then give knowing that you are secure in God's love. That's all that we ever need do. 

Now, you may be in a completely different place in your faith journey. This sermon may have gone completely past you because it’s not a lesson you need to hear. That's okay. That's good, in fact. That means that this body of believers is all growing, somehow, someway, and you don't feel the need to be like everyone else. It is a beautiful thing if you are new to faith, even if you've been going to church for a while, and you're still figuring out who God is to you and who you are to God. I hope this sermon inspires you to spend some time thinking about God's love and what it means to you.

It is a beautiful thing if you are confirmed in your faith and feel God's love in your life, but aren't sure if, how, or where to share what you’ve been given with others. I hope this sermon inspires you to look at yourself and figure out what your shiny scales are and how you can give them away.

It is a beautiful thing too if you, like me, have spent your life giving your scales away. I would challenge you to think about where you find your worth, your ability to give, and to ground it somewhere unshakeable.

And it's a beautiful thing, even if it doesn't feel like it, if you have grown as a disciple in the knowledge of the love of God and have given out of your abundance and life has knocked you down anyway. You are blessed if you are poor or disadvantaged or mourning because it is God, the maker of every good thing, who will fill you up and restore you. Know that you are held in the arms of a God who loves you and that one day, you’ll be able to give again. But it is not this day and that too is a good and joyful thing. Rest in God’s love. That’s all you need to do.

In a few months, I will pack up everything I own and move to Cullowhee, North Carolina. It's so far west, it's practically Tennessee. But it's where God, or, at least, a bishop who's supposed to be listening to God, has sent me to be a pastor. A couple of months ago, maybe even a month ago, that would have scared the life out of me, despite having learned so much from my time here about leading worship and planning small groups and managing church finances and just existing with church people. No matter how prepared for ministry I was, I was struggling to care of myself, much less take on Jesus's commission to tend his sheep. I didn't have anything to give.

Now, though, I feel like I can handle it. I need some rest, for sure (seminary, like I’ve said before, is a marathon that you run at a sprint pace and I'm tired), but I feel stable now. I feel peaceful. And that's not just because the papers are in and the work of seminary is done. It's because I know that I don't have to do the work, I get to do the work. It’s the lesson of a lifetime and I’m so grateful to you all for supporting me while I learned it.

So, after two good long years here at Salem, as I leave this pulpit, if I leave you with any message at all, let it be this: Wherever you are, whatever life has given to you or taken from you, rest in God’s love. Know that God loves you deeply and calls you as God’s own. Let that knowledge fill you up and, when you’re ready, give in love to everyone around you. Let’s light up the ocean around us with all that God has given us.

Amen? Amen.

The Stones Would Shout Out

(This is a sermon I preached for my preaching practicum, inspired by the gospel passage for Palm Sunday, Luke 19:28-40, which directly follows.)

After he had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. When he had come near Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples, saying, "Go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, 'Why are you untying it?' just say this, 'The Lord needs it.'"

So those who were sent departed and found it as he had told them. As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, "Why are you untying the colt?" They said, "The Lord needs it." Then they brought it to Jesus; and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, saying, "Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!"

Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, order your disciples to stop." He answered, "I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out."

We all have stories. 

Some of us have our standard stories, the ones we tell when we’re first meeting people or the ones we tell over drinks or the ones we tell when we want to share our hard-won wisdom with others. But we all, each of us, have stories about our life that we hold dear, stories that, when we share them, explain to others who we are and why we do what we do. Stories are a vital part of our human lives, of the way that we live in community together, and we spend hours each day telling them and hearing them. We all have stories and stories matter. 

As a nanny for a two-and-a-half-year-old, I read a lot of stories. I read stories about cats in hats, about rainbow fish, about hippopotamuses and armadillos. I’ve read Where the Wild Things Are so many times, I can recite it from memory. “The night Max wore his wolf suit and mischief of one kind” [mime turning a page] “and another…” and on and on it goes. Charles and I read stories from everywhere and we read lot. We also read the Jesus Storybook Bible, or the “Yeesus book,” as he calls it (he’s not very good with j’s yet). He loves the rainbow story (Noah’s ark) and the storm story (Jesus calming the storm) and we always somehow end up reading the Abraham story, because it’s got the most stars in it. Charles and I both love stars. 

But there’s one story that I wasn’t prepared to tell him. See, there’s a little Catholic church just down the road from where Charles lives and we go there at least once a week to play on the playground. We can spend an hour on the swings, with a couple of breaks here and there for the slides. At the end of playtime, Charles wants to go to the church. He was baptized there, so I figure we’re allowed in, and once we’re inside, he does everything you think a two-year-old would do in a church: wanders up and down the pews, hands me missals to read, and plays hide-and-seek in the confession booths. 

It’s all good fun. Once, though, he ran up to the chancel area and I, as a nanny and a protestant, had to decide whether I was going to stop him before he made it up to the altar or risk the lightning bolt, or at least the anger of the priest, if he pulled off the altar cloth and went running down the aisles with it, pretending it’s a cape. I chose to chase him up there and walk with him as he explored and we ended up sitting together on the “comfy pillows” (kneeling pads) in front of the cross back up behind the altar. 

Well, actually, it isn’t a cross up on the wall. It’s a crucifix. Charles and I looked up at the crucified Jesus and I… had no idea what to say. How do you tell this story to a two-year-old? What do you say? I decided to let Charles guide the conversation.

“Yeesus has a boo-boo,” Charles said.
“Yes, he does,” I said. “He’s got a couple.”

“Kiss it, make it better?”

“That would be a nice thing to do, but he’s too high up for us to do that right now.”

“He’s sad.”
“Yes, he’s sad right now. His boo-boos hurt. And people were mean to him.”
“He will get better?”
“Yeah, he gets better! We talk about that on Easter!”
“He will get better.”
“Yes, he will.”

Then Charles noticed the sacristy and we were off again, but I’ve come back time and again to this moment in front of the cross. Why did I have such a difficult time telling that story? I can explain the effects of gravitational tidal forces outside the event horizon of a black hole to a third grader. Why couldn’t I explain Good Friday to a toddler?

The answer, of course, is that conversations about hatred, death, and loss are hard, especially with children. We want to save them from the evil and suffering in this world if we can, and Good Friday is a story of evil and suffering, even if it’s bookended by celebration on Palm Sunday and resurrection on Easter morning. We let the children wave palm branches in the air as we sang our hymns this morning, and we’ll dress them up in their Easter best and let them go hunting for eggs next Sunday, but we’ll leave them home with babysitters if we come to church on Friday. Let them be innocent for a while. Shield them from all the pain that’s in the world.

But I struggle with that. This story, the story of Palm Sunday to Maundy Thursday to Good Friday to Easter Sunday, this is our story, our story as Christians. Pain is a fundamental part of our story. Tragedy is a fundamental part of our story. We have spent centuries trying to explain why, trying to tell this tragic story in some way that makes sense. And even though we struggle, it’s still our story. We need to be able to tell it. And Charles is a baptized Christian. It’s his story too, even if he doesn’t know it yet.

Each of the Gospel writers sat down to tell this story, the Passion story, and found that the events leading up to Golgotha needed some background, some context. Mark’s gospel is breathless in its run up to the Passion, going non-stop from Jesus’ baptism through his ministry and teaching all the way up until the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, where time starts to stand still and events are described in detail you don’t find anywhere else in the Gospel. Mark needs you to know this story.

Matthew takes Mark’s gospel and adapts it for Jewish Christians, putting a different lens on the Passion story so that his audience would hear it more clearly and better understand the “why” of it all. Luke does the same, but for Gentile Christians, like us.

John’s gospel, which we read from last week, is an explanation from front to back about why Jesus died and rose again. It has its turning point in chapter 12 and then goes on for another nine chapters, all of which have to do with Passion Week and the teachings Jesus shared as he said goodbye to his disciples. For all of our gospel writers, the passion is the center of why they write. Their wrestling with the reality of the crucifixion gives us four different but beautiful retellings of the events that led Jesus to Golgotha. 

Every three years, we go through this cycle of telling the different passion stories, Matthew, Mark, Luke, Matthew, Mark, Luke, Matthew, Mark, Luke, hearing each of these different voices try to make sense of what happened to Jesus. Every Holy Week, we hear John’s side of things. We have spent all of Lent preparing ourselves for this week, to encounter again the story that leads us through Good Friday to Easter Sunday but today, all that preparation leads us only to a question. 

Why? 

Why did Jesus die? 

Was it all a part of God’s plan? John certainly seems to think so. 

Was it because of the leaders in Jerusalem? All the gospels point some blame that way too, with sometimes tragic consequences. We have a history of antisemitism in the church, and much of it sprouts from how John’s gospel treats “the Jews,” as if Jesus himself isn’t Jewish. 

Was it the crowd’s fault? The gospels surely don’t think they’re innocent in all of this. 

Is it our fault? Well… that’s what I learned when I was a kid. 

And maybe that’s the reason I struggled to tell the Passion Story to Charles. I learned as a kid that Jesus’ death was all my fault and I spent years carrying that shame around. But in the years since, I’ve learned so many other ways to tell this story. I’ve learned to always pair Good Friday with Easter Sunday, to believe as we Christians believe that with every death, there’s a resurrection, because of this Resurrection. I’ve learned to pay attention to the backstory, to study how Jesus lived his life and find new life for myself in his teachings. I’ve learned so much about the world Jesus lived in and the world I live in and how much humanity has always struggled with goodness, every single one of us, in many different ways. I’ve learned that we’ve always longed for community and have built up communities and will act out when it seems like someone is threatening our community, or our way of doing things, and Jesus was certainly doing a new thing. 

I’ve learned to tell this story as a story of God’s great love for us, that out of goodness and compassion, the Word of God came to Earth, incarnated in a human body, and lived a human life and died a human death and even though pain and death are parts of our story that we cannot walk away from, we also know that a light shone in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it, even if it feels that way sometimes. 

When I tell the Passion Story, that’s the story that I want to tell. I want to tell the story where God loves us so deeply that God couldn’t stay away from us, even though God knew it would probably hurt. I want to tell the story where even though we hurt God, God loves us with an extravagant love and showed us that there is nothing we can do that will separate us from God. I want to tell the story where hurt and pain matters, and is real, and is powerful, but never gets the final word. I want to tell the story that ends in love. 

We all have our stories and our stories matter. We all have our own way of telling this Christian story of ours. Maybe my Passion Story is not your Passion Story. Maybe you’re not sure how to tell it. That’s okay. It’s not an easy story to tell. But as we listen to Luke’s Passion later in this service, and as we go throughout this Holy Week, I want you to think about the story, about what matters, and about how you would tell it. Because, as Christians, the passion story is our story. It is our story of life and death, the story that leads to Resurrection. If we don’t tell it, who will? 

Perfume

Editor's note: Sometimes you preach a sermon to yourself. This one I preached at Salem UMC on Sunday, April 7. The main scripture for the sermon is John 12:1-8, but I also retell the events of John 11. You can find the Sunday's other scriptures here. 

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There are so many beautiful promises in our scriptures for this week. In Isaiah, we hear of the dry riverbeds in the desert being filled with water, and a way being made where there was no way before. In the psalm, which we read together as the call to worship, we hear of the LORD restoring the fortunes of Zion. In the passage from Philippians, Paul counts everything in this world as nothing compared to the promised wonders we'll receive in Christ. There is new life everywhere in our scriptures, and it's right around the corner.

Except for our Gospel Lesson. There's something strange happening there. It's a short lesson from John, first off, and we've been traveling with Luke all this Lent so far. On top of that, there's no context of what's happened before or what's about to happen and we have no idea of why Mary does what she does. We've been preparing ourselves for a new creation this Lent, and it's not at all clear how this story fits into that narrative.

But Ehrich, in our sermon series book The Gift of New Creation, pauses over this story. He notices what Jesus says to Mary and he says that we should pay attention to what happens here. So that's what I want to do in the sermon this morning. I think that this story holds encouragement for us, if we look at it right. But before we venture into Bethany and the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, would you pray with me?

God of life and death, thank you for bringing us to this time and place. Be with us here today. And may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

Amen. So in this story, we have Jesus attending a dinner in Bethany at the home of some people that we're probably familiar with from other stories in scripture: Mary and Martha, those famous sisters who have different ideas about cleaning, and their brother Lazarus, who recently died.

He got better.

This story, the story of Mary anointing Jesus, actually comes right after the raising of Lazarus from the dead. That happens in chapter 11 and this is chapter 12. And it's important to remember that story before we read this one. Jesus had been preaching somewhere else on the other side of the Jordan, when he hears that Lazarus is sick. We're told that Jesus loves Lazarus and his family, but he still waits two days before he heads his way. Now, we don't know why Jesus waited, but we do know what the disciples think about the reason behind his waiting: Lazarus lives in Judea and there are people in Judea who want to kill Jesus. When Jesus finally does decide to go, Thomas (of Doubting Thomas fame) says to his fellow disciples, “Let's go with him, that we may die with him.”

It's with this attitude that they go to Bethany to wake up brother Lazarus: ready for a fight. But when they get there, there no fight for the disciples to get into. Instead of an angry mob, they’re greeted by Martha. She goes up to Jesus and she says, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” It's a bold move from a woman, and one that may have put the disciples back on edge. But then she says, “But I know that even now, God will give you anything you ask.”

Jesus and Martha talk about resurrection and Jesus reminds us all the he is the Resurrection and the Life. Then Martha, comforted by her belief, goes to get Mary.

Now Mary did not go out to see Jesus when he arrived. She mourned deeply over the loss of her brother. But when Martha comes to get her and tells her the Teacher wants to see her, she gets up and runs to him, with a crowd of mourners running after her, thinking she's gone off to go weep at the tomb. When she sees Jesus, she falls at his feet weeping, saying, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

There's no theological discussion this time, no talk of resurrection. All Jesus can say in response to Mary's grief is, “Where have you laid him?”

And everyone else says to him the very thing he said to his disciples when he called them, three years ago by the Lake of Galilee. They say, “Come and see.”

And Jesus weeps.

Now, John's gospel is not a gospel for this kind of behavior from Jesus. In John's gospel, Jesus knows it all. Jesus is rock solid, using signs and miracles to reveal himself to be the Son of God. In Luke's Gospel, Jesus is eating and drinking and reacting all over the place, but in John, does nothing so human.

So when Jesus weeps in John's gospel, you know something serious is happening. He goes to the tomb and he asks for the stone to be rolled away and Martha, ever practical, says, “But Lord, the smell. He's been there four days.”

Jesus doesn't care. The stone is rolled away and he prays and then calls for Lazarus to come out and out Lazarus comes.

When Jesus weeps, something serious happens.

And once word gets out about Lazarus, people start turning to Jesus. The leaders in Jerusalem actually wonder if there's any containing Jesus at this point. They're worried about an uprising, which would bring the full force of Rome to their doorstep. They decide that Jesus should die.

Jesus, hearing this, retreats to the wilderness near Ephraim and he stays there, even as people are headed to Jerusalem to get ready for the Passover. And everyone in Jerusalem is looking for him, wondering if he'll be so bold show up in Jerusalem at the Passover.

This is the backdrop to our story for this morning. What happens in our story this morning is the turning point of the gospel of John, when events have reached a fever pitch and everything starts to happen at once. Against this background, dinner at Mary, Martha, and Lazarus’ starts to look pretty significant indeed.

Who knows what the conversation was at dinner that night. Maybe Jesus taught some more, reflecting on his recent time in the wilderness. Maybe Lazarus spent the evening turning to people and saying, “Boo!” Maybe Martha tosses in some of her ideas in between bringing out food and passing plates around. Maybe the disciples discussed whether or not they would go to Jerusalem for the festival, all amid the hustle and bustle of a big, busy dinner. Whatever they talked about, though, all of that discussion and laughter and noise stops when Mary comes into the room with perfume.

Here, I started to walk down from the pulpit to the lectern, which is on the floor near the first few pews of the church. 

Imagine what it would be like to be there in this moment. Imagine the sound dying down and heads turning as Mary walks up to Jesus with this bottle of perfume in her hands. She kneels in front of him (here I knelt down) and there’s a small crash as she breaks the jar open. The smell of the perfume spreads throughout the house and maybe the mutters start then. The text tells us that the perfume is pure nard, which comes from a plant grown in the Himalayas. It had to be traded for and it was very costly—Judas thinks that it could be sold for a year’s wages. The costliness is the beginning of the scandal. Mary has spent an exorbitant amount of money on the perfume that she now uses to anoint Jesus.

But what she did next must have caused even more of a stir. Instead of anointing his head, as one might do with a king or someone else chosen by God, she stays kneeling and anoints his feet. She wipes them not with a cloth but with her hair. Imagine what looks Mary and Jesus exchanged after she had done this intimate and powerful thing for him. Imagine the rumors that began to swell around the room because of what she had done.

(I stood back up here and preached the rest of the sermon from the lectern.)

Judas is the first one to object out loud and he’s silenced by Jesus right away, because, Jesus tells us, Mary understands something that no one else has caught onto yet. Jesus is going to die, and soon. That expensive perfume would last for at least another week, through his entry into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, through his last Passover with his disciples, and through his trial, execution and burial. She had this perfume so that she might keep it for the day of his burial and, seeing the writing on the wall about Jesus’ conflict with the rulers in Jerusalem and knowing the type of death that Jesus was likely to die, Mary took the only chance she thought she would have to anoint Jesus’ body for burial.

See Mary, in the midst of all of the hustle and bustle of the Passover preparations, amidst all of the excitement of Jesus’ ministry and prophecy and miracles, in the middle of the continued celebrations of  and gratitude for Lazarus’ new life, sees what no one else sees. She sees her last days with someone she loves deeply. No matter what it costs, no matter what people may say, she is going to mourn him, show her love for him, and care for him however she can.

And Jesus is moved by this. Because of what Mary did, this house, which so recently smelled of death, now smells of perfume. Where before Mary had bathed his feet with tears when she thought he abandoned her brother to death, she now anoints his feet with deep humility and care because she knows the sacrifice he’s about to make. It’s a bold move for a woman to make and scripture tells us that Jesus loves Lazarus and his bold sisters. What Mary does has such an impact on Jesus that he’ll repeat her scandal at the only other dinner recorded in John’s gospel—the Last Supper, where he’ll kneel before his disciples and wash their feet and dry them with a towel, just as Mary had dried his with her hair.

So, we know what Jesus did with this story about Mary, but what do we do?

Well, I think we mourn.

Sometimes, our lives bring us to the same place Mary is. We can be overwhelmed by grief and loss, no matter what joy gets mixed in, and we need to name that grief and allow ourselves to feel it, no matter what else is going on in our lives. Mary took time to mourn Jesus on the eve of a potential political uprising—the stakes couldn’t have been higher. And she is praised for her act by none other than Jesus. It is vital, then, that we, no matter our circumstances, allow ourselves to grieve.

Because it’s that grieving that allows for new life to enter in. Next week, we’ll wave our palms at the beginning of the service and remember the Passion story at the end. We will mourn that loss as we do every year, because mourning what we’ve lost on Good Friday makes us ready to welcome in the new life that comes on Easter Sunday. We repeat this pattern over and over again, year after year, because we need to be given permission and space to grieve in this and every season of our lives.

This story that we read is so emotionally dense when you think about the characters in it. John’s gospel is full of stories about characters that feel real to us doing extraordinary things. And here, the person being praised is not the person with the most practical solution, the person focused on the mission and the goals. It’s the person who’s paying attention to the people around her and herself, the person who is caring for emotional needs that we may not even notice on first read. Mary is aware of how overwhelmed she is and the grief that is ahead of her, as well as of Jesus’ vulnerable position, and she does this extravagant thing to honor these things.

As we go throughout this week and next, let’s allow ourselves room for grief. Let’s allow ourselves time to feel our emotions and to look out for the emotions of others. We hope and pray for new life, always, but let us with Mary mourn the pain in our lives. It might not seem like it right now, but if we do it right, our mourning will fill our lives with new sweetness, like perfume poured on the feet of the Savior.

Amen.

Those Who Mourn

This week on the blog, I'd like to bring you the sermon I preached on July 15 as a part of a sermon series on the Beatitudes, the opening verses of the Sermon on the Mount found in Matthew 5-7. This sermon is the second in the series, based around the verse, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted." The other scriptures for the morning were from Genesis 16, Psalm 42, and Revelation 21. 

I love the Beatitudes, and I especially love them given the role they play in Jesus' teaching. The Sermon on the Mount is presented in Matthew like Jesus just sat down and spoke it, but it’s more likely that the author of the gospel of Matthew was collecting together common teachings of Jesus, things he always used to say. Jesus was always saying things like, 

“Blessed are the peacemakers.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

Blessed are those who mourn.

You are the salt of the earth.

You are the light of the world.

A city on a hill cannot be hidden.”

I think it’s especially important that these were things that Jesus was always saying given that our beatitude for this morning is, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted,” and I think remembering what people always used to say is a way that we comfort ourselves and mourn all at the same time. My friend Jessica, who died earlier this year, she was always saying, “It’s never too late to follow your dreams.” She had left a career and gone back to school to major in voice because she her dream was to be an opera singer. I believe she would have done it too, if she had been given more time. 

So as we focus ourselves for the sermon, I want you to think of something that someone who is no longer with us was always saying, some story that you tell to your friends or your children or your grandchildren. Hold that memory of who that person was in your mind and your heart for just a moment.

And would you pray with me?

God, you have told us that we are blessed. Help us see that. And may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable to you, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

Now, what I usually like to do in a sermon is give some historical context, look at where the passage we’re focused on is in respect to the verses before and after it, maybe throw some Greek in there, all so that we have a better understanding of this book that is sacred to us.

I don’t feel the need to do that with the beatitude for today. I don't feel the need to do that because grief is a universal human experience. We come into this world crying and our pain only gets deeper from there. I know many people in this room have experience deep grief in their lives, and so have deep experience with both mourning and comfort. There are many places in the Bible where Jesus's lived experience differs from ours. Grief is not one of them.

We know that Jesus mourns. We see him mourning over Jerusalem. We see him try to take time for himself after the death of John the Baptist. We see him crying at the death of his friend Lazarus.

In fact, the Bible itself is no stranger to mourning. It is full of stories of people who are mourning and who are seen by God. Take this psalm for this morning for example, or the story of Hagar, Sarai's handmaiden, her slave. Hagar is so moved that God comes to her in her time of deep pain and grief that changes what she calls God. She calls God the one who sees me. The Bible tells us that God sees grief.

And that is what this beatitude is telling us as well. Jesus sees the mourning that is happening all around him, that still happens today. He sees the pain. And he turns to those in pain and he says, you are blessed. I see you. I have not forgotten about you. You are blessed.

It is a miraculous thing that Jesus says here, because we do not think that those who mourn are blessed. I would offer up to you the fact that the world around us thinks that those who mourn are weak. We see this in the amount of time we allow people to mourn, the time they are allowed to take away from work in order to mourn, and the services that are available to those who have suffered a great loss. It is insufficient. And so many of us walk around wounded, limping for so long that it becomes part of our gait. We tell ourselves that we have to be OK, we tell others that we're fine, we allow everyone to tell us how strong we are, and all the while there is an ache inside us that is never really going to go away.

Because we think that those who mourn are weak, we walk around unhealed, uncomforted. We see that this is true when we look at those who suffered a loss early in life. Those who had a traumatic event in childhood, such as abuse, an illness, or losing or being separated from a parent or parents, bear the marks of that trauma for the rest of their lives. The brain struggles to develop, the immune system flounders, and the body fails to become all that it could be, all because the body is trying to handle the stress that the child has encountered.

We see similar effects in adults too. The stress associated with grief can literally break your heart, causing a condition that makes it more difficult for your heart to function. Stress, when left untreated and unchecked, can cause your body to become less able to heal itself. As we hold in our pain, our muscles react, tensing up and knotting themselves together until it can become difficult to move. Pain and loss put a weight on us that can be too much to bear, and we so often go about our days as if we have already set it down.

But that is not what Jesus tells us to do here. Jesus tells us to mourn, because those who mourn are blessed. If Jesus sees our pain, we should too. Why should we mourn? Because those who mourn will be comforted.

I think many of us have experienced that comfort after a loss, when our family and friends and community and church come together and wrap us up in support. We get this beatitude intuitively because we know that when grief visits our doorstep and we cry out to those around us, we will be comforted. This is a great and good thing that we as members of the body of Christ try to do for each other, and it is a great and good grace when it happens in the world.

But what about when we mourn and are not comforted? What about the people around the world who mourn the loss of their loved ones because of war or famine or poverty? What about the people who mourn the loss of the lives they once had before disaster rolled into town? What about those who have suffered a tragedy that left a wound no amount of comfort could heal? How long are we to wait for comfort? How long does anyone have to live with this blessed mourning?

Thankfully, not forever. We might be blessed when we mourn now, but we have been promised that in whatever world comes after this one, there will be no more mourning. There will be no more pain. All things will be made new and every tear will be wiped away by the God who loved us too much to stay apart from us. This is the picture painted by the end of Revelation, when there is a new heaven and a new earth. I'm not one to spend time lingering on eschatological fantasies, but I think one of the most beautiful promises in the Bible is that the tears of grief that are beyond comfort in this world will be wiped away in the next. Jesus has promised us that. He has blessed us with it.

So, what do we take away from our beatitude for this week? Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted? Well, I think the first thing we have to remember is that we are blessed when we mourn. Life brings pain to each of us and we need to allow ourselves to feel it, to mourn all our loses whenever they come, to be open to mourning whenever it comes to us again. Blessed are those who mourn does not apply to only those living in the space between death and burial.

The second takeaway is those who mourn will be comforted, but that comfort may not come in the ways we expect. It may be the comfort of our loved ones or our community surrounding us. It may be the comfort of our faith, as the psalmist writes. It may be comfort that comes to us straight from God in this life, as Hagar experienced. Or it may be the comfort that can only be given when deep no longer has to call to deep but when we are reunited with the great Love of the universe which made us and longs to hold us, to wipe away each unconsoled tear from our eyes, and to offer us the comfort that will last for all eternity. Blessed are those who mourn, our Lord tells us, because they will be comforted. Amen. 

Tension

Readings for Palm/Passion Sunday: Mark 11:1-11, Philippians 2:5-11, Mark 14:1-15:47. 

Image from theycantalk.com

Sometimes, in my Christian journey, I have been this donkey, blissfully unaware that I am not at all what the people are paying attention to. I carry Jesus all the same, but I have a skewed perception of what's really going on here. At the same time, I see this, and I tense up a little. Jesus knows what's going to happen this week. The donkey doesn't. The crowd doesn't. Smile and laugh all you want, but we smile and laugh here in the face of sadness and hurt. Maybe out of nervousness, maybe out of discomfort, maybe out of ignorance, but always for me with a bundle of tension growing at the back of my neck.

So, would you pray with me?

God, you are God when we are at peace and you are God when we are tense. You are God when we are near and God when we are far. You are God on Palm Sunday. You are God always. Be with us today and may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

There is always some tension in Palm/Passion Sunday. At the beginning of the service, we’re up here waving our palm branches to celebrate Jesus, but at the end of the service, we’re going to crucify him.

And it’s frustrating because Palm Sunday feels right. It feels right to wave palm branches in praise, to recognize Jesus as king, to put our lives and our faith in the hands of this man who we trust to save us. We as Christians know who Jesus is. We know that Jesus is God’s Love made flesh, powerful enough to make every wrong in this world right. We trust in the saving grace he brings and so we show up with our branches and our coats and we climb trees and we jump up and down and we shout hosannas until our throats are sore. Palm Sunday feels right, so how could we crucify him on Friday?

Well, maybe we aren’t seeing Jesus the way Rome saw him. We see our peaceful king, riding into town on a donkey; Rome sees a worrying protest. We see a rabbi with his faithful disciples; Rome sees teacher and a bunch of teenagers talking too loud. We see the man who can set us free; Rome sees a threat to law and order. When we step back, we can see that Jesus means to change things, and change is not comfortable when you’re the one in power. Jesus means to change each of us, and that is not exactly what we want to hear.

We’ve been talking during Lent about Being and Doing, about who we are in Christ and the things we do because of it. If Jesus wants to change us, I think we’ll find that there’s a tension between being and doing too. We know who we are, that we are beloved by God, but the entire rest of the Christian lifetime is figuring out what that means. We know we’re forgiven, but what does it mean to live without the things that needed forgiving? We know we’ve been set free so that we can love and serve God, but how do we love and serve God when it feels less like freedom and more like a burden? We know we should be more like Jesus, should “have the mind that was in Christ Jesus,” but what do humility and obedience really look like for us? We know we should grow closer to God, but how should we pray? How should we worship? How should we love?

It’s hard enough to know how to be. Now we have to know how to do too?

Well, of course we do. Because Jesus did.

There’s a tension for us in Palm/Passion Sunday, there’s a tension for us in our being and doing, and it seems like there’s a tension in Jesus too. The Gospel writers all notice it. Jesus is fully God, but he cries for his friend Lazarus. Jesus is fully human, but he raises people up from the dead. There is a tension, from our perspective anyway, between the humanity and the divinity of Jesus and we see it all throughout his ministry. He’s baptized and called the Beloved Son of God, but then he goes into the desert to be tempted just like us. He preaches words of wisdom to the crowds, but he also needs some alone time. He rides into town the picture of peace, but then goes into the temple and starts flipping tables. He knows Judas is going to betray him for blood money and he lets it happen, but as soon as he goes to pray after, he starts sweating bullets. If we ever have any questions about how human Jesus is, they’re answered as soon as nails hit skin on Good Friday. If we ever have any questions about how godly Jesus is, they’re answered by the fact that he knew the cross was coming, and he went anyway.  

Jesus, knowing who he was, knew what he had to do. His doing came out of his being. Being the Son of God born of Mary in first century Palestine meant that he would end up at Golgotha, doing for us what we could not do for ourselves, making us right before God and bringing us back to God. He did this for us, and he did this because he is what he was and always will be, what God always is: Love. And love can’t just be. Love does.

There is tension all around us. We live in a tense world that is getting more tense by the day. There is tension between our being and our doing. There is tension between the crowd that cries Hosanna on Sunday and crucify early Friday morning. But when it comes down to it, when the road that leads to Jerusalem also leads to the Place of the Skull, there is no tension in Jesus. There is only love because God is love. Wonderful, miraculous, life-changing, heart-breakingly deep love. Love unknown, as the song writer says: 

My song is love unknown,

My savior’s love to me,

Love to the loveless shown

that they might lovely be.

Oh who am I that for my sake

My Lord should take

frail flesh and die?

Beloved of God, reflect on this love, this love that was shown to us while we were yet loveless, that we might be lovely. Amen.