Second Sunday after Pentecost
June 2, 2013

¹¹Soon afterwards he went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went with him. ¹²As he approached the gate of the town, a man who had died was being carried out. He was his mother’s only son, and she was a widow; and with her was a large crowd from the town. ¹³When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, “Do not weep.” ¹⁴Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, “Young man, I say to you, rise!” ¹⁵The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. ¹⁶Fear seized all of them; and they glorified God, saying, “A great prophet has risen among us!” and “God has looked favorably on his people!” ¹⁷This word about him spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding country. – Luke 7:11-17

I happened to start reading a novel this week by J.M. Coetzee called Waiting for the Barbarians. The novel is about an unnamed commander of an unnamed outpost in an unnamed empire. He has been quietly obeying orders from an empire he has seen little of for years. He commands a small group of soldiers, who have been at a quietly uneasy peace with their neighbors, the barbarians, for as many years. But things begin to change when suddenly emissaries from the empire come and stir things up. They capture and torture innocent neighbors, then leave as quickly as they come, all in the name of the empire. The commander is suddenly confronted with the reality that the empire he has been complacently supporting may not be in reality the kind of thing he wants to support. He becomes involved in trying to mend the damage in his own sometimes misguided ways, but his eyes have been opened to something new, a reality he was not previously aware of. His mundane life suddenly was charged with energy and purpose but also questions, and confusion. Life for him is suddenly alive in a new way and at the same time much, much, much more complicated. As I read the book and today’s gospel reading side-by-side, I started to wonder if that kind of disruption is actually the primary healing happening in this story.

I was struck by the similarities between this centurion and the unnamed commander. The centurion, too, seems to be a more or less beneficent soldier representing a more-or-less oppressive empire. And though it is not the empire who steps in to rattle his life, the illness of his dearly beloved slave creates a similar rupture in his mundane activities on the outskirts of a distant empire. His life is at once a little more complicated and richly alive in a new way. I wonder if the centurion is the primary object of healing in this story.

We usually focus on the healing of the physical ailment in this story, but if that were the primary point, you could tell this story in one sentence. A centurion called on Jesus to heal his sick slave, and Jesus did so without even coming under the man’s roof. But Luke gives us much more than that.

I would say that the healing begins long before the slave is up and walking around again. There is an interesting interplay of relationships in the story as Luke tells it. A mix of people with different levels of power. The centurion, though not at the top, is a commander of soldiers. He would have 100 men or likely even more under his command. By his own admission he has the power to say “Go!” and people will go. He has the power to order his slave, including the one who now lies ill, to do whatever he asks.

But with all his power to command others, he cannot command his deathly-ill servant to be well. This was a man living in strict power relationships, and suddenly he realizes something larger than himself and larger than the empire from which he draws authority. In his commanding and being commanded he has not yet felt a need for this Jesus. The slave’s illness changes that, and recognizing that need is it’s own kind of healing.

Realizing he cannot fix the problem, the centurion is overcome by emotion for this servant of his. He cares about a man who is supposed to be far below his consideration. His emotions supersede the difference in their social standing. Perhaps they surprise him in their intensity, when he is faced by the possibility of losing one who has been close to him, who has served alongside him. That is its own kind of healing, too, when we come to a new realization of the depths of our relationships.

And rather than go directly to Jesus, he realizes that not only can he not command the slave to get well, but that his position prevents him from going to Jesus. Not only is he subject to the world of illness, but he is not independent. Not only does he exist in hierarchy but he exists in relationship to the community around him. He needs the friendships he has established in a community in which is mostly considered an outsider. There’s an aspect of healing that comes with the recognition of being part of a community.

And by the centurion’s need and his willingness to share it, the Jewish elders and the other friends are given a role. Because he reaches out to them, because he is willing to ask for help, they are invited into deeper relationship with him. This Roman soldier, who though they saw his positive work in the community, they likely regarded with some level of suspicion. And yet this need suddenly makes him human to them. Perhaps like us, they are quick to respond when a need is expressed even if before we could only see our neighbor as a caricature or stereotype. There is an aspect of healing in this repair of a rift in the community.

And then Jesus responds. Not only does he heal the body of the slave, but Jesus heals an important division. This soldier, this Gentile, this representative of the oppressor, is not only named worthy of making his request, but his faith and trust in the power of Jesus to command even deadly illness represents faith greater than Jesus has found among all the chosen. The outsider is brought into the fold. Healing.

Which brings us to our cries for healing. It is always so hard to talk about. Sometimes there are miraculous cures. Sometimes the medical treatments work they way they are supposed to. Sometimes there is a peace deal that ends or better yet prevents a war. Sometimes we are set free from the things that bind us. Sometimes we see the resurrection life before us.

But sometimes that doesn’t happen. Sometimes we see only the cross at first. Sometimes our prayers do not effect the kind of healing we intend. But something in this story reminds me that healing comes in all kinds of ways. And sometimes God’s way of healing makes us alive in a way that makes life more complicated. When healing suddenly awakens us to the reality of our broken world and empowers us to take action in the world or to go beyond our comfort zone, it may not look like the kind of healing we wanted, but it might just transform what ails us. When Jesus helps us to see the empires around us for what they are, we are both challenged and healed. When healing suddenly opens us to the possibility of deeper inclusion in the community and deeper dependence on one another, it is a complicated prospect, but it might be exactly the kind of healing we need. When healing transforms our perspective on a situation without changing the situation itself, it may not be what we expect but it might be the way Christ brings new life to us and to the world.

So you are invited during communion today to come forward for anointing for healing. Come for yourselves, or for a loved one, or for hurting ones you do not even know. Come even if you aren’t sure what kind of healing you need. Come and make your desires known to God and know that they are heard. Come and trust that there might be cures and fixes, or that God might be healing in a different way. Come, see what God is doing and be assured that today and everyday Christ’s healing is offered to you.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Holy Trinity 
May 26, 2013

There’s always a temptation on Trinity Sunday to try to explain the mystery of the Trinity, which I would argue by nature of it being mystery is nearly impossible. A three-minute cartoon was going around the internet this week in which two characters ask St. Patrick for a clear explanation of the Trinity. Every analogy he uses is quickly labeled heresy by the other two characters, all in an wonderful fake Irish accent. Point being, there are tons of metaphors out there for how something can be three things at once and maintain its oneness. But they’re just that – metaphors, attempts at describing something that we don’t fully understand.

We could try reading the even longer version of the creed, the Athanasian creed. I grew up in a church that did that every Trinity Sunday, but for all it’s important theological statements that speak to arguments made centuries ago, I usually just got more confused. I even went home one time in college and translated it myself from the original Latin to see if it made any more sense. It didn’t.

God’s nature and God’s expression of that nature to us are ultimately an unknowable mystery, though certainly worthy of exploration. But today’s texts present us with an equally unknowable mystery, that whatever the nature of God and however, if possible, we could explain that in our language, we, as human beings, creations of the creator, are welcomed into the life of God.

Wisdom’s speech in Proverbs points us back to God’s creation of the world and the creation of human beings. A creation in which Wisdom takes great delight. Wisdom, this mysterious extension of or part of God, takes this whole passage in Proverbs to express delight at what has been created, right down to the beautifully imperfect human beings.

In Romans, Paul uses the language of justification. He names that we are sinful, but that God has, through God’s incredible grace, transformed us into being made right with God.

And even more so in the words of the psalmist: “What are mere mortals that you, O God, should be mindful of them? Human beings that you should care for them? Yet you have made them little less than divine; with glory and honor you crown them.” In fact, it is part of some orthodox traditions to place a crown on the head of the one newly baptized, symbolizing that though we are human beings, God has crowned us with eternal life. Now there’s a mystery: why would the ruler of the universe crown us?

I think too often, though, we tell one another and ourselves the opposite. We tell ourselves that our failings make us unworthy of God’s love. Sometimes it’s blatent, like the people who got way too much publicity this week for blaming the deadly tornadoes in Oklahoma on particular human sins. This message creeps out after every natural disaster and thankfully most people have stopped listening. Their message is about a God of vengeance, who does not make room for human foibles. They are locked into a singular understanding of God in which there is no room for mystery and wonder. It’s easy, for me at least, to dismiss their ranting. But don’t we all sometimes act out of the same mindset?

Don’t we sometimes tell ourselves that we are not worthy of God’s love or of the love of others? Sometimes we try to live our lives in a false humility, afraid to claim the power that God has given to us, afraid to claim the love that is poured out for us. Maybe it’s because we’ve seen the abuses of that kind of power, the misuse of love for manipulation and exploitation. Power and love drawn from a world where there are winners and losers, where there is one right way. Or maybe it’s that we’re afraid of being a part of so great a mystery. Maybe we’re afraid that God’s three-in-one-ness, God’s one-in-three-ness is more than we can handle.

Whatever it is that keeps us from claiming God’s delight in us, we too often live as if we are not worthy. And that leads all too many in our world to act out violence, physical or verbal, on themselves and others. But perhaps almost as tragic is that I think it causes us to live as if we don’t actually have something to contribute to our communities. We fear that doing our part cannot do much so why bother at all. Or we see that doing our part isn’t enough to make the big changes we want to see.

Instead of seeing the ways in which God invites us, purely through grace, to participate in the mystery of creator and creation, we hold ourselves back. Maybe it keeps us from making the bold commitments we might otherwise make with our time and our money, because we fear that there won’t be enough.

Maybe it keeps us from talking boldly about our faith because we fear we don’t have it all figured out. Or that we’ll run into questions we can’t answer. Or that we’ll somehow mess it up and get it wrong, or that we won’t be capable of transmitting the power of God’s mystery and wonder. But the church has been stumbling over itself trying to understand the nature of God for thousands of years and somehow through it all God uses us, these creatures of the creator, to bear this message of hope to the world.

Maybe this failure to claim God’s love for us keeps us from risking entering into genuine relationship with one another because we live in an us-versus-them kind of world. We fear we might not be worthy of one another’s time and energy. Sometimes we’re afraid as a congregation just to talk to one another openly. But the mystery of today invites us not only into relationship with a relational God but into relationship with one another. It invites us to enter into that which is sometimes uncertain and sometimes messy. It invites us to make mistakes for the sake of exploring the mystery of the other beings around us that God also takes great pride in.

The question in today’s readings is not so much what is God’s Trinitarian nature, but how do we live into the mystery of relationship with God. Are we really as great as God seems to think we are? And if so, how might we live differently? What I find most heartening in the doctrine of the Trinity is that God is not so monolithic that there is no room for us and for our wonderful, mysterious, broken selves. The Trinity opens us up to possibility and wonder, to freedom and exploration, to delight and, yes, even power.

We hear in our scripture readings today a God who recognizes that we are not perfect, but who lifts us up to be stewards of creation and to be the messengers of Good News. Paul uses the language of justification. The psalmist uses the language of our place in the divine hierarchy. Proverbs uses the language of delight. But the message is the same. We are not only made worthy of God’s love by grace but also made worthy of a calling to be the people of God in the world.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Pentecost
May 19, 2013

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. ²And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. ³Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. ⁴All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
⁵Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. ⁶And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. ⁷Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? ⁸And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? ⁹Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, ¹⁰Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, ¹¹Cretans and Arabs — in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” ¹²All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” ¹³But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.” 
¹⁴But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. ¹⁵Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. ¹⁶No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:
¹⁷‘In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.
¹⁸Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
in those days I will pour out my Spirit;and they shall prophesy.
¹⁹And I will show portents in the heaven above
and signs on the earth below,blood, and fire, and smoky mist.
²⁰The sun shall be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood,before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.
²¹Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’ 
-Acts 2:1-21

Last Tuesday I spent the evening at the Jewish Community of Amherst. It was their festival of Shavu’ot, which commemorates, among other things, God’s giving of the Torah to Moses and to the people of Israel. One of the ways they mark that is by holding an all-night long Torah study session, or at least much of the night. They do this in part because the Torah, given once, is still discovered new in each generation. It still calls for interpretation and conversation in new contexts. As part of that they invited me to join them early in the night for an interfaith text study, comparing some Christian gospel texts to texts from the Torah. It was a rich experience, because in addition to gaining a deeper understanding of texts from the Hebrew scriptures we often pay less attention to, I was able to hear a very familiar passage from our scriptures read to a room of people largely hearing it for the first time. And I think that experience was very true to the heart of the festival. This festiva is a celebration of the giving of the Torah, not the receiving of the Torah. For the Torah is given once but received over and over again. Our experience sharing deeply loved texts with one another, was all about hearing them in new ways for new contexts. Old made new again and again. Receiving the Torah again in our own time.

I was fascinated with this in particular because the first Pentecost would have been on the festival of Shavu’ot, the festival of weeks, the festival that takes place 50 days after the Passover. It would have have been on Shavu’ot that the disciples were gathered in Jerusalem waiting for the Holy Spirit. That was the day this fiery, windy, multi-lingual Spirit manifested itself in their midst. I don’t know how old the tradition of Torah study is on that day, but perhaps that is part of what they were doing as they waited. Passages from the Hebrew scriptures certainly emerged in their multi-lingual preaching. But I think we could use a little of the same spirit in our celebrations of Pentecost. A day that celebrates the giving of the ancient Spirit but which recognizes that we are constantly, day-in-and-day-out, receiving that Spirit.

So what does that look like, to receive the spirit over and over again? As Lutherans we tend to shy away from speaking in tongues and altar calls. We tend to be leery of those who claim to be on fire with the Spirit. We’re a little afraid of what this crazy, unpredictable Spirit might do with us. And while it’s not always a bad thing to give ourselves over to the unpredictable, I wonder if we experience Pentecost more often that we realize.

When Immanuel set out to do a lecture series, we weren’t quite sure what we were aiming for. But each year as we’ve selected a speaker and begun the preparations, it’s seemed as if we were sharing something with the community that they were longing to hear. It’s happening again this year as we begin to share with the community about Eliza Griswold coming to speak in September about The Global Encounter of Christianity and Islam. Is that the Spirit using Jesus’ disciples to communicate something of the gospel in a language that people of different faiths and backgrounds in this community can understand?

When we started using this liturgy with music from around the globe, I sensed that we weren’t quite sure what to do with it. It was something a little new to us and something a little hard to get our tongues around at first. But we kept singing it, trying on the music of other cultures and traditions. We celebrated that the Good News of Easter is not just for us but for people we do not know and people whose way of worshipping God is different from our own. And now, as we prepare to shift seasons and return to a more familiar liturgy, I hear us singing this music with an excited energy. Is that the Spirit breathing in us and through us to proclaim a Gospel for all nations?

We’ve had a new energy for our ongoing partnership with Cathedral in the Night reaching out to people who for one reason or another come to meet God on the streets instead of inside a building. And while most passersby during worship on the streets of Northampton look on with genuine curiosity as we break bread and share a cup of grape juice, some are probably asking some version of what passersby asked on that first Pentecost – have these people on fire for God, preaching on the street been drinking?  But I have felt the Spirit there, this Spirit who will not be contained by expectations, or church buildings or anything else.

Or maybe it’s even simpler than all that. Because the spirit is blowing when we pray for one another, deepening our connection with each other as we commend our needs and the needs of our neighbor to God. The Spirit is blowing when we gather week after week to study and be in conversation with one another in Forum and Sunday School, opening our eyes to God at work in the world. The spirit is as at work when we greet one another with a sign of God’s incredible peace and when we extend that greeting into fellowship over coffee after the service. It’s always Pentecost in the church, and God’s Spirit, given generously on the first Pentecost is constantly being received by the world over and over again.

So be on the lookout. Use our worship together, times of prayer and study together and on your own, and conversations with one another to train yourself to recognize the Pentecost moments. Because God is always up to something and God often surprises us with wonderful Spirit-filled gifts that aren’t always what we’d expect. The Spirit of God which was from the beginning and which manifested itself so boldly with Jesus’ disciples, will continue to do new things. And we as the church are called to keep figuring out what God is up to and to stand in awe and wonder at what God does. And we can trust that this ancient and eternal Spirit will come afresh and anew to us and to the world, because Jesus promised us it would be so.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Ascension Day (transferred)
May 12, 2013

At Immanuel we have an annual blessing of graduates that also took place on May 12.

⁴⁴Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you — that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” ⁴⁵Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, ⁴⁶and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, ⁴⁷and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. ⁴⁸You are witnesses of these things. ⁴⁹And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”
⁵⁰Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. ⁵¹While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. ⁵²And they worshiped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; ⁵³and they were continually in the temple blessing God. – Luke 24:44-53

They say it’s harder to be the one who stays behind. When young lovers part, at least in the movies, the camera focuses on the one who stands and waves goodbye as the other gets on a plane or train or drives away. Somehow we imagine the one who travels off at least is going somewhere, at least there’s the distraction of something new.

More seriously, it is often said as loved ones are dying, that our worry is more for those left behind. We trust God’s unfailing mercy to enfold the dying, while the family is left to stare at old photographs, and to walk past a loved one’s favorite chair sitting empty. They are the ones who must pick up the pieces. They are the ones living with grief. It’s harder to be the one who stays behind.

The parent who chooses to stay home often gets the short end of the stick. While it’s hard to generalize whose work is harder, the parent whose work is running the household more often faces the stigma of a society that values paid work over other kinds of work. The ones who stay at home have to face a society that doesn’t always value their work.

Today we start to say goodbye to those who are graduating. Some of you graduates will be here a few weeks longer, and not all of you are leaving town. But for heaven’s sakes there are 11 of you graduating! That’s a lot of people moving on and starting something new. We will watch you move on, rejoicing with you in this new thing. But we will also be thinking about all the gifts God has brought to our church community through you. On the one had we trust that God will bring us new people with new gifts, but honestly we don’t want to have to say goodbye to you. It’s harder to be the one who stays behind.

That’s why I don’t like Ascension. Because Jesus gets to be the one who leaves. He’s the one who disappears and leaves his followers staring at the sky, dazed and confused. This is not the comforting Jesus, despite his reassurances to the disciples. This is not the sweet shepherd, or even the healer or advocate for social justice. This is the Jesus who sets us loose in the world to figure out this kingdom of God thing, seemingly, sometimes, on our own.

This season of Easter that goes on for 50 days is about the constant opening up of the gospel message to the world. Next week that opening up culminates in the arrival of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, the spirit that will send out the apostles to the ends of the earth, breathing in them and through them the love and grace of God to the world.

But before that happens, the disciples have to let go. In order for this message to burst forth to the whole world, it has let go of it’s tie to a single person. God’s kingdom of grace is bigger than any one person. It’s even bigger than the one person Jesus. That’s to say God’s most central incarnation in Jesus is only the centerpiece of grand plan for the whole world. For the disciples to really go out, they have to let go of the physical incarnation of God in Jesus to discover the incarnation of God around them all the time. Only in learning to let go are they able to begin to see the incredible things that God does for them.

Jesus’ presence among them, though, has permanently shaped them. It has changed their very being in ways they cannot yet even understand. It has shaped them into resurrection people who have the power to live as if death is no enemy. It has shaped them into people who have learned to trust God’s providence for their daily needs and to trust one another to be a community that reflects God’s love and care. They no longer see Jesus in front of them, and they still, at least according to Luke’s account, are to wait for the Holy Spirit, but Jesus is very much alive in them, already.

Those in our lives who leave us have permanently changed who we are, too. In our Immanuel community, those people have shaped our mission and ministry in conscious and unconscious ways. They have shared their gifts with us and surprised us with God’s abundance. And it will be hard for us to say goodbye, to send them and their gifts out to other places. But as much as we are called to be Christ for one another, no one of us does that alone. The mission of God in this place and in the world is much, much bigger than any one person. Just as God will use the gifts of those who are leaving in new ways and in new places, God will also supply the people and the gifts that are needed in our own community here.

So as we learn to say goodbye again and again in our lives, and as we look to the many times we have and will again say goodbye to loved ones for short and long periods of time, Jesus’ ascension reminds us that God holds all of us. And that even though we can’t see it, and even though we didn’t always know it was happening, Jesus has been shaping us to be the visible body of Christ for one another.

Staying is hard. Becoming the witnesses to the world we have been called to be is hard. Figuring out our way when the path seems unclear or when we aren’t able to see what will come next is hard. But we are not alone. Jesus is alive in us now and forever.

I want to end with a poem by Jan Richardson, written for Ascension Day. Whether we are staying or going, I think there is something here for all of us:

Read the poem for Ascension Day on Jan Richardson’s blog, The Painted Prayerbook.

 

6^th Sunday of Easter

May 5, 2013

²³Jesus answered him, “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. ²⁴Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; and the word that you hear is not mine, but is from the Father who sent me.
²⁵I have said these things to you while I am still with you. ²⁶But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. ²⁷Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. ²⁸You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I am coming to you.’ If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I. ²⁹And now I have told you this before it occurs, so that when it does occur, you may believe. -John 14:23-29

What makes some place home? I mean on a really practical level, what do you do to make someplace feel like home? In college and seminary when for 9 years the longest I lived in a single dwelling was 11 ½ months, I started to develop a couple of things that made someplace feel like home. Every time I moved, I knew I was home in my new place when my Ikea bookshelf was reassembled, the books were out of their boxes, and my laminated Mark Rothko print was hanging on the wall. That was what I needed to claim the space as my own. Maybe you’ve had a similar experience of frequent moving and have your own list. Or maybe you’ve been in one place so long that the place itself is what makes it feel like home.

We’re all familiar in some way with this idea of making something feel like home. We talk about making guests feel at home by preparing a place for them, fresh sheets on the bed, food ready in the kitchen. Maybe when you’re traveling you find a way to organize your hotel room or guest bedroom so that you feel comfortable and at home.

In John’s gospel, Jesus tells the disciples that God comes to make a home among them, which seems to beg the question, what does God need to feel at home?

Some would say that God needs a beautiful building. Since the Israelites camped in the desert wilderness, God’s people have dreamed up beautifully appointed temples then synagogues and later churches for God to dwell. We have tried to craft ornate churches to reflect God’s rich, divine rule over the world. We have tried to create simple sanctuaries to reflect God’s humility in Christ. We’ve tried building more buildings and we’ve tried getting rid of buildings to make God feel more at home with us. But did you catch that in John’s beautiful vision of the New Jerusalem, the kingdom of God come down? There isn’t even a church building in the whole of the beautiful city. What does God need to feel at home?

Some have said that God needs a perfectly ordered family or community to feel at home. I can’t tell you how many people upon finding out that I’m a pastor suddenly try to pretend their life is more together than it is, as if somehow God might only be looking for someone who’s got it all together. Sometimes church is the last place we want people to know about our failures. We want to appear to those who might be searching that we’re successful, happy, fulfilled, and that all our families look like a 1950’s poster family with 2.3 children, or whatever the 2013 equivalent is. Is that what God needs to feel at home?

Some of us make the mistake that God is only comfortable with people who look like us and act like us. I know none of us in Amherst would ever admit to that, because we know better. But how often to do we act out of assumptions we have unquestioningly inherited from a church dominated by people of European descent – most specifically in the Lutheran community the Germans and the Scandinavians? I’m sure I do it myself without even realizing it. Does God need these particular traditions and models to feel at home?

Sometimes we spend so much time worrying about how to make God feel at home that we become like the host who spends every minute of a guest’s visit cooking, cleaning, and straightening such that no time is ever spent with the guest. There’s something to be said for hospitality, but if preparation gets in the way of relationship, then we’ve lost the point. Does God need any of our elaborate attempts to get things in order enough for God?

If Jesus is any indication of what makes God feel at home, and our scriptures and creeds say that indeed he might be the best indication, the answer is that all God needs to be at home is us. “Those who love me will keep my word, and the Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.” It sounds at least a little conditional, but let’s remember that Jesus says it to these followers he’s called out of all walks of life, followers who have yet to really fully grasp what it is God is up to in Jesus, followers who are terrified because Jesus is talking about leaving them and coming back again and they don’t know what they’re supposed to do. The God of the universe had come to make a home among these followers and all the blind, lame, ill, demon-possessed and the like. God’s dwelling with us is not dependent on thinking right or doing right or getting everything just-so. God’s dwelling with us is pure gift, and the only thing God needs to feel at home, it seems, is you.

Perhaps most poignantly God makes a home with us in the Eucharist. In bread and wine, broken and poured for you, God’s mysterious presence makes a home literally inside of us. The body of Christ for you, God making God’s very self at home in you.

But it doesn’t just happen here at church. God’s promise is that everything will be transformed into the kind of place that needs no church because God’s presence will dwell so fully within it. And the Easter promise is that in destroying death once and for all that kingdom is for you and for the whole world now and forever.

God goes with you when you leave. God goes with you to school, where maybe you still have a few exams left to take or a final few weeks til summer break. And God dwells with you at work on those hard days when nothing seems to be going right. And God dwells with at home around the dinner table.

And God dwells out there in all the places we expect like the survival center and the AA groups that meet here and elsewhere, and in all the little unnamed acts of service that go largely unnoticed. And God dwells out there in all the places we don’t expect, like the giant parties that happen up the street, and in places we’ve long since labeled as godforsaken and the dark corners of our own lives that we don’t show to our church friends, and as some of us were reminded at a workshop yesterday, God is all over the Internet and the social networking sites, long before the church had a chance to catch up.

God doesn’t need much to feel at home, but God does need you. You in all your wonder and in all your failings. God has come down to make a home in you, to be with you, and to love you. Thanks be to God.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Fifth Sunday of Easter
April 28, 2013

³¹When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. ³²If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. ³³Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’ ³⁴I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. ³⁵By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” – John 13:31-35

There’s a song that I can’t get out of my head this week having read this short snippet from John’s gospel. It’s a folk-style church song that was popular when I was a kid, though it’s been around since the late 60s. The words go like this: We are one in the spirit, we are one in the Lord, We are one in the spirit, We are one in the Lord. And we pray that our unity may one day be restored, and they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love.

But here’s the thing, I can’t sing that song with a straight face any more because if you sing it over and over, at some point, you start to hear the phrase in a way that was not intended. Instead of a reprise of today’s Gospel reading it becomes a plea to purchase our love. That is buy our love, b-u-y. The song takes on a wholly different kind of meaning when you think about it like that. I get images of people standing on the street corner selling Christian love in neat little packages alongside knockoff handbags and local handicrafts. I’m sorry, by the way, if I’ve just ruined that song for you, too.

But here’s the thing, it’s kind of funny to think about that song with the wrong lyrics, but I fear that sometimes there’s an element of truth in singing it the wrong way. All too often, I fear that we spend our time trying to sell our brand of Christianity rather than trying to live in love for one another.

That’s been the brand of evangelism most mainline churches have relied on for decades. We have a nice version of Jesus’ story that will promote family values, community building, and philanthropy. We offer a variety of programs that provide education, fellowship, and opportunities for service. We sing and make music together. Come join us, buy our love. And mostly that’s worked reasonably well, but slowly we’re finding ourselves as a church noticing it doesn’t work as well as it used to.

And it’s not that we don’t love one another and show it to our world. Our mission statement is after all about experiencing God’s Love in Action. We know that’s our call. And here at Immanuel we do enact that love in lots of ways. But when it comes down to it, we all fail sometimes. It’s just that this commandment from Jesus is so hard to actually do. Dostoyevsky said it well through his character Father Zossima in the Brothers Karamazov, “Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.”

A harsh and dreadful thing indeed. Because love means work. It means washing dirty feet, like Jesus does in the account which is the context of this short passage from John’s gospel. Love for one another means bearing with someone through terrible and terrifying illnesses that leave them unable to care for their own most basic bodily needs. It means doing things we don’t like and that make us uncomfortable. It means going out to meet the people we’d much rather help from afar. It means speaking out about things we may get criticized for because it’s the right thing. It means loving the person next to you in the pew, whether that person is someone whose gifts and flaws you don’t even know or sometimes even more difficult if that person is someone whose gifts and flaws you know all too well. It means being open to the heartache of tragedy after tragedy in the headlines. It means painfully wrestling with deep heartache for the Tsarnaev brothers, the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing, because they are human beings like us and like the people injured and killed by the bombs. By this love they will know that you are my disciples.

A prepackaged and sanitized kind of love, one available for sale is much easier. The kind of love that Hallmark does well. The kind of love that’s about just being nice to everyone. And all of us fall prey to that temptation from time to time to stop at the simple kind of love. We take the comfortable road because our human souls can’t bear the harsh and dreadful kind of love all the time. We contain love into sweet sentiments, checks too easily written to assuage our guilt, and statements of feeling not backed by our actions. We remain silent on the hard things, and we get ahead at the expense of others in socially acceptable ways. And as Christians selling that kind of love, people may or may not be interested, because for the most part, we Christians aren’t much better than anyone else at that kind of love. In fact, sometimes we’re worse.

But what we as Christians do have is the message of the one who came to love us first. We have the story of the one who came to tear down the walls that divide people one from another. We have the good news of the one who takes on the more difficult kind of love at his own expense for a group of people who cannot return it in full. We know Jesus and the power of God to overcome the cross and grave. And that love is not for sale, because even if it was you couldn’t afford it. Try as we might we can’t package it up and sell it or even give it away. Because God has already given it to the whole world.

Easter is all about the surprising encounters with the risen Christ, love itself made flesh, in bodily form. It’s all about the promise that there will be a new heaven and a new earth where this kind of harsh and dreadful love reigns with a grace and ease that we cannot yet understand. And until that vision becomes a fully present reality, we are left with the reflections of God’s selfless love that are visible through our stumbling attempts to live the kind of love to which we have been called. For the world to recognize us as Christians, it will only be because somewhere, somehow they experience the way in which Christ first loved us, and the way that love is by God’s grace reflected in and through us.

So join together now in singing and feasting with one another. Join in a commitment to love in a difficult way. And then go from here into the world, enacting difficult forgiveness, radical inclusion, and costly love. And be on the lookout for signs of God’s love shining through our feeble attempts to live the kind of love Jesus is talking about. Because God’s promise is sure and God’s love is real. And it’s that amazing and grace-filled love that will support us in living out that harsh and difficult love for one another. Amen.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Easter
March 31, 2013

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. ²They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, ³but when they went in, they did not find the body. ⁴While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. ⁵The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. ⁶Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, ⁷that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.” ⁸Then they remembered his words, ⁹and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. ¹⁰Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles.¹¹But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. ¹²But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened. – Luke 24:1-12

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Here we are on this most important day, the high point of our church year, and Jesus is conspicuously missing. It is one of the few times in the year when Jesus himself does not say or do anything in the Gospel reading.

Jesus does not tell a story to help us understand God’s reign on earth.

Jesus does not teach us how to live in the world.

Jesus does not comfort or rebuke.

Because when the women come to care for the body of Jesus what they find is not Jesus, but an empty tomb.

On the first day of the week, at early dawn, the women arrived. They were looking for Jesus. But I suspect that is not all they were looking for.

Perhaps they were looking for the company of others to help them through their time of grief.

Perhaps they were looking for a concrete task like anointing a body in order to take their minds off the death of a dear friend.

Or maybe they were looking for some sense of closure after that awful Friday, a final chance to say goodbye.

And I would think that Jesus would have the decency to stick around long enough to meet these women. But when they arrived, the one thing they definitely did not find was Jesus. He is not here! He is risen!

And a whole new search was begun. Now they were looking for answers. They were looking for a missing body. They were searching their minds for the things Jesus had said to them. And they went looking for the other disciples. But most of all they were still looking for Jesus.

When the disciples get involved, bold and impetuous Peter goes running out to join the search.

Searching for a shred of hope that the story of the women was true. Searching for proof, perhaps, searching for an answer to bring back to the others.

Searching under every rock and shrub like some kind of twisted Easter egg hunt.

Searching, ultimately, for Jesus.

But maybe you can relate to that frantic searching. In fact, maybe you came looking for something yourself this morning.

Maybe you came to worship on Easter looking for Jesus.

Maybe you came looking for relief from the heavy burden of a loved one battling a disease or the burden of grief over a loved one lost.

Maybe you came this morning looking for peace in a world where violence seems to rule.

Maybe you came looking for new life in a world where creation itself seems to be in danger of death.

Maybe you came looking for hope and security in the face of unemployment or financial uncertainty.

Maybe you came looking for connection with others in what can be a lonely world.

Or maybe you came looking for solace and rest because your life seems to be too full of confusion or simply exhaustion.

But the messengers’ answer to all our searching is simply, “Jesus is not here. He is risen!”

So the question for us on this Easter morning, as we search for hope and life and renewal is: “Where is this risen Jesus?” Like the women at the tomb and the disciples who come running we sometimes have a hard time identifying this risen Christ among us and understanding what the risen Lord is up to in our world.

The problem is that God often does not do what we expect God to do. All this week we have been discovering the unexpected places God shows up.

God shows up riding into town in regal procession but oddly sitting on a donkey.

Then God shows up as a servant washing the feet of his disciples.

Then most profoundly God shows up as a criminal on the cross.

And you’d think we and the women and the disciples would have learned our lesson to expect the unexpected. But death just seemed so final. You can’t blame the women or the disciples for their confusion. But where is this risen Christ?

I am deeply grateful that the cross demonstrates Jesus’ willingness to walk beside me leading the way through my deepest darkness, through the pain and suffering in our world, and even leading the way through death. But sometimes I’m tempted to stop searching on Good Friday, just thankful that we have a God who is willing to be present in the depths of our darkness.

But Jesus’ absence on this Easter morning is a sign of something new. A sign of something so incredible, so fantastic, so unbelievable that Jesus cannot wait to lead us there. Now that death is destroyed, the feast has begun and Jesus has gone ahead to make a way through our wildernesses so that we can join him in this feast!

So maybe when we find ourselves like the women at the tomb searching desperately for Jesus, when we have a hard time seeing or feeling or knowing Jesus’ presence beside us, it’s because the way in which he is with us in those darkest moments is by leading us into a new existence that is beyond anything we can imagine. We cannot see Jesus because he is already helping us live into something we cannot wrap our minds around.

We are not abandoned by God in our searching, but this new kingdom is so incredible that God has grabbed ahold of us and gone running ahead. We sometimes try to remain where we are, looking for the living among the dead, not able to conceive of a God who could do so much more for us, but God’s feast is calling: the empty tomb, the graveclothes, the mysterious messengers proclaiming to us “He is not here, He is risen!” They are all inviting us into a new kind of searching for the new reality God is ushering in.

And so we are invited today to a foretaste of that feast. We are invited to the table of bread and wine for a glimpse of that risen Christ. We are invited to join the singing and the celebration. Because today the risen Christ is here, present among us, but also running ahead of us, leading us, calling us, preparing a way for us out of darkness into light, out of despar into hope, out of death into life.

Alleluia! Christ is Risen!

Christ is Risen indeed! Alleluia!

Easter Vigil 2013
March 30, 2013

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. ²So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” ³Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. ⁴The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. ⁵He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. ⁶Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, ⁷and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. ⁸Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; ⁹for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. ¹⁰Then the disciples returned to their homes.
¹¹But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; ¹²and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. ¹³They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” ¹⁴When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. ¹⁵Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” ¹⁶Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). ¹⁷Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'” ¹⁸Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her. – John 20:1-18

Alleluia! Christ is Risen!

Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!

We have already heard a lot of words tonight, but that’s in part because words have so much power. Just think about these words: I love you. I hate you. I forgive you. Those words speak people into particular relationships with one another. Words have the power to build up or tear down. They have the power to speak volumes in a few phrases or to say nothing at all for pages and pages. A single word from a powerful leader can save or destroy. Words of scripture have the power to generate faith.

In our first reading it is God’s word that literally speaks creation into existence. Out of chaos comes order and beauty. An interdependent creation emerges from forces and elements raging against one another. God said, “Light.” And there was light. It is God’s word that creates land and water, plants and animals and human beings. And it was all very good. But God was not yet finished speaking.

It’s almost as if God was still searching for just the right word. Frederick Buechner puts it this way: “God tried saying it to Noah, but Noah was a drinking man. He tried saying it to Abraham, but Abraham was a little too Mesopotamian with all those wives and whiskers. He tried Moses, but Moses himself was trying too hard; tried David, but David was too pretty for his own good. Toward the end of his rope, God tried saying it in John the Baptist with his locusts and honey and hellfire preaching, and you get the feeling that John might almost have worked except that he lacked something small but crucial like a sense of the ridiculous or a balanced diet.” *

You could add to his list all the others we read about tonight. Isaiah who proclaimed a feast where all can eat without money and without price. Jonah who tried to run away and even after getting swallowed by a fish and being regurgitated on shore didn’t quite get the message of God’s love. Or the men in the fiery furnace who managed to convert Nebuchadnezzar himself. But none of those words quite said it all.

So God’s word took flesh. God’s word became a human being who loved the world, who healed the sick, proclaimed release of the captives and sight to the blind. God’s word became a human being who went to the cross.

And tonight, on this most holy of nights, when the word made flesh rises from the dead, all of those words come racing forth. All of those words of love and promise and forgiveness spoken through the ages, all of those words that spoke God’s people into being, all of those words of love and salvation that God had spoken over centuries – tonight they come bursting out of the tomb along with the word made flesh. They come bursting forth into God’s new kingdom of life. All those faithful human beings who have struggled and failed and struggled and failed over centuries, they come bursting forth into God’s new life on this night.

And early in the morning on that first day of the week, when Mary is wandering confused, alone, and afraid, the word made flesh speaks yet one more word to her. Jesus calls her name, “Mary!” And with that one word spoken into her confusion and fear God speaks her into new life, too. And by that word spoken to her, she and soon all the other disciples get caught up in this crazy kingdom of new life that has burst forth from the grave. And they start speaking, too. Those words suddenly have no bounds or limits. They come bounding through the centuries to us.

In all the words of our readings and all the words of our hymns and prayers this night. The word made flesh in all of history is now speaking words in our lives. Speaking not just any words, but speaking your name and mine, into our doubt and fear and confusion and pain and sin and yes, even into our death. Speaking your name and mine in this resurrection kingdom has a profound power. And those words have the power to raise us from the dead.

Alleluia! Christ is Risen!

Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!

-Pastor Steven Wilco

*Frederick Buechner, WIshful Thinking (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), p. 97.

Maundy Thursday
March 28, 2013

Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. ²The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him. And during supper ³Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, ⁴got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. ⁵Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. ⁶He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” ⁷Jesus answered, “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” ⁸Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” ⁹Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” ¹⁰Jesus said to him, “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you.” ¹¹For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, “Not all of you are clean.”
¹²After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? ¹³You call me Teacher and Lord — and you are right, for that is what I am. ¹⁴So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. ¹⁵For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. ¹⁶Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. ¹⁷If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them. ^31b“Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. ³²If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. ³³Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’ ³⁴I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. ³⁵By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” – John 13 (selected verses)

Tonight you are invited to become the body of Christ. God’s call to you through baptism and God’s constant reinvitation to the altar means you are already the body of Christ, but in tonight’s service we enact that reality in some very particular ways.

First we were reconciled, each of us, to God. In case it’s ever hard to the forgiveness offered every Sunday, tonight we made sure you heard it is for you. One-by-one we proclaimed God’s unconditional forgiveness, and we remembered God’s constant willingness to welcome us back into the body of Christ no matter our brokenness or our mistakes. Reconciled to God and to one another we enter these most holy three days at one with God and with one another as the body of Christ.

In a few moments, we will have an opportunity to pick up a towel and basin and wash one another’s feet in the manner in which Jesus served his disciples on their last night together. We will become the body of Christ for one another. We will take on Christ’s servanthood as part of our commitment to Jesus new commandment to love one another. For those who wish to actively participate in the washing and those who participate in song and prayer, it will be not just a symbol of our desire to love our neighbors, but an actual enactment of that love for one another. The body of Christ made manifest in us.

And then we will receive the bread and wine, Christ’s body and blood, as we do every week. United with the saints past, present, and future, we will take into ourselves the body of Christ, given for us. And by receiving Christ’s body, we receive what we are and become what we receive, the body of Christ.

But here’s the catch. This is a dangerous night to be the body of Christ. Because at the end of the service we will hear Psalm 22, the psalm Jesus quoted on the cross. As all the items are removed from the chancel we will be reminded of the night when Jesus was arrested. Tonight is the eve of Good Friday, the day the body of Christ was hung on a cross. Tonight you are invited to become the body of Christ, but tonight the body of Christ is headed to the cross.

This is a dangerous thing we Christians are called to be in the world. It is a dangerous thing to love in the way that Jesus loves. If we’re really going to live out this new commandment it is going to put us in uncomfortable places with people not like us doing things we may not really like.

Following this command, people like Oscar Romero, whom we commemorated earlier this week, became the body of Christ serving the poor in the middle of an armed conflict. He spoke out again and again for basic human rights for the people of El Salvador. He served among the poor and those in need. He put himself on the line demonstrating Christ-like love and was killed for it.

Living out the love that Jesus commands is what put Mother Theresa in Calcutta, and Desmond Tutu in the middle of the conflict over apartheid, and Martin Luther King, Jr. in the middle of the civil rights struggle. But those famous examples aside, just living Jesus’ command to love one another in our daily lives is hard enough. It takes that same deep courage to enact forgiveness freely with the people closest to us and sometimes just to forgive ourselves. It takes tremendous courage to serve those in our community who are hurting and hungry. It takes courage to make ourselves vulnerable, entering into relationship with people who are different than we are.

And often we fail. We do not live up to this commandment to love. As the body of Christ we fall short of Jesus’ self-giving love. But we do not despair. Because if this is a dangerous night to be the body of Christ, it is also a wonderfully glorious night to be the body of Christ. Not just because in service to one another we experience God, though surely that is the case whether in washing one another’s feet here tonight or in the service we live out in our daily lives. But this is a wonderful night to be the body of Christ because we already know the end of the story.

Even as we enter into these three days of contemplation of the mysteries of Christ’s death and resurrection, we approach them as Easter people. We do not pretend to be ignorant of the empty tomb that is coming. We become tonight and every night the body of Christ crucified and risen, restored day in and day out.

It must have been strange and unsettling for those disciples that night who did not yet understand what Jesus had told them about the end. But they listened intently to this commandment: “Love one another as I have loved you.” And they were uncomfortable and uncertain. They did not yet know what that would mean. But in just a few short days they would be free to live it out with the assurance that the risen Christ was alive in them. So friends, I boldly invite you to continue becoming the body of Christ. Serve one another, love one another, and rejoice that God is alive and at work in you.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Fifth Sunday in Lent
March 17, 2013

With thanks to Pastor Dan Wilfrid of Immanuel Lutheran Church in Holden, MA, for providing the framework and significant parts of the phrasing of this sermon.

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. ²There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. ³Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. ⁴But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, ⁵Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor? ⁶(He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) ⁷Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. ⁸You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”
-John 12:1-8

What would you do if you suddenly received $20,000? You can spend it any way you want. Be honest with yourself. Go ahead and make a list of where it would go. I’ll give you a minute to think about that.

So, what would you do with it? Given that I asked you in the context of a sermon, maybe you said you’d give some of it to the church. I grew up learning to tithe so I’d probably give $2000 to the church in some way. But then there are student loan payments, and paying a little extra on the mortgage. Maybe save a little, splurge on a nicer vacation this year. Maybe you have tuition bills or retirement accounts or maybe just backlogged bills. It would certainly be a nice problem to have to figure out how to spend it, but just to be honest I probably wouldn’t just blow it all on Jesus.

$20,000 is how much Mary pours on Jesus’ feet as they gather for dinner. The oil, according to John’s gospel, is worth 300 denarii. 300 times a laborer’s daily wage. In today’s currency that’s $8/hr, 8 hours/day, for 300 days is $19,200. $20,000 of precious perfume poured out on Jesus’ feet. And the smell filled the whole house.

Judas has his own ideas about how to spend $20,000, wondering why this money wasn’t given to the poor. I don’t know what it would have purchased in Jesus’ day, but today $20,000 could provide 400 starving families with a goat from ELCA Good Gifts to sustain their family and generate income. Or more than 200 children with no food could eat for a year. Or 80 villages could receive life saving mosquito nets to prevent malaria. Or 7 families could have a brand new home after a natural disaster. Mary’s jar of perfume could have done a lot of good in the world.

Maybe you have a more generous heart and side with Mary, but frankly, I’m with Judas on this one. Forget for a moment what John says about Judas stealing from the purse. Maybe he was, or maybe by the time John wrote this the legends about Judas had just turned from bad to worse. Whatever Judas’ motivation, I think John includes his challenge in this story because he wants us to be stuck in the middle. Should I be on Mary’s side or Judas’s side?

Jesus, who generally speaking stands with the poorest of the poor, very clearly sides with Mary on this one. Now I’ve been in the church long enough to be a little uncomfortable standing on the side opposite Jesus. It’s just that I’m not like Mary. I am not inclined to spontaneity in any fashion, including, for the most part, in my charitable giving. If I had a $20,000 jar of oil sitting around, I would have a plan or six for what to do with it. I would have researched the best market price and calculated a good time to sell it. I wouldn’t go around pouring it out in one sitting, not even on Jesus. And I would be enraged if someone like Mary swooped in and did something so reckless.

But then, Jesus didn’t raise my brother from the dead. At least not in the miraculous way that he had raised Lazarus from the tomb, rolling back the stone after he had been dead four long days. John makes sure to tell us that Lazarus, newly raised from the tomb is sitting here at the dinner table when Mary does this. Mary’s spontaneous, extravagant, generous outpouring makes sense and was nothing more than fitting when measured against the extravagant, generous grace and mercy of the God who in Jesus had just called Lazarus out of the tomb.

So maybe the problem is not with Mary and her reckless behavior, but with us, or at least with me. Either I haven’t experienced such overwhelming blessing from God, or more likely I’ve been quick to forget or blind to it in the first place.

To put it another way, it’s people who have experienced God’s rescue from the depths of grief and despair, people who have experienced the horrible stench of a four-day old tomb who find that they need a pound of perfume to celebrate resurrection. It’s not a matter of right or wrong or better or worse. It’s more a matter of what response fittingly expresses gratitude for one’s awareness and experience of God’s mercy and grace.

I have continued to be amazed that this congregation set aside $________ of its capital campaign money to fund new mission projects. That’s 2 jars of perfume. It strikes me as a bold and faithful commitment to ministries we didn’t even yet understand. Now we had some ideas, we had seen God’s providence to us, but like Mary, I’m not sure we really fully understood what it was that we were doing. Sure we had evidence of the resurrection sitting at our table, but we didn’t really yet understand the power of what God still had in store for us. We poured out those jars of perfume, and continue to pour it out that we as a congregation might be free to give generously and spontaneously to those projects where God is stirring up new life. That outpouring has gone to help get Craig’s Door off the ground, to start up a lecture series for the enrichment of the whole community, and to fund children and youth projects. That outpouring prepared the way for God’s power of new life to become active in ways we didn’t even yet imagine. And I guarantee you that God is not yet done.

So I’ll ask the question again. If you were to unexpectedly come into, let’s say $20,000, what would you do with it? How much of it would you spend, save or give away and on what and to whom? If you had just been the recipient of an extravagant outpouring of God’s mercy and grace; if Jesus had just healed or even brought you or someone you love back from the dead; or if in some unfathomable act of love God had just run out to welcome you home like a lost child, or had baptized you into Jesus’ own death and resurrection and promised you new life as a free gift, then gathered you as part of a community of equally, richly blessed people and invited you with them to come to a special dinner with Jesus and with those who have died and come to new life gathered around that same table, and you had a jar of $20,000 perfume, or perhaps even a life with talents, abilities, resources and connections worth many times that, what would you do? What would seem fitting?

You might want to think fast, because that supper is about to begin.

-Pastor Steven Wilco (again, with thanks to Pastor Dan Wilfrid who deserves the credit for significant parts of this sermon)