Faith that allows. April 24, 2022. The Rev. David M. Stoddart

John 20:19-31

William James was a prominent 19th century American philosopher. A story is told that after a lecture he gave on cosmology and the structure of the solar system, James was accosted by a little old lady.

"Your theory that the sun is the center of the solar system, and the earth is a ball which rotates around it has a very convincing ring to it, Mr. James, but it's wrong. I've got a better theory," said the little old lady.

"And what is that, madam?" inquired James politely.

"That we live on a crust of earth which is on the back of a giant turtle."

Not wishing to demolish this absurd little theory by bringing to bear the masses of scientific evidence he had at his command, James decided to gently dissuade his opponent by making her see some of the inadequacies of her position.

"If your theory is correct, madam," he asked, "what does this turtle stand on?"

"You're a very clever man, Mr. James, and that's a very good question," replied the little old lady, "but I have an answer to it. And it's this: The first turtle stands on the back of a second, far larger, turtle, who stands directly under him."

"But what does this second turtle stand on?" persisted James patiently.

To this, the little old lady crowed triumphantly,

"It's no use, Mr. James—it's turtles all the way down."^[1]

 

An infinite progression of turtles. People believe many interesting things, from the sublime to the ridiculous. And we cling to our deepest held beliefs tenaciously and passionately. And that is never more true than in the whole arena of religion. In fact, in our culture, we have made “religion” and “belief” almost synonymous. Do we believe in God, do we believe in Christ, do we believe in heaven . . . how we answer such questions defines our religion, at least in the popular mind. And certainly what we believe is important. Every week we recite the Nicene Creed together, beginning with “We believe in one God.” But our religious life is about more than just belief. If being a Christian, a person in Christ, just means intellectually assenting to a set of beliefs and doctrines, we are missing something crucial. And I think this story about Thomas illustrates what that something is.

 

On the surface, it seems pretty straightforward: Thomas doesn’t believe that Jesus has been raised from the dead; he sees Jesus; and then he believes. But this is John’s Gospel, and John’s Gospel always dives below the surface, and there is a lot going on here that is not so straightforward. For example, is the message here that Jesus will give us all physical evidence so that we will believe in his resurrection? Clearly not: only a handful of people saw the risen Christ: the vast majority of Christians have not. Is the message, then, that we should believe the witness of that small group of people? Well, we can believe them, of course, but that may not be sufficient: remember, even Thomas didn’t believe the other disciples when they told him that Jesus had been raised from the dead, and they were his close companions. If he didn’t believe them, why should we? And besides all that, what brings Thomas back to that locked room anyway, what keeps Thomas engaged enough to even want proof? There is something at work here that goes deeper than belief, and the best word we have for that something is faith.

 

Faith is openness to God, a willingness to live towards God. Psalm 46 says: Be still, and know that I am God. Such knowing is more fundamental than any belief or doctrine. It is faith that keeps Thomas coming back, faith that allows him to raise the doubts he raises. We see a similar dynamic in Mark’s Gospel with the father of the epileptic boy. It is faith that allows him to say, I believe. Help my unbelief! And it has certainly been my experience that it is not belief that has caused me to have faith, but rather that faith has led me into belief. After all, we are not born with a belief in the Incarnation or in the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church, but we are born with a capacity for God, a natural orientation towards God. The seeds of faith have been within us from the beginning. And it doesn’t have to be great faith: Jesus says that faith the size of a mustard seed is all we need. And we all have it — we all have it — which is why Jesus can connect with everyone, even with sinners, Gentiles, and non-believers. He touches that core of faith within all of us. And it’s because of that core of faith that Jesus can say in today’s Gospel: Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe. Blessed are those whose faith has led them to believe.

 

I want to encourage you this Easter season to use the faith you have within you. And we do that by any act of intention, any act that consciously points us to God. That could be a prayer, a word of thanksgiving, an act of trust, an expression of repentance, a deliberate decision to love. Whenever we do anything for the sake of God or anything that is directed towards God, even crying out “Help me believe!”,  it nourishes our innate faith. And the more we nurture and cultivate faith, the more our faith will lead us into deeper belief. That’s true no matter where we are on the spiritual journey. It’s true if we are committed Christians who are convinced that Jesus is risen and alive; it’s true if we are struggling to believe that there is a God at all. God will meet us where we are and lead us into deeper belief, if we are willing to act on the faith we have, even if that only means asking questions and raising doubts. God will help us to know that Jesus is alive, not as a creedal box we check off, but as a living reality. God will help us to know that the Spirit of the Risen Christ dwells within us, not as a doctrine we are supposed to believe in but as something we actually experience. It is God, working through our faith, who will show us these things, far more than any creed, book, class, or sermon could ever do. And may God continue to do that for each and every one of us.

---

^[1] J. R. Ross, Constraints on Variables in Syntax, 1967^[

Worth the risk. Easter Sunday 2022. The Rev. Kathleen M. Sturges

 

John 20:1-18

A man and his ever-nagging wife went on vacation to Jerusalem. While they were there the wife passed away. The undertaker told the husband, “You can have her shipped home for $5,000 or you can bury her here, in the Holy Land, for only $500.” The man thought about it for a moment and decided to ship her home. Baffled and surprised, the undertaker asked, “Why would you spend $5,000 to ship your wife home when it would be wonderful to be buried here and you would only spend $500? The man replied, “Well you see, long ago there was a man who died here, was buried here, and 3 days later he rose from the dead. I just can't take the risk!”

 All grins and kidding aside, the man does have a point because resurrection is risky business. It certainly was that first Easter morning when, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene, overwhelmed by grief, makes her way to the tomb only to discover upon her arrival that the stone has been rolled away. So in her distress she runs to the disciples, tells them the news. and two of them run back with her to see with their own eyes that the tomb is indeed empty. And then they return home leaving Mary alone weeping.

 You know how we just sang Welcome Happy Morning? Well on this first Easter morning it was anything but happy. The day begins in the dark both literally and figuratively. And even as the sun begins to rise Mary is consumed by the darkness of her grief. After some time she looks into the tomb through her tears she sees two angels in white. But it doesn't seem to register who or what they are as they ask her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” because, she responds, “They have taken away my Lord and I do not know where they have laid him.” After saying this she turns around and then the most curious thing happens. The Gospel of John puts it this way. Mary sees Jesus. Mary sees Jesus, but she does not know that it is Jesus. She doesn't recognize him. Perhaps she cannot recognize him because she is so consumed with one thing. Finding Jesus’ body. The way her mind makes sense of this man standing before her is that she presumes him to be the gardener as she pleads with him just to tell her where the body is. She’s holding on so tightly to that thought that it leaves no room to consider anything else. Until, that is, Jesus says her name. Mary. And that changes everything.

 And understandably so because modern science tells us that hearing one's name actually does change us. It literally causes a chemical reaction in our brain. It turns out that when we hear our name spoken, feel-good hormones, like dopamine and serotonin, are released which reduces stress and increases warm, positive feelings like being known and loved.

 When Mary hears her name spoken it is then that she is able to see, really see who it is who’s been standing before her all this time. And I can only imagine the processing that she started to do in her mind: Jesus. Dead. Now alive. Jesus. OMG! And as it begins to sink in my guess is that she did what any of us would probably do if someone we loved came back from the dead. She threw her arms around him. But he tells her to let go. “Do not to hold onto me.” And then goes onto to explain that he has yet to ascend to his Father. But I think there is more to it than that because part of what Mary, and all of us must do, to experience resurrection life is to let go. And that’s the first aspect of resurrection that feels rather risky to me. In order to embrace the new life that God in Christ offers us we must be willing to let something go.

 As wonderful as resurrection life might sound, don’t be fooled, it isn't a life that just simply hops from one joyous event to the next. Hardly. Because you know, by definition, in order to have resurrection first comes death. Death of a person, death of life as we know it. Death of an idea, a hope, a dream, one’s health, a relationship. Our world is full of deaths – both big and small – because life is always changing. And in the midst of those changes, those losses, even those deaths, I wonder how many times is Jesus standing right there before us? We may even see him there, but like Mary, we are unable to recognize him.  Unable because, perhaps, we are holding onto to something else. Clinging to the past, to the way things used to be, to the way we still want them to be. But when we do that, when we refuse to let go, we lose the ability to grasp any other possibility and end up resisting the work of resurrection in our lives.

 Now don't get me wrong, it is a good and right and healthy thing to grieve the losses in our lives. But when we have done that good work there comes a time to let go so that something new can be embraced. When Mary laments, “They have taken away my Lord,” she is not entirely wrong. Although Jesus has risen from the dead, he has not been resurrected so that he can go back to his old life. Resurrection is not the same as restoration. It is not about turning back the clock to the way things used to be. It is about something new. And this is the second aspect that I find rather risky about this resurrection business. The first is letting go. The second is this part about the new. Without minimizing or dismissing loss, resurrection encompasses it what has been lost while offering something new. New life that is good and rich and meaningful. But it’s also new life the is unknown, uncharted, uncontrollable. Hence the risk.

 Nonetheless, this Easter morning you are invited to encounter the risen Christ anew. To hear him tenderly call you name and see that it is he who is always standing right there before you. Jesus calls you, calls all of us, to let go of what we might be clinging to that is holding us back so that we might embrace more fully the resurrection that touches our deepest fears, pains, and losses while giving us new life. And then as we do, we can proclaim, with Mary Magdalene, the good news that changes everything, “I have seen the Lord.” Because when all is said and done, resurrection is worth the risk!

If we let Him. Easter Vigil 2022. The Rev. David M. Stoddart

 

Romans 6:3-11

When Mother Kathleen and I plan Holy Week, we of course have to decide who is preaching at what service. And we don’t usually flip a coin. I was happy that this year she wanted to preach on Easter morning, which meant that I would preach at the Vigil tonight. I was happy because, frankly, I prefer my resurrection in the dark. Don’t get me wrong: of course there’s a place for flowers and butterflies, bright morning skies and Easter egg hunts. Tomorrow’s worship will be glorious, and I’ll love it. But for me there is something primal and deeply meaningful about sitting in the dark together, hearing the story as the night deepens around us, and waiting for the light. After all, it’s in darkness that we most desperately need the light; it’s in darkness that we most readily see the light. And, personally, my most powerful experiences of the Risen Christ have come in my darkest moments.

 In our reading from Romans, Paul says: Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death? Obviously he doesn’t mean that we have physically died or that we have literally been crucified. No, he makes that clear a few verses later: The death he died, he died to sin, once for all. Paul insists that we, with Christ, have died to sin. Does that mean that we behave perfectly and never transgress? Clearly not. Sin in this passage is more basic than that: not just misbehavior but the source of misbehavior, the source of suffering. Sin is separation from God. Jesus lived without sin because Jesus lived intimately close to his Father: The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. Many things can cloud our lives, but the worst darkness we can ever experience is the despair of feeling separated from God. But we have died to that sense of separation, we have died to sin. And one way we can actually experience that in our lives is to go to our darkest places and wait for the light.

 This is something we can really practice. And it really makes a difference. I know I need to do this frequently. For example, not long ago I was walking our dog after dinner, and I felt terrible: just down and anxious. But rather than try to stuff those feelings or distract myself, I entered the darkness and let myself be aware of all that I was feeling. It wasn’t pretty, and a lot of it came down to fear. I felt afraid because members of my family were struggling with difficult issues that I could not fix for them: I felt overwhelmed by everything I had to do at church and I was afraid I couldn’t do it all; I felt afraid of what is happening in our country and our world; and I felt inadequate, like I was failing and powerless, which just led to even more fear. And in the midst of it all, I felt distant from God, disconnected. Fear and anxiety were blocking any sense of God’s presence. But I’ve been there before, and I know what to do. I stopped, and while Nova sniffed the grass, I said, “Jesus, you see everything that is weighing on me: I hold it before you; I don’t hide any of it from you. Please help me. I need you now. I trust that you are close: help me feel that you are close.” And then I walked on slowly, praying the Jesus prayer with my breath: “Lord Jesus” breathing in, “Have mercy” breathing out. And in those moments of darkness, the light started to shine. I could feel a weight lifting and a sense of peace descending. My problems and concerns had not disappeared, but I felt connected to Christ and close to God. The power of sin, that despairing sense of being separated from God, was gone. It’s in moments like that that I know Jesus is alive.

 If we want to experience the Risen Christ, then we need to meet him in our own darkest places, those places where we feel disconnected from God. Lots of things can cause such darkness to overshadow us. Fear is a primary one: if we feel afraid, that’s a sure call to look deeply and honestly at the reasons for our fear and ask for Jesus to set us free. If guilt is plaguing us and making us feel far from God, Christ can offer full forgiveness and we should ask for and receive that forgiveness. And we could go down the list: anger, frustration, sickness, loss, sheer busyness — all these things can obscure the presence of God and make us feel cut-off. When that happens, sin in that most basic sense is weighing us down. But Jesus really can shine light into our darkness and lift any burden from our shoulders, if we let him. Paul calls us to approach everything with this in mind: The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

 Consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Thomas Keating, the Trappist monk and teacher on prayer, said that the only thing which separates us from God is the belief that we are separated from God. Jesus came to set us free from ever having to believe that again. When we feel that God is distant, we need to name what is making us feel that way and ask Jesus to save us. I can offer you examples of that, but I can’t give you some simple three step method to do this: each of us needs to do it in our own way. The way I do it won’t necessarily be the best way for you to do it. But the more we practice considering ourselves dead to sin and alive to God, the more we will feel the power of the Risen Christ at work in our lives.

 And there is more at stake here than just feeling close to God. When we don’t feel close to God, then we are more likely to hurt others and hurt ourselves. When we feel separated from God, then our worst instincts and our worst behaviors can wreak havoc. I see this in myself all the time. In my darkest moments, it’s hard to love and to be the person I want to be. But when I feel the Spirit of Jesus within me, when I feel close to God, it is easier to be more loving, more patient, more compassionate, more hopeful, more joyful. I know that Jesus is alive not because of spectacular miracles or visions, but because of all those times when he has helped me move from being self-absorbed, bound up in my own fear and anxiety, to being free and present — present to God and present to others. That is sharing in the resurrection of Jesus even now. Again, Paul says it: Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. Because Christ is risen, you and I can walk in newness of life — and walking in newness of life — a life close to God — will be our surest sign that Christ is risen.

 

 

 

God’s unending, never-failing, unconditional commitment to us. Good Friday 2022. The Rev. Kathleen M. Sturges

John 18:1-19:42

There is a world of suffering out there. We certainly see it with all of the atrocities in Ukraine. But the Ukrainians are not the ones who are suffering right now. Under Taliban rule, the people of Afghanistan are suffering mightily with the loss of personal freedom, the collapse of their economy, and almost nine million of them on the brink of starvation. Then, of course, there is Covid. In the United States alone, almost one million people have died - worldwide it’s six million. And that’s just some of the suffering that makes the news. All of us know people who are dealing with chronic pain, mental anguish or tremendous loss. If it’s not touching our lives personally, it’s close by for sure. That’s because, whether we like it or not, suffering and death is an integral part of life.

 And Good Friday offers no escape. Jesus is arrested, tied up, interrogated, tortured, and executed. After that his executioners take his clothes and divide it among themselves. The story of the cross is always a story of suffering and death. There is just no way around it. And yet one has to wonder, how is it that something so violently brutal is at the center of our faith?

 Some say that it’s because the crucifixion was all part of God’s plan. That it had to be that way.  Jesus had to suffer and die on the cross because we were so bad. That God had to have something - some kind of payment, some kind of blood satisfaction - in order to enable him to love us. As if divine love is ultimately transactional - given when earned and withheld when not. Did God really say, “I created you, but I can only love and accept you if and only if…you are perfect, you are flawless, you are without sin. But since that’s impossible, I’ve got a workaround. I’ll accept the death of my son, Jesus, instead.”  I don’t know what that is, but I know one thing, it’s not love. Even we who are imperfect, flawed, and sinful are able to grasp that true love, real love is in no way transactional. It doesn’t even operate in the realm of earning or deserving. It just is. Love just loves.

 And God is love. Love that is made incarnate in Jesus the Christ. Jesus who dies on the cross not to convince God in heaven to love us, but to reveal to us just how much we are already loved. The cross shows us in the most starkest of ways that God loved us so much that he chose not to sit back in heaven, removed from the pain and struggles of life in this world, but to join us in it - in the ups and downs, the hopes and disappointments, the frailties and faults of life in this world. All so that we could really see and know God’s unending, never-failing, unconditional commitment to us. When we look at the cross we are offered a vision of love - with no strings attached.

 God in Christ Jesus suffers and dies because we suffer and die. That is part of every human story. And God became human so that we might not ever be alone in that part of our story for the cross stands in the middle of it. No matter what we face we are never alone, never forgotten, never abandoned. But that's not to say it’s not difficult.

 You know, almost everyone ran away from Jesus’ cross on Good Friday. I don’t think it’s because most of the disciples were weak or unfaithful or bad. I think it’s because the cross, Jesus’ cross, and the crosses in our own lives, are just so darn painful which makes us desperately want to get  away from them. We rush to find something good in the horrific. We attempt to explain suffering away. We seek to make sense of things that make no sense. We want to jump from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday and put flowers on the cross before it’s time. Try as we might, we cannot get around the cross of suffering and death in this life. We can only go through it.

 Good Friday does not offer us easy answers or a quick escape. More than any other day of the Church year, suffering is held before us. It’s a hard day. And let me tell you I don’t like it. I don’t really want to face suffering - mine or anyone else’s. Maybe you feel the same. Nonetheless, there, in the middle of our lives and in the center of our faith  stands the cross. 

 And you’ve probably already figured this out that Jesus didn’t necessarily come to take us down from the crosses of our lives. Rather he came so that he could get up there with us. Because that is what love does. And it is from there, with us, that he loves and loves and loves us to the end - which really isn’t the end but just our beginning.

 Today is not called Easy Friday. It’s not called Happy Friday. And it’s certainly not called Painless Friday. It’s called Good Friday. It’s good because the love revealed on the cross - a love that loves with no strings attached - is what ultimately carries us through our sufferings and deaths. It did yesterday. It does today. It will tomorrow and forever more.

 

Anamnesis. Maundy Thursday 2022. The Rev. David M. Stoddart

 1 Corinthians 11:23-26

Did you know that every major religious tradition on earth has some version of the Golden Rule in it? Down through the ages, people all around the world have acknowledged that we should do to others what we would have others do to us. There seems to be ingrained in human nature some innate sense of basic goodness and justice. We are taught not to lie, not to steal, not to kill, but deep down, it's like we already know these things. We may violate them and and often do, but the knowledge of them is still there within us. Plato was very intrigued by this, and developed a theory to explain it. He believed that our souls existed prior to becoming embodied as human beings, and that in that pre-birth state we perceived eternal forms of goodness and justice. So when we learn such values as human beings, we are not actually acquiring new information, but rather remembering what we already know. It’s an act of recollection. And Plato did not see such recollection as diving back into the past, but rather bringing the past into the present, reclaiming it for the here and now. It was an active way of remembering, and he had a special word for it: he called it anamnesis.

Now, thank you for bearing with me. I’m sure you’re not interested in pursuing philosophy tonight, and neither am I. I’m only telling you this because that word anamnesis is the very word used in the Gospels at the Last Supper, and the word Paul uses in our second reading: This is my body that is for you, Do this in anamnesis of me. This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in anamnesis of me. There is a kind of memory where we go back into the past and remember people we have known and things we have done. We look at old photos, maybe, or picture in our minds events that once happened. We use our memory to travel back in time. And that’s lovely — but that is not what is happening in this service. The goal is not to picture ourselves in tunics and sandals and envision being with Jesus in an upper room somewhere in Jerusalem. There’s nothing wrong with doing that, but we are not here tonight to travel back into the past: we are here to bring the past into the present. Anamnesis: every time we break bread in the Eucharist, we make the sacrifice of Jesus present, here and now. As Paul says, For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. 

This is a crucial point. Our faith is not nostalgia. Jesus died once, but the self-giving love of God revealed in that death is an ongoing reality, just as real and present now as it was 2,000 years ago. The only reason we are here right now, the only reason we’re alive, is that God continually pours out life, love, and mercy upon us. I can’t emphasize this enough. If we want to know what God is like, this is what God is like: God is the one who breaks his body and feeds us with it; God is the one kneeling on the floor and washing our feet; God is the one dying on the cross and forgiving those killing him. Every time we celebrate the Holy Eucharist, we remember — anamnesis — that this is who God is and what God does, just not back then, but now and always.

Liturgy, what we are doing right now, is one important way to connect with that truth. But in the Gospel tonight Jesus reminds us that we should also connect with it by following him and being like God, giving ourselves away in love to others. The particular way Jesus demonstrates this in John’s Gospel is by washing his disciples’ feet and telling them to do the same. But again, our goal is not to dwell in the past and literally imitate the ancient Middle Eastern practice of washing feet, but to find ways to live like that in the present. For Jesus says, For I have set an example, that you should do as I have done to you — his own beautiful variation on the Golden Rule. 

If tonight’s worship does its job, we won’t see, hear, taste, and smell what happened at the Last Supper. But we will remember what Jesus did and what God is truly like, and we will be inspired and empowered to imitate Jesus and connect with God by giving ourselves away in love. I think about this a lot, or at least I try to. When I devote time and energy to listen to someone, I am following Christ. When I go out of my way to help someone, I am following Christ. When I give myself away in preaching or teaching, I am following Christ. All of us, in our various vocations and circumstances, can follow Jesus and give ourselves away in love. Think of how you already do that. Think of how you want to do that. Just think about it at all. We can easily forget about it and get distracted by all sorts of things, but deep down we always know the truth. Tonight, we recollect that truth. The God revealed by Jesus Christ is a God of self-giving love. We are fed by that love and washed in that love every single moment. Our happiness lies in experiencing and sharing that love. Remember that. 

Telling the story. Palm Sunday 2022. The Rev. David M. Stoddart

Palm Sunday

When the great Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov saw misfortune threatening the Jews it was his custom to go into a certain part of the forest to meditate. There he would light a fire, say a special prayer, and the miracle would be accomplished and the misfortune averted. Later, when his disciple, the celebrated Magid of Mezritch, had occasion, for the same reason, to intercede with heaven, he would go to the same place in the forest and say: "Master of the Universe, listen! I do not know how to light the fire, but I am still able to say the prayer." And again the miracle would be accomplished. Still later, Rabbi Moshe-Leib of Sasov, in order to save his people once more, would go into the forest and say: "I do not know how to light the fire, I do not know the prayer, but I know the place and this must be sufficient." It was sufficient and the miracle was accomplished. Then it fell to Rabbi Israel of Rizhyn to overcome misfortune. Sitting in his armchair, his head in his hands, he spoke to God: "I am unable to light the fire and I do not know the prayer; I cannot even find the place in the forest. All I can do is to tell the story, and this must be sufficient.” And it was sufficient. God made man because he loves stories.

So begins Elie Wiesel’s novel, The Gates of the Forest. Sometimes all we can do is tell the story. We are, after all, storytelling creatures. It is our human way of finding and affirming meaning. In the midst of happenstance and disaster, when events often unfold in chaotic ways and we seemingly have no control, we tell stories: from fables to epics, we create narratives that move from a beginning towards a purposeful end. Individuals tell stories about themselves; families pass on stories from one generation to the next; nations rally around stories. We naturally prefer happy tales, but some of the most powerful are steeped in tragedy. Eli Wiesel survived Auschwitz and Buchenwald as a child while the rest of his family was murdered, and then told stories to shed light on unspeakable horror and to try to find meaning in a world where such things could happen. I mean, how do you possibly get your head around the Holocaust? Sometimes all we can do is tell the story.

Today and throughout this week, we tell the story. A young man is betrayed, flogged to shreds, and tortured to death for proclaiming the sovereignty of a God of love and preaching the good news that everyone, even the worst sinner, has intimate access to that God. We’ve heard it before, but that doesn’t matter: the story’s power does not lie in its novelty but in the very act of telling it. After all, how can we possibly make sense of these events? We can scrutinize them and analyze them forever, but there is no accounting for such violence, such viciousness. No doctrine, no theology is sufficient here. So we tell the story and hear again that in the very heart of darkness, where terror reigns and an abyss of nothingness swallows everything beautiful and good, God is still God and does what only God can do. Against all odds, in the face of human despair, the story has a happy ending.

And yes, it is Jesus’ story, but it is our story as well. We are the crowds that turn on him, we are the friends who deny him, we are the powers that hurt him. And we are the ones dying next to him, receiving forgiveness. We are the ones entering Paradise with him. And we are even Christ himself, filled with the Holy Spirit, desiring love above all else and willing to give ourselves for the sake of goodness and justice, trusting that somehow, some way, God will make our crooked paths straight and turn our weeping into joy.

And it is crucial that we continue to tell this story in the Year of Our Lord 2022. We tell it as people in our country are still discriminated against because of the color of their skin. We tell it as family members grieve the loss of loved ones killed in mass shootings. We tell it while devastated parents around the world, refugees from violence and oppression, desperately try to find a place where their children can live in safety. We tell it while the bodies of massacred Ukrainians lie decomposing  in mass graves. We tell it in a troubled, churning world because we have to. We have to.

And as we do, these words ring true: God made man because he loves stories – man loves stories and God loves stories. And just as God moves through the story of Jesus to bring life and joy out of death and despair, so God is moving through our story as well. This week we are reminded in the most compelling way that God can take the raw material of our lives, no matter how ugly it may appear to us, and create something beautiful out of it. The Creator, the Holy One, is working to do that right now, in my life and yours. For God is the master storyteller, and it’s staggering to think that God can use even our worst failures and our greatest sins to weave a story of redemption that has a happy ending — but that is the message of Holy Week. I wish I could prove it to you, I wish I could lay it all out in a way that makes perfect, logical sense, but I can’t. All we can do is tell the story. It has to be sufficient. And it is. 

God is always about doing a new thing. April 3, 2022. The Rev. Kathleen M. Sturges

Isaiah 43:16-21, John 12:1-8

I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?  So promises God, through the prophet Isaiah, to the people of Israel. A people who have seen some pretty hard times. Their land has been conquered, the Temple in Jerusalem destroyed, and the people themselves taken captive and forced to live in the foreign land. Life has not turned out as expected. And it’s especially painful when they look back to the days when it felt like God was with them in big and miraculous ways by rescuing them from slavery, parting the Red Sea, and providing manna in the wilderness. No matter who you are or what era you live in, it’s always tempting to look back with rose colored glasses and pine for the good old days. But as important as it is to not forget one’s past and particularly the way that God has provided, it is not good to get stuck there.  The prophet Isaiah puts his finger on this problem when he tells them to not get caught up in “former things.” Because when your focus is on “former things” you often can’t see the things that God is doing right now.

 I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? God doesn’t just speak these words to the Israelites long ago. They are words that are true throughout all time. For God is always about doing a new thing. Shining light into the darkness. Seeking to bring more peace, more hope, more justice into the world. Now it springs forth. “Do you not perceive it?,” asks the prophet of us today. Can you see it? Are you open to that possibility?

 I wonder what it would look like to answer “yes” to those questions? To really trust and believe that God is doing a new thing in our lives. Maybe saying “yes” would look somewhat similar to Mary in our gospel reading today. Not long ago that Mary had had a profound experience of Jesus’ saving power in her life. He had raised her brother, Lazarus, from the dead. Lazarus had been dead for four days. Long enough for the reality of his death to really sink in and then Jesus arrives and calls him out of the tomb, bringing him back to life. It was a tremendous miracle, to say the least. The kind of thing that changes one’s life. You just can’t go on as before after something like that.

 And Mary doesn’t. But what’s remarkable is that she doesn’t get stuck in the past, in the miracle she has already received. She doesn’t live as one who solely looks back on the former things of life - clinging to Lazarus and making his restored life the center of hers. Instead, as amazing as that past was, she is open and able to perceive that Jesus is about to do something new.

 Now this dinner party which we hear about in John’s gospel doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Raising Lazarus from the dead has caused quite a stir in the community, as you can imagine. And it has also caused great concern with the powers that be. Jesus is becoming way too popular for their liking. So a meeting is called and a plan is hatched to have Jesus arrested and put to death. But the news leaks so from that time on Jesus and his companions lay low, John tells us that Jesus no longer walks openly among the Jews. Until, that is, six days before Jesus’ final Passover. He is heading towards Jerusalem but before he arrives he stops in Bethany to see friends. Martha, naturally, gets busy serving. Lazarus hosts. Still there is tension in the air. Yet, nonetheless Mary sees Jesus and is somehow able to perceive that this is more going on here than meets the eye.

 So she goes to the storeroom and pulls out a jar of pure nard - burial ointment. Perhaps it was the very same nard that she used on her brother’s dead body. Regardless, she brings this nard over to Jesus, bows down, anoints his feet, and then wipes them with her hair. The house is filled with fragrance. It’s a beautiful scent, but it also carries with it the association of death, especially in that family. But by doing what Mary does she offers Jesus a profound openness. Her, “Yes.” She is willing to go with him in whatever he will do next. Even if that next thing is death.

 Mary and Lazarus had experienced the restoration of life. Lazarus was dead, and now he was alive and, of course, that was great. But Jesus wants to do even more. Not just restore one person to mortal life but offer all of us eternal life. Yet in order to do that, first he has to die.

 And Mary was ready. Ready to let death back into her life. Ready to let go of the former things, as wonderful as they may be. She is willing to trust Jesus no matter what. And Mary models for us an amazing willingness to face the fear of change, and even the fear of the death of what we know and love, in order to prepare for the new thing that God is doing. For she believes that even in the darkest of days God is doing something good, something new. That was her truth, then.

 And that is our truth, now. For there is no doubt that God is seeking to do something new in your life today. And not just in your life alone, but in the life of our church, and the life of our world. What is that new thing? Do you perceive it? Don’t let yourself get stuck in the former things, whatever they may be - good or bad. Let that go and be open to the new thing God is ready to do. Like Mary and say “yes” to the working of the Spirit. For the way of God’s spirit is always the way of life.

 I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth. With God’s help, let us not only perceive it, but the fullness of our hearts, our minds, our souls, say, Yes!