The Rev. Dr. Austin Leininger
Sermon of the 3rd Sunday of Lent
4 March 2018
Readings:
Exodus 20:1-17
1 Corinthians 1:18-25
John 2:13-22
Psalm 19
Tomorrow we’ll be celebrating the 10th anniversary of Marie’s adoption day back on March 5th of 2008. As we celebrate a decade of becoming a forever family, she’ll get to choose what we have for our celebration dinner, as well as choosing what dessert will follow, and Jane and I will get to tell her story—how at ten weeks old she came home to us, and yet how we had waited for so many years for her arrival! How we loved her so much that we couldn’t imagine having our family grow any other way, and how lucky we have been for the past eleven years to have gotten to be her parents. The story continues to deepen with each year, each new stage of her development and ours as parents, and each new experience with her that keeps us on the edge of our seats for what is to come next.
We’ve talked a lot over the past few weeks about what it’s like to be God’s children, but we also get some perspective over these weeks on what it’s like for God to be our parent, our provider, our protector, who loves us without condition, without expectation, no matter what, and who wants so desperately to be in relationship with us that God will do pretty much anything just to spend time with us.
Today we hear of the ten commandments, which is the next new stage in the development between God and God’s children, Israel. It’s been several generations since Abraham and Sarah, and God has just delivered the whole people of Israel from slavery under Egypt, brought them through the Red Sea, and now seeks to empower them with ways to live that will call them out as God’s children, again, as an identity that both teaches them how to love each other as God loves them, as well as takes God another step deeper into relationship with us.
And, of course, this isn’t the end of the deepening of that relationship. God will be with Israel as their King, then through God’s anointed kings when Israel wants to be like everyone else, and through all of it, God’s prophets will continue to carry God’s word to the world.
In Jesus, as we celebrated throughout the season of Epiphany, God was again bringing God’s word to life in the world, this time coming to walk with us as one of us, and to bring us face to face with God’s love in such a personal and amazing way that it was like the ultimate deepening of our relationship together.
The brief part of Christ’s story that we hear today may not seem on the surface to be a moment of God’s unconditional love, but when we place it in the broader story, we see a different picture. Last week, when Peter insisted that Jesus not talk about being crucified as a criminal, Jesus did a similar thing for Peter that he does for those in the temple this week. He loved Peter enough to confront him, correct him, and teach him the courage to face what lay ahead without turning away from it or denying it. Just before this happened, he had praised Peter for his faith, and just after confronting and correcting him, he still invited Peter as one of only three people to join him on the mountaintop of the Transfiguration.
So too, today, Jesus is correcting the religious authorities. Although everyone in the story is Jewish, including Jesus, John’s gospel’s reference to “the Jews” is specifically referring to the Pharisees and other religious authorities who frequently challenged Jesus for not being traditional enough. Like with Peter, Jesus stands up to them, corrects them, and teaches them. But later in the story, Jesus will also meet with one of them, Nicodemus, by night. Later still, in the story, after Jesus Crucifixion, Nicodemus will go with Joseph of Aramathea to ask Pontius Pilate for Jesus’ body, and will also bring a hundred pounds of costly myrrh and aloe to the tomb for embalming Jesus’ body—an act of intimate care and love for his teacher and friend.
Walking the wilderness with Christ throughout Lent helps us to draw near to the mystery of the resurrection. God was willing to be born as one of us, grow up learning what it means to be human, teach us what it means to be loved as God loves, and all knowing that our human response to God’s radical, reckless, love, forgiveness, and compassion, would be to nail it to a tree out of our deepest fear—fear of a God whose love challenges us to see every human person as equal and as equally important to God; fear of a God who used his power to take care of others; fear of what a world might look like if everyone loved as Christ loved.
And yet, this is exactly what we are called to do. This is the foolishness that Paul talks about in today’s second reading. It is the foolishness that chooses to follow the same path that Jesus set for us—to love in such a way that we too challenge the traditions, rules, and systems that keep people feeling powerless and unloved in our world. Though the world may see this kind of love as foolishness, as Paul teaches us, it is the wisdom of God!
Being a parent to Marie, and her two brothers after her, Jane and I have learned an incredible lesson in a kind of love that seeks passionately for the care, health, wellbeing, and joy of our amazing children—no matter what. It is a love that challenges us to learn and grow at least as much as we also challenge our children to learn and grow.
This year, Marie’s adoption day celebration follows her eleventh birthday, our first year in a new town, and comes in the middle of her last year in elementary school. She continues to amaze us with her sparkling eyes, her brilliant mind, her kindness and compassion, even to her siblings who sometime drive her crazy, and her amazing heart. She has taught us so much about both the wisdom and the foolish playfulness of loving unconditionally!
As we approach the mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection, may we walk the wilderness of Lent as a reminder of the life Christ lived, a life and ministry of the kind of Love that broke every boundary, turned tradition on its head, challenged systems of injustice and inequality at every level from the power of Rome to the common household, and brought all the abundance of heaven to earth, heedless of the consequences. May we follow Christ into this blessed foolishness as we leave this place to bring the wisdom of God’s love with us into the world.
Amen.