Your Math Don't Math!

John 4:5-42

Jesus came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.  Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.

   A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.”  (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.)  The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.)  Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”  The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water?  Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?”  Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again,  but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”  The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”

   Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.”  The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband,’  for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!”  The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet.  Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.”  Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.  You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.  But the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him.  God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”  The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.”  Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”

   Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?”  Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people,  “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?”  They left the city and were on their way to him.

   Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.”  But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.”  So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?”  Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. 35 Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting.  The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together.  For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’  I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”

   

Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.”  So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days.  And many more believed because of his word.  They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”

That Samaritan woman can not be at that well with Jesus.  The math just doesn’t math.  She’s a woman… A Samaritan… She’d had a series of husbands.  The first century social/cultural math calculation makes that scenario impossible!  And yet, there he is, Jesus, just hanging out like he uses a different sort of math altogether!  We’ll come back to that… 

The first century social/cultural math says Jesus should have brought anger, offense, and revulsion to his meeting with this woman at the well.  But what did he bring?  Thirst.  He was thirsty.    

In Jesus’ mind there was no reason to make this situation into some impossible calculus problem!  There was no reason to get differential equations or integrals involved!  He was thirsty.  This woman had a bucket.  They were at a well.  

Thirst + bucket + well = hydration.  Easy.

Trying to solve that problem with the social/cultural math of the day made it into a hopeless problem… an impossible cause.  But when Jesus brought his math to the very same problem… it became no big deal.  It was… easy… a miracle!   

It’s crazy!  Isn’t it?  Those ridiculous ancients!  Am I right?  People who insisted on using their ridiculous, nonsensical, ignorant, and idiotic social/cultural math to complicate things and demonize people!  We modern people would NEVER do that, would we?  Would we?  Yeah we would.  And we do!  All the time!  Here’s just one example: homelessness.

The prevailing social/cultural math calculates that homelessness is a hopeless problem… an impossible cause!  That’s mostly because homeless people have so many other issues that need to be addressed before you can even think about finding them a home.  Really complicated stuff, like mental illness, addiction, joblessness, and the list goes on!  That math just don’t math!  Except… here’s the math they use in Finland.  

Homeless Person - Homeless = Person.  

Finnish people who experience homelessness have all the same issues… mental illness, addiction, health issues, employment difficulties… but the first thing they get there is an apartment.  Their own, permanent apartment.  Of ALL their problems, you know what problem they DON’T have after they get an apartment?  Homelessness.  After they get an apartment…they… don’t… have… homelessness.  Then, from that one, safe, stable location… a place they can count on and call home, they have a base to begin working on all the rest.  

When people try to solve that problem with the social/cultural math of the day it becomes a hopeless problem… an impossible cause, but when Finnish math (which is also Jesus math) gets applied to the very same problem… what do you get… a human being with dignity… A person with a home… a miracle!  

But what about a REALLY hard problem?  What about figuring out where people are allowed to pee?  Kansas recently passed a law that is now expected to cost taxpayers MILLIONS of dollars to implement.  This law, among other things, tries to legislate where people can pee.  Women, men, non-binary, trans, adults, children.  Where can they pee?  Kansas, using the social/cultural math of an unnecessary culture war, has made this into a hopeless problem… an impossible cause.  But creating a place where everyone can pee is actually simple.  Christ Trinity solved this issue decades ago with a very simple equation:  A PNP (thats a person needing to pee) + toilet = Person (brain exploding mime).  

That’s not just theoretical math either!  We’ve been testing it in our “technology incubator” for two and a half decades!  I’m sure you’ve been a test subject.  The technology incubator is located between the sanctuary and the Parish hall and it features a toilet, floor to ceiling walls, and a lockable door.  It has successfully processed PNP’s who identify as men, women, non-binary, trans, children, and adults without incident for more than two and a half decades!  

I make fun, because if I didn’t make fun, I’d ugly cry about how STUPID and HURTFUL it is to have people use such flagrantly de-humanizing social/cultural math on a non-problem, like “WHERE CAN I PEE”, when that same problem is so easily solved with just a little, very basic, Jesus math!  

 

Each of these examples is an impossible problem or hopeless cause, ONLY because people have chosen to use social/cultural math instead of Jesus math.  This lesson… this parable… is showing us… I think… that there really are no genuinely hopeless problems or impossible causes out there in this world.  All that exists is the fear, pride, and ego that keeps us from using Jesus math and treating the “other” as a beloved children of God.  

But the social/cultural math we continue to insist on using just doesn’t math!  It is overly complicated, ineffective, and hurtful!  It only perpetuates impossible problems and hopeless causes.  It never solves them!  

It really is very much past time for our world to abandon that hurtful kind of social/cultural math and instead embrace a math that scatters the proud… casts down the mighty… lifts up the lowly… fills the hungry with good things and sends the rich away empty.  It is time for our world to pick up on Jesus math and stop perpetuating impossible problems and hopeless causes.  It is time for us to abandon all that takes life from us and instead honor the life we've been given…  and live that life abundantly.  Amen.  

Like A Turtle on a Fence Post

John 3:1-17

Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews.  He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with that person.”  Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”  Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?”  Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.  What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.  Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’  The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”  Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?”  Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?

   “Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen, yet you do not receive our testimony.  If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?  No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.  And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

   “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

  “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

Nicodemus was a Pharisee.  Devout, educated, serious.  Not, a bad guy.  He was the meticulously crafted product of a system designed to raise up faithful, serious, men and equip them to think and talk about God in a particular, tried and true way.  But there in that dark room, Jesus painted for Nicodemus a surrealist picture with his words about “being born from above” and NOTHING Nicodemus had ever been taught… nothing Nicodemus knew… could help him make any sense of it. 

Nicodemus was… as the idiom goes… like a turtle on a fence post.  Like a turtle on a fence post, he didn’t get there by himself.  He doesn’t belong there.  Doesn't know what to do, now that he finds himself there, and you and I… seeing him there... are simply left to wonder… what was it that left ol’ Nicodemus so very, very stuck?  Like a turtle on a fence post?  

Nicodemus had seen that Jesus had a unique connection with the Divine.  It was the sort of connection he himself longed for but could not manage to grasp.  He was stuck.  His body high-centered and his little legs slowly flailing.  What was it that left him so very, very stuck?  CERTAINTY.  Certainty had put him there.  Systematically taught… diligently learned… theologically dogmatic... CERTAINTY.  Nicodemus had faithfully taken in ALL the certainty that the traditional, patriarchal, religious educational system had taught him and honestly, it had served him very well for his entire lifetime…

          Until now. 

Now.  In that room.  In the dark.  He was stuck with only the dimly lit, frustrated face of Jesus chiding him, “Are you the teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?”  Nicodemus had been taught for a lifetime how to wrap God up in a nice, neat, manageable package of certainty.  He had brought that nice, neat, manageable package of certainty with him that night to see Jesus, only to have Jesus unwrap it right before his eyes and show him… God wasn’t there!  As another Southern saying goes, “If you can wrap your mind around it… it ain’t God.”  It was what Nicodemus KNEW FOR CERTAIN that had stranded him on that fence post.

Unlike Nicodemus, our next Lenten saint was not burdened with fence-post-stranding certainty.  Hildegard of Bingen had an extraordinarily brilliant mind.  She was a musician, a composer, a medical doctor and herbalist, the head of two abbeys which she herself founded, a prolific author, and a consultant to bishops and kings.  AND… most importantly for us today… she was a mystic.  What she was NOT, because she was a woman, was formally trained in the certainty of the religious, educational system of the Middle Ages.

Denying her a formal education ended up, however, being a backhanded gift which left her free to use her mystic vision to interpret the words of Jesus as they had been written in John’s mystic Gospel.  Unlike Nicodemus, she didn’t need to un-learn a lifetime of indoctrinated theological certainty.  Unlike Nicodemus, she didn’t have to claw out of deeply ingrained dogmas.  Hildegard was able to read John’s mystical Gospel with a mystic’s eyes, guided, as she described, like “a feather on the breath of God.” 

Without learned certainty getting in her way, Hildegard was 

able to understand from Jesus’ words, what Nicodemus simply could not, that “The mystery of God hugs us, in its all-encompassing arms.”  Without having been taught “the right way” to wrap God up in a nice, neat, theological bundle, Hildegard could see that God sending Jesus into the world was not just some Divine afterthought.  It was not something God did in order to fix a world that had gone unexpectedly wrong and it was not some sort of pass/fail test with eternal consequences.  Without the cement galoshes of learned certainty, she could see that the mystical language in John’s Gospel which talks about Jesus as the “Light that shines in the Darkness”… and the “Word made Flesh” was meant to present Jesus to all of Creation as the culmination of God’s intention from before time began...

  God’s intention to SAVE the world… and not condemn it.

Jesus coming into the world was the way God had always meant to help us understand, as Hildegard said, that “Every creature is a glistening, glittering mirror of divinity, for we are the image of God” and “if we wish to see God we need look no further than our souls and bodies, ourselves and our neighbors.”

Nicodemus struggled with Jesus’ mystical words because he tried to hear them with ears trained in theological, dogmatic certainty.  Throughout the ages, all who have come to those last two, well known verses in today’s Gospel with dogmatic certainty like Nicodemus did, all end up stuck… like a turtle on a fence post.  Placed in that helpless spot they either wander off confused, as Nicodemus did, or they take a wrench and twist those two verses completely backwards into a perverse test of who is "saved" and who is not.  

Reading those two verses not through dogmas or certainties, but with a mystic’s eye, we can see them as they were intended to be seen.  As an assurance of unconditional, Divine love sent to ALL of creation.  The take home from John's mystic Gospel is an invitation for us to let go of our dogmatic certainties and see Scripture, our neighbors, and all of Creation through a mystic's eye.  SEE, as Hildegard did that, “God, Who is Love, is with you, within you, and around you.”  Amen.  

The Devil Left Him

Matthew 4:1-11

Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tested by the devil.  He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterward he was famished.  The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.”  But he answered, “It is written,

 ‘One does not live by bread alone,

  but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ ”

  Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written,

 ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’

  and ‘On their hands they will bear you up,

 so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’ ”

Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’ ”

  Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory, and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” Then Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written,

 ‘Worship the Lord your God,

  and serve only him.’ ”

Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.

“The devil left him.”  

The DEVIL...                     LEFT him.

We focus on Jesus being led by the Spirit into the Wilderness and being tested by the tempter… but we pay very little attention to one… key… fact

The DEVIL…                     LEFT him.

We eagerly explore the profound emptiness in body, mind, and spirit which plagued him… but we forget… 

THE DEVIL LEFT HIM 

The parts of this story about the times of testing and temptation we are happy to spend our time on… but to what part do we give almost no time?  The part where we hear…

THE DEVIL LEFT HIM

The tempter came… Satan came… Evil came… and then… 

THE DEVIL LEFT HIM... and angels came and waited on him.

There’s a Pete Buttigieg clip where he says, “Donald Trump will not be politically active in the United States forever.”  He goes on to say, “Think about that.  That is obviously a matter of fact, and yet it’s kind of a hard thing to believe, right?”  Mayor Pete’s right!  Living in the midst of any sort of evil, it feels all consuming… never ending… and the idea that no evil lasts forever NEVER REALLY OCCURS TO US, in the middle of it... does it?  

That same thing is happening in this story about Jesus.  We focus on how he is weakened, exhausted, and famished… how he is relentlessly tested and tempted by the devil himself… the devil himself, mind you… not just a mumbling, modern, minion…  but the devil himself… but how often do we remember, focus on, or even give a passing glance to the end of this story?  

THE DEVIL LEFT HIM... and angels came and waited on him.

I will not be so crass as to suggest that because of that, the evil in which we find ourselves drowning these days doesn’t matter or can be easily shrugged off, or that it doesn’t warrant our attention, deep concern, and action.  The evil that is holding us under in these extremely dark days is VERY real.  The wilderness into which we have been driven is genuinely dangerous and seeks to empty us all of both hope and life.  The evil which we now face needs to be confronted directly, just as Jesus modeled for us in this Gospel lesson.  AND… AND as we wrestle with the devil in our age’s wilderness, we must NOT forget how the story ends… 

THE DEVIL LEFT HIM  

We must continue to stand up to the evil that is testing us just as Jesus did.  Never sinking to using evil’s tactics, tests, or temptations… but by staying true to, and living more deeply into, WHO and WHOSE we are.  AND... We must also always be about the work of remembering how this PARTICULAR STORY ends...

THE DEVIL LEFT HIM

AND we need to remember not just how THIS story ends either, but we also need to remember how this SEASON ends as well.  It ends with nothing less than the Harrowing of Hell… Jesus breaking down the gates of Hell and pulling ALL of creation out.  All of creation without exception, leaving the gates irreparably broken with hardware scattered round about, the gates unable to ever hold anyone inside ever again.  

We must remind one another that every plague of evil that has ever been… HAS COME TO AN END.  And the evil that we live in now?  That too… WILL COME TO AN END… and it will end with all the stops pulled out to the tune of the soaring Easter hymn which proclaims “The Strife is O’er, The Battle Won!”  

I know… I know… I’m not supposed to talk about Easter during Lent… let alone right here on the very first Sunday of Lent, I know… I know.  But truth be told, I mostly preach to myself and THAT is the Good News I needed to hear TODAY! 

TODAY… when hordes of devils fill the land all threatening to devour us.  

TODAY… when this world’s tyrants rage.  

TODAY… when evil breaks into houses, destroys possessions, rips child and spouse from their families, and wrenches life away from our neighbors in the street… 

TODAY... I needed to be reminded firmly and clearly that eventually… eventually… the devil leaves, and angels come and give us care.

Our wilderness time is real.  The beasts prowling our land are real and looking to do us harm.  The test as to whether we’ll stay salty is real.  Will we continue to add our unique little pinch of salt to the stew that is the fight against injustice?  The temptations are real.  Will we hide our light under a bushel basket so as not to draw attention to ourselves?  As Lutherpalians, our history tells us, with the starkness of Bonhoeffer and Niemöller, THAT is not the way.  Though hordes of devils fill our land from ICE and DHS to the now ironically named Department of Justice… we must continue to stand unmoved, confident of WHO and WHOSE we are… And who are we?

We are beloved children of God! 

Children of the God who fights by our side with weapons of the Spirit.  

Therefore let us not tremble in fear… After all...

WE KNOW... WITHOUT A DOUBT... HOW THIS STORY ENDS.  

THE DEVIL LEAVES US and angels come to give us care.  Amen.