Crazy Love (Lent 4C)

 

Crazy Love
Lent 4C
30 March 2025 11:00 a.m. Sung Eucharist

The Mission Church of the Holy Spirit, Sutherlin Oregon

The Rev. Fr. Anthony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.

Readings: Joshua 5:9-12; Psalm 32; 2 Corinthians 5:16-21; Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

 

God, take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

 

In Luke chapter 15, Jesus gives three parables describing God.  The first sees God as a shepherd with 100 sheep.  When one gets lost, he leaves the 99 to fend for themselves, and seeks out the lost one.  He then brings it back on his shoulders, rejoicing, and is so excited that he throws a party (Luke 15:1-7).  Clearly the shepherd is a little wacky—he risks all his sheep and probably spends way more than he can afford on the party.

 

The second parable compares God to a slightly eccentric woman who has 10 silver coins.  When she loses one, she lights the lamp, sweeps the house, and, when she finds it, throws a party to celebrate with her friends (Luke 15: 8-10).  The party probably costs more than the coin’s value.

The third parable told is today’s gospel, often called “The Prodigal Son.”   If you listen to it carefully, though, you soon realize that it should probably be called “the Parable of the Loving Father with Two Lost Sons” or the “Parable of the Dysfunctional Family.”  It too is about a slightly crazy person, a father who ignores the conventions of good parenting in his society and who throws a party in his joy at the return of a wayward son.  In this parable, the coin and the sheep in the previous parables talk back in the persons of the eccentric father’s two sons. 

The family is clearly dysfunctional (as most families seem to be in some way, once you get to know them).   A younger son is impatient for his father to die off, and demands his share of his inheritance in cash, now.  The father is not a good father by the expectations of Jesus’ society:  he does not stand up to defend his own position, his own dignity, and does not defend the integrity of the family nest egg or put up anything even approaching an argument to dissuade the son.  He simply caves and gives the son what he wants.  The son goes off among hated and despised gentiles, and wastes all the money in pleasure seeking and immorality.  When the money runs out, as it always does, he is reduced to feeding the unclean pigs the gentiles raise for food and hits bottom when he realizes that the pigs are eating better than he is, and that slaves in his father house are better off than he is.  He resolves to go back and ask to be hired as a servant in his father’s house, knowing that there is no warrant at for him to be restored to anything close to his former status after the harm he has done his family.  But the father, again, does not meet even the minimum standards of decency and honor then expected of parents.  Not worrying about dignity, honor, or even fairness to the other son, he loses all semblance of acting as a “proper” father should and runs out to meet the boy as soon as he sees him in the distance.  He doesn’t even wait for the reprobate to come to him and beg forgiveness.  He welcomes him back, and throws a big party. 

At this point, the older son’s reaction takes center stage. He is the one most disadvantaged by his brother’s actions, and by his father’s lack of concern for his own duties and the family’s standing in the community.  “I’ve worked night and day my whole life to build our family’s security.  I’ve obeyed and honored you without question.  And now this son of yours [note he can’t even bring himself to call him his brother] comes back and you throw a big party for him.   You never threw a party for me.” 

The old man’s reply is touching.  “But we had to celebrate!  This whole place is yours, I know.  But this is your brother we’re talking about.  He was dead, and now he has come back to life!  We have to throw a party!”   The father seems genuinely bewildered at the cold, self-seeking calculation of the older brother.  He seems to vaguely recognize the validity of the older son’s demands for fairness—he says, “Yeah, yeah, everything I own is written over to you in the will.”  But he seems totally stunned by the older son’s contempt and anger, contempt perhaps even worse than that of the younger son when he ran off.  “He’s your brother.  He was dead, and now is back from the dead.  We have to throw a party.” 

Jesus here is saying that God is more than a little crazy when it comes to loving us.  In God, love trumps demands of dignity, of face, of justice, of purity, or even of fairness.  The calculus of God’s love is not a zero sum, but a geometric expansion.  This parable of a dysfunctional family has the same point as the parable of the bad personnel policy (the parable of the day laborers) found in Matthew (20:1-16).  There, laborers who work throughout a long hard day complain when latecomers hired in the last minutes of the day are paid the same wage as they.  There, the boss says, “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?  Are you going to going to give me sour looks because I am generous?”  

Jesus did teach that there was one situation where God’s love was not so obvious, where, in fact, it looked more to its recipient as anger, not love.   It is when God stands before a heart that because of its lack of gratitude itself has no love, no mercy.  There is the parable of the merciless servant-- whose own debt of millions is forgiven, but then who is unwilling to forgive a $200 debt from a coworker.  The boss is merciless on him when he hears.  In the story of The Pharisee and the Tax Collector Jesus tells the story of a “religious” man who goes to the Temple and prays, “Thank God I’m not like the sinners around me.” Beside him stands a traitor—a collaborator with the occupying Romans, a man who profits from the sufferings of God’s people. The traitor stands far off due to his shame. He won’t even lift up his eyes to God because he fears that God might give him what he deserves. “Have mercy on me, a sinner,” he prays. And Jesus says that the traitor went away right with God while the so-called religious man went away as stone-cold-hearted as he came (Luke 18:10-14).

The difference is the heart itself.  When I was a much younger man, for several years I went around with what I now see what an attitude of resentment.  “Why don’t people give me what I deserve?  Why doesn't God give me what I deserve?” I’d ask.  As long as I was this way, I caused a lot of damage to the people around me.  Finally, when I hit a bottom like the younger son looking at the pig’s food, I changed perspectives entirely.  I let go, and let God.  My attitude now was, “Thank God that God hasn't given me what I deserve!”  I was a lot easier on myself, and a lot easier on others.  Much of the previous damage was healed, and the past redeemed. 

Jesus’ point is that the basic, most fundamental nature of God is to love.  It is a love that is non-contingent.  It does not respond to requirements met, to expectations satisfied, to standards conformed to.  It is a love that actively creates gratitude and love in its recipient, and with this the ability to better meet expectations, standards, and requirements.   And it is not accountable to standards of fairness, justice, honor, or convention.  But it produces in the heart of a person who willingly accepts it such gratitude that that person, too, goes a little crazy and loves wildly. 

In Jesus’ parable picture of God’s love, it is always a little over-the-top, inappropriate, and, the truth be told, embarrassing.   For Jesus, that’s how God is, and that’s how we should be.

 

In our society, we like to praise the value of love, but we tend to deceive ourselves about what unconditional love actually means.  It means ignoring our deep-felt need to establish our own dignity and “save face.”  It means losing our ego.  It means losing our self-seeking, and pursuing mercy to the point of ignoring appeals to fairness on occasion.  It means forgiving the unforgivable, and welcoming not just those seen as outcast by others, but those who we ourselves think should be cast out.  

Being a little crazy in loving doesn’t mean being stupid.  Jesus does tell us to be as clever as snakes but harmless as doves.  But often we tart up our ego and fear and call it street smarts.   But the issue here is our hearts, not the pretty self-deceptions we are able to sell ourselves on. 

God is crazy about us.  God is crazy about you.  Let us be thankful, overwhelmingly so, and respond in kind. 

In the Name of God, Amen.

 

Metamorphosis (Last Sunday before Lent Year C)

 

Metamorphosis
Last Sunday after Epiphany before Lent (year C)
2 March 2025;  9:00 a.m. Sung Mass 
Parish Chuirch of St. Luke, Grants Pass (Oregon)

The Rev. Anthony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.

Exodus 34:29-35; 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2; Luke 9:28-36, [37-43a]; Psalm 99

God, take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

The Hebrew Scripture reading today is about Moses going to the Holy Mountain and returning with the brightness of God still on him.  In today’s Epistle, Paul comments on the Exodus passage and applies it to his pastoral charges in Corinth.  The Gospel is Luke’s version of the transfiguration, when Jesus was transformed before his close disciples’ eyes to something they were later—after the resurrection—to realize was nearer his true glory.  In the Church’s calendar, today is the last Sunday before Lent, called Transfiguration Sunday on account of the Gospel Reading. Usually the transfiguration of Jesus is preached today.  I want to talk to you, however, on the transformation of us.  It is what St. Paul in today's Epistle describes. 

2 Cor 3:12-4:2
Since we have such a hope, we are very bold, not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face so that the Israelites might not gaze at the outcome of what was being brought to an end. But their minds were hardened. For to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away. Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their hearts. But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.  Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God.

Sometimes people use this text in an anti-Semitic and sectarian way—as saying the Law of Moses was bad and Christianity is good. 

 

But this supercessionist reading of 2 Corinthians is wrong.  The letter was written well before Judaism and Christianity had gone their separate ways, at a time when most people who accepted Jesus as Messiah still identified themselves as Jews and made some effort to keep the Law of Moses.  The issue Paul is addressing in this passage is one of halakic interpretation—whether the demands of the Law are the key to making oneself right with God, and if so, how rigorously one applies them.  Paul argues as a Jew among other Jews.  He argues not just a liberal halakic view—one that says that the demands of the Law are not all that important—but a radical one.  He says that the demands of Law are wholly relativized and made secondary to what God accomplished in Jesus.  He bases his argument on the hope that the Christ event gives those who trust Jesus. 

Again, writing as a rabbi he uses a very Jewish tool of scriptural interpretation--the Midrashic technique of linking scriptural texts and taking specific details of the text as points of departure for imaginative and interpretive development.  The evocative image of the glory of God resting on Moses—a symbol in the Exodus story of Moses’ authority—is Paul’s point of departure. (Just a note-- the Hebrew word for “to shine” here has the same root letters as the word for an animal’s horns--that’s why Latin translation says that Moses’s head sprouted horns--clearly something to cause fear!  But as much as that explains medieval and renaissance portrayals of the scene, it doesn’t reflect the orignal story at all.). In the Exodus story, the light emanating from Moses’ head as he descends from Sinai frightens people.  Moses covers his head to calm their fears and the brightness fades enough so that Moses can uncover his head.  Paul applies the story to his own discussion with his contemporaries about how rigorously Jews should follow the Law and whether it should apply to Gentiles converting from paganism. 

Paul says he and other believers in Christ are bolder than Moses because of the hope that Jesus gives them--where Moses in the story covers his face to hide the glory after being in God’s presence, believers in Jesus can look into his face as the revelation of God directly.  Paul contrasts his opponents’ liturgical practices in the Synagogue—covering the head while the Torah is read—with his own group’s liberal practice of worshipping with head uncovered (at least for the men).  He contrasts the import that he sees in the scriptures with what he calls the “veiled understanding” of his opponents when they read the same scriptures. 

He makes his point using rhetorical devices that in many ways are very foreign to us today.  But his point is that faith in Christ makes you free and brings deepened understanding. 

Paul tops his argument by using a very un-Jewish image.  He takes the pagan myth of metamorphosis, or shape changing, to describe how Christ has changed those who believe in him. The myth is not found in the Hebrew scriptures (except maybe when the snake in Eden gets his legs taken away).  It is, however, well known in the paganism in which most of his Gentile converts would have grown up:  Zeus shifting shapes into randy swans and bulls, or handsome young men; the Olympian Gods changing human beings in the myths into constellations, flowers, trees, or even just echoes.

Paul uses the image probably with a bit of ironic humor--he is, after all, talking about how to handle gentiles and pagans who come into the community.  He himself transforms the image by describing a metamorphosis unlike the sudden, in-all-directions shape-shifting of the Olympian myths.  He describes a gradual but marked metamorphosis that goes toward a single point—the same glory or splendor as that surrounding Jesus, to the resurrected Lord's own image.  He writes, “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the splendor of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.” 

What Paul calls the splendor around Jesus is what today’s Gospel reading is about:  This steady, unchanging brightness is what is revealed momentarily to the disciples in the story.  Jesus' transfiguration is not a metamorphosis or transformation.  It is a brief glimpse of the true hidden state of affairs.  It seems that Peter mistakes the revelation of Jesus’ true glory as perhaps a fading transitory shifting of appearances—that is why he demands the building of Succoth—temporary shelters for the Feast of the Tabernacles or Booths symbolizing the transitory nature of human experience—to celebrate the marvel.  But the narrator comments, “he didn’t know what in the world he was saying.”  The cloud and the voice identifying who and what Jesus is correct the misunderstanding. 

The glory of Jesus is indeed the glory of God himself.  It is a standard and a destination for us believers, though it would probably be wrong to say that we should make it our goal.  We can no more by an act of our own will take on the true image and glory of Jesus than we can shift our shapes into those of animals or flowers.   It is His glory itself upon which we gaze that transforms us.

How is it that we can "gaze upon the glory" of our Lord?

It is important to reflect on our Lord and Savior often and regularly.  That is why daily prayer and scripture reading is an essential part of any Christian’s effective spiritual discipline.  Regular Church attendance helps, but in gazing upon the Lord's glory, we must be the Church, not simply attend Church.  It is not just a passive act of admiration.  Following Jesus in doing corporeal acts of mercy, in serving our fellows, in standing with the outcast, the downtrodden, and the sick--these give us an experience of who Jesus is and what he does.  Such experience provides what Thomistic theologians call a connatural knowledge of God-- recognizing and knowing our Lord not because of formulations and verbal claims, but because parts of our heart and mind are shared with the heart and mind of our Lord. 

Given the stresses of day to day life and our all-too-familiar failings, it is easy to lose heart.  It is easy to think that the proverb "you can’t teach an old dog new tricks" is true and believe that people cannot change.  But the miracle and mystery of our faith is this—we can change because God can change us.  It is part of our faith--in the Apostles’ Creed we affirm that we believe in “the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.”    Belief in any of these things makes no sense at all if you don’t believe that God is at work transforming us, and that as a result, we shall be changed. 

The faith that we are being changed from one glory to another in the direction of the image of Jesus is reflected in the classic line from African-American preaching quoted often by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. "Lord, I know I ain't what I outta be.  And I know I ain't what I'm gonna be.  But thank God Almighty, I ain't what I was!"

Such change is sometimes hard, so hard that at times we do not know whether we will be able to bear it.  At other times it is seems easy as taking off a heavy winter coat in the summer heat.   But no matter how hard or easy, it goes on.  And it is not a shape-shifting that turns us into something alien, something that is "not us."  When Paul says this turns us into "the image of Christ" he is not saying it removes our individuality.  What he describes is a transformation into our true selves, the individual people God intended when He created each of us, with all that makes us who we are, but absent the distortions, the twistings, the brokenness that we so often mistake for what makes us who we are. 

One of the greatest foundation stones of personal faith is the experience of seeing transformed brothers and sisters around us, and seeing ourselves over the years as God works with us and changes us.  It doesn’t mean we are perfect, only that God is making progress in finishing his creation in us.  

Charles Wesley in one of his hymns summed it up this way--

Finish then, thy new creation,
Pure and spotless let us be;
Let us see thy great salvation perfectly restored in Thee:
Changed from glory into glory,
'Till in heaven we take our place.
'Till we cast our crowns before thee,
Lost in wonder, love, and praise.  

It is not just in heaven when all of God's creation is done that this happens.  As we are transformed here and now, quickly or slowly, it makes us look around us in amazement of these tokens of God's love and then gaze all the more, "lost in wonder, love, and praise," on the author and pioneer of it all.