The 5th Sunday in Lent Year C

5th Sunday in Lent Year C April 7, 2019 We’ve had some big developments in the Lemburg house these last couple of weeks. We’ve decided to buy a house. It’s here in Isle of Hope (110 Dove Lane), and things seem to be moving quickly forward toward a closing in early May. But what’s crazy about all of this is that we weren’t ready to buy a house. In fact, we didn’t even know if we would ever buy a house again after all the trouble we had selling our last house. But we ran across this house, and I started praying about it. I asked God to give us wisdom and discernment and to be in the process with us, and things have progressed pretty smoothly with the help of a lot of people. So the first thing in the gospel reading that resonates with me this week is the unpredictability of God. Jesus has just raised Lazarus from the dead (just one chapter before this), and because of this, word about Jesus is flying around the countryside; the Pharisees are concerned the Romans are going to crack down on all of them, so they are plotting to kill both Jesus and Lazarus for good measure. Jesus is gathered with Lazarus and his sisters and his closest friends in Bethany, which is near the Mount of Olives just right outside Jerusalem, and they are gathered to have a party. Soon Jesus will enter Jerusalem triumphantly (which we will mark with Palm Sunday next week) and set in motion the events that lead to his death and resurrection. The scene shifts quickly from party to acknowledgement of the dark path Jesus is to follow when, unpredictably, Mary anoints Jesus for burial. This is unusual because all throughout scripture it is men who anoint other men. So this scene is highly improper, and Judas takes issue with this. Which is not surprising because Judas has struggled all along with Jesus’ unpredictability. Judas was actually Jesus’s most zealous disciple, who longed and worked above and beyond all of the disciples for the promised Messiah. He follows Jesus because he believes Jesus to be this Messiah, but Jesus does not act the way Judas expects the Messiah to act. God’s unpredictability through Jesus and his ministry are Judas’s undoing and the source of his betrayal. Which leads us to the second way this gospel resonates with me this week. And that is the invitation to pay attention to my own complaints and the complaints of others as they reveal what is going on deeper in our souls. I’m re-reading a book I read in the first 5-7 years of my ordained ministry, and I’m finding it rich in helping me reflect on the true calling of the priest engaged in parish ministry. The book is called The Pastor as Minor Poet: Texts and Subtexts in the Ministerial Life, and it is written by Presbyterian minister and seminar professor M. Craig Barnes. This week, I was especially struck by a passage from the book where Barnes is talking about what he thinks is really going on when church members come to their pastor with a complaint. He writes, “Complaining is usually a veiled lament about deeper issues of the soul. Since people are unaccustomed to exploring the mystery of their own souls, they will often work out their spiritual anxieties by attempting to rearrange something external…But it doesn’t matter how many changes they make to the environment around them. They will never succeed in finding peace for the angst of the soul until they attend directly to it.”i We can see this at work in this gospel story because we know the struggles that Judas dealt with leading up to his betrayal of Jesus. While on the surface, his complaint is about the extravagant expense of the perfume Mary uses and the ways the money could have been used to help the poor, underneath is Judas’ dissatisfaction with Jesus and the ways his Messiahship has unfolded. But for the rest of us, the motives or the deeper layers behind our complaints are not always so evident. So your invitation this week is two-part. First, pay attention to the ways that God shows up unpredictably in your life and in the world. If you cannot think of ways God has been unpredictable, then pray for eyes to behold and a heart to receive. And remember that not only is God often unpredictable, often times God calls us as individuals into unpredictable situations and as a church into unpredictable ministries. Second, pay attention to your complaints and the complaints of others. Ask yourself what might be going on deeper under the surface of the complaint and offer that to God for yourself and for other people you come into contact with. “Thus says the Lord… Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” i. Barnes. M. Craig. The Pastor as Minor Poet: Texts and Subtexts in the Ministerial Life. Kindle location 188.