Rev. Amy Zalk Larson

Good  Shepherd Lutheran Church    Decorah, Iowa

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Beloved of God, grace to you and peace in the name of Jesus.

This week I got to witness this story happening again. I got to see a woman anoint the body of Christ, as Mary of Bethany did long ago. I was gathered with a part of the body of Christ, members of the Northeastern Iowa Synod of our ELCA. People shared honestly about pain in the 

church today. We named the racism, sexism, homophobia that plague us. We lamented what we have lost during the pandemic, the ways old patterns of being church are dying. God brings life out of death, but it’s hard in this in-between time when the old is dying and the new is not yet emerging. Many expressed the feeling that we can never do enough or be enough in the face of all that is wrong, all that is broken in our world today. Tempers flared. 

And then a young pastor, Pastor Laurel Meester, stood up to speak. As she spoke, hope and love washed over me and so many of us in the room. She said, “I’m thinking of Mary of Bethany. In the face of death, she offered what she had for Jesus. She showed him love. Others judged her; Judas critiqued her – she’s not doing enough for the poor. Yet, Jesus received her offering and honored What she did helped him offer his life for the world.”

And you, Pastor Laurel, said to us, “You can offer what you have. You can show love. You can give and trust that Jesus will receive what you bring without judgment and critique, that Jesus will use what you offer for God’s work in the world. As she spoke, the body of Christ gathered there was anointed, anointed with love, with hope. I could take a deep breath again. I could release the butterflies that had been crashing into each other in my stomach. In the face of pain, this young pastor poured out such love for the body of Christ.

The story of a woman anointing Jesus is so important. It is told by each of the Gospel writers. 

Each tells it a little differently. John says it was Mary who anointed Jesus’s feet. The other three say an unnamed woman anointed his head but affirm the woman’s action even more robustly. In those Gospel accounts, Jesus proclaims, “She has shown great love, she has done a great service, she has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for its burial.” In Matthew and Mark Jesus says, “Truly I tell you, wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.”

This story is central to the account of Jesus’ death and resurrection, yet it is often not told the way Jesus said it should be. Yet this week I witnessed again how much we need to remember and relive this story. The body of Christ needs to be anointed again and again with the love displayed by this woman. We need the hope her story offers. We need to follow her example.

There is so much pain, so much death, so much despair in so many spaces today. The old is dying and the new is not yet emerging. Can we do enough, be enough? How then shall we live? Offer love. Do what you can. Jesus will receive it, Jesus will bless it, Jesus will use it in the work of bringing new life.

This week I heard about a twelve year old (in our congregation) who is doing what he can, offering his love in the face of all the pain of the Ukrainians. When this boy heard about Russia’s invasion, he took out his beloved Duplo building blocks and made Ukrainian flags out of the yellow and blue blocks. He then committed that he won’t break those flags apart until the war ends. This boy uses his Duplo blocks regularly. He pays close attention to detail and builds accurate, masterful creations. Yellow and blue usually figure prominently in his realistic projects. But in this act of love, he is committing to remember and honor the people of Ukraine each day. Learning of this offering, this act of love, has helped me to commit to pray and give for Ukraine for the long haul.

If you look outside our sanctuary today you will see offerings of toothbrushes and washcloths given to make Personal Care Kits for Lutheran World Relief. Right now, care kits collected last Lent are helping to anoint Christ’s body in Ukraine, Poland, Hungary and in refugee camps around the world.

And there are so many ways we anoint the body of Christ closer to home with prayer shawls and service on committees and musical offerings and ushering and meals brought and the cards you send to say thank you for being the cantor or I am praying for you. I remember after my husband Matt’s car accident all the care and love. One of the most memorable offerings was someone who sent boxes of candy and microwave popcorn and the encouragement to have a family movie night. “Do something fun, laugh,” the card said, “that’s important for healing, too.”

Offer love. Do what you can. Jesus will receive it, Jesus will bless it, Jesus will use it in the work of bringing new life. Here today, Jesus pours out love upon your beloved body, upon you who are an essential part of the body of Christ.

Here, words of love and promise wash over you. Songs of hope bathe you in life. Bread and wine, the body of Christ, are given for you. Extravagant, abundant, fragrant love is showered upon you.

Because of this love you are enough, you have enough to do what you can and give what you have.

Let’s take a moment for silent prayer.

Rev. Amy Zalk Larson

Good  Shepherd Lutheran Church    Decorah, Iowa

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Beloved of God, grace to you and peace in the name of Jesus.

Is the anger helping? That’s what I want to ask the older brother in this story. I’m asking that of myself as I rage about the news of the world. I’m wondering that as we see our country exploding with righteous indignation. Is the anger helping?

I understand the anger of the elder brother. It’s about so much more than the goat. I think he sees the injustice of it all so clearly. I can hear him saying, This is wrong. Are you just going to let him treat you that way, dad? Your son took half of what our family had to live on, half of what will keep you safe in your old age, and he squandered it. Now he’s back and you’re going to waste more re- sources on celebrating him? And, by the way, you’re now spending my share of the inheritance on him, without my consent. You’re turning a blind eye to all the problems, sweeping it all under the rug. I’m not going to dignify this charade with my presence.

I can hear the elder brother’s protests resound still today. They have wasted precious resources. There has been irreparable harm. They are squandering the legacy of this country. This action will leave us morally bankrupt. We must have justice and accountability. There needs to be a reckoning.

We put our feet down, dig in our heels, and refuse to engage with things that are wrong. I get it. I do it. But I wonder, is the anger helping?

I wonder, too, what pain lies beneath the anger. Is the elder brother haunted by a vacant chair at the table, by an absent look on his father’s face? Does he ache for his father to stop peering out the window long enough to turn and really see him? The loneliness must be so heavy, and the worry. Does he lie awake at night agonizing about what will become of my family? I wonder how long he’s been seething, how long the bitterness has been festering. I wonder if he’s ever shared any of this with his father, if he’s ever said, “I’m hurt, I’m tired. I’ve stayed home and still I feel so lost. I want to be seen and celebrated.” What would have helped the elder brother with all his pain?

What pain lies beneath our anger? Maybe rather than asking, “Is the anger helping,” maybe I should ask, “What will help? What will I do with this anger? Will I allow it to fester, or bring it to God in prayer? When I see rage in myself and others, can I explore the pain below the anger? How can I tend the pain?”

Would some joy help? Joy seems essential to this father. It seems to be how he wants to heal both the sons – by inviting them each into the feast. When the elder brother stands outside the party, totally committed to justice and totally alone, the father sees him. The father goes out to welcome him into the celebration. The father receives all his pent up rage and responds with love, saying, “All that I have is yours” and “We have to celebrate and rejoice. Come and eat.”

I’m so struck by that line, “We have to celebrate and rejoice.” Is this father, is God saying we need joy as a balm for pain, joy as an antidote to anger? Can laughter be a teacher? Can celebration heal deep wounds? Is this father, is God saying mercy and kindness are as important as justice? Are there some hurts that can only be tended with love, some pain that is healed only at a feast?

What will we do with anger within and around us, dear church? How will we care for those haunt- ed by empty chairs, those who feel unseen, unwelcome, unappreciated? How will we live in such an unjust world? When we stand outside, appalled at it all, God sees us. God comes to us. God receives all our rage, all our pain. God welcomes us into the feast.

We are tended. We taste joy. We experience mercy.

Such loving care helps us to remain curious about the pain beneath the anger.

Such welcome allows us to respond to others with mercy and kindness.

Is the anger helping?

What will we do with the anger?

God comes to draw us into a healing joy.

Rev. Amy Zalk Larson – Good  Shepherd Lutheran Church    Decorah, Iowa

Click here to read scripture passages for the day.

Beloved of God, grace to you and peace in the name of Jesus.

One of my favorite authors is the Irish poet and theologian Pádraig Ó Tuama. He was the leader of the Corrymeela Community, a peace and reconciliation organization in Northern Ireland. These days he’s part of the On Being Project and he offers the beautiful Poetry Unbound podcast. I love hearing him read and reflect upon poems, mostly because he’s so wise, but also because he has this gorgeous Irish accent. I would be moved if he read the tax code.

One thing I’ve learned from Ó Tuama is the Buddhist concept of “mu’” or un-asking. If someone asks a question that’s too small, flat, or confining, Ó Tuama teaches you can answer with this word “mu”. Mu means, “Un-ask the question, because there’s a better question to be asked.” A wiser question, a deeper question, a truer question, a question that expands possibility and resists fear. Ó Tuama’s teaching, as well as a reflection by author Debie Thomas, have given me a new perspective on our gospel reading today. I think Jesus is saying “mu”, ask a better question.

People come to Jesus asking why. Why were those Galileans slaughtered by Pilate? They were making sacrifices to God! How could that happen? Why did that tower collapse, crushing eighteen people? Why did these terrible things take place?

“Why” is a question we’ve been asking a lot over the past two years, and over the past three weeks as Ukraine suffers. But, it’s a question that’s always close to the surface:

Why do bad things happen to good people?

Why is there so much pain in the world?  

Why does a good God allow suffering?

It’s so human to want answers to these questions. For centuries, people have been searching for a Theory of Everything to make sense of why bad stuff happens. We often hope that faith, that Jesus will provide us with explanations. Yet Jesus rarely gives answers. Instead, he invites us to ask better questions.

In our reading today, the people who ask Jesus why, have a theory in mind. They’re pretty sure that those people died because they were sinners, people get what they deserve, bad things happen to bad people. We may use different language, but we, too, have all sorts of theories, all manner of platitudes: They must have bad karma, everything happens for a reason, what goes around comes around, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, this is all part of God’s plan. The problem is, every answer we offer holds us apart from people who are suffering. We theorize and analyze, debate and pontificate, and get to stay at a safe distance from actual pain. Trying to explain it all can keep us from acknowledging that we are all broken, we all suffer, and, as Kate Bowler says, there is no cure for being human.

I think that’s why Jesus calls his first listeners, and us, to repent before it’s too late. I think, in part, he’s saying un-ask any question that keeps you at a sanitized distance from the pain of the world. 

Debie Thomas has helped me to imagine how Jesus responds to our questions with the word “Mu”. She writes, “‘Mu,’ Jesus says to us when we batter God with “why” instead of offering God our hands and feet, our hearts and souls. “Mu”, he insists when we wax eloquent about other people’s suffering, but do nothing to alleviate it. “Mu”. You’re asking the wrong questions. You’re mired in irrelevance. You’re losing your life in your effort to save it. Start over again. Ask a better question. Go deeper, be braver, draw closer. Repent. Which means, change your mind. Turn around. Head in a different direction.”

Then, to help us to repent and ask better questions, Jesus tells a story. This is what Jesus so often does in response to our questions. Rather than giving easy answers, he offers images that open possibilities that have the potential to transform us. Consider again the story he tells, and notice the questions emerge for you. A landlord has planted a fig tree in a vineyard. One day, he goes out looking for fruit on the tree. When he finds none, he becomes enraged. “It’s wasting the soil. Cut it down.” But the gardener pleads for more time. “Let the tree alone. I’ll dig around in it and put manure on it. Give it time.” 

This week, I’ve been wondering, how am I like the landowner? How often do I look at people and situations and pronounce judgments – “There’s nothing worth saving here, no life worth tending, cut it down!” How often do I stand apart refusing to get my hands dirty, unwilling to do what is needed to nurture life? When I look at the world do I see waste and loss and scarcity, or do I see possibility?

I wonder, how am I like the fig tree? In what ways am I unable or unwilling to offer nourishment? 

Where do I feel helpless or hopeless, invisible, dismissed? What would it take to bring me to new life? What kind of tending do I need? Am I willing to receive that? How am I complacent, assuming I have plenty of time to repent and become fruitful?

How am I like the gardener? Where am I willing to get into the mud and muck to tend life? Am I willing to pour hope into a project I can’t control? Will I give time, effort, love, and hope for this tree — this relationship, this cause, this tragedy, this injustice —  with no guarantee of a fruitful outcome?

As I reflect on these questions, I’m also pondering Debie Thomas’s words. “Every time I ask why, Jesus says “mu.” He says “mu” because “why” is just plain not a life-giving question. Why hasn’t the fig tree produced fruit yet? Um, here’s the manure, and here’s a spade — get to work. Why do terrible, painful, completely unfair things happen in this world? Um, go weep with someone who’s weeping. Go fight for the justice you long to see. Go confront evil where it needs confronting. Go learn the art of patient, hope-filled tending. Go cultivate beautiful things. Go look your own sin in the eye and repent of it while you can. In short: Imagine a deeper story. Ask a better question. Live a better answer. Time is running short. The season to bear fruit has come. Repent. Do it now.”  

We can do this, beloved of God, because we have a gardener who has committed to tending us always and forever. God will not give up on us. From the beginning in that first garden, God has been in the muck and mud with us, forming us, and breathing life into us. God has not remained at a safe distance from our brokenness and pain. God has come in Jesus to enter all the manure of this life.

Now from our places of pain and fruitlessness, Jesus brings new life. Jesus pours the Holy Spirit into our hearts so that we might know and bear the fruit of the Spirit. With such tender love, we can repent, we can ask better questions, we can tend others, we can receive care, we can bear fruit.

Let’s take a moment for silent prayer.

Rev. Amy Zalk Larson – Good  Shepherd Lutheran Church    Decorah, Iowa

Click here to read scripture passages for the day.

Beloved of God, grace to you and peace in the name of Jesus.

Our Psalm for today has gotten me thinking about fear. The Psalmist sounds so confident – God’s got me, why should I fear? Umm, I could give you a few answers: Putin and global warming, long Covid and cancer, violence around us and within our own hearts. Also, I just heard about para- chute spiders that can fly on their own webs? I did not want to know about them. 

There is plenty to fear. 

How can we live with courage and strength in such a challenging time? Maybe we should try to be more like Jesus in our Gospel reading today. The Pharisees come to him and say: You better leave town, Herod’s out to get you. Jesus replies, oh yeah, well I’m too busy to be afraid. I’ve got work to do. I’ve got to cast out demons, perform cures, and be on my way. I’ve got to face some angry and violent people in Jerusalem. Herod has already killed Jesus’ cousin John, but Jesus says, you tell that fox Herod that fear isn’t going to get in my way. Jesus has guts. He’s got moxie. I want to be more like that. I wish we could all be more like that in the face of the Herods and dangers in our lives.

But I don’t think our hope lies in just trying to be like Jesus here. We’re not Jesus. And honestly, hearing that Jesus was fearless doesn’t help me to not be afraid. We need more than a great ex- ample, more than inspiration. So maybe we just need more trust that God will protect us. God’s got us, no need to fear. And yet the image Jesus gives us for God today is also not as reassuring as I’d like. 

Jesus describes himself as a mother hen, God as a mother hen who wants to gather us, her chicks, under her wings.  When foxes like Herod stalk, when the violence within us threatens to tear us all apart, God longs to draw us close into her downy breast. This is a beautiful picture but it’s also not an easy answer to the problem of fear. Because, a mother hen can’t actually prevent a fox from killing her chicks. Hens can be incredibly fierce and ferocious when their chicks are in harm’s way.

I wouldn’t want to mess with one. Yet if a fox is determined to eat a chicken, it will find a way. God as Mother Hen doesn’t mean that God is going to keep bad things from happening to us.

As preacher Nadia Bolz-Weber points out,“Nothing actually keeps danger from being dangerous … Faith in God does not bring you safety. The fox still exists. Danger still exists. So where does that leave us?” She asks. “If danger is real, and a hen can’t actually keep their chicks out of danger, then what good is this image of God as Mother Hen if faith in her can’t make us safe?” Maybe, she wonders, “Maybe it’s not safety that keeps us from being afraid. Maybe it’s love.”

Jesus doesn’t promise safety. Instead, Jesus gives us incredibly powerful, vulnerable love.  As au- thor Debie Thomas puts it, “What Jesus the Mother Hen offers is not the absence of danger, but the fullness of his unguarded, open-hearted, wholly vulnerable self in the face of all that threatens and scares us. What he gives is his own body, his own life. Wings spread open, heart exposed, shade and warmth and shelter at the ready. What he promises, at great risk to himself, is the making of his very being into a place of refuge and return for his children – for all of his children, even the ones who want to stone and kill him.”

This love, this place of refuge and return, changes everything for us, even as foxes still lurk. Our Mother Hen God doesn’t keep foxes from being dangerous, our Mother Hen God keeps the foxes from determining how we experience life. Because of this incredible love, the foxes and dangers do not get to determine the contours of our hearts, nor the content of our minds. Because of this love, we can love. And, as Nadia Bolz-Weber puts it , “Maybe the opposite of fear isn’t bravery. May- be the opposite of fear is love. Paul tells us that perfect love casts out fear. So, in the response to our own Herods, in response to the very real dangers of this world we have an invitation as people of faith: which is to respond by loving.” 

Ultimately, I think that’s why Jesus sounds so confident when he says tell Herod I’m too busy to be afraid. I think it is love more than guts or moxie that helps him to keep showing compassion to keep on keeping on. Jesus knows that he is held in God always and forever, no matter what happens. When threats come, he can continue to love because he is loved always and forever.

Amid all the threats and dangers of our lives, we, too, are defined by something other than fear.

We are defined by the love of our Mother Hen God. And nothing can stop God from loving us.

Nothing: not our own resistance, not the violence within or around us, not Herods or dangers or even death, nothing can stop God from loving us. As the apostle Paul puts it, “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword.  No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

This love is our refuge and strength.

From this refuge, we can live with love.

Rev. Amy Zalk Larson Good  Shepherd Lutheran Church    Decorah, Iowa

Beloved of God, grace to you and peace in the name of Jesus.

No Cure for Being Human, And Other Truths I Need to Hear. That’s the title of a new book by Dr. Kate Bowler, a professor at Duke Divinity School. Kate is living with stage 4 cancer, and has such important wisdom about what it means to be human. She notes that we’re bombarded with messages about how to live our best life now, how to escape all our limits and frailties:

This diet will change your life!

Here’s the new science of eliminating distraction. 

Check out: 

this bucket list with glossy photos, 

this calendar to increase efficiency, 

this writing journal with visionary wisdom from gurus.

Follow these spiritual practices and you’ll know perfect peace.

There are all sorts of guides for a meaningful life – how to live one, how to end one. Yet no matter how prayerful or purposeful we are, our lives don’t unfold the way we imagine. We get sick. War erupts. People die before we’re ready to live without them. Relationships are hard. Systemic evil persists. Plans fall apart. This doesn’t mean we’re doing life wrong. It means we’re human – frail and complicated, finite, vulnerable. There’s no cure for that, no way around it.

In the wilderness, Jesus is tempted to escape all this, tempted to use power to break free of human limits. He’s told: You don’t ever have to be hungry; you can control everything; you can be immune to all suffering. If you love God enough, then God will always protect you. Jesus is tempted to believe that things should always work out for him. He should be satisfied, powerful, protected.

These are the lies Jesus hears in the wilderness. They are the lies we hear again and again as well.

If you live right, you won’t be hungry and you’ll also be fit. If things go wrong in your life with the issues that matter to you, you must not be using your power well or giving it your all, you must not be trusting God enough. None of that is true. Sometimes things are hard. Sometimes we’re in the wilderness. That doesn’t mean we’re doing it wrong. It doesn’t mean God has abandoned us.

Jesus has to lean hard into those truths in the desert. Right before his time of temptation, Jesus is baptized. The heavens open and God declares, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.“ Yet when that word Beloved is still ringing in his ears, Jesus finds himself in the desert with nothing to eat for forty days. He is tempted and tested. He is famished. Is he still God’s beloved son? Yes. He can be beloved and famished, valued and vulnerable at the same time. 

In the wilderness, Jesus has to claim that he, God’s son, can be fully human. As one commentator points out, “In some ways, Jesus’s struggle brings the ancient story of human temptation full cir- cle. Adam and Eve were asked, ‘Can you be like God?’ ‘Will you dare to know what God knows?’”  

In the wilderness, Jesus hears a clever inversion of those questions: “Can you be fully human? 

Can you exercise restraint, abdicate power, accept danger? Can you bear what it means to be mortal?” Yes.

At every instance when Jesus can reach for the magical, the glorious, and the safe, he remains grounded in his humanity. Jesus, beloved Son of God, chooses to endure everything that comes with being human. Jesus doesn’t try to escape it or avoid it, but faces it all in the wilderness, on the cross. By entering it all, as fully human and fully God, Jesus helps us to know that nothing can separate us from the presence of God. 

There is nowhere that God will not go, nothing that God will not do to be with us and for us. God is always present for us, always working new life even in the most barren places. Jesus now ac- companies us in all things: all the wilderness, all the hunger, all boredom, disappointment, fatigue, fear, pain.

Jesus’ presence helps us to bear it all, helps us to trust that we too are beloved even when we are famished, valued even as we are always vulnerable.

Jesus’ presence helps us to endure the wilderness and to stay in the wilderness with others, not trying to escape or avoid the pain of life.

There is no cure for being human. Yet because God became human, we can live with hope and courage in all that life brings.

You are beloved of God.

You are not alone.