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Unless I See

4/28/2022

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John 20:19-31
 
Let’s state the obvious, even in the midst of the season of Easter:  We live in a wounded world.  The war in Ukraine is dragging on. Climate crisis goes unchecked. Interwoven into these concerns is the fall out of the pandemic – economic problems, inflation, high gas prices, supply chain issues, levels of gun violence that we haven’t seen in years.  40.3 million victims of human trafficking. 26.6 million refugees worldwide. And not least of all, let us not forget 175,000 people who have on average who have died of hunger and hunger related disease this past week.  That doesn’t even touch upon the wounds carried by communities. The wounds passed down by families.  The wounds carried in the bodies and spirits of individuals. Wounds are everywhere. What wounds weigh on your soul?


The wound that ravaged my family is a common one: alcoholism.  It was a wound that destroyed my parents’ marriage, left us briefly homeless and financially unstable.  For years my four older brothers had morning and evening paper routes around their school schedule to help put food on the table.  Alcoholism was a contributing factor in two of my brothers’ deaths. My eldest brother, Sean, died when I was 15 due to an overdose in the midst of a drunken stupor. Another brother, Chris, died a year later, in an automobile accident in which alcohol played a factor.  I am positive that each person here could tell accounts of wounds endured during a lifetime of living.   Is there honestly anyone present that hasn’t face a trial or tribulation that hasn’t left a mark on your soul? Anyone? I didn’t think so.

For this reason, I treasure the passage from John that we have read today.  Because of the trauma of life, the disciples lock themselves up, for fear of the Jewish leaders.  They saw how these leaders brutally treated Jesus and got him sentenced to death.  It is natural for them to think that they were next to be disposed of. These religious leaders were not going to stop at anything.  They were intent on annihilating the Jesus movement once and for all.  They were a wounded group. They felt the pain of Jesus’ death.  They felt the guilt of their lack of bravery in the hours that Jesus needed them.  They were confused at the reports from the other disciples who proclaimed that Jesus had been risen from the dead, the stone was rolled away, the tomb was empty.  Never a shaken up, wounded bunch had been seen.  Yet in this dark hour, Jesus appears, bringing peace. Neither locked doors or locked hearts cannot keep Jesus away. Jesus doesn’t bring reproach. Jesus doesn’t criticize. Jesus doesn’t dwell on their mistakes.  Jesus brings peace.  But Jesus brings another thing.  Jesus, in his resurrected, body, brings his wounds.  Through his wounds, Jesus brings life.

Thomas was not with the other disciples when all of this occurred, so they report to him what has happened using the same language Mary had earlier used, “We have seen the Lord.” But Thomas declares: “I won’t believe it unless I see the nail wounds in his hands, put my fingers into them, and place my hand into the wound in his side.”   Frankly, who among us would react differently? 

We first hear from Thomas, called the Twin, toward the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry at the time that Jesus goes to Bethany to raise Lazarus from the dead.  The religious leaders, react in rage to Jesus’ miracle and redouble their plans to kill Jesus. On that occasion Thomas said to his fellow disciples: “Let us also go, that we may die with him” (Jn 11: 16). His determination to follow Jesus reveals his total readiness to stand by Jesus.
A second comment by Thomas is recorded at the Last Supper. On that occasion, while predicting his own imminent departure, Jesus announced that he was going to prepare a place for his disciples so that they could be where he is found; and he explains to them:  “You know the place where I am going” (Jn 14: 4). It is then that Thomas intervenes, saying: “Lord, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?” (Jn 14: 5).  Jesus responds with his famous declaration: “I am the Way, and the Truth and the Life” (Jn 14: 6).


I don’t know about you, but Thomas comes across as a straight shooter, grasping and assessing the situation accurately. So, today for the third time Thomas speaks, saying, “Unless I see.” He is just stating that he wants to see what the rest of them saw:  the wounds in Jesus’ hands and side.  He is the one who was ready to die with him.  The one wanting to know the way.  He just wants to know the way.  Thomas knows the way to Jesus is through his wounds of the cross. Jesus very much obliges and appears the next time when Thomas is with the community.  See and believe, Thomas, Jesus says. At this point Thomas goes further than any other disciples by confessing, “My Lord and my God.”

Our passage today tells us that we must not be afraid to touch our wounded places for these are precisely the places where Christ is most clearly revealed.  Jesus choses to be found in wounds.  After all, Jesus could have easily chosen a resurrected body free of wounds.  A whole body in its prime.  But Jesus chose instead that his wounds be visible.   The scarred Jesus does not wait until we’re all beautiful and ready for church to meet us. He chooses to come to us in the midst of pain, illness, and injury.  We find him in the wounds of life. He is with the abused, the hurt, the refugee, the grieving, the lost, the struggling.  Unless we see Jesus in the suffering of the world, we will not find him. For that is where Jesus wants us to find him. 

Not in the corridors of power but in the homeless shelter.   Not on the red carpet, all coiffed and buffed, but in the hospital bed, the prison cell.  Not at the Met Gala overflowing with riches and fancy foods, but at the soup kitchen.  Not in some mansion filled with all the wonderful amenities of life, but in your broken heart and mine.  This doesn’t mean that Jesus doesn’t want us to have the good things of life and be happy.  Jesus just knows that the loneliest place, the most isolated place in life is the wounds we fear to reveal, those wounds that hold us bound, keep us locked.

The Jesus who walked on this earth did not see himself as set apart from the world. Rather he willingly entered into the pain by extending his hand to those hurting, by living among us, and then dying. Jesus was fully human and experienced the pain of living in a fallen world. Peter teaches us that Jesus carried in his own body the sins we committed. He did this so we might live in righteousness, having nothing to do with sin. By his wounds we are healed (1Peter 2:24).

Do you know the sign language for Jesus? It is this: put your finger into the middle of the palms of each hand moving back and forth…from first one hand and then to the other. Jesus is known by his wounds.  So where are you feeling wounded today?  Where is fear keeping you locked down?  Where do you need peace?  Let Jesus touch those places.  As you feel Jesus’ touch, allow the healing power of the Risen Lord to fill you. Then in turn touch others. Let our wounds become the conduits of grace to others, signs that no matter what we have gone through, we can heal, we can be healers, because Jesus, Our Wounded Healer, stands in our midst, and because of this, we have life in his name. Amen
 https://seedbed.com/emily-matheny-touchremember-john-2019-31/
https://pcpe.smu.edu/blog/preaching-john-20-19a-31-in-the-midst-of-the-pandemic

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"Foolish Talk"  Easter Sunday

4/20/2022

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Isaiah 65:17-25; Luke 24:1-12

 
Christ is Risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

We have been following the events of Jesus’ last week of life for the past two Sundays.  Just two weeks ago we encountered the powerful tale of how Mary of Bethany signaled the descent into Holy Week by anointing Jesus with a precious, expensive perfume made of pure nard.  It was one of the most beautiful things anyone had done for Jesus and foreshadowed the anointing he was to receive upon his death.

Today, we hear the account on how the faithful women disciples, with spices in hand, make their way to the tomb of Jesus.  The gospels tell us how they fretted and worried how they will get past the stone that was in front of the entrance of the tomb.  My guess is that they hedged their bets that the Roman soldiers placed there to guard the tomb from raiders. No need to worry. They found the tomb open and empty.  Two men, identified as angels in other accounts, and appear like angels, ask the women, why there are seeking the living among the dead? Remember what he said to you back in Galilee?  The women remembered and believed.  The next thing we see is that they report back to the eleven disciples what they witnessed and heard. They disciples respond with one word.  In Greek, it is the word Leiros.

Leiros. The only time the word Leiros appears in the Bible is here, in Luke’s account of the resurrection of Jesus.   At the root of the word is the English word “delirious.” And so, what the men were really saying was that the women were out of their minds, crazy, spouting nonsense.  It is most often translated politely as “Foolish Talk,” an idle tale,” “a silly story,” or “a foolish yarn,” “utter nonsense” or even garbage or trash.  Scholars tell us that the word in question is quite offensive and vulgar, more fitting for a locker room than an Easter Sunday worship service with everyone at their finest.   Now, I’ll admit I’m tempted to actually come out and say the bad word, but then I will have planted it in your head and now you won’t be able to get it out.   So, I’m not going to say it, I’ll leave it to your imagination.  Let’s just say the “G” rated version is “you’re full of baloney!”  I think you got it, right?   This bad word accurately describes the most common worldly response to the good news of Jesus’ resurrection. Jesus raised from the dead?   Leiros!  

That’s exactly what happened that first Easter morning. The women, the first to proclaim the Good News of the resurrection and the male disciples say to them: “Leiros!”  To add weight to the disciples’ off-color remark is the Jewish legal stance that a woman’s testimony was unacceptable, inadmissible in a court of law. It’s all leiros the men declared.

So, the most sacred, most holy, belief which is front and center to our faith, the resurrection of Jesus, is met by the disciples with foul language.  The same disciples who fled from Jesus, who denied him, who hid behind locked doors in fear.  How can we appreciate how far that first Sunday is from where we find ourselves today? Look around and we see and smell beautiful spring flowers. We hear amazing music, shouts of alleluias, people dressed in their finest. Today we do not experience fear, but joy;  and heaven forbid nary a vulger word on our lips.   Jesus risen? We shout alleluia - not Leiros like the first disciples did.

The Easter message challenges us. It defies human logic. It stretches our reason. It questions everything the world would hold acceptable. After 2000 plus years we have tamed the gospel into a complacency that has taken the teeth out of the good news.  The Easter message says, Yes, death is real, but it is not the final word.  In raising Jesus from death, God changes the rules of the game. Death is defeated, life has the final say.

Easter turns everything upside down. Easter comes in the most unlikely of times: war, supply chain problems, economic worries, a pandemic that won’t go away. Easter teaches us is to look for God where we least expect God to be. To anticipate God using people we wouldn’t dream of God associating with. To get used to God surprising and even overturning our expectations.  Scandalous. It upends it all. And that is the cornerstone of our faith – that God’s good news choses the unexpected, the least trustworthy, the most unrespectable of people and situations to reach us.  God reaches us in our weakest, most vulnerable places of our lives, the mess and muck we make, and turns us around in the most unimaginable, incomprehensible shocking ways possible. God finds us in our weakest state and brings the death and brokenness of our reality to resurrected life. God is not put off by the leiros  of our lives and the leiros around us. In Christ God turns us around, to find life where there once was no life. 

      The Apostle Paul reminds us that if the resurrection didn’t occur, if it’s all just a bunch of leiros, then we’re all just a bunch of pathetic people, our preaching is fake news and our faith is a joke (1 Corinthians 15:13-15).  We celebrate today because we declare that the tomb is empty, Jesus is vindicated. Jesus promises us a new life, a life that doesn’t need to be based in just foolish talk, idle tales, silly stories, stupid yarns.  Love is our destiny, hope our gift, joy our heritage peace our legacy.        Today’s story is a down to earth account of real people like us coming to terms with greatest message to ever grace the world.  It encourages us to tear away the pious masks we wear around each other.  To be real people in a broken world.  It is OK to be ourselves. It’s in fact vital that we be our true selves, so our testimony of how has transformed us can truly touch other people’s life and make sense to them.   God finds us as we are, warts and all.  God hears our doubts, the careless, harsh and even nasty words that cross our mouths and accepts us. Jesus died for us, he rose for us in the messiness and contradictions of life.  We are sinners redeemed, not by anything we have done, but solely through the grace of God in Jesus Christ.

This is the greatest news we can ever receive, because the tomb is empty, the stone is rolled away – we find the Risen One right here in our broken human lives that yearn for change, that seek to be better. That hopes to make a difference.  It’s not leiros, people. It’s not foolish talk. It is truth.  Let us proclaim it:  Christ is risen!  Christ is risen. Indeed!  Alleluia!


​amen.https://www.wpc.org/uploads/sermons/pdf/April21Jones2019.pdf
http://www.fellowshipreformed.org/sermons/2018/4/9/the-journey-all-glory-laud-leiros
https://broadwayucc.squarespace.com/sermons/2019/4/22/idle-talk-amp-other-good-news
1Anna Carter Florence, Preaching As Testimony (Westminster John Knox Press, 2007) p. 119.
2The Mishna states, “From women let not evidence be accepted, because of the levity and temerity of their sex.” Thomas G. Long, The Christian Century, April 4, 2001, p. 11.
https://sermonwriter.com/sermons/luke-241-12-an-idle-tale-london/


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The Messiah We Need

4/14/2022

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 Luke 22:14-23; Philippians 2:1-13
Palm Sunday

       Palm Sunday today marks the beginning of Holy Week, the most significant time in the Christian calendar – the days we follow Jesus to the last supper, then to the cross, to the tomb and then wind up at the empty grave next Sunday, on Easter.  I am old enough to recall how Holy Week used to be publicly somber week. I remember stores being closed, and religious programing with movies like “Ben Hur,” “The Greatest Story Ever Told,” and “King of Kings” shown on commercial television.

       Those days are gone. The most we see on TV are ads for Easter candy. So how are we to mark the days of Holy Week?  Will we spend the week distracted, and focused on the cares of the world, or will we choose to orient ourselves to the cross? Will we enter the passion of Jesus or the passions of the world?  What choice will we make?

Holy Week forces us to ask: Who is Jesus for us?  It is estimated that there are over 1000 films, documentaries and shows made on the life of Christ.  From the farcical “Life of Brian,” to “Jesus Christ: Vampire Hunter,” “Jesus Christ, Super Star,” to the over-the-top blood and gore “Passion of the Christ” by Mel Gibson – to the 2020 “Jesus Film.” Each movie has a unique angle to tell us Jesus’ story.  Who was he?  A holy man? A prophet? A charlatan? The actual messiah? More importantly, what difference does he make in our lives?  How will that difference lead us to spend the next five days? Will it be just another mundane week, or will it be the most important week of our lives?

The messiah, in Jewish teaching, is the expected king of the Davidic line who would deliver Israel from foreign bondage and restore the glories of its golden age; which includes:  to build the Third Temple (Ezekiel 27:26-28).  to gather all the Jews back to the Land of Israel (Is. 43:5-6). to usher in an era of world peace, end all hatred, oppression, suffering and disease (Isaiah 2:4); to spread universal knowledge of the God of Israel, and to unite the entire human race as one. (Zech. 14:9).  This is why the expectations of the crowds ran wild when Jesus entered Jerusalem. All these expectations were being projected unto Jesus.  That’s why people spread their cloaks on the ground as a sign of great respect, they waved palms, they shouted “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!’ Peace in Heaven, glory in the highest heaven!”  The crowds, Luke tells us, witness Jesus perform deeds of power. Healings. Miracles. Jesus fit the bill of the foretold Jewish Messiah.  Centuries of waiting was finally over. 

Yet the gospels remind us that Jesus, throughout his life, carved out a different image of messiah.  In his first temptation in the wilderness, Jesus refuses to worship the devil in exchange for power over the earth.   Jesus proclaims to Pilate that his kingdom is not of this world – and that also speaks that the peace he offers us is not of this world.  The teachings of Jesus are clear: the kingdom of heaven is a kingdom of peace, repentance, justice and love of God and neighbor.   Jesus identifies himself as suffering servant, the son of God who accepts the cross and death on behalf of sinful humanity.  What earthy king would do that?  In Luke alone, Jesus plainly predicts three times his impending passion and death (Luke 9:22; 9:43b-44; 18:31-33).  However, people hear what they want to hear. Jesus does not force the truth of his mission on us, even in his death and resurrection. We are free to choose to accept Him or not to accept him. We are given a choice to repent or not to repent, to declare Jesus as our Lord and Savior – or that he’s just another ordinary guy, who was at the wrong place at the wrong time?

In Jesus’ interactions with people, people have a choice on how to act and engage Jesus.  Will they respond with love? Or out of selfish regard?  Remember the rich man who kept all the commandments, no mean feat, but wanted to know the way to eternal life?  Jesus looked on him with love and said, “go sell what you have and give to the poor and then follow me.”  The rich man walked away dejectedly.  Jesus didn’t force him to give up his money; he didn’t call him back and tell him to do something different.  Jesus left him with choice. In the parable of the prodigal son, the elder son refuses to join the feast when his younger brother returns. The Father doesn’t force his older son to enter, doesn’t bribe him.  It’s his choice.  If we look through the gospels, we seem many occasions where Jesus could have smoothed things over or could have insisted on certain conduct. But he didn’t.  Jesus operated on the core belief that love requires that we have free will. Love that is not freely chosen is not love. God loves us too much to take free will away from our lives, even if it means at times we sin, make mistakes, or suffer as a result.  Our free will to choose is that important. 

Jesus, this week, gives us an example of a steadfast free will that stays the course through his passion. We see this in his refusal to walk away. We see this in his refusal to abandon the principles of the Kingdom.  In his commitment to the will of his Father. We see this in his refusal to lash back at those who tortured him, who hated him, who treated him in the most egregious manner possible. That free will won us our salvation, and now we have our free will to make a choice for or against Jesus, the salvation he offers, the guidance he gives, the love he pours out on us.  It is simple as that.  How will we use our free will this week? For ill or for good? With or without Jesus?

       We have been given, not the messiah we want, but the messiah we need.  Throughout this week we have the opportunity to reject out right or accept with humility the truth that Jesus the Messiah dies freely for us. The messiah we need offers us a choice:  will we stand with him or flee? The messiah we need seeks to awaken in us the power of love, to repent and to free our will from the tyranny of selfishness.

Let us now, in this holiest of weeks, freely embrace the messiah we need, the messiah who emptied himself and took on the form of a slave for the forgiveness of our sins, who show us how true love, free will acts. Spend time this week to get to know this messiah.  Pray. Fast. Read the Bible. Come to worship on both Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. Through the faithful choices we make this week, may we recommit our lives to him – and discover true freedom for our souls and experience the joy of salvation in our hearts.           

Let us pray: Lord God, today as the crowds proclaim you as King, we come before you asking your help to accept you as king of our hearts.   Some of us today need your grace to receive your forgiveness and love as lord and savior of our lives. So, we ask for a Holy Week that transforms us, converts us, to you, the messiah we need. Help us to lay our burdens at the foot of your cross. Touch all our hearts present because we need you in our lives.  May we find ourselves at Easter Sunday a changed people, a holy people a people whose lives are on fire through the power of the Holy Spirit filling us.  Thank you, Jesus, because you have freely chosen us, and now we freely chose you.  Amen.
 



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The Fragrance of Love

4/6/2022

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John 11:1-8

 
What is the strongest sense of smell of something that you remember?  The perfume or lotion of someone dear to us?  Some delicious homemade recipe from childhood?  Freshly baked bread?  The smell of just brewed coffee?  Chocolate chip cookies just out of the oven?  How about a Christmas tree?  Or perhaps some not so pleasant orders, like a refrigerator overdue for a cleaning?  As a child, on the way to my Uncle Doc’s, we’d pass the slaughterhouse - whew - the order or dead carcasses spread for blocks. I can still recall the smell of the smoke from my neighbor’s pipe, the lilacs blooming in our backyard.   The sense of smell strongly influences human behavior, it strongly elicits memories and emotions, and shapes perceptions. Did you know that everyone has a unique odor identity similar to a fingerprint — no two people smell the same way except identical twins? Studies have found that scent marketing increased customer intent to purchase by 80%, turning indecisive shoppers into actual buyers. One gas station actually added the smell of fresh coffee to its store and increased coffee sales by 300%.

Our gospel lesson today invites us to engage our sense of smell, to imagine what the Bethany home of Lazarus, Mary and Martha smelled like when Mary, kneeling before Jesus, poured out a pound of pure nard, a perfume worth a year’s worth of wages, on Jesus’s feet.  Close your eyes and imagine the best scent possible you can conjure up. We are told this beautiful perfumed imbued the entire house. 
Now John tells us in the chapter before today’s reading that Jesus had brought Lazarus back to life from the dead.  The Pharisees and chief priests met. They felt the crowds turning toward Jesus.  As a result, they began to plot to kill Jesus.  So, today’s story signals the last week of Jesus’ life. Lazarus, Mary and Martha, siblings, honor Jesus with a meal, perhaps to celebrate Lazarus’ return to life. It is a meal that actually sets the scene for Jesus’ death, in a matter of days.

It was an ordinary meal.  Lazarus was at the table with Jesus. Martha was busy serving.  Then out of the blue comes Mary.  Mary of Bethany is, if we recall, the female disciple who sits at Jesus’ feet and listens. Remember how Martha complained, asking Jesus to tell Mary to help her out in the kitchen?  Jesus defends Mary, saying she has chosen the “better half.”  Mary has paid attention, she has connected the dots, and now she knows the end is near for Jesus: he has come to Jerusalem to die and be raised. So, without asking, without a speech, Mary anoints Jesus’ feet with this costly ointment and tenderly dries them with her hair.  Servants typically washed the feet of guests.  Here is Mary, assuming the role of the lowly servant to her Rabbi, Master, friend. 

Mary’s action is met with criticism by Judas the thief turned betrayer.  In other versions of the story in other gospels, all the disciples are indigent, perhaps thinking there goes Mary, going overboard, perhaps they are uncomfortable with the act of anointing Jesus.  Mark and Matthew say that Jesus is anointed on the head, here Mary anoints Jesus’ feet and dries them with her hair.  All in all, it is an extraordinary act, extravagant act, even slightly scandalous, for it is out of custom for a respectable woman to let her hair down, let alone use it as towel.  Jesus again defends Mary by telling the disciples to leave her alone, for she alone has correctly interpreted the times, Jesus’s death is drawing nearer.  Mary couldn’t stop this from happening.   But she could show her love, she empties her account, her savings, to envelope Jesus with the fragrance of love.

If we step back a minute, it is interesting to note that the only time Jesus receives gifts are at his birth, when the magi from the East bring him gold, frankincense and myrrh; myrrh being a spice used commonly to anoint the body upon death.  The gift bearers are foreigners, but they get it – Jesus is the King of the Jews and they acknowledge it while Jesus’ own people reject him. Now here at the end of his life, Jesus receives another gift, the gift of anointing with pure nard at the hands of a humble female disciple, a woman, a second-class citizen, on the fringe of the official group.  Mary lovingly boldly carries out this prophetic act that Jesus interprets as preparing him for his death and burial.  Jesus’ life and death are bookended by anointing spices. The deeper question Mary’s act brings to mind is this: where in the gospels is Jesus treated with such tenderness and lavish love – except perhaps the act of another woman, a repentant sinner, who crashes the Pharisees party to anoint Jesus’ feet with her tears and dries with her hair?  The truth is despite all that Jesus has done for others; Mary’s of Bethany’s act tops the charts.  None of his disciples demonstrate their love for Jesus in any way. It can even be said that Mary’s act of anointing Jesus’ feet inspires Jesus, who a few days later at the last supper, will wash his disciples’ feet.

The truth is, Mary reveals how God’s love is scandalous, outrageous, overflowing.  Imagine a God who suffers on behalf of his creation.  But that’s what Jesus does. If we look at all the world religions, Christianity is the only one where at the center of the message is a messiah who dies an ignominious death for love. Jesus embraces death, the indignity of death, with the death of a common criminal, to prove his love for us.  Scandalous. What kind of crazy God would do this? Unthinkable! Mary captures this powerful love as she ministers to Jesus.

It is Mary’s scandalous love that lets Jesus know he is not alone.  I would like to think, as Jesus prayed desperately in the Garden of Golgotha, as he was arrested, falsely charged, badly beaten, and lay dying on the cross, that somewhere in his memory that scent of the lavish perfume lingered, reminding a brutalized Jesus of Mary’s gentle touch. 

Mary’s scandalous love is an example for us for we are called to be the aroma of Christ (2 Corinthians 2:15-17) in a stinking world where death and violence hold sway, in a world that smells of greed and judgment.  We are called to lavishly spread the sweet, sweet aroma of compassionate love.  Mary makes us think: am I stingy with my love for Jesus?  Do I hold back like the other disciples?  Do I turn the other way when someone is in need?  Our reading asks us, what was the last lavish act of love we have performed – an act so scandalous, so outrageous, it left others shaking their heads in wonder.  You see, that’s what we are called to do as followers of Jesus. To pour out our inner resources, to give lavishly of our material resources so that others who witness stand in awe, and exclaim, “I want to know this Jesus that has inspired you so!”
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In these final weeks of Lent, let us get scandalous. Let us get extravagant. Let the powerful aroma of Christ fill our hearts and follow us wherever we go. Let us empty the tank, giving generously until the world overflows with the scent of faith and love wafting through us from the cross of Jesus, the scandalous incarnate love of God who emptied himself, gave it all away, so powerfully, so lavishly so that people would smell the fragrance of love and in turn believe in our scandalous, extraordinary fragrance of God’s love poured out in on the cross of Jesus Christ, our savior, our Lord.
 

 
https://www.companionsontheway.com/post/lent-five-extravagant-love-as-a-response-to-fear
https://www.spectrio.com/scent-marketing/the-psychology-of-smell-how-scent-impacts-customers/
https://saidanotherway.org/2019/04/07/the-frangrance-that-lingers/
http://www.abideinchrist.com/messages/1cor1v23.html

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    Moirajo is a minister, social worker, wife, mother, writer and animal lover. That's just for starters. Join the story, there's so much we can share together! 

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