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This is the sermon preached by Rev. Don Van Antwerpen to the congregations of Unfinished Community and Ashiya Christian Church on Sunday, April 6, 2025, drawing from Isaiah 43:16-21 and John 12:1-8

One of those things that often catches people off guard about me when I step up to preach is just how very open and blunt I can be about the gigantic bone I have to pick with American evangelicalism. My tendency to throw enough shade at evangelicalism that I might be mistaken for a convenient moon isn’t by any means a new thing; some of you may even know it as one of the defining attributes - if not the defining attribute - of who I am as a pastor. 

Which is why it may surprise you to know that I wasn’t always such a fierce opponent of evangelicalism. In fact, I even worked for evangelical churches at two separate times in my life. First by choice, as a young man freshly married and just out of college, and the second time quite by accident at a church not too far from here which had severely misrepresented itself to me during the pastoral search process.

Working in evangelical spaces, as should be no surprise to any of you here, presented me with a great many things that shocked, terrified, even horrified me. I’ve mentioned before about the megachurch which sent an aspiring young musician away crying after bluntly telling her that she wasn’t good enough to share her gifts for God, or preachers who would stand to the pulpit in multi-thousand-dollar designer outfits while they guilt-tripped their starving congregants into offering more and more money to feed their glorious ministry machine.

(In case you’re wondering by the way, the most expensive item on my person today is probably the 4,000 yen shirt I’m wearing, since clergy shirts don’t tend to show up at thrift shops!)

But what really kept tripping me up in those spaces wasn’t the great, obvious horror; those are things I could oppose, even rail against, without seeming like an outright lunatic. No, what got me were the little things, especially in worship, which were presented so rationally, so matter-of-factly, that you might never even notice how utterly, terribly, screamingly wrong they really were. 

Like when the church would turn all the lights off and bring out the church band - all paid professionals, mind you - to perform “praise” music at ear-splitting volume while everyone tried and failed to keep pace with the professional vocalist ostensibly “leading” worship. It was fun and engaging, like a concert, but the darkness isolated people from each other, and the music quickly taught them that their voices were meant to be silenced under the oppressive sound of those more talented.

It’s terrible when you think about it, but when you were there, you never noticed it at all. It all just seemed like the most natural thing in the world because you were no longer in control of the experience. Entering an evangelical space like that means exchanging a hike with friends for a roller-coaster ride; the latter is brief, exciting, and fun, but you’re locked away in your own little car, and the whole thing is on rails. Your path doesn’t change, you never have a chance to consider just where you fit - for good or for ill - into the larger picture of the ride.

This really came to a head for me in my last position, where I will readily admit that I got into a bit of a…shall we say discussion…with church leadership about the lack of a Prayer of Confession. When I first found out that this wasn’t included in the church’s liturgy, I tried really hard to start putting it back in because it’s really important, and I know what happens when you skip the introspection parts in church. But the moment I tried to work that in, I was sharply confronted by the leadership of the church, who told me quite bluntly, “We don’t do that here. People can think about sin and stuff on their own time, privately. In church, we come to be uplifted. We come to be light, and happy, not to feel dark and depressed.”

On the surface of course, that does kinda sound reasonable, right? We want our time with God to be pleasant, uplifting, and happy. We want God to drive the darkness out of our life, so why would we spend any amount of time in that darkness, in worship, by choice?

So, in the interests of conflict avoidance - because, as you probably guessed, I had plenty enough conflict there already anyways - I let it go. At the time, it didn’t really seem worth the fight because  we were only a few months away from Lent at the time, and Lent is that season in the Christian year where all that darkness comes back in with a vengeance, and I figured that if we didn’t face it right away, we would at least have to face it then.

Because Lent - which we are five Sundays into at this point - is probably the darkest season of the Christian year. We’re in the process of building up to Holy Week (which starts with Palm Sunday next week!) during which we walk with Jesus through the final milestones of his earthly ministry, culminating in the Maundy Thursday (the celebration of the Last Supper), the Crucifixion (the execution of Jesus on the cross), and what I might argue is the darkest day of them all, Holy Saturday, where everyone just sat around in shock and mourning, having been utterly crushed by the powers of the earthly government; a situation all-too familiar to friends and family members in the Ukrainian refugee community, in the LGBTQIA+ community, or Black and Brown communities in the United States. 

Darkness, it seems, is all around us. 

And when there’s that much darkness, it’s really easy to drown in it. It’s so very, very easy to see all the suffering and hurt around us, and come to the conclusion that his is the default state, and that hope and optimism are dreams that vanish in the cold light of reality. One quick glance at the news and we see the rich getting richer, and the poor getting poorer. We see the oppressors of the world claiming victory after victory, while all those who suffer are ground under their boots into the dust. War rages, the innocent are killed, and the survivors are made into refugees, only to face hatred and discrimination everywhere they go. The widows and orphans are cast out, the marginalized are pushed even farther to the margins, and fear seems to be the order of the day. 

In times like these, especially in times like these, the words of the prophet Isaiah can sound like a cruel joke:

Thus says the LORD, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, who brings out chariot and horse, army and warrior; they lie down; they cannot rise; they are extinguished, quenched like a wick: 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 will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. The wild animals will honor me, the jackals and the ostriches, for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people, the people whom I formed for myself so that they might declare my praise

How can we ever see God like that, when things are this bad? How can we proclaim that the Lord makes a way in the sea when we’re all drowning? Wouldn’t it be so much easier, even just for this hour and change we spend in worship, just to pretend? Just to turn ourselves away from the horrors surrounding us, to give no mention to them at all, and pretend that we’re already free and clear? No sin, no guilt, no shame, no work to do, no suffering to endure…just the peace of Christ and nothing else.

But love, God’s love, the love so strong that it conquers death itself, doesn’t mean all that much without the death. Our sins being forgiven doesn’t mean all that much if we take the sins out of the equation first. Salvation from all the suffering and pain of this world mean nothing if we don’t acknowledge that the pain is real, and valid, and hurting us terribly in the first place. 

Our God is the God of water in the wilderness, the breaker of chains, the repairer of the breech and the restorer of streets to live in. God is the god of the improbably victory, the impossible salvation, and the defeated grave. Our God is the one who looks suffering dead in the eye and commands it out of the way, who tears down the oppressors from their thrones, and who sends the rich, and the arrogant, and the privileged away empty. 

And we can only ever see that when we see the suffering that this impossible love stands defiantly in the face of. 

As challenging as these text can be in such difficult times, this is exactly what Isaiah knew when he proclaimed that a new thing was springing forth. God’s incomprehensible, impossible love IS a new thing in a world that is built to prosper the few at the painful expense of the many. God’s love for all people makes no sense in a world where losses of life are acceptable but losses of shareholder profits are not. God’s unbending love is irrational in a world where we’re told that all our problems are just a deported immigrant away, just a terrorized trans person away, just a suffering woman or brutalized black or brown person away. To stand here in utter defiance of that bleak reality, proclaiming that love will have the victory, that love will cast these things to the ground, that love is so powerful that all of these things and death besides will pass into dust while love remains and abides even still…that is a new thing indeed. 

This is the same thing that Mary knew when her love for Jesus filled her so completely, so overflowingly, that  she couldn't help but to express it by - hilariously - dumping perfume all over Jesus. It didn't matter that there were more practical things which could have been done with that perfume. Truth be told, despite the very rational objections of Judas (which later interpolations have tried to mitigate by suggesting he was skimming from the purse, but which isn’t actually present in older versions of this text) even the full, retail price of her perfume wouldn’t even have been a drop in the bucket of poverty and suffering in the world around her. To Jesus, the practicalities of the situation were irrelevant because - more than any other disciple - Mary gets it. Her starting point, her ending point, and all points between were wrapped in an all-consuming love. 

And it was no ordinary love. No, it was irrational, illogical, and wild; feral even. It was love not as an emotion, but as a force of nature; defiant and insisting, even in the face of certain death. The cross was looming on the horizon, fear was everywhere, and Mary didn’t know what tomorrow might bring. 

And in the face of all of that, she did not give in to fear, she did not give in to desperation, despair, or death. She loved. She loved like a starving person loves a hamburger. She loved like a person dying of thirst loves water. She loved like dating teenagers who’ve been separated for 7-10 minutes; entirely unstoppably, arguably inappropriately, and utterly without regard for how she might be seen, and what that might mean for her as a result. 

Just love. Irrational, illogical, unrestricted love.

Defiant love, willfully ignoring all the many, many, many reasons not to love, and just diving into it like an oasis of cool, healing water in the midst of a painfully scorching season of life. 

That’s why all this darkness is important. That’s why we have these conversations, even though they’re uncomfortable. This is why we confess our sins, why we confront our failings, why we allow the pain and hurt of the world outside to become part of our experience here in worship. This is why when people say “We don’t do that here,” we respond defiantly with “We must do that here.” This is why we stare unblinkingly at the suffering of the world around us, never hiding, never pretending that these things don’t exist. This is why church must never be about carving out for ourselves a space where only good and uplifting things surround us. 

Because Christ’s love isn’t a love that pulls us away from the suffering. It’s a love that defeats it.

The love of Christ - both the love Christ has for us and the love we have for Christ - is a defiant love. It isn’t a love that hides from the shadow; its a love that explodes out into the darkness, daring it to just try and put us out. Even during this Lenten season, even when suffering seems to overwhelm us, even when so much of our life is lived graveside rather than poolside, especially in the darkest of times like these, this is the most fundamental truth of what it means to live our lives as a Christian. 

Love.

Love explosively. Love improbably. Love chaotically. 

Love defiantly.