An Unending Flood

(This post is my article for this Saturday's Shawnee News Star)

 I hate, I despise your festivals,
   and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
Even though you offer me your burnt-offerings and grain-offerings,
   I will not accept them;
and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals
   I will not look upon.
Take away from me the noise of your songs;
   I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
But let justice roll down like waters,
   and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

Amos 5:21-24, New Revised Standard Version

            The downtown location of our church means that we are often a place where people come for help.  Our neighborhood has its share of low-income residents and many of God’s children who are homeless.  The porch off the south side of our sanctuary has been used as a shelter.  I have lost count of the number of times that I have looked out to see sleeping bags and shopping bags, food, and clothing; the total of a person’s possessions.  On weekdays I have answered the door to folks who need money, rides, food, and clothing.  There aren’t too many days when the church phone doesn’t ring with someone wondering if we help with utilities or car seats.  The needs of my neighbors stretch on endlessly. 

            But I am not confronted with that need only Monday through Friday.  People will see the cars in the parking lot on Sunday mornings, and come into church looking for help.  Our worship is never very far away from the least of these.  Even if no one wanders into the Sunday service, I still leave worship and walk into a world that is poor.  I am acutely aware of this.  I also know that I have the luxury of being able to get into a car and drive away from it.  But my conscience and my heart can’t leave or let go that easily. 

            These words from God, spoken through the prophet Amos, condemn the people of Israel.  At first glance it might seem that God is denouncing their form of worship.  Maybe they are just doing it wrong.  Yet God is not judging them for incorrect ritual or practices.  God is calling them to accountability for thinking that worship is the only thing that counts in their relationship with Him.  The people do not disregard their obligation to worship God; but they have turned a blind eye to the poor and the oppressed in their midst.  Their solemn assemblies and their offerings are given without fail, but the widows and the orphans starve. 

            The translation above does not fully capture the sensory power of God’s words to the people.  God will not look at their rites and rituals.  God will not smell the burnt offerings.  God will not listen to their music.  The people do not yet understand that worship is not worship if it does not also include justice.  Justice and righteousness must spring out of worship and out of their love for God.  The community should be flooded with justice.  Biblical scholar Terence Fretheim comments that “Righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” is too mild for what the Hebrew is trying to convey.  It should be an ocean.  These flooding waters of justice and righteousness should never end.  When justice and righteousness rain down like this, then and only then, are the people truly worshiping God. 

            It is impossible for me to read these words without a pang of conscience, because I know that I do not fully worship God in this way.  I know that there is much more that can and should be done – more that I can do – to open the floodgates of justice and righteousness in our neighborhood and our community.  I don’t have answers as to how to make this happen.  The need of those around is greater than I or my church can completely address.  But that does not mean that we don’t have a responsibility to take our call to do works of justice and live lives of righteousness seriously.  I try to.  I know my congregation strives to.  I know that all of Shawnee’s congregations, regardless of denomination or theology, do as well.  But more can be done.  What joyful good news it is for us to be able, in large or small ways, to answer God’s call to love and care for the least of these.  In these days leading to Easter and beyond, my hope and prayer is that our worship, however we worship, will move us to flood Shawnee with unending justice and righteousness for all of God’s children. 

           

Let Him Loose

John 11:1-45

April 6, 2014

Gone From My Sight

 by

Henry Van Dyke

I am standing upon the seashore.
A ship at my side spreads her white
sails to the morning breeze and starts
for the blue ocean.

She is an object of beauty and strength.
I stand and watch her until at length
she hangs like a speck of white cloud
just where the sea and sky come
to mingle with each other.

Then, someone at my side says;
"There, she is gone!"

"Gone where?"
Gone from my sight. That is all.
She is just as large in mast and hull
and spar as she was when she left my side
and she is just as able to bear her
load of living freight to her destined port.
Her diminished size is in me, not in her.

And just at the moment when someone
at my side says, "There, she is gone!"
There are other eyes watching her coming,
and other voices ready to take up the glad
shout;
"Here she comes!"
And that is dying.

            This is a poem that I’ve used in other sermons.  Some of you may have heard me quote it already.  The difference between those other sermons and today’s is that I usually only refer to this poem when I’m officiating at a service for someone who has died; a funeral, or as it is known in our Book of Common Worship: a Service of Witness to the Resurrection.  I first read this poem in a small book about the stages of dying.  It was a book given to the families of someone placed in hospice care.  It has become a favorite poem of mine, because I think it is an eloquent, lovely, and comforting metaphor about dying.  That’s why I return to it again and again. 

            But it seems odd to read this poem in a “regular” sermon; especially one that is being preached so close to Easter.  Why are we reading about a resurrection when the resurrection is only two weeks away?  It’s not like we need a warm-up resurrection to get us ready for the big event.  Yet the lectionary brings us to this particular story from John’s gospel; the raising of Lazarus from the dead.  So, with Easter only 14 days away, we read another story about death and resurrection.

            Biblical commentator and Johannine scholar Gail R. O’Day, proposes that the most obvious and fundamental question readers have of this story is “Did it really happen?”  Are we really able to accept that something this supernatural, even for Jesus, was possibly imposed upon the natural?  According to O’Day, it is not just a question of whether this happened historically, but whether or not it could happen at all.  It becomes a metaphysical question, and metaphysics deals with truth.  What is the truth of this event, this raising of Lazarus from the dead?  Certainly we can ask this question about any of Jesus’ healings, miracles and divine happenings.  But there is no other gospel story that parallels the raising of Lazarus, so the question of its truth takes on greater importance.

            The basic plot of this story is that Lazarus of Bethany, brother to the sisters, Mary and Martha, is ill.  The sisters send a message to Jesus to let him know of this.  Although the women do not specifically ask Jesus to rush to Lazarus’ bedside, it is implied, especially by what is said later in the text, that Jesus’ presence would be most welcome.  However Jesus hears the message and says, “This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”  Jesus, as in other passages, sees what is happening as an opportunity to show how God works through our human realities.  And because of this, he stays two days longer in his current place, rather than make his way to Lazarus and his sisters. 

            In the next verses, when Jesus does decide to head to Judea, the disciples try to dissuade him from this idea because of the danger he is in from the Jews.  Yet Jesus is determined to do God’s work while it is day.  His friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but Jesus will go and wake him up.  The disciples take this literally, but the reader knows that Jesus is not referring to sleep but death.  Lazarus has died.

            When Jesus and the disciples arrive at Bethany, Lazarus has been dead four days.  This is not just to give the reader an indication of how chronologically long Lazarus has been dead.  In Jewish tradition, it was believed that a person’s soul or shade hovered above the body for the first three days after death, waiting to see if an opportunity would come to reinhabit the body.  After the third day, the soul would make its way to Sheol.  If Lazarus had been in the tomb four days, he was dead.  Really, really dead.  This wasn’t just a resuscitation of a man who was near death.  Lazarus was dead.  Jesus raises him from that death.

            Both Martha and Mary greet Jesus assured that had Jesus been there Lazarus would not have died.  But Martha also tells Jesus, “but even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.”  For Martha this is a confession of faith.  Jesus could have prevented the death, she knows that.  But she also knows that Jesus can do the will of God.  Yet even with her profession of faith, when it comes time to roll away the stone from Lazarus’ tomb, she warns Jesus that the body is already beginning to decompose.  It’s going to stink.  Even Martha, who believed in what Jesus had the power to do, could not fully comprehend what Jesus was about to do.  The truth was elusive even in the wake of her faith.

            Jesus has them roll the stone away from the entrance to the tomb.  Then he prays, giving thanks to God for always hearing him.  Jesus reiterates his knowledge that God always hears him, but he wants everyone else standing around him to know that as well.  At the end of the prayer, Jesus cries out in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”  And with those words Lazarus steps out of the tomb, with cloths binding his feet, his hands, and covering his face.  Jesus says, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

            I find it interesting that while this story is known as “The Raising of Lazarus,” the actual raising is accomplished in two verses at the end of the story.  The verses leading up to that moment of resurrection are about interpretation.  It seems to me that this raises another question.  Keeping in mind the question that O’Day puts forth about this passage, “Did it really happen?” I also think we need to ask, “Why does it matter”?  Why does it matter, especially when we read this unique story two weeks before the real resurrection? 

            After Martha tells Jesus of her certainty that had Jesus been there, Lazarus would not have died, Jesus tells her, “Your brother will rise again.”  Martha replies, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”  Jesus says in response, “I am the resurrection and the life.  Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”

            I am the resurrection and the life.  I am.  Present tense.  I am.  It seems to me that Jesus is telling Martha that resurrection isn’t just something saved for the future, for the end times.  Jesus is telling Martha that resurrection is here, right now.  New life is here, right now.  I am the resurrection and the life. 

            Maybe this means that Easter isn’t just a day or even a season.  Easter is ongoing.  Easter is a state of being.  Resurrection isn’t just a one-time event for which we wait.  Easter is right now.  I am the resurrection and the life. 

            In The Message, Eugene Peterson paraphrases these last verses this way,

⁴⁰ Jesus looked her in the eye. “Didn’t I tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?”

^41-42 Then, to the others, “Go ahead, take away the stone.”

They removed the stone. Jesus raised his eyes to heaven and prayed, “Father, I’m grateful that you have listened to me. I know you always do listen, but on account of this crowd standing here I’ve spoken so that they might believe that you sent me.”

^43-44 Then he shouted, “Lazarus, come out!” And he came out, a cadaver, wrapped from head to toe, and with a kerchief over his face.

Jesus told them, “Unwrap him and let him loose.”

“Let him loose.”  It seems to me that Jesus isn’t just manifesting the idea that resurrection and new life are already in our midst, ongoing in our midst; he is also involving the community in resurrection.  Jesus could have done it all himself.  He could have called Lazarus out of the tomb and removed those death clothes with a wave of his hand.  But this wasn’t a magic trick.  The people there weren’t an audience to be spellbound.  They were the community.  Lazarus was resurrected into that community.  Jesus calls upon them to, “Let him loose.”  And so Jesus calls us.  We have a part to play.  We are called to participate.  We are called to, “let him loose.” 

            David Lose, in his Working Preacher article about this story, quotes a question that was sent to him in an email.  “What would happen if we believed that the smallest things we do actually make a difference?”  Think about that for a moment.  What would happen if we believed, really believed, that the smallest things we do actually make a difference?  It’s easy to spout platitudes about everyone having unique gifts and talents to bring to the larger group.  But do we believe it?  I think our response is an answer to why this passage matters.  It matters because the resurrection is present tense, and we are called to participate.  It matters because Easter is more than one event and more than one day.  It matters because Jesus exemplified, time and time again, what it means to live in community, in relationship.  It matters because we are called to be that community; to live in the kind of relationship Jesus modeled.  We are called to be the community that manifests new life.  We are called to participate in the resurrection. It matters because we all play a part in letting one another, and indeed the world, loose.  Our smallest actions do make a difference.  Let us believe.  Let all God’s children say, “Amen.”

Now I See

John 9:1-41

March 30, 2014

                   

            In the movie Contact, Jodie Foster plays Dr. Ellie Arroway.  She is an intense scientist who puts all of her belief and her trust in science and mathematics.  Her work is looking for extraterrestrial life.  So she listens to space.  She hears something.  She recognizes a mathematical pattern being transmitted from the star Vega.  Without going into long detail, in the message are instructions for a one person pod-like vessel, a space ship.  Arroway finally gets her chance to pilot the vessel into space.  She has recording equipment with her and readies herself for her flight.  She does travel, through space, worm holes, and makes contact with another being.  From her perspective, she spent hours, days making this journey.  But her pod never leaves its launch pad.  All her recording equipment captured was static. 

            As you can imagine, this kind of scientific exploration didn’t occur outside of the political realm.  Arroway remains steadfast in her claim that she made a journey unlike any other.  She is called to testify before congress.  Her story is dismissed and derided, but she makes a powerful statement about what she experienced.  She couldn’t prove anything to them.  She could give them no evidence of what happened to her, but what she saw changed her forever.  This contact made her realize that we are infinitesimally small in a universe that is large beyond our comprehension.  But as humans we are precious.  We are connected.  We are not alone.  She may not be able to provide physical evidence, but she held fast to what she saw, and what she knows to be true.

            When I turned to John’s gospel to reread this story of the blind man receiving sight, I thought about this scene from Contact.  Like Arroway, the blind man has an experience that he knows to be true, but everyone around him refuses to believe.  Unlike Arroway, he has physical evidence to offer.  He was physically blind.  Now he can physically see.  Yet he was still questioned and harangued about what happened to him, and what he knew to be true. 

In our time and context, we understand that blindness is not a consequence of sin.  But as we read in our story, sin and sinfulness were considered the root causes of someone being born blind.  So when Jesus and the disciples came upon this man born blind, the disciples had only one response to his condition.  It was posed in the form of the question, “Who sinned?”  Was this man the sinner?  Was it his sinfulness that was the cause of his blindness, or was it the sinfulness of his parents?  It must be one or the other.  Blindness was the result of sinfulness.  So, who sinned?

            Although Jesus’ response sounds straightforward, it bears repeating that every story in John’s gospel is couched in metaphor and has layers of meaning.  It stands to reason, then, that Jesus’ response to the disciples is also metaphorical and layered in meaning. 

“Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.  We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work.  As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

            Does this mean that Jesus was saying God afflicted the man with blindness so that someday when he was an adult, he could be used as an object lesson for other people?  I don’t think so.  I think a deeper, more accurate understanding is that the man’s blindness was just that, a sad but random happening.  But Jesus knew that through this man God’s glory could and would be revealed.  When Jesus encountered the Samaritan woman at the well, he spoke to her not just of water she could carry in her buckets, but of living water that would revive her soul.  Jesus told Nicodemus that it was his birth, his forming and shaping, in and by the Spirit that would give him salvation and new life.  So too, this blind man would see.  He would see not just the physical world around him, but he would see and recognize the revelation of God’s glory. 

            As one commentator noted, Jesus’ actions take on a baptismal quality.  He spits on the ground, makes mud, and spreads the mud on the man’s eyes.  He tells the man to go and wash in the pool of Siloam.  The man did this, and when the mud was washed away, he returned able to see, both the world around him and God’s glory. 

            Upon his return, the neighbors and others who knew him before took notice.  “Wait a minute, isn’t this the guy who was blind?  Isn’t this the one we knew as a beggar; the one who’s been blind since birth?” 

            Speculation began.  Some of the people believed that it really was him.  But others said, “No that’s not that guy.  It looks like him, but it’s not him.”
            Yet the man kept insisting that he was the one who was blind but could now see.  He said, “I am the man.”  One scholar points out that this man is the only other person to use the phrase, “I am” except Jesus.  I am the man.  So the neighbors asked him, “How did this happen?  How did you receive your sight?”

            He told them exactly what Jesus did.  He spat on the ground, made mud, spread the mud on my eyes, told me to go wash.  I did and now I see.  Now I see.

            However, it was all too suspicious.  No one is born blind then given sight.  The man was brought before the Pharisees, the religious authorities.  An investigation took place.  The Pharisees, like the neighbors, asked the man how he received his sight.  Again, he told them.  Yet rather than rejoice in this miraculous healing, this giving of sight, the Pharisees became more concerned about the timing.  This happened on the Sabbath.  Obviously, Jesus was not “from God” because he willingly broke the Law.  No one truly from God would do that.  But the man’s story never changed.  He told the Pharisees exactly what he told the other people.  He was blind, but Jesus gave him sight.  He was blind.  Now he can see.

            John tells us that the Pharisees are divided.  Jesus broke the Law, so he must be a sinner.  But how could a sinner perform such signs?  This man could now see.  The Pharisees then questioned the man about Jesus.  What does he say about him?  He’s the one who was given sight by Jesus.  All the man will say about Jesus’ identity is that he is a prophet.

            The Jews – we need to understand here that John is speaking of the Jewish religious authorities, not just Jews in general – decided that it wasn’t possible that this man was actually born blind.  So they tracked down his parents.  They questioned them.  “Is this your son and was he born blind?”

            The parents were afraid.  They were afraid of being forced out of the synagogue, out of the community and its fellowship.  It was already known that anyone who gave credence to Jesus would suffer those consequences.  So out of fear, they handed over their own son.  “We know that this is our son.  We know that he was born blind.  But we don’t know how he’s seeing now and we don’t know who made him see.  Look, don’t bother us anymore.  He’s of age.  Ask him.”

            One more time the religious authorities called the man in for questioning. “Give glory to God,” they tell him, “we know that this man is a sinner.”  This wasn’t an invitation to praise God for what Jesus had done.  It wasn’t a call to actually give glory to God.  It was a warning.  This Jesus, this sinner must be denied, and any authority he might have, undermined.  But the man refused to back down.  He refused to speculate or categorize Jesus in anyway. 

            “I do not know whether he is a sinner.  One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” 

            To me this is the crux of the entire passage.  One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see. 

            The man would not let them take that away from him.  He would not let his experience of moving from blindness to sight be hijacked to accommodate the power driven agendas of others.  One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.

            The Pharisees couldn’t accept this.  They reviled the man.  They accused him of being a disciple of Jesus, a sinner, while they, the good and righteous people, were disciples of Moses. 

            The man didn’t take their bait.  He even took them to task for their lack of understanding. 

            “Here is an astonishing thing!  You do not know where he comes from and yet he opened my eyes.  We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to the one who worships him and obeys his will.  Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind.  If this man were not from God, he could nothing.”

            For the Pharisees, that was the final straw.  They responded, “You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?”  They did what people most feared.  They drove him out of the synagogue and out of the fellowship of the worshipping community. 

            At this point Jesus returned to the scene.  We don’t know where he was during this lengthy interrogation, but when he heard that the man was driven out of the synagogue, Jesus went looking for him.  Jesus asked the man one question, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”  The man born blind only wanted to know the identity of the Son of Man, so that he may worship him.  Jesus answers, “You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.”  With that, the man believed.   

            A fellow pastor remarked that in this entire story, every person involved with the man objectifies him.  They treated him as a thing to be argued over, fought over, used.  Jesus was the only one who saw him as an individual, who through no fault of his own or anyone else, was blind.  Jesus gave this man, this individual, this unique creation of God, his sight.  And from this powerful experience, the man believed in Jesus as the Son of God, the Son of Man. 

            One thing I do know that though I was blind, now I see. 

            No one was able to take that experience away from him.  No one could convince him that what he knew was false or delusional.  It was real.  Now I see.

            And not only did he see in the physiological sense.  He saw the truth of Jesus, his identity, his reality.  He saw the Messiah standing in front of him and believed.  But the righteous people, the people who had never spent a day without sight could not see.  They may have been able to pass an eye exam on the first try, but they were blind.  They could not see; they could not accept what was right before their eyes:  Jesus, the Son of Man; the Son of God. 

            How are we blind?  It is easy, perhaps, to relate to the man born blind.  We have seen, in one way or another, the revelation of God’s glory.  Yet I know that I am also like the Pharisees.  I see what I want to.  More accurately, I don’t see what I don’t want to.  How quickly I find myself stuck in the groove of my own righteousness.  I know what’s true and what isn’t.  But when I read this story, I get a glimpse of another truth.  I may be able to see, but I can also be blind. Blind to the revelation of God’s glory because it sometimes appears in ways I don’t like.  I’m blind because sometimes it breaks the rules I believe to be firm.  I’m blind because encountering Jesus in a way I’m unprepared for scares me.  I ask the question again, how are we blind?  In this season of Lent may our eyes be opened to God’s work in our midst; but even more may our hearts be opened to the glory of God all around us.  As we draw closer and closer to Good Friday, may we also proclaim, “One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.”  Now I see.  Let all God’s children say, “Amen.”