Scripture Lesson: Matthew 7:15-29.
Morgan Roberts
COMMENTS ON THE SCRIPTURE LESSON
Our scripture lesson for this morning sounds like the “wind up” of a sermon, the preacher’s closing words to drive home the main points of the message. In fact, that’s what these words are: the closing words of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. To help us unlock their meaning, we need to get ourselves properly situated; we need to remember that we are not sitting on the mountain with those who first heard these words from Jesus’ lips. We’re not back there. Instead, whenever we read any of the four gospels, we are sitting in some early congregation for which some pastor has taken an orally transmitted collection of the words and works of Jesus and reduced them to written form. The gospels thus represent “what someone said that Jesus said.” This does not mean that these are not Jesus’ words; however, because Jesus didn’t publish his words in written form, what we have to rely upon is what someone else has reported. Thus, the voice of Jesus is not coming to us “live” from the mountainside; instead, we are listening to the voice of the pastor as he (or she) reads these words of Jesus to us.
This pastor/author is writing about 50 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus. We don’t know his/her name; many years later, this gospel was attributed to Matthew to enhance its status and authority in the early church. For convenience, however, let’s call our author Matthew. Let’s remember also that the gospels were not written to become part of a collection that came to be called the New Testament; that wouldn’t happen until more than two centuries later. What is important is that we are seated in this early congregation for which this gospel was written, and because these words of Jesus have particular relevance for this pastor’s congregation a half century after the time of Jesus, this gospel will tell us not only what was happening in Jesus’ day, but also what may have been happening in Matthew’s church.
So when we hear Jesus warning his disciples to beware of false prophets, what we surmise is that there were also false teachers misleading the members of Matthew’s congregation. And what they are saying represents a denial of what Jesus emphasized in his Sermon on the Mount. So, what might these false prophets be saying that is in conflict with the words of Jesus?
Jesus pronounced beatitudes upon the peacemakers, but the false teachers are blessing the warmongers. Jesus said that we must love our enemies because God has no enemies, that he makes his sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain upon the just and the unjust. But these teachers are saying that it’s a dog-eat-dog world and that you’d better be well-armed against your enemies. Jesus said that we can’t serve God and wealth and that we should not anxiously heap up treasures on earth. But these teachers are saying, “Forget such idealistic nonsense; God wants you to be prosperous.” (Sound familiar?)
So Matthew reiterates Jesus’ earlier warning, “You will know them by their fruits… A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.” We will be known by our lives, not by our words. What will matter is not that we go about mouthing the claim that we “know the Lord,” but that, by the fruits of righteousness produced by our lives, the Lord knows us.
SERMON
The late William Sloane Coffin, former pastor of New York's Riverside Church, was once a guest preacher in my pulpit at the Shadyside Church of Pittsburgh. I can’t remember why, but early in his sermon he made some reference to Herman Melville's Moby Dick and, before doing so, referred to it as “the book that most of us have never finished reading.” Even if you're one of those who never got all the way through the many chapters of Moby Dick, maybe you have recognized that classic as the source of today's sermon title because my reference to it appears very early in the book in the third chapter when Ishmael, the narrator of the story, obtains lodging in the only available room at the Spouter-Inn but later discovers that he will be sharing his bed with the pagan harpooner, Queequeg. When Queequeg finally arrives, Ishmael is frightened out of his wits by his savage appearance. The innkeeper, however, assures him that Queequeg is a truly sober, kind, and gentle soul. With this assurance, Ishmael falls asleep saying to himself, “Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.”
Outward appearances may not match inward realities. The product inside the box may not match the label on the outside. And with people, what difference does any label, ethnic or religious, make if we don't behave ourselves in a civilized manner? How we behave is always more important than how we label ourselves or others. Then too, deeds are always more important than creeds. Or put differently, what good are our creeds if they aren’t matched by our deeds?
On the night before Tricia emailed me with an invitation to preach today, I had an interesting dinner conversation with a young doctor who teaches at the Lake Erie College of Medicine. When he asked me what I was doing in my retirement, I told him how much I enjoyed tutoring migrant farm worker children at our RCMA Academy at Beth El Mission. And that precipitated his story about one of the most interesting and important persons he was ever honored to meet.
His story was about a man in his native country who devoted his life to the education of children whose parents were migratory. Here in America, our migrant workers follow the crops. In his country, they followed their herds; they were nomads whose children were deprived of a settled education. This man, however, even though his noble birth afforded him a formal education in law and fluency in English, German, and French, never forgot that he himself was born in a tent, the son of a tribal chieftain. And so he went and pitched his “white school tent” among a nomadic people and, from that simple beginning, as others joined him, there began a movement that grew so rapidly during the 1950s, 60s, and 70s that, by the end of his life, having established 550 nomad schools, a half million nomads could read, with the most promising students going on the a nomad college that graduated 9,000 trained teachers, many of them women, and other graduates who moved on to careers as physicians (especially obstetricians), lawyers, and engineers.
Of course, this man and his movement encountered all kinds of opposition and difficulties; particularly because the education of so many women threatened the status quo of those for whom an uneducated populace, raised by illiterate mothers, was a source of profit and power. So threatening was the success of his educational work that, finally, his enemies paid him the supreme compliment: they accused him of being a CIA operative! When he died in May of 2010, the gratitude of those who had received a better life was so overflowing that, at his funeral, 24,000 mourners were in attendance.
Such stories somehow don’t make our front pages, maybe because all of this took place in Iran, and his name was Mohammad Bahmanbeigi, and he was a Muslim. Rather surprisingly, however, this man devoted his life to something beautifully Christ-like. In the prologue of John’s gospel, it says that the Word became flesh and “pitched his tent among us.” And this man did exactly that, he stepped down from a higher, nobler place and “pitched his tent” among a people deeply in need of the light of literacy.
On the morning after I heard this story, I received Tricia’s email with her gracious invitation to preach. Before responding, I looked up the lectionary text for today, the words of which literally jumped off the page with Jesus’ reminder that “You will know them by their fruits…a good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.”
How is it that, every so often, people who make no claim at being Christian end up doing something more Christ-like than what is being done by the Christians? Back in the 1950s, when Mohammad Bahmanbeigi was going about, like Jesus, “doing good,” I had two friends who were serving as missionaries in Iran. Within certain limitations, that was still possible under the rule of the Shah, before the 1979 revolution. They had gone there from our fundamentalist church to save souls, to rescue from eternal damnation the millions who had not accepted Christ as Savior. My friends were good people, doing at great personal sacrifice what they believed God had called them to do. But at this same time, this good Muslim was acting like a follower of Jesus, reaching out to poor people who were lost in the midst of life. I somehow cannot believe that, upon his death, his soul was cast into an eternal hell.
From where does such Christ-like goodness arise? I wonder if the answer is right there in the midst of the Sermon on the Mount in its most radically difficult commandment: to love our enemies. Do you realize what that commandment is saying? It is telling us that the God and Father of whom Jesus spoke is a God who looks upon no one as an enemy. Surely, a God who commands us to love our enemies would not disobey his own commandment. The God whom Jesus taught us to call our heavenly Father must be a God who will never allow anyone be his enemy. When Jesus uttered this radically difficult commandment, he was literally tearing pages out of Hebrew scripture, telling us to disregard any story that suggests in any way that God is an enemy of his own dear children, that God is an unfriendly God.
And that is why Jesus reminded us that God makes his sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain upon the just and the unjust. If that is true, then something brighter than sunlight must be shining over all the earth. The dazzling light of God’s Spirit must be making God’s truth known wherever any heart is open to receive it. How else can we explain the extraordinary goodness that crops up every so often in so-called “pagan” lands? How else can we account for those instances when people who do not wear the Christian label are, somehow, living like genuine followers of Jesus? Evidently, God’s Spirit is not a prisoner of the church. As one of our hymns proclaims,
His spirit floweth free, High surging where it will:
In prophet’s word He spoke of old – He speaketh still.
Before the reading of the lesson, I said that, as we read the words of the Sermon on the Mount, we need to position ourselves in the early congregation to which it was addressed. But now, let’s move from there and go back to the mountainside where it was first delivered. We’re listening to Jesus now, and when we do that, we remember that, when he uttered these words, he was just Jesus, not Jesus Christ. Christ was not his family name; his parents were not Joseph and Mary Christ. He would later be hailed as the Christ, but that was later. On the mountain, he’s just Jesus and he was not, after all, a Christian. On the mount, there are no Christians, just Jews, poor folks who have answered the call to follow Jesus. His words were (and still are) for any and all who would follow him and his way of just and loving life.
His call to bear good fruit cannot be limited to some small segment of humanity that has isolated itself from the rest of humankind within the protective insulation of neat doctrines by which God is reduced to a manageable proposition. Wherever people leave their nets and follow Jesus’ way of life, they are our sisters and brothers, fellow citizens of God’s kingdom on earth, whatever their tribe or tongue.
My ministry in the Shadyside Church of Pittsburgh included a radio program which, allegedly, was the oldest religious broadcast in the history of radio. One of my most interesting discoveries was that one of my regular listeners was a Jewish rabbi. I became aware of this when, for some reason, he sent me a sermon he had delivered on Rosh Hashanah. It contained a wonderful story, and so I phoned to tell him how much I enjoyed his sermon and to ask permission to use his story in one of my sermons, giving him proper credit for the story. “No problem,” he replied. “I use lots of your material.” “How can you possibly do that?” I asked, “So much of my material seems specifically Christian.” “It’s easy,” he said, “I just take it and make it Jewish.”
But isn’t there a deep truth in what he was saying? A true word is a true no matter who utters it. A just action is a just action regardless of who performs it. Does God look down from heaven to see if people are wearing the right label? Back in 1961, during my first pastorate in Newburgh, NY, when a politically aspiring City Manager was harassing the unemployed poor and elderly folk whose only sin was that their life savings had run out and they were dependent upon welfare, few clergymen raised their voices in defense of the dignity of the poor. I couldn't find one other Protestant pastor who would speak out against the manufactured statistics and blatant lies of the City Manager. But Rabbi Kahan joined me. Did it matter to God that his “badge of faith” was the Star of David and not the Cross of Calvary? If he spoke with prophetic courage on behalf of God’s poor, what difference did his label make? Melville might have written of him, “Better a courageous Jew than a cowering Christian!” Whatever may be the complex questions about relationships between Jews and Christians, as well as between Christians and persons of other faiths, there is one truth that cannot be denied: a religious faith that does not result in a righteous life has no value. And so Jesus says, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter into the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.”
So what kind of a church does this call us to be? When I was out in California visiting my three children and grandchildren, I was reading the local newspaper of the Ojai valley where my daughter Holly lives, surrounded by those majestic mountains amidst which the old movie classic, Lost Horizons, was filmed. I came upon the most interesting church ad. I’m guessing that it’s a non-denominational church, one of those stereotypical, whacko California free-style churches in which my blazer and necktie would identify me as a stuffy stranger from some “frozen chosen” denominational church back East. However, I liked their ad. Here are some excerpts:
Hey You! Don’t worry, this isn’t an advertisement about why you should come to our church because we have the “truth,” the “right” doctrine, the “best” programs and all around most “spiritual” people. If anything, you should know we are just like you, and that means fairly screwed up. We are a community filled with people who have checkered pasts, current addictions, skeletons in the closet, consistent struggles with guilt, shame, fear, anger, and urges we’d like to keep to ourselves. Maybe you don’t have any of these struggles…Then again, maybe you struggle with pride, conceit, think too much of yourself and too little of others. We’re doing our best to be honest with our inadequacies, to encourage and help each other limp along, as well as celebrate. Really, we’re simply trying our best to follow Jesus, not Christianity. The institution of Christianity has done much good in the world, but it’s also done horrible damage. Jesus has done only good. We strive to be his healing hands in a broken world. Come stumble along with us as we try to be better human beings, trying to make the world a better place, reaching out a helping hand just as Jesus reached out to us.
It sounded good, almost too good to be true. Maybe it was just a “come on,” I wondered. Upon arriving home, I checked their website and, yes, I was disappointed. The profile of their pastor contained a lot of “jocks for Jesus” stuff about his athletic career, and their statement of faith was a tired, outdated catalog of doctrinal shibboleths – certainly not written by the person who wrote the ad. However, it made me wish that, somehow, somewhere, there might be a church like the one described in the ad, a gathering of ordinary folks who welcome any and all whose intention is simply to follow the Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount, a church whose holy Table is open to all, whether cannibals or Christians, who hunger and thirst after righteousness.
SOME QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION OR DISCUSSION
1. A sermon like this can be deceivingly simple. Christians and/or churches that set out to “get back to basics” often find that the basics are not that simple. A church whose bulletin board advertises it as a “Bible-believing church, whose only creed is Christ,” will, sooner or later, discover that its members cannot reach agreement upon exactly what the Bible teaches or exactly who Jesus is. The “true” Presbyterians who left the Presbyterian Church to form a new, scripturally faithful denomination, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, were soon beset by a controversy that resulted in still another denomination, the Bible Presbyterian Church. The Amish, who strive to live a plain life, have found that they cannot agree about “how plain is plain.” Different Amish communities disagree over what constitutes a plain buggy or a plain kind of buckle. If, as the sermon, temptingly suggests, we were to try becoming a church whose central goal was to follow Jesus’ way of life as it is described in the Sermon on the Mount, what difficulties might we encounter? As you reread the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:1 – 7:29), where might we find ourselves in the greatest disagreement?
2. Creeds often focus upon what we believe, leaving us to figure out the details of how we will live. Try writing a personal creed for your own life that describes how you intend to live your life as a follower of Jesus. As you do this, try to incorporate some of Jesus’ words from the Sermon on the Mount into your statement. Also, try being specific, making your personal creed one that confronts some of the actual difficulties that a person (or family) encounters in seeking to follow Jesus in our modern, digital age.
3. What creeds of the church, ancient or modern, have been most helpful to you in your personal discipleship? Is there a creed with which you have problems?
4. The sermon makes the rather jarring statement that, when Jesus said that we should love our enemies, he was, literally, “tearing pages out of Hebrew scripture,” indicating that some stories in the Bible deny God’s love as the heavenly Father of all his children. If this seems to be an overstatement, try reading 1 Samuel 15:1-3. Then wrestle with this question: Do you think that God ever uttered such a destructive commandment to Samuel? Or are we to understand it, according to one rabbinical scholar, as “what Samuel heard, but not what God s
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Sunday, May 8, 2011
A Journey with Mother Mary
Selected Gospel Lections
Mother’s Day – 3rd Easter
Elizabeth M. Deibert
O God, by your nurturing Spirit tell us what we need to hear, and show us what we ought to do, to follow Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
We’re doing something a little different this Sunday. Instead of following the usual lectionary readings, I decided that for Mother’s Day, we would walk through the life of Mother Mary. The only time of year when we think about Mary is on the third Sunday of Advent each year, as we anticipate the birth of Christ, and usually read the Magnificat, part of which we used as our Call to Worship today.
It is my opinion, and I believe I stand in strong company, that we Protestants over-reacted to Roman Catholicism on two points. First, we shifted from weekly communion, which had been the practice of the church for 15 hundred years. Secondly, we over-reacted to Roman Catholic devotion to Mary.
We have neglected Mary, ignored the fact that she is the supreme example of human faithfulness. Jesus, being of two natures – divine and human – is the one for whom and in whom we live, but Mary is the one to whom we can truly relate. She was fully human, as are we, yet she was so very receptive to the Word of God that she was able to give birth to God in human flesh, our Lord Jesus Christ.
(slide) So for all of us, male and female, Mary is a model of trust in God. On this Mother’s Day, as we are still in the season of Easter joy, let us ponder the life of Mary, from the time she was visited by an angel, to the birth of Jesus, to his childhood and ministry, and finally to his death, resurrection, and ascension. Let us hear these stories, not as we usually do, from the perspective of Jesus or of his disciples or of the crowd, but let’s think about Mother Mary, what she was thinking, how she was feeling, and the challenge she had to be faithful through all these experiences as Mother of God. Theotokos in Greek means God-bearer.
Hear now the Annunciation from Luke 1:28-38 (slide):
Jane Luke 1:28-38 "Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you." 29 But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. 30 The angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. …35 The angel said to her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God….38 Then Mary said, "Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word." Then the angel departed from her.
Perplexed and fearful, but Mary found favor with God, and was overtaken by Holy Spirit and gave birth to a Holy Child, the Son of God. Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Mary was receptive. Hear now the affirmation of her cousin Elizabeth, when the two unexpectedly pregnant women come together. Luke 1:39-42 (slide)
Richard Luke 1:39-42 In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, 40 where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. 41 When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit 42 and exclaimed with a loud cry, "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.
Mary’s womb bore the eternal God, in human form. She is called more spacious than the heavens for that reason. Is it possible to be the God-bearer and not to be changed by that? The birth narratives are the most familiar to us, but let us listen for clues about Mary’s life. Hear Luke 2:16-19 (slide)
Tricia Luke 2:16-19 So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. 17 When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; 18 and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. 19 But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.
She hears from shepherds that angels are announcing his birth. She treasures these words and ponders them. Would that we would do the same when we hear what the angels and the saints through generations have said about this amazing birth. If we would just take time at home, even when we are exhausted as Mary surely was, to ponder these words. If we would just stay the one extra hour for Lively Learning so we can ponder the words of scripture, then we might be more like Mary, blessed, full of faith and grace.
All good parents are protective of their young children. People who believe they have a very gifted or special children, are even more so. You can imagine the fear of Mother Mary when she and Joseph learn that Herod is killing baby boys. So they have the courage to travel by night to a foreign land, to keep their boy safe.
Matthew 2:11-14 (slide)
Chip Matthew 2:11-14 On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. 12 And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road. 13 Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, "Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him." 14 Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt.
We have but one story of Jesus childhood, in fact, he is nearly a teen when his parents lose him in the temple. Nearly every mother and father have a story of forgetting the child or losing the child. Mary and Joseph traveled for three days and did not realize their son was missing. I guess they were traveling in groups from Jerusalem, and perhaps the adolescents would walk together. But turns out Jesus was lingering with the religious experts in the temple. Luke 2:43 -51 (slide)
Elizabeth Luke 2:43-51 43 When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it… 46 After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. 47 And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. 48 When his parents saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, "Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety." 49 He said to them, "Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?" 50 But they did not understand what he said to them. 51 Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart.
Mary was upset. Well, remember they had walked three days journey and had to turn back. I remember one time Emily left her brand new favorite jacket at a rest area, and we had to drive an hour backwards in a 7 hour trip. I was not happy. I remember a few nights when my children did not make curfew or did not call back on their cell phones. That was just hours. Mary was worried for three days!
For three days, she had no idea where he was. Sort of reminds us of the three days which come at his death. By the end of this story, Mary is calm and treasuring these things in her heart. She is a reflective person, clearly.
We move now into Jesus’ life of ministry to his first recorded miracle – water into wine. (slide) I am guessing that Mary was surprised at what her son could do. On the other hand, perhaps she thought he was capable of fixing the problem, as she reports it to him. John 2:3-5
Jane John 2:3-5 When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, "They have no wine." 4 And Jesus said to her, "Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come." 5 His mother said to the servants, "Do whatever he tells you."
Jesus gives a very typical youthful adult response to his mother. Mom, it’s not my fault. What do you want me to do? But Mary persists in her confidence and respectful behavior toward her son, telling the servants, “Listen to him and do whatever he tells you.”
This was only the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, but Mary is quickly learning she must let go of her son. When she comes to see him, he is surrounded by crowds. A message gets through to him, but he makes it clear that family is taking on new meaning as he engages his ministry. Luke 8:19-21 (slide)
Richard Luke 8:19-21 19 Then his mother and his brothers came to him, but they could not reach him because of the crowd. 20 And he was told, "Your mother and your brothers are standing outside, wanting to see you." 21 But he said to them, "My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it."
I think that would have hurt. Doesn’t he care that his own mother is waiting outside? Come on Jesus, I nursed you. I changed your diapers and this is the respect I get? But Mary did get it. She carried on with doing the word of God. This was her life – to hear and do the word of God. But she thought her son was destined for a princely life, not a ghastly death. She celebrated all his miracles and the teaching which drew crowds. She was proud of her boy.
But she also heard the grumbling of priests and scribes. She knew Jesus was in danger. Can you image how much more she worried and prayed now than she did when her 12 year old was missing. Think of Mother Mary in the courtyard with Peter, as Jesus is being questioned. Think of Mother Mary as the crowd is shouting, “Crucify him!” And she’s saying “not my boy, not my boy.” But they did anyway, and faithful Mary took herself to stand there in solidarity with him, to weep over him. John 19:25-27 (slide)
Tricia John 19:25-27 Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. 26 When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, "Woman, here is your son." 27 Then he said to the disciple, "Here is your mother." And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.
Mother’s Day and Father’s Day can be very difficult. Sometimes we forget how painful these holidays can be for people. Maybe they’ve lost a child. Maybe they have or had a terrible relationship with their own mother or father. Maybe they always wanted to be parents and it never happened for them.
I have a pastor friend who finds these two months really hard. He and his wife have an adult son, who has paranoid schizophrenia. They find it hard to talk about, because people do not know how to respond. These devoted parents have done all they know to do for fifty years to help him. But despite all their attempts at offering help, their son lives on the street. It is agonizing. It is more agonizing, when people brag about their own children on days like this. They wish they could feel proud, but instead they just feel helpless -- unable to help their son. Same way Mary must have felt when Jesus was hanging on a cross.
But mental illness and death will never get the last word. God’s redeeming power will win in the end. The life of Christ will triumph over the death that still chases us. We assume Mother Mary might have been with the women who faithfully went to the tomb on Easter morning. Hear the end Luke 23-and the beginning of Luke 24:
Chip Luke 23:55-24:5 The women who had come with him from Galilee followed, and they saw the tomb and how his body was laid. 56 Then they returned, and prepared spices and ointments…. 24:1 But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. (slide) 2 They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3 but when they went in, they did not find the body. 4 While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. 5 The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.
What an unimaginable ending to Mary’s sad story. Her son is alive, but not only that, her son’s life brings life to all people. All the glorious things that were said at his birth really came true. Jesus has risen from the dead and so new life and hope has come to Mary, and to all of us. Death has lost its sting. Where O death is your victory? Don’t you know Mary wants to see Jesus and touch him, even more than Thomas did, not to help her believe but to bring her joy.
It would seem that Mother Mary did see her son again because just after he ascends, we read that the disciples and the women, including Mother Mary, were together in Jerusalem. Hear this story from Acts 1: (slide)
Elizabeth Acts 1:13-14 13 When they had entered the city, they went to the room upstairs where they were staying, Peter, and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. 14 All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers.
Constantly devoted to prayer. Pondering these things in her heart. Treasuring these words. Going with him all the way to the cross and the grave. Mary was faithful. She was willing. She was obedient. She listened to God. She was the first disciple.
Sometimes when we read the stories of scriptures and so many of the main characters are men, we forget about the faithful women. Supreme among all the faithful was the Mother of our Lord, Mary, the God-bearer. Mary demonstrates the perfect human life. From Mary we learn to give birth to Christ in our lives, and to follow his way, even in fearful and dark times.
Blessed be the Mother of all Mothers, Holy Mary. Let us pray now, not to Mary, but with Mary, requesting her prayers for us, just as we might ask of our own Mothers in heaven or on earth:
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.
Mother’s Day – 3rd Easter
Elizabeth M. Deibert
O God, by your nurturing Spirit tell us what we need to hear, and show us what we ought to do, to follow Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
We’re doing something a little different this Sunday. Instead of following the usual lectionary readings, I decided that for Mother’s Day, we would walk through the life of Mother Mary. The only time of year when we think about Mary is on the third Sunday of Advent each year, as we anticipate the birth of Christ, and usually read the Magnificat, part of which we used as our Call to Worship today.
It is my opinion, and I believe I stand in strong company, that we Protestants over-reacted to Roman Catholicism on two points. First, we shifted from weekly communion, which had been the practice of the church for 15 hundred years. Secondly, we over-reacted to Roman Catholic devotion to Mary.
We have neglected Mary, ignored the fact that she is the supreme example of human faithfulness. Jesus, being of two natures – divine and human – is the one for whom and in whom we live, but Mary is the one to whom we can truly relate. She was fully human, as are we, yet she was so very receptive to the Word of God that she was able to give birth to God in human flesh, our Lord Jesus Christ.
(slide) So for all of us, male and female, Mary is a model of trust in God. On this Mother’s Day, as we are still in the season of Easter joy, let us ponder the life of Mary, from the time she was visited by an angel, to the birth of Jesus, to his childhood and ministry, and finally to his death, resurrection, and ascension. Let us hear these stories, not as we usually do, from the perspective of Jesus or of his disciples or of the crowd, but let’s think about Mother Mary, what she was thinking, how she was feeling, and the challenge she had to be faithful through all these experiences as Mother of God. Theotokos in Greek means God-bearer.
Hear now the Annunciation from Luke 1:28-38 (slide):
Jane Luke 1:28-38 "Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you." 29 But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. 30 The angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. …35 The angel said to her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God….38 Then Mary said, "Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word." Then the angel departed from her.
Perplexed and fearful, but Mary found favor with God, and was overtaken by Holy Spirit and gave birth to a Holy Child, the Son of God. Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Mary was receptive. Hear now the affirmation of her cousin Elizabeth, when the two unexpectedly pregnant women come together. Luke 1:39-42 (slide)
Richard Luke 1:39-42 In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, 40 where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. 41 When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit 42 and exclaimed with a loud cry, "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.
Mary’s womb bore the eternal God, in human form. She is called more spacious than the heavens for that reason. Is it possible to be the God-bearer and not to be changed by that? The birth narratives are the most familiar to us, but let us listen for clues about Mary’s life. Hear Luke 2:16-19 (slide)
Tricia Luke 2:16-19 So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. 17 When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; 18 and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. 19 But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.
She hears from shepherds that angels are announcing his birth. She treasures these words and ponders them. Would that we would do the same when we hear what the angels and the saints through generations have said about this amazing birth. If we would just take time at home, even when we are exhausted as Mary surely was, to ponder these words. If we would just stay the one extra hour for Lively Learning so we can ponder the words of scripture, then we might be more like Mary, blessed, full of faith and grace.
All good parents are protective of their young children. People who believe they have a very gifted or special children, are even more so. You can imagine the fear of Mother Mary when she and Joseph learn that Herod is killing baby boys. So they have the courage to travel by night to a foreign land, to keep their boy safe.
Matthew 2:11-14 (slide)
Chip Matthew 2:11-14 On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. 12 And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road. 13 Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, "Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him." 14 Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt.
We have but one story of Jesus childhood, in fact, he is nearly a teen when his parents lose him in the temple. Nearly every mother and father have a story of forgetting the child or losing the child. Mary and Joseph traveled for three days and did not realize their son was missing. I guess they were traveling in groups from Jerusalem, and perhaps the adolescents would walk together. But turns out Jesus was lingering with the religious experts in the temple. Luke 2:43 -51 (slide)
Elizabeth Luke 2:43-51 43 When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it… 46 After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. 47 And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. 48 When his parents saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, "Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety." 49 He said to them, "Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?" 50 But they did not understand what he said to them. 51 Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart.
Mary was upset. Well, remember they had walked three days journey and had to turn back. I remember one time Emily left her brand new favorite jacket at a rest area, and we had to drive an hour backwards in a 7 hour trip. I was not happy. I remember a few nights when my children did not make curfew or did not call back on their cell phones. That was just hours. Mary was worried for three days!
For three days, she had no idea where he was. Sort of reminds us of the three days which come at his death. By the end of this story, Mary is calm and treasuring these things in her heart. She is a reflective person, clearly.
We move now into Jesus’ life of ministry to his first recorded miracle – water into wine. (slide) I am guessing that Mary was surprised at what her son could do. On the other hand, perhaps she thought he was capable of fixing the problem, as she reports it to him. John 2:3-5
Jane John 2:3-5 When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, "They have no wine." 4 And Jesus said to her, "Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come." 5 His mother said to the servants, "Do whatever he tells you."
Jesus gives a very typical youthful adult response to his mother. Mom, it’s not my fault. What do you want me to do? But Mary persists in her confidence and respectful behavior toward her son, telling the servants, “Listen to him and do whatever he tells you.”
This was only the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, but Mary is quickly learning she must let go of her son. When she comes to see him, he is surrounded by crowds. A message gets through to him, but he makes it clear that family is taking on new meaning as he engages his ministry. Luke 8:19-21 (slide)
Richard Luke 8:19-21 19 Then his mother and his brothers came to him, but they could not reach him because of the crowd. 20 And he was told, "Your mother and your brothers are standing outside, wanting to see you." 21 But he said to them, "My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it."
I think that would have hurt. Doesn’t he care that his own mother is waiting outside? Come on Jesus, I nursed you. I changed your diapers and this is the respect I get? But Mary did get it. She carried on with doing the word of God. This was her life – to hear and do the word of God. But she thought her son was destined for a princely life, not a ghastly death. She celebrated all his miracles and the teaching which drew crowds. She was proud of her boy.
But she also heard the grumbling of priests and scribes. She knew Jesus was in danger. Can you image how much more she worried and prayed now than she did when her 12 year old was missing. Think of Mother Mary in the courtyard with Peter, as Jesus is being questioned. Think of Mother Mary as the crowd is shouting, “Crucify him!” And she’s saying “not my boy, not my boy.” But they did anyway, and faithful Mary took herself to stand there in solidarity with him, to weep over him. John 19:25-27 (slide)
Tricia John 19:25-27 Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. 26 When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, "Woman, here is your son." 27 Then he said to the disciple, "Here is your mother." And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.
Mother’s Day and Father’s Day can be very difficult. Sometimes we forget how painful these holidays can be for people. Maybe they’ve lost a child. Maybe they have or had a terrible relationship with their own mother or father. Maybe they always wanted to be parents and it never happened for them.
I have a pastor friend who finds these two months really hard. He and his wife have an adult son, who has paranoid schizophrenia. They find it hard to talk about, because people do not know how to respond. These devoted parents have done all they know to do for fifty years to help him. But despite all their attempts at offering help, their son lives on the street. It is agonizing. It is more agonizing, when people brag about their own children on days like this. They wish they could feel proud, but instead they just feel helpless -- unable to help their son. Same way Mary must have felt when Jesus was hanging on a cross.
But mental illness and death will never get the last word. God’s redeeming power will win in the end. The life of Christ will triumph over the death that still chases us. We assume Mother Mary might have been with the women who faithfully went to the tomb on Easter morning. Hear the end Luke 23-and the beginning of Luke 24:
Chip Luke 23:55-24:5 The women who had come with him from Galilee followed, and they saw the tomb and how his body was laid. 56 Then they returned, and prepared spices and ointments…. 24:1 But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. (slide) 2 They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3 but when they went in, they did not find the body. 4 While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. 5 The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.
What an unimaginable ending to Mary’s sad story. Her son is alive, but not only that, her son’s life brings life to all people. All the glorious things that were said at his birth really came true. Jesus has risen from the dead and so new life and hope has come to Mary, and to all of us. Death has lost its sting. Where O death is your victory? Don’t you know Mary wants to see Jesus and touch him, even more than Thomas did, not to help her believe but to bring her joy.
It would seem that Mother Mary did see her son again because just after he ascends, we read that the disciples and the women, including Mother Mary, were together in Jerusalem. Hear this story from Acts 1: (slide)
Elizabeth Acts 1:13-14 13 When they had entered the city, they went to the room upstairs where they were staying, Peter, and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. 14 All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers.
Constantly devoted to prayer. Pondering these things in her heart. Treasuring these words. Going with him all the way to the cross and the grave. Mary was faithful. She was willing. She was obedient. She listened to God. She was the first disciple.
Sometimes when we read the stories of scriptures and so many of the main characters are men, we forget about the faithful women. Supreme among all the faithful was the Mother of our Lord, Mary, the God-bearer. Mary demonstrates the perfect human life. From Mary we learn to give birth to Christ in our lives, and to follow his way, even in fearful and dark times.
Blessed be the Mother of all Mothers, Holy Mary. Let us pray now, not to Mary, but with Mary, requesting her prayers for us, just as we might ask of our own Mothers in heaven or on earth:
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Christ's Peace for Our Doubts
John 20:19-31
2nd Sunday of Easter
Elizabeth M. Deibert
Christ, be our peace, that we might see you, hear you, touch you, and know you as we hear your Word and as we live accordingly. Amen.
Every year on the second Sunday of Easter, we get to step back from our Easter exuberance “Alleluia! He’s risen!”, and hear the concerns of Doubting Thomas and be reassured again that Christ is indeed alive and breathing peace on us, no matter what we see or don’t see in the world around us. Christ is always bringing peace into the dark of our doubt to drive it away.
The crowds should come on the second Sunday of Easter. Especially at Peace we should love this resurrection story. Peace, Joy, Peace Doubt, Peace, Faith. Peace is everywhere. We love exchanging the peace of Christ and really meaning it, not just being friendly, but hoping with our words and our attitudes of forgiveness to change lives. So we say with all depth, “Peace be with you.” We mean it. We don’t exchange pleasantries in that moment. We share peace. Our recyclable grocery bags say it and our business cards say it. “Peace to you.” If I tried to distill the one message I have for the world into one word, it would be “peace.” If I wanted to communicate one thing Christ was bringing to all people, it would be in the Hebrew sense of the word, shalom, wholeness – Peace. If there one thing I hope my life will embody in the world – in the way I live with others – it is summarized in peace. What a great name for a church – Peace!
19When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 20After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” 22When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” 24But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. 25So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”
26A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 27Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” 28Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” 29Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” 30Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. 31But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.
Let’s talk about Jesus’ first visit with the disciples:
They were afraid. The doors were locked. Jesus came in and said, “Shalom.” This shalom is for them, to calm them, to reassure them. Then he showed them the evidence of his wounds. They rejoice in seeing him. He gives them peace again, and with it a charge. The second “shalom” is the one they and we must bear to the world. Jesus was the one sent. Now he is sending them, but first he breathes on them, the wind-breath-spirit (pneuma) is given them. We take his peace into our souls and by his Spirit we bear peace to the world. But that’s not all. Jesus then gives the power of forgiveness – a huge gift and burden. Do you know the power of forgiveness? Do you know the release you can give yourself and others by offering forgiveness, especially to those who do not deserve it. That’s what Christ offers us – that is the essence of his peace – and he says, as the Father sent me, so I send you. Give people the peace of your forgiveness.
Know Christ’s peace in the depths of your soul, so you can dig deep into that peace, when you’ve been hurt, and offer forgiveness to others. There is great peace in laying our bitterness aside. Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. To love and forgive others is possible only to the degree we have received Christ’s peace. To fully embrace Christ’s peace is a process of trusting his love to be the One thing that completes us, that fills us, that heals us. Sometimes we want to hold back parts of ourselves, not believing that God is what we most need in that deep needy part. Sometimes the deep needy part of us wants the quick feel-good. Sometimes we want to reserve a little spot for our justified anger or blame toward others. We want to reserve that spot as point of pride, thinking too highly of ourselves. We’re like a kid with a dirty scrape, not wanting it to be cleaned. What we need is for Christ’s breath to enter that spot and heal it. Then we will have more peace for others, more forgiveness.
But we like to cling to our doubts about Christ’s peace. We like to think there are some wounds he cannot heal, so we hold them back. We like to cling to our doubt because doubt or skepticism is the intellectual way these days, and we educated people value our minds. Smart people question things like Thomas did. Smart people need hard evidence. Science. Fact. Evidence. Unless I see the evidence of his wounds and touch them, I will NOT believe. Thomas is not just saying to his friends, “I wish I had seen Jesus with you. I’m having a hard time believing.” No, he was exercising his will in doubt. I will not believe. Like Jack Nicholson’s character in the movie, Bucket List when the two guys talk of faith and Jack says with a smirk, “Oh, I admire you people with faith. I just can’t get my head around it. And Morgan Freeman wryly responds, “Well, maybe your head’s in the way.”
Here are some Doubting Thomas declarations for us this week: I will not believe there is a loving God when tornadoes rip through neighborhoods killing people so randomly. I will not believe there is a loving God when tsunamis flood well-prepared cities in Japan, and leave people dangerously exposed to nuclear radiation. I will not believe there is a loving God when fourteen month old Adrian Littlejohn is dying of cancer.
But you can still believe, even when these tradegies rip your heart out. But did you see in the East County Observer Adrians daddy said? Coach Littlejohn of Lakewood Ranch said, “If the good Lord wants to take my son, He will, and if He doesn’t, then He won’t.” Reminds me of Job. Job’s final answer was beautifully sung by Peggy Losee last week “I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand on the last day.”
Of course, the best thing about this story of Doubting Thomas is that he does not continue to doubt. Jesus comes back again to the disciples, seemingly just to bring more peace – peace enough for Thomas to believe. Was it peace or evidence that made him believe? Peace be with you, Thomas. Peace to all the doubters of the world. Here – you said you need to touch and see. Okay. Do it. Don’t doubt, though, believe!
And Thomas’ stubborn agnosticism falls away. The peace of Christ overwhelms him and heals him, and he utters a most profound statement of faith: My Lord and My God.
But was it the evidence or the peace that changed him, I ask you? And just when all the doubters are saying, “Well, Thomas got the evidence, so of course, he began to believe,” Jesus challenges us by saying that believing without seeing is the better place to be. Blind faith? Is this a call to blind faith? Is there more peace in a faith that trusts enough, even in the dark of not knowing.
What evidence do we have that someone who dies is not gone forever? What evidence do we have that we will be reunited one day? No hard and fast evidence – the kind the world likes. But we are blessed, ever more blessed to believe in the Resurrection of the body and the life everlasting with no evidence but the witness of scripture, the church through the generations, and our faith.
Jesus is understanding of Thomas, but not willing to leave Thomas where he is. He charges him to believe. I think believing is an act of our will, more than an ascent of the heart or mind. I think believing often comes in response to an experience of the peace Christ is constantly offering.
I think that every time you walk into this worship service, Christ is here too, pouring out peace in your soul, and hoping you will take notice and exercise your will in believing. Sometimes the doors are locked to your heart, but he comes in anyway.
Sometimes you are not present with your fellow followers of Christ and we have a profound experience of peace which you miss, but he will come again. Indeed he is with you always. And his message always is “Peace be with you. Do not doubt but believe.” And once you are rejoicing in faith, his message is “Peace. Receive the Holy Spirit. As my Father sent me, so I send you.” So let us be at peace, forgive, believe, and share the peace we have been so graciously given.
Our Lord and our God, we thank you for this peace which now floods our souls. We believe your love is healing every doubting dark corner of our hearts. Renew us in your love, that we might forgive, believe, and share your peace with this hurting world.
2nd Sunday of Easter
Elizabeth M. Deibert
Christ, be our peace, that we might see you, hear you, touch you, and know you as we hear your Word and as we live accordingly. Amen.
Every year on the second Sunday of Easter, we get to step back from our Easter exuberance “Alleluia! He’s risen!”, and hear the concerns of Doubting Thomas and be reassured again that Christ is indeed alive and breathing peace on us, no matter what we see or don’t see in the world around us. Christ is always bringing peace into the dark of our doubt to drive it away.
The crowds should come on the second Sunday of Easter. Especially at Peace we should love this resurrection story. Peace, Joy, Peace Doubt, Peace, Faith. Peace is everywhere. We love exchanging the peace of Christ and really meaning it, not just being friendly, but hoping with our words and our attitudes of forgiveness to change lives. So we say with all depth, “Peace be with you.” We mean it. We don’t exchange pleasantries in that moment. We share peace. Our recyclable grocery bags say it and our business cards say it. “Peace to you.” If I tried to distill the one message I have for the world into one word, it would be “peace.” If I wanted to communicate one thing Christ was bringing to all people, it would be in the Hebrew sense of the word, shalom, wholeness – Peace. If there one thing I hope my life will embody in the world – in the way I live with others – it is summarized in peace. What a great name for a church – Peace!
I invite you now on this Holocaust Remembrance Day, at the end of a week full of the worst string of tornadoes in US history, in a year of total upheaval in the Middle East and natural disaster horrors in Japan, to hear again Christ coming in the door to offer peace.
John 20:19-31 (NRSV)
John 20:19-31 (NRSV)
19When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 20After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” 22When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” 24But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. 25So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”
26A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 27Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” 28Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” 29Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” 30Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. 31But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.
Let’s talk about Jesus’ first visit with the disciples:
They were afraid. The doors were locked. Jesus came in and said, “Shalom.” This shalom is for them, to calm them, to reassure them. Then he showed them the evidence of his wounds. They rejoice in seeing him. He gives them peace again, and with it a charge. The second “shalom” is the one they and we must bear to the world. Jesus was the one sent. Now he is sending them, but first he breathes on them, the wind-breath-spirit (pneuma) is given them. We take his peace into our souls and by his Spirit we bear peace to the world. But that’s not all. Jesus then gives the power of forgiveness – a huge gift and burden. Do you know the power of forgiveness? Do you know the release you can give yourself and others by offering forgiveness, especially to those who do not deserve it. That’s what Christ offers us – that is the essence of his peace – and he says, as the Father sent me, so I send you. Give people the peace of your forgiveness.
Know Christ’s peace in the depths of your soul, so you can dig deep into that peace, when you’ve been hurt, and offer forgiveness to others. There is great peace in laying our bitterness aside. Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. To love and forgive others is possible only to the degree we have received Christ’s peace. To fully embrace Christ’s peace is a process of trusting his love to be the One thing that completes us, that fills us, that heals us. Sometimes we want to hold back parts of ourselves, not believing that God is what we most need in that deep needy part. Sometimes the deep needy part of us wants the quick feel-good. Sometimes we want to reserve a little spot for our justified anger or blame toward others. We want to reserve that spot as point of pride, thinking too highly of ourselves. We’re like a kid with a dirty scrape, not wanting it to be cleaned. What we need is for Christ’s breath to enter that spot and heal it. Then we will have more peace for others, more forgiveness.
But we like to cling to our doubts about Christ’s peace. We like to think there are some wounds he cannot heal, so we hold them back. We like to cling to our doubt because doubt or skepticism is the intellectual way these days, and we educated people value our minds. Smart people question things like Thomas did. Smart people need hard evidence. Science. Fact. Evidence. Unless I see the evidence of his wounds and touch them, I will NOT believe. Thomas is not just saying to his friends, “I wish I had seen Jesus with you. I’m having a hard time believing.” No, he was exercising his will in doubt. I will not believe. Like Jack Nicholson’s character in the movie, Bucket List when the two guys talk of faith and Jack says with a smirk, “Oh, I admire you people with faith. I just can’t get my head around it. And Morgan Freeman wryly responds, “Well, maybe your head’s in the way.”
Here are some Doubting Thomas declarations for us this week: I will not believe there is a loving God when tornadoes rip through neighborhoods killing people so randomly. I will not believe there is a loving God when tsunamis flood well-prepared cities in Japan, and leave people dangerously exposed to nuclear radiation. I will not believe there is a loving God when fourteen month old Adrian Littlejohn is dying of cancer.
But you can still believe, even when these tradegies rip your heart out. But did you see in the East County Observer Adrians daddy said? Coach Littlejohn of Lakewood Ranch said, “If the good Lord wants to take my son, He will, and if He doesn’t, then He won’t.” Reminds me of Job. Job’s final answer was beautifully sung by Peggy Losee last week “I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand on the last day.”
Of course, the best thing about this story of Doubting Thomas is that he does not continue to doubt. Jesus comes back again to the disciples, seemingly just to bring more peace – peace enough for Thomas to believe. Was it peace or evidence that made him believe? Peace be with you, Thomas. Peace to all the doubters of the world. Here – you said you need to touch and see. Okay. Do it. Don’t doubt, though, believe!
And Thomas’ stubborn agnosticism falls away. The peace of Christ overwhelms him and heals him, and he utters a most profound statement of faith: My Lord and My God.
But was it the evidence or the peace that changed him, I ask you? And just when all the doubters are saying, “Well, Thomas got the evidence, so of course, he began to believe,” Jesus challenges us by saying that believing without seeing is the better place to be. Blind faith? Is this a call to blind faith? Is there more peace in a faith that trusts enough, even in the dark of not knowing.
What evidence do we have that someone who dies is not gone forever? What evidence do we have that we will be reunited one day? No hard and fast evidence – the kind the world likes. But we are blessed, ever more blessed to believe in the Resurrection of the body and the life everlasting with no evidence but the witness of scripture, the church through the generations, and our faith.
Jesus is understanding of Thomas, but not willing to leave Thomas where he is. He charges him to believe. I think believing is an act of our will, more than an ascent of the heart or mind. I think believing often comes in response to an experience of the peace Christ is constantly offering.
I think that every time you walk into this worship service, Christ is here too, pouring out peace in your soul, and hoping you will take notice and exercise your will in believing. Sometimes the doors are locked to your heart, but he comes in anyway.
Sometimes you are not present with your fellow followers of Christ and we have a profound experience of peace which you miss, but he will come again. Indeed he is with you always. And his message always is “Peace be with you. Do not doubt but believe.” And once you are rejoicing in faith, his message is “Peace. Receive the Holy Spirit. As my Father sent me, so I send you.” So let us be at peace, forgive, believe, and share the peace we have been so graciously given.
Our Lord and our God, we thank you for this peace which now floods our souls. We believe your love is healing every doubting dark corner of our hearts. Renew us in your love, that we might forgive, believe, and share your peace with this hurting world.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Look Again!
John 20:1-18
Easter Sunday
Elizabeth M. Deibert
Let us pray: O risen Christ, open us to the power of your resurrection as we hear it proclaimed again this day, that we too might rise to new life in you. Amen.
Peter and the Beloved Disciple go running to the tomb. It’s a foot-race, I think. They’ve just heard from Mary, who loved Jesus so much she went in her despair to care for his body while it was still dark. Imagine the dismay of Jesus’ closest followers. Their whole world has been rocked. Their Lord is dead, and now it looks like his body has been stolen. After this troubling news, they need to go with Mary and look again. Surely she missed something.
Maybe we’ve missed something too. We have looked at this story before, many of us. But have we seen what we need to see? Let’s go look again.
NRS John 20:1-18 Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. 2 So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him." 3 Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. 4 The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5 He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. 6 Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, 7 and the cloth that had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. 8 Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; 9 for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. 10 Then the disciples returned to their homes. 11 But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; 12 and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. 13 They said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping?" She said to them, "They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him." 14 When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. 15 Jesus said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?" Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away." 16 Jesus said to her, "Mary!" She turned and said to him in Hebrew, "Rabbouni!" (which means Teacher). 17 Jesus said to her, "Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, 'I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'" 18 Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, "I have seen the Lord"; and she told them that he had said these things to her.
According to John’s Gospel, Mary Magdalene came first to the tomb, alone in the darkness. When she saw the stone rolled away, she ran to tell the disciples. Peter and the beloved disciple, presumably John, come running. The anxiety and raw emotion of this moment is clear. They are operating on a faulty but natural assumption – someone has taken his body. Now remember what a miserably dark couple of days they have had with Jesus dead. What can they see but despair? What can they see but dead ends to their vision of Messiah? What can they see but many reasons to fear their own death, now that Jesus, accused of treason, is gone. They are still in shock that he is actually gone. They are angry, confused, disappointed, scared, sad -- the same emotions we experience in times of loss and grief.
But now look again! The tomb is empty. The beloved disciple looks once but doesn’t go in. Peter went in. He sees the linens from Jesus’s body left there. John needs to look again. When he does, he believes. Is it not the same for us? we need to look twice.
“It is interesting to note that the beloved disciple does see and believe something about who Jesus is, but Peter, standing in the same empty tomb, has no such moment of belief. Why the difference? Could it be that “the disciple whom Jesus loved” sees something different in the empty tomb as a result of Jesus’ love for him? If that is his primary defining characteristic, then might we conclude that not only the empty tomb, but all things and all people, are perceived differently if viewed through the lens of Christ’s love? This is certainly a notion worth reflecting on in light of this text!” (Lee Koontz, Reflectious.com)
The disciples leave but Mary stays. She is weeping still, and decides to look again. One commentator said, “Those who seek with affection and with tears are most likely to see Christ.” (Matthew Henry)
Hear the poem by St. Anselm on Mary Magdalene:
Saint Mary Magdalene,
You came with springing tears
To the spring of mercy, Christ...
How can I find words to tell
About the burning love with which you sought Him
Weeping at the sepulcher
And wept for Him in your seeking?...
For the sweetness of love He shows Himself
Who would not for the bitterness of tears.
-- St. Anselm
Mary’s looking again allows her to see more of what’s going on with this empty tomb. This third look, she sees angels. They ask her why she is weeping. She tells them that someone has taken Jesus and she doesn’t know where they have put him.
At that moment she sees Jesus but thinks he’s the gardener. An old preacher once said, “Those that seek Christ, though they do not see him, may yet be sure he is not far from them.” (M. Henry) Interesting to think that Christ could just that near to us, even sitting beside us and we don’t realize who it is right there – right in front of us. Sometimes I lose my keys or my coffee mug or my cellphone, and it is sitting in a very obvious place but I cannot see it. Sometimes I have to leave the room, re-enter and look again. Sometimes I need another person to look with me. Sometimes our eyes cannot see the spiritual world behind the material world, but God is constantly using the material world to demonstrate to us who God is and how much God loves us. (Nikolai Velimirovich, The Universe as Symbols and Signs) We need the encouragement of one another in the church to see as we need to see.
You know that commercial where there are smiley faces in everything, in every piece of architecture, every item of food, everywhere? You do not naturally see that smiley, unless you are looking for it.
Mary does not recognize Jesus, but he responds to her grief with questions to confirm her desire to see him. He gives her an opportunity to express herself. “Why are you weeping? Whom do you seek?” We need to put words to our tears and express our desires. But Mary is still presuming him to be the gardener and so she almost accuses him of taking the body away, which is funny if you think about it.
It is at that moment that Jesus calls her by name, “Mary.” And with that, she looks again at the man she thinks is the gardener. It is Jesus! Looking again, she now sees. And because Jesus is alive again, he can indwell all of creation, including all people. Look again at the person who frustrates you and see Jesus. Look again at the person, getting paid to the yard work in your neighborhood. Look again at all people, and see Jesus. See Jesus’s smiling expression of love everywhere you turn.
Look again. Jesus is calling your name, inviting you to see more than the obvious. Don’t dash off unimpressed after an initial impression, as the disciples did, but linger like Mary.
Keeping searching for the living Christ in all of your life, in all of the people around you, and especially in worship as we hear the Word and experience the Sacrament. Don’t stop looking. Mary saw the Lord because she persisted in looking. Those who truly seek Christ, even through their tears, will never be disappointed.
Do you see only an empty tomb? Look again and you might see linens left by Christ – secondary material evidence. Do you see only the wrappings of Christian faith, look again, and maybe you’ll have a mystical experience of angels. Do you only see angels, look again. There may be a gardener, tilling the soil around you, a gardener who is more than a gardener. Look again with your ears and you may see the Flesh becoming Word, just as the Word became flesh. You may hear Jesus, asking you about your grief, allowing you to express your raw emotion, your loneliness and fear. Look again. He is here, but he is will not let you hold too tightly.
He tells Mary not to cling. As much as he is alive and real and present to us, Christ is still elusive, and not to be controlled by us. We are allowed to see only as much as we need to believe and bear witness to the truth of his existence.
Look again at the Easter story. Look again at your life, especially the people and the angels around you. Look with others who love Jesus, search together as long as you can. Find hope in the evidence of his resurrection. Then turn and look again at Jesus and really listen to him. He’s calling your name. If you will just linger long enough and keep looking, you will hear him, calling your name.
Let us pray: O God, Open our eyes anew to the Easter life you give us. May we continue to see more of you, Christ Jesus, than we’ve ever seen before, that our hearts would be filled with gratitude for your triumph over sin and death. Liberate us by your Word and Holy Spirit, to be your joyful and loving servants, we pray. Amen.
Easter Sunday
Elizabeth M. Deibert
Let us pray: O risen Christ, open us to the power of your resurrection as we hear it proclaimed again this day, that we too might rise to new life in you. Amen.
Peter and the Beloved Disciple go running to the tomb. It’s a foot-race, I think. They’ve just heard from Mary, who loved Jesus so much she went in her despair to care for his body while it was still dark. Imagine the dismay of Jesus’ closest followers. Their whole world has been rocked. Their Lord is dead, and now it looks like his body has been stolen. After this troubling news, they need to go with Mary and look again. Surely she missed something.
Maybe we’ve missed something too. We have looked at this story before, many of us. But have we seen what we need to see? Let’s go look again.
NRS John 20:1-18 Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. 2 So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him." 3 Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. 4 The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5 He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. 6 Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, 7 and the cloth that had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. 8 Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; 9 for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. 10 Then the disciples returned to their homes. 11 But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; 12 and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. 13 They said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping?" She said to them, "They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him." 14 When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. 15 Jesus said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?" Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away." 16 Jesus said to her, "Mary!" She turned and said to him in Hebrew, "Rabbouni!" (which means Teacher). 17 Jesus said to her, "Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, 'I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'" 18 Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, "I have seen the Lord"; and she told them that he had said these things to her.
According to John’s Gospel, Mary Magdalene came first to the tomb, alone in the darkness. When she saw the stone rolled away, she ran to tell the disciples. Peter and the beloved disciple, presumably John, come running. The anxiety and raw emotion of this moment is clear. They are operating on a faulty but natural assumption – someone has taken his body. Now remember what a miserably dark couple of days they have had with Jesus dead. What can they see but despair? What can they see but dead ends to their vision of Messiah? What can they see but many reasons to fear their own death, now that Jesus, accused of treason, is gone. They are still in shock that he is actually gone. They are angry, confused, disappointed, scared, sad -- the same emotions we experience in times of loss and grief.
But now look again! The tomb is empty. The beloved disciple looks once but doesn’t go in. Peter went in. He sees the linens from Jesus’s body left there. John needs to look again. When he does, he believes. Is it not the same for us? we need to look twice.
“It is interesting to note that the beloved disciple does see and believe something about who Jesus is, but Peter, standing in the same empty tomb, has no such moment of belief. Why the difference? Could it be that “the disciple whom Jesus loved” sees something different in the empty tomb as a result of Jesus’ love for him? If that is his primary defining characteristic, then might we conclude that not only the empty tomb, but all things and all people, are perceived differently if viewed through the lens of Christ’s love? This is certainly a notion worth reflecting on in light of this text!” (Lee Koontz, Reflectious.com)
The disciples leave but Mary stays. She is weeping still, and decides to look again. One commentator said, “Those who seek with affection and with tears are most likely to see Christ.” (Matthew Henry)
Hear the poem by St. Anselm on Mary Magdalene:
Saint Mary Magdalene,
You came with springing tears
To the spring of mercy, Christ...
How can I find words to tell
About the burning love with which you sought Him
Weeping at the sepulcher
And wept for Him in your seeking?...
For the sweetness of love He shows Himself
Who would not for the bitterness of tears.
-- St. Anselm
Mary’s looking again allows her to see more of what’s going on with this empty tomb. This third look, she sees angels. They ask her why she is weeping. She tells them that someone has taken Jesus and she doesn’t know where they have put him.
At that moment she sees Jesus but thinks he’s the gardener. An old preacher once said, “Those that seek Christ, though they do not see him, may yet be sure he is not far from them.” (M. Henry) Interesting to think that Christ could just that near to us, even sitting beside us and we don’t realize who it is right there – right in front of us. Sometimes I lose my keys or my coffee mug or my cellphone, and it is sitting in a very obvious place but I cannot see it. Sometimes I have to leave the room, re-enter and look again. Sometimes I need another person to look with me. Sometimes our eyes cannot see the spiritual world behind the material world, but God is constantly using the material world to demonstrate to us who God is and how much God loves us. (Nikolai Velimirovich, The Universe as Symbols and Signs) We need the encouragement of one another in the church to see as we need to see.
You know that commercial where there are smiley faces in everything, in every piece of architecture, every item of food, everywhere? You do not naturally see that smiley, unless you are looking for it.
Mary does not recognize Jesus, but he responds to her grief with questions to confirm her desire to see him. He gives her an opportunity to express herself. “Why are you weeping? Whom do you seek?” We need to put words to our tears and express our desires. But Mary is still presuming him to be the gardener and so she almost accuses him of taking the body away, which is funny if you think about it.
It is at that moment that Jesus calls her by name, “Mary.” And with that, she looks again at the man she thinks is the gardener. It is Jesus! Looking again, she now sees. And because Jesus is alive again, he can indwell all of creation, including all people. Look again at the person who frustrates you and see Jesus. Look again at the person, getting paid to the yard work in your neighborhood. Look again at all people, and see Jesus. See Jesus’s smiling expression of love everywhere you turn.
Look again. Jesus is calling your name, inviting you to see more than the obvious. Don’t dash off unimpressed after an initial impression, as the disciples did, but linger like Mary.
Keeping searching for the living Christ in all of your life, in all of the people around you, and especially in worship as we hear the Word and experience the Sacrament. Don’t stop looking. Mary saw the Lord because she persisted in looking. Those who truly seek Christ, even through their tears, will never be disappointed.
Do you see only an empty tomb? Look again and you might see linens left by Christ – secondary material evidence. Do you see only the wrappings of Christian faith, look again, and maybe you’ll have a mystical experience of angels. Do you only see angels, look again. There may be a gardener, tilling the soil around you, a gardener who is more than a gardener. Look again with your ears and you may see the Flesh becoming Word, just as the Word became flesh. You may hear Jesus, asking you about your grief, allowing you to express your raw emotion, your loneliness and fear. Look again. He is here, but he is will not let you hold too tightly.
He tells Mary not to cling. As much as he is alive and real and present to us, Christ is still elusive, and not to be controlled by us. We are allowed to see only as much as we need to believe and bear witness to the truth of his existence.
Look again at the Easter story. Look again at your life, especially the people and the angels around you. Look with others who love Jesus, search together as long as you can. Find hope in the evidence of his resurrection. Then turn and look again at Jesus and really listen to him. He’s calling your name. If you will just linger long enough and keep looking, you will hear him, calling your name.
Let us pray: O God, Open our eyes anew to the Easter life you give us. May we continue to see more of you, Christ Jesus, than we’ve ever seen before, that our hearts would be filled with gratitude for your triumph over sin and death. Liberate us by your Word and Holy Spirit, to be your joyful and loving servants, we pray. Amen.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
The Last Week
Matthew 21:1-17
Palm Sunday
Elizabeth M. Deibert
Holy God, pour out upon us the spirit of wisdom and understanding that, being taught by you in Holy Scripture, our hearts and minds may be opened to know the things that lead to life, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
What if this was your last week of life? Do you ever stop to think about that? Probably not unless you have a terminal illness. Most of us live as if death does not exist, and when it comes to someone we love, we don’t just grieve, we feel cheated, as if this were not a natural thing – life and death. We don’t even like to spend much time thinking of Jesus’ death, though through it, we are saved.
Jesus, being the perfect union of divine and human came into Jerusalem with some measure of knowledge that he was approaching death. Perhaps he did not know exactly how and when he would die, but there is a sense in which he drives the narrative, not the powers and authorities and certainly not the disciples.
In Jesus’ last week, he experiences what we experience in suffering and death. People rallied around him, treating him royally, embracing him. Then when things got really tough, he was largely alone. They intended to go with him all the way to death. They really did. Peter pledged he would. But they could not, would not. It got too scary, as it does for most of us, trying to care for the dying.
I’ve been reading a book given me by Gretchen, “The Art of Dying” by Rob Moll. He says our modern culture has grown increasingly uncomfortable with death, as we moved it to institutions. People died at home, including many children before the development of antibiotics about 75 years ago. Dead bodies were prayed over in overnight wakes in homes, in preparation for funerals. The grieving were expected to wear black for a significant length of time, before the community gave them permission and encouragement to get back to normal, to reintegrate into life again.
The church taught the practice of dying the good death. Christians related their death to faith in Jesus Christ, and found comfort in knowing he suffered and died, and was raised from the dead. They could readily call on Biblical images to reassure themselves of God’s power over death.
Listen to this newspaper obituary from 1817, “She died in the full assurance of faith. The candle of the Lord shone upon her head. Death had lost its sting. She walked over the waters of Jordan…shouting the praises of redeeming love.”
Before we read the story of Jesus’ final entry into Jerusalem, his welcome by the crowds and his confrontation in the temple, let me challenge you to go all the way to the cross with Jesus this week. Don’t deny him, betray him, abandon him this week. Suffer with him. You know the end of the story. Walk it with him.
Now let us both hear and participate in the Palm Sunday story from Matthew:
Matthew 21:1-17
1 When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives,
Jesus sent two disciples, 2 saying to them,
"Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied,
and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me.
3 If anyone says anything to you, just say this, "The Lord needs them.'
And he will send them immediately."
4 This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet, saying,
5 "Tell the daughter of Zion, Look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey."
6 The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them,
7 they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them.
8 A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road,
and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road.
9 The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting,
"Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!"
10 When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, "Who is this?"
11 The crowds were saying, "This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee."
12 Then Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple,
and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves.
13 He said to them, "It is written, "My house shall be called a house of prayer';
but you are making it a den of robbers."
14 The blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he cured them.
15 But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the amazing things that he did, and heard the children crying out in the temple, "Hosanna to the Son of David,"
they became angry 16 and said to him, "Do you hear what these are saying?"
Jesus said to them, "Yes; have you never read,
"Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise for yourself'?"
17 He left them, went out of the city to Bethany, and spent the night there.
New Revised Standard Version
Around the world there will be many different Palm Sunday sermons preached on many different aspects of this story, but I want us to focus on just two today:
First, let’s think about the primary plea of the people “Hosanna!” It means save us. It is a Hebrew word, used 209 times in the Old Testament – save or deliver us. Funny enough, most of us hear it Hosanna to the Son of David and it feels like praise, which it is. But we mistake it for being synonymous with another Hebrew word, Hallelujah (which parsed means literally, Praise We God) but Hosanna is really a plea, a prayer, more than it is praise.
In the last weeks of my father’s life, he was in the hospital , suffering from TIAs and heart trouble, after surviving a serious cancer diagnosis for several years. My mom and I would take turns sleeping in the recliner in his hospital room, and all night he would call out, “Help me.” Usually, he said, “Help me, Peggy.” When he got to the end, “He was calling to the Lord, “Help me, Lord.” There was nothing we could do.
Hosanna means “Help us.” There is an urgency to this request, “Save us now!” There is a prayer-like quality of humility, “We beg you to help.” There is also confidence in the prayer, as if to say, “We know you are our Savior” Hosanna occurs 6 times in the New Testament, all associated with Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem.
What was so offensive to the scribes and Pharisees is that the human cry for divine help was being addressed to this man, whom they considered to be a scofflaw. He was breaking all their religious rules , ignoring their authority. Second, let’s think about the primary plea of Jesus to those in the temple, “My house shall be called a house of prayer.” My friends called Peace, whatever we do as a church, we should be doing by, in, with and through prayer. We should have the same dependency on our Savior as we see in that faithful crowd, who though they may have misunderstood the kind of kingdom Jesus was bringing, still knew that he was the One to whom they should depend.
And the ones who got it wrong were the ones who thought they knew how to please God, how to be religious, how to save themselves without listening to God, Jesus Christ, in their midst. The humble people who knew they needed help were the ones who appreciated Jesus. The self-confident leaders of the people found him a challenge to their system.
Jesus wanted his house to be a house of prayer. So we spend time in prayer (Word-Share-Prayer) in every gathering of Ministry Team, lest we become like the Pharisees and scribes, thinking we have all the answers. We spend time in prayer as a staff, lest we move forward with religious matters, failing to consult Christ, the Head of the Church. We spend time in prayer in worship and at home, because prayer is at the heart of remembering that God is the creator and we are the creature.
Prayer, understood as intimacy with our Savior, is the goal of our life. Why else should we have to suffer, but that it gives us opportunity to turn toward what we need most – prayer, dependency on God. So we utter “Hosanna. Help us, we pray.” My sister is nearly two weeks out from her difficult Crohn’s Disease surgery. Having lived with pain and nausea for a long time, she reflected on prayer. Why should God want us to pray for one another? God knows what we need. Her answer is this: God wants us to learn to depend on one another, even as we depend on God for our comfort, healing, strength or renewal.
Eugene Peterson says, Prayer is suffering’s best result. “In prayer, God’s anger is neither sentimentally glossed nor cynically debunked, but seized as a lever to pry open the door of redemption. The sufferer, by praying, does not ask God to think well of him or her, but asks that God will enact redemption, building in them “fruits consistent with repentance” through Jesus Christ who suffered and died for all. (Acts 26:20)
Back to the book, “The Art of Dying”…one of the things we see, if we give ourselves a chance, is that the dying have much to teach us about God. Because they themselves are closer to God in their suffering. Many people describe an experience of the thin place, the place where heaven and earth draw close together, when they sit with someone dying. Is it not somewhat ironic that the crowds are crying, “Save us” to the one who is close to death? They had seen his love, his miracles, his power. They did not know he was dying, but they saw in him the potential for new life, though they knew not how it would come. We read the story knowing he’s dying and knowing that in his dying there is new life.
Today we sing Hosanna, “Help us, Savior.” Next week we sing Hallelujah, “Praise Ye the Lord.” And in between, we remain have courage in our own suffering and share in the suffering and even death of others, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us. Life is prayer, and prayer is a dependency on God that says both Hosanna and Hallelujah.
Help us, our Savior to sing your praise, to know you are the Lord, even when we and others suffer. Remind us in this Holy Week of the courage and steady resolve you had in taking on our death and transforming it. By your Holy Spirit at work in us, may every week of ours be like the last week.. May we find the strength and faith to cry hosannas and sing hallelujah, no matter what kind of suffering or death we face. Amen.
Palm Sunday
Elizabeth M. Deibert
Holy God, pour out upon us the spirit of wisdom and understanding that, being taught by you in Holy Scripture, our hearts and minds may be opened to know the things that lead to life, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
What if this was your last week of life? Do you ever stop to think about that? Probably not unless you have a terminal illness. Most of us live as if death does not exist, and when it comes to someone we love, we don’t just grieve, we feel cheated, as if this were not a natural thing – life and death. We don’t even like to spend much time thinking of Jesus’ death, though through it, we are saved.
Jesus, being the perfect union of divine and human came into Jerusalem with some measure of knowledge that he was approaching death. Perhaps he did not know exactly how and when he would die, but there is a sense in which he drives the narrative, not the powers and authorities and certainly not the disciples.
In Jesus’ last week, he experiences what we experience in suffering and death. People rallied around him, treating him royally, embracing him. Then when things got really tough, he was largely alone. They intended to go with him all the way to death. They really did. Peter pledged he would. But they could not, would not. It got too scary, as it does for most of us, trying to care for the dying.
I’ve been reading a book given me by Gretchen, “The Art of Dying” by Rob Moll. He says our modern culture has grown increasingly uncomfortable with death, as we moved it to institutions. People died at home, including many children before the development of antibiotics about 75 years ago. Dead bodies were prayed over in overnight wakes in homes, in preparation for funerals. The grieving were expected to wear black for a significant length of time, before the community gave them permission and encouragement to get back to normal, to reintegrate into life again.
The church taught the practice of dying the good death. Christians related their death to faith in Jesus Christ, and found comfort in knowing he suffered and died, and was raised from the dead. They could readily call on Biblical images to reassure themselves of God’s power over death.
Listen to this newspaper obituary from 1817, “She died in the full assurance of faith. The candle of the Lord shone upon her head. Death had lost its sting. She walked over the waters of Jordan…shouting the praises of redeeming love.”
Before we read the story of Jesus’ final entry into Jerusalem, his welcome by the crowds and his confrontation in the temple, let me challenge you to go all the way to the cross with Jesus this week. Don’t deny him, betray him, abandon him this week. Suffer with him. You know the end of the story. Walk it with him.
Now let us both hear and participate in the Palm Sunday story from Matthew:
Matthew 21:1-17
1 When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives,
Jesus sent two disciples, 2 saying to them,
"Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied,
and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me.
3 If anyone says anything to you, just say this, "The Lord needs them.'
And he will send them immediately."
4 This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet, saying,
5 "Tell the daughter of Zion, Look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey."
6 The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them,
7 they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them.
8 A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road,
and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road.
9 The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting,
"Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!"
10 When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, "Who is this?"
11 The crowds were saying, "This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee."
12 Then Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple,
and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves.
13 He said to them, "It is written, "My house shall be called a house of prayer';
but you are making it a den of robbers."
14 The blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he cured them.
15 But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the amazing things that he did, and heard the children crying out in the temple, "Hosanna to the Son of David,"
they became angry 16 and said to him, "Do you hear what these are saying?"
Jesus said to them, "Yes; have you never read,
"Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise for yourself'?"
17 He left them, went out of the city to Bethany, and spent the night there.
New Revised Standard Version
Around the world there will be many different Palm Sunday sermons preached on many different aspects of this story, but I want us to focus on just two today:
First, let’s think about the primary plea of the people “Hosanna!” It means save us. It is a Hebrew word, used 209 times in the Old Testament – save or deliver us. Funny enough, most of us hear it Hosanna to the Son of David and it feels like praise, which it is. But we mistake it for being synonymous with another Hebrew word, Hallelujah (which parsed means literally, Praise We God) but Hosanna is really a plea, a prayer, more than it is praise.
In the last weeks of my father’s life, he was in the hospital , suffering from TIAs and heart trouble, after surviving a serious cancer diagnosis for several years. My mom and I would take turns sleeping in the recliner in his hospital room, and all night he would call out, “Help me.” Usually, he said, “Help me, Peggy.” When he got to the end, “He was calling to the Lord, “Help me, Lord.” There was nothing we could do.
Hosanna means “Help us.” There is an urgency to this request, “Save us now!” There is a prayer-like quality of humility, “We beg you to help.” There is also confidence in the prayer, as if to say, “We know you are our Savior” Hosanna occurs 6 times in the New Testament, all associated with Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem.
What was so offensive to the scribes and Pharisees is that the human cry for divine help was being addressed to this man, whom they considered to be a scofflaw. He was breaking all their religious rules , ignoring their authority. Second, let’s think about the primary plea of Jesus to those in the temple, “My house shall be called a house of prayer.” My friends called Peace, whatever we do as a church, we should be doing by, in, with and through prayer. We should have the same dependency on our Savior as we see in that faithful crowd, who though they may have misunderstood the kind of kingdom Jesus was bringing, still knew that he was the One to whom they should depend.
And the ones who got it wrong were the ones who thought they knew how to please God, how to be religious, how to save themselves without listening to God, Jesus Christ, in their midst. The humble people who knew they needed help were the ones who appreciated Jesus. The self-confident leaders of the people found him a challenge to their system.
Jesus wanted his house to be a house of prayer. So we spend time in prayer (Word-Share-Prayer) in every gathering of Ministry Team, lest we become like the Pharisees and scribes, thinking we have all the answers. We spend time in prayer as a staff, lest we move forward with religious matters, failing to consult Christ, the Head of the Church. We spend time in prayer in worship and at home, because prayer is at the heart of remembering that God is the creator and we are the creature.
Prayer, understood as intimacy with our Savior, is the goal of our life. Why else should we have to suffer, but that it gives us opportunity to turn toward what we need most – prayer, dependency on God. So we utter “Hosanna. Help us, we pray.” My sister is nearly two weeks out from her difficult Crohn’s Disease surgery. Having lived with pain and nausea for a long time, she reflected on prayer. Why should God want us to pray for one another? God knows what we need. Her answer is this: God wants us to learn to depend on one another, even as we depend on God for our comfort, healing, strength or renewal.
Eugene Peterson says, Prayer is suffering’s best result. “In prayer, God’s anger is neither sentimentally glossed nor cynically debunked, but seized as a lever to pry open the door of redemption. The sufferer, by praying, does not ask God to think well of him or her, but asks that God will enact redemption, building in them “fruits consistent with repentance” through Jesus Christ who suffered and died for all. (Acts 26:20)
Back to the book, “The Art of Dying”…one of the things we see, if we give ourselves a chance, is that the dying have much to teach us about God. Because they themselves are closer to God in their suffering. Many people describe an experience of the thin place, the place where heaven and earth draw close together, when they sit with someone dying. Is it not somewhat ironic that the crowds are crying, “Save us” to the one who is close to death? They had seen his love, his miracles, his power. They did not know he was dying, but they saw in him the potential for new life, though they knew not how it would come. We read the story knowing he’s dying and knowing that in his dying there is new life.
Today we sing Hosanna, “Help us, Savior.” Next week we sing Hallelujah, “Praise Ye the Lord.” And in between, we remain have courage in our own suffering and share in the suffering and even death of others, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us. Life is prayer, and prayer is a dependency on God that says both Hosanna and Hallelujah.
Help us, our Savior to sing your praise, to know you are the Lord, even when we and others suffer. Remind us in this Holy Week of the courage and steady resolve you had in taking on our death and transforming it. By your Holy Spirit at work in us, may every week of ours be like the last week.. May we find the strength and faith to cry hosannas and sing hallelujah, no matter what kind of suffering or death we face. Amen.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Are We Blind or Can We See?
Are We Blind or Can We See?
John 9:1-41
4th Sunday of Lent
Elizabeth M. Deibert
Kids: How far can you spit? What else can you do with your spit? Don’t do it here, please. You know what Jesus could do with his spit? He could make blind people see. And then the people who know they can see, try to figure it out, and discover that maybe they don’t know as much as they thought. Really Jesus wants us to not just see with our eyes but with our hearts. You know how you can see with your eyes somebody sad, but not pay attention? Other times you might look at them more carefully and see with the eyes of your heart. Jesus opened the eyes of his heart to the blind beggar and healed him.
Give me, O my Lord, that purity of conscience which alone can receive your inspirations. My ears are dull, so that I cannot hear your voice. My eyes are dim, so that I cannot see the signs of your presence. You alone can quicken my hearing and purge my sight, and cleanse and renew my heart. Teach me to sit at your feet and to hear your word. Amen.
Our scripture reading today will be read by a various people, so as to make these 41 verses come alive. Hear the story of Jesus, the Blind Man, and the Pharisees. Ask yourselves, who is blind?
John 9:1-411
As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" 3 Jesus answered, "Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God's works might be revealed in him. 4 We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. 5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world." 6 When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man's eyes, 7 saying to him, "Go, wash in the pool of Siloam" (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see.
8 The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, "Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?" 9 Some were saying, "It is he." Others were saying, "No, but it is someone like him." He kept saying, "I am the man." 10 But they kept asking him, "Then how were your eyes opened?" 11 He answered, "The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, 'Go to Siloam and wash.' Then I went and washed and received my sight." 12 They said to him, "Where is he?" He said, "I do not know."
13 They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. 14 Now it was a sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. 15 Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight. He said to them, "He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see." 16 Some of the Pharisees said, "This man is not from God, for he does not observe the sabbath." But others said, "How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?" And they were divided. 17 So they said again to the blind man, "What do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened." He said, "He is a prophet."
18 The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight 19 and asked them, "Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?" 20 His parents answered, "We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; 21 but we do not know how it is that now he sees, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself." 22 His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. 23 Therefore his parents said, "He is of age; ask him."
24 So for the second time they called the man who had been blind, and they said to him, "Give glory to God! We know that this man is a sinner." 25 He answered, "I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see." 26 They said to him, "What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?" 27 He answered them, "I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?" 28 Then they reviled him, saying, "You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. 29 We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from." 30 The man answered, "Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. 31 We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will. 32 Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. 33 If this man were not from God, he could do nothing." 34 They answered him, "You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?" And they drove him out.
35 Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him, he said, "Do you believe in the Son of Man?" 36 He answered, "And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him." 37 Jesus said to him, "You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he." 38 He said, "Lord, I believe." And he worshiped him. 39 Jesus said, "I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind." 40 Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, "Surely we are not blind, are we?" 41 Jesus said to them, "If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, 'We see,' your sin remains. (New Revised Standard Version)
We are blind if we, like the disciples, think that we can so simply find a reason, find someone or something to blame for every hardship -- for every illness, every divorce, every untimely death, every job loss or failure to thrive. The disciples want to place blame squarely on the parents or on the blind man. They assume somebody sinned. We want to know what caused the cancer, why the person committed suicide, how a predisposition and circumstances lead to addiction, and which partner is primarily responsible for the break-down of a marriage. And Jesus says, “Neither the blind man nor his parents sinned.” It seems that Jesus wants to move away from blaming and toward healing. It is okay to want more information but not if we use it against people, not if it leads to a subtle elevation of ourselves.
Jesus’ answer to their question is that he was born blind that God’s works might be revealed in him. You were born with all of your character traits, your genetic predispositions, even the challenging ones, that God’s works might be revealed in you. Maybe you’re not the smartest kid on the block. Maybe you’re not the most athletic. Maybe you’re not the most beautiful. Maybe you were born with a different sexual orientation. Maybe you have always been painfully shy. Maybe you struggle with depression. Maybe you have a chronic or terminal illness, but Jesus says this no matter what it is, its purpose is so that God’s work might be revealed in you.
Secondly, we are blind if we think we can understand or explain how Jesus heals. The people question, “Was this really man?” “What exactly did Jesus do?” The Pharisees questioned how Jesus could be a healer, because clearly he was not following their rules for the Sabbath. They questioned the blind man. They questioned his parents. Some people are always questioning, never satisfied with a miracle, they want to undo it with their logical minds. They want to disbelief it with their scientific reasoning. They want to discount it, by finding some flaw in the character of the healed or the Healer. We tend to value human knowledge over God’s wisdom. Paul says to the Corinthians (chapter 1), “Where is the one who is wise? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? …God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.” But some people, even religious people like the Pharisees and us, get caught up in having their/our own answers. The blind beggar begins to explain things to people who think they know everything there is to know about God.
This leads me to my final point. We are blind, if we think we know all there is to know about God, if we think we can learn nothing from a beggar on the street, from a person whose eyes have been shut, whose disability renders them unimportant in society. We are blind, if we think that poor people, people from underdeveloped countries, disenfranchised people, people who are racked by disease or failures or all kinds of hardship, have nothing to teach us about God. Mother Teresa said if we judge people, we will have no time to love them.
The supreme irony of this passage is in the final verse. Jesus points out the spiritual blindness of the Pharisees, the ones who think they have mastered their faith and religious practice to the point of being free of sin and acceptable to God and above reproach among their peers.
Jesus tells them that their sin is the blindness of arrogance, of thinking they see, thinking they know, thinking they understand things. This arrogance leads them to judge others. They pre-judge the blind man and they pre-judge Jesus. Too bad they did not have the vision to love the poor blind man and love Jesus.
What about us? How is our vision? Do we close our eyes to the miracle of life all around us? Has our skepticism, our indifference to spiritual disciplines, our casual approach to the Christian faith, our tendency toward a moralistic deism formed cataracts on the eyes of our heart? Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” How pure, how clean is your heart? Do you even care? “All have eyes, but some have eyes that are shrouded in darkness, unable to see the light of the sun. Because the blind cannot see it, it does not follow that the sun does not shine.” (Saint Theophilus of Antioch, bishop) Turn yourself over to the Lord Jesus Christ and be healed, commit yourself to his truth and be led out of darkness into God’s marvelous light!
Everlasting God, in whom we live and move and have our being: You have made us for yourself, so that our hearts are restless until they rest in you. Give us purity of heart and strength of purpose, that no selfish passion may hinder us from knowing your will, no weakness keep us from doing it; that in your light we may see light clearly, and in your service find perfect freedom; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
John 9:1-41
4th Sunday of Lent
Elizabeth M. Deibert
Kids: How far can you spit? What else can you do with your spit? Don’t do it here, please. You know what Jesus could do with his spit? He could make blind people see. And then the people who know they can see, try to figure it out, and discover that maybe they don’t know as much as they thought. Really Jesus wants us to not just see with our eyes but with our hearts. You know how you can see with your eyes somebody sad, but not pay attention? Other times you might look at them more carefully and see with the eyes of your heart. Jesus opened the eyes of his heart to the blind beggar and healed him.
Give me, O my Lord, that purity of conscience which alone can receive your inspirations. My ears are dull, so that I cannot hear your voice. My eyes are dim, so that I cannot see the signs of your presence. You alone can quicken my hearing and purge my sight, and cleanse and renew my heart. Teach me to sit at your feet and to hear your word. Amen.
Our scripture reading today will be read by a various people, so as to make these 41 verses come alive. Hear the story of Jesus, the Blind Man, and the Pharisees. Ask yourselves, who is blind?
John 9:1-411
As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" 3 Jesus answered, "Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God's works might be revealed in him. 4 We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. 5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world." 6 When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man's eyes, 7 saying to him, "Go, wash in the pool of Siloam" (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see.
8 The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, "Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?" 9 Some were saying, "It is he." Others were saying, "No, but it is someone like him." He kept saying, "I am the man." 10 But they kept asking him, "Then how were your eyes opened?" 11 He answered, "The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, 'Go to Siloam and wash.' Then I went and washed and received my sight." 12 They said to him, "Where is he?" He said, "I do not know."
13 They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. 14 Now it was a sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. 15 Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight. He said to them, "He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see." 16 Some of the Pharisees said, "This man is not from God, for he does not observe the sabbath." But others said, "How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?" And they were divided. 17 So they said again to the blind man, "What do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened." He said, "He is a prophet."
18 The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight 19 and asked them, "Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?" 20 His parents answered, "We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; 21 but we do not know how it is that now he sees, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself." 22 His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. 23 Therefore his parents said, "He is of age; ask him."
24 So for the second time they called the man who had been blind, and they said to him, "Give glory to God! We know that this man is a sinner." 25 He answered, "I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see." 26 They said to him, "What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?" 27 He answered them, "I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?" 28 Then they reviled him, saying, "You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. 29 We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from." 30 The man answered, "Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. 31 We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will. 32 Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. 33 If this man were not from God, he could do nothing." 34 They answered him, "You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?" And they drove him out.
35 Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him, he said, "Do you believe in the Son of Man?" 36 He answered, "And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him." 37 Jesus said to him, "You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he." 38 He said, "Lord, I believe." And he worshiped him. 39 Jesus said, "I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind." 40 Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, "Surely we are not blind, are we?" 41 Jesus said to them, "If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, 'We see,' your sin remains. (New Revised Standard Version)
We are blind if we, like the disciples, think that we can so simply find a reason, find someone or something to blame for every hardship -- for every illness, every divorce, every untimely death, every job loss or failure to thrive. The disciples want to place blame squarely on the parents or on the blind man. They assume somebody sinned. We want to know what caused the cancer, why the person committed suicide, how a predisposition and circumstances lead to addiction, and which partner is primarily responsible for the break-down of a marriage. And Jesus says, “Neither the blind man nor his parents sinned.” It seems that Jesus wants to move away from blaming and toward healing. It is okay to want more information but not if we use it against people, not if it leads to a subtle elevation of ourselves.
Jesus’ answer to their question is that he was born blind that God’s works might be revealed in him. You were born with all of your character traits, your genetic predispositions, even the challenging ones, that God’s works might be revealed in you. Maybe you’re not the smartest kid on the block. Maybe you’re not the most athletic. Maybe you’re not the most beautiful. Maybe you were born with a different sexual orientation. Maybe you have always been painfully shy. Maybe you struggle with depression. Maybe you have a chronic or terminal illness, but Jesus says this no matter what it is, its purpose is so that God’s work might be revealed in you.
Secondly, we are blind if we think we can understand or explain how Jesus heals. The people question, “Was this really man?” “What exactly did Jesus do?” The Pharisees questioned how Jesus could be a healer, because clearly he was not following their rules for the Sabbath. They questioned the blind man. They questioned his parents. Some people are always questioning, never satisfied with a miracle, they want to undo it with their logical minds. They want to disbelief it with their scientific reasoning. They want to discount it, by finding some flaw in the character of the healed or the Healer. We tend to value human knowledge over God’s wisdom. Paul says to the Corinthians (chapter 1), “Where is the one who is wise? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? …God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.” But some people, even religious people like the Pharisees and us, get caught up in having their/our own answers. The blind beggar begins to explain things to people who think they know everything there is to know about God.
This leads me to my final point. We are blind, if we think we know all there is to know about God, if we think we can learn nothing from a beggar on the street, from a person whose eyes have been shut, whose disability renders them unimportant in society. We are blind, if we think that poor people, people from underdeveloped countries, disenfranchised people, people who are racked by disease or failures or all kinds of hardship, have nothing to teach us about God. Mother Teresa said if we judge people, we will have no time to love them.
The supreme irony of this passage is in the final verse. Jesus points out the spiritual blindness of the Pharisees, the ones who think they have mastered their faith and religious practice to the point of being free of sin and acceptable to God and above reproach among their peers.
Jesus tells them that their sin is the blindness of arrogance, of thinking they see, thinking they know, thinking they understand things. This arrogance leads them to judge others. They pre-judge the blind man and they pre-judge Jesus. Too bad they did not have the vision to love the poor blind man and love Jesus.
What about us? How is our vision? Do we close our eyes to the miracle of life all around us? Has our skepticism, our indifference to spiritual disciplines, our casual approach to the Christian faith, our tendency toward a moralistic deism formed cataracts on the eyes of our heart? Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” How pure, how clean is your heart? Do you even care? “All have eyes, but some have eyes that are shrouded in darkness, unable to see the light of the sun. Because the blind cannot see it, it does not follow that the sun does not shine.” (Saint Theophilus of Antioch, bishop) Turn yourself over to the Lord Jesus Christ and be healed, commit yourself to his truth and be led out of darkness into God’s marvelous light!
Everlasting God, in whom we live and move and have our being: You have made us for yourself, so that our hearts are restless until they rest in you. Give us purity of heart and strength of purpose, that no selfish passion may hinder us from knowing your will, no weakness keep us from doing it; that in your light we may see light clearly, and in your service find perfect freedom; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
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