3-30-14: Light

Light

 

Psalm 23 (NRSV)

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff—they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.

 

John 9: 1-41 (The Message by Eugene Peterson)

Walking down the street, Jesus saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked, “Rabbi, who sinned: this man or his parents, causing him to be born blind?”

Jesus said, “You’re asking the wrong question. You’re looking for someone to blame. There is no such cause-effect here. Look instead for what God can do. We need to be energetically at work for the One who sent me here, working while the sun shines. When night falls, the workday is over. For as long as I am in the world, there is plenty of light. I am the world’s Light.”

He said this and then spit in the dust, made a clay paste with the saliva, rubbed the paste on the blind man’s eyes, and said, “Go, wash at the Pool of Siloam” (Siloam means “Sent”). The man went and washed—and saw.

 Soon the town was buzzing. His relatives and those who year after year had seen him as a blind man begging were saying, “Why, isn’t this the man we knew, who sat here and begged?”

Others said, “It’s him all right!”

But others objected, “It’s not the same man at all. It just looks like him.”

He said, “It’s me, the very one.”

They said, “How did your eyes get opened?”

“A man named Jesus made a paste and rubbed it on my eyes and told me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ I did what he said. When I washed, I saw.”

“So where is he?”

“I don’t know.”

They marched the man to the Pharisees. This day when Jesus made the paste and healed his blindness was the Sabbath. The Pharisees grilled him again on how he had come to see. He said, “He put a clay paste on my eyes, and I washed, and now I see.”

Some of the Pharisees said, “Obviously, this man can’t be from God. He doesn’t keep the Sabbath.”

Others countered, “How can a bad man do miraculous, God-revealing things like this?” There was a split in their ranks.

They came back at the blind man, “You’re the expert. He opened your eyes. What do you say about him?”

He said, “He is a prophet.”

The Jews didn’t believe it, didn’t believe the man was blind to begin with. So they called the parents of the man now bright-eyed with sight. They asked them, “Is this your son, the one you say was born blind? So how is it that he now sees?”

His parents said, “We know he is our son, and we know he was born blind. But we don’t know how he came to see—haven’t a clue about who opened his eyes. Why don’t you ask him? He’s a grown man and can speak for himself.” (His parents were talking like this because they were intimidated by the Jewish leaders, who had already decided that anyone who took a stand that this was the Messiah would be kicked out of the meeting place. That’s why his parents said, “Ask him. He’s a grown man.”)

They called the man back a second time—the man who had been blind—and told him, “Give credit to God. We know this man is an impostor.”

He replied, “I know nothing about that one way or the other. But I know one thing for sure: I was blind . . . I now see.”

They said, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?”

“I’ve told you over and over and you haven’t listened. Why do you want to hear it again? Are you so eager to become his disciples?”

With that they jumped all over him. “You might be a disciple of that man, but we’re disciples of Moses. We know for sure that God spoke to Moses, but we have no idea where this man even comes from.”

The man replied, “This is amazing! You claim to know nothing about him, but the fact is, he opened my eyes! It’s well known that God isn’t at the beck and call of sinners, but listens carefully to anyone who lives in reverence and does his will. That someone opened the eyes of a man born blind has never been heard of—ever. If this man didn’t come from God, he wouldn’t be able to do anything.”

They said, “You’re nothing but dirt! How dare you take that tone with us!” Then they threw him out in the street.

Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and went and found him. He asked him, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”

The man said, “Point him out to me, sir, so that I can believe in him.”

Jesus said, “You’re looking right at him. Don’t you recognize my voice?”

“Master, I believe,” the man said, and worshiped him.

Jesus then said, “I came into the world to bring everything into the clear light of day, making all the distinctions clear, so that those who have never seen will see, and those who have made a great pretense of seeing will be exposed as blind.”

Some Pharisees overheard him and said, “Does that mean you’re calling us blind?”

Jesus said, “If you were really blind, you would be blameless, but since you claim to see everything so well, you’re accountable for every fault and failure.”

Imagine living in a world where people believed that if something bad happened to you, it was because you did something wrong. A world where if you were suffering, your neighbors would believe it was because you were being punished for a mistake you made.

This morning’s Gospel reading, again from the Gospel according to John, takes us into a world just like that one. This morning, as Jesus and his disciples are making their way through Jerusalem, they meet a blind man. Presumably a man they had never met before, who they didn’t know at all. But, from his physical appearance, and from the manner in which they found him begging on the streets, they could deduce that he was a blind man.

How might we suppose Jesus would react if he came upon a blind man? Let’s pretend for a moment that John hadn’t made this story available to us nearly two thousand years ago. Let’s pretend that this scenario is all new to us—Jesus is walking down the urban streets of his home country’s capital, and comes across a blind man, begging for his living. How might we suppose Jesus would react, just based on what we’ve seen of him in the first nine chapters of John’s Gospel? Just based on everything else we have been taught about Jesus, how might we suppose he would react to this? Certainly the man we’ve come to know as a healer, as a miracle worker, as a man with tremendous compassion for the poor in spirit, could do nothing less than show mercy to this man, right?

Well, we might know that. Based on the way we know Jesus, and understand his place in our world, we might know that. But his disciples sure didn’t. The twelve men that he entrusted to join him in his ministry, the twelve men that have witnessed his miracles and listened to hours upon hours of his wisdom, the men who spend more time with him than anyone, see this blind man, point a finger at him, and ask Jesus—whose fault do you think it is that he’s blind?

These twelve men were endlessly lucky that Jesus was so patient. I don’t know if I could be. Then again, Jesus was raised in a devoutly Jewish family, exactly like these twelve men, and knew something about what they were all taught from childhood on that some of us sitting here today might not without doing a little bit of research. Jesus, as an upstanding Jewish man, knew that his twelve disciples had always been taught, by religious leaders that they respected very much, that nearly anything that can go wrong in your life—disease, injury, strife, dysfunction, poverty, homelessness, disability, anything—was the natural consequence of your own sinful behaviors.

So, in the eyes of Jesus’ disciples, they weren’t asking a shockingly insensitive question. In their eyes, they were seeing a familiar sight—that of a poor, disabled man—and asking a respected Jewish teacher and leader, Jesus, to explain the man’s sins to them. Ironically, the man they saw may have been blind, but it was the disciples who were short of sight.

But it’s not really about sight at all, neither in this morning’s Gospel story, nor in our own stories, that we’re living out here and now. It’s not about who can see and who can’t. It’s certainly not about fault or blame for anyone’s shortcomings. In fact, the point here is not at all about what anyone can’t do. It’s about what God can do.

And, more importantly, it’s about what God does. God brings us Light.

God brings us Light. What does that mean? It means that God illumines our path through this life, and shows us the way to wholeness, healing, and strength. And when we have those things, we can follow God, and be his ministers.

If you’re the man in this morning’s Gospel story from John, then it might mean that God shines upon you by restoring in you the one thing that has always held you back—for this man, the ability to use his eyes.

Does God shine upon you in that way? What’s that one thing for you? Is there one thing, more than anything else, that you need? Is there one particular thing missing in your life that’s held you back from living to the fullest? Is there one thing you wish God could restore for you? If that’s true for you, then you have walked the same road as the man Jesus healed in this morning’s story from John.

But, for some of us, God’s light shines upon us in a different way. For some of us, it’s not one particular thing that we seek from God. It’s a whole lifetime of tender, loving care. The kind of care a shepherd gives to his flock. The kind of care we hear about in the Psalm the lectionary appointed for us to hear this morning—perhaps, with little room for argument, the most well-known, widely used, and adored of all one hundred fifty of our Psalms: Psalm 23.

For some of us, what we need to be whole enough to follow God is to be reminded of God’s promises for us. Psalm 23 tells us beautifully of God’s promises.

The promise that if we trusted in God, we would find we lacked nothing that God doesn’t provide in time. The promise that, even in the midst of the chaos in our lives, we will find stillness, tranquility, and peace. The promise that, in spite of the confusion we face in this world, we can trust that the path that God chooses for us is the right one. The promise that God is more powerful than anything that could scare us—even death. The promise that we will be fed what we hunger for. And, most importantly, the promise that God is forever.

Our Tuesday Bible Study group talked about this, and I have a hunch that if I hadn’t printed the words of this Psalm in our bulletin for our Call to Worship, that a good number of us could have recited it from memory together. These are words we never forget, and we find great comfort throughout our lives in being able to recall these beautiful words whenever we need to be reminded of them. That’s the Light of God, shining upon us. That’s a salve to our wounds. That’s our Daily Bread. That’s wisdom for our journey.

And once we have received that, once we have been filled by that, once we have been saturated with God’s Light, we can reflect it in our world.

So the first thing I ask of you is, do you find that there’s something missing from within you, something that leaves you feeling incomplete, or undernourished? What do you need from God? How can God fill you so that you can find the strength it takes to minister to your neighbor? Pray to God to complete you. Pray that God will fill you. And if you can find the words, or if you don’t know if you’re missing something, or what that something may be, then just repeat the words so many of us can repeat from memory—The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. Let those words help you find peace in God.

The second thing I ask of you is just to think back for a moment to how I began this sermon—remember what I said? Imagine living in a world where people believed that if something bad happened to you, it was because you did something wrong. A world where if you were suffering, your neighbors would believe it was because you were being punished for a mistake you made.

Friends, the sad thing is that, as far as we have come since Jesus’ time, in many ways we still do live in a world that works exactly like that. In a lot of ways, we still do live in a world where if something bad happens to you, you get blamed. A world where people believe that if you suffer, it’s because you got what was coming to you.

Two thousand years since the time of Jesus, we still live in a world that struggles immensely with compassion. We still live in a world where we cut funding for the government programs that care for the poor, or for the disenfranchised—welfare, Medicaid, food stamps, unemployment, disability, even veteran’s benefits—because some among us believe that if you can’t afford to get by, if you struggle to provide for your family and make ends meet, it’s because you don’t work hard enough.

And, tragically, even on our best days, we still will look on one another’s suffering—that of a person who lives with a disability, or of a person who has survived an act of violence, or of a person afflicted by an illness or injury, or of a person struggling with unemployment, or homelessness—and the first thing we want to do is figure out who to blame.

These are the mistakes we make when we’re in the dark. These are the mistakes we make when we fail to be ministers to our world.

As God’s sons and daughters, we can do better. As people who have seen the Light of God, we can do better. We can stop placing blame, and just start helping. We can reflect the Light of God to a world that desperately needs it, so that all may see.

May it be so.

Amen.

3-23-14: Burn Out

Burn Out

 

Exodus 17: 1-7 (NRSV)

From the wilderness of sin the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages, as the Lord commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. The people quarreled with Moses, and said, “Give us water to drink>” Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?” But the people thirsted there for water; and the people complained against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?” So Moses cried out to the Lord, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.” The Lord said to Moses, “Go on ahead of the people, and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.” Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. He called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled and tested the Lord, saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?”

 

John 4: 5-42 (NRSV)

So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.

A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink’. (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?’ (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.)^. Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a drink”, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?’ Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.’

Jesus said to her, ‘Go, call your husband, and come back.’ The woman answered him, ‘I have no husband.’ Jesus said to her, ‘You are right in saying, “I have no husband”; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.’ The woman said to him, ‘I know that Messiah is coming’ (who is called Christ). ‘When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.’ Jesus said to her, ‘I am he,^* the one who is speaking to you.’

Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, ‘What do you want?’ or, ‘Why are you speaking with her?’ Then the woman left her water-jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, ‘Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?’ They left the city and were on their way to him.

Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, ‘Rabbi, eat something.’ But he said to them, ‘I have food to eat that you do not know about.’ So the disciples said to one another, ‘Surely no one has brought him something to eat?’ Jesus said to them, ‘My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. Do you not say, “Four months more, then comes the harvest”? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, “One sows and another reaps.” I sent you to reap that for which you did not labour. Others have laboured, and you have entered into their labour.’

Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, ‘He told me everything I have ever done.’ So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there for two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, ‘It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Saviour of the world.’

 

At this point, a lot of you probably know that I listen to a lot of contemporary Christian music. And, since I’ve given up listening to secular, non-classical music for Lent, I’ve been listening to that much more Christian music the last few weeks.

One of my favorite contemporary Christian groups is called Tenth Avenue North. When I took a gander at which texts the Revised Common Lectionary has picked for us to hear this morning, and especially when I saw that we would be hearing about the struggles of our brother, Moses, there was one song in particular that I listened to several times over the course of the week while preparing this message—a recent single from Tenth Avenue North called “Worn”.

When the group’s lead singer, Mike Donehey, was asked what inspired the lyrics and message of this particular song, he responded on his blog,

“I used to think I knew what tired was.
I played soccer in high school.
I pulled all nighters in college.
I’ve driven through the night, for weeks on end.
But then… I had kids.”[i]

 

While some of you might have recent experiences, or vivid memories, that make it easy for you to relate to Mr. Donehey’s stories of utter exhaustion as a new dad, the thing that makes his band one of my favorites is that we can all relate to the lyrics that come from his stories. In this song, “Worn”, he sings,

I’m Tired, I’m worn
My heart is heavy
From the work it takes
To keep on breathing
I’ve made mistakes
I’ve let my hope fail
My soul feels crushed
By the weight of this world

And I know that you can give me rest
So I cry out with all that I have left

Let me see redemption win
Let me know the struggle ends
That you can mend a heart
That’s frail and torn
I wanna know a song can rise
From the ashes of a broken life
And all that’s dead inside can be reborn
Cause I’m worn[ii]

 

You don’t need to be a young dad or mom to be able to relate to these words. Words like these need not be about the challenges of caring for yourself and those you love—but they could be. Or they could be about the battle you wage against an illness, or injury. Or they could be about the pressures you face keeping up with the mark at work or school. Or they could be about how we all feel when we tune in to the news and hear about another tragedy, another war, another government mishap, another act of human greed, or another loss of life. Or they could be about how the majority of us feel right about this time of year, when we just want to break out the spring clothes already and our meteorologists predict a few more days of sub-freezing temperatures.

Or, they could be about a man named Moses. They could be about a man who had a home, a job, a family, and everything he ever wanted when he was suddenly taken from all of it by an incinerating shrubbery…one that could talk to him. Many years after his first encounter with the divine, here Moses is, in the middle of nowhere, with a vast group of people that constantly remind him that he took them away from the only livelihood they’ve ever known, with nothing to say in his defense except that a God they don’t worship commanded this of him. His exasperated cry to the Lord, “What shall I do with these people?”, is as pointed as it sounds. Moses is completely and totally burnt out. And there’s no end in sight to his journey in the wilderness.

Meanwhile, a few thousand years and some miles removed from the desert, a woman comes all by herself at high noon to the town watering hole looking for a drink. A Samaritan woman. That’s right, one of those politically dubious, idol worshipping people from the Northern Kingdom of Israel. The people on the wrong side of the tracks. Not only is she one of those people, and not only is she the classless type of woman who walks around the well all by herself in the middle of the day—yikes—but she’s also the survivor of five failed marriages, and everyone knows. She’s worn and spent. And it’s only noon.

Sometimes you’ve given all you’ve got, and it’s still not enough. Sometimes the challenge seems so great, and your means seem so few, that you don’t know whether you can go on. And sometimes the nay-sayers around you will be all too happy to declare your work a failure, and see you give up.

But sometimes all you need is a good drink of water. And if you can hold on with faith just long enough, you can have it.

And, most importantly, sometimes you need to let other people help you.

Just at this moment of utter dejection, as this woman is about to go get some water, who happens to be the only other person at the well? Jesus.

Or, more like, just at this moment when this woman can’t take any more, who’s right there waiting for her? Jesus.

And the first thing he does is shock her right out of her exhaustion. And not by picking that moment to perform a miraculous sign, or even by saying anything particularly deep, at least not yet—but just by talking to her. By asking her to give him some water.

Why would a man, a man who is not a relative, an upstanding Jewish man from the Southern Kingdom, even give the time of day to her?

But he does. And not only is he willing to talk to her, but they set the record for the longest conversation that Jesus has with anyone throughout all four Gospels.

He tells her there’s a better life out there for her than one with five men who, as best as we can tell, left her, and one who treats her so bad he doesn’t deserve to be called a husband. He also tells her there’s more to life than the day-to-day grind of walking water jugs back and forth from the well.

You don’t have to feel like you’ve got it all together and figured out for God to love you and deem you worthy. You also don’t need to feel like you have a whole lot to give for God to make a great minister out of you. You just need to hold on. And you need to put your trust in God.

By the time of this morning’s Old Testament lesson, that was all Moses could do. He turns to God, and says, tell me what to do, these people are ready to kill me, and I’m all out of ideas. I can’t get them to the Promised Land; I can’t even get them some water.

God says back to him, do you still have that stick I gave you? Take a few people with you, and go hit a rock with that stick.

And there was water. And Moses and the Hebrews kept going.

Meanwhile, over in the city of Sychar, a Samaritan woman, who was a total social outcast not long before, converted most of her neighbors to the Jesus Movement by doing no more than repeating what he said to her.

Hard as it may be to believe when we’re at our wit’s end, we can always find refuge in God. We can always find renewal and strength for the day in God. And, just at the moment when you’re totally out of breath and down to your last ounce of belief, that one ounce might be all God needs to change the world through you. And, in the meantime, we all have this place to turn to every week to renew and remember that belief.

May it be so.

Amen.

---

[i] You can read more of Donehey’s thoughts about this here: http://mikedonehey.tumblr.com/post/31798128080/worn

[ii] “Worn” was performed by Tenth Avenue North, and written by Mike Donehey, Jeff Owen, and Jason Ingram. You can watch the music video for the song here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zulKcYItKIA&feature=kp

3-16-14: Born Again

Born Again

 

John 3: 1-17 (NRSV)

Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things? Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

 

What does it really mean to be “born again”?

While I was preparing to preach this Sunday, this was the question of the week for me—what does it mean to be born again?

I spent the week asking myself this because this phrase, “born again”, which is so rich with meaning, comes to our tradition because of this morning’s Gospel story from John, about Nicodemus.

So what does it mean to be born again?

I don’t know about you, but, for a long time, that phrase, “born again”, didn’t mean very much to me. It didn’t feel like it applied to me.

Depending on what kind of church tradition you grew up in, this phrase, “born again”, could have meant lots of different things to you. People at the church I grew up in rarely, if ever, used these words, this way, and so, for me, it really wasn’t until I went to college that I first heard some of my friends and classmates call themselves “born again”, or “born-again-Christians”.

Now, most of those friends of mine grew up in churches that were, let’s say just a touch more evangelical than our tradition tends to be, and when I asked one of those friends what it meant to them when they said they were “born again”, they would usually elaborate by telling me about their story of being “saved”—the exact moment when they gave their heart to Christ and became a true Christian.

One story, one moment. One testimony to share for all to hear. One powerful, absolutely beautiful way to share your love for God.

But is this the only way to use these words, “born again”? I don’t think so. We, God’s children, receive so much more from our Creator in our new births than we can possibly fit into just one story.

But, for some, that one story might tell another person everything they need to know about Jesus.

That’s the story of our friend Nicodemus, who John introduces us to in this morning’s Gospel lesson.

What do we know about our friend, Nicodemus? Not a whole lot. He doesn’t make an appearance in any of the other three Gospels, Matthew, Mark, or Luke. Only John tells his story. And all John says about Nicodemus is that he is ‘a Pharisee”, and “a leader of the Jews”.

So we don’t know much about who this man, Nicodemus, was in society. Who he was in the eyes of other people. Who he was to his friends, or his family.

But we do hear about who Nicodemus was as a man of faith.

John tells us that Nicodemus came to meet with Jesus “by night”. Now, if Matthew, Mark, or Luke had written about Nicodemus, and if they had written that Nicodemus came to meet Jesus “by night”, then I would simply take those words at face value—I would assume that all they meant was to convey to the reader what time of day it was. I would take them literally.

But John is different. When John says that something happened “at night”, he never just means “at night”. He never just means “after the sun went down”, or “after dinner time”. He’s never just trying to tell us what time it was. It’s the way John tells the story of Jesus’ ministry to us—John loved to use images of light and dark. What John is really telling us is that Nicodemus is coming to Jesus in spiritual darkness. What he’s really telling us is that Nicodemus is afraid, ashamed, and maybe too embarrassed to come to Jesus in the light of day, so he’s meeting him in secret. What he’s really telling us is that Nicodemus needs to see the light. Pay attention, John tells us, Jesus is about to bring the light.

And yet, for a man who’s “in the dark”, Nicodemus at least knows how to ask the right questions. Think about all the other times we’ve seen throughout the Gospels when a Pharisee comes to talk to Jesus. In nearly every one of those situations, we’re seeing a Pharisee confront Jesus about some minor point of the Law that he’s not acting in line with.

This man, Nicodemus, is the leader of these people, so, based on that piece of information, I might expect that, if he requested an audience with Jesus, that we would see him break out a whole list of grievances with him. I might expect Nicodemus, a leader among the Pharisees, to read Jesus the riot act about how often he bends the rules in what little we’ve seen in just two previous chapters of his ministry.

But does Nicodemus do that? No. He doesn’t have a single critical thing to say about Jesus. At least not now, when they’re alone in the dark. Maybe the night protects him—he doesn’t have to keep up appearances now. He can say what he really wants to say. And he can be honest about how he really feels. He says that he knows that Jesus has come from God, because of the signs that he has seen himself.

And yet Jesus tells him, in the many words that are to follow, that even though Nicodemus has come a long way, he hasn’t come anywhere near far enough. He’s only pointing out surface-level things. He’s seeing in Jesus what any person can. If he wants to see more, if he wants to know more, if wants to really understand, then he needs to be reborn.

Born again. And we’re back to our original question—what does that mean?

To Jesus, that means two things. The Greek phrase that John used in the oldest manuscripts of this Gospel means both “born again”, and “born from above”.

Both. So Jesus is telling us we don’t need to just be born into the world we live in, to just be born into a body, into human flesh. We need to be born out of the Holy Spirit—we need to be born into God’s family.

Born again.

So what does that mean? If someone asked you if you were “born again”, what would you say? If you use those words to describe yourself, what do they mean?

I don’t think there’s any one thing that those words need to mean, if Jesus has so touched your heart that you describe yourself as “born again”. But to be “born again” means to have more than just a surface-level relationship with Jesus, like Nicodemus had before he came to talk to him.

When John Wesley, the founder of what became our United Methodist Church, talked about being “born again”, what he taught was that we all get a clean slate with Christ—we all can have our pasts forgiven if we ask. But that’s only the first step of the journey. That’s what Wesley called “justification”. That happens once, and it’s done. But, once we’re justified, we spend the rest of our lives in Christ being “sanctified”—that is, making our selves stronger, healthier, more holy people.

We’re all “born again”. All of us. We’re all forgiven, and we’re all redeemed to God. God gives to each one of us who asks for it a clean slate. Like a newborn, you can start anew, with no baggage from yesterday weighing you down. All you have to do is ask, and you can start over. There’s no shortage of second chances.

So the real question isn’t about being “born again”. The real question is, you’ve got your second chance—what are you going to do with it?

This season of Lent is the perfect season to spend asking yourself that question. This is the perfect time to spend thinking about what you want to change about yourself, what you want to do differently, what mistakes you want to stop making, what good you want to start doing. Who you want to be, and who you want to reach with God’s love.

Nicodemus only makes two appearances in John’s Gospel. Know where the other one is? At the cross, in the light of day, for everyone to see, tending to Jesus.

May this Lenten journey take us all to the cross, and to the light.

Amen.

3-9-14: Knowledge

Knowledge

 

Genesis 2: 15-17; 3: 1-7 (NRSV)

The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to till it and to keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.”

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?” The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.

 

Matthew 4: 1-11 (NRSV)

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” But he answered, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, ‘he will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’” Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! For it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’” Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.

 

This morning our Revised Common Lectionary has picked for us to hear two very familiar stories—Jesus’ temptation as he fasted in the wilderness, and Eve’s temptation to share the forbidden fruit with her husband, Adam. There’s an obvious common theme at work here, and, arguably, a common character across both stories. The devil, if you believe in him, shows up in both stories—in Genesis, as a snake who can talk, and in Matthew, as the underhanded supposed expert on luxury, able to tell Jesus exactly what he should do to make his stay in the desert nice and comfortable.

Of course, we see the common theme between both stories—temptation. Eve’s temptation to do the only thing God told her not to, and eat of the forbidden fruit, and Jesus’ temptation to abuse his divinity for his own personal gain.

It’s no wonder that this theme of temptation might be what stands out to all of us first. It’s a theme we can all relate to. We have to deal with temptation all day, every day, and, if you decided to give something up for Lent, you need to deal with temptation that much more from now until Easter.

But let’s take a good look at our Old Testament story this morning. Because there’s more going on here than just Eve’s temptation.

Our tradition has given us one classical way to interpret this story. We call this story in Genesis, this story of Eve taking a bite from that apple and handing one to her husband, too, the story of “the Fall” of humanity. We attribute Original Sin, our nature of not being able to avoid disobeying God, to this story. And since nearly the beginning of Christianity itself, the forefathers of our faith have blamed Eve for the state of the world being as it still is today—messed up.

John Wesley, the founder of what became the United Methodist Church, more or less interpreted this story from Genesis in that way. He described it like this:

1) “Unbelief begot pride”—Eve didn’t take God’s warning to stay away from that one tree seriously, and thought perhaps she knew better than God did about that fruit.

2) “Pride begot self-will”—Because Eve thought she might know better, she did what she wanted instead of what God wanted.

3) “Self-will begot foolish desires”—Because Eve decided it would be okay to do what was right in her own eyes, she came up with a very bad idea. She ate the fruit from the forbidden tree, she shared it with Adam, and here we are today.[i]

 

Wesley was definitely right here, and I think that if we took an honest look at a lot of our bad choices, we’d see that we did just what Wesley described. We don’t listen to someone who knows better—maybe God, or a parent, a teacher, law enforcement, a friend, a doctor—because we decide we know something they don’t. Then we decide because we know something they don’t that we can do what we want, and because we decide we can do what we want, we come up with very bad ideas, and act on them. I don’t know about you, but this pretty much sums up every reckless driving move I’ve ever made, every time I’ve ever neglected to exercise as much as they say you should, and every time I’ve ever spoiled my dinner by eating too many cookies with my lunch. And I’m sure there’s worse decisions than these that all of us have made because we think like this.

So the point here is pretty clear—Eve, our ancestor, taught us all how to make some epically bad decisions, and we’ve made them ever since.

Still, I’ve never thought that it was quite fair that we’ve made out Eve to be such a bad person, or that we’ve made her shoulder all the blame for the mistakes we make. I also don’t think that this traditional read of the story of the Garden of Eden is the only way we should interpret this classic story.

If you go to our Tuesday morning Bible Study often, then you’ve heard me talk about this before, but when I was in seminary my Old Testament professor shared with our class a different way of looking at the story of Adam and Eve. My professor asked us to consider, what if the story of Adam and Eve is less a story about the beginnings of sin and evil, and more a story about what it’s like to grow up? This is just one person’s idea, and you don’t need to agree with it, but just think about it, because it’s a really compelling point. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve are in adult bodies, but live like children. Who walks around naked and doesn’t feel embarrassed about it? Little kids. Who points at things, names things, and talks to animals like it’s no big deal? Kids. Who lives rent-free, doesn’t do any work, and eats whenever the food shows up? Kids. And who doesn’t know the difference between right and wrong? Kids.[ii]

Like I said, you don’t need to agree with all of that, but there’s no questioning when we read this story from Genesis that when Eve and Adam ate the forbidden fruit and acted on their ability to disobey God, there was something they lost—their innocence. And you know, that once you lose that, you can never have it back. Adam and Eve never knew a world before where someone might trick you into getting in trouble, or where you need to work if you want to eat, or where you need to have babies and raise them. But after this, they did.

But I’m going to add one more idea here for your consideration—in this life, you really need to lose your innocence in order to gain something much more valuable: knowledge.

As for Jesus—if you can really say he ever had innocence, this morning’s Gospel story would be just about the time in his life that he lost it. He’s a young man, and he was just baptized by his cousin. Now, he’s already putting his faith to the test, in the wilderness, for “forty days and forty nights”—what the Bible always says when what it means is “a really, really long time”.

You see, the moral of the story here isn’t that you should try to remain naïve, and avoid ever being around the evil in the world, or the things that tempt you. Rather, if you have to be immersed in the rough parts of life, and if you have to be around things and people that may lead you to make bad decisions, be like Jesus, and use the things you’ve learned as a grown-up to help you make good choices.

While he’s fasting, while he’s all alone, and while he’s likely in more pain than he’s ever been in his adult life, Jesus relies on the Scriptures he’s known all his life to use these forty days and nights to build his faith and character—even when he doesn’t have to, and even when there’s someone right over his shoulder reminding him that he really could do whatever he wants. Jesus responds to every single thing the devil says to him with a quote from the Torah.

Like Jesus, we’re also on a sort of spiritual pilgrimage for forty days and forty nights. We may not be fasting during this Lenten season, and we may not be spending that time in solitude, or in the wilderness. But we are spending this time in repentance, thinking about what we’ve done wrong in the past, and how we’d like to be more spiritually mature so that we can be ready for the incredible joy of Easter morning. Let’s use this time that we have to grow in knowledge—knowledge of the difference between good and evil, knowledge of God’s love, and knowledge that what God wants for us really is best. May this Lenten season be for all of us a time to know more about a life well lived.

Amen.

---

[i] I found this in the study notes in The Wesley Study Bible. Copyright 2009 from Abingdon Press of Nashville, TN—I found it in my seminary’s bookstore, but you can also buy it from Cokesbury. I’ve used several different study Bibles in preparing sermons, and this one is a must-read if you want to know more about John Wesley’s teachings on a particular topic.

[ii] Special thanks to my Old Testament professor, Dr. Mark Brummitt, for teaching me and my classmates this interpretation.

3-2-14: One Brief Glimmer of Light

One Brief Glimmer of Light

 

Matthew 17: 1-9 (NRSV)

Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. Then Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Get up and do not be afraid.” And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone.

As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus ordered them, “Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”

 

On September 10, 1946, a young woman named Agnes Gonxhe Bojaxhiu felt a calling that would change the world forever. Already committed to service to God as a missionary in the Sisters of Loreto, our beloved sister in the faith realized that God was calling her to a whole new ministry, one that would take her away from her duties as headmistress of her convent and propel her head-on into life in the slums of Calcutta, dedicated in lifelong service to the “poorest of the poor”.

Of course, our tradition and our hearts remember this woman not by her birth name, but by her revered title, The Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, or, lovingly, as Mother Teresa.

In 1950 the Vatican gave Mother Teresa permission to officially turn her new ministry, and new-found passion, into an official monastic order—that of the Missionaries of Charity. By the end of her life in 1997, the Missionaries of Charity had gained more than four thousand sisters worldwide who serve in orphanages, hospitals, and charities for refugees, the blind, the disabled, the elderly, alcoholics, and those afflicted by homelessness, floods, famines, disease epidemics, and AIDS.

Throughout her whole life, and even in the years since her passing, Mother Teresa has been recognized, lauded, and awarded for her selfless, steadfast commitment to God and to her neighbor. She received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, and was beatified by the Roman Catholic Vatican in 2003—meaning that, today, this woman is one step shy of being officially recognized as Saint Teresa.

And when asked to describe who she was, where she came from, and where she belonged, Mother Teresa’s reply was, “By blood, I am Albanian. By citizenship, an Indian. By faith, I am a Catholic nun. As to my calling, I belong to the world. As to my heart, I belong entirely to the Heart of Jesus.”

No one can count the lives Mother Teresa has touched, and no one can measure the impact Mother Teresa has had, not only on the Church, but on the whole world. In every way she deserves the title “blessed”, and, in every way, men and women of faith can look to her as a glorious example of someone who saw, and lived in, God’s light.

So, of course, in 2007, the world was shocked when Mother Teresa’s biography, Come Be My Light, was published, and these words were revealed from her own personal diaries:

“In my soul I feel just that terrible pain of loss, of God not wanting me — of God not being God — of God not existing.”

Historians, pastors, spiritual directors, and even mental health experts have all chimed in on what Mother Teresa could have been going through, could have experienced, that would make a woman of such devout faith spend, in reality, the better part of her adult life wrestling with such strong doubts. She went on, in her diaries, to write,

“In my heart there is no faith—no love—no trust—there is so much pain—the pain of longing, the pain of not being wanted. I want God with all the powers of my soul—and yet there between us—there is terrible separation. I don’t pray any longer.”

 

One might ask, how could a woman like Mother Teresa go from feeling so connected to God, and so profoundly called, that she left a very prestigious position to found a whole new congregation, to feeling so spiritually depressed—all within the span of just a few years?

Or, maybe on a day like today, on this day that we hear the Gospel story of Jesus’ Transfiguration on the mountain, we might ask: How could a moment of such radiant light be so brief?

We might imagine this morning that the three disciples Jesus took up the mountain with him—Peter, James, and John—might have been able to relate to just a little bit of what Mother Teresa experienced. Like her, Peter, James, and John were already called to a lifelong ministry, and were already serving Jesus. Then, suddenly, out of nowhere, this incredible divine moment happened—Jesus was shining, and dazzling in their eyes, and they experienced not only his holy presence, but even the company of their greatest ancestors, Moses and Elijah.

Then, just as quickly, Moses and Elijah disappeared, everything went back to normal, and the overpowering, radiant light of the Lord was gone.

At least for the time being.

A lot of us have a “call” story—your story of when you knew God wanted you to be a minister. Most, if not all, of you have heard mine, at one point or another, but I bet a lot of you have a story to tell, too—your own story of where you were and what you were doing when you knew God was calling you to serve him, in all the wonderful ways that you do.

Or you might have a different, special story about your faith on your heart. You might have a story about when you decided to start coming to this church. You might have a story about a moment when you felt “saved”, or “born again”—and what those words mean to you now. You might have a story about a time when you prayed, and you knew God answered your prayer, or about a time that you knew you saw a miracle. Or maybe even a story about one day when being a person of faith just simply felt really, really awesome.

I hope you have a story like that. And if you don’t, I hope we can help you find one here.

And if you do have a special story about your faith journey, a special time, a special moment, then you, too, know at least part of what Peter, James, and John felt on that mountain—you, too, know what it’s like to be engulfed in God’s light. You know what it feels like.

And, if you have such a special story, a special moment, then you know that those moments don’t last forever. It would be awesome if they did, but they don’t. Our lives go back to some version of normal, we walk back down our proverbial mountain with Jesus, and we go back to regularly scheduled programming.

But our journey doesn’t end there.

Over a lifetime of serving God, you will experience these great, shining moments, and you will experience moments of darkness. As much as you feel certain, joyous, and hopeful, you will also have times when you feel doubt, darkness, and even isolation from God. It’s part of being human.

But today, on Transfiguration Sunday, on this day that we celebrate the dazzling light of Jesus, we also celebrate that his light is always with us, even when it isn’t so obvious.

We celebrate, that even in her times of darkness, Mother Teresa wrote in her diary, “In spite of it all—I am His little one—I love Him.”

We celebrate that those glimmers of God’s light in our lives, however brief they may feel, are so often exactly as much as we need to become the ministers God has called us to be—the Mother Teresa’s, the St. Peter’s, the pastors, the speakers, the musicians, the teachers, the stewards, and the servants of our church and our world.

And we celebrate, above all else, that, even in moments of despair, doubt, and darkness, God is merely waiting for another moment to reveal his light again.

Amen.

 

You can read more about Mother Teresa, her life, and her legacy, here:

http://www.americancatholic.org/Newsletters/CU/preview.aspx?id=253

As well as here: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/29/opinion/29martin.html?_r=1&

And here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Teresa