Ears, Feet and Hands

Sunday, March 27th, 2005
Easter
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Matthew 28:1-10, James 1(17- )22(-25)

1After the Sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. 2And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. 3His appearance was like lightning and his clothing white as snow. 4For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men. 5But the angel said to the women, ‘Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. 6He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come; see the place where he lay. 7Then go quickly and tell his disciples, “He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.” This is my message for you.’ 8So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. 9Suddenly Jesus met them and said, ‘Greetings!’ And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. 10Then Jesus said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.’

This is it. This is THE defining story of our faith.

This is what sets us apart. This is unique to Christianity.

We speak of Jesus’ death. More than that, we admit to it. But it’s not so much that we do it today. It is that it was done that way from the beginning. In first-century Palestine, it wasn’t … desirable to begin a new religion by proclaiming the actual human death of your Savior, much less, have the initial proclamation of that Savior’s resurrection be carried out by women. There is a radical-ness to that combination of events that is lost on us today, however entrenched we may be in a male-dominated somewhat chauvinistic society, that still finds it very easy to objectify women and belittle the relevance of faith to human existence, over the last 20 centuries we’ve gotten used to the story that women were the first bearers-of-good-news, the first evangelists. We’ve become immune to the unbelievableness of it.

That the four Gospels contain the story of the empty tomb is to be expected, but that they differ from each other makes the story even more tantalizingly believable. Think about it. Take, for example any given modern conspiracy, any given movie, or television crime drama involving a group of people involved in a crime and trying to hide it. What is the first thing the conspirators do when they decide to conspire? They get together on their story. The thinking is that if their stories all agree, it is more believable.

The Gospel writers couldn’t even get together on that. How many of us, if we were to all witness a car crash here at the corner of Mulberry and History Land Hwy, would all tell exactly the same story, down to the smallest detail? In the varying accounts, there’s a sense of them saying ‘I saw him first! No, I did!’

The Gospel of John has Mary as the only named woman coming to the tomb, and on finding it empty, running back to find Peter and “the other disciple” and then they all go to the tomb. Luke has two men in dazzling clothes meeting ‘them’, an unspecified number of women and men. Mark has three named women – Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome, going to the tomb, and there they encounter a single young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting “on the right side”. The amount of detail begs you to ‘remember with me, don’t you?’

Rather than weakening the story, it speaks more to independent traditions, and reinforces the likelihood that the details on which they DO agree are true.

Just as there is diversity in the telling of the appearances of the resurrected Christ, there is a corresponding diversity in the way we each experience Christ today. How we encounter Christ can change dramatically within each of our individual lives over the course of the years, much more so from one person to another.

Brian Stoffregen, pastor of Faith Lutheran Church, in Marysville, CA, writes:

There are those who experience Christ in a radical transforming, "born-again," event in their lives. There are those for whom Christ as been such a reality throughout their lives that they can't think of a moment when Christ wasn't present to them or when there was a great turning point in their lives. How the risen Christ comes to people differs from person to person.

And that’s where we come in. It is THE Gospel story, and in the beginning, all we can do is hear it. We hear it, of course, with our ears. And if the time is right, and the Spirit moves, we also hear it with our hearts. When we do that, it becomes OUR story. We each make this story our own, when we step into it, by stepping out on faith.

Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary (and Salome, and however many men there may have been with them) stepped through the early morning light and made their way to the tomb. The same feet that took them to what they thought would be a continuing point of sorrow in their lives became instead feet that ran them joyfully and fearfully back to tell the disciples and all who would listen that they had encountered the risen Lord.

So on a morning that may well have been very similar to this one, likely having had very little sleep if any, the story began to spread. So it is for us to take up the story and tell it.

We can use words, if we have to. But we don’t have to. Know this, however. Whether we verbalize it or not, we tell the story. We tell the story in the way we live out our lives. We are telling the story whether we realize it or not. We tell the story of what Christ means to us, what Christ has done for us, what Christ IS to us. Sting put together a set of phrases in a song several years ago, “every move you make, every breath you take, every claim you stake, and every vow you break”, the concluding phrase may be applied from a different perspective by us here today “I’ll be watching you” Sting has said of the song that it is a dark song about obsession, we can look at it today from the perspective that … we are the walking Gospel corporately, as the body of Christ, but also individually, our lives tell the stories that we believe.

The question is: what Gospel story is our life telling?

James speaks to that:

17 Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. 18In fulfillment of his own purpose he gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures. 19 You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; 20for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness. 21Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls. 22 But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. 23For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; 24for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. 25But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act—they will be blessed in their doing.

We can sit and hear, but unless we go beyond that, the Gospel means precious little to us. Hearing, we believe, and believing, we act, and by acting, we either claim or disclaim the truth of the Gospel.

The question for us today is, if I truly believe the Gospel to be true, that God raised Jesus from the dead, and in so doing He vanquished sin, death and the devil. Does my life reflect that?

So we’ve heard the central story. Now for the central act that proclaims our faith. Maybe it would be better to call it the seminal act of our faith, the ‘seed-act’ of our faith. When we join together at the communion table, we are in fact proclaiming the Gospel. Because we are proclaiming Christ’s death until he returns.

The invitation is open. Your response is what will transform you.

Your ears hear the invitation, your feet will bring you forward, and your hands will take the bread and the juice to your lips.

May your ears always hear the invitation, may your feet always be ready to carry you forward, and may your hands always be ready to be put to work for the Kingdom.

(communion)

The Lord … Needs?

Sunday, March 20th, 2005
Palm Sunday
Jerusalem Baptist Church
Matthew 21:1-11

1When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, 2saying 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. 3If anyone says anything to you, just say this, “The Lord needs them.” And he will send them immediately.’ 4This 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.’ 6The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them; 7they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them. 8A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. 9The 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!’ 10When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, ‘Who is this?’ 11The crowds were saying, ‘This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.’

“The Lord … Needs?”

If you think about it, it seems to be a contradiction in terms. “The Lord.” – means someone who is in control, one who has the power, who is ultimately able to do just about anything he wishes.

To say that someone like that ‘needs’ anything … would seem to be saying that it is a limited Lordship, and as such, no Lordship at all, if we’re going to get right down to the heart of the matter.

As Christians, we believe that Jesus Christ was God incarnate. We believe that God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit form the trinity. They are each both individual and one and the same. That is a core belief of the Christian faith.

And now, we come to the toughest and most glorious part of the story, beginning today and continuing through this coming Saturday we will be observing Passion Week. For the last 5 weeks we’ve been moving through the Season of Lent, which as we know, leads us to the cross, to Christ’s death and burial. Next Sunday we will celebrate Easter, we know that is coming, but right now, we remember Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem.

Palm leaves waving, people shouting, donkeys walking, colts too, and Jesus riding both … check it out, Matthew seems to have become so caught up in telling the story that he has Jesus riding both a donkey AND a colt (verse 7). It doesn’t matter so much how he came into the city, it matters more what he came to do and what happened over the course of the next week.

Before the first verse of chapter 21 is done, we have Jesus sending a couple of his disciples off to find the donkey and the colt.

Sending.

Jesus did that with the disciples, and he continues to do it with us. Just as God sent Jesus, Jesus in turn sends us.

To do what, you might ask? Well, that depends on what gifts and qualities God has given you to begin with, as well as what God has called you to do. Get used to the idea that we each have been called to do something for God, by God, through God.

I heard an interview with Henry Blackaby this week. He wrote “Experiencing God”. If you’ve not read it, let me know, and we can read it together. Something he said in the interview stuck with me. His point was that people can sometimes take their talents, those abilities with which they were either born or developed on their own, or through training and encouragement from others, and call them spiritual gifts.

He said natural talents are not the same thing as spiritual gifts. Being called to do something can SOMETIMES involve your using your natural talents and abilities, but it will always involve doing something that you could not otherwise accomplish without God’s help. Let me say that again: Answering God’s call to do something will always involve doing something that you could not otherwise do without God’s help. In other words, being called by God by definition means being at a loss on your own.

Over the last two weeks we’ve been made aware of that being highlighted in Jesus’ ministry as well. With the man born blind, and with the death of Lazarus, Jesus’ healing of the one and resurrecting of the other were both examples of God’s power being made known – of God’s Kingdom breaking into the world. Both miracles went against the natural (broken, but natural) process of life as we know it.

‘But that was Jesus,’ you might say. ‘We’re not Jesus.’

You’re right. We’re not, in the full sense of who Jesus was. But we are his disciples, his ambassadors, his representatives. On one level, we ARE Jesus. When we take Jesus as Lord of our lives we begin to act, speak, think, and feel like him. Sometimes in infinitesimal increments, and often times it’s a matter of two steps forward, one step back. Some days we fail miserably at the task of becoming more and more like him. Some days we do better.

And here’s the sometimes scary part: We will find that, some days, we are the only Jesus others will ever see.

In the most recent issue of the Ministry Messenger, a quarterly newsletter published by the BGAV, John Upton, the Executive Director, says the following:

“One of my favorite passages in the Bible is Isaiah 40 where God says to His people, “Lift up your voice. Lift is up, be not afraid. Say to the people, ‘Here is your God.’” What a challenge by God. Of all people, he asks us, as inadequate as we are, to be bearers of His message of Good News. Our ignorance is monumental. We are often wrong-headed and wrong-hearted, and we can be more than a little bit foolish. Our lives aren’t worthy of the words we’re asked to carry.

But here is the thing to remember. Whose words, after all, are they? And if the Word bids us to be instruments of it, how could our inadequacy possibly matter? Our only part is to open our mouths, our hearts, our arms and our lives and let the words pass through us like breath through a pipe organ. Ready or not, we just give ourselves to it, and our lives are a good enough voice.”

So what does the Lord need, exactly? What is it that he’s asking of us?

Is he asking us only to worship him? To lift the palm branches and wave them and proclaim ‘blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord?’ Or is he asking us to lay down our cloaks, our robes, our best, so that he can walk over them towards his death? Or is he asking us to run an errand, to find the donkey, or the colt, to speak to the owner and tell him that the LORD needs them …

The truth is that he is asking for it all. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Pastor and theologian who was killed in WWII for fighting the Nazi regime, wrote “when Jesus calls, he bids us come and die.”

The Lord needs … company. God craves communion. That it is the almighty creator of the universe coming to us, his creation, is a mystery, and yet, that is what God has shown us through Christ to be God’s own nature.

He’s asking us to walk alongside, to follow, to imitate, however you want to phrase it, you’ve heard me say it before, and you’ll keep hearing me say it -- to BE his presence in a world that is hurting in unimaginable ways.

God has met and surpassed our needs. God did that through Christ. That is what we will be celebrating next Sunday. For now, the question becomes, how will you respond to the Lord’s need?

Let’s pray.

Falling Asleep

Sunday, March 13th, 2005
Lent 5A
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
John 11:1-45

1Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. 2Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. 3So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, ‘Lord, he whom you love is ill.’ 4But when Jesus heard it, he said, ‘This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.’ 5Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, 6after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was. 7Then after this he said to the disciples, ‘Let us go to Judea again.’ 8The disciples said to him, ‘Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?’ 9Jesus answered, ‘Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. 10But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them.’ 11After saying this, he told them, ‘Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.’ 12The disciples said to him, ‘Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.’ 13Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep. 14Then Jesus told them plainly, ‘Lazarus is dead. 15For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.’ 16Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, ‘Let us also go, that we may die with him.’ 17 When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. 18Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, 19and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. 20When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. 21Martha said to Jesus, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.’ 23Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’ 24Martha said to him, ‘I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.’ 25Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, 26and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’ 27She said to him, ‘Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.’ 28When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, ‘The Teacher is here and is calling for you.’ 29And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. 30Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. 31The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. 32When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’ 33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. 34He said, ‘Where have you laid him?’ They said to him, ‘Lord, come and see.’ 35Jesus began to weep. 36So the Jews said, ‘See how he loved him!’ 37But some of them said, ‘Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?’ 38Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. 39Jesus said, ‘Take away the stone.’ Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, ‘Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.’ 40Jesus said to her, ‘Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?’ 41So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, ‘Father, I thank you for having heard me. 42I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.’ 43When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ 44The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, and let him go.’ 45 Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.

My earliest memory of Uncle Babe was hearing momma tell stories of how he used to play jokes on her and my aunts as children growing up outside Nortonville, Kentucky. The memory that stands out the most in my memory though, apart from those stories related to Uncle Babe was hearing Momma read a letter from my grandmother, received over 30 years ago, telling us that Uncle Babe had had multiple bypass surgery.

On some level, I suppose I was expecting the call that came last Tuesday ever since then. Years might go by, but always, if I thought about it, I wondered when we’d get that call. As it turned out, Uncle Babe outlived Grandma and Uncle Floyd, his older brother, by a little more than 15 years. We almost lost him a couple of years ago, but he rallied, and over these last two years the family – both immediate and extended – to whatever degree we were able to, had come to grips with the fact that Uncle Babe would be gone from us sooner rather than later.

So the gathering that took place on Thursday in La Center, KY was in very few ways unexpected.

Uncle Babe had done many things throughout his life; he was a State Trooper, a Salesman, he was elected County Judge-Executive, and when he wasn’t re-elected, he retired and became a pig farmer. There wasn’t a lot that he hadn’t tried. I don’t remember seeing Uncle Babe in uniform, though I may have as a young child, and I don’t remember his … identity being framed by what he did – ever. Even being elected to county office didn’t change that. Uncle Babe was just ‘UNCLE BABE.’ You knew he did SOMETHING for a living, but it wasn’t the ‘something’ that stood out, it was the living.

As I prepared to travel to Kentucky, I reread the text for today, knowing that I would be … perking the sermon while in the midst of visiting with family, sharing stories, and getting and giving hugs and using up tissues.

What I found was a deep sense of comfort in the events surrounding Lazarus’ death and subsequent resurrection. There’s a sense of purpose that Jesus expresses, in his deliberateness in waiting … in understanding as those who were around him could not, that there was a greater purpose to be displayed through Lazarus’ illness and death. The text echoes last week’s story of the man born blind in that instance – do you remember Jesus’ disciples asking him why the man was born blind, because of his parents’ sin or his own, and Jesus’ response – ‘So that God’s works might be revealed in him.’

Here we have a similar response:

4But when Jesus heard it, he said, ‘This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.’

In that sense, John, the Gospel writer, is intentional in how he presents the story of an event in Jesus’ ministry. There is a difference in the Gospel of John that is not as evident in the other three Gospels – John is self-consciously theological in the retelling of Christ’s ministry. The writer makes it a point, for example, to have the people around Jesus call him Lord instead of Master, or teacher, in this passage. It isn’t so much a term of respect as it is a declaration of faith – some of the earliest evidence of the early church’s belief in the divinity of Jesus. To call him Lord even while he was on earth was a radical statement among a people who were known for reserving that term for Yahweh, in our language, God.

If we’ve been raised in church, with the stories of the Bible told to us from childhood on, going into this we automatically fill in the blanks with additional information – we know that Mary, Martha and Lazarus were Jesus’ “hang out” friends. Whenever he came to visit Judea, he stayed with them. Their house was his. He felt at home, he was welcomed. The introduction seems a little out of place, when we read that ‘a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany’… what we have is a non-chronological insertion by John.

The purpose of the Gospel of John is to instill and nurture faith – “so that you might believe”. The other three, on various levels attempt to present the ministry of Christ chronologically. John does not. This is one of those places where it is not. Later on we get to meet Mary and Martha and Lazarus, or in the other gospels, but here the purpose of the story is to … highlight the power of God to transform our lives just like Lazarus’ life was transformed.

True resurrection … does not just prolong life but transforms our entire being. The resurrection is spiritual. It begins when faith moves a person to become open to receiving God’s life.
There are elements within the story that stand out. Jesus hearing of Lazarus’ illness and waiting. The word we read as ‘stayed’ carries a couple of meanings, if you will – tarried, as in … waited, intentionally … and suffered – in other words, Jesus knew that Mary and Martha and Lazarus were suffering, and even though he loved them, he held back … he knew there was a greater event coming.

There is, as is commonly found, a subtext to this waiting – if you are not familiar with the customs and practices of first century Palestinian Hebrews. It was commonly believed that after death, the soul of a person lingered around the body for two or three days. Hence, Jesus waiting for the additional two days before going to the tomb. There was no question on whether or not Lazarus was dead when Jesus finally showed up. In case there were, John takes pains to point out that the smell of a decomposing body was already being noticed.

Where are we in the story?

Do we identify with Lazarus, who is known more for what Christ did for him than for what he did for Christ? Or are we like Martha, the kitchen-maven, who gets the intellectual approach from Jesus, a mini-sermon on resurrection. Or Mary, the scholar willing to break gender stereotypes to receive the instruction she needs, gets the emotional approach from the depths of Jesus troubled spirit.

There is a connectedness in their responses – and in Jesus’ responses to them, that carries through to today.

We are, all, facing life with the shadow of death looming. What God offers us in Christ is Life. True life. Abundant life.

When Jesus tells the people to unbind Lazarus, he is literally telling them to destroy what holds him down. Send him forth free.

That is our call today. We are Christ’s presence in this community. We are called to set people free – through Christ – of the stench of death and sin.

Let’s pray.

Work the Works

Sunday, March 6th, 2005
Lent 4A
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
John 9:1-41

1As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. 2His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ 3Jesus answered, ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. 4We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. 5As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.’ 6When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, 7saying 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?’ 9Some were saying, ‘It is he.’ Others were saying, ‘No, but it is someone like him.’ He kept saying, ‘I am the man.’ 10But they kept asking him, ‘Then how were your eyes opened?’ 11He 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.’ 12They 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. 14Now it was a sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. 15Then 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.’ 16Some 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. 17So 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.’ 18The 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 19and asked them, ‘Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?’ 20His parents answered, ‘We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; 21but 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.’ 22His 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. 23Therefore his parents said, ‘He is of age; ask him.’ 24So 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.’ 25He answered, ‘I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.’ 26They said to him, ‘What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?’ 27He 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?’ 28Then they reviled him, saying, ‘You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. 29We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.’ 30The man answered, ‘Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. 31We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will. 32Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. 33If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.’ 34They 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?’ 36He answered, ‘And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.’ 37Jesus said to him, ‘You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.’ 38He 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.’ 40Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, ‘Surely we are not blind, are we?’ 41Jesus said to them, ‘If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, “We see,” your sin remains.

I’m a bedtime reader.

I don’t mean I read to the kids at bedtime … though I DO, sometimes, I mean that when I go to bed at night I have to at least open a book and read a few paragraphs in order to go to sleep.

As far back as I can remember, lying down in bed hasn’t been about going to sleep as quickly as I can, but about curling up with a good book. As a result, I have a stack of books next to my side of the bed, in, on, or under the nightstand, as well as on the floor.

Over the years the variety of books has broadened. I’m a science fiction fan, so for a long time that was all you could find in the stack. But lately, I’ve expanded the options. I’ve got Herman Wouk’s “War and Remembrance” next to the bed, as well as a couple of bestsellers.

I also have a book co-written by Tony Campolo and Brian McLaren, entitled Adventures in Missing the Point, How the Culture-Controlled Church Neutered the Gospel. In it, Campolo and McLaren address issues facing the Church today, under three main subheadings: God, World, and Soul. Under each, they address various sub-issues. Under God, they speak about salvation, theology, the Kingdom of God, the End Times, and the Bible. Under “World”, they touch on Evangelism, social action, culture, women in ministry, leadership, seminary, environmentalism, and homosexuality. Under “Soul, they speak on Sin, Worship, Doubt, Truth, and on Being Postmodern. Each has his own ‘take’ on the issue, and each responds to the other’s essays – a good example of good dialogue around a given subject.

I bought the book in September or October, I think, and I’ve only gotten a few chapters into it. Campolo and McLaren posit an argument that the Church has been co-opted, that we are too … influenced by our culture, rather than the other way around, to bring about the radical changes that the Gospel of Jesus Christ can make happen.

I’m not talking about making change happen by controlling the legislative process and effecting those changes through laws. I’m talking about individual, life-altering, face-to-face contact that ends up transforming both participants.

We’ve just finished reading the ninth chapter of the Gospel of John. Besides the length of the reading, is there any single event in the passage that stands out most for you?

Are you struck by the way everyone seems to keep trying to pass the buck when they are asked about Jesus, or more by the way the Pharisees keep asking all these questions all those questions, or by the way the neighbors supposedly couldn’t say for sure if the man who could now see was the same man they’d known all their lives?

In some ways, it can almost read like a keystone cops episode, if the subject weren’t so serious.

Here’s what we have: Jesus is walking along with his disciples and they run into a man who is blind. The disciples ask Jesus why the man is blind, is it because of HIS sins or the sins of his parents? It is telling that they already had what seemingly were the only two answers they would consider as plausible in their heads when they asked the question. It is indicative of the reactions we read of throughout the rest of the chapter from all parties. People were not used to thinking outside the accepted norms of society. And that society at the time was controlled by the Pharisees. Well, by the Romans, I suppose, ultimately, but in first-century Palestine, the day-to-day stuff was left up to the locals themselves. The Romans knew that they – the locals - were MUCH better at micromanaging than the Romans were, except where circumstances demanded direct intervention. That would come later.

Anyway, Jesus tells the disciples that it was neither his own nor his parent’s sins that caused the man to be born blind, but rather he was born blind so that God’s works may be revealed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me. In other words, there was a greater purpose … a deeper reason for which this happened. Watch!

What does he do? Jesus spits on the ground, makes mud, spreads it on the man’s eyes, and sends him off to the pool of Siloam to rinse off. And when the man does, he opens his eyes and he can see. The healing takes all of two verses out of the 41 into which the chapter is broken up. That part of the narrative ends at verse 8. For the next 33 verses the arguments go back and forth, about who Jesus was, if he was a sinner (because he’d healed on the Sabbath), if the man actually was who he said he was, talking to the neighbors and the PARENTS about who the man was, then arguing back and forth about who might or might not be a disciple of Christ, likening him to a disciple of Moses … the litany seems endless. There is so much talk filling the rest of the chapter that by the time we get to the end, we almost forget what started the whole argument in the first place: a man was healed by the power and the love of God through Jesus Christ.

The Pharisees missed the point. They were so caught up in the fact that the Sabbath had been violated, they couldn’t get past the fact that Jesus had, in their minds, sinned. It didn’t fit in their heads that God might actually do something outside the strict parameters they had set for themselves by codifying those 613 laws.

Richard Lischer, professor of Homiletics at Duke Divinity School, writes the following:

‘The question of origins pervades the Gospel of John. In our story we have the ancient version not of Who's on First? but of Where's He from? The authorities sink to the oldest of all debate tactics: assail the source of your opponent's argument. Poison the well. Where is this Jesus from? What rabbinical school did he attend? Where did he learn to break God's law? The formerly blind man replies, "He restored my sight. Where do you think he's from?"

Does this story mean that you must possess special knowledge to be a follower of Jesus? Must you see the way God sees?

No -- not knowledge, but acknowledgment.

The formerly blind man did not know all the correct religious phrases with which to interpret his salvation. He was not pious in the traditional sense or even respectful of his elders. What he knew for sure was that once upon a time he sat in darkness, and now the whole world was drenched in sunlight. And he acknowledged that.

"One thing I know," he said. And as he makes his witness to Jesus, we realize that the man blind from birth has a multitude of sons and daughters with their own stories to tell. "One thing I know," one of you might say (sounding like the Samaritan woman in John 4), “is that when I was going through my divorce I hurt so much I couldn't sleep or eat, and I was so filled with hate I couldn't think, but somehow I got through it, and I've come to recognize that the somehow was Jesus."

"One thing I know." How is that for ironic understatement? As if the only teensy little thing you happen to know is -- who saved your life! No, you start not with special knowledge but with acknowledgment. You may begin not with a public profession but with a prayer to the Light of the World.

The man's profession has a terrible consequence for him and for all of us. He is cast out of the synagogue. He is cut off from Torah, family, the sweet--smelling incense of the Sabbath, the certitude of the Law -- all because he looked deeply and directly into the Light.

If J. Louis Martyn and other scholars are right, this story reflects the historic parting of the ways between the synagogue and the Jews who believed in Jesus. We were once so close. Just how close we still are can be seen in those moments when we acknowledge our dependence on God, and place no limits on who and how God saves in Jesus Christ. If we read this story as an ironic comedy and nothing more, we miss the loneliness of its final scene in which Jesus and the man converse outside the synagogue. But if we catch its underlying pathos, we will see this story for the tragedy it really is, and wait upon God to write a new ending.’

So the question for us today, here at Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton is this: Are we limiting the way we are viewing God’s work in the world, are we blind to the radically unexpected nature of the Gospel, are we ONLY looking for God to work in a certain way, through certain people, in a certain timeframe, in a certain sequence, or are we ready to acknowledge that God can and does work in ways we never even knew existed?

Can we be open to those unexpected ways in our own hearts, in our own lives, seemingly insignificant coincidences that turn out to be God-things?

What happened this week in your life? Looking back, was there something that struck you as odd, something you maybe couldn’t quite put your finger on, that now, looking back on it, seems to have been one of those instances, one of those thin places where you could catch a glimpse of the Kingdom shining through? If it DID happen, share it with a friend, or a family member. It is in those events that we find our hope and our courage … and the ability to recognize and to continue to work the works that God has for us to do.

Let’s pray.