The Man Born Blind -- John 9

                                                                   Lent 4A 2014

1 Samuel 161-13; Ps 23;Ephesians 5:8-14; John 9:1-41

Father Adam Trambley

March 30, 2014 St.John’s Sharon

Twenty years ago,

I was part of the music ministry at a church in Boston.

One of our altos was a blind woman.

If she hadn’t been born blind,

she had been blind for most of her life.

She used to have all our hymns

            Typed out in braille

            So she could read the words with her fingers

As she sang.

One Sunday in Lent,

            We read this passage from John’s gospel

            About the man born blind.

As part of the gospel,

            She sang a solo of this hymn:

He healed the darkness of my mind

The day he gave my sight to me

It was not sin that made me blind

It was no sinner made me see.*

At first, I was dumbfounded.

            Who could have been so cruel

            To ask a blind person

            To sing about Jesus healing a blind man.

Then I thought:

            Maybe this is a desperate prayer

                        For her own healing.

            (I was young then.

            I thought God should fix everything.)

Somehow her singing

            About a blind man seeing

            When she was a blind woman not seeing

            Didn’t seem right,

            Like she was telling another person’s story

Then I realized:

            She wasn’t telling another person’s story.

            She was telling her own story.

The story of the man born blind in scripture

            Isn’t about seeing the light with his eyes.

The story of the man born blind in scripture

            Is about believing in the light with his heart. 

The man was born blind,

            Jesus says,

            So that God’s works might be revealed in him

Jesus’ curative miracle,

            as uniquely amazing as it is—

            never since the world began

            has one opened the eyes of a person born blind—

            even that amazing miracle

            doesn’t allow the man born blind to believe.

His belief comes in the rough-and-tumble,

            Back-and-forth,

            Question-and-answer sessions

            With his neighbors, with the Pharisees,

                        And finally with Jesus.

His life isn’t lit by Jesus’ miracle.

His life is lit by coming to know Jesus,

Which was the point of the miracle.

His professions about Jesus develop.

He starts by saying “The man called Jesus.”

            And doesn’t know where he is.

When the Pharisees ask, he replies,

            “He is a prophet.”

They interrogate him again, and he professes,

            He is from God.

Then he meets Jesus, and says,

            Lord, I believe.

What’s the real miracle here?

A man born blind seeing

Or a man once-blind seeing Jesus?

Can you sing this story not-seeing,

But miraculously seeing Jesus?

 

Let others call my faith a lie

Or try to stir up doubt in me

Look at me now! None can deny

I once was blind but now I see.*

So much more to see, here. 

We may not be blind,

            At least with our eyes.

(Although increasing without our bifocals,

We might sympathize with man in the gospel.)

But we all have our struggles.

We were all born with something

            We really wish wasn’t so,

And we may have acquired other handicaps

Along the way.

Maybe for some it’s physical issues.

For others it’s emotional issues.

For still others it’s the family we were born into,

            Whether because we are missing a parent

            Or because we weren’t allowed to trade

                        Our younger sibling for a pony.

What do the disciples ask Jesus?

“Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents,

            That he was born blind?”

Jesus presents a third answer:

            “so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”

Why are we in the mess we might find ourselves?

Sometimes we’ve messed up.

            Sometimes we’ve messed up a lot.

Sometimes we dig such a deep hole

            That we find we can’t climb out on our own.

Unforeseen, but probably foreseeable, consequences

Often follow our foolishness

And we find ourselves

despondently begging

In some gutter or other.

Sometimes the sins of the parents are passed down.

Babies born addicted to drugs or infected with AIDS

            Are perhaps entitled to feel that life isn’t fair.

So are the children abused, neglected, sold into slavery,

            Or just unable to feel the needed unconditional love

            From parents who never knew it themselves.

Not the children’s fault.

            But it’s certainly the children’s pain.

Surely somebody sinned, Rabbi. 

Who was it?

Here’s the hope:

            The answer doesn’t matter.

However we got here,

Whoever might be at responsible,

No matter where we can find the fault,

            Jesus starts where we are right now,

            And he just wants us to see.

Of course we’ve sinned

            Of course others have sinned

                        Of course life isn’t fair,

But Jesus is less concerned about how we got lost in the dark

            Than about bringing us into the light.

            And, as Paul says,

            “in the Lord you are light.”

Wherever we are, we are there

            So that God’s works might be revealed in us.

We may not have been moved to where we are

            Because God wanted us there.

We’re probably not in pain because God caused it –

            God wants healing, not hurting.

We’re probably not stressed because God caused it –

            God gives us gifts to bear fruit,

            Not be worried and anxious about many things.

We’re probably not suffering because God caused it –

            People don’t always do what God wants them to do,

            And when they don’t do what God wants them to do, others suffer.

But once we’ve been moved to wherever we are

            By whatever got us in the predicament we are in,

            Jesus will draw us from darkness to light,

            If only we are willing to go.

In every moment, however horrific,

            We stand at the threshold of the coming

                        Kingdom of God,

            With Jesus holding the door wide open for us.

                        But we don’t have to enter.

The process of coming to see Jesus isn’t always easy.

            Sometimes there is confusion.

            Sometimes there is opposition.

            Almost always there is fear and letting go

                        Of the life of begging

                        To which we have become accustomed.

The miracle in the gospel is that the man born blind

            Received what he needed

            To push through the spiritual darkness

            And come to the light of Christ.

He didn’t need to see to see Jesus.

But he needed to see to see his way through

            The confusion, opposition and fear

            To finally come to see Jesus.

The miracle of a man born blind seeing

wasn’t itself enough, though.

His parents didn’t come to see Jesus,

            Although they could see.

The Pharisees didn’t come to see Jesus,

            Although their eyes worked quite well,

            And they had even talked to Jesus.

Only the man born blind,

            Being healed a little bit,

            And holding on for dear eternal life,

            Finally beheld the true light come into the world.

With us, like with the man born blind,

            Jesus will provide the miracle we need

            To bring us through our own darkness

            Into his glorious light.

He may not make our eyes better,

Or provide a miraculous cure for our individual ailments,

Or give us a winning lottery ticket,

Or make all the mean people go away,

But he’ll give us what we need,

            Especially if we ask him.

Then it is up to us

            To take the thin strand of hope

            And follow it as it thickens into

            our eternal lifeline leading to Jesus’ light.

The way may not be what we would expect.

The way may not be always easy.

The way may be filled

            With unfaithful family, friends and Pharisees,

But the Way, the Truth and the Life

            Will make a way for us

            To find him.

Part of our purpose in Lent,

            Is to beg him to make that way,

            Using prayers, fasting, and almsgiving

            to strengthen our supplication

                        and prepare us for the path.

Ask me not how! But I know who

Has opened up new worlds to me

This Jesus does what none can do

I once was blind but now I see.*

*Words by Fred Pratt Green ©1982, Hope Publishing Co.  Music Available from GIA Publications.

(To hear it, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnswQetj9xU from time 4:40-6:15)

The Woman at the Well

                                                               Lent 3A 2014

Exodus 17:1-7; Ps 95;Romans 5:1-11; John 4:5-42

Father Adam Trambley

March 23, 2014 St.John’s Sharon

Hand-painted icon of the Woman at the Well by the priest currently serving the church at Jacob's well.

The Samaritan woman at the well’s testimony is: “He told me everything I have ever done.” 

Saint Paul says that “while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly…while we were still sinners Christ died for us.”

God knows everything we have ever done and he loves us.

He knows everything good we have done. 

He knows everything bad we have done. 

He knows everything good we have done to look good and promote ourselves. 

He knows everything bad we have done because our own fears and pain kept us from doing any better. 

He knows everything we have done that we have kept successfully hidden from those closest to us. 

He knows everything we have done that we even hide from ourselves. 

He sees you when you’re sleeping.

He knows when you’re awake. 

He knows if you’ve been bad or good, so

…no, actually that part is Santa Claus. 

And the point of God knowing everything about us

is not to manipulate us into behaving better

so we get nice Christmas gifts. 

The point of God knowing everything about us

is that while we were still doing much that was bad,

God sent us the greatest Christmas present ever.

Jesus his son. 

Immanuel. 

God-with-us

 to reconcile us back to God

while we still acted as enemies of God. 

As Paul says: “God proves his love for us

in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.”

God know us completely. 

And he still loves us so much

that he sent his Son to come to us

to bring us into a saving relationship with him. 

He sent his son so that instead of walking in darkness,

we could see the light of the world.  

He sent his son so that instead dying of thirst in the deserts of our own sin and brokenness,

we could receive springs of water gushing up to eternal life. 

He sent his son so that instead of coming to a final death in our fragile, mortal bodies,

we might be crucified with Christ

and share in his resurrection.

Jesus says to the Samaritan woman at the well. 

“Go, call your husband.” 

“I have no husband.” 

“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!” 

Now we can be pretty sure that

in the small town of Sychar,

none of this was a secret.

The woman knows her situation,

probably the husband she now has that isn’t her husband knows the situation,

and every gossip in town certainly knows the situation. 

Probably some particularly sheltered nine-year old isn’t quite aware of it,

but we can guess that this isn’t the first time someone has mentioned her five husbands, plus whatever her current situation is. 

Jesus is an exception, however,

in that he is from out of town

and that he says it honestly to her face

without judgment or and without scorn. 

He doesn’t scold her to repent

or to kick out the no-good-whoever she’s living with

or say that if she likes it she should put a ring on it,

and he doesn’t put her down. 

All he tells her is that he really knows her,

and that he has something life-giving for her.

Then the woman challenges him. 

He seems to be a prophet. 

Yet he’s a Jew and she’s a Samaritan. 

She isn’t interested in just being some project to get the foreign girl to pray the right way. 

She knows something about God and theology,

and she knows the barriers religious people and their practices have put up. 

Again, Jesus refuses to judge. 

He says that the time is coming when people will worship God in spirit and truth. 

What Jesus says about religious and cultural practices

is that the time is coming when God will bring people together

and religion won’t push them apart. 

That’s enough for the Samaritan woman. 

When Jesus says he is the Messiah, she’s sold. 

She drops her water jar,

runs into town,

begins telling everyone to come and see man

who has told her everything she has ever done

and is probably the Messiah. 

They all come to Jesus,

keep him there for a couple days,

and come to believe in him. 

As the Samaritan woman at the well experienced Jesus,

we are invited to experience Jesus. 

Just like Jesus knows everything about the Samaritan woman

and didn’t hold it against her,

he also knows everything about us

and doesn’t hold it against us, either.

Churches can make people feel like they aren’t the right people. 

Martin Luther King, Jr. said

that Sunday morning

is the most segregated hour of Christian America. 

At various times people had to be the right color,

the right ethnic background,

the right social class,

have the right education,

speak the right language,

or even already know everything important about a church

to come and be part of it. 

But none of those things come from Jesus. 

He was a good Jew

who didn’t care that this woman was a Samaritan,

and he made it clear that Samaritans and Jews,

and anyone else,

would be able to worship together. 

So where we have come from is not a barrier

to entering into a loving, saving relationship with God. 

The good shepherd has sheep of many folds

that he is bringing together.  

Jesus invites us to come to him whoever we are.

Jesus also invites us to come to him

no matter what we have done. 

This piece is often harder for us. 

We have all made mistakes.

We have all acted on emotions we wish we didn’t have. 

We have all hurt people we didn’t really want to hurt. 

We have all done things we’d rather no one found out about. 

We all carry guilt and shame and regret

 and, in some places,

an inability to forgive ourselves. 

We don’t always want to accept our past failings,

we don’t want someone else knowing about it,

and we certainly don’t want them telling us

everything we have ever done. 

Yet, we desperately need someone

to know us at our deepest level

 and to love us anyway. 

We could go through six partners

looking for that level of love and acceptance,

but we aren’t likely to find it,

except in Jesus. 

Only Jesus

brings both an unconditional love and the bright light of truth to us. 

All we have to do is accept it from him.

Jesus came and died for us

while we were still in the midst of all

our guilt and shame and hardness of heart. 

He came to reconcile us to God

by giving us an honest assessment

of what we’ve done and

letting us know that we can come to him anyway. 

Too often we only want to present

our Sunday best selves to him,

but Jesus knows our depressed Monday morning selves,

and our frustrated Wednesday hump-day selves,

and our careless Friday afternoon selves

and our not-entirely-presentable late Saturday night selves

when, like the woman at the well,

we were not entirely forthcoming

about our relationship status

with the cute guy at the local watering hole. 

Jesus knows everything we’ve ever done,

and he’ll put it all out there

and he’ll love us anyway. 

When we hear him tell us what we’ve done

without the undertones of judgment we use with ourselves,

and when we receive his love

beyond any other love we have felt before,

then we are reconciled to God and saved. 

We will reorient our lives onto paths of holiness and happiness,

because we can’t imagine wanting to reject

Jesus’ truth and love any longer.

We may stumble,

but those stumbles will move us,

by God’s grace,

further into the loving arms of Almighty God. 

While we were still sinners,

Christ died for us,

and having been reconciled,

we will be saved by his life. 

The Samaritan woman at the well’s testimony is:

“He told me everything I have ever done.”

Once we experience Jesus’ love ourselves,

we will say,

with the rest of the Samaritan village:

“we have heard for ourselves,

and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”

Lent 1 -- Jesus' Temptations

    

                                                                   Lent 1A 2014

Genesis 2:15-17,3:1-7; Psalm 32; Romans 5:12-19; Matt 4:1-11

Father Adam Trambley

March 9, 2014 St.John’s Sharon

Jesus was baptized by John.

He came up out of the water.

He received the Holy Spirit.

He heard the voice of God, “You are my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

He went into the wilderness.

He defeated the devil.

And that is where we are today.  

Jesus starts his public ministry with his baptism.  As soon as he hears God’s voice telling him that he is God’s beloved son, the Spirit drives him into the desert where he prays and fasts.  After forty days and nights of fasting, he is famished.  Scripture points out to us that he fasted day and night, since some types of fasting over extended periods allowed eating at night, and Matthew wants to be clear just what Jesus did.  Then Matthew points out that Jesus was famished, to show that Jesus did the difficult, painfully incarnate work of fasting.  He wasn’t miraculously relieved of hunger by being the Son of God.  He went through what we experience.  Then, while famished, the tempter comes to him, and Matthew and Luke record three specific temptations.

The three temptations we read about deal with specific temptations for Jesus in his ministry.  These three also point to three broad areas of temptation that we all face, while also providing insights into ways we can recognize these temptations for what they are and work to avoid them.

The first temptation Satan suggests is to turn stones into bread so Jesus can have something to eat.  We can see in this the first general type of temptation, which is to give in to our own appetites and our own desire for comfort and convenience.  The deadly sins of gluttony, lust, and sloth are always available to us if we allow ourselves to fall into them.

But the devil isn’t offering Jesus gluttony.  He says, “Command these stones to become loaves of bread,” not “command these stones to become an extra-large hot fudge sundae with Spanish peanuts, whipped cream and cherry on top.”  Later in his ministry we will see Jesus create bread for five-thousand people, and he was known for attending parties.  As soon as the devil leaves, the angels are going to bring Jesus food.  No, Satan’s temptation here is more subtle.  The devil is trying to turn Jesus away from the important work his is meant to be doing at the moment by focusing on himself and his needs.  Those needs are important in other contexts, but Jesus went out into the wilderness to hear from God, to become closer to God, and to prepare himself for the difficult commission God had set before him.  His purpose at that time was to fast and to pray, not to eat.  If he would turn aside from his difficult work now just to have lunch, the devil should have no difficulty turning him aside later when things get really dangerous.  Jesus’ response is telling: “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”  Bread is great, and important, but we can’t knead dough when we are supposed to hear from God. 

This first temptation gives us a question to ask about our own temptations.  Is whatever is being offered to us aiding us or distracting us from our primary task at the moment?  Will what has come to mind make it easier or harder to do what God wants us to do?  For example, building community by texting people is great but not while driving.  Having food at coffee hour is great, but wrangling over the quantity and selection of donuts instead of focusing on ways to make visitors feel welcome might be distracting temptation.  Having a meal out with family members is great, but getting worked up over the quality of the service or details of the food is probably succumbing to the enemy’s temptations.

Jesus’ second temptation is to go up to the top of the temple and throw himself off it.  This idea seems ludicrous, but Satan has good Biblical backing.  He quotes Psalm 91 exactly, “’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’.”  We might note in passing here that while Jesus often paraphrases or combines scriptures against the devil, Satan is precise.  This temptation is essential for Jesus to overcome here, because he will be offered something similar by those surrounding him on Calvary.  They tell him that if he is the Son of God, he should come down from the cross.  Jesus isn’t going to work miracles for himself on the cross, and he isn’t going to work miracles to experience an ancient Israelite Tower of Terror from the top of the temple either.  He isn’t the Las Vegas laser-light-show miraculous messiah.  He is the Son of God who will reconcile the world back to God by sharing God’s self-giving love with the world.  God will take care of him in God’s way and in God’s time.  Jesus doesn’t need to prove anything.

This temptation hits us as the general temptation to appear special, especially special in a spiritual way, which is a form of pride.  We are all individually created and loved by God, and as such we are special at a level that we cannot even fathom.  But sometimes we want to be able to show that we are just a little bit more special than others.  Now if we need God to show up for us because of our own weakness and difficulty, God is always willing to reach out to us.  But performing stunts to prove that we are important enough that God will protect us is not good, especially when we intend others to take note.  God is not at our beck and call to make us look good in front of our friends, or even in front of our enemies.    

Of course, the scripture the devil quotes is true, and God does protect us when we need him to, and we should ask him to protect us when we need it.  If somebody pushed me off the top of the temple, I’d be praying hard, and maybe even reminding God of Psalm 91.  We pray for those in harm’s way, like our armed forces.  Life is sometimes difficult and dangerous, and we need God’s protection, especially if we are engaged in God’s work. 

The question for our discernment and avoidance of this temptation is: Is this about me or about God?  If we want God’s protection to give glory to ourselves, it is temptation.  On the other hand, if we want it to further the work God wants us to do, including being able to live a quiet life of love, joy and peace with our family, then we are right to pray for help, allowing God to provide what he wants.  Jesus said, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”   But he also said, “Ask and you shall receive.”  Another way to think about this temptation, that is also a nice segue to the next temptation, is to remember the words of the three young men who Nebuchadnezzar was about to throw into the fire.  They asked for God’s protection, but for his glory, not theirs.  They said, “You can throw us into the fire.  We believe that God can save us if he wants to.  But even if he decides not to, he is still God and we are not bowing down to you.”

Finally, the devil offers a third temptation.  He takes Jesus up a very high mountain and shows him the glory of all the kingdoms of the world.  “All these I will give you,” he says, “if you will fall down and worship me.”  Here we have a specific expression of the general temptation to use evil means to achieve a good end.  The devil shows Jesus an incredible amount of good that could be done with the seemingly slightest compromise, a compromise that might not even seem to matter that much practically.  Imagine the ability to solve all the problems of the world with no painful rejection, suffering or crucifixion and on a faster time-line that the two-thousand plus years it has taken so far doing it God’s way.  Imagine eliminating cruel Roman emperors and brutal barbarian warlords and sadistic petty tyrants with a wave of the hand.  Imagine all of them being forced to bow down and serve every good cause of your imagining, if only you trade allegiances.  This temptation is Frodo offering the ring to Galadriel, Darth Vader offering Luke Skywalker a job, and the Nazis providing Captain Von Trapp a naval commission with security for his family in the Third Reich.  Satan’s temptation is to do more good in the service of evil than we can imagine ourselves doing if we serve good, and God, alone.

Jesus, of course, has to pass this particular test to save the world and to reconcile it back to God.  He would abdicate his mission if he is willing to be a Messiah of any sort except God’s suffering servant who fully reveals God to the world.  Everything Jesus does, regardless of how effective it seems at the time, must be about God’s glory and nothing else.  “Worship the Lord your God,” he rebukes the tempter, “and serve him only.”  Then the devil leaves him.

For us, when facing temptations in the practical rough-and-tumble of daily life, two questions can shed light for us.  The first is: “Does this action give glory to God, or to someone else?”  If we are focused on giving glory to God, we are likely to avoid immoral compromise, because God is never glorified by evil.  Sometimes, though, we are in such a mix of trouble and difficulty that we really have a hard time figuring out the lesser of two evils or where God could be glorified at all in the midst of a tragic environment.  In this case, a corollary question arises, “Which path puts me at the center and makes my own judgment and accomplishments primary, and which one leaves more room for God to work, including for God to work through other people?”  We tend to think that the more we do, the more things rely on our judgment, and the more control we have, the better everything will be.  That thinking would lead Jesus to trade the devil a bit of worship for command of all creation.  Instead, Jesus submits to God, allows God to work through him in God’s time, and allows God to raise him from the dead.  

In much of our work, the more we leave for God to do, the more we allow God to work through the decisions and efforts of others, and the more we recognize the need for all people to use their gifts to accomplish the work God has in mind, the more we are going to be avoiding the temptation to serve something besides God.  Usually what we would serve is not Satan, per se, but our own fears, our own control needs, and our own agendas, all of which masquerade as goods because of the enemy’s subtle deceptions.   When we focus instead on worshipping and serving God, we can trust God to take care of what needs to be done. Then we won’t make deals with the devil to try to do a better job than what we have erroneously decided that God would be able to do on his own if he were in charge instead of us.

Let’s review Jesus’ three quotations and a discernment question to help us put them into practice:

·         One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.  Will this option aid or distract me from my primary purpose at this time?

·         Do not put the Lord your God to the test. Is this about me or about God?

·         Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.  Does this put me in control or leave more room for God to work, including for God to work through other people?” 

We can heed Jesus’ scriptural advice, as well as praying regularly, “Lead us not into temptation.”