John 20:1-18
Easter: April 24,2011
It’s Easter! What do you see? The lilies, the sun, the colorful eggs, the bunny? What do you see this Easter morning? This is the question asked in John’s gospel. In his telling of the extraordinary event of the empty tomb, his focus is on how people see it. And of course, he’s counting on the double meaning of “see”, which works the same in Greek as it does in English. Literally seeing with the eyes and seeing in terms of understanding…or better, insight.
As we enter this passage, the first thing we are told is that it is night time and Mary Magdalene is on her way to the tomb Jesus while it is still dark. And this darkness serves as a clue to the reader that Mary has no idea what is going on or what is going to happen – she’s “in the dark”. The fact is, she sees nothing yet. But, when she arrives at the tomb, she sees something: The stone has been removed. That’s all. She can’t see anything else – she has no insight yet. So, in confusion, she runs off to tell Peter and the “other” disciple that Jesus’ body has been moved. Then they go to the tomb to have a “look”.
As each one comes to the tomb, we’re told what it is that they see when they get there. Peter pokes his head inside and sees all the strips of linen, and the burial cloth and notices their location relative to each other. Wonderful Peter – always so eager, so thorough and often so wrong! Finally, the other disciple enters the tomb, and the author tells us only that he “saw and believed”. He had some kind of insight, though the author of the gospel doesn’t tell us yet what that is. It’s the same scene – an empty tomb with some folded up linens – but the conclusions each of our characters draw are very different.
Now, the two disciples exit the stage and we stay with Mary, whose vision is slowly changing as she has more extraordinary experiences – more and more extraordinary visions. Because at first she only saw the stone moved away and can’t seem to see Jesus’ body – she is upset. She’s weeping. She doesn’t know what to do next. So, she peeks inside the tomb again – maybe my eyes have played a trick on me, she was probably thinking. But, instead of seeing the body, this time she sees two angels in white. They ask her why she’s crying, and Mary answers. But even this celestial vision is not enough for Mary to see anything but the missing body, to understanding anything except Jesus is supposed to be here, in the tomb, dead. So, when she turns around, Jesus himself is standing before her, and she sees him, but she doesn’t really see him…she can’t tell who it is – because, of course, he looks different from what she would expect.
Both Mary and Peter are looking at the concrete surroundings, noticing the details and looking frantically for the body that is supposed to be part of this graveyard scene. They are looking for something so particular, so limited they can’t possibly see the real truth. They are looking for the dead Jesus. They believe that his life and influence have ended with his death and all that’s left to do is seal up the tomb and grieve their loss.
So, What about us? What do we see? And where do we look?
Starting last November – with Advent – we have walked with Jesus from birth, through his ministry and life, and all the way to the cross. This metaphorical walk we take year after year helps form us and deepen our faith as Christians. It is the walk that helps us see, because this journey with Jesus adjusts our vision and our focus so we can see the world as Jesus did – as God wants us to.
By looking at Jesus’ life, we get a new prescription for our glasses so that as we walk through our lives and world, we see not the glory of riches, but the beauty in relationships, we see not the might of violence, but the power of nonviolence, we see not just our friends and families, but the lives of the poor and the hurting are placed under a magnifying glass. And of course, as we have been so keenly aware of this week, we’re asked to see that leading a life like Jesus did can bring us into conflict with others…it can even lead to the cross.
But if we only walk to the cross, our eyesight isn’t perfect yet. The people following Jesus could see these same things – These new ways of looking at power, wealth, and relationships. Their prescription had been changed. But that first Easter morning their eyesight, their insight, was still insufficient. And if we stop at the cross, our vision will still be blurry. The problem with the eyesight of the disciples from the moment Jesus died was that they were looking in the wrong place for the wrong things.
We have the glasses that were refined by the story of Jesus’ earthly life, but now our gaze needs to turn away from this particular person – bound in time and culture and context. We have Jesus’ sight, and now we need to stop looking for him because the risk of looking only to the dead person of Jesus is that we won’t see – and won’t be – the living Christ – and the living Christ is all around us, in us and among us.
I think we often look primarily for the dead Jesus. We bind our faith to an understanding of a Christ who is equivalent with the Jesus of 1st century Palestine, and is therefore bound up in that time and place. Then, when things go wrong, we look to Jesus – wait for him to help us. We pray for miracles just like the ones he performed, but only end up disappointed. When believing in Jesus as Lord and Savior doesn’t solve our problems, we become resigned. We grieve over the violence of this world, but take it for granted as a part of our lives. We see no way for peace. We resign ourselves to a world where poverty will always be a fact of life. We are saddened by these things, but ultimately we don’t really believe they will change, do we? We can’t see any other possibilities, because we are looking in the wrong direction for the wrong thing.
So what, in the end, changes Mary’s sight? Well, her transformation begins when the risen Jesus calls Mary by name. But, really, her sight is still quite blurry. She thinks she is seeing Jesus, the man who died on the cross. In fact, she so wants to see only Jesus the person that she tried to physically fix him to that very spot. She grabs a hold of him. I picture her taking hold of his ankles and trying to plant his feet in the ground. But, when she tried to live in the past, the risen Jesus gently helps her recast her gaze – “Don’t hold on to me,” he says. Let go of what you know so you can become what you, and all of God’s creatures are created to be – the new, living Body of Christ. It’s time. You are ready. Then, Mary really sees – she stops looking for the dead, and begins living as one named and called by God into the body of Christ. And she goes to tell the others what she has now truly seen with her very own eyes.
Jesus was just the beginning and we are the ongoing manifestation of God’s incarnation. And as such, we cannot stay locked in how we have always seen things. We can not get seduced by the devil we know – seeing only the immutability of the world’s sufferings and brokenness.
We know now what this belief is that the other disciple has when he sees the empty tomb. It is not belief in something particular, some fact that he can’t let go of. It is not belief in a person – any person, dead or alive. He believes not in Jesus, rather he believes what Jesus actually told them and believes in what Jesus called them to do. He believes the extraordinary, un-believable things Jesus was saying all along: That after he was gone they would no longer have him to follow, but they would be given the divine spirit to move them, guide them, and give them the courage necessary to carry on Jesus’ work. Maybe the disciple even believed that crazy thing Jesus said earlier in John’s gospel: That the disciples would do even greater things than Jesus did. Even greater things – do we believe that? Do we understand what that means when we look at the empty tomb?
We can’t look back. We are named and called by God. We look forward to the possibilities that lie just outside our physical sight. This is a vision that completely changes who we are and gives rise to a hope that we could never produce on our own. Where should we look on Easter? Don’t look back. The risen Christ is right here, right now gathered in this sanctuary, ready to carry on what Jesus started. Christ is risen – right here right now. Alleluia! Amen.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Meeting Jesus: Martha, Mary, and Lazarus
John 11:1-45
Fifth Sunday of Lent: April 10, 2011
We have arrived at the last Sunday of looking at stories from the gospel of John where individuals encounter Jesus. Nicodemus, the woman at the well, the man born blind - each living lives that have taken a toll on them or others.
When these characters meet Jesus, they are in some way given new life. For Nicodemus, Jesus freed him from participating in a religious system based on stale and empty belief that only supported the status quo, a status quo that was destroying the marginalized in the society. For the woman at the well Jesus offered new life by challenging a system that made women perpetually economically vulnerable. For the man born blind, Jesus healed his ailment and restored him to community by challenging a system based on false judgments and blame.
But each person, I would argue, represents more than just themselves: they represent all of those people who have been beaten down by unjust and oppressive systems and institutions. They stand in for people who have been killed by the injustices of this world – literally and spiritually. In each character’s story we are given a chance to see a myriad of people who are victims of their time and culture. And we see Jesus showing us this doesn’t have to be true. Things can change.
It’s good to note that all these stories are unique to this gospel – not in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Part of why that matters is that for John, not only are these stories critical to understanding who Jesus was, but we know that John sees them as all interrelated. One way these stories are connected is that in each one John is writing at multiple levels. And in all of the stories people fail to move beyond the literal level and consequently miss seeing who Jesus is – or rather what Jesus reveals to us about who God is.
Another way our stories are connected is that each of our characters make some sort of statement about believing in Jesus. As we saw a couple of weeks ago, all through John’s gospel the author plays on the word, “belief.” People believe things about Jesus along the way, but some beliefs are better than others. Through the constant irony found in the play on words, and even through humor, we, the reader, are supposed to see the differences of belief, evaluate them, and in the end, we are to find out what constitutes real belief.
Going all the way back to Nicodemus, remember that John is, in part, deriding those whose belief is based solely on having seen the miracles Jesus performed. And, at the end of the gospel, we get the punch line: When the disciples are gathered in the room with the risen Christ, Jesus says, “blessed are those who have not “seen” and yet “believe”.
Belief is at play in our story this morning as well. Today, we have the most extraordinary miracle yet: someone is brought to new life who was not just spiritually or metaphorically dead, but dead, dead. And so we could say that when Lazarus meets Jesus, he is given new life, in a literal sense. But we can’t stop there…or rather we can’t begin there. We can never see only the literal story in the gospel of John. When we read the whole passage, we see that Jesus met some folks along the way to Lazarus. And those people are struggling with belief in Jesus. The stories of what happened to them are just as, or really more, important as the miracle.
Once Jesus comes to the town where Lazarus lived, he first meets Martha, one of Lazarus’ sisters. Martha was a bit angry with Jesus at first; “If you have been here,” she says, “my brother would not have died.” But she believes he is capable of a miracle. He can do anything he sets his mind to: “Even now,” she says, “I know that God will give you whatever you ask.” Martha believed in Jesus, but it was all about the miracles for her. She wants him to come in on his white horse with his super powers and fix everything. She is like so many that believe in Jesus as a super-human, able to fix all that ails us. Unsurprisingly, if we have been paying attention to the gospel of John, by the time Lazarus is raised we will see this belief isn’t enough.
Mary, Lazarus’ other sister, was just plain mad. She echoes her sister: “If you had been here, my brother would not have died.” But here there is no follow up comment showing her confidence that he can do the miracle. She might have believed something about Jesus before, but the death of her brother has taken that all away. And with no hope whatsoever, it is Mary who mourns most deeply. It’s Mary who doesn’t believe Jesus can bring new life. Lazarus is dead, Lazarus will stay dead.
After Jesus meets these two women, he weeps.
We usually think Jesus was weeping over the death of Lazarus, his friend. But that doesn’t fit the order of the story – John made it clear that Jesus was confident all along that Lazarus would be raised to life. He would have no reason to mourn his death. It is only after he has met Martha and Mary that Jesus was “greatly disturbed,” as the gospel says. And that makes sense to me: He is devastated by Martha and Mary’s response. He knew them, and had high hopes that they would understand. After all, this is, John reminds us, the Mary who we all thought understood. This is the Mary who anointed Jesus with oil and wiped his feet with her hair – arguably the most intimate moment Jesus had with anyone in the gospels. She was the one it seemed knew something the others didn’t about the death and life of Jesus. Yet here, she doesn’t believe at all. She has given up hope and sees only death. And so, Jesus wept.
Finally, we meet the crowds, and their response is just as troubling for Jesus. The crowds, grieving with Mary and certainly not believing in Jesus, inevitably point the way to death; in fact, they invite Jesus to join them on the road to death. “Come and see where we have laid him,” they say. “Come and see.” This is how Jesus called his disciples: “Come and see,” he said to them when he first called them. “Come and see a new life.” And now he was being invited by people he knew, some of whom I assume he loved deeply, to come and see death. Jesus was the walking, breathing, manifestation of life, and they not only couldn’t see that, they invited the resurrection and the life to walk the road to death. Jesus wept.
The belief wasn’t there. But Jesus doesn’t give up. He’s determined to bring them to true belief – to new life. When they get to the tomb, he tells Martha to take away the stone. And here we see her wavering faith: She tells him Lazarus is really, really dead…he has been there rotting for a while. She doesn’t think she should roll away the stone. She too has lost her faith even in the possibility that Jesus can do miracles. And Jesus says to her, “did I not tell you if you believed – truly believed – you would see what life in God is all about.”
Curiosity must have gotten the best of the folks there that day –because they eventually rolled away the stone. And now Jesus meets Lazarus. In this encounter, we don’t get to know what Lazarus thinks or feels or believes; we know only that he was dead and then alive. What we get to know is what Jesus does in this encounter: First he prays to God so that everyone knows that what they are about to see is from God – what they are about to see is an example of how God operates in this world. God brings life in death filled places. Then, he calls Lazarus out. And lo, and behold, Lazarus walks out of the tomb. Another miracle! He’s done many by this time, but this is a biggie. He raised someone from the dead. And all those there – those who didn’t believe Jesus could do anything – they all, we’re told believed because of it. “Many had seen what Jesus did” John writes, “and so they believed.
But here’s the catch – and really, let’s be honest, there’s always a catch with John. Jesus didn’t stop at the miracle. That’s not where he stops, and that’s not where belief can stop. After he called Lazarus from the tomb, he gives a very clear instruction to everyone gathered there. “Unbind him.” All along, John tells the reader over and over, believing because of seeing what Jesus did was not enough. The people gathered at the tomb that day saw what Jesus did, but they didn’t hear what he said. And in that lies all the difference in what it means to believe.
Jesus brought new life – new possibilities in the midst of death and despair. But it doesn’t end there. Lazarus is still bound – more must be done before he is truly free. Lazarus is the culmination - he is all the other characters wrapped into one. Nicodemus stands by Lazarus at the tomb – though freed from his own oppressive way of understanding religion, he is now dependent on a whole community of people changing their ways if he is to be accepted. The woman stands at the tomb with Lazarus. She’s been shown a new possibility by Jesus – a life where women treated as equals – yet she faces a culture entrenched in its old ways. The man born blind can see more clearly that there is not blame or shame in who he is, yet no one believes him and in the end he remains an outcast. All three have been raised to new life by Jesus, but remain bound until the people unbind them.
Lazarus represents all the people who have been pushed into despair because of things that keep them bound. He represents all who are alive in the flesh but are victims of death-dealing systems. He represents the dead person walking. Jesus tells them that their belief, which was a trusting in Jesus to make everything better through miracles and signs, was creating a world of dead people walking.
Belief can’t be a passive act – it can’t stop at assertions about how great Jesus was – that he was God, that he was the savior, that he was a miracle worker. We need to move beyond that. If we don’t, we will be left looking for the next miracle, and we’ll leave people bound in their bands of cloth at the tomb. Belief is joining with God in the act of bringing people to life.
Anna Carter Florance, a theologian and preacher, wrote beautifully about this passage: She says, God raises the dead, but we are the ones who have to unbind them. God calls us out of our tombs, but we are the ones who have to let one another go free. And then she asks,
“How many resurrections have you witnessed that have failed because the resurrected one could never undo all those bandages by herself?
How many times have you seen a miraculous recovery turn into a relapse because the community didn’t do its part to let the recovering one “break free” of the old patters and habits that kept him in bondage?
How many times have you seen someone finally get a new start, a new job, that turns into a dead end because of a boss’ inflexibility or a market that always hurts the most vulnerable.
How many times have you seen someone freed from prison only to go right back in because people can’t stop blaming people for their problems so won’t lend that helping hand?
There’s nothing more tragic than a miraculously resurrected human being – one who has been touched by the divine grace and power of God – who trips and suffocates on her own bandages.
The gift of new life – of new possibilities – given to us in the life of Jesus is extraordinary. But if all we do is stand back and marvel and never live into those possibilities, we will leave people at the tomb, unable to move.
Jesus showed us with his earthly life a way that is possible – that changes people’s lives by challenging those things that keep them down. But he is on the way to the cross. He will die. The resurrection is in our living. It’s in entrusting our lives to Jesus and walking in his way. Unbind him he says. We have to take away the bands of cloth. We have to trust that new life is possible and then do our part to bring it about. That’s what it means to believe in Jesus. Amen.
Fifth Sunday of Lent: April 10, 2011
We have arrived at the last Sunday of looking at stories from the gospel of John where individuals encounter Jesus. Nicodemus, the woman at the well, the man born blind - each living lives that have taken a toll on them or others.
When these characters meet Jesus, they are in some way given new life. For Nicodemus, Jesus freed him from participating in a religious system based on stale and empty belief that only supported the status quo, a status quo that was destroying the marginalized in the society. For the woman at the well Jesus offered new life by challenging a system that made women perpetually economically vulnerable. For the man born blind, Jesus healed his ailment and restored him to community by challenging a system based on false judgments and blame.
But each person, I would argue, represents more than just themselves: they represent all of those people who have been beaten down by unjust and oppressive systems and institutions. They stand in for people who have been killed by the injustices of this world – literally and spiritually. In each character’s story we are given a chance to see a myriad of people who are victims of their time and culture. And we see Jesus showing us this doesn’t have to be true. Things can change.
It’s good to note that all these stories are unique to this gospel – not in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Part of why that matters is that for John, not only are these stories critical to understanding who Jesus was, but we know that John sees them as all interrelated. One way these stories are connected is that in each one John is writing at multiple levels. And in all of the stories people fail to move beyond the literal level and consequently miss seeing who Jesus is – or rather what Jesus reveals to us about who God is.
Another way our stories are connected is that each of our characters make some sort of statement about believing in Jesus. As we saw a couple of weeks ago, all through John’s gospel the author plays on the word, “belief.” People believe things about Jesus along the way, but some beliefs are better than others. Through the constant irony found in the play on words, and even through humor, we, the reader, are supposed to see the differences of belief, evaluate them, and in the end, we are to find out what constitutes real belief.
Going all the way back to Nicodemus, remember that John is, in part, deriding those whose belief is based solely on having seen the miracles Jesus performed. And, at the end of the gospel, we get the punch line: When the disciples are gathered in the room with the risen Christ, Jesus says, “blessed are those who have not “seen” and yet “believe”.
Belief is at play in our story this morning as well. Today, we have the most extraordinary miracle yet: someone is brought to new life who was not just spiritually or metaphorically dead, but dead, dead. And so we could say that when Lazarus meets Jesus, he is given new life, in a literal sense. But we can’t stop there…or rather we can’t begin there. We can never see only the literal story in the gospel of John. When we read the whole passage, we see that Jesus met some folks along the way to Lazarus. And those people are struggling with belief in Jesus. The stories of what happened to them are just as, or really more, important as the miracle.
Once Jesus comes to the town where Lazarus lived, he first meets Martha, one of Lazarus’ sisters. Martha was a bit angry with Jesus at first; “If you have been here,” she says, “my brother would not have died.” But she believes he is capable of a miracle. He can do anything he sets his mind to: “Even now,” she says, “I know that God will give you whatever you ask.” Martha believed in Jesus, but it was all about the miracles for her. She wants him to come in on his white horse with his super powers and fix everything. She is like so many that believe in Jesus as a super-human, able to fix all that ails us. Unsurprisingly, if we have been paying attention to the gospel of John, by the time Lazarus is raised we will see this belief isn’t enough.
Mary, Lazarus’ other sister, was just plain mad. She echoes her sister: “If you had been here, my brother would not have died.” But here there is no follow up comment showing her confidence that he can do the miracle. She might have believed something about Jesus before, but the death of her brother has taken that all away. And with no hope whatsoever, it is Mary who mourns most deeply. It’s Mary who doesn’t believe Jesus can bring new life. Lazarus is dead, Lazarus will stay dead.
After Jesus meets these two women, he weeps.
We usually think Jesus was weeping over the death of Lazarus, his friend. But that doesn’t fit the order of the story – John made it clear that Jesus was confident all along that Lazarus would be raised to life. He would have no reason to mourn his death. It is only after he has met Martha and Mary that Jesus was “greatly disturbed,” as the gospel says. And that makes sense to me: He is devastated by Martha and Mary’s response. He knew them, and had high hopes that they would understand. After all, this is, John reminds us, the Mary who we all thought understood. This is the Mary who anointed Jesus with oil and wiped his feet with her hair – arguably the most intimate moment Jesus had with anyone in the gospels. She was the one it seemed knew something the others didn’t about the death and life of Jesus. Yet here, she doesn’t believe at all. She has given up hope and sees only death. And so, Jesus wept.
Finally, we meet the crowds, and their response is just as troubling for Jesus. The crowds, grieving with Mary and certainly not believing in Jesus, inevitably point the way to death; in fact, they invite Jesus to join them on the road to death. “Come and see where we have laid him,” they say. “Come and see.” This is how Jesus called his disciples: “Come and see,” he said to them when he first called them. “Come and see a new life.” And now he was being invited by people he knew, some of whom I assume he loved deeply, to come and see death. Jesus was the walking, breathing, manifestation of life, and they not only couldn’t see that, they invited the resurrection and the life to walk the road to death. Jesus wept.
The belief wasn’t there. But Jesus doesn’t give up. He’s determined to bring them to true belief – to new life. When they get to the tomb, he tells Martha to take away the stone. And here we see her wavering faith: She tells him Lazarus is really, really dead…he has been there rotting for a while. She doesn’t think she should roll away the stone. She too has lost her faith even in the possibility that Jesus can do miracles. And Jesus says to her, “did I not tell you if you believed – truly believed – you would see what life in God is all about.”
Curiosity must have gotten the best of the folks there that day –because they eventually rolled away the stone. And now Jesus meets Lazarus. In this encounter, we don’t get to know what Lazarus thinks or feels or believes; we know only that he was dead and then alive. What we get to know is what Jesus does in this encounter: First he prays to God so that everyone knows that what they are about to see is from God – what they are about to see is an example of how God operates in this world. God brings life in death filled places. Then, he calls Lazarus out. And lo, and behold, Lazarus walks out of the tomb. Another miracle! He’s done many by this time, but this is a biggie. He raised someone from the dead. And all those there – those who didn’t believe Jesus could do anything – they all, we’re told believed because of it. “Many had seen what Jesus did” John writes, “and so they believed.
But here’s the catch – and really, let’s be honest, there’s always a catch with John. Jesus didn’t stop at the miracle. That’s not where he stops, and that’s not where belief can stop. After he called Lazarus from the tomb, he gives a very clear instruction to everyone gathered there. “Unbind him.” All along, John tells the reader over and over, believing because of seeing what Jesus did was not enough. The people gathered at the tomb that day saw what Jesus did, but they didn’t hear what he said. And in that lies all the difference in what it means to believe.
Jesus brought new life – new possibilities in the midst of death and despair. But it doesn’t end there. Lazarus is still bound – more must be done before he is truly free. Lazarus is the culmination - he is all the other characters wrapped into one. Nicodemus stands by Lazarus at the tomb – though freed from his own oppressive way of understanding religion, he is now dependent on a whole community of people changing their ways if he is to be accepted. The woman stands at the tomb with Lazarus. She’s been shown a new possibility by Jesus – a life where women treated as equals – yet she faces a culture entrenched in its old ways. The man born blind can see more clearly that there is not blame or shame in who he is, yet no one believes him and in the end he remains an outcast. All three have been raised to new life by Jesus, but remain bound until the people unbind them.
Lazarus represents all the people who have been pushed into despair because of things that keep them bound. He represents all who are alive in the flesh but are victims of death-dealing systems. He represents the dead person walking. Jesus tells them that their belief, which was a trusting in Jesus to make everything better through miracles and signs, was creating a world of dead people walking.
Belief can’t be a passive act – it can’t stop at assertions about how great Jesus was – that he was God, that he was the savior, that he was a miracle worker. We need to move beyond that. If we don’t, we will be left looking for the next miracle, and we’ll leave people bound in their bands of cloth at the tomb. Belief is joining with God in the act of bringing people to life.
Anna Carter Florance, a theologian and preacher, wrote beautifully about this passage: She says, God raises the dead, but we are the ones who have to unbind them. God calls us out of our tombs, but we are the ones who have to let one another go free. And then she asks,
“How many resurrections have you witnessed that have failed because the resurrected one could never undo all those bandages by herself?
How many times have you seen a miraculous recovery turn into a relapse because the community didn’t do its part to let the recovering one “break free” of the old patters and habits that kept him in bondage?
How many times have you seen someone finally get a new start, a new job, that turns into a dead end because of a boss’ inflexibility or a market that always hurts the most vulnerable.
How many times have you seen someone freed from prison only to go right back in because people can’t stop blaming people for their problems so won’t lend that helping hand?
There’s nothing more tragic than a miraculously resurrected human being – one who has been touched by the divine grace and power of God – who trips and suffocates on her own bandages.
The gift of new life – of new possibilities – given to us in the life of Jesus is extraordinary. But if all we do is stand back and marvel and never live into those possibilities, we will leave people at the tomb, unable to move.
Jesus showed us with his earthly life a way that is possible – that changes people’s lives by challenging those things that keep them down. But he is on the way to the cross. He will die. The resurrection is in our living. It’s in entrusting our lives to Jesus and walking in his way. Unbind him he says. We have to take away the bands of cloth. We have to trust that new life is possible and then do our part to bring it about. That’s what it means to believe in Jesus. Amen.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Meeting Jesus: The Man Born Blind
John 9:1-41
Fourth Sunday of Lent: April 3, 2011
Somewhere in the coverage of Japan this week, I stumbled upon a Japanese proverb. It says: “Fix the problem, not the blame.” From most of what I have heard, with one notable, very public exception, people in Japan are responding to fix the problem more than to fix the blame. But, that doesn’t seem to stop others from focusing on the blame.
We’ve heard the outrageous examples of assigning blame for the disaster itself not just in the case of Japan but almost any time we see large scale destruction: Katrina, Haiti, Indonesia. It’s the fault of an immoral society, some people say, and then go on to catalog their pet sins that exemplify such a society.
But, there have also been articles that, even if they are not fixing blame for the natural disaster, they can’t resist the temptation to use this event as an opportunity to criticize Japan for all sorts of things: Economic weakness, aging workforce, weakening country – not to mention the inevitable articles and commentary criticizing how the government responded to the disaster. There has been relatively little politically motivated exploitation of the tragedy in Japan by the Japanese people themselves. The impulse to turn a catastrophe into a political football has been far more pronounced among foreign critics of nuclear power and Western advocacy groups, who seem to regard the disaster in Japan as an opportunity to promote their agenda through the theme of ‘I told you so’.
I really can’t be too critical of this though. For one thing, it would surely be an example of the pot calling the kettle black. Maybe not with the Japanese situation, but I am as susceptible to the blame game as anyone. In fact, I think it’s kind of human nature. Fix the blame, not the problem.
As one columnist wrote,
“Throughout human history, catastrophes like that which has befallen Japan have forced people to make sense of the enormity of events. Such a violent disruption to life brings about not only a physical crisis, but an existential one, too. Momentous events of this scale call into question the prevailing system of meaning. In such circumstances, people are forced to find answers to questions that sometimes they dare not ask. That is why, [since biblical times], floods and droughts have been associated with powerful religious and moral tales about human error and divine retribution.”
Blaming someone or something for catastrophe or tragedy is as old as humankind – and it seems to have two main benefits: 1. We can distance ourselves from the suffering. 2. We can make sense out of chaos and thus convince ourselves we live in an explainable world protected from random, unpredictable tragedy.
If Japan is somehow to blame, if not for the natural disaster itself, then for any glitches or delays in recovering from it, then we aren’t responsible for the human suffering occurring “over there.” It’s the ole’, “she made her bed, now she must lie in it.” Basic politeness keeps us from externalizing such thoughts in the face of things like Japan, but I think such thoughts are present and that’s partly why we see the need to blame.
And of course, if Japan – the Japanese government – is entirely to blame for the suffering of the people, then we can convince ourselves that there is a way – a magic bullet – to keep such suffering at bay. If there’s someone to blame, there’s something that can be fixed. We think, this wouldn’t happen to us because we can do better when the time comes. This is our attempt to create meaning – to make sense of something that probably can’t be made sense of.
Consider another example: Poverty. We have made it a national pass time to blame people in poverty for their own situation. And why not? First, this allows us to distance ourselves from painful human suffering. If someone is to blame for their own poverty, then, we convince ourselves, they can fix it themselves. Their suffering is their own, and it’s up to them to do something about it. Second, blaming helps us make meaning out of a scary, overwhelming reality. As long as we don’t make the same mistakes, we think, we won’t become poor ourselves. It’s human nature to fix blame.
Yet the Japanese proverb, as well as Jesus, I think, calls us to something different. In fact, it seems to me the proverb nicely sums up the encounter between Jesus and the man born blind. His whole life, the man born blind had been the victim of those trying to fix blame. “Who sinned,” the disciples asked Jesus, “this man or his parents that he was born blind?” They don’t even leave room for any other possibility. Someone is to blame for this human tragedy. This was a long-held, deeply entrenched belief for people. They simply never thought to question it. Disaster has befallen this family, and so blame must be assigned.
Blindness was a huge problem in the ancient world. It was highly contagious and spread through insects and was aggravated by sun and dust. Given this, you can imagine who was most afflicted by this disease. Those who could wash frequently, or come in out of the sun were still susceptible I’m sure, but the majority of the people who were blind and suffering were not just poor – they were destitute, homeless, and complete outcasts. Being blind, regardless of how you came to be that way, usually came firmly attached to stigma and judgment…not to mention great fear of the same thing happening to you. Given this it was almost necessary for people to insist that you must have done something wrong if you are blind.
Blaming the victim gave people permission to distance themselves from the suffering. And it wasn’t just emotional distance; they created distance by shunning them from the community because of course, they had sinned – they deserved it. Then, out of sight, out of mind – pun intended. And blaming the victim helped people make meaning of something that had no meaning – ensuring them the feeling that they were in control. It’s all explainable: Sin…you can go blind. Don’t sin…you will be protected from such a terrible fate. Comforting maybe, but Jesus refuses this comforting way of thinking and instead of blaming the blind man, he gets to work fixing the problem. “Work the works,” he tells the disciples. Don’t blame; fix, heal, care for, reach out and touch the untouchable.
The blind man meets Jesus, who has no interest in blame, but rather stops what he is doing – without regard to conventions or protocol, and reaches out figuratively and literally and fixes the problem. The way Jesus healed the blindness was so personal – his own spit, touching the eyes of someone considered unclean, risking his own credibility and place in the religious community by doing it on a Sabbath. He tied his well being to that of the blind man. He un-distanced himself. Jesus was asking people to un-distance themselves from suffering as well. We are, he shows them, responsible for alleviating people’s suffering. When you see people hurting, don’t try to make it their fault; respond – work the works.
Of course, often responding means stepping outside the elaborate systems of meaning we have carefully constructed in order to shield ourselves from feeling vulnerable. Look at how Jesus makes his point: Jesus not only says this man and his family are not to blame, but Jesus blatantly, on purpose, commits a sin himself. He’s working on the Sabbath. If you’re going to blame anyone, he says, blame me. He could have waited a day – this man had been blind his whole life – one more day wouldn’t have been much. But he doesn’t wait – he works the works on the Sabbath. He was so secure in the belief that sin does not invite disaster, any more than following the rules protects you from it, that he sins right there in front of everyone so they could see it for themselves.
It took a while for the man to see fully – metaphorically. This long passage is partially about his slow recovery of spiritual sight after his immediate recovery of physical sight. He believed just as deeply as the rest that sin was the problem. He believed just as deeply as the rest that someone who sins – cures on the Sabbath for instance – could not have possibly brought such good to his life.
When he’s first asked who cured him, he says “A guy named Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and told me to go and wash up. I did, and now I see.” Just the facts – that’s all that’s safe to report…he doesn’t know who this guy is and if he really wants to associate with him. But a few verses later, when the Pharisees deny Jesus could be acting on behalf of God, the man defends him. “He’s a prophet,” he says. The next time he comes right out and says “Jesus is from God.” He’s getting it more and more. Finally, when he’s back with Jesus, Jesus asks him not just who he thinks Jesus is, but he asks if he’s ready to give himself over to this new way – the one that God shows us where blame is no longer the way we do business. And he’s ready. The man’s sight is fully recovered.
It’s not surprising that it was a slow conversion. We’re used to the blame game. We trust it on a certain level, even if we’re the ones being blamed. It’s a game that provides systems of safety and stability, and most of us like systems of safety and stability.
But Jesus yearns for us to see. Jesus is the light – and Jesus’ actions with the blind man refracts that light to reveal a more beautiful way. He illumines the problems with systems that hurt, and shows us what’s possible when we choose to live in his world. We are loved into wholeness by God, without blame, and we can love others to wholeness as well. But it can be hard to trust God’s unconventional ways. It can be hard to give up blaming with all its perceived benefits, even when such thinking hurts everyone involved, including ourselves. It takes a while, I think. It’s scary to step outside of how we think when it is that thinking that gives us protection from suffering and makes us feel safe and secure. It’s terrifying to un-distance ourselves from other people’s pain, and to open ourselves to the constant reality that tragedy can happen to anyone.
To fix blame is human. But to respond to suffering without regard to how it arose is to live lives that refract the light of God into a broken world today, making love visible in all its colors and glory, bringing wholeness and healing to people most in need. Amen.
Fourth Sunday of Lent: April 3, 2011
Somewhere in the coverage of Japan this week, I stumbled upon a Japanese proverb. It says: “Fix the problem, not the blame.” From most of what I have heard, with one notable, very public exception, people in Japan are responding to fix the problem more than to fix the blame. But, that doesn’t seem to stop others from focusing on the blame.
We’ve heard the outrageous examples of assigning blame for the disaster itself not just in the case of Japan but almost any time we see large scale destruction: Katrina, Haiti, Indonesia. It’s the fault of an immoral society, some people say, and then go on to catalog their pet sins that exemplify such a society.
But, there have also been articles that, even if they are not fixing blame for the natural disaster, they can’t resist the temptation to use this event as an opportunity to criticize Japan for all sorts of things: Economic weakness, aging workforce, weakening country – not to mention the inevitable articles and commentary criticizing how the government responded to the disaster. There has been relatively little politically motivated exploitation of the tragedy in Japan by the Japanese people themselves. The impulse to turn a catastrophe into a political football has been far more pronounced among foreign critics of nuclear power and Western advocacy groups, who seem to regard the disaster in Japan as an opportunity to promote their agenda through the theme of ‘I told you so’.
I really can’t be too critical of this though. For one thing, it would surely be an example of the pot calling the kettle black. Maybe not with the Japanese situation, but I am as susceptible to the blame game as anyone. In fact, I think it’s kind of human nature. Fix the blame, not the problem.
As one columnist wrote,
“Throughout human history, catastrophes like that which has befallen Japan have forced people to make sense of the enormity of events. Such a violent disruption to life brings about not only a physical crisis, but an existential one, too. Momentous events of this scale call into question the prevailing system of meaning. In such circumstances, people are forced to find answers to questions that sometimes they dare not ask. That is why, [since biblical times], floods and droughts have been associated with powerful religious and moral tales about human error and divine retribution.”
Blaming someone or something for catastrophe or tragedy is as old as humankind – and it seems to have two main benefits: 1. We can distance ourselves from the suffering. 2. We can make sense out of chaos and thus convince ourselves we live in an explainable world protected from random, unpredictable tragedy.
If Japan is somehow to blame, if not for the natural disaster itself, then for any glitches or delays in recovering from it, then we aren’t responsible for the human suffering occurring “over there.” It’s the ole’, “she made her bed, now she must lie in it.” Basic politeness keeps us from externalizing such thoughts in the face of things like Japan, but I think such thoughts are present and that’s partly why we see the need to blame.
And of course, if Japan – the Japanese government – is entirely to blame for the suffering of the people, then we can convince ourselves that there is a way – a magic bullet – to keep such suffering at bay. If there’s someone to blame, there’s something that can be fixed. We think, this wouldn’t happen to us because we can do better when the time comes. This is our attempt to create meaning – to make sense of something that probably can’t be made sense of.
Consider another example: Poverty. We have made it a national pass time to blame people in poverty for their own situation. And why not? First, this allows us to distance ourselves from painful human suffering. If someone is to blame for their own poverty, then, we convince ourselves, they can fix it themselves. Their suffering is their own, and it’s up to them to do something about it. Second, blaming helps us make meaning out of a scary, overwhelming reality. As long as we don’t make the same mistakes, we think, we won’t become poor ourselves. It’s human nature to fix blame.
Yet the Japanese proverb, as well as Jesus, I think, calls us to something different. In fact, it seems to me the proverb nicely sums up the encounter between Jesus and the man born blind. His whole life, the man born blind had been the victim of those trying to fix blame. “Who sinned,” the disciples asked Jesus, “this man or his parents that he was born blind?” They don’t even leave room for any other possibility. Someone is to blame for this human tragedy. This was a long-held, deeply entrenched belief for people. They simply never thought to question it. Disaster has befallen this family, and so blame must be assigned.
Blindness was a huge problem in the ancient world. It was highly contagious and spread through insects and was aggravated by sun and dust. Given this, you can imagine who was most afflicted by this disease. Those who could wash frequently, or come in out of the sun were still susceptible I’m sure, but the majority of the people who were blind and suffering were not just poor – they were destitute, homeless, and complete outcasts. Being blind, regardless of how you came to be that way, usually came firmly attached to stigma and judgment…not to mention great fear of the same thing happening to you. Given this it was almost necessary for people to insist that you must have done something wrong if you are blind.
Blaming the victim gave people permission to distance themselves from the suffering. And it wasn’t just emotional distance; they created distance by shunning them from the community because of course, they had sinned – they deserved it. Then, out of sight, out of mind – pun intended. And blaming the victim helped people make meaning of something that had no meaning – ensuring them the feeling that they were in control. It’s all explainable: Sin…you can go blind. Don’t sin…you will be protected from such a terrible fate. Comforting maybe, but Jesus refuses this comforting way of thinking and instead of blaming the blind man, he gets to work fixing the problem. “Work the works,” he tells the disciples. Don’t blame; fix, heal, care for, reach out and touch the untouchable.
The blind man meets Jesus, who has no interest in blame, but rather stops what he is doing – without regard to conventions or protocol, and reaches out figuratively and literally and fixes the problem. The way Jesus healed the blindness was so personal – his own spit, touching the eyes of someone considered unclean, risking his own credibility and place in the religious community by doing it on a Sabbath. He tied his well being to that of the blind man. He un-distanced himself. Jesus was asking people to un-distance themselves from suffering as well. We are, he shows them, responsible for alleviating people’s suffering. When you see people hurting, don’t try to make it their fault; respond – work the works.
Of course, often responding means stepping outside the elaborate systems of meaning we have carefully constructed in order to shield ourselves from feeling vulnerable. Look at how Jesus makes his point: Jesus not only says this man and his family are not to blame, but Jesus blatantly, on purpose, commits a sin himself. He’s working on the Sabbath. If you’re going to blame anyone, he says, blame me. He could have waited a day – this man had been blind his whole life – one more day wouldn’t have been much. But he doesn’t wait – he works the works on the Sabbath. He was so secure in the belief that sin does not invite disaster, any more than following the rules protects you from it, that he sins right there in front of everyone so they could see it for themselves.
It took a while for the man to see fully – metaphorically. This long passage is partially about his slow recovery of spiritual sight after his immediate recovery of physical sight. He believed just as deeply as the rest that sin was the problem. He believed just as deeply as the rest that someone who sins – cures on the Sabbath for instance – could not have possibly brought such good to his life.
When he’s first asked who cured him, he says “A guy named Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and told me to go and wash up. I did, and now I see.” Just the facts – that’s all that’s safe to report…he doesn’t know who this guy is and if he really wants to associate with him. But a few verses later, when the Pharisees deny Jesus could be acting on behalf of God, the man defends him. “He’s a prophet,” he says. The next time he comes right out and says “Jesus is from God.” He’s getting it more and more. Finally, when he’s back with Jesus, Jesus asks him not just who he thinks Jesus is, but he asks if he’s ready to give himself over to this new way – the one that God shows us where blame is no longer the way we do business. And he’s ready. The man’s sight is fully recovered.
It’s not surprising that it was a slow conversion. We’re used to the blame game. We trust it on a certain level, even if we’re the ones being blamed. It’s a game that provides systems of safety and stability, and most of us like systems of safety and stability.
But Jesus yearns for us to see. Jesus is the light – and Jesus’ actions with the blind man refracts that light to reveal a more beautiful way. He illumines the problems with systems that hurt, and shows us what’s possible when we choose to live in his world. We are loved into wholeness by God, without blame, and we can love others to wholeness as well. But it can be hard to trust God’s unconventional ways. It can be hard to give up blaming with all its perceived benefits, even when such thinking hurts everyone involved, including ourselves. It takes a while, I think. It’s scary to step outside of how we think when it is that thinking that gives us protection from suffering and makes us feel safe and secure. It’s terrifying to un-distance ourselves from other people’s pain, and to open ourselves to the constant reality that tragedy can happen to anyone.
To fix blame is human. But to respond to suffering without regard to how it arose is to live lives that refract the light of God into a broken world today, making love visible in all its colors and glory, bringing wholeness and healing to people most in need. Amen.
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