Playing with Light

Lent 4A, 3/30/14
John 9:1-41

Oh Lord, open my lips, that my mouth might declare your praise. Amen.

So, here’s something you might not know about me. I really like to take photographs.

Maybe you’ve already seen me with my camera around the church, taking pictures that I can share on our church’s Facebook page – but my love of photography started way before Facebook was invented.

Back in the days when cameras used film to record images, I took a couple of photography classes.        

I learned all about how the shutter would open and let in a fraction of a second worth of light, which would reflect off the mirrors inside the camera and then imprint an image on the film.

I learned how to develop the film, how to take this thin strip of plastic covered in a gelatin emulsion and turn it into a negative image of the photos I had taken.

And then I learned how to use the chemicals and equipment in the darkroom to develop the negatives into prints. The processed film would go on the enlarger and light would shine through the negative onto the photographic paper just long enough for an image to appear.

I used to dream about having a darkroom in my house, so I could develop all my own photographs.

Somehow, fifteen years later, that didn’t quite make the cut when my husband and I bought a new home last summer.

Still, I love the skill and artistry that goes into good photography.

Photography is really little more than playing with light.

Taking a photograph is the miraculous action of capturing light, and saving an image for others to see just where the light was hitting at a particular time and place in history.

In John, chapter 8, verse 12, Jesus says, I am the light of the world.

And then, in John chapter 9, Jesus proceeds to bring light to a man who has never seen it before.

Jesus astonishes an entire community by giving sight to a man who has been blind from birth. And then, Jesus exits the scene for his longest absence in the entire Gospel of John – he slips away for 26 verses while    others    talk    about him and try to figure out what this healing means and what kind of person Jesus could be. They are alternately impressed by the miracle, doubtful of it’s authenticity, and confused that a man of faith would do work on the Sabbath.

As the conversations progress, the man who had received sight goes from describing his healer as the man called Jesus (v11) to a prophet (v17) to a man from God (v33) to the Son of Man and Lord (v38).

With each conversation or confrontation regarding his healing the man who was born blind gains a deeper understanding of just who Jesus really is.

Maybe faith is like photography.

Faith is kind of like capturing just a little bit of the divine light and putting it into a format that can be shared with others, so they can experience it too.

Maybe understanding Jesus is like changing the settings on a camera to let a little more light in, or to focus more clearly on the subject of the photograph.

Imagine taking a family photograph… and in the first one everyone’s out of focus. Then the flash doesn’t go off.    Then someone’s not looking at the camera, or two people are blinking.    Then, finally, after several adjustments, you get the shot that really brings across the best in everyone.

That kind of incremental clarity is what the man who was born blind experiences in today’s Gospel reading.

On a side note, did you realize that this man is never named? He’s like the Samaritan woman – an unimportant person in society, a beggar, someone with no social standing. And yet, Jesus still comes to him. Jesus meets him where he is, and heals the thing that is holding him back from being a fully participating member of society.

It reminds me of some of those fabulous photographs from the Great Depression – or even from the Civil War.

The photographs that really got across the depth of the events of the day were not the pictures of the important people. There are bunches of pictures of Roosevelt and Lincoln, but those pictures don’t tell the story.

It’s the picture of the young unnamed soldier on the battlefield, or the mother holding her children in rags, or the crowds of people standing in breadlines a block long – those are the photos that really get across the reality of the events. Those are the ones that won prizes and those are the ones we recognize now, decades later. They tell the story of our history as a nation.

We see this old familiar photo,

and we get a glimpse of the trials

of the Depression.

And then we see these others,

and our understanding of it grows.

          

The images tell the story.

Just like in the Gospel

Today Jesus heals a nameless man who was born blind.

And in that snapshot of an action, he gives us an image that tells the story of our faith.

With each conversation that follows, another image is added to the album of faith.

Little by little, the pieces start to assemble and the bigger picture starts to develop. The light of Christ shines through in a few more places, with a few more people, and the story begins to emerge, with the way being lit by Jesus.

Like these famous photos from the Depression, one image alone can’t tell the entire story of faith, but by absorbing many images, over the course of time, a clearer picture of a particular event becomes visible.

Eventually we can see more than what the photos show – we can imagine the scenes with us in them, we can feel the hunger or the dust or the cold that the images show.

Of course, growing in faith isn’t always a simple matter, just like capturing a scene in a photo to share with others isn’t always easy.

Here’s a photography “oops” that has probably happened to most of us.

You’re trying to take a picture of a beautiful scene – maybe you’re outdoors in the woods or at the Arboretum or at the botanical gardens – and everything just looks so beautiful that you try to get a picture of the whole thing.

But there’s a tree branch or something in the foreground, so the camera focuses on that, and the flash goes off, and all you’ve got for your picture is an overexposed tree branch in front of a darkish looking background.

It’s an instance of literally not being able to see the forest for the tree.

That happens with our faith all the time.

         We try to look at the big picture and see only the little details in front of us.

We want other people to know how amazing our faith is, but we describe the little things like Harvest Dinner or Easter breakfast, and forget the big things like grace and forgiveness.

We want our worship to glorify God, but we get stuck worrying about whether the Communion elements are set up correctly and whether the lector pronounces all the complicated Bible names correctly.

We want our church, this community of God, to grow, but we get stuck on the details of a word or two in the constitution rather than focusing on our mission as a community of God’s children in this world.

We want new people to join our faith community and see how active God is among us, but when they come, we focus so much on the way things have always been done, we fail to notice God speaking to us through them.

The big picture – the beautiful part of the scene – the reason we even wanted to pull out our cameras in the first place – is blacked out when we focus on the details and fail to see the work of God all around us. We only let Christ’s light shine on certain aspects of our life as individuals and as a community, and we ignore those other places.

But that’s not the example that’s set for us today.

The man who was born blind continues to seek Jesus. His faith evolves over the course of this story. He doesn’t let a single moment in time define his faith forever after.

He doesn’t fixate on a time like “when the church was founded” or “when I was in confirmation” or “when I became a member” or “for the past 20 years.”

He continues to reflect on Jesus throughout the narrative. His understanding of this healer changes from just some strange man to his own Lord and Savior.

The man wouldn’t ever get to that point if he didn’t keep talking about Jesus, risking ridicule from his neighbors. If all the man had been doing was trying to keep the peace and leave everyone’s feathers unruffled, he would never have been kicked out of town – and he would never have known Jesus as Lord.

But experiencing Jesus as Lord was the best thing that ever happened to this guy. And it’s the best thing that could ever happen to us. In order to get to that point, we can follow the example of the man born blind, and continue to seek Jesus, letting his light seep into all the corners of our lives.

Here’s the thing, folks. Jesus wants to change our lives, just like the life of the blind man was changed. Jesus wants us to experience life in a fuller, richer way than we could ever imagine.

But if we keep our cameras turned off and the lens cap on, the light of Jesus can never shine into our lives.

Christian faith is like opening a camera shutter to Jesus and letting his light shine through onto the film of our hearts and minds. And when we develop that picture of faith, we have captured just a little bit of who Jesus is, and we can share that image with others.

You get the analogy, right?

Jesus is the light of the world.

Jesus brings that light into places where it has never before been seen.

And when we open ourselves to Jesus’ presence, it’s like opening the shutter on a camera – we allow Jesus in to our lives, and his presence with us makes a difference.

Like the man who was born blind, Jesus comes into our lives and changes us. And the more we learn about Jesus, and the more we let Jesus in, the brighter our lives of faith will be. 

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Unexpected

Lent 3A, 3/23/14
John 4:5-42

O Lord, open my lips, that my mouth might declare your praise.

Have you ever been looking for something, and you can’t find it anywhere, and you finally find it right in front of your face?

Think of looking for your glasses when you’re wearing them, or searching for your car keys when you’re holding them in your hand.

Here’s one that happens to young women pastors quite frequently. Thankfully it’s not something I’ve experienced here, but if I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard this story, I could retire next week.

Someone will call up a church where one of my peers works, or they’ll come in for a visit, or show up for a meeting at a funeral home or something… and that person needs to find the pastor. They’ll walk right up to my young female colleague and ask, Excuse me, miss, but where’s the pastor? I was hoping to talk with him.

When she answers, It’s me. I’m the pastor… the person who was asking just can’t believe that the person standing right there is really the person they were looking for. The appearance of the actual pastor breaks all their stereotypes of what a pastor should be.

That’s kind of what’s going on in today’s Gospel lesson.

The Samaritan woman is looking for something, and then Jesus appears right in front of her, and at first she doesn’t recognize him for who he really is – she doesn’t realize that he can be the one to meet her deepest needs. 

Jesus doesn’t look like a messiah.

He doesn’t look like a savior of the world.

The Jews – and the Samaritans too – were expecting a political or military leader to overthrow the occupying Roman forces. Based on predictions in the Old Testament, the people thought that the Messiah God was sending them was going to give them power and freedom, and probably riches, and possibly revenge against the people who had been occupying their Promised Land for so long.

The people didn’t recognize the Messiah when he showed up in the form of a carpenter’s son from Nazareth.

But that’s the wonderful thing about our Messiah. Jesus shows up in unexpected places. He does ministry with people who are powerless, people who are outcasts, and everyone in between. He just… loves everyone, indiscriminately.

This Gospel lesson gives a perfect example of Jesus’ unexpected inclusiveness, especially when you look at it in context.

Today’s story from John 4 couldn’t be more different from last week’s in John 3.

Listen to the first two verses of John 3:

Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.”

In chapter three, the character that Jesus meets is named, he is powerful, he has standing in the community and he professes to know who Jesus is.

And yet he comes to Jesus by night, under the cover of darkness. It’s almost as if he’s ashamed of his desire to learn from Jesus – as if he fears his status will be in jeopardy if other people know that he’s been to see this Rabbi.

In today’s lesson from John 4, by contrast, the character Jesus meets remains unnamed. She has no standing in society. She’s a woman, which means that she was dependent upon a man for the roof over her head and the food in her stomach. This woman was apparently a widow five times over, or possibly divorced.

You know, right, that a woman couldn’t initiate a divorce in ancient Israel?

By contrast, a man could divorce a woman for no better reason than that his supper had been burned. All he had to say was I divorce you three times, and the marriage was over.

Talk about an imbalance of power.

Anyway, some people have guessed that this woman from the fourth chapter of John was a whore, since she had been married five times and was currently living with a man who was not her husband.

But it’s clear to me that this woman was doing the only thing possible to avoid whoredom. When one marriage ended, for whatever reason that wasn’t of her making, she immediately entered another, so that she didn’t have to enter the age-old profession that women in every society have used to keep roofs over their heads and food in their bellies.

So. In John 4, we have a powerless, nameless woman, who has spent her whole life dependent on others. According to Jewish beliefs, she was at best immoral and at worst an idolater, because she didn’t worship God at the Temple in Jerusalem. This woman meets Jesus in broad daylight, about noon, a time of the day when anyone could have walked past and seen their meeting – which, for the record, broke about a hundred written and unwritten social conventions. Samaritans and Jews didn’t get along, to say the least, and their men and women certainly didn’t fraternize with one another. Until this woman met Jesus.

This woman is the opposite of Nicodemus from John 3. He has status in society; she does not. He is a leader in the faith; she has none by Jewish standards. Nicodemus seeks out Jesus, while Jesus initiates conversation with this woman. He is fearful of his reputation, he has something to lose – she is not, she has nothing to lose.

And yet Jesus meets them both. Rather than telling the wise Jewish teacher to come back in the daytime… or suggesting that the Samaritan woman meet him when others can’t watch and ridicule, Jesus simply responds to their questions and treats them both with dignity.

Someone who does this… well, he can’t be the Messiah, can he?

Despite all the obvious differences, here’s one thing that Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman have in common.

They both take Jesus quite literally.

Jesus tells Nicodemus that in order to see the kingdom of God, one must be reborn.

Nicodemus doesn’t get it. How can you enter back into your mother’s womb and be born again? 

Obviously you can’t, and Jesus explains to Nicodemus that the rebirth is spiritual, a birth through water with God’s spirit.

Similarly, the Samaritan woman was as a well to draw water to drink. Jesus tells her that he has living water that is more sustaining than anything she could draw from the well.

The woman wonders, how can you draw water without a bucket? In a town without a river, where could you get living water, that is, running water, not something that’s stagnant?

She didn’t get it. And Jesus explains to her that the living water is spiritual, and drinking it is a way to eternal life.

Both of these individuals end up having extended conversations about what Jesus has to offer.

But that first reaction is key.

Jesus speaks in riddles sometimes – he’s not straightforward, as people expected the Messiah to be. He doesn’t seem to have a clear goal or mission in life. In death he certainly does. But in life, Jesus confused a lot of people.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus is constantly transforming things in unexpected ways. Water becomes wine. Birthing happens not in the flesh, but in the spirit. The Temple in Jerusalem is really the temple of Jesus’ body.

         Expectations in society are transformed from predictable to unpredictable.

Based on today’s Gospel lesson, especially taken in light of last week’s reading, we know that Jesus will meet just about any person, in any place in society, at any time of the day and with any specific questions that they might bring with them.

And that’s what makes him unpredictable.

That’s not the sort of thing that a messenger from God is expected to do. It’s beneath him, right? If he’s on a mission from God, shouldn’t he be spending his time on important things?

Well, that’s what’s so counterintuitive about Jesus. He meets us in unexpected places.

In fact, the places where Jesus finds us are so unpredictable, we’re likely to have a hard time recognizing him.

We’ll look right at him, like this Samaritan woman does, and fail to recognize him. We’ll say right to his face, Excuse me sir, but I was hoping to talk to the Messiah. Do you know where I could find him?

And the answer will surprise us.

We’ve got fair warning from the characters in John 3 and 4 that Jesus speaks in riddles and we probably shouldn’t take his answers literally.

But figuratively speaking, the Messiah is all around us. We can see his face everywhere we look. In the nice cashier at the hardware store, or in that jerk who cut us off on the highway. In our closest friends, and in the strangers sitting one table over in the restaurant.

Jesus is there to meet us. He comes to where we are – he wants us to encounter him on our terms. He wants to meet our needs.

And this is a beautiful thing.

How wonderful that we have a savior who wants to welcome us with open arms. Jesus will respond to us whether we are rich or poor, young or old, male or female, and even whether we hold traditional religious beliefs or we are a little deviant from the norm.

What a wonderful person.

He couldn’t be the Messiah, could he?

Well, yes, he could. 

And he is. 

And he blesses us by loving each one of us just the way we are. 

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Call Me

Lent 2A, 3/16/14
Genesis 12:1-4a

Oh Lord, open my lips, that my mouth might proclaim your praise. Amen.

If any of you are familiar with recent pop music, you’ve heard the song Call Me Maybe, by Carly Rae Jepsen. It was one of the top hits from 2011 – about 3 years old, but still very popular. 

Basically the premise of the song is, this girl is out somewhere and she sees a good looking guy, and even though other guys are flirting with her, she’s only interested in this one guy – so she gives him her phone number and says:

Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy,

but here’s my number, so call me maybe.

This song has inspired dozens    if not hundreds    of parodies. The 2012 US Olympic swim team made a music video to the song. So did a group of Marines, and the Miami Dolphins cheerleaders.

My favorite parody was done by a group of Roman Catholic women. They changed the chorus to say:

Hey, I am baptized, and this is crazy,

cuz God just called me, so ordain a lady.

God calls us.

And not just maybe.

As baptized, beloved children of God, each one of us has a calling in life.

Some of us are called to a specific occupation. My pastoral ministry is a direct calling from God. Jean’s composing and directing and career as a musician is a calling from God. Nancy and Rick are constantly responding to God’s call to parenthood and grandparenthood. Betty’s leadership of the quilting ministry is a call from God.

God calls us to relationships, and to activities, and to roles in life.

Jesus’ own baptism gives us a great example. Jesus went down to the Jordan River to be baptized by John, and as soon as he emerged out of the water, a voice came down from heaven saying, “This is my son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

God says the same thing    to each of us. We are each a beloved son or daughter of God. And God calls us each to a purpose, to a mission, to a ministry of some kind or another.

Abram was called by God.

That’s the story we heard from Genesis today. In the first reading, we listened in on the first time that this man heard the voice of God and responded to it. Abram went from the country that would eventually become Iraq – to the land that God promised would belong to him and his descendants.

Abram, of course, became Abraham, and he is the patriarch that the people of Israel all hold in common. Abraham and Sarah raised Isaac, and out of his descendants, God made a great nation.

In some ways, actually, it’s the descendants of Sarah who were the children of God’s promise. Abraham had other children with other women, but it’s only the children and grandchildren of his wife Sarah who were blessed by God, who grew to be as numerous as the stars in the sky, who were given a land in which to live. Sarah is the matriarch that made it all happen.

But all that history and all those relationships and all those blessings started with today’s first conversation between Abram and God.

Go – says God. Go, leave behind everything familiar to you, and I will go with you and bless you.

And Abram went.

Abram is a wonderful example of a person being called by God.

He had the courage to follow that call and do what God asked, even though it must have been a tough thing to do. Abram had to leave his homeland and all his family except his nephew Lot and his wife Sarai. Even so, Abram said yes to God’s call in the story from today.

But over the years, Abram sometimes doubted this calling.

He and Sarah had to wait 25 years before their promised son came along. That’s a long time to try to get pregnant!

Sarah and Abraham always lived in places ruled over by other people. They were not given political or military power. All those promises eventually came true for the descendants of Abraham and Sarah, but they were many generations in the making.

All the setbacks were enough to make Abraham say to God, call me… maybe.

Sure, it’s nice to have a calling from God – it’s nice to have a direction in life and to know what God wants you to do – but having that calling does not mean it will always be easy. God promises to be with Abram, and God promises that good things will come eventually, but God does not promise that the journey will be easy.

What God does promise is that Abram will be blessed.

Abraham and Sarah were blessed… to be a blessing.

God blessed them, not so that they could enjoy easy lives, but so that they could spread their blessings to other people.

That’s the bigger calling from God in today’s Bible story.

That’s also where we fit into the Bible story.

God called Abraham and Sarah – and God calls us.

We may have a specific calling to an occupation, to a job or to a relationship – but even bigger than those details of our call is the purpose behind it. The purpose of our calling is to bring    God’s    blessing    to other people.

We are blessed    to be a blessing.

Abraham didn’t have much when he was called by God, but he had faith. He had a couple of solid relationships with other people. And he had enough determination to follow God’s call, even when things looked bleak.

We sometimes feel like we don’t have what we need to respond to God’s call.

I mean, really – do Nancy and Rick always know exactly what to do with their grandkids? Does Jean always know the perfect piece of music for any occasion? Do I always know what to do as your pastor? Of course not.

But can we find courage? Do we have the support of a few close friends or relatives? I sincerely hope so. At the very least, hopefully this church community can provide the courage necessary for each one of us to follow our callings.

Each of us has received blessings in life. Maybe we have been blessed financially, or maybe we’re really talented in one particular area – like singing or sewing or listening to other people’s stories.

Thinking minimally here… those of us in worship at Cooksville Lutheran Church today have been blessed with the ability to speak and walk. We can read. We have roofs over our heads. We have food on our tables and in our pantries.

And if you don’t have one of those things – please let me know, and we can work to help you get those basic necessities of life.

Those of us who are part of this worshipping community have each been blessed in some way. We may not always feel like it – life gets hard sometimes and we probably wish that God had never called us in the first place – but we still have small blessings to fall back on.

We have food and shelter and love and community. We are blessed.

We can hope for better relationships, we can hope for reconciliation with loved ones, we can hope for nicer homes or better jobs, and ultimately we can hope for eternal life in the presence of God. We can hope for the future. We are blessed.

Like Abram, God has blessed us.

Like Abram, God wants us to be a blessing for others.

Like Abram, we can bring God’s blessing to the rest of the world.

When God called Abram in today’s reading from Genesis, it was clear that God wanted Abram to show God’s generosity to all the nations in the world.

Well… we can do that, can’t we?

If we have reliable meals… we can help others to have the same. We can donate food to the various food pantries that our church supports. There’s a collection basket located in the narthex, and each month the donations go to a food pantry in either Evansville, Stoughton, or Edgerton.

If we have a roof over our heads… well, we can help others to have the same. We can donate to the roof campaign for the Evansville Ecumenical Care Closet – envelopes are located in the fellowship room. We can donate for the Refugee Resettlement program – all our coffee hour offerings through Easter will be supporting this ministry. We can support The Road Home for homeless folks, or DAIS for victims of domestic abuse – there are countless causes that could use our help to keep roofs over their clients’ heads.

If we have family or friends or at least some sense of community in this church family… we can welcome others into the fold. We can invite our friend or neighbors or coworkers to join us in worship. We can tell everyone we know about the wonderful grace of God – we are loved, and we have eternal life to look forward to.

OK, that’s kinda hard. It’s hard to talk to others about our relationship with God. It’s difficult to bring up eternal life with our coworkers. Fair enough.

But the reality is, we have been blessed by God.
We have been called.

We have a purpose.

Whether we are excited to follow God’s calling or we wish God had only called us… maybe… our proper response to God’s promise of grace is to share it with the world.

We, like Abram, have been blessed to be a blessing.

And what a wonderful gift.

How amazing to think that, through us, others might come to know the wonderful love of God.

We have been called.

We have been blessed.

And our job now is to share that blessing with others.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.