New Life

Lent 5A, 4/6/14
John 11:1-45

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

Jesus said, “Take away the stone.”

Then he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”

The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth.

Jesus said to the crowd, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

This is what Christianity is all about, folks.

Jesus raises people from the dead.

This is where our faith begins.

The only reason that we do anything else as Christians – the only reason we gather for worship – the only reason churches even exist – is because Jesus has brought us new life, just like he did for Lazarus.

All those other things that we think are important – music, Bible study, committee meetings, outreach to people in need – none of those things matter at all. None of those things have any meaning    except when they are done in response to Jesus.

The only reason that Christianity matters at all is because it promises new life to all people.

Today’s Gospel story gives us the whole purpose of our faith in a nutshell. Jesus brings life. That’s why Jesus matters. That’s why we follow him.

I could end the sermon right here. Really, the point has been made. But my job as your pastor isn’t just to tell you what Christianity is all about.

My job is also to tell you why it matters.

Jesus brings life. Got it? Good.

But so what?

Christian faith has to do with how we respond to God’s gift of life. When Jesus gives us a second chance, what do we do with it?

I’ve been reading the book Proof of Heaven. Have any of you read it? Heard of it?

Proof of Heaven came out about a year and a half ago. It’s by Eben Alexander, a neurosurgeon who had a vivid near-death experience while in a serious coma. He miraculously made a full recovery from his illness, and now he’s spending the rest of his life telling as many people as possible all about the spiritual realm he experienced, which he now believes is the most important thing anyone can ever know.

I’m not going to go into the details of Dr. Alexander’s near-death experience because they don’t particularly matter for us today.

The reason that Dr. Alexander does matter for us as an example today is that he reordered his priorities when we came out of that coma. Given a second chance at life, Dr. Alexander is sharing the most important message he knows with as many people as possible. He’s spending all his energy on the deeper, meaningful, important things in life, and he’s talking to other people about it.

Dr. Alexander gives us an example of what to do one we’ve received the new life that Jesus has to offer.

Focus on things that are important – God, grace, love, forgiveness – and tell everyone you know about it.

That’s the Christian faith in a nutshell.

What do you think that Lazarus did after Jesus raised him from the dead?

Unbind him and let him go.

Jesus gave Lazarus the freedom to do anything he wanted in his new life.

Do you suppose that Lazarus went back to life as usual, without giving his death a second thought? I doubt it. This is pure speculation, of course, but I’d guess that Lazarus had a greater appreciation for the relationships in his life. He probably enjoyed his food and drink a little more, probably spent a little more time noticing sunrises and budding flowers and good music.

In fact, we can be pretty sure that Lazarus did tell other people about his experience, since it is recorded here for us in the Bible. Lazrus is named, unlike so may other characters in the Gospel of John, which means he was likely a leader in the early church. He shared the freedom he had found in the new life that Christ offered. 

So often we go through our lives as if the things that we want are the most important things in the universe.

We want the new car or the new job or the bigger TV, or we just want our own way. And we do everything possible to turn those wants into reality.

But really, God invites us to reverse that attitude.

When we live in full acknowledgement of our new life in Christ, we live knowing that the most important things in the universe are, in fact, the things that we want.

Grace is amazing. We want that. Forgiveness and relationships are amazing. We want those things. Love is the most important thing in life. And so we want it.

Several folks in this congregation have had a second chance at physical, earthly life.

I’ve heard some of your stories about surviving serious accidents or illnesses. You have some amazing experiences to share about the new life that you have been given.

What are you doing with your new life?

If you’ve had a close brush with death, have you been living differently since then?

I know that for most of you in that situation, the answer is yes.

That should be the answer for all of us.

Every single one of us has been given new life by Christ.

Even if that life didn’t come to us through a near-death experience or miraculous healing after an illness or accident – each of us had been condemned to death because of our sins. And each one of us is made alive because of Christ.

For us it doesn’t look like it did for Lazarus, but the effect is the same. Jesus saves us from death.

So how do we live?

When Jesus calls to us:

Robert, come out!              

Laura, come out!

Mary, come out!              

Steve, come out!                        

When Jesus calls for our bindings to be unwound, and grants us freedom and new life, forever, how do we respond?

New life in Christ breaks all the rules. We don’t actually know much about Lazarus after Jesus raised him from the dead. But we do know some things about Jesus when he was raised from the dead.

Once he is raised from the dead, Jesus can enter rooms that are locked. He can vanish into thin air when his disciples recognize him in the breaking of the bread. He can make a fruitless night of fishing turn into the biggest catch of the season.

Once Jesus is raised from the dead, stones in front of tombs don’t concern him anymore. They don’t matter.

Life matters.

The power of death has been taken away.

So it is with us.

We have already been given new life in Christ.

         We received that life in our baptism.

We receive it anew every time we share Communion, and every time we confess our sins and receive forgiveness.

We can experience Jesus’ gift of new life in our relationships with other people, or in the beauty of creation.

New life, grace that breaks the rules of sin and death – that’s what Jesus has to offer.

That’s the whole message of Christianity.

And our whole life of faith is responding to that gift. We want to share this gift with everyone we know! We can show God’s love to others in words and actions. We can reprioritize our lives. That’s what Christian faith is all about.

Amen.  

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.