“Don’t Give Up on Jesus” - March 29, 2020

John 11:32

            You’ve probably seen the meme that has been going around that says, “I wasn’t planning on giving up quite this much for Lent.”  Before all this began, I was looking at a sermon series called, “What Not to Give Up for Lent (or Ever)”.  This week’s title was to be “Don’t Give Up on Jesus”.  It still is.

            It feels just a little bit more pointed, though.  Usually when we read the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the grave, we focus on that moment when Jesus

“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.” [John 11:44]

Or maybe, as we approach Easter, we hear the stirring promise

“I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” [John 11:25-26]

If the Christian Church says nothing else distinctive, it has to be this: that there is life in Jesus Christ that goes beyond the seeming finality of death – and we will get to that.

            In the meantime, though, we’re cooped up inside, some of us with coughs that indicate the presence of an infection that, while mild to most, has been fatal to thousands.  The rhythms of daily life are gone.  Education and jobs are shaky, with all that that means.  Every day brings out the best in some people and the worst in others.  People are sick.  The economy is sick.   Society is sick.  We see everything around us possibly going away, dying.  You have to wonder sometimes, don’t you, why the Lord doesn’t just step in?

“Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, ‘Lord, he whom you love is ill.’ But when Jesus heard it, he said, ‘This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.’”  [John 11:1-4]

Jesus was friends with Lazarus and his sisters.  Don’t you think he’d cut them a break?

            Lazarus’ sister Martha was plainspoken about that.  She was the one we see in another story where her sister Mary is sitting at Jesus’ feet one day, soaking in all the wisdom of his teaching, when Martha barges in and says to Jesus, “Send her out here to the kitchen.  I need help making supper.”  In the stained glass window we have showing the two of them, Martha is holding a broom.  When I look at it, I get the feeling that if you pushed her too far, she might use it for something other than sweeping.

            Her brother Lazarus is sick and dying with a fever and she sends for help.  Jesus dawdles two more days and by the time he gets there Lazarus is dead, dead and buried for four days.

“When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. Martha said to Jesus, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.’”  [John 11:21-22]

The raising of Lazarus wasn’t Jesus’ idea; it was Martha’s.  Yes, he saw it coming, but he knew her.  She didn’t get what she asked of him the first time, but it didn’t stop her from asking again.

            The two of them had a real give-and-take kind of relationship.  It was different from how he related to her sister Mary.  Mary would be one of the women who would be outside his own empty tomb not long afterward.  He would find her crying because she thought that his body had been moved or stolen, his grave desecrated.  She was someone who could be crushed by the weight of the world.

            Martha, the gruff and down-to-earth one, ironically, was the one who held on even against appearances.  Even though she was angry with Jesus, accusing him of being careless and unkind toward her dying brother and toward herself, Martha kept looking to him for help.  She even saw in him a person whose importance went beyond what he could do for them alone.

“Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.” [John 11:27]

A real relationship isn’t about what someone can do for you or what anybody can get out of anybody else.  A real relationship is an appreciation for who they are.

            That doctor, that respiratory therapist, that nurse, that aide – they will not be able to cure every patient.  But there they are, in the middle of the crowded hallways, doing what they can.  That shows who they are.  The neighbor who goes to the grocery store for someone, the teacher who does her best in a situation she’s never faced, either – they demonstrate reliability.  So does someone who knows enough to say, “I want to help, but I cannot do what you ask, because it might put you in danger.”

            In any situation, we may know what we want.  We want the sick to be healed.  We want the jobless to be employed.  We want the kids to go back to school.  We want people to stop hoarding toilet paper.  We want this whole business to go away.  You know what?  Jesus didn’t want to face his own trials, either, which were a whole lot more difficult than ours.  In the Garden of Gethsemane he prayed that God would spare him from his suffering, yet added,

“Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.”  [Luke 22:42]

What comes of all this, we don’t know now, but hold on tight, and we will find out on the other side.  He knows what is for the best, whether we do or not.  He gets us where we need to be, one way or another.

            He is the way; he is the truth; and he is the life.

“So That God’s Works Might Be Revealed” - March 22, 2020

John 9:1-7

            I knew someone who used to write down a list of questions that he had about life.  He carried it around in his wallet.  I never knew what his questions actually were, although most of us would probably have a lot of the same ones.  He said that they were what he wanted to ask Jesus when they were finally face-to-face, and when this man died I trust that he had his chance, and that the answers were satisfactory.

            The disciples didn’t have to wait like we do.  The gospel of John especially emphasizes Jesus as being the Word of God, speaks of him as the Light and the Truth, and in that gospel the disciples take full advantage of that to ask something that bothers us all: “Whose fault is it?”

            They ask it in a specific situation, of course.  They are all walking along and they see a man who has been blind from birth, and

“His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’” [John 9:2]

What a question!  It presupposes a few questionable points from the start.

            First off, it assumes that everything we don’t like is at least potentially a punishment from God.  Blindness, Down’s Syndrome, a sixth finger on your left hand, earthquakes, droughts, Covid-19: these must all be a sign that God is displeased with someone somewhere.  Either it’s a direct punishment or a generalized warning.

            I would suggest, however, or more than suggest, that there is not anything somehow wrong with anybody born with a distinctive physical condition.  Jesus’ love was never limited to those who were in perfectly good health or who fit any kind of physical profile.  He loves both the Olympic-level athlete and the kid who cannot get to first base in playground kickball.  You cannot convince me that Ray Charles was any less of a musical genius than Bobbie McFerrin.  Set aside the idea right now that any kind of difference means that there is something wrong with somebody.

            That attitude is partly behind the idea that having a child who is blind, or in any way challenged, is a judgment or punishment on the parents.  It assumes that God is burdening them by putting that child in their lives.  Or maybe it is assuming that the child will not be there for the parents in their old age to care for them, as was often expected in the time the Bible was written.  The punishment is partly now and partly later, an ongoing one.

            What if, instead, the question were asked, “What did God see in these parents, to know they would treasure this child?” or “What did God see in this child to warrant parents with extra patience and love?”  Because, yes, it does ask a lot of someone to care for anybody with special needs.  It does mean extra work, extra time, extra expense.  It does mean not doing many of the things that other people get to do, staying home with them sometimes, or maybe having to make arrangements that others don’t have to make in order to do simple things.  And a lot of that will go unappreciated and unseen.  It may even draw that accusatory type of question:

“Who sinned, this man or his parents?”

            Of course, we know that there are occasions where someone really is harmed by conditions that come about before their birth.  Some babies are born with fetal alcohol syndrome or drug addictions and go into withdrawal right away.  I wouldn’t let the parents off the hook right away, but the question ought to be phrased more widely. 

We are all involved.  If we do not advocate for conditions that point a way out of addiction, we let that child down.  If we do not do what we can to provide health care, we are also implicated.  Some people – not only children – are affected by toxins in the environment for which we all bear some responsibility – lead in the water or polluted air.  We all want the consumer items whose manufacture leads to dangerous byproducts.  Who sins there?

            One thing that the current health crisis shows is that we are far more closely tied to one another than we suspected.  It’s one thing to know that in our heads, but another to suddenly realize the level of human contact and the degree of interdependence that we experience day-by-day, at least when things are normal.  Taking away our contact right now is necessary and wise.  But it shows us that removal from one another’s lives would make life itself unsustainable.

            Jesus’ answer to the disciples’ question about blame puts every question about cause and effect aside.

“‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.’”  [John 9:3]

Jesus replaces the question of blame with the challenge to live in God’s love.  Jesus doesn’t waste time on pointing fingers. He sets about taking his own part in the man’s care.  He did it in a way that got his own hands dirty, and involved the man’s own efforts, too, because we’re all in this together.

“He spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, saying to him, ‘Go, wash in the pool of Siloam’ (which means Sent).  Then he went and washed and came back able to see.” [John 9:6-7]

            We are not very far into the current crisis.  It may get worse before it gets better.  The only way we know to mitigate its effects is to draw them out for a longer period, to spread it out so that the healthcare system doesn’t have to face everything all at once.  That is going to take cooperation from everybody, and we are all going to become impatient and frustrated and perhaps scared sometimes.  Be ready for that.

            But ask how we can show the work of God under these conditions, as we would ask how we care for anyone whom God has placed in our lives to be nurtured and loved, and whose presence also nurtures us.  I cannot say this enough: pray for one another, and for everybody around you; be ready to give up for awhile the activities you love for the sake of people you love.  Be ready for whatever Jesus opens your eyes to in the process.

“Don’t Give up on Yourself" - March 15, 2020

John 4:5-42

            “Basura!”

            That was one of the most hurtful, sad things that I have ever heard come out of a child’s mouth.

            “Basura!  Hey, Basura!”  Two or three of the kids who attended our after-school program in Allentown were shouting to a man across the street.  He had been walking along, not bothering anyone, not even looking around much as far as I could tell.  The kids, who lived around the corner, obviously knew the man, but I hadn’t seen him before, and I had a feeling that he must have known them.

            “Hey, Basura!” 

            I made them go inside right away and they started down the hallway with their backpacks like always, but I made them stop and come back and sit down on the steps inside the door.  I looked at them and said, “No usamos estas palabras.  Esta un persona, no basura!”  They stared at me with surprise.  I didn’t want them to know that when they spoke to each other in Spanish I understood them and heard the things they talked about right there in front of me.  I switched back to English.  “Why did you shout that?”

            “It’s his name,” they told me.

            “Nobody is named Basura.”  (“Basura” is Spanish for “trash”.)

            “It’s his nickname,” one of them tried.

            I’ll pat myself on the back for telling them, “Not around here it isn’t.” 

            Those kids heard the lesson, and they got it.  I didn’t have to go any further.  Enough people called them names.  Enough people jumped on them for no good reason all the time.  Enough people saw them as Puerto Rican, or poor, or kids, or some combination of that, and that became their name.  Never Emilio or Freddy.  They knew that man had a name and even if they didn’t know what that name was, they knew that it was not “Basura” any more than their names were “Hey, you!” or “You, kid!”  I can only hope that the man across the street hadn’t heard “Basura!” so many times that he himself came to think someone was talking to him when he heard it.

            That happens, you know.

            People get put down and told how awful they are, and sooner or later some of them are in danger of coming to believe it.  Not everyone, by any means, takes it to heart, but some do.  Either way, people who are routinely and systematically discounted have a real challenge in front of them and an unfair burden put upon them, often at their most vulnerable moments and often from the most formative times in their lives.

            Yet they also have Jesus on their side, calling out the falsehoods and the lies that constant repetition by the world tries to impress on their spirits.  The woman at the well, the Samaritan woman at the well, is the classic example.

            Jesus was taking a shortcut through Samaritan territory near the town of Sychar.

“Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well.  It was about noon.  A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink.’  (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.)  The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?’  (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.)”  [John 4:6-9]

Even without John’s side comment you can tell she knew how at that time Samaritans were seen by Jews and how women were treated by men.  Whatever she may have thought about those attitudes, she expected them.  That’s part of the tragedy when people are regularly and systematically denied their dignity.  It comes to be seen as “normal”, by everyone involved.   It comes to be seen as predictable.  Situations are debased right from the start.

            Not for Jesus, though.  He wasn’t so much concerned about the labels as he was about the person, and what life had done to her.  Somehow (we aren’t told the full story) she had been drawn into a terrible position where she was having to haul water in the heat of the day (when the best time would have been early on) and was there on her own (instead of appearing when others gathered) and it may all have had to do with the situation Jesus outlines (to her surprise).

“Jesus said to her, ‘Go call your husband and come back.’  The woman answered him, ‘I have no husband.’  Jesus said to her, ‘You are right in saying, “I have no husband;” for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband.  What you have said is true!’” [John 4:16-18]

You don’t have to stretch your imagination too far to figure out that someone married five times has had some kind of trauma in her life.  Nor do you have to work hard to figure out what might have been said to or about her in the village. 

It may, though, leave you wondering what she thought about herself.  How much did she see herself as a victim?  How much did she think she deserved whatever abuse and insult she received?  What exactly were her wounds and her scars?  Maybe it’s better that we don’t know specifics.  Instead, we know something more general that applies to anybody at all who for any reason at all has had their spirit crushed or bruised.  Jesus said,

“Those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty.  The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” [John 4:14]

It isn’t simply that Jesus doesn’t treat us as trash or look down on anybody.  It isn’t just that he dealt with a Samaritan woman with respect.  It isn’t just that he touched lepers that nobody else would go near.  It isn’t only that he heard the sorrow in the cries of a man possessed by demons.  It isn’t simply that he saw a poor man lying on the ground outside a rich man’s gate as being headed for a far better position in eternity than the rich man held on earth.  It isn’t just that he called for compassion toward a woman that the crowd wanted to stone, or even that he prayed for his own executioners from the cross.

            It’s that by this, and so much more – by his entire life and his entire being – he opens the door for human beings to enter into a life free from the ravages that sin and hatred work within us, a life that is no longer bound by anything unpleasing to God.  He opens up the life of the spirit to all people, so that they – we – can live as God sees us, not as people do, or as we may see ourselves.  Paul wrote to the Romans,

“For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.  For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption.  When we cry, ‘Abba!  Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ – if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.”  [Romans 8:14-17]

You are not “Basura”.  Far from it.

“Don’t Give Up Learning” - March 8, 2020 (Scout Sunday)

John 3:1-17

            Throughout the church season of Lent, as we prepare our hearts for the observation of Holy Week that culminates in the celebration of Easter, people often try to increase their self-discipline by giving something up.  I myself have a package of Girl Scout cookies in the lower, left-hand drawer of my desk (trefoils, if you’re curious) that is going to remain sealed until Easter morning.  But for my Lenten sermons this year, I am calling on all of us to think about things not to give up for Lent (or ever).  One of those is learning.

            Part of the Boy Scout Oath is a pledge to keep oneself “physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight”.  I think it’s safe to say that the spirit of scouting in general is in accord with that.  To stay physically strong takes common-sense steps, like getting enough exercise, eating right, and getting the proper amount of sleep.  That’s the easiest of the three.  It can sort of stand on its own.

            The other two are more challenging, and they intertwine and support one another.  To be mentally awake is to become aware of the value of a moral life, and to lead a moral life is to use the gifts God has given us – including our minds – in ways that reflect glory back to God.

            To be mentally awake is to keep your eyes open to what happens in the world when somebody doesn’t bother with the moral side of life.  To live a good and upright life does not guarantee that everything will always go well.  Not to live that way, however, does guarantee that sooner or later you’ll find yourself in situations that you do not want to get tangled up in.  To be mentally awake is to think your life choices through.  Sometimes that will not help entirely, but not to think things through is to ask for trouble. 

One time when I was in scouts we were on a camping trip and I remember (who could forget?) waking up and seeing a skunk in the tent.  I knew enough and had learned enough not to move or make any loud noises, and the skunk made its way back outside after what was probably a couple of minutes but which to me felt like an hour.  If any of us in that tent had made the mistake of sneaking a bag of Cheetos or a pack of krimpets into the tent, it might not have turned out as well.

            Last Sunday, Nico taught me a new word: “psychophysicotherapeutics”, which means “the remedial treatment of mind and body.  That’s a fun word to know.  It’s one you can drag out sometimes and sound really impressive.  But more important than being able to pronounce the word is to seek and find ways to keep your mind and body well, to become or to stay physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.

            Some things can only be learned by doing.  I can tell you, thanks to scouting, how to tie a bowline: you hold the rope with one hand and the end with the other.  Make a loop in the rope, then pretend the end is a rabbit that comes out of the hole like a rabbit, hops around the tree, and goes back in.  Now, I have told you.  To actually learn it, however, you have to do it for yourself, over and over and over again.

            So, too, when the Bible recounts the life of Jesus, we meet someone named Nicodemus who goes to Jesus and asks him questions that end up changing his life.  Nicodemus was well beyond the stage where anyone would have judged him a student and Jesus himself calls Nicodemus “a teacher of Israel” [John 3:10].  Given his social position as a leader of his people, given the respect that he was due, it might not have been easy for him to admit his need to learn from the much younger Jesus.  Maybe all of that had something to do with him waiting to visit Jesus by night [John 3:2].  All the same, he went.

            He went, and he asked questions, and he wrestled with the answers.  There’s a Greek word that means both “again” and “from above”.   Jesus told him,

“No one can see the kingdom of heaven without being born from above.” [John 3:3] 

Nicodemus took the other sense of the word and heard it as “born again” and then set off on a track that followed that to its logical and literal conclusion. 

“How can anyone be born after having grown old?” [John 3:4]

Then Jesus mixes him up some more, using yet another confusing term, a single word that could mean “breath”, “spirit”, or “wind” in a way that would leave him having to untangle the meaning himself.

“The wind [or Spirit] blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.  So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit [or breath; or wind].” [John 3:8]

Neither Jesus’ followers nor anyone involved in scouting gets off the hook when it comes to being somebody who keeps learning throughout their whole life.

           

            It is a major mistake to think that there is any point in our lives where we can or should stop learning.  Scouting may begin with Tiger Scouts and Daisies, Brownies and Cub Scouts, but at the other end it points to people who are Explorers, who go out into the world to see what is there and let others know what the wide world holds.

            And then there are those, like Nicodemus, who go further and look to see what is beyond this world, which is so much more than we will ever even begin to know.