Trumping the 'How' of Living with a Larger 'Why'

Community Christian Church        
Roger Ray, pastor  
April 24, 2011       Easter

Matthew 28:1-10    
After the Sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. 2And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. 3His appearance was like lightning and his clothing white as snow. 4For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men. 5But the angel said to the women, 'Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. 6He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come; see the place where he lay. 7Then go quickly and tell his disciples, "He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him." This is my message for you.' 8So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. 9Suddenly Jesus met them and said, 'Greetings!' And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshipped him. 10Then Jesus said to them, 'Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.'

A great deal of my professional life has been lived out on the Opinion page of the Springfield NewsLeader.  As a columnist, I find it irresistible to read everyone else's column and the opinion pages in other newspapers.  A few years ago I realized that one of the most tedious aspects of opinion columnists is how often we bring up Hitler and the Nazis to compare such venial things as a failure to fill the potholes in the city streets with the Holocaust.

I have vowed never to bring up the Nazis unless I am talking about something on the scale of genocide.  Unfortunately, that still gives you a lot of opportunities to talk about the holocaust.

Genocide has been sadly common in history, even in Biblical history.  As much as Jews have a right to decry the 20th century holocaust against their people, we know from Deuteronomy and I Samuel that the Jews carried out genocide against the Canaanites and the Amalekites.

The Roman Empire always tried to conquer and then simply annex nations to make the land and the people a part of the empire, but when a nation would not assimilate, Rome would kill everyone they could find.  Julius Cesar did that in what is now modern day Switzerland and in France, killing millions and enslaving the survivors.

In the next century, when the Jews proved to be too unruly to govern, Emperor Titus had Jerusalem leveled and all the inhabitants killed.  In fact, even when the city was rebuilt a hundred years later, Jews were only allowed to enter the city on one day of the year to go and mourn at the only place where one stone had been left on another, the western retaining wall of the Temple mount.... Now euphemistically called the "wailing wall" for the two thousand years of mournful prayers said there.

Jesus was born and died during the Roman occupation but the gospels were not written until two generations had passed and the nation of Judah had been destroyed.  Paul wrote about the resurrection of Jesus in the decades after the first Easter but Paul did not speak of an empty tomb and he did not give any details of the events of Passion Week.

It is not until the eyewitnesses were either dead or quite elderly that Mark wrote the first account of the passion narrative.  Mark was not from Judah and was probably not a Jewish convert.  But clearly, Mark was heavily influenced by the suffering servant songs of Isaiah and by the substitutionary death described in Psalm 22.

Jesus Seminar scholar, John Shelby Spong, says that the passion narrative in the gospels does not attempt to describe what historically happened but they are an artful and loving account of who these things happened to.

It is often upsetting to church folks the first time they hear that the gospels are a combination of historical events, biblical imagery and metaphorical interpretation but let me invite you to think of that famous painting of George Washington crossing the Delaware River.

It is a historical fact that Washington and his men crossed the Delaware on Christmas day of 1776.  But the German born artist, Emanuel Leutze, who produced the famous painting, not only wasn't there but he wasn't even born yet.  Seventy-five years after the Christmas Day crossing of the Delaware, Leutze combined his knowledge of history with his immigrant's enthusiasm for his adopted nation and its political father to produce the huge mural that now hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Leutze wasn't a liar.  He wasn't making up a myth.  He simply took what little he could know about an event that happened before he was born and produced an image that captured both the event and how the artist felt about the subject.  That is what we have in the gospels.

Mark took his passionate faith in Jesus and combined that with what he knew of the Hebrew scriptures which had been taken as messianic images and he combined that with a metaphorical use of the historical fact of the crucifixion of Jesus.  What I'm telling you today about the context of that writing, that it was written on the heels of a holocaust.

 In fact, it may well be that Mark began to write as the holocaust was taking place.... Possibly even writing because any surviving eyewitnesses were being systematically slaughtered.



Mark, then Matthew and Luke and John, painstakingly recount the betrayal, judgment and murder of Jesus.  Mark declares that even though he was certainly dead for several days that on Easter morning his tomb was found to be empty... which is simply a poetic way of saying that Jesus is not really dead.

Mark does not go so far as to say that Jesus could be seen physically but he introduces a young man at the tomb who tells the women who had come there that Sunday morning that they should go and tell his disciples to go back to the Galilee and that they will see him there.

The Galilee is where they had seen Jesus healing people.  That was where he spoke a word of good news to the poor.  The Galilee was where he had lived and traveled with his disciples but what I want you to realize is that when Mark first wrote these words there was still blood on the grass in Galilee that was not yet dry.

Jesus was a distant memory, but the holocaust was fresh.  The account of the resurrection of Jesus was not a historical claim; it was a defiant word of hope.  Matthew takes Mark's account and edits it.  He adds some additional quotes from the Hebrew bible and he feels the need to have Jesus physically visible on Easter but the fundamental message does not change. In fact, he says the same thing the young man in Mark says to the women at the tomb.... Tell the disciples to go to the Galilee and they will see me there.

When I first went to the Galilee, I went as a seminary student.  I was studying biblical archaeology.  I honestly wasn't interested in even the ancient Byzantine churches or the Crusader castles.  I wanted to visit sights of biblical importance.  But along the way my tour bus stopped at the Holocaust museum.



I was not a student of modern history. I knew a little about the Holocaust but my awareness exploded that day.  We then visited the Children's Holocaust memorial and it was several years after that before I was able to stand to read anymore about it.

Since that time I have twice had occasion to meet Elie Wiesel from whom we take the quote on our worship banner.  After the Holocaust, the mantra among the survivors was "Never again."  But what Elie Wiesel wanted to say to the world was that it never would have happened if persons of good will had not been willing to stand back and let it happen in the first place.  He says that the ethical message of the whole of the Bible is just this, "Thou shalt not stand idly by."

Wiesel's account of the Holocaust in his book, Night, was the memory of a teenaged survivor of the death camps.  It is so graphic and so horrible that for many years publishers refused to print it because they simply did not believe that the holocaust could have been so bad.  After a decade had passed and photographs and messages from the camps were distributed, the awful truth became undeniable.

But the writer whose experiences as a prisoner in the Nazi death camps who really brought meaning to the event for me, and by association, a deeper meaning to the New Testament's Easter accounts, was Viktor Frankl.

 Frankl was a Jewish psychiatrist when he and his family were arrested and taken to the camp.  He was separated from his wife, who went to another camp, and his children, who went to another, all never to be seen again.  As he was taken into the camp, they took away his clothes, his hat, his shoes but he was trying to hold onto a manuscript of his life's work, his research which he was preparing to publish.

A soldier took the papers from him and destroyed them in while Frankl looked on.  The point, of course, was to break any spirit remaining in the captives.... To fill them with despair, to remove any resistance or will to escape.... To make them slaves or simply to make them compliant as they were being murdered by the hundreds of thousands.

Frankl was forced to do slave labor and to endure starvation, bitter cold, and he had to endure the dawning awareness that his wife and children would not survive the camps.  What he said about that was, that they can take everything away from you.... Your home, your possessions, your family, your life's work, they can take your freedom, they can take your health but what they cannot take is your ability to decide who you are and how you will react to the mistreatment.

Through the eyes of a psychiatrist, he made note of the differences between his peers in the camp who gave up hope and who became ill and died and those who appeared weak and had no chance of survival but they did manage to live through the torture to eventually be liberated.  He concluded that those who have a reason to live, those who believed that there were people waiting for them, who depended on them..... those who believed that they had something important to accomplish in life....

Those people survived.  He concluded that if you have a sufficient "why" to live, that you can live with any "how."

I believe that the basic historical facts of the Passion narrative are true.  I believe that Jesus was not a part of organized religion and that as a spiritual teacher who was outside of the salary and donation structure of religion that he was a threat to the temple priesthood.

And I believe that Jesus taught and lived a life totally free of ownership of property or obligation to employers and that as such he was a threat to the whole banking, marketplace system.

And I believe that Jesus taught and lived a life of total liberation, refusing enslavement and servitude and as such he was a threat to the government.  I do not find it hard to believe that the priests, the governor and his own family members and friends conspired together to kill him.

But written against the backdrop of one of history's worst genocides, what do we make of the resurrection story?  One of the great things about being in a progressive church is that there is no one to say what you are supposed to believe about that.

I will, however, tell you what I believe.  I believe that even though they could kill Jesus they could not kill his message.  They could strike the teacher and even destroy the city where the church was first born but the faith community continued to be reborn, in spite of dungeon, fire and sword, because the church had a why to live that was bigger than circumstances ..... even when their circumstances involved trying to survive genocide.

I believe that the church has survived as a sign of the resurrection of Jesus.  I believe that we survive because the world has a reason to expect something of us in the future.  We have a reason to live.  There is a need for us to be witnesses to that same message of liberation for which Jesus died.... That same message of social and economic justice, for which Jesus died, that same message of spiritual wholeness apart from any denomination or bishop or pope giving our franchise legitimacy.

You are the resurrection community.  Don't play dead.  Don't accept life as a victim.  You are not slaves and you need not stand idly by.  We are the resurrection of Jesus..... as long as we keep the message alive, he will never be found in a tomb.

The Passion Narrative as Archetypal Story

Community Christian Church
Roger Ray, pastor
April 17, 2011    Passion Sunday



Jerry Block and Sheldon Harnick, took an old Yiddish short story about a dairyman and his daughters and turned it into a musical play in the 1960's.   Producers turned Block and Harnick down for years saying that their play was too Jewish to be of interest to anyone who did not have eastern European Jewish background.  However, Fiddler on the Roof became the longest running Broadway play at that time and has since been translated into more languages than any other stage play.

The popularity of Fiddler is certainly not rooted in the wide spread awareness of the travails of eastern European Jews at the turn of the 20th century.  Its power derives from the way it explores such universal topics as love and marriage after 25 years and three kids.  It explores how a father feels about his grown daughters getting married.  It expresses what many people have felt about faith, nationalism, oppression and displacement.

It seems odd to think about Fiddler on the Roof being sung in Japanese and acted out in Tokyo but it is very popular there.  Really good stories help us to express our own feelings and to understand our own lives.  The classics of children's stories do not become classics accidently.  They become classics because so many children feel like Jack, living in poverty and threatened by giants.... Or like little girl walking through a forest inhabited by either figurative or literal wolves.

Regardless of how you interpret the religious dimensions of the story of the betrayal and murder of Jesus, the story has the power of an archetypal classic.

It contains elements of betrayal by a beloved friend, abandonment by fickle friends and the shallowness of public opinion.  It places the main character in a mortally vulnerable position in front of hypocritical religious leaders and unethical political figures.  It speaks to every mother who has lost a son unjustly.  To every friend who realized that they had failed to speak up or to act to come to the defense of another.

The passion narrative has also found an audience in every language, on every continent and in every century.  Imagine what it would be like to read it from the perspective of a poor southern black family the day after Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered.  Imagine hearing it through the ears of the poor Salvadoran peasants after Arch Bishop Romero was assassinated.  Imagine being a Hindu and reading the passion in the weeks following the murder of Gandhi.

Everyone, at some point, can see themselves in the Jesus role, as having been unjustly judged, betrayed by a friend, and misunderstood by family, lovers and neighbors.  But to really understand the passion, you must also see yourself as Gov. Pilate, or Herod, or Peter or even Judas.  And you have to realize that if the story were being read this morning in Afghanistan or Iraq the evil empire would not be Rome, would it?

Andrew Lloyd Weber wrote Jesus Christ Superstar after growing up in traditional religious schools but always wondering about the role of Judas in the Biblical account.  Why did Judas do what he did?  What was his motivation and how might he have told the story differently?  In Weber's imagination, the sometimes two dimensional characters of religious accounts of the death of Jesus take on more complex and more believable third dimensions.

The famous and much more recent attempt to tell the story by Mel Gibson focuses almost exclusively on the aspect of torture and to do that seems to miss the point of the story entirely.  Jesus was not the first nor was he the last to die miserably in unjust circumstances.  We tell the story of Jesus because we are able to feel it at so many levels..... through the eyes of Judas who came to see Jesus as a disappointment, a narcissist who failed to do what he could for his own people.

Through the eyes of Peter who believed in Jesus but not enough to risk his own hide.  Through the eyes of Pilate, who somehow seemed to sense that Jesus had integrity which the governor did not but who could not seem to bring himself to do the right thing.  Through the eyes of Mary, who loved, adored, possibly desired Jesus but who still did not understand her own simultaneous love and fear.  And through the eyes of religious leaders who prefer the institution to the faith the institution was created to foster.

Today we invite you to enter the story again, singing "ho sanna" with the fickle crowds who danced in the Triumphal Entry but who yelled out, "crucify him" four days later.  We encourage you to sing with the apostles who were too drunk with prospects of their own importance to comprehend what was going on all around them.  And we invite you to feel with both Jesus and Judas what it is to betray a friend and to be betrayed.

Obviously, we only have the time to present about half of the music from this iconic opera in our service today.  We do not get to over hear the confused disciples asking what's the buzz.  We don't get to see the argument between Judas and Jesus about Mary and about Judas' own decision to betray his friend.  We won't have time for Pilate's pensive remembering of his dream or to witness the moral outrage of Jesus clearing the temple.

Still, I hope that it is enough to spark your memory and to allow you to remember the world's most important story again.  Unless there is a cold hard place where your heart is supposed to be, you should be able to feel the passion yourselves.

A part of me wants to ask you not to applaud today because the story is, itself, sacred and deserves our respect but I know that some of today's performances will be so shocking that you will need to applaud and, frankly, we'll need a few moments here and there to get instruments and equipment ready.

We are using a mixed media today.  We never do that but some of the music we judged to be crucial to the telling of the passion required orchestration and more voices than we could bring in.  Let us move back and forth between the classic film and the voices of people you know, re-telling a story which defines us.

Our spiritual desire for justice, true friendship, substantive love and a meaningful life is rooted in this story which has been translated into every language of the world and remains a fixture in every culture. You and I are in this story.  Our deepest pain is here and somewhere between the characters lays our greatest source of hope.

Can We Live Again?

Community Christian Church  
Roger Ray, pastor  
April 10, 2011   Lent 5

Ezekiel 37:1-14              
The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. 2He led me all round them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. 3He said to me, 'Mortal, can these bones live?' I answered, 'O Lord God, you know.' 4Then he said to me, 'Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. 5Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. 6I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the Lord.'
7 So I prophesied as I had been commanded; and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. 8I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them. 9Then he said to me, 'Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.' 10I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.
11 Then he said to me, 'Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, "Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely." 12Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. 13And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. 14I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act, says the Lord.'

In a couple of weeks, our sanctuary will be full.  Easter will bring out most of our members and, if this year is like other years, we'll have quite a few visitors as well.  Which is great.  We're always looking for new visitors.  But I know that Easter brings out a particular kind of church goer.

The occasional church goer, the nominally religious person, comes out on Easter to hear the story of how Jesus was dead and buried and was discovered, a couple of days later, to have risen from the dead.  And, with the appearance of the revived Jesus comes the message that none of the rest of us will stay dead either and that those of us who know the secret formula and the secret handshake, have a reasonable expectation of living forever above the clouds in eternal reward.

And those occasional church visitors, the nominally religious, will walk back out to their cars thinking..... "How can anyone really know?  I wonder if any of it is true...."  Of course, they have good reason to wonder.  No one knows anything about life after death.  Anyone who tries to tell you that they know anything about it is either lying or they would not be able to reliably pass a psych review.

It reminds me of that fabulous passage in Lewis Carol's "Through the Looking Glass" in which Alice tells the obviously quite mad White Queen that she can't believe impossible things and the animated chess piece replies, "of course you can, why I often believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

Many of us where brought up to believe that faith meant, exactly that, convincing yourself to believe entirely impossible things when, in fact, believing impossible things has nothing to do with faith.  Believing impossible things is, with all due respect to the White Queen, insanity.

God is not impressed by anyone's willingness to impersonate schizophrenia.

Now, two weeks before Easter, we have this reading from Ezekiel which gives a chance to think about resurrection as a metaphor rather than a promise of eternal life.  Ezekiel describes a vision, and a vision, like a dream, is not supposed to be understood literally.

In his vision, the Lord takes Ezekiel to a valley filled with dry bones.  The valley is not identified.  Given the time and circumstances of Ezekiel, it is tempting to think that he has been taken to the scene of Judah's last battle where the Babylonian armies slew the armies of Judah and the survivors were carried into captivity.

You can think of that plain in Israel, around the fortified city of Megiddo but you could think of a lot of other battles as well....such as the Battle of Culloden when Bonnie Prince Charles led his Scottish kin into a battle for freedom which resulted in a bloody massacre... Charles, himself, being one of the only survivors and he survived by dressing as a woman and running away.  The British army was ordered to run through Scotland and kill every man who was strong enough to lift a sword.  One of the most tragic instances of ethnic cleansing in British history.

You could think of the Battle at Little Big Horn.  General Custer had written to a friend, "There are not enough Indians in the world to defeat the Seventh Cavalry."  Even Custer did not survive that massacre.

But, of course, we use military language to describe more than military history.  We talk about "crossing the Rubicon" or "going to our Waterloo," not because we are literally marching with Napoleon or Caesar.

There is no one here who has led such a charmed life that when you read Ezekiel's vision, that God took the prophet out into a valley scattered with the dry bones of personal tragedy, defeat, hopeless circumstances and God asks the ultimate question:  "Son of man, can these bones live?"  And Ezekiel gives him the answer that we've heard echoing around in our own hearts for so long...... "I don't know."

Here, my friends, is the issue of faith.  Faith is not a matter of trying to fake insanity while you are in Sunday School and returning to normal behavior by the time you get home.  Faith is a question of hope in the face of defeat.  Can these bones live?

Resurrection isn't about what happens after you die.  It is about what happens when you feel like your life is over.... When you have been fired... or incarcerated.... Or diagnosed.... Or abandoned.  Can these bones live again?  And, for the most part, we reply, "I just don't know."

The NAACP is starting a billboard campaign around the country.  The billboard reads:  Welcome to America.  Home to 5% of the world's population and 25% of the world's prisoners.

I've done a lot of visiting with prisoners in city, county, state and federal prisons and I can tell you that almost everyone there has worked out a perfectly plausible story for why they don't deserve to be there.  And, based on the fundamental difference between America's incarceration record and, say for example, the incarceration rate in Communist China, you might be inclined to think that most of them are telling the truth.

But, fact is, most of the people in prison are guilty of committing some crime, whether or not it deserved incarceration.  But, even still, guilty or innocent, what do we want the future of these people to be?  If we are not going to wholesale slaughter them, then why won't we let them get job training, education, rehabilitation?  It is as if our society wants to drop people in the valley of dry bones and make sure that they never ever get out.

I come from one of those salt of the earth families in middle America.... We were a family of worker bees.  My dad didn't join a labor union.  We didn't protest the Vietnam War.  My folks got up, went to lower middle class jobs.  They came home, cut the grass, mopped the kitchen floor and paid their bills.  My parents lived their lives right in the middle of their lane, never straying over the white lines or the middle line.

I never had a DNA test done, but my life bears no similarity to theirs at all.  I have not just crossed the white lines on the edge of the highway, I have spent most of my life bouncing from sidewalk to sidewalk.  I've had times of great ebullience and success and I've had times of humiliation and failure without much time in between.  I have lived my life at the extremes.

In both my personal life and my professional life, I've found myself in the middle of this metaphorical valley of dry bones, and if not God then the entire universe has asked, "Son of man, shall these bones live?"  And I've had to honestly reply, "It's not looking very good..... I don't think so.... I don't see how.... There is no way out of this valley of death."

And if you've ever been there, the universe begins to ask other questions..... "do you want these bones to live again?"  And sometimes the answer is, "No."  "No, I've had enough.  Defeat looks like a gift.... Like a chance to lay down my sword and shield and just lie down with my ancestors."

I think that the real matter of faith begins when God asks, "Do you even want to want these bones to live again?"

I've been doing weddings for more than 30 years now.  I don't give warranties, I just say blessings.  But sometimes people get confused about that.  People I married decades ago have had children and become grandparents and sometimes they still call to see if the warrantee is in effect.  "I just wanted to call and tell you that I just found out that when Robert was away for a few months, working in another state, that he had an affair..... what should I do?"

And I said, "What do you want to do?"  And she said, "I don't know."

It starts slowly..... you have to want it.  You have to connect the little things.... You have to remember the good times.... You have to believe the good times are not over.... You have to forgive... you have to rebuild trust and that is not a quick or easy thing.  You connect a little part to a little part, and then little parts to bigger parts:

The toe bone's connected to the heel bone.... The heel bone's connected to the foot bone... the foot bone's connected to the leg bone.

Do you remember that time we went to the Brown Hotel for New Year's Eve?  Do you remember when Sam tried to set up a brewery in his garage?  Do you remember when little Robert got back from the Persian Gulf?

The leg bone's connect to the hip bone.... The hip bone's connected to the back bone.

"Son of man, can these bones live?"  And I said, "You know."  And the Lord commanded me, "prophesy to the bones."  Tell the bones to forgive.  Tell the bones to have hope.  Tell the bones that they should connect to the back bone and find their faith because God is a God of resurrection and not of defeat.

I don't think we should go into prisons and try to baptize prisoners so that they will go to heaven when they die.  I think we should go and baptize prisons so that they will let my people go.

The vision of Ezekiel is not about life after death.  Oh men and women, do not waste your time wondering if you will live after you die.  If you must worry, worry that you may never start to live.

Can these bones live?  You bet they can.  Just add faith and stand back and watch.

You, as Told by Your Parents, Neighbors, the Church and Total Strangers

Community Christian Church  
Roger Ray, pastor  
April 3, 2011   Lent 4

John 9:1-41                                              
As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. 2His disciples asked him, 'Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?' 3Jesus answered, 'Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God's works might be revealed in him. 4We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. 5As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.' 6When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man's eyes, 7saying to him, 'Go, wash in the pool of Siloam' (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see. 8The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, 'Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?' 9Some were saying, 'It is he.' Others were saying, 'No, but it is someone like him.' He kept saying, 'I am the man.' 10But they kept asking him, 'Then how were your eyes opened?' 11He answered, 'The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, "Go to Siloam and wash." Then I went and washed and received my sight.' 12They said to him, 'Where is he?' He said, 'I do not know.'

13 They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. 14Now it was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. 15Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight. He said to them, 'He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see.' 16Some of the Pharisees said, 'This man is not from God, for he does not observe the Sabbath.' But others said, 'How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?' And they were divided. 17So they said again to the blind man, 'What do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened.' He said, 'He is a prophet.'
18 The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight 19and asked them, 'Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?' 20His parents answered, 'We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; 21but we do not know how it is that now he sees, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself.' 22His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. 23Therefore his parents said, 'He is of age; ask him.'
24 So for the second time they called the man who had been blind, and they said to him, 'Give glory to God! We know that this man is a sinner.' 25He answered, 'I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.' 26They said to him, 'What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?' 27He answered them, 'I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?' 28Then they reviled him, saying, 'You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. 29We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.' 30The man answered, 'Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. 31We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will. 32Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. 33If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.' 34They answered him, 'You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?' And they drove him out.

35 Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him, he said, 'Do you believe in the Son of Man?' 36He answered, 'And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.' 37Jesus said to him, 'You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.' 38He said, 'Lord, I believe.' And he worshipped him. 39Jesus said, 'I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.' 40Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, 'Surely we are not blind, are we?' 41Jesus said to them, 'If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, "We see", your sin remains.

In the Historical Society of the Christian Church which is located in Nashville, TN, you can view the personal effects of Alexander Campbell, who was one of the 18th century founders of the Christian Church.  Along with the predictable books, Bible's, notes and writing desk is a little black bag which looks like the little black bag we used to associate with a doctor when making a house call..... for those of you who remember what those words mean.

The 18th century evangelist's bag was, in fact a doctor's bag because, at that time, medical training was a part of the education of a minister.

The clergy, often being the only educated professional in a frontier community, were often called upon, not only to pray for the sick but to be the person most likely to heal the sick.  Even now, ministers are expected to make visits to church members who are hospitalized because in the back of our minds the clergy are still associated with healing.

If you ask yourself, "How did Jesus become well known?  Why did people come out to see him as he traveled around the Galilee?"  And then you read the gospels to see what he did, healing is a big part of that.  Jesus was one of many traveling religious teachers who cast out demons, healed people and who sometimes were said to perform miracles but, as we know from historical documents, they were also expected to pull a bad tooth now and then.

In John, there are no demon exorcisms.  Also, in John, Jesus doesn't tell parables.  That there are so many demon exorcisms and parables in the other three gospels of the New Testament and none in John is an interesting subject in and of itself but since we are looking at a text from John today, let's allow him to speak for himself.  In John, Jesus was a healer and a miracle worker.

John calls the miracles "signs" and he lists them in a kind of ascending order from easier smaller signs to bigger and harder miraculous events.  He starts with turning water into wine and ends up raising Lazarus from the dead.... From favorite bartender to reverse mortician.  Today's account of healing a blind man is near the top of the list of miracles because that is a particularly hard thing to do.

Now, normally, I will get very nervous about anyone trying to find multiple layers of meaning in a gospel text. Normally, when we are looking at Matthew, Mark or Luke, I prefer the most simple and straightforward interpretation of the text because I do not think that the other gospel writers were generally trying to be very complex and sometimes when they do try they tend to lose their way a bit.

But in these early chapters of John, John is being very crafty.  He composes narratives in which the real meat is never just lying on the surface.  This is an account of a healing and a tough case to be sure, but healing accounts are kind of cheap in the world of religion.  Lots of religious healers healed a lot more people than Jesus did and we don't get dressed up and go sit in big buildings to talk about them...... Jesus is different.

This rather long narrative, if it were about the healing, could be shortened to a tight little paragraph.  What John is really wanting us to see in this narrative has relatively little to do with the man who was healed.  Sure, the guy was blind, and that is no small thing, but what John wants us to be aware of.... What he wants us to see is that the man was living in a world full of blind people.  Blindness, after all, isn't always about the eyes.

So, to start with, let me ask you to ignore the beginning portion of this text.... Let's pretend that the actual event being reported is not all that important and let's look at the rest of the text.

In the very beginning, Jesus is just walking along with his friends and his friends are people watching.... Which is pretty normal.

If you notice, when you are walking through the mall, most people aren't carrying any packages.  Ostensibly, you go to the mall when you need to buy something but the truth is, most of the people who are at the mall are not going to buy anything, they are just there..... looking at the people.  "Man, she's fat..... she really ought to do something about that."  "Can you believe she wore that in public?  Who dressed her today?"  "Did you see who he was with?  He must have money or something?"

We go to the mall as consumers but not always consumers of clothes, shoes and Aunt Annie's Pretzels.  We consume one another.  We eat the flesh of the people we feel superior to.

The disciples saw a man who had been blind from birth and they asked Jesus, "Who sinned that this man was born blind?  Was it something he did or was it his parents' fault?"

The disciples, other than Judas, all get to be saints later on.  They have churches named for them and they are all up in stained glass windows around the world but on this day, they saw a man who was blind and they didn't go over to him and comfort him, or help him, or give him anything.... They didn't try to heal him or suggest that Jesus give it a shot.  What did they do?  They discussed him.  You have to wonder how the blind man would feel about that.  It was a religious discussion.... And I guess that makes it some better, but behind the religion was still just gossip.... Who's fault was it?

"Did you hear that Tim was in a car accident?  Yeah, he was hit by a drunk driver and he was injured pretty badly..... but he wasn't wearing a seat belt."  "Who sinned, this guy or his parents?"

And then, if you skip on down a few verses to verse 8.....Something wonderful has happened...a miracle.... A real gift from God.  And verses 8 and 9 say:
8The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, 'Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?' 9Some were saying, 'It is he.' Others were saying, 'No, but it is someone like him.' He kept saying, 'I am the man.'

The neighbors, the other people walking around the mall, saw that the man was no longer blind and they began to talk, "See, I told you he was faking it... he was just trying to get people to feel sorry for him and give him some money.... What a lazy, dishonest fraud!"  "Well, you know, I believed it, in fact, I know he was blind.... This has to be his twin brother."

You know, sometimes when someone is blind people assume that they are deaf too so they were just discussing him and finally the man himself interrupts them at the end of the verse, "Guys, that was me.... I was blind but now I am not."  Amazing how you can clear things up if you'll just go to the source.

Mark Twain said that a lie told and stuck to is as good as the truth.  When it comes to gossip, a lie told, repeated, exaggerated, and asserted becomes the truth rather than the facts.
In this story, a man has had something wonderful, unheard of, fabulous happen to him and people are not rejoicing, they are trying to figure out how it is something bad.  And, of course, they get help.

They took the man to the religious professionals to find out what they should think about this thing.  In verse 13 we read:

They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind.

And then John throws in the killing detail:

14Now it was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes.

The only proverb which I have come up with on my own is this:  If you light a candle in a dark place you'll draw bugs.  I came up with that after several years in the ministry when I realized that no matter what good thing I ever did, some self-righteous.....person.... would try to find fault with it.  It is a form of spiritual gossip.... The basic goal is to assert that my spirituality is better and more important than your spirituality.  As you see in verse 16:

16Some of the Pharisees said, 'This man is not from God, for he does not observe the Sabbath.' But others said, 'How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?' And they were divided. 17So they said again to the blind man, 'What do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened.' He said, 'He is a prophet.'

I think it is interesting to see how the man who was healed is growing in his estimation of Jesus.  When he first told the neighbors about what happed he said, "The man called Jesus," but now he says that Jesus is a prophet and in the end of the text he acknowledges Jesus as the messiah.  Who is teaching this man?  Well, in the end, you have to admit that it wasn't Jesus because he admits that he doesn't even know where Jesus is.

Jesus did him a favor and then left the scene.... He didn't hang around for applause.... He didn't get any recognition.  He just did a kind deed and kept moving.  Who, then, is teaching this man?  His critics.... Just his critics.  I've learned some of the most important lessons I've learned in life from the people who have publicly criticized me.  Rarely has the lesson been what they wanted to teach me, but I am grateful for the learning opportunities none-the-less.

Well, the day which started out as easily being the best day of this guy's life takes yet another turn towards the neurotic.  The religious leaders, not being able to summarily condemn Jesus for doing this horrible thing, call in the man's parents.

In the past couple of centuries we've gotten kind of formal about the official attitude about parents.  We have a Mother's Day and a Father's Day and we are supposed to come to church on those days and, no matter how you spin it, we're being asked to worship our parents.

But I know that a lot of the people lingering in the greeting card isle are sorting through the "you were always there for me" and the "you are my inspiration" and the "I will always love you more than life itself" trying to find the card that says, "You are my dad."  Or, "Thanks for giving birth to me."  Because saying anything else would be a bit over the top.

In a perfect world, your parents would always be your biggest fans and your most reliable advocates.  And some people get to live in that world but not the guy at the center of John's story.
The parents are called in to be questioned because their son has gone and gotten himself in trouble by being healed.  You would think that the parents would be planning a big celebration.... They would be introducing their son to all of the relatives he had never been able to see, they would be leading the cheerleading section.  But their son is in a bit of a tight spot and, well, they don't really want to get involved:

The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight 19and asked them, 'Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?' 20His parents answered, 'We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; 21but we do not know how it is that now he sees, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself.' 22His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews;

Then tension in the narrative continues to escalate until the man is excommunicated from the community..... what a twisted tale!  The way John tells this story about a blind man is that he was born blind but eventually is able to see Jesus the way that John sees Jesus but as the man is healed, the miracle reveals just how blind everyone else is, especially the self-righteous religious folks but his parents, neighbors and the other people milling around the mall don't come off very well either.

I could go on all day about this narrative and I'm sure some of you are afraid that I'm planning to do exactly that but to bring all of this to a relatively compassionate conclusion I want to go back to the original question that started this whole story about blindness and how we can learn to see.

The story begins with the disciples asking Jesus why this man is blind.  They assume that someone has screwed up and that is pretty well reflective of how we think about most things.  Whose fault is it?  Who lied?  Who cheated?  Who stole?  Who was drunk?  Who has the most salacious moral failing?

Jesus ignores this way of seeing and interpreting the meaning of peoples' lives and he says to them..... and please listen to this because this makes the difference between being blinded by gossip and prejudice and having your eyes opened to really see.  Jesus says in verse 3:

3.....'Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God's works might be revealed in him.

The truth is that probably the man and his parents had sinned and so had everyone else at the mall and the church but that is not the point.  Jesus saw the man's crisis, not as something that someone had done wrong but rather he saw the crisis as an opportunity to do something good, something holy, something kind and compassionate.

Are the homeless people in Springfield homeless because they are alcoholics?  Because they are addicts?  Because they are criminals who no one will give a job?  Is it because of the Republicans who have ship wrecked the economy?  Are they homeless because they are lazy Democrats waiting for a hand out?  Are they homeless because they have mental health problems and they are too unstable to solve their own problems?  Take your pick.... Most of the guys I know fit into at least three of those categories.

But here is how John tells us that Jesus sees them:  They are homeless to give you an opportunity to show compassion.  Why did your son's marriage fall apart?  Was it his fault or her fault?  Or is it an opportunity for you to show that your spirituality is based on forgiveness, a suspension of judgment and a heart devoted to compassion?

Wouldn't you love for people to look at you and your failings this way?  Wouldn't you love for your parents, your neighbors, your pastor, to see your crises, your screw ups, your mistakes and accidents as just an opportunity to be love in action?  And it wouldn't it be nice if we could learn to see that way too?

Blindness is for people who don't want to see what Jesus sees.