When Things Fall Apart Lent 5A

When Things Fall Apart

There may be only one thing everyone can agree on: every day it appears more and more that things are falling apart – both here and around the world, and including the world itself. This experience of falling apart generates fear, and some people and groups try to induce fear on purpose. Pema Chodron, a Buddhist nun reminds us that fear is a natural part of life, especially when we feel there is nothing to hold onto. Yet, she writes, “Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.” [i]

 

Just ask Ezekiel. Nearly 600 years before the time of Jesus, things had fallen apart. The people of Judea and Jerusalem had been exiled to Babylon. The Temple had been razed, burned to the ground. All that had been the life of Israel had fallen apart. They are no longer at home. They cannot practice the appointed sacrifices. The prophet imagines the community of Israel as a Valley of Dry Bones. Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones! Hear the Word of the Lord!

 

God calls upon Ezekiel to call for ruach, God’s breath which is life. These dry bones will have new life. [ii] For only God creates new life. We note that the animation and resurrection of these dry bones is a retelling of the creation story in Genesis 2:4b-7: first the body is formed, and then comes the breath of life. We note also that these bones are “the whole House of Israel.” Cut off from home, without hope, they are in a valley of fear and death. They have become a powerless community at the mercy of a brutal Babylonian Empire. Psalm 137 records this moment of hopelessness: “By the rivers of Babylon/Where we sat down/And there we wept/When we remembered Zion/But the wicked carried us away captivity/Required of us a song/How can we sing King Alpha song in a strange land?” [iii]

 

This prophecy asks whether or not powerless communities can again participate in the power of public life. To which the answer is yes – when the community leans into fear and hopelessness and accepts God’s power of renewal and new life! The claim made for God’s power stands over against the closed reality of any and all empires which intend that the dry bones should never live again: “O my people,” God says, “I 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. The concrete and human voice of Ezekiel calls God to act.  As a narrative for Lent, the invitation is to reject the conclusions of the empire, and to trust in the stunning freedom and power of the God who creates and gives life. God can and will bring new life.

 

The circumstances are much the same as depicted in all four gospels. Now it is the Empire of Caesar’s Rome. No need to transport people to another land: instead, a kind of martial law and brutal taxation and indentured slavery is imposed on the homeland itself. They are no longer at home. And by the time these texts are written down, the Second Temple in Jerusalem has been razed, burned to the ground once and for all. For all intents and purposes, the whole house of Israel is once again reduced to a valley of dry bones. They are powerless once again

 

Into this fallen apart reality comes Jesus. He and his companions get word that one of his dearest friends has fallen ill: Lazarus, the brother of Martha and Mary of Bethany, a small village near Jerusalem – a home where Jesus would often find refuge from those who opposed his mission to bring new life to people who feel powerless against the new Empire. [iv] Martha and Mary call for their friend to come to their ailing brother. Jesus hesitates, and who could blame him. Once he decides to go to Bethany, his companions warn him that there are people in and around Jerusalem who “were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?” As we have seen with Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman at the well, and the Man Blind Since Birth, Jesus asserts that a day of deep darkness lies ahead in Jerusalem and that he needs to be about his Father’s work while it is still light – while he is still free and able to bring new life to his powerless community. Despite the real fear for his very life, Jesus moves forward and leans into the danger. He arrives four days too late. As it was with Ezekiel 600 years before, Jesus appeals to his Father to raise the dry bones once again. Once again, it will be the concrete human voice of Jesus that will invite the power of God to bring new life where there is death. He says in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” Out he comes. “Unbind him and let him go,” says Jesus.

 

The story is not about Lazarus. Lazarus is a metaphor for the whole house of Israel that needs to be given new life – unbound from the fetters of the Empire, so that they can one day be at home again. The Lectionary shields us from the full response. Not everyone is happy. There are those who report this episode to the collaborators in Jerusalem, and they conspire not only to kill Jesus, but to have poor Lazarus killed as well – for it is his fault that he died and so that God in Christ  would have the opportunity to grant him new life. [v] The Empire continues to propagate fear. Jesus will not let the fear stop him. He continues to breathe new life into the whole House of Israel.

 

Here we are. The irony is that everyone knows things are falling apart. It is scary. It is fearful. But instead of leaning into the fear with peaceful hearts and love, all sides increase the fear by blaming one another. We seem to be at war with ourselves, generating more fear every day. And it is not only here at home, but around the world.

 

Make no mistake, these stories about Nicodemus, the Samaritan Woman at the well, the man blind from birth, and Lazarus, are all about new life for the whole community. A community which Jesus expands to include everyone, everywhere, all the time! We know what it feels like to live in a time when things are falling apart. We can choose to stay at war with one another. Or, like Jesus, we can choose the way of peace, love, and respect for all others. As Pema Chodron writes, “Every day we could think about aggression in the world, in New York, Los Angeles, Waco, D.C., Syria, Ukraine, Paris, the Korean peninsula…Iraq, everywhere. All over the world, everybody always strikes out against the enemy, and the pain escalates forever. Every day, we could reflect on this and ask ourselves, ‘Am I going to add to the aggression in the world? Every day, at the moment when things get edgy, we can just ask ourselves, ‘Am I going to practice peace, or am I going to war?’” [vi]  The Good News in all of these stories is that God will breathe new life into those who choose the Way of peace. Like Jesus, we can move into the places of fear knowing that our Lord calls us to come out from behind our petty differences and let him unbind us all from all our fears so that together we can work on real problems that face us all. We need to take time-out to breathe. As we remember we are all in this together, New Life will be ours.  

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[i] Chodron, Pema, When Things Fall Apart (Shambala, Boulder: 2016) p.2

[ii] Ezekiel 37:1-14

[iii] Bob Marley and the Wailers, By the rivers of Babylon, https://youtu.be/4tAb5rYRXvs

[iv] John 11:1-45.

[v] John 12:9-10

[vi] Ibid, Chodron, p.12 

A Resurrection Story Lent 4A

A Resurrection Story?

As Jesus is walking along, he sees a man blind since birth.[i] His disciples ask, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he is blind?” Jesus says that neither the man nor his parents sinned. Jesus speaks of the urgency of working on behalf of God now, for the “night” is coming. He then says, “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” Jesus then spits on the ground, makes a little bit of mud to put on the man’s eyes, and sends him to the Pool of Siloam to wash his eyes. Voila! The man can see. At this point, Jesus disappears altogether from the story until the very end.

 

The neighbors, we are told, are disturbed and confused. Is this not the blind man we see begging every day? If so, how is it he can now see? They call over some Pharisees to “see” what’s really going on! The man then needs to tell his inquisitors how it is he can see. He tells them about Jesus, the mud, and washing in the Pool of Siloam. But are you the same man that once was blind. Yes, he says. Then they call his parents to verify if he is man blind since birth. They say, yes. Then how can he see, they ask. Ask him. We don’t want to get involved. Then the man is grilled again.

 

As with the Samaritan Woman at the Well, suddenly he is another unlikely character who becomes an eloquent theologian able to argue his point-by-point with the Pharisees. It cannot go without saying: this is what Pharisees love to do – to argue over all the details of living a righteous life as instructed by Moses who was instructed atop the mountain by God. Oh, yes. Narrator John says it was the Sabbath. Some, not all, of the Pharisees say that Jesus cannot be from God because he made mud on the Sabbath which is work. Still, some Pharisees did not think this was a Sabbath violation.

 

The questions seem to be: How did you come to see again? Who is Jesus? Is he of God? Or, not? Were you really blind to begin with? Are you the same man that was blind? In the end, there is no resolution, but lots of very good arguments back and forth! The Pharisees give up in frustration, because the man’s arguments are too good! Only then does Jesu return. He asks if the man believes in “the Son of Man.” Who is that, he asks? “The one who is speaking to you is he.” The man says, “Lord, I believe.” And he worships Jesus. It ends with an enigmatic saying about some people who are blind can see, and some people who can see are blind. Again, some of the Pharisees overhear this and wonder if Jesus is talking about them.

 

First, it is important to reestablish that the Pharisees in 1^st century Israel, under the occupation of Rome, were the good guys. And that those who seem to be giving the man who was once blind a hard time are just some; a few; not all. And those few are simply doing due diligence at the neighbors’ request. It’s the neighbors who cause all this trouble for the man. They appear to be threatened that they have lost a town beggar. They represent those of us resistant to change. Blind beggars should remain blind beggars! The neighbors like to think they are better than disabled folks. Or, better than foreigners. They are suspicious of those like Jesus who work to bring about change, even if it is positive change. The story casts these folks in a poor light. Because, if for no other reason, 1^st century Israel was in need of serious change. The darkness that prevailed was the occupation of the Empire. Somethings need to change to get out from under being enslaved by Caesar and Rome!

 

Second, for the Fourth Gospel, it is always about light vs darkness; a metaphor for good vs evil. The gospel begins by announcing Jesus is the light of the world, the kosmos He will only be here for a brief time. Sabbath or not, he has work to do to free people who have been chained by circumstances beyond their control. The man had been blind since birth. How could he possibly have “done” anything to deserve being blind. And does God mean to blind people? Or, does he send his Son, Jesus, his Beloved, to bring light, and life, abundant life, to the world; to all people: male or female or LGBTQ+, Gentile or Jew, slave or free, Israelite, Roman, Asian, European, African, Indian, Persian, or the yet to be discovered, Americans – the first peoples of America that is.

 

Third, the Pharisees keep calling the man who was once blind back over and again to tell his story. They want to know. They want to believe. They just cannot fit his story into their standard categories of belief. But they keep trying! Does narrator John make them out to be blind while it is the man who can now see? Of course. The Pharisees are a mere prop for the Fourth Gospel. They stand in for all who refuse to find out the truth; those who cannot imagine change is possible. But in real life everyone knows Pharisees were enacting change every day. Pharisees worked to make life easier and at the same time more sanctified, more holy, for everyone. Holiness was not just for the priests. The Pharisees imagined a kingdom in which everyone is a priest! Which was important since soon the Temple and the priests would be gone.

 

Fourth, Sabbath is not just something that the Jews have kept for millennia. It is the Sabbath that has kept the Jews a people. A people free from being addicted to working 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The Pharisees know this. And in the annals of their arguments about Sabbath restrictions, saving a life or healing a person or an animal on the Sabbath is overwhelmingly not considered work. Not a sin. But worth exploring, because the practice of Sabbath defines the difference between being free or being enslaved. Abraham Joshua Heschel writes this about the Sabbath: “There is a realm of time where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue, but to be in accord. Life goes wrong when…the control of things…becomes our sole concern.” [ii]

 

Finally, I am persuaded this is not a story about healing, or Sabbath, or righteousness, or a coming time of darkness. And it certainly does not mean to disparage the Pharisees. If anything, we need to adopt their practice of seeking truth in any and all circumstances. This is a resurrection story. All of the rest is metaphor. Note carefully, Jesus is absent altogether as people try to figure out just who he is, and how a man once blind can see. Then, as it is after the dark night of his crucifixion, Jesus returns. When he does, some know who he is and believe, and others do not. But he returns, and is present to those who believe. He is here as the tangible presence of God in all of life, all of the time. He comes to affirm that all persons, those who can see and those who are blind, are all children of the One God. That all are deserving of love and care, and dignity, and respect. That’s why some of us, like the man born blind, believe, and worship him. Here. And now. For the light shines in the darkness, all the time, and in all times. And the darkness does not, and cannot, overcome his light, and our light. May we all come to see and be seen. As it is said, “Sleeper, awake! Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” [iii]

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[i] John 9:1-41

[ii] Heschel, Joshua Abraham, The Sabbath (Shambala, Boston:2003) p. ix

[iii] Ephesians 5:8-14 

A Samaritan Woman: The Beloved Disciple Lent 3A

A Samaritan Woman: The Beloved Disciple

We are not told her name. She comes to draw water from her ancestor Jacob’s well. She is a Samaritan. It’s noon, the hottest time of the day. The other women of Sychar draw water early in the morning, or near dusk, when it is cooler. It’s embarrassing when they are there. They know her story. She has lost five husbands. She now relies on a man who is not her husband. Most days they just avoid her altogether. She is perhaps the most broken individual in all of the four Gospels: hers is a life of loss, loneliness and emptiness. She comes when no one is there.  [i]

 

But now there is a man is sitting there. This is a problem. Unrelated men and women are not seen together in public. Yet, this man is different. He senses her loneliness and emptiness. He says, “Give me a drink.”  His accent betrays that he is from Galilee. He speaks Aramaic. He is a Jew. For centuries Jews and Samaritans do not share things in common; worship on separate mountains; and have little or nothing to do with one another. But now he asks that there is something she can do for him. He recognizes her as a person. He treats her with dignity.  She is astonished at this. Later, we learn that his friends who return from fetching lunch are equally astonished that their master was speaking to a woman – in public. And a Samaritan at that! Their people have been divided for centuries.

 

We who have heard this story told throughout the years might understand just how charged with tension this encounter must be. We know such division all too well. We see the divide between White Supremacists and Black Lives Matter. Between Pro and Anti-abortion activists. Between some Evangelical Christian and LGBTQ communities. Between School Boards and Parent Groups. Between immigrants seeking asylum and vigilante border protection groups. We’ve seen the tension caused by a Black woman sitting in the “Whites Only” section of a bus. Between Drag Queens and the State of Tennessee. Asians are attacked and blamed for the Pandemic. Poor people blamed for being poor. Red States vs Blue States. America today knows all too well the tensions that seek to divide us as a people.

 

A woman comes to draw water. A tired man of another tribe needs water. Centuries old disputes have erected a not-so-imaginary wall between their two peoples. Who will be the first to tear down the wall? Surprise. It is the Samaritan woman: “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” She has the courage to call attention to the strangeness of this encounter. She knows the history of the divide between Jews and Samaritans all too well.

 

Jesus answers her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” She does not back down. “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” This Samaritan Woman has chutzpa! Jesus says to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but 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.” It is evident even to this Samaritan that they are no longer talking about water. There’s something he can do for her. She says, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.” The wall of division starts to crack.

 

He asks her to bring her husband back. She says that she has no husband. Jesus says, “You have spoken correctly. You have had five husbands and the man you are living with is not your husband.” She’s astonished that he knows all this. And it seems not to be a problem for him. “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” Which was true. Then comes the most surprising answer of all from the man sitting by the well of Jacob, their common ancestor: “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” The primary dispute is set aside. We can all worship wherever we are in spirit and truth. Suddenly, she says, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” Jesus says to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.” Silence... The walls come tumbling down. It is like Joshua at Jericho all over again. Two people from two opposing tribes have transcended centuries of division. It’s a new world. A new day. Divisions can be overcome.

 

His friends return. She sees their concern, drops her bucket and hurries back to the village to tell people about the Jewish man at the well. “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” She is energized. She has purpose. The living water gushes up within her. She has been made new! The Samaritans rush to see him themselves. In his presence they come to believe. It is just as the woman who had lost five husbands had said. She becomes the first evangelist. She brings a crowd of historic enemies to Jesus. They believe because of her testimony, her witness, her telling them her story. Then suddenly, the townspeople are dismissive of her once again. “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.” No good deed goes unpunished for this Beloved Disciple!

 

How many of us would have the courage and confidence this Samaritan woman displays as she goes toe-to-toe, head-to-head with Jesus – the Savior of the world? She speaks truth to power, and power listens. Power sets aside whatever leverage he might have. But this is God’s Beloved Son. His life is one of radical inclusion. No one is left out. We cannot let the evils of the past persist in the present. We cannot let the evils of the present persist into the future. All people are made in the image of God. All are God’s Beloved. He who is God’s Beloved knows this, practices this, and gathers all people to become a Community of the Beloved. A community that grows that day because one broken woman, a Samaritan, was courageous enough to engage the strange man sitting at the well. She did not back down. She did not run away. Until it was time to tell the others – all others – the Good News!

 

We know her. She is not unlike ourselves. May we all be like her. We can and we must bring others together, to a place of radical inclusion of one another, no matter what the background, no matter what the history. For it is such radical acceptance and inclusion of one another that is the living water that springs up within us. The water of reconciliation. The water of Eternal Life and Love. We pray to be defended “from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul.” May we be inspired by this Samaritan Woman to be a people of Love, Spirit and Truth.  Amen. 

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[i] John 4:5-42

Earth+Water+Breath = Life Lent 2A

 

Earth+Water+Breath = Life

Round Two: “My point, once again, is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, 

but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally.[i] -John Dominic Crossan

Case in point, John 3:1-17: almost everything in the Gospel of John is either symbolic or referential to Hebrew Scripture – The Old Testament. This is particularly true of this story about Nicodemus, a Pharisee and a community leader.

 

The Pharisees were just one group among many in 1^st century Israel. There were also Sadducees, Essenes, Zealots, followers of John the Baptist, and then sub-groups, or “Schools” with individual leaders among the Pharisees like Hillel, Shammai, Akiva, and Gamaliel, some of whom were contemporaries of Jesus.

 

In this pluralistic stew of parties, the Pharisees taught and interpreted Torah, the Way of the Lord God of Israel, And, they were among the most popular party among the common people. In part because, according to the Jewish historian Josephus, they “alleviated the harsher prescriptions of the Bible in civil and criminal law.” [ii] They also made efforts to incorporate certain holiness practices meant for the priests and Sadducees in Jerusalem and the Temple common in the home: such as washing one’s hands before a meal. This would introduce a sense of Temple holiness into the life of the household. They also believed in resurrection, unlike the Sadducees who did not. The Pharisees also held different interpretations of Torah amongst themselves, and as such had much in common with Jesus and his way of living and teaching. Of those with whom Jesus challenged the teachings of others, the Pharisees were very much the good guys.

 

Nicodemus appears to know what Jesus has been up to so far: the wedding reception where Jesus turns water into wine, and his symbolic turning of the tables in the Temple precinct, which had more to do with the Temple officers collaborating with the Roman occupation than any financial or theological issues. Not that the priests and Sadducees had much choice in the matter – they were appointed, forced, by Rome to be a liaison between the Empire and the people. Most everyone came to resent them. One might guess that the Pharisees would have found Jesus’s action at the Temple to be an appropriate prophetic judgment on the current state of affairs.

 

Nic wants to know more about Jesus. His arrival at night surely foreshadows what will soon be a dark time to come when Jesus confronts the authorities once again in Jerusalem. Nic recognizes the signs Jesus performed in Cana and Jerusalem. He concludes that Jesus must be a man in whom God’s presence is revealed here and now. Jesus answers him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” The Greek word “above” can mean “again,” and has often been translated as such. But as the conversation continues, “from above” seems to recall Jesus’s baptism by John in which God’s breath, God’s ruach, comes down from above to land on Jesus, declaring him as God’s Son, God’s Beloved. In the past translators usually translate the Greek word for ruach, pneuma, as ‘spirit’ instead of breath, but as we will see, breath is what makes the most sense. So far, though, none of this is making sense to poor Nic who asks, “How can this be?”

 

Jesus goes on to say that one must be born of breath and of water – just as God from above all the way back in Genesis 2 took a handful of earth and water and breathed into it to form the first human – Adam. Sometimes referred to as ‘earth-guy,’ or, ‘mud-guy.’ Those who first heard or read storyteller John’s account would know that Jesus symbolically takes us back to the beginning. Indeed, the Gospel of John begins with the very first words of scripture, “In the beginning…” Jesus goes on to say, ‘Don’t be confused. Surely you know this. We know not where the breath comes from or where it goes.’ Again, Nic asks, “How can this be?” To which Jesus says, in effect, ‘It just is – surely you Pharisees know this as well as I do. Like many things, it is not easily explainable, and yet, we know it to be true. We need to accept that the breath of God can neither be explained, nor can we control it – yet, we know that the breath is life. We know water is life. We know that we are of the earth, we are dust, star dust at that! Earth+Water+Breath = Life!

 

Then follows yet another reference, now to the time Moses held up a bronze serpent on a pole in the wilderness! The people were being bitten by snakes because they had complained about being in the wilderness for too long, and were tired of eating manna; tired of daily bread. So, God relented, and told Moses to erect the bronze serpent, so that when the people looked at it they would be healed, they would be saved. For our God is a gracious God, abounding in steadfast love, merciful, slow to anger, and relents from punishing.[iii] This reference foreshadows the cross of Christ, which when we look up at him we too can be healed, made whole once again.

 

Here the translator’s punctuation is confusing. It looks as if Jesus says the following, when it seems to make more sense that this is a summary of this episode by the narrator:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

 

We are so used to seeing John 3:16 displayed in the end zone during extra-points, or behind the catcher in baseball stadia, that we tend to miss the Good News here. For we, descendants of mud-guy, created in the image of God – a God whose primary attributes are that God Loves, and God Gives. We are to be those people who Love and who Give. What God loves is the World – literally, the kosmos! All of creation, all that is seen and unseen! God loves us. Like Jesus, we are God’s Beloved! And the best news of all: despite our lack of love for one another, despite our lack of love for the world itself – evident in how we mistreat one another, and how we mistreat creation itself – God sends Jesus his Beloved Son to us, not to condemn us, but to save the world, to save the kosmos, and ultimately, to save us, or rescue us, from ourselves, just as he rescued the recalcitrant people in the wilderness from the oppressive Empire of Pharaoh, and from their own lack of gratefulness for each breath they take, and each morsel of daily bread they are given from above by the gracious and loving hand of God.

 

Nicodemus appears to have understood all of this, as later he returns. First, to remind his colleagues that the law requires that a person be heard before being judged (John 7:50–51), and again after the Crucifixion to provide the customary embalming spices, and assist Joseph of Arimathea in preparing Christ’s body for burial (John 19:39–42). May we, like him, begin to see the symbolic dimensions of the Bible’s stories so we might hear the good news and rejoice in it!

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[i] John Dominic Crossan, Who Is Jesus? Answers to Your Questions About the Historical Jesus

[ii] Levine, Amy Jill, Toward the Kingdom of Heaven (Abingdon Press, Nashville: 2020) p.19

[iii] Exodus 34:6-7, Jonah 4:2, Psalm 86:15