So that ...

The readings for the Fourth Sunday in Lent can be found here.

Lent 4A

March 30, 2014

The Rev. Christopher L. Caddell

This morning’s gospel contains one of those passages that goes on my list of things that I hope Jesus didn’t say exactly like gospel writers recorded it.

“He was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”

It sounds like something we might say when we are faced with unexplainable tragedy.  To say that a man was born blind so that God could be seen in him is in the realm of “Everything happens for a reason,” or “God never gives us more than we can handle.”

Of course, the problem with these statements is that it places God in the active role of causing suffering. 

In the case of the man in this story, that suffering is life-long. 

Having been born blind, the question that the disciples asked Jesus, “Who sinned, this man or his parents,” would have been his constant companion for his entire life. 

Who is at fault?

Why did this happen?

What did I do to deserve this?

His parents would have asked these questions.  Friends and family probably went home from a visit wondering the same things.  Strangers on the street might even point and stare, and either audibly or in their minds taken a position one way or another.  Even the disciples with genuine desire to understand the nature of loss and suffering, ask Jesus to weigh in on the topic.

This man’s entire life would have revolved around that question.

Then there’s the realities of the life he lived.  It’s a life that in his context would have been little more than just an existence.  Unable to see he would not have been able to provide for himself. 

His parents would have cared for him when he was young, but even that has its limits. Whether it was by choice or not, this man would eventually find himself without that support and have to find a new way to survive, and in his world begging was the normal way to carry on.

The stares, the judgments, the hardships, the questions…

All of this, so that God’s glory might be revealed.

It might be helpful to know that those words – so that – are hotly debated in the world of biblical studies.   While some want to stick to the literal cause and effect translation of Jesus’ words, many scholars tell us there is something lost in the translation.

Rather than offering an explanation to the disciples’ question, Jesus offers them an example of how God works.

Eugene Peterson translates that part of the conversation in The Message this way,

Jesus said, “You’re asking the wrong question. You’re looking for someone to blame. There is no such cause-effect here. Look instead for what God can do.

In other words, simply because this man was born blind, God’s glory will be revealed.

Once we begin to understand it in that way this story opens up for us in ways like never before.

Here is a man that everyone assumes is beyond God’s grace, a man in whom God has abandoned.  He is a man who – either by the fault of others or by his own doing – has caused this.

And whatever conclusion you come to there, it is a man who is outside, on the fringes of society.  He is swept to the side, goes mostly unnoticed, with the preference that he would remain unseen or simply go away.

He is someone who has no voice, no power to change his circumstances, and probably has no expectation that anything will ever change.

This man and his life is the last place that you would look if your were wanting to see “God’s works revealed.”

And yet, this is where God chooses to act – in a blind man, isolated from the rest of the world, completely helpless, and without hope.

Simply because this man was born blind, God’s works are revealed in him. 

To give you a preview of this morning’s adult education class – this is the theme in which Rowan Williams will challenge us to consider.  God’s works, God’s transcendent reality is most evident in the outsider. 

God is present in and with those who do not have a voice, in and with those without power to affect their world, and in in and with those who believe they have lost any right the might have had in the world. 

Williams pushes us further.

It is in these persons, those whose place we cannot guarantee, whose welfare we cannot secure, who do not fit with the world around us – these are the persons who remind us of our own limits.

The reason that we sweep outsiders out of view is because in them we are reminded of our own poverty, our own blindness, our own inability to control our situation. 

Yet it is here that we meet God most powerfully, most evidently.

At the 10:30 service, we will sing “Just as I am.”  It is one of the Christian world’s favorite hymns.  It’s in almost every hymnal and if you find an album of Christian hymnody there is likely going to be a track that includes “Just as I am.”

It was also one of my professor’s least favorite hymns.  He always said people sing it as if the words were “Just as I am, because I’m not gonna’ change.”

That is, of course, not what the hymn says. 

Just as I am,

poor, wretched, blind;

sight, riches, healing of the mind,

yea, all I need, in thee to find,

O Lamb of God, I come, I come.

We come to God with the recognition that within us there is a bit of an outsider.  There are those places where we feel we have no voice, no power to change the circumstances of our lives, no hope for the future.  We bring all of that with us and carry it every single day.

And yet, in that is the good news.  Those are the places where God is most likely to be found.  Those are the places where transformation happens.  Those are the places where God seeks to heal.

May that be the prayer for us this day – that we come, just as we are, especially those parts of us that are blind, so that God’s works may be revealed in us.  Amen.

Jesus and the Mundane

For this Sunday's readings, click here.

Lent 3A

March 23, 2014

The Rev. Christopher L. Caddell

I spent spring break of my sophomore year in college just outside the entrance to Big Bend National Park.  I had planned to stay with my best-friend inside the park, but little did we know, if you want to stay at Big Bend National park during spring break, you reservations are a must..

My friend was at Tech and I was at A&M and it seemed like a perfect place to spend a week together, so we had been planning it for months. We thought we had everything covered – a tent, sleeping bags, food.  What else could we need?

Looking back on it, we were probably as ignorant as the Park Ranger who we met at the gate thought we were.

That park ranger, perhaps seeing the disappointment on our faces, told us about a place just down the road that might have some room for us to pitch our tent. 

Relieved that he did have room, we got our tent up with the help of our truck’s headlights and fell asleep, exhausted.

The next morning brought with it the revelation that we had not actually found a park, but rather a large ranch and a rancher who was willing to take our money in exchange for a place to be. 

There were no toilets, no campsites, no water.  Just a vast open plain.  Instead of being able to stay inside the park where there were campsites with bathrooms and a few basic necessities, we were twenty miles outside of the main gate. 

And as the day got hotter, one more thing became clear – we did not bring enough water.

This trip that we thought we had planned so well became an exercise in hauling drinking water.  The closest source that we could find was inside the park, and we soon found that we were making multiple trips per day just to keep the far-too-small igloo jug that we brought with us full.

We got some hiking in, but every time we went to another section of the park, our first question was, “Where’s the water?”

Driving back home from that trip we realized that we had spent far more time finding and collecting water than we ever spent enjoying the beauty of the park.

Water, when you do not have it readily available or in abundance, is something that can consume you.

I can imagine the path between the Samaritan woman’s house and that well is well worn.  It’s a daily trip; probably more than one trip per day. 

Day after day, week after week, month after month.  A never ending cycle of trips to the well for this most precious and needed resource.

I would bet she could make that trip with her eyes closed.  Perhaps she even knew how many steps lie between here and there.  108 paces out the front door, then left, then a sharp right ….

And then there was the hard task of drawing that water and lugging the full jugs back to the house.

Drawing a daily supply of water was a never-ending, yet always necessary, mundane task.

And yet, on this day, that mundane task is going to be interrupted by what appears to be nothing more than a man wanting a drink of water.

On the one hand, our world and the world of this Samaritan woman are so very far apart.  There are so many things going on in this story that to our eyes and ears make little sense, but would have resonated loudly with first-century Palestinians. 

A man speaking to a woman in public.

A Jew asking a Samaritan for a drink of water.

And a conversation about marriage.

This is the point where we have been told that this conversation between Jesus and this Samaritan woman is about morality.  When Jesus tells her to go and bring her husband back, the woman admits that she has no husband, and Jesus says, “Right, you’ve had five.”

What happens next is a shift in the conversation. Where we might expect the woman to fall to her knees and ask for forgiveness, we find the woman, instead engaging in a conversation with Jesus about worship.

We have worshiped here for generations, but you say God must be worshiped in Jerusalem.

Therein lies the debate between Samaritans and Jews.  Since the time of King David’s grandson, these two peoples have been at odds over the proper place to meet God. 

They were once one family, one kingdom – the twelve tribes of Israel united under one God.

But a united family would only last for two generations.  Unwilling to accept David’s grandson as king, ten tribes form the northern kingdom of Israel, while the remaining two form the southern kingdom of Judah. 

By the time Jesus is talking to this woman at the well, this split is nearly 1000 years old. 

But northern kingdom of Israel did not fare as well or last as long as the southern.  Just two hundred years in, Assyria conquers the northern kingdom and disperses the native population throughout its empire.  In turn Assyria settles the northern kingdom with five other peoples –

The king of Assyria brought people from Babylon, Kuthah, Avva, Hamath and Sepharvaim and settled them in the towns of Samaria to replace the Israelites. They took over Samaria and lived in its towns.[1]

What happens next is exactly what the Assyrians want – mixing of the population. 

This is what the Samaritan woman and Jesus know that we do not, and this is what moves their conversation from water to worship, and from worship to hope.

The messianic hope for this woman, indeed for all of the Israelites of the time, is that the Messiah would come, restore the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and rule a great kingdom, once again united as it was with King David.

He cannot be the Messiah, can he?

Of course, Jesus does not turn out to be the messiah that this woman or anyone else expected.  God does not act in predictable ways.

To use a phrase from Rowan Williams that has come up in our class – God appears as something unfolding and unpredictable in the passage of time.

We may be worlds apart from this Samaritan woman, but we have much more in common than we might think.

Days and weeks that can be driven by routine and mundane tasks.

A life in which we are not necessarily expecting to find God in those tasks.

A worldview that says God (if he can be found at all) can only be found here or there, on this day, but not on that.

The world of the Samaritan woman is our own. 

We come with her to our daily and mundane tasks of drawing water from the well never expecting to find the messiah sitting there waiting for us. 

Where do you find God in the daily routine of your life? 

What does the messiah have to say to you when you come to the well?

Do you take the time to allow that conversation to develop or do you just move on with the task at hand? 

What does it look like in your life for God to interrupt what you are doing and to transform your understanding, to move you from a place of monotony or despair to a place of hope?

---

[1] 2 Kings 17:24

Belief, Faith, & Risk

For the collect and readings for this Sunday, click here.

The Second Sunday of Lent

March 16, 2014

The Rev. Christopher L. Caddell

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone that believes in him may not parish but have eternal life.”

I can tell you exactly when and where I memorized that verse.

It was the summer after my fifth grade year and at Vacation Bible School at First Baptist Church in Odessa, TX. 

My best friend and his family were members of First Baptist, and he had invited me to go with him several times, and each time I had dodged the question.  Truth be told, as good a friend as he was, I had no interest in spending a week of my summer in a Sunday school classroom – particularly not one that was not at my own church.  The more he pressed, the more I dodged.

Until, just about the time I thought I had worn him down, he said, “You know, …. Melissa is going to be there.”

Lesson number one: Be careful what you tell your best friends, lest they use it as leverage against you.

So just a few days later I found myself sitting in a Sunday school classroom memorizing John 3:16.  

My friend had neglected to tell me that at First Baptist most of Vacation Bible School was segregated – boys in one class, girls in another.

Believe it or not, we are still friends to this day.

It’s doubtful that there is a piece of Christian scripture better known than John 3:16.  If you grew up in the Bible belt, it’s almost unavoidable.  Even Episcopalians have a particular fondness for it, as it is one of the choices of comfortable words after the confession in a Rite I Eucharist.  John 3:16 is ubiquitous in the Church, and rightly so, for it contains one of the most concise descriptions of what the gospel message is – God loved, so God gave, so that we might live.

Yet for all its notoriety, if you were to ask someone what comes just before or just after, and your likely to get a few blank stares.  Ask them what was the context and to whom was Jesus speaking, and you’re not likely to get an answer.

I’m not suggesting that you embarrass your friends with bible trivia, but rather I want to suggest that the context is important, and while John 3:16 is a good summary of the gospel message, it is just that – a summary.  It does not capture the entirety of the message, and without context it can be taken as a fairly simple formula for salvation. 

Believe in Jesus and all will be well.

Of course, when taken in its full context, that is not the picture that is painted.

Nicodemus – a Jewish leader, man of respect, one to whom everyone would look to – comes to Jesus under the cover of night.

He knows about Jesus, perhaps even witnessed some of Jesus miracles.  What he hoped to gain by meeting Jesus is not clear.  Perhaps he wanted to reason with him.  Perhaps he just wanted to be in his presence.  But whatever his reason, Nicodemus comes very close to what we might think of “believing” in Jesus.

“Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.”

Nicodemus is so very close, just on the verge of understanding, and at the same time, he doesn’t seem to get it at all.

Nicodemus wants it both ways.  He wants to believe in Jesus – he can see Jesus is clearly a holy man – but he does not want that to change things, especially if it means that he must change himself.  Nicodemus is comfortable with the way things are, comfortable with a life as a respected teacher of Israel, comfortable with the way he is.

Nicodemus does not want to risk anything so he comes under the cover of night, hoping he wont be seen, hoping no one will recognize him.

In the Church we speak often of belief and faith.  Often we use them interchangeably.  Faith has become the big umbrella word for someone who believes, and vice versa.  We speak of believing as if it were something we have fixed in our minds.  I believe in God … I believe in Jesus Christ… I believe in the Holy Spirit…

And yet, our readings today challenge what we mean by those words.  Faith and belief are not static things, unchanging, something we have or don’t have, and certainly not a box that we check off like it is an item on the to-do list.

Rather, faith and belief imply listening and discerning, movement and change, uncertainty and risk.

Abram was fairly old when God told him to leave his home, his family, his livelihood to journey to a place that was still unspecified.  I try to imagine what that like, and yet I cannot.

Pack up.  Start walking.  Leave behind everything you know to go literally into the unknown.

Yet, seemingly without hesitation, Abram goes.

The story of Abraham and Sarah is a long one – full of drama and hardships.

The journey is long.  There are unmet expectations.  There are famines, battles, losses, more travels, domestic disputes, rescues, more losses, unthinkable demands, and all of this will last much, much longer than Abram ever expected.

Following God will be what defines the next 100 years of Abram’s life.

For Abram, believing and having faith is something that will cause him to risk, to move, to change, and that will be the very nature of how he lives the rest of his life.

The challenge that Abram and Nicodemus’ encounter places before us today is one of faith and belief.  Not the static faith and belief that merely identifies us as Christian, but the faith and belief that causes us to act, makes us move and change, allows us to risk everything even when we cannot see exactly what lies ahead.

In our personal lives, that may mean reaching out to a broken relationship, being the first to ask for forgiveness and seeking reconciliation.  It might mean giving up a bad habit or something to which we cling to for a sense of security, even though that may make us extremely uncomfortable.   It may mean we need to look at how we use our time, and make changes that allow us to reclaim those things that are important – family, friends, self, and God.

But it is not just our own individual growth that challenges us. There is a challenge here for us as a community as well.  To have faith and belief in a church community means that we are willing to listen to and be directed by God’s Spirit and where it moves – and it is something that moves.

That means that we should be looking for and expecting God to act in all parts of our common life together – in the way we worship, the way we pray, the way we reach out to others in the community, the way we fellowship together …. The list can go on and on.

Our church and school must take risks if we are to be who it is God has called us to be.  That takes all of us listening, discerning, moving and changing.  And while it is what we do as a community, it will take each of us responding to the different movements of the Spirit to make it happen.

Think about this – How are you different from this time last year?  How about 10 years ago?  How have you changed?  What has God moved you to do?

Try something different.

Join the choir.

Become a reader or acolyte.

Go on a mission trip.

Invite someone you don’t know to go to lunch.

I don’t know what the Spirit is moving you to do, but I do know it is not the same old thing that you’ve always done.

Uncomfortable yet?  You should be.  There’s risk involved.  The possibility of failure is there.  And that is what it is to have faith and belief.

I don’t know what brought you to church this morning.  I doubt you were chasing a girl – or maybe you were.  But with that risk in mind, I want you to hear and learn not just John 3:16, but John 3:17 as well.

“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.”

Our task is not “to get it right.”  It’s not about being careful and cautious.  Our task is to risk everything in order that we might follow Jesus more closely.  We will get it wrong from time to time, but it is Jesus’ mission not to condemn us for those failures, but rather to redeem them. 

That is our faith; that is our belief.  That all things are being perfected through God in Christ.  And when we truly believe that, no risk is too great, no change too scary, that we cannot follow where the Spirit blows.  Amen.