When Christ Calls...

John 11:1-45

Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” But when Jesus heard it, he said, “This illness does not lead to death; rather, it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.

Then after this he said to the disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.” The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?” Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble because they see the light of this world. But those who walk at night stumble because the light is not in them.” After saying this, he told them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.” The disciples said to him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.” Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep. Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead. For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.” Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”

When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary and told her privately, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.” And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet come to the village but was still at the place where Martha had met him. The Jews who were with her in the house consoling her saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”

Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

Many of the Jews, therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did believed in him.

A very kindly angel Maître D' showed Lazarus to his table at The Feast That Never Ends.  He slid in his chair and the Maître D' placed his napkin in his lap.  Lazarus looked around at the people seated near him.  He saw one guy just down the table that he knew from the old neighborhood and thought to himself, “Yeah, that makes sense.  He was a decent bloke.”  Then, he saw another guy he knew that made him think, “Wow, God’s Grace really IS Amazing!  Okay.  Alright.”

 

Then Lazarus started to notice the spread.  Rich foods filled with marrow… okay, okay, he thought… being dead is looking up.  Well aged wines, strained clear… nice, nice, good, good.  Then Lazarus went and took a bite and the flavor was… well… so heavenly... that his eyes closed involuntarily.  I mean, you’d expect the food to be that good at The Feast That Never Ends, but to EXPERIENCE it… that was something else entirely.  

As Lazarus opened his eyes, ready for his next bite, there, standing by his chair again was the Angel Maître D'.  “Mr. Lazarus sir, we’ve just received a call from a Mr. Christ… a Mr. Jesus H. Christ… and he would like you to, and I quote, “Come out.”  Lazarus just stared in disbelief at the Maître D'.  He swallowed the last heavenly bite, pushed himself back from the table, set his napkin on the chair, and while the Angel Maître D' folded it into a beautiful swan, Lazarus climbed back down Jacob’s ladder, got back in his body, got himself up from slab, and made his way out of the tomb all wrapped in strips of cloth, where he found friends and family who unbound him and let him go.

That’s how Lazarus did it.  He heard Christ's call, got up, and went.  If it had been me, Jesus would have heard THIS from deep within the tomb:  “NO!    I’m in HEAVEN!     LI-TER-AL HEA-VEN here!  It’s 68 degrees here.  The food is incredible.  Wine… amazing.  Nobody here has dysentery.  The One in charge here isn’t a psychotic narcissist and you want me to go back THERE?  Where it’s 104 in the shade?  Where everyone eats filth and just waits around to get sick and die?  You want me to go back THERE?  The place held hostage by Psycho Caesar?  NO, Jesus!  I'm NOT coming out.  I’m just not.  I don’t care who your dad is!  I’m not coming out.  No.” 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “When Christ calls us, he bids us come and die” and that is exactly what this story is teaching us.  Lazarus is demonstrating for us the Cost of Discipleship.  Answering Jesus’ call to Discipleship cost him EVERYTHING!  Up to and including the rewards of heaven itself!  Rich food filled with marrow, well aged wines strained clear.  It cost him an eternal existence at a comfortable 68 degrees.  It cost him everything.  In this story, Lazarus leaves heaven.  LITERAL HEAVEN, and all heaven has to offer, in order to follow Jesus as a disciple.

 

Lazarus shows us that a call to discipleship is a call to allow yourself to be unbound from EVERYTHING… ego, fear, attachments… to shed whatever wraps us up and keeps us from becoming who God created us to be.  This story ends up being a lived out parable, because we too have been called by Jesus to “Come Out”!  To give up our obsession with the person we see in the mirror… their wants … their desires.  This story is a call to US, to push back OUR chairs from self indulgence... turn around, leave everything behind and walk toward Jesus until we find ourselves in the same position as Lazarus… standing in front of Christ, bathed in the glory of the Presence of the Divine, ready to follow Jesus into an abundant life lived not for the self, but for the other.

In 1209, our final Lenten Saint, Francis of Assisi composed the first, simple rule for his followers, the Regula Primitiva… the Primitive Rule.  The rule was simple.  To “follow the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ and to walk in his footsteps.”  That is precisely what Lazarus did in today’s Gospel.  He followed the teachings of his Lord Jesus Christ, came out of the tomb, and began, once again, to walk in Jesus’ footsteps.  That is the call to Discipleship.  A call no harder than getting up and walking outside.  AND… and… at the same time, a call no easier than leaving heaven behind.  A stunningly simple thing to do on the one hand… and the hardest thing anyone could ever imagine doing on the other!  

May we all be given the vision, faith, understanding, and courage needed each day, to come out from ourselves when Jesus calls.  To allow ourselves to be fully unbound from our certainties, our fears, our ego, and our self indulgence so that we might find ourselves not standing in front of a mirror, but standing the presence of the Divine, fully alive, reflecting God’s infinite love and glory out into the world as we were created to do… and in doing that, become what we are called to be… instruments of God’s peace.  Amen.

You Must Ask the Right Questions

 John 9:1-41

Walking down the street, Jesus saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked, “Rabbi, who sinned: this man or his parents, causing him to be born blind?”

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. We need to be energetically at work for the One who sent me here, working while the sun shines. When night falls, the workday is over. For as long as I am in the world, there is plenty of light. I am the world’s Light.”

He said this and then spit in the dust, made a clay paste with the saliva, rubbed the paste on the blind man’s eyes, and said, “Go, wash at the Pool of Siloam” (Siloam means “The Sent One”). The man went and washed—and saw.

Soon the town was buzzing. His relatives and those who year after year had seen him as a blind man begging were saying, “Why, isn’t this the man we knew, who sat here and begged?”

Others said, “It’s him all right!”

But others objected, “It’s not the same man at all. It just looks like him.”

He said, “It’s me, the very one.”

They said, “How did your eyes get opened?”

“A man named Jesus made a paste and rubbed it on my eyes and told me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ I did what he said. When I washed, I saw.”

“So where is he?”

“I don’t know.”

They marched the man to the Pharisees. This day when Jesus made the paste and healed his blindness was the Sabbath. The Pharisees grilled him again on how he had come to see. He said, “He put a clay paste on my eyes, and I washed, and now I see.”

Some of the Pharisees said, “Obviously, this man can’t be from God. He doesn’t keep the Sabbath.”

Others countered, “How can a bad man do miraculous, God-revealing things like this?” There was a split in their ranks.

They came back at the blind man, “You’re the expert. He opened your eyes. What do you say about him?”

He said, “He is a prophet.”

The Jews didn’t believe it, didn’t believe the man was blind to begin with. So they called the parents of the man now bright-eyed with sight. They asked them, “Is this your son, the one you say was born blind? So how is it that he now sees?”

His parents said, “We know he is our son, and we know he was born blind. But we don’t know how he came to see—haven’t a clue about who opened his eyes. Why don’t you ask him? He’s a grown man and can speak for himself.” (His parents were talking like this because they were intimidated by the Jewish leaders, who had already decided that anyone who took a stand that this was the Messiah would be kicked out of the meeting place. That’s why his parents said, “Ask him. He’s a grown man.”)

They called the man back a second time—the man who had been blind—and told him, “Give credit to God. We know this man is an impostor.”

He replied, “I know nothing about that one way or the other. But I know one thing for sure: I was blind . . . I now see.”

They said, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?”

“I’ve told you over and over and you haven’t listened. Why do you want to hear it again? Are you so eager to become his disciples?”

With that they jumped all over him. “You might be a disciple of that man, but we’re disciples of Moses. We know for sure that God spoke to Moses, but we have no idea where this man even comes from.”

The man replied, “This is amazing! You claim to know nothing about him, but the fact is, he opened my eyes! It’s well known that God isn’t at the beck and call of sinners, but listens carefully to anyone who lives in reverence and does his will. That someone opened the eyes of a man born blind has never been heard of—ever. If this man didn’t come from God, he wouldn’t be able to do anything.”

They said, “You’re nothing but dirt! How dare you take that tone with us!” Then they threw him out in the street.

Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and went and found him. He asked him, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”

The man said, “Point him out to me, sir, so that I can believe in him.”

Jesus said, “You’re looking right at him. Don’t you recognize my voice?”

“Master, I believe,” the man said, and worshiped him.

Jesus then said, “I came into the world to bring everything into the clear light of day, making all the distinctions clear, so that those who have never seen will see, and those who have made a great pretense of seeing will be exposed as blind.”

Some Pharisees overheard him and said, “Does that mean you’re calling us blind?”

Jesus said, “If you were really blind, you would be blameless, but since you claim to see everything so well, you’re accountable for every fault and failure.”

In John’s Gospel, Jesus is THE SENT ONE.  (Like the pool in this story is the “Sent One”)  Jesus is SENT by God into the Old Creation to transform it into a New Creation.  There are seven signs in John’s Gospel to continually drive home that point.  Jesus shows his power over nature by turning water into wine.  Shows his authority over disease by healing an official’s child on the other side of town.  Shows he’s the giver of life when he feeds the 5000.  Shows he’s the new boss of nature by walking on water.  He shows himself as the light of the world by giving the man born blind sight and next week, when Jesus raises Lazarus, he will show us that he has power over death itself.  The only trouble with a New Creation, is that it’s… well… NEW.  And “NEW” is hard.  Particularly for those who really love the “OLD”!  Now, the Old Creation wasn’t bad.  In fact, God made it not just Good, but VERY GOOD.  But that only makes letting go of it that much harder. 

So what’s all that got to do with us?  Well, God making Old things New is a never ending, continually unfolding story, isn't it?  When I got here, we were The Church of What’s Happenin’ Now!  The Rectory Remodel, then Rainbow Chairs, Beer and Hymns, Federation, The Appalachian Trail, Sheffield Pride, A Cycling Hospitality Center, Solar Panels, Berkstock, Bake Sales, and Barbecue, the Hilpl House remodel, a new shed, new signs, a Memorial Garden redux.  Not even Covid could stop us!  We innovated online worship, became Bishop Fisher’s Proto Cathedral and video studio, and matched unused restaurants with hungry families with Feeding Friends!  We were "The Church of What’s Happenin’ Now" and it was GOOD.  In fact I would be so bold as to say it was VERY Good.  The Holy Spirit called, as the kids say, we crushed it!  

But the world is changing.  Our church is changing.  A few of us have been trying to prop up the Old Creation.  Personally taking on more, just trying to keep "The Church of What’s Happenin’ Now"… Happenin’…  but that’s just made us grumpy.  I really didn’t realize how grumpy I’d gotten until I saw others getting grumpy for the same reason.  Granted, I’m grumpy even on a good day, but this was well beyond normal grumpy.

 

Then it hit me, like SIGHT given to a man born BLIND… this is what it feels like to try and hold onto an OLD CREATION when God is trying to get you to follow THE SENT ONE into a NEW CREATION!  Grumpy and frustrated are Pharisee feelings!  That’s what it feels like when God’s trying to get you to pull your head out of your… pocket… we’ll just say pocket… and live into a New Creation and you’re resisting!

So, what is this “New Creation” God's calling us into?  THAT is the right question.  When our daughter Eren was getting her degree in Social Work they talked about measuring the amount of energy you have each day in terms of “spoons”.  Everyone gets so many spoons each day.  Doing things throughout the day costs you spoons.  Easy things don’t cost many spoons.  Hard things cost lots of spoons, but either way when you've spent all your spoons for the day, you’re emotionally DONE.  Even if there’s more to do, you’re still just done… and not just done, but done-done.   

So, let me ask you a question.  How many spoons did a normal day cost you back 5 or 7 years ago?  Maybe six or seven out of ten?  Nine on a hard day.  Every once in the while a day would cost you all ten or maybe twelve, putting you in a deficit for the next day.  But that didn’t happen often.  Right?  How many spoons does a normal day cost you today?  For me, ten out of ten every… damn… day, and that’s when everything goes perfectly.  I don’t think I’m alone with that.  I think that for the vast majority of us, a NORMAL day… just getting from today to tomorrow… costs many of us every spoon we have, and all too often, more than we have.   

With the world like that, God no longer needs us to be “The Church of What’s Happening Now” even if we could keep it up… and we can’t!  What God needs us to be now is a New Creation for the world in which we're now living. But what does THAT look like?  The details are still fuzzy to me.  But it somehow involves gathering and fostering a community with a mystic’s willingness to live in uncertainty, with deeply compassionate hearts, and practicing with others how to love one another while holding everything this chaotic world throws at us very loosely.   

Or, as John Arthur puts it… a ministry of More Huggin’ and Less Luggin’!  Honestly through, as far as the details go, it feels to me like we’re in the same spot the man born blind found himself at the end of this story.  He knew the Old Creation no longer worked.  But at the same time, literally everywhere he looked… everything he saw, was something he’d literally never seen before!  Imagine how absolutely overwhelming, totally confusing, and exhausting that would be!  I think "absolutely overwhelmed, totally confused and exhausted" is where we are as a church in this moment.  For the record, I don't like it.  It’s uncomfortable.  And it's also exactly where we are called to be in this moment.         

So what do we do with all that?  First, we give ourselves permission to let the Old Creation go.  Next, like the man born blind, I think we just try to follow Jesus, fumbling and figuring as we go.  You see, I don’t know exactly what this New Creation is asking of us, but I do think following the One who is light in the darkness, turns water into wine, conquers disease, fills the hungry with good things, rewrites rules in favor of compassion, and has the power to raise the dead… following that One… even when our following is filled with confused fumbling… following that One is probably a really good place to start.  Amen.

Your Math Don't Math!

John 4:5-42

Jesus came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.  Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.

   A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.”  (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.)  The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.)  Jesus answered 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.”  The woman said to him, “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?”  Jesus said 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.”  The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”

   Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.”  The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband,’  for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!”  The woman said to 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.”  Jesus said to her, “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 woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.”  Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”

   Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?”  Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people,  “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?”  They left the city and were on their way to him.

   Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.”  But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.”  So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?”  Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. 35 Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting.  The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together.  For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’  I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”

   

Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.”  So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days.  And many more believed because of his word.  They said to the woman, “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.”

That Samaritan woman can not be at that well with Jesus.  The math just doesn’t math.  She’s a woman… A Samaritan… She’d had a series of husbands.  The first century social/cultural math calculation makes that scenario impossible!  And yet, there he is, Jesus, just hanging out like he uses a different sort of math altogether!  We’ll come back to that… 

The first century social/cultural math says Jesus should have brought anger, offense, and revulsion to his meeting with this woman at the well.  But what did he bring?  Thirst.  He was thirsty.    

In Jesus’ mind there was no reason to make this situation into some impossible calculus problem!  There was no reason to get differential equations or integrals involved!  He was thirsty.  This woman had a bucket.  They were at a well.  

Thirst + bucket + well = hydration.  Easy.

Trying to solve that problem with the social/cultural math of the day made it into a hopeless problem… an impossible cause.  But when Jesus brought his math to the very same problem… it became no big deal.  It was… easy… a miracle!   

It’s crazy!  Isn’t it?  Those ridiculous ancients!  Am I right?  People who insisted on using their ridiculous, nonsensical, ignorant, and idiotic social/cultural math to complicate things and demonize people!  We modern people would NEVER do that, would we?  Would we?  Yeah we would.  And we do!  All the time!  Here’s just one example: homelessness.

The prevailing social/cultural math calculates that homelessness is a hopeless problem… an impossible cause!  That’s mostly because homeless people have so many other issues that need to be addressed before you can even think about finding them a home.  Really complicated stuff, like mental illness, addiction, joblessness, and the list goes on!  That math just don’t math!  Except… here’s the math they use in Finland.  

Homeless Person - Homeless = Person.  

Finnish people who experience homelessness have all the same issues… mental illness, addiction, health issues, employment difficulties… but the first thing they get there is an apartment.  Their own, permanent apartment.  Of ALL their problems, you know what problem they DON’T have after they get an apartment?  Homelessness.  After they get an apartment…they… don’t… have… homelessness.  Then, from that one, safe, stable location… a place they can count on and call home, they have a base to begin working on all the rest.  

When people try to solve that problem with the social/cultural math of the day it becomes a hopeless problem… an impossible cause, but when Finnish math (which is also Jesus math) gets applied to the very same problem… what do you get… a human being with dignity… A person with a home… a miracle!  

But what about a REALLY hard problem?  What about figuring out where people are allowed to pee?  Kansas recently passed a law that is now expected to cost taxpayers MILLIONS of dollars to implement.  This law, among other things, tries to legislate where people can pee.  Women, men, non-binary, trans, adults, children.  Where can they pee?  Kansas, using the social/cultural math of an unnecessary culture war, has made this into a hopeless problem… an impossible cause.  But creating a place where everyone can pee is actually simple.  Christ Trinity solved this issue decades ago with a very simple equation:  A PNP (thats a person needing to pee) + toilet = Person (brain exploding mime).  

That’s not just theoretical math either!  We’ve been testing it in our “technology incubator” for two and a half decades!  I’m sure you’ve been a test subject.  The technology incubator is located between the sanctuary and the Parish hall and it features a toilet, floor to ceiling walls, and a lockable door.  It has successfully processed PNP’s who identify as men, women, non-binary, trans, children, and adults without incident for more than two and a half decades!  

I make fun, because if I didn’t make fun, I’d ugly cry about how STUPID and HURTFUL it is to have people use such flagrantly de-humanizing social/cultural math on a non-problem, like “WHERE CAN I PEE”, when that same problem is so easily solved with just a little, very basic, Jesus math!  

 

Each of these examples is an impossible problem or hopeless cause, ONLY because people have chosen to use social/cultural math instead of Jesus math.  This lesson… this parable… is showing us… I think… that there really are no genuinely hopeless problems or impossible causes out there in this world.  All that exists is the fear, pride, and ego that keeps us from using Jesus math and treating the “other” as a beloved children of God.  

But the social/cultural math we continue to insist on using just doesn’t math!  It is overly complicated, ineffective, and hurtful!  It only perpetuates impossible problems and hopeless causes.  It never solves them!  

It really is very much past time for our world to abandon that hurtful kind of social/cultural math and instead embrace a math that scatters the proud… casts down the mighty… lifts up the lowly… fills the hungry with good things and sends the rich away empty.  It is time for our world to pick up on Jesus math and stop perpetuating impossible problems and hopeless causes.  It is time for us to abandon all that takes life from us and instead honor the life we've been given…  and live that life abundantly.  Amen.