First and Last and In-Between ~ Sermon (Revelation and John)

Tomorrow morning our congregation worships together for the last time (not counting our afternoon closing service):

 

We begin as did John, writing the Book of Revelation from the vantage point of old age and long experience: Grace and peace to you, gathered as the people of the God who is and who was and who is to come, the God of first and lasts and in-between, and gathered as the people of Jesus Christ, ruler of all. 

This is a hard day, this last day.  It’s a day on which we ponder first and lasts and in-between time.  We begin with firsts.  I want to invite you to think for a minute about when your life of faith officially began.

For many of you, yours has been officially a Christian life of faith for a long time, since that day you don’t even remember, when you were baptized as an infant.  For others, that life began, or perhaps began again, when you found your way into the church, or back into the church, as an adult.  For others of you here this morning, you may describe your life of faith in some way other than Christian, as a life of connection to something greater than yourself which began in another setting, during another period in time for you. But whenever or however, most of us have early or beginning moments in our spiritual lives, in those arenas in which we find meaning beyond ourselves, early moments, whether we ourselves remember them or not, that we can recount as a stepping-off point on the journey of faith.  The first of many stations along the way.

Today?  Many of us will count today as an ending in the life of faith.  This is, after all, a last day. For some of us, it’s the ending to a brief period in which we were drawn to this congregation, found a place of worship here, and tried sought to work in concert with God and to make a difference to others in the community.  For others, it’s the ending of decades in the Boulevard community.  S, I know, has a storehouse of memories of helping to found this church with her husband, Rev. C;  so does R, as a charter member of the congregation. So do the C sister and brothers who grew up here. 

For all of us, Boulevard marks a chapter in a life of great community and service.  I can’t name all of those whom many of you will remember as saints in the life of this church  –  I’ve been here for only two of your 65 years  – but I can easily bring to mind people of this period, as well as some of your stories of the past.  I’m thinking of those of you who worked tirelessly, and often physically, to put this building together. I’m thinking of the women who hosted events to raise money for various improvements over the years.  I’m thinking of B and how she has been the face and voice of Grandpa’s, and of D and A and V and Pastor A and so many others who have stood – and run and jumped! – behind the community meals.  I’m thinking of  those of you who discovered deep friendships here.  I’m thinking of the members of session, who over the past two years have stretched and grown to serve in ways they never could have imagined when they say “yes” to that call. I’m thinking of B, who quietly ensures that we have candles and communion, and of his entire family, who provides us with a picnic each year.  I’m thinking of all of you who usher, and provide for coffee hours, and participate in Bible studies, and run the Powerpoint, and come to worship faithfully, Sunday after Sunday.  I’m thinking of all of you who pray with this congregation, here and at home.

And we are all thinking: That chapter is now coming to an end.

But chapter – that’s exactly what is ending.  A chapter only.

Because WE are not the beginning or the ending.  God is – God is the Alpha and the Omega, the Greek letters for first and last. 

We know from the Book of Genesis that God was here at the beginning.  “In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth . . . “ – that’s what our scripture tells us.  I think we know that we weren’t here – we might be old, but we aren’t 14 billion years old! – but we know from the Bible that God was.  Here.  In the beginning. 

And in the end – the real end – God will be there, too.  The whole Book of Revelation, the last book in the Bible, assures us of God’s presence at the end as well, when all that we know is changed and created anew.

And in the middle?  Where we are right now, somewhere in the middle of the life of the universe, somewhere in the timeless life of God, somewhere in the midst of the human journey of faith?  God is here, too.

I don’t think it’s too hard to see God this morning.  Look to your right and look to your left.  Do you see God’s image in your neighbor?  (It’s right there, whether you want to admit it or not!)  Look at this beautiful sanctuary – God has been present in all the love and care lavished on building and maintaining it.  Listen to our music – God is always present in the music! 

First, last, and in between – that’s where God is. 

And you know who else is first, last, and in between – Jesus Christ!

The Bible tells us that Jesus was here at the beginning as well.  Remember how the Gospel of John begins?  Jesus is the Word, and John tells us that “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and the Word was with God.”  That Word was Jesus, with God from the beginning.

And at the last.  Our faith, that faith that we repeat in our creeds, tells us that Jesus will come at the end – which is another beginning: the beginning of the new creation, the creation for which we all long, the creation in which all is made new and there will be no more tears, no more crying. And in the middle – here, now, at Boulevard, where is Jesus? Jesus is here, where we worship together.  Remember? “ Where two or three are gathered, I am there in their midst” – so Jesus says in the Gospel of Matthew.

Jesus is here, where we are kind to one another, where we reach out to one another in times of trouble and in times of celebration. From its earliest days as recorded in the Book of Acts, the Christian Church has been a place of bringing our sorrows and our joys to community. 

Jesus is here, where we provide meals and clothing to our neighbors, where we host safety meetings for the neighborhood and when we make it possible for young people to see Selma.  As Jesus himself tells us, again in the Gospel of Matthre: When you feed the hungry and clothe the naked  and care for others, you see me.

Today in the church across the world, we celebrate Jesus as Christ the King.  Sometimes we say that we celebrate the Reign of Christ.  It’s the final Sunday of the church year, the day on which we sum up all that we have heard and learned and sung and prayed: We are people of the Kingdom of God.  Next week we begin a new year with the first Sunday of Advent, but today we pause to recognize all of the possibility inherent in that new creation in which Christ is King.  Ruler of the already-but-not-yet kingdom in which he has come near and called us to follow, but for whose full fruition we wait.

What does this kingdom look like, this kingdom which, Jesus tells Pilate, “is not from this world” and is yet of this world into which he entered, as the Word of God, as a tiny infant, as the Christ who suffers and also as the Christ who defeats death?  What is this truth, the truth that marks the presence of this kingdom? 

These are some of the things which mark this truth, which tell us that the kingdom is near:

The beautiful young woman I saw on the news the other night, who spoke of lying absolutely still on the floor of the concert hall in France so that the terrorists, still shooting, would think she was dead.  She said that as she lay there, she could feel the hall fill with the love being sent into the world by the frightened and the dying. She said she decided that, if she were going to die that night, she wanted to die with love in her heart.  That is truth.  That is the kingdom of God, coming very near indeed.

The older gentleman who came by this week from Rolling Sobriety, one of the AA groups that’s been meeting here, to pick up the equipment and belongings they had stored here.  He struggles to walk, and my guess is that alcoholism has taken its toll on him, but he is dignified and kind, and invests much of himself in keeping that AA group afloat so that men and women have a place to heal.  That is truth.  That is the kingdom of God, coming near right here at Boulevard.

You know other signs of the truth, signs of the movement of God’s kingdom, signs you have seen here, in this church. Close your eyes for a moment and remember them:

That Sunday school teacher whose lessons opened the Bible to you.

The music which lifted your spirits.

That time you sat down with someone and realized that you – YOU – were called to listen and to share the peace of God with a troubled soul.

The friend who brought communion to you when you were homebound, or in the hospital, and said, “This is the bread of life, and this is the cup of salvation.”

That evening when you discovered that the Bible you had never really thought all that much about was speaking directly to you, about your work and your gifts, and telling you that you were given these gifts so that you could touch others and urging you to see that, as you reached out to them, you were brushing against the God of the universe.

All those moments, moments you’ve never even talked about to anyone – those were your moments of truth, those were your moments when the kingdom of God drew ever so close to you. 

Here.  In this in-between time.  God has been here, all along.

And you know what? The church, this church for now and perhaps another church in your future – church is where we learn this, where we learn the language and begin to know the experience of God.  Church is where we learn it – but church is not where we keep it.

Because God – this wild and reckless God of ours – will not be hemmed in by any church building, or by any particular congregation, or by any specific denomination.  And Jesus, the truth of our lives, will not be limited by the institutions we create or by the rules we think are so important.  God is first, last, and in between – God is everywhere – and God is not going to leave you, no matter where you go.  And Jesus – Jesus is the King of the World, Jesus is the One of God who says, “when you belong to truth, you hear my voice – and my voice can be heard everywhere.

This is a great gift my friends, this gift of faith in which we are wrapped by God from first to last and in-between.  We are about to celebrate God’s call to us with a re-affirmation of our baptismal vows, a reaffirmation of one of our own firsts in faith, so that as we go out today, we go out remembering who we are and whose we are.  And we are going to go out in the confidence that God, the Alpha and the Omega, envelops us with love, offers Jesus as our companion, and sends us forth, blessing each of us to be a blessing, to carry God’s grace and peace into the world, wherever we go.  Amen.

 

 

Endarkenment (Sermon - John 3)

When I was a new mother, my husband and I took our three-month old twins to Florida to see my grandparents, to whom I was very close.  My husband spent several days in Orlando for a business conference, and I took the babies to visit my grandparents.

At the time, my grandfather was extremely ill – dying, in fact, of kidney failure.  He and my grandmother had gone to Florida for the winter, but he had taken a sudden turn for the worse after their arrival around Thanksgiving.  By the time we arrived in mid-December, my grandfather was house-bound and cared for by round-the-clock nurses, as my grandmother was herself too frail to do much of the physical work.

My grandfather was experiencing something with which many of you are no doubt familiar. It’s called sundowning, and it’s characteristic of dementia.  My grandfather was often up and about during the day, coming to the table for breakfast and lunch, completely lucid, aware of who my children and I were, and delighted to spend time with his great-grandsons.  But as evening fell, he would lose his bearings.  His behavior became increasingly erratic, and his sense of who and where he was evaporated in the night.

I was particularly aware of his situation because I was up much of the night with my babies -- in a guestroom next to my grandfather’s room, so that I could hear him talking. Talking and talking, all night long, to his nurse companion.  And during those late, long nights, my grandfather slipped back into the 1930s, into the Depression, into the years in which he and his father and brother were trying to make a go of it in business.  He thought, night after night, that it was Christmastime in 1930 or so, and he was frantic that he did not have Christmas presents for his young family.

I learned so much during those nights, about the cycle of life, and about dementia, and about my grandfather.  I saw life at both ends, with two babies at the very beginning of theirs  and my grandfather in the last month of his. I l learned about the trials of dementia, not in a textbook or classroom sort of way, but in a real-life experience kind of way, spending time with someone I loved as his mind failed him.

And I learned about my grandfather, who he was and what was important to him.  You know the old saying – that no one at the end of life ever says, “I wish I had spent more time at the office?” My grandfather was a perfect example of the truth in that.  In those long nights, a month before he died, he never once talked about his business.  It was all, all of it, about his family.

These were not things I could learn in the light of day, when all seemed well and fairly ordinary.  These things required me to attend to my grandfather’s experience of the night as he neared the end of his life.

What about you?  Where else do we learn things in the night?

Hospital corridors are among the first nighttime places that come to mind. If you’ve ever spent time with a seriously ill loved one, then you’ve probably experienced the lonely, bewildering sense of mystery that one finds in a hospital at 2:00 or 4:00 am.  Deathbeds are another place at which we often find ourselves in the night.  And crises seem to come at night – the police at the door, the ambulance in the drive, the phone call alerting us to an accident.

None of these are night time places we would choose, but they are all places in which we grow, aren’t they?

Now, those are tangible, concrete night times of our lives. But there are also intangible night times – times after a death, after the loss of a home or a job, times of anxiety over a struggling child, or finances stretched too far, or choices gone bad.  In Cleveland, the Brelo trial has been such a metaphorical night time.  While the events of the case – the chase, the shooting, the deaths – all took place during the literal night, the trial and judgment have felt to many like a continuation of  night time.  It’s clear that while Officer Brelo’s actions may have been within the bounds of the law, as the judge decided, that does not mean that they fall within the bounds of acceptable behavior for a police officer.  Brelo’s case falls within the context of a long night time of injustice, of misjudgment and reckless behavior by police officers in communities across our country, the consequences of which fall disproportionately on black shoulders.

Night time seems to be a time for confusion, for struggle; a time in which things go wrong.

Might it also be a time, however, in which knowledge and understanding come our way?  Knowledge and understanding not available to us in the daytime

Barbara Brown Taylor, an Episcopal priest and preacher-writer – we studied one of her books last winter -- suggests that we need to focus more on what we might learn in the night.[1]  As we all know, we tend to emphasize light as a symbol for learning, for finding clarity.  We even call a great historical period of learning and philosophy and literature in Europe “the Enlightenment.” In fact, much of what we understand as cultural norms today first say the light of day during the European Enlightenment.

Barbara Brown Taylor suggests offers us a new term to describe how we might learn differently.  Her term is “endarkenment.”  We need, she says, more of endarkenment rather than the enlightenment toward which we tend to gravitate.

This morning our text offers us a night time story.  Nicodemus: what’s he doing out late at night.

The usual explanation given is that Nicodemus, a skilled lawyer and debater, a leader in is community, doesn’t want anyone to know that he’s visiting Jesus.  He’s drawn to Jesus, this compelling rabbi who performs signs and wonders, and he’s curious – but he doesn’t want word getting around about his attraction to this mystery man.  And so he seeks Jesus out at night.

And does Nicodemus ever get more than he bargained for!  He can’t get a straight sentence out of Jesus, but he gets an earful – about being born “from above” (or, “again”) about relationship, and about the love of God.

Oh – and about the Trinity.   This is one of the few episodes in the Bible in which our understanding of God as Trinity makes an appearance.  The idea of Trinity is very confusing, as most of our most learned theologians have been quite willing to admit.  Nicodemus is merely one of the first in a very long line of confused people.  The Bible does not, after all, have a chapter entitled “The Trinity.”  The Bible is not a textbook on the geometry of three-in-one.

What the Bible offers us, as Jesus does Nicodemus, is a series of hints; of clues.  In this little story of the night, we are told that God sent God’s son, and that we must be born of water and spirit.  Not exactly clear, is it? Poor Nicodemus -- supposed to make sense of all this information coming at him in the night.

What’s important here, though, is not the complicated math of the Trinity, of God.  What’s important is who God is, and what God wants.  What’s important is what Nicodemus learned during his night of endarkenment:

That God so loved the world.  That God SO loved the world.  That God so LOVED the word  . . .  that God gave God’s Son . . .

That God so loved the world that God sought not to condemn -- but to save.  After a whole history of human foolishness and error and destruction, all God really wanted was to save what God had begun.

That God so loved the world that God wanted to endure that we would not perish, but that we would have eternal life.  That we would flourish, that we would grow into the people God always wanted us to be, that the whole world – not just us, but all of creation – would be born anew.

We don’t know much about what happened to Nicodemus as a consequence of his nighttime encounter with Jesus.  The Bible leaves out a lot of the detail.  It’s not like Oprah – no blow-by-blow description of crisis and growth.  But we DO know that this nighttime meeting with Jesus changed Nicodemus.   We know this because toward the end of the Gospel of John, Nicodemus makes another appearance -- this time in the light of day – to assist Joseph of Arimathea in burying Jesus after the crucifixion.    Whatever happened to Nicodemus in those three or so years, he was transformed – transformed by what he learned about the love of God, the God who saves and promises eternal life.

What about us?  What do we learn in the night? What do we learn about God in the night times of our lives, whether in the company of a dying loved on or in the midst of a crisis – do we discover a loving, compassionate, attentive God who, we might not encounter in the light of an ordinary day?  

What about great community challenges which make it seem as if night has fallen? Because of the Brelo case, and because of Tamir Rice, and because of other catastrophes in the same vein, our city is learning about and committing itself anew to justice – the work of God, who tells us over and over through the prophets that justice matters.  Don’t misunderstand me – I’m not saying that what we discover of good in these situations justifies the cost, paid in young lives – not at all.  But it is a reality that our own individual experiences of endarkenment teach us to see with new eyes – we discover things we could not have learned in have learned in the daylight, just as Nicodemus did.

Is it possible that in the night, we, too learn of the extravagant, saving love of God?   A couple of months ago, at Easter, we talked about how the story continues – about how the post-Resurrection story in Mark, which ends with everyone filled with fear and running away, is a story which we are called to continue.  Perhaps the same is also true here, with another story which does not really continue, but picks up later with a changed Nicodemus  – perhaps, again,  we are the continuation of the story.  That God is loving the world into salvation and eternal life, and that we are called to carry that love of God forward, each of us in our own way, each in our own darkness, so that God’s dream is realized.   

Frederick Buechner,  Presbyterian pastor and writer, tells us that “all we’re asked to do is to take a step or two forward through the darkness and start digging in.”[2]  That’s what Nicodemus did; maybe we should do the same.  Look for the love of God – the presence of Jesus – and the persistence of the Spirit – in the nights of life.  Amen.

               

 

 

 

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[1] Learning to Walk in the Dark (2014).

[2] http://frederickbuechner.com/content/darkness-1

Transformed and Transforming: Sermon for Easter 2 (John and Act)

Look at the change in the Christian community between our two texts this morning!  Look at the transformation that takes place between our story in the Gospel of John and the description in the Book of Acts!  In just a few short years, Jesus’s disciples have been completely transformed, from a frightened and uncertain group hiding from public view into a thriving community of worship and mission.  They experience the Risen Christ, and look where he takes them!      

Let’s look more closely at what our stories have to tell us, beginning with the gospel narrative in which Jesus appears to the disciples a week after his resurrection. And what are the disciples up to?  They’re hiding out!  Frightened, terrified actually, that they will be associated with the man who has been crucified for insurrection against the government.  Lost and bewildered: what are they to do without the leader they have come to depend upon?  Inside, behind locked doors – this does not look like a group with a lot of promise insofar as spreading the word of the resurrection is concerned.

And on their own – they are not.  Of course not. 

But Jesus appears in their midst—twice, as it turns out – and two things happen.  Two encounters, two conversations, in which they are transformed by his resurrected presence.

In the first encounter with Jesus, the disciples rejoice.  Of course they rejoice! Wouldn’t we, too, rejoice in the re-appearance of someone whom we deeply love who has died?  Rejoicing  would be the order of the day.  But there’s more to it than their own rejoicing, because Jesus has a commission for them:

“As the Father has sent me,” he says, “so I send you.

Send.  Pay attention that word, send.  It’s one of the most important words in the Bible.  Jesus sends.

The word in Greek, in the language in which this book was first written, is pempwo; it means to send, to insist that something – in this case, the good news of the resurrection and the unfolding kingdom of God – be carried or sent to others.  In Latin, the language into which it was first translated by the church,  the word is missio – mission, in English.  We might think that a mission is a plan, an idea for getting something done – but at its root, a mission is a sending.

Jesus sends.  Jesus does not say, “Oh, this is excellent  -- stay here, locked up by yourselves inside, and be afraid.  Don’t even try to go anywhere, because it’s too scary and challenging out there.”

No – Jesus does not say that at all.  Jesus says, “I send you!”  Get going.  Be bold! There is a whole world out there waiting for good news – I am sending you out to share it!

But there’s more.  More to these encounters, and more to what we are called to do, and to be. 

You may recall that one of this disciples is absent from this incredible, tremendous meeting.  And you may recall that when he returns and hears what has happened, Thomas says. “I don’t believe it.”  We get that, too, don’t we?  If I walked in here and told you that this morning I had seen someone who had recently died, seen them in the flesh and talked with them, you would not believe me.  “Show me,” says Thomas.  "I'm not going to believe this until I see Jesus for myself, and touch his wounds with my own hands.”

And so Jesus, who never leaves anyone behind – Jesus, who is always gathering people to himself – Jesus, who understands us, and understands our skepticism and our grief and our anger, because he is one of us – Jesus comes back for Thomas.  Jesus makes sure that Thomas has the experience of proof that he needs.

And Thomas?  Thomas’s response is, “My Lord and my God!”  “My Lord and My God!” What sort of response is that?  That’s a worshipful response.  That’s a response of praise and adoration and wonder and awe and humility.   That’s worship.

In this one short story, we have the essence of Christian life in community.  Worship, and mission.

When I was in seminary, we had to take a course called Missiology – the study of mission.  Who knew there was such a thing? (Not me!)  Now, I was not looking forward to this required course.  To me, the word mission was about something like missionaries – about sending people out to the far corners of the world to proclaim the news of Jesus Christ.  And that was not something that held any appeal for me.  As a former world history teacher, I knew a lot about the damage that had been done to cultures across the globe by Christian missionaries who so often though they knew best.  I didn’t think that I wanted to study missiology.

But, to my surprise, I loved that course.  I practically inhaled everything I learned in that course.  Because, as it turns out, mission does not mean setting yourself up as the expert and running roughshod over others in the process.  Mission means being sent – and in Christianity, it means being sent with the good news of the kingdom of God among us.

Our professor had a thesis for his course – a main idea.  And what he told us was this: That the church does a lot of things.  We do education, and spiritual formation, and we care for each other and we feed and clothe the needy, and we visit the sick, and sometimes we remember that we do those things in the name of Jesus and sometimes we don’t.  But his conclusion, his main idea, he told us, was that everything we do – everything – comes down to two main projects: Worship, and Mission. 

We worship, God, and God sends us into the world with the good news.  That’s what all of church -- all of who we are and who we are called to be --  that’s what it all comes down to: Worship, and Mission.  If we aren’t doing worship and mission, then we aren’t church.  If we aren’t transformed, if we don’t hear Jesus saying “I am sending you” and if we don’t follow Thomas in saying, “My Lord and my God!” – then we are not church.  If we are not, like those very first disciples, transformed by the Risen Christ from a huddle of frightened people clinging to one another into a community sent into the world, then we are not church. 

So how do we do this?  We are two little churches gathered here on this fine second Sunday of Easter – and how do we do this?  We are scared, aren’t we? – we are small in numbers, and low on funds, and we might close and we might disperse – we are in a tough spot, and where are we?  We’re inside, talking to each other!  How do we open ourselves up to become people transformed by the Risen Christ among us?  How do we open ourselves up to become transforming people, a community sent to transform our world? 

We start, I think by looking at what happened in the earliest church communities.  In our second reading today, from the Book of Acts, we are offered a glimpse of one of the first of these communities, a flourishing community in which – guess what? – people have been transformed themselves by the Risen Christ and are completely engaged in the transformation of their world.  They share, they care for the needy, and they proclaim the resurrected Christ.   Hiding out in upper rooms has come to an end.  The time for hanging out with only one another for company is long past.  Sharing the good news – witnessing to the resurrection in word and deed – that’s what the first churches are up to.

Now this early community – it sounds a little extreme  to us, doesn’t it? These folks own everything in common – no private property – and they sell their homes and use the proceeds to care for the needy.  A different world!  But let’s not let ourselves be stopped by the radical nature of their particular approach.  Let’s ask, instead, how can we adapt what we learn from them to our own circumstances? 

How can we, like the first churches, become people “of one heart and soul?” 

How can we, with this bold example before us, how can we ourselves, perhaps even as one congregation, become a community of worship and mission with “one heart and soul?”  How can we open our hearts during this sacred time, this time of Easter, of resurrection, of hope, of new life, of new possibilities – how can we open our hearts to the Jesus who walks among us?  How can we be transformed by his risen presence into a transforming people, a people who gather to worship and then welcome the invitation to be sent, to care not only for one another, but to practice kindness and to pursue justice in that big wide world out there?

This, my friends, is an important day for us all.  Today is a time to gather, to talk, to question, and to wonder, together.  It’s a day to pause, inside, to worship, to say in unison, “My Lord and my God,” an to take stock and allow our hearts to be cracked open by the Jesus who is here, stopping with us as we consider the future. 

But it’s also a day to recognize, with great joy, that as followers of the risen Christ, we are sent.    We are people who have been invited to the greatest of missions, the mission Dei, the mission of God.  The mission in which children are encouraged and the hungry are fed and the imprisoned are visited and the sick are attended to. 

Worship, and mission. They’re both right there in Scripture.  Their potential lies among people who are unsure and hesitant, but who recognize Jesus when he walks through the door. Their fulfillment lies among people who respond to the calling to be church, proclaiming the good news and serving the world.

That’s us, my friends: B and B Churches. Called to worship and to mission.  Called to be both transformed and transforming. 

Amen.

For Fear of the Other (Sermon ~ John 20:19-31)

Last week, we shared a beautiful Maundy Thursday service together, a Tenebrae service.  For those of you who were unable to come, or who have perhaps not participated in such a service, it’s an evening in which we read gospel passages which tell the Scriptural story from the end of the Last Supper, when Jesus and his disciples head out to the Garden of Gethsemane, through the arrest and questionings and condemnation of Jesus, to his death and burial.  After each passage is read, another light in the sanctuary is extinguished, until Jesus lies in the tomb and we are in darkness, a darkness that lasts until Easter Sunday. 

I’ve been to, and participated in, all sorts of Maundy Thursday services.  I would say that the Tenebrae is my favorite.  But . . . I don’t think I’ve ever been charged with such a large portion of the readings before . . . or perhaps the readings in the past weren’t all from one gospel, the Gospel of John in particular.  And I have to tell you that I was shocked and horrified at what I heard myself reading.

Over and over again, John blames “the Jews” for the death of Jesus.  If I have counted correctly, in the passages we read last Thursday night, combined with some short portions we did not read, there are twelve references to the “Jews.”  Some of those references are mingled with cries of “Crucify him!” and one of them refers to Joseph of Arimathea, one of those who helped to bury Jesus, as a “secret disciple because of his fear of the Jews.”

I cannot begin to tell you how disturbed I was as I read those words, over and over again, as if the Jewish people were in some way to be singled out as having caused the death of Jesus.  I tried to change some of them as I read, to phrases like “the Judeans” or “the leaders” or “the people” – but that was no doubt a confusing distraction, as many of you were following along on the Powerpoint.  And it didn’t solve the problem, the problem of an entire ethnic and religious group of people being charged with a crime as if it were a consequence of their very being, and something for which they were and remain culpable as a group.

Today gives us an opportunity to address that challenge, as that offensive language is echoed in this morning’ reading, in which we find the disciples huddled in a room in a house after the crucifixion with the doors “locked for fear of the Jews.”

What is this all about, “the Jews”?

Yes, some Jews were involved in the execution of Jesus.  Yes, some of the leaders of Jesus’s own people were frustrated by and even fearful of his teachings and gift for healing, and wary of his claims and yes, Judas betrayed him and some of the Jewish leaders urged the Romans on.  But those realities do not make an entire people culpable.  Jesus was arrested was arrested by soldiers – Roman soldiers – and ultimately condemned and killed by Roman authorities.  Crucifixion was a Roman form of execution, a method the  Jews were not permitted to employ.  It was a common enough occurrence – thousands of people were executed by crucifixion by the Romans, most of them for sedition – for rebellion against the government.

So why in the gospel of John is there so much hatred and fear of “the Jews” expressed? Why not the Romans, who executed Jesus and less than 40 years later crushed a Jewish rebellion and destroyed themir temple?  Why this “fear of the Jews”?

To understand John’s attitude, we need a bit of Bible background.

Scholars tell us that the Gospel of John was probably written in the 90s, sometime between the years 90 and 100.  (Remember, Jesus died around the year 30.)  John may have been written even later. And the Gospel of John was probably not written by one person named John, but was the product of the writings of a particular community of faith, writings ultimately compiled and edited by a gifted literary artist in the community.

And what of this community?  The early church, the earliest church in the years immediately following the resurrection of Jesus, was really a handful of small Jewish Christian house churches, of Jewish people still deeply connected to their Jewish faith and traditions and synagogues, but who had come to understand Jesus as the risen messiah.  Over the decades, the relationship between those Jews who did not believe in Jesus as the messiah and those who did began to erode, and by the end of the first century, Jewish Christians were leaving the synagogues to form their own distinct communities of faith, and the synagogues were at the same time evicting those who professed Jesus as Lord. 

And what happens when people begin to separate over a conviction of belief?  What kinds of things do they say in their anger? Extreme things.  People stop using words of conciliation, words like, “You might be right” or “I might be wrong.”  They use words like “This is the way it is.”  And they begin to accuse and condemn one another for their differences. 

That was the sort of community in which the Gospel of John was written.  On the one hand, it was a community of tremendous hope and joy in the promise of Christ.  On the other, it was a community of fear and anger toward “the other” – even though “the others” were the Jews, their own people of origin. On the one hand, the Gospel of John contains some of the most beautiful writing and some of the most profound stories of expectation in the entire Bible. On the other hand, it contains some of the ugliest and most accusatory language in the Bible.  The Gospel of John is the only place in which we find the stories of Nicodemus in the night, of the woman at the well, of Mary Magdalene’s encounter with the risen Lord.  It is the gospel in which Jesus says “I am the light of the world, I am the good shepherd, I am the way and the truth and the life.”  It is also the gospel containing the references to “the Jews” as those to be feared.

To what have those words, “the Jews” led?  To what does any identification of people as “the other” lead?  What happens when we insist upon singling out a person, or a group, as “other”?

Negativity, distrust, suspicion – that’s what happens.  Exclusion, persecution, violence – that’s what happens.  An insistence that we are right and that “the others” are wrong – an insistence that fosters division and disharmony, that breaks the human family apart, and that leads to our destruction of one another.  Think about it: who are “the others” today?  People of color or ethnicity different from our own?  People of religion different from our own?  People whose sexual orientation differs from our own?  Perhaps in your own life, perhaps in this church, perhaps in general – are there those we think of as “the other”?

In the case of the Jewish people, their castigation as “other” led to centuries of exclusion and persecution, and violence.  In Europe and Russia, Jews were forced into their own communities and then often expelled completely  - perhaps most famously from Spain and England, but in reality from over 100 locations.  In the Middle  Ages, the Jews were often blamed for outbreaks of plague – their isolation from the major centers of other community life and their religious rituals of cleanliness kept them relatively free of disease at a time when no one understood how disease was transmitted. By the 19^th and 20^th centuries, Jews were subject to the extreme violence of the pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe, to vicious attacks upon their homes and businesses and persons. And then – the Holocaust, a period of slaughter so calculated and so vast that it stuns us with the magnitude of evil human beings can perpetrate on one another.

Today, sadly, the persecution of “the other” remains prevalent, all around us.  During the week before Passover and Easter this year, just three weeks ago, our Jewish brothers and sisters were the targets of hatred in Ukraine, in which an unknown group passed out pamphlets stating that Jews were required to register with the government – a hoax, but an unsettling and evil one, given that such registration was a precursor to murder during the Holocaust – and here in our own country a man went out looking for Jews to shoot at a Kansas Jewish Community Center and assisted living facility.  Ironically, none of the three people he killed were Jewish – because we have made real progress in our understanding of one another and in our participation in one another’s lives, and we tend to congregate together rather than separately – but the outcome does not change the man’s intent.

So: What is the good news in all this? You can understand now, I think, why I was reluctant to continue reading last Thursday night.  And why I have been mulling over the contradictions inherent in the Gospel of John ever since. Where is the good news when we proclaim hope in Christ while at the same time we steal hope from brothers and sisters whom we call “the other”?  Where is the good news when we come to church and proclaim a risen Christ in the beauty and seclusion of our sanctuary when outside our doors people, perhaps even we ourselves at times, enact the opposite of Christian hope through words and deeds which are racist, or homophobic, or anti-Semitic or anti-Muslim?

Where is the good news?  The good news is that we live in an era of new creation.  The good news is that God is not yet finished with us.  The good news is that God is continually re-creating, re-shaping, and re-molding us into people called to reflect the love of God.

Thomas, the disciple at the center of today’s gospel reading, was not there yet.  He needed to see and to touch the wounds of the Risen Christ for himself before he could confess Jesus as his Lord and his God – but Jesus did not give up on him or abandon him. 

The people of the early church were not there yet.  They thought they needed to distinguish themselves from “the other,” from “the Jews,” in order to establish the distinctiveness of their community.  But God did not abandon them to their fears and instinctive isolationism. 

We are not there yet.  We have our own fears, our own areas of ignorance and insensitivity, our own unwillingness to break down the barriers which separate us from the other.  But God continues to labor with us, to lavish love on us, to invite us into new life, new understandings, and new hopes for our shared humanity with all peoples.

Tomorrow is Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, which, as is the Jewish custom, actually begins tonight.  It’s a day on which we commemorate the lives lost and the heroism shown by the Jewish people during the Holocaust years of 1933-1945.  That means that tonight and tomorrow, we can do our small part in carrying light into the world by becoming aware of the cost of accusing “the other,” of fearing “the other,” of hating “the other.” 

I urge you, tonight and tomorrow, to pay attention to Yom HaShoah.  Read the paper, watch the news, google “Holocaust Remembrance” on the internet.  Learn the stories.  Become aware of your neighbor, who is not “the other.”

Most of you know that for several years I taught in an Orthodox Jewish middle school and high school.  One day some of my beautiful young students, having just seen the Mel Gibson movie, The Passion of the Christ, which relies heavily on the Gospel of John, asked me, “Why do Christians hate us?”

Let’s not be people who hate “the other.”  Let’s not be followers of Christ who hide out in a locked room, or in a church sanctuary, “for fear of the Jews” or for fear of anyone else.  Let’s be people who watch and listen and learn, people who throw the doors of our lives wide open, people who proclaim light by being light.  Let’s be the people of a God of abundant love, a God who breaks down barriers, and a God for whom human beings are not “the other” -- but are, every one of us, God’s precious people.

Amen.

Water for the Journey (Sermon: Exodus and John)

(Play the opening of Wade In the Water)

This song, Wade in the Water, has been stirring up my thoughts all week as I’ve pondered our two texts for this morning.  God tells Moses to strike a rock from which water will gush forth for the wandering, thirsty, and complaining Israelites.  Jesus tells the woman at the well that he has water to offer which will gush forth into new life for all peoples.  And this song tells us that “God’s gonna trouble the waters.”

I learned this song, Wade in the Water, at my daughter’s graduation from Willamette University, a small school in Oregon. That year an honorary agree was awarded to Bernice Johnson Reagon, a history professor, social activist, and founded of the African-American women’s a capella group, Sweet Honey in the Rock.  In her speech to the graduates, Dr. Reagon urged them to go out into the world and “trouble the waters” -- stir things up, bring their gifts to bear on the many needs of our world.  She also, in the middle of that academic afternoon of long speeches, sang Wade In the Water – and stole the whole show.  By far the best graduation speech I’ve ever heard!

The song makes several references to that great story of Hebrew liberation, the story of the exodus of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt under the leadership of Moses. “Looks like the band that Moses led -- God's a-going to trouble the water.”  When we meet them today, the Israelites are in the midst of their long desert sojourn, and they are furious at Moses.  “Why did you bring us out here, to kill us?” they rage at him.  Egypt is looking pretty good at that moment, and they are ready to trade freedom for a roof and a cup of water.  Stuck in the desert, they take their anger out on Moses, who begs God to intervene.  And God does, instructing Moses on how obtain water from the rock.  Where God is, water is often transformed.  Water often becomes a sign of God’s movement among us, and of our movement out into the lives into which we are called.

The woman at the well?  Another story of God’s movement among us, and of God sending us into new lives.  This woman seems to have nothing going for her as the narrative begins.  She’s a Samaritan, a member of a population reviled by the Jews.  She’s had five husbands and has a new companion – a biographical detail that has caused a number of judgmental comments against her – but we have no idea why she’s had five husbands.  Divorce?  Widowhood?  Violence?  Family pressure?  What we do know is that she’s had to start over six times, and that by now she must be disappointed, weary, and worn down by hopes dashed, over and over again.  She’s also alone, isolated from others – by herself at the well in midday instead of part of an early morning communal gathering.

And yet – Jesus engages her.  She’s of the wrong culture and the wrong gender for this conversation – Jews did not interact with Samaritans, and Jewish men did not interact with women to whom they were not married.  He breaks all the rules, and with his words, he changes her understanding of life – changes it so much that she – what does she do? 

Now here I have a confession to make.  This story of is great personal significance to me, for reasons I’ll get to in a minute, but it’s also a story to which my attention has been drawn in rather humorous circumstances:

You probably know that we Presbyterian pastors are all required to study Hebrew and Greek in seminary. And let me tell you: Greek was not one of my strengths in school!  I really had to work at that language – there is nothing about it that comes naturally to me. 

On our final exam, we were presented with a lengthy passage to translate.  I couldn’t make head nor tail of that passage, so I started looking around for words I recognized.  The first one I came up with was pente.  You would know it, too, once you could read the Greek alphabet, for of course pente means five.  The next word I figured out was andras, which means men.  Hmmm, I thought.  Five men.  Where are there five men in the NT?  Then I remembered that andras can also mean husbands – five husbands! Finally!  I knew what the passage was, and I could go back and figure the rest of it out -- with one exception.

Toward the end of the passage, the woman is so excited that she goes back to town to tell everyone about her encounter with Jesus, but first she does something.  She does something with her water jar – and I could not figure out what that verb was.  What did she do?  The verb [aph-y-e-mi, a mi verb] is one of a series of difficult verbs with many different forms, and as I looked at my test paper, I simply had no idea which one it was.  So I thought: She came to the well to get water; the logical thing for her to have done, then, would be to have picked up her water jar and returned to the city. So that’s what I wrote: “She picked up her jar and returned to the city.

Wrong!   “Robin,” my long-suffering professor groaned after the test, “the verb is left.  Left behind.  She is so excited that she leaves her water jar behind!”

Of course.  How did I not know that?  (And I’ve never forgotten it since!  I don’t remember the Greek verb at all, but I do remember that the woman at the well leaves her jar behind.)  She is so excited by the living water that she does something completely out of character, completely out of her usual routine: she leaves her work and goes off to tell people about her encounter with Jesus.  She wants them to know that the water for the journey of life is here -- and it's not literal water; it's the messiah, the anointed one, the savior of the world whose spirit infiltrates her life.

Why should I have known that? (Even if the vocabulary was beyond me.) 

The story of the woman at the well is one which I see as my own.  Some time ago, I was engaged in a year-long experience of prayer, the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises, a year in which I spent hours each week meditating on and contemplating many Scriptural passages.  When I reached the story of the woman at the well, it reached out and grabbed me – spoke to me in a way much more intimately personal than many other stories had.  I recognized that woman.  I hadn’t been married five times, but I had experienced many other kinds of disappointments in life, and her tired and frustrated – and mystified – questioning of Jesus rang true to me.

How is it that you ask a drink of me?  Where do you get that living water?  Who are you, anyway?

What I came to understand, after spending a week or so with her story, was something that I often share with you: the story of Scripture becomes our story, and the stories of our lives become the stories of Scripture.    The water that God has to offer the Israelites and the water that Jesus offers the woman at the well -- this is water that expands life.  This is water that enlarges who we are and what we are called to be.  This is the water of the Spirit, water that fills us with energy and hope. This is living water, water that gushes up into new and eternal life. 

No wonder the woman at the well left her jar behind.  News so unexpected, so startling, so filled with possibility and with love – of course she had to run back to town to tell others.

God doesn’t pour water from a rock so that our own thirst might be quenched.  Jesus does not offer a drink of living water merely for our own personal needs.  No – God troubles the waters.  God offers us water so that we might share it with others, splash it around, drench the entire world in God’s love. 

My invitation to you this week is that you ask yourselves: Where in your lives have you sensed a direct encounter with God?  With Jesus?  With the Spirit?

Where has Jesus unexpectedly offered you water?

Where has God troubled the waters of your own life -- sent you out to be someone new, to proclaim God's goodness, through words or through your acts of service to others?

You might have to give this matter some thought.  My guess is that you were not wandering around in the Sinai desert, or sitting at a well in the city of Sychar.  My guess is that the offer of living water has come to you in the form of a conversation, or maybe in a moment in a sacred place.  Maybe in music, in the form of help or encouragement from a friend.

Last week, one of you shared a song with me, a song that she loves, and a story of calling a friend and singing the song to her over the telephone.  That was a woman at the well moment: she was filled with the spirit of God, with the living water that gushes out of God’s love, and needed to tell someone.  She left behind her water jar, the ordinary reticence that might have prevented her even from humming  a tune in the hallway, and burst into song.

What about you?  Are you paying attention?  Are you noticing when Jesus walks into your life to ask for a drink and then turns the encounter around to offer water to you?  Are you paying attention when God troubles the waters of your own life, and invites you to share what you’ve been given with others?

We need water on this Lenten journey of ours, and here it is: the living water of Jesus Christ, the water that quenches thirst forever, the well from which you are invited to drink and the water you are invited to pour all over the place, everywhere you go.  Amen.