 By The Rev. Dr. Molly Scherm
Our readings this morning speak to us of unease, of longing, waiting, and lamenting. As is so often the case, scripture touches the realities we are living in our own lives. We’ve heard two stories. Both of them involve longing and waiting, and they shine a light on what it is to live in the complexities of being faithful. The first of the two stories involves a moment of encounter between God and Abram from the book of Genesis. Abram had been spoken to by God twice before, at this point, but while God had spoken, Abram had not responded with words. Now, Abram replies to God. He has a burning question, an unfulfilled longing he can no longer keep silence with: he has no heir, no inheritance. For Abram’s people, having “everlasting life” consisted in having the legacy of descendants to carry on one’s memory, and an estate to provide for them. At the point of today’s passage in Gen. 15, God had already promised heirs and land, but to Abram, the promise is not really real. He has heard God’s promises, but has no lived reality through which to make sense of them. For Abram, they are empty words. He has been faithful: he has followed God’s direction in leaving his home without knowing where he is going, traveled to places appointed, and continued through various challenges and hardships. But he is having an increasingly hard time trusting the promises when there has been no confirmation IN EXPERIENCE. Abram has been waiting, and waiting is eroding his confidence. So God reiterates the promise: “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them." Then he said to him, "So shall your descendants be. I am the Lord who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess.” But still Abram longs for a sign, and questions: "O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?" And so Abram and God enact a ritual. To us it is a pretty strange ritual, but it is customary to that time and culture. When two parties are making covenant, they jointly offer animal sacrifice, splitting animal carcasses into two and passing between them. The act symbolically states their willingness to suffer same fate as the split carcasses if they should dare to break their covenant promises. In the Genesis text, a flaming torch – foreshadowing the pillar of fire that will indicate God’s presence in leading Israelites in the wilderness after their delivery from Egypt – passes between the parts, signifying God’s commitment to God’s promises. The storyteller doesn’t tell us, however, whether Abram’s disquiet was eased by the vision. Today’s gospel also speaks of longing and of waiting Jesus’ daily ministry involved the work of healing, providing what was needed to those he met. He demonstrated the presence of God’s Realm, God’s Kingdom, breaking into the world by his acts of providing what was needed -
Jesus does these acts of deliverance and healing as demonstration of his message of God’s love and God’s nearness. At the point at which we listen in on today’s story, Jesus is also traveling gradually toward Jerusalem – the city that had historically rejected and killed the prophets. He had received recent news of Herod’s beheading of John the Baptizer, and now a group of Pharisees inform him that Herod wants to kill him. Jesus knows, in general at least, that this is the fate he is traveling toward, but has his own timetable. He has more work to do before his work is complete – today and tomorrow (he says)- … and on the third day I will finish my work. Third day refers to the time of resurrection. Jesus’ work includes his daily ministry AND his arrest and death and resurrection, which will allow his disciples to finally understand the whole point of his life and teaching, that God’s Realm is present here and now. Jesus’ ministry does not end with his death, but is completed on the third day. Just as Abram longed for an heir and a legacy, and for certainty regarding God’s promises, Jesus expresses, in response to the news of Herod’s dangerous intentions, his own longing. His response to the Pharisees’ reminder of what lies ahead is compassion.
Abram longs for an heir, a legacy, understanding of G’s promises. Herod longs to eliminate Jesus as a threat. Jesus longs to protect Jerusalem from its own worst inclinations. Longing for that which will bring us respite from the worries and fears of life is always a part of the human experience. Often we long for relief from the difficulties of our personal lives, for ourselves and those we love
In this time in the history of our nation and the world we are also living with tremendous anxiety (and often with anger) in relation to the ways in which the policies and practices of our nation have shifted. We read in the news, daily, of the loss of protection for the vulnerable in our nation and world, of the loss of livelihood for many, of the abandonment of measures that support the wellbeing of our environment. So, much of our longing, like Abram’s, is for assurance that the future is not as bleak as it looks. For Abram, and for the author of the psalm we sang together this morning, the answer is that we must maintain trust in God to provide what we need, and that we must accept God’s timetable, rather than our own. Honestly, it is hard to feel reassured by this when we see suffering, and fear that terrible mistakes are being made in our world. At the same time, there is some relief (for me, at least,) in knowing that even as we are obligated to do what we can do to work for what is right, at the end of the day, we can leave it in God’s hands. From Jesus we learn two things.
And in these troubling times, we need to up our games by calling out for the justice we long for, by sending our postcards to the White House, and calling our representatives, and signing petitions. As we continue to move forward with as much patience and hope as we can muster, let us remember and find comfort in the words of the psalm we have sung together this morning: The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom then shall I fear? One thing have I asked of the Lord; one thing I seek; * that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life; O tarry and await the Lord's pleasure; be strong, and God shall comfort your heart; * wait patiently for the Lord. Amen  The lectionary does an odd thing in these Easter weeks in the B cycle. You’ll recall that the lectionary, or schedule of lessons we’re assigned to read each Sunday, has three rotations. In the “A” year we mostly hear the gospel as Matthew tells it, with his emphasis on Jesus’ parables; in the “B” cycle – which we’re in this year – we mostly hear Mark’s version, a more fast-moving, action-oriented gospel; and then in the “C” year, we hear how Luke understands the gospel story, with his interest in Jesus’ outreach to society’s outsiders.
There’s no cycle for John. It’s quite a different account from the other three. John covers both less and more: it includes fewer stories of Jesus’ ministry – the healings, general teaching, and everyday encounters with people who came to see and hear him – but goes to much greater detail in those stories he does include in his narrative. It is only John who gives us some of the key accounts that give us insight into Jesus’ mission and ministry, including the wedding at Cana, the raising of Lazarus, the Samaritan woman to whom Jesus reveals his identity at the well, and the “doubting Thomas” incident we hear on the second Sunday of Easter every year. When the framers of the lectionary set it up, they spliced these unique passages from John into the Matthew, Mark, and Luke cycles so that we could benefit from hearing them even though – for whatever reason – John didn’t get a cycle year of its own. Which brings me back to my observation of the peculiarity of the lectionary’s structure in this “B” year’s Easter season. Instead of continuing with accounts of what was happening for the disciples in the time between the resurrection, the ascension and Pentecost, as would seem logical, the “B cycle” takes us back to hear Jesus’ words to the disciples at the Last Supper. Last Sunday, today, and next Sunday we hear excerpts from what is known as the “Farewell Discourses”, material that is unique to John’s gospel. As Heather suggested in her sermon last week, it is important to hear these passages in context, specifically, that they represent what John wants us to understand to be the final words that Jesus shared with his friends in the last hours before his arrest. Heather summarized it this way: “In the verses that precede our lesson, Jesus modeled for his disciples what it means to love one another by washing their feet. Now he is advising the disciples to abide, and in the verses that come immediately after our lesson, to love.” The repeated theme throughout the “Farewell Discourses”, as Heather pointed out, is relationship. Jesus emphasizes the relationships between himself and the disciples, a relationship that mirrors the relationship between himself and the Creator, his source and grounding, whom he referred to as “Father”. Jesus offered the metaphor that “I am the vine, and you are the branches”, conveying not only that the bonds between himself and his friends could not be broken, but that whole and complete life is not possible if one is cut off from the source that gives us life and enables us to “bear fruit”. These words of reassurance were undoubtedly intended to provide comfort for the disciples, an image to remember and hold onto in the days following his death and his eventual departure, when the loss of his physical presence could well feel like loss of the relationship. His words undoubtedly provided the same comfort and reassurance to the early Church community for whom John’s gospel was written, about 60 or 70 years later, as they suffered under persecutions by the Roman Empire. In the part of the passage that we have heard this morning, Jesus goes beyond emphasizing the relationship between the Father, himself, and the disciples: he reminds his friends of the love that is at the center of the relationship, and urges them to sustain it: “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you” and “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” As Heather pointed out last week, throughout these farewell passages Jesus repeatedly entreats his friends to “abide” in him, and in his love, just as he abides in them, and, of course, in us. He uses the word “abide” eleven times in the eleven verses of this extended text. Even though we don’t use the word much ourselves, these days, we know what “abide” means. We know it means to dwell, to stay, to shelter, to inhabit a particular context or environment. “Abide” suggests calm, a restful place to dwell – we’d never say someone “abides” in prison, for example, or in a war zone. Cynthia Briggs Kittredge points out that dwelling or abiding is a theme throughout the whole Gospel of John. Discussing the opening verses of John, which declare that “the Word became flesh and lived among us”, she observes that the Greek more literally could be translated that the Word dwelt among us as in a tent.* “The Word pitched a tent or “camped out” among us”, she observes, “and showed us the embodiment of God’s love. In Jesus’ life, God’s love walked and talked among the people of first-century Galilee and Judea.”* And it is in God’s love that Jesus calls us to find our shelter, and then, to express that love to one another. “Abide in my love,” he says. “Make my love the house, the tent, the shelter in which you dwell and move around in,” he seems to say.* We all know how critical the place where we abide is. Thinking about our homes, when we have the resources to create a space that not only feels comfortable, but reflects our passions, our priorities, and our histories, we have a home base in which we can live with joy, and from which we can venture out boldly, and to which we can return for refreshment and renewal. On the other side of the coin, we’ve probably all had periods – hopefully brief ones – of living in spaces that were not our own and somehow felt alien or hostile, and we know how difficult it is to feel joy in our living there, or to thrive in our day to day life. We’ve also all lived through a pandemic in which our homes were both shelter and, which, at times felt somewhat suffocating. Jesus invites us to allow God’s love to provide us a safe, nurturing and empowering shelter. We can perhaps imagine Jesus elaborating, “Let my love be the foundation under your feet, let my love permeate the walls that shelter you, and let my love form the roof arching over your head.” And we know what it means to live grounded in Jesus’ love: We can live out of the dwelling of God’s love when we volunteer for Sunday Sandwiches or Second Helpings. We abide in God’s love when we call on a neighbor to check on how she is feeling. We do so when we work to reduce our carbon footprints. When we donate to humanitarian relief organizations that provide aid to those impacted by war. When we write emails to our local and national officials to express our concerns and solicit their action on the justice issues facing our communities and nation. When we abide in God’s love and strive to live as Jesus did, we are not satisfied to remain where we are. We recognize our own need to learn and to understand more deeply. We choose to engage with tough questions and try to bridge divides by listening to perspectives different from our own. The more that we can allow God’s love to be our dwelling place, our foundation and shelter, the more room we have to invite others to shelter there with us. In this season of resurrection, may we abide with Jesus in God’s love. May we find new ways and commit ourselves ever more fully to abiding in the love of the One who first loved us and who shows us how to love one another.
By The Rev. Dr. Molly Scherm  Copyright Greenfield Recorder, 2023 Most of you are probably aware, as I am, that we are preparing for a transition. In fact, we’ve already begun it. Today and next week are my last Sundays as Associate Rector at Saints James and Andrew, after which I will join the good folks of St. Mary’s in the Mountains in Wilmington, Vermont, in figuring out how to best live into the Gospel in that context.
Change is hard. Whether an upcoming change is something we’ve chosen, or it’s something that was chosen by someone else, and even when there are elements of what is coming that we are excited about, it’s difficult. Change involves the loss of the familiar. It magnifies the uncertainty – which we’re always living with, but often manage not to think about – the uncertainty of not knowing what lies ahead, and what it will be like, and how we’ll manage it. In these days of preparing for transition, of living with the challenges of change, it would have been lovely to hear a nice, uplifting set of readings. Well, as you may have noticed, we don’t always get what we’d like. This morning’s readings are, in fact, rather off-putting. First we heard the familiar story of the crossing of the Red Sea, as the people of Israel fled from their enslavement in Egypt. It was a great day for the Israelites, but not so much for the Egyptians, who wound up, as the narrative tells us, “dead on the seashore”. And then we heard Paul, in his letter to the Romans, lecturing about not showing judgement toward others. And finally, one of Jesus’ hard parables speaking to the question of forgiveness, with a servant handed over to be tortured because he was unwilling to forgive a neighbor’s relatively minor debt. Not very uplifting. But the scriptures always have something to say to us, so let’s dip in. Both Paul’s letter and Jesus’ parable are follow-ups to the texts we heard last week and both remind us of some of the worst of our human inclinations when we live in relationship with other people. Given that times of transition, when we may be feeling somewhat frail in our uncertainties, may be times when we are particularly prone to responding out of our less-generous proclivities, perhaps it’s good to be advised as we are by this morning’s lessons. As Heather helped us to understand last week, in his missive to the Church in Rome, Paul was addressing himself to Christ-believing Gentiles, those followers of Jesus who had come from traditions outside of Judaism but were practicing their new faith within the context of the Jewish synagogue in Rome. They did not feel as recognized or included as they would have wished, and Paul advised them of their responsibility to exercise patience and continually seek to love their neighbors, even as their neighbors were apparently not as hospitable as they could have been. In today’s continuation of this exhortation, Paul turns his attention to the believers’ inclination to judge others. Some within their community were committed to and practicing elements of Jewish tradition that Paul had declared to be no-longer-required for gentile converts, and the latter group were apparently frustrated and impatient that everybody was not on board with the program. Isn’t it just always the case that when we’re feeling vulnerable ourselves, the behavior of others can get on our nerves with particular intensity? So, as we live with the changes ahead, let’s take Paul’s advice to heart, and take deep breaths when we feel like passing judgement, and do our best to remember that judgement is God’s job, not ours. In the gospel passage we heard last week, Jesus provided guidelines for, likewise, handling conflicts and wrongdoing within the community of believers. He urged that when one member of the community does wrong to another, it can’t be swept under the carpet; communication and reconciliation need to take place. He emphasized the importance of accountability, teaching that the offending member should be spoken with by as many as necessary, including holding public discussion of the wrongdoing if it becomes necessary, until such time as the offender can acknowledge and understand their fault. In this morning’s gospel, Peter follows up on that teaching by asking about the obligation to forgive others’ wrongdoings. He must have felt magnanimous in suggesting that he should be willing to forgive seven times. Jesus’ reply was, basically, that we need to forgive past the point at which we can count. In other words Peter (and we ourselves) ALWAYS have to forgive, and we will never have forgiven “enough”. Jesus’ answer was followed with a distinctly disturbing parable. It’s about a king who shows mercy to servant who has accumulated an absolutely massive debt. The debt was more than the fellow could EVER hope to repay. After his initial impulse to hold the servant accountable and have him sold, along with all of his possessions and his entire family, the king suddenly and without explanation reversed course and declared the entire debt forgiven. The experience didn’t have the impact one would have expected on the person whose debt had been excused. Instead of paying forward the compassion he had been shown, the servant who had been forgiven, when he in turn ran across a fellow servant who owes HIM money, was adamant in demanding that he be repaid. The one who had been shown mercy, when his opportunity came, had no mercy at all, and arranged for his debtor to be thrown into prison. When the king learned of the first slave’s hard-heartedness, having received reports from the first servant’s offended colleagues, the king turned him over to be tortured. Jesus tells the story with a frequent and familiar introduction: “God’s Realm is like this”, and it’s not hard to understand the point. This parable-of-the-Kingdom reminds Peter – and us - how extraordinary it is that we, whose failings are numerous, are yet loved and accepted by God beyond our deserving or our comprehension. The parable asks us - how, then, can we fail to extend compassion and generosity to one another? It’s a beautiful principle, but we all know how hard forgiveness can be. Now, some offenses are really not too hard to forgive, and letting them go doesn’t cost much and even allows us to feel good about ourselves. Other wrongs can be so deeply disturbing and cause us so much pain that they feel utterly unforgiveable. Some of the wrongs we experience in life cause true, ongoing hurt every time we think about them and seem like they’ll never go away. Probably the place where forgiveness is hardest is where the other person won’t acknowledge or take responsibility for their wrongdoing, let alone apologize. Here's the thing, though, and I’ll bet we all know it: holding on to unforgiven hurts ultimately does more damage to the one who cannot forgive than it does to the wrongdoer. Nurturing resentment, hurt, and anger can become its own prison, leading us into bitterness and self-pity that separate us from others. Forgiveness, when we can offer it, frees us. Martin Luther King had it right: “Forgiveness is not an occasional act,” he said; “it is a constant attitude.” Jesus calls on us to live out of a spirit of generosity, just as God shows immeasurable generosity to us – not keeping a record of wrongs done to us and a tally what we are owed in compensation - but a spirit of compassion for the many ways in which we all stumble and fail, a spirit of readiness to extend new chances to others, to let them try again get it right, even if they don’t see the need to do so. *** Having said all of this, I also believe that accountability is critically important, and that “get out of jail free” cards are not always called for, and not always what is best for us. As an example, we live in a time, in this nation, when we need and are trying to come to terms with the deep and persistent wrongs – those of the past and those that continue - done by white America to our neighbors of color. Because of this depth and persistence of this wrongdoing, I see it as dangerous to hold up limitless forgiveness as an ideal. I don’t have easy answers, but I do feel that there are some principles that are consistent with the Gospel that we need to hold in tension with the mandate to forgive. Again, I don’t claim easy answers, but I think there are some principles we might apply when looking at the question of forgiving wrongdoings:
The changes ahead are going to require generosity, as well as patience, as we all find our ways. So let’s head into the transitions that lie ahead of us striving to live into and extend to others the inexhaustible generosity that has been extended to us. Let’s proceed with patience and thoughtfulness, recognizing that when things are messy and times are hard, it’s easy not to be our best selves. Let’s be gentle with ourselves and extend compassion to one another in ways that help us all to take responsibility for our acts and to live, more and more, into God’s dream for us. And let us do it with thanks for God’s grace. * Readings: https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Pentecost/AProp19_RCL.html
These four passages – Jesus’ visit from Nicodemus, his encounter with the Samaritan woman, his healing of the man born blind, and his raising of Lazarus, which comes next week – are all crazy long. They contain some of the most extensive dialogue found in the gospels as well as some of the most complex plotting and the most provocative interpersonal dynamics.
John provides fewer accounts of Jesus’ active ministry than do Matthew, Mark, and Luke, but the episodes he does include, he develops in tremendous detail. As I observed when I reflected with you about the Nicodemus conversation, the community from which John’s gospel arose was deeply concerned about understanding the meaning of Jesus’ life, his identity, and the relationship between Jesus and God. These concerns of the young Church in the very last part of the 1st century Before the Common Era, were the beginning of an intense era in the life of the Church (that in fact lasted through the great Councils of the Church in the 4th century) in which pinning down the Church’s Christology – its understanding of the nature of Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah - was a primary focus. If we read John closely, we see that this is the thread that runs through the gospel, from the Prologue in which John declares that In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and throughout, including in this morning’s account of Jesus’ healing of the man who was born blind. Before we take a look at other details and implications of this morning’s gospel, I’d like to zoom in on one little line that is part of the pattern through which John reveals his convictions about Jesus. Before he heals the blind man in today’s gospel, Jesus says to him “I am the light of the world.” This is one of SEVEN “I am” statements spoken by Jesus in John’s gospel. Scholars who write about these “I am” statements don’t even count such statements as the one we heard last week, in which after talking about living water and the coming of the Messiah, Jesus says to the Samaritan Woman “I am he.” I’ll leave it to you to listen for the “I am” statement coming up in next week’s gospel. What’s the big deal about these “I am” statements? Do you recall the story of the call of Moses in Exodus? How Moses was confronted by a burning bush and heard a voice directing him to return to Egypt and lead his people out of bondage? In the communal memory of their relationship with God and of God’s saving activity on their behalf, this memory was and is one of the critical touchstones for Israel, for Jesus’ community. It would have been well known, as it was read from the Torah in the synagogue every year. One of the questions Moses asks in that ancient story aims to understand God’s identity: “But who shall I say sent me?” The answer Moses heard was “I AM.” Jewish hearers of Jesus’ repeated “I am” declarations, and readers of John’s gospel who were been grounded in the Hebrew Scriptures would have been immediately understood Jesus’/John’s reference: God was once again revealing God’s self, once again offering grace and salvation to God’s people, this time, in Jesus. And so we have this rather crazy story of the healing of the man born blind. You may have had trouble following it as we heard it this morning because the plot is a bit of a jumble. It starts with Jesus’ disciples, upon seeing a man who was blind, begging, and, assuming that his blindness was a punishment for sin, asking whether it was the man himself or his parents who had sinned. Without any direct interaction with the man himself, Jesus applies mud to the man’s eyes and directs him to go to a sacred pool to wash. And Jesus then disappears. When the formerly blind man returns with his sight restored, a complete hubbub ensues, with a wide cast of characters getting involved in the quest to figure out what has happened. Is this really the man who was blind? How then was his sight restored? The uneasy neighbors refuse to believe the man’s account of his own experience, and drag him before the local religious authorities, who in turn don’t believe his testimony, but instead, haul his parents out as witnesses. The parents actually don’t really want to get involved, fearing that coming down on the side of the controversial prophet, Jesus, would not be in their best interests. When the continuing dialogue between the religious leaders and the newly-sighted man leads to his offending them with the suggestion that they don’t really know as much as they think they know, they expel the man from the synagogue and, apparently, the community. At which point Jesus returns, to offer consolation to the one who has been healed. He confirms man’s belief in the Messiah and informs the man that he is the one who has been expected, and offers a summary statement on the whole episode: “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.” I have often referred to Frederick Buechner’s suggestion that the gospel is a mirror that shows us ourselves1, and this certainly applies here. Today’s gospel is really a sad story of a group of people who are so unwilling to have their view of the world shaken up that they refuse to hear the truth about a healing that takes place right in their midst. It would be laughable if it weren’t so sad that not just the powerful religious leaders but also the ordinary townsfolk cannot believe the firsthand testimony of a person they know. “He’s blind. He can’t possibly be able to see now just because that traveling preacher smeared some mud on him!” “It must be somebody who just looks like him, probably trying to put something over on us.” “We’d better get rid of him!” And this is, at least in part, my point about this story as a mirror. We have such a drive in us to fit the evidence to the way we already understand the world that it is really hard to remain open to new thoughts and new truths. When claims of a different reality nudge at us and make us uncomfortable, our impulse is to want to punish somebody. When Jesus says “I came into this world … so that those who do not see may see”, he’s not really talking about the man born blind: it is all of us that Jesus speaks about, even as he is also speaking to us. I feel terribly troubled, and I suspect that many of you share my concern, that the cultural divides that exist not only in our country, but increasingly, it seems, in the wider world, seem to be hardening rather than easing. I worry terribly that diverging perspectives on gun ownership, and on what we have to acknowledge are real immigration crises throughout the world, and on voting rights, to name just a few, seem to have become intractable problems because we are so dug in to our differing assumptions and differing values that we cannot even talk to one another, let alone devise solutions. I hope that I am clear that I think we are all guilty of this. It’s very easy for me to see the plank in the other person’s eye, to identify how narrow and selfish and unreasonable their positions are. I think that we Christians have Lent so that we can be thinking about the debris that compromises our own vision. In her sermon last week Heather built on Jesus’ statement to Nicodemus that “‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life”, observing that in his outreach to the Samaritan Woman, Jesus EMBODIED that message of love. Heather went on to suggest that the story of the Samaritan Woman is an invitation to us to join Jesus in the work of reconciliation among peoples who are divided from one another. I think that today’s story shows us the role that vision plays in the challenges of doing the work of reconciliation. In order bridge divides, we must be willing to see accurately, and overcome our own inclinations to remain blind. When Jesus returns to the man born blind at the end of our gospel story, he promises that he has come into the world “so that those who do not see may see”. Jesus shows us God’s presence in the world and God’s wish to heal us. The vision we need is inner vision; the vision we need is wisdom and courage, to open our eyes to the truths that are not simple and not easy, and not necessarily the ones we’d choose. What clouds our vision this week? What are we having a hard time seeing?, Where do we need healing?
|
