March 30, 2014 Fourth Sunday in Lent

John 9:1-41

1 As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
   3 “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. 4 As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. 5 While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
   6 After saying this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes. 7 “Go,” he told him, “wash in the Pool of Siloam” (this word means “Sent”). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing.
   8 His neighbors and those who had formerly seen him begging asked, “Isn’t this the same man who used to sit and beg?” 9 Some claimed that he was.
   Others said, “No, he only looks like him.”
   But he himself insisted, “I am the man.”
   10 “How then were your eyes opened?” they asked.
   11 He replied, “The man they call Jesus made some mud and put it on my eyes. He told me to go to Siloam and wash. So I went and washed, and then I could see.”
   12 “Where is this man?” they asked him.
   “I don’t know,” he said.
    13 They brought to the Pharisees the man who had been blind. 14 Now the day on which Jesus had made the mud and opened the man’s eyes was a Sabbath. 15 Therefore the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his sight. “He put mud on my eyes,” the man replied, “and I washed, and now I see.”
   16 Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.”
   But others asked, “How can a sinner perform such signs?” So they were divided.
   17 Then they turned again to the blind man, “What have you to say about him? It was your eyes he opened.”
   The man replied, “He is a prophet.”
   18 They still did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they sent for the man’s parents. 19 “Is this your son?” they asked. “Is this the one you say was born blind? How is it that now he can see?”
   20 “We know he is our son,” the parents answered, “and we know he was born blind. 21 But how he can see now, or who opened his eyes, we don’t know. Ask him. He is of age; he will speak for himself.” 22 His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders, who already had decided that anyone who acknowledged that Jesus was the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. 23 That was why his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.”
   24 A second time they summoned the man who had been blind. “Give glory to God by telling the truth,” they said. “We know this man is a sinner.”
   25 He replied, “Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!”
   26 Then they asked him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?”
   27 He answered, “I have told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples too?”
   28 Then they hurled insults at him and said, “You are this fellow’s disciple! We are disciples of Moses! 29 We know that God spoke to Moses, but as for this fellow, we don’t even know where he comes from.”
   30 The man answered, “Now that is remarkable! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. 31 We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly person who does his will. 32 Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. 33 If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.”
   34 To this they replied, “You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!” And they threw him out.
   35 Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”
   36 “Who is he, sir?” the man asked. “Tell me so that I may believe in him.”
   37 Jesus said, “You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you.”
   38 Then the man said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him.
   39 Jesus said, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.”
   40 Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, “What? Are we blind too?”
   41 Jesus said, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.

“Was Blind But Now I See”

The man born blind was healed.  It was a miracle.  No one could take that away from him.  His eyes were opened not only to the beauty of the world around him but also to the beauty of the world within him.  He saw not only a sunset;  he also saw the Son of Man, and he worshipped him.  He saw life anew through the eyes of faith and he was indeed born anew in the Kingdom of Heaven.

To stand with him is to dare believe in miracles and to dare confess that we are often blind and cannot see...that we need “light in the darkness of our hearts” .

Is this not our challenge not once but over and over again in our lives.
To see beyond the moment to that which is eternal and to see in the moment that which is truly joyful and joy giving?

And is it not a miracle when our eyes are opened and we see more clearly - even through it is always as “in a mirror dimly” - the power of love to transform our lives and to give us joy and hope.

The movie “The Bucket List” portrays this truth for us in what was for me a powerful way.

It is the story of two men - Carter, played by Morgan Freeman
and   Edward, played by Jack Nicholson,  who meet in a hospital room where both of them find themselves with terminal cancer.
Carter - Morgan Freeman - and intellectual who was forced by family obligations to become an auto mechanic is making out a list of what he wants to do before he kicks the bucket.
It contains such noble things as “witness something truly majestic, help a complete stranger for good, laugh until he cries, and even drive a Shelby Mustang.”

Edward- Jack Nicholson -  sees the list and wants to join the fun.  He adds skydiving, seeing the Taj Mahal, getting a tattoo, sitting on top of the Egyptian pyramids, and kissing the prettiest girl in the world.

So they start out together with Edward’s money, and it is wild ride.  Especially for Carter who hasn’t done anything this wild in his life.  And as they go about all the exciting things Carter shares with Edward some of his inner self.  Like, on seeing the brilliant stars in the black night he says, “This is one of God’s most amazing wonders.”  Edward sneers at it and they enter in a discussion which ends up with Carter asking, “What do you believe?  To which Edward replies, “We live, we die and wheels on the bus go round and round...unless you think you know something I don’t know?”  And Carter responds. “No, I just have faith.”

They also talk about their families and it becomes apparent that Edward is divorced numerous times and estranged from his only daughter.  Somehow in the subtleties of the time spent together - and there only hints of this in the movie, like when Carter asks Edward as they sit on the top of the Egyptian pyramid, two questions:  “Have you found joy?” and “Has your life brought joy to others?”

Somehow Edward begins to see his blindness - his failure in spite of his great financial success and he ends up going to his daughter to seek reconciliation and it is there that for me, the miracle of the story happens. He discovers he has a granddaughter and she, perhaps 2 years old, gives him a hug and he kisses her cheek.

The next scene shows him scratching off the bucket list the item - “to kiss the most beautiful girl in the world.”

And the miracle happens again.  The blind see!  Life is given joy!  Salvation has come to his house!

At Carters funeral Edward says - “He saved my life and he knew it before I did.”

Is this not how it is with us?
Is this not the miracle which happens in our lives - not once, not twice, but many times as we are led out of our blindness into the light of God’s love which transforms our living, brings joy to our hearts, and causes us to live so others can know joy too?

A question we might all well ask ourselves is, how do my beliefs keep me from seeing Jesus present in toady's world?  How does what I believe keep me from seeing and believing in “ Thy Kingdom come, Thy will  be done, on earth as it is in heaven”?

Mar 23 2014 Third Sunday in Lent

John 4: 5-42

5 So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.
   7 When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” 8 (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)
   9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.
   10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
   11 “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”
   13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
   15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”
   16 He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”
   17 “I have no husband,” she replied.
   Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. 18 The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”
   19 “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”
   21 “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind oworshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”
   25 The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”
   26 Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”
    27 Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?”
   28 Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” 30 They came out of the town and made their way toward him.
   31 Meanwhile his disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat something.”   32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”
   33 Then his disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought him food?”
   34 “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. 35 Don’t you have a saying, ‘It’s still four months until harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. 36 Even now the one who reaps draws a wage and harvests a crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. 37 Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true. 38 I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.”
    39 Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. 41 And because of his words many more became believers.
   42 They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world
“Because Of Her Testimony”

The Samaritan woman did not expect Jesus to speak to her.  And especially about something as intimate as life with God.  May it not be that God also encounters us where and when we don't expect it as well as in those we don’t expect God to be.

Jesus didn’t get the woman of Samaria out of anything; he got her into the thrill of faith and discipleship.
It is the same for us.  Faith doesn’t get us out of the tasks of life;  it gets us into the tasks of discipleship, living as a forgiven servant, opening up life to new and amazing challenges and tasks.

She opened the eyes of others to God.  Her testimony was honest, real, and human.
She was personal, brutally honest about herself, and pointed away from herself to Jesus.  Those who heard her went on to believe for themselves; her testimony was successful.
A man from India said when asked why he could not accept Christianity:
“It is not new, it is not true, but most of all, it is not you.”

Her testimony was also life giving for her.
When we are talking about something human -like our own sins - the spiritual isn’t very far away.
When we share our weakness redeeming things begin to happen in us and it is a life giving energy - living water.

Out of the honesty of telling it like it is, comes living water - forgiving grac

Mar 16, 2014 Second Sunday in Lent

John 3:1-17 (The Message)

1 There was a man of the Pharisee sect, Nicodemus, a prominent leader among the Jews. 2 Late one night he visited Jesus and said, "Rabbi, we all know you're a teacher straight from God. No one could do all the God-pointing, God-revealing acts you do if God weren't in on it." 3 Jesus said, "You're absolutely right. Take it from me: Unless a person is born from above, it's not possible to see what I'm pointing to - to God's kingdom." 4 "How can anyone," said Nicodemus, "be born who has already been born and grown up? You can't re-enter your mother's womb and be born again. What are you saying with this 'born-from-above' talk?" 5 Jesus said, "You're not listening. Let me say it again. Unless a person submits to this original creation - the 'wind hovering over the water' creation, the invisible moving the visible, a baptism into a new life - it's not possible to enter God's kingdom. 6 When you look at a baby, it's just that: a body you can look at and touch. But the person who takes shape within is formed by something you can't see and touch - the Spirit - and becomes a living spirit. 7 "So don't be so surprised when I tell you that you have to be 'born from above' - out of this world, so to speak. 8 You know well enough how the wind blows this way and that. You hear it rustling through the trees, but you have no idea where it comes from or where it's headed next. That's the way it is with everyone 'born from above' by the wind of God, the Spirit of God." 9 Nicodemus asked, "What do you mean by this? How does this happen?" 10 Jesus said, "You're a respected teacher of Israel and you don't know these basics? 11 Listen carefully. I'm speaking sober truth to you. I speak only of what I know by experience; I give witness only to what I have seen with my own eyes. There is nothing secondhand here, no hearsay. Yet instead of facing the evidence and accepting it, you procrastinate with questions. 12 If I tell you things that are plain as the hand before your face and you don't believe me, what use is there in telling you of things you can't see, the things of God? 13 "No one has ever gone up into the presence of God except the One who came down from that Presence, the Son of Man. 14 In the same way that Moses lifted the serpent in the desert so people could have something to see and then believe, it is necessary for the Son of Man to be lifted up - 15 and everyone who looks up to him, trusting and expectant, will gain a real life, eternal life. 16 "This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. 17 God didn't go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again.
He came by night to ask the question we all ask - only he didn’t know what he was asking and we often don’t either.  It is the question which arises our of our need for a Savior as Dr. Thielicke puts it:

“At root very primitive things play the decisive role in our lives.  Our stomach with its need of nourishment, our conscience with its lack of peace and our death towards which we irresistibly move...these are the forces which decisively constitute life.  The one who can master these, taking away anxiety, consoling the conscience and supporting us in dying is the one for whom we truly look  Nicodemus had an obscure feeling that Jesus might be that person.”    Out Of the Depths, p. 63

How does this happen?  Being born anew?

It happens like falling in love.  It happens not because we figure lit out but because we let the wind of God’s forgiving love and grace blow over us.

God does it.  We just let God do it by surrendering ourselves to God and feeling the power of his grace at work in our lives.

The wind blows - the sun shines- God’s love is real.  Let it happen to you.

Mar 9, 2014  First Sunday in Lent

Matthew 4:1-11 (The Message)

1 Next Jesus was taken into the wild by the Spirit for the Test. The Devil was ready to give it. 2 Jesus prepared for the Test by fasting forty days and forty nights. That left him, of course, in a state of extreme hunger, 3 which the Devil took advantage of in the first test: "Since you are God's Son, speak the word that will turn these stones into loaves of bread." 4 Jesus answered by quoting Deuteronomy: "It takes more than bread to stay alive. It takes a steady stream of words from God's mouth." 5 For the second test the Devil took him to the Holy City. He sat him on top of the Temple and said, 6 "Since you are God's Son, jump." The Devil goaded him by quoting Psalm 91: "He has placed you in the care of angels. They will catch you so that you won't so much as stub your toe on a stone." 7 Jesus countered with another citation from Deuteronomy: "Don't you dare test the Lord your God." 8 For the third test, the Devil took him on the peak of a huge mountain. He gestured expansively, pointing out all the earth's kingdoms, how glorious they all were. 9 Then he said, "They're yours - lock, stock, and barrel. Just go down on your knees and worship me, and they're yours." 10 Jesus' refusal was curt: "Beat it, Satan!" He backed his rebuke with a third quotation from Deuteronomy: "Worship the Lord your God, and only him. Serve him with absolute single-heartedness." 11 The Test was over. The Devil left. And in his place, angels! Angels came and took care of Jesus' needs. Teaching and Healing
.

Jesus was tempted.  His temptation was real.  It was not a game he was playing.  He was truly human which means he was temptable.  His temptation was necessary in his human journey as the Son of God.

His temptation was for you and me.  It reminds us that we too will be tempted and we can overcome, with his help.  We too have to struggle with wanting bread more then the bread of life; wanting to have it easy rather then face the difficulties of life; wanting to have it all and even be god rather then live as His children in His Kingdom; as servants not masters.

We live in a fallen world; we are a fallen race.  We are temptable, for we want more then we have. We want to have it all and feel good; not be challenged to live as God would have us live.  C. S. Lewis reminds us that the devil is most pleased with good people who do no good.

God calls us to struggle to be all we can be as we struggle to stay steadfast in
God’s word.  God’s word which always places grace at the center of our living and calls us to be what only grace can enable us to be.

Jesus had limits; his limits were that he was not to use his divine sonship as a way to get out of being human when the going got tough.  Not turn stones to bread - jump off the temple, do what best serves himself even it it means worshipping the devil!

We would like to live without limits, thinking this would be paradise. But would it?

“Imagine a life without the experience of limits.  You could have wild strawberries whenever you wanted them!  Nothing would be inaccessible, nothing forbidden, nothing out of reach, no unfulfilled dreams or wishes, no ‘thus far and no farther!’.  But how could human beings under such conditions ever experience wonder, surprise, or gratitude?”     (Douglas John Hall, “God and Human Suffering, p. 58)

And where would life be without wonder, surprise or gratitude?