Lent 4, Year A

I Samuel 16: 1–13; Psalm 23; Ephesians 5: 8–14; John 9: 1–41

A homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois on Sunday, March 30, 2014.

THE DISCIPLES’ "SEMINARY EDUCATION”

(Homily text:  John 9: 1–41)

Jesus’ twelve original disciples had a lot to learn during the three years they spent with Him in His earthly ministry.  These raw recruits required a lot of shaping, disciplining and educating in order to be ready to lead the newly-born Church after the Lord ascended into heaven after His resurrection. 

The healing of the man born blind must have been one of those memorable events in which the disciples’ eyes were opened to see what God was doing in the person of Jesus Christ.  We are probably safe in saying that the blind man wasn’t the only one whose eyes needed opening…. the disciples’ eyes also needed that treatment, and, as we read in the last part of our gospel passage this morning, so did the eyes of the Pharisees. 

We could liken the disciples’ training program to a seminary education, which is meant not only to educate, but to shape and form the future leaders of the Church.  (It is interesting that the disciples’ education process took about three years, which is the length of a contemporary seminary course of study at most seminaries.)

So, let’s take a closer look at the healing of the blind man, and draw some conclusions about the things the disciples most likely learned as they watched the Lord at work.

A person’s life situation and the presence of sin:  Perhaps one of the most important lessons they took away from this event is that a person’s life situation isn’t directly dependent on sin, or a lack of sin.  Notice that the event begins when the disciples ask the Lord, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

The disciples are simply echoing the beliefs of the Jewish society of their day, a belief that if someone was beset by disease or some other condition, it was due to the presence of sin in some way or another.  Conversely, the belief also was that if a person was wealthy or was blessed with good health, that must be because they were living a righteous and holy life, following the commandments of God faithfully.

Jesus debunks this idea entirely, answering that sin was not the cause of the man’s condition, but rather, his condition is cause for the works and power of God to be seen clearly.  Here we might pause for a moment and recall Nicodemus’ comment to the Lord (which we heard two weeks ago)….Nicodemus opened his conversation with Jesus by saying, “Rabbi, we know that you are a man come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.” (John 3: 2) 

Precisely, Nicodemus.

The miracles that Jesus was doing were meant to point to His being one with the Father.  Put another way, we could say that Jesus was exercising the powers that only God has in being able to conquer disease, death, and the powers of nature because He and the Father are one (see John 10: 30).

Faith will be tested:  Notice that Jesus creates a mud pack of sorts by spitting on the ground and creating a mixture with the soil. Then, He told the blind man to go to the pool of Siloam and wash off the mixture.

Wouldn’t it have been just as possible, and easier for the blind man, to have touched his eyes and healed them on the spot?  After all, the man had to make his way, still unable to see, to the pool of Siloam in order to wash off the mud pack Jesus had applied.

But it seems as though there may have been a test of faith involved in Jesus’ instructions to the man.  “Go wash in the pool of Siloam.” 

If there was a test involved, the blind man passed, making his way to the pool to wash. 

Having 20 – 20 vision:  Notice how much of today’s text is devoted to the reaction of the Jews to this miracle.  They spend a lot of time cross-examining the man, trying to determine if he is really the one who was healed, and if he was truly born blind.  They also try to ferret out the exact means Jesus used to cure the man.  We should not be surprised to read that it was the Pharisees who were engaging in this scrutiny.  We also shouldn’t be surprised that the Pharisees focused on the fact that Jesus did this healing on the Sabbath day. 

The Pharisees’ problem was that they could see certain aspects of a situation, but they seemed to be unable to see all of a situation.

Put more precisely, the Pharisees often focused on the legalities of the law, and lost sight of the benefit to real-life human beings.  Notice that they call Jesus a “sinner” because He healed the man on the Sabbath day, while they ignore the fact that the man can now see as a result of what Jesus did.

How blind can a group of human beings be, to miss the blessing of a miraculous healing just because it took place on the holy day of the week?

Having made these three observations about the healing of the blind man, let’s draw some lessons for ourselves from this incident.

First of all, we need to be careful not to connect a person’s life circumstances to their spiritual condition.  It is a situation in which “this equals that” does not apply necessarily.  Illness does not equate to the presence of sin, any more than health and wellbeing (financial or otherwise) equates to a close walk with God.

The danger in believing that “if we do so-and-so, then God will bless us accordingly” makes our walk of faith into a matter of our own creation.  Put another way, we can fall into the trap of believing that we ourselves can improve our own situation and can earn favor with God by what we do.  Believing behaving this way can make faith a matter of a contract, making faith a bargain with God.

Of course, some things that we humans do have consequences.  There can be no doubting that.  An example would be a person’s use of illegal drugs, which can lead to a deterioration in a person’s health.

But even in a situation where a person has made poor choices that have led to destructive results, God’s power to redeem and to reclaim remains.

Oftentimes, when a person is redeemed and reclaimed by God from a destructive situation such as an addiction of some sort, God’s power is magnified by the depths of bondage that the addiction has created.  God’s power is seen more clearly in cases where human weakness is unable to effect a change.

The second thing we should notice has to do with testing.  Many times in Jesus’ earthly ministry, He tests the faith of the person who is in need.  Often, He will say, “Go your way, your faith has made you well.”

Wrapped up in the mystery of how God works is the role that the testing of our faith plays in making God’s power available.  Somehow, God wants us to play our part, as we demonstrate that we trust in God’s power, that we trust in God’s ways of doing things to answer our requests.

So we are not simply bystanders in the process of seeing God at work.  Like the man born blind, we are asked to go and do what is required to demonstrate that we believe that God’s power will be available to us in ways that God alone will determine.

Finally, we need to have our own eyesight honed by God so that we can see the entirety of a situation clearly.  The warning here is that we are not to be like the ancient Pharisees, who took the legalities of the law seriously, but who lost sight of the importance of human beings’ needs.  Jesus will summarize the relationship between the law and human beings by saying, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”  (Mark 2: 27)

If we lapse into a legalistic mode of thinking, we will all be condemned, for none of us is blameless when it comes to keeping all of God’s commandments perfectly.  Applied to the situations that will come our way with regard to those whose life circumstances are less-than-perfect, we will encounter many situations where God’s will doesn’t seem to be present.  We are to err on the side of love, just as Jesus did, recognizing that God’s love is able to penetrate any and every situation that will arise.  God’s love seeks people out, being able to accept people for who they are and where they are when God finds them.  God’s love never leaves people where they are found, however, and so, like the man born blind, everyone who comes into God’s loving embrace will find a new life ahead of them.

And that, dear friends, is great and good news indeed!

AMEN.

Lent 3, Year A

Exodus 17: 1-7; Psalm 95; Romans 5: 1-11; John 4: 5-42

A homily by Fr. Gene Tucker given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois, on Sunday, March 23, 2014.

“GOOD NEWS TRAVELS”

(Homily text:  John 4: 5-42)

Good news travels!  Good news often travels fast.

Good news travels, and comes to Samaria, as Jesus, a Jew, decides not to avoid Samaria by walking along the Jordan River valley to get from Jerusalem to Galilee, but decides, instead, to go directly north from Jerusalem to Galilee through Samaria.

There, the Lord sits by Jacob’s well[1], where he meets, at the middle of the day, a woman from the city of Sychar, as we read in our gospel text for this morning, from John 4: 5 – 42.

A lively conversation ensues…..

The Lord asks the woman for a drink, to which she responds, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?”  John inserts a sidebar here, explaining to his readers that Jews have nothing to do with Samaritans.  In addition to the hatred of Jews for Samaritans, there is the matter of a man speaking with a woman he did not know in public.

Good news takes place, as Jesus begins to break down the walls of hostility and estrangement, walls which separate Jews from Samaritans and men from women.

The conversation continues, as Jesus begins to talk about “living water”.  The woman doesn’t seem to understand what the Lord is talking about, for she seems to interpret what He is saying as having to do with “running water”.[2]  Her comments seem to indicate that, perhaps, she thought that Jesus had access to a spring somewhere, which would eliminate her need to come and draw water from a deep well.

The two talk past each other, the woman taking Jesus’ comments literally, while the Lord is speaking spiritually.  (We saw this same dynamic at work in last week’s gospel reading, which had to do with Nicodemus’ meeting with Jesus, from John 3: 1 – 17.)

Jesus then moves the conversation in another direction, as He says to the woman, “Go, call your husband and come here.”  She, in reply, says, “I have no husband.”

Jesus says that, “You are right in saying ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.”

We might very well pause to look a little closer at this part of the conversation.  Scholars down through the years have focused their interest on this aspect of the Samaritan woman’s life history, and have wondered about the specific circumstances that caused her to have been married five times.  In truth, we do not know the reasons for this large number of marriages.  Perhaps the woman had been widowed at least once, or perhaps more than once.  Perhaps she had also been the object of divorce.  What we can say with some assurance that our guess is probably right is that the number of marriages she had been party to would have been unusual.  Certainly that would have been so in Jewish society, and it probably was in Samaritan society, as well.

But what the Lord does is to point out that the woman is currently living with a man that she is not married to.

Good news has a way of traveling:  Good news comes to the Samaritan woman as the Lord does not condemn the woman for her living arrangement….neither does He condone it.  Nor does He end the conversation, or seek to get away from the woman or to ignore her, as perhaps many of the residents of Sychar may have been doing….it is notable that the woman has come to draw water at the hottest part of the day, a time when many others would have been unlikely to be present.  (We will come back to the Lord’s treatment of the woman in a moment.)

The woman is surprised, it seems. 

After all, there is no way that this Jewish man could have known, by normal human means, her past history.  What we have before us is Jesus’ ability to see and know things that normal human beings cannot know.  This is a prominent feature of John’s gospel account, for John takes pains to let us know that Jesus is “one with the Father” (John 10: 30).  The point is that Jesus has God’s power to know all things.

So, she apparently decides that, if this fascinating Jewish man could know her life story, perhaps he could also settle a long-standing matter of debate between Samaritans and Jews:  The question of which mountain is to be considered the holy mountain where people are supposed to worship God.

Good news is expressed in Jesus’ comments:  Essentially, He says that “salvation is from the Jews”, which answers the woman’s question.  But then He continues to say that the time is coming when people who worship God won’t focus on any particular mountain at all, for God will be worshipped by all who worship “in spirit and in truth”.

This scrappy lady responds by saying that, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ).  When he comes, he will tell us all things.”

Good news comes in all its fullness as Jesus confirms that the Christ, the Messiah, has come.  He says, in response to the woman’s comment about the coming of the Christ, “I who speak to you am he.”[3]

Now, good news comes to the residents of Sychar, as the woman gets up, leaves her water jar by the well, and goes into town to exclaim “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did.  Can this be the Christ?”  Good news travels fast, by the feet of the Samaritan woman and by the words of her testimony.

John goes on to tell us that many residents of Sychar came to believe in Jesus as a result, first of all, of the woman’s testimony, but also because they, themselves, had come to experience the Lord for themselves.

Some observations about this marvelous encounter are in order:

• The walls of separation that divide one person from another, one ethnic or racial group from another, one gender from another, all come tumbling down as Jesus Christ is encountered.  This is good news, indeed.

• God’s presence, a presence that is to be worshipped, adored and honored, will be seen and known everywhere.  This is good news, for no longer will people be able to think that God is to be found only in a special, holy place (mountain).  No, God is present everywhere and not just in a special, holy place, as Jacob exclaimed after he had had his dream of a ladder reaching up into heaven at Bethel.  In response to his dream, he said, “Truly, the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.”  (Genesis 28: 16)

• God’s good news extends to everyone, even to those whose lifestyles are less-than-acceptable.  (Here we would do well to remember that the Lord didn’t avoid, censure or condemn the woman for her life history, as perhaps many in Jewish society would have done, and perhaps as many in her own community were also doing.) The Lord is quite willing to accept this woman – and everyone - in the place and in the circumstance in which He finds them.  But the Lord never leaves anyone in the place where the initial encounter takes place.  That part of the good news is also important to underscore.  The Samaritan woman’s life changed forever, we can be reasonably certain, as a result of her encounter with Jesus beside Jacob’s Well.

• When we, ourselves, encounter the Good News of God made known in Jesus Christ, we will want to tell others about that experience.  Good news is meant to be shared!

This process is – in its simplest form – the same process that Jesus outlined to His disciples as He told them to look up and see the harvest that was at hand in the city of Sychar.  “Look,” he said, “and see that the fields are white for harvest.”  He told them that they were to share in a harvest whose seeds someone else (Jesus Himself) had planted.”

All of us who have come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ have benefited from a rich harvest, the seeds of which were sown by the Lord Himself.  We have received good news ourselves, through the graciousness of God.

Thanks be to God for the Good News of Jesus Christ.

AMEN.

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[1]   Jacob’s Well is located near the modern city of Nablus, which is located in the West Bank region.  The well is about 135 feet deep, and is now housed in a Greek Orthodox Church which has been built over the site.

[2]   The Greek word which is usually translated as “living” can also mean “running”.

[3]   The Greek literally reads, “I am, the one speaking to you.”

Lent 2, Year A

Genesis 12: 1–4a; Psalm 121; Romans 4: 1–5, 13–17; John 3: 1–17

A homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois on Sunday, March 16, 2014.

“THE SPIRITUAL AND THE PHYSICAL”

(Homily text:  John 3: 1–17)

            “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand this?” Jesus said to the Pharisee Nicodemus.

            What might the Lord have been referring to by asking this challenging question of His nighttime visitor, Nicodemus?

            Jesus’ comments about spiritual realities having to do with rebirth provide the answer. The Lord says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born anew (or again)[1], he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

            Jesus is speaking of a spiritual reality, as we see in His comments about the movement of the Spirit of God being like the wind, which blows where it will.

            But notice Nicodemus’ response to the necessity of rebirth:  He asks if a person must re-enter his mother’s womb and be born a second time. 

            Nicodemus’ focus is on the physical, Jesus’ focus is on the spiritual.

            The two are talking past each other, to a great degree.

            This conversation tells a great deal about the mindset of the Jews of Jesus’ day.  It is a mindset that had to do almost entirely with the physical realities of daily living.  It concentrated on that reality so much – one gets the impression – that the things of God were blocked out.  For evidence of that mindset, consider the things that seemed to be important to the Jews of 2,000 years ago:

• Strict observance of the laws concerning the observance of the Sabbath day meant that one could not travel more than a certain distance.  Nor could a person be healed on the Sabbath (remember that Jesus got into trouble for doing that).  Nor could a person walk through a wheat field and pluck grain on the Sabbath (Jesus’ disciples got into trouble doing that).

• Rules about the distinctions between what was clean and what was unclean meant that contact with things that would render a person ritually unclean were to be avoided at all costs.  For example, in Jesus’ parable about the Good Samaritan, notice that He says that the priest and the Levite both pass by the wounded man lying beside the road without stopped to assist.  The reason for their avoidance is because both the priest and the Levite would have become ritually unclean by coming into contact with the man’s blood, and would have been unable to enter the temple until they had gone through a cleansing process.

• Certain persons, because of their behavior or their occupation, were regarded as sinners.  Jesus cites the tax collectors and the prostitutes as examples of those the Jews of His day declared to be in that category, perhaps permanently so.  And yet, despite the prevailing attitudes of many, Jesus specifically reached out to these outcasts.

            We live in a material, physical world.  So did the people of Jesus’ day.

            We are surrounded by nature and by the things that human beings have created:  Buildings, roads, cities, a culture, nations (to cite but a few).  We occupy much of our time dealing with the physical demands of daily living:  Preparing meals, seeing to the maintenance and upkeep of property, getting work done on our cars, decided what to wear on any given day, going to work, and so forth.

            It’s easy, given the predominance of the physical realities of life, to think that that’s all there is to life and living.

            We live in what has been called a “consumer age”. Evidence of our preoccupation with the physical and tangible can be seen in the slogan which says, “The one who dies with the most toys wins.”

            We are preoccupied with getting ahead, with landing a new or better job, with managing our financial portfolio or our bank account.

            It is easy for this mindset and these preoccupations to skew our priorities and alter the things we pay attention to in our life with God, as well.   Ever met a person whose concentration in the Church is on the beauty of the Church building, or on the liturgy, or on the music, or on the Prayer Book?  Sometimes, people who focus in on such physical details as these risk missing the spiritual realities which lie within and beyond the physical realities of Church architecture, liturgy and music. 

            That was the focus of many in Jesus’ day, as well.  Those who went to the temple in Jerusalem marveled at its grandeur and majestic size and architecture.  They took part in its rituals and scrupulously followed the Law of Moses in their liturgical practices.  The image the gospel accounts paint of the religious practices of Jesus’ day is one of a formal-but-distant relationship with God.  Much of what took place in the Temple had to do with maintaining what was the “big business” of that day:  The priestly families made money from the sale of animals that were destined for sacrifice.  (Remember that Jesus cast out the money-changers, accusing them of making His Father’s house a “den of thieves”.)

            How does the spiritual reality relate to the physical reality?

            Nicodemus seems to be somewhat aware that God was active in the things that Jesus did, for his opening comment affirms that reality.  Nicodemus says, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do, unless God is with him.”

            Now, it’s possible that Nicodemus was simply seeking to curry favor with the Lord by putting his best and most positive foot forward at the beginning of their conversation.  But it’s also possible that Nicodemus is affirming that God was active in the observable, physical things that Jesus had been doing.  Perhaps Nicodemus had in mind Jesus’ healings, or the feeding of the 5,000.

            But Nicodemus seems to miss the scope of God’s activity in the things that Jesus was doing.  His reaction to Jesus’ requirement for a rebirth affirms that he is caught in the mindset of his day:  “Can a man be born a second time when he is old?” Nicodemus says.

            Jesus attempts to get Nicodemus to see things differently, and with larger eyes than the mindset of many in the culture of his day would allow.  Jesus points to the spiritual reality which interacts with the physical reality.  That is the essence of being born anw.

            The Spirit’s power changes everything about the physical. The unseen reality shapes the reality we can see.

            So, for example, in the Eucharist, we affirm that Jesus is really present in the elements of bread and wine.  The sacrifice of the Eucharist isn’t simply a memorial meal, but it is to come into one-on-one contact with the Lord Himself, who is present in some mysterious way we can’t fully understand, but can fully affirm, in the physical and tangible elements.  To think that the Holy Communion is simply a memorial and nothing more is to risk dismissing the spiritual reality in favor of the physical reality.

            If we ignore or deny the Spirit of God’s power to create and to re-create, we risk behaving like the Pharisees of long ago. 

• We might think that God’s power to change lives, to bring about a new birth, is limited.

•  We might think that some situations are simply never going to change, because no one, including God, can change them. 

• We might think that some people are permanently outside of God’s favor. 

            But Jesus’ comments tell us otherwise.  Jesus tells us that “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.”

            “Whoever”. 

            Anyone and everyone can come into a new or a renewed relationship with God, and to have a new birth, a new way of being, in the process.

            Thanks be to the God whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.

AMEN.

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[1]   The Greek word can mean either “anew” or “again”.