Month: April 2014

A Sermon for Easter Day – Year A – 20 April 2014

John Edward Miller, Rector

 If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory. –  Colossians 3:1-4

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes.

But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her. – John 20:1-18

The Collect

 O God, who for our redemption gave your only-begotten Son to the death of the cross, and by his glorious resurrection delivered us from the power of our enemy: Grant us so to die daily to sin, that we may evermore live with him in the joy of his resurrection; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

  “Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!”

Easter is about the power of God – the power that transcends all other powers. God is love, and love is God’s power. God creates, redeems, and sustains the world with the power of love. Unleashing love’s ultimate force, God raised Jesus from the dead. And love prevailed; it proved to be stronger than death, greater than the power of annihilation. That is the pivotal point of Easter. When God raised Jesus, everything changed. God’s power ushered in a new state of affairs in this world that he loves so fully.

Easter proclaims that God’s love has dominion over death. On the cross the power of death had done its worst. Jesus died, and about that there is no doubt. But death could not hold Jesus; because of God’s love he is alive, and his Spirit is with us and in us, giving life to our mortal bodies. Therefore on Easter we have come to celebrate, generation after generation, because we rejoice in the truth of this astounding claim. We sing our alleluias of praise, hear God’s word of love, and take the holy sacrament to our comfort, knowing that the power of love is at work in us. We are becoming what God intends us to be, his Easter people. The resurrection of Jesus blazed a trail – a new way of being that is ours to accept and to follow.

So it’s not simply that we’re celebrating an ancient miracle. We have gathered as Easter people – people of the promise of new life. We worship because we believe that God’s Easter has a now dimension as well as a then. We have come together in the well-founded belief that the resurrection of Jesus was not a one-time event. We are persuaded that Easter marks the beginning of a new way of living for those who trust in the goodness of God, the presence of God, the power of God, even as they come face-to-face with the terror of death.

Easter demonstrates a love that will not let us go, a love that is not defeated by death. We rejoice because we know in excruciating detail that God’s love for us has no limits. That is the message of the Holy Week just past. In Christ God has rendered himself vulnerable to the worst that our human condition has to endure. For our sake, he suffered shame, treachery, betrayal, and execution at the hands of brutal men. His death is God’s own taste of death. But that solidarity in suffering and loss is not the final word. On Easter Day the word is life; God is the Lord of the living.

What that means is that we also share in the resurrection to eternal life. For us, Easter Day is the invitation to claim and to activate our gift of new life in Jesus Christ. Easter is the day that the Lord has made; it is first day of our new life. But that life is not business as usual; it is marked by radical transformation made possible by the power of resurrection. By the grace of God we are being raised with Christ to a life that seeks the things that are above, where Christ is, rather than being pulled down by the gravity of self-gratification and of things that are perishing. Even now God is busily working to remove the massive stone that separates the living from the dead, the awful stone of grief, of loss, of dark finality. God is love, and his will to resurrect us is relentless. The process of resurrection at work in the present, as well as in the past, in the future as well as in the present. We Christians are a people who trust the re-creative power unleashed in Christ’s resurrection. And we trust its availability even as we trust its relevance.

The Church would not exist if the resurrection were nothing more than wishful thinking or pious delusion. None of us would have come to church today to hear again an idle tale that had no footing in reality. We have come to affirm what is real – the power that takes what is dead and brings it to life, and the power that takes what is languishing in darkness and leads it to Christ, who is the light of the world. That is, we hold that resurrection is not solely tied to the idea of death. Our Easter hope does not exclusively lie in a realm of eternity beyond time and space. Easter is also about transforming the world for which God gave his only-begotten Son. That incomparable gift was offered so that those who believe in him might have eternal life – now and then. Easter faith believes that God’s love makes possible life before death, and a life that surpasses death. We trust in the resurrection of the body, the whole human self, and in the life everlasting. Our God is the Lord and Giver of life, both now and in the world to come.

On Easter Day our thoughts inevitably go to loved ones that we have lost. Their death has affected us deeply, leaving an empty space in us that cries out to be filled. We cannot fill those voids by our own actions, and we cannot depend on our memory alone as the place where they live on. Nothing that we can do will gloss over the abiding awareness of loss. Moreover, our memory famously fades over time, adding frustration to grief. Nevertheless, we are not helpless. Easter reminds us that it is God’s action that redeems us from the power of death, and it is God’s remembering that finally saves our beloved ones.

Easter powerfully declares that God loses nothing that is precious to him, including our selves, our loved ones, our dreams, and our accomplishments for the good. While our most durable monuments crumble, that which is worthy, just, and loving about our life is never lost in God’s eternal life. I believe that God’s infinite capacity to re-member us – to put us back together when we and the people dear to us are disintegrating – eternally recreates us as whole, vital, distinctive selves who are present to God and one another in the communion of saints. This belief is beautifully expressed in the Prayer Book’s burial service. We say:

Remember thy servant, O Lord, according to the favor which thou bearest unto thy people, that increasing in the knowledge and love of thee, he may go from strength to strength in the life of perfect service in thy heavenly kingdom; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.[1]

That prayer has given great comfort to those who grieve. It comes out of the sure and certain hope of resurrection to eternal life that God gives us in Christ Jesus. His rising from the dead, to which Scripture attests, is a lens through which faith sees everything. The truth of Easter and the truth about our future in God are made real by foretastes of God’s resurrecting love in the now. From time to time our Easter eyes glimpse the power of resurrection in our very midst. Those experiences confirm our venture of faith, and form the foundation on which we build our expectations for eternity.

St. Paul’s letter to the Colossians presents an inspired witness to this sacred truth. Although he is writing from his prison cell, Paul still exudes confidence in the Easter Gospel. He emphasizes the here-and-now dimension of resurrection life, saying, “. . . you have been raised with Christ.” The apostle’s message urges every Christian – then and now – to  claim the Easter miracle as his or her own. Paul tells us to accept what we have been freely given in Christ, and grow into the promise of our baptism. He challenges us to be transformed by what you see and feel and hear of the risen Lord, and attain the full stature of Christ.

Whenever we witness an act of compassion, whenever we receive the grace of forgiveness, whenever we are relieved of fear and loneliness, whenever we are uplifted by a spirit of giving that expects nothing in return, whenever we feel the influence of a love that is patient and kind, that is not jealous or boastful, that is not arrogant or rude, whenever we experience life-restoring hospitality, whenever we are healed in body and in soul by outstretched hands of mercy, then we have been touched by the power of God, and realize that, by believing, we have been raised with Christ.

On this Easter Day, we sing our Alleluias because we have tasted the first fruits of eternal life. We rejoice because we know that the first Easter is the ongoing power of new being. It is a process that is here and now. Resurrection is what the God of love is about in every moment of life. Because we are the people of hope who feel Easter’s power, we entrust our selves and those whom we cherish to God, who is the Creator, the Redeemer, and the Preserver of that life which is eternal.

“Alleluia! Christ is risen! . . . How about you?”

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, may it always be so. Amen.

 A Sermon for the Sunday of the Passion
 Palm Sunday – 13 April 2014

Eleanor Lee Wellford, Associate Rector

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.  And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death– even death on a cross.

 Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.  – Philippians 2:5-11

If you look up at the hymn boards you’ll notice 3 hymns listed there – as is typical of most any Sunday.  And, as is also typical, we we’ll sing all three of them.  But this morning, there is a hymn that’s not listed, nor will it be sung; but it’s considered by Biblical scholars to be a hymn none the less.  It’s contained in the part of Paul’s letter to the Philippians that we just heard.

 The hymn contains one of the most complete and accurate descriptions of Jesus in the New Testament.  Even though he wrote decades before any of the four gospels were written, Paul seemed to understand the very mind of Christ and invites us to have that same mind.  He wrote that Jesus emptied himself and he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death.  Then he was exalted by God and given a name above all others so that at the mention of it, every knee should bend and every tongue should confess. 

What does it take for us to literally fall to our knees and confess to Jesus?  In Paul’s case, it took a lot.  Before he became Paul, he was Saul of Tarsus.  And after the death and resurrection of Jesus, Saul, a Jew, was authorized by the high priest to arrest and persecute any followers of Jesus in the city of Damascus.  On the road leading to that city, however, Saul and his traveling companions were struck down by a blinding light. 

And then he heard a voice saying to him: “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” (Acts 9:4).  As is natural for anyone hearing a strange voice, Saul asked who was speaking to him and the voice replied, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.” (Acts 9:5-6). 

Saul did what he was told, most likely because he literally couldn’t see to do anything else.  Meanwhile, Jesus appeared in a vision to a man in Damascus named Ananias.  He told Ananias to go seek out Saul, because as Jesus explained, he had chosen Saul to deliver the gospel to the Gentiles, their kings and the people of Israel.  Ananias was shocked by what he heard Jesus tell him, because he knew all too well Saul’s reputation for being a persecutor of Christians.  Nevertheless, Ananias did what he was told, too.  He found Saul and laid his hands on him, at which point Saul’s sight was restored.   Saul was then baptized a Christian and his name was changed to Paul.

It’s amazing to me how Paul knew the mind of Christ as well as he did because he spent so much time and energy opposing it.  Then with his name change came a change of heart and an embracing of Jesus’ teachings.  Paul not only lived by those teachings, but he encouraged and expected others to do the same.  That’s why his visits and letters to communities such as the Philippians were so important in helping them stay unified in the face of opposition.  After all, Paul had been on both sides of that opposition which gave him a unique perspective and quite a bit of insight into the mind of Christ.

Paul knew that the essence of that mind was humility and captured it in his hymn.  He wrote that though Jesus was “in the form of God, he did not equate equality of God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself” (Philippians 2:5-6).  And those last two words “emptied himself” are what I keep going back to.

Do you know what it means to “empty yourself?”  It means dismantling every shred of our carefully formed image and not comparing or caring what people think of us.  It means becoming a slave and always putting the welfare of others before our own.  Only then, wrote Paul, will we know the mind of Christ Jesus.  Why would any of us want to do that?  Why would we want to have our lives be controlled by the constant needs of others?  Wouldn’t the consequences be that we would end up with nothing? 

Jesus entered this world curled up in a wooden manger and full of possibility; and he left this world outstretched on a wooden cross with not one worldly possession to his name.  That’s what he got for emptying himself.  But he didn’t end up with nothing.  He left this world with the same heart full of unconditional love for all of us as he did when he entered it.  And he left this world with his humility intact.  After all, it was on Palm Sunday, just days before his death,  that Jesus chose to enter the City of Jerusalem on a donkey instead of on something the size and stature of a Clydesdale which would have fit the image that the Jews had in mind for their Messiah. 

So, when you think about it, maybe humility is the one thing no one can take away from us.  We can be stripped of our power, our status, our prestige, even our dignity, but no one can strip us of our humility.  Because once we humble ourselves, we’ve emptied ourselves and by definition of empty, there is nothing left to take. 

Think for a moment how hard that would be to have nothing left but our humility, when we are so used to judging ourselves and self worth by all the things we have in relation to what other people have.  I am especially guilty of that!  I love fine things – cars, clothes, jewelry and I don’t try to hide that fact.  But the truth is that I’m probably using those things to fill an emptiness related to feelings of self worth.  It’s one thing to have a feeling of emptiness which many of us try in vain to fill up, and quite another to actually empty ourselves.  That shouldn’t be confused because it’s only the process of emptying ourselves that transforms us. 

When Saul was knocked off of his horse and struck blind and realized that Jesus was talking to him, he was profoundly changed.  Probably for the first time in his life, he became needy and vulnerable.  He had to empty himself of everything that defined him as the persecutor Saul, so that he could become the apostle Paul and help believers connect with the same mind that was in Christ Jesus.   

And though emptying himself for the sake of the gospel landed him in jail more than once, he was not left with nothing.  He, too, was left with his humility which affected everything he said and did for the rest of his life. 

The good news for the congregation in Philippi and for us on this beginning of Holy Week is that once we are stripped of everything that seems important to us in defining who we are, we are not left with nothing.  We may be humbled to our knees by the struggles that we encounter in our lives, but we are not down and out.  We may be empty of everything our ego holds near and dear to it, but we are not nobodies. 

Isn’t it true that if we’re not empty, then we can’t be filled up?  If our cars aren’t empty, how can they be filled with gas?  If our stomachs aren’t empty, how can they be filled with food?  If our souls aren’t empty, how can they be filled with the Holy Spirit? Being empty doesn’t mean being left with nothing.  And being empty is not the same thing as feeling empty because feeling empty is simply an ego in trouble – a fear of not measuring up. 

Becoming empty by humbling ourselves transforms us into people full of possibility as Paul knew so well – the possibility of being filled with the life giving, love giving mind of Christ Jesus.  And no one can take that away from us.

A Sermon for the Fifth Sunday in Lent

Year A – April 6, 2014

David Hathaway Knight,  Priest Associate

Send your spirit, God, to open our hearts and our minds to your Word,
and strengthen us to live according to your will, in Jesus’ name.  Amen.

Driving down Monument  Avenue earlier last week, I was struck by the beauty of the trees bursting into bloom—there were these radiant white and pink blossoms that I swear weren’t out the night before.  I suddenly became aware of new life around me.  Once again, this bursting forth of nature became in some mysterious way a reminder of the new life given to us in the Resurrection and the hope that can bring to each of us.  However elusive hope may be, there remains the promise that hope will return.   The prophet Ezekiel promised that that the Israelites, enslaved by foreign masters and sent into a desolate place in exile could have hope again.  The psalmist cries out of the depths to the Lord,

I wait for you, O Lord:  my soul waits, for you
in your word is my hope.

Paul writes in his letter to the church in Rome, “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.”  In the gospel we hear the story of the raising of Lazarus from the dead.  It points to the hope of the resurrection with profound anticipation that whenever you and I are in the midst of suffering and pain, and that can indeed feel like being in a tomb, God promises to unbind us so that we too will experience the power of the resurrection in some powerful way in our own lives.  As Lent continues to move us toward Easter and as these days lengthen, and as nature begins to blossom once again, you and I have reason to hope.

As I was reading this Sunday’s passage from the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel, a memory, etched in my brain from my younger days, came to mind.  It is that memory of the Saint Paul’s College Choir from Lawrenceville, Virginia coming to Lenox School where I was a student back in the early ‘60’s. Saint Paul’s College, as you recall was a college primarily for African-American students. Sadly, it closed its doors last year, but it was a vibrant college back then.  The president of the college at the time had a son, Earl McClenney, Jr, who was a student in the class ahead of me at Lenox School.  Each year while he was atLenoxSchool, theSaint Paul’s College Choir had Lenox as one of their stops on their spring tour.  It was a fine choir and while they had a wide variety of musical selections in their repertoire, I vividly remember their rendition of the African-American spiritual with these words which I’m sure you remember from childhood as well:

The toe bone connected to the foot bone,
The foot bone connected to the ankle bone,
The ankle bone connected to the leg bone,
The leg bone connected to the knee none,
The knee bone connected to the thigh bone,
The thigh bone connected to the hip bone,
The hip bone connected to the back bone,
The back bone connected to the shoulder bone,
The shoulder bone connected to the neck bone,
The neck bone connected to the head bone… 

As the choir sang that spiritual, you could hear those dry bones being reconnected.  You could feel life returning as the flesh covered the bones.  With each new connection of those bones, the melody would raise a half tone. Those bones rose up and came back to life.  Strange, isn’t it, how some images remain etched in our minds over a life time? 

The words of that spiritual, of course, come from the experience of African-Americans who were trapped in a dark period of our history when slavery still prevailed.  These people understood, as perhaps no others on this continent have understood, the experience of Ezekiel’s people who had been forcibly removed from their native land and put into exile.  Though alive, they felt like they were dead.  They were a people without hope.  Like a nation of dry bones they cried out in their misery.  Just now we have heard the prophet Ezekiel telling in vivid detail how God carried him in a vision to the valley of the dry bones, bones symbolic of the rotted bodies of a hopeless people.  Then, as Ezekiel watched in utter astonishment, flesh and muscle began to cover those bones. Skin covered the muscle and the bones came to life!  Then God told Ezekiel to tell the people ofIsraelthat their lives, all but dead from despair, would have breath once again.  They would be a nation reborn and alive again.

There can be little wonder why African-Americans embraced this story from the Old Testament as their own. We can only imagine why these souls who, against their wills, had been removed from their homeland and transported in ships to North America where they were sold as slaves, found the stirring words of Ezekiel a source of hope. We can understand how they could place that imagery into song that could empower them walk as human beings in the cotton fields of oppression. Despite their misery, it was their faith that brought them together and that gave them hope.  It was a faith that empowered them to sing with joy and yes, with trust, that they too would indeed rise like the dry bones of Ezekiel’s forsaken valley.

How might this image of the dry bones coming to life speak to us in our own day as a culture, as a nation, as the Church? After all, we live in a day when the thought of slavery is incredibly obscene, yet in reality, there is still the element of oppression that rears its ugly head in various ways in our land, where there are souls who are still placed in the margins of society.  The civil rights movement must continue as there are people in our land, whose basic rights, rights that are meant for all, are being challenged.  Efforts to slash lifelines to the poor still prevail.  Vestiges of hatred and oppression linger.  We have come a long way since the days of slavery, yet our work as a nation is not done by any stretch of the imagination.  We recall that as Lent began with the Ash Wednesday Liturgy, we prayed, “Accept our repentance, Lord … for our blindness to human need and suffering, and our indifference to injustice and cruelty.”   Martin Luther King, Jr, once said, and his words ring with clarity still,  “The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people, but the silence of the good people.”  The Church, mindful of its call to strive for justice must not remain silent just as Jesus himself was not silent in the face of injustice.  In our continuing study on Fridays of Pope Francis’ Apostolic Exhortation, The Joy of the Gospel, we read and discussed what he has to say about the Church’s role. He writes, “If indeed ‘the just ordering of society and of the state is a central responsibility of politics,’ the Church ‘cannot and must not remain on the sidelines in the fight for justice.’  All Christians, their pastors included, are called to show concern for the building of a better world.  This is essential, for the Church’s social thought is primarily positive: it offers proposals, it works for change and in this sense it constantly points to the hope born of the loving heart of Jesus Christ.” (p.93)  Someone in our group Friday offered the wisdom that even if we might not all agree about the solutions, we must at least begin to have conversations about matters of justice.  As our Lenten discipline reminds us, the Church calls us to this time of self-examination and repentance as a church and as individual people of God.  To be repentant is to be willing to turn and head in the right direction.

You and I may not be in exile in the same way as were the Israelites or as were those sold into slavery in our own land, yet we too are often hard pressed by powers that can lead us to some very dark places.

What hope is there for us when we experience our own barren valleys of the soul?  Today’s reading from Ezekiel gives us a glimpse of the hope which Ezekiel envisioned for the people ofIsrael.  It became a vision of the hope about which the slaves in that terrible time in our history as a nation nonetheless could sing.  It can be a vision for you and me in our own barren valleys of the soul.

Where for you this morning might be your spiritual valley of dry bones?  Is it something physical?  Might it be in some relationship you have, a bitterness, perhaps, or a cherished resentment?  In today’s Gospel we note what happened when Jesus got the message from Mary and her sister Martha that their brother Lazarus was ill and what he said to them.  He said, “This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”  You see, he was pointing to his own death and resurrection, and to the fact that for all of us, our earthly journey is but a part of our journey toward eternal life.  There is life after we pass from this earthly domain and we no longer have use of our physical bodies.  No illness, or virus, or accident, or even act of violence can end our journey toward eternal life even though our death, or the death of a loved one, can seem so final and so painful to be sure.  Our physical death is not the final answer.  But there are illnesses in this world that can take us to some very dark places.  This past Wednesday night, Thom Blair, when he was speaking to us, used a powerful image.  He spoke of what he called those “viruses of the soul”, you know, like tumors on our soul, and these can destroy us. You know, there are those times when we hold on to a bitterness, a cherished resentment, a desire for vengeance, or that unwillingness to forgive.  All these things bind us in chains and we become slaves to them.  But, you know, we can also be bound in chains by our worries,  and I am the first to admit that this can be a tough one for us, at least it can be for me. Yet the beauty of it all, the blessing in it all, the hope of it all for us is that God does not intend for us to remain slaves to these things.  Through the grace of God—grace being something that comes to us a gift freely given—can set us free from these chains. As well, there is a place for prayer and for self-examination, and for meditating on God’s holy Word, as the Church invites us to do as we travel along our path during Lent.  There is a place as well for taking time each day to be intentional about simply being still. God can and God does unbind us and empower us to move forward once again.  You know, it’s like having those chains removed.

What might be something that brings stress into your days?  What hopeful lesson might you and I take from today’s reading of God’s word?  What might be a dark place in your path where you find yourself yearning to see light at the end of the tunnel? It could be something stressful at work.  Or it could be waiting for something the outcome of which is beyond your control.  You know, we all want our faith to be deepened.  There already exists in each of us a desire, even if an unconscious one, to know the truth about God and his love for us and how we are to be set free from sin and death.  We all yearn for hope as we face all that life brings.  We look for the promise that strength will come.  We try as best we can yet sometimes that hope still remains elusive. I would not presume to stand before you and tell you otherwise for there are those of you who have experienced some very tough things, things that make the very thought of hope seem so remote if not impossible to imagine, but I am increasingly convinced that it is during these times—especially during these times—that a loving God promises us that we will come through our despair to the other side when hope once again will prevail.

Lent is for us a time that leads us forward to the greatest promise of the hope that God is there with you.  It is the gift of raising Jesus from the dead and thus giving life to our mortal bodies by his spirit that lives in us.  May these remaining weeks of our Lenten journey provide you with the hope to persevere not only in this Lenten season but in the days that follow throughout the year.  As the days lengthen, and the light comes, and the promise of the resurrection dawns upon us, may the image of God’s breathing life into those dry bones breathe life into your faith, so that you and I, by the grace of God, may face life and all that it places in our path with renewed hope.  For now, I hope that the words of Albert Camus, the French existentialist, might be of some help to you in the context of your yearning to experience hope.  These words of his were printed across the top of the front page of the March 14 edition of the Vineyard Gazette, Martha’s Vineyard newspaper.  Camus once said, “In the depths of winter I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” In these remaining weeks of Lent, as the days continue to lengthen, and in the days that will follow, may you in some way along your journey from the depths whatever they may be for you, be blessed with God’s invincible hope.   Amen.

 A Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent – March 30, 2014

by Kim Baker Glenn, MDiv, MACE

Open the eyes of our hearts Lord so that in seeing you we might love you ever more dearly and follow you ever more nearly. Amen.

 Last Sunday, Parson John Miller opened his sermon with a reference to the popular seventies song Day by Day. My opening prayer echoes his sermon that in part reminded us that each day of Lent, indeed each day of life, day by day, is an opportunity for a new journey with Christ. During Lent, that journey is one of introspection and self-reflection. Some might say that it is a journey into the darkness of our souls. It’s dark, not in the sense of evil but in the sense of shutting out the distractions. Sometimes, when we really want to focus on a task at hand, we have to close the curtains, close the door or close the blinds so that whatever is happening outside of our space will not distract us. It is in that sense that the Lenten journey is one of darkness; darkness that is awaiting the brightness of the light of Easter morning.

I wonder if any of you have spent time exploring the darkness inside you. I know I have, and I’ve done it at different pivotal points in my life. The 70s were years of first boyfriends and social cliques for me. So when John Miller introduced Day by Day in his sermon last week it took me right to those deep feelings that I had then. Music has a way of transporting us that way. But today, I invite you this morning to consider a piece of relatively recent music.  Today, I’d like you to consider lyrics from a song you may not have even heard before. I first heard this song at a Shrine Mont Retreat for youth. Songwriter and worship leader, Paul Baloche, wrote the words I used this morning in my Prayer of Inspiration. The song begins with these words, “Open the eyes of my heart, Lord.” The scripture that inspired Mr. Baloche was from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. The part that caught his attention reads like this, Paul says to the church in Ephesus, “I pray that the eyes of your heart would be enlightened.” Obviously, Paul didn’t have a literal pair of eyes in mind when he wrote that.

The focus of this morning’s text is blindness. Let’s step back for a moment into the literary world of the biblical writers to see how Paul’s use of words is connected with this scripture from John’s gospel. It’s important for us today to consider how the readings would have been heard when they were new. What did the writer of a particular first or second century text intend for his audience to hear? According to American scholar Elizabeth Evans, the metaphorical use of blindness was widespread in all types of Greco-Roman literature. They used metaphor in their writing then in much the same way as we use it today.They would use features like height, shapes of eyes or ears, skin tone and things like those; things identifiable to a unique person.

For example, in Plato’s Republic he wrote, “You call the dark-skinned “manly” to look at, and the fair-skinned “children of God.” And another example from that same period, a description of Augustus by Suetonius in the biography he wrote, “He had clear, bright eyes, in which he liked to have it thought there was a kind of divine power.” These words that describe familiar human features convey a sense of the character of the one being described.

 The way the ancients heard these metaphors was to link the physical characteristic with a corresponding moral characteristic. The study of this practice is called physiognomy. That’s a new word for me and maybe for you, too.  But since it is a relatively common literary device in the Bible, it’s important to know. Physiognomists identified the human eye as the “most reliable physical marker.”[1]I don’t know about you, but I tend to evaluate people’s moods and intentions by looking at their eyes. It seems the author of John’s gospel did, too.

In fact, the author of John’s gospel had good reason to choose blindness as the focal feature in this scripture. His audience would have been immediately alerted to the multiple meaning of the beggar’s blindness. He was blind from birth, meaning he had never been able to see and it meant that likely his parents were being punished by God; and he was blind, meaning he could not perceive the truth that Jesus represented; and beyond that, because he was blind his own character was suspect, his moral stature was in question.

Thank goodness, blindness does not have the same moral implications in our 21^st century society. At least we have made some social advances. We have grown in compassion and seek to treat people with physical challenges equitably. Maybe that means the Holy Spirit has been at work in the world! Nevertheless, we use the term blindness loosely. My husband might say, “Where are my sunglasses?” And I might respond, “Are you blind? They are on the counter in the kitchen.” But let’s all admit; we can be blind in more serious ways than that – without even meaning to be. It is easy to be blind about the depravity of  life in the city’s projects, blind about the injustice of the city’s transportation system. It’s easy because we have to go out of our way, out of our daily routines in order to see it; in order to open our eyes and UN-blind ourselves.

Jesus asked the man who was born blind to go out of his way, out of his routine in order to have his eyes opened, to UN-blind himself. Jesus spat in the mud making a paste and then “spread the mud on the man’s eyes, saying to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam.”” Then the blind man did as he was told. It would have been so much easier to doubt and stay put. But somehow he felt a change in himself. Imagining ourselves as part of the crowd, we watch as he stumbles and gropes his way toward the pool, annoying people as he knocked against them in his path. The result was that after washing away the mask of mud, he could see. The people around him noticed that he could see. But they were doubtful.

 Would you have been skeptical about his sudden transformation? Let’s consider how we might react today if we came upon someone we recognized as a blind street corner beggar. Wouldn’t we be skeptical if he suddenly proclaimed that he could see; that someone who supposedly had divine healing powers had brought sight to his previously useless eyes?  The people around him were filled with cynicism, reasoning that he had never been blind to begin with. Would we not be tempted to do the same?

The skeptics took the previously blind man to undergo the scrutiny of the Pharisees. The Pharisees were strict keepers of the Jewish law. They were supremely suspicious. They surmised the man who had mudded this man’s eyes had no divine powers to heal. And even if he had managed to give sight to the blind man he had broken a couple of very important rules in the process. The Pharisees were not about to let that pass without notice. They were bound and determined to expose this healer as a sinner and a hoax. They hoped to expose the man who had been blind from birth as a fraud and an unworthy witness.

The irony, of course, is that it is they, the Pharisees, whom Jesus is exposing as sinners and unworthy witnesses to faith. The Gentiles and Jesus followers who would have first heard this story would have picked up on the meaning behind the literary device of physiognomy. They would have linked the physical change that took place with an expected corresponding moral change. The physical change from blind to sighted serves as a mark of transformation. The pitied and shunned formerly blind man is now the one whose experience sets a moral example. It is an example for all who long for truth and hope. The transformation from blindness to sight is the Christian hope for the world. That transformation cannot take place without faith, intention and effort as exhibited by the blind man in this story.

The good news is that Jesus is ready to wash away our blindness, too. Imagine, after the dark day-by-day introspection of Lent, our eyes wake up on Easter morning to all the sweet, emerging colors of spring and our hearts wake up to the extravagant act of God in the resurrection.  Open the eyes of our hearts, Lord. In raising Jesus from the tomb, God gave us all the grace-full gift of access to a restored relationship with him. Our sacraments help us to remember that. Through baptism we are reminded just whose we are. Through the Eucharist we offer “ourselves, our souls and our bodies” to God and we receive through the bread and the wine the strength and spirit of Christ into ourselves. Might we receive renewed vision in the process?

The Pharisees in this story thought they had vision but they were actually refusing to see. They were blind to seeing Jesus as the healer; to seeing the possibility that he was God’s son – right in their midst. They questioned whether God’s own son would be so quick to violate Sabbath law. They were unable to see that as God had acted in their world through Abraham and Moses and Jacob that God was now acting in their world again, this time through Jesus. I see it, don’t you? I see and believe that God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is alive and continues to act in this our world. The gospels and the letters of Paul show me how that can be so. But it is the wonderful acts of kindness, charity and grace I see in this world that keep my faith strong. Through people like us, God is acting to overcome evil and injustice.

As we prepare for the sacrament of Eucharist today, let us be reminded that it is through us that the Holy Spirit in Christ works to bring about God’s will. Join me in praying that God will use me and will use each of you to rid our world of spiritual blindness; to bring life to the message of the risen Christ. To God be all the glory. Amen.