Sermon Notes on John 9 (read with column notes, perhaps)

The telephone rang in the office recently. The voice on the other end was from Indiana. His long-troubled marriage was moving into separation and in all likelihood, divorce. How did we get from where we were happy to this, he wondered? This long long story strikes me as a cri de coeur from John and his reading group  of what went wrong  in their emergence within Judaism. It is a story of an impending divorce, between two  facets of an ancient faith, I think. It plays around with sight and blindness as it concludes that it is a matter of seeing things in a certain light and an inability to see things as well.

When presented with a blind man, the disciples see the issue clearly. The disciples right away take the stance that someone has to be to blame for misfortune. They link it directly to punishment for sin. God must be punishing the blind man and his family, no? Centuries after the book of Job they have not progressed one inch from the position of the friends of job or in our time people who blame illness on thinking positively, as if germs and virus do not exit.Notice that Jesus will not even begin to countenance their question. Instead, he proceeds to move the person toward healing. Let the question linger here. Are the disciples blind about suffering in their midst. What do we see and not notice about suffering in our world?

Here Jesus does not heal with a word but with medicine. The ointment is interesting.something that would blind us is used as the vehicle for sight. In the face of the blindness of the disciples Jesus calls himself the light of the world. Yet, light cannot help the blind.His cured blindness will be a vehicle to see the reality of a god who wants healing not punishment.

The reaction of the religious leaders reminds me a bit of a few of the people we feed who complain about the portions or the variety of food. Faced with a miracle, they begin an inquisition that spreads out, as they are wont to do. it also becomes quite a comic parody of an investigation as the investigators are left further and further in the dark.As Bruce Springsteen would say, they were blinded by the light, in this case, the light of the world bringing sight to the blind.

While the man is healed of blindness it takes him a while to come to the blinding realization of the reality of Jesus.Physical sight has come to him, but spiritual insight seems to take time, even as it starts in a blinding flash of revelation.It seems to me that we accuse others of being blind when they do not agree with us. Don;t you see? why can't you see my point? Paul Mccartney struggled with the issue in We Can Work It Out. sometimes blindness is a sign of incapacity or perhaps inability or unwillingness to  see something as it is just too painful to contemplate. Springsteen sang I would rather be blind that to see you with your man.

God is able to see past the disappointment with Saul and the expectation for a king for what it was. god looks past appearance and age to select David. One of the attributes of God is to see clearly where we cannot. god can perceive light within the deepest darkness.

We can view so much. CAT scans peer into our bodies. We are not nearly as adept at seeing to into the motivations and viewpoints of others.Mostly we grumble at how they can be so blind not to see things our way. (see judge not book). John Calvin famously called Scripture to be a glasses. It gives us  a way to look at ourselves and each other with fresh eyes.

Devotional Notes for Week of March 30

Sunday-Ps.23 is the listed psalm for the day. We do not pay as much attention to its closing section as the early section. Why is it better to be feted at the table on any enemy than with friends? For now, where would you most like to see your cup running over in different areas of your life? I iwll say that we live this out every time we have Communion.

Monday-Clinging to drab visions, we pursue paltry resolutions. Restore our souls, O god. Inspire within us such imagination that we may address with optimism the needs of this and every day." (James S. Lowry, "Prayers for the Lord's Day: Hope for the Exiles")

Tuesday-”I don't know anyone who'd recommend living "a divided life"—a life in which our words and actions conceal or even contradict truths we hold dear inwardly... yet our culture counsels us to do exactly that: "Don't wear your heart on your sleeve." "Play your cards close to your vest." Sadly, most of us learn early on that it's not safe to be in the world as who we really are with what we truly value and believe.”-Parker Palmer

Wednesday-Resilience is part of our name.  It is the word I am trying to celebrate during the month of March.  It's been a long hard winter for many of us and for some there is still no sight of Spring.  The ravished land is a marvelous metaphor for what happens in the human spirit.  There are times when what seemed to be blossoming in us comes to a halt and remains frozen, yet beautiful.  How can we trust that the winter of grief in our lives, the deep containers of doubt, the mountains of discouragement can all become teachers for us. Somewhere in the heart of everything is a resilience that wants to lift its face, lift its voice-- and sing its way out of the frozen land of our lives.  AND IT WILL! Macrina Wiederkehr

Thursday From Ira Kent Groff"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes" A friend shared these words from Marcel Proust. How do they speak of your spiritual journey?

Friday-After John 9 this past Sunday, I am still playing around with what we see and don’t see, what we don’t even realize that we see or do not see. I’m working through the little book Stitches by Anne lamott and her musings that many of us are blind to troubles because it is just too much to face. What are you able to see clearly/ when do you need help? what are your spiritual reading glasses?

Saturday-We have a small reflective “emerging church” style service at 6PM, usually wiht a sparse group. Lately we have been sharing some movies as well on Sunday afternoons. I need ot find a balance between success as numbers and success as quality. Still, I get frustrated that folks complain constantly about wanting a different service style at times and to have something good to watch and ignore it when it is offered. For me, I will keep on making offerings and let the acceptance up to others.

Column notes on sight for John 9 (and Donald Rumsfeld)

This Sunday, many churches will read a long passage on Jesus curing a blind man from John 9. It has set me to thinking about sight. When I was young, like many people, I read Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land. If you truly grasped something, the science fiction word for it was to grok. When I express I understanding, I use a visual term, oh I see it. I may say that I don’t see your point. My ineptitude with things mechanical stems from my inability to “see” how things work and are put together.

Do we see things as they are? When I was young, John Birch Society lunacy was properly laughed off as conspiracy viewpoints of folks untethered to reality. Now such viewpoints are said openly in public, sometimes by seemingly sane people. People freely post and reposting ravings, and then get upset if they are called on their being the product of fantasy.

As Anais Nin said, we do not see things as they are; we see things as we are.” We project attitudes on to people and events all of the time. I suppose introverts look at things differently than extroverts, at least at times. We definitely know that pessimists view the world with a different set of lenses than optimists.Objectivity is often more of an aspiration than a reality when we are dealing with human behavior.

We cannot or will not face certain things. Ideology is an interpretive screen, but it can scrren out the unfamiliar or unacceptable to the cause. Religious people screen out part of the bible that they find uncomfortable from any perspective. Of course, so called creationists apply their particular view of only Gen. 1 to screen out scientific facts. they then have the unmitigated gall to declare outmoded thought patterns, inaccuracies, and ill-understood points to be on par with the vast array of scientific studies, as in the call for “equal time” for the new series, Cosmos.Partisanship blinds us to the good points of politicians of the other party and blinds us to the foibles of those in our own. Perhaps, it is most clear in matters concerning climate change. People disregard a scientific consensus because thye find the truth more than inconvenient, but unpalatable.

We see things that are not there.We are fully capable of ocnjuring up what we wish to see even when we can find no evidence ot support us.As the Temptations taught us, “it is just my imagination, running away with me.” We claim our own misinterpretations as the truth.

In Pilgrim’s Progress one of the early stages involves visiting the house of the Interpreter. Sacred religious texts require interpretation. In my literary interests in regard to the bible, we can say that we interpret through three screens: the historical background of the passages, the world that the words  created within the text itself, and the  perspective we bring to the passage when reading it now. No one interprets the Bible literally. Everyone emphasizes or downplays elements within it.

John Calvin famously called Scripture to be spectacles, our instrument for seeing God and the truths about ourselves.

Love is blind, we have heard. Lord Byron reminded us that after a period of infatuation, especially when love goes wrong, our sight becomes positively microscopic in detailing faults that were seen as charming or were unnoticed just days before.In the end, Christians are exposed to a story that tells us that god indeed loves us blindly. We are to see the Christ, the author of blind love, within each person we encounter. Perhaps most difficult, that includes oneself. Perhaps, we see clearly only through the eyes of love.

Week of March 23 devotional pts

Sunday-Ps. 95 is a hymn to god as Ruler. toward the end it refers us to another reading today in Ex. 17 of a dispute over finding water in the desert. Here it imagines God’s fury atan incapacity to trust as not permitting them to find rest in god. Is spiritual restlessness a sign of searching or cna it be a sign of deep mistrust?

Monday-God, kindle Thou in my heart within/A flame of love to my neighbor,/To my foe, to my friend, to my kindred all,/ To the brave, to the knave, to the thrall,/O Son of the loveliest Mary, /From the lowliest thing that liveth/ To the name that is highest of all.-Kent Ira Groff © Lately people have been using Irish prayers as a guide ot their prayer lives, and I thought this was a lovely example.

Tuesday- Weaving in and out of lives/I've come to know/the letting go/as the surrender in that war/between my roots and wings.-MACRINA WIEDERKEHR, Seasons of Your Heart where do you most need to let go of some things in your life so you cna fly? where do you need ot keep solide roots?

Wednesday-The Church is always God hung between two thieves. Thus, no one should be surprised or shocked at how badly the church has betrayed the gospel and how much it continues to do so today. It had never done very well. Conversely, however, nobody should deny the good the church has done either. It has carried grace, produced saints, morally challenged the planet, and made, however imperfectly, a house for God to dwell in on this earth. Ronald Rolheiser

Thursday-"If it were possible," he continues, "to read the histories of those who are doomed to have no historian, and to glance into domestic journals as well as into national archives we should then perceive the unjust prodigality of our sympathy to those few names, which eloquence has adorned with all the seduction of her graces."from Michael Jinkins Go back over the course of some years and track some key elements that made up peaks and valleys of your own experience or of a loved one.

Friday- What is all this juice and all this joy?/A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning In Eden garden.–Have, get, before it cloy,Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,Most, O maid's child, thy choice and worthy the winning.-Gerard Manley Hopkins,

Saturday“-Confidence is not a wilted plant that can be brought back to life with a bit of water. It is a highly flammable object. Doubt sets it aflame and destroys it irreparably.” ― Michèle Halberstadt, The Pianist in the Dark: A Novel What builds up your confidence and what attacks it.? Bear in mind the root of confidence is faith in Latin.

John 4, Ex. 17 sermonnotes

John 4 March 23

My mother was raised in a coal company town in Pennsylvania. I got her to write to our daughters about what Monday wash day wa slike. Mostly she wrote of hauling water. Her job was to lug the water from the shared pump to the kitchen. then it had to be loaded on to the coal stove for the water to heat and for different containers to be used for washing rinsing, final rinses with something called bluing. You did not waste water in our house, as the memory of all of that sheer work stayed with her.

This long story in John may well speak for itself, but I do wish to touch on a few points.John continues to have fun with folks who take the words of jesus at a basic physical level and refuse to move up into a spiritual plane.

We often imagine here as an ancient multi-married Elizabeth Taylor, but recall that divorce was the male prerogative. Either she is widowed many times over or she has been sent away over and over and now is in social and legal limbo.

She reminds me a bit of Eve as she has this theological discussion with the crusher of the serpent, Jesus.the famous promise of living water is prompted by her drawing water. what does running, living water mean? My immediate reaction is to think of the polluted water in West VIrginia after another chemical spill that poisons and fouls that most precious of natural commodities.

As a biblical type scene, this is a place for a marriage to emerge. Here a different sort of spiritual union is formed. Instead of a marriage, they exchange a most intimate connection, a religious discussion. Notice how Jesus engages her as a full discussion partner at a time when men and women were not to speak openly in public as in radical Islamic society.Just as Jesus was using a physical image with Nicodemus, we hear it again from the woman. She too gets stuck on the water in the well and loses its spiritual import.she would love running water, instead of having to haul it from a well back and forth.

Jesus certainly found this foreign woman who lived a life of real struggle worthy to have a discussion with him, just as he just had a discussion with a leading religious figure, Nicodemus, even if we are not graced with her name. perhaps that is to draw us into her story, to draw us into conversation with Jesus, to realize that Jesus sees us as worthy of dialogue and respect as well.After all, in Communion we do claim a union with Christ.

At Massah and meribah, the question lingers, Is God among us or not? Is God in samaria or Jerusalem? Nothing separate sus us from God as much as hard times and religious quarreling.Here we are in the midst of spiriutal living, life giving water.At the end of the story in Exodus, the peopel get all the water they need. At the end of our story in John, we have a se ort of wedding feast,as the whole community gets involved in spirit and truth. she is not certain. In Greek she expects a negative answer-this cannot be the Messiah? Nicodemus is impressed with signs,and she is impressed with the knowledge that Jesus has on her life. Still, Jesus offers her the living water, even given the highs and lows of her past. No matter the highs and lows of our pasts, Jesus looks past all that to the treasures within each one of us. jesus looks to a bright future of a deeper, richer, fuller life that moves far past any physical deprivations. No matter who we are, where we come from, jesus welcomes us with wide open arms.

I Sam. 16 Notes

1) Why does Samuel mourn Saul? After all, he wasn;t thrilled aobut the original selection. I must admit tha tsaul elicits sympathy from me, especially when I consider him mentally unstable.

2) Why does Samuel arouse such trepidation?

3) What does the selection of David tell us about appearances being deceiving, if anything? Again we are in the biblical preference for the youngest.On the other hand, David is described. His name means beloved. that too could tell us something: beloved of whom,? Is God's love for David utterly arbitrary or does looking in on the heart mean that God sees special qualities in this youngest or smallest one, perhaps the runt of the litter? If smallest, then it is in contrast to both Saul and the eldest brother Eliab.

4) Jesse means perhaps wealthy, or God exists, or gift. Bethlehem means house of bread.

5) It cannot be coincidence that a shepherd boy becomes a shpeherd ruler of Israel.

6) What kind of sacrifice was offered, I wonder.

7) To what degree are we to read ourselves into the succession of named and unnamed brothers and wait for the seemingly insignificant one to be chosen and anointed. remember that priest, prophets, and kings were anointed ones, hence messiah/ christos.

8) I wonder why the sotry stops naming the borthers?Could that draw us in as the rejected ones? Many of us recall being the last one picked in a game.

Ex. 17 Notes

I forgot to publish this in a timely way, but one can look up older thoughts on the passage on this blog if you wish.
Recall that the rock can be a feminine image as in the rock of birth Dt.32:18 What does it say about the people as followers? How are they keeping a slavish dependence mentality here?
What does this passage say about Moses and God as leaders? Why does God have water come out at all?
Massah means place of testing and Meribah is place of a lawsuit, contention, dispute. so this could be a great time to address church conflict or interpersonal conflict.
Notice that Paul associates the water with Christ elsewhere in I Cor. 10:4

Work with the image of water form the rock.Remember where they are in the narrative.Horeb probably comes from a word for dry, desolate.
This also could be a great place to talk about complaining
Look at how this is remembered in Ps. 98
Massah could be a good place to examine the te4sting of God when we are feeling tried/tested/tempted. See the Lord's Prayer or the first week in Lent reading as well