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BLIND FAITH
John 9:1-41
Rev. Richard R. Wohlschlaeger
Swarthmore Presbyterian Church
March 6, 2005
As
[Jesus] walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned,
this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his
parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in
him. We must work the works of him who
sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light
of the world.” When he had said this, he
spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s
eyes, saying to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to
see. The neighbors and those who had
seen him before as a beggar began to ask, “Is this not the man who used to sit
and beg?” Some were saying, “It is he.” Others were saying, “No, but it is someone
like him.” He kept saying, “I am the
man.” But they kept asking him, “Then
how were your eyes opened?” He answered,
“The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to
Siloam and wash.’ Then I went and washed
and received my sight.” They said to
him, “Where is he?” He said, “I do not
know.”
They brought
to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. Now it was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the
mud and opened his eyes. Then the
Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight. He said to them, “He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see.” Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not
from God, for he does not observe the Sabbath.”
But others said, “How can a man who is a sinner perform such
signs?” And they were divided. So they said again to the blind man, “What do
you say about him? It was your eyes he
opened.” He said, “He is a prophet.”
The Jews did
not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they called
the parents of the man who had received his sight and asked them, “Is this your
son, who you say was born blind? How
then does he now see?” His parents
answered, “We know that this is our son, and that he
was born blind; but we do not know how it is that now he sees, nor do we know
who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of
age. He will speak for himself.” His parents said this because they were
afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed
Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. Therefore his parents said, “He is of age;
ask him.”
So for the
second time they called the man who had been blind, and they said to him, “Give
glory to God! We know that this man is a
sinner.” He answered, “I do not know
whether he is a sinner. One thing I do
know, that though I was blind, now I see.”
They said to him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes? He answered them, “I have told you already, and
you would not listen. Why do you want to
hear it again? Do you also want to
become his disciples?” Then they reviled
him, saying, “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as
for this man, we do not know where he comes from.” The man answered, “Here is an astonishing
thing! You do no know where he comes
from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know
that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him
and obeys his will. Never since the
world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born
blind. If this man were not from God, he
could do nothing.” They answered him,
“You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?” And they drove him out.
Jesus heard
that they had driven him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe
in the Son of Man?” He answered, “And
who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may
believe in him.” Jesus said to him, “You
have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.” He said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped him. Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment
so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become
blind.” Some of the Pharisees near him
heard this and said to him, “Surely we are not blind, are we?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you
would not have sin. But now that you
say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains. (John 9:1-41)
This is one of those biblical stories about which
teachers of preaching are apt to observe: This
story preaches itself. But if this
were really true, they’d be out of business.
And so would I. And yet there is
truth in the observation, it seems to me.
This is an amazing story, so full of human emotion and human
idiosyncrasy – both commendable and reprehensible – that our cup of
interpretation, as the Psalmist for this morning might suggest, “runneth over.” Such richness is a joy to behold.
As I read the story, I hope you could hear the
expressions of frustration, joy, anger, disgust, fear, hope, thanksgiving . . .
and that might just be skimming the surface.
Hallelujah! A man blind from birth has been given his
sight. But not so
fast. A controversy breaks
out. Was the man really healed? Is he really the blind beggar the people have
been accustomed to seeing as they come and go about their business? And who healed him? Jesus?! How could he? Hasn’t he broken all the rules set up to know
exactly what to believe about God and how to be obedient in the faith?
It all begins with an age-old question that Jesus quickly
dismisses, a question based on the assumption that illness and suffering come
from sins we commit. That’s been around
for a very long time. And after all that
Jesus said on that issue, some of us are tempted still to ask in the face of
our own illness or suffering: Why me, Lord? What did I do to deserve this? Nothing!
is Jesus’ answer.
Neither the man nor his parents did anything to deserve blindness. The man’s blindness is not related to his or
his parents’ moral behavior. The two are
not connected. But the fact that he is
now blind gives Jesus an opportunity to reveal God’s presence and power. And he gives the man his sight.
We need to recognize how quickly Jesus dismisses the
people’s assertion about the man’s blindness.
To their question he gives a curt reply: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that
God’s works might be reveled in him.” And
then he follows with this observation: “We
must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no
one can work.” My grandfather on the
farm would have said about such urgency: We’ve
got to make hay while the sun shines. But,
of course, this is also the Gospel of John, and we’re used to the symbolic
meaning of light and dark. Jesus has
just so much time before the sun goes black on Good Friday afternoon. He has much to do, this light in the world of
darkness. And so he sends the man to
wash in the pool whose name means sent. And he wants others to see the power of
God through him in the man’s healing.
But that’s not so easy for the other people to see, even
though it may seem obvious to us on the face of it. The man’s been healed. Jesus was the obvious agent. Why do they set up so many roadblocks? Is this
really the man? And to the man’s
parents: Is this really your son? Were you ever really blind in the first
place? You say Jesus healed you; how can
he? He breaks the rule of the
Sabbath! Where does he come from? We can’t trust someone without the right
credentials. We know what we see!
And that’s the rub, isn’t it? They don’t really believe what they see. They believe what they want to see. Their
attitudes, preconceptions, presumptions, fears, and prejudices blind them to
what they might otherwise see. They seem
so ridiculous, don’t they, those by-now stereotypical Pharisees and the people
they have twisted and turned into blind followers, too? They have trained their eyes not to see the
truth before them. And we might ask
what’s wrong with people who in the face of obvious and irrefutable evidence
can ignore or deny the facts. And yet
that’s what’s at the heart of this story’s paradox: the seeing ones are blind,
while the blind one gets his sight.
There are a lot of blind people walking around who see in
the way we usually mean by “seeing.”
They see how to put one foot in front of the other so as not to fall
over something in their path, but in other very important ways in life they’re
blind as bats. They’re the kind of
people who live in a dark world of solid assumptions about everything, bound by
steadfast convictions of what can and cannot be. When something happens, they rush to fit it
into boxes they have stacked all around to hold such things. They know what causes this or that, and very
quickly they find the box to put it in.
Let me give you an example of something from the “faith”
world that might speak to what John is driving at in his story of Jesus healing
the blind man. A woman I’ll call Sue
faced serious and life-threatening surgery.
And though the surgery proved terribly painful, disfiguring, and
difficult, she survived. She found a
whole new life for herself with new dignity and sense of purpose. Her recovery was rather miraculous.
In fact, that’s what she called it – a miracle! “God gave me the
hope and the strength I needed to go on,” she told her friends. To which one friend immediately responded,
“You have always been such a strong person.”
And the other said, “I don’t know anyone who has a stronger sense of
self than you.” Isn’t it curious how the
woman’s confession of faith – “God miraculously gave me the hope and strength
to go on” – was rejected out of hand. Why?
Was that a threat to her friends’ system of belief – or lack of
one? Why couldn’t they simply accept
their friend’s explanation? Why couldn’t
they simply have done what Paul exhorts people of faith to do – to rejoice with
those who rejoice, which, in this instance, would have been a true act of
compassionate friendship and a faithful response to the personal testimony of
God’s miraculous intervention.
It is the nature of miracle to intrude into our preconceived
notions of reality, to dislocate the expected and the merely rational. In John’s story we have a man who once was
blind and now can see, and nobody takes time to wonder, to give thanks, to
celebrate with him. They turn the whole
thing into an intellectual problem. They
all huddle together to explain it away, to reassure themselves that nothing
new, nothing that doesn’t fit their reassuring modes of explanation, has
occurred. Because if something truly new
had happened, and if it had happened by the hand of Jesus, then they might have
to go back to the drawing board and rethink some cherished assumptions like “if
you are sick, then you must have sinned” or “there’s nothing new under the sun
since Moses” or “it’s up to us to fix the world or the world won’t get fixed.”
Bill Willimon, the preacher and
chaplain at
And Willimon, the religious
professional who also admits that he’s on guard against “religious fanatics” – his words – said to the young man, “I
can understand how you may have gotten on this religious high, but you have no
gifts for working with the poor. You’re
a philosophy major! You’re going to
And the young man responded, “Well all I know is that I
felt the presence of God in those children.
I felt like Jesus touched my life in a way that was undeniable. All I know is that this summer I’ve felt a
joy such as never before.”
And
the blind man, in the face of mockery and threatening insults, said “One thing
I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.”
Bill Willimon says now that
he wishes he had said to the young man then – and this is his shameful part –
he wishes he had merely said, “Go ahead.
Trust your experience. Clinch
your fists and believe. Ignore the
narrow-mindedness of the world. Go with
what God has given you. Go with what you
know.”
That venerable old preacher, Fred Craddock, reflects that
more people than will admit have had the experience of God implanted in their
hearts. Have you ever gotten up in the
morning before the rest of the family, he asks -- maybe during a more relaxed
schedule than most of the rest of the year affords – and gone out on the back
steps with a cup of coffee and cupped your hands around it against the morning
chill? Or, late in the evening, have you
ever walked down the back roads and along the rivers of your memory? What do you think about? As an African saying puts it, “We know
somebody walks in the trees at night.”
People have had experiences, but we don’t often talk about them.
That was what the woman who came to my office this week
professed. She knows she’s had such
experiences – she’s confident others have, too.
She thinks we would all do better if we talked about them more, shared
them with one another. There are places
we do, I suppose, but maybe we need
to do more. At the root of it all we
need to be more open to the testimony, less afraid of what the newness might
threaten in our world made safe by what and whom we have shut out. There were any
number who wanted to shut Jesus out, after all.
But, thanks be to God, the darkness could not
overcome the light that came to shine in new ways in the world.
And that’s where we’ll leave all this, except for one
concluding observation. And I think we
need to consider it as we continue our Lenten journey through stories that
become even more contentious between Jesus and his adversaries from the
religious establishment. These comments
might mean even more to those of you who were able to attend all or part of
this weekend’s theologian-in-residence program led by Sarah Tanzer,
a Jewish woman married to a rabbi who is at the same time a professor of New
Testament and early Judaism at the Presbyterian seminary I found so exciting as
a Christian student twenty-five years ago.
Remember that the Gospel of John was written last among
the four Gospels. It was written in a time
when the Jewish establishment was taking the emerging Jesus Movement seriously,
and, thus, fearfully and defensively.
What would these people mean to the Jewish tradition? At first, of course, before Christianity
became a name and a faith unto itself, it was a radical new wave within
Judaism. When Jesus becomes harshly
critical of “the Jews” he is being positioned by John to give voice to early
Christianity’s needs and anger. The
problem in John’s time – several decades after Jesus’ death – revolved around
an intra-family dispute: one wronged sibling arguing with the other sibling
held responsible for that wrong. Members
of John’s community within the Jewish structure sensed themselves to be
increasingly outcast and marginalized.
Hearing words from Jesus’ mouth harshly critical of “the Jews” would
have restored their sense of power and dignity, for they were a minority
community compared to the established Jewish community of their day.
In time, of course, Christianity would break completely
after enduring untold suffering and persecution from both the Jewish
establishment and the Roman rulers.
Jesus himself was the precursor of hundreds, indeed thousands, of
followers who would suffer and die in his image. But hundreds of years after
Would that more truly faithful people of all faiths that
hold God’s truth be able to say simply, like the blind man in our story, “One
thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” Then he said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped God. Would that that beginning
of blind faith be the light that gives more light, not more darkness, to the
world. Amen.
BEING BORN AGAIN
John 3:1-17
Rev. Richard R. Wohlschlaeger
Swarthmore Presbyterian Church
February 20, 2005
The question’s inevitable, I
think. It’s part of natural human
development. Already at age three and a
half, my grandson is realizing that there were certain advantages to being a
baby. Already he’s experiencing things
that must seem difficult or painful in comparison to looking back on the bliss
of utter dependence on the care of his mother.
The other day the question came – the desire expressed – as it was
reported to me: “Mommy, I want to be in
your tummy again and be a baby.” Then he
thought about that a few seconds and followed on with another question
suggesting further growth in awareness: “How did I ever get in there?” That’s a delicious moment for grandparents as
all of us know. Now it’s their turn. Let them
handle this.
As human development continues
through the life cycle into adulthood, we all entertain the desire now and then
to return to or to discover for the first time a place of perceived comfort and
peace. Things often get rocky along
life’s tangled web of pathways. Maybe
that’s what Nicodemus was experiencing that led him to approach Jesus with his
tentative but sincere inquiry. It wasn’t
a question, really; or if we can consider it so, then it was couched in an
observation: “Rabbi, we know that you are
a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these things that you do
apart from the presence of God.” You
see, it’s not a question really. But
there’s a question behind it. Who are you, Jesus? What do you mean for us?
Nicodemus is identified as a Pharisee, a leader of the
Jews. Pharisees were lay people, not
priests, but they were seen as guardians of Jewish orthodoxy. And when John says that Nicodemus came “by
night” he means to suggest much more than time of day. We know that about John. John’s language is always symbolic and
layered with levels of meaning. Did
Nicodemus come by night out of fear
of discovery? After all, as a respected
leader of the Jewish tradition he might risk his reputation and livelihood by
being seen with this upstart itinerant preacher.
Did he come by night out of a sense of wonder, of questioning? Or did he come by night because he really didn’t know who or what Jesus was, but
his curiosity got the best of him? Did
he come by night out of his own
darkness, a long dark night of the soul, what we might call a mid-life crisis
in which he had begun to doubt the meaning and purpose of life, of all that he
had been holding as guideposts for his life and was looking for something
new? The answer to these questions is
probably “all of the above.”
We do know this for sure: it’s
critical for John to tell us that Nicodemus came to Jesus “by night” for
throughout his Gospel “night and day” – light
and darkness – are symbolic terms, pointing either to the reality of God’s
presence or to the absence or rejection of God’s presence. The whole point of his Gospel is that the
incarnation of God in Jesus Christ lights up the world. The
light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
Nicodemus stands as a foil to this message to show
through his encounter with Jesus the purpose of Jesus’ presence among us. Nicodemus – and perhaps others he knows, for
he refers to “we” – have been impressed by the signs and wonders Jesus has
performed. This passage follows closely
on to Jesus’ miracle of turning water into wine at the wedding in
But Jesus accepts Nicodemus anyway, and immediately turns the conversation from the
supernatural to the very accessible wonder of God’s grace and Spirit that call
us to faith. Jesus receives Nicodemus as
a seeker, a sincere religious pilgrim.
Jesus welcomes him and his searching mind. Jesus immediately senses that this learned
Pharisee, this member of the religious establishment, is responding to
something in his teaching. He seems to
know that Nicodemus is willing to risk leaving behind the truth as he has known
it in order to explore something new.
Jesus invites him into a new realm of insight and takes Nicodemus
seriously even as he pushes him far beyond his comfort zone. Recognizing a spiritual pilgrim who is
starting down a new path, Jesus seeks not to embarrass Nicodemus, nor condemn
him, but to offer him instead the possibility of new life.
And that, my friends, is where the
good news begins for all of us in this passage.
For all of us, I suspect, even if we were born and raised in the faith,
have had moments when we’ve crept tentatively, almost stealthily, as if under
cover of night, to reach out, to put our toes in the water, so to speak, to
test the temperature. And we wouldn’t be
here today had it not been for some sense of acceptance and understanding
greeting our searching spirit.
Indeed, a sense of love that
embraces us. For this whole passage must
be seen in the context of its last two verses: the penultimate one which holds
arguably the most familiar words in all of Scripture, if not also the most
beloved – For God so loved the world that
he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but
may have eternal life – and the final one, which makes the preceding even
more powerful – Indeed, God did not send
the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might
be saved through him.
Acceptance – understanding –
unconditional love – a desire to save us from our sins, not condemn us because
of them: this is the Good News of the Gospel that we need to hear again this
morning and take home with us into the challenges of the week before us. Knowing that this is God’s initiative with us
can make all the difference to how we receive and cherish the gift of life, and
how we then turn to our neighbors with that same spirit of acceptance,
understanding, and love, with no desire to do harm but with a heartfelt effort
to lift up and make whole. In these
words we stand at the center of the Christian gospel. It is good for us to be here in a spirit of
awe and profound mystery.
I’m not sure Nicodemus felt much awe
that night, for Jesus challenged him with words he could not – or did not want
to – comprehend. He wrestles with
confusion. Born from above? Born
again? How can this be? he asks. He reduces
Jesus’ challenge to absurdity, a clever ploy to avoid the uncomfortable. How can I re-enter my mother’s womb and be
born again? Such questions from a
three-year-old are appropriate; but not from a middle-aged religious leader who
seems inappropriately disingenuous.
And yet this term “born again”
continues to confound contemporary Christians as well. Some Christians who typically identify
themselves as evangelicals uphold the belief that true Christians are those who
can recall a specific moment in their lives when they made a conscious decision
to accept Jesus as their “personal lord and savior.” This decision signals that they have been
born again, the requirement they hold for being “saved.” They point to other so-called Christians who have
not had such a dramatic conversion experience and to have, in their judgment,
missed the boat. But Jesus’ own words in
his conversation with Nicodemus would not seem to support the necessity of
personal decision so much as the freedom of God’s Spirit that moves with the
force and mystery of the wind to bring the gift of faith to those who seek it.
Naturally the great conversion
stories impress us. Moses
being convicted by the burning bush.
Paul being struck blind on the road to
Some of you over time have asked me
about my call to ministry, assuming perhaps that it might have been a dramatic
moment worth remembering. In fact, it
was. And it wasn’t. There was a moment clear to my memory today
when I discerned powerfully within me – there wasn’t a storm around me, more like a storm inside me – that I wanted to pursue the
new path I have come to take. But it was
also a very long and slow process with roots reaching deep into my childhood,
much like those a young woman of our church talked about last fall when she
stood at the lectern to help us think about supporting the ongoing life of our
congregation.
So I believe that both the event and the process are
part of a new birth from above. And they
certainly don’t come from our own efforts.
A new birth from above is what Jesus says must happen to all of us on
the road to faith. But it’s not a
formulaic pattern that necessarily grips us all in the same way. Nicodemus had been taught that obedience to law
brought one into right relationship to God.
He was committed to a life-long struggle toward that end. But then he heard someone speak in new terms
about a God who loves the world so much as to never give up on us, always
urging us toward the fullness of life we desire in our heart of hearts.
Jesus came into the world to invite
us into a new life. We can say “yes,” or we can say, “no thanks,”
which is not to say that we won’t be asked again and again. But saying “yes” is like being born all over
again, born in a spiritual sense, being wiped clean of the dross we’ve picked
up along life’s way, emerging to a life in which the very Spirit of God is
present in us. Whether we can pinpoint
that “yes” in time and place, or acknowledge it as having been occurring
through events along life’s way, it’s still being
born again. As we accept the Truth
that sets us free from the bonds of temporal things to accept the riches of
heaven’s way, we have given in to God’s initiative for us to be born from
above. No matter how we look at it, it’s
a process, really, not just an event – a process called “sanctification” that
lasts our whole lives long.
Most of us are not “converts” to Christianity in the strict sense of those who have moved from one religion to another. Most of us were born into Christian families and raised in the church, socialized into its values and meanings. Undeniably our faith has been further affected by our experiences within the church. If our experience of the church has been a positive one – where we have experienced love and acceptance – then we are likely to embrace its message as holding the key to the meaning of our lives. If, however, our experience has been negative, that is not likely to happen. Evangelism is not possible outside our walls without the identification of our community as a place where persons can experience their worth in God’s eyes as participants in a world loved by God.
God in the person of Jesus had
offered Nicodemus acceptance, despite his human sinfulness. God’s acceptance of sinners is called grace.
And our acceptance of God’s grace is called faith. The resulting forgiveness,
freely given, cleanses us and makes us new, as if born again. It comes when and whence it will, like the
wind, from the Spirit of God.
Did Nicodemus understand this? He doesn’t proclaim on the spot that, praise God, he has been born again. But unlike some biblical characters who have
an encounter with Jesus and never reappear, their story forever a mystery, John
brings Nicodemus back to re-enter the narrative in succeeding chapters. By chapter seven, for instance, the Pharisees
are out to get Jesus. They want to have
Jesus arrested. But then we hear these
words from John: Nicodemus, who had gone to Jesus before, and who was one of them,
asked, “Our law does not judge people without first giving them a hearing to
find out what they are doing, does it?”
He is quickly shouted down for his expression of fairness and equity.
And then these
poignant words toward the end of the story. It’s Good Friday
afternoon. Jesus hangs on the cross of
Was Nicodemus all this time being born again? John won’t let him out of our sight. Though he had come at first to Jesus by night, he seems to have come
increasingly by day. The light shines in the darkness, and the
darkness did not overcome it. There
is a message in this story for all of us.
Through these days of Lent – this sacred journey – may we remember what
Nicodemus might have experienced after all. In being born again perhaps he grew to know
the Truth of God in Jesus Christ who came to love the world to death, and,
thus, to love us all to life. Amen.
ONE TEMPTATION AFTER ANOTHER
Matthew 4:1-11
Rev. Richard R. Wohlschlaeger
Swarthmore Presbyterian Church
February 13, 2005
I read in one of the local tabloids this week about a
young man who after hitting rock bottom and being rescued by friends – only to
fall several more times before climbing back out of the pit – has now become a
successful person in his own right and a positive influence on others. The details are more sordid than we need to
get into, but what caught my eye was the incident that sent him plummeting, quite
literally, to the bottom of the pit.
After an odyssey involving drugs and all varieties of
vagrancies up and down the East coast, he found himself standing one day on the
edge of a construction site in
Last December he sent Christmas cards to his family and
friends in
Getting
back to that Christmas card, he reports understandably that it wasn’t an easy
card for him to send or for his family and friends to receive. But arriving home for the holidays, he found
that people he had known all his life greeted him with a new tenderness and
love. His honesty had helped redeem him
in the eyes of people who had always wanted to love him but didn’t know
how. Ironically, he notes that he
finally found the Spirit of God’s presence with him through what he had lost.
“I found it by losing it all,” he says. “I found it by suffering. Once all the material [stuff] was taken away,
I found out who I really am. And it’s a
gift.”
Well, this man’s journey is a bit far out for most of us,
I suppose. Not many of us have had
experiences resembling his. Not many of
us have lived quite on the edge where he found himself to be, though our
stories do include things that would surprise some of our pew mates. I know that, too.
On the other hand, not too many of our stories resemble
Jesus’ story either. Most of us live on
a middle ground between the bottom where the young man in our story found
himself for so long, and the divine throne imaged as the dwelling place for
Jesus as God’s own son. And yet this
passage from Matthew about Jesus’ temptation is often appointed as the
lectionary Gospel reading for the first Sunday in Lent. The presumption is that this story has direct
relevance for us as we enter a period of penitence and spiritual reflection and
renewal. But how, really, does it
correspond to our experience?
We don’t hold conversations with a visible devil. We are not whisked from place to place like a
Superman with promises of glory if we sell our soul. What do Jesus’ temptations have to do with
ours? How can we be tempted to turn
stones into loaves of bread when we know that we never could anyway?
Well, I would suggest – as you might guess – that there
is more similarity here than we might imagine.
Both in the stories from the bottom, and the stories from the top. For if we are honest with ourselves, our
stories echo the stories from the Bible.
Life is really just one temptation after another. And the reason temptation is so central to
the Bible’s story is not that temptation has so much to do with the naughty
little things we give in to – like eating that “sinful” dessert when we know we
carry enough weight already – as it does with the essential relationship we
have with God which determines the quality of our life on this side of eternity
as well as on the other. Temptation is a
matter of life and death, physical, emotional, and spiritual. Resisting it brings life, giving in to it
brings death. And the basic underlying
temptation that Jesus shared with us – that Adam and Eve shared with us – is
the temptation to treat God as less than God.
Let’s look first at that temptation in the Garden of
Eden. There we have the two characters
who begin it all – Adam and Eve. The
word Adam means human being, and the
word Eve means life. This is a story about all human beings and
all of life. But it’s framed in the
story of two mythological characters who are typical of all of us to some
degree, for although they had been given everything they could ever need, they didn’t have everything they
could ever want. And that was the cause of their fall.
Renowned Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggemann, writes about the garden experience of Adam and
Eve in terms of three important words: vocation,
permission, and prohibition. Adam and Eve’s vocation is to tend and
care for the garden. Their permission is
to enjoy all that God has given them that sustains their lives. Their prohibition is not to transgress the
authority of the One who has given them their lives. Our primary human task, then, is to find a
way to hold the three facets of divine purpose together. Vocation
– permission – prohibition.
Ironically, what we remember most about this story is the prohibition,
the punishment Adam and Eve received for their transgression. So little attention is given to the original
vocation and permission. Only in
understanding the subtle juxtaposition of all three do we understand the
meaning of human destiny.
Brueggemann goes on to suggest
that the Garden of Eden story provides a kind of theological understanding of
the common human problem experienced as anxiety. The craftiness of the serpent seduces Adam
and Eve into believing that they will be better off without any limits – prohibition in Brueggemann’s
terms. God didn’t really mean that you
shouldn’t break the limits of your humanity; the serpent says. God is just jealous that you will be God’s
equal. Look how enticing all this fruit
is. Go ahead. Take it.
Eat it. Enjoy it. And they did.
And nothing, says the Bible, has been quite the same ever since.
Good parents know – and maturing children come to learn –
that limits make for true happiness. Yet
like unknowing children, many adults never grow up. We continue to strive for autonomous freedom;
and freedom that does not discern the limits of human life leaves us anxious,
not more satisfied. Bellies stuffed
full, we are often not happy at all. In
our own society, the advertising of consumerism and the relentless drive for more
acquisition, like the serpent, seduce us into believing that there are securities
we can attain on our own apart from the reality of God.
Jesus tells us about anxiety just a couple of chapters
later in Matthew, following his own experience of temptation in the
wilderness. “Therefore I tell you, do
not worry [that is, do not be anxious] about your life, what you will eat or
what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear . . . Look at the
birds of the air . . . Consider the lilies of the field . . . So do not worry
[that is, do not be anxious] about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of
its own. Today’s trouble is enough for
today.”
Jesus seems to be telling us that anxiety comes from
doubting God’s providence, from rejecting God’s care and seeking to secure our
own well-being. Failure to trust God
with our lives makes us anxious and brings us down. To trust God with our lives is to turn from
the autonomous “I” to the covenanting “Thou” – Brueggemann’s
term here – to the “covenanting thou” which takes us from our short-sighted
inventing of our well-being to the reality of God’s overriding purposes and
gifts that bring us true life and a spirit grounded in trust and a heart at
peace with ourselves and our lives.
We should not be surprised at Jesus’ words coming swift
on the heels of his successful but trying experience with the devil in the
desert wilderness. Remember his first
temptation: to turn stones into bread.
After forty days, of course, he’s hungry. Since the devil knows Jesus is God’s own son,
he knows that Jesus has the power to satisfy whatever hunger he carries also as
a human being. This particular
temptation should remind us of the faithlessness of the Hebrews wandering in
the wilderness, not trusting that the God who had called them out of slavery would
also lead them to the promised land of freedom.
The Manna that fed them – the bread of heaven – reminded them that they
would not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of
the Lord. Jesus would come to trust that
word, refusing to exploit the Spirit’s power by providing himself with a quick
fix to his hunger. Jesus faithfully
remembers that he is totally dependent on God.
And he becomes the new bread of heaven for us.
In the second temptation Jesus refuses to test God’s
promises by throwing himself from the temple, not because he doesn’t believe
that God will come to his aid, but because honoring God excludes every kind of
manipulation, including putting God to the test – daring God – to do his bidding.
In my opening story, the distraught young man sought to test God’s
existence by daring God to catch him on the way down off the side of the
construction chasm. I wonder if at the
bottom – even though the soft sand had enabled him to live – he doubted God’s
existence. Or if he later came to know
God through the angels God sent in his friends who picked him and up and cared
for him, the same way in which Jesus at the end of the devil’s taunting found
himself surrounded by the angels of God he’d always known were there for him.
Jesus’ third temptation has to do most of all with what
kind of messiah he would come to be.
Perhaps this seems the most remote from us. Most of us – I hope not too many of us
entertain a messiah complex – are
more or less content, perhaps resigned, to the reality that we will never become
the leaders of nations or of great social or religious movements. But we are all too aware of the compromises
that public office seems to require of even the best-intentioned among us. And at the root of this third temptation is
the notion of idolatry, which is
putting lesser gods before the only God.
It means dividing our loyalties dangerously between things that are
temporary and things that truly last, between the false and true. At some level I think we all know what that
means.
I hope we can go away from worship on this first Sunday
of Lent with a notion of what the temptations of Adam and Eve and of Jesus can
tell us about our own lives. What a gift
it is to be human, and to be human in the fullest sense, without pretense
toward being any other. In contrasting
Adam with Jesus, Barbara Brown Taylor has written: “Whereas Adam stepped over
the line [of being human], and found humanity a curse, Jesus stayed behind the
line and made humanity a blessing. One
man trespassed; one man stayed put. One
tried to be God; one was content to remain a human being. And the irony is that the one who tried to be
God did not do too well as a human being, while the one who was content to be
human became known as the Son of God.”
We may not be tempted to turn stones into bread, but we
are constantly tempted to mistrust God’s readiness to empower us to face our
trials. None of us is likely to put God
to the test by leaping from a cliff, but we are frequently tempted to question
God’s helpfulness when things go awry.
Pagan idolatry is no more a temptation for us than it was for Jesus, but
compromise with the ways of the world is a continuing seduction.
The narrative of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness
underlines for us the seriousness of being in the world – which often resembles
a parched and forsaken desert. There are
real forces out there with which our minds and hearts, our human words and
actions must mingle. And the only way to
go is – as Jesus did – armed with God’s Spirit.
Amen.
SEEING BEYOND THE SURFACE
Matthew 17:1-9
Rev. Richard R. Wohlschlaeger
Swarthmore Presbyterian Church
February 6, 2005
Sometimes we see something we don’t expect to
see. That’s one of the themes of the
story we’ve just heard from Matthew. The
disciples who went up the mountain with Jesus that day saw something they
hadn’t expected to see.
Seeing
the unexpected was driven home to me again a few days ago when I saw an Italian
film on video that I had missed seeing in the theatre. The title of the film in English is I’m Not Scared. The title refers primarily to the protagonist
of the tale, a 10-year-old boy who finds himself face to face with a reality he
had never imagined. Playing with some of
his friends near his home in a rural setting in Italy, he comes across a piece
of sheet metal on the ground near an abandoned house that the neighborhood kids
ride out to as a kind of secret place to play.
Giving in to his curiosity, the little boy raises the piece of metal and
realizes that it serves as a door over a cavern in the ground. Peering into it he notices a human foot
sticking out from under a blanket. He is
doubly taken aback when the foot moves.
Putting myself in the kid’s place, I’m scared. But true to the
film’s title, the kid is not. After a
couple of secret visits to the place, he ventures into the hole by climbing
down a rope. He finds that the foot
belongs to a boy his own age who he eventually learns has been kidnapped from
wealthy parents in
The boy finds himself standing face to face with the
other boy, the kidnapped child who has been in the hole for some time,
sustained by food and water lowered by the rope the boy has used to climb down
into the hole. The kidnapped boy wears
only a long white nightshirt. His hair
is disheveled and his eyes pasted shut.
“Open your eyes,” the other boy commands him. “I can’t,” he answers. He has been in the dark hole so long with no
light that he has simply closed his eyes.
They are of no use. There is
nothing to see. And because he hasn’t
used his eyes, they have, in effect, become pasted shut, the way our own eyes
sometimes get after a long sleep.
But the boy implores him to open his eyes, and as he does
the film’s director has us look through them.
We, too, are blinded by the light.
Eyes that have been closed so long in darkness can barely take in even
the light shining down through the hole from above. “Who are you?” the kidnapped boy says to the
other. “Are you my angel?” Incredulous, the other boy replies, “No, I’m
a boy just like you.” And they discover
that they are exactly the same age, only one is free to play and ride his
bike. The other is the victim of a cruel
and heinous crime.
Well, I won’t go on further about the film. You might see it yourself, and I wouldn’t
want to give away the plot. But suffice
to say that the boy who has come upon the other turns out to be much more the
angel than he ever could have imagined he might be.
And that’s one of the themes in today’s story about Jesus
and his disciples on the mountaintop.
It’s about what the disciples see before their eyes but also how what
they see changes them for the road ahead.
They are amazed at what they see happen to Jesus – but in time others
would become amazed at what happened to them as well.
One of our lectionary texts for today is a passage from
The Second Letter of Peter which presumes to be written by the apostle Peter,
though scholars debate this fact. Yet
the truth of the witness remains. The
writer proclaims: For we did not follow
cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our
Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received honor and glory from God the
Father when that voice was conveyed to him by the Majestic Glory, saying, “This
is my son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” We ourselves heard this voice come from
heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain.
That kind of direct testimony can send shivers up my
spine. Someone was there and has lived
to tell the tale. Someone has seen God
face to face and knows what exists beyond the surface. Moses on the mountaintop. Three of the first four disciples of Jesus on
another mountaintop. Which begs the
question: don’t we all need that kind of experience? Do we ever have it? I contend that we do. I contend that most of us have had it. Perhaps sometimes we just need to open our
eyes. Like the little kidnapped boy
entrapped in the dark hole in the ground, we are so used to keeping our eyes
closed for seeming lack of anything to see, that they’ve almost become pasted
shut. It’s amazing what we might see if
we were to open them to the light.
As an opening exercise for group building at the first
meeting last Tuesday evening of our new session, I reminded our elders that
this coming Sunday would be Transfiguration Sunday, and I asked them to turn to
each other for a few minutes and share transfiguration-like
moments they might have had in their lives.
It’s my feeling that most of us have had them; otherwise we wouldn’t be
here in worship, continuing to strive on the side of hope instead of despair.
Well, you would have thought I’d asked them to turn the
world upside down in five minutes. The
look of incredulity that spread around that large rectangular table of gathered
spiritual leaders of this congregation was striking. Like the look on the face of that little kid
in the movie being mistaken for an angel when he knew he was only a kid, just
like the other one, just not kidnapped.
They’d better get used to questions like that. I will continue to challenge them to see
their stories in the Great Story, the same way I try to do it with all of you
every Sunday. But, you know, the nervous
chatter soon quieted some, and by the time we got around to a few minutes of
sharing what had been spoken of, things were said that brought us to a hushed
silence.
People spoke of diagnoses of serious illness, either for
them or for people they love, and how that moment caught them, froze time,
changed them – transfigured them, if
you will – so that seeing beyond the surface of life they had been
changed. Small things that used to
irritate them became irrelevant, while things held dear before became cherished
as never before. Or the miracle of the
birth of a child. A solemn and sublime
experience of nature. The inexpressible
beauty of art – of music – even of sports had been visionary experiences
shattering the surface of reality and exposing a deeper mystery beyond.
To be honest, I didn’t share. I was too busy trying to lead. But later I thought of that day in a family
waiting room on the maternity floor of the hospital of New York University a
week after 9/ll when our family was celebrating quietly the birth of my
daughter’s first child, my first grandchild, celebrating quietly in deference
to the memorials on the street below to the missing and known dead from the
World Trade Center disaster that had occurred just several blocks to the south
and a few days earlier in time. And how
we began making calls to family and friends.
And how when I told my son that he had become an uncle I “lost it,” as
we say. Maybe it was because I began to
think of my father and his father before him, and of the new place we all were
taking in the march of life. I’m not
sure. But perhaps we should say we “find
it” sometimes through tears that let us know that we are part of the ineffable
mystery of life and death over which we have so little control but through
which we share such inexpressible glory one with another, both in sadness and
in joy.
We need to pay attention to our lives in our living. For when we pay attention, we find that
occasionally we have climbed to a mountaintop, and everything – in an instant –
has been changed. One of the things that
happens is that our perspective transforms.
We get a glimpse of the big picture, and we find ourselves within
it. In the big Transfiguration story the
disciples see only Jesus again after it’s all over. No more Moses. No more Elijah. No more blinding light and dazzling
clothes. But then they remember what
they had heard God say: “This is my son, the Beloved; with him I am well
pleased; listen to him!” And then their
friend comes to them and touches them and tells them not to be afraid.
There would be much to be afraid of in coming days, but
what they had seen and heard would give them courage and hope. Even if Jesus suffered, they would later
understand that God was in it. Even if
their story did not work out the way they thought it would – God would be in
it. And very slowly they began to see
that they were part of a very large thing – this Jesus, his calling of them to
leave their nets and follow him, this life of faith to which they had been
called.
So I ask you the same question I asked our session last
Tuesday night: What transfiguring experience has lifted you up to go on when times
have gotten tough? If one doesn’t
come instantly to mind, give yourself time.
Maybe some of those people who left the meeting the other night after
making important decisions as leaders of our congregation, recalled in their
car on the ride home some experience they might not have thought of on the spot
when I threw that scary question at them.
Something, in fact, that had happened along the way that has held them
up through the tough road we often walk in this life.
Sometimes it’s not just something personal, but expansive
and embracing of efforts important to others as well. Since we Americans have just begun to
celebrate our annual observance of Black History month, it might be a good time
to remember the great role the African-American people of faith played in the
civil rights movement. Something
powerful must have happened in those times of worship and fellowship in those
clapboard churches on side streets in cities and towns across this
country. People must have come to see
that God was in what they were doing. At
least I believe that’s what gave them strength to envision a world and to work
for one in which they could vote and have equal opportunities for the blessings
of liberty that the constitution of their country had promised them, but that
the forces of darkness had denied them.
And no matter how we feel about the ways and means of the
current war in
The visions that give us strength and purpose often fade
quickly from view, but their effect lasts on through the work that must be
done. On the mountaintop that Matthew
talks about, Moses and Elijah suddenly disappear. What are the disciples to think? Have they been part of some great and holy
moment, or has this been only a dream?
Jesus’ face no longer glows. He
looks just like one of them. They hear
no more word from God, only the sound of the wind blowing lonely as it does
over tops of mountains. It’s time to go
back down. It’s reality time.
At the bottom of the hill a man comes to them with an
epileptic child. “Lord, have mercy . .
.” he implores, and the disciples stand by helplessly as if nothing at all has
happened to them. But they begin to
catch on in time. They become partners
with Jesus in the healing of and caring for other people. Sometimes the shock in coming down the
mountain can catch us off guard, but, as the story tells us, we – like Peter,
James, and John – cannot stay forever in the place of splendor. Reality intrudes. But that’s precisely where we need the
recollection of the vision.
Let’s get back to our session meeting the other
night. A young woman of our church
family had come to us with the request that I be allowed to bless the union she
has formed with another young woman for life.
I was willing, but our session needed to give assent. According to the laws of the state and of the
church, this would not be a wedding or a marriage – but it would be an occasion
to invoke God’s blessing upon a committed relationship between two people, a
time for their family and friends to gather in the presence of God to celebrate
a reality they cherish for themselves.
But this is a volatile issue, as we know, in both religious and
political circles. What would our church
leadership do? After very thoughtful,
serious, and caring deliberation your session voted overwhelmingly to permit
the ceremony. Sometimes we come across
the unexpected right in the middle of the ordinary, and we are called to stand
in one way or another. In this situation
I believe they stood on the side of God in standing for these two young people,
but not one of us could fail to see that this was an awesome moment.
I remember a dying woman in this congregation who told me
that the thing that was sustaining her in her final days – and she knew and
welcomed them as her final days – was that every now and then Jesus came and
stood at the foot of her bed and reassured her that everything was going to be
all right. From that moment on, I took
care as I stepped around her bed when I came to visit, and I never stopped for long
at the foot of her bed. The last thing I
wanted to do in her final hours was to come between her and her Lord. Seeing Jesus before us in the starkness of
the hospital room, or on a lonely mountaintop, or in the midst of our community
– is what our faith is all about, and what the story of the Transfiguration
opens up for all of us. Glory be to God
forever. Amen.
COME FISH WITH ME
Matthew 4:12-23
Rev. Richard R. Wohlschlaeger
Swarthmore Presbyterian Church
January 23, 2005
Before the big snow, there was a little snow, and I was
in Paoli that Wednesday afternoon about ten days ago, and what is usually
slightly less than a half-hour drive back to Swarthmore took nearly an hour and
forty-five minutes. I have to say I was
glad I had a full tank of gas, a heater, and a radio as I crawled bumper to
bumper down 252.
Ironically – considering the weather conditions – a
bumper sticker on the car ahead of me for most of the way home read: I’d rather be skiing. I’ll bet so! To be a skier caught in a claustrophobic
situation, crawling along a snow-covered roadway when you’d rather be gliding
freely down a snow-covered mountainside makes you wonder about the fates that
have done a real number on you that day.
That bumper sticker got me to thinking. I had a lot of time to think about almost
anything that afternoon. Have you ever
wondered about all those people who, by reading their bumper stickers, would
seem to be wanting to be somewhere other than where they are now or be doing
something other than what they are doing now?
Check out the bumper stickers: I’d
rather be sailing. I’d rather be in the
islands. I love
It’s a little like the sign in the window of the small
town storefront business of American folklore: Gone fishin’. Some people actually do it. They close up shop on the business of the day
and take off for the thing they really want to do. Practically, of course, they can’t do that
habitually. If you’ve got a business to
run, you’ve got to pay some attention to it or you won’t have the wherewithal
to take that fishing vacation when the time comes. We all know what that’s about.
We have a fishing story this morning, but it’s quite a
different story than one of disengagement and letting go. It’s rather a story about engagement and about a new
relationship. “Come fish with me,” Jesus said one day to four young
fishermen, and just like that they did. It’s
a rather amazing story.
What would cause such a thing to happen? And when I say that, I mean both the call and
the following. What would cause the
call? What would cause the following?
As with most stories in the Gospels, the story in Matthew
of Jesus calling his first four disciples tells us as much about the one who
calls as the ones who follow. To see
Christ is to see the nature of God among us.
Many who followed Jesus called him rabbi,
which means teacher. But Matthew’s story
tells us that this rabbi is a teacher of a new kind. It was not conventional for rabbis of that
time to go out and call disciples, or students.
It was considered bad form for a rabbi to go out and beat the bushes for
new converts. Evangelism is what we
would call that kind of activity today, and it seems that rabbis were not into
evangelism. The greatness of their
teaching was supposed to naturally attract new students.
But at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry we see a
change in that old pattern. Jesus goes out
among the people proclaiming the good news of the nearness of God. “Come, follow me,” he says, “and I will
change your lives forever.” You see,
Matthew is trying to tell us from the get-go that our God is an actively
seeking, relentlessly searching God, not a passive, inactive, aloof God who
waits for us to make the first move. God
is patient with us, but God doesn’t wait for us forever. God takes the initiative.
The fifteenth chapter of John says it in these familiar
words: You did not choose me but I chose
you. And I appointed you to go and bear
fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in
my name. I am giving you these commands
so that you may love one another (John15:16). That’s the good news we are asked to hear
this morning – that from the beginning Jesus calls us, as the old hymn
proclaims, “o’er the tumult of life’s wild and restless sea” to the peace and
fullness of life lived close to God.
And yet this story sort of amazes me. As pastor Mark Ralls writes in The Christian Century: “Each day Andrew and Simon, James and John
wake before dawn, walk down to the sea, unroll their fishing nets and try their
luck. This was their routine. Yet when Jesus calls, their lives are changed
in an instant. ‘Follow me,’ Jesus says,
‘and I will make you fishers of people.’
With a few words they are his.
“Then Jesus sets his sights on James and John, and they
leave their boat, and everything that goes with it, behind them. In the blink of an eye, they are by Jesus’
side, wide-eyed and dripping wet from the
Jesus reportedly said that the Kingdom to which he was
calling his followers was not geographically boundaried. That is, God’s Kingdom does not exist like a
country does. It is not “here” or
“there,” but everywhere. It is spread
all over, but most people do not see it.
The fishermen Jesus called, you know, might have understood that saying on