The First Modern Man (John 20:19 - 31)

Easter's not over, you know . . . we have another six weeks of it . . . while our more evangelical brothers and sisters have put away the lilies and bonnets until next year, while they're sharpening the blades on the mower and getting ready for Summer we who follow the church calendar are still singing Easter hymns and contemplating the resurrection . . . and that's how it should be, isn't it? Easter is the most important time of year, it's the time when we celebrate the fact that separates us from all other faiths: we worship a risen God, a God who has conquered sin, who has triumphed over death. It's from Easter, from the fact of the resurrection, that we derive that most characteristic of Christian qualities: hope. Hope that this is not all there is . . . hope that – in spite of everything we see and hear – evil is being routed in the world . . . hope that like Jesus, the first fruits of the resurrection, we will be resurrected some day as well.

Hope is our song, our poem, our anthem . . . but after Jesus' death, there wasn't a lot of it going around . . . when we left off last week, Mary Magdalene had seen the empty tomb, but at first she’d thought his body had been taken . . . even after he appeared to her, she thought he was the gardener, until he called her by name . . . and so, as that first resurrection day comes to a close, Mary knows, but no one else . . . Oh, Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, had seen an empty tomb, but it’s unclear just what they thought about it, and even more unclear what they’d gone and told the others. So we don’t know what they thought as they gathered that evening in a Jerusalem house, maybe they were discussing it, trying to decide what to think of the empty tomb . . . John says all the doors were locked, and he says it was for fear of the religious authorities – and suddenly, without warning, Jesus appears and stands before them. Just like that, right through a locked door. And he could have said a lot of things, like "How ya'all doing?" or "Behold! I have returned," but the first words out of his mouth are "Peace be with you."

And he shows them his nail-scarred hands and his sword-pierced side, and they rejoice when they see that it’s him . . . and he says again "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." And right here we have John's version of the great commission . . . it's not at his ascension, as it is in Matthew, it's right here in the quiet lamp-light of their gathering place . . . "As God has sent me, so I sent you." The disciples are sent to the world just as Jesus was sent . . . by God, the Creator almighty. And to power them, to animate them and sustain and comfort them as they do the work of God, he breathes on them, literally giving them his spirit, his Holy Spirit . . . and notice again that it's not like the other accounts we have . . . particularly Luke's, where the Spirit comes down upon the disciples in fire and tongues at Pentecost . . . here it's literally the breath of God. Breathe on me, breath of God . . .

I wonder if they saw anything? I wonder if they saw the spirit pass from Jesus into their bodies, into their hearts and minds? Pam and I were at a revival in Mississippi with a friend of ours, a communications professor from State, and it was a Pentecostal revival, and there was a lot of flinging the spirit around . . . and at one point the revivalist threw the spirit with great vim and vigor up into the balcony, and you could hear the folks swooning up there, and our friend turned to us and said "I thought I saw something that time," and I don't know, maybe he did, but I don't think it was like that in the house where the disciples had gathered . . . this seems like the antithesis of the flashy-show-biz spirit, the opposite of the public Pentecost event Luke describes in Acts . . . Jesus breathes on them, quietly, without fanfare, without muss or fuss , and they receive the spirit of God . . .

And this Spirit empowers them to do . . . what? Jesus gives some specifics: "If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained." Whoa . . . sounds pretty serious . . . sounds like the Spirit gives the apostles the ability to forgive sins or not forgive them, as the case may be.

I was having coffee with a guy I know, and the subject got onto the Roman Catholic Church, somehow, and the role of priests . . . and my companion said "I don't need any priest to forgive me," and so I said sweetly – this is before I figured out the absolute futility of these things – I said "have you ever read John 20:23?" and he admitted that he couldn't recall the exact verse, and I heard later from his wife that he went home and read it and was mightily troubled for awhile . . . and rightly so. This is one of the scriptural foundations of the priestly role as confessor/forgiver . . . and one of the reasons the Roman Catholics insist on Apostolic succession. This spiritual gift to forgive and retain sins is limited in their theology to their own priests, who are – according to them – in the direct line of succession from those disciples gathered together on that Easter evening.

Well. There was one of those original disciples, one of the original twelve, who was missing that night, and it was Thomas, who was called not "doubting," but "twin." And the others tell him about it, about the appearance as if by magic, right through the walls of the house, about the nail-scarred hand and the sword-pierced side, and about the Spirit bestowed upon them, light in their master's breath . . . but the Twin refuses to believe unless he sees the hands and touches them and slides his hand on up into that sword-sliced side. And here, of course, is where he got that nickname "doubting," because he refuses to believe unless he's seen it with his own eyes . . . but I think it's kind of a bum rap, myself. I mean, would any of you out there believe if one of your favorite teachers came back to life, and you heard about it from some of your friends who'd been at a dinner party – where there surely was a little wine going around? I can see it now: Andy says "And there we were, chatting away, and all of a sudden there's Ruby, big as life, back from the dead, and she lifts up her shirt and shows us the embalming scars, and the tire marks on her legs . . ." I'd probably feel ol' Andy's forehead, like are you sick or something, man? Just what had you all been smoking, anyway?

I suspect that none of us would believe it if our friends told us of a resurrection . . . and so I don't tend to blame Thomas for not believing just on the testimony of some eyewitnesses . . . In fact, in this respect Thomas is the very model of a modern man, only about seventeen-hundred years too early . . . like us moderns, he demands hands-on proof before he’ll buy into it . . . if he can’t touch it or feel it or put his hand inside of it, he’s not going to believe . . . it’s like he’s a charter member of the show-me state of mind, and of course that’s kind of like who we tend to be . . . especially since the enlightenment, if you can’t prove it scientifically, it didn’t happen . . . if it’s not corroborated by eyewitnesses, if there’s not a physical chain of evidence, you just can’t prove it . . . and in those days of course there was no DNA or fingerprint lab, no C.S.I. Jerusalem, no quirky – yet serious – forensic scientist, who can leap tall hypotheses in a single bound . . . but even Grissom would have trouble with the empty tomb . . . he’d have no problem identifying the grave as Jesus’ – they’d have his DNA from his time in custody – but he’d be looking for a dead body, not a living, breathing human, especially one that looks so different his closest friends can’t even recognize him.

And that’s why all the gospels relate post-resurrection experiences. They’re critical to the Christian tradition. After all, without these appearances, there’s just the empty tomb, with the neatly-folded grave clothes. In the first weeks after the crucifixion we can imagine all kinds of rumors, flying around Jerusalem . . . competing stories about what happened to his body. Bandits took him away, or maybe wild dogs? It could even have been the religious authorities, or the Romans, trying to deny the Christian movement its martyr . . . nobody was looking for a living, breathing resurrected body, even disciples like Thomas, who should have known better . . .

A week after his first appearance to the gathered disciples, Jesus materializes in the upper room again, this time with Thomas present. Once again the doors are locked, and once again – for the third time – he says "Peace be with you" – I guess they don’t call him the Prince of Peace for nothing. He goes right up to Thomas and offers himself up for inspection: "Put your finger here and see my hands; reach out your hand and put it in my side . . . do not doubt, but believe." But Thomas is convinced just by seeing him – and note that in this, he’s no different than the others, who believed when they first got a load of him the week before – and Thomas confesses his faith right on the spot: "My Lord and my God!"

And Jesus, who knows a teachable moment when he sees one, says "Do you believe because you’ve seen? Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have come to believe!" And right here is the theological punch line of the whole story . . . the Greek word we translate as "blessed" connotes more than just "fortunate" or "happy" . . . it refers specifically to having favor bestowed upon you by God. And that divine favor is belief in a risen savior . . . Jesus is not saying that you are blessed as a result of believing without seeing, but that you are blessed in that you believe and yet have not seen. Believing without seeing, without touching, without stuffing your hand down inside a sword-riven side, is a blessing, it’s a gift from God.

And what a blessing it is, especially in these skeptical, 21st-Century times . . . and that’s how it’s often preached . . . we’ve been given that ultimate blessing, that ultimate gift of belief without seeing Christ standing before us in the flesh, aren’t we lucky? And yet, is that really true? Do we really not see our risen Lord, all around us? Did he not tell us "I will be in you and you in me?" And so is he not right there, in our friends next to us in the pews, in our brothers and sisters across the aisle? And did he not say “as you do it to the least of these . . . you do it to me?” And so is he not also in the homeless that wander our highways and hedges, also in the abused and neglected children of our suburban and inner-city streets?

If we look at the beaten, if we look at the depressed, if we look at the victims of war and genocide and economic oppression we will see and touch the nail-scarred hands, and we will bury our arms up to the elbows in his wounded side . . . that’s where Christ is, in all the victims, all the scapegoats, all the widows and orphans and children who ever lived. That’s where he is and that’s where he’s always been.

I guess, in a funny kind of way, we’re the reverse of Thomas . . . he saw Christ, he spoke with him and broke bread with him and only then did he believe. We’re given the wonderful gift, the marvelous blessing of belief without all of that, and now we can see. We can see the world the way it really is, we can see – as Calvin might have said – through Christ-colored glasses instead of the lenses of sin . . . we can see the risen Christ wherever we look . . . in our neighbor, in our kin, and in ourselves. Amen.

To Believe or Not to Believe (Easter A; John 20:1-18)

How many of you believe that Jesus was bodily resurrected, just like it says in the gospels? Don't answer that . . . I don't want to embarrass anyone, or make anyone fib . . . The fact remains that the resurrection is consistently one of the major stumbling blocks to belief--notice I didn't say faith--in Christianity. It's one of the hardest things to wrap our minds around, which is why some scholars have recommended--and indeed, practiced their own selves--coming to Jesus through his teachings. Understand his life and what he did, they say, and that will prepare you to believe that he came back from the dead. Or . . . not. Many of these folks never make it beyond the “it's a wonderful life” phase, and value Jesus as a great teacher, and only that.

That is view of participants in the several "quests for the historical Jesus," a term coined by Albert Schweitzer, who besides being a medical doctor, was a pretty fair New Testament theologian. Modern historical Jesus questers include Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, who, modernist that they are, downplay--or downright dispute--the miracles, including and especially the resurrection.

John Shelby Spong, an Episcopal bishop who wrote some books popularizing these ideas, and who a seminary buddy of mine calls Spronngggg, feels that in this modern day and age, belief in the miracles--again including the resurrection--is an embarrassment to Christians, and should be jettisoned, or at least that's the theme of every one of his books. He catalog various ideas about how the resurrection “really” happened, ranging from “his disciples came and carried him off” to “wild dogs ate him” to “it was just a vision and/or a dream.” Ironically, the theory about the disciples stealing him away is the one the scribes and Pharisees put out to discredit the first Christians, according to Matthew.

This difficulty of believing in the resurrection isn't a just a modern thing . . . It was just as hard for the ancients to believe . . . Even the disciples, who had been TOLD that he was going to rise again, had trouble. There's the famous “doubting Thomas,” of course, but each gospel account tells of others who at first disbelieve. In Mark, after Mary Magdalene sees Jesus, she goes and tells “those who had been with him,” i.e., the disciples, but they don’t believe her. In Matthew, although the eleven remaining disciples come to worship at the risen Christ’s feet, some of them doubt, though doubt what we’re not told. In Luke, the Marys and Joanna and “other women” see the empty tomb, run back to the disciples, and tell them; but they aren’t believed, because it seems to be an “idle tale,” which may be 1st century code for one told by women.

Finally, in our passage, Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, race one another to the tomb, after Mary had told them the stone had been rolled away. When they get there, the other disciple gets there first, looks in and sees the empty linens, but doesn’t go inside. When Peter—good old, full-tilt Peter—gets there, he goes inside, sees the linens as well, but also the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head, neatly rolled up and placed aside, away from the other linens in a place all by itself. Finally, the disciple that Jesus loved comes into the tomb, sees and believes.

But here’s the thing . . . just what does the other disciple believe? It can’t be that Jesus was resurrected, because in the very next line we’re told “for as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that he must rise again from the dead.” And note the beginning of that line “for,” as in “because as yet they did not understand . . . that he must rise from the dead.” The clause about how the other disciple believed is predicated upon the succeeding clause, the one beginning with “for.” It some way or another, the information about not getting that Jesus must be raised again explains or leads to his belief . . . and so I ask again: what was it that he believed?

Well, the most obvious thing is that Jesus is not there . . . that’s the proximate thing, but if that was all it is, why the stuff about not understanding that Jesus must be raised? Well, it could be any number of things, as Bishop Spong has pointed out . . . he could believe that bandits have come and carried him away, for their own nefarious reasons. That wild animals have dragged him off for equally nefarious, but different, reasons. Or, he could believe the Pharisees—and Spong’s—version, that others of his disciples had come along and stolen the body, but surely a disciple as prominent as the one Jesus loved would have heard about it.

Here’s a thought: what if we are misreading John when he uses the verb “to believe?” What if we are taking it in a purely intellectual sense, as in I believe something to occur, when John meant it to be something more? After all, the Greek word for “to believe” and “to-have-faith” are one and the same, and how we translate it—to believe or to have faith—depends on the context, on the words and situation that it is meaning to describe. And almost everywhere you see that word, especially in John, it has something of both meanings in it . . . for John, intellectual belief and faith are inextricably intertwined.

And really, isn’t it that way for us? Except perhaps in the most mundane of situations, perhaps . . . maybe if you’re staring at a piece of clothing someone has on, and you say “I believe that’s green,” but really . . . though we say that, sometimes, what we really mean is certainty . . . I know that it’s green, and there’s a different word in both English and Greek for that . . . but unless it’s right in front of you, isn’t all knowledge contingent? Isn’t all belief the same way? If a person says they believe, say in the Easter Bunny, isn’t there at least a dollop of faith in there? I mean, I presume that they’ve never seen the Easter Bunny . . . and if someone says I believe Aunt Matilda’s coming in at eight, doesn’t that have a large measure of faith about it? After all, her arrival time depends on a whole lot of variables, doesn’t it? Plane schedules, train schedules, traffic . . . Aunt Matilda’s driving ability, perhaps. But how can one say one “knows” something absolutely? Especially if one has never seen or touched or experienced it?

Maybe one can describe the concept of belief/faith as a continuum . . . knowledge on one end, blind faith on the other . . . and perhaps John is telling us that—in spite of not understanding that Jesus was to be raised from the dead—that the disciple that Jesus loved gained at that instant a measure of faith that he didn’t have before, maybe in spite of not understanding the scriptures that said Jesus would be raised again, despite not understanding when Jesus told him—three times!—that he would be killed and raised on the third day, perhaps he gained belief—perhaps way to the right, on the knowledge-faith continuum, far toward the end of faith..

In John’s gospel, Jesus insists, over and over, and in many ways, that belief comes from above, from God, not from anything we see . . . and what we have here is another demonstration of that fact . . . the disciple that Jesus loved does not believe because of that empty tomb, he doesn’t even believe because he saw the linens and the head-cloth, all neatly folded. He believes because God wills it, and what he believes—even though it might not be in the resurrection—was in the person and name of Christ.

And I have no idea why John doesn’t say the same thing about Peter, except that perhaps—just perhaps—it’s a demonstration of exactly what I’ve been talking about . . . Peter sees the same exact thing as the disciple whom Jesus loved, and yet we don’t hear that he suddenly believes . . . and as I said, I have no idea why, except that our God is a mysterious God, whose ways are not our own. Perhaps Peter already had been brought to that level of belief/faith, perhaps God was waiting for some other time, who knows? But the fact that Peter isn’t portrayed as having believed, and it shores up John’s contention that it is not anything that anybody sees—after all, Peter sees the same thing that the beloved disciple sees, but does not come to belief.

Well. The two men scamper back off to their homes, where they have been presumably mourning in private—and away from prying, religious-authority eyes—leaving Mary Magdalene alone, just as she had been that morning when she discovered the stone had been rolled away. And she bends down to look into the tomb, and Lo! There are two men in white sitting in there, and they hadn’t been there before . . . they hadn’t been there when the men were there, and does Mary wonder at that? Does she wonder why the two . . . whatever they were, we’re told they’re angels . . . didn’t appear to the men? After all, men were the religious elite . . . weren’t they? They ran the show, they made the rules. Men were allowed into parts of the temple that women couldn’t go, and only men could be priests or teachers . . . does Mary wonder why these messengers from God appear to her and not to the men?

If she does, she doesn’t have much time to dwell on it, because the angels ask her a question: “Woman,” they say “Why are you weeping?” And she replies: they’ve taken away my Lord, and I don’t know where they’ve laid him.” And note well: she isn’t weeping because they had killed him, but because she doesn’t know where he is, she can’t go visit the grave, she doesn’t have a place to locate her grief. She doesn’t have a place she can go on Memorial Day to bring flowers and have a good cry, she doesn’t have a place to go talk to him as if he were still there, as if he were with her.

Because it’s important to know where our dead are, isn’t it? It’s important to have a place to go, a place to be with them, even if you’re a Christian even if, ostensibly, at least, you believe that the person is not there. The multi-billion dollar funeral industry counts on that . . . their funerary parks, their cemeteries of the dead, cater to that desire to know where our dead are . . . because just like Mary, we want to know where they have been laid.

And this brings us back to belief in the resurrection. Christian doctrine is that no matter what happens to us just after we die, we will be resurrected on the final day when, the just Kingdom of God is established on earth. And why is that Christian doctrine, why is it Christian belief? Well, as Paul puts it, Christ’s is the first fruits of the resurrection, the forerunner of us all, who are children of God through Christ. It is our Christian hope, again as Paul says, that we will be raised up just as was Christ.

Notice the word “hope:” Swiss theologian Karl Barth writes that what draws people to worship is an unspoken question, and that question is simply this: “Is it true?” Is it true that God lives and gives us life? Is it true that God established a routine, that we call the laws of nature, and that God broke the routine and somehow raised Jesus from the dead? Is it true that something so extraordinary happened on that morning that we can only rebuild our lives on its foundation?

Friends, this is why it’s called belief, this is why it’s called faith: and why it’s not called knowledge: With the resurrection, God gave us a demonstration of love and forgiveness that was so powerful, so compelling, that it is worthy of faith, and thus doubt. What we proclaim at Easter is too mighty to be encompassed by certainty, too wonderful to be found only within our imaginations’ border. So we continue to question, we continue to doubt, we continue to dig deeper and deeper into our faith, which was born on this day nineteen hundred and eighty four years ago, when we believe and proclaim that Christ the Lord has been raised from the dead. Hallelujah! Amen.

A Most Ingenious Paradox (Matthew 21:1 - 11)

Well, here we are, at the place we arrive every year: Palm Sunday, gateway to Holy Week. Now, if that sounds like a tourist slogan—See! The disciples gathered ‘round the table! Witness! How just a little spilled salt can upset an entire career—if it sounds like a tourist slogan, that’s how we treat Holy Week, as outside observers of a great pageant. And in some ways, that’s not a bad way to think about it. After all, Holy Week is a week of Holy signs, Holy symbolic actions, which we observe every year. And they don’t call it observance for nothing.

And here’s the thing: One of the biggest symbolic actions of all is Jesus’ riding into Jerusalem on that colt and/or donkey. It is an action that symbolizes something. We just have to figure out what it is supposed to symbolize to us.

Right at the outset, it’s clear that Jesus plans and executes it carefully so that it is a symbolic act. He tells his disciples exactly where to go, and what to do when they get there. And what he plans is a messianic entrance to Jerusalem. As theologian James Duke writes, the story, common to all four gospels, “takes place amid the swirl of messianic expectations during the age of Second Temple Judaism.” These expectations were many and diverse, calling for in some cases the violent overthrow of the Roman occupying forces and their Jewish collaborators. Jesus carefully sets the scene so that these messianic expectations are aroused . . . and in the end, subverted as well.

Although the scene is in all four gospels, it is not told exactly the same in each. In particular, Matthew—often considered the most Jewish of the evangelists—wants to make sure his audience really gets it that Jesus is the messianic fulfilment of Hebrew scripture. To that end, his version is the only one that contains what biblical scholars call a fulfilment quotation, which begins with “This took place to fulfil . . .” And the prophecy that it had taken place to fulfil was from Zechariah, who said “Look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” That’s why in Matthew—and Matthew alone—Jesus carefully instructs his disciples to go and find two animals: “"Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me.” Which the disciples do, and Matthew dutifully tells us, with no apparent irony or sense of incredulity, that Jesus mounts both animals and heads into Jerusalem.

And I’ve always chuckled at this, that Matthew is so literal—or perhaps so, how shall we say it . . . dull . . . that he misses the fact that Zechariah is writing poetically, and the chief attribute of Hebrew poetry is parallelism, the repetition of a lines, in slightly different formats, for emphasis. Thus, when Zechariah says “your king will come, humble, riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey” he doesn’t mean the king will ride on two animals, but the line “on a colt, the foal of a donkey” is a poetic repetition of “riding on a donkey,” repeated to emphasize the fact that it will be a donkey. And after all, every donkey is the foal of a donkey, including the one he rode in on.

Over the years, I’ve imagined this scene: Jesus, riding on a donkey and a smaller donkey as well, maybe like a rodeo trick rider, standing with a foot on each, both sets of reigns in hand, or maybe like John Wayne in Stagecoach, stopping a speeding stage by crawling over multiple horses. But just recently, I came across what is now my favorite visualization: a cartoon showing a donkey with a smaller one on his back, and with Jesus sitting on the smaller one’s back, giving a thumbs up sign, and saying “Heeey!” And the poor bottom donkey is saying “I feel stoopid.”

The guy who drew that cartoon, one Thomas Whitley, derides Matthew for this in his blog, saying he “apparently didn’t understand the Hebrew parallelism in the original text . . . Moreover, Matthew apparently didn’t realize the lunacy of saying that Jesus rode both a donkey and a colt simultaneously.” And for a while, I agreed with this rather smug assessment—I know, right? Me, smug?—but something always bothered me about it, always niggled at the back of my mind. If Matthew was a good Jew, if his was the most Jewish of gospels—as scholars, and Whitley, insist—what are the odds that he didn’t understand Hebrew poetry? After all, there are indications that he was well versed in Hebrew literary tropes—such as chiasmata or inclusios—elsewhere in his gospel. Why wouldn’t he understand this very basic feature of Hebrew poetry?

As I puzzled over this, it came to me: what if Matthew understood very well what he was doing? What if he knew all about Hebrew poetry, knew that Zechariah meant only one donkey, and what if he interpreted it literally on purpose? Then the image of Jesus riding awkwardly around on two animals is one he wanted us to have, he wanted us to imagine “circus Jesus,” to picture the absurdity of it all. And then I thought: what a subversive thing to do, and that’s when I became convinced. Because the whole thing is subversive, the whole thing is most ironic. Jesus set the whole thing up to be that way: after all, he’s the one who chose a donkey, the most humble of conveyances . . .

As biblical scholars Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan point out, no King of any worldly state would be caught dead riding into town on a donkey, he’d have a white destrier, a prancing, snorting stallion at the very least. And Borg and Crossan speculate that there indeed was such a ruler riding into Jerusalem that day, on the opposite side of town: they write that the Roman governor Pontius Pilate entered Jerusalem to personally oversee the quelling of any violence that might erupt because of the Passover. And they go so far as to suppose that Jesus set up his entrance to Jerusalem to mock that specific entrance.

Whether or not that is true, Matthew’s account of that entrance both upholds and subverts the messianic expectations of the day, and I think—the most Jewish gospel writer that he was—he deliberately adds just a little extra fillip of ridiculousness to the whole picture. After all, his audience consisted of largely educated, perhaps wealthy, Jews, and they would have no problem picking up on it all . . . they would recognize that the whole thing is a most delicious, a most ingenious paradox, and that it would heighten their understanding and appreciation of just what kind of Messiah they had gotten for themselves.

It’s the same paradox that Paul speaks of so eloquently over in 1st Corinthians: foolishness to the Greeks and a stumbling block to the Jews, and indeed it points out just how foolish, and how ultimately ridiculous the rich and powerful rulers are in God's sight. Matthew's picture of a king trying to ride two animals, no matter how humble they are, reminds me of the over-the-top symbolic actions associated with the Hebrew prophets. Take Hosea: god commands him to "take ... a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord." Or Ezekiel who, following God's direction, (a) eats a scroll, (b) makes a model of Jerusalem out of a brick, (c) lies on one side for 390 days and the other for 40, and (d) preaches to the brick. And that’s just one of the actions he is commanded to perform.

Whether Jesus actually rode into two on two donkeys or not--and I suspect that he did not--Matthew seems to have been bent on portraying at least a little of that prophetic over-the-topness. He is having Jesus perform a ridiculous symbolic act that shows the ultimate folly of worldly power.

God's ways are not our ways ... To the world it is foolish to worship a crucified king, one who rode into Jerusalem in triumph on one day, on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey, and less than a week later had been murdered, spiked to a crossbeam, in about as painful way a person could die. Because that's the message of this brilliant piece of political theater, and Matthew's equally brilliant portrayal of it. Worldly power is fleeting, it is as ridiculously foolish as a man trying to ride on two donkeys ... A man who, though he is king, son of god, nevertheless rode into town humble, on a beat of burden, like a sack of potatoes.

And the lesson is still sharp today, isn't? Vladimir Putin lets himself be photographed shirtless, muscles bulging, riding a horse. Ronald Reagan cultivated his image as a lone gunslinger, Gary Cooper standing over against the Soviet menace. Talking heads and political opponents castigate a president who doesn't talk tough enough to other nations, using the buzzwords "irresolute," or wishy-washy when what they mean is not war-like, not saber-rattling enough. Franklin Roosevelt hid the fact he was in a wheel chair from the American people because he knew that it read “weak” in the photographs. Or, imagine Barack Obama or George W. Bush riding into Washington on a donkey, lanky feet dragging the ground, smiling and waving to the crowds. What would the talking heads be saying?

World leaders have a distressing way of claiming to be Christian and doing the most unchristian things … you can go on YouTube and find a video of Vladimir Putin, scourge of the Crimea and Ukraine, talking about his baptism. And here in our country—and I will not name names—we’ve had presidents who have gone to church on Sunday and defended water-boarding on Monday, who’ve sung Amazing Grace one day and ordered drone attacks the next.

That's not what Christianity is about. It isn't about the one with the most troops or the better generals winning. It's not about the rich always getting their way. God's way is foolishness to the nations, to the world, and nothing shows it more than Palm Sunday, when the king of the universe rode into town, feet dragging the ground, on a donkey and a colt, the foal of a donkey. Amen.

The Sixth (or Seventh) Sign (John 11:1 - 45)

The second part of the Gospel of John is called the “Book of Signs,” because it seems to be structured around seven—or maybe six—signs. And whether seven or six, it doesn’t matter for our purposes, except to note that this one, the raising of Lazarus, is the final one in that section. And you might well ask—and I’m glad you did—what they are signs of? Well, they’re signs of the Kingdom of God. And so, right off the bat, we’re going to look at that oft-misunderstood concept, which is referred to by multiple names in the Bible, names like “the rule of Christ” or “the day of the Lord” or “the kingdom of heaven.” Reference to this concept are rife in the Bible, in both the Old and New Testaments, and my favorites in the Old are from Isaiah and Micah: “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them . . . [the nations] shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”

In the New Testament, Jesus tells parables about the kingdom—like the mustard seed growing into a tree with home for all the birds and animals—and there are those six—or is it seven—signs in John, the last of which we just, but nowhere is it more clear than in Luke, where Jesus gives his mission statement which is, of course, to embody the Kingdom: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.”

Now. What are things all those descriptions have in common? Well, right off the bat, they’re surprising . . . who ever heard of a mustard seed—little, tiny, producing normally a little herb—growing up into a tree? One big enough for all manner of birds to nest? And the laying down with the lamb? Puh-leeeze. The lion fricasseeing the lamb, is more like it . . . but here, in the kingdom of God, the lion and the lamb will lay down together, and you can take that literally, or symbolically, like it was surely intended, but one thing is clear: the lamb, which ordinarily would be dead, is alive.

And that leads us to a second thing in common with these descriptions . . . life arises where seemingly it would not. In the case of the mustard seed, it would normally produce life—in the ancient mind, the seed was considered “dead”—but it produces life overflowing, life abundantly, it makes life—living space and food and nourishment—for the birds of the air. And the lion and the lamb, and interaction which normally produces death, instead—inscrutably and unaccountably—engenders life.

Now. To see where I’m going with this, the first thing I thought of when I read this morning’s lection was the Kingdom of God, and—the Spirit moving in particular ways as it does—in Christian Ed we just happen to be studying discernment, and one of the spiritual disciplines within it is learning to see where the kingdom of God is breaking out around us. In other words, to look for signs of the Kingdom of God. We do this by asking ourselves—and one another—a simple question: where have you seen the Kingdom of God (or the rule of Christ or the day of the Lord or the kingdom of heaven—breaking through into the world? Where have you seen signs of the Kingdom of God?

And one of the things we’ve started to do in session—and I hope committees and boards will join in the fun—is asking ourselves every month “Where have you seen signs of the Kingdom breaking out in the last month.” And as I contemplated this, I imagined how another session meeting might have went, the Session of Brownhills Presbyterian Church of Judea sitting down, and their moderator—a completely handsome, charismatic kind of guy, as are all moderators—asking them “Ok, where have you seen the Kingdom of God breaking out in the past month.” And the elders kind of shrink down in their seats, and shift nervously around, they won’t meet his eye, but finally Fred of Bethany pipes up: “Uh, well . . . I was trudging home one morning after working the swing shift at the tannery—we’d just gotten a big order for Roman bullwhips, and I was dog tired—and I cut through the graveyard—I usually don’t go that way, ‘cause it’s so creepy, all those dead people—but I was tired, so I cut through the graveyard and there was this high keening sound, it set my teeth on edge, and for a moment, I thought all the banshees of Hades were after me, but it turned out to be just ritual weeping, and I thought ‘Cripes, it’s a funeral, the traffic’a gonna be so heavy, and Mildred is gonna be so mad’ . . . she’s always telling me ‘Come right home, Freddie, don’t you dare stop and have one with the boys, and don’t be bringing any of your mangy friends over, either. You don’t make enough at that so-called job of yours for us to be feeding the whole countryside . . . ‘”

And the moderator gently interrupts him “The kingdom, Fred? Where did you see the Kingdom?” and Fred blushes and says, “Oh, yeah . . . well, it turned out it wasn’t a funeral after all, but it’s hard, even now, to say what it was . . . I guess it was the exact opposite of a funeral . . .” “Why do you say that?” asks the moderator. “Because they weren’t putting somebody in a tomb, they were letting somebody out. This . . . guy . . . walked up to a tomb, and it looked like any other tomb, just an eerie hole in the rocks . . . and I could see the stone that the workmen had rolled aside, and this man walks up to the tomb and yelled ‘Lazarus, come out!’ And immediately, I knew what was what, ‘cause that was my cousin Lazarus in that tomb, and I’m thinking ‘Say what??? He’s been in that hole for four days, his spirit has had time to get out of dodge, and he’ll certainly be kind of, ah . . . ripe.’

“And sure enough, I caught a whiff of graveyard stench, and I started down there, fixing maybe to stop that circus, make ‘em leave poor ol’ Lazarus alone, hasn’t he suffered enough, when, in the doorway to the tomb, in that dank hole in the ground, I saw a white smudge, just a little lighter than the surrounding darkness, then it became more and more clear and it was as if the darkness of the tomb turned to day, and the keening and wailing shut off like someone turned a faucet, and my mind was screaming ‘No . . . no . . . this can’t be happening,’ but before my very eyes the blob resolved into a white-bound figure, stumbling into the light, and he would have fallen, but the man—is he a faith healer? An exorcist?—the man caught him in an embrace that was incredibly tender, entirely loving. And the man looked up, and told the crowd ‘Unbind him, and let him go.’ And they did.”

Fred sits for a long time, head bowed, lost in thought, then the moderator says, again gently—for all moderators are gentle—“So why, for you, was this an demonstration of the Kingdom of God?” And Fred looks up, kind of startled, as if he thought it would be self evident: “Well, it surprised the living Hades out of me . . . you hear a lot about resurrection in the final days, in the Day of the Lord, maybe, but you don’t exactly expect to see it coming off the freeway . . . and the last place you expect to see it is in a graveyard. I mean, really: life springing up out of all that death . . . death in the air, death in the dust, death in the very ground and there is life. Unlooked for, unpredicted, unforeseen . . . Life.”

And the other members of the Session of Brownhills Pres of Southern Judea just stared, some transported, some puzzled, but all touched and thinking and feeling the kingdom of God. Amen.

Seven Brothers for One Bride (1 Samuel 16:1 - 13)

Well, you just heard how the historians told it, but I’m here to tell you how it was . . . Because although these events happened three thousand years ago, and I was an old man even then, I remember them well. I remember I was depressed . . . I don’t know whether it was what you’d call clinical depression today or not, but I felt downright bad. I could barely get out of bed, I could hardly choke anything down for dinner—and as a prophet, the last of the judges, no less, my meals tended to be on the sumptuous side . . . but I couldn’t eat, I kept pushing around my peas and potatoes and roast lamb with my fork until my wife said “Quit playing with your food, Samuel . . . don’t you know there are people in Samaria starving at this very minute, that’d give anything for a little of that lamb?” And even though I was an old man I’d have to say “Yes, dear” and pretend to shove some food into my mouth.

Why was I so depressed, you ask? Well, it was simple: God repented of making my dear friend Saul king of Israel. As the last of the judges, I was the one to anoint him . . . I remember that he was tall and fair to look at, well muscled and competent, and all the ladies sighed when they saw him, even my dear wife, and over the years he was King we became close, so close that I was almost a father to him; he was certainly more of a son to me than those good-for-nothing meshuganahs Joel and Abijah, and now, God had withdrawn his spirit from Saul, and that was a death knell for his king-ship, and sure, he’d done some bad things . . . there was that unlawful sacrifice that irritated the Lord, and the cursing of his own soldiers so they couldn’t eat . . . and oh yeah: the sparing of the enemy’s livestock when God had said to destroy it all. But, really: what was so bad? Only a little youthful zeal, maybe an over-idealistic concern for people . . .

But God decided to withdraw the favor of the Lord from Saul, and I admit it, I wept. That’s right, big strong manly judge of the Israelites, weeping before the Lord his God. And of course I had to be the one to tell him, and that just made it worse, and irony of ironies, I had to be the one to go out find and anoint his successor. “How long are you going to grieve over Saul, old man?” said the Lord. “He’s done with, kaput, it’s the end of his King’s Highway. I have withdrawn my spirit from him, and I’m not gonna change my mind. So buck up, quit your moping, I have a job for you. Fill your horn with anointing oil, saddle up ol’ paint, and go to Bethlehem. I’ve found a king for you and his dad’s name is Jesse.”

And I’m thinking “Riigght . . . because your choosing a king worked out so well the last time,” but I can’t say that out loud. What I do say is “You’ve gotta be kidding . . . if Saul gets wind of it, he’ll kill me. He’ll draw and quarter me, then take the quarters and feed them to the jackals, and after that he’ll throw them in the fire—crackle, crackle, crackle—and after that . . .”

“All right, all right, I get the message,” says the Lord my God, “Here’s what you do: take a heifer with you and say ‘I’ve come to sacrifice to the Lord,’ and invite Jesse and his sons—Jesse loves a good party, the old reprobate—and I’ll take it from there. All you gotta do is anoint the one I choose. No sweat!”

And in spite of my misgivings, I do what the Lord tells me—after all, look what happened to Saul when he didn’t! And I get to Bethlehem—that flea-bitten wide spot in the road—and the town fathers show up, bowing low and scraping, ‘cause they know who I am, and what power I hold, and they ask if I’ve come in peace, if I’ve come in shalom, and I say “In shalom . . . I come to sacrifice to the Lord, so clean yourself up and make yourself right with God, and come on along.” And I do the same for Jesse, they clean the sheep manure off their robes, and I sanctify him and his sons, and here comes the first of his sons Eliab, and I’m thinking “Hoo, boy! This gotta be the anointed of the Lord, big, strapping lunk of a man, just look at him!”

And he evidently thinks the same, ‘cause he struts along, looking like the cock of the walk, like he owns the whole place, and he is first-born, so he’d own two thirds of Jesse’s fortune after the old man was gone, and he glances at his reflection in the ceremonial bowl and smirks at himself, just like he was already king, and I say to God: “Well, do you want me to anoint him now, or later?”

But God says: “Don’t you dare . . . he isn’t the one. Don’t look on his appearance or his height or his noble brow . . . for I don’t see as you all do, as mortals do . . . you all look on the outward appearance, but I the Lord look on the inward person, on the heart.” That’s right, my friends: in the middle of a sacrifice, when I’m looking to anoint the next king of Israel, for Moses’ sake, God is giving me a theology lesson. But of course, I don’t say anything, seeing as how I’m not fond of being burnt to a crisp, and so Jesse calls Abinadab—nope—and Shammah—nope—and it’s beginning to look a little like the Miss Jerusalem (I was wondering when the swimsuit competition would start) and finally, all seven brothers have passed before me, and I have to tell Jesse “Sorry ‘bout that, the Lord hasn’t chosen any of these.”

And I ask him “Is that the last of them? Are all your sons here?” And he says “Well, there is one more, he’s the youngest, but he’s down watching the sheep.” And there’s a whole world unsaid here . . . youngest son . . . relegated to babysitting sheep while his brothers got to come to the sacrifice . . . and now I’m reminded of that other story, what is it, Cinder . . . rabbi? Cinder . . . jelly? About this girl kept doing scut work by her sisters ‘cause they thought she was worthless, and the impression is strengthened when I see the brothers rolling their eyes and nudging each other in the ribs. They evidently don’t think too much of this younger sibling.

But I have to tell Jesse “Go get him, bring him up here, ‘cause we can’t sit down to the sacrifice ‘til he’s been seen,” and they send a servant, and while he’s gone, we stand around making small talk—how ‘bout this heat? Shepherd’s almanac says it’s gonna be a short winter, but Achmed the hyena saw his shadow, stuff like that—and finally, there he is, and he takes my breath away, he’s so ruddy and full of life, and what about those eyes? He’s going to break the hearts of all the ladies at court with those eyes, and sure enough, God says: “Rise up and anoint him, for this is the one I’ve chosen!”

And so I take the horn of oil that I’d drug all the way from home, and anoint him in the presence of his brothers, who carp and complain, and roll their eyes even more, until suddenly, there is a rushing sound, as if it were the wind, and a radiance illuminates David’s face for just moment, so that it glows with an unearthly fire, and that shuts them all up, and I get on my mule and head back home to Ramah, humming a little tune, acting all nonchalant, as if I saw shepherd boy’s faces light up every day. And a thought keeps going through my head, and I can’t get it out, nor do know from whence it comes: God’s spirit goes where it will . . .

And even though David was a good looking kid, all ruddy and beautiful of eye and everything, I had to take God’s assurance that he was the King for Israel, that God had looked inside, deep into his heart and found it good. And by and large, he turned out to be a pretty good King, as kings go. In fact, I think you could say he was the best one we ever had, even including Good King Josiah not long before we were shipped off to Babylon. Those—ah—indiscretions with Bathsheba notwithstanding

Over the three millennia since I anointed the boy King, I’ve seen a lot of things . . .I’ve seen my people scattered over the earth, I’ve seen kingdoms come and kingdoms go, I’ve even seen religions come and go. In particular I remember a fellow Jew, born in the same town as David, who was hung up to die by the Romans, and whose worshipers nevertheless revere him precisely for that action, and they name themselves after him, and they’ve gotten real big over the millennia . . . they seem nice, but they have a penchant for killing those with whom they disagree . . .

And in all these years, what I’ve noticed is that the world will go after a looker, every time. They’ll go after outward appearances, the gilt and the glamor and the ruddy looks and beautiful eye. Only unlike God, that’s all they see . . . I remember the heads of your Christian religion, all the golden robes and funny hats . . . they wielded tremendous power, made kings and queens, and all this following a guy who wore rough robes and sandals, and let himself be hung up on cross. And it’s only gotten worse over the years. It’s only gotten worse since the advent of whatcha call it? Television, that’s it . . . I remember a debate in the last part of your 20th century between two candidates for president of what you call the United States—Is that like a King? I don’t understand this thing you call democracy—and it was one of the first debates on this television thing, and the guy who looked better on TV won because his opponent—I think his name was Nix … own, or something like that—looked sweaty and shifty. And I know that the tallest candidate has a distinct advantage . . .

And there’s another thing . . . a lot of times, the person with the most money wins, and not just for your president, either . . . Senators and congressmen, all win because they have the most money . . . and I can see this bias when I watch tele-visionwhich is all about doctors and lawyers and firemen and policemen, not about the majority who just barely make ends meet, who work two jobs at those stands where you can buy processed meat sandwiches—what do you call them? Ham-burgers?—you don’t see any TV shows about the poor who live from pay-check to pay-check. Just the glamorous jobs, and they all look good, and their hair is perfect. Of course, I usually watch only PBS . . .

And I guess it’s no different in your time than it was in the time when I was judge over Israel . . . mortals look on the outward appearances, but the Lord looks inside, upon the heart, and it was a hard lesson for me to learn, but I think it’s important for those who call themselves people of God to do the same, don’t you? Amen.

Rock Me on the Water (John 4:5 - 42)

Nicodemus came to Jesus at night ... He was embarrassed, ashamed, perhaps, that a man of his stature and learning should come to a carpenter's son ... Then again, he was a leader if the Jews, a prominent Pharisee. It wouldn't have done to be seen consorting with a trouble-maker, a threat to their hegemony and rule.

Although Nicodemus came to Jesus at night, the woman—John doesn't even bother to tell us her name—comes to the well, and thus to Jesus, in broad daylight. At noon, as a matter of fact, nearly the hottest heat of day, when the sun scorches your eyeballs and is reflected off the bleak, Samaritan rocks as if they were dusty mirrors. Nobody in their right mind leaves the house at noon, much less does any work ... water was normally hauled in the cool of the evening in those parts, when they wouldn't get sun-stroke from walking from house to well.

So a fair question is this: why did this woman, like Nicodemus, come at a most inopportune time? Clearly, it couldn't have been expressly to see Jesus. Unlike the Pharisee, she couldn’t have seen any of his signs—he hadn’t been doing them in Samaria. To the woman, he was just another dusty man on a dusty road. So it’s hard to say, but perhaps there's a clue in their conversation ... Jesus asks her to fetch her husband, and upon saying she had none, Jesus reveals that he already knows that she's had five in the past, and that the man she is now with isn't her husband.

Now, a lot of preachers have gone on about her "sin," and Jesus’ presumed forgiveness of it, and they apparently mean some kind of sexual misdeed, but Jesus doesn't go there. He just matter-of-factly lets her know that he knows, and it serves to convince her that he indeed is a great prophet. What others fail to understand is that it very likely wasn't her fault that she'd had five previous husbands. Women were no more than property in that culture, no more than chattel. In truth, we have no idea why the woman lost her husbands ... Divorce was entirely the prerogative of the man, and it could be for trivial reasons: in fact, there was a debate at the time over just how trivial. The eminent Rabbi Shammai opined that the reason had to be serious, while the equally eminent Rabbi Hillel claimed it could be for something as trivial as burning the soup.

Of course, life could be nasty, brutish and short in the first century, so it's likely that at least one of her husbands expired in some untimely way or another, thus leaving the woman wholly without protection, completely without a means of supporting her or any children she might have. In fact, it was imperative that a woman have a man of some flavor to support her, lest she and hers be reduced to begging.

But though I don't know for sure whether or not the woman was blameless, what I do know is that each time she lost a husband, her social status decreased or to put it crassly, she became increasingly damaged goods. So that by the time she got to the sixth man, it's likely she was little more than a maid, someone to haul his water, cook his food, and provide for his other needs.

All this suggests that the reason she comes to the well at the ungodly hour of noon is shame. Has she had enough of the stares, of the open contempt from her neighbors? Is she so out of the pale, so outside the bounds, so much of an outcast that she doesn't dare show her face when others are about? People who are constantly told that they are lesser, constantly reminded in some way that they are different and inferior—especially if it has to do with sexuality—tend to internalize it, and so I suspect that it isn't just a water jar she brings to Jacob's Well, it’s a load of shame to boot.

And marvel of marvels, the dusty man speaks to her ... He’s clearly a Jew, and a male to boot, and yet he speaks to her. She was so used to being ignored, so accustomed to being the invisible woman, persona non grata, that just being acknowledged is transporting to her, like a breath of fresh air.

And so begins a conversational dance that has the character of theological sparring, and also—dare I say it?—playful speech between a man and a woman. And what is important to understand is that there are movements to the dance, stages that lead the nameless woman to a genuine relationship with the Christ.

First movement: he asks her for water, she counters with “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” He answers her, explaining that Samaritan or not, he has a much greater gift to give her, and calls it “living water." Like Nicodemus, she takes it literally—"How can you give me any of this water?” she asks, "you don't even have a bucket!” And then she takes her first step toward the Kingdom: "are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who built this well?” It’s beginning to dawn on her that she's not in Kansas anymore, that this isn't just any old thirsty traveler . . .

Second movement: Jesus ups the ante . . . everyone who drinks of this water won’t ever be thirsty, he says, this water will become for them a spring of water, gushing up to eternal life. And I love this image, especially because I’ve been in some pretty arid places in my life . . . I picture stumbling along in the desert, heat rippling off the horizon, sweat stinging my sun-slit eyes … and there is a cool blast and a gusher, springing from the ground, disappearing into heaven . . . birds swooping joyously, palm trees bending toward the water, eager to suck up precious moisture.

And the woman, who in her life has known nothing other than the harsh desert, marvels at this image as well, she is captivated by it, and the image—along with the man who gives it—causes her to reach a new level of understanding—though it is imperfect still, and she who thought she had something for Jesus realizes it’s the other way around, she needs something from him . . . And it’s important to see that it’s Jesus who’s pulling her along this path, who is leading her to a saving faith . . . but unlike Nicodemus, she is open to it . . . could it be because of her shame, her low self estate in life? Could Nicodemus’ refusal to consider what Jesus is saying, or perhaps his inability to do so, have to do with his position, which was just about as respectable and important as any could be? Could his status in life—secure, well-to-do, in charge—keep him from being open to Jesus’ lead? Remember that ol’ camel and the needle’s eye . . .

Movement 3: Jesus tells her about her five husbands and the man she is living with—and again, there is no shaming, no saying “go and sin no more”—and she comes to the realization that he is a great prophet . . .

Movement 4: the woman assumes that because he is a Jew, he’d tell her that she must worship in Jerusalem, and he counters with a prediction—as befits a prophet—that soon they’d worship God neither in Jerusalem or on Samaria’s mountain, but—since God is spirit—true worshipers would worship in spirit and truth . . . and was radical to the nameless woman, ‘cause Samaritans—like their Jewish cousins—believed God resided in their temples, on their mountains. To say God could be worshiped in spirit and truth is to say that God could be worshiped anywhere—and this is what tips the Samaritan woman over the edge—by anyone.

And now she’s hooked, she starts thinking about the Messiah, and says the Messiah will come and tell them all things, including about who could worship whom on what mountain, and Jesus calmly says: “I am.” And although most translations add the “he” so that it reads “I am he,” in the Greek there is no pronoun, so it’s just “I am,” and who else—and where else—have we seen that phrase? On Mt. Sinai, of course, coming from a burning bush . . . and so in the fifth and final movement, Jesus declares himself fully to her, without reference even to “Messiah”—note that he never says the word. He just utters the Greek equivalent of God’s declaration on Mt. Sinai, I am . . .

And it is a remarkable disclosure, one that I don’t think Jesus makes to anyone else, and right then—at the worst possible moment—here come the disciples, back from town, and though they’re amazed, simply amazed that he is talking to a mere woman, they’re too polite to say anything, and the woman leaves her water jar—symbolic of leaving her old life behind—and runs into town, telling everyone “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?"

And in the Greek, it is clear that she believes Jesus is the Messiah, but what’s more interesting is the first sentence of that phrase . . . it seems to me to have an unfinished feel, especially in light of what we know of her past, and likely present. You could complete that sentence with four words: “Come see a man who told me everything I have ever done . . . and loved me anyway.” She doesn’t say the last four words, but they’re implicit in the joy with which she runs. “Everything she ever did” is a long list, and they’re ever before her, in the judgmental stares and backhanded comments of her neighbors. And for Jesus to know her past is one thing—prophets weren’t unheard of, after all—but for him to know her past and love her still, well . . . that is as new as springtime flowers, as fresh as a new creation.

Sisters and brothers, I can’t think of any society that has as many opportunities for shame as ours . . . it’s one of the by-products of our extreme individualism, and our national story that anyone can get ahead if they just work. And when someone has clearly not gotten ahead, the immediate inference is “well, they must not have worked hard,” and they’re branded a priori as lazy, as a class, as a group, and they internalize that judgment, and it can be terribly shaming.

But wait, there’s more! Western society is an equal opportunity shamer. We’re barraged by images featuring beautiful people, and we’re told what we should wear, how our hair needs to look, and how much we should weigh. And if we’re not like that, if we can’t afford the latest clothes, if we can’t afford to be toned and tight, or don’t have the genetic disposition, well, we internalize that too . . . Just as in Jesus’ day, women get it the worst . . . our society objectifies women, and the objects that it uses to fie them—get it? Object-i-fy?—the objects with which they are compared are impossibly slim and airbrushed. We’ve all known women, slim women, who are obsessed by what they imagine is a few too many pounds on their frame, and this causes no small amount of anguish and shame, and—not by accident—fattening of the diet industry’s coffers.

Men aren’t immune from this, however: Western society is an equal opportunity shamer, after all . . . I remember growing up, being a little—and I know you find this impossible to understand—overweight, and I was always last to be chosen for a team, and etc., and a child internalizes this, she or he gets to believing it, and it can cause a world of pain, a world of hurt.

But you know what? We are spirit, as well as flesh, and God is spirit, and as Jesus told ol’ Nicodemus, the spirit goes where it will . . . and although we can’t know everywhere it goes, we can be certain of one thing: the spirit was with that nameless woman at the crack of noon in Samaria, and the Spirit is here today, as is Jesus, who knows everything we’ve ever done—all the petty lies we might have told, all the resentments and animosity that we harbor, all the many things we do that separate us from God, Jesus knows all of these things, and loves us anyway. Amen.

The Night Stalker (John 3:1 - 21)

Do y'all remember Darren McGavin? He was a wonderful actor, probably best known for his role as the hilariously foul-mouthed, leg-lamp-loving father in A Christmas Story. But I first took notice of him in TV-movies and a series from the early 70s called The Night Stalker, where he played a newspaper reporter named Kolchak who investigated—and battled—evil creatures of the night: vampires, werewolves and the like. Kolchak stalked at night because, well, that's when his prey came out: at night. Nicodemus, the original night stalker, comes at night not because that’s the only time Jesus is up, but because of reasons of his own. And John doesn’t tell us what they are, but we assume it has something to do with his position as Pharisee, and member of the San Hedrin. We assume that it’s embarrassment, or even fear, that sends him lurking out after Jesus in the night. After all, though Jesus wouldn’t rip your throat out like the things Kolchak stalked, he was dangerous to the powers that be just the same. He threatened the dominant power structure of temple authorities and their Roman overlords, a structure in which Nicodemus was firmly entrenched.

So Nicodemus appears out of the darkness like a wraith, and by way of explanation, he says “Rabbi, we know you’re a teacher from God,” and I’m not quite sure who the “we” here is . . . does he represent a group? Is he the spokesman for a whole cadre of stealthy, but curious, Pharisees? Whatever it is, the reason he gives for knowing that Jesus comes from God is the signs he has done, the miracles which are described a little bit earlier in John: “many believed in his name because they saw the signs that he was doing.” Perhaps that was it: Nicodemus was talking for all those folks, identifying himself with the many who saw those signs.

But note how Jesus answers him. He doesn’t complement Nicodemus on his perspicacity, he doesn’t congratulate him and the people on their newfound “belief in his name,” whatever that means. No. He launches into a discourse: “Very truly I tell you”—and when he puts it that way, you just know he’s serious—“no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” And always I have to stop right here because this is the first instance in this passage—but not the last—of what some people call “double-words.” In the original Greek, the word translated here as “from above” can also mean “again,” as in “born again.” And in fact, when I look in my Bible software, I notice that both the New International Version and the New American Standard Bible render it like that: “unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” And that’s the way Nicodemus clearly takes it: he very deliberately says “How can anyone be born after having grown old?” And in case we fail to get it: “Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?”

So the heart of this story seems to be a misunderstanding: Jesus is talking one thing—from above—and Nicodemus takes it to mean something else. Or does he? It’s possible that Jesus does mean “born again,” or perhaps—and this is what I think—he means both. Because Jesus is speaking about both a second birth, a re-birth, but also a different kind of birth, as he goes on to explain. “No one can enter the kingdom of God,” he says “Without being born of both water and spirit.”

But isn’t it just like a hyper-religious person, just like a counter-of-theological beans to flatten it out like that? Isn’t it just like an expert in religious law to reduce it to a matter of numbers? He seems to think that faith comes down to weighing the evidence and drawing logical, sane conclusions. How can this be, he asks, how can one enter the birth canal, enter his mother’s womb a second time? Wouldn’t that, I don’t know . . . hurt?

Maybe in addition to being the original night stalker he’s the original Presbyterian as well . . . always reasoning, always figuring, always counting the beans . . . he’s fascinated with evidence, with what he sees with his own eyes. After all, he’s one of the ones who believed in Jesus’ name—again, whatever that means—after he saw Jesus performing some miracles. In fact, in the paragraph just before our story, John tells us that Jesus wouldn’t entrust himself to any of those who believed simply because they’d seen.

Jesus takes a dim view of that sort of faith, that’s gained after seeing signs, and it becomes one of the gospel of John’s major themes. And Nicodemus is exhibit A of that philosophy, and Jesus tells him that you have to be born of both water—i.e., the waters of physical birth—and the Spirit. And this second birth comes from above, it is an act of God, for who else can confer the Spirit of God but God’s own self? And Jesus goes on to explain: what’s born of the flesh is flesh, and that born of the Spirit, from above, is spirit. What comes from flesh, from human nature, is more of the same: it’s flesh, which we all know is perishable. What we do on our own, without it being born from above, is perishable. Only what is done through and by the Spirit is spirit, is eternal.

And now Jesus starts admonishing him:” Don’t be astonished that I said to you ‘You must be born from above, ‘cause the wind blows where it wants to, and you can hear it, but you don’t know where it’s going to or coming from.” And here’s the second great double-word, the second great word-play in this passage: the Greek for wind is the same word as that for Spirit, and the same as that for breath. And everyone born of the Spirit is like that: they are the stuff of spirits, they are spirit, and you just don’t know where they’re going to be . . . and I find this to be a remarkable claim, don’t you? Being born of the Spirit, being born from above, a person is one with the spirit, and you don’t know where they might end up: the wind of God, the spirit, God’s very breath, blows where it will, and blows them where it will, if they’ll let it.

Well, one place you know the spirit-born will be is the Kingdom of God, and by this, John doesn’t mean heaven. For John, you are part of the kingdom as soon as you are born of the Spirit, as soon as you’ve had a genuine encounter with the Christ. For John, the Kingdom of God is on earth, and it is as much a way of being on that earth during life as it is of being with God after that life is over.

And Nicodemus doesn’t get any of it: the last words out of his mouth in this passage are “How can these things be?” And notice that he’s still trying to rationalize, still trying to relate these teachings to things he can understand, good proto-Presbyterian that he is. And Jesus answers him with no small amount of irony: “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?" And this is the last word we hear from Nicodemus, he fades back into the darkness, and Jesus turns to a broader audience: from this point on, he uses the Greek plural, which I fancy can be rendered "you-all," and he’s speaking to everyone like Nicodemus, everyone who believes due to what they have seen, not due to the invisible blowings of the spirit-breath across the land.

And he might be speaking to those of us in this modern age, as well--those who are locked in a world of provablity, of cause and effect . . . If you can't measure it, if you can't quantify it, it doesn't exist . . . This is the world-view of the neo-atheists, like Sam Robards and Richard Dawkins, who I liked a lot better as a populizer of biology than his current role of defender of rational thought. They are as smug in their certainty as are the most intolerant fundamentalists you can imagine.

But you know what? The spirit-wind goes where it will, and no one--and that means neither you, nor I, nor the Reverend Billy Graham knows where it goes or from whence it comes, and that's a lesson we all have to learn, whether we are fundamentalists or the most liberal, tolerant Presbyterians in the world. And it means this dividing up of the world into the good guys, like us Good Christians, versus the bad guys,. like those smug atheist, i.e., those who are in versus those who are out, is nothing anyone should be doing. And yet, we—and in this I definitely include myself—continually do so, we pooh-pooh those who use the term "born again," for example, or those folks who get all emotional when they worship, throwing their hands up in the air, for St. Peter's sake, or rolling around on the ground, speaking in tongues, or singing idiotic praise songs . . . ours is a rational faith, our hymns have meaning, we do things decently, and in good order . . .

But the Spirit goes where it will, and it's dangerous to deny that fact . . . It causes religious wars, schisms, such as the one this denomination is currently undergoing, and crusades. It is not a feature of the Kingdom, which Jesus, in our passage, characterizes as what he himself, in his role as the Son of Man, has experienced and does: the Son of Man has ascended to and descended from the heavenly realms, and he must be lifted-up like that serpent that Moses stuck on a pole in the wilderness. And here is the final double-word, the final play on words, of our story: the Greek word for "lifted-up" also means exalted, and of course, Jesus was not only exalted, but lifted-up on a cross to die.

So the kingdom is characterized by this dual meaning: Jesus' exaltation, which is at the same time a humiliation, a gory death . . . and it is living out of—and living in—this reality that Jesus characterizes as believing in him, as opposed to, perhaps, believing in his name, so that that whoever believes in him may have eternal life, and this is arguably the most famous verse in the Bible: “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 talk about separating those who are in from those who are out, this verse has been used as a way of weeding the sheep from the goats for a long time, as in if you don't believe in Jesus in exactly the way I believe, you're going to that other place. But notice that the word "believes" is a participle (and in Greek it's a lot more clear), which implies an ongoing thing. More importantly, it implies nothing about how that belief came about, so that you could put it this way: everyone who is believing in him, or is in a state of belief, may not perish but have eternal life. And since Jesus said right at the first that this re-birth comes from above, that it's god's doing, not ours, not any choice we make, how is it an indicator of any goodness, any superiority, in those who are believing? How can we use it to exclude anyone from who we think are the chosen people?

I am convinced that if those who use this verse to exclude, to brand, to draw a circle around those whom they don't like, or those who believe differently, if they were to read and really internalize the verse just after John 3:16, they--and indeed all of Christianity--would be much better witnesses to the risen, forgiving God than they tend to be. "God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him." That's save the world, the whole world, no exceptions. The Spirit goes where it will, indeed! Amen.