Sermons

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

I looked back at my sermon from the last time we heard this Gospel reading three years ago, and it turns out that it was the first Sunday we were completely locked down due to Covid. In an attempt at levity in the midst of an otherwise very serious sermon I noted that Martha warned Jesus about opening the tomb, saying “Lord, by this time he stinketh”, and speculating that we might say the same thing after we were let out of our homes again, which at that time I said “in a few weeks.” Little did any of us know that it would be months.

In any event, at that time I said we could identify with our Lord’s reaction to the death of his friend Lazarus, encapsulated in what is famously the shortest verse in the bible: Jesus wept. Though we are no longer home-bound, the state of the world today–war, disaster, economic insecurity–should remind us once again that our God is a God who, in Christ, knows and shares all our sorrows.

Consider again this moving account. Jesus’ friend Lazarus has died, yet Jesus knows how this story ends. Just in last week’s Gospel, in which Our Lord says the blind man’s condition allowed God’s power to be made manifest, so does he say of Lazarus’ condition: “This… is for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby.” Jesus, who tarries two days in Jerusalem upon hearing of his Lazarus’ sickness, knew by the time he had left for Bethany that his friend had died. Upon his arrival he informs Martha that he intends to raise Lazarus from the dead. And yet, upon approaching the tomb, Jesus weeps. He knows Lazarus will live again, yet his grief is no less real.

My friends, none of us knows how God, in his Providence, has determined to use all the crises which afflict his world to his own divine ends. God knows and will transform whatever the power of evil throws at us to mysteriously and miraculously work his own purposes out. Even so, because we have a God who is not only high and lofty, but who has chosen in Christ Jesus to take on our very nature, we also have a God who despite knowing the ultimate triumph of life nonetheless weeps with us in our grief.

But having a God who suffers with us is not sufficient if that’s all we have to say about God. But thank heavens, we also have a God who is in control, and this reality of having a Lord who is both provident and incarnate is, I believe, the only thing that can satisfy the longing of our hearts for hope in the midst of adversity. To put it plainly, I don’t know how one gets through our life without utter despair without Jesus; thank God we have Jesus, who is our help and our salvation.

We must hold these two truths–that God is in control and that Jesus feels for us–together, lest we believe in a God who is powerless or who is distant. This being the case, I have to amend something I know I’ve said in sermons before (not that I was entirely wrong, but rather that this tension means that sometimes the whole truth is obscured). I know I’ve said in sermons before that the miracles of Jesus are presented differently in John’s Gospel than in the so-called “Synoptic Gospels” of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Specifically, while those three Gospels use the Greek word dynamis (or “deed of power”) to refer to the miracles, John uses the word seimon (or “sign”), suggesting that each of the “signs” including the raising of Lazarus–point to a truth about God in Christ beyond the act itself.

Now this is true. The raising of Lazarus has something larger to say about Jesus being the Lord of Life in a larger sense. The healing of the man born blind that we heard last week has something larger to say about Christ’s mission to enlighten all and bring spiritual sight to those formerly blinded by sin. The feeding of the five thousand has something larger to say about Jesus’ promise to feed us always with the bread of heaven. One could go on.

Okay, that’s all true, but reading the signs exclusively as signs can give us the incorrect impression that Jesus merely used these needy people as object lessons rather than seeing their humanity and need for the provision of real practical blessings. We need not make that mistake though, and the reason why is found in the text as clear as day. Jesus did not get up and give a talk on the meaning of his miracle at the wedding in Cana. He simply did it (and got a little irritable in the process, if you recall). The five thousand were genuinely hungry. The blind man was oppressed and Jesus both gave him the promise of salvation and refused to accept the pharisees’ nonsense. And, then, most profoundly, Jesus, knowing he was about to raise him from the dead nonetheless keenly felt the loss of his friend and the grief of Mary and Martha and wept openly.

Thus, we have a God who is both all-powerful and all-loving. As we approach again the great and Holy Days which present to us our Lord’s pain and his glory, his passion and his triumph, let us hold fast to the one who alone shamed the powerful with weakness, who alone disclosed divinity through perfect humanity, who alone can save us.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

One of the problems faced by theologically inclined people like me is that there is always a danger of over-theologizing leading to inaction. This is not to say that theological reflection is not in itself a worthy endeavor, but rather that sometimes other methods are, perhaps counter-intuitively, more direct routes to truth.

Take that age-old problem that we call theodicy- the problem of evil. Why do bad things happen to good people? We can spend a lifetime sitting and thinking about how to explain evil and never come to any satisfying conclusion. Indeed, some have done so, and some have even lost their faith in the process.

Or we could set out to bring some comfort to the afflicted, to help the orphan and the widow and the beggar in what small ways we can and eventually come to some satisfying conclusion, not in the form of a theological axiom which one can publish and give lectures about, but in knowing that while evil exists and is hard to explain, one has nonetheless both experienced God’s grace and has done a little, Christ being our helper, to weaken its hold over the most vulnerable.

We see these two approaches—action and reflection—in this morning’s Gospel, and at least in the instance of the man born blind, the former was apparently the proper approach. Here is a man who is in tremendous need, a blind person in those days almost invariably being condemned to a life of panhandling, no other profession being open to one so disabled. And how do the disciples respond? They see the encounter as an opportunity for theological reflection. “Master,” they ask, “who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” There is, of course, in their question a false assumption, namely that misfortune is directly linked to some specific trespass. I have mentioned before from this pulpit something called a deuteronomic view of history, which is the commonly held belief that such a simple connection exists between sin and hardship (or, for that matter, between righteousness and good fortune). We need not revisit this view in great depth again today, except to say that Jesus seems to reject it, but not in the manner we might expect.

Jesus does not take the time to respond to the disciples by presenting an alternative philosophical system; he does not (at least on this occasion) unveil a new definition of weal and woe, offering details of their nature and various causes. Rather, he quickly dismisses the suggestion that somebody’s sin caused the man’s blindness, and then says that there’s work to be done. He moves quickly from reflection to action. “I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day;” he says, “the night cometh, when no man can work.”

Now, I’m not saying that good old theological reflection of the sort where one sits down surrounded by dusty books producing weighty texts about theodicy and other theological problems is bad or unnecessary. We’d be as blind as the Pharisees if men and women had not done that work, and the Church would be sorely lacking if everyone adopted an unreflective sort of faith. You see, it’s teaching—doctrine—which produces and permits conviction, and without convictions our efforts are meaningless. In this sense, theological reflection has to precede action if said action is to rise to the status of Christian charity.

What I am saying, though, is that Christian discipleship is as much a matter of the heart as it is a matter of the head, and when the latter crowds out the former our theology can be unmasked as no sort of theology we’d want to publish. Imagine if the disciples had received the kind of answer they presumably wanted from Jesus: a sustained reflection on the problem of evil complete with definitions of terms, Old Testament references, and a few clever bons mots to keep their attention. It would probably be good reading; and the theological dilletante in me wishes this were what happened but the man would have remained blind, and Christ would have been seen as being more interested in theological discourse than in showing the power of God in a tangible way.

What is even more notable here is that a faith sustained by works of charity can enlarge one’s theological perspective. The problem the Pharisees had in this morning’s reading was a dogmatism resulting from what we might consider a lack of love. If the Pharisees had loved their formerly blind brother they would have rejoiced in his being cured, and they might have been able to enlarge their view of God to encompass the work of Christ. As it happened, they cast the formerly blind man out because their small faith could not allow for that which was to them theologically problematic.

We do well, I think, to heed the warning implicit in this story. We are just as capable of falling into uncharitable dogmatism as the Pharisees and we’re just as likely as the disciples to see a suffering brother or sister as a theological conversation starter rather than seeing him as one to whom we might show mercy and loving-kindness, since God has already done so. When we choose to reach out, our own understanding of God’s love is increased. We start seeing that needy person not just as a target for our charity, but as one already gifted, whether he knows it or not, with God’s charity, as one already loved by the one who is love and in whose love we also abide. That is to say, our view of God, our theology, is made more expansive and more truthful when we walk in love, and it may be increased to an even greater degree than the best theological reflection can accomplish.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

As Twenty-First Century Americans we tend not to think about the reality of water scarcity to the extent that many people throughout human history and hundreds of millions today in the developing world have had to do. We just turn the tap on and there it is. Only once in my life have I been very mildly affected by this reality. It was when I was in Pakistan. Despite all the warnings not only to avoid everything but bottled water, but only to drink one particular brand of bottled water, I imbibed what appeared to be the right kind of water only to realize that the bottle must have been refilled from a tap somewhere. This led to a few extremely uncomfortable days. I’m embarrassed to complain about it, though, since hundreds of thousands of children die as a result of unsafe drinking water every year.

Now this is not one of those “do something to fix the world” sermons. You’ve all heard my complaints about those kinds of sermons, and I won’t rehearse all of the reasons yet again for fear of sounding like a broken record. If you want to contribute a little, Episcopal Relief and Development does great work in the area, but be warned that doing so may or may not ever “fix” the problem, progress toward the alleviation of suffering is noble and enjoined on us but it won’t bring about the Kingdom of God, and even a lavishly generous contribution to ERD or UNICEF or any other organization isn’t going to get you a ticket to heaven.

The reason I bring up water safety and scarcity is because they are both so central to today’s Old Testament and Gospel readings, and because it provides some context for what they have to say to us about the tremendous Grace of God in Christ.

First, in Exodus, we see God’s miraculous provision of water in the desert. The children of Israel are wandering through the Desert of Sin. Now, as apposite as that name may seem, that’s just the Hebrew name of the area in the southern part of the Sinai Peninsula, and it has no etymological connection to the English word “sin.” Nonetheless, there was a lot of sinning going on. The Israelites keep grumbling, seemingly almost immediately forgetting that God just saved them from slavery in Egypt. “We want bread. We want meat. Oh we had such great produce back in Egypt. Let’s make an idol and worship that instead of the God who just delivered us.” In today’s lesson, Moses is afraid that they’ve become so irritable that they might even stone him to death! God would have been within his rights to strike them all down. Instead, he instructs Moses to strike the rock with his staff (the same staff which turned Egypt’s waters into blood and separated the waters at the Red Sea) and a great stream of good, clean drinking water flows out to quench the thirst of those who did not deserve such a gift. It was pure Grace.

In my bible study last week, I mentioned that the Church Fathers believed that the Old Testament must be read typologically–that is, seeing shadows of the fullness of the New Covenant in Israel’s story–and that while this may sadly have fallen out of fashion with modern, critical biblical scholars starting in the Nineteenth Century, its appropriateness should be obvious considering that St. Paul himself read the scriptures in precisely this way. I brought this up last week in reference to two typological readings we see in Romans: the connection between Abraham and the Church and between Adam and Christ.

Here in Exodus we see another beautiful example, which Paul explicates in his First Epistle to the Corinthians:

Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; And were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea; And did all eat the same spiritual meat; And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ.

Here, I think, we are not to understand this merely metaphorically. Rather, we see what theologians would call a Christophany, a glimpse of the pre-incarnate second person of the Trinity in the experience of God’s chosen people which could only be identified as such retrospectively in the light of our Lord’s Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension. Before they could know Christ, they were baptized in the Red Sea. They ate the bread of heaven in the form of manna. And just as blood and water proceeded from Christ’s side when pierced by the lance of the Roman soldier, so did the same spiritual drink flow as the rock was wounded by Moses’ staff. All this is to say that in response to Israel’s sinfulness, God actually responded not by punishing them, but by giving them even more than they asked for–not merely water, but living water. This isn’t to say that God never punishes to correct his children, but that, as that wonderful prayer which we get to say when we use the traditional rite of the church (and which the prayerbook revisers were sore remiss in excluding from the contemporary rite) our God is a God “whose property is always to have mercy.”

Likewise, the Samaritan woman received more than she asked for or could have even known to request. Her “water insecurity” if we can call it that, was not a matter of living in a desert but of social stigma. As is still the case in hot climates in villages with communal wells, everybody goes to fetch their water for the day in the early morning, while it’s still cool. We might imagine the woman trying to do the same, being taunted by her fellows for her less than savory lifestyle. We can assume that she was not simply five times a widow and that the man with whom she was now co-habitating was not merely a platonic roommate, which is why she evades Jesus’ question about her marital status. I think we miss the point of this story if we make it all about Jesus reaching across cultural divides (which is certainly an element of the story, but not the only one) or if we try, as some commentators have, of insisting that the woman is simply misunderstood. I think we’re supposed to understand that this woman has some serious baggage, some real sin, and while the other women of her town should have shown her some compassion, she is no saint.

Nevertheless, Christ gives her more than mere water that day; he gives her more than she knew to ask for. Indeed, this is only this one time in John’s Gospel where Jesus directly says to anyone “Yes, I am the Messiah.” He chooses a woman whose sins are public and notorious to divulge this truth to, and at that moment she becomes what some derisively refer to today but which should have no such pejorative subtext, a “true believer” and goes and tells everyone she can find, whether or not those people would be inclined to listen to one like her. This, like the water given to the children of Israel, is pure gift–not mere water but living water.

We still receive this living water today, in the Sacraments and in the Spirit which dwells in our hearts. We received it before we knew to ask for it. Even still that grace may surprise us in the midst of deserts into which we’ve been cast or through which we’ve chosen of our own accord to stumble through through ignorance or rebellion. The rock is still there, the well is still there, right before us, whenever we need a drink.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.