God’s Dream in the Real World (2nd Sunday in Lent; John 13:1-17; February 25, 2018)

God’s Dream in the Real World

2nd Sunday in Lent
John 13:1-17
February 25, 2018

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, Iowa

We are always changing. We sincerely hope that our changes are changes of growth, of deepening, and of wisdom. But whether our changes are in the direction of being perfected in love, to use John Wesley's phrase, or merely the solidification of our prejudices, we are always changing.

I have been ruminating on my changes over the last several years. I know that my thinking has changed a good deal in the time that we have journeyed together. A number of experiences have urged me on, making it impossible to remain in one place. I am indebted to so many people.

As I have read the Bible with new eyes, I have come to understand Jesus as a social justice reformer whose thought and work were grounded theologically in the tradition of the Hebrew prophets. Let me repeat that. Jesus was a social justice reformer whose thought and work were grounded theologically in the tradition of the Hebrew prophets.

He lived out of a reality that the gospels called ho basileia tou theou or (in Matthew) ho basileia tou ouranou. These are usually translated as "the kingdom of God" and "the kingdom of heaven." The latter is unfortunate because "heaven" seems to mean a place we go after we die. This gives "the kingdom of heaven" an other-worldly sense. In reality, though, substituting "heaven" for "God" is simply an example of the Jewish reluctance to speak of God too directly. This same sensibility is the reason that "Lord" is substituted for God's proper name, deemed too holy to pronounce lest it accidentally be taken in vain.

In recent decades, it has been the "kingdom" part of the phrase that has been the focus of attention. Feminist theologians have correctly pointed out the privileging of male-ness in the notion of a kingdom. Kin-dom has been proposed as a possibility, lifting up equal relations in place of the power structures of a kingdom. Another alternative is the "reign"--that's r-e-i-g-n--of God. It works in print, but aloud it sounds like a weather report.

I'm not sure that "kingdom" makes any sense to us at all, we whose only exposure to kings and queens has been British royal weddings or seeing a greatly-limited constitutional monarch in the Nordic Fest parade. (Harald seems like a nice fellow, but there is little even remotely kingly about him, at least by ancient standards.)

For all of these reasons, I've settled on the phrase "God's dream" as possibly the best way to name in English the very Hebrew notion at the center of Jesus' life. God's dream. And what does that dream involve?

Unpacking the phrase is the work of a lifetime and, if I am right, requires much if not all of the Bible to answer adequately. But, at the center are a couple of simple ideas: 1) A world at peace in which the needs of every living creature are met without the exploitation of any; and, 2) A human community that enjoys just relations of mutuality.

It is hard (but not impossible) to translate these into policy. They are easy to express in images of which maybe the most persistent is this table to which both the rich and the poor come. There the poor receive what they need. There the rich are relieved of the burden of excess wealth which is what they need.

Jesus saw God's dream made real and visible in things like healing from the diseases of poverty and oppression, deliverance from oppressive spirits, resisting evil non-violently, and freedom from debt.

One of the most startling realizations that has come to me is the place that the forgiveness of sins has in Jesus' life and ministry: very little. It's not that it wasn't important. It's that the forgiveness of sins takes is place under the broader umbrella of debt forgiveness. A major "plank" of Jesus platform was the elimination of the debt system. In God's dream, our relations with each other are not based on debt. Neither is our relation with God.

Somewhere in our history the forgiveness of sins displaced social justice as what we thought Jesus was up to. I suspect that when Christianity became a mostly Gentile movement it lost the deep moorings it had had in Jewish notions of justice. So gradually Christianity became a way for individuals to have their sins forgiven rather than a way for us to cooperate with God's dream.

God's dream is one that embraces us and our world from the smallest level to the largest. It requires revolutionary change in the structures of our social and economic life and the transformation of individuals. But society and individuals are in a closed loop: society forms us; we form society. Where is there an entry point where God's dream can break in to begin the work of transforming us and our world?

In our reading this morning we begin to see that the community of Jesus' followers is part of the Jesus' answer to that question. We usually call that community the church. The church is the beta release of God's dream. A beta release is when a computer program has been designed, built, and tested in a lab, but needs to be tested in the real world before it's put into production. In the real world a computer program is put through its paces, subjected to abuse by users who don't know what you can't do to a computer program. Problems will happen. The program will fail. But the failures will be repaired and the problems ironed out and eventually the program will be ready to release. The church is the beta release of God's dream.

The church isn't perfect, but if the church is being the church, we can see in it the outlines of the world as God dreams it. We in the church are not perfect, but we in the church begin to see and move toward the deep changes toward which God's dream calls us. In the church the transformation of the world and our transformation find their meeting ground.

In this reading we see into the heart of what makes the Jesus community work. It can't be based on power. I can't be based on debt. It has to be based, says Jesus, on love. Nothing else will work. Nothing else will form a community that shows us what life on our planet could be. Nothing else can make possible the humane life God dreams for us.

By love, Jesus means something well beyond the warm feelings we link usually label as love. Jesus took a bowl of water and a towel and, kneeling in front of them, washed the dirty feet of his friends. It was servant's work, not the work of a rabbi. But it's what he did. Why? Because it's what we're supposed to do. Not the foot-washing thing, at least not necessarily, although we can do that too. No, it's the concrete expression of love doing the work of service.

The disciples thought that was beneath them and that it was certainly beneath Jesus. And yet Jesus regards this act, this servant's work, as a place where God's dream is coming into the real world. Imagine that! Imagine that the smallest act of mutual service is the place where God's dream takes shape and occupies space in our world. Our world needs some more of that.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA.

Couldn't he have kept [them] from dying? (1st Sunday in Lent; John 11:1-7, 17-29, 32-44; February 18, 2018; Sunday following the Douglas High School Massacre)

Couldn't he have kept [them] from dying?

1st Sunday in Lent
John 11:1-7, 17-29, 32-44
February 18, 2018

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, Iowa

Lazarus left behind two grieving sisters. Mary and Martha loved Lazarus. Not that he was so hard to love. Their home together was a place of peace. That Mary and Martha got along so well was partly his doing. He was a gentle man who gave a great deal of energy and, in his later years, wisdom to the community. It needed both in the days of Roman occupation. They were proud of him. He was what the later Jewish tradition would call a mensch.

Aside from all that, they needed Lazarus. In that day women who lacked a father, a son, or a brother were vulnerable to predatory relatives and envious neighbors. "How are we going to live without him" was an economic question as well as an emotional one.

Lazarus was dead. His quiet voice would never again fill their home. His strength would never again be their source of safety. His wisdom would never again be a part of the community's decisions. All that he had been or ever would be was lost to them.

Jesus strangely delayed his trip to Bethany for two days, so the burial had already taken place by the time Jesus and the disciples arrived. The word of his approach preceded him and Martha came to greet him on the way. She was not pleased. I suspect she skipped the expected courtesies. She went straight to the heart of the matter: "Lord, if you had been here my brother wouldn't have died." And then, giving him a way to save the situation she made this implicit demand: "Even now I know that whatever you ask God, God will give you." (Hint, hint.)

Jesus replied that Lazarus would rise again.

That was all that she needed: theological platitudes. "It's for the best. He's in a better place. This is God's plan."

I hear sarcasm in her response: "I know that he will rise in the resurrection on the last day…[blah, blah, blah]." Of course, I hear sarcasm in a lot of places, so you can make up your own mind.

Jesus then made a short speech about being the resurrection and the life. You know it because it is a part of our funeral service. Then he asked Martha if she believed this. She dodged the question.

She dodged the question, but she went to their house, found Mary, and told her that Jesus was asking for her. Mary went to Jesus. You remember Mary, don't you? Gentle, quiet Mary, sitting at Jesus' feet, soaking up his every word. Meek Mary, nice Mary. She went to where Jesus was, fell to her knees and greeted him, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother wouldn’t have died."

Jesus, Mary, and the crowd, including some of the city folk from Jerusalem went to the tomb at Jesus' request. Some of the city folk said to each other, "If he had been here, Lazarus wouldn't have died." Well, I'm paraphrasing, but that's the gist of it.

At the tomb Jesus ordered the stone to be removed over the objections of Martha who pointed out that after four days the smell would be awful. Lazarus has not fallen into a coma; Lazarus is dead.

Jesus prayed a short prayer and called for Lazarus to come out of the tomb. And out Lazarus came. With his feet and hands still bound and his face covered, we are not to imagine Lazarus walking out of the cave blinking at the bright light of day. Jesus speaks and Lazarus is alive and standing in the cave doorway. Jesus' speech has the same power to give life that God has in the creation story in Eden.

Then Jesus ordered the people there to untie Lazarus and let him go.

"I am the resurrection and the life," said Jesus. "Whoever believes in me will live, even though they die. Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die."

I am sure that these words of Jesus and this episode in John's gospel were an assurance to John's community that, whatever the outcome of their struggles, in the end they were safe within God's care. In their baptismal connection to Jesus they had already become a part of the resurrection. Nothing could change that. Being thrown out of the synagogue couldn't change that. Losing their friends and families couldn't change that. Even death couldn't change that. All's well that ends well.

But.

But I cannot help but find this a less than satisfying response to the outrage of death. Oh, I appreciate and I trust that those who have died are safely in the hands of a loving God. I appreciate and trust that I may commend the friends and family members to God's care.

But.

But a belief in the general resurrection of the dead somehow misses the point. It didn't soothe Martha when she confronted Jesus in her outrage and anger at her loss and at Jesus' absence when it really mattered. I doesn't soothe me either. The pain of grief cannot be eased by theological bumper stickers. Loss cannot be talked away. And, whatever may await our loved ones on the other side of death, our loss is permanent.

Lazarus was summoned back to life from the grave. Good for him and, of course, for his sisters. I don't begrudge his restoration to Mary and Martha.

But Mary and Martha are not the only ones in the world who grieve. Lazarus is not the only one in the world who has died and is waiting for a summoning call. We have suffered our own losses in our families and our communities. This week we suffered seventeen tragic deaths in our nation that did not have to happen. The lives of seventeen students and their teachers ended because one young white man believed that he was entitled to act out his rage through violence against people who never hurt him. Beautiful, loving, dedicated people, all of them young (by my reckoning) are mourned today in part because one organization that serves as the public face of the small arms industry has bribed the Congress into silence and inaction.

There were seventeen of them and they are irreplaceable:

• Alyssa Alhadeff, 14, played soccer.
• Scott Beigel, 35, was a geography teacher killed while trying to usher his students back into his classroom.
• Martin Duque Anguiano, 14, was sweet and caring and funny.
• Nicholas Dworet, 17, was a senior who was headed to the University of Indianapolis on a swimming scholarship.
• Aaron Feis, 37, assistant football coach, threw himself in front of his students to protect them. He had run toward the sound of the gunfire.
• Jaime Guttenberg, 14. His father says, "I am broken..trying to figure out how my family gets through this."
• Chris Hixon, 49, the school’s athletic director, had survived a 2007 deployment to Iraq.
• Luke Hoyer, 15, had friends and a family and a future.
• Cara Loughran, 14, was an Irish dancer.
• Gina Montalto, 14, carried her art book with her everywhere she went.
• Joaquin Oliver, 17, from Venezuela, became a US citizen January 2017.
• Alaina Petty, 14, was a Hurricane Irma volunteer.
• Meadow Pollack, 18, was headed to college next year.
• Helena Ramsay, 17, relentlessly pursued her studies and was brilliant and witty
• Alex Schachter, 14, played baritone and trombone in the marching band and orchestra
• Carmen Schentrup, 16, was a National Merit Scholar semifinalist
• Peter Wang, 15, worked in his parents’ Chinese restaurant

They are all dead and they are all waiting. Their families and friends and even we are waiting. Could not he who gave sight to the man born blind have prevented their deaths? I don’t know. But I do know that Jesus has not yet come for them.

This isn't the first time I've been forced by circumstances to try to make theological sense of a mass shooting, as we observe our dreary national ritual of avoidance and self-deception. A mass shooting occurs. Politicians send "thoughts and prayers." Some call for legislation. Others say no laws would help. In the meantime we are the only developed country in which this kind of slaughter occurs. It is the dark side of American exceptionalism. And then, of course, what is supposed to come next is that we move on to the next bit of news until this happens again. Which it will. Prayer will not stop the next massacre.

One thing I notice that is different this time is that the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School aren't taking this lying down. They are demanding meaningful action. They are calling out the politicians who have taken blood money. I don't know what they can accomplish, but if I were a anti-regulation politician I would be advised to take them seriously. If other high school students make common cause with them and bring their parents along, democracy might break out in the United States. One thing is certain:Our leaders will not lead us.

So I've tried to hear what this story might have to say to us, grieving and angry and frustrated and disillusioned and even hopeless as we are. Hearing what a story says always seems to involve placing ourselves in the story, usually unconsciously. I usually imagine myself as the narrator. It's easy enough and many times the narrator has invited us to do just that. But to hear this story in a liberating way, in a way that shakes us loose from the ways of thinking that bind us, in a way that leads to new life, I find that I often have to resist the text and place myself in some unexpected place.

So here's my suggestion for where to find ourselves: We are not the narrator, not Mary, not Martha, not even the city folk from Jerusalem. No, we are Lazarus. We are Lazarus, dead in the tomb, smelling something awful because it's been days since we died. We are in the tomb with our hands tied, our feet bound together, our faces covered with a cloth, and rolled up in our burial linens. We are there, unaware of the crowd, unaware of Mary and Martha's grief, unaware of pain or decay, unaware of anything except for the irritating, penetrating Voice that demands that we live and come out of the tomb.

And now, it seems to me, you and I have a choice to make. If we do not heed this bothersome interruption of our deathly slumber we can rest in peace. Well, not exactly peace, but more like rest. Okay, not rest either, but restless inactivity. On the other hand, if we heed this irritating voice and live and come out of our tomb, Jesus will command that we be untied and let loose. I have no idea what will happen then, but I'm pretty sure it won't involve shrugging our shoulders or sending "thoughts and prayers."

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We Are Butt Dust (Ash Wednesday; Genesis 2:4-8; February 14, 2018)

We Are Butt Dust

Ash Wednesday
Genesis 2:4-8
February 14, 2018

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, Iowa

A picture has been making the rounds on Facebook this week among preachers, an example of what happens when you rely on spellcheck for proof reading. It features the cover of an Ash Wednesday worship bulletin with a large cross drawn with ashes and a caption that said: "Remember that you are but dust and into dust you shall return." Well, that was what it was supposed to have said. In fact an extra "t" had found its way into the word "but" and, just like that, the caption was transformed into "Remember that you are butt dust and into dust you shall return."

My colleagues have divided into two camps. In the first are those who are trying to figure out how to work that into a sermon for Ash Wednesday. In the second are those who wish they had the courage--or perhaps it's the lack of discretion--to work it into a sermon. Me? I'm retiring at the end of June, so I'm short on discretion. Work a reference to "butt dust" into a sermon? Here, hold my beer!

I have no idea what butt dust is, but it sure doesn't sound good. "We are butt dust." This is not a very optimistic view of people, is it? Somehow, though, one way of thinking holds that the less well we think of ourselves the better, especially at the beginning of Lent. We imagine at least that the tradition invites us to wallow in miserable-wormism. We are butt dust and unworthy of God's love. Maybe, if we wallow miserably enough, God will love us anyway.

Of course that sets the bar pretty low. After all, what can anyone expect of butt dust? Will it accept the freedom and power to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves? Probably not. After all, it's butt dust. Will it be open to loving neighbors, to serving the widow, the orphan, and the migrant worker? Probably not. After all, they're only butt dust, too.

But butt dust isn't the only kind of dust. There are other kinds. You can see another kind if you go outside this evening after it's fully dark. It will be better if you can leave even a little city like Decorah and find a dark place, like our yard, for example. In the southern sky you will see the constellation Orion. Three stars in a short line are Orion's belt. His sword hangs down from the belt and about half-way down the belt is the fuzzy object that the Charles Messier cataloged in the late 1700's as M42. To the naked eye it's a star, but even a pair of binoculars reveals it to be a cloud, a nebula. A small telescope will be able to pick out four massive newborn stars, mere infants no more than a million years old. They illuminate the cloud that is composed of stray atoms left over from some ancient supernova, an explosion of a large star. These stray atoms are being attracted to each other and they are forming as many as a thousand stars. M42 is a star womb. As these stars form, some of them will have planets. Perhaps one of those planets will have an iron core and an atmosphere of oxygen and nitrogen. Perhaps one day millions of years from now there will be life, and, who knows, perhaps even a world teeming with life, changing and evolving toward self-conscious intelligence.

Out of such a cloud our sun was formed. So was our world, ourselves, and everything that shares this earth with us. Joni Mitchell was right: we are stardust. Even butt dust is star dust. That sort of dust might call for something more ambitious from us. Stardust might be a suitable vessel for God's dream. With stardust anything is possible.

After all, it was in the garden that God took some stardust and shaped it into a human being and breathed into it and it became a living being. And out of stardust God called forth the plants. And out of stardust God fashioned the animals. God even made those little inedible heart-shaped messages that say things like: Luv U, Kiss Me, Hugs, Be Mine, and all the rest. Stardust, all of it.

So we come as lovers and fools to Ash Wednesday and to the dusty ashes left over when all the life has been consumed from the palms when the palms have given all the love they have to give. For centuries we Christians have had this ashy dust applied to our foreheads to signify what?

That we are mortal? Yeah, we kind of knew that already. That we are sinful, fallen, flawed? Again, no real surprise. That we are butt dust? Well, we might not have put it that way exactly, but again, this is not news. The ashes signify all these things, I suppose. But the dust says something more. Even if it is butt dust and even if that is what we are, butt dust is also stardust. It is the stardust of creation, waiting in the garden that is not yet a garden, waiting for the fingers of God to come, to stir it, to knead it, to shape it, and then, at last, to breathe into it. We bring the stardust. God brings breath. A living being is the result of this impossible and inevitable synergy. God's dream become flesh. God's flesh dreaming. Born, we are reborn. Created, we are recreated by God's recreation. We are a nebula at play, still a little fuzzy around the edges, perhaps, but with the fire of stars at our center. We are butt dust. We are stardust.

We are butt dust returning to dust. We are stardust waiting to be created.

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Here's Mud in Your Eye (The Transfiguration of Christ; John 9:1-41; February 11, 2018)

Here's Mud in Your Eye

The Transfiguration of Christ
John 9:1-41
February 11, 2018

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, Iowa

It is, as I said a little earlier, the day we celebrate as "The Transfiguration of Christ." Unlike the other three gospels, the Gospel of John has no transfiguration story. You know the one I mean: the inner circle of disciples and Jesus climb "the" mountain and there Jesus is changed in appearance with his face glowing and his clothes shining like they had been washed with detergent and bleach.

There is no such story in John, although, I suppose, someone could make an argument that the whole of the gospel is a sort of transfiguration as we see, in its own words, "[Jesus'] glory, glory like that of a father's only son, full of grace and truth."

But if the transfiguration has to do with seeing, with what we see, and how we see, then it's all here:

It's story about a man who was blind from birth. On seeing the man, Jesus' disciples want to know whose sin was responsible for the man's blindness. But, says Jesus, neither is. Instead, he talks about daylight and nighttime darkness. Then he makes some mud by spitting on the ground and stirring saliva and dirt together [Oops! Making clay is work! It was on the Sabbath!] Then he smears the clay on the man's eyes and said, "Here's mud in your eye."

No, that's not what he said. He sent the man to go wash in the pool of Siloam. (Siloam means "sent.") Get it? Jesus sent him to the pool called "Sent". Nice. He sent a blind man off to find his way through the city to the pool.

When the man comes back the man's neighbors think it might be the same man, but it might just be someone who looks like him. When asked, the man tells the story of what happened to him. The neighbors want to know where Jesus is. How should the man know? He's been wandering around the city!

Then the crowd took the man to the local clergy group. The man testifies again. Here's where the Sabbath-breaking catches up with Jesus. The pastors won't believe that a "sinner" could perform a healing.

Then the preachers interrogate the man's parents. They confirm that this is indeed their son, but they refuse to get involved otherwise.

Stuck between the evidence of their own eyes and their prejudices, the preachers prefer their own prejudices. The man, however, reasons well from his own assumptions and comes to the conclusion that Jesus could not have healed him if Jesus were not "from God."

The clergy group rejects this argument and the man himself. He is "expelled."

When the word of this action gets out, Jesus finds the man, and asks if he believes in "the Human One." How can he, since he was blind when Jesus was smearing mud on his face? Jesus introduces himself and the man "believes."

This is why Jesus has come, he says. It is so that the blind can see and those who say they see can be shown to be blind.

So there is a lot of seeing and not-seeing in the story. And, as always with John, the words and images carry double meanings. The man who has been blind since birth sees well enough. Those who are supposed to have great insight are blind teachers who teach only blindness.

So, if we're looking for Transfiguration themes, we have them a-plenty. Only the burden of the event is on us. It is up to us to see or not to see. And those of us who think we can see just fine are under a caution.

But I see something else at work in this text. I have become convinced that in these forty-one verses we are given all the insight we need into John's community. My "traumatic" reading of John is grounded in this chapter.

The story concerns a man who has been blind all of his life. And, because that is the case, he has little hope for healing. There is even a suspicion that he himself has deserved this blindness. There are people who are willing to argue for the man having been "born completely in sin" as the Pharisees put it so sweetly, rather than admit that God's justice has miscarried in some way.

Of all the people in Jerusalem when Jesus came to visit, Jesus chooses this man for healing. The method that he chooses to heal is odd, but perhaps not without meaning. Jesus heals him with clay. This man who had never seen anything, is a case of failed creation. His eyes were, it seems, never completely formed. So the mud that Jesus applies sends us back to the creation of The Adam when God created the human being from the mud (which is what "Adam" means). Jesus finishes this man's creation with the mud of creation.

Jesus sends him to the pool where he is to wash off the mud. The man goes and baptizes himself. He comes back a new man, a new creation, finished this time, and able to see.

It's funny, the man's neighbors don't really seem to know who he is. How good is their sight? They try to figure things out and then refer the question to the clergy. I doubt very much whether the clergy had ever bothered themselves to consider this poor blind man's situation. But now they are outraged that he has been healed. The proper procedures were not followed. The wrong people were involved. And then, when the now-seeing formerly-blind person not only tells them what has happened, but what he believes about what happened, they can't stand it. The mere presence of this man is a challenge to their authority. They kick him out. Presumably, it is the synagogue that they are kicking him out of.

Notice how helpful his parents are in this whole excommunication process? They are afraid of being thrown out of the synagogue. So they throw their son under the bus: "Ask him. He's old enough to speak for himself." Thanks, Mom. Thanks, Dad.

But Jesus finds him and completes the man's enlightenment. "I, who am speaking to you, am the Human One." And the man believed and worshiped Jesus. (Incidentally, worship in the Bible never describes an inner attitude. It is always the act of bowing down in front of someone, usually while kneeling.)

So here is the final scorecard: The man has lost his parents, lost his place in the community, and lost his membership in the synagogue. He is no longer a part of the Jewish community in any significant way. But he comes away with two things: He is now able to "see." And he is now connected to Jesus who has healed him. "God's mighty works [have been] displayed in him," just as Jesus said when he and the disciples had first come upon him.

And, this, I believe, is the situation in which we find John's community. They, too, have had their eyes opened. Their lives have been changed by the presence and actions of Jesus. And because of this, they have been abandoned by their families, expelled from the synagogue, and cut off from the Jewish community. They have suffered deep wounds from which they will not recover easily. Those wounds are evident all through the Gospel. They have paid and will continue to pay a high price.

But the work of creation which had been incomplete before they had encountered Jesus is now being brought to a glorious finish. They are on their way to becoming all that God had dreamed that they could be. In the waters of baptism they have been washed clean from the mud of their healing and connected to Jesus who has become family, community, and inheritance to them.

They have lost their families, but they are joined to Jesus. They have lost their community, but they are bound to each other and to Jesus. They have lost their place of belonging in the ancient tradition, but they are created as a new world and new people through the acts and words of the risen Jesus.

So, folks, here’s mud in your eye!

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA.

An Outsider's Outsider (4th Sunday after Epiphany; John 4:1-42; February 4, 2018)

An Outsider's Outsider

4th Sunday after Epiphany
John 4:1-42
February 4, 2018

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, Iowa

Last week we were privileged to overhear a conversation between Jesus and an important Jewish leader. It was a conversation that took place at night and Nicodemus, except for his acknowledgment that Jesus is a wise wonder-worker, shows himself to be pretty much in that dark when it comes to understanding how God loves. Pun intended. In John, the puns are always intended.

After that, Jesus and his disciples are to be found in the Judean countryside where Jesus does some baptizing of his own--although the text corrects itself a little later by saying that it was the disciples who were baptizing and not Jesus himself--and has a conversation about John the Baptizer. Then Jesus turns his feet toward Galilee and decides to take the shortcut across Samaritan territory.

That they are in Samaria is important because it sets the stage for his meeting with the unnamed woman at the well of Joseph at Sychar. And, before we listen to their conversation, I think we have to ask, "Who are these Samaritans and why does it matter?"

The first thing that I think we need to remember is that there was no such thing as "Judaism" even as late as the late first or early second centuries, when John was written. There were lots of Judaisms There was a Judaism that was based on the ritual life of the Temple. There was a Judaism that was based on oral traditions that had gathered around the Torah and the Prophets. There was a Judaism that was intensely focused on the hope for a cosmic divine intervention. There were other, less well-known Judaisms as well. They all influenced each other. There was no one body that could speak for all who called themselves Jews or, in the case of the Samaritans who did not call themselves Jews, for all of the children of Israel.

The Samaritans--who, by the way, are still a small ethnic and religious group in modern Israel--traced themselves back to the split between the Northern Kingdoms of Israel and the Kingdom of Judah. It's more likely that they emerged in the period after the exile of Judah to Babylon. The returning exiles--without being invited--tried to extend their control over the peoples who had not been exiled. The Samaritans were one of these peoples. They had never been especially fond of the self-styled elite in Jerusalem. They had gotten along just fine without their help during the sixty years or so of the exile and were not at all interested in being under their control now that they were back. They had their own ritual center. They had a version of the Torah. And they simply continued about their business.

Relations between them and other people who worshiped the God of the Torah were not good. As our text tells us, things were bad enough that the Samaritan woman was surprised that Jesus, a Jew, was willing to speak with her, a Samaritan. Jesus expresses, or least offers, a standard Jewish list of complaints about the Samaritans: they worship in the wrong place, they think they are the source of the Jewish religious tradition, and they are immoral. Actually, it was standard Jewish practice to assume that any people that deviated from the Torah would plunge directly into sexual immorality.

So Jesus and his disciples have stopped in a place where people have slightly different understanding and practice from what was demanded by the authorities in Jerusalem and for that they have suffered isolation. Jews won't talk to them. They are excluded from Jewish institutions. And this, in case you haven't noticed, pretty well describes the people of John's community as well.

It was about noon, our story tells us. Jesus sat down by Jacob's well. He was tired from walking. The disciples had gone to look for a gyro stand or a taco truck or somewhere where they could pick up a quick lunch. A woman came to the well.

Now, this text, like much of the Bible has been read through eyes that assume that women are inferior in every way for so long that we have come to believe that the text itself looks down on women. The traditional assumption about this woman is that she is immoral, sexually immoral, to be specific. She comes at noon. Supposedly, early morning is the normal time for drawing water. She comes at noon because she is shunned by the rest of the community and has to come when other women are not there. But the text does not say that.

The other place where the traditional reading looks is the history that she reveals: She is not married, but has been married five times. The man she is living with is not her husband. But, except for the last man, there is no hint that she has had anything other than bad luck. Men could divorce with no or little cause. Men died. And the last man may well be a relative of one of her husbands who out of piety has given her a roof over her head.

If this sad history were the result of her moral failings, it is strange that repentance isn't found anywhere in the story. Jesus certainly doesn't ask for it. And, if she were being shunned by her community, why would any of them listen to and believe what she says about Jesus.

The traditional interpretation of this woman is wrong. It is an unethical reading practice to assume that women in the Bible are all up to no good. And it's dangerous because that same set of assumptions is used to judge real women in the real world and then you end up with situations in which it takes the testimony of 156 women to put away one exploitive and abusive physician.

It is enough for our story that we recognize that she is Samaritan and (as the observant disciples notice right way) a woman. Jesus is a Jew and a man. Jews don't talk with Samaritans. Men don't talk with women. Jesus does both. And there is the point of the story.

Last week we heard Jesus tell John's community that the authorities aren't so smart and sometimes they are wrong and that John's community should not look to the authorities for permission to be who they are. They should look to Jesus.

Now we hear Jesus tell John's community that Jesus is to be found among communities that have been cast out by the authorities, communities that have taken a different path than other more mainstream Jewish communities. John's community, wounded and grieving, is one of those outsider groups, like the Samaritans among whom Jesus stays for two days.

The hour is coming, says Jesus, when the God's true people will worship neither in Jerusalem nor on Gezerim; they will worship in spirit. John's community is already living in that hour. The outcasts now have the inner track; they have a place of privilege; they are truly God's children.

Now, finally, we have to consider where we place ourselves in the story. Some of us have suffered the trauma like this woman has. Some of us have experienced the exclusion like the Samaritans had. Some of us carry the wounds and the grief like John's community bore. And to them, and to all of us in whatever way we have suffered these things, John's Jesus says, "You are the ones whom God seeks."

But most of us cannot assume those places in the story. Instead, we must look on through the eyes of the disciples, coming back from town with our bags of gyros, hummus, and falafel, and finding to our surprise that Jesus is talking with a Samaritan and a woman at that! And so the question for us is: is there room in our understanding of God's love for a Samaritan woman? If God has accepted her, if Jesus has accepted her, don't we have to as well?

Or, to put it more concretely: Is there room at the table for Samaritans, for those who act and think differently than we do, but who come needing God's love and human solidarity? Is there room at the table for LGBT folk? Is there room at the table for Latinos and Latinas? Is there room for the folks who have needed or are likely to need our material help--and need it repeatedly--so that their families have food to eat and a warm place in the wintertime? Is there room at the table for those whose mental illness makes them behave crosswise to our sense of decorum? Is our table really an open table?

We begin to hear Jesus correctly when we begin to notice who isn’t at the table and make sure that they get their invitations too.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA.

God So Loved (Third Sunday after Epiphany; John 3:1-21; January 28, 2018)

God So Loved

Third Sunday after Epiphany
John 3:1-21
January 28, 2018

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, Iowa

There is no single more quoted verse in all of the Bible than the one--you know the one I mean--in today's reading. This is a challenge for the preacher. Everyone already knows what it means; why, they've memorized it; they know it by heart. How much better can you know something than to know it "by heart"? Somehow, whenever we hear a very familiar text, we have to allow it to speak in such a way as to become strange to us. The work of the historian, I have heard it said, it to make the strange familiar and the familiar strange. Something like that has to happen with John 3:16.

The other problem is specific to me because, as you know, as I have said repeatedly, John's gospel is not a favorite book of mine. This chapter is, in fact, one of the reasons for my dislike of the book. Too often I have heard John 3:16 brandished as if it were a weapon. Some besotted Christian takes Paul's admonition to treat the "Word of God" (which may or may not refer to the Scriptures) as "the sword of the Spirit" just a little too literally. God's love gets weaponized and wielded against unbelievers and heretics heedless of the spiritually dead and wounded they leave in their wake.

The temptation to abandon John to those who practice a sort of "kill them for their own sake" holy warfare is pretty great. But I'm not going to do it. This book is our book and it belongs to all of us, not just to one party among us. So with whatever personal reluctance I have, I will take it up and see if it has something for us this morning. Maybe it would be good to back up and getting a running start.

Okay. Remember John's hurting community, expelled from the synagogue, cut off from their deep tradition and the place that it had provided them in the world, not just their cultural world, but their cosmic world. They had been denied their connection to God's purposes in history by the authorities of the synagogue, they have found themselves adrift--metaphysically, spiritually, psychologically, socially--you name it, they're experiencing it. They have lost community, synagogue, even family in some cases.

Some might say, "Well, get over it, snowflakes. It happens. Stop feeling sorry for yourselves. Get up, dust yourselves off, and go on with life." As in our day, so in theirs, there were people who dismissed any suffering they did not share or understand.

But that's not what the author of John does. He takes their pain seriously. He trusts them to tell their own story. He believes their testimony. So John locates them in God's cosmic purposes once again and emphasizes that God is coming/has come to them where they are. He has reminded them that with Jesus in their midst even their pain cannot keep them from celebrating. He has reminded them that with Jesus raised from the dead they have a holy place from which they cannot be excluded. The authorities of their tradition can say what they want, can decree what they want. They can place John's community outside of their circle of care, but they cannot place John's community outside of God's circle of care. John's people do not have to entrust themselves to those who do not have their best interest at heart.

And now, Nicodemus, a member of the leadership circle, comes to Jesus by night. We can make of that what we will. Is Nicodemus afraid that his peers will find out that he is talking with Jesus? Or does he just want a chance to have a private conversation without the distractions of a Temple crowd? I tend to think that he is a conscientious leader who wants to find out about Jesus firsthand. So he begins with the appropriate courtesies, acknowledging Jesus ability to work wonders and complementing Jesus' wisdom in advance.

Jesus should do the same, since Nicodemus is a fellow teacher, but instead sets a little trap for him. "If you want to see God's dream, you have to be born..." Oh, there is a little translation problem here. The Greek word is anôthen which can be translated either as "again" or "from above." The version we heard this morning has "again" while the New Revised Standard Version, for example, has "from above." The Common English Bible has both Jesus and Nicodemus understanding anôthen as meaning “again.” That is, they are on the same page. But the NRSV translators (and I) have imagined that Nicodemus has misunderstood what Jesus has said and heard "again" when he should have heard "from above."

The difference it makes is that it tells John's readers, "Look, the grand poobahs don't know everything. They're foolish sometimes and dense. You understand Jesus and they do not." There is more in this exchange, but I think this is the important part. It's like this: I'm a highly educated person, and I am ordained and appointed and all that, but if I tell you that you are outside of the circle of God's care and love, you do not have to believe me. In fact, you should not believe me. Whatever my authority is worth, and I think it's worth something, it won't help you or me much if I do not understand how God's love works.

“God so loved the world,” Jesus says. God's love, he says, is for the cosmos--the entire ordered world. That doesn't just include the people of the synagogue (or, we might add, the church); it doesn't just include people for that matter. Go outside on a clear, cold winter night. God loves everything you can see and everything you cannot see--everything in the universe. And whoever might be out there. And, I'll add, everything and everyone in any possible universe beyond this one.

No authority can take that away from you, not me, not some televangelist, not some ICE agent or immigration judge, not a gossiping neighbor, not an abusive parent, partner or boss.

And here is what John's community has to do to earn that love: nothing. Not a thing. Not a single thing. They can trust it and it will become a source of life for them. But if they don't trust God's love, God will not stop loving them. Nothing will stop God from loving them.

In the words of Gregory Palmer, "God loves you and there is nothing you can do about it."

Please repeat after me: God loves me...and there is nothing I can do about it. God loves you... and there is nothing you can do about it. God loves our families and friends... and there is nothing they can do about it. God loves our enemies...and there is nothing they can do about it. God loves us all...and there is nothing we can do about it.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA.