Walking In Light & Love

The message of John’s Gospel (9:1-41) for Lent 4 is so simple and direct, yet so terribly profound. In 8:12 Jesus had said, “I am the light of the world. No follower of mine shall ever walk in darkness; no, he will possess the light of life.” John’s story of the man blind from birth describes how Jesus justifies this claim. It’s a beautiful story, with moments of almost childish naïveté and even a touch of humor. According to the late Scripture scholar, Fr. Raymond Brown, an authority on the Gospel, it shows John’s dramatic skill at its best.


The occasion of the story is that Jesus, walking along with his band of disciples, sees a man blind from birth. The disciples pose a question, arising out of the old tradition “wisdom” which holds that successive generations are punished because of sin, either personal or that of a forbear. Such faulty thinking was still alive in Jesus’ time, and, sadly, we still see remnants of it today. Jesus is very definite in responding: “It was no sin on this man’s part, nor on his parents’ part. Rather, it was to let God’s work be revealed in him…” God’s purpose is served in history, and John’s Jesus speaks of times of darkness and light. “I am the light of the world”, says Jesus, hearkening back to Isaiah 49:6: “I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”


As is so often the case, Jesus engages the man physically, spitting on the ground, making mud from his saliva, then smearing the man’s eyes with the mud. He directs him to go wash in the pool of Siloam, Greek form of Shiloah = sender or, according to John’s parenthesis, “one who has been sent”. That doesn’t jibe with Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, but I’ll go with the Greek text of John! Siloam was a reservoir within the city connected to a tunnel running from the spring of Gihon, the principal water source for ancient Jerusalem. The man willingly goes off, washes, and returns, now able to see.


Eventually, the news got around and people who used to see the blind man begging begin to question how he could now see. As with most groups faced with a dilemma, everyone becomes an expert. “Wow,...it’s really him, and he can see!” “You got it wrong -- it’s just someone who looks like that blind man.” The man speaks up: “Yep, it sure is me!...that guy, what’s his name?...Jesus...yeah, he made some mud and put it on my eyes. I went and washed in the pool of Siloam, and Voilà!..I can see!”


There are always skeptics, and those who have to check everything out with the religious authorities! So, they trundle the man off to the Pharisee leaders. John quick slips in a reader’s note: “Oh, by the way, it was a Sabbath day when Jesus did all this...just for the record.” Naturally, the Pharisees want to discern what had happened, so they make the man repeat the whole story once again. Immediately, a couple of Pharisees proclaim that Jesus surely can’t be from God because he obviously doesn’t observe shabbat. According to their reckoning: 1) the man’s life wasn’t in any danger; 2) Kneading was one of the 39 works forbidden on the Sabbath by the Mishnah; 3) according to a later tradition, anointing an eye on the Sabbath was unlawful; and 4) one was not supposed to put fasting saliva on the eyes on the Sabbath. The objections didn’t go down well with some; if he’s a sinner, surely he couldn’t do such a miraculous thing. The public squabbling continues, something which interferes with “good order” for the religious leaders.


The Pharisees take a different tack by asking the man what he thinks about Jesus. “He’s a prophet!” -- a no-brainer there! The religious leaders huddle and mumble, and conclude that the guy’s lying, that he surely hadn’t really been blind from birth, so they summon the man’s parents. Probably among the community’s senior citizens, they’re obviously terrified, and probably embarrassed by all the commotion. To admit that Jesus could even possibly be the wonder-working Messiah would’ve gotten them kicked out of their home synagogue. They quickly confirm the man’s identity as their son, and that he was born blind, no question. But as to how got un-blind, “we don’t know. Ask him; he’s old enough to answer for himself.”


So the second grilling on the man starts. Pulling rank they try to bully the man into agreeing with themselves, who are obviously much wiser about such things, that Jesus is really a sinner. With a fresh and innocent directness the man tells them, “Maybe so...I surely wouldn’t know about that. But what I can say is that I was blind before, and now I can see.” They press him further, “Well, just exactly what’d he do to you. Spell it out for us.” Now the newly sighted man is getting a little testy and he delivers what I consider a delightful zinger that must’ve made those Pharisees see red: “Why tell it again? Is it because maybe you’d like to become his disciples?” That, of course, blew off the lid! Angrily, scornfully, disdainfully, these so-called religious models accuse the man of being a disciple, proudly noting they “we are disciples of Moses!” They know God spoke to Moses, but this guy...they don’t even know where he’s from. The man, whom gave the impression earlier of being somewhat soft-spoken, rises now to the occasion and challenges the sputtering Pharisees. “That’s interesting...you don’t even know where he comes from, but he opened my eyes. Surely God wouldn’t empower some stranger, especially a sinner, to do that. God listens to those who are devout and obey God’s will. Why, think about it...it’s totally unheard of that anyone, sinner or not, ever opened the eyes of someone who was born blind!”


When all else fails, corrupt religious leaders can always fall back on the excommunication card, which the Pharisees do, expelling the man from the synagogue, calling him “steeped in sin” and accusing him of “lecturing” them, as they lecture him, and finally throwing him out, maybe even physically. So much for the pious!


Word gets back to Jesus about all of this, and he seeks the man out. “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” “Who is he, sir,” the man respectfully asks, "that I may believe in him?” “You have seen him, for it is he who is speaking with you.” It seems that v. 38, about the man professing his belief and kneeling down to worship him was probably a later addition, not by John, possibly a liturgical reference. Whether v. 39-41 is also an addition, the points made are certainly valid lessons from the story. “I came...that those who do not see may be able to see, and those who [think they] see many become blind.” If the Pharisees had only been “blind”, in the sense that they really didn’t “get it”, they wouldn’t be guilty, but when their “darkness” -- denial in the face of reality -- now claims to be “light”, they’re lying, resisting Truth itself, and as such, are sinning against the Holy Spirit.


This reading and the other two readings for today’s liturgy (1 Samuel 16:1-13 and Ephesians 5:8-14) have a common thread of people being chosen by God to come into and walk in the light. 1 Samuel recounts God’s election of David as king. He wouldn’t have been Samuel’s nor David’s family’s first choice, but God is clear: “...this is he.”


Paul reminds the Ephesians and us that we, too, have been marked, chosen. He calls us “beloved children” of God, “saints”, holy ones, “children of light”. In Baptism you and I were “marked as Christ’s own forever”, just as the blind man of the Gospel was chosen by God “to let God’s work be revealed in him”.


None of us would be part of the Church had we not first experienced God’s choosing us, a pure gift. For our part, we’ve chosen to be chosen in response, to acknowledge the gift of Jesus the Light in our life, to commit ourselves to letting his light permeate all the dark and unredeemed corners of our hearts and lives, to ungrudgingly share that light with whomever is open to it.


How do I do this? How am I able to walk in the light and love to which God calls me? How do I sidestep being taken in by evil and deception, from within myself and through others? How do I avoid blindness of spirit? Both individuals and communities of faith in the Church go through all levels of spiritual blindness, as well as recognition, just as the man in the Gospel did. There are times when about all we know is that he is “that man they call Jesus”. At other times we see him as a wonder worker, a prophet, or as One whose life is marked by complete obedience to the Father. By his grace, and it alone, we may even come to that stage where we, too, can bow down in faith and say, “I do believe, Lord.”


That is a life-long struggle. I can never say “I’ve arrived.” “The Way” is a continual, deliberate choosing to put aside whatever doesn’t befit “saints”, to bear “the fruit of light” in actions that are good and right and true. How we do this, I believe, lies in the community of believers which we call the Church, those who keep coming together to share his living Word and Presence in Eucharist, then carry the light of that forth into our homes, schools, places of work, community. We need each other for regular care, support, encouragement and prayer in our personal struggles to be faithful, in our frustrations and failures, as well as in our joys and successes. It’s uniquely in the gathering which we call Eucharist, Thanksgiving, that God’s Spirit of Light comes upon us, week by week, year by year. Dorothy Day writes: “We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.”

The Proof of God's Love

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved...through him! For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! Not only is this so, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. (Romans 5:8-11)

Gospel: Having A Windshield Larger Than The Rearview Mirror

"[Jesus] answered, "I suppose you're going to quote the proverb, 'Doctor, go heal yourself. Do here in your hometown what we heard you did in Capernaum.' Well, let me tell you something: No prophet is ever welcomed in his hometown. Isn't it a fact that there were many widows in Israel at the time of Elijah during that three and a half years of drought when famine devastated the land, but the only widow to whom Elijah was sent was in Sarepta in Sidon? And there were many lepers in Israel at the time of the prophet Elisha but the only one cleansed was Naaman the Syrian."


That set everyone in the meeting place seething with anger. They threw him out, banishing him from the village, then took him to a mountain cliff at the edge of the village to throw him to his doom, but he gave them the slip and was on his way."


What could be worse than being thrown out of your own community of faith, especially when you were being seriously truthful...explaining the Scriptures as faithfully as you could?


Many times I've seen this sort of thing, though not to the extreme measure which these folks took in the end, in the course of my own ministry. Not every church goer who professes to be a believing Christian is able or wants to hear the honest truth proclaimed. It's not that they don't want "the message" to be spoken and taught...it's just that it has to be their version of the message. Unfortunately, most times it's a narrow, adolescent viewpoint which they perhaps heard in Confirmation class years before and which, in their insecurity in faith, they feel they must hang onto. The curious thing is that many of these folks may be people who are quite "with it" in their field of work, and don't bat an eyelash over change in the marketplace. Just don't touch their "religion"!


Luke tells us that after Jesus moved down the road from the hostile hometown crowd in Nazareth, he got a much different reception: "He went down to Capernaum, a village in Galilee. He was teaching the people on the Sabbath. They were surprised and impressed—his teaching was so forthright, so confident, so authoritative, not the quibbling and quoting they were used to."


John Indermark, in his wonderful little book Gospeled Lives, has a quite relevant passage with which to conclude this reflection: " Over the past two years, the Reverend Dr. Mark Miller has served as the Transitional Interim Conference Minister of the Pacific Northwest Conference of the United Church of Christ...Mark makes light of the acronym for his title (TICM), saying he hopes his work does not lead too many people to hear it with an 'off' at the end (as in, 'tic 'em off'). His other trademark wordplay when he speaks to churches and church leaders explores variations on the theme: 'Your windshield needs to be larger than your rearview mirror.' The image is not only striking -- it is gospel." 

Living Water

We’re almost at the half-way point in the season of Lent. The Gospel passage for today’s liturgy is the well-known story of the woman at the well in John’s Gospel (4:5-42). It’s a story about brokenness which we’ve all felt, a story of how God’s love and pardon came to a woman and her town through the man named Jesus of Nazareth.


The story begins when Jesus strikes up a conversation by asking a Samaritan woman for a drink of water from the well, where he was sitting while awaiting the return of his disciples who’d left for a lunch-run. The well, Jacob’s well, had been there a long time. John hints that the woman came here frequently to lower her bucket and draw water. The woman is put off by the fact that Jesus, a Jew, is asking for water from her, a Samaritan. She then becomes amazed at Jesus’ offer to give her some special water, since he has no bucket. The well is deep and he process is tedious and time-consuming. A fountain or spring of “living water”, she thinks, would certainly make the job ever so much easier.There’s an immediate miscommunication, because the living water to which Jesus refers is actually the Wisdom which gives life. In the Hebrew Scriptures “living water” refers to Torah, “the gift of God”, as the rabbis called it. The will of God as expressed in Torah, and practical living according to it, was life-giving Wisdom for a Jew.


For writers of the Christian Scriptures, especially John, “living water”. the Wisdom which gives life and guides people’s lives is both Jesus’ wisdom, his teaching, summed up in himself, the “Word” incarnate; and the Spirit whom Jesus communicates, sends. “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. The one who believes in me, as the scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.‘ Now he said this about the Spirit which those who believed in him were to receive.” The coming of the Spirit was to be the sign that the messiah = anointed [Greek, christos] One had arrived. Jesus had proclaimed in his own hometown synagogue, quoting from Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me...he has anointed me...to heal the brokenhearted.”


As Jesus’ conversation with the woman unfolds, we begin to glimpse how inwardly broken she is. This is a woman who, for whatever reason, has bought into the racial and religious discrimination which existed between Jews and Samaritans in first century C.E. She could be described as a person who felt “denominationally superior” because she was convinced that her people knew the “right” way to worship. We learn further that she’d apparently had her share of broken relationships in her life until now. She’d had five husbands. When Jesus mentions her husband, the dialogue abruptly shifts to the topic of “real” worship and the proper place for it. Jesus had gotten a little too close to home for her. The woman deals with her embarrassment and guilt by drawing attention away from her home situation. Jesus quietly offers her his presence and peace. He slowly, patiently, cuts through her misperceptions, prejudice, spiritual blindness, even deceptiveness, and reveals himself as the healing One, holding out to her the remedy for her brokenness, foretold by Isaiah: the living water of God’s Spirit, his very presence and peace.


Jesus accommodates her and takes up the topic of worship, but he begins to explain how he views true worship. It’s not in Samaritan vs. Jewish terms, but in terms of “spirit and truth”. Whenever spirit appears unmarked in John’s Gospel it usually refers to God’s Spirit. And truth, for John, primarily indicates Godself or is a characteristic of people who respond to God’s revelation.


In proclaiming worship in spirit and in truth Jesus doesn’t seem to be contrasting external worship with internal worship, with worship of God in the inner recesses of one’s heart. Being broken before God and yet trusting that somehow we’ll come out at the other end is God’s way of challenging us to deeper faith. When you and I stand vulnerable and open to God’s life-giving Spirit, even if grudgingly at first, we begin to have faith, to believe. Acknowledging and accepting the Spirit, Godself, and God’s will expressed in the Word -- Jesus himself and the Scriptures -- becomes the basis of true worship. “The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not spurn.” The liturgical prayers, gestures, and paraphernalia which we use in worship are only aids, and are all empty and meaningless unless they lead us to make real the kind of worship of which Jesus speaks. When, in our brokenness, we approach the living God in spirit and in truth, we allow God to heal, to restore, to recreate us.


Jesus does this for the Samaritan woman. Through a simple request for a drink of water, through conversation, and through patience Jesus helps her work through her self-imposed limitations and short-sightedness, and to come to know God’s Spirit which he himself embodies. The selfsame Spirit of truth enables this woman to eventually do “surprise ministry”: to share Jesus’ story with her friends and townspeople. It’s something she’d probably never have done on her own. Like us, she’d have pled “unworthy”, “incapable”, with “not enough time to devote to it”. Her fellow townspeople would never in a million years have enlisted her as the town evangelist, the bearer of “Good News”. After all, they knew what she was like!


After the disciples return, a bit shocked to find Jesus speaking with the Samaritan woman, John notes that “the woman left her water jar and went back to the city”. Why did she leave the jar? Was it just because she was so excited and in haste to share the latest bit of gossip? Or was that little detail symbolic? Could it, perhaps, indicate that in dealing with the Holy God and with each other, you and I need to leave our jars, our containers, however large or small, behind? No one can contain or put limits around God’s truth, the living water who is the Spirit. Unfortunately, don’t we often attempt to do just that: to contain and put limits on God’s Spirit, on the Spirit’s ability to deal with whatever brokenness afflicts our lives or those of others? We’re uncomfortable with life’s uncertainties and changes. We want the answers to life’s questions, the security of “the truth”. Jesus’ most radical opposition, after all, came from “religious” people who believed they had a corner on the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth: in a jar, so to speak. The Samaritan woman had thought that way at first, and so do we until we realize, as Paul reminds us in 2 Corinthians that “...we have this treasure in earthen vessels, to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us.”


Thomas Merton coined the phrase which (approximately) says “God writes straight with crooked letters.” God has a way of continually smashing our jars and containers when we attempt to put limits on God’s Spirit, when we try to dictate how God should deal with those of whom we disapprove, or worse, when we try to disallow even God the freedom to change brokenness, in ourselves or in others, into a new start, a “surprise ministry”. Jesus’ gift of eternal life is there for the taking, if only we choose to be refashioned in its power, if only we believe enough to leave our jars behind and let the Spirit blow where it will.


I wonder what Jesus might have said to a person like singer Janis Joplin, a broken woman to all appearances, often disapproved of and berated by others, ultimately a victim of her own addictive tendencies, dying alone. How might she have responded had someone sat down with her, been truly present to her, and told her about the living water of the Spirit. Amanda McBroom wrote a song called The Rose, used in the movie of the same name, a movie based on Janis Joplin’s life:

It’s the heart afraid of breaking

that never learns to dance.

It’s the dream afraid of waking

that never takes a chance.

It’s the one who won’t be taken

Who cannot seem to give,

And the soul afraid of dyin

that never seems to live.

Mary: A Lesson In Humility & Faith

Someone has said, "A person who has never doubted is a person who has never thought." Frederick Buechner goes further: "...if you don't have any doubts you are either kidding yourself or asleep. Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving." Some folks seen almost always at peace with their faith. Others seem to be in a state of constant questioning. 


To speak of doubt is to speak of testing or difficulty in believing, not of refusal to believe.The presence of doubt says nothing about the certainty with which we believe. A person can be torn by doubt, yet be very dedicated and firm in faith. Strong faith, in fact, can often be accompanied by great doubt. The more a believer loves and surrenders self, the more one has abandoned one's own ground, and more is at stake. A challenged faith can remain a full faith, for true faith is always full. It isn't a question of half-believing and half-unbelieving. 


The man whose son was possessed by a spirit and who cried out to Jesus, "I believe, help my unbelief," had a full faith. And Jesus healed the son. Thérèse of Lisieux, the French Carmelite nun, often known as "The Little Flower", had painful doubts about faith even as she lay dying of tuberculosis at age 23. "My 'little way'," she wrote, "is the way of spiritual childhood, the way of trust and absolute self-surrender." In the example of Jesus himself we can see best of all the certainty which is not crushed even by the worst difficulty or doubt. Jesus was tested in the desert. Though, quoting Psalm 22, Jesus cried out in agony on the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?", his surrender, his faith, his gift of himself was at its most total in his temptation and doubt.


Scripture constantly talks about people in crises of faith and confidence. One could cite such stories as that of Abraham, or of the Exodus, or of Jeremiah, or of the people after the destruction of Jerusalem. Such crises of faith take on a different form in each age. Some centuries have been called the "Ages of Faith", while others have been marked by darkness approaching despair. Many in our own day feel that any sort of belief in God's existence or Jesus or the Spirit is a complete illusion.


Doubt has its origin in many things, mostly in such questions as arise in all our minds at some time or other. How do I reconcile the cruelty and violence of the world with God's goodness? What do I do when the salvation I hear proclaimed seems to bring me no deliverance? What if I don't perceive God as part of my existence, as meaning nothing to me practically? Why do people witihout faith seem to get along just as well, perhaps better, than those who profess to believe? Many of us remember a time, perhaps, when "the faithful" were advised not to busy themselves too much with such heady issues, to simply pray to God for guidance and to go on leading a good life, with assurances that it'll all be OK in the end. Such simplistic platitudes are largely ignored in an age which constantly seeks, probes, and questions. There's no way, ultimately, to dodge honest doubts, nor should we. While it would be foolish to allow ourselves to become the playthings of every new thought or idea which crosses our mind, or slaves to compulsive notions, we should take time, make time, to thoughtfully discern the meaning of our doubts. 


Even this can be somewhat simplistic, because difficulties in faith go far deeper than simply the intellect. The real source of doubt often is that we've lost a sense of God's presence and peace, or contact with it. The testing may, in fact, be a call to deeper belief. It may be that we're not living in faith, that we're allowing ourselves to be choked "by the cares of the world, and the delight in riches, and the desire for other things" (Mark 4:19) Sometimes we try to fit our convictions to decisions we've already made, decisions contrary to conscience. Or we may be inwardly unable to bring ourselves to love certain people, or perhaps we're feeding a hatred in our hearts.


Sometimes serious doubt spills over into actual despair. Thomas Merton described such critical times as "the absolute extreme of self-love", when a person makes a choice to turn her/his back on all help from anyone else, including God. Perhaps there's some hidden root of despair within all of us. There's a pride which raises its head as soon as our own resources fail us, which they will, inevitably, at times. Despair is the result of letting pride develop to such a point, where even despite the reality of the suffering of Christ on the cross, one chooses the absolute misery of complete separateness and alienation, rather than accept happiness from God's hands. 


The way out of doubt and despair, the way to God's presence and peace, calls for humility. Humility is primary if one is to live spiritually. It is the key to faith with which our life in God's Spirit begins. Deriving from the Latin word humus = earth/ground, humility "grounds" us, helps us see reality, things as they are, not the fantasies we wish they would be. Only when I can humbly accept the reality that I'm a creature in relation to God can I submit, surrender, myself -- even in the face of doubt or despair -- to God's presence and peace.


This feast of the Annunciation is a celebration of Mary's extraordinary humility and faith. If anyone had reason to doubt, maybe even to despair, it was this young Jewish girl of marriageable age, who, though unmarried, found herself pregnant and with no explanation which anyone could comprehend, much less accept, least of all her intended, Joseph. We can only conclude from Luke's story of Mary that somehow this young girl had learned quite early the key to wholeness and holiness. The Lord's messenger addresses her as "Highly favored one, the Lord is with you." God's presence is there, unrecognized, and the only way that could be is if she were at the same time humble, grounded: she knew the way things were in relation to her Creator. When it was made known to her that she was to be a key figure in the greatest event in history, a thousand doubts and questions must have rushed in on her. She expresses some of them: "How? I have no husband. I'm afraid. Why?" But as soon as it becomes clear to her Who is behind all this, the Most High, the Holy Spirit, she exclaims: "...I am the Lord's servant; let it be to me according to your word." We'd be very wrong to read into this scene that, for Mary, it was somehow "different", or that for her it was easy, but surely not for us. That would be to rob her of her true humanity. French writer, Jean Guitton notes that Mary might well have said of her humble and faithful "Yes" to God what the French painter, Corot, said of a canvas he'd hastily completed: "How much time did I spend on it? Five minutes -- and my whole life."

Of Potters & Clay

The passage from Jeremiah [18:11; 18-20] strikes a responsive note because it ends with a question which we’ve all undoubtedly asked: “Is evil a recompense for good?” [v.20] You and I might rephrase the question a little differently: “Why did God cause this tragedy, or whatever, to happen?”; “I don’t understand it: I pray and pray, and God never answers.” “There’s no justice in this world! The rich just get richer and the poor, poorer!”

It appears that Jeremiah was a sort of “visual learner”. God’s message told him to go to a potter’s studio: “...there I will let you hear my words.” Jeremiah watches intently as the potter works at his wheel, fashioning a clay vessel. But he goofs (the potter, that is). Perhaps he pressed too hard, used too much water on the clay, didn’t spin the wheel fast enough: whatever,...the pattern he’d set out to make was ruined.

The thing which Jeremiah noted was that the potter didn’t get upset and throw the piece of clay away. Patiently, “he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do…” It was then, after the potter handled the situation this way, that Jeremiah understood God’s message which he was to give to the people of Israel.

God compares Godself to a potter working with the clay, in this case, Israel/humanity. If the people are “bad” clay, i.e., they aren’t as clay should be, God is still able to fashion them into something useful, to accomplish the divine purpose, if the clay will respond to God’s expert touch. If, on the other hand, people who are “good” clay, i.e., capable of being fashioned into a vessel of God’s choosing, willfully allow themselves to be deficient clay, then even God won’t exercise his artistry. God won’t contradict the laws of nature which are the expression of the divine goodness and truth itself. The logical consequence and result, despite God’s creative hand, will be a misshapen, disfigured vessel. The potter’s creative purpose will have been purposely frustrated by the “clay”.

“Is evil a recompense for good?” therefore? Does God cause evil in our lives? or bad things to happen to good people? Certainly not! For God is like the potter, after all. Is Jeremiah’s message, in terms of the potter, meant to convey simply that the potter has dominion? that he calls the shots? that the clay isn’t important? that the potter exercises arbitrary control over the vessel’s existence, or that he can shape evil regardless of the quality of his clay?

Or does Jeremiah’s message, rather, have a different thrust: that a potter is one whose delight is in creating, in giving things the possibility to be; that potter is careful, precise, patient; that a potter puts something of her/himself into what is created; that a potter fashions objects which are useful, things which delight us with beauty, which benefit and serve others?

“Is evil a recompense for good?” No. But to say this doesn’t mean that it’s a complete answer, or that you and I understand or can ever fully grasp the mystery of evil in the world and in our own lives. It’s not a complete answer, but it’s a firm and sure answer, one based on the Word of God.

The reality of being human and limited and of being the inheritors of selfishness is that, sooner or later, we’ll each find ourselves as spoiled vessels in the Divine Potter’s hands. But faith tells us that God can and does rework us, if we allow it, into other, and more magnificent vessels, “as it [seems] good to the potter to do.” No one, I think, has expressed this more beautifully than St. Paul, writing to the Christians at Corinth: “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.” (2 Corinthians 4:7-10)

"I Set My Heart"

O God, whose glory it is always to have mercy: 
Be gracious to all who have gone astray from 
your ways, and bring them again with 
penitent hearts and steadfast faith to embrace 
and hold fast the unchangeable truth of your 
Word, Jesus Christ your Son; who with you 
and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns,one God, 
for ever and ever. Amen.

The Gospel for Lent 2 (John 3:1-17) is a familiar one. It redefines the life of faith in Christ. It speaks of being born into a new life of the Spirit. Inasmuch as you and I are transformed, we're called to trust in God's promises.

James Adams' book, So You Think You're Not Religious?, written for modern skeptics, is a favorite of mine for the definition of faith which he suggests in it. Adams tells of an incident which he witnessed at Oxford University, where Robert Morgan was giving a series of lectures on Paul's Epistles. Morgan came to the text in Romans 10:9 where Paul says: "...if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." "Then", Adams recounts, "he looked up and said, 'Believe in your heart. That is the only kind of believing that matters. As you probably know the Latin word 'credo', from which we get our word 'creed', is usually translated 'believe', but it means literally 'to set the heart'." Adams notes that this stunned him, for it suddenly solved for him how a skeptical person might, with integrity, pray the Nicene Creed. "'Credo'...'I believe in', really means 'I set my heart'. It does not mean 'I set my head'."

In John's Gospel passage Jesus and Nicodemus have an interesting conversation, "by night", John says. I think it helps to put that conversation into some perspective by reading the preceding three verses: "When he was in Jerusalem during the Passover festival, many believed in his name because they saw the signs that he was doing. But Jesus on his part would not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to testify about anyone; for he himself knew what was in everyone." John makes this observation in light of a challenge flung at Jesus by Jewish religious leaders in vv. 18-19, after he'd "cleared the deck" of moneychangers in the Temple just before that.

Nicodemus, a Pharisee, a Jewish leader, now approaches Jesus (note again, "by night"), opening with rather unctious words of praise about Jesus' skill as an authentic teacher, and alluding to the "these signs that you do" as evidence of that. Jesus who "himself knew what was in everyone", including this man, cuts right to the chase: "Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the reign of God without being born from above." That phrase, "the reign of God", by the way, appears only here and in v. 5 of John's Gospel. Jesus' statement whizzes right over Nicodemus' head as Nicodemus puzzles over the mechanics of how someone might be born again once the person has "grown old", as he himself presumably has. But Jesus is relentless, and says again, "You can't be part of God's reign without being born from above, that is, of water and Spirit." Water is a symbol with several meanings: a cleansing agent or a refreshing liquid. But also, in sufficient quantity, such as an ocean or the tsunami which devastated Japan last week, with rippling effects even here in our own state of California, it's a source of power, of undoing and destruction. Spirit is the principle of life. We might draw the implication that eternal life, which is the essence of being part of God's reign, is possible only through a rebirth, a transformation, a humbling, even an undoing or destruction, in a sense, of our human ways of knowing and understanding, and being given the gift of God's life-giving Spirit.

Jesus continues with a beautiful image of wind, breath, blowing where it chooses. Of course, the Hebrew word ruach and the Greek word pneuma = breath, spirit are both applied in Scripture to Holy Spirit also. As wind blows around us we can hear its sound, its voice, but we don't know where it comes from or where it goes. "So it is", says Jesus, "with everyone who is born of the Spirit." Well, poor old literal Nicodemus, "a teacher of Israel", as Jesus describes him, still doesn't "get it". Not so subtly, Jesus singles out the crux of the Nicodemus' problem: "We [the majestic "We" of the Trinity?? or "We" who've learned to set our hearts on God??] speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you [those who either haven't learned the necessity of setting their hearts on God, or those who've deliberately chosen to live in the darkness of blindness to what's right in front of them??] do not receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?"

Jesus then draws a parallel between Moses and "the Son of Man". There's a vertical ascent involved: "...just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness [cf. Numbers 21:4-9], so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. There's also a vertical descent: "...God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life." And this descent, the sending of the Son by the Father to humankind, was done so that all human beings themselves could ascend, be raised up, "that the world might be saved through him." In this passage, John, through Jesus, addresses you and me who are the Church. If Moses' action brought life to the Israelites, Jesus' actions, indeed everything which he did and said, brings eternal life to us. In the whole mystery of Jesus' crucifixion on the cross, his resurrection from the dead, and his being taken back into and glorified in the presence of the Trinity, you and I, through the power of the Holy Spirit, who sets our hearts on God, are ourselves raised to glory. "The reign of God" becomes our new way of existing. The only way this cannot happen is if I refuse the Holy Spirit ["blaspheme", according to Mark and Luke; "speak against", according to Matthew], if I choose to live in darkness and lack of understanding, thus withholding my heart from the very Spirit who is Love.

Hazel Jean Spire wrote the following in the January/February issue of alive now!:

"Florida. August.
    I leave my husband to cast his line again. I point my new camera at the palm trees. Click. The wading birds. Click. The Miami skyline. Click. I shield my lens against an unusually bright glare from the ocean.
   A fishing boat glides in to the wooden jetty. A young man steps out and calls my name. Who on earth knows me here?
    'Yes?' I respond, feeling my toes sink into the wet sand while he makes a half hitch around a cleat.
    'Did you think you could escape from me, Hazel?' The man is laughing now, and walking toward me.
    I squint. 'Roger?'
    'No, not your ex. Your first love. Remember the youth retreat, south coast of England?'
   I want to hide. Instead I stammer, 'Oh, it's you.'
   With a glance at Mark, who is reeling in a branch of seaweed fifty yards down the beach, I say, 'You know I've remarried.'
   'Of course,' he says, and my old friend invites me to sit with him on the jetty. His hair and skin are a lot darker than in the mental picture I've been carrying.
   'I'm sorry I cut off communication,' I tell him. 'No excuse really, though I did try to blame Roger.'
   He smiles, but his eyes reveal the pain of rejection. 'I've missed you,' he says. 'You didn't reply to any of my messages.'
   I shake my head in shame as well as disbelief that we're having this conversation. 'I was looking through some of your messages the other day. I've been through so much change lately, I was trying to find some words to help me. But they didn't make sense any more.'
   He sighs. 'You used to be able to read my thoughts.'
   Retrospect sweeps me back to those early steps away from my first love. All I can say is, 'I guess I wasn't ready to promise you anything at fifteen.'
   'But you did accept my gift and that made you mine.' His look penetrates my soul.
   'I still have plans for you.' His tone is gentle, persuasive, but I hestitate.
   My husband wades to the top of his boots, casting again.
   'What about Mark?'
   'Oh, he's coming too, but I still want first place in your life.' My friend stands. 'It's not the first time I've been betrayed,' he says. 'I always knew you would choose your own way for a season. But I wouldn't force you to stay. I can only draw you back with my love.'
   He reaches down and pulls me up with his strong brown arm. Now I notice the ugly scars. I remember what he did on a dark lonely hill outside Jerusalem. My guilty verdict is washed away by the tide of grace.