Conversation Points for John 11:1-45

Study Format:
1. What did you hear Jesus offering to you? To us? To the world?
2. What kind of resistance to Jesus did you hear?
3. What will you have to learn to resist or renounce in order to receive what Jesus is offering?

Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• Like last week’s healing of the man born blind, while the presenting issue of the story is the miraculous raising of Lazarus, the bulk of the conflict deals with the conversations between Jesus and other characters in the narrative.
• While the raising of Lazarus is only recounted in John’s gospel, other stories of Jesus raising people from the dead occur in the synoptics, so this sort of a miracle is common to all Gospel traditions.
• Lazarus is also the name of the poor man in the parable in Luke 16:19-31. While the two are certainly not the same character, as the naming of characters in parables is pretty unusual, some scholars have posited that the name “Lazarus” entered the parable through Luke’s knowledge of this story from the Johaninne tradition.
• The story begins with identifying Mary as “the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair.” However, this event hasn’t happened yet, it takes place in John 12:3. Some scholars have read this as an editorial gloss, indicating a mistake where an ancient editor rearranged stories. Others have argued it is the writer of John’s Gospel assuming the audience’s familiarity with Mary already, and thus the reference here links the death of Lazarus to the death of Jesus, which Mary is preparing the body for by anointing Jesus.
• In v. 4, Jesus moved the focus of the illness from the illness itself to it as an opportunity for God’s glory to be revealed, just as the man born blind was not blind because of sin, but in order for God’s glory to be revealed. The irony of the story of Lazarus is that while Lazarus’ illness did not lead to Lazarus’ death, it will lead to Jesus’.
• Jesus’ talk about hours in v. 9-10 recalls the coming of Jesus’ hour as a metaphor for his death. Prior to this, Jesus would say, “my hour has not yet come” (2:4; 7:30; 8:20), but now he will begin to say that the hour has come (12:23; 13:1; 17:1).
• V. 17 states that Lazarus had been in the grave four days. This is a reference to the popular belief that the soul hovered around the body for three days, and after the third day would leave the body for good. So saying Lazarus had been dead four days reinforces the idea that he was very much dead.
• We tend to read Mary and Martha through the lens of their depiction in Luke, Martha being the hard working one, and Mary more passive. Those traits don’t really apply here, and we should read them only as their own characters. When Martha says, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died,” commentators have been hesitant to describe it as a complaint so much as an expression of her faith in Jesus as a healer. If it is tinged in complaint however, complaint is a language of faith in scripture (c.f. Psalm 4; 6; 13; 22), so the two do not have to be exclusive.
• Jesus’ response to Martha, that Lazarus would live, is open-ended, so her misunderstanding of the timing is understandable. She affirms her belief in one of the tenants of her faith, while misunderstanding the nearness of that belief.
• Jesus’ prayer in v. 41-42 is the first time in John’s Gospel that Jesus addresses God as “Father,” though it is common in the synoptic Gospels. The prayer has been dismissed as a “show prayer” more an example than an act of piety. But other scholars have noted it is a prayer of thanks. Jesus does not need to petition God, for his relationship with God is such that he is always in communion with God. The prayer reinforces the purpose of the miracle, not to draw attention to Jesus, but to draw attention to the revelation of God.

Works Sourced:
O’Day, Gail. “The Gospel of John.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume IX. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.

The View from Behind the Water Heater in the Furnace Room: A Sermon on John 9:1-41

I brainstormed for this sermon in the furnace room this week. Why was I brainstorming in the furnace room? Well, on Thursday we played hide and seek with the bus kids. Because I’m apparently a super-competitive hide and seek player with sixth graders, I decided to hide in the furnace room. Figured I’ve spent enough time in there already throughout my time here, it’s a space I’m fairly comfortable in, so I might as well go there. And it turns out it was an excellent hiding place, so I had lots of time sitting there in the semi-darkness to ponder this Gospel text about what it means to be able to see.

I got to thinking about the text because of how my vision shifted. When the door first closed behind me, it was really dark in there. I had decided to kneel behind the water heater, to give a little more cover in case someone actually decided to look in the furnace room. But it was so dark that instead of walking behind it, I actually first walked into it, and then had to feel my way around with my hands. But, as I mentioned, no one thought to look in the furnace room, so I sat back there for a while. And it wasn’t long before my eyes got used to the low light, and I could actually see pretty well. I could see the old toilet that is being stored in there for reasons I am unclear of. I could see the handle of the snowblower, hanging out for the Murphy’s Law reason of knowing that the day we put it away in the garage for the season is the day it snows again. I could see the extra air filters leaning up against the furnace next to me. The longer I sat there, relaxed and quiet, the more I found I could see. By the time I gave up on them finding me and came out, about ten minutes later, the furnace room didn’t even seem dark anymore, more just sort of dim.

And here’s the funniest thing that happened. That whole ten minutes I sat in there, someone did open the door and look in. But because their eyes had not had to adjust to the darkness, even though they were standing in the light, they couldn’t see me, huddled in the darkness. The light, which we normally think of as helping us to see, actually prevented them from being able to see.

And that part, the part where the person in the light looked in and couldn’t see, while the person in the dark, me, could see just fine, is what really got me thinking about the sermon for today. I sat there, quietly chuckling and my ingenuity and thinking, that sort of irony is basically the problem in our Gospel text this morning.

Our story this morning was Jesus healing the man born blind. At least, that’s what we call it, but in reality the healing itself takes all of two verses, and happens mostly off scene. “[Jesus] spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, saying to him ‘go, wash in the pool of Siloam’ (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see.” That’s all there was on the miracle part. No flashy healing, no grand revelation. The man born blind didn’t even ask for healing. Which, if you think about it, is one of the kind of weird parts of the story. I mean, basically, the man was just sitting there, begging and minding his own business when out of nowhere some random stranger just came up to him, rubbed spit-mud in his eyes, and sent him off in search of a particular pool of water. I always kind of wonder if the man born blind’s first thought might have been, hey, I’m already a blind beggar. And now I’m a blind beggar with your weird spit-mud in my eyes. Thanks a lot, random stranger. But something about Jesus caused the man to decide to give it a whirl, or maybe he figured he didn’t want the mud on his face, might as well wash it in the way the guy suggested, what was the worst that could happen. And he went, and he washed, and came back able to see.

But again, all this, even though it is the miracle from which the whole story is named, is really only the set up for the true conflict in the story, what happened when the man born blind came back able to see. Because here this guy comes back, and it’s a crazy miracle right, “was blind but now I see,” we sing songs about it. But the other people, they were not amazed. They wondered if it was even the same guy. “Was this the man who used to sit and beg?” “No, no this is some other random guy who just looks a lot like the guy who used to sit and beg.” And the man’s like, no, hey, guys, it’s me. Same guy. Same guy you’ve been walking past, throwing a few coins to, for years now. The man called Jesus—this is his first understanding of Jesus’ identity, just a name, the man called Jesus, but it is something. The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and now I see.

But they didn’t believe him. So they went and brought some Pharisees to see him, to see if his words could be true. Now the Pharisees, of all people, should have recognized what was going on. Because the Pharisees were the most educated people in the community. It took a lot of years of learning and study to become a Pharisee. If there was a miracle taking place, the Pharisees were the ones best trained to recognize it. And this miracle seems especially tailor-made for them. One of the central metaphors of John’s Gospel is seeing as the first act of discipleship. Being part of the kingdom of God first means seeing. Remember way back when Jesus called the disciples, he told them to “come and see.” And the woman at the well urged the townspeople, “come and see.” Well, now this guy is seeing, which is like a huge neon arrow pointing a revelation of God, and the Pharisees missed the point entirely.

And I think the Pharisees missed it, because they could see too well. Like the hide and seek game, where Emerald couldn’t find me because he had too much light around him, the Pharisees missed the miracle because they were too well educated in the ways of the law. And their education got them caught up in the fact that Jesus had done this miracle on the Sabbath, and it blinded them to the fact that, who cares the day, a miracle occurred.

And if I’m honest with myself, I can’t really blame the Pharisees for missing it. I think the Pharisees make a mistake that we’re all guilty of at times. The mistake of being so in the light, so convinced that we are right, that we cannot see the ways in which someone else might also be right, and maybe that contradiction is OK. As I thought about the Pharisees, I kept thinking about our current political climate, where it seems like things have to be one way or another, either this or that, and if you are this and I am that, then there is no way that we could ever find any common ground. I’ve talked before about how hilarious I find the Starbucks cup controversy every Christmas, where folk either rush out and boycott Starbucks, because clearly their Christmas cup is not Christmasy enough, so they must be trying to oppress religious freedom, or folk rush out and BUY Starbucks every year, because their Christmas cup is not restrictive, so clearly Starbucks is pro-religious diversity. Friends, Starbucks just wants to sell you coffee. As a corporation, they do some things that are really ethically good, and some things that are really ethically not so good, so come to whatever conclusion you want about supporting them, but don’t base it on cup design. And Starbucks is a silly example, but we do this. We do this for all sorts of things. We make an opinion, based maybe on logic, maybe not, but then we cling desperately to that opinion, even when something comes around that invites us to change our minds, out of fear that we might look foolish.

Our knowledge, the Pharisees knowledge, and the pride in that knowledge, can blind us. But the man born blind, he didn’t have that roadblock in front of him. He couldn’t see, and the great irony of this story is the very fact that he could not physically see, is what made him able to experience the revelation of Jesus. The event of God’s revelation happened to him, it was experiential knowledge more than it was head knowledge, and the experience moved him to a greater understanding of God, a greater seeing than the Pharisees, with all their wisdom, could reach.

So we’re talking about baptism this Lent. And what I love about baptism, about both the sacraments really, baptism and communion, is that they communicate the revelation of God in a way that is beyond words. You don’t have to fully understand what’s happening in these waters, around this table, in order for it to move you. In fact, sometimes I think trying to fully understand can actually get in the way. I’ve said before that I think my godson Karl, who’s three, gets the total, uncontainable, overwhelming love that God has for him more than I do, because Karl doesn’t get stuck in his own head. While I get stuck in big, churchy words like justification and consubstantiation and homousious, Karl just knows that in these waters God said, you are my child, and that’s enough for him.

And here’s the last thing that’s really cool about this story. See even man born blind, even our hero, did not get all the way to faith, all the way to understanding who Jesus was on his own. He came pretty close through his own wonderings, first knowing Jesus as The man called Jesus, then calling him a prophet, then saying he was from God, but that’s as far as he was able to get. But after he got kicked out for being snarky to the Pharisees. And, as an aside, is there a better comeback in scripture then verse twenty-seven, when the Pharisees have asked the guy the exact same question for the fourth time and he responded, “I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?” That is just classic dry humor. But anyway, after he got all snarky with the Pharisees and they threw him out, Jesus, who, you may have noticed, was not present for the entire middle of the story, came and found him again. And when Jesus found him, he asked him “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” To which the man answered, “And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.” This guy, who has just done all this great testifying about who Jesus is, who was given sight by Jesus, was now standing face to face with Jesus, and still did not recognize him, still did not fully know who he was. Even the now seeing man who once was blind could only come so far on his own. So Jesus reached out and took the next step, completing the revelation by identifying himself. “You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is him.” Basically, I am he. To which the man replied with a full confession of faith, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped him.

And so, as we journey through this Lent, and especially as we enter into Holy Week and the Great Three Days, I invite you to, like the man born blind, let go of the things you do not know, and let your experience guide you. Touch the water in the font, taste the bread and the wine. On Palm Sunday shake palms and shout things you don’t understand. On Maundy Thursday eat soup, on Good Friday sit in darkness. On Easter Sunday smell lilies, hear trumpets and wonder at the mystery beyond understanding. Don’t get so caught up in what you have to know, but instead find yourself in places to let Jesus meet you in the unknowing. Let Jesus reveal himself to you, so that you might, even in your uncertainty proclaim, Lord, I believe, even in that which I do not yet understand. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Conversation Points for John 9:1-41

Study Format:
1. What did you hear Jesus offering to you? To us? To the world?
2. What kind of resistance to Jesus did you hear?
3. What will you have to learn to resist or renounce in order to receive what Jesus is offering?

Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• Jesus’ healing of a blind man appears in all four gospel narratives. Common in all four stories are the man being a beggar, Jesus touching the man’s eyes, and the use of spit in the healing. Though, as is true for all of John’s Gospel, this account does not seem directly dependent on any of the synoptic accounts, but seems to draw from its own fund of Jesus traditions.
• V. 1-5 set the situation for the miracle healing. Interestingly, the man born blind is nothing more than a set piece at this point. He did not approach Jesus requesting healing, but the healing came out of a conversation between Jesus and the disciples about conventional theological concerns as to the cause of suffering. It was commonly believed that physical ailments were punishment for sin. Since the man was born blind, the sin would have either had to have been committed by his parents, or prior to his birth (the struggle between Jacob and Esau in Genesis open the possibility of sinning in the womb).
• Sin in John’s Gospel is not a moral category of behavior, but a theological category dealing with how one responds to the revelation of God in Jesus. The need that evokes the miracle is not the man’s need for forgiveness for the moral sin that caused his blindness, but the need for God’s works to be revealed.
• The Pool of Siloam was the source of water used during the feasts at the Tabernacle. Translating Siloam as “sent” connects the water itself to Jesus, because Jesus is referred to in John’s Gospel as the one who is sent by God.
• The traditional motif for a miracle story ends with witnesses testifying to the miracle. In this story, the neighbors’ doubts about the identity of the man allow him to testify for himself about the miracle that has happened to him. While he was silent to begin the story, he became the central witness as it continued to unfold.
• One of the conflicts in the story is the timing of the healing occurring on the Sabbath. Kneading (the verb used when Jesus “made mud”, v.6) was an action explicitly forbidden on the Sabbath. Violating Sabbath law challenged the traditions that bound the Jewish community together as a covenant community and the Pharisees’ role in interpreting those traditions, so a threat to the Pharisees’ power. The Pharisees thus accused Jesus as being not from God, an irony because, as the man born blind correctly noted, the miracle of the return of his sight was a revelation of the work of God.
• The man born blind came to recognize Jesus’ identity more and more (“man called Jesus” v. 11, “he is a prophet” v. 17, “if this man were not from God” v. 32, “Lord, I believe” v. 38). Meanwhile the Pharisees moved more and more away from recognizing him (“this man is not from God” v. 16, “we know this man is a sinner” v. 24, “we don’t know where he comes from” v. 29, “you were steeped in sin at birth, and they threw him out” v. 34). Blindness is not determined by physical sight, but by recognizing the revelation of the works of God in Jesus.
• V. 22 “His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogues.” This verse looks beyond the scope of the time of Jesus to the life of the Johaninne community. The parents could not have been afraid of “the Jews” as a group, because they, their son, and Jesus himself, were all Jews. The fear of being “put out of the synagogues” probably relates to what was called the “Benediction Against the Heretics,” a prayer directed against outside religious groups dating from at the least later than 70 CE, probably between 85 and 95 CE. The Johaninne community in that time was experiencing persecution by the religious leaders, and by writing that tension into the story of the man born blind, the writer of John’s Gospel helped his community to see themselves and their conflicts as part of Jesus’ overall story.
• “Give glory to God” (v. 24) is a traditional oath to urge someone to tell the truth or confess their sin. The irony is the man born blind does tell the truth, and thus is “giving glory to God.” It is the authorities who turned their back on the revelation of God.
• “We know” (v. 24) echoes the conviction Nicodemus had in Jesus’ identity that led to his misunderstanding, and the woman at the well’s uncertainty, which led to her understanding. The man born blind did not engage the Pharisees on the law, their area of expertise, but on his experience, and thus his knowledge, of who Jesus was. Experience, seeing Jesus, trumps education.
• While the man born blind came to a close recognition of Jesus, final recognition and full confession of faith did not come until Jesus identified himself in v. 37.

Works Sourced:
O’Day, Gail. “The Gospel of John.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume IX. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.

Without a Bucket: A Sermon on John 4:5-42

Like last week, the Gospel reading this morning is the story of a conversation. Two retellings of individuals in conversation with Jesus, and that is really about where the similarities end. Last week, we heard the story of the consummate insider, the Pharisee Nicodemus, seeking out Jesus by night to question him. This week, the conversation partner is the consummate outsider. A woman, a Samaritan woman at that. And unlike Nicodemus she did not seek Jesus out, did not initiate the conversation. But Jesus found her, not at night, but in the heat of the day, drew her into dialogue, and through that open-ended conversation, made of her a foreman in the harvest of the kingdom of God.

Nicodemus came to Jesus while he was in Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. Following the celebration, Jesus went out into the Judean wilderness. It wasn’t long until the rumors began that Jesus was amassing a large following. To avoid the tension, Jesus decided to return to Galilee, and in order to get from Judea to Galilee, John chapter four, verse four reported, “But he had to go through Samaria.”

He had to go through Samaria. Now, geographically, this is true. Samaria stretched across the center of what we now know as Israel, from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, separating Judea to the south of it from Galilee to the north. Jesus could have gone around, through the area of the Decapolis, but the most direct route was through Samaria. But there seems to be something more going on here. The word John used, edei, is most often used in reference to something necessary to fulfilling the plan of God. So, there is a theological dimension as well as a physical. Jesus had to go through Samaria, not only because that was the way the road went, but more importantly, because going through the land of outsiders was essential for revealing that salvation was from the Jews, but it was not exclusively for the Jews. Rather, it was to flow, like ripples in a pool when a stone is thrown, starting in Jerusalem, Judea, Israel, then outward through Samaria, and Galilee of the gentiles, and into the rest of the world, the universe, the cosmos. Salvation was for Israel, and also for all those who had been marginalized by Israel. Humanity’s borders had no bearing on the movement of the Kingdom of God.

So Jesus went through Samaria. And at noon, as his disciples went into the city to buy food, he met a woman who had come to the well to draw water. This alone was a strange thing. High noon, in the heat of the day, was not the time when one normally came to get water. Most women came at dawn or at dusk, in the cool of the beginning or the end of the day. Nicodemus used the cover of darkness to reach Jesus without anyone knowing where he was going. The woman went to the well at high noon to avoid everyone, and found Jesus there, waiting for her, waiting to offer her more than she could imagine.

When Nicodemus reached Jesus, he opened with an affirmation to prove his knowledge, “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who came from God.” When the woman approached Jesus on the other hand, Jesus opened. And he opened with a request, “Give me a drink.” Jesus engaged the woman by showing his humanity and vulnerability. Woman and Samaritan though she was, Jesus put himself in the lower position of person without bucket in the presence of person with bucket and access to water.

But the woman was cautious. She’d gone to the well at noon to avoid others, and she wasn’t immediately going to open up to this strange Jewish man by himself at the well. So she inquired, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” Nicodemus used his identification of Jesus as a way to level the playing field; the woman used it as a way to distance herself. I see you, she told Jesus, I know who you are, and I know where I stand in relation to you. You are here, I am here, let’s keep that space. She gave Jesus the option to disengage, but Jesus didn’t take the bait. “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”

She’d been trying to disengage, but Jesus’ persistence paid off. He gave her an opening she couldn’t resist. She stated the obvious, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep.” You may be a Jew and a man, and me a Samaritan and woman. But I am also the one with a bucket, and you the one without a bucket, you are the one who set the positions in place, what are you talking about when you claim you can give me living water?

Having drawn her into conversation, Jesus continued with his offer of living water, water with which she would never thirst again. Like with Nicodemus, we again see the miscommunication, the woman talking about physical water, while Jesus was talking about so much more. Having drawn her into conversation, Jesus used the opening to take the topic deeper. “Go, and call your husband.” To which she responded, truthfully, “I have no husband.”

Now, here we have to be careful. Because for centuries this part of the conversation has been used to cast a judgment upon the woman. She must have been a sinful woman, loose in morals, poor in character, to have gone through five husbands, to be “shacking up” with a man not her husband, how gracious, how noble of Jesus to forgive her. Her coming to the well at noon, avoiding the others of her village, could tell us that it was not only centuries of theologians who have cast such judgment against her, it was also those around her.

We have to be careful, because in contrast to centuries of assumptions, Jesus did not cast judgment. Instead he acknowledged the truth of her statement, fleshing it out to draw her to a deeper level, “You are right in saying, I have no husband. For you have had five husbands, and the one you are living with now is not your husband. What you have said is true.”

So amazed was the woman by Jesus careful assertion of her situation that she rushed back to the village to proclaim, “Come and see a man who has told me everything I’ve ever done!” Yet even in her wonder, there remained a tinge of hesitation, “he could not be the Messiah, could he?”

I mentioned the various differences between this conversation and the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus. But I think her uncertainty is the most important difference. Her uncertainty, her doubt, her hesitations and questions were what allowed her to be changed by Jesus. Nicodemus came in totally set in his ways, in who he was, what he knew, and who he knew Jesus was. The woman, on the other hand, came in doubting, open to be shifted, open to be moved, open to be changed and grown and molded by Jesus, until she could rush back into her village to declare, “Come and see… He could not be the Messiah, could he?”

This Lent we are talking about the gift of baptism, and Jesus’ conversation with the woman is a beautiful model of how the dance of baptism unfolds. In these waters, Jesus meets us, like the woman at the well. This water here is living water, water that quenches our thirst once, for all time, and a well spring we can always come back to for the unending promise of refreshment. But most importantly, it is water deep enough to hold our questions, our doubts and our ponderings. Contained in this shallow bowl is the unending depths of the promise of God. May this water quench us, move us, and mold us, that our questions may move us to action. Amen.

Conversation Points for John 4:5-42

Study Format:
1. What did you hear Jesus offering to you? To us? To the world?
2. What kind of resistance to Jesus did you hear?
3. What will you have to learn to resist or renounce in order to receive what Jesus is offering?

Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• The conflict in chapter 4 is based on the well-established rivalry between Jews and Samaritans. The breach began during the Assyrian occupation of Palestine in 721 BCE (see 2 Kings 17). The conflict revolved around the correct location for worship, the Jerusalem Temple or a shrine on Mt. Gerizim. During the Assyrian occupation, the exiled Jewish community continued to see Jerusalem as the center of worship life, whereas the Samaritans, still in Palestine but blocked from Jerusalem, built a new center of worship on Mt. Gerizim. By the time of Jesus, there no longer was a shrine on Mt. Gerizim (it had been destroyed by Jewish troops in 128 BCE), but the split continued (for probably obvious reasons, if you want someone to come around to your way of thinking, destroying their most sacred place is maybe not the best approach).
• Like much of John’s Gospel, the story of the Woman at the Well is a complex interweaving of dialogue and narrative. There are five major scenes in the story: v. 4-6 – Jesus’ arrival at the well, v. 7-26 – conversation between Jesus and the woman; v. 27-30 – arrival of the disciples and departure of the woman; v. 31-38 – conversation between Jesus and the disciples, v. 39-42 – Jesus and the Samaritan townspeople.
• In the interest of time (this is already a long passage) the lectionary cuts out verses 1-4. While not central to the story, these verses help explain how Jesus got to a well in the middle of enemy Samaria. Prior to this, Jesus had been in Jerusalem to celebrate Passover (2:13). After his conversation with Nicodemus, Jesus traveled to the Judean wilderness where he spent some time with John the Baptist, and also did some baptizing. This stirred up the attention of the Pharisees, so Jesus decided to leave Judea and return to Galilee. “But he had to go through Samaria” (John 4:4). This very short verse is interesting, because why did he have to travel through Samaria? Scholars are evenly divided on whether the need was geographical or theological. For the geographical argument, first century historian Josephus noted that the best route from Judea to Galilee was through Samaria. For the theological argument, the word translated as “had to” (edei) is often used in John’s Gospel to indicate God’s plan.
• The location of a well calls to mind many Old Testament images. Jesus interrupting a woman in a household task recalls Elijah doing the same thing with the widow of Sidon (1 Kings 17:10-11). Other scenes involving a man and a woman at a well include the betrothal stories of Isaac (Gen 24:10-61), Jacob (Gen 29:1-20), and Moses (Exod 2:15b-21). John already connected wedding imagery to the coming of the Kingdom of God in the miracle at the wedding feast at Cana. The connection between the Samaritan woman at the well and these betrothal stories in the Old Testament expand the Kingdom of God not only to Israel, but even to those who are marginalized by Israel.
• In addressing the woman, Jesus broke two social conventions. First a Jewish man, especially a religious leader, did not engage in public conversation with a woman. Second, Jews did not engage in any way with Samaritans out of concern for ritual uncleanliness.
• “Living water” (v. 10) has two possible meanings (more word play! Noticing a theme here?). First, it could mean fresh, running water (spring water, instead of water from a cistern). It could also mean life-giving water.
• Like Nicodemus, the woman only caught the surface level of the wordplay. How could Jesus get her water, living or otherwise? He doesn’t even have a bucket. As readers, the Gospel writer lets us in to see the irony of the situation. The woman challenged Jesus that he was not greater than Jacob, the great ancestor of the faith who gave them the well. The reader of course knows the truth, Jesus IS greater than Jacob.
• Like with Nicodemus, Jesus leaned into the woman’s misunderstanding and challenged her to imagine bigger. Water, even fresh, spring water, quenches thirst only for a while. But Jesus is talking about water that gives life.
• The Samaritan woman’s enthusiastic response to Jesus in v. 15 on one hand shows she still missed the point. She still saw Jesus through the surface lens of the physical, instead of the broader spiritual gift he was offering. However, her move to seeing Jesus not as a rabble-rousing Jew without a bucket, but as someone who could meet her need does demonstrate her openness to expand her understanding about who Jesus was.
• Interpretations tend to get stuck on the woman having had five husbands and now living with a man not her husband, but that is not the point of the conversation. The point is that much like how the rest of the conversation had gone, the woman responded at a surface level (I have no husband, a true statement), whereas Jesus went beyond the surface, to the deeper truth of her statement. The difference is now they are not talking about water, but about the woman’s life. In response, the woman declared Jesus to be a prophet, showing another move along the spectrum of understanding the truth of who Jesus was.
• Recognizing Jesus as a prophet, the woman asked his thoughts on the greatest theological question of her time, where was the proper place of worship (aka: who was right, the Jews or the Samaritans). Jesus, rather than answering the question, looked beyond. Focusing on the proper place to worship is to confine God. God is bigger than such a conflict allows for.
• The woman’s understanding continues to develop, but there is still some lack of understanding, as seen in v. 25. “I know that the Messiah is coming…When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” The irony, as the reader well knows, is that the Messiah is in fact standing in front of her, and she still doesn’t recognize him. With this though, Jesus dropped the games and spoke plainly, “I am he…”
• “I am” is an explicit reference to the name God gave to Moses in Exodus 3:14, “I am who I am.”
• V. 27-30 form a transition, with the arrival of the disciples, the woman left to proclaim what she had heard.
• When the woman left, she left her jar behind. The left-behind jar plays two roles. First, it links the two conversations. While the woman is no longer in the scene, the presence of her jar shows she continues to be a participant. Second, is shows her progress in understanding Jesus. So convinced of him, she no longer is caught up in the search for water that brought her to the well, but is instead immersed in the mission of spreading the Kingdom.
• V. 29, the woman’s testimony has several interesting layers. “Come and see,” a key invitation in John’s Gospel to participate in the life of faith (cf. 1:37-39, 46). “He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” There is a level of tentativeness to her statement of faith, she cannot all the way believe the truth of her statement since Jesus challenged her expectations of what a Messiah was. Her tentativeness is in contrast to others in the Gospel, who’s certainty keep them from seeing Jesus (ex. Nicodemus, 3:9; the crowds, 6:25-34; the Pharisees, 9:24-34). Yet in response to her uncertain witness, the townspeople went to see Jesus (v. 30).
• While the woman was testifying to the townspeople, Jesus had a similarly two-leveled conversation with his disciples (in the presence of the woman’s water jar). This time, the miscommunication was not with water, but with food. The disciples brought Jesus food from town, but Jesus referred to the food of his work which sustained him. Who Jesus is, his identity, is indistinguishable from the work Jesus does, doing the will of God.
• After the food conversation, Jesus switched to another popular metaphor for the coming kingdom, agriculture, and specifically harvest time. When he asked the disciples to look at the field, that for which the disciples are to reap is the Samaritans who are coming.
• V. 36 and 37 it is unclear who is meant to be the sower and who the reaper. These are not allegories, but parables, inviting the reader to read themselves in all the roles, and none of the roles.
• The story ends with the description of the success of the Samaritan mission. Jesus “had” to go through Samaria (v. 5), and when he did, many believed and asked him to stay (meno, the same word from John 1:14, “And the Word became flesh and lived among us,” sense of abiding with).
• The Samaritans confession of faith demonstrates that while salvation may be from the Jews, it is not limited to the Jews. And the truth of Jesus words, that neither the Jerusalem Temple nor Mt. Gerezim define the worship of God.

Works Sourced:
O’Day, Gail. “The Gospel of John.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume IX. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.

Broken Printers, Greek Words, and the Wind/Spirit/Breath of God: A Sermon on John 3:1-17

So it’s been an interesting week around the church office. Adding to the list of “things I didn’t know I needed to know,” I learned that we are a three-phase building, and Wednesday’s wind storm knocked out two of them. This meant we had power in some, but not all of the building. And in weird ways. So, for example, half of my office lights worked. The choir room had heat, but no light. Co-op had working computers, but no internet, heat, or phones, and only one light. The microwave tray spun around, but the microwave didn’t heat anything. The refrigerator light came on, but it didn’t keep anything cold. When, adding insult to injury and totally unrelated to the wind, the office printer, which has been acting finicky for some time, finally decided to just quit trying, I actually just physically slid out of the chair and under the desk. Doug and Eileen, when you walked in Wednesday evening, I had just pulled myself out from underneath the desk. It was just one of those weeks where nothing seemed to go right or to make sense.

On Thursday, as I was walking around with the guy from Sims Electric trying to figure out what was wrong with the power, which, by the way, turned out was a problem on Consumers end, I started thinking about how weird wind is. It’s just air, the stuff we breathe, the stuff we move through all the time. I can wave my hands around and make a breeze; I can blow it out, but good for nothing more than ushering a cotton ball across the floor or snuffing a candle.

And yet, it can also be this incredibly powerful and destructive force. From inside my office, Wednesday looked like a beautiful, sunny day, but this powerful thing downed power lines, toppled the tree across the street, and scattered bits of the roof across the back lawn.

In our Gospel reading for this morning, Jesus remarked, “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” What’s interesting about this sentence is that in both Greek and Hebrew, the word for wind and the word for spirit are the same. The word is pneuma in Greek and ruach in Hebrew, both mean wind, spirit, breath. “The wind-spirit blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the wind-spirit.” What the Greek and Hebrew tells us is that the Spirit, like the wind, is a force both mysterious and powerful. At times gentle, the whisper of a breeze on a warm day, at times creative, we can harness it to drive windmills and generate electricity, and at times destructive enough to topple trees and bring down entire city blocks, but it is always moving, always shifting. We cannot see it, but we can feel its force against our skin, we can see the effects it leaves behind.

This play on words with wind and spirit is one of a host of double meanings in this reading. If you’re a fan of word play, this is a great Gospel for you. In addition to the wind/spirit combo, there is another one with what the NRSV translated “born from above” but is often translated as “born again.” The word in Greek is anochen, and it means both born again and born from above. So it means both a physical, time-bound experience of being born, and a radical generative new creation. I know we’re doing a lot of Greek in the sermon this week, but seriously team, how cool is that. With the word anochen, Jesus challenged Nicodemus to consider a truth bigger than he had imagined. Those born into the kingdom of heaven are born both again and from above, both physically present and beyond the universe, both timeless and time-bound, into a kingdom that is both already present in the person of Jesus, and not yet complete, there is still more to be done in the unveiling of the fullness of God.

But Nicodemus, like so often happens, missed the point Jesus was making. When presented with this word that invited him to consider this rich, deep, developing new thing, Nicodemus focused in on the physical thing right in front of him. He picked a meaning, like our English translators were forced to do, because there isn’t such a double-meaninged word in English. Unlike our English translators, Nicodemus could have had both, but both was beyond his capacity for wonder, so he picked one. He picked again. “How,” Nicodemus asked Jesus, “can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” No, right, that can’t be. Once the process of being born has begun, once the water has broken, there’s no turning back. You cannot put your little brother back, no matter how much you might ask your mother to do so, and you cannot be born again.

But choosing one or the other was not Jesus’ point, so Jesus leaned into him with still more wordplay. “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” The verb translated lifted up, is the Greek hypsoo or the Hebrew nasa. It means both to be physically lifted up, like I’m lifting up my arms. But it also means to be exalted, to be given a place of highest honor. The lifting up Jesus was referring to here was his crucifixion. Jesus was saying, when I am lifted up on a cross, like a common criminal, that will be the moment of my greatest exaltation. It is the seeming foolishness of the cross Paul wrote about in Corinthians, that in dying Jesus Christ destroyed death, and the cross, not the resurrection, but the cross was the moment of Jesus’ greatest glory. That’s not to say the resurrection wasn’t important, but that it was more for us than for Jesus. We needed him to come back from the dead, so that we could see that his defeat of death had worked, we could see the reflection of his glory. Here in John chapter three, Jesus gave Nicodemus a preview of all that was to come, but even for us who have read the whole story and know how it turns out, it all seems kind of fantastical, so you cannot really blame Nicodemus for missing the moment.

But he will not miss it forever. Nicodemus is one of my favorite characters in John, because while he fades from this scene, this is not the only time he will appear. In chapter seven he’ll show up again, when some other Pharisees are questioning Jesus and give an admittedly rather half-hearted defense of Jesus. Then after Jesus’ crucifixion, he along with Joseph of Aramethia are the only two with the courage to approach Pilate for permission to bury the body of Jesus. Nicodemus didn’t get Jesus’ message all at once, his imagination, his capacity for wonder, was not yet great enough in chapter three, but it will grow and he will get there. And it will give him a courage he may not have thought possible, when he was skulking through Jerusalem streets to come to Jesus by night.

The thing I found myself pondering all week as I reflected on the Nicodemus story was what is my own capacity for wonder? What marvelous things have I missed because, like Nicodemus, Jesus laid out the whole world in front of me, and I chose to see only part of it. So often, I think, Jesus offers us this incredible new thing, and our imaginations are not yet great enough, so we settle for the restrictive familiar.

So the challenge I am taking on this Lent, and I invite you to take it on with me, is to increase our imaginations, our capacity for wonder. To look at what seems like a fixed point, and wonder if there might be a third way. To not be restricted by how things have been, but to see where the Spirit might be blowing through like wind, and while we may not know where it comes from or where it goes, we see the effect, the potential energy stored up within it. Maybe the broken printer is just a broken printer, or maybe it is an opportunity to change some of our office structure. Maybe the power outage was inconvenient, but maybe knowing we’re a three-phase building will be helpful in some way. Maybe our budget is small and our building is crumbling, and it is in fact an opportunity for us to discover what it means to be church in a radical new way. I don’t know, but this Lent I am going to take Nicodemus as my model, and see if I can’t lean into this potential, and maybe it will give us courage to do things we never thought possible. Thanks be to God, who blows through our lives in spirit-wind, never showing where it comes from or where it goes, but remaking us in God’s image. Amen.

Conversation Points for John 3:1-17

Study Format:
1. What did you hear Jesus offering to you? To us? to the world?
2. What kind of resistance to Jesus did you hear?
3. What will you have to learn to resist or renounce in order to receive what Jesus is offering?

Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• If you are a fan of word play, this is a story for you!
• This story is the first example of a common pattern in John’s Gospel: a central event (in this case, a conversation between Jesus and the Pharisee Nicodemus) followed by a discourse by Jesus in which Jesus draws out general theological themes illustrated by the event. Other examples of this are Jesus teaching about the bread from heaven (John 6:22-58) after the feeding of the five thousand (John 6:1-15) and the Good Shepherd discourse (John 10:1-19) after the healing of the man born blind (John 9).
• Nicodemus is a complicated character, a fact that is portrayed immediately. On one hand Nicodemus, a religious leader, not usually the ones portrayed as being supporters of Jesus, sought out Jesus. As we saw in the calling of the disciples in John 1:38, seeking out Jesus in John’s Gospel is the first act of discipleship. But Nicodemus came to Jesus not during the day, but under the cover of night. This detail is especially important in John’s Gospel, where “night” is often used metaphorically to represent separation from the presence of God (9:4; 11:10; 13:30).
• Nicodemus opened with three positive acknowledgements of who Jesus was. 1) He called Jesus “rabbi,” acknowledging him as a teacher. 2) He said he was a “teacher who has come from God.” This was a traditional way of speaking of religious figures, so there is a degree here were Nicodemus was speaking a truth deeper than he understood. 3) Addressing Jesus in the first person plural indicated Nicodemus spoke not just for himself, but for his community. But Nicodemus drew these conclusions based on what Jesus had done (“signs” being the term used in John’s Gospel for what other Gospels termed miracles). 2:23-35 demonstrated that Jesus will not trust those who follow based only on signs.
• This reading introduces another common Johaninne (Johaninne relating to the writer and community of the Gospel of John) phrase, which in English is translated: “Very truly, I tell you…” In Greek, the phrase is amen, amen, lego, which literally translates Amen, amen I am saying to you…” Amen has the same meaning in Greek as in English, it is a transliteration of the Hebrew amen, meaning a declaration of affirmation, “may it be so,” or “truly.” My Greek teacher in seminary described it as Jesus saying, “When I finish what I’m about to say, you’re going to say Amen.”
• Has anyone ever asked you if you’ve been “born again”? That phrase comes from this story. The Greek word frequently translated as “again,” is anothen, a word with multiple meanings. It does mean “again,” it also means, “anew” and “from above.” These multiple meanings are only possible in Greek, there is no Hebrew or Aramaic (or English) equivalent. To be born anothen addresses both a time of birth (“again”) and the place from where new birth is generated (“from above”). The Kingdom of God in John also has both spacial and temporal dimensions. It is both already here in the person of Jesus, and not yet come into fullness.
• The choice of the use of anothen intentionally and unavoidably adds ambiguity into the reading, forcing Nicodemus to move beyond a surface reading to a deeper meaning. V. 4 showed how Nicodemus missed the two levels of meaning, focusing instead on one (“again”), and protesting that it is physiologically impossible. Nicodemus’s limited sense of possibility continually prevent him from understanding the fullness of what Jesus is saying. While Nicodemus was correct in one sense, it is impossible to be born again, that was not what Jesus was saying. Jesus was speaking of a radical new thing, not confined by space and time, and Nicodemus did not have the language or imagination to grasp it.
• In v. 5-8, Jesus tried again to expand Nicodemus’ thinking with new images that capture both meanings. “Born of water and spirit” in itself is a phrase with double meaning. For Nicodemus, the phrase turns on the word “born.” Nicodemus keyed in on the birth process as an exit from a mother’s womb, the literal process of giving birth. Jesus played on that imagery with “water” a reference to waters breaking immediately before the birth of a child, and “spirit” a reference to the new thing Jesus is bringing. For the reader of John’s Gospel, there is also a reference to baptism. The two essential items for a sacrament are a physical thing (in the case of baptism, water), and a word of promise.
• In v. 8, Jesus added more depth to the metaphor by talking about wind. The word in Greek is pneuma, which like anothen has a double meaning. In both Greek and Hebrew the words for spirit and wind are the same. Wind as a thing is mysterious, we as humans can feel the effects of wind, but we cannot see the wind itself. In the same way, what Jesus speaks of is a mystery beyond human knowledge and control.
• At v. 11, the text switches from conversation to discourse. Jesus spoke also in first person plural, speaking not just for himself, but for John the Baptist, the first disciples, and all the church who have “seen” Jesus and “know” him (see and know in quotation marks for the deeper meaning of both in indicating discipleship).
• V. 13, Jesus spoke of his ascension in the past tense, even though at the point of his speaking, it was in the future. This makes clear the post-resurrection perspective from which the Gospel is written.
• V. 14 references the story in Numbers 21:8-9 where Moses lifted up a serpent on a pole to protect the Israelites from snakes. It too is based on play on words. The Greek hypsoo means both “lift up” and “exalt” (the Hebrew word nasa has the same double meaning, for a humorous example, read Genesis 40:9-23, nasa is twice used in “lift up your head,” the first time it means “exalt,” the second it literally means lift up, as in remove your head from your shoulders, decapitate, if you will.) The double meaning is that in the physical act of being lifted up, Jesus will be exalted. The “lifting up” here refers to the crucifixion. John/Jesus is making the claim that in the seemingly demeaning experience of being crucified, Jesus will be exalted. This is the central theology of the cross in John’s Gospel, the event of the crucifixion is the moment of Jesus’ glory.
• Is there a more well-known verse of scripture than John 3:16? The word translated as “world” is the Greek kosmos, which in John most often refers to those who are at odds with God. So the use of the term here seems to suggest that God gives Jesus not only to believers, but in fact to all people.

Works Sourced:
O’Day, Gail. “The Gospel of John.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume IX. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.

Who's tempting Jesus:?: A Sermon on Matthew 4:1-11

Every year on the first Sunday of Lent, we read one of the accounts of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. Either Matthew, Mark, or Luke’s take on how Jesus spent forty days in the wilderness being tempted by the devil. And I totally understand with the people who select our weekly readings chose to do it this way, it makes great sense to start our own forty-day journey through Lent by reflecting on Jesus’ own forty-day journey. I totally understand it, but I don’t really like it. And I don’t like it, because I think connecting Jesus’ forty-days in the wilderness too closely to our own sets us up to misread the story.

My first concern is we read this story out of context. I mentioned this way back in the beginning of January when we read about Jesus baptism, this happened immediately after that. In verse one, the Spirit who led Jesus up into the wilderness? That was the Holy Spirit. If we were story-blocking this, the scene would go: Jesus comes to the Jordan, is baptized by John, comes out of the water, heavens open, Spirit descends like a dove, voice says “you are my Son,” dove-spirit leads Jesus out of the river and into the wilderness. Then, temptation, calling the disciples, Sermon on the Mount, and so on. Out of context this story, and Lent, can seem like some sort of trial Jesus had to go through in order to prove his worth, or punishment for doing something wrong, or an attack by evil. But it’s not the case. Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness was part of the divine plan, it was both a mark of Jesus’ obedience and a show of his power.

If anything, the temptation of Jesus is a demonstration of just how much the powers of evil misunderstand the power of kingdom of God. The third temptation is the clearest description of this. The devil led Jesus up to a high mountain and offered Jesus all the kingdoms of the world if Jesus would just worship him. Does the devil really even have that to offer? If, as Psalm 24 tells us, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it,” Jesus, the Son of God, already had all the kingdoms of the world. It’s like when my baby cousin Shane tried to convince me to give him a cookie in exchange for my own shoe. It was already my shoe; I didn’t need to give him anything to have it. Shane was not quite two at the time of the shoe incident and didn’t really have an understanding of property yet, so his effort was cute, but not exactly a hard offer to pass over.

My second concern about reading this story as a start to Lent is it opens us up to see the forty-day journey through Lent, a time where we are encouraged to take on a spiritual discipline like fasting or almsgiving or prayer, as a period of struggle marked by horrible temptation. Which can turn fasting, almsgiving, prayer, into a burden of sacrifice rather than a gift to draw us closer to Jesus. When we hear that Jesus fasted forty days in the desert, often the first thought is, oh my, how horrible. Of course the devil came and tempted Jesus forty days into this fast, when Jesus was at his weakest and most vulnerable. But here’s the thing. Yes, the Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness. But Jesus was fully human, just like us, so Jesus had free will. Jesus chose to go into the wilderness, and he chose to spend forty days fasting. So maybe the devil tempting him forty days in was another sign of the devil misunderstanding the power of God. The devil thought, ah ha, this guy’s been without food for a long time, he’s going to be at his weakest. But Jesus had just spent forty days building his relationship with God. He’d just spent forty days in prayer and meditation and fasting. So yes, he was hungry, but spiritually he was in tip-top shape. The so-called temptations by the devil were not tempting at all, because after forty days growing closer to God, Jesus knew exactly who he was and whose he was.

That really is the purpose of Lent. It is not about giving up something you really really love for forty days so you can suffer a lot and therefore earn God’s forgiveness. It is about making space in your life and your mind and your soul for your relationship with God to flourish. The key word in the phrase “spiritual discipline” is not “discipline” but “spiritual.” Spiritual disciplines are for growing strength for the journey. Yes, they can be hard, but it’s a good hard. The kind of hard where you feel good about yourself afterwards, because you know you’ve done something healthy and well and you are the stronger for it. It’s the difference between taking a kick-boxing class and just letting someone pound on you. Both can hurt, but one is a form of exercise, and the other is just abuse. God wants for you the one that is exercise.

This story works well for the first Sunday of Lent when we read it as a model for living in the already and not yet of the kingdom of God. When we read it as solidarity in the struggle and confidence in God’s presence and in God’s eventual triumph. This story appears at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry because it introduces what will be the central conflict of the Gospel, the cosmic battle between God and the powers of the world, a battle which God has already won even as it is still being contested. That Jesus faced the trial in the wilderness, and the various trials and struggles throughout his ministry with Roman authorities, which religious leaders, and even with his own disciples, serves to reassure us that struggle is not antithetical to our story; it is part of our story. It is part of what it means to live in and amidst the glorious unveiling of God’s kingdom. When we struggle, when we hurt, when we are tempted, we can see those times not as a test of our faith or as punishment for our actions, but as a reality of the already and not yet of creation. And that knowledge can give us the confidence to try, and fail, and try again.

You may have noticed a decidedly water theme to our sanctuary, that is because this Lent we are focusing on baptism. Each week we are going to take part of the baptismal liturgy and focus in on what it means. This week, we’re looking at the beginning of the liturgy, what’s call the Three Renunciations. Before each baptism, I ask the person being baptized, or their parents and sponsors if the person is a child, to profess their faith in Jesus. I then ask, “Do you renounce the devil and all the forces that defy God, the powers of this world that rebel against God, and the ways of sin that draw you from God?” The response is then, “I renounce them.” Some of you may remember the story I’ve told a few times at my Godson’s baptism, this was the point where he got restless and when the pastor asked his parents and I if we renounced these things, Karl hollered, “Nooooo” at the top of his lungs, generating a burst of laughter from the audience. I love that memory, one, because I think Karl is a hoot. But two, because it reminds me that baptism is not some magic potion where suddenly we never make a mistake and everything goes great. We make these big promises at baptism and the promise God makes to us is if we fail to live up to those promises, we don’t need to be baptized again. It’s also why I love that our tradition baptizes infants. Because if I’m honest with myself, while I know better than Karl when not to yell no, his childlike trust and wonder is probably better at comprehending the gift of baptism than my analytical adult mind is. I think Karl probably gets God’s unconditional love for him in his soul better than I do, because I have years of practice thinking myself out of it.

These three renunciations directly correspond to the three temptations of Jesus in the wilderness. The devil and all the forces of evil, the powers of this world, and the ways of sin that draw us from God, are directly related to the loaves of bread and material wealth, the miraculous rescue and the desire for glory, and the kingdoms of the world and the thirst for power. And we renounce them before every baptism, and at Trinity we have taken on the practice of having all of us renounce them together, not just the parents, sponsors, and the people being baptized, because this isn’t a once for all time thing. Baptism is the gift that keeps on giving. Every time we need it, we can come to the waters, remember the promises made to us, and find strength for the journey. We can make bold statements because we have a God who walks beside us in the journey, who claimed us as beloved children, and who went to the ends of the earth for us, literally to death and beyond, so that nothing can ever separate us from God.

So, as we enter into this forty-day journey, I welcome you into a holy, a healthy, and a life-giving lent. I invite you to take on a spiritual discipline that focuses on the spiritual. Let whatever you do strengthen you, grow you, and shape you, so that you find yourself living more fully into the words spoken by the one who leads you, you are my child, my beloved, with you I am well pleased. Amen.

Conversation Points for Matthew 4:1-11

Study Format:
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?

Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• We always read the baptism of Jesus on Baptism of Our Lord Sunday at the beginning of Epiphany, and then the story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness on the first Sunday of Lent, but the stories actually happen back-to-back. After Jesus was baptized in the Jordan, the “Spirit of God descend[ed] like a dove and alight[ed] on him” (3:16). 4:1 continues, “Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.”
• While this is the only place direct conflict with Satan is described, this is a portrayal of the central conflict of the whole Gospel, a clash of kingdoms between the kingdom of God and the kingdom represented here by Satan. In other places, it plays out in Jesus’ conflicts with Herod, the high priests, and the scribes. The word here translated as “tempt” is translated other places as “test” and is used only of the Jewish leaders. As Jesus did here, he responded to them with scripture.
• Jesus came from Galilee to be baptized and was led by the Spirit to be tempted as a show of his obedience. Jesus’ facing down Satan was part of God’s plan, not a play by the devil.
• The writer of Matthew used the terms “devil,” “Satan,” “the evil one,” and “ruler of demons” interchangeably as a personification of the power of evil.
• Jesus was in the wilderness 40 days and 40 nights, a detail meant to clue the reader in to yet another similarity of Moses and the Israelites in exile for 40 years.
• The word translated “if” in verse 3, “If you are the Son of God…” may be better translated as “since.” The question is not if Jesus is the Son of God, but what it means that Jesus is the Son of God. What are the expectations of a Messiah? The things the devil is offering, material wealth, armies of angels, worldly power, were all things expected of a Messiah who was supposed to come and run out Rome.
• The first temptation is for Jesus to turn stones into loaves of bread. Since Jesus would have only needed one loaf, the temptation is not just about Jesus fulfilling his own need, but creating food for all human need. Jesus certainly cares about humanity’s need for bread, and in fact throughout the Gospel cares for the hungry and needy in many ways. But here, Jesus spoke of a deeper hunger than simply bread.
• The “high mountain” in verse 8 strengthens the allusion to Moses. The temptation for Jesus to rule the kingdoms of the world is to assume the role held by the Emperor. The devil tempts Jesus to accept the status quo of the world instead of the potential of the kingdom of God.
• Jesus responded to each of the devil’s challenges with scripture. The devil also quotes scripture.

Works Sourced:
Boring, M. Eugene. “The Gospel of Matthew.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume VIII. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.

Masks: An Ash Wednesday Sermon on Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—

Why should the world be over-wise, In counting all our tears and sighs? Nay, let them only see us, while We wear the mask

This poem by Paul Lawrence Dunbar is one of my favorites. I love its haunting honesty, and it always comes to my mind around this time of year, this season of Lent.

One of the reasons I think of the poem, “We Wear the Mask,” is because the idea of masks is so prevalent in the reading. The word hypocrite has taken on a negative context in English. A hypocrite is someone who claims certain beliefs or values, and then acts in contradiction to their stated beliefs. In Greek however, hypocrite was a neutral term that meant “stage actors.” In Greek theater, two or three actors would play multiple roles. Masks allowed the audience to tell who was who, to focus on the characters, rather than the actors behind the characters.

But Jesus, of course, was not talking about stage actors. He was talking about people who seem to be stage acting their lives. People who present a carefully curated version of themselves to disguise their true selves. Who speak of honesty while cheating their neighbor, or bemoan violence while cutting with their words, or belittle others to hide their own self-doubt. We’ve met those people, and, if we’re honest with ourselves, we’ve been those people. Or, better said, we are those people. We, all of us, walk around with masks to hide the truth of our identities, the secrets we wish to conceal.

And, let me be clear, these masks are not inherently a bad thing. If you’ve ever pushed aside your own grief to help someone grieving, or battled exhaustion for someone more tired than you, or faked joy at another’s enthusiasm, these too are masks, and they can be good and helpful ones, masks worn for the betterment of others.

The problem then is not the wearing of the masks themselves, but the motivation behind the masks. Do we wear masks to improve our own well-being, or to help the well-being of others? Are the masks to raise our own status, or to level the playing field of our community? Right-living is not about being quivering masses of availability at all times to all people, it is about finding the balance, when to be open and when to be closed, when to be helpful, and when it is more helpful to withhold help and let someone figure it out on their own. Masks, with the right motivation, can be good tools in helping us along. We can act grace until we feel grace; we can practice mercy until we live mercy.

The other problem with masks is that they are heavy. Masks of false-pride, worn to glorify us at the expense of others, are stressful as we need to maintain them at all times, less our true selves poke through and our vulnerabilities be revealed. Masks of humility prevent us from taking time for ourselves and run us the risk of pouring so much of ourselves into service of others that we have nothing left to give. And the more we wear them, the more of them we seem to pull on, needing different masks for different occasions, until our necks and shoulders become worn down with the weight of disguise.

The gift of Ash Wednesday and indeed of all of Lent, it offers us a time to take off all the masks, both those that serve us well and those that serve us poorly, to evaluate them, to work the kinks out of our shoulders, and to pick up again only the ones that serve us well, and wear them only when they are helpful. Ash Wednesday and Lent are about cutting through all of the false narratives and covered images, laying all of that bare, so we can figure out who we truly are, so that when Easter comes and we step out of the tomb, we carry with us only the things that we need, nothing more and nothing less.

When Jesus taught his disciples about religious life, about almsgiving and prayer and fasting, he did not tell them not to do those things. But rather he told them: give alms to serve others, not to serve yourself. Jesus’ audience were not the wealthy and well-to-do, they were poor. The almsgiving Jesus called them to was not about giving huge checks so that others would think well of them, but was about sharing resources so that what was not enough for one became enough for all. I think, for example, about our relationship with the Co-op. We are a small church with too much building and a hunger for mission, they are a large organization with a strong mission and no building. Alone we as a congregation would be struggling in this space, and they would be without a roof. Together, their mission becomes ours, and helps sustain our worship life while filling our building with people throughout the week. It is not giving so that others think well of us, rather it is sharing out of our abundance to fill each other’s weaknesses so there is enough for all.

Jesus said: Pray to talk to God, not to show others how great you are at praying. Have you ever met someone who spends so much time talking about what a great listener they are, that you cannot get a word in edgewise? Prayer is about relationship, it is about building a relationship with God. If we’re so busy praying so that others may see our great faith, then we don’t have time to hear what God is saying in return. Jesus prayed a lot, and he prayed in public a lot, but when he prayed in public, it wasn’t about being seen, but rather it was about teaching people how to pray, about modeling his relationship, so others may learn how to find their own.

Jesus said: Fast to serve others, not to have others take pity on you. The prophets have long associated fasting with acts of social justice. One of the options for the Old Testament reading for tonight is from Isaiah 58, part of which reads: “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house.” Fasting isn’t about giving up food so that you suffer for Jesus, it is about creating space in your life to live in Jesus. It is about remembering that food or chocolate or Facebook or whatever you are giving up is not in the end the master of you, but Jesus, who calls you beloved, is the one in whom you live.

On Ash Wednesday we make ashy crosses on our foreheads to remind us of our brokenness, our sinfulness, and our mortality. We disfigure our faces with ash, not like the hypocrites, who disfigure their faces to show others, but to remind ourselves that the clean, clear image we portray is just that, an image. We are not immortal, moral, right-living beings, we are complex, complicated, stuck in sin and struggling with doubt. There is freedom in that. This ashy cross invites us to lay down our masks at the foot of the cross and hear only the words spoken to us through our baptism, you are my child, my beloved, in whom I am well pleased.

When we make the cross of ashes on our foreheads, we hear these words, “remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” There is harsh reality in this. The only thing we are promised in this life is that we will not get out of it alive. Everyone, from the holiest to the most profane, from the weakest to the strongest, will not live forever. We all will die, and when we die, our bodies will return to the dust from which we came. There is, as the writer of Ecclesiastes said, a time for everything. It is humbling, this reminder that we will become dust.

We will become dust, but we are also made of dust. At the dawn of creation, God gathered dust in divine hands, and breathed life into the dust to create humanity. As our knowledge of science has increased, so has our realization of our interconnectedness with this universe God created. The same atoms, the same combinations of protons and neutrons, that form the ground we walk on, the air we breathe, the mightiest of mountains, the stars that shine, those same atoms are what make us. We are mortal beings composed of immortal elements, bound together by the breathe of the divine into the image of God.

So let this ashy cross on your forehead be a reminder for you, of your humanity and brokenness, but also of the promise that from the dust of creation, you were made in God’s own image, filled with God’s own breath. Let the promise of both of those truths free you to take off all the masks and be wholly yourself, so that you may put on only the ones that serve you well, only those that reflect the blessedness of you were created. Amen.