Birth of an Era

The Pharisees said to one another, “See, this is getting us nowhere. Look how the whole world has gone after him!” (John 12.19)

What’s Happening

A bout of spring flu the past few days irritated me twice over by preventing me from posting on Palm Sunday. Opening Monday’s Lectionary to find John’s account of the event brought a sigh of relief, as he connects the dots between Lazarus’s resurrection and the impromptu coronation initiating Jesus's final week of mortal life. And it’s a rollercoaster by any standard, a white-knuckle frenzy of dazzling ascents and dizzying plummets held to the tracks by the centrifugal force of divine destiny propelled by human hatred.

At first, the brevity of John’s treatment surprises us—more for its abrupt departure in style than glossing over information the other Gospels highlight (procurement of the donkey Jesus rides into Jerusalem, His remark about “rocks and stones” singing His praises when Pharisees disdain the crowd’s exuberance). Up to now, John is to the rest what long-form maestros like Norman Mailer and Susan Sontag are to newspaper reporters. He’s a poet with a sharp eye for telling details that bring hidden nuances to light. While Matthew, Mark, and Luke outpace him in scope, their concise, linear approach primarily focuses on what happened. John’s episodic structure and specificity—time of day, social dynamics, personal histories, and so on—illuminate what’s happening. Subtext is everything to him, which is why we read him for truths that emerge in his lengthy scenes and metaphorical dialogue without burdening him with historical reliability. So it’s a bit startling when John squeezes this signal moment in Jesus’s story—the proverbial point of no return that flips everything upside-down—into seven verses offering little in the way of drama or history.

Full-Blown Crisis

It appears John condenses his narrative for dramatic effect, inferring by the time Jesus reaches the capitol, the conspiracy against Him and surge of adulation are at critical mass. Although He’s escaped assassination attempts before, Jesus can’t avoid what awaits Him in Jerusalem. Curiously, however, John back-times the genesis of this fateful moment to Lazarus’s resurrection in nearby Bethany. There Jesus’s indisputable authority over Death unleashes a tidal wave of new followers, on the eve of Passover no less, when Jerusalem will teem with excitable provincials sure to be swept up by the sudden furor. This Self-styled Rabbi from Nazareth has been a problem from the start. But now the powers that be realize the Lazarus feat has created a full-blown crisis.

To make matters worse, John tightens the screws by inserting a scene in which Mary, Lazarus’s sister, anoints Jesus with expensive perfume before the Triumphal Entry, thus setting Judas Iscariot’s betrayal in motion to coincide with Jesus’s enemies’ urgency to eliminate Him. (Matthew and Mark place the controversy later in the week, near the Last Supper; Luke puts it earlier in Jesus’s ministry with no mention of Judas; all three locate it in the home of another Bethany resident, Simon the Leper, and don’t identify the woman who honors Jesus with her costly gesture. Ergo, discrepancies abound across the board.) The chief priests essentially declare a state of emergency; in typical political overkill, they scheme to end the problem by murdering Jesus and Lazarus. Meanwhile, the Pharisees—those enthusiastic enforcers of religious order—toss in the towel. “This is getting us nowhere,” they concede. “Look how the whole world has gone after Him!” (John 12.19)

Not One Word

This being John’s version, we fully expect to hear from Jesus as the ominous storm coalesces around Him. Is this not the Gospel that defines Jesus as “the Word made flesh”? (John 1.14) Is Jesus not at His most eloquent, probing, and assertive in John’s narrative? Does He not consistently proclaim, “I am,” in these pages? “I am the Bread of Life” (6.35), “the Light of the World” (8.12), “the Gate” (10.9), “the Good Shepherd” (10.11), “the Resurrection and the Life” (11.25), “the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (14.6), and “the Vine” (15.5)—boldly (to many, heretically) declaring He is God, the I AM of Exodus, Who ordains Moses to liberate the Hebrews? What does Jesus say to His disciples, His fans, and His enemies while seated on a young donkey, making His way to Jerusalem on a road paved with palms of victory and garments of praise? As John tells it, not one word.

John takes Matthew’s lead, underscoring the Messianic import of Jesus’s mode of transportation: “See, your king is coming, seated on a donkey’s colt.” (Zechariah 9.9) The donkey is a loaded symbol, signifying the wealth and nobility of its rider, whose shoes never graze the ground, while also a stark contrast to horses exclusively employed for warfare. The colt’s youth heightens the effect; it’s an untried, untamed beast, verifying Jesus’s docile strength as a gentle Master. And, still, the absence of Jesus’s voice in John pierces the majestic aura of Zechariah’s Sovereign to pinpoint Isaiah’s Sacrifice: “He was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.” (53.7) The other Gospels will get there as well, when Jesus refuses to answer His accusers in Herod’s court. But John’s unusual decision to mute Jesus completely—withholding any comment about the crowd’s adulation or reproach for the Pharisees’ outrage at its raucous behavior—fairly explodes with bone-chilling subtext. This isn’t a coronation parade; it’s a funeral procession. These aren’t faithful adorers; they’re fickle adversaries. They will be the death of Him. Though they bellow, “Hosanna!”—“Save us!”—they’ll not spare His life. It’s a done deal before Jesus dismounts in Jerusalem. It’s over before it’s begun.

Life Now. Life Always.

For the first time in three-and-a-half years of constant bickering, Jesus and the Pharisees see eye-to-eye. Practically overnight, this thing has escalated in speed and scale until it’s bigger than all of them. Both He and His dogged detractors sense they’re witnessing the birth of an era, an irrevocable changing of the guard that will conclusively reverse humanity’s march into the abyss. Inescapable Death that ushers Jesus into Jerusalem will be met and answered by Indomitable Life—not the gossamer-and-pearly dream of Life Forever After, but Life Now, Indomitable Life Now. The resurrection of Lazarus was also a done deal when the Word Made Flesh declared, “I am the Resurrection and the Life.” John couldn’t be more correct in citing that statement—Life Hereafter and Life Here—as the catalyst for this tumultuous week we commemorate.

The Pharisees couldn’t be more right in their resignation. As they watch what’s happening before their eyes, what else is there to say but, “This is getting us nowhere”? Peter’s already expressed their sentiment in John 6.68: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” Of course, as the Pharisees observe, “The whole world has gone after Him!” Every step in Jesus’s natural existence has mounted to this pivotal event, when human lack acquiesces to divine longing: “For God so loved the world that God gave God’s one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send God’s Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.”

This week we quit Lent’s desert and proceed into Jerusalem, not as palm-waving fanatics, but as true disciples eternally grateful to live in the Era of Resurrection and Life. We go after Jesus with billions across the ages, knowing anything less gets us nowhere. He has the words of eternal life. Life Now. Life Always. Indomitable Life that meets and answers Inescapable Death.

By muting Jesus, John replaces Zechariah’s Sovereign with Isaiah’s Sacrifice. But the Inescapable Death ushering Jesus into Jerusalem will be met and answered by Indomitable Life.

Fortresses and Façades

Because they lead my people astray, saying, “Peace,” when there is no peace, and because, when a flimsy wall is built, they cover it with whitewash, therefore tell those who cover it with whitewash that it is going to fall. (Ezekiel 13.10-11)

Midnight of the Soul

On this date, 150 years ago, Confederate soldiers sweep into Charleston Harbor and attack US troops stationed at Fort Sumter. Their gunfire rings in America’s midnight of the soul—an hour whose darkness grows so impenetrable it hovers above us still. It was destined to happen, of course, this violent reckoning with contradictions the Founders naïvely entrust future generations to reconcile. Democratic ideals like personal freedom and social equality are too rich for our pragmatically capitalist blood. While a federal government ensuring states’ rights works in principle, it’s stubbornly impracticable. The revolutionary pledge to promote such inalienable human rights as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness only holds for male landowners of European descent. The Founders aren’t so naïve they don’t notice potential cloud chambers pocking their Great Experiment’s fortress of freedom. They see where its walls are flimsy, its joints weak. As Founders, their first duty is laying solid groundwork for upcoming architects and builders to refine their original design and shore up its initially patched-together construction. In this, they’re utterly magnificent.

Their faith that future Americans will heed their precedent of revering national unity above political ideology and personal ambition is naïve to the point of foolishness, however. Succeeding generations find choosing sides far less demanding than compromise. Greased palms feel friendlier than hands calloused from tireless labor to build an increasingly great nation. Instead of bolstering the Founders’ beacon against clouds that dim its brilliance, they settle for slapping on a fresh coat of red, white, and blue from time to time in the name of “patriotism.” Then April 12, 1861 arrives. Before God’s sun rises, our midnight lands in a blaze of artillery. America’s bastion of liberty all but implodes as nearly a century of pent-up bickering and neglect eclipse the horizon.

Naturally Superior and Morally Bound

We’re well versed in mounting conflicts that erupt into Civil War. We’re taught the South’s agrarian economy can’t survive without slave labor; the real issue is states’ rights, not slavery; slave trade has become such a fixture in Southern culture few who benefit from it question its justice. Yet when we envision hundreds of gray-clad youths stealing into position to slaughter their fellow countrymen, we can’t discern what they hope to gain by use of violence. What’s in it for the wealthy elite—plantation owners and merchants reaping huge profits at human expense—is too apparent to refute. Nor is it sane to suggest anything but wealth and favor motivates toadying politicians and preachers who hawk distorted ideology and diabolical doctrines of racial inequality. Confederate military command is decidedly upper crust, either ardent slave owners or their sons. But the faceless troops—hardscrabble farmers, day laborers, millworkers, and miners whose misery mirrors slavery more closely than the privileged manner they volunteer to die for—what’s in it for them?

The standard answer: they fight to protect their way of life, a laughable conclusion about an average Confederate soldier with neither means nor need to own slaves. No, these men risk their lives because they’re seduced to believe they’re inherently superior to slaves and morally bound to murder anyone opposed to their belief. (Sidebar: how is it we Americans harshly reproach Germans who tumbled for Hitler’s evil while sentimentalizing our very same dance with the Devil?) Without a morally sound foundation on which to build, the Confederacy’s architects erect a façade that mimics America’s freedom fortress. Borrowing from their recently disavowed compatriots’ playbook, they mask their rickety structure in red, white, and blue patriotism—cleverly sticking to stars and bars and all that goes with inflaming unwary American minds to hate, wound, and kill for “love of country,” rather than defending their nation’s ideals. (Remember: that’s really hard work to be avoided at all cost—“cost” being the operative term.)

Thus, in the first instance of what would become a deadly habit, decades of lazy politics and poor citizenship lead America to equip enemies of freedom and equality. The young Rebels have absolutely nothing to gain by killing and maiming their brothers. If anything, the slavery crisis provides their generation’s best reason for uniting to remedy a fundamental flaw in the Founders’ plan—to make the freedom’s fortress sturdier, more impregnable to threats of tyranny, corruption, and senseless violence. With neither side having witnessed this, though, taking up arms seems logical to both; a lifetime wasted on watching paint dry conditions North and South alike to turn a blind eye to their civic duty to uphold moral principles and social justice. When midnight descends on the American soul, the Union stumbles and staggers in search of a way out. Meanwhile, the Rebels can’t see they’ve elected to be slaves to slave-owner wealth and power. Lives across the divide are cheapened past the price of the cheapest slave—and debt our nation accrues in the process has yet to be cleared. April 12, 1861’s toll on racial harmony, equal rights, and personal freedoms may never go away.

Addicted to Whitewash

Inattentive upkeep of fortresses and fondness for façades are neither recent phenomena nor uniquely American. They’re common to a universal tale as old as time. Ezekiel’s prophecy addresses a nation born in bondage and nurtured in freedom, only to be divided into two kingdoms, north and south, that turn on each other and consequently fall captive to Babylon. (Their 70-year exile is lamented to this day as the midnight of the Jewish soul.) The prophet is a captive through whom God charges the people with apathy that accounts for their demise. Content to watch paint dry, they disregard the hard work of building their nation. Convenient ignorance evolves into a crippling habit they can’t break. In Ezekiel 13.10-12 we see an oft-repeated pattern throughout the prophecy. God cites leaders for abusing their nation’s trust but ultimately indicts the people for letting them get by with it: “Because they lead my people astray, saying, ‘Peace,’ when there is no peace, and because, when a flimsy wall is built, they cover it with whitewash, therefore tell those who cover it with whitewash that it is going to fall. Rain will come in torrents, and I will send hailstones hurtling down, and violent winds will burst forth. When the wall collapses, will not people ask you, ‘Where is the whitewash you covered it with?’”

America has become addicted to whitewash. No sooner do we kick the habit than we permit leaders to seduce us with fresh paint. Our resistance weakens with each relapse. Cycling up to deadly overdoses takes less time: 80 years to the Civil War; 60 tolerating robber barons and political graft before crashing into Depression; 40 excusing paranoid propaganda and moral hypocrisy before the Sixties unleash a tsunami of unrest and violence; 25 pretending not to see the Religious Right creeping into bed with neoconservatives and big business; 15 tuning out cautions that rampant materialism and media overload will be our undoing. And every cycle cheapens lives past the cheapest slave’s price.

Every time our walls cave, we grab the whitewash and leave freedom’s trowels and hammers to somebody else—somebody who doesn’t exist, never did, and never will. Out of the mouth of God we’re warned that whitewashed walls will surely fall. The most patriotic façade is still a façade. It cannot endure. Fortresses require constant attention and fortitude to strengthen ramparts, seal cloud chambers, and mend moral decay. As believers who know the ways of justice and righteousness, we have no excuse for not speaking out against moral apathy or conveniently ignoring flaws we can remedy. If no one else pitches in, with God’s help we can do the hard work of liberty and equality. We can break the whitewash habit and kill our contentment to watch paint dry. May it be so.

On April 12, 1861, eight decades of convenient ignorance erupted in a blaze of brother-on-brother violence. Since that day, our whitewash addiction has escalated into increasingly shorter cycles between calamitous overdoses.

Love Among the Ruins

Jesus wept. Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” (John 11.35-37)

People of Substance

A lot has changed in the three years or so since Jesus found Peter and Andrew on the seashore and began assembling a core group of followers. For one thing, the need to recruit disciples has long passed. Jesus is an established Rabbi known for His provocative preaching and miracles. There’s always a show when He comes to town. People drop everything and flock to Him. Although it sounds crass, the comparison seems accurate: Jesus is a celebrity activist akin to Bono or Oprah—Someone Who wields His fame to change lives. That broadens His appeal significantly. By the second year, many people of substance actively court Jesus. They invite Him to banquets, prevail on Him to heal their sick, and ask to join His entourage. Since wealth and status don’t impress Him, He rebuffs those whose self-interest is obvious. Yet we’re given more than a few instances when Jesus befriends people who don’t fit the downtrodden mold. Besides, assuming Jesus confines His interest to the outcast and impoverished contradicts His message of radical inclusion in John 6.37: “All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away.”

It should be noted, however, the better advantaged of Jesus’s followers are exceptions to their class. Unlike Bono, Oprah, and their ilk, Jesus never obtains the kind of superstar glamour that swings wide the gates to upper crust society. That’s why when we see Him dining in finer homes, clusters of unhappy neighbors gather in protest. It’s why Nicodemus, the highly regarded Pharisee, sneaks off in the night to visit Jesus. It’s also why the disciples balk when He decides to return to Bethany—the Jerusalem suburb where his dear friends Martha, Mary, and Lazarus live—after He learns Lazarus is gravely ill. The last time they visited that part of the country, its residents tried to stone Him.

Completely Out of Character

Although John’s Gospel doesn’t explicitly say so, Jesus appears to share the disciples’ concern. Something’s amiss—that we know. News of Lazarus’s sickness reaches Him and He reacts completely out of character. He’s indecisive and hesitant. It takes two days to make up His mind to go see about His friend. In retrospect, we realize Lazarus couldn’t have got sick at a worse time. Jesus’s arrest and execution will occur in a matter of weeks. Returning to Bethany puts Him within two miles of enemies conspiring against Him. His sense of foreboding must be unbearable, as must knowing His friends need Him desperately. Lazarus, Mary, and Martha never hesitate to welcome Jesus to their home. The sisters lavish Him with care, feeding and housing Him in grand style. On one occasion, Mary empties an expensive box of perfume on Jesus to signify how dearly He’s loved. Yet Jesus waits. He waits so long by the time He tells the disciples they’re going to Bethany He’s confident Lazarus is already dead.

John, whose main purpose for writing his Gospel is deifying Jesus as “the Word made flesh” (1.14), gives the impression Jesus lingers on purpose to set the stage for a final, unprecedented miracle that foreshadows His own death and resurrection. He confides to the disciples, “For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe.” (11.14) But if we accept that, we also accept that Jesus delays coming to His friends’ aid for heartlessly selfish reasons. What could be crueler than ignoring their urgent request for help—to allow Lazarus to die, while his sisters cope with undue stress wondering why Jesus hasn’t shown up? Clearly, Mary and Martha are wounded when Jesus arrives. Mary stays at home and lets Martha go out to greet Him as He nears the town. “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died,” she says. (v21) Jesus doesn’t acknowledge her grief, however. He promises Lazarus will be revived, saying, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die.” (v25) When he asks about Mary, Martha brings her to Him and she says exactly what Martha said: “If You had been here…” Again, Jesus overlooks her sorrow, asking, “Where have you laid him?” (v33) Mary leads Him to Lazarus’s grave, with a gaggle of neighbors trailing after them. At the tomb, the weight of the entire ordeal buries Jesus. His disconcerting detachment vanishes. In the presence of beloved friends and cynical onlookers, He weeps.

A Horrible Situation

What is Jesus feeling? The episode is so fraught with conflicted emotions and behaviors attributing His grief to any of them amounts to speculation. Mourning Lazarus doesn’t prompt His tears; in mere minutes, He will restore His friend’s life. We want to agree with neighbors who say, “See how He loved him!” (v36) Then again, the cynics have a point when they counter, “Could not He Who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” (v37) John’s reason for Jesus’s delay is moot when we observe how it affects Mary and Martha. The purest of intentions don’t change the fact Jesus walks into a horrible situation of His own making. Is that what we’re meant to see? Should we even question why Jesus falters? Perhaps the most obvious answer is the best one.

When Jesus reaches the graveside, regret, confusion, disappointment, and every other feeling we associate with human frailty engulf Him. He weeps because His hesitance incited His friends to doubt Him. His tearstained face conveys love among the ruins. He summons all of His power not only to speak life into Lazarus’s hollow shell, but also to revive the faith and trust of those He loves. What we’re looking at is precisely what Hebrews 4.15 describes: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.”

We all have uncomfortable moments when hesitance, fear, and every other imaginable internal conflict threaten the ruin of relationships with people who dearly love us and we dearly love. We cause grief and confusion about where we are and why we don’t respond sooner. When we realize what we've done, we weep. But there is life in us, because there is love in us—life we can speak that brings lost friends out of their graves and heals the pain of disillusioned loved ones. Accounting for shambles we create is never pleasant. Walking into situations where we’ve let people down is nothing we want to do, even though we know we must. At Lazarus’s graveside Jesus demonstrates the power of love among the ruins.

The humanity we witness in Jesus’s tears expresses the regret, confusion, disappointment, and every other feeling we associate with frailty.

Community

All of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble. Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing. (1 Peter 3.8-9)

Organizations

When talking with LGBT and other believers who’ve withdrawn from the Body of Christ, sooner or later the conversation comes down to this: “I have faith. But I want nothing to do with organized religion.” There’s no good answer to this—even though I’m convinced avoiding religious rejection is tantamount to accepting it. When we permit unwelcoming denominations, congregations, or individuals to force our surrender from seeking inclusion where we're welcome, we reinforce the notion we're unworthy of acceptance. We become complicit to the lie—the heresy—that God prefers certain kinds of people and doesn’t love all of us equally.

That everyone who comes to God will be received isn’t open to debate. It’s the bedrock of Christianity Jesus lays in statement after statement, most famously in John 3.16 (the most-beloved, oft-quoted, and—apparently—misread scripture of many who subscribe to exclusionary doctrines): “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (Emphasis added.) Given grace’s pricelessness, however, it’s easy to understand why some try to protect it with qualifiers. No less than Peter makes this mistake. In Acts 10, it takes an epiphany for him to confess, “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism.” (v34) Yet, despite Christ’s emphatic teaching and the Apostles’ determination to honor it, since the first, Christianity has been plagued by attempts to shut people out.

There’s no good answer for those who disdain organized religion because they’re absolutely correct. Organized religion falls short of its higher purpose by trying to safeguard core ideals with government and guidelines. Since faith is a human endeavor, it lends itself to a human approach. Thus we define what it is by what it isn’t—the same way we organize everything in life. From there it’s a hop, skip, and jump to categorizing who can and can’t believe, and what does and doesn’t evidence belief. Harms caused by our instinctive “this-not-that” scheme explain why so many resist organized religion. But, if we step back to see the wider perspective, we recognize their complaints focus on symptoms of a rarely acknowledged paradox: organizations are natural enemies of faith. By design, they set parameters and implement procedures, whereas faith breaks barriers by imparting principles to overcome them. That’s why “churches,” i.e., religious organizations, remain at perpetual loggerheads with The Church, the transcendent, universal community of faith—the Body of Christ, the physical entity that expresses God’s presence and fulfills God’s purpose in the world.

Organisms

The Apostles struggle mightily with this conflict. As we read the Book of Acts and the Epistles, we’re consistently struck by the Early Church’s fragile condition. Its leaders and people are keenly aware they’re doing something new and revolutionary. They have no template, model, or precedent, let alone a formally adopted text or theology, for reference; basically, they’re inventing The Church as they go. Its phenomenal growth—starting with 3000 at Pentecost, with hundreds being added by the day—as well as its unheard-of diversity (based on adamant belief in unrestricted inclusion) and rapid expansion across the Roman Empire create organizational nightmares. Urgency to adhere to Christ’s principles generates urgency to institute lines of authority so the teaching and far-flung congregations stay intact. After much prayer and discussion, the Apostles meet this challenge in a unique fashion. Instead of institutionalizing Christianity as a religion, they revert to its roots as a community of like-minded believers. Faith for them surpasses religion’s legal and ritualistic impositions on constituents’ lives. It’s a way of life that all believers share in common, yet each expresses individually in relation to Christ, just as the original disciples related to Jesus.

Therein lies the distinction between churches and faith communities. The former are organizations striving to protect ideals they profess by conforming to time-honored governance and guidelines pursuant to faith. The latter are organisms whose faith evolves with time, as they pursue commonly held ideals in response to the Holy Spirit’s guidance. In other words, churches are built; communities grow—if not numerically, always in spirit, knowledge, and obedience to Christ’s commands. Churches foster allegiance to their leaders, who are no less fallible than those expected to comply with their direction. Faith communities honor their leaders’ service to God, as Paul explains when chiding the Corinthians’ organizational disputes over leadership. “Since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere humans? What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned each to his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow.” (1 Corinthians 3.5-6)

Reliable Indicators

Differences between churches/religious organizations and communities/spiritual organisms are subtle, yet nonetheless huge. What makes things all the trickier is faith communities are most commonly housed in churches. That’s why writing off organized religion is unwise. Believers in search of community who’ve also been hurt by church have to separate the two, realizing they’re unlikely to find one without the other. Now the question turns to how does one know he/she’s found an organic faith community nested in an organized church?

Contrary to popular thought, size, structure, style, activity, and/or presentation aren’t reliable indicators. Many large, enthusiastically run and supported churches thrive as organizations. Yet they falter as organisms by neglecting to nurture the common purpose and interpersonal dynamic 1 Peter 3.8-9 describes as chief markers of authentic faith communities: “All of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble. Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing.” Community is where we practice our faith. It’s where we join with other believers in like-minded obedience to Christ’s commands. It’s where our capacity for sympathy, love, compassion, and humility is tested, where failure is forgiven and frailty is overcome. It’s where we learn how to answer our calling to repay wrongs and insults with blessings. Community is where we grow.

When we enter a church and observe these traits, we’ve crossed the threshold from organized religion to organic faith. And while it’s true, one need not be in community to have faith it’s no less true faith is unlikely to grow without it. Our gifts and needs ache to be expressed. Our faith longs to grow. Dismissing The Church as a monolith of organized religion—a human institution as apt to harm as to help—only hurts us. There is community somewhere inside its walls and not until we overcome our phobias to seek community where we’re genuinely welcome and accepted can it be found.

Churches are built. Faith communities grow.

Blind, Deaf--and Dumb

“Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” To this they replied, “You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!” And they threw him out. (John 9.32-34)

Madcap Chaos

The 1937 screwball classic Nothing Sacred kicks into high gear when a hoodwinked Manhattan reporter tries to save his career by chasing down a young Vermont woman allegedly dying from radiation poisoning. He has the finest intentions. He hopes to lionize her as a heroine, using her story as a cautionary tale of technology gone awry. When he reaches her village—a company town owned by a watch manufacturer—his reception is less than ideal. The local store manager tells him “they don’t want any scandal-mongering New Yorkers snooping around.” Adults turn up their noses, kids pelt him with slush from an ice wagon, and a tyke bolts through a picket gate to bite his leg. By the time he locates her, he realizes he can’t help her if he hangs around the village. So he whisks her to New York, where she melts the city’s cold heart and madcap chaos ensues. It turns out she’s as phony as the shyster who nearly ruined the writer by posing as a sultan. But dwelling on that aspect steers us from why I mention the film in relation to this Sunday’s Gospel: the healing of a man born blind in John 9.

Without diminishing its profundities, this extraordinary episode unfolds in a bizarrely comic manner that very much reminds me of Nothing Sacred. The chapter takes off quickly, initially presenting the blind man as an incidental character Jesus uses to make a bigger point. He’s with the disciples in Jerusalem when they notice the man and, since his blindness is congenital, they ask whose sin caused the condition, his or his parents’. “Neither,” Jesus says, explaining the man was born blind “so that the works of God might be displayed in him.” (v3) He goes on to say, “As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” (v4-5) Thus, the sole purpose for the man’s disability leads to this moment, when Jesus combines miracle and metaphor to verify His divinity. In a gesture indubitably meant to evoke humanity’s creation, Jesus spits on the ground to make mud, packs it on the man’s eyes (ergo, recreating them), and sends him to wash in the Pool of Siloam. The man returns with perfect sight—which would be great, except Jesus and the disciples are long gone, leaving him to deal with the madcap chaos that ensues.

Crazy

John makes one thing clear right away: Jerusalem is a company town full of people who don’t like anyone upsetting the status quo. They’re not interested in rejoicing in the man’s miracle. They need to get to the bottom of things before the bosses show up. First, they confirm it’s the same guy who was born blind, since the whole thing may be a hoax. Next, they want the name of who’s behind it. But the man can’t identify who healed him. So they bring in the Pharisees, who get hung up on a huge detail the others miss. It’s the Sabbath. Whoever did this broke the rules! The whole thing’s crazy, as the anonymous Healer is a sinner and everybody knows sinners can’t work miracles. The Pharisees rustle up the man’s parents, asking if he’s really their son, if he truly was born blind, and if so, how is it he can see all of a sudden. “That’s our boy, alright,” they answer. “And he’s been blind since birth. But we have no idea how he’s cured or who did it. He’s an adult. Ask him.”

The comedy darkens. They recall the man for another grilling. After he sticks with his story, they resort to insults, basically asking, “Do you take us for idiots?” They accuse him of being Jesus’s disciple—a co-conspirator blindly following a sinner, nobody in their eyes. They pull rank, boasting, “We’re Moses’s disciples! God spoke to him. This Fellow? We don’t even know where He’s from.” But the once blind nobody sees through their religious darkness and blows them away with their own argument, which is crazy. “Nobody’s ever heard of opening the eyes of man born blind,” he says. “If this man weren’t from God, he could do nothing.” That does it. They won’t hear another word. They revert to the unenlightened myth that set off the uproar when the disciples asked whose sin is to blame for birth anomalies. The Pharisees bellow, “You were steeped in sin at birth. How dare you lecture us!” and they toss him out. If this were a screenplay instead of a Gospel, we might read:

Slowly fade to black, so the audience sorts out the irony. The man was blind since birth; the Pharisees are blind, deaf—and dumb—for life.

If this were a movie, it could end here. The irony is writ so large across the screen anything more would be anticlimactic. But since John is writing a sacred text about people who are gifted to misread sacred texts, he has more to do. News of the controversy has spread across Jerusalem (true to form for any company town) and Jesus comes looking for the man. He asks if the man believes in the Son of Man, i.e., the Messiah. The man replies he would if he knew who the Messiah was. Jesus says, “He is the one speaking to you,” and the man worships Jesus, saying, “Lord, I believe.” Here’s what Jesus tells him to believe: “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.” (v39) Outraged Pharisees keeping tabs on the man, perhaps to uncover his Healer’s identity, ask, “What? Are we blind too?” Jesus ends with the perfect button—screenwriter parlance for a closing line that puts the entire story into perspective: “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.” (v41)

Scathing Satire

Most of us feel confident we know this story fairly well until we reread the full chapter and learn we only remember the first six verses, in which Jesus uses mud to cure the man’s congenital blindness. We may not even recall his condition is congenital or why that’s the linchpin for the entire story. As the narrative progresses—and we observe how screwy it gets, along with how cleverly John builds to a concluding statement that socks us in the gut—we start to sense why so many prefer to focus on the healing and leave it there.

The miracle is merely a set-up for a scathing satire on insular faith communities and leaders who’d rather not see, hear, and learn the truth that Christ’s light incontrovertibly exposes. They’d rather cling to myths about sin and Sabbaths—obsolete doctrines and rituals—than embrace the uncertainty and faith the cured man witnesses by saying, “Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!” (v25) When we say that, we confess we aren’t wise enough to predict what Christ will do, whom He will save, and how He will work.

Opening our eyes, ears, and minds to Christ’s light opens our lives to His justice, which insists no one is shaped or hobbled by sin, that everyone is created from birth to display the works of God. Jesus, the Light of the World, demonstrates God’s power of recreation. Alleged anomalies—sexual orientation, inherent sensibilities, purported inferiorities, and so on—that we’ve lived with our whole lives are merely seeds of life-changing renewal. “Sin” has nothing to do with our making. It’s the chosen occupation of those who choose to be deaf, blind—and dumb—for life. In the end, madcap chaos and lunacy we endure due to small-minded, religiously benighted communities and leaders are secondary. Jesus finds us, reveals His true identity, and we worship Him, saying, “Lord, I believe.”

Sin is the chosen occupation of those who won’t see, hear, and learn the truth that Christ’s light incontrovertibly exposes.

Postscript: Company Town

Here's the sequence from Nothing Sacred that set me down the path of viewing John 9 as a satire. It's hard not to imagine that many of the provincial, fearful attitudes lampooned in this movie aren't similar to those Jesus confronted in Jerusalem--a company town if ever one existed.

Esteeming Grace

For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. (1 Corinthians 15.9-10)

Significant Costs

Our church’s Lenten Bible study rounded a major corner this week, as the 40-Day Journey with Dietrich Bonhoeffer turned our thoughts from the disciplines of discipleship set forth in The Beatitudes to properly evaluating God’s grace. Although Bonhoeffer’s terminology has become common among theologians and seminarians, it was new—and somewhat unsettling—to us. He writes, “Cheap grace is the mortal enemy of our church. Our struggle today is for costly grace.” (p52) Cheap grace? Costly grace? Affixing financial modifiers to grace seems inappropriate, since it’s a priceless gift. That’s the paradox of grace: while it’s too great to be earned by good deeds or moral virtue, it’s offered to all. And, ironically, its being beyond our means is what causes us to undervalue it. We cheapen grace by treating it like carte blanche to persist in harmful habits because we know God’s grace will always be abundantly available. Yet grace is anything but a license to ill. Its primary purpose is enabling correction.

Grace clears our slates so we can replace unhealthy attitudes and behaviors with those that please and reflect our Maker. Thus, it’s given freely, without favor; yet in accepting God’s gift of grace, we assume significant costs: self-honesty by confession of sin; repentance that renounces wrongdoing; constant discipline and awareness to follow Christ faithfully; and active obedience that transcends lip-service to Christ’s principles and commands. In the final analysis, grace may be free, but it sure ain’t cheap. Its demands are costly and entail many sacrifices.

Nothing and Everything; Everything and Nothing

God’s gift of grace is the crux of Jesus’s message, and it’s impossible for us to comprehend how absurd the concept strikes those who first hear of it. Like all ancient worshipers, they pay for wrongs via specific animal sacrifices mandated for two classes of guilt: moral trespasses and physical impurity. Trespass offerings require a sacrificial ram—symbolizing one’s social and financial stability—to make restitution for losses inflicted on others. Sin offerings secure forgiveness and purification on a sliding scale; prices range from a young bull for high priests to one-tenth a bushel of fine flour for very poor people. Both trespasses and sins are assumed to be unintentional errors. Intentional crimes are adjudicated per a labyrinthine penal code that exacts extremely brutal punishments. Thus, when Jesus talks about God’s unconditional love and grace—a God Who gives rather than demands—He unravels the fabric of Jewish worship and society. That’s why we often hear disciples and listeners question how this works. Freely given forgiveness and mercy sound improbable to them. There must be a price. And there is, which is why Jesus repeatedly emphasizes how costly grace is. Because nothing about us can possibly earn God’s love and forgiveness, grace costs us everything. Or, as Jesus puts it in one of many similar statements, “Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.” (Matthew 10.39)

When Jesus introduces the concept of grace—which He teaches relentlessly and ultimately ensures by sacrificing His life—it’s so revolutionary it has no name. Although Luke 2.40 says from childhood Jesus “was filled wisdom, and the grace of God was on him,” and John 1.14 declares Him “full of grace,” none of the Gospels cites any instance when the actual term passes His lips. It’s only after Early Church leaders consolidate Jesus’s words, life, death, and resurrection into a unified doctrine that “grace” enters Christian usage. No surprise, Paul rallies as its greatest champion. (Of the 124 times the Bible mentions grace, 80 are credited to him.) Virtually every statement he utters in the Book of Acts and every sentence he pens circle back to God’s grace and our responsibilities as its recipients. His confidence and enthusiasm know no bounds because he, above all Apostles, knows from experience that God’s grace is boundless. As he confesses in 1 Corinthians 15.9-10, “For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect.” From the moment Christ halts him on the Damascus road to his dying breath, God’s grace flabbergasts Paul. He owes everything to grace and nothing it costs is too much to pay.

The Riches of God’s Grace

Esteeming grace becomes Paul’s lifelong theme, while inspiring all believers to do likewise becomes his life’s mission. One marvels at the passion in passages like Ephesians 2.4-8: “Because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive in Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.” Love, mercy, life, acceptance, honor, kindness—the riches of God’s grace are not to be cheapened by underestimating them. Nearly as often as he extols grace’s inexhaustible wealth, Paul insists there’s no excuse for abusing it; knowing God’s love and forgiveness know no bounds isn’t our ticket to do as we please. After five chapters of reveling in God’s grace, he begins Romans 6 by posing and answering a hypothetical question: “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?” In other word's God's grace doesn't free us to sin. It frees us from sin.

Lent is traditionally regarded as a season of penitence, when the desert’s harsh solitude sets our failures and frailties in sharp relief and we confess them to God. This is an invaluable pursuit that every believer should practice every day of the year, not merely 40 of 365. The self-honesty predicating sincere penitence unlocks grace’s treasures. “If we confess our sins,” 1 John 1.9 tells us, God “is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” At the same time, it accounts for costs we incur as recipients of grace: conscious repentance that renounces sorry attitudes and behaviors, fervent obedience to Christ’s commands to love God and our neighbors, and the disciplines of true discipleship. Esteeming grace always, never underestimating its riches, keeps us mindful it sure ain’t cheap. Yet how could we possibly believe it’s not worth the price? We owe everything to grace and nothing it costs is too much to pay.

God’s grace is a paradox. While it’s freely offered to all, those who accept it incur significant costs.

When No One's Around

Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon. When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (John 4.6-7)

With gratitude to Rev. Larissa Kwong Abazia, whose sermon, “Living Water,” inspired this reflection.

The Perfect Time

John’s account of Jesus’s encounter with the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well is packed with revealing details. As a Jewish man conversing openly with a Samaritan woman, Jesus flouts every conceivable taboo and debunks the myth that Jews have exclusive rights to God’s love and acceptance. That would be plenty on its own. But Jesus also demonstrates the difference between knowing a person’s history and judging his/her character by it. He tells the woman He’s aware she’s been married five times and now lives with a sixth man. Yet He neither questions nor condemns her. When she tactfully changes the subject to their differing beliefs, He blows the lid off sectarianism by radically redefining worship. He says, “A time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.” (John 4.23-24) The woman says she too believes the Messiah will revolutionize worship, whereupon Jesus reveals His identity, something He’s never disclosed to anyone—and will be reticent to admit thereafter. “I, the one speaking to you—I am he,” He says. (v26)

There are enough breakthroughs in this synopsis to leave us breathless. Before looking at the core of their conversation, Jesus’s promise of living water, we should note a few added details. Because—unlike the other Gospel writers, who paint their scenes with a few strokes and zero in on the big points—John lingers over specifics to endow his narrative with meaning we’d otherwise miss. Here, he tips us off to several crucial facts. Jesus and the disciples are taking a shortcut through Samaria, a calculated risk, since hostility between Jews and Samaritans raises prospects they’ll be viewed suspiciously. Jesus is road-weary and hungry. With the disciples off buying food, He sits at Jacob’s well—a bold gesture, as Jews bitterly contest Samaritans’ claim to be Jacob’s descendants also. Finally, it’s about noon, the hottest time of day. The morning chores are done and what’s left waits for the cool of the afternoon, when the well will get busy with women drawing water to cook and wash up before bed. For now, Jesus is alone—until a woman comes to the well. Suddenly, incidental mention of the hour acquires major importance. Only someone avoiding her neighbors draws water in the heat of the day. This profoundly touches Jesus. Meeting this lady when no one’s around provides the perfect time for Him to fix her situation.

Truth and Mercy

Jesus doesn’t bother with assessing the woman’s mood or sensibilities. As they are, their circumstances crackle with volatility. He stuns her by requesting the unthinkable: “Will you give me a drink?” Her jaw drops. “How can you, a Jew, ask that of me, a Samaritan?” she replies. (The basic protocol breached by a man addressing a woman in public is a given.) Jesus tells her if she knew Who He was, she’d give Him water and, in exchange, He’d give her living water. Before asking what He means, she reminds Him of a pragmatic issue that prevents her from honoring His request. He has nothing to draw with. Jews and Samaritans don’t drink from the same vessel, and the well is too deep for her to scoop up some water and pour into His hands. Then she asks where “living water” comes from. Jesus answers, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst.” (v13-14) John doesn’t confirm the woman understands what Jesus is saying. It’s unlikely she does. But, if nothing else, never thirsting again will relieve her need to draw water in the noonday sun. “Give me this water!” she says.

Jesus knows exactly what He’s offering. He’s going to heal the woman’s self-confidence and restore her reputation so she’ll be welcome at the well when those who presently scorn her are there. He adeptly shifts the discussion from what the woman wants to who she is. He tells her to get her husband and come back to the well. Since Jesus is a foreigner, she very easily could fabricate a reason why her husband is unavailable. Yet she truthfully confesses, “I don’t have a husband,” validating what anyone who saw a woman drawing water at noon would presume. Yet there’s a problem: if she attributes anything Jesus says to guesswork, all of His words can be explained away. So He lays out her life story—without blinking an eye. The combination of truth and mercy amazes her. “I can see you are a prophet,” she says. (v19) Jesus knows who she is, and she thinks she knows Who He is. As a prophet, His interests focus on spiritual matters, not village scuttlebutt. She engages Him in theological talk, which inspires Him to reveal He is more than a prophet. He’s God’s Son, sent to bring truth and mercy to a world obsessed with pretense and judgment.

High Noon At the Well

What we see at the well are two outsiders. One, for reasons never explained, has never enjoyed marital stability. Most readers assume she’s a serial divorcée and hence, by ancient moral standards, an adulterer. Yet we can’t rule out the possibility she’s been widowed five times; no longer a viable bride, she may have taken a lover to provide her protection and companionship in middle age. Her rejection at the well may be fairly recent, due to her current arrangement. Whatever brings her to the well at noon, there she meets a ragtag Rabbi Whose true identity compels Him to buck religious traditions and ignore social taboos. Jesus sits by the well at noon, tired, hungry, and thirsty, because He has nowhere else to go. He’s as much a pariah as she. And in those quiet, uncomfortably hot moments when no one’s around, not only does He reveal that He knows everything about this alienated lady (yet doesn’t’ judge her). He reveals everything she should know about Him. Her encounter with Truth and Mercy Incarnate restores her confidence and self-respect. She goes into the village and invites the neighbors who’ve rejected her to the well. “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” she says.

So it is for all of us who, for one reason or another, trudge to the well in the heat of the day—looking to quench our thirst for life and sustain our faith. Prime time isn’t our time. We’ve come to the well then, only to be told we’re not welcome. But high noon at the well is the perfect time. That’s when we meet another Outsider. He knows everything about us. He neither questions nor condemns us. He talks to us as one Outsider to another. The truth and mercy in His words revive us and restore our confidence and self-respect. But most of all, He entrusts us with full knowledge of Who He truly is. The encounter with Jesus so changes us we invite the very neighbors who pushed us aside to the well and say, “Come, see a Man Who told me everything I ever did!” Some will come. Many will not. Nonetheless, what happens at high noon at the well changes how we view the well. It’s no longer their well, or the patriarch’s well, a Catholic well or a Protestant one. It’s our well, where we first tasted living water that forever changed our lives. We will never thirst again.

The well at noonday, when no one’s around, is where and when we find out Jesus knows all about us and Who Christ really is.

Postscript: “The Woman at the Well”

In her sermon, Larissa referred to this video—a monologue by the woman at the well—that shakes us with the realities of what transpires when we encounter Christ. “To be known is to be loved,” she says, “and to be loved is to be known.”