Easter II

My old sermon--I do not preach old ones often--held up pretty well this morning and there is, I think, a significant thought therein. The Gospel text for the day was the appearance of Jesus to the disciples sans Judas, and Thomas' demand to touch the hands of Jesus and put his hand in Jesus' side.

I mentioned that Thomas was our twin, when we demand proof but do not show up where proof might be found. And that Thomas is my twin, in many ways, but that he and I are inversely related...in that I need Jesus to touch my hands, to unfist them and make a tear in the flesh of them so that generosity might pour out; that I needed Jesus to place his hand in my side to massage my hard heart so that it was not so cold and hard.

Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus.

aaurgh!

I really do try to get my formatting correct--indentions, paragraphing, etc. Sometimes it will not show-up in the actual post, despite multiple attempts. Sorry. And if you can advise me, please do!

Here, O My Lord, I See... (A Communion Meditation)

I

There is a eucharistic hymn in the United Methodist Hymnal, and perhaps in others too, whose first line is: Here, O my Lord, I see Thee face to face..."

And in truth, our faith since Easter afternoon when Cleopas and his friend took the very first Walk to Emmaus is that just as they did, all subsequent pilgrims have "recognized him (Jesus) in the breaking of bread." Which is to say, in the breaking of bread, the sharing of the cup, we recognize his grace--that, "having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them--just as he loves us--to the end."

In the breaking of the bread we recognize his fealty, his loyalty, his faithfulness to the purposes of God, no matter the cost of that fidelity.

We recognize his ability to take ordinary things and make them extraordinary: whether bread and wine into his own body and blood; or men and women, into saints and servants, the flesh of his Word, themselves means of his grace and beacons of his Kingdom.

We recognize Jesus in the Holy Meal. That is the good news.

II

The bad news is that Here, in this Meal, we also recognize ourselves, or may. We see in the dark mirror of this broken bread and blood-red wine the truth of our own lives and condition. For "it was on the night he was betrayed" that Jesus instituted this meal.

"Yes, my own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, who ate of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me." These words, from the forty-ninth Psalm, have often been used as a lens to implicate Judas, but in truth the betrayal of Jesus is not limited to him, or even to Peter. In fact, all of his familiar friends, in whom he trusted, who ate of this bread, fell away. Despite pledges of faithfulness, loyalty and loving devotion, they all of them betrayed him.

Jesus' enemies can refuse him, or accuse him. They can accost him, or arrest him. They can lie, then try him. They can convict and condemn him. They can berate and beat him. They can scourge him and spit on him. They can crucify him, kill him, bury him deep in a hole...but they cannot betray him.

That special privilege is reserved for us. For only those who love him can turn on him. Only those who know him can say they never did. Only those who have pledged faith can recant that faith, only those who sit at the Table can get up and leave the Table, to go into the night, to do what they are going to do quickly or otherwise.

Only those who are close enough to kiss Jesus can give him the kiss of death.

And only those who are on the receiving side of Christ's extraordinary gift-making can render those extraordinary gifts ordinary. Trivial. Meaningless.

In the breaking of bread, here, O my Lord, I see Thee face-to-face.

And here, O my God, I see myself so as to hide my face.

According to Mark's account of Jesus' last night, after he had announced that "one of you," one of his familiar friends, one of his disciples would betray him, they each of them asked in turn, "Lord, am I the one?"

The answer to that question is...yes. We are all of us the ones.

III

Jesus feeds them anyway. Knowing all of them so well, knowing so well all of what was coming, he fed them anyway. Washed their feet. It was on freshly washed feet that Judas went to the High Priest. When Simon denied him--said, and of a truth, that he did not know the man--it was with sacrament on his tongue that he did it.

Jesus fed them.

Jesus feeds us.

He gives this meal even when we fail to discern the fullness of its meaning, even when we fail to receive.

He shows himself to us in the Meal, shows us who we are, too, knowing that we do not fully recognize either, but in hopes that when we see ourselves as we are we will see all the more clearly who he is.

And so may God grant us grace, as he did to Cleopas and his friend on that Easter afternoon long ago, that the scales may fall from our eyes and we may recognize him, recognize ourselves, see all he would grant us to see, in the breaking of this bread.

Amen.

Ray Stevens was Wrong

I

Ray Stevens was wrong, I think. Everything is not beautiful, not in its own way or in any way we can imagine. Maybe some things are more beautiful than we are willing to see, some people more beautiful than they first appeared to us to be: the person who grates on our nerves and we dread to see approach, with the passing of time and the sharing of circumstance, becomes a wonderful friend. Couldn’t have seen that coming, wouldn’t have imagined it…some things, some people, are beautiful even if we can’t see it at first, but not everyone is beautiful. Not everything.

A young man, too young, is struck down by a cancer that seems a family curse almost: his dad and his mom both died before their time and now it will soon be his time, and there is nothing beautiful about it. His new grandbaby will never know him. His children are terrified, for him, for themselves in a few years. Nothing beautiful about any of that.

A young family, shredded by the infidelity of the mother; another family, cleaved asunder by the infidelity of the father: and the sins of the fathers and the mothers are visited on the heads of the children—if not theologically then relationally, and for how long will the cycle continue? Perhaps to the third or fourth generation, all that confusion and bitterness, anger and hurt bleeding onto other people and relationships… these wounds that do not heal cleanly, not even with the unguent of time or counseling or otherwise. Nothing beautiful about any of that, either.

A child dies. A parent loses memory. Soldiers are killed on far away battlefields, and if sometimes that kind of sacrifice is beautiful in its own tragic way, if there are times when war enobles a nation or a people, it is not always so. Sometimes the rush to war only diminishes those who fight, and I speak not only of the battles waged on foreign soil, either, but these fierce little wars we fight in the boardrooms and in our bedrooms, in the church parlors and fellowship halls…these wars diminish us each and all.

There are things worth fighting for, to be sure, but sometimes we fight just to fight; sometimes we fight because we are in the habit; sometimes we fight because we, too, have lost memory that our first and final task as followers of Jesus is to love our enemies, to forgive our debtors, those who trespass against us, our offenders; we sometimes forget that we are to bear one another’s burdens and thus fulfill the law of Christ, that we are to love one another as Christ has loved us, that we are to see others as Christ sees them…but sometimes we don’t do that, don’t try to see others as Jesus sees them. Many times we screw our eyes shut to anything beyond our pride and prejudice because we don’t want to see beyond our own prejudice and pride.

Which is to say, sometimes we just won’t see the other side, just can’t see anything beautiful in the enemy, in the neighbor, in the friend or spouse. Which is to say we are so blind, sometimes. Can we all of us just confess that. Blind, sometimes because we will not see, other times because we can’t.

II

Jesus and his disciples are strolling the streets of Jerusalem when they see this man, blind from birth. The disciples, with all the sensitivity of a brick, begin debating the man’s condition, its causes, its effects: Did his parents sin? Did he?

They are so much like us, we are so much like them: if we can figure out a way to blame the victim, then we do not have to feel so bad about it one way or the other. Lung cancer? Well, if he hadn’t smoked all those years. She was raped? Well, if she hadn’t worn that short dress. Killed while driving under the influence? I always knew that kid would come to ruin. If we can blame people for their own problems, we can be satisfied that we are not like that, can keep ourselves aloof, condescending, can relieve ourselves of responsibility.

Oddly, Jesus refuses to see things that way, or people, refuses to debate cause. He just gets on his knees in front of the poor man, spits on the ground, makes some mud, rubs it on the man’s eyes…And in this whole wonderful story, which runs the length of John, chapter nine, that is my favorite moment, my favorite detail: Jesus, making mud with his spit, smearing that holy goo on the eyes of the blind man.

You know what this looks like, Jesus on his knees with the man?

Remember way back in Genesis 1 and 2, you have there two stories of “creation,” or if you prefer two versions of the one story, and the first of them is that majestic poem whose meter and verse we have known since childhood: In the beginning, when there was nothing but darkness and void covering the face of the deep, God created the heavens and the earth. There is darkness here, too, the blindness of the man, and also of the disciples.

Later in Genesis, later in creation week, comes the other story, how God got down on his knees in Eden, the garden he had planted to the east, scooped some of that damp, new earth into his hands, rich soil of the misty new world he had just made from nothing. God brow furrowed, beaded sweat as God patted and rolled and formed the first human—his fingerprints are all over Adam and all over us, too, all the days ever since…though there are some who can’t see it. God made us with dirt from the garden and sweat from his brow and God breathed divine breath into the little mud man, and there was life as well as light, but Adam was a lonely soul till God also made Eve.

God rose from that creation moment with us in the grain of his palms, the residue of all Eden’s children under his nails, and he has never been able to wash his hands of us entirely, not with the water of the flood, not even when blood poured from the hole where a roman nail pierced the flesh the creating Word had become.

And here, in John 9, Jesus kneels, scoops up dirt and with the spit of his mouth makes mud. Once again, there is creation, recreation, light. The man can see. Really see.

III

I wish Jesus would do that for me, truth to tell. The last few verse of this great chapter in John are scary ones:

Jesus said, “I am come into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.” Now some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, “Surely we are not blind, are we?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no sin. But now that you have said, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.”

Which means my sin remains because I am the one who so often says, I see, which is to say, I know. I understand. I have this figured out.

I am like Nicodemus, who comes to Jesus by night—get it, by night? Because he is in the dark? And Nicodemus says, in effect, “I see,” when he is just as blind as he can be. Nicodemus says, “We know you are a teacher come from God…” and just by saying it that way Nicodemus, a really, really religious person, an elected official, a teacher of Israel, proves that he knows nothing.

Do you get it? We are the really, really religious people. We are the teachers. We are the officers of the church. And we are the ones who best be careful, lest we think we know. The only time Jesus ever said, “You need to be born again,” he was talking to a man like us when he said it. Not to an atheist, not to a pagan, but to a man like us, who thinks he has it figured out, that he is righteous, that he can see.

We best be careful, then, lest we think we see…in fact we see little if anything, most days. We do not see the horror because we have contented ourselves as to explain it, at least to our own satisfaction. Neither do we see the beauty, when there is beauty to be seen.

Listen! The Pharisees, the folk like us, could only see what was wrong with what Jesus did: he healed on the Sabbath! They could not see what was amazing and right and good: that he healed!

So maybe Ray Stevens was right after all, well, at least about this one thing: There are none so blind, as those who will not see…

If only Jesus would stop by here and put mud on our eyes.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.