Safe at home. This isn’t about baseball, although one could use some of baseball’s language to get at what Jesus is promising the disciples—that to make it to home is the goal and there is a particular path or way to get there. And so we live our lives running the bases, perhaps occasionally trying to steal a base; when things are rough and we’re behind, we might try a slide, and we bunt more often than we should. At least we can say that with Jesus it’s not three strikes and you’re out—thank God! When we’re kids we play games, and if you remember the kind of kids games you played, there is very often a safe place in the game—a designated spot—a tree, a rock, a location where you can go to avoid getting tagged out. We seek the safe place.

Are we really any different as adults? We live in an age of great anxiety for many people—the world seems like a frightening place, we live in a world of color-coded anxieties and threat levels. The news we see raises our anxiety, and then what do we do? We seek distraction and entertainment by watching police shows and movies about violence and crime and war—after all, art imitates life, does it not? When taken together, all these voices can reinforce the perception that we are surrounded by all sorts of chaos and disturbance and violence. Even here in Ukiah, we feel anxious-if not for ourselves, then for our kids—what is the world coming to? We want a safe place—we want a home where we can feel secure.
We want a community free of violence and threats—we want a quiet, normal life.

Where can we find such safety and security? What path do we take to find safety? Is there any relief to the anxiety we feel? Well, there’s all sorts of things we do to lessen the anxiety—we wire our homes with security sensors, we bar our windows; we demand more police services and getting tough on criminals. In some communities, we erect fences and walls to keep the chaos “out there”. I heard a stock market analyst say recently that one of the surest investments we can make in these chaotic economic times is to put our money in any company that works in the home security field, and also in self-storage units—many of us have so much stuff which we buy, often to help us feel better, and perhaps even less anxious, but we can find ourselves in this cycle—anxiety drives us to seek safety and comfort, but the things we acquire to make us less anxious merely add to our anxiety, because we become anxious that our stuff will be stolen. And so we no longer have space in our homes to store all this stuff-so we pay for the safety of a locked and alarmed closet. Anxiety and fear is big business.

There are good reasons to be anxious about many things. Many things, bit not everything–not our lives with God. This is the message that Jesus is trying so hard to communicate to his disciples—Do not let your hearts be troubled—when all the world seems to be crashing down around your ears, take comfort in this—God has prepared a home—a safe home.

What makes a house, structure, a building, into a home? A home is more than a building—what makes a home is what happens inside-the relationships, the sharing of life, the sharing of meals, the joys and pains. A home is where we can feel safe, even when the rest of the world feels very unsafe. I think that this is what Jesus is getting at when he speaks of homes and places–This is more than a just a place, Jesus is talking about a relationship—a relationship with God.

If we think about it this way, “the place” Jesus is preparing is not a spot in a physical dwelling, but a “place” in God’s family — a “place” where one can be related to and remain with the Father as closely as Jesus, the Son relates to the Father.

In this gospel, Jesus has been speaking to the disciples about all that was about to take place—his upcoming arrest and death are imminent and this talk causes the disciples much confusion and anxiety—they are deeply troubled by the foreboding of his words. The response of Jesus is wonderfully simple: believe in God! And while you’re at it, believe in me. Belief, here, includes believing that Jesus claims to represent God, but it also means trust. The trust is in the person of Jesus, but more than this. There’s a place for you! What a wonderful summary of the whole gospel! There’s a place for you – in the heart of God.

The question that follows is natural– how do we find this place? Thomas’s confusion about how to get there evokes the famous response: ‘I am the way’ Jesus is the way to this promised abundant life. This is more than claiming that Jesus points to the way, like some cosmic road sign but that he, himself, is the way (and the truth and the life). This only makes sense if we understand that Jesus is speaking about a relationship. And even more powerfully, Jesus makes the extraordinary pronouncement that when we see Jesus we are seeing God—in other words—to know Jesus is to know God—we find the Father through the Son—if we wonder what God is like, if we wonder what God cares about, then we need not look any further than the life of Jesus. In all he says and does, Jesus takes our questions and theories and philosophical wrestling about the nature and character of God and makes God real—Jesus embodies in himself the truth about God.

And at the close of this passage we hear another astonishing claim—Jesus says that the disciples will outdo Jesus. We will outdo Jesus—how can we possibly do that? Can we save the world? Can we raise the dead? Perhaps we can. This does not mean that we will perform bigger miracles than Jesus, but it does mean that we have a bigger mission field, because Jesus will send the disciples equipped with the Holy Spirit to speak of God’s reality to people far beyond Galilee and Judea. Jesus came into the world at a particular time and place in history—that in so many ways is alien to us—but, because of the Spirit, the disciples and by extension, us–we are empowered to take this message far beyond the borders of Israel or Potter Valley. This is how a small gathering of disciples became empowered to reach every corner of the world.

What Jesus is asking of the disciples is the same thing that Jesus is asking of us. Trust that God is the way Jesus told us and demonstrated to us. We can trust in the God of compassion in which there’s a place for us and we can know that the meaning of life is to share that compassion in the world – there’s a safe place for all! This is life and truth and the way to our home. Amen.

These readings for the third Sunday of Easter are all about pounding hearts, wounded hearts and burning hearts. These readings invite us to encounter the living Christ in the heart of who we are.

“Why can’t you simply believe all that the prophets said?” because our hearts and minds are too full or distracted. I really struggle to pay attention to what matters—I suffer from ADD—perhaps not the medical condition, but I have been indeed conditioned, as many of us have, to pay attention to many things that, in the grand scheme of things really don’t matter. And this leads to the challenge that faces these two disciples on the road. By extension their problem is our problem, too: How do we recognize Christ? How do we know when we’re in the presence of Jesus?

We hear these resurrection accounts—of Mary in the garden, not recognizing Jesus, and these two on the road, and part of me wants to really know how it is that they do not recognize Jesus?

The writer Kathleen Norris and many others remind us that “to believe” is not a matter of the mind, but a matter of the heart. For what we “believe” is what we “give our heart to.” In other words, merely having knowledge or memorizing scripture does not make one a disciple of Jesus—it is in the way we choose to live each moment of our lives that defines us as a follower of Jesus—with every beat of our hearts, we seek to become more Christ-like. With every breath we take, we desire to be filled with the breath of life called the Holy Spirit. This life-change does not happen automatically or come easily to us—it certainly did not come all at once to the disciples of Jesus, and they even had the advantage of knowing and walking with Jesus personally.

It is in the scene we witness, as two of the disciples are on the road to Emmaus that we get a glimpse into the promise and possibility of a new life in Christ. It is nearly evening on the day of the resurrection and the sun is setting. I imagine that the approaching darkness matched the mood of the two travelers. Jesus’ resurrection, at this point, is nothing more than a rumor, a curiosity, an improbable hope. They had walked with Jesus, had heard his teaching, and had even witnessed first hand Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. Now, they have to wonder: had that all been a dream, a fantasy? It certainly must have seemed so now. From the excitement and enthusiasm of being caught up in the movement that was building around Jesus, they had to watch in horror as Jesus was betrayed by one of their own, beaten, humiliated and tortured to death. It seemed that their hope died and was buried along with Jesus’ battered body.

And yet when the disciples meet a stranger on the road, it seems that the early reports of a resurrection have intrigued them. They have been talking about it for hours, rehearsing the possibilities, arguing about the details, and wrestling with one another about the meanings of an empty tomb. Buried beneath their wrestling with all of these questions, there seems to be a deep yearning and a holy hunger. How they wished the reports of the resurrection were true! Within that wishful desire is a glimmer of hope – that hope speaks of their need for God to be alive and present. But the weight of their doubt and their fresh memories of seeing Jesus die on the cross get in the way of their faith. And so when the risen Jesus joins them on the road, they cannot see him–their grief and pain seemingly blind them to the truth that Jesus was right beside them.

On Sunday morning in contemporary America, and around the world for that matter, we modern disciples come straggling through the church door weighed down by our own burdens of cynicism, stress, doubts, fears, and I am sure more than a few battered or broken hearts. We are a people who live in the midst of profound paradox. We are sophisticated and educated 21st century citizens of the world—we have nearly instantaneous access to more information and knowledge than is imaginable—with a few clicks of our keyboards we can witness world-changing events as they happen—we can read the online journals of our troops on the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we can read the online journals of the Taliban, automatically translated for us. Our technologies allow us to manipulate our DNA to cure diseases; we have two little robot vehicles still rolling around on the surface of Mars, we can do all sorts of wondrous and incredible things, and yet the paradox is that while we live with all these amazing things, we also live in a world that is filled with chaos and violence and all kinds of turmoil—will we run out of oil, will the world’s economies collapse? Will our collective greed result in the death of the environment—which would mean the death of us all?

We are very skilled at navigating the complexities of the world, but when it comes to the realm of the Spirit, too often we seem lost. We are realists—we are rationalists, and the world of the spirit seems too unreal, too irrational, but the hunger is still there: We are just like the first disciples: we yearn for the living presence of God. But we are too preoccupied, suspicious, and too busy to actually recognize God. In our objective world of fact and matter and money, the church’s world of mystery and meaning and risk and relationship seems silly and well, quaint. And so we will often be eager to discuss and debate the idea of God, even talk at great length about law and morality, but that still leaves us unprepared to experience or recognize the presence of the living God.

As a young man, Mahatma Gandhi studied in London. After learning about Christianity, and after reading the Sermon on the Mount, Gandhi decided that Christianity was the most complete religion in the world. It was only later, when he lived with a Christian family in East India, that he changed his mind. In that household he discovered that the Word rarely became alive — that the teachings of Jesus rarely became the reality of knowing Jesus. It seems that we do not yet realize that it will only be through pounding hearts and burning hearts that we will come to believe — that we will come to recognize Jesus.

I think that we continue to struggle with the lack of redemption in our world and its challenge to our faith and hope. We are witnesses to too many awful things for our hope to remain unshaken. How do we reconcile genocide in Rwanda and Darfur, how do we make sense of the sexual exploitation of women and children—right here in our county. Do you ever find yourself in tears and asking THE question—how can humans do these things to one another? What kind of evil is this? And then the real hard question: Where is God in all of this? Where is our hope? Is it even possible to talk about redemption and new life in the midst of the mass murder of 800,000 of our fellow children of God? How do we keep hope alive when peace seems to be an impossible goal for our planet? Did Jesus’ coming make any difference?
In the midst of our grieving and hopelessness — or of our wealth and prosperity, it can be difficult to recognize the risen Jesus in our midst. But thanks be to God, Jesus doesn’t give up on disciples like us who are ” “So thick-headed! So slow-hearted! ” And so we have heard the teaching and we know all the right words about the resurrection, but those words haven’t always produced life-changing faith in our lives. As rational people, we have stressed the power of the story of Jesus to produce faith—and what we mean by that is we act as if hearing the story and knowing the story are enough to get ourselves to somehow come to “believe”. I believe that this is partly the way—Jesus does come to us in the Word, but something more is needed to make our hearts burn with passion for Christ…

What is needed is the same thing that was needed for the two disciples on the road to Emmaus—an encounter with the living Christ, made known in the gathering together, hearing the story and in the breaking of the bread—remember how this happens—Jesus helps these two disciples remember and understand the story of what happened and why it happened—he reminds them of the Words of the prophets and of Jesus’ own words, and in doing this, Jesus makes these words come alive. And then Jesus sits down with them at the table and breaks bread—in that instant, they recognize Jesus for who he is, and in that moment, their hope returns, their hearts are set on fire and they go and do the only thing they can—they gather with others who had lost hope and they tell the story as Jesus told it to them, and they come to believe.

And so it goes—2000 years later, we are called to do just these things that the two disciples did—we tell the story to others, we gather with them and we break bread. It is these simple acts of telling and listening, in gathering and eating, in the act of sharing our fears and anxieties in speaking of hope lost and found that we come to know the risen Christ who lives with and in us. And so we are left with questions: How much do our hearts burn within us when the scriptures are opened to us? And how often do we recognize the stranger as the living Christ in our midst? Amen.

Poor Thomas…I have always felt that Thomas has been unfairly called “Doubting” Thomas, because he merely asked to see the Risen Lord, just as the other disciples were able to do—They didn’t want to believe that Jesus was risen—they couldn’t even take the eyewitness account of Mary Magdalene, who had seen Jesus in the garden—some commentators say that this was because the tradition-bound Jewish men could not accept the evidence of a mere woman—in Jewish courts, the testimony of a woman was not considered trustworthy. At any rate, the disciples struggled to believe that Jesus had indeed risen, as he said he would.The disciples have locked themselves in a room because they are afraid. I wonder how long they have been there and whether or when they plan to get on with their lives. If you think about it, the locked room is like a tomb where Jesus’ friends are huddling together, paralyzed by their fear into their inactivity and hopelessness. I always picture this room as hot and cramped, doors barred, windows shuttered—This isn’t like a fun game of hide and seek—This is more like Anne Frank and her family hiding in an apartment in Amsterdam. I can only imagine what it must be like to listen breathlessly for footsteps and to wonder if my fragile cover will be ripped away in the next moment.

Suddenly Jesus is there. John doesn’t tell us how he entered; he is simply there.

Even then, it must have been difficult at first for the disciples to believe their own eyes—you can almost picture them, staring, blinking, rubbing their eyes as if to wake up, not willing to trust this vision before them—were they going crazy? Had their grief pushed them over the edge into madness? Or was this some kind of ghost or apparition that has materialized in front of them? It seems that there was at least a moment of doubt, because when Jesus appears and says to the disciples, “Peace be with you.”, they seem too dumbstruck, too disbelieving to acknowledge him. The disciples are urged to look at his wounds to make sure that they are in the presence of Christ–not some ghost or imposter, but their friend and teacher. Jesus urges them to probe his wounds. You can almost sense the hesitation— somewhere inside they know if they touch, they will have to believe–it really would be easier all around if Jesus had stayed dead…

So Jesus shows them his wounds, and it is only then do they rejoice in amazement that Jesus is with them. Seeing the wounds helped them to believe. And so it was with Thomas—when Jesus appears the following week, it is only when Jesus reveals his wounds that Thomas is able to fall to his knees and make the power proclamation that Jesus is Lord and God—Thomas is actually the first to make that connection—that the crucified and wounded One is God. Now it would take the church literally a couple of hundred years to sort out the implications of what Thomas was able to grasp in that moment, but it almost takes my breath away when I try to imagine what that moment must have been like for the disciples.

This moment in the upper room is incredibly important for the future of the whole church—something powerful and dramatic must have happened to get the disciples out of their safe and secure hiding place and out into the world with the message of the gospel.
For me, the proof of the resurrection lies in the changed lives of the disciples. When this frightened group of Jesus’ followers was about to totally give up hope and abandon everything Jesus had taught them in order to run away in despair to Galilee; when these peasants, shepherds, and fishermen, who had betrayed and denied their master and then failed him miserably, suddenly could be changed overnight into a confident and dynamic movement, absolutely convinced of salvation and God’s work then no vision or hallucination is sufficient to explain such a revolutionary transformation.

I believe that it is not saying too much to suggest that if Jesus did not really appear to the disciples, then we might not be sitting here 2000 years later.

The giving of the Holy Spirit helped! Jesus breaths into them new life –breathing belongs to the image of the spirit which in biblical languages means wind and breath and spirit. Perhaps the image is akin to God’s breathing upon human clay in the creation story. Here is a new beginning. The Spirit, the helper, will help the disciples boldly proclaim the story of Jesus before the people.

What about us? What will it take to get us out of our sanctuaries and hiding places? What will it take to get us out into the world to proclaim the good news? Are we really any different than Thomas or the other disciples? We may say rationally that we know that we most likely will not see Jesus standing in front of us, we might even remember the motto of the reformation—“faith alone”—we say we don’t need signs or wonders and we may question the faith of those who ask for signs–and yet who among us would not love to see Jesus, to experience his presence just as the disciples did? As much as we might say that we stand on “faith alone” I suspect that each and every one of us is here because we are just like Thomas—we want to believe, we want to trust that what others have said down through the centuries, the witnesses of the power of God, we hope that we will get even just a small glimpse of Christ, and so we gather here with others who have the same hope—the hope to see and experienced in some way the reality that Jesus is alive, and this thing we call church is where we come to see Jesus—to see and believe. Jesus knew that the disciples would struggle with doubts and unbelief—that is why Jesus formed his disciples into the church and breathed on them and gave the church the Holy Spirit—the church is the living, breathing body of Christ made real. When we see the living and breathing church, we see Jesus.

Perhaps you might say that that is putting too much on the church—after all, the church is hardly perfect. That is certainly true; we have our share of wounds and scars—But so does Jesus. This is what Jesus formed us for—to be the Body of Christ for the sake of the world. It’s not like we’re left on our own—we have the promise and reality of the Holy Spirit, or do we need some kind of sign? Look around you—this is the sign—you and me, all of us gathered together here in this place—called together by God—this is the sign that the Holy Spirit is present.
What about people outside the church? How can we help them see and believe in Jesus? If we as the church are meant to be the Body of Christ for the world, then it is vital that when the world looks at us they see what Jesus wants them to see—not perfect people who never stray away from God, not self-righteous judges condemning the evils of the world, but wounded and broken people, just like them, sinners one and all, made whole by the wounds of Christ. Healed by seeing and believing and experiencing that love is stronger that death, forgiven and renewed by the waters of baptism and nourished at the table with the body and blood of our risen Lord.

Seeing and believing is not easy—we all suffer deep wounds that can blind us to the reality of God. These wounds run deep and healing deep wounds is hard work. And it’s work that is best done with the help of others. It takes the gathered community called the church to come to the aid of those who are wounded–to recognize in each other the woundedness we all share as humans struggling for wholeness.
We hope and pray and look this Easter season to the cross, and see our Lord and savior, to see his wounds, and remember. It is in seeing and believing, in remembering the wounds of Christ that we and indeed the whole world will be healed. Amen.

How did it come to this? From triumphal entry into Jerusalem, declared king, to dead in less than a week. What possessed the crowd? The same thing that has always possessed humans and still possesses us. Humanity has a problem, and the problem is sin–we fail to live the lives that God intends and we choose our own way for our own ends rather that God’s desire. We know this–I don’t know too many folks who lack any sense that their lives are not what they should be. We all know that we are weak and broken creatures.The problem arises when those of us who desire a relationship with God take a long and hard look at what scripture and tradition teach us about what God demands via the Law, and we come to the frightening realization that it is simply impossible for anybody to ever come close to meeting the demand of the Law. This can lead to despair, as in Luther’s case or to a rejection of the whole scheme, which I have to say is tempting when there are so many public examples of Christians behaving badly—nationalism, homophobia, sexism, racism, anti-intellectualism, to name but a few. (yea, I’m one of “those liberals”)If one rejects the whole scheme of seeking a relationship with God, or a spiritual path of some kind, there are numerous options, which in our current world includes seeking satisfaction and comfort through the accumulation of wealth or relationships or power or addictions or any of the myriad ways that we humans have of self-distraction or self-medication. I am by no means saying that faith in God or Christ is the only way to experience a fulfilled life—but in our context, the traditional setting of “Church” is still the way that most of us connect with a faith community. I happen to know some quite happy and healthy atheists—yet I would say that there is something unique and powerful in the Christian story of human-God relationships via Christ and the cross. If this is where we find ourselves, as part of the Christian story, then we have to wrestle with what happened that week in Jerusalem.

The power of sin and guilt remain, even when we try to numb or distract ourselves from our predicament. In our heart of hearts, we truly do seek God. We choose to live our lives apart from God , because the truth is too painful and frightening–we know that we cannot ever get to God. God, of course, knows all this and so God finds a way to break through all of our rejections and distractions. Even in our rejection and fear, there is a question that we address to God: we ask, “how do we sinful, broken human beings, having broken your Law, how do we work our way back to the garden—the way You meant life to be?” And then God answers our plea. God says, “you can’t and you won’t come to me, so I come to you, in the person and life of Jesus of Nazareth. Look into his eyes, look at his life with me and follow Jesus and know that you are loved.”

This does not sit well with us—we reject God’s offer and we lash out and kill the One sent by God. We then say to God, “Everything has a price. Somebody has to pay for our sins—blood must be shed to restore order and balance (see Rene Girard’s work on the scapegoat) What is the price of your love? More than that, prove your love!” God answers, “O.K., I will.” And so God gives Godself over to death on a cross as a sign of love.

Blood has value—the Israelites and virtually every culture in history understood this, and so do we—we have not evolved very much in this—we’re dealing with primordial forces and deep human feelings and metaphors–we still know that shed blood has value—blood represents life—the life-force of living creatures—blood sacrifice got its power and efficacy from this idea. We honor the shed blood and sacrifice of heroes with parades and monuments because we know that life blood is precious.

Jesus’ death on the cross is an incomparable price to be paid for sin. This scheme only works if we acknowledge what Jesus said about himself—that He and The Father are One. If Jesus’ had not been identified as God-in-the-flesh, then the cross would have no power to save us—it had to be Godself on the cross to get the point across to humanity—nothing less would do. This self-giving of God to us demonstrates God’s love. This is my main point: Jesus’ death did not change anything about God or God’s attitude toward humanity. Jesus’ death is meant to change us and our attitude toward God.

It’s not a case of an angry, vengeful God being appeased by a human sacrifice—no! God’s mind wasn’t changed—Jesus’ death should change our mind about God and the nature of self-giving love. Remember the deep mystery, the paradox, the mind-twister—when we look to the cross and see a crucified Jesus we are at the same time seeing a crucified God. So does it end here?
We’ll have to wait and see—and not just until next Sunday morning.

Surely, We Are Not Blind, Are We?
John 9:1-41

What would it be like to be born blind? I’ve tried to imagine it—never having seen any color or the face of someone—trying to live in a world full of people who live and breath visual images—whose language is full of visual and descriptive images—think of all the ways our language relies on visual metaphors—when we’re angry, we “see red”, we say “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, “a picture is worth a thousand words”—jut try it today—notice when you’re in conversation or just in your own thoughts how often you use words and language that would make no sense to somebody born blind. To be born blind is to be cut off from so much of the world—To suffer from a defect in any of our primary senses makes living in this world very difficult—whether it’s blindness, deafness, taste, touch or smell, we would be forever missing out on key experiences—this is not to say that people who have a sensory deficit cannot live rich and full lives—certainly many people who have a deficit do amazing and wonderful things with the gifts they have—we call people like this heroic, because they are—they have had to overcome great obstacles in order to be able to function in this world.

In Jesus’ day—there were other obstacles to deal with—we can tell this in the first paragraph when the disciples ask Jesus “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” The disciples were not being uncaring or rude, they were expressing the common understanding of their day—illness and disabilities were the direct result of sinful behavior—they were a punishment from God.
In Jesus’ day, people thought of light as substance that radiated out from itself, a kind of fire that, when present in the human body, could flow out of a person’s eyes and allow them to see—something akin to a flashlight beam. Someone who couldn’t see lacked light inside their body –they were filled with darkness instead of light. This was not though to be the natural condition, but was the result of sin.
This belief that God caused sinful people to be born blind or lame or deaf was woven deeply into the fabric of the culture, and this understanding extended beyond physical disability—if you were poor or a slave it was because that was to be your God-ordained lot in life. If you had a disability and could not work, you had to rely on charity to survive and you would spend your life on the margins of society—remember there was no governmental safety net for widows, orphans or the disabled.

That is why the Pharisees gave this formerly blind man such a hard time—notice how the Pharisees belittle and berate this man and his parents—in the blindness of their hearts they cannot see how such people would be worthy of receiving such a miraculous gift of healing. The greater blindness is that they do not see that Jesus as the promised messiah, the one sent by God to bring sight to the world.

It is notable that this story of the blind man has some similarities to the story we heard last week about the Samaritan woman at the well, whom Jesus encounters—both the woman and the blind man were outsiders in their community—the woman because of her checkered marital history, and the man, because of his disability. Both encountered Jesus and both were transformed into powerful witnesses—they both end up doing the most effective form of evangelism there is—they tell their own story in their own words to others, who are then faced with a choice—to seek out the source of hope, or to continue in blindness.

Of course you know I have to ask the question, “In what ways are we blind?” In what ways do our beliefs and behaviors demonstrate our spiritual blindness? We church-going folk tend to be educated believers. Most of what we know is good, and we have a rich tradition to nurture us. We have learned many good things about God and Christ and the church, and we are in the line of a tradition that strongly proclaims God’s grace and love in word and deed.

The Pharisees also thought that their religious learning and traditions and actions were the very best possible. Their chief complaint against Jesus was that he was doing healing on the Sabbath, and even more nit-picky was that in the process of making the mud from his spit and dirt, Jesus was “kneading together” like you knead bread dough–which violated the prohibition of working on the Sabbath. “We’ve always kept the Sabbath this way.” Does that sound a little bit familiar? This is not to say that keeping the Sabbath or the form in which we worship is not important, but Jesus’ acts of mercy force us to consider the difference between the Spirit and the letter of the Law. For them and for us, knowledge of the Law in and of itself and obedience to the Law and traditions can become a new god.

Remember–we never make gods of things we think are bad. Jesus turns spit and dirt into mud and heals on the Sabbath to expose and destroy such false gods as trusting in our obedience of the rules and laws. Laws have their place and I really get irritated by people who break the rules—such as people driving by themselves using the carpool lane to zip by traffic, or the person who has 10 items in the 9 items or less line. By his actions, Jesus says, “I am destroying the false security you place in your obedience. I am replacing it with myself. You can either trust your obedience or me; but not both.” One has to choose between Moses or Jesus — between trusting obedience to the law or Jesus’ offer of divine grace. Somewhere I read this quote: “Stop acting so good and start being a Christian.” Could this apply to some of us today?

What other forms of blindness do we suffer from? We as sinful humans, I think we can agree that the list of things we do not see that God desires we see is a long and painful one indeed.

Do you remember the horrible tsunamis in south Asia? The response to the Tsunami disaster was an unprecedented and overwhelming outpouring of aid and assistance from around the world—the Red Cross actually had to request that people stop sending money, because they had enough to rebuild affected regions for the next 20 years, and that there were other situations and disasters that were in danger of being neglected in the rush to aid the victims of the Tsunami. The same was true, when it came to the volunteer response to Katrina—I was there and saw it—a huge, complex logistical challenge was undertaken mostly by churches and other non-profits—the UMC was awarded the largest contract ever for the management of the long-term recovery programs. We do have something to be proud of.

But even this show of love and care raised the question for a number of commentators—why does it take a gigantic natural disaster to inspire such an outpouring of aid? Are there not countless personal disasters in our own backyards that are just as devastating to the lives of those affected as those impacted by the Tsunami? What about hunger and homelessness and disease in our own community? I know that many of you have opened your eyes and your hearts and have been caring for and supporting many local programs like Plowshares, Project Sanctuary, the homeless shelter, the kids at school-oftentimes in very quiet and private ways, and I thank God that you’re doing that great work—but is it ever enough? If you make yourself available, the work is unlimited, so we do what we can and count on God’s promised future when we won’t need to do that work.

There are other, deeper forms of blindness that we suffer from. Too often, Jesus would say, that we are blind to the ways in which our hard hearts are closed to the gift of the Holy Spirit—closed to the power of Christ to transform our lives as Jesus transformed the lives of those he touched with spit and dirt. Too often, Jesus would say, too often we are blind to the truth that we cannot save ourselves—we forget that all of our rituals and works may be good things, but they by themselves do not a disciple of Christ make.

In the final part of the Gospel, Jesus encounters the man that he healed and who had been driven out of the Temple by the Pharisees. In this moment, Jesus invites this formerly blind man to see something deeper and even more miraculous that the gift of his sight—Jesus invites him into a relationship with God—The God who heals the brokenness and binds the wounds of the least of people, the God who judges self-righteousness to be the worst of all sins. Jesus invites the blind in every time and place to open our eyes to truly see ourselves as we are and to see the wonders of creation and the gift of life that is ours through Christ, because seeing is believing.  Amen