1. The Creation Story 
   1. Why we have it today: Trinity Sunday. 
      1. God the Creator; the wind from God; and God’s creating Word, which, later, John’s Gospel will identify with Jesus. “In the beginning was the Word…” 
      2. The Trinity is the Church’s understanding and teaching about how One God can have three Persons – God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; the One who Creates, Befriends, and Inspires. And I’m not going to talk about the Trinity today.
      3. Instead, I’m going to use the opportunity of the Creation story to talk about something I did last week, and what it’s left me thinking about. 

2. But first, I want to talk a little about the Creation story itself. 
   1. Genesis 1 and 2 are not a scientific account of how the world was formed. We do not have to choose between this story and the stories told by physics and biology. 
   2. But these chapters are a sacred account of God’s relationship with creation, and humanity’s relationship with creation. In that vein they say some important things which I find, basically, to be true. 
      1. First, it all begins with beauty, with diversity and plenty, and with belovedness. Every step of the way, God calls Creation good!
      2. Second: Somewhere along the way, something went awry. Genesis 2 and 3 tell that story: The first humans – Adam and Eve – are warned away from the tree of knowledge, but the serpent tempts them, and they eat. As a result, God sends them forth from the garden; from that point onward, they are condemned to struggle and work the earth – and to kill animals – for their food. This part of the story is often called the Fall. 
   3. It’s a complicated story; it’s easy to point out the embedded misogyny, and some extremely bad parenting on God’s part. 
      1. But when we as the Episcopal Church name this as Scripture, as holy text, we don’t mean that we have to take it at face value. We mean that we can look for the ways our faith-ancestors were coming to understand themselves, the world, and God. 
      2. This story in particular points to a sense of loss – of a sense of intimacy and belonging with the land and living systems.
         1. Look: The first time I tried to write this part of the sermon it started to turn into an anthropology lecture and got way too long. Let me try to keep it simple! 
         2. The idea of a kind of romantic primeval simplicity, of an original harmony between humans and the land, is not especially faithful to the facts in many cases, and can be risky to tell. 
         3. But if we look at the lifetime of our species as a whole, it is not wrong to say that there has been a worldwide, long-term trajectory – over tens of thousands of years – away from immediate relationship with the land and living systems.
         4. And I think we have felt that loss, culturally and collectively, and expressed it in various ways, including in this particular Scriptural story. 
         5. And I think many of us feel that loss individually, and grieve it, and wonder how it could be otherwise.
      3. Which brings me to where scripture goes next! As we move through Genesis, as God calls a people and invites them into covenant relationship, humanity’s relationship with the land is a big part of the story.
         1. Old Testament scholar Ellen Davis and others argue that the Abrahamic covenant has three parties – God, humanity, and the land. 
            1. God’s people are called into right relationship with the land – treating it with respect and care, not as a tool for individual wealth but as a resource for shared flourishing. 
            2. In Davis’s words, “We are answerable to God for how we use the physical order to meet our physical needs.”
      4. So: there’s a core story here in which the Earth is created in love, with enough for all; over time, humans’ increasingly extractive relationship with the natural world have harmed creation and alienated much of humanity from the land and living systems; and part of our responsibility as God’s people is to strive towards a new relationship of restorative care for creation. 
         1. That is a sacred story in which I find meaning and purpose, as a Christian in the time of climate crisis.

3. And THAT brings me to what I did last week. 
   1. From Monday afternoon through Wednesday morning, I attended an event called “Pastoring for Justice and Healing in a Climate Crisis.” If that sounds like a big topic… it was. 
      1. It was hosted up the road at Holy Wisdom, and put on by several organizations, including Creation Justice Ministries, Faith in Place, and Garrett Seminary. 
      2. It brought together clergy and lay leaders from many denominations, from Chicago, northern Illinois, and southern Wisconsin, for common learning and networking. 
      3. We learned about climate emotions, about the impacts of climate change in our region and in our hearts, about the interconnectedness of climate change with structural injustice, about resources and initiatives and possibilities. It was hard and exciting and important. 
      4. It’s hard to boil down what I carried away, honestly. It was kind of a fire-hose situation. And I’ll be taking some of it to the upcoming Green Team organizing meeting. 
      5. But here are three points I’d like to share, today, as we wonder how to live into our responsibility to strive for a renewed relationship of care with God’s wounded creation. 

4. Point one is that churches matter. 
   1. One of the presenters, a scientist, said: Look, we climate scientists have botched this. We haven’t let people know why climate change matters to them, and we haven’t let them know what they can do to help. 
   2. There is a real role, in the large-scale movement that needs to grow and spread and deepen, for communities organized around common hopes and values – such as faith communities. 
   3. We can be learners together. Getting to know our local environment deeply, our human and non-human neighbors, and learning to love and serve them. Learning about the impacts of climate change here, now, in five years, in fifteen, in fifty. 
   4. We can be advocates together, raising our voices to our neighbors and leaders about the losses and the costs if no action or not enough action is taken, and speaking up for changes that matter. 
   5. We can be change-makers together. We can learn about the impact of our actions and choices, and make small changes that add up as we undertake them together and spread the word – especially in partnership with other like-minded faith communities. 
   6. And we can be helpers together, learning about what kinds of climate crises are most likely to impact our communities and how we as a church could be a resource. For example, we could prepare to be a cooling station in a future heat wave, as a respite for neighbors. 

5. Point two is that the leaders of this event really stressed that climate change is an intersectional issue – meaning, it intersects with race, class, gender, and other axes of injustice. 
   1. We are a church with many commitments and I think we can sometimes feel like we’re pulled in different directions. That there’s potential for competition between issues for time and attention and resources. 
   2. But our presenters said: Climate change intersects with poverty. Climate change intersects with structural racism. Take just about any social justice issue and ask, Where does this connect with climate change, in terms of current impact or future risk? Or take any climate issue and ask: How will this effect marginalized communities? The connections are there. 
   3. So we can work towards an integrated awareness – and integrated engagement – that recognizes the reality of these interconnections. 
   4. Listen to the mission statement of the Center for Ecological Regeneration at Garrett Seminary in Chicago, one of the event sponsors: “For the just healing of wounded socio-ecological relationships in the midwest bioregion and beyond.” For the just healing of wounded socio-ecological relationships… Isn’t that an interesting? Doesn’t it make you want to learn more? We can! … 

6. Point three is that we are surrounded by things that are dying. By signs of endings, in the words of a favorite Advent hymn.
   1. I’m not talking about people here, but about institutions, systems, norms, ways of being. 
      1. Whether it’s fast casual dining or mainline institutional Christianity, there is a lot of change and struggle and, let’s be frank, a lot of death in our cultural, economic, and social world right now.
   2. In the ecological world, a death means a release of resources and nutrients, and perhaps a niche in a system, made available for other living things to use. 
      1. Just the other day, I harvested some mushrooms on our grounds that were happily digesting a chunk of dead elm tree. 
   3. At a larger scale than a single dead organism, the collapse or decay of systems from order towards chaos also creates certain kinds of opportunities. 
      1. Bill Mollison, a founding figure in the permaculture movement, describes chaos as an opportunity for creative re-ordering. 
      2. In nature, death and decay present opportunities for rebirth and new growth. The dying of the old makes room for the new. 
         1. That’s not a reason to be callous or cavalier about the losses of our times. But it is a reason not to despair. A reason to actively engage in imagining and building possible futures. 
   4. The speaker who shared all this was Tim Eberhard of Garrett Theological Seminary. And the part that I keep thinking about is when he said that all our institutions are facing death – by kenosis or apocalypse. 
      1. Let me explain those two big words. Kenosis is a theological term, based in how the apostle Paul talks about Jesus Christ in his letters. It’s from the Greek word for empty, and refers to Christ’s laying down divine power and glory to live – and die – as a human being. 
      2. Kenosis refers to a willing, chosen laying down of self-interest or even self, for the sake of the other or the greater good. 
      3. Apocalypse is a more familiar word but let me remind us of its theological meaning: signs that point us towards the end of the present age, the Eschaton. 

1. 1. 1. 1. That end may come with a bang or a whimper; it may be violent or glorious or both. 
         2. Wikipedia points out aptly that the word “apocalypse” has come to be used as a synonym for catastrophe, but in the original Greek it means “revelation” – a showing of hidden truths. The climate crisis shows us how something can be both at once – catastrophe and revelation. 
      2. Tim said that the the multi-systemic collapse that we’re beginning to see now, worldwide, is overdue and earned. We have done too much in so many ways – too much extractive monocropping, too much burning of fossil fuels, too much cutting down rainforests, too much creating cheap and disposable consumer goods and burning fuel shipping them around the globe, too much dumping garbage and toxic chemicals into our air and waters, too much, too much, too much. 
         1. The collapse is overdue, and earned; AND it will be incredibly costly to people, creatures, and ecosystems. It is nothing to celebrate. 
         2. But it is also not a reason to lose hope. Hope is not naive optimism; true hope begins from excruciating realism. And true hope names that seasons of collapse are also times of immense opportunity. 
      3. When Tim said that endings are coming for us all, whether by kenosis or apocalypse, he means, I think, that we have choices. 
         1. As a church: we can’t choose the times we live in or the epochal challenges we face.
         2. We can choose whether to carry on as usual until apocalypse shakes and shatters us; or to recognize those signs of endings all around us, and spend our resources, time, and skill for the sake of the common good, towards a renewed future.
         3. Tim said: There is good news in this season for dreamers, prophets, and builders. There is an opportunity here for deep change – if we seize it. 

7. Genesis tells us: We belong here. We are part of a Creation that is beautiful and bountiful and beloved. We have a special, God-given role to tend it and help it flourish. 
   1. And: Much has gone awry. As a species, we have lost so much knowledge of, and intimacy with, the land and living systems. 
   2. So much is wounded, askew, spiraling towards catastrophe. 
   3. But there is hope. If we face our situation honestly and boldly. If we build connections – between one another, between churches and organizations, between climate change and our daily choices, between climate change and the other issues that occupy our days and our hearts. 
   4. Tim ended his talk with a quote from Willie James Jennings, one of the great theological voices of our times and a Black Baptist pastor. I’m going to end with Jennings’ words too: “These days I am trying to understand how to be Christian in the dirt. Which means I am trying to think theologically from dirt and trees, sky and water, ocean and animals—not as background to life but as the reality of connection that prepares us for the living of life together.”
   5. Beloved friends, let’s work together to figure out what it means to be Christians in the dirt. Amen. Alleluia. 

Sources: 

Ellen Davis quoted in Sojourners, Oct. 30, 2013

https://sojo.net/articles/ellen-davis-unearths-agrarian-view-bible

The Willie James Jennings article quoted:

https://www.christiancentury.org/article/how-my-mind-has-changed/caught-god

So we’ve had TWO stories today: first the one with Moses and Eldad and Medad, from a book in the Old Testament called the Book of Numbers – that’s a funny name, isn’t it? It’s because there’s a lot of counting in that book, actually! – and then we had the Pentecost story, from the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, which is a fancy way of saying, The Book of Stuff the Apostles Did. 

Did anybody notice something similar between those two stories? … 

That second story, the Pentecost story, is the story of this day, the feast of Pentecost. Our calendar of readings gives us that other story, from the wilderness time when Moses was leading God’s people, to help us notice what’s the same in those stories.

There are a lot of differences too! But in both stories we see God’s Spirit coming to people and making them act in surprising ways! Shouting and dancing, preaching and prophesying. 

Now, here’s an important thing to know: Sometimes the Bible argues with itself. 

Which isn’t that surprising when you realize that the Bible is really only barely one thing. There are all different kinds of texts in the Bible, from different times and places, talking about different things in different ways. And sometimes they disagree. 

Today, our short Gospel lesson – so short you could almost miss it – says that when Jesus was saying goodbye to his friends, before he was arrested and crucified, there wasn’t a Holy Spirit yet. 

John thinks that the Holy Spirit didn’t show up until Jesus had gone to be with God. That you can either have Jesus around, or the Holy Spirit, but you’ll never see them both at the same party.

There was actually a big split in Christianity about this! 

Christians understand God as being three different people (or Persons) who are also somehow all one Person. We call that the Trinity and we celebrate it next Sunday. 

Note:  I am about to make some very complicated things, very simple…!

The first Person of the Trinity is God the Creator and Source; the God whom Jesus calls Father. The God in whom we live and move and have our being, as we heard Paul say a couple of weeks ago. The God who is always making the universe, and holding all things together.

The second person is Jesus, God come to dwell among us as a friend, teacher and helper.

And the third Person is the Holy Spirit, God who comes close like a wind, like breath, like the warmth of the sun, like waves washing over your feet at the beach. She helps us discover our gifts and find our way and feel God’s presence. 

In the first years of Christianity, people were trying to understand how God could be all one God, but also be these different Persons. How those three aspects of God related to each other. 

And the understanding they came to was that the three Persons of the Trinity are different, but they are equal in glory, equally eternal, equally holy. 

But later on, some Christians started to think that the Holy Spirit was sort of secondary to Jesus. The technical language is that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father – God the Creator – and the Son, Jesus Christ. That God and Jesus get together and send out the Holy Spirit. (Actually, the way John’s Gospel talks about the Holy Spirit is pretty central for this view.) 

Now, that difference really mattered to people, because it was about the importance they gave to either the Holy Spirit or Jesus.

So there was a big split, about 800 years ago! The church in western Europe said, We know the church has always said it was THIS way, but now we think it’s really THIS way. So we’re going to change the Nicene Creed, this ancient statement of the church’s faith, and add this thing called the Filioque clause. That means “and the son” – as in, The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the son. 

And the Eastern church said no thank you, that doesn’t seem right to us! We are not going to change! 

Back in 1994, the Episcopal Church, our parent church, decided that maybe we in the Western church got it wrong and shouldn’t have made that change – or at least that it wasn’t important enough to split over! So we are authorized to use a version of the Creed without the Filioque – which I know sometime surprises visitors or newcomers from other churches. 

Our story from the Book of Numbers today is just one example of something that sure sounds like the Holy Spirit doing her thing in the world, a long before the time of Jesus!

Let’s imagine a little timeline with a couple of other examples. 

First, we start with the creation story the very beginning of the book of Genesis. The very first words in the Bible say, “In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void, and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.”

A wind from God, stirring up the waters, before there was land or light or living things! We just heard about the mighty wind of Pentecost – we know that the Holy Spirit can feel like wind! 

We know this is a holy story that is different from what science says about how the world began. But life on earth did begin in water, in ancient, ancient oceans and lakes! 

Now, a long, LONG time later, like 3.7 billion years after life began on earth, we have our story from Numbers, when God’s spirit empowers some people to share leadership with Moses. 

Now let’s add another example I really like. There are a couple of places in the Bible before Jesus that talk about Lady Wisdom. In Proverbs, which is from maybe a thousand years before Jesus, and in the Wisdom of Solomon, which is maybe a hundred years before Jesus. 

The Wisdom of Solomon describes Wisdom as a Spirit that is intelligent, holy, active, generous, kind, and peaceful. She is a breath of God’s power, and an emanation of the glory of the Almighty and a reflection of the eternal light! And in every generation she passes into holy souls and makes them friends of God, and prophets.

That sure sounds like what we know about the Holy Spirit! 

Continuing our timeline, we get to the time of Jesus’ life… and then there’s the first Pentecost, from the Book of Acts, fifty days after the first Easter! 

And then a couple of thousand years later there’s us, here, at St. Dunstan’s. Still honoring and calling on the Holy Spirit!

(Zoom: wave red things) 

So that’s a timeline of sorts. There are probably other examples we could have filled in here. But it sure seems to me like God’s people have always experienced God’s presence and guidance and power, in ways that sound a whole lot like what the Church calls the Holy Spirit. 

The Jewish people, the people of God’s first and continuing covenant, don’t talk about a Holy Spirit. But they see this too and they have their own ways of talking about God’s Presence in the world. 

So when John says there was no Holy Spirit before Jesus, I don’t know if he’s just wrong or if he’s not being careful with his words. 

People sometimes say that Pentecost is the church’s birthday, but it’s not the Holy Spirit’s birthday. She was already around! 

She just came to the first Christians in a new way, that day, and gave them new powers and a new mission. 

But I think it’s really really cool to look back over all these holy stories and many more, all the ways the Holy Spirit has given people wisdom and courage and creativity and comfort and hope and vision and joy, and stirred up God’s people to join God’s work. 

That’s why we celebrate the Holy Spirit today and I hope that’s why we look and listen for the presence of the Holy Spirit often! 

With the end of the federal Covid public health emergency on May 11, some kinds of Covid tracking and reporting have ended – including the CDC’s Community Level system, which has been the basis for St. Dunstan’s masking policy and week by week recommendations.

Dane County will still maintain a Covid data dashboard, and we will continue to monitor that dashboard and notify the congregation of any notable upswings in Covid or other serious illnesses.

Right now the Vestry will maintain our policy of having masks be optional at 10AM worship, and other in-person events (unless specified otherwise), until and unless conditions warrant a change in policy.

We will also maintain masking for all at the 8AM service. If you attend, or would like to attend, the 8AM service and have thoughts about masking policy at that service, feel free to email  at any time.

Please wear a mask at church if you have symptoms of illness or a recent known Covid exposure. If you have unexplained symptoms consistent with Covid, please consider staying away from in-person worship.

Our parish leadership supports those who choose to wear a mask for any reason. Bear in mind that asking someone why they wear a mask may amount to a request for private medical information. Extend grace to one another and trust that each one is making the decision that is best for them. 

Here are some photos of our Parish Center spaces.

Before we begin the Passion Gospel, I want to say something about one of the verses we’re going to hear. After Jesus is arrested, Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea, holds a public appearance where he offers to free one of the prisoners the Romans are holding, as a goodwill gesture because it’s the Passover, the great Jewish feast of freedom. Pilate offers them a man named Barabbas, or Jesus himself. 

Luke’s Gospel says that Barabbas was wanted for insurrection agains the Romans – that he was a freedom fighter, of the violent variety. He may have been popular with the crowd for that reason – or Jesus may have been unpopular. We are in Jerusalem here, in Judea, where many people have never really taken to Jesus’ message. They see him as a strange outsider who talks down about the Great Temple and the version of Jewish faith centered on the Temple. 

Whatever the reason – and there’s much to explore and wonder about – the crowd that gathers for Pilate’s prisoner release stunt demands that Barabbas be freed, and Jesus be executed. Please note, this is not the same crowd that greeted Jesus on his arrival in the city! Some of the people could have been the same, but this is five days later and in a different place. It’s not like a thousand people loved Jesus one minute and hated him the next. 

As Matthew sees it, Pilate doesn’t really want to have Jesus executed, but he has to do it because the crowd is demanding it – and as the Roman governor, his job is to keep the peace. A riot at Passover could get messy. So, even though it is the Roman government that has the power to perform executions, even though Jesus will be crucified by Roman soldiers, Pilate tries to excuse himself, saying,“I am innocent of this man’s blood.” 

And Matthew has the people respond – “His blood be upon us and upon our children!”

In fact the text says that the PEOPLE AS A WHOLE say that. It’s not a particular crowd, this particular thousand people, but the entire Jewish people. And that is what Matthew means. 

This line – “His blood be upon us and upon our children!” – is only in Matthew’s Gospel. I believe, quite strongly, that this line is something Matthew has ADDED to the account of these events that he received – in order to explicitly blame the Jewish people for Jesus’ death.

And Matthew does that because he has seen terrible, terrible things. In the year 66, there’s a revolt against the Romans in Judea. The Romans have massively superior military force, and they crush the revolt. Jerusalem burns. The Great Temple is torn down. Countless people die. Matthew sees this. I suspect he was an eyewitness; I suspect he lost people – just because his rage and grief burn so hot. 

And Matthew – writing his account of the Gospel; struggling to make sense of horror – comes to an explanation. He doesn’t say, Well, this is what empires do: they hold territory by force, against the will of many of the locals, and now and then the locals revolt, and the empire, if it’s strong enough, crushes the revolt so they can keep holding the territory and extracting wealth from it. 

Instead Matthew says: This is God’s punishment on the Jews for rejecting Jesus. 

And the terrible thing, beloveds, is this:

Matthew thought that punishment was accomplished. Done. 

But as Christianity became a religion with political and social power in the subsequent centuries, Christian leaders used this text to justify persecuting Jews. 

This idea – that the Jewish people as a whole carry blood guilt for Jesus’ death – has a body count in the millions. And it’s not dead yet. 

I always encourage us to read Scripture with a thoughtful eye. With respect, with love, with curiosity, but also with an awareness that texts speak in complicated ways, and that there’s much to wonder about what we receive in this book we call holy. 

In this case, beloveds, I encourage us to actively resist this part of Matthew’s telling of this story.

And I’ve asked the Narrator to give us time to pause after that line. Among the other pauses and moments we’ll take to just breathe through everything that’s hard and sad and terrible about the story the church tells today, we will take a moment of stillness for the weight of all the violence that this text has justified. 

In sharing all this, it’s not my intention to deflect our attention from Jesus – the central figure in this story, the central figure in our faith. Accepting this death, Jesus takes on all the ways humans hurt each other… the burden of our capacity to hate, condemn, destroy. Surely it must have been one of the most difficult aspects of our humanity for God to take on fully. 

But he does take it on – and it kills him. 

That’s the part of the story we tell today, and again on Friday. It’s a hard part of the story. But it’s not the end of the story. In some ways it’s just the beginning. 

We’ll continue in the Passion Gospel booklet. You may need to share with a neighbor. 

Those reading the parts of the Narrator and Jesus should come to microphones. Other readers are asked to stay in your place, and STAND and USE YOUR BIG VOICE when it’s time to speak your lines. 

The rest of us will sit for the first part of the Passion Gospel. We will be invited to stand, later. 

This homily is for All-Ages worship featuring a Scripture drama of the story of the Man Born Blind from John’s Gospel. 

What does it mean to be blind? … 

Does anybody know someone who’s blind? … 

We depend on our eyes a lot. But we have other senses too. 

Close your eyes for a minute and notice what you hear, what you feel, what you smell…

Many people who are blind really use their sense of hearing, and their sense of touch. This is an example of a prayer book made for people who are blind, who read with an alphabet called Braille, that you read with your fingers!… 

We used to have a member of this congregation who was blind. His name was Jerry. He died about nine years ago. 

Once when we had this story about the blind man in church, 

I asked him about it, after church.

I asked him: Does it bother you when the Bible talks about being blind like it’s a bad thing?

And he said, “No, it doesn’t bother me. Being blind is just part of who I am. I met my wife because I was blind. I spent my life helping other blind people learn how to care for themselves. Being blind isn’t a burden for me, so I don’t mind how people talk about it.” 

For the young man in the story, the problem isn’t really that his eyes don’t work.

The problem is that people around him see that as a problem.

Can people who are blind have jobs?

Can people who are blind get married and have families, if they want to?

Can people who are blind participate in their communities?

Can people who are blind have full, happy, interesting lives?… 

Of course they can.

In the time of Jesus, there wasn’t a lot of understanding or support for people with disabilities. 

This young man was a beggar – that means he would just sit beside the road and beg, ask people for money. 

It’s probably not what he wanted to do.

It sounds pretty boring, frankly.

But the people around him couldn’t imagine anything else for him. 

Maybe that’s why Jesus healed him.

Not because his blindness was a problem,

But because the way people thought about his blindness was a problem.

They thought it might be a punishment, because he had done something bad; and they definitely thought it meant he couldn’t do normal things.

So Jesus healed him to free him from all those ideas. 

Those kinds of ideas are still around!  

We have come a long way, but we STILL sometimes think that people with disabilities have to live small, limited lives. 

To think that the disability is the problem,

Instead of thinking that the way we do things to exclude people with disabilities might be the problem. 

Let’s talk about the word disability. 

Have you heard that word before?… 

The Americans with Disabilities Act, or ADA, an important law in our country, says that a person with a disability is someone who “has has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activity.”

That was a bunch of big words. 

Let’s say the same thing more simply:

A person with a disability has something going on with their body, or their mind, that keeps them from doing some of the big things people normally do.

What do we think about that definition?…

Think about the young man in the story.

Is it his blindness that keeps him from doing the normal things that other people do, or is it the way other people think about his blindness?…

Hmm. We might not really know, but we can wonder about it. 

Let’s look at another definition of disability. 

This one comes from the World Health Organization. 

They say:

“Disability is part of being human.

Almost everybody will temporarily or permanently experience disability at some point in their life.”

That’s a big idea, isn’t it?

A few years ago St. Dunstan’s made a decision to spend a lot of money putting in an elevator. Before that we just had stairs between the levels of our main building. 

When we think about who might have trouble walking up stairs, we might think of older people who use a cane or walker or wheelchair.

But you know what?

When I was eight, I broke my leg. And my church didn’t have an elevator. And there was a flight of stairs up from the main door to the church, and there another flight of stairs up to the level with the Sunday school classrooms.

And my Sunday school teacher just carried me up to Sunday school. Lucky I was only eight and small enough to carry!!

Okay, let’s go back to what the World Health Organization says about disability. 

They say, “Disability results from the interaction between individuals with a health condition… with personal and environmental factors, including negative attitudes, inaccessible transportation and public buildings, and limited social support.”

Listen, this is important.

The ADA says disability means there’s something about a person’s body or mind that limits them.

The World Health Organization says: 

There’s a person with something different about their body or mind; and then there’s the world around them – the people, buildings, roads, schools, jobs, stores, all that stuff.

And disability happens when the world around that person doesn’t let them participate. 

Disability isn’t in the person.

It’s in the mismatch between the person, and everything around them that makes things difficult for them because of their difference. 

The World Health Organization says: 

“A person’s environment has a huge effect on the experience and extent of disability.”

This week I looked up an organization called Disability Rights Advocates. They bring legal cases to try and get companies and governmental agencies and other organizations to change how they do things to make it easier for people with various kinds of disabilities to do things. 

Here are some cases they’ve been involved with recently. 

• A case in New York about kids with diabetes, an illness that can mean you need to check in with your body and sometimes do things to keep yourself healthy during the day. Public schools in New York City weren’t working with kids to help them be in school and do things like field trips and sports. Does that seem right? … 

I think this is a really good example of the idea that disability is really between the person and their environment. 

There’s nothing about diabetes that should keep kids out of school – if the schools just commit to supporting them!

Now those schools have been ordered to help and support those kids so they can do school stuff like any other kid. 

• [A case in California where people who had trained as social workers, to be helpers in their community, and did really well in their training and wanted to do their work, couldn’t get hired if they had a diagnosis of a mental illness… even if it’s not impacting their work at all! Does that seem right? … ]

• We have an election in a couple of weeks – has anybody ever gone with their parents to vote? Do you know what a ballot looks like? … 

Here’s a printed-out sample ballot. It doesn’t look very much like the real ones, but it gives you the idea. You just use a pen to fill in the little circle next to the choice you want to make.

How would you do that if your eyes didn’t work?… 

Yeah, you’d probably have to have somebody do it for you. But what if you don’t have somebody you really trust to mark your ballot the way you want to? 

You could be losing your vote. Does that seem right? … 

With our technology today, we can create machines that allow people who are blind to vote privately and safely! 

There have been recent legal cases in Indiana and North Carolina forcing the states to do a better job of making those options available. 

Let me come back to our Gospel story, our Gospel drama, today. 

The story is playing around with the idea of being blind, unable to see. There’s a young man whose eyes don’t work.

But his heart and mind understand things just fine. 

And then there are also some people whose eyes work, but they don’t see what’s right in front of them. 

Their minds are made up and their hearts are closed and nothing is going to change how they see things. 

At first, they don’t believe that the man was really healed. They think it’s a trick or a mistake.

And then they’re convinced that the man was healed,

and they know that that was a wonderful, amazing miracle –

but they can’t see what that means about Jesus. 

That Jesus does good things because Jesus is good;

that Jesus does powerful, holy things because he is God’s Son. 

They don’t believe it, so they can’t see it. 

I think one thing this story wants us to carry away is to keep our eyes open, as we go through life – not just the eyes in our faces, but also the eyes in our minds and our hearts. 

Be willing to see things that surprise and challenge us. 

Be ready to learn, and to have our minds changed. 

Look for goodness wherever it shows up, because all goodness points to God. 

I also think this story can invite us to think about disability.

And how disability lives between a person and their environment. 

I wonder who really needed to be healed, in this story: The man who was born blind, or the people around him who thought he was less important, and that he didn’t have anything to offer to his community, because his eyes didn’t work. 

I am learning about disability.

I am trying to pay attention to my words and my thoughts and to the assumptions I make about people whose bodies or minds are different in certain ways.

I wonder how our church could be more truly welcoming and inclusive of people with differences and disabilities, and how we could help speak up for their needs, too. 

If you have ideas, or if you want to wonder with me, let’s talk. 

Thank you to our actors! … 

Read John chapter 11 here. 

1. The raising of Lazarus – next of our extended scenes from John’s Gospel. 
   1. Following Nicodemus’ visit and Photini, the woman at the well. 
   2. I learned in seminary that there’s a view that the Jesus of John’s Gospel is very unemotional, impassive – doesn’t seem to suffer or struggle, even on the cross. 
      1. I wonder if that’s true to John’s Gospel or to how we read John’s Gospel.
         1. Humor and wordplay that we easily miss because we’re not looking for it; emotion too? 
   3. But even if you see John’s Jesus as a very stoic figure, this story a big exception, because it contains what is famously the shortest verse of Scripture: Jesus wept. 
   4. So let’s talk about feelings, emotions, in this Gospel story. 

2. Mary and Martha’s Feelings
   1. Interesting overlap between John and Luke – many differences, but both have stories about Jesus’ friendship with sisters Mary and Martha. 
      1. Luke 10: Martha is busy preparing a meal for an honored guest; Mary sits at Jesus’ feet listening.
      2. Lots to say about that story – mention it because dynamics of sisters seem to match John’s account.
         1. Martha: trying to hold it together and make sense of things, come to some sense of peace that will help her move forward.
         2. Mary: overwhelmed with emotion, weeping at Jesus’ feet. 

2. 2. Both sisters start their dialogue with Jesus the same way: Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 
      1. Tendency to read it backwards from resurrection – Lazarus’, and Jesus’. Sad, but calm. Anticipating grief resolved and transformed. 
      2. What if we read it as angry? Even as bitter? 
      3. (Read it a couple of times)

2. 3. If you attend funerals with any regularity, part of this passage may be familiar.
      1. Jesus’ dialogue with Martha is a funeral gospel.
      2. Appropriate and powerful.
         1. Martha is a lot like us, when we’re dealing with a death. 
         2. Strives to trust in resurrection. But also – like us – she grieves an immediate loss. 
         3. Swanson: “[Martha] sees to the heart of things: of course she trusts that the dead will be raised… She expects that God will regather all the faithful and balance all accounts… But she also knows that [an eventual] general resurrection has no immediate impact on the fact of bereavement.  Lazarus, her brother is dead.  Trust in God’s ultimate balancing of accounts does not dull the slicing agony of losing him.”
         4. [breath pause]
      3. Martha’s bereavement is unexpectedly reversed. But her feelings, in this moment, are so true, so real. 
      4. Jesus’ response – pointing to a life beyond this world. A life in God beyond earthly death. 
      5. Martha’s response – she doesn’t say, Yes, I believe that. She says, I believe in You, Jesus. Her trust, her hope, her comfort is not in abstract ideas or doctrinal teachings but in her friend, whom she also knows as her Messiah. 

3. Jesus’ Feelings. 
   1. There’s a LOT about Jesus’ emotions in this passage!
      1. He loves Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. A close friendship – attested in two quite different gospels. 
      2. Other than that, through the conversation with Martha, he sounds pretty calm: Johannine impassive Jesus. 
      3. But then Mary throws herself at his feet, weeping, and the group that gathered to console the sisters are also weeping, and things get interesting. 
   2. NRSV, verse 33: “When Jesus saw [Mary] weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.” [repeat]
      1. Sounds like a fancy way of saying he was really sad. 
      2. David Bentley Hart: “He groaned in his spirit and yielded himself to his turmoil.” 
      3. Richard Swanson: “Jesus snorted in disgust in breath, and shuddered.” 
         1. Quoting Swanson at length: “The word [translated as groans] … is generally translated so that the audience is given a glimpse into the tender inner workings of Jesus’ heart.  He feels bad that Lazarus is dead.  He even cries. What a guy. But the word does not refer to tender inner feelings. The word, [embrimaomai],  refers to the snorting of a warhorse. It should generally be translated as “snorted in anger.”  Inner feelings, especially in the face of bereavement, are surely difficult to express, and even harder to translate, but the word will carry with it a note of anger, disgust, even.” 
            1. (1) Suggests that translations that smooth this over are editing the Bible to match their ideas of who Jesus ought to be and what he ought to be feeling. 
            2. (2) Anybody who’s lost a loved one knows that people’s emotions around a death can be quite complicated and intense! 
         2. Swanson continues: “Jesus snorts in anger, maybe even in disgust.  Why? One possibility is that [being] scolded by Martha… drove him over the edge.  He was angry, and the storyteller shows us the anger… Another possibility is that Jesus is angry with himself.” 
            1. (1) Swanson says there’s a prefix on the word that points it inward. 
            2. (2) “Such a reading would give us a Jesus who has just now realized the real-world, real-sister impact of his choice to delay,  It is a fine thing to do things so that ‘the Son of God may be glorified.’  It is another thing to crash two sisters hard into raw grief that he could have prevented.”

3. 3. Circling us back to the beginning of this passage and Jesus’ decision not to rush to Bethany, upon hearing that Lazarus is ill.  
      1. Church’s teaching: Jesus fully human and fully divine. 
         1. Does that mean his knowledge, understanding, and decisions are always perfect? 
         2. Or was part of the point of becoming human, for God to understand us better by living a limited, uncertain, vulnerable life like ours? 
         3. Did being fully human mean for Jesus, as it surely does for us, that sometimes we don’t understand the implications of our choices and actions? Sometimes we regret things done and left undone? 
      2. The story invites us to assume Jesus always planned to resurrect Lazarus, to raise him from the dead. 
         1. He’s healed the sick before. Time to go big. 
         2. How to interpret his delay: Either he knows about the sisters’ grief and doesn’t care, because his agenda of escalating miracles is more important; OR … he doesn’t really understand the stakes until he’s face to face with it. Until he sees Martha’s anger and Mary’s tears. 

3. 3. 3. Which Jesus do you prefer? Which Jesus is easier to love, to trust? 
         1. For me, it’s the Jesus who has a great plan… and doesn’t fully recognize its costs until he sees his friends in pain. 
         2. And I think the plain reading of this passage fits this understanding of Jesus. A Jesus who learns, changes, and grows – as fully human, and fully divine. 
         3. This is why – in that famously brief verse – Jesus weeps. The enormity, the absoluteness of loss, when experienced from the human, earthly side of things, has just dawned on him. He finally knows – finally feels – what it’s like to lose someone, for good. He weeps. 

4. Let me say one more thing, briefly, about where this story fits in our trajectory towards Holy Week. 
   1. We have switched the order of our Gospel passages for this week and next week, so that our kids can work with the story of the Man Born Blind in All Ages Worship next week.
   2. For John, this story leans heavily towards the cross. Listen to the verses that immediately follow it: 
      1. “Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what he had done. So the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the council, and said, ‘What are we to do? This man is performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.’  But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, ‘You know nothing at all! You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.’ … So from that day on they planned to put him to death…” 
   3. Jesus enters Jerusalem for Passover, greeted by excited crowds, in the next chapter. We are close to the endgame. 
   4. Orthodox churches observe Lazarus Saturday, the day before Palm Sunday –  because this miracle, and the reaction against it as told by John, so clearly pivot the Gospel towards its final and necessary chapter. 
   5. I’m a little sorry to disrupt that escalation by moving this story earlier. But maybe it’s not so bad. 
      1. Palm Sunday and Good Friday can come at us fast. 
      2. Not always time to take in how quickly and completely the tide turns against Jesus. 
      3. So this year, at least, we are taking a little extra time to know where all this is leading. 
      4. Next week we’ll hear about another disruptive miracle next week, with an awareness of the deepening shadow of fear and judgment hanging over Jesus. 
      5. Let’s continue the journey, friends. 

Richard Swanson on Jesus’ snorting in anger:

https://provokingthegospel.wordpress.com/2017/03/29/a-provocation-the-fifth-sunday-in-lent-april-2-2017-john-111-45/

NOTE: Due to travel this week, my sermon is an outline rather than a full text. I know this makes it harder to read; sorry!

Read the Gospel text here. 

1. INTRO
   1. Never really preached this
   2. Overwhelming text; lifetime of sermons
   3. Can only say one or two things today! 

2. The Woman
   1. Foil for Nicodemus, prev chapter
   2. Man/woman
   3. Midnight/noon
   4. Insider (Jew)/outsider (Samaritan – worse than Gentile) 
      1. Dynamics of mutual dislike
   5. High status/low status
      1. What to make of her marital status. 
      2. Who divorced who? 
      3. Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe 
      4. How is she seen? How does she see herself? 
         1. “Come see this man who told me everything I’ve ever done!” 

2. 6. Final contrast with N: She asks questions! She pushes back! Where N shuts up/shuts down. 
      1. Commentator: Jesus kind/patient with her. 
         1. I think he likes this give and take. 

3. LISTEN to the exchange. 
   1. DEFAULT “reading the Bible out loud in church” style. How we usually read Scripture. 

3. 2. Urgency. The woman is a seeker, looking for something she can’t find – big questions, deep yearnings. Jesus longs to connect with her, offer her wholeness and hope. 

3. 3. The third time, read it as a flirtation. Wells are places of romantic encounter.
      1. Richard Swanson names this as a possible reading, and it works. 
      2. He calls this scene part theological seminar and part flirtation. 
      3. This will be uncomfortable!  But it is NOT in fact heresy. Mystical traditions… if God is love then all forms of love are God’s.

4. What’s the point of the exercise?… 
   1. Dialogues in John: Getting to know Jesus. 
      1. Breaking from usual church “Jesus voice” to explore. 
      2. None of these readings are outside the possibilities of the text we receive; others may well be possible as well.

5. New idea for me: Significance of this story for the church at time when it was written down. 
   1. Specifically, for the Johannine Community. 
   2. Gospel of John – “Beloved Disciple” – John in other Gospels. 
   3. Big differences from other Gospels; diff understanding of Jesus’ teachings & mission 
   4. Community gathered around BD/John early on; shared and taught them; became a distinct group, recording a distinct witness. 

6. So: what was the importance of this story for the Johannine Community? 
   1. BRIEF look at some big ideas; I have just scratched surface myself! 
   2. Raymond Brown: Story explains presence of Samaritan converts in Johannine community.
   3. JC might have had an earlier understanding/lived experience of Jesus’ mission to ALL people than the rest of the church – 
      1. which tied in with a higher Christology, universal/cosmic significance of Jesus – 
      2. Both early non-Jew members & early high Christology could have pushed JC away from mainstream early church understanding of Jesus and ecclesiology.

6. 4. LIKEWISE, story might have justified role of women as evangelists. Clues: 
      1. “Come and see!” – John 1, Jesus gathering disciples – invitation to discipleship. 

6. 4. 2. “Many believed because of her testimony” – Sharing testimony that leads others to belief is a core mission for John’s Gospel. Repeated theme.  She lives it out! 

6. 5. SO: Perhaps JC had non-Jews & women evangelists; perhaps this story – whether recording a memory or tradition, or not – was important because it explained and justified those distinctivenesses. 

7. Importance of story for OUR faith community?
   1. Big question!! Lots of possible directions. 
   2. Today, one thing: Jesus wants to be in conversation with us.
   3. Might sound weird and abstract. I mean it as literally as possible given that Jesus is not usually physically present in this world. 
      1. I’ve had a number of conversations with Jesus over the course of my life. (In some sense my whole life so far is one long, often very slow conversation with Jesus.)
      2. Through Scripture, prayer, often other people, sometimes signs or moments of insight, sometimes a voice within or just a deep knowing. 
      3. Not as direct as talking with another human; but not metaphorical. I’m talking about asking Jesus about the things that I struggle with and yearn for and wonder about, and getting… sometimes answers, sometimes reframing or redirection or reassurance. 
      4. Personal relationship with Jesus – one of many things we’re not going to let evangelical Xty steal from the rest of us.  
         1. Know it may be triggering idea for some, and just plain alien for others. 
         2. How can I help? … 

7. 3. 5. One upshot of these intimate, personal conversations in John (Nic & the Woman, so far): Jesus cares about individual people. 
         1. Wants to hear their questions; name needs; push towards new understandings. 
         2. Not put off by challenges or questions. 
         3. Nothing about who we are or what we’ve done keeps him from wanting to talk about our big questions, daily struggles and joys. 

7. 4. Only one way this text might speak, but significant: Help us to imagine – to recognize – that Jesus sits down at the kitchen table in our hearts, asks us for a glass of water, and then waits to see what happens next.