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"This is the story of a God who often seems late, but a God who always comes."

3/26/2023

A WEEPING GOD
Sunday, March 26, 2023 – Lent 5
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell

John 11:1-45

Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” But when Jesus heard it, he said, “This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was. Then after this he said to the disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.” The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?” Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them.” After saying this, he told them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.” The disciples said to him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.” Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep. Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead. For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.” Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.” When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.” And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.

In seminary, I used to love a good theological argument – the more esoteric, the better!  My friends and I would gather for some food and then stay up until the wee hours of the morning, debating the minutiae of all we thought we knew. -- But then I got called to a parish and started to deal with real people’s problems; started to deal with my own real problems.  And suddenly, arguing about what one cannot possibly know just seemed silly or insulting or completely out of touch.  It was in dealing with real people’s lives that I began to see faith in God, not as a collection of answers and doctrines and theories, but TRUST, especially when one is not rescued.

But trust is a hard sell.   Many people come to faith precisely because they are looking for an answer; or better said, THE ANSWER.  They want a God they can understand, but more than that, they want a God who intervenes and saves us from all that frightens us.  But eventually, that expectation is bound to disappoint.

One day, Jesus received word that his dear friend Lazarus was desperately ill.   Lazarus lived with his sisters, Mary and Martha in a village called Bethany, just two miles outside of Jerusalem.  Lazarus had developed an odd cough, and at night a fever shook him.  With each passing day, he got weaker.  Finally, in full-blown panic mode, his sisters sent for their friend, Jesus.  Surely, he would have an answer.  Surely, Jesus would rescue them.

But Jesus delayed going to Bethany.  He delayed and said something odd about the illness of Lazarus being an avenue for the glory of God.  – And Lazarus died waiting for his friend.  Now, that’s hard enough to accept, but then this is harder: once Jesus heard that Lazarus had died, he didn’t rush to get there to comfort Mary and Martha.  Instead, he stayed where he was for two more days while the sisters grieved and wondered where their answer was.

When Jesus finally arrived in Bethany, Lazarus had been dead for four days.  And that’s a significant detail because the Judaism of the time taught that the spirit of the deceased lingered on earth for three days before passing the point of no return.  But this was the fourth day and that meant that all hope was gone.

When Martha heard that Jesus was approaching the village, she ran out to meet him on the road.  She ran, powered by grief and anger.  She ran, and as she ran, she wept. When she got to Jesus, she erupted: “Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died!” And then perhaps, in much quieter voice, she speaks words that can break your heart: “But I know even now that God will give you whatever you ask.”
And Jesus replied: “I am the resurrection and the life…”

Martha latched onto those words and ran home to get Mary. They sisters returned to Jesus, but now with a group of people.  And Mary collapsed at his feet and sobbed: “Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died.”

When Jesus saw the depth of their pain; when he saw the hole that death rips out of human lives, he was deeply moved.  The Greek word implies not only that he was moved, but that that he was angry.  And I like that detail very much because it is my own experience that grief is often experienced as anger; that fear is often fed by anger.  And seeing what death did to his friends; seeing what death does to us, Jesus began to weep.

“Jesus wept.” That is one of the most profound theological statements in the New Testament, for if you take the Incarnation at all seriously; if you believe that somehow Jesus is Emmanuel “God with us,” then that means that the Sovereign Creator of all that is, is deeply moved by our pain.  But God is more than just an observer of our pain.  God enters our pain.  What else can the cross mean?  And God weeps - great, copious tears.

Some people don’t like to talk about God like that.  They want a God who is a superhero: all powerful and far removed from the human condition.  They want a God who is THE ANSWER to all human pain.  But that is not the way we experience life or God.  And quite frankly, a weeping God is the only way that this Christian can make any sense of the pain of the world.   Theological arguments about God’s power and glory cannot comfort me in the graveyard of my life.  But a weeping God who stands beside me; a weeping God who hung on a cross, that is an image that I can grasp onto.

Of course, this story doesn’t end with weeping.  The story of God-with-us never does.  Jesus asked that the stone be rolled away from the opening of the cave.  And then he cried out in a loud voice: “Lazarus, come forth!”  And Lazarus did, still wrapped in his grave clothes, hands and feet tied, face covered with a grave cloth.  People gasped and mouths fell open.  And Jesus said: “Unbind him and let him go.”

I have loved this story for as long as I can remember.  When I was younger, I loved it most because Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, showing his power.  But the longer I live; the more grief I experience; the more that God does not rescue me from everything that frightens me, it is a more profound truth that I see.  This is the story of a God who often seems late, but a God who always comes.

In the mid 1990s, I worked at a large suburban church in New Jersey.  Like lots of churches back then, this one had a softball team.  And one of the star players was a young husband and father named Doug.  – One day, Doug hurt his knee sliding into home base.  It didn’t heal so he finally went for surgery at the Hospital for Joint Diseases in Manhattan.  I went to visit the day after surgery, but when I entered the room, the energy was dark and strange.  Doug and his wife told me that the doctors had found a malignant tumor on his knee.  And not just any tumor, but a rare and virulent form of cancer with no know treatment.  It took all of two weeks for Doug to die, leaving his family and parish in complete shock

During those two weeks, I made a number of trips to the hospital.  One day his wife asked me to step into the hallway, and without warning, asked me: “Why do you believe in God?”  I knew this question was coming directly from her suffering and from the despair of this hopeless situation.  She wasn’t looking for some esoteric theological argument.  She wanted to know what I thought and why I believe.

I can no longer remember the specifics of what I said to her, but it was something like this: “I don’t believe in God because of anything I have ever read or been taught.  I don’t believe in God because of the Bible or because of doctrine or theology.  -- I believe in God because when I have been in the depths of despair, I have known a companioning presence.  Sometimes it comes in people.  Sometimes it comes in words spoken, or in silence.  Sometimes it comes in my bittersweet longings or in my hot, angry tears.   And sometimes, God even comes by way of a felt presence that defies explanation.”  She held my gaze for a long time, and then, very quietly, she said: “Me too.”

It is absolutely normal for us to want to be rescued from our pain and fear.  “Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died; my sister would not have died; my husband, my wife, my partner, my dreams, my health, my faith would not have died.” And we weep for all that is lost.  But the one who catches all our tears in a bottle, stands weeping beside us.  This weeping God wraps us in the everlasting arms, and will never let us go.

But more than that, the weeping God stoops down to gather up all the broken pieces of our lives, all those things we count as lost, and from them fashions something new and unexpected.  We call that Resurrection.

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"They cannot believe in a God who would not follow their rules. And so, they choose the darkness of their own opinions."

3/19/2023

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BLINDED BY THE LIGHT
Sunday, March 19, 2023 – Lent IV
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell

John 9:1-41

As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, saying to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see.

The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?” Some were saying, “It is he.” Others were saying, “No, but it is someone like him.” He kept saying, “I am the man.” But they kept asking him, “Then how were your eyes opened?” He answered, “The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ Then I went and washed and received my sight.” They said to him, “Where is he?” He said, “I do not know.”

They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. Now it was a sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight. He said to them, “He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see.” Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not observe the sabbath.” But others said, “How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?” And they were divided. So they said again to the blind man, “What do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened.” He said, “He is a prophet.” The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight and asked them, “Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?” His parents answered, “We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; but we do not know how it is that now he sees, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself.” His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. Therefore his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.” So for the second time they called the man who had been blind, and they said to him, “Give glory to God! We know that this man is a sinner.” He answered, “I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” They said to him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” He answered them, “I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?” Then they reviled him, saying, “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.” The man answered, “Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” They answered him, “You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?” And they drove him out.

Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” He answered, “And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.” Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.” He said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped him.

Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.” 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 not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.

Nine years ago today, the Rev. Fred Phelps died.  And when he did, most of the world breathed a collective sigh of relief.

Fred was the founder and pastor of the infamous Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas – a congregation committed to this one message: God hates sin and because you are a sinner, God hates you.  This congregation is well-known for its protests at the funerals of fallen soldiers, whose deaths, they say, are America’s punishment for sin.  But so are dead children.  They gleefully protested at the funerals of the murdered children of Sandy Hook.  They are regulars at the burials of LGBTQ people, the subject of much of their anger.  Even Mr. Rogers could not escape their judgment.  When he died, they stood in the cemetery with signs thanking God that Mr. Rogers was in hell.

Fred Phelps did a great deal of damage in this world.  But before the damage, Fred actually did some good.  I was shocked to learn that before Fred became a hate monger, he was a civil rights attorney.  He was well-known for taking on those cases that no one else wanted, and winning many of them.  At one time, Phelps’s law firm made up one-third of the state of Kansas’s federal docket of civil rights cases. Even a local chapter of the NAACP honored him with an award.

So, what on earth happened to Fred?  How did this one so full of promise become so full of hate?  I don’t know the whole answer to that, but I do know that religion had a lot to do with it.

Religion has a lot to do with the hate that sets our world on fire, day after day.  People use religion and their sincerely held beliefs for all kinds of evil.  And if there is anything that causes me to struggle with my faith and my calling, it is that.

Of course, religion as a weapon; as a means of accumulating power and control is nothing new.  It’s as old as time.  And Jesus was well-acquainted with it.

There once was a man born blind.  And in that world and in that time, everyone was sure that someone was to blame for such misfortune.  Their religion had taught them that.  Even the disciples of Jesus wanted to know whose fault it was, this man or his parents, that such a tragedy had befallen him.  Imagine their great shock when Jesus replied: “It’s nobody’s fault.  It’s not because of sin.  Instead, this illness will be an avenue for the glory of God.”

Then Jesus did a very odd thing.  He spat on the ground, mixed the saliva and dirt, and made a muddy poultice.  Then he rubbed it on the man’s eyelids and told him to go wash it away in the spring-fed Pool of Siloam.  And when the man did, lo and behold, this one who had never seen his own face, saw himself clearly in the cool water.  Oh, and by the way, all of this happened on the Sabbath.

When his neighbors saw the man with the sparkling, curious eyes, they didn’t recognize him.  Even when he told them who he was, they didn’t believe him.  And so, they took him to the religious authorities to have his story checked out.  And that’s when all hell broke loose - because the man described how Jesus had made some mud and rubbed it on his eyes.  And kneading mud with one’s hands was one of thirty-nine things expressly forbidden on the Sabbath.  And choosing mercy over the rules was proof to some of these religious gatekeepers that Jesus could not possibly be from God.  And furthermore, maybe this was all a ruse.  Maybe he had never been blind at all.  So, they called his parents in for an interrogation. “Yes,” they said, “he was born blind.  But how he can now see, we don’t know.  He’s an adult.  Ask him.”

And so, they asked the man again.  But this time, he answered their questions with increasing confidence.  And that’s a really interesting part of this story, because it demonstrates a healing of another kind.  Jesus restored his sight and Jesus restored his self-respect.  -- But the man’s confidence in his own experience angered those who thought they knew what everyone’s experience of God was supposed to be.  And so, they kicked him out and told him never to come back!

What a day!  His neighbors called him a liar. His parents abandoned him.  And the religious authorities abused him.  Who knew that miracles could be such pain in the behind?!

It was at very that moment that Jesus, who had been absent from this story for 27 verses, reappeared looking for the man.  And Jesus and the man had a conversation about who Jesus was.  And the man believed.  And the man worshipped Jesus – the only time in the entire Gospel of John that anyone worships Jesus.  -- And then Jesus made this rather enigmatic statement: “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.”

In the Gospel of John, seeing is a metaphor for believing.  And believing is not intellectual assent to some theological ideas or about knowing and following the rules.  It’s far more visceral than that.  Belief or faith is about trust and trusting those things we cannot see.  So, for example, do we trust God’s ultimate love and mercy, not just for ourselves, but for everyone else?

Which takes me back to Fred Phelps.  Fred seems to be a poignant example of the second part of Jesus’s statement about those who see becoming blind.  How else do you explain a Civil Rights lawyer becoming a perpetrator of hate?

We much prefer stories that go the other way.  We want stories about people who gain their sight, not about people who are blinded by the light.  Wouldn’t this be a better sermon illustration if old Fred had started out as a bigot and then, through the grace of Jesus, become a civil rights attorney?  Then we could all feel good and praise God together for the miracle of sight.

But the hard truth is that not everyone responds to the light of Christ with increased insight.  Some people, in the blaze of all that glory; in the light of all that mercy; in the brightness of that universal love – shut their eyes and refuse to see.  Because it’s just too much of a challenge to the way they think things ought to be.  They cannot believe in a God who would not follow their rules.  And so, they choose the darkness of their own opinions.

But then again, sometimes so do I.

I’ve been remembering all those times I hated Fred Phelps.  I hated him for what he said and the horrible damage he did and the grief he compounded, all in the name of God.  I hated him for making the Christian faith a mockery, and for giving Baptists such a bad name.  And when he died, I remember thinking that perhaps Fred deserved the hell he so delighted in consigning others to.

But truth be told, I have no idea how God dealt with his lost son, Fred.  But this I do know: when Fred died, suddenly he could see.  Fred was in the presence of the Light of the World.  And the mud of his prejudice and vitriol and hatred and personal pain was washed away from his eyes by the clear water of mercy.  -- And I can either trust that’s possible for everyone – even Fred.  Or I can choose to be blind.

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"But I also know how to prime the pump to get down to that living water. And so do you. You start by having an honest talk with Jesus."

3/12/2023

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THIRSTY
Sunday, March 12, 2023 – Lent 3
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell

John 4: 5-24, 27-30, 39-41

So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.” Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?” Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” They left the city and were on their way to him.

Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word.

My grandfather, Staff Sergeant David Campbell, was part of the D-Day Invasion.  He died a couple of weeks later, in one of the many skirmishes in the villages of northern France.  And he is buried in the American Cemetery in Normandy.  Marcos and I are the only people in my family who have ever been privileged to visit his grave.  It was a profoundly moving experience.  -- Some of you have family stories like that too.  Some of you have made tremendous sacrifices for this nation and its noble ideals.

Recently, I’ve wondered what my grandfather would think of this flippant talk of a national divorce, or the casual references to a new Civil War.  Didn’t we do that already?  And didn’t we already pay a horrible price?

But that’s the thing about political hatred and the lust for power.  They care nothing for those kinds of sacrifices.  And once the seeds of discontent and distrust are sown, they grow like weeds, and take on a life of their own.

Once upon a time, there was another deep division among people, and one that influenced the entire ministry if Jesus.  It was the enmity between Jews and Samaritans.  And it was all about politics and religion.

On this particular day, Jesus and his disciples had been out on a dusty road, underneath a broiling sun for hours.  They were traveling north from Judea up to Galilee.  And in between those two regions was a place called Samaria – a place to be avoided at all costs because… Samaritans lived there.   Most Jewish people would walk an extra nine hours around Samaria just to avoid “those people.”

So, who were they?  Well, Samaritans were the descendants of those Jews who, centuries before, had inter-married with the invading Babylonians.  They had slept with the enemy, so to speak.  And not only that, but over time they had integrated with their new neighbors, and had accepted some of the culture and customs and religious practices of the invaders.  That made them collaborators and pagans in the eyes of the faithful.  – But Jesus, as was his want, walked right into the middle of it all.

The disciples had gone ahead to buy some food and so, Jesus was on his own.  And John says that Jesus was tired.  And that little detail says a mouthful about the fulness of the Incarnation: our Lord, dusty and tired and thirsty.

Jesus came upon the legendary well of Jacob, and he sat down to rest.  Maybe he could smell that cold, crisp, delicious water.  But he had no bucket to lower into the well and nobody was around during the heat of the day, since water was routinely collected in the early morning before it got too hot.

Just then, through the shimmer of the radiating heat, Jesus saw a solitary figure approaching.  It was a woman, alone, carrying her water jar.  And when she got close enough, Jesus asked her to give him a drink.

Now, maybe it was his clothing.  Or his accent.  Or something about the way he looked, but she knew that he was a Jew.  And she knew that he didn’t belong there.  And she wondered if he was lost or just looking for trouble.  And so, she looked this stranger in the eye and said: “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman… of Samaria?”  And then the Gospel writer adds this note of explanation, just so we don’t miss it: (“Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.”).

What follows is the longest conversation that Jesus ever had with anyone in any of the four Gospels.  And when you read this whole passage (which we abbreviated for today’s reading), you will notice a kind of ebb and flow to it.  This conversation moves back and forth, like water, between the Son of God and this “other.”

A lot has been said and written about “The Woman at the Well” as she is known – most of it is bad.  Lots of preachers concentrate on what they perceive to be her sexual misconduct because of all those husbands.  And they cluck their tongues, and marvel that Jesus could forgive even that, and then tell the rest of us to behave.  But we have no idea of why she had been married so often.  Maybe her first husband died and then she was passed down to the surviving brothers, as was the custom of the time.  Or maybe she was thought of as defective because she couldn’t have children, and that was cause for a husband to divorce a wife.  At that time, only men could initiate divorce.  --So, her many marriages are interesting, but they don’t seem to be the issue.  Instead, her home life is an avenue for the kind of honest conversation where the truth can be told and received, and new life can begin.

What’s really interesting here is that in a world where women were second class citizens, Jesus treated this woman with respect.  And she responded to that respect with trust.  And in the ebb and flow of that kind of communication, salvation came to her – even those she was one of “those people.”  Because for Jesus, it was people over politics.  It reconciliation was the greatest good.

Perhaps the best-known part of this story is something Jesus called “Living Water.”  That’s what he offered to the woman.  And that’s what he offers to us.  The woman wanted to know where to find this magic spring.  And most of us are looking for it too – the answer to all of our problems.  And so, we grasp onto the latest fad or podcasts or supplements.  But Jesus said we don’t have to look any farther than our hearts.  Jesus said that the living water is already inside of us.  It’s just that sometimes the pump needs priming.  We need Jesus to ask us for a drink.  We need some truth-telling and honesty and willingness to love our enemies in order to get those waters flowing again.

That’s exactly what happened to her.  She engaged with Jesus and got him a drink.  And those waters bubbled up and quenched her thirst for respect and acceptance and salvation.  --She dropped her water jar and ran back into town and told anybody who would listen: “Come and see a man who told me everything I’ve ever done.”

I was fascinated this week to learn that this woman, so often stereotyped as immoral, is actually celebrated by certain Christians around the world.  In southern Mexico, La Samaritana is remembered on the fourth Sunday in Lent, when people share cool water flavored by fruits and spices in her honor.  For Orthodox Christians, she is known as St. Photini.  And her name means “equal to the apostles.”

Why?  Well, maybe because she was the very first person in the Gospel of John to announce that the Messiah had come.  She was the very first evangelist; the first to preach the Good News of Jesus Christ.  And apparently, her preaching was quite effective!  John says that Jesus and his disciples stayed there for two more days, and that many Samaritans came to believe in Jesus because of her testimony.

Jesus ignored the calls for political division and the dehumanization of the other.  He marched right into so-called enemy territory and then stayed there for a few days, accepting their hospitality and learning their stories.  And if we claim his name; if we call ourselves Christians, then we have our marching orders too.  We are called to be agents of reconciliation and peace in a divided and bitter nation and world.  Notice that Jesus and the woman did not agree with one another on the finer points of theology and politics.  But Jesus showed us that we don’t have to agree with someone in order to serve them and receive from them and to stay with them.  We just need to let the living water do its work in us – washing us clean and quenching our thirst.

Now I know that sometimes, my water is rather brackish.  It gets stagnant.  Sometimes it’s even a little poisonous.  Instead of the gush of living water, it’s just a pool of pride and arrogance.

But I also know how to prime the pump to get down to that living water.  And so do you.  You start by having an honest talk with Jesus.  And then, you get out in the world and serve others - especially the ones you don’t like.  And you tell the truth about yourself and trust that the love and grace of God can handle it.

That’s when the living water begins to flow again in me.  And I am washed clean again.  And my thirst for purpose and meaning and dignity and salvation is quenched again.  And I can stand in this place, or any place, and say with amazed joy: “Come and see the man who told me everything I have ever done… and loves me just the same.”

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"Worship is not meant to entertain us. Worship is meant to take us into the divine presence where sometimes the ground moves under our feet, and clouds of glory swirl..."

3/12/2023

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LIKE A DEVOURING FIRE
Sunday, February 19, 2023 – The Transfiguration of the Lord
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell

Exodus 24:12-18

The Lord said to Moses, “Come up to me on the mountain, and wait there; and I will give you the tablets of stone, with the law and the commandment, which I have written for their instruction.” So Moses set out with his assistant Joshua, and Moses went up into the mountain of God. To the elders he had said, “Wait here for us, until we come to you again; for Aaron and Hur are with you; whoever has a dispute may go to them.” Then Moses went up on the mountain, and the cloud covered the mountain. The glory of the Lord settled on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it for six days; on the seventh day he called to Moses out of the cloud. Now the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the people of Israel. Moses entered the cloud, and went up on the mountain. Moses was on the mountain for forty days and forty nights.

In my very first church, there was a young father named Mike, who had a spiritual awakening.  He had traveled that well-worn path from being a Sunday morning Christian to being someone who passionately wanted to follow Jesus seven days a week.  Mike was as enthusiastic as a puppy and as earnest as a young seminarian.  And he wanted everyone to know what he had found.  So, to spread the Good News, he slapped a bumper sticker on the back of his pick-up truck that read: “God is my co-pilot.”  And Mike would tell anyone who was interested exactly what that meant to him.

If you’ve ever seen the cockpit of an airplane, then you will understand something of what that expression meant to Mike.  To say that God is your co-pilot is a declaration of intimacy because cockpits are very small places.  In a cockpit, decisions of life and death are regularly made.  Pilot and co-pilot work in harmony with one another; sharing tasks and conversations.  To say that God is your co-pilot implies the kind of intimacy that is a hallmark of modern American Christianity.   That’s how we roll.  That’s how we like our God - casual and intimate and not too formal.

This intimacy with God is reflected in some of our best-loved hymns.  We sing “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” and “I Come to the Garden Alone.” The garden hymn, in particular, is so intimate that it borders on the romantic, with its refrain: “And he walks with me, and he talks with me, and he tells me I am his own, and the joy we share as we tarry there, none other has ever known.”

Now I do not mean to dismiss out-of-hand the notion of intimacy with God.  Each relationship with God is personal.  Jesus taught us to pray: “Our Father, who art in heaven…”. But the life of Jesus and the experiences of Jesus also shows us a God who is holy and wholly other.  You will remember that at his baptism, the sky was ripped in two and a voice came from the clouds, saying: “This is my Son, the Beloved.”  At his Crucifixion, the veil of Temple was torn from top to bottom, while the sky grew ominously dark, and there was a tremendous earthquake.  There were no eye-witnesses to the Resurrection, but it must have been infused with the very glory of God – raising Jesus from death to life.  And in today’s observance – the Transfiguration – we are confronted with such a moment of glory that humans stagger backwards, filled with wonder and awe and holy fear.

As the author Annie Dillard says in her book, Teaching a Stone to Talk:
“Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke (in church)? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? …It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.”[1]

Wonder.  Awe.  And holy fear.

“The Lord said to Moses, come up to me on the mountain, and wait there; and I will give you the tablets of stone, with the law and the commandment.”  So, Moses and some of his leaders set out to climb the mountain.  The leaders waited somewhere down the slope, while Moses continued to climb.  And he climbed and he climbed and he climbed until he reached the summit, where the air was thin and cold.  Sometime after he got there, an odd cloud covered the top of the mountain and the glory of the Lord settled among the heights.  The writer of Exodus described this glory of God as a devouring fire, a burning cloud swirling around the lofty peaks.

Moses entered the cloud, but, incredulously, he was not consumed.  He entered the cloud and there he stayed for six days in all that divine glory.  On the seventh day, the voice of God finally called out to Moses.  And Moses stayed on that peak for another forty days, receiving the law and the commandments.  Meanwhile, the people back in the valley must have wondered what on earth had happened to the man who disappeared in that ominous cloud of fire.

This is the story of a theophany.  A theophany, simply put, is a human encounter with the divine.  It is God made manifest to us.  It is a moment when the veil between this world that the other is temporarily lifted; a thin place, as the Celts called it; a moment of transcendent glory.

In the ancient world, theophany stories are found across cultures and religions.  And they are almost always set on mountaintops.  For ancient people, mountains were holy places.  They were closer to the heavens.  They were the pillars of the earth, literally holding up sky.  And so, as an ancient book, the Bible is full of mountaintop experiences – an expression we still use today.  So when Moses wanted to encounter Yahweh, he climbed a mountain.  And when Jesus was transfigured and shone like the sun, it was on top of a mountain.

There are many significant similarities between the stories of Moses on Mount Sinai and Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration.  But one of the most pronounced is how the humans reacted to the raw glory of God.  And trust me, it wasn’t to call God their co-pilot!  Exodus says that the ancient Hebrews were terrified of the consuming fire on the mountaintop.  And the Gospel says that Peter, James, and John were “overcome by fear” and fell to the ground when they heard the voice of God in the cloud.

Now, if you’ve listened to me preach for any length of time, then you know that I was raised on a steady diet of the fear of the Lord – a diet I would never recommend to anyone, with its potential for spiritual and emotional abuse.  --In my own case, and over a long period of time, I came to throw off those shackles and began to understand something of the amazing grace of God.  And then I fell in love with God.  But here’s what I’ve learned along the way: loving God is not the same thing as taming God. Loving God is not the same thing as understanding God or putting God in a box or making God your best bud.  Because when we do that, eventually, we get bored with God.  And boring is not what we need God to be.

Because we humans are naturally drawn to seek meaning beyond the everydayness of our lives.  Some of us look at the stars and the great expanse of the universe and whisper: “Oh my God…”  For others, it’s nature that takes your breath away.  Maybe the birth of a baby filled you with joy and trembling.  Perhaps you’ve witnessed a holy death in which the room was suffused with divine presence.  Maybe it was in the embrace of a lover that you knew something of transcendence.  Or maybe it was in church -- although though the chances of that are rather slim – because we want a God who is nice and predictable and easily controlled.

One of the great laments of the mainline church, and indeed, these days of all churches, is that we are shrinking.  And somewhere along the way, we decided that the best way to reverse that trend was to make church look and feel like everything else.  And so, we built churches that look like warehouses and we composed music with trite theology that sounds like jingles.  And we flock to sermons that reduce 2000 years of Christianity to pop psychology.  We decided that in order for the church to be relevant, it should be easy and familiar – a ready competition to every other entertainment.  And we do all of this at the same time that study after study indicates that many young people who were not raised in church are actually drawn to church when it is unlike every other experience they have in their daily lives.

Worship is not meant to entertain us.  Worship is meant to take us into the divine presence where sometimes the ground moves under our feet, and clouds of glory swirl, and love – deep and abiding and everlasting – holds this whole Universe together.

[1] Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters (New York: Harper & Row, 1982), pp. 40-41.

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"This is the story of a God who often seems late, but a God who always comes."

"They cannot believe in a God who would not follow their rules. And so, they choose the darkness of their own opinions."

"But I also know how to prime the pump to get down to that living water. And so do you. You start by having an honest talk with Jesus."

"Worship is not meant to entertain us. Worship is meant to take us into the divine presence where sometimes the ground moves under our feet, and clouds of glory swirl..."

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