What Got Into Him?

John 13:21-31

Maundy Thursday

April 17, 2014

William G. Carter

After saying this Jesus was troubled in spirit, and declared, ‘Very truly, I tell you, one of you will betray me.’ The disciples looked at one another, uncertain of whom he was speaking. One of his disciples—the one whom Jesus loved - was reclining next to him; Simon Peter therefore motioned to him to ask Jesus of whom he was speaking. So while reclining next to Jesus, he asked him, ‘Lord, who is it?’ Jesus answered, ‘It is the one to whom I give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish.’ So when he had dipped the piece of bread, he gave it to Judas son of Simon Iscariot. After he received the piece of bread, Satan entered into him. Jesus said to him, ‘Do quickly what you are going to do.’ Now no one at the table knew why he said this to him. Some thought that, because Judas had the common purse, Jesus was telling him, ‘Buy what we need for the festival’; or, that he should give something to the poor. So, after receiving the piece of bread, he immediately went out. And it was night.

The Bible story takes me back a moment when I was five or six years old. My mother parked in front of J.J. Newberry’s variety store, and helped my sister and me to get out of our seatbelts and take us shopping. But just as we walked into the store, there was a rough looking man with a black comb-over. He had a tattoo prominently displayed on his left shoulder, and a gold ring in his ear. She clutched our hands, pulled us toward her, and said, “Stay close.” Then she murmured, “He’s a bad man.”

I later learned she was responding to more than mere appearances. He was a local character. The man had recently gotten out of prison for doing time for some unmentionable act. In my mother’s world, at least at that time, a man like that should not have been walking the streets. “Stay close,” she said, “he’s a bad man.”

The experience still gives me pause. Was he a bad man because of something he did, or was there something wrong in his soul? It’s an ongoing question. We struggle to explain human lapses. Is it bad decision-making, or something far worse?

Every time the Gospel of John mentions Judas Iscariot, it gives him a swift kick and says, “He’s a bad man.” John says Judas was “a devil from the beginning.” (6:70)  He kept the finances for Jesus and his disciples, but John says Judas often put his hand in the money box to keep a little something for himself (12:6). This is the betrayer, says John. He was indifferent to the poor. He collaborated with Jesus’ enemies. Worst of all, the devil had crept into his soul. He was not clean.

Now this is how John tells the story, some sixty years after it happened. He and his church had some time to think about it. By the time John writes the book, his church saw the world as a struggle between dualities: good and evil, light and darkness, God and Satan. Jesus comes to the world in perfect goodness and the world smacks him back. This is the cosmic struggle of the Gospel. Jesus came to his own people, says John, and they refused him. It was a bad decision, to say the very least, and it was probably due to the pervasive power of evil.

Even so, we have to wonder about a few things. The first is this: Jesus chose Judas. It was his intentional decision to select him as a disciple. He was one of the twelve. He heard the teachings, he saw the miracles, he passed out the loaves and fishes, he took care of the finances. Sixty years after the fact, John declares in chapter six that Jesus knew from the beginning how Judas would betray him. He knew it, and he chose him anyway.

Not only that, in the account we heard tonight, it is Jesus who directs Judas to go and quickly do what he was going to do. Jesus (who knows everything) seems to be calling the shots for a man he chose who has Satan in his heart. Let that sink in for a minute . . . it sounds like the dark side of predestination, that God had a plan for Judas, that Jesus the Son knows the plan, and that Judas is playing a part in the plan for Jesus to save the world. Is he a bad man – or in some grander sense, is he doing what God wants him to do?

Of course, John is writing this story sixty years later, around 90 AD. And as he looks back, he remembers what God has done in Jesus Christ. Jesus is the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world. He takes it with him to the cross, where in a single act of glory, his self-giving love once and for all cancels the power of sin, and God raises him from the dead to speak peace and invite us to believe and receive God’s eternal life. John sees the whole thing and says it was a plan from the beginning of time. God wants to rescue the rebellious world that God himself loves.

So, is Judas a bad man? Or is he a bit actor in a much bigger plan? Here’s my conclusive answer: I don’t know.

What I do know is the story is as complicated as we are. The Bible reads us perfectly. If you look at the people around you, you can’t describe them in a simple diagnosis. That would be like that Far Side cartoon from years ago. A goofy looking man is babbling away on a psychiatrist’s couch and the shrink writes on his pad, “Just plain nuts.” Oh, if it were only that simple.

The other day, I was reading about a man named Cornealious Anderson of St. Louis. He was arrested and convicted for armed robbery thirteen years ago. He held up a Burger King store with a BB gun. The court said, “You’re going to jail,” but through a clerical error, they never came to take him away. Mr. Anderson was out on bail. He kept waiting, but the court never gave him a prison date. So he went about his business, got married, had some kids, learned a trade, got a job, started his own business, paid his taxes, renewed his driver’s license, and, generally speaking for the past thirteen years, straightened out his life.

Last summer a clerk discovered the old error and pretty soon a SWAT team knocked on Mr. Anderson’s door. At the time, he was fixing breakfast for his three year old daughter. He has been thoroughly rehabilitated, but the state of Missouri took him off to prison without so much as an apology.[1] Is he a bad man? Not any more.

So I wonder about Judas. I wonder about the rest of us. I believe God has reconciled the world to himself through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe God intended this from the beginning. I believe there is only one God, and regardless of evil and wherever it comes from, God is infinitely more powerful.

I also believe people are complicated enough to still create an awful lot of messes, both in their lives and in the lives of others. What gets into them? Is it Satan? Or are they just full of themselves? It may be too complicated to say, but the messes still happen. The very people God loves can fall down. The Messiah is betrayed.  

And so tonight, two words are offered to us from scripture. The first comes from an early preacher of the church, “Discipline yourselves; keep alert. Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour. Resist him!” (1 Peter 5:8-9). In my mother’s early warning, “Stay close.” Stay close to the protective power of love. For we have the ability to say No to all that can hurt, destroy, and betray. We need the clarity and courage of God to do so.

The second word comes from Jesus. It is the Christ who takes a piece of bread from his Last Supper table and gives it to Judas. He feeds Judas from the bread at the Table. And he hands us the same bread from the same table and says, “Take, eat, this is my body given for you. Do this, remembering me.”

Imagine this: to be so full of Christ that evil has no power over us! Now, there is a holy plan.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] http://news.yahoo.com/armed-robber-never-told-report-prison-195146743.html

Missing the Cues

John 12:9-19

Palm Sunday

April 13, 2014

William G. Carter

When the great crowd of the Jews learned that he was there, they came not only because of Jesus but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. So the chief priests planned to put Lazarus to death as well, since it was on account of him that many of the Jews were deserting and were believing in Jesus.

The next day the great crowd that had come to the festival heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord— the King of Israel!” Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it; as it is written: “Do not be afraid, daughter of Zion. Look, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey’s colt!” His disciples did not understand these things at first; but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written of him and had been done to him. So the crowd that had been with him when he called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to testify. It was also because they heard that he had performed this sign that the crowd went to meet him. The Pharisees then said to one another, “You see, you can do nothing. Look, the world has gone after him!”

One of the awkward truths about being human is that we miss a lot of things that are going on all around us.

Perhaps we are distracted. Or confused. Or we are simply not paying attention. For instance . . .

“Did you see that man who fell asleep in church?”  No, where was he? “He was sitting right next to you.” I guess I didn’t notice. I was listening to the trumpeter.

It happens a lot. The day dreaming motorist sits in front of a light turned green. The high school actor fawns over the attractive singer and forgets to go on stage. The young executive should have double-checked the zipper. All of us do this. Oblivious can be our middle name.

I had something horrible happen two weeks ago. After preaching for a big celebration in Abington, just north of Philadelphia, I greeted some people after the worship service. One of our talented church members was there. It was great to see him. He mentioned that church was only a short distance from where he is pursuing an advanced degree in physical therapy. I said, “Oh, this would be a great place to worship while you’re down here!” and made a mental note to mention it to the church’s pastor.

Then I turned to the next lady in line, an older woman on crutches. She had heard our conversation and smiled broadly. I pointed to Ben and said, “Ma’am, are you in need of a good physical therapist?” She said, “I would be, if I had another leg.” Oops! I had not noticed. Call me Captain Oblivious.

Ever have something like that happen to you? It is a common human problem. Something big is going on and we are fussing on the sidelines. We lean down to tie our shoe and miss the motorcade passing by.

It is a way to understand this Palm Sunday story. Jesus comes to town and people miss who he is. The Gospel of John isn’t the only one to say this.

In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus rides down the Mount of Olives on the donkey and he pauses midway to look at the Holy City. There is a chapel there now, in that precise spot, and it is shaped like a teardrop. It is said that Jesus wept there, gazing at the beautiful city, and he cried out, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, if only you knew the things that make for peace! But you can’t see them, for you miss who is visiting you.”

They don’t notice. The Passion story is a story about a lot of missed cues. A lot of people don’t observe what is going on right in front of their noses.

According to John, Jesus comes into the city with Lazarus. He has just raised Lazarus from the dead. The buzz is all over the region. The crowds are looking for him. The very serious religious officials are upset. “Look at this!” they exclaim. “We can’t do anything about this movement. We had better kill Jesus . . . and we had better kill Lazarus too, his sermon illustration.” It is one of the dumber things that anybody ever says in the Gospel of John: Jesus has raised Lazarus from the dead, so you’re going to kill both of them? Don’t you notice what kind of life-giving power is at work in the world?

John the Gospel-Writer is not beyond using irony. In fact, it’s often the main course on his banquet. One of the primary reasons he writes this book is to tell the truth about the human race. The truth is quite simple: In Jesus Christ, God comes to us and we don’t want him. We reject the Power that gives us life. We shrug off the Healing that can make us well. The Glory of the One True God shines bright but we put on sunglasses, and then we shut our eyes.

A friend named Rodger had an invitation to speak at a church in Alaska, all expenses paid. It was a long way from Atlanta where he lives. So he flew up to Alaska, took the ferry through the fjords, caught a ride, and got to the church. He said it was amazing. Right behind the pulpit was a huge glass window. Out there were mountains and glaciers, and a pristine lake. It was breathtaking, and it was behind him when he spoke.

At one point, he caught some movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned to see an eagle swoop down, snatch a trout, and then drop it in front of a Mama grizzly and her cubs. He said, “Wow! Did you see that?” The people in the congregation said, “Oh, we see it all the time.” Ho hum, no big deal.

I believe it was John Calvin who wrote that one of the main pieces of evidence for our sinful condition is that we ignore the glory of God when it is right in front of us. We are blinded by something we see all the time. We grow dull and stop paying attention.

Either that, or we filter it, as a way of making it more manageable. You know another missed cue when Jesus came into Jerusalem? The crowds thought he was coming to get rid of the Roman army. You know how we know that? They responded by using a political symbol: they waved palm branches.

In his new commentary on the Gospel of John, Dale Bruner reminds us that for a hundred years palm branches had been a sign of military power, especially subversive political power. When the Maccabeus family led a guerilla revolt against the occupying empire, the Jerusalem Jews celebrated by singing psalms and waving palm branches.[1] They have a long memory. They are thrilled because they believe it’s happening again.

That’s why Jesus counters by choosing a donkey to ride. Not a groomed white horse of victory, but a farm animal of low humility. That’s how God comes to town – humble, self-giving, winning over not armies but one person at a time.

Jesus has been through this before. In chapter six, he fed thousands of people, who then tried to force him to be their king. But he slipped away. He wouldn’t have it. Satan had offered him a crown in the wilderness, and Jesus said, “Get out of here!” His own people had offered him a throne and scepter, but he refused.

It’s not that he doesn’t care about politics. The Lord of Life is deeply concerned about the affairs of human beings, especially about their welfare and their ability to live with one another. But he doesn’t exert his authority as if he were a politician. As he will say to the politician Pontius Pilate at the end of the week, “My authority – my kingship – doesn’t come from around here.” Pilate, a career politician, doesn’t understand him either.

We have to welcome Christ on his own terms, not on our own. That’s difficult for us, because one of the highest human goals is getting our own way. We want to be self-determined, self-authenticated, self-righteous. We want to determine what kind of Christ we will get. And when the real Son of God comes to town, we miss him.  

I am not willing to criticize the crowds and the religious officials for this. My own soul is riddled with blindness and a good dose of cluelessness. There are many, many cues that I miss, and a great many more that I can’t respond to. Maybe it is the same for you.

So this time through Palm Sunday, I want to pay closer attention. As John tells the story, there are plenty of distractions. Over here is the resurrected Lazarus, the brand-new celebrity who still smells of embalming spices. His manager says, “Maybe we can get him on Dancing with the Stars.”  It’s all about the fame.

Listen to the cheers of the adoring crowds, ever hungry for Somebody to take charge and fix everything that’s wrong with their world. They are willing to alter one of their favorite psalms and cry out for a king. Did you know they do that? They change the words and say, “Come, O King,” as they wave their palm branches.

Meanwhile, the religious officials are in despair. They see their power slipping out of their grip and an uneasy truce with the Romans coming to an end. The whole world is going after that Jesus. That’s not true, you understand; the whole world is no more interested in Jesus than it ever was. But the Pharisees, the scribes, the priests, are feeling like their whole way of life is threatened. What are they going to do?

Lazarus, the joyful crowds, the religious officials – all of them are consumed with distractions. They are missing who it is who rides down the hill, into the city, and up to the cross. This is the One who gives us the life of God. This is the One who makes all things well. This is the One that most people miss because he comes calmly, simply, and humbly.

Maybe what we need this Palm Sunday is a little less cheering and a good deal more adoration. Maybe we need to watch him, to trust him, to love him. Maybe what we need is this humble, quiet man who is not turned aside by anything. He stays focused on his purpose: to give his life that we might have life. This is the work of God. Pay attention. Don’t miss it.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] F. Dale Bruner, The Gospel of John: A Commentary (Grand Rapids, Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2012) 708-710.

Easter Life in a Lenten Graveyard

John 11

Lent 5

April 6, 2014

William G. Carter

On a recent visit to Washington DC, I was reminded of what kind of world this is. My daughter and I went to visit the Hirshhorn Museum on the National Mall. It’s one of the modern art collections in the Smithsonian Institution.

The Hirschhorn is holding an exhibit on the theme of destruction. Destruction. Within a few steps of entering the exhibit, there are the remains of a grand piano after it was chopped up by an axe. Go a little further and there are photos of atomic explosions and abandoned automobiles rusting in lakes. You can watch footage of Yoko Ono in the days before John Lennon. She sits in a chair as people come forward with scissors and cut away chunks of her clothing. A mattress is posted on the wall after it has been incinerated. At the end, there are a series of photos of what happens in a crematorium.

Destruction. Death and destruction. What kind of world puts these things on display? The kind of world that we live in. Some would say this is a world enchanted with its own demise. Others would simply declare what the museum curator declares: that we live with destruction and death every day.

As the apostle Paul quotes from one of the Psalms, “We are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.” [1]

Word comes to Jesus that his friend Lazarus is near death at his home in Bethany. Lazarus is special. The Gospel of John calls him “beloved,” the friend whom Jesus loved. In a very curious move, Jesus stays where he is. He waits intentionally until his friend passes away, and then he moves toward the tomb.

He is met first by Martha, then by Mary. Both sisters wanted Jesus to come and prevent the death. They want him to cure their brother and keep him around for a while. But Jesus doesn’t do that. Instead he waits long enough for his beloved friend to die and be buried. He skips the funeral. It is not that he doesn’t care about his beloved friend. No, it’s that Jesus is indifferent to death.

I am going to guess that the Lord would probably skip the exhibit at the Hirschhorn Musem. He’s not interested in destruction. If we recall the opening words of the Gospel of John, we will remember why. In that peasant’s tunic, hidden in the splintered hands of the Carpenter, is the One through whom all things were made. John says, “What came into being through him was life, and the life was the light of all people” (1:3-4). Don’t bother him with death; the Jesus of John’s Gospel is only interested in life.

Life blows in the window on the wings of God’s Spirit, free and powerful. Nicodemus wondered, “How can this be?” Life wells up like a fountain and spills freely for all who will drink it. The Samaritan says, “Really? Where is your bucket?” Jesus heals the crippled person, then the sightless person, without restriction. The religious officials said, “You can’t do that; we have a Bible that says God can only act on certain days of the week.”

Now he stands before the sealed tomb of Lazarus. He says, “Roll away the stone,” and Martha replies in good King James English, “But Lord, he stinketh.” Ignoring her, ignoring the hired mourners, ignoring Death itself, Jesus bellows, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man stands up, now full of life, and the Lord of Life gives the order to unbind him and set him free. We live in a world burdened and bound by death; and Jesus gives life – full life, abundant life, God’s eternal life to a world obsessed with death.

Maybe it’s just me, in my wild imagination, but I wonder about hypothetical things. Would Abraham Lincoln beat Jefferson Davis in a game of bowling? Would Martha Stewart ever sit at a church potluck dinner without trying to improve it? Here’s my wild hypothetical thought this week: would Jesus pay good money to go to a zombie movie?

I say that with all seriousness. What’s this current obsession with the walking dead? What’s behind all of that? Are we so obsessed with death that we are afraid its representatives will stalk us, hunt us down, and eat our brains? What’s with that? Are we so fearful of the future, or sufficiently fearful that there’s not going to be a future, that we dream up these nightmares about the undead taking over the world? Somehow I think if Jesus bothered to go to a zombie movie, he would shut it down. He is not interested in celebrating death. He comes to give life. Easter life.

But it’s still Lent, you say. Easter doesn’t come for a couple of weeks. Fair enough. For that, we have the strange and unusual Gospel of John. John tells of Jesus going to the tomb of Lazarus when it’s on his timetable. He doesn’t drop everything to hurry up and fix his dying friend. No, death has its business to do. When Jesus goes it will be for an opposite reason.

When Jesus gets there, he sheds a tear. The people standing around say, “Ah, look at that. See how he loved him!” Well, they don’t understand. Sure, Jesus loves his friend, the one who is called “beloved.” But the reason he is there is to give him life, to freely give him that gift from heaven. And Jesus knows if he brings Lazarus out of the tomb, a world obsessed with death is going to put him into the tomb. That is why he weeps.

This is John’s version of the Garden of Gethsemane. This is the moment of commitment, when Jesus decides to give God’s eternal life to Lazarus, even if the backlash will kill him. That’s how the Gospel of John tells the story. We will hear more of it next week in his version of Palm Sunday.

For today, it’s enough to remember where we live. A large part of our world believes it is a Lenten graveyard, a valley of dry bones, with no hope, no breath, no power. Many churches are dwindling or dumbing down. The wider culture has forgotten its Christian influences. Greenland is thawing. CNN is obsessed with the technological failure of airplane tracking systems. And somebody out there is making blockbuster movies about zombies. The only conclusion: the whole place is falling apart. Maybe you are fearful of that, too.

If so, I commend to you Jesus of Nazareth. He doesn’t obsess about death because he’s free of it. He comes with the life of eternity, to give it freely to anybody who wants it, to give it to Lazarus who ran out of time before he could ask for it. To take hold of this life, you simply have to trust that is why he has come, and what he has come to do – to give life to you and to the world. Just trust that. That’s the essence of faith.

As somebody has said, “Apart from trust in God, the world is a cemetery, but into the world God has sent in Jesus Christ the offer of resurrection, the opportunity to pass from death to life. Just as the crowds wanted bread and he offered Bread, so here the sisters want their brother returned and Jesus acts to restore the world to life. To act in this larger life-giving way means Jesus must move to his own death, and so he does.” [2]

To come to faith, to come to Christian faith, is to trust that the life God gives is stronger than death. Even if we can’t see it, we can trust it. And it shapes how we live.

Yesterday my friend Virginia Miner reminded me of a story about the medieval Christians. They believed Jesus gives life. They believed eternal life begins in us when we start to trust the life-giving God with our hearts. So in the Middle Ages, when famines and plagues came to town, the Christians were the last to leave. They stuck around because there were people to be cared for – and they weren’t afraid of dying. Of course. Living with God here and how, living with God eternally – it’s one and the same. And there’s holy work to do.

Lazarus is raised from the dead. He’s going to die again. But living or dying, he is going to remain with Jesus. So what’s the difference?

That’s the eternal life – or more properly translated, the life of eternity. It begins at the point of our faith and trust, and it just keeps going forever. Jesus commits himself to giving us this. He dies, yet he says, “I am the resurrection. I am the life.” Then he gives that profound paradox: we die but we live - or we never die. It’s a paradox that makes complete sense if we are full of life.

A Lenten graveyard? But Easter life. Always Easter life. I conclude with a poem by Julia Esquivel, a remarkable poet from Guatemala. She loved the poor, remembered those who were forgotten, and was exiled from her native country because of her Easter poems. One of those poems goes like this:

I am no longer afraid of death
I know well
Its dark and cold corridors
Leading to life.
I am afraid rather of that life
Which does not come out of death,
Which cramps our hands
And slows our march.
I am afraid of my fear
And even more of the fear of others,
Who do not know where they are going,
Who continue clinging
To what they think is life
Which we know to be death!
I live each day to kill death;
I die each day to give birth to life,
And in this death of death,
I die a thousand times
And am reborn another thousand
Through that love
From my People
Which nourishes hope! [3]

Do you know why I like that poem? Sounds like Jesus.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] Romans 8:36, cf. Psalm 44:22

[2] Fred B. Craddock, John: Knox Preaching Guides (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1982) 85.

[3] Julia Esquivel, Threatened with Resurrection: Prayers and Poems from an Exiled Guatemalan (Elgin: Brethren Press, 1982) 65.

Words by the Well

John 4:5-29

Lent 3

March 23, 2014

William G. Carter

"Come and see a man how told me everything that I had done. You don't think this is the Messiah, do you?"

It is always risky to end a sermon with a question. The preacher can ask something and leave it dangling in the air, like a piece of fruit hanging from a tree. The curious will come close, survey what they see, and declare, “It looks like a piece of fruit.” Others will keep walking by, unwilling to stop, going wherever they thought they were headed. It’s only the hungry who reach out, grab the fruit, and take a bite. Everybody else passes by.

This anonymous Samaritan woman is the first female preacher in the Gospel of John. She leaves behind her water jar, goes back to her village, finds some townspeople and asks, “You don’t think this could be the Messiah, do you?” Her question stays dangling in the air.

Now, if you know the rest of the story, you know it’s enough for the whole hungry town to search for Jesus and ask him to stay with them for a while. They come to trust that he is the One who satisfies every human longing. But we never learn what happens to this woman. She is quickly dismissed offstage. Her job was to ask the question of neighbors who will move on beyond her. To this day, nobody ever remembers her name.

What we remember is the conversation. That’s what John gives us. It is the longest conversation that Jesus has with any single person in the whole Bible. He talks longer with her than any conversation he ever has with Peter, James, or John. He speaks with her longer than his backstage conversation with Pontius Pilate.

I can’t tell you what a remarkable conversation this is. He is a Jew, she is a Samaritan. She is a woman, he is a man. They step over the barbed wire of racial differences and religious divisions, to say nothing of the cultural rules that declare men should never talk to women in public.  

Jesus starts the conversation. “Give me a drink.” She is astonished that he speaks to her, and she is feisty enough to tell him so.

Jesus pushes back. If you knew this is, he says, you would ask him for living water. She replies, “Where’s your bucket?”

Leading her into the depths, he speaks of the gift of living water which gushes up into the life of the eternal God. She says, “I’ll take it.” She’s tired of being thirsty and weary of going to the well.

What she doesn’t know is this is John’s version of Jesus. According to the Gospel of John, Jesus knows everything. He knows she has been discarded by five husbands in a row. That’s how it worked back then. The husbands had the authority to get rid of their wives, even if it was the smallest matter that prompted the dismissal. Jesus knows this woman’s wound. He knows her pain, he knows her disillusion with one marriage after another. More to the point, he knows her. He is the One who will later say in this book, “I am the truth” (14:6) and he knows the truth about her. He comes that close and he stays there.

Well, it’s a little too close, so she steps back and puts up a barrier. She decides to pick a fight about religion: “This Samaritan mountain is our holy mountain, but you Jews say the holy mountain is in Jerusalem. We’re different, you know. We have separate temples on separate mountains.”

Jesus says, “Lady, God is not bound to a mountain nor a city. We’re talking about God, the Source of all life. God is Spirit, free like the wind.”

I can see her pausing to consider this. Then she says, “I know that Messiah is coming.” Jesus looks at her and, with the full weight of the Old Testament, he says, “Yahweh! I am.” It’s a holy moment, a holy holy moment. . .

. . . So leave it to the twelve disciples to bumble in at that precise minute, to interrupt the whole thing, and to murmur among themselves, “Why is he talking to her?!?” She is a Samaritan, she is a woman. She’s standing by the well at high noon with none of the other villagers around, so they can only guess what kind of person she is – and Jesus is talking with her. Surely they murmured, “What’s going on here?” and they missed that Jesus has revealed to her who he is.

Please note this is a conversation. Not a one-sided speech. Not a defensive statement of theology. It’s  a conversation. It moves from the shallow end of the pool into great depths. We never actually find out if Jesus got his cup of water. That’s not the point of the conversation. The point is that the woman came for water and she left with the well.[1]

Even so, as she scurries off to spread the word to the townspeople, the thing she talks about is the thing she can’t totally possess. “There’s a stranger who told me everything about myself.” She can only invite others to “Come and see.” Then she dangles the really big question in the air: “You don’t think this might be the Messiah, do you?”

We’ve heard a conversation about faith, about the kind of faith that gives us life and trust. That’s the living water that Christ gives. To hear other people talk about it, faith should never have any questions, just an orderly stack of answers. God says THIS. Jesus is THAT. There should be no discussion, only the description of correctness, what we should and ought to believe.

Ever hear anybody talk like that? I’m afraid what they are missing is what John says about God, both in this story and the story last week of Nicodemus. God is Spirit. The Spirit blows where the Spirit blows. That is how God is – free, unbound, wild, life-giving to whomever God provides such abundant life. It’s going to be frustrating for anybody who confuses faith with certainty, especially anybody who handles the things of heaven with a lot of their own control needs.

Faith is what comes as a gift, like living water from a Savior who has no bucket. Faith can blow in on the Spirit’s wings, and for the minute we may see everything we need to see. We trust the Source. We experience the kindness of heaven. But just as quickly it comes, it can slip away. That’s the nature of faith, at least as the Gospel of John describes it. Faith is not something we convince ourselves into believing. Rather it’s the evidence of God’s Spirit blowing freely upon us, bringing us to moments of understanding, filling us with trust.

You know something? Other than Jesus, in the Gospel of John there is not one person whose faith is finished and complete. Not one. Last week you heard about Nicodemus, the night-time Pharisee. He slips in and out of this book three different times, and by the last page there is no evidence he has memorized the Apostles’ Creed.

There are people healed by Jesus all throughout the book. But usually, right after the healing they slip back into the crowd, or Jesus does. We never do hear much more about them, whether they go off and start churches, or whether they keep believing into the next week or month. Jesus heals them, and it is one more moment of grace and truth in their lives. They will have to keep working out what it means.

Or the twelve disciples - they are certainly a work in progress, every one of them unfinished. This is the book that speaks of Doubting Thomas, after all. The Risen Lord asks him a dangling question: “Have you believed because you see? Well, blessed are those who do not see yet come to believe.” (20:29)

In the Gospel of John, everybody’s faith is in process. God is still working on each person bit by bit. Just like this conversation with the woman at the well. It starts so simply: “I’m thirsty” – “Where’s your bucket?” But then it goes deeper. She first calls him “a Jew,” later says “Are you greater than Jacob?” Then she says “I perceive you are a prophet,” then she names the “Messiah.” At the very end he is “Savior of the World.” Her understanding increases as the revelation grows larger and larger during the conversation. Meanwhile it is missed by those who wonder, “Why is he talking to her?”

The point is simply this - - faith (if is real faith) is something that lives and grows. Faith is never once and done and finished. Faith ebbs and flows because it is the life of the Spirit within us. Sometimes it explodes in a burst of understanding. Other times we have to hang in there like an impossibly long February.

I like how some of the church kids have explained it to me over the years. I’ve written these down. One middle school boy said, “If God told us everything at once, we couldn’t understand it all. Our hearts are too small.”  

Or there was the teenage girl who blurted out, “I said my prayers every night, just like I was told, and then one night I realized somebody was listening.”

Or that wild kid who came back from the national youth rally. He said, “Rev, now I know what you’re talking about! My parents don’t get it, but I do.” I had to explain that’s how it is with all of us. And I added that’s the best reason I know for sitting in church and listening to sermons week after week. Some morning you might actually wake up.

Remember what the Samaritan woman said? “Come and see a man who told me everything about myself. You don’t think this is the Messiah, do you?”

I like how she says it. It is an invitation, to come and see. It is within the range of her experience, so she’s not manufacturing any extra words. It is honest with her own uncertainty, so she doesn’t have to prove anything. There is nothing judgmental or superior about it; in fact, the Jesus who knows about her life does not judge for it, but brings the truth into the open so it can be healed. How refreshing!

Before she slips away into her town, let me affirm what she does. She is not a parrot mimicking what other people told her to say. She does not hand out packaged answers to questions that nobody is asking. She doesn’t declare, “You better believe or you’re going to hell.” Oh no, she avoids that kind of arrogance. In the end, she simply asks the question about Jesus, and gives the necessary space and time for everybody to answer it on their own.[2]

And they do. The people in her town say, “We believe this is the Savior of the World.”

Have you ever had a moment when you believed that is true?

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] A great turn of phrase shared by F. Dale Bruner, The Gospel of John (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012)  273.

[2] Thanks to Fred Cradock for these insights in “The Witness at the Well,” The Christian Century, 7 March 1990.

Cleaning House

John 2:13-25

Lent 1

March 9, 2014

The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money-changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, ‘Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a market-place!’ His disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me.’ The Jews then said to him, ‘What sign can you show us for doing this?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ The Jews then said, ‘This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?’But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

 When he was in Jerusalem during the Passover festival, many believed in his name because they saw the signs that he was doing. But Jesus on his part would not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to testify about anyone; for he himself knew what was in everyone.

I’m not sure what to think of this Bible story. I know a preacher who got in trouble after preaching a sermon on the text. As you can surmise, every congregation has its own mix occupations and perspectives. Well, his congregation had a lot of bankers, accountants, merchants, and fund raisers. So maybe he wasn’t thinking, or maybe he was, when he stood up, read the story of Jesus cleaning out the money changers, and then announced, “This is what needs to happen when a temple starts thinking it’s a business.”

No sooner did the words leave his mouth, like the balloon in a cartoon, when an icy wind blew through the pews. By coffee hour, the air was now hot. By the next meeting of the trustees, there were murmurs of “Crucify! Crucify him!”

It is a contentious story, just like the original episode. Jesus turns over the tables of those selling the sacrificial animals for the rituals in the Jerusalem temple. He threw their coins to the ground. Forming a leather whip, he began cracking it at the money changers. “Get this stuff out of here,” he screams. “This is not a financial market place.”

Now, that’s a story that can spin in a number of ways. The twelve disciples remembered a line from the Psalms about zeal for the house of God. Some modern people will nod their heads and say, “Yes, the church is much too preoccupied with money.” Those outside the church say this to keep from ever going in. Those inside say it to keep from giving any more. Both miss the point. Heaven forbid they should have too much zeal!

According to the Gospels, this is an inflammatory story. When Jesus turns over the tables in the Gospel of Mark, it is the last straw (11:15-19). The Organizers of his Organized Religion say, “That’s it! We must get rid of him.” So it sets the wheels in motion for Jesus’ final week. The religious people will silence him, squelch him, and push him out of their world. The inference is the temple is just the way they want it. Yesterday they were prophets, but today they are reactionaries.

What’s interesting is that, by the time this story is told again in the Gospel of John as we have it today, there are some significant changes. John is writing about 90 AD. By that date, the Jerusalem temple was a distant memory. It had been destroyed for over twenty years. The Roman army tore it down, stone from stone. So John remembers Jesus saying enigmatically, “Destroy this temple, and I will build it up again.”

The second significant change is that the Gospel of John moves this episode from the end of Jesus’ life to the very beginning of his ministry. For John and his church, the temple’s cleansing is something far more than an historical event that prompted the crucifixion. No, this is a story of how the Christian people relate to God. Because for John, in his day, faith could not be centered on a building. The building no longer existed.

Now please understand: buildings are important. They teach by their architecture. They shape how we believe. One of our friends stopped in here last Wednesday for our Lenten time of silent prayer. We sat together in silence, and then she remarked on the stained glass, the majesty of the open space, the sense of awe that a building can create. In the rare moments when it is quiet, this temple testifies to a greater God, a holier presence, a healing power at the heart of all things.

And then Jesus says, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it up again on the third day.” On the third day . . . With that little phrase, John winks at his congregation, prompting them to affirm that Jesus is the Temple. If the Temple is the meeting place between God and the people, then Jesus is that meeting place. Sixty years after the Resurrection, twenty years after Jerusalem was destroyed, John’s church knew - God meets us in Jesus Christ.

That’s why this Gospel offers story after story of how people encounter God as Jesus meets them. Through this season of Lent we will hear of one person after another: Nicodemus, the woman at the well, the man born blind, Lazarus, Mary Magdalene.

There is at least one thing that each story has in common, one thing that we hear today: Jesus acts in complete freedom. He is not restrained by religious routines. He is not kept in a building. He is remarkably indifferent to how official people tell him he should act. Jesus is free because God is free, because God who is Spirit can blow wherever and whenever Spirit chooses. And what this Three-in-One God chooses to do is to give life and light to anybody who will receive the light and life.

The place where God acts in this story is a temple, The Temple. It was first established as a house of prayer. It was the one place on earth where people were re-connected to God after some life changing event, like the birth of children, or the death of a family member, or after some terrible thing that they have done. The Temple is the place of restoration. That’s the heart of all those old Jewish rules and rituals about purity and holiness. When something happens to “dirty you up,” God provides the means to bring you back into relationship. God does this in freedom, to come after us, to welcome us completely.  

But the spiritual history of the human race offers a long and continuing account of how we resist this. We add official rituals and unofficial rules, and they can take on a life of their own. We don’t want God to rule the world; we prefer to be in charge. We don’t want to live in peace with one another; we prefer to keep things stirred up. We don’t want an intimate sense of being loved by our Maker; intimacy scares us – it’s too close. So we do everything we can to go it alone. We put on that appearance.

That’s why John adds an interesting postscript to his version of the temple cleansing story. He says, “Jesus did not trust himself even to those people who trusted in him, because he knew what lies in the heart of every person” (2:24-25). What is it that lies in our hearts? It is our resistance to live completely in God, to trust God with all things. We are ambivalent about this. We want it, but we don’t want it. We might say all the right things with our lips, but we hold God at bay in our hearts.

And here is what Jesus does with who we are: he comes anyway. It is his mission to come into the world that the Father loves, to offer grace and truth, light and life, to be bread from heaven, to offer himself as the way to the Father.

That’s why we are here. The church is that group of people - not the building, but the group of people - who point to Christ and his mission. We are the people who tell the truth about him. The scriptures are God’s gift to instruct us, but we don’t worship the scriptures. We look through them like a window and we worship God.

In the same way, whatever happens in the Temple is not the main thing. It can only point to the Main Thing, and that is life-giving fellowship with God. This week I had brief conversations with two of you. One of you said, “Thank you so much for offering ashes on Ash Wednesday. It is a great way for me to begin my spiritual journey in Lent.” Another one of you said, “Ashes? I don’t need any stinking ashes,” and then he smiled.

Ashes or no ashes – does it ultimately matter? Neither is the Main Thing. The Main Thing is the deep trust that you belong to God. Whatever we do in the Temple must point to the living truth. The truth is Jesus will do whatever it takes to claim you for God. Whatever it takes! That’s the Main thing. That’s why we are here.

It is like what author Frederick Buechner once wrote about the organization Alcoholics Anonymous. It’s a lengthy quote, but it makes the good point:

Alcoholics Anonymous or AA is the name of a group of men and women who acknowledge that addiction to alcohol is ruining their lives. Their purpose in coming together is to give it up and help others do the same. They realize they can’t pull this off by themselves. They believe they need each other, and they believe they need God. The ones who aren’t so sure about God speak instead of their Higher Power.

When they first start talking at a meeting, they introduce themselves by saying, “I am John. I am an alcoholic.” “I am Mary. I am an alcoholic,” to which the rest of the group answers each time in unison, “Hi, John,” “Hi, Mary.” They are apt to end with the Lord’s Prayer or the Serenity Prayer. Apart from that they have no ritual. They have no hierarchy. They have no dues or budget. They do not advertise or proselytize. Having no building of their own, they meet wherever they can.

Nobody lectures them, and they do not lecture each other. They simply tell their own stories with the candor that anonymity makes possible. They tell where they went wrong, and how, day by day they are trying to go right. They tell where they find the strength and understanding and hope to keep trying. Sometimes one of them will take special responsibility for another – to be available at any hour of day or night if need arises. There’s not much more to it than that, and it seems to be enough. Healing happens. Miracles are made.

You can’t help thinking that something like this is what the Church is meant to be and maybe once was before it got to be Big Business. Sinners Anonymous. “I can will what is right but I cannot do it,” is the way Saint Paul put it, speaking for all of us. “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do” (Romans 7:19).

“I am me. I am a sinner.”  “Hi, you.”  Hi, every Sadie and Sal. Hi, every Tom, Dick, and Harry. It is the forgiveness of sins, of course. It is what the church is all about.

No matter what far place alcoholics end up in, either in this country or virtually anywhere else, they know that there will be an A.A. meeting nearby to go to and that at that meeting, they will find strangers who are not strangers to help and to heal, to listen to the truth and to tell it. That is what the Body of Christ is all about.

Would it ever occur to Christians in a far place to turn to a church nearby in hope of finding the same? Would they find it? If not, you wonder, what is so Big about the Church’s Business?[1]

So why are we here? We are here to connect people to God as deeply and as widely as we can. Everything is about that.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark: A Doubter’s Dictionary (New York: Harper and Row, 1988) 4-5.