March 6, 2005 - Fourth Sunday in Lent - Mother Stephanie Parker

FIRST READING: 1 Samuel 16: 1-13
PSALM: 23
SECOND READING: Ephesians 5: 8-14
GOSPEL: John 9: 1-41

Over the last several years, I have had the wonderful occasion a couple of times to go to Sunday brunch at the Plaza Hotel in New York City. Now, I don't know if any of you have ever made it to the Plaza for Sunday brunch, but I am quite sure that in Palm Springs there are dozens of wonderful hotels and restaurants that can lay this very same kind of feast. But, for me, the reason I was brought in mind of my time at the Plaza for Sunday brunch is that, when I would go in there, especially the first time - even the second time, quite frankly, even after having seen it once - you go in, and there is this huge ballroom with tables laid and set and table after table after table set with one more delicacy even greater than the last. It sort of starts with breakfast items, and then lunch items, and then on it goes into desserts, way back. You can't even hardly see it with the eye, but you know it's there. Right?

Now the reason I am brought in mind of this is that, for me, today, this week, when approaching our Scriptures that the Lexionary has laid out for us, it had the same kind of experience for me. I mean, my friends, if you don't read the Bible as a normal part of your worship practices, because somehow it feels unapproachable or not really understandable, just start with the readings that we have today, especially in I and II Samuel. As I said this morning at the 8:00 service, if you really get into that and approach it with the same mind as you approach a good juicy beach fiction novel, you will not be disappointed. And not only will you not be disappointed, but you won't have the guilt of having spent so much time reading that piece of trash, right? O. K.? It will be good for you. So, anyway, all of them, the Psalm, the Shepherd's Psalm that is so great and these readings from Ephesians - Sleeper, awake! - I mean the possibilities in that!

Of course, then we come to that feast that is John's Gospel today and the incredible richness of that piece of Scripture. You know that question, if you went to a desert island and you had to preach the same passage . . . . that is not quite the way it usually goes, is it? You usually get to take stuff - a member of your school board said Gin - to a desert island if you could take nothing else. But, for a preacher, if you had to go to a desert island, and you were going to preach to the people on that desert island; and you could only take one text, I would take this passage from John. There are so many things in it, and it is so rich; it is so meaty; it is so thick that you could preach on it Sunday after Sunday after Sunday and never run out of possibilities.

So, with this feast laid before me, I was in a real quandary. How in the world could I bring just one message, one solid focus spoken in three points, as we are charged in Seminary? My grasp of this was so tenuous and so fragile that I didn't even go to Jay's most wonderful class that I love, From Darkness to Light, for fear that my mind could not contain it all, and that I couldn't stay on this common thread. But John's feast I have chosen for one specific reason. As I looked back over my week, and I tried to think what all of these Scriptures were saying to me and how they were touching and intersecting at points in my life, there was one line in particular that resonated with me, and that was, in fact, as I said, from John's Gospel, and it was this one:

"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".

Now, I think one of the things we do - and this was born out in my week, which I will talk about - is that, even as good Episcopalians, we sort of shy away from talking about sin. I think we embrace sin intellectually, but it is hard for us to approach it. Even a couple of you, when I came here, said you were a little bit worried about getting a former Baptist as a preacher, and that maybe sin would be a little bit to tight of a focus of my homiletic practices here. But fear not! Fear not! I struggle with sin just like everybody else does. One of the things that we do intellectually - particularly as people whose faith practice is founded on a sense of rationality, that we have rational thought, and that we don't have to take this literally at any time and at any place - intellectually we do that, but, in times of despair and darkness, in times when we feel abandoned, in times when we are fearful, when we have been told we have a horrible illness or someone we love has a horrible illness, or someone we love is inexplicably taken from us in a moment, in a horrible accident, that intellectual grasping of sin falls away, and most of us think, "What did I do wrong? What did I do to deserve this? If I had done something right, possibly this would not have happened to me". So, somehow, no matter how intellectual we are and no matter how far we reach into God's mercy and God's justice on a regular basis, when we are in extremis, we most often want to find some reason. And, when we come smack up against the point that for some of the horrible things that happen in life, there is no reason, we want to turn God into someone who does horrible things so that we can sort of give ourselves some measure of control to create some reason. But today's Gospel, as well as many others, tells us very clearly, my friends, that God does not punish sin with horrible infirmities or having horrible things happen to you.

Now, even in this Gospel, it can be sort of ambiguous, right? When I read this line, "This man was born blind so that God's works might be revealed in him" - well you could possibly say, "Well, doesn't that say that God made this man blind so we could see how wonderful Jesus was?" When I am confronted with a piece of Scripture like this, I go back to the Greek, and even in the Greek, it is ambiguous. A lot of times the Greek saves us preachers, right? - because we can bring it out, and we can create a little bit of a different meaning. But this is still really ambiguous, and it very well could read - and what I think it reads, because when I look at other Scriptures where, even in the Old Testament when we are dealing with sin and punishment and how God links those two together - very clearly we are told over and over and over again, especially in the Gospels, that God does not punish sin in a horrible and terrible way by wreaking disease and havoc on people's lives. In Luke's Gospel, particularly, he says it very clearly, "No, I tell you. This is not true." But, what do we do in those horrible places of abandonment and those horrible places of quandary where we do not know?

Well, I know that, for me, when I talk about picking up the threads of my week to see where they point - and this may be a little bit too revealing that I watch too much TV in my down-time, I am not sure - but with almost every example I have, I was watching a TV show. And it's true; it is not even just hyperbole for the sake of this sermon. I was watching one new show that, to this day, a couple of months after the event, is still trying to tie the tsunami disaster with God's wrath. Still today, thousands and hundreds of thousands of faithful people believe that God would wipe out all of these people to teach humanity some deep lesson.

And then, like unto it, I was just talking to a former parishioner of mine from Good Shepherd, a beautiful woman - 50-something, I am not really sure - but she is single; and she never had children; and she is very lonely. It is a very difficult life for her, and she was saying to me, "You know, Stephanie, I don't know what that is. Maybe it is just God's will that I never married or that I never found anybody that I could be in relationship with." And this is a sensible, smart, accomplished person, and my heart just broke for her, because I wanted to say "No!" And I did! I did not only want to say it, I did say it! No! God does not will loneliness or pain on us. Sometimes in life inexplicable things happen, chaotic things happen, horrible things happen, but what our Gospel tells us today is what? - that Christ is in the midst of that. Christ did not cause that. God did not will that. But, in those places of abandonment - this man sitting day after day at the gates of the Temple, blind and begging . . .I think about that guy, and I wonder what he thought when some guy came up and slathered spit and mud on his face, without introduction - but still, we see that Jesus sees him in this place of abandonment and goes to him. And He tells His disciples very clearly, "No, this man did not sin, nor did his parents sin; but I want to teach you - and this is my translation of this, and I think it is the true one - I want to teach you that, no matter what place of darkness or pain you find yourself in, God's power and mercy can overcome it". That is how God's might was shown through this man's blindness - not that God caused it so that we could have this really wonderful show-and-tell moment, but that because this was this man's condition, because life is unpredictable, God can enter into the midst of that and bring away this man's blindness and put away his pain. That is what I think this Scripture tells us.

Now, even like unto it - and this is again more revealing that I watch far too much TV, and not necessarily high-brow news shows, by the way, because, unrepentantly, I will tell you that I was watching American Idol. I not only watched it on purpose, I sought it out. I had to check the times, because it was kind of coming on on two or three different days, right? So, I am just going forward with that and being transparent to you now, O. K.? And I was watching the show, seeking just a little bit of that frivolous kind of entertainment, and then the interviewer, that Ryan guy, was asking her, "Well, you did great in rehearsal, but then, when you got up on stage, you sort of fell apart. What happened with that?" And she says, "I guess it was just God's will that I not do well tonight". I guess it was just God's will that I fall on my face on American idol, O.K.? But this woman was very sincere, and I guarantee you she loves God. I bet she is a wonderful witness for God, but somehow in there she has missed it. God does not teach us lessons about the dangers and perils of life by exacting those dangers and perils on us. Who of you with small children have ever held your child's hands in a flame to teach them that fire burns? Would you do that? No! (And, if you have, you need to see Andrew or me or Fred after the service). No! We don't do that, but what is it in us that conceives that God does that to us?

So, the great witness, the great feast that we are given this refreshment Sunday - and what is that cake? Simnel cake? It is good, whatever it is - in the middle of refreshment Sunday, we have this Scripture, all of this laid out in the heart of Lent, this incredible feast set before us to tell us one thing, my friends - no matter where we are in a place of abandonment, no matter where we are in a place of deep pain and feeling lost and forsaken by the world or by someone we love, and especially when we feel forsaken by God, what our feast of Scripture this morning points to quite clearly is: No - it is just the opposite.

Jesus not only saw this man in his place of darkness of sight and being expelled by society, when the Temple authorities kicked him out for having the temerity to say, "Well, I don't know what else He did, but I was blind, and now I see". I mean, that is pretty intense! But, when this man was expelled for his belief in this man, whom he did not even yet know because he had yet to see Him, and he was cast out, who came and found him? Not his parents. Not the temple authorities. Who came to this man? Don't be afraid, you can say it. "Jesus!" Now, you see, that was a Baptist moment! Thank you!

And one more time, for those of you who were timid the first time - When this man was lost, and he was expelled, who came to him?

JESUS!

AMEN