Palm Sunday - On Plan and Purpose

I’ve always found Palm Sunday a difficult day to define…traditionally, the proper title for this day is “Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion” and the reading that is used as the gospel is not the selection from John 11 that I read, but rather an account of the passion of Christ from one of the other gospels. In that way -- as in real life -- the crowd that first acclaimed Jesus as king and messiah in their midst, later calls out for his death.

It’s hard, coming through this season of Lent; a season that call us to remember our baptism and all that it means, to remember that Jesus comes to us as a servant. And that as we read in Isaiah today, that Jesus comes to us a suffering servant; suffering because it was seemingly demanded and foreordained by God that it was good for him to do so.

And that’s a hard row to how. But Jesus, as the servant of us all, shows us that it is not the accolades, success, or prosperity of this world that shows our worth and value – but rather that true worth is shown through obedience to the purpose God has for us.

What does it mean to be a servant who comes in love, reaches out to those marginalized in society, opens the eyes of the blind, and restores the dead to life – but is then spit upon, beaten, and nailed to a cross? It seems almost capricious, that God would visit the worst punishments upon God’s own son, so that we would be spared the soul-torturing reality of the death that is brought upon us by sin.

But there’s often disconnection between understanding the difference between a plan and a purpose. The Israelites – John refers to them as Jews in the gospel – knew that a messiah was coming. God had promised it. But they didn’t know what the messiah would do. They thought they did; they thought they knew exactly what God’s plan was – to restore the kingdom of Israel through power and might, throw off the Roman oppressors, and let them oppress everyone else around them.

In other words, they believed God’s plan to be exactly what they would do, if they were God. But they missed God’s purpose, which was to reconcile the world, to heal it through a mightily stubborn love and free gift of grace that brought light to a dark world. In Jesus, God's purpose was to bring the whole world to God…but the world didn’t like that very much – and neither, really, do we.

Like the Israelites, we want to see a great, monolithic, written-in-stone plan of God. Preferably, we want a plan that involves the smiting of our enemies and those who don't agree with us – while we watch, and gloat, since that's how we would it. But like the Israelites, we miss God's purpose.

I've noticed that when I talk with people who like to use the phrase `God's plan` usually use it to separate `us` from `them` -- to keep the people who agree with what they think in one category, and those who disagree in another. So that rhetoric creates an angry, wrathful, spiteful, vengeful God – and then creates Jesus as the heroic older brother who saves us from an abusive parent. Is that how we want to think of God?

Jesus was the fulfillment of God’s purpose; a purpose that was shown forth when the crowd welcomed him into their midst in Jerusalem and blessed his presence among them. That purpose – God’s purpose, which we know from Scripture – was to show that ways we draw ourselves further from God, and then breach them through God’s own actions through Christ Jesus.

And Jesus lived in obedience to the divine purpose of his earthly life…and we, too, have a purpose here in life. It’s not as grand a purpose of reconciling the world from sin, but it is important nonetheless.

We are the people of God, and through our baptism God brings us in to be part of God’s purpose for humanity: to live in community, to gather life, strength, and hope through Jesus Christ. We can never know God’s plan – no matter how much we might think we can, we cannot think like God – but we can acknowledge God’s purpose for our lives and our participation in that purpose.

In our baptismal liturgy we announce that purpose clearly: to “profess faith in Christ Jesus, reject sin, and confess that faith of the church…renounce the devil and all the forces that defy God…and to renounce the ways of sin that draw us from God.” That’s God’s purpose for our lives. When we began this journey of Lent I asked you to consider what it meant to be human, and to remember whose we truly are – and if we are created by God, then we are part of God’s purpose.

And when that little corner of us then demands “but what do I have to do to be part of God’s purpose” we can turn around to is, and recite that purpose, and then ask “is this really just a mental commitment? Or am I to participate in this purpose with my whole body, soul, and strength?”

It was humankind’s rejection of that purpose that led to the crucifixion – Caiaphas’ knowledge that one man dying for the people would be better than the whole nation dying. Nations exist for the people and the systems that form them – and Caiaphas was afraid of Rome. So afraid, in fact, that he more or less accidentally foretold the fulfillment of God’s purpose through Jesus Christ.

Because as far as Caiaphas was concerned, he knew God’s plan. He was High Priest – this was not a easy job. He knew the right answers. He was a good theologian, a good pastor (being a good pastor is easier when you just tell people what they need to do or believe). But in his myopic vision of God’s plan, his human eyes failed to see the purpose.

There are ways that we embrace that purpose, and ways that we reject it…we reject it by making choices that harm our relationships with others, that are selfish or self-serving rather than godly. In fact, usually if we think that we know God’s plan for our lives, or start feeling that what we’re doing is what God plans for us (and we know this because we feel good about it)…then we should probably approach the world from a different angle…like down on our knees.

If we live our lives trying to deduce God’s plan for us, then we are condemned to become part of the crowd, and just that. One minute acclaiming Jesus as Lord and Saviour, and the next minute rejecting him and calling for his death because he doesn’t look or act how we expect and want him to; he hasn’t saved us as we want to be saved. Instead of pointing to our enemies and declaring their faults, Jesus welcomes them and eats with them, and then reveals our own hard-heartedness as a more grievous offense. But then, even worse, he still welcomes us, as well.

But when we live for God’s purpose, we become part of his church, the Body of Christ…and we become part of the great narrative of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. In reality, we become a living thread in the fabric of God’s kingdom; fulfilling our purpose and being one part of many.

Living to God’s purpose is not always pleasant – as the cross shows us, it too often involves suffering and pain. But because God understands this life – and the great Christian claim of God in Christ proclaims that God truly does understand – God also knows the purpose is greater.

Living God’s purpose for us gives us a glimpse of the world to come, so we understand that it is not an easy life, or the cheers of the crowd that give us worth – but like our saviour, obedience to the divine purpose of our God.

And if you doubt that, that God’s purpose for you is that you live eternally, then walk through this coming Holy Week. Come, imagine your saviour washing your feet and feeding you on Maundy Thursday. Come and be witnesses to his execution on Good Friday.

And then, on that great feast of Easter Sunday, come and see that God loves you so much that more than being willing to die for you – your God is willing to live for you.

Let the people of God say amen.

Lent 4 - On Returning to God

“One thing I do know: that though I was blind, now I see.”

A recent survey on about religious questions asked, “what do you have to do to get to heaven?” The results showed that close to 80% of respondents believed that if you lived a good life and didn’t hurt anyone, you’d get to heaven. Being Christian was not the requirement. Simply “being good” was.

So what does it mean to “be good”? What yardstick do you use to measure that? The truth is, the only measure that we use to determine whether or not we’re ‘good’ is more often than not our own opinion. And it’s always easy to be good when we’re the judge, isn’t it? We tend to only consider ourselves as ‘not good’ when we look at our past selves.

It’s funny – and sad – how often the culture we live in picks and chooses the kind of baggage it can carry along. TV and movies still largely carry the message that you should live your life as you choose, not caring what other people think of you. You are the last and best judge of your actions.

And the same plot plays itself over and over and over again: someone commits a grievous error, hates themselves, and tries desperately to find some way to make amends through their own actions. If they’re successful, it’s a happy ending.

In the movie Seven Pounds, Will Smith plays a character who killed seven people in a car accident. To make amends he chooses seven people to help. He donates parts of his body and vital organs to people, first making certain they’re worthy to receive his gift.

As he lives, he chooses who will receive these things. Finally, he finds the last two candidates to whom he will donate his seven pounds of flesh – a man who’ll receive his eyes, and a woman to whom he (literally) gives his heart.

Having found them, he then commits suicide, having arranged through a friend that the deserving recipients will receive his gifts. He dies, they live. As he lived, he satisfied his own conscience, met his own criteria, found his own forgiveness.

And you know, we want to be able to fix everything, to make everything better, to clear our own conscience. On some level, we know we can’t. Yet that’s what we consistently try to do. Take charge of ourselves, take charge of our lives.

It’s good to hear that redemption is within our grasp. It’s the stuff of powerful Hollywood stories. The bad character can redeem themselves at the last possible moment. It’s the last way we can tell ourselves that we control our lives, our destiny, our salvation. Then we can answer that question: “what must I do to get to heaven,” with “anything I want.”

So, there’s a man in the gospel lesson for today who was born blind. We don’t know who he is, but we do know as we have come to understand the culture of the time that he would have been worthless. Being born blind, if he was lucky enough to come from a wealthy family he would have been sequestered at home.

Since he wasn’t – and we can know this from the way the Pharisees treat his parents – he was probably a beggar. Sitting by the side of the road with a bowl, dependent upon strangers for alms to help his family and support himself. This is where Jesus meets him, as he walks along the road.

And his disciples ask the question: who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? It’s a question that the disciples have to ask. In their religious system, if you have done good things then God looks after you and blesses you. If you have done bad things, then God will curse you and possibly your children. If you are born blind, then either the man or his parents must have done something to deserve it. Later on, when the Pharisees are driving him from the synagogue, they accuse him – “you were born entirely in sins!”

Because that’s always the big question, isn’t it – if God exists, then why do bad things happen to good people? That question has been at the root of many people who have walked away from the life of faith, because that question and its reverse – why do good things happen to bad people – struggle and strain at our hearts and our minds. If we are responsible for our own salvation, then if something is wrong in our lives then that must be our fault, too. It must be someone’s fault.

But as often as we think of those questions, we don’t remember the Saviour’s answer: Neither this man nor his parents sinned. Jesus doesn’t just answer the question with a ‘no,’ he negates the entire question.

It’s not about ‘who sinned,’ but rather that a man was born blind so that God’s work might be revealed in him. Jesus gives the disciples a better question to ask, which is “how will we see God at work in this man’s life?” And to think of it, that must have been the question they were asking. Because the blind man is still on the side of the road until Jesus takes some direct action.

The man wasn’t blind because of something he or someone else had done. He was born blind so that people would see that God’s grace is for all, perhaps even especially for those who didn’t think he deserved it. After all, the Pharisees who question him aren’t interested in his answers, only in that he’s not asking what they think are the right questions.

And it’s those questions that really define this gospel lesson, don’t they? From the very opening to the closing of the passage:

Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?

Is this the man who was blind?

How were your eyes opened?

Where is this man?

Who is this man?

Are you trying to teach us?

Do you believe in the Son of Man?

Surely, we are not blind?

Place yourself in the story: Are you a disciple? Are you the man’s parents, trying to defend a religious position against attack while not feeling safe enough to place yourself in with the group under attack? Or are you a Pharisee, safe in your own righteousness and knowledge, able to denigrate and dismiss someone else’s miracle and attack the source of their hope and their identity because your safe answers are in jeopardy?

Actually, I think, in this story we’re the blind man on the side of the road. Our minds are filled with questions: who am I? Why am I here? How do these things happen to me?

The blind man doesn’t know who comes to heal him; in the same way that at our baptism we don’t know this Jesus who comes to us. In fact, we might live most of our baptised lives never actually feeling like we are part of the family of God: it’s easy to forget. If there is a monumental failing of the Lutheran church it’s that we pastors haven’t always been direct in connecting the pew, the pulpit, and the altar to the baptismal font. You are here and you are baptised – you are not here because you were baptised. You are here because you are.

It’s really easy to forget something that we might not actually remember; a day long ago when a pastor held us and sprinkled water on our head. When God is so far away from us, it does indeed seem that the world we know – the dust of the road, people passing by, our own internal thoughts – is all there is.

Jesus does not let us remain that way. He doesn’t even speak to the blind man before he does something about his affliction. Kneeling down, Jesus makes mud in the dust of the ground and forms it over the blind eyes. Telling the man to go and wash, he says nothing else to him. The man isn’t healed because he deserved it, or because he’d done something good in life. He’s healed because Jesus sought him out, and brought him into the kingdom of God.

And the man is left, on his own, to reach his own conclusions about what happened to him. Indeed, to reach his own conclusions about this man who healed him; who re-created his own eyes with the dust of the earth even as God created those first two humans in the Garden.

And when he is put to the test by the Pharisees who demand he admit that the man who touched his life is no different than anyone else, he can only offer one testimony in reply: this man may be a sinner. But one thing I know: though I was blind, now I see. And after he is put out of the synagogue for his troubles, Jesus comes seeking him again. The one who was blind and now can see has traded places with those who, though able to see, blind themselves to the presence of God in their midst.

Jesus calls the Pharisees blind because they willing blind themselves. In the comfort of the traditional answers they have, they don’t want to be moved beyond what they know. If Jesus is, in fact, the Messiah, then their carefully constructed system is about to fall down about their ears. The solution, then, is that Jesus cannot be the Messiah. He just can’t.

And I’ve said before that the Pharisees are good people. They’re not big bullies, the way we make them out to be. They follow the rules, they know the answers, they are the textbook example of good people.

And maybe they are a good example why it might not be enough to say that ‘good’ people are automatically fit for the kingdom of heaven. Maybe the question that survey should have asked instead was, “who is outside of the kingdom of heaven?” But that wouldn’t get many good answers, or at least, answers that would get good press. The old questions are much to be preferred. The old questions – what must I do to get into heaven? – are the ones the Pharisees ask.

And in much the same way, we become willingly blind through some of our own questions, when either we don’t want answers or the old answers we have are too comforting to let go. A few hundred years ago, there was no way that anyone who wasn’t Lutheran was going to go to heaven. It just wasn’t going to happen.

But over time pluralism and ecumenism worked to bring us together, and now we count many, many other Christian traditions among our coworkers in the vineyard of the Lord. Of course, they may not always count us among their coworkers, but we spend a little less time thinking about that.

As we sit, blind on the side of the road, and even later with our eyes newly opened, Jesus seeks us out. In our community we seek out the questions and the answers that the world asks of us: who is this Jesus, and what is he to you?

And we may spend several thousand more years trying to determine better answers to those questions than those we already have. Doctrine and dogma, the Small Catechism and the Lutheran Confessions all contribute to those discussions.

But let us, in this season of Lent, share our answer with the blind young man who was questioned by the Pharisees – what do you know about this man?

One thing we do know – once we were blind, but now we can see. Once we were asleep, but now we are awake. Once we walked in darkness, but now Christ shines upon us. Not because we earned it, but because we received it as gift.

Let the people of God say amen.

Lent 3 - On Being Known

So, let’s try something different this morning.

I want to you to close your eyes and picture yourself. Picture yourself as you see yourself – what you do well, what you love doing, what your greatest joys are, your favourite pastimes. What do you look like?

Hold that image for a minute. Do you like what you see? Of course you should – that’s what self-esteem is all about, after all. We can construct an idealized image of ourselves and work to fit in it.

But now imagine this: you walk outside of church today, and see a man leaning up against your car. You begin to speak with him, and eventually realize that somehow he knows everything you’ve ever done. With a shock, you realize that it’s Jesus. And he’s talking about your salvation. And he knows.

Everything. Even those things that you try to keep hidden from yourself.

You can open your eyes. How do you feel now?

Did that imaginary encounter make you feel a little uncomfortable? Knowing that Jesus would know those silly little secrets you keep hidden from everyone?

It’s often hard to think of it, but that’s exactly what Jesus does with the woman at the well.

A few months ago I was out for supper with a very good friend of mine who is also a pastor. We were chatting with our waitress, and through our conversation we found that she worked two jobs, and had recently moved. My friend and I began to speculate about her situation. I guessed that she was paying off student loans and had left a relationship. He disagreed, thinking that she had bought a house and moved into it.

To settle our little contest, the next time the young lady came around my friend simply said to her, “so, do you like owning your own home?” And the look on her face was simply priceless. She almost dropped her tray, completely flabbergasted and weirded out that my friend knew she had bought a home. She spent the rest of the evening trying to figure out how my friend knew, even when he explained to her how he had reached his conclusion.

Now, I don’t think that she went away telling everyone he was magic. Actually, I think she found the experience totally creepy. And that’s how it is – when somebody knows something about us that we think we keep hidden, and we think is personal, we most often respond by wanting to hide ourselves from that person and from the knowledge they have about us. We try to bury our feelings – our shame? – rather than live with the knowledge that person has about us. Because we know that they may use it to cause us hurt.

As we’re gearing up for another federal election, now is the season that attack ads and scandals are unleashed upon us. Can you imagine being one of those leaders – hoping, praying that something from your past won’t become fodder for the nightly news? It’s unbelievable. Knowledge is power in our society, and the wrong kind of knowledge about the right person is an incredibly powerful tool.

In today’s gospel lesson we met the Samaritan woman at the well. It’s worth mentioning that she’s there at noon – the time when she should be gathering water is in the early morning, when all the other women are out. She speaks with Jesus. As a Samaritan, she shouldn’t even be seen near a Jew, let alone a male. This isn’t looking good for anyone.

But they have a conversation about water. It’s actually kind of cute – a glimpse into the humour and repartee that Jesus could have with people. “Give me a drink…why do you ask me?...if you had asked me, I would have given you living water…you have no bucket, where do you get it?...everyone who drinks this water will never be thirsty, it will become a spring in them, gushing up to eternal life…sir, give me this water so that I don’t have to come here anymore.

Then Jesus tosses in a comment that derails the entire conversation: “god and call your husband, and come back?” Why does Jesus say that? Can you imagine how that woman felt? Her downcast look, the sudden flushing of her face with shame and embarrassment? Any of you here who have experienced first-hand a divorce, either as a spouse or a child, knows the pain that questions like that automatically cause.

And she replies – “I have no husband…” and Jesus goes on, and digs even deeper. She’s right, he tells her, she has had five husbands, all dead or divorced, and the one she is with is not her husband. What that likely means is that her last husband died, and she became the property of his brother or half-brother; such a union had no religious rite under the law, and such people were usually second-class citizens.

Thus, we find her here. At the well of her shame, outcast from her community, having known the shame and stigma of abandonment, of loneliness. And this man, this man in whom for a moment she was beginning to have a microscopic glimmer of hope, this man just dashed it again.

And she acknowledges that he is a prophet, but she knows that prophets only denounce women like her. She’s a example, and not a good one. She’s a “scarlet woman” – it doesn’t matter what her former husbands may have done; since she’s a woman the fault is hers.

But the prophet, the Messiah, the Christ, keeps speaking with her. He doesn’t denounce her; he doesn’t make her an object lesson. Knowing her deep secrets and desires he takes the knowledge of them and instead of using them to hurt her, he returns to her her dignity. The woman who came to the well to draw water instead comes to the font of living water, and finds the wellspring inside of her.

We often toss off a cliché – Jesus knows your heart, and we usually mean it in a pretty passive-aggressive way. If you don’t agree with what I’m saying, Jesus knows you’re wrong. Or, as an excuse – he might be a pretty nasty piece of work, but he’s got a good heart. But those don’t really matter. Jesus is going to show you all those deep wounds in your soul, wounds that are as deep as that well where the woman sat.

And when our wounds are that deep, we come to them to draw our own water, seeking endurance, character, and hope through our suffering. But that gets old, quickly. And as endurance fails, hope fails faster. As our own supplies of spiritual water that give us strength fail, we become angry, turned in on ourselves, and ready to vent our anger at anyone, and especially at those who we think might dare to lead us. When we come to depend on ourselves instead of Christ for our spiritual food, we come up empty, but find that we can’t blame ourselves and instead find fault with the institution, its leaders, and its Saviour.

But when we are thirsty, and when Christ comes to us and offers us that living water, we can drink deeply and often, and we find that it truly does form a spring inside of us, a spring from which the Holy Spirit flows in, around, and through us.

God, who can bring water from a rock, can even bring from our own wounded and fragmented hearts abundant life; life that is restored to relationships we thought long dead, to feelings we thought long dormant, and to a Saviour we thought was laid in a tomb.

As in those days of the Israelites God struck the rock and water poured out of it, on that darkest day when our Saviour hung on the dead wood of the cross, God struck that tree and from it came the spring of eternal life.

From the dark stain of death and suffering came endless and eternal life, the gift of God through Jesus Christ, who reconciled us with God so that we may sit with him at that eternal well, dwell with him in glory, and join in the work of the harvest.

Let the people of God say amen.