Reflectionary

Many Mansions

Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. (John 14:1-2, King James Version)

My mother introduced me to the idea of "many mansions." For a person who lived a very interior life, and who seemed oddly narrow and cynical about some things, she had some surprising attachments to ideas that formed me in a good way, and this was one of them. It helped me realize that many kinds or people might be part of God's family, not just the people we knew at church, or even the friends we loved who went to other churches, but maybe, just maybe, all people.

My boys turned me onto "Battlestar Galactica," and my husband enjoys it, too. Tonight, cuddled up in his rented room in a Non-Contiguous New England State, we watched the first two episodes of the new season on my laptop. Cylons and humans are caught in what seems like a battle to the death. Their old hatreds (the humans once enslaved the Cylons, who are machines, but in their current incarnation look like people) and their religious systems (these humans are polytheists, worshiping the Gods of Ancient Greece, while the Cylons are monotheists, worshiping the One True God) place them at odds with each other. The Cylons have killed most of the humans from this particular system, and those still living are trying to get to Earth, a place some believe in as a literal truth and others suspect is a myth.

There is a lot of religious discussion on the show, and it fascinates me that both the Cylons and the humans have among their leaders a crusty old non-believer. Where do the non-believers fit into the picture?

Are there enough mansions to include them, too?

My husband is not a believer, so this is a personal question as well as a larger matter.

Although he is not a believer, he is a seeker. He seeks to understand why we, why humanity, exists. He struggles with our poor choices, our misuse of the resources available to us, our acts of violence and genocide. He wonders why I believe in a God who doesn't simply straighten it all out from above.

Sometimes I wonder that, too.

And I wonder how someone who spends so much time thinking about the same things that perplex and amaze me can reach such different conclusions.

John's gospel has been used over the centuries to "prove" that the chosen are few, the way is clear, the gate is narrow, it's my way or the highway. We overlook the "other flocks" and the "many mansions." We feel safer, perhaps, drawing boundaries that exclude others, boundaries that make us feel important and connected and significant to God.

I don't believe it can be that simple.

Tonight I read aloud the poem I posted at my other blog in memory of Cub, a poem by Rumi that suggests it is our very longing for God that proves God's existence. I cried as I read it to my husband, and when I finished and turned toward him, I saw the tears on his cheeks, too.

Many mansions. Many.

Speaking of Narrow

(Easter 4A    John 10:1-10)

When it comes to the Gospels, I never hesitate to name Mark as my favorite. I struggle with John, with the way that intensely developed theology is swallowed whole by some Christians today without attention to the context of time and place so necessary to a clearer understanding. I struggle with John's narrowness.

I had a moment recently where someone suggested I sit in an empty chair at a restaurant table, but I could not picture myself squeezing through the available space, past other diners, to get to it. Once at the chair, all would have been well, but getting to the banquet table appeared to be the problem.

Rather than ask someone to move, I went away.

I wonder how narrow the gate to enter our churches feels to people who never even get to see the available chair, the space God hopes they might occupy. You have to be pretty comfortable to ask, pretty confident that you will get a favorable response, before you ask others to get out of the way and make the gate or the door or even the parking lot more readily accessible.

This is not what the author of John was thinking about, in my humble opinion. He was thinking about how to define the territory, to make it clear who was in and who was out, to establish a meaning for a new, or new-ish, community.

Most of us are not engaged in that work, at all. Most of us are engaged in the work of trying to make the gate wider again, to let more people in, to share the Good News with those who need to hear it. That Good News is not about the narrowness of the gate but about the abundance of love available to those who will receive it.

Sometimes we have to brazen our way to it, squeeze past the obstacles, in order to believe it's true.

Martha's Ministry of Proclamation

(Lent 5A    John 11:1-45)

There are so many fascinating threads in the story of Mary, Martha and Lazarus, with its themes of humanity and divinity, and its subplot marking Thomas as possibly the bravest disciple of all. At my lectionary group this week we had a rich discussion, wondering just what this story was really about? It prefigures the Resurrection. It shows us the humanity of Jesus at the same time it underscores his divinity. It gives us two of the best-drawn supporting characters in the gospel, the sisters Mary and Martha, opening out the tiny character sketch of Luke's gospel. It gives us a sense of how intensely people can consider a teacher to be their friend, too, very interesting for those of us in a pastoral role.

Mostly, though, it's a dramatic display of the power of Jesus, not as friend or teacher, but as part of God's self.

It's Martha who says the words, Lord love her. It sort of redeems her performance in Luke's story, doesn't it? She may be practical and brusque or whatever other characteristics the stories might suggest to you, but in this gospel she is the one to make the Christological confession, the role that falls to Peter in the other gospels.

She says the words:

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." (John 11:21-27, NRSV)

I adore the counter-cultural nature of this scene. What would possess the gospel writer to go so far off-script and give the words that everyone else thought of as Peter's to a woman, to Martha, to say? Not only does she declare the Good News, she declares it TO the Good News himself.

But she doesn't hesitate to remind him that a dead body will stink.

No wonder St. Martha is pictured with a dragon. She would have made a heck of a preacher.

How Were Your Eyes Opened?

A sermon for Lent 4A    March 2, 2008
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?" (John 9:1-2, NRSV)

We start with a plaguing question. Is it the fault of the man or of his parents that he was born blind?

We would like to think we are past that kind of thinking, and in fact the prophets had gone beyond it, long before Jesus came on the scene. But the idea prevailed among many people, that any sort of disability must be a punishment directed by God against some person or persons.

So, was it the parents who sinned, or the man himself, while still in the womb?

I find that kind of thinking smug and limited, but I'm afraid I subscribed to it myself until I had a good reason not to do it anymore, a personal reason. I'm afraid I couldn't put myself in other people's shoes. I'm afraid I could not see things from another perspective until my mother, dying from multiple metastases of malignant melanoma, wondered quietly what she had done wrong? Why was God punishing her?

I understood how she felt. For a year I had been wondering what lesson God had been trying to teach me when I learned my baby had a genetic abnormality, when I lost my baby. For a year I had been blaming myself.

I had never heard anyone ask the question so directly as my mother did that day, and I knew in that moment, without a doubt, she was wrong. Sure, she was set up for melanoma: a blue-eyed blond with fair, fair skin who lived in the tropics as a child and sunbathed as an adult, a person with a quiet, self-denying personality who kept everything inside, what they now call "Type C." She had all the components, and yet we know there are people with similar characteristics who never develop melanoma or cancer of any kind. Why did it happen to her?

Was it the parents who sinned, or the man born blind?

This was a common question, and we can hear in the story how risky it was for the family to answer it, how many years the parents had kept a low profile as they try to do in this event, to avoid being blamed for their son’s disability. Ask him, they say. He is an adult and can answer for himself!

But they know what the world thinks!! The world thinks they did something wrong, and the only way to get out from under that is to lay the accusation at the feet of their son himself, not the grown-up son begging in the marketplace, but the infant once placed in his mother’s arms, the baby they eventually realized could not see.

Did they feel he was lost to them in that moment of realization, knowing that a person who could not see, whose eyes might even have looked unusual, would be condemned by the neighbors and the people in religious authority?

Was it the parents who sinned, or the man born blind?

What a cruel God they worshiped.

I do not worship that God, and I believe God came to us in Jesus to free us from that way of thinking, yet we know that it persists, that people love to blame the troubles of other people on the wrath of God. It makes us feel safe to define ourselves as different from “them,” right up until others return the favor.

How were your eyes opened? They asked him that question. They wanted to know what Jesus had done to heal him, to change him, to make him nearly unrecognizable, but mostly they wanted evidence to prove Jesus had worked on the Sabbath, to show him to be a breaker of the Law. They were looking for reasons to arrest him, even to kill him, to ensure that he would not be heard or seen again.

He upset the balance, the norm, the status quo, and the Pharisees did not want to hear about it.
Sometimes we go along abiding by a family or community code because we don’t know any better, but other times we do it to remain safe within the system.

I’m not, on the whole, inclined to law-breaking, but why should it matter that Jesus healed the man on the Sabbath? Is it not the day for doing God’s work?

And, really, isn’t every day? There are no limits to the days on which our eyes may be opened, no limits to the days on which we may learn to see.

I want to share something with you, because this is in a sense our last “regular” Sunday together. Next week we will approach the word through drama, and my final weeks with you will be in a holy season that draws more than the usual people to church. So while we are here together, the immediate family, I want to thank you for opening my eyes. Through your willingness to tell me what you thought about what I do, you gave me confidence in areas of my ministry that I hoped I did well, but there had been no one to tell me before. You did it with kind words or the squeeze of a hand, and I thank you for it. God moved through you, and I thank God for it. I am a better pastor for having been with you, better able to see what God is calling me to do.

How were your eyes opened?

Jesus did a strange thing. He spat on the ground used his own saliva to make mud with the dirt of the road. He used that mud to heal the man born blind, to give him visions he had never imagined, to let him see the world, his parents, his neighbors and all those whose voices he knew but whose faces were unfamiliar.

When God restores our sight, we see things differently. The familiar becomes clearer, more recognizable. When my mother voiced her fears, I saw the history of her life, the love and trust she placed in her own mother, the person who taught her such truly terrible things, who “cured” her gall bladder problems with diet and believed in her own will to heal and called it God’s. What worked for her, an orderly system of blame, remorse and repentance leading to victory, left my mother feeling not like a beloved child but like a person begging on the fringes of the community, abandoned by God.

My mother trusted me with her deepest question, and although you know me as a pastor and might understand why she would talk to me about it, she thought seminary was a very bad idea for the mother of young children, and faith had become a closed subject between us. Thanks be to God, she opened it again. Thanks be to God, we talked about it, and I told her, kindly, how I disagreed with her assumptions. Thanks be to God, she heard me and became more forgiving with herself. In her vulnerability and brokenness, spoken aloud in a simple question, my mother opened the door to healing for both of us. In that moment, God broke through and opened both our eyes. At the end of her life, I saw her more clearly and loved her more. At the end of her life, she began to see who I might be and to love that person, too.

How were your eyes opened?

Jesus walked into town with his disciples, a notorious character, already in trouble for his radical actions and teachings, for the company he kept. He walked into town on the Sabbath and he broke the Law and he healed a man who could not see. God broke through. Using the most ordinary element, earth, God broke through. Using part of God’s own self, working in human form, God broke through.

And it happens every day, when we realize what is really happening in the world, when we look in the mirror and know ourselves, when we offer a kind word to someone who needs to hear it, when we ordinary people doing completely usual things meet one another and recognize God is with us in the mud of life and can use it for healing.

Was it the parents who sinned? Or the man born blind?

Our sin is not found in our disabilities any more than our salvation is found in our gifts. God does not rate us based on merit but loves us as we are, human and broken and, yes, sometimes quite completely blind in spirit.

How were your eyes opened? They asked the man and he gave a simple answer about a poultice of dirt and spit, and sometimes those homely answers contain a truth based in facts and observations. But the real opening comes when we see that God is with us in Jesus, and we decided to join him on the journey, wherever it may lead. Amen.

How They Received Her

(Lent 3A John 4:5-42)

Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman's testimony, "He told me everything I have ever done." (John 4:39)

I'm thinking this morning about what makes a source reliable.

The news is full of the John McCain/lobbyist story, and particularly the angle of why the New York Times published it in the first place. We love to deconstruct, don't we?

It amazes me that anyone believed her.

More on this tomorrow.

John 3:16

(Lent 2A    John 3:1-17)

It's such a great story. Lent this year is full of great stories from John's gospel, and although I am a Mark fan rather than a John lover, I look forward to the return of these stories in the lectionary.

Except this one, even though it's great.

If you've been to or watched a major sporting event, you may know why. There are too many people who use "John 3:16" as code for "whosoever says a certain set of words, the same words someone told me to say, is all set, and the rest of you fools? Mwahahahaha!" It's the theological equivalent of what my dad used to call the only thing an athlete says in an interview before one of those sporting events: "We've got a great bunch of guys, and we're going to go all the way."

The gospel at risk of becoming a slogan, a cheer, a secret code.

3:16 "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.      

3:17 "Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

Maybe the problem is not reading through to verse 17, or maybe it's taking the couplet out of context. Because if you read the whole story, from the entrance of Nicodemus in verse 1, you'll see that what Jesus is saying is not simple or readily understandable. He introduced new concepts, ideas that puzzled even a leader among the Jews, a Pharisee, a learned man. To be born from above, what does this mean?

Nicodemus asks a practical question, trying to show that in a literal interpretation, what Jesus says makes no sense.

And then Jesus employs a literary device that reminds us meaning is found on many levels:

"And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness..."

We are in the realm of things beyond our understanding, in which we must employ similes and metaphors to come close to comprehending.

His words bring us close, but not all the way, to his meaning and his purpose. They are the pin-prick in a piece of cardboard that allows us an indirect view of the eclipse.

But in our desperate attempt to control what is too powerful for us, we reduce him to a piece of poster board and the shorthand, "John 3:16."