The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too.
Rose Schneiderman, Feminist Labor Leader, 1912
Rose Schneiderman, Feminist Labor Leader, 1912
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There is a theme that unites all of our readings today and that theme is new life. It can be hard to think about new life when the world around us seems bleak. These days, the news is filled with stories of war, violence, and corruption.
War, violence, and corruption were part of the every day lives of the writers of our scripture readings today, too. Ezekiel, John, Paul, and the communities to who they wrote, all found themselves living in times not so different from our own. Ezekiel was a prophet during the exile of the people of Judah into Babylon (roughly 597-528 BCE). The Babylonians made multiple excursions into Jerusalem where they destroyed virtually all the infrastructure, including the beloved temple built by Solomon. The Babylonians took all the middle and upper class people, marched them 800 miles to Babylon, and made them slaves. The poor they left behind to farm the land for Babylon. Those left behind struggled to survive, because the economy was shattered. The Babylonians paid meager wages. And, of course, those living in slavery in Babylon struggled mightily, as well. The introduction to Ezekiel in my favorite study bible describes the situation this way: "In Ezekiel’s world, superpower politics and small scale ethnic nationalism were buttressed by idolatrous practices that legitimated military alliances, violent crimes, and oppressive economic polices. In the face of Israel’s disintegrating independence and identity, old theological certainties collided with the massive shock of warfare, destruction, and deportation. Surrounded by political deportees suffering the consequences of imperialist terror, Ezekiel presents a barrage of evocative, disturbing, bizarre, and unconventional responses to the trauma of exile. Ezekiel’s goal is to constitute a people whose character corresponds to the holiness of the Lord, and whose identity declares the Lord’s righteousness and justice among the nations" (The New Interpreter’s Study Bible, 2003, p. 1153). For John the gospel writer, and his community, life in first century Palestine was equally challenging. This time, instead of being deported, the people were occupied. Roman occupation created economic hardship for them. The taxes were crippling. The violence was unpredictable. And while the Romans were known for Pax Romana, that peace was only truly felt by citizens at the highest levels of Roman society. Countries occupied by Rome were milked for whatever resources could be taken, all for the benefit of the wealthiest Romans. People from all over the Roman empire were captured and carried off to Rome as slaves. It was horrific. Roman occupation and oppression continued in Paul’s time. He and the church communities he founded all experienced hardship because of Rome. Rome continued to expand it’s reach and to extort resources from across the region. They called the Mediterranean basin Mare Nostrum (our sea). They controlled everything from Britannia to modern day Turkey and Northern Africa to modern day Germany. Shortly after Jesus’ crucifixion, Rome began periodic persecutions of Christians. Paul was martyred in Rome In the year 67. And yet, about ten years earlier, Paul wrote the words that we heard today, encouraging people not to focus on what is broken in this world (the flesh) but to remain focused on the things of God (the Spirit). So how could Ezekiel, John, and Paul all point towards new life when things seemed so bleak? Each of them had a profound encounter with God that fired hope within them. Ezekiel’s hope came from a series of powerful visions. We hear one of them this morning. Ezekiel finds himself in the middle of a valley filled with dry bones. As you can imagine, Ezekiel and the people of Jerusalem must have felt pretty dead and dried out themselves, after all that they’ve been through. So God tells Ezekiel to call the breath, the Spirit, and the bones are resurrected. These bones, that represent the people of Jerusalem, are given muscles and sinews, and then breath. They live again. Eventually, Ezekiel’s vision would come true. The people are released from captivity and return to Jerusalem where they reconnect with God, rebuild their lives, and even rebuild the temple. John can hope because John has seen Jesus risen from the dead. His gospel is replete with signs that point towards Jesus as the Messiah. Today’s story contains one of those signs. It shows Jesus having power over life and death. His raising of Lazarus from the dead illustrates this power. It also served to strengthen the faith of those in John’s community, who would have seen their share of hardship and persecution. But what about Paul? As a young man, Paul joined in the persecution of Christians, even participating in the stoning of Stephen, the first Christian martyr. But his perspective and his life changed when he had a profound encounter with the risen Christ. His new life in Christ prompted him to spend the rest of his life spreading the good news about Jesus and founding churches. For me, the strongest example of this transformation in Paul comes at the end of the chapter that today’s reading comes from. Here Paul’s words from Romans 8:38-39: “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” When I researched the lives of Ezekiel, John, and Paul, and what they experienced, my first thought was that there really is nothing new under the sun. We too are living in a time of war. We are dealing with disappointing political leaders at home and abroad. We are watching our immigrant neighbors face threats that would have been unimaginable eighteen months ago. These days, David and I can generally tolerate watching the news for about 7 minutes before we need to switch the channel to something far more relaxing - like a cooking competition! I find that my emotions move back and forth between fury and heartbreak with not much of a pitstop in between. Ezekiel had plenty of reasons to despair. So did John and Paul. So do we. Reading the news every morning, I see plenty of reasons to feel hopeless. Our situation isn’t so different from what our ancestors in the faith were experiencing. So how did they cope? How can we? There are two things that help me. First, I really, truly lean into these scripture stories about new life. The dry bones readings has always spoken strongly to me. I hope that I have even a tablespoon of the faith that Martha and Mary had when they told Jesus, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died." I remember Paul’s teachings about what faithfulness looks like and that nothing can separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Truth: I don’t get it right. Not even most of the time. And, when I remember these things, I feel less despair. I also keep my eyes wide open for signs of new life and hope. Sometimes it’s as simple as watching the daffodils come up outside my office window, or noticing the forsythia begin to bloom in our neighborhood. I’ve been moved by the stories of gratitude that have been shared here each week during Lent. Our UTO moments of gratitude prompted me to think of my own moments of gratitude and to drop some cash in the mighty mite box. The Optimist section in the Washington Post shares stories that feature loving kindness. Each of these practices helps me. None of these things make what’s hard about this moment go away. But like the dry bones, and Lazarus, and Paul’s call to keep our minds on the Spirit, all of these present day stories about new life prompt me to look up and away from my despair and they remind me that our God is a god of life. Amen.
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3/15/2026 0 Comments Sermon for Lent 4A - John 9:1-41In all four gospels, we hear stories of people who have physical disabilities who encounter Jesus and he heals them. By far the most common one is blindness. And by far the most detailed story of Jesus healing a blind person is today’s story from chapter 9 of John’s gospel.
This story presents us with some troubling imagery to unpack. It’s troubling to me because it seems to use blindness to describe a spiritual failing. I find that troubling because there are people in my life who have been impacted by blindness and vision issues. Perhaps that’s true for you also. I need to name this reality at the outset. Because of my discomfort, I spent a great deal of time with this text this week. And I hope that as we make our way through the text together, we’ll see that there’s nuance in what’s happening here. And even while the story might make us feel uncomfortable, it also invites us to see things in new ways. Together, we’ll look at some of the challenges in this text and some of the invitations. Let’s start with the challenges. Right at the beginning of the story, Jesus says about the man born blind, “He was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.” To me, that sounds like God made this man blind, and caused all the suffering he experienced, for God’s own purposes. It reminds me of the story of Job. But, I think what Jesus is saying is that God didn’t cause his blindness. Rather, the man is blind and in this present moment, God’s power of healing, through Jesus, is then able to be revealed by his healing. This story also highlights a troubling aspect of life in the first century. Having any kind of physical disability made a person a social outcast. Remembering this aspect of first century Roman culture can help us to understand the passage, even when we disagree with the perspective. First century Roman culture was obsessed with social status. There were many things that could help a person accrue status, or take status away. Having wealth, social position, and family connections conferred status. So did meeting societal standards of beauty or attractiveness. Lacking any or all of those things could take status away. Any physical disability was another of the things that could lower status. And while first century Palestine wasn’t Rome, it was occupied by Rome and influenced by Rome’s values and culture. The third thing that is challenging is they way Jesus labels those who are spiritually unaware as being blind. But if we keep stay with the text, we can see that Jesus is doing something quite different here. Jesus is flipping the assumptions of his world around. In first century Palestine, those who were blind had no status, no power, no way to support themselves, and often no home. I noticed in my reading and re-reading of today’s text that the man’s parents are still alive, but they are not caring for him. He has to beg to survive. However, by the end of the story, he’s the one who understands better than anyone else who Jesus is, while the Pharisees, who had way more power and status, who were supposed to be the experts on all things holy, didn’t get it at all. The person society places on the bottom, Jesus places on the top. It’s the kind of reversal that we see all the time around Jesus and his followers. In Paul’s day, one Roman writer actually described the social upheavals that Christians brought into his city as “the world turned upside down.” So now, how does this text invite us to see things in new ways? First, this text dispels any anxiety that we might have about why things happen the way they do. The disciples assume that someone is to blame for the man’s blindness. They ask, “Who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind?” Jesus is quick to reassure them that the man’s blindness isn’t the result of anyone’s sin. Yet, the Pharisees are quick to label both Jesus and the man born blind as sinners because they don’t fit the Pharisees mold of faithful behavior. John warns all of us to hold our judgement lest we turn judgement back on ourselves. This instruction to not judge is a common gospel theme - take the log out of your own eye before you try to remove the splinter from someone else’s, Jesus teaches in Matthew (7:3-5). Next, this text invites us to notice that here, and in many places throughout the gospels, sin isn’t primarily defined as an action. Sin isn’t something that we do. Sin is defined as a failure to recognize who Jesus is. Jesus doesn’t like the Pharisees’ actions towards the man born blind. But the problem comes from their failure to recognize Jesus and his teachings. It is, in fact, their inability to see Jesus for who he is that is the source of their problem. The final new way this text invites us to see is in relationship to what we might call holy rules. One of these holy rules was around the sabbath. The third of the ten commandments is, “Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy.” By Jesus’ time that fairly straightforward commandment had developed into an elaborate set of rules about what was allowed on the sabbath. Throughout the gospels, Jesus and his followers get crosswise with some of the religious leaders for doing things on the sabbath that these elaborate rules prohibited. In this passage, Jesus does three things that break the sabbath laws. He made a paste of mud, then he smeared it on the man’s eyes, and then he healed him. There’s a moment in Mark’s gospel (2:27), when Jesus is criticized because he and his disciples pluck some grain to eat on the sabbath. Jesus responds by saying, “The sabbath was made for humankind, not humankind for the sabbath.” In this teaching from Mark’s gospel, and every time Jesus speaks about the sabbath, he is inviting the disciples, the Pharisees, and us to act in ways that prioritize people over religious rules and laws. When Jesus heals the man born blind, he changes that man’s life. He’s been homeless and marginalized by his blindness. Because Jesus heals him, he will no longer forced to beg. He’s restored to his community, at least until the Pharisees kick him out. After that happens, he chooses to follow Jesus and is brought into a new community of disciples. This portion of the text invites us to ask: What beliefs are we holding on to in a rigid way? Are we placing more emphasis on following a rule than we are on loving our neighbor? Who is excluded by our beliefs? This gospel text is a long and complicated. There are some important things for us to remember as we take this story with us today. It tells the story of a man born blind. It invites each of us to see a number to things. We are called to see how Jesus and his ministry turns the world upside down. We are invited to let go of our preconceived notions about sin and causation. We are invited to see Jesus and what he has to teach us. And finally, we are invited to see how religious rules or structures might cause us to exclude or limit others, and to let those go. In the end, this is a story about how Jesus opens faith and belief, welcoming and inviting everyone to see him and draw closer to him. We are invited to use the man born blind as our model and our guide. Amen. It seems to me that when Christians use the word blessed, we mean something different than what God had in mind when he said to Abram, “I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.”
I searched on Amazon this week for “blessed” merchandise. I found:
People say they are blessed in many different circumstances. You might hear a football player say it when they score the winning touchdown, or a baseball player when they hit the game-winning home run. After a disaster, you might hear a home owner say they are blessed, if their house is still standing, when all the others in the neighborhood have been destroyed. And I’ll admit it - I’m uncomfortable with what I sense all these scenarios are trying to convey. But, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me back up and start with Abram’s story. We meet Abram first at the end of Genesis 11. He is the son of a man named Terah, born in a place known as Ur of the Chaldeans. Abram marries Sarai, and together with his father and his nephew Lot, they leave Ur and settle in Haran. It is while they are in Haran that today’s Genesis passage about blessing takes place. God says to Abram, “I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing….” Then, following this promise of blessing, God calls Abram, Sarai, and Lot to leave Haran and continue on to Canaan. All sorts of things happen to them. A famine causes them to flee to Egypt. They experience ongoing infertility (despite God’s promise of offspring). A son is born when Abram forces a relationship on Sarai’s slave Hagar. And, let’s just stop to note that Abram’s actions are not a blessing to Hagar. Later, God makes another covenant with Abram that comes with new names - Abraham and Sarah. And finally, in their very old age, Sarah gives birth to their promised offspring - a son they name Isaac. So given all that happens to Abram - he thrives and grows rich, he becomes the forefather of a nation, and to this day, we know his name - we could definitely call Abram #blessed. But what does blessing mean in this context? My working definition of blessing is that it is a declaration of faithfulness to another person. And that faithfulness is shown by truly seeing that person, accepting them as they are, with all their faults and foibles. It is shown by honoring them and loving them. When God promised that he would bless Abram, God promised to faithfully see, accept, honor and love him. Note that blessing is not is a promise that we will all live happily ever after. Bad things will still happen. But blessing does mean that, no matter what we are going through, God is faithfully present with us, seeing, accepting, honoring, and loving us in the midst of whatever we are facing. Not only that, God’s blessing of Abram also comes with responsibility. God blesses Abram so that he will bless others. God’s expectation is that the blessing conferred upon Abram isn’t for Abram alone. It’s meant to be passed on. Abram is to approach others with that same attitude of faithfully seeing, accepting, honoring, and loving them, that God has shown to him. There’s also a part of this promise God makes that makes me deeply uncomfortable, and I need to be name it. God goes on to tell Abram that he will bless those who bless him AND curse those who curse him. What makes me uncomfortable is that it sounds like God is ready to pounce on people for failing. And that doesn’t ring true with how I experience God. But, in actual fact, things play out differently. Let me explain. Notice that God is setting up a series of reciprocal relationships here. If things work according to plan, God will bless Abram and Abram will bless God. Then Abram will bless others. They will bless him back. If this unfolds the way it’s supposed to, the world is filled with people who faithfully see, accept, honor, and love one another. But if the people Abram meets fail to reciprocate Abram’s blessing, then they find themselves under God’s judgement. That’s what the cursing part means. Things mostly didn’t work out the way God intended. Abram didn’t always bless God, despite repeated promises to do so. He didn’t always bless others. Others didn’t always bless him. And yet, despite the threatened curse, God kept coming back and remaking the offer. God gives Abram and others repeated opportunities to try again. Eventually, as we learned in the reading from John’s gospel this morning, because God loved this world so much, he sent Jesus. I kept coming back to this text this week because I have such a love/hate relationship with the word blessed. Our society seems to think that blessed means lucky, rather than being faithfully seen, honored, accepted and loved by God - and then passing that blessing on to others. Our society also seems to miss the “…so you will be a blessing” part. Whatever ways I happen to be blessed, that blessing isn’t for me to bask in and hold selfishly. If I feel blessed to have a loving family, then my obligation is to help other families be equally blessed. This question of what it means to be blessed and how we bless others came to the forefront for me yesterday as I was in the midst of writing this sermon. Along with all of you, I learned that our country is now at war with Iran. The news that we are at war is always hard news. This news hit me, and many in our congregation, particularly hard, because more than 20 of our siblings in Christ are from Iran. I know that many of our Iranian siblings still have family and friends in Iran. I know that the recently escalating violence in Iran has led to the deaths of some of their loved ones. I know that they fear for their loved ones’ safety and well-being, even more now than before. While their views are not univocal, they have no love for the Iranian leadership. They long for Iran to return to the way it was before a strict sharia theocracy took over Iran during the 1979 revolution - a theocracy that has become ever more conservative in the 45+ years since it was established. In a congregation that is politically diverse in a variety of ways, we come to this moment with different views about what is happening and how our government should proceed. This war, the broader political moment we find ourselves in, and the diversity of viewpoints about all of it, pushes us to ask what it means to be blessed, in order to bless others. What does it look like - right now - to receive God’s promise of faithfully seeing, honoring, accepting, and loving us? How do we bless others? How do we bless those with whom we disagree? There are thing we can do to be a blessing right now. We can donate to organizations that are helping people on the ground in Iran. A quick look today didn’t show many options yet. But I know that there is also grave need in the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem, related to the war, so that could be a place to start. If you are inclined to advocacy, you may want to follow the work of the Episcopal Public Policy Network, which does governmental advocacy on a variety of issues as directed by the resolutions of our General Convention. Each of us can pray - for a speedy resolution to this conflict and for the safety of the loved ones of our siblings from Iran. As I hear from our Iranian siblings, I’ll share more ideas of how we can bless and support them. In this country, blessed is a word that has become divorced from its biblical meaning. It’s taken on a sort of Calvinistic implication - if something good has happened to me, it’s because I am blessed, with the converse true as well. I call on each of us today to remember the biblical meaning of the word blessed. God saw Abram. God accepted, honored, loved, and was faithful to him, as Abram was. In return, Abram was called to bless God and those whom he met. Abram was to pass God’s blessing on. Blessing isn’t something to be grasped tightly. It was always meant to be shared. We bless others to make the world a better place, to fill the world with God’s love. God’s call to Abram is for us, as well: I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. Amen. |
AuthorI'm Fran Gardner-Smith. I'm an Episcopal priest, a wife, a grandmother, a feminist, a writer, and an artist. Archives
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