One of my favorite things about the disciples of Jesus is how frequently they mess up. The gospel stories are, presumably, the highlights of the life and ministry of Jesus, including the stories about his friends that stood the test of time. And yet they are not always the most flattering portrayals! Peter, most famously, is always putting his foot in his mouth about something or other, and he falls out of a boat more than once, and—spoiler alert—he denies being associated with the crucified Jesus in the immediate aftermath. But he’s also the rock Jesus chooses to build the church upon, the cornerstone of early Christianity. It is not always those most outwardly qualified for bringing about the reign of God who are invited to do it.
This morning’s gospel story, about a man born blind, is no exception.
I am a voracious reader, and every once in a while my reading manages to line up really successfully with other goings-on in my life, and this season of Lent is a perfect example. I have been reading a really excellent book by a scholar named Amy Kenny, called My Body is Not a Prayer Request: Disability Justice in the Church.
Dr. Kenny is a disabled woman and her book—well, at least the first half of it that I have read so far—is about reclaiming the prevailing understanding of disability as something to be pitied, cured, whispered about, openly reviled, and discriminated against and replacing that with what Jesus says disability is: “a method for revealing the living God to the community.”
Right off the bat, in the beginning of our story this morning, our astute disciples ask, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9:2). It’s noteworthy that they are not asking if sin is the cause of this man’s blindness, but are assuming that that must be the case and are just wondering whose sin, exactly, is to blame.
This was the prevailing understanding at the time, and the association of sin and disability meant that scores of disabled people were excluded from the temple because of their presumed sinful state. The whole life of the community was centered in the temple, and so they were not permitted to participate in any of it—in worship, or commerce, or government, or even basic human interaction and fellowship.
Whether they were, like this man, born blind, or had limited use of their limbs, or were unable to speak or hear, or lived with any other disability, they were excluded on that basis. But Jesus—as usual—steps in to show another way of looking at things. “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” he says, “he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him” (John 9:3). Every person bears the image of God in their created body.
It should be noted that just like our unnamed Samaritan woman from last week, the man born blind is not named in this story, either. Just as she was not afforded the dignity of being named, this marginalized man is also identified only by that which makes him “other” than the rest of his community.
Chapter one of Dt. Kenny’s book is centered on this man’s story, and she has a lot to say. Dr. Kenny writes that “Jesus inverts their idea of blindness by showing the disciples that disability becomes a place of encounter with the glory of God. Jesus interacts with [the man born blind] directly, talking not just about him but to him and with him.
According to Jesus, [the man’s] blindness didn’t result from his or his parents’ sin, but instead his blindness displays God. What a powerful, subversive statement: disability helps reveal the light of the World.”
How exactly? I’m glad you asked.
When I previously read this story, I assumed that the miracle is the restoration of sight to the man born blind, and that Jesus is revealing God’s power by making this drastic physical change in the life of this person. But Dr. Kenny’s interpretation really challenged me, suggesting that that is merely one piece of this puzzle. Part of what leads her to this understanding is that most of the story happens after the spit and mud on the eyes moment, and there is a lot of action between Jesus, the religious authorities, the man born blind, his parents, and every nosy neighbor in town.
“If it were just about the physical cure,” Dr. Kenny suggests, “the story would end after verse 7 when he reemerges from the pool, able to see.” But since you listened to me read verses 1-41, not just 1-7, you know that that’s not what happens!
What Jesus gives this man is not just his physical sight, but a richer understanding of himself as a child of God, and a reconnection to his community. Just like the more-than-physical-water Jesus offered the Samaritan woman at the well in last week’s story, there is a broader transformation at work here.
The ministry of Jesus, and the work of his disciples before and after his death, contains dozens of healings. These healings are not only physical changes, but spiritual changes and communal changes. “Jesus’s healing is not purely about a physical alteration but about reestablishing right relationship between humanity and God, and, hopefully, between individuals and community.”
The man born blind receives a miraculous restoration of his sight, the story tells us. In response, he tells everyone who will listen—including some curious local authorities—all about the man, Jesus, who wields the power of God.
The local authorities are hung up on the “how” of the whole situation—which our modern sensibilities can identify with, frankly—but they fixate not on the transformation of this person, but the assumption that this change happened in an inappropriate manner. Jesus healed him on the sabbath, when work is not permitted, and so must not be from God—because surely someone from God would follow the law to the letter. “But others said,” we read in verse 16, “‘how can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?’” While some are trying to pin unholiness on Jesus, these community members are doing the opposite—citing this miracle as proof that Jesus is who they have heard him to be.
This argument goes back and forth for quite some time, and many opinions are sought. I hear the exasperation—and the courage—in verse 27, when the man born blind responds to the investigation by saying. “‘I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?” *chef’s kiss*
This transformation in his life has called him out of his exclusion, away from the margins, right into the main event. God’s work in the world, embodied by Jesus, now also includes the life and testimony of this man.
Dr. Kenny writes that the man born blind “received a physical cure in the beginning of John 9 when he emerged from the pool able to see, but his true healing does not occur until much later in the chapter, when he declares, ‘Lord, I believe,’ and worships Jesus (9:38). That’s the moment he is restored through a conversation with the living God and is able to reach the place of worship he’s been excluded from.”
Over and over, Jesus is inviting unexpected people to be part of his work in the world. He is not calling those who sit at the top of hierarchies, those with the most power and prestige, those who seem, at face value, to be the best recruits. He invites the uninvited, the ignored, the overlooked, the deliberately excluded.
Previously, the man born blind would not have been able to worship in the temple with his neighbors, because of that pesky assumption of sin the disciples were asking about earlier. Now, empowered by God to proclaim his faith in the Son of Man, he is called and sent—just like his fellow apostles.
His story is just as mundane and everyday as theirs, in some ways. They were just a ragtag crew of fishermen, remember? They wrangled a tax collector into their ranks, and who could forget the camel-hair-wearing, locust-and-wild-honey-eater, John the Baptizer! They have women among them, even! These are not the cream of the crop, socially. But that’s exactly why Jesus calls them his friends and sends them out to proclaim the coming reign of God to the ends of the earth. They are people, just as you and I are people, called out of their humble circumstances, to tell the truth about who God is and who we are.
Whatever your body can or cannot do, you are a beloved child of God and a disciple of Jesus the Christ.
Whatever your mind can or cannot do, you are a beloved child of God and a disciple of Jesus the Christ.
Whatever anyone has said or done to exclude you or harm you or discourage you from this truth, you are still a beloved child of God and a disciple of Jesus the Christ.
Whether it feels like you have any idea what you are doing, you are a beloved child of God and a disciple of Jesus the Christ. Amen.
The Water and the Word
We’ve discussed that I am a word nerd. I am also what some may refer to as a Chatty Cathy. I have a habit of…speaking. For someone whose vocation is Minister of Word and Sacrament, in which I am regularly called upon to proclaim blessing, this is good news. It is occasionally more appropriate in my line of work not to speak, to hold space for silence, to bring a non-anxious presence to a room. The balance, I suppose, of knowing when to speak and when not to speak, is part of the work.
As a clergy woman, I am well aware of the many historical and present-day scenarios, specifically in the church, when I would not be permitted to speak, and certainly not to preach the gospel or preside at the eucharist. The acknowledgment of my call to ministry in the ELCA is a gift I take seriously, especially for my sisters and siblings for whom silence is still the expectation.
For centuries, people of marginalized genders have been expected to listen, rather than speak. And, while remaining silent, serve at the pleasure of those who are empowered to speak. Today, however, we read of a conversation that defies all expectations. In the middle of the day, at the well in a city of Samaria, a woman speaks to Jesus.
Why is this conversation noteworthy? I am so excited to tell you.
We don’t know her name, because there were still some gaps in the “women are people” idea at the time the Gospel According to John was written down, but we can work with that. What we do know about her is that she is part of the Samaritan community, estranged cousins of the Jewish people.
The Samaritans and the Jews have a shared history—you’ll notice that she names this, calling Jacob “our ancestor” during their conversation—but they diverged at a crucial point. The exact history of the schism is blurry, but the division itself is stark. Samaritans believe in the same God of Israel, but they have differing beliefs about the Torah, and, most significantly, regard Mount Gerizim (in Samaria) as the holiest place on earth, rather than Jerusalem. These differences caused centuries of strife between Jews and Samaritans, a separation which exists to this day.
In the time of Jesus, this separation would have prohibited interaction between Samaritans and Jews—they couldn’t speak to one another, eat or drink together, worship together, work together, let alone intermarry. Their communities are not just separate, they are enemies. Both Jesus and the unnamed Samaritan woman would have been steeped in this prejudice by their communities.
So what is Jesus doing in this region of his enemies? Well, just before this, he is in Judea, and needs to get home to Galilee. You may not have a map of “Judea, Samaria, and the Surrounding Areas in New Testament Times” handy, but the back of my HarperCollins Study Bible does, and so I can tell you that the way from Judea to Galilee is—you guessed it—through Samaria.
Jesus is tired from the journey he has been on, and he stops to rest. His disciples scurry off to the city for food, leaving Jesus alone at the well. When the unnamed Samaritan woman comes to the well to draw water, Jesus, knowing exactly who she is, speaks directly to her, “Give me a drink.” This is perhaps not the most polite request of all time, but he is exhausted, and it could be expected that a woman would draw water for a man. However, the unnamed Samaritan woman is surprised. “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” She asks.
It is surprising to her and would have been surprising to John’s hearers that “Jesus initiates contact with a Samaritan woman, an outsider and inappropriate interlocutor. After her shocked reply, Jesus proceeds to speak about the living water he could give her.
The woman’s [skeptical] reply, ‘are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us this well?’ focuses on the common ground of the Israelite history they share.” [1] It is with this acknowledgment of their shared foundation that Jesus opens up the conversation about his identity as the Messiah—which he has not spoken about to anyone else before.
This is what is further scandalous about this encounter. That Jesus is the long-awaited Messiah is basically the thesis of the Gospel According to John, and this conversation with the unnamed Samaritan woman is the only time Jesus outright says this truth to another person!
“That the person he trusts himself to is a Samaritan and a woman is deeply significant, not only to [this gospel’s] first-century audience, but to anyone….The gospel truth of Jesus’ life is that he brings a new way that results in all people—[people of every gender, every ethnicity] outsiders and insiders—worshiping in Spirit and in truth.” [1]
Back to the content of their conversation, we see a pattern similar to the conversation Jesus had with the Pharisee Nicodemus in the previous chapter, the subject of last week’s text. As readers of the New Testament, we know that Jesus makes some cryptic pronouncements, and is not always straightforward. Both the unnamed Samaritan woman and Nicodemus “misunderstand Jesus because they are thinking too literally, prosaically, or conventionally.” [2]
Other stories in John also feature this miscommunication, like confusion about flesh versus bread, or how Jesus, the carpenter from Nazareth, could possibly have been born from above. This gospel invites us to wonder about the power of God to cross boundaries, turn things inside out, and make all things new.
But the Samaritan woman is sure that Jesus means actual, physical, drinkable water. And why wouldn’t she? Here they are at Jacob’s well. He is asking her to quench his thirst.
Here, you can thank our lectionary compilers for the callback to the reading from Exodus, in which our merry band of Israelites are…not so merry. They, too, are parched. Moses has led them out of slavery in Egypt—thanks be to God!—but has led them into the hot, dry, desert.
They have traveled for what feels like years, lugging their children and their livestock and all their earthly possessions. If it’s summer, which, for the sake of our imaginations we will assume it is, the temperatures are soaring over 100 degrees, easily. Aren't you thirsty just thinking about that?
They complain to Moses about their physical thirst and about their perception that God has abandoned them. “Is the Lord among us or not?!” they ask.
When we read stories like this from the Torah, and shake our heads at the grumbling and ungrateful Israelites, we forget that we, as the reader, have access to the whole canon and can know the whole story. We know about the coming covenant and the Promised Land. “Yet at this point in the text, the Israelites are just a band of runaway slaves in the wilderness….their need…is real. They do not have water to drink.” [3]
Miraculously, Moses follows instructions from God and draws water from a rock. God is present in the desert as a promise of accompaniment in their struggle, and as cool water on a parched tongue.
Another remarkable thing about Jesus’ conversation with the unnamed Samaritan woman at the well is how long it goes on. This is the longest single conversation Jesus has with any individual in this gospel! Both of them have a lot to say.
Probably, if you’ve heard a few sermons about this conversation, you’ve heard that this woman’s promiscuity—five former husbands and a current man who is not her husband—adds a layer of scandal to the conversation. But, in all he has to say, Jesus does not condemn this woman or call for her to repent, or anything he might do if he was concerned with sexual immorality. “Neither Jesus, nor [any editorial by] the gospel writer make[s] a value statement about the five husbands; it is likely that the woman’s past is not her fault.” [1] There’s nothing in the story that leads us to anything but a compassionate conclusion about this unnamed Samaritan woman’s life story.
“There are a number of reasons why the Samaritan woman might have the past she has. Perhaps she was married off as a child bride, then widowed and passed along among her dead husband’s brothers, as per the ‘Levirate marriage’ practice of the day. Maybe her various husbands abandon her because she’s ill, disabled, or infertile. Maybe she’s a victim of abuse.” [4] We don’t know.
But what we do know is that when Jesus meets her, he sees her for who she is, as a whole person. He engages her in conversation and in revelation about who he is, transforming her life as she knows it. Not her marital status, not her social location, but her deepest self-understanding as a child of God.
Preachers will hem and haw about whether to offer a tidy conclusion that the moral of the story this week is that the good news comes to us metaphorically, as a “spring of water, gushing up to eternal life” or that God’s love for us is so specific to our very humanness, that God provides the literal water we need to survive.
I think, though, that it has to be both! In our encounters with others, “We must offer not only the living water of Jesus but the compassion of our hearts toward [people] whose most basic needs of food and water await fulfillment.” [3] To the Israelites, parched in the desert, the presence of God is cool water to drink. To the woman at the well, compassion is living water, inviting her into something entirely new.
We’ll sing, in just a moment, one of my favorite hymns, Baptized and Set Free. As we make our way through its verses, I hope you will feel that God is with you in the waters of your baptism, in the crashing waves of the Pacific Ocean just a few miles from here, in the next refreshing sip of water you take today, and in the wellspring of hope that rises in your chest. I hope you’ll feel sated and I hope you’ll feel free. Amen.
[3] Nyasha Junior, “Third Sunday in Lent” in Preaching God’s Transforming Justice, Year A, 143.
[4] Debie Thomas, “The Woman at the Well” in Into the Mess and Other Jesus Stories (Cascade 2022), 38.
A Reminder About (and Renunciation of) Antisemitism
Good church-going friends, are you familiar with how the lectionary works? The word lectionary comes from the same Latin root as the word “elect” and so has a meaning somehow related to “chosen.” There are chosen readings for each week of the church year, according to the season, and on a three-year cycle through three of the four Gospels.
Matthew, Mark, and Luke are what we call the synoptic Gospels—you might recognize a similarity to the word synopsis in there—which are the Gospels structured narratively around the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
There are similarities and differences between the three—Mark is the shortest and likely the first to be written, and skips right over Jesus’ birth and into his adult life; Matthew starts with a lengthy genealogy, situating Jesus with his ancestors; Luke has the most stories in common with Matthew, which causes some scholars to posit a hypothetical source document from which both Matthew and Luke are derived.
Each of the three has their own particular vibe, but they walk us through the story of Jesus. Each lectionary year—A, B, or C—is dedicated to one of these three books. We are in year A, which is Matthew. Next year is B, Mark, and then C, Luke, and then back to A.
As we go through the church year, Advent to Christmas to Epiphany to Lent to Holy Week to Easter to Pentecost and back around, we’ll hear from one of these three every Sunday morning, give or take, with a sprinkling of the fourth gospel, John, in there for good measure.
The Gospel According to John is the outlier. John doesn’t get its whole own year because it doesn’t have the same narrative function as the other three, and it has alternative, spiritual, enriching content. It does have some stories of Jesus’ life, that’s why it’s included in the four Gospels, but it’s different.
It is different in beautiful ways—its opening line: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the word was God.” I have that tattooed on my arm, which you may or may not have noticed when you’ve seen me in short sleeves.
The Gospel continues, a few verses later: “A light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” And later, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” And later, “I am the resurrection and the life; those who believe in me, even though they die, will live.”
The Gospel According to John is poetic and mystical, in addition to its narrative. The author writes, more than once, that it was written so that the reader might come to believe. It focuses very deeply on the end of Jesus’ life, and so is ever-present in our Lent and Holy Week lectionary.
But the Gospel According to John is also different in a way that has become more dangerous as time has passed. The Gospel According to John is the most antisemitic of the canon. Throughout its 21 chapters, it makes dozens of references to “the Jews” as a group, and as those responsible for violence and especially for the violent death of Jesus.
The distinction between “the Jews” and “the religious authorities” or “the state” may have been clear to the original audience, but its interpretation throughout Christian history has not made that plain. These words have been used to harm our Jewish siblings for centuries, and to bias us against them, even implicitly. This must not continue.
The history and present of Christian hegemony in this nation and around the world means we have to overcorrect at all available opportunities. This goes especially for the ways in which Christian history—and our present—are intertwined with white supremacy.
Those of us who benefit most directly from white supremacy may find this the hardest to reconcile. It is easier for us to think that these ideas lived and died with Hitler, and that our Jewish siblings are safe the world over. But last week, various hate groups announced their intentions to harm US Jews on shabbat, their holy day of community and rest, calling it a Day of Hate. Many non-Jewish allies stepped up to provide a peaceful presence outside local houses of prayer. This scare tactic was sufficient enough to scare many people away from their synagogues on Friday, but fortunately there were no major incidents. In the year of our Lord 2023, these are still the realities faced by our Jewish siblings.
This week’s text from the Gospel According to John is not one such text that includes the harmful use of the generalization “the Jews” but it does mention them and it does feature another much-maligned group of Jewish people, the Pharisees. The Pharisees were a group of Jewish religious leaders, some of whom—like Nicodemus—were members of the Sanhedrin, a deliberative body of judges.
They knew the Jewish Law forward and backward, and could help their communities stay in line with the will of God by adhering to its precepts. They were faithful interpreters of sacred texts.
Like any rule enforcers, they weren’t hugely popular. They were respected by their communities, for sure, but most of them were probably not the life of any parties. There is some contemporary Jewish research that posits that Jesus himself was a Pharisee, which would explain why he has so much contact with them, and why they take his dissent so seriously.
However, Christian history has taken this title and turned into a slur for being legalistic and shrewd—and Jewish. Lutherans must reckon with this history most carefully.
Later in his life, Martin Luther’s work veered into hateful antisemitism. His interpretation of the Gospel According to John blamed Jews the world over for the death of Jesus, and attempted to hold contemporary Jews accountable for this crime. He wrote a 60,000-word treatise in which he spewed venomous words against all Jewish people, and called for their deaths. This is wrong, and cannot be tolerated. Lutheran history includes Lutheran antisemitism, which did nothing to stop Adolf Hitler’s antisemitism. We have to tell the truth about this, because, like Jesus says in John’s complicated Gospel, the truth will make us free.
You have not spent enough Lenten seasons with me to know that this sermon would be at least half introduction and disclaimers—so typical of me. Okay! So! On to the main event, the actual words of the text!
The gospel reading for today is a pretty famous exchange between Jesus and Nicodemus, the aforementioned Pharisee. He comes to see Jesus under cover of night, asking his burning questions. I love Nicodemus for this.
I can just imagine that he has been lying awake at night for days. He has heard that this man, Jesus, is called the Son of God; he has heard him declare forgiveness of sins; he has heard him proclaim freedom from the systems that oppress. Nicodemus has probably tossed and turned, wondering how this could be. And so, one of those nights, he gets up out of bed, puts on his shoes, and goes to see Jesus.
Nicodemus treads carefully, saying, basically, ‘your reputation precedes you’ and that the only explanation for Jesus’ behaviors and actions is that he is telling the truth about himself, that he was, in fact, sent by God. Jesus does not deny this, and cryptically claims that “no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”
I imagine Nicodemus’ eyes went wide, eyebrows raised, then immediately furrowed in confusion. Being born a second time is not physically possible. What could Jesus mean by this? Is Nicodemus suddenly wondering if he has made a huge mistake, and this miraculous man is actually...bonkers?
How many times have you heard the Gospel read from up here, heard a preacher say “this is the Gospel of the Lord,” and thought, “what on earth did she just read?” Was this week one of those times? Jesus says some wild stuff. For example: “What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit...The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Oh, well, it all makes sense when you put it that way…
What Jesus’ poetry about water and spirit are pointing toward is a fundamental shift in understanding. It is no wonder that Nicodemus does not understand, and it is no wonder if you don’t understand, exactly, either. Jesus is insisting that the standard operating procedures are going by the wayside, and that devotion to God requires a complete redirect. Worship of our earthly ways of knowing and being must come to an end.
The earthly circumstances of our birth—our health, our social class, our race, our gender, our nationality—are not what defines us. Our connection to God, our status as God’s beloved children, is what defines us.
“We speak of what we know and we testify to what we have seen—yet you don’t receive our testimony,” Jesus says to Nicodemus.
As Jesus and the disciples have been out and about in the world, telling the truth about God to everyone they meet, healing them of their wounds and freeing them from sin, the governing authorities have tried to quash this movement. Concerned about what the liberated masses might mean for their power, the leadership discredits Jesus and threatens him. These leaders are so busy trying to shut down the message, they haven’t listened to it properly. If they had, as perhaps Nicodemus has begun to do, they would know that this gospel truth is for them, too.
These great legal scholars have dedicated their lives to the word of God, and to its rightful administration. Like many of us, they may struggle to see that the abundant life proclaimed in its pages is not just for some ideal person, but for every person.
In the world we live in, the idea of “free” is hard to grasp. Everything has a price. Everything has a catch. There’s always something in the fine print.
Did you catch the famous John 3:16 in our Gospel reading? “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.” Everyone.
You’ve seen John 3:16 on a neon poster board in the stands of a professional sports game. You’ve seen it emblazoned on a keychain, scribbled on a post-it, stitched on a pillow.
To bring Martin Luther back from exile, he referred to this sentence as “the Gospel in miniature” and it has been a useful summary for many Christians throughout history. “...like any summary of the Gospel, this famous sentence pushes us to clarify how we understand God’s love and God’s justice to be related. If we distort this key relationship, we can render the verse not the [good news], but [its antithesis], a proclamation not of love and invitation but of contempt and exclusion.” [1]
Since this sentence has been spread so thoroughly in our culture, it is easy to imagine that it has been arranged and interpreted to emphasize just about any of its key words, but most likely the word “believe”. Did God love the world such that only those who “believe” have eternal life? By what metric is that belief measured? This can make any of us quite nervous about our own salvation, unsure if we’re believing the right thing in the right way in order to qualify.
It is important that we do not get too hung up, beloveds, on any single sentence in our scripture. Yes, John 3:16 is a fine summary, but only a summary.
We do well to remember that God loves graciously, mercifully, faithfully, extravagantly, uncomprehendingly. God loves the whole world, the entirety of creation, each individual creature, enough to freely give us the gift of grace. The mechanics and logistics of salvation are “God’s business, not ours. What we are charged to do is to proclaim again and again the good news of God’s extravagant love and mercy for the world, without exception.” [1]
Grace abounds, dear ones. For you, and for me, and for Nicodemus, and for Martin Luther, and for everyone. Thanks be to God!