Shifting currents
Commentary
Object:
Most twentieth-century predictions about life in this new millennium have proved widely
off base. Much of what was forecast about technology simply hasn't happened, while
aspects of invention and the communications revolution far exceed anything that was
imagined. We are, at best, quite hopeless when forecasting massive shifts in human
trends. Now and again, there are hints at new days dawning, but most of us are too
myopic either to notice or to understand the implications.
Yet the message of the Bible is always about shifting currents and the wind of the Spirit of God blowing in new directions. Even during this season of Lent, when we rehearse the old, old story of sin and death that led Jesus on his painful pilgrimage to the cross, we feel the fresh breezes of eternity.
Our lectionary readings for today confirm this. David is anointed the royal leader of a new era in Israel's history, even as the old order of Saul remains a viable entity. Paul writes about a new age mentality for those who know Jesus, while most of the world around them still believes that this current darkness is and will remain the status quo. And Jesus, in opening the blind man's eyes, calls attention to spiritual awareness that shifts the dividing line between "haves" and "have nots" in ways that we could never predict.
1 Samuel 16:1-13
The Home Alone series of movies provided a humorous look at what might happen if a family forgot one of its younger members in the excitement of vacation planning and travels. While the events and antics portrayed are highly unlikely to occur in real life, something of the rueful and comedic quality infusing those episodes seems uncannily like the atmosphere surrounding today's Old Testament lectionary reading.
The rueful part is in Israel's desire for a king and Samuel's regrets about Saul. There is a chain of leadership in the Old Testament that starts in a big way with Moses. He was the great deliverer of Israel, challenging Pharaoh with the word of Yahweh to "Let my people go!" Moses was the people's guide through the wilderness, the shoulder they cried upon, the general they followed or challenged, and the almost superhuman mediator of the Sinai Covenant, who dared to stand in the presence of thundering and glorious Yahweh when they were cowering in fear.
Joshua took over after Moses finally died at the age of 120. Joshua commanded the troops of Israel in battle and successfully waged a war of conquest and settlement that netted the nation the domain of Canaan and its east bank hills. At the close of Joshua's life, the aging trailblazer gathered the "elders" of Israel's clans and tribes for a final pep talk (Joshua 23). He commissioned them with oversight of the nation and placed the people's obedience to Yahweh in their hands as an ongoing responsibility.
It took only a generation before this group was forgotten (Judges 1-2), and the nation almost whistled its way into oblivion under the challenges of regional powers. But the leadership chain was tossed by Yahweh to a cadre of independent agents divinely raised up and uniquely qualified as temporary deliverers. They were called "judges," and the book preceding Samuel is named for them.
In fact, from the first chapters of the book containing our reading for today, we understand that Samuel himself was considered to be one of the judges. Indeed, his actions early on, in receiving a divine call to lead and deliver the people, and his position at the head of Israel's armies as they defeated the Philistines with divine assistance made him one among the great judges of ancient Israel.
But then the people asked for a king (1 Samuel 8). Samuel took the request very badly, but Yahweh convinced the priest/prophet/judge that the ultimate target of Israel's disaffection was not Samuel, but Yahweh instead. Samuel reluctantly anointed Saul and watched Israel's first king move quickly from a promising royal start to a self-important and demoralizing end. Yahweh and Samuel both felt "home alone" while the nation romped in some kind of sadistic vacation after a self-destructive megalomaniac.
Now the rueful helplessness of being left "home alone" takes on a new and comedic direction. Yahweh convinces a morose and melancholy Samuel to buck up and get on with life by choosing a new king, even as the current failure devolves out of control. Samuel is led to Bethlehem ("House of Bread," where a famine in bygone years enticed Elimelech -- "My God is King" -- to dislocate his family to Moab until the covenantal obedience of his daughter-in-law Ruth brought her and Naomi back home to both a physical and spiritual bountiful harvest) where a ruse allows him to survey the leading families of the district. Here the "home alone" tagline turns laugh-out-loud funny, for although Jesse's family gets the divine nod, none of his football squad sons is tagged. Instead, after moments of surprised confusion, Jesse and his wife remember they left the runt of the family back at the farm with the sheep.
Samuel waits until David is found, and though he does not seem to be the initial political poster child of the bunch, is led by Yahweh to anoint the boy as future king. In tune with Yahweh's past actions that upset birth orders (Abel and Seth over Cain, Isaac over Ishmael, Jacob over Esau, Joseph over his brothers), David is secretly placed on a trajectory that will allow him to establish the dynasty that will sustain at least a portion of the nation through the international superpower conquest campaigns, and ultimately informing the Christian theology of Jesus as King of kings and Lord of lords, a true and eternal scion of David.
Today's passage is fundamental to understanding several things: 1) the self-destructive behavior of any society because of resident evil and decay; 2) the surprising grace of God in choosing the lost and the last and the least to serve as agents of divine deliverance; and 3) the beginnings of the grand biblical theology of the Messiah King who is raised up to become king of all nations and apocalyptic Lord of all creation.
Ephesians 5:8-14
When I was a radio announcer during my college days, our station began a late-night "Contemporary Christian Music" program, one of the first in the nation. We talked about the format for a while and discussed the content. Of course, we debated what to call the show.
An early suggestion was "The Solid Rock Hour." Though the double entendre in that title was marvelous ("rock" for the style of some of the music, and "solid rock" as a picture of Jesus Christ), the name itself didn't ring with any contemporary feel. Our final choice was "Illumination," and both the name and the program became a major hit.
"Illumination" speaks of darkness and shadows while at the same time pointing to the growing clarity produced by light and insight. There is a lot of spirituality contained in thoughts of illumination.
It certainly expresses well the God-talk of the Bible: darkness and chaos lurk until God speaks Light and Life; the psalmist wanders through the valley of the shadow of death with the testimony "The Lord is my light and my salvation" on his lips; Jesus appears as the light of God entering a dark world; when he hangs on the cross darkness steals the light away and the shades of hades appear to take over for a time; yet on Easter morning resurrection comes with the dawn. For these reasons and more John says that "God is light," and, as Paul instructs us here, we are to live as "children of the light."
C. S. Lewis captured the tension of Light and Darkness in spiritual combat in his space trilogy about Venus. The planet Mars, in his tale, is populated by an ancient race of God's creatures who never gave in to the lure of evil and remain holy and just. Earth, as we know, has fallen under the domain of the dark shadows, and the Great Creator has posted warning signs around it in space. It is off limits to other races; quarantined until the end of time.
Venus, though, is a freshly birthed planet with a more recent "Paradise" story of creaturely development. A newly formed pair similar to Earth's Adam and Eve dance about in innocent delight.
The evil power in the universe will not allow a divine masterpiece to go long unmarred, however, and he sends a vicious Earth scientist named Weston to introduce sin on Venus by corrupting its Lord and Lady. In a countermove, the Great Creator sends an ambassador of his own to Venus. The universe holds its breath as the future of this bright world hangs in the balance.
In these novels, Lewis pictured the tension in every human heart. Like Adam and Eve at Earth's creation, and like the Lord and Lady of Venus, we are surrounded by dark powers, yet long for the light of redemption and love. Most of our lives we struggle to see more clearly.
Still, life gets lost for us, often, in the shadows. But grace breaks through, now and again, in moments of insight and illumination, and those are the moments we have to hang onto. That is why John 3:16 has become one of the most widely known verses of the Bible. It summarizes the scriptural message as that of God looking for us in love.
Just as powerful are passages like this one, in Paul's circular letter of 58/59 AD, written from house arrest in Rome and eventually ending up in Ephesus. Like a mother who brings a child into this world, God is protective of the lives birthed on planet Earth. When sin stains and decadence destroys, God's first thought is to rescue and redeem and recover the children God so dearly loves.
This is a theme repeated throughout the Bible. If God is saying anything through its pages, at least this much is clear: it is the whisper of divine love. And we, who have been drawn like moths from the darkness of our nighttime world into the reflective light of the moon that announces the coming dawn, flutter in hope toward the advent of the coming age.
John 9:1-41
Some years ago, the Dallas Museum of Art raised money by selling a recording of Texas Bound, an anthology of short stories written by Texans about life in that great state. One of the most delightful among the tales is "Personal Testimony," written by Lynna Williams. It tells of a twelve-year-old girl, the daughter of a fire-and-damnation west Texas preacher, who gets sent to a summer camp in Oklahoma. There she finds a new vocation as a ghostwriter for Jesus. Since she knows the language of the church, she can create personal testimonies for all who are willing to pay. The other campers, most of whom are just ordinary kids with little spiritual depth, get moving and tear-jerking confessions that will satisfy their counselors' decision-night bonfire revival meeting hopes and prayers, and she herself gets a little extra spending money.
What makes Williams' story so accessible is that virtually all Christians (and even many non-believers) can identify with the formulaic pieces of the typical "personal testimony." One girl can write a believable personal testimony for others because all know how they are supposed to flow: Once I was that, then Jesus came into my life and now my life is like this.
All of these typical and familiar personal testimonies are ultimately based upon the foundational personal testimony that forms the heart of today's gospel lectionary reading. Here is a man who was blind from birth. His eyes are opened by Jesus, and everybody wants him to tell his personal testimony (some for more noble reasons than others).
But there are a number of things that make this story more interesting than the usual before-and-after Sunday newspaper supplement centerfold dieting program pictures. First, there are no instances of blind people having their sight restored in all of the Old Testament. To be sure, the army of Aram was once temporarily blinded in order to provide divine deliverance for Samaria during the time of Elisha. But apart from that one incident, no person with congenital blindness or any other sight loss due to injury or illness ever had sight restored throughout the 39 books of the Old Testament. The prophets, however, increasingly told about the coming Messiah who would open the eyes of the blind (cf. Isaiah 42:7). Although John only chooses a few of the miracles of Jesus to relate in his gospel, he deliberately ensures that one will be that of sight restored. This should have proved to those in Jesus' own time that he was the promised Messiah. Of course, even the sighted are at times blind about such things, which is the primary theme of the whole story.
Second, the manner in which Jesus gives sight to the blind man seems at first strange. Jesus spits on the ground, makes mud, packs it on the man's eyes, and sends him to wash in the pool of Siloam (which, as John notes, means "sent"). Why? Why not just speak the word of healing or snap his fingers?
When taken within the whole message of John's gospel, with its focus on re-creation (see the intended parallels to Genesis and the original creation in chapter 1), the evangelist here takes pains to show Jesus in the role of the Creator at the beginning of time, who stoops and shapes human life from the mud of newly formed terra. Since this man is already alive, but has lost his ability to see, it is only the eyes that need re-creation, and this is performed in the same manner as the origin of human life back then.
Furthermore, the pool of Siloam figured in prophetic instruction as symbolic of the gentle graces flowing from God's care in contrast to the mighty torrents of judgment that would roll in if Yahweh were dismissed by Israel (see Isaiah 48). Now, in this critical "Day of the Lord," when the messenger of heaven has actually appeared gently, those who reject him will be in for powerful tsunamis of heaven's vengeance.
Third, the overall theme of the passage is that the blind (like those who are considered under judgment by their societies and marginalized from mainstream human life) are visited by divine healing grace, and those who are sighted are actually the truly blind, for they are self-sufficient and religiously deficient. There is no question that this passage is as much a word of judgment against most of us who think we see, as it is a whisper of kindness to the ones we walk past daily in our judgmental social poses.
Fourth, while many personal testimonies seem triumphalistic, with their "once I was down and out but now I'm riding the waves of glory" emotions, there is little of that in this man's confession. Precisely at the time of gaining his sight, his community rejected him, his parents disowned him, his religious leaders vilified him, and Jesus was nowhere to be found. The day of his personal testimony virtually turned into the worst day of this man's life. But this is probably more realistic than many of the "happily-ever-after" tales that are marched around the Christian revivalist circuit.
Fifth, as many historical studies note, this gospel was written near the end of the first century, when lines of demarcation were being drawn within the Jewish communities of the Mediterranean world, and many Jesus-followers were being excommunicated from their hometown synagogues. If anything, this "personal testimony" is about the cost of discipleship, a fitting theme to mark as this season of Lent enters its final weeks.
Application
The theme of "new day" is present in all three passages for today. Young David's anointing as future king announces a new era in the Israelite story. Paul proclaims the new morning of the messianic age and a morality that attends it among those who are children of the dawn and light. And in the act of Jesus' miracle, new lines are drawn between those who remain denizens of the dark and others who have entered the era of eternity with the Lord of light. This may help explain the tensions of Lent, when we struggle with the walk of pain and sorrow with Jesus, yet live on the other side of Easter as citizens of the kingdom of the risen Lord.
Alternative Application
Ephesians 5:8-14. Houston Smith, the great professor of world religions at the University of California Berkeley, once summarized the main human beliefs as organized among the dominant religions in this pithy manner. If you could peg each to a clock, he said, Confucianism would be 9 a.m., when all go off to work and fit into the social system, making the machine work for the benefit of all at the cost of their personal freedom. Islam is 12 noon, when the sun sears from above, and there are no moral shadows under the glare of heaven's intensity. Five p.m. finds Taoism, the religion of the individual wanderer who is released from the pressures of the workaday world to find her own path of delight in harmony with the flow of all natural things. At 7 p.m. we encounter Buddhism, enjoying an evening meal in the company of others, content and sated and harmonious. And 9 p.m. brings the hour of Judaism, thanking God as rest returns to begin a new day. Midnight is the time of Hinduism, according to Smith, when all our senses are denied and we converge into the oneness of all being. But Christianity, said Smith, is the religion of the dawn, of resurrection morning, of eschatological hope as the new day/new age emerges. This fits well with Paul's words in the epistle reading for today.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 23
This psalm sits with incredible familiarity on the couch next to us. Like an old friend caught up in the warming embers of faded and familiar stories, the words slide easily over the tongue as we recite these words.
And this, to a large degree becomes a problem as we seek to understand this psalm. Most people who read scripture tend to read it as though it were a monologue from the mouth of God. A straight narrative offered like a lecture given to yawning rows of university students. But this isn't the case.
Holy scripture is a conversation. Sometimes it's a dialogue, sometimes it's as though a room full of voices were shouting out in praise and power, but it should never be approached as a monologue.
This is true of Psalm 23 as well.
From the very beginning there is a conversation with an unheard voice. The Lord is my Shepherd. The emphasis here needs to be on the word "Lord." In other words, there are choices to be made here. Other shepherds are available. But the writer has made a choice, and it's not king or ruler of the moment. It's not the latest self-help guru or real estate tycoon. It is the Lord!
The tone is oppositional. He (and no one else) makes me to lie down. He (and no one else) leads me beside still waters. He (and no one else) restores my soul. It would be a good thing if this entire psalm could be read with this kind of choice in mind. It is at once a joyful and defiant tone. The trust described here is so total that it banishes fear, even in the face of one's enemies. The words to the old hymn come to mind. "Here I plant my ebeneezer!"
Such a reading flies in the face of the old comfortable view of this piece. Such shifts, however, are often helpful. As the church lumbers toward a new awakening, one has to wonder if there are other scriptures once thought comforting that might now be stirring or even provocative?
Indeed the whole question of comfort comes up as we claim a fresh perspective. Is Christian faith designed for our comfort? Is our church supposed to meet our felt needs? Or is all this really about making a choice of who it is we will follow?
Yet the message of the Bible is always about shifting currents and the wind of the Spirit of God blowing in new directions. Even during this season of Lent, when we rehearse the old, old story of sin and death that led Jesus on his painful pilgrimage to the cross, we feel the fresh breezes of eternity.
Our lectionary readings for today confirm this. David is anointed the royal leader of a new era in Israel's history, even as the old order of Saul remains a viable entity. Paul writes about a new age mentality for those who know Jesus, while most of the world around them still believes that this current darkness is and will remain the status quo. And Jesus, in opening the blind man's eyes, calls attention to spiritual awareness that shifts the dividing line between "haves" and "have nots" in ways that we could never predict.
1 Samuel 16:1-13
The Home Alone series of movies provided a humorous look at what might happen if a family forgot one of its younger members in the excitement of vacation planning and travels. While the events and antics portrayed are highly unlikely to occur in real life, something of the rueful and comedic quality infusing those episodes seems uncannily like the atmosphere surrounding today's Old Testament lectionary reading.
The rueful part is in Israel's desire for a king and Samuel's regrets about Saul. There is a chain of leadership in the Old Testament that starts in a big way with Moses. He was the great deliverer of Israel, challenging Pharaoh with the word of Yahweh to "Let my people go!" Moses was the people's guide through the wilderness, the shoulder they cried upon, the general they followed or challenged, and the almost superhuman mediator of the Sinai Covenant, who dared to stand in the presence of thundering and glorious Yahweh when they were cowering in fear.
Joshua took over after Moses finally died at the age of 120. Joshua commanded the troops of Israel in battle and successfully waged a war of conquest and settlement that netted the nation the domain of Canaan and its east bank hills. At the close of Joshua's life, the aging trailblazer gathered the "elders" of Israel's clans and tribes for a final pep talk (Joshua 23). He commissioned them with oversight of the nation and placed the people's obedience to Yahweh in their hands as an ongoing responsibility.
It took only a generation before this group was forgotten (Judges 1-2), and the nation almost whistled its way into oblivion under the challenges of regional powers. But the leadership chain was tossed by Yahweh to a cadre of independent agents divinely raised up and uniquely qualified as temporary deliverers. They were called "judges," and the book preceding Samuel is named for them.
In fact, from the first chapters of the book containing our reading for today, we understand that Samuel himself was considered to be one of the judges. Indeed, his actions early on, in receiving a divine call to lead and deliver the people, and his position at the head of Israel's armies as they defeated the Philistines with divine assistance made him one among the great judges of ancient Israel.
But then the people asked for a king (1 Samuel 8). Samuel took the request very badly, but Yahweh convinced the priest/prophet/judge that the ultimate target of Israel's disaffection was not Samuel, but Yahweh instead. Samuel reluctantly anointed Saul and watched Israel's first king move quickly from a promising royal start to a self-important and demoralizing end. Yahweh and Samuel both felt "home alone" while the nation romped in some kind of sadistic vacation after a self-destructive megalomaniac.
Now the rueful helplessness of being left "home alone" takes on a new and comedic direction. Yahweh convinces a morose and melancholy Samuel to buck up and get on with life by choosing a new king, even as the current failure devolves out of control. Samuel is led to Bethlehem ("House of Bread," where a famine in bygone years enticed Elimelech -- "My God is King" -- to dislocate his family to Moab until the covenantal obedience of his daughter-in-law Ruth brought her and Naomi back home to both a physical and spiritual bountiful harvest) where a ruse allows him to survey the leading families of the district. Here the "home alone" tagline turns laugh-out-loud funny, for although Jesse's family gets the divine nod, none of his football squad sons is tagged. Instead, after moments of surprised confusion, Jesse and his wife remember they left the runt of the family back at the farm with the sheep.
Samuel waits until David is found, and though he does not seem to be the initial political poster child of the bunch, is led by Yahweh to anoint the boy as future king. In tune with Yahweh's past actions that upset birth orders (Abel and Seth over Cain, Isaac over Ishmael, Jacob over Esau, Joseph over his brothers), David is secretly placed on a trajectory that will allow him to establish the dynasty that will sustain at least a portion of the nation through the international superpower conquest campaigns, and ultimately informing the Christian theology of Jesus as King of kings and Lord of lords, a true and eternal scion of David.
Today's passage is fundamental to understanding several things: 1) the self-destructive behavior of any society because of resident evil and decay; 2) the surprising grace of God in choosing the lost and the last and the least to serve as agents of divine deliverance; and 3) the beginnings of the grand biblical theology of the Messiah King who is raised up to become king of all nations and apocalyptic Lord of all creation.
Ephesians 5:8-14
When I was a radio announcer during my college days, our station began a late-night "Contemporary Christian Music" program, one of the first in the nation. We talked about the format for a while and discussed the content. Of course, we debated what to call the show.
An early suggestion was "The Solid Rock Hour." Though the double entendre in that title was marvelous ("rock" for the style of some of the music, and "solid rock" as a picture of Jesus Christ), the name itself didn't ring with any contemporary feel. Our final choice was "Illumination," and both the name and the program became a major hit.
"Illumination" speaks of darkness and shadows while at the same time pointing to the growing clarity produced by light and insight. There is a lot of spirituality contained in thoughts of illumination.
It certainly expresses well the God-talk of the Bible: darkness and chaos lurk until God speaks Light and Life; the psalmist wanders through the valley of the shadow of death with the testimony "The Lord is my light and my salvation" on his lips; Jesus appears as the light of God entering a dark world; when he hangs on the cross darkness steals the light away and the shades of hades appear to take over for a time; yet on Easter morning resurrection comes with the dawn. For these reasons and more John says that "God is light," and, as Paul instructs us here, we are to live as "children of the light."
C. S. Lewis captured the tension of Light and Darkness in spiritual combat in his space trilogy about Venus. The planet Mars, in his tale, is populated by an ancient race of God's creatures who never gave in to the lure of evil and remain holy and just. Earth, as we know, has fallen under the domain of the dark shadows, and the Great Creator has posted warning signs around it in space. It is off limits to other races; quarantined until the end of time.
Venus, though, is a freshly birthed planet with a more recent "Paradise" story of creaturely development. A newly formed pair similar to Earth's Adam and Eve dance about in innocent delight.
The evil power in the universe will not allow a divine masterpiece to go long unmarred, however, and he sends a vicious Earth scientist named Weston to introduce sin on Venus by corrupting its Lord and Lady. In a countermove, the Great Creator sends an ambassador of his own to Venus. The universe holds its breath as the future of this bright world hangs in the balance.
In these novels, Lewis pictured the tension in every human heart. Like Adam and Eve at Earth's creation, and like the Lord and Lady of Venus, we are surrounded by dark powers, yet long for the light of redemption and love. Most of our lives we struggle to see more clearly.
Still, life gets lost for us, often, in the shadows. But grace breaks through, now and again, in moments of insight and illumination, and those are the moments we have to hang onto. That is why John 3:16 has become one of the most widely known verses of the Bible. It summarizes the scriptural message as that of God looking for us in love.
Just as powerful are passages like this one, in Paul's circular letter of 58/59 AD, written from house arrest in Rome and eventually ending up in Ephesus. Like a mother who brings a child into this world, God is protective of the lives birthed on planet Earth. When sin stains and decadence destroys, God's first thought is to rescue and redeem and recover the children God so dearly loves.
This is a theme repeated throughout the Bible. If God is saying anything through its pages, at least this much is clear: it is the whisper of divine love. And we, who have been drawn like moths from the darkness of our nighttime world into the reflective light of the moon that announces the coming dawn, flutter in hope toward the advent of the coming age.
John 9:1-41
Some years ago, the Dallas Museum of Art raised money by selling a recording of Texas Bound, an anthology of short stories written by Texans about life in that great state. One of the most delightful among the tales is "Personal Testimony," written by Lynna Williams. It tells of a twelve-year-old girl, the daughter of a fire-and-damnation west Texas preacher, who gets sent to a summer camp in Oklahoma. There she finds a new vocation as a ghostwriter for Jesus. Since she knows the language of the church, she can create personal testimonies for all who are willing to pay. The other campers, most of whom are just ordinary kids with little spiritual depth, get moving and tear-jerking confessions that will satisfy their counselors' decision-night bonfire revival meeting hopes and prayers, and she herself gets a little extra spending money.
What makes Williams' story so accessible is that virtually all Christians (and even many non-believers) can identify with the formulaic pieces of the typical "personal testimony." One girl can write a believable personal testimony for others because all know how they are supposed to flow: Once I was that, then Jesus came into my life and now my life is like this.
All of these typical and familiar personal testimonies are ultimately based upon the foundational personal testimony that forms the heart of today's gospel lectionary reading. Here is a man who was blind from birth. His eyes are opened by Jesus, and everybody wants him to tell his personal testimony (some for more noble reasons than others).
But there are a number of things that make this story more interesting than the usual before-and-after Sunday newspaper supplement centerfold dieting program pictures. First, there are no instances of blind people having their sight restored in all of the Old Testament. To be sure, the army of Aram was once temporarily blinded in order to provide divine deliverance for Samaria during the time of Elisha. But apart from that one incident, no person with congenital blindness or any other sight loss due to injury or illness ever had sight restored throughout the 39 books of the Old Testament. The prophets, however, increasingly told about the coming Messiah who would open the eyes of the blind (cf. Isaiah 42:7). Although John only chooses a few of the miracles of Jesus to relate in his gospel, he deliberately ensures that one will be that of sight restored. This should have proved to those in Jesus' own time that he was the promised Messiah. Of course, even the sighted are at times blind about such things, which is the primary theme of the whole story.
Second, the manner in which Jesus gives sight to the blind man seems at first strange. Jesus spits on the ground, makes mud, packs it on the man's eyes, and sends him to wash in the pool of Siloam (which, as John notes, means "sent"). Why? Why not just speak the word of healing or snap his fingers?
When taken within the whole message of John's gospel, with its focus on re-creation (see the intended parallels to Genesis and the original creation in chapter 1), the evangelist here takes pains to show Jesus in the role of the Creator at the beginning of time, who stoops and shapes human life from the mud of newly formed terra. Since this man is already alive, but has lost his ability to see, it is only the eyes that need re-creation, and this is performed in the same manner as the origin of human life back then.
Furthermore, the pool of Siloam figured in prophetic instruction as symbolic of the gentle graces flowing from God's care in contrast to the mighty torrents of judgment that would roll in if Yahweh were dismissed by Israel (see Isaiah 48). Now, in this critical "Day of the Lord," when the messenger of heaven has actually appeared gently, those who reject him will be in for powerful tsunamis of heaven's vengeance.
Third, the overall theme of the passage is that the blind (like those who are considered under judgment by their societies and marginalized from mainstream human life) are visited by divine healing grace, and those who are sighted are actually the truly blind, for they are self-sufficient and religiously deficient. There is no question that this passage is as much a word of judgment against most of us who think we see, as it is a whisper of kindness to the ones we walk past daily in our judgmental social poses.
Fourth, while many personal testimonies seem triumphalistic, with their "once I was down and out but now I'm riding the waves of glory" emotions, there is little of that in this man's confession. Precisely at the time of gaining his sight, his community rejected him, his parents disowned him, his religious leaders vilified him, and Jesus was nowhere to be found. The day of his personal testimony virtually turned into the worst day of this man's life. But this is probably more realistic than many of the "happily-ever-after" tales that are marched around the Christian revivalist circuit.
Fifth, as many historical studies note, this gospel was written near the end of the first century, when lines of demarcation were being drawn within the Jewish communities of the Mediterranean world, and many Jesus-followers were being excommunicated from their hometown synagogues. If anything, this "personal testimony" is about the cost of discipleship, a fitting theme to mark as this season of Lent enters its final weeks.
Application
The theme of "new day" is present in all three passages for today. Young David's anointing as future king announces a new era in the Israelite story. Paul proclaims the new morning of the messianic age and a morality that attends it among those who are children of the dawn and light. And in the act of Jesus' miracle, new lines are drawn between those who remain denizens of the dark and others who have entered the era of eternity with the Lord of light. This may help explain the tensions of Lent, when we struggle with the walk of pain and sorrow with Jesus, yet live on the other side of Easter as citizens of the kingdom of the risen Lord.
Alternative Application
Ephesians 5:8-14. Houston Smith, the great professor of world religions at the University of California Berkeley, once summarized the main human beliefs as organized among the dominant religions in this pithy manner. If you could peg each to a clock, he said, Confucianism would be 9 a.m., when all go off to work and fit into the social system, making the machine work for the benefit of all at the cost of their personal freedom. Islam is 12 noon, when the sun sears from above, and there are no moral shadows under the glare of heaven's intensity. Five p.m. finds Taoism, the religion of the individual wanderer who is released from the pressures of the workaday world to find her own path of delight in harmony with the flow of all natural things. At 7 p.m. we encounter Buddhism, enjoying an evening meal in the company of others, content and sated and harmonious. And 9 p.m. brings the hour of Judaism, thanking God as rest returns to begin a new day. Midnight is the time of Hinduism, according to Smith, when all our senses are denied and we converge into the oneness of all being. But Christianity, said Smith, is the religion of the dawn, of resurrection morning, of eschatological hope as the new day/new age emerges. This fits well with Paul's words in the epistle reading for today.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 23
This psalm sits with incredible familiarity on the couch next to us. Like an old friend caught up in the warming embers of faded and familiar stories, the words slide easily over the tongue as we recite these words.
And this, to a large degree becomes a problem as we seek to understand this psalm. Most people who read scripture tend to read it as though it were a monologue from the mouth of God. A straight narrative offered like a lecture given to yawning rows of university students. But this isn't the case.
Holy scripture is a conversation. Sometimes it's a dialogue, sometimes it's as though a room full of voices were shouting out in praise and power, but it should never be approached as a monologue.
This is true of Psalm 23 as well.
From the very beginning there is a conversation with an unheard voice. The Lord is my Shepherd. The emphasis here needs to be on the word "Lord." In other words, there are choices to be made here. Other shepherds are available. But the writer has made a choice, and it's not king or ruler of the moment. It's not the latest self-help guru or real estate tycoon. It is the Lord!
The tone is oppositional. He (and no one else) makes me to lie down. He (and no one else) leads me beside still waters. He (and no one else) restores my soul. It would be a good thing if this entire psalm could be read with this kind of choice in mind. It is at once a joyful and defiant tone. The trust described here is so total that it banishes fear, even in the face of one's enemies. The words to the old hymn come to mind. "Here I plant my ebeneezer!"
Such a reading flies in the face of the old comfortable view of this piece. Such shifts, however, are often helpful. As the church lumbers toward a new awakening, one has to wonder if there are other scriptures once thought comforting that might now be stirring or even provocative?
Indeed the whole question of comfort comes up as we claim a fresh perspective. Is Christian faith designed for our comfort? Is our church supposed to meet our felt needs? Or is all this really about making a choice of who it is we will follow?
