What can we say March 19? Lent 4

 

    Samuel’s clandestine visit to Bethlehem in 1 Samuel 16 (depicted here from the 3rd/4th century Dura Europos synagogue in modern-day Syria) is a high water mark of Scripture drama. Saul is king, but he’s pretty much done. He was big, strong, tall, powerful – yet when David appears on the stage of history, tall Saul seems small, very small next to this very small one. The Bible’s quirky logic is in play: “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts” (Zech 4:6). “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish; but what are they among so many people?” (John 6:9). “It was not because you were more numerous than any other people that the Lord set his heart on you – for you were the fewest of all peoples” (Deut 7:7). “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised” (1 Cor 1:27).

    What were Jesse’s feelings when he learned one of his sons would be king? Pride? Shock? A fearful trembling?  The preacher can depict the lineup of sons, tallest on down, the strapping Eliab, the burly Abinadab, the chiseled Shammah, all 7 – but not one of them was the one.  The Lord’s word to Samuel – and us?  “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart” (1 Sam 16:7).

   Even in church, we look to ability, strength, IQ, savvy – but it’s the “heart,” although it’s really God choosing whom God chooses. Puzzled, Samuel shrugs – and only then acknowledges, “Well, yes, there remains yet the youngest, but he is keeping the sheep.” The obvious deduction is that Jesse didn’t even consider the possibility that this little one might be the one. But could it be that Jesse actually feared David might be the one, that he saw unprecedented potential in him – or perhaps he was simply the one he loved the most, the unexpected child of old age, the apple of his eye? The writer does take note that David “was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome” (1 Sam 16:12). Perhaps Jesse wanted to keep this small but handsome one home, to shelter him for himself, and from the perils of kingship.

   Christian history features so many stories of parents blocking their children’s calling to sainthood. Francis of Assisi’s father, Pietro, was so mortified when his son began giving to the poor with total abandon that he took him to court and disowned him. Pope Francis’s mother was crushed when he reported he was headed into the priesthood instead of to medical school, and she would not speak to him or forgive him for some time. How many women and men never became great heroes of the Church because parents restrained them, and wouldn’t let go?

   This story is about a different kind of seeing. The verb “see” occurs six times in the story of David’s anointing; “the Lord does not see as mortals see” (1 Sam 16:7). How does God see? How can we see as God sees? Can we see things as they really are instead of being deceived by what is only superficially visible? As Gandalf wrote in a letter to Frodo in The Lord of the Rings, “All that is gold does not glitter.” Or that Native American saying: “We teach our children to see when there is nothing to see, and to listen where there is nothing to hear.”   Preaching is not seeing for others, but showing them how to see.

   This brings us to Psalm 23. The Hebrew word for “see,” ra’ah, is one barely distinguishable sound away from ra‘ah, the word for “shepherd.” We might think of shepherds as lowly and despised, poor laborers of no account. Yet there is always an ambiguity to the image of a “shepherd.” Yes, they spent their days and nights out of doors with smelly animals who tended to nibble themselves lost. Mothers didn’t fantasize that their daughters would marry shepherds one day. And yet in the agrarian, pastoral culture of the world in those days, where sheep were everywhere and they mattered for survival, even the mightiest kings of Sumer, Babylon, Assyria and Egypt were often dubbed the “shepherds” of their people.

   The Lord is my shepherd.  Lest we get sappy about the image, as so much kitschy church art does, I will recall the first shepherd I saw in Israel:  Elvis t-shirt, green rubber golashes, with a stick, swatting sheep, hollering expletives at them.  The Lord is like that? Or we are like such dumb sheep?

   Most of us have heard the Hebrew of verse 1 means “I shall lack no good thing.” I shall not want? Our whole life is about wanting, even in prayer. Maybe we are asked here to learn to want the one good thing: God. Psalm 27 says “One thing have I asked… to behold the beauty of the Lord.” Psalm 73 similarly says “For me, it is good to be near God.” Clearly all this requires a focused re-understanding of what is genuinely good, and what doesn’t really count… 

   In our church, we read Psalm 23 aloud at funerals. “Read” – but really people say it from memory, and are clearly moved. And we use the King James Version, rightly I think…  Regardless, I’m struck by one four letter word in verse four: thou. This is fascinating: in the original Hebrew of Psalm 23, there are exactly 26 words before “Thou art with me,” and exactly 26 words after “Thou art with me.” Could be chance – but perhaps the poet was boldly declaring that God being with us is at the very center of our lives, the apogee of all that transpires, the focal point of the universe? God is with us. We are not alone down here.

   The whole Gospel is that God is with us; Jesus was called “Emmanuel,” which means “God with us.” John Wesley’s dying words were “The best of all is, God is with us.” Sam Wells has rightly demonstrated how the most important theological word in the Bible is “with.” God doesn’t shelter us from trouble, God doesn’t magically manipulate everything to suit us. But the glorious With is unassailable, unchangeable, the only fact that matters.

   This marvelous news draws our attention again to the Thou. For the first 3 verses of the Psalm, God is spoken of in the third person: “The Lord is my shepherd… he leads me… he restores my soul.” But with the Thou, the third person shifts to second person: “for Thou art with me, thy rod… thou preparest a table…” Instead of talking about God, the Psalmist begins to talk to God; instead of God in the head, God is a friend in the heart, a conversation happens, a relationship grows. This is faith. This is the only true comfort.

   And the with isn’t just me-with-God. It is me-with-others – and especially those with whom I’ve been estranged. Reconciliation is our burden – and joy. This “table” is set “in the presence of my enemies.” Jesus said Before you come to the altar, make peace with your enemies (Matthew 5:23f) – and When you have dinner, don’t invite your friends, but the outsiders, the outcast (Luke 14). In our day of intense rancor and derision, we are asked, invited and empowered by God not merely to think about others more happily and in light of God’s grace, but actually to break bread with them. How do we urge our people to engage in this difficult but life-giving discipline???

   How interesting is it that Psalm 23 says “though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death” – the key word being “through.” We don’t move into the valley and camp there; we get through it, not by dint of will, but by God’s mercy. 

   Ephesians 5:8-14. In my book on Birth (in the Pastoring for Life series), I dwell on the rarely noticed but obvious once you see it image that the newborn emerging from the womb “once was in darkness, but now in the light.” And so, to ponder being “a child of the light,” reflect on the moments after birth, where you are entirely vulnerable, yet encircled in tender love, utterly dependent, yet the focus on intense attention and unlimited grace.

  “Fruit of the light” jars a little, as we are familiar with “fruit of the Spirit.” But fruit requires the light of God’s good sun to grow. Frank Thielman interestingly translates v. 10 as “trying to find out what is pleasing to the Lord.” Like, try to figure it out. Do some investigating. Study. Ask around! I admire Thielman’s chapter heading for this text: “From Avoidance to Transformation.” Christians aren’t avoiders so much as they are doers, but not just human effort doing; it’s transformed doing, and being.

   How lovely: if you want to know how noble you are, how fantastic humanity actually is, it is that we are capable of “pleasing” the Lord. It’s God, almighty, ineffable, omniscient, eternal, immovable, omnipresent, infinite – and yet God makes the divine heart vulnerable to be buoyed up into joy by us, or conversely to be crushed in disappointed sorrow. Clearly the Christian life isn’t about rules, doing right or wrong, and it isn’t even entirely about grace, as in God’s embraces you no matter what – both of which are true, but missing this dynamic that we can please that omni-God, and that this is precisely what brings us our own pleasure.

   Paul’s expose of what is “secret” could be probed in the sermon. iPhones champion their ‘privacy’ settings; we all wear our masks and hide dark secrets, often even from ourselves. I had a friend years ago, a sociologist, whose specialty was family secrets. Any time she mentioned this, at a party or anywhere, someone would pull her aside and say “You know, our family has this secret” – and then who knows, who doesn’t and why? Tell this in a sermon and people squirm a little over what they hide, or suspect they’ve not figured out just yet. Paul wants us to go right to that place.

   His overriding image is of waking up from sleep. Rip van Winkle slept through the American revolution. The “Seven Sleepers of Ephesus” hid in a cave from persecution, fell asleep, and woke up decades later to the shock that the empire was now Christian. Sleepwalking is a thing someone you know does – and it’s such an apt image of the way we drift through life, even our church life. Paul sounds the alarm: it’s time to wake up!

   John 9:1-41 is a really long read in worship. But such a dramatic story! Jesus’ answer to the question about sin exhibits his heart more than anything he ever said: Who sinned, this guy or his parents? Right answer: Neither. Boom, blame game squashed. Odd: religious people had read the book of Job, but still resorted to the tactic of Job’s friends: it’s gotta be something he did wrong. Be sure to underline this nasty habit in your sermon. A teenager uses drugs, and we suspect the parents were duds. A husband leaves his wife for another, and she firmly believes she was inadequate. A homeless man must be a lazy bum. On and on. Name these. Let people fill in the blanks – both in how they feel unjustly judged, and how they do this to others. Jesus says Neither.

   The gross tangibility of Jesus’ healing: spittle “smeared” on his eyes. Jesus gets his hands dirty, and yours too (reminding us of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s wisdom that Christians too often like to keep their hands clean, when doing God’s will actually gets your hands dirty). The setting of this healing: the Pool of Siloam has been excavated in recent years. If you look at a city map of ancient Jerusalem, you realize this wasn’t a pool for swimming or beautifying the city. Siloam (like Bethesda, the other pool where Jesus healed) was a gigantic group mikveh – those ritual bath establishments. 

   People coming to the temple, pilgrims having journeyed for many days, stopped off at the huge Siloam mikveh to repent, to cleanse themselves, to prepare to climb the hill to enter the holy place. Jesus knew this place of grief and expectation was a prime spot to find seekers receptive to his message and his healing.

   And John 9 titillates the listener with Jesus’ clever, probing irony about who can see and who can’t. The super-pious assume they see all things clearly – but they are the truly blind ones. A homiletical question is: do we wish to see clearly? Or do we prefer to continue to avert our gaze, keeping the corrective lenses of Scripture safely on the coffee table?

   Jean Vanier (the news about whom broke my heart) shared thoughts on John 9 that acknowledge his own brokenness: “Yet if we seek deeper, we will find underneath our brokenness the beauty in our own hearts and in the heart of each person; our capacity to love, to give life and to take our place in the world.” He notes how bystanders in John 9 talk about the person with a disability instead of entering into a relationship with the person! “People with disabilities are like everybody else. Each person is unique and important. Each one has been created by God and for God Each one of us has a vulnerable heart, and yearns to be loved and valued. Each one has a mission Each of us is born so that God’s work may be accomplished in us.”

   Vanier even ushers us into Jesus’ own head: “Jesus must have been deeply touched by this trusting beggar… Maybe it is precisely because this man had been excluded and pushed aside that he was able to distinguish in Jesus a real person, someone sent by God, profoundly human. People with disabilities are sometimes more realistic than those caught up in a competitive society.”