Dear Ones -
I am posting below the text of the talk that was live-streamed this past Wednesday, March 18, from St. Paul’s. Normally on Wednesdays there is a mid-week Eucharist service. The responsibility for convening this service is shared among the clergy. This was my time and it was the first such service since the decision was made to honor the CDC guidelines and not have any gatherings larger than 10 people. I decided to turn it into more of a “fire-side chat.” I understand that it will be posted as a video on the St. Paul’s website so that you can watch it there. Or, you can download it.
Being Able To See
Welcome to this live-stream version of our mid-week communion service. Because of the Coronavirus and our cooperating with the recommendations of the CDC, gatherings of people for worship services, educational events and offerings such as this mid-week communion service have been replaced by live-streaming. We are also investigating tools to use that will allow us to have small group meetings via internet connections.
Please check the St. Paul’s website regularly to stay up-to-date with any changes or updates in our schedule or plans. Please feel free to contact us through the website or by calling the church to let us know of your prayer requests and personal concerns. We care about you and we want you to experience our care.
At any rate, no matter where you are, no matter who you are, no matter where you are in your spiritual journey you are welcome here at St. Paul’s. When this electronic phase of our gatherings is over, which it will be at some point, you are certainly welcome to join us here in person. St. Paul’s provides rich liturgical worship experiences enhanced by our world-renown choir and we provide a wealth of educational and missional opportunities for spiritual growth and the practice of love, compassion and justice not only here in our community but also around the world. You are welcome here.
I want to begin this brief reflection today with a prayer I have adapted for my own daily use. It has been part of my own daily spiritual practice for years. It is sometimes referred to as “St. Patrick’s Breastplate Prayer.” If you put that phrase into the search engine on your computer you can find a beautiful rendition of this set to music on YouTube. It is this -
Jesus with me, Jesus within me,
Jesus behind me, Jesus before me,
Jesus beside me, Jesus to win me,
Jesus to comfort and restore me.
Jesus beneath me, Jesus above me,
Jesus in quiet, Jesus in danger,
Jesus in hearts of all who love me,
Jesus in mouth of friend and stranger.
Amen.
St. Paul’s is a lectionary church. That means that our worship is shaped by a lectionary that is shared by many of the mainline churches in the Protestant denomination. Ever since I was in the seminary I have been grateful for the lectionary. My first experience of it was found in the Book of Common Prayer that is used by most Episcopal churches.
The use of a lectionary, a set of readings designed to provide education for worshippers, can be found in some form all the way back to Jewish worship long before the time of Jesus. When the Jews would gather for worship, selections would be read from “the law and the prophets” and these readings followed a cycle of “holy days” in the Jewish calendar. When the followers of Jesus separated themselves from synagogue worship somewhere around the year 80, they took a lot of the Jewish practices with them. After all, they were Jewish.
Over the centuries various lectionaries were created by worshipping Christians. There were no printed books in the first many centuries and then, when there were, the books were few and most people could not read. Lectionaries, or appointed readings, made sense as a tool for educating and guiding those who gathered to worship and share a meal together.
The Scripture passages for today not only fit together so beautifully but also they are so apt for this time when we are anxious about and hurting over the restrictions placed on our normal way of living because of the Coronavirus. Rather than read the passages to you, I simply want to tell you about them and then show one way they are applicable to our lives.
The first reading is from the book in the Hebrew Scriptures called First Samuel.
This passage contains a story that is likely familiar to you.
Samuel has been selected by God to go to the house of Jesse of Bethlehem to select from his soking for Israel. Samuel is very apprehensive about going because he fears the reception he might get from Jesse. But, God advises Samuel that if he invites Jesse and the other town fathers to join him in a worship service, things will be fine - which, indeed, they turn out to be.
Jesse shows up with all of his sons and Samuel knows he is to pick one of Jesse’s sons to be the new king of the children of Israel. Immediately he sees Eliab and thinks, “This is the one!”
But, God says to Samuel, “Looks aren’t everything. Don’t be impressed with his looks and stature. I’ve already eliminated him.” The text reads, “God judges persons differently than humans do. Men and women look at the face; God looks into the heart.”
This process of elimination goes on and on, one son after another until Jesse has presented seven sons to Samuel and Samuel determines that none of them is the person God is looking for. So, he says to Jesse, “Is this it? Is this all you’ve got for me? Are there no more sons?”
Jesse says, “Well, there is one more. The runt of the bunch (this is what the text says). He’s out tending the sheep.”
Samuel says, “Go get him. We’re not moving from this spot until her he is here.”
So Jesse sends for him and when he arrives, the very picture of health, God says to Samuel, “Get up and anoint him! This is the one.”
This is the story of how David is selected as King of Israel.
The story of David becomes a complicated one and First Samuel is somewhat disjointed. However, you will remember from readings we have during the Advent season that Jesus is described as coming from the house and lineage of David.
Now to the passage from the Gospel that the lectionary directs us to for this day.
When I first got this assignment for today I thought, “Good grief! There is no way we can even read this selection during the relatively brief time we have for this service. It is the entire ninth chapter of the Gospel of John. That’s forty-one verses.”
Again, it is a story you know.
The disciples and Jesus are walking along the way and they encounter a man who, as the scripture has it, was blind from the day of his birth. The disciples to raise a question that fit perfectly with their inherited Jewish theology. Who sinned? This man or his parents that he was born blind? It makes no sense, of course, to say that he could have sinned since he had been blind from birth.
When it comes to God and human suffering, some people can easily and quickly get thrown off the path.
I’ll wager you it won’t be long, if it hasn’t already happened, that some religious idiot will say that the Coronavirus is the result of someone’s or some group’s sin. It will be the homosexuals or abortionists or immigrants or some group that person targets as an “unworthy” or “sinful” group. I know you know better than that.
Stephen King has a line that is the truth about our lives and living on this planet: “The world has teeth and it can bite you with them anytime it wants.” Indeed. When I was diagnosed with coronary artery disease nearly eleven years ago now, I asked my cardiologist if there was a cure for the condition. He said, “No. As Buddha said, ‘To have a body is to live in a house that is on fire.’”
This chapter in John is so rich. Spend some time with it.
The main point for this conversation today is that Jesus heals a blind man. If you read the entire chapter you will see the wide range of responses this healing had.
At the beginning of his ministry Jesus announced, quoting one of the Jewish prophets, that he had come, among other reasons, to restore sight to the blind. He didn’t mean just physical seeing. This is a metaphor for the kind of seeing the Hebrew passage shows us: a seeing that is not superficial but one that sees the essence of a person.
In this ninth chapter of John Jesus says, “I came into the world to bring everything into the clear light of day, making all the distinctions clear, so that those who have never seen will see, and those who have made a great pretense of seeing will be exposed as blind.”
Perhaps one of the biggest problems we have in this world is what might be called “the sin of superficiality.” Father Richard Rohr, someone I know many of you are familiar with, says that one of the shortcomings of the church is that it has taught people what to see and not how to see. Both passages appointed for this week are about how to see, about having our vision corrected so that we can see as Jesus saw, as God desires us to see.
Suppose you have gone to the grocery story. It is after work and you are in a rush to buy what you need to prepare the evening meal and head home. You forgot to bring your own bags and are carrying two paper sacks full of your purchases as you head for your car as fast as possible. As you leave the store and are about to step into the parking lot, you collide with another patron. The handles on your paper bags break and you watch as almost in slow motion your purchases - eggs, milk, pasta sauce, plastic containers of fresh fruit become airborne for a few slow seconds before making a total broken mess in the parking lot.
You are frustrated and furious. It take enormous restraint for you not to yell at the person who caused this, “What?! Are you blind?” You turn to castigate the person only to see that, in fact, he is blind, can’t see a thing.
Immediately your heart does a one eighty. You say, “Oh, I’m so sorry. Are you alright. I didn’t see you. It’s okay. Don’t worry about it.”
You do this because you see what is really going on. You see deeper than the surface.
One of the things the lectionary readings for today invite us to do is to see.
I’ll take it a step further. One of the things following Jesus enables us to do, empowers us to do, is to see.
Jesus with me, Jesus within me,
Jesus behind me, Jesus before me,
Jesus beside me, Jesus to win me,
Jesus to comfort and restore me.
Jesus beneath me, Jesus above me,
Jesus in quiet, Jesus in danger,
Jesus in hearts of all who love me,
Jesus in mouth of friend and stranger.
With companionship like that we don’t need to be afraid and we will be empowered to see.