Acts 17:22-31
A few weeks before Easter this year, a church in California paid $5,000 to run a 30-second ad in a local movie theater. But after previewing the commercial, the theater refused to run the ad and returned the church’s money. The ad, they claimed, was too controversial...because it mentioned Jesus.
The senior pastor of the church said, “They told us the ad looked great, it looked nice. It’s just that we couldn’t put the name of Jesus in the ad.”
The agency for the theater claimed that some of their constituents might be offended. It gave the church the opportunity to revise the ad to meet the theaters guidelines, but the church declined.
“We were told we could promote our Easter services with a commercial that featured the date, time, and place [of the service] with some fun bunnies and eggs thrown in,” said the pastor. (1)
Apparently, Jesus, a man whose life of love led to the cross, a man who came back from the dead, isn’t something everyone can relate to. The folks who owned that movie theater were afraid that the life, death, and especially the resurrection of Jesus were just too controversial.
If someone took a stroll through our city or our church or -- God forbid! -- our houses, what would these places reveal about our fears? Locked doors reveal our fear of strangers and theft. Hospitals and first aid kits and medicine cabinets and hand sanitizer everywhere reveal our fear of injury and illness. Banks and offering plates and retirement accounts reveal our fear of poverty and not having enough. Grocery stores and pantries and nonperishable foods reveal our fear of hunger. And each one of these things, in one way or another, reveals our fear of death. (2)
From Athens to Akron, things haven’t changed all that much.
Paul looks around Athens, the center of intellectual sophistication, and everywhere he looks he sees signs of people’s fear...which is to say that everywhere he looks he sees idols. The Athenians were so smart that they not only had idols to all the known Greek and Roman gods, they even had an altar to “an unknown god” -- covering their bases, as it were, just in case there was a god they hadn’t heard of who might protect them or reward them for their reverence.
The reason people have always fashioned idols is fear. To be human in any time, in any place, is to be afraid. In ancient times, religious practices were fairly straightforward: gods controlled everything, and if you made the right sacrifice of animals or money or worship then the drought would end, the harvest would be abundant, sickness would be held at bay. People turned to gods for protection and prosperity, hoping that if they did the right things then the things they feared -- and have we not always feared death most of all? -- would not come to pass.
Jen Lee grew up in a family that had a deep, abiding faith in two things: Jesus and Mary Kay cosmetics. She was determined to opt out of the Mary Kay part, but at a crucial moment she attended a recruiting meeting and before she knew it, she had signed up to sell the products.
Now Mary Kay has a very effective training program and Jen Lee turned out to be an excellent saleswoman. She perfected the art of what Mary Kay calls “warm chatter.” Here’s how it worked. She would go to her local Target, get a red cart and pretend to be there shopping just like everyone else. Really, though, she was trolling for new customers. When she’d see a woman who looked receptive, she would discretely follow her around the store until they ended up alone together in an aisle. Then Jen would casually say the words she had rehearsed hundreds of times, “Excuse me, can I ask you a quick question? I’m Jen with Mary Kay and we have just came out with a new line of lip gloss and we’re looking for some women to try it out. I happen to have some samples here in my purse. Is there any reason why you wouldn’t want to take one home and try it?”
At the same time Jen was successfully building her Mary Kay career, she and her husband had become involved in a local church, a church that, as she says, “was trying to be really hip and modern.” It met in a strip mall and had a rock band in worship. She and her husband were right in the demographic the church wanted to attract -- twenty-somethings, and they began to be recruited into the church leadership, first onto the leadership team, and then onto the core leadership team.
“I remember my first night at one of these meetings,” she says. “I don’t know exactly what I was expecting but I think I’d always imagined them to be...soulful events and I was really dismayed to discover that it is was this tedious conversation about branding and marketing and what the church’s next advertising campaign would look like. So it didn’t take too long before these two worlds -- the church and Mary Kay -- began to look more and more similar. They both had the lure and Mary Kay was giving out free samples. But at the church we were having free events trying to get people through the door. In both worlds I was being trained all the time to listen to people everywhere I went for whatever was missing or not working in their life and offer what we had as the solution. So, if you needed time or flexibility or money, Mary Kay might be perfect for you. But if you’re struggling with your marriage or you’ve had a recent loss or you’re trying to figure out the meaning of life...maybe Jesus is the answer.” (3)
After a while, Jen Lee ended up very confused. Eventually, she ended her career with Mary Kay and left the church, because she could no longer figure out what was the difference between Mary Kay and Jesus.
Can you?
Paul looks around Athens and he sees everything that he and the Athenians have in common: he sees how religious they are, how dedicated they are to serving the gods they know and even gods they don’t. He sees people desperately serving idols, but also desperately seeking a God completely different from the idols they have created.
And Paul can tell them all about this God, because he has seen him face to face...and in seeing Jesus, Paul indeed faced his greatest fear. The one, true God is not a god like all the other gods, Paul tells them, one who will offer protection and prosperity if they follow the right regimen of worship and sacrifice. This is not a god that needs us, but the creator of heaven and earth. Because the difference between idols and God, the difference between Mary Kay and Jesus is that one needs our devotion to exist and the other created us to be in relationship, a relationship that goes beyond our fears, beyond even death. Paul looks around Athens and he sees people enslaved to gods they don’t know and don’t understand, people searching and groping for the God who, it turns out, “is not far from each one of us.”
What Paul says about the people then in Athens is equally true for those of us today in Akron: we are all searching and groping for God. Sometimes it feels like God is so distant from us that our fears take over. We can’t find God and in our fear, we refuse to trust God, to trust that God is as close to us as our own breath, to trust that God has given us everything we need to thrive, to trust that in our darkest moments God is with us. And when we trade trust for fear, we create idols.
But, as theologian Rolf Jacobsen puts it, an idol is “that thing you think is serving you but is really enslaving you.” (4)
Heather Hendrick recently moved to Haiti with her husband and four children. She works in a medical clinic for Haitian mothers -- those who are pregnant or have newborns. Even more than providing these women and infants with basic medical care, the clinic works hard to educate the women about childbirth and infancy in a country with a high infant mortality rate.
One reason infant mortality is so high in Haiti is that there is a persistent myth there that breastfeeding is bad for babies. Many mothers refuse to feed their babies breastmilk, convinced that if they do so, they will make their babies sick. Of course, formula isn’t always available, so instead they feed these infants soda or other drinks watered down with often-contaminated water. Sometimes they even feed the babies table food. But these foods and drinks lack the nutrients developing babies need, so many of them die.
Hendrick writes that there is an evil lie planted in these mothers’ souls, and this is what it says to them: "[Your milk] is not good enough. You can't trust what God created, what God has planned. God is faithless. Take matters into your own hands." It is this lie, she says, that “causes a Haitian woman to hold her brand new baby far from her breast...risk killing the life that wiggled in her womb...when God was all the while pumping life...rich, abundant life...free of cost...liquid grace through that mother's breast.” (5)
Sometimes when we can’t find God, when we can’t figure out what God is doing, our fear takes over and we come up with our own ways to get the protection and prosperity and spiritual nourishment we crave...we create idols. And far too many of these idols are deadly denials of the very thing God has put right in front of us that could give us life. Instead of alleviating our fears our idols feed them, because without us, our idols could not survive.
Paul knows the difference between Mary Kay and Jesus, and, if we’re honest, so do we. Idols are meaningless without people to believe in them and although they may look and feel comforting they nourish us about as well as watered-down soda nourishes a newborn baby. But Jesus came so that God could be in relationship with each one of us, not a relationship that offers us protection or prosperity -- because nothing can do that. Jesus offers us a relationship that will not avoid our fears but take us right through them, all the way to the cross and on to the other side of death. Amen.
Endnotes:
1. Eryn Sun, “Church Easter Service Ad Pulled for Mention of Jesus,” The Christian Post, March 30, 2011.
2. Quinn G. Caldwell, “Living by the Word,” The Christian Century, May 17, 2011.
3. From The Moth podcast. Listen online here.
4. Rolf Jacobsen, ed. Crazy Talk: A Not-So-Stuffy Dictionary of Theological Terms. Augsburg Fortress, 2008.
5. http://allthingshendrick.blogspot.com/2011/05/lies-as-old-asthat-garden.html
Monday, May 30, 2011
Monday, May 23, 2011
Trust (sermon, May 22, 2011)
John 14:1-14
At one time or another someone has said it to us. In the absence of knowing what else to say, we have probably even said it to someone else. At the calling hours, in the hospital room, after the funeral. “Well, at least he’s in a better place.” “We can be thankful she’s not suffering any more.” “He’s gone home to be with Jesus.” “She’s in God’s house now.”
If we ever wondered what Bible texts we get those sayings from, the number one culprit is probably our text from today. Of all the texts I’ve heard, this passage from John about a house with many rooms is one of the most common texts chosen for funerals.
Why is that?
Well, first of all, it paints a comforting picture. Jesus offers words that we all need to hear, even more so on days when we are grieving the death of a loved one and wondering how we are going to get along without them: “Do not let your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” Then, Jesus describes a place that sounds downright heavenly: God’s house, with room for everyone, and all the rooms prepared especially for us by none other than Jesus himself. In his translation The Message, Eugene Peterson has Jesus saying: “Trust me. There is plenty of room for you in my Father's home. If that weren't so, would I have told you that I'm on my way to get a room ready for you? And if I'm on my way to get your room ready, I'll come back and get you so you can live where I live.”
What’s not to love about a promise like that?
The problem is, the gospel of John simply isn’t about what is going to happen to us after we die. This is the gospel that is focused on the incarnation, the one that begins with this mind-blowing announcement: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God...and the Word became flesh and lived among us...” John’s gospel is all about the incarnation: God. In the world. With us. Here. Now. Today.
But just how exactly does this work?
That’s what the first disciples want to know. Thomas and Philip actually screw up the courage to ask Jesus what in the world he is talking about. “Lord, we don’t know where you going. How can you say we know the way?” questions Thomas. And Philip, “Look, Jesus, just show us the Father, show us God, and then it will all make sense.” Technically, Philip’s words are a demand, not a question, but what Philip is saying to Jesus is this: “what does God look like?”
And that is a question that good Jews are not supposed to ask. After all, the Hebrew Bible -- our Old Testament -- makes it quite clear that God’s glory is simply too much for human beings to behold. When Moses, the model of faith, asked to see God, God turned his face into a rocky mountain and passed by and Moses could see God’s glory all around -- even with his face pressed into a rock. Moses was finally allowed to turn around after God passed by, so that he could see the tail end of God’s glory. It is simply too much for us to see God and live to tell about it. (1)
So why would Philip ask for such a thing?
It might help us to remember the context of Thomas and Philip’s questions. This whole exchange takes place on the night of the Last Supper, after Jesus has washed the disciples’ feet, predicted Judas’ betrayal, and commanded the disciples to love one another. This is the night we celebrate during Holy Week, the night known as Maundy Thursday. Chapter 14 is the beginning of a section in John known as the “Farewell Discourse,” Jesus’ final words to his disciples on the eve of his death. The disciples are scared. They are disheartened. They don’t understand what is happening. And in the face of their fear and confusion, as they wonder how on earth they are going to survive if Jesus dies, what they want more than anything is to see God.
Will Willimon is the bishop of the Northern Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church. In his blog and on his podcast he has often criticized the organizational structure of the Methodist Church which he finds cumbersome. I didn’t know this until he said it, but apparently, the whole reason his denomination was originally named “Methodist” was because everything they did had a method.
But recently, Willimon published a podcast in which he repented of all that criticizing of the Methodists’ methods. In the wake of the tornadoes that ripped through northern Alabama in April, Willimon witnessed the benefits of that organization. Of the churches in his conference, fifteen were completely destroyed by the storms. Another fifteen were still standing -- at least partially -- but were not safe for people to enter, and so might as well have been destroyed. Churches that were undamaged immediately stepped in to fill needs for shelter and food for those hardest hit.
Willimon remembers when he first became bishop and toured the area of the conference. He was shown six disaster trailers, mobile units ready to be deployed to areas of need in the aftermath of disasters. He remembers wondering what in the world that small conference needed six trailers for...but those trailers were sent out as soon as the tornados hit, bringing much-needed supplies to devastated communities and showing the love of God to people in dire need of some good news. (2)
God. With us. Here. Now. Today. That’s what the disciples wanted to see that night. It’s what we still long for today.
Last year, on Maundy Thursday, at an army base in Afghanistan, the Christian chaplain there held a foot-washing service for soldiers who wished to observe Holy Week.
There were around 60 soldiers in the tent, the chaplain reported. Then, a general stepped forward, grabbed the towel, knelt, unlaced the dusty boots of his troops, and joined with several others in washing the feet of privates. (3)
God. With us. Here. Now. Today.
The version of this passage that I read today makes it very clear that belief is what is necessary for us to experience the incarnate God in Jesus Christ. But the Greek word that is translated as “believe” can also be translated “trust.” For most of us, belief is something we do with our heads while trust is something we do with our hearts. One John scholar says that the meaning of this goes beyond either of those English words, that what Jesus is talking about here is being in a relationship with him, a relationship that can handle our questions, our anger, our betrayal, even our fear.
Tony Campolo writes that “In striving to create the Kingdom of God here on earth one of our biggest struggles is fear. Fear of failing, fear of looking like a fool, fear of family and friends. The writers of the Bible were afraid as well. Because of this, fear is one of the most frequently addressed topics throughout the Bible.
“The words ‘fear not’ appear 365 times in the Bible. That’s once for every day of the year. Faith overcomes worry with hope...The devil wants us to worry. Christ wants us to trust him.” (4)
To trust Christ is to enter into a relationship with him. And relationships -- relationships that really matter -- are never one-sided.
When Derek and I got married, his aunt Jan, unbeknownst to us, asked all the guests to our wedding to send her a piece of advice for a happy, healthy marriage. She had all the advice typed up and bound into a book which she gave us as a wedding gift. It is filled with all sorts of wonderfully practical tips: don’t go to bed angry, have your own tubes of toothpaste, never start a serious discussion after 10p.m. But the one piece of advice that has really stuck with me over the years -- maybe because I find it a true challenge -- is this: no matter what your spouse does, assume the best.
This isn’t just good advice for spouses, of course. It works in all kinds of relationships. Assuming the best about the people we are in relationship with is really about trust. And what is so amazing about our relationship with God in Jesus Christ is that this trust, this relationship, is mutual. We don’t just trust in Jesus, Jesus trusts in us. “Very truly I tell you,” Jesus says, “the one who believes in me [the one who is in a relationship with me] will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these...”
Talk about assuming the best! Jesus knows that when we enter into a genuine relationship with him -- which means not just offering him reverence and obedience but also our questions and our fears -- when we do this, we are capable of doing all the things that Jesus did. And remember, what Jesus did was reveal that God is with us. Here. Now. Today.
Today after worship, the members of the confirmation class will go before the session to make a public profession of their faith. The process that has led up to this day has not been easy. There has been a lot to learn and a lot of hard questions asked as the confirmands have struggled to write their statements of faith. And that’s okay -- it shouldn’t be easy to put into words what we believe. Because when we focus on putting our beliefs into words we get into our heads. And faith is so much more than what we think. Faith is mystery, it is trust, it is entering a relationship with someone we can’t even see. Faith is living out that relationship by allowing God to work through us so that the world can see God, just as Jesus has shown God to us.
The confirmands are not professing their faith as some down payment on one of those rooms Jesus is preparing. Death should be the furthest thing from their minds today. Because faith in Jesus Christ is not about what’s going to happen when we die. It’s about entering a two-way relationship of deepest trust. As these young people go through the many challenges of adulthood, I want them to have a sure and certain sense that God is with them here, not in some far-off place, and that no matter what happens, God loves and claims them now. And even more, that God trusts and empowers them to reveal God’s love to the world just as Jesus did.
The wonder and comfort of God with us is not locked away in some mansion in the sky. God is with us...working through us...Here. Now. Today. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Endnotes:
1. Thanks to David Lose’s “Dear Working Preacher” article on this passage for these insights. Read it online here.
2. Will Willimon’s podcast from May 3, 2011, “What I’ve Learned.” Access it here.
3. From Mark Ramsey’s sermon “Eye to Eye” on April 24, 2011, Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church, Asheville, NC. Online at www.gcpcusa.org.
4. From a post on Tony Campolo’s blog entitled “Actualizing the Kingdom on Earth,” May 17, 2011.
At one time or another someone has said it to us. In the absence of knowing what else to say, we have probably even said it to someone else. At the calling hours, in the hospital room, after the funeral. “Well, at least he’s in a better place.” “We can be thankful she’s not suffering any more.” “He’s gone home to be with Jesus.” “She’s in God’s house now.”
If we ever wondered what Bible texts we get those sayings from, the number one culprit is probably our text from today. Of all the texts I’ve heard, this passage from John about a house with many rooms is one of the most common texts chosen for funerals.
Why is that?
Well, first of all, it paints a comforting picture. Jesus offers words that we all need to hear, even more so on days when we are grieving the death of a loved one and wondering how we are going to get along without them: “Do not let your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” Then, Jesus describes a place that sounds downright heavenly: God’s house, with room for everyone, and all the rooms prepared especially for us by none other than Jesus himself. In his translation The Message, Eugene Peterson has Jesus saying: “Trust me. There is plenty of room for you in my Father's home. If that weren't so, would I have told you that I'm on my way to get a room ready for you? And if I'm on my way to get your room ready, I'll come back and get you so you can live where I live.”
What’s not to love about a promise like that?
The problem is, the gospel of John simply isn’t about what is going to happen to us after we die. This is the gospel that is focused on the incarnation, the one that begins with this mind-blowing announcement: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God...and the Word became flesh and lived among us...” John’s gospel is all about the incarnation: God. In the world. With us. Here. Now. Today.
But just how exactly does this work?
That’s what the first disciples want to know. Thomas and Philip actually screw up the courage to ask Jesus what in the world he is talking about. “Lord, we don’t know where you going. How can you say we know the way?” questions Thomas. And Philip, “Look, Jesus, just show us the Father, show us God, and then it will all make sense.” Technically, Philip’s words are a demand, not a question, but what Philip is saying to Jesus is this: “what does God look like?”
And that is a question that good Jews are not supposed to ask. After all, the Hebrew Bible -- our Old Testament -- makes it quite clear that God’s glory is simply too much for human beings to behold. When Moses, the model of faith, asked to see God, God turned his face into a rocky mountain and passed by and Moses could see God’s glory all around -- even with his face pressed into a rock. Moses was finally allowed to turn around after God passed by, so that he could see the tail end of God’s glory. It is simply too much for us to see God and live to tell about it. (1)
So why would Philip ask for such a thing?
It might help us to remember the context of Thomas and Philip’s questions. This whole exchange takes place on the night of the Last Supper, after Jesus has washed the disciples’ feet, predicted Judas’ betrayal, and commanded the disciples to love one another. This is the night we celebrate during Holy Week, the night known as Maundy Thursday. Chapter 14 is the beginning of a section in John known as the “Farewell Discourse,” Jesus’ final words to his disciples on the eve of his death. The disciples are scared. They are disheartened. They don’t understand what is happening. And in the face of their fear and confusion, as they wonder how on earth they are going to survive if Jesus dies, what they want more than anything is to see God.
Will Willimon is the bishop of the Northern Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church. In his blog and on his podcast he has often criticized the organizational structure of the Methodist Church which he finds cumbersome. I didn’t know this until he said it, but apparently, the whole reason his denomination was originally named “Methodist” was because everything they did had a method.
But recently, Willimon published a podcast in which he repented of all that criticizing of the Methodists’ methods. In the wake of the tornadoes that ripped through northern Alabama in April, Willimon witnessed the benefits of that organization. Of the churches in his conference, fifteen were completely destroyed by the storms. Another fifteen were still standing -- at least partially -- but were not safe for people to enter, and so might as well have been destroyed. Churches that were undamaged immediately stepped in to fill needs for shelter and food for those hardest hit.
Willimon remembers when he first became bishop and toured the area of the conference. He was shown six disaster trailers, mobile units ready to be deployed to areas of need in the aftermath of disasters. He remembers wondering what in the world that small conference needed six trailers for...but those trailers were sent out as soon as the tornados hit, bringing much-needed supplies to devastated communities and showing the love of God to people in dire need of some good news. (2)
God. With us. Here. Now. Today. That’s what the disciples wanted to see that night. It’s what we still long for today.
Last year, on Maundy Thursday, at an army base in Afghanistan, the Christian chaplain there held a foot-washing service for soldiers who wished to observe Holy Week.
There were around 60 soldiers in the tent, the chaplain reported. Then, a general stepped forward, grabbed the towel, knelt, unlaced the dusty boots of his troops, and joined with several others in washing the feet of privates. (3)
God. With us. Here. Now. Today.
The version of this passage that I read today makes it very clear that belief is what is necessary for us to experience the incarnate God in Jesus Christ. But the Greek word that is translated as “believe” can also be translated “trust.” For most of us, belief is something we do with our heads while trust is something we do with our hearts. One John scholar says that the meaning of this goes beyond either of those English words, that what Jesus is talking about here is being in a relationship with him, a relationship that can handle our questions, our anger, our betrayal, even our fear.
Tony Campolo writes that “In striving to create the Kingdom of God here on earth one of our biggest struggles is fear. Fear of failing, fear of looking like a fool, fear of family and friends. The writers of the Bible were afraid as well. Because of this, fear is one of the most frequently addressed topics throughout the Bible.
“The words ‘fear not’ appear 365 times in the Bible. That’s once for every day of the year. Faith overcomes worry with hope...The devil wants us to worry. Christ wants us to trust him.” (4)
To trust Christ is to enter into a relationship with him. And relationships -- relationships that really matter -- are never one-sided.
When Derek and I got married, his aunt Jan, unbeknownst to us, asked all the guests to our wedding to send her a piece of advice for a happy, healthy marriage. She had all the advice typed up and bound into a book which she gave us as a wedding gift. It is filled with all sorts of wonderfully practical tips: don’t go to bed angry, have your own tubes of toothpaste, never start a serious discussion after 10p.m. But the one piece of advice that has really stuck with me over the years -- maybe because I find it a true challenge -- is this: no matter what your spouse does, assume the best.
This isn’t just good advice for spouses, of course. It works in all kinds of relationships. Assuming the best about the people we are in relationship with is really about trust. And what is so amazing about our relationship with God in Jesus Christ is that this trust, this relationship, is mutual. We don’t just trust in Jesus, Jesus trusts in us. “Very truly I tell you,” Jesus says, “the one who believes in me [the one who is in a relationship with me] will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these...”
Talk about assuming the best! Jesus knows that when we enter into a genuine relationship with him -- which means not just offering him reverence and obedience but also our questions and our fears -- when we do this, we are capable of doing all the things that Jesus did. And remember, what Jesus did was reveal that God is with us. Here. Now. Today.
Today after worship, the members of the confirmation class will go before the session to make a public profession of their faith. The process that has led up to this day has not been easy. There has been a lot to learn and a lot of hard questions asked as the confirmands have struggled to write their statements of faith. And that’s okay -- it shouldn’t be easy to put into words what we believe. Because when we focus on putting our beliefs into words we get into our heads. And faith is so much more than what we think. Faith is mystery, it is trust, it is entering a relationship with someone we can’t even see. Faith is living out that relationship by allowing God to work through us so that the world can see God, just as Jesus has shown God to us.
The confirmands are not professing their faith as some down payment on one of those rooms Jesus is preparing. Death should be the furthest thing from their minds today. Because faith in Jesus Christ is not about what’s going to happen when we die. It’s about entering a two-way relationship of deepest trust. As these young people go through the many challenges of adulthood, I want them to have a sure and certain sense that God is with them here, not in some far-off place, and that no matter what happens, God loves and claims them now. And even more, that God trusts and empowers them to reveal God’s love to the world just as Jesus did.
The wonder and comfort of God with us is not locked away in some mansion in the sky. God is with us...working through us...Here. Now. Today. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Endnotes:
1. Thanks to David Lose’s “Dear Working Preacher” article on this passage for these insights. Read it online here.
2. Will Willimon’s podcast from May 3, 2011, “What I’ve Learned.” Access it here.
3. From Mark Ramsey’s sermon “Eye to Eye” on April 24, 2011, Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church, Asheville, NC. Online at www.gcpcusa.org.
4. From a post on Tony Campolo’s blog entitled “Actualizing the Kingdom on Earth,” May 17, 2011.
Monday, May 2, 2011
Believing Is Seeing (sermon, May 1, 2011)
John 20:19-32
A couple of weeks ago two veteran photojournalists, Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros, were killed while trying to document fighting between rebels and government forces in the Libyan city of Misrata. These men had been in war zones and disaster areas around the world, documenting them in pictures for the world to see.
In the most recent issue of Newsweek, former CNN correspondent Michael Ware remembers Hetherington and Hondros. Although Ware is no longer reporting from war zones, he did for many years and he writes that when he was in the field, he gravitated to photographers. They are “the ones who come the closest to revealing the truth, even if we never get the entire truth,” he wrote. “In war, everyone lies; their government, our government, the rebels -- even civilians lie through exaggeration or confusion. But what we can get is the shards of truth,” like those revealed in a picture Hetherington took of an exhausted, filthy soldier in a bunker in Afghanistan or in a picture Hondros captured of a five year-old Iraqi girl, wailing and blood-splattered after her parents were mistakenly shot and killed by American soldiers. (1)
We’ve all seen photographs like these of war or of natural disasters, pictures that completely change our understanding or feelings about these events. I’ll never forget a photograph I saw of the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti. The picture showed a huge pile of rubble atop which was sprawled the unquestionably lifeless body of an infant. At first glance that little body looked like nothing more than just another piece of rubble. Seeing that picture made the earthquake real to me in a whole new way.
Throughout the gospel of John, seeing and believing have a particular connection. Back in chapter one, John the Baptist sees Jesus and declares, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world!” (1:29) Jesus calls his disciples by telling them to “Come and see.” (1:39) When Jesus encounters the Samaritan woman at the well, he sees her completely, saying things to her that no stranger could possibly know, and because of that, she sees him differently, first identifying him as a prophet and then as the Messiah. (4:19 and 4:29)
But if we dig a little deeper into John’s gospel, we discover that it’s not just seeing that is significant when it comes to Jesus, but any kind of incarnational experience of him, and by incarnational, I mean any encounter with him that involves people’s bodies, their senses. Throughout this gospel, we find that when people have a sensory experience of Jesus it deepens their understanding of who he is. Ultimately, these sensory encounters are what makes their relationship with Jesus real.
Scholar Karoline Lewis argues that in John, to believe in Jesus means to be in a relationship with him. (2) And this happens when people hear Jesus preach and teach. It happens when people taste food Jesus provides -- like at the feeding of the five thousand and at the Last Supper. It happens when people smell the stench coming from Lazarus’ tomb, proving just how completely dead Lazarus is before Jesus brings him back to life. It happens when the disciples feel Jesus’ touch as he washes their feet.
For reasons that no one understood, Emilie Gossiaux began to lose her hearing at a young age. In her teenage years her hearing rapidly deteriorated and she had to wear a hearing aid. Either in spite of this or because of it, Emilie was filled with a passion for visual art and after graduating from high school in Florida, moved to New York City to attend art school. Last October, Emilie was twenty-one years old. Just a few months earlier she had fallen in love with one of her classmates, a young man named Alan. One sunny day in October, after their usual morning routine, Emilie climbed on her bike and rode off down a Brooklyn street, headed for work. She never got there. While riding her bike that day, Emilie was struck by an eighteen-wheeler.
She was rushed to the hospital, where trauma doctors did everything they could to save her life. She emerged from surgery in critical condition, having suffered a stroke, brain injury, and multiple fractures in her head, pelvis, and left leg. Her prognosis was grim. Emilie’s parents flew up from Louisiana and, with Alan, kept vigil at her bedside. Against all odds, after six weeks, Emilie was still alive, although she showed few signs of mental functioning. Her mouth had been wired shut so she could not speak. Every time Alan or her parents tried to put in her hearing aids she would kick and hit and flail, so she could not hear. And, worst of all, the doctors suspected that she had lost some if not all of her vision in the accident, so she could not see.
In John’s gospel, after the resurrected Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene in the garden, Mary goes to the disciples and says, “I have seen the Lord.” But either they don’t believe her or they don’t understand what that means, because instead of going out to find Jesus, they go into a house together and lock the doors behind them. Of course, it takes more than a locked door to keep Jesus out, and he soon appears to them, shows them his wounds, gives them peace and the Holy Spirit, and their relationship with him deepens yet again.
Then Thomas shows up. Poor Thomas. Was it his fault he wasn’t there when Jesus appeared? Is it fair to cast him as the doubter when all he wants is what the rest of the disciples got -- to see Jesus for himself? He shows up -- late -- and all of the other disciples are shouting all at once: “He came! Jesus was here! We have seen Jesus!” The disciples didn’t believe Mary when she claimed to have seen Jesus and Thomas doesn’t believe the disciples, he just wants -- and needs -- what the rest of them got: a personal, physical, incarnational encounter with the risen Lord.
And lo and behold, he gets it. A few days later, Jesus reveals himself to Thomas. Seeing Jesus standing before him, Thomas actually becomes a model of faith for us. It’s Thomas who finally brings together the beginning of John’s gospel -- “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God” -- with the end. Seeing Jesus, he exclaims, “My Lord and my God!” Not just Lord, but Lord and God. And not the Lord and the God -- my Lord and my God. Believing in Jesus as Lord and God is deeply personal. We can’t just hear about him from others...at some point along the way, we must experience Jesus, we must see him for ourselves.
The poet Christian Wiman was interviewed in a recent issue of Christian Century magazine. When asked whether his attention to detail is simply a talent or a skill he has practiced, he responded, “attention, like spiritual awareness, cannot be completely willed. There's an element of givenness to it—of grace—which means that attentiveness has a passive quality as well as an active one. The world will come to you—and God will come to you—but only if you are open enough to receive it. I have trained myself to wait, which means that it is not at all unusual for me to go months without writing a poem. But I am listening during that time. I have learned how to continue listening.” (3)
Artists -- whether writers or photographers or quilters or cooks -- seem to understand that sometimes you must wait, both passively and actively, you must wait for the perfect word in the poem or the perfect light for the photograph or the right piece of fabric for the quilt or for the sauce to achieve just the right consistency. The moment will finally come -- as Wiman says, the world will come to you and God will come to you -- but you have to be ready to see it and receive it.
Lying in a hospital bed in New York, Emilie Gossiaux had no choice but to wait. She couldn’t see, hear, or communicate with those around her. She was utterly lost. The doctors recommended that Emilie go to a long-term nursing home facility rather than to a rehab center. They believed that nothing else could be done for her. She was, in their minds, a lost cause. But Alan believed that the woman he knew and loved was still there. One night, in a fit of desperation, he tried to communicate with her by finger spelling on her palm. He started by slowly and deliberately tracing each letter into her palm: I. L.O.V.E. Y.O.U. As soon as he finished, she spoke, her voice slurred but perfectly understandable. “You love me? Thank you.”
With growing excitement, he tried something else. “What is your name,” he spelled, and immediately, she responded, “Emilie.” “What year is it?” he asked and she correctly replied, “2010.” It was 4a.m. but Alan called Emilie’s mother and insisted that she come to the hospital immediately. When she got there, Alan showed her how he could communicate with Emilie. But it was clear to both of them that, although this means of communication worked to a point, Emilie didn’t know who Alan was. He kept spelling his name in her hand, but she couldn’t seem to connect that name with the Alan she had known and loved.
She also kept saying something strange, “Pull me out of the wall. Pull me out. Help me. I know you can do it. Pull me out of the wall.”
Finally, Emilie’s mother told Alan to ask her about the hearing aid. Alan finger-spelled “hearing aid” into her palm and Emilie agreed to put it in.
Alan put her hearing aid in and turned it on and said, “Emilie, can you hear me? It’s me, Alan.” And in that instant, everything came back to her. She remembered everything, she knew exactly who Alan was and she knew he loved her and she loved him. Then, hearing her mother’s voice, she said the words her mother had waited so many weeks to hear her say, “Mama. You’re here.” “Of course I’m here,” her mother said, “I’ve been here all the time.” Talking about this time later, Emilie said that during that time before Alan put in her hearing aid, she felt completely lost and helpless, she didn’t know where she was or why. “I was waiting for some communication,” she said. “And I was relieved [when Alan began to communicate with me]. Alan...he’s a miracle to me.” (4)
I know that all this talk about incarnational experiences of Jesus begs the question: how can this possibly apply to us? We can complain like Thomas all we want, we can set conditions for our faith, but we really don’t expect Jesus to show up and show us his wounds. We haven’t seen Jesus in person and we don’t expect to.
Or have we? Is there someone who has loved you like Alan loved Emily -- enough to fight to bring you out of the darkness? Is there someone you have loved like that? Then you have seen Jesus. Have you ever gathered around a table with friends and strangers and left nourished by more than just the food you consumed? Then you have seen Jesus. Have you ever heard music or smelled a flower or seen a sunset or watched a baby sleep and become aware, at some deep level, of the exquisite joy and pain of being human? Then you have seen Jesus.
The disciples, the women at the tomb, even Thomas -- they all got to see the risen Lord. And they believed in him. But it is us -- the ones who believe in him without seeing -- that Jesus blesses here: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” We are blessed because, having believed in Jesus, it turns out we can see and experience him in all the everyday moments of our lives. Seeing...hearing...tasting...smelling...touching...Jesus is here, every day, every moment, offering us the gifts of peace and the Spirit, and inviting us to share those gifts with others. Jesus is here, our Lord and our God. All we have to do is pay attention. Amen.
Endnotes
1. Michael Ware, “To Walk with Ghosts,” Newsweek, May 2, 2011, p. 43.
2. Karoline Lewis, in her commentary on the passage at workingpreacher.org.
3. Amy Frykholm, “Pain, Prayer, Poetry: An Interview with Christian Wiman,” The Christian Century, April 18, 2011. Online here.
4. See Emilie's website here and hear her story on Radiolab, “Finding Emilie."
A couple of weeks ago two veteran photojournalists, Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros, were killed while trying to document fighting between rebels and government forces in the Libyan city of Misrata. These men had been in war zones and disaster areas around the world, documenting them in pictures for the world to see.
In the most recent issue of Newsweek, former CNN correspondent Michael Ware remembers Hetherington and Hondros. Although Ware is no longer reporting from war zones, he did for many years and he writes that when he was in the field, he gravitated to photographers. They are “the ones who come the closest to revealing the truth, even if we never get the entire truth,” he wrote. “In war, everyone lies; their government, our government, the rebels -- even civilians lie through exaggeration or confusion. But what we can get is the shards of truth,” like those revealed in a picture Hetherington took of an exhausted, filthy soldier in a bunker in Afghanistan or in a picture Hondros captured of a five year-old Iraqi girl, wailing and blood-splattered after her parents were mistakenly shot and killed by American soldiers. (1)
We’ve all seen photographs like these of war or of natural disasters, pictures that completely change our understanding or feelings about these events. I’ll never forget a photograph I saw of the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti. The picture showed a huge pile of rubble atop which was sprawled the unquestionably lifeless body of an infant. At first glance that little body looked like nothing more than just another piece of rubble. Seeing that picture made the earthquake real to me in a whole new way.
Throughout the gospel of John, seeing and believing have a particular connection. Back in chapter one, John the Baptist sees Jesus and declares, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world!” (1:29) Jesus calls his disciples by telling them to “Come and see.” (1:39) When Jesus encounters the Samaritan woman at the well, he sees her completely, saying things to her that no stranger could possibly know, and because of that, she sees him differently, first identifying him as a prophet and then as the Messiah. (4:19 and 4:29)
But if we dig a little deeper into John’s gospel, we discover that it’s not just seeing that is significant when it comes to Jesus, but any kind of incarnational experience of him, and by incarnational, I mean any encounter with him that involves people’s bodies, their senses. Throughout this gospel, we find that when people have a sensory experience of Jesus it deepens their understanding of who he is. Ultimately, these sensory encounters are what makes their relationship with Jesus real.
Scholar Karoline Lewis argues that in John, to believe in Jesus means to be in a relationship with him. (2) And this happens when people hear Jesus preach and teach. It happens when people taste food Jesus provides -- like at the feeding of the five thousand and at the Last Supper. It happens when people smell the stench coming from Lazarus’ tomb, proving just how completely dead Lazarus is before Jesus brings him back to life. It happens when the disciples feel Jesus’ touch as he washes their feet.
For reasons that no one understood, Emilie Gossiaux began to lose her hearing at a young age. In her teenage years her hearing rapidly deteriorated and she had to wear a hearing aid. Either in spite of this or because of it, Emilie was filled with a passion for visual art and after graduating from high school in Florida, moved to New York City to attend art school. Last October, Emilie was twenty-one years old. Just a few months earlier she had fallen in love with one of her classmates, a young man named Alan. One sunny day in October, after their usual morning routine, Emilie climbed on her bike and rode off down a Brooklyn street, headed for work. She never got there. While riding her bike that day, Emilie was struck by an eighteen-wheeler.
She was rushed to the hospital, where trauma doctors did everything they could to save her life. She emerged from surgery in critical condition, having suffered a stroke, brain injury, and multiple fractures in her head, pelvis, and left leg. Her prognosis was grim. Emilie’s parents flew up from Louisiana and, with Alan, kept vigil at her bedside. Against all odds, after six weeks, Emilie was still alive, although she showed few signs of mental functioning. Her mouth had been wired shut so she could not speak. Every time Alan or her parents tried to put in her hearing aids she would kick and hit and flail, so she could not hear. And, worst of all, the doctors suspected that she had lost some if not all of her vision in the accident, so she could not see.
In John’s gospel, after the resurrected Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene in the garden, Mary goes to the disciples and says, “I have seen the Lord.” But either they don’t believe her or they don’t understand what that means, because instead of going out to find Jesus, they go into a house together and lock the doors behind them. Of course, it takes more than a locked door to keep Jesus out, and he soon appears to them, shows them his wounds, gives them peace and the Holy Spirit, and their relationship with him deepens yet again.
Then Thomas shows up. Poor Thomas. Was it his fault he wasn’t there when Jesus appeared? Is it fair to cast him as the doubter when all he wants is what the rest of the disciples got -- to see Jesus for himself? He shows up -- late -- and all of the other disciples are shouting all at once: “He came! Jesus was here! We have seen Jesus!” The disciples didn’t believe Mary when she claimed to have seen Jesus and Thomas doesn’t believe the disciples, he just wants -- and needs -- what the rest of them got: a personal, physical, incarnational encounter with the risen Lord.
And lo and behold, he gets it. A few days later, Jesus reveals himself to Thomas. Seeing Jesus standing before him, Thomas actually becomes a model of faith for us. It’s Thomas who finally brings together the beginning of John’s gospel -- “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God” -- with the end. Seeing Jesus, he exclaims, “My Lord and my God!” Not just Lord, but Lord and God. And not the Lord and the God -- my Lord and my God. Believing in Jesus as Lord and God is deeply personal. We can’t just hear about him from others...at some point along the way, we must experience Jesus, we must see him for ourselves.
The poet Christian Wiman was interviewed in a recent issue of Christian Century magazine. When asked whether his attention to detail is simply a talent or a skill he has practiced, he responded, “attention, like spiritual awareness, cannot be completely willed. There's an element of givenness to it—of grace—which means that attentiveness has a passive quality as well as an active one. The world will come to you—and God will come to you—but only if you are open enough to receive it. I have trained myself to wait, which means that it is not at all unusual for me to go months without writing a poem. But I am listening during that time. I have learned how to continue listening.” (3)
Artists -- whether writers or photographers or quilters or cooks -- seem to understand that sometimes you must wait, both passively and actively, you must wait for the perfect word in the poem or the perfect light for the photograph or the right piece of fabric for the quilt or for the sauce to achieve just the right consistency. The moment will finally come -- as Wiman says, the world will come to you and God will come to you -- but you have to be ready to see it and receive it.
Lying in a hospital bed in New York, Emilie Gossiaux had no choice but to wait. She couldn’t see, hear, or communicate with those around her. She was utterly lost. The doctors recommended that Emilie go to a long-term nursing home facility rather than to a rehab center. They believed that nothing else could be done for her. She was, in their minds, a lost cause. But Alan believed that the woman he knew and loved was still there. One night, in a fit of desperation, he tried to communicate with her by finger spelling on her palm. He started by slowly and deliberately tracing each letter into her palm: I. L.O.V.E. Y.O.U. As soon as he finished, she spoke, her voice slurred but perfectly understandable. “You love me? Thank you.”
With growing excitement, he tried something else. “What is your name,” he spelled, and immediately, she responded, “Emilie.” “What year is it?” he asked and she correctly replied, “2010.” It was 4a.m. but Alan called Emilie’s mother and insisted that she come to the hospital immediately. When she got there, Alan showed her how he could communicate with Emilie. But it was clear to both of them that, although this means of communication worked to a point, Emilie didn’t know who Alan was. He kept spelling his name in her hand, but she couldn’t seem to connect that name with the Alan she had known and loved.
She also kept saying something strange, “Pull me out of the wall. Pull me out. Help me. I know you can do it. Pull me out of the wall.”
Finally, Emilie’s mother told Alan to ask her about the hearing aid. Alan finger-spelled “hearing aid” into her palm and Emilie agreed to put it in.
Alan put her hearing aid in and turned it on and said, “Emilie, can you hear me? It’s me, Alan.” And in that instant, everything came back to her. She remembered everything, she knew exactly who Alan was and she knew he loved her and she loved him. Then, hearing her mother’s voice, she said the words her mother had waited so many weeks to hear her say, “Mama. You’re here.” “Of course I’m here,” her mother said, “I’ve been here all the time.” Talking about this time later, Emilie said that during that time before Alan put in her hearing aid, she felt completely lost and helpless, she didn’t know where she was or why. “I was waiting for some communication,” she said. “And I was relieved [when Alan began to communicate with me]. Alan...he’s a miracle to me.” (4)
I know that all this talk about incarnational experiences of Jesus begs the question: how can this possibly apply to us? We can complain like Thomas all we want, we can set conditions for our faith, but we really don’t expect Jesus to show up and show us his wounds. We haven’t seen Jesus in person and we don’t expect to.
Or have we? Is there someone who has loved you like Alan loved Emily -- enough to fight to bring you out of the darkness? Is there someone you have loved like that? Then you have seen Jesus. Have you ever gathered around a table with friends and strangers and left nourished by more than just the food you consumed? Then you have seen Jesus. Have you ever heard music or smelled a flower or seen a sunset or watched a baby sleep and become aware, at some deep level, of the exquisite joy and pain of being human? Then you have seen Jesus.
The disciples, the women at the tomb, even Thomas -- they all got to see the risen Lord. And they believed in him. But it is us -- the ones who believe in him without seeing -- that Jesus blesses here: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” We are blessed because, having believed in Jesus, it turns out we can see and experience him in all the everyday moments of our lives. Seeing...hearing...tasting...smelling...touching...Jesus is here, every day, every moment, offering us the gifts of peace and the Spirit, and inviting us to share those gifts with others. Jesus is here, our Lord and our God. All we have to do is pay attention. Amen.
Endnotes
1. Michael Ware, “To Walk with Ghosts,” Newsweek, May 2, 2011, p. 43.
2. Karoline Lewis, in her commentary on the passage at workingpreacher.org.
3. Amy Frykholm, “Pain, Prayer, Poetry: An Interview with Christian Wiman,” The Christian Century, April 18, 2011. Online here.
4. See Emilie's website here and hear her story on Radiolab, “Finding Emilie."
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