Jesus and The Samaritan Woman

            When we were in the Holy Land, we stopped at Jacob’s well where Jesus is recorded to have been on his travels, and where he met the Samaritan woman recorded in John’s Gospel in that wonderful story.  He asks her for a drink, and the woman says to him: what, you a Jew are asking me a Samaritan for a drink? It was the custom that Jews and Samaritans never did things for each other, going back to an ancient feud that erupted when Nebuchadnezzar conquered the Northern Kingdom and the population was integrated into the people who followed him and the tribes in the North simply disappeared.  The more or less faithful Jews in the South refused to have anything to do with those who were the people of Samaria in what had been the Northern Kingdom.

             When we stopped at the well, we bought a little ceramic jar with water from the well in it.  I still have it on a shelf in the bedroom.  It always reminds me of the story about that woman.  She and Jesus have an animated discussion that takes them very deep into theology and into her life. 

            Jesus tells her that if she knew who it was who was asking for water, she would ask him for a drink and he would give her living water, and she would never be thirsty again.  She asks him for some of this water and he tells her to go and get her husband.  She replies that she has no husband.  Jesus tells her that she speaks the truth; that she has had five husbands, and the man she is currently living with is not her husband.  She is astonished at this deep insight into her life by this man whom she has just met at the well. 

            What is marvelous about this exchange is how she reacts.  She goes into the town, where there are more people clustered around the town’s well and she tells them to come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done. Jesus has made a believer out of her, simply by having a non-judgemental conversation with her.

            What is wonderful to me about all of this is that the reason that she went all the way out of the town to Jacob’s well is that she didn’t want to be among the other women in the town because of their judgement and their conversation about her.  She got no judgement from Jesus, only love and acceptance for who she is. 

           

            That is a lesson for all of us in this repentant season of Lent when we are all trying to cleanse ourselves of our life’s blemishes in preparation for Easter.  It really isn’t helpful to judge others.  It always brings the reminder that when we judge others, we open ourselves up to judgement also. What continues my amazement is that the people of the town believed what she said and flocked into the desert to see this man that she described.  Her astonishment at him was so apparent that they couldn’t help but be impressed with her, and also with Jesus.  That to me is a profound lesson in evangelism.  Being ourselves is the issue, not what we say, but who we are.  That is how we attract others to the place where we have become comfortable in our faith.  Showing it in our lives is all that we are called to do.  Those who yell their faith the loudest seem to me to make the least difference.  St. Francis told his followers:  Go and preach the Gospel.  Use words if necessary.  That is all that we need to hear.

Our Faith and Our Veterans

            When I was a kid during the Second World War, there was a returned veteran who lived up the street from our house.  He was often seen out on his porch raving at nothing, or at a bunch of us kids who were playing baseball in the field behind his home.  The rumor in the neighborhood was that he had been “shell shocked” in the war and we didn’t think much more about it.  Shell shocked.  That is really how we dealt with post traumatic stress disease back then, and indeed to this present day.  There isn’t really much that we do for the veterans who come back to us having suffered very much in the wars that we have fought in our lifetime; not only the world wars, but also Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq, Afghanistan as well as the “little” wars such as Grenada and Somalia.  War wounds are not only of the flesh, they have taken a terrible toll on the minds of many of our veterans, and we continue to do very little about it.

            When I worked at Western Penitentiary, there was a group of Viet Nam veterans who got together a couple of times a week to deal with their own stress that had been caused by the war.  I became convinced that many of these men were in the prison because of the crimes that they committed after coming home from that unpopular war with their stress and discovering that there was little concern on the part of the general public about their condition.  I know that often it led them into acts that they would have never contemplated before going to war.  Viet Nam was also the last time that we sent draftees in to military engagements.  Being drafted has an involuntary aspect to it.  I was drafted back in the fifties, before Viet Nam, but it still upended my life and my plans.  I certainly recovered from that, and found my time in the army to be a benefit, but I saw no military action and I escaped without stress. 

            I think that caring for one another is one of the basic cornerstones of our faith.  That there are people hurting all around us ought to cause us some concern.  That these hurting people are mostly ignored by the rest of society is a terrible travesty at best.  It is also a cause of a lot of turmoil not only in families, but also in our communities.  The fact that benefits for veterans are cut without thinking very much about it in order to reduce deficit spending is a terrible crime.  If we spent a fraction of what we spent on our military crusades on taking care of our hurting veterans, we could produce a great benefit to them and to our society. 

            When Nicodemus came to Jesus to talk to him about faith, heaven and healing, he got a magnificent response from our Lord, who told him that one could not understand the things of heaven without being born again.  This is a wonderful phrase that has been taken out of context by a lot of religious people and construed to mean that one has to have some kind of emotional religious experience in order to qualify to be one of the elect.  That isn’t what Jesus meant at all.  What he was trying to say to Nicodemus is that one needs to have eyes that look beyond this world in order to see the majesty of Heaven.  According to the scriptures, Nicodemus acquired these eyes.  He was one of those who took Jesus from the cross of his death to the tomb of his resurrection. 

            I think we need to acquire new eyes when we look at our veterans.  We need to see the beauty of who they are and understand the suffering that they have undergone.  When we do that, we can participate in the resurrection of many good people who have suffered for all of us and become heroes, even if we don’t really seem to appreciate it.  That man who lived up the street from us who had come back from the war wasn’t only shell shocked, he was ignored.  That isn’t on him, it is on the rest of us who have let it happen. May God give us the grace to do better for the veterans who live among us at the moment. 

Judging, Power and the Poor

            The hypocrisy of this political age is astounding.  I have heard professed Christians talk about the poor as if they were stealing money from everyone.  They get food stamps that they supposedly use to go to Las Vegas and those who are paying for all of this are the wealthy who are subjected to higher taxes of one sort or another.  These staunch Christians then turn around and refuse to acknowledge that people who are gay have a right to marry, or even in some cases to be served in businesses.  It reminds me sadly of the plight of the African-Americans in the south in the years of the Civil Rights movement when sit-ins at Woolworth lunch counters became newsworthy and brought us to the terrible days of the Selma march when peaceful marchers were set upon by dogs and beaten by police.  These were also Christians who were acting against the marchers, who were probably the most Christian of any of the people involved in this situation. 

            Our Lord told his Pharisee listeners not to judge, because those who judge face judgment themselves.  That is certainly true, and here am I making judgments about the people who have made terrible judgments about others.  Where does all of this come from?

            In the Garden of Eden, we have the wonderful story of the creation of Adam and Eve, who were told to eat freely of anything in the garden, but not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, because if they ate of its fruit, they would surely die.  The crafty serpent contradicted God and told Eve that she wouldn’t die at all, and that God didn’t want them to eat of this fruit because they would then become like God.  So Eve ate of the fruit and gave some to Adam, and immediately they knew good from evil and knew that they were naked and that wasn’t good.  When God came down to walk in the Garden, he couldn’t find Adam and Eve, who cried out to him that they were naked.  God knew immediately that they had eaten of the fruit, he then banished them from the Garden of Eden and we have the problem that continues to this day.

            We are beginning the season of Lent, when we pay close attention to our sins and how it is that we are not following the precepts laid down by our Lord.  We seek forgiveness from our sins and fervently promise to lead lives that are more in keeping with what God has in mind for this earth.  While we are doing this, others are making political judgments that fly in the face of Christian principle.  We are told to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and give shelter to those with no homes.  Our political leaders fight this kind of thing tooth and nail.  It is necessary that Christians find their voice and make the course of action decreed by our Lord to be our own agenda and not let those who would make poverty even worse than it is.  Finding our voice is not easy.  Political muscle these days depends on lots of money and the wealthy have found ways to accrue power.  That is what is being courted by those who not so subtly demean the poor in favor of those who are wealthy.  

            Finding our voice in this season of Lent ought to focus our prayer and our ministry on taking care of those whom Jesus cared the most about.  He spent little time with the rich and made his work the needs of those who had nothing.  In Matthew 25, Jesus tells his listeners about the sheep and the goats.  To the sheep, he says: when I was hungry, you fed me, when I was naked, you clothed me; when I was in prison, you came and visited me.  They asked him when they had done these things, and he told them, when you did this for the least of my brethren, you did it for me.  

            That needs to be our focus in this time.  To take care of those in need isn’t really that hard.  What is hard is getting the Pharisees to listen.

The Incredible Transfiguration

            Thirty-one years ago, in 1983, Rosie and I took a wonderful trip with our dear friend Nancy Lapp to the Middle East.  We were in the company of a number of other clergy, Harold Scott the Executive Presbyter of Pittsburgh and his wife Mary Ellen, John Baiz, the Rector of Calvary Church and his wife Mary, and a number of other good friends.  We landed in Jordan, toured the astonishing Petra in the south of the country and also the old Roman city of Jerash in the North. We then went across the Allenby Bridge into the West Bank, where we saw Jericho and a number of other sites.

              It was a great trip that eventually took us up to the north, into Galilee where we visited Capernaum and Nazareth and found our way to Mount Tabor. This is the mountain on which Jesus experienced the Transfiguration.  In the several descriptions in the Gospels, He took Peter, James and John with him and went up the mountain.  Up there, they saw their Lord shining, covered in a haze, and Moses and Elijah with him, and then they heard a voice call out to them, This is My Son, My Beloved, with whom I am well pleased! Listen to him! The disciples were stunned by this and fell to the ground, but Jesus touched them and told them not to be afraid, and not to tell anyone what they had seen.

            When we got to Mount Tabor, we parked the tour bus, got into a taxi driven by a Palestinian man who raced up the mountain with all of the five of us in the car holding on for dear life.  I think another cab passed us on the way down, which certainly got our attention.  When we got to the top, we got out and saw a fascinating site.  There was a low fog covering the place; and a chapel of the monastery was there with a choir of German tourists inside singing beautiful hymns.  I was struck by the correspondence between what we were seeing and the verses in the Gospel that described this place.  It was a deeply spiritual experience for me.  I could imagine Jesus in that place and his disciples around him and what they must have seen. 

            What are we to make of the Transfiguration story?  Jesus wanted it kept secret, so he told his disciples to keep it quiet.  The truth is that Peter, James and John saw something profound on that mountain that changed them deeply.  They saw their Lord through the eyes of God and heard God speak of the power that lay in his Son.  It changed their ministry and their lives.  If they had previously had any doubts about the role of Jesus, those doubts were erased and they continued their work in the certainty of who Jesus was.  At Caeserea Phillipi, when Jesus later asked Peter who people said he was, he confidently told him that some people said he was a prophet, others said that he was John the Baptist returned from the grave, but when Jesus asked him who HE said that he was, Peter replied, you are the Messiah, the Son of God!  And so He was.

            This Jesus, who we follow, has the power to change all of our lives.  That trip certainly changed my life.  I came back with a certainty that I had never had before.  I had learned a great deal about the power of Jesus to affect the people around him.  I saw the places where he had worked, and I knew the effect that he had had on all of those who knew him. I got no factual evidence of who Jesus was, but the content of that trip convinced me that Jesus was certainly for his disciples, the Messiah, and with all that they went through with him, including the crucifixion, that information was certainly valid.

            We are about to enter the long season of Lent, a time for reflection and preparation for the incredible experience of Easter.  It is because of Easter that we can all confidently live this life, with all of its confusion and headaches and know that our God is with us, not only in the moments of our worship, but in the knots and creases of our lives.  May you all have a profitable Lent and a glorious Easter.    

The Morality of Water

            For a long time, the people of Charleston, West Virginia, where Rosie and I used to live have gone without usable water.  A chemical plant on the Elk River, located just above the intake valves of the West Virginia American Water company, began to leak chemicals into the river.  The chemical that leaked is used for cleaning coal, and has a strong licorice odor to it.  Water is restricted in nine counties around Charleston, schools are affected as are restaurants and certainly the day to day usage of the residents of the area.  No one can drink the water, bathe in it or use it for cleaning.  Bottled water has been made available, but this has a limit and is incredibly inconvenient for the residents. Many people from outside the area have contributed bottled water and other things to the affected residents. The economic effect on the area isn’t known, but it will certainly be substantial.  There is even talk of people leaving the area because of the tainted water.  The response to all of this from the people in charge has been less than helpful. 

            One of the reasons that there is an overwhelming problem is the vice-grip hold that the coal industry has on the politics of West Virginia.  When the Upper Big Branch mine disaster hit the state, there was an outcry for justice, but the coal company was held responsible only to a small extent in terms of their wealth.  Nothing much really happened, nor had it happened when the Sago disaster killed a number of miners.  There was, as there always is, substantial coverage by the media, but in the end, the problem faded from the public’s immediate concerns.  When mountain-top removal is done by the coal mine interests to quickly obtain coal from West Virginia’s beautiful mountains, it is always done out of sight of the interstate highways going through the state.  You have to fly over the state to see the incredible damage to the once beautiful landscape.  This has also been largely off the public’s radar, and when it is covered by the news media, it fades away in due time.

            This time, the issue is different.  The entire area is completely affected by this latest crisis.  The media is not relenting in their coverage of it, it is at the top of the agenda for most of the people, all of the time.  The coal industry won’t be able to get away with shoving this under the rug the way they have been able to do with the disasters that have preceded this one.  How those responsible will be held accountable is yet to be seen, but there will be no let up in the public’s outrage until something is done.  West Virginia’s lawmakers have made a number of comments that indicate that they take this problem seriously, but there has yet been no really concrete suggestion of what to do about it. 

            The book of Leviticus is not often read by us, but it is a wonderful source of the mind of God when the Ten Commandments were created and given to Moses.  It contains a great explanation of what is meant by God and by our Lord Jesus when we are told to love our neighbor as a person like ourselves.  For example, in Leviticus 19: 9, we read:

               When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall

                 not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather

                 the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not strip

                 your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of

                 your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor

                 and the alien: I am the LORD your God.

            I think that this verse applies to things like the removal of water from the taps of the people who live around the mines, and who depend not only on the coal, but certainly on the water that flows in their rivers for their lives.  Certainly polluting the river so that the water can’t be used is covered in this Levitical verse.  But the question is what are we going to do about it?  Those of us outside the bounds of the people who are affected certainly have a responsibility not only to help with the supply of bottled water, but also to make sure that our government leaders care enough to make this situation right and to call to account those who are responsible and to do it in a way that gives this area back its dignity and wholesome life.  May God bless the people of these nine counties and give them back what they so desperately need, which is the richness of their lives.

Living Into Our Forgiveness

            Do you ever have the feeling that you just can’t measure up?  That no matter what it is that you do, however you live your life, it just isn’t enough?  That somehow despite your faith and whatever love you can provide for others, you still don’t come up to the standard that you have set?  That is not an uncommon feeling in this culture, in this time. 

            We all want to be good people.  Often, we just don’t know how, and the feelings that we get from Holy Scripture don’t sometimes help.  There is a passage in the Gospel of Matthew that tells us that unless our righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees, we can’t enter the Kingdom of Heaven.  That certainly doesn’t come to me as good news.  My righteousness certainly doesn’t exceed anybody’s righteousness.  I often make judgments that I ought to not make and say things that I ought to keep to myself. When I am driving, I don’t like what other drivers do sometimes.  When I am at an intersection, and I am trying to turn, I hate it when another car turns in front of me.  I say bad things when this happens.  I don’t endear myself to others, or to my Lord when I do these things. Under these terms, how can I possibly aspire to enter the Kingdom of Heaven?

            Listen to this prayer at the beginning of our service:  O God, the strength of all who put their trust in you: Mercifully accept our prayers; and because in our weakness we can do nothing good without you, give us the help of your grace, that in keeping your commandments we may please you both in will and deed; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. 

            That is a prayer that I need to say over and over again.  I need the help of God’s grace constantly to pull me out of the messes that I make for myself; and so do you.  We have no chance of pleasing God on our own.  It is by God’s grace that we live lives that are worthy of the Christ whom we all adore.  It is only by God’s grace that we have the ability to enter into the heaven that has been promised to us.  Even though I am a sinner, I know that the forgiveness of Jesus the Christ is mine. 

            We all come before the altar and confess our sins and the priest pronounces absolution.  When I pronounce the absolution of sins, I mean it.  Your sins are forgiven and you are pure in the eyes of God.  I know that many of you don’t believe that, but that isn’t the point.  The point is that you are forgiven, after you have confessed your sins, whether you believe it or not.  It is as pure people that we come to this table to receive the body and blood of Jesus Christ who died for all of us.  His death and resurrection is concrete proof of that forgiveness.  I don’t care what you have done, our God offers you forgiveness.

            I spent a number of years as a part-time chaplain at a penitentiary in Pittsburgh.  I had a group of eight men, all of whom had killed somebody.  One of the members of that group had been a teacher who had killed a young woman in a particularly brutal way.  One day, after being in prison for nearly ten years, he got a letter from the family of that woman telling him that they wanted to come to see him.  The group told him to let them come.  It was with fear and trembling that he went to the visiting room to meet with the parents of the girl whom he had killed.  The father told him that they had come to forgive him.  And to give him a sense of how they had come to this decision, he told him that on the day that he was transferred from the jail to the courthouse for his trial, he was on a roof down the street with a rifle and that he had fully intended to kill him.  He said that he just couldn’t do it; and after a number of years of struggle, they had decided to put this all behind them, to live their lives and to forgive him. 

            This utterly changed the man in my group.  He couldn’t believe that anyone could forgive what he had done.  It made his life more meaningful, even though he knew that he would never leave prison.  For the family of the young woman, it changed everything.  They could leave their hatred behind and get on with their lives.  That is what forgiveness can bring. 

            If someone can be forgiven for a horrible crime by a family, certainly we can be forgiven for the things that we have done.  God bless us all as we confess to our Lord our sins and receive back his generous love.

Being the Salt of the Earth

            A couple of weeks ago, I was in the coffee hour following a service at which I had preached when I was approached by a ragged woman with cast down eyes and a desperate look on her face.  She quickly asked me to give her some money so that she could live.  I didn’t hesitate.  I reached into my pocket and gave her an amount of money that I had placed there earlier in the day.  I had been warned about her earlier by someone in the congregation, that this woman frequented the coffee hours and always wanted money.  I went ahead, heedless of the warning because I didn’t know what her need was, only what she said that it was.

            Often, when I have walked downtown, beggars have come up to me on the street and have asked for money.  I have always given them what I had.  I have often been told that I have no idea what these people do with the money that I give them, that they probably just head for the nearest liquor store or drug dealer and when I give them money, and I am just contributing to their bad habits.  Well, I don’t know if that is true or not.  All that I know is what I have been told by the people asking for the money.

            One time when I was working in Washington, DC, I was at an intersection waiting to turn onto 14^th street to go back to my apartment in Alexandria, VA when a man pounded on my window and shouted: “Hey, preacher, give me ten dollars so that I can go into this liquor store and get me a bottle.”  I’ve always thought that was the most honest request for money that I have ever heard.  That time, I was scared badly and quickly turned the corner and sped toward safety. 

            What I am trying to say is that we have no idea what our acts of kindness will do to benefit the people who ask us for help.  We only make a mistake when we assume the worst and don’t do anything at all.  Sometimes, taking them by the hand and listening to their story is all that is needed.  We don’t always have to give money.  Friendship and understanding is the most wonderful thing to be desired by somebody in need.

            Jesus told his disciples to be the Salt of the Earth.  That is a kind of obscure statement that only means something when you think about it.  Salt is a simple element that is on most of our dining tables and in our kitchens.  It does a lot of wonderful things, it makes dishes taste better; before refrigeration, it was often used to keep meat from spoiling over a long period of time.  But what was it that Jesus meant when he told his disciples to be salt?  When I look at the whole of Jesus’ ministry on this earth, it is clear that he meant  for us to do the little things that are needed to get the lives of people back on track: to feed those who are hungry; to clothe the naked, to heal the sick and when we can, to raise the dead.  These were the things that Jesus did through all of his life, and the things that eventually got him crucified.  He told his disciples to do these things over and over again.  In the 25^th chapter of Matthew’s gospel, he tells the story of the sheep and the goats, how the sheep were blessed because as he tells them, “When I was hungry, you fed, me, when I was in prison, you visited me, when I was naked, you clothed me.”  When they asked him when they did these things for him, he replied, “When you did this for the least of my people, you did it for me.

            In the Old Testament, in Isaiah, we hear about the requirements of God for those who would want to be righteous.  It is not simply fasting and expecting by the fast to be beloved of God.  God tells his people that such a fast that only humbles the self is not pleasing to God.  Instead, he tells the people:

                                  Is not this the fast that I choose:
                      to loose the bonds of injustice,
                      to undo the thongs of the yoke,
                      to let the oppressed go free,
                      and to break every yoke?
                      Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
                      and bring the homeless poor into your house;
                      when you see the naked, to cover them,
                      and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
                      Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
                      and your healing shall spring up quickly…

        That is what God has in mind for all of humanity.  To simply be kind to one another and to pay attention to one another’s needs.  That is the road to happiness not only for those whom we encounter in this world, but for ourselves.  It is truly the path to a healthy relationship with God, and our savior, Jesus Christ.  It is also the road to a healthy, peaceful world, where everyone’s needs are met and we can live in a harmony that all of us yearn for over and over again.  God bless us as we work toward this wonderful goal.