Amazing Grace after Jesus Leaves

 

We all sang the words today, echoing the testimony of the man in our Gospel lesson: “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found. Was blind, but now, I see.” This hymn verse makes healing sound so easy, so instantaneous. But is it? What about today’s Gospel? On first glance, it might look like our Gospel is just one more miracle story about Jesus’ power to heal. But if we look closely, we see that Jesus isn’t really the focus of this story. As Fred Craddock puts it, our Gospel lesson today is a story about human coping in Jesus’ absence.[1]

I like this story, precisely because it’s not just Jesus doing some divine magic. It’s not just about “fixing” a poor, pitiful blind person, either. It’s about all of us. It’s about our own lack of spiritual sight, our own blindness in our interactions with one another and with ourselves. When Jesus puts damp mud on the man’s eyes in our story, Jesus is re-creating him—just like God used damp mud to fashion the first “earth creatures” in Genesis 2. When Jesus sends the blind man to wash in the pool called “Sent,” he is baptizing him with water, making him an apostle, one who is “sent out.”[2] This man is you and me: Wounded, broken, yet neither judged nor condemned; created by God in God’s image; baptized in Christ’s death and resurrection; sent out to share the Good News. This man is all of us.

So what happens when Jesus get his healing hands on us? Well, the newly healed beggar gains his sight, yet he loses his old, familiar identity. All his life, he has been a blind beggar—unable to work, a fixture at the city gates, someone from whom people avert their gaze as they pass by. But now, thanks to Jesus’ healing touch, the man is no longer a beggar slumped in the dust. He now walks rapidly down the street, purpose in his step. He is so changed that no one recognizes him. He has become an alien in his own village. He might be able to see, but if he looks in the mirror, I wonder if even he would recognize himself? By gaining his sight, he must begin the hard work of rebuilding a whole new self. If you’re reading Richard Rohr with us, you’ll recognize the challenge: the challenge of shedding your False Self—that blind mask that conforms to the world—and coming home to your own True Self—the beloved, light-filled soul that God created you to be. That shedding of the mask can feel like dying. For us, as for the blind man, the True Self only appears through great loss.

First, the newly-healed man has to deal with being grilled by the religious leaders. Imagine if you were an unhoused person suddenly dragged before the bishop and the police chief and asked to explain a mysterious public healing that you didn’t even ask for? How intimidating and frightening that would be! The former beggar is now an object of suspicion and a source of controversy—and Jesus is nowhere to be found during his interrogation. Here he is, finally able to see, and the authorities are all still blind.

And then the man’s parents refuse to back him up. His own family! They acknowledge him as their son, but, afraid what the change will mean for their own lives and reputations, they don’t stand behind his story: “Ask him,” they stammer as they wiggle away from controversy. “He’s a grown-up; he will speak for himself.”

Finally, as the man begins to make sense of what has happened to him and who Jesus truly must be, he’s once again hauled before the authorities and then thrown out of the synagogue for his support of the healer who has saved him. He’s tossed out of the community and labeled as a heretic. As Craddock writes, “A few days previous the man’s life was blessed by Jesus and now his old friends disregard him, his parents reject him, and he is no longer welcome at his old place of worship. What a blessing!” Only after the man has dealt with all of the difficult changes brought about by his healing does Jesus finally reappear and reveal himself.

Change wasn’t easy or instantaneous for John Newton, either, the author of the hymn “Amazing Grace.” He was an eighteenth-century slave trader, enriching himself through dehumanizing others. He was successful, at the height of his career. But on one voyage, he met Jesus in a book, a book about the inner light of Christ. After reading it and journeying inward, his outward journey forced him to spend days fighting a deadly hurricane on the open seas. Fearing for his life, he prayed for mercy, and he and his ship were saved. After that encounter with Christ, though, Newton didn’t change overnight. He took that encounter with him back into his everyday life. When he gave up his job as trader, I’m sure his friends and business associates thought he was crazy. When he became an Anglican priest and an ardent anti-slavery advocate, I’m sure many people rejected him. But he was “sent,” called to testify. His testimony influenced the politician William Wilberforce, who played a vital role in the abolition movement in England. Newton’s own story in his book, Thoughts on the African Slave Trade, greatly helped to secure the British abolition of slavery. [3]

For the Christians in the community to whom John is writing, Jesus has been gone from this earth for almost a century. They themselves are Jews who have been labeled as heretics. They’ve been thrown out of the synagogue for believing that Jesus is the Messiah. The animosity between their communities and the community of the Pharisees is strong, painful, and probably all-consuming. In telling the story of the blind man, John wants to encourage the fledgling Christians during this difficult time of transformation. “Stay strong in your testimony,” he is imploring them. “Even though Jesus has gone to the Father, the changes that he has brought to your lives are life-giving changes. You live in the light of his truth. In time, your coping will have its reward,” John encourages them.

Indeed, John’s message is one that resonates just as strongly today. In my years as a priest, I’ve talked with many people who’ve been through the turbulent journey from the blindness of a False Self to the grace of a True Self. They are often individuals to whom Jesus has opened their true sexuality, or their true gender, or their true worth in situations of abuse, or their true dignity in situations of domination ... These people have had a live-giving encounter with a loving Jesus. And yet, they’re left with rejection from their families, their churches, their communities—all because those groups believe that they have some special hold on the truth, that they alone can see.

As individuals and as a community, we must continually ask ourselves, where are our blind spots? Where do I need to see anew? One of my favorite poems is by the Israeli poet, Yehuda Amichai. He writes:

“From the place where we are right / Flowers will never grow/ In the spring./ The place where we are right/ Is hard and trampled/ Like a yard. /But doubts and loves/ Dig up the world / Like a mole, a plow./ And a whisper will be heard in the place/ Where the ruined/ House once stood.”[4]

And that whisper? That whisper is God’s Amazing Grace.

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[1] Fred B. Craddock, “Coping in Jesus’ Absence” found at http://www.religion-online.org/sharticle.asp?title=706.

 

[2] See https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/2020/3/17/now-i-see-salts-lectionary-commentary-for-lent-4

[3] Diane Severance, “When John Newton Discovered Amazing Grace (And Wrote the Hymn),” https://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1701-1800/john-newton-discovered-amazing-grace-11630253.html

[4] Yehuda Amichai, “The Place Where We Are Right.” https://www.best-poems.net/yehuda-amichai/the-place-where-we-are-right.html.

True Welcome

 

At our vestry retreat last week, we were looking at the data from the small group conversations in which many of you participated. Our consultant Elizabeth had gathered the words and phrases that you used to describe what’s special about St. Ambrose. These words won’t surprise anyone, I don’t think. We see ourselves as: loving, supportive, accepting, welcoming, helping each other out, open to others, and valuing connection. Elizabeth then challenged us to find the theological underpinning for this self-understanding. What would be the Bible story or understanding of God that could ground who we are as a parish? One vestry member suggested, “The Samaritan Woman at the Well.”

“Uh oh,” I thought, as I remembered that this story would be our Gospel lesson for today. “I know what I’m going to have to preach on next week.”

In order to look more closely at this story, I thought that it might be helpful for me to invite the Samaritan woman herself to speak with us today. So let me present “Rebecca.”

Good morning! I’m Rebecca of Sychar, in Samaria. I’m told that my town is now called Askar, in the West Bank, and is a refugee camp of some sort. But in my day, we were a close-knit group of Samaritan families. We’d all been in Sychar for generations, and we were proud to live right near the holy mountain of Gerazim, God’s true dwelling place. We were far from the corrupt practices of the so-called Temple in Jerusalem.

But I’m told that you want to hear the story of how Jesus transformed my life? I love telling that story. It makes my heart leap, even after all this time.

For years, my heart had felt only despair. I wasn’t yet an old woman, but I knew only misery, day after day. When I married at age 13, I had hopes for a happy life. My husband Benjamin was kind and earned a decent living, and I imagined a life filled with sons and daughters. But a fever came to Sychar and carried away our newborn son, and then Benjamin soon followed him to the grave. I almost died myself. As soon as I was well, the family passed me off to marry Benjamin’s brother Jonathan, as the law dictates. The next year, Jonathan died, and they passed me on to a cousin. I really wanted to return home to my parents’ house, but that just isn’t done. Women can’t leave a marriage, you know. I wasn’t sad when that third husband died except that I still had no sons—not even a daughter! I was cursed! But a woman has to have a husband. They gave me in marriage to Nathan—until he died, too. Everyone accused me of bringing death as my dowery. None of other men of Benjamin’s family wanted me then, but Jacob had to take me. Jacob was cruel. He beat me, and when I had no sons, Jacob came in one morning and presented me with papers of divorce. He told everyone in town that I was lazy and stupid, but I was just sad.

At that point, I didn’t know where to go, or what to do. I was afraid of starving in the streets. I was so filled with shame. That’s when I asked old Malachi if he would take me in. His wife had just died, and he was crippled in the legs. I gleaned the fields and cooked for him, and he let me share his food and sleep on some straw on the floor. He was too old to mess with me, but the town was still horrified. I was living with a man who wasn’t my husband! The other women avoided me, afraid that I had an evil eye on me. The men made rude noises whenever I passed by, and the children would stare.  I couldn’t even go haul water for Malachi in the cool of the morning, when the other women would all gather at the well. If I wanted to avoid everyone’s scorn, I had to go at noon, when the sun blazed down hot, and only the dogs roamed the streets. That was the only time that I’d be left in peace.

My heart sank when I arrived at the well that day and saw a dusty male stranger hanging around alone. “Here we go,” I thought, steeling myself for harassment. Decent men don’t hang around wells by themselves, you know, unless they’re looking for some, ah, female company. And I knew I sure wouldn’t be getting a marriage proposal at the well, like my namesake in the Torah! To make matters worse, I noticed as I got closer that this man was dressed like a Jew—a poor, tired, down-and-out Jew. The last thing I needed! What if someone saw us there together?! They’d stone me for sure!

But, you know, this man was different. He was kind. His mouth was caked with dust from the road, and he just wanted some water. He was a stranger in a strange land, far from home. I was glad to give him a drink. I know what it’s like to be thirsty. When he started dissing our ancestry and our temple, like Jews always do, I got my guard up again. And when his Jewish friends showed up, they gave me ugly stares, just like the townsfolk always did. But he ignored them.

The teacher talked about Living Water. Water that never gave out. Look, if I had that water, I thought at first, I wouldn’t ever have to come back to this well again. I could hide away from all the hateful people around me and avoid the daily hurt of going outside. But then I finally understood. I’m not stupid. I figured out that this man was talking about a Holy mystery, not just some spring somewhere. He was talking about water that quenched your heart and soul, deep down, that healed and made whole, like his eyes did. I wanted that water so badly. I felt like I’d follow him anywhere, just to find hope and joy again. To find Life again.

The most amazing thing was that this teacher knew me. He knew the person underneath all the pain, all the rejection. He knew my true self, beloved of God. And he welcomed all the rest of me—all my misfortune, my barrenness, my grief. He named it. He drew it out of its buried wound and into the light. I was so filled with joy that I ran off without my water pail! I told everyone I could find that there was a healer at the well, a strange man who might well be the Anointed One of God. This man—Jesus, he was called—he stayed in Sychar for two whole days. Everyone was amazed at his teaching, and his healings. And I was the one who brought them the news! Me! People looked at me differently after that. I was different.

 Barbara Brown Taylor points out that Jesus’s conversation with the woman at the well is his longest recorded conversation in the entire New Testament.  He talks to her longer than he talks to his twelve disciples, or to his accusers, or even to his own family members.  Moreover, she is the first person in John’s Gospel to whom Jesus reveals his identity.  And she is the first believer in any of the Gospels to become an evangelist who brings her entire city to a saving knowledge of Jesus.[1]

So, how does this story apply to the loving, welcoming nature of St. Ambrose? Of course, we are all the Samaritan Woman in some way, aren’t we? We all need to have our true selves valued in Jesus’ eyes, in order to be brought to wholeness. Just read Richard Rohr! But how do we at St. Ambrose imitate Jesus? Do we really offer the same kind of welcome that he does? He goes out into hostile, unfamiliar territory. He presents himself as thirsty and vulnerable to sworn enemies of his people. He lets others reach out to him, without presenting himself as better than they are. He crosses boundaries of safety and propriety, not caring what others think. He reaches out in love and acceptance to the scorned, the outcast, the despairing.

If we truly want this to become our story, if we truly want to follow Jesus, then you and I will need to gird our loins with courage, get out of our comfort zones, leave what is familiar, and open our arms to all the Rebecca’s at the well, giving them a chance to quench our own thirst. It might sound like a daunting task, but there’s one easy thing that we can do today to get started! Without even leaving the church building! Are you curious?

During the confession, we open our true selves to Jesus. And during the words of absolution, I remind us that we are forgiven and accepted by him. During the peace, it’s our turn to become like Jesus, to offer peace and forgiveness to our fellow worshippers, so that we can all sit together—open and vulnerable—at God’s Table. Here at St. Ambrose, like in many other small congregations, we like to go hug our friends and chat a bit during the peace. We pride ourselves on being the church where the peace lasts forever. That’s our identity, our history. But do you know what really happens? While we seek out the familiar, our newer or quieter friends stand awkwardly alone. Believe it or not, it happens every single week.

 So here’s your challenge for today: Let’s take a first step outside of our comfort zone. To be a truly welcoming and open congregation, let’s turn and offer the warm peace of Christ to each person right around us, whether we know them or not, whether it feels awkward or not. Let your friends on the other side of the church get to know the people near them. After all, we can all chat after church to our hearts’ content. Let’s make the Peace a holy, special time of welcome, love, and Living Water. For everyone!

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[1] Quoted by Debie Thomas, Journey with Jesus. Found at https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2561-the-woman-at-the-well-2.