April 10, 2011, The Fifth Sunday in Lent, Yr. A

Sunday, April 10, 2011, The Fifth Sunday in Lent
John 11:1-45
The Rev. Jo Miller

What I have learned as a supply priest is you can't give an Annie Dillard kind of
homily in most churches. You know the kind of homily in which you need a crash helmet
instead of a nice Easter bonnet and a seat belt in the pew to keep you from flying off the end or out the door. It is hard to find a place where old assumptions and ways of seeing one's faith is allowed to be challenged. Do we really want our barriers and boundaries torn down? I am referring to the barriers we have built to keep God safe in God's place and to keep people well defined so we know where to keep them or where we can keep ourselves safe from God and others. We also want to keep our fears intact. We are skeptical that love wins in the end. It is a human tendency, or at least that's the way I read it in the Bible.

Love wins. Bottom line. There is a fairly new book out by Bob Bell, an
"Evangelical", a pastor of a mega church in Grand Rapids, Michigan whose book is titled Love Wins. He is tearing down walls, barriers, and boundaries. He along with some other people are beginning to preach Annie Dillard type sermons and writing books that sound a lot like the Jesus I have come to know in the Bible. And you know what, they get picketed by and receive nasty e-mails from Christians.

The Gospel of John critiques the social relations and structures of the world that
Jesus confronted. Those structures back then are very similar to our social structures today that create, uphold, and sustain boundaries, walls, divisions, prejudices, and fears. Many of these social structures are generated from religious belief systems.

In the past two Sundays and today we have had three fairly long Gospel Readings
from John. They are full, rich, deep, multilevel dramas that confront certain social
structures that we read and hear Jesus dismantling. We see how our blindness interferes with our greater spiritual understanding, we see how fear of life and death can be overcome through the presence of the Living Spirit of God who dwells in us, who is the one in whom we walk and live and have our being.

All three of the main characters in our Gospel readings were given new life: the
Samaritan woman at the well given new life, the blind man given new life, Lazarus given new life by Jesus dismantling barriers. The very presence of Jesus was a demonstration of God's love and that God's love will win in the end.

Let's take a brief look at the Samaritan woman and the boundaries or barriers that
came down. Jesus a lone man at the well of Jacob speaks to a lone Samaritan woman at
the well. Barrier number one: Jesus spoke to a woman, barrier number two a Jewish male spoke to a Samaritan, barrier number three Jesus as the Christ of God spoke to an adulteress, a sinner. The love of God was present to her. In her conversation with Jesus, the Samaritan woman slowly moves from unbelief to faith, from darkness to light, from blindness to sight, from ignorance to knowledge, from misunderstanding to understanding. Jesus was just present with her and she began to see. Her growing faith that Jesus was the Messiah brought her justification by her faith as Paul wrote in Romans.

Let us now have a brief look at last week's Gospel. The three players in this drama
were a blind man, men who had sight but were blind, and the very presence of Jesus. The primary social barriers that Jesus broke down were the understandings of sin and
righteousness. These two barriers keep all kinds of relationships from growing and
especially our relationship with the indwelling Spirit of God. The man born blind
according to the Gospel reading did not ask Jesus to heal him. He did not know who Jesus was at the time. But Jesus was present to him even in his blindness and his ignorance.

Jesus was also present to the men who were willing to make religious judgments.
Our religious judgments perhaps are the most difficult for the Spirit of God to dismantle. Our religious judgments embody our fears, our prejudices, our hatreds and we have a tendency to make them noble by claiming they are sanctified by God. Religious judgments were one of the powers that sent Jesus to the cross. God was even reconciled to those who held those judgments whether we like it or not. Perhaps because we hold judgments against those who hold negative judgments on others.

Again, as with the woman at the well it took time for the man born blind to fully
understand who had touched him and who was willing to love him. It takes us time also. It can take a life time to accept the full presence of the living Christ in our life.

Now the story of Lazarus. Keep in mind the verse in Ephesians 5:14 that we heard
last week. "Therefore it says: Sleeper awake! Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine in you. Paul in Romans 8: 6-11 speaks of the indwelling nature of God in the Spirit. It reads "If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you." Our reading from Ezekiel is also an articulation of how the very breath of God, the Rhouak, the Spirit of God can bring life back to us even if we had chosen to live in darkness, a life without hope, and a defeated life.

We read that Jesus wept. This is an emotionally profound testimony to the truth of
the incarnation itself, of Jesus being truly one of us to the point of sharing our human need for friendship and our grief at the loss of a friend. Jesus was there to have the rock rolled away that separated living from the dead. Life was breathed back into the one who had died. Love wins.

The tension between the hope of resurrection and finality of death is palpable during
this season of reflection. The tension between hope for new life and having to live in the death of the old is being played out in our news every day. Amid the painful circumstance and death-dealing social realities, we yearn for resurrection and the unbinding that releases us to dream beyond the boundaries and experience a renewed life. To dream beyond the boundaries we impose on ourselves and others impose on us is to imagine a world in which wholeness, well-being, health, and purpose are the normal expression of our human existence and to partner with the God of life in making the dream come true. It is to recognize that our world is not as it should be, while rejecting assertions that the socioreligious barriers that prevent persons from experiencing God's presence in their lives is impervious to change. This fifth Sunday of Lent invites us to consider the possibility or new life as in the resurrection in the lives of the many persons and communities who deeply need God's presence in the nowness of our existence. We need to live the life that demonstrates that God's love wins. That God's love through the indwelling Spirit of Christ
can continue to tear down the boundaries and barriers.