Patience - Easter 2A

Saint John 20:19-31

Some of you are able to remember those warm dismal days while others, like me bore only a small, long since faded scar on our upper arms that gave a witness to a long battle with a deadly disease.

Discover Magazine described it this way:

Like a horror movie, throughout the first half of the 20th century, the polio virus arrived each summer, striking without warning. No one knew how polio was transmitted or what caused it. There were wild theories that the virus spread from imported bananas or stray cats. There was no known cure or vaccine.

For the next four decades, swimming pools and movie theaters closed during polio season for fear of this invisible enemy. Parents stopped sending their children to playgrounds or birthday parties for fear they would “catch polio.”1

In 1952, the number of polio cases in the U.S. peaked at 57,879, resulting in 3,145 deaths. Those who survived this highly infectious disease could end up with some form of paralysis, forcing them to use crutches, wheelchairs or to be put into an iron lung, a large tank respirator that would pull air in and out of the lungs, allowing them to breathe.2

If they have any memory of this outbreak at all people will usually sum up the story in a single sentence:  And then a guy named Jonas Salk developed a vaccine and it all went away.  

If only it were that simple. 

Salk started his work at the University of Pittsburgh in 1947 3 and it wasn't until February 23 of 1954 that "a group of children from Arsenal Elementary School in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, received the first injections of the new polio vaccine.”4

A little more than a month later, “on April 26, six-year-old Randy Kerr was injected with the Salk vaccine at the Franklin Sherman Elementary School in McLean, Virginia. By the end of June, an unprecedented 1.8 million people, including hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren, joined him in becoming ‘polio pioneers.’”5

Even though it was one of the largest public health crises of the mid-20th century it took at least a year-and-a-half to develop a vaccine that would allow parents to send their children out to play with confidence.  

The legend of an overnight cure for any dreaded disease gave birth what George F. Will wrote recently to "the misconception that pharmacological silver bullets are the key to large improvements in public health."6  They are not as we are proving so far in our battle against Covid-19 or the Caronavirus. 

We are behaving.  We are careful without being unreasonable about social distancing.  We are staying home more even if it is doing great damage to our economy.   We are even learning what is it like to live without baseball.  

The hardest part of all, for me at least, is being patient.  We would all like to know when this is over so that we can get on with our lives. 

Even the NewsHour on PBS ran a segment on "When to Reopen" in which Judy Woodruff asked Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont where he came up with May 20th as the date when things could start to return to normal in his state. He explained that he hoped that by May 20th they "would be in a better position to determine what we can open, how we can open, and when we can open."6

I was watching this after a pizza supper with a long-standing friend of mine, Scott, who is a physician.  Scott said that the governor’s response to the question of how he determined what date it might be safe to start reopening things should have been: “How did I decide on May 20th?  I dunno.  I just pulled that day out of thin air.  It seemed as good as any.”    

Everybody wants to know the exact date and time we can go shopping without wearing a mask and looking we are going to rob the place.  We all want to know when we can use the public parks without worry and get back to church again without being concerned that  somebody is going to give us anything more that a warm welcome during the passing of the peace. 

For the foreseeable future anyway it looks like we are just going to have to be patient.  Patience, surprisingly enough, is one of the things today's gospel is about.

Yes, it is about another one of Jesus’ great resurrection appearances but today I am intrigued with how the disciples treated Thomas in the time between Jesus first appearance and his reappearance.

Today’s Gospel begins with the first followers of Jesus in the exact same place we have been for the last month – behind closed doors that have been locked because of fear.  It is precisely there and precisely then that Jesus comes to them.

This is the first time that Jesus has appeared to more than one or two women.  This time the whole gang is there, men and women all together in a group when he shows up in their midst.  However, one of their number is missing.  It is Thomas who would be forever cast in the role of being a doubter.

All he was really guilty of is missing an unscheduled meeting.  

You have to believe that after all the talk of Jesus being alive again if Thomas knew where and when Jesus could be seen he would have been there.  It would have been something that took precedent over everything else on his social calendar.  Had Jesus given some notice Thomas would have certainly been seated with the group waiting for the raised Lord’s grand entrance. 

He wasn’t.  And, for years, the honest humanness to his disappointment has caused  him to receive a short shrift.  He only wants to see for himself.  He only wants to have his own experience of the risen Jesus before he is willing to commit himself.  He can’t be sure until he does his own poking around into the matter.  So, he folds his arms over his chest and says, in effect, “let’s see if what you are saying is true.”

It is not what happens but what doesn’t happen at this point that intrigues me.

The others don’t get upset with Thomas.  They don’t raise their voices and wave their arms and shout:  “We’re telling you, man, this happened!  This really happened!  He was here!  Standing right where you are standing now!”  

They don’t force him out of the group and neither does he leave.  We don’t know exactly what they did between resurrection appearance one and resurrection appearance two but there is no evidence that they became angry with Thomas or each other.  Nor are we told they sat around drumming their fingers on the table wondering, “When is Jesus coming back?”

There is a great deal of patience in this text, men and woman.  They are patient with Thomas.  He is patient with them.  They all are patiently waiting on Jesus.

Eventually, like eight days earlier, Jesus shows up and if we play close attention to the text we’ll see that something is missing.

Michelangelo Caravaggio thought it was there and in one of his graphic biblical paintings of the late 16th and early 17th century paintings depicted the meeting of Jesus and Thomas in shocking detail.  

The painting (pictured above) is called “The Incredulity of Saint Thomas” and has the future saint poking around the wound in Jesus side like some really cruel emergency room physician.  A couple of other disciples have come close to watch as an index finger is plunged, knuckle deep, into the gash.  

Caravaggio painted it that way but that is not the way Saint John portrays the scene in his gospel.  

Jesus issues the invitation to poke and prod as much as he would like but Thomas response is only to cry out, “My Lord and my God!”  In scripture Thomas keeps his “social distance” before he makes his confession.  

I think that is because he had the same experience that the followers had when Jesus first showed up eight days earlier and said, “Peace be with you.”

Isn’t that exactly what we need the resurrected Christ to give us now, at this moment? We need his peace.

We can work out our theology of mission later when we can be sent back out into the world.  We can plumb the theological depths of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus later when we don’t have to pull on rubber gloves and don a mask that steams up our glasses before we go into the grocery story.  There will be much to think about and do once we are sprung from the separateness of our isolation.

For now, what we need more than ever is Christ’s peace.  

The promise of the resurrected Christ is that he is coming to us, like he came to those first followers, on that first Easter, and offering us nothing less that his peace, God’s peace.

As we hear those words, “peace be with you,” may they wash over our hearts and take root in our minds and help us to be patient  this day and for how many days there are to come.  

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1. Carl Kurlander and University of Pittsburgh. “The Deadly Polio Epidemic and Why It Matters for Coronavirus.” Discover Magazine, April 17, 2020. https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/the-deadly-polio-epidemic-and-why-it-matters-for-coronavirus.

2.  “Salk Legacy.”   Pitt Public Health, University of Pittsburgh. Accessed April 17, 2020. https://publichealth.pitt.edu/home/about/vision-mission-history/salk.

3.  “Children Receive First Polio Vaccine.” History. A&E Television Networks, February 20, 2020. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/children-receive-first-polio-vaccine.

4.  Christopher Klein, “Eight Things You May Not Know About Dr. Jonas Salk and the Polio Vaccine.” History. A&E Television Networks, March 25, 2020. https://www.history.com/news/8-things-you-may-not-know-about-jonas-salk-and-the-polio-vaccine.

5.  George F. Will. “You Are Not a Teetering Contraption.” The Washington Post, March 20, 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/you-are-not-a-teetering-contraption/2020/03/19/806d504a-6a08-11ea-abef-020f086a3fab_story.html.

6. “When to Reopen.” The NewsHour. New York, New York: PBS, April 14, 2020.

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"No Stone Unturned" - The Resurrection of Our Lord - 2020

Saint Matthew 27:57–28:10

It is really obvious that this Easter is unlike any Easter any of us have experienced in our lifetime.  All over this land churches with wise leaders are empty.

The feeling of emptiness may have been underscored at the beginning out our time together when my “Christ is risen!” was not greeted with the usual rafters ringing shouted reply of, “He is risen indeed!” but with deafening silence.  It was strange.  It was strange indeed.

We are not used to empty churches at Easter.  We usually save that for the Sunday after Easter when the crowds are so diminished that it only looks empty.  Easter is the holiday that packs the place with people we haven’t seen for a year or perhaps only since last Christmas.  

Some preachers take the opportunity to be snarky as if saying snide things to their biggest audience of the year is a good idea.  I promise you that I won’t because if people pick one Sunday to be in church or listen to a video this is the one.  Easter is the one Sunday when the church has something really important to say to the world about matters of life and death.  

If you’re going to talk about important stuff like that you might as well do it up right and break out a brass choir; fill the place with lilies; put on your best outfit because what you are to be about is big, really big.  

That is why it is also essential that we take this message in when we are with others.  We need their voices to uplift ours and the presence with us to give us the confidence of the crowd to believe that what we are hearing is true.

On that first Easter they didn’t have that luxury for there were very, very, very few people who were not confused, uncertain and not sure if they would be up to the task ahead.  

In Saint Mark’s gospel, the briefest we have, the women have one thing on their minds as they walked to the tomb.  Jesus’ burial had been done hurriedly just as the sun was setting and now they were going to make sure that his lifeless body would be cared for properly.  They were going to bring their last gift of love to poor, dead Jesus but as they got closer “They worried out loud to each other, ‘Who will roll back the stone from the tomb for us?’”`1

They had watched Joseph of Arimathea come out of nowhere to claim the body and place it lovingly in his tomb and roll a large stone across the entrance.  There was a large barrier blocking their path to discovering the resurrection just as there is an impediment to our experiencing the resurrection in the usual way.

In their case it was a boulder in our case it is a virus. 

When you look at pictures of it Covid-19 looks like it could have been designed by a child as an art-and-crafts project.  To reproduce a model all you would have to do is take a soiled Styrofoam ball and stick red pins in it.  There you would have a perfect replica of something so small it could be only seen through a very strong microscope.

It might as well be as big as a house because it is getting in the way of everything.

It is getting in the way of our being together but that pales in comparison to what others are going through.  Some are isolated in the rooms or apartments in retirement communities.  Others haven’t been outside in days locking themselves up and sheltering in place as if a murderer was lurking outside.   Some families have not even been able to give their loved ones who have succumbed a proper burial.  This tiny virus looks as immoveable as the rock that sealed Jesus’ tomb.

How I wish I could pivot now to tell you that there will be an earthquake and just like that this will all be over.  I’m afraid I can’t do that.  

That the churches are not packed but empty on this Easter is proof that all of our wishes won’t make things right instantaneously.  In fact, that hope doesn’t even square with the events of that first Easter.

Jesus didn’t say “Do not be afraid” after his original greeting just to break the ice.  He said it to break the tension and counter the fear “because on Easter morning the disciples were still in mourning, still lost and heartsick over devastating loss, still trying to grapple with a breathtaking new reality.”  Jesus was dead.  

Now he is alive and talking to them in a graveyard.

“And isn’t that the point? Jesus doesn’t wait for the moment of triumph. Instead, he meets us in the midnight hour, in the darkness before dawn, in the hopelessness of our lives and the brokenness of our world.”2

That may be the point that this Easter drives home to us like no other before. 

Jesus doesn’t hang around waiting for us to get all dressed up and come to him he comes to us.  In this troubled times he is not only with us, he is ahead of us.  He is going into our Galilees wherever they may be.

While we need each other to gather and give a full-throated celebration of all he means to us he is still at work in the world and in us.

He is at work in healthcare professionals and first responders.
He is at work in the minds and labors of the researchers who search desperately for a vaccine.
He is at work in governors and local officials who are stepping in and taking charge.
He is at work in firefighters, and police, and paramedics who do their job even though they know that in going home they may bring a danger to their families.
He is at work in grocery story clerks and other essential workers who are called upon to do their jobs in the midst of crowds.
He is at work in the garbage collector, the janitor, and the cleaning staff that picks up our messes.
He’s at work in me standing in our church alone.  
He is with you sitting in your pajamas listening to this over the crunch of your breakfast cereal.  
He is with you who are listening to appease a loved one the same way you would have by coming to church on Easter.  

He is even with those of you whose morning coffee hasn’t kicked in yet and you have had to replay parts of this sermon ten times because you dozed off.

Christ is with you!  Christ is with us!  Because Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!  Amen. 

__________

1. St.  Mark 1:3.  (MESSAGE) [MESSAGE=The Message]

2. Leah Waldron Lyman. “Where We Need Him Most.” Modern Metanoia. Modern Metanoia.org, March 30, 2020.

"Don't Rain On Our Parade" - Palm Sunday 2020

Saint Matthew 21:1-17

We should have known that desperate times were ahead when Saint Patrick’s Day parades started to be cancelled.  

From Dublin Ireland to Dublin California the annual events celebrating the life and ministry of Saint Patrick with corned beef and cabbage dinners, green beer, outlandish costumes and behaviors, were being nixed because of the virus.  New York’s parade was “postponed for the first time in its 258-year history.”1

Surprisingly, in 2001 Dublin, Ireland had to cancel their parade “amid an outbreak of foot and mouth disease.”  In their case it affected their livestock in ours it seems to have severely affected some of our nation’s leaders.

In a fit of long dead and buried pique in what seems like sociological light years ago, in Boston “cancelled their celebration in 1994, amid a legal battle over whether parade organizers could ban an Irish-American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual group from marching.2”

As a native I am proud to say that the South Side Irish Parade was suspended in  2009 for a far, far better reason after 54 people were arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct.3  That there were so few arrests still amazes me! 

Besides celebrating all things Irish the parades have a political purpose as politicians jockey to march closest to the most popular leader at the moment.  

If the parade were held this year, you would see lessor officeholders trying to get as close as they could to Mayor Lightfoot.   

Some who share my belief that he is doing a fine job may have been seeking to get as close as possible to Governor Pritzker while others may be giving him a wide berth.  There is little doubt that in New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo would be given rock-star status.  

Sadly, for him, few would gather around Aurora’s mayor Richard C. Irvin who seems like an excellent executive but who could only watch the parade from his front window sequestered as he is from the Covid virus.

Most parades have political overtones and the Palm Sunday parade is no exception.  In fact, this parade may have set the standard for highly charged political theater masquerading as a parade.

Take those palm branches we love so much!

At almost every church you can experience the same thing.  Children get the branches and immediately turn them into instruments of torture.  Ears are tickled with them from behind calling forth yelps of “Cut that out!”  A palm branch in the hand of a boy can become a sword or, in this post Harry Potter age a magic wand pointed at one another with the cry of “Reducto!” hoping to blast them.  

To us palms are like pennants and “Hosanna” is merely a shout but to the authorities in the Jerusalem of Jesus’ day those palms and that shout must have been a cause for concern.

Palm branches had been a sign of Jewish nationalism for about 100 years since the defeat of the Syrians in 141 B.C. They were a sign of victory over an oppressor nation! 

“Hosanna” was an equally loaded shout for it literally meant: “Save us, Lord!  Save us now!”  The people weren’t talking theologically, but they were talking politically.  Hosanna was shorthand for “Save us from the tyrannical rule of Rome.”  Those palm branches that we wave sometimes so half-heartedly and those shouts must have made the authorities take special notice.

I am not sure that Jesus has choreographed his entrance but we do know that “with Passover due, Pilate with his Roman legion is marching into Jerusalem from Caesarea to the west, arms clattering, swords glinting in the sun, the thunder of hooves and chariots meant to intimidate, to quell any thought of an uprising.”4

But that is exactly what was happening with Jesus parade and things get worse when Jesus enters the temple it begins to look like a full throated rebellion. 

Tables are turned over and money changers are chased out.   

Blind and lame, forbidden from entry because of their infirmities, are now loose on the temple grounds being healed left and right.

And children who were not even to be seen let alone heard because of their status as not quite persons are continuing to shout “Hosanna!  Here is the one who will save us now!”

It is all too much for those who want to keep the status quo.  They look at the children and then look at Jesus and say, in effect, “Shut them Up.”  And Saint Luke remembers Jesus replies to this request:  “I tell you, if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”

That is where we are, isn’t it?  There are no crowds.  The children are not here and neither are the adults. There are no shouts.  The church is empty except for me.

Instead of being at the head of the parade every politician is living out their lives like poor Richard Irvin who is quarantined in addition to being overwhelmed, like the others, by the enormity of it all. 

The stones will have to cry out for us.  Our parade has been rained on and feels like it might be rained out. 

The Palm Sunday parade didn’t end as one might expect with a celebration and jubilation worthy of the afterglow of any Saint Patrick’s Day event.  There are no parties.  Jesus is not hoisted on their shoulder and hailed as a hero at festivities that go long into the night.  Instead we are told, “And he left them and went out of the city to Bethany, where he spent the night.” 5

Jesus went home and that is where most of us have been.  We’ve been curled up with a good book, or binge-watching our favorite series, or walking the dog.

But as the wonderful preacher MaryAnn McKibben Dana wondered recently, “could it be that maybe, just maybe, Jesus has stopped leading for a moment and is just standing with you where you are, and maybe he’s just pointing.”  

Maybe all he is doing is asking us to follow him into that which is not just unfamiliar but that which we have never experienced before.

It takes Palm Sunday faith to go ahead of Jesus, knowing that the road leads us through the events of Holy Week … for we know that going into the unknown doesn’t always mean fun and adventure. 

Faith is a risk, and nowhere do we feel that more acutely than in the events of Holy Week.
But let us not shy away from faith, for here is the twist—and how often does the gospel provide a twist! There is nowhere that Jesus sends us that is unfamiliar to him. It may be foreign territory to us, but there no dimension of human experience that Jesus did not share in.6

So even as we sit and stare out of our windows at our rain soaked, washed out parades we do so in faith that the one who bounced into Jerusalem on the back of a shaggy donkey is still the answer to our prayers even if the only prayer we can dare to speak is: “Lord, save us.  Save us now!”

__________

1. Jennifer Peltz, and Don Babwin. “St. Patrick's Day Parades Nixed, from New York to Dublin.” Scottsbluff Star-Herald, March 12, 2020. https://www.richmond.com/news/national/st-patrick-s-day-parades-nixed-from-new-york-to/article_859b5ade-0e61-5006-8de6-65d5980257cd.html.

2.  Michael James. “Coronavirus Halts St. Patrick's Day Parades in Boston, Dublin; Heavy Economic Impact Likely.” USA Today. March 9, 2020. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/03/09/coronavirus-worry-has-forced-boston-and-dublin-call-off-st-patricks-parades/5006173002/.

3.  Michael, Konkol. “Bad Luck Of The Irish As South Side Parade Called Off.” Patch. March 11, 2020. https://patch.com/illinois/chicago/south-side-irish-parade-cancelled-due-new-corona-virus.

4. James C. Howel. “Palm Sunday: the 4th Sunday of Covid-19.” James Howell's Weekly Preaching Notions. Myers Park Presbyterian Church, January 1, 2019. http://jameshowellsweeklypreachingnotions.blogspot.com/.

5. St.  Matthew 21:21.  (NIV) [NIV=The New International Version]

6. MaryAnn McKibben Dana. “The Crowds Along the Way.” A Sermon for Every Sunday. asermonforeverysunday.com, March 31, 2020. https://asermonforeverysunday.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/MaryAnn-McKibben-Dana-Palm-Sunday.pdf.

"Lord Only Knows" - Lent 5A

Ezekiel 37:1-14

The picture at the top of this sermon is of the Old Orchard shopping mall in Skokie.  It was taken at about 2 o’clock  last Tuesday afternoon.  On any other weekday while the mall might not have been packed there would always be cars in the parking lot and people walking around.  You can from the picture see there are none.

Being there was not only strange, it was scary as I wondered what all the people were doing.  Were they at home curled up with a good book?  Fighting for space on the couch with the dog? (As I would have been.)  Were they at home pacing in house slippers or shaking in their beds with the covers pulled over their heads.

I thought about all the salespeople and wait-staffs and others whose hourly wage was now gone.  I thought about my friend who had spent a great deal of time and money on his new salon only to have it closed over health concerns related to the virus.  I thought about people who after long hard efforts had just opened businesses only to have them shuttered.

I thought about health care workers – doctors, nurses, orderlies, housekeeping staff – who were putting themselves in harms way to care for the sick.  I thought about police officers, and firefighters, and paramedics who also ran a very high risk of becoming exposed.

I thought about the people at my favorite grocery stores who are manning the registers, stocking the shelves, and also exposing themselves to  the health risks by dealing with large numbers of the general public so that you and I can have something to eat.

In the few moments it took for me to snap a picture a million thoughts ran through my mind.

The biggest thought of all was not just when are we going to get out of this but how are we going to get out of this mess to the point where we can start to recover from the havoc this virus has caused.

And the only thing I could say to myself then, as I have had to very often ever since is, “Lord only knows.”  It is a perfect substitute for “who knows?” and it is perfect for our time.

“Lord only knows” when the virus will abate and life will begin to get back to normal.  

“Lord only knows” how many people will become sick and some sick unto death between now and then.  

“Lord only knows” if one of us hasn’t crossed paths with someone who is carrying the virus putting ourselves and the people we then meet in danger.  

“Lord only knows” when I will be able to stop having to watch church on my computer and be able to return to the place and people I love.

“Lord only knows” may be a statement as old as time.  

I can imagine one cave dweller wondering aloud to another.  “I wonder whatever happened to Murry after  that saber-toothed tiger caught sight of him.”  “Lord only knows” was probably the reply.

A variation of “Lord only knows” was said by Ezekiel as he looked out over the valley of dry bones.

It must have been a frightening scene in a frightening time for the prophet.

We have all encountered those moments on television news programs when the anchor issues the warning: “The following scene may be too graphic for some viewers.” The squeamish cover their eyes and look away but that option was not open to Ezekiel. 

What he saw was not like one of those old black-and-white battlefield pictures from the Civil War or World War I.  No, this was right there before the prophets eyes in color and in 3-D.

He must have stood for a few minutes with his eyes staring straight ahead not able to take in what he was seeing, his mouth agape.  Who knows how long he stood there before the Lord broke the silence with an impossible to answer question: “Mortal, can these bones live?”1

The answer could have been “no” because the people whom Ezekiel was called to prophecy had been held captive by the Babylonians for around a quarter-of-a-century. 

If we think being holed up in our homes for a few weeks is tough imagine think of how difficult it must have been to have been carted away to a foreign land with vastly different  customs and unknown gods and being stuck there for 25 years.

Perhaps at first it was not hard for the people to keep up their hopes that God would rescue them from Babylon; but as the years piled up into decades and they continued to languish in captivity despair began to replace hope.  Finally it had been too long; they considered themselves as good as dead.  Their expectation for a better future is as alive as a valley full of dry, disconnected bones.2

If that doesn’t perfectly describe where we are now I don’t know what does.  

We are isolated.  Many of us are feeling alone in our enforced cocoons of not more than ten people.  Our life circle is getting smaller and smaller and perhaps we are missing the interpersonal interaction more and more.  We are even cut off from our places of worship not knowing when we will ever be able to return. 

The biggest questions  that we cannot escape asking ourselves as we gaze out over empty parking lots is the same one that Ezekiel and his people were asking God.   When is this going to be over?  When will things get back to normal?

God’s questions to the prophet are even bigger: “Do you really think this is over? Do you really think this is it?”  And the prophet’s reply is: “Lord, only knows.”

Fortunately he was speaking to the Lord at the time who had something for him to do:  “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them, ‘O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord!’”3

Make no mistake about it, God could have acted alone.  Ezekiel could have been a mere spectator to a miraculous event but God always chooses to do God’s work through human actors. Whether it be Moses and Miriam, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Rachel,   Elizabeth and Zechariah, Mary and Joseph, all throughout the pages of scripture, the pages of history, God works in concert with God’s people.

God’s instruction to Ezekiel is not random.  This may sound too simplistic for words but all God asks Ezekiel to do is prophesy to the bones because he is a prophet.  

God knows that Ezekiel is not an Osteologist so Ezekiel is not told to start gathering up the bones or sorting them out and rebuild them into skeletons.  God knows that Ezekiel may not have been that great a singer (In some cases that may have done more harm than good.)  so he is not told to “Sing to the bones.”  He may not have been by any means a baker otherwise God might have told him to “Bake the bones.”  

All that Ezekiel has is his voice, his prophetic voice, and so he is told to speak.  When he does, things begin to happen not only is bone joined to bone but tendons appear to knit the bones together.  And finally flesh, and blood, and breath is added.  

It is a recreation of the creation story.  God will recreate God’s people.

God proclaims that they do indeed have a future because God will revive them.  The source of their hope is not in their own abilities.  It is not even in their prophet.  The source of their hope is in the God who has not abandoned them, who continues to be with them even in their exile.4

That is exactly where we are and where God is now.

We can hope that the wishful-thinkers are right and this will all be over by Easter and that social distancing will be such a thing of the bygone past the churches will be so packed that the faithful will have to sit shoulder to shoulder if not on each other’s laps.  We can hope for that but to those who look at the science and cannot hold out that false hope to people might want to ask: “What have you been smoking?”

We can hope that factories will start to reopen, and restaurants will start table service, and the stock market will rebound to higher heights than we have ever seen before.  We can hope for that or see it as the mere rhetoric which always leaves us feeling empty inside because we know it is not true.

Or we can trust God, like Ezekiel did, as he was “willing to listen to God and for God.  Whether or not Ezekiel thought it would make any difference in the reality of the world, he did what he heard God ask.  What God required of him was none other than to be his own true self and use what was his own true gift.”5

People are using their gifts in this crisis keeping things together.  

Over the road truckers and freight trains are still passing through Aurora hauling goods.  

Women and children are making masks and construction companies are saying “We have masks too.”

Restaurants are keeping their staff’s busy feeding the hungry among the poor and making meals for hospital workers.  

Grocery stores are closing early so that workers can restock the shelves for the next day.  

Breweries are even retooling so that they can produce hand sanitizer instead of our favorite libation.

Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto said after the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor by forces of Imperial Japan.  “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”

Let us stay awake.  Let us keep our resolve.  So that the bones might not just come together but stay together until that day when parking lots are full again.

May God grant this to be so.  Amen.

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1. Ezekiel 37:3.  (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version]

2. Rebecca Wright-Abts. “Ezekiel 37:1-14. Commentary 1: Connecting the Reading with Scripture.” Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship 2 (Louisville: Westminister|John Knox Press, 2019): 93–95.

3. Ezekiel 37:4.  (NKJV) [NKJV=The New King James Version]

4. Wright-Abts, loc.  cit.

5. Wright-Abts, loc.  cit.
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"Othering" - Lent 3A

Saint John 4:5–42

Dr.  Fred Craddock remembers returning from a conference and being seated next to a couple on an airplane who were everyone’s worse nightmare.  They had an opinion about everything none of which were positive.  

As they paged through the airline’s magazine, the husband remarked to his wife about the obligatory column from the company’s CEO touting some accomplishment by an employee, an enhanced service, or an improvement to the fleet.  Few things in the world are as benign as these articles but this couple noticed something that set them off.  

“Remember,” said the man to his wife loudly enough to be overheard six rows back,  “when this article would have only been published in English?  Look!  Now they have to have it in Spanish and even in Japanese.” 

It should not have been a surprise because the flight was coming from California on an airline with primary routes to Japan and the rest of the far east.

When they were done with that rant they turned their attention to Dr.  Craddock and asked him the standard questions about where he was from, what he did while he was visiting California, and where he was going.   

He said he was going home to Atlanta and that he had been at a conference at Yorba Linda University.

“That’s a Seventh-Day Adventist School isn’t is?” they asked.  “Are you a Seventh Day Adventist?” 

 “No,” he said, “I’m of the denomination Disciples of Christ.” 

“Never heard of it,” the husband said. “So what are you doing with the Adventists?”

 Dr.  Craddock  explained they were working together on sermons, church, things like that. 

“You’re not a Seventh Day Adventist, but you spent time with them?” the woman said. 

“Yes.” He said.  

She said, “Then you were ‘othering.’” 

“I’m sorry,” Craddock said, “I’m not familiar with the term.” 

The husband explained, “Our preacher uses it all the time. He just making us sick with it. Go out and be with others. We ought to get acquainted with others. We ought to relate to others. Others, others, others, just always ‘othering.’ If I hear it one more time, one more sermon on ‘othering,’ I think I will just throw up.” 

“It’s just a fad, dear.” The wife replied.  “Soon he’ll  be on to something else.”

Dr.  Craddock had heard enough.  “So you are Christians, are you?” he asked. They nodded smiling. 

“Go to church?  Read the bible?  Believe in doing what Jesus did?”  Again smiles and nods.  

“Then you know the stories about Jesus and how one day he met a woman at a well who was a Samaritan.”  Now they were right with him and hanging on his every word.

“You know what he was doing?  He was ‘othering,’ he said, “is not just a fad it goes all the way back to Jesus.  It’s what Jesus was about.  He was always ‘othering.’ Let’s hope his attitude toward others never goes away any time soon.”

Craddock, who in his life was one of the kindest, gentlest of men, reported with great glee that he returned their sugary sweet smiles with one of his own and never heard another word from them during the rest of the flight.1

During this time when we fear an unknown virus we especially need each other.2  

On the web sites of churches who have had to cancel worshipping together for the next few weeks out of an abundance of caution one of the things they universally mourn is the fellowship that is going to be lost.  They won’t get to raise their voice in song.  They won’t get to sit together to listen and pray.  They won’t get to see old friends and welcome new people.  They won’t get to “other” and it makes them sad.

We loose something, we loose a lot, whenever we see “the other” as a threat.  We loose something when we worry that our friends, or people we don’t know who are visiting our church home might bring a “bug” in that might cause us to catch something and have to stay at home for at least two weeks.  We loose a great deal when we can’t ‘other.’

For whatever reason the woman who came to the well at midday was not big on “othering” and her relationships suffered for it.

I’m sure you have heard sermons on this passage in which her reputation was not only called into question but completely besmirched all because of the multiple husband business.  Scholars, even women scholars, have portrayed her as some sort of floozy, a loose woman, flitting from one relationship to another. 

They speculate that the reason she had to come to the well in the middle of the day is because she is embarrassed about her past and wanted to avoid the dirty looks and snide remarks from the other woman.    The picture is painted of a woman with glossy nails and heavy mascara who just can’t seem to settle down with one man.

Have you ever heard of Occam’s (Ockham’s) razor?  You can’t buy it in drugstore, online, or through the mail because it is the rule in logic that the simplest of competing theories be preferred to the more complex.  Let’s apply this rule to rehabilitating the woman’s reputation.  

Perhaps the reason  she was at the well at high noon was because she had been there earlier and had been so busy cleaning her house all morning that she didn’t notice she had run out of water.  She was there because she needed more.

She could learn a thing or two from some of our fellow Americans who have decided that the thing to do during a health crises is to stockpile toilet paper.  Have they no friends who would be willing to share a roll or two or shop for them if they found themselves quarantined?   

It’s the same principle that causes some people to stock up on bread, milk and eggs before a snow storm.  Really?  Two days later, when the roads are clear and life is back to normal, how much French toast will they be able to eat?

Back to the woman and about her multiple husbands.  

The cause might have been  death.  I can imagine the pain in her over outliving one or two husbands might have made her want to avoid crowds and retreat into herself. 

And remembering the ease of a husband to divorce his wife in those days she might have suffered abandonment.  Watch the old coot go out for more hand sanitiser one day and never come home.  Even if all the women were completely on her side and thought the guy a cad who would want to talk about what a jerk he was day after day?

Any of these reasons are far more probable and much more kind than pinning a label on her, calling into question her morals, and having it stick through the centuries.

The important part of this story for us is that Jesus did not see her as an “other” although he could have.

There are countless more “others” between these two strangers.

The first was that he was a man and she was a woman.  In that culture, as in some now, unrelated men and women were forbidden from talking to each other in public. 

The second, however, was even more important.  He was a Jewish man and she was a Samaritan woman.  These two groups had a history of social distancing that dated back at least seven centuries.   To apply Ockham here the differences were a matter of the Samaritans’ willingness to marry non-Jews; their rejection of any of what we would consider books of the Old Testament except the first five and their belief that the place where God was rightly worshiped was Mount Gerizim and not Jerusalem.

So deep were these divisions that they wouldn’t even use each others kitchen items.

“Nevertheless, Jesus neither flinches nor flees from the Samaritan woman at the well.  Jesus and the Samaritan woman carry on conversation at some length at midday.  His radical inclusion of a historically dreaded ‘other’ speaks volumes about Jesus.”3

I think it was Jesus’ willingness to see her as something more than an “other” that brought about her realization that he was something special.  He saw her for who she really was, another child of God  and it touched her deeply.   It had to have been a beautiful moment when she discovered, as it is for all of us when we discover, that we are loved by God.

I think that is what caused the woman to drop her water bucket, leave Jesus standing by himself at the well with cup in hand, and run into town with her proclamation that was really a question.

“In her, ‘He’s not the Messiah – is he?’ I hear a playful openness, a wonderful willingness to consider that God was larger than her preconceptions. [It is a] first step, a courageous willingness to be shocked, surprised, intruded upon”4 and included.

That’s why she went back to town!  She wanted to include others in this love she had found.  And look at what happened.  

On the strength of her word the people decide to include others too.  The people of her village don’t throw Jesus and his equally Jewish followers out of town but rather they ask them to hang around for a couple of days. 

This would have been unheard of!

It would be like the Democrats and Republicans not only having their conventions at the same time, in the same city, but in the same building.  It would be like FOX News and MSNBC sharing the same headquarters.  It would be like tea with Bernie Sanders and Donald J.  Trump.

It would be like Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and  Antonin Scalia having dinner together, and going to the opera together, and going on vacation together. Oh, wait! That really did happen!  And so did this!  

A Samaritan town welcomed Jewish guests all on the strength of one woman’s witness.

Imagine what this “othering”must have looked like.

The Samaritans invite the Jews to stay with them for a while and, remarkably, they do, for two days. What a picture—Jews and Samaritans, men and women, walking back to town together, eating together for two days, sleeping under the same roofs together.5

People who had believed each other to be so socially and theologically different that they would even use the same set of dinnerware were now having a party.

Nothing like that had ever happened before. Ancient enemies, people who believed in the very depths of their hearts that the others were so wrong, so outside orthodox definitions of morality, that contact with them was repugnant, unthinkable—those people spent two days together. They must have eaten together. They must have shared dishes and utensils and cups even. They had never done anything like that in their lives. They must have slept under the same roofs. I’ll bet they had a party. I’ll bet they had a banquet and drank a little wine—men and women, Jews and Samaritans. And I’ll bet before Jesus and his friends left to resume their journey to Galilee, they embraced.6

I am neither a profit nor a sage but I can tell you that we will get through this current crises.  

We will take precautions, of course.  We will heed the advice of local and state officials.  We will listen carefully to the wisdom of the likes of Dr.  Anthony S.  Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and others who actually  know what they are talking about.  We will mute those who don’t know or don’t care to know anything but preconceived notions and conspiratorial ideas.  

We will wash our hands and be kind to one another and care for one another until this goes the way of  the Swine, Avian, Sars, Ebola, and H1N1  scares.  It’s not the Black Death, Cholera, Leprosy, Small Pox or even the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918.  This too shall pass.

Until that day comes I hope we remember how much the fear of the other is costing us not only in dollars but in the emotional toll this isolation brings. 

We need each other and some day we will look back at this difficult time and remember what that unnamed woman who came to draw water and Jesus who needed a drink taught her town, his disciples, and now all of us.  Namely: “othering” is a good thing.  It is a very good thing indeed.

When that someday comes – as it always has and always will – maybe we’ll even be able to say: Thanks be to God for this hard earned lesson.  

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1.  Fred Craddock, The Renewed Homiletic, ed. O. Wesley Allen Jr. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010), 47-48.

2.  This sermon was preached at the outbreak of the Covid-19 virus.

3.  Andrew Benson-Nagy, “Saint John 4:5-42. Commentary 1. Connecting the Reading with Scripture.” Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship. 2 (Louisville: Westminister|John Knox Press, 2019): 72–74.

4. William H. Willimon, “Ordinary Revelation.” Pulpit Resource 33, no. 1 (2005): 37–40.

5. John M. Buchanan, “Astonished.” Sunday Morning Worship.  The Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago. February 27, 2005.

6. John M. Buchanan, “Included.” Sunday Morning Worship.  The Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago. March 3, 2002.