Well, friends, whether you have given something up or picked up a new discipline or habit for the season of Lent, I have some good news for you. The good news is, of course, that Jesus loves you no matter what, and that we are almost to the halfway point of Lent! If you are struggling, be encouraged by the words of the prophet. “Whoa. We’re halfway there. Whoa–oh. We’re living on a prayer.”
Ok, so that was Bon Jovi, but he speaks the truth in his own kind of way. Truly, I hope that you are being encouraged through deepened prayer or some form of spiritual practice. If you aren’t, It’s never too late to start. This may also be the point where some of you realize that something you’ve given up was not something you really needed in the first place. Of course, there is more to life than basic necessities, but the point of a time of spiritual discipline is to encourage a life of discipleship.
As a community of disciples of the way of Jesus, we have been reflecting on our scripture passages during the season of Lent in light of the Six Great Ends (or purposes) of the Church. Don’t worry, though, there will not be a quiz at the end of Lent, and as I understand it from scripture, Jesus is a lot more concerned about the way we put these ideas into practice than our ability to recite them.
That said, I want to remind you that we started out with The Proclamation of the Gospel for the Salvation of Humankind, and the idea that all the other “Ends” flow from that one. The Gospel – which means “good news” – is something we share because we believe that it offers salvation, restoration, and reconciliation between us and God and all of God’s good creation in this life and the next; but what does that look like? How do we do it? That’s what the rest of the Great Ends are about.
First, we focused on The Shelter, Nurture, and Spiritual Fellowship of the Children of God. We talked about the fact that the Christian faith offers adoption into the family and household of God. We talked about the fact that our adoption does not limit God’s love for others and that there is no one whom God does not love as God’s own child. That means that it is our job 1) to make sure that we know ourselves to be beloved by God, 2)to make sure that we see one another as beloved by God, and 3) to make sure that everyone and anyone who has been made to feel that they are not beloved by God are instead encouraged to understand that they most certainly are.
Last week we talked about The Maintenance of Divine Worship as a means of experiencing God in the mundane and regular moments – as well as in the times we come together – by centering our lives around God’s love for us. Worshiping the Divine means putting God at the center of our decision-making process so that we live worship-filled lives – lives that glorify God just in the way we live – because we are not waiting for salvation to come. We are living into the salvation we have received!
Today, as we live into the salvation offered to us through God’s abiding love, we’re going to talk about “Preserving the Truth.” In such a time as this, it seems more true than ever that our ability to grasp “The Truth '' has become a moving target. While that may be distressing to some, I want to offer you this word of encouragement: this is not a new problem, nor is the solution.
I’m sure he was not the first to think it, but in the 1820s the French Philosopher, Gustave Floubert, has been quoted as saying, “There is no truth. There is only perception.” Likewise, Shakespeare’s Hamlet pondered the idea that “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
Perhaps it is true that our perception of things becomes our reality – at least that’s what those who demonize and alienate their perceived opponents want you to believe – but what I have discovered is that there are two things that are certainly true and constant and real, regardless of our perception. The first constant truth is that everything changes. Even our perception of the perceivable universe constantly changes. The second thing is in contrast to the first. God’s love does not change. Our understanding of it may change, but the reality of God’s never failing love is that it never fails. God’s love is a fixed point in space and time. It is a singularity – a function with an infinite value.
Now, if that is the case, and I believe that it is, then what we are preserving is not the actual “T” Truth of God’s unchanging love. Instead, we are preserving the ability to see God’s love as a constant factor in the world, and we are extending the invitation to hold onto God’s love and be held by it in the midst of an ever-changing reality.
We see this invitation in simple terms in the 23rd Psalm as we imagine ourselves to be cared for as gently and as firmly as a shepherd might care for their sheep. Still, waters are provided because the sheep do not have a way to know that a current can sweep them away. They don’t have a way to know that their wool would quickly soak up the waters and weigh them down.
How many of us have found ourselves in situations where our choices did not pan out the way we expected? How many of us have found that faith in God’s love has helped us move from death into life? That’s not to say that God will pay your rent if you just pray hard enough. It is to say that God never abandons us, and our faith can help us see where we have been provided for and where we can expect it again and again.
The same is true in the story of healing in John 9. The man born blind doesn’t even ask for Jesus to heal him, and yet he is healed because it glorifies God for Jesus to do it. Before we go too far down that road, I need to throw out a couple of caution flags and maybe give a little more context to the situation. The first caution flag is that saying that this man was born blind and lived as a beggar on the streets just so Jesus could show off is in conflict with an understanding of God’s opposition to suffering. At best it says God is indifferent. At worst it says that God uses our suffering for God’s benefit. Neither is true, even when Jesus says that the man was born blind “so that God’s works may be revealed through him.”
What is true is that blindness or any other genetic human limitation – which we all have – are not indicators of our deviance from God or God’s lack of compassion for us. They are instead a clear and present invitation to experience God’s presence in the midst of our limitations. That’s not to say that I’m above pleading for healing – or even shaking a fist at God – over diseases and natural disasters. It is to say that God’s love is still constant, and God suffers with us – as we see clearly in the cross of Jesus.
The second caution flag I want to throw out is the one I always throw out in John’s Gospel, and that is about the “fear of the Jews,” which I have read as, “fear of the Jewish authorities.” Antisemitism is higher than it has been in generations, and texts like these have fueled it in the past. What we have to remember is that Jesus was himself a Jew and that the Johannine Community was a group of Jewish and Gentile believers who had, themselves, been thrown out of their own synagogues.
When they heard or read this story about spiritual blindness, they would have identified with the man who was born blind who was then run out of the synagogue. What about us? Who do we identify with in this story? Are we, like the Pharisees, acting as gatekeepers for the love of God? Maybe not intentionally. Really, as protestants in South Louisiana, we’ll take anyone we can get!
Unfortunately, we are fighting against the perceptions of some about who and what the Christian Church expects and believes. We are fighting against the reality of the dominant voice of White Christian Nationalism in Western Society and the history of complicity and in some cases actual harm and discrimination, of the church against marginalized people. That’s not to say that Presbyterians were not active in the Civil Rights Movement or leaders in regard to the empowerment of women or the inclusion of LGBTQ+ people.
It is to say that the beat goes on, and the truth claim of this text comes from the one whom others reject. Even his own parents only told a half-truth, out of their own fear of the repercussions for standing with their son, and when the Jewish authorities asked him about his healing he said, “One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” When they pressed him he said, “Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?”
That question angered them, but it is the one that we hear and says, “Yes! Yes, we want to be his disciples! We want to hold onto the truth that holds us! We want to know the healing and wholeness offered through God’s never failing love, and we want to invite others into it, again and again, and again!” May God so remove our spiritual blindness and give us the strength to preserve this truth, so that we may glorify God in all we say and do. Now and always. Amen.
Ok, so that was Bon Jovi, but he speaks the truth in his own kind of way. Truly, I hope that you are being encouraged through deepened prayer or some form of spiritual practice. If you aren’t, It’s never too late to start. This may also be the point where some of you realize that something you’ve given up was not something you really needed in the first place. Of course, there is more to life than basic necessities, but the point of a time of spiritual discipline is to encourage a life of discipleship.
As a community of disciples of the way of Jesus, we have been reflecting on our scripture passages during the season of Lent in light of the Six Great Ends (or purposes) of the Church. Don’t worry, though, there will not be a quiz at the end of Lent, and as I understand it from scripture, Jesus is a lot more concerned about the way we put these ideas into practice than our ability to recite them.
That said, I want to remind you that we started out with The Proclamation of the Gospel for the Salvation of Humankind, and the idea that all the other “Ends” flow from that one. The Gospel – which means “good news” – is something we share because we believe that it offers salvation, restoration, and reconciliation between us and God and all of God’s good creation in this life and the next; but what does that look like? How do we do it? That’s what the rest of the Great Ends are about.
First, we focused on The Shelter, Nurture, and Spiritual Fellowship of the Children of God. We talked about the fact that the Christian faith offers adoption into the family and household of God. We talked about the fact that our adoption does not limit God’s love for others and that there is no one whom God does not love as God’s own child. That means that it is our job 1) to make sure that we know ourselves to be beloved by God, 2)to make sure that we see one another as beloved by God, and 3) to make sure that everyone and anyone who has been made to feel that they are not beloved by God are instead encouraged to understand that they most certainly are.
Last week we talked about The Maintenance of Divine Worship as a means of experiencing God in the mundane and regular moments – as well as in the times we come together – by centering our lives around God’s love for us. Worshiping the Divine means putting God at the center of our decision-making process so that we live worship-filled lives – lives that glorify God just in the way we live – because we are not waiting for salvation to come. We are living into the salvation we have received!
Today, as we live into the salvation offered to us through God’s abiding love, we’re going to talk about “Preserving the Truth.” In such a time as this, it seems more true than ever that our ability to grasp “The Truth '' has become a moving target. While that may be distressing to some, I want to offer you this word of encouragement: this is not a new problem, nor is the solution.
I’m sure he was not the first to think it, but in the 1820s the French Philosopher, Gustave Floubert, has been quoted as saying, “There is no truth. There is only perception.” Likewise, Shakespeare’s Hamlet pondered the idea that “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
Perhaps it is true that our perception of things becomes our reality – at least that’s what those who demonize and alienate their perceived opponents want you to believe – but what I have discovered is that there are two things that are certainly true and constant and real, regardless of our perception. The first constant truth is that everything changes. Even our perception of the perceivable universe constantly changes. The second thing is in contrast to the first. God’s love does not change. Our understanding of it may change, but the reality of God’s never failing love is that it never fails. God’s love is a fixed point in space and time. It is a singularity – a function with an infinite value.
Now, if that is the case, and I believe that it is, then what we are preserving is not the actual “T” Truth of God’s unchanging love. Instead, we are preserving the ability to see God’s love as a constant factor in the world, and we are extending the invitation to hold onto God’s love and be held by it in the midst of an ever-changing reality.
We see this invitation in simple terms in the 23rd Psalm as we imagine ourselves to be cared for as gently and as firmly as a shepherd might care for their sheep. Still, waters are provided because the sheep do not have a way to know that a current can sweep them away. They don’t have a way to know that their wool would quickly soak up the waters and weigh them down.
How many of us have found ourselves in situations where our choices did not pan out the way we expected? How many of us have found that faith in God’s love has helped us move from death into life? That’s not to say that God will pay your rent if you just pray hard enough. It is to say that God never abandons us, and our faith can help us see where we have been provided for and where we can expect it again and again.
The same is true in the story of healing in John 9. The man born blind doesn’t even ask for Jesus to heal him, and yet he is healed because it glorifies God for Jesus to do it. Before we go too far down that road, I need to throw out a couple of caution flags and maybe give a little more context to the situation. The first caution flag is that saying that this man was born blind and lived as a beggar on the streets just so Jesus could show off is in conflict with an understanding of God’s opposition to suffering. At best it says God is indifferent. At worst it says that God uses our suffering for God’s benefit. Neither is true, even when Jesus says that the man was born blind “so that God’s works may be revealed through him.”
What is true is that blindness or any other genetic human limitation – which we all have – are not indicators of our deviance from God or God’s lack of compassion for us. They are instead a clear and present invitation to experience God’s presence in the midst of our limitations. That’s not to say that I’m above pleading for healing – or even shaking a fist at God – over diseases and natural disasters. It is to say that God’s love is still constant, and God suffers with us – as we see clearly in the cross of Jesus.
The second caution flag I want to throw out is the one I always throw out in John’s Gospel, and that is about the “fear of the Jews,” which I have read as, “fear of the Jewish authorities.” Antisemitism is higher than it has been in generations, and texts like these have fueled it in the past. What we have to remember is that Jesus was himself a Jew and that the Johannine Community was a group of Jewish and Gentile believers who had, themselves, been thrown out of their own synagogues.
When they heard or read this story about spiritual blindness, they would have identified with the man who was born blind who was then run out of the synagogue. What about us? Who do we identify with in this story? Are we, like the Pharisees, acting as gatekeepers for the love of God? Maybe not intentionally. Really, as protestants in South Louisiana, we’ll take anyone we can get!
Unfortunately, we are fighting against the perceptions of some about who and what the Christian Church expects and believes. We are fighting against the reality of the dominant voice of White Christian Nationalism in Western Society and the history of complicity and in some cases actual harm and discrimination, of the church against marginalized people. That’s not to say that Presbyterians were not active in the Civil Rights Movement or leaders in regard to the empowerment of women or the inclusion of LGBTQ+ people.
It is to say that the beat goes on, and the truth claim of this text comes from the one whom others reject. Even his own parents only told a half-truth, out of their own fear of the repercussions for standing with their son, and when the Jewish authorities asked him about his healing he said, “One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” When they pressed him he said, “Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?”
That question angered them, but it is the one that we hear and says, “Yes! Yes, we want to be his disciples! We want to hold onto the truth that holds us! We want to know the healing and wholeness offered through God’s never failing love, and we want to invite others into it, again and again, and again!” May God so remove our spiritual blindness and give us the strength to preserve this truth, so that we may glorify God in all we say and do. Now and always. Amen.
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