Sermon for Lent IV, A
Bishop James Mathes
Sermon for Lent IV, A
St. Paul's Cathedral, San Diego
Sunday, March 6, 2005
I Samuel 16:1-13
John 9:1-38
Come Holy Spirit: Touch our minds and think with them, touch our lips and speak with them and touch our hearts and set them on fire with love for you. AMEN.
I.
As I begin today, I need to tell you that while I may be your bishop, Bishop
Persell is still MY bishop, and it is an intimidating thing to preach to one's
bishop! I begin today by quoting that great sage of the later part of the Twentieth
century, who in 1976 wrote these lyrics,
Someone's knocking at the door, somebody's ringing the bell,
someone's knocking at the door, somebody's ringing the bell,
do me a favor, open the door and let 'em in. (1)
Thank you for following the wisdom of Paul McCartney and letting 'em in!
I must tell you what a humbling and joyful experience it is to come into this
sacred place and have you welcome me as your new bishop. This place is sacred,
but not because of the beautiful stained glass or the high ceilings…it
is not even sacred because of the incense lifting our prayers heavenward. It
is sacred because you, the people of God in your diversity, complexity and giftedness
have gathered here. You make this holy ground because as you gather you bring
the body of Christ together.
II.
So here we are today, a new rookie bishop and a people who let 'em in. Let us
be assured of this, that God has put us all here for a reason. We are assembled
in this place, at this time to be Christ's body to do a particular ministry.
Just like with David's call to be king over Israel, each of us has been anointed
through baptism or ordination to do the work of the Spirit.
In the years ahead, I hope to have a special relationship with this Cathedral
community. You will be my spiritual home. As I go out into our diocese, I leave
my family in your care. I may return to you weary and dry, and I pray that you
will refresh my soul. And from time to time, you may need to give me a word
of direction or urging. You may need to remind me of what I am called to be
as bishop. In a sense, a bishop in partnership with the dean and cathedral community
can model the connected and collaborative ministry of the entire diocese - a
ministry that can make a difference by touching people where they are hurting
and give them hope through the love of Christ.
III.
In listening to the call to be your bishop, I heard time and time again the
desire for a healer. You wanted someone who could bridge differences and heal
the wounds of broken relationships. This was particularly expressed around the
differences and divisions felt in the diocese after the last General Convention
and the consecration of Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire. We recognize
this to be a time of some distress in our church. But this distress and division
reaches beyond our church, and in many ways our disagreements and conflicts
simply mirror deeper and more aggressive conflicts across our nation and throughout
the world. We live in a country at war. It is a war against terrorism seen most
clearly perhaps in the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. In this war, the
losses can be measured in the thousands, first at the World Trade Center, the
Pentagon and in a field in Pennsylvania. But it now includes over 1,500 service
men and women from our nation, countless other combatants and civilians from
across the globe. Terrorism has as its operating premise that problems can be
solved by senseless violence. And our response, seems to be to meet violence
with violence. And as the adage goes, "an eye for an eye makes the whole
world blind." But our divides go beyond this ever present war. We live
just a few miles from a border that divides the richest nation on the planet
from one of the poorest. On that border a daily battle for survival is played
out across an imaginary line. And in this diocese and in the city of San Diego,
we have all the grave social issues of our society: exploitation of children,
homelessness, hunger, just to name a few. Our city leaders are paralyzed by
financial crisis and investigation. Division, conflict, and discord seem to
rue the day.
And in the midst of this BAD news, we gather as bishop and people for the first
time. We come into this sacred place to begin a new ministry together and we
proclaim loudly in our songs, our prayers and by what we do today that this
is not the world that God intends. We come in the name of Jesus Christ. We come
in the name of Jesus Christ, anointed to heal a broken and sin sick world, seemingly
blinded by violence and conflict.
IV.
And to this world we come, giving the healing power of Jesus Christ. You wanted
a healer as your bishop. Be at peace: you already have a healer as your Lord
and Savior. And in our gospel we encounter this healing Jesus as he meets a
man blind since birth. The stage is set. Jesus is surrounded by those who would
test him. Make no mistake about it, there is not just one blind man. All are
blind. They try to see with eyes, eyes of law. They can only see with sin and
judgment. Thus, the man who is physically blind must be blind because of his
or his parents' sin: "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that
he was born blind?" Who sinned? Whose fault is it? Who do I blame?
Our world and our church is not very different from those gathered around Jesus
to challenge him. Those gathered want to judge Jesus, judge the blind man, judge
anyone but themselves. I know this tendency so well because I practice it so
well myself.
And so today, we find ourselves in a church and world where judging others
is common place. Who sinned…this man or his parents that he be born…a
liberal? Who sinned…this man or his parents that he be born…a conservative?
And so we judge and divide. And we cannot abide to be with each other. We become
what James Forbes calls "sin patrollers".
But this is not what we have been taught by our healer. When Jesus is challenged
to judge, he declines to do so. Jesus takes the man as he is. For Jesus, the
wrong question is being asked. He doesn't care why he is blind. We can almost
see Jesus' frustration come through his words: "Neither this man nor his
parents sinned; he was born blind so that God's works might be revealed in him."
In fact that is why all of us are born; all of us are given life so that the
works of God might be revealed.
Sin and judgment are not the issue; the issue is work of the one who sent Jesus
while it is day! And so Jesus, the incarnate Son of God, the force of creation,
stoops down, mixes spittle and mud and places it on the man's eyes. And here
is where the story gets really interesting, to the point, and teaches us what
we are to do and be.
I want to call our attention to three aspects of this healing. First, Jesus
heals in a messy and intimate way. Even in this moment, Jesus gives something
of himself. To make a healing mud pack he uses his own salvia and places it
on the man's eyes. Jesus gets dirty to heal. He is totally with the blind man.
His hands are muddy and his DNA is in the mix. And if we are to be healers who
take people where they are and help them to be healed we must get down with
them, get dirty, and give of ourselves. For us as Eucharistic people, our healing
ministry will be ministry of table fellowship, where all are welcome. It is
messy; our lips will touch the same cup. The stuff of Jesus, body and blood,
will be in us. We will have the dirt of the road others travel on our hands
and face. This is communion. It is messy and it is intimate. It puts you in
touch with people where they are. And neither you nor they are ever the same.
Strangers become known and understood for who they are. If you want to stop
wars, poverty, homelessness, even divisions in our church over sex, you better
be willing to come to this table. That is where the healing ministry of Jesus
begins.
But it doesn't end there. For here we have a man still blind…his eyes
covered in dust and divine spittle! He is still blind. Jesus tells him to go
and wash in the pool of Siloam. I am convinced that this part of the story is
a baptismal moment. To truly see, the man blind, touched by Jesus, must be bathed
in living water. He must go to a pool called Siloam, which means Sent. To get
to these waters he must move. He must follow Jesus' call to be sent. And I suspect
that like our own baptisms, he will need helping hands to find his way to those
waters. And washed in the water, he sees. The eyes of the law that do not see
are transformed into eyes of love that see clearly and completely.
And so when a man blind from birth is challenged by those still sadly equipped
with only eyes of law, he tells what he sees: "I do not know whether he
is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see".
And our story ends with the man once blind confessing faith in Jesus.
V.
Our ministry of healing and reconciliation begins with our own healing and reconciliation.
We too have been blind, blind with eyes of law. But Jesus has come and joined
our table. He has touched us with the dirty, messy and intimate meal of the
cross, and we are fed. And then, we get up and guided by the others our eyes
are washed in living waters of new life and see with eyes of love.
And now that we see, we confess the Jesus Christ is the Lord of Love and master
of a new world that says, "No" to division, hatred, and discord. Ours
is a ministry of healing. My prayer is that this episcopate will be a time when
we see the world and each other with new eyes, eyes of love with truly astonishing
vision. We will then see clearly the great yawning gap between what is and what
can be. We will say that we come in the name of Christ to give hope, healing,
care, and acceptance to a broken world.
VI.
And so I return to Paul McCartney, "Someone's knocking at the door, somebody's
ringing the bell…" Okay, a few minutes ago it was me. But who is knocking
now? Is it Jesus knocking on our spiritual door asking to be let into our souls?
Assuredly, this knock is a constant melodious invitation. But faith is about
more than our own individual relationship with Christ. Is it someone else knocking
to enter this sacred place and be a part of this sacred community? Absolutely,
they are knocking and we should let them in. But we cannot be the church God
would call us to be by passively waiting to open the door to those who find
it and knock.
I would suggest that this cathedral is a place where eyes can come to see clearly.
It is where Jesus touches us with his bodyand blood, where we find a pool of
water and our eyes are washed free of debris and we see clearly. My sense is
that we need to knock on the other side of the doors of this cathedral. We need
to knock and be let into the world which God so loves. We need to knock on those
doors and enter into the place where there is so much pain, hurt, anger, violence
and poverty. We must leave this sacred place and go with eyes of love and be
a force to transform and heal. The real work of healing and reconciliation is
not within the walls of the church but outside. We must work to close the great
yawning gap between the world we find and the kingdom that Christ came to bring.
It is a tall order. It is scary in some respects. In some ways it is safer to sit around asking who sinned. But that is not the question. Do you see with eyes of love? Can you see the hurts of a broken world? Today, I knocked on those doors and you let me in. Again, thank you. Now let us knock on the doors that enter into places that are dark…the doors of the poor and the hopeless….those in prison….those who are sick…. "Someone's knocking at the door, somebody's ringing the bell"…and that someone is you and me. Let us enter as healers and reconcilers in the name of Jesus Christ. Let's start knocking on some doors…
AMEN
(1) MCartney, Paul and Wings, 1977, Wings Over America (Audio CD #46715),
EMI, Int'l.