The Gospel According to Lazarus

The scriptures referred to are John 11:1-45.

New Testament Professor Ben Witherington III has an intriguing theory about the beloved disciple mentioned in the Gospel of John. He thinks the beloved disciple was Lazarus and not the apostle John, the son of Zebedee. And according to the 1^st century bishop Papias, the Gospel of John, along with the 3 letters of John and the book of Revelation, were done not by the apostle but by John the elder of Patmos, whom Papias knew. Witherington thinks the fourth gospel comes largely from Lazarus and was edited by John. His reasons? Lazarus lived in Judea where most of that Gospel takes place rather than Galilee. It doesn't mention any of the things where the apostle John would be present, like his call to follow Jesus, the resurrection of Jairus' daughter, the transfiguration, or Jesus' prayer in Gethsemane. The beloved disciple isn't mentioned until after John 11:3 when Lazarus' sisters send Jesus word that “he whom you love is ill.” Lazarus was apparently known by a group of Judeans who know the religious leaders in Jerusalem and report this miracle to the Pharisees and priests. (John 11:45-47) And it makes sense that a prominent person living in Judea, and not a Galilean fisherman, would be known to the high priest and be able to get into his courtyard during Jesus' trial. (John 18:15) When Jesus commends his mother to the care of his beloved disciple, it's implied that he lives nearby. (John 19:25-27) And indeed Mary is still living near Jerusalem in Acts 1:14. Plus the disciples flee when Jesus is arrested. (Mark 14:50) Yet at the cross, along with the female disciples, there is one male disciple, the one Jesus loved. I think it's because Lazarus would be the only one not afraid of death, having been resurrected by Jesus. It also explains why the rumor started that the beloved disciple would not die. (John 21:20-23) After all, Jesus brought him back to life. People just assumed he would still be alive when Jesus returned. And right after mentioning this, John of Patmos added this postscript about the beloved disciple: “This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true.”

Whether Witherington is right or not, it is certainly true that the raising of Lazarus is pivotal, the climax of the 7 signs that John's Gospel is built around. It led directly to Jesus' crucifixion. As we said, some who witnessed it reported back to the religious leaders, whose reaction was to panic. They say, “What are we doing? For this man is performing many miraculous signs. If we allow him to go on in this way, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away our sanctuary and our nation.” (John 11:47-48) What's interesting is that they are not concerned about whether Jesus is the Messiah or not, just with whether the people will believe he is. They are more worried about the political and religious impact of Jesus being hailed as the Messiah than the spiritual implications of Jesus really being the one anointed by God.

“Then one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said, 'You know nothing at all! You do not realize that it is more to your advantage to have one man die for the people than for the whole nation to perish.'” (John 11:49-50) If he really believed that Jesus was sent by God, the high priest would not have suggested this. But he was seeing this strictly in terms of the political and earthly ramifications of someone being seen by ordinary Jews as the Messiah. And since Passover was coming up, this was especially troublesome. Jerusalem would be crammed with Jewish pilgrims from all over the empire. Passover was a feast commemorating God liberating his people from slavery and oppression. Its theme could inspire a revolution. And as the council could clearly see, the might of Rome would crush them. The temple could be destroyed again. They could go into exile again. And so to prevent the possibility of this happening, the leaders start to plot to kill Jesus. (John 11:53)

Which raises the question of what does it take to make people believe something? You would think a man raising folks from the dead would do it. Each of the gospels recounts Jesus reviving someone who died: Jairus' daughter in 3 of the synoptic gospels (Mark 5:21-43; Matthew 9:18-26; Luke 8: 40-56) and the son of the widow of Nain in Luke. (Luke 7:11-17) John focuses on Lazarus. Perhaps it had a greater impact because the others were in Galilee while the raising of Lazarus was in Bethany, just 2 miles from Jerusalem, and it was witnessed by people who knew the religious leaders there.

But why was its effect to make them plot to get rid of Jesus rather than to make them believe he was the Messiah sent by God?

A lot of research has been going on into why people persist in believing things despite evidence to the contrary. It's called belief persistence. It's maintaining a belief despite strong evidence that contradicts it. In fact, presenting evidence that debunks someone's firmly held belief can paradoxically strengthen that belief in them. This is called the backfire effect, a version of confirmation bias, where you cherry-pick evidence that confirms what you already believe. People will also nitpick the contradictory evidence for any perceived flaw or error, however slight, and use that to dismiss all the evidence, no matter how overwhelming. We see that in those who believe in conspiracy theories, like the hurried and tortured explanations by those who said the world was flat when they saw photographic evidence of a round earth taken by our astronauts on the moon.

To change your mind can cost you emotionally. That's true for the average person, but when you have maintained an extreme belief despite what everyone else says, it's really hard to admit they were right all along and you were wrong. The reasons people reject the truth are not so much logical as psychological.

And for Jesus' religious opponents, the cost was even higher. They would have to change their mind about God. The Pharisees believed God supported their elaborate interpretations and rules that went far beyond what the Torah actually said. For instance, Jesus healed folks on the Sabbath. To admit he was doing this in alignment with God's will meant throwing out huge swaths of the oral law. They couldn't bring themselves to do that.

The Sadducees were the priestly party, supporting the operation of the temple. Jews must come there to offer sacrifices for their sins. To admit that Jesus could forgive sins would be to undermine their whole understanding of the relationship between God and his people. They didn't want to face the idea that Jesus might supersede the temple.

In the absence of a king, Caiaphas was the closest thing to a leader of the Jewish people. (Yes, Pilate, the Roman governor, had ultimate authority, but Caiaphas stood up to him over things like bringing the empire's insignia, considered idols by the Jews, into Jerusalem. This is probably why, when Caiaphas handed Jesus over to be crucified, Pilate was in no hurry to comply, especially when he found Jesus to be no real threat to Rome. If Jesus was causing Caiaphas headaches over religious matters, Pilate was all for it.) But for Caiaphas to admit that Jesus was the Messiah would mean the high priest was not the highest religious authority in Judea. A handyman's son would outrank Caiaphas.

Now let's give Caiaphas some credit in looking out for his people. The popular conception of a Messiah was as a warrior-king. And while the Zealots liked that idea, the establishment was afraid of what would happen if the people following Jesus decided to make him king and revolt against the most powerful empire on earth at that time. Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin had no illusions of how that would go for the Jews.

The reason that these people didn't believe in Jesus was not that they lacked the evidence, it was that they lacked the motivation to change. Believing in Jesus would upend their lives and they liked things just as they were. Sadly, what they were settling for was far less than what they would gain if they actually listened to and believed Jesus.

Jesus' awareness of their cognitive bias may explain the other Lazarus in the gospels. He is the poor, sick, starving man in Jesus' parable about him and the rich man. They both die and the rich man is tormented in hell. He sees Lazarus in paradise and asks Abraham to send Lazarus to his brothers so they can avoid the rich man's fate. Abraham points out that they can heed Moses and the prophets. The rich man says that won't work on them but they will repent if someone returns from the dead. To which Abraham replies, “If they do not respond to Moses and the prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.” (Luke 16:19-31) I can see Jesus appropriating the name of his friend and winking at him at the private joke as he tells this parable. Jesus knows that people would rather believe whatever they want to rather than the truth. If Lazarus' return to life won't make believers out of them, neither will Jesus' resurrection.

So why then did the average Jew put their trust in Jesus? Because of what he did. He healed the sick; he fed the hungry; he revived the dead. And his teachings got to the heart of matters unlike the Pharisees' teachings. When Jesus saw a need, he fulfilled it. He didn't hold back because it was the Sabbath or because it would make him ritually unclean. He touched lepers, bleeding women, and the dead and he made them well. He healed Gentiles. He taught women. He hung out with tax collectors and sinners. He went where he was needed.

Like going to the tomb of his friend Lazarus. Though this miracle kicked off the events that would lead to his crucifixion, I don't think that was Jesus' primary reason for doing it. And, yes, he also wanted to give his disciples a big reason to believe more deeply in him, as it says in verse 15. They are going to be grieving soon, this time for Jesus, and they still haven't grasped his teachings about him rising again. (Mark 9:10)

But he was genuinely fond of Lazarus, Mary and Martha, as we are told in verse 5. And it hurts Jesus when the sisters each tell him that had he been there, their brother would not have died. (verses 21, 32) And when Jesus saw them and their friends weep, he began to weep as well. (verse 35) He felt their pain and loss.

So we must picture Jesus standing at the tomb of his friend, with tears streaming down his cheeks as he tells them to roll away the stone and as he tells Mary she will see the glory of God and as he prays to his Father and as he cries out “Lazarus, come out!” And they became tears of joy as Lazarus shuffled out, straining against the cloths that tied his limbs and Jesus said, “Unbind him and let him go!”

The Pharisees saw a God of rules. The Sadducees saw a God of rituals. Caiaphas saw a God of earthly power. If they had been there, or if they had really listened to the witnesses, they would have seen in Jesus a God of compassion, a God who cares for his people, a God who feels what they feel.

And they would have seen a God who is greater than their greatest fear: death. So they would not have been afraid of what would happen if they believed in Jesus. They would have gladly given up their preconceptions of what God was like and what God wants. They would have unreservedly given up their positions and followed him.

But they valued their preconceptions and their power more than the truth. They put their trust in lesser things. And then those things were taken away from them. Both Pilate and Caiaphas were removed from their positions in 36 AD, just a few years after this. Both are remembered chiefly for their infamous roles in Jesus' execution, and not for anything else they did. The temple would be destroyed in 70 AD, a mere generation after Jesus was crucified. And with the destruction of the temple, there went the role of the Sadducees. There too went the laws concerning it, half of the 613 rules in the Torah, of which the Pharisees saw themselves as custodians.

But the movement that Jesus started did not go away. Most messianic movements start to die after their leader dies. There aren't a lot of Branch Davidians around now that David Koresh is dead. There aren't a lot of active members of the People's Temple now that Jim Jones is dead. Nor is there much left of the International Peace Mission started by George Baker Jr, a preacher who in the 1930s started calling himself Father Divine and saying he was God. He died in 1965. Wikipedia has pages of people who claimed to be God or the Messiah, most of whom you've never heard of.

But Jesus, who had a mere handful of followers at his death, has, 2000 years later, more than 2.2 billion people who call themselves Christians. Why? Because of the evidence left by people like Lazarus. In the Gospel of John we are told that Mary Magdalene ran to Simon Peter and the disciple Jesus loved and told them Jesus' tomb was empty. And the two men raced to the tomb. The other disciple beats Peter to the tomb and looks in. Peter barges right into the tomb, sees the empty burial clothes and doesn't know what to make of them. But when the other disciple finally enters the tomb, we are told, “He saw and believed.” (John 20:1-8)

Why did he believe then and not Peter? Well, if he was Lazarus, he had experienced both the power of death and the power of Jesus and he knew which was stronger. He put his trust in the one who said, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” Jesus said this to Martha prior to raising Lazarus. She probably told her brother the whole conversation after he was raised. And I think we know Lazarus' answer to Jesus' question about believing he was the resurrection and the life. It would be a resounding “Yes!” Which is why John the elder of Patmos, who compiled the fourth gospel, wrote, “Now Jesus performed many other miraculous signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are recorded so that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” (John 20:30-31) 

Disastrous Thinking

The scriptures referred to are John 9:1-41.

In the insurance industry it seems that there is no such thing as an accident. Everything that goes wrong has to be someone's fault. Either it was your fault, or someone else's, or you both were at fault. If they can't blame it on a human being, then it's called an Act of God. Unfortunately, this kind of thinking goes deep in the human psyche. When things go bad we seek to blame someone, anyone, rather than see it as random or unintentional. Even in the Old Testament, anything outside of human control is often attributed to God, like calamities. (Isaiah 45:7) Only rarely are terrible events attributed to Satan, most notably in the book of Job. In that book Satan is mentioned 11 times, more than any other book in the Bible. By Jesus' day, illnesses of every kind were attributed to devils, also called demons or unclean spirits. But just as often, diseases and disasters were seen as a judgment by God.

And that's the situation we see in today's gospel. Encountering a man blind from birth, the disciples ask Jesus, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Such talk may shock us but that kind of thinking was common. It was hard for people to acknowledge that sometimes bad things happen to good people for no discernible reason. It's much less distressing to think they brought it on themselves. Or at least that someone else's bad behavior was responsible.

It's only been very recently that society seems to have realized that a rape victim was not asking for it by wearing provocative clothing, or being in a nightclub, or walking alone at night, or inviting a man to her apartment. Or that a man shot by police at a traffic stop was not somehow deserving of death because he didn't comply with what they said. Or that a disaster wasn't the result of God's judgment.

But people still blame the victims because that is more comforting than to think that it could somehow happen to us. We like the idea of a direct and poetic cause and effect.

And of course, certain types of behavior do increase the risk of bad outcomes. Hanging off of tall buildings to take spectacular selfies does heighten the odds a person will fall and die. Taking illegal drugs does increase the risk of dying from a fentanyl overdose. Driving like a maniac on US-1 does raise the odds of being in a bad accident. But you could be innocently walking down the street and have the selfie-obssessed person fall on you. Criminals could divert your legitimate medication to sell on the black market and replace it with something else. You could be driving safely only to be hit by someone who thinks that US-1 is a race track. A wise person does what they can to decrease obvious and probable risks but you can't ever eliminate all risk.

Sadly there are still Christians who think bad things primarily happen to people who do bad things. So it made sense to them when Jerry Falwell said that the Twin Towers fell on 9/11 because of “pagans, abortionists, feminists, gays, lesbians and the ACLU.” John Hagee said of hurricane Katrina, “I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God and that they were recipients of the judgment of God for that.” Pat Robertson said that the earthquake that hit Haiti was caused by its people's “pact with the devil.”

Which means these so-called Bible-believing Christians don't believe Jesus. In Luke 13 we read, “Now there were some present on that occasion who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate mixed with their sacrifices.” Apparently Pilate, the heavy-handed Roman governor of Judea, killed some people from Galilee who came to make sacrifices at the temple, which was right next to the Antonia Fortress where he stayed when in Jerusalem. Quite probably a crowd of pilgrims got out of control at a festival, maybe even Passover, which celebrated God liberating his people, and Pilate quashed it. Jesus' response? “He answered them, 'Do you think these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered these things? No, I tell you! But unless you repent, you will all perish as well. Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower in Siloam fell on them, do you think they were worse offenders than all the others who live in Jerusalem? No, I tell you! But unless you repent you will all perish as well!'” (Luke 13:1-5) In other words, don't assume God singles out a certain type of sin or a specific level of sinning for special punishment. Nobody is morally perfect. We all need God's grace. We all need to turn from the destructive and self-destructive things we think, say and do and turn to the one who loves us enough to die for us.

That said, there are 3 big disasters in the Bible that are connected to sin. The first disaster recorded in the scripture is the great flood in Genesis. And it says, “The earth was ruined in the sight of God; the earth was filled with violence.” (Genesis 6:11) And God tells Noah that because the earth is filled with violence he will destroy it. (Genesis 6:13) By the way, the Hebrew word for “destroy” is the same word as “ruin.” God is saying: humans ruined my creation with violence and so I am really going to ruin it for them. Although he is not actually destroying it. He is taking it back to its original state, when the waters covered the earth as in Genesis 1:2, and then starting over. And afterwards, he hangs up his weapon of war, his bow, in the clouds as a sign he will not flood the earth again. (Genesis 9:13) That's his part of the first covenant he makes with humanity. Our part is not to murder each other because humans are created in God's image. (Genesis 9:6) Each human has inherent worth. In this case the reason for the flood was violence.

The next major disaster in the Bible is the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah by sulfur and fire. This also is explicitly said to be a judgment from God. (Genesis 19:13) But people often take the incident where the men demand the angels be handed over to them as the primary reason for its judgment. The Bible says it's not. In Ezekiel we are told, “See here—this was the iniquity of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters had majesty, abundance of food, and enjoyed carefree ease, but they did not help the poor and the needy. They were haughty and practiced abominable deeds before me. Therefore when I saw it, I removed them.” (Ezekiel 16: 49-50) The people of Sodom were arrogant and had an abundance of food and time on their hands but didn't help out those who lacked the necessities of life. And the book of Proverbs says that to God abominations include “haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that are swift to run to evil, a false witness who pours out lies, and a person who spreads discord among family members.” (Proverbs 6:16-19) Even if the attempted gang rape is included, the majority of these sins are not sexual but injustices towards other people. In fact only 9% of the sins condemned in the Torah are sexual sins. We prefer to say it's sex than to acknowledge our widespread inhumanity to each other.

In Jewish eyes the biggest disaster in the Old Testament was their exile to Babylon. And the reason for that, according to the prophets, is that they have broken their covenant with God. In Jeremiah God says, “You must change the way you have been living and do what is right. You must treat one another fairly. Stop oppressing foreigners who live in your land, children who have lost their fathers, and women who have lost their husbands. Stop killing innocent people in this land. Stop paying paying allegiance to other gods. That will only bring about your ruin. If you stop doing these things I will allow you to continue living in in this land which I gave your ancestors as a lasting possession.” (Jeremiah 7:5-7) Notice that these are violations of the two great commandments Jesus listed: to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself. 

But let me point out something else. In each of these cases, the disaster does not happen first and then a prophet comes around later to pin it on sin. If it's God's judgment, he gives plenty of warning ahead of time. Because God desires people to repent. In the book of Jonah that's the whole point. Jonah doesn't want to warn Nineveh, capitol of the Assyrian Empire that took the northern kingdom of Israel into exile. Because he knows how God works. When the people of Nineveh do repent, Jonah tells God, “Oh, Lord, this is just what I thought would happen when I was in my own country. This is what I tried to prevent by attempting to escape to Tarshish!—because I knew that you are gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in mercy, and one who relents concerning threatened judgment.” (Jonah 4:2) The prophet knows that God gives fair warning, and if people heed the warning, he relents. If there's no warning beforehand, it's not God's judgment. So if anyone does some Monday morning quarterbacking by saying that a previous disaster or illness was God's judgment, he is a false prophet.

When Jesus' disciples ask him about whose sin is the cause of the man's blindness, Jesus says, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God's works might be revealed in him.” Jesus doesn't see this an an occasion to debate theology; he sees it as an opportunity to show God's love in action. He isn't interested in fixing the blame but in fixing the problem. He isn't going to delve into the cause of the man's suffering but is focused instead on how he, Jesus, can alleviate that suffering. And that should be our approach.

And a lot of Christians understand that. Indeed 89.3% of nurses are religious, with 86.4% of them Christian. 76% of doctors believe in God. 45% of Americans who pray daily and attend services weekly also say they volunteered in the last week, compared to 28% of those who are not highly religious. 65% of the highly religious say they have donated money, time or goods to the poor in the past week, compared to 41% of all other adults. The book of James was right: those who have real faith show it. (James 2:17-18)

It's time we listened to Jesus and stopped blaming people for things beyond their control. Obviously this means not blaming people for illnesses. This includes mental health problems, like depression, and even addiction. Some people are more susceptible to such diseases than others are. Only 30% of people who try heroin actually become addicted. Those who get hooked physically respond differently than most folks. And we have seen people get addicted to pain medications that were legitimately prescribed to them initially. The problem is not a weak will but a problem with the way their brain responds to the drug. Our approach should be to help them get free of the addiction.

Even getting out of poverty is difficult. For those who spent their childhood living in moderate to severe poverty between 35 to 46% are poor throughout their early and middle adulthood. The odds can be beaten but it is not easy. And as we've seen God expects us to help the poor and needy.

Jesus' reaction to suffering was not to judge the person but to help and heal them. But we see that the religious leaders cannot simply praise God for the man's cure. They just want to discredit Jesus and so they go after the man and even his parents. Eventually they blame and expel the man who had suffered. Jesus, though, when he hears of this, does a follow up visit. He finds the man and, now that his physical problem has been resolved, Jesus deals with his spiritual needs. He lets him know who it was who healed him and the man worships Jesus.

People came to Jesus to be healed and then stayed to hear what he had to say. Because it's hard to think about spiritual matters when you are hungry or in pain or are homeless or have some other overwhelming physical problem. We need to remember that. Because we are now the body of Christ on earth. And a body consists of more than just a mouth to preach with. We are Christ's hands, his ears, his eyes, his feet. When we see someone in need, our first response should be to give them concrete help, not just quote Bible verses at them. If they experience the love of God in our actions, they will be more likely to listen to why we act as we do. As someone said, preach the gospel always and when necessary, use words.

The Power of the Spirit

The scriptures referred to are John 4:5-42.

I just read of a woman who died on a plane due to severe turbulence. It was a small corporate jet with only 5 people on board and she wasn't wearing her seatbelt. Still, while I've experienced turbulence on planes, including one time when it felt like a rollercoaster ride, and I could see if you were walking about, you might get hurt, I never realized you could get killed. And the cause was basically wind.

Of course, down here we've seen what wind in the form of waterspouts and hurricanes can do. Especially when combined with water. Unfortunately this lets the insurance companies argue that any damage you report was not covered by your wind policy because of the water, or that it's not covered by your flood policy because of the wind.

Still it's sobering to think of the power of things that are not solid. Wind isn't even visible. You can see its effects, but you can't see the thing itself. Jesus said in last week's passage from John's gospel, the Spirit is like the wind. “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you don't know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” (John 3:8)

This week he compares the Spirit to living, or as we would say, running water, such as you would find in a spring. While water can be seen, it is translucent. And like the wind it is both formless and powerful. We've seen the damage floods can do but even smaller streams of water can cut a path through rock over time. So both water and wind are good pictures of the power of the Spirit.

In John's gospel the word light appears 16 times, 6 in the first chapter alone. Light is something else that is formless but powerful. Unlike water and wind, we don't feel its power physically but it allows us to see the world and navigate through it. Light allows us to be aware of things we can't otherwise perceive because we can't hear or smell or touch them. You can see clouds rolling in and so know a storm is coming. And light travels faster than sound. You see lightning before you hear thunder, especially when it is distant.

In Jesus' day you had 3 sources of light to see by: the sun, the moon and fire from a torch or lamp. Fire is basically formless and it is immensely powerful. It not only gives illumination, it gives warmth, it can cook food, it can refine metals—and it can burn and destroy if you are not careful. At Pentecost when the Spirit comes upon the disciples, tongues of flame appear to rest upon each of them. (Acts 2:3)

All of these things are powerful but without a fixed shape or form. And so it is with the Holy Spirit. Of the persons of the Trinity, the Spirit is the hardest to grasp, just as wind, water and light are impossible to grasp. But like all 3, the Spirit is essential to us.

In both Hebrew and Greek the word for spirit also means wind and breath. Breath is essential for life. Indeed, while you can survive about 3 weeks without food and 3 days without water, after 3 minutes without oxygen, brain damage starts to set in. After 12 minutes without breathing, a person is usually unable to be revived. (Which is why everyone should learn CPR.)

Water, as we've seen, is even more necessary to life than food. In fact one of the reasons that the US is more densely populated in the east than in the west is the availability of water. You just have to look at a precipitation map of the US to see that the plain states and those farther west get on average between a quarter and a half of the precipitation that the states from the Midwest on to the east do. And a precipitation map of Israel shows that while the north and middle of the land is green, the west and far south of that country is desert. Hence the importance of wells.

In the era before indoor plumbing, women usually went to the village well early in the day and late in the afternoon to avoid the sun's heat. So seeing a woman coming at noon to draw water would have been surprising. The Samaritan woman may have been coming at noon to avoid the other women commenting about her life. Despite what the Jews thought of them, the Samaritans also would have looked askance at a woman with 5 husbands in the past and a live-in lover at present. So Jesus' offer of a different source of living water would be very attractive to her. But Jesus senses that what this woman really needs is not so much physical refreshment as the presence of the Spirit in her life.

When the discussion progresses from physical water to her life, the woman pivots from this personally uncomfortable subject to a discussion about religious differences between Jews and Samaritans. The Samaritans were the descendants of the poor Jews left behind when the Assyrians took the upper classes into exile in 722 BC. The Assyrians then moved other conquered peoples into Israel. (2 Kings 17) The two groups intermarried. They had their own version of the Torah and rejected the rest of the Old Testament. Their temple was located on Mount Gerizim rather than on Mount Zion in Jerusalem. The Jews viewed the Samaritans as heretic half-breeds while the Samaritans viewed themselves as the true heirs of the Mosaic tradition. The bad blood between the two groups was only further fueled by the destruction of the temple on Mount Gerizim and the enslavement of the Samaritans by the Jews during the Maccabean revolt.

Jesus doesn't let the differences between the two groups get in the way of his message about the Spirit. Though he holds to the primacy of Mount Zion, he says, “Woman, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem....But the hour is coming, and is here now, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

Even today people get caught up in denominational distinctives to the point that they obscure the truth about God. They either don't know or forget that our forms of worship, our liturgies and how we are organized are not the same as they were in Jesus' day. There are some who try to recover the exact way the New Testament church did everything but that is impossible. And unnecessary. In the first century Christians met not in churches but in homes. During times of persecution, the church had to meet in secret. In Rome they met in the catacombs, the underground maze of burial chambers. Their only Bible was the Old Testament. For the first 60 years their knowledge of Jesus came directly from the mouths of the apostles. After the apostles were martyred, people collected Paul's letters and wrote down the stories of Jesus which were compiled into the gospels.

And even the early church had to adapt to changes caused by the Spirit. The first Christians were Jews. When Gentiles began to convert the church had to decide whether to make them become Jews, getting circumcised and observing all the Jewish laws, or simply accept them as fellow Christians saved by God's grace through their faith in the same incarnate, crucified and risen Lord Jesus. At the council of Jerusalem they came to see that, just as water takes the shape of whatever it encounters and yet maintains its essential nature, the Spirit can take the shape of whatever vessel God choses. (Acts 15:1-31) Water only stays in one form if you freeze it, and then it is no longer living water.

Still the church has never felt all that easy about the Spirit's freedom to adopt other forms. As soon as the church became official, it started codifying things. Now some of this was necessary. After all water has but one formula: H2O, two hydrogen atoms to one oxygen atom. Double the number of hydrogen atoms and you get deuterium oxide which is great for nuclear reactions but not entirely safe to drink. Add another oxygen atom to water and you get hydrogen peroxide, which is an antiseptic and bleaching agent. You can gargle with it but it would be harmful to swallow. In the same way the church did have to define who God is and who Jesus is. It's essential to agree that God and not some lesser being created everything and that Jesus is both divine and human so that we know that when we are dealing with Jesus we are dealing with God. As a professor of mine once said, in your house you need some things nailed down, like the roof and the walls and the floors. But you don't want everything nailed down. When I first came home from the nursing home, we had to rearrange the back room to accommodate a hospital bed. We couldn't do that if the furniture was nailed in place.

But as time went on, the church expanded the things that were codified, like whether clergy could marry, or whether baptism had to be by immersion, or the exact words of baptism. You may have heard of the Arizona priest who was using the words “We baptize you...” instead of “I baptize you...” The Catholic church considers all the baptisms he performed over 26 years, estimated in the thousands, invalid. Which means that all the subsequent sacraments received by those he baptized, like confirmations and marriages and being ordained, were also invalid. Because, apparently, the Spirit can only work when we use exact wording. Yet when the New Testament quotes the Old Testament, it uses not the original Hebrew but the Septuagint, a Greek translation. To me this decision about a single word makes baptism sound like it's a magic ritual rather than the action of an intelligent and loving God, who wants all to be saved and whose Spirit is not limited by language but who “intercedes for us with inexpressible groanings.” (Romans 8:26)

And as we see, Jesus says that the time has come when what is essential is not about exactly where or exactly how God is worshiped. What is vital is that we worship God in spirit and truth.

What does he mean by that? By spirit he obviously means the Holy Spirit, whom Jesus calls the Spirit of truth. That's appropriate because the Spirit guides us into the truth (John 16:13) Which means he testifies to us about Jesus, who said, “I am the way, the truth and the life...” (John 15:26; John 14:6, emphasis mine) The Spirit leads us to Jesus Christ, the God who is Love Incarnate, the ultimate truth in the universe. (1 John 4:8)

We can see the action of the Spirit in us because it produces “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” (Galatians 5:22-23) As opposed to those things that unredeemed human nature results in, like “sexual immorality, impurity, depravity, idolatry, sorcery, hostilities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish rivalries, dissensions, factions, envying, murder, drunkenness, carousing and similar things.” (Galatians 5:19-21, emphasis mine) Notices how many of the things Paul lists divide people. And they can divide churches. And sometimes because people feel that there is only one way the Spirit can express or communicate the truth.

Yet in Acts 2 the Spirit accommodates people in dozens of languages so the gospel can be understood. And think of the differences in idioms the Spirit would have to use. In college I met a student who was an MK, or missionary kid. His parents worked with a tribe in the Amazon. When translating the gospel of John, they realized that there was no word in the tribe's language for lamb. There are no sheep in the Amazon jungle. So they settled on an animal the tribe used for sacrifice: the monkey. In their translation Jesus was called the “Monkey of God.” It may sound funny to us or even blasphemous but that's how they were able to communicate the good news that Jesus was the sacrifice for the whole world's sins. They preserved the essential truth though the form was changed.

When God manifested himself to Elijah, we read, “A very powerful wind went before the Lord, digging into the mountain and causing landslides, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the windstorm, there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake, there was a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. After the fire, there was a soft whisper.” (1 Kings 19:11-12) These spectacular events alerted Elijah to the fact that God was present so he would listen to what God was telling him. Too often we confuse the physical forms God uses to communicate with us with God himself. But God is Spirit. As Luther pointed out, washing someone with water without the appropriate word of God is not baptism; it's just washing. Eating bread and drinking wine without the words of Jesus, God's living Word, is not communion; it's just eating. The water, wine and bread are the physical forms through which the Spirit communicates God's grace to us. But that power is not inherent in water, wine or bread. It is the Spirit that gives these physical forms their meaning and power.

And as we see, even the Samaritans understood the concept of the Messiah. And while Jesus brings up the woman's multiple marriages, he doesn't do it to shame her, despite the fact that Jesus on other occasions expressed his displeasure with divorce and remarriage. (Matthew 5:32) No, it was to convince her that he was telling the truth when he admitted to being the Messiah. And when she leaves her water jar behind and runs to the village, she says, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” Not even Sherlock Holmes could have deduced that the woman was married exactly 5 times and was currently living with someone she wasn't married to. That this Jewish stranger to their little village whom she just happened to come across knew all of this about her made her a believer. And yet despite seeing Jesus' mastery over disease and his masterful understanding of scripture, the Jewish religious leaders could not even entertain the idea that he was the Messiah. Jesus didn't fit the picture of the Messiah they had formed in their minds and so they couldn't even see God's Spirit at work in him. (Mark 3:28-30)

Like wind, you cannot see the Spirit but the discerning can see the Spirit in gracious actions that heal and help people in their specific situations. Like water, the Spirit can take the shape of whatever vessel God chooses without losing its essential nature. Like light, the Spirit can reveal things we otherwise couldn't perceive. The Spirit's power is not found in the forms used. And like wind, water and fire, if we arrogantly try stand in the way of the power and the movement of the Spirit, it can spell disaster. So let us instead open our sails as Jesus' disciples did and go where the Spirit wants to take us. Let us quench our spiritual thirst with the living water Jesus offers. Let the Spirit illuminate the darkness of this world and lead us to the truth we find in Jesus. 

Trust

The scriptures referred to are Genesis 12:1-4a, Romans 4:1-5, 13-17 and John 3:1-17.

When you woke up this morning, you threw off the covers made by someone else, got out of a bed you didn't build, put on slippers you didn't make and went into a bathroom filled with things which were installed by plumbers, probably before you bought your house. You put on clothes neither you nor your spouse sewed. You might have eaten food grown and made by others. You drove to church in a car you didn't engineer. And you entered a building built by people long gone. And none of this would be possible if human beings weren't the most cooperative animals on earth.

You may object and point to bees or ants but they are really extended families. We do things for and in connection with people we are not related to. Unless you work in a family business, your boss and coworkers are not kin. How often do you buy things online from a company run by strangers offering products made by other companies, often overseas? You trust them to deliver what you ordered and they trust that you are paying them via a card you legitimately have in your name. Our civilization is held together largely by strangers trusting strangers.

Trust underlies all relationships. And at the beginning of any relationship, extending that trust is a leap of faith. And faith simply means trust. If the relationship goes on long enough, a history is built up that underlies and supports that trust. You find a barber or hairstylist you know is not going to make you look bad. You take your car to a mechanic you know has done a good job fixing it on other occasions. A long marriage is normally based on each partner knowing the other person is reliable and has their back.

Even science is a faith-based venture. A scientist's work starts from and builds on the work of other scientists. They have to trust that the research and experiments were done properly, meticulously written down, astutely analyzed with all factors accounted for and peer-reviewed before it was published. And they have to trust that no one working on the scientific paper fudged the results to, say, get a grant or keep corporate funding or make a name for themselves. Which has happened all too often recently.

So when we talk of religious faith, it is not something wholly unlike all other human activities. The main difference is that in religion the person we put our trust in is God. And studies find that believing in a god or gods is a natural and universal human trait, found in the vast majority of people in all societies. Evidence of religious behavior in humans goes back to the Middle Paleolithic era, 100,000 years ago. And it was an essential part of all complex civilizations up until the 20^th century. Even today atheists account for only 7% of the world's population, with China accounting for 2 out of every 5 atheists.

Today's lectionary readings are all about the importance of trusting God. We start with Abram being called to leave his country and extended family and go to the land of Canaan. Originally from Ur, an important city in the Sumarian empire, Abram was being told to move to an area with a lower level of civilization, a rural area with a collection of independent cities. This is a big change and a major decision for Abram. God promises Abram land, descendants and eventually a nation that will be a blessing to the earth. It is his faith in God and his promises that motivates Abram to travel hundreds of miles from his kin and previous life. It takes a long time for him to see even one child of his but still Abram continues to have faith that God will do what he says.

One interesting detail, though, is that at one point, because he is getting up there in age, Abram designated a servant of his, Eliezer of Damascus, as his heir. (Genesis 15:2-3) So he is hedging his bets. But God tells him that he will have an actual son to be his heir. God tells Abram to look at the stars and says that his descendants will be as numerous. At night, you can see about 8000 stars with the naked eye. And right after God says this, we are told, “Abram believed the Lord and he counted it to him as righteousness.” (Genesis 15:6) And only then does God make a covenant with Abram.

The Hebrew word translated “believe” here has the underlying sense of confirming or supporting. And the word given as “counted” literally means to think or calculate. Which is why the NET Bible translates this as “Abram believed the Lord, and the Lord considered his response of faith as proof of genuine loyalty.” Abram takes God at his word and that puts him in the right relationship with God.

In our passage from Romans Paul uses this verse to show that we do not get right with God by our actions. We cannot be perfect in all that we do. Or as Paul puts it, paraphrasing Psalm 14:3, “There is no one who is righteous. No, not one.” (Romans 3:10) We may try to get right with God by working to do everything the way we should but it's like someone with a broken leg trying to walk properly. The leg has to be fixed, something only an orthopedic surgeon can do. And it all starts with trusting the doctor to do what he says he can do. I have seen patients who did not trust doctors and they refuse to be helped.

Now in some cases, the treatment has to begin right away. If a person has a stroke and gets to the ER in the first 3 hours they can be given a clot dissolving medication that can reverse the damage. But it has to be given in that window of time. With God, however, there is no such time limit. Look at the man crucified next to Jesus. He rebuked the other dying criminal, who has been harassing Jesus, by saying, “Don't you fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we rightly so, for we are getting what we deserve for what we did, but this man has done nothing wrong.” Then he said, “Jesus remember me when you come in your kingdom.” And Jesus said to him, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:40-43)

There is nothing at this point this man who was a violent criminal can do to right the wrongs he has done. (Matthew 27:38) He can't promise to clean up his act and go to synagogue every Sabbath from now on. He is dying. But he admits he has done wrong, expresses his belief in Jesus' innocence and in the fact that Jesus is the Messiah, the promised king, all evidence at the moment to the contrary. He simply believes Jesus and trusts him to save him at some point beyond the time of their deaths. And Jesus gives him an assurance he gives no one else: that he will be with Christ in paradise that day. He says that on the basis of the man's faith.

God can work with someone who trusts him, even just a bit. One time a father brings his sick son to the disciples who are unable to help. When Jesus enters the scene, the father goes to him. He says, “...if you are able to do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” Jesus says, “If you are able? All things are possible for the one who believes.” Immediately the father of the boy cries out and says, “I believe; help my unbelief.” (Mark 9:22-25) The man was struggling with doubt but did have some faith in Christ and Jesus was able to work with that and heal his son.

When it comes to sin, though, it doesn't seem fair that repenting and believing is enough to be declared righteous by God. Shouldn't the person do something to redress the things they've done wrong, to fix the damage they've caused? Yes, but they can never undo all they've done. They can control their temper but they cannot erase the memories of the terror they've caused their loved ones. They can try to reestablish a history of trust with the partner they've cheated on but they cannot take away the hurt and betrayal they felt. If God demands absolute justice, none of us can ever set everything right between us.

Our salvation, our restoration to a right relationship with God, depends, as Paul says, on God's grace. It is God's gift freely offered to those who trust him and accept it. It is not what we deserve; it is what we could never deserve. God loves us enough to extend his grace, his undeserved and unreserved goodness, to us.

Salvation is the ultimate do-over. As Jesus says, it is essentially being born all over again by water and the Spirit. And it is a do-over because to be with God we must be holy. There are people who think that since we are saved by grace through faith and not by anything we do, it means we don't have to do anything ever except believe. But that's misunderstanding what salvation is.

To be saved is to become the person God created you to be. And we are all created in God's image. Our sins distort and blur that image in us. In Jesus we see clearly what God is like. So to be saved is to become Christlike.

But it is a process. Paul speaks of believers at Corinth as being like infants in Christ, requiring milk and not yet being ready for solid food. (1 Corinthians 3:1-2) Eventually we are supposed to become “a mature person, attaining to the measure of Christ's full stature. So we are no longer children, tossed back and forth by waves and carried about by every wind of teaching by the trickery of people who craftily carry out their deceitful schemes. But practicing the truth in love, we will all grow up into Christ, who is the head. From him the whole body grows, fitted and held together through every supporting ligament. As each one does his part, the body grows in love.” (Ephesians 4:13-16) In this passage Paul is talking about the body of Christ, of which we are all a part. But the parts of the body have to grow, too. An adult would have a hard time walking if one leg stayed as it was when he was a baby.

It starts with trust. And it continues with trust. We keep trusting in God and his promises. We trust in his love and grace. And because we trust him, we do what he says.

Stephen King wrote a short story in which a brother and sister spend their summers on their grandparents' farm. They love to play in the big barn, which has a high wooden beam that runs the length of the barn. They like to walk along the beam as if it were a tightrope. And then one day the brother hears his sister scream for him. He runs into the barn and finds that she has slipped and is hanging from the beam, dozens of feet from the ground. She can't look down and see him so he lets her know he is there. He knows he can't pull her up and so he runs around the barn grabbing armfuls of hay and piling it under her. He keeps doing it until it is a very big pile. And finally he tells her to let go. And without seeing what he has done, she lets go. And though she breaks her leg, her life is saved. Because she trusts her loving brother to save her.

Trust is the opposite of fear. We can trust God to save us because he loves us. What Jesus did on the cross shows that. (1 John 4:10) He suffered the consequences for our sins so that we wouldn't have to. What God did on Easter morning also shows his love. Jesus' promise to the robber next to him would mean nothing if death had the final word. Most of Jesus' promises don't work if this life is the only one. After all, Jesus defined a disciple of his this way: “If anyone wants to become my follower, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.” (Luke 9:23-24) And he also said, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live even if he dies, and the one who lives and believes in me will never die.” (John 11:25-26)

So we trust God with our life. And we trust his promise that death is not the end but that it gets better. We call that hope, which someone has called the future tense of faith. So we walk by faith and live in hope. But that is not all.

We trust God because he loves us. Faith proceeds from love. Faith should also lead to love. If someone loves you as much as Jesus does, you grow to love them as well. Paul points out that faith without love means nothing. (1 Corinthians 13:2) Paul says that in the end 3 qualities remain: faith, hope and love. And of these three, love is the greatest. (1 Corinthians 13:13) Just as Jesus said the 2 greatest commandments are to love God and love our neighbor.

Faith is the doorway to our journey with God and the ground that supports us on our way. Hope guides us to our destination. Love gives us the strength and energy every step of the way. And Jesus embodies all 3. He trusted God enough to go to the cross and that shows us we can trust him. He put his hope in being raised from the dead and our hope is anchored in his resurrection. He loves us and we can love him back.

So our salvation comes not from our feeble attempts to be good but from trusting in the grace of the God revealed in Jesus. And because we trust and love him we want to spread that love to others, the way you want to tell others about any good news you receive. Like “I went to this doctor and he cured me!” And as we see in Jesus going to the cross and bursting from the tomb, actions speak louder than words. So we show that love not only with our lips but with our lives, which are full to overflowing with good and loving actions. As James points out, it's not faith vs. works. We are saved by grace through faith and good works just naturally follow.

Abram, later renamed by God Abraham, went on a long journey away from the life he knew. He just had God's word that things would turn out right. But he trusted God and that was enough to go on. In our journey we move from faith to love to hope to telling and helping others. It's an adventure. There will be challenges. But the one leading us, Jesus, has walked this way before and we can trust him to get us to the place we will call home forevermore.