Christ Church Cathedral
A Homily for Lent 4, 2008
March 2, 2008
The Very Rev Michael J. Pitts
1 Samuel 16:1-13
Ephesians 5:8-14
John 9:1-41
The birds they sang
at the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don't dwell on what
has passed away
or what is yet to be.
Ah the wars they will
be fought again
The holy dove
She will be caught again
bought and sold
and bought again
the dove is never free.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in. i
The first thing you may have noticed about our liturgical Gospels of recent weeks is that they have been very long. If you haven’t noticed that, the acolytes certainly have. I hope you have also realized that they have all been from St John’s Gospel, and further that they have all been stories about Jesus’ dialogues with named or unnamed individuals. The first was about Nicodemus. Next week will be about Lazarus. Thematically these two form a frame of stories about life, eternal life as John calls it. Within that frame was last week’s reading about water and today’s about light. What John knew existentially, we know scientifically: the two essentials for life are light and water. But John, of course, is not thinking about either physical water or physical light. The words, like the word life are symbols or metaphors about spiritual realities. This leads me to the third thing I hope you noticed, to which I believe Dr Balk made reference in his sermon last week. Each of the four stories portrays people who totally misunderstand, sometimes in an amusing way what Jesus is trying to say.
In the Nicodemus story ii , there is a very clever word play on the Greek word anwyen, which translates either as again or from above. Jesus uses the word as meaning from above:
"Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above."
Nicodemus hears the word as meaning again:
"How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born?
If only our evangelical and charismatic friends , who put so much effort into telling us that the only true Christians are those who are born again, would actually study the Gospels with some knowledge of the original language. They might realize it was a joke.
The narrative of the misunderstanding by the woman at the well in Samaria, which we read last week iii, was more complex and sustained. When Jesus speaks about inner water refreshing the soul, the woman thinks only about physical water, and about the wonderful labour-saving water delivery system which Jesus is offering. And when the subject comes round to deep spiritual realities, the woman wishes to stay at the level of pious religion.
In today’s liturgical Gospel iv, it is the educated Pharisees who fail to understand, while the uneducated formerly blind man sees exactly what it is all about. The blind see the light, while the seeing do not.
Finally in next week’s gospel v, the disciples will misunderstand what Jesus means by falling asleep, and Martha of Bethany will fail to understand what resurrection means, as maybe we do too.
The synoptic gospels also record many times when Jesus is totally misunderstood, even by the inner group of followers. It is interesting also to see how these failures are clearly brought out in Mark’s gospel, and how, when Matthew and Luke are using Mark as their source, they tone down the misunderstandings, or shift the blame on to someone else.
This failure to understand is a theme which runs through the whole scripture. Last week saw the Israelites grumbling against Moses and failing to see that the God who had brought them through the red Sea could also provide water in the desert. Today Samuel cannot quite get it that God has not chosen the tallest and the best looking, but the youngest one who knows about nothing except looking after sheep. Next week Ezekiel takes some time to realize that the dry bones can really live. It is a hard lesson for all of us to learn and especially for important clergy, that we are asked to:
Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, vi
Our God, it seems, chooses to speak to us through our failures and weaknesses, our misunderstandings and powerlessness. Should that surprise those whose key symbol for faith is the cross? Maybe we spend too much effort on worrying that the Anglican Church is falling apart, that the whole church in Europe and Canada is in a decline so rapid that it is almost free-fall, that Christian Unity seems as dead as Lazarus. Maybe Leonard Cohen (who maybe wrote this poem after wrestling with depression) is right:
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
From this wider view of our Lent Biblical readings this year, let us turn to the specific reading of today, especially the Letter to the Church at Ephesus and the Gospel story of the man born blind.
Both tell us that light and vision are closely connected. Both ask us to reflect that as well as physical sight and bodily vision, there is also inner light and inner vision.
In our Lenten study this year we have begun to wrestle with how we can express God language in a society whose thinking and structure are framed in the language of science. Today we shall continue to wrestle with how to deal with Jesus language in our post modern world. This wrestling is important, for as long as we slip into speaking, preaching and praying in a language which speaks of God existing in the same way as we exist or the material world exists, we shall be unlikely to communicate our faith to our children and grandchildren, and the church will continue to decline precipitously. What I believe we need to grasp, as do people of other faiths, is that religious language is about an alternative vision, a vision of that which does not correspond to the ordinary realities of life. It is the breaking in (through the cracks) of a light which forces us to see life in a new perspective.
We also, I believe, need the illumination of that light to fall, not only on our individual inner lives, but on the society which we have created. This past week, amid the news of wars that seem both endless and futile, amongst the thousands of words about a forthcoming election whose outcome, whatever it is, is unlikely to change much in the world, I also heard a report of research by a Montreal pediatrician which showed that the effects of poverty on both family relationships and on housing patterns causes, through stress, profound effects on the architecture of the developing brains of babies and young children.
We need a new and alternative vision of humanity and what it means. Maybe in both our Christian faith and in the faith of other traditions, there are resources to help us find that vision. I believe we need earnestly to pursue that road of a new vision, walking side by side with Buddhists and Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs Jews and other Christians, people with faith and people without. Maybe too this is what resurrection is about.
i Leonard Cohen Anthem (The Future 1992)/
ii John 3:1-17
iii John 4:5-42
iv John 9:1-41
v John 11:1-41
vi 1 Corinthians 1:26-28 NRSV
