John 11:1-53
May 10
David A. Davis
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You will note the length of today’s lesson from the Gospel of John. We are finishing up a four-week series in our preaching life that has looked at long conversations with Jesus in the Gospel of John. Nicodemus. The Samaritan woman at the well. The man born blind. And this morning, Mary and Martha and the death of their brother Lazarus. The reason to read this lengthy encounter is that the power of the long conversation comes with the gospel writer’s slow, deliberate description of grief. More than the words spoken, it is the emotions named and actions described, and the questions that never get answered. Love. Heartbreak. Anger. Weeping. Spreading the word about one who is dying. Surrounding those who grieve to console them. Following them here and there to make sure they’re okay. Questioning. Blaming. Weeping. Someone is saying the wrong thing. Others are trying to make sense of it all. A whole lot that will never be understood. And weeping. The passage begins with Jesus being told of Lazarus’ death and ends with the authorities hatching the plans to put Jesus to death.

Jesus is remembered in this encounter with Mary and Martha not for what he said, but for what he did. Jesus wept. Even more than his raising Lazarus from the dead, Jesus is remembered here for his tears. Jesus wept. But the infamous brevity of the verse (the shortest verse in the bible, right), the brevity cannot take away from the way John describes the Lord’s profound encounter with death. John works hard to let the reader know how greatly and deeply Jesus was disturbed. His tears alone can’t sum up the emotion.

Mary came and fell at the feet of Jesus, repeating Martha’s claim, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Mary was weeping. The friends surrounding her were weeping. When Jesus saw it, John tells us “he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.”  Greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. It is a redundant expression clearly intended to express magnitude. A magnitude of emotion, like multiplying to the “nth degree, that’s what frames his tears. Some suggest that Jesus is crying because he was mad at himself for his delay. Others argue that he was really upset with Mary and the crowds; that somehow their tears conveyed a lack of belief in what he was about to do. Some even conclude his pre-tear irritation was akin to being annoyed that he had to do another miracle. None of that is very compelling.

After “Jesus wept” and before he heads to the tomb, John again reports that Jesus was “greatly disturbed.”  The piling on of descriptors implies that there is more going on here than Jesus’ own grief over the death of one whom he loved. St. John of Chrysostom argues that this depth of emotion that surrounds Jesus’ tears is the same emotion Jesus displayed in the Garden of Gethsemane as he was “deeply grieved, even to death.” This profound, raw emotion that leaves him shouting there outside the tomb of Lazarus, “greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved, it rises up in Jesus as he faces off with the power of death and darkness. It is another round in a cosmic battle. This soul-wrenching reaction of Jesus, it comes in response to death’s constant and cold reality that tears again and again at the human heart. Jesus’ confrontation with death; it took him to the cross, to his own tomb, to the depths of hell. Yes, he was “greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.”

Weeping wasn’t even the strongest response that came from Jesus. It was that shout. When he stood outside the tomb and cried with a loud voice. When he looked up to heaven, he prayed to the God of life and then let loose with a shout. When all that deep-seated existential staring down death emotion came bursting from within him, “he cried out with a loud voice.”  He shouted. It was a whole lot more than a shout to Lazarus, a whole lot more than a one dead man rising shout. This was a resurrection shout for the ages. Just like Christ is Risen!

This story of Jesus, Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, it doesn’t just drip with his tears; it drips with our humanity. It’s that deliberate, slow description of life when confronted by the constant and cold reality of death. The only thing John misses is a description of Mary and Martha’s friends bringing food to the house. Tears. Questions. Everything is sort of slowing down. And even that shout.

Jesus said to Martha, “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.” I think I have repeated that verse at every funeral or memorial service that I have led since the first one in July of 1986. I haven’t kept count, but there were six in my first two months of ministry right out of seminary. So I have repeated it a lot. And no one, no one in all these years, has ever said to me, “What on earth does that mean?” No one ever asks because it’s not something you explain. It’s not a verse you parse. It’s not a sentence you diagram. No, you just sort of let it wash over you. The verse, it doesn’t stay in the ear or land in the brain; it resonates somewhere deep within where words don’t work so well. You can read biblical commentaries that try to unpack it, but frankly, they don’t do it very well. Because what you and I have come to know about this resurrection promise of Jesus is that it is all about when and where you hear it.

When death calls Easter people together, when we gather together here or at the cemetery or in a funeral home, when we fall on our knees hoping the resurrection promise of Jesus will once again wash over us, there is always an echo of Jesus’ shout. With each and every death, with each and every grieving heart, comes the tears of Christ himself and a cosmic, death-shattering shout.  I can’t explain it, and I cannot really describe it. But I have seen it. Again and again and again. The people of God are taking that slow journey so full of grief, emotion, questions, routines, and seeking a comfort that can’t be parsed. The followers of Jesus dared to stare down the reality of death and then live every day in the power of the resurrection promise of God. Here in the body of Christ, living into the psalmist’s affirmation that “weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning”. God’s Beloved, gathered in and sent out, testifying and living into a resurrection shout so much bigger than one dead man rising. A resurrection shout that shall rise above all that the darkness brings, until that day when all the blind will see, and all who are thirsty will be satisfied, and we shall see the kingdom of God. A kingdom where swords are plowshares, and dividing walls are shattered, and the hungry are fed, and hatred is squashed, and love forever reigns and the beauty and artistry of God is unadulterated and radiantly on display; where no one shall hurt or destroy on all of God’s holy mountain, and justice and righteousness flow like and everlasting stream, and where death shall be no more. And God will wipe away every tear.

“Lazarus, Come Out!” Jesus and his resurrection shout. It is not a secret that here at Nassau Church, we have had more than our share of memorial services this spring. As I said to my peer group of pastors at our gathering earlier this week, I am really tired of death. But I have also received the holy gift of hearing these resurrection shouts. “I’m not afraid to die, I’m just not sure about getting there,” one person said to me. That’s a resurrection shout. From another, “Long ago I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior, and my relationship with him is safe and secure.” A resurrection shout. “I told my family it is time”. Resurrection shout. “I am eager to see my Creator and my Savior”. A resurrection shout. I told someone in my office weeks ago about the person years ago who said to me, “I just want to have some awareness of my grandchildren growing up when I am gone.” “That sounds like heaven to me”, I responded. The person in my office smiled and said softly, “Me too!” It was said in a whisper, but it was a resurrection shout.

Our granddaughter Frances Aubrey is named after her two maternal great-grandmothers, and they both were a piece of work. I have told you before that my mother, Jane Aubrey Davis, was the greatest theologian in my life. That mostly has to do with living with her all the years after my brother’s death at the age of 21 in a car accident when I was in second or third grade in 1973. Observing her grief and her faith amid a death she never got over. When my father was dying in 1998, and the cardiologist kept trying and trying and trying various procedures, I stood next to my mother when she told the doctor it was time to stop, “I know for you death is failure,” my mother said, “ But we are a family of faith. For us, death is not a failure.”  She wasn’t preaching. She wasn’t wearing her faith on her sleeve. She wasn’t being rude to the doctor. But there in a hospital hallway of Mercy Hospital, there in PGH, it was a resurrection shout like so many others I have heard these forty years of ministry.

“Jesus said to Martha, ‘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.’”

“Lazarus, come out!”

John 9:1-41
May 3
David A. Davis
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The man blind from birth whom Jesus sees as he walks along. The one whom Jesus heals with spit and dirt. The healed man is perhaps most remembered for saying this: “One thing I do know, that I was blind, now I see.” But what he says at the end of the chapter is much more important and is the title of the sermon. “Lord, I believe.” “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” Jesus asks all the way at the end of chapter 9. “Who is he? Tell me so that I might believe in him.” Jesus tells the man that he is the one, or in Bible-speak, “the one speaking with you is he”. “Lord, I believe” is the formerly blind man’s strong affirmation of faith. And according to John, he worshiped Jesus.

The man said, “Lord, I believe,” and John tells us, “The man worshipped Jesus.”  The man’s more famous line, “one thing I do know…I was blind, now I see.” Notice he doesn’t say it to Jesus. He says it to the Pharisees.  Actually, the man doesn’t say much to Jesus. Another one of these chapter-long encounters, but this time, Jesus and the main character don’t say much to each other. The man doesn’t cry out to Jesus, asking to be healed. He doesn’t acknowledge Jesus right up front with a title that would imply a faith that precedes healing. In fact, the only thing here in the beginning of the story that Jesus says to the blind man is “Go and wash in the pool of Siloam”. Jesus gives that instruction and then disappears from the page until “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”

As became clear in our presentation of the biblical text before you this morning, when it comes to John 9, all of John chapter 9, Jesus says very little. And much of what he does say (“he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him…..I am the light of the world… I came into this world for judgment so that those who do NOT see may see, and those who do see may become blind”), much of what Jesus says leaves the disciples, the Pharisees, the church, you, and me, scratching our collective heads.

Clearly, when it comes to the man born blind and the bulk of his story, Jesus has little role to play. Well, he healed him, and that’s sort of a big deal. But John spends SO much time writing about the man born blind and the neighbors and his parents and the Pharisees. The miracle, one presumes, the spit, the mud, the washing, the miracle happened in the blink of an eye! But John just goes on and on. John goes on and on telling of the man’s growing confession and understanding of Jesus. First, he knows nothing. Then, with his sight restored, he makes reference to a man named Jesus and tells the neighbors he had no idea where Jesus was. Then the man tells the Pharisees about the mud, the washing, and the seeing. “He is a prophet,” the man tells them as they demand to know what he says about the one who healed him. Then, when the Pharisees call the man now healed a second time, and as things must have started to sink in during their interrogation of him, he says, “If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” Finally, after he had been driven out, Jesus goes after him and finds him, in that last exchange between the man and Jesus, he confesses faith in the Son of Man.

John goes on and on to show the man born blind’s evolving view of Jesus. Just as his brain must have had to catch up to his newfound ability to see, his heart was gradually catching on to this Jesus. The Pharisees’ reaction to Jesus healing the blind man moves in the opposite direction. First, they are divided; worried less about the healing and worried more that Jesus was working on the sabbath. Then, “we know that this man is a sinner!” And by the end, their exasperation wins out, claiming to have no idea where this man Jesus even comes from. They see less while the man born blind sees more. With his growing sight comes his expanding response to the Pharisees. With each interrogatory, his answers come with more of an attitude. “Do you also want to become one of his disciples?” Until, as John tells, they reviled him. That’s a harsh word. “They reviled him,” and “they drove him out.”

When you go over to visit the new Princeton University Art Museum, there are some paintings that are best viewed from a bit of distance. Obviously, that’s not unique to the galleries on campus. In any museum, anywhere, some art is best viewed from a distance. One New Testament scholar describes the 9^th chapter of the gospel as John’s “ultimate artistry”. Preachers for more than fifty years have been taught at the seminary down the street to stand close to the biblical text. To use all the tools of biblical historical criticism to examine the text closely. To try to determine authorial intent and dig into the Greek text to find the true meaning. Pastors who identify as biblical, textual preachers were taught to invite their listeners into close reading of the text. In the case of John 9, to zero in on Jesus’ words, trying to figure out Jesus’ intended meaning at the beginning of the chapter and at the end. To dig in and try to get into the heads of the man’s parents, who were worried about those in power and those who make rules, religious power and religious rules, so worried that they would deny their own son. To stand so close to the text that you find yourself distracted by that first question about sin and blindness and the challenge of translating Jesus’ answer, so distracted that this infamous encounter with Jesus and the blind man may just become less meaningful and relevant to anyone who seeks to live the faith. So focused on a close reading of the text that one may, in fact, take away from the ultimate artistry of John.

John invites the reader to take 20, 30, 40 steps back from the artwork and look again. Take a step back, not just for an overview or a summary, like somebody in the office saying “let’s keep it at 30,000 feet”. No, take a step back for a whole other meaning. The man born blind was seeing more and more. The Pharisees were seeing less and less. And with Jesus playing the overture and the reprise, Jesus at the beginning and the end, what comes to the fore is the man born blind’s interrogation by neighbors, parents, and Pharisees; by pretty much everyone! What comes into view is the bombarding cynicism, the barrage of mistrust and questions, and the flat-out trial of the man born blind. The interrogation came not because of the miracle that gave the man sight, but because of his increasing faith in the Messiah and his growing ability to see the reign of God that Jesus brings and the world Jesus intends.

The world is interrogating faith and threatening one’s ability to see the reign of God that Jesus brings and the world Jesus intends. I had coffee this week with Kevin Sack. He is a visiting professor of journalism at Princeton University this semester and the author of the highly acclaimed book Mother Immanuel: Two Centuries of Race, Resistance, and Forgiveness in One Charleston Church. As he told me of his ten years of research, being part of the congregation, and living in Charleston, SC., he described a bit of what the church is like today. Kevin told me that for centuries, the church was a neighborhood church where everyone walked to worship on Sunday morning.  He said there was only one couple who walked to church now. A retired white couple who live in an expensive condo and became members of the congregation after the tragedy. He then lamented the gentrification and the cost of living in the historic southern city. “You know we are sitting in Princeton, right?” According to the Wall Street Journal, 10% of our country’s wealthiest people account for 50% of the spending. According to Sports Illustrated, the five top college quarterbacks are making from $3 million up to $5.5 million. Few things interrogate our faith and threaten our ability to see Jesus more than what the world thinks about money.

NYTimes opinion writer David French is a Presbyterian who writes about faith often. He is more conservative theologically, a former member of the Presbyterian Church of America. A month or two ago, he wrote that the biggest divide when it comes to faith and politics no longer breaks along the traditional lines of right and left. The primary divide for those who identify as Christian in the public square is between decent and indecent. French goes on to quote the Apostle Paul on the fruits of the Spirit: “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.”  The powers and principalities and leaders of the world bombarding and interrogating faith and an ability to see Jesus with an unrecognizable gospel.

Years ago, I was serving at a wine tasting in Joy Saville’s backyard. It was a fundraiser for Housing Initiatives of Princeton. The rector at Trinity and I enjoy participating as pourers at the spring event. Sometime after all the whites and early into the reds, one of the guests at a table called me over, not for a fresh pour but for a comment. “30 years I have lived in Princeton,” he announced in a loud voice, “and I have yet to find anyone who believed in the resurrection of the body!” Now there is actually a long and rich debate in theological circles, and I have had many conversations over the years about what on earth “resurrection of the body” means. But I can tell you his tone didn’t reflect a question. And with me standing there with two bottles of wine in hand and a napkin over my arm, I think the belittling intent was clear. Few things interrogate our faith more than the world’s demeaning sneer.

Saying “Lord, I believe” and yearning to see Jesus more and more isn’t easy amid the world’s relentless interrogation. So come to the Table this morning to be refreshed and nourished by Christ himself, who invites you here. Because you and I know that nourishment isn’t just for today. It is so we can rise tomorrow facing a Monday morning, saying “Lord, I believe”. And then get up on Tuesday and choose again to live by God’s grace, saying “Lord, I believe”. And on Wednesday, saying “Lord, I believe” and then heading out to witness to God’s love and mercy. On Thursday, praying that you will be able to see just a bit more of the world Jesus intends, saying “Lord, I believe”.  Rising on Friday, allowing the Spirit to remind you that you are a child of God and nothing will separate you from God’s love, saying “Lord, I believe”. Come Saturday, finding a voice to speak for God’s justice, and a craving to see Jesus just a bit more, saying “Lord, I believe”.

Because when it comes to the life of faith, and our witness to the gospel, and our service to the kingdom, the world’s interrogation never stops. The world is seeing less and less, and you are seeing more and more. “Lord, I believe!”

John 4:1-42
April 26
David A. Davis
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This water. Give me this water. Give me this water so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming back here to draw water. This water. Living water was what Jesus called it. Living water. It could also be translated as flowing water. As in the water that flows into a deep well. Water is not stagnant but flowing. Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that flowing water? Flowing water. Living water. Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life. “Give me this water,” she said. And those who thereafter overhear the conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan Woman try to grasp the weight of the phrase “living water”. For Jesus clearly intends it to drip with meaning. Living water. Is it the teaching of Jesus recorded in the gospels? Yes. Living water. Is it the promised presence and the anointing of the Holy Spirit? Yes. Living water. Is it the grace and forgiveness that define the gospel and rest at the center of God’s plan of salvation? Yes. Living water. Is it life in Christ in all of its fullness, abundant, eternal? Yes. Give me this water, she said.

You and I could tackle this conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman for a month of Sundays and still be left with plenty to ponder and lots to remember. In the chapter just before here in John, Nicodemus came to Jesus by night. The meeting at the well took place at noon, and Jesus was the one who spoke first. Nicodemus pretty quickly fades away as the teaching of  Jesus soars into John 3:16. Here in chapter 4, the woman at the well stays stage center pretty much the whole time. She goes back and tells others of the man who told her everything that she had done. “He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” Because of her testimony, even her hesitant, question-formed testimony, because of her,  many Samaritans believed in him. It is only as Jesus stayed with them for a few days, as people heard his word for themselves, only as they came to know him as Savior of the world, only then does the woman take a step back in the narrative’s drama.

She hardly fades away. The Samaritan Woman. Not like Nicodemus, who fades into the night while Jesus keeps teaching. Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman is the longest recorded conversation that Jesus had with anybody; the Samaritan woman and Jesus were there at Jacob’s well. Length is only part of what makes it remarkable. The gospel narrator’s comment about Jews and Samaritans not sharing things in common; that’s hard to miss. And the disciples were shocked that Jesus was speaking with a woman? It’s probably more than gender being questioned there. The disciples would have known those old stories of finding a spouse at the well: Abraham and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel, Moses and Zipporah. Of course, they were astonished that Jesus was talking to her there at the well. The well in town was like an Old Testament version of a dating app! So, the reader doesn’t have to work very hard to understand how remarkable this conversation really was; this is the longest and most remarkable conversation.

Do a little online reading about the Samaritan Woman, and you will be amazed at how quickly interpreters, preachers, devotional writers, and bloggers make her out to be a prostitute. Yes, it is a reaction to the part of the dialogue where Jesus asks her about her husband and then comments about the person she is with now. But it’s mostly an overreaction that serves to make the gospel more juicy, not unlike how Mary Magdalene has been forever portrayed. Nowhere in the text does Jesus offer forgiveness or condemn behavior or talk about repentance or say to her, “go and sin no more”. That’s a different conversation in John’s gospel (the woman caught in adultery). Here in this long, drawn-out encounter, Jesus had plenty of time to “go there” if he wanted to.

I figured I could blame men for portraying her as one with questionable character and a shady past, but the attempt to turn this encounter into little more than a morality play doesn’t break along gender lines. It is an unfortunate, slippery slope: portray her as a sinner, assume her question about worship and mountains is intended to change the subject away from her past, belittle that confession that comes as a question (rather than understand it as a gradual and persistent awakening to who Jesus is), and then ignore the affirmation of her bringing others to Jesus. Push the Samaritan Woman to the steamy side and then forget that even before women were the first Easter morning preachers, here in John’s Gospel, the Samaritan woman was the first to offer a testimony to her encounter with the Messiah, the Savior of the World. It’s the safer read, isn’t it? Reducing the gospel to some archetypal account of a loose woman rescued, preached over and over again by evangelists preparing for their own fall from grace, and thus kept far enough away from most of us whose lives lack such sinful flair. The church’s slippery slope that, over and over again, chooses to objectify women rather than listen to their testimony and empower them to preach.

I am convinced by those who suggest a more nuanced reading of ancient marriage laws and writers who wonder if maybe she was unable to have children and therefore cast off again and again. All we know from the story is that she was either widowed or abandoned five times. As one colleague puts it, “one might imagine the woman’s story is tragic rather than scandalous.”  For goodness sake, if the disciples hadn’t come and interrupted the well-side conversation, expressing their shock that Jesus would be talking to a woman, causing her to drop her bucket and rush off, if the disciples hadn’t come back, Jesus and the Samaritan Woman might still be talking there about worshipping God in spirit and truth. Jesus telling her that he is the one called Christ; invoking every part of God’s conversation with Moses back at the burning bush; I am… the one who is speaking to you. That dropped bucket on the ground; a symbol for all to see that she will never thirst again and that with her testimony, she has now been moved, empowered, and ordained to schlep living water. The scandal of the gospel was never about her; it’s what the world did to him. God’s love poured out. Give me this water…

Did you hear? Did you notice how this long conversation started? John tells the reader that Jesus left Judea and started back to Galilee. Before John records that Jesus came to a city, sat by a well because he was tired, before John tells us that it was about noon, John writes, But he had to go through Samaria. It is an odd comment. He had to go through Samaria. It’s odd because it’s not a geographic necessity. One could get from Judea to Jerusalem without going through Samaria. It’s like telling someone to drive to Boston, but you have to use the George Washington Bridge and the Cross Bronx Expressway. There are other ways to get there. He had to go through Samaria. It’s a gospel way of underlining the importance of what is about to come. He had to go. It is a nod, a theological margin note that circles this whole boundary-shattering, inclusive, grace-filled conversation. It had to happen. Almost like Jesus didn’t want to go that way; he had to! So that even there, in the most unexpected of places, even in the most difficult of places, by his grace and with her persistence, in that longest of encounters, living water starts to flow.

Experiencing grace in a place you did not want to go. Two weeks ago, I was in the Dallas-Fort Worth airport Hyatt for three days. I didn’t want to go. But I am serving on a denominational search committee, and it was time for in-person interviews. Other than a dinner out for Texas BBQ, we never left the hotel. The meeting room barely had a window. The view out my window was airport construction. Seven members on the search committee. A few denominational staff members and some folks from a search firm. I only knew one person in the group, and almost all of our work up until then had been online. And the committee had some pretty divergent opinions throughout the process.

I figure at some point there would be a decision. What I didn’t expect in hanging out with Presbyterians I didn’t know for a few days in a hotel was a depth of relationship and friendship to develop. A shared task. A commitment to the work. A mutual love of the church. Meals together. Laughter. Honest sharing. Lots of prayer. I didn’t want to go, and among my new friends, there was an unexpected gift of grace. Some days, some weeks, some seasons, you have to take God’s grace anyway, anytime, you can get it!

I have told you before about our family trip to NYC many Christmases ago. We went to see the musical Godspell. I am dating myself, but I know every word of every song. The night we traveled up there, it was absolutely pouring rain; just teeming, coming down in buckets. As folks rushed into the theater out of the weather, the whole lobby area looked like a changing area at a pool. People are toweling off, taking off wet coats, and checking umbrellas. As we found our seats and had some time to look around the rather small, theater-in-the-round, I noticed a drip coming from the ceiling. Given the amount of rain, a leak wasn’t a surprise. It was a slow, steady drip, falling right on the stage there in the middle of the theater.  Instead of putting a bucket onstage, I noticed they had opened one of those trap doors that would lead into places unknown in the bowels of a theater under the stage. How convenient, I thought to myself. The leak was perfectly located. Drip. Drip. Drip. Of course, the joke was on me (and the rest of us in the audience). Very early on, that drip-catching trap door was opened and became a baptismal fount as the characters splashed in grace, baptized by John. The fount filled not by a rush, or a mighty pour, but by a drip, drip, drip.

The Samaritan woman and her experience of the Living Water: it wasn’t like a fire hose opening up. It came in the drips and drabs of the longest of encounters. It was her yearning, her persistence, her elongated inquiry, and the bold grace of the Savior that took him to the most unexpected of places, courting the most unexpected of people. Some in this life of faith have been blessed by a transformation that comes like a teeming, drenching rain. (One thing I know, I was blind but now I see). Most of us, I imagine, trudge along for the long haul, experiencing the grace of Christ in the drips along the way. And here’s the promise that comes from Jesus and his encounter with the Samaritan woman: that you and I would find grace in the places we have to go, not just where we want to go. That grace will find us in the most unexpected places and through the most unexpected people.

Droplets of the teaching of Jesus recorded in the gospels; like welcoming children and loving your enemy and turning the other cheek and you can’t serve God and mammon; just a sprinkle of the Holy Spirit; the wordless presence that brings peace and comfort not at all like what the world has to give; even a trickle of the grace and forgiveness that everyday helps you to find your place in God’s plan of salvation; the sips of the life Christ offers in all of its fullness; abundant, eternal, sips that bring joy when the morning comes, sips that help broken hearts to sing again, sips that allow our lips to yet again praise God.

A fire hose of grace; maybe, every now and then….but most days, when the living water just drips….

Give me this water. Give us that water, O God….

John 3:1-17
April 19
David A. Davis
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For the next four Sundays, we are going to be in the Gospel of John, reading about, preaching about, and pondering several conversations with Jesus. Nicodemus. The Woman at the Well. The man born blind. Mary and Martha. As to gospel comparisons, all of them are rather robust in terms of dialogue and number of verses. Because we are in John, each of the conversations comes with a phrase, a metaphor, an image that lingers: born again, living water, light of the world, resurrection and life. But when you string these four conversations together and ponder how the gospel writer seems to use the dialogue to slow the narrative, the drama, it is as if the reader is being invited to linger for a while, to sit with the characters for a while. Instead of rushing to figure out what it means to be born again, or trying to pin down a definition of Living Water, or falling in with the disciples who want to know who sinned, the blind man or his parents, or arguing about whether Lazarus was really dead or just sleeping, what if we just allow ourselves to listen in on the conversations, to sit a while with Nicodemus and the woman at the well and the man born blind and Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. This morning, it’s the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus.

When the reader of John’s gospel comes to chapter 3, it is hard not to rush to John 3:16. It is so easy for the preacher, the listener, to be influenced by the interpretive landscape which has been so dominated by what it means to be “born again”, “born from above”. When Jesus says to Nicodemus, “no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above”, all eyes and ears focus on “born from above.” But the term “kingdom of God”, “see the kingdom of God, it is the only time the phrase is used in all of John’s gospel.  In Mark, right off the bat Jesus is preaching: “the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has come near.” In Luke Jesus comes right out and affirms “the kingdom of God is among you.” In Matthew, Jesus tells those parables about the coming kingdom of God: the wise and foolish maidens, the talents, the sheep and the goats. But not John; as for the kingdom of God in John, only here: “no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above”.

Nicodemus: a Pharisee, a leader of the Jews. Nicodemus acknowledges Jesus as a teacher, as one who comes from God, and as one who has done these signs. “Signs” are key throughout John’s gospel. Here so early, one sign would be the water turned to wine at the Wedding in Cana. Nicodemus, though he comes to Jesus in the cover of darkness, begins with an acknowledgement, an openness, some kind of recognition. “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.”  Jesus answered Nicodemus, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” The phrase could be “born from above” or “born again,” and Nicodemus, like the readers of John and the church pretty much ever since, immediately tries to figure out what on earth Jesus meant. “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?”

Jesus takes the opportunity provided by the ambiguous metaphor and the watery language and moves in a spiritual/theological direction. A fairly common move for Jesus; using the ordinary to then leap to the extraordinary: a mustard seed, a fig tree, a man who had two sons. This time, the ordinary comes from his use of words; a term like “born from above”. “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born from the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above’. The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Jesus’ reference to the wind and the Spirit here is not to be missed. It is not just “born from above” that is perplexing. For “wind” and “spirit” is the same word in the Greek text. The wind, the spirit blows where it chooses. If it wasn’t at night, if it wasn’t just Jesus and Nicodemus in conversation alone, one can imagine someone listening in saying, “I see what you did there, Jesus.” Wind and spirit.

Now, with his head spinning, Nicodemus loses the title of Rabbi or teacher in responding. He settles for something more like “huh” or “what”; “how can these things be?” One can imagine Nicodemus taking a step or two back from Jesus. Jesus tosses the teacher label right back at Nicodemus. Just as Nicodemus addressed Jesus as teacher when the conversation started, Jesus effectively shuts down the encounter with Nicodemus by questioning the Pharisee’s educator status: “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?” And it all started with “no one can see the kingdom of God without…”   the Spirit blowing where it chooses.

I say Jesus ends the conversation with Nicodemus because at this point, Nicodemus appears to leave the stage. He has no more lines. John’s Jesus continues the teaching about earthly things and heavenly things, but the dialogue with Nicodemus is over at v. 10. Not only does Nicodemus come to Jesus by night here in John’s gospel, but his character also fades to black much quicker than you think. By the time John’s Jesus gets to “For God so loved the world….”, by the time someone stands up at a sporting event with John 3:16 on a sign, by the time the church gets to talking about being born again and “whosoever believes in him may not perish but have eternal life”, by the time all of that happens, Nicodemus has long since disappeared.

A careful reading of John’s gospel reveals that Nicodemus didn’t go away completely or forever. Later in John chapter 7, the temple police and the Pharisees were in a bit of a tizzy about whether to arrest Jesus. It is Nicodemus who offers a bit of a defence of Jesus, reminding the others that the law does not judge people without giving them a hearing. It’s hardly a major appearance and far from a strident defence, but in John’s gospel, Nicodemus is still around. Then, when Jesus was crucified (John 19), it is Nicodemus who went with Joseph of Arimathea to remove the body of Jesus and prepare his body for burial. According to John, Nicodemus was carrying a mixture of myrrh and aloes that weighed a hundred pounds. That’s a lot.

Nicodemus, the one who had first come to Jesus by night, the one who so quickly faded into the night when he couldn’t understand, the one whose questions and hesitations set the table for John 3:16, the one so easily defined as the prototypical intellectual cynic and doubter and religious leader who tries but doesn’t get it,  Nicodemus is the one who shows up the cross with an extraordinary and extravagant amount of ointment to care for the crucified, dead, Teacher who came from God. Maybe it’s not a big old exclamation point when it comes to the role of Nicodemus, but he’s still there. There is no Thomas like affirmation, “my Lord and my God”, but he’s still there. There is no indication in the gospel that Nicodemus was ever able to fully understand what it meant to be born from above, but there he was, taking down the body of Jesus and bearing the weight of absolutely all that was needed to give Jesus the burial fit for a king. He was still there. Even there in the margins of John’s gospel, on the edges of the ministry of Jesus, Nicodemus saw something. Nicodemus saw something of the kingdom of God. He was there. Right there until the end.  Serving the Son of God, the Saviour of the world.

In a season when politicians and pundits and elected officials are questioning, criticizing, and belittling how the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church reads and interprets scripture, how he reads the bible, one might be tempted to see the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus as a debate or even an argument. As Nicodemus moves to the background of scripture’s page, he somehow was the loser in an encounter with the Lord, who put him in his place. But then there he is, at the end. Along with Joseph of Arimathea, doing what seems an ordinary task. Burying the dead. Because he saw something.

Hanna Reichel was here at Nassau Church a few weeks ago talking about their book For Such A Time as This: An Emergency Devotional. In the introduction to the work that is worth reading way more than once, Professor Reichel writes this: “I have increasingly come to appreciate the less dramatic and more mundane, less corporate and more individual, less exceptional and simply ongoing task of faithful living as the world around is rapidly transforming; the task of doing all our life and work as confession- as a response to God that, even so responds with a different kind of resolve to the world around us….Only some of us have the necessary time and platform to proclaim the faith of the church, or even the bandwidth to write the kind of forceful manifestos that might, or in some future, become something like a confession of the church. But all of us must keep living despite what feels like the end of the world, and this task requires just as much discernment, just as much attention, just as much resourcing.” Less dramatic and more mundane. Less exceptional and a simple task of living in the face of what feels like the end of the world. That sounds like Nicodemus to me, from the margins. Not understanding everything. There at the end. Burying the dead. “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.”

“No one can see the kingdom of God without…”  It’s not a prescription, it’s a promise. It’s not a test, it’s an affirmation of God’s Spirit. That for those who follow Jesus, it’s less about right answers and more about glimpsing the kingdom; less about being able to figure it all out and more about finding ways to further serve him and his kingdom. It’s less about having a doubt-free life and much more about caring, anointing and working for those who suffer, knowing that in the broken-hearted you will see the very face of Christ. “No one can see the kingdom of God without…”  Jesus wasn’t seeking a following of people who thought they were right all the time. He was searching for any and all who would bear the weight of servanthood, even from the margins. Bearing the weight of serving him and his kingdom, and still being there until the end. Because when you are born of the Spirit, when the Spirit of God is at work, when the wind blows, you will see the kingdom of God.

John 21:15-19
April 12
Andrew Scales
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John 20:1-18
April 5
David A. Davis
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I am standing before you to preach my 40^th Easter sermon. To be honest with you, I’m sort of tired of listening to my own voice on resurrection hope. So I thought I would begin with a few other voices. “Too often”, one preacher begins, “Easter comes across very sentimentally, like a dessert wafer—airy and sweet. But there’s nothing sentimental about Easter. Easter represents a demand as well as a promise, a demand not that we sympathize with the crucified Christ, but that we pledge our loyalty to the Risen One….I don’t see how you can proclaim allegiance to the risen Lord and then allow a life once again to lull you to sleep, to smother you in convention, to choke you with success.

Another preacher finishes the Easter sermon like this: “The gospel accounts of the resurrection tell us not to be afraid—because new life is frightening. It is unnatural. To expect a sealed tomb, and find one filled with angels, to hunt the past and discover the future, to seek a corpse and find the risen Lord—none of this is natural. Death is natural. Loss is natural. Grief is natural. But those stones have been rolled away to reveal the highly unnatural truth. By the light of this [Easter] day, God has planted a seed of life in us that cannot be killed; and if we remember that, then there is nothing we cannot do: move mountains, banish fear, love our enemies, change the world!”

A preacher on Easter morning in Mark’s gospel, where the Risen Christ never appears in what scholars call “the shorter ending”; “If we could get our hands on Jesus, we would surely throttle the life out of him as did his contemporaries. But we can’t. Jesus is free, out of the tomb, beyond our control, and beyond death. That’s why the story is good news. He’s free so that he can make his way into our lives and actually liberate as God has planned since before the foundation of the world…. if God’s entire resurrection promise is little more than believing in a Jesus who has saved everyone in principle but never gets close enough to unsettle anyone in particular”, well, you may as well leave him in the tomb.”

These Easter morning preachers are attempting to shatter the domesticated gospel. They are challenging the “Hallmark-ification” of both the reality and relentlessness of death and the earthshaking power of resurrection hope. A domesticated gospel shaped to make you feel better, to help you achieve more, to justify all your opinions, and excuse your actions. A domesticated gospel is one where any hard edges are safely sanded down; edges that call for sacrifice, edges of discipleship that require investments of time and effort, edges formed by God’s call for justice and righteousness, edges of discomfort when one actually listens to the voices of those the culture has so long silenced. A domesticated gospel never challenges the rich, or speaks truth to power, or questions humanity’s lust for violence, or calls out the blasphemy of claiming to wage a war “in Jesus’ name”.   Easter morning with the domesticated gospel clings to the sentimentality, and the finery, and a nice brunch, or a dessert wafer, airy, and sweet.

Mary stood weeping. She had been the first to see the stone rolled away. Convinced that someone had taken the body of Jesus, Mary ran to tell the others. She remained unconvinced by the disciples’ empty tomb conversion; they saw the empty tomb and believed. Mary was unmoved by linen clothes wadded up in a ball. After the two disciples ran back to their homes, Mary stayed. Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. Every now and then, she must have bent over to look in, trying to see if the body was there, and she just missed it, to see if this ongoing spectacle of the empire’s law enforcement murdering her teacher would end. Not even the angels could comfort her. “I don’t know where they have laid him!” Even her first sight of Jesus, her encounter with the one now raised from the dead, even that didn’t convince her. “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him.” Mary’s first brush with the mystery of resurrection didn’t seem to spare her from her grief and broken heart.

That’s when Jesus called her by name. Then Mary knew it was him.  “Teacher”. Mary says in response. Jesus says to Mary, “Do not hold on to me”. Do not grab hold here. Don’t cling to me here. Do not hold on to me here in the place of death.“I have not yet ascended to the Father.” There is no indication that Mary was going in for a hug. Matthew tells of the women falling to worship the Risen Christ and grabbing his feet. But here in John, Mary just says “Rabbouni”. One writer wonders if maybe the use of the title is why Jesus tells Mary not to cling. “Teacher” is his Friday name, but it’s now Sunday, the Day of Resurrection.

Jesus must have known that in some fashion Mary simply wanted to hold on to the way things were; hold on to her relationship with the Teacher who healed the sick and touched the outcasts and modeled for her and the others what a faith-filled life here on earth could be; caring for the poor, feasting with tax collectors, feeding the hungry, rattling the pious, and proclaiming the good news. Mary wanted to stop the weeping and hang on to her world. But resurrection power comes from the hand of God. The victory over the forces of death and darkness comes with Jesus seated at the right hand of God in all power and honor and glory. When the heavenly chorus gathers around the throne and starts to sing “Hallelujah…For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth”. As Barbara Brown Taylor puts it, Mary is not to hold on because Jesus is on his way back to God, and he is taking the whole blasted, broken world with him.

Mary wants to cling, but Mary’s world will never be the same. More than shaking off the grief that ripped at her heart and getting back to normal following in the Teachers footsteps and yearning to be faithful, more than that, this resurrection life is about ushering in the very reign of God; it’s about toppling the powers and the principalities that prefer darkness and unleash evil in the world, it’s about life conquering death, forgiveness stomping on hatred, generosity squelching greed, love overcoming bitterness and division, the first being last, swords being smashed into plowshares, the hungry pushing away from the table now full, the poor being lifted up while the rich stoop down to help with the lifting. Mary’s world will never be the same because Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed!

Years ago, a member of the faculty at Princeton Theological Seminary died after a long illness. Professor Don Juel taught New Testament. He was the preacher I quoted earlier who said, “If God’s entire resurrection promise is little more than believing in a Jesus who has saved everyone in principle but never gets close enough to unsettle anyone in particular”, well, you may as well leave him in the tomb.”  We had the funeral here in the sanctuary with the casket present. Dr. Juel’s roots were Lutheran. I led the service along with the Lutheran pastor from Abiding Presence Lutheran Church in Ewing. It still is the only funeral where I have celebrated the Lord’s Supper. After the service, the entire congregation went over to Princeton Cemetery. It was early spring, and the cemetery was rather a mess of melting snow and a bit of rain. At the reception afterward, everyone was warming up, continuing to celebrate and remember Dr. Juel with some light refreshments and plenty of wine. I remember thinking the gathering was sort of an extension of the fellowship with the communion of saints at the Lord’s Supper. A foretaste of glory divine. At one point, I looked down at my shoes and saw how they were still muddy from the cemetery. Then I looked around, and pretty much everyone’s shoes had mud on them from the cemetery. I was struck by all of Professor Juel’s faculty colleagues who taught bible and theology and church history and preaching and pastoral care and Christian education, all those colleagues who taught preachers like me about resurrection hope were celebrating life, abundant and eternal, with the mud from the grave on their shoes.

Standing in a Good Friday world and daring to live into an Easter one. That’s the call of the Risen Christ. “Do not hold on to me…here”.  Yearn deep down to cling to that which you know and yet in the power of the Holy Spirit, be willing to point to that which God knows is yet to come. For Christ is Risen! Facing the onslaught of death over and over again and still, by God’s grace, reaching to the very depth of your soul to announce “I have seen the Lord”.  For Christ is risen! Surrounded, indeed overwhelmed, by the grief and suffering and heartbreak that so mercilessly defines what it means to be human, and yet daring to live as Easter people who, clinging to the very promise of God, find the strength even at the grave to proclaim “Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”  For Christ is Risen! To stand up in a Good Friday world, daring to live into an Easter one inspired by the gospel we read, we hear from the lips of Jesus, and then begging, pleading, praying, working, even demanding “a more excellent way”.  For Christ is Risen. To tread each and every day through the muck and mud of the world’s slush of darkness and death, and by nothing other than the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, still believing, still living, still serving because in Jesus Christ, our best days are always yet to come! For Christ is Risen.

1 John (selected verses)
April 2
David A. Davis
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Philippians 4:4-8
March 22
Nassau Youth
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Matthew 21:1-11
March 29
David A. Davis
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The procession comes from the Mount of Olives. One can easily see Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives. Just down the hill from the Mount of Olives is the Garden of Gethsemane. Between the Mount of Olives and Jerusalem is the Kidron Valley. The procession started at the top of the Mount of Olives, went down the steep hill, passed the Garden of Gethsemane, through the Kidron valley, and up the steep hill to the holy city of Jerusalem. The only way to get to Jerusalem from any direction is to go up. Somewhere in between the Mount of Olives and the city was a village. That is where two of the disciples found the colt and the donkey. They brought them back up the hill, and the procession started. A donkey. A colt. Cloaks on the animals. Cloaks on the pathway. Branches spread along the way as well. Crowds are going ahead. Crowds following behind. All shouting “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” Jesus and the procession come to one of the gates into the walled city of Jerusalem. As Jesus enters the city, Matthew tells his readers that “the whole city was in turmoil.” The crowd that went before and the crowd that followed Jesus, they were shouting “Save, save, save,” But the city, the whole city was in turmoil.

All four gospels tell of Jesus “Triumphal Entry” into Jerusalem. Matthew is the only gospel that tells of the city of Jerusalem in turmoil. Matthew describing the city in turmoil is the only time the word “turmoil” occurs in the New Revised Standard Version of the New Testament. Other English translations read that “the city was stirred”. The King James tells of the city being “moved”. Eugene Peterson, in his paraphrase, writes that the city was being “shaken”, not stirred, not moved. Moved. Stirred. Shaken. Turmoil.

In the Greek text, the word used to describe the state of the city here is a cognate of the English word “seismic.” It is the same word Matthew uses when the earth shook as Jesus breathed his last. “Then Jesus cried again with a loud voice,” Matthew records, “At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from the top to the bottom. The earth shook, and the rocks were split.” It is the same word Matthew uses when the earth shook that first Easter morning. “After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. And suddenly there was a great earthquake.” Not just in Matthew, but throughout scripture, when a form of the word is used, it refers to an earthquake kind of thing. The only other time I can find that the word is used to describe anything other than the earth shaking is when Matthew writes about the guards seeing the Risen Christ. “His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing was white as snow. For fear of him, the guards shook and became like dead men.”  When the Palm Sunday procession arrived in Jerusalem, the whole city was shaking. The whole city shook. The whole city was in turmoil. It was like an earthquake.

Here’s a preacher’s traditional way, then, of interpreting the turmoil. With attention paid to Matthew’s word choice, the reader discovers the connection between the Triumphal Entry, the crucifixion, and the resurrection. The city shaking is, at the very least, a foreshadowing of the earth-shattering events that will come to pass in the days to come in Jerusalem. Perhaps, the arrival of the Messiah at the city gate demands a cosmic affirmation as well. The long-awaited, heavenly trumpeted Messiah is here. He reaches the threshold of the city, and the city quakes. For the Messiah to arrive is a momentous, earth-moving event; just like the death of the Son of God, just like when the Savior of the world rises again. The city was in turmoil, and all of creation shook with it as the Savior finally came knocking.

In addition to the symbolism that points to an affirmation from above when it comes to the turmoil, the shake,  there is an assumption that the stir is caused by the arrival of the Jesus parade. “When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, ‘Who is this?’” One sort of just figures that there’s this commotion, this buzz, as Jesus and the crowds make their way through the gate. “Who is this? Who is that? Do you know who that is? What’s all this about?” The sort of bottleneck, gaper delay, ambulance chasing buzz. It’s the talk of the town.  A turmoil made greater with the messiah talk, the messiah shouts. The messiah is supposed to arrive on a stallion prepared to bring victory over the empire by power and might, shock and awe, ushering in God’s kingdom to cripple, to topple, to crush, the kingdoms of this world. But a donkey? A colt? Cloaks on the animals. Cloaks on the pathway. Branches spread along the way as well. A motley, ragtag, underwhelming crowd shouting “Save, save, save.” “Who is this?”

But the turmoil must be more. You have heard me say this before: when you bring the world to bear on an unsuspecting biblical text, the Spirit works to turn the page of scripture into God’s living word. Which is to say, you cannot read the Triumphal Entry in Matthew in this world, in this nation right now, and not think the turmoil has to be more. Matthew 21:10; what if it reads more like this: When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city in turmoil…was asking, “Who is this”? When Jesus came into Jerusalem, the whole turmoiled city was asking, “Who is this?” When Jesus came into Jerusalem, that shaking, fear-driven, riled up, city in turmoil….everyone was asking, “Who is this?” What if the turmoil wasn’t caused by the asking or by the chatter? What if the turmoil really wasn’t caused by Jesus’ arrival at all? What if the stir, the shaking, the turmoil was an apt description of the city before Jesus got there? What if Jesus came to Jerusalem precisely because it was a city in turmoil? Jesus came to Jerusalem not just for those who were shouting “Hosanna,” but he came for a whole city that was shaking in fear!!

The whole city in turmoil. The city where the powers and principalities meet. The city where the rich get richer and the poor beg at the gate. The city where religious ritual becomes a pay-to-play business. The city where the pious exaggerate their wealth and generosity, while the poor widow puts in all the living that she has. The city where the most faithful religious leaders do their best and appointed political leaders can’t ever really win. A city where the empire rages with its power and fear is stoked to control the people. A city where violence never seems to cease, and blood in the streets has become the norm. A city that had, that has a timelessness to it. An archetype-alness to it. A city that moved Jesus to tears in Luke’s gospel. The turmoil of Jerusalem. It was Jerusalem just being Jerusalem. Full of the shaking, stirring, moving, quaking reality of the human condition. And Jesus rode right smack into the middle of all that… turmoil.

Turmoil doesn’t begin to describe it, does it? The unending promise of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that he still rides in to the thick of this….turmoil, into all that shakes not just in the world, in the nation, but in the turmoil of our lives; your life and mine. God knows the turmoil out there is quite enough, but look around in here. I remember a former student of mine coming to see me in my office when she came back to Princeton after a year or so in her first call as a solo pastor. “I look out over my congregation, some Sundays it’s almost paralyzing and so daunting that I am expected to have something to say”, she said to me. She was talking about the pastoral realities of life and the burden of knowing all the joys and sorrows people bear. I told our Lenten small group that, pretty much every Sunday from where I sit in this room, I can see someone shedding tears. And in times like this, it feels like there’s more. More tears. All this….turmoil.

All the turmoil of your life and mine. All of it added up, multiplied, all piled up right here. And Christ Jesus promises to march smack into the middle of it all, into the middle of us all. Not just our acclamations but our fears. Not just our affirmations but our doubts. Not just our joys but our sorrows. Not just our palm-waving shout but our gut-churning plea. He marches right into the middle of it all. Come, King Jesus, even here, even now. Save! Save! Save!

It’s his Palm Sunday promise. It’s our Palm Sunday prayer.