Lord, if you had been here… Sermon 5 Lent A

Here is a sermon I wrote back in 1996. It looks at the story of Lazarus from the point of view of the sisters who questions Jesus by saying "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." It looks at how loss in our own lives leads to that questioning of God, but ultimately can lead to a deeper knowledge of how much we are loved.

5 Lent A - Lazarus

John 11:1-44

3/24/96

St. Alban’s Episcopal Church

By Rev. Valerie Hart

As I read the gospel for today, the line that jumped out to me was “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”  If only you had been here. How often in our lives we say or feel that. If only God had provided a miracle and my mother had not died. If only I had been offered a better job. If only my spouse had not divorced me. If only I had a little more money. If only I had a little more time. If only I had children. If only I didn’t have small children to care for. If only God would heal me of my physical, emotional, or spiritual suffering.

“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” We can’t really blame Mary and Martha for feeling this way. After all, they had seen Jesus heal people who were a lot sicker that Lazarus. He had told the lame to walk and the blind to see. Why didn’t he heal their brother, who was his friend, not just a stranger on the street. They had sent for him to come, but he had delayed. If he really cared he would have come immediately. Or he could have easily healed him from a distance. Yet Jesus let Mary and Martha’s brother, his beloved friend, Lazarus, die. He had let him die without even trying to heal him.

“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

Sometimes we too feel that Jesus has abandoned us. If he really loves me the way the Bible and church tell us me does, why am I suffering? Why do I sometimes feel alone, abandoned? Why doesn’t he respond to my fervent prayers? If he loves me he would heal me. If he loves me he would take away this pain. If he loves me he would change the heart of my husband or wife. If he loved me my loved one would not have died.

After all, where was Jesus, this lover of souls, this lover of little children, when that insane incarnation of evil entered a classroom in Scotland and started shooting?

“Lord, if only you had been there they would not have died.” must be the agonizing feelings of the parents who mourn.

What kind of callous person does not come immediately when a friend is ill? What kind of person delays for days for no clear reason? What kind of God let’s there be so much senseless suffering in the world?

“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

Yet Jesus weeps. He feels the pain and suffering of Mary and Martha, he grieves for the death of Lazarus, he weeps for the very human sorrow. Just as Jesus weeps with us in our pain, grieves with us in our grief, fears with us in our fears, and knows the anguish of feeling abandoned.

God could change all this. The all mighty creator could get rid of all suffering and pain. Jesus could have kept Lazarus alive. But that is not what happened. God leaves suffering and sin in the world. Jesus let Lazarus die. Why?

When hearing of Lazarus’ illness Jesus says that the illness is for God’s glory. He also says that he is glad he was not there “so that you may believe.”

“Lord, if you had been here our brother would not have died.” mourns Mary and Martha. Jesus’ response is that without the death of Lazarus, they and the disciples would not fully believe, would not know the true power of God and would not fully understand who Jesus is. It was necessary for Lazarus to die, painful as that was, for God’s glory to be fully known.

Jesus could have chosen not to submit to the cross. He could have chosen a different path. He could have avoided the pain and suffering involved. He could have easily justified to himself reasons to not die. He asked God to remove the cup he was about to have to drink from. Perhaps he prayed to his Father “If only I don’t have to die this way then.....” But the suffering of Christ was necessary for us, each of us, to come to know how much we are loved. There was no other way. It was necessary for Lazarus to die for Jesus to glorify God through bringing him back to life. It was necessary for Christ to die in order to demonstrate the power of God’s love through the resurrection.

Sometimes we must go through periods of intense pain, in order to know God at a deeper level.

“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” but her belief would be weaker, and she would not have known the full power of God.

When we go through painful periods in our life, whether the death of a loved one, the end of a relationship, extended illness, loss of job, bouts of depression, the reason it is so painful is that a part of us is dying. A part of our egos, of who we thought we were, is dying. Perhaps the good daughter, or the perfect wife, or the ultimate provider - those images of who we think we are - is dying. And it hurts, it hurts a great deal to have part of our self identity die, part of who we think we are. Yet without death, there can be no resurrection. Without Good Friday, there can be no Easter. Without the pain of loss we are not able to realize how deeply we need God’s grace, how much we long for Jesus to be part of our lives, how deeply we are loved.

Have you ever noticed that it seems to be the times when we are most devastated, feeling worst about who we are and what is happening in our lives, that if we can open up to another person and share our pain we discover that we are loved more deeply than we would ever acknowledge before?

Have you ever noticed that it is when we have reached bottom, when our suffering is greatest, that we most realize our need for God? It is when we are humbled by life’s difficulties that we are able to acknowledge our need for grace and to receive it abundantly. It is after a time in which we have died to who we thought we were that we come to a greater realization of who we really are - Beloved children of God.

Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.

Lord, if you had been here, I would not have had to die a little inside.

Lord, if you had been here, I would not have had this opportunity to see the glory of God.

Lord, if you had been here, I would not have seen you weep and know that you weep with all those who grieve.

Lord, if you had been there, we would not know of your power.

Lord, if you yourself had not died, we would not know of your resurrection.

Let us pray

Jesus we thank you for the difficult periods in our lives that have led to a deeper knowledge of you and a greater capacity to love and be loved. We thank you for the assurance that you weep with us and walk with us. And we thank you for your sacrifice on the cross that tells us that out of every death, every loss, you have the power to bring resurrection, for you are the resurrection and the life. AMEN

Fourth Sunday of Lent year A - The man born blind

In the Gospel for the Fourth Sunday in Lent John describes the healing of a man who was born blind. In the sermon I gave in 2011 I considered the different kinds of blindness that are described in the Gospel and how in many ways the man born blind could "see" what others could not. 

I also discussed the importance of the  ministry of healing in the church.

I hope you find this helpful to your preaching and/or your daily life, for we all have our blind spots.

Lent 4 A

April 3, 2011

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church Arroyo Grande

The Rev. Valerie A Hart

In this rather long Gospel reading we hear about a number of different kinds of blindness. First, and most obvious, is the man who is born blind, and he was healed of his physical blindness. His illness was of the body. There was something wrong with his eyes, and Jesus fixed it so that he could see.

But there was more profound illness and blindness going on in this story. There was the blindness of the people who were neighbors and had seen this man begging his whole life and yet had never really seen him as other than that blind beggar. And when he could see again, they couldn’t recognize him. They weren’t sure it was the same person because they had only seen his blindness and not the person. And then of course there is the blindness of the Pharisees who were so concerned with their rules and regulations that couldn’t see and acknowledge a miracle when it happened.

Now you will notice that most of the time in the Gospels, when Jesus heals someone he can do it from a distance, or he might touch them, or he might put his hands on the eyes or the ears to heal them, but in this story it is different. He spits on the ground, on the dust, and he makes mud from it. Now that’s significant because according to the rules of the Sabbath you are not supposed to knead bread, you are not supposed to make mortar, you are not supposed to do any kind of mixing together. So by taking his spit and some dust and making mud out of it he was breaking the Sabbath rules. He must have done that with awareness. As part of why he chose to heal in that manner. So when he put the mud on the man’s eyes and sent him off to wash he must have known how the Pharisees would react. And sure enough, when the Pharisees hear about it they are blind to what really happened. All they can see is that someone broke one of the minute rules. And therefore they labeled Jesus as a sinner.

This harkens back to the beginning of the story when the disciples ask Jesus, “This blind man here, who is the sinner? Was it he or his parents?” Because they assumed that for such a horrible thing as being blind from birth someone had to have sinned. They were blind to seeing the reality, and Jesus said, “He was blind so that the works of God can be seen.” For the glory of God, not because anybody sinned.

There’s lots of blindness here. The one who isn’t blind is the man who is born blind. Because he sees. He sees who Christ is. First he says he’s a prophet, and then he says he believes. And he had great courage. He is willing to speak out and say that this Jesus must be a prophet even though he knew that the Pharisees would kick him out, and even though his parents, who according to our understanding didn’t have any illness at all, didn’t have the courage to speak. They had a blindness out of fear.

There’s lots of different kinds of blindness, and most of us know very well that wonderful hymn Amazing Grace. “Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost and now I’m found, was blind and now I see.” John Knox, who wrote that was never physically blind. He could always see with his eyes, but grace let him discover that he had a more problematic kind of blindness. He was blind to the suffering around him, he was blind to the humanity of people around him and he was blind to what he was doing to them. It was a much greater illness than to not have sight. You see, he was a captain of a slave ship. His ship would go to Africa and the cargo hold would be packed full with slaves. These were people who had been captured, and were stuffed into the cargo hole like cattle. They suffered terribly on the trip to the Americas. They struggled with illness and death and if they survived they were sold into slavery. John Knox would get his money and go right back and fill up the ship again. He was blind to the suffering that was right there in the bottom of his ship. But at one point grace touched him and opened his eyes to see what he was doing. He was blind and suddenly he could see. He was transformed and became a minister and wrote that hymn that touches all of us. Because we all have ways in which we are blind and we all need that grace that will open our eyes.

Jesus’ healing is an important part of the church. He not only healed people, but he sent out his disciples to heal. He told them to heal physical maladies. He told them to drive out demons, which is how mental disorders were described back then. Instead of saying someone was mentally ill it was said that they had a demon. So they healed mental-emotional illnesses. And they were to preach the coming of the kingdom of God, which is to heal spiritual illnesses. That was an important part of their ministry, and what Jesus told them to continue to do. You find it in the Acts of the Apostles where the Apostles continue to go out and heal people.

The church has included that throughout it’s history. Healing has been an important part of ministry. Jesus describes himself as the “light of the world” and Paul says that we have become the light. We can be the healing presence of God. And when we pray for healing, when we lay on hands for healing as the disciples did we offer ourselves to be an instrument of God’s healing grace in the world. We ask that God’s healing heal the body mind and spirit of the person we pray with or for.

It is an important part of the Episcopal Church and it has been an important part of St. Barnabas for a long time. Our Wednesday, mid week service, is a healing service. Every week as part of that communion service we offer the laying on of hands and invite people to come up for that gift.

Some people are given a gift of healing. Sometimes people know they have a gift for healing prayer but they don’t want to admit it to themselves. Sometimes you may have a sense of it but you are not going to tell anybody else, and some people know that it is a ministry that they are called to. There is an organization called the Order of St. Luke’s that Chris Finch can tell you more about. Sandra Barnard has a small group that is part of this order, in which people are encouraged to develop and use the gifts of healing. So if you want more information about that you can talk to me, you can talk to Rev. Jeremy, or you can talk to Chris or you can talk to Rev. Sandra and learn more about the order of St. Luke’s. We are going to try and get this going here at St. Barnabas, and get some more people involved in it.

During our regular Sunday service during communion we usually have someone standing in the back of the church offering healing prayers. But today what we are going to do is we are going to have healing prayers as part of this service like we do at our Wednesday service. So, after I am done with the sermon we will have the creed and then we will do the litany of healing which is the Prayers of the People that we use on Wednesday morning. After the confession I will invite you to come up and receive the laying on of hands, for yourself or someone else, for healing of the body, or of the mind or of the spirit. We will offer prayers with you, inviting God to work in your life in a healing way. I have seen times when people have had physical maladies healed in ways that really shocked the doctors. I have seen people who had mental issues that did much better. I have seen people whose spiritual life has been uplifted through prayer. Most of the time I have no idea how God has responded to the prayers. Because I trust that whatever is needed God is able to provide and we can be an instrument of God’s healing by inviting the Holy Spirit to be there and transform people.

So when it comes time, you will be invited to come forward. Rev. Jeremy. Chris, Kathy Bond and I will all be behind the altar rail to offer healing prayers. We usually come and kneel around on the altar rail. If you feel called to also lay on hands on people and help with the prayers you are welcome to do so. If you have any physical limitations and it is difficult for you to come forward we will be happy to come to you in your pew. Christ is the light of the world and we are to be God’s light now.

Amen

Third Sunday of Lent year A

The third Sunday of Lent this year brings us the wonderful story of the woman at the well. In this sermon that I gave in 2011 at St. Barnabas I ask the question of how she recognized Jesus as the Messiah and use Paul's discussion of grace to help answer that question.
Hope you find this helpful.

3 Lent A

Transcribed from a sermon given at

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

March 20, 2011

By Rev. Valerie Hart

I love this part of the Gospel of John about the Samaritan woman. It is an amazing piece of literature, this dialogue between the Samaritan woman and Jesus. It is an incredibly deep theological conversation, with a woman! From Samaria! Remember gospel reading for last week last week, which is just before this one John’s Gospel? It is the story of Nicodemus and how Nicodemus, who is a teacher in Israel and in the Sanhedrin, snuck at night to go and talk to Jesus, and Jesus spoke to him about being born again. Nicodemus was totally confused and had no idea what Jesus was getting at. Then right after that we have Jesus talking to a Samaritan woman, a person who wasn’t even Jewish, a person who was a woman who had no education who had no claim to know anything, and yet they have this wonderful, deep theological discussion. And she is able to keep up with Jesus as he talked about worship and living water and all kinds of really profound things. At the end she recognizes him as being the Messiah.

This would be like if Jesus came again and he was walking around in the Five Cities Area. He was preaching and teaching and some people were impressed. So there was a pastor of a church, it could be from the Lutheran church or a non-denominational church or even the Episcopal Church, who has had a seminary education and thinks they understand theology. They hear that this guy is impressing people but they don’t want their congregation to know they are going to talk to him because nobody knows where he came from and it might not look good. So they go over at night when nobody is around and talk to him and ask him questions and have no idea what he is talking about. And then the next day Jesus would go down to People’s Kitchen and be sitting outside and say to one of the Hispanic women coming out “could I have some of the food off of your plate” and she would say, “You want food off of my plate?” That’s what it was like to ask for water from a Samaritan. Then she sits down and they have a profound theological discussion. She recognizes that this is Jesus walking around again and tells other people.

That’s the contrast, that’s who this woman in Samaria is, and it is a wonderful story. When I think of how to preach on this story there are so many ways that you can go with it. You can talk about the nature of worship. You can talk about what is the living water. We could discuss all kinds of things. We could even talk about evangelism. But I want to ask a question. What was it that touched that woman so that she recognized that Jesus was the Messiah? What was it? Could it have been just that he knew she had had several husbands before? That might have been common knowledge in the town. Was that a reason to believe he was the Messiah? A prophet perhaps, but the Messiah?

I think the answer to that question has to do with a rather enigmatic thing from reading from Paul. The readings from Paul’s letters recently have been talking about faith, justification by faith and not works, and the nature of grace. I think that that can help us understand how the Samaritan woman might have felt.

But let me take a step backwards a few days in my life. And how I came to where I am in interpreting this Gospel. You see it is Lent and Lent is a very busy time for pastors. There are classes to teach, there are promotional things to get out, there is planning for services and it always seems that there are lots of pastoral needs. We have had people dying, we’ve had people who are sick, and we’ve had all kinds of things going on. And wonderful things have been happening at the church, senior luncheons and Sunday School and planning VBS, and on and on. This has been one of those times when I started to feel overwhelmed. You know those days when you go in and you have 50 emails and you spend a couple of hours going through your emails and then you check and now you’ve got 60, and the pile on the desk just gets higher, higher and higher. I discovered that some things were falling through the cracks. I wasn’t getting back in touch with people I needed to be in touch with. There were people who needed to be visited that weren’t getting visited. Now that’s all well and good and just part of Lent but what I found myself doing was an old habit pattern of judging myself for that, of thinking that I was inadequate because I wasn’t living up to the expectations that I had for myself. And I struggled with it this week. I had a conversation with my spiritual direct who said “well maybe that’s the voice of your mother that you have internalized.” Well you know that helps, but it really is my voice. And then as I began working on this sermon and contemplating the woman at the well I realized that that is a voice inside of me that has not yet been redeemed. That’s the voice that has not yet fully accepted grace.

If you look at the woman at the well when she met Jesus he not only told her that she had been married 5 times, but he looked at her with love. He knew everything that she ever did. Somehow she knew that he not only knew about the husbands, but he knew about all the secret things inside of her. The thoughts she couldn’t share with anybody else and he knew it, he knew it all. And he loved her. He treated her with respect. He loved her, even though he knew everything. And that’s what grace is.

Grace is the fact that Christ loves us and knows everything we’ve ever done or thought and all those dark little secrets that we’ve never told anybody, and loves us. He accepts us. And that is the point that Paul is trying to make when he says that Jesus died while we were still sinners. You might die for someone who is good but he died for us knowing that we all have stuff inside that we are not very proud of, yet he offered himself for us. He did this to let us know that even all that creepy stuff inside of us can’t keep us from the love of God. That there is a relationship and that Christ reaches out in that relationship and cares about us, and loves us. Those of you who have been through a twelve-step program know that there comes a time when you are expected to tell someone else your shortcomings. And that is a powerful thing. Some of you may have taken advantage of the opportunity for what we call the service of reconciliation, which is a confession in which you have an opportunity to tell a priest whatever it is you don’t want to tell anybody. There is something incredibly freeing about speaking that to someone else and having them not go away. Having them not hate you for it. Having them not judge you for it, but to be there, and to love you, and to care for you. That’s what grace is. Grace is the fact that our deepest, darkest secrets are brought out into the light, and they don’t keep us from the love of God.

I know that I’m not perfect. This week the problem was not that I wasn’t doing all the things that I might have done. The problem was the self judgment, which then gets in the way of being able to receive God’s grace. And then to do whatever it is I can.

Whatever the secrets are that you hold, whatever the doubts and the questions that you hold, offer them to God. Jesus knows them already. Just like he knew the Samaritan woman. And he loves you. And it is okay. And that is the grace. And that is the Good News. And that experience is how the Samaritan woman knew that this was the Messiah.

Amen

Second Sunday of Lent A

The Lectionary readings for the Second Sunday of Lent include the  amazing conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus in the Gospel of John 3:1-17. Here is the transcription of a sermon I gave in 2011 looking at the meaning of being born again and the action of the at Holy Spirit in our lives. I hope you enjoy it and find some inspiration.

Sermon for the Second Sunday in Lent - Year A

 Given on March 20, 2011

At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in Arroyo Grande by

Rev. Valerie A. Hart

The evangelist Billy Graham could tell you the exact day perhaps the exact hour or even the exact moment on which he was “born again”. His wife Ruth can’t do that. She says that her faith in Christ just grew gradually over time. She can’t specify any particular moment when she was “born again”. If asked, “When were you saved?” I might answer, “I have always been saved.” Another answer could be, “A little over two thousand years ago on a Friday afternoon.”

We have in this passage from John the source of the concept to be “born again”. Now, the translation that we read today is from the New Revised Standard Version and they translated it as to be born from above. That’s because the Greek word that can be translated as born again can also be translated as born from above. It gets tricky when you translate from one language to another because of the subtlety of meanings of words.

Let’s look more closely at this particular episode in John’s gospel, this conversation of Jesus with Nicodemus. As a member of the Sanhedrin he was a religious leader, an educated man, who was touched by what he heard about Jesus. But he was still concerned about what people would think, so he came to Jesus by night when no one would see him. This conversation between the two of them moves from conversation to theological explication and no one is quite sure when Jesus stops talking and the Evangelist begins in this particular passage. It is very pivotal passage in the Gospel of John. It is a very important part of our theology and our understanding of the resurrected Christ. But it also rather confusing. It was confusing to Nicodemus and it is confusing to us even though we have heard all this language before. What is he talking about when he says to be born of the water and the spirit? to be born from above? to be born anew? to be born again?

Another translation issue we have is that the word for spirit, wind and breath is the exact same word. The same word is used for all three in Aramaic, which is the language Jesus spoke, in Hebrew, which was the written language of the Jewish people, and in Greek, which was the language that the New Testament was written in. So whenever you see in the New Testament, or the Old, breath, spirit or wind it comes from the same word. It is just that in English we use different words of different aspects of that concept. In English we also have words that have different meaning depending upon the context.

One of the delights of the Greek language is this subtlety of multiple meanings to the same word. Was Jesus consciously using this pun by using the same word to mean spirit and breath and wind? Probably. So what do with this? What do we do with this concept of the Holy Spirit? It is wind and it is breath. If we think about it this goes all the way back to Genesis in the creation of the earth. We have God sending the spirit by speaking, by breathing, over the earth in creation. And when human beings are created God “breathed” into them to bring them to life. It is the breath of God, the spirit of God, that makes us alive, that makes us human beings. When that spirit is gone, when the breath is gone, we are no longer alive in the body.

So Jesus says we have to be born again and we need the spirit, the wind. What is that?

Now I’d like you use your imaginations for a while. I know we have some fisherman here, and if you are not fishers, I know that there are people who are boaters. I’d like you to imagine that you are on a lake and you want to get to the other side. You have a destination you are trying to get to, and you are rowing a boat. As you are rowing the boat the wind comes up and the wind is blowing against you. What happens? You find yourself working harder and harder to try and get to where you are going. Pretty soon you are really tired out, but you still aren’t any closer to your destination and you struggle and you struggle against the wind.

But then perhaps someone comes up in another boat and gives you a sail, or you discover that there is a sail down at the bottom of the boat. So you put the sail up and suddenly as you put the sail up and it billows and fills with the wind, your boat just starts to move effortlessly. It begins to be carried along by the wind, but of course it is going in the exact opposite direction of where you were trying to go. But it feels so good to be moving. At first it is a little overwhelming, you may be struggling with the sail and it seems to be just tossing you this way and that, but over time you begin to work with the wind instead of fighting against it and you find that when you get really good at sailing you can learn how to tack and go against the wind by going back and forth. You can’t go directly against the wind but you can still work with the wind in other ways.

So imagine our relationship with the Holy Spirit, with the breath of God as our relationship with the wind. Now if we don’t put our sail up we never get a chance to have that power, to have that energy, that support, that help. But if we try to use the sail to go against the wind it’s hard so we have to work with the wind. We have to become friends with the wind. Now we are not in a balloon. In a balloon, the wind comes along and just pushes it this way and that. This is not our relationship with the spirit and with God. We are still human beings we still have some choice we can work with the wind or not work with the wind. But if we do work with it, when we get to know it and we listen and feel and sense where the wind is taking us we can just sail almost effortlessly and we can go to places we never could have imagined before.

Now when we are sailing with the wind it doesn’t mean that it is always going to be easy. There are going to be struggles, there are going to be down times. Sometimes when the spirit is sailing along you may find that you are not real crazy about the direction that your life is going because God’s got plans for your life and you’ve got some other plans. So, sometimes we end up putting our sail down in order to try and row somewhere else. This can get real tiring and we have to be reminded to open up to the spirit again and let the spirit empower us. Sometimes we go through really tough times, really difficult situations of grief and loss and doubt. It can feel overwhelming. It is those times that we need to listen and open to the spirit to heal us, and carry us and bring us through those difficult times.

That is the gift that we have, the gift of the Holy Spirit. That is what being born again means. It means getting that sail.

This is wonderful baptismal imagery; the whole idea of being born of the water and of the spirit it is a wonderful image of baptism. So we may have gotten our sail at baptism or we may have always known that we had a sail or we may in the middle of our adulthood be reminded to open it up and let the spirit blow through us and use us and transform us.

That’s what Abraham did. (Abraham is called Abram in this passage because it is early on in the story and his name was Abram). God called him. He was old, his wife was old, and God called him to leave where he was and wander. His friendship with God was so strong that he trusted and he followed where the wind took him, where the spirit took him where the breath of God took him. He trusted, and that’s what makes him such a spectacular representation of what it means to walk with God, to be a friend of God, to trust where we are called, to trust the spirit, to trust that guidance. That is what we are called to be, to be friends of God who open ourselves to the Holy Spirit and let it blow through us, empower us, guide us and carry us.  Amen.