Lent 4 A

Today I'm reposting the sermon I posted for Lent 4 A in 2014 because I did not have available any other sermons for that Sunday. This discussion of blindness felt worth reposting.
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

Second Sunday of Lent year A

Imagine that you are on a lake and you want to get to the other side. You are rowing the boat and the wind comes up blowing against you. Now you find yourself working harder and harder to try and get where you are going. You struggle against the wind. But then you discover that there is a sail at the bottom of the boat. So you put the sail up and suddenly as you put the sail up it billows with the wind. Your boat starts to move, effortlessly, it begins to be carried along by the wind.

Second Sunday of Lent year A

Transcribed from a Sermon

Given on March 20, 2011

By Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

The evangelist Billy Graham can tell you the exact day, perhaps even the exact hour, or even the exact minute, when 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. And when I am asked, “When were you saved?” my answer is to say, “I’ve always been saved.” Or another answer is to say, “A little over 2000 years ago on a Friday afternoon.”

We have in this passage from John the source of that idea of being born again. Now the translation that we read is from the New Revised Standard Version, and they translated it as born from above. This difference is because the Greek word often translated as again, as in “born again”, can also be translated as above which leads to “born from above”. It can get tricky when you translate from one language to another because of the subtly of the meaning of words.

But this particular episode in John’s Gospel is part of a conversation between Nicodemus who was a member of Sanhedrin,  a leader in the community, an educated man who was touched by what he heard about Jesus, but still a little afraid of what people would think so he came at night when no one would see him. This conversation between the two of them, which moves from conversation into theological explanation and no one is quite sure when Jesus stops talking and the Evangelist begins in this particular passage, is very pivotal. It is an important part of our theology and our understanding of the resurrected Christ.

But it is 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 be born of the water and the spirit? What does it mean 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. You use the same word 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 in which was the language in which the New Testament was written. 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 we we use different words for the concept for which they use one. One of the delights about the Greek language is this subtlety of multiple meanings to a word. Like above and again, the same word means both of them. Born fresh and new and born from above. Was Jesus consciously using this pun by using the same word to mean spirit breath and wind? Probably.

So what do we do with this? What do we do with this concept of the Holy Spirit that is the wind, that is the breath? It goes all the way back to Genesis, at the creation of the earth we have God breathing God’s spirit, speaking breathing, sending God’s spirit over the earth at creation. And when human being are created God breathes over 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 breath is gone we are no longer alive.

So Jesus says we have to be born again and we need the spirit the wind, what’s that?

I know that we have a few fishermen here, and if you are not fisherman then I know that there are a lot of 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 that you are trying to get to and you are rowing a boat. And 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 where you are going. Pretty soon you are tired out but you still aren’t any closer. You struggle and you struggle against the wind. But then perhaps someone comes up with and another boat and gives you a sail, or you discover that there is a sail at the bottom of the boat. So you put the sail up and suddenly as you put the sail up it billows with the wind. Your boat starts to move, effortlessly, it begins to be carried along by the wind.

But of course it is going in exactly the 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 just be 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 different ways.

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

Now when we are sailing with the wind that doesn’t mean it is always going to be easy. There is going to be struggle, there’s going to be down times. One thing we might find is that as the spirit is sailing along you are not real crazy about the direction that your life is going. It may be God’s plans for your life but you have some other plans. Sometimes we try putting our sail down and rowing somewhere else. Then it can get real tiring and we have to be reminded to open up to the spirit again and let the spirit empower us. And sometimes we go through really tough times, really difficult situations like grief and loss or times when we are reminded of the difficult situations in life when we turn on the news. Like he horrors of what they are going through in Japan, of the struggles going on in Libya, of all the suffering that there is. Sometimes it feels overwhelming. Sometimes we have our own personal grief and lose and doubt. And It is those times that we need to listen, to open to the spirit, to let it 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's what being born again means. Getting that for some people is represented as baptism. That baptismal imagery of being born of the water and the spirit is a wonderful image. So we may have gotten our sail at baptism. Or we may have always known that we have a sail. Or we may in the middle of our adulthood be reminded to open 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 before his name changed to Abraham. God calls him when he is old and his wife is old. He is called by God to leave where he was and wander. His friendship with God was so strong that he trusts that and he follows where the wind takes him, where the spirit takes him, where the breath of God takes him. That is 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, friends of God who will open ourselves to the Holy Spirit, to let it blow through us empower us, guide us, and carry us.

Last Sunday of Epiphany Year A

The psychologist Abraham Maslow studied what he called 'peak experiences.' We might call them mountaintop experiences. In this sermon I explore how understanding peak experiences informs our understanding of the Transfiguration.

Last Sunday of Epiphany Year A

Transcribed from a sermon given on

March 6, 2011

At St Barnabas Episcopal Church

By Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

In 1964 a psychologist named Abraham Maslow wrote a book in which he wrote about what he called ‘peak experiences’. These were experiences in which life is transformed for a moment or a short period of time. Experiences of a sense of peace and joy and unity. Experiences in which colors are brighter and sounds clearer. Experiences that change peoples lives. He called them peak experiences, but they could be called religious experiences, or mystic experiences or mountain top experiences.

As they researched this they discovered that almost everyone has had this kind of experience. Some moment, some time, in which everything is clarified, when there was a sense of unity, a sense of oneness - a mountaintop experience. I bet that almost every one of you sitting here has had at least one such experience in your life.

The other thing they found about those who had had such an experience is that almost no one had ever told anyone else, not even their religious leaders or their spouses. Because after such an experience there was a sense in which we are not sure I want to share it.

The readings today describe two archetypal mountaintop experiences. In the Gospel we hear about the transfiguration. And in the Old Testament reading describes Moses going up on the mountain with God for forty days.

Jesus takes time away from the other disciples and goes up on a mountain with three of his closest disciples, Peter, John and James. While they are up there something happens. Something profound happens. Jesus is transformed.

 One of the ways that these mountain top experiences have sometimes been describes is that because we are caught in the material world, because of our attachments, because of the anxiety and concerns and worries that we have, we can’t see the truth of what the universe, what existence, is really about. It is said that there is a profound difference between what we see every day and reality, that there is a background something beyond our perception. It is as if we walk around like we have a hand over our eyes, or a veil over our eyes, and we just can’t see.

A peak experience is walking around with a hand over your eyes, or a veil over your eyes so it is always dark. Or you are wearing really dark sunglasses, and then all of a sudden they are taken off for a moment. Suddenly you see the truth of what is out there. You get a glimpse of a reality that is beyond anything that we can imagine. We get a glimpse of the spiritual presence that underlies all of creation, and then the veil comes back down. We get those momentary times when we see something else. When we see something beyond.

Now these can happen when you are deep in a spiritual program or you go off on retreat or you are fasting and praying. They can also happen when you are driving down the highway and suddenly you see the sun and the rays and the reflection on the water or whatever it is and it is so profound that it is more beautiful then anything you ever imagined.

Sometimes it happens when you are listening to a truly great piece of music. I still remember one time when I heard Beethoven’s Ninth performed live and there was a moment that was just transcendent.

Such mountaintop experiences come in all types and forms. They are a gift. And most of you, I’m sure have experienced that. And that experience that might be part of why you have any interest in coming to church, because you have had an experience that has told you that there is something more. You might not understand what that something more is. You may not be ready to identify it or agree to any creed or certainty of the nature of it, but you have experienced that there is something more. That is the mountaintop experience.

Now like the disciples, when we have those mountain top experiences we have a tendency to want to hold on to them. We go back to that spot in nature where we had that mountaintop experience, and it is just not the same. We listen to the piece of music that transformed us, and it is nice, but it is not the same. We go back for another retreat, and maybe it happens and maybe it doesn’t because these mountaintop experiences are gifts of grace. We can’t control them; we can only appreciate them. Like Peter we want to build a house around them. We want to hold on to it. We want to take a picture of it. We want to record the music; we want to somehow stay there. But the thing about mountaintop experiences is that you can’t live on the mountaintop. You have to come back down into the valley. We are not allowed to stay there.

In the church we have a church year, a cycle, that begins at Advent when we anticipate the coming of the Messiah, then we have the season of Christmas when we celebrate the incarnation, currently we are in the season of Epiphany in which Jesus is making himself known to the world. Then we move into the season of lent, and then the season of Easter and then after Pentecost we have that long green season that is sometimes called ordinary time, that represents life after Pentecost. Today is the last Sunday before Lent, the last Sunday of Epiphany. It is the last Sunday in which we sing Alleluia at church, so we have lots of alleluias in the music, because we put the alleluias aside during Lent. And every year on the last Sunday before the beginning of Lent we read about the transfiguration. It is always there on the last Sunday.

In the story in the Gospels Jesus takes the disciples aside and has this magnificent experience just before heading to Jerusalem. Before that time, he was a Rabbi and an amazing healer. And then for those three chosen disciples, he took the veil down for a moment. He let them see a glimpse of who he really was and is.

Now in the story of Moses encountering God the people did not want to go up the mountain with Moses because they were afraid of seeing God face to face. There is this sense that if you saw God face to face you would die. Moses went up and spent those forty days on that mountain and when he came back his face shone so brightly that the people couldn’t stand to see it, so he walked around with a veil over his face.

Now imagine if Jesus truly was who we say he is. If he truly was the manifestation of God on earth. If he let himself be fully seen it would have been very difficult to be around. The light would have been so bright it would hurt your eyes. It would frighten you. People would feel they were going to die. So he veiled himself so he looked like a normal human being, but up on that mountain, for that short period of time, he let the disciples see a glimpse of who he was. It is a gift he gave to those disciples perhaps to help them with what he knew was ahead. You see the gift of a mountain top experience is that when we go back down in the valley and things get difficult, when we feel alone and we don’t have any sense of God’s presence, when we begin to question and begin to wonder, when we struggle in so many different ways we can remember. We can remember that experience that told us beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is something more to life than just the everyday struggles for existence. It helps us through those dark times, those times of doubt and question. I imagine that this time on the mountain with Jesus must have helped Peter, John and James as they risked their lives, as they were afraid for their own safety, as they watched Jesus die.

So we remember the transfiguration before we start Lent. Lent is a time for us to go down into the valley, to look at things, to reflect, to take some time as we prepare ourselves for Easter

In the service for Ash Wednesday the celebrant reads “I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy word.”

So there are three things to do during Lent. It is more than just not eating chocolate. Lent is about self reflection, acknowledging our short comings, and asking for repentance. It is about giving something up, about fasting and about prayer. But I’d encourage you that if you are going to fast whether it is by not eating chocolate or not going and having you half and half vanilla, decaf, whatever it is, that in addition to what you give up, whatever money you would have spent on that, give it away. If you spent $2.50 a day on coffee, put that away and after forty days you are going to have $100 dollars and you can give to some charity. And I invite you that if you are going to give something up that you also take something on.

In the invitation to a holy lent it talks about study and reading scripture. I invite you to take on some kind of spiritual discipline, whether it be a prayer time, or it be reading scripture, or perhaps if you have never done the Day by Day program you can do that.

I also invite you to think of it as being part of a community. This is a time when the church traditionally prepared people for baptism, so I invite you to also be part of a community. We have several different programs going on this year. We are going to be having every Wednesday night the Stations of the Cross so you can come and reflect and meditate on that. We are going to be having on Thursday evenings a soup supper followed by an education program, where we are going to explore the nature of forgiveness in terms of different cultures and religions.

(At this point the recording of the sermon ended.)