Hope for Today and the End of Our Days

The miracle we hear in our gospel this morning is perhaps the most famous performed by Jesus. Certainly, Lazarus, is the most famous recipient of a miracle – he is given not only a name, but also a loving family, a friendship with Jesus, who risks his own safety to come and help.

One aspect of the story that always strikes me is how calm Jesus is when confronted with the news of Lazarus. Jesus never loses hope. All around him, people are panicking. They have already given up. They are angry Jesus came too late. They have decided nothing will work. But Jesus, in the face of that whirlwind, is calm. And from that state of calm and resolute hope, he raises Lazarus to life again.

When these kinds of miracles happen in the gospel, our scientific age is prone to skepticism. But science, in fact, has its own Lazarus syndrome – people whose hearts stop, who appear dead, for long, impossible minutes, and yet come back to life. Many years ago, there were controversial cases of resignation syndrome – or what in Sweden, they called “uppgivenhetssyndrom.” A small group of refugee children had taken to their beds, fallen asleep and would not wake up. The children had lived most of their lives in Sweden, but their families were facing deportation. In one case, the child was checked by doctors and given a feeding tube, but did not move. The doctors diagnosed that this was a case of hopelessness. For, who indeed, can live without hope?

Whatever condition ails Lazarus is equally perplexing. At first, it’s suggested that the illness that Lazarus suffers from does not typically cause death. Then we understand that Lazarus has died, and Jesus announces his intention to wake him. He travels to the tomb where Lazarus has been lying for four days now. The stone is rolled back. “Lazarus, come out,” Jesus calls. And Lazarus comes out, bound as one prepared for burial. It is surely a foreshadowing of another tomb to come, where there will be a rising from the dead. Perhaps it is also meant to inform our perception of the resurrection for us as individuals. (When Jesus says, Come out, come on, come see, come be at peace – do we listen?)

But as I always like to say, the details make for a good story, but they are not the substance of the tale. When we accept that Lazarus was sleeping, given up for dead and raised back to life by Jesus – however that happened – what else do we see? When we step back, and watch the story unfold, what do we learn?

We see all the places where hope is lost. The disciples don’t want Jesus to go to help his friend – it is too dangerous – they have no hope for his safety. Mary and Martha have lost hope that the brother can be saved. Mary, in fact, doesn’t even come out to meet Jesus. And Martha, when she does, is angry that he is so late.

(Just to pause here: another aspect of this story that is so remarkable is the clear friendship these people have with one another. Mary and Martha address Jesus almost as equals. They don’t question that Jesus will come to help their brother. Jesus answers their questions and comforts them. It is a particularly personal scene in the gospel.

And what does it reveal? That Jesus was also someone who would risk, on a personal level, for those he cared about. He wasn’t just preaching to a big, wide flock. He was also a friend himself who worried about people special to him. I mention this because we can always imagine Jesus at the right hand of God, or Jesus the rabbi, Jesus the teacher, even Jesus the maker of miracles. It’s often just a sidebar that Jesus was also a son, a brother to others, a dear and trusted friend. But of course, in between all these gospel scenes was the life he lived, and the people he cared about along the way. (If we think also of Jesus this way, does he not become fuller and clearer to us?)

It may be Jesus, the son of God, who calls Lazarus back to life. But what does Jesus, the friend and brother, accomplish? Where there is no hope, he brings it. To the disciples, he eases them: there is room in a day for good deeds to happen, even more than bad.

“Are there not twelve hours of daylight?” he says, as if to remind them - 12 hours! What can’t we do in 12 hours! “Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. But those who walk at night stumble because the light is not in them.” Walk with hope in the day, and you will not stumble.

To grieving Martha, he offers comfort. I am here now, he tells her. It is not too late. In other words, he tells her: I have not given up on Lazarus. Lean on my hope until yours is restored.

What are we without hope? Without knowing that, whatever comes next, we will manage, we will be loved, we will be cared for? What happens to us if we stop believing that God walks with us? Or if we start believing that there is nothing to hold on to? Hope is the breath of life. And Jesus offers it to Mary and Martha with his first words of comfort. And then in two very specific ways – in the immediate, he resurrects Lazarus from the tomb, and in the long-term, he promises the resurrection at the end of our days. We need both of those to live on: the hope that we can carry forth in this day, and this moment, whatever pain we might be feeling, whatever trial we are facing. This lies behind so many of the life lessons from Jesus - to set aside our own troubles and serve others – for in doing so our own trouble is diminished. The lessons that tell us to forgive, so that we might have resilience in relationships. The lessons that tell us to love, so that we might have the healing medicine of joy. But Jesus also offers us hope now, and in the distant future – the hope of the resurrection – the hope that in the end, we matter, our lives matter, and that the journey along the way is worth the weight we carry. That is what Jesus tells Martha and Mary – he raises Lazarus from the tomb on that fourth day, but he promises Lazarus life at the end of days.

What healed those strange cases of sleeping children? – hope. What feeling would have kept the families praying over their seemingly lost loved ones going – hope. What did Jesus give to Martha and Mary – and Lazarus himself? Hope.

There are times when we all feel bereft of hope. What Jesus offers is not a perfect hope, or a golden hope, or a hope that is easy. Jesus offers real hope, that when we arrive at the end of our days, we will know God, who deems our lives worthy. To watch where we step, and to look ahead where our steps lead, this is the action of hope. Knowing that Jesus is there – our teacher, yes, but also our friend - not just to resurrect us at the end of days, but to lift us up each and every day. Amen

Eyes Wide Shut

Many years ago, I read about a man named Pierre-Paul Thomas. His incredible story comes back to me every time I hear our gospel for this morning. Maybe that comes from my having only one good eye. More likely, it is a reminder to be honest with myself about all the times that I don’t see the world, and my place in it, with clarity. All the times I fail to see where God is leading me.

Pierre-Paul Thomas was born blind – indeed he was a lot like the blind man in our gospel story this morning.

He grew up in a family of nine brothers and sisters in a small town about 100 kilometres north of Montreal, in the 1940s. Mr. Thomas learned to see with his fingers. He repaired bikes, and worked in a bakery, kneading dough. But he lived in a grey world of shadows, walking with a white cane.

And then, a miracle. Though at first it didn’t seem that way. In 2011, when he was 66, Mr. Thomas fell down a flight of stairs, and fractured the bones of his face, including those around his eye sockets. In emergency. the doctors mended him as best they could. But a month later, he was in the office of Lucie Lessard, a well-respected plastic surgeon, who performed the next surgery. He still recalls her nonchalant question: “While we’re at it, do you want me to fix your eyes, too?”

It seems that all these years Mr. Thomas had suffered from a blindness that could have been fixed with an operation, but he had grown up before public health care, another side note to this tale. Dr. Lessard did her work – just as Jesus in the gospel did his - and Mr. Thomas emerged into a world he had never before experienced. His eyesight would never be perfect, but he could see so much more. Colours and clear shapes. The faces of his family.

One thing he noticed so clearly: nobody had ever described to him the little green buds that grow on the trees in the spring.

Can we even imagine that? Having been blind all our life and then suddenly being able to see? How must it have been for that man in the gospel, who so faithfully followed the directions of Jesus, who covered the man’s eye with mud mixed with saliva and then told him to wash in a pool of water. Still the man listened, whether it was because he believed or because he would have tried anything if it meant he might see. We do know, from our text, that he refused to be swayed from telling the truth of what had happened. Though berated by the Pharisees, he refused to be cowed into giving up the truth. For that, for seeing with his own eyes, he was driven out of the temple, a terrible punishment in that day. It was not as if you could wander down the street to another temple.

When Jesus says, “I have come to make the blind see and those who see blind,” the Pharisees believe in him enough to be worried. “Surely, you’re not saying we are blind?” And Jesus chastises them: for their failing is thinking that they see clearly, and not realizing that they are blind.

For how often do we hear this phrase: ‘Open your eyes!’? We use it to describe a naive person who is being taken in by someone else, or to expose the way we might see another person being manipulated, or when a lie is being too easily believed. But how often do we say it to ourselves? How often do we go to God and ask him, “Open my eyes, so that I may see clearly”? We may not, because we might be worried about what seeing too clearly inside ourselves will reveal – we prefer blindness to what is experienced by others.

But here is the thing about Mr. Thomas: he was extremely grateful for his gift of sight and the world he was now a part of. But even two years later, he was having a hard time shaking old habits, still feeling along the wall when he walked. It was hard to change, even when he could see clearly.

And that’s also a metaphor for us. In our blinded state, we fall into habits, we slip into old ways of being. We use certain fixed words to describe ourselves, and ones that pin down others as well. Words like selfish, critical, dishonest. We assume that how we see the world is the way it is, and the way it will be, or the way it has to be.

But Jesus calls us to open our eyes and look deeply at our lives. To see clearly how we are in relationship with others. See the places where we have made a colourful life grey, or allowed shadows where they don’t need to be. It begins with a simple request: God, help me see clearly. With God, we may open our eyes and see ourselves clearly: where a failure to forgive is twisting our insides, where anger is really jealousy, where judgment is really self-criticism. In those moments of eye-openness, when we are honest with ourselves first, we come to see more clearly the way that God intends us to see.

We cannot see the little green buds on the trees – the new beginning of each day, and each relationship – if our eyes remain closed. Amen.

Stereotypes: Toss them Down the Well!

March 12, 2023—John 4:5-42

A few years ago, two employees named Nicole Hallberg and Martin Schneider worked at a company that fixes up resumes . Nicole and Martin decided to conduct an experiment. On their emails to clients, they would switch names. Nicole would become Martin and Martin, Nicole.

The real Martin soon found himself having email conversations that he found curious. They were unexpectedly snippy in their tone. Or over-explained simple issues. Occasionally, someone called him “hon.” Finally, to test what was happening, Martin pretended he was handing things back to “Martin,” and – as you probably guessed, the tone became immediately friendly.

On Nicole’s side, posing as Martin, she was having a great time. Her questions were all being answered. She wasn’t being second-guessed. Nobody was calling her sweetie.

This past week, as we celebrated International Women’s Day, that little experiment came back to me. It’s an example of how a name can change people’s perceptions. And how stereotypes and assumptions change not only the value we give people, as well as the learned wisdom we attribute to them, but even the subtle ways we talk to them. And so we have to ponder what has changed – and what hasn’t– when we consider our gospel story today.

Jesus meets a Samaritan woman coming to collect water at the town well. Let’s consider this woman for a moment: based on her exchange with Jesus, scholars have traditionally described this woman as a prostitute, pointing to Jesus’s shocking revelation that she was living with a man who was not even her husband! And here she was getting her water at noon, when everyone knew that “proper women” had already fetched their water in the morning and were partly done with their washing by then. So here she is – a lazy Samaritan woman with too many husbands, and of questionable morals. The narrative was right there in front of Jesus. The judgement is ready to fall.

So what does Jesus do? It is remarkable, really. He asks her for a drink, which is a big deal, as we know from her reaction: “Why would you, a Jew, ask to share a drink from a Samaritan like me?” The theological exchange that follows is one of the longest in the gospel. I guess John was either so shocked by the event that he had to get it all down, or perhaps he felt it might serve the followers of Jesus later. What Jesus basically says to the woman is: What’s a cup of water, when I have so much more to offer? You should be asking me for a drink from the living water of God. Now think on this: if it was shocking for Jesus to ask for a drink from this woman, how much more shocking must it have been for him to be offering her a drink back? And yet he does, and she accepts it.

They next have an interesting exchange about her marital history, as if Jesus is testing her. When asked to fetch the man in question, she admits that she has no husband, and Jesus confirms her history. But where is the judgement in his tone? Let’s set aside the fact that a growing number of scholars are questioning our interpretation of this woman’s past – she may have been divorced, she may have been widowed multiple times; we don’t know. The reality is: Jesus doesn’t care. The very way he raises it and then moves on to a welcoming discussion about grace and faith suggests he was actually clarifying to the woman how much he didn’t care about the stories being told, or the past that was nipping at her heels, or the stereotypes people were so keen to attach to her. He was saying: I knowwho you are. None of that matters. Because you matter.

It is really an extraordinary exchange in the Bible. Because what we have is Jesus breaking the rules of society without a thought, having an in-depthconversation with someone who would have been seen as outside the circle. And then, this Samaritan woman doesn’t just drift from the picture – she becomes someone who spreads the gospel to others. Jesus includes her, honours her, and empowers her. He crumbles up the stereotype in front of everyone watching and tosses it down the well.

What’s truly remarkable is how much this story challenges the biases that lead to discrimination and intolerance today. We often keep these biases quiet, or maybe they slip in unconsciously. We assume that poor people are lazy, or perhaps didn’t work hard enough. We assume that people who aren’t white must be from “somewhere else,” or don’t speak English well. We assume that old people are slow and young people are selfish. An outspoken woman is bossy; a kind man is weak. Even when we say we don’t think that way, these biases often shape the way we see people, how we speak to them, what we assume they need, or are capable of. And yet again and again, the gospel challenges the idea that people can ever be reduced to stereotypes. How many examples do we need to hear ofthe welcoming back of the prodigal son, Jesus urging aid for the GoodSamaritan, and, even this morning, conversing freely and with respect to the woman at well? Jesus sets repeated examples of throwing out stereotypes, of rejecting narratives that stomped people down, and casting wide the door to those who would be invited inside. If we must be careful about how false narratives slip into our own thinking, let us also be mindful when false narratives of our faith are just allowed to drift out there, to be picked up and used to wrongful ends.

This morning’s gospel is a feminist gospel. Jesus and the woman have adiscussion much the same as he would with the disciples. He refuses to accept – or even consider – the sexist gossip that the villagers are spreading. It is not whatmatters to Jesus; what counts for Jesus is our coming together in relationship, one of mutual respect and kindness.

It is such an easy trap for us humans to follow the stories that our experience, our prejudices, and our culture want to say to people that we don’t know. What results are sexism and homophobia, racism and Islamophobia. And each time we miss an opportunity, we miss the potential of a larger community, we miss a life-changing moment at the well of the living water. We miss a chance ourselves to experience more from the people around us.

Don’t fall into this trap. Remember this story in the gospel. And yes, indeed, ask yourself, each and every day: What would Jesus say? What would Jesus do? We know the answer. Amen.