Note: You can watch this teaching on CrossWalk’s YouTube channel.
Bart only knew what it was to be blind (John 9). He couldn’t see from birth. Everybody in the community speculated why God would give his parents such a child. Most agreed it was a curse from God for some infraction on their part or a generation before. There were not a lot of options for Bart in that day and age. He likely learned to cope with the senses he had left, but his only hope of subsistence was begging. The deck was literally stacked against him – he was limited by something he did not choose and did not want. His state was largely out of his control.
Bart could tell you the day that all changed, when Jesus came upon him and heard his story. Bart wanted a better life, apparently, but he never caught a break. Jesus asked him what he wanted (an interesting question – he didn’t assume to know the answer). Bart said he wanted to see, which would lead to a whole lot of change-for-the-better in his life. Jesus treated him with a method they both understood and left him with instructions to go wash his eyes. When he did, he could see. The healing was a gift of empowerment to begin living a new life.
Have you ever felt like you were dealt a bad hand from day one? Like your very potential was cursed from the beginning? Maybe you’ve even cursed God for it, knowing you didn’t do anything to deserve your fate. The Good News of Jesus is that the curse was never from God, and that God is with you even if others have told you otherwise your entire life. Do you know what you want, really? It’s a real question. When what you want is directly related to your True Self – who you were created to be in all of your made-in-God’s-image-glory – expect some things to shift. God is with and for your True Self because it’s aligned with shalom. You can let go of whatever guilt and shame you’ve carried. You may have even sinned a time or two for good reasons. Be free to live – this is God’s Good News of grace to you in Jesus.
Justice. The ones who were questioning “Bart” were the leaders of Judaism. They were quite unsettled by what Jesus did on multiple levels – all of them disturbing. First, a man born blind – a curse from God – was uncursed. Who has the authority to do such a thing except God? What does that say about Jesus? Second, the means Jesus used to head – the mud-dough – required a direct violation of Sabbath law. How is it that a blatant sinner could be used so powerfully by God? Third, the miracle did not include the religious leaders in any way, or their sacred space. What are the implications of all of this? What if word got out about this? How would that impact their authority? Bad news for them was Good News for all people, who realized that God was with them as they were, where they were, with shalom. This gave access to God to everybody, which is a justice issue.
Dan could tell you his story, when the first sign of a very long death sentence appeared on his hand (Matthew 8). It wasn’t something he wanted – who would want leprosy? He could only ignore and hide it for so long. Once it was known, his life was forever changed. Only distanced contact with family and friends while at the same time being thrust into a new community of fellow sufferers. Isolated until the skin disease subsided, his life was over. Especially if it really was leprosy, which didn’t show up in the ANE until about 100 years before Jesus was born. While leprosy itself wasn’t a sin and didn’t mean you were a sinner, contracting it was often associated with God’s will, and likely insinuated that you had done something to warrant such a sentence. Once contracted, mishandling the disease was considered sinful.
Dan could tell you the day he sinned that led to his healing. He approached Jesus and fell to his knees before him, begging for healing. Hmmm. What do we have here? Someone who had been publicly shamed and forever quarantined – God-damned – came out of the colony and dishonored social distancing – a clear infraction. A God-damned sinner. Literally. Instead of rebuking him, Jesus empathized with him, welcomed the intimate exchange, and granted the request. Dan was healed. The sin was forgiven and the damnation absolved.
Have you ever felt like Dan? Like you’ve acquired a condition that has separated you from others in devastating ways? Maybe those who have pushed you out have even thrown down the God card, making you feel as God-damned as Dan. Hard to have hope in that situation. Maybe your skin is clear, but you feel tainted in others’ eyes. The Good News declared by Jesus is that you are not God-damned but God-loved. You are welcome in the presence of God because God’s presence is loving and welcoming. There is healing for you here.
Justice. The leper broke the law and his reward was healing. Jewish leaders would be deeply disturbed by the theological implications of such an event – what would this mean for others who they instructed needed to “get right with God” before God could heal? What did it mean that the healing did not in any way include the official, so-called “God-ordained” religious leadership who learned about the healing publicly, after the fact? How embarrassed they must have been! Once again, people connected the dots: God is with people as they are, where they are, with shalom. Equal access to God was a justice issue and everybody paying attention knew it.
Grace never imagined her life would become so awful (John 8). Things went from bad to worse as her poverty forced her into prostitution. She had mouths to feed and no recognizable alternatives. What she had hoped would be a one-time-emergency maneuver became her work and her reputation. She would never be more than a town whore.
She was unaware that she had been set up to create a trap for Jesus. She just thought it was another trick. But that afternoon she was caught in the act. Somehow her “John” slipped away and she was left alone with a bunch of religious leaders who treated her with great indignity, not even allowing her to put clothes on. Instead, they dragged her to where Jesus was teaching and threw her in front of the crowd, an object lesson and test for the provocative teacher. “The Law says we should stone a woman caught in the act of adultery, what do you say?” It was a chess game.
A lot of weird things happened that became a blur. Jesus said whoever was sinless should throw the first stone (usually it was the accuser/plaintiff), and then doodled in the dirt. Everybody left the scene with no stones thrown. Left alone with him, she heard him ask where the accusers were. She noted that everyone left without condemning her. He then said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go and leave your life of sin,” which is a way of saying, “Go now and live.”
Have you ever felt like the path you chose had led you to a serious rut in your life, like you are trapped by past bad decisions? People are sometimes really awful about such things, never letting you forget who you are or what you did and treating you accordingly. The Good News of Jesus is that your past doesn’t have to dictate your future. Shalom means there is hope for a new beginning, a fresh start – you don’t have to return to living apart from life. You can live directly from the source. Accept the grace and move forward.
Justice. Such an awful scene here. Jesus was surely frustrated and angry as he watched the religious leadership who were supposed to be agents of loving and healing people instead use their power to create more harm for someone already beaten down. They had no pity, no compassion, and certainly no empathy. They used her just like every “John” she ever met. Only worse, since they wore their religious garb as they did. Such adherence to the law with no regard to grace or the people involved – this was an awful, disrespectful thing to do to Jesus, too – misrepresented God plain and simple. Their violence was what caused Rome to strip them of the right to execute those they condemned – the leaders of faith! This also represented a kind of spiritual abuse as it promoted a singular way of reading scripture and demanded adherence or expect condemnation. Jesus’ response was brilliant, showcasing his knowledge of the Law and the savvy to deal with such abusers. The woman was treated incredibly unjustly, and Jesus saved her from it. Imagine what those who were there took away? No doubt, the religious leaders were deeply threatened – they just got humiliated at their own game. And, once again, everybody learned that God loves people as they are, where they are.
Zach was a dirtbag, a cheater of his own people (Luke 19). He was a tax collector in Jesus’ day, on contract with the Roman Empire to deliver the required assessments from his own people. He was seen as a traitor. He was hated for it. He was also loathed because everybody knew he could get away with robbing his own for his personal profit. He had climbed his way up the ladder and was filthy rich.
One day he heard that Jesus was coming into town, and he wanted to see him for himself. Being short, he climbed a tree – he was a climber, after all! What would Jesus say? How would he be treated? Jesus saw him and called him out of the tree. He invited himself over for dinner at Zach’s home, a statement that let Zach know that forgiveness had arrived that day, and there was plenty for Zach.
Sometimes we turn on those we are supposed to love. Motivated by selfish interest, we abandon others for personal gain. Relationships are broken or severed. A lot of pain is created in the process. We self-medicate with the spoils of our decision, yet it leaves us empty. It feels like there is no way back. The Good News of Jesus, however, is that the reset button is always available. God is one who is always supportive of helping people get things back on track, of living into the True Self they were created to be. The way forward may be challenging, but the bright side is, there is a way forward! We are not simply the product of our poor past decisions.
Justice. The injustice in this story was carried out by a Jewish traitor (of sorts) against his victims. By inviting himself over to dinner, Jesus was communicating to Zach that he was loved by God as he was, where he was. The response to such grace served to correct the injustices Zach had carried out so many times, in accordance with Jewish Law. What else was modeled here? Restorative justice, instead of retributive justice. The latter is the popular method used the world over, and, unfortunately, by religion itself. It demands retribution, punishment. Such a system feels like justice gets served. But not much healing comes of it. Restorative justice, however, seeks to restore, to heal, and in this case, it apparently did. What a different approach. The take-home lesson would include the point that there can be justice – people paid for the wrongs they suffered – and the wrongdoer can also be made right.
If this is what Jesus was engaged in, what should the implication be for those who strive to follow in his footsteps? What reaction might we expect from those who benefit from systems of injustice?
Stuff to meditate on from Richard Rohr...
Some simple but urgent guidance to get us through these next months.
I awoke on Saturday, September 19, with three sources in my mind for guidance: Etty Hillesum (1914 – 1943), the young Jewish woman who suffered much more injustice in the concentration camp than we are suffering now; Psalm 62, which must have been written in a time of a major oppression of the Jewish people; and the Irish Poet, W.B.Yeats (1965 – 1939), who wrote his “Second Coming” during the horrors of the World War I and the Spanish Flu pandemic.
These three sources form the core of my invitation. Read each one slowly as your first practice. Let us begin with Etty:
There is a really deep well inside me. And in it dwells God. Sometimes I am there, too … And that is all we can manage these days and also all that really matters: that we safeguard that little piece of You, God, in ourselves.
—Etty Hillesum, Westerbork transit camp
Note her second-person usage, talking to “You, God” quite directly and personally. There is a Presence with her, even as she is surrounded by so much suffering.
Then, the perennial classic wisdom of the Psalms:
In God alone is my soul at rest.
God is the source of my hope.
In God I find shelter, my rock, and my safety.
Men are but a puff of wind,
Men who think themselves important are a delusion.
Put them on a scale,
They are gone in a puff of wind.
—Psalm 62:5–9
What could it mean to find rest like this in a world such as ours? Every day more and more people are facing the catastrophe of extreme weather. The neurotic news cycle is increasingly driven by... narcissistic leader[s] whose words and deeds incite hatred, sow discord, and amplify the daily chaos. The pandemic that seems to be returning in waves continues to wreak suffering and disorder with no end in sight, and there is no guarantee of the future in an economy designed to protect the rich and powerful at the expense of the poor and those subsisting at the margins of society.
It’s no wonder the mental and emotional health among a large portion of the American population is in tangible decline! We have wholesale abandoned any sense of truth, objectivity, science or religion in civil conversation; we now recognize we are living with the catastrophic results of several centuries of what philosophers call nihilism or post-modernism (nothing means anything, there are no universal patterns).
We are without doubt in an apocalyptic time (the Latin word apocalypsis refers to an urgent unveiling of an ultimate state of affairs). Yeats’ oft-quoted poem “The Second Coming” then feels like a direct prophecy. See if you do not agree:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Somehow our occupation and vocation as believers in this sad time must be to first restore the Divine Center by holding it and fully occupying it ourselves. If contemplation means anything, it means that we can “safeguard that little piece of You, God,” as Etty Hillesum describes it. What other power do we have now? All else is tearing us apart, inside and out, no matter who wins the election or who is on the Supreme Court. We cannot abide in such a place for any length of time or it will become our prison.
God cannot abide with us in a place of fear.
God cannot abide with us in a place of ill will or hatred.
God cannot abide with us inside a nonstop volley of claim and counterclaim.
God cannot abide with us in an endless flow of online punditry and analysis.
God cannot speak inside of so much angry noise and conscious deceit.
God cannot be found when all sides are so far from “the Falconer.”
God cannot be born except in a womb of Love.
So offer God that womb.
Stand as a sentry at the door of your senses for these coming months, so “the blood-dimmed tide” cannot make its way into your soul.
If you allow it for too long, it will become who you are, and you will no longer have natural access to the “really deep well” that Etty Hillesum returned to so often and that held so much vitality and freedom for her.
If you will allow, I recommend for your spiritual practice for the next four months that you impose a moratorium on exactly how much news you are subject to—hopefully not more than an hour a day of television, social media, internet news, magazine and newspaper commentary, and/or political discussions. It will only tear you apart and pull you into the dualistic world of opinion and counter-opinion, not Divine Truth, which is always found in a bigger place.
Instead, I suggest that you use this time for some form of public service, volunteerism, mystical reading from the masters, prayer—or, preferably, all of the above.
You have much to gain now and nothing to lose. Nothing at all.
And the world—with you as a stable center—has nothing to lose.
And everything to gain.