Without Our Initiative--March 24, 2026

Without Our Initiative--March 24, 2026

"Then [the LORD] said to me, 'Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely. Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord GOD: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people, and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the LORD, has spoken and will act, says the LORD'." [Ezekiel 37:11-14]

Watch out--the first step is a doozy.

The first of the Twelve Steps, I mean--in an addiction recovery program, like Alcoholics Anonymous. The first step is especially hard, because it means letting go of the illusion that you're in control of things. "We admitted we were powerless... and that our lives had become unmanageable." That's how it starts--not with a vow to "just try harder," or a recitation of the old poem Invictus, "I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul." No, instead, recovery has to begin with the honest recognition of our powerlessness, so that we can finally quit wasting our energy pretending we've got our stuff together.

In so many ways, that's all of us human beings, too--whether or not you're officially in a Twelve Step Recovery program. Left to our own devices, we're all pretty well powerless, and our lives are just about unmanageable, too--except we tend to want to fool ourselves and everyone else around that we're all smashing successes. We want to picture ourselves as the doctor or nurse who saves the patient in the nick of time, or the firefighter who comes out of the burning building at the last minute, carrying the rescued child. We don't want to consider that we're the patient on the table or the person carried out of the flames.

But the Scriptures telling us the uncomfortable truth: we are not spiritual Boy Scouts earning heavenly merit badges to make it to the next rank up; we are more like old chalky bones needing to be raised to life again through a power beyond our own. We're Lazarus, waiting to be called to life again--which isn't something we can achieve by our own power.

Maybe that's what makes it so hard to admit we are powerless like Ezekiel's valley of bones: it means that we bring nothing to the table but our helplessness. Bones, after all, can't even ask for help or healing. A sick person might have the bright idea to call 9-1-1. A child trapped in a burning house can shout for help. But bones? They don't even know their predicament--they can't even ask for help in the first place. God has to give it without being asked first. God has to step in and raise the dead, without waiting around for the bones to get their act together and request a resurrection. That means--gasp--God's work to save us doesn't depend on our being bright enough to request it, good enough to earn it, or pious enough to invite Jesus into our hearts first. We are powerless, and our lives are unmanageable, after all. We need a God who is willing to raise us from the dead without needing our initiative to kickstart it or to invite God into our hearts first. We need a God who redeems even before we realize we need redemption.

That was certainly the hard pill that the exiles had to swallow in Ezekiel's day. After generations of thinking they were invincible because they had God on "their side" or because of their national wealth or their armies or their weapons or their own generic "greatness," they were brought face to face with their own helplessness. Babylon, the empire du jour, had trampled down their city walls, burned their Temple, overrun their armies, and plundered their wealth. It was as close as you could be to national death--to being just a valley full of old bones. And it was at that point--but not before--that God could bring about a resurrection and bring them home again. Resurrection, by definition, is only for the dead, and therefore must be given and cannot be earned, initiated, or even asked for. But that's exactly when God's best work gets done.

If we, like the ancient exiles sitting in Babylon, don't bring anything to the table to earn or initiate our own resurrection, then that certainly removes any ground we have for looking down on anybody else. Bones don't get to brag, and the femur over here doesn't have reason to think it's better than the tibia further down on the pile. We're all just in need of a power beyond ourselves to bring us back to life. If I want to grow in love, it will mean abandoning the illusion that I'm more worthy of God's love than you or anybody else.

Today, then, is a day for honesty... with ourselves and with God, so that we can be honest with everybody else, too. We are helpless on our own--but that doesn't need to make us despair for even a split second, because ours is a God who meets us exactly at our helplessness. The thing that changes for us, though, once we are able to admit that we are powerless and that our lives have become unmanageable, is that we don't have to try and compare ourselves to anybody else, push them down, or puff ourselves up. We can leave that kind of arrogance behind as one more coping mechanism that never got to the root of the problem anyway. And instead, with open, empty hands, we will at last be ready simply to let God resurrect what is dead in us--and to rejoice when God does that for others around us, whether or not we thought they were "worthy" of it.

O living God, we find ourselves resurrected by your power and your life-giving Spirit--thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Allow us to quit pretending we have come to life in you by our own achieving, so that we can celebrate as you call others to life all around us, too.

Letting God Surprise Us--March 23, 2026

Letting God Surprise Us--March 23, 2026

"The hand of the LORD came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. He said to me, 'Mortal, can these bones live?' I answered, 'O Lord GOD, you know.' [Ezekiel 37:1-3]

The longer I continue in this life's journey with God, the more I come to believe that faith starts, not with what we "know" about God, but with the humility to say, "I don't know, God--but you do." Faith, in other words, doesn't start with our cocky certainty about how God works, but rather with giving God the room [or recognizing that God already has the room] to surprise us.

And honestly, I think faith doesn't only start there. Mature faith has learned how to let God keep surprising us, too. A growing and deepening faith doesn't look so much like a catechism of memorized answers, which confine God to stay inside the boundaries of theological theses and philosophical propositions, but rather looks like a relationship that knows the Divine well enough to know that there's always an ace up God's sleeve.

That is most certainly where the prophet is by the time we get to the vision here in Ezekiel 37, words that many of us heard yesterday in worship. He has known the living God long enough not to put anything past the Almighty... and knowing that the moment you decree God "can't" do something, or isn't "allowed" to do something [you know, because of "the rules"], God tends to take it as a personal dare to do the very thing you said God couldn't or wouldn't do. That's why Ezekiel has learned that when God asks a question, especially something that sounds like a loaded question, it's best not to pretend to have more answers or more certainty than you really can claim.

When God shows Ezekiel a valley full of chalky old dry bones and asks, "Can these bones live again?" the obvious answer would have been a resounding NO. No, old bones cannot come to life again. No there is no hope for scattered skeletons. And by extension, the obvious answer should have been NO, there was no hope for the scattered fragments of the people of Judah, whose nation had been destroyed and whose citizens had been taken into exile in Babylon. By all reasonable accounting, the nation was, to be blunt about it, dead.

And that's really what's behind God's question and the imagery of dry bones. They are a stand-in for the exiled people of Israel and Judah, and they were certain that there was no hope for them. Their nation and all the things they built their identity on [their Temple, their capital city Jerusalem, their way of life, and their king] were gone, and they were certain that their covenant relationship with God was permanently and irreparably broken. The idea of a new beginning and a new relationship with God was as absurd as the idea of dead bones becoming living people again. So when God asks Ezekiel, "Can these bones live?" Ezekiel and all of his fellow exiles would have heard it with the same force as, "Could there ever be a new beginning for us as a people?" And the obvious common-sense, rational answer to both questions should have been, "No."

But of course, Ezekiel has known God for long enough not to fall for the obvious answer, even when anything else seems impossible. He knows that God doesn't ask a question like that without a reason, and usually the reason involves up-ending our old assumptions. So Ezekiel lets humility direct his answer: "O Lord God, you know." That is to say, "Everything else would have told me there was no hope, but you are the God who does impossible things, and you would move heaven and earth for the sake of your beloved, so I won't put anything past you any longer." Ezekiel's faith is mature enough that he's ready--maybe even expectant--for God to surprise him, even if it means admitting he doesn't have all the answers.

That's really what God's people keep coming back to, isn't it? Throughout the Scriptures, in the stories of ancient Israel through the gospel adventures of Jesus and the witness of the early church, we are most in closest [and most honest] relationship with God when we abandon all arrogance and pretense and let ourselves be surprised by the ways God's strong love does the impossible. Or, as theologian Douglas John Hall puts it, "The disciple community believes that God reigns, all contrary evidence notwithstanding. But God, as God is depicted in the continuity of the Testaments, is never quite predictable—or rather, only this is predictable about God: that God will be faithful.”

It's the same humility in faith that leads Peter to call out to Jesus, "If it's you, Lord, call me to come to you out on the water." It's the same openness for God to do a new and impossible thing that leads the Ethiopian eunuch to ask, "What is to prevent me from being baptized?" and Philip to go ahead and baptize him, even for all the long list of reasons that "the rules" say he can't. And today we are again dared to let our love of God be humble enough to be open to God's surprising actions that push the boundaries of what we thought possible.

On this day, the living God just might pose some equally impossible sounding question to you, too: "Mortal, will you love those you have written off as unacceptable and unworthy?" "Disciple, could my grace give a new beginning for someone you have written off as beyond hope?" "Child, could there be hope where you have given up, and new life for you right now?" When it happens, may we have the maturity of faith to know how, like Ezekiel, to answer humbly:

"O Lord God, you know."

Surprise us, O God, as you will--and let these hearts of ours be ready for you to move in ways we did not expect, but which turn out to be completely faithful to your character.

On Being Found--March 20, 2026

On Being Found--March 20, 2026

"Jesus heard that [the religious leaders] had driven [the man who had been blind] out [of the synagogue], and when he found him, he said, 'Do you believe in the Son of Man?' He answered, 'And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.' Jesus said to him, 'You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.' He said, 'Lord, I believe.' And he worshiped him." (John 9:35-38)

Religious folks often seem to want to ask the question, "Have you found Jesus?" But the Scriptures seem much less interested in that question than they are in what happens when we recognize that Jesus has found us.

This scene, which comes at the conclusion of the story we've been looking at all week, is a case in point.  It is indeed true that Jesus asks the man who had earlier been blind "Do you believe in the Son of Man?" but once you see that question in its context, it sounds much less like a cold call of a religious salesman at the door, and much more like, well, another instance of Jesus doing the seeking.  The man who can now see has been ostracized from his religious community because he wouldn't denounce Jesus as a "sinner" for healing on the sabbath.  He simply testified to what he knew about Jesus and what Jesus had done for him, and the Respectable Religious Leaders were outraged, so they expelled him from the synagogue.  He was now an outcast, not because of his physical malady, but because of the condemnation of the Orthodoxy Police.  So what does Jesus do?  He does what he always does: Jesus seeks out the outcast and brings them into his own embrace.

It is worth noting that Jesus has to be the one who does the seeking and finds the man who had been blind, because the healed man had never actually seen Jesus before to be able to look for him again.  When he first met Jesus, of course, he could not see him, and Jesus' curious way of healing him was to put mud on his eyes and go send him to the pool of Siloam to wash.  So he wouldn't know Jesus if he found him, and he had no particular reason to believe that Jesus was still in town.  If this man is going to be reclaimed from being thrown out and rejected, it will have to be Jesus who makes the first move.  Jesus will have to be the seeker.  And so he is.

This coming Sunday, many of us will hear another amazing story from John's Gospel, when Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. And in that story as well, the responsibility will fall to Jesus to take the initiative both to heal and to restore the lost, since the recently-deceased Lazarus cannot ask for Jesus' help, seek him out, or take the first step. Jesus will have to make the first move, because dead men do not even know they are dead to be able to ask for resurrection. Jesus is the seeker, and Lazarus brings only his empty-handed deadness.  Over and over again in the Scriptures, that's how it works: not so much that we have to go find a missing deity, but rather that we are the ones who have gotten ourselves lost, gone astray, or don't even realize that we are in trouble (or dead!), and God is the one who seeks, regathers, and rescues us.

So here in John 9, Jesus is the one who does the finding, and honestly, that's what the whole Christian story is really about: being found by Jesus.  Once Jesus has found the man whom he had healed, he can ask the question about belief--"do you believe in the Son of Man?"--but only after having sought him out first.  And of course, the man's response is telling: he doesn't know who this "Son of Man" is!  So Jesus even supplies him with the answer.  "It's me.  The one who is talking to you.  I am the one worthy of your trust.  I have already sought you ought."  That changes how we hear the initial question, doesn't it?  Instead of sounding like a quiz or being a litmus test (as in, "If you get this one wrong, you're not going to heaven!"), but rather with the assurance that if the man doesn't know the answer, Jesus will supply it.  Jesus doesn't say, "Well, since you didn't properly recognize me as Lord and Savior, I'm afraid you're doomed!  Tough luck!" but rather, "Since you don't know yet, I'll tell you--I'm the one to put your trust in.  And don't worry--I've already found you first!"

And of course, part of the point of stories like in this in the gospel is to help us to recognize the resonance with our own story, too.  Each of us has been found by Jesus; each of us was first sought by Jesus.   Each of us has been drawn, led, and pulled by the Spirit already, even before we were aware of it.  So when we get to a place of being able to say, "I believe in Jesus," it is only possible because God has enabled us to place our trust in Jesus.  Jesus spoon-feeds the answer to the man who had been blind, after all; he will not keep his identity secret or hidden from us.  The humbling, but deeply grace-filled, thing is that Jesus has already sought us out before we realized we should even be looking for him.  By the time we can answer the question, "Have you found Jesus?" in the affirmative, it turns out that he has already found us.  Like our older brother in the faith Martin Luther says when he is talking about the meaning of the Third Article of the Creed ("I believe in the Holy Spirit..."), at some point we come to the realization that "I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to him; but instead the Holy Spirit has called me through the Gospel..." The point at which we come to put our faith consciously in Jesus is much more the realization that we have been found already first by the One who sought us out. And maybe the whole Christian life is really a matter of learning what it means that we have been found by Jesus, and that in his grip we are held with a love that will not let us go.

I suspect that realization will change the way we share our faith with people.  Instead of seeing ourselves as religious salespeople trying to close a deal by getting people to subscribe to our religion or buy the Savior we are peddling, we'll see ourselves as people who have been found and are helping others to recognize that Jesus has found them, too.  We will see salvation, not as a reward for reaching the end of a spiritual treasure hunt, but the gift given by the One who found us when we didn't even realize we were lost, and who gathers us into his embrace when we had been outcasts before. And maybe we will stop talking about eternal life as a prize we have earned for getting the answers right on some post-mortem theological exam at the pearly gates and more as the new kind of existence we become aware of when we realize that Jesus has claimed us and the Spirit has given us the ability to trust in him as a gift. When that happens, we'll see that belonging in the community called "church" is not an exclusive club for people who know the right password, but a gathering of outcasts, misfits, and lost sheep whose hope doesn't hang on getting the answers right but on having been sought out by the Shepherd already. And faith is simply the word for how you come to see the world differently when you realize you have been found.

Today, may we realize that beautiful, humbling truth: we have been found.

Today, may we help someone else to see it, too.

Lord Jesus, heal our vision to see ourselves as people whom your love has found, and to let that seeking love be our message to the world.

Removing Our Filters--March 19, 2026

Removing Our Filters--March 19, 2026

"Some of the Pharisees said, 'This man [Jesus] is not from God, for he does not observe the sabbath.' But others said, 'How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?' And they were divided. So they said again to the blind man, 'What do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened.' He said, 'He is a prophet'." (John 9:16-17)

It's not a lack of piety or belief that keeps people from recognizing the saving power of God in this story; it's arrogant religious certainty. That's the tragedy, and the warning for us. Sometimes the Respectable Religious People are so unquestionably sure they know who is a "sinner" that they are unable to acknowledge the miracle in their midst that has come from God's own hand. Sometimes we are those Respectable Religious People ourselves, missing out on the gracious power of God right before our eyes. And it quite literally a damn shame when we miss it.

This is one of those realities we have a hard time wrapping our minds around, because most of the time we'd think it's a good thing to have strong faith, sure convictions, and solid confidence in what we believe. And, sure, all of that is true. Waffling faith that keeps looking back, twiddling its thumbs, or is afraid to step out of the boat and onto the water is not a virtue. But when faith curdles into dogmatism--when our faith shifts from being focused on God to being focused on our rightness about what we think about God--we can end up missing what God is actually doing among us, because we've filtered out anything unexpected from our view.

That's what has happened in this passage, which continues the story many of us heard this past Sunday in worship: some of the Respectable Religious People have pre-decided that nothing Jesus does can be good or holy or from God, because he has healed someone on the sabbath day. And this is the hitch--they've decided that their interpretation of what the sabbath commandment means is unquestionable, and therefore when Jesus does something that breaks their interpretation of the rule, they are dead certain that he's broken the commandment... and therefore is a sinner... and must hate the word of God. Funny, isn't it, how we so easily make that leap from "we disagree about what this religious commandment means" to assuming "because you and I disagree, YOU must be wrong, YOU must be the sinner, and YOU must reject the word and authority of God." Jesus, of course, doesn't do any of those things, despite the fact that he believes the sabbath commandment allows for healing and restoring life--in fact, that is the purpose of sabbath in the first place. The trouble here with the Respectable Religious People isn't that they take their faith seriously and care about practicing their piety--it's rather than they are unwilling to even consider the possibility that they could be wrong in their interpretations... and because of that, they set themselves up to miss out on the presence of God's saving power in their midst.

And of course it's easy for us 21st century church folk to rag on this particular group of Pharisees in this particular episode, and to miss the way we do the very same thing. It may not be a miraculous restoration of sight that happens in the course of this day, but all too easily, we make decisions in advance of who "must be" a sinner because they disagree with us, and therefore, we assume they are not only wrong but opposed to God and God's ways. And instead of seeing other people who differ as people who love the same God we do and who are striving their best to live out their faith in that God, we end up saying, "Because we disagree, YOU are wrong--and since I love God you must HATE God." We end up parting company with folks who are striving their very best, just as surely as we are striving our best, to seek the will of God and love the way Jesus loves. And we end up letting our faith become rigid and brittle like a weathered old wooden beam, rather than flexibly strong like a living oak that can sway in the breeze without snapping, precisely because it can bend.

This is at least part of why it is so vitally important for love to include intellectual humility rather than unquestionable arrogance. Arrogance isn't just bragging about my accomplishments: it's also what happens when I am so certain about my rightness than I cannot fathom even the possibility that I could be wrong, or that I could have something to learn. And it's not just bragging that kills Christ-like love--it's when I allow my rigid certainty to keep me from seeing others as people through whom God might be moving, people whom God is healing and saving right now, and even people through whom God might be teaching me something. When our faith is no longer teachable and correctible--when I am unwilling to hear someone else's perspective or see how another person views things--I should be worried that my faith is no longer in God, but in my own certainty. And that kind of certainty is an idol of the most insidious kind.  On the other hand, when we can see that our reason for belonging in the family of God comes from God's grip on us, rather than our exclusive grasp on The Truth, we can consider the possibility of our own wrongness and be open to learning from others, as well as making space for people whose perspectives are different from our own, even while they are still striving to follow Jesus and seek the will of God.

Today, without becoming spineless jellyfish who have no substance or convictions, perhaps it's enough for us simply to practice the humility that dares to say, "Maybe I'm not right about everything--and if I'm not, how would I know?" Maybe before we leap to saying our disagreements automatically mean that THOSE PEOPLE must hate God or reject the Bible, we could stop and ask, "Is there the possibility that I have something to learn here--and could I be at risk of missing out on what God is up to?" Like the line from Ted Lasso puts it (even if it's not really from Walt Whitman, as the famous scene from the TV shows claims), "Be curious, not judgmental."  When we can be curious and ask others how they see things and how they have arrived at their perspectives, we end up learning a great deal rather than missing out on opportunities for growth.  And most of all, we are less likely to miss out on the movement of God in our midst on account of our inability to see what we did not expect.

A story like this one says to me that Jesus is willing to go out of his way to help us to remove those filters we've put up that keep us from seeing God moving in unexpected ways. Maybe today's the day we let him in close enough to restore our vision to see God's goodness where we didn't think it could be found, right before our eyes.

Jesus, break down the arrogance in our minds that keeps us from seeing where you are at work, and keeps us from recognizing the people through you are trying to get through to us.

Sharing Our Stories--March 18, 2026

Sharing Our Stories--March 18, 2026

"They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. Now it was a sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight. He said to them, 'He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see'." (John 9:13-15)

The old line goes, "Evangelism is one beggar telling another where to find bread."

I've always loved that way of putting it, because it reminds me that my job is not to have all the answers or think it's my job to dole out heavenly goodies. I am a recipient of God's good gifts, and the most I can do is to tell others where I have found them being given away. Belonging in the found family of God is not like being an elite member of an exclusive club for VIPs--it is a collection of people who have been given grace beyond their earning and, as Frederick Buechner once put it, who have "at least some dim and half-baked idea of whom to thank."

And that truth is both humbling and freeing. It's humbling, on the one hand, because it means acknowledging that I don't have all the answers and am not in control; and it is freeing because it means realizing I don't have to have them all or be in control. I can just tell the truth I know about the grace I have been given.

One of the things I love about the man in this story from John 9 is that he doesn't have anything to prove to anybody, and he doesn't need to make anybody think he's got it all figured out. He doesn't know what Jesus looks like [at this point in the story]. He doesn't know how soil and spittle produced sight. He's not an expert on whether it is, or is not, a violation of the sabbath commandment to restore someone's eyesight on the day of rest. And he doesn't know what else to say about Jesus other than that he must be a prophet.

But for all that this man doesn't know, he is neither ashamed nor apologetic. He is comfortable enough in his own skin to say, "Here's what I don't know, and then here's what I do know: Jesus put mud on my eyes, I washed, and now I can see." He doesn't have to pretend he understands how it worked. But he doesn't have to hide what he has experienced just because he only has his own experience to share. The man tells the truth he has to share--"Now I see"--even if he can't explain the miracle or dissect the divinity of the one who worked it. But once he has shared what he can speak to, he doesn't need to silence anybody else [even though the Respectable Religious Leaders will do that to him], and he doesn't need to weaponize his words against others, either. Neither does he start a crusade telling other people living with blindness that they must have done something wrong because their experience doesn't match up with his. The man can speak to what he knows and leave it there--this isn't a contest or a battle or a war.

There is something we can learn from this man's way of telling his story without turning it into a culture war. All too often, modern day Respectable Religious Folk still talk about sharing what we have come to trust about God like it's a "battle for the truth" or a "war against the people who have it wrong," when the man healed by Jesus doesn't fall for that kind of thinking. He can tell the truth he knows without arrogance [as if he had everything figured out] and without fear [because he doesn't have to pretend to have all the answers]. I wonder what it would look like for us to hold onto both of those day by day. We don't have to pretend we are Bible experts, professional theologians, or perfect peaches in order to tell people what we have received from God in Christ. We can say, confidently and graciously, how we have come to know love beyond earning and grace beyond calculating. We can talk about how Christ's presence in our lives gives hope and direction. We can tell others about the fullness that surrounds us in the community of Jesus' followers, who share joys and sorrows and ordinary times along the way with us. And we can do all of that without having to get up on any high horses as if we're the only ones with anything to say, or that everybody else who says anything different is wrong. We can tell the truth we know without getting defensive, because we're really just beggars telling other beggars where we've found bread.  Witnesses in a courtroom simply tell their account of what they have experienced; they do not also get to be the judge.

What would it look like if we started there today? What difference could it make for someone around us if we were willing to share what Jesus has meant to us--without having to make it into a battle or a war of words? What might happen in this day if all you have to worry yourself about was telling the story you have to share, and nothing more?

Lord Jesus, free us and humble us to be able to share what you have done for us without thinking we have to have all the answers.

The Muddy-Handed Messiah--March 17, 2026

The Muddy-Handed Messiah--March 17, 2026

"When [Jesus] had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man's eyes, saying to him, 'Go, wash in the pool of Siloam' [which means Sent]. Then he went and washed and came back able to see..." (John 9:6-7)

Jesus chose mud.

Just sit with that thought for a moment. Of all the possible means and methods he might have used to help the man in front of him, Jesus chose to make mud and get his hands dirty. And, not to put too fine a point on it, but mud made from his own spit and the soil of the dirt road. Jesus chose that. For whatever else that fact means, it says that Jesus is not above that kind of messy, grubby kind of work if it is in the service of loving another person and revealing the character of God.  And maybe it's only fitting, since the God we meet in the Bible fashions human beings (at least in one version of the story, from Genesis 2) by forming us out of the dirt and clay of the ground and then breathing into us to bring us to life.  Somehow it seems only fitting, then, that Jesus should restore someone's sight by making mud with his hands and touching his eyes up close face to face.

That's the connection I think I have overlooked in all the times I've read this story before over the years: it's that Jesus' choice to heal this man in literally the earthiest way possible is also meant to show us the beating heart of God. Just before this passage, in the verses we looked at yesterday from this passage that many of us heard this past Sunday in worship, Jesus told his disciples, "We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day." And then the very next thing he does is to stick his hands in the mud he's made on the ground with his own saliva as his way of healing this man. What Jesus does is meant to be a picture of God's own kind of love and power--that is to say, it's not just Jesus who is willing to get dirt under his fingernails: God is.  The messy and muddy-handed messiah is showing us a picture of the way God loves.  Jesus is saying, "This is what God is like."

Think about it: Jesus has the power and authority to heal by just speaking the word. He could have silently willed for the man's eyes to work, or he could have even just laid hands on the man. He does all sorts of things all the time when he heals people--sometimes, to the hear the Gospels tell it, he doesn't even have to be in the same building or part of town as the person he's healing. But here, Jesus chooses something earthy, something humble, something messy--not because the mud is magic, but because Jesus has come not only to heal, but to help all of us to see what God is like. And as Jesus shows us, God's way of being among us is in earthiness, lowliness, and humility. Jesus doesn't have to make spit-mud because that's the only way to give this man his sight; he shows us that the very Creator of the Cosmos and Ruler of the Universe is willing to enter into the mess with us. Jesus gives us a living picture of the God whose love doesn't blush at the thought of spit or soil or mud-caked hands.

And I think that's worth paying attention to, because we are so used to lesser "loves" that won't come close. We are used to the celebrity or politician photo op, where a Big Name stays at the soup kitchen or the disaster response shelter just long enough to get a picture taken--and then gets out of town in a gleaming motorcade. We are used to people who throw money at problems but never darken the door of the actual programs or agencies they supposedly support. We are all too familiar with how easy it is to offer electronic well-wishes or social media "thoughts-and-prayers" that stay safely on a screen but never lead us actually to connect with the people we say we care about. And here Jesus makes a point of saying, "That's NOT how God's love works."

God's love, as Jesus shows it to us, is more like the willingness of parents not only to take pictures of their cute babies in fresh onesies, but also to change diapers. It's more like the willingness of a good friend to sit at your side while your nose is running and your tears are streaming down your face, no matter how unbecoming or unsanitized it seems. It's more like the snap action of a stranger to perform rescue breathing or chest compressions on someone who has collapsed and needs CPR until the ambulance can come. In these moments, genuine love isn't ashamed to be in the midst of our messy humanity--and Jesus shows us that this is what God's love is like, too. Jesus doesn't just drop a couple of shekels in the man's begging bowl and say "Good luck," and he doesn't choose a no-contact way of healing the man, either. Jesus chose mud... so that we would know that God isn't afraid of the mud, either.

What could it look like for us to show that kind of love in our actions and presence today? If we, like Jesus and his first disciples, have been sent to "work the works of him who sent" Jesus [that is, God], then how might we love in that same kind of un-haughty, unpretentious way that is willing to get into the mud if necessary for the sake of our neighbor? When we are tempted to keep other people [especially folks who are different from us in some way] at arm's length, how might we instead let Jesus' dirt-under-the-fingernails kind of love lead us close? And how might that also help peel away our own sense of self-importance and climb down from whatever pedestals we've put ourselves on?

Today, we are indeed called to act in ways that reveal the heart of God for the watching world. And since Jesus has made it clear that God's love isn't too proud to get into the mess among us, we should expect to get dirt under our fingernails, too.

Lord Jesus, lead us to follow where you go and to love humbly like you do, wherever that takes us.

Our Invisible Baggage--March 16, 2026

Our Invisible Baggage--March 16, 2026

"As [Jesus] walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, 'Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?' Jesus answered, 'so that God's works might be revealed in him, we must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world'." [John 9:1-5]

Consider this Exhibit A.

I'd like to submit this conversation into evidence for why good theology [and bad theology] matters. I know that in this day and age it is easy to dismiss theology as either fanciful nonsense or intellectual ivory tower stuff that doesn't connect at all with real life, but a scene like this makes it clear that the things we think about God [and humanity, creation, and life] have the power either to build up or destroy, to help us grow in humility and love or to become permission for arrogance or hate.

When I was a high school student and friends or classmates found out I was discerning a call into ministry, the running joke was that I would grow up and work in a "religion factory"--the gist of their joke being that studying religion or theology was a useless and impractical pursuit because there is no such thing as a factory where you can get hired to build "religion." And in that sense, they were right. But the more I pay attention to the ways folks use--and quite often mis-use--their thinking about God to determine the ways they treat other people, the more I wish that all of us spent more time critically thinking through what we believe about God and why... because the consequences are profound.

This opening scene from the story many of us heard this past Sunday is a case in point. Upon crossing paths with man who had been reduced to panhandling for food and spare change, who was also born blind, Jesus' disciples immediately go into armchair-theologian mode and pose a loaded question to Jesus. "Rabbi, who sinned, that this man was born blind?" And notice: these are Jesus' own hand-picked disciples; this is not a case of the Respectable Religious Leaders setting Jesus up with a trap question, as they sometimes do. This is not someone trying to trip Jesus up with a "gotcha" question. These are Jesus' own students and followers, who have been with Jesus for some time already, and who still are convinced that this is how God operates in the world.

Right off the bat they have made assumptions about what is going on here. They were doing theology [badly] and didn't even realize how those assumptions got their question off on the wrong footing from the beginning. They have offered Jesus two options, and both are wrong. Their assumption is that the condition of being born blind is a punishment from God [already wrong on so many levels], and that therefore the only question left to ask is whose sin this is punishment for. Did he somehow sin in utero, or did God possibly punish people in advance of sins they would commit? Did his parents sin, and thereby pass along wrath to their children? These are the options they present Jesus with, not even considering that hey, what if blindness isn't a punishment, and what if God is not in the business of zapping people with maladies every time they mess up?

The thing that gets me about this whole opening scene is that the disciples don't even realize how much invisible and unnamed baggage they are bringing to the situation. They don't realize how much they are unquestioningly assuming when they frame their question. They have already decided in a sense how God operates in the world--and thereby they have set themselves up to look down on some people as divinely-judged sinners, simply by the way they have set the question up. Even before Jesus gets a word in, the disciples have taken their theological starting point--namely, that physical disability is invariably a sign of God's judgment for specific sins--and let it filter their view of reality. Their starting point about God means any time they see someone with some severe physiological condition, they'll assume this is a punishment from God. And conversely, they'll see anyone who is not affected by a medical condition as marginally better or more righteous; after all, at least they're not being punished with an illness, right? And of course, presuming that most of the time these disciples are themselves in pretty good health, that conveniently allows them to cast themselves, not just as "good," but as "better" than others they cross paths with. The disciples may not realize they are doing it, but their own theological assumptions are teaching them arrogance that sees themselves as better and other people as inherently less-than.

Now, I would hope it is obvious that Jesus shuts down all of this thinking. He rules out that God is to be found in this situation as the judge handing out a sentence for sin, but rather that if you're going to find God here, it will be in the healing of this man and the doing of good. [This is kind of like the old line of Mr. Rogers that when tragedy happens, we look for "the helpers" who are repairing and restoring.] Jesus isn't just giving the disciples an answer for this specific man in front of them, but he is pulling apart their whole theology to get out the poorly laid foundation they have built it on. Jesus tears down the disciples' bad theology that unwittingly taught them to see others as "less than" and instead insists that God is to be found in mending rather than in zapping. Their assumptions about God are not only incorrect; they are also bending the disciples' hearts and lives toward arrogance rather than in the direction of love. Our theology always shapes the kind of people we are becoming. And while nobody is saved by their theology [or damned by their bad theology], God does care about the kind of people we are becoming. God's love not only forgives us and claims us, but also reshapes us and forms us in the likeness of that love. So bad theology matters, because it has a way of giving us permission to hate some people, or to shrug off other people in apathy, or to see others as inherently less worthy of care and dignity. And that matters to Jesus, because those people matter to Jesus.

Today, it is worth looking more closely at our own assumptions about God and where they come from, and to see how our theology sometimes leads us away from love and into arrogance. Where that is happening, maybe it's time to let the living Jesus start pulling down the structures, worldviews, and thought-patterns we've built on top of shoddy foundations, so that he can build us anew in the likeness of his love and goodness.

Lord Jesus, give us the courage to let you help us re-examine what we think, what we believe, and what we unquestioningly assume, so that we see the world through your eyes rather than our own filters.