I Really, Really Believe

  

One thing strikes me really powerfully in the story of the Raising of Lazarus. It’s just two words, "Jesus wept." He wept. Now this is his beautiful humanity coming forth. We know that Lazarus and Mary and Martha, they were close friends of Jesus. He wept for his friend. And I think that's powerful. It's powerful to understand that weeping can be a holy moment, and that sometimes we're tempted to hold back our tears, but weeping can be profoundly human and profoundly healing.

How many times when I am onsite providing grief support to a person whose coworker had died that the person in front of me is holding back tears. Yet, let them come. Tears are a source of comfort. They help to relieve the sadness and bring calm to the body and soul.

The story of the Raising of Lazarus is a crucial, climactic moment in John’s gospel where we really get to experience a living Jesus. You realize this is the turning point where events start to race downhill toward Jesus’ crucifixion. This is where we might start to see the Son of God look more like us. In this story we see Jesus crying, feeling both love and grief. From here on we’ll see him feeling apprehensive about his fate. We’ll hear him pray for his disciples. He’ll even humble himself to be their servant and wash their feet. He’ll tell them to love each other as he has loved them. We’ll even see him, as he suffers on the cross, make arrangements for the care of his ageing mother. Now we see Jesus’ true humanity. 

I think John wants to give us this picture of a genuine and relatable Messiah so that we may believe in him. When we meet someone and we share in their vulnerability, don’t we have a new relationship with them? Don’t they become more genuine? Don’t we believe in them more? To “believe” in John’s gospel doesn’t mean simply to assent that something may be true. The word in Greek is pisteuo (pisteuw). It means to put trust and confidence in something. When Martha says in verse 27, “Yes, Lord, I believe,” the Greek form of that word means “I really, really believe!”

The gospel calls us to believe in the things of Christ—love, compassion, prayer, humble service, and care for others. Belief in Christ means God can bring new life out of death. No matter where we are on life’s highway, it ain’t over ‘til it’s over. There is always a word of faith to proclaim, a deed of love to be done, a blessing to hope for. 

Lord I pray for all my Sonshine Friends that like Martha despite the tears, despite the sadness, despite our doubts, we can say: “Yes, Lord, I really, really believe!”

While the gospel story is about the promise of a new life with the Lord, I had the humble privilege of being asked to serve as the wedding photographer for Ben and Saiesha’s wedding. Being a wedding photographer means you can pick up on the little, unexpected moments.

 

The promises they made to one another include love, compassion, prayers and humble service and care for one another till death. Hopefully, the photo above captures the God moment when they spoke these vows to one another. The unexpected moment in the gospel had to be when Lazarus eyes were open and Martha and Mary were shocked to see their brother alive again. I am sure there were tears, but these were tears of joy. My unexpected moment is when Fr. Don, the dad of the groom, smiled after he had told his son to kiss Saieha, his new daughter-in-law.

 

 

 

 

 

How's Your Vision

  

In about a month, I will have the humble privilege to travel with Bishop Mack to confirm the children and young adults at Divine Mercy Parish  in Las Vegas. Fr. Erick has many beautiful ministries for his Hispanic families. I have an invitation to take a day trip to the Grand Canyon. Now a million photos are posted daily on the internet. No doubt millions of images of the Grand Canyon have been uploaded. Instead of the usual tourist shot, I hope to capture a moment in time that can best be describes as stunning. Question, where is this location?

In the ninth chapter of John’s gospel, a young man who has his life radically changed that he gets snarky with the religious authorities. These religious authorities are so set in their ways they couldn’t recognize God’s actions if it bit them in the butt. His parents are so afraid of ostracism they’re ready to throw their disabled son under the bus. Then there are  bystanders who don’t believe in miracles even when they see one, and we have the usual clueless disciples.

The disciples have concluded that being born blind has to suck. Admittedly, blindness has its drawbacks. The disciples think because this poor guy has to sit on the street corner with his cup in hand asking for spare change that God must be mad at him or his folks for something. It must be comforting for the disciples—and for the rest of us, too—to think there’s a reason for everything. 

In this story the Pharisees are again cast in the role of the bad guys, and they really live up to it. In fact, I think their behavior here is a quintessential example of what it is to be real dumb-assed jerks. 

So how do these Pharisees see the world? These guys have such a rigid world view that nothing can shake them. Jesus can’t be holy because a truly holy person would observe the Law of Moses and never do any kind of work on the Sabbath. Period. Forget compassion. Forget mercy. The law is the law, and they are its smug and self-righteous guardians.

This makes me ask: what absolutes might we believe? There is but one true expression of the Christian faith. Male homosexuals are all pedophiles. Women are not as smart as men. Every American should have the right to own a firearm. My brother-in-law is selfish? Big business is out to screw you. Foreigners sponge off our country. Everybody should pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Some people never change. Everything is their fault. 

Conservative or progressive, rich or poor, Black or white, we all have ideas in our heads which we think are unshakable. We think we see it all clearly, but maybe we don’t. And sometimes we just need to surrender. That’s what repentance is—changing our minds. Admitting there’s another way to look at things. The 18^th century ship captain John Newton once believed it was okay to transport Africans to the New World as slaves, but God opened his eyes to the truth. In return, Newton, who went blind in later life, wrote the poem which became the lyrics for “Amazing Grace:” 

“I once was lost, but now I’m found, was blind, but now I see.” 

Is there a place in your life open to mystery? Or a place in your heart open to change? Can you accept you might be wrong?

Lord, I pray for all my Sonshine Friends that this Lent is meaningful and brings you a new vision. May you see differently as if looking through the eyes of Jesus.

Looking differently taking a stunning image of the Grand Canyon means doing some planning. My secret tip is to download a site on google called “Fine Art Grand Canyon” and scan all the photos tourist have taken of this wonder of the world.  After a 5 minutes search, I found the following image above that I plan to take on my photo adventure.

 

 

A Woman Apostle

  

The Gospel Reading tells the story of a woman who is worthless by the standards of Jewish society at that time. Jesus has sent his disciples off for food, and he is sitting at a well when she comes to draw water. There is every reason why he shouldn’t talk to her at all.

What Jew or Samaritan would want to invite her to lunch?

First, she is a woman. The disciples are flabbergast at Jesus that keeps them from asking him what he thought he was doing when they return and find him talking to her without even a chaperone by her.

Secondly, she is a Samaritan. As she herself points out to him, Jews don’t talk to Samaritans. Samaritans are outcasts from the Jewish point of view, and self-respecting Jews stay away from them.

And, thirdly, this Samaritan has the sort of history that makes women pariahs even in their home communities. Jesus knows her status, and he lets her know he does. She has had five husbands—five husbands!—and she is currently living with a man to whom she is not married. Even by the lax standards of our own day, this sort of history would make people look askance at her. In her village she is undoubtedly a shamed person.

So, take it all and all, she’s a worthless person, isn’t she? What Jew or Samaritan would want to invite her to lunch?

But, you might be thinking, the savior of the world could certainly spare a crumb even for a shamed Samaritan woman. He could preach to her that her sins are forgiven, you might be supposing, or he could offer her some other kind of pastoral help.

But he doesn’t, does he? No, he asks her to help him. He opens the conversation with her by asking her to give him a drink.

And then look at how this story ends: she brings belief in Jesus to her village, and the villagers come to Jesus because of her.

She isn’t worthless then, is she? No, then she takes her rightful place among the apostles. The evangelization of her village is her accomplishment.

And so when Jesus asks her to care for him, he starts a process that brings her from being worthless to being the apostle to her village.

It was our Lord's belief in her innate goodness that changed her life. It was the love of Christ which changed a Samaritan woman with a checkered past into a future saint of the church.

My question to you today is this: are you an agent of transformation in the lives of others, or do you go around undermining, backbiting, gossiping and otherwise putting other people down.

We are challenged on a daily basis in our homes, in our work places and in our encounters with others throughout our daily lives to see them as Christ sees them: as men and women who are not perfect but in whom God has limitless love. Sometimes, we even need to see that in ourselves.

Lord, I pray for all my Sonshine Friends that we act an agents of change to see the goodness of one another and help to bring out the best in one another.