The One Who Said Yes

John 11:1-16
Then Thomas said to the rest of the disciples, "Let us also go, that we may die with him."

However disturbing the fact that Jesus would intentionally neglect a dying friend, subjecting his family and friends to such grief, what I find worse is that Jesus does it as an opportunity for the glorification of God. (Couldn't God find better ways for glorification? Better ways to teach Jesus' followers? Better ways to inspire hope and assurance?) I can only assume that whatever Jesus was doing where he was, was so important that he could not leave until it was done. (Neither the place or Jesus' activities there ever receive mention in John's Gospel, however, so I question that idea, too.)

For me, right now, the real hero of the story at this point is Thomas Didymus ("the twin"), who speaks the words quoted above.

Jesus is heading back to Judea, where (in John's Gospel, at least) Jesus repeatedly visits and is threatened with death each time (and still manages to win converts and disciples as loyal and loving as Lazarus and his sisters). In John's Gospel, Jesus returning the Judea is the equivalent of walking into hostile, enemy territory. This is foolish behavior - obviously there is work to be done and disiples to make aplenty in the Galilee and even the Decapolis (the Hellenic cities on the far side of the Jordan). Jesus and his disciples receive a warmer welcome in Samaria than in Judea! But Judea is where Jesus is going - and apparently the disciples have a choice whether or not to follow him.

Of course, they always have a choice. They are not servants bound to a master. They are not slaves. At every moment of every day, they must choose whether or not to continue alongside Jesus. It is just like marriage or baptism - you can't rely on that first experience to see you through all the experiences to come, you must choose over and over again to be married, or a disciple. We all get to choose. Have to choose.

But to be a disciple, you often choose death in the service and footsteps of Jesus.

Here, Jesus ups and starts walking away, heading for Judea - and unspeakable resistance. His disciples, sitting around the fire, are stunned and unsure, questioning and reconsidering. And Thomas speaks up - "let us go with him, that we may die with him."

Thomas is the one who sees the reality - that following Jesus means walking in the shadow of death, of resisting powers and defying conventions in order to minister to those most needy. And that those in power and those whose fortunes are bound up by the conventions of culture and economy and might will bring all of their power, wealth and violence to stop you from upsetting things. And that what it means to be a disciple is just that: to suffer and die in upsetting things for the rich and powerful and proud.

Thomas says: I'm in. I signed on to this man's vision, and I believe in it. The world can be different, can be better, and if we have to go to the heart of the beast in order to start changing it, then I''m following Jesus there.

But here's the key to the story: Those that followed Jesus into the jaws of death were the ones to witness a miracle. Grief would be healed, the dead would rise, answers and faith would be found. Only those willing to risk persecution and death for the Kingdom of God witnessed the miracle. Only those willing to die with Jesus (rather than live without him) glimpsed the Kingdom.

Are we given no less a choice? Are the stakes lower for us than for Thomas? Are the Powers and Principalities of this world more congenial to Jesus' vision and the Kingdom of God?

Can we say, with Thomas, "Let us also go, that we may die with him"? Will we say, "Let us also go..."? Despite the trials and resistance? Are we willing to consider the values of the Kingdom of God more trustworthy than the values of our Culture, Economy, Government, Pocketbook?

Defying all logic and convention, Jesus went to Judea to raise someone from the dead. Are we willing to follow him into dangerous territory to witness a miracle?

Where did it go?

John 9:6-12

"So the man went and washed, and came home seeing." (v7, NIV)

What an interesting way to put it: and came home seeing. The blind man didn't immediately receive sight, didn't dance and shout at the pool after seeing for the first time in his life, didn't run first to the Temple to offer sacrifcices in thanks for a miracle. He came home seeing, and was ridiculed by his friends and neighbors.

But isn't this always the way? If we come home different, with our eyes opened to a new reality, with new ideas and convictions, if we come home transformed, we consider it miraculous. While those still mired in the old world, in the old ways of seeing, in the old reality with the old convictions, will accuse us of treachery and treat us with suspicion. They will doubt the sincerity of our transformation - were we ever really the way we were, are we really the way we are now? And they will question us: How did this happen? And they will not be satisfied with our answer.

"How then were your eyes opened?!"

"Where is this man?"

I don't know.

This transformation, this healing, this opening to new worlds isn't something you can locate, corral, drag into court or put under a microscope. Its sponteneity is part of its charm. It is working in all of us all of the time, and sometimes some of us are particularly open to it. Jesus is walking all around - and there are blind people left and right. Why does Jesus stop to heal this one, who didn't even ask? Who can say? But it doesn't mean that man didn't receive (in)sight. Just because lightening strikes one person and not another doesn't mean lightening didn't strike at all.

And just like lightening, Jesus disappears, leaving the smoking, seeing man behind to face the doubts, looks and scrutiny of his peers.

Where is this man, they asked him.

"I don't know," he said. I'm not sure what happened, or where to go from here. All I know is that I see now what I did not before. And I will have to figure out how to be in this world now.

The Work of the Day

John 9:1-5

It is interesting, first of all, that Jesus should say that neither the blind man nor his parents sinned. I am assuming that implied is "that he was born blind," because the liklihood of three people living sinlessly is pretty low - even lower that Jesus wouldn't find such examples worth commenting further on. But there is hope here, too, that we might be genuinely capable of living without sin in certain contexts - on our best behavior, if you will. Or, even if we can't live without sin, one aspect of the Grace of God is God's willingness to overlook or forgive sin - particularly sin in spite of our best intentions or actions.

Notice, though, that Jesus does not dwell on the issue of sin. A short, dismissive answer to the disciples saying in other words that sin isn't the concern here, and Jesus zeroes in on the real issue: "As long as it is day, we must to the work of him who sent me." (NIV) All this talk of sin and deserving is a distraction - the real issue is for us to be at God's work while we are able.

For Jesus, the work of God is healing those blind without fault - in other words, healing injustice and relieving suffering. It isn't so much that Jesus is a miracle-worker - there were plenty of miracle-workers across the Roman Empire. Even for the Gospel writer John the miraculous plays second-fiddle to the purpose and commentary of Jesus surrounding his works, what we are supposed to learn from the story or walk away from this reading believing.

We must do the work of that which sends us. The nature of our God is revealed by our actions. Even if we Christians sing devotedly one hour a week but live the rest of our lives as if that one hour meant nothing, then we reveal our personal god to be shallow, untransformative, soothing for us but insensitive to the cruelties of the world, and unable to move us to action and sacrifice on others' behalf.

We must do the work of that which sends us. If our God is one that has the power to move mountains or redeem sinners or make us want to do things that do not serve our own interests or pleasures, then where are we in relation to that power? If we believe that God can - and have every expectation that God will - be active in the world, in the hearts and minds of people; or that God can and does work in our world to end injustice, transform people, redeem individuals and societies, use every opportunity to transform what is to what should be, then why are we not just as actively engaged?

Night is coming! When no one can work! We have only so much time, people! We do not live forever. Our work for good or ill will not survive forever. The structures and mechanisms - governments, laws, cultures, economic systems, personal relationships - they will not last forever. We have to get to work in them now, before we have lost our chance. (Even then, though, we'll have the chance to work in our new situation - there is Grace even in our failure to act.)

Night is coming - the sun will set on opportunities before long. You will pass someone on the street needing to be reached out to. You will pass the opportunity to give your money to places where it is being put to the work of God. You will not stop from being angry, when gentleness and patience would be better called for. You will lose a friendship to time or distance. You will spend your money on silly things. You will move homes, change neighbors, change jobs and co-workers. Night is coming! Things will change - and you will have lost the opportunity to do the work of that which drives us.

Where are you in your day? What opportunities are at hand for you?

God cares deeply for us and for our world. Where Marxism and Capitalism fail - believing that people are merely products of their environment on the one hand, and that people's environment is a commodity to be purchased or crafted without regard to their spiritual condition - Jesus succeeds: the world is transformed and redeemed by the transformation and redemption of individuals, who then build a new world within the old, seed communities of Zion.

While it is yet day, what seeds are we planting?