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Written by Jessie Shuman Larkins
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Friday, 29 February 2008 |
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“Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, ‘Surely we are not blind, are we?’ Jesus said to them, ‘If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.” -- John 9:40-41
When I was in seminary, one of the questions that we were instructed to ask ourselves in any ministerial context was: “Where and who are the invisible people?” This question was intended to help us to find those people in every community that are out of sight and out of mind to so many in the church and to ask the crucial questions about why they had been relegated to the margins and pushed “out of sight.” I was in a meeting recently when someone critiqued this language of invisibility. Invisibility, she argued, indicates that there is something inherent to the person or group of people that makes them unseen. The real issue is not that they are invisible, but that we are blind to them. These people and communities exist, materially and concretely, in plain sight—but those of us who inhabit our middle class, mostly Anglo, mainline society are able to live our lives comfortably pretending as if those on the margins do not exist. |
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Last Updated ( Friday, 29 February 2008 )
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Written by Erin Martin
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Sunday, 24 February 2008 |
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 This year our Lenten journey through the wilderness is not one that we walk alone. The persons who come face to face with Jesus in the Gospel of John on the Sundays in Lent are our traveling companions. Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman, the man born blind, Mary, Martha, even Lazarus, all have a place on our journey with Jesus to Jerusalem. From Sunday to Sunday while each of these persons experiences Jesus in individual ways, collectively they reveal to us the fullness of who we are as well as our total emptiness before Jesus.
In the Gospel of John, the individuals who encounter Jesus each experience him in ways that transcend his or her understanding. Jesus calls upon each person to come to know him in ways that go beyond what he or she already knows. Jesus appeals to their senses, to the expansive ways that humans know, through sight, sound, taste, touch and smell to reveal to all of us how little we are aware of the mysteries of God. First, Jesus challenges Nicodemus to discover rebirth in the Spirit by listening to the sound of the wind. Next, Jesus asks the Samaritan woman to drink in new life through the taste of living water. Jesus then restores the sight of a man born blind and in so doing exposes the blindness of people who see. Finally, Jesus uses the stench of Lazarus’ decaying body to demonstrate to Mary and Martha that even death is not death before God. By bombarding our senses in Lent, Jesus lays bare our ignorance, how easily we are dulled, how little we understand.
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Last Updated ( Monday, 25 February 2008 )
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Written by Debra Dean Murphy
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Thursday, 21 February 2008 |
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Third Sunday in Lent - John 4:5-42
Interpreters of this lengthy passage are usually quick to point out the “three strikes” against the woman at the well: her gender, her ethnicity, and her dubious marital status. And despite the fact that she engages Jesus in the longest conversation he has with anyone in the gospels, friend or foe; that she can hold her own in a theological debate; that she is the first person Jesus reveals himself to in John’s gospel; that she is the first evangelist and her testimony brings many to faith; despite all of this—what the Samaritan woman is most remembered for, it seems, is that she had five husbands.
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 26 February 2008 )
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