sermon preached
at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Bellingham, WA
by the
Rev. Josh Hosler, Associate Priest for Adult Formation
The Fourth
Sunday in Lent, March 26, 2017
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| David Anointed by Samuel, Dura Synagogue, Syria (3rd century C.E.) Wikimedia Commons |
Have you
ever been anointed?
David was
anointed king many years before he was crowned. The prophet Samuel came to Jesse’s
house, where young David was the eighth son, a spare, an afterthought, the one
keeping the sheep while the older boys were being considered for greater
things. Yet God called David to be king over Israel. He was a fresh, bright,
talented upstart, a little too handsome for his own good. David was a thorn in
the side of King Saul for years before finally deposing him.
David was
obviously flawed, a sinner many times over, a poet who gave voice to his
passionate, tumultuous relationship with God. David went down as Israel’s
greatest king not because of his virtue, but because he kept coming back to the
one who was his shepherd, who made him and set him on the throne. David was
anointed, and his son Solomon was anointed, and his descendants were anointed
kings of two Jewish kingdoms until the Assyrians and Babylonians carved up the
land. But God loved the people so much that he promised through the prophets
that Israel would someday have a descendant of David on the throne again.
What would
that look like? Well, obviously, some new bright young upstart would come along
to lead a revolution and throw off the chains of the Jewish people’s
oppressors. There would be a Jewish kingdom on earth again. What else could it look like to have a descendant
of David on the throne? And so the people waited for the new Anointed One, the
new Messiah.
When we think
we see clearly, it’s hard to imagine any other way of seeing. But we’ve been
warned: God does not see as mortals see. God did not choose Jesse’s oldest son,
but his eighth. God passed right over the perfect number of seven and kept
going into new territory. When we think we see clearly what must happen, it
might behoove us to be skeptical.
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| Faces of Easter Image 5 (Godly Play Resources) |
Centuries
later, another anointing did occur. A remarkable young upstart did appear, in Galilee. This Jesus of
Nazareth turned water into wine. He cured a young boy’s fever. He caused a
paralytic to walk. He fed 5000 people with five loaves and two fish. He walked
on water. And then, for a sixth sign, he anointed a man who had been blind
since birth. He anointed him not with oil, but with saliva and mud applied to
the eyes for the purpose of healing. He sent the man as an apostle is sent,
sent him to wash the mud from his eyes. And then this newly anointed, newly
sent apostle could see more clearly than any of the others around him.
This wasn’t
in the script. Worse yet, this took place on the seventh day, the Sabbath, the perfect
day that completes God’s perfect week. This was the day when the people rested.
They did not go around giving sight to the blind. It just wasn’t done. Come to
think of it, it had never been done.
Have you
ever been anointed? When Jesus anoints you, don’t expect to be honored and
placed on a throne. Life will probably get much more difficult. And don’t
expect it to be clean: your anointing is likely to be full of spit and dirt.
Oil smells good, and oil is for royalty, and we are anointed with oil at our
baptism. But you can’t get too deep into a body of water without churning up
some mud. After all, God got down in the mud to make the first human being. And
God came to us as Jesus, allowing himself to get mired in the everyday concerns
of our bodily lives.
Former
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams writes:
You might expect to find Christian people near to those
places where humanity is most at risk … being baptized is being led towards the
chaos and the neediness of a humanity that has forgotten its own destiny … You
might also expect the baptized Christian to be … in touch with the chaos in his
or her own life—because we all of us live not just with a chaos outside
ourselves but with quite a lot of inhumanity and muddle inside us. A baptized
Christian ought to be somebody who is not afraid of looking with honesty at
that chaos inside, as well as being where humanity is at risk, outside.[1]
So anointing
is messy business. But when you wash the mud from your eyes, you’ll see much
more clearly. Jesus anoints this man, opens his eyes, and sends him to open the
eyes of others. He gives the blind man a clarity of purpose, of vision, that
those in positions of power cannot afford to see. They have their script, and
neither this formerly blind man nor Jesus is following it. Where is the war
leader, the military figure who will lead the people to bloody revolution on
any day except Saturday? You won’t find him in the person of Jesus.
It is to
this disappointment, that of a failed Messiah, that parts of our gospel passage
today refer—and also to the disappointment of being expelled. The gospel writer
tells us that the man’s parents are afraid of being expelled from the
synagogue. But this is an anachronism. Synagogues were local worship houses for
small communities of Jews. There were no synagogues in Jerusalem—not at this time,
not while there was a temple. This reference comes from later times, perhaps
around the year 100 when this gospel was written. The temple had been destroyed
several decades before. The Jewish people were trying to figure out how to
reemerge as a people faithful to God. Jesus’ followers would jeopardize the continuing
viability of Judaism, so these Christians could not be called Jews. The
original hearers of this gospel would have understood the anachronistic
reference, because they were still stinging from being excluded.
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| An incredible amount of suffering has resulted from misreadings of the gospel writers' accusations against "the Jews." (Image: Persecuted Jews, 13th century) Wikimedia Commons |
Never forget
that Christianity is not against Judaism, but a branch extending from it. The blind
man’s parents are “afraid of the Jews”? Nonsense: they themselves are Jewish.
So is everybody else in this story. So whenever you hear “the Jews,” you might
substitute “the Jewish authorities,” or, “those of God’s chosen people who
thought they knew the script.” Better yet, substitute, “You and me and all of
us, because we usually think we know better than God, too.” We’ll see this play
out very clearly when we get to Holy Week, when the tide turns against Jesus.
So as I was
saying, Jesus of Nazareth turned water into wine. He cured a young boy’s fever.
He caused a paralytic to walk. He fed 5000 people. He walked on water. For a
sixth sign, he anointed a man who had been blind since birth. And for a
seventh, as we will hear next week, he raised his friend Lazarus from the dead.
Seven miracles: a Jewish number of perfection. But that’s not all. At the
conclusion of John’s gospel, we read: “Now Jesus did many other signs in the
presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are
written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of
God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”
These seven signs
are given to help us arrive at fullness and perfection. But when we think we
see clearly what must happen, it might behoove us to be skeptical. God didn’t
stop at the perfect number of seven but kept going into new territory—past the seventh
son, past the seventh miracle, past the seventh day of Sabbath and into an
eighth day of new creation. On Monday of Holy Week, we’ll hear how Lazarus’
sister Mary anointed Jesus’ body for burial. She did it while he was still
alive, and she spent a fortune on it. Six days later the women will go to the
tomb to anoint Jesus’ dead body—on the eighth day—but it will not be there.
We are
Christians, and this is our story. We are always telling the story, but Lent is
the time we tell the guts of the story. Don’t pay it polite attention and then
not let it transform you. Did Jesus literally heal a man born blind? Good
question, but apply a new lens and catch more light: is Jesus healing you?
Did Jesus
literally raise Lazarus from the dead? Good question, but apply a new lens and
catch more light: is Jesus raising you to new life, right here, right now? If
you’re not sure, then dare to believe it and see what happens. These stories
are written down “so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah,
the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”
Like the
blind man, you were born so that God’s works might be revealed in you. In your
baptism, you are anointed as a new kind of royalty, a spiritual descendant of
David, a new kind of monarch who serves others instead of ruling over them. You
are anointed for healing, sometimes surprisingly quick healing, but oftentimes painstaking
and slow as you come to see new realities in a larger world and wash the mud
from your eyes. You are anointed and sent as an apostle to spread Good News. And
you are anointed for burial, for though the death of your body is imminent, God
is already raising you into new life.
Is this
poetic? Sure. Is it literal? It’s beyond that: it’s supra-literal. This is the
stuff of a world that includes our “real world,” denies none of it, yet is even
more real, a world that includes all the everyday stuff of our lives but
applies a new lens to it so we can catch new light—the light of Christ who has
come into the world. The darkness can
never overcome this light. Jesus comes to make us what he is—a priest anointed
to approach holy things, a prophet anointed to bring a message, a king anointed
to serve. Can you see it from where you are? Step into the water and accept
your baptism. Ask to be healed and accept the mud applied to your eyes. Step
into the light and accept your anointing, and then go and tell others. Amen.
[1]
Rowan Williams, Being Christian: Baptism,
Bible, Eucharist, Prayer (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014).
