ME OR A STUPID DONKEY

The blind man in today’s Gospel lesson

            is one of my favorite characters in the Bible.

If the American Academy of Religion gave out Oscars,

            I’d nominate him for best supporting actor.

He gave us the immortal line in Amazing Grace,

            “I once was . . . blind but now I see.”

But that doesn’t quite catch the feel of what he actually said.

We translate his words as “I once was blind but now I can see.”

But in the Greek, that last clause is just one word – Vlepo.

I once was blind. Now: vlepo.

It’s a word with sharpness of insight,

like the French Voila’ or the Spanish Claro.

Vlepo doesn’t mean quite the same thing

as Voila or Claro – but it has that feeling.

I once was helpless. Now voila.

I once didn’t have a clue. Now claro.

I once was blind. Now vlepo.

It’s a pithy rejoinder shot out in the middle of an argument.

The religious authorities didn’t like it one little bit

that Jesus had restored the man’s sight.

They were smart theologians and scholars.

They knew charismatic healing was just hocus pocus

            by charlatans to fool the hicks in Galilee.

Now Jesus had healed someone in the city.

Something had to be wrong with this picture.

So they interrogated the man’s parents

to find out if he had really been blind at all.

Then they interrogated the blind man himself,

and when they didn’t like his answers,

they confronted him with undeniable religious truths.

“We know this Jesus is a sinner,

so how can you claim he has restored your sight?

Just answer us that.”

He replied. “You say he is a sinner.

I don’t know whether he is a sinner or not.

All I know is I was blind. Now vlepo.”

Do you see what I like about this guy?

He is so Zen. So simple. No interpretation. No fuss.

Having spent his entire life in darkness,

            he is used to not knowing things.

He knows what he knows, and beyond that

            he doesn’t speculate.

He doesn’t argue that Jesus must be the Son of God,

or the Incarnation of the 2^nd person of the Trinity.

He’s no theologian.

He’s just someone who was blind and now he sees.

The first thing we see here is that grace is just that.

It’s grace. It isn’t something we have to earn

by believing anything in particular,

not even believing in Jesus.

The blind man didn’t believe any doctrines.

Grace just happens.

We didn’t conjure the sun to rise with our positive thinking.

We didn’t make the flowers bloom with our sound doctrines.

We didn’t make the river flow with our moral living.

Creation is gift. Life is gift.  Healing, beauty, and goodness are all gift.

When we acknowledge that so much is just gift,

            we can relax and open our hands to receive more of it.

The second thing we see in this story

is that faith doesn’t begin with doctrines.

They come later and sometimes they can help,

            but they can get in the way too.

The religious authorities in our Gospel lesson had doctrines

that made what they were seeing impossible.

So they could not believe what they saw.

There is a Sufi story about a joker sage named Mullah Nazradin.

One day a neighbor came to borrow Mullah Nazradin’s donkey

to haul some goods across the village.

Nazradin said, “I am sorry friend,

But I have already loaned my donkey

to my cousin in the next village.”

“Ok,” the neighbor said, but as he walked away

he heard braying in the back yard.

Curious, he went around to the back and voila, claro, vlepo!

There was the donkey.

So he went back to the door and said,

“Mullah, what is this?

            You said you had loaned your donkey

            to your cousin in the next village.

But I hear your donkey braying in the back yard.”

Nazradin snapped back indignantly,

“Well who are you going to believe --

            me or a stupid donkey?”

The first cardinal virtue, the mother of all virtues

            is the just seeing things as they are

                        unfiltered through fixed concepts.

Faith and wisdom both begin

            with looking life in the face

            and telling the truth about what we see.

The final thing we  see in our story

            is that seeing the truth, especially telling the truth,

                        can stir things up.

In our families, in our jobs, in our churches,

            wherever we organize ourselves into groups,

            the groups adopt certain agreed upon ways of looking at things.

This person is a hot head; that person is a saint.

People of this race are a certain way.

People of one religion are greedy

            while people of another religion are  violent.

We have unquestioned beliefs about ourselves

            and about each other.

We dare not question them because loyalty to the group

            means living in the group think box.

But it's pretty dark inside those boxes.

 Living in a group think box of fixed concepts

            is a form of blindness.

We cannot see the simple truth of things as they are

            because we are wearing blinders of prejudice

            and unquestioned beliefs.

In this story, Jesus takes the man’s blinders off.

He gives him sight, simple sight.

And he accepts it. “Vlepo,” he says. No interpretation.

In the 15^th Century, church leaders refused to look

            through Galileo’s telescope for fear

            they would see something contrary to the accepted beliefs

                        of the time.

They had not gotten the point of today’s story.

Nothing that is true is foreign to Christ.

Ironically, some scientists like Richard Dawkins

are blinded by their group think box.

They are unwilling to look a the truths we see

            through our telescopes of ancient stories, poetry,

            rituals, songs, and prayers.

They are even unwilling to look at the interpretations

            of other scientists, like physicist Robert Russell who explains

that time is a construct restricting our possibilities,

that eternity plays by completely different rules

and that sometimes the threshold between time and eternity opens.

Jesus invites us to look at things as they are.

He invites us outside our group think box.

He does that for the same reason now that he did then

He’s lonely out there.

Jesus doesn’t fit in our group think box

            so we can’t see him.

It’s a kind of blindness.

But if we dare to look through our spiritual telescopes,

            if we dare to read the old stories,

            perform the sacred rituals and sing the songs,

            if we dare to pray,

                        we might just see Jesus.

I have seen him in those forbidden ways         

            and he has blessed my life beyond measure.

The joy and splendor of reality

                        are always outside the box,

                        like the stars the men of old refused to see

                                    through Galileo’s telescope.

They are in the hand of the same man who opened

the blind man’s eyes.

And the price is still the same. It’s a gift.

YOUR HEART IS A HOUSE OF PRAYER

[This message was given two years ago on Lent 3 at the first worship service conducted in the new Cathedral in Machakos, Kenya]

I bring you greetings from the Episcopal Church in Nevada.

I will share with you today what I believe the Holy Spirit

            is saying to us through our Gospel lesson

                        about Jesus’ cleansing the Temple.

But first I ask you patience.

I want to tell you about my home

            and what it means for me to be here.

Like Kenya, my home is beautiful but it knows suffering.

Nevada is a very large state with not many people in it.

It takes many hours to drive from one church to another.

Our land is a vast desert with hundreds and hundreds of mountains,

            more mountain ranges than any other state in the USA.

In much of Nevada, it is too dry to grow crops or raise cattle.

In the countryside, our main way to make money is mining.

We mine all sorts of things, especially gold.

The only place in the world

            that produces more gold than Nevada is South Africa.

We have one large city, Las Vegas, where there is a lot of entertainment.

Some of it is good, healthy entertainment. Some is bad for people.

You have heard that there is much drunkenness

            and other bad behavior in Nevada.

It is true.

Much of this is caused by loneliness.

Very few of our people grew up there.

Most of us do not have families living near us.

I have no family in Nevada except my wife.

So it can be lonely.

There is more despair than faith in our land.

87% of our people have no connection to any religion.

So it is not surprising that our suicide rate is two times as high

            as the average in the USA.

Many people are addicted to drugs or alcohol.

There is much violence in the families and much divorce.

Nevada is a beautiful barren place,

            much like parts of the Holy Land where Jesus lived.

Our people are brave, humorous, strong, and kind.

You have to be strong to live in the desert.

But there is loneliness and despair all around us.

So God has given our Church an important mission.

We are there to proclaim Jesus’ message of hope.

We are there to speak up for the poor and the suffering,

            to reach out to the lonely and the hopeless.

It is a hard mission, but an important one in God’s eyes.

We need your prayers.

I pray for this Diocese of Machakos every day.

Please pray for us in Nevada.

Pray that God will pour out his Spirit on our Church

            like a long steady rain that we may be Christ in our desert.

There are probably many things about the Church in Kenya

            that I cannot understand because I am not Kenyan.

I hope to understand more after this visit.

There may be things about the Church in Nevada or the USA

            you do not understand.

I can tell you this much.

Many people in my home land need Jesus

            but have no idea who Jesus is.

They do not even know the most famous Bible stories.

We are trying our best to bring people to Jesus.

I learned this expression

            from a old political movement 40 years ago.

“By any means necessary.”

It’s basically the same thing St. Paul said,

            “I want to bring people to Jesus

                        by any means necessary.”

That is what we are trying with all our might

            to do in Nevada which is a desert of land

                        and a desert of the spirit.

I am very happy to be here with you today.

I am happy for several reasons.

The first is that there are so many Anglicans here.

There are five times as many Anglicans in Kenya

            as in the USA.

In Nevada, there are very, very few of us

            even compared to the rest of the USA.

We are a small church in a large desert.

So it is a great joy to be here

            where there are so many people

            who worship and pray in the same way I do.

The second reason I am happy to be here

            is that we cannot know who we are

                        unless we know our story,

            and that includes the story of our ancestors.

So I am here to see and to touch the land of my ancestors.

Does it surprise you that a white man would say that?

African-Americans have always looked to Africa

            to learn the ways of their ancestors.

But today, our best scientists believe that the whole human race

            – black, white, brown, or yellow – all of humanity

            began in East Africa, very possibly right here in Kenya.

And they believe that it all began with one human couple

            just as the Bible says,

            that this is Eden and Adam and Eve were East Africans,

                        possibly Kenyans.

You probably already know this.

Most Americans do not.

But the likely fact that this is where human life began

            makes your home a sacred place

                        – a holy place like Jerusalem –

            so I feel blessed and grateful to be here.

My wife Linda and I thank you for welcoming us

            to your beautiful home,

            a place of rich culture and tradition,

            a place of ancient civilization,

                         the place where all our stories began.

Today’s Gospel lesson describes one of the most striking moments

            in our Christian story.

It tells us that when Jesus went to the Temple

            for Passover, he found people doing all sorts of business.

He found cattle, sheep, and doves being sold for sacrifice.

He found money changers doing a banking business.

This is the one time when Jesus was violent.

He drove them all out with a whip, turned over their tables.

            scattered their money, and shouted at them,

            “Stop making my Father’s house a market place.”//

Now Jesus did not have anything against market places.

He went to them and through them all the time.

He taught and healed people in the market place.

He used the business of the market place

            to make spiritual points in his stories.

Jesus had nothing against doing business in the marketplace.

What made him angry was using the Temple for a marketplace,

            because the Temple is holy.

Matthew tells us that when Jesus drove the merchants and bankers

            out of the Temple, he said “My house . . . is a house of prayer.”

Business is ok in the business district,

            but not in God’s house.

The Temple is for prayer and prayer alone.

There are two important things we can learn from this story

            – one is important for our private lives

            – the other is important for our mission as the Church.

Let’s start with our private lives.

What does Jesus cleansing them Temple have to do with us?

What does Jesus cleansing the Temple have to do

            with your heart, your spirit?

Everything.

St. Paul said to the Corinthians and he says to us,

            “Do you not know that you are God’s Temple

                        and God’s Spirit dwells in you?”//

Your heart is the Temple of God.

Your heart was created to be a house of prayer.

But often we turn our heart into a marketplace.

The busy thoughts of the world take possession of us.

We plan, we plot, we think “if this happens then I may gain something.

            It that happens I may lose something.”

And our heat beats faster with the hope of gain or the fear of loss.

Our hearts beat faster like the hearts of the gamblers in Las Vegas.

And we think “If I do such and such, I will have a better chance.

            But what if such and such happens? Then what shall I do?”

And our heads do not rest easy in our beds.

We breathe a little too quickly and take in too little air

            with each breath.

We have no peace. We have no serenity.

We are out of balance and we cannot pray.

Jesus said “My house . . . is a house of prayer.”

Your heart was shaped by God to be a house of prayer,

but most of our hearts are often busy and fretful like marketplaces.

Now it is a good thing to do business.

It good to grow food or make things to sell.

The marketplace is part of life.

The market place is human and God loves it.

The marketplace is where justice can happen.

It is where mercy and friendship happen.

The marketplace is good. We belong there.

But we also need a house of prayer.

We need a serene center in our selves, a place of peace.

We need hearts that hear the word of the Lord, saying

            “Be still and know that I am God. . . .

            Search your hearts while you are in bed and be silent.”

It is good to jump into the busy hustle and bustle of life,

            to go to the marketplace to buy and to sell,

            to talk, to tell stories and listen to stories.

But we also need to leave the marketplace a little while each day.

Jesus left the hustle and bustle of his ministry of teaching and healing

            to be alone and to pray.

He withdrew into solitude, withdrew into the temple

            of his own heart.

“Go to away by yourself and shut the door,” Jesus said,

            “pray in secret to your father who is in secret.”

Brothers and sisters, save the very center of your soul

            as a place to be alone with God.

Maybe you have a room in your house where you can pray.

Or maybe you go out walking alone.

Pray while you watch the sunset.

Or get up before dawn and pray while the sun is rising.

Pray as you take your bath.

Pray as you put away your tools at the end of the day.

Each of us must choose his own time and his own place.

Because it is a time and place that belongs to you and God alone.

The active life of business and family is a gift from God,     

            but it can be as stormy as a typhoon.

We are often caught up in the busy activity of life

            and it blows us around in circles like a typhoon.

But even in the typhoon there is a still center.

We call it “the eye of the storm.”

I don’t know why we call it that.

Maybe it’s because it is when we step out of the whirling wind

            into the still place, that’s where we can actually see

                        what’s happening.

Brothers and sisters, Jesus invites you to step out of the storm

            into the still center of your own hearts each day.

God says, “Be still and know that I am God.”

Let Jesus drive the fears and ambitions, thoughts and plans

            out of your hearts so that you can be alone with him

                        in prayer, give yourself to him in prayer.

And what shall you do in the solitude?

What shall you say to the Lord?

You can recite a prayer from the Prayer Book.

Or you can speak to Jesus of your deepest desires.

You can tell him what you truly want in life.

Or you can just imagine his face.

St. Francis used to sit in silence and pray for hours.

Someone said, “Francis, tell us how you pray.”

Francis answered, “I look at him and he looks at me.”

It can be as simple as that.

There is no one else who can love you so perfectly as Jesus,

            no one else who accepts you so completely just as you are.

It is a sacred duty to spend time with Jesus in prayer.

But it is also the deepest joy, the quietest peace we can know.

St. Augustine, the greatest African saint,

            Regretting how much of his life was wasted in busy ambition,

                        prayed these words,

            “So late I came to love you, O Beauty so Ancient and so new.

            So late I came to love you . . .

            I ran after . . . the things you have made.

            But you were inside me. And I was not with you. . .

            You called, you cried, you shone through my blindness. . . .

            You touched me, and (now) I ardently desire your peace.”

If we turn away from the things of the world a little while each day,

            then our hearts will prepared to worship together

                        when come to church on Sunday.

Our prayer and our singing, our taste of the Holy Communion,

            will be so much deeper than if we have spent the whole

                        week lost in the ways of the world.

If we have spent time with Jesus in the solitude and silence,         

            we will bring a larger soul to the Church on Sunday.

And we will bring a larger soul into our acts of kindness

            for one another and our work for justice and peace.

We cannot bring peace to a war torn world

            unless we first have peace inside ourselves.

  

Now we have arrived at the second point we can learn

            from the story about Jesus’ cleansing the Temple.

This point is about the mission of the Church.

I do not know how this is in Kenya.

But we have a challenge in the America.

There are other Churches there

            that preach a different message from ours.

Their religion is all about prosperity.

They say that if you believe in Jesus,

            he will make you rich, healthy, and successful.

Their religion does not have the cross in it.

They would never observe the season of Lent.

Their religion is all about becoming rich and powerful

            in this world.

They have nothing to say about justice, mercy, and compassion.

They have nothing to say about the duty and joy of helping each other.

It’s all about how to get God to serve us,

            not how we serve God’s mission of peace and love.

Naturally, those churches are popular and they are growing.

It is a candy-coated gospel. It is a sweet poison.

But it is popular because it promises people  

            what they want in their pockets,

            not what they need in their souls.

So our people in the Anglican churches

            say “Look how they are growing.

            Their message is popular.

            Why don’t we do that in our Church?”

I have heard that other religions in Africa

            and even some other Christian churches

                        are doing the same thing.

I have heard that other religions promise

            all sorts of worldly rewards

                        for people who will join them.

This may not be an issue for you yet.

But if you have not already been tempted,

            you may someday be tempted to become like them.

But I beg you in the name of Jesus, do not be led astray.

I beg you in the name of Jesus, do not turn the Church

            into a marketplace.

Each human heart is a little Temple of God.

When we bring our hearts together in the Church,

            when we unite our hearts in the Holy Communion, 

                        this is God’s Temple.

God is here.

And Jesus said, “My house is a house of prayer.

            Do not make it into a market place.”

Brothers and sisters we are not here to sell our religion.

We are not here to twist our sacred truths

            to fit what the market demands,

            we are not here to sell whatever people are most likely to buy.

We are here to proclaim Christ crucified.

Our Jesus did not turn the stones to bread,

            did not accept political and military power over the whole world,

            and did not  perform his miracles in public to make himself a hero.

He was born in a stable,

            wandered without a home to teach God’s truth,

            and went to the cross to suffer and die

                        – all out of love for us.

Our faith in Christ crucified calls us to help one another,

            not use God to help us get ahead of our neighbor.

Our faith calls us to share what we have in love.

Our faith calls us to befriend the outcast,

            to stand up for justice against power,

            to give ourselves to Jesus who gave his life or us.

It is a costly faith.

But it offers so much more in return

            than worldly wealth and power.

It offers the peace of God which surpasses all understanding.

I know the Anglican Church of Kenya helps people

            to have better, happier lives.

I know of your work in clinics, orphanages, and schools.

I know a little of your work in economic development.

These are acts of justice and mercy.

They are God’s mission.

But God’s mission must be done from the heart

            which is God’s Temple.

All of our good works in the world depend on prayer.

“Unless the Lord builds the house,

            its builders labor in vain.”

So I beg you, Brothers and sisters,

            make each of your hearts a house of prayer

                        where you give yourselves to Jesus;

            preserve this Cathedral as a house of prayer

                        where we give our common life to Jesus.

Then we can go out into the world to do the work

            God has given us to do.

We can go in peace to love and serve the Lord.