This is much more than the usual healing story from the gospels. We know that Jesus healed people who came to him, or sometimes even people who didn’t seem to be seeking him out. But this is a long story that seems to have a much bigger message for us, about what following Jesus really involves. It’s actually a story about what it means to be a holy and grace-filled human being and how you get there. Let’s start by noticing all the talk about sin and uncleanness in this gospel. As a blind person of course this man who was healed was an outcast, but it seems like he…
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I’m sure you all remember the past when people used to attend sporting events in person. And in the end zones at football games you’d often see someone holding up a sign that said John 3:16. And of course that’s scriptural shorthand for one of the sentences in today’s gospel, the one that tells us that God so loved the world that he sent his only son to bring us eternal life. I imagine that the people in the end zones with those signs think that if you were going to see only one sentence from the gospel, only remember one thing, that this is the one. Are they right?…
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Almost every Lent, we hear this story of the man born blind. And it’s one of the essential stories for Lent because it’s about transformation — someone experiencing dramatic change and even liberation. And during Lent, that is what we are all after, a sense that something new is possible for us, something that frees us from whatever we need to leave behind. But what we also see in this story is that transformation isn’t easy. We can’t rise to something new without giving up the old. Even this story of the blind man, who is healed by Jesus without even asking for it, shows that change has unintended consequences.…
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Today, if we were all in the parish gathered together, you’d be hearing the second of three great gospels of John that are read this time of year: last week, the woman at the well (John chapter 4); this week, the healing of the man born blind (John chapter 9); and next week, the raising of Jesus’s friend Lazarus from the dead (John chapter 11). If you are looking for scripture passages to spend time with during these difficult days, you couldn’t do much better than these. We read these stories during Lent because they are all stories about transformation — people experiencing dramatic change and even liberation. And during…
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This gospel comes at the end of a sequence of three stories Jesus tells about how we are supposed to feel about those who are lost. First it’s a lost sheep, where the shepherd leaves the 99 sheep who aren’t lost to find the one that is; then a lost coin, where a woman sweeps the house until she finds the one she lost, even though she has nine others; and now finally a much longer and more complicated story of a lost son, or maybe, given the end of the story, it should be the story of two lost sons, since it turns out that there are different ways…
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This long gospel with the three familiar characters that we all know so well almost doesn’t need a homily or an explanation. So today, we should take just a couple of minutes to turn one phrase over in our minds. It’s that wonderful cinematic moment at the real turning point in this story when we’re told that the prodigal son suddenly came to his senses. Came to his senses, a great phrase, as if he finally began to use his senses, after years of just indulging them, he opened his eyes and ears and noticed the unhappy world that he had surrounded himself with and in a moment, it looked…
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The experience of being excluded, on the outside looking in, is a painful part of life. Maybe you have a memory of being the last kid chosen for a baseball team, or not chosen at all. OK, I confess, that was me in grade school, and I vividly remember the coach’s name. Or, maybe you have at one time or another found yourself suddenly fired from a job, an outsider after years of being an insider. But exclusion can get much uglier. Any week, you can read the stories of Christians in parts of the world who find themselves hated and persecuted and the targets of violence, or gay teenagers…