Lent 4A, 2008
John 9:1, 6-9, 13-17, 33-34
TRUTH... AND BEING A BLESSING OR A CURSE
Let me share with you three short story cameos.
The first cameo comes from a friend in Melbourne who got it from the web.
I know the name of the author
but for reasons which I feel you will readily twig to later,
I will not disclose.
But I can say he is a Jesuit priest.
[In September 2004], I spoke to some 2,000 students during their annual lecture at a Baptist college in Pennsylvania.
After a short prayer service for peace centred on the Beatitudes,
I took the stage and got right to the point.
‘Now let me get this straight,’ I said. ‘Jesus says, Blessed are the peace makers, which means he does not say, Blessed are the war makers, which means, the war makers are not blessed, which means war makers are cursed, which means, if you want to follow the non-violent Jesus you have to work for peace, which means, we all have to resist this horrific, evil war on the people of Iraq.’
With that, the place exploded, and 500 students stormed out.
The rest of them started chanting, ‘Bush! Bush! Bush!’
So much for my speech.
Not to mention the Beatitudes.
A second cameo.
It comes from a communications resource book by Don Fabun
which I have used in seminars in days long past.
It is an ancient Hindu story of six blind people and an elephant.
Six blind people came upon an elephant.
The first one touched the elephant’s side
And at once began to bawl:
‘God bless me! The elephant is very like a wall’.
The second one felt the tusk.
‘To me it’s very clear, the elephant is very like a spear’.
The third one grabbed the elephant’s ear and said:
‘Deny the fact if you can, but an elephant is very like a fan’.
The one who had hold of the trunk boldly spake:
‘You fool! The elephant is very like a long, thick snake!’
The fifth one, who had bumped into a leg, said:
‘You’re all crazy! I have a firm hold on this elephant, and it is very like a tree’.
And from behind,
the one who had grabbed the tail, called out:
‘It’s not a large thing at all, you dope.
Indeed it is very like a small, stiff rope!’
And so these folk disputed loud and long,
each in their own opinion, exceeding stiff and strong.
Though each was partly in the right.
They all were in the wrong!
The third cameo.
One day the devil and one of his little helpers,
were sitting on a cloud looking down at the humans below,
when they saw a man walking down a road
who stopped, picked up something from the road,
put it in his pocket and walked on.
“What did he find?” asked the devil’s helper.
“A piece of the truth,” chuckled the devil.
“A piece of the truth? Don’t you want to stop him?”
“Stop him? Oh no,” said the devil. It’s only a tiny piece of truth.
Before long, he’ll turn it into an orthodoxy.
And then he’ll be doing my work!” ( Bausch 1998)
oo0oo
John, our biblical storyteller for today, really knows his craft.
He weaves one story in and around another story.
The story of a disabled person - a blind man,
who begins to grasp some of the new possibilities
of Jesus’ re-imagined world.
And starts to act upon them.
And a second story of what some religious leaders did
when they too began to sense some of the implications
of this re-imagined world.
And start to act upon their fears.
But all is not as clear as that!
To begin with, it's a story woven around another story where the subject matter,
I want to suggest, isn’t about healing or curing
but about how big or small are our claims of ‘truth’
and how we frame those claims.
So let me tease out some of this suggestion just a little.
oo0oo
Rumour has it, John the storyteller wasn’t that keen
on many of the Jewish leaders of his day.
Indeed, I reckon it is more than a rumour.
At times – many times – this storyteller is quite ‘anti-Jewish’.
But that doesn’t always come out in the traditional
Christian interpretations of John’s stories.
Take today’s story again.
Several biblical scholars, including some Australian biblical scholars,
advance the view it is highly likely that by the time John was writing,
his small congregation (the so-called reformers) had been excommunicated
from main stream Judaism (the so-called orthodox).
That one group was seen to be ‘open’. The other group was seen to be ‘closed’.
That one group was seen as ‘inclusive’. The other group was seen as ‘obsessive’.
That one group advocated a broader based ‘truth’. The other group
claimed a narrower based ‘truth’.
John’s language is much more strident than what I have just said.
He has Jewish Jesus say of the Jews, for instance:
‘You are from your father the devil, and you choose to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer… he lies…’ (John 8:44).
Would such a similar statement if levelled at us, go down well in this place?
I would think not!
I think we would have a membership problem on our hands!
Jewish new testament scholar Amy-Jill Levine,
who is our mentor during this year’s Lenten season, says:
“Despite the lack of evidence that there was an empirewide expulsion of Christians from synagogues or that Jews around 90 were cursing Christians… the Pontifical Biblical Commission [for example] goes so far as to suggest that Jews were not only expelling Christ-confessors but also murdering them” (Levine 2006:108).
She goes on:
“The picture this description presents is of nasty Jews who persecute innocent Christians for loving God, loving neighbor, and worshiping the Christ” (Levine 2006:108).
John has, I reckon, been swamped by dangerous propaganda, the effects of which,
have been felt as anti-Judaism and anti-Semitic around the world,
and even fuelled a world war or two!
Such rigidity as expressed by John, must be denounced.
And denounced by Christian theology.
Because such rigidity suggests Davidson Loehr, can lead to some being
“willing to fight or even kill for the(ir) truth, (that) they don’t realize... they are among (truth’s) greatest enemies – and that they make the devil laugh with glee at his newest disciples” (D Loehr. First UU Austin Church Web site).
So what about the suggestion that John’s story is about ‘truth’ rather than ‘healing’?
I have difficulty with accepting the notion
that you allow one group to define ‘truth’ for someone else.
As I was reminded again by another Davidson Loehr comment:
“when the only tool you own is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. It... takes more and better tools to serve either truth or life” (D Loehr. First UU Austin Church Web site).
So perhaps we can start by acknowledging that none of us
will ever have all the ‘truth’.
We are all, if you like, that person who picked up
a ‘truthlet’ - who picked up just a tiny piece of truth.
Thus the ‘truth’ journey we could encourage for ourselves, is:
Has what we’ve been following, made us a curse or a blessing to others.
Has what we’ve become, increased or decreased
the amount of understanding and compassion in the world.
The Bible is capable of taking on innumerable interpretations.
Critical scholarly work can be helpful in eliminating
some of the negative interpretations.
Yet some of the so-called ‘positive’ interpretations can also have
serious negative effects.
We live in a multicultural, multi-faith society.
And often Paul’s so-called ‘inclusive’ proclamation that:
There is no longer Jew or Greek, no longer slave or free, no longer male or female… in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:28) is held up as good news for all.
“But”, says Amy-Jill Levine again:
“to state that in the ideal world… ‘there is no longer Jew or Greek’ sounds like an erasure of Jewish (and Greek) identity. Christian universalism thus entails the erasure of anything distinctly Jewish. Those who seek to promote multiculturalism might wish to rephrase Paul’s language to celebrate ’both Jew and Greek, both male and female, and all, who should be free” (Levine 2006:114).
Similar comments can also be said of parts of the synagogue liturgy and language.
That they can sound ‘anti-Christian’ to Christian ears.
I hope these thoughts might be worth pondering some more
as we continue during Lent, to travel on the journey
that Jesus chartered.
Notes:
Bausch, W. 1998 A world of stories for preachers and teachers. CT: Mystic. Twenty-Third Publications.
Fabun, D. 1968. Communications. The transfer of meaning. CA: Beverley Hills. Glencoe Press.
Levine, A. 2006. The misunderstood Jew. The church and the scandal of the jewish Jesus. NY: New York. HarperOne.