May 23, 2012

We Can’t Handle It

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My dream, as yet unfulfilled.

It is the Week of the Skunk. Or more precisely, skunks.

A guy from Lewiston I’m calling my New Best Friend set some traps in my yard, and when he came back and found only a pregnant possum and heard my report that the skunk had been seen nibbling the marshmallows at the door to the trap in the middle of the day, we had a talk about what would happen if she appeared to be rabid. “Then we’ll have to dispatch,” he said. “Call Animal Control,” I asked? “No. I’ll have to dispatch … her.”

I couldn’t handle it.

A clergywoman knew she had bats in the attic of her parsonage, and on a summer evening she distracted some children of the church by sending them to count the bats flying out from the eaves. 1, 2, 3. That was expected. 15, 16, 17. When does it start to get really creepy? They finally stopped counting at 450.

I really couldn’t have handled that.

I’ve been in the hospital when a beloved church member revealed more, shall we say, than I wanted to see. I’ve been on the phone with someone whose diagnosis brought my mother’s death right up in my face. I’ve gotten the email telling a story so much like my own that it makes me shudder.

I didn’t want to handle it.

In my first church, the organist resigned during announcements one Sunday morning after calling me out on referring to God as “She.” She gave a week’s notice, then sat down and waited to see what I would say.

I had to find a way to handle it.

Jesus, in the Common English Bible, tells the disciples, “I have much more to say to you, but you can’t handle it now.” He knew their limitations.

People won’t respect that boundary – really, why should they? I don’t always. I bet you don’t either. But if you’re the pastor, you’re supposed to know how to handle it.

The trouble comes when we decide we know everything we’ll ever need to know. We’ve achieved this stage in life – adult, seminarian, graduate, ordained pastor. We’ve read the Bible. We’ve prayed. We’ve discussed and pondered and written. We’re set.

Until we reach the next stage. And there is always a next one. (Just ask the oldest people in the room.)

“I have much more to say to you, but you can’t handle it now.”

Jesus knew how hard it was going to be for the disciples, but he also knew they would not be alone after he left them. He knew that just as he had come, part of God’s own self, to live in human form, so would the Spirit come to be available to his friends. The Spirit of Truth and Love would come to guide them and illumine them and inspire them. And it wasn’t just for that spring in Jerusalem, or the next five years, or the first three centuries of the new era his life began. It is true for us.

Here’s the tricky part.

You might think it would be easier for pastors. After all, it’s our job to attend to things of the Spirit, isn’t it?

(Please laugh now.)

Well, it’s true. But it’s also true that it’s our job to attend to people, and the world around us, and there are going to be medical crises that call up our personal history, and there are going to be skunks in the yard, the four-legged and maybe the two-legged, and there are going to be bats in the attic of the parsonage and in the belfry and in our own personal belfries…and possibly those of our church members, from time to time. There are going to be emails and phone calls and walk-by shootings in the receiving line that take our breath away.

There are going to be things we feel we just can’t handle, but we won’t have much choice about it. And those are the times we need the Spirit of God.

“I have much more to say to you, but you can’t handle it now.”

Thank goodness that isn’t the last word. I’m grateful Jesus did not leave his friends, or the rest of us, on that note, aware that there is more to know and not brought into the secret, left with the conclusion that we just aren’t ready to comprehend…yet.

We can’t handle it, not alone.

But God will allow things to unfold at the right time, when we’re ready. In the Spirit of Truth, there is a New Best Friend better than any other. That’s the Good News, whatever confronts us, whether it’s skunks or bats or slipping hospital johnnies or theological disapproval or all of them at the same time. When we need to grow in knowledge or understanding, when we need to love more or believe more, when we need to see visions and dream dreams that take us further, when we need the courage to prophesy, we are not alone. In the company of God’s Spirit, we can handle it.

(I had the privilege of leading a worship service for Members in Discernment in our Association today, as well as advisors and members of the Church and Ministry Committee, and this is an adaptation of the meditation I offered. Many thanks to kathrynzj for the bat story, which I am thankful is not mine.)

Filed Under: Gospel of John, Ministry, Pentecost ·
May 21, 2012

You can’t handle it now

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There’s a lot of ugly talk out there. There’s a lot of ugly talk by Christians about LGBT people. It pains me.

Even before it felt so personal, it would have pained me.

I’m still learning how different it feels when the words apply to me as well as lots of people I love and plenty of people I don’t even know and even a few I don’t like, but for reasons having nothing to do with the fact about their lives and mine that puts us in the middle of a cultural flash-point.

And in case you think I’m exaggerating, I’m not. When a preacher stands up in a church and suggests that gay people be enclosed in electrified fences, as a way to get rid of them since they can’t reproduce, so surely they will eventually all die off…well, it is such a collision of ignorance and fear and bigotry that I finally understand in a visceral way the meaning of homophobia.

I had the luxury of parsing the word, before, you see.

Here’s Jesus speaking to his disciples, from the Farewell Discourse:

“I have much more to say to you, but you can’t handle it now.  However, when the Spirit of Truth comes, he will guide you in all truth. He won’t speak on his own, but will say whatever he hears and will proclaim to you what is to come.” (John 16:12-13, CEB)

You can’t handle it now.

That’s what I want to say to the preacher in North Carolina:

The little mama skunk in my backyard

Dear Brother in Christ,

In my backyard there is a family of skunks. I live in the middle of a densely populated neighborhood. The single-family houses are close together. If one of us has skunks, all of us have skunks. Friends with a more rural mindset have suggested shooting the skunk, which would be illegal in my city, and also not something  would ever consider doing or be able to do. But we can’t live together, so there are traps in my backyard, and I have the number of the nice man who will come and take the skunks away if they follow the bait of marshmallows and end up with the trap door closing behind them. 

I really wish we could live in peace together. They eat pests and are rather adorable, although I never imagined I would be saying that and seeing one up so close. But I have a large dog who needs his small backyard, and I have neighbors, as I mentioned before. So if all goes well, the skunks will be relocated. Because the mother would abandon her young if set free, they’ll go to a place where they are kept together until the babies are weaned, and only then will they all be released into the wild. 

I have suffered in mind and heart over the fate of the skunks. Right now the cages are in my yard, empty, and I do not know what I will find in the morning. I guess I hope she’ll catch a hint and move her family, but more likely in a day or two, I’ll be calling the nice man to tell him the mama is in the trap, and he’ll come look for the babies, and this will become a story I tell later, in which I remind myself that in a difficult situation, in which we cannot all share the same space, I did the best I could for the skunk family.

And I compare that to the way you would like to treat human beings, and I cannot understand how it is we claim the same Lord, the one who loved us so much that he laid down his life for us, the one who said over and over again that people would know us as his followers by how we love others.

People like you sometimes suggest that people like me cannot really be Christians. I don’t want to be a person who sets those kinds of limits on others. I like to leave a little more room for the Spirit to work. I am praying that your heart and your mind will be opened, and that you will close your mouth long enough to listen for the Spirit of God. 

Maybe you can’t handle it now. But that doesn’t mean the day can’t come. God is pretty amazing, after all. 

Your skunk-loving Sister,

Martha

Filed Under: Gospel of John, LGBT, Pentecost ·
Apr 18, 2009

She Verbs

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She sent word.
She heard.
She went.
She said.
She said.
She said.
She went.
She called.
She said.
She gave.
She served.

(Martha in verbs, John 11 and 12, from an exercise at the BE 2.0.)

Filed Under: Gospel of John ·
Apr 8, 2009

On Holy Wednesday

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Jesus Judas and the Others
(Thinking about the texts for Holy Wednesday, particularly John 13:21-32.)

After saying this Jesus was troubled in spirit,
and declared, "Very truly, I tell you, one of you will betray me." The disciples
looked at one another, uncertain of whom he was speaking. One of his
disciples–the one whom Jesus loved–was reclining next to him;Simon Peter
therefore motioned to him to ask Jesus of whom he was speaking. So while
reclining next to Jesus, he asked him, "Lord, who is it?" Jesus answered, "It is
the one to whom I give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish."
So when he had dipped the piece of bread, he gave it to Judas son of Simon
Iscariot.
After he received the piece of bread, Satan entered into him. Jesus
said to him, "Do quickly what you are going to do." Now no one at the table knew
why he said this to him.
(John 13:21-28)

 
"The Devil made me do it." When I was a student in
an Episcopal girls' school, an older girl wrote a column for the school paper
called "The Devil Made Me Do It." I remember being a 7th grader and grappling
solemnly with the notion of a Devil who could make you do bad things. I thought
of cartoon images, in which an Angel version of Goofy and a Devil version of
Goofy sat on his shoulders, tempting him to do right or to do wrong. It's
perhaps a poor way to develop an understanding of evil, to base it on a cartoon,
but I think the basic principle was correct: the capacity to choose well or to
choose poorly lies within each of us.
 
Judas, though, trips up my theory. Is it the case
that someone had to betray Jesus? Was this his fore-ordained role to play? Did
Satan come into him and cause him to act this way? Although John's gospel would
have us believe it, the groundwork has already been laid for the idea that Judas
is out of sync with the rest of the disciples. He's the money-grubber, and as
anyone who has ever been in charge of the books for a family or an organization
knows, that's not the most glamorous job around. It requires attention to
details and sometimes a brusque truth-telling. The bookkeeper cannot afford to
rise above reality.
 
Judas fascinates, because like all the other
disciples he lived alongside Jesus for three years, and in the end found a way
to betray him to the authorities, going against all they had learned and shared
with others. He sold out Jesus and made a bad end himself.
 
I find it too easy an answer to say Satan entered
him, or any of us, but perhaps in this story it's true. Perhaps we needed to see
betrayal played out in such a terrible way in order to understand its magnitude.
Perhaps we can learn from Judas to be on the watch for the inclination to wrong
choices in our own lives. When we hurt another person, or hurt ourselves,
when we disappoint God, may we not let the Devil be an excuse.  May we own up to
what we have done or thought, make amends if we can and ask God's
forgiveness.

(Image from Vanderbilt Divinity School's New Revised Lectionary Website.)

Filed Under: Gospel of John, Holy Week · Tagged:
Jan 14, 2009

Come and See

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(thinking about John 1:43-51)

The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and
said to him, "Follow me." Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathanael and said to him, "We have found him about whom Moses
in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth."

Nathanael said to him, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" Philip
said to him, "Come and see."  (John 1:43-46)

Not too long ago I had a phone interview with a church, and I knew up front their theology and mine did not make sense together. I went ahead with the interview in part for the experience and in part because I wanted to let the Spirit work whatever needed to be worked in the process. It did not surprise me when questions I think of as more fundamentalist in tone were asked. It did not surprise me, but it did shock me, just a little, the sort of jolt you get when you touch a metal doorknob on a crisp day. You knew it might be coming, but Oh! It prickles.

"When did you become a Christian?" I know the thinking that underlies this question, that the questioner wants to hear a story of some sort of realization and life change. I come from a tradition that incorporates that thinking, but I live in a tradition that believes in Christian Nurture, that we don't require the particular sort of conversion my questioner sought. I can answer that question with a story that speaks her language, but it's not my language anymore, and it's not my thinking anymore, and it comes out of my mouth awkwardly.

I want to think I've been following Jesus all along, since I took my first toddling steps in the nursery at Court Street Baptist Church. I think we can do that, on some elemental level, as little people. (And not just Jesus, but whatever our way may be. I'm one of those kind of thinkers. Don't tell the lady from the phone interview.) I want to think I've been moving along the path, coming to see.

Now, at a crossroads where I seem to have the choice to make once again about the priority of motherhood over the pursuit of career, I wonder how well I followed. No doubt my delay of years, in part due to divorce and the choice to take time to raise my children, changed the nature and direction of the path I might have followed, and now I tread a different one. Most of the time this feels fine to me, feels right and fitting, but some days I wonder where I might be and what I might be doing instead. Some days I wonder if I've really been, as my friend NotShyChiRev once said, "Fierce and Fabulous for Jesus." On those days I fear I have been mild and parochial for Jesus, and that does not feel like enough. On those days I wonder why I expect God to be in such a hurry to make things clear to me when I dilly-dallied so determinedly before responding to God's call.

When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said of him, "Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!" Nathanael asked him, "Where did you get to know me?" Jesus answered, "I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you." Nathanael replied, "Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!"

Jesus answered, "Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these." And he said to him, "Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and
the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man." (John 1:47-51)

Just this minute, I'm not sure I see much of anything. I want to see greater things, and I hoped they might include some fiercely fabulous usefulness on behalf of Jesus, as rendered by me.

Filed Under: Gospel of John, The Inner Landscape · Tagged:
Apr 17, 2008

Many Mansions

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Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. (John 14:1-2, King James Version)

My mother introduced me to the idea of "many mansions." For a person who lived a very interior life, and who seemed oddly narrow and cynical about some things, she had some surprising attachments to ideas that formed me in a good way, and this was one of them. It helped me realize that many kinds or people might be part of God's family, not just the people we knew at church, or even the friends we loved who went to other churches, but maybe, just maybe, all people.

My boys turned me onto "Battlestar Galactica," and my husband enjoys it, too. Tonight, cuddled up in his rented room in a Non-Contiguous New England State, we watched the first two episodes of the new season on my laptop. Cylons and humans are caught in what seems like a battle to the death. Their old hatreds (the humans once enslaved the Cylons, who are machines, but in their current incarnation look like people) and their religious systems (these humans are polytheists, worshiping the Gods of Ancient Greece, while the Cylons are monotheists, worshiping the One True God) place them at odds with each other. The Cylons have killed most of the humans from this particular system, and those still living are trying to get to Earth, a place some believe in as a literal truth and others suspect is a myth.

There is a lot of religious discussion on the show, and it fascinates me that both the Cylons and the humans have among their leaders a crusty old non-believer. Where do the non-believers fit into the picture?

Are there enough mansions to include them, too?

My husband is not a believer, so this is a personal question as well as a larger matter.

Although he is not a believer, he is a seeker. He seeks to understand why we, why humanity, exists. He struggles with our poor choices, our misuse of the resources available to us, our acts of violence and genocide. He wonders why I believe in a God who doesn't simply straighten it all out from above.

Sometimes I wonder that, too.

And I wonder how someone who spends so much time thinking about the same things that perplex and amaze me can reach such different conclusions.

John's gospel has been used over the centuries to "prove" that the chosen are few, the way is clear, the gate is narrow, it's my way or the highway. We overlook the "other flocks" and the "many mansions." We feel safer, perhaps, drawing boundaries that exclude others, boundaries that make us feel important and connected and significant to God.

I don't believe it can be that simple.

Tonight I read aloud the poem I posted at my other blog in memory of Cub, a poem by Rumi that suggests it is our very longing for God that proves God's existence. I cried as I read it to my husband, and when I finished and turned toward him, I saw the tears on his cheeks, too.

Many mansions. Many.

Filed Under: Gospel of John, Learned From My Mother, Television · Tagged:
Apr 10, 2008

Speaking of Narrow

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(Easter 4A    John 10:1-10)

When it comes to the Gospels, I never hesitate to name Mark as my favorite. I struggle with John, with the way that intensely developed theology is swallowed whole by some Christians today without attention to the context of time and place so necessary to a clearer understanding. I struggle with John's narrowness.

I had a moment recently where someone suggested I sit in an empty chair at a restaurant table, but I could not picture myself squeezing through the available space, past other diners, to get to it. Once at the chair, all would have been well, but getting to the banquet table appeared to be the problem.

Rather than ask someone to move, I went away.

I wonder how narrow the gate to enter our churches feels to people who never even get to see the available chair, the space God hopes they might occupy. You have to be pretty comfortable to ask, pretty confident that you will get a favorable response, before you ask others to get out of the way and make the gate or the door or even the parking lot more readily accessible.

This is not what the author of John was thinking about, in my humble opinion. He was thinking about how to define the territory, to make it clear who was in and who was out, to establish a meaning for a new, or new-ish, community.

Most of us are not engaged in that work, at all. Most of us are engaged in the work of trying to make the gate wider again, to let more people in, to share the Good News with those who need to hear it. That Good News is not about the narrowness of the gate but about the abundance of love available to those who will receive it.

Sometimes we have to brazen our way to it, squeeze past the obstacles, in order to believe it's true.

Filed Under: Gospel of John ·
Mar 8, 2008

Martha’s Ministry of Proclamation

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(Lent 5A    John 11:1-45)

There are so many fascinating threads in the story of Mary, Martha and Lazarus, with its themes of humanity and divinity, and its subplot marking Thomas as possibly the bravest disciple of all. At my lectionary group this week we had a rich discussion, wondering just what this story was really about? It prefigures the Resurrection. It shows us the humanity of Jesus at the same time it underscores his divinity. It gives us two of the best-drawn supporting characters in the gospel, the sisters Mary and Martha, opening out the tiny character sketch of Luke's gospel. It gives us a sense of how intensely people can consider a teacher to be their friend, too, very interesting for those of us in a pastoral role.

Mostly, though, it's a dramatic display of the power of Jesus, not as friend or teacher, but as part of God's self.

Martha_tarasque1
It's Martha who says the words, Lord love her. It sort of redeems her performance in Luke's story, doesn't it? She may be practical and brusque or whatever other characteristics the stories might suggest to you, but in this gospel she is the one to make the Christological confession, the role that falls to Peter in the other gospels.

She says the words:

Martha said to Jesus, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him."

Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again."

Martha said to him, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day."

Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?"

She said to him, "Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world." (John 11:21-27, NRSV)

I adore the counter-cultural nature of this scene. What would possess the gospel writer to go so far off-script and give the words that everyone else thought of as Peter's to a woman, to Martha, to say? Not only does she declare the Good News, she declares it TO the Good News himself.

But she doesn't hesitate to remind him that a dead body will stink.

No wonder St. Martha is pictured with a dragon. She would have made a heck of a preacher.

Filed Under: Gospel of John ·
Mar 1, 2008

How Were Your Eyes Opened?

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A sermon for Lent 4A    March 2, 2008
John 9:1-41

As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth.  His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" (John 9:1-2, NRSV)

We start with a plaguing question. Is it the fault of the man or of his parents that he was born blind?

We would like to think we are past that kind of thinking, and in fact the prophets had gone beyond it, long before Jesus came on the scene. But the idea prevailed among many people, that any sort of disability must be a punishment directed by God against some person or persons.

So, was it the parents who sinned, or the man himself, while still in the womb?

I find that kind of thinking smug and limited, but I'm afraid I subscribed to it myself until I had a good reason not to do it anymore, a personal reason. I'm afraid I couldn't put myself in other people's shoes. I'm afraid I could not see things from another perspective until my mother, dying from multiple metastases of malignant melanoma, wondered quietly what she had done wrong? Why was God punishing her?

I understood how she felt. For a year I had been wondering what lesson God had been trying to teach me when I learned my baby had a genetic abnormality, when I lost my baby. For a year I had been blaming myself.

I had never heard anyone ask the question so directly as my mother did that day, and I knew in that moment, without a doubt, she was wrong. Sure, she was set up for melanoma: a blue-eyed blond with fair, fair skin who lived in the tropics as a child and sunbathed as an adult, a person with a quiet, self-denying personality who kept everything inside, what they now call "Type C." She had all the components, and yet we know there are people with similar characteristics who never develop melanoma or cancer of any kind. Why did it happen to her?

Was it the parents who sinned, or the man born blind?

This was a common question, and we can hear in the story how risky it was for the family to answer it, how many years the parents had kept a low profile as they try to do in this event, to avoid being blamed for their son’s disability. Ask him, they say. He is an adult and can answer for himself!

But they know what the world thinks!! The world thinks they did something wrong, and the only way to get out from under that is to lay the accusation at the feet of their son himself, not the grown-up son begging in the marketplace, but the infant once placed in his mother’s arms, the baby they eventually realized could not see.

Did they feel he was lost to them in that moment of realization, knowing that a person who could not see, whose eyes might even have looked unusual, would be condemned by the neighbors and the people in religious authority?

Was it the parents who sinned, or the man born blind?

What a cruel God they worshiped.

I do not worship that God, and I believe God came to us in Jesus to free us from that way of thinking, yet we know that it persists, that people love to blame the troubles of other people on the wrath of God. It makes us feel safe to define ourselves as different from “them,” right up until others return the favor.

How were your eyes opened? They asked him that question. They wanted to know what Jesus had done to heal him, to change him, to make him nearly unrecognizable, but mostly they wanted evidence to prove Jesus had worked on the Sabbath, to show him to be a breaker of the Law. They were looking for reasons to arrest him, even to kill him, to ensure that he would not be heard or seen again.

He upset the balance, the norm, the status quo, and the Pharisees did not want to hear about it.
Sometimes we go along abiding by a family or community code because we don’t know any better, but other times we do it to remain safe within the system.

I’m not, on the whole, inclined to law-breaking, but why should it matter that Jesus healed the man on the Sabbath? Is it not the day for doing God’s work?

And, really, isn’t every day? There are no limits to the days on which our eyes may be opened, no limits to the days on which we may learn to see.

I want to share something with you, because this is in a sense our last “regular” Sunday together. Next week we will approach the word through drama, and my final weeks with you will be in a holy season that draws more than the usual people to church. So while we are here together, the immediate family, I want to thank you for opening my eyes. Through your willingness to tell me what you thought about what I do, you gave me confidence in areas of my ministry that I hoped I did well, but there had been no one to tell me before. You did it with kind words or the squeeze of a hand, and I thank you for it. God moved through you, and I thank God for it. I am a better pastor for having been with you, better able to see what God is calling me to do.

How were your eyes opened?

Jesus did a strange thing. He spat on the ground used his own saliva to make mud with the dirt of the road. He used that mud to heal the man born blind, to give him visions he had never imagined, to let him see the world, his parents, his neighbors and all those whose voices he knew but whose faces were unfamiliar.

When God restores our sight, we see things differently. The familiar becomes clearer, more recognizable. When my mother voiced her fears, I saw the history of her life, the love and trust she placed in her own mother, the person who taught her such truly terrible things, who “cured” her gall bladder problems with diet and believed in her own will to heal and called it God’s. What worked for her, an orderly system of blame, remorse and repentance leading to victory, left my mother feeling not like a beloved child but like a person begging on the fringes of the community, abandoned by God.

My mother trusted me with her deepest question, and although you know me as a pastor and might understand why she would talk to me about it, she thought seminary was a very bad idea for the mother of young children, and faith had become a closed subject between us. Thanks be to God, she opened it again. Thanks be to God, we talked about it, and I told her, kindly, how I disagreed with her assumptions. Thanks be to God, she heard me and became more forgiving with herself. In her vulnerability and brokenness, spoken aloud in a simple question, my mother opened the door to healing for both of us. In that moment, God broke through and opened both our eyes. At the end of her life, I saw her more clearly and loved her more. At the end of her life, she began to see who I might be and to love that person, too.

How were your eyes opened?

Jesus walked into town with his disciples, a notorious character, already in trouble for his radical actions and teachings, for the company he kept. He walked into town on the Sabbath and he broke the Law and he healed a man who could not see. God broke through. Using the most ordinary element, earth, God broke through. Using part of God’s own self, working in human form, God broke through.

And it happens every day, when we realize what is really happening in the world, when we look in the mirror and know ourselves, when we offer a kind word to someone who needs to hear it, when we ordinary people doing completely usual things meet one another and recognize God is with us in the mud of life and can use it for healing.

Was it the parents who sinned? Or the man born blind?

Our sin is not found in our disabilities any more than our salvation is found in our gifts. God does not rate us based on merit but loves us as we are, human and broken and, yes, sometimes quite completely blind in spirit.

How were your eyes opened? They asked the man and he gave a simple answer about a poultice of dirt and spit, and sometimes those homely answers contain a truth based in facts and observations. But the real opening comes when we see that God is with us in Jesus, and we decided to join him on the journey, wherever it may lead. Amen.

Filed Under: Gospel of John, Sermon ·
Feb 22, 2008

How They Received Her

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(Lent 3A John 4:5-42)

Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman's testimony, "He told me everything I have ever done." (John 4:39)

I'm thinking this morning about what makes a source reliable.

The news is full of the John McCain/lobbyist story, and particularly the angle of why the New York Times published it in the first place. We love to deconstruct, don't we?

It amazes me that anyone believed her.

More on this tomorrow.

Filed Under: Gospel of John ·
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