March 30, 2014
Pine Valley Christian Church
John 12: 1-9
Rev. David Hansen
Pine Valley Christian Church began in 1966. Soon we will be celebrating our 50th anniversary. In preparation for this anniversary we have been reconvening as house church groups and reading the papers that the founding members of the congregation studied almost 50 years ago because our worship and our common life are still profoundly influenced by the work of the founding members. I am in awe of the heavy duty theological work they did. Papers by Joseph Matthews, Rudolph Bultmann, Paul Tillich, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and H. Richard Niebuhr are not easy reading. But the Matthew’s paper explains our life as a gathered and scattered community. He helps us understand the drama of worship as it relates to our daily life. Bultmann challenges commonly accepted ideas about faith. Tillich explains sin and grace. When we read these papers we understand perhaps more clearly why the great hall is arranged the way it is, why worship flows the way it does, and why we do the things we do in worship. So we are still shaped by the work of our founders.
Last week we read the Bonhoeffer paper on freedom. It is not an easy read. It is heavy lifting. The fundamental issue he is wrestling with is our understanding of freedom. He calls the widely accepted cultural notion of freedom “arbitrary self-will.” Freedom is the freedom to choose. If we have more money, we have greater financial security and more freedom. We can worry less and make more choices. The Author Philip Roth calls American culture a “moronic amusement park,” and many would agree. Bonhoeffer offers a very different understanding of freedom. He says that freedom is understood in the context of responsibility. We are responsible to God and to our neighbor. Our freedom comes in deciding how we want to live responsibly. That’s a different understanding of freedom. Bonhoeffer says that Jesus is the model of a free and responsible person. Christian freedom and cultural freedom are different things. That is why during this season of Lent we are taking time to get grounded in God’s love.
Once we are grounded in God’s love we are free to live in the world in a different way. God’s love shapes our view of the world. It is not a dangerous place that needs to be tamed or conquered. Creation is a gift, a life-sustaining and life-supporting, life-creating gift. Because the world is God’s life-sustaining gift, we can imagine a world in which everyone has enough.
Because we are grounded in God’s love we can make our way through the world following a different path. Instead of preying upon our enemies, we can pray for them. The world still has many dangers, toils and snares, but we walk a different path because we are grounded in God’s love.
Now we come to the third dimension of love—shaping ourselves. I want to read the story of the healing of the blind man as an example of this dimension of God’s love. The temptation of popular culture is to read this story of healing as an early version of the Cinderella story. It is the myth we learn as a child and as children we learn to love this story. Cinderella, the poor and abused step-sister is shunned by her step-sisters and exploited by her step-mother and then the fairy godmother appears and everything changes. Cinderella goes to the ball, she loses her glass slipper and the handsome prince searches the realm until he finds her. Her foot fits perfectly into the glass slipper and the two of them are united in marriage and life happily ever after.
Because we know this story so well, we are tempted to overlay this story on the gospel and read it like a fairytale. The blind man has a problem; in fact he is a problem. Because he is blind is he a social misfit. He is disabled, or as some would say, he is “differently-abled.” He is poor. He is a beggar. He is a burden on society. He is unwanted and unwelcome. In the eyes of the righteous he is a sinner. Sin, remember, is not a moral category. It is a social class. He is a sinner not because he has done something wrong, but because of who he is. He is blind and therefore he is a sinner. He is religiously unclean and unpure. He is unqualified to be in the company of the righteous and the fit.
His blindness describes not only his physical condition but also his social condition. Because he is blind and poor, he is invisible. He is unseen. He lives in the shadows of society. That is one of the problems of being poor. You become invisible. Other people do not see you and they do not want to see you. Your identity is reduced to a single dimension. You become “shrink wrapped.” His identity is that he is blind. That is what counts. He is marginalized and minimized. He becomes one of “Those People.”
And then Jesus comes along and everything is changed. His eyes are opened. He is no longer a problem. Now he can become one of the respected and accepted members of society. Except, if you read the story in John, that is not what happens. And I am reminded, this is not a fairy tale. This is the gospel of Jesus Christ.
On Saturday night a member of the congregation sent me a poem that I want to share with you. It is written by Julia K. Dinsmore. The title of the poem is “My Name is Not ‘Those People’.”
My Name Is Not “Those People”
By Julia Dinsmore
My name is not “Those People.”
I am a loving woman, a mother in pain, giving birth to the future, where my babies have the same chance to thrive as anyone.
My name is not “Inadequate.”
I did not make my husband leave – he chose to,
and chooses not to pay child support.
Truth is thought, there isn’t a job base for all
fathers to support their families.
While society turns its head, my children pay the price.
My name is not “Problem and Case to Be Managed.”
I am a capable human being and citizen, not a client.
The social service system can never replace the compassion
and concern of loving Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, Fathers,
Cousins, Community – all the bonded people who need to be
but are not present to bring children forward to their potential.
My name is not “Lazy, Dependent Welfare Mother.”
If the unwaged work of parenting, homemaking and community building was factored into the Gross National Product, my work would have untold value. And I wonder why my middle-class sisters whose husbands support them to raise their children are glorified – and they don’t get called lazy and dependent.
My name is not “Ignorant, Dumb or Uneducated.”
I live with an income of $621 with $169 in food stamps.
Rent is $585. that leaves $36 a month to live on. I am such a genius at surviving that I could balance the state budget in an hour.
Never mind that there is a lack of living-wage jobs.
Never mind that it is impossible to be the sole emotional, social and economic support to a family.
Never mind that parents are losing their children to the gangs, drugs, stealing, prostitution, social workers, kidnapping, the streets, the predator.
Forget about putting money into schools – just build more prisons.
My name is not “Lay Down and Die Quietly.”
My love is powerful and my urge to keep my children alive will never stop. All children need homes and people who love them. They need safety and the chance to be the people they were born to be.
The wind will stop before I let my children become a statistic.
Before you give in to the urge to blame me,
the blames that lets us go blind and unknowing into
the isolation that disconnects us, take another look.
Don’t go away.
For I am not the problem, but the solution.
And…My name is not “Those People.”
Ms. Dinsmore’s poem, My Name Is Not “Those People,” is included in her book, My Name Is Child of God … Not “Those People”: A First-Person Look at Poverty (Augsburg Fortress Publishers).
As the scales begin to fall from my eyes I see the healing in a new way. A new question now confronts me. I cannot close my eyes or turn my head and pretend that I don’t see it. I cannot look away.
Jesus did not come to change the blind man so that he could be assimilated into a society that did not want him and refused to accept him. He came to change the culture. He came to reshaped the culture and everyone in it in the image of God’s love.
Now, with my eyes wide open, I have to ask myself if I am ready to follow the Lord of this Dance and become a disciples whose life is shaped by the image of divine love.