I want to give him a B name, his name as we know it is the man born blind. Maybe Bennett, which means blessed. Or Bohdi which means awakened. Berenger means brave as a bear, and that certainly suits him. Bertie is the name of one of my favorite fictional characters, and it means wise and graceful. Bertie Berenger. Wise, Graceful, and Brave like a Bear.
Bertie is said to be a man, so by cultural standards of the time, he is at least 13. It is hard for me to imagine a person born blind who hasn’t been educated and accommodated. Imagine all the people you know, with all their inborn imperfections, imagine their gifts tossed aside. In some ancient and modern cultures, illness is a mark of sinfulness. A system where shame is used to control who has power and who does not. Bertie would have been automatically unclean from birth, never formally taught, not welcome in synagogue or temple. He is clearly smart because while he may not have sight he has big ears to hear. On the outskirts all his life, he has learned enough to rebut and challenge the authorities after his awakening. It is amazing what the people we never notice know about us.
Maybe he had heard about this Jesus of Nazareth. The wonders he had done and the welcome that he taught and practiced. This Jesus who every time he shows up at the Temple there is some type of hub bub. We don’t know why Bertie begs outside the Temple, maybe he was hopeful, maybe he was curious. Maybe that was the spot where the charity was better. Even with the shaming his birth creates, Bertie Berenger’s family is still in the picture. There his parents are, passing the buck, willing to be silenced, saying ‘go ask him’. Bertie was known to be theirs and I imagine he still lives with them.
One of the characteristics of ancient Judaism that stands out in the simmering cultural soup of the Roman Empire was its celebration of life. We tell of our origins with the Lord chanting ‘it is good’, it is good. With God breathing the spirit into dark earth and bringing life to life. We hear of how we are to be fruitful and how our top priority is to care for the least. Most other realms of the Empire had a different take. A family was a burden and children were necessary but considered germ ridden vermin. An imperfect child, any disability, such as being born blind was a waste of time and effort. Bertie, grown and blind and still a part of his family, would have been radically unusual in the rest of the Hellenistic world.
It is a sabbath day when we meet Jesus today, and he had just left the Temple under threats of violence. Did he see Bertie, walk up to him, did he whisper hello, my name is Jesus, I have come to set God’s people free. May I help you see? He goes to this man directly in front of the temple with authorities and Pharisees right there. Like stealing a cookie in front of your parent. Not only does Jesus work a wonder, he also makes clay. Clay that recalls the primordial making of God, clay that fractures boundaries because making is one of the categories of things not done on the sabbath. The bold challenge to the authorities is unmistakeable.Two flimsy walls were broken and a man is healed like nothing anyone had ever seen and the powers that be are fraught.
Bertie's witness progresses steadily through the story, living a metaphor where enlightenment is about more than what is seen or unseen, it is going from the burdens of darkness to recognizing and praising and joining the saving works of God in Jesus. This highlights a very different understanding of how Jesus saves than what we sometimes see. In John’s gospel rescue from sin and brokenness is the fact of Jesus life, even more so than his tragic death. God’s light and word were born in the human life of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus’ presence was full of God’s grace and truth and when we let our life be defined by this light, we are brought out of the dark and the chaos. Bertie’s words clearly outline this central idea to his interrogators. He says, from the beginning of time there has never been anything like this - THIS IS IT! Jesus is a creation restart. When we are oriented to the Son, we see. When we turn toward any other vision of reality, we are in the dark.
We must be careful with passages such as these where the Pharisees can be paper bag villains and the Jewish authorities more defined by their tradition than their role. By the time the author of John is writing there is a charged and fraught atmosphere amongst family and friends who are all Jewish.After the temple was destroyed in 70 there was drastic reshuffling that after a few hundred years defines the Judaisms we know today.At the time there were multiple sects and streams and groups, including the Christ followers. The differences are not unlike some of the struggles amongst we who share the title Christian today. Important and consequential disagreements about who we are to be and how we are saved. This is true with our Anglican siblings, and it is true with our ecumenical friends and most obviously our fundamentalist cousins. You may be familiar with authors Rachel Held Evans and Brian McLaren. They are both raised in more evangelical and fundamentalist traditions, and they are both people who over time became more ‘progressive’ Christians. Two people who do bring light and voice to a compassionate faith in Jesus that many very much need to hear. And they are two people who are responded to with volumes of hateful vitriol by folks some of whom are from their root communities, who are challenged by their testimony. You don’t have to know those authors to know of an example, there are plenty of other examples of folks who play on the same team not getting along.
However, the plain text reading of passages such as this where the ‘Jews’ are the terrible other have caused millennia of sin and massacre, and in the name of Jesus we cannot fall victim to it again. This Anglican and Episcopal tradition rarely makes straightforward directives, but here we do. In our interfaith relationships, especially with other ‘people of the book’ such as Jews and Muslims, any form of anti-Semitism and anti-Islamism is turning away from the Triune God and embracing the darkness. In today's gospel sin isn’t so much about things done and left undone, but about something broader and more relational.Here sin is the un-response to Jesus, it is the turning away, the refusal to hear, the blindness of not trusting the endlessness of the peaceful welcome of the Holy Lord , Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Bertie Berenger, the man born blind, is one of my absolute favorite people of the New Testament.It really goes back to those two lines, those brave and wise and somewhat smart-aleky lines: You keep asking questions, do you want to be his disciples? Never from the beginning has there been anything like this, and your don’t know who he is? Are you kidding me?? I really like Bertie, I identify with Bertie when he says these things. However, I also connect with more of this story. I was raised in the church, in the Episcopal church, required every Sunday unless I was ill. But I was blind to it. I didn’t dislike it, it just didn’t connect.
This episode of the man born blind is a story of conversion, and it has all the parts of mine. Acknowledging a moment of grace, asking questions to find out more, going from saying I don’t know who Jesus is but I am drawn to him, to proclaiming he is our friend and shepherd and savior. I have been every character in this gospel text today: the religious authority deciding what is in and what is out, the caregiver replying to a difficult moment with I don’t know, when I did, the disciples asking provocative questions, and perhaps at my best moments the healing light of Christ. Who have you been? Over and over again, I visit these personas, twisting into the dark and being loved back into the light. Turning, turning till we come round right.
Bertie Berenger. Where he is, we are to be also. We are to be with him in his trust, in his response of commitment to the way of Christ. We are to be with him in his response to the forces of darkness and silencing. The man born blind. Bertie Berenger. Wise and graceful. Brave as a bear. His smart response sees us clearly. Do you want to become Jesus’ disciples too?
Will you pray with me..
You are the God who unleashes well-being
You are the Savior who lights the Way.
May we see;
may we love;
may we follow.
Amen.
Lent 4 A RCL
March 26, 2017
St. Paul's Walla Walla
Prayer expanded from Walter Bruggemann Lent Book.
Audio if the widget doesn't work for you!
It is a sabbath day when we meet Jesus today, and he had just left the Temple under threats of violence. Did he see Bertie, walk up to him, did he whisper hello, my name is Jesus, I have come to set God’s people free. May I help you see? He goes to this man directly in front of the temple with authorities and Pharisees right there. Like stealing a cookie in front of your parent. Not only does Jesus work a wonder, he also makes clay. Clay that recalls the primordial making of God, clay that fractures boundaries because making is one of the categories of things not done on the sabbath. The bold challenge to the authorities is unmistakeable.Two flimsy walls were broken and a man is healed like nothing anyone had ever seen and the powers that be are fraught.
Bertie's witness progresses steadily through the story, living a metaphor where enlightenment is about more than what is seen or unseen, it is going from the burdens of darkness to recognizing and praising and joining the saving works of God in Jesus. This highlights a very different understanding of how Jesus saves than what we sometimes see. In John’s gospel rescue from sin and brokenness is the fact of Jesus life, even more so than his tragic death. God’s light and word were born in the human life of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus’ presence was full of God’s grace and truth and when we let our life be defined by this light, we are brought out of the dark and the chaos. Bertie’s words clearly outline this central idea to his interrogators. He says, from the beginning of time there has never been anything like this - THIS IS IT! Jesus is a creation restart. When we are oriented to the Son, we see. When we turn toward any other vision of reality, we are in the dark.
We must be careful with passages such as these where the Pharisees can be paper bag villains and the Jewish authorities more defined by their tradition than their role. By the time the author of John is writing there is a charged and fraught atmosphere amongst family and friends who are all Jewish.After the temple was destroyed in 70 there was drastic reshuffling that after a few hundred years defines the Judaisms we know today.At the time there were multiple sects and streams and groups, including the Christ followers. The differences are not unlike some of the struggles amongst we who share the title Christian today. Important and consequential disagreements about who we are to be and how we are saved. This is true with our Anglican siblings, and it is true with our ecumenical friends and most obviously our fundamentalist cousins. You may be familiar with authors Rachel Held Evans and Brian McLaren. They are both raised in more evangelical and fundamentalist traditions, and they are both people who over time became more ‘progressive’ Christians. Two people who do bring light and voice to a compassionate faith in Jesus that many very much need to hear. And they are two people who are responded to with volumes of hateful vitriol by folks some of whom are from their root communities, who are challenged by their testimony. You don’t have to know those authors to know of an example, there are plenty of other examples of folks who play on the same team not getting along.
However, the plain text reading of passages such as this where the ‘Jews’ are the terrible other have caused millennia of sin and massacre, and in the name of Jesus we cannot fall victim to it again. This Anglican and Episcopal tradition rarely makes straightforward directives, but here we do. In our interfaith relationships, especially with other ‘people of the book’ such as Jews and Muslims, any form of anti-Semitism and anti-Islamism is turning away from the Triune God and embracing the darkness. In today's gospel sin isn’t so much about things done and left undone, but about something broader and more relational.Here sin is the un-response to Jesus, it is the turning away, the refusal to hear, the blindness of not trusting the endlessness of the peaceful welcome of the Holy Lord , Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Bertie Berenger, the man born blind, is one of my absolute favorite people of the New Testament.It really goes back to those two lines, those brave and wise and somewhat smart-aleky lines: You keep asking questions, do you want to be his disciples? Never from the beginning has there been anything like this, and your don’t know who he is? Are you kidding me?? I really like Bertie, I identify with Bertie when he says these things. However, I also connect with more of this story. I was raised in the church, in the Episcopal church, required every Sunday unless I was ill. But I was blind to it. I didn’t dislike it, it just didn’t connect.
This episode of the man born blind is a story of conversion, and it has all the parts of mine. Acknowledging a moment of grace, asking questions to find out more, going from saying I don’t know who Jesus is but I am drawn to him, to proclaiming he is our friend and shepherd and savior. I have been every character in this gospel text today: the religious authority deciding what is in and what is out, the caregiver replying to a difficult moment with I don’t know, when I did, the disciples asking provocative questions, and perhaps at my best moments the healing light of Christ. Who have you been? Over and over again, I visit these personas, twisting into the dark and being loved back into the light. Turning, turning till we come round right.
Bertie Berenger. Where he is, we are to be also. We are to be with him in his trust, in his response of commitment to the way of Christ. We are to be with him in his response to the forces of darkness and silencing. The man born blind. Bertie Berenger. Wise and graceful. Brave as a bear. His smart response sees us clearly. Do you want to become Jesus’ disciples too?
Will you pray with me..
You are the God who unleashes well-being
You are the Savior who lights the Way.
May we see;
may we love;
may we follow.
Amen.
Lent 4 A RCL
March 26, 2017
St. Paul's Walla Walla
Prayer expanded from Walter Bruggemann Lent Book.
Audio if the widget doesn't work for you!
I'm reminded of my late friend and colleague, Dr. Alan Clive.
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