Tag: Bruce Stanley

And the Lord asked, ‘Son of Man, can these bones live?’ Ezekiel 37:3

When Ezekiel was given this vision by God, Israel was at one of her lowest points. The Babylonians had taken Jerusalem’s best and brightest back to Babylon. Not only were these Jews being held captive, they were being integrated into Babylonian life and being raised as other than Jews. Meanwhile, Jerusalem was a barren mess. Jews there were living with fear instead of faith and their hearts were full of despair rather than devotion. To both the suffering and bewildered Jewish diaspora and the Jews remaining in Israel, God spoke these powerful words of hope: I will bring you back.

Ezekiel’s vision is eternally contemporary.

In the United States it resonated with the ones whom we held captive. Our slaves, suffering horror unimaginable to most, found hope in Ezekiel’s words. They fashioned a song, “Dem Bones Gonna Rise Again” that was sung as both lament and encouragement. The song captures the components of Ezekiel’s vision: human bones, scattered and torn asunder; the sound of rattling as bone joins bone; the blowing, flowing wind as God breathes life to the bones.

This Lenten Season we find ourselves in isolation, torn from corporate worship, places of work, and even apart from family members whom we cannot hug or even visit. We ask, “Can these scattered remnants of a once proud people find life again?” How can we come together, remain connected, so that we can live.

I am full of hope as I see winds of change blowing through our land. A Sunday school class at Edenton Street UMC stays in touch with some of the church’s elderly by dropping off meals to their homes. It is not ideal that the meal must be left outside, yet it is a great way to connect. One of our neighbors has decorated their carport pillars with balloons so those out walking can see that hope springs forth. Others have pulled their Christmas lights back out of the attic as Advent and Lent collide. If you have tried to connect using Free Conference Call, Google, Zoom, or other platforms you may have experienced difficulty with access as their servers are overloaded with persons needing and wanting to communicate.

Ezekiel’s prophetic word is clear. Things have fallen apart and the people have become scattered. Can these bones live again? With confidence that God is sovereign and God’s will cannot be prevented, we answer a resounding yes. We join our voices and sing, “Dem bones gonna rise again!”

Bruce Stanley

As he went 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?” “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.” John 9:1-3

There is much noise and clutter in this Gospel lesson for the fourth week of Lent and it can make it difficult to hear the Good News.

We hear authentic questions of theodicy – how to account for evil in a world God pronounced good at creation. Keep reading the passage and you’ll find conflict about healing on the Sabbath and the refusal of bystanders to identify the one healed (“It could be … or it looks like him”).

Contributing to the distractions is the process of the healing itself. Jesus heals the man, yes, but he performs the healing in three stages. First he spits into the ground and forms a poultice. Next he applies the poultice to the man’s eyes. Then he instructs the man to wash it off in the Pool of Siloam.

We know Jesus raised the dead with a simple verbal command (Lazarus) and by the touch of his hand (the son of the widow of Nain). Why then this elongated and elaborate process?

In the midst of raised voices and pointed questions, there comes utterance that has rung across the ages with clarity and hope. When it is (finally!) his turn to talk, the man healed of his blindness declares with straightforward power, “One thing I know: I was blind and now I see.”

Today we too find ourselves in a time of loud noise and clashing voices. We find ourselves wanting the threat from Covid19 to be over quickly, even immediately. We don’t want to endure process or go through stages of isolation, diagnoses, and quarantine. We want to see the end of this so desperately. Returning to the passage in John, we are not told the age of the man who regained his sight. Had he waited 18 years? 30 years? Longer?

I cling to the man’s declaration. God is indeed with us, though we may now be blind to where and how God is at work. I claim his hope as mine, that one day where I have lacked sight I will be able to see.

Bruce Stanley

Just then his disciples came. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but none said, “What do you wish?” or, “Why are you talking with her?” So the woman left her water jar, and went away into the city, and said to the people, “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” – John 4:27-29

In past years many churches – Protestant, Roman Catholic, Orthodox – would not permit weddings during the Lenten season. Some continue that restriction. The reasoning is obvious. Lent is the season of contrition and repentance and the rejoicing involved with marriage is in contrast to this.

In our current day, a few parishes and congregations maintain the total ban but generally the rule has been relaxed and the ban may apply only to Good Friday and Holy Saturday.

While I completely understand the traditionalist position banning weddings during Lent,  I think there is great argument to be made for the exact opposite position. Perhaps Lent is the most appropriate time for a wedding! 

After all, the traditional vows contain the admonition, “Matrimony is an honorable estate, instituted by God, and is therefore not to be entered into unadvisedly but reverently, discreetly, and with the fear of God.” This is serious language.

The happy loving couple might not want to hear that a prerequisite of a healthy marriage is reverent introspection and a heart that trembles in the presence of the Holy and Perfect One. In the marriage ceremony currently found in the United Methodist hymnal, the ring vow is “With all that I am and all that I have, I honor you.” During premarital counseling I ask couples to consider the great import of this statement. They are each offering (and asking) the other to receive all that they are. This means not simply noble sentiments and endearing traits. All means all – and includes petty resentment, short temper, impetuous comment, and sullen affect. There can be no pretending. Think of it as the warts and all clause.

Return now to the Gospel of John. At first glance the Woman at the Well’s invitation seems like a poor evangelism strategy. Do we really want to be in the presence of someone who knows “all that I ever did”? 

Yikes!

A more thorough look, however, reveals that not only does Jesus know all that we are, say, and do but he still loves us and desires to be in relationship with us.

We engage in introspection and self-examination during Lent not so we can be disconsolate but so we can be forgiven. We admit our wrongdoing and wrong thinking not to reinforce self-loathing but to celebrate the Lord who loves us, warts and all. We marvel that God is able to use even our frailty and weakness to achieve great things. We offer therefore all that we have and all that we are and trust that God’s redeeming love is greater than our shortcomings and sin.

The woman went to the well to draw water yet so overcome with the joy of salvation, she forgot all about her water jug! She ran with the news that others might come and experience Jesus also.

Her invitation is timeless, echoing across the ages: Come! See! It is the Christ!

– Bruce Stanley

 

In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when he said, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” – Matthew 3:1-3

During World War II the Resistance in Yugoslavia was incredibly effective and the longer the Nazis occupied the country, the more effective the Resistance became. The SS, notoriously adept at rooting out the underground in other parts of conquered Europe, were frustrated. They were chasing the presumed leader of the Resistance. So elusive was this leader that some in the SS thought he was a fabrication. Contributing to the conclusion in the intelligence community that he was not real was his nom de guerre, Tito.

In local slang, Ti meant “this” and To meant “that.” Legend has it that what made him so effective and so difficult to locate was his insistence on face to face communication and his brevity of speech. When a matter was being discussed or course of action contemplated, he replied decisively, “Do this,” or “Do that.” There was no lengthy discourse or written record. He commanded and moved on. Tito indeed.

John the Baptist communicated in like manner. He, too, was hiding from the (Roman) overlords as part of a resistance movement. He worked away from the cities and garrisoned towns. He preached in the wilderness area a single message, “Repent.” He stayed on message, calling the children of God to a life of contrition and self-examination. He worked tirelessly to help people lead a new life in God and to find forgiveness of sin. He did what was foretold – he prepared the way of the Lord.

We call this season of the year Lent. We might more accurately name it simply as that Jewish partisan did. Our fasting , our additional worship, our daily scripture readings and prayers are all toward one end. In a word, we are invited to “Repent.”

And Yahweh Elohim commanded A’dam, ‘You are free to eat from any tree in the garden but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.’ Genesis 2:16

by Bruce Stanley

No scholar can say for certain when or how the apple, symbol of our willful disregard of God and point of entry into the wilderness, came to be identified as the fruit that was on the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The best guess is that sometime in the Middle Ages, when Latin was the language of the church in western Europe and literacy levels were very low, confusion occurred. Latin used the word malum for apple. It is borrowed from Greek and is the word we in English borrow for melon. In Latin the word for evil is malus. A bite from the apple then came to be associated with our rebellious resistance; with that bite humankind moved from living in God’s preferred future to living in the wild.

The Lectionary readings for the first Sunday in Lent are traditionally wilderness passages. From the Hebrew Bible comes this reading (above) with Adam and Eve subsequently stumbling out of Eden and into a life of toil. The New Testament reading tells the story of Jesus in the wilderness dealing with our greatest adversary (the Hebrew term is H’satan).

Throughout scripture, the story is the same and – in fact – becomes the defining narrative of Israel’s faith. Consider these three examples: The Jewish people looked to their rescue from bondage in Egypt and wilderness wandering (prior to entering the Promised Land); Isaiah predicted and John the Baptist fulfilled the role of a “voice crying out of the wilderness”; and the final book in the Greek portion of scripture was written by John from prison during a time of horrible persecution and suffering.

With such grim experience in such inhospitable surroundings it may seem we have no hope.

During Lent, as we acknowledge the wilderness of our lives, we find there is hope sent from God in the person of Jesus Christ. In Greek, the word gospel means “Good News.” God comes to us in the midst of the wilderness in order to lead us out again and again and again and again.

Even when we are at our rebellious worst, Jesus comes to us, walking alongside us, offering hope. He comes for each and every person, no matter how great their sin and suffering. He comes unbidden even into the most desperate circumstance and he offers hope, joy, and peace. Jesus continues to journey with us, leading us all out of places of pain and suffering back to where we belong, within the walled garden of God’s preferred future.

Let us begin our Lenten journey acknowledging the wilderness around us and the wildness within us. We give thanks for the Word of God that tells the story of our loving Lord working to bring us safely back into right relationships where we belong.