rick morley

I grew up in Ocean City, New Jersey – a wonderful island and shore town that has kept vestiges of it’s Methodist roots through the years.

To the west of the island is the Little Egg Harbor Bay. To the east of the island is, of course, the Atlantic Ocean. And to the north of the island is a short stretch of water that separates Ocean City from the larger island of Ventnor/ Margate/ Atlantic City.

And, at that northern tip of the island where the Little Egg Harbor Bay and the Atlantic Ocean meet is a choppy, white-capped wave mess.

I’ve traveled from Bay to Ocean many times there by boat, and it’s always a little frightening. Always an event.

The confluence of those two bodies of water is violent. And beautiful. And worth the trip across to see the great expanse of ocean.

In the eleventh chapter of John there is another confluence which is far more powerful. It’s the confluence of the humanity and divinity of Christ.

For eleven chapters John has been setting up Jesus as The WORD, the pre-existent Logos that was present in the beginning, and who is God in the fullest sense . For eleven chapters Jesus has been engaging in a ministry of signs – signs of power, love, healing, and hope. He’s turned water into wine, restored sight to the blind, thousands have been well fed on a meager offering, and those who were paralyzed get up and walk.

And the seventh sign – and notice the importance of the number ‘seven’ in the Hebrew Bible – is the raising of Lazarus.

He was stone cold in the tomb.

He was so dead that he had begun to stink of de-composure.

And Jesus tells him to walk out of the tomb.

And he does.

At this point, is there any doubt as to who Jesus is, and what Jesus is capable of?

I mean, the only thing greater than raising someone else from the dead might be…well…oneself raising from the dead…but we’ll get to that in a couple of weeks.

And yet, as powerful and holy as that storyline is – it’s not the only part of the story.

Because in this story of Jesus trampling down the power of death, Jesus is also presented as very…human.

Jesus has friends. Real friends. Whom he visits, and eats with, and whose home he stays in when he’s in town.

Mary, Martha, and Lazarus might be described as disciples in some larger sense, but really they are more than that. They are Jesus’ friends.

And, when one of them – Lazarus – dies, Jesus comes, he talks with his friends, he gets agitated, and he weeps.

Jesus weeps over the death of his friend. Jesus succumbs to that most primal of human reactions, and he cries. Openly.

And then, after wiping the tears from his eyes, he raises the one for who he cries.

We’re hundreds and hundreds of years away from the great Christological controversies of the Church. No longer do we argue about the divinity and humanity of Christ, and if he might be both, and if both then how he can be both at the same time.

And we lose those conversations at our peril. Far too often people look at Jesus as only God. As Gray Temple says, “Jesus is more than a hematological function.” It’s not just about his blood.

AND, far too often, we hear about Jesus just being some nice guy, who was a good teacher, and who has some wonderful ideas about us all holding hands and singing kumbaya.

But, this is not the Jesus that we find today in the eleventh chapter of John. He’s weeping and mourning – like us. And he’s raising people from the dead – like only God can do.

Here we find that Sacred Confluence of humanity and divinity commingling in our world and waking a dear friend from the deep sleep of death.

And that’s Jesus. All of him.

I don’t know why, but human nature is consumed with building ourselves up and tearing others down.

Part of the reason why Christianity, as Jesus taught it, is so at-odds with the world is that Jesus was all about building the ‘other’ up, and willing to be torn-down himself.

That’s the Way of Christ. It’s the Way of the Cross. It’s the Way of Lent.

It absolutely startles me that when the disciples see a man, afflicted with blindness from birth, their first thought is about sin.

Did HE commit a sin?

What, at birth? In the womb? He committed some horrific sin as a zygote and was therefore punished for life?

Are they joking?

Or, did his parents sin?

As a father of two young daughters, I don’t even want to ask the questions that follow that line of argument.

They see a man who has never seen a flower, a sunrise, the sea, his parents, or the place he called home – and they start wondering what he did wrong.

They aren’t reflecting on their OWN sin, of course. It’s not a “oh-gosh-I’m-not-living-the-way-I-ought” sort of moment.

It’s a “oh-the-poor-slob-I-guess-he-got-his-due” sort of moment.

And it’s at this point in the encounter that Jesus shines a Light on the Way as he lives it. He doesn’t look at him as a sinner, he sees someone to lift up.

And so the Son of God, Prince of Peace, Lord of All, and Creator of the Stars of Night, reached down into the dirt of the ground, spit into his own hand, and slathered a paste onto the man’s eyes.

He didn’t just look on him with sorry pity. He touched him. He got down in the dirt.

He heals him.

He lifts him up.

Because that’s what Jesus does.

Now, I know that this story of giving sight to the blind, like all the stories of Jesus giving sight to the blind, is about God giving spiritual sight to all of us who are spiritually blind. It’s about God showing all of us the way with new eyes, and a fresh look onto the Universe that God made.

But, that also means that Jesus comes to us. And digs in the dirt. And spits in his hand. And slathers us with paste.

So that our new eyes may behold the Light of the World.

I can’t shake the poetic links to God digging in the dust of the ground in Eden, and giving us his breathe that we might live. God lifted us out of the earth in the Beginning, and Jesus is still in the business of lifting us up. And opening our eyes. And bringing us Life.

And, as the Way of Jesus, it is meant to be our way too. There are a lot of broken lives out there that need picked up. Whole countries of lives, in fact. Japan. Libya. Sudan.

Let’s not look on people like they’re poor slobs, and wonder at how blessed we are. Let’s reach out – into the dirt – if we have to. Let’s dirty our hands. And let’s bring the Life that Jesus brings.