Tired of My Tears

The other day I heard a heartbreaking story. Anthony Griffith, a stand-up comedian, was telling a group the story of what his life was like when he was breaking into show business in the early 1990s. It was recorded for a podcast called "The Moth," which gives people 12 minutes to share stories with a live audience. I listen to it every so often because I believe in the power of stories. Most of the stories are funny, poignant, forgettable, or just plain bad. There aren't many I'd recommend. But Anthony Griffith's story stopped me in my tracks.

As Griffith tells it, he was invited to go on the Johnny Carson show, which was the main way comics made it back in the day. For those too young to remember, Johnny Carson was the host of the Tonight Show before Jay Leno or Conan. Griffith got the call at about the same time that he got the news that his 2-year-old daughter's cancer had recurred. So there was the hook. Listening to his story now, I was following these two tracks - one the story of a young man finding success in a field he felt called to, and the other the story of the same man struggling to walk with his daughter through a battle with cancer.

He talked about the struggle to make people laugh when all he wanted to do was cry. He talked about his managers who were telling him his humor was getting too dark. He talked about his daughter's failing health and worsening diagnosis. He talked about watching her small body struggle with chemotherapy. Finally he talked about her death.

It was the first time he had told the story publicly and his voice cracked several times. He broke down in tears. He said, "I had a plan to teach her to drive. I had a plan to send her to college. I had a plan to walk her down the aisle at her wedding. I didn't have a plan for this."

He consoled himself with a figure from the movies, Denzel Washington's police trainer in the movie Training Day. He heard Denzel's voice telling him, "Man up...You think you the only one losing kids, today? 25 kids walked in this cancer ward, only 5 walking out. This ain't no sitcom. It don't all wrap up all nice and tidy in 30 minutes. This is life. Welcome to the real world."*

It was a heartbreaking story. Well told, as if that matters. All it meant was that Anthony Griffith's ability to communicate meant we could feel his anger, his tears, and his pain even better. It was a heartbreaking story. And I believe in the power of stories.

Jesus stands face to face with Martha in the roadway to his friend Lazarus' tomb. Her sister Mary is the one who falls at his feet. Mary is the one who sat at Jesus' feet to listen as he talked. Mary is the one who anointed his head and wiped his feet dry with her hair. Martha stares him down.

"Lord, if you had been here...if you had been here, my brother would not have died." She struggles to keep it under control. She fights down her disappointment. (He waited two days more to come when he heard of Lazarus' sickness!) She fights down her pain. Fights back the tears. Holds on to the hope beyond hope. "Even now I I know that God will give you whatever you ask." Her brother may be dead, but she will still allow that Jesus may be the one. But still her brother will be dead.

"Your brother will rise again," Jesus says.

"I know. I know. At the resurrection. At the end of all things."

"Martha. I am the resurrection. I am the life. If a person believes in me, that person will live. And everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?"

We hear echoes as he talks. Jesus saying to a Samaritan woman, "I will give you water that will never run out." Jesus saying to a blind man, "I am the light of the world." Jesus saying to Nicodemus, "You can be, you must be, born anew."

It seems a cruel thing to say to Martha. She is standing in the road. Dust swirling. Mourners wailing. A grieving sister in the house. A dead brother in the tomb. Shouldn't Jesus be telling her something like Denzel? "Get yourself together woman! You think you're the only one losing someone today? This ain't no fantasy. This is real life. Welcome to the real world." But he doesn't say that. And she doesn't protest. She confesses. "Yes. I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God." And she goes to get Mary.

Mary is the emotional one. She runs out of the house and the mourners follow her thinking she is off to the tomb to weep and she might need some help from their culturally appropriate, manufactured tears. But Mary doesn't go to the tomb. She goes to Jesus. And falls at his feet.

"Lord, if you had been here...if you had only been here." The story has not changed. The tears testify to the pain that will not go away, even in the presence of the Messiah.

"Where have you laid him?" The text says anger was rising in Jesus' spirit and he was troubled in himself.

"Come and see," they said. The same thing Philip, Jesus' disciple, had said to Nathaniel when he was telling him about Jesus. Nathaniel had asked, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" and Philip replied, "Come and see."

Come and see this body. Come and see the death. Come and see where all our fantasies bump up against the real world. This is the real world, Jesus.

And Jesus wept.

This is the point where I wept with Anthony Griffith, too. I've been there all too often with people whose faith has gone off a cliff. I've been there in the back of an ambulance to tell a couple that the children they fought to get out of a burning house have died. I've been there when marriages have failed. When the diagnosis is bad. When the job is lost. When the boyfriend bails. And what does God give us for times like these but tears?

Yesterday, I posted the topic for today's sermon on Facebook with the question: What makes you want to cry? And people posted replies. What makes me want to cry? People being hungry and not being able to feed their children. Congress. My friend's baby dying. Hatred, violence and suffering..especially the suffering of children. The New York Mets.

We are tired of our tears.

And the answer Denzel gives is to "Man up. This is the real world." That's not what I want to tell Anthony Griffith. I want to tell him that, yes, the pain is real. Yes, the suffering is real. Yes, the death is real. But that is not nearly enough to tell the story of this world.

If death is all there is to the real world then every story is a tragedy. Every tale I tell will end in woe. Every tear I shed is a wasted sign of a world with no God.

But that's not what our tears are and that's not what this world is. Those tears are for a broken world that hasn't yet reached the end of its long road. Those tears are prayers for God to break in on this world. Come, Lord Jesus, and stand before my tomb and let something happen.

I want to tell Anthony Griffith. Man up? Yes, the man is up. And the man is not going to tell you that your pain doesn't matter just because its mixed with the pain of a million others. The man is not going to say, "Stuff happens" and that's the end of it. The man is going to stand in front of the tomb and say, "Take off that stone."

The people will protest. "Lord, think of the stench."

"Take off that stone."

"He's been in there for four days."

"Lift off that stone."

They will lift off that stone. They will expect the worst. They will not expect life. They will not know what to do with it. They will not know how to handle it. They will not know what Jesus is saying when he says,

"Didn't I tell you that you would see the glory of God if you believe?"

They will not know what to think when he calls out in a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!"

They will not know who they are when they hear a rustling in the dark. They will not know where to run when they hear a shuffling in the tomb. They will not know what the world is coming to when a dead man sheds his wraps and walks once more.

I would weep with Anthony Griffith. I would not know what words could touch the pain. But eventually I would say that someone is standing outside his tomb. I would say to you, "Someone is standing outside your tomb." You know what it is. You know the places where you think even God can't go. You know the stones that seal those places off.

And you know who says to you, "Lift off that stone." You know who says to you, "Come out of that tomb." The man is up and he's waiting for you to meet the real world...the real world where saviors weep over the pain of the world and then say, "Wait, there's more."

I believe in the power of stories. Especially I believe in the gospel story. Because it shows that love wins the day. Death is defeated and God is here to stay. Thanks be to God.

*"Anthony Griffith: The Best of Times, The Worst of Times," www.themoth.org/podcast. Accessed April 9, 2011.

How Can I See Miracles?

I don't know how to explain what it is that I saw. A few weeks ago I was out on Cedar Island. If you've been around me since then you're probably sick of hearing me talk about it. I was out on Cedar Island. It was a Friday. I'd just come off doing another funeral. It was a good funeral. Suzanne's aunt, Augusta, had died at the age of 98 and we had celebrated her life. Celebrated life in the face of death.

And the next day was Friday and it was a relatively warm day and the kayak was hanging there in the garage, staring me in the face every time I pulled the car in, and saying, "Alex, help me. Get me down from here. I need water. I need water." I could hear it.

So I got the kayak down and went over to Burton's Shore. It was a little breezy but the water was calm. The clouds were all drifting in a line that pointed straight across Burton's Bay to Cedar Island. So I waded into the chilly water, jumped in the kayak and paddled off.

When I got to the island I put my stuff down and I started running. I know I don't look like a runner, and I'm not. But the district superintendent in Richmond, Steve Jones, has challenged all the clergy in the conference to participate in the Richmond Marathon in November this year and I'm working on it. The worst part about running is the first two miles. After that, it's a really neat thing. I just wish I could start with mile 3.

So, anyway, I set out down the beach, and here's the critical thing - I left my glasses back with my stuff near the kayak. I don't like running with my glasses on, but the side effect of that is that I can't see very well. So as I ran I could see shapes and hear birds and the waves, but I couldn't get much detail. It was impressionist running.

I had run about as far as I had set out to run and was just about to turn back, but I knew that there was a boat beached on the island that ran aground during a storm last winter and I wanted to see it. So I ran a little bit further to see if I could see it and sure enough, around a bend in the island, there was the shape of the boat. So I kept running.

I was getting very close to the boat when I saw a shape over next to the small dunes. It looked to me like a mesh bag of potatoes and I thought, "How did a bag of potatoes get washed up on the shore?" So, like Moses on the mountain when he saw the bush burning without being consumed, I said to myself, "I will now turn aside and see this great sight, why a sack of potatoes has washed up on this beach."

So I ran up towards the dunes and as I did, the sack of potatoes moved. I was only about four feet away from it. It moved and looked up at me with these sad, black eyes. It was not a sack of potatoes. It was a seal.

I don't know who was more scared - me or the seal. It startled me more than anything. I jumped back and stared. It was about as big as a large child. Brown with black spots. Those mournful, puppy dog eyes. It was a long way from the surf but it started making its way there - pushing its fins into the sand and dragging itself forward, stopping every so often to catch its breath. I pulled out my phone to take a picture.

But here's the thing: even though I was only a few feet from it, I knew I was actually going to be able to see it better when I looked at the pictures I was taking. Even close up I was feeling the seal's presence more than seeing it in any detail. And it's hard for me to describe what I was feeling.

It was such a strange place on the beach. There was a boat on the land which should have been in the sea. Next to it was a cabin on stilts that was out in the water where it shouldn't be. Here was a seal from the Arctic and there was me. Did I belong?

I was sensing the seal's fear and my own sense of awe. I felt a kind of fellow-creature feeling for it - like we were both alike on this beach - God's own critters in a place we couldn't describe. And I felt a deep tremor within. It was the day of the earthquake in Japan. I felt like I was in the presence of something beyond me - something holy like that burning bush. It's such a strange thing to be a preacher sometimes - you can stare down death at a funeral one day and the next you can be totally undone by a seal. But you don't have to be a preacher to feel this. You can know that the world is more than you can say. That miracles are out there. You just have to be able to see them and with more than your eyes.

Over the last couple of weeks we have been looking at a series of Jesus' close encounters with people. There was Nicodemus who came in the night. The Samaritan woman at the well. And today it's a blind man.

The healing part of this story is pretty straightforward. Jesus sees a blind man, walks up to him, and spits in the dirt. This is a scene you don't often see depicted in stained-glass windows - Jesus spitting in the dirt. But it's basic and graphic. Even more so in the dirt because the Greek word for spitting is ptuo. Which is the perfect word for spitting. Ptuo is the sound you make when you spit.

So Jesus comes to heal the blind man and ptuo right in the dirt. He reaches down and grabs some of this glop he's made in the dirt and he puts it on the eyes of the blind man. He tells him, "Go and bathe in the pool of Siloam." So the blind man leaves, the clay still on his face, and goes to dunk himself in the pool. When he returns, he can see. The healing is done. But it doesn't yet qualify as a miracle. The blind man has sight, but he's not yet a disciple.

Scene 2. Let's call this scene "The Curious Neighbors." The people who have lived with this man who was healed all their lives suddenly have a hard time identifying him. Some of the neighbors were saying, "It's him." Others were saying, "No, it just looks like him." And finally, the man gets tired of the guessing and says, "It's me." And the confused and curious people say, "Who did this and how?"

Listen to how the man answers. He doesn't make any claims for Jesus. Doesn't try to go beyond the facts. He simply says, "The man Jesus made mud and put it on my eyes and said, 'Go wash,' so I did, and look what happened."

We know, because the gospel of John tells us this from the very beginning, that Jesus is the light of the world. Jesus has told the disciples this before the healing even. But that was very uncomfortable for the neighbors, who weren't sure what to think. So they decided to take the man to the Pharisees, the religious leaders, to get an opinion.

Scene 3. We might call this the scene where the Pharisees become blind. Something happened to the Pharisees when they were training at Pharasaic Junior College or wherever it was they went to school. They got hung up on sin and started to see it everywhere. They were were convinced that they had clear answers to all the major questions and anyone who disagreed with them or acted differently was a sinner. They already had problems with Jesus because he had healed a man on the Sabbath, which qualified as a prohibited work for them - a sin. And guess what? The day that Jesus touched the blind man was...a Sabbath.

The Pharisees ask the man the same questions as the neighbors - who and how - and the man gives the same answer except that it's even simpler this time. He leaves out the spitting part and says, "He put mud on my eyes and I washed and I can see." This is enough to divide the Pharisees and they try to get beyond the disagreement by asking the man who he thinks Jesus is. And the man makes his first statement of belief. He goes beyond the bare facts and says, "He is a prophet."

This really disturbed the Pharisees so they decide to call in his parents, who are no help. The parents say, "He's a grown man. Ask him who this Jesus is."

So a third time they call him back and the man who was blind says, "Look, I've told you the story. What do you want to hear? You can sit here and figure out if Jesus is a sinner or not if you want to, but what I know is that I was blind and now I see. Now that's the story. Do you want to be his disciple, too?"

Now he's finally let it slip. He's a disciple. Jesus is not just a man. Not just a prophet that I can choose to follow or not. He is worthy of the man's faith, worthy of the man's witness and worthy of the man's life. He has now come to see clearly who Jesus is and who he is. The miracle has finally happened.

For this the Pharisees call him a sinner and they throw him out. They have become totally blind.

But there is one more interrogation for the man. Jesus now comes to him. "Do you believe in the Son of Humanity?" he asks.

"Who is he? Tell me so that I can believe in him." He is starting to sound like the woman at the well who asked, "Where is this living water?" and who talked of the Messiah. Just like in that conversation, Jesus says, "You are looking at him. The one speaking to you is the one."

The miraculous thing here is not that a healing happened. Like most miracles that are worth their salt the healing is only an opportunity to see the deeper miracle. The miraculous happens at a level that can't be accessed by facts or labels or expectations. It happens when you confront a reality that you've been desiring all your life. Miracles don't come to contradict our skepticism about the world - they come to confirm our hopes. They don't come to confound our minds, they come to dwell in our hearts.

So what does that tell us about how we see miracles? If you're a Pharisee you're not going to see a miracle because you've got too much invested in your rules and in a rigid worldview that is a closed system. Nothing gets into a Pharisee's world that he (and they were all 'he's) can't explain. Jesus won't be welcome in a Pharisee's heart.

If you're a fearful neighbor or a fearful parent you're not going to see a miracle because your fear is going to close you off from hope. Your fear will keep your world small. Your fear will determine the answer to every question because you will only allow yourself to believe what is acceptable. The parents of the blind man don't testify to who Jesus is because they knew they would be expelled from the synagogue if they professed him as Messiah.

So the miracle comes to the one who knows what darkness is like. Who knows what it's like to live on the margins and to be dependent on others for his very survival. The one who has been called a sinner just for being blind. The one who has been longing to see. This is the one who sees a miracle.

So what's keeping you from seeing a miracle in your life? Are you shut down by a closed system in your mind that thinks that nothing can be believed unless all the answers are provided ahead of time? Is there room in your heart, in your life, in your mind for something that you can't explain - something that feels less like facts and more like love?

Or are you shut down by fear? Fear of loss? Fear of the future? Fear of inadequacy? Fear of rejection? Fear of failure? Remember that perfect love casts out fear and that you cannot see the miracles right in front of you if you are in the grip of fear. But perfect love casts out fear.

What's keeping you from seeing a miracle in your life and what is keeping us from seeing a miracle in this world? We are not in touch with our deepest hopes and greatest desires. We lead with our defenses instead of our trust. And we suffer. Our neighbors suffer. Our world suffers.

Jesus and the blind man walked through the same land as the Pharisees and the fearful neighbors. But some saw miracles and others saw sin. What you see is not up to the Pharisees to decide for you. What you see is up to you. What the blind man saw is still here in front of us. In this very room. Remember what the angels say when they show up? Do not be afraid. For if you are not afraid and if you listen to God speaking in your heart - there are miracles. Thanks be to God.


John 9:1-41
Now as he was passing by he saw a man who had been blind from birth. His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned so that he was born blind, this man or his parents?

Jesus answered, "Neither this man nor his parents sinned. This happened so that the works of God might be revealed in him. As long as the day lasts we must be about the work of the one who sent me. The night is coming when no one will be able to work. As long as I in the world, I am the light of the world."

Having said this, he spit on the ground and he made mud from the spittle and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the mud. He said to him, "Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, (which is translated 'Sent'). So he went, washed and came back seeing.

Then the neighbors and the ones who were used to seeing him around, (for he had been a beggar), said, "Isn't this the man who used to sit and beg?" Others said, "This IS the same one." Others said, "It looks like him."

He said, "It's me."

So they said, "How were your eyes opened?"

He answered, "The man called Jesus made mud and anointed my eyes, saying to me, "Go to the pool at Siloam and wash.' So I went and washed and I could see."

They said to him, "Where is he?"

He said, "I don't know."

They brought the man who had been blind to the Pharisees. Now it was a sabbath when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. So the Pharisees asked him again how we received his sight. He said to them, "He put mud on my eyes and I washed and I can see."

Then some of the Pharisees said, "This man is not from God because he doesn't observe the sabbath." Others said, "How can a sinner do signs like this?" They were a divided group. So they spoke to the blind man again and said, "What have you got to say about him? He opened your eyes."

He said, "He is a prophet."

But the Jews would not believe this about him, that he had been blind and received his sight, until they sent for the parent of the man who had gained his sight. They asked them, "Is this your son who you say was born blind? If so, how can he now see?"

His parents answered them, "We know that he is our son and that he was born blind. But we don't know how he can now see nor do we know who opened his eyes. He's a grown-up. Ask him. He can speak for himself." His parents said this because they feared the Jews, for the Jews had already agreed that anybody who professed him as Messiah would be expelled from the synagogue. This was the reason his parents said, "He's a grown-up. Ask him."

So they called the man who had been blind for a second time and said to him, "Give God the glory instead. We know that this man is a sinner."

The man said, "I don't know if he is a sinner or not. The one thing I know is that I was blind and now I see."

They said to him, "Who did his to you? How did he open your eyes?"

He answered them, "I have already told you and you didn't listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples, too?"

Then they went off on him and said, "You are that man's disciple. We are disciples of Moses. We know that God spoke to Moses, but we don't know where this man comes from."

The man responded to them, "This is a wonder! You don't know where he comes from and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God doesn't hear sinners but God does hear the one who fears God and does God's will. From the very beginning it's unheard of for someone to open the eyes of someone blind from birth. If this man weren't from God he wouldn't be able to do anything."

They answered him, "You were totally born in sin and you want to teach us?!" Then they threw him out.

When Jesus heard that they threw him out, he found him and said, "Do you believe in the Son of Humanity?"

The man replied and said, "Who is he, Lord? Tell me so that I can believe in him."

Jesus said to him, "You are looking at him. The one speaking with you is the one."

He said, "I believe, Lord." Then he worshipped him.

Jesus said then, "I came into this world for judgment so that those who can't see could see and those who see would become blind."

When they heard this, some of the Pharisees who were with him said, "We aren't blind are we?"

Jesus said to them, "If you were blind, you wouldn't have sin. But now that you claim to see, sin remains in you."