When I was growing up in Marengo County, our drinking water contained a great deal of sulfur mixed with a high concentration of fluoride. No one had cavities and there wasn’t a dentist to be found because there wasn’t enough work for him to do. There was, however, a veterinarian who did some teeth pulling, but other than that, there was no dentist.
To unsuspecting visitors, the water had a unique taste and frankly smelled like something had died upstream. Often friends and relatives who would come to visit would ask, “Can we drink this water?” Or, “Can we safely drink the water?”
Now, there are those who don’t like our public water right here in “River City.” Many have raised questions: “Is it safe? Is it pure? Is it not contaminated?” The truth is there are those who believe that everything from radioactive materials to lead, arsenic and manganese pollutants have seeped into the underground sand and gravel aquifer of our area and have polluted our drinking water.
As late as April 1999, state regulators were considering ordering the Utilities Authority to advise thousands of people served by the so-called East and Hagler wells located on 10th Avenue and Mallory, and out near the Airport on 12th Avenue, not to drink or cook with the water and to make bottled water available to those who requested it. This debate is still going on here and everywhere in America drinking water is carefully monitored.
I don’t want this to make you afraid, because every public agency in our area charged with protecting human health has unequivocally said that our water is safe to drink, and I believe it and drink from the tap.
Jane came home one day from shopping at Parisian, before they sold the company. At the time, its headquarters was located in Birmingham, Alabama. In one of her shopping bags was a six-pack of bottled water, which had been bottled from Cold Water Springs in Eastaboga, Alabama. We laughed about this “rather expensive” bottled water from Cold Water Creek, for that is Jane’s native land. She said, “I wonder if they bottled it upstream or downstream from our old swimming hole? If it was downstream, I sure don’t want to drink it.”
All of this is to introduce the intriguing story of this morning’s scripture in which Jesus asks a Samaritan woman: Is the water safe to drink? Would you draw me some water?
The problem of the Samaritan woman was that she had drunk from the polluted water containing a feeling of inferiority. Jesus surprised her with this presence and his friendliness. His offer to her was a sacred gift of accepting love that would change her life forever. His offer was of “living water” that would satisfy her inner needs for acceptance.
The truth is we have drunk of water from wells that have been polluted. Polluted with contaminants of dishonesty, anger, inferiority (which was the problem with the Samaritan woman). The pure water that God offers to us is filled with honesty, generosity, confidence, faith, hope and love. Drink of this water and it will be for you like living water and you will never be thirsty again.
We are human and in this human journey we sometimes drink from polluted streams. But not today, not now. The communion cup into which we dip our bread is the source of eternal life; it is the source of strength for Christ like living, it is the source of comfort and a peace which surpasses all understanding.
I offer to you today living, pure water – I offer to you Jesus Christ.
In the book entitled "Making Today Count for Eternity” the author, Kent Crockett, tells this delightful story of William Montague Dyke, an Englishman. When William was ten years old, he was blinded in an accident. Despite his disability, he graduated from Cambridge with high honors. While in school, he fell in love with the daughter of a high-ranking British naval officer, and they became engaged.
Not long before the wedding, William had eye surgery in the hope that the operation would restore his sight. He insisted on keeping the bandages on his face until his wedding day. If the surgery was successful, he wanted the first person he saw to be his bride.
The wedding day arrived and with it the day for removing the bandages. A crowd gathered in the chapel to witness the exchange of vows and the removal of the bandages from William's eyes. At the altar, William's father and the doctor who performed the surgery and stood beside the groom. William stood with the bandages still on his eyes. The organ trumpeted the wedding march and the bride slowly walked down the aisle to the front of the church. As soon as she arrived at the altar, the surgeon took a pair of scissors from his pocket and cut the bandages from William's eyes. Tension filled the chapel. The wedding guests held their breath as they waited to find out if William could see. And there he stood face to face with his bride to be. William's words echoed throughout the chapel: "You are more beautiful than I ever imagined."
One day when we stand before Jesus Christ, he will remove the bandages from our eyes and we will see. We will see Christ in his glory and I believe that it will be far more splendid than anything we have ever imagined.
We will see things as they truly are, not as we might want them to appear. The Apostle Paul even says: "Now we see through a window dimly, but then we shall see face to face.” Well, already, because of Jesus Christ and maybe because of the maturing process or growth in God's grace, those of us who are living in Christ are beginning to see things more clearly. It is as though, because of this living relationship with Jesus Christ, we see much clearer and with a new depth of appreciation. Today’s scripture of the healing of the man born blind is but one among many miracles of giving sight to the blind in Jesus’ short biography. Even to this day our encounter with Jesus gives new and fresh insight into life.
When you are "in Christ" you see the sacred side of things rather than the superficial. Let me illustrate this in specific ways:
I see interruptions as sacred opportunities.
There are times when I feel this urge, or encouragement, or prodding to do something or to see someone I need to call or make contact. More times than not, they become opportunities to experience God’s unique promises.
For example, we know a number of facts about Jesus: He was a Galilean, a man from Nazareth. He was a teacher and we remember things he said and stories he told. He was a healer who restored people to health by his touch. He was a free man who honored the sacred Torah, but he did not make an idol of it.
But all of these facts don't tell the entire story. To know about Jesus does not mean that we know Jesus. To know Jesus means that our lives are captured by his gentle, godlike presence. His presence transforms our attitude and simply does not allow certain behaviors to coexist comfortably in our lives. Either it's him or these behaviors. It is our choice. He will not stay if we compromise our honesty, our integrity, or how we treat other people.
The Jews didn't see the sacred in Jesus. They only saw the facts of his human story and they said: "He doesn't look like the Messiah. He is not a military leader, a powerful ruler, he looks more like a suffering servant. That's not what we expected therefore; he's not the Messiah.” In other words, if Jesus doesn't conform to our expectations, then we will have nothing to do with him. If that is your attitude, you will miss out on one of the greatest adventures offered to human beings. Let Jesus be who He is! See Him as He is.
One of the reasons you can't see the sacred is because you are looking at things as they are, not as things can be. You are blind to the possibilities of your own life. You know the problems but you don't see the sacred opportunities.
Frankly, I'm getting tired of people who are always tired, always overwhelmed, always negative, and because they are not using the eyes which God has given to them to see the sacred. Open your eyes!
When we are in Christ, we see things differently:
We see Sunday, not as a holiday, but as a sacred day to remember who we are.
Remember, we are God's people. We believe that all that we have is a gift from God and we take a day per week to devote to God's work just as we take a 10th of our money. Wherever we are, what ever we are doing, when the Lord's Day comes, we stop. We do things differently, for it is a holy day. It marks our distinctive nature. No, we are not playing in a tennis tournament because it is Sunday. Our family doesn't play soccer on Sunday. Someone told me about pulling his or her child out of a soccer program held on Sunday. "We decided that, if you compromise for every little thing, in time you don't have anything."
We see the Written Word of God not as literal or factual details, but as Sacred Story. When you read such stories as the birth of Jesus, or the resurrection of Jesus, or as is the case today, the healing of the blind man; you look beyond the literal details to the great mythological themes of the ages. It is when we push beyond the words and the details of the story that we are able to float in the profound and limitless sea of ultimate truth.
It's not in the particular words of scripture, but it is in the great themes that we see the sacred:
Sin leads to death and expulsion.
Slavery is overcome by deliverance.
Life in exile is overcome by restoration.
Death becomes the entrance into eternal life.
Well, open your eyes! You will see beyond to the sacred meanings of all things. The end of the human journey is such a challenge and sometimes so difficult.
These days I sit beside my mother, as I sat beside my father and my brother, and watch her slip from us and it is so hard. On Wednesday George Anderson said to me, “I can't stand this, I am ready to go.” Finley Holmes, who checks on my mother's medical needs said to me, “She's well on the way to a better place.” And then he said, "I envy her, really." I guess he had had a bad day when I saw him, but really, when you are in Christ, you see through death and you see it as a sacred door through which you enter into eternal life. Even death is a sacred gift.
The Sunday Jesus and his disciples entered Jerusalem as the beginning of the end. It was the first day of his final week. It would be the beginning of a new way of life for many and perhaps today even for you.
Palm Sunday is a day unlike any other day as it is the time for Christian people to recall the events in the last week in Jesus' earthly life. He would on the first day of that eventful week, enter the city of Jerusalem, not unlike the Kings of Israel had before him, riding on the back of a young colt. His mother had carried him on a young colt that night he was born, which begin his life. She had carried him again on the long and treacherous journey to Egypt to escape the soldiers of Herod, who were killing the babies of the Hebrews and back again to Nazareth, where he had grown up.
This day, at the age of 33,would mark the beginning of the end of his life. But strange, it looked and felt more like a new beginning than it did an ending. Each evening of that final, fateful week, Jesus would retreat to the home of Mary and Martha and Lazarus, in Bethany, located some five miles outside of the city walls of Jerusalem. On Thursday he would have what would be his Last Supper, and then would be arrested in the Garden of Gestheme. He would be tried in the early hours of Friday and by early morning nailed to a cross and by noon, hung dying with the last bit of blood draining from his limp body.
But it was Sunday, the first day of the week and not unlike King David's entrance into Jerusalem, Jesus rode a donkey with palm branches waving and welcoming him and his small band of believers. In the crowd on that first day of the week, were individuals who would make choices, which would shape their lives forever. I'm convinced more than ever before that our lives are determined by the choices, which we make. Each day we make decisions and one choice after another and before we know it, a life is formed, another autobiography is written, a unique and unrepeatable story is told.
Choice, it is a precious, powerful gift of the creator to each of us.
You can chose today to reject evil and to accept the power that God is giving you to resist wickedness in any form it presents itself or to commit your life to Jesus Christ.
You have the power of choice, the freedom to decide how you will react to death, to evil, to opportunity, to everything. God has chosen you!
Julia Roberts, of the movie screen fame, said recently: "Our lives consist of choices, compromises and sacrifice." And she is right.
We choose to be loving and caring or hateful and angry.
We choose to be responsible or negligent.
We choose to be a contributor to a community or a parasite on society.
We choose to be generous or selfish, victor or victim.
We choose to be positive or negative.
Choices, one after another, and a life story is written.
The choice as to what we will do about Jesus and all that he represents is the choice presented to us on Palm Sunday, a life choice, which has earthly, and eternal implications. To those of you to be confirmed, I will present to you the opportunity to commit your life to Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, but that offer is made to all.
On the first Palm Sunday, there were in the crowds, those who chose to follow Jesus, to put their whole trust in his grace, and others who said no.
Let us consider first of all, the unfortunate ones, who decided against Jesus:
No, I think not, not today, negative persons receive more attention than they deserve for their lives were a waste and their short sighted decisions do little more than stir us up before they slip into oblivion, and there is no reason we should elevate their tragic lives. Herod, Pilot, neither of these sad leaders would be known today to you, had it not been for Jesus.
But consider the ones who said "Yes" to Jesus.
There were the children. Most children will follow a parade and Jesus and his disciples waving palm branches would have had a Mardi Gras atmosphere which would have attracted many. There are those who go with the crowd.
There were those present who had chosen Jesus sometime earlier. The disciples like Peter, and James and John, who had left their father's fishing nets to be his disciples and were astounded by his miracles. John, who brought the child who had shared his 5 loaves and 2 fish and Jesus, blessed his offering and over 5,000 were fed. Yes, John would have been there, and that child, who could have been of John's family, would have been there.
There were those whom Jesus had touched and healed, they would have been there for sure. Mary of Magdala, out of whom Jesus had cast seven demons, Legion, who had been possessed with such mental illness, he could not live with real people, but instead, lived in a grave yard. The blind beggar, Bartimeous who now sees, who had lived for years beside the Jericho road, he would have been there.
And there would have been those who were skeptical, had their doubts, but they watched from a distance with hope in their hearts.
1. Today as Jesus walks by, you will make a choice, for everyday you make these choices, sometimes they are unconscious, but nevertheless, they are made and your life is shaped. For most who are present today at least in this place, the choice to be a disciple of Jesus is as natural as breathing.
You have grown up in the family of Christ. Seven of our Confirmands were baptized here at this altar. I held them as tiny babies, and their parents or their grandparents, have as best they could have, sought to keep them in the life of the church, and that has not always been easy, with unchurched friends and Sunday sports programs and all their friends who never darken the door of the church. But nevertheless, today their decision to follow Jesus now is so very natural, and easy. Confirmation for these is but a natural rite of passage.
E. Stanley Jones has written: "The Christian way is not an alien way, it is the natural way to live. And when I find him, I find myself and when I live in him, by him, I live. If I live some other way, I tend to go to pieces."
Write in your journal, today was the day that I decided to commit my life to Jesus Christ. Palm Sunday will never be the same for you, for this will be the day that will mark your day of decision. This is a great day!
2. There are some who have experienced the harsher lessons of life and they chose Christ in spite of what they saw around them. They seldom hear their parents singing a hymn in worship, or see them with head bowed in prayer. They hear words that would embarrass a construction worker coming out of the mouths of their parents and see behavior on television and in their homes which no one should ever have to endure.
We have witnessed violent tragedies in the cities of our homeland. Death has invaded our nation. Guns and knives and anthrax and hate is not the way of Christ, and those who choose such ways, will experience hardship and tragedy. Choose anyway other than the way of Jesus, and you will find yourself on a dead end street.
Such individuals become graduates of the school of hard knocks, and they, in time, will come to Jesus for relief. Out of despair they will one day cry out in hope.
3. And thirdly, there are those who sincerely want to claim the best of human life. Their minds are inquisitive, their hopes are high, their dreams are pure and their desires are sincere. They chose Christ, because he is the best and his way condemns our shallowness and our sin.
Summary: Whatever the reason for your choice today concerning Jesus, know that your choice to follow him is the correct one and one that will have eternal implications.
Jesus once said: "I have given you a power greater than that of the enemy." To his disciples he will empower.
Choose Jesus as the Way, the Truth and the Life and I am confident that your choice will make the difference for you between success and failure,
Fulfillment and frustration,
Joy and sadness
Meaning and confusion
Order and chaos
Life and death.
Hope and despair
Easter Sunday is a day like no other day in the year! It is a Sunday we sing songs of victory and the emotions of the day are of hopes which are realized, despair which is done, death which is finished, dying which is at last complete, and life which is renewed.
Among the beautiful songs we sing are:
"Spring has now unwrapped the flowers, Day is fast reviving, Life in all her growing powers Toward the light is striving; so, as he renews the earth, artist without rival, In his grace of glad new birth, We will seek revival.
Christ the Lord is risen today, Sons of Men and angels say, Made like him, like him we rise, Ours the cross, the grave, the skies.
Every day to us is Easter, with its resurrection song, When in trouble move the faster to our God who rights the wrong,"
We come to this glorious day and hear the unusual stories of the First Easter morning, sing our songs of life and victory, grace and triumph, and greet with smiles of joy Christian friends and strangers who have come to this celebration of celebrations. Today enjoy what God has done to renew and bring new life to a church that this year is 181 years old, but sparkles like a fresh new baby. Enjoy the fact that an old funeral home now pulsates with new life of a youth center. That this old sanctuary resonates with the sounds of a new song. Enjoy what God can do with an individual like you, for you have had problems, some of you are a problem, but look at what God is doing with you! What a day! Even the birds sing…
But we have been here before, many of us. We have come and experienced this kind of day and gone home the same persons, which we came. We have sung these songs of new life before but gone home to the same old problems we have always dealt with.
There are biblical scholars who believe that the original stories of the Easter Resurrection ended with verse 10 in John's gospel "Then the disciples went back to their homes."
Think about it. Back to their homes…
Peter went back to his fishing nets in Galilee.
Zacchaeus went back to Jericho.
Matthew went back to his tax books.
Bartemeus went back to begging and hiding behind the dark glasses of a blind man.
Mary went back to Magdala, to her seven demons.
Thomas went back to his doubts.
We are told that two nameless disciples went back home to Emmaus, depressed and confused and angry, after they had heard the bizarre reports of the women that the tomb was empty.
Back to their homes - back to the way things used to be. Back…it was ridiculous. Here Jesus had been raised from the dead, and they had gone back to the way things used to be. What's wrong with these disciples, These who witnessed the empty tomb? Get with it guys. Wake up, the world had changed and they went back home. Depressed and down. Back home to live and die. Something is wrong here with these people.
Well so, also is something wrong with you, for you have been going back home like they did, every year for now on…how many years?
My prayer for us all is that this year, when we go back home, we will at last be different. That finally the message of Easter will sink in and when we go home we will be different persons.
One reason this might happen this year is because during this past year, we have seen and experienced things we have never experienced before. We don't look at life quite as we did before 9/11/2001.
Sure we witnessed the stark horror of evil's destructive ways, but we also witnessed true heroes. There were firemen and policeman who went into the flames of a crumbling building and gave their life to do their job of saving people who would have died had they not done their job. Against the backdrop of the immediate loss of family, family is now precious.
There are military persons who sit among us who have done this same thing time and time again, but this year it has become a visual reality and so maybe, at long last, we will go home aware of the horror of death on Good Friday, but more appreciative of Easter's message of Life on Sunday. You will go home to live through more Tuesdays and Fridays, but you now know that Sunday is coming!
Like the disciples, Mary and Peter, we have now seen things, with our own eyes that we’ve never seen before. When you go home, look at the flowers, look in the eyes of your children, remember what has happened in our church this year, and in the life of the soul of the nation, and choose to live in the reality that in this world of Good Fridays and 9/ll's, mysterious and amazing things are happening.
Be not depressed, but be confident.
Be not overwhelmed, but be sure.
Be not one who is dying, but one who is living. The Lord of the Church has said,
“I have come to give you life. I am the Resurrection and the Life.”
No longer are you going to be defeated, but victorious.
No longer sad but glad.
Go home a different person, knowing what you now know, you are prepared to say
no to evil and yes to good,
No to death and yes to life,
No to depression and yes to confident hope,
No to sickness and yes to health,
No to sadness. No to anger. No to dishonesty. No to death!
Good things will happen in your life and in your family if you will stop going home from the Easter services the same old crabby person that went home from last Easter's services. Maybe it would help seal the deal if you, prayed, “Dear God, help me. . .” Maybe it would help if you leaned over and said to someone sitting beside you, "I’m going home today a different person!” If it is a family member like your father or your wife, to lean over and say: "You’re going home with a different person.” That's not a bad idea. That's not a bad idea at all. I want you to lean over to the person near you and say: "You’re going home today with a different person!”
Congratulations! Easter is finally going to make a difference in this city. Thank God that Jesus is more than a memory, He is a living presence for those who believe!