Blind man sat by the road...

This week at Crossings we read the story of the man born blind. Talk about the blues!

This guy is a blind beggar, minding his own business when the disciples decide to turn him into a morality question -- is the blindness his fault or because of his parent's sins.

Jesus spits on the ground and puts mud on his eyes and tells him to wash... people talking about you, putting spit on your face. Kind of a bad day. But this guy seems to be used to the blues. He just goes and washes.

MIRACLE! upon washing the guy can see!

This sets everyone off. Is it really the blind guy? can he really see. Everyone starts whispering. It turns into a big ordeal and people start questioning the guy over and over. Were you really blind? How can you see now?

The man tells his story but no one listens. They are all getting puffed up about Jesus spitting and how improper that is and how he isn't supposed to work on a holy day ("making mud" counts as work).

They keep asking the guy to say that what Jesus did was wrong but the guy can't do that. His life was changed by Jesus. So what they do? They kicked him out the the church.

Dude, talk about the blues. Going from one kind of outcast to another.
but yet, the guy doesn't seem to have the blues. Jesus touched him. Jesus changed him. He has joy that most don't understand.

When life seems empty...

This week at bible study we read John 15. Jesus's last teaching to the disciples during the last supper. He says, "I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful."

A woman in our group has beautiful rose bushes in her backyard. And she called her dad about how to take care of them. His answer was to hack them until there's nothing left but a dead looking stump.

Reluctantly she hacked away till the beautiful, life-abundant bushes were nothing more than dead stumps. Afraid she had killed them, she looked out at them all winter, wondering if they would ever grow back.

In the spring, they grew. Bigger and more beautiful than the previous year.

Sometimes when life seems to strip down to nothing. When we lose our jobs, our health, our friends, our family, our favorite activities, when we have nothing left of us but dead dry stumps which seem lifeless. God is at work.

In those times all we have is God, and if we remain in him and let his love and spirit work in us, spring will come and we will arise and bear much fruit. Our lives richer and more beautiful because every unimportant and useless part had been chopped away.

So if God is pruning you. Live in it. Sing the blues. Read scripture. Pray. God will grow you again.

John and the Blues

During my time at Holden, most of my study revolved around preparing to lead Crossings through the season of Lent

Since ancient times, the church has used certain readings from the Gospel of John to prepare new believers for baptism. I was curious, why these passages?

We've also developed a tradition of playing blues music and african american spirituals during lent. On a gut level, this music - FEELS - like lent. But is there something deeper behind this music that I could connect to the spiritual revelations in John?

Of course!

John is essentially a two part gospel. The first part focuses on what it means to be "born again" not born again in the accept Jesus as your person Lord and Savior sense. But to be recreated with a new life in faith. The second part shows us the path to walk on once we've committed to a new life in Christ.

It is not an easy Gospel. It is about letting go of our identity - letting go of our jobs, social status, patriotism, insurance plans and individualism for a new identity shaped by a call from God to live out the Gospel.

The Blues were born out of a need to express the raw pain and reality of slavery and of abject racism of a post civil-war south. The Blues are the truth of our experiences and the reality of being human in a broken world.

The Spirituals however are born of a different theology. Slaves saw Jesus as God taking on the burden of being human. Not simply human, but a human born in a barn as a slave is born, whipped by oppressors and killed humiliated and rejected. Yet, he was God's chosen lamb who died to free all of us and to make us all God's children.

The Spirituals are the expression of joy, hope and freedom that will come to those who are reborn not as slaves but as children of God.

So, together, the blues and the Spirituals embody the theology of John. Each of John's stories begin with a human condition that is broken. Each start with the Blues. With the acceptance of Jesus and the Gospel message, each is reborn as children of God and into the hope of the Spirituals.

This lent, we goin down to the river.