Scripture: John 4:46–54
If I look like I’m bouncing as I preach today, it’s because I crafted much of this sermon with a baby hanging in a carrier on my front, so that bounce is in the DNA of this sermon.
Back in the summer and fall of 2020, I served as an interim minister for three months at the First Congregational Church of Meredith New Hampshire. As we all know, the world was in a major time of transition, and many of us were traversing the painful losses of friends and family members, and struggling to allow the hard reality of change to sink in.
The church in New Hampshire where I served was in between settled ministers, and I was there to bridge the gap. While I was there, we were part of the “worship-in-the-parking-lot” branch of the pandemic church. The people of the congregation were invited to bring their own church pews, known as beach chairs and set them up on the pavement outside the church. The organist, Nancy, would bring out an electronic keyboard, and Bob, a local AV professional would set up tall Bose tower speakers and microphones that could have sent our audio clear across lake Winnipesaukee if Bob had chosen. And I would bring out a laptop and stream the service on Zoom so that anyone could hear and see the worship service.
All things considered, outdoor worship worked well. It never rained on a Sunday morning, and even in October, it never got too cold. One parishioner pointedly told me that with my long hair and COVID-beard, I was helping them understand what John the Baptist in the wilderness must have looked like.
My favorite part of adding an online component to worship was that my grandmother Mary logged on to the Zoom from her house in Connecticut for every service. As a leader of her retirement-community computer club, she was good at this type of thing. Even in this disorienting time where the world was changing and hurting and adapting, her presence on Zoom worship was a sustaining rock and a great joy to me.
Will you pray with me?
God help us to believe that the signs of Jesus are signposts pointing us to you. May our time of worship be a testament to you, that in all that we do . . . and in all that we fail to do . . . we might be drawn to you . . . and you to us right here, and right now — for you are our God and we are your people. In your name we pray, Amen.
My grandmother Mary had a great-grandfather Abram, who enlisted in the American Civil War and who was amazingly still alive in his 90s when Mary was born. And Mary had an older brother Billy who died in World War II as a teenager serving in the Navy aboard the USS Hull in the Pacific Ocean. In 1944 when the Hull was engulfed by a typhoon and sank, more than two hundred sailors were swept away, including Billy. Future president Gerald Ford was one of the survivors of the typhoon.
I share all this to say that my grandmother described living much of her life in a state of belief and disbelief — on one hand she knew that her brother had died, and on another deeper level, for years she expected him to walk back in through the door to whatever room she was in. In effect, she had two very different understandings of the same brother. She held onto both of them in different ways.
When I studied the Gospel of John in seminary, my professor talked similarly about there being two Jesuses in the Bible: one Jesus is the one presented in Matthew, Mark, and Luke’s gospels, and the other Jesus is the Jesus of John’s Gospel — the one we’re reading about at Newman this year. Dr. Hill made it clear that there is only one Jesus in the Bible, AND that Jesus in John’s gospel is his preferred Jesus. He found it helpful to think about two Jesuses.
Why did he feel this way? He said that John’s Gospel is about courage — the writer of the gospel had courage, and the Jesus in the story has courage, and the readers of the text (that’s us) are given courage — it gives us the courage to believe that even though we live in a time of dislocation, that the world is good — created in love and maintained through a physics of love with Jesus that bends towards justice.
In the scripture reading today we’re talking about healing stories. Jesus is back at Cana in Galilee (his home turf) and the place where he had performed the first miracle of turning water into wine. As you can imagine, people are still talking about that first miracle, and by now they’ve also heard about the attention Jesus has gained when he was at the temple in Jerusalem flipping tables.
In the next chapter, Jesus will be back in Jerusalem, because he goes back and forth from Galilee to Jerusalem to celebrate the religious festivals. Jesus is constantly outside, constantly on the move, constantly exerting himself physically and spiritually. Walking from Cana to Jerusalem is like starting at Newman Church and walking to Boston by way of Worcester — it would talk a good four or five days to make the journey.
In the story this week, a father of a sick child has also walked a long distance over multiple days to find Jesus and ask him to save his sick son. The father is a royal official, a powerful outsider in the society who may have had trouble finding help through other means — have you ever moved to a new place and tried to find a new dentist, a new hair stylist, a new church, a new doctor? It’s hard. And it’s even harder when the people of this new place see you as an enemy like they would have seen this royal official. But he believes enough in what he has heard about Jesus that he goes above and beyond to find him and ask him for help.
At first Jesus seems standoffish, saying that people won’t believe in him without seeing his miracles, and declines to go back with the man to Capernaum.
Instead Jesus heals the child from afar, and says to the father go home because his child is okay, and it is written that the man believed and went.
The official believes Jesus, but he has to walk all the way home to Capernaum not knowing which Jesus is real . . . the healer, or the not-healer. He’s living with both Jesuses at the same time on that longest walk of his life.
Perhaps we’re doing the same thing. We are the wedding guests at Cana, and we are Nicodemus. We are Photina at the well, and we are the royal official . . .
Wondering which Jesus is going to show up in our lives today . . . here . . . now. What good news can we expect.
Our faith is seeking confirmation. We live in challenging times and we’re waiting to be changed.
John’s Gospel offers the suggestion of a courageous leap of faith . . . jumping into the fullness of Jesus.
Have heart. Believe in the wonders around you, including a messiah who is multiple things all at the same time.
Jesus says unless you have seen wonders you will not believe. His miracles point to a relationship with him.
Amen.
