From the Gospel according to John:
As Jesus walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”
(From the Daily Office Lectionary – John 9:1-3 (NRSV) – March 18, 2013.)
I’m not the least bit sure I like the last thought of Jesus reply . . . Is he suggesting that a loving God caused this innocent man’s blindness so that Jesus could come along and heal him with some mud made of spittle and demonstrate his power? I mean, really, is he? I don’t want to get into that today, but surely there must be another interpretation for Jesus words and perhaps someday I’ll explore that.
Today, I want to focus on the first clause of his answer, which is basically just a wordy, “No.” As a parent, I cannot tell you how happy it makes me that the man’s blindness was not his parents’ fault! Because accepting that blame is all too often our parental response when things go wrong in our children’s lives . . . . It doesn’t really matter what it is – accident, illness, bad grades, suspension from school, trouble with the law, break-up with their partner or spouse – it doesn’t matter what it is, when something goes wrong in our children’s lives a parent’s response is often an overwhelming sense of guilt. “What did I do wrong that this happened to my child?”
This is, after all, a perfectly acceptable biblical view! In the Book of Exodus, Moses told the Hebrews that God does not “clear the guilty, but visits the iniquity of the parents upon the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” (Exod. 34:7 NRSV) And again the same words are reported the Book of Numbers: “The Lord is slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the children to the third and the fourth generation.” (Numb. 14:18 NRSV) And, again, in Deuteronomy, Moses says, “Be careful to obey all these words that I command you today, so that it may go well with you and with your children after you forever, because you will be doing what is good and right in the sight of the Lord your God” (Deut. 12:28 NRSV) implying that disobedience would mean things wouldn’t go well for the kids! Finally, there is that great biblical proverb reported by both Jeremiah and Ezekiel: “The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” (Jer. 31:29 and Ezek. 18:2 NRSV)
So there is plenty of biblical support for our parental guilt pangs! But here is Jesus saying that the sins of parents are not responsible for the misfortune of their son. Thanks be to God! What that says to me is that we need to start looking at our feelings of parental remorse in a different way.
Not that those feelings are “wrong” or “bad.” Guilt is a basic human emotion. Everyone feels it and, when it comes to parenting, whatever we do is liable to cause us a little bit of guilty self-reproach because it sometimes seems that “you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t.” What if, instead of beating ourselves up over these things, we think of what feels like guilt as simply evidence that we are being good parents, good enough to be constantly thinking about what we’re doing and how we’re doing it? We care enough to do our best at the very important, frequently frustrating, often terrifying, and even more often incredibly rewarding job of raising children we love more than we will ever be able to tell them. No parent is perfect, but the ones who worry about whether they are doing it well, probably are doing it well, really well.
Here’s something I know. During the past sixty or so years that I’ve been alive, I’ve had a lot of rough patches, a lot of problems. I’ve done some bonehead things and made some really stupid mistakes. I’ve been in trouble with various authorities, and broken up with lovers and partners. And you know what? Very little of any of that was my parents’ fault! On the other hand, I’ve gotten through those rough spots. I’ve solved the problems. I’ve learned from my mistakes and avoided doing even more boneheaded stuff. I’ve made up with the lovers and, if I haven’t made up with the authorities, at least I’ve figured out how to work with them. And you know what? Most of my ability to do so is due to what I learned from my parents, from what I observed of the way they lived their lives and from the values they taught me. They may have eaten some sour grapes, I don’t know, but my teeth were not set on edge.
I love my kids a whole lot more than I can ever tell them, and I can only hope they have learned from me the way I learned from my folks.
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Father Funston is the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio.
Some years ago, during the summer of 2000 to be exact, I was one of about a dozen adults who chaperoned 87 teenagers on a ten-day tour of northern Italy. One of the pieces of advice given our group by the organizing tour guide was that the young ladies would not be allowed into Italian cathedrals wearing shorts or tank-tops. She suggested that they take with them, and always have on hand a light-weight over-blouse and a large scarf that they could tie around their waist to form a sort of skirt. This caused no amount of amusement among our group 17- and 18-year-old, Twenty-First Century, American girls, but it only took one time being escorted out of a church by a stern Italian nun for them to realize how serious the advice was and to never again forget to put on their overshirts and their wrap-around skirts. 
Jesus walking on the water has always struck me as a very funny story. “Funny” in the sense of “oddly out of place”, although it also has a certain Monty-Python-esque quality to it as well. The fact that it is reported in three of the Gospels – in the synoptic Gospels of Mark and Matthew and here in John – attests to its importance for the early church. John’s version of the story is the simplest, but it contains all the elements – a storm, rough seas, disciples’ fear. Like Mark, John leaves out Matthew’s addition of Peter trying to join Jesus on the surface of the lake. 
As I read the lesson from Exodus today, there is a bush in my dining room. It’s a four-foot tall evergreen and it’s sort of burning. There are little electrical lights all ablaze all over it. It’s our Christmas tree. (We have a short Christmas tree set on a table because we have three cats. We tried for a couple of years to have a normal size seven-foot tree with these guys, but it was impossible. So, small tree on table.)
This is a weird little fish tale peculiar to Matthew’s Gospel. The temple tax about which it is told is a requirement drawn from Exodus 30:13: “Each [man] who is registered shall give: half a shekel according to the shekel of the sanctuary (the shekel is twenty gerahs), half a shekel as an offering to the Lord.” While Exodus does not make this an annual levy, most Jewish men paid the tax each year, including Jews who lived outside of Palestine. The tax provided a significant portion of the revenue needed to operate the Jerusalem Temple. There is an entire tractate of the Mishnah (Shekalim, fourth tractate in the order of Mo’ed) devoted to this tax which rather establishes its importance. Unlike Roman taxes, this tax was paid with patriotic pride by the Jews until the destruction of the temple by the Romans in A.D. 70. ~ Jesus asks Peter whether earthly kings tax their sons, to which Peter replies in the negative. Jesus seems to be implying that he, as Son of God, the King of the Temple, is exempt from the tax. However, were he to refuse to pay it, he would create a scandal, perhaps people would take his refusal to mean that he didn’t support or approve of the worship of the Temple, or that he was not loyal to the Jewish religion. They might get the idea that he didn’t think others should pay the tax. ~ So Jesus provides a way for Peter to pay the tax for him that underscores his divinity – the coin to pay the tax for both them miraculously appears in the mouth of a fish. That’s the weird part of the story. Like his walking on water and calming the storm at sea, this episode demonstrates that Jesus is the Lord of nature, but I don’t really think that’s his point here. Rather, I believe he is simply doing something that will leave an indelible impression on his disciples. ~ So there must be some lesson here for them (and for us). I think there are two. This story underscores Jesus’ humility before and on behalf of others; he declines to scandalize the community or to be a stumbling block for others. In this story he is an example of the humility we are called to exhibit, of the way in which we are to act on behalf of others, in which we are to the give up our own rights and interests for the good of others. We may not be able to produce valuable coins from the mouths of fishes, but we are able to give for others’ good even if we are not required to do so, especially when we are not required to do so!
I’ve been fascinated by the Shekhinah, which is what the cloud and fire described here are all about, for years. The Hebrew word which names the pillar of fire and cloud which accompanied the escaped slaves on their trek across the Sinai desert means “the Presence”, i.e., the presence of God. Whether the Shekhinah is separate from God has been a matter of some debate in Judaism for centuries. Moses Maimonides, also known as Rambam, the 12th Century Egyptian Jewish philosopher, believed the Shekhinah is a distinct entity, a light created to be an intermediary between God and the world. In the next century, the Spanish Rabbi Nahmanides, known as Ramban, disagreed; he considered the Shekhinah to be the essence of God manifested in distinct form. ~ The Shekhinah was believed to be present in the First Temple, but not the Second. In the absence of a Temple, later rabbis have suggested that the Shekhinah appears in a variety of circumstances: when two or three study the Torah together, when a minyan (ten men) pray, when the mysticism of the Merkabah (the divine chariot) is explained, when the Law is studied at night, and when the Shema is recited. God’s Presence is said to be attracted to prayer, to hospitality, to acts of benevolence, to chastity, and to peace and faithfulness in married life. ~ The idea that the Shekhinah is present when two or three study Scripture reminds me of Jesus’ promise: “Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” (Matthew 18:20) The Daily Office, both Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer, ends with a collect said to have been written by St. John Chrysostom which recalls this promise: “You have promised through your well-beloved Son that when two or three are gathered together in his Name you will be in the midst of them.” ~ The Book of Exodus makes it very clear that the People of God were terrified of the Shekhinah. They would not go near it; only Moses could do so and, as this bit demonstrates, even he could not approach sometimes. Smart people, those ancient Hebrews! They understood the Power they were dealing with. Not so, us modern folks. Christian writer Annie Dillard, in her book Teaching a Stone to Talk (Harper & Row 1982), makes this point in an oft-quote observation: “Does any-one have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake some day and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.” ~ We are, indeed, children playing with dynamite – or maybe even playing with a nuclear bomb! Thank Heaven our God is a playful god. I do not believe God will awaken and take offense, but I do believe God wants us to move beyond games, to stop simply playing with the power his Presence provides, and to start using that power for good!
This psalm is not the only time Holy Scripture reports God’s displeasure with the sacrifice of animals. Consider these words from the first chapter of the Book of Isaiah, “What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the Lord; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats. When you come to appear before me, who asked this from your hand? Trample my courts no more; bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and sabbath and calling of convocation – I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity.” (Isa. 1:11-13) Despite all of the ritual directions found in the Law and in the Histories (see, e.g., Exodus 29, Leviticus 1, Numbers 7, and 1 Kings 18), the Psalmist, the first Isaiah, and especially the Prophet Micah make it very clear that sacrificing innocent animals is not what Judaism (or religion in general) is all about. Micah writes, “‘With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?’ He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:6-8) It may be that doing justice, loving kindness, and walking with God may (and often does) require one to give up one’s possessions, one’s livelihood, even one’s life. But such “sacrifice” without the demanded ethical basis, sacrifice done only to curry favor with God, is not what God asks or wants. ~ It is from this ethical stream in ancient Judaism that Christianity flows. It is unfortunate that early Christian writers looked back to the sacrificial practices of the Temple to find an analog to crucifixion of Jesus; we might have seen the Christian religion develop differently if, like the writers of the Gospels, they had looked more to the prophets. Jesus certainly did: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 22:37-40) ~ So spare that bull! Sacrifices of animals (or their modern analogs, whatever they may be) are not the sacrifices that demonstrate love of God and love of neighbor. Rather, the core of ethical religion is as the writer of the Letter to Hebrews said: “Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.” (Heb. 13:16)
This is one of those biblical tales that I just love and wish the English would tell correctly. The Hebrew ‘achowr would better be translated “hindquarters”, “rear”, or “rear parts”, or even as “butt” . . . “Back” is just so bland! God is being a little earthier with Moses than that, and in that earthiness I find a counterpoint to the grandeur of this story. ~ This is a “grand” story, a big story, the story of God “choosing” and adopting as his own a whole people, the story of God giving the Law, the story of God continuing the motion, the arc, the trajectory of the whole sweep of Jewish and Christian history. This is a big story! And in the midst of it, here is this same God rather jokingly, perhaps teasingly saying, “You can’t see my face, but you can see my backside.” ~ One of the traditional depictions of the face of God has been that of a bearded old man (think of God talking to King Arthur from the clouds in 
The rest of today’s Daily Office reading from the Hebrew Scriptures sets out the Ten Commandments. My first thoughts were of those and wondering whether the course of world history might have been different if the Lord had laid out those laws in an affirmative rather than a negative style. You know – said something like “You shall hold all life in reverence” rather than “You shall not murder” (Exod. 20:13) or “You will respect your neighbor’s right of possession” rather than “You shall not steal” (Exod. 20:15). But then the ending verses caught my eye and I immediately thought, “Incense!” ~ OK, not immediately … but I did think of incense and liturgy. Smoke and lightning and loud noises and a leader separated from the people to do special things vis-à-vis God (so the people don’t have to do them for themselves, because – God knows! – those things are downright dangerous!). Skip forward several generations and you have the liturgy of the Temple . . . skip forward several more generations and you have the liturgy of the Church. As I thought about today’s Exodus reading, I realized that the liturgy of temple and church is about recreating Sinai; liturgy is an attempt to experience in the here-and-now what the Hebrews experienced in this encounter with God. And I began to ask, “Is this what has put us on the trajectory of irrelevance and disbelief?” ~ The stagecraft of temple and church became the stagecraft of the theatre, of vaudeville, of burlesque, of the stage magician. There is very little difference between staging a good worship service and staging a good theatrical or musical production. Use of “props”, use of lighting, use of stage technique . . . it all started in the temple and the church, and was borrowed by the entertainment stage (in fact, one might argue that the Western European way of staging dramas and other forms of entertainment in some sense originated in the church with medieval “passion plays” and whatnot). And now, today, the flow is in the opposite direction: the staging techniques of the rock concert have replaced the formal liturgy in many independent congregations and so-called megachurches. This is so well-known that there’s even a very funny parody of the situation on 
Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, has to have been one of the wisest men in all of Holy Scripture! What he advises Moses to do is nothing less that to delegate authority and responsibility. Delegation is one of the most important management skills. Good delegation saves time, develops people, grooms successors, and motivates subordinates. Poor delegation will causes frustration,confuses subordinates, discourages others, and leads to failure of purpose. Delegation is vital for effective leadership. Jethro seems to have known this and recommended it to Moses: “Look for able men among all the people, men who fear God, are trustworthy, and hate dishonest gain; set such men over them as officers over thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens.” (Exod. 18:21) ~ Here’s the thing, though, delegation means letting go! Once you have handed over authority, you cannot dictate what is delegated nor how that delegation is to be managed. Delegation means letting go and letting go is hard. Human beings, especially talented and successful ones, are reluctant to let go of the things we do well. It’s simply human nature. But refusal to hand-over jobs to subordinates minimizes our productivity and effectiveness. We need to learn to let go. That, by the way, is the message of Christ. Jethro anticipated Jesus: “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.” (Matt. 6:34) In other words, let go! ~ When I was in college there was a bumper sticker popular among church-going Christians of a particular sort. It read, “Let go and let God”. And I know it’s also a catch-phrase for twelve-steppers and apparently it works for them…. but I hated it then and I don’t like it any better now! I think it misinterprets and trivializes the Christian message, what it means to be an active and responsible Christian. Jesus, in fact, never tells us to “let go and let God”. “Letting go” in this catch-phrase seems to imply that one do nothing, say nothing, feel nothing, and accept responsibility for nothing. That is neither what Jesus said, nor what Jethro advised Moses! Jethro told Moses to continue to be involved: “Let them sit as judges for the people at all times; let them bring every important case to you, but decide every minor case themselves.” (Exod. 18:22) Every good manager knows that delegation doesn’t mean complete relinquishment of responsibility, and every good Christian ought to know that “letting go” doesn’t mean just shrugging everything off onto God’s plate! Yes, we need to learn to let go, but letting go means letting go of tension, anxiety, worry . . . not of all responsibility. God has high expectations of us! That bumper sticker catch phrase fails to acknowledge that. ~ The fellow who said “Do not worry about tomorrow . . .” is also the man who said “Beware, keep alert . . .”, the man who said “[When] you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” (Mark 13:33; Matt. 2:40) We are not to abandon our responsibilities; we are to meet them in a non-anxious way in community working with others. That is what “letting go” means. That is what God expects of us; that is what Jethro advised Moses.
