405 Three Parades

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Three Parades”, originally shared on March 25, 2026. It was the 405^th  video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

    Parades were once an expression of community identity. That they have become fewer in number and less substantial is not surprising. Today, we’re going to look at three that create Christian identity.

   This coming Sunday was once a big deal. It was Palm Sunday in mainline protestant and Catholic churches. Then it became either Palm/Passion Sunday or, in the Lutheran denomination of which I am a member, Passion/Palm Sunday. Palms don’t even get first billing anymore.

   Why? Because people weren’t coming to Good Friday services (crucifixion) much less Maundy Thursday services (foot washing, beginning of Holy Communion, giving of the new commandment to love one another as God loves us, and the stripping of the altar).

   Palm Sunday has followed the downward trend that parades have, and for the same reason: the loss of our identity.

   Do you like parades? There are two parades that have shaped our lives forever. And a third one that will. And all three are all about our identity as children of God.

   I’m sure you have seen parades. Have you ever seen one live? Have you ever been in a parade?

   Have you ever seen a parade that started because people were so excited that the whole community was in turmoil? That’s the one we’re going to focus on today.

   I love a parade! Especially one with marching bands. They are why I started playing drums.

   I remember watching the Memorial Day Parade in my hometown, Manitowoc, Wisconsin, as a child. I remember standing at the curb, hearing the rumble of the percussion coming closer and closer, and my excitement growing.

   I remember feeling the thumps on my chest as it drew nearer, the staccato pulse of the snare drums, the crash of the cymbals, and the massive thud of the big bass drums.

   I wanted to do that!

   I tapped out rhythms on every surface I found in front of me for years. Actually, I still do that. 😊

   I made my own drums out of empty cardboard boxes, Quaker Oats containers, my legs, whatever I could find. I destroyed the child’s drum set my parents bought me for Christmas when I was in 5^th Grade playing “Rock Around the Clock”.

   I played a violin for a year because our school system started its orchestra program a year before its band program, and I thought it would help me learn to read music.

   When I couldn’t play drums because I didn’t own a concert snare drum, I played mellophone (a French horn with trumpet valves) for a summer until my dad talked with the high school band director, who sold him a surplus used drum from the high school band.

   I started practicing on a practice pad and played that snare drum. I moved immediately into first chair and stayed there for four years, all the way through high school. I still have that drum.

   I became that guy who played the drums, marching down the same street where I had been a spectator, but now I was in the parade.

   When I chipped my left wrist vaulting over a “horse” in gym class, I wore a groove into my cast and played in the parade anyway.

   I saved up and bought a Ludwig “Super Classic” drum set with the silver sparkle finish, just like Joe Morello’s, the drummer with The Dave Brubeck quartet.

   I took it to college and played in jazz bands through college and seminary and beyond. Playing drums had become a part of who I was, my identity.

   And it all started with a parade. Today, we’re going to see the Christian message in three of them.

   Parades bring people together, whether they are in the parade or watching it. They create a sense of focus, an expression of identity, and a common experience, even a common cause.

   That brings us to today’s first parade: Jesus entered Jerusalem at the head of a parade. He would be dead in just a few days, but for that shining moment he brought people together, at least some of the people anyway. He knew that he would die there, but he rode into town like a champ.

   Here’s what happened, in Matthew 21:1-11

¹When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, ²saying to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me. ³If anyone says anything to you, just say this, ‘The Lord needs them.’ And he will send them immediately.” ⁴This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet, saying, ⁵“Tell the daughter of Zion, Look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” ⁶The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them; ⁷they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them. ⁸A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. ⁹The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!” ¹⁰When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, “Who is this?” ¹¹The crowds were saying, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”

   I don’t know if there were any bands in that parade, but I imagine small children watching, running along with it on the sides. Caught up in the excitement, finding branches to throw in his donkey’s path. Asking their parents if they could throw their outer clothing onto the path for Jesus’s donkey, like they saw that some of the adults were doing, and hearing a firm, “No”.

   I imagine that it was exciting, but that it was also kind of scary. Who were these people? Crowds can become mobs, and mobs can go out of control, they can get destructive.

   But here he came, Jesus. The Messiah? The one they had been waiting for for 1,000 years? A deliverer, but from what? Deliverance from the Roman empire’s army of occupation (the empire threw palm branches to greet successful military leaders)? Something else?

   Was the excitement contagious, or did many look at it with horror, or indifference? Did they think that the Messiah was coming as a military leader to organize a violent resistance against the Roman occupation: one quick surprise attack to knock them on their heels and get rid of them?

   How did Jesus feel, riding into Jerusalem like that? What did he think about the cheers of the crowds?

   Was it big news in the big city?

   Today, “Breaking News!” barely registers. It’s usually a new twist on old news. Unless it’s something truly life-changing, it will be forgotten after the 24-hour news cycle. He did seem to draw a crowd, though.

   But Jesus knew that crowds are fickle.

   Jesus knew what was about to happen. He knew about the deadly violence that he was about to experience.

   Jesus knew that much of that crowd that was shouting “Hosanna!” on Sunday would be shouting “Crucify him!” on Friday.

   I wonder if Jesus felt a momentary urge to just end the chain of events that he knew was coming, right there. To just stop with the cheers, and spend the rest of his life as a popular rabbi, a miracle worker.

   But he didn’t.

   Someone posted a poem on a Facebook page for Lutheran pastors a while back that began,

“We want the war horse

Jesus rides a donkey”

   In Jesus’ physical time on earth kings rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, not a war horse, to show that they came in peace. Palm branches were waved as a sign of goodness and victory.

   Why did Jesus ride into town on a donkey? Was it a conscious reference to the Old Testament prophecy, as we read in Zechariah 9:9?,

⁹ Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion!
    Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem!
Lo, your king comes to you;
    triumphant and victorious is he,
humble and riding on a donkey,
    on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

   I think that he had a particular kind of triumph and victory in mind, just not what the crowds expected.

   He chose to ride a donkey as a symbol of humble service: death on the cross, because he resisted the temptation to take the easy way.

   He got that donkey when the disciples just went and untied it and, when the owners asked them to explain, they said “The Lord needs it”. And they said, “OK”!

   How did that happen?!

   Either I’m missing something, or it was another world back then.

   Did they know about Jesus? Was he that respected, that popular? Jesus had a lot of disciples outside of his inner circle of twelve and his second circle of seventy.

   The Bible says that a “multitude” of his disciples began to loudly praise God. Right there. In broad daylight. In public. It says that when Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil. What would it take to put a whole city in turmoil?

   Jerusalem at the time of Jesus had an estimated population of 55,000 under normal circumstances, and 180,000 (some estimates go much higher) during major festivals like Passover, which was going on when Jesus was crucified. That’s a lot of turmoil!

   But it’s easy to follow Jesus when he’s there at the head of the parade. Top of the charts.

   It’s harder when he’s headed to the top of the cross.

   That brings us to the second parade, the parade of Jesus to the cross.

   The governor’s soldiers humiliated and tortured Jesus. Then this happens in Matthew 27:31-37,

³¹ After mocking him, they stripped him of the robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him away to crucify him.

³² As they went out, they came upon a man from Cyrene named Simon; they compelled this man to carry his cross. ³³ And when they came to a place called Golgotha (which means Place of a Skull), ³⁴ they offered him wine to drink, mixed with gall; but when he tasted it, he would not drink it. ³⁵ And when they had crucified him, they divided his clothes among themselves by casting lots; ³⁶ then they sat down there and kept watch over him. ³⁷ Over his head they put the charge against him, which read, “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews.”

   Do you know how many of the “multitude” who were in or who watched the Palm Sunday parade followed Jesus all the way to the cross?

   Zero. That’s right. Zero. The power of that parade, the one we celebrate as “Palm Sunday”, was very temporary. Jesus knew that.

   His humble service would change everything. It would lead to the salvation of all who put their trust in Jesus to save them, to transform them, to produce a life of love for others in response to the sacrificial love of God in Jesus Christ for us. But that’s a story for next week, a week of love and shame. Holy Week.

   I don’t want to say much more than that today, I encourage you to go into the valley next week, the valley of Holy Week, with Jesus. Find a Maundy Thursday service and worship God there. Find a Good Friday Service and worship God there. Find your identity. Let the Holy Spirit restore you as a Christian. Steep in it. Feel it. It’s the only way to understand the glory of Easter!

   It’s also a story that doesn’t end with Holy Week. In fact, it doesn’t come to its end at all but to its beginning, a beginning that happens much later.

   That brings us to the third parade, the parade of those who are in the end being saved through faith by Jesus Christ for all eternity. The parade of the multitudes who believe and are baptized, who do not desert Jesus at the end, but the multitudes who are received into his perfect presence forever.

   We get a glimpse, in Revelation 7:9-10,

   9 After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. 10 They cried out in a loud voice, saying,

“Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!”

   Salvation belongs to God and God gives it to all who receive it in faith, in a living relationship with the one true living God that transforms lives.

   So, as community identity flounders and parades decline in number, participants, and crowds, we offer three parades. They form our identity as the children of God and, as long as our focus is on them and on what they tell us, we have something better to offer the world.

   We offer a way of living that is truly life. We offer what we have first received by the grace of God in Jesus Christ on the cross.

   We provide the communities we serve with the sense of connection and transcendence that our culture so desperately needs. We live by it, we offer it, we communicate it, and we grow by invitation to it. We serve others in response to it.

   We introduce Jesus for a second chance, a new life, for transformation through a living relationship with God for to all who will receive it!

   That is the gift of God in Jesus Christ shown to us in three parades: the one where Jesus triumphally enters Jerusalem, the one where Jesus goes to be the only acceptable sacrifice for the sins of humanity, and the big one, the big parade, the one where, having received the gift of God in faith and in trust in Jesus as our only savior, and are thereby drawn to him before the throne of God, forever.

   Three parades: Palms, Passion, and Perpetuity!

   This coming Sunday we will enter the valley.

   Holy Week will arrive, but Easter is coming!

   Share the good news.

 

404 404 Error Code

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “404 Error Code”, originally shared on March 18, 2026. It was the 404^th  video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   The Emergency Food Pantry in the church that I served in Compton had a bumper sticker stuck to the inside of its door. It said, “If you feel far from God, guess who moved?” Today, we’re going to find out what that means.

   When the pandemic got to the point where we were pretty much confined to our homes in 2020, Sally and I asked ourselves what we could do.

   We decided to produce YouTube videos with messages for connection and encouragement that would provide a means to reflect on what it meant to be a Christian in the LA area and beyond.

   We called them “Streams of Living Water”, because we were never alone in the Holy Spirit and, well, the videos were being streamed, get it? 😊

   Those developed into a blog, “Words of Living Water”, and into a podcast, “Living Water Radio.”

   This week, we are producing the 404^th episode of each.

   Last week, I received the “404 error” message when I was searching for a website on my computer. That’s not a good thing.

   The 404 error code appears, according to Google, when your browser is connected to the server but the specific webpage, file, or resource requested could not be found. Also known as the “not found” code, it usually means that the URL you’re using is misspelled, or the page was deleted, or the link is broken.

   It’s a variation of the ancient computer principle, “Garbage in. Garbage out.”

   And, it’s frustrating. Like our weather.

   We were getting torrential rain a few weeks ago.

   This week, we are having record heat, and most of the rest of the country is having record snow.

   It seems like a disconnect.

   It seems like the way Mary and Martha must have felt when their brother, Lazarus, died.

   They were faithful people. They were probably Jesus’ best friends on earth, and Jesus didn’t seem to be caring that Lazarus was dying, at all!

   That is, they had a connection to the server, but the answer they sought was not found. They were experiencing a 404 Error Code! 😊

   The three siblings Mary, and Martha, and Lazarus lived with one another in the village of Bethany, just over the Mount of Olives, and about two miles east of Jerusalem. It appears to have been Jesus’ favorite place on earth.

   They were his close friends who were not among his close disciples. We have no record of him teaching publicly there. He just went there to relax and hang out with people who loved him and whom he loved.

   Then, one day, Lazarus was very sick and the sisters sent a message to Jesus to let him know.

   Jesus said to his disciples, in John 11:4b,

^4b“This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”

   Phase One: “Oh, he’s just sick.” Lazarus is sick, but Jesus starts by doing nothing. Though he loves Lazarus and Mary and Martha, he stays put for two days. There’s some kind of plan. But what’s going on?

   Then this happens in verse 7,

⁷Then after this he said to the disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.”

   Which, the disciples say, is kind of crazy since he was just there and some of the people were trying to kill him. Jesus brushes-off their concern and explains that they just don’t understand who he is.

   He describes Lazarus’ situation in Phase Two, in John 11:11b, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.”

   What?! The disciples want to know why Jesus is going to risk his life, and maybe theirs, to wake Lazarus up from a nap? This makes no sense to them.

   Phase Three: Jesus explains the situation, in John 11:14,

¹⁴Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead. 

   Jesus is then ready to go.

   [Sidebar: What do you think of when you think of the disciple named Thomas? Doubting Thomas, right? Look at his behavior here, in verse 16,

¹⁶Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

   Bold, huh? Thomas is a stand-up guy!]

   The story continues with verse 17,

¹⁷When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. 

   People were already coming to console Mary and Martha. Martha hears that Jesus is coming and goes out to meet him and says, in John 11: 21b,

^21b “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. ²²But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.”

   That had to hurt like a punch to the gut, even as Martha speaks to Jesus with humility and faith.

   Then comes the central message of this passage, in John 11:23-27,

 ²³Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” ²⁴Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” ²⁵Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, ²⁶and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” ²⁷She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”

   Martha goes and tells Mary that Jesus is near and is calling for her. Mary finds Jesus, kneels, and greets him with the same stinging words as her sister, in verse 32b,

 ^32b “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

   Now, I’m not normally much of a crier. Maybe more so now that I’m older and the estrogen is kicking in. But the floodgates open up if I see   people crying. That’s it!

   I remember sitting in the front row at my mother’s funeral. She had died of complications of breast cancer at age 53. I was trying to keep it together. That’s kind of the Norwegian way. Stoic. And I did, until I looked to my left and saw one of my best friends since childhood sitting with his wife, looking at me. His father had died when we were in our early 20’s. And he looked stricken, and his face was pale and wet. That was it for me.

   That’s why I’ve usually looked over the heads of people at the funerals I have led. I need to stay focused on the needs of others, not my own.

   Jesus wept. I don’t know if Jesus cried often. He lamented over Jerusalem. He was fully God, and he was fully human. Look what happens here, in John 11:33-35,

³³When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. ³⁴He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” ³⁵Jesus began to weep.

   There is it. John 11:35, “Jesus began to weep.” In some translations it’s, “Jesus wept.”, the shortest verse in the Bible.

   Do you ever picture Jesus crying? I don’t. He seems to be above that kind of thing. He’s God. Doesn’t he see death all the time every day?

   Why would Jesus weep over anything? He knows how it will all turn out.

   Is death so unfamiliar to him? So unexpected?

   Queen Elizabeth II once said, in a statement of condolence to the families of the British who were casualties on 9-11, “Grief is the price we pay for love.”

   Grief is the price we pay for love.

   Was that it? Were Jesus’ tears the expression of the living relationship with the one true living God for which we were all created and which now Jesus appears to have lost with Lazarus? At least in this world?

   The next verse tells us, in verse 36,

 ³⁶So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” 

   Others, though, were not so empathetic. Some questioned how Jesus healed the man born blind but didn’t heal his friend, Lazarus. Jesus was again in grief and went to the cave-tomb. A stone was lying against it. Sound familiar? Like another death and burial that we know is coming?

   Some protested when Jesus said, “Take away the stone”, pointing out that after four days there would be a stench. The King James Version of the Bible translates this passage, “Lord, by this time he stinketh”! Much of Christian art of this event shows people holding their noses.

   Jesus brushed all of that off and says, in John 11:40b-41a,

^40b “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” ⁴¹So they took away the stone.

   Jesus prays with thanksgiving, and then this happens, in verses 43-44,

⁴³When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” ⁴⁴The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

   Wow! What a moment! What must it have been like to be there at that moment? Did all Creation hold its breath? I wonder what the people who were there took away from this?

   Well, we find out in the last verse of this passage, John 11:45,

⁴⁵Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.

   That’s easy to understand. But what can we take away from this? Four things.

   First, that there’s a reason that the verses at the center of this event are so often heard at Christian funerals, John 11:25-26,

²⁵Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, ²⁶and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” 

   It is the very foundation for our hope in the new life in this world and the new heaven and the new earth in the life to come in Jesus Christ.

   Second, the answer to the question, “Who killed Jesus?”

   The award-winning and Oscar-nominated film “The Fabelmans” is based on the life of director Steven Spielberg. It contains a scene from when he was in high school being attacked for being a Jew, “because the Jews killed Jesus”. The actor responds, in part, by saying that he wasn’t around 2,000 years ago. 😊

   It is true that some Jews are shown in the Bible calling for Jesus’ crucifixion, but not one of them is alive today. And I’ve always wondered why there isn’t more anti-Italian prejudice directed at the descendants of the Romans who actually conduced the trial and did the crucifixion. “Jews” didn’t kill Jesus any more than “Italians” did.  

   Others say that the answer to the question “Who killed Jesus?” is “You did.” and “I did.” Jesus died to be the only acceptable sacrifice for our sin, to restore the created relationship with God that our sin had broken. He would not need to have been killed if it wasn’t for the fact that humanity had messed things up.

   But the fact is, and it is the record of scriptures, that, ultimately, nobody took Jesus’ life. He gave it.

   In John 10:17-18, where Jesus speaks about being the good shepherd and how the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep, Jesus says,

17For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. 18No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again.

   We see God’s power over life and death in Jesus’ raising of Lazarus from the dead. We see it in the gift of God in Jesus Christ, that Jesus gives his life on the cross as fully God and fully human being, and that he then he takes it up again in the Resurrection.

   Third, that we have good news to share: that Jesus is the Resurrection and the life. Our lives are transformed, they are made new, through a living relationship with the one true living God that we call “faith”. Lazarus was raised from the dead by Jesus, but he is given new life, eternal life, in Jesus, and that is much more important.

   Lazarus would die again, eventually. His eternal life is assured in Jesus. “Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, ²⁶and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” The question that follows is, “Do you believe this?”

   A colleague, a predecessor at a congregation I served, told me about the night he had a Church Council meeting, and he knew it would be a late evening. He called his wife and told her not to make a dinner for him. He would just stop by MacDonald’s on the way home, which he did. But, as he got out of his car to order inside, someone jumped out at him, pointed a gun at him and told him to give him all his money or he’d kill him.

   He told me, “I wish I could say that I was brave, but the truth is that I was just tired, and I said, ‘You can’t kill me. I’ve already died in Jesus Christ.’”

   All the color drained from the other person’s face, and he turned and ran away!

   That brings us to the Fourth lesson, that we have already died. We died in our baptism. Death is a past-tense experience for us. Does that mean we are the “Living Dead?”

   In a sense, it does.

   Paul writes, in Romans 6:3-5,

3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. 5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.

   And Fifth, that God suffers with us in our suffering.

   Jesus wept. He was greatly distressed. He was “disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.” That in itself is a sign to us pointing to the nature of God.

   I remember very clearly when my father was dying. My brothers and sister and I were at the hospital. Our dad was in and out of consciousness. His organs were shutting down. We took turns sitting with our dad while the others sat in the hallway.

   I’ve been in that space countless times as the pastor. I’ve struggled with the right things to say in that moment.

   I remember when the pastor from our hometown church, our dad’s pastor, came to visit. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. The look on his face said everything. We so appreciated his visit, his empathy and his concern. He just had to be there to express all of that.

   People say weird things when people have died. Even Christians. Things like, “I guess God needed another angel”, or “Everything happens for a reason.” or “Don’t cry, they’re with the Lord now.” or “God won’t give you any more than you can handle.” But none of these reach us at the point of our pain. But I don’t criticize people for saying them. People just don’t know what to say in their grief, in the face of death, and they’re afraid of saying the wrong thing.

   The best we can do is to be present in the hallways of people’s hearts. To sit with them. To share their grief even in the midst of our hope.

   This is what God does. God loves us at the point of our pain. God weeps at the point of our loss and reminds us of His eternal promises in our suffering: love everlasting.

   We have no need to fear death. It’s just a transition to another way of living. But we feel that pain in the pain of others even as we rejoice in the promise of eternal life given to us by Jesus Christ on the cross.

   The question is, do you believe it? Do you believe that the key to life and death is Jesus Christ? That true life is not something we achieve, but something we receive as the gift of God in Jesus Christ?

   That he gave his life and then took it back again? That Jesus has set everyone free from the effects of sin, death and the power of the devil who believes and is baptized?

   Sometimes we may feel that we have experienced a “404 Error Code:, that we are disconnected from the server, that we are far from God. But that’s not on God.

   Jesus has restored us to our true selves!

   Jesus has unbound us, and let us go!

   “Do  you  believe  this?” Share the good news. 

403 Formerly Known As

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Formerly Known As”, originally shared on March 11, 2026. It was the 403^rd  video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   California has been known as the place where people from all over can go to reinvent themselves. Jesus has another idea. Today, we’re going to find out what it is.

   Have you ever wondered how great it would be if you could just go back in time and see Jesus walking the earth, hear him speak, maybe see him do a miracle? Have you ever thought that seeing just one miracle would lock-in your faith and remove all your doubt?

   You’d be wrong. Seeing a miracle is not your problem. Being a miracle is.

   We’ve seen spectacular weather recently. Aside from some recent winds, our weather seems miraculous to people living almost anywhere else in our country.

   We occasionally get some heavy rain, scorching heat, or strong winds in our area. And, as a pastor, I’m sometimes get the wink and elbow from someone asking something like, “Hey, ‘padre’, can’t you do something about this weather?”

   Of course, I can’t. That would be a miracle. So, I say, “I’m sorry. I’m in sales, not management.” 😊

   The main Bible reading that we’re looking at today, the one that will be read in the vast majority of churches throughout the world this coming Sunday, John 9:1-41, raises a similar question.

   Jesus did miracles. He healed a man born blind. Why don’t we see those kinds of miracles today?

   Good question!

   The passage begins with a sight that is all but unheard of today but which was not so uncommon back then, and is not so uncommon in many other parts of the world even today, in John 9:1,

¹As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. 

   “Blind from birth.”

   In our country today, babies are given an antibiotic eye ointment shortly after birth to prevent blindness. But being blind from birth didn’t mean the same thing to people in Jesus’ day.   

   We might say that being born blind meant that an infection, or some congenital cause was the reason. People in Jesus’ day believed that things like blindness happened to people as punishment for sin. The only question was whose sin it was. The person’s or their ancestors’.

   The disciples ask the question, in John 9:2,

² His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

   Which is weird because the answer is one that changes over time in what we call “the Old Testament” and what people in that day called “the scriptures.”

   The Bible says that God punishes people for the sins of their ancestors near the beginning of the Old Testament, and it says that God does not punish them for the sins of their ancestors near the end of the Old Testament.

   Jesus takes the later view and so he shows a better grasp of the scriptures than his disciples.

   Jesus answers the disciples’ question, in John 9:3-5,

³Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. ⁴We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. ⁵As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

   Jesus is about to take his disciples to school. God’s works are about to be revealed. Jesus is God, and the works that are about to revealed are the gifts of God from the Creation of all things.

   That’s what a miracle is. It’s not a suspension of the laws of physics. It’s not something unexpected that just happens. A miracle is the restoration of what God intended the world to be in the beginning of Creation and a sign of what it will be when Christ returns and there is a new heaven and a new earth.

   The world was created to be perfect. Human rebellion brought evil into the world, and we can’t always connect the sin with what happens afterwards, like when a factory owner has toxic waste to dump and dumps it in the river behind the factory. He saves money, his business is more profitable, his investors are happy and he sleeps well at night. Meanwhile, people drink the water and, eventually, they get cancer. They don’t know why.

   A miracle is a sign that points to God’s Creation as it was intended to be, and what it will be once again. Clean. Perfect. And, in this case, no blindness.

   Jesus, “the light of the world”, comes into the darkness of this man born blind and the man sees Jesus. His sight is restored.

   But first, it gets weird, in John 9:6-7.

⁶When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, ⁷saying to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see.

   Did anyone, when you were a kid, usually an older female relative, ever see dirt on your face and take out their hankie, dip it in their mouth, and use their saliva to clean off the spot? Gross right? You probably make that “Ick!” face, but you were clean.  😊

   Have you ever heard someone make a toast by saying “Here’s mud in your eye”? That expression started in England around 1930 and is either a reference to life in the trenches during WW1 or a reference to this text, which kind of makes sense, because it is a toast to one’s good health. In this text, it’s about healing.

   People back in Jesus’ day believed that saliva had actual healing properties.

   Jesus used it as a signal that a healing was about to take place.

   The man’s neighbors, who have only known him as a blind beggar, have questions.

   And Jesus is not around. So, they bring the healed man to the Pharisees, who also have questions, in John 9:13-15,

¹³They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. ¹⁴Now it was a sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. ¹⁵Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight. He said to them, “He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see.” 

   Do you see where we’re going here?

   If you know one verse of the Bible by heart, it’s probably John 3:16. If you know one hymn by heart, it’s probably “Amazing Grace”, and the first verse in particular:

“Amazing grace!- how sweet the sound-

That saved a wretch like me!

I once was lost, but now am found;

Was blind, but now I see.”

   That hymn was composed by John Newton, an English slave ship captain who came to Christ and repented of what he had done, left that work, and lived the rest of his life campaigning against slavery. He lived a transformed life in the grace of God.

   That’s also what the Bible calls a miracle! A miracle is a sign that God’s intention for creation is being restored.

   But there’s a bigger issue.

   At least the Pharisees think there is.

   Jesus has broken one of the 10 Commandments, they said, by healing, that is, doing work on the sabbath, the day of rest. And Jesus told the guy who was healed to go and bathe in the pool of Siloam, which they also considered to be working on the sabbath. Those things, they said, could not be works of God.

   They quizzed the man’s parents, and his folks don’t want to get caught up in all the drama and risk being labeled as sinners by the Pharisees.

   So, the Pharisees ask the guy who was healed about this “sinner”, Jesus, the one who worked on the Sabbath when he had healed him, and he answers, in verse 25.

²⁵He answered, “I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” 

   That’s a good answer, and the Pharisees argue with the man born blind, now healed, about his healing, but the man holds his ground and they drive him out.

   Jesus hears about what happened and finds the man, in verses 35-38,

³⁵Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” ³⁶He answered, “And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.” ³⁷Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.” ³⁸He said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped him.

   There’s the miracle! Again! It’s the miracle that is happening every day all over the world, including right here, right now, in your life, right in front of you!

   You can see a miracle today! Share your faith. Ask someone, “Have you heard about Jesus? Really heard about him?” Share the good news of forgiveness and salvation for them and invite them to open their heart to receive the transformational gift of Jesus Christ, the savior of the world, to become a new Creation, to become a Christian.

   Invite them to turn away from their old lives, to start over, to receive a new life, seen in 2 Corinthians 5:17,

17 So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!

   We are not the light of the world. Jesus is.

   But we can be reflectors of the light.

   Robert Fulghum, in his book, It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It, told the story of a modern Greek philosopher giving a lecture who answered Fulghum’s question on the meaning of life with his story about living on a Greek island during the Nazi occupation.

   One day, he said, he came upon a wrecked German motorcycle. He picked up the broken pieces of the rearview mirror and, unable to put them together, kept the largest piece, which he filed down to a circle with a stone. He played a game with that mirror, seeing what deep pocket of darkness he could illuminate by reflecting light into it.

   He said that he still had that mirror in his wallet and believed that it was the key to the meaning of life: that he was not the light or the source of the light, but that he could be a reflector, bringing light into the dark places of life, and that though he didn’t have the whole mirror, he had a part of it, and could do what he could with what he had.

   How do we help people see this, to see the Light, with what we have? The story of the healing of the man born blind concludes with its lesson, in John 9:39-41,

³⁹Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.” ⁴⁰Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, “Surely we are not blind, are we?” ⁴¹Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.

   Tricky. Sin produces our separation from God, our lack of the relationship with the one true living God for which we were created. Jesus says to the Pharisees that if they were blind, it would not be because of their sin. But by saying “We see” while not “seeing” the presence of God at work right in front of them, they reveal that they are still in their sin. They don’t see God, which is worse than any physical blindness.

   And they’re not alone.

   Think about all the people who physically saw Jesus do a miracle. Thousands! How many of them stuck with Jesus to the end? Zero. I think it was because they didn’t “see” Jesus.

   Martin Luther, the 16^th Century Church reformer, said, “I have covenanted with my Lord that He should not send me visions or dreams or even angels. I am content with this gift of the Scriptures, which teaches and supplies all that is necessary, both for this life and that which is to come.”

   The Bible is our source for everything that is good in this world and the next. It is the primary means by which God speaks to us. The Bible reveals to us the power of the cross to restore that for which we were created: a living relationship with the one true living God.

   The Bible both describes miracles and enables us to see them. It enables us to see ourselves as we really are and to see our Savior for what He has really done.

   We cannot reinvent ourselves. We are sinners. But, at the cross, we are sinners who have been reinvented by God.

   We are participants in God’s greatest miracles. We tell our stories. We point people to God’s intention for human beings when he created them, and to the power and agency of God to give them a new life, to make them into a new creation. We point to Jesus as the agent by which a living relationship with the one true living God for which we were created was made possible through faith alone, by grace alone.

   Maybe you’ve heard of the popular musician who changed his name to a symbol and became known as “the artist formerly known as Prince”?

   The man formerly known as blind from birth became the man known as the one whose eyes were healed by Jesus. He told others what Jesus had done for him.

   He who was formerly known as blind became the one who could say, “I was blind but now I see.” He told others what Jesus had done for him.

   We who were formerly known as no people are now God’s people.

   We who were formerly known as cut off from God by our sin are now restored to God by God’s amazing grace, forever.

   We can tell others what Jesus has done for us and show by our love for one another and for the world that the new life that God gives to all who will receive it is God’s greatest miracle.

   And that, ultimately, everything and everyone who believes and is baptized will be healed!