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SERMONS

Fourth Sunday of Lent
March 2, 2008

By The Rev. Sylvia Czarnetzky

1 Samuel 16:1-13
Psalm 23
Ephesians 5: 8 – 14
John 9:1-13, 28-38

When I was a child our house in Greenville, Mississippi, backed up to a huge cotton field. If you stood in our back yard facing away from the house, you’d see cotton as far as they eye could see, and it wasn’t spring or summer, you’d see dirt as far as they eye could see! We lived in a new subdivision, that was literally built in a former cotton field, there was nothing but a ditch separating our back yard from the turnrow of this big cotton field. We used to love to jump the ditch to play back there; we considered it a kind of extension of our playground.
                                                           
My sister, Nicky, and I, played a lot with our nextdoor neighbors, Kathy and Marian, and our neighbor 3 doors down the street, Prissy Jones.  We built a fort in the ditch. We started a band in our laundry room (don’t ask). We rode our bikes to each others’ houses. We managed to entertain ourselves on summer days, especially when it was pretty outside, but we spent a lot of time playing in the mud back behind our house.

And with a little imagination, you could have a lot of fun with mud. Sometimes we made mudpies, using the little cake pans that came with our Easy-Bake Oven. (I guess we were sort of tomboys.) Sometimes we’d dig around back there with sticks, drawing stuff or writing our names. But the thing I remember most vividly about playing back there was when we’d fill a bucket up with some water from the hose, and take it out to the field, and we each would dig a little shallow hole in the dirt, about yay big. And from the little pile of dirt created by our digging the hole, we’d kind of sift through, carefully picking out the stones and sticks and little dirt clods.

Then we’d take a little dirt and a little water, and mix them together in the shallow hole -- it was kind of like a little mud sink -- and we’d stir our mud potion around until it was nice and smooth, about the consistency of devil’s food cake batter. And once our mud was the consistency we wanted, we’d spread this glossy brown mud all around the sink almost like a picture frame. And when we finished that, we’d start another one. By the end of the afternoon, as you might imagine, we were completely filthy – so dirty, in fact, that Momma wouldn’t let us back in the house until we’d rinsed off the worst of it with the hose!

Looking back, I now wonder whether we weren’t up to our elbows in toxins! It was a working cotton field, and DDT wasn’t banned until 1972, so the Lord only knows what kind of toxic chemicals might have leached into the soil! Between the toxic mud we played in and and our other favorite summertime activity – running behind the bug man as he fogged the neighborhood – it’s really kind of a miracle I’m still alive!

I have to say that I hadn’t thought about playing in the mud in a really long time, but my memory was triggered by the gospel story, where Jesus mixes up a little mud paste of his own, and uses it to heal a man who has been blind from birth.

In this story from John’s gospel, Jesus encounters the blind man as he walks along the road.  And even though the blind man doesn’t ask him to, Jesus mixes some dirt with his own spit, and applies the mud to the eyes of the blind man.  He tells the man to go and wash off the mud in a nearby pool, and he does, and his sight is restored. (Jn. 9:1-4)

Later in the story, the man faces the skepticism of his neighbors, and the hostility of the Pharisees who end up driving the poor man out of the synagogue. Jesus goes and finds the man, and the man born blind whose sight has been restored by Jesus’s healing touch confesses
his faith to Jesus, saying “Lord, I believe.” And worships him.

It’s always seemed to me that Jesus uses the mud in this story to essentially anoint this man and heal him. Only instead of oil or water, Jesus uses dirt and spit, made into a paste of mud. But it works, and Jesus demonstrates for us his healing power by bringing light to this man’s darkness. We’ll call the gospel story the first variation on the theme of anointing.

The second variation on the theme of anointing comes in the 23rd psalm, probably one of the most familiar and well-loved passages in all of the Bible. Anointing is mentioned towards the end of the psalm. The verse reads, in the King James Bible: “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies; thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.” (Ps. 23:5)

This language about tables and oil and cups comes on the heels of all those comforting images of the Lord as the shepherd who watches over us in our wanderings (Brueggemann, Texts 212): “He makes me lie down in green pastures and leads me beside still waters… and guides me along right pathways for his Name’s sake.” (2-3) In the psalm, “Yahweh the guide [is] the fierce yet gentle companion who, though we stray, never lets us out of his benevolent keeping, giving us rest and sure directions, protecting us…” from danger. (213) Whether our wanderings take us into green pastures, or beside still waters, or through dark valleys in death’s shadow, “our benevolent Guide is there to defend us.” (213)

Nestled among these images of comfort and assurance is the image of Verse 5: “You spread a table before me in the presence of those who trouble me; you have anointed my head with oil, and my cup is running over.”  And for some interpreters of this psalm, this verse continues the metaphor of the benevolent shepherd taking care of the sheep, for “preparing a table” could refer to the way that shepherds in the middle east prepared fields for their sheep to graze upon. “Shepherds…used the expression ‘to set the table” to refer to this practice. Before turning their sheep out to graze in a particular field, shepherds would pull “poisonous weeds and thorns” and run off snakes and scorpions to make the field safe for grazing. (Craddock 170)

Also, at the end of the day, the shepherd would corral his sheep, and they would separate out any sheep who were injured or sickly, and the shepherd would treat those sheep “with oil and a curative drink made of fermented material and herbs sweetened with honey.” (170) And that’s how the table and the oil and the overflowing cup continue the shepherd metaphor. So we can visualize a shepherd sitting by a fire in the evening,taking tender care of an injured lamb.

On the whole, the images conjured up in Psalm 23 are images of great compassion, showing us the depth of care that the shepherd has for the sheep, and correspondingly, that the Lord has for us, no matter where our wanderings take us.

The third variation on the theme of anointing comes in the Old Testament lesson, with the anointing by Samuel of David as the new King over Israel. Yahweh has sent Samuel to Bethlehem on a mission –
to anoint as king one of Jesse’s sons that he has chosen to succeed Saul as King of Israel.

Samuel is there in Bethlehem, and one by one, the seven elder sons of Jesse pass before him, and Samuel converses with Yahweh as each pass by, and one by one, all seven are rejected. (Brueggemann 211) Finally, Samuel asks Jesse whether he has any more sons in his household, which reminds me. of the question that the prince asks the wicked stepmother in Cinderella – after the glass slipper won’t fit the stepsisters, the prince asks the stepmother: is there anybody else in the household?

All the action ceases while they wait for the youngest son to be brought in from the field where he has been keeping the sheep. And when the youngest son is presented, the Lord tells Samuel, “’Rise and anoint him, for this is the one.’ Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed [David} in the presence of his brothers, and the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward.” (1 Sam. 16:12-13)

When Samuel smears the oil on David, he performs an ancient ritual for designating a new king, and by that act, David is “set apart from the ordinary and given divine authority.” (Craddock 169)

I have to say, though, that the part of the David story that kind of jumped off the page at me was something that the Lord says to Samuel. As the elder sons parade before Samuel, he sees the eldest son, and Samuel says to Yahweh, “Surely” this one is “the Lord’s anointed,” Yahweh says to Samuel: Do not look on his appearance, or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him, for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” (1 Sam. 16:7) “the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” 
                                                           
And that’s not a bad note on which to end this sermon – to remember that God is not fooled by outward appearances, because he knows what’s in our hearts. Amen.

Works Cited:

Brueggemann, Walter, et al. Texts for Preaching, Year A. Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 1995.

Brueggemann, Walter.  irst and Second Samuel. Interpretation.  Louisville: John Knox Press, 1990.

Craddock, Fred B. Preaching Through the Christian Year, Year A.Philadelphia:Trinity Press Intl., 1992.

Eslinger, Richard I. “The Season of Lent.” New Proclamation, Year A.  Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007.