"I Am the Resurrection and the Life"

"I Am the Resurrection and the Life"

JESUS MAFA. Jesus raises Lazarus to life, from Art in the Christian Tradition

Lectionary Scripture Focus:  John 11:1-45 (NRSV)

1 Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha.  2 Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. 3 So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, "Lord, he whom you love is ill." 4 But when Jesus heard it, he said, "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." 5 Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, 6 after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was. 7 Then after this he said to the disciples, "Let us go to Judea again." 8 The disciples said to him, "Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?" 9 Jesus answered, "Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. 10 But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them." 11 After saying this, he told them, "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him." 12 The disciples said to him, "Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right." 13 Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep. 14 Then Jesus told them plainly, "Lazarus is dead. 15 For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him." 16 Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, "Let us also go, that we may die with him." 17 When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. 18 Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, 19 and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. 20 When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. 21 Martha said to Jesus, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22 But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him." 23 Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again." 24 Martha said to him, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day." 25 Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?" 27 She said to him, "Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world." 28 When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, "The Teacher is here and is calling for you." 29 And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. 30 Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. 31 The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. 32 When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." 33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. 34 He said, "Where have you laid him?" They said to him, "Lord, come and see." 35 Jesus began to weep. 36 So the Jews said, "See how he loved him!" 37 But some of them said, "Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?" 38 Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. 39 Jesus said, "Take away the stone." Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, "Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days." 40 Jesus said to her, "Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?" 41 So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, "Father, I thank you for having heard me. 42 I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me." 43 When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!" 44 The 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." 45 Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.

TRUMP & RYAN - CHRISTIANS NEEDING RESURRECTION 

There are parts of the above story that speak quite personally to me. First is when Jesus says that Lazarus apparent death is instead an illness that does not lead to dying.  The passage can leave a person wondering what illness Lazarus actually suffered from -- and once his life is fully restored, will he have a special mission and vision to fulfill?  Another part of the story that moves me is when Jesus' commands others to remove the stone from the tomb and unbind Lazarus from his burial clothes.

Taken together, these actions represent release into the freedom God provides us if we will trust and hear the call to become alive again.  It lays a foundation that God's power can resurrect our lives and show us what we can do and become as a result. In essence, it means that a crisis can be an opportunity. When we are raised to new life, we are called to be fearless -- for real courage means being perfectly aware of the worst that can happen, even terrified because of it, and yet doing what is right by others and right toward oneself.

These days, I can't help but shake my head that those who identify themselves as Christians eagerly awaiting Jesus' Second Coming and God's Just and Peaceable Reign here on earth, rant and rave against universal healthcare and say it is not a right.  Clearly, they lack understanding of  Christ's generosity and compassion in freely healing Lazarus and so many others.  They sing songs with lyrics such as "...freely, freely, you have received, freely, freely give."  In their reading of scripture, they seem to forget passages that call humanity to do it's part helping the world move toward a space and time when we "...will wipe away every tear -- and death, mourning, crying, and pain will be no more.....” (Revelations 12:1-7).  Frankly the greatest offenders standing out in this manner right now are the professed Christians Republican POTUS 45 and his sidekick the current Republican House Speaker.  Their recently defeated diabolical American Health Care Act (AHCA) would take healthcare coverage away from 24 million of our fellow citizens and raise healthcare costs substantially for everyone with those costs being especially burdensome for the elderly and older adults.  This is an evil for which they should be removed from public service and/or spend some time learning from the following countries that do offer Universal Healthcare and the year they began doing so:

As I treated a patient this week benefiting from expanded Medicaid coverage through the Affordable Healthcare Act (ACA), I marveled that the individual probably would not be alive right now if the ACA had not become law of the land.  The individual's recent involuntary psychiatric hospitalization had resurrected the person from what the individual referred to as "a very dark place I don't ever want to go back to again."  Now resurrected and restored to a reality-based frame of mind and able to access outpatient mental health services because of the ACA, the individual states intention to continue their healing process and getting life back on track with the help of psychotherapy, medication, and their "Higher Power".  I feel hopeful for the person's mental health recovery and resiliency as defined by the U.S Department of Health's Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSHA) -- a department of the U.S. government that Republican POTUS 45 and the Republican House Speaker want to de-fund or for which to severely cut funding. Addiction and mental health services are Essential Health Benefits the ACA requires insurers to cover.  Republican POTUS 45 and the Republican House Speaker wanted through their AHCA plan to eliminate coverage of these lifesaving services. 

Obviously what these two supposed Christians need is a resurrection of their own.  Let us pray that Christ rolls away the stones of their dark entombed mentality, opens their eyes to the evil they have tried to perpetrate throught the AHCA, and through such miracles these two men began to authentically and compassionately work toward universal healthcare for all -- that which will be a genuine expression of God's Just and Peaceable Reign here on earth.   

So I close this lectionary reflection simply with asking the question, "What binds you in this life?  What are you called to unbind yourself from and to release yourself into for the purposes of God's Just and Peaceable Reign here on Earth?"

May God's Peace be with you,

Brad Shumate
Free of Encumbrance
Eugene, Oregon

COME, DRINK LIVING WATER

“Come, Drink Living Water”

Lectionary Scripture: John 4:5–42 NRSV

5 So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. 7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink." 8 (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, "How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?" (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, "Give me a drink,' you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water." 11 The woman said to him, "Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?" 13 Jesus said to her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life." 15 The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water." 16 Jesus said to her, "Go, call your husband, and come back." 17 The woman answered him, "I have no husband." Jesus said to her, "You are right in saying, "I have no husband'; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!" 19 The woman said to him, "Sir, I see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem." 21 Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth." 25 The woman said to him, "I know that Messiah is coming" (who is called Christ). "When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us." 26 Jesus said to her, "I am he, the one who is speaking to you." 27 Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, "What do you want?" or, "Why are you speaking with her?" 28 Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, 29 "Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?" 30 They left the city and were on their way to him. 31 Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, "Rabbi, eat something." 32 But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you do not know about." 33 So the disciples said to one another, "Surely no one has brought him something to eat?" 34 Jesus said to them, "My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. 35 Do you not say, "Four months more, then comes the harvest'? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. 36 The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. 37 For here the saying holds true, "One sows and another reaps.' 38 I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor." 39 Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman's testimony, "He told me everything I have ever done." 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. 41 And many more believed because of his word. 42 They said to the woman, "It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world."

"AHCA, Fails Living Water Test" 

What I love about this scripture passage is how Jesus engages with a person, a woman in this case, whom society and culture intensely scorn.  From the first moment of meeting however, Jesus establishes for the woman that she is a child of God, worthy of love and respect.  He withholds nothing from her and promises that she will never again experience the pain and suffering of thirst for he offers her living water that will sustain her and her community throughout life.

We have a current day example in the United States of living water that sustains life, that keeps pain and suffering at bay.  It is the Affordable Care Act (ACT).  Millions upon millions thirst for it.  It is not a perfect resource.  It can stand to be improved.  It does accomplish much good and contributes greatly to the betterment of the Common Good.

Thanks however to a Republican Congress and Republican POTUS 45 and those who elected the individuals in these positions, the living water of the ACA is about to run out.  Rights of access to the living water of the ACA are about to be repealed through the Republican sponsored American Health Care Act (AHCA).  In actuality, the AHCA is little more than an act of democide that will leave 52 million people without healthcare insurance coverage in the USA by 2026 per the scorecard of the independent non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO). People without coverage therefore means people not getting the healthcare they need, which means people dying, which means AHCA is an act of neglect and abuse by a government that knowingly results in the loss of citizens’ lives – which is therefore “democide”.  What makes the culpability of the Republican Congress and Republican POTUS 45 even more horrific is the untold billions of dollars in tax cuts they are going to hand to the wealthy as part of taking away the living water of the ACA.

As a psychotherapist in a not-for-profit medical group practice, the terror of what is about to happen -- if the AHCA gets signed into law -- is so thick for my patients that it can be cut with a knife.  People whose lives have been getting healthier the past several years from the living water of the ACA will very quickly return to pain and suffering because they won’t be able to afford what the Republican Congress and Republican POTUS 45 have trotted out in the AHCA.  How it is that Republicans fail to see this is shocking!  Even in the face of protests and opposition against the AHCA by the American Medical Association, the America Hospital Association, and even the AARP, the Republican Congress and Republican POTUS 45 remain driven to return people to pain and suffering.

Americans as a people, society and culture need to have a come to Jesus moment like the woman at the well and like her community who came to join her there as well to hear Jesus preach and teach of living water.  America is the only developed country in the world that does not provide the living water of basic health care as a recognized basic right of its people.  For some reason long ago, the rich and powerful among us decided that healthcare was a money making machine from which obscene profits and money-making schemes should happen.  Today that way of being demonstrates on a per capita basis that we Americans have the costliest healthcare system on the face of the planet that still leaves millions upon millions without basic healthcare.  Every other developed country in the world sees the living water of basic healthcare as an inalienable right and shockingly, they manage to do it quite efficiently and at far less a cost per capita than how our silly nonsensical system does things.  It’s time fellow citizens to take the profit making schemes and processes out of the American healthcare system.  Its time for single-payer universal healthcare.

Often, I bristle at phrases of “what would Jesus do” or “what would Jesus say”.  They seem so trite and seem to fall on deaf ears of culturally right people of faith who believe healthcare is not a right. They seem to imagine that Jesus is going to one day drop out of the sky and magically wave his arm and make everything just and right.  But as these individuals often like to say as well, “God helps those who help themselves.”  Well it’s time Americans help themselves.  Like an individual married multiple times, we have gone through several different times of being wedded to ideas of what healthcare should be and do.  The answer to our healthcare dilemma is right before us, just like Jesus sitting right before the woman at the well and later Jesus sitting right before her community at the well and saying he has living water to freely give to all.  The living water of providing basic healthcare as a right of all people needs to be what we say and what we do.  It must become our perspective and the living water we demand of those who run our government.  Healthcare for all, not just for some!!  Come, drink living water.

I close this message/sermon (or whatever you want to call it) with the following:  AHCA = Trumpcare = Ryancare = 52 million uninsured by 2026 per CBO = people dying = thinning of the American herd = Democide, A.K.A. a government's intentional, knowing, reckless disregard for life -- the neglects and abuses of which cause citizen deaths.  This is "old order" thinking.  Far from the scriptural message below:

Then I saw new heavens and a new earth.  The former heavens and the former earth had passed away, and the sea existed no longer.  I also saw a new Jerusalem, the holy city, coming down out of heaven from God, beautiful as a bride and groom on their wedding day.  And I heard a loud voice calling from the throne, “Look!  God’s Tabernacle is among humanity!  God will live with them; they will be God’s people, and God will be fully present among them.  The Most High will wipe away every tear from their eyes.  And death, mourning, crying, and pain will be no more, for the old order has fallen.”

The One who sat on the throne said, “Look!  I’m making everything new!” and added, “Write this, for what I am saying is trustworthy and true.”  And the One continued, “It is finished.  I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End.  To those who are thirsty I will give drink freely from the spring of the water of life.  This is the rightful inheritance of the overcomers.  I will be their God and they will be my daughters and sons.”                               ---- Revelations 12:1-7, The Inclusive New Testament

May the Peace of all God’s prophets, mystics, teachers, and messengers be with you -- for all are called to provide living water, and that means you!!

Brad Shumate
Free of Encumbrance
Eugene, Oregon USA

©Copyright 2017 Brad Shumate  

!! - WAKE UP AMERICA - !!
SAY "HELL NO!"

VERSION 2.0 OF TRUMPCARE & RYANCARE IS BEING SNEAKED THROUGH CONGRESS RIGHT NOW!!

STOP IT, CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVE & SENATORS!!

AHCA = Trumpcare = Ryancare = End of ACA Mandated Essential Health Benefits(*)= 52 million uninsured by 2026 per CBO = people dying = thinning of the American herd = Democide, A.K.A. a government's intentional, knowing, reckless disregard for life -- the neglects and abuses of which cause citizen deaths.

(*)  Repeal of ACA Essential Health Benefits means that Federal Government no longer requires insurers to cover the benefits listed below.  Version 2.0 of Trumpcare and Ryancare requires instead that individual states decide which Essential Health Benefits they will mandate insurers to cover.  This begins a race to the bottom of the barrel for the lowest common denominator as no state will risk the financial liability of providing more generous benefits than another other state.  Insurers will have overwhelming leverage to force states to accept poorer quality health plans so insurance corporations can maintain higher profit margins, have less costs, can raise premiums as people age, and lastly can kick people off their insurance plans is an individual starts costing them too much money.  Tell Republican POTUS 45, Republican House Speaker, and Republican Congress "HELL NO!!!!"

ACA Required Essential Health Benefits:

1) Ambulatory patient services (outpatient care you get without being admitted to a hospital)
2) Emergency services
3) Hospitalization (like surgery and overnight stays)
4) Pregnancy, maternity, and newborn care (both before and after birth)
5) Mental health and substance use disorder services, including behavioral health treatment (this includes counseling and psychotherapy)
6) Prescription drugs
7) Rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices (services and devices to help people with injuries, disabilities, or chronic conditions gain or recover mental and physical skills)
8) Laboratory services
9) Preventive and wellness services and chronic disease management
10) Pediatric services, including oral and vision care (but adult dental and vision coverage aren’t essential health benefits)