February 28, 2008
Dirt
Lent 4A Jn 9.1-38
John’s story says that Jesus saw a man blind from birth. His disciples, faithful to what they’d been taught about such disabilities and maladies all their lives, automatically presumed, “Who sinned?”
Jesus said that’s not the point, things are different. Then he spat on the ground, made some clay with the spittle and the dirt, anointed the man’s eyes, and sent him off to take a bath. The man came back with sight and some considerable insight.
For now and without getting into the rest of the story about the incredulous neighbors, lets just take the incarnate part — the dirt and the spit.
We westerners are said to be a clean lot, some say we’re obsessed with washing. I don’t know about you, but I was brought up that way. I have vivid memories of my mother, the soap, and the washcloth. The soap never failed to get into my eyes, the washcloth felt like sandpaper. My ears were always apparently dirtier than anything else and more needful of fierce scrubbing.
Dirt is an ambiguous word. It can mean unclean. It can mean obscene. It can mean gossip, as in What’s the dirt? Or it can mean the ground as in nourishment and foundation and basis and nature’s wall-to-wall carpet. It is what God took to make Adam. It is what God took to make us. Literally and metaphorically, for both are true. The great theologian Paul Tillich called God the Ground of Being.
Christianity is anchored in earth, not the earth, but earth. William Temple, one of our greater archbishops of Canterbury, said that Christianity is the most materialistic of all the religions. Sure it is spiritual, but it is not spiritualistic. The Incarnation is at its heart. God’s Word became flesh and, says the Greek word, Pitched his tent in our midst.
Earth is good.So what does this mean for us? For one thing, it has a lot do with vocation. A farmer’s son was working in the field and noticed the clouds forming the letters G P C. He left the plow, went to his parson, said that he felt called, that the letters meant Go Preach Christ. The parson knew him well and thought better of it, said would he consider whether they might meant Go Plant Cotton.Earth is good.Earth is nourishing. Earth is the source of our food and of many of our medicines. Earth is the way we engage life and the means through which we serve. Earth is the instrument for and the implement of the way we harness and lever the universe with our stewardship. Gardening and its big sister farming are among the noblest of works. Remember, Eve and Adam didn’t get their start in a supermarket.
So what are the implications of all this, of the fact that Christianity is the most materialistic of all the religions? Of Jesus’s dirt and spit for healing?It tells us first of all that we are inseparably connected with the environment. The flora and the fauna are our sisters, our brothers, our parents. It tells us that by virtue of our seeming autonomy, we are even more responsible to be engaged, to be stewards of one another under the vast creative umbrella of human rights, and to do this through our political systems, our cultures, our sciences, our arts.
I am mindful that the great poet John Donne said it well in 1623 that “All (humankind) is of one author, that No one is an island, entire of itself; every one is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.”But some of us still haven’t learned that truth that no person is above another. No person is more blessed than another. No person has the right to subjugate another. No person has the right to torture another. No person has a right to hoard — and flaunt — his wealth above another.”
For, Donne continued, “Anyone’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in humankind, And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
Let us consider these things. Dwell on these things. Embrace these things. For they come in the healing power that gives true vision through dirt and spit.
Until then, here’s mud in your eye.
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