EASTER 4: APRIL 29, 2007-04-27

It has been nearly two weeks now since the tragedy at Blacksburg, Va. On that Monday I had spent most of the morning in my office on the campus at Brenau and had gone to the gym to workout. People were standing silently in front of the TV screens, watching the tragedy unfold. The magnitude of that event had not been fully known at that hour. It would be another day before the identity of the shooter was known. His picture would be flashed around the world and the question most heard was, “Who is he?”

In that same gym the other day, again as I was watching a news broadcast, there appeared the picture of Boris Yeltzin, announcing his death. There were pictures of him standing on a tank in front of the Russian Parliament building defying an attempted coup and then there was one of him at a Whitehouse dinner where he was so drunk he fell out of his chair. The newscaster said, “Who was he, really? A reformer or a drunkard?” “Who was he?”

In the Gospel for this morning Jesus is in Jerusalem for the celebration of Hanukkah, the Feast of Dedication. That feast marks the defeat of a Syrian army by the Jewish rebels in 164 B.C. As Jesus walked through the East Portico of the Temple he is besieged by the Jewish leaders who keep asking, “Who are you?” “Are you the Messiah?” “Are you the one who is going to lead a new rebellion?” If he answers “Yes” they will expect a revolution. If he answers “No” many od his followers will desert him. His reply is “What d you think? You have seen what I do and have heard what I have to say. Who do you think I am?” As he leaves they are still asking, “Who are you?”

All of that gave rise to a fantasy. What if we could go back in time and interview some of the people who encountered Jesus and ask the same questions we hear today in order to discover, “Who are you?”

Our camera crew and interviewer would start in Jerusalem and drive northwest for about an hour. We would arrive at a mountain and a nearby village called Sychar. It is the site of Jacob’s well that is first mentioned in Genesis. There we would meet a woman, tall, attractive, and obviously with a mind of her own. She is of Samaritan extraction and, therefore, hated by the Jews who consider her racially and ethically inferior. She tells of the day that she met Jesus at high noon beside the well. She had come there in the heat of the day because the village women, who came to the well early in the morning, shunned her. Jesus had asked her for a drink of water and a conversation had ensued. She was shocked that he, a Jew, would speak to her. Somehow, to her amazement, he knew about her four previous husbands and her current boyfriend, but he didn’t condemn her. Rather, he offered her a gift. He said to her, “I am living water….for you”. Her life had not been the same sense. Now she comes to the well every morning and she holds her head high.

From Sychar we travel northeast about another hour and a half to Tiberias. There we meet a man who fishes on the southern end of Lake Gennesaret. He remembers the day he took his whole family to hear Jesus speak. They traveled around to the other side of the lake until they came to a grassy hillside where there was a huge crowd gathered. They found a place to sit and the children raced around and played with the other kids. Jesus spoke to them about something he called “the kingdom of God”. He talked longer than expected and he healed the sick, touching each and every one of them. It was late when they finished and they were hungry and Jesus had them sit down and he took some bread and a few fish and, somehow, he fed all of them. And he had said to them, “ I am the bread of life…for you.” That fisherman thinks of that every time he breaks a loaf of bread.

Our camera crew makes its way back to Jerusalem. That evening we sit in a sidewalk café having a drink and watching across the way as pilgrims make their way to the Temple to make an offering. Our waiter remembers Jesus. He remembers the day Jesus healed a young man of his blindness. Unfortunately it was a Sabbath and the folks in charge of the Temple were furious. Our waiter remembers that young man because of what he said to all those learned scholars. He said, “All I know is that I spent the first half of my life blind and now I can see.” Jesus had said to him and others who were there, “ I am the light of the world…for you.”

Our camera crew interviewed some folks who came and went at the Temple, asking if they remembered Jesus. One man, who refused being filmed, said he remembered how Jesus had blasted the Pharisees and Temple priests as “false shepherds”. The next day we spotted a Bedouin shepherd with his flocks of goats and sheep and we watched him. Some of our crew had never seen a shepherd. That Bedouin had names for every one of those animals. He’d whistle in a peculiar way and they would follow him. At nighttime he separated the goats from the sheep and put the goats in a cave. He covered the entrance with brush. He used brush and scrap wood to make a small corral and he placed his bedroll at the entrance to the corral so that he became a living gate. What Jesus had said at the Temple the day after he had given sight to the blind boy began to make more sense. He had said, “ I am the Good Shepherd…for you.” And he went on to say, “I am the gate to the sheepfold…for you.”

The next day our cameraman finally found a couple of the disciples who had been with Jesus. They weren’t too interested in talking about the arrest and trial and execution. They hadn’t handled themselves very well that night. One of them, Thomas, told his story, however reluctantly. He talked for a long time about their last meal together. What he emphasized was what Jesus had said that night and how it didn’t make any sense at the time. Jesus was acting sort of strangely that night and he had said to his friends, “ I am the way and the truth and the life…for you.” Thomas said, That didn’t make any sense to me and I told him so.” And all he did was to look around the room at each one of us and said, “I am the vine and you are the branches…each of you.”

Thomas told us later that it began to make sense after the resurrection, after they had experienced him in the here and now. You see, that’s what “I am…” means, “in the here and now, in the present.” When God told Moses to go to Pharaoh and demand the release of the Hebrews, Moses had asked, “Who should I say sent me?” And the voice at the burning bush replied, “Tell him I Am sent you.” What he was saying was, “I am the living God who is in charge.”

As our camera crew was getting ready to go back to the airport we drove three miles down the road to the village of Bethany for one last interview. We stopped at the home of two sisters named Mary and Martha and their brother Lazarus. Lazarus is quite the local hero since Jesus called him out of his death tomb. Unfortunately Lazarus doesn’t remember much about it and wasn’t a good interviewee. But Martha, she was the wrap-up interview. She remembers that day well. She’s embarrassed to remember that she was afraid her brother had begun to decompose. What she really remembers however, is what Jesus had said to her and everyone else. Do you remember? He said, “I am resurrection and life…for you.” Amen