JD
Vance came from Middletown, Ohio. He
grew up in a poor, dysfunctional family.
His single mother abused drugs and had a different boyfriend about every
month. His grandparents abused alcohol
and fought – once his grandmother shot his grandfather. Although there were definitely bright spots,
they were a mess. After graduating high
school, JD enlisted in the marines because there was something in him that was
reaching out for something better.
He
went into boot camp a soft, pudgy teenager.
The first day he went through the cafeteria line and took a piece of
cake for dessert. His drill instructor
stepped in front of him, looked him up and down, and said, “You really need
that cake, don’t you, fat-ass?” He
smacked the cake to the floor. JD bent
down, cleaned up the mess, and threw it out.
He never again took a piece of cake.
He
went into Marine boot camp and lost his identity. He says, “From the day you arrive, no one
calls you by your first name. You’re not
allowed to say ‘I’ because you’re taught to mistrust your own individuality. Instead you refer to yourself as ‘this
recruit.’”
When
he finished boot camp he was 45 pounds lighter and held himself with pride and
new confidence. People didn’t recognize
him anymore. Boot camp had changed him,
inside and out, and redefined him.
JD
wrote about it in his book, Hillbilly
Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and a Culture in Crisis. He is now a Yale-educated lawyer, something
he didn’t even know was possible when he was a kid in Middletown. He gives the Marine Corps much of the credit.
But
boot camp comes in many different forms, and the Lenten experience of boot camp
for the soul has the potential to redefine you as well.
The
stories we heard today are stories of being redefined in the eyes of the world
by the power of God. And how surprising
this redefinition tends to be. In the
story David who is anointed by the prophet Samuel, no one sees this happening –
even Samuel. And in the story of the man
who was blind from birth, and is given his sight by Jesus, no one sees this
happening – not his parents or anyone else.
The
conversations that follow this dramatic healing are the bulk of this
story. The healing itself is quite
undramatic – a little spit, a little mud, and there you go. But that is where the trouble begins.
People
refuse to believe that he is the man he says he is. Not surprising. Just like JD after his boot camp
transformation, this young man doesn’t appear the same as he did. What’s more, the fact that he can now see
seems to defy the laws of nature. How is
it even possible that he is the man he says he is?
But
that is only the beginning of the trouble.
Once the Pharisees get wind of this, they are feverishly working to deny
the truth of it. It can’t have happened
because Jesus is clearly a sinner (he heals on the Sabbath) and God doesn’t
work through sinners. It can’t have
happened, so they refuse to see what has happened. They eventually are at such a loss, they
simply walk away.
Change
can have these effects on people. When
they challenge our beliefs and expectations, we might simply refuse to see what
our eyes are seeing. This is blindness,
Jesus says.
And
there is the irony in this story: the
only person who can see is the blind man.
Those who have had sight their whole lives are unable to see, or accept,
who it is who stands before them in the person of Jesus. But the one man who has never in his life
seen anything before, looks at Jesus and accepts him for who he is. Maybe it is because he has never seen anything
before. He doesn’t have a lifetime of pre-conceptions about things that infect
his ability to see.
Think
about how much our preconceptions affect our perceptions. Think about JD’s story: the pudgy, insecure
boy from the dysfunctional, crazy family could not be the strong, confident
young man who stood before them now.
Think about David’s story: the small, young boy who watched the sheep
out in the pasture while others did more important things could not be the king
of Israel.
Think
about a time in your life when you were changed – perhaps when you left home to
go to school, or the military, or get married – and you had the chance for the
first time to redefine yourself. No
longer would your family define who you are.
Spiritual
exercise gives us room to live into God’s definition of who we are. Even more, they enable us to redefine for
ourselves who God is in our lives. Have you
ever imagined that God is the very air that you breathe?
In
many languages spirit is the same thing as breath. The Latin word spiritus means breath. The
Greek word pneuma and the Hebrew word
ruah both are used to indicate the
Holy Spirit as well as to mean breath or wind.
To think of our breath as the same thing as the Spirit – can it be that
God is as close to us as our very next breath, and that being with God is as
natural as breathing?
The
oldest name we have for God is the sacred name Yahweh. And it is believed by some that this name
Yahweh is merely an approximation of the sound of breath. The name of God is the breath of life. God is not watching us from a distance, but
God is as near to us as our breath.
Redefine
God in this way. And with each breath,
redefine yourself as being filled with the moving and living Spirit of
God.
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