Now I See (John 9)

Nicholas Klein might not be a well known historical figure, but you’ve probably heard a version of something he once said, especially if you spend a good amount of time online.

Klein was a leader in the labor movement of the early 20th century. It was in that role, while giving a speech in which he was encouraging his audience to remain steadfast in pursuing their demands, even in the face of often violent opposition, Klein remarked,

First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you.

This has become one of those quotes that resurfaces on social media from time to time, often detached from its original context, or even misattributed to another speaker.

Nevertheless, Klein’s statement reflects a certain truth about the human experience.

People who accomplish great things rarely do so without facing resistance and opposition. In fact, one might say that an accomplishment’s greatness is measured, in part, by what must be overcome to reach it.

If that’s true then the athletic accomplishments of Oksana Masters are among some of the greatest ever.

This month Masters dominated her events at the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Paralympic Games. Winning four gold medals, she raised her career total to 23 medals, making her the most decorated winter paralympian in U.S. history—an achievement as utterly and completely improbable as any story you’ve ever heard.

Oksana was born in 1989 in Ukraine, which was then a part of the Soviet Union.

Exposed to high amounts of radiation in utero, she was born with a long list of physical defects. She had “six toes on each foot…webbed fingers on each hand, and no thumbs. [Her] left leg was six inches shorter than [the] right, and both were missing weight-bearing bones.” (The Hard Part Out Lord)

Oksana was put up for adoption and spent the first seven and a half years of her life in a violent and abusive orphanage system.

She was an outcast among outcasts—the kind of life all too frequently treated as disposable, like a nobody whose life means nothing to no one.

However, one day before Oksana’s fifth birthday, Gay Masters, a college professor in Buffalo, New York, saw a grainy black and white photograph of her in a publication from an adoption agency.

Masters would later say that, upon seeing that picture, she knew that Oksana was her daughter.

“It was her eyes,” Masters said. “They just pull you in.”

From that moment, it took two long years to complete the adoption process.

Oksana was seven when she finally came home to Buffalo for the first time. Later, the new family moved to Louisville, Kentucky.

Along the way, nurtured by her mother’s love and support, Oksana grew stronger and fierce.

She was a competitive and active child, despite eventually having both legs amputated.

Rowing was the first sport that Oksana fell in love with. She even set a world record and won her first paralympic medal in 2012, but a back injury required her to give it up rowing when she was only 23 years old.

Grieving the loss of a sport she loved, she tried others—skiing, cycling, biathlon—and she excelled at all of them, too.

More records and medals followed, which brought Oksana more accolades and opportunities to tell her story. She became an author and an advocate.

She even made a trip back to Ukraine with her mom–visiting orphanages and wounded veterans, in her own words, “to try and show people in Ukraine that no matter what their circumstances, their futures have yet to be decided.”

Oksana has this drive, this fire, to overcome anything set in her path by anything or anyone and she wants to help others do the same. It’s a quality that our cynical impulses often dismiss as naive optimism, but animating someone who has been through so much, done so much, survived and endured so much, our better angels recognize it as genuine and powerful hope—a quality she learned from her mother.

Oksana writes,

For two years, [my mother] waited for me. She wanted me when I was five years old, but legislation in the Ukraine made it impossible for her to take me to America. For two years, she didn’t quit.

“Get a Russian baby,” they told her. “That’s what everybody else is doing. You can get a healthy Russian right now.”

They even offered her information on some Russian adoption agencies. But again and again, my mom refused.

“I just want my daughter.” she told them.

For two years we weren’t able to speak or communicate in any way. I only had one picture of her, but every day I would look at it. I would stare at the only photo I had of my new mom. I’d sit alone, in the dark, and tell myself over and over that one day things were going to get better.

I’d do it again when I lost one leg, and then the other. Every time I was hurt, or alone, or the future looked bleak, I would say the same thing: “It will get better.”

And in the end, it always did. (Live Better, The Players’ Tribune)

First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you.

I think the man at the center of our Gospel passage would’ve seen the truth in these words and celebrated the power of Oksana’s story.

John’s 9th chapter tells us about “a man born blind” who was judged and dismissed by many, but who Jesus saw, heard, and healed.

It’s said that Jesus and his disciples once encountered a man who had never been able to see. Making mud and then spreading it upon the man’s face, Jesus told the man to go wash himself in a nearby pool of water.

Then he went and washed and came back able to see.

After the healing, Jesus and his disciples left the man and continued on their way. However, with the gift of sight, our man would see for himself how judgemental and dismissive his neighbors could be.

First, they doubted him.

The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?” Some were saying, “It is he.” Others were saying, “No, but it is someone like him.” He kept saying, “I am the man.” But they kept asking him, “Then how were your eyes opened?” He answered, “The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ Then I went and washed and received my sight.” They said to him, “Where is he?” He said, “I do not know.”

The Pharisees—members of the religious establishment—were dubious of the man’s claims, too. They inquired so as to learn if this really was the same man who once was blind.

Once they were satisfied that it was the same man, they were less than enthusiastic.

First they doubted him. Then they criticized him.

Once the evidence convinced the authorities that a healing had, indeed, taken place, criticism about how the miracle occurred replaced their doubt.

It wasn’t the right time for healing, they said.

A holy man would know better than to heal on the Sabbath.

The authorities questioned the healed man’s parents, then gave him one more chance to denounce Jesus.

“We know that this man is a sinner,” they said.

He answered, “I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.”

They answered him, “You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?” And they drove him out.

First they doubted him. Then they criticized him. And then they drove him out of town.

That’s where Jesus found our man again.

Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” He answered, “And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.” Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.” He said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped him.

His neighbors had so little regard for this man, he was such a nobody, that not only could they not be bothered to celebrate his life changing healing, they actually counted it as another disappointing chapter in his disappointing life.

He was such a screw up that he couldn’t even get healed correctly.

But these labels that belittled and dismissed meant nothing to Jesus.

He saw the man just as he sees each one of us–as we really are, not as others define or even as we define ourselves.

He sees and hears the truth about us and he “loves us, gave his life to save us, and, even now, is living at our side every day to enlighten, strengthen and set us free.”

He also invites us to share the same grace we’ve received with others by pushing past the labels they’ve had placed up on them and honoring them as the beloved children of God that they are.

Jesus calls us to be his disciples and to continue his work—to see and hear our neighbors for who they really are and to love them.

Nicholas Klein once said, “First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you.”

Oksana Masters went back to a place she dreamed of escaping “to try and show people…that no matter what their circumstances, their futures have yet to be decided.”

The healing of a man born blind unleashed a firestorm of judgement and criticism, but the man remained clear eyed about what had happened.

“One thing I do know,” he said, “that though I was blind, now I see.”

May we, as the Church, take Klein’s wisdom, the power of Oksana Masters’ story, and the witness of John chapter 9 to heart.

With the confidence of those who are seen, heard, and loved by a gracious, merciful, steadfast God, may we reject every label that belittles, dismisses, and damages God’s children, so that we may see, hear, and love our neighbors just as they are–-just like Jesus.

Amen.

Image: Oksana_Masters_Rob_Jones_mixed_sculls_final_2012.jpg: Steve Selwood from Yate, U.K.derivative work: IronGargoyle, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

The Woman's Hour Has Struck (John 4:5-30)

March is Women’s History Month and in just a few weeks we’ll hold a concert here called “Satin Dolls: Unsung Women of Jazz” celebrating the voices of female jazz singers who, although well-known in their day, have faded somewhat from the popular consciousness.

In that same spirit, I want to begin this morning by highlighting the cultural contributions of a woman who played a pivotal role in the movement for women’s voting rights, but about whose legacy I, admittedly, know next to nothing.

I’m talking about Carrie Chapman Catt who lived here in Westchester County and who toiled alongside fellow suffragettes like Anna Howard Shaw, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony. Together, the risks they took, the case they made, and the small steps and victories they won along the way, led a movement from Seneca Falls, NY to Capitol Hill and state houses across the country.

Catt was a passionate and effective leader of the suffragette movement. She was even serving as president of their national organization in 1920 when the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, which states that “the right…to vote shall not be denied or abridged…on account of sex,” became law.

In the final push for ratification, Catt wrote an open letter to Congress that she copied and shared with politicians all across the country. That’s the part of her legacy I want to focus on for a moment. [Read the full text of Catt's address here.]

Catt wrote her open letter shortly after New York State granted women the right to vote, an accomplishment that really put the wind in the movement’s sail. She wrote with confidence and a sense of how far they had come and how close they were to victory.

The opening line pulls no punches.

“Woman suffrage is inevitable. Suffragists knew it before [New York granted us the right to vote]; opponents afterward.”

This confidence guided Catt throughout her message, as she expounded upon a basic point–we’re going to win, here’s why we’re going to win, and you should give us our win right now.

But near the end of the letter there’s a tone change. It’s not that she was wavering, she just remembered. She remembered the barriers the movement faced and the indignities of disenfranchisement, and she was a bit weary.

Catt writes,

In conclusion, we know, and you know that we know, that it has been the aim of both dominate parties to postpone woman suffrage as long as possible. A few men in each party have always fought with us fearlessly, but the party machines have evaded, avoided, tricked and buffeted this question from Congress to Legislatures, from Legislatures, to political conventions. I confess to you that many of us have a deep and abiding distrust of all existing political parties - they have tricked us so often and in such unscrupulous fashion that our doubts are natural.

These are the words of someone who has been lied to and dismissed one too many times to put on rose colored glasses.

Catt had seen some things and learned some hard truths about the world and its ways.

So she continued,

Do you realize that in no other country in the world with democratic tendencies is suffrage so completely denied as in a considerable number of our own States?...

Do you realize that when you ask women to take their cause to State referendum you compel them to do this; that you drive women of education, refinement, achievement, to beg men who cannot read for their political freedom?

Do you realize that such anomalies as a College President asking her janitor to give her a vote are overstraining the patience and driving women to desperation?

Do you realize that women in increasing numbers indignantly resent the long delay in their enfranchisement?

Of course, they all realized that what she was saying was true.

They knew it, she knew it, and she knew that they knew it, but she also knew that just knowing the right thing to do was no guarantee that politicians would do the right thing, so she ended her letter with a wise flourish.

Getting them to do the right thing because it was the right thing was probably a bridge too far, so Catt urged Congress to do the right thing because failure to do so might cost the members to lose their power.

"There is one thing mightier than kings and armies"--aye, than Congresses and political parties-- "the power of an idea when its time has come to move." The time for woman suffrage has come. The woman's hour has struck. If parties prefer to postpone action longer and thus do battle with this idea, they challenge the inevitable. The idea will not perish; the party which opposes it may. Every delay, every trick, every political dishonesty from now on will antagonize the women of the land more and more, and when the party or parties which have so delayed woman suffrage finally let it come, their sincerity will be doubted and their appeal to the new voters will be met with suspicion. This is the psychology of the situation. Can you afford the risk? Think it over….Woman suffrage is coming--you know it. Will you, Honorable Senators and Members of the House of Representatives, help or hinder it?

In his Letter to the Galatians, Saint Paul wrote, “So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up.” (Galatians 6:9)

Of course, the fact that Paul had to offer the people this bit of encouragement shows that even those who are most ardently committed to doing good and doing what is right can grow weary.

I think Carrie Chapman Catt proves Paul’s point.

Weary and tired, she did not give up and her movement did not stop, until women were seen and heard in ballot boxes all across this country.

We’ve read this morning Saint John’s account of Jesus’ encounter with “the Woman at the Well” and it makes me wonder.

Would Carrie Chapman Catt have clicked with her?

I think she would have and that they would’ve had a lot to talk about.

John tells us that on one occasion when Jesus and the disciples were travelling through Samaria, while the group went to town to buy food, Jesus sat down beside a water well to rest.

That’s where he met a woman who had come to draw water from the well.

Their conversation, which broke all sorts of customs and taboos, revealed the women to be sharp witted and a deep thinker. It also revealed that she had been married five times and was currently with a man who wasn’t her husband.

Men have pounced on this detail of the conversation for centuries to make all sorts of wild and harsh judgements about the woman’s character, but I think Rev. Nadia Bolz Weber’s insights are closer to the truth.

She writes,

We don’t know why she’d been married so often – maybe she was a teen bride widowed and passed along through a line of her elderly husband’s elderly brothers or maybe she was divorced for being infertile. The least likely thing is if she lured men into her trap, killed them after a year of marriage and just kept getting away with it. But who knows? All I know is that no matter if the wound was self-inflicted or inflicted by others or some combination of the two, she had a wound. Like we all do. (“Wounds and Wells; A Sermon on The Samaritan Woman”)

And that’s the point.

Our point of connection to the woman isn’t that she was some sort of super sinner, some sort of extreme moral failure.

She was wounded.

She was weary. This much treasured promise centers our worship today upon Jesus and the gracious way in which he seeks and receives all who would come into his presence. It’s an invitation at the heart of the Gospel, the idea that God loves and accepts us just as we are, that a person’s worth and dignity is never conditional upon the way in which they carry or present themselves, or how well they “keep it all together,” or what they’ve been through or lived through. And that’s good news because it’s often difficult, if not impossible, to put our best foot forward when we’re straining under the weight of life’s heavy burden.

Like the woman at the well, like the Church to whom Saint Paul wrote, like workers for justice in every age, we grow weary and long to know that we are seen and heard for who we really are.

Set against the backdrop of a rigidly patriarchal society, Jesus’ meeting with the woman at the well brings to mind a variety of issues including the way in which shame, shunning, and silence were then and are now used as weapons of oppression, especially of women.

But in seeing and hearing her, Jesus smashes these weapons with compassion, connection, and conversation, meeting the apparent inflexibility of every moment with transforming grace and demonstrating how God’s love can make a new way forward where such progress was once thought to be impossible.

And he promises to do the same for you and me.

Weary and tired, we are seen and we are heard.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Image: Malczewski, Jacek, 1854-1929. Christ and the Samaritan Woman, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=59732

Better a Fool for a Minute (John 3:1-17)

Regarding the temptation to not ask the question that one wants or needs answered, Confucius, the famed Chinese philosopher cautioned, “The man who asks a question is a fool for a minute, the man who does not ask is a fool for life."

This bit of wisdom holds in tension the consequences of two decisions—there’s the moment of embarrassment one experiences when admitting that they don’t know or understand something–to be “a fool for a minute”--and there’s the decision never to ask a question and to remain uninformed—to be “a fool for life.”

In hindsight, I could’ve used a little pep talk from Confucius when I was in middle school because that’s a time in my life when I allowed the fear of appearing foolish to keep me from asking questions that I needed answered.

I did well in school when I was a kid, but when I got to 8th grade, I needed to start studying and doing my homework, which revealed a problem.

I was in 8th grade and I didn’t want to study and do my homework.

By the time I realized the nature of my problem, however, I was in over my head, particularly in French class.

As my classmates were progressing with their assignments throughout the year, adding skills on top of skills, building upon what they had previously learned, I was stuck on square one, and I was too embarrassed to do anything about it.

I didn’t want to admit I had no idea what the teacher was talking about.

I didn’t want my friends to know that the things they’d figured out continued to elude me.

I didn’t want to ask for help.

And you know what happened?

I failed the class. I got an “F” and proved myself to be a fool, if not for life, then at least for middle school.

Even though I got much better at asking questions in school, I can’t say that 8th grade was the last time I allowed fear or frustration to keep me uninformed.

Even as an adult–for heaven’s sake, as recently as this week–there have been times when I wish I would’ve asked more questions and gotten more answers before moving forward with a decision.

And I know I’m not alone.

There’s an entire industry of coaches, teachers, and leadership gurus trying to help their readers and clients on this point, but it’s a struggle.

As communications consultant John Vaught notes, “For some reason it is easy to think that asking questions is far less valuable than doing actions — even when we don’t know exactly why we are doing it!”

And less we think there’s something uniquely modern about our willingness to charge ahead at full speed with incomplete information, a quote from Daniel Webster, an esteemed public speaker in the 19th century, reminds us there’s nothing new about this.

“How little do they see what really is,” Webster remarked, “who frame their hasty judgement upon that which seems.”

If it’s true that “the man who asks a question is a fool for a minute, the man who does not ask is a fool for life," then we really are very foolish.

From the wisdom of Confucius, to middle school studies, and online career coaches, it’s clear that there’s virtue in asking questions, seeking answers, and taking the time to make informed decisions, but we, like those who came before us, often struggle to overcome the temptation to have no greater priorities than protecting ourselves from embarrassment and trying to save time.

And then there are the circumstances in which external and coercive forces actively suppress questions and honest inquiry.

Political movements, religious institutions, domineering parents and partners—we can point to countless examples of systems like these–from rigid households to aspiring empires–that demanded conformity, reduced education to rote memorization, and made sport out of casting out the curious and non-conformists.

Sometimes the people are made to be foolish because of the fools in charge of them.

It seems probable that a wide array of internal and external forces like these were working to keep Nicodemus at home on the night he went out to find Jesus.

A leader within Jerusalem’s Jewish community at the same time Jesus was gathering followers and gaining attention, Nicodemus would’ve faced pressure to keep his distance from the man and his ideas, both of which challenged the status quo from which Nicodemus and his peers benefitted. But Nicodemus sought out Jesus, risking embarrassment and for worse to go to him in secret.

Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with that person.” Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” (John 3:1-3)

What followed was a verbal back-and-forth between the two about spiritual rebirth, the kingdom of God, and the Son of Man–topics that were not foreign to Nicodemus, even though the way Jesus tied them all together seemed to give him pause.

Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things? (John 3:9-10)

The conversation continued, but Nicodemus never had that “Aha! moment” or personal epiphany. In fact, the way Saint John tells the story makes us think that it ended just like it started, with Nicodemus quietly, secretly, moving through the dark.

But something significant did happen that night.

Set against the backdrop of secrecy and the pressure Nicoldemus felt to conform and go along, Jesus said something to him that would become an iconic summary of his message.

Many of us know it by heart—John 3:16—“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

Verse 17 is pretty good, too—“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

Even though John doesn’t tell us how their first meeting ended, he does give us evidence that it made a deep impression on Nicodemus.

That evidence comes later in the Gospel, much later, almost at the very end, after Jesus’ betrayal, arrest, and death on a cross.

John writes,

After these things, Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, though a secret one…asked Pilate to let him take away the body of Jesus. Pilate gave him permission, so he came and removed his body. Nicodemus, who had at first come to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred pounds. They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths, according to the burial custom of the Jews. (John 19:38-40)

First coming to Jesus in the dark of night, ultimately, Nicodemus was there as the sun was setting on a day unlike any other.

He was there giving, risking, grieving, remembering how Jesus saw and heard him, and recognizing, even in that sorrowful moment, a love that was more powerful than the ignorance of fools.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him. (John 3:16-17)

What questions do you need to ask Jesus, like Nicodemus did, under cover of darkness?

Questions about tragedies you’ve experienced or griefs you’ve endured?

Questions to help you make sense of the past or prepare for the future?

Questions that are, on some level, so basic that you’re embarrassed to ask them, questions like, “Are you for real?”, “What’s heaven like?”, “Am I a good person?”

Our guiding light this Lenten season is the conviction that Jesus sees and hears us.

Today, this light illuminates the story of Nicodemus for us. In the coming weeks it will lead us, again, to familiar stories about “the woman at the well,” “the man born blind,” and the scene at Lazarus’ tomb.

And as this light shines, as we open ourselves to this Jesus who sees and hears us, we learn that we are free to step off the path of pretense, embarrassment, and fear, and can start walking with One who desires that we be our real and honest selves—even when we honestly have questions that run against the grain of a go-along-to-get-along ethos—for it is when we come to him just as we are, and not how we think we’re supposed to be, that we truly begin to understand the depth of his love and the power of his grace.

Jesus wants to see and hear you, the real you.

Jesus enables us to see and hear one another, to be a real community following in his steps.

It seems probable that a wide array of forces worked to keep Nicodemus at home, in his lane, and, ultimately, in the dark, like a fool with his unasked questions, but he chose to go to Jesus where he was seen, heard, loved, and changed.

Jesus offers the same to each one of us for it is when we come to him just as we are, and not how we think we’re supposed to be, that we truly begin to understand the depth of his love and the power of his grace.

Thanks be to God for this Good News. Amen.