Muddy Mess

The Rev. Joseph Winston

April 3, 2011

Grace and peace are gifts for you from God, the Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ.1
It might be impossible to find a child that does not like playing in the mud. Go
to a beach like Galveston and what do you see? From one side of the island to the
other, there are sandcastles of all shapes and sizes. The waves did not wash these
beautiful creations onto the beach. A child with a tiny plastic pail and a shovel
carefully built each one.
You do not need any tools to have fun in the mud. All you really need is a ready
supply of dirt, water to make the right kind of mud, and your imagination. Make
a soupy mix of mud by adding lots of water and very little soil. Grab a handful of
the goop and let it slowly drip out between your fingers. You can make towers that
you might find on a distant planet somewhere out in the far unexplored reaches of
the galaxy. Add more dirt or put in a smaller amount of water and now you have
1
Romans 1:7, 1 Corinthians 1:3, 2 Corinthians 1:2, Galatians 1:3, Ephesians 1:2, Philippians
1:2, 2 Thessalonians 1:2, Philemon 1:3.

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food that can be served in the finest dining establishments in this nation. On the
menu, we have chocolate pancakes, chunks of meat, and world famous mud pies.
Sit down and have a bite.2
Once you get past a certain age, you tend to give up playing in the mud and
replace it with something else. Only a very few college students make a Spring
Break trip to the beach just to build a sandcastle. They would rather spend their
time doing fun things like cruising up and down the Seawall looking for some ac-
tion. Not many teenagers create distant worlds from mud. They have better things
to do with their time. There are status updates that need to be posted to Facebook.
It would be hard to find a child attending junior high that still made mud pies. If
you asked why, they would tell you something like this, “Don’t you know that I’m
to old for that.”
When you see an adult playing in the mud, you expect them to provide a
reason why they are acting this way. There definitely is nothing wrong with either
a mother or a father sharing a mud pie with one of their children. That is fine. But
if this is all that the parents do, then there is a problem that must be addressed. You
would do the exact same thing if an adult continued to build towers and castles
out of mud. Grow up would be the nicest thing that you would say to them.
Mix in some responsibility that all adults must face and your concern about
playing in the mud dramatically increases. You might remind a college aged child
or grandchild that education today costs quite a lot today. You need to find a
2
Do not think for a moment that these simple ingredients cannot make absolutely amazing art.
Japanese children take the same three things: dirt, water, and imagination and make shiny mud
balls. Given enough time, a mud ball can shine like a precious stone.

2
summer job so you can help with your expenses and not spend all your time at the
beach making castles. Move up the corporate ladder and the distinction between
what you should do and what you do not becomes even clearer still. If you can
even imagine a serious financial paper reporting on a senior executive playing in
the mud, then you know what you would find in a report on the company.

In this economy, people who sit on the boards of publicly traded com-
panies need to pay close attention to increasing the value received by
the shareholders that invest in the company. Officers just do not have
the time to play in the mud and if they continue this inappropriate
behavior, they should be relieved of their duty.

Now ratchet all the way up and imagine God playing the in mud. How do you feel
about Jesus doing that?
You might have a sneaking suspicion that everything is quickly spinning out of
control. Your first hunch comes when Jesus makes mud out of spit and dirt. There
is no need to be delicate. That is gross. It is much more than that. It is a rude insult
to the man born blind. Next, Jesus grabs the man and what He does is not very
nice at all. He plasters the man’s eyes with the mud. The dirt hurts as it tears into
the man’s sensitive corneas. With all that mud causing unbelievable pain, Jesus
then gives the bind man two impossible command: go and wash. Tell me, with all
the agony he is in, how is the bind man to do this? You know how the bind man
must feel, “This is just another punk making fun of my horrible situation.”
For those people who like to think things through, this image of Jesus making
mud out of spit and dirt is a problem. First of all, the Word that called all of

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existence into being can without a doubt heal a man born blind by just saying
something. Nothing else should be required. That does not happen at all. Instead,
Jesus makes mud (And did you notice it?) puts it on the man without even asking
for permission. Then, Jesus sends the bind man to go and to wash the mud off.
Why does Jesus, who created the Universe by just speaking, need this kind of
response from one who has never seen anything at all?
No matter how you look at it, this is what faces us today. For the people who
experience the world primarily through emotions, there is a God in the lesson
that does not feel quite right. For those who like to reason things out, the Gospel
gives us a God that refuses to fit into our neatly arrange categories. What we have
instead is this. We have a God that plays in mud.
Now, it would be very easy to explain away all these problems you might find
in today’s Gospel lesson and that is typically is what one does. A sermon that
attempts to do that would sound something like this. It was necessary for Jesus to
make mud and wipe it in the blind man’s eyes. He had something like cataracts
and this is the only way that Jesus could cure the blind man.
This approach neatly avoids the issue that faces us by focusing in on the diag-
nosis of the disease. Once we know what is wrong with the blind man, we then
can prescribe an appropriate treatment. It follows that this way of looking at Jesus
moves Him into the category of the best doctor the world has ever known and out
of being the Savior of all. It also removes the impact of Jesus playing in the mud.
This is exactly what we want. We want to forget that there still is work for God
to do in the world.

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 We know what it means when we hear about God, water, and dirt. God is
creating. That is what the second account on the origin of the world tells you. God
formed you out of God’s Spirit, the dirt of this earth, and God’s artistic skill. To
make this mixture stick together, God added a little water. Some will say that the
moisture came from God’s Breath, like the water you see when you breathe on
a cool glass window. Others will talk about the mist that originally watered the
earth as the liquid that binds our dirt together. No matter how you look at it, God
made you out of mud of the earth and the Lord’s Spirit.
The mud in Christ’s hands made out of dirt and spit means our God is down
here with us in the thick of it. We all know that some leaders would rather not
get their hands dirty. So, when it is time to get something done, these so-called
leaders always find someone else to do what is required. How does that make you
feel? Second-class citizens just about sums it up, does not it? Leaders are not the
only ones that act like this. All the things in this world that vie for our ultimate
attention do the same thing. They make promises and when it comes time to put
up or shut up, what happens then? Dead silence. Jesus comes and does whatever
it takes so that you might have a full life.
Mud on God’s hands means something else. God is making required changes
in the world. It might be easy to say that God is righting all of our wrongs. Yes,
this is true, but as Jesus tells us this is not the whole story. God works here on
earth doing things that you would never expect to happen for one reason only.
God want you to see the Savior of the world. In other words, miracles still occur
today. God makes them happen so others can see Jesus just like you do.

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 Jesus also reminds us of something we all know to be true. It is even captured
in the way that we speak. Pitching in requires you to get your hands dirty. Here
at Zion we are blessed by many hands that do not mind a little bit of hard work.
Every pair is a gift from God that by God’s grace turns the dirt and water of this
earth into a sign that points others to Jesus.
Today, we have the privilege of recognizing one group of people that do not
mind dirt on their hands. They are the Call Committee. The call that God has
given them is one of identification. They first assess Zion’s needs. This requires
asking many difficult questions like, “How did we get here?” and “Where do we
need to go?” They then must take the answers that Zion gives them and accurately
translate them into the required forms. Next, the Call Committee organizes the
names of pastors that God might be calling to serve Zion. The names on this list
do not come from one single place. Some pastors come with the Bishop’s recom-
mendation, while other pastors are those that members know. The Call Committee
uses this list to review the pastors. Now, their identification skills are sorely tested.
While listening to what is being said and what is not, the committee members con-
sider if the pastor matches the work that God has given Zion. Finally, a candidate
is selected. Now, the entire church along with the pastor makes one final decision.
Is God calling this one to get their hands dirty at Zion or not?
You might want to believe that playing in the mud is child’s play. After all,
that is how one normally looks at it. Children are the ones who build sandcastles
at the beach. Children transform dirt and water into new worlds. Children serve
us meals made of mud.

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 The children of this world can teach us something that we too often forget.
The world is a dirty place. It expects everything of you. In return for your hard
labor, it gives you pain. What can you make from this sweat, tears, and the dust of
the earth besides an offering of mud? Who would want this muddy mess?
Jesus takes your gift of mud, formed from the pain of this life, and creates
from it new life.
“The peace of God, which passeth all understanding, keep your hearts and
minds through Christ Jesus.”3

3
Philippians 4:7.