One Sunday I went home feeling great about the services that morning. The hymns and offertory music were beautiful and on point. The readers read well.  The prayers were earnest. Attendance was strong and the sermon seemed to have hit home well. It was a very blessed day.  After almost everyone had left, I went to my office to take care a few things before heading home.  But there was trouble.  A nasty computer virus had entered my computer.

Viruses are bad, but this one really scared me because the message said: Infected registry. That’s really bad. Here’s why. Everything we do with a computer, all the programs and documents, are in the operating system. The registry is all the stuff your computer does right when you turn it on, before your home screen even pops up.

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I asked the children, what’s going on outside? I’m sure if I asked that to this group, we would come up with a lot more! We’ve got all manner of issues going on locally, and in the world. Crime. Traffic. Tariffs. Wars. Hostages. We see all manner of trouble, and we have no control over it.

 

In today’s gospel, we have a story with a story. Inside we have the scene with Jesus, Lazarus, Martha and Mary and Judas among his other disciples. But in order to understand their gathering, we need to look at what’s going on outside in their world, beyond the walls of the house. And we need to consider what happened before this moment and what is to come. I’ll set it up for you!

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I need two volunteers this morning. First, is there anyone here who has perfect or very good vision without glasses or contacts? Second, who has the worst vision and is wearing glasses?

If we take the strong glasses off of the person who needs them, they cannot see properly. Likewise, if we put strong glasses on otherwise good, strong eyes, they cannot see properly either. It isn’t a matter of effort; each can try as hard as they can, but that won’t help much if at all. We cannot see unless our perspective is correct. And we really do not see the world the same way.

In this morning’s Gospel, Jesus is trying to teach the Pharisees and scribes a crucial lesson about perspective. They are criticizing Jesus for eating with sinners. In their view, they lived by standards set by God. “Those people did not and do not. We live by them, they don’t.” That seems very straightforward to them, but clearly it is not.

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