Sermons for the Month
"Seeing the Light"
DATE: March 10, 2002
TEXT: John 9:1-41“To all of you Saints here this morning, grace and peace to you from God our Father, from His Son, Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit. AMEN
Again this morning we hear the story of a person whose life is changed, opened up, made new by an encounter with Jesus. And also included in the drama as the evangelist John presents it are some people who refused to be changed, refused to see or experience anything new in the light of Jesus' company. As Jesus and his disciples walked along, they saw a man who had been blind all of his life. Blindness was not uncommon in those days, and it was a devastating handicap. Unlike today, a blind person in that society was left virtually helpless, completely dependent upon others, with no prospect of a productive work life, and therefore no hope for marriage, home, and children as his only source of income would be begging, the social "safety net" of the time. To make matters worse, pop theology suspected that such a catastrophic disability must be God's punishment for some significantly serious sin; we hear Jesus own disciples speculating about it, thereby piling on the additional burden of an attitude that "you probably deserved what you've got." Jesus is quick to dismiss that little bit of folk wisdom, and then goes on to take charge of the situation, using it to demonstrate very vividly the awesome healing power of God, regenerating nerves and receptor cells, revitalizing neurotransmitters, recreating processes which had gone unused for decades. What a wonderful moment it must have been, as this man for the first time in his life could see the blue of the sky, the shimmering sunshine and the green of growing things, could look into the face of those whom he had loved, could see his own image in the reflecting pool! It was news so good as to be well-nigh unbelievable to his neighbors and family and friends. What a party they must have been putting together! And now comes bad news, courtesy of "some of the Pharisees," who were in charge of seeing that things were done "the right way." Because Jesus hadn't. It was the Sabbath Day when Jesus did his healing thing. God had commanded His people to keep the Sabbath as a holy day of rest, and the Pharisees, taking God very, very seriously, had formulated the rules and regulations which defined things you could and could not do on the Sabbath, so as to avoid anything that might possibly be construed as "work." Now, it's hard to quantify how much "work" is involved in a miracle of healing, but they knew for a fact that in this particular instance, Jesus had used a treatment that involved making some spit-and-dirt mud, or "clay," actually, and that was clearly a problem! Once you let someone make a little bit of clay on the Sabbath, someone else will take that as permission to make a little MORE clay, and then maybe a few pots or goblets while they're at it, and once you've done all that, what's to keep you from marketing just a few of them, just to people who don't have time to shop any other day of the week……and the next thing you know all the stores will be open on God's Holy Day, and there goes the whole commandment, smashed to pieces! Surely God can't want that to happen! And so the controversy commences. Well, underneath and intertwined with the surface account of the story is a deeper theme. "Blindness," or being "in the dark" are Scriptural metaphors for our inner blindness to God. We too are "born blind," inheritors of the sinful human condition that leaves us groping for direction and unable to "see" the Holy God and Merciful Father who's right under our noses. The only way we "see the light" is for Jesus, the Light of the World, to come to us and to re-create our damaged eyes, and to shine His light into our darkness. In the early centuries of the Church, this story was a popular baptismal text, as the candidates too would have their spiritual blindness washed away in the waters of baptism, by the power of the Spirit receiving the light of Christ, and so still today at baptisms we give candles lighted from the Easter candle, that little piece of the Light which is given to us so that WE not only can see the light, but then can walk in the light, and BE Light ourselves. What a miracle! What a party we can put together! Unless, of course, we'd rather be Pharisees. The Pharisees were, after all, the people who took their religion very, very seriously. They were the active synagogue-and temple-goers, the tithe-givers, the Council members, the ministry team leaders. They were the middle-class and upper-middle-class folks, respected in their community; the Pharisees were a whole lot like your average North American Lutheran. I don't know if St. John knew that he would be writing his Gospel for North American Lutherans, but he surely does hold up the Pharisees as a mirror, just in case we see in them something of ourselves. Because they display here almost in caricature one of the very tempting tendencies of good religious folk, which is the attitude that we have the handle on God; that WE have absolutely THE right interpretation of His Word and of His Will; that we have the only proper ways and means of worshipping Him; that we've always believed certain things to be true, and our congregation has always done things that way, and we really aren't interested in re-visiting the issue, thank you! God's worked very well for us for the last 20, 30, 50, or more years now, and we really think we have it down pretty well, this business of running a church.
I wonder if it isn't easier for God to get through to someone who is totally blind -- who has never heard much about God, or heard but never cared much -- than it is to correct the vision of someone who needs a new lens prescription, but whose once-corrected vision has blurred every so gradually that she still thinks she can see just fine?! In the story, the blind man didn't know who Jesus was at the beginning -- Jesus picked him out of the crowd and healed him. After he'd thought about it, the man concluded that Jesus must be a great prophet. By the end of the story, he could see Jesus as "Lord." The Pharisees, on the other hand, started out knowing perfectly well who Jesus was -- a trouble-making, irreverent, rule-breaker -- and they simply sought evidence to confirm the way they already saw things to be. At the story's end, they were just as much in the dark, or more so, than when it started. We ARE the ones who have received the light of Christ in baptism, who have regular opportunity to have our minds and hearts enlightened as the Lord speaks to us in Scripture and Sacrament. But the process must continue, and we dare not settle for a tunnel vision that causes us to believe that the way we saw God and His Will for us in the first grade, or at confirmation, or 20 years ago, or 6 months ago is the way it is, and we must allow nothing else into our field of vision to shake things up. The constant truth upon which we stake our lives IS the abiding presence of God, seeking us out with gifts of forgiveness and healing; but the Bible constantly speaks of New Creation, of God doing "new things' with and for His people. It seems as if God has way too much creativity to let us just stay our same old stale selves! Is God doing a new thing in your life this season, as the days lengthen toward Easter? Is He trying to call your attention to something you're not seeing in yourself -- something destructive to self and others that He wants you to give up; or, something good and lovely and pleasing to Him that you're not even seeing, and that He thinks the rest of us would appreciate, too? Is God trying to get you to look at some other person in a new way -- with new understanding, with the openness to listen; with caring that demonstrates itself not only in words but in actions? Could God be wanting to show you a new way to look at a situation, not as a problem or a hassle or an obstacle, but as an opportunity to learn and to grow in faithfulness, hopefulness, and service? Think about it; pray about it And I will do that, too. What is certain is that God is calling us to turn our eyes to Him; to see Him and to know Him as He makes Himself visible to us in Jesus, the Christ, that we might see the light of God's awesome creative power, and of His very great mercies; that we might walk by the light of His forgiveness and His gracious unconditional love; and that we ourselves might BE the very Light of Christ, glowing with His presence in our lives and radiating that fiery warmth and light into the lives we touch. AMEN