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| Pr. Steve's Sermon - Having Our Eyes Opened |
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| Children's Sermon - Seeing God's Works |
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| Youth Bell Choir - Our God |
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| Solo (Lindsey Paradise) - Let Me, God, Your Help Be Finding |
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Sermon Notes from Pastor Steve...
"Surely, we are not blind, are we?" ask the Pharisees. And before Jesus can even answer, we all think, "well of course you are!" You guys are the bad guys in the story! You can't "see" anything, literally or figuratively. But we, on the other hand, who know the story, are totally enlightened and can see all the works of Jesus that you can't see.
That's the danger we face whenever we read this story, or stories like it. It's really easy to lump people together into "good guys" and "bad guys", and then to assume that we, of course, are part of the "good guys."
Yet in this story about the healing of the man born blind, Jesus doesn't talk about "good guys" and "bad guys." Instead, he talks about seeing and enlightenment, both literal and spiritual. And the kind of "seeing" and "enlightenment" Jesus wants people to receive is the ability to see "God's works" in themselves, in others and in the world around them.
That's tougher than it seems. And in fact, there are at least three types of "blindness" in this story. That is, there are at least three reasons that people can't "see" what God is doing in their lives. Sometimes, that reason is because:
- They literally can't see - the man born blind isn't physically able to see, and as a result, he can't see Jesus or anything that he's doing; moreover, his physical blindness has kept him from participating in most other activities in the society of his day, and so his ability to "see" is limited to the small corner of the world to which he's been relegated...
- They don't want to see - the parents of the man born blind are brought in and questioned about how it is that their son is now able to see; yet they really don't want to get in the middle of it; John makes the parenthetical remark that "the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue." That, of course, hadn't happened yet, but by the time John wrote this story down, confessing Jesus to be Messiah was a huge inter-family fight in many Jewish families; John was a Jewish Christian and wrote this down for mostly Jewish Christian disciples, and they were all caught up in the midst of that big family fight (and it's important for gentile Christians to remember this when we read it); and that means that, for many people, "seeing" what God was doing in Jesus would be a costly endeavor...
- It doesn't fit with their understanding of how God is supposed to work in the world - we usually think of the Pharisees in this regard; in their understanding, Jesus is "working" on the Sabbath. In their understanding, he's doing something so antithetical to the way God commanded people to live, that his works can't be God's works. But this is also the problem the disciples have. "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" In their minds, "everything happens for a reason", and God must have a reason. So when Jesus tells them, "that's not the way it works", and you should be looking for how God's works can be revealed in him through his blindness, it totally confuses the disciples. At least at the beginning, they really don't "see" either ...
And the danger of dividing the story into "good guys" and "bad guys" is that each one of us, from time to time, is all of these kinds of people. Jesus wants all of us to be able to "see" God's works in our lives, in the lives of others, and in the world around us. But like the folks in the story, sometimes we're blind to God's works because:
- We just can't see it - it probably isn't physical blindness. But it may be that the "darkness" of our lives or the world around us keeps us from seeing God's works. Sometimes, the burdens of personal pain in our lives, or the heaviness of the chaos and evil of the world so overwhelm us that we become blind to God's continuing goodness around us; and sometimes, it's hard to help others see God's works in their own lives because of the darkness that envelopes them; in those times, Jesus calls us to have our eyes washed again in the waters of baptism - not literally, but in the sense of refocusing our eyes on God's claim and promise on our lives even in the midst of pain and evil ... (as Luther pointed out in the catechism...)
- We don't want to see it - there are times in my life and in yours when we sense that we can see God's works. The problem is, those works sometimes call us to live and work in new ways that aren't always easy or comfortable. God's works may call us to care about our neighbors or speak out against injustice or re-order how we live. At those moments, I relate to the parents in the story - yeah, I sort of see it, but I don't really want to get involved in those works. Yet at those moments, Jesus is calling us not just to "see" God's works, but to respond to those works by being willing to live and act in new ways...
- God's works just don't fit our pre-conceived notions of how God is supposed to work in our lives - and often, it's because we have preconceived notions of who we are and who God is supposed to be. Last Wednesday, during our mid-week service, Pr. Christine read from a devotional by Richard Rohr, who wrote that spiritual growth - "seeing God's works" - is about letting go of images, "images that we built in our youth, images that solidified and energized our own self-image...those who worship the images instead of living the reality simply stop growing spiritually." Jesus' call to us, as to the first disciples, is often to give up the images of who we're "supposed to be" and how God is "supposed to work" so that we can experience the true and living works of God in our lives...
Jesus opened the eyes of the man born blind so that Jesus could show us that we all need to have our eyes opened to the works of God in our own lives, in the lives of others and in the world around us. And the first step in having our eyes opened is not to assume that we're seeing all that God wants us to see.
Instead, Jesus calls to be aware of how the darkness in life, the resistance to personal change and even our own ideas of who God is can blind us to God's works. But Jesus also promises to anoint us with his spirit; to wash us again in his baptismal promises; and to call us each day to open our eyes to a renewed vision of what God is already doing in our midst.
Amen.
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