March 30, 2014
We’re Not Blind Are We?
- 1 Samuel 16:1-3
- Rev Ruth Chadwick Moore
Today’s gospel lesson is about a healing miracle by Jesus. But don’t you think it’s hard enough for us to see and understand the ordinary in our lives, let alone a miracle? Most of us have grown up in a culture and society that trains us to make quick decisions and evaluations. So we evaluate products quickly, situations quickly and even people quickly. It is a skill that is often necessary in the 21st century and most of the time it benefits us as human beings and it helps us to survive to live longer and grow older.
We have also been taught to search for the strongest and the smartest people. We have learned how to investigate situations and to figure out why something happened. We are encouraged to find the people, the places and the things that help us become more efficient, more successful, and more powerful – to be the fastest and the strongest we can be. It’s called survival of the fittest. American society encourages this way of thinking and living. But sometimes that way of living can blind us.
This week we see the prophet Samuel getting instructions from God to find the next king of Israel. He is told to go meet Jesse and to anoint one of his sons as king. Samuel meets all of Jesse’s sons and he kept looking for the smartest or strongest or fastest or most successful of them all – and then one by one God tells him to keep looking. Samuel, like most of us, was in the habit of only seeing with his eyes. But God was asking Samuel to see the way God sees. And God sees all kinds of things differently than we do.
In our gospel lesson we hear about people failing to see the miracle of sight restored because they are too busy looking for something else. Jesus heals a man blind since birth. It was the common understanding of the time that this man’s blindness was punishment for sin – either his or his parents. The crowd asks how this man’s sight is restored. Then the Pharisees want an explanation. And then they pass judgment – because who could do this on the Sabbath? Even the blind man’s parents don’t rejoice in his gaining sight! They are too afraid to even talk about the healing because they don’t want to get kicked out of the synagogue.
But the blind man learned and then he knew one thing for sure – now he could see. Everyone else is too busy looking for something else to really see his restored sight for the miracle that is was. It seems like there are none so blind as those who will not see. That seems to be the irony of this gospel lesson. The blind man receives his sight, but everyone else in the story loses theirs – not their physical vision, but their capacity to believe and understand what they have seen.
But we’re not blind like that are we? We would never believe someone was born with a congenital challenge because they were sinful would we? We would never really look at a blind beggar and then not know who he was once his sight was restored would we? We would never criticize someone who healed or helped someone on the Sabbath would we? We would never get so wrapped up in our own beliefs and sense of holiness that we couldn’t see God at work would we?
Like the jars that we were asked to leave behind at the well last week – jars that interfered with our relationships, or kept us angry or anxious, or were jars of selfishness or guilt, there are so many things in life that can keep us from living and loving the way God intended for us. There are so many things that can blind us.
Our background can blind us. Our privilege can blind us. Our skin color can blind us. Pride can blind us. Past failures can blind us. Just like the disciples, along with most people of their day, many of us still believe that sin and sickness go together.
Fear can blind us. Just like the blind man’s parents, we don’t want to be exiled from our communities. As our churches change and challenge some long held beliefs many churches threaten to leave their denominations if things don’t stay the same. Such power can blind us to the healing power of God.
Judgementalism can blind us. The church is not a place to dissect miracles, turned the healed into the accused, or to question the grace of God in people’s lives. But that is what the Pharisees are doing here – they have a problem with a healing on the Sabbath. It is a violation of their rules. The Pharisees are more concerned about maintaining ritual righteousness about Sabbath-keeping than to love a fellow human being and rejoice in his wholeness. It is the spiritual blindness of the Pharisees, not the physical blindness of the beggar that forms the heart of this story.
And before we get too high and mighty about ourselves versus the Pharisees, Barbara Brown Taylor reminds us that one reason we don’t like them is “because they remind us of ourselves. However much we prefer the role of the blind man, we are not naturals for the part. We are not outcasts, most of us. We have not been set outside the community for our sins. We are consummate insiders – fully initiated, law abiding, pledge paying, creed saying, members of the congregation of the faithful – or in shorthand, Pharisees.”
I’m a Pharisee. Teri has told you that before in a sermon. I’m a rule follower. I like to do things a certain way and have a hard time being flexible with change. I like rituals and order and sameness. It makes me feel secure and helps me to know how to live my life. In the life of the church we can also be Pharisees. How many times have we said, “We have never done it that way before?” How many times have we said, “I don’t want to learn new hymns?” How many times have we said, “Children make too much noise in worship?” How many times have we become impatient because someone took too long to walk up to receive communion? And for me personally I can’t tell you how many times I have thought, “Well shoot, if they would just do things my way everything would be fine!”
It is often when we are certain and think we have all the answers that we are blind. We grasp onto our certainty – grasp firmly to the way we think things should be and how we should do them – and then we cast aside anyone that doesn’t fit our way of being and doing. It’s like we draw a line in the sand and say, “We just can’t go any further, or change anymore, or accept new ways of thinking – it is too hard and we have to have rules and guidelines and morals because if we didn’t the world would go to hell in a hand basket and then where would we be? But in that certainty, and in drawing those lines in the sand, we don’t allow God to work through people that we would never have expected. – people like women who have had 5 husbands and live with another, or blind beggars, or tax collectors, or adulterers or even sinners like us! The very certainty we grasp is our blindness in disguise. But when we encounter Jesus, when we really look, experience, listen and participate in his ministry, our eyes are opened and we begin to see as God sees. Those we thought were the least among us reveal God. And God’s compassion is so wide there isn’t anyone that is not included.
Acknowledging our own spiritual blindness can be embarrassing, painful and threatening. To confess your own darkness, your own fears, or your own failures is unnerving. Confessing your own blindness can make you anxious about what others might think of you. We know from experience and from the disciples and Pharisees in this gospel story just how cruel, condescending, derogatory or dismissive people can be towards the blind. Some people will kick you when you are down. We shoot the wounded.
But healthy people, people open to change and grace and the amazing power of God, try to befriend their blindness and make peace with it. That’s different than making an excuse for it. Spiritually-sighted people recognize that acknowledging their blindness is an act of liberation and not a confession of bondage. Perfection is an awful and oppressive burden to bear. Trust me I know. Only when we identify our symptoms can we experience a cure. The journey to the light begins when we acknowledge our own darkness.
I think I’m getting a little preachy here – kind of like a Pharisee. So to lighten the mood a bit I want to share with you a few sayings from a list entitled: “Great Truths About Life That Little Children Have Learned.”
- No matter how hard you try you cannot baptize a cat.
- When your mom is mad at your dad, don’t let her brush your hair.
- Never ask your 3 year old brother to hold a tomato – or an egg.
- You can’t trust dogs to watch your food for you.
- You can’t hide a piece of broccoli in a glass of milk.
- Never wear polka-dot underwear under white shorts – no matter how cute the underwear is.
These truths that the children learned, while they are funny, they point us to an even greater truth – with experience we can gain insight. Can’t you just see a little child trying to baptize a cat? But the point to me is clear: A dramatic, or might we say miraculous experience, can give us new insight, new perception and new vision if we keep our eyes open to it.
Jesus says at the end of this long healing story, “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.” (John 9:39)
“Those words used to sound threatening to me. Now they sound a bit more promising. At the very least they make me wonder how seeing has made me blind – by giving me cheap confidence that one quick glance at things can tell me what they are, or by fooling me into thinking that I have a clear view of how things really are, or where the road leads, or of who can see rightly and who cannot.” (“Light without sight,” Barbara Brown Taylor, Christian Century, March 24, 2014.)
During Lent we have been talking about how people’s lives have been changed because of an encounter with Jesus. What a wonderful thing if this Lenten season could be a time when we opened our eyes and our spirits to see the life changing, world transforming power of the fact that Christ came to take the darkness of this world upon himself. And as the darkness is taken into the light of Christ it becomes no darkness at all. May God give us the grace to open our hearts and minds to the life changing light of Christ so like the blind man we might see and worship the one who came to give us life. We don’t have to be blind, because when Christ dwells within us, and our lives are open to his life changing presence, darkness does not dwell in us. As John’s gospel tells us: “What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” (John 1: 3b-5) Amen.
Resources:
“Grounded and Rooted in Love,” Fourth Sunday in Lent, Year A, kcchurch.typepdad.com/blog.
“Jesus and the Man Born Blind,” by James W. Moore, sermons.com.
“Jesus Spit,” Fourth Sunday in Lent, journeyswithjesus.net/Essays/2011.
“Light without sight,” by Barbara Brown Taylor, Christian Century, March 24, 2014.
“Open Our Eyes,” by Linda Fernandes-Bailey, April 3, 2011.
“Seeing Again for the Very First Time,” lectionarysermons.com/march.
“The Gentle Healer,” by Dr. J. Howard Olds, sermons.com