1 Samuel 16: 1-13
NPMC
March 2, 2008
Psalm 23
4th Lent
Ephesians 5: 8-14
Anita Retzlaff
John 9: 1- 41
What do we see?
Grace and peace to you from God the Father of our Lord and Savior Jesus the
Christ. Are you the kind of person who sees things in shades of light or are you
someone who tends to view life events as various configurations of grey? In
other words is your first response to new situations and to people an optimistic
one or do you tend to see the trouble spots and the underside of things
instinctively? The gospel story today is the story of a man who is given his
sight in a miraculous way. Now, consider all the things that we just heard from
Holy Scripture. Is this good news for you or is it bad, light or darkness? The
story raises all kinds of questions that are very difficult to answer. Are we
comforted or anxious in its hearing? I have to admit that there is much in this
story that makes me immediately unsettled.
Right off the top I will share a couple of questions that spring to mind: Can
our sin cause physical infirmity? For example, when we do something wrong and
later on down the road receive a diagnosis of illness, are these two realities
related? Many of us have talked about this kind of scenario. The disciples ask
this question. A step down the road with that one is the question I still ask
myself sometimes, “Am I divorced today because of sin I committed at another
time in my life?” Or, there is this one: Did Jesus really restore the man’s
eyesight or was it merely a spiritual comparison and a teaching tool?
Why is it that we cannot happily hear the good news of this story and rejoice
with the blind one who can now see? Why can’t we just move along, giving God
praise for this great gift? Well, not much has changed over two millennia
because the witnesses to Jesus’ act of mercy are no quicker to celebrate than we
are. A whole host of other stuff gets in the way, beginning with the judgemental
assumptions of the disciples right at the opening of this scene. They ask, “Who
sinned?” and Jesus says, “You are asking the wrong question. This man’s life is
a testimony to the great goodness of God, so pay attention and find out how.”
This is a different angle completely. The blind man’s life, our lives, can be
evidence, not of sin but of God’s work, God’s mercy.
The miracle of the blind man receiving his sight is described in straightforward
fashion. The actual healing seems not to be the main point but rather the
various responses elicited by Jesus’ gift is the showstopper today. The
neighbours, the Pharisees, the Jews and the parents all have their comments and
questions in the wake of this particularly profound miracle. A man blind from
birth can now see for the very first time in his life. The neighbours’ response:
“Huh?” The Pharisee’s response, “Not on a Sunday, you don’t.” The Jews”: Not in
our backyard,” and the parents’, “We’re not responsible.” In the bright light
and beauty of the miracle of sight, all of these responses remain in the shadows
of darkness; and we can identify ourselves immediately in these for they are our
responses too.
We tend to ask the wrong questions, make the wrong judgements. All too often we
respond in blindness, in ignorance. In other words, along with the formerly
blind man’s parents, along with the Jews, the Pharisees and the disciples, we
abandon Jesus and the good news just when we should be catching on to something
new and wonderful. We slip into the darkness leaving the newly en-faithed and
sighted man alone to revel in the joy of God’s power. Predictably enough this is
a story about power – again!
It is pretty standard. There is power in an individual’s judgement of another.
There is power in our structures and institutions. There is power in numbers and
tradition and there is the power of God. Do we believe that God has the power to
bring sight out of blindness, light out of darkness and the biggie: life out of
death. And so we admit along with the disciples that we have the power to sin
and to ruin our lives and feel that there is nothing that can save us. We feel
hopeless and worthless and we want to give up. Or with the Pharisees we
unwittingly give away all hope of God’s intercessory power and we give that
power over to the structures and institutions we participate in and we put all
of these things first before the power and possibility of God. There is no chink
in that wall of hierarchies and protocol to let in any light.
Then there are the protestations of the Jews, the clan, the well-meaning ones
who celebrate close family ties but in so doing keep out anyone else who is too
different. Mennonites have a particular challenge here because many of our
parents and grandparents survived severe distress in Russia and it has been the
strength of clan structures that have kept us alive as a denomination. However,
when the threat is no more and we are strong, we have to learn how to open
ourselves to the stranger and even to the enemy and invite them in to our
fellowship and in to our hearts. The Jews expelled the new Christians from the
synagogues. Do we get the connection?
And finally, the parents of the once blind son, those most closely related to
him, take a giant step back from his new-found joy. Afraid of the rest of the
clan, they wash their hands of any responsibility for their son, his healing and
his interest in Jesus.
Do you see that none of these witnesses to God’s gift, want it? Instead of being
happy for the in breaking of God’s love, they are fearful and threatened by it.
The disciples don’t really expect to experience God’s grace at all. The
neighbours can’t explain how it happens. The Pharisees are ticked because their
rules are being ignored. The Jews represent those who don’t believe that
anything right can happen outside of the clan and the parents don’t want to be
implicated in something that they can’t explain even though it is a beautiful
thing that has happened to their very own son.
In spite all of this ambivalence, the one who is the recipient of God’s grace,
the man born blind, has been urged on a journey, a dizzying journey of discovery
throughout which he testifies eloquently of his experience of Jesus. After a
lifetime of blindness, he sees. Saved from the realm of darkness he is freed for
a life in the light. The newly sighted one interprets the richness of his
experience in the process of responding to the bullying of his interrogators.
Astonished by what has taken place; he opens himself to the possibility that it
is the power of God that has changed his life. No one else travels that road
with him. Everyone else remains in darkness, blind to the working of God even
though it happens, in their community, among their own people and right before
their very eyes.
What do we see? I think it comes down to one question: Do we believe that God
works grace or that God works condemnation: that interplay of light and dark?
Are we inclined to see this story from a negative perspective and threat or do
we see the joy and the new possibility? For when we truly believe that God works
acts of grace and light, response is required. First it means that we expect God
to work in our lives and in the lives of others around us. We live with the
expectation that the gracious, loving spirit of God is to be found in our
friends, in our communities, in the lives of strangers, even enemies and in
ourselves. We open ourselves to wild and wonderful possibility.
From expectation we move to awareness. We actually look for the Spirit of God at
work and we do our part in anticipating and understanding God’s good work. In
the struggles that we all have, we look for the redeeming acts of the love of
Jesus. We will see what we look for, that to which we open ourselves. And as
such then, the church, that institution of which we are all a part, for we have
all gathered here today, our church opens itself and becomes flexible,
adaptable, to the mission call of Christ. Our mission is not to maintain our
structures according to a rigid mold but to use that structure to assist in the
work of God, the one who sent Jesus to show us this work.
What is that work? Well we have lots of challenges before us in 2008. We have
principalities and powers to stand up to and send scurrying back into the
darkness from whence they come. The media traffics in fear and the absurd these
days just to get our attention, our compliance and our support. Let us not be
seduced. Our world is at war with itself because the starkness between those who
are wealthy and those who are poor is becoming more pronounced and obvious to
everyone. Our children are growing up learning to trust no one. We leave
diplomacy behind and speak with guns. Terror tactics are being used by the
powerless and the powerful. We are letting ourselves be sucked into the myth
that peace can be achieved through violent means, that we give up our lives to
fight and that we are naively misguided if we choose to give up our lives to
make peace. We are at risk of losing faith in God’s grace, expecting only
darkness and struggle.
We must be opened enough to let the light in. That takes faith and faith is
simply the God-given ability to ask the compelling questions and to trust that
the heart of God is love. For that we need our church community - the community
that nourishes our lives of faith in study and support and discernment in
difficult times. We have been given what we need; the grace and the love of God,
the wisdom of the Spirit through scripture and prayer and each other, the Body
of Christ, wide-eyed and opened to receive the gifts of Jesus our Lord. AMEN