The Man Born blind Lent 4 year A

4 Lent Year A 2017
March 26, 2017

    What an amazing story from today’s gospel.  As I read the story earlier in the week, I was struck by the amount of tension in the story.  On the one hand, there are the authorities who just cannot seem to believe that the blind man was healed.  They keep insisting that maybe he wasn’t really blind at all, that somehow the whole incident is made up, perhaps even made up to make them look bad, since anyone who believed that Jesus was the Messiah, would be kicked out of the synagogue.  I imagine that being kicked out of the synagogue was a big deal.  I doubt seriously there was another one nearby; it’s not like changing churches; the synagogue is a central place for worship, teaching and organizing the community; Not being allowed to participate in synagogue activities would mean being separated from the whole community, and likely result in being shunned.  I suspect that it was easy for the authorities to control people by holding their membership over their heads.  Community was necessary for survival, and everyone knew it.  If you were shunned by the community, then you were at their mercy.
    The man who was born blind is already dependent upon people for his survival; we know that he had to beg in order to live, and his unclean status probably affected his parents as well, which is why they were reluctant to defend him.  They and he were already marked as sinners, and I suspect they would do almost anything not to draw attention to themselves.  Well, as we know, especially in the gospel of John, Jesus is not all that subtle; and the closer he gets to his entry into Jerusalem, the less subtle he gets.  He not only heals the man of his blindness, but he does it on a sabbath.  Work was forbidden by sabbath law, which now makes Jesus into a bit of a criminal.  Now the man who is blind, his parents, AND Jesus are all sinners according to those in authority.  And who is going to question authority?  The man born blind has moved from the darkness of blindness into the light of being able to see; and his eyes, eyes that have never seen before, can see what those in authority can not see; he sees who Jesus really is, perhaps because his eyes are new; they are not hardened by seeing through lenses of greed or power; he has come from the lowest place, and so anything at this point is an improvement… and Jesus, who is the true authority, and the light of the world, has already said that the man’s blindness was not the result of sin, which is in direct conflict with what the authorities are fighting about…

And look at how much they fight.  More and more questions, more and more confusion, more and more denial of the truth… and the more it all goes on, the more eloquent the blind man becomes; listen to what he says:  “Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.”   He basically quotes the law to those who are the authorities, and they have nothing to say in return except that he is a sinner, which goes back to the original argument.

    And here’s an interesting point that I hadn’t thought about before; the man, when he was blind probably couldn’t be part of the synagogue worship… and now that he is healed, his belief in Jesus will likely still keep him from the worship of the synagogue, which as we have already seen, basically means he STILL isn’t part of the community now that he can see.  The authorities want him to give glory to God by admitting that Jesus is a sinner; and yet what truly gives glory to God is the fact that man is healed by Jesus…

    So much tension; so much insistence on being right by those in power… and it is clear, especially as we go deeper into John’s gospel that their power and their ability to see the truth diminishes as their fear increases.  And here, a man who was a blind beggar, who dared to believe that healing was possible even on the sabbath, now has more truth, more knowledge and is part of the greater community of disciples of Jesus.

    So much powerful imagery in this story, perhaps the most obvious being that of light overcoming the dark, weakness overcoming power, poverty overcoming privilege, innocence overcoming knowledge, humanity overcoming law.  One of the important parts of a healing story is the recognition of the sick person’s humanity; Jesus not only cares about this man, but he speaks to him directly, and he touches him, something that would not have happened without risk of being seen as ritually unclean.  And as he humanity is recognized, he in turn grows in his faith; he uses his new eyes to truly see in ways that others cannot because of their fear and greed.  The man had nothing to lose; and in his deep poverty and brokenness he experienced more than he bargained for.  He was truly healed in body, mind and spirit, despite the incredible controversy that rose up around him.

    Amazing things can happen for us when we bring our brokenness to Jesus; if we can be willing to suspend our dependency upon the idolatrous ways of the empire, if we can let our faith in God bring light into the dark places of our lives, then we too will be able to see things differently.  When the light of Christ illumines our path, there is no room for fear to take hold of us because we know who and what the truth is.  The blind man knew who he was in the eyes of the empire, and he chose to remain an outsider by believing Jesus was the Messiah, bringing him closer to God; those who thought they knew what the truth was, chose power and in choosing it, placed more distance between them and God.

    As we continue to journey with Jesus to Jerusalem, perhaps we too are being asked to suspend our belief in the empire.  When we choose the way of Christ, we are choosing to be made whole through brokenness, we are choosing light over dark, life over death.  Unlike the man born blind, we must work a bit harder to truly see, because we all have had a taste of power and privilege, which we cling to when we become afraid.  We all have something we must let go of to be made whole; are we ready to have faith? Are we ready to wash the mud from our eyes so that we might see him, and be guided more clearly?

   

2 Lent Year A

2 Lent Year A
March 12, 2017

    We believe in one God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth… We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God…

    You and I are going to recite these words together in a few minutes, and I know some of you are getting together and studying about this creed, known as the Nicene Creed on Sunday mornings.  This creed is the statement of our beliefs, our statement of faith.  The word Creed comes from the latin for believe; the sense of believing that we “do” when we recite the creed is not a superficial believing, but the kind of believing that for us gives us so much more than just information  It’s the kind of believing that we do at a very deep and personal level.  It’s the kind of believing that actually forms and shapes us.  The creed isn’t simply a statement of faith, but I would say it is also something that we pray, and as such it’s words are powerful and deeply meaningful.  We know that we cannot truly define who God the Father is, who Jesus is, or who the Spirit is; the Trinity defies all defining; but we have to do something; we have to have a way to talk about the Trinity, and particularly about Jesus.  It is an imperfect formula at best.  But it has served the church since the council of Nicea in 325 AD.  So, it’s a pretty important part of our worship and our teaching.

    Deep in my heart, I have always been glad that this creed, at least in the translation we use on Sundays starts “We Believe”.  For me, that helps take some of the pressure off.  I know that if I were to take a poll about what each of us actually thought some of these words meant, we would probably have as many different explanations as there are people sitting here.  And, honestly, that’s ok. 

    What do you think to yourself when we say, “We Believe”?  I have to admit, some days, I think, “I’m not so sure what I believe… “ I know others may be thinking the aren’t sure IF they believe… one of the reasons the WE is so powerful to me, is that on those days when maybe my own believing is a bit shaky… maybe I can be carried by YOUR believing.  We believe is one of the gifts of community.  Our faith is not just something that we do as individuals; it is something that we do and experience as a community; we depend upon each other to have support, ideas, and just to experience together in worship the grace that helps us to reconcile ourselves to God, to each other and to our neighbors…

    On Ash Wednesday, one of the things I talked about was vulnerability… that the ashes we received on our heads were perhaps a way for us to realize our own vulnerability as well as each others; perhaps ashes were a sign to us to be kinder, gentler, more loving with ourselves and with each other because God was certainly kind, gentle and loving, even when we didn’t feel it or perhaps deserve it…

    I read something this week that suggested that in order to believe one must be willing to be vulnerable…  God I hate being vulnerable.  But it rings true for me… .In order to believe, I must be willing to be vulnerable.  I began thinking about how I got to the Episcopal church.  My family was not a church going family.  We were superstitiously Catholic at best, like many ethnic families were in our neighborhood.  Toward the end of my Navy years, in my mid twenties, I experienced some pretty serious life altering events which led me to come to the conclusion that I should probably stop drinking and change how I was living my life.  I did the things that were absolutely necessary in order to get sober.  As I worked on myself and on my life, I realized that I needed something else.  It would take me a while to figure it out, but what I needed was Jesus… and just as much as I needed Jesus, I needed a community that would help me figure out my place in the kingdom, and would help me to learn and grow in relationship to them and to God.  I also had to figure out this whole vulnerability thing.  I had to let my community get to know me, but also, I had to be willing to give some things up in order to make room for belief in God, in Jesus and in the Spirit… in some ways, making room for Jesus was the hardest part.  I could sort of believe in a far off God that didn’t really give a hoot about my daily life; but… God so loved the world that He gave his only Son… oh boy.  This was different.  This was personal.  This was all about relationship and it was all about relationship with me… and like other loving relationships it was going to mean that I had to be vulnerable… in ways I didn’t really like; because now, God was getting personal and getting all up in my business with this whole Jesus thing.  In Jesus, there was a person to whom I could relate; a person whose story intersected with mine; a person who I came to learn went all the way to death in order to save me from it… and I learned how much God really loved; not something I really knew about as a kid….but God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son… gave his Son not to condemn, but to save the whole world…. The whole world… not just the parts that you or I like… but the whole world.  That’s a pretty big deal to say the least.  And for each of us to believe it, to act on it… we have to give up something of ourselves, we have to be vulnerable…

    Nicodemus wanted to believe… and he did believe some.  He was a good man trying to do the right thing… but he couldn’t quite let go of part of himself… I think in order to believe, we have to give up something of ourselves so that there is a place for God to be… and sometimes we get really caught up in protecting our inner selves so much that we forget that vulnerability isn’t bad… but it’s a pathway for us to get to know God, Jesus and the Spirit just a little more… Nicodemus was a smart man… and perhaps his smarts kept him from believing more; he couldn’t get past what he thought was SUPPOSED to be true, so that he could actually experience was was actually TRUE.  We are so much like him… the good news is that we don’t have to believe all at once, whatever that might mean, and we don’t have to believe all the same, and we can rest on each other’s believing when we aren’t quite up to it…  however, I hope that we are all willing to keep working at it; to keep trying to give up some of ourselves so that we can be vulnerable, so that in those tender and vulnerable places we might deepen our relationship with God’s perfect gift of Jesus who came so that we might be closer to God…. God so loved the world… how do we so love God?  What might we be asked to give up to make more room for Jesus?