"You
groped your way through that murk once, but no longer. You’re out in the open
now. The bright light of Jesus makes your way plain. So no more stumbling
around. Get on with it! The good, the right, the true—these are the actions
appropriate for life. Figure out what will please Jesus and then do it. Don’t
waste your time on mere busywork, the barren pursuits of darkness. Expose these
things for the sham they are. It’s a scandal when
people waste their lives on things they must do in the darkness where no one
will see. Rip the cover off those frauds and see how attractive they look in
the true light of day." (Ephesians 5:8-14 The Message)
John 9:1-12 As
Jesus walked along, he saw a man who was blind from birth. The disciples asked
him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born
blind?" Jesus answered,
"Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God's
works might be revealed in him. We must do the works of the one who sent me
while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the
world, I am the light of the world." When he had said this, he spat on the
ground, made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man's eyes, saying
to him, "Go, wash in the pool of Siloam" (which means Sent). So he
went, washed and came back able to see. The neighbors and those who had seen
him before as a beggar began to ask, "Is this not the man who used to sit
and beg?" Some were saying, "It is he." Others were saying,
"No, but it is someone like him." He kept saying, "I am the
man." But they kept asking him, "Then how were your eyes
opened?" He answered, "The man
called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, 'Go to Siloam and
wash.' Then I went and washed and received my sight."
Did you know there are places where you can go to
have an ‘experience’ of being blind, without sight, relying on voice only, and
assistance of others. In “Learning to Walk in the Dark”, Barbara Brown Taylor
recounts her experience, in an evening called “Where the Blind Really Do Lead
the Blind” Let me read you a little – (Chapter 5 pp 97-100)
She goes on to talk about people who, through
surgical means, are able to recover sight – and find the sensory input so
overwhelming that they only feel comfortable if they can shut their eyes and
carry on as if they were still blind.
So physical blindness is a critical part of the
Gospel text. Maybe. The text tells us the man was blind from birth, and that
the Jews believed that the blindness was a result of sin – most likely his
parents. The sins of the parents are visited on the children, so to speak. So
Jesus says clearly no one sinned, and that’s not how God works. But, he says,
God’s work can be revealed through this man. God did not make the man blind,
nor did God intend that the man should be blind all his life, and forced to
live as a street beggar until Jesus came along and restored his physical sight.
How about reading the text in a different way? How
about reading the text as an allegory for human beings? Born into the kind of
world we are, where and how we live, what our experiences are as we learn. I
remember growing up as a child in Saskatchewan, knowing little if anything
about the internment of Ukrainians, Germans, Japanese-Canadians; nor knowing anything about
our First Nations peoples and their history – even though I lived in a town
where there was a residential school. I liken
the learning about these things to the dropping of ‘scales of blindness’ from
the eyes, about a new way of seeing the world, our history and our place in it.
And once our eyes are opened, we can either choose to turn away, or we can go
on to grapple with the new understanding, and let it change us.
Was this what the blind man meant? Was he truly healed
altogether? Was his blindness psychological rather physical? Did Jesus heal his
soul, or just his eyes? Or both? There are more questions than answers in this
text. And I want to leave you thinking about these questions.
Paul’s letter to the Ephesians talks about a different
darkness. I use this darkness as the one
surrounding churches in this time – what Barbara Taylor describes as the “great
cloud of unknowing”. As a minister, my email feed and Facebook feed has been for
years filled with ideas for ‘getting
people back to church’. Books and books have been written about being welcoming
churches, about making ourselves more interesting, about how to get people in
to the church. Out of it all have come some excellent ideas and excellent
music. By and large, however, the ‘let’s
make it popular’ movement produced thin theology and even thinner music –and in
the end, it hasn’t made a huge difference. Even the massive megachurches are
beginning to flounder, the big evangelical congregations struggle.
The line in Ephesians which leaps out for me is “Figure out what
will please Jesus, and then do it.” (and the corollary about not getting tied
up in busywork). I suggest the churches which have lived - and I use that word deliberately – not necessarily
grown huge, but ‘lived’, have clicked into
that. Instead of being bogged down by
the weight of trying to stay the same and hoping things will change, or trying
out every gimmick there is to catch people’s imagination about ‘church’, they’ve
used this as a ‘touchstone’ – figure out what it is that fulfills the message
of the Gospel, and what of that we can do in this place, in this community, in
this time. Isn’t this a good way to work no matter what the situation? So many
churches spend time figuring out what will please themselves without taking lots
of effort, at the same time telling themselves it’s ‘focusing on the Gospel’.
But is it? Or have they had a spurt of outreach and a sense of mission, and
then settled down to do the same things every year. Do we as individuals who
claim Christianity use this as our touchstone? Focusing on the teachings of
Jesus, the centrality of love. What would all our churches be like if the
teachings of Jesus were the measure for everything we do?
John’s Gospel story takes us right there – holding everything
up to Love as the measure – inclusive love, with no boundaries – not being
afraid to have our eyesight restored. The
man born blind had to go on with his sight, and endless questions – and a
completely different life where his honesty would be continually questioned. It
isn’t an easy road – but it is a road forward. It is, indeed, a calling out, a
calling to go forward, with trust.
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