Lent 4 Cygnet JSM Seeing the light

John 9;1-49

You might well wonder what Mr. Bean has to do with today’s readings

The readings for today are all about seeing the light, Revelation, the guidance of God.

We see Samuel anointing David through God’s guidance after seeing all of Jesse’s sons, the tall the dark and the handsome, in every way the apparent leadership material for the role of king. “Do you have any other sons” Samuel had to ask. Yes but it is just David, the youngest who is a shepherd. David, God’s chosen who was to be the father of modern ancient Israel.

Paul tells us that we should live in the light, that we are the light in Jesus.

This brings to mind Mr. Bean. You might be familiar with Mr. Bean being dropped into view in a spotlight and being wholly within the light. It is not so hard to imagine ourselves being within the light of Christ in a similar way. When we choose to wander away from the light we are outside of Jesus protection and guidance because we have chosen that path. We can move back into the light with repentance and be restored through forgiveness in the Grace of God. Paul tells us that we should choose light. To avoid the ways of darkness because that is how we were before we belonged to Christ.

These two readings about sight, light and insight support the gospel in which the blind beggar who was born blind receives his sight and then, even much better receives spiritual sight as well.

He is contrasted starkly by the Pharisees who demonstrate severe spiritual blindness in their determined attempt to defuse the threat they perceive in Jesus.

The reading goes through different phases, firstly addressing the question  of whether sickness is hereditary or not. Jesus makes it clear that neither the beggar nor his parents were responsible for his blindness, but that brokenness gives the opportunity for God’s glory to be revealed.

The blind man is a good advocate for Jesus, even before he has the second encounter with Jesus where he receives his spiritual sight he knows that Jesus is a prophet from God.

For a poor man, uneducated and very much on the fringes of society, he is able to out debate the Pharisees firstly by pointing out that such healings only come from God so it is simple to deduce where Jesus is from. He knows that Jesus’ power is from Heaven whilst the Pharisees are questioning even his geographical origins.

When pushed even further about his own opinion of how Jesus accomplished the healing, the man commits himself to Jesus by asking the Pharisees, do they want to become his disciples also.

Like his parents, he must have known that by opposing the Pharisees that he would be excommunicated. Having already spent his whole life in a state of excommunication, one would have thought that the last thing he would choose to do was to throw away the possibility of normality but he did just that.

He had not even had a day of getting used to not being a reject and yet he chose to become a reject from mainstream society because he knew Jesus had freed him from blindness and that Jesus power came from God.

It is interesting as an aside the sequence in which these events unfolded. Jesus took pity and healed the man without any bidding from the blind one.

Jesus healed on the Sabbath and used spittle to make the paste to smear on the mans eyes. Both would knowingly bring the wrath of the Pharisees as being contrary to Mosaic law.

The man professed to being a disciple of Jesus on the strength of his healing at which stage Jesus had not revealed himself as the son of man which must have been equivalent of announcing himself as the messiah. The restored man had no compunction in accepting Jesus word that he was the messiah. “Lord I believe” and he worshipped him.

At this point in his journey to the cross, Jesus revealed himself. In a similar way to God revealing David as the King elect, God revealed Jesus to be the messiah who would die on the cross.

It was obviously much more important to the now seeing man to commit to Jesus than to conform to the social and political mores of the day.

He had seen the light and how appropriate that is to us on our Lenten journey.

As our trip to and through the cross continues, we have heard about being born again through the exchange with Nicodemus, and we have heard the witness of the Samaritan woman that Jesus is the Christ.

In both those encounters we have seen how important it is to let go of all which inhibits us, all that holds us back. Nicodemus could not see past his humanity and his learning, so being born again had to be spelt out word by word for him. The Samaritan lady was an outcast and knowing she was in the presence of a prophet, she was prepared to receive the understanding that Jesus was the messiah.

Again through an outcast of society the same knowledge is revealed. Nicodemus had to discard all he knew to allow this strange concept in. The lady at the well had lost all already, she was at the bottom of the heap, a social reject and welcomed a God who would accept her rather than push her away as did her society. The blind man also had nothing, then he had everything, or so it seemed, that is a normal life to enjoy, but he threw it away and accepted Jesus as his Lord.

Our Lenten journey may not be so dramatic but we do try to expose all that is dark within us to the light and pass it to Jesus cross and as we do just that, maybe this lent, Jesus is revealed even more clearly than before. Christian life is about being born again, new life, every day and Lent is a special time where we can deepen our relationship and sense of purpose with Jesus. We have infirmities, we have levels of brokenness which need restoration and Jesus invites us to unload and see afresh that he is Lord and saviour.

The 23^rd psalm is the perfect scripture to reinforce that restoration that God offers us, leading us beside the still waters to restore our soul.

Lent is a special time for Christians, however that does not mean that it  is only for Christians.

This blind man’s experience challenges us to think about how people in our society who do not have a relationship with Jesus might have as dramatic a revelation as did he have. And that is where we come in.

We might not be involved in the restoration of someone’s sight, but the gaining of spiritual sight is equally astounding so we can believe that what we do to help people into relationship with Jesus is dramatic.

We continually have the challenge to live as people of God. To shine the light. And that is usually just the first step in bringing people to ask us how we cope, what is the meaning of life for us.

Our Samaritan friend last week showed us the way, she didn’t try to convert anyone, she just told them what Jesus had done for her and she posed the question, could he be the messiah?

They went on, met and formed their own relationship and believed.

There was an Every day Light article last week which I posted on the blog which asks how can we get closer to God?

Praying was of course the first answer, reading scripture and believing that it holds truths for us in our everyday lives is another. Expecting those truths to be realised and sharing our experience with others completes the cycle.

Sharing, whether it be our knowledge of Jesus, our car or a few eggs doubles the value of the item and builds society.

Today we can unload our darkness to Jesus, we can enjoy and share in the seeing of the light in a new and refreshing way, we can believe in the changes that are happening in our lives through Jesus, our healing, our refining, our learning our growing and our growing closer to Jesus.

And we come back to Mr. Bean, having renewed our relationship with Jesus we are living in the light which comes from within as well as from without at which point we not only reflect light but generate light.

And we can go out into the world feeling confident and expecting and wanting to share and knowing that so long as we do our bit honestly, the Holy Spirit will take over and add to and magnify and complete our efforts.

May this lent be lightening and enlightening for us all, for Jesus Sake

Amen

Lent 4 John Cannell, Woodbridge

SERMON   SSSimon&Jude Woodbridge  Sun Apr.3 2011  J.K.Cannell:       John 9:  Seeing and Believing

Refs: Saint John by John Marsh, Pelican/Penguin1968; Laymans Bible Commentary, John, Floyd Filson,Vol19,John Knox Pr, 1963; New Bible Commentary D Guthrie et al,IVP 1970

The purpose of the Gospel of S.John, according to the beloved apostle himself, was written to produce faith in Jesus as the long-awaited Messiah, or Christ, and as Son of God.  John’s exalted Christology never detracts from his account of the humanity of Jesus.   This one story, in it’s several sections and characters, occupies a whole chapter in the Gospel’s 21 chapters, and is one of the gospel’s clinching examples of John’s teaching about who Jesus is.  The previous chapter introduced Jesus as the Light of the World and here is an example of what that means.  The healing miracles in this gospel tend to involve people who are in a chronic state, so Jesus’ acts of healing or restoration are seen to be very powerful.  What really marks this story is the detailed record of the discussions that the miracle provoked and the miracle that the discussion provoked.  I ‘d really like to set up this marvellous narration & story in a play.   I divide the story into 7 parts, as John Marsh does in his book Saint John.

Part 1.  Jesus is in Jerusalem.  He leaves the Temple and he sees a man, who probably has to beg, who has been blind since birth.  What else can a blind man do at that time?  At once the first discussion gets going.  His disciples ask whether the blind man had somehow sinned before birth or whether his parents had sinned in some way sufficient to bring this sad affliction on their son.  There was much topical discussion about the connection between suffering and sin.  It was a common idea in that society, well exercised if you remember by Job’s companions in the Book of Job.  It still is in some in fundamentalist religious quarters.   I also happened to get involved with that topic of suffering because of sin last Sunday when I preached on natural disasters and the often asked question  Why did God let the Japanese earthquake and tsunami etc happen (that has caused and is causing so much suffering).  In Luke 13:1-5 Jesus dismissed straight away the suggestion that the tower of Siloam that fell and killed 18 people was deserved by those people and their sins.  Here again Jesus dismisses at once any suggestion that this blind man’s sin (which would have to have been in the womb) or his parents’ sin had caused this tragedy from birth.  Instead He says the man had been born blind so that God’s power might be displayed in curing him.  That seems hard, but it was!  Indeed that pretty unexpected statement was the curtain-raiser on all that follows.  The man had never seen light.  It appears he was mature but still young, articulate, possibly in his late teens, certainly older than 13 which was the age of becoming “of age.”   He was well known locally (v.8).

Part 2.  From v 6 Jesus takes the lead for a little while.  The darkness in which blindness had kept the man led Jesus to describe the time of his own ministry as a “day” in which he must get on with what his Father had sent him to do, before darkness fell.  He emphasizes again, just as he had done earlier, that in his earthly ministry he was “the light of the world”.  Then he heals the man and brings him light.  And as we read on we see this real physical healing symbolizes the light-bringing effect of his ministry.  He mixes probably colloidal clay into a paste using his own saliva and spreads the paste as ointment on the man’s eyes.  (There are some medicines now that have a colloidal base).  “Go to the the pool of Siloam and wash it off and bathe your eyes.”   The man does so, and comes back, able to see.  Mark’s gospel twice reports Jesus using his own saliva, once in the healing of a deaf mute and once like this of a blind man.  Commentators say that Jesus’ healings mean the re-creation of the whole person spiritually as well as physically.  Signs are all about: Genesis 2 speaks of God making Adam out of the dust of the ground which had been softened by rain and mist.  Jesus speaks of people being baptised in living water, when people become incorporate in him.  Paul says if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation. 

Part 3.  This next section is especially vivid.  When the man returns in v.8 the neighbours are puzzled to say the least.  They ask him incredulously how it happened.   I imagine some were trembling at whatever amazing thing or miracle had happened.  The man was well known, perhaps a local fixture, a tragic case but one they were used to.   Some were so surprised they doubted whether it was the same man.   Some of the local crowd say it’s not him at all but someone who just looks like him.  Some said “It is he”.  And he says “I am the man”.  It was in the preceding chapter that John had used the great ego eimi  I AM Name of Christ, and here in a different style and context it is again.   Perhaps there is a sense in which the man can now join his Lord and say I AM, I really am.     John’s account contains quiet irony as the locals discuss this ‘new creation’ of a man remade by Christ.  Anyway the friends and neighbours keep asking him, “How was it that your eyes were opened” and the man tells them about the clay paste anointing his eyes, about stumbling off to wash at Siloam and then finding he could see.   “Where is that fellow now” they ask.   “I don’t know” he says.  At this stage Jesus is just another man to him.  It is still sinking in, despite the new miracle of light that overwhelms him, how amazing it is to be born blind and yet receive sight.  S.John’s story up to now is holy, reverent, low key.   

Have you ever had a miracle or experienced one?  I suspect the full meaning of it, the blessing of it only dawns on us slowly.  I remember in our previous parish perhaps 18 years ago the grandson of the great theologian A.W.Tozer came to preach and celebrate.  After the service a vision-impaired lady friend of ours could see clearly again and she wouldn’t stop squeaking, bless her.  Most people didn’t give thanks.  They didn’t want to believe that something extraordinary had happened to upset the even tenor of the day and the order and decency of the worship.  What soured the service for some was that the visiting priest had also whacked the Masonic Lodge, some of whom came to that church.  When the rector came back next day he was angry.  “If anyone attacks the Lodge”, he said, “it should be me, not some upstart from Melbourne”. 

On another note I remember back in Adelaide some of us christian teenagers praying ernestly for a mate who had just had a serious motor-scooter accident.  He looked quite dead lying on the road, blood seeping from an ear.   After a while Trevor became well again.  We were very uncomfortable then and thought we all must have exaggerated, and I confess the one thing we didn’t do together was to stop everything and kneel down and thank and praise God.   Talking of miracles, I remember back in 1960 (BM=Before Margaret) driving down the M1 motorway from Rugby to London in my 1935 Morris 8 Tourer (Sue) of which I had just finished replacing all the worn-out big-end and crankshaft bearings.   There was no speed limit in those days but I knew if I stuck to 50mph the engine would be happy and the oil pressure would stay above 45psi.  But after driving for an hour I found the speedo said 62mph and the oil pressure had sunk to 15psi instead of 45.  I had to drive up a hill at the exit from the motorway and then the little engine sounded rattly and very sick.  There was a good chance I wouldn’t get to the very important meeting in London at which I had to speak (which was to change my life), let alone get to Surrey afterwards to see my then girlfriend.  I stopped and prayed “Please Lord if I’ve busted or melted my bearing shells again, please hold that damage and let me make it there in time.  Please get the oil pressure up.  Please God of all creation, you’re the greatest engineer.   Please help me get there.”  When things had cooled I started up again and the engine seemed better and I got to the meeting on time.  Afterwards I got to Christine’s parents’ house OK.  On Sunday night I drove safely and slowly the 125 miles back to Rugby, driving carefully to spare the little engine.  As I turned into my lodgings there was a strange crunch and the engine stopped and wouldn’t restart.  Next weekend I pulled the engine out and took it apart and there was hardly any metal left on any bearing anywhere.  Sure it was a miracle, as far as I was concerned.  Eventually I gave thanks.  In fact I still do.  Only a little miracle but real enough!  Of course there’s others too, and I’d really like us all to share our experiences of miracles this morning.   I suspect for most of us for most of the time, daily miracles pass almost unnoticed and unappreciated.  How do you put up with us Lord?  Anyway the blind man came back with his sight.

Part 4.  In the next act in this drama v14 the people take the bloke before the priests and Pharisees, who were the leaders and rulers of the Jews.  It wasn’t unreasonable to interrogate him and he tells his brief story.  Always keen to discredit Jesus or anyone else who was out of their theological circle, they press him on how he gained his sight.  He tells them exactly what has happened.  Within a little while they have formed into two sides, one side claiming that “the man who did this cannot come from God, he did what is unlawful on the Sabbath, digging clay and kneading it.”  The other side argues “But how could such amazing signs come from a sinful man?”  They divide.   They ask the man himself “What do you have to say about him?”  The man has been listening to the debate.  Also he is settling down [who would behave calmly who can suddenly see after maybe 20 years of darkness] and he is beginning to form his own conclusions.  In that high company he is prepared now to affirm more about Jesus: “He is a prophet” he replies.   In one sense this is no big deal!  This confession is that Jesus must be a prophet used by God, like any prophet.  The woman at Sychar said that.  More insights will come but let’s not underestimate what’s happening now.   For the man has increased considerably his answer from the first time when he said: ‘I don’t know who he is’.  Now he is declaring that Jesus is a prophet, and a prophet is far senior to a rabbi and indeed to an ordinary Pharisee.   The man didn’t say “He is the prophet.”  Not yet anyway.   

Part 5.  From v 18 the situation hots up.  Now the Jews sat they don’t believe the man had been blind, so they call his parents who say  “We surely know he is our son.  We brought him up.  We surely know he was born blind.  We have no idea how he can now see, or who healed his certain blindness.  Ask him.  He is of age.  Let him tell you.”  We can assume the parents were simple people but they were not fools.  Also they were in a dilemma.  They were scared of the learned assembly of Pharisees, who had already let it be known that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be ejected from the synagogue.  And although it rarely happened, that was pretty serious, only surpassed by being sent to jail.

Part 6.  Not surprisingly, the Jews then decide to re-examine the man himself, and this interrogation from v24 starts on a different note.  Apparently their own arguments have resulted in an agreement that Jesus must have broken the Sabbath law in which case he must be a sinner.  On the other hand we can guess the man has always been forthright and avoided trouble previously because he was blind and therefore not taken too seriously.  For he gives a very spirited argument and defence which takes them aback.  “I don’t know whether the man who healed me is a sinner.  But I do know that I was blind and now I can see”.   So the authorities make one last attempt to have the details settled clearly enough that the matter can be settled beyond doubt.   “What did he do?” they ask again, “How did he heal you?”  But the man is becoming impatient    “I told you already but you wouldn’t listen.  Why do you want to hear it again.  Perhaps you want to become his disciples?”    At this the Jews become indignant and abusive.  This affair is not turning out well at all for them, and their bullying isn’t getting the right results.  “We are disciples of Moses.  As for this fellow you speak of, we don’t know where he comes from” which wasn’t true because they had already tangled with Jesus at the Feast of Tabernacles and the authorities certainly knew of Jesus’ birthplace.   But you and I know that they didn’t really know where The Lord Jesus came from.  And the man answered   “This is extraordinary.  You don’t know anything about the man who opened my eyes, I who was born blind!”   And he said quite a lot more and addeed  “God doesn’t listen to sinners but to anyone who is devout and does his will.”  (Spot on).  “If this man was not from God he could do nothing.”

So the man whom Jesus healed ridicules them, the official theologians of Israel.  “Who are you, obviously born and bred in sin, to lecture US” they shout.  Whereupon in their pride and anger they excommunicate him who an hour ago had been standing blind by the roadside, but who now could see them.

Part 7.  If we made a play about this story, or a film, or even an opera, we’d switch now to a scene of peace, perhaps with Beethoven’s 6^th symphony in the background.  Jesus enters.  There are no parents, neighbours, Pharisees in this scene.   The Son of Man, Son of God hears the story.  He comes up to the man who has been excommunicated and asks “Do you now believe in the Son of Man?”  The man replies, just like the woman by the well, just like some of my students in Nepal, just like some people on Bruny Island “Tell me who He is so I can put my faith in Him.”  Jesus says “Indeed it is He who is speaking to you”.  He might have said, perhaps did say, “I AM”.  We may imagine how the once-blind man reacts.  He looks again.  With the power of sight given him by The Lord he now sees the reality.  The man falls to his knees and says “I believe” and worships Him.  There’s the miracle of the miracle!   Friends, I could go on to a Part 8 to examine in detail what Jesus then says about having come to give sight to the sightless and to make the blind see, but you know that; you love that scripture and you can read it again.  Finally Jesus unmistakably condemns the Pharisees and authorities because they claim to see but see nothing.   Is The Church still sometimes like that.  Are we? 

But we can pray, “Lord, heal our blindness.  Let us see you and let us worship you with all our hearts, bodies and minds.  Teach us to know you, and to believe you are the great I AM, Light of the World.   Amen