St. John’s United Church of Christ

March 2, 2008

A Sermon by the Rev. John Krueger

Believing Is Seeing                                                                John 9:1-41

On one level, this is a pretty straight forward story, long, to be sure, but with a simple plot.  Jesus creates a controversy by healing a man on the Sabbath.  The man has been blind since his birth, and thanks to the healing power of God in Christ, he now can see.

Various attempts are made to discredit the man’s story.  Both he and his parents are grilled but they stick to their story; he was blind, and now he now can see.  The story ends with the man, now able to see, thrown out of the synagogue by the religious leaders.

Well, let’s assume this is not as simple a story as we first thought.  Let’s assume the plot is much more complicated, and we have much to learn from the story.

It is important to remember that all of this is happening on the Sabbath day.  In the Gospel accounts of the life of Jesus, there seems to be this recurring theme that Jesus does his best work on the Sabbath.  But according to Jewish law, no work, not even one’s best work, was to be done on the Sabbath.  Guarding the Sabbath was a very serious religious duty, making sure both the spirit and the letter of the law were kept. 

By all accounts, Jesus was a pretty religious person but keeping the Sabbath strictly was not high on his list.  If Jesus saw someone in need on the Sabbath and he could address that need, he usually did, as with this man born blind.  But of course there would be consequences.  There always are, for some would say that no good deed goes unpunished.  One layer of this story is the conflict with the religious leaders who were offended by this upstart rabbi, Jesus.

Another layer is the effort to discredit what had happened.  You would think this would the occasion for great rejoicing, but as the story unfolds the controversy intensifies.  The first skeptics are the neighbors, those who had known him all their lives.  Some readily admit this was the same person who had been blind while others cannot fathom the change and say this must only be someone who looks like him.

The man is brought to the Pharisees, those super religious lay folk, and they continue the grilling.  The man rehearses the story of his healing, Jesus putting mud on his eyes, washing in the pool of Siloam and then being able to see, for the first time in his life.  Clearly this doesn’t fit with their sense of reality, their concept of what is possible.

They turn their attention to the man’s parents, making sure they claim him as their son, trying to verify if in fact he was born blind.  They are unwilling to say too much, not wanting to offend the religious folk and thereby be thrown out of the synagogue.  Finally they say he is old enough to speak for himself.

For the second time, in their frustration, they call the man in.  They argue about the methods Jesus used – “How did he open your eyes?”  They argue about Jesus’ theology – “Who sinned, this man or his parents?”  They argue about Jesus’ credentials – “Where did he come from?”  “What do you say about him?”  All of this avoids the unmistakable fact that the blind man is no longer blind and they have no way of explaining how this is possible.

Certainly they are unwilling to attribute what has happened to this mysterious traveling teacher who also seems to be an extraordinary healer.  So the story begins with one blind person, and all the others apparently able to see, and the story ends with one person who can see, can see Jesus as the Lord of his life, and the others stumbling around in their blindness.

Let’s assume this is not a story that tries to define clinical blindness - this is not a test for your camel driver’s license.  We are talking here about insight, about wisdom, about a person’s ability to perceive what is happening, and why.

In 1968 the Apollo 8 space craft circled our earth, sending back breath-taking pictures of our sphere, revolving in the midst of space.  The International Flat Earth Society denounced the space mission as “a fraud, a fake, a piece of trickery or deceit.”  In 10 years time, membership in the Flat Earth Society grew from 20 members to more than 450.  Members quoted both from Shakespeare and the Scriptures to “prove” that the pictures of the roundness of the earth were a hoax, falsified by the television networks.  More than 3,000 letters a year come from people who say they always knew the earth was flat and they are so glad that someone else out there agrees with them.

Yes, we chuckle about something so bizarre, but blindness is with us, all of us, some of the time.  Jesus says, “I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.”  So what is the nature of our potential blindness?  What are we Not seeing?

Every time we come together, as we are here this morning, we are invited to a possible Healing Service.  We each see this world through a mirror, dimly, as the Apostle Paul would say it, struggling to see the ways of God in our midst.  When we come here for worship, we pray that Jesus Christ would offer us the gift to see more clearly, to discern more clearly, to understand more fully and to believe more deeply this God we seek to follow.

Now we may think we see pretty well already, thank you.  We may think we have things well in hand and that God would be advised to lavish that healing gift on someone who really needs it, not me.  But if we dismiss our need to be healed with an insight we do not now have, the Healer may go away, for a season, and we would be left in our blindness, not even aware of our blindness.

I readily admit that I only dimly see God’s mighty acts in this world of ours.  I only catch glimpses, fleeting glimpses of God at work, in my life, or in yours.  Most often, I only recognize God’s hand after the fact, looking back on an event that was clouded at the time but is filled with meaning in retrospect.

I believe one of the supreme values of being a part of a faith community, a church, like this congregation, is our communal gift to each other to overcome our blindness, our blind-spots, our dimness of vision and our shallowness of faith and belief.  You need to tell me about the saving acts of God in your life, how God has touched you and healed you and restored you and forgiven you.  And then I need to tell you about what I know of God’s providence and grace in my life.  I need you to share with me how a partly-sighted person like you has been loved into wholeness by a gracious God, and that what you now see had been hidden from you before.

Seeing may be Believing, but more importantly, Believing is Seeing.  We need to receive God’s grace to understanding God’s love.  We need to ask for the ability to see, to see more clearly, for that is the avenue to wholeness.

This is the Sabbath, the day when Jesus did his best work.  Believing Is Seeing, and why shouldn’t we expect God in Christ to want to give us the gift of sight?