4th Sunday in Lent
1 Samuel 16:1-13 Psalm 23 Ephesians 5:8-14 John 9:1-41 Dear fellow ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ, grace and peace to you from the light of the world. Amen This story always reminds me of my preaching professor Dr. Craig Satterlee, this is his favorite story, you see he was born blind I believe he particularly held onto the part where in response to the question of the disciples asking who sinned the man or his parents to cause his blindness Jesus responds “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.” While people didn’t ask who sinned while he was preparing to become a pastor and professor and now a bishop they did ask a lot of questions that showed they doubted that the works of God could be revealed in him. Yet that’s exactly where God likes to be revealed in the last place people expect. In the gospel of John people didn’t expect God to be revealed in a drunken wedding feast, they didn’t expect God to be revealed to a samaritan woman at a well and they certainly didn’t expect God to work through someone who everyone accepted was a sinner because of his blindness. And yet there our God appears when faced with these unexpected revelations we react in one of two ways, we embrace the glory of God and hold onto the experience even if it doesn’t make sense and even if it changes us or after the initial shock we focus on the impossibility of the experience, and hold so tightly onto what we understand to be the truth with a capital T that we refuse to acknowledge the possibility that God could be working in a new way and we refuse to be changed by the encounter. These two reactions are played out in our gospel in the characters of the man born blind and the Pharisees and while we might not hold onto the belief that blindness or other what we sometimes call disabilities are caused by sin anymore there are other ways of thinking that we hold onto as true even when confronted by evidence to the contrary that cause us to miss the glory of God in front of us So how does this all play out? Jesus encounters the man born blind, rejects the notion that his blindness is a result of sin and gives him instructions that result in his healing. The man born blind follows the instructions and comes back able to see (Jesus is gone by this point) and when he returns to his community able to see people start to ask questions, like how did this happen? He tells them, a man called Jesus gave me these instructions and now I can see, this is the simple truth of his experience. his answer isn’t satisfying to the people he’s given them the how they want to know the why So the people go and get some pharisees who are people who have spent a lot of time studying scripture and religion, thinking they might have some insight, and at this point the pharisees seem to agree that Jesus healed the man but they are divided on how to interpret the events some of them are offended that Jesus healed on the sabbath but others wonder aloud if someone who were a sinner could perform such signs, maybe he is from God. They are all at about the same level at this point, they accept what has happened but they don’t understand it. So they ask the man’s interpretation of who it was that healed him and this time when pressed to go beyond the simple facts he calls Jesus a prophet. His confession is closer to the truth this does not satisfy the pharisees and their dissatisfaction begins to lead them further from God. they begin to question whether the man was actually even born blind, they are so unwilling to believe that Jesus healed the man that they suspect that it’s all a trick and bring the man’s parents forward to testify and ask them “was your son really born blind, how do you explain it?” And now his parents are caught in the middle, they know that their son was blind and that now he sees and they say this but they also know that if they confirm that it was Jesus that healed him they will be kicked out of their community so they plead ignorance and turn the questioning back on their son. And now the pharisees seem to have made up their minds, they bring the man back and essentially say, we know Jesus is a sinner, swear in court that he is a sinner. but the man sticks to his experience he says I don’t know if he’s a sinner all I know is that I was blind and now I see. This doesn’t satisfy the pharisees, “tell us, what did he do to you” they ask And this pushes the man born blind over the edge, “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.” and he accepts their charge that he is a disciple of Jesus. So here we have a man who was born blind, given his sight back by a man that he never actually sees- his sight only returns after he washes in the pool- go from simply telling his story to proclaiming Jesus a prophet to becoming one of his disciples, the more the pharisees push back at his experience of God the more he believes, and the more he believes the more the pharisees become entrenched in their position resisting the possibility of God doing something new so much that they intimidate their witnesses and finally fall back on a childish sounding argument, “well you were born entirely in sins, you can’t teach us anything” and they kick him out of the community. Jesus hears they’ve driven the man out he goes and finds him and asks, “do you believe in the son of man?” “I’d like to” says the man, “I am he” Jesus says and the man confesses his faith, “I believe” he says and worships Jesus. And it seems like a happy ending, except Jesus has one more thing to say, he names the pharisees spiritually blind, by their willful rejection of Jesus the light of the world he names them sinners, which in John means that they have no relationship with Jesus or the one who sent him. The grace of Jesus seeking out the man is balanced with a warning in the story of the pharisees, a warning that good, faithful, religious people can get so stuck in their ways that they miss the glory of God before them and end up breaking up their community and alienating themselves from God. As Christians we are called into relationship with Jesus the light of the world and the thing about the light of the world is that it seeks out the dark corners of our lives, it goes to the places where we don’t expect there to be light, where we don’t expect to find the glory of God or ever be healed and yet that’s where the light goes first revealing and healing our broken places. Then, forgiven and made whole we are called to share our story with others, to tell about the times when Jesus transformed our brokenness into a place where God was revealed we are called to walk as children of the light, to bring the light into dark places to be constantly surprised at how God is working in the lives of others and to be constantly changed by the way Jesus chooses to reveal the glory of God. Amen
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AboutPastor Emily Johnson preaches weekly at Christ Lutheran. These are manuscripts of her sermons given at Christ Lutheran. Feel free to engage with them in the comments section of the blog. Archives
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