I Was Blind But Now I See Preached on March 26th, 2017 At the Wollaston Congregational Church Scripture: John 9:1-41 Recently I have been reading the book “All the Light We Cannot See” by Anthony Doerr. Perhaps you’ve read it too. When I read our gospel story for today, I noticed certain parallels with the book. It dawned on me that both our Bible story and the book concern blind people who learn to see and sighted people who do not see. The book tells the story of two children, growing into young adulthood in Europe during World War II. The girl, Marie Laure, is French and lives in Paris with her father until the age of 12. Marie Laure becomes blind at the age of 6 and her father has to help her to find her way about in their community. He is a skilled wood carver and so he creates a perfectly scaled model of their area of Paris. Marie Laure uses this model to “feel” her way around the streets and buildings of their neighborhood. She learns braille, and for each birthday her father provides a new book for her to read. Marie Laure loves stories, such as “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea”, that expand her view of the world. But when the Nazis arrive in Paris, Marie Laure and her dad have to flee to Saint Malo on the Brittany coast. They take refuge in Marie Laure’s great uncle’s home, a peculiar tall house with an attic full of old radio equipment. Suddenly Marie Laure is in a completely strange place and has to begin to learn her way around all over again. A boy of around the same age, Werner Pfennig, is growing up in an orphanage in the mining town of Zollverein, Germany, cared for by a French nun, Frau Elena. With his sister, Jutta, Werner scavenges electronic parts from the nearby dump and reconstructs a radio. In the evenings they cuddle together to listen to broadcasts. Their world is opened up by a regular broadcast from France hosted by an older man who teaches the wonder of science for young listeners. But the relationship of the two siblings begins to fall apart when Werner’s skill and intelligence are noticed by a Nazi officer. When the Nazis forbid Germans to listen to foreign broadcasts Werner smashes the radio that he and his sister retrieved. Jutta sees the propaganda and the grooming of Werner for what it is. She is frustrated by his cooperation with the Nazis and angry that he has destroyed their precious radio. And so she refuses to say good bye, as he is taken away to be trained at an abusive boarding school for the Nazi military elite. At the age of 16, as the Nazis become more desperate to win the war, Werner is advanced into military operations that detect enemy radio broadcasts. Meanwhile Marie Laure finds a clarity of purpose becoming involved in the French resistance. Her uncle, who has isolated himself due to PTSD following WWI, is convinced to use his secret radio equipment to transmit information for the resistance. As the story line progresses, the reader begins to see how Werner’s story and Marie Laure’s story will intersect in Saint Malo. I would love to go on telling you about this fascinating story. But, I will say that it was a revelation for me to re-examine this book in the light of today’s gospel reading. So now let’s turn to the Bible story. Again, in John’s gospel, Jesus is pitched against caricatured versions of the Jewish Pharisees. These larger than life “religious authorities” are determined to keep the Jesus people out of their community. The setting for the story is a community that is plagued with anxiety, over who is out and who is in: boundaries and rules. Let’s remind ourselves --- this is important --- this story is written around the year 100 CE, for followers of Jesus at a time when Jewish followers of Jesus were expelled from synagogues. The Rabbinic Jews and the Jesus followers are separating. We are hearing one side of the argument: the Christian side. But we have something to learn from this story of Jesus restoring the sight of a blind man. We begin to ask the question, who has true vision, and who is actually blind? Jesus and the disciples randomly meet a blind man as they are walking along the road. In any system of anxiety there is what is called “an identified patient”. Like a “problem child” in an anxious family system. In this case the identified patient is the blind man, dependent on the good will of others for survival. The disciples play right into the anxiety of the system, and they ask Jesus whose sin caused his blindness. Yes, you heard correctly. They are looking for someone to blame. Jesus corrects them right away. It’s is no one’s fault. We have the opportunity to do the work of God here. And so he immediately sets about restoring the sight of the man. So the man is healed. The neighbors can’t get their heads around it, although he repeatedly tells them “I am the man.” They have lost their identified patient! Next they get the religious authorities involved. What an outrage, having these good works being done in the community, on the Sabbath, by this rebellious person! This is a clear indicator that this miracle worker is from the outside. But the newly sighted man is growing in his understanding of Jesus, saying “he is a prophet.” Now the parents of the newly sighted man are summoned, but they’re fearful of being expelled from the community. When asked about the miracle, they simply deflect back to their son. And so the newly sighted man is brought back in for questioning. He’s getting frustrated by now, but his is clearer about who Jesus is, and says, "Here is the amazing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes.” To put it another way, Jesus’ actions attest to who he is. The religious authorities would keep people “in” or “out” of the community, based on being with or without “sin”. Jesus sees only opportunities to do the work of God. The sighted man cannot open the eyes of the authorities, and so he is thrown out of the community. At the beginning of the story the blind man received his sight, but now he has experiences the clarity of knowing Jesus. This is the point where Jesus comes to find him! The Light of the World has come into the community and this man is the only one to have seen it. The physically sighted authorities are blind to Jesus’ presence. They are too caught up in their system of exclusion and purity. So first we have Marie Laure and Werner, caught up in the anxious system of the Nazis. It’s a system that hinges on who is “in” and who is “out”. It restricts group members, monitors all their activities and forbids any kind of free thought for the young conscripts, such as Werner. In the case of the Nazis, the Jews were seen as the identified patient, or scapegoat. In the case of our Bible story, we have the formerly blind man, who is caught up in an exaggeratedly anxious system, to demonstrate that Jesus is the light of the world. And now, I want to tell you about a time when I was caught up in an anxious religious system. My first year in college. Before I left for school I decided that I wanted a change from the traditional church services offered by my home church. I wanted something “livelier” and more compelling. And so I connected with a Christian group on campus. From the outset I was uncomfortable with the group’s approach. Most members talked in terms of when they “became a Christian” which tripped me up a bit. I didn’t have a conversion story, and that seemed to be a problem. Never the less I persevered, and agreed to host a weekly lunchtime prayer group and attend their Bible studies. The main focus of the group’s ministry was “non-Christians” as a blanket group. There was no acknowledgement of Jews, Muslims, Atheists or Hindus, although all of these groups were present on campus. Non-Christians were the identified patient along with so called liberal/lukewarm Christians. The anxious mission of the group was to convert all the non-Christians to true Christianity so that they would be “saved”. Salvation was supposed to be free and available to all who turned to Jesus, as personal Lord and Savior. But in my experience, it came with baggage: preoccupation with right belief and sin. The group convinced me that my personal sin was the reason Jesus suffered and died on the cross. My sin. In weekly Wednesday evening worship, the group sang “praise songs”, and many wept with gratitude for Jesus giving his life for their sins. But this salvation didn’t make me feel whole and acceptable. It put me in a constant state of anxiety. The insistence on unworthiness, made me feel I would never be good enough for God. Don’t get me wrong, there were kind, loving people in this group, who moderated the behavior and narrative. But it wasn’t working for me. How did I escape that anxious system and yet still remain a follower of Jesus? How were my eyes finally opened, to what was a potentially abusive system? The gentle pull of love, I think, as I met my husband and he helped me understand that this style of belief and worship wasn’t true to me. It also came over years, setting aside anxiety about right belief and sin, so that I could open myself to a clearer vision of who Jesus is. The bottom line: Jesus came and found me. So how do we escape anxious systems of belief, those systems who say who is “in” and who is “out”, those systems that focus on an identified patient or group. How do we enable those who are blind to become sighted, with a clarity of vision for who Jesus is? Most of all, I think we need to know we, you and I, are wholly and unreservedly beloved and acceptable in God’s eyes. Jesus, the Light of the World, came to find us and to show us that. And then, very simply, we need to open our hearts to all the others who are beloved and acceptable to God too. No exceptions. Amen
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
If you enjoy a sermon or have a question, please leave a comment. If you would like to quote any of my material in your own sermons or writings, please use appropriate attribution. I look forward to hearing from you!Archives
April 2022
Categories |