That I May See
A sermon brought forth from Psalm 27 and John 9:1-41 preached (by John Dull) on Sunday, February 27, 2022
Jesus seems a minor part of this story. That’s the first thing that I’m struck by. This long, drawn-out mess of a story doesn’t have much Jesus in it. Jesus starts it off—he is the reason for everything that comes along, but then He gets lost in the shuffle of conversation, the switching of scenes; and most everyone in this story—all except the man whose blindness is healed—place themselves, or their own interests, at the center.
We know from both scripture and our own lives, that’s when Jesus gets lost. It's easy to lose sight of the One who first gave it to us. It does take much for Christ to be crowded out of our vision. They say that coming to faith is like being given a new kind of eyes. Through them we see the same things we always have, but those brought to faith in Christ Jesus can see more in most everything. Poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning Earth wrote,
“Earth’s crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God.”
Coming to faith in and through Christ is quite like growing the eyes it takes to see how the common is alive, and how God is at work in and through all of it. Even though on the surface it looks like Jesus goes missing in the middle of this story, He is quite a part of it all. Jesus doesn’t just set the scene in motion, He’s at work in every twist and turn along the way. But only the blind man can see that.
Because most everyone in this story can’t see a thing, chaos ensues. This is a mess. No one sees what’s happening because they’re all preoccupied with their own interests. Richard Rohr’s quote on the back of your bulletin helps us out here.
“Most people do not see things as they are because they see things as they are.”
Everyone but the blind man and Jesus has a hard time seeing through their self-interest. The parents love being a part of the synagogue so much that they fudge their way through their conversation with the Pharisees, who pretty much own the place, and in their effort to protect their membership in that community, they basically throw their own son under the bus. In the Pharisee’s questions, all they see is red. The Pharisees are the powerbrokers here, and the parents know it. If they say the wrong thing to them, they’re excommunicated. Their synagogue membership means more to them than their son does, so they abandon him to their congregation’s authority. Mercy. Who’s blind in this story again?
But the disorientation doesn’t stop there. If I put myself in the shoes of the man whose sight is restored, I’m on top of the world now that I can see. Jesus has just washed away my blindness and has sent me to the Siloam pool, and I know the pool’s name means “sent,” and by His touch and this pool’s waters, I can see for the first time in my life, and I’m sent away from the water’s edge full of sight. I’ve just grown new eyes, and everything has come alive. I can see a brand-new world and I can’t help but tell everyone about it.
But what happens to me next is ironic. Turns out everyone I run into, including my own parents, is as blind as they could be. More blind than I’ve ever been. I needed someone to celebrate with me, but all I could find were people unable to see what just happened to me.
“The Lord is my light and my salvation,” declares the 27th psalmist right along with this man with new eyes. “Now I gaze on the beauty of the Lord. Though my father and mother forsake me, I remain confident that I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.”
The man gifted with a new way of seeing has a simple story that he sees no need to back down from. Though he cannot describe what happened to anyone’s satisfaction, he can share the difference it makes.
“I don’t know the details,” he says. “All I know is that once I was blind but now I see.”
If we back up in John’s Gospel, we’ll be able to see more in this blind man’s story. The first words Jesus had for his first disciples were words of invitation “Come and see,” He said to Andrew. Then Jesus’s second disciple, Philip, had the same words for his brother Nathaniel, “Come and see!”
“Come and see!” the Samaritan woman said to her neighbors after Jesus offered her the living waters of salvation. “Come and see, there’s enough of this eternal water for you, too!” Then last week, we were in John 7, where Jesus declared Himself to be living water.
“Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Come to me and you will see what real life is like. It’s yours for the beholding.”
We belong to the One who goes along giving Himself away so that others may see. By His invitation into new life, we are compelled to leave behind our old and worn-out ways of seeing and re-image our vision until our eyesight is aligned with His.
Today is Transfiguration Sunday. Today we pay attention to the great distance between how we see and how Jesus sees. The disciples had that problem, too. At the outset of John 9, they needed their eyes retrained. They ask Jesus whose sin was responsible for this blind man’s condition, his own or his parent’s. “Neither,” Jesus says.
Jesus’s answer changes the man’s blindness from a result to a possibility. This man’s blindness is not a setback; it’s an occasion for God’s glorious work to be seen by others in a remarkable way. Jesus is here to retrain the way we look at everything. This man’s blindness is no reason for their concern, it’s the world that’s blind, and God is working in Christ to heal it.
This man who’s been given a new way to see calls himself a disciple of Jesus. It’s in the sarcastic question he has for the Pharisees, “Do you want to become one of His disciples, too?” A disciple is one who knows there’s far more to God than what they can perceive on their own.
This Wednesday, by way of the dark smudge of ash, we enter the long season of Lent. It’s a beautiful 40-plus-day pilgrimage for we who follow in discipleship. The Lenten journey is one we make with Christ toward the cross. If we give ourselves to its way, Lent is a season of clarity. The Lenten way is one of darkness that leads us into real light.
We begin with a kind of smudgy, muddy blindness, and with each step, we’re gifted a clearer way of seeing most everything. Lent is 40 days of disorientation that leads us to a holy reorientation. Along the way, death gives way to life, darkness gives way to light, and blindness gives way to sight. We need our eyes retrained that we may see with God’s eyes.
The world and we who are in it are blind, short-sighted. God’s work is to heal all of it—all of us—that we may see.
All praises to the One who made it all and finds it beautiful!
Alleluia! Amen.