St. Paul’s United Church Sunday, April 3, 2011

Vision Test – Rev. David Mundy

Psalm 23 Ephesians 5:8-14 John 9:1-41

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Blind as a bat! Do you know that expression? Most of us do, but it is a strange one because bats aren’t blind at all. They have reasonable sight, although in the dark they rely on their remarkable echolocation, a function of sound to get around.

Just the same, I use the expression “blind as a bat,” often when I am describing myself without my eyeglasses. I can squint and blink all I want, I don’t see much, even close at hand. Of course I’m not blind either, in the sense that I have no sight, but my myopia has been serious enough since I was a kid that I would be lost without my glasses.

There are lots of ways to be sort-of-blind, as many of you will know. We tend to call this “vision impaired” these days, but we understand what it means. An NHL player underwent surgery this past week after he was struck in the eye and lost much of the vision in one eye. We tend to have more commonplace, although serious, conditions such as cataracts and glaucoma and macular degeneration and retinal detachment.

Thanks to modern medicine, most of these conditions can be treated now, with varying degrees of success, and new treatments are being developed all the time. There are various forms of laser surgery and there are even eye transplants, although they are actually corneal transplants, the pane of glass at the front of the eye. Twice in the past few months members of the congregation have told me that the corneas of loved ones who have died have been donated to give sight to the living. What a wonderful gift and legacy.

All these medical advancements mean that no one shows up at the minister’s study door requesting prayers for immediate healing of their blindness. I have prayed with, and for, those who are blind or vision-impaired, because loss of sight can be terrifying, but I think we are all “on the same page” as we begin these prayers, that when we open our eyes it will be unlikely that a spectacular miracle will have occurred. There is no question, though, that eyes opened and sight restored by any means is a gift from God.

In the bible there are a number of healing stories for those who are blind, including the one we heard this morning. I really don’t need to tell you after hearing today’s passage from John read that this one is lengthy and complex and multifaceted. By the time Betty was done the reading, you were probably grateful that she was the person who was asked to read this week and not you!

This is the third of four encounters with Jesus in the gospel of John which we are pondering during this season of Lent.

Encounter with an Insider – Nicodemus -- John 3

Encounter with an Outsider – The Samaritan Woman – John 4

A Healing Encounter – The Man Blind from Birth – John 9

An Encounter of Death and Resurrection – The Raising of Lazarus – John 11

This story begins with Jesus and his country disciples walking down a street in the big city of Jerusalem, where they come upon a blind man who may have been there because he was forced to beg for a living. It was often assumed that people went blind because they had done something wrong, but this situation was tricky because the man had been blind from birth, so the disciples ask whose fault this affliction is. I like the way Eugene Peterson frames Jesus’ response in his paraphrase called The Message:

5Jesus said, "You're asking the wrong question. You're looking for someone to blame. There is no such cause-effect here. Look instead for what God can do. We need to be energetically at work for the One who sent me here, working while the sun shines. When night falls, the workday is over. For as long as I am in the world, there is plenty of light. I am the world's Light."

The sermon title this week is 'vision test' but I probably should have called it 'clear as mud' because Jesus makes up a weird, gooey paste of spit and dust, then smears it on the man’s eyes. Talk about kicking a guy when he’s down! The blind guy patiently heads off to a spring-fed pool which you can still visit in Jerusalem. The folk artist Elijah Pierce, son of a slave, did a three-part depiction of this story.

Did you notice how the story shifts from here? We go from “why do bad things happen to good people?” to a strange but miraculous healing, and eventually to Jesus admonishing religious people for being spiritually blind. There is the feel of a Monty Python comedy sketch about what happens, with neighbours and religious leaders insisting that the blind man couldn’t have been healed. They even say that he isn’t the same guy. So he ends up saying “c’mon, it’s me, I’m not an imposter!” You probably noticed that this is not a “feel-good, happy ending” story, at least not for the religious leaders, because Jesus scolds them for not seeing what is right in front of them.

So, what do we make of Jesus’ encounter with a blind man? Perhaps for us it is more important to ask what it means to be spiritually visually impaired, and how our sight might be restored. There is an old proverb attributed to Jonathan Swift of Gulliver’s Travels fame which says “there are none so blind as those who will not see.” It’s one thing to be blind from birth, but it is another thing to choose blindness.

History is littered with the examples of religious people who, like the Pharisees, have been reluctant or unwilling to open their eyes to the injustices all around them. Even though Christians would like to believe that they have been set free by grace, that their eyes have been opened by the healing Christ, their vision is often clouded.

There are lots of ways in which we can be sort-of-blind, aren’t there? An obvious example is racism, deciding that those with a different colour skin are really not like us. Martin Luther King Jr. used to say that the most segregated place in America was in church on a Sunday morning. While we might like to think that this was an American problem, we probably all catch ourselves in our racial stereotypes at times, and our supposedly liberal United Churches aren’t exactly multi-hued.

Religious prejudice is another form of blindness. For centuries, Christians not only didn’t like Jews, they persecuted them, conveniently forgetting that Jesus and many of his first followers were Jewish. In the early years of my ministry I served a congregation near Lake Simcoe, and we would take our kids to play in a lakeside park. I was shocked when a member mentioned that the ornate wrought iron entranceway once said “Gentiles Only” which was really another way of saying “no Jews allowed.” She admitted that while Jewish cottagers had been in the area for decades they never mixed. Today we may struggle with our suspicions about Muslims, again even though the Koran views Jesus as a prophet.

When I think back through the years at the varied ways in which my spiritual vision has been impaired I am embarrassed. Sometimes I have been “blind as a bat.” In my teens I was convinced that the bible insisted that women should accept the authority of men, and that women should never be ministers or pastors. It took a few good women to put me in my place! There are many other areas in which my eyes have been opened, and I would like to believe that it has been Christ who has opened them. And I would like to think that God isn’t done with me yet.

Perhaps we all need to regularly have a spiritual vision test, to be open to an honest assessment of the places where we just aren’t seeing in the way Christ would have us see, for the time in which we live. Jesus as the Divine Optometrist – there’s an image for you!

And here is the Good News. It is a real miracle when we are able to go beyond stereotypes and prejudices to actually see in different and unexpected ways. We have probably never thought that we wanted to be a blind beggar standing by the side of a dusty street, but surely it is from the position of humility and need that we encounter Jesus, rather than as arrogant know-it-alls. After the blind man was healed, he was grilled by the religious folks who say that Jesus is an imposter. Finally the newly sighted man says “ I know one thing for sure: I was blind . . . now I see.”

We are about halfway through this season of Lent, a time of reflection and grounding in Christ. So why not ask ourselves not only how our eyes have been opened but Jesus will open our eyes today with laser-like accuracy? And are we willing to be the humble street person who is given the insights and the out-sights which will transform us in our inner being but also our external attitudes and dealings?

Are there areas of our lives which need to be healed, and mended, and changed? Perhaps we will move step by step toward the healing waters, but that process can be a holy one because Christ sends us.

I will leave you with two things this morning, first with verses from another of the passages for this day which we didn’t read because of the length of the gospel. In the letter to the Ephesians the apostle Paul says: “For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light – for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true.” Ephesians 5:8,9

The other is a famous prayer from Richard Chichester, a Christian who lived in the thirteen century, although you may be more familiar with the adaptation of these words for the sixties musical, Godspell.

Thanks be to thee, my Lord Jesus Christ,

for all the benefits Thou hast given me,

for all the pains and insults thou hast borne for me.

O most merciful redeemer, friend and brother,

may I see thee more clearly,

love thee more dearly

and follow thee more nearly,

day by day.

It is “clear as mud” that Jesus, the Christ, can restore our vision today and always.