Loving God, you continue to reveal yourself in new ways, challenging our assumptions and our vision.  Renew us by the power of your Spirit, granting us the courage to be healed and the vision to see your glory, through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

          Who could have ever known that it would cause so much trouble to be healed!  In fact, his life was quite ordinary before Jesus came along.  Day after day, he sat in the street and begged for money, or food, or whatever people might give him.  After all, what else was a blind man to do?  But then along came Jesus, who put mud on his eyes and told him to go wash in the pool of Siloam.

         When he came back, he was able to see for the first time in his life.  However, it seemed as though everybody else had become blind.  His neighbours, who had seen him begging there for years, no longer recognized him.  When he tried to tell them that he was the one who had sat there begging, they kept asking him how on earth he could see now.  “It was the man called Jesus,” he said.  “He put mud on my eyes, told me to wash at Siloam, and when I did, I could see!”  A likely story, they thought.  And where is this man called Jesus anyway?  And so they take him to the Pharisees, who surely will investigate.

         The Pharisees, of course, ask him all of the same questions all over again, and he gives them all of the same answers.  It turns out, however, that it was the Sabbath when this man was healed, and that opens a whole other can of worms.  Only God can heal, so the man who healed him must be from God.  However, anybody who comes from God wouldn’t break the Sabbath.  Therefore, this man must not have been healed.  It was fake news – a vicious rumour started by somebody who was out to get them.  And so, they call in the man’s parents in order to confirm that it was, indeed, a fake healing.

         The parents, however, have no desire to get drawn into this debate.  They confirm that the man is their son and that he was born blind.  As for how he is now able to see, they suggest that the Pharisees ask him, as he is an adult and can speak for himself.  And so the Pharisees ask him again, and invite him to give glory to God by declaring Jesus to be a sinner.  This man, however, will do no such thing.  What he knows is this:  He was blind, and now he can see.

         The Pharisees, however, persist.  They don’t know where this Jesus comes from, and he breaks the Sabbath rules, so how could he have healed the man?  And that’s when the man who had been born blind finally loses it.  “What are you people – blind?  How can you not know where somebody comes from when he is able to heal like this?  Surely you know that God doesn’t listen to sinners, yet God has worked through this man called Jesus in order to heal me.  Has anybody ever before opened the eyes of somebody who was born blind?”  “If this man were not from God, he could do nothing” (Jn. 9:33).  And that’s when the Pharisees kick him out.

         They are so sure that they know God’s Law and they know how God works.  They are sure that it was sin that caused the man to be blind in the first place.  They are sure that healing is definitely not allowed on the Sabbath.  They are sure that Jesus comes from Galilee and that the Messiah won’t come from there.  They are sure that God would never heal a man born in sin, and would definitely never do so on the Sabbath.  And because they are sure of all these things, they conclude that this healing must not have happened.

         Oh, how easy it is to see when you are on the outside looking in!  And how hard it is to see when you already know that you are right!  Truthfully, isn’t it hard for most of us to see things in a new way?  Most of us are creatures of habit, and we just go along with the things that we have done and believed for years.  However, God, it seems, has a habit of acting in new ways in order to get people to see what God is really like and what God is interested in doing.

         This is the whole premise behind Alan Roxburgh’s book Joining God, Remaking Church, Changing the World.  He examines what he calls the “Euro-tribal” churches in North America and all of the things that have been tried since the 1960’s in order to “fix” the church.  One program after another has been trotted out, each one promising to grow the church.  However, none of them have really worked.  His suggestion is that the focus of these programs has been on what we should be doing rather than on what God is doing.  He also suggests that God has been at work all along, in the neighbourhoods we live in, and out there in the world, waiting for us to stop long enough to discern what God is up to.

         What Roxburgh is suggesting is essentially a change in our vision – rather than looking at ourselves and at the church, he suggests that we look outwards – at our neighbours and our communities – in order to discern what God is doing in the world around us.  It is simply a different approach to a couple of questions that were posed a few years earlier by Kelly Fryer: What is God doing? And How can we help?

         As those of you who have engaged in discernment like this know, these are not easy questions to answer.  Prayer is required, and immersing ourselves in the Scriptures, as well as simple curiosity about what is going on in our neighbourhoods.  Yet, discernment is always needed – discerning what God is up to; discerning where God is directing our attention; discerning what priorities are God’s priorities.

         The great tragedy would be if we were to totally miss the power of God at work, just as the Pharisees were unable to see the miracle that was right there in front of them.  Jesus continues to heal and to forgive and to set free.  May we be given the vision to see God at work among us and in our world, through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Transfiguration of our Lord (NL 4)                                                John 9:1-41

February 11, 2018                                                              

St. Luke’s Zion Lutheran Church

Pastor Lynne Hutchison

© 2018 Lynne Hutchison  All Rights Reserved