A sermon about the blind man

I've been asked to organise a church service when our minister goes on a holiday to China. It's for March 26th so I've got in early and the tasks have been allocated to elders, children, and includes a play.  Here's the draft of the sermon part.  Hey, I haven't preached for years, and then hardly ever. I left that to Talatala Peceli but isa lei he's not with us any more. This is the second draft and I have deleted the first draft which was all over the place.

Sermon Draft for Sunday March 26

The blind man stood by the road and he cried

Oh, show me the way, the way to go home.

BLINDNESS, DARKNESS. SHADOWS

Darkness can be frightening.  When you are in an unfamiliar place and it is pitch black. I remember one time we had to pole across a river and were returning from visiting relatives in a Fijian village, Navuso. It was getting dark, and by the time we reached the other side of the river it was pitch black. Not a single light in sight.  I was with our grand-children Jordan and Andrew, and Andrew said, ‘Don’t worry Grandma, I know the way.’ He was about eight at the time. So I grabbed his hand as we walked down a rough track about 100 metres to reach the road to catch a passing taxi. Show me the way to go home, I was thinking. Anyway at last we saw the wink of lights from a house near the road and my panic ceased.

SHADOWS AND LOW VISION

With low vision such as myopia means to be  able to see your hands, a book, the computer, close up – but can’t see well enough to cross the road.  Can’t tell the difference between a wheelbarrow and a dog in the garden.  We wear spectacles or contact lenses. How many people need and use glasses? Plenty.  Some people even as small children.  Imagine a seven-year-old girl at Swan Hill Primary School. The teacher writes on the blackboard ‘Go home’ and tells the forty children to follow the words. One girl sitting up the front who can read and write well at her desk is the last to leave. She can’t see the board. The teacher realizes that she needs glasses so writes a letter for the girl to take home to her mother. Next week the girl is wearing round glasses  (like Harry Potter’s) but she is amazed at what the world looks like. She wore those awful looking glasses throughout her school years but at least she could see to read, paint, play the piano, climb trees, chase sheep.

Life is very hard for some people with handicaps such as being blind . Imperfect vision in the days of Jesus meant the person was not independent, could not really look after himself or herself, had a limited scope of knowledge of the world, mainly just what he could touch near him. 

The story is in John’s Gospel concerns  a man blind from birth who sits by a pathway near the Pool of Siloam and begs.  People have always told him, -hey you, your blindness was because you are a sinner or your Mum and Dad are sinners. That was the view of the people of that culture. That the cause of disability was what people did.  In the Middle East two thousand years ago the people did not have the scientific knowledge that we take for granted today, that with short-sight – myopia – a pair of spectacles can give 20 20 vision. We  know that blindness is not caused by the sin of the parents or the sin of a person.  It may be caused by living in a place where sand is in the air much of the time. It may be caused by a defect at birth. Or a potential for eye trouble in the DNA. It may be deterioration with aging such as macular degeneration.

But wait.... Jesus puts spit on the eyes of the man begging then tells him to wash in the nearby Pool of Siloam.

The Pool of Siloam is a rock-cut pool on the southern slope of the City of David, the original site of Jerusalem, located outside the walls of the Old City to the southeast. The pool was fed by the waters of the Gihon Spring, carried there by two aqueducts. Other stories of blind men being healed in the other gospels talk of a healing in the town of Jericho. Different.

CHANGE  TRANFORMATION  A NEW W ORLD

The man follows this instruction. The cloudiness disappears and he can actually see.  See people. See his friends.  See the blue sky.  See flowers. He is amazed. This is a miracle. Perfect vision gives the man the ability to have new experiences, to see the river, see the mountain, to be able to move about safely, and of course to see the faces of his family and the face of Jesus.

THE CRITICS

Now the story in the gospel of John goes on.  Friends took the man to the Pharisees as the custom then was to show the Jewish leaders that the man is now normal and cured. The pharisees don’t say – how marvellous, how wonderful at all.  They continue with the old superstition about sins of the parents.  And also -they want to trap Jesus. He has done this healing on the precious Sabbath, day when Jews are not allowed to work at all! Romans could but not Jews. They even ask the parents of the man what had happened, but the parents are careful in their answer knowing that to acknowledge that Jesus does miracles, is dangerous  They say – he’s grown up, ask him yourself, and the man of course says, yes I am cured.

Then the critics replied, “You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!” And they threw him out.

Spiritual Blindness

The story does not end there.  Jesus meets with the man again.  Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”

³⁶ “Who is he, sir?” the man asked. “Tell me so that I may believe in him.”

³⁷ Jesus said, “You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you.”

³⁸ Then the man said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him.

³⁹ Jesus said,^[a] “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.”

⁴⁰ Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, “What? Are we blind too?”

⁴¹ Jesus said, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.

What does Jesus mean then?  Perhaps he is talking about truth, seeing the truth. The once blind man now sees reality, not only a physical reality of the people in the street, the sky, the donkey walking past, but the reality of knowing who Jesus is. A spiritual relationship, a spiritual reality which the critics do not see.

So there is more to dark and light than physical.  There’s a kind of symbolic meaning in the story. It is not only physical light after darkness, but a spiritual awakening, a new kind of seeing what life is about, that going home for the blind man is not just to his house but it’s to know that he has met the Messiah, that there is a relationship with God.  And Jesus says yes, that’s it.

This is what I believe.  That we are created to be in a relationship with one another, with family, with friends, with community, with our social world, and we are created to be in a relationship with our Creator, God.

SHOW US THE WAY

We are sometimes like that blind man sitting by the road crying out ‘Show me the way.  And like the blind man we continually are curious, we seek answers to questions, especially where am I going to. What is the purpose of my life. Show me the way.

Just as darkness limits our experience of the world, our knowledge, our relationships, to be in the light means knowledge, experience,  an appreciation of beauty, and relationships with people. And Jesus implies that children of the light also have a relationship with our Father God.

As we read in Corinthians:

Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.

The blind man sat by the road and he cried

Oh, show  me the way.

We all sit by the road and we cry

Oh, show me the way.

And the answer:

Jesus says: I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life
And the way to go home,
and our response:

You are the way, You are the truth, You are the life
And the way to go home.

Show me the way to go home

Home is a place where we feel secure, safe, optimistic, in relationships with family and a base for relationships with neighbours and community. But...is the word ‘home’ used here to mean a view of the future after this life – that is - heaven?  That’s how it is used in many hymns of the 19^th century. ‘I am coming home’. An old hymn expresses the view that we need God to show us the way in a time of difficulties. We need light in the darkness.  Lead, Kindly Light is a hymn with words written in 1833 by John Henry Newman. Certainly we need guidance in our world that has gone tipsy turvy at times with gross selfishness and violence.

"Lead, Kindly Light, amidst the encircling gloom,
Lead Thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home,
Lead Thou me on!
Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene; one step enough for me.

"Lead, Kindly Light" was sung by Betsie ten Boom, and other women as they were led by the S.S. Guards to the concentration camp Ravensbruck during the Holocaust.

Lead, Kindly Light was sung by a soloist on the Titanic during a hymn-singing gathering led by Rev. Ernest C. Carter, shortly before the ocean liner struck an iceberg on April 14, 1912. Lead, Kindly Light was sung by British troops to the accompaniment of nearby artillery fire during the 1st World War at services held before going into the trenches the following day^.

So long Thy power hath blest me, sure it still
Will lead me on.
O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till
The night is gone,
And with the morn those angel faces smile,
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile!

Meantime, along the narrow rugged path,
Thyself hast trod,
Lead, Saviour, lead me home in childlike faith,
Home to my God.
To rest forever after earthly strife
In the calm light of everlasting life."

I AM SURE THAT IT MEAN\S A WALK WITH GOD

And a verse from one of my favourite hymns ‘In heavenly love abiding’

2 Wherever he may guide me,
no want shall turn me back;
my Shepherd is beside me,
and nothing can I lack:
his wisdom ever waketh,
his sight is never dim,
he knows the way he taketh,
and I will walk with him.

And in our second reading for today which will be read at the close of today’s service – from Ephesians 5:8-14 New International Version:

⁸ For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light ⁹ (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) ¹⁰ and find out what pleases the Lord. 

Show me the way.   The way to go home.  It is the way of Jesus.  It is to know truth and see what life is really about. No longer living in shadows, of not seeing, of guessing, of limits. Of seeing people in a real way, no longer just thinking of yourself and your needs, but having empathy for other people, kin, friends, networks and eventually to a world view of all people. And, walking with Jesus in that journey.