First Reading: Ephesians 5:8-14 (The Message)
You groped your way through that murk once, but no longer. You're out in the open now. The bright light of Christ makes your way plain. So no more stumbling around. Get on with it! The good, the right, the true—these are the actions appropriate for daylight hours. Figure out what will please Christ, and then do it. Don't waste your time on useless work, mere busywork, the barren pursuits of darkness. Expose these things for the sham they are. It's a scandal when people waste their lives on things they must do in the darkness where no one will see. Rip the cover off those frauds and see how attractive they look in the light of Christ. Wake up from your sleep,
Climb out of your coffins; Christ will show you the light! So watch your step. Use your head. Make the most of every chance you get. These are desperate times!
Second Reading: John 9:1-8, 10-11, 13-17, 24-25 (The Message)
Walking down the street, Jesus saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked, "Rabbi, who sinned: this man or his parents, causing him to be born blind?" Jesus 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."
He said this and then spit in the dust, made a clay paste with the saliva, rubbed the paste on the blind man's eyes, and said, "Go, wash at the Pool of Siloam" (Siloam means "Sent"). The man went and washed—and saw. Soon the town was buzzing. …They said, "How did your eyes get opened?" "A man named Jesus made a paste and rubbed it on my eyes and told me, 'Go to Siloam and wash.' I did what he said. When I washed, I saw." …They marched the man to the Pharisees. This day when Jesus made the paste and healed his blindness was the Sabbath. The Pharisees grilled him again on how he had come to see. He said, "He put a clay paste on my eyes, and I washed, and now I see." 6Some of the Pharisees said, "Obviously, this man can't be from God. He doesn't keep the Sabbath." Others countered, "How can a bad man do miraculous, God-revealing things like this?" There was a split in their ranks. They came back at the blind man, "You're the expert. He opened your eyes. What do you say about him?"… They called the man back a second time—the man who had been blind— and told him, "Give credit to God. We know this man is an impostor." He replied, "I know nothing about that one way or the other. But I know one thing for sure: I was blind . . . I now see."
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Let us pray: Loving God, we thank you that you are with us, and that we may call upon you no matter where we are, or what we are feeling. Keep us mindful of your presence and trusting in your promise—that you are working with us in the moment-by-moment unfolding of our lives. Amen.
I have had many teachers—some are still living, some not. Some were great, some not so much. But one of my greatest spiritual teachers has four paws, a bushy tail and weighs (when he stays on his diet) about 16 pounds. Jonathan and I have walked the road of faith for 8 years now and he has taught me many things along the way about unconditional love, patience, and God. Since we moved to The Villages, our dogs have had to give up their fenced yard. We still have a doggie door in the slider leading to the lanai, but that’s as far as it goes. This seems to satisfy their need for freedom somewhat. Jonathan has developed this amusing habit that got me to thinking about my—and maybe our—relationship with God. He will go outside and then sit and look back in the sliding glass door with an expression that looks very much like “I wish I had a nice house to live in”. Of course, all he has to do is come back in the doggie door, but he will sometime sit there as long as an hour just woefully looking in.
As he was doing this just the other day, I got to thinking about our journey to God. I wonder how often we sit and look longingly at a close, warm relationship with God when in reality the path to that relationship is a mere six inches away. And so, I wonder if Lent might not be about moving us those six inches—from longing to experiencing, from seeking to having. Both of our scriptures point us in this direction. Paul, in Ephesians, exhorts-- You groped your way through that murk once, but no longer. You're out in the open now. The bright light of Christ makes your way plain. So no more stumbling around. Get on with it!” Move that six inches—that approach—Paul’s famous ‘tough love’ works for some of us—not for others.
Jesus, on the other hand, is walking down the street where we often find him—out in the world, walking with the common folk. He comes upon a man born blind. In answer to the disciples’ questions about the whys of this man’s blindness he calls them to move to another place in their thoughts. “There is no one to blame—look at what God can do.” And then he calls us to the gospel itself, saying “We need to be energetically at work for the One who sent me here, working while the sun shines… For as long as I am in the world, there is plenty of light. I am the world's Light." And, then, of course, he heals the man. It is the response of that very man where the six inches becomes clear—remember—that six inches from longing to experiencing, from failing to see to seeing. People all over town are haunting this man—taunting him, actually. How did this Jesus heal you? What do you think happened? This man says simply, “he told me what to do, I did it, and now I can see.” Over and over, they just won’t leave him—wanting theological answers, wanting him to explain away the obvious miracle. At last we hear him say: “I don’t know about any of that! I just know that I used to be blind and now I see”. All this other stuff gets in the way for him—his sight is the reason he believes—he is different, he is healed. In doing what the Lord asked him to do, he has moved his six inches for sure.
Barbara Brown Taylor, a contemporary prophet and minister who now works in a small college in Northeast Georgia and lives on a working farm, says this about too much information about God in the church: “In an age of information overload, when a vast variety of media delivers news faster that most of us can digest—when many of us have at least two email addresses, two telephone numbers, and one fax number—the last thing any of us needs is more information about God. We need the practice of incarnation, by which God saves the lives of those whose intellectual assent has turned as dry as dust , who have run frighteningly low on the bread of life, who are dying to know more God in their bodies. Not more about God. More God.”
And here is Jesus, spitting into clay—being God, and changing a man’s life forever in an instant. This healing, this miracle, changed this man’s perspective from one who couldn’t see to one who could. And he did it by reaching out—body to body! This, my friends, is the Gospel incarnate! This is Jesus, the living Word, walking on this earth as one of us, who used something as common as spit and clay to change a man’s very world. And this is what Lent is all about—moving that six inches, from longing to being, from chaos and confusion to purpose and peace.
Now I know that many of you have heard sermons on this passage before. And we know that most of the time, the man born blind is said to represent our spiritual blindness, our inability to see the truth. Jesus, literally, opens the man’s eyes and he sees all that there is to see. Most importantly, he captures the truth of the simplicity of it all—none of the theological questions bother him one iota—he just knows that now he sees—and we are invited to see the same way—by allowing Jesus to become incarnate in us and is so doing, he makes us aware of all that we need to know.
I would challenge us to look again at the passage and see the second truth that may get hidden in the excitement around the miracle of new sight! We usually identify with the formerly blind man. Is there not a second role that this passage calls us to—to be the embodiment of Jesus—Jesus, the one who stooped and scooped up clay and then spat into it to create this miracle? Jesus, who keeps us focused on the very real, sometimes very dirty work of spreading the Gospel. And this is what Barbara Brown Taylor calls us to when she tells us that people don’t need to know more about God—we need more God. We ALL need more God—and as I look around this place, I see plenty of God to go around. And so I invite us to join Jesus in this stooping and scooping and healing—to join the creator of the universe in the healing of the universe. Those of us who struggle with spiritual understanding, not knowing if all of this Jesus and miracle and change is really for us, need really look no farther than this simple, earthy and earthly act of Jesus.
For it is in allowing God to be embodied in us, just as God was embodied in Jesus that we shift that tiny six inches and we become immediately in the loving embrace of a God who welcomes us to be a part of the Word made flesh—the Word in the world, as it were. Jesus says, “we need to be using our energy to work for the One who sent me here, working while the sun shines.” And then—“for as long as I am in the world, there is plenty of light. I am the world's Light." Here’s what I think—I think that Jesus is telling us that it is up to us to keep him visible and working in the world. That it is our work, modeled after his work, his stooping, scooping, dirty, healing work that keeps him present to a world so desperately hungry for God. And once we are busily doing the work of God, our perception shifts that magical six inches—there is no secret that evades us when we are down in the dirt with Jesus. This is the blessing—the embracing relationship that we seek—to know that God has used us to bring others new sight.
And now a blessing for the Journey of Seeking God:
*When your soul whispers of its deepest longings,
may you quiet yourself to listen.
May you follow the path of yearning to the One alone who blends the uneven edges
into a life of meaning.
May you meet and be united with God
and give thanks for the whispers
that led you there. (*from explorefaith.org)
And all God’s people said amen and amen!
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