This Is My Story (2)

I came across a “fascinating list” that carried this intriguing title: “Great Truths About Life That Little Children Have Learned.” Let me share a few of these “great truths” with you.

1. “ No matter how hard you try you cannot baptize a cat.” 2. “When your mom is mad at your dad, don’t let her brush your hair.” 3. “Never ask your 3-year-old brother to hold a tomato… or an egg.” 4. “You can’t trust dogs to watch your food for you.” 5. “Don’t sneeze when somebody is cutting your hair.” 6. “School lunches stick to the wall.” 7. “You can’t hide a piece of broccoli in a glass of milk.” 8. “Never wear polka-dot underwear under white shorts… no matter how cute the underwear is.”

Now, it is virtually certain that the children learned these “great truths” and came to these bold new insights after some dramatic eye-opening experience in their own personal lives. Can’t you just see in your mind’s eye…some children trying to baptize a cat…and learning full well from that experience that this is just not a good thing to do. The point is clear: A dramatic personal eye-opening experience can give us new insight, new perception, new vision.

On a much deeper level and on a much more positive level, that’s precisely what we discover in this amazing story in John 9. A man blind from birth has a dramatic eye-opening experience with Jesus… and talk about new vision, talk about new insight… he is completely and totally healed. He is made whole and he comes back from the pool of Siloam with 20/20 vision,… able to see perfectly for the first time in his life. His transformation is so complete and so dramatic that he even looks a little different. The townspeople see him and say: “Hey, isn’t that the blind beggar? He can see now. Is that him? No, it’s just someone who looks like him. Couldn’t be him,” And the formerly blind man says: “It’s me alright. I am the man.”

Remember the story with me…

https://sermons.com/home/illustrations/2017-03-26

John 9 NIV

1 As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” 3 “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. 4 As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. 5 While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” 6 After saying this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes. 7 “Go,” he told him, “wash in the Pool of Siloam” (this word means “Sent”). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing. 8 His neighbors and those who had formerly seen him begging asked, “Isn’t this the same man who used to sit and beg?” 9 Some claimed that he was. Others said, “No, he only looks like him.” But he himself insisted, “I am the man.” 10 “How then were your eyes opened?” they asked. 11 He replied, “The man they call Jesus made some mud and put it on my eyes. He told me to go to Siloam and wash. So I went and washed, and then I could see.” 12 “Where is this man?” they asked him. “I don’t know,” he said. 13 They brought to the Pharisees the man who had been blind. 14 Now the day on which Jesus had made the mud and opened the man’s eyes was a Sabbath. 15 Therefore the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his sight. “He put mud on my eyes,” the man replied, “and I washed, and now I see.” 16 Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.” But others asked, “How can a sinner perform such signs?” So they were divided. 17 Then they turned again to the blind man, “What have you to say about him? It was your eyes he opened.” The man replied, “He is a prophet.” 18 They still did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they sent for the man’s parents. 19 “Is this your son?” they asked. “Is this the one you say was born blind? How is it that now he can see?” 20 “We know he is our son,” the parents answered, “and we know he was born blind. 21 But how he can see now, or who opened his eyes, we don’t know. Ask him. He is of age; he will speak for himself.” 22 His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders, who already had decided that anyone who acknowledged that Jesus was the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. 23 That was why his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.” 24 A second time they summoned the man who had been blind. “Give glory to God by telling the truth,” they said. “We know this man is a sinner.” 25 He replied, “Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!” 26 Then they asked him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” 27 He answered, “I have told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples too?” 28 Then they hurled insults at him and said, “You are this fellow’s disciple! We are disciples of Moses! 29 We know that God spoke to Moses, but as for this fellow, we don’t even know where he comes from.” 30 The man answered, “Now that is remarkable! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. 31 We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly person who does his will. 32 Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. 33 If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” 34 To this they replied, “You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!” And they threw him out. 35 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, “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.

In this text, our main character is a man who has been blind from birth who is also a beggar—which is an indication of how his community treats people with disabilities. As an adult, begging is his only option for income in his patriarchal, able-centric world. His community members also assume that sin is the reason for his disability, which gives them an excuse to consider him unclean and ostracize him from society, leaving him to fend for himself, refusing engagement with him for fear that his sin or the sin of his family will somehow rub off on them, making them unclean. Even after Jesus confronts these injustices, and even after he heals the man, the religious leaders refuse to believe. It is easy to read this text as a feel-good story about a man whose life Jesus changes for the better, but we need to confront the more sinister things that are happening in this story because they are not very different from our reality today. This story exposes in this community a failure to listen, a failure to care, a failure to include and love, and a complete unwillingness to acknowledge their own sin.

Ableism

This story exposes the people’s cultural assumption that disability is a consequence of sin.

This assumption automatically ostracizes anyone who has a disability because they are viewed as unclean, which prohibits them from participation in temple worship as well as regular society because of the Torah-driven belief in the contagion of uncleanliness.

The man in this story is on the edge of town begging, which shows his physical relegation to the outskirts of the community. Unless someone chooses to provide for someone with a disability (which would mean causing themselves to be ostracized and viewed as unclean as well), those with disabilities are left to fend for themselves, which is why this man is a beggar.

Since this man was born blind, the cultural assumption is that someone had to have sinned at some point to cause the blindness, and Jesus’s disciples want to know who: “this man or his parents?”

Jesus’s answer that nobody sinned is therefore radical because he is rejecting the prevailing theology of the day, which is that all evil/bad luck/bad things happening to people is a result of sin. With his proclamation that nobody sinned, Jesus is also publicly shifting the blind man and his family from the designation of unclean to a status of clean—which indicts the community’s treatment of this family. The man (and his parents, if they have cared for him) should never have been excluded from the community or the temple.

Jesus goes on to offer a strange-sounding explanation: “this has happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.” What is the work of God that Jesus is talking about?

Of course, it is the work of God that gives Jesus the power to make this man see. But the continuing discourse is less about physical vision and more about the willful blindness and callousness of the religious leaders regarding their exclusionary choices.

In Luke 4:18–19, Jesus declares that the work of God that he has come to do involves preaching good news to the poor, proclaiming liberty to the captives, granting recovery of sight to the blind, setting the oppressed free, and announcing the year of the Lord’s favor. So the work of God involves welcoming all, and abolishing all oppression.

Sin

The word used for what Jesus does to create the mud with the saliva is a labor related word, indicating making or producing something. In other words, technically this act is forbidden on the Sabbath by Jewish law. Whenever Jesus heals publicly on the Sabbath, he seems to be doing it for a purpose: to illustrate the sad reality about the religious elite caring more about their legalism than they do about people’s humanity.

The people bring the healed man to the Pharisees so they can officially pronounce him clean and able to be part of worship and community again. But the Pharisees are not interested in restoring the man to society; now they are focused on the way that Jesus has sinned.

The Pharisees have a lot of power, so when they send for the man’s parents to testify about what is going on, they are afraid because they don’t want to be excluded from worship. We can surmise they probably have been excluded in the past because of their son’s condition, were perhaps welcomed back once their son came of age and left their home to fend for himself, and are afraid of being cast out again. So they refuse to speculate on how or why their son suddenly has his sight, claiming he is old enough to speak for himself.

The man makes clear that he is ill equipped to make a judgment about whether someone else is a sinner. He tells them the simple truth of what he knows, which is that he was blind and now he is not. The Pharisees are not interested in the truth, however. They are interested in having their “gotcha” moment with Jesus. When the man does not give them what they want, they throw him out.

Jesus seems to be communicating that the real sin in this story is the willful spiritual blindness of the religious leaders. Jesus says they are guilty of sin because they can’t admit their own sin.

It would be easy to turn this story into an ableist illustration, but Jesus is attempting to do the opposite: he’s trying to separate blindness from sin, emphasizing that our willful actions (sins)—like oppression, legalism, and lack of love—cause terrible consequences for others.

The Kingdom of God

Jesus is once again extending the boundaries of the kingdom of God to include people who haven’t been included up to this point—like people with disabilities. Although Jesus restored this man’s sight with the partial goal of restoring his standing in the community, this text is a call for the church today to see those around us with disabilities with eyes of love, not judgment. They shouldn’t be left to beg on the margins of society.

The global church has not been and still is not always good at welcoming those with disability into the worshiping community. Families and individuals facing these realities will not attend churches with accessibility issues, or churches where they feel unsupported or unwelcome, or churches where they feel unsafe.

There are numerous stories from disabled people who have had random people in churches pray “healing” over them without being asked. How is this different from the assumption that the blind man is living with the consequence of his sin?

If the kingdom of God is inclusive of those who have been oppressed, alienated, marginalized, and ostracized, then we as the people of God are also expected to be inclusive. In what ways do able-bodied Christians need to repent of injustice toward people with disabilities, and how can we demonstrate our true repentance by changing our ways and fighting for justice and inclusion?

People born with disabilities are not some kind of glitch in the system of God’s good creation. If the kingdom of God is inclusive of those who have been oppressed, alienated, marginalized, and ostracized, then the kingdom isn’t complete without disabled people.

We are reminded once again that loving God and loving others are the two most important callings of any Christian life. We are to be people who are motivated by love over law, just as Jesus was. We are to be people who include, instead of exclude. We are to be people who recognize that we don’t become unclean by association but that we can create a better world when we draw close to those whom the world deems unclean or unworthy.

We are deep in the season of Lent, a season of reflection and repentance. It is safe to say we have some repenting to do!

Some of us have to repent of our assumptions of sin in the lives of disabled people— even if we’ve never said it out loud. Some of us have to repent of our behaviors of ostracizing and excluding. Others of us have to repent of our fixation on rules being broken to the extent that we forget to look at the people we are breaking in the process. Still others need to repent of our oversight, our neglect of the responsibility to look around and see who hasn’t been invited or who is unable to even get into the room.

We also must remember that repentance requires actionable change. Repentance means we know we have done wrong, and we seek to do better. In our cries for repentance to a God who is inclusive, who confronts injustice and oppression in all of its forms, we must also commit to the work. We must commit to being a people who confront injustice and oppression, who seek to include, who seek to see the kingdom of God brought on earth as it is in heaven.

This is my story

This is my song

Praising my Savior all the day long

This is my story

This is my song

Praising my Savior all the day long

TIME OF REFLECTION - Prayer Stations (while music plays in background)

COMMUNION RITUAL

The Communion Supper, instituted by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is a sacrament, which proclaims His life, His sufferings, His sacrificial death, and resurrection, and the hope of His coming again. It shows forth the Lord’s death until His return.

The Supper is a means of grace in which Christ is present by the Spirit. It is to be received in reverent appreciation and gratefulness for the work of Christ.

All those who are truly repentant, forsaking their sins, and believing in Christ for salvation are invited to participate in the death and resurrection of Christ. We come to the table that we may be renewed in life and salvation and be made one by the Spirit.

In unity with the Church, we confess our faith: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. And so we pray:

PRAYER OF CONFESSION AND SUPPLICATION:

Holy God,

We gather at this, your table, in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ, who by your Spirit was anointed to preach good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives, set at liberty those who are oppressed. Christ healed the sick, fed the hungry, ate with sinners, and established the new covenant for forgiveness of sins. We live in the hope of His coming again.

On the night in which He was betrayed, He took bread, gave thanks, broke the bread, gave it to His disciples, and said: “This is my body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of me.”

Likewise, when the supper was over, He took the cup, gave thanks, gave it to His disciples, and said: “Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. Do this in remembrance of me.” Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

And so, we gather as the Body of Christ to offer ourselves to you in praise and thanksgiving. Pour out your Holy Spirit on us and on these your gifts. Make them by the power of your Spirit to be for us the body and blood of Christ, that we may be for the world the Body of Christ, redeemed by His blood.

By your Spirit make us one in Christ, one with each other, and one in the ministry of Christ to all the world, until Christ comes in final victory. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.

EXPLAIN ELEMENTS

The body of our Lord Jesus Christ, broken for you, preserve you blameless, unto everlasting life. Eat this in remembrance that Christ died for you, and be thankful.

The blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, shed for you, preserve you blameless unto everlasting life. Drink this in remembrance that Christ died for you, and be thankful.

CONCLUDING PRAYER OF THANKSGIVING AND COMMITMENT

And now, as our Savior Christ has taught us, let us pray:

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.