Let’s See Part One: Who We Are

Introduction: Eye Doctors

Anxiety at the eye doctors.

I don’t know about you, but I get super nervous every year at the eye doctors when they put that goofy machine over your face.

Is it better one, or better two?

Some people can answer that right off the bat.

I’m always like…can I see One again? Is there a three? What do you think looks better doc?

But all of that exercise is all about being able to see better.

It’s about a doctor who wants to provide for my healing.

That’s what Jesus wants to do for us today as well.

Blind Man

This story starts in an interesting place.

Some people brought him.

We’ve seen this before in scripture.

Examples of friends, or even in this story just random strangers from the way the Greek is constructed.

The man brought in through the roof.

When Jesus saw “their” faith, he said that the lame man’s sins were forgiven.

Just a bit earlier in Mark- “they” bring a deaf man.

Again, we don’t know who “they” are.

Whether they’re friends or (maybe literally) good samaritans, they see someone who needs healing and know right where to take him.

(In John’s gospel), Andrew brought Peter to Jesus.

We have found the Messiah!

You’ve just got to see this guy!

Come and see! Come and see!

Who have brought you to this point on your journey?

It’s always interesting to take a moment and ponder this point every now and again.

Who has brought you this far on your journey?

Who is it who has been intimately interested in your own journey of healing?

Who has wanted to make sure that you could see clearly?

If nothing else, it’s always good to take a moment of gratitude for those folks in our lives, to thank God for them.

But also, let me tell you something…

As a former youth pastor, I occasionally get notes from folks who have felt I influenced their faith journey, thanking me for helping them along the way.

And it fills my eyes with tears every. single. time.

So then I turn around and write my youth pastor a note and thank him for everything that he’s done in my life.

For sure, thank God for the folks who have brought you this far on the journey.

But if you have the time and ability, send them a note or a phone call or something…let them know what they meant to you.

While these folks helped bring the blind man to Jesus, Jesus has an interesting reaction.

He leads him away.

We as a staff when we were reading this earlier this week were so touched by the tenderness of Jesus taking this blind man by the hand to lead him away from the crowd, and to a quiet spot for healing.

The First Effort-

We’ve got to say it:

Healing is weird!

I’ve been saving up all week, and I brought my bucket of spit…

Not really…

I assume Jesus is powerful enough to do all of this with a word…I’m not sure why the theatrics of spit were necessary.

Jesus could have just spoken over this blind man and I assume that it would have been enough.

But no, Jesus gets gross with it.

He spits in this guys eyes!

Let’s be honest, sometimes our healing is incredibly awkward.

Worship leader David Crowder wrote once that he was having a crisis of faith, not sure if God was really out there.

And he found healing of all places…in a Chick-Fil-A sandwich.

He said that it was the most perfect meal that could have happened at the lowest point, and without being able to fully explain it, he knew that God was present and providing for him in that Chick-Fil-A sandwich.

Healing is weird.

Sometimes when it is my relationships that need healing, there are plenty of weird conversations that need to happen.

As a pastor who has occasionally had to mediate these conversations, I’ll note two things:

1) Do you know how awkward it is to sit with two rather upset people in a span of like 10 minutes of pure silence?

2) Do you know that it’s the strangest things that often get people talking to each other and working back to healing?

I once had a couple get back to talking by starting with their shared love of cheese!

Healing is weird.

If you spend any length of time with doctors, you’ve eventually come up with the weird healing stories there too.

These incredible men and women of science almost all have a story that ends with “I don’t know how that thing healed itself…but it did!”

Healing is weird.

We Presbyterians in particular who like to hold things decently and in good order, we need to realize that every now and again healing requires a bit of strangeness.

Every now and again there’s going to be some spit involved.

But we still need to live in the trust of our savior.

But…

It doesn’t quite work…

I see people, but they look like tress walking around.

That’s actually what it says on my eyeglasses prescription…

Clearly this guy hasn’t always been blind.

He knows that trees look like.

But that’s also not complete healing, is it?

I see people, but they look like trees walking around is what I’m like without my glasses, and without my glasses I’m not allowed to operate a motor vehicle.

It makes for a pretty difficult way of life.

There are times where we’re in this kind of half way state when it comes to healing.

Sometimes we’re not so much healed as we are healing.

Sometimes we’re still holding on to the aches and pains of an injury.

Sometimes that person that broke our heart still tugs at those old heart strings.

Sometimes those who have wronged us haven’t quite come back around.

Sometimes we can see the path we’re on…but only a little bit.

Like Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians- Right now we just kind of see in a mirror dimly.

When I look at the world we occupy, and the number of people who are in it that are broken and hurting and then in turn hurting others, I have to admit I don’t quite see what God’s up to yet.

I have to admit it when I’m the victim of people disappointing me.

I have to admit it when the world doesn’t work out the way I thought it would.

I have to admit it when love is anything but patient, or kind, or when love gives in to arrogance or rudeness, that I just don’t see what God is up to yet.

I can’t quite see…everything just looks like trees walking around.

We have to be honest in asking Jesus for what we need.

If I were in this blind man’s position, I wonder if I would have settled for that halfway healing situation.

I so don’t want to bother anybody.

Plus I can’t imagine the process of having someone spit in your eyes is all that enjoyable…

So when Jesus asked me “How’s that?” and I saw people like trees walking around, I wonder if I would have responded with

Yeah, I’m good!

Thanks Jesus, this is enough!

I’m all set. I can “see.”

Thank goodness, this Blind man has the hunger for healing to say that he’s not done yet.

Boss, it’s good. But I want to be able to see things more clearly.

I want to be more healed.

I want to do better.

A hunger for healing.

A big piece of me wonders if that isn’t the point?

In seminary, there was a debate about whether or not Jesus screwed up the first attempt at healing.

Maybe he didn’t quite have his mojo working that day?

Or maybe he was tired and hadn’t eaten enough?

Or maybe he just wasn’t feeling it?

And for what it’s worth, I think those are questions that we are more than justified in asking when we’re in the people like trees phase of healing.

Some people want to jump to maybe this guy didn’t have enough faith to be healed?

But first of all, I don’t know that this is exactly how it works…

And secondly, someone who’s lacking in faith isn’t honest enough to keep asking Jesus for more.

No, I think there’s a value in Jesus drawing this guy’s hunger for healing out.

There’s a value in that persistant widow who keeps begging the judge for justice.

There’s a value in praying without ceasing.

There’s a value in carrying on, even with that thorn in the flesh, because God’s power is made perfect in weakness.

I wonder if for us who are in the halfway point, if we need to draw on that hunger for healing?

It’s not enough to just see people walking around like trees.

Do we have the desire to end where this guy did?

Seeing everything clearly.

My prescription changes every year.

The road signs get blurry, and that’s probably not good for anyone.

It’s usually around November or so that things start to fall apart, so avoid the roads around the church then…

There’s profound damage that can be done when you can’t see things clearly…especially about yourself.

A lack of self-awareness can be absolutely deadly in the life of faith, in the same way a bad glasses prescription can be deadly behind the wheel of a car.

See yourself clearly.

The dark side.

This is where most preachers go with this, to make sure that we’re seeing our darkness clearly.

1 John 1:8–9 “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

I love that…we deceive ourselves.

I have been at this for a while, and I have come across a whole bunch of Christians who actually don’t have any need at all for Jesus.

If you listen to them talk, they’re perfect! They’re flawless! They never killed anybody

(Side note, I don’t know why that’s on everybody’s list…it’s a pretty low bar!)

They always cross at the green. They’re always in church. They always do the right thing.

They don’t need anything from Jesus in their telling.

And every time I hear someone go on and on like that, I get the intense feeling that they’re lying to themselves.

So we need to be honest about the darkside.

We need to know the places we’ve gone wrong.

We need to be comfortable with confession.

We need to be honest about the places where we need healing.

And…

And the light side.

Too often when preachers like me are encouraging folks to see themselves clearly, they just mean that sin side.

And yes, we should be really honest about that.

But we should also recognize what else is true about ourselves…

1 John 3:1 “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God, and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.”

See it clearly friends: you are loved!

See it clearly friends: You are a child of God!

See it clearly friends: You belong to the Father!

See it clearly friends: You are forgiven!

See it clearly friends: You are loved!

We’ll see other people later…

John Calvin had an interesting note on this, coming straight from the first Chapter of his seminal work “The Institutes:”

“Without knowledge of self, there is no knowledge of God. Our wisdom, insofar as it ought to be deemed true and solid wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.

Calvin kind of puts up this ping pong for us in our souls:

Want to get to see God better? Get to see yourself more clearly.

Want to see yourself more clearly? Get to seeing God in your life.

How can we see ourselves:

Let our friends help us…with caution.

Glaucoma

A few years ago at one of those routine eye glass appointments, better one, better two?

The doctor doing the exam noticed something that caused her a little bit of concern, and so she sent me to the ophthalmologist.

It turns out, right about as early as it could possibly be detected, she had noticed that I have glaucoma.

For which, I’m really grateful.

Glaucoma has almost not symptoms at all until you lose your sight.

I could have been carrying that around with me for years without knowing, until I just went blind.

She was able to notice something about me that I never would have noticed on my own, and helped me get healing.

With a few drops every night, I’m as right as rain and my sight is good to go.

This is what really, really good friends can do for us.

They can notice the tiny, imperceptible, but also quite toxic parts of us that need attention.

They can point out what might be causing us harm that we’re not even noticing.

Some people have even taken to calling these our blind spots. Talk about seeing.

They can bring us to Jesus for healing.

Only trusted people allowed.

I trusted my doctor with her diagnosis because…well…she’s a doctor.

If some guy on the street came up to me and said “Hey, I think you have glaucoma. Have some eye drops from my private collection…

I think I’d trust that a little bit less.

Make sure that the voices your listening to about your healing are those you trust.

We don’t need an endless stream of voices suggesting what healing we need.

We need trusted friends who can see what we can’t, and are most interested in us getting healing.

Speaking of trusted friends…

Be honest with Jesus about what we need.

I’ve come across plenty of people in my ministry who don’t want to bother Jesus.

Really, they’ll say things like “God’s got so many other people with so many other problems to deal with, I don’t want to pray about this or that affliction that I’m dealing with.”

That’s not how this works!

Jesus cares about each and every single sheep in his flock, and that includes you dear one!

Your afflictions, however great or small, are of tremendous interest to Jesus.

Your wounds, whether paper cuts or bullet holes, are the ones that Jesus wants to bind up and bandage.

Your blind spots, however glaring, are those that Jesus is most interested in healing.

Don’t settle for half way healed.

We can be a bit more like the blind man in this regard.

Jesus, I see people but they look like trees walking.

Jesus, I am working on the road to forgiving my brother or sister, but I need more help with that.

Jesus, I am trying to move past that hurt, but it’s still stinging.

Jesus, I am healing, but I want to be made whole.

Be patient with the dim mirror.

Right now, we don’t see everything clearly.

We have a lot of questions about what’s going on in our world around us.

We have a lot of questions about why that world doesn’t look more like the Kingdom of God.

We have a lot of questions about what our role is to play in making that Kingdom a bit closer.

We have a lot of questions about what it looks like to be the Church in this climate.

And you know what, that’s ok.

We can be patient with the dim mirror we’re seeing, because love is patient.

We can be gentle with the world around us, because love is gentle.

We don’t need to be arrogant or boastful about what we can see, because love is not arrogant or boastful.

We can endure all that this world throws at us, because love endures all things.

And so what we most need to see is what Jesus has to say about us.

What does Jesus really have to say about us?

You are loved.

You are loved.

You are loved.

You are loved.

You are loved.

Don’t believe me?

Let’s see.