Spiritual Cataracts, Lent 4 2020

Lent 4: 2020 Hillside Community Lutheran Church John 9:1-41 Dear Friends in Christ. With the restrictions that we are under because of the spread of the virus, we are keeping in touch with each other via the net. So, this sermon is also printed. This is our first week we are making the service available via audio. My blessings and prayers are with you and yours during this time of restriction and we pray together that the measures we are taking as a community of faith in our county, state and nation will stem the spread of the virus. John 9:1-41 is a long gospel reading. It has 4 distinct sections. Verses 1-12 describe Jesus’ healing of the man born blind. Verses 13-23 tell the story of the Pharisees questioning him. Verses 24-34 continue the conversation between the healed man and the Pharisees. The final verses describe the man’s confession. There is a lot of conversation in this text between Jesus, the healed man, and those who witnessed the healing. Several years ago, I had a conversation that went something like this: She said, “It is tough today. I’m getting in touch with a lot of things”. I asked if she wanted to talk and she began to cry and said, “she was my great aunt. She was like a grandmother to me. She was a good friend. I’d go over to her house and play cards. They put her in a home, and I didn’t know it and didn’t even get to her funeral. I’ve carried the grief around for a long time and even used it to fill up my own self-pity bag. For some reason I went to this grief group and I’ve started to let go. I’m dealing with getting into a new way of thinking about myself and my life.” That conversation typifies how hard it is to adjust when things change. Especially when healing starts to happen after having dealt with the pain for a long time. It shows that even if our routines are interrupted with a new way of looking at things for the better the adjustment to whatever is new doesn’t happen overnight. It’s at the very end of the story that we finally have the healed man making his confession. One can imagine the trauma and adjustment of the man born blind from birth. First Jesus comes along and gives him sight. Then he is not recognized by his neighbors who had known him as beggar. Then the religious people wouldn’t believe his account of the healing and go one step further by saying they didn’t believe he was blind before. His parents wouldn’t defend him. Finally, he was in a position to confess that Jesus was the Son of man. The story illustrates that it wasn’t only the miracle of his eyes being opened to see the world anew. He also saw firsthand how quickly other people refuse to open their eyes to change and truth. There is a kind of domino effect. When things really changed in his life, others couldn’t accept it. So even though the story is often called “Jesus healing of the blind man”. It begs the question, “who really needs healing here?”. Who really needed the clay applied to their eyes? Was it the religious people who refused to acknowledge that Jesus really healed the blind man? Was it the blind man’s mom and dad who didn’t want to defend him? Was it the neighbors who had gone by this beggar day after day and yet didn’t recognize him with new sight? Who really needed their eyes opened? This is not a new theme in the Gospel of John. John does a lot with going from darkness into light. From the beginning of his story John says, “in him was life and the life was the light of all people”. Later Jesus says, “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world”. All along the way Jesus is doing things that shed new light on things and when he does other things get unsettled. There are couple things this story unsettles me. First, it causes me to think about my own blindness. Where is it that I am blind? Where am I blinded by confusion, complicated problems, by a world moving too fast, by a totally new circumstance that keeps me and my community bound behind walls because of a virus, by my own hesitancy to be open to a new vision of the future, by own tendency to keep God boxed up so that things aren’t out of my control? Where is it that I am expecting God to work only in the proper places? Where is it that I am hesitant to let God change me? Where and how am I blind to God’s miraculous love? On the second hand, this story causes me to realize that when God starts to do God’s thing with my comfortable routine is upset. I am moved by Jesus to make changes and adjustments. New life brings new eyes. A couple of years ago, I had cataract surgery on both eyes. Gradually over a long period of time I had become used to a kind of foggy outlook. It happened so gradual that I seemed to just adjust to it. It was like I just settled for a foggy view of things like it was my normal. Finally, it got to the point that I went to a specialist and he removed the cataracts. Wow, there was new vision… Slowly I had gone into a kind blindness, but with a laser and a physician’s hand, I was given new sight. During Lent we do a lot with the first questions. We are in a contemplative mood. We are in a repentant mood. Penitence and repentance keep us in touch with our limits and our blindness. But today the story is prompting us individually and as a church to make the next moves with the healing power God has given. God has given us new eyes to look at the world and there is healing not only as God changes things but as we move into our lives with God’s change. Once we know the story of God’s love in Jesus, we can no longer live with cataracts that cover our eyes from God’s world. We can no longer say, “Jesus don’t make me move and don’t make me change”. Jesus will do it. Jesus will bring healing. God is at work in Jesus to being light and life to your life and mine. Sometimes it might seem like we are going around like the blind leading the blind. But Jesus is here. He comes like a laser to remove our spiritual cataracts and He is always here shedding light on our darkened world. During these days when we are being requested to stay at home, it is take time to let the miraculous power of Jesus shed new light on our lives. Lets think about how God is always inviting us to open our eyes and remove the spiritual cataracts that keep us bound up and may we life in a new routine of Grace and love. We pray: Bring light into the darkness of our hearts and anoint us with hour Spirit. Come among us, dear Jesus, and give us eyes to see your grace. Amen.