Fourth Sunday of
Lent
March 10, 2002
Tellico Village
Community Church
Stephen Nash
This story of the man who had been blind from birth is a powerful parable for Saint John of the condition of us all—of all of humanity. It is John’s theological commentary of the human condition and the nature of salvation. This one man, like all the rest of us, is blind to the power and presence of God. Blind, that is, until Jesus, the light of the world, reveals the God who is capable of curing our vision disorder.
The notion of salvation as “enlightenment” is threatening to some Christians. It sounds like a notion more of Eastern religions than of Christianity. But that is only because we don’t know our own Christian tradition well enough. Enlightenment is one of the most predominant and powerful metaphors for salvation in the Bible itself, especially in John’s gospel.
Faith is a indeed a matter of seeing differently. Of experiencing a new consciousness. A new awareness. It’s a new way of seeing resulting in a new way of being. This is the most basic truth Jesus taught, and it’s the easiest to forget. It comes in a three-word-package: God is here. All his other ideas stem from this assumption, like the shiny spokes of a bicycle wheel grow out of its axle. In trying to communicate this central megatruth, Jesus used another three-word phrase more than 110 times in the New Testament records: kingdom of God. Jesus said God is here and you experience God by entering a new level of consciousness which he called the “kingdom of God.”
Do you remember the first time you fell in love? The day that happened you became an entirely different person. Then, everything changed. Your thinking and behavior suddenly came under the control of a new perspective, a new awareness, a new consciousness. You looked at the world through new mental lenses. You had entered a new level of consciousness
In fact, the word “repent” in the New Testament means to change one’s way of seeing . . . to change one’s mind . . . one’s thinking . . . one’s perception, that obviously result in a change in life orientation. It is such a powerful reality, that Jesus refers to it, as recorded by John, as a “new birth.”
But this story in John is not simply about a man who experiences such an epiphany. It is about the potential reaction of others to the very same reality. The healed blind man’s reception among his friends, family, and the Pharisees suggests that there are four very different ways to respond to life—to respond to God’s movements in our lives. Out of the same situation, considering the same circumstances, there can be four entirely different reactions.
The actual healing takes place simply and quickly as recorded in vss. 6-7. It is the reaction to it that John is interested in here, obviously. Here is where John’s metaphorical story begins to pulse with real life. Just as quickly as the man’s sight is restored, his cure comes under scrutiny from his friends and neighbors. The true religious folks of the day, the Pharisees are quite bent out of shape because this healing took place on the Sabbath. Clearly an infraction of their religious rules and sensibilities. After all, mixing mud constituted work, which was strictly forbidden.
Here we have an example of one orientation to life, to use a colloquial expression—the Nit Picker.
Anyone who has ever had a child come home from school with a note proclaiming that the notorious head louse has once again made an appearance knows all about the phrase “nit picking.” Each “nit” or tiny egg of the louse has to be meticulously combed, picked or pulled from the single strand of hair it’s attached to.
“Nit picking” has become a shorthand expression for those who cast a negative critical eye on everything, who can’t see the proverbial forest for the trees. Nit-pickers are always noting what is wrong with something and someone rather than what is right. They can’t enjoy anything, especially anything that has the least flaw in it. With little sense of humor these pickiness people are always looking for spiritual or moral “gotchas” to flaunt at others.
In the religious tradition in which I was raised, there was a proliferation of religious journals back in the 19th century. One of the many of those sectarian magazines was called “The Heretic Detector.” I hope that I’m remembered for what I am for more than what I am against.
Instead of rejoicing that there has obviously been a life-enhancing spectacular occurrence here, that a man has regained sight—the antagonists in this story can only focus on the possible Torah infringements that might have made it possible. “The ends don’t justify the means!” is their tut-tutting mantra.
When it comes to life in general, nit-pickers can burst any balloon. “The wedding was so beautiful; such a shame the groom couldn’t have lost a few pounds for the occasion.” You know the kind of disposition I’m thinking of. Just negative. Critical . . . and not in any constructive sense.
One of the late Irma Bombeck’s favorite Jewish grandmother stories tells of a grandmother who took her grandson to the beach one day, complete with bucket, shovel, and sun hat. The grandmother dozed off and as she slept, a large wave dragged the child out to sea. The grandmother awoke and was devastated. She fell to the ground on her knees and prayed, “God, if you save my grandchild, I promise I’ll make it up to you. I’ll join whatever organization you want me to. I’ll volunteer at the hospital, give to the poor and do anything that makes you happy.”
Suddenly a huge wave tossed her grandson on the beach at her feet. She noticed color in his cheeks and his eyes were bright. He was alive. As she stood up, though, she seemed to be upset. She put her hands on her hips, looked skyward, and said sharply, “He had a hat on, you know!”
When it comes to the religious life . . . the life of faith and ethics and relationships, the nit-picker cares more about rules than people. They disagree with Jesus’ bold assertion that the law was made for man, not man for the law.
You see, to Jesus the real condition of people was more important than the letter of the law. In this, Jesus was a humanist. A lot of Christian folks get bent out of shape when one says that, but it’s true. I don’t see how it’s possible to be a follower of Jesus without being a humanist. It was Jesus who said that the weightier matters of the law were love, justice, mercy . . . values and dispositions that enhance human life. Humane values are God’s values. And people who put religious dogma and party precepts before the real needs of people, are standing toe to toe in disagreement with Jesus of Nazareth and standing shoulder to shoulder with the Pharisees.
I like the way the renegade Catholic theologian Hans Kung puts it: “God wills nothing for himself, nothing for God’s own advantage, for his greater glory. God wills nothing but man’s advantage, man’s true greatness and ultimate dignity. This then is God’s will: man’s well-being. This is clear from the first to the last page of the Bible. God’s will is a helpful, healing, liberating, saving will. God wills life, joy, freedom, peace, salvation, the final, great happiness of man; both of the individual and of mankind as a whole.”
It follows, then, since God is such a “humanist,” that anything that is life enhancing is God’s will. And anything that is life-diminishing, stands in resistance to God’s will.
People always come before precepts. Human need, before religious dogma. We can’t always be certain about our dogmatic formulations, but we can always be sure about the one core ethical truth that is common to all – the preciousness of human life.
I once had a seminary professor that I really liked. It was my first year in seminary. I was very suggestible. Although he was pretty rigid, narrow and dogmatic, his lectures were stimulating. He fascinated me with his grasp of issues and ability to communicate them lucidly and in such an organized manner. His logic was impeccable. I shared lunch with him one day and asked him why he went into theological academics rather into pastoral ministry. His answer, which obliterated my respect for him: “I like dealing with ideas, but I don’t like people very much.”
These Pharisees loved their ideas. But they didn’t like people very much. They were religious nit-pickers.
They were also “wound lickers,” if you’ll pardon the crude expression. Remember getting a mosquito bite or a small scratch when you were a kid and then having to listen to your parents’ repeated admonition: “now don’t pick at it”? Of course, they had to keep telling us that because there is something self-destructively fascinating about an open wound. We are drawn to it, we want to mess with it, re-examine it, pull off the scab a little at a time to see how it’s healing. But that fixation on a wound—not allowing it to simply heal, can easily lead to infection or a worse wound. Vets have to put cones on the heads of pets to keep them from licking wounds.
When the Pharisees in verse 18 of our story called the man’s parents as possible witnesses against his previous condition of blindness, they are being wound-pickers. They can’t leave the situation alone, but return to it, trying to expose some imagined wrongfulness. They don’t realize that the wound they’re re-opening is the gaping hole of their own ignorance and spiritual bankruptcy.
Author James Michener has made his mark in the literary world by producing massive historical novels such as The Source, Hawaii, The Covenant, Texas (to name just a few). Ironically, Michener’s style has drawn its strength and beauty from characters fleshed out with extensive genealogies and deep cultural roots. But the irony is that he himself is a man without a geneology, without a birth certificate.
He was abandoned as an infant, raised as a foster-son in the Michener family headed by a widowed woman, and never knew his biological parents. While he claims to have come to peace with this vacuum in his life, it’s easy to see why he finds pleasure in inventing extensive lineages for all his characters with each new novel.
But in spite of his reputed generous spirit and kind nature, Michener’s accomplishments raised the ire of one of his adopted kin. He started getting poison-pen letters from an anonymous Michener. Hate-filled and mean spirited, always signed, “the real Michener”. Even after his Pulitzer Prize, this poison-pen writer charged Michener with besmirching the good Michener name, which he said, “you have no right to use,” and denounced him as a fraud. But the phrase this obviously jealous individual thrust the most deeply under Michener’s skin was, “Who in hell do you think you are, trying to be better than you are?”
The final letter he received from his unknown relative came in 1976 after he was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The acid note read: “Still using a name that isn’t yours. Still a fraud. Still trying to be better than you are.”
Michener testifies that the “words of that cry are burned into my soul.” But he turned the negative power of that accusation into a life-challenge. He acknowledges his wound-gouging kinsman, and admits to missing the nasty letters when his relative presumably died: “He was right in all his accusations,” Michener confesses. “I have spent my life trying to be better than I was, and am brother to all who have the same aspirations.”
Human existence is full of wounds. Wounds inflicted by others, by ourselves, by life. We are all wounded people. The English word “salvation,” you know has as its root the word “salve.” Salvation is salve for the wounds of existence. We can either be wound-pickers—constantly keeping our wounds as scabs and inflicting the same on others. Or we can be recipients of and bearers of the salve of salvation. We can be wounded lovers . . . who allow a God to heal us, even with a scar at the wounded place which becomes holy ground, and become wounded healers of others.
Jesus was a wounded lover, a wounded healer. The Pharisees, ancient and modern, are obsessed with picking at wounds.
There’s a third disposition toward life and faith that is represented in this story. These are the “goodness-sakes” people. Self-appointed crusaders for the promotion of righteousness. They consider themselves – and let all the rest of us know it – to be super-spiritual. Historian H.G. Wells complained about people he called the “goodness-sakers.” These are people who stand around saying, “Well, for goodness sake,” why doesn’t somebody do something.” Or, “For goodness sake, look at what they’re doing, or “for goodness sake, how awful.” The “holier than thou” types.
I have to confess to you, I am deeply cautious about people who are overly pious in their language. Don’t get me wrong. I think it’s appropriate and necessary to talk about spiritual things . . . to talk about God and Jesus and faith. God knows I make a living with god-talk. But there is god-talk and there is god-talk. There is piety, and there is piety. People who think that the life of faith is about “taking the mind off of the things of the world and putting them on the things of God.” They fail to realize that the things of the world ARE the things of God. Saint Paul had to deal with the hyper-spiritualists who were terrorizing the Corinthian church. The spiritual elitists who are so heavenly-minded they are little earthly good.
The healed man in John’s story had shown great restraint and self-control through most of this narrative, at last was driven to jab back at these up-tight self-appointed guardians of truth. As usually with goodness-sakers, however, they don’t get the point of his sarcasm when he answered their harassing questions with, “I told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples?” They didn’t get it. They reviled him and flaunted their allegiance to Moses, who they knew to be a prophet, and no new religious reality was possible for them. Don’t confuse us with the facts, our mind is made up.
One good barometer of whether or not you are growing is to examine your beliefs, attitudes, perspectives, and ask yourself if they have changed at all in recent years. Now, certain core convictions may never change. But is every article of your faith and belief and opinion exactly the same as it was 5, 10, 25, 40 years ago? If so, that’s not a sign of a strong faith, but a weak one. It’s a sign of a dogmatic faith that believes that it is always right and everyone else is always wrong. It comes from the notion that religious truth is a manageable body of information that’s placed into our minds, and then our only task is to protect it and defend it.
We need, rather, to conceive of spiritual truth as a muti-faceted gem which we can never completely comprehend perfectly, which should fill us with such humility as to dash any inkling of super-spirituality. The more we come to know, the more we realize we don’t know. Someone has said, the larger the island of knowledge, the greater the shoreline of ignorance.
Of the multi-faceted gem of spiritual truth, we may see only one or two facets that are real and true and beautiful, but we need to be open to others who have a view a view of different facets that we have yet to see and appreciate. A lack of openness not only stifles spiritual growth, but tends to create negative, disruptive attitudes and destroy senses of community.
But when we can avoid the nit-picking, the wound-gouging, and the “goodness-sake,” when we are truly open to the new level of consciousness that Jesus called the kingdom of God, our response to our experiences and our learnings and our healings will be one of celebration and awe and worship. It will be one of arm-waving. People who celebrate human victories and lend support int times of defeat. It’s not that arm-wavers don’t see all the imperfections in life and in people. It’s just that they focus on the beauty and goodness instead of the flaws, because, in imitation of their Creator, they are people of grace and redemption.
It’s amazing how arm-wavers are absent for so long from John’s story of the healed blind man. Here is a spectacular thing—a man suddenly enlightened from blindness—and no one celebrates. His neighbors are doubtful, his parents are worried about the legal and religious ramifications, while the Pharisees find the whole episode threatening to their established dogmas. Not until the healed man himself gradually comes to a realization who Jesus is . . . not until Jesus’ identity finally sinks in, does the man offers a full-body wave – he falls on his knees and worships.
The late Bob Benson of Benson Publishing tells of the pride he felt at watching from the grandstands as his son’s marching band performed before the judges in the press box at a prestigious competition and the thrill of watching them win the first prize three years in a row. He shared with his son that although it must have been a thrill to be on the field, “blowing to the box” as they call it at the finale, executing and playing flawlessly and winning the prize and hearing the applause, nothing could compare with the thrill that a parent feels in the stands, standing on tiptoe, watching and seeing their child do well.
Benson writes, “My thinking about this nudged me into some further thoughts about the heavenly Father. This one who is calling us. We all tend to believe that the God who calls us is watching us. It makes all the difference in the world where we think he is sitting. As long as we think of him as the judge in the press box who is checking for smudges on our white shoes, for the misplayed notes, for marching out of step, for our hats falling off or any one of a dozen other things that can happen to us in our performance, it is hard to keep from living our whole lives in fear of a button coming off our tunics. It was Jesus himself who reminded us that we were to call him “Abba.” Pappa, Dad. I think Jesus was telling us that our Father is the one in the stands who is standing on the seat, waving his coat in a circle over his head with tears of pride and happiness running down his face when we do well, and agonizing and hurting with us when we do poorly or even fail miserably. But he is our Dad. Perhaps the loving parent who some have not had on this earth. He is the one who has called us and he is faithfully loving. The one who will take us home”
That deserves a big wave of the arms.
Amen.