March 2, 2008

Lent 4 A
John 9: 1-41

Amazing Grace

A man born blind sees for the first time and his sighted neighbors don't recognize him. Religious bigwigs with fancy degrees, resident experts on what is lawful and what is not are called sinners...and blind. They are blind to the truth because they refuse to see the obvious: Jesus Christ is the light of the world. And in Jesus they are looking at God. But they've got theological blinders on; they can't see the forest for the trees of their own moral categories.

True to form the disciples, blinded by the "blame the victim" mentality typical of their day, ask the wrong question. Like them, confronted with a story like this of the Jesus healing the man born blind, we find questions of our own drifting in front of our eyes, obscuring our vision like those annoying floating spots the optometrist tells us are common in people as we grow older. Questions like: "Why are some people born with disabilities?" "Why does God stand by and allow anybody to be born blind?" "Why doesn't God heal people like he did in Jesus' time?"

This story in John's gospel of Jesus spitting on dust to complete the creation of a nameless blind man is many things. It is the story of a sign, an act by Jesus that gives insight into his true identity, a wonder worked by God to produce faith. It is a baptism story, a story of cleansing and rebirth. It is a dramatization of John 3:16-21 -- that passage that starts with "For God so loved the world..." It is a glimpse of light at the end of the dark, dark tunnel of Lent, a reminder that the days are lengthening and Spring will come. It is a demonstration of faith seeking understanding in this world of great beauty and great need, to use Pastor Nate's well-turned phrase.

For the past four and a half years, the Cartons from France - Pascal and Frederique, Robin, Victoria, and Cesar - have been sailing around the world on a catamaran. My path converged with theirs at the guest house where we were all staying while we worked on our conversational Spanish at a language school in Antigua, Guatemala. I enjoyed the French family a great deal. They were funny and fun, and being with them reminded me of years gone by when my own children were the ages of Robin, Victoria, and Cesar, and we lived in India for six months, doing some adventurous traveling of our own.

Together the French family and I laughed over the old sitcom "Friends", discussed politics, shopped the artisan markets of Chichicastenango, explored the shoreline of Lake Atitlan, and enjoyed the cuisine of that colorful place. One day at dinner, I made a passing reference to being a pastor. Silence fell on the table like a boulder. Then, looking both incredulous and hopeful, Victoria, 14, asked me, "Do you believe everything?"

I took a breath, looked her in the eye, and launched into a pastor's answer about the Bible being a book for faith containing stories that are true on the inside, which is more important than their being true on the outside. Except for Jesus' birth and death and resurrection. Now those stories are true every which way, I said. Victoria nodded, perhaps out of politeness.

Her question has stayed with me.

I wish I had told her the story of my own blindness, and a few of the times I have been dragged into the light. How, when I was her age, blaming messages and guilty feelings held me captive to unbelief. Then, years later, in a nano-moment, after years of questioning, as I was washing the dishes in my college apartment, the truth of "I did this for you" broke over me like an egg cracked onto a mound of dry ingredients trying to be a cake, and I said, "Yes!" to the living God. How that God who pressed me close still finds me when I get lost, still opens my pinched-shut baby bird eyes and fills my baby bird mouth with good things.

"Do I believe everything?"

Making meaning of the fragments and filaments of the life I've been given, piecing it together into a coherent whole is my life's work...and yours.

I am reminded of the Indian tale about the Blind Men and the Elephant, a good one for us to set alongside John's account of Jesus and the blind man he healed.

You remember that folk tale: Six men who had been born blind argued day and night about elephants. None of them knew what an elephant was like, of course, since none of them had experienced one. But each had a theory that was very different from all the others. The neighbors of the six blind men grew tired of all the arguing and one day they arranged for the blind men to visit the palace of the rajah to learn the truth about elephants.

In a courtyard within the palace walls stood an elephant. Led by a young boy from the village, each of the blind men stepped forward to touch the creature that was the subject of so many arguments. The first touched the animal's side and declared, "It is solid like a wall. It must be very powerful." The second touched the limber trunk and announced, "An elephant is like a great snake." The third blind man felt the elephant's pointed tusk and said, "This creature is as sharp and deadly as a spear." And so on. Each had a distinctly different impression of the elephant based on the part of it that he experienced.

Of course this did nothing to put their argument to rest. In fact they woke the rajah up from a nap with their arguing. "How can each of you be so certain you are right?" the rajah shouted above the din. Not one of the blind men had an answer. "The elephant is a very large animal," said the rajah kindly. "Each man touched only one part. Perhaps if you put the parts together, you will see the truth. Now let me finish my nap in peace."

"He is right," said the first blind man. "To learn the truth, we must put all the parts together. Let's discuss this on the journey home." And home they went, led by the village boy, each one with his hand on the shoulder of the man in front on him.

There are elephants in the rooms we live in that we don't see, and miniature galaxies where we don't even look.

What in the world are these, do you think? A close-up detail of a frog's egg? The undulations of a down comforter? A subterranean cave? A view of Earth's atmosphere from the window of a spacecraft?

None of the above, actually. They are, in fact, images of the inside of my shoulder during arthroscopic surgery -- high resolution pictures of the hidden microcosm that was a torn tendon, photos that guided my surgeon and his attentive assistant as they stitched sinew and shaved bone to make me whole again. (I was alseep, so I don't really know for sure, but I trust they didn't spit on dirt to make a paste of clay like Jesus did!) All the same, their handiwork (together with the skilled manipulations of my physical terrorist...I mean, therapist, physical therapist!) is working a modern miracle to restore my body to something closer to God's original creation.

You may or may not have noticed, but your preachers during Lent have been working a common theme: Unlikely Heroes: Faith Makes Heroes of Us All. We've taken this time to take a closer look at what distinguishes us as Lutherans from the rest of the pack in the community of Christian faith.

The story from John's gospel for this weekend gives us the chance to think about the process of meaning-making we do as Lutheran Christians. How do we as people of faith piece together our view of the truth? Certainly scripture is at least part of the elephant, one ingredient of the whole. Christians in other traditions might say it is the only part worthy of study. How do we as Lutheran Christians "see" scripture? Of course I've bitten off more than I can chew for one sermon but this much I can say:

We hold that the Word of God is a living Word, with all the implications and ramifications and grayness that that sometimes entails. As products of the Reformation, we Lutherans take Scripture seriously; the Bible is our norm for faith and life. We believe that there are other sources of God's revelation, and we take those seriously, too. Lutherans seek to read the critical issues of our day through the lens of Scripture and the revealed Word of God. We believe that Scripture is best interpreted and understood in the context of community. We do our best to get it right, but we accept the possibility that we might get it wrong - that we have been wrong in the past and might be wrong again.

Our vision isn't always as clear as we would like it; sometimes we deal with floaters. But we trust that God's Spirit is at work within us as we struggle, restoring our sight, giving us new eyes to see the truth: sharpening the resolution of what comes into view, shaping our vision of the whole so that we might live in the light.

During this season of Lent, we are moving out of darkness into the light. We follow Jesus the healer, the truth-teller, the truth-doer through the darkness of the grave into the Light on the other side. He IS the true light of the world, and in his waking light we see with new clarity. We discover that Christ is a trustworthy shepherd and that we have seen only a fraction of the what God sees in the world around us. And so we go out into this world of great beauty and great need - eyes wide open, baptismal candles raised high to light the path ahead: disciples making a difference.

Now to finish this sermon, we sing an old song we sing well and never seem never to tire of, a hymn that gives us words when we have none and a glimpse of the future promised for us when our own eyes will close: "Amazing Grace."

Kristie Hennig
Chanhassen, Minnesota