We See
A sermon
delivered by Rev. Peter T. Atkinson
July 12, 2015
at Gordonsville
Presbyterian Church, Gordonsville, Virginia
John 9: 35-41
Let us pray,
Help us to see despite our eyes
Help us to think outside of our minds
Help us to be more than our lives
For your eyes show the way
Your
mind knows the truth
Your
being is the life.
Amen.
It has been almost a month now since
we last took a look in John's gospel, but when we did, back then, we were
beginning chapter 9. Now like we've seen over and over again throughout the
gospel, this chapter started with a miracle, and then straight to form the
miracle was on the sabbath, and also straight to form the religious authorities
are now upset with Jesus. This time there was the healing of a man who was blind
from birth, and there we discussion about it concerning sin, and who was to
blame for the blindness. Jesus doesn't give an answer blaming anyone, instead
talks about the revealing of the glory of God through this man, and he puts mud
on his eyes, then he sends him to wash to be healed, washing his eyes in the
Pool at Siloam, which is the sending place. The rest of the chapter covers up
the fall out from this healing: The pharisees investigate, they get hung up
again on the same things, Jesus not following the law and healing on the
Sabbath, and Jesus also again, claiming to be the son of God, when they are
sure he is a sinner. . . it all comes to a conclusion in the following passage.
. . this is the end of chapter 9, verses 35-41:
35 Jesus
heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you
believe in the Son of Man?” 36 He answered, “And who is he, sir?
Tell me, so that I may believe in him.” 37 Jesus said to him, “You
have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.” 38 He said,
“Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped him. 39 Jesus said, “I came
into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those
who do see may become blind.” 40 Some of the Pharisees near him
heard this and said to him, “Surely we are not blind, are we?” 41 Jesus
said to them, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say,
‘We see,’ your sin remains. [1]
Again we have Jesus claiming to be
the Son of Man/Son of God, and the man healed, who was formerly blind sees him
as such, and the Pharisees, who have always been able to see, cannot see Jesus
as the Son of God, they are blinded to who he is by something. We've been talking about this situation
throughout the gospel, each chapter seems to have its own take on this same
situation. This time it's juxtaposed poetically with the metaphor of seeing and
blindness. The irony of the blind man being able to see what the people who
have always been able to see cannot. Jesus takes it one step further when he says.
. . "If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say,
"We see" your sin remains." This is the line that closes the
chapter. This is the line that stood out to me as important to investigate and
think about this week. Because you say, "We See" your sin remains. .
. .
And I think, what does seeing have to do with
sin? So many times we look at this metaphor from the position of the blind man.
. . and we think of his blindness as being caused by sin. . . even the
disciples ask this question at the beginning. We can see the justice in
ailments being caused by sin. . . it makes sense in a cosmic idea of karma, and
it fits what we think we know about the world, but Jesus has already turned
that on its head. And then the next easy metaphor is that the blind man was
blind but could see Jesus, and these guys can see, but can't see Jesus, so we
get the concept of physical blindness and the concept of spiritual blindness,
and they do not always coincide, and it would seem in this case instead they
have some kind of opposing correlation. . . . which Jesus takes one step
further, and says, because they say "We See" their sin remains, but
if they were blind they would be without sin, somehow. . . interesting.
I want to take a step back for a
moment, then we'll come back to this new sin question. I took the Old Testament
Lesson from the book of Proverbs, actually from the very beginning of the book,
where the purpose of the book is given. Proverbs is a book about wisdom, a book
full of precepts and principles for living a wise life. It is traditionally
thought to have been written by Solomon, who as part of the story goes, was
granted one thing from God, whatever he asked, and he asked for wisdom. Now the
beginning outlines exactly what these proverbs teach, and the nouns tell you
everything you want to know. Here they are: "wisdom, instruction,
understanding, insight, wise dealing, righteousness, justice, equity,
shrewdness, knowledge, prudence, learning, discerning, skill." That is
quite a list, and if you had that going on in life you'd be pretty set. Even if
you just had the top five of those you'd be doing pretty well, but after all of
that, he sums it up, and says the one idea that holds it all together, that
puts it in perspective, the gateway towards the others, the first step. . . .
it actually reminds me of Paul in
1Corinthians 13:
13 If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do
not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I
have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I
have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3
If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I
may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. [2]
If you don't have love, you don't
have any of those things, or they are worthless, and Solomon says that if you
don't have this one thing, you will be missing out on all that wisdom,
instruction, understanding, insight, wise dealing, righteousness, justice,
equity, shrewdness, knowledge, prudence, learning, discerning, skill." And
he says that all of that good stuff is begun with the "Fear of the
Lord," he says, "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of all knowledge."
After rolling out that impressive list, he says that the beginning of all that
is Fear of the Lord.
Now if you have ever been in an
adult Sunday School you have talked to death this idea that fear is not fear,
that it has a more complicated definition than just being afraid. And it is an
important distinction because fear is not something that is good. Most of the
evil, hatred, hoarding, and the sinning that folks do in this world is seemingly
rooted in fear, so this fear must be a little bit different. The word in Hebrew
is Yawray, and if you look up the word's meaning, much like the Sunday School
talk about it, it has the two distinct meanings. One repulsion based in
something being a frightening, terrible, dreadful thing, and the other
reverence, honour, awe. . . that kind of stuff. Now it makes sense to us that
this word could be used in both situations and mean both things, but what is
significant is that the Hebrews used the same word in both both situations, so
as we see the distinction between the two, it is likely for them there was more
of a connection.
So what causes fear? What causes
awe? and so, what causes the beginning of knowledge. I try to think about the
things that scare me. . . and I think about the snake that I can't see, that
one scares me much more than the snake that I can see. I want to take a picture
of the snake I can see to show the girls, but the one I can't see gives me the
willies. It's the sneakiness of the snake or the mouse, that startles us. If we
think about our other fears, like fear of the future, and fear about what will
happen to us, they are wrapped around this idea of unknown. We don't know, we
are in anticipation of it, and it makes us fearful. . . and this kind of fear
makes us humble. . . sometimes it can make us avoid, but once fear has to be
faced, we take a breath, and we step forward in humility before our fears. . .
see this is how they are connected. Fears that we avoid cause us problems and
leave to evil, but fears that we face takes a whole lot of humility. You have to take stock you have to know
yourself, and you just are. . . do you see some of the connection to standing
before God in fear and trembling. . . it's about being humble, and vulnerable.
My colleague at school, he's the
head of the English Department, and his classroom is right next to mine. He's
got a sign on the door that says, if you ask a question you could be seen as a
fool for a minute, but if you never ask you could be a fool for a lifetime.
Asking that question takes the realization that you do not know the answer. . .
and you humble yourself enough to admit it, and that leads to the gaining of
that knowledge.
In religion I think this not knowing
refers to Mystery, and mystery to me is what these Pharisees were not allowing
themselves to realize. They thought they knew it all. They thought that they
had the checklist, and they could apply it to people and decide whether the
person fit or didn't, whether the person was in or out, whether the teacher was
teaching truth, and whether the supposed Messiah was legit. They applied the checklist to Jesus and they
found him lacking, and so since he was claiming to be the Messiah they had to
do something about it. It's like a great line from the movie Hoosiers. . . the
new coach has come and one of the parents of the players had been running
practice. . . and the parent doesn't like it, and the coach basically politely
kicks him out of practice, making sure he knew the boundaries. . . the parent
says. . . "There are two kinds of dumb,
uh... guy that gets naked and runs out in the snow and barks at the
moon, and, uh, guy who does the same thing in my living room. First one don't
matter, the second one you're kinda forced to deal with." Jesus is barking
at the moon, and these guys have been pushed and now they feel they have to
deal with it. . . why, because they knew. They were sure. . . and Jesus didn't fit into their criteria.
Now these guys are supposed to know,
why don't they, and why does this blind man. I think the answer lies in this
quote by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It comes from the Advent devotional of his I
have, some of you who were at the advent
study this past December may remember it. . . and the emphasis on this idea of
mystery. He says:
The mystery
remains a mystery. It withdraws from our grasp. Mystery, however, does not mean
simply not knowing something.
The greatest
mystery is not the most distant star; on the contrary, the closer something
comes to us and the better we know it, then the more mysterious it becomes for
us. The greatest mystery to us is not the most distant person, but the one next
to us. The mystery of other people is not reduced by getting to know more and
more about them. Rather, in their closeness they become more and more
mysterious. And the final depth of all mystery is when two people come to close
to each other that they love each other.
Do you see the difference, yet? What Jesus wants these
people to realize is that religion/faith/spirituality/true. . . whatever you
want to call it, just ain't about their list. It is about relationship, and
building a relationship with God about love. . . and closeness does not result
in you becoming an expert, and a bean counter, and judge about who is in and
who is out, who is worthy and who is not, but closeness results in mystery. . .
and mystery is founded in more than not knowing, but in love, and fear, and
awe, and any other word that is out there. It is a dance, an endless never
ending dance, where the more you know the more you have a thirst for more, and
the more you want, and the more you realize is out there that you haven't even
a clue about yet. It is danger and vulnerability, and it doesn't include
control, it includes risk, and mystery, and that leads to more wisdom, which
again leads to more mystery.
One of the major problems of
organized religion is that it can become a roadmap, and a roadmap that points
in one direction, and leads a group of people trying to get them to have an
experience of the divine, of the mystery. . . and the roadmap tends to cheapen
the mystery, which leads to false promises, and let down people. I always get
the vision of Huckleberry Finn, praying for those fish hooks, and when they
don't come he don't put no stock in praying. I don't use this quote to be
political but to prove a point, that applies across political spectrums. . .
but Reagan once said, the problem with. . . (and I'll leave it blank because
who he was talking about isn't my target) but it isn't that they are ignorant,
it's that they know so much that just ain't so. . . This is an issue of the
Pharisees here. It is also an issue across the board of our society. We have
come to believe that our knowledge of things is complete and finite, and that
leaves us way too sure of our body of knowledge, and so we have lost the fear,
lost the love, and lost the mystery, both to God and to each other. We say we see,
and since we say we see, we know. . . Jesus says, “because you say you see, your
sin remains. . . Woe to us, because when
we do the next step seems to be to crucify Jesus. God help us we know not what
we do, but woe to us for we think we do. We think we see, we say we see, and in
saying so, we confirm that we do not.
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