Sight

Sermon by James W. Crawford

Third Sunday in Lent, March 14, 1999

John 9:1-41

John writes his Gospel amid virulent, passionate, religious conflict. He and his Jewish friends, who claim a convicted criminal, publicly executed in the most cruel and unusual punishment devised by the Roman imperialists, find themselves, for their blasphemy, their incredible faith, expelled from the synagogue.  Judaism in a desperate effort to save itself from extinction at the end of the first century can no longer tolerate deviance in the ranks. Therefore, for this Jesus movement: out!

Rejected, perceived as the enemy, John's community finds itself fighting for its very life against derision, ridicule and the implacable fury of orthodox Judaism. In defense, John fights fire with fire. He uses hyperbole, resorts to polemic to attack his antagonists. He paints his opponents as sightless. He describes them as blind inhabitants of darkness, denizens of the night brought upon themselves by refusal to accept a new domain of love and peace ushered in by this Messiah,  Jesus —a domain John likens to a realm of light, whose inhabitants Jesus graces with true sight. This struggle pits Jew against Jew, neighbor against neighbor, family against family, child against parent.  The cost of confessing Jesus as the Christ comes very high. For John, this narrative of the man-born-blind, and the shrill controversy over his gaining sight provides a luminous illustration of courageous discipleship in face of brutal social pressure, fierce institutional resistance, rigid moral codes and mortal threat.  This encounter offers insight into the conflict faced by our forebears in the faith. It provides, as well, a description  of the ambiguities and stress, indeed, the challenge you and I and our churches confront as we make our choices in response to this Christ Jesus who comes to us as Light of the world.  Are we blind to this incandescent presence?  Do we possess sight to live in the Light with all of its dangers and rich possibilities, its costs and its joys?

I

Now, please stay with me for just a moment as we get our metaphors straight.  John understands this man-born-blind not as a solitary, pathetic individual by the side of the road.  He understands this "man-blind-from-birth" as you, as me, as our nation, our churches, our  world—all of this—and us—blind from the very beginning apart from Christ. John understands our natural existence as blindness.  He believes the world without Christ is blind.    Within his own time, John attacks the Orthodox Synagogue as blind, the Roman imperium as blind, half-hearted church members as blind.  But his understanding includes all of us who seek to build our lives apart from love. He sees the single-minded pursuit of profit, the desperate race to be number one, the ingenious rationale we assemble to manipulate others sexually, commercially, narcissistically,  as blind. John perceives a world fragmented by ethnic hatred, nationalistic chauvinism, religious elitism, ideological arrogance, class presumption,  ethnic chasms as our natural world, a world as if blind from birth.

And as our world, imparied by our blindness, sits figuratively at the side of the road, John sees Christ healing our blindness. He really sees Christ as transforming community, as a transfiguring presence seeking to heal the gulfs separating us from one another—the very gulfs signifying our blindness.  Christ dissolves the barriers we build to wall out others. Christ poured into our lives and societies as love assumes fairness, equity, mutuality.  The love of Christ wipes out distinctions of language, nation, race, religion, class, gender, sexual orientation, wealth, heritage, blood lines, everything we use to assault one another, to pamper ourselves, to fortify our niches, to put others in their place.  When Jesus daubs dust soaked in his spittle, and sends the man-blind-from-birth to bathe in the pool called "Sent," the man gains sight, to be sure, but, even more important in this Gospel, he represents  a new community bound by grace and a passion for service; a community whose presence in this dark world can only be described in metaphor—a world  so changed we can only say night becomes day; darkness, light; blindness, sight.

II

Now John believes this new creation, this realm of Light confronts us with choices. We can live spiritually blind in a world of darkness; or we can live spiritually sighted in a world where Christ's light amid much that would threaten to kill it, yet shines brilliantly.

I want to tell you two stories this morning illustrating sight amid Light. Story number one:  Do you remember Robert Fulgham who told us in his first little collection of reflections that "all he needed to know he learned in kindergarten?" Well, yes and  no. Robert Fulgham  learned something as a father, too.  He tells of his daughter Molly who, as a little girl,  helped to pack lunches for her siblings and her father. As Fulgham set off to work one day Molly gave him two bags: "a lunch sack," he writes,  "and the one with the duct tape and staples and paper clips."

"Why two bags?" he asks.

"Oh," Molly replies, "Just some stuff.  Take it along with you." And he does.

And then Fulgham continues. "At midday, while hurriedly scarfing down my real lunch, I tore open Molly's bag and shook out the contents. Two hair ribbons, three small stones, a plastic dinosaur, a pencil stub, a tiny seashell, two animal crackers, a marble, a used lipstick, a small doll, two chocolate kisses and thirteen pennies . . . I smiled," he says. "How charming . . . Rushing to hustle off to all the important business of the afternoon," he continues, "I swept the desk clean—into the wastebasket— leftover lunch, Molly's junk and all. There wasn't anything in there I needed."

Well, you can guess.  That evening Molly asks how he liked that bag of dinosaurs, kisses and hair ribbons.  Did he bring it home?  She hopes so. "No," Fulgham straightforwardly replies.  "I Forgot."   He lies.

He understands now. Molly gave him her treasures, her favorite things, "love in a paper sack."  He dashes back to the office, pours out his wastebasket on his desk, finds the "jewels" in the garbage,  washes the mustard off the dinosaur, sprays the whole thing with breath freshener to kill the smell of onions, smoothes out the wadded brown paper into a semifunctional bag, carries the treasures home, and listens to her tell of fairies and dreams and  memories and fantasies—and the candy kisses— he had given her, remember?   For love and an energy emergency.  "I managed to say,  'I see' very wisely several times during the telling.  And as a matter of fact,  I did see.  Love in a paper sack,  and I missed it.  . . ."

In this world where we suspect everyone to suspect us; where so many are out to make it at our expense; where the truth is cut; the hype rolls over us like waves; the auditors need to be audited, words are cheap.    Can we see, dare we see such things as love in a paper sack?  Can we risk trusting one another? Can we step off to love one another knowing it will inevitably cost us?  Oh, that we in this dark world might recognize the Light and regain our sight!

III

A second story. Some eight years ago Linda and I went to visit our daughter and son-in-law in what was then called Zaire, and is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  Our children happened to be working for Habitat for Humanity there, but the  Covenant Church, a Midwestern-centered evangelical missionary denomination, sent some of its teachers and agricultural aids there, and a terrific gang they were.  They benignly looked after our children,  and on one occasion, we believe took an unsolicited and daring initiative that saved our kids' lives. In any case, among them there served a missionary named Brad Hill, who compiled a series of diary reflections he entitled Slivers from the Cross. It is a recital of "Trials and doubts, hopes and headaches, cross-cultural messes, mud huts and bush airports"—and a folk who live by the Cross, and yet, ironically, even with their deep conviction,  like the rest of us,  who can be blinded in this dark world.

Brad Hill tells of a Missionary foray into the Zairian bush.  It consists of a team of four: a faith healer, a nurse, a minister, and himself. They mean to build a church amid the Ngombe tribe. As they set off, Brad Hill wonders about the four members of the team.  Is it wise for all of them to come along?   Which one, or two, or three, might well have been left at home?  The faith healer?   he asks.  Some people think he is no more than shaman in Christian disguise, one who might confuse real proclamation of the Gospel with mumbo-jumbo faith healing, but in any case he surely attracted a crowd.

Or is the mistake on the missionary team the male public health nurse? An able man, trained in the best U.S. hospitals, now carrying his bag of medicines and tools, setting up a clinic in a thatch-roofed gazebo, fascinating the villagers with his technical and medical paraphernalia: Hill wonders if all this medical expertise might deflect from the emphasis of the team's primary focus on Christ.

And yes, the African Pastor, Mbangyie Epapola: once an elephant hunter, now a terrific administrator, but, Hill wonders, does  he want to build a church, appoint some deacons, get an organization humming and perhaps "neglect the front line engagement of evangelism that will be ours?"

And of course, Brad Hill, the fourth member of the team: Hill speculates if with all  his tracts, his Coleman lantern and tape-recorded music, if perhaps the high tech he carries will not redirect the focus of the villagers and fascinate them more than the Gospel message the team  presumes to carry.

The team  spends the day in the village going about their various tasks, and evening settles.  Then out of the shadows three men appear.  Two men are young, the third, in the middle, wizened and old, carrying a long stick, feeling his way along the rough terrain.  The two younger men were guiding him tenderly toward the resting missionaries.  The old man sits. Brad Hill describes him as "tall and thin to the point of emaciation; I could encircle him with my thumb and forefinger. A few tufts of white hair graced his head like the end of an arrow."  His two sons speak: "Our father heard you were in the village. He heard many people are getting help for their sicknesses.  He would like to see again."

"Have you always been blind, Tata?" Hill asks. The old man answers,  "No, I used to see, to run, to fish, but many years ago I noticed that something was happening to my eyes.   Can you help me?"

Well, as Brad Hill tells the story, the minister takes the lead, and asks the nurse to examine him. The nurse takes the old man to his primitive clinic, gives him some ointment for an onsetting infection, returns resignedly to his colleagues and confesses he can do nothing.   River blindness wins.

Next, the Faith healer takes his cue, and leads the blind man to the hut used as a prayer room. "Do not disturb me," he urges, "The Lord will heal this man."

 Then, the minister rises, addresses the villagers and assures the onlookers that God can use medicines in healing because God showed us how to make them; God can sometimes use prayer to heal and sometimes not, but whether "yes" or "no" we know God loves us because Jesus came and out of love died for us—and in confidence we pray for this man."

And the fourth team member?  Brad Hill's mind is elsewhere. He worries that the old man will return from the faith healer's hut not cured, yet blind, and the spiritual power encounter will turn into a spiritual powder puff, a disaster for evangelism.

The next morning, "as the darkness relented, the light mist still clinging to the ground"  the healer emerges from the hut.  The old man follows him, takes two steps and stops.  He sons run to him and place the walking stick back into his hand. No change.  Blind. 

The minister, the nurse, the faith healer, the missionary gather, the minister says, "We must trust God."  The Nurse, almost in tears, says the disease might have been prevented if only, earlier,  the appropriate medicine in ample amounts could have been dispensed.  The faith healer complains of their all being too weak in faith to make anything effective. The missionary broods over the blind man's failed cure, worrying that his evangelical message might be subverted.

Later that morning the familiar figure of the blind man led by his sons makes its way toward the  discouraged and humiliated group. The old man speaks: "I want to thank you for praying for me and giving me these medicines," he holds up the little tube of ointment. "Will you keep praying for me?"

"We will" they say.

The old man continues:  "A long time ago when I was a youth I left this village and went into town.  I went to a church but I did not believe what they said.  But ever since I came back here I have hoped to hear that message again.  Now I have heard it, and I want to become a Christian."

The old man is baptized, a church started, and as the little missionary team sets forth on the river toward home comes the question:   "Why did he want  to become a Christian when he was not healed?" asks Pastor Mybangie. "I cannot fathom God's purposes.  Maybe God just wanted to build a church here upon another foundation.  I have seen God do many miracles greater than restoring sight many times."

The pastor pauses, remembering, shifting the outboard motor on his shoulder. "They have seen our efforts, heard our prayers, listened to our testimonies, received our medicines and witnessed our failure, yet there is belief.  Maybe, somehow that is how it should be, here, this time."

Oh, Pastor Mybangie,  Bless you!  You've got it!  We can barely see beyond our own interests, routines, assumptions, prejudices,  concerns.  In your story, Pastor Mybanygie,  for the nurse, success depends on technique and science; for the faith healer, ritual and religion, for the minister, prayer and organization, for the missionary, a dozen baptisms.  All them blind to the truly transformed figure in their midst, while the village blind man—not cured, in this case, yet healed—sees.

Friends, in John's great narrative, the man-born-blind regains his sight amid religious types of the highest order who become increasingly blind. John knows such blindness can afflict us.  He knows for all of our church programs, our pious words, our religious claims, we church men and women may be no less blind than that pack of Pharisees is blind to the one who now truly sees among them. If we forget that worship and mission, hymn singing and social justice, praying and approaching the state legislature, Bible study and making every effort in the face of enormous corporate and personal self-interest to make of this city what  John calls "the Beloved Community," we forget that our religious roots nourish us to sing and serve, then we may be considered,  in John's powerful imagery, blind to our own blindness.

Oh friends, so long as we see the Light of the World in Jesus Christ as a matter of treating one another justly and graciously; so long as we see discipleship as shaped in the ministry of the one who went to the Cross for Love's sake; so long as we see going the second mile or risking forgiveness,  so long as we practice our religion as a matter of ethical integrity, loving, serving, striving to narrow the chasms of injustice, moving to protect the vulnerable, facing the resistance to make sure the most deprived and diminished and disenfranchised get a fair shake, and maybe even an advantage, so long as kindness, generosity, magnanimity carry the day when everything around us says, "Forget it,"   then we live in the Light. We see!

And thus, confident in the marvelous capacity of this congregation—all of us—to be claimed and created, and recreated: a Beloved Community, as the Gospel ordains, I pray "we work the works of one who sends us into the world while it is still day."  I pray you, me, this church may worship and serve,  recognizing the dark around us yet gaining in the presence of the Light of  the World our courage, our hope, yea, our sight.