Scripture Text: John 9: 1-41
This is the third week we have heard
gospel lessons from the gospel according to John, each one addressing a
conversation between Jesus and a person he has encountered. And here again, as
in the past two weeks, we have a case of double entendre; of Jesus emphasizing
a new meaning for a part of life we typically take for granted.
Jesus talked to Nicodemus about being
born from above - something more than, other than, typical human birth. Nicodemus came and went in the dark, and there
was no indication that his eyes were opened about Jesus, at least during that
conversation.
When Jesus engaged with the woman at the
well, their conversation about water and thirst quickly turned toward the
reality of the living water that only he could offer.
And because Jesus saw her with eyes of
love, her eyes were also opened, and she recognized him, and she saw herself in
a new way, as a vessel of living water, and she was able to witness to others
about what she had now seen for herself.
And here we have a story about blindness
and seeing, where the act of seeing quickly moves beyond the topic of physical
sight. Christ sees that the man is blind, and acts to open his eyes, saying to
the disciples, “we must work the works of God while it is day, while the light
is still here…. I am the light.” And now this man, once blind, can see… and
what he can see goes beyond plain sight to an awareness and understanding of
who Christ is. He sees, but with new eyes.
Christ’s eyes see the world differently; and
we see the world differently when we see through the eyes of Christ, the eyes
of love.
It is Jesus who starts the interaction with
the man on the side of the road. The man makes no request of Jesus. Like the
woman at the well, it appears the man had no idea who Jesus was. Jesus is
walking by, he speaks to his companions, then spits on the ground, works the
mixture of water and earth into muddy clay, places it on the man’s eyes, and
tells him to go wash in the waters of a place whose name means “sent”. And
suddenly, for the first time in his life, the man can see what he never could
see before.
The next part of the passage describes
the investigation by the Pharisees of what happened; in fact, Jesus completely
fades from the story for this entire section. The Pharisees’ focus is on
revealing the man’s sin and Jesus’ sin.
And as the man tries to reply to the
questions about how and why he can now see, he shows that what he is really
beginning to see and understand is who Christ is, and that Christ has changed
his life. The man starts out saying, “my life has been changed, and I have no
idea how it happened” and ends up saying “he [Jesus] must be of God, for how
else is this possible?”
So when Jesus comes looking for him, having
learned that the man had been thrown out of the synagogue by the Pharisees, and
Jesus tells him that the one standing before him is, in truth, the Son of Man, this
man is fully ready to say, “I believe”, and to worship him. And he’s ready
because of what Jesus has already done in his life; because of how Jesus has
changed him.
Isn’t this how it often happens to us, how
we begin to truly believe? We may have been raised in the church, we may know
Jesus as part of our upbringing, or maybe not; but doesn’t it often take
something life changing for us to begin to understand what Jesus has really
done for us, and who Jesus really is, and what living our lives as disciples of
Jesus really means?
Don’t we need new eyes to really see
Jesus?
When Jesus takes hold of our life, or
when we let Jesus in, we begin to see not only Jesus, but the world and the
people in it with new eyes – eyes of love – eyes of Christ.
I have a friend named Hugh Hollowell. He
is the founder and director of Love Wins Ministries in Raleigh, NC, where he
pastors a congregation made up mostly of people who are experiencing chronic
homelessness. He is an ordained minister in the Mennonite Church USA.
Here is how he describes Love Wins
Ministries:
“We feed people…
But we are not a feeding ministry.
Sometimes, we help people get jobs…
But we are not a job training program.
Maybe 10-12 times a year, someone leaves
homelessness with our help…
But we are not a housing ministry.
Yet, at any given moment, we may be doing
any of those things.
But what we really are is a ministry of
presence and pastoral care for the homeless and at-risk population of Raleigh,
NC.”
Hugh began this ministry after spending
more than ten years climbing the ladder of business success, only to find
himself reasonably well off, sick from the stress, and terribly unhappy with
his life. So he quit everything that was part of that life, and he eventually moved
from Memphis to Raleigh, traveling by bus, with his last $800 in his pocket, to
change his life. It was time, as he said, to be born again. Where he had
realized that he had become a user of people, in his words, in order to get
what he wanted, his eyes were opened to see the world in a new way.
And so he started a ministry based
entirely on relationships. As he describes it, “relationships with people who
often cannot return the favor, and who can’t advance my career or puff my ego.”
He started it by selling hot dogs from a
stand to raise money to begin this ministry, and now they still rely entirely on
donations and proceeds from his occasional speaking engagements, but Love Wins
now has several people working there, all of them fundraising whatever they
need to live on, and they have a house where people can come and be loved, where
people are seen and known by name and worried about when it’s cold and they are
sleeping outside. They are seen with eyes of love.
I’m telling you about Hugh, because Hugh
doesn’t see people who are poor or living on the streets or fighting addictions
or just hard to get along with in the same way you and I probably do. Hugh sees
them as people needing friends, needing relationship, as the first step to
changing their lives. And so Love Wins is about relationships, about helping
with that first step. They can do that because they see people and situations
through new eyes, with eyes of love, with Christ’s eyes.
Here is a story from Love Wins from just
last week. Please listen for how seeing with new eyes made a difference in this
story, told in Hugh’s words…
“Her name is Mickey, and she found me on
Tuesday of this week, timid and uncertain. If you look up the definition of
“mousy” in the dictionary, the entry should have her picture next to it. She is
petite and naive-looking, actually 26 but looking all of 18 or 19. But spend
some time talking to her, and you learn of her two kids being raised by family,
a history of drug use, and a cross-country crime spree that involved hot checks
and a stolen car. All of that will clue you in that she is not as naive as she
appears.
But you also get the feeling she wishes
she could be.
Like I said, she looks naive, but she has
spent the last eight years having to be tough. But tough led her to drugs, the
wrong guy(s), and a stretch in prison. She knows how to be tough – but tough
has never worked out for her – at least in the long term.
Which is why she was uncertain on
Tuesday. Because she is now on probation, and staying at the rescue mission. And
she really, really needs a job, or else she loses her spot at the mission, and
she is pretty sure that a safe bed to sleep in every night is what is keeping
her sober and giving her the freedom to make good choices. In other words, to
her, getting a job is a matter of life and death.
So, Monday, she was overjoyed when she
heard she had a job doing construction clean-up, and it starts in a week. And
then crestfallen when she learned she needed a new pair of steel-toed shoes
before she could start. Forty dollars was between her and a job that literally
is life-saving.
Tough Mickey would know how to solve this
problem – but that wasn’t who she was anymore – or at least, who she didn’t
want to be. Instead, she went to the mission, to the clothing closets, and
called everyone in the phone book and cried and pleaded and no one had any
shoes. And neither did they seem to care that she had no shoes.
When she was in prison, she had heard
about Love Wins. The other inmates had told her it was a place that you would
be accepted. That was safe. Where you could just… be. Which is why she was
there this Tuesday, begging me to buy her a pair of shoes. And why she cried
when I told her that of course we could. And why she was ecstatic when Joel
took her to Walmart yesterday to try on shoes and pick the pair she wanted.
Now, you can argue that wasn’t necessary
– that we could have just handed her a Walmart gift card and sent her on her
way. That it wasn’t the best use of time for a volunteer to take her to the
store, and that she would have been fine with a used pair someone had donated.
But any of those arguments would be
missing the point. Because the point is not to get her back to work, but to
figure out how to be in relationship with her. And if I am the one who decides
what her shoes look like, where she gets them, or that she gets the cheapest
pair, that is a lot more efficient – heck, it is a lot of things, but it isn’t
relationship.
What it mostly is, is power.
We decided a long time ago that we can
love people, or we can have power over people. But to date, we haven’t figured
out how to do both. So, we choose love. And sometimes, love looks like shopping
for shoes.”
Sometimes, love looks like shopping for
shoes.
Sometimes it looks like offering water.
Sometimes it looks like sitting with
someone in the dark when their lights have been turned off.
Sometimes it looks like stopping to give
a hand to a friend by the side of the road who is unable to see Jesus for
themselves.
Sometimes it is being a friend to someone
who we really don’t like much at all.
Love sees with the eyes of Christ.
Christ sees us with the eyes of love, and
sets us free from our spiritual blindness, from our sin.
Christ sees the whole world with eyes of
love, and because of that he died for us, to save all of us from all our sin
and brokenness and blindness.
And Christ calls us to open the eyes of
our heart, and to see one another with the same eyes, the same mind, the same
heart as Christ.
We must begin by loving one another right
here, in this congregation, setting aside our differences and our hurt, and
loving those who are still feeling hurt or wronged.
And only then are we ready to take that
love out into the community, together, as the body of Christ and share it.
Because God sees us all with eyes of
love, and because of that love, offers us freedom to see one another in the
same way.
And that is very good news.
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