|
March
6, 2005 (Jimmie Johnson) Ephesians 5:8-14 For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light—for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true. Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to mention what such people do secretly; but everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for everything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says, “Sleeper, awake! Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ John 9:1-16 As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, saying to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see. The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?” Some were saying, “It is he.” Others were saying, “No, but it is someone like him.” He kept saying, “I am the man.” But they kept asking him, “Then how were your eyes opened?” He answered, “The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ Then I went and washed and received my sight.” They said to him, “Where is he?” He said, “I do not know.” They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. Now it was a sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight. He said to them, “He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see.” Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not observe the sabbath.” But others said, “How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?” And they were divided. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ A man born blind begins to see. Jesus rubs spit and dirt into something like mud, touches the man’s eyes, and the blind man sees. One of our core Christian beliefs is that Jesus is the light of the world, capable of lighting up any darkness, even eyes that cannot see. I wish I could see. I have been told by Dr. Kannwischer that one of these days I’ll have to have a cataract removed from my right eye. When I close my left eye and look only through my right eye, it’s like looking through a piece of wrinkled up cellophane. This awareness of vision loss doesn’t bother me nearly so much, though, as the awareness I have at fifty-eight of the blindness of my heart. My heart doesn’t see very well at all. My heart’s vision is very dim. All parents, if we are paying attention, get to watch the Garden of Eden story acted out in our children, just as we lived it as children ourselves. The old Genesis story of the Garden of Eden is our human story. Adam and Eve, seeing only with their hearts, become conscious of opposites, of good and evil. And you know the outcome. They cover themselves with leaves, no longer unashamed in their nakedness. They experience life as toil and burden. They are expelled from paradise. They can no longer see purity. The Genesis story ends with them living out their lives “east of Eden.” It is the same story of our very own “fall,” a condition in which we can no longer see with the heart; the experience of self-consciousness takes us into self-centeredness, estrangement, and exile. It is the end of childhood. We can’t find Sesame Street anymore. It’s the end of seeing God, each other, and our very own selves through the eyes of the heart. The world of the child, with its mystery and magic and play, grows dimmer and dimmer. Emerging adulthood darkens the vision of our heart because it brings fear. Billy Collins, poet laureate of the United States, captures the loss of our heart’s ability to see what in theology class we call “the fall,” what parents see in their little ones—the end of childhood. Poet Collins writes of it in his poem titled, "On Turning Ten": The whole idea of it makes me feel like I’m coming down with something, something worse than any stomach ache or the headaches I get from reading in bad light— a kind of measles of the spirit, a mumps of the psyche, a disfiguring chickenpox of the soul. You tell me it is too early to be looking back, but that is because you have forgotten the perfect simplicity of being one and the beautiful complexity introduced by two. But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit. At four I was an Arabian wizard. I could make myself invisible by drinking a glass of milk a certain way. At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince. But now I am mostly at the window watching the late afternoon light. Back then it never fell so solemnly against the side of my tree house, and my bicycle never leaned against the garage as it does today, all the dark blue speed drained out of it. This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself, as I walk through the universe in my sneakers. It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends, time to turn the first big number. It seems only yesterday I used to believe there was nothing under my skin but light. If you cut me I would shine. But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life, I skin my knees. I bleed. He’s theologically nailed it. By the time we are in early adolescence, maybe earlier, we have stopped seeing with the heart; we see through eyes that the world provides, where the afternoon light falls so suddenly solemn, bringing about the beginning of sadness. We are the product of culture. Our innocence is cast out. We see that we are okay or we see that we are not okay by the way we measure up to the messages we have internalized. We may have been given a beautiful message about who we are in our baptism, but after “the fall,” we find that promise too beautiful to believe since we can no longer see with the heart. The eyes of the world see and measure only in terms of the 3 A’s: appearance, achievement, and affluence. Adolescence is all about asking ourselves: Are we attractive enough? Do we look good enough? Are we cool? And into adulthood the issue of attractiveness only increases, only now it is accompanied by issues of achievement and affluence and issues of intimacy, sensitivity, and caring. Am I enough? Am I good enough? Do I have enough?* So by the time we are my age, we have fallen further into the world of darkness, with its comparisons and judgments, separations and alienations. No longer—if at all—seeing with our hearts. To use the language of Frederick Buechner, we live our lives from the outside in rather than from the inside out. Our “fall” into exile is deep. Our vision of the heart becomes dark. The experience inside our skin is no longer the confidence of being filled with light, but rather the fearful awareness of being filled with prideful worry, grasping, and anger. Our experience is that of no longer being somebody great but maybe only okay or not much at all. Can a miracle happen? Can someone fix our eyes by fixing our hearts? Can we begin to see again? It’s what this assembly says is possible. The baptismal font, the table, and the text—all promise that the invisible can again become visible. Such a miracle can be sudden and dramatic, like what happened to the man in our text this morning. But for most of us, the recovery of the heart’s sight will be a gradual and incremental process that will take a lifetime. It’s what we call the Christian life. And it’s why we come to worship, to get our sight back. With an aging centered in the grace of God in Jesus Christ, there is given a strange recovering of sight. The frantic messages and lures of youth and middle age grow muted; we can rest more and more in God, more easily be in silence with God. And by being more centered in God, our hearts begin to see again.* As the Christian life deepens, we begin to experience the self-forgetfulness that accompanies a deepening trust in God. And this gift of self-forgetfulness grants a freedom and lightness of being that, to me, can be described only as miraculous. It is a miracle to see again with the heart. I am beginning to see now when I am becoming burdened with an unnecessary heaviness, a heaviness brought about because I have forgotten God. In the act of remembering God, remembering my baptism, I sometimes see beyond self-preoccupation and burdensome confinement. “Unless you become like a little child, you cannot see the kingdom of God,” said Jesus. And the cynical, know-it-all world says it’s not possible. In the assembly on the Lord’s Day, all we know is that now and then we see a glimpse of Big Bird, angels, and each other through the eyes of the heart. Jesus rubbed some spit and dirt into mud and touched a blind man’s eyes. And he could see. “Can you tell me how to get... how to get to Sesame Street?” Some will always say it is impossible. Well, all we know is, once we were blind, but now we are beginning to see again. * Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity Sermon: Jimmie Johnson Edited for website: Georgia Brady |
First Presbyterian Church • 1100 Austin Avenue • Waco, TX
76701 • (254)752-1665
Questions, comments, or broken links? Please email the webmaster at bgilliam@firstpreswaco.org.
Unless otherwise
stated, all material contained in this web site is Copyright © 1999-2005
First Presbyterian Church of Waco, Texas. Right is hereby granted
for any congregation or governing body of the Presbyterian Church
(USA) to copy and use this material only as long as proper credit
is given as to its source. The scripture quotations contained within
are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, Copyright © 1989
by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of
Churches of Christ in the United States of America, and are used
by permission. All quotations from the Book of Confessions are reprinted
by permission and are Copyright ©1996 by the Office of the General
Assembly, Presbyterian Church (USA).