“But Now I See”

John 9:1-41

March 6, 2005
St. Paul United Methodist Church

Rev. John Andrew Fleming

I like the story that Max Lucado tells in one of his books. I will ask for your forgiveness because I used the story in my Lenten devotional for this morning and in my article in the current issue of our newsletter. I want to use it again this morning, because I think that it is a perfect beginning for our sermon. I know that you will forgive me for telling this story more than once.

At the beginning of his book God Came Near Max tells the story of Bob Edens. For all fifty one years of his life, Bob had not been able to see. He had often wondered what things looked like. Then it happened. In his fifty-first year of life, technology caught up with his particular vision issue. A complicated surgery performed by a skilled surgeon was successful and when the bandages were removed from his two eyes, for the first time, Bob Edens could see. I would have liked to have been there when the bandages were removed. I would have liked to have stood behind the doctor, near the nurse, when Bob’s eyes squinted. I can just imagine that at first, images were blurry, but then became clear. I can just imagine the look on his face as he looked around the examination room and into the face of his family for the first time. We do not have to guess what Bob said about his first few days of sight. Max Lucado tells us that Bob said these things: “I never dreamed that yellow is so, well, yellow. My friends have told me about yellow for years, but I just can’t believe it. I am amazed at yellow!” But yellow was not his favorite color. Bob loved red, and said this about it, “I can’t believe red!” The colors, as you might imagine, were not the only things that amazed Bob. Again, Max tells us what he said, “I can see the shape of the moon. I like seeing jet airplanes streak across the sky leaving a vapor trail behind them.” Bob loved sunrises and sun sets. Bob tells that for many nights, he laid on the green grass in his back yard, and looked up at the stars. Bob said many things just after the bandages were removed, but the one thing that he said that sticks out in my mind is this, these words, “You could never know how wonderful everything is!”

Bob is right. With only one exception that I know of, most of us here this morning have always had our vision and so we cannot possibly know or understand the kind of thing that Bob is talking about. The preacher in me this morning wants to say to you that Bob is not the only one who has spent a lifetime near something without really being able to see it. I understand that there was once a reporter who visited a school for those without their sight. Near the end of his visit, he mumbled under his breath, “It must be hard going through your life without your eyes.” One of the boys, who lived at that school, overheard the reporter’s words, and said, “I would rather go my entire life without my eyes, than to have my eyes and not really see the things around me.” That is a good point! Helen Keller is rumored to have said this, “The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.” I am sure that she is right about that. I may have been twenty-five or so before I saw the beauty of a flower. Working in a flower bed used to be my punishment. Now it is my pleasure. I have known Susie now for sixteen years. We have been married for eleven years. I could have spent a lifetime with her, sleeping beside her, living with her without looking deep into her eyes, and seeing her soul and who she really is.

I would like for you to hear Bob Eden’s quote one more time as we turn back to our scripture lesson for this morning. I think that it will be a nice little bridge to our lesson. Bob said, “You could never know how wonderful everything is!” Bryan Gray, our Minister of Music, helped me to see something important in this man. In our staff meeting this past Tuesday morning, Bryan said this, “Most likely this was a frightening experience for the man. It might not have been good news to him.” I think that Bryan is right. I think that the man, sitting there on the outskirts of his town was used to being blind. Jesus giving him his sight changed his world. In his day, those without their sight would have had to rely on others to help them with everything. They would not have worked, and so the man would have had to beg for help. So the man may have been used to doing that and with his sight came a new responsibility. Besides him, the man’s parents were used to his state. The religious leaders were also used to his being blind. We will hear a little about them later in our sermon.

So vision is the issue in our scripture lesson for this morning. Jesus gives the man new eyes, fashions them out of mud, but by the end of the passage, we are left wondering who it is, really, who is blind and who it is that can see. By the way, there are enough sermons in these forty-one verses to keep a preacher preaching for several weeks, if it was used in a sermon series, or several hours, if it were just one sermon. I am indebted to Bryan for his insight about the man and this not being altogether good news. You should be indebted to him for gently telling me that I did not have to preach more than one sermon this morning.

The tale begins like most of Jesus’ stories. Jesus is walking along and sees a man near the city gate. I want you to understand something here. Jesus could resist the temptation to turn stones into bread to feed his own hunger, but it seems that he could never resist the opportunity for compassion and to heal someone who needed it. So what I want you to see first in this story is that Jesus sees the man born blind. Six verses into our lesson is sermon number one. I am not sure that that is the sermon that I want to preach this morning, but I do not want you to hover over it without noticing it. Maybe I do want to preach that sermon. Most of the time, we do not see people. We do not really behold them, take a look at the people close to us. We do not always take a look at the people that we encounter. I am ashamed to admit it, but I will admit that when I worked downtown, left my office, and crossed Center Street, I often would look down. I rarely looked up because I did not want to make eye contact with someone who might want something from me, like my money or my time.

It is not always this way, but sometimes we do not look carefully at the people in our own families. I can remember Susie coming home from a conference with one of the parents of a child in her first grade class. Susie went to the school early to meet this parent. Being the good teacher that Susie is, she was trying to encourage the parent by saying that if she would just spend fifteen minutes a day with her child, her reading would improve. What that mother said shocked Susie. It shocked me, too, when she told me about it. This mother said, “Mrs. Fleming, I don’t have fifteen minutes a day to spend with my child.” A few years ago, there was a silly movie called Meteor Men. It was a silly movie; there wasn’t much depth to it. The movie was about a group of wannabe but less than super heroes. One of the characters in the movie was the Invisible Boy. He decided that he must be invisible because no one ever noticed him.

That was the case with the man in our lesson for this morning. No one really noticed him, no one paid any attention to him, no one considered him, until Jesus did. And then he drew all kinds of attention. The disciples were the first ones who saw him. They looked at him sitting on the roadside. They asked the age old question, “Who sinned, Lord, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” It is the age old question of whose fault the blindness was. In Jesus’ day, it was believed that if you were born without your sight, if you were poor, or if you had some kind of a disease, it was the direct result either of your own sin or the sins of your family. You might call this an inherited sin. Now we know that such thinking is crazy. We know that God does not work like that. But in Jesus’ day, that was the mindset. Those closest to Jesus saw the man as a sinner.

Then there were his neighbors, the folks he had known a lifetime, the ones who had been there when he was born and had watched him grow up. I just wonder if he looked all that different. Instead of wondering who he was, they should have been arranging for a celebration. They should have thanked God that someone in their town was healed and given a different life. Instead they cannot believe that it is him. They cannot see him as he is. They can only see him as he was. The debate about his identity is funny, I think. Some said that he was the same man who they had known a lifetime. Others said, “Oh no, he only looks like that man.” He listens and says, “I am the man!”

He tells them what happened to him, but they are not ready for his answer. So they go to the religious authorities. And for some reason, these men cannot see the man, either. They see their religious beliefs. They see their rules. They see in him a problem. But they do not see a need for any kind of a celebration. What they want is the facts. They want their questions answered. They wondered, “Who do you see in this healer?” The man said, “I dunno. Maybe he is a prophet.” His answer makes them angry. They want the truth, so they call in the man’s parents. He is a grown man, been on his own for years, and yet they call them in to ask if the man is their son. They know the answer. They know that he is, but they are blind, too. They are blinded by their fear, the fear of being thrown out of the synagogue. So they pass the buck, refuse to accept any consequences, and tell the rulers that if they want to know, they should ask their son themselves.

Did you realize that the Pharisees are asking the wrong questions? They want to know: “What did he do to you?” And “How did he open your eyes?” They should have asked what they could do to help him celebrate. The Pharisees only believed that Jesus could not have been sent from God. He is a sinner. No one sent from God would heal on a Sabbath day. Imagine the audacity of that, they must have thought. And all the while, all the man can say is this, “I don’t know. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.”

This morning I would like for you to go home with three things from this lesson that says so much. Here is the first thing, once Jesus has opened our eyes, it changes the way that we see ourselves. You might understand this by looking at how we come into the world. We come in demanding things. Our cries say things like: Feed me. Hold me. Love me. Burp me. Change me. Rock me. Pay attention to me. Sometimes our focusing on ourselves does not change. Have you ever seen a teenager focused only on himself? Sometimes it lasts longer than that. Have you ever known a thirty-seven year old who thought that life was only bout him? A few months ago, Liz arrived on Sunday morning, laughing at a catalogue that was selling Max Lucado’s latest book. She loved the title. She thought that it would speak to my life. Here’s the title: It’s Not About Me. She was more pleased when later that same morning, one of our members handed me the book to read. You see, it is all about me. Take care of me, cater to me, give to me, feed me, pamper me. Bishop Kenneth Shamblin used to say, “Conversion is moving from, ‘That belongs to me to I belong to that.’” I would add this line, “From do something for me to let me do something for someone else.”

The second thing that I would like for you to go home with is this, when our eyes are opened we look at other people different. When your eyes are opened, when you have not only your sight, but insight, you will see things differently. You will see the pressures of your life differently. You will look at people differently. Can I ask you to do that? There is a great line in the movie, The Preacher’s Wife, where Rev. Biggs speaks on behalf of one of the youth in his church who is trouble, in court. He says something like this, “You see problems, I see possibilities.”

And finally the third thing. When your eyes are open, it changes the way that we see God. Did you notice the progression of the blind man’s faith? When he was asked by his neighbors who restored his sight, he simply said, “The man Jesus did this for me.” When he is questioned by the Pharisees, he calls Jesus a prophet and even tries to convert the religious leaders. Then, at the end of the lesson, he is thrown out of the synagogue. Jesus comes to him in that moment, and the man sees Jesus now as the Lord of his life. Three things. When your eyes are open, you see yourself differently, you see others differently, and you see God differently. Let us pray.

(Special thanks to Max Lucado for the opening story in this sermon. The words can be found in his book God Came Near. Special thanks to Bryan Gray for his support and help with this sermon. Special thanks to Rev. Jimmy Moore for the quote from Bishop Shamblin. And special thanks to the writers of The Preacher’s Wife for the line from the courtroom).