Matthew 28:1-10 "The Earth Shook: Evidence of Resurrection"

You are welcome to use parts of this sermon, but if you do, please attribute them properly! 

         United Church of Christ pastor, Jim Hibbett, tells the story of his own young children who, one Easter morning, awoke to find their pet gold fish lying on its side, so very still, in its round glass fishbowl, looking, for all intents and purposes, completely lifeless. It took only a glance for their father before he declared the children’s finned friend dead and suggested that the toilet be used as the best means of burying the fish.

         And so, the young ones gathered around the watery porcelain tomb and watched as their father slowly poured the fish into its final resting place.  They were about to say their final goodbyes even as their father’s hand reached for the flusher handle when the fish suddenly did a little flip and began to swim about actively.

         Needless to say, on that particular Easter morning and for those particular children, the story they would hear later in church took on a very real and exciting meaning.   But evidence of resurrection?  Sounds to me more like resuscitation or even a near death experience!

         Many years ago, a pastor did an Easter children’s sermon.  The kids flocked around her on the steps at the front of the sanctuary, all of the boys and girls dressed in their Easter finery, most of them on the wired or hyped up side after consuming large portions of the contents of their Easter baskets before leaving for church – chocolate rabbits, yellow marshmallow peeps, colorful malted milk eggs, and the like.  

         As one would expect, the pastor engaged the children by retelling the story of the resurrection.  He talked about the women coming to the tomb early in the morning before sunrise.  He told them about the stone that sealed the tomb being miraculously rolled away.  He reminded them of the fear and trepidation the women felt as they peeked into the darkened mouth of the cave.  And finally he asked the essential Easter question:  “And when the women looked into the tomb, what do you suppose they saw?”

         One particularly wide-eyed little girl could barely contain her excitement and enthusiasm as she blurted out the greatest miracle about a tomb she could think of that morning:  “Jellybeans?”

         Evidence of resurrection?  Sounds to me more like a sugar coated version of this story that lies at the very heart of the Christian faith.

         Each of the four Gospel writers – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – have their own version of what happened three days after Jesus was crucified outside the gates of Jerusalem, the Holy City.       The four storytellers have their own ways of relating what occurred three days after the disciples had resigned themselves to the finality of death and the defeat of their dreams (“"It was a good campaign while it lasted. But we didn't get Him elected Messiah. Death has the last word. We had hoped, but you've got to face facts.”). 

         The four evangelists have their own ways of narrating what transpired three days after Jesus was hurriedly laid to rest in a garden tomb, three days after hope had been killed, three days after the tomb was sealed shut with a massive rock blocking the only way in and out of it.

         However, it is Matthew’s story, the one we just read, that is the most dramatic of the four different versions, peppered as it is with bunches of colorful and unique details. 

It begins at dawn, as all the narratives do, with women (in this case, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary) tiptoeing through the dew on the garden grass, making their way to the tomb.  These women, however, do not take sweet spices and oils to anoint the body of Jesus, as the women in the other Gospel accounts do. 

         In the Gospel of Matthew, these women are no dummies.  They know there is a boulder sealing the tomb, an immovable rock that was set permanently in place on Friday just before the Sabbath began.  They know there is no way on God’s green earth that they could get to the corpse no matter how hard they tried – even if they had wanted to – which they did not. 

         Were they going to the tomb to discover evidence that Jesus had actually done what he said he was going to do?  Did they go to the garden to be assured of his resurrection?  Not a chance! 

         As Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor notes, “Resurrection (unlike springtime) is entirely unnatural. When a human being goes into the ground, that is that....You say good-bye....and you go on with your life as best you can, knowing that the only place springtime happens in a cemetery is on the graves, not in them...."

         Face it: The two Marys were going to the cemetery just like we might go to a cemetery – to touch the cool and solid marble of the gravestone of a loved one, to lay a flower atop the freshly mounded dirt, to pay our last respects, and, for the two Marys, to acknowledge that death and evil and all the malice and all the ridicule and all the hate that was heaped onto Jesus had won out.  They came to the cemetery to soak up the silence and to acknowledge the finality of the end:  “That was it,” they might well have whispered to each other as they approached the cave.

         But they were wrong.  Instead of yet again having to confront their own powerlessness, they confronted the power of God.  Instead of being haunted by the death knell silence, they were shaken by the rocking and rolling of a violent earthquake, so strong, so sudden that, as the Gospel writer tell us, it knocked the socks off the Roman guards assigned to the garden and flattened them – like dead men. 

         Instead of witnessing the world as it had always been, the women were the first to experience a world transformed because it was the two Marys who heard the message of an angel that, the Gospel writer tells us, looked like lightening and wore clothes as white as snow and delivered news –

Good News - that was meant to shake, rattle, and rock the world. 

         And in one fell swoop, as the earth shook, that angel – the power of God personified - rolled the stone away, perched himself on top of the boulder, and said to the two Marys, “I know – in your heart of hearts - you’re looking for Jesus, the One they nailed to the cross.          But guess what?  He is not here. He was raised, just as he said. If you want, you can take a look inside the tomb where he was placed. But get on your way quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He is risen from the dead. He is going on ahead of you to Galilee. You will see him there.’ That is the message.”

         You know, if you read this story carefully, you will note that the women did not even take the time to look inside the cave.  They just took off to tell the others. And maybe it was because they had faith enough not to take a peek – even at the heavenly invitation - to see if the angel was telling the truth or just joshing them, but, if that encounter in the garden was not enough to ensure that they would believe what had happened, then surely what occurred next would. 

         Whom should they meet on their way out of the cemetery, but Jesus himself?  “Good morning!” he whispered (Good morning?). And he reiterated the angel’s message: “Don’t be afraid. Go and tell the others.”

         And presumably the women did as they were instructed – because here we are, over 2000 years later, gathered together in this sacred space to say to one another on this Easter morning, “Don’t be afraid.  He is risen.  We need to go and tell the others.” 

         Tell the others?  Why?  Because the earth is trembling beneath our feet.  Why?  Because you just do not keep Good News to yourself.  Why?  Because on that morning just before dawn long, long ago in a garden far, far away, the world was rocked and rolled and shaken to its very core – never, ever, even these millennia later, never to be the same.

         “We need to go and tell the others” – just like the women did.  That is the commandment of Easter, you know.  Both the angel and Jesus proclaimed it.  “Go and tell the others.” 

         But what, pray tell, do we tell them? Ah, the essential Easter question.

         Do we jump through analytical hoops to come up with a rational explanation of what happened in that cemetery?  Do we say that, because the Bible tell us so, that is reason enough to be convinced –and do not worry about the discrepancies between the four Gospel versions of the story?  Do we tell them that they will not get to heaven (whatever that means) if they have any doubts at all about what happened there in the graveyard?

         “Go and tell the others.”  But what, pray tell, do we tell them?  I can think of three things as starters.

         First of all, we bluntly and forthrightly tell them that Easter is not about them.  Rather, Easter is about God.  As Methodist Bishop William Willamon writes, “It is not about the resuscitation of a dead body….It's not about the "immortality of the soul," some divine spark that endures after the end. That's Plato, not Jesus.

         It's about God; not God as an empathetic but ineffective good friend, or some inner experience, but…. God who makes war on evil until evil is undone, God who raises dead Jesus just to show us who's in charge ….On the cross, the world did all it could to Jesus. At Easter, God did all God could to the world.”  We tell them about our “God who creates a way when there was no way.” 

That is resurrection - and the earth shook.

         “We need to go and tell the others.”  But what, pray tell, do we tell them?

         Second, we tell them that what happened at Easter really says little about what they will experience when they die. 

         Episcopal priest Michael Marsh puts it this way:  “The joy of Easter is not only that God has raised Christ from the dead. Easter joy is also about the possibility and the promise that, regardless of what our lives are like now, new life is available to each one of us here and now…..Perhaps we should worry less about whether there is life after death and more about whether there is life before death.” We tell them about all the holy possibilities for renewal and transformation in our lives right now. That is resurrection – and the earth shook.

         “Go and tell the others.”  But what, pray tell, do we tell them?

         Third, we tell them that at the heart of the Easter story is the fact that God has said yes to Jesus and no to the powers that killed him. (Borg/Crosson).  God has said yes to love and forgiveness and no to hatred, revenge, and vindication. 

         We tell them that to declare that Jesus is risen is to proclaim that Jesus exists in the present and is not simply a figure of the past that we read about in four ancient Gospel accounts with conflicting details and differing sequences of events.  

         As Michael Marsh has noted, “What matters most about Easter is not the empty tomb (of 2000+ years ago) but (what matters most) is what we do tomorrow, the day after, and the day after that. How will we now live differently?

         Jesus did not die and rise again so that we might continue life as usual. If this new life and freedom do not change us we might as well put the stone back over the tomb. If we leave here today and don’t think about Easter again until next year then we’ve entirely missed the gift and, I would say, the point of Easter. Our lives are the evidence of resurrection, or not….Life is eternal. Love is immortal. We are free to live. We are free to love.

         We tell them that the end of the (empty tomb) story is the beginning of our life.  We tell them that Jesus continues to be known - even to us, even today.  That is resurrection - and the earth shook.

         “Go and tell the others.”  That is the commandment of Easter.

         We need to go and tell the others that Easter is not about our afterlife but is about the power of God – and the power of love.  We need to go and tell the others that Easter is not about whether we will experience life after death but rather whether we will experience life – real life – before death.  We need to go and tell the others that Easter is especially not about the mechanics of how the stone got rolled away and whether there really was an earthquake that morning but rather is about the mechanics of how we are going to live our lives differently going forward and whether we will reflect the Risen Christ in the justice and mercy we will inevitably be called upon to show toward others.

         That is what we need to tell the others. Those things are evidence of resurrection. Those things are what will make the earth shake and tremble beneath our feet.

         The dean of a Catholic seminary told a first year student that he should plan to preach the sermon in chapel the following day. The student had never preached a sermon before.  He was nervous, and he stayed up all night.  However, in the morning, he had no sermon.

        

         So he stood in the pulpit, looked out at his classmates and said, “Do you know what I am going to say?”

         All of them shook their heads “no” and he said, “Neither do I. The service has ended. Go in peace.”

         The dean was not happy. “I’ll give you another chance tomorrow, and you had better have a sermon.”

         Again, the student stayed up all night; and again he could not come up with a sermon. Next morning, he stood in the pulpit and asked, “Do you know what I am going to say?”

         The students all nodded their heads “yes.” “Then there is no reason to tell you,” he said. “The service has ended. Go in peace.”

         Now the dean was really angry. “I’ll give you one more chance; if you don’t have a sermon tomorrow, you will be asked to leave the seminary.”

         Another all-nighter, but, again, no sermon. The student stood in the pulpit the next day and asked, “Do you know what I am going to say?”

         Half of the students nodded “yes” and the other half shook their heads “no.”

The student preacher then announced “Those who know, tell those who don’t know. The service has ended. Go in peace.”     

         “Go and tell the others,” Jesus told the two Marys. 

         “Those who know, tell those who don’t know.  Those who know tell those who don’t know that Jesus is risen in a way that we will never understand but in a way that we all have the potential to experience.  Those who know tell those who don’t know that evidence of the resurrection lies in our acknowledgment that new life is bursting from within each one of us, in our affirmation that the world, through our doing, can be transformed.

         “Those who know, tell those who don’t know. This sermon has ended. Go in peace.”      

by Rev.Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church (U.C.C.)       

John 11:1-45 "It is about Now"

  You are welcome to use parts of this sermon, but if you do, please attribute it properly!       

         Three friends were discussing death, and one of them asked: "What would you like people to say about you at your funeral?"

         The first of the friends said: “I would like them to say: ‘He was a great humanitarian who cared deeply about his community.’”

         The second one said:  “I would like them to say: ‘He was a great husband and father who was an example for his children to follow.’”

         The third one said, “I would like them to say, ‘Look, he’s breathing!!’”

         Not many of us look forward to death – at least not while we have the health and wherewithal to discuss it good-naturedly with our friends.  Given a suitably vibrant constitution and abiding friendships, surely there is a piece of each one of us that hopes we will defy the odds and try out immortality - or at least find ourselves movin’ and shakin’ for a good many more years to come.   If we look through the eyes of blessing, when we look around us, we cannot help but see that there is so much of life left to live.

         Lazarus of Bethany must have felt that way – until he got sick, that is, until the cancer metastasized, until he could feel his lifeblood ebbing and slowing to a trickle, until he could no longer ignore the smell of impending death that his own body sent forth as a signal of the inevitable.

         There is so much of life left to live. Surely that is how Martha and Mary felt as well – and perhaps not so much as when Lazarus got sick.  When they sat by his bedside and soothed his fevered brow.  When they came to understand that all their nursing and all their comfort care would do no good in the long run. 

         They knew Lazarus was in dire straits, and so, out of the depths of their souls, they cried out to the only one they hoped could help them.  They did the only thing left for them to do. 

         They sent word to Jesus: “Master, the one you love so very much is sick.”  As Lutheran pastor Lee Griess pondered, “We can almost hear Martha, can't we? Surely he will come; surely he will help. Didn't he aide the paralytic? Didn't he cure the leper? Didn't he give sight to the blind and help the lame? And they hardly knew him. Surely he will come. Surely he will help.”

         And, of course, one would have thought, because it was Lazarus dying that our rabbi would have dropped everything and beat feet to Bethany to help out in this time of desperate need. After all, as the Gospel writer tells us, Lazarus was the one that Jesus loved. 

         However, as Lee Griess continues, “But he didn't come. He didn't help. Lazarus got worse, and Martha was left to watch and wait. And when Lazarus slipped into unconsciousness, getting weaker and worse, Martha whispered in his ear, ‘Hold on. Hold on. He will come. He will be here soon.’

         But Jesus didn’t come. He didn’t help. And finally it was done. Lazarus died and four days later, Jesus came. And Martha is hurt.”

         Imagine that!  It was four days later, after the connection between the body and the soul had been eternally broken, which was the Jewish belief, after death was therefore assured and there was no hope of turning back, after the body had been wrapped in its funeral attire and placed inside a cold cave-like tomb, after the rock had been set in its immovable place, after what was left of Lazarus had begun to decompose and emit that awful smell that corpses do:  It was after those four long and pain-filled days that Jesus showed up. 

         What took him so long?  The Gospel writer does give us an answer to this pivotal question, you know.  The Gospel writer tells us in no uncertain terms that this story is not about Lazarus.  It is not even about Jesus.  It is about God, for Jesus told his disciples, “This sickness is not fatal. It will become an occasion to show God’s glory by glorifying God’s Son.”

         And so Jesus put everything on the line - all his ministry, all his beliefs - and he showed up when he knew his friend was dead and gone.  No wonder the sisters were angry.  No wonder they were upset.  No wonder Martha ran down the road when she saw Jesus in the distance.  No wonder she threw herself at him – unladylike and downright scandalous behavior that it was.  No wonder that, out of the depths of her anger and despair, she laid it on the line for him. 

          “Master, if you’d been here, my brother wouldn’t have died. Even now, I know that whatever you ask God he will give you.”

         And Jesus calmly replied, “Your brother will be raised up.”

         And Martha, being the good Jew who knew her Torah, who knew as all good Jews knew that bodies would be resurrected physically at the end of time, but not now, not now, replied, “I know that he will be raised up in the resurrection at the end of time.”

          And Jesus answered her with those familiar words that we hear at every funeral, those words on which we perhaps mistakenly stake a claim on our own immortality, and I say mistakenly because those words are not about the future.  They are about the present, “You don’t have to wait for the End,” Jesus said.  “I am, right now, Resurrection and Life” – to quote from The Message translation of the Bible.

         Soothed by this puzzling statement, Martha wiped her tear-stained face and dutifully found her sister, and Jesus became the focus of the whole anger, grief, and despair scenario a second time. 

         “Master, if only you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

         Maybe it was just too much for Jesus, all the emotional upheaval, all the sobbing and wailing carried on at a fever pitch, but whatever caused it, Jesus’ emotions grabbed him as well – and would not let go.  First, he got angry.

         “Where did you put him?” he asked.  And they took Jesus to the tomb with its eternal rock set in place, and there, for the moment at least, Jesus’ own grief at the death of his friend poured out of him.  He wept.  He wept, and the tears ran down his face and settled in his scruffy beard.  He wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his robe.

         After all, as the author of the blog, Magdalene’s Musing, noted, “…glory comes at a cost. The cost (here) is one dead man, and two sisters who mourn and suffer terrible grief, not only at the loss of their brother, but at the failure of Jesus to act in time to save him.”

         But even in the midst of such an emotional scene, there were still the practical ones among the crowd of neighbors and friends, the ones who, for the most part, could not see much beyond their own noses. 

       “Well, if he loved him so much,” they murmured and whispered.  “Why didn’t he do something to keep him from dying? After all, he opened the eyes of a blind man.”

         Hearing such backchat, Jesus, the anger again welling up within him, commanded, “Remove the stone.”

         And Martha, ever the practical one, piped up.  “Are you crazy?  He will smell.  After all, in case you have forgotten, he has been dead four days!”

         Jesus looked her straight in the eye, unblinking. “This is not about Lazarus, Martha.  This is not about you, and it is not about me.  It is about God, about the glory of God.

         And so, at his command, they removed the stone.  Jesus said a quick prayer, knowing that what he was about to do would seal his fate.   “Abba,” he whispered, “I have spoken so that they might believe that you sent me. It is not about Lazarus.  It is not about me.  It is about you – and your glory.”

         Jesus knew that it was one thing to heal a blind man or even touch a leper, but this?  This?  This sort of thing was quite another.  And he took a deep breath and shouted into the depths of the cave, into the depths of all the pain and despair, the sobbing, and the malicious whispering raging about him, “Lazarus, come out!”

         And lo and behold, Lazarus did, a living corpse, wrapped from head to toe in strips of white linen, with a kerchief over his face.  The onlookers stepped back – in awe and in its flipside, fear – and probably also because of the stench of which Martha had warned.

         Undeterred, Jesus said, “Unwrap him, let him loose, and set him free.”

         We do not know what happens when we die – and we have no record of what stories Lazarus might have shared with his family, neighbors, and friends – though tradition has it that he lived another 30 years.  None of us knows what happens when we die though many of us try to figure it all out.  Listen to this form letter once sent by the Department of Social Services in Indiana to a recently deceased welfare recipient:

“Your food stamps will be stopped, effective March 1992
because we received notice that you passed away.
May God bless you. You may reapply if there is a
change in your circumstances”.

         No, we do not know what happens when we die.  But we do know what happens when we live.  I like to think that Lazarus did some good before he left this earth for all time.  No one, as I said, bothered to write down the rest of his story.  However, you can visit his final, final resting place at the Church of St. Lazarus, a Greek Orthodox house of worship in Larnaca, Cypress.  No, we do not know about Lazarus’ life that second time around.  We can, however, know something about ours.

         “You don’t have to wait for the End,” Jesus said.  “I am, right now, Resurrection and Life.”  It is not about some future point in time.  It is about now.

         It is about living with the kind of hope that Martha and Mary had when they sent for Jesus.  When everything around them had fallen apart, when all the good nursing in the world would not make a difference, when they could see in Lazarus’ sunken eyes that there was nothing else that could be done, Martha and Mary hoped for something more – for something beyond the structure of humanity as they knew it.  And so out of the depths they called for Jesus, and we as Christians might do the same.  Perhaps that is one thing the sisters can teach us. 

         When the going gets tough, call on Jesus.  Place your hope in Jesus because such hope will never fail you.  We might change what we hope for.  We may not always hope for the cancer to be gone, for the clock to be turned back to happier, healthier days.  Our hope might shift to a loving letting go, where grudges and petty resentments are laid to rest.  We might hope for a dignified death, a gentle death.

         “You don’t have to wait for the End,” Jesus said.  “I am, right now, Resurrection and Life.”  It is not about some future point in time.  It is about now. 

         It is about living with the sure and steadying knowledge that we are not alone in our pain and in our despair and in our grief.  As Martha and Mary learned when they finally found the warm embrace of Jesus, in the end, he came to them.  And he not only came to them, he came weeping. 

         He wept because Lazarus was dead.  He wept because Martha and Mary were in such pain.  He wept because the whole course of events could not have been otherwise.  He wept, just as he weeps with us at the cancer diagnosis, the failed marriage,

all the times when things go terribly wrong, and we try unsuccessfully to make sense of loss and disappointment on our own.  He wept, and because he wept, Martha and Mary knew they were not alone.  Still he weeps – for us.  Still he weeps – and shares our pain.

         You don’t have to wait for the End,” Jesus said.  “I am, right now, Resurrection and Life.”  It is not about some future point in time.  It is about now. 

         It is about living here and now.  Life is not about waiting to die.  Life is about having a purpose.  Life is about the contribution each one of us makes now – today – tomorrow – and all the tomorrows to come. 

         Life is about affirming as Jesus did that everyone – everyone – but most especially the outcasts and the marginalized, most especially the ones who hurt and who litter our world with their pain – affirming and doing what Jesus calls us to do for them in order to ensure that they have the long and rich lifetimes they deserve.

         You don’t have to wait for the End,” Jesus said.  “I am, right now, Resurrection and Life.”  It is not about some future point in time because, in the end, life is about living.  And living is about the glory of God. 

by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church U.C.C.

John 9:1-42 "Blind Spots"

You are welcome to use parts of this sermon, but if you do, please attribute it properly!

         Here are some essential truths that have been passed down from generation to generation of children.

         1. No matter how hard you try, you cannot baptize a cat.

         2. Never ask your 2-year-old brother to hold a tomato or an egg.

         3. You cannot trust all dogs to watch your food for you.

         4. Do not sneeze when somebody is cutting your hair.

         5. You cannot hide a piece of broccoli in a glass of milk.

         6. Never wear polka-dot underwear under white shorts… no matter how cute the underwear is.

         The source of each of these truths is surely buried in personal experience.  Seeing is believing, so to speak, which is perhaps why these core axioms are re-invented with each successive generation of children.  Even today, without a doubt, the cat will end up drenched and very angry.  Your mother will always find that piece of broccoli drowned in a glass of milk, and the polka dots will forever show through.  However, you do not really know any of these things unless you see them with your very eyes.

         Seeing is believing - or so they say - and perhaps that is why the Pharisees, the neighbors, and even the young man’s parents just did not get it in the story we heard about Jesus healing a blind man on the Sabbath.  Of course, the Gospel writer of John does not make it easy for us either to discern the truth of what was going on. 
         Consistent with so many of the stories the writer includes in his narrative, these verses are filled with metaphors and loaded with double meanings.  There is physical blindness and physical sight.  There is spiritual blindness and spiritual sight.  There is belief and unbelief.  There is seeing what is right in front of your nose and being blind to the workings of God.
         And it is all those various perspectives packed into a single story that makes this particular passage so intriguing.  Did you realize that, in the 42 verses it takes for the Gospel writer to tell the tale, only two of those verses deal with the actual healing of the blind beggar? The remaining 39 consider the slew of reactions to the healing.
         It all began on a Sabbath morning.  Maybe Jesus should have been in synagogue, but instead he and his disciples had come upon a blind man begging by the side of the road.   The man had been born blind, and that fact is the only thing that everyone in this story can agree on. 

         Maybe it was because it was the Sabbath and the disciples were wondering if you can worship God in the great outdoors rather than in the synagogue and, feeling a tad bit guilty about not listening to the local rabbi expound on the Torah, they seized upon this moment to inject a bit of Sabbath theology into their day.

         “Rabbi,” they queried like good synagogue goers who knew their Holy Scriptures well, “who sinned: this man or his parents, causing him to be born blind?”

         “Neither,” Jesus replied emphatically. “You’re asking the wrong question. You’re looking for someone to blame. There is no such cause and effect here. Look instead for what God can do. You know (he continued), we need to be energetically at work for the One who sent me here, working while the sun shines (Sabbath or no Sabbath). When night falls, the workday is over.”

         And with that our rabbi kicked up some dry dirt from the roadside, bent over, and scooped it up in his hands.  Then he did a strange thing, according to the Gospel writer. 

He spit – and it must have been taken a lot of spitting too – he spit onto the dirt and managed to turn it into some sort of mud, mud, I love mud.  And he took the mud – that beautiful, fabulous super duper mud – and rubbed it onto the blind man’s eyes, this poor marginalized blind man whose greatest contribution to society thus far was that he had been a lifelong object of theological reflection on the origins of sin.

         The spitting and rubbing done, Jesus wiped his hands on his robe and said to the man, “Go and wash your face in the Pool of Siloam.”

         The blind man did as he was told, feeling his way along the city walls, lifting his face toward the sky so the mud would not fall off his eyes before its time, but it slid down his face anyway, and some of it got soaked up in his beard.  But that did not make a whit of difference because when he returned, he was no longer simply the man born blind, object of theological reflection on the origins of sin. 

         Now he could see.  He could see the browns and beiges of the dry dust on the road.  He could see the blue of the sky and the whites and grays of the clouds that scudded by.  He could see the hundred shades of cream in a sheep’s wooly coat.

         One would think that people would have been pretty excited and joyful for him – the man born blind but who now could see.  However, that was not so.  Take the disciples, for example.  They were still trying to work through that head-scratching question of sin and never could get past it enough to rejoice in the man’s newfound sight. 

         The town was abuzz though, and the news of a healing on the Sabbath spread like wildfire.  And yet, there was really no celebration there either.  Instead, the neighbors failed to even recognize the man and they, like the disciples, got into a big discussion, not about sin this time but about the man’s true identity.

 

          Some wondered, “Why, isn’t this the man we knew, who sat 

here and begged?”

          Others speculated, “It’s him all right!”

         But still others objected, “It’s not the same man at all. It just

looks like him.”

         And the blind man who now could see kept interjecting, “It’s me, 

it’s me, the very one.”

        But even that brief confession of identity did not sway the neighbors.  They were still wary, and so they asked point blank, “How did your eyes get opened?”

          “A man named Jesus made a paste,” he declared, “and rubbed it on my eyes and told me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ I did what he said. When I washed, I saw.”

         “Yeah, right! “ they countered.  “So where is this so-called healer?”

         “I don’t know,” the man answered, not doing a lot to strengthen his case.

         No wonder the neighbors marched him off to the Pharisees, not knowing whether this was a miracle they had encountered, some kind of hoax, or – worst of all – something (and someone) dreadfully impure that they ought to avoid.

         And so the Pharisees began their investigation.  They asked for the facts of the case, and the blind man who now could see related his story yet another time, remarking that Jesus was surely a prophet.

         “Hogwash!” countered the Pharisees, who now were unwilling to even contemplate that the man had been blind in the first place.   And so they trotted him off to his parents with the nosiest among the neighbors in close pursuit.  His mother and father admitted that their son had been born blind but then, for fear of reprisal, withdrew their parental support, indicating that if he was old enough to vote, he was old enough to handle this situation himself. 

         In the end, the man born blind who now could see was left to his own defense.  And he, like the woman at the well that we heard about last week, became an evangelist too. 

         He did his best to convince the Pharisees that Jesus – even though the rabbi broke all the rules by healing on the Sabbath – was a good man, a man from God.  However, unlike the woman at the well, whose confession of Jesus as the Anointed One, led to, as the Gospel writer said, “many believing,” the man born blind was not quite so successful.  He got expelled from the synagogue – and that is end of his story.

         Except that Jesus showed up again, and the Gospel writer uses this opportunity for a last bit of theological reflection and for sticking it one more time to the Pharisees.  You see, the man born blind who now could see proclaimed his faith.  “Lord, I believe,” he said, and in a posture of the deepest respect, knelt down before Jesus.

         And in a marvelous twisting and turning of words, Jesus spoke pointedly to the Pharisees about those who are blind who really can see and those who can see who are really blind.        

         “Does that mean you’re calling us blind?” they asked obtusely.

         And Jesus replied, “If you were blind, you would be blameless, but since you claim to see everything so well, you’re accountable for every fault and failure.”

         We who also claim to see so well have our blind spots, you know.  Everyone does – people or events or ideas that are right in front of us that we do not see – and so, like the Pharisees, we are not blameless either. 

         If Jesus were here right now, surely the question he would put to us halfway through our Lenten journey is this:  What do we see – and what are we blind to? What are we blind to - and what should we maybe ought to see?

        Jesus looks at the blind man and he sees an opportunity for God’s goodness to be revealed. The Pharisees look at the blind man and they see an opportunity to make trouble for Jesus. Even the blind man’s parents, God bless them, don’t seem to be able to see their own son. They look at him, and they see the loss of their place in the community, the threat of being kicked out of their synagogue.”

         As the writer of the blog, Magdalene’s Musing, wrote “The disciples look at the blind man and they see a question of sin. 

         But - what do we see?  Not just in this story, but in our own lives and in the life of our church?

         Do we see people living in poverty because they are lazy and do not want to work, because she should have known better than to get pregnant – again, because being on welfare is fun?  Or do we see the unimaginable struggle of the working poor, the MacDonald’s Mom whose kids do their homework while she dishes out fries, the indignity of picking up the phone and making a cold call to a church to ask for help to pay the electric bill? What do we see?

         Do we see the astounding retreat of glaciers as an event that does not matter because we have lots of water in Maine?  Is the disappearance of white birch, balsam fir, and maybe even maples trees something we are content to be blind to?  Or do we see a world swerving almost uncontrollably toward such radical change that we have cause to wonder how in heaven’s name we will ever be able to ask forgiveness from our grandchildren? What do we see?

         Do we see a polarizing debate on the origins and effects of climate change so tiring and at times so boring that we convince ourselves it does not concern us? 

         Do we see a church that is a convenient and comforting place on Sunday mornings?  Do we see a congregation that wants to grow but, deep down inside, hopes that it is the pastor’s job to get people in the door, coming back over and over again, and then joining and pledging lots of money, so the church can continue to be a convenient and comforting place on Sunday morning? 

         Or do we see the radical transformation that is possible in our own lives and in the life of this church and this town if we let the Light of the World shine in our lives and through our ministries – and actually tell people about it?  Do we see the healing that is possible when we (and our church) become the ones who carry that light to a world too often filled with darkness?  What do we see?

         Are we like the blind man who knows he can see – and more than that – understands the source of his sight?  Certainly he is the one we all like to think we are.  And maybe some of us are – at one time or another. 

         But we all have our blind spots, don’t we? So maybe in the midst of our Lenten self-reflection, we also ought to ask ourselves:  When are we like the other characters in this story?

         When are we more like the Pharisees – who convinced themselves of their 20/20 spiritual vision but were, in fact, blind as bats when it came to recognizing Jesus for who he was and his message for its power?  When are we like the disciples – so involved in analyzing the situation to fit it neatly into a theological box that we are blind to the joy of healing and the potential for transformation?  When are we like the parents who divest themselves of any responsibility in order to save their own skins?  When are we like the neighbors – unable to recognize the goodness and greatness of God right before our very eyes?

        Those are the questions of Lent, and my prayer is that when the sun peeps above the horizon on Easter morning, like the man born blind, there will be a part of us that can affirm with assurance and great high hope that, though we, like him, were blind, now we can see: see the world around us for what it is, but also see glimpses of what it can become, see the damage that we have done – and also see impressions of the role we can – and must – play in its transformation.
by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village COmmunity Church U.C.C.