4502 Summer Street - Burlington, IA 52601 - Phone (319) 754-5044 Email us at - info@springgrovechurch.com Spring Grove United Methodist Church Pastor's Corner Laverne Hueholt, Pastor February, 2008 Wash our Eyes IN John 9:1-41 we have a 4 Act Play: Act I As Jesus walked alone he saw a man blind from birth. Thus begins the first act of the story. Jesus sees a blind man who survives by begging. Jesus doesn't do the type of thing you would expect. We would expect him to touch the man or speak in some way and say be healed. Not today. In this situation he spits on the dry clay dust and makes mud out of it, then places it on the man's eyes and tells him to go to a pool and wash. The word Siloam meant "sent". So Jesus sent the man to sent and told him to wash. He came back and he could see, but by this time Jesus was gone. In fact Jesus disappeared from the story for a long time. Now the formerly blind man's neighbors began to argue. Was this the same man who was born blind? The man says yes I am. Well then who did it? Jesus! Where is he now? I don't know. We have the man who can see with his eyes, but not with his heart. He doesn't know the one who had sent him. How many times do we find ourselves in that situation? We can see but we don't feel with our heart and accept that God has been the one to send us. Think about the things that happen. You wrestle with problems of the world (blindness) and somehow your eyes are washed and you can see. You respond why didn't I think of that sooner? We as the man in the story don't know who or where the sight came from. We take the credit, but this man couldn't do that because of the magnitude of the change. Act II They take him to the leaders of the Church and they continue to interrogate him. Now he understands a little better, the healing has occurred on the Sabbath, which according to them is against the religious beliefs. The leaders are the police and should make decisions and mead out punishments, but they have a dilemma. The healing was good but doing it on the Sabbath was bad. What do they do? So they make him explain some more. He now is understanding better and he says the person was a prophet. But they keep insisting who was it? Well that's a good question, who is Jesus? He is one with a great idealistic and perhaps unrealistic message. Act III The religious leaders talk to his parents and they respond yes this is our son who was blind. Well who healed him? We don't know. He is of age ask him. So they call him back and question him again. They tell him to give glory to God, but this man that healed you is a sinner. The man is starting to think, if this man is a sinner, then how can he do these things. In fact if he were not from God he could do nothing. The blind man has gradually elevated his vision of Jesus. First Jesus was the one who sent him to the pool, next he is a prophet, now he elevates to he is from God. He has now placed the situation in a position that cannot be dismissed. It's easy to dismiss Jesus as an idealistic teacher who doesn't understand the real world, but God's message can't be so easily dismissed. Have we reached that point in our life that we can join the man in his belief that Jesus' message is a message from God? Act IV Jesus reappears after the man has been driven out by the leaders and finds the man. He asks him, "Do you believe in the Son of Man?" He responds who is he? Jesus says, "You have seen him and the one speaking with you is he." He says "Lord I believe." See the sequence? First he's the one who sends us. Next he's a human teacher of morality. Third he becomes the one with God's message. Now the former blind man sees spiritual insight. Jesus is not only the person with God's message; he is God's message. At Christmas we talked about the birth of a baby with a title. Not just a man, not just a prophet, not just a person who has insight into God's ways and purposes, but Jesus is God with us. The formerly blind man worshipped him. The Gospel writer has staged a story of enlightenment. The one who formerly couldn't see with his eyes or his heart now sees in crystal clarity "the light of the world." It's an amazing story. Who do you say that he is? January, 2008 Charlie Brown was heard to say, "I've given up the idea of being a doctor and helping others". Linus says, "Why I thought you loved humanity". Charlie says, "I do love humanity it's the people I can't stand." Most of us can understand Charlie's dilemma. I always enjoy listening to Barbara Streisand when she sings, "People who love people are the luckiest people in the world". Then it dawns on me that most of my problems are caused by people. I can't begin to count how many times I went into a teacher's lounge and if I was there for any period of time would quite often hear the comment; "teaching would be a great job if it weren't for the students" and I'm sure we hear that in many business setting. One can almost hear Paul saying the congregation at Corinth would be great if it weren't for the people. You see Paul had heard disturbing reports of the bickering that was going on in Corinth over who was their leader. I Corinthians 1 The congregation was divided over who they felt was the inspiration in their live. Some said Paul, some said Apolos, some said Cephas and some said Christ. Paul is saying that they weren't dividing over who baptized them, but they were dividing themselves over certain lines in the community. Paul makes it very clear that Christ cannot be divided in our church if we expect the church to continue. This has carried down to the present time and we find that that type of division is still taking place. One denomination may say we are right and the next door congregation is wrong or one group of people may say we are right but you are wrong because you have a different idea. If we study our church history we are all descendents of that first church of Christ, it's just that we have taken different approaches to the way we worship him. Yes we too have divided Christ along the lines of laws and grace, along the lines of biblical interpretations and understandings, along the lines of exclusion and acceptance. So what is the solution? A starting place would be for a community to realize that we are all children of God whether we are Christian or sinner. We may not look alike nor think alike, but what we share is a common Christ. In some way we think God's kingdom is replaced by kinddom. If we are not alike on the outside we are different. It reminds me of the archeologist that during his digging found a cave that contained a container full of what looked like clay balls. It looked as if someone had taken moist clay and molded it into nice round balls and they had dried and were firm and easy to handle. Intrigued by those balls he took them with him out into the sun and down to the beach. As he walked down the beach he would take a ball and see how far he could throw it into the ocean. After he had proceeded for quite a ways, he happened to drop one of the balls as he was preparing to throw it and it broke, revealing a beautiful gem inside. He then proceeded to break the remaining balls and in each found an equally beautiful and valuable jewel. When he finished he had found 10 jewels that were worth quite a sum of money. As he picked them up and walked on he thought, there must have been 50 of those balls in the container when he started and he lost them by throwing them away without looking at anything but the outside. We need to ask ourselves that same question. How many friends or inspirational acquaintances have we thrown away because we have only looked at the outside? Yes, Paul tells us and the church at Corinth that we are all gems in our own right because we have that power of God inside. We need to remember to stop making decisions by looking on the outside and look instead for those gems that God has placed in us all.