Sunday March 2nd 2008

MESSAGE GIVEN BY

THE REV. PAUL MULLEN

AT

SCARBORO UNITED CHURCH, CALGARY

MARCH 2, 2008

“WHEN SEEING IS NOT BELIEVING”

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SCRIPTURE:   John 9: 1-41

Reporters puzzle over the glee we take in seeing the lofty brought down  -  even though they take part and encourage it. Look at Conrad Black heading off to prison tomorrow. I wonder how many people feel sorry for him? How many are taking at least some satisfaction that this person, who was so arrogant and so needy that he renounced a much-prized Canadian citizenship so he could become Lord Crossharbour, must now go to jail? Not only go to jail, but have no chance of serving his time in the much more lenient Canadian prison system because of that very ego-motivated renunciation. Hah!

Or is it all just sadly pathetic to see brilliant intelligence tarnished by the inability to see beyond his own greed, his own sense of superiority, his own belief that he could smart his way out of any pickle? What is the price of that kind of blindness?

It is strange, but the people with the most potential that I have known or know about, that got themselves in the most trouble, were people who were smarter than the vast majority of people. They came to believe that their brains would enable them to get out of any trouble they got themselves into.

But let's not pretend that the not-so-good-Lord and his ilk are the only ones whose vision is somewhat inadequate. It is not possible to have a whole, unspoiled, unwrinkled view of reality. There is no 20/20 vision when it comes to understanding life. We all have imperfect vision. We are all blind in some ways. If we were not, we would know everyone's inner motivations with perfect clarity, a clarity we do not have when looking at our own motives. Our vision of the motives of others and of our own is muddied by experiences often in the long-forgotten past.

One thing we learn from this story we have today about Jesus healing the blind man is that sometimes you have to look through a lot of mud and spit to see beyond the dirt.

In Jesus’ day vision was understood to work backwards from the way we know it today. Let me elucidate that muddification! The ancients believed that light came from an internal fire in each of us and shone through the lamp of our eyes, which in turn lit up objects in front of them. As Jesus says, the eye is the lamp of the body. The light coming from within was seen as good or evil. The evil eye was to be avoided at all costs. Strategies were developed to deal with evil coming from the eyes of others. One theory was held that evil attracts evil. The evil eye, then, could be distracted by a talisman, such as a blue stone that resembled an eye (blue eyes were seen by a brown-eyed people as more likely to be evil), or by an evil gesture such as a finger sign (you may not have too much trouble imagining that one!) or by spitting. The purpose of these distractions was to draw the evil away from the person to the object.

It is significant that Jesus makes a poultice of unclean dirt and spit and puts it on a man’s eyes. He does this to draw the evil out. And it works!

I am reminded of a Fred Craddock story about a minister thought to be William Willimon, another famous preacher: (Evangelical Laughter, Preaching Today, Tape No. 137)

A young pastor in his first year of ordained ministry is asked to go to the hospital and to pray with an older woman. He's been told that she is near death, and when he arrives he finds her lying on the pillow, gasping for breath.  He reads scripture to her and offers her words of encouragement, and then he says, "Would you like to have a word of prayer before I go?"

The old woman says, "Yes."He says, "Well, what would you like us to pray for today? And she says, "I'd like to pray I'd be healed, of course."  The young pastor is not so sure about praying for healing for a woman who is about to die, but he perseveres: "Lord, we pray for your sustaining presence with this sick sister. And if it be thy will, we pray that she will be restored to health and to service. But if it's not thy will, we certainly hope that she will adjust to her circumstances."

Suddenly the old woman opens her eyes and sits up in bed. She throws her feet

over the side of the bed. She stands up. She says, "I think I'm healed!" And she strides out

the door. The last the pastor sees, she's striding down the hall toward the nurses' station,

saying "Look! Look at me! I have been healed by the power of God."

The pastor goes down the steps, goes out to the parking lot. Before he opens the

door of his car, he looks up and says, "Don't you ever do that to me again!”

What is the real issue here? Touching a blind man? Healing a sinner? Healing on the Sabbath? Scoring a point over the Pharisees? All of these are legitimate grounds for discussion. To me there are two issues that are connected and connect with us today. The first is our need to blame others. We need to protect our illusion of innocent perfection. We know that we are not perfect yet we hate having it found out. Jesus’ disciples want to know because people at that time believed all illness was caused by sin. Was it the blind person’s own sin or the sin of his parents that took his sight from birth? Whose fault was it? In our day that question can be reframed as whether the man’s blindness was caused by genetics or by his own choices. We all know how that question has been a part of our church discussions about homosexuality.

Jesus’ answer is plain and simple and avoids placing blame anywhere. “The man”, he says, “is blind in order to show the glory of God.”

What would happen if we applied that to all our own personal infirmities and shortcomings? What if we are simply the way we are, regardless of how we got here, to show the glory of God? And what if we viewed others though those same eyes? The question then becomes one of how, not why. How can God’s glory be shown through our imperfections, our own blindness?

We are blind, after all. To one degree or another there is so much in life that we cannot see. We cannot grasp all of life, all of God, either as individuals or as a church. We can strive to be the perfect church, but whose fault will it be when we fail? Can we accept our own imperfection as a church? I am not just talking about Scarboro. When reflecting on this I recalled the title of a book on the Imperfect Church and wanted to see if it might still be available. When I Googled the words “imperfect church” it came up with almost 600,000 hits. We are not alone!

One website, the Community Presbyterian Church in Ringwood, New Jersey, has this invitation on its home page:

“Welcome to real live Christian fellowship. Be assured that because we are real and we are living, we are an imperfect church. On the other hand, if you are looking for the perfect church and if you find it, don't join it  -   your presence will wreck it.  No offense, but if you are human that's how it is.”

What does it mean then for us to show the Glory of God? In our imperfection have we lost sight of our call?

At the Official Board workshop yesterday we were talking about our tendency to get caught up in administering the structure of the congregation and the structure of the building. I passed on an image given to me by some of my fellow clergy. Jesus calls us fishers of people, not keepers of the aquarium. Too often the church gets sidetracked into keeping the aquarium and forgetting that we are called to minister to others outside our building and outside our congregation. Our structure and our building need to be cared for but they are the means, not the end, when it comes to our mission.

At our workshop it became apparent, and there was a consensus, that our vision for Scarboro is not as clear as we would like it to be. Our committees need to see more clearly where we are going and what is expected of them. You who have come here to seek healing and comfort, to do the work of your worship, you also need to see clearly your service to the community and how your faith and church can help you in that.

By the way, did you know that spit can be used to baptize someone? In extreme emergencies, our church ancestors decided, where someone is dying and wants to be baptized, anyone, lay or clergy can perform the sacrament. What is more remarkable is that they agreed that if there is no water available, spit can be used. It has water in it.

As a congregation we need to have some holy conversations about our blind spots, about the kind of church we are called to be, about our mission and how will we fulfill it. Can we trust Jesus to take some spit and rub it in the mud of our imperfection? We are clay after all and maybe we then can be reborn with a new vision of a congregation:

that serves the communities around us with Christ like compassion

that worships with zeal and variety

that respects the intellect, that celebrates diversity and longs for justice

that is an imperfect place for imperfect people to find restoration, healing and hope

that is an imperfect place to find wholeness, to be completed by God, not by our own efforts

where there are no easy answers but loving responses

where there is no self-righteous judgement but a yearning for right relations in all our relations, knowing

that our relations are never perfect but still loving them into fulfillment.

where God is glorified because that is why we are here in the mud, surrounded by God’s glory and

wishing we could open our eyes.

Here’s mud in your eye!