CHILDREN’S ADDRESS
At the start of the service – I brought a torch in today. It belongs to me, and to show that, I have put my name on it. It’s a nice torch. look how good it looks on the outside. It’s designed to shine a bright light. Look at this! [switch on]
Oh it’s not working. I’m wondering when we get to the ‘Time with the Children’ slot, if someone can someone try to fix this for me? OK?
At ‘Time for the children’: well look what the problem is: inside the torch, at its core, there should be some batteries. The batteries are the power source to make the torch shine the light. Instead, there are just scraps of dirty rags. This one says: ‘pride’. This one says: ‘judgment’. This one says: ‘rejection’. This one says ‘unloving’.
Just like the torch has my name on it, God puts his name on his own people who belong to him. He did this for his people in the OT, the people of Israel. But the religious leaders led them away from God. They thought they were good by their own work and effort, their religious performance. They looked good on the outside, but inside their hearts were far away from God. The dirty rags reminds us of what Isaiah said about God’s people. Even though they thought they were so good, they were like this torch that looks good on the outside only. Isaiah says that inside, their righteousness is as filthy rags.
We hear that in today’s Gospel reading with how the religious leaders treated Jesus and the blind man. They hated Jesus. Because the blind man believed in Jesus, they were mean to him and chucked him out.
But just like he came to heal and help the blind man, Jesus has come to us. In our natural condition, we are all spiritually blind and cannot see Jesus as the Saviour we need. Jesus says: “While I am in the world, I am the light of the world” (John 9:5).
Like batteries fit into a torch, Jesus comes to make his home in us and make us clean. I have a cross on these batteries to show that. [take out rags and put in batteries]. He is the light for our life. The Holy Spirit connects us to Jesus’ power to make us his people who are righteous through faith in him. [turn on torch which now works] Then we can shine his light to others too.
Prayer on the taking faith home insert
SERMON – Episodes in Lent – Episode 4: Seeing Jesus…seeing like Jesus.
Who are the two main characters we see in today’s chapter of episodes in Lent? The first one, again, is Jesus. This time he swiftly and purposefully leaves the Temple grounds. You quickly recognise that this scene is different to previous episodes—there are not just two characters. In the background you see angry faces—the faces of the Pharisees. Their aggressive expression tells you that they have intention to harm with the stones they hold in their hands.
Jesus has really confronted them this time—it seems there’s no coming back from this. Yet he is so calm and assured. He challenged their religious worldview in which they think they have special favour from God due to their descent from Abraham. Jesus had just told them that Abraham is not their Father, nor is God: “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I have come here from God. I have not come on my own; God sent me.” He has charged them with belonging to the devil, the father of lies. He claimed to be greater than Abraham.
“Who do you think you are?” The Pharisees retorted.
“Very truly I tell you, before Abraham was born, I am!” Jesus answered, applying the Divine name revealed in the Old Testament: “I AM” to himself. At this, they picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus slips away from the temple grounds.
That’s the context in which Jesus journeys with his disciples and they come across the second main character in the frame—a blind man. The disciples ask: “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” He might be blind but he’s not deaf. The dejection on his face intensifies at not being able to see who was talking, but knowing they are talking about him. Will there ever be anyone who can help him? He didn’t have much of a life, this blind man. Not only was he blind, but also destitute. His blindness made him unemployable, so he simply sat and begged…feeling exposed, shamed, stripped of his dignity, judged as a sinner without hope, with everyone around looking at him and talking about him, as if he weren’t there.
“Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”—really quite an appalling thing for the disciples to say, but the blind beggar had heard it all before. It was widely held that one could bear misfortune as divine retribution for the terrible sins of their parents. Jesus brings the necessary correction: God doesn’t work that way. “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life. As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
Having said this, Jesus spat on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes. You sense the importance of this, remembering how in the beginning God formed Adam from the dust of the earth. In using his saliva, Jesus is showing that he is greater than the gods of ancient mythology whose saliva was thought to have healing and life-giving properties. What happens next verifies this: Jesus says to the blind man: “Go, wash in the Pool of Siloam”. So the man did what Jesus told him to do, and came home seeing.
Jesus changed this man’s life. Those who previously saw him begging can’t but help notice the dramatic difference. They demand to know how his eyes were opened. He tells them: “The man they call Jesus made some mud and put it on my eyes. He told me to go to Siloam and wash. So I went and washed, and then I could see”.
What follows next is that the man formerly blind not only sees, but increasingly sees the truth of who Jesus is. He shows reservation to the Pharisees’ claims that Jesus is a sinner. Despite their continual and intimidating questioning, the man courageously stands firm, making stronger assertions about Jesus and what he has done for him, before finally confessing his faith in Jesus and worshipping him.
Parallel to this is the religious leaders’ increasing condemnation of the man, and of Jesus. The Pharisees think that they are the ones with eyes wide open, but in a spiritual sense they are shut tight. Their focus is on finding fault with Jesus rather than looking to what his miracle showed. For them, Jesus’ mixing dirt and saliva constituted a work—because such work was done on the Sabbath, Jesus could not possibly fit into the framework of their legalistic expectations of how God would work and to whom he should show his favour. They reject the assertions made of Jesus, they resent the healing and desperately try to disprove it, they disbelieve the man was even blind from birth. They show how blind they really are by confessing that they do not even know where Jesus comes from (v29) before affirming where their loyalty lies: “You are this fellow’s disciple! We are disciples of Moses.” They condemn the man: “You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!” And they threw him out.
Sadly, it seems as if the man born blind is back at square one—someone with nowhere to belong, cast out, without help. As you see him there, picking himself up, scuffed hips, elbows and face, what do you see? How might the man born blind represent those on our streets, in our church carpark, or even in this congregation? Has there been a time in your own life that you can identify with the circumstances of the man born blind?
I’d like to share with you some verses of a poem I came across this week:
My looks are nothing special,
My face reveals my age,
My body shows some wear and tear,
And my energy’s not the same.
I try hard to avoid my mirror.
There are things I would rather not see,
And even those times when I just catch a glimpse,
I can no longer recognize me.
But the thing that really makes me sad
Is despite what people see,
Underneath my tattered, worn out shell,
I’m still the same old me.
My heart can still feel endless love,
And at times it still can ache.
My heart can fill with so much joy,
And then it can suddenly break.
So maybe to some I look ugly and old,
A person who barely exists.
I’m still quite aware of the beauty inside,
And my value should not be dismissed.[1]
The poem, by Patricia Fleming, is called ‘I still matter’. To the eyes of those who saw themselves as the religious elite of the day, this man born blind was deserving of his condition. Even his parents were more concerned about protecting themselves rather than standing by him. He had no future and no hope. He mattered to no one.
No one—except God. What is arguably the most beautiful part of this Gospel reading is not the initial healing of the man by Jesus, but that after he was written off a second time—thrown away; thrown out—Jesus sought him out and cared for him. The man mattered to God; so much so that Jesus searched for and found him.
In the Gospel reading from a few weeks ago, Jesus met with Nicodemus and spoke what is perhaps the most commonly known verse in the bible: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son…”
Today’s episode in John 9 shows how God lives out his love in a broken world. The blind man still mattered to God. God first saw him. It was Jesus who saw the blind man before he was able to see Jesus. It was God, in the face of Christ, who looked on him with divine favour. It was when the blind man wasn’t able to see Jesus as his Saviour, it was in the midst of the disciples’ judgments about him, and the midst of the shame and guilt he was made to feel, that Jesus displayed the work of God in this man’s life. And then when he was cast out a second time, Jesus came looking for him, and made him whole. When Jesus found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” “Who is he, sir?” the man asked. “Tell me, so that I may believe in him.” Jesus said, “You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you.” Then the man said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him.
The light of the world who in the beginning said “Let there be light” gave this man physical sight, so that even though sinful men threw him out, he had been given a place in the communion of saints. This account shows us that faith isn’t a neatly compartmentalised thing. Faith is a journey, an ongoing unfolding of sight. Through the highs and lows of life, God comes to bring faith, and nurture faith, and grow faith. Faith that does not just believe in statements, but lives it out in relation to God and others. Faith that is not just knowing about Jesus but knowing Jesus.
As you see the man born blind, not only healed, but made whole by Jesus, who else do you see? Who are the others around us, that matter to God? Everyone matters to God.
Do you see yourself there—one who was also born blind; spiritually blind, unable to see Jesus? Do you see yourself there, sought after and ministered to by Jesus after others have sinned against you, because you matter to God?
You matter to God. God has looked up you with favour too. Just as he sought out and found the man after he had been cast out, he searched for and found you, and washed you, not in the pool of Siloam, but at the font in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and you were born again with new eyes and a new heart of faith, to confess with other Christians through the centuries, saying: “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Christian Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.”
He has given you a place to belong. A place that this world could never give you. A place in God’s Kingdom, to live and serve him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness. Then, when Jesus comes again to judge the living and the dead, you will, like the man born blind, come home seeing—seeing the glory of God in the face of Jesus, bright shining as the sun. And when you meet all the other saints and the angelic choir, you will have no less days to sing God’s praise than when you first begun. Amen.
[1]Fleming, Patricia: ‘I still matter’. Published by Family Friend Poems September 2017. https://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/i-still-matter last accessed 10:42pm 16 March 2023
