Please Note That Most Messages Follow
The Revised Common Lectionary

The Minister: For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light--for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true. Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord.

The People: The Lord is our Shepherd, we shall not want. He makes us to lie down in green pastures, He leads us beside still waters, He restores our soul. He leads us in right paths for His name’s sake.

The Minister: Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.

The People: Though we walk through the darkest valley, we will fear no evil for you are with us, your rod and staff- -they comfort us.

The Minister: For it is shameful even to mention what such people do secretly; but everything exposed by the light becomes visible,

The People: You prepare a table before us in the presence of our enemies; you anoint our heads with oil, our cups overflow.

The Minister: for everything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says, "Sleeper, awake! Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you."

All: Surely goodness and mercy shall follow us all the days of our lives, and we shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

The Minister: This is the Word of the Lord!

The People: Thanks Be Unto God!

On my computer I often see the following initials: "WYSIWYG." This morning I confess to you that for years I would look at those initials and I never knew what they meant. The other day I ran across them and in parentheses beside the initials were these words: "What You See Is What You Get." Up until that time I truly had no idea what those initials stood for.

I remember as a child watching some of the old westerns. Cowboys would gather in the saloons and the bartender who always kept a shotgun under the bar would pour them a shot of whiskey and just before they drank it they's say: "Here's Mud In Your Eye!" I have no idea what that meant either a few day ago and - I still don't! For you and I this morning it carries an entirely different meaning.

As I was preparing for the message this morning I kept focusing in on the act of physical healing that Jesus had done. I read it and re-read it over again. Almost every time I was attracted to the physical healing of the blind man. I searched for materials and I was almost ready to produce a sermon about "Why Do Bad Things Happen To Good People," but I realized that someone had already covered that subject in a book somewhere and that most of the population of the world had read that book and besides I thought it was a miserable work.

I don’t know when but at some point a light bulb went off in my head. It was almost like a Divine voice speaking out to me: "Hey you! Look at this passage again from beginning to end - you’re missing the whole point!" I came to the realization that what I was seeing was not necessarily what God wanted us to be getting here. I was only seeing what was on the surface and not really going as deep as John intended for his readers to go.

All too often we miss what God is doing because we are either too busy doing something else or we have a better idea of what God would do.

Someone sent me the following in an email this week:

Satan called a worldwide convention. In his opening address to his evil angels, he said, "We can't keep the Christians from going to church. We can't keep them from reading their Bibles and knowing the truth. We can't even keep them from forming an intimate, abiding relationship experience in Christ. If they gain that connection with Jesus, our power over them is broken. So let them go to church, let them have their conservative lifestyles, but steal their time, so they can't gain that experience in Jesus Christ. This is what I want you to do, angels. Distract them from gaining hold of their Savior and maintaining that vital connection throughout their day!"

"How shall we do this?" shouted his angels. "Keep them busy in the nonessentials of life and invent innumerable schemes to occupy their minds, "he answered. "Tempt them to spend, spend, spend, and borrow, borrow, borrow. Persuade them to work for long hours, to work 6 - 7 days a week, 10 - 12 hours a day, so they can afford their lifestyles. Keep them from spending time with their children. As their family fragments, soon, their home will offer no escape from the pressures of work."

"Over stimulate their minds so that they cannot hear that still small voice. Entice them to play the radio or cassette player whenever they drive. To keep the TV, VCR CDs and their PCs going constantly in their homes. And see to it that every store and restaurant in the world plays non-biblical music constantly. This will jam their minds and break that union with Christ."

"Fill the coffee table with magazines and newspapers. Pound their minds with the news 24 hours a day. Invade their driving moments with billboards.

Flood their mailboxes with junk mail, sweepstakes, mail order catalogues, and every kind of newsletter and promotional offering free products, services, and false hopes."

"Even in their recreation, let them be excessive. Have them return from their recreation exhausted, disquieted, and unprepared for the coming week.

Don't let them go out in nature to reflect on God's wonders. Send them to amusement parks, sporting events, concerts and movies instead."

And when they meet for spiritual fellowship, involve them in gossip and small talk so that they leave with troubled consciences and unsettled emotion."

"Let them be involved in soul-winning. But crowd their lives with so many good causes they have no time to seek power from Christ. Soon they will be working in their own strength, sacrificing their health and family for the good of the cause."

It was quite a convention in the end. And the evil angels went eagerly to their assignments causing Christians everywhere to get busy, busy, busy and rush here and there.

Has the devil been successful at his scheme? You be the JUDGE. How about this definition of busy:

B - Being
U - Under
S - Satan's
Y - Yoke

In our Old Testament Reading Samuel almost missed anointing David because he thought God would surely have chosen one of his older brothers who were much stronger than he. The Pharisees in today's lesson had much the same problem. They were good people - religious people. Their devotion was unquestionable. They were so caught up in knowing what God would have people do or not do on the Sabbath that they were "blinded" to the truth. They just knew that God would never - ever use someone like Jesus to redeem the world. There was no way a carpenter’s son could be the Messiah. The Messiah in their eyes was to be a earthly King not a suffering servant.

With all the knowledge the Pharisees possessed that was handed down to them from the prophets I often find myself wondering how they could have missed the fact that quite often God chose to use the most unqualified person or the most ordinary individual to do the most ordinary things. I came across a letter once that went something like this:

"TO: Jesus, Son of Joseph, Woodcrafter's Carpenter Shop
"FROM: Pharisaic Management Consultants

"Dear Sir:

"Thank you for submitting the resumes of the twelve men you have picked for managerial positions in your new organization. All of them have now taken our battery of tests, and we have not only run the results through our computer, but also arranged personal interviews for each one of them with our psychologist and vocational aptitude consultant. It is the staff's opinion that most of your nominees are lacking in background, education and vocational aptitude for the type of enterprise you are undertaking. They do not have the team concept. We would recommend that you continue your search for persons of proven experience in managerial ability and proven capacity.

"Simon Peter is emotionally unstable and given to fits of anger. Andrew has absolutely no qualities of leadership. The two brothers, James and John, the sons of Zebedee place personal interests above company loyalty. Thomas demonstrates a questioning attitude that would tend to undermine morale. We also feel that it is our duty to tell you that Matthew has been blacklisted by the Greater Jerusalem Better Business Bureau. James, the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus definitely have radical leanings and they both registered a high score on the manic depressive scale.

"One of the candidates, however, shows great potential. He is a man of ability and resourcefulness, meets people well, has a keen business mind and contacts in high places. He is highly motivated, ambitious and responsible. We recommend Judas Iscariot as your comptroller and right-hand man. All of the other profiles are self-explanatory.

"We wish you every success in your new venture,

Sincerely yours,

James, son of John"

Our gospel lesson is a story designed to point out just exactly who this Jesus is and what he came to do. Jesus and his disciples were out walking one day which happened to be a Sabbath day when they came upon a man who had been blind from birth. They asked Jesus the 20 million dollar question: "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"

I will never forget when I was diagnosed with cancer this well meaning minister who called me aside to explain to me how this was the devil’s rule in my life and that I could really beat the cancer if I simply rebuked the devil. I also remember working for a week at an institution for mentally retarded children. The chaplain told me the most common question he was asked by parents of these children was "What have we done to cause this to happen?"

What was Jesus answer to the Disciples that day? "Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God's works might be revealed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world."

Then John tells us that Jesus took some dirt and spit in it. Then Jesus put the mud on the man’s eyes and told him to him, "Go, wash in the pool of Siloam." He did as he was commanded and his sight was restored.

When people hear of the man’s healing they begin to talk and eventually the word gets back to the Pharisees who are none to happy about it let me tell you! They were more concerned over the very fact that this Jesus character did such a thing on the Sabbath then they were that a man who was blind from birth regained his sight. My take on this is that they were so against Jesus being the Messiah that when they heard this they refused to believe it to be so. In fact our scripture says so:

"Some of the Pharisees said, "This man is not from God, for he does not observe the sabbath." But others said, "How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?" And they were divided."

They interviewed the man. They went to the man’s parents. They interviewed the man again - threw him out of the synagogue. The poor man feeling rejected meets up with Jesus again and that’s when Jesus made the statement that not only broke the proverbial camel’s back as far as the Pharisees were concerned but it’s the part that I missed as I read this passage. He said to them basically these words:

"He who could not see can see but you who can see cannot. I am the Messiah and because I came in a way that you did not expect and because I work in ways that are unorthodox for you - you are blinded to the very fact that you are standing on Holy Ground for I am the Son of Almighty God who has come to redeem my Father’s creation!"

This passage speaks to us about the identity of a God who comes in surprising and unexpected ways. This God also calls unexpected people into service. The religious establishment of the day regarded Jesus of Nazareth as a dangerous - now get this and understand it - as a liberal! A thorn in their side who they wanted to get rid of. Yet those whom he touched, those with new sight, were able to proclaim their faith with certainty. The prophet Samuel was able to put his own, rather strong, feelings aside and anoint the unexpected one as the future King.

This passage also challenges us to receive the new sight offered by Jesus; and that sight is to be open to those strange and new actions of God in our lives and in the world around us.

The Pharisees in this story had closed their minds regarding Jesus and remained spiritually blind. God doesn’t want his people to simply "appear" to be religious. He wants people whose faith goes far deeper than outward appearance. People of deep inner commitment. I have often made the comment that if the truth were known we do exactly what we want to do most of the time.

In yet another place Jesus encounters the Pharisees and says these words to them:

"This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines." (St. Matthew 15:8-9 NRSV)

2000 years later Jesus wants more than mere lip service. Believe it or not He expects far more from us than our mere attendance at church on Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights. There’s a sad trend in churches these days. Most churches no longer have Sunday night services because no one ever attended. People somewhere along the way replaced attending church on Sunday nights with "more important things." Now it’s the Wednesday night services. Wednesday night services are so poorly attended that some churches are now doing away with them because people are too busy doing more important things. I have to wonder if in twenty more years will we even have church as we know it at all or will Sunday mornings be replaced with something more important?

Lent is a time for recommitting ourselves to Christ. The gospel challenges us to take on "New Sight" given to us by Christ. To renew our commitment to Him. To rededicate our lives to serving Him and making His business our top priority. I am truly convinced that we can be good at nothing until we are good in our relationship with Him. Perhaps what we need is a little mud in our eyes. What we really need is to allow Christ to touch our eyes and open them that we can see exactly where we are standing in relation to Him. What about it this morning? Are we growing closer or further away? Is our commitment to Him as strong as it once was? Are we willing to allow ourselves to be used by Him to accomplish His will in the world? Are we reading His Word? Are we studying it and applying it to our lives? Has our attendance in His house increased? Decreased? Or have we replaced it with more important things? Will you join me? Will you pray with me this morning and join me as I recommit my life to serving Him? As I recommit my life to growing spiritually? As I ask Him to touch my eyes and remove the spiritual blindness from my life will you ask Him to do the same thing for you?

Amen.

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