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Sermon: The Lenten Ecumenical Service - 29th March 2011
Epping Uniting Church 7:45pm
Readings: 1 Samuel 16:1-13; John 9:1-41
I have just returned from six days of almost complete silence at Tarrawarra Abbey in Victoria, with Fr Colin and a group from the Epping Carlingford Catholic parish. In the silence, the other senses became sharpened. I began to be more observant to what was around me. I heard the sounds of the natural environment with a sharper ear. And without table conversation, I paid more attention to the taste of the food. An attentiveness developed among us regarding who needed the salt or sauce passed to them.
I began to think more about the man who was born blind, sitting at his begging station. Even though he could not see, I imagine that he heard a great deal around him. Who knows – he may even have been able to guess from the perfume or less desirable odour of those approaching, whether they would be good for a few coins, or not. Without being able to see a thing, perhaps the blind man got to know the locals very well – better than they might have imagined.
It sometimes comes as a surprise to us when we discover that others see aspects of us that we ourselves are reluctant to see -- or that we do our best to keep very well concealed. As we have heard, and as we shall see, this story is largely about Jesus telling the Pharisees what they themselves do not want to see.
The story is a masterpiece, which S John’s Gospel sets out for us in eight scenes. We can carefully separate these out to look at each one in slow motion, to see each developing and interwoven part of the story.
First is Jesus and his disciples; second is Jesus and the man born blind; third, the blind man and his neighbours; fourth, the blind man and the Pharisees; fifth, the Pharisees and the blind man’s parents; sixth, the Pharisees and the blind man; seventh, Jesus and the blind man; and finally, Jesus and the Pharisees.
This is a fascinating story of movement, and as I read it, I began to imagine the story’s movement expressed musically. Then I discovered that Sir Edward Elgar did just that in his late nineteenth-century oratorio The Light of Life.
When we are first we are introduced to the blind man, he does not fully understand what has happened or who it is who has healed him. All he knows is that “it is the man called Jesus” who has given him back his sight. So far he knows nothing more of Jesus. It must have been bewildering enough that the man was coming to terms with now seeing for the first time. But on top of that, he also had to face this intense interrogation. The Pharisees question him further about his sight, and by now the man’s dawning awareness allows him to declare the healer to be a prophet. The Pharisees are alarmed at this, so they ask the adult man’s parents if he really had been born blind. In amongst the step by step telling of the story by John, we get a sense of a certain amount of confusion – “Is this the man?” “Yes, I am the man.” “No, it’s not him, but somebody like him”. “Was he really born blind?” “Ask him yourself, he is an adult and can answer for himself.”
Bit by bit through the to and fro of the dialogue, the healed man comes to understand who it is who has healed him. He has not only been cured of physical blindness; he also receives spiritual sight. By contrast, the Pharisees, none of whom in this story were physically blind, are shown to be spiritually blind. The greater the healed man’s recognition of his new sight, the greater becomes the spiritual blindness of the Pharisees. The story moves between physical and metaphorical sight. The man comes to greater sight – and insight, while the Pharisees move into greater blindness.
This raises a question for us: of what we see, and of what we fail to see? It may be that like the Pharisees, the cost and the implications of seeing something are too great, and will challenge or even shatter our view of the world as we like to see it, and so we try to skirt around what to others may seem obvious. When there is something we really do not want to see, we construct a world where (unless anybody inconveniently points out the obvious to us – which we’d rather they didn’t) we can get along reasonably well in our spiritual or political or emotional or relationship blindness. Seeing can be a risky business, because if we do see something which we previously didn’t see, what happens next?
For the man born blind, his days of being dependent on the goodwill and charity of his family for his survival would have been over. Presumably his days of begging would now be over, and he would have to learn how to make his own way in the world.
Like the man’s parents – have you ever been in a situation where you want to say something about what you see, but out of fear (real or imagined, internal or external) say it in a guarded, hedged, tentative, round-about sort of way. Sometimes we lack courage to say what we see, and sometimes it may even seem wise not to say what we see.
We are warmed up to this question of what do we see, by the choice of David in the reading from 1 Samuel. David as the youngest was the unlikely choice, but that is where God directed Samuel to look. God’s ways are not our ways. Saul is replaced by David; the spiritual sight of the Pharisees’ diminishes, while that of the man born blind increases.
An ecumenical gathering such as this may be a good opportunity to tell of my own experience of seeing something by looking in what I thought was an unlikely place – which is simply, that one of the best books on the Rosary I have ever read was written by a Methodist: (Neville Ward, Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy).
In thinking about sight and sound while I was staying at the monastery, the purpose of monastic silence struck me afresh. My voluntary refraining from speech, so as to allow me to find an inner silence in which God may speak, is in great contrast to the silence of those who dare not speak for fear of the consequences; whether political, or perhaps even in their own homes.
Our ability to see brings with it choices about what we choose to see, and whether or not we notice something which perhaps may be glaringly obvious, but which we may choose to ignore if we lack the ability or the courage to act in the light of what we see.
In his Rule for monks, Saint Benedict the Father of Western monasticism wrote, “Let us open our eyes to the light that comes from God” (Prol. 9). He goes on to quote Psalm 95 saying, “and [let us open] our ears to the voice from heaven that every day calls out this charge, ‘if today you hear God’s voice, do not harden your heart. Open minds and hearts are a prerequisite for open eyes. The blind man was given sight, and he progressively gained also in spiritual sight. The Pharisees already had physical sight, but their minds and hearts were closed, and so they became progressively spiritually blind.
Let us see what is there to be seen. Let us tune our senses, so that with open minds and hearts, “our eyes may be open to the light that comes from God.”
Martin Davies