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A sermon is a manner of oral communication and therefore words and sentence structure/order would be added, altered, or deleted at the moment of delivery. + In Nomine Jesu + The Rev. Evan Gaerther Today’s gospel lesson is a story that gives us a vision into the work of God. Jesus and his disciples saw a man blind from birth. His disciples wondered who had sinned. This man or his parents must have sinned in some particular way in order to explain this affliction. Blindness during Jesus times was seen as a darkness inside of a person that prevented him from seeing the light of the world. It was figured that this darkness was the effect of a particular sin. It would seem that the disciples were simply asking a question about sin, but Jesus was going to teach them and us a lesson about the continuing work of God’s creative and redemptive power. Jesus explained that it was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that this man’s blindness was an opportunity for the works of God to be displayed. An affliction of blindness that seemed to be a punishment is explained by Jesus to be an opportunity to give us a vision of the continuing of the work of God. Jesus puts a whole new perspective on the relationship of suffering to God. Suffering was often seen as the result or punishment of something that had been done. Jesus instead of seeing the suffering purely as an expression of the wrath of God, looks to suffering as an opportunity to show God at work. I believe that Jesus’ response to the suffering of this man born blind is essential for us to understand our own suffering and the desire of Jesus in continuing the works of God through us. Jesus spit on the ground and made mud with the saliva. He then placed the mud on the man’s eyes with the mud and said to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam”. So the man went and washed and came back seeing. The mud and saliva may seem rather crude and an example of wacky medical practice. “For instance in England this week will be auctioned off a couple of 16th century manuscripts with odd medical suggestions. The 300-year-old cookery, medical and household recipe books, lavishly illustrated and with elaborate script, give advice on almost everything, from treating burns to getting rid of freckles. The advice for getting rid of Scalds and burns are suggested to be best treated with a mixture of sheep's dung and fresh goose grease, while four-day-old lemon juice rubbed on the face is guaranteed to eradicate unwanted freckles. There is an even more disgusting recommendation for getting rid of pimples that I won’t share with you this morning” (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=583&e=1&u=/nm/20050303/od_nm/odd_medicine_dc) But Jesus spitting onto the ground and manufacturing mud with his saliva was not an exercise in practicing the medical practices equal to an old wives tale. Jesus was continuing the work of his father. On the first day of creation God said, “Let there be light and there was light.” On the sixth day God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…so God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” Moses in the book of Genesis continues to explain the details of the sixth day of creation in the second chapter of Genesis when he writes, “A mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground—then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” The Lord God named the man Adam which means “from the mud.” Jesus was continuing the work of creation bringing, from the mud, vision to a man that was born blind. The real challenge in our story today does not come in Jesus healing a blind man. The story takes a significant turn when this man’s friends bring him to the Pharisees. It was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened the blind man’s eyes. The Sabbath was a day of holy rest. In the book of Genesis it is said of God that he rested on the Seventh Day after creating everything. So the commandment which obliges people to rest on the Sabbath is a strict commandment to imitate God. In Jesus time a person who didn’t rest on the Sabbath was a sinner because he was neither obeying nor imitating God. Some of the Pharisees said about Jesus, “This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.” The Pharisees were not trying to be hypocrites and obstacles to the work of God. Rather they were trying to be protectors and motivators for the people to imitate God through their actions. The struggle was that they had made themselves masters over God’s law, rather than servants to the living God. The Sabbath, God’s creative work, and God’s redemptive work all go together through the work of Jesus in our lesson for today. Jesus explained to his disciples that the man was born blind so that the work of God may be made known. In the creation the mist was coming up from the ground and from the mud of the ground the Lord God formed man and breathed into him the spirit of life. In Jesus making the mud with his saliva and putting that man blind from birth we witness the work of God continuing in the present to bring healing, redemption. The curing work of Jesus on the Sabbath has in its purpose the revelation that God’s continued creative power is being delivered through Jesus. The Pharisees reaction to Jesus is a reaction to how God should work according to their logic. For them the Sabbath served as a point of division between those that observe it and thus are good imitators of God, and those who do not keep the Sabbath and therefore are not of God. Shamefully in our own times we use this same logic to determine who is righteous in our eyes and who is not, who deserves God’s mercy and who deserves God’s punishment. In our sinful eyes of seeking division and separation between righteous and unrighteous maybe you use a dividing point such as who goes to church and who does not? Who teaches their kids about Jesus and who does not? Who observes the laws of God and who does not becomes a dividing mark of the worthy, the righteous, or the deserving. But Jesus did not look for a reason to blame this man or any other. Jesus takes us out of the role of judge and instead through his actions establishes himself not solely as God the judge, but more importantly and primarily God the creator, God the redeemer, God the gracious, God the merciful. The Sabbath as an imitation of God and him at rest is a mistaken understanding of God’s work in creation and how it continues to come into our lives through Jesus redemptive work. The alternative to the Sabbath and its observation becoming a dividing point between the righteous and the unrighteous is to use the Sabbath to see God’s Word continuing its creative, redemptive work. So what does it mean to keep holy the Sabbath. It does not mean to sit in idleness and do nothing. The day was holy in creation because our Lord had been about his creative work. To sit in idleness and do nothing today would be to deny the continuing of God’s creative work. As we receive the Word of God, which we have heard in our hearts and with our minds, we pray that we would publicly confess this living, active Word and intend to hold onto it through life and death. It is the desire of God not for us to sit idle and at rest but to bring his holy rest to those that are suffering, unsettled, lonely, and forgotten. Through bringing the work of Jesus, his holy creative and redemptive power, to those that do not know the peace and completeness that is found through faith in Christ as savior we are imitating the creative work of God. In our own suffering and the suffering of others we may desire to find reasons to blame and accuse, to separate and divide, but Jesus in our suffering sees the opportunity to be gracious and merciful. Jesus is at the heart of continuing the creative work of God. So it makes sense to say that to be an imitator of God is indeed a high and noble purpose to life, the Pharisees were not wrong in that. They were wrong in understanding who God is. He is not idle and at rest, finished or completed with you, he is at work continuing to bring his grace and mercy to you and to all those that suffer. God is continuing his mercy-giving, creative-redemptive work.
Soli Deo Gloria -->> Home |