Call to Worship You are my all in all
Prayer of Approach & Confession & The Lord’s Prayer (NBoP 831; BoP 605)
Opening Praise: NBoP 411 Stand up, and bless the Lord
BoP 328
Responsive Reading – Psalm 24 [BoP 625]
Children’s story – Gilbert the goat
Children’s Hymn: songs 65 The ninety and nine
Scripture Readings:
OT – 1 Samuel 16:1-13
Epistle – Ephesians 5:8-14
Hymn of Illumination: NBoP 769 Lord of light
BoP 489
Scripture Readings:
Gospel – John 9:1-41
_1As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. 2His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
3“Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life. 4As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. 5While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
6Having said this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes. 7“Go,” he told him, “wash in the Pool of Siloam” (this word means Sent). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing.
8His neighbors and those who had formerly seen him begging asked, “Isn’t this the same man who used to sit and beg?” 9Some claimed that he was.
Others said, “No, he only looks like him.”
But he himself insisted, “I am the man.”
10“How then were your eyes opened?” they demanded.
11He replied, “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.”
12“Where is this man?” they asked him.
“I don’t know,” he said.
13They brought to the Pharisees the man who had been blind. 14Now the day on which Jesus had made the mud and opened the man’s eyes was a Sabbath. 15Therefore the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his sight. “He put mud on my eyes,” the man replied, “and I washed, and now I see.”
16Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.”
But others asked, “How can a sinner do such miraculous signs?” So they were divided.
17Finally they turned again to the blind man, “What have you to say about him? It was your eyes he opened.”
The man replied, “He is a prophet.”
18The Jews still did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they sent for the man’s parents. 19“Is this your son?” they asked. “Is this the one you say was born blind? How is it that now he can see?”
20“We know he is our son,” the parents answered, “and we know he was born blind. 21But how he can see now, or who opened his eyes, we don’t know. Ask him. He is of age; he will speak for himself.” 22His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews, for already the Jews had decided that anyone who acknowledged that Jesus was the Christ would be put out of the synagogue. 23That was why his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.”
24A second time they summoned the man who had been blind. “Give glory to God,” they said. “We know this man is a sinner.”
25He replied, “Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!”
26Then they asked him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?”
27He answered, “I have told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples, too?”
28Then they hurled insults at him and said, “You are this fellow’s disciple! We are disciples of Moses! 29We know that God spoke to Moses, but as for this fellow, we don’t even know where he comes from.”
30The man answered, “Now that is remarkable! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. 31We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly man who does his will. 32Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. 33If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.”
34To this they replied, “You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!” And they threw him out.
35Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”
36“Who is he, sir?” the man asked. “Tell me so that I may believe in him.”
37Jesus said, “You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you.”
38Then the man said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him.
39Jesus said, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.”
40Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, “What? Are we blind too?”
41Jesus said, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.
NIV
Sermon: To make us see
There are people who are born and are thrown into the worst of circumstances, and in those situations they have made terrible choices. They have stolen, or cheated, they have sold out their friends or they have sold out themselves. Further still, there are people who by their own choice – having every opportunity to do right, with every advantage life can give – make very wrong decisions. No matter the choice that has been made or has not been made, people can find themselves facing the pits of hell.
There’s the expression, ‘Where but for the grace of God go I’. It is a terrible expression really. It points to another person’s dire circumstances, and snidely says that God has graced me with going through something terrible. I will say very plainly, that the pride with which that expression is often used is far more rotting than any difficult situation we might find ourselves in.
But that expression and others like it harkens back to the false mentality that people are in hard times, and in tough situations because God is invoking a punishment on them for something they have done, or something an ancestor did. This assumption is not only wrong, it assumes the wrong things about our redemption.
But how often have you heard someone say, when someone is going through a hardship, ‘It’s a judgment on them’, ‘they must have deserved it somehow’. And we say that, not out of pity [though we might try and make it sound like pity], but out of some need to explain that bad things happen to people because they deserve it, because if that is not true then bad things can happen to anybody. We like to think that we e good enough people not to have to deal with sadness, struggles, sorrow.
This kind of attitude is just one of our common forms of blindness. When we believe foolish assumptions, when we follow doctrine with examination, or orders without question, we are blind. The people of God had become blind. They could not see the truth of their time, the evil of their conquerors, and the corruption in their own faith.
The Pharisee Priests and leaders at the temple in Jerusalem had a very skewed view of this healing, of all healing. Their faith had become so controlled, to explainable, that there was no room for miracles. This same faith, born from the great acts of God through the prophetic leader Moses, revisited by the miraculous examples laid down in the powerful prophecies of Elijah, Elisha and the many prophets who proclaimed God to the people through out the ages. Yet their reaction to this act of healing of a blind man should awaken us to how skewed a view was thriving in the leadership at that time.
Jesus states a very different reason for blindness than what was popularly held, perhaps even differently than we believe ourselves. When we encounter someone who is blind, or someone who is suffering from an ailment we do not go with the assumption that we found in our reading today, that they are ill or weak or disabled because of the sin of their parents or themselves. We assume that they have acquired a virus, a genetic malfunction, an injury. In other words, we like the Pharisees try to explain away the handicap. But Jesus does not explain it away, Jesus gives even a handicap like blindness a purpose.
Jesus invites us to see this blind man in a whole new way. Jesus invites the blind man to see his blindness in a very different way than he has ever been taught. Up until that point the blind man was likely bitter with his parents for whatever sin they had committed for causing him to be blind. The blindness was a barrier between them, but blind or sighted Jesus draws people together. The power of Jesus miracles is not only does this man regain his sight but his family is reunited in the midst of this, his parents stand in defense of him before the accusing Pharisees – who it seems would be more than happy for the man to remain blind.
Now I want to be clear about one thing at this point: the view that was generally held by the Pharisees in today’s gospel reading was not exclusive. The Pharisees, it says in verse sixteen, ‘were divided’. Yet the work of the Pharisees was clearly to explain away the miracle to be something other than a miracle.
This is a difficult line to skate. On the one hand we are told to believe, yet we want to know how things take place. We have this terrible tendency to explain God out of most things in life.
Why did the seed grow?
Well, because we planted it in nutrient rich soil, watered it, made sure it got lots of light and warmth, kept bugs and illnesses from interrupting its growth.
Do you see where God was involved in this?
Or, A little girl is very ill, but then she got better. How did she get better?
Well, her parents made sure she had lots of rest, made sure she drank lots of liquids, took the medicine the doctor gave them for her, she ate what food she could when she could and that food was very healthy food.
Do you see where God was involved in this?
Why did the man die?
Well, he had lived a good long life, his body was getting weaker, he kept getting sick, he had suffered from a number of injuries, he had good relationships with both his friends and his family.
Do you see how God was involved in this?
You and I could easily explain away everything I have just described with ever mentioning God. But God is involved, God’s will is present in death as well as life, in sickness as well as health and God’s glory is shown. God is present with the broken family as well as the unified one. But our need to explain thing to our own satisfaction instead of to God’s glory blinds us.
Oh, we can be very blind. We can be very blind to the presence of God and purpose of God. Have you asked in prayer what God would have you see, and what task God is calling you to fulfill?
You have been given God’s word, it has been read and the resources to know and to learn and to see God’s truth laid our for you are not hidden from you. You, like the Pharisees, have no excuse to not to see. You have reason to claim blindness from the truth found in God’s word and revealed in all of life. You have each other as a fellowship of believers and more than that you have the Holy Spirit as your guide.
Will you see?
Can you see?
Are you looking into your own life to see the revelation God has for you?
I pray you are, and that through God’s word you will discover and with joy celebrate that calling God has placed upon each of you.
See, and know that God is God, and in Christ our salvation is secured. May God be praised. Amen
Prayer of Thanksgiving and Intercession
God’s Tithes and our gifts
Doxology (NBoP 830; BoP 603)
Offertory Prayer
Commissioning Hymn: NBoP 471 We are one in the Spirit
(overhead)
Benediction
Dismissal: We celebrate the gifts we share
We celebrate the gifts we share,
In service we proclaim
Our Saviour Christ who for us died
To wash away sin’s stain.
By faith we go and labour on,
Through tasks God’s Word reveals;
Amidst the joy of worship done,
To wonder as He heals.