God Sees The Heart

“God Sees The Heart”

Sermon for MCC New Haven

March 30, 2014

Rev. Brian Hutchison, M.Div.

1 Samuel 16:1-13

John 9:1-41

ACIM: “Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love. The real miracle is the love that inspires them. In this sense, everything that comes from love is a miracle… Miracles are natural. When they do not occur, something has gone wrong.”

         Miracles are happening all around us every day! Every act of love is a miracle. Normalcy to us is being able to walk down the street without fear of harm. That’s a pretty good start since many people around the world do not have that luxury. News channels focus on the ab-normal, the extra-ordinary. They tell us about car accidents, shootings, drug busts, and outrageous things celebrities have done. (News has turned into such a tabloid!) They also sometimes highlight so-called “acts of charity” when people go “out of their way” to help others.

I saw a story this week about a police officer that wasn’t particularly busy. He saw a kid throwing a football in the air to himself, so he got out of his car and tossed the ball with the kid. I think this story is very sweet, but it shouldn’t be so extraordinary to make the news. Why is that so out of the ordinary? Remember, miracles occur naturally as expressions of love.

         Especially around the holidays, I see stories on the news about churches and organizations feeding families with turkeys for Thanksgiving or hams for Christmas. That is wonderful work that they are doing and I greatly appreciate and support it. But would the greater miracle not be for the gap between the richest of the rich and the other 99% of the population to close? It’s unfortunate when one individual shows lack of love to another, but it is catastrophic when a nation’s government and richest citizens show a lack of love to the rest of the population. Systemic sin is much greater than individual sin.

         The man blind from birth that we heard about from the Gospel of John today lived in a divided society too. He was a beggar on the street. Everyone knew him by face, but not even the Gospel of John gives the poor man a name. He was just, “that blind guy who begs.” The blind man did not ask to be healed, but Jesus approached him anyway. The disciples asked Jesus whether the blind man or his parents had sinned to make him blind. It was a common understanding in ancient times that sin caused disability.

In the Book of Numbers in the Torah, (14:18), it reads, “I, the Lord, am not easily angered, and I show great love and faithfulness and forgive sin and rebellion. Yet I will not fail to punish children and grandchildren to the third and fourth generation for the sins of their parents.” So I have migraines because my great, great grandfather sinned?? I really can’t accept that kind of logic. The only sins of the parents that could harm a child before birth are if the mother drank or used drugs during the pregnancy. But I highly doubt that is what the disciples were asking about.

Either way, Jesus does not agree with that logic either. He says plainly that neither the man nor his parents sinned to make him blind. But I have issue with what Jesus says next. He says that the man was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. So let me get this right… God made this poor man blind from birth so that however many years later, Jesus could use him as proof that he comes from God… Yeah I’m not buying that logic either.

The God that I worship does not make people disabled or send plagues of disease. According to certain televangelists, God sent AIDS as a punishment to gay men. I can’t believe that for a second. As a person with a basic understanding of modern science, I know that disability and disease have causes that are just part of the natural world. In the womb, the eyes of the man born blind did not develop. That’s it, end of story.

So did Jesus actually do something supernatural by spitting in the dirt and putting it on the man’s eyes? I don’t know. Frankly, it doesn’t matter to me. Blind people live out full lives with the use of their other senses and most don’t seek out pity for their disability. What really matters is what this story can teach us. The answer lies in the best line of our reading from 1 Samuel: “For the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”

It’s unfortunate that John decided to use the metaphor of blindness and sight to teach this, but it’s what we have to work with. But before we dive into the metaphor, let’s first hear from a blind Christian theologian about this passage. John Hull wrote an article titled, “Open Letter From a Blind Disciple to a Sighted Savior.” In it, he writes, “In the eighth chapter of this your fourth gospel you say that you are the light of the world and that the one who follows you will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life (Jn. 8:12) but, my Lord, I walk in darkness every day and have done so for twenty years.  Yes, I know that you only meant it metaphorically, but it is not very nice to be regarded as a metaphor of sin and unbelief.  Sometimes the metaphor is so graphic, that I can't help feeling a twinge of pain.” Can you imagine your weaknesses being used as metaphors for sin? What if your clinical depression was compared to a mind filled with evil? What if your bad knee was made a metaphor for not walking well with God? What if your cancer was used as a symbol for wrongdoing in the body of Christ? They are easy metaphors to go to because we understand our weaknesses, but they certainly do not make us feel any better about them.

Inclusive language is not about not hurting people’s feelings. It is about demonstrating with our language that we truly believe all people are created in the image and likeness of God. That is why in MCC, we change the words in Amazing Grace from “was blind but now I see” to “was bound but now I’m free.”

In 1994, Nancy Eiesland wrote the book, “Disabled God.” The point of her work was to show that all people, including those we label as “disabled” are “imperfectly perfect” reflections of God. She points out that no matter healthy you are now, you can become disabled at any time. Instead of categorizing people as “abled” and “disabled,” she rather uses the labels “temporarily abled” and “disabled.” I remember how actor Christopher Reeve played Superman, the superhuman come to save the day. Ironically, the actor fell from a horse, broke his neck, and lived the rest of his life as a quadriplegic. These bodies of ours are resilient, but they are also incredibly fragile. God didn’t push Christopher off of the horse. He just fell. And that’s the messy stuff of life.

Humans try so hard to clean up life, to fix everything. Much of what we have figured out we can do through technology is wonderful. We have found cures and treatments to diseases. Thank God for that. But regardless of how hard we try, we have to accept that life is not neat and tidy. Many things will not go our way. Accidents happen. Life happens. Shit happens… But that is no reason to live in fear. Living with caution is common sense; living in fear is just senseless.

The true miracle of the encounter between Jesus and the man born blind was what happened in the blind man’s heart. Living as an outcast of society, perhaps he had doubted his worth. No one would let him work, so maybe he felt he had nothing to contribute to his community. But Jesus showed him otherwise. Regardless of the state of the man’s physical eyes, abundant life in Jesus was still available to him. In the beloved community Jesus was building, those whose disabilities were welcomed with open arms. A life of joy really was possible for him. The miracle was the man’s shift in perception from accepting the lies told to him to receiving the truth of his sacred value.

These final words from the blind theologian John Hull really touched me. He says, “What I want is inner healing, the healing that comes from acceptance, from inclusion, from the breaking down of barriers through mutual understanding, for an acceptance of different worlds, of different kinds of human life.” We each have our own worldview, our own perspective, our own understanding of the world. That’s just the beauty of God’s diverse creation. But Jesus calls us to perceive one thing in common: each fraction of a second, each holy instant, miracles are happening all around us. Pay close attention. God will make you smile. Amen.