Not Seeing It (Fourth Sunday in Lent)

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“I don’t see it.”  Have you ever said that?  Or perhaps, it’s been said to you.  Sometimes, “I don’t see it” means:

• Literally, I don’t physically see something, or see the difference …

• Intellectually, I don’t buy that argument …

• Emotionally, I don’t grasp how that can make somebody else all excited…

“Seeing” can mean much more than what you do with your eyes.  And this is the case in today’s Gospel reading as well.  Today, John has given us another long story, that on the surface seems to be about Jesus healing a man born blind.  And indeed it is, but it’s much more than that.  If John had just wanted to tell us a miracle story about Jesus healing someone, he could have done that in about 12 verses like other evangelists, instead of going on for 41!

But in fact, this story is also about a whole bunch of other people who also don’t “see”, even if they’re physically able to use their eyes. Jesus makes “God’s works” known in their midst, but they “don’t see it.”  And they don’t “see” for a variety of reasons.  Sometimes, they “don’t see it” because:

• They aren’t paying attention – Just before this story begins, Jesus has (again!) so ticked off people on the Temple Mount that they were about to stone him.  So Jesus and his disciples beat feet, and head down from the mount along the way going up to the Temple towards the Pool of Siloam that we hear about later.  This is a place where lots of people came and went everyday, and that’s probably why the blind man was sitting there begging.  Everybody would have seen him, as he was a regular fixture.  But when he starts running around telling people that he can see, lots of the “neighbors” debate whether it’s actually the same guy, or just somebody who looks sorta like him.  And a lot of that is probably because they never really paid attention to him (or to a lot of people and things that were there on their way to the Temple.)  And so if and when God did something with or through those people or things, they’d never notice that either…

• They don’t want to deal with more “drama” in their lives – and after all, probably everybody’s got plenty of drama in their lives to deal with already.  They want God, or God’s works, to take away the drama, not give them more.  But in this story, the parents realize that if they really “see” God’s works, it’s gonna cause more drama.  John makes the parenthetical comment about an internal family fight that was going on between Jewish Christians and other Jews over Jesus – and how by the time the Gospel was written down, believing in Jesus or not was already literally causing family drama… and sometimes, when it feels like something could cause more drama, I don’t want to see it…!

• It just doesn’t fit with their worldview – I get it. I want God’s works to fit nicely with my life and my worldview, too.  But many of the Pharisees can’t “see” because Jesus has already been irritating them!  Remember that in John’s Gospel, the very FIRST thing that Jesus does is cleanse the Temple.  He literally begins by upsetting the apple cart.  And everytime Jesus says or does something that doesn’t quite fit the view of “the way things are supposed to be”, many of the Pharisees become more and more resistant to “seeing” anything good in Jesus.  And so their worldview and intellectual expectations often prevent them from seeing it …

And so John tells this long, long story not simply to tell us about a miracle Jesus did.  Rather, I think he makes it this long as a way of asking his readers to consider what gets in our way of “seeing the works of God.”  It’s easy to read an ancient story from long ago, about people we’ve never met, and judge them for being so “blind.”  But that would be to miss the point entirely! 

Rather, John lifts up this story to get us to consider the reasons we might miss the works of God going on around us, and how we can be more open to having our eyes opened to the “works of God” in and around us.

And for us, too, that often means opening ourselves to God’s works in our lives by:

• Paying more attention to the regular people and places we live in each day.  Even though the “neighbors” lived in Jerusalem, they probably figured God’s works would happen up on the Temple Mount, but not down in the streets, and not among the people they passed by and ignored everyday.  And so perhaps for us, “seeing God’s works” begins with expecting God to act in the regular, and even unnoticed, people and places in our lives.  It’s often easy, especially in the DC area, to get caught up in all the national and international drama and intrigue going on in far flung places in the world, or even just on Capitol Hill.  But sometimes, “seeing” the important things God wants us to see means being open to “seeing” God’s works in the ordinary people and places we live and move among each day…

• Being willing to accept that sometimes God’s work will cause more stress, discomfort and even drama in our lives … everybody usually loves today’s Psalm, and how it talks about God being our shepherd and leading us beside still waters.  But the context is that people are walking through the valley of the shadow of death and surrounded by enemies.  Apparently, the psalmist realizes that to experience the comforting “work of God” you’ve gotta be willing to be in emotionally difficult places.  The parents in today’s Gospel reading call us to realize that sometimes we miss the “works of God” because we resist going down a road that will not be a lot of fun.  But not going down that road sometimes also means we won’t see the “works of God”…

• Being willing to let God mess with our expectations… part of the irony of today’s story is that the Pharisees, as a group, recognize that Jesus is doing works that look like the works of God.  But he isn’t doing them in the right way!  And because it’s not done in the “right way”, they don’t see.  And that story is told because so often we get hung up on the “right way to do things” and if it’s not done that way, it can’t be “God’s way.”  But in today’s story, Jesus challenges that notion, and reminds us that when we’re hung up on our own worldview of “the way things should be”, we may often miss the “works of God” in our midst…

And so through this story, Jesus is also working to open our eyes so that we can see the works of God.  And like those first disciples, Jesus is calling us to watch for how God’s works can be made known through the ordinary people and places we walk among each day.  Jesus is calling us to remember that God’s works are often most intensely present when we’re walking down emotionally difficult roads.  And Jesus is promising us that God’s works are always happening in our midst, even when they come packaged in ways we don’t expect.

Amen.