Believing is seeing

    This Sunday we have another of the extensive readings from the Gospel of John about one of Jesus’ encounters with people on his travels, including religious authorities and scholars.  Sunday’s readings from John 9:1-41 are about a man born blind whom Jesus healed.
Clearly John means this to be an impressive healing, since someone blind since birth is a very difficult case; this is not about recovering sight but giving it where it never existed.  So Jesus is showing some pretty impressive skills on this one, raising him well above the typical wonder-working prophet.  In fact, creating vision in the man has resonance with God’s creation out of nothingness.  We, the readers, recognize that implication even if the participants don’t.

      Jesus then deftly deflects the objections of the religious powers-that-be and begins an extensive riff on spiritual blindness taking off from the physical blindness.  Not being able to recognize… or even see… how God is at work in the world is the worst sort of blindness to John, and Jesus is really, really sarcastic toward the leaders who are willfully blind to God’s new things.  Clearly, if one is unwilling to believe that God is breaking into human life in Jesus, you just can’t… or just won’t be able to grasp the good news.  In this case, you have to be willing to believe in order to see what’s in front of you.  Another problem with the authorities is how they get all upset over Jesus healing the man on the Sabbath, not imagining that their insistence on following the fixed, narrow rules might be blocking them from a new revelation of God’s ongoing grace.  They obsess over the details and don’t get the wider picture.

      In my usual search for connecting the weekly lessons to the ongoing overall life of the congregation, I’m intrigued at this context for electing the Search Committee this Sunday.  In fact, much of the Search Committee’s first work will be trying to discern, trying to see ahead to where God is going with this congregation.  If a Search Committee takes its task merely as finding a qualified applicant for a position description without also seeking to discern the overall direction and vision for a congregation, rooted in God’s call to that congregation, it will have, a least, poor eyesight, if not downright blindness to God’s light.  But it will take some time for our Search Committee to pull all the data from our congregational self-study into focus, to see God’s calling.  Firstly, give the Committee lots of time to do that work.  And to do it right!  Help them by working with them if they ask the congregation for more of your thoughts or want to bounce their developing ideas off you.  Be good partners in the process.  Secondly, don’t crowd them as they crystallize the vision.  Don’t be on their case like the Pharisees were on the man’s case!  When you are feeling impatient, take a deep breath and instead of asking what’s taking so long, pray for their vision and efforts.  Believe that when they figure out what they are seeing, they will help you see it too.

      And believe that somewhere, in due time, someone will see what the Search Committee sees about this church and will want to join you in your walk forward into God’s future.  Believing is seeing.

                                                                          In Christ,
                                                                   
                                                                           David            

Please attend the congregational meeting this Sunday after worship to elect our Search Committee.  And stay for the luncheon sponsored by the Women’s Ministry after that!

Texts For Sunday Worship:

      From the Epistles              Ephesians 5:8-14
      From the Gospels             John 9:1-41