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This One Thing I Do Know
February 20, 2000
Sermon Series on the Gospel of John
Pastor Dan Baumgartner
John
9:1-38
Six
snapshots:
First
picture: very old one, bunch of brawny men with mud spattered
all over faces.
The
year was 700 BC, and King Hezekiah was readying Jerusalem
for a siege by the Assyrians. All the surrounding cities
had fallen, and Jerusalem was standing alone. Hezekiah realized
that there was a major weakness in his defense: water.
The
main source of water for Jerusalem was a spring outside
the city walls, in the Kidron Valley. If the Assyrians
took the spring, they would take the city. And so Hezekiah
sealed the outlet of the spring, and had an underground
channel designed so that the water could be diverted, and
sent through the tunnel. The tunnel was a zigzag design
following fissures in rock, which turned out to be 583
yards long. It was 2-5 feet wide, and averaged barely 6
feet in height (sometimes 150 feet below the streets of
the city). Cutting crews started at both ends of the tunnel.
It was an extraordinary undertaking.
In
1880 two boys playing in the area found a carved inscription
celebrating the day of completion…the two crews
digging, zigging and zagging, correcting course and digging
again…ax to ax towards each other, hoping to meet…sweating,
working against the clock in the dark, dingy rock…until
finally one day one of the stonecutters heard a sound…and
then another. What was it? It was a voice, shouting through
the rock. It was the other crew, only 4 ½ feet away
from them. Following the sound of the voices, they broke
through the last wall. The water was sent underground to
a safe place inside the city walls, to a pool, in fact…called “The
Pool of Siloam.”
Second
picture: close-up of one man, with mud spattered around
eyes.
John
9:1-12
In
chapter 8, Jesus says, “I am the light of the world.” Here
in chapter 9, Jesus says, “I am the light of the
world.” That probably didn’t mean much to someone
who was totally blind, and had been their entire life.
Think about that for just a moment.
As
we have zigzagged back and forth across the country, we
have seen some amazing things. The last trip it was the
Grand Teton mountains in Wyoming. We drove and drove, and
reached a sort of plateau of magnificent flat land that
stretches forever, and then looked to the right, and I
had to pull the car over. From out of nowhere these huge,
craggy mountains rise out of the flat earth, peak after
peak after peak. Like two dozen Mt. Bakers rising up right
next to each other. It’s stunning. The color, the
height, the depth, the size…stunning particularly
when you have never seen it before. I just stared in awe
at this thing I had never seen.
But
try and imagine this man, whose name we don’t even
know…who has NEVER seen anything at all. And he’s
never seen Jesus, nor does he appear to know anything about
him. This story begins in darkness. And Jesus begins acting
out a parable that he started when he said “I am
the light of the world.” He applies a compress to
the man’s eyes, and sends him off to the Pool of
Siloam to wash. “So the man went and washed, and
came home seeing.” It sounds so calm and matter-of-fact.
The man came home SEEING. The people of his neighborhood
asked him “How did this happen? Who did it?” And
this seeing man says simply the only thing he knows, “The
man they call Jesus.” The light begins to glow in
the man.
Third
picture: a group of men with long…robes on..debating
something.
John
9:13-17
The
neighbors take the man-who-used-to-be-blind-but-is-now-seeing
to the Pharisees, the religious leaders, the respected
visionaries of the people who claim to see but quickly
show us they are actually in the dark. One writer calls
them “The Religious.” These Religious seem
very sure about how God works…so much so that they
seem to know that God acts in very expected, predictable
ways. There is no room for God to do a new thing, or to
work through unlikely people. There is a blind hardness
about some of these men. They’re not seeing something…this
man is SEEING! But there is no rejoicing. No one is thankful.
No one asks him what it felt like to actually see what
people looked like, or if the clouds in the sky were like
what he had imagined. But they couldn’t see.
We
always miss seeing what God does when we start from the
premise of that He can only work in a certain way. It’s
a danger the Church faces all the time. For example, we
quite easily fall in love with the way we do church. We
think God only really works when things are done the Bethany
way, or the way our church growing up did it. We sneer
a little at churches that do things differently. But God
is too big to be contained in one place.
What
a loss it would be to the kingdom if there weren’t
churches which took very seriously social issues, that
refuse to let us forget the injustices in our society!
What a loss if the charismatic renewal hadn’t persisted,
and given us churches that continue to remind us that the
Holy Spirit is active in the here and now. What a loss
if “seeker” churches hadn’t sprung up
with a particular concern for those outside the faith.
So often we laugh and say, “They’re doing it
wrong over there”…instead of opening our eyes
and seeing what God is at work doing over there!
But
this group knows God could not possibly act through a Sabbath-breaker,
through an uneducated healer. Finally in the middle of
the discussion, somebody thinks to ask the man what HE
thinks about Jesus. The seeing man says simply what he
understands: “He is a prophet.” A prophet is
a seer, a truth-teller, someone who speaks God’s
word into a situation. And the light in the man grew brighter,
and the hardness of the Religious grew darker.
Fourth
picture: A bunch of robe-wearers tower over an elderly
couple.
John
9:18-23
The
Religious weren’t hearing what they wanted, so they
looked around for someone that could give it to them. Don’t
be too hard on them…we usually gravitate to people
who will agree with us too! If the seeing man was going
to stick to his ridiculous story, perhaps his parents could
be coerced into lining up with the Pharisees’ position.
It doesn’t work. The man watches as his parents point
the interrogators back to him. They seem even more upset.
And the light in the man grew brighter, and the hardness
of the Religious grew darker.
Fifth
picture: The now-seeing man towers over the Religious.
John
9:24-34
“Give
God the glory,” the Religious said to the man. What
they meant was “tell the truth.” No, actually
what they meant was “tell us what we say is the truth.
Tell us you’re lying, and that this renegade Jesus
had nothing to do with any miracle. We know he is a sinner.” And
once again the man says very simply. “I don’t
know everything about who he is. But this one thing I know:
I was blind…now I see.” He sounds like Martin
Luther in the 16th century, about to be excommunicated,
but refusing to back off of what he felt scripture taught: “Here
I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen. “ The
Religious push harder and harder, they get downright nasty.
But the man continues to speak to what he DOES know: “This
Jesus has power that no one else does. Surely He is from
God.”
And
the light in the man grew brighter, and the hardness of
the Religious grew darker.
Jesus
is growing on and in this man. Many scholars point to the
gradual progression of the man’s simple statements
about Jesus. First he says Jesus is a man. Then a prophet.
Then someone of great power. Then surely someone from God.
That
seems the opposite of how we react with people. Many times
when we make a new relationship, everything about our new
friend seems wonderful. Finally, we have found someone
full of integrity, wit, wisdom…we start building
a pedestal for them to stand on. Then, over time, as we
get to know them…we see imperfections. Flaws. Things
that bug us. We take away the pedestal. That is the key
point of the friendship…will it go on despite and
in the midst of the imperfections?…or will the realization
of shortcomings prove fatal? But this man is shows us something
different about Jesus. Jesus’ light continues to
increase, like one of those rheostat switches. It’s
an amazing thing about Jesus. We are in a relationship,
not shooting for a destination. You don’t arrive…you
continue to grow.
Sixth
picture: Jesus sitting next to the seeing man on the
steps.
John
9:35-38
The
courtroom type scene, the shouting, the witnesses, the
interrogations are all over, the man who committed the
crime of testifying to God’s work in Jesus has been
thrown out of the presence of the Religious. The sun is
going down, and we’re given a very brief picture.
Jesus hears that they have thrown the man out…and
goes to find him. The early church father John Chrysostom
said “the religious leaders cast him out of the temple…but
the Lord of the temple found him.” Now you’d
think that Jesus would have more important things to do
after this big confrontation he has heard about...straighten
out some Pharisees, make sure his own disciples are thinking
theologically about all the ramifications. Instead, Jesus
goes away from the crowd, looks down a couple side streets…and
seeks him out. The truth is that Jesus has sought the man
out from the beginning of the story…but here, in
a tender way, his seeking is relentless.
The
Danish philosopher Kierkegaard describes Christ as just
such a seeker: “When it is a question of a sinner,
He does not merely stand still, open his arms and say, “Come
here”; no, He stands there and waits, as the father
of the lost son waited, RATHER He does not stand and wait,
He goes forth to seek, as the shepherd sought the lost
sheep, as the woman sought the lost coin. He goes—yet
no, He has gone, but infinitely farther that nay shepherd
or any woman, He went, in fact, the infinitely long way
from being God to becoming man, and that way He went in
search of sinners.”
When
Jesus found the man, he said, “Do you believe in
the Son of Man?” “I want to believe…who
is he?” He had never actually physically seen Jesus
before! Had been healed at the pool, away from Jesus. Just
like with woman at well in chapter 4, Jesus says: It’s
me. Then the man says, “LORD, I believe,” and
he worshipped him. The progression continues…the
man now calls Jesus “Lord,” and bows down before
him.
And
the light in the man grew even brighter.
What
do the pictures show us? What is the difference between
the Religious and the man who was given sight?
There
are many things, but two strike me:
First:
the man had a soft firmness about him. Oxymoron. He had
a willingness to admit that there were many things he did
not know. Yet he was willing to act on what he did know.
That willingness allowed God to use him, to give more light.
I’ve spent literally years of my life being reluctant
to talk with friends or neighbors or colleagues about faith…because
I felt like I didn’t have all the answers. Sometimes
we’re so afraid that there is some philosophical,
some scientific, some theological question we don’t
know…Of course there is! But this man said it so
simply: “This one thing I do know: Jesus is changing
my life.” The more we act on what we know, the more
light we receive.
Second:
There is a rigid hardness about the Religious. They have
God in a box. He can only act within certain parameters.
That hardness cost them everything. They lose sight of
the fact that God is the creating God, that He is making
all things new, that the deeper our relationship is with
Christ, the deeper He gets, that God is a living God whose
plan is to change the world. The more we limit God, the
less light we receive.
Frederick
Buechner says it like this:
“People
are prepared for everything except for the fact that
beyond the darkness of their blindness there is a great
light. They are prepared to go on breaking their backs
plowing the same old field until the cows come home without
seeing, until they stub their toes on it, that there
is a treasure buried in that field rich enough to buy
Texas…they are prepared for a mustard-seed kingdom
of God no bigger than the eye of a newt but not for the
great Banyan (tree) it becomes with birds in its branches
singing Mozart. They are prepared for the potluck supper
at First Presbyterian but not for the marriage supper
of the Lamb…”
May
God grant that we can see the One who comes to find us,
And the boldness to say what we do know:
Jesus, Light of the World.
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