Learning to See Again

Lent 4 Year A

 1 Samuel 16:1-13 

 Ephesians 5:8-14 

 John 9:1-41 

 Psalm 23

Before I was married, almost before I started dating, I was sure that I wanted a boyfriend – who I would ultimately marry - who was tall, slim, blond. And a church goer. This man would be the father of my children, and we would live in a remote cottage in the country with a huge garden and keep donkeys and chickens. Well… one out of all that aint bad! Those of you who know Andrew will admit that, yes, he is tall but can hardly be described as slim or blond. He doesn’t come to church, we don’t have children, our house isn’t remote, we both hate gardening and there are no donkeys or chickens to be seen in our lives!

Happily, when I met Andrew for the first time I wasn’t so blind as to refuse to go out with him, but there was the chance that I could have let him slip through unnoticed, had I not been just a little open to the opportunity!

The Old Testament and Gospel reading are both about the dangers of making assumptions, and how this has the possibility of blinding us to the reality of God and God’s plans for us, as the world, and us as individuals. If we feel so confident that we know God’s will, then our confidence, our assumption that we are correct, needs to be unsettled.

So, here in one scene, we have Samuel standing in Jesse’s house, looking for Israel’s next king. In the other the disciples are standing beside a man who has been blind since birth. In both these pictures, people who believe they understand what they’re seeing discover that their vision isn’t quite as clear as they thought.

Rather like me, Samuel already has an idea of what the man he is searching for will look like: tall, strong, confident. So when Jesse’s eldest son Eliab walks in, Samuel immediately thinks: This must be the one. But God has other plans. In the case of Israel’s next King, the attributes that humans automatically look for were not the attributes God looks for. The next king of Israel turns out not to be the obvious choice standing in the room, but the youngest son out in the fields—a shepherd who hadn’t even been invited to the gathering.

In John’s Gospel, the disciples make a different kind of assumption. They saw a man born blind and asked a question that was perfectly reasonable in their world: “Rabbi, who sinned—this man or his parents—that he was born blind?” Bound by the beliefs of the time, which were that maladies came upon us as a result of sin, the disciples wanted to know whose fault it was that the man was blind.

They assume that suffering must have a clear moral cause. Someone must be responsible. And they immediately go from seeing to explaining. Assumptions are quickly made and these lead to their actions.

Aren’t we the same? We see a single mum with four kids, and assume that she is feckless, they have four different fathers, she must be diddling the social security system, so we turn away without listening to her story…we see a homeless person begging on the street with four cans of extra strong lager and assume he must be an alcoholic who will only spend the money we give on more booze, so we keep our hands in our pockets… We see situations where people need love, support, understanding, as they survive in difficult circumstances, and we assume that somehow they brought it on themselves, and somehow they must deserve it.

But Jesus refuses that entire framework. He doesn’t assign blame. He doesn’t trace the man’s condition back to some hidden failure.

Instead, he shifts the conversation entirely. In this moment Jesus dismisses sin from the equation. It is not about what is right or wrong, but rather about the possibility that God’s work might be revealed here.

The disciples thought they understood what they were seeing. But Jesus invites them to look again.

As many of you know, I was a primary school teacher back in the UK. I remember receiving the class lists for the next class I was to have in September and seeing a certain name on it. My heart sank. All I knew about this child was that he was difficult, he didn’t care, he was disruptive. So when the school year began, I already knew what he was like. It pains me to admit it, but, while I wasn’t aware I was doing so, in my mind I probably wrote off the student, thinking he wasn’t going to respond to my teaching so I wouldn’t expend that much effort on him.

Later on, talking to his mother, I learned of home problems, of trauma earlier in his childhood, that explained some, if not all, his behaviour traits.  As I found out more about the child’s background I must admit to feeling quite ashamed of how I had made assumptions, which had affected my interactions and my attitude.

Nothing about the boy had changed – including his disruptive behaviour.  But suddenly I saw him differently. What had looked like indifference might have been being unable to cope with external stimuli; what had been seen as “acting up” had a background story which was one of trauma and abuse. The story I had told myself about this child had been wrong—not because I was careless, but because I simply didn’t see the whole picture. And I had treated him differently based on my assumptions.

And perhaps that is how human vision usually works. We see a moment and assume we understand a life. We look at people and imagine we know their story. We see circumstances and assume we understand their meaning. But God keeps disrupting those quick conclusions.

Bishop Mark alluded to this last week, with the story of the Samaritan woman at the well. The disciples, the people in the village, all made assumptions about this woman, without knowing the whole story. Jesus, however, saw the woman as she was: he saw the complete picture. He saw her and loved her.

What these two readings tell us is that God chooses unexpected people. God works in places we would never imagine. God reveals grace where we expected judgment, and Love where we expected rejection.

Again and again, the invitation of faith is not simply to believe more things. It is to see differently. To remain open to the possibility that God is doing something we had not yet imagined.

As a congregation, we are – as you know – in the middle of a search for a Priest. Maybe you “know” what kind of a person you want, or think God wants, for our church. Maybe you think we need a man (or a woman), someone with a family (or someone who is single, or without kids), someone who is white (or of colour), who speaks French (or doesn’t), who is gay (or straight, or bi-), who is evangelical…or…or… In particular, the Search Committee need to be really careful that we don’t let our assumptions get in the way of what God desires for Christ Church. We need to remain open to the possibility that God is planning someone who is something we had not yet imagined. So please pray fervently that we will all be open to that. That we can recognise that our next priest is perhaps not the tall, confident Eliab, striding in first, but maybe the gentle shepherd who is the last to be considered…

In the situations in the readings, people had to let go of the idea that they knew best. Samuel had to call for the shepherd boy out in the fields. The disciples had to let go of their neat explanations. The man born blind simply trusted the strange instruction Jesus gave him and went to wash.

And slowly, sight emerged. Not perfect sight. But clearer sight than before.

At the end of the story in John, Jesus says something that sounds almost like a warning: “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.”

The danger, it seems, is not blindness. The danger is the certainty that we already see clearly. Because the moment we believe our vision is complete, we stop looking again. The moment we say we are sure that this is the Truth, we stop searching to know more.

And yet the whole movement of Scripture suggests that faith is less about perfect clarity and more about a kind of holy humility.

Samuel had to look again. The disciples had to rethink their assumptions.

The healed man simply remained open to what Jesus was doing.

And perhaps that is the invitation for us as well:

To move through the world a little more gently… to hold our judgments a little more lightly…and to trust that God is still revealing things we have not yet learned to see.

Because sometimes the most faithful prayer is not,“Lord, show me what I already believe.” Sometimes the most faithful prayer is simply:

“Lord, help me see again.”

And when our eyes are opened, and we begin to see again, we begin to understand that we are called upon to do the works of him who sent us. We, unexpected as we are, are called upon to be the light of Christ in the world. To reveal God’s grace when people expect judgement; to show love when people expect rejection. One of the phrases that drew me to the Episcopal Church is “God loves everyone: no exceptions” We are not asked to assume who God loves and who God doesn’t, who is deserving and who isn’t, who is “right” and who isn’t.

Instead we are called, as the writer of the letter to the Ephesians reminds us, to live as children of Light, bringing the love, acceptance and grace of God into the world.

Gracious God,

You see more deeply than we do.Forgive us for the times we are too certain of our own vision.

Open our eyes to what we have overlooked—the people, the possibilities, and the quiet work of your grace.

Help us to live as children of your light,bringing your love, acceptance, and grace into the world.

And in all things, keep teaching us to pray:Lord, help us see again.