St
Luke’s, Havelock North – Lent 4, 2008 – Sermon
“We must work
the works of him who sent me while it is day”.
I have to admit I was sorely tempted to simply let our Gospel
reading this morning stand in for the sermon as well – it was certainly long
enough! And I realize many of you may be disappointed to hear that I eventually
decided to resist temptation – it is Lent after all!
Of course the gospel is only one of today’s readings and in one
way or another all four are about sight and seeing. Individually they all say
something about how we might see or perceive times of trouble and hardship,
both for ourselves and others. Collectively these readings present us with an
invitation and challenge to see all things differently – through the eyes of
others and in the light of God.
Let’s take the first reading for example. The anointing of David
has long been a favourite story for both Christians and Jews. It’s certainly
one I’ve used many times, especially with children, and we’ll be using it again
at the All Age service later this morning. One of the reasons for its
popularity is the very clear and simple message the story puts across; we look
at the outside of people while God looks at the inside.
Of course that message only covers part of what this story has
to offer. There’s also a very political and corporate aspect to the choice of
David as king, especially while the current king, Saul, was still around. Walter
Brueggemann, the Old Testament scholar, describes this story as one that
transformed both David and ancient
Think about it for a moment – you’re a young man working for
your father, well down the family pecking order, with seven successful, good
looking older brothers, and suddenly a prophet shows up and says God wants you
to be the next king of your nation, and on your behalf your father says yes.
Transformative is probably too mild a word to describe the impact that must
have had on David.
But he wasn’t the only one transformed. As Brueggemann points
out, in choosing David – this young, inexperienced, untested and unlikely boy –
God effectively overturns the established order of the nation, and it’s
precisely because of his youth, inexperience and the humbleness of his background
that God chose him. In all these things David represents what Brueggemann likes
to call the ‘marginated’ in society. Once again, although perhaps more famously
than most, in the story of David’s anointing we find God bypassing the wealthy,
the learned, the famous and the infamous in favour of a shepherd boy with no
experience or qualifications to be king except that God is with him, which
turns out to be qualification enough to be sure.
God sees in David what others – even his own family – do not, and
ultimately the vision of David himself and the whole of
It’s a similar but at the same time different story in our long
gospel reading this morning. There we find similar themes to the David story,
albeit that they’re couched in very different language and circumstances.
Jesus and his disciples are traveling when they meet a man who
was blind from birth. Immediately we’re thrust into a debate that still rages
often today – what did this man or his parents do to cause his blindness? We’ve
been thinking about this in our Lenten studies, where Job’s friends spend
chapter after chapter trying to justify God’s actions on the basis that Job
must have done something to deserve them. This was the commonly accepted wisdom
for thousands of years, and sometimes still is today. You can find dozens of
scriptures to support it. If you’re rich and well blessed with family and
friends, it must be because you’ve done the right thing by God, and if you’re
poor or sick or suffering in any way, it’s because you haven’t. The disciples
accept this understanding without question, and in one sentence Jesus dismisses
it.
“Neither this man nor his parents sinned.” Then Jesus goes on to
say something almost as unhelpful as the attitude he’s just dismissed, “he was
born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.” It’s Job all over
again – the idea that God might actually not just allow but even cause someone
to suffer, personally for me that’s an even harder concept to accept than that
these things might be due to cause and effect. So in this one verse of John 9,
which may or may not represent what Jesus actually did or didn’t say, we’re
left with a difficult and potentially divisive debate – and there are still
nearly 40 verses to go.
Jesus, of course, goes on to heal the man and then we get the
reactions of the religious leaders to his actions. Here we find a fascinating
insight into how Jesus was perceived and received by these leaders. Some can’t
see past his rule breaking; how can we allow him to get away with healing on
the Sabbath? Some are convinced that despite his unorthodox methods, only
someone sent by God could do the things he does, and some don’t believe he’s
actually done anything at all, and accuse the supposedly healed man of never
having really been blind at all. So they go to his parents and ask them, and
the parents, not wanting to get on the wrong side of their questioners, pass
the buck back to their son; go and ask him yourself. So they do, they call the
man in again and demand that he speak against Jesus, and the man refuses,
saying, I don’t know who he is or what he is, all I know is that I was blind
and now I see, and that’s enough for me. Then he upsets the leaders completely
by asking if they’re so interested in Jesus because they want to become his
disciples, so they run him out of town on the proverbial rail. Jesus hears
about this and tracks the man down again and in that encounter ends up
describing the religious leaders as being more blind than he ever was. End of story,
kind of.
Can we ‘see’ the connections between these
stories? Jesus chooses to focus on the blind beggar while the leaders are left
to their confusion. The blind man eventually sees the Christ in Jesus while the
learned leaders remain blind – even choose to be blind we could say. Meanwhile
David is chosen to be king over every logical and seemingly sensible
alternative. In every case God sees something the people don’t which eventually
transforms all around them.
As I said at the start, both individually and
collectively these stories challenge us to see things differently, to recognise
the promise and potential – the very presence of God – in those people we would
least expect to find it in, to see in a way as and what God sees – to a point.
I started this sermon with a quote from our
gospel reading and as I struggled over these passages the other day, this was
the verse that kept coming back to me: “We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day;
night is coming when no one can work.”
Life
is short. The disciples have just asked Jesus a question with no really simple
answer – life is full of those questions, our faith is full of those questions,
even these readings are full of those questions. We could choose to spend
hours, or days, or even years struggling to come to grips with them and to find
some helpful answers, and yes, that’s important, but it’s not most important.
I
do believe that as we explore these issues and struggle with these questions we
will find ourselves better able to see as and what God sees, but only ever to a
point. Ultimately though, no matter how valuable and helpful those struggles
may be, we still have a job to do. We are those who are called to be lights in
our world, to bring hope to the hopeless, and life in the face of death. That
is our calling, to work the works of him who send us, and no questions or
struggles must be allowed to get in its way.