Open my eyes that I may see (what I don't even know yet that I don't see) -- sermon from Oct 24, 2021

 Reading: Mark 10:46-52

Jesus is on the verge of entering the city of Jerusalem, and stops to heal a man named Bartimaeus of blindness.

For three years, Jesus and his disciples have been criss-crossing the northern province of Galilee.  He has been healing and feeding the people, forgiving their sin, gathering them into free and inclusive community, treating everyone as equals, and challenging the ways in which both church and state use power to keep people marginalized and powerless.\

All along the way he has been saying that the world becomes the kingdom of God when we live God’s way of love, rather than the world’s way of power.  But people – even the disciples, are slow to see what this means, and to change their way of thinking.  

In the story just before this one, two of the disciples are still asking Jesus to give them places of power with him, so they can help him rule over others.  They still think Jesus is coming to Jerusalem to take over the throne and be crowned king – to be a worldly king like David.

They still don’t see – which makes this story a perfect way to end the Galilee part of Jesus’ work, and to open the curtain on what is to come in Jerusalem.

Then Jesus and his disciples came to Jericho.  As they and a large crowd were leaving the city [to start the final short stretch into Jerusalem], a blind man, Bartimaeus, was sitting by the roadside begging.  When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”

Many rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!”

Jesus stopped and said, “Call him.”

So, they called to the blind man, “Cheer up!  On your feet!  He’s calling you.”  Throwing his cloak aside, he jumped to his feet and came to Jesus.

“What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked him.

The blind man said, “Rabbi, I want to see.”

“Go,” said Jesus, “your faith has healed you.” 

Immediately he was able to see, and he followed Jesus on the road he was walking. 

Reflection 

It was the summer of 1988.  Hundreds of United Church members from across the country were on their way to the City of Victoria.  They were commissioners elected to General Council 32 by congregations, presbyteries and conferences from across the country, and they were going to Victoria to discern together the good will of God.

Everyone knew “The Issue.”  A report years in the writing was recommending that homosexual persons not be barred by their sexual orientation from being considered for ordained ministry in the church.

Hundreds of groups across the country read and debated the report.  Around 90% issued reports of their own opposing the ordination of homosexual persons.  The majority of delegates coming as commissioners to General Council were opposed to it as well, and their electing bodies expected them to vote it down.  A group called The Community of Concern that had been established in the United Church to oppose the report was active and out in force at the General Council, as was a group of anti-homosexual fundamentalists from the States that showed up.

 

But as the days unfolded, and commissioners found their way through the business and busy-ness of the General Council and all the educational and informational events that were part it, a strange thing happened. 

 

By the time the vote was taken on The Issue, the majority of people had changed their mind.  By about a 3 to 1 majority, the recommendation was approved that “all persons, regardless of their sexual orientation, who profess Jesus Christ and obedience to Him, are welcome to be or become full member of the Church, and that all members of the Church are eligible to be considered for the Ordered Ministry.” 

 

The delegates also added a further amendment stating “that all Christian people are called to a lifestyle patterned on obedience to Jesus Christ.”

 

Some said the open hatred of gays and lesbians they saw in some members of the Community of Concern and in the American fundamentalists was a wake-up call.  Many had never before in their life met and had a chance to talk with an openly homosexual person.  It was the first they heard such heart-wrenching stories first-hand. 

 

Altogether, it was an eye-opening experience, and when they prayed to God for guidance at the end of it, a majority found they now saw The Issue differently than they had before.  Their eyes were opened, and there was no going back.

 

I’m told that one of the basic differences between Western and Eastern Christianity, is that in the West we focus on the fallenness of the world away from God, and the need to fix it, to separate right from wrong and divide good from bad to make the world good again, while in the East the focus is on the continued beauty and glory of the world created by God, and the need is to have our eyes opened to it, to be able to love it and hold it together in love as God does. 

 

In the West, we think the problem to be fixed is the world’s sinfulness, and we pray for the power to do it;in the East, the problem to be fixed is our blindness to how beautiful and filled with glory the world is, and the prayer is to have our eyes opened to see.

 

And once your eyes are opened, and you see something differently than you were able to before, there really is no going back to what you once thought was the whole truth.

 

Just a couple of examples.

 

Now that we’ve seen images of Earth as a brilliant blue marble standing out in the dark vastness of the cosmos, thanks to photographs from space, we can never go back and never again not see and know Earth as a fragile, singularly beautiful planet spinning its life in the midst of all God has called into being, and worth all we have to love it and care for it.

 

More recently, something that will resonate in the Canadian consciousness for some time, is the sight of displays across the country of 215 pairs of little shoes, commemorating that many bodies of children buried at just one of the hundreds of Indian Residential Schools built by the power of church and state across the country.  It’s an experience that opens our eyes and helps us see in ways we cannot forget. 

 

Like the annual National Day for Truth and Reconciliation that’s followed in its wake.  It’s a day of story-telling and experience-sharing – of telling and of hearing the stories that invite us to see others and ourselves in ways we have not been able to before.  Have not been encouraged to.  Sometimes have been discouraged from.

 

I think of the importance of eye-opening stories in my own life. 

 

My first experience of church was very conservative evangelical.  Near fundamentalist.  In it, I learned to accept a particular pathway to God and Christian life, and learned also to see others as not being on a path like it.  Our next-door neighbours were United Church, and I grew up saddened by the knowledge they were not true Christians.  I was taught that Roman Catholics – of whom I knew only a handful, were idolators in the way they prayed to Mary and the saints.  And people of others traditions – Hindu, Buddhist and other?  Well into my high school and first year in university they were just pagans as far as I could see.

 

But then I studied history, fell in love with the unfolding stream of the human story, was deeply touched and personally deepened in my own faith by the spiritual traditions and practices of other cultures – medieval, Roman Catholic, Buddhist – and I could never go back to my old way of looking at others.  I had my eyes and my heart opened to a whole new race and family of brothers and sisters in God.  And once you are able to see, there is no going back.

 

I’ve read and seen news bits recently about something called The Human Library project – a world-wide movement for social change.  The way it works is simple.   According to their website – humanlibrary.org – they are quite literally a library of people -- people with stories to tell of their experience and who are willing to tell them, to share their story with someone wanting to hear it.

 

The Human Library hosts events – there was one recently in Toronto, at which people with stories to tell, especially of prejudice, stigmatization or discrimination of their lifestyle, illness, religious belief, disability, ethnic origin, social status, or anything else,

make themselves available at the event for scheduled half-hour meetings with people who have signed up to hear the story of someone in a situation and with a perspective on life that they have never yet really heard first-hand from a real live person who has lived it.

 

The people on both sides of the table claim it’s a life-changing experience.  For the tellers of their stories – for some of them it’s the first time they have felt heard, and that their story and life-experience really count as part of the whole truth.  For the listeners and the hearers of the stories – for most of them (and that’s why they’re there) it’s the first time they have ever seen the world they live in, from that perspective.

 

It’s eye-opening and life-changing.  It’s one way in which through love and openness rather than power and domination, the world is changed by letting the whole picture come a little bit more into view.

 

So, in these and other ways, Jesus still comes by on his way to the kingdom, and asks, “What do you want me to do for you?”

And the blind man – at least, those who know they are blind, say, “Teacher, I want to see.”

It makes me wonder not just what I want to see, but what I might yet need to see, to be able to follow him more closely and more fully on the road that he is walking.

I'm useless! (... not to God, you're not)

 Opening Thoughts 

Do you ever feel useless? 

If so, is it because someone said you were?  Or do you compare yourself and the good you can do, with others, and it seems you don’t measure up?  Or is it that you used to be useful, but just aren’t as helpful or as able to do as much good for others as you used to?

A rock group from Winnipeg called The Weakerthans – who I’m pretty sure are not together as a group anymore – when they were together recorded a song called “Utilities” – a strange little piece, an off-beat kind of discordant lament about feeling useless, that says in part:

Got this feeling that today doesn’t like me.

The air tastes like flowers and paint.

There’s a sink full of bottles and cutlery,

and the car’s got a list of complaints.

I just wish I were a toothbrush or a solder gun.

Make me something somebody can use.

…

Got a face full of ominous weather.

Smirking smile of a high pressure ridge.

Got more faults than the state of California,

and the heart is a badly built bridge.

Seems the most I have to offer doesn’t offer much.

Make it something somebody can use.

Make this something somebody can use.

 Reading: Mark 10:35-45 

By this point in the story, Jesus and his disciples have finished their time in Galilee and now are on their way to Jerusalem. In Galilee, the disciples have seen many wonders, have been taught many things, and have had their eyes opened to the possibility of God’s kingdom coming to be, and God’s will being done on Earth as it is in heaven.  Now, on their way to Jerusalem, their expectations rise to a whole new level. 

James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to Jesus.  “Teacher,” they said, “we want you to do for us whatever we ask.”

“What do you want me to do for you,” he asked.

They replied, “Let one of sit at your right hand, and the other at your left when you come into your glory.”

“You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said.  “Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?”

“We can,” they answered.

Jesus said to them, “You will drink the cup I drink and be baptize with the baptism I am baptized with, but to sit at my right or left hand is not for me to grant.  These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared.”

When the other ten disciples heard about this, they became indignant with James and John. 

Jesus called the whole bunch together and said, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them.  Not so with you.  Instead, whoever wants to become ‘great’ among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be ‘first’ must be slave of all.  For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” 

Reflection 

Dolores was distraught.  A member of a community I served some years ago, was being told by her family who lived mostly at a distance, and by some of her friends who had the courage, and by her doctor that really she should not be living alone in the house anymore.

The house was where she had lived all her adult life, had raised a family of four, now took care of herself after her husband passed some years ago, and still wads able to welcome the kids back home for holiday visits.  They were recommending she be moved to what then was called a seniors home.  And she said the thought of it made her feel “useless.”

I’ve grown closer myself to that age since then, and recently I was talking with my sister.  A few years ago she was forced into unwanted early retirement by realignment and downsizing in the company she worked for, and now is living with her husband, similarly early-retired, in a retirement community.  They enjoy their new neighbours and the weekly rounds of activities – euchre games, carpet bowling, bridge, daily walks along a variety of beautiful trails nearby, and who knows what else.  But at the same time, she says, after working all her adult life there’s a nagging background feeling of “purposelessness” that comes with losing her place in the world, and being able to effect something good in it from her place of employment and authority over some little part of it.

Whoever wants to be, or to feel, useless or purposeless?  Especially if you want to do good?

So, we read ...“Oh Lord,” James and John said, “let us sit at your right hand and your left, to have a place of power with you to help bring the kingdom to be, and help make the world work the way God wants it to be.” 

Usually in reading this we see James and John as power-hungry, which could be true.  Heaven knows we’ve had enough religious people and whole religious traditions that think the way to save the world and do God’s will is by gaining power to be able to dominate and control.

But it could also be that what’s at stake is something even more common and therefore also more insidious than that – the idea that if you want to be able to do any good in the world and be worthwhile, you need to be a person of some substance in it – a good place in the pecking order, status, property, privilege, name recognition.  And that it’s those who have these things, who live meaningful lives and make the world go round and go right.

When one of our members some time ago was suddenly and shockingly widowed – losing a husband with real presence in the community, and her family soon after moved her to an assisted living apartment in a long-term care facility, miles from her home, her friends and her church, it seemed like the loss of too much too quickly for anything good to come of this.  A number of people thought it would be the beginning of the end for her.

What it has proven to be, though, is the beginning of a new and surprisingly vibrant chapter in her life.  In her new home, her natural vibrancy, her open-hearted delight in others, and her gratitude for all she has been given in life have blossomed, and within days of her arrival other residents of her new community were commenting on how much she brightened their lives, how she renewed their own gratitude for being where they were, and their appreciation of the goodness of God in their lives because of her.

“It’s not power and authority that make you effective servants of the kingdom of heaven on Earth,” Jesus says.  “It is being a humble and lowly servant of others.  No power or status required.  In fact, power and status are best checked at the door.” 

Sometimes this kind of humbled servitude is a chosen lifestyle.  I think of a United Church minister recently passed away, who was quite a force for good in his years of active ministry, but spent the last 12 or 15 years of his life confined to a bed and a wheelchair in a nursing home.  Active ministry was out of the question.  He let go all his positions of leadership.  Some former parishioners and colleagues probably even thought he had already died. 

But with a laptop and a good internet connection he stayed in touch with world affairs, engaged in ongoing theological and spiritual reflection on the state of the world, and continued without fanfare or much recognition to be a light, a mentor, and a servant of others’ ministries across the country and around the world.

Sometimes, humbled, place-less servanthood is a one-off occurrence.  Like the night a year or so ago when Japhia was suffering through one of her overnights in the ER.  Wracked with debilitating nausea, in vain she tried to find rest and relief in one of three recliner chairs in a treatment room as IV fluids and meds dripped steadily into her veins. 

Late into the evening, our daughter-in-law texted her a blessing, reminding her of the nearness of Jesus sitting with her and holding her hand through the night.  With her phone set up for voice-over because of her visual impairment, SIRI read the text to her.  A woman in a recliner next to her overhead the blessing, and asked Japhia if she could listen to it again.  Japhia had her phone repeat the text for her neighbour, and the woman thanked her then and later for helping to lift her spirit, bring her fresh hope, and help her get through the night.  Japhia came home the next day marveling again of how even in her illness – in fact, because of her illness and impairment, God was able to use her to bring life and hope to others – use her as a servant of the kingdom of God.

However it happens, it has nothing to do with what we think it takes to live an effective and meaningful life.  It doesn’t take power, authority, good health, or having your own hard-won place in the world. 

Those things in fact can be in the way.  As soon as we have something to lose, it’s hard not to grow protective of it and defensive – even combative against others, rather than opened-up and simply obedient to their needs.

The other night I was watching highlights of a pre-season NHL game.  I don’t remember the teams that were playing nor the players involved, but a fight broke out. 

You know the old joke, “I was watching a fight the other night, and a hockey game broke out.”  I think what I watched was a hockey fight, in the midst of which what broke out, was the kingdom of God and the kingdom of heaven on earth.

I don’t remember the teams playing nor the players involved, but there they were – two players fighting hard to prove themselves, each trying with all their might to gain the upper hand, to establish their place on the ice and on the team, to not lose ground or lose face.  The kind of thing that happens and that we give ourselves to in so many ways in so many areas and arenas of life.

At one point one of the players lost his helmet.  The other player pushed his sudden advantage.  The first player, under the onslaught, fell backwards.  And as he fell, his unprotected head hit the ice.  Hard.

Immediately, the second player stopped fighting.  Stood stock still over his fallen opponent and without having to think – without time to think, began waving to both benches to come help.  Come see to the man on the ice.  Come quickly.

One can only wonder what was racing through his mind.

Immediate and spontaneous concern for the well-being of the other, whom only a second before he had seen as a threat and an enemy, but who now was a brother in need of help.

Shock and horror at his implication in what was suffered by the other.  He was just doing his job and what was expected, but he had a role in making this bad thing happen.

The frantic desire for the other’s well-being, and wanting anything and everything that could be done to help him, to be done, right away, as soon as possible.

All divisions and divides dissolved.  All need for power and authority fell away.  All concerns about gaining the upper hand and establishing your own place made no sense any more. 

In place of all those things by which we usually measure our worth and our effectiveness in life, the only thing left was an awareness of shared humanity with someone you once saw as separate from you, and a simple, total desire to help them and to serve their well-being in whatever way you can, as quickly and completely and compassionately as possible. 

I don’t know … but doesn’t that sound like what the kingdom of God is said to be about? What it’s like when God’s love for all breaks through our normal business?  That maybe it’s one way of seeing in real life what we pray for, when we pray “thy kingdom come, and thy will done on Earth as in heaven”? 

And if a hockey player in the middle of a fight can suddenly find himself acting on impulse, without even having to think about it, as a servant of the kingdom of God, how can I not believe the same possibility is always there for me as well in any arena of life I am in?

And not on a highlight reel; that's not the point.  But in day-to-day real life. No matter where and how I am at the time.  Totally apart from any power, privilege, authority, place, authority, or status I have or don’t have.  Maybe especially when I am able to lay those things aside and let go of them, and just let myself – my true self, be found in obedient response to someone else’s need.

Thanks be to God, that none of us is ever useless to him.