“Who Wipes Away The Tears?”
How the blind can see, and the sighted be blind
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, March 17, 2002
Text: John 9:1-41
I was invited to be the master of ceremonies at the 40th wedding anniversary of my parents' closest friends and, although my parents were no longer alive, I felt that I should honour this request; for it was indeed one of my mother's great wishes that I be present at this celebration for her best friends. And so I agreed.
Two years ago this summer, I went to the beautiful area of Upper Clements on the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia, where we met one evening. As the sun was beginning to set, all their friends and relatives arrived for this great celebration.
After a wonderful, multicourse meal of many, many pieces of Nova Scotia fish, we sat down to celebrate the life of this couple. Somebody then got up and told a few anecdotes about the life that the couple had led, which, as is normally the case at a wedding anniversary, were clearly funnier to the teller than they were to those present. Another person decided to get up and give some rather humorous repartée; the only problem was he was inebriated and slurred some ungodly things.
It had been organized that some members of the family would do a song and dance routine that was eminently forgettable. Then, at the end of all this, yours truly was asked to say a prayer. Of course, by this time no-one was listening. It was a typical anniversary gathering.
After we had concluded things and were ready to go home, as we were about to say a benediction, in fact, there was a tap on my shoulder. An 11 year-old boy, the grandson of the people whose lives we were celebrating, tapped me on the shoulder and said: "Andrew, I would like to say a few words."
Well, what you don't know about this child, and what made this all so difficult, is that he had been born with cerebral palsy. Nearly everything, it seemed to me, throughout his life (for I had known him for 11 years) seemed to turn out to be a disaster.
Often when he would speak, he would struggle with words. My mind flashed back at that moment to the church play he had asked to take part in, only to go on the stage and fall down, always needing someone to lift him up. This is the young boy whose parents, I remember, made him wear a helmet when he started to run, because every time he ran he fell over. Christopher gave the term wipeout a whole new meaning and I thought, Oh Christopher, I'm not sure.
I looked at the eyes of his parents and they were anxious. I looked at his grandparents and they were distressed and I thought, What do I do?
I said to Christopher: "Is this really important to you?"
Christopher said: "Yes, it means everything to me."
And so I made an executive decision; I asked everyone to sit down and I introduced the grandson. Am I glad I did!
Christopher got up and humorously recounted all the things that the rest of us had found embarrassing. He talked about how, when he failed tests, his grandparents would spend the next few nights tutoring him to make sure that he would pass the next time around. He talked about the numerous times he had ridden his bike or run along the road only to graze himself on the asphalt, and his parents had put Dettol™ on his knees to comfort him. He recounted embarrassing moments in his life when his grandparents had always been there to give him a helping hand.
At the end, after he had recounted these from the depths of his passion and had us all in tears from laughter, like a great evangelist, he looked towards Heaven and he said: "Thank you, God!" and he sat down.
Everything else that had preceded that moment had little or no meaning in the light of that. Here was a young boy who, his whole life, had had nothing but tears. Everything that he had done seemingly turned into that which was partial, or that which was painful, or that which was embarrassing. Yet, in the midst of all of this and after all of this, here is a boy who raised his hands and thanked the Lord.
I have often wondered what gave that young boy the strength to wipe away the tears of his life. When I turn to the story this morning from the Gospel of John, I am reminded that the Gospel message itself is one of God wiping away our tears.
You see, the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that in the Kingdom of God there is an inverse relationship between suffering and glory. Where in the world's eyes those who are the articulate, those who are the powerful and the influential are the ones you would think would bear the greatest witness and be the most blessed, in the Kingdom of God it is not that way. Often it is those who are like the man in the story we are going to look at this morning - blind - who are the greatest witnesses, and those who are like the woman who anointed Jesus' feet with oil who are the ones that history remembers. It is the ones who have understood that there are tears but have had them wiped away who are in fact the greatest testament to the truth of the Kingdom of God.
The story from which I want to borrow this morning is something on which I preached two years ago, but which I want to do differently today.
The story is very simple. It is about a man who is born blind. Jesus comes up to him and he takes spit and mud from the Pool of Siloam and places it on his eyes. He heals him and then there is outrage.
There is outrage among people around who can't believe what they have seen. They question whether the man that Jesus has healed is the same man that they had seen begging by the Pool of Siloam.
Some of the religious leaders question what Jesus did because he did it on the Sabbath, contrary to the law. How could something contrary to the Word of God be good?
They decide that this man was perhaps not the man that they had seen before, and so they go and interview his parents to make sure that this in fact is their son, the man who was born blind.
After it all, Jesus takes this man to one side and this man says: "I believe."
But then John adds another brilliant phrase, and it's a phrase I want to dwell on this morning. After all the people had questioned this healing, after this man had declared his faith and had had his sight restored, Jesus says: "For judgement I have come into this world that those who do not see may see and those that see may be made blind."
In other words, those that cannot see, those who have infirmities, those who have tears in their eyes, those who live in pain and suffering - they will see the glory of the grace of God before their eyes, but those who have already determined that they know what God is and what God is like and want to constrain God and will not accept God in their midst in Jesus - they will be made blind.
And so, in the light of this contrast, it raises two very simple questions. The first is: What makes those who see become blind?
The answer is very clearly that those who claim to see do so with a fixed view of God. They have closed their minds to God's revealing anything more, doing anything more; to God's Spirit or God's presence in Jesus Christ bursting into their lives. In other words, they have put God in a box and they have so made God in the likeness of their own reason, so constrained Him by the forces of their own imagination, that they cannot see the glory of God, even when it's before their very eyes.
Oh, these are religious people: They know their law; they know their Bible; they may even be pious and righteous. The only problem is that they have decided to shut God out.
They do not believe, for example, that Jesus can be doing good, even when he is healing, because it is happening on the Sabbath. They are not willing to accept that Jesus of Nazareth is God incarnate and so they have shut their minds, but they have also become complacent. They have decided that their old-time religion is good enough for them. They sit back on their laurels and they close their minds and their hearts to God's doing any more.
But even more than that, they have decided only to see half of what God is doing.
Oh, the half that they are willing to see is that which fits in with their tradition. The half that they are willing to understand and appreciate is that which their mind can comprehend or that which has worked for them in the past. But even though the evidence was right before them, even though this blind man was able to see, still they refused to see what God was doing, because it was contrary to their understanding of what God was able to do.
Just this last week I was reading this month's Reader's Digest. There was an interview with Sir Paul McCartney. I've always been a huge fan of Paul McCartney - I'm sure we all had a favourite Beatle. No question he was mine. I've admired the way that he has taken care of his family, and the way that he took care of his late wife, and so many of the things that he has done. But in this article, Paul said something that disturbed me.
He said: "You know, I believe in spiritual things but I don't believe in any religion. I do not believe in the formal religions because all religions cause war."
Now, I understand what Paul McCartney is saying. This is, after all, St. Patrick's weekend and we all know the division that religion has caused in the beautiful isle of Ireland. We can all see the differences and the degradation that are brought to the world in the name of God through religious traditions.
But the problem is, that's only looking at half the evidence. It's only looking at half the story. It is not looking past that to the greatness and the goodness of God in Jesus Christ, and what he has done and what he continues to do in people's lives.
And so many people, particularly in our society, have decided that they want to shut God off and they want to shut the Christian message off, and just conveniently only see half and not the whole, because they have already made up their mind about what God can and cannot do.
Sometimes, my friends, even we are like that. We see things at face value and not the deeper meaning that is behind them.
It's like a wonderful ad that a secretary put in a church bulletin to remind the congregation of an upcoming event. It said the following:
Ladies, remember next week is the rummage sale. It is a wonderful opportunity to get rid of all those things in your
house that you need to get rid of. Please bring your husbands.
On the surface, it looked innocuous enough, but … you know. There are sometimes two messages.
People sometimes look at the superficial, but we do not see the hand of God behind. We are not open to see the work of God in the world. One of the great challenges of this era, I think, is for us to open ourselves to the power of the risen Jesus Christ.
There is a wonderful passage that was read very beautifully for us this morning from the Book of Romans where the Apostle Paul says: "Now, because Christ has been raised from the dead his Spirit is within us and we live."
God is still at work and the risen Christ's presence is still transforming and empowering and wiping away the tears from people's eyes, if we will but have the openness to see it.
But the more important question, I think, is: What causes the blind to see?
Before we can really answer that question, there is something we have to note: In John's Gospel he makes the point that the man we see healed was born blind. In other words, from the very moment of his birth, he never knew anything but blindness. His whole life had been covered in darkness. He had no imagination of what it would be like to see. He had no sense of what it would be like when Jesus came along. He had lived forever behind this veil of darkness and had no conception of what seeing was really like.
My friends, there are many people who, throughout the whole of their lives, have absolutely no idea as to what it is like to live a life looking at it through the eyes and the grace of Jesus Christ; who have never seen or experienced the touch of God or the grace of God's Holy Spirit.
There are people, for example, who have suffered throughout their lives and the tears have so welled up in their eyes that it has distorted any view of God that they might have, because when you have tears in your eyes you do not see things straight-on. You see them in a distorted and a blurred fashion.
There are many people who have always lived a life of anxiety, never knowing the liberating power of the freedom of the grace of Jesus Christ in their lives, and because they have lived with that anxiety they have never known what it is like to see spiritually through the eyes of God.
There are people who have become skeptical and cynical and hard and have ceased to be open to the glory of God, because again they have no conception of what it's like.
Harry Emerson Fosdick tells the story of the day after Lincoln's magnificent Gettysburg address. The editor of a newspaper in Harrisburg, which is just some 30 miles away, wrote a piece the next morning about the speech. This is what he wrote in his editorial about the Gettysburg address:
We today pass over the silly remarks of the President. For the credit of the nation
we are willing that the veil of oblivion shall be dropped over them and they shall no
more be repeated or thought of.
In other words, even when greatness, goodness, profundity and healing are before people's eyes, their minds are so closed that they cannot see what is happening. Which raises the question: What then caused this blind man to see?
The answer is: Jesus. That's how he saw. The initiative was not the blind man's at all. It certainly wasn't the purveyors of the law. It certainly wasn't the people of the street. It was Jesus Christ. He initiated it. He came to this man in the midst of his sorrow and he laid his hands on him and he healed him.
And Jesus Christ still knocks on the doors of people's lives, offering exactly the same thing: to wipe the tears away. But the problem is so many people have so closed themselves to that reality, so shut the door to that power, that even the full grace of Jesus Christ does not break through.
This is what Jesus encountered when he came upon the great city of Jerusalem to bring healing and they would not have it. He said: "Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem how often I have wanted to take you like a chick under my wings, but you wouldn't let me." How often Jesus walked the streets and said it was the purpose of his ministry to bring liberation to the oppressed, to bring sight to the blind, to bring food to the hungry, to bring hope to the dying, but how he often faced a wall of rejection.
Jesus Christ still faces that same wall of rejection. But nevertheless, the initiative, the grace, the opening of himself for others is still there and it is still powerful through his Spirit.
What makes the story of this man who was born blind so magnificent, that makes his name recorded in the annals of history, is that he was open to the initiative of Jesus Christ. He opened his life and was even willing to risk ridicule. Having been born blind he was willing to have a gift of which he had no conception, because he believed, and thereby became one of the greatest witnesses to the glory of God ever recorded.
There is a delightful story told (and I never know whether these are true or they are apocryphal) of Arnold Palmer. Arnold Palmer went to a convention for blind golfers - and, before you laugh, there is a convention for blind golfers.
When he got there, he asked many of the blind golfers: "Well, how are you able to play the game of golf?"
One of them gave his secret. He and his caddy took him to one side and said: "This is what we do. The caddy goes down the fairway; he rings a bell; I hear the sound and I drive the ball towards it."
Arnold Palmer said: "This is incredible. Can you show me?"
The man said: "Sure, I will show you."
He said: "Are you any good?"
The blind man said: "Yes, I am. Actually, I would like to play you a game."
Arnold Palmer said: "Well, I don't know if that's absolutely necessary, but … No, I don't think so."
"No" said the blind man, "I'd love to play you a round of golf. It would be a great honour. Don't worry, I'll be able to keep up with you. I might even be able to beat you."
Arnold Palmer said: "Well, that's very nice. Thank you very much, but I really don't think so."
The blind man said: "No, no, no. I really mean this. I will bet you $10,000 I can beat you."
Arnold Palmer said: "Well, that's very nice but I really don't think we should pursue this."
And the blind man said: "No. Please, please, please - honestly, $10,000."
Arnold Palmer said: "All right. If you are that insistent, you are on. When do we tee off?"
The man said: "At 10:30 - tonight!"
Sometimes it is the blind who can see and Jesus knew it. Jesus knew that even those who in the world's eyes might not be able to drive straight down the fairway at two in the afternoon can still do so on their own terms, and those are the terms of the Kingdom of God.
You see, the greatest witnesses are often those who have had their tears wiped away.
My friends, we saw that last Sunday, didn't we. Didn't we? And I think for 2,000 years the great witness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that those who really can pay testimony to the true power and grace of God are those who have had their tears wiped away.
A few years ago I went to visit the magnificent L'Arche community, which is a community established by Jean Vanier. This particular one is in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. One of my very good friends was one of the counselors there and he invited me to come and spend the day.
In the L'Arche community are people who are physically and mentally challenged; people who cannot live elsewhere, but live in a community and are cared for by people of immense grace and love. The idea of L'Arche is that you are surrounded by the love and the protection and the grace of God's Holy Spirit; that those who are there providing care are Christians to the depths of their souls, and that this is one of the ways that they can minister to people who are in need.
And so after I had spent a day there, I marvelled at what I saw, marvelled at the love and the affection and the interaction, at the bonding and the grace. It was a wonderful day but after it all I said to my friend Dan: "Dan, how are you able to teach these people? Isn't it difficult?"
He said: "Yes, it is; but I think it is harder for them to teach us."
You see, those in that community, like my friend Christopher, lived a life of tears. But what gave them such power and such witness and such grace was that they knew the One who had wiped their tears away.
May we be so open to Him.
Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.