Sermon Reflection

So this past Sunday was my second sermon. I'm not 100% sure what to say about it. I feel as though it went fine. The written text was in a very good place after working with Sarah and Jamie to make sure that I was saying what I wanted to say, but the oral presentation could have been a bit more polished. I didn't practice quite as many time as I did for my first sermon and I feel as though that showed, even if other people didn't notice. I received lots of positive comments from church members that day and Judy (mom's cousin) who is one of the reasons I want to be an elementary teacher was very protective, telling everyone who would listen that I was going to be a teacher that preaching was reserved for summers and retirement.
For those of you who weren't there here is my sermon text, based on John 9, so if you don't feel like doing a lot of reading you should probably stop now. Also there are probably a few errors/differences from how I presented because I forgot to update this version and I don't really feel like doing it now.

Peace,
Daniel

August 9, 2009
John 9:1-41

Open Your Eyes

I would like to begin this morning by telling the story of my friend Jimmie, but before I do, I need to paint a picture of Jimmie in your minds. Jimmie is probably about 40, he has longer, curly hair, is missing most of his teeth, and is an atheist. But Jimmie is not just any atheist, he is an “active atheist,” to use his words. He has debated Catholic priests and Satanists and everyone in between, an equal opportunity atheist, if you will. In fact, Jimmie is so good at this debating that one time, he made a witch cry. Jimmie is a musician by profession, sometimes working in bars and sometimes playing on street corners, hoping to get enough money to feed his addictions. Due to a variety of factors including his experiences in Vietnam and some poor choices, Jimmie found himself on the streets of Denver, waiting in line for a soup kitchen one day when he saw a group of bright-eyed, young faces coming towards him.
Now you are probably asking yourself, what on earth does this Jimmie fellow have to do with the man who was born blind, who we’ll call Jack? much more than you might think.
You have probably all heard several sermons on this passage, Lois told me that she alone has preached on it three times, so I tried to find a new perspective. Hopefully the comparison that I’m about to make is a new concept for you and, as it has for me, maybe it will help to open your eyes just a little.
Now Jimmie is homeless and he is not alone. Homelessness is a major problem in the United States today with up to 2 million people sleeping on the streets on any given night. Let’s look at some common myths about homelessness from the Department of Health and Human Services. Myth number 1: The homeless population is comprised of mostly single men. In fact, single men make up at most only 50% of the population with 36% being families with children. Myth number 2: Homelessness is a chronic problem. Actually, less than 30% of the homeless population has been homeless for more than two years, it takes 650 days on the street to be considered chronically homeless. Myth number 3: Homeless are lazy and do not work. In reality, the majority of the population do have jobs, albeit inconsistently, and less than ¼ receive federal assistance. It is important to remember that just because they live on the streets doesn’t mean that the homeless are unhappy or want to be moved into houses. I know several people who choose to be homeless. They don’t want houses, the just want respect. Now that I’ve spewed these facts, you are probably still quite confused about what this has to do with our scripture, bear with me; I’m getting there. Our Biblical blind man, who I’ve named Jack, was mistreated by the Pharisees. Today we treat the homeless in the same way. The way Jack was treated represents how we, the Pharisees, treat the homeless.
If we look at the beginning of the passage, Jesus’ disciples believe that Jack, who was begging, was the victim of some sort of sin. He or his parents had done something wrong and he was being punished for that wrong. In a similar way, we view the homeless as having serious problems. They are all mentally ill or have substance abuse problems, which lead them to life on the streets, which they deserve. For example, during our servant project in Columbus I overheard a sponsor from another group telling her youth that, “[The homeless] all have mental illnesses that aren’t treated correctly.” Jesus gives his disciples a rebuke for believing that and just as Jack was not blind because of sin, although he was treated as such, not all homeless are the victims of mental illness or substance abuse, despite how we view them.
Following his healing, Jack is seen in a different light. People wonder about him. Wasn’t he just begging? What is he doing now? What’s going on? While some of them believed his story and knew he had been healed, others did not believe, saying that it was not really Jack. The lack of trust displayed in these verses is also evident in our interactions with the homeless today. They are a marginalized population that are not always taken seriously and rarely trusted. Cities will pass ordinances that prohibit serving food on the street or sleeping outdoors and then they will arrest homeless people for violating those ordinances.
I was touched in Columbus by a homeless woman who sat on a bridge while all the youth walked by, going to and from worship. She didn’t say anything but as groups would walk by her their volume levels would go from happy, cheerful, excited teenagers to graveyard and back again. At first I was very offended by this, but after I thought about it I realized that they didn’t know how to approach homeless, or were scared, or didn’t feel as thought they could trust her. There is a large gap between the homeless and the non-homeless and these teens had most likely never been taught how to bridge that gap. I stopped and talked to her a couple of times and she told me that she felt invisible. I wonder if that might be how Jack felt, even after his healing when people still didn’t believe him, invisible.
The theme of disbelief continues in verses 18 through 34 when the Pharisees question Jack. After interrogating him, they did not believe that he had been blind. They were so sure that he had not been blind that they had to call in his parents to confirm it. How would that make you feel? No one trusts you. No matter what you say or what you do, no one trusts you. You can’t go to the authorities to receive help because they are the source of the problem.
Through my close encounters with the homeless population in Denver, I know that there is a breach in trust between these men and women and the authorities. They are afraid to report crimes because they may have had a bad experience with law-enforcement. They will possibly receive the blame and maybe even be arrested. Without this trust, these men and women are vulnerable to the actions of those around them, just as Jack was.
Finally, after yet another round of questioning, Jack rebuked the Pharisees for their contempt of Jesus and they threw him out. He called them out, made them think about what they were doing, and they shunned him, saying “You were born entirely in sin,” your opinions don’t mean anything. We don’t want you around anymore because you make us look bad. He was expelled from that place because they couldn’t prove that he was wrong
The best illustration I have again comes from my experiences in Denver last summer. As you probably remember, the Democratic National Convention was held in Denver in late August. Throughout the summer there was talk of how to deal with the homeless population during the week when the convention was in town. Now Denver has some of the best social services in the nation for homeless and that is one of the reasons the homeless population in the metro area is estimated to be as high as 10,500. The city believed that this was a major problem and some of the proposed solutions were to send them all to the movies or the zoo for a day or two while the convention was in town, or to buy bus tickets for them to go somewhere outside of the city. As you can imagine this enraged the homeless who felt as though it was a party to which they did not get invited. They were extremely insulted because many of them didn’t want to be in the downtown area during that time because they weren’t wanted. One man said to me, “Why can’t [the authorities] just leave us alone to do our own thing?” I left before the convention so I don’t know how things turned out, but I know that there was a lot of tension in the weeks leading up to it. In this way, homeless are expelled or banned from certain spaces, not for doing anything wrong, but just as the Pharisees with Jack, we don’t want to admit that they aren’t doing anything wrong.
There are some striking similarities between the treatment of Jack and our treatment of the homeless population today. So what do we do about it? I’ll skip ahead to the end of the passage. In verse 39 Jesus says “I came into the world to bring everything into the clear light of day so that those who do not see, may see, and those who do see, may become blind.” This is a rather confusing statement at first, and the leaders do not know what to think, asking Jesus if they are blind. Jesus’ reply surely angers them as he says that their sin remains, despite their high opinions of themselves.
The Pharisees have sight, but are blind, and Jack is blind, but sees, so where does that leave us? Perhaps the blindness that Jesus is referring to here is “Spiritual blindness” or as one commentary puts it, “one’s openness to the revelation of God in Jesus.” Well whew, we’re safe from the blindness, right? Wrong. It is exactly that kind of thinking that gets us in trouble. So I’m saying that we are spiritual blind? Yes and no, it’s a bit more complicated than that. We are not completely on the level of the Pharisees. We are open to Jesus and the message that he brings. We do not claim to be the well-informed spiritual guides that they do either. But we are not on the same level as Jack who was blind, experiencing the fullness of Jesus.
The Pharisees saw nothing in Jesus, nothing good, nothing holy, and definitely nothing worth listening to. We at least try to be the opposite of this, finding something to respond to and reach out to in Jesus message.
I’m going to jump way back to the beginning, where we left Jimmie. As he saw these young, bright-eyed faces coming towards him, Jimmie knew they were Christians. He stopped and said his first prayer right there, “Lord, save me from those Christians.” Now the Christians that Jimmie had experienced in the past were nothing like Mennonites or the group that was approaching him then. They preached fire and brimstone, not love and mercy. The students Jimmie met that day showed him the love that we believe is the central point of Jesus message, and at the end of that summer, he took a good hard look at the Bible and was loved into the kingdom. Jimmie is now around 65 and has been a Christian for the past 15 years, working hard with the homeless to show them the same love that he has found.
Jimmie is very conscious of his own blindness, longing, like Jack, to see more and know more. This is what we must strive to be, conscientious of our own blindness and never being content or comfortable in our faith. We must open our eyes to see just how blind we really are.
Amen