Reminder: We will be worshipping remotely until further notice for the health and safety of our community during the COVID-19 pandemic. This week, we are providing Pastor Jim’s sermon. Next week, we will begin sharing a recorded worship service, including communion, prayer, and scripture. Read more about how we’re responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Scripture: John 9:1-41

Opening Prayer

Everlasting, Eternal, Loving Creator; we come together in this holy place seeking to know your presence and your love. 

We eternally claim the fact that you are always with us: that you bend down to feed us; that you lead us out in times of trouble; that you take us in your arms and heal us. 

Help us to become aware of your presence yet again.  Bind us up in cords of human kindness and bands of love.  As we seek to worship you in fullness and in truth, guide us.  Help us to share the kind of love you have given to us in the sending of your Son, Jesus. Amen.

Sermon

One who has never seen the light of day, the colors of trees, the face of a friend, is treated by Jesus with mud pies which when washed off in the pool of Siloam empowers eyesight he never dreamed possible.

Even a casual read of this story leaves one asking “What’s happening here?”

When you are terminally ill, you use what you’ve got. The pool of Siloam was an open air basin twenty by thirty feet fed by a conduit into the city leading to a spring in the Kidron Valley. It was not built for healing purposes, but for defense purposes.

To think that a combination of dirt and saliva could set in motion a healing process that culminated with a baptismal bath in the pool of Siloam is strange to us.

Even knowing that other people, including Africans and Egyptians, considered saliva to have a therapeutic effect does little to explain the healing methods of Jesus in this story.

There is a deeper truth that hits home. We beggars can’t be choosers.

When you are terminally ill you use what you have; that is what is happening in this story. So I understand why people take alternative medicines praying that vitamins might be the answer.

Beggars can’t be choosers. You use what you’ve got. When you are ill, you take what you can get. Jesus touched him. That divine touch proved to be enough.

Touch is the most important of all the senses. It stimulates all the other senses. It stimulates language and communication. It promotes bonding and attachment. Hugged children are happy children.

When there are no words, touch unlocks compassion and heartfelt care. Sometimes a hug or a pat on the shoulder is just the healing touch that we need.

While the authorities are trying to pick this miracle apart, the blind man who now sees sticks to one single statement, “I once was blind but now I see.”

Nothing else really matters.

He knew he had been helped and that made all the difference.

It didn’t matter to him whether the FDA had approved the treatment or not.  It didn’t matter to him that it had been done on a Sabbath day and he broke a law.

He just knew one thing, “I was blind, but now I see.”

THERE ARE NONE SO BLIND AS THOSE WHO WILL NOT SEE. There is physical blindness and there is spiritual blindness. Helen Keller, who was blind since the age of nineteen months once said, “The worst thing that can befall a person is not to lose your sight, but to lose your vision.”

Backgrounds can blind us. The disciples, along with all people of their day, had been taught by the religious authorities that sin and sickness was a cause and affect relationship.

In our passage, Jesus’ disciples are the ones who first saw him sitting by the side of the road begging. Unfortunately, It was a common sight.

But why they picked him out I have no idea. There were multitudes of others sitting around him, but they picked him out and posed the question to Jesus.

It is in the second verse you heard read this morning, “Who sinned, this man or his parents?” They also tell us that he has been blind since birth, so I don’t know when he got a chance to sin in his life.

In Exodus 20:5, right in the middle of the Ten Commandments, it says, “I, the Lord your God, punish the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.”

Some people believe that. But Jesus had a different idea.

It’s interesting that God’s gracious healing and life giving moment, becomes an interrogation by religious leaders as it threatened the law and their power….

Someone must be punished…

So his parents who had suffered all their lives are now confronted with the possibility of being excommunicated from the synagogue.

So instead of defending him, they say to authorities, “Ask him, he is of age. Let him speak for himself” (Verse 21).

Judgmentalism can blind us.  Brothers and sisters, the Church is not a place to dissect miracles, turn the blessed into the accused, or question the grace of God in people’s lives.

Jesus taught life’s hardships are opportunities to witness the power of God’s grace in acts of kindness, forgiveness, compassion, healing, and making room for others in our church family.  This is what we celebrate at the Lord’s Table.  Christ’s gift to us to remind and encourage us to continue his ministry of inviting, welcoming and empowering the lost and broken children of God.

Unfortunately, the authorities have a problem with this healing.

Never mind that a blind person could now see, that’s not the issue. Somebody else by the name of Jesus broke the law of the Sabbath. They cannot rejoice with those who rejoice and they are not willing to weep with those who weep. They have an opinion about everything under the sun; they insist that everything must fit.

And here, Jesus and God’s grace doesn’t fit because he heals a man on the Sabbath. All they can see is the violation of the Sabbath.

Some call the Pharisees nit-pickers. You know the source of that word? As school teachers here know, head lice take up residence next to your scalp. Each nit, or tiny egg, must be meticulously combed, picked, or pulled from a single strand of hair.

Some folk become obsessed with nit-picking. With meticulous care they find something wrong with everything.

They pick at life’s joys, tarnish life’s triumphs, and make critical comments about every victory. That’s what the authorities were doing.

As a result, they couldn’t rejoice with this man. They were too busy nit-picking the fact that Jesus had broken a law.

You know what it is like.

– Wasn’t that a beautiful wedding?

            Yes, but it’s a shame the bride didn’t lose a few pounds.

– Congratulations on your new promotion.

            I hope you get along with your new boss better than I did.

– Have you seen Jane’s new baby?

            Too bad the little thing looks just like her father.

– It is a wonderful thing that a blind man got healed,

            but it is awful that Jesus did it on the Sabbath.

You know what I am talking about. And so it kills the joy of a great happening in a person’s life and in the life of the church family. The spirit of judgmentalism is a virus that fights against God’s amazing grace. 

As we cautiously guard ourselves from spreading coronavirus, we experience anxiety of how our world has changed and its aftermath.  It is times such as this, that God gives us opportunities to see opportunities to experience grace. 

Our church leadership is creating ways that we can minister to our members and neighbors so they know they are not alone.  The elders are reinstating the flock ministry.  Members are making soup for our homebound who may have no other source of help.  These are gifts of God’s grace flowing through his people.

The Gentle Healer is here at church today. He is the truth, the life, the way. He wants to touch you at your point of need.

Will you trust Him with your hurts and your pains and your problems and your spiritual emptiness as you come to receive this holy communion today?

The Gentle Healer promises to be with us always—and God is with us. 

Pastoral Prayer

One of the things we know we can do together, even if we are not in the same physical space together, is to pray. We pray because prayer changes things. It changes us. 

So wherever we are this day, let us now join our hearts together as we pray for our world, our nation, our churches, and our lives. 

Holy God, gracious and loving God, we gather our hearts together in prayer. We turn to you, remembering you and relying on you to help us, to guide us, and to give us strength and love.

Give us a spirit of kindness, and help us to think about our neighbors, how we can help them, and how we can allow them to help us. 

Into our anxiety, sow peace. Into our fear, sow courage.

Into our confusion, sow wisdom. Into our division, sow love.

We pray for all those who are experiencing illness of any kind. Heal their bodies and heal their souls. Protect all those who are affected by the coronavirus. Keep them safe, and help them heal. 

Be with the nurses and doctors, surgeons, scientists, and paramedics, as they seek to care for people and to heal them. Bring them wisdom and insight, and keep them strong themselves. Help all caregivers to be renewed and to get the rest they need to continue to serve as they would like. 

We pray for those who are most vulnerable in this world. Help us to be the hands and feet of Christ, bringing healing, attention, and love to all those in need. Give us joy and laughter to share with one another, as well as food and safety and justice. 

Holy God, we pray for all leaders of our nation and our world. Fill them with a spirit of wisdom and courage, that they may lead rightly, driven by compassion for all people. 

Strengthen our leaders with clarity, and soften them with humility, as we know that no human being is infallible and all people need your grace.

We pray for your creation, God. Help us to care for all that you have given us. Make us faithful stewards, guide our actions, help us to resist taking more than our fair share. Fill us with a spirit of generosity and a sense of security, that we may be free of fear and filled with your spirit of abundance and sufficiency.

O God of all creation, we pray for the church in all places, that even as we worship in separate places and at different times, even so bind us together into one human family. Help us, we who are Christian, to be the body of Christ, loving and serving the world and all the peoples that you have created, Holy God. 

Even now, in all our different places, we join our voices with the voice of Jesus who taught us to pray, saying,

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen.