Believing is seeing
Commentary
Sometimes we see people who are wide-eyed with wonder. Children especially can appear this way, in part because of the size of their eyeballs. Our eyeballs grow very little during the course of our lives, and certainly not at the same rate as the rest of our bodies' organs. For that reason children stare at life with eyes bigger in proportion to their faces than those of adults. Compared with big people, children's eyes dominate their facial features and can thus appear more piercing and inquisitive.
While all five of our senses help us connect with our environment, we tend to rely more dependently on our sight than on smell, taste, hearing, or touch. We are people who trust our eyes before we will accept input from our other senses. Missouri claims that it is the "Show me!" state, and most of us take up residence there intellectually, whether we ever physically resettle into those borders. In fact, one of our favorite proverbs is "Seeing is believing!" Like Thomas among Jesus' disciples, we won't believe until the proof of something stares us in the face.
But sometimes sight blinds us. Rather than helping us understand life, our vision can distract us from reality. We find that in each of our passages for today. Samuel assesses each of the sons of Jesse in one way, but does not find the next king of Israel until he begins to see with the unique eyes of God, and believes in God's promises. The Apostle Paul reminds us that physical sight and spiritual insight are not exactly the same thing, and on the day that Jesus brought healing to a man who had been born blind, there was a great confusion about how people were to "see" this event.
While in much of our lives "seeing is believing," there are truly some times when "believing is seeing." Today, you, as a pastor, must be in part a spiritual ophthalmologist who gives to your congregation an eye exam that improves the sight of every heart.
1 Samuel 16:1-13
Samuel's Israel is in chaos, and the conflict has emerged from within the royal house itself. After Saul began his reign with great promise (1 Samuel 9-11), a number of events led both Samuel and Israel to question Saul's ability to rule well. First, Saul deliberately attacked a Philistine outpost to provoke war with Israel's much more powerful neighbor (1 Samuel 13:1-5). Then, when Samuel was delayed in coming to the troops to confirm God's blessing on their fight, Saul jeopardized the religious pep rally by assuming a spiritual leadership for which he was not called or qualified (1 Samuel 13:8-13).
Next, Saul left the battlefield as if he were uncertain about the wisdom of the commotion he had set in motion (1 Samuel 13:14-15). Then, when Saul's son Jonathan carried out a bold maneuver to resolve the tense standoff, Saul is caught indecisive and unprepared (1 Samuel 14:1-23). Furthermore, Saul shames himself before his troops, first by stupidly denying them any nourishment to carry on with the demands of battle (1 Samuel 14:24), and then later condemning his own son Jonathan to death when Jonathan disobeys this restriction that he had never heard in the first place (1 Samuel 14:25-44). Fortunately, Saul's armies had more sense than Saul, and stopped this senseless abuse of power. But the tide had turned, and both the nation and God fell out of alliance with Saul (1 Samuel 15).
Several people make judgments about David and his suitability for royal office in this short passage. First, Samuel meets Jesse's oldest and strongest sons, and assumes that they are the stuff of kings. God needs to remind Samuel that royalty is not determined merely by size and bearing. After all, Saul was handsome and stood head and shoulders above the rest of his community when Samuel had anointed him as king (1 Samuel 9:2). Samuel found out the fickleness of mere physical assessment, as Saul had become a burden to both him and Israel. Yet here Samuel was, again playing the beauty pageant game rather than waiting for the whisper that would help him to truly see the qualities of leadership that may be hidden inside the ugly or the unlikely. Only when he believes in the inner anointing of God on the true candidate will he be able to see David as king.
Then Jesse and the rest of his family also make a judgment about David. Evidently they think that David is a rascally runt who lacks the physique and maturity of his older brothers. Verse 11 is actually rather comical, if its implications are drawn out: first, the family doesn't think enough of David to allow him to be part of the great party that has come to town with Samuel's arrival. Next, they refuse to believe that Samuel's direct command to Jesse to assemble all his sons includes David (Can you imagine what an inferiority complex David could have gotten from being treated in such a way by his own parents?). Then, when they finally remember that David is also part of the family, Jesse dismisses him offhandedly as merely "tending the sheep," as if his place is more with the hired servants than with the family. Jesse and his family believe David is not the stuff of leadership quality, and they sideline him from the selection process without a second thought. They do not believe in what David is truly made of, and therefore they cannot see him as king.
Thankfully, however, there is actually another onlooker. He does not make a cameo appearance in the story, but Samuel alludes to his presence. This other observer is God. While Samuel is uncertain as to what assessment God gives to each of the older sons of Jesse, he eventually becomes certain about God's measuring tools in the process and confident about God's ultimate choice: "The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart" (v. 7). God understands the heart and qualities of David's life, and therefore God authorizes David's right to rule Israel. God believes in David and sees a king.
During this season of Lent, several themes from this passage may serve as helpful hooks on which to carry the sentiment of suffering. First, there is a deep-seated evil in our world that cannot be simply explained or excised. Saul's loss of his throne, the distresses in his family, his varied popular opinion polls, and his future are all complexly shifting around a variety of evils resident in the system. Saul's story at least requires us to think about the wiles of sin that confound all our daily lives. During Lent, we must take sin and evil seriously, and not minimize their contortions of God's good world.
Second, as David put it in Psalm 23, all of us will walk at one time or another through the "valley of the shadow of death," and be forced to eat at a table "in the presence of [our] enemies." This story in David's life echoes the misunderstandings and sufferings that we all share on the pilgrimage of life. Furthermore, it reminds us that the hardest thing we can do is walk the journey alone. Thus, to know that others have walked this way, including David and Jesus, we find some camaraderie, even in difficult times.
Third, there is the hopeful promise in Samuel's awareness of God's presence and constant direction. We may be surrounded by those who view us with scandalized eyes and torment us with inappropriate judgments, but one sees and knows and feels and has a heart disposed toward "good." It is precisely during Lent that we need to know that God believes in us as God's children, and therefore sees us with eyes of grace and mercy and care.
Ephesians 5:8-14
Paul's letter to the Ephesians appears to have been a circular message of encouragement sent along with Tychicus (6:21-22) and the slave Onesimus (Colossians 4:7-9) whom Paul is returning to his master Philemon (Philemon 8-12). It was written while Paul was imprisoned (see 4:1), probably in Rome in the early '60s, and was likely meant to be circulated among the Christian congregations of the Lycus River valley near Philemon's home (note that earliest manuscripts do not identify the recipients in 1:1, indicating that it may have gone to several churches before ending up in Ephesus; also see Colossians 4:16).
The letter is usually divided into two major parts, with chapters 1-3 explaining the supremacy of Christ in all things, and chapters 4-6 giving implications of Christ's rule for Christian living. In these verses, Paul deals with perceptions that change actions. There is no physical movement of Christ-believers from an arena lost in darkness (v. 8) into a realm constantly flooded with light. Instead, Paul wishes for his readers to understand the transformation of their mindsets and outlooks from one corrupted by sin into an intellectual and volitional perspective that is ruled again by God's original designs. Darkness is a spiritual condition that all of us are born into; light is the gift of God's grace in Jesus Christ, and allows us to be reborn into a new moral and ethical posture toward ourselves and those around us.
Once we believe, we begin to see in new ways. Believing is seeing. During the season of Lent this takes tangible shape in the islands of grace that Sundays form in the dark morass of Lenten pain and suffering. The Sundays during Lent do not belong to the season of Lent, but are, in fact, early echoes of Easter victory. So, on this fourth Sunday during Lent, it is important to remind our people that they may be surrounded by darkness, but they live as children of the light. The darkness presses in and causes turmoil, but the light of Christ is the guiding norm of our existence. We must, as one author has put it, "set our sights by the true North Star, Jesus."
John 9:1-41
While the synoptic gospels tell of many miracles that Jesus did, John enumerates only seven. He calls these "miraculous signs" (2:11), and tracks them moving the disciples and others from doubt to faith in Jesus as the Christ, as the Son of God, and as the Savior (John 20:30-31). Some Johannine scholars see a correlation between the seven signs and a rehearsal of Old Testament events. If that be so, the healing recorded in this passage is miraculous sign number six, and parallels the blindness of ancient Israel that could only be undone with God's interruptive coming on the "Day of the Lord" (see Isaiah 6:8-13; 9:2; 60:1-3; 61:1).
It is obvious from the start of this story that something unusual is happening, even for Jesus. While most miracles are done with a word or a touch, here Jesus goes through a strange process of several steps in order to bring sight to the blind man. First, he interprets the man's blindness not in causal terms as the disciples wanted to read it (9:1), but as a divinely ordained preparation for Jesus' own revelation (9:2). Second, Jesus places this healing in the context of the cosmological wrestling of darkness and light that are used to describe his coming in the prologue (1:1-18). Third, Jesus makes a mud pie of his spit and the clay of the earth in an act that seems reminiscent of the divine creative activity in Genesis 2:7, even to the point of dependency on divinely appointed moisture giving life to all things (Genesis 2:6). Fourth, the man's eyes are not opened immediately, but only after he goes to the pool of Siloam and washes off the mud packs. Of course, the only way he could get to the pool is by having family or friends guide him there, since he is still blind. This means that the act of healing would involve the presence, witness, and shared faith of others, placing the man into a believing community in order to receive his sight.
But the healing is met with confusion rather than faith. Many who had known the man in his blinded condition could not believe that the sighted man was the same person (9:8-9). Already this gives an indication as to how "believing" will be "seeing" for all in this story, and not the other way around. Furthermore, it seems that John is giving a second message through the disbelief of the neighbors, namely that all who believe in Jesus as Savior have a new disposition about them that former acquaintances find confusing.
The incident becomes a matter for public debate. At stake is not the man's sight, but the character of Jesus. Is he a breaker of the Sabbath (9:14, 16)? Is he a common sinner like everyone else (9:16)? Is he a prophet (9:17)? Is he the Christ (9:22)? While the sign itself is undisputed, the message of the sign is debated. Jesus stands as a signpost, but all who gather around him argue as to what his signboard is declaring. Those who recognize his power believe in him as divinely sent (9:31-38); those who refuse to acknowledge their need for him deny Jesus' divine character and the healing he brings. In the end, the choice between blindness and sightedness is not physical but spiritual (9:39-41). Believing is seeing.
In order to tie this to our journey through Lent it might be appropriate to make a connection with those things in our lives that confuse, confound, and torment us: a threatening disease, a sudden death, a broken marriage, a moral failure of someone we trusted, a lack of work, a terrifying terrorist attack. Why these? Why me? Why us? Why now? Just as with the man's blindness in John's story, we can get caught up in micro-assessments and lose sight of the big picture. Jesus came to share our walk with us, as marked by our Lenten remembrances, but he came as a sign of the big picture of healing that God was providing for our darkened world. Each incident of evil is of concern to God, but no single happenstance of cruelty or disease ought to detract us from the important goal of God -- the total restoration of God's creation. During Lent we can get caught up in our shared sufferings with Jesus. What we need to remember is their redemptive purpose.
A second theme from this story is that of the community of faith. While the formerly blind man has great trust in Jesus, his original healing came only through a communal effort to get him to the waters of Siloam. Furthermore, there is a communal ownership of the outcomes of faith -- the man's parents fear being expelled from the synagogue as a result of their connection with their son. To John's first readers this message likely resonated in their current situation, and called them to communities of faithfulness over against the communities of persecution that threatened them. We in North America tend to view faith and belief as personal, individual matters. The truth is that we cannot walk either through Lenten suffering or Easter hope alone. We need community.
Application
Believing is seeing. It was so for the characters that surrounded the boy David when even his family did not recognize his true worth. It was true for Paul's readers who attempted to live according to divine ethics in a world contorted by devilish designs. It was also this way for the many people who saw the miraculous sign of Jesus in John 9, and who chose to respond with different faith perspectives.
So, too, it is with us. Every year we take this torturous pilgrimage through Lent, bent with the burdens of sin and evil clinging to us. Sometimes it feels good to wallow in misery. There is a psychological desire in each of us to want to play the martyr, to cry for others to pity us, and to lament the uniqueness of our particular load of injustice and hurt. These passages remind us that what we see is not necessarily what we get, and what we experience will not be the last chapter written about our condition. When we believe, we see things anew. When we understand God's perspectives and designs, we move from slugging it out in the shadows to life in the light, and the turning point is not merely some pious wish or some psychological self-babble or some political promising, but rather the person of Jesus. Who is Jesus? Is Jesus the Son of God, the divine messenger, the physician of the soul? Or is Jesus merely another "sinner" among us who taunts us with false pledges? Those who trust Jesus may not be able to explain it, but neither do they stumble in darkness any longer.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 23
It is one of the best-known and best-loved passages of the Bible. Generations have memorized it, in Sunday school or at the knee of parents or grandparents. It is one of the first Bible passages we learn, and -- as common as it is at funerals -- it is often among the last words said over us when we die. Psalm 23 has been a source of strength and comfort for many.
Its very familiarity makes it difficult to interpret, at least critically. Biblical scholars have always held that Psalm 23 presents problems of interpretation. It seems to be two psalms connected together, and the fit between them is not very good. There is a sudden and awkward transition between the first part, where the author seems to be envisioning himself as a sheep, to the second part, where he has become a hungry and thirsty traveler welcomed into a Bedouin tent.
The images seem strained. What sheep have any of us known that were concerned with "paths of righteousness," or that contemplated their own end in "the valley of the shadow of death"? The words are beautiful, but the logic certainly seems confused.
Scholars have expended a lot of ink over the years trying to explain Psalm 23. Some have speculated that an early editor combined two completely different psalms. Yet, so lyrical is this religious poem, and so beautiful its language, that few readers have minded the abrupt change of scene, or the thought of sheep with strangely human sensibilities.
Probably the most fruitful interpretation is one that has its roots in the original Hebrew. Not all biblical translations make this clear, but the New Revised Standard Version does. Unlike the more-familiar King James Version, the NRSV does not say, "He leads me in paths of righteousness"; it says instead, "He leads me in right paths." It makes no mention of "the valley of the shadow of death"; instead, it speaks of "the darkest valley." The Bible translators chose these English words because they are truer to the original Hebrew and as we pay attention to the difference these changes make, the curtain of confused logic falls away, and a wholly new picture of this psalm emerges.
Imagine that the narrator is not picturing himself as a sheep, but as a lost and lonely traveler. The blazing heat of the desert noonday is long gone, and the bitter cold of desert night is coming fast. The road has disappeared into the twilight. Provisions of food and water ran out hours ago, and the traveler is parched and hungry. In the distance, a jackal howls. Fears of wild animals and bands of robbers flow, unbidden, into his mind. He regrets having begun this journey, and wonders if it will be his last.
Then the traveler sees a figure on a hillside, outlined against the darkening sky. It is a shepherd -- a common, ordinary man, but a man who knows these hillsides and ravines. He goes down to the weary traveler, and leads him up out of the shadowy valley to a place where the last beams of sun still light the way ahead. He leads the wayfarer to a grassy meadow, and invites him to lie down. The shepherd cups water from the oasis spring in his hands, and offers it. The traveler drinks and drinks.
He glances up to see the shepherd's rod, by which he guides the sheep, and also his staff, or walking stick. It is comforting to see these symbols of a man who knows his way through the desert. When the traveler has rested a bit, the two walk on, following "the right paths" this time, to a black goatskin tent set amidst an encampment of other tents. These are Bedouins, dwellers in dry and desolate places -- determined people who know how to scratch a living from the desert. They are also outsiders to the rest of society, even outcasts. The Bedouin have their own mysterious ways, unknown to our lost traveler (who would hardly have given them a thought had he passed them in the town). It occurs to him that they may even be enemies who wish to rob or kill him.
The shepherd brings the man into his own tent. It is lit inside with oil lamps, and decorated with carpets that are as intricate and beautiful as the goatskin tent is plain. There is no fear now; the laws of Middle Eastern hospitality are in effect. As long as the traveler is in the shepherd's tent, the shepherd is pledged to protect him from all enemies. The two sit cross-legged at a low table, and the shepherd spreads out a meal -- a simple meal that somehow tastes better than any our traveler has ever had: steaming lamb stew, soft pita bread, succulent dates. In a timeless gesture of honor, the host pours a flask of fragrant oil over the guest's head, and pours wine into his cup until it overflows.
The fears of night have been transformed; where there was once aching terror, there is now serenity and trust. Such is the power of desert hospitality. Perhaps it was this hospitality that David -- or whoever wrote this psalm -- once felt. So moving was this experience for the psalmist, so unforgettable his rescue from the very jaws of death, that he has come to see it as symbolic of God's love.
While all five of our senses help us connect with our environment, we tend to rely more dependently on our sight than on smell, taste, hearing, or touch. We are people who trust our eyes before we will accept input from our other senses. Missouri claims that it is the "Show me!" state, and most of us take up residence there intellectually, whether we ever physically resettle into those borders. In fact, one of our favorite proverbs is "Seeing is believing!" Like Thomas among Jesus' disciples, we won't believe until the proof of something stares us in the face.
But sometimes sight blinds us. Rather than helping us understand life, our vision can distract us from reality. We find that in each of our passages for today. Samuel assesses each of the sons of Jesse in one way, but does not find the next king of Israel until he begins to see with the unique eyes of God, and believes in God's promises. The Apostle Paul reminds us that physical sight and spiritual insight are not exactly the same thing, and on the day that Jesus brought healing to a man who had been born blind, there was a great confusion about how people were to "see" this event.
While in much of our lives "seeing is believing," there are truly some times when "believing is seeing." Today, you, as a pastor, must be in part a spiritual ophthalmologist who gives to your congregation an eye exam that improves the sight of every heart.
1 Samuel 16:1-13
Samuel's Israel is in chaos, and the conflict has emerged from within the royal house itself. After Saul began his reign with great promise (1 Samuel 9-11), a number of events led both Samuel and Israel to question Saul's ability to rule well. First, Saul deliberately attacked a Philistine outpost to provoke war with Israel's much more powerful neighbor (1 Samuel 13:1-5). Then, when Samuel was delayed in coming to the troops to confirm God's blessing on their fight, Saul jeopardized the religious pep rally by assuming a spiritual leadership for which he was not called or qualified (1 Samuel 13:8-13).
Next, Saul left the battlefield as if he were uncertain about the wisdom of the commotion he had set in motion (1 Samuel 13:14-15). Then, when Saul's son Jonathan carried out a bold maneuver to resolve the tense standoff, Saul is caught indecisive and unprepared (1 Samuel 14:1-23). Furthermore, Saul shames himself before his troops, first by stupidly denying them any nourishment to carry on with the demands of battle (1 Samuel 14:24), and then later condemning his own son Jonathan to death when Jonathan disobeys this restriction that he had never heard in the first place (1 Samuel 14:25-44). Fortunately, Saul's armies had more sense than Saul, and stopped this senseless abuse of power. But the tide had turned, and both the nation and God fell out of alliance with Saul (1 Samuel 15).
Several people make judgments about David and his suitability for royal office in this short passage. First, Samuel meets Jesse's oldest and strongest sons, and assumes that they are the stuff of kings. God needs to remind Samuel that royalty is not determined merely by size and bearing. After all, Saul was handsome and stood head and shoulders above the rest of his community when Samuel had anointed him as king (1 Samuel 9:2). Samuel found out the fickleness of mere physical assessment, as Saul had become a burden to both him and Israel. Yet here Samuel was, again playing the beauty pageant game rather than waiting for the whisper that would help him to truly see the qualities of leadership that may be hidden inside the ugly or the unlikely. Only when he believes in the inner anointing of God on the true candidate will he be able to see David as king.
Then Jesse and the rest of his family also make a judgment about David. Evidently they think that David is a rascally runt who lacks the physique and maturity of his older brothers. Verse 11 is actually rather comical, if its implications are drawn out: first, the family doesn't think enough of David to allow him to be part of the great party that has come to town with Samuel's arrival. Next, they refuse to believe that Samuel's direct command to Jesse to assemble all his sons includes David (Can you imagine what an inferiority complex David could have gotten from being treated in such a way by his own parents?). Then, when they finally remember that David is also part of the family, Jesse dismisses him offhandedly as merely "tending the sheep," as if his place is more with the hired servants than with the family. Jesse and his family believe David is not the stuff of leadership quality, and they sideline him from the selection process without a second thought. They do not believe in what David is truly made of, and therefore they cannot see him as king.
Thankfully, however, there is actually another onlooker. He does not make a cameo appearance in the story, but Samuel alludes to his presence. This other observer is God. While Samuel is uncertain as to what assessment God gives to each of the older sons of Jesse, he eventually becomes certain about God's measuring tools in the process and confident about God's ultimate choice: "The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart" (v. 7). God understands the heart and qualities of David's life, and therefore God authorizes David's right to rule Israel. God believes in David and sees a king.
During this season of Lent, several themes from this passage may serve as helpful hooks on which to carry the sentiment of suffering. First, there is a deep-seated evil in our world that cannot be simply explained or excised. Saul's loss of his throne, the distresses in his family, his varied popular opinion polls, and his future are all complexly shifting around a variety of evils resident in the system. Saul's story at least requires us to think about the wiles of sin that confound all our daily lives. During Lent, we must take sin and evil seriously, and not minimize their contortions of God's good world.
Second, as David put it in Psalm 23, all of us will walk at one time or another through the "valley of the shadow of death," and be forced to eat at a table "in the presence of [our] enemies." This story in David's life echoes the misunderstandings and sufferings that we all share on the pilgrimage of life. Furthermore, it reminds us that the hardest thing we can do is walk the journey alone. Thus, to know that others have walked this way, including David and Jesus, we find some camaraderie, even in difficult times.
Third, there is the hopeful promise in Samuel's awareness of God's presence and constant direction. We may be surrounded by those who view us with scandalized eyes and torment us with inappropriate judgments, but one sees and knows and feels and has a heart disposed toward "good." It is precisely during Lent that we need to know that God believes in us as God's children, and therefore sees us with eyes of grace and mercy and care.
Ephesians 5:8-14
Paul's letter to the Ephesians appears to have been a circular message of encouragement sent along with Tychicus (6:21-22) and the slave Onesimus (Colossians 4:7-9) whom Paul is returning to his master Philemon (Philemon 8-12). It was written while Paul was imprisoned (see 4:1), probably in Rome in the early '60s, and was likely meant to be circulated among the Christian congregations of the Lycus River valley near Philemon's home (note that earliest manuscripts do not identify the recipients in 1:1, indicating that it may have gone to several churches before ending up in Ephesus; also see Colossians 4:16).
The letter is usually divided into two major parts, with chapters 1-3 explaining the supremacy of Christ in all things, and chapters 4-6 giving implications of Christ's rule for Christian living. In these verses, Paul deals with perceptions that change actions. There is no physical movement of Christ-believers from an arena lost in darkness (v. 8) into a realm constantly flooded with light. Instead, Paul wishes for his readers to understand the transformation of their mindsets and outlooks from one corrupted by sin into an intellectual and volitional perspective that is ruled again by God's original designs. Darkness is a spiritual condition that all of us are born into; light is the gift of God's grace in Jesus Christ, and allows us to be reborn into a new moral and ethical posture toward ourselves and those around us.
Once we believe, we begin to see in new ways. Believing is seeing. During the season of Lent this takes tangible shape in the islands of grace that Sundays form in the dark morass of Lenten pain and suffering. The Sundays during Lent do not belong to the season of Lent, but are, in fact, early echoes of Easter victory. So, on this fourth Sunday during Lent, it is important to remind our people that they may be surrounded by darkness, but they live as children of the light. The darkness presses in and causes turmoil, but the light of Christ is the guiding norm of our existence. We must, as one author has put it, "set our sights by the true North Star, Jesus."
John 9:1-41
While the synoptic gospels tell of many miracles that Jesus did, John enumerates only seven. He calls these "miraculous signs" (2:11), and tracks them moving the disciples and others from doubt to faith in Jesus as the Christ, as the Son of God, and as the Savior (John 20:30-31). Some Johannine scholars see a correlation between the seven signs and a rehearsal of Old Testament events. If that be so, the healing recorded in this passage is miraculous sign number six, and parallels the blindness of ancient Israel that could only be undone with God's interruptive coming on the "Day of the Lord" (see Isaiah 6:8-13; 9:2; 60:1-3; 61:1).
It is obvious from the start of this story that something unusual is happening, even for Jesus. While most miracles are done with a word or a touch, here Jesus goes through a strange process of several steps in order to bring sight to the blind man. First, he interprets the man's blindness not in causal terms as the disciples wanted to read it (9:1), but as a divinely ordained preparation for Jesus' own revelation (9:2). Second, Jesus places this healing in the context of the cosmological wrestling of darkness and light that are used to describe his coming in the prologue (1:1-18). Third, Jesus makes a mud pie of his spit and the clay of the earth in an act that seems reminiscent of the divine creative activity in Genesis 2:7, even to the point of dependency on divinely appointed moisture giving life to all things (Genesis 2:6). Fourth, the man's eyes are not opened immediately, but only after he goes to the pool of Siloam and washes off the mud packs. Of course, the only way he could get to the pool is by having family or friends guide him there, since he is still blind. This means that the act of healing would involve the presence, witness, and shared faith of others, placing the man into a believing community in order to receive his sight.
But the healing is met with confusion rather than faith. Many who had known the man in his blinded condition could not believe that the sighted man was the same person (9:8-9). Already this gives an indication as to how "believing" will be "seeing" for all in this story, and not the other way around. Furthermore, it seems that John is giving a second message through the disbelief of the neighbors, namely that all who believe in Jesus as Savior have a new disposition about them that former acquaintances find confusing.
The incident becomes a matter for public debate. At stake is not the man's sight, but the character of Jesus. Is he a breaker of the Sabbath (9:14, 16)? Is he a common sinner like everyone else (9:16)? Is he a prophet (9:17)? Is he the Christ (9:22)? While the sign itself is undisputed, the message of the sign is debated. Jesus stands as a signpost, but all who gather around him argue as to what his signboard is declaring. Those who recognize his power believe in him as divinely sent (9:31-38); those who refuse to acknowledge their need for him deny Jesus' divine character and the healing he brings. In the end, the choice between blindness and sightedness is not physical but spiritual (9:39-41). Believing is seeing.
In order to tie this to our journey through Lent it might be appropriate to make a connection with those things in our lives that confuse, confound, and torment us: a threatening disease, a sudden death, a broken marriage, a moral failure of someone we trusted, a lack of work, a terrifying terrorist attack. Why these? Why me? Why us? Why now? Just as with the man's blindness in John's story, we can get caught up in micro-assessments and lose sight of the big picture. Jesus came to share our walk with us, as marked by our Lenten remembrances, but he came as a sign of the big picture of healing that God was providing for our darkened world. Each incident of evil is of concern to God, but no single happenstance of cruelty or disease ought to detract us from the important goal of God -- the total restoration of God's creation. During Lent we can get caught up in our shared sufferings with Jesus. What we need to remember is their redemptive purpose.
A second theme from this story is that of the community of faith. While the formerly blind man has great trust in Jesus, his original healing came only through a communal effort to get him to the waters of Siloam. Furthermore, there is a communal ownership of the outcomes of faith -- the man's parents fear being expelled from the synagogue as a result of their connection with their son. To John's first readers this message likely resonated in their current situation, and called them to communities of faithfulness over against the communities of persecution that threatened them. We in North America tend to view faith and belief as personal, individual matters. The truth is that we cannot walk either through Lenten suffering or Easter hope alone. We need community.
Application
Believing is seeing. It was so for the characters that surrounded the boy David when even his family did not recognize his true worth. It was true for Paul's readers who attempted to live according to divine ethics in a world contorted by devilish designs. It was also this way for the many people who saw the miraculous sign of Jesus in John 9, and who chose to respond with different faith perspectives.
So, too, it is with us. Every year we take this torturous pilgrimage through Lent, bent with the burdens of sin and evil clinging to us. Sometimes it feels good to wallow in misery. There is a psychological desire in each of us to want to play the martyr, to cry for others to pity us, and to lament the uniqueness of our particular load of injustice and hurt. These passages remind us that what we see is not necessarily what we get, and what we experience will not be the last chapter written about our condition. When we believe, we see things anew. When we understand God's perspectives and designs, we move from slugging it out in the shadows to life in the light, and the turning point is not merely some pious wish or some psychological self-babble or some political promising, but rather the person of Jesus. Who is Jesus? Is Jesus the Son of God, the divine messenger, the physician of the soul? Or is Jesus merely another "sinner" among us who taunts us with false pledges? Those who trust Jesus may not be able to explain it, but neither do they stumble in darkness any longer.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 23
It is one of the best-known and best-loved passages of the Bible. Generations have memorized it, in Sunday school or at the knee of parents or grandparents. It is one of the first Bible passages we learn, and -- as common as it is at funerals -- it is often among the last words said over us when we die. Psalm 23 has been a source of strength and comfort for many.
Its very familiarity makes it difficult to interpret, at least critically. Biblical scholars have always held that Psalm 23 presents problems of interpretation. It seems to be two psalms connected together, and the fit between them is not very good. There is a sudden and awkward transition between the first part, where the author seems to be envisioning himself as a sheep, to the second part, where he has become a hungry and thirsty traveler welcomed into a Bedouin tent.
The images seem strained. What sheep have any of us known that were concerned with "paths of righteousness," or that contemplated their own end in "the valley of the shadow of death"? The words are beautiful, but the logic certainly seems confused.
Scholars have expended a lot of ink over the years trying to explain Psalm 23. Some have speculated that an early editor combined two completely different psalms. Yet, so lyrical is this religious poem, and so beautiful its language, that few readers have minded the abrupt change of scene, or the thought of sheep with strangely human sensibilities.
Probably the most fruitful interpretation is one that has its roots in the original Hebrew. Not all biblical translations make this clear, but the New Revised Standard Version does. Unlike the more-familiar King James Version, the NRSV does not say, "He leads me in paths of righteousness"; it says instead, "He leads me in right paths." It makes no mention of "the valley of the shadow of death"; instead, it speaks of "the darkest valley." The Bible translators chose these English words because they are truer to the original Hebrew and as we pay attention to the difference these changes make, the curtain of confused logic falls away, and a wholly new picture of this psalm emerges.
Imagine that the narrator is not picturing himself as a sheep, but as a lost and lonely traveler. The blazing heat of the desert noonday is long gone, and the bitter cold of desert night is coming fast. The road has disappeared into the twilight. Provisions of food and water ran out hours ago, and the traveler is parched and hungry. In the distance, a jackal howls. Fears of wild animals and bands of robbers flow, unbidden, into his mind. He regrets having begun this journey, and wonders if it will be his last.
Then the traveler sees a figure on a hillside, outlined against the darkening sky. It is a shepherd -- a common, ordinary man, but a man who knows these hillsides and ravines. He goes down to the weary traveler, and leads him up out of the shadowy valley to a place where the last beams of sun still light the way ahead. He leads the wayfarer to a grassy meadow, and invites him to lie down. The shepherd cups water from the oasis spring in his hands, and offers it. The traveler drinks and drinks.
He glances up to see the shepherd's rod, by which he guides the sheep, and also his staff, or walking stick. It is comforting to see these symbols of a man who knows his way through the desert. When the traveler has rested a bit, the two walk on, following "the right paths" this time, to a black goatskin tent set amidst an encampment of other tents. These are Bedouins, dwellers in dry and desolate places -- determined people who know how to scratch a living from the desert. They are also outsiders to the rest of society, even outcasts. The Bedouin have their own mysterious ways, unknown to our lost traveler (who would hardly have given them a thought had he passed them in the town). It occurs to him that they may even be enemies who wish to rob or kill him.
The shepherd brings the man into his own tent. It is lit inside with oil lamps, and decorated with carpets that are as intricate and beautiful as the goatskin tent is plain. There is no fear now; the laws of Middle Eastern hospitality are in effect. As long as the traveler is in the shepherd's tent, the shepherd is pledged to protect him from all enemies. The two sit cross-legged at a low table, and the shepherd spreads out a meal -- a simple meal that somehow tastes better than any our traveler has ever had: steaming lamb stew, soft pita bread, succulent dates. In a timeless gesture of honor, the host pours a flask of fragrant oil over the guest's head, and pours wine into his cup until it overflows.
The fears of night have been transformed; where there was once aching terror, there is now serenity and trust. Such is the power of desert hospitality. Perhaps it was this hospitality that David -- or whoever wrote this psalm -- once felt. So moving was this experience for the psalmist, so unforgettable his rescue from the very jaws of death, that he has come to see it as symbolic of God's love.
