Spiritual Blindness (John 9:1-41)

Sermon as preached at Lambs and Evington UMC 3/30/14

As a psychology major at Randolph-Macon, I remember studying many fascinating experiments  that have been done in the field of psychology. One of these experiments that I really enjoyed was an experiment in selective attention. Now the results of this experiment are so baffling that I probably wouldn’t have believed that they were true except for the fact that my professor first tested the experiment on us before explaining the results. The experiment goes like this: we were shown a video of people passing a basketball, some of them were wearing white shirts, others were wearing black shirts. Our objective was to count how many times only the people wearing the white shirts passed the ball. We sat and we watched focused on those people wearing white shirts, and when the video was over we were asked how many times the people in white shirts passed the ball, and most of us were happy because we had the right answer. But then the professor asked us a strange question, “Did you see the gorilla?” Did we see the gorilla? What kind of question is that?  So the professor played the video again for us and told us just to watch and not to count this time. At first things were just as we remembered it, but midway through the video sure enough someone dressed in a gorilla suit walks out in the middle of the people passing the ball. Not only does the gorilla walk out, but he actually stops in the middle of them, pounds his chest, and the continues off the set. The gorilla had probably been on the screen for 10 seconds in clear sight, and yet the majority of us watching the video had no idea. This is called selective attention.  It is when we become so caught up in looking for one thing that we completely miss what is going on around us, even something that is so obvious, like a man in a gorilla suit. As the old adage goes, “we can’t see the woods for the tree.”  Jesus in our scripture lesson for this morning might have called this selective attention blindness; not blindness in the physical sense, but instead a spiritual blindness.

            Our story from the John this morning starts out with Jesus and his disciples as they are traveling the come across a blind beggar.  The disciples’ response to the situation indicates where the dilemma in this story is going to be. First, the disciples ask Jesus, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"  In those times illness and disability was seen as being something that was caused by sin. The question the disciples are really asking is really whether or not this man has committed some sin that has caused him to be blind, or whether his blindness is a punishment against his parent’s for their sin. Jesus responds by saying, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God's works might be revealed in him.”  This man has not sinned, but instead God’s works are able to be revealed in him. This isn’t that challenging of a statement for many of us today, but for the disciples this was mind-blowing. Jesus is telling them that something they had always viewed as being a result of sin is actually is actually a means by which God’s works may be revealed.

            In our scripture we don’t get the disciples reaction to this statement, whether they agreed or were upset; instead the story quickly goes into the disciples questioning Jesus once again. They told Jesus to hurry up and heal the man for daylight was almost gone and the Sabbath was almost upon them. Once again we must recognize the practices and beliefs of that time. For Jews of that time, and still some today, the Sabbath, this began at sundown on Friday to sundown Saturday.  There were  many strict laws about working on the Sabbath, this list was in fact long of things that could not be done including the making of clay.  We see that Jesus ignores the disciples protests, spits on the ground and makes mud or clay, and  tells the man to go wash in the pool of Siloam and sight would be given to him.  After just telling the disciples that the man’s blindness was not the cause of anyone’s sin, Jesus shocks the disciples again by committing what many believed to be a sin, working on the Sabbath.  These two elements of Jesus works in this story, the rejection of an idea of the man’s blindness being caused by sin, and Jesus’s working on the Sabbath are crucial to hold onto, as they will become the focus later on in the story. 

            Interestingly enough, the story changes, and now instead of focusing on Jesus and his disciples, John focuses on the once blind man. People around town notice that this man has sight and they begin to say to each other, “Wait isn’t that the beggar that used to sit on the road?” I  thought he was blind? Maybe it is just someone who looks like him. And they began asking what happened? How were your eyes open to which the man replied, “The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, 'Go to Siloam and wash.' Then I went and washed and received my sight.” All of this was very odd and so they took the man before the Pharisees to be questioned.

            As we see the man who had been blind from birth being questioned by the Pharisees we once again see those two stumbling blocks that we mentioned earlier at play. The evangelist John sets up the scenario for us he  says, “Now it was a sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes.”  As the blind man tells the Pharisees about how Jesus had healed him, we see that the fact that the miracle was performed on the Sabbath creates a divide amongst some of the Pharisees. Some argued that this man was a sinner because he had done this work on the Sabbath day, while others argued, “How could a sinner perform such signs.” In order to help the debate the Pharisees turn to the man and ask him what he thinks about this man Jesus. This may seem like a harmless question asked in order to find out the truth but that is probably not the case. At that time it was a mandate forbidding Jews from following any heretical movements, so it is likely those Pharisees against Jesus asked the man this question assuming he’d be afraid and reject Jesus, but that’s not what happened. The man replies, “He is a prophet.”  These are brave and powerful words from this once blind man.

            Not satisfied with this answer the dismiss the man and call for the man’s parents. If they can’t prove that Jesus is a sinner, maybe they can dismiss the case by proving that the man who had been a sinner. Remember that blindness was seen as being a punishment for sin; those who committed a sin may become blind during their lifetime, but someone born blind would not be a sinner but rather the result of their parent’s sin.  The Pharisees desperately wanted to prove that this man was a sinner and therefore his testimony about Jesus would be tainted. When the parents arrive they ask the parents if this man was blind from birth, and the parents respond with the truth, yes.  When asked how he was healed however the parents backed down in fear, they said, He is of age to answer that, ask him.”

            So after finding out that the man was in fact blind from birth, spoiling their plans of discrediting the man’s testimony to Jesus, the Pharisees decide to once again question the man. This time they ask the man straight up, Was this man Jesus who healed you a sinner?  The man’s response is poetically honest, “I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see." You can almost feel the frustration of the Pharisees they want to discredit this man’s testimony so bad, but yet have been able to do such, so once again that ask to hear his testimony.  Fed up the man replies, “I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?" Well this angers the Pharisees, but also gives them the leverage they think they need. They reply, “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.”  In other words, We do not follow this random man off of the streets, we follow the law handed down to us from Moses.  It seems like a valid argument, it seems as if the Pharisees finally have the upper hand until the man once again chimes in. It’s funny that you know nothing about him and yet he opened my eyes. Never have we heard of a man born blind being healed, and that very law you follow teaches us that God does not listen to sinner but to the righteous. If Jesus was not from God, how could he perform this miracle? Flabbergasted and angry the Pharisees label the man and dismiss him.

            Later the man once again runs into Jesus and Jesus asks do you believe in the Son of Man?” The man responds show me him so that I may believe. Jesus responds it is I, and immediately the man responds, “Lord, I believe.” Jesus concludes by saying, “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.” You see this whole story is about blindness and sight, but what Jesus reveals is that the story is just as much about spiritual blindness as it is about the physical. This blind man was healed, his eyes were opened, but he did not just begin to only see the world around him, he began to the Lord as well. Just look at the progression of how he describes this man Jesus. When first asked by the random townspeople asking how he sees, he simply refers to Jesus as, “the man named Jesus.” As he is being questioned by the Pharisees and asked who does he say that Jesus is, the man goes one step further and claims, “He is a prophet.” Finally after all the questioning and when Jesus meets with the man again, the man cries out, “Lord I believe.”  The man’s eyes were opened both physically and spiritually and now this man is able to go from recognizing Jesus simply as a man, then as a prophet, and finally as Lord. “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.”

            This seems like it should be the end of the story, except some Pharisees overhear this last comment from Jesus.  He has just told the blind man that he came to give sight to those who do not see, and to blind those who see. They ask Jesus, “Surely we are not blind, are we?"  Jesus responds, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, 'We see,' your sin remains.” But what does that mean?  Jesus tells the Pharisees, because you claim to see you are in fact blind. Because you think you have it all figured out, you have nothing figured out. I healed a man who was blind by birth and instead of recognizing the miracle that it was, you criticized me for working on the Sabbath and attacked the man I healed for being blind in the first place. You put so much trust in the Law of Moses that you failed to notice God working in the midst of you. Like the experimenters who failed to see a man in a gorilla suit walk in clear sight, because the Pharisees were so involved in finding the sin in someone else, they failed to see the glory of God in their midst they had become spiritually blind.

            We too in Christian culture often fall into this sin. We hold up the law of Moses as we should, but instead of using to work on our own holiness we use them to label others as sinners. Or like the Pharisees we follow the law of Moses believing that if we follow correctly we will earn our way into heaven, but Paul tells us that is not the purpose of the law. In Romans 7 Paul says, “What then should we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet, if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin.” In other words,  the law does not save you, instead it helps us to see our own sin and recognize that we need saving. Being a good person, following all of the checklists does not get you into heaven, only by faith are we saved. And so instead of using the law as some checklist to follow or even worse as some tool for differentiating ourselves and discrediting others, let us use the law as a means to build our faith.  Let us use it to help us recognize that which separates us from God.  The fatal flaw of the Pharisees is that they were focused on the law and not how the law leads to Christ. They put their trust in the law, not in God. Sadly sometimes as Christians it is our very attempts to get it right that lead us astray. We can forget what we worship is a Holy and living God, not a set of rules. Let us  not be like the Pharisees who in their claims of wisdom found only blindness, instead let us use this Holy gift (hold the Bible) not as a way to prop ourselves up,  but as a way to humble ourselves, as a way of opening our eyes to our own sin.  So that we may not be blind but see, that what we need most is not our own righteousness, but rather the grace of God drawing us ever closer a love like Christ’s.

Selective Amnesia (Exodus 17:1-7)

Sermon as preached at Lambs and Evington on 3/23/14

 So there is an interesting phenomenon that I  and a bet many of you have; this phenomenon is known as selective amnesia. Whereas amnesia is the loss of memory or even identity often caused by some sort of physical or psychological trauma, selective amnesia is an intentional loss of memory that usually benefits the person forgetting.  It is quite a helpful little phenomenon to have.  It helps around the house when laundry starts to pile up, and I was asked to do a load, but for some reason I can’t remember ever being asked.  In school, I conveniently forgot that homework had been assigned. When an email is sent asking for volunteers for this or that, I seem to forget about it until it is too late. Especially when it comes to my sport teams this selective amnesia helps me to cope with difficult realities. For example I remember that Duke played last weekend, but for some reason I don’t remember anything about the game.  ( Take time to “try to remember”) Well anyways, this phenomenon of selective amnesia is quite interesting since I can remember so much other random information. I remember my telephone number from my house growing up, I remember every super bowl winner that I’ve watched, and I remember that the Battle of Hastings happened in 1066, and yet I can’t remember to do my homework or to wash my clothes.  All kidding aside, while selective amnesia seems like a good and fun thing to have, the consequences can be quite damaging.  Not doing my homework affected my grades; not doing laundry leaves me with dirty clothes, and probably an angry wife, and not remembering who won last weekend, well that’s still ok.   You see in life, we sometimes hold on to the memories we should ignore and forget things we should cherish.  We can become angry at a loved one for something so minor while forgetting  everything they have done for us. We can allow ourselves to lose hope in something just because of a minor setback.

            This is the case  with the Israelites in the desert; the Israelites had selective amnesia. Our scripture for today starts looks at the Israelites in the midst of their travels in the wilderness, however the story for the Israelites starts long before that. The Israelites were a people who had been enslaved in Egypt, forced to work long days for the Pharaoh. As a people, this was rock bottom. They cried out to the Lord for help, and as we see God hears the cry of his people.  God calls Moses, an Israelite himself, though now living amongst the Pharaoh, to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. We see many encounters between the Pharaoh and Moses, miracles performed by God through Moses, and of course the plagues as a punishment for Pharaoh’s failure to listen. Finally we see the Israelites lead out of Egypt by the power of God, through fire and storm and through the parting of the Red Sea. God had lead the Israelites out of captivity, had closed off the Red sea to ensure their freedom, and on top of it all had promised them a land full of milk and honey. The Israelite’s history is one of God providing for them, God delivering them from evil,  God abiding with them.

            With this history in mind our scripture for this morning seems a little odd. Today we find the Israelites wandering in the desert, and quite honestly wandering in misery. It has been quite some time since they had left Egypt, and they are still not at the promised land of milk and honey.  Not only is there no milk or honey, there is hardly any food or water at all. Our scripture tells us, “They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink.” The Isrealites had become fed up with the journey, fed up with their seemingly aimless wandering, fed up with Moses, and yes even fed up with the Lord.  The Israelites had come to the end of their ropes and so they cried out, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?  The once joyous moment of freedom from Egypt, the crossing of the Red sea, now seemed like a cruel twist of fate.  The freedom they had always longed for now seemed to be leading to their demise.  The people began to question whether or not it was worth it to flee, they even began to look back upon slavery and think about how good those times were; they thought this about slavery! In their minds Moses had led them astray, God had disserted them, and that anything would be better than what they were going through now.

            This is the danger of selective amnesia.  The pain and uncertainty that they were enduring now caused the people to forget how bad they really had it. They forgot about the beatings, the labor, their lack of power or of voice, and now all they remembered is that they we fed. At the current moment that seemed like a good deal. What is worse however is not that they forgot about how bad their situation had been, but they forgot about how faithful God had been.  They forgot that their leader Moses had thrown away all the comfort and wealth he had when he killed the unjust slave driver. They forgot about the plagues that Egypt endured and how they were protected from them. They forgot about the meal they shared at Passover, marking their doors with lambs blood so that in the morning they could hold their firstborn in their arms, and they forgot the agony of the Pharaoh and the other Egyptians who were not as fortunate. They  forgot the Lord parted a sea for them  to cross and then closed it so that no one could follow. They had forgotten all of this, and now cried out to a God they believed had forgotten them. They cried, “Is the Lord among us or not?”  After all that God had done for them they still ask whether the Lord is with them are not.

            It’s amazing how quickly things can turn from looking up to looking down, and it’s amazing how quickly faith and praise can turn into doubt and anger.  But even as the Israelites questioned and threated Moses, Moses continued to have faith in the Lord.  Now as I say that let us be clear in what I mean. There is a common misconception that in order for us to have faith we are not allowed to doubt at all, that if we have faith we should never be afraid or angry, but this is not that case. Moses kept his faith, but you better believe his was scared, and you better believe he was questioning whether what he had done was the right thing. In our scripture he says, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.” Moses is scared for his life, Moses has no idea what to do, but what makes it true that Moses had faith; Moses goes to the Lord with his problem.  Moses does not forget the ways in which the Lord had provided for him, Moses does not forget about God’s promise of a land full of milk and honey. Moses has no idea what is going to happen, he has no delusion that things will be simple or easy, but Moses trusts that if he follows the Lord all will be right, whatever right may be.

            And from there on we see that Moses was right. The Lord tells Moses to take some elders and go ahead in the journey to the rock of Horeb and with the same rod he used to part the Red sea, strike the rock and water will flow.  This moment is priceless, it is not just some coincidence that the same rod used for freeing the slaves is now used to quench their thirst, in fact God goes out of the way to make that point. It’s almost sarcastic how God uses the same instrument that freed them from slavery in order to quiet their doubts and provide them with water. As the Israelites cry out is God among us, God cries back, I never left.  Do you not remember this rod, this rod that I used in order to set you free. This rod will now once again save you. It is almost as if God is crying out to the Israelites, Moses has in his hands a sign, a symbol of my faithfulness to you, you see this sign every day, how could you forget?  And yet the Israelites history is one of selective amnesia, of forgetting God’s faithfulness and then abandoning the Lord, getting brought back and starting the circle all over again. In fact this is not just the Israelites history, but it is also our own.  How many times have we experienced the grace and power of God at work in our lives, and later felt as though God was nowhere to be found, or that God had abandoned us. How often do we traverse from a mountain top experience with Christ into a barren spiritual desert?  Like the Israelites who we tired, thirsty and hungry, sometimes we have some legitimate reasons to doubt. The loss of a job, the loss of a loved one, some goal we just can’t achieve, or some debt or addiction that we just can’t get out from under. In these wilderness times it can make sense for us to have some doubts. It makes sense for us to thirst for some spiritual water. It makes sense for us to have selective amnesia, but we cannot let ourselves fall into the same trap as the Israelites. When we thirst we cannot run away from God, we must not forget God’s steadfast love for us.

            Instead, when we thirst, we should be more like Moses, whose initial reaction is not to run away from God, but instead is to run towards God. Yes he was scared, yes he too was tired, and probably a little angry, but in his times of trouble and doubt, he sought out the Lord.

            Many of us today are going through our own spiritual wilderness.  Some of us are facing external dilemmas such as the ones mentioned earlier. Others of us feel guilty because our spiritual fervor has waned even though there seems to be no reason for it.  We become spiritually thirsty, and we begin to forget what ever nourished us in the first place. This however is not necessarily a sign of your faith diminishing, in fact it can even be a sign of your own spiritual growth.  Just like I showed the children for the children’s message,  as the glasses get larger, it takes more water to fill them up.  Likewise, as we grow spiritually we become capable and open to letting more of God’s grace into our lives, and so when we fail to fill the void we can sometimes feel thirsty or empty.  This means that what filled us up when we first became Christians probably doesn’t fill us up the same way anymore. I know that for me personally, My formative time was during my teenage years. Retreats with the same vibe as pep rally used to fill me up, and while I still enjoy these type of experiences they don’t quite quench my thirst anymore. As a kid all I needed was worship, as I got older throw in a bible study and I was good, but as I kept getting older and older I needed more and more to quench my thirst.  I still feel it now when I have served in outreach or mission in a while. When I fail to read, or be in prayer as often as I should I feel it. I can tell when I am not being spiritually fed and do you know how I know? I know because my selective amnesia comes back. I begin to forget all that the Lord has done for me, the ways God has carried me through difficult times in my lives, the people who have touched my life through the power of the Holy Spirit, all of this seems to fade from memory and all that is left is an aching, longing feeling. This Lent as we prepare for Easter, let us not miss all the signs around us reminding us of God’s faithfulness to us.  Let us not be like the Israelites who daily fixed their eyes upon the very rod that freed them and yet remembered nothing about it. As we focus on that which separates us from God, as we recognize our own sin, we also recognize that it is we that separate ourselves from God. That God’s love is steadfast, and yet so often we fail to see. That sometimes in our spiritual growth we become discouraged because what used to fill us, doesn’t produce the same results anymore.  So whether this morning we face some difficult situation that makes God seem so distance or if we simply have seemed to lost the spark in our hearts that once burned, the solution is simple, seek the Lord.  Seeking the Lord doesn’t mean everything will be better, it doesn’t mean that we will automatically be once again alive for Christ, but is means that we will have comfort that no matter what, God is with us. It means that we will be filling ourselves with God’s grace, it means we will never forget God faithfulness. 

The Fall (Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7)

Sermon as preached 3/16/14 at Lambs and Evington UMC

This week we begin a new sermon series that is called “Separation Anxiety” As most of you know we have entered into a season of the church that we call Lent. While in today’s culture most people associate Lent with giving up some minor guilty pleasure in our lives like chocolate, or coffee, even caffeine all together. The true purpose of the season of Lent however is a time that prepares us for the great feast of Easter. Lent is not too dissimilar to the more familiar season of advent that prepares us for the for the arrival of the Son of God at Christmas. The major difference between the two is that in Advent we are preparing for Jesus’s arrival and therefore there is an emphasis on expectation and waiting, whereas for in Lent we are not preparing for our Lord’s birth but rather, for his death and resurrection. And so how do you prepare for Jesus’ death and resurrection; for this even that is the basis for our whole belief system, the essence of our salvation? How do you prepare to celebrate Christ’s atonement for our sins and the promise of eternal life that it provides. We prepare by reflecting upon why it is important in the first place. When we start this type of reflection it become apparent quite quickly that we need it because we are such broken and sinful people. No matter how hard we try we seem to keep falling short of the glory of God, we get corrupted by evil, we turn our desires towards ourselves rather than upon God and on others. We realize that we cannot save ourselves and we desperately need God’s grace to save us. And as we reflect upon our need for God’s grace we begin to truly realize the distance between us and God. Not because of anything God has done , for God’s grace is always extended to us, but because we have separated ourselves from God, we have put up our own barriers. And so during Lent we give up these things that devour our time and our energy, these things that distract us from God, and at the same time we take on spiritual disciplines that realign our hearts with the heart of Christ. This is the beauty of Lent, this is why over the next for weeks we will look at ways in which we separate ourselves from God, because to truly appreciate Easter, we need to appreciate why we need it so badly.

            We look at the world today and we see violence and wars, we see animosity in the political spheres, we see homelessness, poverty and starvation around the world and in our own community. We even find ourselves occupied and worried about so many different things  that “have to” get done. We get so used to this type of world that we live in that we begin to think that this is the norm, that this may even be what God wanted. But if we read from Genesis and look at the creation story, we start to find a world quite different than ours, we notice that this isn’t how it has always been. In Genesis 2 we find Adam and Eve, the first man and woman, and we find that they are living in paradise, in the garden of Eden. The two of them were together with the birds and the beasts, and the creatures of the sea. There did not have to worry about starvation because food was abundant, in fact its seems as though they did not have to worry about death at all. They were naked and not ashamed of it, for what guilt or what shame should they feel, they were as God created them. All of this was freely given to them with the one stipulation that they must not eat of the tree of knowledge of good or evil.  The Lord warned them that if they it from it, if they even touch it they will die.

            Things were great in paradise, that is until sin crept into the world through the power of curiosity and through the serpent.  The serpent persuades Eve to take of the fruit from the tree of good and evil, Eve persuades Adam to eat from the fruit, and from there on the course of history, of human nature had been changed.  Sin had entered into the world. Now there are certainly many questions that arise from this story, many are good questions that we just aren’t able to cover today.  Did God create the serpent, and if so did God create the serpent evil? Did God create evil? Why was there even a potential of sin in the first place. As I’ve said these are great and difficult questions, questions that pastors, laity, theologians, and philosophers alike have been trying to answer for centuries. It is not as important to focus on the why sin entered into the world as it is to recognized that we as humans have been changed because of it. Instead of asking why is there sin, we should be asking what is sin.

            What is the sin that occurred during what we call the fall of humanity?  We see that the action that led to the fall was the eating of the forbidden fruit, but was it simply the act of disobeying God that led us to the state we are in now? Not entirely, yes disobeying God was bad, but it was what happened before that which to that original sin. The serpent tells Eve that if they eat from the fruit “You will not die;  for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God,^[a] knowing good and evil.” You see Adam and Eve ate from the fruit, ate from the tree of good and evil because they were tempted to make themselves like God. They wanted to be able to determine good and evil, the quality best reserved for a ruler. They wanted to have more power than that which God had already given them. They wanted to be like God. And so when they ate of that fruit their eyes were opened, and yet somehow as their eyes were open they lost focus. They became focused on themselves, they noticed that they were naked, something that had always been, but now they were ashamed of it. They recognized that it made them no different than the animals around them, and that just could not be. Those people of honor and glory hide their intimate parts, they were no longer like the animals after all, they were now like gods.  You see the original sin of Adam and Eve was that in that moment they changed their very natures from living as creatures in union with God’s vision of creation, and became creatures who rejected God’s vision, and saw themselves as something greater than they already were. They had turned their vision and their focus away from God and put it squarely on themselves. So when God questions what had happened, the damage was already done. The humans tremble in fear and feel an emotion they have never felt before, guilt. As promised the humans now face the fate of death, the face a world of toil and pain, they face a life of sin. There is a separation from the garden,  in our scripture it seems as some sort of punishment but for what purpose I’m not sure. Scripture tells us that God says, “See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever.”  What does this mean I’m not sure, maybe God is preventing humans from a greater hell of living an eternal life while  focused on ourselves, or maybe God’s banishment from the garden in God’s first act in trying to restore our nature to what it once was. Whatever the case may be the story ends with humans banished from Eden with a twisted, perverse nature that seeks our own pleasure and power over that of any one else.

            This is the essence of sin, that our focus has been shifted from God and shifted toward ourselves. As we continue in this season of Lent before we do anything else we must try to get a grasp upon what sin really means. In our culture we like to talk about sin as an action that we have done. Murder, lying, cheating, stealing; for us these things are sins, and indeed they are. And yet if we live our lives simply trying to avoid committing these sins, then we are doomed for failure, we are looking at sin all wrong.  Instead we should think of sin more like a disease, like a genetic disorder, like an illness. An example of a disease is more fitting than that of an illness, but out of respect for so many who have faced diseases, let us use the example of a flu to explain what I mean by sin being like a disease.  So say you wake up one morning shivering, and coughing. You start to feel nauseous, your body aches and so you take your temperature and find out that you have a fever. How do you react? Do you look at each thing separately and take medicine for each ailment, or do you realize that they are all symptoms of a greater illness, the flu, and realize you need to go see a doctor.  You see those daily sins that we commit they are much like symptoms of a disease.  We lie because we want to protect ourselves our make ourselves look better. We gossip because we enjoy the thrill of knowledge and the feeling of being superior to someone else.  We could try to treat eat symptom, we can try to stop gossiping, we can try to stop lying, and we should, but that doesn’t solve our overall condition of sin.

            So are you, how am I affected by sin? What does Adam and Eve’s mistake have anything to do with us?  Well if we viewed sin and simply committing evil acts, then the answer would be that it doesn’t affect us. That we are separate entities making our own separate mistakes; that the only way that they affect us is that we learn their bad habits.  It is because so many of us have this understanding of sin that we find the concept of original sin so disgusting. We ask how can a baby be sinful if they haven’t even done anything wrong? But do you see how that’s the wrong question to ask? A baby isn’t sinful because they have committed some wrong, the baby is sinful because we as humans are all sinful. We are all affected with this disease, this nature of sin.  It is quite amazing how our modern technology can actually help us to understand this point. Over the past few decades amazing research has been done in human genetics. In fact the human genome project has mapped our DNA.  Researchers are slowly now able to find abnormalities or predictors in a person’s genes that show the passing of genetic diseases from parents to children. Now I’m not saying that sin is a genetic disorder or that we can find sin somewhere in our DNA, but what I am saying is like genetic disorders are passed from parent to child, so too has sin been passed onto all of us. In the fall human nature was changed from a perfect state to a sinful state, so that all the offspring of humanity were no longer able to reap the benefit of the perfect nature originally created for us, but rather we have inherited that distorted nature of sin.  This morning as we begin to start out talking about what it is that separates us from God, we must first start by admitting we are in fact separated. That this life that we live, this world that we live in is not as it was intended to be. That we have inherited the sinful nature of sin, the disease of sin, so that now our inclination is to treasure ourselves over anything else, that serving God, loving God more than we love ourselves is a struggle. In fact so much of a struggle that so often even our faith is primarily focused on the hope of our own personal salvation and assurance of heaven, rather than the will and  desire that God has for all creation.

            And so as we begin this sermon series, as we recognize and admit that we live with this disease of sin, we can now start the process of having our health restored. Just like with a disease, the first step is recognizing the symptoms and getting diagnosed. So this morning we come recognizing our own symptoms of sin, that we daily fail to be obedient to God’s will, that we fail to serve our neighbors, and even failed to love God with our whole hearts. It is why we say prayers of confession because it allows us to recognize the fact that things aren’t the way they should be. We aren’t the way we should be.  The diagnosis is simple we have sin; sin is part of our nature. And yet the good news is that there is a cure. That Christ has come to Earth, taking on our sin upon the cross and conquering it and death with his resurrection. As is the case with most cures though the treatment is long.  We must strive each day to be drawn closer to Christ.  Each day will bring challenges are we get sidetracked by our own desires, as we feed our own ego, but today we take the first step, we recognize that we are sick and that we need help.  The good news is that even when we fail in our journey, and we do constantly, that God’s grace is there to pick us back up. Our sin is never terminal for even when our love fails and we turn away, Gods love remains steadfast, because grace is greater than sin.

Containing God (Matthew 17:1-9)

Sermon as preached at Lambs and Evington UMC on 3/2/14

Image courtesy of Vanderbilt Divinity School

This Sunday is a special Sunday in the life of the church that we call Transfiguration Sunday. It is the Sunday in which we celebrate the special revelation to a few of the disciples of Christ where they saw Jesus transformed in white light and accompanied on the mountain by Elijah and Moses. This story fascinates many of us, while at the same time this story confuses many of us. There is just so much going on, what are we to focus on?  We could focus on what it means for Jesus to be transfigured by glowing light. We could focus on why Moses and Elijah are there with Jesus. We could ask why only a few disciples a privy to this revelation, and we can ask why Jesus tells them not to tell anyone until he is raised from the dead.  We could and we will talk a little about Peter’s request to build dwelling places. There are almost too many things going on to cover in the span of a sermon, and any of the things listed above warrant their own time and energy, but today we will talk about something that maybe is one of the lesser talked about parts of this story, and that is the cloud.

            Verse 5 tells us, “While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, "This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!"  Here we see the presence of a bright cloud on top of the mountain, but what does this cloud signify?  As Christians the first thing that jumps out to us is that the words from the cloud here on the mountain are the same as the words from God during the baptism of Jesus.  These words tell us the significance of Jesus Christ as the Son of God as well as the command for him to be listened to, to be followed.  These words continue into the theme of revelation happening during the Transfiguration; that Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of the law and the prophets. These words tell us something else about the voice heard from the cloud, and that is that the voice we hear is none other than that of God the Father. 

            For Christians today as well as Gentiles of that time, we may need this clue to understand the significance of the cloud; however for those from the Jewish tradition, like the disciples of Jesus already knew exactly what this cloud signified.  This is not the first appearance of a cloud like this in the Bible, in fact this cloud was present often through the history of the Israelites.  In Exodus 14 as the Israelites are escaping Egypt we see, “The angel of God who was going before the Israelite army moved and went behind them; and the pillar of cloud moved from in front of them and took its place behind them. ²⁰ It came between the army of Egypt and the army of Israel. And so the cloud was there with the darkness, and it lit up the night; one did not come near the other all night.”  Likewise later when the Israelites were constructing the Tabernacle we read, “Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. ³⁵ Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud settled upon it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.³⁶ Whenever the cloud was taken up from the tabernacle, the Israelites would set out on each stage of their journey;³⁷ but if the cloud was not taken up, then they did not set out until the day that it was taken up. ³⁸ For the cloud of the Lord was on the tabernacle by day, and fire was in the cloud^[f] by night, before the eyes of all the house of Israel at each stage of their journey.  This cloud signifies the presence of God with the Israelites. First it is God with them as the escaped from Egypt, and later it was God with them in the Holy Tabernacle.  In fact it was Jewish belief at that time that where the cloud resided was where the Lord was, and the cloud as we read resided at the tabernacle. Those who were able to enter the tabernacle, we able to dwell in the presence of the Lord.

            When we understand this important aspect of the cloud, then it becomes clear why Peter reacts the way he does. Here he see Moses, Elijah and Jesus transfigured by bright light in the presence of this cloud, this cloud signifying that they God is dwelling with them on this mountain. And so Peter simply reacts the only way he knows how; let’s make three dwelling so that what is happening may last, so that this cloud, this presence of God may continue to last for others to come and see. Peter tries so hard to get it right, but poor Peter gets it all wrong. Peter doesn’t understand that God will not be contained, that there doesn’t need to be a special dwelling place for God. Peter misses the whole message of this transfiguration, that God is already dwelling amongst them as a human, as Jesus Christ. God is no longer contained to a special dwelling place, God is with us, everywhere.

            How often do we make Peter’s mistake? It is right and good for us to gather hear together in this sanctuary for worship. It is wonderful to gather here for Bible studies, and UMW, for special benefits, and for the planning and ordering of events of the church. But how often when we refer to church do we mean this building rather than those who are gathered in it?  How often do we view church as something that we go to rather than something that we are always a part of?  How often do we honestly strive to serve and reach out to others in our community but stay here in this building expecting others to come to us rather than we go out to others?  When we do these things, when we think like this we are making the same mistake as Peter did on that Mount of Transfiguration. Too often the church building becomes for us a false tabernacle where we expect God to dwell.  And God does dwell here, but far too often we try to contain God. That God happens here for an hour on Sunday mornings and then I can leave that behind. But the Transfiguration reminds us that God is always with us. That God lived among us as human, and as Jesus Christ ascended he gave the Holy Spirit to be with us always. God cannot be contained, the presence of the Lord is always with us. Let us not set us dwelling places to contain the Lord, instead let us reveal the presence of the Lord for all to see.  Let us always dwell in the presence of the Lord.