Readings for the Day:
Sermon:
I remember the first time I got a new pair of glasses. I had been warned that it would change how I saw things, but it wasn't until I saw it for myself that I truly believed. I remember putting them on, looking up, and as the light poured in, I looked over at the trees. And you know what? The leaves no longer looked like green circular blobs. I could see that there were individual leaves on that tree. Just because a piece of glass changed the angle that light was going into my eyes, I could see everything clearer. I could see everything in so much more detail. I could see the world closer to what it actually is.
I don't tell this story because I think it is unique. In fact, I know it is not. I know that those of you who have worn glasses have experienced something like this before. Having the light reveal the world to you in a new way.
Which is exactly what all of our lessons to day are about. The light coming down and revealing the truth for us.
Sometimes this can be a painful revelation. In Ephesians, we hear that light can sometimes reveal those things we don't want anyone else to see. Those things that are painful about ourselves even.
But taking all of our lessons together, we see that the light reveals to us something we didn't see before. Something we didn't realize. The light reveals to us that what we thought we knew before, our ways, are not always the ways of God.
In our Old Testament reading this morning, Samuel is trying to find a new king to replace Saul. God has led him to Jesse to choose one of his sons.
And Samuel looks on each brother, thinking "this must be the one God has chosen." He sees men strong in stature. Warriors. But these are not who God has chosen.
As God says to Samuel, "The Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart."
And so it's the youngest who is chosen. The boy who still tends the sheep. The poet. The one who is so small and scrawny, when he will later go against the giant Goliath, he won't even be able to fit into the armor the Israelites make ready for him, or to even lift a sword. And yet this boy, David, would become a great warrior. He would be come one of the greatest kings of Israel. He would become the one through whose line Jesus, the Savior of the world, was born from.
Samuel had thoughts about what the next king of Israel would look like. But he was wrong. And God opened his eyes, and so Samuel came to know the truth. That what God is looking for is often very different from what we are looking for.
God continues to defy our expectations in the Gospel this morning as well. In that reading, we heard of a man, blind from birth. Now there was a thought at that time, one that perhaps we have all been guilty of thinking ourselves at one point or another, that an ailment was a punishment from God. That this man's blindness was the result of God's disfavor.
But Jesus says that this man's sins, nor his parents' sins, had anything to do with it. Instead it was to reveal the glory of God.
What Jesus is really saying is that such ailments aren't punishment. They are an opportunity. They are a chance for all of us to show God's love to those who need it.
Jesus defied expectations. Not only does He say that this blind man is not a notorious sinner, nor are his parents. He is loved by God, just as God loves all of us. And so Jesus heals Him.
But sometimes it is hard to see that our expectations are wrong. That God's ways are not our ways. And this is what we see from the Pharisees and the leaders of the Synagogues.
They see the result of the healing. They have irrefutable proof from the testimony of this man's parents that he was born blind and that somehow he now sees.
But they keep finding something against this healing. He was healed on the sabbath, and everyone knows you can't break the sabbath. He claims to be healed by a prophet, but how can this man be a prophet if he heals on the sabbath and is outside the synagogue? And this formally blind man claims to want to follow this man, but why follow Him and not Moses, who we are supposed to follow?
The leaders can take no more. And so they banish the blind man from the Synagogue just as many Christians in John's time were from their own synagogue communities.
Sometimes it is hard for us to accept that our ways might be different from God's ways. That the leaves in the trees aren't just masses of green, but that they are made of individual leaves and with texture.
Sometimes it is hard to see that the light that falls on us, as Ephesians points out, is not always flattering, but instead points out a flaw. That it points out something that we need to fix.
Lent is a time of reflection. Of repentance. Of purging the old ways out of us that keep us from God and taking in new ways to lead us back to Him. New ways that will help us on the path to the Resurrection.
And in this time, and throughout our lives, we need to keep our ears and eyes open to see what it is that God is trying to say to us. We need to be like Samuel and listen to what God is saying to us as we try to discern His will. We need to keep our eyes open for the signs that Jesus performs in our lives to see what it is Jesus is trying to reveal to us. We need to keep our eyes on the path Jesus is shining in front of us, so that we can be children of Light, as Ephesians calls us to be.
And most of all, we have to be willing to let go. To accept that we might be wrong. That God might be calling us to a different path than the one we find ourselves on. We have to continue to be willing to listen to what He is saying to us in Scripture. To not let our thoughts and believes shape how we read Scripture, but to let Scripture shape us. To let our worship shape us. To let our faith shape our lives in all that we are and in all that we do.
We need to stop. And pray. To talk to God. And continue to let Him change us. To stop following our own ways, and instead follow God's light so that we can walk in His.