(I may not do it word for word, which I should. It's a sermon from my past but perfect for Lent IV.)
Lent IV 2020 “Deep in the old man’s puzzle….”
(John 4.5-42)
I
want to share with you a short passage from Robertson Davies novel, Fifth
Business. An elderly French Jesuit named Blazon is talking to a Canadian
teacher and writer named Dunstan Ramsey. Ramsey has just asked Blazon how he
can be a holy man after just having consumed a whole chicken and a whole bottle
of wine at dinner. Blazon then replies. Listen:
“Listen,
Ramezay, have you heard what Einstein says?—Einstein, the great scientist, not
some Jesuit like old Blazon. He says: ‘God is subtle, but He is not cruel.’ There is some sound Jewish wisdom for your
muddled Protestant mind. Try to understand the subtlety, and stop whimpering
about the cruelty. Maybe God wants you for something special….
“….I am quite a wise old bird but I am no desert hermit who
can only prophesy when his guts are knotted in hunger….I am deep in the old man’s puzzle, trying to
link the wisdom of the body with the wisdom of the spirit until the two are
one….you cannot divide spirit from body without anguish and destruction.”
“I am deep
in the old man’s puzzle,” Father Blazon said, “trying to link the wisdom of the
body with the wisdom of the spirit until the two are one.”
Today’s
gospel lesson is so long and complex—more like a short story than the normal
readings—that we could spend hours together teasing out all the subtleties of
the healing of the man born blind. There
obviously isn’t time to do that. We all have places to go and things to do. So,
cutting to the chase, I want to spend a few minutes with you “deep in the old
man’s puzzle”, wrestling with the wisdom of the body and the wisdom of the
spirit and how the two are linked together and one.
The
story begins with blindness of the body: Jesus and his disciples encounter a
man born blind—so his blindness is genetic, on the level of DNA, not because of
some illness or accident. He was blind in the midnight of the womb and wrapped
in double darkness until that moment when Jesus gives him new eyes and “first
sight”.
The
story ends with the “spiritual blindness” of the Pharisees. Their souls dwell
in the double darkness of their rigid, unenlightened adherence to a Law that
makes no sense and their blindness to the miracle and wonder of Jesus’ power
and authority over the Sabbath, over all things.
Jesus
says: I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see
may see, and those who do see may become blind.
Some of the
Pharisees who heard his words asked Jesus: Surely we are not blind, are we?
If
you were blind, Jesus tells them, you would not have sin. But now that you
say, “We see,” your sin remains.
We
are deep in the old man’s puzzle, trying to link the wisdom of the body and the
wisdom of the spirit until the two are one.
Here’s
something to notice and remember: in John’s gospel, Jesus always speaks of SIN, in the singular, not the plural, SINS.
When
John the Baptist sees Jesus coming to the River Jordan to be baptized, he says:
behold the lamb of God who takes away
the SIN of the world! John
says ‘SIN’ not ‘sins”. Sin, in John’s Gospel, does not
refer to actions we do that we should not
have done or to actions we didn’t do that we should have done. “Commission” and “Omission”—the way the
church refers to those two categories of “sins”—isn’t what John’s Gospel is
referring to. It is not our individual “sins” that Jesus comes to “take away”;
rather, it is SIN itself.
One
way of looking at “sin” is to see it as a state
of being—THE STATE OF BEING SEPARATED FROM GOD.
Separation
from God—being out of touch with God,
alienated from God…alone and empty—that is “the Sin of the World.”
Just
as Blazon longs to link the wisdom of the body to the wisdom of the spirit
until the two are one; in just that way,
Jesus longs to link humankind to God until the two are One.
And
old hymn from my childhood goes like this: ‘O,
how marvelous, O how wonderful, is my Savior’s love for me….”
Jesus
offers us “first sight” and new eyes. Jesus offers us the ability to see—see clearly, see truly, see through
our separation from God…our Sin…until we see God face to face. Oh, how
marvelous! Oh, how wonderful!
God
is subtle, but He is not cruel.
Einstein’s
insight points us to the “wisdom” of the story of the man born blind. Jesus speaks of “blindness” and “sight” as if
the wisdom of the body and the wisdom of the spirit WERE ONE. To the man born blind he gives his own
saliva, mixed with dirt into mud, applied to his eyes and washed away by the
waters of the healing pool named “SENT.”
The man who had never seen is given both the sight of the body and the
sight of the spirit.
Do
you believe in the Son of Man? Jesus asks him.
And
who is he, sir? The man replies. Tell me, so that I may believe in him.
You
have seen him, Jesus tells the man with first sight, and
the one speaking with you is he.
Then, seeing with both his eyes and
his heart, the man says to Jesus, Lord, I believe. And he worshiped
him.
Oh,
how wonderful….Oh, how marvelous….
How,
in our lives, are we like the man born blind? How, in our lives, have we come
to see—not with our eyes only, but with our hearts?
And
how, in our life, are we like the Pharisees? How, in our lives, are you and
I bound and rigid and blind because you
and I are tied to the limitations of the past, of our upbringing, of our
culture, of our prejudices, of our resistance to “the New Thing” God would do
for us?
You
see, we are deep in the old man’s puzzle, you and I. We are struggling with the
wisdom of the body and the wisdom of the spirit and we long to link them
together until they are one. God is
subtle, but God is not cruel.
The
subtlety of God has to do with “how to SEE” and how to find first sight, new eyes.
There is a story I would
tell you. Then I would invite you into a few minutes of silence, deep in the
old man’s puzzle, to wrestle with what is Broken and what is Whole…with body
and spirit…with sight and blindness…with seeing the Face of God.
My story is this: Once there was a very old and very wise
Rabbi. He was sitting by the river with his three young, energetic disciples just
before dawn.
One of them, there in the last moments
of darkness, said to the rabbi: Master, when is there enough light to see?
He replied: Tell me what you think…
One said: There is enough light to see when
you can tell the young lambs from the young goats as they play in the field
across the river.
The Rabbi replied: No, that is not enough light to
see.
A second disciple said: There is enough light to see when
you can distinguish the trees from the fog in the early dawn.
But the Rabbi answered: No, that is not enough light to
see.
A third student took his turn: There
is enough light to see when you can see the leaves on the trees across the
river and know which is a myrtle and which is an olive.
The Rabbi said, as before: No,
that is not enough light to see. And he grew silent for a long time.
There is enough light to see, the
rabbi finally said, when you can look into the face of any human being and see the face of
God….
We are deep in the old man’s puzzle. Let us pray for enough
light to see.
