Sermon for October 25, 2009

                     Scripture:         Mark 10:46-52

               “Blind”             Rev. Christopher Fazel

              So, Jesus heals the blind.  Now, I try not to be so arrogant as to presume that this story did not actually happen – physically.  As Hamlet says to his best friend, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophies.”   Physics is defining our universe in stranger and stranger ways.  It used to be against the laws of science that gravity could bend light.  Then Einstein proved it.  Now, the laws of science say that gravity bends light.  Truth is a growing thing.  In my mind, such things as are reported in this gospel story are plausible.  But that’s just me.

              However, I believe that stories such as these are not in our scripture just to record physical events.  The purpose of our scripture is not only to convince us, but also to awaken us.  There is awakening power in this story.  This story is intended to teach us something about ourselves.  What does it teach us? 

              Well, to me, it says primarily that the power of healing comes to us as a gift from On High, but in order to receive the gift of healing, one must accept it in a certain attitude that Jesus calls faith.  Now, I have had many discussions lately, among many of you concerning this mysterious attribute called faith, so I know it’s important to you.  Many Christians understand faith to mean believing without question certain dogmatic statements that are made by some authority like the church.  But that is not the character of faith that is taught by Jesus.  When Jesus refers to faith, he means something much more akin to trust.  Have you ever ridden in a car when you didn’t trust the driver?  Maybe the driver didn’t know where to go, or maybe the driver was driving recklessly.   That is a very disturbing experience.  But then there’s the opposite experience.

              Back in March of 1982, Sharon and I moved to Virginia Beach from Los Angeles.  We drove two vehicles, our car and a Ryder truck.  We communicated with CB Radios.  Remember them?  No cell phones.  During that trip one late afternoon in West Virginia, it started to snow.  We said to each other, “Isn’t this beautiful!  We haven’t seen snow in years.  And it was beautiful – until sundown.  Then the wet snow refroze into glaze ice.  Did I mention we were going over a mountain?   We were at the very peak, and suddenly the truck started to slide.  By slamming on the breaks and coming to a complete stop, we escaped sliding into the deep ravine to our left.  One of the semi-trailers stuck on the road behind us – and because of us – wasn’t so lucky.  We heard him cursing us on the CB radio.  We were completely stranded.  I saw no way out.  We were the Israelites with our backs to the sea.  When suddenly Moses arrived in the guise of a gravel-spreading snowplow.  It snaked its way passed us spreading its blessed traction like manna from heaven.  And slowly, the stream of stranded pilgrims started moving.  We followed that snowplow down the twisting, dark, icy road to the base of the mountain, like ducklings following their mother.  That was faith.  We had absolute trust in that snowplow, and our faith did not disappoint.  Soon, Sharon and I were safely at an inn, around a blazing fire, sipping wine.  And it never tasted so good, because it was flavored with victory, rescue and gratitude.   This experience was a powerful lesson to me concerning grace and faith.  All healing – physical, mental, spiritual, or situational – is grace; in other words, a gift.  But to be received, it must be accepted in trust.  And so our story today is in our Bible in order to teach us things about the grace of healing and the necessity of faith. 

              But I also think the story teaches us more than that.  I think it teaches us something about blindness.  You see, in a sense, we’re all blind, because we have limited understanding of ourselves and of one another.   Don’t we all know the experience of thinking we know a certain situation only to be enlightened to aspects of it that we didn’t previously know, and suddenly we see the situation very differently?  We think somebody’s a jerk, but then discover what their dealing with, and suddenly our anger turns to compassion?  We have all experienced that.  Misunderstanding is a kind of blindness.  Paul says as much, “Now we see in a mirror dimly; then we will see face to face.”  Paul is talking about seeing ourselves and one another and our relationships to the Divine more clearly – with better understanding.   Helen Keller talks about the dark time before she understood the concept of words, and how that understanding when it finally dawned was like a great light.

Well, here is very good news.  It is the promise of the gospel that even in the dark recesses of my soul, in spite of my ignorance and misunderstanding, there is light -- a Living Light who will protect and guide us as we labor to awaken our sight, if we faithfully seek and follow that Light.  We Christians call it the Light of the Christ, but of course, that light resides in all children of God, available for any human who seeks the good and who is willing to follow in faith.  As Jesus says, when he identifies with the “Good Shepherd,” “And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold and one shepherd.”  

Now, at times, in the narrowness of our collective ego, the Christian Church has interpreted such statements as a call to triumphalist expansion of the Christian religion – “convert the world”.  But I see that as a misunderstanding of what Jesus says.    Rather, he is promising that as we awaken our sight – our understanding of who we are -- in our depths, we will begin to recognize the essential unity of the human family and the one Spirit of Goodness that unites us all.  There will be one shepherd because we will all eventually recognize the Spirit of the Good that seeks communion in the depths of every human heart and mind.   There shall be one flock, because as we better understand ourselves and others, we become aware that – in the Communion of the Good, we are one in spirit.  As Jesus says, “As ye have done it unto the least of these my brothers and sisters, ye have done it unto me.”

              So our scripture today teaches us about the gift of grace, the power of healing, the necessity of trust and the promise of enlightenment.  Altogether, it is most certainly the Good News.

              Thanks be to God.  Let us pray.

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