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Sight

Blindness is a dreadful afflictionA blind man begging on the side of the road was a familiar sight in ancient Israel. But the man we read about in John 9 wasn’t blind because of the dusty roads and disease-laden air: he had been born blind. In answer to the disciples’ question about who was to blame, Jesus responded by pointing to the purpose of the man’s blindness – it was so that God’s power through Jesus to give sight might be revealed. Here and elsewhere Jesus implies that physical blindness is an outcome of living in a fallen world.

Sight. Jesus’ stunning miracle is told simply. Significantly, it was another occasion when he didn’t expect ‘faith’ before he acted. He took the initiative. The faith Jesus called for was in response to his command to go and wash. It was only when the man obeyed Jesus’ word of instruction that he came back seeing.

In the neighborhood conversations that John reports (9:8-12), we get the sense that when the man went home, everyone was talking about it. ‘How can you see?’ they asked when he affirmed that he was the former blind beggar. His response is simple and direct: ‘The man Jesus healed me.’ It’s a moving, straightforward testimony, a wonderful model for us all.

Spiritual sight. As John 9 unfolds, it becomes increasingly evident that the miraculous healing of the man’s physical blindness becomes a metaphor for the way God heals our spiritual blindness. The flow of John’s Gospel and the cumulative impact of his narrative, gently but firmly challenge us to ask, ‘Who is Jesus’?

In John chapter 9, four conversations unfold in the aftermath of this healing. The healed man was ejected from the synagogue by the religious leaders. But Jesus sought him out. ‘Do you believe in the Son of Man?’ Jesus asked. The man’s response was candid: ‘Who is he that I may believe?’ ‘You have seen him,’ Jesus said. ‘The one who is speaking to you is he.’  We can only begin to imagine the awesome implications of Jesus’ words that day. And the man responded: ‘Lord, I believe.’ John tells us the man worshiped Jesus as though he were God.

There are few mountain peaks higher than this in John’s Gospel. The  healed man had progressed from speaking of Jesus as the man (9:11); to calling him a prophet (9:17); and then, this man must be from God (9:33). Finally, he worshiped Jesus as Lord. Jesus had not only given this man physical sight but had opened his spiritual eyes.

It’s a picture of the road many travel in coming to faith. Because Christian faith involves a relationship with Jesus Christ, it takes time for us to realize who Jesus really is. We come to see that he is a man – he did live; then we see that he is more than a man – he’s a prophet; then we see he’s more than a prophet – that he is from God, that he is God.

Open our eyes Lord. There is something else here. Just as Jesus took the initiative to heal the blind man, so we need him to open the eyes of our hearts. In our willfulness we are blind to the truth that he is from God, come to restore our spiritual sight and to give us life.

Revivals occur when God’s people pray, not just for themselves, but that the Lord in his mercy will continue his work of opening blind eyes. Let’s commit to pray, and also to playing our part, helping family and friends along the path to a faith that worships Jesus Christ as Lord.

Resurrection

Death is not something we usually bring up in everyday conversation. It’s not polite. Some may recall Woody Allen’s words: “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work… I want to achieve it through not dying”. Yet death is the certainty we all face, which is why literature, film and philosophy so often dwell upon themes of our mortality. But it’s rare that anyone claims they can do anything about it – death is taken as an inevitability.

But does death need to be the end of life?

Life had been heating up for Jesus in Jerusalem in the weeks before his arrest and crucifixion – the Jewish leaders had attempted to stone him (John 10:31) for his apparent blasphemy. So he left the city for the region east of the Jordan river. There he learned that his friend Lazarus, brother of Martha and Mary, was dying in the village of Bethany, near Jerusalem.

Learning that Lazarus had died, and against the advice of his disciples who feared the Jewish leaders, Jesus returned to Bethany where he was met by Martha. In the course of talking with her he made this amazing assertion:

“I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die” ( John 11:25).

It’s important we notice what Jesus was saying. He didn’t say, ‘I promise resurrection and life’, or ‘I procure’, or even ‘I bring resurrection.’  He said, ‘I am the resurrection and the life.’  Unless he is one with God, he is the worst charlatan of all.

Pointing out the options we have about Jesus, C.S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity: “Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

The witness of Jesus’ own resurrection and the New Testament, the evidence of history and the existence of the Christian church, all point to the conclusion that Jesus’ words are the truth. Dr. John Lennox, Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University, has said in a recent article that can be found at the Australian national broadcaster (the ABC): “The Christian gospel is based squarely on a miracle. It was the miracle of the resurrection of Christ that started it going, and that same miracle is its central message.”

The question that Jesus put to Martha at the time of Lazarus’ death, he puts to us today: “Do you believe this?” If you do believe this, what change has this made to your relationship with Jesus? How will this affect your life including conversations with people you meet at work and in the wider community?

A prayer for Easter: Almighty God, you have conquered death through your dearly beloved Son Jesus Christ and have opened to us the gate of everlasting life: grant us by your grace to set our mind on things above, so that by your continual help our whole life may be transformed; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit in everlasting glory. Amen. (Book of Common Prayer, Easter Day)

Regret

Everyone has regrets. We regret words we let fly in haste; the opportunities we missed or messed up; the relationships we let slip and the ones that we should never have begun. There are all those past actions for which ‘redemption’ seems impossible. Arthur Miller, the playwright, put it this way, ‘Maybe all one can do, is hope to end up with the right regrets.’

A woman at a well in Samaria  whom Jesus encountered long ago, would have agreed. Like most of us, she longed for happiness, but happiness had eluded her. Five failed marriages testified to that. Hoping that love and marriage would give her life meaning and happiness, she had thought each new man was Mr. Right. But each time she made the same mistake. Her life was a mess. She felt insecure, lonely, and dissatisfied.

Jesus, we learn, was doing something unusual for a Jewish man: he was traveling through Samaria. We read about it in John 4:1-42. He transgressed social taboos – he was a Jew speaking with a Samaritan; and what’s more, he, a man, was having a private conversation with a woman in public. But clearly Jesus was not bothered by social custom. He spoke then, as he speaks to you and me today, with equal concern and equal respect.

Asking the woman for water, he gently directed her to the subject he wanted her to consider – the subject of living water. This gave him the opportunity to touch on the regrets in her life. Through this conversation we begin to see that Jesus offers us water of such vitality that it satisfies our deep inner spiritual thirst.

‘How does he do this?’ we ask. In his conversation with the woman that day, Jesus was anticipating the events of the first Good Friday, his death by crucifixion, which later writers went on to explain. So, Paul the Apostle, in his Letter to the Galatians tells us: Christ died for our sins (1:4). Jesus did not die simply to reveal God’s love for us. Rather he died to make the one, perfect and sufficient sacrifice for all our sins.

The New Testament is consistent and insistent that Jesus is the answer to the regrets and emptiness that gnaw our souls.

  1.  Most of us aren’t willing to admit such a reality, and the woman that day was no exception. We pretend everything is all right, but truth be told, we all live a lot closer to despair than we like to think. We activate all kinds of defense mechanisms against anything that threatens to expose our inward spiritual poverty. Deep down we have a real spiritual longing. If we are going to find Jesus’ answer to our regrets we have to be willing to acknowledge our need and turn afresh to only one who can rescue us.

As the hymn-writer, William R. Newell put it:

Mercy there was great, and grace was free;
Pardon there was multiplied to me;
There my burdened soul found liberty,  At Calvary.

Failure

No one likes failure. You may never have experienced it, but it happens, even to the smartest and wisest of people – physicians when they see a patient die knowing they might have done better; Wall Street brokers when they give bad advice to their clients. And, while we may find it hard to acknowledge, too often we fail those we love most. If we have a conscience, we are embarrassed. A sense of failure can wound us deeply.

As another Easter season is upon us it is worth taking a moment to consider the failure of two of Jesus’ close followers – Judas and Peter.

Judas. We read in John’s Gospel that six days before the Passover Jesus and his followers had dinner with their friends, Martha, Mary and Lazarus. During the meal Mary broke open a jar of very expensive perfume oil and poured it over Jesus’ feet. Judas’s response was to ask, ‘Why wasn’t the perfume sold and the money given to the poor?’ John tells us that Jesus said this, ‘not because he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief (John 12:6).’

Judas’ concern for the poor was hypocritical, for underneath he was a greedy man. And that is why his love for Jesus proved to be conditional. That’s why his kiss at the Passover meal turned out to be treacherous, for he was the kind of follower who supported Jesus as long as he thought there was something in it for him. When Judas saw that Jesus was not fulfilling his expectations he cast him off.

Judas had a choice. He had been a privileged follower of Jesus, but at the end of three years he chose to reject him. His decision was his own, not mechanistically predetermined. The other Gospel writers tell us that later, realizing what he had done, he was filled with self-pity and committed suicide.

Peter’s problem was pride. Luke tells us that Peter denied Jesus three times and at the third denial the rooster crowed. At that, Jesus turned and looked across at Peter (Luke 22:61). What was in that look of Jesus – reproach, disappointment, dismissal? I suspect it was love – love for a failure.

Luke tells us that Peter went out and wept bitterly. His tears weren’t those of a sulky child, or a romantic, wanting to relieve overwrought emotion. His tears were those of a penitent who is honest about failure and desires to turn and follow the right course. Seeing Jesus’ look he was both humbled and repentant.

Judas and Peter. Let me ask: How do you intend to cope with failure? We’ve all disappointed the Lord – betrayed him, turned our backs on him – sometimes for many years. We may have sold him for silver, a career, or a relationship. There may have been times when we’ve denied him and said we don’t know him.

The test is not the dimension of our sin, but our response to failure – self-pity or repentance? God does not forgive remorse but he does forgive the repentant heart.

A prayer of confession: Almighty and most merciful God, I have gone my own way, not loving you as I ought, nor loving my neighbors as I should. I have done what I ought not to have done, and I have not done what I ought to have done. I justly deserve your condemnation. Father, forgive me. Turn my heart to love and obey your will. Strengthen me by your Spirit to live and work for your glory, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Tears

Television news loves to capture the tears of grieving people. News editors are aware that other people’s tragedies capture our attention: we are drawn to tragedy and catastrophe as long as it doesn’t affect us.

Jesus’ tears. Considering the way that news editors want to capture tears, it is striking that Luke records Jesus’ tears as he entered the city of Jerusalem on the first ‘Palm Sunday’. Luke uses a word for deep sorrow: As Jesus came near and saw the city, he wept over it… (19:41).

Earlier in his narrative Luke records Jesus’ moving lament over Jerusalem: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather you together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing” (13:34).

Jerusalem was much in Jesus’ thoughts: he knew he would die there. But his lament and his tears were not for himself. Rather, they are a vivid image of his extraordinary compassion for God’s ancient people. It was a unique opportunity for them to meet with divinity, personally.

Paradise lost. Men and women do not perish because God is just an angry God, as the movie NOAH would have us think. We only have ourselves to blame. ‘I would have gathered you as a hen would gather her chicks’, Jesus said, ‘but you were not willing.’ He may be saying the same about some of us as we read this. He offers us joy, but we casually turn our backs. He weeps with sadness, but we harden our hearts. He gives us his promise, but we confidently carry on. ‘You can choose’, Jesus says.

Knowing Jesus. Let me ask, how seriously do you treat Jesus? How well do you know him? As you prepare for Good Friday and Easter have you considered setting aside time to read Luke’s narrative of Jesus’ death and resurrection (19:41-24:53)? You may find it useful to have a readable commentary with you (at the risk of a personal reference, my commentary, Reading Luke Today: An Unexpected God is available online through Matthiasmedia (USA) – http://www.matthiasmedia.com/growth/commentaries/ or Amazon – www.amazon.com.)

Jesus wept for the lost, but he also acted. So seriously did he take our plight that he sacrificed his life for us at Calvary.

We do not have to die to reconcile people to God: Jesus has done that for us all. But what of the lost of our age? Have you ever wept for your family, friends, your community, even enemies? In every age, God’s people have.

Do you pray for family and friends? Do you look for opportunities to talk with them about the Easter story? Do you ever comment on Jesus’ words on the cross, ‘Father, forgive them,’ and ‘Today you will be with me in paradise’? And, do you long to explore with them the way Jesus’ resurrection validates all he said and did, as well as his promises about paradise restored?