Having Eyes to See

I had cataract surgery about a month ago.  It has been very successful.  I now have 20/20 vision in both eyes.    I have been wearing glasses since I was about 7 years old and I couldn’t see much without my glasses.  They were the first thing I reached for after getting out of bed in the morning and took them off when I went to bed at night.  I still require reading glasses, however, it's a different world out there and I see it with new eyes.

I had the opportunity to preach on Sunday and, coincidentally, last Sunday’s Gospel reading was John 9: 1-14.  This is the account of Jesus giving sight to the man born blind at birth.  The Gospel reading has taken on a new meaning for me from the many times I read it previously.  I now see it with new eyes.  I was certainly not blind before the surgery, but it is a whole new world out there for me to take in.

I have had many favourite singers in my life – favouring songs by Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchel aPeter Paul and Mary, nd similar singers – one of my favourite songs for a long time has been one by Leonard Cohen or St. Leonard of Song as I like to call him.  You may know the one that begins with an H but I can’t say the title because we are in Lent.  However, I think I have a new favourite

I can see clearly now the rain is gone
I can see all obstacles in my way
Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind
It's gonna be a bright, bright sun shiny day
It's gonna be a bright, bright sun shiny day

So, this Gospel reading is an account of a blind man receiving his sight – a miracle performed by Jesus.  It was a not just any old miracle – the man was blind all his life – he was born blind.  This was undoubtedly seen as a miracle by the people in the account, “Since the world began was it not heard that any man opened the eyes of one that was born blind.”  This is wonderful for the man who now could see for the first time.  The story might have ended there if it was a fairy tale – now that he could see, he found his princess and they lived happily every after.  But stories of the people of God in the bible never seem to be that simple.  No, in his new life, in which he is able to see, he is caught up in the midst of quarrels and disagreements and schisms in Israel at that time.

The man who was blind, now could see.  However, he was not the only one in this Gospel who was blind.  There are many in the story who are blind and remain that way.  First, we have the neighbours who don’t believe what they see - they can’t believe their lying eyes – “Some said, This is he: others said, He is like him: but he said, I am he.”

Next, we have the Pharisees – you can always depend on them not to see what is before their eyes.  This could not be a miracle because Jesus broke the rules and healed on the Sabbath.  Some one who is a sinner could not perform God’s work.  Then there were others who believed the man was a fraud – he had not actually been blind. 

Then we had the man’s parents.  They were blinded by fear. They were afraid to acknowledge Jesus as the one who performed this wonderful thing for their son:

His parents answered, “We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; but we do not know how it is that now he sees, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself.” His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. 23Therefore his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.”

Finally, we again have the wilful blindness of the Pharisees.  They completely reject the man who had been given his sight.  They can’t believe what they have seen, “They answered him, “You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?” And they drove him out.” 

So, we can see for this Gospel, that there are many ways in which we can be blind – turn a blind eye to how God is working in the lives of these people.  It can happen through physical blindness – but more to the point it can happen because of disbelief, or fear, or denial, or doubt and so on.  The question for us today is, how are we blind – how do we turn a blind eye to where God is in our lives?

It is a challenge for us and for many Christians to actually see and hear what God is doing in our lives and in the world.  As with those gathered in our Gospel reading – the formerly blind man, the family, the neighbours, the Pharisees – we are blind or turn a blind eye to God acting in the world and in our lives.  We may see where God is calling us but, like the parents of the blind man, be afraid to respond to what we see. 

We may be like the Pharisees – yes, those enemies of Jesus – and believe that God could not be doing because God is using a sinner.  We may be stuck in our old ways and believe those ways are right and God could not be calling us to be a church in different ways. 

There is no question that to follow the example of Jesus – to hear and truly believe his teaching, to love one another as he loves us, is no easy thing – to put it mildly.  But as they say the journey begins with the first step.  One way that you can be on that journey is to recognize God’s presence in your lives right now.  God is present to us and offers us the opportunity to be on that journey.  I invite you to reflect on how the Triune God is present in your lives now.  It may be in the wonders of God’ creation – in the great outdoors.  It may be in music.  It may be in gathering to study holy scripture.  It may be helping with the community dinner.  It may be in worship and being part of gathering in the name of Jesus Christ – it only takes two or three gathered together. 

Once you identify that, see if you can deepen that relationship with God but continuing whatever it is and acknowledge how God is present in your life and give thanks to God regularly and often.  It may also mean trying new ways and seeing if you can identify God’s presence in new ways.  I have never been one who finds God’s presence in the midst of nature. 

I don’t do that naturally.  However, I have been enjoying being part of the Holy Strollers and walking with others in the great outdoors that God has created.  I am beginning to find God’s presence in those walks.  So, I invite you to try something new and see if you can identify God’s presence in a new way.

A wise person once said, give thanks to God in all things.  I would say, give thanks to God in as many ways as it is possible for you.  That would be a step on the journey that Jesus calls us to be on as Christians.  Then we will have eyes to see and ears to hear more fully God’s presence in our lives.  Something to consider on our journey.  

 

COVID Rears its Ugly Head

I can hear in my head the theme music for the movie Jaws:  duunnn dunnn… duuuunnnn duun…

Well, I can confirm that it is not necessarily safe to go into – well in this case not the water – but places where people gather – like churches – if you let your guard down about the reality of COVID.  I can hear the murmurs – COVID?! – that’s no longer a thing, is it?  After all, we have the vaccine for COVID and there are no reports in media or government press releases about COVID outbreaks, are there?

Well, let me assure you, or perhaps scare you, that COVID still is with us.  My wife Lorna came down with COVID after contact with someone – not quite sure who – in our church a week ago.  You know, church is where two or three or more are gathered in the name of our Saviour Jesus Christ.  Well, that’s just it, we are called as Christians to gather together.  That means if someone has symptoms of COVID and joins the gathering anyway or perhaps has no symptoms – they will likely infect others.  Our collective memories of COVID and the pandemic and all that we had to do, such as masking and hand washing and getting vaccinated have faded as time has passed.

Lorna came down with symptoms much like those of a cold – sniffles, cough, fever, and feeling lousy etc.  Due to unrelenting brain fog (her words), she suspected that it was more than a cold and dug out an old COVID test kit and, sure enough, the two lines appeared showing she tested positive for COVID – not a good thing in this case where you want to see a negative result. 

Now Lorna and I are fully up to date on our vaccinations.  Being vaccinated does not make you immune but will just lessen the severity of the symptoms.  I am symptom-free at this point and may have escaped.  Perhaps as result of being a special person; actually, just a matter of good luck.  However, that doesn’t mean I am free of COVID and have been lying low until I get a test kit and check it out.  These are not as readily available as they were at the height of the pandemic. 

There is also conflicting information online at government websites.  One site I checked said that if you are symptom-free you don’t have to isolate, but others say you should isolate if you are in contact with an infected person. 

We both stayed home from church last Sunday.  We have heard of a number of people with symptoms who have tested positive or suspect they have COVID - there may be more who are infectious but don’t know they are.  Our church – like many – has a demographic that skews to the older age – so they are in the vulnerable category, as Lorna and I are, and may be susceptible to symptoms that are more serious.  I believe it is a good idea that organizations where people congregate have policies that reinforce the necessity for people to stay home if they have symptoms that could mean they are infectious.  Also reinforcing rules around hand-sanitizing and providing hand sanitizing gel are good ideas.  We must not let our collective and individual guards down. 

Remember, the water may look safe – but who knows what lurks beneath the surface.  Blessings indeed. 

So Many 40’s

We are in the midst of the season of Lent in the Christian calendar.  Lent is forty days long, excluding Sundays which are of Lent but not in Lent.  Last Sunday was the second Sunday of Lent.  I have been thinking of the fact that the number forty (40) occurs frequently in the bible.  If you are familiar with the bible, I’m sure you can think of some of the times when this happens.  Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness after his baptism in the Jordan River by John the Baptist.  It rained for 40 days and nights during the flood which God sent to cover the earth.  The Israelites were in the wilderness for 40 years after escaping from slavery in Egypt.  Moses was on Mount Sinai for 40 days and night in his encounter with YHWH (God).    That is just a few of the better-known examples of the number 40 occurring in the bible.  However, if we take a bit of a dive into this, we will find there are many more – including some that are rather obscure e.g. the Egyptians spent 40 days embalming the body of Jacob – how’s that for obscure.   

So, is this just a coincidence – or is there a deeper meaning in the number 40 than just a measurement of mathematics or a length of time?  Well, to explore this I did what most people would do these days, I started with a question to AI.  I found out that the number 40 occurs 146 times in the Old Testament and New Testament.  This is the type of question that AI is good at answering. As noted above, there are occurrences where the number seems to be significant and others where it is not so much.

Here’s a few more examples:

·         Jesus appeared to his disciples for 40 days between his resurrection and ascension

·         Elijah traveled 40 days and 40 nights without food to Mount Horeb

·         The first three kings of Israel—Saul, David, and Solomon—each reigned for 40 years

·         Several judges, including Othniel, Deborah, Barak, and Eli, served for 40 years.

·         The holy of holies in the Temple was 40 cubits long 

·         Mosaic Law allowed a maximum of 40 lashes (stripes) for a guilty person

·         Goliath taunted the army of Israel for 40 days before David defeated him

·         The prophet Jonah warned that Nineveh would be destroyed in 40 days

I will leave it to you to decide if the examples are significant or not – for me some are and some don’t seem to be.  However, taking the big picture view, it seems to me that 40 has a significance beyond just its use as a measurement or in counting.  Looking at the symbolic meaning of the number, we find that 40 can symbolize completion.  Forty can be used to represent a complete generation.  Turning to another source for symbols, the Penguin Dictionary of Symbols states, “the number forty marks the completion of a cycle, ending in a radical change or a passage to a fresh level of activity or of living.”  Symbols can be difficult to tie down their meaning.  However, it does give us a different way of looking at the biblical stories.  For me, the 40 in those stories don’t as much mean a measurement but, rather, can represent the story of completion.  Whether the Israelites were actually in the wilderness for 40 years, rather it was a completion of their time of preparation for entering into the Promised Land to fulfill the promise that God had made to Moses. In the bigger picture, we are not ready to move to the next phase of something until we have completed the current stage we are living in.  That’s why we are not born fully formed – like Athena who came fully formed out of Zeus’ forehead.  We need to grow through the stages of life from infancy to childhood to adult and on.  Hopefully we will continue growing throughout our lives.

Something to consider and pray about in Lent.  May your Lent be a blessed one.