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.  

 

The Inner Pharisee

Last week I was “conferring”,  I was at the Haden Institute, Dream and Spirituality Conference in Hendersonville North Carolina.  I was a tad worried about crossing the border into Trumpland.  Ironically, I had the easiest border crossing I have ever had.  There was only one car ahead of me in the line at the booth and the border guard just asked me what I was going to do in Hendersonville N.C. When I responded I was going to a Conference, he asked what I would be “conferring about”.  I advised “dreams and spirituality” he gave we a funny look (as usually happens), and sent me on my way.

Lorna and I have gone to this conference for many years.  Lorna couldn’t go this year because she had a family wedding to go to in Ottawa.  I had already committed to lead dream groups and a workshop so I  miss the event.  The workshop was entitled The Ego, The Bible, and the Spiritual Journey.  It is based on my book The Ego and the Bible which explores the role of the ego in many of the bible stories   (I would be pleased to give you information about the workshop or the book).  However, enough about the commercial.

In addition to the annual conference, the Haden Institute trains people to lead dream groups and to be spiritual directors.  I have graduated form both programs and find leading dream groups and being a spiritual director to be a very rewarding ministry.   In the approach dreams are considered God’s Forgotten Language; God speaks to us in our dreams but we have forgotten how to listen and understand the language of God in our dreams.  This is true of many ways in which God speaks to us.  My approach to spiritual direction is to help Directees understand how God is speaking to them and how to respond and deepen their relationship with God.

To give you an example God speaking to me in a dream, I awoke one mooring at the Conference and I remembered a phrase that was presented to me in a dream; “policies known and unknown”.  That was all I remembered; it may have been part of a larger dream but I didn’t remember anything else. It was an interesting message but it really caught my attention later at the Eucharist that morning (each day started with a worship service at the beautiful outdoor chapel at the Kanuga Conference Center).  The Rt. Rev. Larry Maze, retired Bishop of Arkansas was presiding and preaching. 

The Gospel for the day was John 9: 1-8; this is the story of Jesus healing the man born blind.  The Pharisees were critical of Jesus doing the miracle because it was on the Sabbath and Jesus broke the Holiness code by working on the Sabbath.  In the sermon (I am paraphrasing here and Larry was much more eloquent) Larry noted that the Pharisees were concerned with maintaining the Holiness Code because it had worked well for the Jewish people.  It had enables them to survive and continue as God’s chosen people for a long time under trying circumstances.  Some people had to suffer because of the code but it was for the greater good and was from God.  However, the Pharisees had allowed the Holiness Code to become an idol and they wanted the Jews to serve the idol rather than God. 

As Larry noted we all have rules which we learned while we were growing up.  They were necessary as we were growing up to help us and to protect us.  We know many of these rules but others are often not in our awareness.  We all have an inner Pharisee who wants us to obey these rules and keep us on the straight and narrow path.  However, for the inner Pharisee these rules are God.  Some of these rules will prevent or hinder us for living life fully as God intends.  They can prevent us from being and becoming the people that God intends us to be.  The message I received in my dream was to explore the “policies known and unknown” in my life which are preventing me from being the person God intends me to be. 

After much work reflection and trial and error and mistakes false starts I have explored many of the rules and regulations and policies which my inner Pharisee want desperately for me to follow.  The dream image is confirming I still have work to do to discover those unknown policies.  I invite you to reflect on what are the policies that your inner Pharisee holds are a god if not God.  

Sermon September 27, 2015: 17th Sunday after Trinity

Some years ago I learned an approach to understanding the Gospel.  There are actually three rules to this approach.  The first of the rules is, ‘the Gospel is always astonishing’. The second rule is ‘The Gospel is not fair’. Finally, ‘in the Gospel, God always acts first’. 

Now I must admit that I don’t always use these rules.  However, I have found that when I do they can be helpful in trying to figure out what the Gospel is saying to me in the current moment.  I thought of this approach when I read today’s Gospel.  Specifically, I was surprized/astonished when I read that Jesus went to the house of the chief Pharisee.  Now, if I had been asked I would have said that this is the last place that I would expect Jesus to be.  It is like Daniel going into the lions’ den voluntarily.  Jesus was never reluctant to criticise the Pharisees and hold them to account for their approach to religion and their seemingly making a god of the law e.g. the Sabbath is made for man and not man for the Sabbath.  

Here we have the Gospel with Jesus breaking bread at the chief Pharisee’s house.  We might have thought that perhaps the fence—or should I say chasm—that separated the Pharisees from Jesus might have been mended and bridged. 

But we are disabused from that possibility almost immediately.  We are told, “that they watched him.”  In effect they had invited Jesus to dinner to do what they always seemed to do; try and catch him in some faux pas of religious law so that they could condemn him and his message.  That, of course, in itself is a breaking of the rules of hospitality.  That is not what a host should do.  The host should welcome a guest and put him or her in the place of honour. 

The drama unfolds and we have what seems to be a set-up by the host.  There is a man among them who has dropsy.  Now I wasn’t actually sure what dropsy is.  I looked it up on the source of all knowledge—I Googled it and found out.  It is the old term for Oedema which is an observable swelling caused by accumulation of fluid in the bodily tissue.  So it seems that this man—who had a condition that Jesus couldn’t miss—was invited there to be bait to trap Jesus in a blasphemy.  They probably thought that Jesus might be moved by his condition and heal him.  And as we are told it is the Sabbath and therefore he would have performed work on the Sabbath and broken the Holiness code.

However, Jesus is no fool (except perhaps for Christ). He beats them to the punch-line so to speak.  He asks the assembled religious leaders and lawyers, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath day?”  They know that they have been caught in the trap they set for Jesus so they do the only thing they can and say nothing.  He goes ahead and heals the man.  He doesn’t however stop there.  He uses the opportunity to show them what they should know as religious leaders.  He shows them that the law does allow work to be done if it is for compassionate reasons.  They would rescue an animal that was in need of saving.  Would not God expect the same for His people? 

He then gives them the final lesson—the icing on the spiritual cake so to speak.  He gives them a lesson in true hospitality and shows them what the spirit of the law is.  He shows them that the first shall be last and the last shall be first.  They are not to hold that they are the important ones.  They are to humble themselves. They are to be poor in spirit as Jesus will later tell us in Beatitudes.  Then they will be blessed. 

  

Where does this leave us?  Do we then have to remember to show true hospitality to other?  That sounds fairly easy doesn’t it?  If we invite someone to dinner we should not do it for nefarious reasons.  All well and good.  However, with Jesus I don’t think we get off that easy.  Jesus is calling us to true humility in all aspects of life.  It is like the Pharisee who is beside the tax collector praying “Thank God I am not like the tax collector”.  We are like that when we hold ourselves to deserve the best seat at the table in all aspect of life we are not humbling ourselves as we are called to do by Jesus. 

When we engage with someone what kind of an internal conversation do we have?  Do we compare ourselves to the other person and see where we are better or not as good as that person?  Do we put that person in a category of worthy of our friendship or even our attention?  We consider if this person is worth our while.  What do we think about those who are struggling? Do we categorize them as the worthy poor who should get our help or even the help of government?  So we think that refugees don’t deserve our help because they are probably terrorist anyway.  Jesus didn’t worry about the worthiness of the man with dropsy—he healed him. 

Admittedly it is hard to overcome what seems to be our natural inclination to judge others. However, Jesus also said judge not lest you be judged.  It is hard not to judge and in some cases we need to judge; is something positive of negative; is someone acting for the benefit of others or out of selfishness?  But when we judge we are called to see the child that God has created in each person we meet.  We are called to see Jesus’ face in the face of the homeless person and the neighbour we don’t get along with.  We are called to love one another as Jesus loves us.  It doesn’t seem easy but we are called to travel that road.  It is a journey we were called to take at our baptism and it is one that continues all our life.  Amen.

True Hospitality; True Compassion

Last night Lorna and I watched Saving Private Ryan—with interruptions to watch the lunar eclipse which was fascinating.  It was one of our VHS tape finds at Value Village in Charlottetown this year.    The movie was just as engaging as the first time we saw it.  This morning Lorna made a very interesting and insightful comment.  It would have been an even more interesting movie if Spielberg had given it a dark twist and it turned out that Private Ryan had lived and completely unredeemable life after being saved by the group of heroic U.S. soldiers who all gave their lives in the effort.  The ending has the Private Ryan character—played by Matt Damon—visiting the military cemetery in France in the present day and tearfully asking this wife to affirm that he had lived a good life i.e. one worthy of the sacrifice that had been made by those soldiers who died ‘Saving’ him.  They were sent to bring Ryan to safety and to be discharged as he was the sole surviving son in a family—his three brothers having been killed in action. 

As I reflected on that insight I thought about it in the context of my sermon yesterday.  The subject of the sermon was the miracle performed by Jesus curing the man with dropsy at the home of the Chief Pharisee (Luke 14: 1-11).  This act of compassion was done by Jesus on the Sabbath and had been a set up by the religious authorities to catch Jesus in the sin of doing work on the Sabbath i.e. healing the man.  Jesus teaches them a lesson in true hospitality which, of course, the religious leaders did not show Jesus inviting him to dinner for nefarious purposes.

The connection between the Gospel lesson and the movie is related, I believe, to true hospitality.  Jesus did not determine if the man with dropsy deserved to be healed.  He acted out of compassion for the man.  The act of compassion by the military to save Private Ryan and spare his mother further tragedy would not have been lessened if Ryan had turned out to live a completely selfish or even evil life.  In the same way we do not know what kind of a life was lived by the man with dropsy.  He may have been moved to give his life to the glory of God like the one healed leper who returned to thank Jesus; however, he may not have.  That doesn’t change the nature of the act. 

There was one element of the movie that dealt with this quandary.  The band of brothers who were rescuing Ryan set a German soldier they had captured free.  He later reappears as a central character fighting against the U.S. soldiers who are defending a bridge.  He ends killing a number of the soldiers who rescue Ryan including the commanding officer played by Tom Hanks.  Lorna’s imagined ending to the movie would have truly made the viewer reflect more deeply on the nature of compassion and hospitality rather than having a Hollywood ending.  But then it was truly a Hollywood movie; a good one none-the-less.

In closing I can pose this question for all of us.  How do we show true hospitality and compassion to others?  I believe we do not do that by sitting back and turning our backs on the refugee crisis.  That is the issue facing us today.  There are, of course, ongoing ones we have to wrestle with every day.  Peace.  

Of Motes and Beams

Sermon July 13, 2014:  Fourth After Trinity

Luke 6: 36

Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to pull out the mote that is in thy brother’s eye.

We might call today’s lesson — rather than ‘of mice and men’ — ‘of motes and beams’.  I’m sure we know what a beam is — it is a very large piece of wood.  But what is a mote?  Well one definition of mote which I looked up is: ‘a very small piece of dust, dirt’.  So we get the comparison.  It is easy to understand that you might have a speck of dust in your eye.  Probably everyone here has had the experience — not a pleasant one but not something that is going to do you serious damage — perhaps unless you are driving along a mountainous road with no guard rails.  But having a beam in your eye — if you can imagine that — is certainly going to give you lots of trouble — if not permanent blindness.

Jesus then is setting up a comparison that it is impossible to misunderstand.  People are paying attention to the small things that they don’t approve of in others and they are blind to the big things that they should be paying attention to in themselves.  These are the hypocrites that Jesus is identifying when he declares, ‘Thou hypocrite’ or in modern English, ‘You hypocrite’. 

Let’s put this passage in context.  A lot has happened just before this passage.  Jesus has just passed through a grain field on the Sabbath and his disciples have sinned by doing work — they have picked some heads of grain to eat — being his disciples they probably didn’t always get regular meals.  The Pharisees criticize them for doing work on the Sabbath — I guess they hadn’t heard Jesus proclamation that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath.   After this, Jesus is criticized again by the Pharisees for healing a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath.  Elsewhere in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus doesn’t pull any punches regarding how he feels about the Pharisees, “But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.”

So Jesus does not think much of people who are hypocritical.  The biggest culprits in this sin are the Pharisees.  The Pharisees were religious laymen — there don’t seem to have been any women Pharisees — which might have been part of their problem.  They were a sect or social movement which was primarily interested in the law — which of course in that time and place was the Mosaic Code — and ensuring that the law was fulfilled and obeyed. 

They were condemned by Jesus many different times first because they seemed to be making a god of the law rather than the law being a way which would bring people closer to God.  Secondly — and specifically in today’s context — they were more concerned with the mote — the speck of dust — in other’s eyes than in the beam or log in their own eye.  They ‘shut up the kingdom of heaven against men’ — I believe that is the greatest sin in Jesus’ eyes.  They not only block their own way to the Kingdom of God but they block others from reaching the Kingdom. 

Well, where does that leave us today? None of us like to think of ourselves as hypocrites.  But of course Jesus is speaking to us as well as to the people around him.  I believe this is where we need to consider the motes and the beams.  Do we ever fall into the trap that Jesus identifies in the Pharisees?  Of course hypocrisy is probably as common today as it was in Jesus’ time.  It just may have different subject.  Today people are rarely criticized for working on the Sabbath.  However, I believe that we are all subject to the beam and mote problem. 

We all will fall into the problem — or sin to put it in religious language — of seeing faults in others before we see them in ourselves.  It is human nature to do this.  In fact we often see in others the things about ourselves that we don’t want to acknowledge. 

In the psychology of Carl Jung he calls this the shadow.  We identify and react to those things in others that we do not find acceptable in ourselves.  In effect we see the beam that is in our eye as being the beam even if it is only a mote in another person’s eye.  One way of telling when this happens is the strength of the reaction that you have to the actions of behaviour or even appearance of the other person.  If the strength of your reaction or the depth of the emotions that are stirred up are out of proportion to the event then you are probably dealing with an aspect of your shadow — an aspect of you self that is not acceptable to you.  In effect the beam that you see in the other person may in effect be closer to a mote and in truth is your own beam. 

I believe that this is important for us as Christians because we need to be able to do all we can to follow Jesus’ lessons.  If we realize that the fault — dear Horatio — is in ourselves and not all in the other — we are more able to do as Jesus commands.  The Gospel lessons begins, “Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.  ³⁷Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven”.  These are the attributes that Jesus believes are the important ones — not the minutia of following the law.  We are to love one another as he loves us.  As Paul says to the Church in Corinth, ‘And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity”.

If we are to live in true charity with our neighbours and ourselves we will be following Jesus commandment to love one another.  Amen