Eyes Opened

John 9
 1As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. 2His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"  3"Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life. 4As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. 5While I am in the world, I am the light of the world."  6Having said this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man's eyes. 7"Go," he told him, "wash in the Pool of Siloam" (this word means Sent). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing.  8His neighbors and those who had formerly seen him begging asked, "Isn't this the same man who used to sit and beg?" 9Some claimed that he was. Others said, "No, he only looks like him." But he himself insisted, "I am the man."  10"How then were your eyes opened?" they demanded.  11He replied, "The man they call Jesus made some mud and put it on my eyes. He told me to go to Siloam and wash. So I went and washed, and then I could see."  12"Where is this man?" they asked him. "I don't know," he said.

 13They brought to the Pharisees the man who had been blind. 14Now the day on which Jesus had made the mud and opened the man's eyes was a Sabbath. 15Therefore the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his sight. "He put mud on my eyes," the man replied, "and I washed, and now I see."  16Some of the Pharisees said, "This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath." But others asked, "How can a sinner do such miraculous signs?" So they were divided.  17Finally they turned again to the blind man, "What have you to say about him? It was your eyes he opened." The man replied, "He is a prophet."  18The Jews still did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they sent for the man's parents. 19"Is this your son?" they asked. "Is this the one you say was born blind? How is it that now he can see?"

 20"We know he is our son," the parents answered, "and we know he was born blind. 21But how he can see now, or who opened his eyes, we don't know. Ask him. He is of age; he will speak for himself." 22His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews, for already the Jews had decided that anyone who acknowledged that Jesus was the Christ[a] would be put out of the synagogue. 23That was why his parents said, "He is of age; ask him."

 24A second time they summoned the man who had been blind. "Give glory to God,[b]" they said. "We know this man is a sinner."  25He replied, "Whether he is a sinner or not, I don't know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!"  26Then they asked him, "What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?"  27He answered, "I have told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples, too?"  28Then they hurled insults at him and said, "You are this fellow's disciple! We are disciples of Moses! 29We know that God spoke to Moses, but as for this fellow, we don't even know where he comes from."  30The man answered, "Now that is remarkable! You don't know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. 31We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly man who does his will. 32Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. 33If this man were not from God, he could do nothing."  34To this they replied, "You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!" And they threw him out.

 35Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and when he found him, he said, "Do you believe in the Son of Man?"  36"Who is he, sir?" the man asked. "Tell me so that I may believe in him."  37Jesus said, "You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you."  38Then the man said, "Lord, I believe," and he worshiped him.  39Jesus said, "For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind."  40Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, "What? Are we blind too?" 41Jesus said, "If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.


My family comes from a small town, not too far outside Charleston. Charleston is a pretty diverse city so you’d think that being close would affect us out in the country, but really, we were pretty much the Deep South, and we were somewhat secluded and homogenous. Growing up in a place like that means you aren’t exposed to a wide range of experiences that the world has to offer. The world is only as big as the high school football stadium. I grew up thinking that everything I needed to know about life I could have learned in our town. I grew up thinking I wasn’t ignorant of anything. And then I moved the 45 miles to Charleston for college. I’ll never forget the kind of culture shock of my first semester. I didn’t know that my whole life I’d been blind to a whole world around me. I met students from all over the country and all over the world. I met people with different political ideologies, religious leanings, and sexual orientations.

I’ll say, while this entrée into a broader world was eye opening, it wasn’t easy. I wasn’t looking for change. I wasn’t looking for my eyes to be opened. And when they were, I didn’t always like what I saw. When my world suddenly expanded, what I saw sometimes wasn’t all that pleasant. Because with different ideologies, leanings, and orientations comes just that— difference. Because my eyes were opened, I was stretched and pulled and questioned and challenged.

And so it was with the man blind from birth when Jesus came into his life. Jesus and his disciples were walking along and encountered this man, a man who had never seen the world around him. He had never had sight and did not even know what he was missing, probably. In fact, he wasn’t even looking to be healed. He didn’t seek Jesus out. Jesus came into this man’s life and opened his eyes, and before he knew what hit him, he began to be pressed and stretched and questioned and challenged. When this man’s eyes were opened, what he saw was a lot of ugliness. He saw the infighting among his neighbors. He saw the power struggles that existed in his community, power struggles that set the Pharisees at an uneasy posture. He saw his parents hauled in for questioning and he saw them sort of throw him under the bus. They said, “Don’t ask us. Ask him. We aren’t a part of this.”

This man who was once blind and left alone to his own business, now sees and what he sees is a community of turmoil. For me, at first glance, I’m almost sad Jesus didn’t leave this man alone, let him be happy in his limited world. After all, I was happy growing up in my small town, where all I knew outside of my little area was on the news and, thus, far removed. My world was limited, but I didn’t really feel its limits. When I looked around, most everyone was like me so there wasn’t much conflict. Now I have been exposed to a much bigger world, and I have seen its ugliness, its conflict, and its confusion. In this man’s world, when he was blind, people left him alone. He didn’t have to make choices, answer questions about what he believes. He didn’t have to answer any questions about who he follows and what his theological grounding is. But Jesus came along, opened his eyes, and opened him up to a world of questions, questions without answers that will ever satisfy everyone.

But rather than responding in anger, rather than looking back to the days of his blindness, this man confesses Jesus as Lord. The Pharisees ask him who Jesus is and how it is that he has performed this miracle. His response: I don’t know all of that, but I do know this. My life is changed and now I see. And when he met Jesus again, because his eyes had been opened, he recognized him and witnessed to his identity when he said, “Lord, I believe.”

Like the blind man confessed, I must confess what I know. I don’t know how exactly God works or what God looks like, but I do know this. In everything I see, I see God. God is at work, ever-present. God comes to us before we know that’s what we need, opening our eyes and moving with us. And what I know is that as we continue to move through this world, we see more and more, experience more and more. Some of it is hard. Some of it challenges us. It’s different and it’s other. But what we see when we recognize God’s overwhelming presence is the beauty that comes to us when our eyes are opened. We recognize that the world is much bigger than our backyard and this God-breathed, grace-filled world is beautiful, even when it looks ugly from our outsider’s view.

What all this means is that we cannot be content to stay inside this church building, comfortable with the walls between us and the rest of the world. God has come to us, pouring grace and mercy over us, opening our eyes to God’s work and to God’s world. We must push outside these comfortable walls to see, to really see. As we do this, let us go out and confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. And amidst all of what we see as conflict and difference let us embrace each other and celebrate our graceful difference because we are all one in Christ Jesus.

Happy Birthday, Holy Spirit

Prayer is a funny thing. I wish I prayed more. I wish I was better at it. I wish I knew the right words or I wish I could focus my thoughts better. I wish the world around me didn't bleed into my prayers. I am reminded of the anonymous Russian pilgrim who set out to fulfill the Pauline command to pray without ceasing. He wandered the country looking for some wise person to tell him how this could become accomplished. And a piece of advice he received was to pray the Jesus prayer (Jesus, have mercy on me, a sinner) over and over again, 3000 times a day, 6000 times a day, and so on. I think about that and can't help but think of the tragic character Franny in Salinger's Franny and Zooey who went literally crazy with the prayer on her lips. And then I go back to the pilgrim who learned the most important lesson about praying that prayer over and over again. It was that once the prayers of his lips became the prayers of his heart, then he would pray without ceasing. I love that lesson, and I try to think of the pilgrim (and not Franny) when I reflect on it. The prayer of my heart, not just the prayer of my lips.

Ah, yes! If only it were that simple...

I wish I could spend some time earnestly learning how to pray better, stronger, more authentically. I wish everything I did was so pointed towards God that everything I did was a prayer to God. But it's not the case, not for me. I simply don't know how. I will struggle with it, struggle with my thoughts and feelings, and my communication with the divine, and I will search for the words and the right heart and all that forever. Which, then, leads me to the title of this blog. Happy Birthday, Holy Spirit! Today is Pentecost, 50 days after Easter. Today is the day we celebrate the Holy Spirit depended on those gathered. The Holy Spirit which was sent as an advocate, sent to show us that God is still here, God is still with us. God has not left us alone. Even as we struggle, God knows and God hears. And what's even better is that God intercedes for us when we aren't strong enough to do or say or feel or be as we ought. My most favorite, most comforting, passage in all of scripture comes from Romans 8: "Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God" (v.26-27). Sighs, sighs too deep for words.

Praise God for the coming of the Holy Spirit so that men and women will prophesy and the old shall dream dreams and the young shall have visions. Praise God for the Holy Spirit who intercedes for us when we can't for ourselves. Come, Holy Spirit, come.