Reverend Daniel England
February 17, 2008
"The Hamburger, the Statue and the Blind Man"

So a couple of weeks ago, I was down the street at the Beach House Restaurant in the hour or so between finishing my work for the day here and the beginning of the Bible study. I ordered a hamburger and fries. Now I don’t usually order fries but the Beach House has particularly good fries, nice and thin and hot and done just right and if you skipped breakfast this morning I’m sorry.

So the man delivers my plate and I begin to eat. And almost immediately, I ran into ketchup trouble. It seemed every time I reached around and dipped a fry into the ketchup and then brought it up to eat, some little bit of ketchup would drip, on my sweater, or on my trousers or one time, on my shoe. After a few times at this, interrupted I have to say by a few non-ketchup dripping successes, it occurred to me that I was going to show up at the Bible study looking like one of the characters in "The Departed". So, with painful slowness, my mind began to analyze the situation and I realized that I had accepted the plate as it had been given to me with the hamburger in front, the french fries in the back and the ketchup on the back rim. That meant that to ketchup my fries (I am now using the verbal form of ketchup) to ketchup my fries, I had to reach around the burger and load up a fry and draw it across the plate. This was simply too much hang time for the ketchup.

So, I did the only thing I could. I turned the plate. And my ketchup problem disappeared.

I have reflected on this. Why would I sit there, moment by moment increasing my debt to the dry cleaners and risking my reputation as a reasonably hygienic person with my plate in the wrong position? The answer is, it came that way and I got used to it. Lord, how hard it is to change?

The politicians this year are all about change. Of course what they mean is that we should change politicians. What most people mean is that the politicians should change. But it is hard to change because to be a politician, you have to believe in yourself no matter what – which is dangerous.

I heard a story of a politician who was out trying to get votes so he drove up to a house on a dirt road, got out of his car and walked up to the door, speech prepared. All he was able to say was, "Good day, madam, my name is…" and the woman started in. "I know who you are you son of a goose. You’re the lowdownest, floor flushing, double-talking, graft taking miserable excuse for a public servant since Tammany Hall and that’s an insult to Tammany Hall. I wouldn’t vote for you if you were running for dogcatcher. Now get off my porch before I get my shotgun and do a bit of my own public service!" With that she slammed the door. So the politician shrugged, turned and went back to his car. He picked up a clipboard, took his pencil and ticked a box on the sheet of paper. Undecided.

Why is it so hard to change? From a plate on the counter, to relationships to our weight, to our attitudes to our way of seeing the world. Why is it so hard to change? And if it is hard to change in ordinary affairs – in things of diet, or matters of temper, or patterns of behavior – how much more difficult, it seems, is it to grow and change as Christians. David talked about the discipline of prayer last week. He had many wise things to say. Lots of valuable insights. And perhaps as you were sitting here, you thought to yourself, yes, that’s right, I need to pray more and deeper. So I ask you. Did you pray more and deeper this week? And if you did, will you be able to sustain it, and if you didn’t why not? Lord, how difficult it is to change.

Jesus in the story we heard from John 9, puts his finger on one reason it is so hard to change, especially spiritually. The Pharisees in this story cannot and do not change because they are wedded to a logic that they cannot untie. "We are disciples of Moses they say and Moses said to keep the Sabbath, but this man does not keep the Sabbath so he must be a sinner and therefore cannot have opened the eyes of this man." In other words, that’s where they were and that’s where they wanted to be. Jesus kept running into this. Do you remember his encounter with the lawyer in Matthew, when the lawyer stood up and asked Jesus a question? The record says, and he said, seeking to justify himself…

Seeking to justify himself. Do we not justify ourselves? There is perhaps no greater barrier to change in human beings that self-justification.

This last Christmas season, my wife and I went to Paris. Talk about justification – it’s not that we didn’t want to be with our relatives, we just needed a break. Anyway, we were there. And we visited the Louvre museum. And at some point, after the Italian painters and the Flemish painters and the Dutch painters, we were walking back through a large hall full of statues and we paused on a bench.

And suddenly there was a commotion. A large family of Italians were there and they had obviously decided to take picture. So one family member was designated as photographer and the rest lined up in front of this statue, a nude of a goddess. And as they just about got to the cheese part, the father of this clan reached up and grabbed the statue by the breast and smiled broadly. Well – out of nowhere came a female guard shouting and gesticulating and telling the man to unhand the statue and not to touch anything in the museum. Now mind you, she was speaking in French and the man was answering in Italian and I only spoke English, but that was the gist of it.

And then the man grabbed the guard and with a grin pulled her over to the family as if to invite her to be part of their family picture in front of the statue. Well, this sent the guard in to paroxysms of blistering French and a scolding I doubt the man had ever heard the likes of in his life. And then they moved on.

But I saw him again a few minutes later. His wife was having words with him this time. And do you know what he was doing? He was doing this. [gesture of defensiveness and guilt]. As if to say, what? I was just having a little fun. Whenever you hear the words "I was just…" there is self-justification going on.

I’m not overweight; I just appreciate food.
I’m not cheap; I’m just thrifty.
I’m not a bore; people like hearing my opinion.
I’m not harsh; I’m honest.
I don’t gossip; I report.
I’m not judgmental; I’m just realistic and she should be too.

Lord, how hard it is to change.

So what can we do?

First, as David said so well last week, we can pray. It is very difficult to justify oneself when you are on your knees confessing your sin, telling God of your struggles humbling yourself before him and praying for other people.

Second, we can study God’s word. One of the things that studying the Bible does is tell us a different story than the one we keep repeating to ourselves. Self-justification comes when we keep telling ourselves the same story we’ve made up about ourselves so that we don’t have to face ourselves. In the scriptures, God tells us his story about ourselves. And so when we read that in the Garden of Eden man and woman sinned, the first thing they did was to hide and then to blame each other. We need to hear that story because it is probably different from the one we tell ourselves.

God tells us a story about his son who so loved us that he died for us and meant to found a church full of people who were not grasping after themselves or their self interest but in the well being and healing and comfort and encouragement love of one another. We need to hear that story.

And I will tell you this. In the last few weeks that we have been doing this Bible study, I have been taken aback at how much my faith has grown. It’s always the same with God. You start out doing something because you have to – in my case, because a bunch of people were going to show up every Tuesday and Sunday – and before you know it, God is using that study of his word to make connections within me that I would never have seen otherwise. And I am stronger in my conviction of the truth of the gospel, of the reliability of the scriptures in their portrayal of Jesus and the early church and in the relevance of realities such as the incarnation for my life than ever before. I cannot tell you how much my faith has been helped by being reminded of that passage in II Corinthians 4 we studied, we have this treasure in earthen vessels. Studying the Bible is like hooking into a power line. It may shock you, it may kill you, but it will change you.

And finally there is the blind man.

Given the belief that sin caused disease, the Disciples asked Jesus who had sinned this man or his parents that he was born blind. Jesus says neither, he was born this way that God might be glorified. And he reaches down in the mud and he puts the mud on the man’s eyes and tells him to go wash in the pool. My there are a lot of pools in the New Testament and they are all significant.

So the man in faith, goes and washes and can see. He could have derided Jesus, he could have scoffed at the effort, he could have justified himself – I am born blind, what can I do? But he didn’t.

And the first thing that happens to him is self-knowledge. For some came and said it isn’t him, it is only one like him. But the man says, I am the man. You see, the first step in spiritual growth is knowing the truth about ourselves, not trying to be someone else. Yeah, truth be known that’s really me. Too caustic, too judgmental, too afraid that others will do better. That’s me.

So they say, how did this happen? And the man says, the man named Jesus made clay. That’s all Jesus is to him, a name. The man named Jesus. And really, that’s all we ever start with. Someone we’ve heard of named Jesus. We don’t know him, we don’t know much about him, we certainly don’t love him. He’s just a man named Jesus.

I find this man child-like in his honesty and simplicity. In this story he grows, but he always says things plainly. I understand that there are many many children here today. Rosemary Lamie, our Director of Church School, thought it would be good for the children to be in church and I agree. She asked me to do a children’s sermon and I disagreed. Too many things can go wrong. One pastor I heard about had prepared a clever children’s sermon about a squirrel. So gathered children around him, "Now children, we are here to talk about Jesus, because Jesus loves us and he especially loves children. Jesus loves each and every one of you. And he loves his creation too." Having satisfactorily made the transition to nature, the pastor held up a picture of a squirrel eating a nut. "What is this a picture of boys and girls?" He asked. They stared at it for a long moment and then one little boy raised his hand and said, "Well, I know it’s supposed to be a picture of Jesus, but it sure looks like a squirrel to me."

So the Pharisees hear about what had taken place, and they say, what happened? And he tells them. But he’s had a chance to think about it now. He’s born blind, he now sees. The Pharisees, the religious leaders couldn’t open his eyes and now they oppose him, just like God’s prophets of old were opposed by religious leaders. Who do you say that he is, they ask. A prophet, he says. Not just a man but a special man, a prophet. And many a person in their spiritual journey has gone through the same sequence. He’s a man, well, maybe more.

So they call his parents and the parents want nothing to do with all this. Yes he was born blind but it is nothing to do with us because they’d heard that followers of this Jesus could be put out of the country club, oh sorry, synagogue.

So they call him again. And they apply their logic that if he healed on the Sabbath he must be a sinner and therefore could not be from God. The man says, I don’t know anything about that. But one thing I do know. Once I was blind, and now I can see. And really this is the true beginning of faith in Christ – a personal encounter with him. Because until a man or a woman or a young person has this personal conviction, nothing else can follow. I may not know a lot about the Bible, or doctrine or the church or anything else. I’m willing to learn and I am willing to enter into some discipline to do it. But this I know. Once I was blind and now I can see. Once I had not Christ in my life, but now he’s there and I see things differently than I ever did before. I was after what everybody else was after, but now things are different. This I know.

Well, they said, he can’t be from God. And the man said, "Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing." Now look what’s happened. The man Jesus, the prophet Jesus, the man from God Jesus. And so they throw him out of the synagogue.

And when he hears about it, Jesus comes to find him. You might want to take some comfort from that this week. When you’re in trouble, Jesus will come to find you. So look for him.

Jesus says, do you believe in the son of man, by which he means, as those of you who have studied Mark already know, it is a title of messiah ship. You remembered that didn’t you.

The man says, I don’t know who he is. And Jesus says, it’s me. Do you believe in me. And the record says, the man says to him Lord, I believe and he worshipped him. Note the progression -- man Jesus, prophet Jesus, man from God Jesus, and Lord Jesus.

So how do we change and grow and become the people God would have us to be? We must come to understand just how much we justify ourselves, and to forsake self-justification whenever we see it in our heart. Then in faith we begin to pray, to reach out to God in whatever words and thoughts we can manage. Someone said, becoming a Christian is giving all you know about yourself to all you know about God. And that’s not a bad place to start. And when faith gets a bit of traction in your heart, then we will be able to enter into the discipline of study and to encounter God’s story in the scriptures.

But don’t get thrown off by modern self-improvement doctrine. In the self-improvement doctrine, you only get as much out of discipline as you put into it. There is a direct proportionality to exercise, say, or dieting or the study of books or the amount of time spent in the office.

But God’s economy is different. There may be some sweat in the study and there may be some tears in the prayer but there is always more grace than effort. In almost all his encounters, whether it is the woman with the widow’s mite, or the woman who reaches an anonymous hand through the crowd to touch Jesus coat, or the lame man by the pool, or even fraidy cat peter who is very unsteady in his faith, a little bit is enough. Even with this man, it doesn’t take much – a simple obedience to wash and it is turned into the confession of Jesus as Lord and a changed life.

And so if you enter into the discipline of prayer or study or other ones that will be talked about in the weeks to come, you can expect great things to follow from little efforts. It is God’s way. He is bountiful and generous beyond counting. So much does he desire us to be in relationship with him, that the least sliver of faith will be filled and expanded beyond anything we have a right to expect?

For we come to him blind and not knowing what to do. God does though. God in Christ reaches out his hand and touches our eyes and by his grace allows us to see things we’ve never seen before, in ourselves and in each other, in this church and in the world.

Funny what you can get out of a hamburger, french fries and ketchup when you look hard enough.

Amen