Thursday, March 31, 2011

Spiritual Blindness


Lent 4, Year A, 2011
Refreshment Sunday, Harvest Thanksgiving, Mothering Sunday

Text: 1 Samuel 16: 1-13; Ephesians 5: 8-14; John 9: 1-12, 35-41.

Let us bow our heads in prayer –
God of all creation, heal our blindness that we may see our world and others in new ways. Amen.
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When I was a child there was a man named Bill who lived across the street from us. As children my bothers and sisters loved playing hid and seek with Bill at his house. The interesting thing about Bill was that he was blind. He always found us because he new the layout of his house intimately. However, I have to admit he wasn’t very good with mirrors, because he didn’t realise we could see him in them! Bill was also a very kind man, and as I grew older I realised Bill saw with his blindness what most of us never see. He saw with his ears and his gut, and his heart. Sometimes ‘blind’ is not really blind and ‘seeing’ is not really sight.

Today’s Gospel reading begins with Jesus correcting his disciples when they suggest that the blind man is born this way because of his or his parent sin. Jesus then tells them that he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.

I remember being at dinner party one night and being totally shocked when I heard a couple suggest that a person they knew must have done something really wrong to get cancer, attributing the cancer to a build up of bad karma in the person’s life. These people had very new age ideas. I couldn’t believe that people could actually think like this! Perhaps you’ve heard people suggest this about someone you know suffering from an ailment.

I personally think it’s helpful to make a distinction been the words ‘illness’ and ‘sickness’.

Illness is something a person is born with through no fault of their own. There body has simply been made with a chink in their DNA missing or chemically incorrect, resulting in a physical or mental problem, which can be realised at birth or sometimes later on in their life. Some forms of cancer can be like this. They can be realised at birth or they can be realised latter on in life when something triggers them. The person personally can’t do anything about it, and God has created them that way out of love. Nothing God creates is deficient or wrong. So that person is in fact complete physically in the eyes of God. It is only their own or others illusions about how the physical world is meant to be, and the incorrect belief in the physical world itself, that suggested that the person is not complete. God can use that person to reveal God’s works just like any other person or aspect of creation, as Jesus suggests to the disciples.

Sickness on the other hand is something that we make ourselves and can be realised physically or mentally. For example we all know that extreme worry can lead to anything from skin irritations to back problems to depression and even stomach ulcers and cancers. However, these same problems can also be illnesses that we are born with. So the important thing in considering the issues surrounding illness and sickness and healing is not to judge any situation because we may not know the real cause of a person’s problems.

All of us are blind in one way or another. Some of us have blindness of the body: like a crippling disease or cancer or loss of sight. And this can be caused as I’ve suggested through illness or sickness. The majority of us however are spiritually blind, which is true sickness. Spiritual blindness can lead to us not being able to love another person beyond a superficial level or not even being able to love ourselves. It can lead us to being rooted in addictions to material things like possessions or work to cover up the empty hole in our lives. Or it can lead to a total sense of darkness in our lives born out of a sense of anxiety about the past and fear about the future.

Maybe you’re living with a blindness in your life right now.

It’s a hard concept to get you mind around, but it’s interesting that everything we see physically is actually in the past. It has already happened. It takes a moment for light to travel so that we can see anything at all. In truth we never actually perceive anything physically as it is right now, this instant. So in one sense we are totally by ourselves in the physical ‘now’. The past has already happened and the future is yet to be, and we sit in the middle.

When we suffer from sickness we see the past as real and we project fears into the future based on our past beliefs, and it is out of these fears we make separation between ourselves and others and God. If we believe that the physical world holds answers to our happiness and if we believe that we are separate to God we are gravely mistaken, and our beliefs will only lead us to death. Nothing is what we think it is in our physical world and it is only when we open ourselves to these spiritual truths that we will find freedom.

Jesus says to the man who he had given sight “I came into this world for judgement so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.” God’s judgement is not like human judgement. God’s judgement involves only love and truth and the removal of that which is not true. God’s truth enables those who do not see to see spiritual truth and those who see spiritual truth to become blind to the ways of the world.

It is not the physical healing of the blind man in our Gospel story that is important, although this may be important in pointing out who Jesus is, but his spiritual healing which saved him and led him to worship Jesus.

We have a choice. We can either be open to healing like the man who Jesus gave site and come to worship Jesus or be like the Pharisees who rejected and to who Jesus said “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.

What’s your spiritual blindness? Amen.

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Tempted?


Lent 1, Year A, 2011

Text: Genesis 2: 15-17; 3: 1-7; Romans 5: 12-19; Matthew 4: 1-11.

Let us bow our heads in prayer –
God of integrity, you drive us into the desert to search out your truth. Give us clarity to know what is right, courage to reject what we know is not, and help to abandon the false innocence of failing to choose at all. Amen.
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Temptations are something that we experience constantly in our lives on a day by day basis. Some of course are small and if we get caught up in these we sometimes justify them shrugging them off with little thought. We think we might just park in the restricted space because there aren’t any other parks around and what I’m going to do will only take a few moments, and I’m sure a disabled person won’t come along during that time. Other temptations however are large and if we open ourselves to these sorts of temptations they can lead us into the very darkest places of denial within. Perhaps you have experienced or are experiencing something like that in your own life. I don’t know if any of you have been following the story about the celebratory Charlie Sheen recently or saw the interview with him on 20/20 this week. I caught a few moments of that interview after the Lenten Study on Thursday night, while I was actually writing this sermon. I don’t want to put a judgement value on his beliefs because those are his personal ideas. I actually found myself agreeing with many things he said, however, I couldn’t help but think how some of the temptations of addiction that he has opened himself to, like drugs for example, has lead to many aspects of his life spiralling out of control. In many ways I think that interview was inappropriate to have on TV because Charlie Sheen is clearly a very sick man with serious addictions.

The thing that all temptations have in common, be they small or large, is that they are all illusions, and all illusions have no substance to them.

Imagine for a moment that you are in an empty room and that in the middle of that room is hanging a light bulb off a cord which is filling the room with light. I want you do imagine for a moment that that light is the presence and love of God and that it’s all around you filling every corner of the room. Now take a piece of paper and hold it up to the light. Behind that piece of paper forms a shadow. When people are involved in evil, which is the result of following through with a temptation, they are in a sense behind that piece of paper, that obstacle or temptation. They can’t see that the rest of the room is full of light. All they can see is the shadow that they are trapped within. Take away the piece of paper, the obstacle or temptation, and they see that what they have been involved in was only an illusion. It has no substance or truth about it.

Even the personification of evil as the temper or the devil or satan, or whatever you want to call it, is an illusion. The very nature of who God is doesn’t allow for the creation of evil because God is truth and truth doesn’t allow for the existence of evil within it. God doesn’t allow any corner of the room full of light to be in darkness! The devil in our Gospel story today is as much an illusion as the temptations that are put before Jesus.

While I realise that people sometimes have personal experiences of the personification of evil in their own lives, and that those experiences are very real to them, ultimately those experiences are still illusions. All evil has to be an illusion by its very nature.

The danger of the personification of evil, ‘the devil made me do it’ type scenario, is that we can blame something outside of ourselves and not take personal responsibility for something we are in fact responsible for, which is exactly what illusions want us to do.

It’s interesting that this passage about the temptation of Jesus comes just after Jesus’ baptism and just before he begins his public ministry. The scripture seems to suggest that Jesus had to come to grips with his baptism and confront its deeper meaning before he could face the next part of his journey into ministry.

It’s also interesting that in our passage Jesus is lead into the wildness to be temped by the devil by none other than God’s Spirit. Shock, horror, God wanted Jesus to confront evil. God wanted Jesus to confront his fears and find Truth. As human beings we all at one time or another have wilderness experiences in our lives where we question and for a time can feel lost. They are experiences that can lead us into the darkest of places. Many people are lost in these experiences for years, some even for a lifetime. However, if we allow ourselves like Jesus to be lead into these experiences by God’s Spirit, and allow ourselves to cast off the illusions that these experiences open ourselves to we will find Truth, and this is what this passage is telling us.

Jesus is confronted with three temptations in our Gospel story which deal with the deep truths of who we are as human beings.

The first temptation that Jesus is confronted with is the illusion of turning stones into bread. In other words the illusion of the body or the physical world. Many people are tempted into believing that the physical is all that there is. They believe that they are merely bodies, and because they see themselves as being merely bodies they see themselves as separate to God, creation and other people around them. The result of this separation is that they live lives trapped in fear. Jesus says however, “One does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God”. In other words the physical is not all that there is. It is the word of God that is behind everything physical that gives it meaning and life.

The second temptation that Jesus is confronted with is the illusion that we can put God to the test. In other words the illusion that our own egos are greater than God. With the belief in separation comes the belief that it is ‘me’ that is the most important thing, and that out of fear I must protect myself against the world, and even against God. After the devil takes Jesus to the pinnacle of the temple he tells him to jump, telling him to put God to the test, Jesus says however, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” Jesus is telling us it is not us who has things in control, but God. If we believe we can manipulate things we are sadly mistaken.

The third temptation that Jesus is confronted with is the illusion of power. In other words the illusion that we are special. With the illusions of the physical and the ego comes the illusion that we can dominate and find fulfilment within this. Power is of course a substitute for love. We need to hold on to power when we feel we or life is out of control. Jesus says in response to this, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’” It is only in God that you will find fulfilment Jesus is telling us.

Like Jesus it is only when we truly face ourselves and come to grips with the illusions that are in our lives that we can be truly free. And it is only in those things in which we are free that we can fulfil our baptism and bring life to others as we minister to them. It is only Truth that brings life.

So what are the temptations that are facing you at the moment in your own life? What illusions are you holding onto that are keeping you from seeing the truth? As you journey this Lent are you prepared to be lead by God’s Spirit in confronting those things, or are you going to continue to wander aimlessly in the wilderness? Amen.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Ninth Sunday after Epiphany

Please note that I am not publishing a sermon this week as another Priest in our parish is preaching.