Trinity Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

Sermons 

Title: "How Is God Revealed in You?"

Text: John 9:1-41

studying this story this time around.

Something I never noticed before.

Maybe it’s even part of the reason

that the story goes on for so long.

What I learned was this:

Even though the blind man is healed

at the very beginning of the story …

it takes him until the end

really to understand what has happened to him.

You can almost watch him,

growing in comprehension,

each time he has to answer more questions

about who healed him, and how.

At first, when the neighbors ask,

he tells them the healing was done

by "the man called Jesus."

By the time the Pharisees have questioned him the first-time-around,

the formerly-blind man has reached a conclusion about Jesus:

"He is a prophet," he says to the Pharisees,

which I’m sure didn’t make them very happy.

After the Pharisees have sought out his parents,

and then called him in yet another time,

he announces an even deeper realization:

Only someone who came from God

could have healed me.

Therefore, Jesus came from God.

And finally, after all the questions are answered,

and the man has a chance to talk to Jesus again,

he leaps to his final conclusion:

"Lord, I believe."

Now this is a story of a healing,

but it is also a story of faith development.

And while the man born blind

goes through the developmental stages

rather more quickly than most of us,

nevertheless, the whole progression is there.

In the first phase,

all he’s willing to affirm is that

he was healed by a man called Jesus.

He knows the name,

he probably knows a few facts about him,

but that’s it.

And that’s where many of us begin as well,

whether our faith journey begins

as children or as adults.

We have heard of Jesus.

We know a few things about him,

like maybe some Christmas and Easter stories,

but so far we haven’t become aware

of how significant it all is.

And that’s okay,

because that’s exactly where we need to start.

We need to hear and to know

the stories and the facts,

to get good information so we can build on it.

It’s all right if we don’t even understand

very much of it at first.

I can remember as a small child,

singing "The Old Rugged Cross" along with my mommy,

and having no idea what the song was about.

Something about Jesus,

but beyond that there were so many words I didn’t know.

Jesus, and a cross …

and some other vague stuff

about a hill, a crown, a home far away.

And I especially didn’t get that bit

about trophies laying down.

But it was enough to begin with …

whether we are children,

or adults beginning on a faith journey.

We start with some simple facts, the basic story line.

It’s a foundation to build upon.

But we can’t stop there,

and the sad thing is, some people do.

Of course we find that outside the church,

where there are many who have heard about Jesus

but haven’t felt compelled to move on from there.

Sadly, though we also find it in the church.

Folks who are in the church

because they know it’s the right thing to do,

yet who have never felt a need to move beyond

knowing a few simple facts about Jesus and God.

The second phase comes when

the man born blind

recognizes that Jesus is a prophet.

That there is something special about him.

That he’s not just an ordinary person,

but he stands out in some way.

And we, too, often pass through this phase.

It may happen when we are children,

when one day we recognize that the stories about Jesus

are somehow different from, and more important than,

some of the other stories we like to hear and to tell.

It may happen when we are adults,

when some day, the stories all taken together

begin to add up to something more.

When we take the facts we’ve learned,

and put them all together,

and something new emerges.

Jesus is special.

He’s not like everybody else.

In some ways, he’s like me,

but he’s a better person.

Again, this too is a phase we need to experience

and then to pass beyond.

The Christian faith is not simply a belief

that Jesus was "someone special."

Jews, and Muslims, and people of many other faiths

believe that Jesus was special,

that he was a prophet, an example for all to follow.

If we want to be uniquely Christian,

our faith must keep maturing.

Interestingly, the man in our story

reaches the third stage

only after long argument with the Pharisees,

and really having to think through

everything that had happened to him.

He reasons it out quite carefully:

Here I am … I was born blind,

but now I can see clearly.

Never since the world began

have we heard of anyone

who could open the eyes of someone that was born blind.

Surely, God must have been at work here.

Therefore, Jesus is God.

Now, probably the majority of us in the church

can accept this conclusion.

We haven’t thrown out what we learned in stage two:

that Jesus is a special person,

but we’ve added onto it by understanding now,

that he also has a special relationship with God.

We affirm it in our creeds:

Jesus is both human, and God.

We call him the son of God.

We recognize and celebrate

his power to heal, to redeem, to transform.

But even then,

we must go one more step.

It is not enough

simply to believe certain things about Jesus.

When the man who was healed

encounters Jesus once again,

Jesus asks him, "Do you believe in the son of man?"

Not, "what do you believe about him?"

but, "do you believe in him?"

And the man’s response is,

"Lord, I believe."

Now the story is complete.

He has received not only sight, but insight.

Jesus is not just One about whom

we have certain opinions and beliefs …

He is Someone we must believe in,

trust, obey.

Now sometimes it’s hard to make the distinction

between belief about and belief in.

Here is a very mundane example.

And it’s not an exact analogy,

but it’s close, so stay with me:

I know enough about physics to understand completely

how it is that an airplane flies.

And if we had a blackboard,

I could draw you little pictures

and show the shape of the wing,

and how the air flows around it,

and how that works to lift the plane off the ground.

I can tell you all about gravity, and lift, and thrust, and drag.

I know and believe those things

about airplanes, and about the physical world we live in.

But every time I climb onto one of those contraptions,

I don’t quite believe that we can get off the ground and fly through the air

with all these people and all their luggage.

It feels absolutely impossible,

and there is a part of me

that really doesn’t believe in it at all!

I guess the difference between believing about and believing in

is the difference between

head knowledge and heart knowledge,

between knowing something in our brain

and really feeling it in our gut …

It’s the difference between

knowing something, and acting on it.

And until we reach this point,

our faith is still in need of growth.

You know,

at the very beginning of our story,

Jesus’ disciples ask a question about the blind man:

They want an explanation for why he is blind.

Is it because he sinned,

or because his parents sinned?

Jesus tells them it’s not for either of those reasons,

but so that "the works of God might be manifest in him."

So that people can see God revealed

in the life of this man.

Now I think the tendency is for us to assume

that what Jesus means by this

is that he will heal the man,

and everyone will see it, and say "God is great!"

And that may be part of it.

Because, certainly,

a miraculous healing such as this

does display God’s power and God’s greatness.

But I don’t think that’s the whole meaning

behind Jesus’ words.

Because if a miracle like this one

is the only way in which God is manifest,

then we would have to conclude

that God is absent a large part of the time.

That’s not to say that miracles don’t happen …

only that they are rare,

and many of us will go our whole lifetime

without seeing one.

It seems to me that

when Jesus says that God’s work will be manifested

in the blind man’s life …

he’s talking about the man’s faith,

and his growth in understanding,

and his coming to a mature faith.

God is manifested not only in the man’s healing,

but also in his believing.

And that is good news.

Because it means that we normal people, in our normal lives,

can be revealers of God to other perfectly normal people.

We don’t have to have a miracle performed on us,

much less to we have to perform a miracle on someone else,

in order for God to be revealed.

Our life can be a witness to God;

God can be revealed in us,

in fairly normal, straightforward, everyday ways.

How is God revealed in you?

- No matter what stage of faith you are in,

are you continuing to grow nearer to God?

- Could someone see God in the way you

interact with your family?

- Would people see God in your choice of occupation,

and in how you act when you’re at work?

- Will they see God when they watch you in action

at school, at home, when you volunteer?

- Would God be revealed to someone

flipping through your canceled checks?

- Could they see God is they looked around your bookshelves?

- If they overheard your conversations?

There are so many ways for us,

through our faith,

to reveal God to other people.

Now, like the Pharisees,

they may not always believe us;

sometimes they may make fun of us.

But for the sake of the world, and ourselves,

we must keep on revealing what we know.

And who we know.

It is our calling as followers of Jesus Christ

to reveal the works of God

in this world which belongs to God.

As we continue on our journey to the cross,

remember to ask:

How is God revealed in you?

Amen.

© 2005 Julie Adkins (e-mail: DrJAdkins@trinitypresdallas.org)