Let us pray:

God, give us the courage and the insight to see your movements among us. We say that we are here because we want to come close to you, but then, when you come close to us, we are discomforted. We want you to come to us, but we want you to come in ways that we expect. We want you to speak to us, but not in a way that disrupts our lives. Lord, keep near to us, keep blessing us with your unexpected intrusions, keep bringing us life and light, keep intruding upon our darkness with your great light. For in your light is our life. AMEN

Our Gospel story this morning of the man born blind is dense and full of possibilities, as was the story last week of the woman at the well. It is important, once again, when reading the Gospel of John, to remember that the Johannine Community was one of the last evicted from the synagogue for proselying too fervently. Hence, when the parents are afraid of the "Jews" they are speaking of the Jewish authorities, not the Jewish people!

In this story Jesus and the disciples come upon a man blind from birth. The disciples, in typical first century fashion, assume that his affliction was the result of some sin of his own or his family. Jesus disabuses them of this notion by saying that his blindness was there so that "God's works might be revealed in him." He then says: "I am the light of the world" and heals the man with clay of the earth and a nearby pool, Siloam. His neighbors do not recognize him, believing him to be someone else. When he tells his story they summon the Pharisees who claim that Jesus must be a sinner for breaking the Sabbath. They, too, do not believe the man and go to his parents. They, in fear, say he is their son blind from birth but they know nothing of his healing. When they question the no-longer-blind man he says: "I do not know if he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see." After more discussion he is driven from the community, seeks out Jesus, believes and worships him. This story ends as did the one last week, with the most unlikely people believing in Jesus as the Son of Man.

When you think of it, we aren't so different from those people in the first century. What we find in this story is that those who should see are blind to change and the reality of the human being in front of them. The blind man sees and the sighted are blind. I have had the opportunity to be in a wheelchair of late. I am fascinated by the number of people who appear to simply not "see" me. If they do, many look at me curiously and look away. (The man in Safeway who watched me crash with the motorized chair into the Charmin was a notable exception! He saw me, for sure , with both laughter and a speck of fear!) For most people I am "other," one of those who are different and make them uncomfortable.

All of us have people who are other in our lives, whether we will admit it or not. We like to think that we are all-accepting, but often are blinded by the issues that created these attitudes: our families, where we grew up, the culture in which we live that expects perfection, our tendency to flock to people who are like us and the influence of our peers in our work and social situations.

There is a story told on the internet of a successful, young executive who was driving his new Jaguar too fast in a neighborhood. Suddenly there was a crash as a brick hit the side of his car. He wheeled the car around, stopped, jumped out and ran toward the child who had thrown the brick. "Why in the world did you do that? He exclaimed: "This is a new car and it will be very expensive to have it repaired!" "Please, Mister. I'm sorry; I didn't know what else to do!" pleaded the youngster. "No one else would stop…" Tears were dripping down the boy's chin as he pointed around the parked car. "It's my brother," he said. "He rolled off the curb and fell out of his wheelchair and I can't lift him up. Would you please help me get him back into his wheelchair? He's hurt and he's too heavy for me." Moved beyond words, the driver tried to swallow the rapidly swelling lump in his throat. He lifted the young man back into the wheelchair, took out his handkerchief, and wiped the scrapes and cuts, checking to see that everything was going to be okay. "Thank you and God bless you," the grateful child said to him. The man then watched the little boy push his brother down the sidewalk toward their home. He never did repair the side door. (Copied, AHA, 3/10/02)

Most of us need bricks thrown at our cars in order to confront the blindness we experience about our prejudices and feelings about other people. We pretend that we do not see color, poverty, economic and social differences, and disabilities. It takes a strong desire to change or a shocking experience to make us more alert.

There is a funny illustration of this I found in Synthesis (3/21/1993). "Seems a Chinese man and a Jewish man had lunch together. Suddenly, without warning the Jewish man got up, walked over to the Chinese man, shoved him and sent him sprawling. The man got up and asked why he had done that. His reply: "That was for Pearl Harbor!" The man replied: "I am Chinese; it was the Japanese who bombed Pearl Harbor!" The other answered: "Chinese, Taiwanese, Japanese – they're all the same to me. They both sat down and a few minutes later the Chinese man walked around the table and socked the Jewish man in the jaw. That man asked why in the world HE had done that. The Chinese man's reply was: "That was for the Titanic!" "The Titanic, the Titanic…I had nothing to do with that!" The Chinese man answered: "Goldberg, Friedberg, Iceberg…they're all the same to me!"

When we see people as other, when we don't stop to really find who they really are , we deny their humanity as we generalize about them and put them in categories. This business of 'otherness' can also occur when we make assumptions about people. In one final story, Steve Covey, author of the book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, tells of an experience he had on a NYC subway one Sunday morning. People were sitting quietly when a man and his children entered the car. The children were soon out of control, yelling throwing things, even grabbing people's newspapers. He could stand it no longer so said to the father: "Sir, your children are really disturbing a lot of people. I wonder if you couldn't control them a bit more." The man lifted his gaze, as if coming into consciousness for the first time and said, "Oh, you're right. I guess I should do something about it. We just came from the hospital where their mother died about an hour ago. I don't know what to think, and I guess they don't know how to handle it either." Steve says, "Can you imagine what I felt at that moment? Suddenly I saw things differently. Because I saw differently, I felt differently. I behaved differently. …my heart was filled with this man's pain. Feelings of compassion and sympathy flowed freely. …Nothing changed in that subway car… (except) a way of seeing it all and, with the seeing, a change of behavior. (Wm. J. Bausch in A World of Stories for Preachers and Teachers (Twenty-third Publications, 1998)

This is what we are called to do: to take off the blinders on our eyes…to see differently. When we see differently, we begin to feel differently. At that point we can begin to behave differently, to be fully present to the other, to see them as fellow human travelers through this world.

It is God in Christ who helps us to move from darkness to light, from blindness to sight, from judgment to compassion. When we begin to truly "see" the other we can no longer discount and judge him or her. Lent is the season for making a radical moral inventory of ourselves, a time to peer into our inner hearts to root out that which is not of God. This is hard, for we have been conditioned over the years to feel and think the way we do. We don't even know we are blind! I invite you to join with me during this holy season to begin to celebrate and embrace the beauty of our differences – those of skin color, ethnicity, gender, and economic, social and intellectual backgrounds. Let us, like Jesus, reach out to those who are shunned by many in our world, to commit ourselves to living as "children of the light – for the fruit of the light are found in all that is good and right and true!" AMEN