The Rev. Virginia W. Nagel
Ephphatha Parish of the Deaf
Episcopal Diocese of Central NY
The theme for today's Bible readings seems to be: to see. Let's make a quick count of the different kinds of seeing that we are learning about today. We have to be careful in doing this, because not all seeing is done with the eyes....lots of it is done with the mind or brain. How often have you said, or heard or seen another person say, "Oh, NOW I see!"?
Ready? Here we go....
In the reading from Isaiah, the people say, Now we know why God does not save us from those who oppress us.....Lord, our crimes against you are many. Our sins accuse us.
Apparently the people now see why their prayers are not being answered; they have turned away from God, lost the right to go to him for help.
A little later they confess, Our thoughts are false; our words are lies. Justice is driven away, and right can not come near. Truth stumbles in the public square, and honesty finds no place there. There is so little honesty that those who stop doing evil find themselves the victims of crime.
So, now we are finding that the people see one of the big consequences of sin, and they are admitting or confessing the reality that they themselves have been sinning....not just the other guy. It is not only our own souls and our own lives that we ruin when we sin. It sets us a general habit of sin among the people around us, and that habit of sin and wrongdoing spreads until all of society is affected by it. We are seeing much the same thing happen in our own country, in our own time....it wasn't just in the time of Isaiah, 500 or so years before Christ! This situation has been repeated over and over again, all through history, and it is happening today, too.
And then the people's speech goes on to say, The Lord has seen this and he is displeased that there is no justice....He will clothe himself with the strong desire to set things right and to avenge the wrongs that people suffer. He will punish his enemies according to what they have done....
Clearly, the people have finally come to the point where they can see that sin and wrongdoing must be punished. They seem to be getting to the point of seeing that they have brought much of their loss of faith and their loss of happy, peaceful living upon themselves by their neglect of their covenant promises to God.
In the letter to the Hebrew Christians, we read: You have been Christians long enough that by now you should be teachers, but you still need someone to teach you the first lessons of God's message....(you should be able now) to tell the difference between good and evil. Let us, then, go forward to a mature understanding of God's message, and leave the first lessons for those still learning about God....We shouldn't have to start all over again and build up in ourselves the teachings we learned before, about God's message.
The writer is trying to help the Hebrew Christians see and understand that while God's message is truly Good News, Christians cannot just smile and expect everything to be a bed of roses. He wants the reader to understand that Christians will need to work hard to be good examples of God's teaching, that many Christians will have to suffer for their faith, and that the life of a Christian is not always easy. There will be hard times and discouragements along with the joy and the blessings. Many of us, even today, do not see or understand this, and that's one reason why so many Christians take their faith and their religious responsibilities so lightly, missing church for little or no reason, and not bothering to try to spread the faith and bring new people into the Kingdom. The writer goes on to say, We do not want you to be lazy, but to be like those who really believe and are patient, and wait faithfully to receive what God has promised.
And now we come to the Gospel. It is the much-loved story of how Jesus healed a blind man, a beggar named Bartimaeus. The man who had been blind from birth, unable to support himself, and just sit in the dust of the street and beg for money to buy a little food, was instantly able to see! And we read, At once he was able to see, and followed Jesus.
Bartimaeus was made able to see. His blindness was cured, in a very physical way. His eyes that had never worked properly now worked perfectly, and he could see the trees, flowers, people and buildings, perhaps for the first time in his life. But his new ability to see was not only a physical healing. It seems to have also been a spiritual healing; he understood immediately that he owed everything to Jesus, and set out to follow Jesus in thanksgiving and gratitude for the blessing he had received.
So....what kinds of seeing have we learned about today?
We have seen that our sins are not just little private things but that they are known to God, and that they will be punished. Yes, we are forgiven through the death of Christ on the cross, but we still have to deal with the consequences of our sins. Spiritual forgiveness will help us get into heaven, but what about the people we have hurt, the ways we have changed society for the worse, by our sins? That makes the Lord angry and upset, too. That is why we need to do the best we can to repair the problems of hunger, homelessness, government corruption, denial of civil rights to people of color or handicapped people or members of other minority groups. That is why we need to work to bring justice and peace back to the center of our society. Isaiah is very clear about it: make no mistake, God punishes injustice and sin. And even if we are forgiven, we still have to clean up the mess our sins have made.
Then we have seen that being a Christian is not all we need to do. It isn't enough to be baptized, we have to live our
baptismal promises. We have to work to bring justice to the world, and to spread the kingdom of God. Baptism isn't something we do to a baby to make Grandma happy; baptism is the beginning of a lifelong journey and labor to bring God's kingdom here among us. We cannot be like the Jews whom John the Baptist scolded for their sins. They said, "Oh, it's okay, we are descended from Abraham, we are okay with God because of that." And we cannot say, "Well, I was baptized, so I'm sure to go to heaven, so I don't need to worry about going to church and keeping the rules." John the Baptist's answer to the Jews was clear, and it hit deep: "You fools! Don't you know that God can raise up more children for Abraham from the stones on the ground? Having Abraham for your father doesn't count....it only counts if you live with Abraham's faith!" He was speaking to us, too, you know.
And finally: once we can see and understand, we need to follow the one who gave us the blessing of understanding and sight. We need to follow Jesus, model our lives and our actions on his, and, like him, live, work and pray for the spread of the Kingdom. Amen.
