St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church, Owings Mills MD
March 19, 2023
Year A: The Fourth Sunday in Lent
1 Samuel 16:1-13
Psalm 23
Ephesians 5:8-14
John 9:1-41
To See as God Sees
Back in the early 1990’s, I taught history at St. Vincent Academy, an all-girls Roman Catholic high school in Newark, New Jersey.
The Sisters of Charity founded St. Vincent’s back in the 19th Century to educate the Catholic girls of Newark and the surrounding towns.
In the late 1960s, after years of factory closings and white flight to the suburbs and especially after the 1967 uprising that devastated much of the city, particularly the area around St. Vincent’s called the Central Ward, the Sisters and their lay co-workers faced a choice:
To stay in the wounded city, continuing to educate Newark’s girls, or to close or move, like many other institutions of the city.
With great faithfulness and courage, and to their eternal credit, the leaders of St. Vincent’s chose to stay, and have been there ever since.
Fast-forward to sometime around late 1991 or early 1992.
I had applied for a position as a history teacher, a midyear replacement for a teacher who had gotten sick.
On the day of my job interview, I remember riding the bus from Newark Penn Station up to the school. I remember looking out the window and seeing the urban mix: a still bustling but frayed around the edges downtown, a fairly new and still shiny community college, a stately old courthouse - but also block after block of vast rubble-strewn lots with a few crumbling houses here and there.
Not for the last time in my life, I wondered what I was getting myself into!
Eventually the bus rounded the corner and there was St. Vincent’s, a red brick 19th Century building up on a small rise, looking like a well cared-for sanctuary, or maybe better, a beacon - shining hope - shining the light of Christ into the suffering city.
During that long-ago day of interviews and meetings, I spent a lot of time with one of the school’s administrators, Sister June.
It’s all mostly a blur to me now, but I do recall that at one point Sister June said that I must always remember that each of my students, each of these girls, was absolutely precious to at least someone – a parent or a grandparent, someone.
Sister June said that should be the way that I saw my students: as precious, as loved.
June didn’t put it quite this way but what she was really saying was that I should see my students as God sees them.
To see as God sees.
In today’s Old Testament lesson, Samuel learned something about seeing as God sees.
Samuel had been given an important assignment: to anoint a new king.
This task was made even more challenging and difficult by the fact that the old king, Saul, was still alive and on the throne.
Anyway, God sent Samuel to anoint one of Jesse’s sons as new king.
Reasonably enough, Jesse presents his sons in age order, starting with the oldest. He’d be the expected choice and he certainly seems to look the part.
But God says no – God keeps saying no until there are no more sons left. Oh, wait, there is the youngest, David, such an unlikely choice that he had been left out in the field tending the sheep.
Surely, he won’t be king, right?
To see as God sees.
And then today’s lengthy and rich gospel lesson is all about seeing – and not seeing.
We begin with the disciples noticing the man born blind who was forced to beg, but they don’t see him as a person but only as a consequence of sin.
But that’s not how Jesus sees him – he sees him as a way for God’s glory to shine.
So, without the blind man even asking for healing – I mean, who would even dare to hope for such a thing – Jesus gives this man the gift of sight.
The formerly blind can now see the world around him.
The formerly blind man sees that God has worked a powerful sign in and through Jesus.
And by the end of the story, the formerly blind man sees so well that he has become a disciple.
As for the other characters in this story, well, their vision is not so good.
The neighbors, which have probably never paid much mind to this blind beggar – he was probably just part of the background of their lives – they’re not quite sure that it’s the same man.
What did he look like anyway?
And then there are the Pharisees. Most (but not all) of them view this remarkable healing as… an opportunity to put Jesus on trial. They focus on a possible Sabbath violation while somehow missing the wonderful sign that has just occurred.
My God, a man born blind now can see!
The man’s parents do a little better. At least they know and admit that he’s their son. But then they kind of throw him under the bus (“Ask him, he is of age. He will speak for himself.”), supposedly because they feared the Jews, who would cast out any Jesus followers from the synagogue.
Now, I have to pause right there and remind us that everyone in this story – Jesus, his disciples, the neighbors, the man born blind and his parents, the Pharisees – everyone in this story is a Jew.
We have to remember this because so often the Church has forgotten, and texts like this have been used to justify horrific anti-Semitism.
Especially as we get closer to Holy Week, we have to remember that the Gospels do not tell the story of Jews vs. Christians. No, this is a disagreement among first century Jews, some of whom will accept Jesus as the messiah, while others will not.
But the heart of today’s story isn’t really disagreement about healing on the Sabbath – it’s about sight – it’s about seeing as God sees.
And, as Christians, we don’t have to wonder about how God sees.
In and through Jesus, we know that God sees the Samaritan woman at the well, with her complicated past and unconventional present, an outcast from her own community, God sees her as precious.
In and through Jesus, we know that God sees the blind beggar as precious.
In and through Jesus, we know that God sees the girls of Newark, the kids of Baltimore, and children everywhere as precious.
And God invites us – commands us - to see as God sees.
So, to be totally honest with you, I’ve struggled with today’s sermon.
Today is the Fourth Sunday in Lent, often called “Laetare Sunday,” from a Latin word meaning “to rejoice.”
Today we switch liturgical colors from purple to rose as a signal that Lent is starting to wind down and soon we will once again experience the joy of Easter.
But, our country and world don’t seem so joyful these days, do they?
Most days, our country feels like it’s coming apart at the seams. Like the blind man's neighbors, we seem barely able to see each other at all, forget about seeing as God sees. The days ahead are going to be quite difficult. And, no matter our political point of view, how can we not dread the next presidential election?
I’ve struggled with today’s sermon because I don’t want it to sound like pie-in-the-sky church talk.
Seeing as God sees – to view each human being as absolutely precious and of infinite worth – this is not just some nice goal we should to aspire to.
No, seeing as God sees is essential to our survival.
And, despite our many troubles, I can still rejoice, at least a little, because I have learned that, with God’s help, it really is possible for us to see as God sees.
It’s a lesson I learned long ago in Newark, from sisters and their co-workers, who refused to give into fear.
Instead, they chose to stay and to teach and, most of all, to see as God sees.
Amen.
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