Silliman University Church Reflections

The teacher went to see the boy that afternoon. No one had mentioned to her that the boy had been badly burned and was in great pain. Upset at the sight of the boy, she stammered as she told him, “I’ve been sent by your school to help you with nouns and adverbs.” When she left she felt she hadn’t accomplished much. 

But the next day, a nurse asked her, “What did you do to that boy?” The teacher began to apologize. “No, no,” said the nurse. “You don’t know what I mean. We’ve been worried about that little boy, but ever since yesterday, his whole attitude has changed. He’s fighting back, responding to treatment. It’s as though he’s decided to live.” 

Two weeks later the boy explained that he had completely given up hope until the teacher arrived. Everything changed when he came to a simple realization. He expressed it this way: “They wouldn’t send a teacher to work on nouns and adverbs with a dying boy, would they?” 
Hope means nothing unless you are truly without means. As long as matters are easy, hope is just flattery or platitude; it is only when everything is hopeless, when we are made to choose between despair and hope. It is when there is nothing else, when the end knocks on the door, that hope begins to be a strength. 

Lent is a brief summary of life. It begins with Jesus triumphal entry to Jerusalem , his betrayal, his suffering, his pain and his death. Easter is the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Savior and Lord.

In this story, Jesus answers life’s questions from beginning to end. When we are victorious. When we are betrayed. When we are in pain and when we die. When we should all be lost in hopeless despair, because everything ends in death, the Lord conquers death. He gives a paradigm of new life. Easter is a story of hope in new life.

“He is risen!” Something in life is greatly modified. Let us examine some changes that Easter has brought.
Before Easter, the cross was the symbol both of the grandeur as well as the terrible power of the Roman Empire . The cross was a shameful and horrible instrument of death, rough wood soaked with human blood. Cross is a symbol of all our despair,  joblessness, poverty, corruption, betrayal, mediocre lives, many kinds of death. But since Easter, the cross is a symbol of hope, a reminder of God’s great love for us. We shall overcome.

Before Easter, for most of the world, the tomb was looked upon as the final chapter, the closing of a great door, the end of everything. But after Easter, we can rejoice that beyond death is where life really begins, and it will never end. Before Easter, humanity saw temporary things, with physical eyes. After Easter, we see in the light of eternity.  Easter makes that change.
Before Easter, time was measured by sunrise and sunset. After Easter, life on earth is understood as an important but temporary destination. On the other side is the possibility of greater life with God eternally, and that changes the whole purpose and meaning and scope of our life in this time.

Before Easter, death was the end, the final curtain call. Before Easter, all we could do is mourn as people without hope. But after the resurrection of Jesus Christ, when someone dies, we mourn because we have lost a loved one. But we mourn as people who have great hope because Jesus Christ is alive, and the promise of Scripture is that if Jesus is alive, then we, too, can live with God as long as God is the God of love. Our sins are forgiven by his blood, and we have the promise of everlasting life. Easter changes the whole concept of death itself.

Before Easter, we lived our earthly lives in despair. After Easter, we can walk through life everyday in hope. We can live for God’s glorious purpose or live according to our death bound purpose, for personal wealth, for political expediency.  Life is wonderful some times, but most of the time it is painful and desperate. Now earthly life is only a foretaste of the abundant life that Jesus promises. Life is temporary but it does not mean we cannot learn to live in hope, and joy and peace and love, in the meantime. Easter makes that hope possible. Easter is a paradigm of hope.

Poem
Some of us stay at the cross,
some of us wait at the tomb,
Quickened and raised with Christ
yet lingering still in the gloom.
Some of us ‘bide at the Passover feast
with Pentecost all unknown,
The triumphs of grace in the heavenly place
that our Lord has made His own.
If the Christ who died had stopped at the cross,
His work had been incomplete.
If the Christ who was buried had stayed in the tomb,
He had only known defeat,
But the way of the cross never stops at the cross
and the way of the tomb leads on
To victorious grace in the heavenly place
where the risen Lord has gone. Annie Johnson Flint.

Easter is our new paradigm of life. Before, some things seemed so important. But now they have become pretty insignificant. Before, time was so limited. But now there is all eternity. Before, life was filled with despair. But now it has purpose, hope and meaning. Before, death was the end. But now it is the beginning. May we truly claim an Easter life for all. Happy Easter! Christ is Risen!

 (Sermon delivered March 23, 2008, SU church, 10 am)

Our Scripture lesson today seems pretty straightforward. Jesus heals a blind man by the well of Siloam. It is a simple story about the power of God. But is the message really that simple? The conflict that follows the event reveal much more. Was the blind man, blind because he was sinful? Was his blindness punishment for his sins? Who is Jesus, who makes a blind man see? And what about Jesus parting words “I came to make the blind see, but those with eyesight I make blind”. And the Pharisees cry, “What, are we blind too?” There is more than the healing of the blind man here. There is a struggle of faith and talk of new vision.

Quantum physicist Arthur Zajoc writes of studies which investigated patients recovering from congenital blindness. Thanks to cornea transplants, people who had been blind from birth gain function of their eyes only gradually. Zajoc talks about a young boy. “Upon awakening from surgery, the boy was confused with the light, color, and shapes he was seeing,” Light and eyes were not enough to grant the boy sight. The light made him see the world, but the mind was unable to explain the world, though his eyes were open.

“The power to see is learned slowly” the doctor said. “To give back sight to a blind person is more the work of an educator than of a surgeon. The truth is vision requires more than a functioning eye. Without an inner light, without visual imagination, we are blind”. We need “inner light” — the light of the mind, spiritual sight that creates meaning, before we understand what we see.”

Physical blindness is difficult enough to heal. But healing a man with congenital blindness, was the easier part for Jesus. More difficult was convincing those with perfect eyesight that indeed a blind man had been healed. Those with eyesight jealously grilled the man. How did Jesus heal you? Who is Jesus? Is he from God when he violates the law of the Sabbath? Are you with him too? Were you really blind from birth? Call your parents. The parents confirm in fear that he was blind from birth and said, why don’t you ask him, he is an adult already. The parents were afraid they would be expelled if they believed in Jesus.

One blind man sees. But those with eyesight have been blinded.
Let’s look at some forms of blindness.

1. Blindness due to prejudice
Note, the disciples’ questions: “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”  Blindness was thought of as punishment for sin. The blind man was judged a sinner. Jesus:Judge not lest ye be judged, (Matt.7:1-2). Prejudging is a favorite past time because it makes some persons feel alright with God. If blindness is punishment for sin, and I am not blind, therefore, I am free of sin.

Prejudice makes us think that we are better than other people. That is one kind of blindness.

When we see a teenage mother struggling to raise her child alone, we say, “Well, she should have waited, until she was married.”

When we see the effects of alcohol or drugs on the lives of people, we say, “They deserve it!”? This prevents us from seeing the world and its people and prevents us from recognizing the work of God that needs to be done.

2. Blindness due to skepticism!
The neighbors were skeptical of what happened. They see what they want to see. They remembered this man as being blind and begging at the Temple gate, and now he is up walking around. Some of them wondered, “Was he really blind, or was he just pretending to be blind, in order to be a beggar?”

We too struggle with skepticism. It is often a mechanism to seek comfort in what is familiar. Skepticism shuts out God’s action.
The captain of the Titanic refused to believe the ship was sinking till water was knee deep in his room. Only then did he believe the hull had been pierced and the unsinkable ship was going to sink.

3. Blinded by religion!
When the Pharisees were confronted with the blind man who was healed, they debated. This is a stage managed event, the blind man is a conspirator with Jesus. Jesus is a sinner because he healed on the Sabbath. Whatever he does is not of God.

We too rely on our traditions and heritage to escape responsibility. Our structures and doctrines sometimes prevent us from doing God’s command. Traditions protect us but they make us slow to act.

4. Blinded by fear
When the blind man’s parents were called and asked, was he really blind from childhood? The parents were afraid. Why don’t you ask him, he is old enough. The parents were afraid they would be thrown out of the synagogue. They couldn’t proclaim the truth because of fear.
Fear cripples us, and keeps us from affirming the work of God completely, in our persons, and in our community.
We started out saying, this is a simple story of God’s miraculous power. Jesus healed a blind man! But Jesus also explains other forms of blindness — prejudice, skepticism, religious pride, fear. These are forms of blindness which are as bad as or even worse than literal blindness.

In order to  understand, we need inner light, a willingness to see with eyes of faith.
Helen Keller was once asked: “Is there anything worse than being blind? Her answer: “Yes, a man with eyes, who has no vision.” The Pharisee question “Are we blind too?  is a question we might well ask ourselves from time to time. Because we have eyes but sometimes no vision.

(Sermon delivered March 2, 2008, SU church, Acknowledgement Larry Hiles)