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“Faithful
Sight”
a sermon by
Thomas L. Jenkins
Text: John 9:1-41
“Jesus said, ‘For judgment I
came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and that those
who see may become blind.’”
DEAR SISTERS AND BROTHERS we have just heard another long story giving a
witness to us about our Lord Jesus Christ.
Faithfully it is something we may see and know about him.
For Christ, as we are shown in what we just heard, the sight of
ones present suffering is far more important to Him than the sight of
ones past or presents sin. When
He healed this man born blind, it had nothing to do with sin, or the
lack of sin in his life. It
had to do with the loving heart of Christ toward this one suffering.
To start off, it may help us to understand, and actually faithfully see
the judgment of God. One of
the first visions of the election of God is that God elected Himself to
be the judge of all the sin in all our lives; and God also elected to be
the one judged. The Son of
God was convicted for all the sin in the world, and then sentenced to
death on the cross. Yes, He
was convicted because He and God the Father both knew and saw in their
hearts that this sacrifice would accomplish their very first desire and
choice: to convert and bring us all into their eternal life in the love
of the Holy Spirit. This is
part of what we are to see through faith.
The whole idea of “seeing” in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament
are very important, but different after the coming of Christ. Moses and Isaiah where two of the major leaders and prophets
in the Old Testament, because they had seen God.
In the New Testament, however, faith is a deeper, spiritual kind
of sight.
One of the most amazing stories of a Christian’s life and service to
God, in the last century, was that of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
He was German. At
one time in his life he was a student of Karl Bart.
And then he came to the United States, actually New York, where
he continued some of his scholarship.
But right before WWII started, he returned to Germany, and in a
couple of years was actually convicted of trying to assassinate Adolf
Hitler. During his time in
prison Bonhoeffer wrote some of his most fascinating letters, sermons,
and a book about Christian faith. He
was then hanged in April 1945.
If I would have been a friend of his at that time, I probably would have
written to him, something like this, “You are so strong and
courageous. I wish I had
words for what I see you dealing with.”
In the Christian faith the Word of God that we hear actually creates
inside of us what we truly see. The
Apostle Paul wrote, “We walk by
faith, not by sight.”
We are the church known as the Reformed church.
For centuries, many of the people who where considered Holy
Saints were often those who had seen Mary, the mother of Jesus, and
maybe other first century saints. And
I am certainly not denying that they did.
In the early church seeing was very important, but then, in the time of
the reformation of the Holy Catholic church, hearing became more and
more significant; actually completely victorious.
Bibles had never been read by lay people, so the leaders of the
reformation translated the holy scriptures into local common languages,
and taught and preached God’s Word maybe four and five times a week.
There were rooms and large halls in pretty big buildings where
people were to hear teaching and sermons.
And these areas were emptied of everything to be seen: pictures,
sculptures, stained windows, and even lights.
Hearing the Word of God replaced seeing, and even faith through
the Word of God replaced visions.
But Jesus does say, “For
judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see…” The first verse in John’s gospel tells us, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word
was God.” And then
all throughout John’s gospel we are shown and taught that the Word
became flesh in Jesus Christ.
Jesus said, “I am the way, the
truth, and the life.” The
people who do not see, or do not actually know the real truth in Jesus
Christ, saw him at that time, but people hear him in their hearts now.
When we hear the Word of God in our hearts, that is faithful
sight.
Those who thought they could see, the strong religious types were, and
are, shown by Christ, that they are really blind because breaking the
ten commandments is certainly wrong, but that is not the ultimate aspect
of being blind to the truth. Real
blindness is not hearing, knowing, and faithfully seeing that we are
already included in the relationship Jesus Christ has with God the
Father.
We are now being called to the table of the Lord, where the Word of God
becomes our bread and wine. We
will taste the bread and wine, but in our thoughts we will be meditating
on what we have just heard, and what we see around us.
And through all this, God will gift our minds, emotions, hearts,
and souls with the faithful sight of Jesus Christ.
Let us pray …
Amen.
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