I’m not the most observant of people. I tend to move through life with a lot of purpose, which means I’m constantly focused on whatever task is at hand. There’s a lot of life that happens outside of where I’m focused, and I have no idea it’s there!
I’m married to someone who notices everything. She’s got a gift for hearing music in a show or in the background at a restaurant. I wish we could monetize her noticing because we’d be rich. She’s constantly asking me if I noticed that a particular song was being played at a restaurant, and my response is almost always, “I didn’t know there was music on!” We’d be watching a movie trailer, and she’d say, “Did you notice they’re reusing the music from Stargate? The music is more popular than the film ever got!” (By the way, that music made its way into The Mummy, Waterworld, and The Lord of the Rings, among other films.)
We were working together at Aldea a couple of months ago. There were two people at the table next to us chatting. Because I’m hyper-focused, I got a ton of work done over that hour. Jess didn’t because she was following all of the drama in the conversation next to us. Apparently it was a pretty wild one, and I didn’t even know it was happening.
I could stand to pay more attention, I think.
After all, Jesus is someone who notices. He sees need, and he acts on it.
I’ve always enjoyed this story from John 9. It begins with Jesus noticing. “As he was walked along, he saw a man blind from birth.” Blindness is difficult enough in our world, but imagine what it would have been like then. Gary Burge observes, “This man’s life should be depicted as a hopeless tragedy….His day-to-day life enjoyed none of the protection or charitable assistance often given to the blind today. We have to forget images of seeing-eye dogs and Braille books. He sat at the roadside and begged. No employment, no prospects for marriage, no social honor. He was at the bottom of the social ladder. His future was bleak and he knew it….This man’s world had foreclosed on him. There was no social net to catch people like this.”
Also, blindness was far more common in their time. There were few cures to eye diseases, and the conditions they lived in were often unsanitary. It’s one reason blindness is such a common theme in the gospels, both because it is something Jesus heals and because it serves as a metaphor for the condition of those who cannot “see” who Jesus is and what he is doing.
What is that work? To use Mark’s words, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe the good news.” Jesus’ work in healing this blind man isn’t mere kindness, although it is that. No, it is a demonstration to this man and all around that God’s reign profoundly counters what is wrong with the world — poverty, illness, violence, and so much more.
But Jesus’ work is disruptive, and not everyone likes these disturbances. This story gives four different responses to the work Jesus has done. First, there is the blind man himself. Jesus put mud over his eyes and sent him to the Pool of Siloam to wash. He did so, and now he could see. All he can do is bear witness — “Jesus did this, and now I see.” Later in the encounter, Jesus finds him again and takes him deeper. He goes from experiencing healing to belief that Jesus is the Messiah. For this man, his life is changed, and John holds him up as an ideal believer.
Not everyone is so happy about this transformation. A man whom people would have stepped around to avoid for years is healed, but the religious authorities are upset about this because the healing broke the sabbath. Their interpretation of Torah excluded such action. (Remember last week when Pastor Kristine spoke about how any interpretation of Scripture that does not lead us to love God and neighbor is wrong? Well…here you have it in action.) The way of Jesus can cause even the most religious to become upset.
There was also this man’s wider community. Rather than believing he was blind but could now see, they are upset because they now wonder if he’d been faking it all these years. They feel like he’s been taking advantage of the help of the community. “Could he have been able to do things all this time instead of living off of our assistance?” they selfishly wonder.
So, they call his parents in, and their response is apprehensive. They hedge. Yes, they admit, this is their son. Yes, he was born blind. But, no, we have no earthly idea how he can now see or who helped. They don’t seem particularly thrilled about this development because it seems like their standing in the community is at stake. Their very place in the synagogue is threatened.
So, the work of God in Jesus brought astonishing healing to this one man, but it caused all sorts of issues as the wider community sought to deal with its consequences. In this healing, Jesus called into question the way they observed sabbath, the openness of the community to what God was doing in their midst, and even a challenge to their concept of neighbor.
“The work of God (which Jesus was eager to do) was simple: He brought the power of God to bear on one man’s life.” The issue staring us in the face is not what Jesus has done; rather, it’s whether or not we’re open to letting the work of God influence our view of the world around us, whether or not we’re open to broadening our perspective on where and how God is moving even now.
Today we’re engaging with the fifth Great End of the Church — the promotion of social righteousness. I have to admit that I spent a fair amount of time this week sorting through those words. If I were to ask you what this means, I suspect I’d get a wide array of answers. “Promotion” feels fairly easy. It means to move forward. We encourage and display social righteousness.
But those final two words are the tricky ones, aren’t they? Christians in America are prone to think of personal righteousness. Faith is about how I can relate to God. Don’t get me wrong; it is about that — in part. But righteousness isn’t simply about being declared “right” in God’s sight. It’s also behaviors that evidence that belief. Also, it’s not simply personal. Faith is always both personal and social. It cannot be lived alone.
Martin Büber, a Jewish philosopher, paired justice and righteousness. He says they are gifts from God, not behavioral goals. Justice and righteousness are gifts that create the conditions where society as a whole can flourish. We can also reject them to our detriment.
Righteousness is all-encompassing. It goes beyond using language well, not lying, or not harming others. It stretches into our care for others, ourselves, and the whole world in striving to live the reality of Jesus’ reign being present now. It’s a theme that’s found throughout the Bible. Someone once surveyed the Bible to find all the references for how we should care for others, particularly those trampled down by life. Did you know that one out of every sixteen verses in the New Testament is about the poor or about how we are to handle money? In Matthew and Mark’s gospels, it’s one in ten. In Luke, it’s one in seven! And, dear friends, this is where see Jesus most clearly!
What does social righteousness look like? It looks like Jesus!
He didn’t run from disease and brokenness. He ran to it and brought wholeness. I love how Joseph Small preaches on this. “[Jesus] romped through a world that not only feared disease but saw illness as a symptom of moral failure and so rejected sick people. Jesus didn’t reject those who were ill and disabled. Instead, he made them whole, thereby announcing that God was on the side of sufferers. By what he did, Jesus denied that health was a sign of God’s favor, and illness, a sign of God’s displeasure. He healed people, restoring them to full participation in all of life. Jesus was on the side of sufferers, and that was strange.
“He floated through a world that kept meticulous track of right and wrong, rewarding moral people and despising anyone who fell short of the Law’s demands. Jesus didn’t despise sinners; he forgave them, proclaiming that God has no interest in burdening people with guilt. He forgave people’s sins, setting them free from the past and free for a renewed future, and that was eccentric.
“He barged through a world that divided people into categories, that clothed some with respectability and pigeonholed others as outcasts who were beneath the notice of ‘the right people.’ Jesus didn’t see anyone as an outcast. He sought out the company of traitors, crooks, revolutionaries, and loan sharks, as well as women, children, and even Pharisees, announcing that all were cherished by God….
“He rambled through a world that prized order, a world that gave authority only to people with the right qualifications and expected little or nothing from common people. Jesus expected great things of ordinary people, even gathering poor, uneducated folks as disciples and then giving them authority to heal diseases, forgive sins, and break down societal barriers of race, class, and gender. Entrusting his mission to ordinary people was not rational.
“It was all crazy. None of it made sense. Who Jesus was, what he said, and what he did were incongruous in a world that looked on departures from ‘the way things are’ as loony at best and dangerous at worst.”
If Jesus were in ministry around us today, I wonder if we’d welcome him, or would we think his all-encompassing ministry too extreme? He notices those we don’t. He stops for those others pass by. He shines the glaring light of his love on those who are too easily lumped into statistics or political jargon or simply declared “them” because they’re not “us.”
Friends, we must have the ability to truly see our neighbors as they are, to see them the way Jesus sees them. The ministry of Jesus is all-encompassing and is constantly calling us to tear down any barriers that divide us from one another. (And, let’s be honest, we all like putting up barriers around ourselves.) We must offer connection and community because that’s what Jesus does. We must notice.
This is the challenge. “Where are we to follow? Where Jesus has already gone and continues to go, of course. As Jesus’ followers we, too, are to work for the healing of people who are ill, families that are fractured, ideologies that are blind, social systems that are disabled, and power arrangements that are sick unto death. We, too, are to place ourselves with those who are pushed to the periphery: refugees, victims of wars, people without jobs, or homes, or hope. And we, too, are to speak truth…even when the truth is unpopular. Jesus proclaimed the kingdom of God — God’s new Way in the world — in which social righteousness — reordered relationships among all people—would be the order of things. No more of the tired old ‘way things are,’ but new, God-given, Christ-inaugurated, Spirit-powered possibilities for human living. In short, Christ calls us now to embrace the crazy possibility that life in this world can be free and full for all of God’s people.”
This begins in noticing. It continues in acting.
When Jesus encounters the blind man who could now see, he asks, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” The man wonders who this could be, so Jesus says, “You have seen him.” Jesus saw this man in his need. Now this man sees Jesus, his healer, his Savior. And believing comes with his healing and his seeing.
God calls the church to promote social righteousness — reordered relationships among all people. That is part of who we are and what we do. Doing so grates against the old order of things, but it also creates a community that flourishes, thanks be to God!