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“RECEIVE YOUR SIGHT”
GOSPEL SCRIPTURE TEXT:  MARK 10:46-52

DAVE RING, PASTOR
LOS ALAMOS 1ST UNITED METHODIST CHURCH
SUNDAY MORNING, FEBRUARY 17, 2008
THE SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT

SCRIPTURE TEXT:  46Then they came to Jericho. As Jesus and his disciples, together with a large crowd, were leaving the city, a blind man, Bartimaeus (that is, the Son of Timaeus), was sitting by the roadside begging. 47When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!" 48Many rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more, "Son of David, have mercy on me!" 49Jesus stopped and said, "Call him." So they called to the blind man, "Cheer up! On your feet! He's calling you." 50Throwing his cloak aside, he jumped to his feet and came to Jesus. 51"What do you want me to do for you?" Jesus asked him. The blind man said, "Rabbi, I want to see." 52"Go," said Jesus, "your faith has healed you." Immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus along the road.  --  Mark 10:46-52, New International Version

PRAYER:  Lord, we would see the things of God this morning.  Open the eyes of our souls, Lord, that we may truly see.  Amen.

MESSAGE:  When I entered seminary in Atlanta, Georgia in 1973, my first field assignment as a ministerial student was in a decaying urban area of south Atlanta.  There I presented myself to the principal of Parks Middle School, a 100% black, inner city public school.  Some of you might have heard of Parks – most of the children murdered in Atlanta in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s by mass-killer Wayne Williams were students there.  Parks Middle School was and, as far as I’m aware, remains one of Atlanta’s roughest schools.

When the principal at Parks interviewed me he was impressed by my science and engineering background from my former profession.  Within two days, although I had no teaching credentials whatever, I became the “permanent substitute” teacher of general science to two sections of Parks’ seventh and eighth graders.  Since they never found a regular teacher that semester, my entire ministerial assignment for four months was as a part-time, inner-city junior high science teacher.  It was quite an experience!

One particular problem that I’ll never forget had to do with eyesight.  Nearly all of my students were classic inner-city ineducables – eighth graders who couldn’t read “See Spot run,” seventh graders who couldn’t add two plus two.  But for some odd reason I took note of an unusual characteristic among these kids.  In my one class, of 38 eighth graders, there was not a single child who wore glasses.  In the seventh grade section, there was only one girl with glasses.  That’s strange.  If you look around at the general population in the U. S., about half of all the people – even in our era of the availability of both contact lenses and Lasik surgery – about half of all folks wear glasses.  Among teens, it’s about a third.  But not one kid out of 38 wore glasses at Parks.

So I did a little records checking.  By law all of these kids had had their vision tested repeatedly.  And I quickly discovered at least half of them were on record, for several years, as needing glasses.  But the parents routinely threw away such reports – they couldn’t afford to buy glasses for their kids.  And the schools weren’t required to do anything more than conduct the vision tests.  My students couldn’t read or write or calculate arithmetic because half of them couldn’t see well enough to do such tasks.

I began a personal crusade to get glasses for “my” kids.  I sparred with local and federal program officials, pleaded with Lions Clubs and so forth until finally, just before leaving my assignment at Parks School, a handful of these youth started wearing glasses.

I’ll certainly never forget Harold – the absolutely “dumbest” child in my two assigned sections.  Not only was Harold nearly blind without glasses, he also had a substantial hearing loss.  With glasses and a hearing aid, which I also campaigned to obtain, Harold became a different person.  He could see, he could hear!  I’m usually not much on equating social action with the gospel of Jesus Christ, but that was one time I did.  In at least a physical sense Harold’s glasses and hearing aid made him a new creature.  For Harold it was almost a new birth!

The blind, the deaf, the lame, the leprous – all of them came to Jesus, and He never once refused to heal those who sought His grace.  Bartimaeus cried out, “Rabbi, I want to see!” and Jesus immediately granted him sight.  Jesus understood His ministry very strongly in terms of such healing.  Several times He applied the healing prophecies of the great Isaiah unto Himself.  Once, when questioned by the disciples of John the Baptist, He replied thus:  “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard; the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up….the poor have good news preached to them.”  Jesus was definitely in the healing business.

Jesus brought sight to the blind.  Fortunately, physical blindness has receded as a major problem in our contemporary world.  God has allowed humans to exercise healing power over many forms of blindness today – through better disease control, nutrition, eye care, corrective lenses and surgery, and the like.  But although healing physical blindness was very much a part of Jesus’ concern, He was also well-aware of another sort of blindness – a blindness fully as terrible as a lack of physical eyesight, really much more so.

I suspect you may already be anticipating the kind of blindness I’m about to describe – blindness not of the eyes, but of the spirit, the soul.  In our world, in our society, in our lives this is the sort of blindness that affects countless millions the world over.  Spiritual blindness is epidemic in our county, our state, our nation, our world.  It affects every social class, every economic group, every age bracket, every racial and ethnic category – it’s an equal opportunity affliction.  And it’s far more horrible that physical blindness, for it’s a terminal disease – with a 100% mortality rate.

Unlike ignorance, which on rare occasions can be defensible, spiritual blindness is never excusable.  And it’s not transformed into something “novel” or “chic” by granting it fancy titles such as “pragmatic rationalism” or “secular humanism.”  It’s the blindness of one who, having been exposed to light, refuses to open his eyes.  In the face of truth such blindness swears, “It’s a lie!”  Knowing God’s will for human life, this spiritual blindness boldly claims, notwithstanding, “I’ll do it my way!”

Remember the Pharisees of Jesus’ time.  They were fully immersed in the revealed Word of God.  They knew what God’s will was for human life.  And yet, they refused to obey it.  And so Jesus reserved His worst criticisms for them:  “Woe to you, blind fools, hypocrites!  You shut the Kingdom of Heaven against men – for you neither enter yourselves, nor allow those who would enter to go in!”  They knew God’s law, but felt themselves to be above it.  They paid lip service to God – and lived worse than those around them who knew little or nothing of His will.  Their eyes beheld God’s light, but they were blind to it.

Jesus Christ is God’s light for a world in darkness.  He has never turned away any who would sincerely seek to be cured of blindness – be it physical or spiritual.  Nicodemus, one of the foremost religious authorities of his generation, came to Jesus under the cover of night -- and admitted his spiritual blindness.  Jesus seemed, initially, somewhat surprised: “You, who claim to know spiritual truth and who would teach others the ways of God --you yourself are lost?”  It was surprising, yet perhaps not so surprising.  A pastor learns, with time, that sometimes the finest, best educated, most upstanding members of his or her congregation are adept at one particular skill – putting up a front.  Nicodemus, regardless of his worldly status, was spiritually blind.  He admitted his blindness to Jesus – and because he was honest with the Lord of life, because he “came clean” with the Christ, Nicodemus was granted spiritual sight.  The eyes of his soul were opened – Nicodemus experienced a new birth.  Much like Bartimaeus, Nicodemus came to Jesus in darkness – and went away seeing.

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