Encountering God Rewrites Definitions

 

             If you’ve been following my sermons the last few weeks you know that we’re asking one of those big questions: What does it mean to be found by God, to see God, to encounter God?
And part of what happens when you encounter God is that you get your definitions changed on you!

            Think of the famous experiment—the Slit experiment.
Put poorly, light behaves differently if it is observed or not observed
—it can be defined as a wave or a particle, depending on if we’re looking at it or not.

            So too, an encounter with God
—like the encounter the blind man had with Jesus
—can mess with, change, our definitions. Encountering God changes our definitions.

Let us pray

 

            When God encounters us—meets us in life,
it wrecks our categories and destroys our definitions,
it upends what we think we know about our world.

            When the blind man encounter’s Jesus redefinitions fly
—everything from who is the insider and who is the outsider to the nature of Sin to the Blind man’s very identity, change.

 

            It begins with, an unexpected encounter
—the Disciples want to talk Sin,
Jesus insists upon healing.
The man is left healed and unrecognizable; his sight, make everyone else blind.

            He starts off as an object lesson,
an example of intergenerational sin,
a son with no autonomy of his own,
a disability, a condition,
“The Blind Man.”
But on the other side of things Jesus has removed him from these boxes people have hemmed him into.

That which crippled him doesn’t have the last laugh, instead God laughs with him, joy bubbles up,
because God upends his pain
—when God encounters us we’re all broken jars glued back together with gold,
our scars reveal majesty!

He answers for himself, instead of simply as so-and-so’s son.
His subjective reality—his witness to what God has done—overcomes all that objectifying they’ve been doing to him his whole life long.
He’s a Son of God!
No other definition matters!

           

            The very Laws of God get re-defined in this encounter. He’s healed on the Sabbath
—well, what’s the Sabbath for if not for healing?
That back and forth, already present in Genesis and Deuteronomy, is on full displace—is Sabbath about Liberation or Rest?

What is the purpose of the Sabbath?

“Can the captive truly rest?”

“No,” says Jesus.

Only the Free can Rest.

Only the Liberated can Relax.

 

            At a certain point,
Jesus’ intervention upends questions of authority
—who is speaking, teaching, rightly about God?
The powers that be question this Man so often, that he eventually has to ask, “You don’t want to become his disciples too… do you?”
You’ve expended so much energy and words wondering what happened to me… six times this man recounts his encounter:

-“The man called Jesus made mud…

-“Then I washed…

-“He is a Prophet…

-“I was blind, now I see…

-“…Do you also want to become his disciples?

-“…If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.”

            In each retelling his faith and his authority are transformed
—that’s the power of sharing our faith with others
—it strengthens and develops our own faith! Through such actions our faith seeks understanding.

 

            The starting assumption
—the working definition
—is that this man is “born in sin from head to toe.”
An assumption based on an if/then universe:
-If you sin, then you are sunk;
-if you fly right, then God will bless you.

You are in the driver’s seat,
you are in control
—God simply reacts to you like Pavlov’s Dog
—salivating at a bell,
saving at your say so.

            But Jesus, he insists that Sin is something different
—God is at work in the world, encounter Him and be changed!
A because/therefor sort of God.

-Because I love you, therefore you are lovable.
-Because God see his suffering, therefore the Blind Man gets to see the Jesus

-Because God acts for those in need, therefore their needs are met.

            If you say, “We see” and you have not seen
—shame on you.
Sin is ignoring the works of God,
refusing to come to terms with the uncontrollable grace of God.

            Sin is not recognizing a God found amid suffering.
A God driven out from the city walls. Out here with us.
Jesus is driven out here with us.

 

            Yes, Jesus is out there, with the man once blind
—outside the gate, driven away from his home.
Expelled by his community, something miraculous happens,
he finds himself among the community of the expelled…

            Let me say that a second time for those in the nosebleed section
—This man is expelled by his community and finds himself among the community of the expelled
—and that’s where Jesus is.

-Jesus too is labeled a sinner,

-Jesus too is grilled by the religious authorities,

-Jesus too is weighed down by questions about his identity and his origins,

-Jesus too is driven out,

…Jesus, crucified outside the gates of Jerusalem.

            Who knew that when the insiders expelled this outsider, the whole system inverted
—the insiders are outsiders and the outsiders insiders.

 

            Truly, encountering God changes our definitions. Amen.