Written and Delivered by The Rev. Canon Paul S. Nancarrow, PhD

Our Gospel lesson today is the third in a series of stories in which a man or a woman has an encounter with Jesus--and in that encounter is given the possibility of enlightenment, when she or he sees through the ordinary layer of meaning to the extraordinary grace that Jesus offers. Like the stories we've heard the past couple of weeks, our story today also hinges on that turn from ordinary to extraordinary--but today's story is made a little more complicated by the fact that the "ordinary" thing is itself a miracle. In today's Gospel Jesus opens the eyes of a man born blind--but that opening is just the beginning of the story. The real enlightenment, the real transformation, comes as the man moves from sight to insight, as he grows from the vision of the eyes to the vision of the spirit, as he comes not only to see but to see Jesus.

Look at the way the story is laid out: At each turning point in the story, each moment of plot development, the man's vision becomes clearer--especially the vision he has of Jesus.

At the beginning of the story the man is simply sitting there in the marketplace, the way he usually does, begging for a few coins from the crowds that pass. Then Jesus and his disciples walk by. Now the disciples want to get into a theological discussion about the man's sin, but Jesus wants to make a theological point about the man's salvation. So Jesus spits on the ground, and makes mud, and he puts it on the man's eyes, and tells him to wash, and gives him his sight.

So the man goes, and washes and then comes back into the marketplace, and everyone is amazed that he can see. By this time, however, Jesus himself has moved on, Jesus is no longer in the marketplace, and the man has not yet actually seen the face of the one who healed him. The people ask him how his eyes were opened, and he says, "The man called Jesus did it." He knows that Jesus healed him, but all he knows about Jesus himself is that he is "a man." He doesn't really know Jesus yet--he hasn't really seen Jesus for himself.

Well, a miracle of this magnitude can't go unreported--so the people take the formerly blind man to the Pharisees. Pharisees, the crowd thinks, are experts in interpreting God's will through the Scriptures--they'll be able to figure all this out! The Pharisees interrogate the man rather closely; but it becomes clear as they speak that they don't really want to hear what the man has to say. They've already made up their minds about Jesus, and they are not at all interested in seeing things from the ex-blind man's perspective. "We know that God has spoken to Moses," they solemnly declare, "but as for this man, this Jesus, we don't know where he comes from." The Pharisees know what they know, and they see what they see, and they aren't at all prepared to open their eyes to anything else.

But while the Pharisees are blinding themselves, the formerly blind man's vision is growing sharper. Although he still hasn't seen Jesus with his eyes, his insight into Jesus is becoming more and more clear. When he was first questioned by the Pharisees, the man said that Jesus was a prophet--not just "a man," but "a prophet"--and now, at the end of his interrogation, he is ready to say even more: "Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind," he says. "If this Jesus were not from God, he could do nothing." So the man's vision of Jesus has grown again: from "a man" to "a prophet" to "one who comes from God." He is seeing ever more clearly who Jesus is and what Jesus means.

The Pharisees, however, are not impressed: they revile the man and they cast him out--which in this context means both that they put him out of the building, out onto the street, and that they ban him from attending services at the synagogue. It's not exactly the kind of treatment one would expect for being the recipient of a miracle of healing.

It is there on the street, when things are actually looking pretty bleak for the man who had been blind, that Jesus comes to him again. Remember, the man still has not actually seen Jesus face-to-face, even though his spiritual vision has been getting clearer--so he really isn't quite sure what's going on when someone stands in front of him on the crowded street and says, "Do you believe in the Son of Man?" He isn't quite sure what's going on--but he's willing to take a risk and trust in what God has done for him so far, so he asks "Tell me who he is, so that I may believe in him." And Jesus answers, "You have seen him, and you are seeing him now." And the man who had been blind now sees Jesus, with his eyes and with his spirit, and seeing who Jesus is at last, he worships him.

So through this story the man has gone from thinking of Jesus as "a man" to thinking of Jesus as "a prophet" to thinking of Jesus as "one who comes from God" to seeing Jesus as the Inheritor of both human and divine realities--that's what we mean by the biblical phrases "Son of God" and "Son of Man"--he sees Jesus as the Divine and Human One who calls forth his worship. This man's enlightenment comes as he moves from sight to insight, as he grows from the vision of the eyes to the vision of the spirit, as he comes not only to see but to see Jesus.

And the invitation the story makes to us today is to be like that man: the invitation of the Gospel to us is to learn to see not only with our eyes, but also with our spirits; to learn to see, and to see Jesus.

And I think that invitation to see and to see Jesus is especially meaningful, especially urgent, to us of St George's, to us in the Diocese of Minnesota, at just this time and just this place. For over two years now our diocese has been engaged in a process of rethinking our identity, our purpose, and our mission in Christ; and the fruits of that process were put forth in a report from the Bishop's Commission on Mission Strategy at our Diocesan Convention back in October. During this season of Lent, our Grown-Up Sunday School sessions here at St George's have been looking at that BCMS report, looking especially at the implications of that report for our life as a congregation. One of the top priorities that report names is the spiritual transformation of each of the congregations in our diocese, including our congregation--a spiritual transformation that is rooted in recognizing the presence of God active in our midst, and raising up our passions and gifts for ministry and connecting those passions to real concrete opportunities to do mission in the world.

One of the key elements in that spiritual transformation is Dwelling in the Word, Gospel-Based Discipleship, a way of reading scripture that we have been doing more and more of here at St George's. In Dwelling in the Word we do not read the Bible simply as a historical document, nor do we read it as a rulebook full of prescriptions and proscriptions telling us what to do. Instead we read the Bible with three questions in mind--What do we see God doing in this passage? What do we hear God saying to us in this passage? What do we hear God calling us to do in this passage?--and by engaging those questions in dialogue with each other, we allow the Word to come off the page and really speak to us, we learn to look at the scriptures and see meaning in them, we learn to look at scripture and to see and to see Jesus as a living, calling, empowering, encouraging presence in our lives. Dwelling in the Word helps us to see and to see Jesus.

But if we see Jesus in the scriptures, we are also called to see Jesus in ourselves and in our world. Another important priority of the BCMS report is to renew and revitalize our congregations in their mission contexts, precisely by learning to see our congregation as the place where each of us is encouraged to name our passions for mission, and discover our own unique gifts for ministry, and connect those gifts with real things we can do in our real worlds to reveal and to enact the extraordinary love of Jesus in the ordinary works of life. Our congregation is a place we come to be ministered to, certainly; but here we are ministered to so that we can become ministers, so that we can learn the ways of ministry and minister to those around us Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday and all week long--not just be ministered to on Sunday. Our collective commitment to mission means that each one of is is invited, called, commanded, to learn how to see and to see Jesus in the people and the situations we deal with every day, all the time.

That is what enlightenment, transformation, discipleship, means for us.

In today's Gospel, a man whose name we never even know makes the journey from sight to insight, from the vision of the eyes to the vision of the spirit, from seeing to seeing Jesus--and the Gospel calls us to make that same journey in all the connections of our lives. May that journey be a part of our Lenten walk--and may it also be part of our Easter joy. Amen.