1 Samuel 16:1-13
http://bible.oremus.org/browser.cgi?passage=1+sam+16%3A1-13
Psalm 23
http://bible.oremus.org/browser.cgi?passage=psalm+23
Ephesians 5:8-14
http://bible.oremus.org/browser.cgi?passage=eph+5%3A8-14
John 9:1-41
http://bible.oremus.org/browser.cgi?passage=john+9%3A1-41
What do you see when you look at the world? A lot of people, particularly Christians, see the world as a terrible place. We talk about the "evils of society" and the degradation of the culture around us. We see violence going on in our cities, and we take it as proof that God has abandoned the world to its own devices. When we want to describe places where sin is rampant and evil reigns, we talk about "the world." "The world" is a place where nobody cares about anybody else. "The world" teaches you to be selfish. Out in "the world", things are a mess.
And the result of this way of looking at the world is that we become cynical, we lose hope. We despair of there every being any change in the world, and we give up, or we deliberately refuse to help. What’s the point? It’s just all going to go to hell some day, and the sooner the better. Then God can come and start all over again. Truly - there are Christians, and non-Christians, who see the world this way. To them, the world is a depraved place, and they believe that God is really going to take them away from all of that. So, they’ve decided there’s no point in making the world a better place. They would rather segregate themselves and create little religious utopias where they live than go out into that mess and try to heal the wounds. The world doesn’t deserve it. There’s too much darkness. There are too many shadows.
And who can blame them, really? God has given us more than enough chances to make things better, and every single time, we’ve made a mess of it. In the last century, we had the Great War, the war to end all wars, and then only thirty years later we had World War II and the dropping of the atomic bomb. This century is only five years old, and the same old military nationalism just carries on. The same wounds are picked at, the same innocent people get hurt. Nothing changes. Why bother?
The prophet Samuel thought that. In the Old Testament reading, he was so depressed that Saul, whom he had anointed to be king over Israel, had in the end rejected God that apparently he just gave up. He didn’t go out looking for a new ruler for Israel, and he stopped criticizing Saul for his rejection of God. Instead, he just hid from Saul and did nothing. There wasn’t anything he could do. The people, who wanted Saul against God’s wishes, deserved their misfortune. He wasn’t about to go and make their lives any better.
The Pharisees thought the same thing about the blind man, and in fact about all sick people. During Jesus’ time, it was thought that people got sick because God was punishing them for something they or their parents did wrong. Hence, all sick, diseased, disabled people were sinners. And that meant that they were better off left alone - why mess with God’s punishment? Why bother trying to heal someone who clearly doesn’t deserve it? If God didn’t see anything in those people worth healing, why should they?
For Samuel, and the Pharisees, and us, it’s easy to look at the world as a place of darkness, to see the shadows that cover everything, to give up every reason for hope and making a difference.
But God doesn’t seem to see the world the way we do. At least, God doesn’t act as if all God sees is shadows and death and evil, abandoning us to our own wicked ways. In fact, God acts as if God sees the complete opposite, as if God sees in the world and in us good reason to offer healing and hope and new life, not because we need it, although we do, but because there’s a chance it will make a difference.
For instance, in the Old Testament, when Samuel has given up all hope and doesn’t see any reason to get involved anymore, God finally tells him to get off his butt and to go and anoint a new king. God basically says to him, "Look, get over Saul. I’m doing something new here, something nobody’s seen before, and I need you to get out and make it happen." And God, through Samuel, picks out a new king for Israel, one who loves God, one who doesn’t look like much of a king - he’s the youngest of eight brothers, not at all big and strong like a king ought to be - but God doesn’t look at those things. God sees into his heart, and God sees something special. And so God tells Samuel to anoint this boy as the new king. And David goes on to be a good king, and does good things for Israel, redeeming it before God.
The Son of God, Jesus Christ, saw something that nobody else saw when he healed the blind man. Where everyone else, including the disciples, saw a sinner, Jesus saw a child of God who was worth healing. Where the Pharisees saw a probable fraud and liar, Jesus saw someone who was worthy enough to be trusted with the secret of who Jesus really was. The Son of God did not look at people the way we do.
The Son of God didn’t look at the world, or even at us, the way we do, as a worthless place with no hope for change. In fact, God, and by extension Jesus, saw in the world, and in us, something worth dying for. God saw something so precious and so valuable that God was willing to go to the cross to save it. And don’t tell me that God didn’t know what we would do with that kind of gift, that we would abuse it and reject it and ignore it. There’s no doubt God knew. But God chose to overlook that, and to see us differently, to see us as worth the effort of healing and restoration. God’s not going to wipe everything away and start all over again, or whisk the worthy away to a better place. No, God’s already decided and already begun to save what’s here. Through Jesus, God waded into the mess that is our world and is anointing and healing and forgiving all over the place. God is acting as if there is hope for us after all, and God is going to do everything possible to make things better.
But why the difference? Well, you could say that God sees the world in a different light than we do. That, in light of new evidence, God sees the world differently. You see, God sees the world, including us, in the light of Jesus Christ. Jesus is, after all, the light of the world. And light, we know, shows things in a new way. It gets rid of shadows and darkness and helps us to see things we never saw before. "Everything exposed by the light becomes visible," says the writer of Ephesians, and "everything that becomes visible is light." By the light of Christ, what has become visible is that the world is indeed worth saving, that we are worth healing and new life, that through Christ, we who once were darkness are now light.
And through the light of the Son, God shows us what God has always seen, that the world is a place where hope grows instead of despair, where goodness makes a difference in the face of evil, where peace puts an end to war, where new life triumphs over death. God has not and will not abandon us. On the contrary, God has chosen this world as the site where God’s ultimate act of healing and redemption has and continues to take place. Jesus Christ was sent to help us to see the world the way God does - as something worth saving. His shining light swept away the shadows of the world and of our lives, showing to us that we are indeed special in the eyes of God, that we are loved, that we are worth dying for. And with this light shining down, we can see that the same is true for the whole world. In light of what Christ has done, the world is worth loving, worth dying for, worth healing. The world is worth us. No, God doesn’t see the world the way we do. By the light of Christ, God sees something special. God has seen that the world is worth nothing less than the life of the Son of God. Amen.
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