On the Road to Glory

Rev. Harriette Cross Englewood United Methodist Church Rust Memorial United Methodist Church October 28, 2012 Job 42:1-6, 10-17 Mark 10:46-52 22nd Sunday After Pentecost Year B On the Road to Glory The questions of life Have you noticed that the older we get in life, the more complex our questions about life become. As we go through our journey of life, we find that life is full of questions. When we were young we used to think that there was not a question that we could ask, that our parents didn’t have an answer for. And when we discovered that our parents didn’t have all of the answers, that is when we started to ask God. Of course God had all of the answers. God’s word, the bible is full of questions about life and answers to our deepest questions. Questions that we all ask, such as where did human beings come from, how did the world begin, what is our purpose in life, how are we supposed to live our lives, what is evil, how to be a righteous person in the midst of evil. We have come a long way in the last 6000 years. We have worked hard to be able to find the answers to our questions. But no matter how far we have come in life. There are certain questions that come up time and time again in our lives. The greatest question that we have is why? Why is this happening to me. Why does bad things happen, even when we strive to be good people. People who are faithful to God. Instead of giving us an straight answer, if you read the bible, God gives the answers we seek in the context of a story. Usually a story about someone’s life. They say that Job may not be the first story in the bible, but that it is the oldest story in the bible. This story was told even before the book of Genesis was written. Job is not a isrealite, Job is a foreigner who came to know God. Job intended to answer our deepest questions Even if Job is not the oldest story – it addresses the oldest question. Why does bad things happen to good people? Today are at the end of the story of Job. The man who started out with everything, who God allowed to devil to take it all away. He and his friends struggle with this. Why is this happening? Why is God standing by and letting this happen to a faithful person. Job asks, but God never gives an answer. It is in this final chapter of the story that Job answers his own question. Chapter 42 is known as the restoration of Job. Everything that he had in the beginning is restored to him. His health, his family, his wealth. But most importantly his faith in God. I want to focus on the first six chapters of chapter 42 – Job says that he repents from his need to question God about his life. He says that I now understand what I did not understand. He says that he repents. He says that he had heard of God but now he sees. He sees the ways of God for himself, and he is ready to go on with his life. I have heard it said that God is a lot like a pastor – you don’t see him all week, and then when you come to church to hear the sermon, you still don’t understand. The ways of God are always going to be a mystery. It is not ours to understand. But if by chance, in the midst of our confusion, in the midst of or questions, in the midst of our darkness, if we can come to the realization that we worship a truly wonderful God – we come to see all that we need to see. If in the midst o my pain, I am able to see the glory of God – I see it all. Helen Keller on being able to see Keller, so brave and inspiring to us in her deafness and blindness, once wrote a magazine article entitled: "Three days to see." In that article she outlined what things she would like to see if she were granted just three days of sight. It was a powerful, thought provoking article. On the first day she said she wanted to see friends. Day two she would spend seeing nature. The third day she would spend in her home city of New York watching the busy city and the workday of the present. She concluded it with these words: "I who am blind can give one hint to those who see: Use your eyes as if tomorrow you were stricken blind.' You see that is just it, most of us, all of us, go through life blind to what is really important. Most of us don’t see God for who he is in our lives. Our eyes work fine, but there is something wrong in our spirit. God is hard at work showing us the beauty of life, and for some reason we just don’t see it. That is probably why one of the signs of the messiah is that the blind will see. The lame will walk, the sick will be healed, the hungry will be fed and the blind will see. If you read the book of Mark you will see that Jesus does all of these things in order to show that he is indeed the messiah – the son of David, the son of God. In Mark 10, Jesus is on a trip to Jerusalem. His final trip to Jerusalem. He has been trying to teach his disciples, but it seems that they have a bad case of spiritual blindness. His disciples are still looking at Jesus through the eyes of the world and not the eyes of the spirit. They ask to sit at his right hand, as he greatest. Jesus has to tell them that greatness is not about honor, it is about serving. As jesus is teaching, a blind man, bartimaeus cries out and asks to be able to see. His request is granted. This is not the first story in Mark about Jesus healing a blind man. After the first healing of the blind, Jesus tells him not to tell anyone. But this story Is not just about healing the blind. The blind are able to see. Not just with their eyes, but with their spirit. Bartemaeus stays around to follow and serve Jesus. By now the secret is out. It is time for everyone to see. Not just the disciples, but everyone. Not just those who have been there all along, but the latecomers, not the insiders, but the outsiders. God’s love is for everyone. God’s glory is available for everyone to see. But sometimes, we are so caught up in our suffering that we just don’t realize it. We are all blind, we all cant see God in our lives. But Jesus says that it is our faith that makes us whole. Can’t see Jesus in the picture Pastor Steven E. Albertin told the following story. He said, in my church secretary's office there hangs a modernistic picture composed of a maze of colors and shapes. I realized these sophisticated, modern, and abstract pictures were supposed to contain some profound artistic or philosophical message, but I never was able to figure it out. It just looked like a jumbled mass of confusion. If there was a message there, I was blind to it. One day while I was standing in the office, waiting for the copier to warm up, one of the congregation's kindergarten-age boys, Adam, stood beside me and said, "Do you see what I see?" "Do you see something in that picture? I sure don't." Adam looked at me with glee in his eye, "Pastor, can't you see him? It's Jesus hanging on the cross." I stared as hard as I could, until my eyes actually hurt from staring. I wanted to believe Adam and that there actually was the image of Jesus hanging on the cross hidden somewhere in that mass of color and shapes, but I couldn't see Jesus anywhere. "Adam, I'm sorry but I must be blind. You will have to help me see." Directing his finger to a mass of color in the center of the picture, Adam said, "There, Pastor. Do you see what I see? There is Jesus, his face, his arms outstretched on the cross." And then, like an epiphany, the image began to appear. Yes, there hidden somehow "behind" the colors and the shapes was the barely visible image of Jesus, hanging with arms outstretched on the cross. "It's amazing, Adam. You have helped one blind pastor to see Jesus. Yes, I can see what you see, Adam." Steven E. Albertin, Against the Grain, CSS Publishing Company, Inc. Some say that the biggest problem in the world is not so much that we live in an evil, fallen world. The biggest problem in the world is the fact that there are so many people in the world who are going through life, and their eyes are not open to see the glory of God in their lives. Everything that happens to us in life is a test. Just as the devil challenged Job’s life, the devil challenges or life. Suffering is our chance to see God in our lives. In the midst of suffering we all have a choice – we can decide to be bitter or we can decide to be better. When Job decided to get better, he started to understand his God. The story of Job shows that God didn’t come to rescue us from the events of life. God didn’t come to answer our questions. If you know the story of Job, you know that Job didn’t get God’s answers, but he did get God’s presence. He realized that God was with him from beginning to end. He also realized that he didn’t need to have the answers, he didn’t need to understand why, all he needed to do was to have faith in a God that loves him. Japanese sword illustration: It is the Japanese who have created the best swords in the world. To create these fine weapons, ancient Japanese sword makers had to create a sword that was hard enough to retain a sharp edge, but at the same time soft enough not to be brittle. Sword makers who made swords by making the steel hard found they could preserve a sharp edge. Such swords, however, were often so brittle that they would often break when they clashed in battle. Soft steel, however, was found to be not as brittle, but would easily dull and be unable to slice through armor. Japanese sword makers, therefore had to forge a sword with steel hard enough to retain a sharp edge, but at the same time pliable enough not to break in battle. What Japanese sword makers learned to do was to create a sword made of hard and soft steel. Multiple sheets of hard and soft steel are heated, folded and pummeled together over and over again. Japanese swords go through a lengthy forging process until they have up to 33,000 paper-thin laminations of hard and soft metal. Each of these layers is one hundred thousandth of an inch thick. This is all done to a very precise recipe of temperature treatment. The end result is a finely crafted weapon with extreme pliability and a blade that will retain a finely honed edge. Just as Japanese sword makers repeatedly hammer together layers of metal to produce a sword that will be strong enough to withstand breaking, so God allows trials to hammer metal into the lives of His children. Just a sword made of hard metal will easily break in battle, so the believer filled with pride will also break in adversity. It is in the forging hand of God that humility and dependence on Him are developed into our lives to create character that will triumph in adversity. The hard steel in our lives is the word of God. The soft steel in our lives is humility and a dependence on God. These are forged together in our lives through fiery trials and prayer to produce vessels that will give Him glory. We need the hard steel confidence of what we believe together with the soft steel of humility. Job’s restoration is our restoration. Job’s faith is our faith. When we decide to turn around, and see God – the lord will bless our days to come, just as much as he had blessed our past. Let us pray…. The rest of these stories are not used… D.L. Moody, the famed evangelist, told this story at one of his meetings: One evening just before Christmas, a man was walking through the streets of an Eastern city. The store windows were all beautifully decorated, and he observed three little girls intensely interested in one of them. He discovered that the girl in the center was blind, and the others were trying to describe the beautiful things in the window. “Why,” they said, “can’t you see that Teddy bear and that doll? Just look at that pretty pink bow!” But the poor little girl stood with a blank expression on her face and could not appreciate the beautiful things before her. “Now,” said Moody, “this is an illustration of the effort we Christians are making to arouse the unconverted to an interest and delight in spiritual things. The reason we can’t do so is because the sinner is spiritually blind.” Moody had scarcely concluded when a reporter was on the platform asking him where he had heard that story. “Oh,” said Moody, “I read it in one of those daily papers. I have forgotten which one.” Then the reporter said, “I’m the one who wrote the story because I was there and saw the whole thing. I see now that I’m just like that little girl, spiritually blind.” That man was converted then and there. Illustration: In fact, most Christians today perceive God like one person noted: God is a lot like our pastor. I don’t see him through the week and I don’t understand him on Sunday. Dear God, Before I finish, I want you to take care of mommy, take care of daddy, take care of my sister and my brother and please, God, take care of yourself, because if you don’t we’ll all sunk. Amen! A. Little Suzie understood a very important lesson about herself....she was totally dependent upon God. as if tomorrow you were stricken blind.' As bad as blindness is in the 21st century, however, it was so much worse in Jesus' day. Today a blind person at least has the hope of living a useful life with proper training. Some of the most skilled and creative people in our society are blind. But in first century Palestine blindness meant that you would be subjected to abject poverty. You would be reduced to begging for a living. You lived at the mercy and the generosity of others. Unless your particular kind of blindness was self-correcting, there was no hope whatsoever for a cure. The skills that were necessary were still centuries beyond the medical knowledge of the day. Little wonder then that one of the signs of the coming of the Messiah was that the blind should receive their sight… The story is told of a Sunday class that had been asked the question, ¡§in your time of discouragement, what is your favorite Scripture.¡¨ A young man said, ¡§the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want Psalm 23:1.¡¨ A middle age woman said, ¡§God is my refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Psalm 46:1. Another woman said, ¡§In this world you shall have tribulations, but be of good cheer, I have overcome this world. John 16:33-35. Then old Mr. John who was 80 years old, with head of white hair and dark black skin, stood up and said with as much strength as he could muster, ¡§and it came to pass¡¨ 85 times in the bible. The class started to laugh a little thinking that old Mr. John¡¦s lack of memory was getting the best of him. When the snickering stopped, he said. At 30 I lost my job with six hungry mouths and a wife to feed. I didn¡¦t know how I would make it. At 40 my eldest son was killed overseas in the war. It knocked me down. At 50 my house burned to the ground. Nothing was saved out of the house. At 60 my wife of 40 years got cancer. It slowly ate away at her. We cried together many a night on our knees in prayer. At 65 she died. I still miss her today. The agony I went through in each of these situations was unbelievable. I wondered where was God. But each time I looked in the bible I saw one of those 85 verses that said, ¡§and it came to pass.¡¨ I felt that God was telling me, my pain and my circumstances were also going to pass and that God would get me through it.

So that we May See

April 3, 2011
Fourth Sunday of Lent
Year A
John 9:1-41
In Order that We May See


Introduction – how we treat people with disabilities

Imagine how different your life would be if you were born blind? What in your life would you have never witnessed, how would you talk to people different? Who is it that you would have to depend on to get things done? Who would you have to trust to get you places? How would you be a different person? How would life be different with any disability? In the past years, we as a society are being more intentional about how we integrate people who don’t fit our view of what is normal, but the reality is that we still have a long way to go in how we treat one another, the labels that we put on one another, and how we accept people for who they are, and not for who we expect them to be.

The blind man’s encounter with Jesus

The encounter with Jesus today is the only story in the bible of Jesus dealing with someone who is blind, and Jesus heals not only his blindness, but is able to restore his life – so that he is able to return to life without the stigma of having a disability. Some people are not even sure that this is the same beggar that they knew all of their life. He acted so differently, now that it appears that he had his sight.

John’s Jesus – The Son of God
This whole chapter has many important messages for us. We won’t be able to focus on them all this morning. I just want to bring you a few of them, that I thought were important. When you read the book of John, John has a special message about the nature of Jesus Christ for us. He wants to make it plain that Jesus is not only a special person; he is the son of God. Jesus has all of the attributes of God. He is a healer, a restorer, a guide, a leader, a transformer, a way maker. He is the one who can supply all of our needs. Jesus is the messiah – the fulfillment of the promises of God.

Jesus came so that we might have life and have it abundantly
But the only way to take advantage of the attributes of God is to believe in Jesus and to believe in what Jesus can do. Have you ever noticed that people who don’t believe in Jesus, tend to be people who don’t need Jesus for anything?

The only way to really know Jesus, and to know what Jesus can do for us is to have an encounter with Jesus in some way in our lives. We know who Jesus is, and what Jesus can do, by the story of what Jesus has done for us in our lives. In that encounter, we come to know Jesus, but Jesus also comes to define us.


Story of a teacher giving a student identity

A sixth grade English teacher, really seemed to love her subject and her class. She would have them sit in a circle so that she could see them, and she would teach them her subject in a way that seemed to make sense to them. James seemed to love her class. She had him write a play, and then had his classmates read the lines and perform the play. It was a great feeling for him to see others perform his work. He started to write other plays and other writings. One day after class, she told James that she saw him as a writer, and that she did all that she could to bring that quality out of him. James grew up and became a famous playwright- because a teacher believed in him, and treated him as she saw him. He responded by tailoring his lifestyle after those expectations.
Jesus does the same for us. We give Jesus his identity as the messiah, as our lord and savior. He gives us our identity as the faithful people.

The blind man makes a choice
The gospel lesson for this morning is not a story of a man being blind. It is the story of how Jesus saves him. How that man dealt with the consequences of being saved, how he made a conscious decision to be saved, to be healed. And how he endured when it became evident that was not going to be an easy choice. Being saved, is not just one moment in time in our lives, it is a lifetime of making difficult decisions.
Remember that show extreme makeover, where they would radically change the appearance of people. At the end of the show at the big reveal, problems that people had dealt with all of their life had been taken away. I think one of the reasons that show is not on the air anymore, was because they realized that changing someone’s appearance, was not enough to change their lives. Along with those lifelong problems, were also lifelong habits. If you did not rehabilitate those habits, that person would continue to be miserable.

Blind man chooses life
Being cured of blindness does not mean that you will automatically go on about your life. Someone who was born blind has no idea of how to use their sight. They will still bump into walls, and not be able to pick up things, because they have no idea of depth perception, or what colors are. They are seeing all of these contraptions, a telephone, a radio, a salt shaker. But they have no idea of what these things are, or what they are used for or how to use them. You start to see all of these strange people, who know who you are, but you have no idea of who they are.

The new life can be overwhelming enough to make someone want to go back to being blind. And yet the bible says that this man not only was happy to be able to see, he embraced his sight. He went on with his new life. Because that is what Jesus told him to do.

After the healing, Jesus goes away and is not a part of the story. And even more hardship comes about. People start to talk about him, his family is threatened, he is eventually kicked out of the synagogue. But he holds strong to the new life that Jesus gave him. Making sure that he won’t turn back. He makes a conscious choice that he will be a new man with a new life. Salvation is not a moment in time, it is a lifetime of choosing to follow Jesus.

Story of a driver choosing sin
A man looks back at his life, and recalls that when he learned to drive as a teenager, he felt that it was a waste of time to stop at stop lights. Whenever he would come to a stop light, if there were no cars around, then he would slow down for a moment, and just keep driving. He continued that habit for years. He got to be a pro at looking out for cars and going on. He even go to the point where he did not even slow down, he just checked for cars. Well as you can imagine, one day that habit was challenged. Anyone who drives, knows that there are times when you can check and double check, and there is always this car that appears out of nowhere. The car that appeared out of nowhere for this man just happened to be a police car. He was able to stop on time so that he would not get a ticket. He vowed from that time forward to give up that habit and to intentionally stop at all stop signs. It wasn’t the police car that scared him. It was his own actions. When he go to the stop life, his foot went for the gas pedal. It then went for the brakes. But no sooner had he hit the brake, that out of habit his foot automatically went for the gas pedal. He was so used to running the stoplight, that his body could do it without thinking. He realized that it was time for a change.
That is what a life of sin does to our bodies, our minds and our spirits. It takes over our lives. It takes less effort for us to do the wrong thing, that it is for us to stop and to think and do the right thing. The path of least resistance is the path of sin. The decision to stop, think and to endure is salvation. What is the path that Jesus leads us on. Jesus says I am the light of the world. To embrace the light is to choose to be a child of God. But most of the world still prefers to live in darkness. They don’t want to see, the want to remain blind.

Jesus is the light of the world
Jesus says I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind. Those who see may become blind, what does that mean. There are many in the world who want to keep things the way they are, who can’t accept the change of salvation. Because to be saved, means that they would have to change their habits, their beliefs, their lives. If Jesus was to truly come into their lives, it would take too much effort on their part to maintain their salvation. After all, the Pharisee considered themselves pretty faithful people. They too made a choice. But the choice wasn’t to follow Jesus. Are you calling us blind? Jesus comes back by saying if you were blind, you wouldn’t be guilty of your sin. But since you say you can really see, then your sin remains. There are a lot of people who claim to live in the light, but still embrace the darkness. But what about you? Have you had an encounter with Jesus? Are you willing to accept that things will never be the same? Do you really want to see, or is it easier to stay blind?
We need Jesus in order to see
If you want to see the stars you use a telescope, of you want to see the small things of life you use a microscope, of you need to see your insides you uses a x ray machine, but if you want to see your sin and the way to salvation – you need Jesus in your life.

Who is Jesus for you? Let us pray….