(By Jody)
Greta Thunberg interview
John 9
“It is impossible for you to go on as you were before, so you must go on as you never have.” (Cheryl Strayed said that, but Jesus might have.)
This is a beautiful story.
A challenging story.
A dangerous story.
And a problematic story.
The more I learn about disability and disability pride the more uncomfortable I am about preaching this text. I am a sighted person: I must check myself on my assumptions about the “rightness” of sight, but I also must not claim it is disempowering to be healed of blindness.
The bible mentions blindness in a few contexts: helplessness (Isaac blessing the wrong son, Paul on the Damascus road), lack of insight and awareness, and of course, an opportunity for healing.
As Jennifer Koosed and Darla Schumm (who is partially blind) point out: “The use of metaphors and other literary devices must be understood to have real consequences in the world, and these consequences must be recognized and interrogated. There is more than one way to be whole and holy.”
So along with being drawn to metaphors of light and dark, sight and blindness, as representing alternative realities within reality, possibilities within possibility, I am learning to question the assumptions they are built on. Blindness, especially in some contexts, can marginalise and make life extremely difficult. But that is not because blindness is a fundamental lack, any more than not being able to fly is – it reflects the way the sighted majority have set up the world to suit themselves. Likewise, darkness can be a place of fear or oppression, but it does not have to be. It can be a place awareness, of rest, of health. We have all come from the life-giving darkness of a womb.
So there are (at least) two challenges in this text. One is the presenting challenge: of spiritual awareness and insight and growth. The other is: questioning assumptions, including ones in the text. We are not in conflict with the text, but friends, who seek also to bear witness to Christ. Besides which, questioning assumptions about sight and blindness support Jesus’ own point: re-examine your paradigm that you might grow deeper into the human person you are divinely created to be.
The text describes an encounter with Jesus, and a miraculous physical change. The story unfolds with various characters coming on set; pontificating on sin, expressing surprise and dismay at Jesus’ action, avoiding comment and dodging implication, condemning and entrenching. Woven throughout is the man, who bears witness to the transformative upheaval Jesus has brought to his life: “One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” Richard Rohr said: “Whatever is going on in God is a flow, a radical relatedness, a perfect communion between Three—a circle dance of love. God is Absolute Friendship. God is not just a dancer; God is the dance itself.” The man has been drawn into the dance.
Throughout the story we are presented with two possibilities:
Openness, transformation, dance.
Power-clutch, entrench, cement.
Some of Greta Thurburg’s comments, on what we must confront and what we must pursue, would slot into this text without any trouble:
Step out of your comfort zone...
It actually has a lot of impact when you speak truth to power...
I just know what is right. I want to do what is right.
In some circumstances it can definitely be an advantage to be neuro-diverse. Because that makes you different, it makes you think differently. ... We need to think outside our current system.
...Once you fully understand ...then you know what you can do as well...
Ruth Haley Barton comments: “How desperately we need practices, experiences and questions that help us get outside our paradigms so that we can see old realities in new ways.” (p24 Pursuing God’s will together)
Gone are the days of privilege and prominence for the church in New Zealand – where we sit tight and people come to us. What God is doing, how God is transforming, must be worked out on a dance floor that is far bigger than church buildings and institutions.
Greg told us years ago: we have two ears for listening and one mouth for talking. Gavin told us quite recently: you have to listen way more than you talk. Duane told us last week: the dance doesn’t need words. Don’t presume power, nor false powerlessness. You are not the chorographer nor are you a marionette. Open. Listen. Jesus invites us into a new way of being, and bearing witness.
Creative reflection on Scripture is one way, in our tradition, of listening to God and discerning. In presenting the following reflections, which is abbreviated quotation from Ruth Haley Barton’s book Pursuing God’s Will Together, I am not angling for us to come to particular conclusions about our church life and witness – I think you know me well enough to know I am not that strategic. It is an invitation to explore with God detangling from established paradigms and mindsets, and opening to where God might be moving.
John 9 is a profoundly disturbing passage for those of us who have been in and around institutionalized religion for a long time. And if we’re honest, we probably find ourselves depicted somewhere in this story. ...
If you identify with the disciples and suspect that you might be asking the wrong questions and getting caught up in theological debates that miss the point, cultivate spiritual seeing by asking a different set of questions. Ask questions that have to do with healing rather than blame, loving real people in space and time, ... noticing what God is up to and getting on board with that rather than being so intent on pushing your own agendas.
If you identify with the neighbors, so stuck in your own paradigms that you can’t see anything outside of them, ask God to reveal your paradigms for what they are—not necessarily bad, just limited. Ask God the brave question, Where are you bigger and more and outside of my way of thinking and constructing the world? ...
If you identify with the Pharisees, who were so caught up in preserving the system and their place in it that it became more important than what God was doing, get honest about it. ... we might gently ask ourselves, What am I trying to protect? What do I stand to lose if I were to see—really see—what God is up to and sought to join [God] in it? All we have to lose is the false self and its attachments, which are illusions anyway. What we have to gain is the kingdom of God...
We might even see a little bit of ourselves in the parents—those who knew what they had seen but were afraid to say so because it would put them on the outside of the community they longed so desperately to be a part of. Standing on the truth that you know may involve loss... But how much better it is to live in the truth of what Jesus is actually doing in our lives and work from there!
Lord, Holy Spirit,
You blow like the wind in a thousand paddocks, Inside and outside the fences,
You blow where you wish to blow.
(James K Baxter)
Greta Thunberg interview
John 9
“It is impossible for you to go on as you were before, so you must go on as you never have.” (Cheryl Strayed said that, but Jesus might have.)
This is a beautiful story.
A challenging story.
A dangerous story.
And a problematic story.
The more I learn about disability and disability pride the more uncomfortable I am about preaching this text. I am a sighted person: I must check myself on my assumptions about the “rightness” of sight, but I also must not claim it is disempowering to be healed of blindness.
The bible mentions blindness in a few contexts: helplessness (Isaac blessing the wrong son, Paul on the Damascus road), lack of insight and awareness, and of course, an opportunity for healing.
As Jennifer Koosed and Darla Schumm (who is partially blind) point out: “The use of metaphors and other literary devices must be understood to have real consequences in the world, and these consequences must be recognized and interrogated. There is more than one way to be whole and holy.”
So along with being drawn to metaphors of light and dark, sight and blindness, as representing alternative realities within reality, possibilities within possibility, I am learning to question the assumptions they are built on. Blindness, especially in some contexts, can marginalise and make life extremely difficult. But that is not because blindness is a fundamental lack, any more than not being able to fly is – it reflects the way the sighted majority have set up the world to suit themselves. Likewise, darkness can be a place of fear or oppression, but it does not have to be. It can be a place awareness, of rest, of health. We have all come from the life-giving darkness of a womb.
So there are (at least) two challenges in this text. One is the presenting challenge: of spiritual awareness and insight and growth. The other is: questioning assumptions, including ones in the text. We are not in conflict with the text, but friends, who seek also to bear witness to Christ. Besides which, questioning assumptions about sight and blindness support Jesus’ own point: re-examine your paradigm that you might grow deeper into the human person you are divinely created to be.
The text describes an encounter with Jesus, and a miraculous physical change. The story unfolds with various characters coming on set; pontificating on sin, expressing surprise and dismay at Jesus’ action, avoiding comment and dodging implication, condemning and entrenching. Woven throughout is the man, who bears witness to the transformative upheaval Jesus has brought to his life: “One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” Richard Rohr said: “Whatever is going on in God is a flow, a radical relatedness, a perfect communion between Three—a circle dance of love. God is Absolute Friendship. God is not just a dancer; God is the dance itself.” The man has been drawn into the dance.
Throughout the story we are presented with two possibilities:
Openness, transformation, dance.
Power-clutch, entrench, cement.
Some of Greta Thurburg’s comments, on what we must confront and what we must pursue, would slot into this text without any trouble:
Step out of your comfort zone...
It actually has a lot of impact when you speak truth to power...
I just know what is right. I want to do what is right.
In some circumstances it can definitely be an advantage to be neuro-diverse. Because that makes you different, it makes you think differently. ... We need to think outside our current system.
...Once you fully understand ...then you know what you can do as well...
Ruth Haley Barton comments: “How desperately we need practices, experiences and questions that help us get outside our paradigms so that we can see old realities in new ways.” (p24 Pursuing God’s will together)
Gone are the days of privilege and prominence for the church in New Zealand – where we sit tight and people come to us. What God is doing, how God is transforming, must be worked out on a dance floor that is far bigger than church buildings and institutions.
Greg told us years ago: we have two ears for listening and one mouth for talking. Gavin told us quite recently: you have to listen way more than you talk. Duane told us last week: the dance doesn’t need words. Don’t presume power, nor false powerlessness. You are not the chorographer nor are you a marionette. Open. Listen. Jesus invites us into a new way of being, and bearing witness.
Creative reflection on Scripture is one way, in our tradition, of listening to God and discerning. In presenting the following reflections, which is abbreviated quotation from Ruth Haley Barton’s book Pursuing God’s Will Together, I am not angling for us to come to particular conclusions about our church life and witness – I think you know me well enough to know I am not that strategic. It is an invitation to explore with God detangling from established paradigms and mindsets, and opening to where God might be moving.
John 9 is a profoundly disturbing passage for those of us who have been in and around institutionalized religion for a long time. And if we’re honest, we probably find ourselves depicted somewhere in this story. ...
If you identify with the disciples and suspect that you might be asking the wrong questions and getting caught up in theological debates that miss the point, cultivate spiritual seeing by asking a different set of questions. Ask questions that have to do with healing rather than blame, loving real people in space and time, ... noticing what God is up to and getting on board with that rather than being so intent on pushing your own agendas.
If you identify with the neighbors, so stuck in your own paradigms that you can’t see anything outside of them, ask God to reveal your paradigms for what they are—not necessarily bad, just limited. Ask God the brave question, Where are you bigger and more and outside of my way of thinking and constructing the world? ...
If you identify with the Pharisees, who were so caught up in preserving the system and their place in it that it became more important than what God was doing, get honest about it. ... we might gently ask ourselves, What am I trying to protect? What do I stand to lose if I were to see—really see—what God is up to and sought to join [God] in it? All we have to lose is the false self and its attachments, which are illusions anyway. What we have to gain is the kingdom of God...
We might even see a little bit of ourselves in the parents—those who knew what they had seen but were afraid to say so because it would put them on the outside of the community they longed so desperately to be a part of. Standing on the truth that you know may involve loss... But how much better it is to live in the truth of what Jesus is actually doing in our lives and work from there!
Lord, Holy Spirit,
You blow like the wind in a thousand paddocks, Inside and outside the fences,
You blow where you wish to blow.
(James K Baxter)