Are you stuck in your ways? I know that the older I get, the more I would say that being stuck in my ways is true of me. After all, it’s good to do things in a particular way, to be a certain way, and I like my comfortable beliefs. Life is less complicated if we know how we want to do things, and we have beliefs that support the way we tend to see the world.
But today’s passages have made me think differently about being stuck in my ways. The many people in today’s lectionary readings who are stuck have got some issues to face!
In today’s Old Testament reading, God shakes his prophet Samuel up a bit because Samuel is stuck. Samuel is balking over anointing a new king. After all, Samuel had anointed Saul, the current king, and had been a big supporter of Saul. But now, God is ready to move on, since Saul has been a disappointment to God as the leader of Israel. So God tells Samuel—stop being stuck in the past. It’s time to do something new. So Samuel finally gets himself together and goes to Bethlehem to find Jesse, the father of many sons.
Samuel expects that the Lord will choose the one of the oldest, kingliest-looking sons. He has a preconceived idea of what a king should look like—and yet, seven sons pass by and God doesn’t choose one of them. So Jesse sends for his youngest son, David, who is out in the fields keeping the sheep. Certainly not king material—a shepherd, and too young to be given such responsibility.
But surprise of surprises, when David shows up, the Lord says, “Rise and anoint him; for this is the one.” And the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward.
The most unlikely person is the one that God chooses as the next King of Israel and not only that, the one from whose family the Messiah will someday be born.
Samuel isn’t the only one who is stuck.
The people in today’s gospel are also stuck in their ways. First, the disciples are stuck in their belief that the man who is blind must have done something wrong, or else his parents did—that his blindness is a punishment. The disciples were stuck in their belief that the bad things that happen to us must be a punishment that we somehow deserve.
And then once Jesus restores the man’s sight, the neighbors and others who have seen the man begging cannot believe that the man who was blind can now see. They are stuck in what had been the reality, but now that the reality has changed, they can’t change their minds about what is now true. Sounds like Samuel, doesn’t it? Samuel, who knows that Saul is king, that’s the reality–how can you, God, appoint someone else?
And then we get to the Pharisees and the Jewish authorities (for when John writes about the Jews—he is writing about the Jewish authorities, not the Jewish people in general). They are really stuck. They have specific beliefs about how the Sabbath should be observed—and healing is work, so healing can’t take place on the Sabbath. Plus, Jesus also does the work of kneading his spit into the dirt to make the mud which he puts on the eyes of the man born blind. Kneading was one of the activities considered as work and prohibited on the Sabbath.
And—the Pharisees are convinced that their religious beliefs are the ones that all people should observe—they are disciples of Moses, after all. They believe in Moses as the greatest prophet of all time, and they meticulously follow the laws that God gave Moses on Mt Sinai. They cannot imagine that the Messiah might show up as a person like Jesus—and this Jesus is definitely a sinner, breaking the law on the Sabbath.
The parents of the man born blind are also stuck–stuck in their fear. Knowing that if they give credit to Jesus for giving their son sight they could be thrown out of the synagogue, they refuse to answer the questions of the authorities and they send the authorities back to talk to their son.
Jesus comes to shake things up, to shake people out of being set in their ways, to shake people into a new reality. He gives the man born blind his sight. Can you imagine anything more earth shattering and wonderful than to never have seen a thing and then to be able to see the whole magnificent world around you?
Even though we can all see, we are blind in so many ways! Blindness can be comfortable, for just assuming that we can see is different than actually seeing as God would have us see, to see into the heart of things. How often we look at the familiar faces of those around us, taking them for granted, never seeing beyond the surface. How often do we go through our days on this earth taking its beauty for granted and forgetting that every bit of God’s creation is worthy of awe?
This story reminds us that God is waiting each and every morning to give us our sight for the day—so that we can truly witness God’s work in the world, so that we can be truly present to those around us, able to see and to listen with our hearts and not just our eyes and ears.
In his poem, Auguries of Innocence, William Blake describes the sight that God gives us when we are ready to receive it—a sight that penetrates beyond the surface into the heart of what we are looking at.
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
Jesus also comes to shake up our preconceived ideas about the people around us. What about people who have what we consider to be disabilities? People who are of a different age than we are and so have different needs and interests? People who dress differently or act differently? Or people that we would consider annoying or not worthy of our attention? I can’t help but think of the people who beg in the median strips—I have gotten so that I try to set aside the judgment that rises up in me when I see one of these people holding up a sign appealing for my sympathy and my money. I’ve started being intentional about making eye contact with these people and acknowledging their presence, although I haven’t gotten much farther than that. Is it possible that if I took the time, God might be able to open my heart so that I could see these people with God’s eyes, and to be more compassionate toward them?
And what about people who have different beliefs than we do? We can be so convinced that we have the right answers about how we are to follow Jesus, and then judge those who differ from us. We live in a nation where every person is sure of the right answer, and anyone who disagrees with us is wrong. Where has this judgment toward others gotten us? We’re thinking and acting like those Pharisees, good people who were followers of Moses. We must remember that Jesus said that he came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.” If I want to be one who has sight, then may I look on those who differ from me with the same compassion and love with which God looks on me, to see those with whom I disagree with God’s sight, not my limited sight.
But being stuck isn’t the end of the story in today’s scriptures.
Today’s scriptures also describe people who are not stuck in their ways, or who are making an effort to get unstuck. Let’s start with the passage from Ephesians. The people who would have heard this letter read to them would have been people who had already chosen to follow Jesus, so they weren’t stuck in that way, but the writer reminds them that deciding to follow Jesus is only the first step. We followers have to truly take a good look at what we do and to put away those things that contribute to our blindness and stuckness—the writer describes these things as works of darkness. We have to decide to rise from the things that are killing us—our unkindness to our own bodies and souls, the death dealing actions we take that we hope no one else will witness.
“Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord.” This is our constant calling as followers of Jesus—not to be stuck in our certainties, but to always be trying to figure out what pleases the Lord instead of just assuming that we already know that and staying stuck in our ways.
Another thing I love about this passage from Ephesians is the idea that we are light. Not light by ourselves, but now in the Lord we are light! When we follow, Christ will shine on us. What popped into my mind when I read that line, that Christ will shine on us, was the moon. Have you ever noticed how bright the moon can be? On a clear night, the moonlight can be so bright that it even casts shadows! But the moon isn’t shining with its own light. It’s shining because it’s reflecting the sunlight that is bouncing from it!
That’s us—we can’t be light by ourselves, but we can definitely shine brightly when we let God’s light reflect into the world from us. That is a humbling and yet exhilarating thought, isn’t it, that we can be light by reflecting God’s light, that God can shine God’s light into the world through us. I want to do that! I hope you do too! To reflect God’s light into the world!
And finally, we get to the one who wrote the 23rd Psalm, traditionally attributed to David, that son of Jesse most unlikely to be king, and yet, he was the one chosen.
The person who wrote the 23rd Psalm is one of the most unstuck people in scripture. This person trusts in God, rather than in himself. He follows where God leads. He does what he does for God’s sake, not his own. He trusts God through the hard times of life, in those valleys of the shadow of death through which we must all walk, and does so without fear, knowing that God is going with him. He doesn’t judge his enemies—instead he looks to God and is glad to sit down at God’s table. This person knows that all he has comes from God, that God has anointed him with love, and he is grateful. And last of all, the psalmist doesn’t stay stuck in any spot in his life, knowing that wherever he is and whatever he is doing, he is surrounded by God’s goodness and mercy, and that already, he is dwelling in God’s house, regardless of his physical circumstances on this earth.
So God, may we trust in you always, instead of trusting in ourselves, our ways, and our dearly held beliefs.
Lord, unstick us from anything that we have gotten stuck to that isn’t from you.
And most of all, choose us, even though we are the most unlikely of choices. And then, “Shine in our hearts, Lord Jesus,” so that we can reflect your light out into the world.