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October 12, 2003
Learning to Walk in the Land of the Blind
Learning to Walk in the Land of the Blind
Psalm 32 / Genesis 29: 1-25
Luke 6: 39-42
October 12th, 2003
Last week I watched a blind young man walking down the staircase in Stewart Hall. On the landing he tapped his cane until he got to the rail, and then made his way down the next flight of stairs. I was amazed at his courage. With trust in his white cane he walked into the blackness.
But blind people develop other instincts to make up for no eyesight. They read with their fingertips. They hear sounds you and I miss. They memorize the lay of the streets they must walk. If asked, they can tell you details about our neighborhoods that you and I never notice—smells here, sounds there, the texture of the side-walk in a certain place. They develop another fifth sense, replacing sight. We’d call it a sixth sense, except they only have four others.
But despite their courage and their other sense, I would not ride with a blind person driving a car. I would not trust a blind person to lead me by the hand along a trail at Shades State Park with a rock cliff on one side and a steep decline on the other. For sure we’d both end up falling one way or the other. But we do not fault blind people for the challenge of sightlessness. And no blind person would ask us to let him lead on that trail.
We just read of a time in the life of the Old Testament Patriarch, Jacob, when he moved, sight unseen, into his choice of a wife. It’s this way for us all. We cannot see the future into which we must walk as though we know what to do next. No one is to blame for being unable to see the future.
But it’s another matter when it comes to spiritual blindness. Spiritual blindness is an incapacity within; we cannot or will not see. In a way it is an inability people choose and then cling to. Spiritually blind people, thinking that their blindness is sight, are often eager to get followers. Because they imagine the terrain we are to walk in is called “religion,” while what’s really at issue is the Kingdom of God. The way of religion is well populated with spiritually blind people saying, “Follow me.” The Kingdom of God is a spiritual land, a land of the heart over which God presides, and to which He invites us. Jesus referred to spiritual blindness when He asked the question, “Can the blind lead the blind?” What passes for the spiritual realm of the kingdom of God is often nothing but religion. It’s a disaster to follow a religiously confident but spiritually blind person.
Remember that in this “Sermon on the Plain,” Luke’s version of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is continuing to explain the meaning of the Second Great Commandment, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” What does it mean to love your neighbor as yourself? It means, “Love those who don’t love you.” It means, “Don’t criticize or speak unkindly to people who irritate you.” And now, “You who are spiritually blind, don’t lead the way for others. You’ll bring others down into the ditch with you” –– not a loving thing to do.
But who are the spiritually blind? Jesus says, “Wait, I’ll get to that.” First He has to build the case a bit more. Remember He is speaking to the Twelve Apostles. These twelve men would hold a status just below the Son of God Himself for millions of people over the following centuries. They would come to have immense prestige. Clad in this prestige, this religious stature, they would be responsible for spiritual leadership into the Kingdom of God. They didn’t know this at the time, but Jesus did. Jesus was grooming them for spiritual leadership for all people yet to come while they would face the daunting obstacle of being considered towering religious authorities. Abraham and Sarah were the physical progenitors of God’s people, but the Twelve Apostles would be the spiritual teachers. It mattered what way they would lead, as spiritual guides into the Kingdom of God and not as mere religious leaders. Religion may have little or nothing to do with the Kingdom of God.
Jesus was grooming them for spiritual leadership—not religious leadership. Jesus was not starting up a new religion. Jesus was opening the way to worshiping God “in spirit and in truth.” Jesus was teaching a way available to a Samaritan woman rejected as a defective human being by her own people, who were themselves a people rejected by the Jews. Jesus was teaching a way that harlots, despised tax collectors, and pagan Roman soldiers would precede people who are proud of their religiosity. It was this spiritual leadership, this leadership for the heart, for which Jesus was grooming the Twelve Apostles.
There is a great difference between religious leadership and spiritual leadership. Religious leadership is often an institutional thing. Religion is something people make up with the bits and pieces of God’s truth that they may or may not fit together right in a puzzle. Religion, maybe even our religion, is often like a puzzle with the pieces put together not quite right. If you see a group of folk huddled together over at Friendship House, putting together a puzzle on a card table, and one of them is bossy, telling the others to put this piece here and that piece there, even though the pieces obviously don’t fit, you say, “It’s funny.” Old people act like that, we younger folk say. But when it is respected religious leaders doing this with spiritual truth, it’s a tragedy.
People accept religious leaders as spiritual leaders, as guides in matters of the heart. The Twelve Apostles were spiritual guides. People from Jewish and many pagan backgrounds were eager to follow them, so that the Body of Christ grew enormously in the first three hundred years. Nowadays people are hungry for spiritual guidance too. They look beyond the institutional divisions to find God’s way. Protestants find in the Catholics Thomas Merton and Henri Nouwen spiritual guides. I read Thomas Merton’s description of his walk with God in The Seven Story Mountain and felt myself being led where my heart longed to go. Hindus listened to E. Stanley Jones, the great Methodist missionary in India, when he spoke of Jesus, because they felt themselves being led where their hearts longed to go. Jesus is the light of the world, and whenever Jesus is faithfully presented people cannot help but be drawn to Him.
Jesus’ disciples would be guides bringing people from every religious sector under heaven to Jesus, and through Him into the Kingdom of God. Jesus’ amazing love of which we sing, “That thou, my God should’st die for me,” is very attractive. Jesus is irresistibly attractive. Nobody can resist someone who loves them the way Jesus loved people. Remember Jesus said, “My Kingdom is not of this world.” It was to an un-seeable Kingdom that the Twelve Apostles would be the teachers and guides. In a realm that we cannot see, we are blind. Jesus said to these twelve men who would lead people who could not see the way to the Kingdom of God, “Every one when he is fully taught will be like his teacher.” You are the teachers, the leaders into this kingdom no one can see. People will be like you. It matters how you are.
You remember that Thomas, whom we call “Doubting Thomas,” said to Jesus, “We don’t know where you’re going.” Jesus said, “Yes, you know the way. I am the way, the truth, and the life, and you know me.” So it was to these future teachers of the way of the Kingdom of God that Jesus said, “Don’t become blind spiritually by opting in to that broken human thing called ‘religion’.” It was a way to warn them against spiritual blindness that could strike them. So what is spiritual blindness?
It was in answer to this question that Jesus gave the parable we love to remember because it is so ironic, so descriptive of human behavior. He asked His disciples to visualize someone with wooden pole in her eyes. Think of it as a Miss Utopia in the Miss Universe pageant, who has a pole sticking out of each eye, but she thinks she has perfect eyelashes and eye shadow accentuating her lovely brown eyes. But in reality she has two poles sticking out of her eyes. It’s not mascara; it’s mahogany wood. She confused two “m” words. Forget that this might be a bit dangerous to her health. Just think of it as questionable make-up. Yet, as she walks around dressed proudly in her beautiful ball gown, and two poles protruding from her eyes, she notices Miss Greece has a speck in her eye. Miss Utopia walks over to Miss Greece and says, “How bizarre! You have a flaw in your eye make-up. You should be wearing perfect eye makeup like mine.”
We’re not supposed to ask physiological questions; it’s a cartoon, after all. We know it’s impossible to see at all if you’ve got a pole in your eye. In fact, you’d be not only blind, but dead with a big piece of wood sticking into your eye-socket—even if you are Miss Utopia. Jesus was talking about something as spiritually deadening, we might say, as having a mahogany pole in your head, through your eye-socket.
Jesus’ cartoon asks us to imagine how the twelve Apostles, spiritual guides into the way of the Kingdom of God could have glaring, obvious defects and be oblivious to them, while being acutely aware of far smaller defects in others. These poles in their eyes would be an immense hindrance to teaching the Gospel.
If this was possible for the Twelve Apostles, consider that it is possible for you and me. Jesus knew that the problem of His disciples would be multiplied because they would cling to their cherished defects. We all do this. These defects are obvious to others, but we deny having them. Remember again, Jesus was teaching something to the Twelve Apostles. “If you won’t acknowledge and get rid of your glaring spiritual defects, you’ll be nothing but blind leaders of the blind.” It is nearly impossible to see and admit to our own self-blindness.
It was this very crucial matter that the Apostle Paul had in mind when he told earnest Christians in Corinth, “If you can speak with tongues like angels, and know everything, have faith so you can move mountains, and can understand all mysteries, but don’t have love, you are nothing, have nothing, and gain nothing.” Religion emphasizes “right” knowledge, faith, and mystery. Jesus warned His disciples, and all of us who come after them, who have learned from them what it is to follow Jesus, that they and we would be lured into concentrating on knowledge we’ll never know, on definitions of faith, on subtle mysteries while ignoring the most basic element of Jesus’ way. If you don’t love your neighbor as yourself, all your correct doctrines constitute a pole sticking in your eye. You will be so proud of your correctness that you are blind to what you really are. Your very correctness may kill your spiritual life. It keeps you from seeing.
You think of Jesus warning others about this grave danger, when He would have you realize He is talking to you. He’s talking to me too, but you must listen to Jesus speaking to you, and I must listen to Him speak to me.
You know yourself. You know, when you stop and think about it, how spiritual pride protrudes from your eyes like poles. You pride yourself in what you believe right that is different from the way others believe. How refined we Protestants have become in our differences from others. How we cherish these refinements. You pride yourself on how fine a Christian you just know you must seem to be. Maybe you’ve never been convicted of a crime—that is, you’ve never been caught after drinking an additional glass of wine you should not have drunk before driving home from the restaurant. You’re proud of your fine home, of your fine education, of your distinguished career. Maybe you’re proud you attend Faith Church. What composite picture have you drawn for yourself from all your excellences? You’ve been able to cover over the fact that you do not love your neighbor as yourself, a thing of the heart, by accumulating layer upon layer of life-make-up. Your perceived excellences are superior to the life make-up of others.
This is too bad in itself. But the problem is that the next generation follows your lead. You and I are teaching our young people what is important. We try to teach correct doctrine and correct morals, and that’s good. But have we taught our children that first of all we must love God with everything, and love our neighbor as ourselves.
I hear some of my conservative colleagues saying, “Don’t minimize correct doctrine.” I’m not. But I’m reminding you that Paul who taught us nearly everything we know about correct doctrine understood Jesus’ message to His Apostles and to all who would learn from them, “If we have all knowledge, and all faith, and understand all mysteries, and can speak in spiritual ecstasy, if we do not have love, we have nothing at all.” Not only that, but we’re like Miss Utopia, strutting around with poles in her eyes—something lethal to the body, and also to faith. “Faith without works is dead.” Paul, Jesus, and James march in lockstep on this basic truth.
So where do we go from here? Shall we give up trying to believe correct doctrine? Shall we give up on emphasizing the importance of holding to the morality taught in the Bible? Shall we not enjoy the times of exquisite spiritual delight that come along?
No. Let’s try to understand and teach good Bible doctrine. Let’s let the Bible be our guide in all matters of morality. Let’s enjoy the unique delights that come to us when our feelings are moved with sacred music or clearly presented Bible truth. But let’s not be confused that these are the stuff of following Jesus. Let’s not imagine these are the substance of the Christian life. All of these good things may solidify for us into a thick pole, sticking in the eye, that somehow makes us both spiritually blind and acutely conscious of perceived flaws in others. All this may even lead to spiritual death.
Because, remember, Jesus told us that “in that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’” And Jesus will reply to these who prophesied and did many mighty works in His name, “I never knew you; depart from me, you evildoers.” Jesus told us that loving Him is a very hands-on kind of thing. It’s not a matter of spiritual perceptions but of spiritual actions, actions prompted by the Spirit of God—loving your neighbor as yourself, in fact.
Perhaps you hear God speaking to you this morning. What will you do about it? You can go from here and say, “I hope so and so heard what the pastor said.” Or you can recognize that you’ve got a pole in your eye and implore God to remove it so that you can see the way to follow Jesus. While all along you live in a world and even worship in a church where many confuse mahogany poles for mascara, and these pole-eyed folk are distressed at what you know is only a fleck in your eye. This is the challenge of following Jesus that we must follow Him while living in circumstances that do not give the kind of encouragement we need. It’s a lonesome valley those must walk who will love God with all they are, and will love their neighbors as themselves.
Let us pray: O Lord God, thank you for Jesus, the light of the world, my light and the light of these my friends, my brothers and sisters. Take away the blindness that we cherish, and give us grace, to see Jesus clearly and the will to follow Him more nearly. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, Indiana
Posted by faithpres at October 12, 2003 09:30 AM