Sermon: Vision Problems

Luke 13:10-17
Vision Problems
James Sledge                                                                                      August 21, 2022

Back in the 1960s, a student at Y

James Tissot, 1836-1902,
Woman with an Infirmity of Eighteen Years

ale University wrote a term paper in which he proposed creating a company that used a fleet of airplanes to deliver envelopes and small packages overnight. Parcels would be picked up in the afternoon, whisked to the airport, flown to a central location where they would be sorted, put back on airplanes, then flown to their destinations to be delivered the next day.

His professor was unimpressed by the paper and gave it a grade of C. Clearly the idea was impractical, and the cost would be prohibitive. No way the market would support the cost of developing a small airline for ferrying around letters and packages at night. And who would pay the high price of getting mail to its destination a couple of days early?

Not too many years later, that student founded Federal Express, now known as Fed Ex. In just over a decade, the company had a billion dollars in revenue and was being copied by UPS and others. The company was so successful and synonymous with overnight delivery that people began to say, “I’ll fed ex that contract to you.”

I’ve often wondered if that Yale professor ever reflected on the poor grade he gave that term paper. Did he wonder how he had failed to see what an innovative idea it was? Did it make him wonder about his own credibility as a professor?

History is littered with smart people, experts in their field, who dismissed cars as a passing fad, television as a ridiculous idea that could never compete with radio and the movies, or the phone as little more than a novelty. It’s amusing to recall how badly these experts missed in their predictions. How could they have gotten it so wrong?

It seems we humans have an impressive ability to misjudge the future, to misjudge what will work and what won’t, to misjudge where the world is really headed. Some of this is simply the limitation of being human. We can’t see into the future, and so it’s no big surprise when that we fail when we try.

But human limitations aside, we also fail to see the future because of poor vision that causes us to miss what later seem obvious signs of coming change. Our vision problems come from a trait we all share to one degree or another. We tend to think that our understanding of how things are is actually how they are and even how they should be. And so we’re usually very slow to accept different views of things, different ideas of what is possible, different ways of doing things. We label such things impractical, unworkable, ill conceived, etc.

When Jesus showed up, proclaiming that the day of God was drawing near, a day when the poor would be lifted up, justice would be done, people would be healed, restored, and experience new life, lots of people couldn’t see it. The problem was especially acute for religious leaders who often saw Jesus and his ideas as disruptive, irreverent, impractical, ill conceived, etc. Even when Jesus did amazing things in their presence, they still couldn’t see it. Jesus just went against the grain too much.

That happens in our reading today. The synagogue leader is upset that Jesus healed a woman on the Sabbath. Surely he could have waited till sunset, the start of next day. The need wasn’t urgent enough to break the Sabbath rules.

Sabbath was very important for the Jewish people. During the Babylonian exile, it was one of the primary ways they had been able to maintain their identity as God’s people. Sabbath was a tangible way to devote oneself to God, to focus entirely on God. Certain exceptions were allowed. You could water your animals. You could rescue a person or animal that was in danger, but beyond the exceptions, everything stopped.

Jesus kept Sabbath as well, but Jesus also saw the Sabbath as a time to do God’s holy work, to proclaim God’s presence through action. And so when he saw a crippled woman all hunched over, presumed to be afflicted by Satan, he had to act. He had to heal; he had to restore the woman to her place in the community. What could glorify God more?

But the synagogue leader was blind to what Jesus was doing. He could only see how Jesus was being disruptive, acting outside the rules. The leader was in the presence of God’s power, but it was invisible to him. His religious practices and assumptions wouldn’t let him see.

Lately I’ve been reading a new book by Brian McLaren entitled, Do I Stay Christian? The book is divided into three sections. The first outlines reasons to leave, and the second reasons to stay. A third section then talks about how to enact either option in a “good, honest, and loving way.”

One of the chapters on leaving is labeled, “Because Christianity is a Failed Religion.” The failure referred to is a lack of transformation. How many people do you know, he asks, who have become more kind, loving, non-violent, self-giving, hospitable, willing to suffer for the sake of others, and so on because they are Christian? Or do Christians look pretty much the same as everyone one else in the world, just with particular beliefs about God and Jesus?

I think this is a valid criticism of much of Christianity, and I wonder why that is. Christian faith is supposed to make us new creations. The original name of our religion was The Way because Jesus’ followers lived in ways that were distinct and different from the world around them. So what happened?

Over the centuries the message of Jesus got domesticated and coopted by empire. It got turned into a religion that didn’t talk much about transformation but promised believers a place in heaven if they believed the right things and behaved themselves. Somewhere along the way, the power of God in the midst of the Church, the Spirit moving and equipping the people of God for transformed lives that transformed the world got obscured, and we couldn’t see it any longer.

If Jesus showed up today, would we be able to recognize the power of God in our midst, or would he seem too strange, his words too impractical, his presence too disruptive for us to see anything but trouble? Would we dismiss him, tell him to behave himself, ask him to leave like that leader of the synagogue all those years ago?

According to our sacred stories, the presence and power of God is still in our midst, empowering and equipping us to proclaim God’s new day and to live in ways that show it to the world. The power of God to heal and make whole is present in the Spirit, longing to give us grace, wholeness, and renewal as God’s beloved. But can we look past the comfortable confines of a settled religion to see that power at work in our lives and in our community?

In just a few moments, we will baptize Fletcher Hobbie. As we do, you as a congregation will answer the question, “Will you encourage him to know and follow Christ and to be a faithful member of his church?” When we say that we will, what does that mean? Do we mean that we will help Fletcher see and embrace the strange, impractical, disruptive ways of Jesus, or that we’ll help him accept a comfortable religion?

By the power of the Spirit, the risen Jesus is still at work in the world, still offering to heal our brokenness and still calling us to follow him in his strange, impractical, counter-cultural ways. If only we have eyes to see.