{"id":648,"date":"2020-03-22T14:04:38","date_gmt":"2020-03-22T14:04:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/?p=648"},"modified":"2020-03-22T18:08:50","modified_gmt":"2020-03-22T18:08:50","slug":"fourth-sunday-in-lent-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/2020\/03\/22\/fourth-sunday-in-lent-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Fourth Sunday in Lent"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

John 9: 1-41<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Found in a video at the following link: <\/strong>https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pg\/stpeteschestersprings\/posts\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grace to you and peace\nfrom God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\nalways feel, both happy and sad, for the blind man that we just read about from\ntoday\u2019s Gospel. He was just sitting there going about his business of begging;\nhe had no idea who this man was who was approaching him; he may have wanted to\nreceive his sight, but he didn\u2019t really know what sight was; he definitely didn\u2019t\nask Jesus to heal him. Jesus healed him anyway; he healed him so that God\u2019s\nworks might be revealed. Jesus made it clear that the man was born blind, not because\nof anyone\u2019s sin, but so that God\u2019s works might be revealed; this blind man\u2019s part\nin the spreading of the word and love of God was important. The Gospel of John,\nis known to have told the stories of Jesus\u2019 miracles, so that people seeing\nJesus\u2019 signs might believe in Jesus as the Savior, the Son of God. The blind\nman\u2019s purpose, much as is ours, was to reveal Jesus as the Messiah of God to\nthe world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This\nparticular story is long and is one with lots of twists and turns. I\u2019m not\ngoing to tell it again, but I will highlight some important portions. As it\nturned out Jesus healed this blind man on the Sabbath, an act questioned by the\nPharisees, who saw even healing as an act of work, something that was\nprohibited on the Sabbath. This is a part of the story that makes me feel sad. The\nman, formerly blind, was asked to give an account of his healing, as though he\nhad in some way done something wrong by being healed; can you imagine? The\nPharisees even seemed to doubt that he was the same man who had been blind; now\nimagine having to prove you had been blind, when all you really wanted to do\nwas go out and celebrate your great blessing and thank the man who healed you. This\nis like one of those stories where good fortune is the beginning of great\nhardship. While the formerly blind man stood before his questioners with\nconfidence and a willingness to speak the truth from his heart, his questioners\ncalled for his parents to substantiate his story. You would think that they\nwould support him, but they did not; afraid of these religious leaders, they\nsimply turned the questioning back of their son, telling them that he was of\nage, to ask him; all they would really do is admit that he was their son who\nhad been born blind. This formerly blind man was all on his own, it seemed; the\nreligious leaders, unhappy with his responses, drove him out of the house of\nGod; at least the formerly blind man had his vision!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nPharisees and other religious leaders argued first among themselves that this\nman is a sinner because he had been blind; they argued that Jesus was a sinner\nbecause he healed on the Sabbath, something that the devil would surely do;\nthen they argued how no one had ever healed a person born blind and given him\nsight; only a person come from God could possibly perform such an act. This is\nwhy I feel bad for a man who received a wonderful blessing. I pray that Jesus\nmet up with him again, after this conflict and gave him the opportunity to\ncelebrate his gift, but that is not a part of the story. That is because this\nstory (I believe) is in many ways about the Pharisees and religious leaders who\nfirst confronted the man formerly blind and then were confronted themselves by\nJesus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jesus\nwas not happy that the Pharisees had driven the formerly blind man our of their\nplace of worship.  The worship place was\na place of God, not a place for narrow minds. It was not a place for those who\nare blind to seeing the Son of Man. The man (formerly blind) saw Jesus,\nlistened to his words, experienced the miraculous acts of God, and he believed,\nso he could see more than just the images of light and darkness through his\neyes, but he could see that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of Man, God\u2019s Son. The\nPharisees and other religious leaders, in our story, were so wrapped up in\ntheir rules and ideas that they did not see, they did not recognize the work of\nGod and they did not recognize Jesus as God\u2019s Son. They were blind to God. How\noften have we seen such a reality? A quote comes to mind, \u201cDon\u2019t confuse me\nwith facts, I already know what I believe.\u201d In politics, especially today, this\nis a real problem, no matter which side of the political fence we lean on. We\ntend to believe only the rhetoric of the politicians who speak for our own\nside. Too often we are blind to the truth; too often we do not take the time to\ncheck the facts. We even have a name for this, we call it \u201cblind faith\u201d. The\npharisees in our story, did not have to go to a fact check site on their\ncomputers, they simply had to open their eyes and see the power and wonder of\nGod in the healing of a blind man born blind. If they went to the Scriptures to\ncheck the facts, they would see that only someone sent from God could do the\nhealing done by Jesus and they would have no reason to cast out of God\u2019s house\nthe healed man and they would have turned to Jesus as their Lord and their\nSavior. But they were blind to Jesus; these religious leaders were the ones who\nwere living in sin. Their sin was that they would not see, they would not\nlisten to the word and love of God in Jesus Christ. It was seen as sin, because\nthey had eyes with which to see and ears with which to hear, but the chose not\nto believe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Make\ngood use of the eyes you have and the ears that you have and believe that Jesus\nis your Lord and Savior; he loves you, forgives you and promises you new life\nin his kingdom. Jesus will be with you throughout the current crisis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John 9: 1-41 Found in a video at the following link: https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pg\/stpeteschestersprings\/posts\/ Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I always feel, both happy and sad, for the blind man that we just read about from today\u2019s Gospel. He was just sitting there Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons-and-services"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=648"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":649,"href":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648\/revisions\/649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}