Living as Servants

Rebecca Sheridan
Sunday, March 19, 2023
John 9:1-41

    One of the ministries I got to relate to while I was living in Omaha is called Table Grace, a pay-as-you-can café downtown where business professionals can get locally-sourced, freshly prepared meal for $20 or however much they want to donate and sit alongside people who may only be able to pay $1 or who are washing dishes or sweeping the floors for their meals.  The chef and CEO was actually trained at the Culinary Institute here in New York before returning to family in Nebraska, so the food is really, really good.  Another of the initiatives of Table Grace is to train people struggling with homelessness with kitchen skills as a marketable job, complete with training on how to do a job interview, write a resume, use knife skills and kitchen hygiene.  Those who complete the program have an 80% chance of finding a job.  Aside from the founding CEO and his wife, all employees of the ministry were former patrons of the Café who could not afford to pay for a meal.  It’s an amazing ministry.
One of the first times I visited Table Grace, I was greeted by a warm, bubbly woman in an apron who was the head of staff that day.  I was blown away when I learned that she was a former drug addict and had lived on the streets for nine years.  You would have never known in the professional manner she conducted herself.  She could have been me or you, easily.  It was a humbling experience to see the church not just serving those who needed a warm place and food to eat, but empowering people and treating all people with dignity.  It was a humbling reminder that we often judge people based on their appearance as worthy or unworthy of our attention and even of the dignity that God gives to all people.
    As we talk about a third aspect of fulfilling God’s purpose today, “living as servants,” it’s easy to tell you that we should serve others.  I think we all know that’s a core tenet of being a Christian.  But have you ever thought about our NEED to serve others as something all humans need to do to live fulfilling, purposeful lives – as needed as breathing air and eating food?  Have you ever thought that the people you are serving may have physical needs they are not able to meet on their own, but also have the need of being treated with dignity, and the need to contribute or in some way give back?  Being able to help someone else give our lives purpose and meaning.  As early as children learn to talk, if you know toddlers, they start to say, “I do it.”  They want their own agency, and it makes them incredibly proud when you catch them “being good” by sharing their toys, taking turns, or helping mom or dad do a basic chore like setting the table – as selfish as 2 and 3 year olds can be at that age!  Even our littlest ones know it’s important to serve.  And too often, like the Pharisees in today’s gospel, we deem some people unworthy of our service, much less allowing ourselves to be served by such people.
    Our gospel for this morning points us once again to an unlikely servant in the healing of the blind man.  The common belief at that time was that you or your parents must have sinned if you were born with any kind of birth defect or struggled with mental illness or so on.  Your problem was God’s punishment for sin.  The people around Jesus in this chapter 9 of John seem obsessed almost with sin.  The blind man’s a sinner, his parents are sinners, Jesus must be a sinner, but then how can he heal this man?  We aren’t sure but sin must have something to do with it!  It’s difficult to imagine God can work through sinners, even for us today, if we can admit it.  Ex-convicts? Crooked politicians?  People with dementia or other mental health issues?   Addicts or alcoholics?  Jesus’ response in the gospels may suggest for one thing we need to cool it on judging everyone for being sinners – we all are, after all, whether we’re perfectly “normal” and healthy or not.  Until we see our need to be saved from our sins, we remain spiritually blind, like the Pharisees in our gospel for today.
And then Jesus says a much more surprising thing; he says this man “was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”  Now, maybe like me, you heard that line and thought, “Well, I don’t know about that; that seems awful cruel of God to purposefully have someone be born blind just so that years later God could heal them and, in that way, reveal that Jesus is who he says he is.”  After further reflection, I don’ t think that is what Jesus means.  I could be wrong, but I don’t think God punishes people with blindness or any other disability.  I think Jesus is saying that the man’s blindness isn’t the problem.  The whole story is about a man who is lifted up because he can spiritually see even when he is still physically blind.  He's a man who gets who Jesus is and what Jesus is trying to do, which is much bigger than restoring one person’s sight.  Jesus’ healing of the man is not just about making it possible for him to see.  It is giving him back his God-given dignity as a person created in the very image of God as he is, sinner though he and we may be.  He is a person who has much to contribute, like all of us.  That’s what Jesus wants ALL of us to see.
Jesus restores the man to himself.  He was born so that God’s works might be revealed in him, and that is, after all, what each of our purpose is as people of Faith – recognizing that we, too, whoever we are, whatever we struggle with, are people who were born so that God’s works might be revealed in us.  Like the man born blind, we can recognize Jesus as the light of the world, and then seek to share that light in how we live and serve in the world.  All people are capable of not just being served, but also serving.  All people, regardless of age, ability, and even level of sinfulness in their background, were created by God to serve and share the light of Christ in the world.
    John tells us what the pool of Siloam means in English: “sent.”  The man washes in the pool and then can see – he can see himself for who he truly is, a man born so that God’s works might be revealed in him.  A man with a God-given purpose to serve as Christ serves.  So we, too, at our baptisms are sent by God to know that we belong to God, and we are sent to serve, to not judge based on outward appearance, but to remember the God-given dignity of every precious human life.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.