Changing Vision

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
February 17, 2008; 2nd Sunday in Lent, Year A

Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary
The Gospel -- John 3:1-17 -- is printed below the sermon text.
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It was 1962. I was in the fourth grade. My father's old partner from when he had been an agent in the F.B.I. came down to visit with his family from Ohio. His wife had been one of my mother's best friends, and they had two girls who were almost exactly the same age as my sister and me.

I was pretty interested in them. They were from Ohio. That means they were Yankees. I'm not sure I had ever met any real Yankees. Now when you grow up in the middle of Mississippi, and the team you follow with childhood passion is called the Rebels, and their mascot is a Confederate soldier, and the fight song is "Dixie," and you wave Rebel flags whenever something good happens, Yankees are a big deal. They were the ones who had fought and defeated us in "The Great War." In Mississippi there is much lore and puzzlement about that War. We played Rebels and Yankees on the playground and in our backyards. It was hard to get somebody to be a Yankee. On our playground, they always lost. This stuff was in the air I breathed. As our neighbor William Faulkner said, "The past isn't dead; it isn't even past."

I remember taking these two Yankees from Ohio to our town square. I showed them Leslie's Drug Store and the soda fountain where we got our nickle Pepsi Colas. We had all heard the news stories about black people who were going into soda fountains like Leslie's and integrating them. Soda fountains and restaurants were for "whites only" then. That was the law. For those who are too young to remember, there were separate waiting rooms, restrooms, swimming pools and schools back then, separate but equal facilities for Negroes, as we said.

There were news stories about black people, sometimes with white allies, usually Yankees, who would intentionally go into soda fountains and ask for service. Usually those stories ended up pretty simply. The store called the police and the police came and dragged off the protesters to the jail. But sometimes, before the police could get there, a fight broke out. You have to understand, what those protesters was doing was against the law. The law said that any property owner had the right to serve anyone he wished. Black people who tried to eat at a "whites only" establishment were guilty of trespassing, unless a fight broke out. And then they were guilty of inciting a riot, or something like that.

My Yankee friend asked me if any Negroes had integrated Leslie's. "Why no," I explained to her. "They wouldn't even want to come in to Leslie's! Let me show you where the Negroes go," and I led them around the corner, down a narrow alley. We came to a rusty screen door with a rusty sign over it, "Bole's Cafe." "You see," I explained condescendingly to the poor little Yankees who didn't know anything, "This is where the Negroes go to eat and to drink their Pepsi." I pointed out the yellowing menu sign over the grill. "See, they even eat different things from us. Do you see it on the sign? 'Buffalo Fish.' You can't get Buffalo Fish at Leslie's."

I want you to know, and this is important -- that this was a completely innocent conversation on my part. I was simply sharing what I knew. And I felt good that I could help enlighten a benighted Yankee about the things of the South that they didn't have a clue about. This was part of the cultural blindness that came with the territory when you grew up in Mississippi.

Sometime later that year, my vision changed. It had something to do with the riots that happened in the fall of 1962 when James Meredith integrated Ole Miss. I remember the face of hatred. Four feet away from my backseat window. A fierce, angry man who leaned out his car and yelled, "Let's go git 'em!" straight into my face as he drove past, headed into battle. That mud in my eyes washed something out, and I began to see some things in an entirely different way.

Once your eyes get changed like that, you can't go back to that old way of seeing. It just doesn't work anymore. It makes you different from everyone else that you've known; all of your friends who still see they same way you used to see. Only one other classmate in my fifth grade class of thirty-two students was not a segregationist. And our teacher did her best to change our minds, to make us see again the way we used to. I got an "F" in deportment for the first six weeks report card, and I got in a lot of trouble at home. I was nearly perfect the next six weeks, and I got a "D." My dad was about to ground me for life when our enlightened elementary school principal told him to go easy on me. I was getting those grades because of my "views."

I know that experience marked me. It made me suspicious of cultural conventions. It made me sensitive to various forms of discrimination. It made me sometimes skeptical of the law. I know when I hear my neighbors complain of illegal immigrants, it doesn't find much traction with me. I find more fault with the bad immigration laws than with people of color trying to improve their lot. It's the way I learned to see things.

Like the man born blind, whose eyes Jesus healed, we all go through these processes of changing vision. And conflict usually ensues. We're all blind in different ways. Our faith tells us that ours is vincible blindness, and the spiritual journey can be likened to a pilgrimage of ever expanding vision, allowing us, over time, to be able to see more of the light, and to come to terms with the darkness that is revealed every time the wattage is turned up. I'm hoping that this weekend's visit from Ibrahim Abu-Rabi will be an enlightening one -- that we will see some things more clearly thanks to his sharing some of the perspectives that come from his culture.

I also think that it is important for me to remember with compassion that fourth grade boy who innocently explained the cultural values of the South to his Yankee friends. From within my world view and paradigm at that time in my life, I was being as consistent, wise and compassionate as I possibly could be. It would be wrong to fault me personally.

I think that kind of compassion is important to remember as we live together with one another. We all live together at different stages of consciousness, with different paradigms and different world views. Psychologists and spiritual directors have various schemes to trace these stages of consciousness. When we interiorize the values of our parents, culture, church and peer groups in an unquestioning way, we are living in what the Benedictine spiritual director Thomas Keating calls the "mythic membership level of consciousness." I remember asking with earnest need, "What do we Episcopalians believe?" I wanted to know. What are the rules? What are the norms? What do I believe? We do our best to help our young people develop a strong sense of identity and meaning as Episcopalians. It is essential during the stage of our life when our mythic membership consciousness needs the values of our community in order to establish our own sense of self. I remember desperately wanting a book with all the answers; a book to which I could entrust myself to with confidence, because this is what we believe. Many people find the Bible to be just that kind of book.

But for some of us, there comes a time when our upbringing fails us, when our certainties crumble. We learn something that was different from the book we were given; something contrary to the values and rules of our parents, culture, church and peer groups. When that happens, our vision changes. We begin to question and to think for ourselves. We begin to value independent, rational, pragmatic thinking. Thomas Keating says, when that happens we are entering the "mental egoic level of consciousness." Some people see our contemporary American culture war as the expression of these two contrasting world views which they say account for most of our adult population.

Keating would have us realize there are further stages open to our spiritual and emotional development. Beyond mental egoic consciousness is unitive consciousness and more. But that's an exploration for another day.

It is enough today to look at the story that John's gospel has given us, this story of the healing of a man born blind and his conflict with the authorities. Jesus offers this punchline: "I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind." We can see our own stories of movement from blindness to insight within this metaphor. We can recognize upward mobility of vision that characterizes the various stages of human consciousness. We can accept the tension and conflict that inevitably exists at the boundaries of these different stages of consciousness. We can confess in the words from our new Enriching Our Worship liturgies: "We repent of the evil that enslaves us, the evil we have done, and the evil done on our behalf."

We can look with trust upon Jesus, and ask him to put a little mud in our eyes in order to enlarge our sight. We know we will experience our own interior tension and anxiety as we grow. We know our neighbors and our society will experience tension and anxiety as we live together in different paradigms. But that tension itself is a divine gift from God, inviting us to grow, to transform, even to transcend ourselves.
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(John 9:1-41) -- As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" Jesus answered, "Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God's works might be revealed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world." When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man's eyes, saying to him, "Go, wash in the pool of Siloam" (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see. The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, "Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?" Some were saying, "It is he." Others were saying, "No, but it is someone like him." He kept saying, "I am the man." But they kept asking him, "Then how were your eyes opened?" He answered, "The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, `Go to Siloam and wash.' Then I went and washed and received my sight." They said to him, "Where is he?" He said, "I do not know."

They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. Now it was a sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight. He said to them, "He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see." Some of the Pharisees said, "This man is not from God, for he does not observe the sabbath." But others said, "How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?" And they were divided. So they said again to the blind man, "What do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened." He said, "He is a prophet."

The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight and asked them, "Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?" His parents answered, "We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; but we do not know how it is that now he sees, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself." His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. Therefore his parents said, "He is of age; ask him."

So for the second time they called the man who had been blind, and they said to him, "Give glory to God! We know that this man is a sinner." He answered, "I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see." They said to him, "What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?" He answered them, "I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear itagain? Do you also want to become his disciples?" Then they reviled him, saying, "You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from." The man answered, "Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing." They answered him, "You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?" And they drove him out.

Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him, he said, "Do you believe in the Son of Man?" He answered, "And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him." Jesus said to him, "You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he." He said, "Lord, I believe." And he worshiped him. Jesus said, "I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind." Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, "Surely we are not blind, are we?" Jesus said to them, "If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, `We see,' your sin remains."
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