Sermon for the Episcopal Church of St John the Baptist, Capitola,

given by Rev.Stuart A. Schlegel, March 2, 2008

  The Episcopal Church of Saint John the Baptist welcomes all to worship God and to share

Christ's love in the world.  We are a parish family committed to provide liturgy, Bible study, music, counseling, and Christian education for children, youth, and adults, and to equip all our members for life and for service to other

SERMON

I want to speak to you, this morning, about our being blind but also our being God's gift.

I won't repeat the gospel lesson we have just heard. It is the familiar one of the man born blind, who was healed by Jesus, and who then recognized him as the Christ. Perhaps it is such a well-loved story because, at some level, we are all conscious of many kinds of pervasive blindness in ourselves. One simple example: as Christians we believe that God is near, but we find it so hard to recognize God's presence in our day-to-day existence. God is there, whenever love is there, but we take it all somewhat for granted and don't see God in that love. We are blind. Or, at least, I know I am-over and

over.

I wrestle with this, of course, and over the years I have shared many of my wrestling matches in my sermons. A few years ago, I heard a great Christian thinker and writer, Frederick Buechner, say that professional preachers all too often shy away from speaking of their own concrete encounters with God in their lives, preferring to simply-and safely-state familiar, well-worn, impersonal theological ideas. He said that because of this, "Ministers run the awful risk of ceasing to be witnesses to God's presence in their own lives." He is right. Such impersonal messages are terribly common among preachers, even though we have been blessed in this parish with preachers who just don't do that. In my sermons over the years, I have long tried not to do that either. Like most preachers, I preach primarily to myself. If I myself cannot hear and feel truth and reality for me in what I am saying, I know it is unlikely that you who listen will hear much truth and reality in it for you.

Thinking about this, and about the blind coming to see through Jesus, I found myself recalling vividly an incident that happened a number of years ago to me, a minor misunderstanding and its aftermath, which I think is worth sharing this morning. It speaks to me-out of a small event in my daily life-of a certain healing of some of my blindness and a coming to recognize God's presence to me. I share it with you in hopes that perhaps you will find in my little story some resonance

in your own lives.

A few years ago, when I was still rector at St. Luke's in Los Gatos, I was having dinner at home before going to church to celebrate our regular Thursday evening Eucharist. My wife Audrey was telling me about a conversation she had that day with a woman friend. In the course of her story, in a somewhat pained voice, Audrey said these words to me: "Mostly," she said, "she and I talked about how bad our relationship is." I hardly heard what Audrey said after that, because I reacted with such inner hurt. All I heard was her saying that our relationship was in a terrible state. Over the many, many years of our marriage, we have had some real ups and downs-all couples do-in trying to make our relationship a loving, caring, respectful,

life-giving one. Sometimes things go well, and I soar with joy. Sometimes they go badly, and I get depressed, even feel defeated. But that evening, right when I had thought things were really good between us in spite of the horror of our son's deadly cancer, I was hearing that in Audrey's mind they were decidedly not. I felt crushed. In a way, it just felt like a piece of news I could not bear. With Len's sickness, I felt as though my bottle for stress and sorrow was full to the top, and I just couldn't cope with any more. Now, the fact is that I learned later that night that it was all a silly misunderstanding-all couples have those, too-and that Audrey had been talking not about the state of her relationship with me, but about how things were going right then between her and another woman friend. I had simply misunderstood her words. But at that moment, I

had blindly thought that she was saying that things were rotten between us. And so, I went off to celebrate the Thursday evening Eucharist with a heavy heart.

My feeling, as I prepared for the service, was that everything I was about to do seemed so meaningless. That the Christian liturgy I was about to lead-with its book, its bread, its wine, its fine phrases and its mighty affirmations-was all a kind of ancient scam, a spiritual house of cards. But, as I had done for so many, many years of my life that it had become sheer habit, I offered in that Eucharist-in some melancholy and unspoken way-all the hurt and stress and sadness that was heavy upon my heart that evening. I offered up my pain, and my fear, and my heart-sickness, as though they were part of the very bread and wine that I was placing on the altar. And, then, as the Eucharist played itself out, something quite wonderful

and deeply healing began to happen to me. It was as though, when I spoke in the liturgy about the angels and archangels and the whole company of heaven, that I could actually feel their presence all around me. As though I sensed a number of palpable presences. I felt God's presence in Jesus and in me, in the bread and wine which were becoming sacred symbols of Christ's body and blood, in an elderly couple worshipping there as they did every Thursday evening. In my associate priest, Ruth Eller, who was standing beside me and helping me with that service just as she helped me so wonderfully every day with her ministry in the parish. But more than that, in people not present, I felt God's profound presence in Audrey, who really has loved me all these many years. And in our dying son, Len, whose bravery and family connection were just bursting with love. And in Will, our younger son, who was in those difficult days a model of commitment and support to his family. And in my friends and my colleagues. It was a strange and a splendid feeling-as sharp and real as it was unplanned and unexpected. I had this vivid realization, as the words of the Eucharist flowed from my mouth, that I was floating on a veritable ocean of love, on waters that were not drowning me but keeping me vibrantly alive. I was catching a momentary glimpse of the deep, deep truth-at least it is truth for me-that all of life is a feast, is a holy communion, if only we have eyes to see.

Is there a God in and under this world, a God whose name is Love? I cannot prove it to you. But I believe that I knew God that evening, and I knew too that God is everywhere in my life, hidden only by my blindness. Audrey feeds my life with her constancy and her love, and that is to know God. My son Len fed me with his great gift for empathy and compassion and with his splendid honesty about his life and his death, and that was to know God. The Christian fellowship feeds my life with so many companions, both in sorrow and in joy, and that is to know God. The scriptures we read and the sacraments we

celebrate in each other's company feed me with sacred nourishment, and that is to know God. Every honest relationship I experience feeds me, and-when my eyes are really open-shows me God's presence. All of this is what Christ teaches us in so many ways: our relationship with God is not really a matter of just rituals and rules; it is merely symbolized by the rituals and encouraged by the rules. Our relationship with God is experienced in this world through our relationships with each other.

As Jesus gave sight to the man born blind, Christ is in us as we give each other life. With all our weaknesses, our faltering and our flaws, we are ourselves-for better or for worse-"the gifts of God, for the people of God." That you and I-born so blind-can see that in each other is a wonderful, life-changing, grace.

Amen.