Sermon: 4th Sunday in Lent, Year A
Reading: 1 Samuel 16:1-13 & John 9:1-41
Things are not always the way they seem.
A few years ago I was looking for some computer software with translations of the Bible. I went to a Christian bookshop and looked around in the software section. My eye was drawn to a brightly coloured package, with interesting graphics on the front and pictures. The labels seemed to indicate that this was the latest and best stuff and exactly what I wanted.
I was ready to tuck it under my arm and head for the counter, when I thought to myself I’d better read the fine print more closely about exactly what is in this package. I found a nice brightly lit part of the shop so I could read the tiny print on the back of the box. As I read I became more and more disappointed.
What I was actually buying for the price indicated on the box was very little indeed – three translations of the Bible that are outdated and anyway hardly used here in Australia, along with a couple of outdated and useless dictionaries and commentaries, all on CD. If I wanted any of the other really useful material listed in large print on the front of the box, I would have to lay out almost the same amount of money again in order to get access to it.
Things are not what they seem. Today more than ever, things are driven by marketing, image, misleading advertising based on shallow, appearance driven values. What looks great often is not so great when you really find out what’s really going on under all the marketing.
People and communities are the same. Usually what is really going on is hidden. Appearances are one thing. What’s going at the heart is another thing entirely. It’s true in our lives too. We often tend to present ourselves to the world as the kinds of people we think we should be or the kinds of people we think others want us to be.
But behind the masks, there is the real us. We only show people the real us when we know them well enough to trust them to not judge us or reject us. You have probably found this out for yourself. As you get to know somebody, you find out the hidden strengths they have, as well as the hidden weaknesses.
This inner self, the real you, is what God sees. He is not fooled by appearances. He sees behind that. This is what God explains to Samuel, who is looking for the one who will be king of Israel and is admiring all Jesse’s big, tall, strong, strapping sons. He eventually sees the son he thinks looks like the next King of Israel: Eliab – a fine figure of a man, everything a king should be: good-looking, athletic, talented, charming, courageous …
What does God say? In verse 7 of 1 Samuel 16 we read:
‘Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.’
The Lord looks inside, into the heart. He sees what we are really made of. He knows a person’s true character is not something you can tell by their height, or their looks, or their voice, or their clothes, or their manners, or their bank balance.
You see this in the Gospel reading for today, too. Jesus, by simply speaking and living the truth, tends to bring a person’s true nature to the surface. He tears away the appearances so that people are revealed for what they are. In John 9, the Pharisees – who seem to be great worshippers of God; very spiritual people – end up showing how empty and false their religion really is. And the blind man – who appears at first completely ignorant, disinterested, and even uninvolved – becomes a disciple of Jesus and proclaims what Jesus has done for him, confessing him as Lord.
Looking at the outward appearances of that situation you would have concluded the opposite. As we see that situation through Jesus’ eyes, however, we see the truth.
I wonder what do you think God sees when he looks at you?
What do you think? Sin, evil, selfishness, rebellion? Yes. That is what in us by nature. That is what is we by ourselves are.
But is that all God sees? If so, we have had it!
Fortunately not. We certainly are sinners, but by grace we are also saints. We Lutherans have always been careful to emphasise the reality of sin, but maybe one thing we have not fully realised sometimes is that when God looks at us, at our inner lives, he also sees his own work going on there. He sees his Holy Spirit at work there.
Do you realise, brothers and sisters, that from the day of your baptism the Holy Spirit has been working on you: renewing, refining, reshaping, maturing, strengthening, softening you. This happens largely in secret, unseen. Your heart is the Holy Spirit’s workshop – despite your sin, you are a new creation, pure and perfect and beautiful. Please notice I didn’t say “should be”; I said “is”. It is God’s work, not yours, and he makes it happen, not you.
Do you believe that?
It’s hard to believe it sometimes, from what we see in yourself. In my experience people are very aware of their weaknesses and their sins. Sometimes, as people look at their own lives, this is all they can see. I have met many people in the church who judge themselves more harshly than anyone else does. But remember you can’t just go by appearances. They do not tell you everything. God’s workshop is the heart and what he is doing there we sometimes may not even be very aware of ourselves.
It’s important for us to remember that when we look at others in the church too, and notice their imperfections and weaknesses, you are only looking at the outside – God is at work in that person who drives you crazy, just as he is at work in you.
God’s mysterious work is more often than not hidden from our eyes, or at least happening in a place where we have not noticed.
What to us is small or weak or powerless, God so often uses as his most powerful tool. Who would have thought, after all, that a puny shepherd boy would be one of the Old testament’s greatest figures? Who would have thought a dead man hanging on a cross was the almighty power of God at work for the salvation of all people? Hidden there on the cross of death is the Lord of the whole universe, and the redeemer and Lord of your life.
Hidden in you – in your life, small and unimpressive as it may seem to you, ineffective, weak and sinful as you sometimes feel you are – hidden in you is this same Lord Jesus, this same power of his that changes the world. Yes you, whether you realise it or not, God, who looks at the heart and who works in the heart, is working in your heart. And what a wonderful work it is!