A Sermon for the Sunday closest to October 26
The Rev. Patricia A. Gillespie
Isaiah 59:(1-4)9-19
Hebrews 5:12-6:1,9-12
Mark 10:46-52
Psalm 13
THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
Gerard Manley Hopkins writes about God's Grandeur
You've seen it somewhere sometime – the stunning reality of God's presence.
Perhaps it was a display of natural beauty a thunderstorm or a sunrise an infant's hand or an old woman's smile.
Maybe it was an inspired human creation the unique beauty of Hopkins' Victorian poetry a soul-stirring piece of music or awesome longing of a cathedral.
Possibly, you have experienced the presence of God in actions in the loving forgiveness of a friend or in a time of personal pain or healing or maybe even during a time of quiet prayer or joyful worship in God's word and sacrament.
You've seen it sometime somewhere. It's part of what brings most of us here. For most of us "seeing is believing." If we don't see any evidence of God's existence, why gather to praise God? why ask for God's forgiveness and help?
Seeing is believing. And how hard it is to be blind. -- how hard it is when we loose sight of God's presence.
For most of us this is how we live much of our lives. Few are blessed with an ever present awareness of God's presence. Most Christians , if they are honest with themselves, live through times -- often very long times -- when God is hard to see when God seems so very far away when we struggle and question God's presence or when we simply turn away empty times, blind times.
Maybe we're in the wrong place Victorian poetry or Elizabethan prose doesn't speak to everyone maybe we've been shocked into blindness through trauma Cambodian refugee women who survived the Khmer Rouge massacres in the 70s became physically blind for no apparent reason or perhaps our blindness is on account of our busyness or our indifference
How awful it is to be blind. We sit beside the road, in our homes or in our pews, we don't see the beauty of God's presence, and faith passes us by.
This blindness is what Isaiah laments: "We wait for light and lo! There is darkness and for brightness, but we walk in gloom. We grope like the blind along a wall, groping like those who have no eyes; we stumble at noon as in the twilight." Isaiah laments our sin, our turning away from God in blindness.
This same blindness is what the psalmist experiences "How long shall I have perplexity in my mind and grief in my heart, day after day?"
But the psalmist, like the blind man Bartimaeus in the Gospel, does something about it Even in their blindness, they turn to God for help The psalmist cries out "Give light to my eyes, lest I sleep in death." And Bartimaeus shouts "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.!" For them, not seeing is not "not believing."
Even in the darkness, even in sin and blindness, even when God seems hopelessly far away they turn toward God.
It isn't easy to call out to God from the darkness. When "seeing is believing" and we are blind it can be difficult to find even the tiniest bit of faithwith which to begin prayer.
Practice helps like the poster I have that shows praying hands and says: "Become stronger with this simple exercise" it's a good exercise for those times of darkness.
But for most of us the discipline of prayer, like the discipline of physical exercise, is hard to keep up alone. That's why aerobic classes and health clubs are so successful. That's one reason to keep coming to this place of community prayer in times of spiritual darkness.
It is hard to be blind. But it's even more difficult to be blind alone.
Maybe the struggling psalmist heard a visionary prophet like Isaiah saying "God is coming like a pent up stream driven by the wind of the Lord." Perhaps it was a far-sighted friend who told the blind beggar Bartimaeus "Jesus is coming!"
Often in times of blindness, when we fail to see God we live by the vision of friends we trust -- it is their seeing that supports our believing. When our faith is weak, the vision of the community of faith may give us the courage to call out to God and, like Bartimaeus, to "take heart and get up" when Jesus calls.
Take heart, my friends And when Jesus asks "What do you want me to do for you?" May we, in our blindness, be given the faith to answer. "Let me see again!"
Live light to our eyes, O Lord! So we can see to follow Jesus.