Ascension Day Readings and A Greenhouse Lesson on Blindness VS Sinfulness
/Today is Ascension Day, the day that the church celebrates Jesus ascending into heaven after he gave his disciples the Great Commission, leaving his disciples with the command to wait in Jerusalem until the Spirit comes. This Sunday we will be talking about Ascension in more depth, and here is Donna Theissen reading the Ascension Day passages.
It was a cool, rainy afternoon when I decided to head over to Sprucedale greenhouse in Austin to make my annual purchase of flowers for my pots and vegetables for my garden. I figured there might be fewer people there on a cool day than on a warm day. Sara decided to come along. When we arrived, there was only one other customer, incidentally my neighbour, checking out the apple trees in front of the greenhouse. I was surprised to see the “Come on in, we're open” sign but the doors closed. I wondered if they just had the doors closed to keep out the cold. I greeted my neighbour then headed on into the building.
As soon as we stepped in the door, a staff person immediately came over and pointed out that we had come in the exit door and would we please go the proper entrance and wash our hands. At first I was confused: I have been coming here for 14 years and this is always the door that I've come in. It had never been just the exit door. In my slight embarrassment, I felt obliged to justify myself to the staff person – the sign I saw said “Come in, we're open,” so I had come in! However, Sara and I dutifully walked down to the new proper entrance and washed our hands then continued shopping.
We picked out all the plants we wanted, paid for our selections and headed out the door we had initially come in. As we placed our boxes in the back of the van, Sara looked back and pointed out the enormous “EXIT” sign above the door we had wrongly entered and just to the right an enormous “ENTRANCE” sign with an arrow pointing to the “new” entrance. I felt sufficiently silly and wondered at why I hadn't seen the signs.
I hadn't intentionally disregarded the new protocols set in place to ensure good health and social-distancing. I had just seen what I expected to see: the “Come in” sign by the door I had always come in for the last 14 years, and I did what I had always done before – gone in. I was so blinded by my mission and my usual pattern of doing things that I missed critical information and direction, the larger picture. Thankfully for me, the staff person was gracious and did not shame me; she simply enlightened and redirected me.
My ridiculous situation got me thinking about physical and spiritual blindness. The two often show up in the Bible together as the need for gracious enlightening and redirection. In John 9, Jesus heals a blind man by spitting on the ground, making mud which he spreads on the man's eyes and then telling him to go wash in the Pool of Siloam. Before Jesus heals the man, the disciples ask Jesus whether the man is blind because he sinned or his parents sinned; they want to assign blame for this deficiency. Jesus' response is: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned ... but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed” (vs. 3, emphasis mine).
After the man is healed, there is a big drama in the temple with the Pharisees, the man, his parents, trying to figure out who healed the man and whether the healer came from God or was a sinner for healing on the Sabbath. Eventually, Jesus shows up, reveals himself to the blind man who worships him, and says to the Pharisees, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind” (vs. 39). The Pharisees take offense and suspect that Jesus is accusing them of spiritual blindness. Jesus answers them, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains” (vs. 41, emphasis mine).
It seems to me from this story that blindness, either physical or spiritual, is not an indication of one's sinfulness. One's blindness is what creates awareness of the need for healing, for awakening to redirection, for enlightenment. It's the starting point for where the works of God can be displayed, it's the brokenness that can let the light in. What puts a person in error is resisting healing, denying the need for redirection, stubbornly remaining in the dark. Walking in the exit door at the greenhouse was dumb, but it didn't make me worthy of punishment. If I had refused to cooperate, become belligerent or aggressive, they would have been within their rights to kick me out of the store. We are all broken and blinded in some way, stumbling in darkness in some areas of our lives, making missteps, following misguided patterns. God desires to enlighten and redirect each of us. Our response determines our status.
