Don't Judge a Book By Its Cover

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, on Sunday, April 3, 2011.]

John 9:1-41
“Don’t judge a book by its cover.” We’ve all heard that advice. It warns us to avoid making judgments based on outward appearances and to instead, see life and people at deeper levels.

This theme is seen in our first lesson for today, 1 Samuel 16:1-13, which tells the story of when a shepherd boy, David, was anointed to be king of Israel.

The theme is carried forward in the Gospel lesson. In it, we catch up with Jesus nearly midway through John’s gospel account of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. Already, by this point in John’s narrative, there have been groups of people laying in wait for the chance to have Jesus executed.

Then, on a Sabbath day, Jesus’ disciples make a mistake. They judge a book by its cover. They see a blind man and decide that somebody has to be to blame. “Rabbi,” they ask, “who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus tells the disciples that they’re looking at things wrongly. The sins of neither this man nor his parents were responsible for the man’s blindness.

Aren’t we prone to think as superficially as the disciples, though? We look at the cover and don’t bother to take a look inside.

Jesus repeats something He’d already said. It's something that John wrote about at the beginning of his gospel. “I am the light of the world,” Jesus says. Jesus here is pointing to the fact that He’s not only about to help a blind man see, but also has the power to offer all who repent and believe in Him, new life.

Mixing His spittle with some dust from the ground, Jesus spread mud on the blind man’s eyes. He then told the blind man to wash his eyes in a nearby pool. The first miracle in our lesson took place: Jesus gave sight to the blind man.

But another miracle is in the offing.

Other people in the rest of our lesson will prove to be the real  blind ones. Not only don’t they see the blind man for who he is and the miracle of his recovered sight for what it is, they also, most tragically, can’t see Who Jesus is. They refuse to see Jesus for Who He is!

The reason for their blindness is that they’ve turned the faith revealed to Israel and chronicled in the Old Testament into a legal system they could control.

Those of you who have been participating in Read the Bible in a Year know that in Old Testament times, God laid down a lot of laws for His people. As I pointed out last week, only the moral law—or the Ten Commandments—and the laws that issue from them, like Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount or the apostle Paul’s explanation of the commandments in 1 Timothy 1:8-11, remains valid today.

But there are limits to what God’s moral law can do. In the book of Romans, Paul says, “The law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good” (Romans 7:12). But the most that God's holy, just, and good law can do is show us our need of the forgiveness and new life that comes only to those who repent (turn from sin) and believe in (that means, entrust their lives to) Jesus Christ. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” Paul writes later in Romans 8:1. No condemnation! That’s good news! When you and I surrender to Jesus Christ, our sins are covered over, Christ has paid our debt for sin, and we belong to God for all eternity!

But there are always people who want to turn the gospel of new life for those who rely completely on Christ into some religious or political system they can control. This was true of some of Jesus’ fellow Jews whose reaction to the blind man’s returned sight wasn’t happiness or celebration.

They became upset because Jesus, Who had restored the blind man’s sight, had, according to their rules, worked on the Sabbath day. Kneading (k-n-e-a-d-i-n-g), which Jesus had done when He mixed His saliva with dust, was one of thirty-nine activities which Pharisaic Jews saw as a violation of the Sabbath day.

Never mind that a man born blind could now see. Never mind that, as the newly-sighted man said, such a sign could only have been done by someone sent by God. Jesus wasn’t playing His culture’s religious games. That’s why His opponents couldn’t see Jesus for Who He was (and is) and why a blind man, open to the promptings of God could see Jesus for exactly Who He was (and is).

Toward the end of our lesson, Jesus asks the man to whom He'd given sight, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” This is a consequential question, the most important question any of us will ever be asked.

The term “Son of Man,” first appears in the Old Testament book of Daniel. In Daniel 7:13-14, for example, Daniel records a vision he had of a Son of Man Who would one day come to set things right in the world:

I was watching in the night visions,
And behold, One like the Son of Man,
Coming with the clouds of heaven!
 He came to the Ancient of Days,
 And they brought Him near before Him.
 Then to Him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom,
 That all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him.
 His dominion is an everlasting dominion,
 Which shall not pass away,
 And His kingdom the one
 Which shall not be destroyed.

Son of Man is a designation Jesus uses of Himself 84 times in the New Testament's four gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Jesus clearly saw Himself as the fulfillment of Daniel's vision of the Savior sent from God.

“Do you believe in Me?” Jesus is asking the man. “Do you entrust your whole life to Me: all your past sins, all your dreams for the future, your whole destiny in this life and in the next? Are you utterly surrendered to Me? Will you live each day in repentance and renewal as you follow Me to eternity? Will you let My Holy Spirit empower you to confess and live out your faith in Me? Do you believe in Me?”

Jesus had already made it abundantly clear in His conversation with Nicodemus, which we talked about a few weeks ago, just how much is at stake when anyone is asked if they believe in Jesus: “For God so loved the world,” Jesus said, “that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”

When asked if he believed in Jesus, the newly-sighted man had just one question, “And who is he, sir?” That's when we read about the second miracle in our lesson. When Jesus said that the One he was looking at was the Son of Man, the blind man worshiped Jesus. He saw what others—what many today—refuse to see: that Jesus is God the Son, the only way to forgiveness and reconciliation with God, the only means by Whom you and I can become all that we were made to be by our loving God.

If we only look at the humanity of Jesus, we need to ask Him to open our eyes and see Him as the only God and Lord we need to believe in and worship. The miracle of faith in Christ can happen in us…and in anybody!

We who have been called and commanded by Jesus to share the Good News of new life for all who repent and believe in Him must ask God to use us as His agents in helping to dispel the blindness that keeps so many of our neighbors from knowing and following Jesus.

We must share Jesus’ call to repent and believe in Him lovingly and unapologetically. Otherwise, people with whom we live, work, and play—people we like and people we love—will be separated from the life Jesus so desperately wants to give to all people.

I’ve cited it often, but it’s worth mentioning again that Jesus has made it as clear as possible, when He said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me”  (John 14:6).

If our neighbors, family members, or friends see Jesus as anything less than the God Who has conquered sin and death for all who believe in Him, we must pray that God will help them see…and that the Lord Who gave sight to a blind man will use us to share a true vision of all that Jesus is and all He can be for those who call Him Lord and God.

But this means that we also must ask the God we know in Christ to help us see others not by their “covers,” but for who they are as children of God.

At the end of an Easter evening service at the Brooklyn Tabernacle in New York, Pastor Jim Cymbala sat exhausted close to the altar area. He wanted to relax and unwind a bit. But then he caught sight of a man dressed in shabby clothes. His hair was matted. He looked awful.

He stood about four rows from Cymbala, awaiting permission to approach. Cymbala nodded, but thought how horrible that this was how his festive, if tiring, Easter was going to end. “He’s going to hit me up for money,” Cymbala thought.

As the man approached, the odor—a mixture of alcohol, sweat, urine, and garbage—took Cymbala’s breath away. It was so bad that he instinctively turned his head to inhale while he spoke with the man.

"What’s your name?" Cymbala asked. “David,” he said. “How long have you been homeless?” “Six years.” “Where did you sleep last night?” “In an abandoned truck.”

Cymbala said that he’d heard this story many times before. He reached into his pocket for some money he could give to David and send him on his way.

“No, you don’t understand,” David said. “I don’t want your money. I want the Jesus that red-haired girl talked about [during the service].”

Cymbala says that he felt “soiled and cheap.” He silently asked for God’s forgiveness. “I had wanted…to get rid of [David],” Cymbala writes, “when he was crying out for the help of Christ I had just preached about. I swallowed hard as God’s love flooded my soul.”

David seemed to sense this change in Cymbala's view of him. He moved forward and fell on Cymbala’s chest, burying his grimy head against the repentant pastor's clean clothes.

Holding David close, Cymbala told him about Jesus’ love, how Jesus had died and risen to give David new life. “I felt love for this pitiful young man,” he says. And the foul odor? “I don’t know how to explain it,” Cymbala writes, “It had almost made me sick, but now it became the most beautiful fragrance to me.”

In this moment, he sensed Jesus telling him, “Jim, if you and your wife have any value to Me, if you have any purpose in My work—it has to do with this odor: This is the smell of the world I died for.”

When Jesus looks at us, He doesn’t see us as the world does. He sees prodigal children worthy of the sacrifice of Himself on the cross. 

May we see Jesus as our Lord and God and, seeing others with the same love, passion, and concern He has for us, may we tell the whole world about Jesus. Amen!

The Best News We'll Ever Hear

[This sermon was prepared for worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier today.]

The Gospel Lesson: John 8:31-36
Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” They answered him, “We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, ‘You will be made free’?” Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.  ^3233343536

Whenever I read the words of our Gospel lesson, I think that Jesus sure knows how to kill a celebration.

Earlier in chapter 8 of John’s Gospel, from which today’s Gospel lesson is drawn, Jesus called Himself, “the light of the world.” He promised that, “Whoever follows Me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.” In these words, Jesus was staking His claim to be “the true light, which enlightens everyone…” Jesus was claiming that He was God in the flesh, come to be the Messiah and Savior of the world. The crowd, composed of Jesus’ fellow Jews, was excited. The verse just before our lesson says that, “As [Jesus] was saying these things, many believed in Him.”

Many believed in Him! That was the idea, right? Jesus came into the world to gather a people who believed in Him. He had said it. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him…” Many believed in Jesus. They had signed the contract. They bought the T-shirt. Mission accomplished. Let the party begin.

But Jesus couldn’t leave well enough alone. He had to explain what it means to believe in Him. You see, Jesus isn’t an unscrupulous advertiser who tries to divert our attention from the fine print. He’s not a politician of the conniving kind who says that she or he can’t possibly go into details on what they will do in office until after they’ve been elected. He’s not the scheming suitor who hides his true nature until after the honeymoon. Jesus practices truth in advertising. With Him, everything is up front. No hidden charges, no gimmicks.

But His timing is strange. Take a look at the first two verses of the Gospel lesson in the Celebrate insert. Just as the crowd is cheering, we’re told: “Then Jesus said to the Jews who believed in Him, ‘If you continue in my word, you are truly My disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”

The crowd skips over the words in those two verses that might trip us up. Many in today’s world claim that, contrary to the witness of the Bible, everybody has their own versions of the truth and that every version is swell, no matter what God has said.

Had many post-modern folks been listening to Jesus that day, they might also have recoiled at the notion of “continuing” in Jesus’ Word; that sounds too much like an ongoing commitment.

They might also have been offended by Jesus saying that anyone needs to continue in His Word, the revealed Word of God. After all, many today would say, there are so many words not uttered or endorsed by Jesus, not found in the pages of Scripture. Many would rather treat God's Word like the menu at a cafeteria, picking what words they want to continue in and which they'd rather ignore.

Had other contemporary folks been there to hear Jesus' words, they might have been turned off by the idea of being His “disciples”—His followers, His students. That sounds like a call and a command from Christ to subordinate our egos and desires to Christ alone. (Which, of course, it is.)

Something else Jesus says in those verses is what caught the attention of the Jews in who believed in Jesus, though.

They didn’t like Jesus’ promise, “the truth will make you free.” Look at what they said in verse 33 of our Gospel lesson, “They answered Him, ‘We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, ‘You will be made free?’”

“Free?” they ask Jesus indignantly, “Who needs to be free?” They claim that they have never been slaves to anyone! That, of course, is a lie. The whole history of the Jewish people had been riddled with slavery. They had been slaves in Egypt for 430 years. The Babylonians and the Assyrians had conquered and enslaved them for many more years. And, even as they recoil at Jesus’ insinuation that they need to be set free, these Jews are living under the harsh dictatorship of the Romans, a kind of slavery.

Folks, people who are addicted to alcohol or drugs of any kind like to say, “I could quit any time I like” and then keep on using. Some people who are drowning in debt rail against the wastefulness of others, then take extravagant vacations and buy baubles they can’t afford. Some adults speak disparagingly of the unhealthy practices of young people who get tattoos or they say drink too much while themselves endangering the bodies and lives God gave to them by ingesting thousands of unhealthy calories and walking just enough to find the remote before falling asleep in the Lazy Boy. The point is, as the saying goes, denial is more than a river in Egypt. Like all these modern examples I just cited, the Jews in our Gospel lesson are in massive denial. They are slaves, but they won’t admit it.

And at this point in our lesson, they’re also in an uproar. How dare Jesus say that they needed to be free? But Jesus makes clear in verse 34, that He’s only begun to insult them. He says that they are slaves at even deeper and deadlier levels than they might imagine. Look at that verse, please. “Jesus answered them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.’”

Let me take a little survey. (And please do not, under any circumstances, raise your hands. I will collect your responses telepathically*.)

How many of you have sinned—and by that I mean, violated one of the Ten Commandments—in, say, the past year?

How about in the past week?

How about since you arrived here at the church building this morning?

Now, I’m going to make the assumption that all of us gave honest answers and announce the results. It’s a landslide that would make any politician happy this coming Tuesday: 100% of us said yes to every single question. Of course, the bad news is that, according to Jesus, that makes all of us slaves to sin.

“The trouble with saying that out loud,” one commentator writes, “is that many people in the Western world are bored of hearing about sin. They think it just means offences against someone else’s morality.” But, he goes on to explain how the sins we commit, however seemingly minute they appear, enslave us. “When people rebel against God in whatever way, new fields of force are called into being, a cumulative effect builds up, and individuals and societies alike become enslaved just as surely as if every single one of them wore chains and was hounded to work every day by a strong man with a whip.”

Whenever we wander from the plan of God for truly human living—in other words, whenever we sin, we give away parts of our souls.

Like a junkie moving more deeply into the clutches of addiction, with every sin, we become more enslaved to sin. And each sin we commit makes the next one that much easier to commit, that much harder to avoid.

That might not seem horrible. We might be willing to accept slavery in exchange for the pleasures that sin offers us in this life. After all, we commit sins not because we're repulsed by them, but precisely because they're so attractive to us, precisely the things we want to do when we do them.

Being slaves to sin might be OK if this life were all there was to our life, if sin brought pleasure and no eternal consequences.

But we know better. In one of my former parishes, a man came to see me and confessed that he had been conducting an affair with another man’s wife for ten years. “I know I should want to stop,” he told me, “but I enjoy it. Every time I vow that I won’t see her again, she calls and we end up planning to meet again. I can’t seem to break free and I know that, eventually, I will face God and pay the price. But right now, all I can think of is how much I want her.” With tears in his eyes, he looked at me and asked, “What can I do?”

In twenty-six years of ministry, I’ve heard that man’s question—“What can I do?”—from countless other people. That cry of enslavement has come from each of them, whether their particular sin was insensitivity to their spouse, gossiping, misusing God’s Name, thievery, envy, or covetousness. “What can I do?” All these people have known the truth of what Paul writes in the New Testament book of Romans: “The wages of sin is death…”

In the sixteenth century, that truth haunted a German monk and priest named Martin Luther. Brought up in a Church that, like many modern church bodies, conservative and liberal, put human traditions and human reason on a par with the revealed Word of God, Luther had done all the things that the Church of his day told him to do: penance, purchasing indulgences, self-abasement.

But he still felt far from God, enslaved to sin, certain that he would go to hell.

Luther’s life was changed though, when he came to understand a deeper truth recorded on the pages of the Bible. It’s the truth to which Jesus points in our Gospel lesson this morning. Look at what Jesus says in verses 35 and 36. “The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there [in the household of God] forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”

Do you know what I told that man who asked, “What can I do?” The same thing I’ve told all the other people who have ever asked me that question, the same thing I’m telling you now: “You can do nothing. But if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”

Through His life, death, and resurrection, Jesus has done everything needed to free us from the power of sin and death over our lives. We simply need to keep believing—keep trusting in Him. We need to continue in His Word.

When Luther realized that God sets free all who entrust their lives to Jesus Christ, he said that the very doors of heaven opened to him. The same can be true for us.

“So what?” we may wonder, “After all, this isn’t heaven.” This sure isn’t heaven! But the certainty of heaven belongs to all who believe in Jesus Christ and that can set us free to live this life with a love and a passion and a boldness that no poet has ever imagined and no brave warrior has ever experienced.

In 1984, Archbishop Desmond Tutu won the Nobel Peace Prize. In the country of South Africa, where Tutu lived (and still lives), many Christians churches claimed that the oppressive system of apartheid, in which blacks were treated as slaves, was ordained by God. In the Name of Jesus Christ, Tutu rightly called any "Christian" justification for injustice a lie. For his opposition to apartheid, he received death threats every day. Tutu was asked why he risked death. He couldn't help it, he said, injustice is wrong in God's eyes and it must be opposed. "Besides," he added, "death is not the worst thing that can happen to a Christian."

All who believe in Jesus Christ know that heaven is their home. And knowing that sets us free to live this life to the full, no matter what the cost, no matter the opposition.

All who are set free by Christ know that nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God.

Luther wrote about this in his great hymn about spiritual warfare based on Psalm 46, A Mighty Fortress is Our God. Listen to the words of the final verse:

God’s Word forever shall abide,
No thanks to foes, who fear it;
For God Himself fights by our side
With weapons of the Spirit.
Were they to take our house,
Goods, honor, child, or spouse,
Though life be wrenched away,
They cannot win the day.
The Kingdom’s ours forever!

Christ can set us free forever. We do nothing to gain our freedom. Christ has already done it all. All we must do is believe in Him.

The Reformation is a call to the freedom that belongs only to those who by faith in Christ are learning to, "Let go. Let God!" That's our call today: "Let go. Let God!" And knowing that by entrusting our lives in Christ we can let go and let God, is the best news that you and I will ever hear! Amen!

*I am kidding about the telepathy stuff, by the way, just in case anyone misses the attempt at humor.