Agreeing & Disagreeing - in Love
It is time for me to pay due tribute to the most formative influence of
my childhood: television. I can't read the story of the man born blind,
in fact, I can't think of anything at all to do with blindness, without
my mind immediately conjuring up the image of Mr. Magoo. Perhaps you
remember Mr. Magoo – he walked through life blindly, convinced that all
was well, and that he was doing good, while in fact, leaving a trail of
destruction in his wake. False innocence has a dark side. Even as a
child, I somehow knew that Mr. Magoo was showing me something about
myself, about my own blindness, and the way I naively refused to see
that I could not see, and, as a result, there was danger to those
around me from my blindness and my unwillingness to admit it. This
became clearer to me when someone attached the nickname “Mr. Magoo” to
me during my adolescence, and it stuck. A little like the Pharisees
described today, I thought I could see and so I never seemed to realize
that I couldn't – and what I didn't see, didn't hurt me, just everyone
else in the vicinity.
Silly as it is to compare Jesus’ rebuke of the Pharisees with a
cartoon, I do think this particular cartoon presents in humorous form,
the dilemma that we face when it comes to honestly seeing our own
blindness – we can't. That's the problem. Jesus could not bring healing
to the Pharisees in their blindness because they did not see or believe
that they needed any healing. What allowed Jesus to heal the man born
blind, on the other hand, was the very stigma he carried for that
physical blindness. He could not escape the knowledge that he was
blind. And even if he tried, other people would remind him. They didn't
remind the Pharisees, however, they seemed to buy the lie that the
Pharisees were wise and spiritually mature just because they were
honored in the world of religious power. People seemed to believe that
they could see. No one dared to tell them they were blind – no one
could see it – no one but Jesus, who did tell them, and told them
directly.
And we too, hard as it is, need someone to tell us – we need someone
who can hold up an objective mirror to us in order to begin to see.
When we do see, it is often shocking to us to realize how different the
picture is than the picture we had fantasized and built up in our
minds. Here's one of my silly self-pictures – I am so long-suffering,
oh my, I forebear, I forebear all this terrible and misguided abuse and
yet, I always do the right thing, and I'm so kind and compassionate and
oh . . . . well, my children know it ain’t so and thank God, they don't
mind telling me, and likewise, my best friend, who doesn't suffer such
foolishness for even one minute. “Get over it, cause I'm not
listening,” he'll say. And that's the best thing anyone can say, at
least to me.
Because the truth is, if we do not see how ridiculous these pictures of
ourselves are, if we don't see how blinded we are by them, we, like the
Pharisees may do real harm. And that is not why we're here on this
earth – we're here “to learn to bear the beams of love”, as William
Blake says, we're here to seek and serve God. That's our calling. The
Pharisees thought they were serving God, but Jesus says no, they are
blind to the ambition that really drives them, the desire to prove
themselves superior to others. There is a way out of that blindness,
but it is a long, hard road.
Here is one of the ways out – this road map from the writings of St.
Paul on working with other people entitled “Agreeing and Disagreeing in
Love.” This has been floating around the church a long time, and yet,
it takes more than a quick read and a nod to make this happen. This is
real work, and it goes against the ways we have been conditioned to
work with other people. If we don't first see our blindness, if we
think we can actually see, and if we think we are actually doing these
things here, without recognizing the ways that we are not, then Jesus
can't heal us.
So let's look this over, with realistic humility and simple honesty,
and hope that each one of us has a magic moment when we say “ooops!”
Because ooops is the word here, ooops is the simple, honest, undefended
way of acknowledging that we have missed the mark. Ooops! I didn't do
that, I sure didn't hit the target, I didn't even see the target . . .
I ooops!
So let's go, just quickly over these steps, and let's have a bunch of
ooops moments, because then we can help each other, because then we
won't be the blind trying to lead the blind, we'll be the people who
can something trying to help the people who can see something else, and
together, we might just get a bigger picture.
So, the leaders of this community, the clergy, the Vestry, the Music
director, Choir director and choir have all committed to try and keep
on trying to use these steps in working together. I hope you'll help
us. I hope that if you see that I am not doing this, you will tell me,
so I can say “ooops” and get on track. I hope you'll do that with the
other leaders too, and maybe we can all help one another to see our
blindness more clearly, so that the glory of God can be revealed and
Jesus can heal us.
Amen.
The Rev. Edie Bird
The 3rd Sunday of Lent, 2008
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