Eye Opener - John 9:10

John 9:10 “How then were your eyes opened?” they asked. (NIV)

The greatest wish or prayer that I have for all of my loved ones is encapsulated in this verse from John’s Gospel. I want all of them to have their eyes opened by Jesus in order to see Him for who He actually is: The Savior of their souls and the Lord of their lives. I know that am I not a perfect witness or flawless example of what a Christian should always be, but that does not stop me from hoping and praying that they will one day discover Christ in all of His totality.

Before I took Christ seriously, I dabbled in different things spiritually. I always felt there was something bigger and better than me, a supernatural power or almighty force that kept sustaining the world and universe. However, I was too self-absorbed to make any true leap of faith, so I just meandered down my own reckless path and put any notion of God to the side. It was only when I realized I was actually being self-destructive and needed to change that I cried out to God for help. I had blinded and deluded myself into thinking that I could handle anything and even do everything I wanted, but instead of filling my life with substance, I was actually draining my spirit and emptying my soul. Only God could rescue me from my self-made pit; only Christ could heal the blindness within me.

Perhaps you’re also praying for your loved ones to have their eyes opened by Christ. Maybe you’re feeling empty and in the dark yourself. Whatever the case, please know this: Christ can help your loved ones, so keep praying; Jesus can also brighten your life, so keep asking Him for His light. On the day that I decided to surrender to Jesus, my life changed forever. He opened my eyes and enabled me to see life as it actually is: a gift from God that is wonderful to experience and amazing to know.

Point to ponder

Has Christ opened my eyes to His love? What about my loved ones? Am I praying for them?

Prayer: Lord Jesus, thank You for revealing God to our world. Open our eyes to Your ways in our lives and help us to share Your gracious gift with all of our loved ones. In Your Holy Name, we pray. Amen.

John Stuart is the pastor of Erin Presbyterian Church in Knoxville, Tennessee. Please come and join us for worship on Sundays at 11:00 AM. You will be made very welcome 😊

Today’s image is one of John’s Holy Week drawings called “Passion.” If you would like to view a larger version, please click this link: Passion.

October 20 - Finding the Light - Matthew 4:16

Matthew 4:16   “The people living in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.”

When I first became a minister, I worked for a while in an ophthalmic ward as its part-time chaplain. All the patients in it were recovering from eye surgery. Some of them needed implants, some suffered from glaucoma, and still others had been involved in car accidents which meant that the surgeons had to patiently pick out small fragments of glass and metal from their eyes. Most of the time, the surgeries were successful. Some patients had to undergo several different operations before their eye ailments were cured. Sadly, a small number of people each year remained blind. Dealing with those patients was amongst the saddest pastoral experiences I ever had.

For the rest of the patients, recovery took several days. They were gradually brought into the light so that their eyes would not be permanently damaged by the sudden brightness of daylight. I can remember that large wooden shutters were placed over each window in the ward. The merest ray of sunshine, if prematurely exposed to the patients, could ruin their eyes forever.

The best experiences in the ward were those great days when a patient was wheeled out into the courtyard in full sunlight. Their joy was ecstatic and tears of gladness were often shed by the patients, nurses, as well their families. It was indeed a fulfilling of the old Biblical prophecy – “the people walking in darkness have seen a great light.”

Spiritual darkness occurs in the hearts and souls of many people in the world today. Sometimes they’ve allowed fear, disbelief, and distance from God to take them back into the shadows of doubt and despair. Sometimes painful events, grief, and illnesses cause people to retreat within them, cutting themselves off from God’s love and His people. Whatever the causes or the circumstances, as a pastor I have seen the light of Christ heal, restore, and reclaim people like them for God’s Kingdom, in words and ways that cause them to rejoice in the Lord and delight in His glory.

Perhaps you are currently undergoing some pain, hardship, or trouble. Maybe you feel vulnerable, isolated, and alone. Dark clouds may have almost overwhelmed your soul and you may feel depressed. Know this: Christ has the capacity to bring you back into the light. Allow Him to do what He is best at accomplishing – restoring lives and returning people to God’s Love. All you need to do is ask Him to do this for you, even now as you are reading this message.

Point to ponder

When I have experienced dark times in my life? How can Christ’s light heal me of those moments?

Prayer:                       Lord Jesus, You know the struggles we are all experiencing and the issues that over-shadow our lives. In the midst of all the darkness that we feel, bring to each of us Your Everlasting Light. Encourage and embrace us; empower and enable us to follow Your Path. In Your Holy Name, we sincerely pray. Amen.

John Stuart is the pastor of Erin Presbyterian Church in Knoxville, Tennessee. If you would like to comment or ask a question about today’s message, please send him an email to Traqair@aol.com. You can also read the church website at www.erinpresbyterian.org.

Today’s picture is one of John’s seasonal drawings called “Halloween Jack.” If you would like to view a larger version of this drawing, click on the following link: Jack.

New Year devotion: Healing Blindness - John 9:11

John 9:11       He replied, "The man they call Jesus made some mud and put it on my eyes. He told me to go to Siloam and wash. So I went and washed, and then I could see." 

I’ve always loved this Gospel story of Jesus healing the blind man (John 9:1-12). When I was a child, I owned a small picture book with drawings of Jesus and His disciples. In my mind’s eye, I can still see the old picture of Jesus standing over the blind man, just after He healed him. The man is looking with amazement at his own hands which he has just seen for the very first time. Behind Jesus are all of His disciples, who are all awe struck about what their Master has just accomplished. It was a beautiful picture and it captivated my heart as a child.

Growing up in the world, I began to see that blindness is not just a physical ailment; it’s also a spiritual malaise among many people. As a young alcoholic, I could not see the real Jesus or even worse, I did not want to see Him. I wanted to live my life in my own way without Christ judging me for being selfish and sinful, misguided and lost. It was only when I reached rock bottom in the depths of darkness that I began to see Christ’s Light. My self-imposed blindness was penetrated by His love and mercy. He found me and healed; He restored my sight and led me by His astonishing light.

To make my healing effective, I had to do the same as the blind man in the Gospel story. I had to do what Jesus told me. In the blind man’s case, he had to go to the Pool of Siloam and wash the mud from his eyes. In my own case, I had to give up alcohol and trust in Christ completely. In both events, Christ’s healing prevailed.

Perhaps you are worrying about the future or you are carrying baggage from the past. Maybe your life has meandered for a while without purpose, direction, or meaning. Today I’d like to encourage you to honestly and simply give your heart to Jesus. He won’t break it; He will mend it. He’ll also lead you by a new light of faith, hope, and love in your life.

Questions for personal reflection

Have I been losing my way recently? Will I turn to Jesus and be restored to the light of His path for my life?

Prayer:            Lord Jesus, sometimes we are blinded by our own ways, works, and words. We get distracted and misdirected by greed and ambition, insecurity and fear. Reach out to us and heal us of all that harms us. Beckon to us and call us back into Your Everlasting Light. In your Holy Name, we pray. Amen.

John Stuart is the pastor of Erin Presbyterian Church in Knoxville, Tennessee. If you would like to comment on today’s message, please send him an email to traqair@aol.com.

Today’s image is another of John’s Epiphany drawings for church bulletins. It’s called “Fit for a King.” If you would like to view a larger version, please click on the following link: http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8361/8334144969_0f958571f3_b.jpg

Stushie's Latest Song: Blindness

I recorded my latest Christian song for the album, "Church of the Holy Moon." You can download and listen to the MP3 at this link:-

Blindness

It's part of a sound recording project that I've recently started. I've uploaded five songs to Amie Street website for the proposed album. It's beginning to make some money. Who would have thought that home recordings could do that? Wow! You can find them at

http://amiestreet.com/artist/55579

BTW, all the voices on the song are mine.

Sunday Sermon: Seeing is Believing

Experiencing the Reality of Christ in a Spiritually Blind World

Last night I was watching a program from the History Channel called “The Naked Archaeologist.” It’s hosted by an Israeli-born Canadian Simcha Jacobivichi, who is one of the professors of archaeology at the University of Toronto. Simcha is a bit of a comedian and his off beat approach to the sometimes dreary subject of archaeology is very entertaining. In fact, I think that he is so good at it that we’re going to be discussing a few of his programs at the Monday Night Bible Study group starting tomorrow night. So, if you’d like to come along and be educated and entertained by Biblical Archaeology, then you’re welcome to join us tomorrow in the parlor at 7.15pm.

Enough with the church commercials, the reason I started talking about Simcha is that in a recent episode he revealed the fact that the Pool of Siloam from today’s chapter in the Bible, has just recently been discovered. I can remember almost thirty years ago, one of my New Testament professors disputing whether or not this incident ever took place. “After all,” he concluded, “if there’s no evidence for the Pool of Siloam’s existence, why should we believe that Jesus actually healed a blind man at this spot?” I wish I could now see his face – I’d love to show him the program with Simcha standing on the very steps of the pool.

Seeing is believing is quite a common theme when it comes to having faith in Jesus. A lot of people want proof that Christ existed and that He still exists in the world today. Personally, with millions of churches and billions of believers across the world, I honestly don’t know what kind of world non-believers are looking at. And the fact that so many people still worship Jesus after two thousand years, should tell us all that His Spirit still remains in the world. I tell you, if a college basketball team or a national football team had two billion supporters through the world, they would make front page news and be in the TV headlines every single day. If anyone person had two billion supporters in the world, their eminence, influence, and dominance over the earth would be absolute. Christ has all of these things, and yet people are still foolish enough or consistently stubborn to disbelieve Him.

But what about this passage: what do the people in Christ’s time actually see happening when He is with them? What do they experience in their lives that we can apply ourselves?

Well, the disciples seem to think that people who are sick deserved it. Illness and disease were considered to be punishments from God. If you did something bad, God plagued you with a disease. If you committed a sin, you and your children were made ill. Whatever sickness you had, it was God’s way of revealing to the community that you were an evil person. And if you died of that illness, then God never forgave you.

Now this might seem very judgmental, highly superstitious, and completely intolerant to us. We know that illness and diseases, sickness and ailments are not punishments from God. Or do we? It’s not all that long ago when AIDS came into our world and the Church pronounced it was a punishment from God upon homosexuals. I can still remember those days when bitter Christians castigated the gay community for being promiscuous and left them to die horrible deaths. I can still hear pious preachers and bigoted Christians protesting hatefully against gays. It was a terrible and terrifying time.

I remember upsetting a few folk (so what’s new), when I preached about this in 1988. It was the last Sunday in January, which in British churches is meant to commemorate World Leprosy Day and raise money for the Leprosy Mission. Instead of talking about Hanson’s Disease, I preached about how we were creating a whole new generation of lepers and outcasts by condemning those people with AIDS and HIV suffers to a living hell because of the lack of Christian compassion, love, and understanding. It was highly controversial and some people didn’t get it. They didn’t get it because they didn’t want to understand it. And because they didn’t get it, they left the church, especially when some of them found out that my brother Alan was gay. They didn’t want to see nor believe that Jesus would compassionately help and heal anyone who was ill or diseased.

John 9:3 "Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.

I love how Jesus answers His disciples. He doesn’t criticize them for being so judgmental, nor does He humiliate them for being so foolish. He just gets straight to the point – nobody sinned causing this blindness. It just happened. But now that we’re here, let God’s glory be displayed.

In other words, Jesus is going to use the opportunity to do some good in the world. The religious bigots and narrow minded zealots might say that this man was blinded because of his sinful parents, but as far as Christ is concerned, here’s a blind person, who is not an object lesson for a theological study session, but a man who needs help and healing, compassion and caring.

Jesus does this quite often. On Wednesdays, we’re looking at the Gospel of Mark in our Coffee Club groups. We’ve seen something like this before when Jesus heals someone on the Sabbath or in the synagogue. All the religious clerics hate Jesus for healing people in a holy place or on a holy day. In fact, they hate Him so much, that they want to kill Him. Instead of seeing the amount of good that Christ can do, instead of believing in a God who actually cares about people, all the religious bigots want is for Jesus to conform to their rules, their understanding, their ways of maintaining religion.

You know there a group in Topeka, Kansas who claim to be Christians. They’re from the Westboro Baptist Church and they go to funerals of soldiers all over America with posters that say things like “God hates Fags” or “America is going to hell” or “God is judging You.” They call themselves Christians, but they’re really hateful bigots who have nothing to do with Christ. They just hate people who are different from themselves, and they spew Satanism from their pulpits and posters. They are self-righteous people who emotionally crucify soldier’s families and friends with their ungodly protests and un-Christ-like behavior.

I feel sorry for them because they are warping the message of love and grace that Jesus has given us through the Gospel. They set themselves up as judge and jury of society, forgetting that Christ went out to heal the sick and save the lost. They are unforgiving and completely intolerant. It makes me wonder how they say the Lord’s Prayer each day…how they say “Lord, forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us?”

It was the same for the disciples – they were asking if the blind man sinned and so deserved his blindness; but the disciples were also sinners, so shouldn’t they also have been sick? Or were they saying to Jesus, Lord, we know that we are perfect, strong, and healthy and that’s why You chose us to be Your disciples; but what about this blind guy, why is he so imperfect, weak, and diseased? What is he guilty of?

They just don’t get it. Just like the people who didn’t want to show compassion to AIDS sufferers in the 80s & 90s. Just like the Westboro Baptist Bigots now. They just don’t understand that illness and sickness, weakness and imperfection happen, not because of sin, but because we are all human - frail in mind, body, heart, and spirit.

John 9:5 While I am in the world, I am the light of the world."

Just before Christ heals the blind guy, he reminds His disciples of Who He is. He is not an itinerant preacher, or quack medicine merchant, or con man, he is not a one man show, circus, or entertainer. He is not a carpenter turned into a prophet roaming around Galilee. He is the Son of God, the Lord of creation, the Light of the World.

It’s not just the blind man who is blind, but the whole of Christ’s society. The disciples are just like everyone else and the darkness of ignorance, intolerance, and insensitivity blinds the whole community. Christ is come into the world to reveal things that have not been seen since Time began. Christ is come to earth to reveal the Kingdom of God in ways that people will understand and accept. He’s not there to shore up religion – Christ is there to inspire and enhance faith. Religion is all about having a belief in God and trying to do the right thing. Faith is much more than that. Faith is trusting God totally, not just believing in Him, and doing what He wants done.

Let me give you an example of this: this week, in Mesa, Arizona a High School issued a proclamation that the kids in school cannot hug one another. It seems that so many kids have been kissing and cuddling in the school that the teachers want to put a stop to it. Now its being going on for years – My name is John Stuart and I was sent to the Principal’s office for kissing my girlfriend in the school library – but in order to stamp out this “vile” adolescent behavior, the hugging police have prohibited this kind of contact. The High Schoolers protested and the principal relented. The students can now hug one another for up to 2 seconds only. I can now picture teachers in the school hallways with stop watches for all of those hugging kids. That’s legalism gone wild and a complete waste of time. Thankfully, the students held a wonderful protest that cut through the absurdity….they had a 20 minute hug-athon and got detention for doing so. I just love free speech in this country.

Anyway, it’s that kind of narrow-minded legalism that bolsters religion. In Christ’s times, the clerics declared that illness and sickness were punishments from God, so the people believed it. But Jesus showed His world that this wasn’t how God operated – God was more interested in compassion, kindness, and care than rigid, legalistic religion. In fact, it wasn’t faith that killed Jesus on the Cross; it was hard-hearted, narrow-minded, belligerently bigoted religion that nailed Him to the tree. Faith had nothing to do with it.

So, what have we learned today? Religion is a sickness that we bring upon ourselves. Faith is a gift of God’s grace. Blindness is an illness of the spirit that is fed by ignorance, intolerance and injustice, whereas Christ is the light of the world, who seeks to show us the holy ways of God’s Kingdom through help and healing, compassion and caring.

Seeing is believing, especially when we look for Christ’s presence in our world. There are two billion Christians in the world today, so if we were all to show compassion and care to just two other people this week, then we would witness to the whole world. And if the world could see and experience Christians such as us, as truly loving people, then would also believe and put their faith in Him, the King of Kings and Lord of Life. Jesus Christ, our Savior forevermore. Amen.

John Stuart is the Scottish Pastor at Erin Presbyterian Church in Knoxville, Tennessee.