Then Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man said “My teacher, let me see again”

There are two normal and expected ways to go at a sermon on a Church’s Anniversary Sunday.

The first is to be like Bruce Springsteen’s old HS baseball buddy and tell “boring stories of, Glory Days, that have passed you by”, the second is to predict a future, in the non-immortal words of Leslie Gore, full of Sunshine, lollipops and rainbows, Everything that's wonderful.

But we’ll save all of Glory Days stuff and all of the Sunshine, lollipops and rainbows stuff for the celebration, because this is still Clover Hill and I’m still me, and normal and expected have never been our way of doing things.

So today, at least in my sermon, I don’t want to be all about the past, nor am I very interested in talking about the future, at least not right now.

Because the more I went through the scriptures for today, the more I tried to answer the question that I have begun each sermon with this month, “What makes Clover Hill, Clover Hill?”, the more I realized that it doesn’t matter what we have been, nor does it matter what we will be, what matters is what we are today.

That’s the only measurement that counts when it comes to this Church or any Church. It’s not attendance and it’s not finances and it’s not buildings, it is only and always: what’s happening right now? Are we the Church of today? Are we addressing the issues and the stresses and the joys of today? Or are we so lost in the wonders of our past, or so entranced by the promises of our future, that we are failing to be the Church of today?

Jimmy Buffett has a song – you sort of knew this was coming, didn’t you? – it is a song that he wrote about the survivors of Hurricane Katrina called “Breathe in, Breathe out, Move on.” And he sings of a watch that he bought in New Orleans, a watch that is never wrong:

It doesn't use numbers or moving hands

It always just says Now

Every Church and every Christian needs to wear a watch that just says Now!

You and I might be impressed, and rightly so, by the fact that we are 175 years old, many Churches don’t get to this point and some of the ones that do, shouldn’t.

But we need to be honest, God’s not impressed. I’m sure God is pleased that we are here, but impressed? No, come on we’re talking about the God for whom “a thousand years is but a day and a day a thousand years”. Our God is the ultimate “What have you done for me lately, like today?” sort of God.

So, what should we be doing today? Well one of the things that we should do today is to admit to God, along with Job, that we often don’t know what we are talking about.

Here, at the end of his story, Job finally says: I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.

That’s us, on any given day, we utter what we don’t understand; we speak without knowing just how wonderful the full truth of life is; we presume that our limited experience and incomplete knowledge is normative for all people, normative even for God. God’s truth is always everything that we can describe . . . and then some, and then a lot.

We can’t seem to handle that and so we end up creating a god in our own image and then we speak of this god so carelessly. On this day, right now, I am sure that I am not the only one in the room who could look back and cringe at well-meant advice or sometimes not so well-meant criticism that we handed out to people when we didn’t know what we were talking about! We were too immature, at any age, to appreciate their situation or we were too insecure to believe that different perspectives will enhance, rather than threaten, our faith or we were too blind to see what was really going on in the lives of others or even in our own lives. We have uttered what we did not understand, things too wonderful for us, which we did not know.

Which, of course, is different than Bartimaeus, the blind beggar, who knew exactly what he was saying that day.

Earlier in the chapter Jesus welcomed the children, as the disciples tried to deny them access to Christ, now we have Jesus welcoming this beggar whom people tried to silence.

That’s what we need to be doing. We need to be welcoming all those who cry out, as Bartimaeus did, and that means those who look differently and think differently and speak differently and pray differently and love differently than we do.

We’ve got a long history of doing that and doing it well in this place, we have been – very quietly and very faithfully – in the forefront of every major social and theological issue of the past century, but that history doesn’t mean a thing if we don’t do it today, if we don’t continue to do it right now.

“What do you want me to do for you?”

How do we answer when Christ asks that of us?

I used to wonder why Jesus had to even ask that question. It was obvious that Bartimaeus was blind, what else would a blind man want but vision?

But then I realized that Jesus didn’t need to know, but Bartimaeus did.

That’s why the question was asked, Bartimaeus needed to answer for himself.

Just as we do.

That’s what prayer does, among other things, it allows us to answer for ourselves and it forces us to measure our lives in the framework of God’s vision for us.

Here’s where we often get it all wrong on why we pray! We don’t pray in order to enlighten God with our eloquence and wisdom, don’t be silly, God doesn’t need us to tell her what’s going on. We pray in order that our eloquence and wisdom will focus us on what we really want from Jesus.

It is a today question, it is an every day question, it is a right now question.

“What do you want me to do for you?” “My teacher, let me see again”

“let me see again”

Did you catch that? Bartimaeus had seen and somewhere along the way he lost his vision and now he wants to see again. Hasn’t that been true for all of us, at one time or another?

Aren’t some of us, even today, the flip side of Amazing Grace: we once were found, but now are lost?

“let me see again”

Sometimes along the way we can lose our vision, it happens, we may not even now where or how, but we always remember what it was like, don’t we?

And in our heart of hearts we want it back again, don’t we?

“let me see again”

What causes us to go blind to God’s place in our world?

More often then not we give up on God because God has not been who or what we expected.

Bad things happened to us, we blame God.

Our dreams didn’t come true, we blame God.

People we loved died on us, we blame God.

So rather than seeking the good things that God provides, rather than reshaping our dreams to fit God’s call, rather than finding the comfort of God in our sorrows, we take our marbles and our false made up gods and we go home.

We give up on God, but God never gives up on us, if the vision seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay, that is the promise of every Sunday worship, it’s the promise of every morning, no matter how many times we reject God, every day is a new today, every moment is right now and God is here, still waiting for us to realize what we have lost, still waiting for us to pray:

“let me see again”

Jesus was on his way to some truly big and important things that day, the crucifixion, the salvation of humanity, the whole “pay the price for our sins” thing was coming up.

And no one wanted him to stop.

It wasn’t on the agenda.

But he did.

And he does.

And he will.

All you have to do is call out, today, right now, and the same Jesus who stopped for Bartimaeus will stop for you and for me and for us as a Church, today, right now.

It has been true throughout our history here and it remains true today.

On this day, and on every day when people have gathered here since 1834 Christ has asked the same question he asked of Bartimaeus.

And for those wise and humble and faithful enough to answer, Christ has healed and restored their vision and their lives.

“What do you want me to do for you?” “My teacher, let me see again”

So “What makes Clover Hill, Clover Hill?”

I spent October comparing our often perilous and yet faithful history to the drama of Job. Well the Job story ends with Job receiving more than he ever had, after he prays for his friends, after he prays for his friends.

Let that be our goal and our vision today, that we might pray for our friends, those we know and those we haven’t met yet, and in so doing we will experience the blessings of God in greater abundance than we have ever known before.

And if we hold up our end of the bargain, God will take care of the rest and the blessings of our later years will far exceed the blessings of our early years.

Then Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man said “My teacher, let me see again”

Clover Hill Reformed Church 1834-2009 A 175 Day Scriptural Companion Dear Friends, As we progress through our Anniversary Year, I invite you to join together in a shared reading of scripture. I have selected 175 passages, from Genesis through Revelation, that have had special meaning in our Congregational life. Go Here