Coffeehouse Spirituality

This is a very vivid story of an event that happened in the life and ministry of Jesus.  A man that was blind since birth was given sight.  But what are we to learn from this passage?  Is it that God is powerful and can do all things? Is it that God is not punishing us through our troubles but instead is glorified when we are given the strength to endure them?  As with most scripture the lessons are many. What is God saying to us today?

I read passages like this and I see the healing. When I see Jesus healing immediately and someone receiving a new life with (in this case) a new ability to see, there is a part of me that says why couldn’t you have done that for my dad? He believed in you his whole life.  This scripture says it wasn’t because of any sin he or his parents committed that the man in the scripture was blind. I see the healing potential that Jesus has and I am hopeful and I see the suffering of faithful people all over the world and reflexively take a step back from all that hope.

I know God can heal.  I just wonder why God doesn’t always heal in the way that is apparently needed. I read a tweet recently that said, “I don’t take the good parking spaces because I don’t want to use up God’s favor.” This is to say that God’s love is limited. That God is sometimes concerned with parking spaces. Of course the person that wrote that was joking, but how do we talk about how God blesses us? How do we talk about how God interacts with us?

I used to have some great conversations about theology, philosophy, military strategy, cosmology, ethics,…Not in any college classroom, but in a coffeehouse. There used to be this place in downtown Big Rapids called Shamans Bluff. A couple of business students from the university started it and it was an instant success.  Their coffee was good but it wasn’t the coffee that they were selling.  They were selling an atmosphere. Oh, sure they offered all the pretentious stuff that places like that try like open mic nights and such but the real draw for me was a place what was comfortable and accepting.   It was a place I could go to with my friends and sit. We would sit for hours and those conversations would emerge. They sold coffee so there weren’t the fights that were happening down the street at the bar.

It is in those conversations, when the small talk is exhausted and the desire for more remains that the really good stuff emerges.

In the scripture lesson today there was that man, who was born blind and Jesus rubbed mud made from dirt and his own spit, on his eyes. He washed it off and he could see.  What does that mean for us today in 2014?  Don’t get me wrong, I praise God for the miracle and I stand in awe in His presence but what about this moves us into action?  Jesus was looking for true worshippers, this is true, but he would also so “Now go and do.”

The man received sight. His neighbors saw that he now had sight. Some didn’t believe it was him but said “I am the man.” They asked him how. He said it was Jesus. They asked him where Jesus was. 
“I don’t know.”

The Pharisees asked how it happened.  He said it was Jesus, and when they asked how, he said Jesus is a prophet.

They brought his parents to confirm that that was their son and that he was indeed blind since birth.  The Pharisees asked them how it’s possible. They said, “I don’t know. Ask him.”

The Pharisees questioned the man again.  Apparently they didn’t like the answers they were getting.  The facts didn’t fit with their theology.  The facts didn’t fit with their plan of how God was supposed to act in the world.  But the man gave a great answer. One thing I do know, that thought I was blind, now is see…I have told you already, and you would not listen.  Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?”… “Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. WE know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships and obeys his will. Never since anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not form God, he could do nothing.”

They didn’t like his answer. They drove him out.

It didn’t matter what the man had previously learned, it didn’t matter the opinions of the Pharisees. It didn’t matter that this event was unexpected.  The man was blind and was able to see because of Jesus. The facts were all he could relate.  God acts and we witness. There will be those who do not want to hear about God’s actions in the world. But we are called to tell about then anyway.

When I sat in Shaman’s Bluff Coffeehouse in Big Rapids Michigan I didn’t know anything about theology, philosophy, military strategy, cosmology or ethics…not really. My friends didn’t really know anything earlier. But in the conversation we found inspiration, in the conversation we were drawn closer to the truth.

Jesus took some dust and mixed his own saliva and made something wonderful happen.

In the book of Genesis it says “Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” We are formed from the dust of the earth.

We have been given this earthly form and we don’t always live up to our potential in fact we often fail. But Jesus comes and lifts us up from our failures. He wipes the dirt from our eyes so that we can see him clearly.

When we trust in Jesus the Holy Spirit resides in us and begins to transform us. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!

The apostle Paul wrote a letter to the church in Corinth in it he said,  “However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural; then the spiritual.  The first man is from the earth, earthy; the second man is from heaven. As is the earthy, so also are those who are earthy; and as is the heavenly,”

Yes we are earthly creatures but when we take what is just dust and we mix in what is heavenly the mixture is something that can give new sight. 

At the end of our scripture passage Jesus tells the Pharisees that since they claim to have sight, their sin remains.  They were not physically blind but spiritually blind.  Jesus is offering spiritual sight. Just as David was to be king because God sees differently than humans, so do we can see differently when Jesus is fully part of our lives.

The man who was cured of his blindness wasn’t a theologian but he knew God when his eyes were opened. 

So how is it with you today?  What has God done in your life?  What is god doing around you that doesn’t make sense?

Brothers and sisters no matter how young or old, no matter how many times we have read the bible we still have a need to have the mud washed from our eyes.  We invite Jesus into our lives but do we let him mix all the way through it?  Part of doing that is telling each other the story of what God is doing in your life and hearing what is God is doing in other’s lives.  If you don’t regularly have those conversations outside of Sunday morning, there is more for you to discover on your spiritual journey.

May you encounter Jesus in a very personal way very soon.