I have already wasted too much of my life looking for things which haven’t actually been lost. As I get older, it only going to get worse. A typical scenario would go like this. It is Sunday morning, and I am about to leave for church. I can’t find my keys. I run around the house looking high and low. Often, Alison will say something helpful like – “You’ve got the biggest bunch of keys I’ve ever seen. I don’t know how you keep losing them.” There is some truth in that. Eventually, I’ll find them, often sitting openly in plain sight. But in my anxiety at being late, I haven’t been able to see what’s right in front of my eyes.
 
Today, we have read a story about people who couldn’t see what was in front of their eyes. As we’ve been reading stories from John’s Gospel over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been stressing the relational aspects of them. I’ll admit that that’s a bit harder to see in this story. This is not so clearly a story about relationship. But there are many different relationships in it, and they are complicated relationships, and that imparts a level of reality, a level of authenticity to this story. There are no easy relationships here. This is a story about real life.
 
The central character is a man born blind. In a very literal sense, he cannot see what’s in front of him. A bit like in the story of the Samaritan woman at the well, which we looked at last week, this is an apparently chance encounter, though I think it is most likely that there was intention on Jesus part. The man is not expecting anything. He knows nothing of Jesus. He asks for nothing. Jesus could have passed by as so many others must have done.
 
But he didn’t. He stopped. But he doesn’t approach the man directly. Rather, he stops because his disciples ask him a question. A question about sin. Who sinned? This man or his parents? Jesus seizes the opportunity to teach. Physical impairment is not caused by sin, he tells them. God loves rather than punishes. God suffers along with those he loves, rather than meting out suffering. It was a radical message for the disciples. And it is a message that we still need to hear, because the assumption of a link between sin and suffering still lingers. We still sometimes think that suffering must have been deserved. But that’s not what Jesus teaches.
 
After this conversation, Jesus, embodying the love of God, responds to the humanity of the blind man. He reaches out to help. It is the beginning of a profound change for the man. First, he gains his sight. That, you might think, was enough. I think we often, rather naively, assume that when Jesus healed people, everything was sorted out, that everyone rejoiced and said how marvellous it all was. But this story tells a different tale, a much more nuanced, complicated tale, and, in doing so, it tells us quite a bit about how difficult it can be if, or when, Jesus makes a difference in our lives. And it challenges us to ask if that’s why we resist changes, and often keep Jesus at arm’s length.
 
The first thing that happens is that the man’s neighbours don’t recognise him. Is this the blind man, or just someone who looks like him? It is as if he had been reduced to just one recognisable characteristic – his lack of eyesight. They only know him for one thing. Without that, they didn’t know him. I think that must lead us to ask if we also think so reductively about others. I suspect we do, and know people only for one thing. God, though, knows the fullness of our characters, and calls us to do likewise.
 
The now formerly blind man may have begun to wonder if blindness had been easier than trying to explain his changed circumstances, his gaining of sight. As we read on in the story, we see he was having a hard time trying to justify himself. He hadn’t asked for this. How could he have known how it had happened? He didn’t even know anything about the person who had done it. He certainly wasn’t asking for trouble. But that’s what he got.
 
Some Pharisees objected that this had happened on the Sabbath, the day when no work was to be done. Whoever did it must have been wicked, they reasoned. But that didn’t seem right to the newly seeing man. Hadn’t he just experienced something really good? Hadn’t he just received an extraordinary gift? He wasn’t going to go along with the views of the Pharisees who wanted to condemn an infraction of the rules and overlook a great good that had been done. He reasons – this man must be a prophet, a good man – and he bravely tells the Pharisees so. It is the beginning of understanding.
 
But the Pharisees are having none of that. They try to discredit the man. They drag his parents in
and try to make out that the claim to have received sight was fraudulent. The man’s parents manage to stand up to the Pharisees, up to a point. They are scared of these people in authority. They are scared that if they go against them too much, they will be put out of the synagogue, effectively cast out of their community. It is a powerful threat. It can be really hard to go against religious orthodoxy, whatever that orthodoxy is, even when it is wrong. That’s where cults get their power. Even in normal churches, you can find people who use their own version of right belief to bully and exert power over others.
 
Though they are not getting terribly far, the Pharisees try again to get the formerly blind man to recant, to disown whoever healed him. They pile more pressure on him. But it has the opposite effect. The more pressure they put on him, the more the man argues back. He argues that Jesus must be from God, because what Jesus did was unambiguously good. Then he goes further. He declares himself to be a disciple of Jesus.
 
He does this because he has been reasoning, working out in his own mind who Jesus must be and what his actions must mean. He’s on the same journey as Nicodemus. He has seen that Jesus is good. I am standing on the side of good, he tells the Pharisees, no matter how difficult you find that to fit in to your theology and rules.
 
Sensing that they are losing the argument, the Pharisees resort to temper and drive him out. The truth is too uncomfortable. It is only then that Jesus comes back into the story. The formerly blind man makes his third confession of belief. He has gone from thinking of Jesus as a prophet to describing himself as a disciple, to now declaring his belief that Jesus is Lord. It is at this point that he sees fully what is before his eyes. Sight, both physical and spiritual, has been received.
 
But not by all. Some eavesdropping Pharisees objected to the implication that they, in some senses, could not see. They couldn’t accept that they were, in fact, unable to see that was in front of their eyes. Because what was in front of their eyes was a big challenge, a challenge to the old ways of thinking, a challenge to their tradition, a challenge to their authority, a challenge to their privileged position in society. They couldn’t deal with challenge of change, of accepting a new and deeper truth. Accepting change in the light of new understanding is a challenge to us all, perhaps particularly in the church. We’d often rather stick with what we think we know, even if what we know is no longer relevant, no longer adequate to the times we now live in.
 
So the Pharisees, in a sense, could not bear to see what was in front of their eyes. And neither could the man’s parents. They couldn’t see what was in front of their eyes because they were afraid, afraid to accept something different. They were under pressure, pressure to conform, not to do anything that would disturb the established order. It is only the blind man, the man who is given his sight, who sees, not only with his eyes but with his mind, his understanding, who does what we are all required to do, to work out for himself who Jesus really is. It is the blind man who teaches us to see.
 
Amen.

 
How do you know if a relationship is a good one or a bad one? Easy, you might say. If it is loving, it is good. If it is abusive, it is bad. If it is trusting, it is good. If it is controlling, it is bad. If it is supportive, it is good. If it is violent, it is bad.
 
But stop for a moment. How many decent, kind, sensible people do you know who are in, or have been in, a bad relationship? Maybe you’ve experienced it yourself. Even good, sensible people get it wrong, sometimes many times. It is not that they are stupid, or self-destructive, or hopelessly naïve. It is just that it is often really difficult to know if a relationship will be a good one, or a bad one.
 
We’re exploring some relationships in John’s Gospel at the moment. We started last week with Nicodemus. He’d observed Jesus and was intrigued. He wanted to come closer, to know more. Jesus accepted him, challenged him, and said things to him which have been treasured by followers of Christ ever since. He told him: God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
 
Today, we’re moving on to a different encounter. Jesus is no longer in Jerusalem where he had met Nicodemus. Things had got a bit hot there. He’s been back in Galilee for a bit. But he’s heading back to Judea. The Gospel tells us that he had to go through Samaria. If, like me, your Palestinian geography is a bit hazy, you probably hear that in the same way as you’d hear the sentence: He had to go through Bonnyrigg to get to Rosewell. But actually, Samaria was not necessarily on the way. Jews routinely travelled between Galilee and Judea on a route which avoided going through Samaria. Jesus had to go through Samaria because he had something to do there. He had someone to meet; someone who knew more than her fair share about bad relationships.
 
It was Nicodemus who sought out Jesus. Now it is Jesus who is seeking out a particular woman. Where did he go? Not to her house. Not to the market where she bought her groceries. He goes to meet her at the well where she draws water.
 
Wells were great places for young men to meet girls. Traditionally it was the younger women who had the job of carrying water back to the home. In the Old Testament, there are several stories of men and women meeting at wells. Abraham’s servant met Rebekah at a well and brought her back to Abraham’s household where she became the wife of Isaac, Sarah and Abraham’s son. Moses met his future wife, Zipporah, at a well. In both these stories, the man was in a foreign land, just as Jesus was in Samaria. And there’s another story which conforms to the pattern of these boy-meets-girl-at-a-well stories: a meeting which took place at the very well where Jesus was sitting.
 
This well isn’t just any well. It is a very special well. For it was at this well that Jacob met Rachel, the woman so gorgeous that he was prepared to work seven years for her father Laban to gain her hand, the woman he so adored that he was prepared to work seven more years after being tricked by Laban into marrying her older sister first. This very well is the setting for one of the greatest romances in the Bible. And here’s Jesus, a young, foreign man, sitting by it, waiting for a young woman. A woman he was there to meet. It’s exciting stuff.
 
The woman arrives. Unlike Nicodemus, she’s not looking for Jesus. She’s surprised that he talks to her. But when she talks to her, she talks back. A bit like with Nicodemus, their conversation is beset by misunderstandings. Her focus is on the mundane, the everyday, the normal. His focus is on the spiritual, the eternal, the things of salvation. But remember, Jesus sought her out to tell her these things, to include her in his work of salvation. He sought her out, knowing, as he did, all about her.
 
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the setting and its history, and that these are two young people in conversation, the talk turns to relationships, the woman’s relationships.
 
How do you respond to the facts about her relationships – her five husbands and the man she’s now living with – which Jesus mentions? How you respond might depend on your age, your expectations, your particular sense of morality, or on other sermons you’ve heard. The traditional response to her – informed by the kind of Victorian, patriarchal norms most of us have probably inherited and which some accept and others now reject – is disgust. This response says she must have been a loose woman, a woman of low morals. And many interpreters have spoken of how Jesus forgives her. But that’s all wrong. There’s no word of forgiveness in the text. There’s no need.
 
The most likely reason for her five failed marriages is that she had been abandoned. And the most likely reason for that is that she and her husbands had been unable to have children. It was perfectly normal then for men to divorce their wives, to abandon them, if they did not bear children. All these men would have blamed the woman. No man then would have thought infertility was anything to do with him. Can you imagine what she’s suffered? This woman is a victim, not a sinner. She has no need of forgiveness, and she certainly deserves no condemnation.
 
The disciples return. Unlike us, they’d have known the history of this place and seen its significance right away. They knew wells were the dance halls, the nightclubs or dating apps of their day.
 
Is it just their – let’s name it – anti-Samaritan racism, or their culturally conditions sexism that prevents them asking why Jesus is talking to her? Or are they suddenly afraid that he’s going to leave them and go off with this clearly articulate, confident, quite possibly attractive young woman? As it is, he doesn’t.
 
While I may have been overplaying the sizzling, sexual tension in this story, it is none-the-less, a story absolutely about relationship with Christ. I’m not talking about the unhealthy ‘Jesus-is-my-boyfriend’ kind of spirituality. In its misguided exclusivity, it distorts what relationship with Christ is truly about. ‘Relationship with Christ’ is a phrase I’m aware I use a lot, without defining it. So what is relationship with Christ? I believe we see it in this story.
 
Jesus told Nicodemus that God so loved the world that he sent his one and only son, not to condemn the world, but to save it. If you want to see the world which God loves, look in this story. Jesus seeks out a woman and offers her a relationship unlike any she’s known before. He offers a relationship of respect, of trust, of support, of esteem; a relationship without judgement, without condemnation, without the wielding of unequal power; a relationship of solidarity in the face of the disapproval of others; a relationship based on justice; a relationship based on genuine love.
 
What did she do to deserve it? Nothing. What did she do that would mean she didn’t deserve it? Nothing. She, like all people, no matter who we are, where we come from, what we do or what we’ve done, are loved by God. We are in relationship with Christ when we love, as best we can, the way God loves. At Jacob’s well, we see God’s love in action, a love without boundaries, a love unconstrained by conventions, a love unburdened by conditions.
 
It is a lovely girl-meets-boy story, but with a wonderful twist. It is also a world-meets-God story, which offers not a happy-ever-after ending, but something much, much deeper. It shows us the love which assures our salvation and embraces us in eternal life.
 
Amen.

You and I share about 90% of our DNA with fungi. That means that, genetically, we are 90% identical to mushrooms. Genetically, we’re 99% identical to chimpanzees. But no one, not even the most cynical and unkind, could walk in here and mistake us for a mushroom farm, or the ape enclosure at the zoo. Tiny genetic differences make a very big difference indeed. Little things cause big changes.
 
One of the things that marks us out from all other creatures is story. So far as we know, we are the only creatures who tell stories. Others communicate how to hunt or where to gather food, but no others tell stories. It has been said that culture is the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. Story is how we understand who we are and what we are about.
 
Anyone walking in here should recognise that we are a story telling community, and that our stories are powerful, powerful enough to define who we are, powerful enough to shape how we live. We have many stories: family stories, fictional stories, religious stories, exciting stories, fantasy stories, true stories. Stories pick out what is important in a situation. They help us to understand and make sense. They help us to teach and learn and develop. Stories affect us. Stories make us.
 
I think that often the stories which affect us most are the stories about relationships. We are relational creatures. Very few thrive alone. We form pairs, and families, friendship circles and communities. No one can pretend that these are ever straightforward. But all sorts of stories help us navigate them, help us understand how we fit with others, help keep us together.
 
Over the next few weeks, we’ll have the opportunity in church to explore several of the great stories about Jesus which John the Evangelist tells. They’re all stories about relationships, principally about how certain people related to Jesus and he to them, but they each describe or allude to a web of other relationships too. We’ll read about Martha and Mary and Lazarus. But before we get there, there’s a story of a blind man who receives his sight. There’s the Samaritan woman at the well.
And there’s Nicodemus, and the story of the beginning of his relationship with Jesus. Most of the people we will encounter are ordinary folk. The blind man and the Samaritan woman, neither of whom are named, lived with significant disadvantage. In these stories, only Nicodemus is a person of power, a person of importance within his community. This maybe accounts for him coming by night, in secret, unobserved, but it does not explain what he asks and what he learns.
 
The first thing we learn about Nicodemus from Nicodemus is that he is open-minded. Unlike many in authority, he doesn’t see difference as a threat. He’s more threatened by the conservatism of his colleagues on the Sanhedrin, his fellow Pharisees. He’s open-minded enough to see something significant in what Jesus is doing, to approach him to try to find out more.
 
It is the beginning of a relationship. But it is not an easy relationship. In fact, as it will be for the Samaritan woman, and for Mary and Martha and Lazarus, it will be a challenging relationship. Jesus expects Nicodemus to think, and, through thinking, to change
 
So he says this apparently bizarre thing. He says, No one can see the Kingdom of God without being born from above.
 
The Greek word which John uses can be translated in two ways. It can either be ‘born again’ or it can be ‘born from above’. To me ‘born from above’ makes more sense. It also moves us away from the unhelpful baggage associated with ‘born again’, which has come to be a way of dividing Christians into true believers or nut cases, depending on which side you’re standing on.
 
Nicodemus is one of those who has come to see that Jesus is of God by what he has been doing. But that doesn’t go far enough. Jesus tells him that he can only fully understand the Kingdom of God, which Jesus embodies, if the Spirit of God gives that understanding, if, through God above, new understanding is brought to birth. Without that, the real meaning of Jesus cannot be seen. He would just be some kind of wonder worker. Only when one is ‘born from above’ can one see that he is the Son of God.
 
This difficult conversation is the start of a relationship. It starts small, but it is going to grow into something really significant for Nicodemus. He appears twice more in the Gospel of John. In Chapter seven, Nicodemus is heard arguing with his fellow Pharisees that Jesus should be given a fair hearing. And then, after the crucifixion, Nicodemus was one of the two, along with Joseph of Arimathea, who brought spices to the tomb and buried Jesus. These little moments hint at a bigger story, a story leading from enquiry to faith, from conversation to participation, from observation to service. They hint at a growing, deepening relationship, one that took a long time to grow. They hint at a life changed.
 
And that’s what relationship with Jesus is about. It is about lives being changed. It can happen to the respectable like Martha and Mary and Lazarus. It can happen to establishment figures like Nicodemus. It can happen to the disreputable like the five-times-married Samaritan woman. It can happen to the outcast, like the blind beggar. It can happen to us.
 
Of all these stories, that of Nicodemus is probably closest to our experience. It tells us about the importance of observation. He saw something in what Jesus did which made him want to know more. Our service of Christ, we noted last week, should never be motivated by a desire to be noticed, but we must be open to the possibility that our actions, probably even more than our words, will cause people to wonder why we care, why we give, why we stand up for justice, why we choose selflessness, why we love our enemies, why we turn the other cheek.
 
The beginning of Nicodemus’ story ends by Jesus telling him that God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world. Jesus did not condemn Nicodemus for his slowness to understand. He offers no condemnation to the Samaritan woman, nor to the blind beggar. He does not condemn Martha or Mary for their lack of faith, even though Martha berates him. In Jesus there is no condemnation.
 
Lastly, Nicodemus’ story has much to teach us about patience. He only came out as a follower of Jesus right at the end of the Gospel. Not for him a sudden conversion. But it was at night, years earlier, that a seed was sown. A seed which took a long time to grow.
 
Many of us, as we look around, probably feel that the church we know and love is in its winter. It has blossomed and flourished, but now it is withering and perishing. But there are many things we do not know. We do not know what seeds of faith have been planted. Nor do we know where they might grow. All we can do is trust in God, that, in time, new faith will grow, new lives will be touched, new forms of service will emerge, new relationships with Christ will develop. It may even be our own relationship which will be renewed.
 
Nicodemus is just one of many whose story tells us that God can touch any life and reveal his kingdom anew to anyone.
 
Thanks be to God.
 
Amen.

 
In the middle of last week, we entered the Season of Lent.
 
What are your associations with Lent? Is it a time for giving up chocolate, or alcohol, of meat, a time for spiritual self-discipline, for doing something which is good for the soul? Or maybe you feel that it is not really for the likes of us Presbyterians, that it is a tradition imported from elsewhere. But maybe you have a sense that this is a solemn season, a serious time of year. And if you do, you are probably not expecting to hear anything remotely comic in church.
 
To be honest, ‘remotely comic’ is the best I can offer. The Bible is rarely laugh-out-loud, hold-your-sides funny.
 
Here’s a little picture Jesus paints.
 
A wealthy person approaches a beggar. Quickly, he summons his personal trumpeter. Fanfare please. Everybody looks round. Here, beggar, the wealthy person says. I am bestowing upon you a tiny fraction of my immense wealth. How good I am being to you. See, all these people are impressed by my great generosity. Round of applause, please.
 
Maybe the disciples sniggered a bit. But comedy works best when it shows us something we recognise, but just a bit exaggerated.
 
Of course, no one really demands a fanfare when they give. But many do look for recognition. The disciples would have seen that. We’ve seen that too. There are many plaques to prove it.
 
Jesus then turns to another matter. He starts to talk about praying.
 
You’ve all seen them, he says, the people who make a great show of their prayers, who use many, many words, whose prayers are a great performance, who go on and on and on.
 
We’ve seen them too, the people who adopt prayerful poses, who blether on and on, using words that mean very little, who make a great show of their piety. It often feels like those who don’t are being judged as less holy, less spiritual, less likely to be listened to by God.
 
Not so, says Jesus. And to make the point, he teaches them how to pray. And we say that prayer every week.
 
Then he turns to another subject. He’s still talking about the expression of faith. He talks about fasting, caricaturing people who make a great show, who tear their clothes, who make themselves look utterly haggard. Fasting is not really part of our tradition, but it doesn’t take a great leap of imagination to see similar things going on. The people who look worn out doing good works. The people who let you know they are taking on great burdens for the church. It is a temptation all too easy for ministers, in particular, to fall into.
 
A couple of weeks ago, we thought about what holiness is. We heard how Jesus taught that it was really about how we live our everyday lives, about being generous, non-judgemental, going the second mile, loving our enemies. Here is more teaching on holiness, and this time it is a warning. Holiness is not ostentatious. Holiness is not being showy. Holiness is not being loud. Holiness has no room for pride. Holiness is quiet. It is anonymous. It is discreet. It is never about attracting attention, but it is always about doing God’s work, for God’s sake. If you are holy, and God calls us to be holy, wants us to be holy, expects us to be holy, we shouldn’t be trying to get people to look at us. Our practice of faith, our service in the world, should point only towards God.
 
Within the church, that’s a really obvious, uncontroversial thing to say. It is something we all know, thanks to Jesus. But it is also actually a really difficult message. We live in a society in which everyone and everything is vying for attention, all the time. We are surrounded by advertising, shouting buy me, buy me! Go and look round your house and see just how much you have which has been designed, not only for function, but to be attractive, to make you want it. And we know that many people in work are under increasing pressure to stand out, in order to gain promotion, or to attract new business, or even just to keep their job by proving over and over that they are valuable to their employer. This is what happens when competition infects every aspect of life. Everyone and everything is seeking attention.
 
And the church is no different. As members of the Kirk Session know, increasingly congregations are being pitted against one another in competition for ministers, which, we are told, are an increasingly scarce resource. Look at the Church of Scotland’s digital and print publications, from Life and Work to Facebook and Twitter, and you see that the tone is relentlessly self-congratulatory – look at us, how good we are, what valuable work we’re doing, how relevant we are to today’s society we are, despite what anyone else says. There is a fine, and frequently crossed line between good news and boastfulness.
 
So, while at first we might snigger with the disciples at the trumpets of the hypocrites, we very quickly see that we’re little different. We reason – why put in all this effort if no one notices?
 
That’s what Jesus warns against.
 
He says, be generous, but for the sake of the person you give to, not your own; pray faithfully, but keep it brief. Do not imagine that God pays more attention to longer, louder prayers; align your life to the will of God, just don’t make a great show about it. To lead faithful and faith-filled lives, we do no need public recognition. God will see, and that is enough.
 
But this still leaves us with a dilemma. A little later on, Jesus says this: What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the rooftops. We might think there’s a contradiction between these two teachings. How can we be both modest to the point of invisibility and be effective witnesses to Christ? Surely that requires that we seek attention.
 
The answer is by no means clear. It is a fine line that Jesus asks us to walk. We won’t always get it right, and we’ll probably often be accused, often unfairly, of getting it wrong. But true faith is never about self-promotion. Real holiness is never about gaining personal credit. It is always and only about the glory of God.
 
Let me offer this thought: we must not be seduced by the lure of success. If, in our life of faith we focus on success, we inevitably apply measures which do not come from the Gospels. Jesus was not interested in success. He didn’t count conversions. He didn’t tally up healings to show how effective he was. He was often more interested in being with the people society ignored than he was in influencing the influential. He completed his ministry, not to universal acclaim, but on a cross and in a tomb.
 
If success is our aim, we are working for something other than what Jesus worked for. We would be working, if we are honest, for ourselves. And we know that that’s not right. We work for Christ.
 
Amen.