1 Samuel 16:1-13
Psalm 23

Ephesians 5:8-14
John 9:1-41

Mt. Zion UMC, Stokesdale, NC

1 March 2008

4th Sunday of Lent

 

Keep your Eye on the Ball

 

          Growing up, I played a lot of baseball.  There was rarely a summer day that went by when my dad, brother, and I didn't at least play catch.  We were always throwing the ball around.  Even on trips, a baseball and mitts were some of the first things packed.  And learning to play ball began at an early age.  As soon as I could hold a little plastic bat, dad had me taking swings at a little plastic ball that he would toss to me from the other end of the hallway in the house... much to mom's dismay.  It's funny, the instruction he gave to me as a toddler holding a plastic bat was the same he gave me each year throughout my years playing baseball; "Keep your eye on the ball."  The great thing about this tid-bit of advice was that it worked for both offense and defense, for batting as well as fielding.  "To hit the ball, you must keep your eye on the ball and watch it come off the bat."  "To catch the ball, you must keep your eye on the ball and watch it go into your glove."  You have to go beyond simply seeing the ball.  You have to focus on the ball and start seeing aspects of the ball that are not readily or even consciously evident.  Aspects such as speed and trajectory, two essential variables needed to catch or hit a moving object.  If I had to sum-up the most important, most fundamental aspect of playing baseball successfully, I would have to reiterate my father's leading and instruction, "keep your eye on the ball."

          Our Old Testament and Gospel readings for today deal with seeing, but at the same time, they seem to go beyond just simply seeing and call us to a deeper insight of truth based on our paying attention to God's leading and instruction.

          In our reading from 1 Samuel, we find the prophet Samuel being led by the Lord to anoint Israel's second king after their first king, Saul, wandered from his call and became a king that really ceased to serve his God and people and started to serve himself.  Samuel follows God's instructions and finds himself in Bethlehem, leading worship, and about to choose and anoint the next king of Israel.

          Samuel narrowed the finalists down to one family, Jesse's family.  One by one, Samuel inspects Jesse's sons.  The oldest son was probably inspected first.  Apparently, this guy looked like king material because Samuel said, "Surely the Lord's anointed is now before the Lord."  But God corrected Samuel.  God pointed out that Samuel was looking at outward, physical things while God saw deeper; God saw the truth; God saw the heart.  It's funny, ultimately David, the smallest and the youngest of the brothers was chosen and anointed.  From his outward appearance, David certainly didn't look like king material.  Even David's father, Jesse, didn't see it because he left David to tend to the sheep while he presented the rest of his sons to Samuel.  And Samuel himself really didn't see David as the king either.  What Samuel did, however, was pay attention to God's leading and instruction.  Only then did Samuel see and complete his mission.

          Our reading from Saint John's Gospel also is focused on sight.  Jesus is out for a walk with his disciples and they come across a man who has been blind since birth.  Since the man is blind, he can't work and has to rely on others, even to the point of begging, to survive.  This is understood to be a great burden on his family as well as his community and so was seen, at the time, as punishment for some sin.  Now there was some discussion as to who was being punished, this man or his parents.  Jesus definitively answers that this man is not being punished and instead God's works are to be revealed in him.  Now, this is a pretty radical statement.  You see, this man is a social outcast; he's a burden to society; and he's going to be used to reveal God's works?  How is he going to reveal the works of a glorious God who is worthy to be praised?  He can't even take care of his own basic needs!  Jesus winds up healing this man through giving him physical sight.  This, of course ruffles the tail-feathers of the local religious experts who are starting to get really sick of Jesus challenging their authority and reinterpreting tradition.  So, they try every trick that they can think of to disprove that this man was really the same blind man or to prove that Jesus some how cured him unethically.  The formerly blind man sticks to his guns, so to speak, and declares that he was blind and now he sees.  And because Jesus was the one who cured him, he concludes Jesus must be a man from God.  The religious experts get frustrated and angry, and so drove the man away.  Jesus meanwhile, hears of what the religious experts did and went to the formerly blind man.  While with the formerly blind man, Jesus gets a little theological.  He asks the formerly blind man if he believes in "the Son of Man."  This was another name for the Christ or Messiah - the one that the prophets foretold would come and liberate Israel from worldly oppression.  The formerly blind man answers that not only would he believe, but that he would like to see the Son of Man.  Jesus says "You're looking at him" and the formerly blind man expresses his belief through worshiping Jesus right then and there.

          As I think of this story, I wonder just when it was that the blind man was truly able to see.  Was it when he went from being the blind man to the formerly blind man who could see the physical world?  Or was it when he went from being the formerly blind man to being a man who has seen the truth of Jesus Christ?

          What strikes me about both of these stories is that neither Samuel nor the formerly blind man could really see as God sees, but instead they were led to what God sees by paying attention to God; by attending to God's leading and instruction.  Samuel didn't see David as the king but instead faithfully paid attention to God when God pointed David out to Samuel.  The formerly blind man didn't see Jesus for who Jesus was but instead was faithful to Jesus' instruction as to who “the Son of Man” was.  So too is it with us.  We are humans; we have human eyes; we see as humans do.  Will we ever see as God sees?  Possibly, with God's grace to truly open our eyes.  Yet through most of our lives, we will most likely see the outward appearance.  We’ll see with human eyes.  But that does not mean that we will never know nor see the truth.  You see, no matter what we're looking at, we need to continually be paying attention to God's leading and instruction.  Samuel saw a small, young shepherd, but knew he was the king because of God's instruction.  The formerly blind man saw Jesus as a man, probably from God, who cured his physical blindness, but knew that Jesus was the Christ because of God's leading.  We will all see many things throughout this world.  We will see them through human eyes, because those are the type of eyes we have.  But we can see beyond the outward appearance if we stay attentive to God's leading and instruction.

          "Keep your eye on the ball."  It seems kind of silly really.  After all, if a ball is thrown towards me, I'm going to see it.  But the fundamentals of baseball isn't simply about seeing the ball, it's about concentrating on the ball; it's about seeing aspects of the ball that are not readily or even consciously evident; things like trajectory and speed, two variables essential in catching or hitting a moving object.  In a sense, by instructing me to "keep my eye on the ball," dad was leading me to see beyond the outward appearance of the baseball and to see it in a deeper more total way.  If I hadn’t paid attention to my father’s instruction, I’d never have been nearly the ball player that I was.  I wonder if that's what God is telling us in today's readings.  I wonder if God is offering us a tid-bit of advice much like “keep your eye on the ball.”  If that’s the case, it begs the question, in what area of your life is God telling you to "keep your eye on the ball?"

 

SDG