Jesus heals a blind man. We'll begin by talking about miracles. John's favorite thing to call a miracle is a sign. Signs are always pointing beyond themselves. The sign is never the point.

So here we're retelling the story. Everyone in it is preoccupied with the sign (the blind man can see!). The Pharisees are especially preoccupied with the sign. Blindness in this story seems to have nothing to do with eyesight. It has more to do with posture, with openness. Because the Pharisees were preoccupied with the sign, they weren't open to what was right in front of them, they couldn't see what was right in front of them. Jesus - God in the flesh. But this doesn't surprise us; there are all kinds of stories in the gospels where even the disciples don't recognize Jesus for who he is. How often to we fail to recognize the presence of Jesus when Jesus shows up?

So, how do we recognize the divine presence? Every time we see goodness and grace, healing and forgiveness; we are seeing signs of the divine presence. Are we ready to believe something that large and expansive about Jesus? So we pay attention to the signs.

We human beings have an enormous capacity to focus, to pay attention when we want to.

What if we started asking different questions? Let's ask the question, "what's God's invitation here?" a little more often.

Speaker: Aaron Vis

Scripture: John 9:1-41

http://bible.com/events/49576397