1 Samuel 16:1-13; Ps 23; John 9:1-41; Ephesians 5:8-14
Let's face it, we human beings can be very shallow in our judgments of others. Apparently, when you go for a job interview, it's possible that before you even open your mouth, there's a strong chance that you've either got the job or not - your clothes and body language are communicating for you, and what they say may be crucial in making the decision. Maybe that's why there are so many TV programmes these days about giving out the right signals: an alien who tried to find out about human beings from television might well come to the conclusion that none of us know how to live, dress, care for the house or look after the garden without experts telling us how to put over the right impression - and, of course, how to spend a fortune while we're chasing social acceptance. But fortunately not everything relies on appearance: we also have the possibility of looking deeper, of looking at the heart.
We see this in Samuel's attempt to find a new king for Israel, now Saul has turned away from obedience to God. When we first meet Saul a few chapters earlier, we hear that he's the handsomest and tallest man in Israel, but now Samuel is a bit more cautious, and faced with Jesse's sons, a whole line-up of male pinups, he pays attention not to the normal considerations -health, wealth, social status - but to God's voice inside his mind saying, ‘Don't judge by appearances: look the way I look at someone, not at the way they seem, but the way they really are inside.'
Going by that little voice, Samuel eventually chooses as king none of these fine upstanding young men, but Jesse's youngest, a boy, someone not even important enough to meet the prophet, who's been stuck with the sheep all day. Unfortunately for the moral of my story, the text describes David as handsome and with beautiful eyes, so in the end it's still the attractive one who gets the prize of kingship - though maybe, since David's very attractiveness gets him into trouble thereafter, this is just a way of hinting that handsome is as handsome does, and even God's chosen king is going to get into trouble if he doesn't look out. If only David had known that in time...
For that's the only snag with knowing God loves and accepts us: if we're not careful, we start to assume that whatever we choose to do must be right and other people's opinions don't count. Of course, there's the opposite problem too, of assuming that whatever problems we have must be our own fault, that God can't possibly love us, or want to improve things for us. In either case, we may not have got God right. In the story we heard from John's Gospel this morning, the man born blind and the Pharisee both had sudden decisions to make about how to react to God's sudden entry into their lives in the form of Jesus; decisions that would affect the rest of their lives.
The blind man, when he overheard a group discussing whether it was him or his parents who had offended God so much that he was the way he was, could easily have refused to listen; could easily have found another way to wash his eyes that didn't involve obeying Jesus; could easily have lost his nerve when confronted with the Pharisees; could easily have walked away rather than acknowledging his gratitude for sight received. The Pharisee, conversely, could have recognised a source of divine power in Jesus, could have recognised real experience in the story of the man born blind, could have been humble enough to admit he'd been blind to the possibility of God transforming someone's life before his very eyes.
In a strange way, the man born blind had the easier task. He couldn't be argued out of the evidence of his newly working eyes. He knew he wanted his previous situation to change, so when it did, he was ready to accept it. The Pharisee, on the other hand, was confronted with the need to lose power and credibility if he were to acknowledge God at work beyond the world of religious rules and regulations, where he was an acknowledged expert. It would have taken him, the good religious man, a lot of courage to admit that he had been wrong about God; more courage, according to the story, than he then could muster. And that contrast between the two isn't surprising. It's often people who've known the rough side of life, rather than those who have always had an easy ride, who really see the point of being Jesus' friends.
But whether we start off from an easy life or a hard one, it's a choice we all have to make, over and over again, from our baptism to our grave: whether we're going to react to God more like the man born blind or more like the Pharisee. As the writer to the church at Ephesus puts it, we each of us have a choice: once we were darkness, but now we are light in the Lord; so let's not sleepwalk into darkness, but wake up, walk as children of light and try as hard as we can to learn what is pleasing to the Lord.
How can we do that? How, in each of the many decisions of our life, can we work out which choice will open our eyes wider to God, and which will screw them tight shut, making us have to pretend to ourselves and others that we see? We know from what happened to Samuel that it won't always be the obvious choice, the one the whole world sees as sensible, that's the right one. After all, what on earth was the point of choosing as king of Israel a boy whose only work experience was with sheep? We also know from the Pharisee's experience that God won't always want us to make the choice that's within our comfort zone. God may want us to make contact with people with very different lives from ours, and to take them and their experience seriously. We may even, like the man born blind, have to stand up to ministers or other religious authorities, and not be afraid to argue our case with them!
But be of good courage: we won't have to do any of this on our own. For as that well-loved psalm 23 reminds us, if we are sheep, apt to wander off in the wrong direction, God is our shepherd. God has better eyes than any of us for what will do us good rather than harm. Whether we're going through the sunny uplands or the shadowed valley, God promises to guide us on the way we should go. And I truly believe that if we put aside time and space and hush all the conflicting voices within us, whether through a sudden idea or through conversation with a friend or through an inexplicable feeling of peace, God will show us what we should do. So let's praise our maker, the one who brings us from darkness to light, the one who transforms our lives and the lives of those around us, our Lord and our God.