Sermon for 4th Sunday of Lent – evening
Sunday 26th March 2017
Ephesians 5.8-14
John 9. 1-41
Revd Preb Maureen Hobbs
It has been another dark week with the murder of a policeman and other, innocent bystanders in the Westminster attack. And it highlights for us once again the bravery and patience of those who protect and guard our public buildings and our democratic freedoms from those who seek to spread only darkness and despair.
“once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light” Ephes. 5.8
I cannot imagine what it must be like to lose the sense of vision; or hearing come to that…. even though I have been horribly short-sighted since a child and even though I am aware that my hearing is not as sharp as once it was…
I did witness how difficult it was for my mother, who suffered from macular degeneration for the last twenty years of her life. First losing the useful vision of one eye and then the other.
This complaint means that you never go completely blind, there is still light entering the eye and stimulating the cells at the back of the eye. But it is the opposite of tunnel vision. So while you can still see things out of the corner of your eye, as it were, the centre becomes a meaningless blurr. I remember her saying to me – “Darling I know it is you standing there in front of me, because I can see your feet… but your face has no features!” It renders reading impossible, and the TV or any film has limited appeal.
I saw too how her world gradually contracted around her and the person who had been a confident, feisty and independent woman, slowly became fearful and dependent on others.
John Hull, a theologian and academic who taught many of the clergy in this diocese who trained at Queens Theological College in Birmingham, wrote movingly of his blindness in a book called “Touching the Rock”. John was a radical with a passion for social justice and refused to allow his physical blindness affect his teaching or his life as an activist, calling out the church’s prophetic role in society, especially in opposing the money culture and nuclear weapons.
The poet John Milton lived from 1608 to 1674, during the years of the English Civil War. He was, famously, the author of Paradise Lost. By 1654 he had gone completely blind and was frustrated that his talent for writing was now no use to him; he had to dictate his poems to others, who wrote them down – as an amanuensis – but it was a frustrating process. One of his most famous poems is called an ”Ode to blindness”, which is quite short, but is full of deep reflection.
Milton compares a blind person to someone who has been carrying a lamp, which has gradually gone out, leaving them in complete darkness. He was only 46 years old, and imagined, wrongly as it turned out, that he had another half of his life ahead of him which would be totally wasted.
He regarded his ability to write poetry as a God-given talent, which he could use in the service of God. Without the ability to write, he felt he was as good as dead, and he was afraid God would come – as in the parable of the talents – to demand an account of how he had used his gifts. He feared he would be like the man who buried his one talent for fear of losing it and incurred God’s anger as a result.
Milton might have expressed his anger back at God, but he didn’t – although he did think it unfair to expect him to work for God when it was too dark to do so…
The remainder of the poem is written by a personification of Patience, who tries to help him to see his misfortune from the point of view of God. God doesn’t need any of the things that we offer him – either our work, or our worship, or the talents which he himself has given to us in the first place.
So Milton’s blindness is not a total disaster, and from it he can learn to be patient, and offer that patience to God instead of his poetry. If Milton’s earthly light is extinguished, well, Jesus is himself the Light of the World. The final line of the poem is one of the most famous in the whole of English poetry.. (and I wonder how many of you know that it comes from this origin?) – but what a profound lesson for us in patience it carries.
So here is the poem in its entirety…
When I consider how my light is spent
e’re half my days, in this dark world and wide,
and that one talent which is death to hide,
lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
to serve my Maker, and present
my true account, lest he returning chide,
‘Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?’,
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
that murmur, soon replies, ‘God doth not need
either man’s work, or his own gifts; who best
bear his mild yoke, they serve him best; his state
is kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
and post o’er land and ocean without rest:
they also serve who only stand and wait.’
I have a colleague, Jeff Leach, a fellow priest, living in Wolverhampton who has his own battles with severe disability with which to contend. On Wednesday he published on social media the following…
Almighty God, creator of all humankind
We pray today for those attacked in London,
We pray especially for their families and friends
And all of the emergency services called to help,
And the good Samaritan passers-by, who also stopped
To render support and care.
We pray especially for those related to the Police Officer who put his life in harms way to protect our democracy.
We cannot understand the mindset of those who do such things.
And pray that they will come to know you in the Peace of Christ.
For those injured, we ask for your Holy Spirit’s presence.
For those who have died;
May they rest in peace.
Amen