OH ... SAY CAN YOU SEE
John 9:13-18, 24-25
REVEREND KELVIN L. PARKS
Associate Minister
Monument of Love Baptist Church
Preached:
31 July 2003 at Shelby County Penitentiary
INTRODUCTION
I’m reminded of a story of a blind man who was on his deathbed. The man had been born blind but that didn’t stop him from serving the Lord. You see ... he was very active in his church, always giving, never asking for anything in return. Everyone loved this old man. Children ages 6-60 came to him for his straightforward, good Christian advice and counsel. You may say he was the epitome of what Jesus talked about in Matthew 7:16 when he said “You shall know them by their fruits...”
Well one day the pastor of the church came to pray and to talk with him. The pastor when he approached the man’s bedside said, everything’s going to be fine? The old man responded I know everything’s going to be fine. I’m not worried at all. Matter of fact, I’m real happy right about now. Well, this kind of threw the pastor for a loop. Here is a man on his deathbed and he is reassuring the pastor that everything is going to be all right, and to top things off, the sick man claimed that he is real happy right now.
After that exchanged both he and the pastor were quiet for a moment then the old man spoke up. He said, pastor you know why I’m happy right now? The pastor, with tears in his eyes about now responded, why? The old blind man said, just think, I’m lying here about ready to die. And when I die, I’ll close my eyes for the last time, because the next time I’ll open them, I will be able to see. And you know what? The first person I will ever see in my life will be Jesus Christ.
Now I don’t know whether this story is true or not and it really doesn’t matter. For you see, the story serves as an illustration. One may argue that this old blind man had been given sight a longtime ago, sight that really mattered. Sight to see things not in the natural but in the spirit, and his focus was still, as it always had been, on seeing Jesus Christ.
SUBJECT:
Well I came to ask you tonight, “Oh say, can you see”?
Do you remember when your eyes opened up? Who or what did you see? Now I’m not necessarily talking about being saved. Because some of us were saved when we were 8, 9, and 10 years old, and been in church all of our lives. But we have grown up and we have experienced more things about ourselves, others, and the world, which, in part changed our views on how we approach, handle, and views things now. When was it that you really saw and what did you see?
Was the first person you saw Jesus and how Jesus has been a part of your life in spite of your current situation and circumstance? Did you see how he had brought you? How he has kept you? How he still loved you in spite of all of our idiotic and insane decisions you made in your life? Did you see how he protected you, comforted you, cared about you? Did you see how he gave you chance after chance, after chance? Did we see how Jesus was still working in your lives despite your objections to the help that He was provided? Did you see and recognized Jesus working in your lives? I just want to ask the question tonight...Oh say, can you see ...
Or did you see yourselves or did you like James said ... looked in the mirror and forgot what you looked like. When you look in the mirror of life ... did you see a broken down, beat up shell of a person desperately searching and seeking serenity? Did you see your life as an un-orchestrated orchestra out of tune with the dark, damp, and destitute realities of life? Did you see the broken relationships, shattered dreams, and unfulfilled desires that led you to be this meandering wonderer wondering through the desert of despair of this penal system? In other words, did you see yourself just going through the motions not living but just illegally surviving by trying to obtain the quick and easy money? When we saw for the first time what did you see?
Did you see the injustice and all of the problems the world throws at you? Did you see the homeless and any marginalized and ostracized person, not just as another bum in the street or someone that’s sick and deranged, person but also as a person? Did we see how many of your children are failing and flunking out of school because you are not there? Did you see where your neighborhoods are in disarray because of the drugs that you sold in them.
Oh say can you see ... what did you see when your eyes were opened. When you looked into the mirror of your life.
However, sadly, there are people here tonight who still cannot see. As a matter of fact, there are some people who just don’t want to see, they just don’t want to get it. Some people can’t see the forest for the trees. They can’t see any light at the end of the tunnel, regardless of how bright the light might be. God has manifested His presence time and time again in your life, blessing you, delivering you, shaking you up, bringing you through, giving you friends and family members who love and care for you, showing you a better way, but you still refuse to see. Instead you would rather hang out with Tyrone and Pookie them.
The truth of that matter is ... some of you still live your lives in a maze, clouded with convoluted ideas of happiness, which in the end not only destroys you but can destroy others around you as well. Don’t believe me ... think of how many mothers are crying right now for their sons. Think of how many sons and daughters will go to bed tonight with yet another tear in their eye ... longing for their daddy’s presence.
Some you here tonight ... may even hear the word. You may even see the word through scripture reading, you see the results of the word even tasting the fruit of the word, but your eyes are still not open.
Some of you, under the sound of my voice, will say the reason you are so successful, is because you did all by yourself. Just as Frank Sinatra said it “I did it my way” ... all by myself. And I must agree with you, you did it your way and look at what your way has result in ...
But don’t despair; you just happened to be in the right place at the right time. I tell you brothers that it was not just a coincidence, or incident, it was by God’s providence that carried you through. Some of you may have gone to the right schools. You may have come from the right family. We may have a strong sense of determination and self-esteem. We may even have the connections and the hook-ups, but if God decided right now to withhold air from your bodies, it wouldn’t matter who you knew, where you came from, what you have, or where you were going, all things as you know it ... would stop! Because in the final analysis, God has the last word and we need to understand and see this fact.
I came tonight ... to remind somebody that they need to open their eyes and see. See what the Lord is doing with you. See where the Lord has brought you. See where the Lord is taking you. See what the Lord is doing for you in your life. See through many dangers, toils, and snares, you have already come. Open your eyes and see God’s magnificent, magnanimous, majesty at work.
Because with Christ in your lives, I agree with the songwriter that we can see clearly now ... the rain is gone. With Christ in your lives, we can see all obstacles in our way. So if you’re tired of living your life being hoodwinked, bamboozled, ran amuck, led astray, tricked and trapped, tired of people leading you down a wrong path, do like Paul did and take the scales off your eyes so you can see!
Once you start seeing you become a better person than you were before. Things that you use to say, you don’t say anymore. Things you used to think about, you don’t think about anymore. Things that tripped you up, you walk around them now, you can step over them now, you can go under them now, or you can put your hard hat on and go through them now! It’s the power of Christ Jesus in your life that makes it possible for you to see.
So I came to ask somebody tonight, “Oh say can you see”
This is what we find in our text. A man who was born blind that wanted to see. The man in his physical ailment was reduced to being a beggar, hanging around street corners looking for the day’s handouts. In Jesus day, you were considered a nothing, a nobody, an incomplete person if you had any physical ailments. So you were shunned by your community and by family members. You were called unfit and unworthy. You had no one to protect you and no one to call to help you out. Sometimes the money that you made begging, especially for a blind man, was taken away by someone else. It was a tough life for people who couldn’t see.
And it is a tough life for those who cannot see today. And I am not talking about physical blindness, even though I imagine that being physically blind is tough at times. But I am talking about tonight ... is people who can see, but yet they are still blind. They come in all shapes and sizes.
I’m talking tonight about the big balla, shot callers that can only see joy and happiness if they are making money by carrying the sack, big necklaces, and platinum grill. They are the people who can only see happiness and fulfillment in a having a two and three honeys in their arms. They are the people who can only see fulfillment and contentment in the thrill of planning and carry out a criminal plan. They are the people who think that they only way to elevate their position is to bring somebody else down, by stealing what others have worked all their lives to obtain. These people claim to see but they really don’t see.
And sooner or later they become like the man in our text, reduced to living life on the outside, hanging out on the many sidewalks of life begging and starving for true love and affection that they thought they were getting from the objects of their desire. In this vain search for wholeness and truth, they eventually become trapped with the trappings they so desire and find themselves suffering from their wayward decisions and now live a life with no joy and peace.
You see Jesus had no business even stopping and talking with this man because as custom in Jesus day, a person who was higher in status than you didn’t talk with you, especially if you were a religious authority. You see ... it was the whole system that reduced people to insignificant individuals that Jesus rallied against. You see ... Jesus went to places and talked to folks that many of our good church folks wouldn’t go or speak to unless it will make them fill good.
Thank God, Jesus is still going up into folk’s mess that sometimes ... good church folk don’t want to get into. But Jesus will go anywhere we are and if you called his name, you can be delivered and set free.
As we read the text, Jesus does heal the man and he receives his sight. However, I believe we can quickly learned 3 lessons about seeing. You see ... When you are truly touched by the Master, He’ll open your eyes, and you will see these 3 lessons.
#1.
The first lesson that you learn is that when you open your eyes and see you can always see the Master working. You see it doesn’t matter what day it is, the Savior is always working. You see ... the ecclesiastical social club of Jesus day interpreted the 4th commandment, remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy as a day when absolutely no work was to be done.
However, Jesus had already told them in Mark 2:27 that the Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath. In other words, human needs and conditions come before any rule, rite, ritual, or regiment.
And he follows up that statement by saying that the Son of Man is Lord even over the Sabbath. In other words, I am not bound by your tyrannical traditionalism. I am not shackled by your wicked ways. I am not hindered by your botched beliefs. I am not held hostage by your inept interpretations, human needs and love for all humankind comes first!
What this also tells us is that the Master is always working on any day of the week. It doesn’t matter if it’s Christmas, Labor Day, Arbor Day, or your birthday, your parole day or your court day. Everyday is the Lord’s Day. You can call him up anytime day or night, darkness or light. In the morning or in the evening.
People want to talk about the right time, the appropriate time and place, but when you are drowning, wallowing in your own self-pity, you need help and help right now! Jesus doesn’t take time off, go on vacation, take sick leave or show up for work late, because we all know that He’s right on time!
And when we can truly see, we may not understand what’s going on. It might not sound like a good plan to us. We still may be a little confused. We may wonder how are we going to get out of this mess, but if we can truly see, we can see the Master is always working it out!
#2.
The 2nd lesson I see here is that when you can see, you see people for who they really are. It’s only after your eyes have been opened can you see this truth. All his life he has only heard the religious leaders as they talked about God. He held them in high esteem. He believed that they had his best interest at heart. But now since his eyes were opened, he was seeing another side.
In the man’s happiest hour, he was being questioned and interrogated because Jesus came into his life. The religious leaders didn’t want to believe this miracle. They didn’t want to believe that this man who had been born blind was now seeing.
But maybe the real reason that they didn’t want to believe this miracle was that Jesus had something to do with it. You see, they had already threatened anyone who confessed Jesus as the Messiah with expulsion from the synagogue. In other words, support this Jesus fellow, talk about him in a positive way, and be kicked out of the place you have learned to love. The same thing is happening today ...they call it separation of church and state. No wonder the man’s parents when questioned said, that we could testify that he was born blind, but we don’t know how he is able to see? By even mentioning Jesus name they would have been kicked out of church.
What the man was hearing and seeing now didn’t sound like the love and fellowship that these leaders preached all those years when he wasn’t able to see. And in this we learn a valuable lesson. When we are touched and healed by the Master and are able to see, some people will believe that your new vision is phony. You see ... people are going to say that you are a crook and will always be a crook. Some folk are going bet wages trying to predict the month and day in which you will return to a life of crime ... a lot of folk will tell you that your revival is phony.
They won’t believe that you are sincere. People will question your motives. They will wonder what you have under your sleeve ... are you trying to take me for my papers. Some people have a hard time, believing you have changed. Instead of being happy for you ... when you go back to your dorm or cell tonight somebody is going to question you and your purposes of having been here this evening.
You see ... some people are more comfortable with you in your pathetic positions in life. Some people feel more comfortable if you stay down forever. People want to hold you back, dismissing you, destroying you, deterring you, stealing your song, busting your blessing, carjacking your comfort, jumping your joy, hijacking your hope, trying to leave you for dead.
But, I just want to tell you tonight that you don’t let a weeklong devil disrupt your Thursday joy! I hear Jesus saying, the thief comes to steal, kill and destroy: I come that they may have life and have it more abundantly. In other words, just keep on keeping on. Don’t let anybody stop you. Don’t let anybody dislodge you from your position. Don’t let anybody break you up or break you down. Being an inmate does not mean that you are not able to praise the Lord. Being an inmate does not mean that you are not able to give your life fully committed to Jesus.
Stand on the promises of God. Stay rooted in scripture. Just keep on hanging in there because the best is yet to come.
#3.
The 3rd and final thing you see is that ... after you see Jesus working, after you see people for who they are, you must see to it that you give credit where credit is due. In other words, keep on praising.
You see the Pharisees were still arguing and whispering among themselves whether or not this man was telling the truth. They were just arguing not over the truth, but some other mess that had no place in the conversation. If the Pharisees would have stopped long enough to see they could have marveled also at the wonder workings of God, but they could not see.
There’s a lot of blind folks out there tonight debating and deciding on stuff that really doesn’t matter. They are arguing with one another saying what you have and what you see isn’t real. They think it’s going to wear off. Some people on this campus are hooked on other things ... like watching smack down, and seeing a crippled man jump off the top rope ... things that they believe can help them see better. But I’m here to tell you that all of that is just what it is smack down ... that smack will surely bring you and distort your vision.
Oh say, can you see ...
When you can truly see, you see all of your critics for what they are. You know how to handle them and you keep on worshipping Jesus Christ.
When someone comes up to you and say, you religious experience is hogwash and you are just a criminal acting like you are saved while you are locked up. You just tell them like that man said in the text “Where as I was blind, now I see.” You tell them; I probably can’t tell you all the details of an immovable, immutable, and insurmountable God.
You can tell them that ... I don’t understand what God is doing all the time. I may not be able to quote scripture like some others. I haven’t walked the ivory halls of a theological seminary. I may not be able to preach like Paul and I may not be able to tell you, homiletics from hermeneutics or exegete a text of scripture. But you can call me crazy if you want to, say I’m losing my mind, all I know is I was blind, now I see!
So you go tell those people you can evaluate, illiterate, pontificate, postulate, narrate, abbreviate, delegate or mandate all you want, but I see what I see, I know what I know, If feel what I feel, I have what I have and whereas I was blind now I see!
All I know ... is that God has been good to me. God has brought me from a mighty long way. God has brought me from darkness into the marvelous light. Every now and then when I’m all by myself, I just have to say thank you!
- Thank you, Thank you! I can see! I can see!
- Jesus in your life, Jesus morning, noon, and night!
- All Jesus all the time.
- Jesus like visa, He is everywhere I want to be.
- Jesus, like AMEX, I never leave home without him.
- Jesus, like bounty, He is the quicker picker upper.
- Jesus, like a Timex, He took a licking, but kept on ticking.
- All Jesus all the time and I am so glad Jesus opened my eyes, because whereas I was blind, now I see.
