The Tin Church, Bedmond

10/06/2026

We hope you can join us for the fete-
Fun for all the family

07/06/2026

Today in Church was all about miracles, especially that astonishing story in Matthew 9 where Jesus ... raises someone from the dead. What on earth to make of it? Here's what got said this morning.....

Trinity 1, 2026
Matthew 9:9-13; 18-25

But when the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took her by the hand and the girl – the dead girl – got up.

The dead girl got up.

Did that really happen? Forget your church self for a moment, forget what you think you’re meant to think. Do you think that really happened?

A big part of me is not at all sure.

It’s not just that it’s a miracle. There are plenty of miracle stories told about Jesus – plenty of healings, say. Someone blind here, someone deaf there. And with those, it’s easier to imagine some kind of healing we don’t quite understand, some kind of extraordinary non-scientific gift of curing things that Jesus had. It’s strange, yes, but then there are plenty of strange things in the world.

But this story pushes things to a new level. Your mind scrabbles round for a rational explanation. Maybe the girl wasn’t really dead. Maybe she was, like Jesus said, just sleeping – some kind of deep unconsciousness, like a coma. People just mistook it for death. It’s still amazing that he somehow brought her out of it, but it isn’t raising from the dead. We’re still on planet just about believable.

Or maybe, you’re still more sceptical. Maybe you think, look, this is just kind of story people told back then. It’s not real history. It’s more like legend, or fantasy. Like Adam and Eve, or Hercules.
Maybe people did believe it once, but now we’ve got science, we know things don’t work like this. Forget all the mad stuff, and just focus on Jesus’ teaching, his morals, his example.

And there’s another issue of course. If things like this did happen. If Jesus did raise that little girl from the dead – why didn’t he do it a lot more? And why doesn’t it happen now? It’s probably the most terrible thing there is, the death of a child. If God can bring people back, why doesn’t he? Even more so, why didn’t he stop it happening in the first place? I can only imagine the pain that hearing a story like this must bring for some people.

That one in particular is a subject for another morning, another sermon. All I want to say for now is that if you struggle to believe that this morning’s Gospel really happened, you are in good company. And it is all right. You’re allowed to have an intelligent, grown-up, critical, sceptical attitude towards Scripture. That’s part of having a mature faith. Don’t feel guilty about having doubts.
On the other hand …. Also, doubt your doubts. Be sceptical about your scepticism. Is it, after all, as well founded as you think?

Take, for instance, the idea that the girl wasn’t really dead. Yes, of course, we know that misdiagnosis happens on occasion – I suppose it can’t absolutely be ruled out. On the other hand, it’s pretty unlikely. And in the two other stories the Gospels tell about Jesus raising someone from the dead, it seems utterly impossible: in Luke 7 the raising happens during the actual funeral service, and in John 11 – the story of Lazarus – we’re told he’d been in the grave for four days and had started to decompose. Mistake seems unlikely. We’re dealing, it seems, either with something made-up, or a miracle.

Were the stories made up? Well, maybe. But on the other hand, on the whole, the Gospel writers come across as fairly reliable witnesses. Think for instance, about how they tell plenty of stories about the Apostles looking stupid, or worse. Those were stories the early church might have happily have kept quiet about. Or how the Gospels record Jesus saying deeply inconvenient things, like how he didn’t know when the end of the world was to be. The man the Church wanted to say was God, telling everyone he was ignorant! Not helpful – and yet they wrote it down. And they didn’t write down some other things, thing they’d have loved to be able to. So, perhaps the biggest argument in the early Christian church was about whether Gentiles needed to be circumcised and keep the Jewish law. It would have been so easy, and so convenient, to make up a saying of Jesus to settle it – the Lord says this. End of argument. And they didn’t. Again, not conclusive, but it tends to suggest you’re dealing with people who don’t just casually make things up. Who, rather, are quite careful about writing down what they remember really happened.

Another factor to consider about miracles in general. If nothing really happened, what were people getting so excited about? That is to say, if Jesus just turned up and gave his teaching: God loves you, your sins are forgiven, the Kingdom is going to come, sickness and evil and death will be swept away, you’re going to be free – people might have thought it sounded lovely, but they wouldn’t have been convinced. They wouldn’t have thought, as they did, that the Kingdom of God was actually beginning in this man, that he was in fact the King. They thought that, because they began to see it actually happening around them. It wasn’t just theory, it was practice: the blind were seeing, the lame were dancing. Somebody once wisely said that of course the miracles were more than special effects. Of course they had a deep symbolic meaning, a rich spiritual significance. But, he said, part of their rich spiritual significance is that they actually, physically happened. Part of their rich, spiritual significance is that they actually physically happened.

So, take this miracle – the raising of the little girl. Its rich spiritual significance is the ultimate victory over death. None of our stories, now is going to end in misery, sadness, funerals, coffins. We’re going to live. We’re going to shine with all the glory of God. That’s what the story means, that’s its promise, you’ve heard me say it a million times. That’s the meaning: but you don’t get the meaning without it actually happening – without that little girl really, actually, physically rising from the dead that day, and her village erupting in joy. Otherwise, it’s just a theory, without reality . The Gospel is about reality. It’s a promise, yes, a promise of that which we don’t yet know in its fullness – but it’s a promise grounded in fact, in real events, real history.

And that idea of promise brings me to the most important consideration. Do you find it hard to believe that a little dead girl got up and walked, because Jesus came and made it happen? I do. It is hard to believe. But is it harder than what we say every week, and what is the absolute core of Christianity? That none of us is rubbish. That none of us is here by accident. That each one of us was created out of love, and is destined for glory. That whatever has been done to us, and whatever we do, whatever dark twisted mess we get ourselves into, that Jesus Christ, on his Cross and in his Resurrection, can undo it and bring us to brilliance and beauty? That in the eucharist, every Sunday, he puts his life inside us. That He goes to work within us, forgiving us, healing us, changing us? That He is even now making us fit to shine with all the glory of God? Is today’s Gospel story harder to believe than all that?
No. It’s not. Next to the Gospel, this particular gospel story is not hard to believe. Next to the great miracle – God became human, that we might become divine – this miracle is nothing. Next to Jesus Christ, the story of the little girl is not hard to believe after all. It’s just what you should expect.

To the God who gives life to the dead, to his Son and to the Holy Spirit, be glory now and forever. Amen

02/06/2026

It's the first Wednesday of the month tomorrow - that means it must be coffee time at the Tin Church! Join us for a cuppa and cake between 10.00am and 12.00noon - and you'll be assured of a warm welcome! See you there!

06/05/2026

Come and join us in the Tin Church for coffee and cake this morning between 10am and 12noon - all welcome for a time to chat with friends - see you there!

19/04/2026

This morning we carried on looking at the Acts of the Apostles, and specifically at the first Christian sermon ever recorded - Peter in Acts 2. Here's what got said - an uncomfortable read at times!

Easter IV
Acts 2:14a, 36-41
This Jesus, whom you crucified
It seems odd to have such a beautiful, mysterious Gospel reading and then not preach on it – but those of you who were here last week know that for the next few weeks, all the sermons are going to be on the Acts of the Apostles, so our second reading. (The choir though, will be giving a musical response to the Gospel in the anthem this morning).
So: Acts. To recap. Acts is, if you like, the second volume of the Gospel according to St. Luke. It’s the story of what happened next, after the resurrection. It is literally the acts, of the Apostles – what Jesus’ chosen representatives did, where they went, how they preached. It moves from Jerusalem at the beginning – with last week’s and this week’s reading - to Rome. And that physical journey symbolises a spiritual one: how Christianity went from being a Jewish thing to a whole-world thing. It’s the story of how the Gentiles get brought in to God’s family.
This week’s reading simply carries on from last week’s. It’s part, you’ll remember, of what I called the first ever recorded Christian sermon, given by St. Peter on Pentecost morning. Last week, it was all about the resurrection: how the promises made to David in the Psalms had finally come true in the Son of David, Jesus Christ. How he’d beaten death, and you could know he’d beaten death because his tomb was empty. You could go and check. And how, because of his resurrection, our whole being, our bodies as well as our souls, will be swept up in glory.
That was last week. So far, so joyful.
And now, a crashing change of gear.
Therefore, let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.
This Jesus, who you crucified.
It’s not an isolated note in the first few chapters of Acts. Twice in Chapter Two, and twice in Chapter 3, there it is: this Jesus, whom you crucified. You, o house of Israel. The entire house of Israel. It’s your fault. It was the Jews that did it.
Ever since the Holocaust, most of the Church has rejected this kind of language. The Holocaust happened, in part, because of the long Christian tradition of saying that it was the Jews that killed Jesus. That they were God-killers, deicides. And part of our response to the Holocaust has been to stop saying it. To remember that Crucifixion was a Roman punishment, not a Jewish one. That Jesus, and all his apostles, were Jews themselves. That, yes of course, some Jews especially in the leadership, helped kill Jesus. But to say that that all Jews did, that the entire house of Israel did – let alone to say that today’s Jews are still guilty - is just wrong, stupid and dangerous.
Except, of course, Luke says it. Not the bit about today’s Jews, to be fair – he leaves that to St. Matthew – but Luke does lay it on thick about the whole house of Israel. This Jesus whom you crucified. And when Peter’s hearers are cut to the heart, and cry out ‘what shall we do’, he answers, repent and be baptised, every one of you. Every one of you. Save yourselves from this corrupt generation. And so, we’re told, three thousand of them did.
I wonder if many of them were personally responsible for the death of Jesus. Whether many of them actually had any real involvement. Maybe some of them were part of the crowd that called for his death. Maybe some of them had been followers who had let him down. Maybe. I suspect most had nothing to do with it. Peter doesn’t care. It’s all of you. The entire house of Israel.
And this would indeed be dangerously anti-Semitic, were it not for what I said at the beginning. Acts is the story of how Christianity goes from being a Jewish thing to a whole world thing. From a Jewish thing, to a whole world thing. And if that’s true of the promise, of the hope of the resurrection, it’s also true, strangely, of the condemnation. It is true of the bad news, as well as the good.

What’s the bad news? We did this. We nailed Jesus Christ to the Cross. We killed God. Not as a matter of historical fact, obviously. We weren’t there. But more in that the same things that put him there – greed, fear, the love of power - the same general moral darkness that coursed through Judas and Pilate and Caiaphas courses through us. That’s how the 3000 were guilty. They hadn’t actually done it. They weren’t the ones responsible. But they were cut from the same cloth. Full of the same stuff. Dark, poisonous, God-killing stuff. And so, says the Gospel, are we.

Perhaps you think that’s an exaggeration. I grant you, it is certainly stark. Some of you, though, know exactly what I mean – that there is stuff in your life, your past, which is not trivial, not nothing. Stuff you loathe: rank selfishness, mean-ness, dishonesty. Darkness of which you are bitterly ashamed. Others might not feel that all. Perhaps because they genuinely are good people, or perhaps because they lack much self-knowledge. But even the very best of us will know that there are many times we have deliberately, clearly, coldly decided not to love. Not to give. Not to forgive. Not to welcome. Not to help. Or forget the ‘nots’: there are times we’ve decided deliberately do things instead. To hoard for ourselves, to consume, to exploit, to resent, to wound. Well, everytime we made those decisions, we chose against God. We did our bit to kill God. We hammered our own nail into his body, onto his cross. Let the whole house of Abbots Langley look at Jesus Christ on the Cross, and know that you did this.

It’s bad news. And yet, I said, it’s the Gospel that teaches it. The Gospel, which is Good News. How can Good News bring Bad News
When they heard it they were cut to the quick, and said to Peter and the other apostles, brothers, what shall we do? And he said to them, ‘repent, and be baptised everyone of you in the name of Jesus Christ, so that your sins may be forgiven, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.’

What shall we do, full of dark God-killing stuff as we are?
Repent, and be baptised.

Turn around, change direction, beg forgiveness, leave the old ways behind. That’s repentance. That’s what all the prophets had said. And whilst it is certainly good and necessary advice, it’s not enough. Some things you can’t change, even when you know you need to.

But be baptised in the name of Jesus Christ – this is new. To be baptised means to be immersed, to be plunged, to take your life and sink it – sink it literally under water, sink it spiritually in Jesus Christ. It means you’re not on your own any more. It means that your life and his life have come together. And that means you’re now joined to unimaginable power. To resurrection power. The deepest centre of you, when you’re baptised, is Jesus Christ.
And when a baptised person repents, it’s not just about feeling sorry and trying to change. No, you bring your darkness to Jesus. You say to Him: here I am Lord. With my heart full of that God-killing stuff, the bits I know, the bits I do not know. The lust, the pride, the greed, the fear – you can write your own list. The stuff my heart is over-run with, the which has corroded my life. I sink the whole thing into you. I sink myself into you.

And that is when the miracle happens. Because Jesus Christ, your deepest centre, is like a great refining fire, a furnace, and He begins to burn all your darkness up. All your sin, however deep and powerful and permanent it is, has nothing on Him. There’s nothing more powerful than Jesus Christ. That’s what resurrection means. All the God-killing in the world goes into Him, and He burns it up. He changes it. Which means, he changes you. It may take a moment, it will more usually take a lifetime and beyond. But you will be changed. We will be changed. There will be no more darkness and death in us. This Jesus, whom we crucified, is going to breathe into us the Spirit of Life.

That’s the Gospel. You may be darker, and more lost, more wicked, than you have ever realised, ever suspected. Look at Jesus Christ on the Cross: you helped do that. But keep looking, and realise what it means: there is nothing, nothing, in you which can stand against the power of the love in that man. You’re are more loved than you could ever imagine. Because he hung there, because he opens his life for you, and joins you to Himself, you are destined for joy beyond your wildest imaginings.

That’s what the Resurrection of the Crucified One means.
Hallelujah, Christ is risen. He is risen indeed, Hallelujah!

12/04/2026

This morning in Church was all about the first Christian sermon ever (probably) - St. Peter in Acts 2, speaking about Psalm 16. Here's what got said - and a beautiful recording of Psalm 16 to boot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dls4YOM9n1g

Easter II, April 12th, 2026.
Psalm 16 / Acts 2:14a, 22-32.

As many of you know, I don’t actually choose the readings we have each week. We follow a thing called the Lectionary – basically, a pattern of readings chosen by many churches, and in theory at least followed throughout the world. There are pros and cons to that, but one of the big pros is that it is a way of showing that every local congregation is part of the big, universal or Catholic church – and equally, that it stops the vicar just choosing his or her favourite texts all the time. You get to hear bits of Scripture they wouldn’t necessarily choose, left to their own devices.

Like, for instance, in my case, the Acts of the Apostles – our second reading today. I’ve nothing in particular against the Acts. I’ve just very seldom preached on it. It has never seemed that urgent, that important. Which is why it is intriguing that the Lectionary has suddenly turned very bossy and insists that for the next six weeks, for Eastertide, we have got to have a reading from it. So strap yourselves in. Six weeks of sermons on Acts await you.

First, very briefly: what is it, and where is it? You will find it immediately after the Gospels in the New Testament. It is, quite simply, what the Apostles did next, after the Resurrection: the Acts, of the Apostles. It was written by whoever wrote the Gospel of St. Luke, who also seems to have been a close companion of St. Paul. It begins in Jerusalem, like in our reading this morning, and it ends in Rome. And that geographical change represents a whole spiritual and cultural change. Acts tells the story of how Christianity goes from being essentially a Jewish thing, to being a whole world thing: of how the horizons just get bigger and bigger, of how the Gentiles are brought in. The key figure is St. Paul, whose story takes up more than half of the book. It begins with his conversion, and ends with him in Rome, waiting to preach the Gospel to the Emperor. Interestingly, it doesn’t record how the story ends – with Paul’s ex*****on. The best explanation for that, I think, is that that hadn’t actually happened yet – which means that Acts is a really early book. You’re looking at something finished sometime around 65 AD.

So, why is the lectionary so insistent that we read Acts now? Well, at one level, it is simply What Happens Next: you’ve had Jesus, had his Resurrection, here comes the sequel. True enough, but there’s something deeper going on too. The best illustration of it comes from one of the most famous moments in the Acts – the story of Paul’s conversion. You might remember it: Saul the Pharisee, breathing threats and murder against the church, riding to Damascus to bring them in, is suddenly knocked off his horse, blinded by overwhelming light, and hears that terrible voice from the sky: Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? Note that odd way of putting it: why do you persecute me? Not my people, or the Church, or the Christians, but me. ‘Who are you Lord?’ says Saul. ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.’ I am Jesus.

Now there’s several very long sermons waiting to be preached in there, but the essential point is this: in some sense, Jesus and the Church belong with each other. More than that, in some mysterious sense, Jesus is the Church, and the Church is Jesus. It is deep, it is bewildering, it needs more time than we’ve got this morning, but it’s true. It is what Paul means, after all, when he describes the Church as the Body of Christ. And it’s what we pray every week in communion, that He might live in us, and we in Him. Part of what it means to say Jesus is risen, is that He is alive in us – that if you want to see where He is in action today, look at his church.

That’s what is going on in Acts, and why the lectionary is so bossy about reading it in Eastertide. It is trying to say: to really understand what the Resurrection means, look at what comes from it. Look at this community where the love keeps getting bigger and bigger. Where all the things that used to divide people: whether they were rich or poor, master or slave, male or female, Jew or Gentile come tumbling down and they belong in one family, one body. The Resurrection is not just about what happened in that tomb on that third morning, it’s something that goes on unfolding, exploding into the world. Jesus catching more and more human lives up in Himself, making them new.

That is, if you like, an overview of Acts in general. Now, very briefly, too briefly, this morning’s passage from Acts Chapter 2 – the very first recorded Christian sermon. And brilliantly, it gives the balancing corrective to what I’ve just said. Yes, the Resurrection is not just about what happened in Jerusalem that third morning. It is a lot more than that. But, St Peter insists, it absolutely is that first. If something absolutely factual, absolutely historical, did not happen that first Easter morning then all the rest of it is just building on air.
This is what he is doing with Psalm 16, our first reading this morning. Look, says Peter. David in the Psalm said that he would trust in the Lord, that he would not be shaken, because He knew that God would not abandon him to death; that his flesh could live in hope, because God would not let him experience corruption. He would not rot in the tomb: no, he would be filled with joy and gladness in the presence of God. ‘Well, fellow Israelites, says Peter, I may say to you with confidence of our ancestor David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day.’ Psalm 16 did not come true, not for David at any rate. But then, says Peter, it was never about David. It was about the Son of David – one of David’s line, in whom all these promises would come true, to whom God would prove faithful. It’s Jesus of Nazareth, the one in whom Psalm 16 and so much else comes true.

And note, please, the logic. We know that Psalm 16 didn’t come true for David himself, because you can visit his tomb. He’s inside it, mouldering away. Peter’s point is that you cannot do the same for Jesus. He’s not there. People sometimes try to make out that when the early Christians spoke of resurrection they were really speaking symbolically, or metaphorically – that it was just a vivid way of talking about new hope, or the eternal validity of Jesus’ teaching, or his ongoing influence, his enduring spiritual presence. No, Peter says: the tomb was empty. And resurrection language wouldn’t have lasted five minutes if it wasn’t. It is sometimes said that you can’t prove the Resurrection, that it’s a matter of faith. True enough. But what you can prove is that no-one could find that body. If the Romans had it, they’d have brought it out. If the disciples had it, they knew they were lying and they died for their lie – including Peter himself. No. Whatever happened to it, that body had gone.

Which means something else too. It’s not just that resurrection is more than symbolism, or psychology – that’s it’s about a real, public, historical event. A fact. It’s also crucial that that fact involves the body – something our Gospel reading today also, obviously, emphasises. Put your hands in my side, says the risen Jesus. Touch me. Now I realise this is hard to believe, and it has always been one of the stumbling blocks for Christian faith – but here we go: Christianity does not believe that there’s your body, and there’s your soul, and that the physical bit of you is like a shell that gets thrown away when you die, whilst the spiritual bit floats off to Heaven. No. Christianity says that just like Jesus, our bodies are going to be caught up in glory. You’ll notice that in the Creed we don’t say, ‘we believe in the immortality of the soul’. No, we believe in the resurrection of the body. That whatever our future is – and it is, of course, utterly beyond comprehension and imagination - it involves our bodies. Amazingly transformed, no doubt. Astoundingly more than our present experience of bodies. But crucially, not less. We’re not going to be ghosts. We’re not going to be less than we are now. We’re going to be more. As someone once brilliantly put it, because of the Resurrection of Jesus, we are now but shadows of our future selves. We are but shadows of our future selves.

That’s the first ever Christian sermon. God’s promises to David are all coming true. They’ve begun to come true in public, in history, in Jesus Christ – look, you can go down to his tomb and check. He’s not there, he is risen. And because he’s risen, our whole being, everything about us, is going to be swept up in glory. The first Christian sermon ever, and the same message we preach today. Alleluia, Christ is risen. He is risen indeed, Alleluia.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dls4YOM9n1g

04/04/2026

The church flowers arrangers have done a great job today making the church ready for Easter celebrations tomorrow - do join us at 11.30am - we'd love to welcome you

01/04/2026

Join us for a coffee (or tea or chocolate) this morning between 10am and 12noon - we'd love to see you!

28/03/2026

No service in the Tin Church tomorrow as it's Palm Sunday and we'll meet on Kitters Green in Abbots with Churches Together at 11.00am then follow the donkey to St Lawrence for a service at 11.30am - do join us ..... but before that don't forget the clocks go forward one hour tonight!

15/03/2026

This morning in church it was all about the story of the man born blind, told in John Chapter 9 - the story of how Jesus healed him, and the big row it caused. And how about people can be blind in more senses than one. Here's what got said - and a link to the story told a different way!

Lent IV, 2026 (15th March)
John 9
Spiritually Blind

How can you tell if you’re spiritually blind? How you can see, that you can’t see?

That’s the problem, isn’t it. ‘Surely we’re not blind, are we?’ said the Pharisees. And Jesus says, in effect, if you’d realised you were blind we might get somewhere. But given you’re so confident you see … well, your sin remains.

What is it to be spiritually blind? Well, remember that little formula from last week – being Christian is about learning to see as God sees. Learning to see as God sees. Seeing with eyes of utter clarity, seeing things as they really are, without spin, illusion, excuse or distortion. And yet simultaneously, with those very same eyes, seeing with utter love. Utter clarity, and utter love. That’s spiritual vision.

Spiritual blindness is simply its opposite. Your physical eyes might be functioning fine. But you don’t really, truly see anything. You get taken in by spin, illusion, excuse, distortion. You see yourself and everyone round you in a fundamentally false kind of way. And at the same time you see without love. You see through eyes that criticise, blame, judge. That’s spiritual blindness.

So the first answer to the question, how do you tell if you’re spiritually blind, is: well, of course you are. We all are. It’s part of what being a sinner is, and each and every one of us is a sinner. There’s not a single person in this church, I’d say, who is not to some degree spiritually blind. Does not need, in some way, their sight healed.

What might be the symptoms, though, of a particularly bad case? John Chapter Nine offers some suggestions. How about … refusing to recognise the good thing happening right in front of you, because it doesn’t fit your assumptions about what should be happening. That’s what the Pharisees do, when they even question if the blind man had really been blind in the first place. It’s what we might do, if we were silly enough, say, to deny that there could be real goodness in people of other religions. Or real wisdom in what they say.

That’s one symptom. How about another – legalism? Maybe the man was healed, but he shouldn’t have been, because it was the sabbath. An example of getting so wound up about a rule, a rule that was probably a good idea to start with that you end up making it a bad one. Something that was made for human good – rest on the sabbath – then gets in the way of human good. Religion is good at rules. We’re not so hot on grace. That’s spiritual blindness.
And then maybe the biggest symptom of them all – the desire to punish, to exclude, to drive out. They reviled him, it says in that Gospel reading. They reviled him, and drove him out. The more reviling and driving out you’re doing, I’d say, the more likely you are to have a spiritual sight difficulty. You’re not seeing others as God sees them, as children he loves. And you’re not seeing yourself as God sees you, a beloved child, yes, but also someone in no way qualified to throw that stone.

Now of course, we do need rules. And of course, on occasion, people do need punishing – if for nothing else to protect others from them. Judgement and punishment aren’t always wrong. But – and it is a big but – that proper instinct needs a very, very close leash kept on it. Because many of us – most of us – have a tendency to let rip with it. To condemn, to judge, to lash out. And so often, it is just destructive. Even when we manage to aim at it at the right target, so often we do it in the wrong way, and end up just feeding our anger, our pride, our self-righteousness. It shuts out the growth of what God really wants in us, and what is good for us: gentleness. Humility. Grace.

And lastly, of course, for John - what’s the ultimate blindness? It’s to have Jesus right there, doing his work in front of you, goodness and love incarnate, healing … and not to recognise Him. To shut yourself off from him. That, for John, is to put yourself in the darkness.

At which point, we might feel rather smug. Surely we’re not blind, are we? We’re here, worshipping Jesus. We’ve seen him! We’re walking in the light - unlike our poor neighbours, lost in the darkness.

Of course, it’s not quite as simple as that.

To start with, it would be richly ironic to read John 9 and come away thinking – ah yes, the more religious I am, the more I’m in the light. John 9 is all about religious people going dark. And about how religion is one of the best ways there is of shutting out Jesus. Religion might be good and necessary – I’m a vicar, of course I think religion is good and necessary – but my goodness, it goes easily and badly wrong.

Secondly, remember right back at the beginning of John’s Gospel: the Christmas Gospel. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. That is to say, just as everyone is blind to some extent, so also everyone sees. There is a knowledge of God, of goodness, of truth in everyone – more distorted in some, less in others, yes – but in everyone. So don’t be surprised if you meet a non-Christian with really great spiritual sight. Rejoice in it, and learn from them. There’s nothing Christian about thinking that everyone else is simply and totally wrong. There’s large elements of light – of truth, of wisdom, of goodness – in them. Yes, Jesus still has more to give them, absolutely yes – but they’re not simply wrong. They’re at least partly right.

Thirdly, why do people reject Jesus? Well, that’s a very big question, with lots of possible answers, but one of the first has to just to notice that rejecting Jesus is very different from rejecting many of the nasty little things that go under his name. There are forms of Christianity you’d be better off out of. Some of the TV evangelism, I’d say, is little better than organised crime. Sometimes it’s a mark of real spiritual insight to turn your back on a church. And it’s not surprising if for a while at least that looks like turning your back on Jesus. In the long run, we can hope that even better spiritual sight will help people see the difference.

With all those caveats entered though, we still come back to a difficult truth. It remains possible to stand in front of the real Jesus, like those Pharisees did, to see his work, and still not allow him to change how we see the world, ourselves, and other people. We don’t want to see things like God sees them, thank you very much. It would mean too much change. And if you don’t want to long enough, hard enough, consistently enough – well, that what’s the Bible means when it talks about people being in darkness, or being lost. And if it hardens into eternity, that’s what is meant by Hell. Where you’re simply shut up with yourself, having shut your eyes to a bigger, more surprising world. Now in the end, we can hope, light can get into even the darkest corners of hell. In the end, we hope, no-one has to stay lost. But my goodness, we can bury ourselves deep in there. We can screw up our eyes very tightly indeed.

How do you know you’re not doing that? How do you know you’re not lost?

Well, at one level, you can’t know – you’ve just got to trust God that he’ll find you. All any of us know is that God wants us to be saved – and God’s wanting is a pretty powerful thing.

That said, just like there are good clues that you might be spiritually blind, so there are good clues that your eyes are being opened.
Here’s one: you’re asking the question. You’re genuinely worried that you might be lost. That thought never troubled the Pharisees for a moment. They never worried they might be in the wrong, that they might be the bad guys. If you’re seriously asking the question, you’re getting your sight back.

Here’s another: if spiritual blindness is marked by a refusal to see good where you don’t expect it, and by legalism, and by the desire to revile and punish – then spiritual sight is marked by the opposite of all these things. Can you rejoice to see good things where at least part of you thinks they shouldn’t really be? Do you just celebrate, and if you ask questions at all, ask them much later? Are you, not indifferent to rules, not dismissive … but also able to be a little bit relaxed about them? And then above all – the key question - is there more gentleness and patience and humility in your heart than there is anger and reviling? The more that’s so, the more it’s reasonable to hope your eyes have been opened, and you’re seeing well. Ask God now to let you see more.

The Church gives us this Gospel in Lent for a reason. It’s for self-examination. Take John 9 home, and read it again, deeply and slowly. And then take a long, hard, deep look at yourself in its light. What are your symptoms? Where are you on that spectrum between blindness and seeing? Do you rejoice in the good wherever it comes? What does flow strongest in you? Grace? Or the desire to punish? Ask God to use John 9 to show you, you. And remember, when He does, He does so with utter truth and with utter love. You are loved. Let that give you the courage to ask for your eyes to be opened.

This video excerpt from The Chosen was created for the educational purpose of enhancing your study of Jesus heals a man born blind as described in John 9:1-3...