The Truth of our Experience

At the present moment, our society, our nation, is engaged in a debate about the meaning of Truth, about the importance of facts. For months now we’ve been hearing people throw around phrases like fake news, and alternative facts. This debate revolves around our understanding of Truth. What comes first, what is more essential, our ideological framework, our worldview, or the facts of our existence as we experience them? Should our experience change our worldview, or should our worldview change our experience of reality? The present example, the source of our new phrase, “alternative facts,” was the size of the crowd at this year’s inauguration. If you are convinced that Donald Trump is leading a historic popular movement with broad based support, you may, like Mr. Trump himself, believe that the crowd was the biggest ever. If the facts, the photos, the official counts, don’t support your belief, then you simply look for alternative facts to support your conclusion. What is true is what you already certain of, and if the facts do not support it, then they must be rejected.
The Pharisees were the dominant Jewish sect in first century Palestine. The worldview of the Pharisees included the belief that the Mosaic law was final and absolute. Furthermore, it was adherence to this law that brought salvation to individuals and to the nation of Israel. They had based this worldview on their holy texts, on the traditions of the elders, and on their own well-reasoned arguments and interpretations of these texts. The Pharisees were well trained, well educated, and they possessed a great a deal of authority in judging the political and religious questions of the Jewish people. If there was a question, the Pharisees knew the answer. It had already been given in the law, and they had been trained to properly understand and apply this law.
Jesus was not a great respecter of human authority. In fact his habit of going around challenging the authority of the Pharisees and the scribes, and the Romans, ended up getting him in a great deal of trouble. Jesus had a great many conflicts with the Pharisees but the story we heard this morning from John is a great one. 
As Jesus and his disciples were walking one day, they came upon a man who was born blind. The disciples asked Jesus to weigh in on the contemporary Jewish debate, about whether physical ailments were punishments for the sin of the person, or for the sin of their parents. “Rabbi, who sinned,” they asked, “this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus responds by rejecting the premise that the man’s blindness was any kind of punishment. Rather he says, “It was not that this man sinned or his parents, but that the works of God might be made manifest in him.” And right away Jesus brings confirms the truth of his statement, by spitting in the dirt, making mud, spreading on the man’s eyelids and sending him to the Pool of Siloam to bathe. There at the pool, when the man washes the mud from his eyes, he is able to see. The darkness in which he has lived is lifted, through the light of Christ, the work of God, this man, born blind, now sees.
In 2010, I was a confused, somewhat lost graduate student, contemplating if ministry might be the calling on my life. After a year of studying religion with the idea that I would become a professor, I had begun to explore changing to the vocational track, training to become a minister instead. I took the plunge, switch programs, and was immediately thrown into the fire. In my very first semester on this vocational track, I had to find a church to work in as an intern. This prospect terrified me. Not that I’m scared of churches, rather, I was insecure about my calling. And working at church made that calling to ministry feel real. I was not sure that I was up to it, not sure that I was supposed to be there, not sure that I was worthy of pursuing and practicing ordained Christian ministry. And then I met, my new mentor, the Pastor of New Spirit Community Church, where I work for a year as an intern. In one of our first meetings together, Rev. Jim Mitulski, told me something that I will never forget. He told me that there was nothing that I could do, that would make him not want to work with me. He offered to me the unconditional love and acceptance that we preach comes from Jesus the Christ. It was a revelatory moment me. Here I was, a sinner, a deeply flawed and conflicted young man, trying to build up my belief that I was worthy, and Jim, without studying a resume, without interrogating me, had simply begun our relationship by accepting me just as I was. I still didn’t know if I was up to ministry, if I could hack it, but I knew from that moment that I loved Jim Mitulski and I that I would do just about anything for him. And if he could see in me the potential for ministry. than maybe I could too. Jim kept believing in me, he kept supporting me, kept teaching me, kept loving me. And by the end of that year there wasn’t a doubt in my mind about what I was called to do. Jim had loved me into ministry, he changed my life, he helped me to see myself in a new light, the light of Christ. 
As incredible as the healing of the blind man had been, it nevertheless stirred up a fair deal of controversy. You see, it just so happened that Jesus had performed this little miracle on the day of the Sabbath, the day of rest commanded by the law. So, the people presented the man born blind to the Pharisees, the authorities on all legal matters. The Pharisees asked him how he had received his sight, and he tells them what happened, how Jesus healed him. But this is just too much for the Pharisees to believe. They have already come into conflict with Jesus, have already decided that he is not from God, but is rather a blasphemous sinner. And then, this supposed healing, took place on the Sabbath, in violation of God’s law. Certainly then, Jesus was a sinner, and God would not do good works through one that broke His law. The facts that the man born blind presented to them could not accepted, because they contradicted the Pharisee’s worldview, their ideology. And so the Pharisees began searching for “alternative facts.” They decided that man must be lying, that he had never been blind at all.
So, they call his parents forward, who of course, confirm that he is their son, and that he was born blind. Again, the Pharisees call forward the man born blind and question him. This time they ask that he agree with them that Jesus is indeed a sinner. To this the man responds, “Whether he is a sinner or no, I know not; one thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see.” The man sets aside their concern about Jesus’ sinfulness, focusing instead on the surpassing importance of the miracle. He is essentially, I don’t know if he is wrong or right, but if getting my sight is wrong, I don’t want to be right. Gaining his vision was a work of God, of that he was sure. To this the Pharisee’s fall back upon their certainty, their Mosaic law, their authority. “We know that God spoke unto Moses, as for this man, we know not where he comes from… You were born in utter sin, and would you teach us.” The man was a sinner, as was Jesus, as such they had no authority with which to question the Pharisees. And with this the Pharisee’s cast him out, dismissing his testimony, dismissing the miracle that was worked in him, refusing to see the work of God right before their eyes. 
There were and there are still, a great number of Christians who would dismiss my testimony about Rev. Jim Mitulski as well. Rev. Mitulski is HIV Positive. He is an openly gay Christian minister. For many, this idea, that of an openly gay minister, is a contradiction in terms. There are prohibitions against homosexual relations in the book of Leviticus, there are also parts of Paul’s letters, which seemingly condemn same sex relationships as well. There is also a long tradition of interpreting this texts as an authoritative and final prohibition on homosexuality in any form at any time. There are many among my collegues in ministry, and our fellow Christians, who would dismiss Jim as a sinner, as an abomination. There are many who would call his practice of ministry as an openly gay man blasphemous. They would likely question, what, if anything, I could have learned from such a sinner.
I’m aware of the tradition of excluding and condemning gay people in the church. I’m also aware of the prohibitions against homosexuality in the Bible, though I would debate their authority and their common interpretation. But my belief in God’s working through Rev. Jim Mitulski, has little to nothing to do with these things. My belief in Rev. Mitulski’s Christian ministry is the fact that he gave me sight. I was blind to my potential, and now I see. I was blind to my calling for ministry, and now I see. I was unaware of how to practice ministry with integrity, honesty, and humility and now I see. Through the love and acceptance of Jim Mitulski I have come to be what I am today. And I am certain that such love, such acceptance, and the miracle of my new vision, are the workings of God in Christ Jesus. If that love, that acceptance, that miracle, are wrong, then I don’t want to be right. 
After the Pharisees had cast him out, Jesus looked for the man and found him. He asked him, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” The man was apparently unaware of this Messianic figure, ignorant of the prophecies about him, but nevertheless willing to believe whatever Jesus told him. “And who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?” “You have seen him, and it is he who speaks to you.” And the man said, “Lord, I believe.” 
You may not agree with me on my stance about homosexuality in the church, and that is alright, we can disagree and still be in fellowship with one another. But I want each of you to remember the end of this story from John. Jesus, the Son of God, the Son of Man, the Messiah, reveals himself not to those who rely soley on their holy texts, on their traditions, and on their own expertise. Instead, Jesus the Christ, reveals himself to the man who was daring enough to trust his own experience of God. Jesus reveals himself to the man that defied the certainty of the authorities, the man who recognized the miracles of God in his life. We are all in the same situation, we all must decide for ourselves what is the will of God for us and our lives. Tradition and scripture are indispensable guides in this effort. But so is our life experience. So too is our own understanding of God’s working in our lives, the ways in which God reveals Herself to each of us. The Bible and the tradition of the church can, as they did to the Pharisees, blind us to God’s miraculous workings in the world. It is my prayer that we will find the wisdom to discern God’s workings in our lives, that we will find the faith to trust our experiences of God’s love, acceptance, and liberation, and that we will be granted the courage to stand on our convictions, on our experience of God in Christ, and speak our truth to the world. May it be so. Amen.