Welcome to the Lightly Salted Podcast.
These are the readings and sermons of St. John's Lutheran Church of Park Rapids, Minnesota.
They are offered so that the Word of God would shape and strengthen you to be what He calls you to be, salt and light.
You can find us at stjohnspr.org.
Now, on to the Word.
The Old Testament reading is from the 42nd chapter of the prophecy of Isaiah, beginning with verse 14.
For a long time I have held my peace.
I have kept still and restrained myself.
Now I will cry out like a woman in labor.
I will gasp and pant.
I will lay waste mountains and hills and dry up all their vegetation.
I will turn the rivers into islands and dry up the pools.
And I will lead the blind in a way that they do not know.
In paths that they have not known, I will guide them.
I will turn the darkness before them into light.
The rough places into level ground.
These are the things I do and I do not forsake them.
They are turned back and utterly put to shame who trust in carved idols, who say to metal images,
you are our gods.
Hear you deaf and look you blind that you may see.
Who is blind but my servant, or deaf as my messenger whom I send?
Who is blind as my dedicated one, or blind as the servant of the Lord?
He sees many things but does not observe them.
His ears are open but he does not hear.
The Lord was pleased for his righteousness sake to magnify his law and make it glorious.
This is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
The epistle is from the fifth chapter of St. Paul's letter to the Ephesians beginning with verse 8.
For at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.
Walk as children of light, for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true.
And try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord.
Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.
For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret.
But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible.
For anything that becomes visible is light.
Therefore it says, awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
This is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
We omit the hallelujah and the season of Lent, and so I ask you to stand in respect of Christ, of whom the Holy Gospel is read.
The Holy Gospel according to St. John, the ninth chapter.
Glory be to thee, O Lord.
As Jesus passed by, he saw a man blind from birth, and his disciples asked him, Rabbi, who sinned?
This man or his parents? That he was born blind.
Jesus answered, it was not that this man sinned or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.
We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day, night is coming when no one can work.
As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.
Having said these things, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva.
Then he anointed the man's eyes with the mud and said to him, go, wash in the pool of Siloam, which means sent.
So he went and washed and came back seeing.
They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind.
Now, it was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes.
So the Pharisees again asked him how he had received his sight.
And he said to them, he put mud on my eyes and I washed and I see.
Some of the Pharisees said, well, this man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.
But others said, how can a man who is a sinner do such signs?
And there was a division among them.
So they said again to the blind man, what do you say about him since he has opened your eyes?
He said, he is a prophet.
They answered him, you were born in utter sin and would you teach us?
And they cast him out.
Well, Jesus heard that they had cast him out and having found him, he said, do you believe in the Son of Man?
He answered, and who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?
Jesus said to him, you have seen him and it is he who is speaking to you.
He said, Lord, I believe and he worshiped him.
Jesus said, for judgment I came into this world that those who do not see may see and those who see may become blind.
This is the gospel of the Lord.
He lives me to the old Christ.
Grace to in peace from God our Father and from our Lord and our Savior Jesus Christ.
Amen.
I'm going to start things off by fessing up.
This has been a really difficult Sunday to get ready for.
One of the reasons for that is our gospel reading, which would be my natural choice for preaching,
was something we just heard preached on on Wednesday.
Now I know not everyone was here, but it was the story of the blind man.
And it's an appropriate story, especially as we focus on that theme, Amazing Grace, right?
Because isn't that one of the key lines, was blind, but now I see.
Well, I was ready to basically do a Bible study.
Really, honestly, it was going to be one of those walking the aisle moments, which I know some of you really enjoy.
The problem is, I had mentioned that to Ginny, who had a little different context.
She said, you know how long those sermons can get.
Spot on, that's true.
Then I came across this in our, we get a subscription Concordia Pulpit Resources.
It's an aid for our church body.
And I came across this sermon by pastor, Dr. Peter Scare.
He's one of our professors at Fort Wayne.
And it really sort of did something for me, besides give me a bunch of good words.
But it was interesting because he starts out and we're going to be talking about the photo. Anybody know who that is?
Bono from U2.
Now, a number of years ago, somebody had put me on to this, and I'm guessing maybe it was John.
I don't remember who the conversation was with.
I've never really listened to U2.
Never really been into a lot of rock and things like that.
I mentioned how he has a pretty awesome confession of faith that works its way actually through a lot of their music.
And as I did some research then, and I did some more now, having this intro, really long intro,
I can still say, I don't really love the band U2,
but I can see how much of a force for good they have actually been in the world, especially Bono.
He has been extremely large on charity with his influence as well as with his money.
He has been for many years fighting AIDS in Africa and really all around the world,
and especially supporting some of those extended problems that come from AIDS,
especially the poverty and the widows and the orphans created by it.
He's done a lot of work to support charities who are desiring and working hard to alleviate poverty
and things like sexual abuse, helping victims.
There's 43 major charities that he's supported or started.
Number of them he's started himself, including he has a clothing line that's dedicated to using the principles of capitalism to help impoverished nations.
His clothing line is dedicated to working with nations and poverty to source his materials from them in order to help them.
But probably one of his longest efforts has been supporting Amnesty International.
This year is the 15th anniversary of Bono recording John Lennon's 1970 song, Instant Karma.
All of the profits from that song are going to Amnesty International, especially at the time of the genocide,
the humanitarian crisis that was going on in Dufour, Sudan.
As of this last June, the song in physical and digital sales has netted $5.8 million to help alleviate those problems.
Now, normally I'm a little cynical about some of these things,
but it really is amazing how Bono has used his star power in order to try to actually bring real help to real people.
In an article, actually it's a book a number of years ago,
it's a conversation book with a writer from France who asks him questions and he answers.
He was asked what drives him, what makes him tick, and Bono answers this.
It's a mind-blowing concept that the God who created the universe might be looking for some company, a real relationship with people.
But the thing that keeps me on my knees is the difference between grace and karma.
Now, it's no small thing to talk about karma, and there's a lot of striking things in that statement to me,
but one of them especially is considering he recorded John Lennon's instant karma song in order to help out Amnesty International.
What's the idea of karma?
The idea of karma is that what goes around comes around.
There's a kind of justice at work in the universe.
We all sort of instinctively understand it.
It's pretty well exemplified in a viral video a while back.
A guy in a truck is sort of tailing a lady in front of him, then he decides to pass her and gives her a very inappropriate gesture,
and then just a little bit further on he spins out and goes in the ditch.
And we're like, yes, that's what he gets. That's karma.
He got what's coming to him.
And then on the other side of karma is the pay it forward type of movement, sort of building some good karma.
You know, you pay for the guy's cappuccino in the truck behind you, or you pay somebody restaurant tab,
and you're building good karma.
You're setting the universe and the motion of the universe in your favor.
Bona also says this, you see at the center of all religions, and I would like to just add the word man-made religions,
is the idea of karma.
You know what comes back to you, an eye for an eye.
What you put out comes back to you, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
The physical laws, at every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
So, all of that to say this.
So it just so happened that Jesus was walking along and came across a man who was blind.
And the disciples ask the karma question, who sinned, this man or his parents.
And it struck me today, I hadn't thought about this in prepping for Wednesday, but it really struck me today in the readings,
they say Rabbi, Rabbi, teacher, teacher, we have a great teaching moment here.
You settle this question for us, this karma question, who sinned, this man or his parents.
And honestly, it's a kind of question we're comfortable with.
It's a kind of question that attempts to make sense of the world around us.
A man has cancer, well, yeah, he smoked for over 20 years.
Kidney problems, liver problems, well, drank too much.
Heart attack, well, not enough diet, not a good diet, not enough exercise.
Car accident, well, they were driving too fast for the condition.
Oh, and that texting, we're never going to do that texting.
Right?
And so a man born blind, was it because of his sin or the sin of his parents?
Rabbi, teacher.
And so oftentimes, we take this as a teaching moment.
I want to give the karma answer.
I'd say, well, one common sin infects us all.
And certainly sometimes, individual sins have certain consequences to them.
But we don't ever do a one-for-one tit-for-tat.
We don't look at it generally that way.
But yeah, that's a little bit of how the world functions.
But the fact of the matter is, death is going to eventually get each and every one of us,
no matter how well we live, no matter how righteous we may be,
or at least think we are, we've all sinned.
All creation suffers.
The world is broken.
And that's true enough.
You know, if we give an answer like that, we're speaking truthfully.
It is something to understand about the world around us.
Yeah.
And I like this.
I'm pretty sure that the focus of this sermon was a chapel sermon.
You speak into seminarians, you know, throwing a little quote from Luther, from Piper, from Walther,
and you're going to get an A on that kind of answer.
Because it is truthful.
But it's sort of interesting to notice that Jesus doesn't even offer some sort of dogmatic answer.
Instead, he says it was not this man who sinned or his parents,
but that the works of God might be displayed in him.
Talk about mind-blowing.
Rabbi, his primary teaching is that there is something so much bigger going on here.
Sin, with all of its negativity, has actually set in motion a chain of events that ends not with disaster,
but with a mysterious blessing.
Is that possible?
Well, a lot of times we are very comfortable with the principle of karma,
especially when all sorts of good things are happening to us,
but run into a situation like this,
how long we want to distance ourselves from karma as best we can.
Bono also said if karma was finally going to be my judge,
then I'd be in deep, we'll say doodoo, not quite the word he used.
But then Bono added, I'm holding out for grace.
I'm holding out that Jesus took my sins onto the cross because I know who I am,
and I hope I don't have to depend on my own religiosity.
It was never God's plan for man to fall into sin.
It was never his intention that there would be illness and death,
or that men would be born blind.
And yet, in the mystery of his grace,
the Lamb who was set apart from before the foundation of the earth, as Peter says,
the Lamb who was set apart from before the foundation of the earth, the world,
the Lord, took the fallen situation and not only had a plan for it,
and not only restoring it,
but that plan was to make it better than ever.
And by the mystery of the incarnation, by the glory of the cross,
we have a better relationship with God than we ever could possibly have had.
And we have been able, through these things, to be able to see God as we never could before,
face to face in a full and sacrificial love.
Confident that something far better than even Eden awaits for us.
We have been given a love that has been tested, a love that has been challenged,
a love that goes far beyond a mutually beneficial relationship
and haven't been forgiven much.
What can we do but fall to our knees?
Having received a love greater than all earthly loves
and having been shown a grace that is so much more beautiful than karma.
What can we do but follow our rabbi, our Savior,
the one who takes us from mere creatures and turns us into children of the Heavenly Father.
And He does this in the midst of a world that is still so lost in its blindness.
A world that can't see things for what they are.
A world that would take the water of the font and consider it just like spittle.
Not worth much.
But for us, for eyes open to the grace of God demonstrated in Jesus,
that becomes a life-giving water.
A water that's flowing from the very throne of God.
Flowing from the Lamb who once was slain but now lives forever and ever.
The world sees bread and wine,
but we receive everything we don't deserve
as we see the body and blood of the Lamb into ourselves.
Ono's right.
It is actually a miracle that the God of the universe is seeking out the company of folks like us.
But that's what he's done.
What happened to the man born blind?
Well, we know that he became an outcast.
His own parents distanced themselves from him.
The community ostracized him.
But the Lord went the extra mile.
He sought him out again.
This man who knew that he had been healed by Jesus
but had no clue who Jesus was because he hadn't seen him in the healing.
Our Lord sought him out.
And He took his friendship and His mercy and His grace
and turned it into full communion with this man who was blind and now sees.
So yeah, sometimes karma seems sort of cool.
But you know, we all admit how karma would turn out for us.
We do it whenever we gather and confess our sins.
When we speak the truth of what God has spoken to us.
When we say that all I deserve is earthly and eternal punishment.
But what I get is grace.
So with this one I'm with Bono, I'd rather have the grace.
And having that grace, it is to impact us and change us.
There is one more quote that I'd come up and I'd forgotten to put in
because it's fascinating.
This conversation he has is fascinating.
He says this,
the point of the death of Christ is that Christ took the sins of the world
so that we, what we put out did not come back to us
and that our sinful nature does not reap the obvious death.
That's the point.
It should keep us humble.
It's not our good works that get us through the gates of heaven.
And then a little bit later he said,
if only we could be a bit more like him.
The world would be transformed.
Transformed by grace, not karma.
Amen.
May the peace of God which transcends all understanding
keep your hearts and your minds in Christ
who demonstrates grace in that karma.
Amen.
Thanks for listening to Lightly Salted.
We'd love to hear from you.
You can contact us at StJohn's PR.org
or look for us on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.
Our thanks to Eric Mediash at soundimage.org for morning due.
God's blessings.