There is a Chinese proverb which states,

Nothing we do changes the past;
everything we do changes the future.

Today's story about Samuel choosing David as the new King of Israel put me in mind of this bit of ancient Chinese wisdom. Samuel, as God's prophet knew the radical freedom God gives us to create the future. In the Book of Samuel we hear that God is weary of Saul as King of Israel. Saul has failed and God tells the prophet Samuel to anoint someone else. The story might be described as a dramatization of the conversation going on in Samuel's head about how he will go about replacing Saul. Samuel is experiencing turmoil and fear at what he knows he must do.

What Samuel determines to do goes against conventional wisdom not to mention the wishes of Saul and his supporters. Samuel's choice of David as a new king would be regarded as truly outrageous and in violation of every accepted notion of how the new king should be picked and who it should be. Samuel flaunts both the power establishment and tradition.

For me the story is about moving on. It reminds us that God is about moving on. God is about movement. In the Old Testament God is deeply reticent about the idea of a temple being built in Jerusalem for fear that future generations would make God a prisoner of that temple and the priestly cast which controlled it. I think that it is fair to say that Jesus, in many ways, believed that a prison is precisely what the temple and the religious system it upheld had become.

As Christians we are not well served by many of the descriptive words for God. Words like "Almighty", "Eternal", "Holy" convey a sense of God's immutability or changelessness making us forget that God is always on the move. Maybe, for the next century, we should invoke God with the title "Great Wind" or "Living Word"or "Busy Mother"! The truth about God that we know from Jesus Christ is that God is living, dynamic, on the move, like we ourselves.

Richard Holloway, the former Primus of the Episcopal Church of Scotland reminds us ( in his book Dancing on the Edge) of how easily we replace a living God with idols. Typically we think of idolatry as something we do with an object - like praying to a statue. But in its broader meaning, idolatry is the desire to make what is relative absolute- so words, traditions, and institutions can become idolatrous as well. Few of us here would be tempted to fall down and worship a golden calf if I were to place one in the chapel some Sunday, although we do seem to be inordinately attached to every piece of wood and brass in this place, but we can easily become idolatrous about bible passages, and creeds, and even traditions. Holloway states,

The motive for idolatry is understandable. It is bred of our deep longing for permanence and security, our inability to live with the whispers and signals we receive and our longing for something loud and positive and overwhelming. Idolatry comes from our anxiety and insecurity, our inability to live by the uncertainties of faith, our loneliness before the elusive God. An idol is the objectification of these needs and anxieties. (Dancing on the Edge, Richard Holloway, Harper Collins, 1997, p. 47)

Samuel, God's prophet, knew that it was time for the nation to move on. Saul had not lead his people as a shepherd. He had acted like the kings of other nations. Samuel was deeply disappointed in Saul and in himself because he had anointed Saul.

Unlike Samuel, the Pharisees in today's gospel are portrayed as being unable to move on. They pounced upon the blind man healed, no doubt a simple man without much education, and told him that he was mistaken in his understanding of what happened to him. Not even his parents would stand up for him so much they feared the religious authorities. The religious authorities brought the full weight of their authority and the dogma of their religion against the man to discredit his simple confession that God had healed him through Jesus.

What I find amazing about this story is that this simple man clung to his experience in the face of this onslaught of orthodoxy. At first the blind man simply describes what happened to him without any interpretation of its meaning, he said " The man named Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes and said to me, `Go to Siloam and wash'. Then I went and washed and received my sight" (John 9:11)

But by the end of the story his insight into what had happened to him had deepened so that he responds to Jesus' question, "Do you believe in the Son of Man?" with the confession, "Lord, I believe." And he worshipped him. (John 9:35ff)

And the Pharisees, steeped in biblical study and the tradition, are portrayed as blind, while the blind man with none of these advantages has his eyes opened.

I do not think that this is intended as a piece of anti-intellectualism. It is not meant to send the message, "oh well, study and discipline, and faithfulness to a tradition do not matter, all you need is to have God zap you and you will get, with no effort, the renewal of your life which others have striven for over a lifetime" No, that's not the message. The blindness of the Pharisees was not their great knowledge of the tradition, the blindness of the Pharisees was that they thought that their great knowledge fully explained God and that God would never do a new thing.

They had God in a box and by golly their job was to keep God in that box.

Have you ever been on a road trip with a map which you discover is out of date. The map serves you well if you stick to the old roads but the new divided highway which bypasses the city is not shown on the map. Well the old map may get you to your destination eventually if the old roads are still in place, but the trip may be unnecessarily prolonged and difficult.

Dogmas and moral teaching which have not been updated to new conditions are like old road maps. They will get you to the old familiar places but they won't get you to anywhere new and may, in fact, prevent you from getting anywhere at all.

We all face times when we need to move on. Sometimes we succeed and sometimes we don't. For example, in our spiritual lives we too often enter adult life with a Sunday School faith. We enter adult life with the faith of a 12 year old and soon find that it simply doesn't hold. We may cling to pieties that no longer sustain us in the lives we live. As church people we must always question whether our teachings and disciples continue to serve us well.

There are no easy ways of knowing what needs to be kept and what needs to be consigned to the treasure chest of history. I think that much of the controversy which presently faces the Anglican Communion is precisely this kind of struggle.

On a personal level we all know about the struggles, joys, and pitfalls of moving on. When someone we love dies, we know we must move on. Or, when we are stricken with an illness and lose a measure of our independence, we know we must move on. That is, we can no longer live our lives as before.

When we have been hurt or victimized or betrayed, there comes a time when we must move on. When we have failed at something and feel diminished and shaken we must move on. We know that we will shrivel up and die if continue to live our lives out of hurt, regret, and resentment.

We all know about moving on. We know that moving on requires work and resolve. Sometimes we need to put certain things to rest before we can move on. We may need counselling. We may need to make a formal confession to put aside debilitating guilt. We may need to forgive and make amends. As Christians we believe that such measures provide opportunities for healing and hope.

As people of faith, and as a community of faith, the blind man healed is our model. When we have been seized by the experience of God, we may not know how to explain it or even what to do with it. But like the blind man we know it is real and abiding. The experience of the blind man ultimately leads him to an act of faith- his confession that Jesus is the source of his healing. This ownership of his own experience of God is his first step in picking up a new life and moving on. He will need the support of others similarly touched to persevere in fulfilling the process of conversion begun in him.

In truth, the real miracle of the blind man's healing, the truth which the gospel of John wants us to understand, is not the recovery of his physical sight -rather, and much more significantly - it is that he has received the gift of gospel eyes.

The blind man healed sees everything differently. Himself. His tradition. His world. He gets a glimpse of the world through God's eyes. That is the miracle here. And that is the miracle of new sight we all seek. It is a clarity of vision available to us whether we are totally blind or enjoy perfect eyesight. The blind can have gospel eyes and those who see well may never have them.

In our journey along the Way we need reassurance and we need to offer reassurance to others. As we engage this pilgrimage together we keep our gospel eyes fixed on the Christ who crossed every boundary and broke down every barrier. We keep our gospel eyes fixed on the Christ who everywhere claimed his freedom and called others to theirs, the Christ who proclaimed a vision of the world's destiny beyond family, national, and religious loyalties.

If it is this which brings us here week after week, may we not be disappointed.