Today’s text is a long and drawn out drama. It is written like a one-act play with lots and lots of characters. There are at least 12 disciples, a whole community of nosy neighbours, a group of religious leaders, a set of parents, an un—blinded man, and Jesus. We’re talking about a whole town of people. And because it is so long and drawn out it’s a little confusing where to settle on a sermon. I’m pulled here and then there and then back over here. And whenever that happens it’s always good for me to remember something that I learned about preaching and that is to ask the question, what is being taught here? What is the central message in this story? What's going on here?
 
Just before today’s story Jesus has a terrible confrontation with the religious authorities of his day inside the Temple. They try to stone him to death and basically they kicked him out of the Temple.. And today we have another story where someone else is kicked out of the Temple. Somehow Jesus has managed to escape the mob scene at the Temple and join up with him sauntering along, singing his song and he is asked a question as they pass a man born blind, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind?” Jesus answered the question: Neither the man nor his parents have sinned. This man’s blindness has nothing to do with anyone sinning. The disciples see a sinner where Jesus sees a non-sinner. And so Jesus takes it upon himself to perform a miracle that involves a mud-pack and washing with water. [I wonder if the saying "Here's to mud in your eye" has anything to do with this miracle]. And the man all of a sudden can see. Good so far. But then all kinds of chaos breaks loose. The neighbors come flying fiercely out of their houses in full force, in a paparazzi-like style. Reporters are all over this guy who makes it on the six-o’clock news. His picture gets plastered all over the front page of the local newspaper. I mean, WOW! Great! With a little spit, mud, and water he can see where once he could not. Wow! Big sensational news!

Not! The man gets taken to the religious authorities, thrown before the Board of Directors and they have a face off with him. Back and forth and asking this and asking that and going up one side of him and down the other. Checking every square inch of that miracle. It is at that point that everything about the miracle turns ugly. We find out what's really going on. We find out that the headline in the local paper doesn’t read, I Was Blind and Now I See! The headline reads, Jesus—Sinner—Does Work on the Sabbath. This very public miracle—the whole town knows about it—was performed on the Sabbath and that put the gatekeepers of the religion in a huge dilemma. Some synagogue leaders said, “If Jesus heals on the Sabbath our religion (by the way, the religion that has served our people all the way back to Moses and the Ten Commandments) says this so-called Messiah is a sinner. But other synagogue leaders said, “How can Jesus be a sinner if he can perform such miracles like this?” Our religion says he’s clearly a sinner. But what he does proves he is clearly no sinner. Sinner or no sinner? That was the split that Jesus caused over 2,000 years ago.
 
And the same thing is happening today. The church keeps splitting and splitting and re-spitting and splitting again. It’s what happens in the church.
 
But I wonder how church splitting happens in places like Dominion City. I wonder if it looks a lot different here. If it looked the same I think it would be just Bernice and me here on Sunday morning. Here's something to illustrate what I mean. The Valley Pastoral Charge Search Committee took me out for dinner last May and I felt very much welcomed. During the dinner conversation I said something like, “I am really grateful that I get to do ministry in this place.” And then Linda Steinert, bless her heart, asked me, “What is it about this place that you like?” And after a moment of panicking (I said it….now I gotta tell her what I mean), I said this, “In a great big city church if people don’t like something about their particular church, it’s easier for them to just up and go to another one. But people in smaller towns have a harder time just up and leaving. And so there’s more of a probability that you will find ways of living together. It’s like facing crosses all the time. In this small family church in Southern Manitoba I don’t think it’s easy living together faithfully in a Christian community called Dominion City United Church. There are many elderly members. Many suffer physical illness. Our bodies are often tired-out bodies. There has been two huge losses of loved ones in this community in one week. We hear of and see too many people who have to close down their family farms. In spite of this or maybe more correctly I need to say, it is  precisely because of this, this congregation knows in a deep way that you are stuck with one another, come what may. Look around you. Whether you like it or not this is the Christian Community you are called to live faithfully as disciples of Jesus Christ. I am going to stick my neck out and say that somehow you know deeply that it is really God who gathers this community together, and not you yourselves. This is where this church is pointed, towards oneness. And we are reminded of it many times when we sing songs like, We Are One As We Come, lots of others. We’re pointed there but ….we still have a ways to go. Jesus is at work around us calling all sorts of people to join the Christian Community, even those whom we ourselves label as sinners. Let’s be honest. Our congregation here is still very culturally and ethnically homogenous. And we are learning more and more that diversity is a necessary and crucial part of our well-being as a congregation. We have to be careful because if we turn our backs on those “different” people those “sinners” we turn our backs on Jesus Christ himself and we turn into religious authorities who kick Jesus out of our church. [joke about street person standing outside the church speaking to Jesus—if there is time].

Sinner or no sinner? Do we make the judgement call or do we allow God to do that? Do we kick them out? Do we shun them? Do we hold back our hospitality to them? Or do we work hard like we have already done with each other here for so long to spread the good news to all of God’s people? Jesus today, right now is calling sinners, people fresh out of the penitentiary, people who get pregnant in grade 7, people who are so lost in their lives that they think nothing of stealing a car, even when that car happens to be ours, obnoxious people with no manners.  People we call sinners.

 In two weeks on Good Friday in Green Ridge we will gather at the foot of the cross. The journey we are taking right now to that cross is not an easy one. Let us always never forget that Jesus was horribly tortured and killed for his good news message, because that  was a bad news message to many people in his day. It turns out that the central message for us today, the question we need to take with us this week is NOT, “Do you believe in Jesus Christ?” The central message for us today is, “Do you believe in this Jesus Christ. This one, who not only comforts us but also makes us so angry and uncomfortable that we feel like giving up and running right out of this church?  How do you feel about believing in this Jesus Christ? This one! The best of struggles my dear friends!