Heresy Checks - John 9:1-41
We haven’t talked about good, old-fashioned heresy in a while. And I thought to myself this week, “You know what the people of God are probably craving right now? A sermon about heresy.” Heresy, simply put, is belief that runs contrary to the Church’s teaching, and Christians have always had to guard against it. Sometimes the false stuff is easy to spot. Take the case of someone starting a religion for ulterior motives. L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, once joked that if you want to make a lot of money, you should start a religion. When heresy is that obvious, it’s not hard to spot.
But most of the time, heresy is far less obvious, and that’s what makes it dangerous. Like Christians throughout history, we can slip into it without even realizing it. As one guard against that, Jason and I read each other’s sermons before we preach them, which we affectionately call the heresy check. Hopefully that means you’re relatively safe from harm from this pulpit.
Still, heresy is thriving all around us, as it always has. Christian nationalism is one example. It’s growing quickly in popularity, even though Jesus was crystal clear. The line between devotion to earthly empires and worship of God should never be blurred. And there are smaller heresies too, especially on social media. The other day I came across an influencer promising good things to anyone who learns to manifest what they want, especially if you purchase their step-by-step guide. It sounded like a rebranded version of the prosperity gospel. There is no shortage of false prophets vying for our religious attention. Which is why Christians have always tried to keep our guard up, staying close to the Scriptures and watching for the ways false religion sneaks in.
Which is why I find myself somewhat sympathetic toward the Pharisees in today’s Gospel. They are the guardians of tradition, an important line of defense against heresy. So when a man who was born blind is suddenly healed, they have questions. They want to know who healed him, and how such a thing could happen on the Sabbath, when it was forbidden. And they certainly want to know how this formerly blind man suddenly thinks he can lecture the religious authorities about whether this Son of Man is from God or not. The Pharisees in this text often get a bad rap for refusing to believe the miracle. But in their own way, they are doing careful and faithful work, trying to discern what is true and what is false.
The healing of the man born blind is a beautiful story. We are invited to linger over the details: the large cast of characters, the careful dialogue, the strange intimacy of mud pressed onto a man’s eyes, and the man’s gradual awakening to who Jesus really is. As the story unfolds, he moves from not knowing who healed him to boldly confessing faith in Jesus. It is such a rich story that a preacher, or a listener, could wander down any number of fruitful paths to explore.
What I hear in this story is a particular word for those of us who try to keep our guard up—which, as we’ve covered, is often a good and faithful thing to do. Here’s the problem: we can become so skilled at weeding out what is false that we also throw out what is good and true. Barbara Brown Taylor names the challenge in this story this way: we worry, she says, about the danger of believing the wrong thing. But there is also a danger of not believing the right thing.
The Pharisees’ problem is not ignorance, it’s certainty. They already know some things for sure: that God would not heal on the Sabbath, that sinners cannot perform signs, that Jesus cannot possibly be from God. Sometimes the beliefs that once helped us understand God can become the very things that keep us from recognizing God. Like the Pharisees, for all of our sophistication, we can miss God’s handiwork right in front of us.
Hearing a warning about missing what God is doing might sound like a discouraging spiritual test. What if we don’t believe the right thing? What if we miss the truth right in front of us? Fortunately for us, God does not leave us in that place, trying to figure it all out on our own.
Did you notice that we are given the 23rd psalm today? It is a perfect companion to the Gospel story: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” We are meant to hear echoes of that shepherd imagery in John’s Gospel. After the man’s confrontation with the Pharisees, Jesus does something remarkable. When the authorities cast the man out, Jesus comes looking for him. Like a shepherd searching for a sheep driven from the flock, Jesus seeks him out and brings him back—not just healed, but now also as a disciple. Whatever we’re trying to figure out about God, one thing we know - our God is a God who seeks out the lost, including each one of us.
That may be the most hopeful part of this story. It teaches us that faith is not some test we must pass by getting belief exactly right. Faith is not about having perfect vision. Faith is about being found.
If you happen to feel as though your faith is imperfect or inconsistent, notice too that the man born blind does not come to understand everything about Jesus all at once. His vision unfolds slowly, one step at a time. First he knows only the name of the man who healed him. Then he wonders if he might be a prophet. Eventually he comes to see what he could not see before: that the one standing before him is the Son of Man. The turning point in the story is not the man finding Jesus. It is Jesus finding him. That’s how the Good Shepherd works. When we are confused, when we are wrong, when we have been pushed out or lost our way, Christ comes looking for us. He finds us, calls us by name, and leads us back to all that is true and good.
I still think we need to be on our guard against all the false prophets out there. People can do so much harm in the name of the Church. But let’s not get so sophisticated in our heresy checks that we lose our ability to see God at work. Because sometimes God is opening our eyes to something we haven’t seen before.