Rev. Dr. James Goodlet…A Love That Changes You

Sunday Worship - FPC LaGrange - March 22nd, 2026

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SPEAKER_00 0:03

Well, we're glad to have you. And nothing says welcome in the South like a like a good old casserole, right? Chapter 9. Let's talk a little bit about chapter 9, about what we read earlier. There's a lot happening. And and truth be told, if we were doing it right, we would have read the whole chapter. That's the thing about John. The chapters are long, they are dense, and if we had read the whole chapter, it would have probably taken a solid 10 to 15 minutes. So we pick portions of it. And there's a lot going on, and even just what we chose. First thing being, can you imagine in a post-COVID reality, if Jesus had tried to do what he did in today's scripture? I mean, I know all the way through 2019, people were spitting on mud and covering eyes and all that kind of stuff. Very commonplace in modern medicine. But after 2020 hit, no more of that. When somebody blows candles out on a birthday cake, I shudder. And we had two birthdays in our family this week. 2020 really is the gift that keeps on giving. There's also this there's the inescapable reality that people in that day and time they would often ascribe meaning or purpose to someone's condition. Meaning, I don't know if you caught it, but this man was born blind, and immediately his disciples thought, well, something must have happened to cause this. Either he sinned or his parents sinned. We're going to ask Jesus about this. Okay, Jesus, you see this guy, he's blind. Why? Whose fault is it? Is it his or somebody closely connected to him? And we don't necessarily, we might not think that this is how we approach these kinds of conditions in this current day and age, but if you think about it actually, it still does happen. I went to Haiti a number of years ago while I was serving in Tuscaloosa, took a group of college students down there. One of the places where we stayed is a place called Wings of Hope. When children of various developmental and cognitive and physical challenges, they were placed in this home, Wings of Hope, because they had been displaced from their homes. Well, there are various reasons for this. Some of them were placed there because their families could not support them, could not financially support to care for them, but others were placed there because they had been left out on their streets because of a belief that was actually often fused with Christianity, that these children had been inflicted with some sort of malady due to a demonic presence. That's why they were the way they were, according to some. And that may be difficult for us here in the states to believe. It may feel really far removed from our own context. But again, I would say, hold on just a second, just a second. How many times have we heard it said, even around here in our own lives or in the popular cultural ether, that something happened somewhere due to some sort of preordained divine plan. As if, say, a hurricane was inflicted upon an entire region due to the so-called evils of that place. I have heard very popular Christians say as much. Or I've heard it said that someone was involved in a fatal car accident as an extension of God's will. People, be they Jesus' disciples or us, tend to rationalize the unexplainable by linking those actions to divine will or divine purpose. I'm not really entirely sure that's that's fair to God. I'm not even sure it's accurate. It could just be that people are born blind because that's what happens to the body sometimes, and not necessarily because anything's wrong with them, or that they've done anything wrong. And it could be that hurricanes happen and they land at a certain place because the conditions were just right. And it could be that car accidents happen due to human error or mechanical malfunction or any number of other factors that I'm not sure have anything to do with God's so-called will. Other than the fact, and it is a fact, that God is with us in the hurricane. And God is with us in the tragedy. God will never leave us. What I really want to talk about here in this particular passage, that being said, is Jesus' proclivity to change lives. Or reorienting the way we experience the world, even in the face of tremendous adversity and despair. I want to ask you a question. But when when Jesus and his disciples arrived on the scene in today's story, and they spotted this man, what did what was said? What did you hear them say? You can answer. What did you hear them say? The disciples. Say that again. Why is he blind? Then, good, thank you. And then what happens after that? What did they say? Why is he blind, Jesus? Was it because he sinned? Or was it because his parents sinned? Why is he blind? Was it because he sinned, or was it because his parents sinned? What did they not do or say? The disciples did not do or say something very, very critical. They didn't kneel down and say, What can we do for you? They didn't ask him, What is your real need? How can we minister to you? Instead, they point and use him as an object lesson. Why is he blind? Whose fault is it? With the irony of that being that the disciples themselves are blind to what his needs were. And if you read on in chapter nine, it continues. People try to figure out how can he see again? What happened? Who do we point to for all of this? They don't care about the fact that his life has been changed. They want to know how, they want to know why. They even later on in this in the in the chapter, they drive him away. They don't care about the person. They don't care about the need. The only person that understands the profundity of what happened to this man who was born blind was the man himself and Jesus. Everybody else blind to what he needed. And it's caused me to wonder, as I've been reflecting on John chapter 9, if we do, if we do the same thing. If we miss the life-changing power and potential of Jesus, if we miss witnessing the world the way he sees it and experiencing the world through his eyes, of seeing the people he sees. If we are too busy trying to figure out the hows and the whys and the what's and all that kind of stuff, that we miss the need right in front of us. If we miss the potential of being a changing and changed church and a changing and a changed people rather than humdrum disciples who use others as vessels for object lessons. And let me say this. And it's not love your neighbor. You want to know what the sentence is? Here's what it is. For our work, in accordance with Sir Robert's rules of order, it is important. But it is not the Bible. It's procedure and administration. And you have to have that or hear it. But it cannot be the sole determinant of what we do, lest we become a bunch of disciples who point to a person born blind and ask, wonder what happened to that guy, instead of kneeling down and washing his feet. Jesus cut through the red tape and administered to people's real needs instead of allowing the red tape of administration to blind us from their need. He got his hands dirty. He spat in his hand and he made mud. He put it on people's eyes and he changed lives while fundamentally reorienting the way people, including his own disciples, changed and viewed the world. And it begs the question then, well then what does this actually look like, James? Are we gonna take the book of order and Robert's rules and throw them out to the bonfire and watch them burn? Well, I don't really want you to look up the section that is entitled How to Terminate a Call with a Pastor and apply that to me. But I will say this: that as long as we spend hours upon hours talking about addressing someone's need and calling a committee and then calling a task force as an extension of that committee that then acknowledges the need's existence, and then we hypothesize as to why that need exists in the first place, as long as we do that without also putting our hands in the dirt and ministering to the actual need, then we will be no better than the disciples and the Jewish leaders in this story, and nothing will ever change. No one will change, including ourselves. And I will tell you that if that is the case, then nobody will find the church or the savior around whom we center our very lives compelling. We'll be nothing more than empty thoughts and prattling prayers. But if we can take those conversations and those committee meetings and those task forces, and if we can actually turn those conversations away from procedural motions and into tangible action that actually ministers to the needs of the unseen and the unheard and the blind and the deaf and everybody who is marginalized in our existence, then that I will tell you is when people will start paying attention to the church. They will start paying attention to the particularity of a church's potential to change the world and see what we can accomplish together with a love that changes us and you. Aside from being overly politically engaged, aside from an obsession over individualized salvations and shallow theologies pinning all of life's ills on God's so-called plans. But while that might be problematic, I see it as an opportunity to reframe that perspective toward an ideology and a theology centered around changing lives. And we're doing that already here. Wednesday mornings, every week, faithfully, the DeSell folks are meeting with neighbors in need. And Thursday mornings, we serve hundreds upon hundreds of people who need just bread to eat. And we have a green team that is trying to figure out ways we can better steward the resources we have been given on this earth. And we have a partnership with Bertha Weathersby Elementary. We prayed for a child who had a significant tragedy in his life recently. And we have a Groundspring Teacher Housing Initiative. It's the second one in the country for early childhood education teachers. And not coincidentally, when we launched Groundspring, that was the most social media engagement that we got of anything else we've ever done. You want to know why? Because people find that compelling. They find a church that's rolling up their sleeves and doing that kind of work compelling, and we have to keep going. We have to continue discerning just how Jesus is calling us to rub our hands together, make mud, and put it on the eyes of the world so we can change lives in this community and recognize the needs of those like the man in this story and not merely call a committee meeting about it. We have to address the need in ways that may not make first, make, may not make sense at first glance, because I can tell you nobody had ever healed a man by putting mud on his eyes. But that doesn't mean it didn't work. And so my question for us this day is this who are we going to be moving forward? Are we just going to point to the man born blind and ask questions about why and how? Or are we gonna get our hands dirty? Even if other people scoff. Even if other people ask questions.