I was a perpetual bench sitter in high school.  I was always good enough to make the teams, but never really good enough to start.  So I watched most of the games from the sidelines.  And if the truth were told, I think I liked it there. Even though you couldn't effect the outcome of the game from there, your identity wasn't destroyed each time your team suffered a loss.  There was no such thing as personal failure from the bench.  Sure, you'd feel sorry as for the team, but it wasn't as if it was something I did that contributed to the loss (or the win, for that matter).    It was pretty safe, sitting there on the bench...

If you read today's gospel, you discover there's not much room for bench sitters...  The classic figures are the parents of the blind man, aren't they? When pressed by the Pharisees, instead of sticking up for their own son, they choose to stay on the bench.  "Ask him, he is of age..."  John tells us the reason for their choosing to stay on the bench - they could be expelled from the synagogue.  So, rather than risk that, (and it is a huge risk in a society where social status plays so much of a role) they remain on the sidelines, uninvolved. But perhaps the figures we can most learn from are that of the Pharisees and the blind man.   So, let's look at what John presents for us there, so as to learn how we are to make our walk of faith.  The blind man, who has spent his entire life on the bench, sidelined by his inability to see, gradually moves into a starting role.  The more the Pharisees press him, the more resolute he becomes as a player.  "The man called Jesus", 'a prophet'; 'a man from God'; and finally, "Lord" are the titles by which he addresses Jesus.  It is as if he senses he has the chance to make a difference, because what he knows grounds him to Jesus ever more and more.  "I was blind, but now I see."  It becomes the bedrock experience of faith for him.  He repeats it over and over again, each time, gaining new confidence, new strength. What this man did for me - it is enough to believe in.  It is enough to follow.  Once he accepts that truth as a starting point, he cannot but not be involved in life.  "Who is he, that I may believe in him?"  "He stands here in front of you."  "I do believe Lord..."

The Pharisees, on the other hand, move in the opposite direction.  - From key players to the sidelines.  - From the potential for faith to outright rejection. They refuse to see what the blind man wants them to acknowledge.  For if they admit that same rock that the blind man based his faith on - blind but now seeing - then they too, would have to believe.  But they won't.  They gradually turn away from what they have seen and known and deny the truth, because it will cost them too much to acknowledge it.   "You are a sinner... thus, we won't believe  you...".

For you and me this morning stands the choice of the blind man or of the Pharisees - to sit on the bench or to play in the game.  To let what we have seen and experienced make us active believers in the world.  And what might that look like?  How are we to live this week as people who were blind but now see?    Possibilities: 1) Remember - what have you known of God that calls you to believe - perhaps a foundational moment on retreat, perhaps a conversation with a friend, perhaps a time of prayer when you "SAW" God for who God was - let that become a bedrock upon which to act.  Let that moment bring you standing once more before the one who stood before the blind man, and find the space there to say once more: "Yes Lord, I do believe..." 2) What areas of life do you RESIST looking at?  Like the Pharisees - sometimes our worst blindness are the areas that we won't look at.  The church in the US and here in St. Louis are wrestling painfully these days with the areas of sexual abuse that we wouldn't look at before.  I believe we will be a better church because of this.  But it is something we were blind to, would not look at.  What do you resist seeing in your own life?  Perhaps selfishness?  The petty desire to have things my way? 

It's easy to sit on the bench of life - to not be responsible for victory or loss.  But it is not the way of the believer.  In that chilling last line - Jesus tells us that we will either see or be blind, participants in faith or spectators.  The latter is the way of death.  The former, is the way to life eternal...