Sermon
3-30-14

Stacy and Clinton sneak into an unsuspecting person’s life at their workplace, while they are out with their friends or in some other creative way and surprise them announcing they are from “TLC’s What Not to Wear.” They then proceed to show this unsuspecting person video they have secretly taken of them over the last number of weeks as they went about their daily life of work, play, etc.

Friends, coworkers and family members of the poor unsuspecting person nominate them for this show to help them with their fashion sense. After viewing the video the person is faced with the decision to accept a $5,000 Visa card for a shopping spree in New York in exchange for their willingness to be on the show and to let Stacy and Clinton critique their current wardrobe and in the end throw away most if not all of what they currently own.

Once they agree to the terms of the show they are faced with critique of two or three specific outfits in their current wardrobe along with suggestions from Stacy and Clinton on alternatives complete with fashion tips along the way. Armed with these tips they head off to their shopping spree later joined by Stacy and Clinton. The final trip of their journey involves a visit to a hair stylist and a makeup artist.

If you have watched this show you know that often the transformation that happens during their time with Stacy and Clinton involves more than looks. Often the very way they look at themselves and others look at them is transformed through the process.

It is this kind of transformation that we find in our reading for this morning. After his encounter with Jesus nothing in the life of the formerly blind man is the same as it was before. He has received a new life – new birth. It’s exciting and yet, new birth isn’t always easy. The man who now sees can attest to that for upon receiving sight he is suddenly barraged with questions from neighbors and the religious authorities. How was he healed? Who did it? And even from some: Are you really the man we once knew as the blind beggar on the street corner? 

Transformation is good and necessary but sometimes it can be hard both for those who are being transformed and for those around them. Just as babies come kicking and screaming out of the safety of their mother’s wombs sometimes we come kicking and screaming out of the ways that have grown so dear to us… into a transformed life.

Transformed lives are God’s business. Where Jesus is… where God’s presence abides… lives are transformed. “Always being made new” is the tagline for the ELCA based on Paul’s words in his letter to the Corinthians: “So, if anyone is in Christ there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see everything has become new.”

Like this blind man God is transforming us both personally and as a congregation. We are “always being made new.” Unfortunately we are often too busy to notice the transformation - to see how God is at work in our lives and the lives of those around us. This morning I would like us to take some intentional time to do just that.

First I would like you to take some time to think about how God has… or is transforming you personally. How is God at work in your life through the people you encounter or things you experience?

Pause

Next I would like you to think about how God has or is transforming Augustana Lutheran Church. How is God at work in the life of this congregation through God’s people in this place or those we encounter?

Would anyone like to share what they “saw” in their lives or in the congregation during this intentional time?

Transformation is God’s business. As we enter the redevelopment process as a congregation taking intentional time notice the needs in the community around us our ministries and our very lives will be transformed. Like the man born blind we will not be the same. Who knows maybe our neighbors won’t even recognize us saying: “Are those the folks from that church on the corner?”  Amen.