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Scripture:
1 Samuel 16: 1-13
Ephesians 5: 8-14
John 9: 1-41
Seeing is believing
As I have wrestled with the texts for this morning, one phrase kept rolling around
in my head. “Seeing is believing.” This seems such a simple phrase, and one which we
can all probably relate to. What we might fail to realize, however, is that much of what
we see and therefore believe is colored by our expectations, our experiences, and what we
already tend to believe. We see things a certain way because we have been taught to do
so. In effect, we tend to see what we want to see, or we see what we can understand
because of our cultural context. If I were to ask each of you to picture what snow looks
like, you could probably do so fairly easily. You’ve all seen it. All you need to do is look
outside right now. But now think about how you would describe snow to someone who
has never seen it before. Not so easy is it? We could describe it to one another, as wet, or
heavy, or melting and we would know what the other was talking about because we have
seen it for ourselves. We can put it into a framework of our experience and expectation.
In the passage that we heard from Samuel this morning, that’s precisely what
Samuel is trying to do – all that is happening around him is colored by what he has
known and what he expects to happen. Samuel knew Saul as king and he couldn’t really
get pas the idea that this was no longer God’s will. God basically tells Samuel to get over
it already. Look past what you have known and see what I am showing you. So Samuel
reluctantly goes to anoint the new king. When he arrives to find the new king, he looks
for what he knows and expects to find. He looks upon Eliab and sees the same
characteristics, the same outward appearance as his former king Saul. He believes that
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