March 15 2026: Trust in the Eternal Flow of God’s Love

Lent 4, March 15 2026, Sleeper, Awake — Illumination and the Courage to Be Seen

Sleeper, Awake — Illumination and the Courage to Be Seen

March 15, 2026

Rex McKee

I celebrated my 21^st birthday in 1969 with Linda and my good friend Canadian Beat Poet David Bromige who was poet in residence at the U, his wife Sherril Jaffe professor of Creative Writing. I remember a wonderful evening…..and most important to my life thereafter David and Sherril gifted me with my first Leonard Cohen album… I remember listening all night to his music and reading from his latest book of poetry, Flowers for Hitler.

The following was first read in 1970, Please Don’t pass me by….

 

 

I was walking in New York City and I brushed
Up against the man in front of me
I felt a cardboard placard on his back
And when we passed a streetlight
I could read it, it said:
“Please don’t pass me by – I am blind
But you can see –
I’ve been blinded totally – Please
Don’t pass me by”
I was walking along 7th Avenue
When I came to 14th Street
I saw on the corner curious
Mutilations of the human form
It was a, a school for handicapped people
And there were cripples
And people in wheelchairs and crutches
And it was snowing
And I got this sense that the
Whole city was singing this: Oh please, don’t pass me by

It is one of the most human prayers — even when Scripture does not say it aloud.

“Don’t pass me by.”

Beneath the roadside beggar, beneath the woman pressing through the crowd, beneath Zacchaeus in the tree, beneath every life reduced to a diagnosis instead of received as a person, lives this same prayer: don’t pass me by. Before theology, before doctrine, before moral interpretation, the Gospel begins with presence. A person stands there. Not an issue, not a category, not a debate — a human being.

We are trained, often unconsciously, to step around suffering. We learn to explain it quickly, so we do not have to engage with it. We name causes, assign judgement, rationalize, or move to solutions. We allow the judgmental quadrant of our Myers Briggs assessment to justify and control our responses.

Yet the cry of the Gospel interrupts our practiced distance. It asks first not for answers but for attention.

The prayer “don’t pass me by” is not only the cry of the wounded. It is also the prayer of the church — that we might not pass God by when God appears in unfamiliar form. The scandal of the incarnation is that God comes disguised as interruption. The holy arrives as inconvenience. The divine appears as a person we were about to ignore.

The church begins not when it solves suffering but when it stops and notices.

In the ancient church this story was proclaimed during the scrutinies, when catechumens prepared for baptism. The Scrutiny’s are Lenten rites in the catechumenate in which the community prays for those preparing for baptism, asking God to strengthen what is good and heal what is broken as they reflect on the Gospel stories of the Samaritan Woman at the Well (John 4), the Man Born Blind (John 9), and the Raising of Lazarus (John 11).

Catechumens are not presented as experts in faith, but as beginners, learners. They came not to demonstrate their knowledge but to experience illumination.

Paul writes, “Once you were darkness, now you are light in the Lord.” Not that we simply lived in darkness, but that we once moved through life without seeing clearly. In Scripture, darkness is not about skin or identity—it is about a world distorted by fear, illusion, and separation from God. It is the state of being asleep to God’s presence among us.

 

Baptism is not a cosmetic change. It is an awakening. It is not about becoming better behaved; it is about learning to see again. In baptism our vision begins to clear, and we discover that the light of Christ has been shining all along. It is perception healed.

Jesus kneels in the dust and makes mud. Creation begins again not in perfection but in wounded humanity. God does not repair from a distance; God re-creates from within. The same earth from which humanity was formed becomes the material of restoration. The miracle is earthy, tactile, embodied.

The man must walk blind to the water. Called, sent, washed, returned. The community watches someone move toward what he cannot yet see.

Before belief — trust.
Before comprehension — obedience.
Before sight — movement.

This is the scrutiny: not the church examining the candidate but Christ exposing how we see. The light reveals not only sin but vision. What we notice. What we ignore. Whom we consider real. Baptism heals the eyes of the heart before it settles the mind.

The miracle begins before the healing. It begins in trustful movement toward water we cannot yet understand. As Jesus said the water, I give will be an artesian spring within, gushing fountains of endless life.”

And when he sees, the real trouble begins.

Neighbors question him because his transformation unsettles their familiarity. Authorities interrogate him because clarity threatens order. Even his parents hesitate because truth can carry consequences. A healed person disrupts a stable explanation of the world.

 

Finally, he is expelled.

The miracle is not the problem — the testimony is: “I was blind, now I see.” A person who can name what has happened becomes difficult to manage. When visibility interrupts a system, resistance follows. Not always violently, but through anxiety, distancing, and exclusion.

A person who begins to see differently lives differently. And a community built on shared assumptions must decide whether to adapt or reject. The cost of illumination is often belonging.

Baptism has always carried this risk. A baptized person notices absence. Notices who is missing at the table. Notices who must remain silent for peace to be preserved. Sight becomes witness simply by existing. Public witness rarely begins as protest. It begins as honesty.

Light exposes simply by being present.

After he is cast out, Jesus finds him.

The Gospel’s tenderness lives here. The healing of sight was not the conclusion but the introduction. The point was never merely vision but relationship. The one who lost place in the community is located again by Christ.

“Do you believe?”
“Who is he?”
“You have seen him.”

For the first time the man experiences seeing and being seen simultaneously. Recognition flows in both directions. And the only possible response is worship — not argument, not certainty, but belonging.

Faith matures in encounter. The man moves from “the man called Jesus” to “Lord” not by explanation but by presence. Relationship clarifies what information cannot. The light that exposed him to conflict also leads him to communion.

Illumination without encounter would be unbearable. But Christ meets the expelled, and the one who loses place in society finds place in God. The Gospel reveals that exclusion is never the last word. Being found is.

The church learns its vocation here. To live as children of light is to refuse to pass others by. The church does not exist to manage belonging but to reveal it. Where people are rendered invisible, the community of baptism practices recognition.

This does not begin in heroism but in attention. We remain. We listen. We name what we see. Slowly, quietly, sight reshapes community. A people formed in the waters learn to live with open eyes.

The Scrutiny’s therefore belong not only to catechumens but to all of us. We are always being asked: what have you learned not to notice? What explanations protect you from encounter? Where might Christ already be waiting outside your expectations?

I imagine Jesus calling in Cohen’s voice….

You Know what my friends
I’m still out there on the corner
I’m with the freaks, I’m with the hunted
I’m with the maimed
I’m with the torn, I’m with the down
I’m with the poor come on now
please don’t pass me by

And, finally, Cohen’s come to Jesus Moment:

That’s why I gotta get down on my knees
Because I can’t make it by myself
I’m not by myself anymore, because
The man I was before, he was a tyrant
He was a slave he was in chains
He was broken and then he sang:

Oh please, don’t pass me by

 

Baptism forms a people who trust that truth and mercy are not enemies. Light exposes in order to heal. Visibility restores relationship. The church becomes a community of we who were blind and now can see; people transformed again and again, how not to pass one another by.

So to the catechumens — and to all of us renewing baptism:

Come to the water.
Allow Jesus to heal your blindness…
Speak the truth about what you have witnessed.
Stand beside those the world passes by…..

 

And when you are tired…. when your human instinct is to pass on by, the beggar on the corner, the immigrant in custody, the broken and frightened, hungry and homeless, when your soul is empty…   remember the words of Jerry Garcia…I am sure quoting Jesus….

Reach out your hand, if your cup be empty
If your cup is full, may it be again
Let it be known there is a fountain
That was not made by the hands of men

Sleeper, awake.

Come to the water
Rise from inherited blindness.
Rise from practiced distance.
Rise into recognition.

And The Light of Christ will shine upon you!

Amen.

(Jesus sculpture images from the Matthew 25 project in Cleveland)

10am Service