Lent 4A
John 9:1-41
There have
been a lot of things in the news lately that have made me really want an
explanation. A flight mysteriously disappears from the sky and now seems to be
somewhere in the Indian Ocean. A mudslide near Seattle covers, traps, and kills
dozens of people. Several decisions have been made in various circles that many
believe to have been misguided and even unethical. Day after day, something else
happens to make me shake my head and wonder, “Why this?”
I’m sure I’m not alone in this. We
humans crave answers and understanding. We have this need to ascribe reasons
for things. If we can give something a reason, can explain it, then we can put
it in a box and move on. This has long been a part of the human condition. It
is noteworthy, in our Gospel lesson today, that the introduction and actual
healing of the man born blind takes a mere 8 verses; the remaining 33 verses
are dedicated to the controversy surrounding the healing, and people trying to
figure out exactly what happened, who did it, why, and whether or not it was of
God. The story starts with a very simple explanation: clearly, either this man
sinned in his mother’s womb and was thus was born blind, or his parents sinned
and so his blindness is their punishment. Whichever the case, it is a neat and
tidy explanation for something that otherwise would be so tragic.
Don’t we just love to come up with
reasons for things? Following 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, the earthquake in Haiti
– people were so quick to blame it on this kind of person, or that person’s
actions, or this situation. We just can’t stand not understanding things.
And someone being born blind – this
seems very sad to us indeed. And so it is no wonder that Jesus’ disciples have
ascribed the reason for this man’s blindness to either his or his parents’ sin.
In their narrow perspective, that makes sense. Maybe it even makes sense to us
today. How often do you hear that someone’s poverty is their own fault? If they
would just get a job, or work harder, or be more responsible, then they could
be middle class like the rest of us. Their life situation is merely a result of
choices that they made.
But how much do we miss when we are so quick to offer reasons
and explanations? How often does our insistence to explain things reflect our
own blindness, our own unwillingness to fully see?
Stated a different way, how much do
we miss when we only see someone for his or her ailment? Sometimes, what you notice determines what you miss. It is remarkable in this story
that everyone knows this man as “the man who was born blind” – such that when
he has regained his sight, no one is even sure anymore that it is him! They see
him day after day, give him money and food, even worship with him, but when he
is no longer “the blind beggar” but has become “the seeing evangelist,”
confessing a faith in Jesus, they say, “No, that’s not him. It’s just someone
who looks like him.” They noticed his blindness, and missed his personhood. He
couldn’t possibly be anything other than what they have already pegged him as.
He couldn’t possibly be different, or more, than what they have already decided
to perceive. Eventually, their resistance to the possibility of this man having
undergone a transformation, and their inability to explain it, results in them
simply kicking the man out of the synagogue.
What we notice determines what we
miss. So what do we miss when we focus only on what is wrong – with others and
with ourselves? Might we miss seeing the mysterious work of God? That’s what
Jesus says. When his disciples ask who sinned, him or his parents, Jesus
responds, “Neither. He was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in
him.” But the people were too busy noticing his blindness to notice God’s work.
But Jesus’
way is a much more faithful and transformative way to understand what we would
dub as “disability” or “weakness.” It’s not an external reflection of an inward
sin. It’s not punishment for bad decisions. It’s not something to judge and put
into a box and move on from. Difference and brokenness and weakness are ways
for God to show God’s works.
I have been
reading Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories
That Heal – a wonderful book full of life-giving stories. It’s written by a
woman who is a doctor-turned-counselor, who works with people with cancer and
other life-threatening illnesses. There’s one story about a young man whom the
author says was the angriest person she ever met. He had lost a leg to cancer
in his 20s and as a result he lived in a deep, angry darkness. In one session
with him, she asked him to draw a picture of himself, and he drew an outline of
a vase with a huge crack down the middle. He angrily scribbled with a black
crayon, making that crack more and more prominent, tears of rage in his eyes.
In time, his anger began to change. He
started bringing in newspaper clippings to their sessions of stories about
people like him, young people who had lost a body part, always angry that no
one knew the first thing about it. “If only these people were nearby, I could
talk to them,” he said. She told him, “There are people like this nearby.” He
started visiting people in the hospital who had endured something similar to
him, just lending an ear and connecting with them and letting them tell their
stories. As he continued doing this, his anger began to fade. It was clear he
had found a purpose. One day, he visited with a young woman who, at age 21, had
just had a double mastectomy. Nothing he did or said could reach her; she was
in a deep depression. Finally, he noticed there was music playing, and he took
off his prosthetic leg and started dancing around the room, bouncing on his one
leg and snapping his fingers. The girl took notice, and burst out laughing. “Fella,”
she said, “if you can dance, maybe I can sing.” The two became friends, and
started visited people together. She encouraged him to go back to school to
study psychology and carry his work further. Eventually, the two got married.
Sometime
later he was back in the counselor’s office, a completely different man. Now
that he was in a much better place, the counselor showed him his self-portrait
from earlier, the vase with the deep black crack. He looked at it thoughtfully,
then said, “It isn’t finished.” He took a yellow crayon and drew thick lines radiated
from the crack, then handed it back to the counselor and explained, “This is
where the light comes through.”
What if
instead of searching for explanations for difference and brokenness and pain,
we saw them as places where the light shines through? “He was born blind so
that God’s works might be revealed in him,” Jesus explains. All of those
“whole” people around him, making judgments and offering explanations, and yet
it is the man born blind who was able to shine the light of Christ, to profess
his faith to the authorities, and to say to his Savior, “Lord, I believe.” Getting
to that place where we can not only see light shining through the cracks of
others, but also in ourselves, can be a long road, and when we finally do see
that light it can be blinding after so much darkness. But then our eyes adjust,
and the light that shines in the darkness, the one who came into the world so
that all might not perish but have eternal life, helps us to see the truth and
beauty in each person we encounter – whether they are like us or not, whether
they are rich or poor, blind or seeing, gay or straight, Christian or not,
black or white or other, liberal or conservative, healthy or sick… All of these
people have the potential to show us the light of Christ. All of these people,
and their unique situation and experiences, have the potential to have God’s
works revealed through them, if we have the eyes to see.
Let us pray…
God of light, we are sometimes so quick
to judge. When our judgment makes us blind and keeps us from truly seeing your
works revealed, grant us eyes to see your light shining in the darkness. In the
name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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