Lent 4A
March 26, 2017
John 9
Grace to you and peace from God our
Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Some things
in faith cannot be explained; they can only be experienced.
The man who
was formerly blind could tell you that. Here is a man who was really just
minding his own business. He wasn’t seeking out Jesus, or any sort of healing,
for that matter. He was, if not content, at least accepting of his lot in life:
he had been born blind. Maybe it was his fault, maybe it was his parents’
fault, or maybe it just was. Whatever
the case, there he was: a man born blind, who sat by the road hoping for
handouts from strangers. One thing he knew: there was no use complaining about
it.
Then along
comes Jesus. He happens upon this man-born-blind, and his disciples immediately
try to find an explanation for this man’s experience. Surely his state had been
caused by something. Surely there was a nice, neat, understandable, theological
explanation for his situation: either this man sinned or his parents did, and that is why he was born blind.
I think we
can appreciate where the disciples are coming from. Don’t we want to understand
“why”? Who among us has not shaken his or her proverbial fist at God and asked,
“Why this, God? Why now??” Even if the question is not anguished, we still
would really like to understand why this world works the way it does.
This past week, we finished our
confirmation lesson a bit early, so we spent the last half hour doing what I
like to do at least once a year: a little game of “stump the pastor.” I allow
them to ask whatever questions they want about God and faith, and I do my best
to answer them. I am always fascinated to hear what their questions are.
Sometimes I have very clear answers for them. But often I resort to some version
of my dad’s favorite answer for unanswerable God-questions: “It’s a mystery.”
Whenever I gave them that answer, all those teen and pre-teen faces looked back
at me with a mix of frustration, resignation, and a touch of wonder, as they
tried to wrap their heads around the reality that when it comes down to it, God
and God’s ways cannot be explained.
Whether you
are a 1st century Jew or a 21st century middle-schooler,
it feels much more satisfying to have a real, concrete answer to help you make
sense of the world and its brokenness. We desperately want to see, to know, to understand. We don’t
want to be kept in the dark, in our spiritual blindness.
In the story
of the man born blind, those seeking answers don’t receive the sort of answers
they want – the sort that match up with their understanding of the world – but
they do receive some answers. Let’s look at three ways this story makes sense
of things that don’t make any sense.
The first
way is actually Jesus’ first answer to the disciples’ question about who sinned
that this man was born blind. Jesus answers simply, “No one sinned. He was born
blind so that God’s works might be revealed through him.” What a gorgeous light
this possibility shines on our brokenness! Like a vase that is cracked, but because
of that brokenness, we can see the light of a candle flickering inside, and
filling the cracks and the room with its light.
I remember sitting in my living room
after being diagnosed with cancer just one year into my call here. I was
incredibly frustrated, and lamenting to my dad, “Why, when I have such a
promising ministry before me, doing what God called me to do, would God slap me
with cancer right now?” In his wisdom, my dad responded, “So that you can have
such a promising ministry before you.” In other words, God would use even that
to make me stronger, wiser, and more equipped to serve. That’s what we see in
the story of the blind man: the brokenness of this guy who is judged and looked
down on by passers-by meets up with the love of Christ, and suddenly, his
brokenness is transformed into an opportunity to witness and to share his
story.
The second
way Jesus helps the disciples and us to make sense of what cannot be explained
is in his enigmatic closing line, offered in response to the Pharisees asking,
“Surely we are not blind, are we?” Jesus answers, “If you were blind, you would
not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.” At first
glance, this is a real head scratcher. But I think it is well explained by this
little bit of scripture that starts off our confession each week: “If we say we
have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. But if we
confess our sins, God who is faithful and just will forgive our sins and
cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” In other words, Jesus is using blindness
as a metaphor for an inability or an unwillingness to see our own sin. If we
say we can see just fine, that we know exactly what is going on (and, too
often, that whatever problem you are facing is definitely someone else’s
fault), then “we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.” Because
there is always more to see than what is on the surface. There is always more
to understand. Like when we see a man born blind and assume either he or his
parents sinned. Or, we look at someone living in poverty and assume it is a
consequence of their own bad choices. Or, someone says or does something we
don’t like, and we assume they are in the wrong, without considering why they
might have said or done what they did.
On the other
hand, Jesus says, if we acknowledge that we don’t always see everything
clearly, that indeed sometimes we are
blind, and confess that blindness to God, then, we might regain our sight.
That’s what Lent is all about, right? It is a time of examining those places in
our hearts that are not quite clean, times we have fallen short of the
Christian call to love and serve God and our neighbor – and then confessing
them, praying that God would create in us clean hearts. Lent is a time of
recognizing our own spiritual blindness, and asking that God would give us
sight.
The third
way to make sense of things we cannot understand is to recognize that sometimes
experience is far more valuable than explanations. I just love the simplicity
of the formerly blind man’s testimony. Everyone wants from him an explanation
of who did this and how it happened, and he responds, “I don’t know who he is.
One thing I do know is that though I was blind, now I see.” Plain and simple.
He has experienced the life-giving love and grace of God. He doesn’t know why
or how, just that he experienced it, and it is absolutely true.
Nadia Bolz-Weber talks about such an experience she had in seminary. She writes,
“Suddenly, in that moment, all I could think was: What I am doing? Seminary? Seriously? With a universe this vast and
unknowable, what are the odds that this story of Jesus is true? Come on, Nadia.
It’s a fairy tale. And then the very next moment I thought this: Except that throughout my life, I’ve
experienced it to be true.” She goes on, “I cannot pretend, as much as I
sometimes would like to, that I have not throughout my life experienced the
redeeming, destabilizing love of a surprising God. Even when my mind protests,
I still can’t deny my experiences. This thing is real to me. Sometimes I
experience God when someone speaks the truth to me, sometimes in the moment
when I admit I am wrong, sometimes in the loving of someone unlovable,
sometimes in the reconciliation that feels like it comes from somewhere outside
of myself, but almost always when I experience God it comes in the form of some
kind of death and resurrection.” She concludes, “I have only my confession –
confession of my own real brokenness and confession of my own real faith.”[1]
Sometimes it
is those experiences that are the only way to understand the mysterious ways of
God. Words and reason only go so far. But at its core, faith is a series of
stories, of experiences we have in which we were blind, but now we see, when we
were lost but now are found, when we were in the darkness of death, but now we
are alive. That is the story of Jesus. And it is a story of which we all are a
part.
I once was lost but now am found, was blind
but now I see.
Let
us pray… Mysterious God, we crave certainty
and answers. Help us to find certainty in the story of your love, and answers
in the profound ways we experience your life-giving love in our lives. Grant us
the courage to share those stories with the world. In the name of the Father
and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Photo credit: Jesus heals a man born blind by JESUS MAFA
| http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=48383, accessed 3/28/17 |
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