Lent 4B
March 19, 2023
John 9:1-41
INTRODUCTION
When Israel first formed as a nation, they had God as their king. But this wasn’t enough for the Israelites, and they begged God for a king like the other nations. Finally, God gave in and lifted up Saul. Saul was a good-looking dude, a strong military leader, and a decent king, at least at first, but eventually, he blew it and had to go. That is where today’s first reading drops us: Israel is still grieving Saul, and can’t imagine who could fill his shoes. So, God sends the prophet Samuel, the guy who had found Saul, to the home of Jesse, whose got a bunch of strapping sons, among whom will be the next king of Israel. Against all odds, the son God had in mind was young David, the shepherd boy. David would go on to be one of the (if not THE) most important king of Israel. (Jesus, you’ll remember, is a descendant of King David!)
Today’s Gospel throws us deeply into our Lenten questions theme – in particular, highlighting our human need to know things, and understand things. In this dynamic conversation, there are questions a-plenty, but most of them seek to figure out what exactly happened. Yet the most compelling question of all comes at the end, when the man born blind asks Jesus, “Who is the Son of Man… so that I might believe in him.” Sometimes, we must put aside our desire to know and understand things for certain, in favor of simply experiencing the love and grace of Jesus.
As you listen, think of when you have experienced faith, beyond a cognitive understanding, and how God’s work was revealed through that. Let’s listen.
[READ]
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
This week, I was a part of a conversation with some local Lutheran clergy about evil, demons, and how or whether these things show up in the world. The presenter was a Lutheran pastor in Alberta, Canada, who has done a lot of study in this area. He has had a single experience performing an exorcism, which he said was plenty for a lifetime, and he described the experience for us. Lutherans don’t talk much about these things, a point that was brought up in the conversation. Lutherans tend to be more rational in their approach to faith, and approach these more sensational aspects of life and faith with caution and often skepticism. We’ll ask the questions, and try to be open-minded, but are more hesitant to get fully on board until we can see something for ourselves.
As this group of Lutheran clergy grappled with this mysterious and weird topic, asking at times incredulous questions, I couldn’t help but think about today’s Gospel reading. Here we encounter not evil, but the opposite: a dramatic revelation of God’s work, as Jesus calls it – and predictably, even though they had the cold, hard evidence before them, the witnesses have a hard time accepting it as something beyond their understanding. Surely there must have been a spiritual cause for the blindness, and an explanation for the fact that he now sees. Back and forth, they go over what is known, and try to figure out the pieces that are unknown. They seek to understand in a cognitive way – a feeling we know all too well! In many ways, we still approach faith like this!
And yet, when we are so focused on knowing things, we miss that so much of faith is about relationship, and experience, and trusting that while God and God’s ways are mysterious, they are no less real.
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 Jesus’ first answer to the disciples’ question about who sinned, that this man was born blind. Jesus answers simply, “Sin is not the cause here. 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 crack, 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 ministry. 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 – why would God slap me with a cancer diagnosis right now?” In his wisdom, my father responded, “So that you can have such a promising ministry before you.” In other words, God would use even this to make me a stronger, wiser, and more equipped servant. 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 people in the story 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 a bit of scripture, 1st John chapter 1, that often 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 here 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 must have 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 spiritually blind, and confess that blindness to God, then, we might regain some 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, times when we have been blind – 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.
Pastor 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.” (from Pastrix)
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.
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.
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