"I Was Blind, but Now I See (Lent 4)"
Pastor Susan Langhauser
Sunday, April 03, 2011
John 9:1-41
Grace and peace to you from God the Creator, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Well here we already four weeks into Lent. There are four candles lighted on our Lenten cross and it is time for a quick review: in the first week, our focal point was Jesus in the wilderness. The second and third week we met two people – Nicodemus and the woman at the well. What a contrast! Nicodemus. A Jewish man of status, in the dark of night, seeking wisdom, fraught with fear – who goes away confused. The Woman at the Well. A Gentile woman who’s outcast, in the glare of noon, seeking water, fraught with shame – and she goes away with renewed faith! And now, the fourth week, we meet the man blind since birth. Now, Nicodemus has name, the woman has a place, the well. But this man has only an affliction as his identity, “the man born blind.” So our stories seem to spread out like the circles from a pebble dropped in water - from Jesus and his experience in the wilderness, to the human family, male and female, to today’s man who stands in for the whole church. For although these stories have other themes, they are also parables – and today’s parable is a story about discipleship. Jesus encounters and brings sight to the blind man. (Did you notice that the man never sees him? He was blind, then covered with mud, and once he washed and could see, Jesus was gone.) So the man is left to tell his story of his encounter with God – to witness and testify - until he and Jesus meet face to face. That’s sort of our story, too, isn’t it? We, too, have been saved by a Jesus we have never seen, and left to tell our story about that encounter over and over again, until we meet Jesus face to face.
And yet the bulk of the story in John’s gospel is not about the discipleship, it’s about the age old question: “Who sinned?” There is a legend about a time when all the healed blind men of the gospels met each other. At first they were all excited about the miracle of sight that Jesus had given them, but as they talked about how Jesus had healed them, they began to discover some significant differences. For some, the healing came with simply a touch from Jesus (Mt 9:29; 20:34). Another proudly boasted that he had enough faith so that Jesus didn't have to touch him to perform the miracle (Mk 10:52). Another meekly exclaimed that Jesus not only touched him twice, but also "spit on his eyes" in order for him to see clearly (Mk 8:23). The final one really felt embarrassed to admit that even though a touch wasn't part of his healing, Jesus' "spit" wasn't enough. Jesus had mixed his saliva with dirt and put the mud on his eyes and then told him to go and wash in some pool of water (Jn 9:6-7). Since each one thought his healing was normal and better than the others, they divided into spittites and non-spittites; muddites and non-muddites; touchites and non-touchites. And “denominations” were born.
As amusing as that story is, it does illustrate how people react. Finding fault seems to be a basic human instinct. Maybe it’s a coping mechanism, to understand, or explain, or to excuse our part in it – to blame someone else and protect ourselves. Perhaps what we need is a change in our point of view. After all, aren’t parables supposed to be about God? That reminds me of a time when I was a kid and my sister and I had braces. Periodically we would visit the orthodontist, and then Mom would take us shopping. We’d go downtown to a real department store that had a tea room to have lunch after the dentist. On one particular day, my sister and I were bickering more than usual. Finally, exasperated, my Mom looked up to the heavens, sighed, and said, “Isn’t that a lovely chandelier?” (in other words, “let’s change the subject.”) So it was that whenever anyone in our family would begin to bicker too much or go down a road with conversation that Mom deemed inappropriate, someone would lean back and sigh, saying, “Isn’t that a lovely chandelier?”
How would our lives change, how would the WORLD change if we took this story as an example – changed the subject - and acted, as if no one sinned? No one is the cause of this. No one is the subject, here—except God, and what God might do in this situation. For writer Anna Carter Florence, this changes everything. Whose fault is it that the baseball went through the window; that this couple cannot conceive a child; that this marriage ended; that this country is devastated by a natural disaster? Whose fault is it? No one’s fault. No one is the subject, here—except God, and what God might do in this situation. (So heads up you Pharisees,) what do you think God is doing here? And how can we be a part of it?
It’s a good instinct, changing the subject. And it was a fair question for the disciples to ask their Rabbi, given that in the day “blindness = sickness = sin = human fault.” Were the 12 open to the possibility that there might be a new theological equation, a different answer, here? Well Jesus as much as tells them, “No blame. No fault - just an opportunity for God to be seen and known.”
You know, we Lutherans are sitting here because of just that theology. We call it grace, and it means we have received God’s love without merit or worth. That’s the part we love about grace. But are we ever “blind” and get in the way of grace? Sometimes we do, whether we know it or not. Like the little church that had a visitor: Following the service he approached an official looking guy and asked him, "When do they do it?" "Do what?" was the reply. "The stuff." "What stuff?" To which he replied, "The stuff in the Bible." "What do you mean?" "You know - the healing of the sick, the multiplying of the loaves and fish, feeding the hungry, giving sight to the blind, that stuff." Then came the answer, "Oh, we don't do that, we believe in it, and we pray about it, but we don't do it." As disciples, we don’t just think about or talk about our faith. At some point we have to step up, and DO GRACE.
Do you hear the echoes of Creation in this story? How God formed Adam from the dust of the ground, and now Jesus takes that same dust to do a little update. Can you see our font as children are washed in the waters of new life like the man washed in the pool of Siloam? And do you hear that the word Siloam means, “sent?”
What did the man KNOW for sure? What was his “gospel of grace?” This man can see for the first time in his life! He doesn’t care if Jesus did the right thing for the wrong reasons or the wrong thing for the right reasons. In fact, this guy doesn’t give a fig about sin…he cares about what’s happened to HIM. And if being able to see is sin, well…you can understand how he’d still be following Jesus.
What do you KNOW for sure about God? What blindness are you willing to let go of, so that you can bring God in, or back, to places where folks do not KNOW the God we love? Is it possible, that God might still work miracles on a Sabbath, or through a sinner, or outside of the church (or for that matter, INSIDE of the church?) Is it possible that the untrained, unordained, unestablished among us might have something to teach us about God? Is it possible that what folks think they KNOW about God is not about God at all, but about some age-old rules that even God doesn’t recognize? Let me give you an example.
Last week I was called out by the Overland Park Police Department, where I volunteer as a chaplain. In the middle of the night I arrived at the home of a man who had died suddenly, and met his wife, who was in shock and understandably distraught. My first question to her as we stood outside in the dark and cold of that night was, “Do you have a faith community?” “No,” she said, and began to apologize, to make excuses for not having a church. “No, no,” I said, “I just wanted to know if there was someone we could call for support for you and your family.” A bit later, as we waited for her sons to arrive and take her home with them, I asked her, “Was your husband a man of faith?” “Well, no,” she said, and again apologized, recounting the litany of reasons for not being part of the church. All I wanted to know was how to respond to his passing, and how to be helpful to her and the family. Finally, many hours later as she sat in the detective’s car and the coroner’s van pulled up to the driveway, I asked her, “Would you like me to pray over him, as they take him from the house?” Tears, from the woman with no faith and no church. “Yes, please,” she said, “That would be wonderful.”
God gives us grace for the “world of hurt” outside those doors. Come to think of it, for the world of hurt inside these doors as well. So isn’t it about time that we started DOING more of the work that God sets right in front of us every day? My prayer for you for this coming week is that God might open all of our eyes to just that one opportunity for you to touch the eyes of a child of God - who is waiting - for you. Because we too, were blind - but now we see. Amazing. Amen.
Thanks to Brian Stoffregen for the Legend of the Blind Men; to Anna Carter Florence, Wiley Stephens and Barbara Brown Taylor for ideas that informed this sermon.