3 April 2011

“Faces of faith – Jesus and the man born blind”
John 9:1-41
4 Lent A
3 April 2011


We have spent much time in this season of Lent getting to know people … faces of faith … unforgettable characters along Jesus’ way of and to the Cross.
We’ve had increasing time – each week – to spend with them … the Gospel readings each succeeding Sunday have grown longer and longer … from a mere 11 verses four Sundays ago … to an entire chapter, 41 verses in all, today.
And yet … though you might think, given the length of these readings, these stories, that we would be becoming better acquainted with these Lenten companions … as we have with Nicodemus, and the woman at the well … today, certainly, we do not.
For the story of the man born blind, is so little about this man, himself … he’s another character, lost in his darkness, brought into the light by Jesus … but the bulk of this story, it’s not about him.
It’s about his neighbors, about the Pharisees, about the man’s parents … anyone, everyone else … though the man who was blind, who is healed by Jesus in the beginning of this story, appears all the way through it, we hear very little from him, about himself. The conversation aimed at him, it’s all about his being bullied, cornered, into making a statement which those others want to hear about how they are affected by what’s happened, rather than, how the blind man himself feels now that he’s been healed.
It’s a selfish tale, to be sure. Selfish, self centered, and spinning around and around the two people at the center of it … rather than focusing on them.
This is also a fearful tale, which should give it some real traction among its hearers today, we who live in the most fear-filled of times, fear coming at us from all directions, political, economic, social, natural disasters.
And yet … the two people at this story’s center … the blind man, and Jesus … they are like the eye of the storm …they are calm, collected, not anxious, not fearful, nor breeding anxiety in and among those around them. Which serves to make their hearers even more anxious and resentful.
This is the curious way of what people who work with and analyze human systems … what they call “the non anxious presence.” In any organization or human gathering, the result, the outcome, of one person who remains calm, while controversy and chaos spin all around them, is the same. And this “works” in virtually any situation, where there is conflict … family, school, job, and yes, church. Especially, the church.
The “non-anxious presence” remains calm, cool and together … not disconnected or aloof, but listening and caring … they just do not become anxious … despite the anxious cries of those around him or her, others trying to share their own anxiety, fear, troubled natures. Eventually, the majority of those around them also take on this calm, collected nature … while the real sources of anxiety in the system … are shown in the true light of what they’re doing … likely, becoming more anxious, more fearful in the process … but now the system … the family, the company, the church congregation … is strong enough to resist them, so they won’t do damage anymore.
This is what’s known as “making the system healthy.”
Unfortunately, in our Gospel story today, we don’t see health restored to the whole system … though we assume that some who heard and saw what was going on here, took in the truth of what was going on, and told that story to still others … so that the Word about Jesus continued to spread.
What we do see is health, wholeness, healing, light shining into his darkness, coming to the blind man, in so many ways … and this story, bookending if you will around Jesus’ fervent hope, desire, that what he would do in this encounter would glorify God.
We begin … in the darkness.
At the start of the story, everyone’s in the dark, except Jesus. The disciples and Jesus are walking along, and they see this blind beggar. The disciples, seeing a moment in which they might sound as smart as their rabbi, able to engage him on a theological level, ask Jesus the standard theological question in such circumstances, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
It’s the theological question of the self-justifying … when something bad is encountered … we hear of someone who had terrible misfortune befall them … accident … natural disaster … illness … death … and we must search for a cause.
We humans must search for a cause. Why did this happen?
Sometimes, there may be some nobility associated with this causality quest … a rightful investigation so that this won’t happen again. That is the place of science … the non-anxious presence, if you will, in the investigative process. The NTSB comes out to comb through the airplane crash site and find the “black boxes.” Medical researchers determine this chemical additive or that environmental factor contributes to a rise in cancer rates.
But then … the human side weighs in … and self-justification is the end and goal. Well, she smoked, so of course she got cancer … good thing I don’t smoke.
Did you ever see how he ate? It’s no wonder he died of a heart attack. Good thing I eat better than that.
At times this search for self-justification … building up oneself while tearing down another … becomes downright harmful. And of course we’ve seen this all too frequently … as purported “churches,” TV preachers and political loudmouths all try to explain terrorism, natural disasters, radiation leaks and the like as direct results of equal rights for all, loose morality in the media, liberal politics, “not following God’s word in the Ten Commandments.”
This line of thinking certainly shows up in the words of the disciples here … trying to pin the sin on the sinner … “who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Somehow, some way, there must be a cause, a reason, for this man’s blindness. The great religious minds of that time said that physical or mental defect … illness, handicap … was caused by sin, either that of the one affected, or their parents.
You can see we haven’t come too far in two thousand years … have we?
But Jesus … THE non-anxious presence … he won’t have any of it.
Even our English translation … the New Revised Standard Version … needs to, must enter this Hobson’s choice … putting forth Jesus’ words here as “Jesus answered, ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.’”
There’s just one problem with that translation. It’s not what Jesus says.
The original Greek of this text nowhere includes the words, “he was born blind.” That’s the anxiety of the translators, trying to keep a shred of self-justification present, even in Jesus’ words.
So what does Jesus really say?
“Neither this one sinned nor his parents, but that the works of God might be revealed – shown – made clear in and through him.”
Jesus refuses to enter the self-justification, pin-the-blame-on-the–sinner-so-I-can-feel-better-about-myself game.
He also refuses to speculate as to why this man was born blind.
The text translation seems to go a third way … like God caused this man to be born blind so that God’s glory might be made manifest in the healing.
But this is also bad theology. Who wants a God who willy nilly makes people sick, or blind, or lame, just so he can be glorified in their healing? A manipulative controlling, capricious God such as this … would only instill fear and trembling in me, not awe, not reverence, not love. And certainly no willingness to be in relationship with him. I would guess it would be the same for you.
But Jesus destroys this falsehood about God as well … not with words, but with silence.
“Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
Jesus’ answer is … silence. He … the blind man … was just born that way … he is. He just is. In the vernacular, it’s as if Jesus says, “Hey, _______ happens” (you fill in the blank). Sin and suffering is an integral part of what life in this world is all about. If you try to separate it out it’s like peeling an onion, all you’re left with is shards and tears. But I – Jesus – I come so that there might be – will be – a different outcome.
Jesus says that this man’s illness will be changed, so that the result will be God’s work and God’s glory, shining forth, like bright Sonlight into the darkness of human sin and suffering, through this man who had been blind.
And sure enough … by verse seven, the man is healed.
So verses 8 through 37 deal with all the anxiety that this causes … first with the man’s neighbors and friends (Who did this? Where is he?) to the Pharisees (this couldn’t possibly have happened in this way, because we say it couldn’t possibly have happened in this way) to even the man’s parents (if we say that he sees now, and that we believe him when he says that Jesus did it, we might get kicked out of the synagogue … so we’ll just say nothing).
But they’re all blind. Blind to their own anxiety and their fear. So when the religious leaders call the man before them a second time to explain himself … they think they’re going to get him to re-enter their darkness by ordering him to “Give glory to God.”
He does “Give glory to God” … as Jesus predicts he will – for, remember, that’s what his healing is all about … but he does it by reflecting Jesus’ light and love into these anxiety-ridden, fearful lives … as they go deeper and deeper into the darkness … neighbors, friends, religious leaders … this man, who had been blind, truly sees the light and love of Jesus.
And so by the end of the story, when he says to Jesus, “Lord, I believe,” the circle is complete … indeed, God’s work of faith and hope and love have been revealed in him, so that he becomes a “little Christ” himself, to and for the sake of the world.
His is a face, a life of faith, for us to reflect as well.
For we, too, live in times of great anxiety and fear. Fear is all around us, fear is what is used to motivate us, from corporations, politicians of any and all stripes, religious leaders, colleagues, family and friends. Fear fills our world, and sucks the light and life right out of it, and us, bringing more and more darkness.
So when we hear this story … let it be to us a wakeup call and a warning … a wakeup call to see the people and hear their voices of anxiety and fear around us … a warning that these people, their voices, are all too willing to suck us into the blame game … whether you want to call it religious prejudice or racial profiling or economic or churchly fearmongering …
… this word, Jesus’ word to us here, is to walk away from their darkness … to take on his Word, to live in his non-anxious way, to trust, to hope, to be filled with his light and love, grace and peace, forgiveness and life …
Those who follow Jesus live as people of hope … hope that, even in the darkest times, even into the darkest lives, this light will come.
All we can do is reflect it. His Spirit can and will do the rest, bringing others to the place of the formerly blind man, able to confess with their own mouths, their own lives, “Lord, I believe.”
On this we have his promise, and his promise has not failed us yet.
“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not, is not, will not overcome it.”
Thanks be to God!
Amen.