Sermon, March 10, 2002
Fourth Sunday in Lent, Year A
The Rev. Lowell E. Grisham
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas
Sermon, March 10, 2002
Fourth Sunday in Lent, Year A
The Rev. Lowell E. Grisham
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas
Gospel – John 9:1-38 Jesus heals the man born blind
When my father-in-law reads the newspaper, he goes straight to the business section first. Then sports. If there’s time left over, he’ll check out the headlines. I check out the local news on the front page of the Times first. But of more interest, I go to the editorial page where I spend the bulk of my time. I’ll glance at the world headlines in the Democrat-Gazette, but then I’ll turn to their editorial pages and scan more carefully. Except on Fridays when the Morning News prints their "Religion" section; and Saturdays when the Democrat-Gazette does religion. My father-in-law never reads the religion section; I never look at the stocks page. Each of us experiences the reality of the world as filtered through our daily newspaper in remarkable different ways. We really like each other and get along great. But we perceive two different worlds emerging from the same black and white print.
Today’s gospel reading is about vision and perception, with a tag line about how the blind sometimes see better than those who think they know what to look for.
Our story opens with an earnest question from Jesus’s disciples. They see a man blind from birth and they ask, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" They know their Bible. Especially the Wisdom tradition of the book of Proverbs. Proverbs traces the two ways of life: the path of wisdom and the path of folly. Follow wisdom and you will prosper; your life will go well. Follow the wrong way, and you will founder. God is just. God will punish the sinner and reward the righteous. That’s the presumption that underlies the disciples’ question. If someone is born blind, there is a just reason. It is the punishment for sin.
We do the same thing with our forms of conventional wisdom. Why are these people poor? Who sinned? Were they lazy or dishonest? Did they not have the virtues of industry and discipline? Rabbi, who sinned that these people lie in poverty?
Jesus’ answer is amazing. He dismisses the theological presumption that health and prosperity are the straight-line cause-and-effect results of rewards for virtue and punishment for folly. (In doing so he stands with a contrary Biblical tradition found in Ecclesiastes and Job.) "Neither this man nor his parents sinned," says Jesus. The 21st century materialist nods with approval. Just bad blind luck, we say, if you’ll pardon the pun. But then Jesus goes on. "[H]e was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him."
Now that sentence challenges our conventional wisdom as well. We see tragedy and suffering, and we want to attribute it to meaningless circumstance or to rational cause and effect. Some people are born blind; it just happens. A lump appears on the CAT scan. It just happens. We can live with the meaningless tragedies that are the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." And we can live with the explainable tragedies that are the predictable outcomes of life choices. You smoke for forty years – you get emphysema. But to say, as Jesus does here, that bad things may happen so that God’s works might be revealed feels like slippery territory.
And yet, I know so many stories of human triumph and spiritual transcendence that have their origins in tragedy. Who has not been moved by the inspiring story of Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan? It’s not hard to say that God’s works have been revealed through their sufferings. I know so many people in Alcoholics Anonymous who have discovered a spiritual path that they say they never would have known otherwise. Some will even say "I thank God for my disease of alcoholism. It brought me to where I am now."
There is a mystery at the bottom of suffering that sometimes is the cauldron for blessing. It is something I don’t understand, but I know I am more careful now to judge. It is often cruel to lay blame upon victims as the theology of Proverbs implies. It can also be near-sighted in the presence of suffering simply to retreat into meaningless agnosticism. Suffering can bear meaning. Jesus declares that this man’s blindness can be the instrument for God’s works to be revealed in him. Jesus sends him to the pool of Siloam, and he can see.
Now comes the interesting part. Who can see truly what has just happened? The blind beggar returns seeing. What do the neighbor witness? Some say, "It is he." Others, "No, but it’s someone like him." Lawyers will tell you that eyewitness testimony is the most powerful and least accurate evidence in a courtroom. We convict people to prison on such testimony.
The blind man stays in simple awareness. "I am the man." When they ask him what happened, he stays in simple awareness. "The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ Then I went and washed and received my sight."
The Pharisees come to see what has happened. The Pharisees are teachers. They interpret and uphold the biblical laws that define Jewish faithfulness. They filter all reality through the Biblical teachings. When they hear the simple, factual, straight-forward testimony of the blind man, they can only see that this was an act done on the sabbath. Their commitment to the divine law blinds them to the divine goodness in front of their eyes.
The authorities arrive; they are called "the Jews" in this gospel. They are people of power. They investigate the situation by interviewing the parents. But the parents know that these people have the power to harm them, to expel them from the synagogue, and thus from community life. Few people can relate openly and freely to the powerful. So the parents, blinded by fear, equivocate. "We know nothing," they say trembling.
So the authorities call the formerly blind man directly to them. Again he is a picture of simple awareness. He tells what he has experienced. "Though I was blind, now I see." They press him for details again. He sees through them. He knows that the powerful always look to their own interests, even when posing as objective. His awareness exposes their duplicity. They have feigned interest in this marvelous deed; so he challenges them fearlessly, "Do you also want to become his disciples?" Not the politically wise thing to say. He is expelled from the congregation in a town where the community is the congregation.
Then comes the second healing. Jesus hears of the expulsion. He seeks out the man. With compassion Jesus confirms a deepest truth. The reversal of vision is complete. The blind truly sees; and those who think they see so much, have been blind to it all.
What a rich story. It invites us to reconsider the tragic and ask, "How can God’s works be revealed in this event of tragedy or suffering?" It invites us to explore our own blindness and nearsightedness. It challenges us about our own filters for reality – filters of belief and self-interest and fear that block us from seeing truly. It invites us to an attitude of simple awareness. It raises up for us the contrast between secondhand religion, religion learned from others as teaching and practices to be believed and followed, the religion of Proverbs; and firsthand religion, the firsthand experience of God, the religion of Ecclesiastes and Job. The firsthand experience of the sacred shatters and transforms secondhand religion.
Today you leave this place as neighbors and witnesses. What will you see? Will you see God’s Word opened and revealed in wisdom and insight? Will you see sacred communion of God and humanity through a miracle of bread and wine?
If they ask you as you leave, "What happened?" How will you answer? Will it be about secondhand religion, teachings and practices you believe and follow? That’s okay; it takes us part of the way. Or will fear block your experience of the overwhelming and the mysterious? Or will expectations blind you to see only what your expect to see? Will you be awake with simple awareness, or asleep with clouded eye? God is in the midst of us, and wonderful things are afoot. O God, let those who have eyes see; let those who have ears hear.