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Fourth Sunday in
Lent
March 6, 2005 Sermon
by Rev. Peggy Tuttle, Interim Rector
A Sunday School teacher
decided to have her young class memorize one of the most quoted passages
in the Bible; Psalm 23. She gave the youngsters a month to learn the
verse. Little Bobby was excited about the task. But, he just couldn't
remember the Psalm. After much practice, he could barely get past the
first line. On the day that the kids were scheduled to recite Psalm 23
in front of the congregation, Bobby was so nervous. When it was his
turn, he stepped up to the microphone and said proudly, "The Lord is my
shepherd and that's all I need to know!"
Last Sunday we heard of the Samaritan woman, shunned by her neighbors,
who draws water from the well at the heat of noon. Before that it was
the story of Nicodemus, a teacher of wisdom, who hunts for a wise
teacher in the anonymity of midnight while the wind is blowing like dark
fear or birth. Today it is a blind man, isolated by his disability, who
becomes more isolated by his healing.
Suffering takes on a human face in the story of the man born blind and
healed by Jesus. Witnesses assume the blindness is a punishment. It is
not a deformity it is the result of sin.
Jesus does not see it this way. Jesus sees the blindness of the man
before him as an opportunity to prove the awesome love of God. The
blindness may well be of God, but if it is, it is meant to be used for
the glory of God, a way for Jesus to demonstrate the power of God.
The act of restoring sight to the blind man is an act of creation. There
are striking similarities to the first act of creation by which a living
being was made from dust and saliva. Here, the blind man is called to
life, to a new existence, one he had never before known. To see for the
first time is to live, and presumably because he was blind from birth,
everything he saw was as new to him as everything that Adam saw was new
to him. The blind man is re-made, re-created, and, after his bath in the
pool of Siloam, he is no longer the man he once was.
This is shocking, both to him and to his neighbors who depended upon the
old reality, the changelessness of his previous condition as a blind
beggar. Those who thought they knew him become alarmed. They don’t like
the concept of change, especially when the change elevates someone from
a lower standing. It changes their relationship. The formerly blind man
is equally disoriented by this new condition of his life. After all, he
knew how to make a living as a blind beggar. What is he to do now, and
how?
Not often mentioned in these miracle stories is the risk involved in
healing. What happens when the healed one has to adapt to a whole new
universe where nothing is as it was? What happens to those who care for
the sick, when the sick are made well? What do those do whose whole
vocation and identity depends upon the condition of their illness, when
they are healed? When the stability of suffering is removed?
What about the children of Israel when they were liberated from slavery
in Egypt? They found themselves in the wilderness begging to return to
Egypt rather than learn how to forge new lives in a new world.
The blind man is questioned sharply, the integrity of his own experience
is challenged, and his worthiness to be healed is debated. Indeed, if
his blindness was a divine punishment, who was Jesus to undo it? Jesus
is subject to sharp criticism not only for the act of healing but for
doing it on Sunday. The parents are questioned. What do they know about
the details of their son’s blindness and the healing? Fearing the
interrogators, the parents direct them to the son himself. “He is of
age, ask him.” But the formerly blind man repeats the story as he
understands it and the critics say, “Give God the praise, this man we
know is a sinner.” Relying on the only evidence he has, his new sight,
he answers, “If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” But
the critics refuse the arguments, the healing, the man, and indeed
Jesus, and they cast the formerly blind man out of the community.
It becomes clear that insight among the sighted is a rare and dangerous
thing, and the blind who are made to see, challenge the moral economy of
the community in which they are found. It may be true that in the land
of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, but in this case sight and the
source of it are too much to risk, and the healed man is expelled. When
Jesus says that he came into the world that those who do not see might
see, and that those who see might become blind, he uses the paradox as a
stick with which to beat those who think they see but who see not.
If you stop and think about it, every experience of change has two very
different aspects. On the one hand, we get something that we did not
have, and on the other hand, we give up something that we did have: we
gain something at the same time that we lose something. At the most
basic level, this is what change is and what it does. In bringing sight
to the blind man, Jesus is saying that healthy change occurs when we
discern that the thing that is being offered is greater and better than
the thing that is being taken away.
Healing is not always welcomed. Just ask the recovering alcoholic!
Family systems develop around the one who drinks. Remove the chemical
and the system is disrupted. No matter how bad it was when they were
drunk at least everyone knew who was to blame for all the problems in
the family. Remove the alcohol and everyone has to look at his or her
own behavior. That’s why the whole family needs to be involved in the
healing process.
Creative changes occur in our lives when we discern that what is being
given is really of a greater value than what is being asked of us. The
same experience, however, becomes destructive when the gain dimension is
not obvious, and when all we can think about is the loss dimension. From
this perspective, change is by no means a life-enhancing and
life-enriching process, but rather a diminishment and a lessening of the
good.
The story told by John in the Gospel lesson for today is remarkable in
many ways. It’s long and involved and complicated, taking up a great
deal of space in the Gospel. It is a story about a blind man whom Jesus
causes to see; it is also a story of the spiritual blindness of those
who are offended by this sign of Jesus. The man who is cured of his
blindness must have wondered at some point whether receiving sight was
worth the trouble, considering the “hassle” which he had to go through.
He was accused of bringing the blindness on himself -- or perhaps his
parents caused it -- an example of what we in contemporary America call
the “blame the victim” mentality. Jesus responds to the question by
affirming that this blindness is not the man’s or his parents’ fault;
he’s blind, in effect, so that Jesus can cure him. Hmmm. He gives the
man his sight so that he can see the Light of the World. His neighbors
hardly recognize him, but he assures them that he is himself and that
Jesus is responsible for his cure.
The Pharisees cast him out, and Jesus seeks him out. Jesus asks the man
if he believes in the Son of Man. The poor guy at this point is
exceedingly wary, probably wanting just to be left alone. Jesus says to
him, “It is he who speaks to you.” The man formerly blind at last
becomes the testimony he was healed in order to be, and in effect
ratifies the sign with his in-sight: “Lord, I believe.”
Just like the little boy in Sunday School said, “The Lord is my shepherd
and that’s all I need to know.”
Lord, I believe. Amen.