Did any of you preacher types preach on the text from John last weekend (John 9:1-41)?
I did. It was quite an experience for me personally, simply because of the significance of what Jesus reveals in the text itself.
When Jesus and the disciples come upon that unsuspecting blind man who had been blind from birth, the disciples’ initial question is, to say the least, troubling. “Rabbi,” they say, “who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Do you sense the unsettling implications of their question? These disciples were harboring a worldview in which that man’s blindness could only be interpreted as a punishment from God, either for a sin that the blind man had committed, or a sin that his parents had committed for which he was being held accountable. In the disciples’ worldview, in other words, the man’s blindness was not simply the result of malfunctioning eyes. It was rather a form of suffering assigned by God to a sinner.
The disciples, it would seem, were caught up in a deuteronomic system of thought in which people received God’s rewards and punishments in some very tangible ways: health and prosperity, according to this worldview, were manifestations of divine blessing, while illness and tragedy were manifestations of divine wrath. It was as “simple” as that!
In what I consider to be one of the most important and revelatory teachings in the entire Bible, Jesus responds to the disciples question by telling them, in essence, that their worldview was faulty. “Fellas,” Jesus says, “neither this man nor his parents sinned. Rather, he was born blind so that God’s work might be revealed in him.” Which is to say, “disciples, your worldview is broken, and it’s time for you to embrace a new one!” According to Jesus, this man’s blindness was not a punishment for sin. It was simply a physical ailment that provided for God a significant opportunity to accomplish transformational things.
With that, Jesus spits onto the ground, dampening the soil enough to make it into a healing balm. (Maybe I should have entitled the sermon “Spit Happens!”) Then Jesus places the balm on the blind man’s eyes. “Go,” Jesus says to the man, Go and wash yourself in the Pool of Siloam,” which was an actual pool in which many people of faith cleansed themselves before entering the temple.
And, by the way, that may have been why Jesus chose this particularly muddy method of healing. Perhaps Jesus was communicating to all who were daring to pay attention that this man was about to be washed and cleansed in a whole new way.
When the man washes his eyes in the Pool of Siloam, all of a sudden, he is blind no longer. All of a sudden, the malfunctioning eyes with which he had been born become fully functional, and he is brought into a condition of sight, thereby revealing the healing power of our Lord.
And yet, as dramatic as the blind man’s healing is, I do not believe it to be the most important healing in this story. Rather, I believe that the most important healing in this story is Jesus’ healing of the disciples’ broken worldview.
The disciples were absolutely convinced that the man’s blindness was a punishment for some sin. But Jesus incarnates a new worldview in their very presence—a worldview in which blindness and other forms of human hardship, need not be looked upon as a punishment from God, but as an opportunity for God to accomplish even greater things; a worldview in which human suffering is not a curse but an opportunity for God to become more intimately connected with broken souls; a worldview in which the Creator of heaven and earth is not a malevolent deity eager to punish, but a miraculous God eager to bring about miracles in the midst of human suffering.
The implications of this new worldview that we find in Christ are enormous, aren’t they? When we find ourselves suffering and broken (which we will periodically), when we find ourselves struggling with cancer or divorce or the loss of a loved one, the new worldview that Jesus inaugurates enables us to conceptualize those experiences, not as divine punishments, but as divine opportunities for the miraculous. Sometimes God’s miracle will manifest itself as a dramatic fixing of the problem, as it did for the blind man in the Scripture. But other times, God’s miracle will manifest itself, not as a fixing of the problem, but as a new way of living WITH the problem, so that the problem no longer holds dominion over human souls. In either case, the suffering is not a manifestation of God’s wrath, but a condition rich with unique potential in which God might do what God does best: bring wholeness out of brokenness and life out of death.
A description that I cannot yet embrace. A description that brings me to this question: how does painful, horrible, brokenness, bring about wholeness with God doing what God does best? Perhaps a question for the quiet of my own heart, and not a blog??!?
Your question, Barb, is inseparable from another:
How does one man’s painful, horrible death on a cross bring about reconciliation between a perfectly holy God and a fallen humankind?
My sense is that the answers to both questions are grounded in the same reality.
I found it to be a very interesting and useful revelation considering many people fall into the punishment trap when trying to handle tragedy or hardship. I just wonder though in your counseling to those who are in the midst of pain and suffering, are they able to internalize and live out this explanation? It’s got to be easier to interpret and discuss and accept when your not in the middle of a crisis. I am glad that it is a passage I have experienced and can ponder during a time of calm in my life. (wait, did I say calm - with 4 kids ?!) So what are some the reactions you have encountered?
Well, Allene, let’s put it this way:
My explanation, difficult as it may be for some to process, is significantly easier to digest than this sort of approach: “What did you do to deserve this punishment from God?!”
I have found that, when people are liberated from the punishment mentality, they find it easier to live with the mystery of how their suffering fits into the redemptive scheme of things.
When my husband of 43 years was diagnosed with lung cancer, in the midst of all the fear and the anxiety instead of him saying “why me?” his comment to his family was “why not me? Just because I believe in Jesus Christ and go to church every week, that does not exempt me from cancer” Through his 9 month struggle, he never questioned God, at least not that I knew of and that in itself gave all of us great strength in the battle. We believed that God did suffer and cry with us through it all as He does with all his children.
Thannks for the powerful testimony, Louise.
Your remembrance of your husband and his journey speaks volumes about what the 9th chapter of John is communicating.
I can echo what my mother (Louise) said about my father. However, what I have more recently experienced with our 3 children losing their father is confirmation that God’s miracles exist. He can bring new life from death. Unfortunately many times we give God our “to do” list of problems and just want Him to fix it our way. But if we allow ourselves to open the eyes of our heart, we can see the miracles unfold. As a mom, seeing such tremendous pain on my children’s faces naturally left me feeling a bit helpless and filled with that mom desire to “make it all better”. But when I have taken a step back and allowed myself to watch God work in them and through them, I have seen His comfort bring forth healing. The strength and unwavering faith in Spenser, Tyler, and Lexi’s hearts has been revealed time and again.
Amen, Lisa. And thanks.
Good post; I took a similar track.
“Spit Happens”!! I don’t care what the rest of the congregation “sez” about you(ha, ha), you really brought it home with the message of the then and now disciples of Christ with the new “worldview”. Any message that sends you home crying and thinking about it for days is a “good message”.