“Did Jesus Get It Wrong?”
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Text: John 9:1-9
People of faith, if they're honest, sometimes experience a great chasm. It's the chasm between what they really believe, their convictions, their hope, their love for Christ, and the reality on the other hand of the world that they live in and the things that they experience day-to-day. And that chasm between what we believe and what we see and experience is often made all the more acute when what we see is suffering.
People of faith, Christians, if they're honest will say that they do struggle with this chasm. That there appears at times to be a great divide between what they hold as their creed and what they actually see in reality all around them. An unthinking person would not see a chasm, but anyone who thinks even for a moment, knows it's there.
In a most marvelous poem, by Ruth Harms Calkin, she wrote the following in a beautiful poem entitled, “In the Morning.” I don't often start with poetry, but this is just so good and it will resonate with you in such a profound way, because it speaks about the relationship between faith and suffering. This is how she put it:
Today, Lord, I have unshakable conviction, a positive, resolute assurance that what you have spoken is unalterably true. But today, Lord, my sick body feels stronger and the stomping pain quietly subsides. Tomorrow, and then tomorrow, if I must struggle again with aching exhaustion, with twisting pain until I am breathless, until I am utterly spent, until fear eclipses is the last vestige of hope, then Lord, then grant me the enabling grace to believe without feeling, to know without seeing, to clasp your invisible hand and wait with invincible trust for the morning, for the morning.
In this touching poem, she is dealing with this reality. An invincible trust in God, with the recognition that tomorrow morning she could awake in pain and suffering. How does she make sense of this chasm? How does she live with this dichotomy? Our passage is just an example of that very chasm. The story grasps you the moment you hear it. It was a simple story of a blind man, a beggar, sitting on the side of the road and Jesus and his disciples walk by and the disciples ask Jesus a question. It's a simple question, "Who sinned, this man or his parents?"
You might think on the surface that that is a strange question. In some ways it is, but there had always been within the scriptures this correlation between sin and suffering. That we suffer because of our sinfulness, because of our brokenness, and that people who have exceptional problems have probably brought them upon themselves by virtue of their disbelief or an act of sin, a vice or avarice, but have you noticed that the tone that they give is cold and unfeeling.
Not once did the disciples say, "Lord, have compassion on this blind beggar who is on the side of the road." Do they say, "Lord, heal and restore this blind beggar on the side of the road?" Do they reach out in any tangible way to this blind beggar on the side of the road? No, they simply ask an esoteric theological question, "Who sinned, this man or his parents?"
But in this incredible encounter, in this credible seizing of a situation, we want to hear Jesus answer, don't we? As we listen to the disciples ask this question, you and I suddenly become part of the story. It's no longer just about the blind beggar on the side of the road and Jesus, it's about us. “Come on Jesus, tell us who sinned, this man or his parents?” For like Ruth Calkin, we awake some days and our bones ache and our stomach is upset and we are sore. And some days we get up and we face treachery at work, or we face injustice in the world, or we walk passed beggars on our own streets, or we see that a member of our family is suffering from an incurable disease, and we want to know what Jesus has to say. It's no longer about the blind man it's about us. Who sinned, us or our parents? Who is responsible for this? How come we're suffering?
We also live in an age unprecedented in the way that it brings the suffering of the world onto our doorsteps, our homes, our televisions, our computer screens and our iPads. Never in the history of the world have we been able to access in one press of a button the suffering of the world that is around us. Whether it is scenes of bodies strewn in Tripoli, because of the brutality of a regime, or because of the collateral damage of a bomb, as people are wheeled in and out of hospital with blood all over them, we see it. Its right before us, the camera is our lens into suffering.
We hear that the world was shaken. We hear that the people of Japan were crushed and swept away in waters, that they fear the terrible, terrible dangers of radiation. And suddenly their suffering through a lens enters into the consciousness of our own minds. Or we hear some statistic from the Cancer Society or the Heart and Stroke Foundation about the problems that beset our society with these two terribly dangerous things and suddenly we're confronted by the suffering of the world around us. It's no longer just about a blind man, it's about us and our world. Come on Jesus, tell us who is sinning here. Is it us, is it the world, is it the parents, is it the people, come on let us know for we cannot understand this suffering.
But what was Jesus' response to the disciples? Did Jesus enter into an esoteric discussion about the theological origins of suffering? No. Does Jesus say it has to be one or other of those two options? No, it is neither. He makes a revolutionary statement. He says, and I quote directly from the scripture, “So that the works of God can be displayed in his life.”
On the surface, this might seem like an equally cold refrain as the disciples questioned, “Who sinned,” but it isn't. Suddenly, this blind beggar is now transformed into a means of God's revelation. Suddenly this man who had hitherto been sitting on the side of the road a beggar, who had had no status within society or within religion was being addressed by Jesus as someone to reveal the will of God.
And what did Jesus do? Jesus healed the man and he restored him. What is this revelation of which Jesus spoke? How did this man somehow come to reveal the will and the works of God? What was it in that encounter that is really profound? Through Jesus' encounter with the blind man, with the beggar, Jesus reveals himself as the light of the world. Jesus says, “After having healed the man, I am the light of the world.” He says, “There will come a time when the light will not be with you,” referring, of course, to his own crucifixion. Now is the time when God will be revealed through what I do. The light of the world has come into the midst of darkness, restored the blind and given them sight, has revealed the power of God's grace.
And this is consistent all the way through John's gospel. From the very beginning, John tells us that the light shone in the darkness and the darkness could not put it out. Even at the end of the gospel, it is the light of Christ's resurrection that ultimately brings hope to the disciples. All the way along, Jesus is engaged in bringing light into the midst of darkness. Transforming that darkness, but it's also a light that continues to shine. It's a light that needs to be understood as shining, even in the midst of suffering and apparent darkness.
It's fascinating that humanity's preoccupation with trying to find meaning in suffering really has only reached it's apex over the last 300 or so years. And many scholars and philosophers believe that one historical event actually caused the great minds of the western world to ponder the meaning of suffering. It was in 1755, there was a terrible earthquake in Lisbon, in Portugal. It was such a powerful earthquake that it was believed to be nine on our current scale. Thousands upon thousands of people died. The city was destroyed. A tsunami swept up and moved into North Africa and tore off pieces of the Iberian Peninsula. Lisbon was ruined. Its marvelous churches, synagogs, places of worships, disseminated.
Word got out about this and people questioned how could this happen. They were particularly perplexed because at that time there was an optimism about the world. There was the optimism of the philosopher, Leibnitz, who talked about the best of all possible worlds, according to Voltaire's, Candide, who really thought that everything was just marvelous and God had been good to everybody. But Lisbon shattered people, shattered Europe, shattered the intelligentsia, shattered Christians. Lisbon was a Christian city. “How could this happen,” they said. They were disseminated and frightened.
Simon the philosopher said, “This is a clear sign that God has nothing to do with the world. That God doesn't care. That God is apathetic. Don't give thought to God.” Some said, “It must be something that the people of Lisbon had done wrong, that's why it was brought upon them.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau said, “The reason for this is there were too many people living in Lisbon and if everyone lived in the country we wouldn't have problems like this.” Sounds like a great argument. Just get out of the city and then a whole lot of people won't be killed at once.
Some like Immanuel Kant reflected on it and said, “There must be a natural cause to this. We need to understand this. There is something going on in the earth.” And in many ways, he was the forerunner for seismologists. The thought that went into this was staggering. They wanted to know and understand what it was, but there seemed to be a general consensus that this earthquake had shaken something more than the foundations of Lisbon. It has shaken the foundations of western Christianity. Something needed to explain this kind of disaster and how we keep our faith.
The 20th Century, had a similarly earth-shaking experience, but this time it wasn't nature that was the cause, it was humanity. The Holocaust caused a similar form of introspection. This total act of dehumanization, this industrial genocide, this slaughter of innocence shook the world. Many people questioned God's role within it and others like Elie Wiesel struggled to come to terms with it. Who did this? How did this happen? How could good human beings do such terrible things? And people of faith wondered.
We've wondered recently have we not? Tsunamis in Indonesia, earthquakes in Haiti, earthquakes in Chile, earthquakes in Japan, the world seems to suffer and suffer and suffer. And we ask Jesus, “Jesus, who sinned here? Who is responsible for this? Where are you? How do you care? Are you involved?”
And Jesus would say, “Look how I dealt with the blind beggar. I healed him and I restored him. I came into his brokenness. I came into his world and I loved him and I showed compassion for him. I was his light in the midst of darkness.”
But all the cynics rose up. The disciples were mesmerized at why Jesus would do such a thing. The public wondered if the man they had seen as the beggar on the side of the road was now the same man who had actually been healed, even though, he says, “I am him. That's me I'm the same guy,” they weren't having it.
Then the irony, the religious leaders were upset with Jesus for taking care of this blind man and healing him in his suffering and caring for him in his brokenness. Why? He did it on the Sabbath. What a wretched, wretched thing to do on the Lord's day. They would have none of it. This man, who had previously been cast out of the temple, this blind man because he was broken, was not going to be brought back in because it happened on the Sabbath. And Jesus, bringing the light into the darkness, coming and dwelling with the broken, entering into their midst and bringing healing was condemned for doing it.
But Jesus, as their light in the darkness of the eyes of that blind man, and Jesus that light of truth in the midst of terrible despair, also wanted to reveal one other thing: Namely, that this was his mission to enter into a suffering world, to enter into the darkness of the world. And where do we see that happening, and to what was Jesus pointing in all of this, but to the cross. The cross is the symbol of God's identity with suffering people. It is God's recognition, it is God's solidarity with the suffering in the world. It is God's ultimate act not only of self-exposure, but redeeming grace in the world.
A couple of weeks ago, just after the earthquake in Japan, I quoted a passage from the great Japanese theologian, Kagawa, and I read part of his poem on the cross. And it's interesting, a couple of people afterwards said to me, “Andrew, why did you do that? You made no statement about Japan, no great, great message about it. Why quote Kagawa on the cross?”
Well, the answer is simple. Kagawa had seen earthquakes, he had seen poverty in Kobe, he had seen the destruction and suffering of life, and the way that he made sense of it was the cross. In that cross he saw God bearing the suffering of the world. And it is that which Jesus wanted to convey over and over and over again in his ministry. His glory was in his crucifixion. His light was revealed in the moment of his greatest darkness. The greatest bursting forward of his light was in his forgiveness for his persecutors on the cross.
It's a wonderful story told by Mark De Haan and it puts this in such great perspective because it's a story of a piece of ebony. It's not a true story, of course, it's an allegory of a piece of ebony that has been chipped away by the carpenter. The carpenter chips away and molds it and drills holes into it and the piece of ebony finally says to the carpenter, "Why are you doing this to me? Why are you cutting me and breaking me and putting holes in me and hurting me?"
The carpenter says, "I will not desist from what I am doing, because I am turning you into a flute. And with these holes, beautiful tones will be made. With your new shape, you will bring joy and blessing to others, with the shaping that I am doing of you, you will be a blessing for countless people for years to come."
Jesus said to the disciples, "We must now do the works of Him who sent me." We must now, then continue to believe in God's healing grace, in the molding of a broken world, but not a world with which God is dispassionate, not a world where God is separate. You see, some people suggest that the only way to understand this is to not believe in God at all and to suggest there is no God and so just simplify the debate and walk away, but where is hope. Some will say God has nothing more to do with the world, like Voltaire has just sort of left the scene, but where is hope. Some will say, "Oh, the only thing that matters is heaven. Earth doesn't matter, it's going to break and fade anyway, but where is hope." Some will say people are being punished for what they have done wrong. As one evangelist said so erroneously about Haiti, but where is hope. No, hope is found in the cross of Christ. Of God's identification with and suffering for a broken world.
I received this last week a most marvelous letter. One of the most touching things I have read in years. The letter wasn't to me, the letter was to be signed by me. The letter was written by a member of our church who was here this morning who is from Japan. It is to a church and a congregation that he loves very much in Sendai. And because he knows that my Japanese is not particular good, he wrote it in Japanese himself, thank God, but gave me an English version in order that I might know what I am signing. It's from you and me to that church in Japan. And in one of the paragraphs, it talks about the congregation and our prayers for them and it says:
If the church and members of your congregation did not suffer any damage at all in the earthquake, that is wonderful and we thank God for that. But please tell us of the other churches in Sendai, or in the Miyagi Prefecture, or ones in the neighborhood of other Christian denominations who were washed away or destroyed, we would like to know their names, their minister's names, the church members and the names of those who died. Not that we will be able to do anything from the other side of the earth, and definitely I can assure you not something ridiculous or insulting to the proud Japanese people who probably have everything more than we Canadians do, not just by sending them stuff, but we would at least like to write expressing our sympathies, our prayers as brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus Christ.
I signed that letter with pride, because Jesus said, "May you do the works that my father has done with me. May you bring light into a broken world. May you bring compassion in the midst of suffering. May you bring the cross to the center of where people suffer. If you see the cross for what it is, there is no chasm." Amen.