As Jesus and his disciples were walking through the temple area, they saw a man who had been blind since birth. Their question to Jesus was, “Who sinned, this man or his parents? Whose fault is it that he is blind?”
Look around you in this world today. Maybe it’s human instinct to find fault. Maybe it’s a coping mechanism to keep the unknown at arms length. Whenever anything goes wrong, people start looking for someone to blame. They want to fix the fault with something or someone tangible – accessible to them. Not God – that’s too esoteric – maybe not satisfying because you can’t take God to court. But more than that, if it is God’s doing, then we have no control and most people don’t like feeling helpless.
As my field work for seminary, Bishop Payne sent me to Rockdale, Texas as the lay vicar of a little mission church with about 30 members. Some of these parishioners had some very interesting and varied ideas about theology – that is, about God and those things dealing with God. This Gospel lesson came up in one of our discussions and Meg took exception to this lesson. She was very incensed that God would cause someone to be born blind just so that God himself could be glorified.
February 11th is the day set aside by Holy Women, Holy Men to remember Fannie Crosby. Fannie is remembered as a prolific songwriter, who from about 1860 to 1910 wrote the words to over 8000 hymns. The most famous one is:
Blessed Assurance, Jesus is mine,
oh what a fore taste of glory divine.
Heir of salvation, purchase of God,
Born of his spirit, washed in his blood.
This is my story, this is my song.
Praising my savior all the day long.
This is my story, this is my song,
Praising my savior all the day long.
The thing about Fannie, is that she was blind; not from birth, but from the incompetence of an ‘unschooled doctor’ who treated her for an infection when she was about 6 weeks old. If anyone had a right to be angry over their condition, she did. But she was not angry and she didn’t complain. Besides writing hymns, Fannie was also a teacher and lecturer who traveled around the country. When asked if she would like to have her sight, she replied “no.” She was afraid that the beauty of the world would distract her from praising God for all he had done for her.
So back to our lesson: Here we are with a man who has been blind from birth. In the age and culture that Jesus lived, blindness and other maladies were considered to be judgments from God – the result of sin.
Since that time, I’ve given a lot of thought to Meg’s complaint. What I understand is that we are all born, in whatever state we are born in, so that the glory of God can be shown forth in us. As human beings, we are born in the image of God, and in that image, we show forth the glory of God, if we allow him to work in us and through us. Fannie allowed God to work in her, and his glory was shown forth in marvelous ways.
As with so many stories in John’s gospel, there are two dimensions to this story. The physical blindness is a symbol of the spiritual blindness that many people experience. The man is blind, both physically and spiritually. When he receives his sight, he tells everyone that Jesus opened his eyes.
The Pharisees, although they can see, refuse to acknowledge that God is working through Jesus or through the man who was blind. They remain spiritually blind. This upsets their world for a person who was born blind (that is in a state of sin), to receive their sight. You can read that as being cleansed from their sin. This is really outside their experience so the Pharisees say that Jesus is a sinner. The man answers, “I don’t know if he’s a sinner. One thing I do know, I was blind, now I see.” I can almost hear the sarcasm when he says, “You don’t know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes?”
We cannot always control what happens to us – and we can’t always find someone to blame. There is an email that has gone around periodically – it speaks to our lesson today.
A blind boy sat on the steps of a building with a hat by his feet. He held up a sign which said: "I am blind, please help." There were only a few coins in the hat.
A man was walking by. He took a few coins from his pocket and dropped them into the hat. He then took the sign, turned it around, and wrote some words. He put the sign back so that everyone who walked by would see the new words. Soon the hat began to fill up.
A lot more people were giving money to the blind boy. That afternoon the man who had changed the sign came to see how things were. The boy recognized his footsteps and asked, "Were you the one who changed my sign this morning? What did you write?"
The man said, "I only wrote the truth. I said what you said but in a different way. I wrote: 'Today is a beautiful day; but I cannot see it.' Both signs told people that the boy was blind. But the first sign simply stated the fact. The second sign reminded people how fortunate they were to have their sight. Should we be surprised that the second sign was more effective?
Be thankful for what you have. Be creative. Be innovative. Think differently and positively. When life gives you a 100 reasons to cry, show life that you have 1000 reasons to smile. Face your past without regret. Handle your present with confidence. Prepare for the future without fear. Keep the faith and drop the fear.
It ended with this statement, “Faith is not about everything turning out OK; Faith is about being OK no matter how things turn out.” Fannie Crosby was OK with her condition. She made the most of her life regardless of her physical blindness because she had spiritual sight. There is something healing about being content with those things in our life that we cannot change.
The man in our Gospel did not ask to be healed – he did not demonstrate great faith to effect his healing. He accepted his life as it was, and God blessed him so that he could learn faith through what he experienced. I ask you to consider where God has touched you, so that your faith might be increased, and God’s glory seen in your life?
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