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My heart beats for love. I want to be different. I want to be who I am called to be. WORTHY and LOVED!

Sunday, March 23, 2014

The Cost of Healing- John 9:1-41

The first time I remember really wrestling with the question of God’s goodness and sovereignty was a few years ago while I was going through chaplain training. During the program I was assigned to several units: Medical Intensive Care, Pediatrics, the General Floor, NICU, and Obstetrics. While I was visiting patients one day, I came across a young woman, who was about my age. She was preparing to give birth. I didn’t think much of the encounter until later that evening when I was paged to go see the same young woman. Her baby boy was born with several medical issues that were unknown until birth. A few days later I was paged again to sit with her as they removed life support and she said goodbye to her child.
I found myself wondering in the days and weeks to come, how God could be good and all powerful, yet allowed this child to die. I started to wonder if God caused the birth defects, caused him to die, caused his mother so much pain. At some point in our faith journeys we have to wrestle with these big questions about the God and evil. About  our God who is faithful and pain. 
When I think back on my struggles around the death of this child, I feel a bit more sympathetic to the disciples in today’s scripture passage who ask “who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” They felt the need to place the blame for the man’s blindness of someone, and surely it wasn’t God’s fault. For if it was what would that say about God? So the disciples got caught in the trap that we still find ourselves in today - measuring our sin against others. Feeling that either this man or his parents must have committed a grave enough sin to cause his blindness. And a question behind their question reveals itself - what do I have to do to make sure I don’t sin so badly as to be punished in this way?
But Jesus answer surprises them, surprises us. “Neither...he was born blind so that God’s work might be revealed in him.” Which brings us right back to the question of God and evil. Did God really cause this man’s blindness? 
However, that’s not what the text says. It does not say that God caused this man’s blindness or that all situations we face are God’s will or works. Rather, the text says that in this specific instance, God was redeeming the situation for the Glory of the Kingdom. Before we too quickly brush this off as semantics, think about your own life. Have you ever faced a situation where you really wrestled with rather God caused ill to befall you or one you love? Or conversely have you ever proclaimed that surely God will provide with your lips, but in your heart you had your secret doubts about God’s ability or timing?
The disciples only had one frame of reference - people sin and are punished. They assumed that natural evil, this man’s blindness, was the result of moral evil, sin. Jesus threw them for a loop by saying this wasn’t the case at all. Not all bad things that befall us are punishment from God. And just because we can’t understand something, doesn’t mean that it is limited to our thoughts and perceptions. We may never understand the ways of God. Not even the man who was healed in the story fully understood what happened. But that doesn’t mean that we need to give into black and white thinking - that either God caused the blindness or the man or his family caused God to punish them in this way. 
We live in a world where bad things happen for no apparent reason. But we also believe that we have faith in the One who can heal. This is one of my favorite healing stories in scripture. When Jesus healed the man he didn’t just speak a word over him for a distance. He bent down, spat on the mud, and scooped up spit filled dirt and rubbed it on the man’s eyes. It sounds a little gross to me, but it is a reminder that healing can be messy. Which this healing certainly was.
For as soon as the man was healed chaos erupted. Here is a man who was dependent upon his community for so much. Dependent upon his family. And suddenly everyone seemed to reject him. Sometimes we struggle with the wish that things would go back to simpler times when everyone took care of everyone else and family was the center of society. First century Palestine was that time, brothers and sisters, but this story serves as a reminder that earlier times were not necessarily better or less isolating, because no one’s reaction is what we would expect those who care about someone to have. 
The neighbors who lived near the man their entire lives - those who saw him every day, played with him as a child - didn’t even recognize him. They claimed that it had to be someone like the person they knew, but not him. How is this even possible? Could it be because they had labeled him simply as “the blind man” or cared more about his disability then about him?
Then the Pharisees, the religious leaders who should have been praising God for this healing, this sign of God’s power, claimed to not believe him because the story was so different from what they wanted it to be. They wanted this Jesus to be a sinner, one who would be punished, not a healer. The wanted their God to be nice and neat, just as the disciples wanted with their earlier question. They wanted to have sole control over and access to God. And now here comes Jesus, healing on the Sabbath and threatening their understanding of God. It wasn’t fair to them. So they blamed the poor previously blind man.
The man’s parents even failed him with their reaction. If anyone should be excited it should be the man’s parents who struggled all of these years with the same question the disciples asked. Struggled watching the one they love and caring for him. But instead they thought about their own safety and self-interest.
Which brings me to the second reason I like this healing story. The man was not only healed of his physical blindness, but of his mis-perceived relationships. This healing turned the world around him upside down, and he came to realize that Jesus was the only one who could come through for him. The only one he could trust. Jesus stood with him in the midst of the chaos and invited him to come and know him, to come and be a follower. Jesus provided the man with much more than a healing of sight, he provided him with a new set of relationships and purpose in the world.
I have to wonder how many times this man and his parents prayed for healing. Would we still pray for healing if we knew that Jesus would turn our lives upside down and sideways? Would we pray for healing if it would change how we think about and relate to God? Would we want healing if it provided us with more than we asked for? 

Healing is often messy, brothers and sisters, and comes with more than we could ever expect. What do you need to be healed of this Lenten season to truly follow the Light of the World as a disciple? What do you need to come and know Jesus in a new way? And are you willing to be healed, no matter what it may cost? Amen. 

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