Blind, But Now I See

3-26-17 (Lent 4A)

1 Samuel 16:1-13; John 9:1-41

Blind, But Now I See

One of the most painful experiences I have ever had was the day we learned that a part of Caleb’s brain hadn’t developed the way it was supposed to.  Officially, it’s called Dandy-Walker Malformation - that was the name that the doctor told us in the ultrasound room before offering his condolences and ushering us into another room to meet with a genetics counselor.  At the time, however, it was a mixture of having the rug pulled out from under us and having a bucket of ice-water dumped over our heads.  We didn’t know really anything about what it would mean for us or for our son, but what we did know was that suddenly everything in our world had changed - every image we’d painted for ourselves of our child was suddenly shattered and was going to be replaced with something different.

As we drove home that day, the question on our minds was an awful lot like the question on the lips of the disciples as they passed the man born blind: “Who sinned, that this should have happened to him?”  What was it that we did wrong that our son’s brain wasn’t developing the way it should?  Was it the old apartment building we lived in on the seminary campus?  Did Janis not start taking the prenatal vitamins soon enough?  Would things have been different if we’d given a dollar to the homeless guy on the corner before we went in for that appointment?  What would have happened if we’d turned right instead of left?

It’s a question that a lot of people have asked over the years - not just parents, but people facing any situation where their dreams and ideas have suddenly been shattered and changed.  What did I do that I should have done differently?  What wrong turn did I make that brought me to this place at this time?  What could I have done differently so that I wouldn’t deserve this?  It’s a natural part of our initial attempts to cope, to understand, to process the information and events that we suddenly find ourselves confronted with.  We don’t understand - there must be some reason, some explanation that will ultimately make sense of the situation.

In fact, it’s this search for a “why” that really drives this entire passage of John’s gospel.  The disciples search for a theological answer to why the man was born blind.  The man’s neighbors take him to the Pharisees to see if they can find an answer for how Jesus was able to heal him and how the man was suddenly able to see.  The Pharisees ask the formerly blind man to tell his story time and time again, hoping that they can discern some answers for themselves: how was it the man was able to see again?  How did Jesus manage to give the man his sight in the first place, especially when he did it on the sabbath and they thought he was a sinner for doing so?  They bring in his parents so that they can find out if the man was actually born blind in the first place. Even the blind man ends up having his own questions for which he seeks answers as he questions Jesus as to who the Messiah is.

There are aspects to the story that are almost comical when you think about them - and the sense of absurdity and strangeness only grows the more the formerly blind man is passed around from place to place and told to retell his story and answer the questions being put to him.  He answers the same way almost every time “All I know is that I was blind, but now I see.”  And finally, he gets so fed up with having to answer the same questions time and time again that he tells off the Pharisees, asks them if they want to become Jesus’ disciples, and gets himself driven out of the synagogue.

Sometimes, no matter how badly we want them to exist, there are just simply no easy answers to be found.  We can hear the story told again and again ad nauseam and still not find that one element that helps explain it all.  We can go over everything we’ve ever done in our lives and never be able to exactly pinpoint a particular instance that must have warranted a particular thing happening in our lives that we struggle to understand and cope with.  Sometimes the only answer we can find is that “What happened, happened.”  A strand of DNA unzips in a way that it normally wouldn’t and things don’t develop the way they should. A butterfly flaps its wings in Missouri and the resulting breeze somehow translates to a tsunami in Japan.  A prophet goes out to the pastures to find the tall, muscular, masculine new King of the Israelite people and ends up anointing a shepherd boy.  The Son of God decides to glorify the Father and raise one individual’s status by restoring sight to a man who was born blind.  And sometimes, the only “why” is that “it just happened.”  I was blind, and now I see.

It’s not an easy answer - it doesn’t wrap things up nicely in a little box and tie it with a bow.  But there is an answer in the midst of all the questions.  The irony is that Jesus gives us the answer before so many of the questions are even asked - “He was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”  If I’m going to be honest about this passage, this one particular verse has always caused me a lot of struggle - it’s a dangerous verse that can do as much harm as it can do good.  I’ve heard all too many hospital chaplains and visiting pastors who use this verse to try to comfort patients and parents who are grieving some kind of hard diagnosis - “Oh don’t get discouraged - it’s God’s will that your baby is going to be born blind.  Think of what God is going to use your baby to do!”  Or “It’s God’s will that you have this terrible and painful disease, because if you persevere and stay strong, think how many people you’ll be able to show God’s strength to!”  And you can see the hurt in the parents’ eyes, the pain of hearing things like that and even the anger - would God seriously afflict my child with such a debilitating disease just to make a point?  And if so, how does that make it any better than God punishing my child for some perceived slight on my part?  Or, if we take the Old Testament at its word, even the slight of my parents or their parents?

I think we have to really hesitate and question the text if we’re going to go with that kind of interpretation - I don’t think that God caused the man to be born blind just so that, some handful of years later, Jesus could stumble across him and heal him in some kind of grand, cosmic game of chess in which the greatest player of all time is already thousands of moves ahead.  The man’s blindness wasn’t a punishment for someone else’s sin; it wasn’t a curse on the man himself for some slight against God.  It was just something that happened, and Jesus chooses to utilize this situation to demonstrate something about God and bring him glory in the process.  Jesus steps into a situation in which a sinful world has taken a man who is “less than perfect” and marginalized him, pushed him out to the outskirts of his community, declared him unclean and unfit for anything in this world but begging.  Jesus, who “does not see as mortals see,” looks beyond the superficial details of the man’s situation, just like he does with the Samaritan woman at the well, and lifts the man up out of his circumstances, restoring him in the process.  The man was blind, but now he sees.  And in the vision that this man receives and the testimony he gives of that vision, even in the face of all the questioning and prodding, that man brings glory to God.

We might not always have the answers we’re looking for - sometimes all that we know is the same as the man as he answers: “I was blind, now I see.”  And sometimes, perhaps that’s all we need.  Sometimes, we get so bogged down in the “hows” and the “why’s” and the “wherefore’s” that we end up completely forgetting to acknowledge the miraculous, the power of God at work in our midst.  Sometimes, we just need to step back and acknowledge the thing for what it is: “I was blind, now I see.”  And as we acknowledge that simple reality, as we give credit to the Creator whose presence surrounds us in all our situations… we, too, can find that God receives glory in all our situations.  In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.