- Sermon - Mickey Anders

Text: John 9:1-5

Today I want us to imagine that our family is the family which is at the heart of our Scripture passage for today. Imagine the happy days when this family was expecting a baby. The whole extended family was thrilled with the coming of this boy. And then imagine our reaction when the child is born, and the family discovers that this child is blind. I imagine that we would deem that as a tragic event.

Our hopes for this child would have been dashed, and we would find yourselves asking some hard questions. We might ask, "Why did this happen? Why did it happen to us? Why did God allow this to happen?"

In our text, the disciples asked the same kinds of questions that we do when they encountered a man who was born blind.

We don't ask these hard questions as long as life goes normally. Most of the time we have no difficulty with our basic assumptions about God and life. We believe that God is good and all-powerful. God is like a loving parent who wants only the best for us and will do everything to see that it happens. As long as we are obedient, God rewards us. If we get out of line, God disciplines us. God protects us from being hurt or from hurting ourselves, and God sees to it that we get what we deserve in life.

But then something happens that doesn't fit our perfect little picture of the way God works in this world. A man is born blind, or a relative has cancer. That's when we look deeper and ask hard questions. "Why did this happen? Why did God do this? Why did God allow this?"

When something bad happens, religious and well-meaning people come out of the woodwork to explain why this happened. People who are not involved in our pain know exactly why this has happed to us and they are glad to tell us how to understand it. They have easy answers for our hard questions. Most of these answers are what I call "pat answers," simplistic statements that may or may not really solve the problem.

For some people, maybe most people, these theological difficulties are only a minor bump in the road of faith. Most people are perfectly comforted by the simple and sincere explanations given by church friends, and they never notice the inconsistencies in the pat answers that come their way. These are people who are quick to faith and acceptance.

Sometimes, I find myself jealous of such a simple faith because I can't seem to muster it myself. When an answer doesn't make sense, it bothers me. I am one of those who has to fight and struggle his way to faith in God.

Let's look at some of the typical pat answers and see if they really work for us.

Pat Answer # 1 - Blindness was a result of the sin.

This is the pat answer that seemed completely self-evident to the disciples. The disciples were convinced this is the simple explanation for tragedy. People suffer because of sin, somewhere, somehow. The disciples were well-acquainted with the following verses which seem to say that bad things are always a result of our sin.

Proverbs 12:21 "No harm happens to the righteous, but the wicked are filled with trouble."

Psalm 35:27 "I have been young, and now am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread."

These verses depict God as a righteous judge who gives us exactly what we deserve. Life's tragedies are the result of sin. Bad things happen as a result of our own sin.

People in the twenty-first century still seem to believe this. I have seen it time and again. When something tragic happens in a family, their immediate question is, "What did I do to deserve this?"

It seems to be a knee-jerk reaction. Even people who know better often feel they have done something to bring this tragedy into their lives. We are somehow at fault.

Certainly there are times when we bring disaster on ourselves. Bad decisions often lead to bad outcomes. But I am not talking about those times. I am talking about random tragedies that clearly are not brought on by anybody's decisions. People still ask, "What did I do to deserve this?"

When the disciples encountered a man born blind, they were so sure of this theological conclusion that they worded their question, "Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"

In their minds, there were only two possible explanations. Either the man himself sinned or his parents sinned.

Since the man had been born blind, they thought perhaps Jesus would explain how a child can sin before it is born. Maybe this man had been rebellious in the womb and had been punished by blindness.

Perhaps even they did not believe a child could sin in the womb, so they expected Jesus to explain that it was the man's parents who had sinned. After all, even the Ten Commandments contain this warning: "For I the Lord your God am a jealous god, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and fourth generation of those who reject me." (Exodus 20:5)

But Jesus made it clear that he didn't accept either one of these answers. He quickly said, "Neither this man nor his parents sinned..." Whatever was the cause of this incident, Jesus made it clear that it wasn't the result of sin.

I am glad that Jesus gave such a clear answer to this question, because it is one that we should put to death. Jesus makes very clear that this man's blindness had nothing to do with anybody's sin. It just happened.

Anyone who reads the Book of Job knows this as well. Job clearly shows that sometimes tragedy comes even to the righteous. Bad things sometimes happen to good people.

Today we can add significantly to the disciples' pat answer. I want to leave the text at this point and talk about some other pat answers. Our contemporary friends, like the friends of Job, have an arsenal of advice that they are quick to bestow on the suffering. Let's look at some popular "Pat Answers."

Pat Answer #2 - What seems to be bad is really beautiful.

Sometimes we are told that the ways of God are mysterious, and we do not understand them. That which seems to be a bad thing - a child who is born blind - is really a beautiful thing. We should give thanks for the blindness or tragedy. It is all God's Will.

Perhaps our friends will use the famous illustration of Thorton Wilder from his book The Eighth Day, where he compares life to a beautiful tapestry:

"Looked at from the right side, it is an intricately woven work of art, drawing together threads of different lengths and colors to make up an inspiring picture. But turn the tapestry over, and you will see a hodgepodge of many threads, some short and some long, some smooth and some cut and knotted, going off in different directions. Wilder offers this as his explanation of why good people have to suffer in this life. God has a pattern into which all of our lives fit. His pattern requires that some lives be twisted, knotted, or cut short, while others extend to impressive lengths, not because one thread is more deserving than another, but simply because the pattern requires it. Looked at from underneath, from our vantage point in life, God's pattern of reward and punishment seems arbitrary and without design, like the underside of a tapestry. But looked at from outside this life, from God's vantage point, every twist and knot is seen to have its place in a great design that adds up to a work of art." (1)

Pat Answer #3 - Suffering can be good for you.

Sometimes our friends explain that tragedies cure us of our faults and make us better people. This approach says suffering is good for you.

And they might use an illustration like this:

"If a man who knew nothing about medicine were to walk into the operating room of a hospital and see doctors and nurses performing an operation, he might assume that they were a band of criminals torturing their unfortunate victim. He would see them tying the patient down, forcing a cone over his nose and mouth so that he could not breathe, and sticking knives and needles into him. Only someone who understood surgery would realize that they were doing all this to help the patient, not to torment him. So too, it is suggested, God does painful things to us as His way of helping us." (2)

Pat Answer #4 - The blindness was just a test.

Other friends might say, "This blindness is just a test. God wanted to make this child strong or his family strong by this test of faith. God did this to your family because he knew that you were strong enough to pass the test."

Maybe one or more of these pat answers has meaning for you. Perhaps for you these ways of looking at the tragedies of life give you the strength to carry on. But for me, none of them work because all of them assume that God is the cause of our suffering.

Skeptics like me say, "What kind of God is it that plays around with the health of children to teach a lesson?" I wonder if we haven't devised clever illustrations that turn the world upside down by saying that what we think is bad is really good. Doesn't that discount the whole matter of our suffering? I sometimes think we go to unnecessary lengths to defend God, to use words and ideas to transform bad into good and pain into privilege.

On the first reading of our text, one might conclude that Jesus said something exactly like that. He says, "Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but the man was born blind so that God's works might be revealed in him."

Jesus seems to be saying that the man was born blind for this very moment in his life when Jesus would display the miraculous power of God in healing him. God caused the blindness knowing that Jesus would heal the man right now.

Some scholars suggest that the words translated "so that" would be better translated as "with the result that." I think Jesus was focusing on the result of the blindness rather than the cause. I believe God is not as much interested in what caused the tragedy as in where we go from here. He was prepared to bring healing to the blind man. Finding the cause really doesn't change anything. But when we focus on the results, we are able to redeem even the worst of situations.

I think Jesus was saying, "You guys are asking the wrong question. Don't ask, 'Who caused this?' or 'Why did this happen?' but ask, 'What good purpose can come out of this?'"

Our question should not be "God, why are you doing this to me?" but rather "God, see what is happening to me. Can you help me?"

The God I believe in does not send us the problem; God gives us the strength to cope with the problem. God is responsible for the help, not the pain. The psalmist writes, "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills; from whence cometh my help. My help comes from the Lord, maker of Heaven and earth." (Psalm 121:1-2) The Psalmist does not say, "My pain comes from the Lord," or "My tragedy comes from God." He says, "My help comes from the Lord."

I don't think God makes bad things happen to us. I don't think God decides which families will give birth to a blind child. God doesn't decide which persons get cancer today. God doesn't single out certain people to be crippled with a bullet or a degenerative disease. God doesn't do it to make some beautiful tapestry in heaven. God doesn't do it to teach us a lesson, nor to punish us for our sins or our parents' sins. Sometimes bad things just happen. When they do, God is on the side of the healing.

I believe those things just happen. There is no answering that awful question, "Why did this happen?" But I am sure God didn't cause it to happen.

I think God stands ready to help us to cope with our tragedies if we can only get past our feelings of guilt and anger that separate us from God. Asking, "How could God do this to me?" is the wrong question to ask. A better question would be "Now that this has happened to me, what am I going to do about it?" This question helps to focus our attention not on the source of the tragedy but on where it leads.

Christians are not exempt from the laws of disease or the laws of nature. God is not in the business of weaving a magic spell around us so that bad things will only happen to other people.

But people who pray for courage, for strength to bear the unbearable, for the grace to face the tragedies of life very often find their prayers answered. They discover that they have more strength, more courage than they ever knew themselves to have.

When a group of tourists saw a legless war veteran go to the Shrine of Lourdes, they whispered and laughed, "Does he suppose God will give him back his legs?" The veteran overheard this remark. Turning to the group, he said, "No, I don't expect God to give me back my legs. I expect him to show me how to live without them."

Perhaps if we just asked the right questions, we would discover that God is not in the business of bringing pain and suffering into our lives. Rather God gives strength to live even in the midst of the worst kinds of suffering.

Endnotes:
1) When Bad Things Happen to Good People, Harold Kushner, p. 18.
2) Ibid., p. 21