From the Daily Lectionary for Thursday in the Thirteenth Week after Pentecost
John 9:1-17
As Jesus walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, saying to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see. The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?” Some were saying, “It is he.” Others were saying, “No, but it is someone like him.” He kept saying, “I am the man.” But they kept asking him, “Then how were your eyes opened?” He answered, “The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ Then I went and washed and received my sight.” They said to him, “Where is he?” He said, “I do not know.”
They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. Now it was a sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight. He said to them, “He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see.” Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not observe the sabbath.” But others said, “How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?” And they were divided. So they said again to the blind man, “What do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened.” He said, “He is a prophet.”
I can’t help but chuckle a bit reading this passage. A blind man has just been healed and the institutional leadership can only talk about whether it was “kosher” to perform such a miracle on the Sabbath. “This isn’t the way we’ve always done it!” It’s a lot like the conversations that abound these days: red is blue; and blue is red. Good is bad; and bad is good. Our tribal tendencies keep us from acknowledging wholeheartedly the Truth in our very midst. Why is that? Why is it that human nature often opposes our humanity?
The more serious consideration in this passage is John’s raising the issue of theodicy. Theodicy is a theological term that literally means, “God’s justice,” from the Greek Theos, God, and dike, justice. The term has to do with the time worn conundrum that keeps theologians busy late into the night: “If God is a loving God, then why is there suffering and evil in the world?” And, if Jesus takes away the sins of the world, why have things, in essence, stayed the same. Those are serious questions.
Jesus is asked, “Who sinned, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?” The implication, of course, is that God punishes sin. That would be an expeditious and unambiguous answer to the question of theodicy. In fact, it was, throughout biblical history, the orthodox answer to the thorny question. Jesus’ answer, however, flies in the face of conventional wisdom: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.” Such audacity. One has to engage the imagination to hear such a teaching.
Is it possible that suffering just “is;” that evil just “is;” that perhaps the created order requires the iterations of dark and light? Artists know this: Contrast is everything. Is it possible that evil and suffering make for the startling awareness of the power of Love? Wallace Stevens proclaimed that “death is the mother of beauty.” I trust the voices of our poets. But it is enough for me to think that God, the consummate improviser, can use any circumstance for growth and transformation. I don’t believe that God gives us obstacles, but I do believe that God can turn an obstacle into possibility, even such obstacles as suffering, evil and violence, even death itself… and that all things eventually, in God’s good time, become irrepressible praise.
A Prayer for Joy in God’s Creation (BCP p. 814)
O God who has filled the world with beauty: Open our eyes to behold your gracious hand in all your works; that, rejoicing in your whole creation, we may learn to serve you with gladness, for the sake of him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
