"No Blame" given March 26

 The man had been sightless from birth, John tells us. All his life-- his identity, his role had been defined for him--invalid, handicapped, beggar on the corner. All his life he had been perceived as helpless--and worse, despised. Despised not necessarily because he could not participate in so much of human life, not only because he was dependent on the charity of others, but mainly because he was a sinner. Even Jesus' disciples saw it that way.

"Who sinned?" they asked. "..this man or his parents, since he was born blind?"

There's no possibility in their minds of this sightless beggar simply being an innocent victim. That was not a category in their thinking. Blindness, illness, almost any sort of infirmity was seen to occur as a direct consequence of sin--much as many people see AIDS in our era. “Instant Karma’s gonna get ya”. Or as Maude used to say on TV “God'll getcha for that!”

No doubt there were many people that day pressing Jesus for healing, for advice, for teachings, for wondrous works. But something drew Jesus' eyes to the man born blind--who could not even see Jesus.

"There is no blame here--only opportunity. The works of God will be displayed in him."

“No Blame.” That’s a profoundly radical statement. In Jesus’ world, everybody knew that bad things simply did not happen to good people. Bad things only happened to bad people. If something tragic or awful happened to somebody—even someone with a spotless reputation-- everybody knew that it was Divine punishment for some secret sin.

But Jesus knew that there is much random, tragic, unmerited suffering in the world. We cannot explain it away by blaming God. We cannot explain it away by blaming the victim. That attitude deadens our compassion. It

mutes the nagging of our social conscience-- and it lets us off the hook of trying to help when we blame the victim.

Blaming the victim is an easy out for us—until we end up a victim. But in the end it doesn’t wash. The reality is that bad things do indeed happen to good people—all over the world--all the time. And though we may not always be comfortable admitting it--we know that’s true.

“Why me?” We pray.And the broken-ness of the world—the consequences of the sins of others—nature--heredity—pure chance—answer back.

“Why not?”

Jesus also understood a spiritual reality that few people in his time, or in ours, totally grasp, or are willing to accept. Suffering-- unmerited suffering-- has spiritual power. We touch. only the tip of the iceberg when we say, 'Every cloud has a silver lining”. “What doesn’t kill ya’ makes ya’ stronger” is a bit closer. But it goes even deeper than that. Unmerited suffering (when we refuse to lose faith) is redemptive. And faithful, redemptive suffering has the power to touch and cleanse hearts, as well as change lives. It will ennoble the one suffering. And it can redeem others—onlookers, family, even eventually persecutors.

It can also transform and redeem society—as the freely undertaken suffering of Gandhi and his followers or the freedom riders, or Dr. King and their followers eventually freed and transformed India, and then our own country.

. That’s the spiritual principle behind the reality of the cross. The unmerited suffering of Jesus on the cross redeems the world. And that Divine Redemption is the ultimate gift of God’s grace.

“No blame.” Knowing that, Jesus kneels down in the dirt, and spits in it, and makes a muddy paste of it. Then He rubs it into the sightless man's eyes. He then sends the man off to the sacred pool to wash. And as the mud washes off the sightless man's eyes, so does his blindness. Then he comes back to Jesus healed--but not yet whole. He doesn’t know who has healed him. Or how, or why. He doesn’t even know where to look for his healer until someone tells him.

Gradually though, after the healing, after the Sanhedrin sticks its nose in, the man comes to recognize and understand who Jesus is. The man grows from innocent victim, to patient, to believer, to witness, to disciple. The former sightless man, eventually came to call Jesus Son of God. With his new eyes, he finally saw Jesus as He truly was.

The Pharisees and Sadducees and priestly clique however, remained sightless, unable or unwilling to see the Divine Reality before them. Their all-too-human scale of values was valueless in the eyes of God.

A thousand years earlier, God’s prophet Samuel had to have it explained to him. It wasn’t the good looking, adult, first-born son of Jesse. it was that half-grown, pimply, smart aleck teenager he was supposed to anoint as the next King of Israel.

“God does not see as human beings see”.

We see it again and again in the Gospels. When Jesus was born and angels sang, proclaiming the Messiah's birth. Who was it that they flew to? King Herod? The Roman Governor? The generals, the government officials, the chancellor of the University, the captains of industry, the local big shots?

You and I know the answer. They went to a bunch of shepherds watching somebody else’s sheep on a cold hillside. Shepherds--outcasts, hirelings, classed with sinners—regarded as only about half a step above the prostitutes and the unclean. And who was it that brought the Babe gifts? The Magi--foreigners-- gentiles, goyim, pagan outsiders.

When Jesus picked his disciples, did He go to local movers and shakers--business people, respectable citizens, middle class and professional folk? No. He called smelly fishermen and despised tax collectors and half-baked revolutionaries and ex-hookers to follow.

When Jesus describes the final scene in all of history in Matthew 25, humankind is judged and divided into two groups. The he-goats and the sheep. The males and the females. Hebrew culture always placed women lower than men. The woman was created second, standing at her man's left hand.

But in the parable of the Last Judgment we're told that God will place the sheep— usually thought of as female— on the right hand— the favored side, the saved side, the blessed side. And the goats— usually thought of male— will be placed to the left of the Throne-- on the damned side. As in so many of His parables, Jesus reverses the expected order—upsetting comfortable preconceptions and prejudices and challenging his listeners to stop, and listen, and think, and pray, and grow.

Why do you suppose that the good news of Christ goes forth into the world in such an upside down manner? Why is it that the Gospel message was first given to shepherds and foreigners, working people, women and outsiders, the lame, the handicapped, the poor, the sick, the widows and children, the mentally ill, the lepers, the Samaritans and gentiles and so on? Why would Jesus do such a thing?

“God does not see as human beings see”. Jesus knew. It’s the outsiders and marginalized who are best able to see the injustices, the equities, the pain of this life. When you put a car on a lift and look at it from underneath, you can see where repairs are needed a lot more clearly than you can from the driver’s seat. When your view of the world is from the underside you can see clearly, how far away this world is from God, and God’s Will for it.

The view of society looking up from beneath may be the most tragic, but it’s also the most realistic. The broken and despised are often those who can best discern how desperately this sad and tear-stained planet does indeed need Jesus Christ, and His love, and His Gospel of hope.

As a result, those who must dwell on the margins have the potential to become the real agents of transformation in the world. No one needs to wash the mud from their eyes. They see things as God sees them. No misleading first impressions, no illusions, no self-delusion, no false optimism, no convenient stereotypes or vested interest in the status quo, no ideological or theological blinders.

The church has used the season of Lent to preach the healing of blindness for as long as there has been a season of Lent--or a church for that matter. In Jesus Christ you and I are offered a new and different slant on things--a new look at reality. We can begin to look beyond appearances and images. We can get a glimpse beneath the surface--at the heart of things.

The Gospel Reading is full of descriptions of different sorts of blindness. There's the blindness of the disciples who speak and moralize in trite clichés and phrase their theology in terms of blame.

There's the sightlessness of family and friends who will refuse to be caught up in a new vision— almost declining to recognize their own son out of fear of censure by the political powers that be. There's the blindness of the professional religious establishment, which refuses to see that anything good or blessed could occur outside the narrow bounds of their own system and understandings.

Finally there is the physical sightlessness of the man born blind himself. And in many ways, his blindness is no more dark or any more debilitating than is anyone else in the story. Yet in the midst of this dark night of sightlessness, the man born blind has—as we also can have our healing made complete.

Though he didn't even see Jesus in the first place, though he didn't even know where his healer was, or who this Jesus was , and although in their own blindness those around him couldn't help, in the end, it is Jesus who finds him. (As He finds us.) Then, Jesus confronts the man with the opportunity to make a personal commitment of faith to the one who gave him sight and made him whole. As he confronts us.

"Do you believe in the Chosen One?" Jesus asks.

"Who is he sir? Tell me that I may believe." And Jesus replies,

"You have seen Him. You are speaking to Him now."

The gift of godly sight, of spiritual discernment, of faith, only can come to us from our personal encounter with our Lord. He kneels before us, and in our blindness, we may not even be aware until we feel the healing hand touch our eyes and call us to wash, to return, to believe, to testify, to follow.

The Spirit who healed the man born blind was the very same Spirit of God who rushed upon David and made him a hero of his people. It is the same Spirit who walks beside us through the valley of death. It is the same Spirit--the Spirit of Christ who allows us to attack the Goliaths of our lives with a slingshot. It is the same Spirit who allows us, like that formerly sightless man, to twit the entrenched and self-satisfied. It is that very same Holy Spirit who allows us, in the face of persecution and difficulties and handicaps and personal trials and tragedies, to still believe, to hope and trust in God to persevere, and eventually to be transformed and triumph. Amen.