Lent 4, 2002
God’s Ways are not Our Ways: Why was this man born blind?
Were you ever the last one chosen to be on a sports team in gym class?
Did you ever try out for the play, or the chorus, or the drill team and, when the list was read out, you never heard your name called?
Are you short? Have you ever felt frustrated because you weren’t valued as much as someone who was taller, even though you might be smarter, more agile, more talented? Or are you average height or more but awkward, always feeling that the smooth talkers and actors get all the attention and no one gives you a chance?
Are you the youngest, or one of the younger, children in your family, and always felt that the older ones are the important ones?
Have you ever applied for a job that you really wanted, only to be told that you did not have the qualifications they were looking for? No experience, for example? And you thought, how am I supposed to get experience if no one will hire me in the first place?
Well, if you have had any of these experiences, you can relate to what happened to David – at first – when Samuel came to meet Jesse’s sons in order to anoint one of them to be the future king of Israel.
Samuel is God’s prophet. He had anointed Saul, the present King, and he had high hopes for Saul as the leader of God’s chosen people. But God “repented that he had made Saul king over Israel.” So he tells Samuel to stop grieving over Saul, and to go anoint one of Jesse’s sons to be the future king. Samuel obeys and goes. And a fearsome sight he must have been approaching Jesse’s hometown of Bethlehem; the elders come to meet him trembling, asking, “Do you come peaceably?”
Samuel consecrates Jesse and his sons, offers the sacrifice and then looks at each of the young men as they come before him. One after the other, from Eliab one, seven sons of Jesse pass before him; each time Samuel thinks, this is a fine looking young man, this must be the one. But each time God says No. Gods says rather, “Do not look on the outward appearance, or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him (it is important to note that Saul was very tall - and that was seen as sure proof of his suitability as the king); (now this is the important line) For the LORD sees not as man sees; man looks upon the outward appearance, but the LORD looks upon the heart.” Now that is the key text for today – the LORD does not see as we see – He looks on our shortcomings, our natural defects, our talents, the thoughts of out hearts in a different light from not just us ourselves – but from all humanity. We do not have God’s point of view, so we cannot see what He sees in ourselves, or in each other!!!
So it is that, although Jesse thinks his youngest son David is too young and unimportant to even be considered, Samuel, who is listening to God, asks is not there another son. David is out tending the sheep – notice the difference between this story and the tale of Joseph, who, although he is the second to youngest of Jacob’s sons, is precocious from the beginning, and always is the favored one of his father. David is not the spoiled youngest child – rather he is the ignored youngest child. Isn’t it interesting how all the stories of family life are here in the Bible – it may be thousands of years since David watched his father’s sheep, but human nature doesn’t change!
(Now we are told by the Biblical writer that David was good looking – but notice he says nothing about whether David was tall, like Saul.) But what matters is that he is the one God has chosen, not one of the older sons of Jesse. And so Samuel anointed him then and there in front of his brothers. And the spirit of God came upon David mightily from that day on. Note – you are not too young for the spirit of God to come upon you, just because you are not yet an adult. Remember, God called Samuel when he was just a little boy!
Well, when Jesus, 1000 years later, encounters a man who was blind from birth, his disciples ask him, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Now we may recoil at the blatant judgmentalism of the question, but remember that it is Jesus’ disciples who ask it – not his enemies the Pharisees, the religious legalists. For in that time, sin and disease were considered to be inextricably linked; and God’s judgment upon human sinfulness was assumed in all the misfortunes that befell the Jewish people as well as individual Jews.
But this is a question which, in a slightly different form, we ask all the time when a child is born with some disease or problem; and we ask it, in different words whenever something bad befalls a person born perfectly normal who nevertheless gets into trouble, becomes ill, or disappoints the expectations of her friends and family. “Whose fault is it that this happened?” Shall we blame the man or shall we blame his parents? We still have a desire to fix the blame, as if, in so doing, we somehow control the outcome of our lives by knowing whom to blame in the first place.
Jesus replies, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be manifest in him.” That is from a completely different point of view from the questioners. It is from God’s point of view. God does not see as we see; He does not look upon either our fine qualities or upon our limitations, sicknesses, or even sinfulness, as we do. Jesus is here telling us, that, although we cannot know the answer to our perennial question, we do not need to know it. It is irrelevant. What matters is what God plans to do with us – whether we are blind, sick, proud, talented, well educated, or simple-minded. Either God’s glory is going to be revealed in the circumstances of my existence or not – that is the only question I need to ask.
Jesus heals the man – but we understand that, like so many of Jesus’s healing miracles, the point here is not the man’s limitations but the presence of God in our midst. Jesus heals him so that the presence of God might be manifest – made known – clearly seen by everyone. The giving of sight to the blind was one of the major promises for the Messiah foretold by the Hebrew prophets. As Isaiah said of the Day of the Lord, “Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened.”
The Pharisees, realizing the import of such an event for messianic expectations, try to deny that the miracle occurred – they try to say that this man was not really blind; they get his parents and grill them. The parents do not even have the chance to rejoice that their son is no longer handicapped – that he can see – they are afraid for their reputations if they are accused of being disciples of Jesus, the itinerant preacher and healer. (How often we too do not rejoice in the healings in our lives because of what others may say about us?)
The man is asked over and over again what happened and how, and who is this man who did this miracle. He firmly replies: “Whether he is a sinner I do not know; one thing I know, that though I was blind, now I see.” Those words rang in John Newton’s ears when he became a Christian, and he enshrined them in his hymn, “Amazing Grace How sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now I’m found, was blind, but now I see!”
Three years ago I attended the Symposium on healing and spirituality sponsored by Touro Hospital for its 150th anniversary celebration. Many medical doctors and chaplains, as well as spiritual leaders spoke and a major theme in all the talks was that there is no longer any doubt, even among the scientific community of the efficacious power of prayer in healing. Study after study, done in prestigious medical schools and hospitals according to accepted standards were cited to show that there is a measurable response to praying for those who are ill – between 25 and 30% of those so prayed for did better than those for whom no prayers were known to have been offered. We also learned a lot about the physiology of the brain, about the spot that is involved in meditation, about a place that one author says is the locus for God inside our heads, or the locus “hardwired” to receive messages from God. Are such results just physiological or psychological? Or is God revealing his glory in the world through healing and also through research into the human brain?
Fr. Stan Klores, a dear friend for many years, was one of the distinguished medical and spiritual leaders who gave a presentation. His was on the spirituality of Alcoholics Anonymous, the subject of his doctoral dissertation in Spiritual Theology at the Gregorian Institute in Rome. He told his own story – of being found drunk in the gutter, of its taking 4 years before he was really healed through a miracle at the Shrine of Lourdes in France. I knew his story, and I had heard his witness before. But, meditating on this gospel account of the man born blind, I realized that Stan’s illness was exactly analogous to the plight of that ancient man whom Jesus healed. Although my friend was born whole and in a privileged family, was well educated and handsome, he still ruined his life, and almost lost his life through his drinking.
Alchoholism – Whose fault is it – his parents, his, a disease? Is it a moral failing or a chemical imbalance, or both? What difference does it make if you are the one who has ruined your life and are lying in a gutter near death?
Jesus says to him, and to you and me just what he said to his disciples that day: “It was not this man’s sin or his parents – but that the works of God might be manifest in him.”
God’s glory has been revealed in my friend, Fr. Stan, to the countless students he has taught, to the many faithful whom he has served as pastor, counselor and priest, to his fellow recovering alcoholics with whom he shares his experience, strength and hope.
That is what matters for each of us. God does not look on our failings, our sins, our diseases, or our natural limitations of intellect, stature, facial beauty, birth order, or our accomplishments of education, wealth, ordination, or anything else as we do. God looks on them as an opportunity to work his saving grace in the world, grace that we all need, no matter how “together” our lives may seem to be.
That is what Jesus came to tell us, to show us by his word and example. That is why the crucifixion of Jesus --a public execution of a itinerant young teacher and faith healer – right alongside two common criminals -- is the central event in the history of the world. God does not look upon our pain, our suffering, our failure, or even our deaths as we do.
The real question is the one Jesus puts to the man, “Do you believe in the Son of Man …” The answer to that question is the only one that makes any difference, in the end.
God grant us the ears to hear what Jesus is saying, what he is whispering in our ears, so we may see ourselves, and, like Samuel, see the others he makes to pass before us, with His eyes –as a chance to show forth God’s glory in the world.
The Very Rev. Dr. Jean Alden McCurdy Meade, March 6, 2005
Mount Olivet Episcopal Church
New Orleans