John 9 - Amazon Web Services
John 9.1-41
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Fourth Sunday of Lent
Shelton, WA
The Eyes of Love
Sin… it’s a big issue in this passage. As a matter of fact, the word “sin” appears some 9 times in this one story. “Who sinned,” the disciples asked, “this man or his parents?” Some of the Pharisees condemned Jesus saying, “We know that this man is a sinner.” While others wondered, “How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?” The Pharisees rebuked the blind man saying, “You were born entirely in sins.” And finally, here at the end of the story Jesus tells the Pharisees that because they claim to see… because they claim to be the only ones with a handle on God’s truth (when in fact they were blind and living a lie), their sin remains.
Actually, when you think about it, sin is a pretty big issue in the Bible. As a matter of fact, pretty much the entire Bible is the story of God working out this whole sin problem and the ways it has devastated our world. We have two short chapters in Genesis about creation and paradise, and then, before chapter 3 is finished, sin takes over and becomes the dominate theme from that point on. The whole rest of Scripture—from Genesis 3 to Revelation—is about how God deals with this all pervasive problem of sin.
So what is sin? Well, there are a lot of definitions out there of just what sin is—some better than others. “Falling short of the glory of God”… “Missing the mark”… are a couple that come to mind. They’re both biblical. They’re both technically accurate. But they only capture a piece of the puzzle, only a part of the picture—and a pretty pessimistic piece at that.
According to fundamentalist and Calvinist who tend to exclusively latch onto this one piece of the definition, we all sin in word, thought, and deed each and every day; there’s no escaping it, no avoiding it; it’s as inevitable as day following night. Sin is everywhere, and while we’re trapped in these wretched bodies here in this wicked world we are all in effect prisoners to sin. Even Wesley admits that there is a dimension of sin that is so pervasive that we will never be fully free of its effect until death.
But Wesley also saw that there is a sense in which we can be free from the power of sin in the here and now. There is a dimension of sin that can be broken, freeing us from its power (even if not its effect). His famous definition, “A willful transgression of a known ordinance of God,” gets at this notion. It begins to bring sin out of a purely forensic realm and into a realm revolving around relationships. His mother, Susanna, no doubt, had a strong influence on Wesley’s relational view of sin when she gave him these instructions while at Oxford: “Whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God or takes off the relish of spiritual things, that thing is sin to you, however innocent it may be in itself.”
Well, let me throw out one more definition of sin for us to consider this morning. “Sin is what humans do to destroy goodness.” I like that one. I think this is a pretty good definition of sin—especially in light of our story this morning.
You see, as I thought about this whole idea of destroying goodness, my mind naturally went back to Genesis chapter one and the creation story. Seven times in that chapter we hear the words, “And God saw that it was good.” As a matter of fact, when it was all said and done and creation was complete, “God saw everything that he had made, and indeed it was very good.” This is the goodness that sin seeks to destroy—God’s intended goodness in creation. What God made is good; it is very good. Sin destroys that goodness.
Now here’s the kind of funny thing in this whole story of the man born blind. The word sin is used 9 times, but it seems to me that in most of the times it was used improperly. It was actually used in a way that destroys goodness. It was used as a tool of judgment and condemnation, to justify injustice, to bolster pride, and promote jealousy.
Most of that misuse of the word sin was by the Pharisees. No surprise there. They had a way of taking good things and twisting them around their own idea and agendas, bending them out of shape to the point where they were no longer good. As a matter of fact the Pharisees seemed to have been masters at the art of deliberation that breeds inactivity.
I read a paper this week for class by Soren Kierkegaard. Basically he talked about how his age (the 19th century) was an age without passion or action. It was always about to do something, but never actually did anything, always postponing action so that it might appear that something was about to happen. All its apparent activity was only an illusion of activity… a smokescreen… a big, fat nothing.
That’s kind of what the Pharisees were like. They liked to get together and talk about how when the Messiah comes thing will be better. But they did very little to actually try and make things better themselves. They liked to debate issues of sin and justice, but they never really did anything about injustice or the problem of sin. The question, “Who sinned that this man is born blind?” was typical of the day. They avoided responsibility by loosing themselves in the ambiguity of reflection and endless debate.
Jesus comes along, though, and he doesn’t get caught up in all the dialogue and debate about who sinned, or even about how sin could make a person blind; or for that matter, if it was sin that made this person blind, shouldn’t we let sin inflict sins punishment. Shouldn’t we let sin run its course? Shouldn’t we just stay out of the way… not get involved?
No, Jesus simply spits on the ground, makes some mud and rubs it on the man’s eyes, and tells him to go and wash it off. And the man does. And he can see. Goodness is restored. And the people are astonished. Some believe, some say “things like that don’t happen,” some go and tell the Pharisees.
I can just picture that scene: A bunch of old guys with long white beards, high hats, and poofy robes sitting around looking all important, talking about all the things they were about to do. In other words, postponing action so that it might appear that something was about to happen, but nothing ever did… nothing ever will. All of a sudden someone come busting in on their meeting, “The dude can see. He can see.” Then someone else comes running in, “How did it happen? The blind man—the one who was blind since birth—he can see.” The Pharisees murmur to each other and then announce with much pomp and piety, “Bring him to us. We will determine if he can see or not. We’ll decide how it is that this happened. We’ll get to the bottom of this. We’ll see if this is legitimate or not.”
But of course, they can’t see. Their vision is distorted. They are themselves blind—more blind than this man standing in front of them ever was. They just didn’t know it.
And do you know what it is that made them blind? They didn’t recognize goodness. They had let all their rules… all their laws… all their en-cultured ideas of what was important, what was proper, what was improper blind them from seeing. They were more concerned with appearance and form than with passion and action. They cared more about proper Sabbath observance than about people suffering.
Jesus came to restore goodness. That’s what love does. Love does something. It spits in the dirt and makes some mud; it rubs that mud on the eyes of a blind man. And he can see. It waits at a well in the middle of the day. It takes the time to reach across social and cultural barriers that destroy goodness, love touches the outsider—a rejected woman—and love restores what sin destroyed. Love takes a few loves of bread and a couple of fish and feeds a multitude. It touches the widow’s son and brings him back to life. It reaches out to the leper and makes them whole. The lame walk, the deaf hear, the captives and the prisoners are set free… the blind see.
Love does something. It responds to a need. Not just any need, but the need to restore goodness, the need to bring wholeness back to a broken world. Love bleeds for people.
You see, I think that’s what this passage is about—restoring vision… seeing our world through the eyes of love; not the eyes of judgment… not through the eyes of religious elitism… not through the eyes of churchiness… but through the eyes of love—a love that bleeds for people.
Dear Father, Almighty creator of all that is good; help us to see our world through your eyes of love. Help us, Lord, to put that love into action. Put us to doing. Fill us with your passion—a passion that reaches into the dirt to make mud… a passion that bleeds for people. We want to be people who restore goodness, people who bring wholeness, people who work diligently to undo all that sin has destroyed. Through Jesus Christ our Lord we pray.
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