John 9:1-41
Samuel, I'm telling you! If I hear one more person ask what I did to cause my son's blindness, I'm going to hit him with my crock-pot!"
The elderly Jew reached out to stoke his wife's shoulders. "Sarah, Sarah, Enough," he said. "We've been through all this a hundred times."
Benjamin was the light of their lives, the child for whom they had hoped for so long. But light was something that had no meaning for him. Benjamin had been born blind. Every day they had watched him struggle. Every day they had listened to the townspeople ask: "What did you do to cause his blindness?" Samuel and Sarah had searched their minds, their very souls, and still they did not know. It couldn't have been Benjamin's fault. He'd never had a chance to offend anyone. So it must be theirs. But what had they done that was so horrible that their child deserved to suffer?
No one ever asked how they could help Benjamin, only what his parents had done wrong. Even today it had happened again. That group of men from out of town had seen her son begging by the side of the road and she had heard one ask their leader the old question. All afternoon she had been pondering the answer she'd overheard. He had said, "It's not anyone fault. It's so God's work can be shown through this man's life." What had he meant by that? And who was he, anyway?
At first glance we may think that we no longer ask such questions like that in our society, "Whose fault is it?" But let us think for a moment.
Kathy had three children; two of them were identical twins. The one of the twins was born with a brain tumor the size of a baseball. They had both been born with autism. Kathy told me once of the guilt she had over these two little boys. She said, "When the baby comes out of your body, the guilt goes in, especially if your have special needs children."
In a crisis when everything seems to be falling apart, do you ask yourself, "What did I do to deserve this?"
Joni Eareckson was 17 years old when she dove into too shallow water and snapped her neck. The accident left her paralyzed and, at first, angry and bitter at God. One night she prayed to God, "How can any of this be your will? I did all the things your supposed to do to be a Christian. I was sorry for my sins, all of them. How could you let this happen to me?"
Later she prayed, "Its stupid trying to talk to you, God. You're as impersonal as the machines in this hospital. What a dumb thing to believe, that you really care about people, and what happens to us."
This was her lowest point. The next day she asked her best friend to help her commit suicide. She was desperate. What was the point in living? There was no meaning to this accident and no point to her life anymore. Her world had been turned upside down and she was left anchorless.
"Rabbi," the disciples asked Jesus, "why was this man born blind? What is the point, what is the meaning to his blindness? Whose fault is? There must be a reason?"
The blind man and his parents might have asked that same question, "What is the point of my blindness?"
Jesus answered: "It is not that he or his parents sinned. He was born blind so that God's power might be displayed in curing him."
And then he did the most bizarre thing. He spit on the ground and made a clay paste with the saliva, rubbed the paste on the blind man's eyes, and sad, "Go, wash at the Pool of the Sent" The man went and washed and saw.
Jesus answered the old question, "Why." Jesus said, "This blindness is senseless. And I am going to give you meaning!" After the tragedy, after the event, Jesus gives meaning in what otherwise might be senseless.
Joni Eareckson meets a man who claims to have enough faith for the both of them. He believes that his faith is strong enough to cure her from her paralyzes. They go to a church and pray for her to walk again. Nothing happens. She does much soul searching and comes to understand that she will be used to glorify God, but not in the way her boyfriend thought. She waits to find out from God how she will be used by him.
Joni is a talented artist and at her first exhibition she meets a Vietnam veteran who is now struggling with the loss of his eye and his hand.
She says to him, "I am sure of only one thing. I know who put me back together." He asks her "How can you know?" She says, "I sleep nights and I laugh a lot. If there really is such a place as heaven, and Jesus really died on that cross because he wanted to bridge the gap between God and us, then getting to know him and all that means, should be worth looking into. I'd rather be in this chair knowing him then on my feet without him."
And, in that moment Joni knows that she has been found the meaning of her paralyzes.
Tragic events happen. God does not cause them to happen. Through Christ, pointless tragic events are given meaning. Meaning is attributed after the tragedy.
By choosing Christ, our lives become meaningful because of Christ. God's gift to us is meaning where there is there is hopeless. When we are able to see the meaning in our lives our eyes are opened. True healing has occurred and we can sing that glorious song, "I once was lost, but now am found, was blind but now I see."
