David Orendorff · John 9:1-12

We are a people that like to know where the fault lies. From the Big Bang, to accidents, to disease and life we want to know the cause. Knowing the cause of something potentially gives us some control over our lives. It also permits us to shift blame as in “It’s not my fault!”

And so when Jesus encounters the man blind from birth the disciples want to know the cause of the blindness; is it the blind man’s sin or his parent’s sin. I think it is helpful to remember that the disciples are asking this question from the perspective of what is called Blessings Theology.

Most of you know about Blessings Theology but let me take a minute for those who may not know and to remind the rest of us. Blessings Theology in its rawest form simply says that God gives good people good lives and bad people bad lives. A major portion of the Hebrew Scriptures advocate this sort of Santa Claus understanding of God. Good children get presents, bad children don’t. Except God is more severe than Santa Claus and not only withholds gifts but also sends suffering.

The Book of Job is written as a criticism of Blessings Theology postulating that a very good man suffers horrible things for no discernable reason. In our time Rabbi Kushner has written a wonderful little book; “Why Bad Things Happen to Good People.” But Blessings Theology also needs to explain why good things happen to bad people. And then there is the whole problem of blaming the victim since suffering is punishment.

Blessings Theology is still very much with us. There are preachers and congregations offering the notion that a loving God wants us to be healthy and wealthy. And if we are not then we must not be listening to or obeying God. Our attitudes toward social welfare sometimes reflect the notion that if one is poor it must be because they are lazy freeloaders. And when someone gets lung cancer we want to know if they were a smoker.

Now back to the man blind since birth. Was it the baby in the womb or his parent’s that sinned against God? The question poses a dilemma with, for me, not right solution. What could a baby, still in the womb, possibly do that deserves a life sentence of blindness? And then, what kind of God punishes a baby because of the parent’s sin. I can understand why babies suffer because of the sins of their parents. But I cannot understand why God would punish the baby for the sins of the parents.

In what must have surprised his disciples Jesus says it is no ones fault, not the baby’s and not the parents’, but that this man is blind so that the works of God might be revealed in him. What concerns Jesus is not who sinned, but that this man’s blindness is an opportunity for God to be made known. In the adversity of the man born blind is a chance for God to shine. This has remarkable implications for the suffering of our lives. Our suffering is not divine punishment but is an opportunity, as Jesus says, for God’s works to be revealed in us.

Alcoholics Anonymous likes to say of adversity that it is “another opportunity to excel.” To be able to say this and mean it is an important shift in the thinking of the alcoholic. Alcoholics most naturally see life from a somewhat paranoid point of view. To reverse this thinking so as to see adversity not as punishment for some unnamed sin (alcoholics are great at verbal self abuse) but as an opportunity for God to do something great is a radical shift. Instead of waiting for the other shoe to drop, those alcoholics seeing “another opportunity to excel” are waiting for the next miracle of grace in their lives.

Henri Nouwen in a Lenten Study on the Prodigal Son parable says it this way,

So often people grow resentful and bitter as they grow older. With time their image of an ideal life is disturbed because painful historical, political, personal, family, or financial realities break through.

Your pain, seen in the light of a spiritual journey, can be interpreted. The great art is to gradually trust that life’s interruptions are the places where you are being molded into the person you are called to be. Interruptions are not disruptions of your way to holiness, but rather are places where you are being molded and formed into the person God calls you to be. You know you are living a grateful life when whatever happens is received as an invitation to deepen your heart, to strengthen your love, and to broaden you hope. You are living a grateful life when something is taken away from you that you thought was so important and you find yourself willing to say, “Maybe I’m being invited to a deeper way of living.”[1] Henri J.M. Nouwen, From Fear to Love: Lenten Reflections on the Parable of the Prodigal Son, (Creative Communications for the Parish, Fenton, MO, 1998), 8

Dr. E. Stanley Jones is one of my heroes. Dr. Jones led an active life as a missionary and evangelist in India and is arguably one of the greatest missionaries and evangelists to ever bless the Methodist Church. He was a prolific writer. Like my father, grandfather and grandmother I find his writing profound and wonderfully instructive. For three generations now we have collected his books and we have several first additions. When my father dies, along with the outhouse collection, I get the E. Stanley Jones collection.

Jones prayed and studied scripture two hours daily. He was intent on listening for the will of God in his life. When in the mid 40s he was elected Bishop at General Conference he went back to his hotel room and prayed. It seemed clear in his prayers as he listened to God that he was to continue his missionary work in India and so on the following morning he resigned as Bishop.

In December 1971 E. Stanley Jones at 87 had a major stroke. Dr. Jones didn’t meditate about the why of his suffering though he availed himself of the best medicine of the day. Instead he wrote of the opportunity his stroke brought him to preach the gospel in a new and more profound way in a book entitled “The Divine Yes.”

It was not easy writing because though Jones could write some with his right hand he couldn’t focus his eyes so his writing was indecipherable. His daughter helped him use a tape recorder, but he couldn’t always focus his mind and so what he spoke was often rambling and confusing. Here was a man who had a life long passion to share the love of God with anyone who had a minute to listen, a gifted speaker and writer who was now without the power to speak or write. He could have become bitter as so many do with their afflictions, but he didn’t. Instead he saw life this way:

I didn’t choose this last call to write a book on the Divine Yes. It seemed a part of the paralytic stroke which has afflicted me. As I thought about it, I came to the conclusion that it had always been part of my life resources and my life plans to be taking up things that I could not do - and then by God’s grace doing them. I never dreamed of a stroke that leaves you helpless as a call to present a Divine Yes, the universal Yes which meets a universal need. But perhaps it is in the fitness of things that it should be so.[2] E. Stanley Jones, The Divine Yes, (Abingdon Press, Nashville, 1975), 24-25

And Dr. Jones concludes his opening chapter with:

Perhaps I can write this book by faith. It is now hard for me to preach a sermon; why not be one?[3] ibid., 26.

E. Stanley Jones looks for the glory of God to be revealed in his broken body and mind. He looks and writes of how God works so even strokes might reveal God’s grace in a “Divine Yes”. We don’t have to be E. Stanley Jones to adopt an attitude which sees adversity as an “opportunity to excel.” In fact we don’t even have to be a Christian, or a believer to see in life’s adversities divine opportunities.

Stephen Hawking is one of the great theoretical physicists of our time and a self pronounced non-believer. Since the late 1960s he has suffered ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease. For many folks this would have signaled the end. But for Stephen Hawking it was the beginning of the most productive part of his life. While his body was being systematically destroyed he discovered he had an abundance of time to give his mind to the mysteries of the universe. Living in a wheelchair, under constant nurses’ care and speaking through a computer he wrote what in its first year of publication became a classic work on time and space entitled “A Brief History of Time.”

Every affliction, every adversity, even crucifixion is an opportunity for God to excel in our lives. On the last night of his life, Jesus is not celebrating his immanent death but prays for God to “let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want.[4] Matthew 26:39” He prays so hard that his sweat flows as blood and falls to the ground. Jesus no more seeks suffering than we do. But he sees in the horror of his death that God’s will is to be done and in that divine will God will make something good, something that is a Divine Yes to all the life woes; that God will excel in this adversity as God has excelled in every adversity.

Why the man was born blind is an important question to science and medicine and to us. But it is not the important question to Jesus. And Jesus certainly does not believe that suffering is a punishment of God’s. In fact Jesus sees suffering as an opportunity for God to be revealed. What is important to Jesus, and I think should be of ultimate importance to us is the question, “How does this suffering reveal the work of God?”
With the blind man, E. Stanley Jones, Stephen Hawking and Jesus we are invited to see each adversity, every suffering and death as a Divine Yes; as an opportunity for God to be revealed. We become like the old alcoholic who after being sober for a number of years and finding serenity in God says, “I am a grateful alcoholic for God has worked a miracle in my life and without my disease I would have missed it.”

The meaningful purpose of our lives is the simple testimony the man more blind gives to priests, family and friends, “I was blind and now I see. Thanks be to God.”

Shalom and Amen.

[1] Henri J.M. Nouwen, From Fear to Love: Lenten Reflections on the Parable of the Prodigal Son, (Creative Communications for the Parish, Fenton, MO, 1998), 8

[2] E. Stanley Jones, The Divine Yes, (Abingdon Press, Nashville, 1975), 24-25

[3] ibid., 26.

[4] Matthew 26:39