Blame Game

John 9:1-41

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The earthquake came without warning creating a crushing tsunami that engulfed the city.  More than 100,000 people perished.  Many wondered, “Was God angry?  Was this His will?  Was this His judgment on a sinful world?  The city was Lisbon, Portugal.  The date: November 1, 1755, All Saint’s Day in the Roman Catholic Church.

            Three centuries pass and another earthquake creates another crushing tsunami and again well more than 100,000 die.  In hardest hit Banda Aceh, Indonesia, Muslim clerics wondered if Allah caused this disaster because people were shirking their daily prayers and following a materialistic lifestyle.  In Israel, Shepardic chief rabbi Shlomo Amar said, “this is an expression of God’s wrath with the world.  The world is being punished for wrongdoing-be it people’s needless hatred of each other, lack of charity, moral decline.”  In Sri Lanka Buddhist survivors recalled the story of a tsunami that flooded that island kingdom 2,200 years ago when a king killed a Buddhist monk in a fit of anger.  They wonder which political leader angered the sea gods this time.  For some Hindus it was a matter of bad karma, the result of sins committed in previous lifetimes.[1] 

Assigning blame, finding fault is an instinctive human response.  Even though the explanations do not really change anything, the dead remain dead and the survivors continue their struggle, the reasons are still important because they make the world understandable and so more predictable.  They bring, we think, order out of the chaos.  If you know why a bad thing happened, you can change your behavior and so control your future.

That’s why everyone got so bent out of shape when Jesus assigned no blame for the personal tragedy of a man born blind. If you cannot find fault and assign blame, then this kind of thing could happen to anyone, could happen to you, and that’s too scary to think about.

  Jesus was not some much about looking backward as he is about looking forward.  His question was not, “Why did this happen?”  His question is, “What are you going to do about it now?  Before we think about our response, let us pray:

Lord, it is never a question of “if” we must go through some dark valley.  It is always a matter of “when”, because everyone who lives and breathes and moves will sometime bump into something that hurts.  If it hurts bad enough we lift our eyes to the heavens and ask “why?”  “What did I do to deserve this?”  If possible, help us to understand.  If not, help us to move forward and ask, “what now?” Grant us the eyes and hears to hear and the faith to respond.  Amen.

            “As Jesus walked along, he saw a man blind from birth, and his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”[2]  The question is as old as time.  People always want to assign blame. For the disciples, this was a spiritual law of Physics, “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”[3]  Every effect has a cause, so someone who suffers some affliction or loss must have done something to deserve it.

            Even though the Book of Job refuted this understanding it remained a popular because it was so simple.  It was an A=B formula.  All you needed was one side of the equation to figure out the other.  Since the disciples could see the man was blind they concluded some sin caused this effect.  Their only question was who did wrong, the victim or his parents?  Who do we blame?

            Jesus response is tricky and easy to misunderstand.  Your Bible says, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”[4]  On the surface Jesus’ answer seems to shift the blame from the man or his parents to God.  It appears as if God made him blind so that Jesus could come along later and make him see.  If that’s the way we read it, God appears cruel and a little bit of a show-off.  This man should suffer this infirmity for years so that he could be a pawn in Jesus’ magic act?

            Whenever I encounter one of these difficult verses, I go back to the original language.  I knew Seminary would pay off some day.  The critical Greek word is spelled iota, nu, alpha and pronounced “ina”.   It is translated as “so that”.  It is a purpose clause that points to the reason for something happening.

            Many translators think the word points backward to the question “why” and comes up with God as the answer.  But, others believe it points forward to the question “what now?”  If that is the case it might better be translated, “So that the work of God might be displayed in his life, we must do the work of him who sent me.” One scholar put this way,  “God had not made the man blind in order to show his glory; rather, God has sent Jesus to do works of healing in order to show his glory.”[5]            

            This man could have been born blind for any number of medical reasons. “What now” matters much more than the endless question “why”? For the man born blind “what now” was answered when Jesus spat in some dirt and made a poultice of mud, placed it on his eyes and said, “I am the light of the world.”[6] When this man born blind washed the mud off in the pool of Siloam he could see for the first time in his life.

            What follows is a sad commentary on the human condition, because no one, not the neighbors, or religious leaders or even his family rejoice or give thanks for this miracle.  No one shouts “Alleluia” or “Praise the Lord”.

            Why?  Why was no one particularly happy with this miracle?

            For the Pharisees the answer is simple.  Jesus healed this man on the Sabbath and he did it after they had told him not to.  Today many look at this kind of thing as rigid fundamentalism, as blind adherence to outdated religious rules and so smugly reject the notion that we should be bound by any of these rules at all.  For many, the Ten Commandments have been whittled down to two or three suggestions that are not too hard to keep.

            For the Pharisees these commandments were important because they believed they came from God and they also protected the identity of the Jewish people.  Remember, they were living under Roman rule, so the temptation was strong for people to go along to get along.  Give up kosher and the Sabbath and you might stand a better chance for promotion in the Roman Civil service.

            That’s why the Pharisees were so strong on the Sabbath.  This was one of the distinctive characteristics of Judaism.  It marked and shaped their identity.  So, they concluded this healing could not have come from God, because God would not break his own commandment to honor the Sabbath day.[7]

            Others did not rejoice in the miracle because they did not believe in miracles.  The supernatural challenged everything they believed about a natural world they could understand through empirical observation and carefully crafted formulas.  They liked the idea of cause and effect, but had a hard time believing Jesus could cause such an effect, because he looked like one of them, and since they could not do such a thing concluded he could not as well.  So the man must not really have been blind.  He must have been faking it these last thirty years.

            While everyone was debating the theological nuances of this event, the man who could now see stared in awe at his hands, the sky, and the faces he recognized only by the sound of their voice. His wonder was interrupted when it finally occurred to someone that they ought to ask the man who was at the center of it all.  Leave it to some know-it-all to interrupt a perfectly good argument in order ask a question and try to figure what is really going on?

            “What do you say about Jesus?  It was your eyes he opened.”  The man thought he must be a prophet.  When they pushed him further by saying he didn’t understand the theological implications of such a statement, he responded, “Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes.  If this man were not from God he could have done nothing.”[8]

            In other words, the know-it-alls turned out to know nothing-at-all.  This was beyond their experience and so it made no sense to them.  Rather than admit they might not understand the cause for every effect, they tried to bend the facts to fit their assumptions.

            So, it did not occur to the Pharisees that they might not understand all that God intended for the Sabbath; that its purpose is for healing and wholeness.  It did not occur to those who confined their understanding of the world to the things they could see and touch and explain that there may be truths beyond their senses.  There might be effects for which they could see no cause.   Life may not be as simple as they’d like to think.  There may be events beyond our understanding, some tragedies for which we will never see a reason.  Rather than dwell on this endless question, “Why”, maybe we ought to ask  “What now?”

            One who understood this better than most was a boy who grew up not far from here.  Mattie Stepanek was diagnosed very early in his life with a particularly aggressive form of muscular dystrophy.  He struggled always with the physical disability this disease caused.  He faced the loss of three siblings who died from this same illness and so prophesied his end as well.  Wise beyond his years Mattie channeled his suffering through poetry, publishing five books before his death at the age of fourteen.  His mother Jennie shared with me a prayer he called “An Examination of Faith” written when he was only five years old of five, Mattie struggled with this question of “why” and concluded with “what now?”

Dear God,

When Mommy told me that

The little baby growing in Margie

Died last night,

I was surprised and angry.

I prayed to You, God.

I prayed every night an

I prayed every day and

We all prayed that this

Sweet little baby would live.

When Mommy told me that

The baby died, I said,

“Then our prayers didn’t work!”

God didn’t listen! God didn’t

Make a miracle for the baby!”

Mommy said that You

Always listen to our prayers,

But sometimes Your Answer

Is not what we were wishing for.

And “prayers” are not “wishes.”

She said that maybe letting

The baby come into Heaven

As such a tiny angel was a miracle.

There are miracles every single day

Except we don’t always notice them,

Because we were hoping or wanting for

Something different that what we got.

So God,

Thank You for all the miracles

You give to us each day.

And thank You for listening

To all of our prayers.

And even though I am sad about

Margie’s baby, I am not angry with You.

Amen.[9]

           

           

             

           

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[1] Broadway, Bill:  Divining a Reason for Devastation.  Washington Post, January 8, 2005.  B-9.

[2] John 9:1

[3] Conservation of Momentum

[4] John 9:3

[5] Burge, Gary:  The NIV Application Bible: John. Zondervan Publishing, Grand Rapids Michigan. 2000. pg 273.

[6] John 9:5-6

[7] Exodus 20:8

[8] John 9:17, 30, 33

[9] Stepanek, Mattie J.T. – “Hope through Heartsongs”. Hyperion. N.Y. 2000. pg 25.