Amazing Grace

Wesley E Cook • Sunday, April 3, 2011 • Fourth Sunday of Lent
Text: John 9

I know of a woman who had a flight delay in a large international airport. You know the kind. They look like a mall more than an airport. She picked up a box of cookies at one of those swanky little bistros and sat down to enjoy a book. A man sat down next to her. As she was reading, she grabbed a cookie from the box, savoring every chocolaty bite. The wrapper started rustling, and to her dismay, the man who sat down next to her took one of the cookies and began to eat it. She glared at him. He held the half eaten cookie up to her, smiled and nodded. She immediately took another one, glaring. As he took another cookie, so did she without pause. They continued this exchange until there was one left. He picked up the box, offered her both the last cookie and a nice day. Her glare turned into the evil eye as the man turned to leave; she was so upset she could not even enjoy her book. As she picked up her purse to put her book away, her unopened box of gourmet cookies stared her down. It doesn’t take poor eyesight to have vision problems.

Ask the teenager if the punishment fit the crime when Mom and Dad found out about the clandestine parking activity from last Saturday night. The story is simple: two high-school seniors kissing in a car parked in a public park caught by a lifetime neighbor of the girl’s parents, passing by unbeknownst to the enraptured. This is the kind of love that lasts a lifetime: high school romance. What more is there to life? They are going to nearby colleges. They have similar career goals, educational aspirations. He wants two children; she wants a boy and a girl. The foundation is perfect for a future together. It was just innocent necking between two doe-eyed kids, nothing more. A month of no dates is certainly inappropriate. And, to add insult to serious injury, prom falls within the grounding dates. Senior prom. To be separated from friends, forced out of the festivities, to know that they will miss you but the show will go on: that is the worst thing. The worst thing.

Ask the parents whether they feel like the consequences constitute justice. It sounds like a totally different story. The date was to be with a boy named Sam: the salutorian, the boy-next-door with aspirations for law school. The neighbor picked up the cell phone not to nark, but out of concern. Instead of Sam, the date was with Dean, the thug ex-boyfriend who had introduced their daughter to a world destined for pain and failure. They trusted her. She had lied to them. Neither could be home when she left the house; the feeling that they had been played was palpable. On overarching violation of trust, trust that they had spent months rebuilding, filled the atmosphere with almost suffocating consequences. To violate trust on this level, from a person that familial: that is the worst thing. The worst thing. They hated taking prom away, but it seemed the only way. Same story. Two different perceptions.

This is the fourth Sunday of Lent: Laetare Sunday. It’s the halfway point to the other-side of the cross. This break from the color purple and bare-bones worship is meant to be a sign of encouragement: we’re almost there. “Rejoice, for you have been sorrowful.” It can look kind of bleak in here during Lent, especially with the memories of Advent and Christmastide’s beauty so fresh in our minds. So, today, we invite ourselves to remember joy amidst sorrow. It seems easy in theory. Put out a few flowers. Dust off the organ if you want. Dawn pink, that’ll brighten things up. But, in practice, joy amidst sorrow is rarely easy.

We don’t have many stories yet of the Japanese parading in the streets, inspiring each other into reestablishing hope and normalcy. Instead, we have, as one would only expect, stories about how the fourth largest earthquake in world history brings devastation through a Tsunami and aggravated a nuclear power plant so badly that tens of thousands of people have been left homeless and many are left to bury their dead. The economy has been ravaged. There is not a whole lot of joy to go around here. Yet, college grads still took to the national tradition of singing the national anthem this past Friday as they celebrated the acquisition of a job with the first and possibly only company they will ever work for. Thank goodness, someone found some joy.

Turn to the Ivory Coast. The should-be ex-president violated the sense of electoral justice and a rebellion took to the streets to let it be known that a dictatorship will not be tolerated. Millions have fled their homes. Hundreds have been killed. Unrest continues. The future looks bleak, and the sorrows are high. Yet, the Red Cross is there distributing medical care, food, water, and shelter. I imagine the first sight of that crimson cross amidst a plane of white would bring at least a little joy to someone’s heart. Although, it is hard to imagine, let’s be honest.

How about the kid in Christian college, who knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that his calling is within the institution of the church while struggling with the reality that the church may never ordain him because he couldn’t be attracted to women if he wanted to. Believe me, he tried. To be ripped away from a divine calling by the very people you are called to serve: That’s sorrow. Imagine the joy at realizing there are plenty of valuable, useful ministries in the kingdom of God with no pulpit and finding that healing is not only a valuable calling, but a true one as well.

We have, this morning, a panhandler for whom Jesus and his gang opened Pandora’s Box. Unlike many of the other healings we understand Jesus to have performed, this man never asked to be healed. Here’s the scene: Jesus is hoofing it away from an angry mob that one verse ago had stones in hand ready to loft at him for being a blasphemer. Suddenly, the disciples notice a beggar and have an important question. Here is Jesus, literally running for his life as the Greek insinuates, and the disciples decide it’s time for an object lesson. They are the kid in the backseat who says, “Nuh Uh, Mommy, you just put it on” as her mother confirms with the police officer that she has been wearing her seatbelt all along. Sometimes truth just has to wait a minute to be convenient.

“They want to stone me and you are worried about how this man’s sins made him blind?” Nonetheless, Jesus stops. There is a reason for this distraction, for this moment of truth seeking. Just as the man begins to ignore the scene because it’s happened so many times before, Jesus says something so foreign, so unexpected, the panhandler can do nothing more than sit dumbfounded. “Folks, You are asking the wrong question. You’re looking for someone to blame. There is no such cause-effect here. Look instead for what God can do” (The Message). You can almost see the tears forming in the blind man’s eyes.

Suddenly, a heavy, musty smelling substance is being put on his eyes by hands full of power. It comes with instructions to go and wash. No instructions about being able to see, just “Go; wash.” In obedience, he goes to wash. We could call it faith, but what does he have to be faithful about. Remember, there is no promise of vision here. He just needs to clean the clay off of his eyes. Then, as he opens his eyes the way he has a thousand times before, things were radically different. He began to understand what Jesus meant by “I AM the Light of the world.” Can you imagine how overwhelming it must have been to see, anything, for the first time, and how much more it would have been without asking to or being told that you would. That is joy. That is real joy.

The joy, however, is short lived. People who have known him his whole life have such a hard time believing the truth that they do what we all do when we want to be right and have it known. They found a lawyer, a whole gaggle of them called the Pharisees. After a recap of the events, the ruling came down. “No. No. No. If this Jesus was from God, he would not have healed you on the Sabbath.” Born blind, then healed on the wrong day? I don’t even have to imagine the man’s reaction.

The debate continued on and on. Every jot and tittle was considered. Finally, they elicit the healed man’s testimony, “What do you say about him?” “He’s a prophet,” offers the healed man.
Dissatisfied at the answer and with no conclusion amongst them, the Pharisees call their next witness: his parents. They are not much help. “He’s of age. He can speak for himself. What do you want with us in this matter?” The Pharisees refocus attention to the man; leading the witness with reckless abandon: “Be truthful. You know this Jesus that healed you is not from God. Confess.”

Then, the man says something so profane, so immoral, so blasphemous to the court that even his own parents, knowing it to be true, dared not utter it: “This is very simple. I once was blind, now I see. You claim not to know much about this Jesus, but it must be you that wants to believe he is from God. You’ve taught us that God does not listen to the requests of sinners but only those with a full reverence and a heart for God’s will. If Jesus was not out of God, he would never have been able to do this.” Same story. Two completely different perceptions.

Caught with their pants down, the Pharisees reverted to their last option for winning the case: defame the character of the witness. And, that they did. There are few things so sorrowful as rejection from your family, friends, and faith, especially when it is because of good news. Just like that, this man, who did not asked to be healed, is forced out of church, family, his own humanity because he brought good news, because he brought an inconvenient truth. No, it certainly does not take poor eyesight to have vision problems.

We live in a world with this fundamental truth: We see the world as we perceive it not as it really is. And, this can be scary. What if both sides are ignorant to this vital truth upon which communication and understanding hinge? What happens when we retreat into the dark forest of our own mind with no map, no note for our loved ones to tell them of our venture, no boundaries set for how far is too far into a woodland full of the most dangerous predators we imagine? What happens to our understanding of the world when we finally realize it is just that, our understanding.

Lest we become too dismayed, it can also be beautiful. Can you imagine a world where everyone sees it as you do? There would be a lot of sorrow and not a whole lot of joy. Personal perception is the foundation of art and expression, of beauty and diversity. Seeing the world as we see is a greater gift, as well. In knowing the limitations of our perception, we are released from being right, from needing to be right. More importantly we are freed from thinking “being right” is the way of God. Perhaps this truth is why this gospel reading is so central to the “Scrutiny” experience of the Lenten candidates for baptism and confirmation. It lets us be human and God be God.

Revered Disciples of Christ preacher, Fred Craddock, tells of his father’s death bed confessional (Craddock Stories, 14).

His mother took them to church and Sunday school; his father didn’t go. He complained about Sunday dinner being late when she came home. Sometimes the Preacher would call, and his father would say, “I know what the church wants, another name, another pledge, another name, another pledge.” That’s what he always said. Sometimes they’d have a revival. Pastor would bring the evangelist and say to the evangelist, “There’s one, now sic him, get him, get him,” and his father would say the same thing. Every time, his mother in the kitchen always nervous, in fear of flaring tempers, of somebody being hurt. And, always his father said, “The church doesn’t care about me. The church wants another name and another pledge. “ I guess Fred heard it a thousand times.

One time his father didn’t say it. He was in the VA and he was down to seventy-three pounds. They’d taken out his throat, and said, “It’s too late.” They put in a metal tube and x-rays burned him to pieces. Fred flew in to see him. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t eat. Fred looked around the room, potted plants and cut flowers on all the windowsills, a stack of cards twenty inches deep beside his bed. And, even that tray where they put food, if you can eat, on that was a flower. And, all the flowers beside the bed, every card, every blossom, were from persons or groups from the church.

He saw Fred read a card. Fred’s father could not speak, so he took a Kleenex box and wrote on the side of it a line from Shakespeare: “In this harsh world, draw your breath in pain to tell my story.”

Fred said, “What is your story, Daddy?”

And, he wrote, “I was wrong.”

Last week, Jesus invited us, through the woman at the well, to beg the question, “Who are we not to engage God in meaningful worship, wherever and whoever we are?” Our healed guy didn’t get that memo. In such sorrow, it is not easy to seek out joy. He doesn’t go back to Jesus after he was cast out of the assembly. So, Jesus goes to find him. I’ll say that again: Jesus goes to find him. And, spinning last week’s question, Jesus asks: “Who are we not to allow God to engage us, wherever and whoever we are?” Reality may be infinitely more than our own perceptions but it is totally vacant without them.

The man born blind did not ask to be healed. He was engaged by God for no other reason than his destiny from birth was to have his brokenness glorify God. Face to face with such a reality, the healed man surrendered to God what is God’s: himself. While God may not have asked us if we wanted to be healed, we have been asked to acknowledge this: that before we knew we needed him, Jesus sought us out and now waits for us to accept our calling. Whoever, whatever, or wherever we are is exactly what Jesus requires of us to make the glory of God known through us, even in all of our brokenness. This is amazing grace. This is ultimate reality. Amen. Amen.