“Seeing Differently”

By Chris Copeland

Associate Pastor

March 10, 2002

John 9:1-41

In this story of Jesus healing the man born blind, the disciples begin by asking Jesus a logical question: “Who sinned that this man is blind? His parents or him?” In asking this question, the disciples are not only seeking Jesus’ opinion on an ancient Jewish controversy, they are expressing a simple human reaction. It is commonplace to equate suffering with sin. At first glance this question might seem to reflect a child-like fear that our sin will result in punishment. At a deeper level, however, the tendency to equate suffering with sin reflects not a fear but a wish – a wish for control, for mastery in an otherwise confusing and chaotic world.

Essentially the disciples’ question is rooted in a desire to know why things happen in this world. Why do people suffer? Why do people we love die? Why is the world such a broken place?

Although I welcome Jesus’ first response – “neither this man nor his parents sinned” – his second response causes me to stumble. Is Jesus saying that the man was born blind so that God’s works would be revealed? You mean the whole reason that this man lived a life of poverty and marginalization due to his blindness is so that God could be revealed in his healing? This seems at best unfair, and at worst the workings of a cruel God.

This past year has been a difficult one for this community and for the family of Sarah Woolf. We have watched Sarah and her family struggle through a diagnosis of cancer, a year of chemotherapy and radiation, and finally death last night. Like the disciples, there have been a number of us who have asked why such a tragedy should strike a girl so young, so full of life, so generous, so loving?

Sarah’s father, Bill, responded to this question during this past week as Sarah lay dying in her bed at home. He said, “I don’t want to know why b/c no explanation would be adequate.” Bill said it right. There is no “why” that can explain Sarah’s suffering and death. There is nothing that would make us all say “Aha. Now it all makes sense.”

Then it hit me. Jesus is not saying that the purpose for the blindness is so that God might be revealed. It’s not that God had this great plan to strike this one poor soul w/ blindness so that Jesus could meet him years later, heal him, and people would know God. No.

What Jesus is saying is that the fact that this man is blind, offers an opportunity for God to be revealed. He doesn’t say here’s the reason this man was born blind. He simply acknowledges that the blindness is a reality and that out of that reality, there is the opportunity to demonstrate hope and love to the world. It’s not about causation. It’s about opportunity. This one man’s suffering and God’s reaction to it was redemptive for others.

And this draws my mind to the gathering of the Woolf family last night in their living room shortly after Sarah’s death. We told Sarah stories, we laughed together, and we comforted each other in our grief. The love in that room was so strong that it was undeniable. After we prayed, David Woolf said what I was feeling so intensely: “What an incredible family.”

That’s it, I thought. The love that has rushed forth from this family, from our community of faith, from the city of Decatur, from all over the world where people have prayed for Sarah and her family – this love is what has come. The works of God have been revealed in the people who have shown their deep love for Sarah, for the Woolfs, and for all of us who have been grieving. And God has been revealed in this love. And God was revealed so profoundly in the love of the Woolf family gathered together last night.

This is the second time in two weeks that I have had a visceral experience of the presence of God. Recently, Lanny, Melissa Range, and I spent a week at San Francisco Theological Seminary at the second inservice of the Youth Ministry and Spirituality Project. This is a project funded by the Lily endowment whose purpose is to create a new model of youth ministry based in contemplative spirituality.

During the week, our focus was upon spiritual discernment, listening for the voice of God in decision-making. As a way of demonstrating how this process works and how we can use this process in our own ministry context, a number of the spiritual directors in the project modeled for all 60 of us gathered, a spiritual discernment about a healing service that was to take place.

As they gathered together, they lit a candle representing the presence of God among us. Then they had a period of checking in with one another, and they practiced an ancient spiritual exercise called, lectio divina. This is a way of praying scripture and listening for the call of God in the text. One person reads the scripture while everyone listens for a word or phrase that arises or shimmers or glows in the text. As they meditate and pray in silence, they ask what God might be saying to them in these words.

As each person in the spiritual discernment shared what they saw and felt in the scripture text, a deep silence fell over the room. Slowly, God was being revealed to us in that place. As they shared their stories of loss, pain, and brokenness that came out of that text for them, they became transformed. And I became transformed.

As I sat in that room watching this group of people discern the call of God, I began to weep. My tears came not just because I saw and felt the pain of those who shared difficulties, but more profoundly because I had seen the face of God in these people. I was overwhelmed. I later described it to my spiritual direction group as feeling like Moses having seen God on the mountain. He glowed after seeing God’s backside. I felt like I was on fire. I am as sure of God’s presence in that room as I am that I’m standing before you today. God was there. I just knew.

That’s what the man born blind knew, too. He couldn’t explain to his neighbors, nor to his parents, nor to the church leaders how he was healed. All he knew was that he was blind and now he can see. His was a theology based in experience. He had seen God through Jesus even though he was blind. Those who could physically see could not see the revelation of God in this healer. They did not know how to see differently.

Lent is a time when we try to be intentional about seeing differently. It is a time of reflection and attentiveness to the presence of God in our lives. This story of Jesus and the blind man encourages us to stop, look, and listen for the revelation of God. And in that revelation is our hope.

Remember, in Lent we don’t yet know about the resurrection, nor do we even know that Easter will come. But what we do know is that God is present right here, right now. We know God because we see God in these faces, in the love of this community, in the help we offer to one another when we are broken. This is the revelation of God that Jesus was talking about with his disciples.

And this is the truth and hope of resurrection. Resurrection is the community of God, the body of Christ, that lives on even after death. As a community of faith, we are the resurrected body of Christ. And that is what we celebrate today at the table. We share this meal so that we may re-member that we are Christ’s body in this world. God is here among us. We are the body of Christ. Let us remember and never forget. Let us see differently.