John 9:1-4

Jesus and his disciples passed a man blind from birth and his disciples asked who sinned. Some Rabbis taught that there was no suffering without sin so Jesus’ troubled disciples asked whether he was blind because his parents sinned or because a fetus could sin in the womb. Jesus said that the man had been blind from birth so that God’s work could be revealed through him. 

That troubled me as a child, that someone was blind from birth so that Jesus could heal him. Later I rationalized that I was blind to many things because I took them for granted, but being blind from birth everything this man saw was a miracle. Not just his first sight but everything he saw everyday. His feet. His hands. A rock. The sky. Water. His mother’s face. 

When I studied Greek I learned there are no original texts of the Christian Bible. The earliest versions of the New Testament that we have were written on scrolls in all capital letters or all lower case from margin to margin with no punctuation or space between words. The scrolls were copied by hand, often by slaves who could not read the words they copied. As the scrolls aged and became brittle the edges crumbled. Eventually the scroll broke. We have fragments that have been assembled by Greek scholars, and I am not one.   

A word for word English translation of the story in all caps without punctuation or spacing reads:

 “ANDPASSINGHESAWAMANBLINDFROMBIRTHANDASKEDHIMHISDISCPLIESSAYINGRABBIWHOSINNEDTHISORHISPARENTSTHATBLINDHESHOULDBEBORNANSWEREDJESUSNEITHERTHISSINNEDNORPARENTSHISBUTTHATSHOULDBEMANIFESTEDTHEWORKSOFGODINHIMMEITBEHOOVESTOWORKTHEWORKSOFHIMWHOSENTMEWHILEDAYISCOMESNIGHTWHENNOONEISABLETOWORK”

Or with spacing and capitalization but without punctuation: And passing he saw a man blind from birth and asked him his disciples saying Rabbi who sinned this or his parents that blind he should be born answered Jesus neither this sinned nor parents his but that should be manifested the works of God in him me it behooves to work the works of him who sent me while day is comes night when no one is able to work

So, it is possible to space and punctuate the story thus: “And passing he saw a man blind from birth and asked him his disciples saying, Rabbi, who sinned this or his parents that blind he should be born? Answered Jesus, Neither this sinned nor parents his. But that should be manifested the works of God in him, me it behooves to work the works of him who sent me while day it is. Comes night when no one is able to work.”

I liked that a lot better. He wasn’t blind because of sin. But that left unanswered why he was born blind. Events can be explained poetically, metaphorically, economically, environmentally, historically, scientifically, philosophically, psychologically, legally; there is also coincidence, serendipity, human error, unintended consequences and some things that are beyond our understanding and explaining. Believers use all those ways to understand because some believers are lawyers, geologists, physicists, historians, etc.

The man was born blind and it wasn’t fair. That’s a complaint every child makes. I was good and something bad happened. The moral explanation is that being good is not going to prevent disease. It won’t stop a wayward car or a drunk driver. Alone, it won’t save your job, or your home, or your marriage. The philosophical explanation may be that east of Eden, it is not a loving, caring world. The scientific explanation will likely be in genetics, infection or something amiss in the complex procedure that conception, gestation and birth are. 

The man was born blind and God was revealed through him. The story is not about him or his blindness or his parents or sin. It’s about God’s Kingdom. And when we pray, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done,” that’s what we volunteer for. We enlist as a verb in God’s story and become part of God’s Kingdom and our life and death serve him. Our success or our failure, our health or our illness is part of God’s kingdom that is and is coming. 

I don’t mean that God made your child blind. Or that God targeted you when a bridge collapsed beneath your car. Or that God aimed a tsunami at your country or a hurricane at your city. Antioch, where Jesus’ followers were first called “Christian,” has been destroyed many times by earthquake and fire. Remember that when declaring another city evil. 

When a tsunami struck Indonesia with enormous loss of life, some who claim to read God’s mind said it was because Indonesia is the country with the largest Islamic population. Dr. Donald J. DePaolo, a geochemist at the University of California, Berkeley said that the “geological process that caused the earthquake and the tsunami is an essential characteristic of the earth...and has something very directly to do with the fact that the earth is a habitable planet.” Robert S. Detrick Jr., a geophysicist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution said, “There's no question that plate tectonics rejuvenates the planet.” William Broad wrote that “some experts refer to the regular blows as the planet's heartbeat.” (New York Times 1/11/05)

That’s the scientific, and for me the theological, explanation for “natural disasters.” Sodom and Gomorrah are going to suffer for it, but without “natural disasters” or “acts of God” there would be no life on earth. We read of miracles nearly every day. Sometimes they are called medical or scientific miracles. And sometimes they are called “unexplainable” or “impossible to understand.” But believers know they can also be understood as God’s work in the world.    

I write stories and in those stories some succeed, some fail, good comes to some, others are handicapped from birth. In my stories success or disaster are explained or “motivated” but behind the accidents, coincidences and consequences, they happen because it serves the purpose of my story. And yes, some characters refuse to play the role I intended. 

Our culture asks, “What can I lobby the government to do for me? Acculturated Christians ask, “What can I lobby the government to do for Christians?” Christianity does not mean control of others. It means finding pleasure in being part of God’s story. 

God is writing a magnificent story and our glory is to be part of that story. That’s our empowerment, not what we can lobby the government to finance or compel others to do. The problem is: We want to do it ourselves for our glory.

The problem is: James Dobson may not be the center of the story or the sentence or the footnote in which he appears. You may appear only in the index. My part may be to be blind or old or a failure.

You may be the star whose time has not come. Like John the Baptizer who died without seeing the full glory of Jesus. Or Joseph sold into slavery by his brothers. Do you suppose Joseph prayed that his brothers would repent and rescue him from the pit? from slavery? If God had saved Joseph from slavery in Egypt, what would have happened to Israel during the famine? But it isn’t Joseph’s story.

God didn’t throw Joseph in the pit. It wasn’t God’s will that Joseph be sold into slavery. But God used Joseph’s slavery to save Israel. It wasn’t God’s will that King Herod should behead John the Baptist. It wasn’t God’s will that Martin Luther King, Jr. be murdered. There are characters who do not perform the role God intends. We call that “free will.” But God used John’s death to strengthen the faith of Jesus’ followers and to prepare them for the tests they would soon face. God used King’s death to manifest the evil of racism in America. And God will use your triumph or your defeat, your grief or your joy for God’s purpose. For good.

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