A Blind Man: The PEST

Text: John 9:1-41
Theme: “A Blind Man: The PEST”
4TH Sunday in Lent
April 3, 2011
First Presbyterian Church
Denton, Texas
Rev. Paul R. Dunklau

In the Name of Jesus

Grace, mercy, and peace to you -- one and all! -- at the eleventh hour of a new week still fresh in its infancy. The moments we now share ought to be – and are! – the most blessed and important moments of this week as we hear the Word of the living God read, proclaimed, and, today, celebrated in the Holy Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.

It is April 3, 2011, the Fourth Sunday in Lent. On many Christian calendars, it is called Laetare Sunday. Laetare is Latin for “rejoice”, and the Biblical reference and traditional theme/verse of the week is Isaiah 66:10: “Rejoice with Jerusalem and be glad for her, all you who love her; rejoice greatly with her, all you mourn over her.

In the season of Lent, as in life itself, there is mourning and rejoicing – not one at the expense of the other, but both. If the reports hold true, Denton Christian Preschool just concluded its best plant sale ever and that is cause for rejoicing. But then, amid such a happy report, there came word about a friend of mine – the pastor emeritus who preached my ordination sermon -- who is out on the east coast to participate in services for his daughter who died of cancer. Another friend relayed information about the pastor to me. That pastor said: “It’s just not right that you have to prepare the memorial service for your own child.” There is mourning.

Most days, we live somewhere in that middle ground between mourning and rejoicing. We pinpoint ourselves on the scale between Thoreau’s “quiet desperation” and Roberto Begnini’s “Life is Beautiful”!

But then there are the things that pester us. Being pestered is no cause for rejoicing – unless it is all in good, sophisticated humor and fun. But neither is pestering a big cause of mourning – although it could be. Say, for example, that arthritis is pestering you. That said, you may come to the point where you mourn the loss of your mobility.

Anyway, I’d rather rejoice – even if, at times, it feels like whistling in the dark! And what can we do but rejoice when we pause to consider how great a salvation is ours in Jesus Christ!

But there are days – aren’t there? – when someone or something threatens our spiritual equilibrium and pesters us. Things get under our skin. We throw up our hands in frustration. We roll our eyes, shake our heads, cringe, and even grind the teeth. Words go through our minds that are likely not mentionable in church. But they come flowing forth in our cars when we’re alone, when someone doesn’t yield the right of way.

I have the perfect antidote to take your mind off whatever may be pestering you. The antidote is today’s Gospel. There is much pestering going on there, and so, at least for a few moments, we can take our minds off what is pestering us, sit back, relax, and let the events unfold. Here goes!

We are told that Jesus, as He traveled along, spotted a man who was blind from birth. That’s otherwise known as congenital blindness. Jesus saw a man who could not see Him. His disciples saw that Jesus saw the man who could see none of them.

Based on the question the disciples ask, we spot the first hint of pestering going on. “Rabbi,” the disciples ask, “who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” It’s not exactly a watershed moment in the history of human inquiry. It’s not like Tom Cruise saying to Jack Nicholson, “I want the truth,” and Jack Nicholson replying: “You can’t handle the truth!” To some, this may seem to be a benign or even legitimate question the disciples ask. My viewpoint, though, is that it’s insulting. My daughters are not blind, but two of them have autism. You could re-word the question to go like this: “Who sinned – Kiersten, Caroline, and or their parents – that these girls have autism?” People who ask those kinds of questions make my blood boil. Even today, there are folks who look at every problem in the world – every disease, every disorder, every accident, every illness, every natural disaster or man-made disaster – as a punishment from God upon sin. Nothing pesters me more than people who breathe the rarefied air of self-righteousness. These are the individuals, groups, and even some churches that see life as little more than a morality play – and they are the ones who think they are doing God a service by keeping score!

Meanwhile, in contrast to this, Jesus does not seem pestered in the least. He says to the disciples: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

People who are blind, I am told, do adjust to their condition. The human body has a remarkable capacity to adapt. Other senses – such as taste, smell, and touch – become especially acute. The blind man didn’t see it coming, but he certainly felt it when it did come. Jesus does something that, at first, does not seem sanitary to us. He spits on the ground. I confess I’ve never seen a picture in a Bible story book of Jesus spitting. He makes mud with the saliva only to touch the man and paste his eyes over with it. The man’s sense of touch is engaged with the mud of Jesus and His spit. Then, his sense of sound comes to play. Jesus says to him: “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam.”

That’s just what he did. He came back with 20/20 vision. For the first time, his eyes could see the ground, the sky, the trees, the birds, and the people. What a moment of grand discovery that must have been! His eyes, darkened all his life by congenital blindness, now are able to survey, for the first time, the world around him.

You would think that there would be much rejoicing! No. Rejoicing was set aside for yet more pestering. Some weren’t sure that the blind man, now seeing, was really the blind man who they always saw sitting by the road. Others were convinced that he was. Not to be deterred, they all join in demanding to know just who it was that opened his eyes. “The man called Jesus,” the formerly blind man said. “Where is he?” they reply. “I don’t know,” he says.

The crowd, now totally interested in a man that they were once totally disinterested in, brings the man to the Pharisees. There was this little issue of Jesus doing work on the Sabbath day, and you weren’t supposed to do work on the Sabbath day. Work was allowed only if someone’s life was in danger. The poor blind man was blind, but he wasn’t likely to kick the bucket. Thus, the morality crowd begins another round of pestering. The Pharisees are perplexed. Whoever Jesus is, He’s doing some great things but He’s not playing the rules. So they pester the formerly blind man. “What do you say about him?” they ask. “He is a prophet,” comes to the reply.

The Pharisees, unwilling to drop the matter, seek out the blind man’s parents to confirm that he in fact was blind. The parents do that and also say that they don’t know how he now can see. They direct the Pharisees back to the blind man and the pestering continues. “Give glory to God,” they say. “We know that this man (Jesus) is a sinner!” The formerly blind man, himself capable of a bit of pestering himself, says: “I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.”

The Pharisees, not to be deterred, continue to interrogate him as if he were a common criminal in police headquarters. The blind man pesters right back: “I have told you already (how He opened my eyes), and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?” Then the Pharisees reviled him. In our way of speaking, they hurled verbal abuse on him. The formerly blind man does not back down. He says: “Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” The Pharisees, true to form, then pass judgment: “You were born entirely in your sins, and are you trying to teach us?” They drove him out; they excommunicated him.

Jesus got wind of this and set out looking for him. Jesus would not excommunicate. Jesus would welcome! Remember that! He has a question not tinged with verbal abuse but with love. He says to the man: “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” He answered,”And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.” Jesus said to him, “You have seen him and the one speaking with you is he.”
Jesus made it possible for him to see! Do you see? The man, no longer pestered, says: “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped him, we are told.
In this life, there is mourning and rejoicing. There are moments of quiet desperation and moments when life is beautiful. There are instances of congenital blindness, of autism, and so much else. Also, there are things that will pester us; we, too, can pester others.

The good news is that there is always Jesus. Apart from Him, if we claim to see and understand everything perfectly and make our pronouncements about life accordingly, we are only blind. But with Him, if we claim to be blind and not capable of understanding things perfectly and not wanting to make those Pharisaical judgments, we are on our way to deeper and better discipleship. Jesus – crucified and risen from the dead! – can see in us the raw material He can use to change our little corner of the world and maybe even more!

Amen.