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April 3, 2011   -   Lent 4
John 9:1-41

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Answers or Engagement?

“Neither this man nor his parents sinned”  John 9:3

Did you notice in this story how quickly the disciples defaulted to a “causal” explanation of the man’s blindness?  (causal)   “Who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind?”  That was their religion’s answer to the man’s blindness – that it was the result of Divine retribution.  It sounds to me a lot like many explanations I have heard for contemporary disasters; that the specified disaster was divine punishment for the terrible “sins” of the afflicted people.  One popular evangelist said, referring to the Japan earthquake and tsunami, that  it was distinct sign of the imminent end of the world – that was his religion’s answer.  A radical Japanese Buddhist monk had declared it was divine punishment for the self-indulgence of the Japanese people – that was his religion’s answer.  You can pick almost any major catastrophe that has occurred in the last ten years and find those who correlate the catastrophe with human sin and Divine retribution.  I also hear used in the context of personal misfortune.  

But notice how quickly Jesus dismantles that kind of theological framing of reality.  “Neither this man, nor his parent’s sinned, he was born blind so that God’s work might be revealed in him.”    Jesus quickly moved the conversation from cause to purpose.  What  Jesus is saying is that the man’s blindness provided an opportunity for action to occur in response, “God’s works.”  .  In this case, “God’s work” took the form of Jesus getting personally involved with the blind man.  In a dramatic down-to-earth gesture, Jesus makes mud out of his own saliva and the dirt of ground and rubs it on the man’s eyes and tells him to go wash in the pool of Siloam.  The blind man asked for nothing.  “God’s work” in this instance was a “work” of pure grace on the part of Jesus. Jesus, “the light of the world,” brought light into the man’s life. 

This story constitutes the entire 9^th chapter of John - of which we only read the first 12 verses.  What is both tragic and fascinating is that everybody in the story dismisses the blind man by being blinded themselves by their beliefs and personal agenda.  There are three sets of characters in the story: disciples, Pharisees and parents of the blind man.

The DISCIPLES dismissed the blind man by defaulting to a divine causal explanation – hence they were blinded. 

Right after this the PHARISEES dismissed him by defaulting to seeing this event as an opening to discredit Jesus on three counts:  that he’d healed on the Sabbath;  worked on the Sabbath by making mud; and they proposed it was a hoax and Jesus was a fraud, suggesting the man was never blind in the first place – hence the Pharisees were blinded. 

Even the blind man’s PARENTS got into the act by distancing themselves from their own son and caved into the fear that if they appeared to affirm Jesus, they would be cast out of the synagogue community – hence they too were blinded.  So, the story itself implies the reader (us) to ask the question, “Who is really blind in this story?”  Is it the blind man?  Or is it everybody else?

Not one person, other than Jesus, was able to engage the blind man as a person – astounding!  Everybody else retreated into their beliefs and their agenda.  The blind man enthusiastically asserted himself in verse 25 when he was asked about Jesus.  He excitedly declared, “I don’t know who this Jesus is exactly.  All I know is that I was blind and now I see.”  Locked into their default blindness, they all, disciples, Pharisees and parents, were blinded by the shallow and bankrupt answers their religion had provided – and nobody could simply celebrate with the man who could now see!  

Our book study group is currently reading and discussing an engaging and fascinating book entitled, The Naked Now, by Richard Rohr.  Rohr is a Franciscan friar, contemporary mystic and the founding director of The Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, NM.   One of Rohr’s main points is that contemporary Christianity has often been held hostage by dualistic thinking.   Dualistic thinking is what he calls all-or-nothing thinking.   Dualistic thinking puts one on a quest for the perfect answer to every question.  Once the perfect answer has been identified, it then needs to be defended at all costs, and all other possible answers are dismissed and seen as misguided, mistaken or wrong.  Dualistic thinking leads to the attitude that you either win or lose – and the whole idea is to win and never lose.   When dualistic thinking creeps into religion, religion can become dogmatic, unyielding and rigid and seeks to provide a simplistic, perfect answer for every question and every situation – an answer that requires vehement defense. 

We see evidence of extreme dualistic thinking all around us, especially in the political and religious realms of culture.  Everywhere we look we see people divided up into camps, lobbing shells of harsh rhetoric at each other, the only goal being to defend one’s answer at all costs and discredit and defeat those on the other side.  Words like negotiation, compromise and common good have little or no meaning to those confined inside of extreme dualistic thinking – in fact, those things are perceived as treasonous  and disloyal to the tribe’s cause.

Rohr goes on to argue that as a result of being held hostage by polarity thinking, Christianity has often projected an image of being largely unyielding, judgmental, disparaging and fiercely tribal – all qualities that ironically stand in stark contrast to the life and person of Jesus Christ.  He notes that Christianity has not been widely known for creating harmonizing people;  with things like peacemaking, non-violence, love for the outsider, inclusion, empowerment of the poor, humility and dialog all curiously at a minimum and often absent altogether.     

Jesus was not a dualistic thinker.  He was much more a holistic thinker.  Even a cursory look at his life and teachings reveal that.  He almost exclusively taught in parables, stories, aphorisms and riddles that often leave us with more questions than answers.    All of the rigid lines and boundaries that his religion’s dualistic thinking had created, he breached and experienced Divine Presence beyond those boundaries in the lives of the unclean and those that religion and political power had  quarantined.   Jesus experienced God, not in perfect answers, but in imperfection and enigma.  Dualistic thinkers, like the Pharisees never understood him on this, and they severely criticized him for engaging “tax collectors and sinners”  and those religion had pushed to the margins.

When we look at the lives and teachings of the great Christian mystics down through the ages, we see that their lives and teachings closely resembled the life and teachings of Jesus and, like Jesus, they often shocked people with their holistic thinking and teaching, and they experienced  the Divine in places others considered unholy and profane.  For example, St Francis instructed the friars that if they found a page of Koran, they should kiss it and place it on the altar!   Today, St Francis would be drummed out of many Christian circles for saying something like that and declared a heretic.  You see, his holistic thinking was not based on fear, but rather he was free to honor the Divine and holiness anywhere it was found – similar to Jesus when he honored holiness in people and places religion had declared out-of-bounds: in Gentiles, sinners, women and children – in those who had been excluded.  

Today we see that Jesus dismantled the dualistic thinking of his disciples by not dismissing the blind man with a simplistic theological answer or agenda, but engaged the blind man in his authentic humanity.  Jesus was willing to get his hands dirty and muddy because he was guided, not by simplistic answers that excluded, but a profound grace and love that empowered him across boundaries and barriers to engage and include real people, with real issues, in real pain.  He was like light that shined in their darkness.

For me, the bottom line on this passage, and many others similar to it, is a critical question I must ask myself every day.  Is my faith characterized by seeking perfect answers that I impose on people and life?  Or is my faith characterized by the love, grace and compassion that I experience in Jesus that motivates me to engage others at a deep level of our shared humanity?       

In the end, a religion based on perfect answers almost always becomes rigid, defensive, exclusive and judgmental – and misses out on so many of the places and people where Divine Presence exists in the world. 

In the end, a religion based on engagement is less concerned about perfect answers and more committed to following Jesus into the depths of life empowered by the grace and compassion that characterized his life – to discover and experience the Divine in the dirty and muddy places of life that perfect answers would never dare go and simply cannot embrace.   A religion of engagement never answers all the questions and seeks not to - needs no to.   It recognizes that life is often is far too complex, and it is content with the great Mystery, with a capital “M”, the Mystery who leads us into deeper and more “muddy” experiences of life to discover Divine Presence there – in places and people that lie far beyond perfect answers. 

Answers or engagement?  How is each manifest in your journey of faith?   To be sure, it is an important question to consider and reflect upon each and every day.