Fourth Sunday in Lent
March 10, 2024

Is It Easier if You Know Who to Blame?

Tom Are Jr.
Interim Pastor

John 9:1–34

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There was a man and Jesus healed his blindness. Seems like that would have been good news, but the reactions were curious. His parents were afraid. Religious leaders became prosecutors of religious law. It made Jesus’ disciples anxious.

The disciples asked, “Who sinned, this man or his parents?” They assume someone is to blame for this. They wonder, Did this man offend God while still in the womb? Is that why God punished him?

No, surely it was his parents who sinned.

There must be someone to blame.

But let me ask you, Does inflicting blindness on a baby because the parents have sinned, does that sound like God to you? No, surely not.

We may stumble over the way they ask their question, but the desire to know who to blame, we get that.

When things go wrong, we want to know where fault lies. Take your crisis of the day, civic leaders will promise, “We will get to the bottom of this. We will find out whose fault this is.”

Sometimes that’s important, so that we can right a wrong or make tomorrow better than yesterday.

But there is no indication that the disciples are trying to right a wrong. They actually display no concern for this once-blind man. They show no joy in the restoration of his sight; they just want to know whose fault it is. Something went wrong; they need someone to blame.

When we can identify who to blame, then it reaffirms our need for the world to be fair.

That’s what they were asking. What’s the reason for this man’s blindness? There must be a reason. As we tell ourselves, everything happens for a reason.

When I was in elementary school, my next-door neighbor was Danny Martin. He was my best friend, but he was also trouble. He was the one who insisted that we ride our bikes in the newly paved bank parking lot. It didn’t work out well. He was the one who, the night before a football game against Cloverdale Elementary School — our archrivals —painted Tad Densfry’s helmet in Cloverdale’s colors. Tad almost didn’t get to play. Danny Martin was a troublemaker.

We had a tree house that straddled our backyards. We met in the treehouse one fall afternoon. He wasn’t quite himself. I asked him if he wanted to throw a football. He didn’t. I asked him if he wanted to ride bikes. He didn’t. I told him we could pin some playing cards so they run through the spokes. Sounds “just like a motorcycle.” (That tells you how old I am.) He didn’t want to do that either. Then he looked at me and said, “My dad doesn’t live with us anymore.” We looked at each other for a long time the way kids do. Adults would have to look away for a moment. Then he said, “I think it’s my fault.” Of course it wasn’t his fault. Fault is never a simple conversation in these matters. But I remember thinking, yeah, it is probably your fault. I knew him, and there were lots of things that were his fault. But more than that, even as an elementary-aged kid, I didn’t want to live in a world where things like that could happen to kids at random.

The disciples are asking, “Whose fault is this, Jesus? We need to know who to blame. If we know who to blame, then we can convince ourselves that it won’t happen to us. We will muster a measure of control in a chaotic world.”

Jesus says, “It’s not him. It’s not his parents.” Then Jesus says, “He was born blind in order that the work of God might be revealed in him.”

Jesus has no interest in assigning blame. Jesus just wants to heal the man. If I understand this point of the text, it teaches us what when things go wrong, when suffering comes to us, there is not always a reason. There is not always an explanation, but there is always a response.

Jesus walked right past the need to explain the circumstance and just does what he can to address the circumstance.

I want to be clear here. Sometimes there is a reason. We hurt each other. Systems fail. Power is abused. Sometimes there is blame. But not always, and the ability to place blame should not be confused with actually doing something. The fingerprints of God are found less in the assessment of blame or explanation of cause and more in the response.

Dr. Kate Bowler is an Assistant Professor of Christian History at Duke Divinity School. When she was age thirty-five, she was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer. She has shared that journey in her book Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I Have Loved. Her field of study is the prosperity gospel. The theology of the prosperity gospel is that God desires to bless you. God’s blessing is manifest in your success — status, financial success, even health. This is not a gospel that is based on the life of John the Baptist, who was beheaded, or the Apostle Paul, who was martyred. The prosperity gospel does talk about Jesus, but it doesn’t mention taking up your cross very often. It is not Presbyterian theology to equate financial success or even good health as a sign of God’s specific blessing of this life or that, but I think most Presbyterians have a dose of prosperity gospel in our theology. It’s that conviction that if I live my life right, then things will go well for me. If I work hard, I will succeed. It’s only fair. And of course, when suffering comes, it must be explained.

The assumption is that the normal life is free from suffering.

But what if that assumption is wrong?

If we lived in such a world when suffering was an intrusion into normal life, then thirty-five-year-old church history professors wouldn’t get cancer … but they do.

Kate Bowler said a neighbor was with her and said, “You be strong, and remember, everything happens for a reason.” Kate’s husband said, “I’d love to hear it.”

“I’d love to hear the reason my wife is dying.”

Dr. Bowler said, “My neighbor wasn’t trying to sell him a spiritual guarantee. [But she wanted to believe there was a reason] why some people die young and others grow old and fussy about their lawns. She wanted some kind of order behind this chaos. There has to be a reason, because without one we are left as helpless and possibly as unlucky as everyone else.”

Bowler continues, “A friend of mine stops by with heaps and heaps of kale and flies around the kitchen with instructions on how to harness its healing properties. … Friends keep sending me recipes for green drinks and quinoa salads, and others ship herbal supplements. … They are saying You can eat your way out of this” (Kate Bowler, Everything Happens for a Reason, pp. 84–85).

When things go wrong we want control. Then she said, “Control is a drug, and we are all hooked.”

We want to believe that life is fair, predictable, and, most of all, that I can control tomorrow. But that’s not true. There is chaos in this world.

Some babies are born blind, and some people are born poor. Some are born with minds like Stephen Hawking, but most would have trouble getting through calculus classes. Some are born in Northwestern Hospital, and some are born in what’s left of Gaza. In the real world, chaos and order battle, and we don’t control it.

So, in a world too familiar with chaos, Jesus engages in making things better as much as possible. He doesn’t explain; he responds.

He said, “It’s no one’s sin. This man was born blind that the works of God might be revealed in him.”

That’s what he said, but I don’t really love that answer. He is blind so that God can get credit for healing him later? I can imagine a better way. It bothered me enough that I went back to the Greek text, and I was stunned by what I found there.

This is not actually what the text says. And I don’t know exactly what to make of this, but the translators have added words to this verse. They added “he was born blind.” The Greek doesn’t have those words. In the Greek it reads, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the work of God might be revealed in him, we must work the work of the one who sent me.”

If I understand the text, Jesus is saying, when people are suffering, don’t worry about who’s to blame; just do the good that is yours to do. Respond, and the power of God will be witnessed. When suffering comes, and it comes to all, there may not be a reason, but there is always a response of grace and compassion and mercy. When suffering comes, the faithful response is love.

Carla worshiped in the first church I served. Each Sunday after worship she filled the narthex with giggles and jokes. Everyone wanted to talk with Carla. She could lift your spirits.

I always admired her, but once I learned her story I was amazed by her. Carla was married to Ryan. Ryan was a sailor. Not professionally, but it was his passion. He taught their boys to sail, and by the time they were in middle school, they all knew their way around a boat.

Their son Phillip graduated from college, and he and some buddies took the boat and headed out to sea. There was an accident, and they didn’t make it home.

I was young and stupid, so I asked, “Carla, you are so happy now. How did you ever get over that?” She just smiled and said, “Tom, mothers don’t get over that. But let me tell you what I learned when I was in the valley of the shadow. I began to see that we all have sadness. Everyone knows the dark night; everyone knows heartbreak.”

“I’ve learned,” she said, “that every day the sadness is waiting. I don’t know if it will come with the coffee and the morning paper or if it will speak to me in the grocery or penetrate my dreams. I don’t know if it will whisper to me in worship. But every day I pray, ‘God, don’t let the sadness win. Let me push back the sadness, not only in my life but in the lives of those I talk with today. Help me push back the sadness.’”

“I’m not a smart woman,” she said. “But I know how to laugh and to help others do the same. You may think it is silly, Tom, but I think it is my ministry.”

She’s right.

The next Sunday I walked into the narthex, and there she was, people gathered around tossing their heads back in laughter, pushing back the sadness.

“Jesus, was it this man or his parents who sinned?” No. When suffering comes, there is not always a reason, but there is always a response. So when suffering comes this week, let us do the good that is ours to do. In that we will be about the work of the one who sends us.

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Sermon © Fourth Presbyterian Church