Midweek Lenten Sermon Series

Based on “Choruses from the Rock” 

IV

Wednesday, April 3, 2019 – John 9:1-12

  Blind from birth he carried a curse.  Ancients blamed parental or relative sins for such birth defects.  If you were born blind or disabled in any way you were carrying the sins of your ancestors in your very flesh and blood.

Interesting how Jesus debunks the proverbial wisdom of his time by saying that the birth defect, the blind man’s condition is so that God’s works might be revealed.  God is not pre-disposed to lives being broken by birth defects, nor is God the author of tragedies. Those are part of the human condition.  Rather God comes to those places of brokenness to make them places of divine revelation.

Our wisdom, our knowledge moves us to ask, “Why?”  Why is the tragedy happening?  Why was this birth defect?  Why this blindness?  Give me more information to discover why.

The Divine is more interested in acting in the midst of hurt – being present to the suffering – showing compassion and healing.

It remains a mystery but often the cracks and fissures in our lives have the potential of opening us up to God.  The mystery is that the man born blind becomes the occasion for God’s presence to be revealed.

This rattles the cage of the religious establishment.  Institutionalized religion is often dogmatic and people like answers.  But God calls us to live in the questions – to live in the mystery.

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

Our proverbial wisdom is no match for divine foolishness.  Our knowledge is often lost in dogmatic information which in the long run offers little comfort.

Lent moves us toward Christ’s passion and the cross.

It is the ultimate story of brokenness and defeat. 

Yet, it is at the cross where God is most absent.

It is at the cross where God is most present.

Lent takes us into that paradox – that seeming contradiction -

That space where the mystery of divine love is revealed: 

God in Christ at the cross most absent,

God in Christ at the cross most present

as death gives birth to new life.

Our wisdom lost in knowledge.

Our knowledge lost in information.

And the blind see more clearly than the sighted.

And the empty tomb is glanced in the distance.

“Amazing grace how sweet the sound,

That saved a wretch like me,

I once was lost, but now am found;

Was blind, but now I see.”

Amen

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