Disruptive
Grace—How Sweet the Sound!
John 9:1-41Hope Lutheran Church, Fergus Falls, MN
Lent 4—March 30, 2014
In
the name of Jesus. Amen.
Let’s
start with a multiple choice quiz.
Which of the following statements comes closest to the truth?
A. Having Jesus
come into your life makes everything better.
B. Having Jesus
come into your life disrupts everything.
C. Both A. and
B.
I
wonder how this man in our gospel lesson would do on this quiz.
Having
Jesus come into his life certainly made everything better. Here he was a man “blind from birth.” Jesus comes into his life, fashions a
mudpack for his useless eyes, sends him to wash off this mudpack in a pool
known for its healing qualities. And when
the man does that—lo and behold!--he can see for the first time in his life!
I’d
call that a very good day—to be blind from birth and then—all of a sudden, able
to behold everything and everyone, whiter whites, brighter brights, the whole
amazing universe suddenly alive and in focus!
Amazing!
Yesiree—when
Jesus comes into your life everything gets better!
But
wait. There’s more here in John 9.
What
should have been the best day in this blind man’s life got very complicated.
· For all at
once his life became a topic of interest, a source of speculation for his nosy
neighbors.
· His healing was
brought to the attention of the local authorities who opened up an
investigation and interrogated the blind man repeatedly.· His parents even got dragged into the situation and badgered by the powers-that-be.
· The upshot of all this consternation is that the blind man winds up excommunicated from his community of faith--all because Jesus healed him, all because the man told the truth about the great thing that had happened to him.
Wow! Having Jesus come into your life can disrupt everything,
all in a day!
And
Jesus himself—who’s off-stage for much of this long story—sums it up this way:"I came into this world for judgment so
that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind."
The
answer to our little multiple choice question is “C” don’t you see? Jesus coming into our life makes everything
better….but only because Jesus disrupts everything, first.
And thank God
for that!
Because,
you see, there are all sorts of things in our lives that need disrupting.
First
of all, our “natural” assumptions about how the world works and how God does
business with us need to be disrupted. That
is apparent right at the start of this story when the disciples notice the
blind man and ask: “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born
blind?"
The
disciples give voice to what I like to call “Maude theology.” Maude, you’ll recall, was a TV show back in
the ‘70s about a blunt, outspoken woman whose catch-line was: “God’ll get you for that!”
God’ll
get you for that! Left to our own
devices, that’s how we think of God—as a law-and-order, demanding Boss whose
job is to keep us on our toes and under his thumb.
“Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents,
that he was born blind?" the disciples ask. Their question allows them to keep their
distance from this blind man. They and
everyone else took no notice of the real, live human being in their midst. What the blind man’s neighbors knew best was
his diagnosis—he was a man infected by sin and therefore "blind from
birth."
No
wonder the man’s neighbors seemed confused about his identity after he was
healed. They’d been so focused on his
condition that they never saw him as a brother in their midst.
Does
anything about that sound familiar to our ears? Who are we oblivious to, even though we may
stumble over them every day? Who do we
know as a diagnosis but not a person?
Jesus
came along and disrupted that mindset. Jesus’
healing action forced folks to notice a man they really didn’t know that much
about.
But
there’s more that Jesus disrupts here in this story. The local religious authorities, rather than
rejoicing in the miracle of new sight, became obsessed with the where and the
when of the healing miracle.
For
it was the Sabbath day, the day to cease all work and activity in the world. Folks were hung up on that when Jesus walked
the earth.
In
fact they worked very hard to make sure and everyone avoided work
on the day of rest! They transformed the
gracious gift of rest into a huge cause for anxiety!
Does
that sound familiar to us? We know that
obeying the rules and doing good works can’t make God love us any more than God
already loves us…but really, don’t we still like to keep a few accomplishments
tucked tucked away in our pockets, “just in case.”
That
needed disrupting, too—all the ways we turn God’s good gifts into
do-it-yourself projects. That cock-eyed
way of thinking needs disrupting in our lives too.
And
then there’s the fixation here in John 9 on the question of community—Who’s in
and who’s out of our community of faith?
This
story in John 9 winds up with a man who’d been left out of the circle of
community because of his disability…and in the end he’s bookted out of his
community of faith, purely because he happened to be in the path of the Son of
God, who heals all our diseases and makes all things new.
The
blind man ran afoul of a religious community hell-bent on being an enclave of the
like-minded, who agreed that “anyone who
confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue.”
That
inward-focused, self-centered, “one-bad-apple-spoils-the-whole-bunch,” pinched
view of God’s people needed to be disrupted….even as it needs to be disrupted in
our time and place.
I
love the story about Ole the Norwegian who was stranded on a desert island for
30 years. When he was finally
discovered by persons on a passing ship, they were amazed to see how Ole had
constructed a whole village on his tiny island—complete with stores, a school
and a church. But as Ole’s rescuers toured
his “village,” they noticed another church building, just a few yards away.
“What’s
that?” they asked Ole.
“Oh,
dat!” Ole replied. “Dat’s the shurch I
USED to belong to!”
That
way of thinking and imagining the church needs to be disrupted, which is
precisely what Jesus does when he comes into our lives….calling into question
our insulated tendency to associate only with persons who’re exactly like us—even
in the church!
Pope
Francis names this crucial reality when he says: “I prefer a church which is
bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than
a church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own
security….More than by fear of going astray, my hope is that we will be moved
by the fear of remaining shut up within structures which give us a false sense
of security, within rules which make us harsh judges, within habits which make
us feel safe, while at our door people are starving and Jesus does not tire of
saying to us, 'Give them something to eat.'" [1]
When
Jesus comes into our lives everything does get better….but only because when
Jesus comes into our lives FIRST he disrupts everything—everything that needs
to be disrupted, everything that distorts how we understand God and God’s way
with us, everything that blinds us to the neighbor in our midst, everything
that even hints we can play “let’s make a deal” with God, everything that
causes us to become inner-directed, inwardly-focused on ourselves in the
church.
All
of those tired old dilapidated ways of thinking, seeing and believing…all of
that needs to be disrupted, set aside, cleared from our path…so that Jesus might
have room truly to walk in our midst, opening blind eyes, forgiving all our sin,
and wooing us into a gracious, merciful community focused, laser-like on
following Jesus in his mission to restore and bless the whole world.
This,
my dear friends, is the rhythm of Lent, this wondrous season of preparation for
the Easter joy that shall soon be ours.
Jesus still walks among us, upending all our rotten assumptions, and
setting us free for the life and the future he intends for all his people.
Jesus’
grace is amazing, but only because it first disrupts everything that needs to
be disrupted--so that we might be set free, free for God, free for our
neighbors, free for this good earth, free for the future that Jesus Christ is
bringing to us as a sheer gift.
In
the name of Jesus. Amen.
