St. Christopher's Episcopal Church: Sermons
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A Sermon Preached at St. Christopher's Episcopal Church, Oak Park, IL
on the Fourth Sunday in Lent, March 2, 2008 (Year A, RCL)
by the Rev. Paris Coffey
"As Jesus walked along he saw a man who had been blind from birth. The disciples asked him, "Master, whose kin caused this man's blindness, his own or his parents?" - John 9:1-2
Bill Cosby jokes that if you only have one child and something's broken, you know who did it. If you have more than one, though, you're guaranteed a round of denial as Cosby once illustrated, if memory serves correctly, with the incident of a broken lamp. Hearing a lamp crash, said Cosby, he ran into his living room demanding to know who broke it. "Not me," chimed the first of his virtuous children, followed by the rest echoing, "Not me, not me, not me." Denial can be a kneejerk response to guilt or fear, but it can also escalate into blame.
For example, if pressed Adam might say, "Eve broke the lamp," or in its secondary version, "She made me do it." We like to assign blame, so much so that a comedy troupe from Northern Ireland created a show called The Blame Game. Now in its second successful season on the BBC, the show features an outspoken team of panelists who name, shame and blame everyone and everything for all the latest news. According to the BBC Press Office, it guarantees plenty of quick-fire banter, insults and finger-pointing, claiming that no subject is taboo nor any person exempt from condemnation. It sounds pretty funny actually, although no funnier (or sadder as the case may be) than our own national pastime of finger-pointing.
Take, for example, last year's horrendous shooting at Virginia Tech. Before anyone knew what had hit them, spin-doctors were blaming the violence on everything from Rosie O'Donnell to society at large. Hollywood, of course, was also blamed, as were video games, TV and even wrestling. The greatest stretch, though, seemed to me to be from syndicated talk-show host Glenn Beck who suggested that YouTube may have been at fault. All of these theories were aired long before gun control was suggested as a contributor, which is my personal favorite for assigning blame. The truth, though, is that no matter how self-satisfying it might be, blaming others is a dead-end game.
As The Blame Game's creators admit, "The game picks up on that quintessential trait we all seem to have, where we don't just like to complain about things, but apportion blame . . . usually in an attempt to clear ourselves of any responsibility." Calvin, of Calvin and Hobbes, admits the same, explaining to Hobbes in one of my favorite comic strips, "When I grow up, I'm, not going to read the newspaper and I'm not going to follow complex issues and I'm not going to vote. That way I can complain that the government doesn't represent me. Then when everything goes down the tubes, I can say the system doesn't work and justify my further lack of participation." Hobbes mocks, "An ingeniously self-fulfilling plan," to which Calvin responds, "It's a lot more fun to blame things than to fix them."
We might agree, preferring to assign blame rather than take responsibility for the needs at hand. After all, finger-pointing distances us from the people and problems at hand, as we see in today's Gospel where everyone - with the exception of Jesus - assigns blame to the man-born- blind. The disciples do it, the townspeople do it, the Pharisees do it, even the man's parents do it. All distance themselves from the blind beggar, although the disciples may be the worst. Talking about the man as if he isn't there the disciples ask, "Master, whose sin caused this man's blindness, his own or his parents?"
Their callousness is downright rude, exceeding a simple breach of etiquette. Indeed, even children know better, having been taught, "Don't point at the blind man, don't stare at the lady in the wheelchair, and certainly don't ask the beggar in the street what he did to deserve this." Jesus' disciples, though, seem to have had no such upbringing, blurting out within earshot of the blind man, "Hey, Jesus, did God afflict this man because he's a low-down, rotten sinner or because his parents are?" It's a totally insensitive question, to which Jesus replies (all too mildly if you ask me), "You're asking the wrong question; you're looking for someone to blame rather than asking how you can reveal God's compassion."
Actually, in the translation found in your leaflets Jesus says, " Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God's works might be revealed in him." I deliberately chose the J.B. Phillips translation, though, because first, it states plainly the real meaning of this text, and second, because the NRSV allows us to distance ourselves from the story. In the NRSV what we're apt to hear is that God caused the man's blindness, which despite its FALSE teaching may well prevent us from hearing the story's TRUE teachings.
After all, this false teaching has been around longer than we have, so please, if you don't do anything else today, put away once and for all the ill-conceived theology that God is out to get us. God is after no such thing but rather is out to love, heal and strengthen us using whatever God has, including
We try to distance ourselves from vulnerability, asserting that illness is deserved and so if we behave impeccably we won't get sick. We try to assure ourselves that TV, videos and You-Tube cause violence and so if we do away with these things we'll be safe. We try to focus on theological or sociological reasons for things to avoid seeing and doing something about the REAL needs of human beings, and in the process we look past one another, blind to God's call and presence in our midst
This is what the disciples do when they try to reduce the whole of a person to sinner, and what the townspeople and Pharisees do when they INSIST the man-born-blind stay in the pigeonhole they've put him in. "He's a helpless sinner whose sentence is justified," they say, wanting him to stay put; for if the man-born-blind's condition changes they may have to admit that there's something God can do - or they can do with God's help - to touch the lives of those they've marginalized. And that's a lot to admit! Indeed, it requires a whole new world view - a view through the eyes of God who sees all kind of things differently than we do: who sees a young, scruffy sheepherder as a king; who sees a Samaritan woman from last Sunday's Gospel or the man-born-blind from today's as witnesses to God; who sees sinners as saints and victims as victors; indeed, who even sees Pharisees as being more than the narrow confines of their faith if they will only take their blinders off and see the Living God.
The Pharisees, though, or most of them, refuse to take their blinders off as we see in this very funny exchange from today's Gospel. And it is funny, reminding me of Abbott and Costello's comic routine, "Who's on First," which I recently watched on YouTube. Today's comedy is just as funny, building on the Gospel players' repeated refusal to hear what's being said. The Pharisees only want to hear and see what supports their own agenda and belief system, and so theorize about what has really happened. The man-born-blind-who's-blind-no-longer, on the other hand, refuses to theorize. He simply states the truth, and as he does so he becomes bolder and bolder. He becomes whole, no longer a marginalized victim, but one who sees and knows first hand the grace and power of the Living God. And in so doing, the man-born-blind becomes the Pharisees' foil, underscoring their blindness.
As Jesus says, in essence, to the Pharisees, "There're none so blind as those who will not see." The Pharisees, though, reject the accusation saying, "Not me, not me, not me." Oh, they get what Jesus is saying, snapping, "So we're blind, too, are we?" They don't believe it, though, refusing to open their eyes and remove the lid from the box they've put God in. After all, as Calvin says, "It's more fun to blame things than to fix them" - even to blame God - or the God revealed in Jesus. On the other hand, it's wiser to accept responsibility, for in so doing we acknowledge our need for God, opening not just our eyes but lives to the One with power to turn sinners into activists boldly facing the truth, that they might serve the world with justice, mercy and compassion.
Amen.