Be Thou My Vision, March 2, 2008

I Samuel 16:1-13
John 9: 1-4
Several years ago a little book was published by Rabbi Harold Kushner, that soared to the top of all the Best Seller lists, the book was titled “When Bad Things Happen to Good People”. Ironically, nearly everyone who referenced reading this misquoted the title as “Why Bad Things Happen”, because that is the question we want answered. Kushner was convinced there is no answer to WHY? Kushner had a young son with a rare disease causing rapid advancement of age, and like all of us in the midst of grief, he sought solace in sharing his story. When Bad Things Happen to Good People, we seek out others, to tell our story, in hope that they can offer comfort, or that our story will have meaning to them, because we are too close to it to perceive anything good.

“Why?” is the question Jesus' disciples asked when they first saw the man born blind. CAN A BABY, Not yet born, SIN, and therefore be born to a life of suffering? Or, was this man's physical ailment the result of his parents' sins and therefore he is atoning for things that he was not responsible for? That would be a cruel punishment indeed, for each of us when seeing a child with a simple ear infection or illness has wished they could bear this rather than see a child suffer; and for a child to bear suffering for their parents seems too much.

Jesus answers the question, that we MUST REMEMBER OUR LIVES IN RELATIONSHIP TO GOD. SO OFTEN, the question of sin, and of suffering, what theologians call SOTERIOLOGY neglects the presence of God, and focuses only upon what we have done, or what others have done and upon the Morality of Sins, without reference to the existence of GOD. Jesus answers the question of WHY by a reversal of circumstance. IF A BLIND MAN Could be made to see, is this MIRACLE the responsibility of the MAN, or of HIS PARENTS, or the COMMUNITY. If the HEALING OCCURRED on the SABBATH, when no work was to be done, would the MIRACLE BE A SIN?

We live in an era where The Church is divided against itself on what is and is not a SIN? WHO is and is not a SINNER? Is premarital intimacy a SIN, or EXPECTED? Are those Mutually Exclusive? Is UnWed PREGNANCY a SIN? When it happens, what do we as a Church do? In another Church in another community, we had a girl in the Confirmation Class who suddenly was found to be with Child, and as she Confessed her Faith taking on Adult Responsibilities in the Church, the Church came to recognize they could not abandon her. Is Homosexuality a sin? Is Euthanasia? DO we discount the CIRCUMSTANCES we know as SITUATION ETHICS. As a MAN OF GOD, what I have come to SEE, is not judging which is and is not a sin, or who is and is not; but rather recognizing WE ALL ARE SINNERS & GOD FORGIVES US.

Tomorrow afternoon Dr. David Reed, the Chairperson of Emergency Medicine at SUNY's Upstate University Hospital, returns with a 4th Year Medical Student, from their having spent a month at the Clinic in Sudan, and late this week Dr. John Covell and Melanie an LPN leave, with our prayers, for their mission experience. They go NOT ONLY to heal people afflicted with Malaria, Pneumonia, Measles, Malnutrition, Tuberculosis, which these people did not cause, nor did their parents. These missionaries from our midst go, NOT ONLY for the selfish reason of witnessing suffering no longer present in our societies, BUT also, because we live in a world so technological, so mechanized, that clinical diagnosis by MRI, CAT Scan and Specialists' Lab Tests have become our rituals; and at least once in a lifetime our most educated and most highly trained need to get in touch with the basic humanity of touch, seeing, witnessing with your own eyes and touching humanity as means of experiencing FAITH IN GOD anew.

WHY DO BAD THINGS HAPPEN, one could & SHOULD as easily ask WHY DO MIRACLES HAPPEN? The point according to the Gospel of John, is not only that Jesus suffered and died as a sacrifice for our sins on the Cross; but that part and parcel with this is that GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD as to enter in and share in life with us. What matters are not all the individual sins of MORALITY: Did you think evil thoughts,... were you filled with lust,... have you been slothful,... greedy,... arrogant... deceitful; but the one SIN that matters, whether we reject God, or having experienced the best and worst of circumstance can we try to love, try to forgive, wrestle to understand. We make FAITH IN GOD a prerequisite for having faith, instead of wondering whether FAITH IN GOD MAY BE OUR ROAD MAP.

Painfully, we have become GOOGLE OBSESSED, believing there is a right answer we can know. FAITH is not about having the right definition or perfect directions. I recently rented a car with a GPS LOCATOR. It was seductive, all you needed to do was have a name or address, you did not even need to know where or what it was near. This seductive voice would guide you, “In one-half mile turn left. In thirty feet turn left. Turn left now.” And if for whatever reason, we ignored the seductive instructions, the voice would re-calibrate and give us new step by step directions, without criticism that we had ignored the voice's guidance, or making us turn around to do it right. Following the step by step directions, turning when the disembodied voice tells us, we never learn landmarks and reference points, turning right at the Church, going past the University, stopping briefly at the Cemetery. Life is not about the destination, or getting the answers right, not even about the prerequisites before we begin, but in those long nights of waiting and worry, we agonize over what we may be called to be, considering options we never imagined. We wonder WHY GOD? WHAT DO YOU WANT US TO SEE?

We take for granted the systems we know, as if everyone in every other country has always done what we do. Oddly, the American Presidential Election system is one of the few in all the world, one of the few in all history, where former leaders are able to leave office alive. We have assumed a natural transition from one leader to the next every four years.
In order to understand this Old Testament story, we need to recall that after the people had wandered with Moses, they came into the land and for many generations lived with each person doing what they saw right in their own eyes for themselves. Eventually the people wanted a King to lead them, and chose for themselves King Saul. He was tall and handsome, a great warrior and leader. But Saul refused to listen God. As a leader he continued to do only for himself, so God chose to have a new King. Samuel who was the last of the prophet leaders in the tradition of Moses, Joshua, Deborah and Samson and Gideon, was called to do an act of faith and righteousness with God, but an act that also would have been considered an act of treason against the King. This is a beautiful little story, because going to do an act of faith, God instructed Samuel don't try to hide the faith of what you are doing as something else. If you are going to do an act of faith, do not conspire to do some little thing, taking one handful of grain as an offering, sending your wife a card on Valentine's as an act of LOVE and DEVOTION. Instead, take a heifer, a full grown cow, enough that could feed a whole village, as an ACT OF FAITH, also do what the people need.

Second, Samuel is presented not with one son of Jesse, but seven sons, each stronger, taller and more handsome than the one before. And when each of these is just like the King already upon the throne, the MAN OF GOD dares to ask the question we routinely forget... Are there any others? Is there a FAITH RESPONSE we have not yet seen?

The reading from John is a long one, but one of the few examples in Old or New Testaments, where after the Miracle, and after the Cleansing, and after the Trial, when this MAN now sits outside the Temple, we witness seeing Jesus SEEK HIM OUT. We would want to ask: Is he better off, as a man who once was blind and now can see, seeing that the people who once surrounded him able to see were actually blind? But that is not the question of Jesus. Jesus question to the man and to us is DO YOU BELIEVE? And having healed him, sent the man to POOL CALLED SILOAM, meaning SENT OUT.