“The Blind Beggar”
John 9:1-41

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Pastor Kevin Vogts
Trinity Lutheran Church
Paola, Kansas
Fourth Sunday in Lent—March 30, 2014

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Psalm 139 says, “I will praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”  One of the most wonderful works of God’s creation is the eye.  A digital camera like this one seems marvelously complex and compact, a miracle of engineering.  But, did you know you already have TWO digital cameras, far more advanced, much more complex and compact, than this or any work of human engineering?  You were born with them, implanted in your head.  That is the true miracle, a wonderful work of God’s engineering.

A digital camera is rated with a certain number of megapixels, which refers to the number of light receptors.  That is exactly how God designed the eye, with receptors to receive and process the light striking them.  But, “The Blind Beggar” who has an encounter with Jesus in today’s Gospel Reading was apparently born with some physical defect which doesn’t allow enough light to strike the receptors in his eye. 

So it is with us spiritually.  We are all born with the spiritual defect of original sin, which obscures the light of God, and darkens our understanding.  Without God’s spiritual light illuminating us within, we go groping our way through life, like “The Blind Beggar.”

The #1 area in which we desperately wish we had more enlightenment from God is the question, “Why?”  Why do things happen in our world, and to us, the way they do?  Especially the question which theologians call “theodicy,” the question of why BAD things happen in our world and in our lives.

That’s the question with which the disciples begin today’s Gospel Reading: “As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’”

There have been several best-selling books recently aggressively promoting atheism and denouncing religion, especially Christianity.  In all these books, the authors’ greatest stumbling block, the one thing that turned them so vehemently against belief in a LOVING God, is this question of theodicy: If God is all-loving and all-powerful, why do bad things happen?

“Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” Jesus said, “but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.”  Even bad things can be used by God, in his wisdom, according to his plan, for our good, and his glory.  As Paul assures us in Romans, “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him.”

The question of theodicy arises because in this world we often do not perceive God’s plan.  Only in heaven will we fully see and understand how God works all things, even bad things, for the good.  As Paul says in 1st Corinthians, “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully.”

But, like a lawyer badgering a witness, demanding, “Just answer the question,” we want God to explain it all to us, right NOW.  The Lord answers in Isaiah: “’My thoughts are not your thoughts, and neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the Lord.  ‘For as the heavens are above the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.’”

If you’re a parent, you probably remember telling your little children in answer to their incessant questions: “JUST BECAUSE!”  I remember thinking to myself, “That’s what MY parents used to say to ME!”

Just as parents cannot always explain things in a way their children are able to understand, our heavenly Father’s plan is not fully explained to us in this life, because often it is simply beyond our ability to comprehend.  “For as the heavens are above the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.”  As a result, when bad things happen, we are often frustrated, we feel like we’re groping blindly, because we can’t understand why these things are happening.

Matthew reports that at the Last Supper, Peter had promised, “I will never deny you,’ and all the other disciples said the same thing.”  But, just a few hours later, when Jesus was arrested, mocked, flogged, crucified, dead, and buried, Matthew says sadly, “Then all the disciples deserted him and fled.” 

This was the ultimate question of theodicy: WHY would this ultimate bad thing happen—to the ultimate good person?  Paul says in 1st Corinthians that for some the message of Christ crucified is a “stumbling block,” and that’s what the cross was for the disciples on Good Friday.  The Gospels report that for the three hours Jesus hung on the cross “darkness came over the whole land,” and, as they looked at the cross, darkness came also over the hearts of the disciples.  They could not accept that this awful thing could be part of God’s plan for the good.

“While I am in the world,” Jesus says, “I am the light of the world.”  Though the disciples at the time could not perceive it, light was actually radiating from the darkness of the cross, the light of God’s love, shown to us in the sacrifice of his own Son.  Paul puts it this way in Colossians: “Give thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light.  For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”

The mud Jesus puts on the eyes of “The Blind Beggar” symbolizes our sin and spiritual darkness and blindness.  The water in which Jesus tells him to wash symbolizes the blood of Christ, which John says, “cleanses us from every sin.” 

And the washing in the Pool of Siloam also symbolizes Baptism.  This is how Paul describes Baptism in Ephesians: “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the Word.” 

Your Baptism is like the water which washed away the mud from the eyes of “The Blind Beggar.”  For, through the Sacrament of Holy Baptism, “the washing with water through the Word,” your sins, like that mud, are washed away.  As Peter says in Acts, “Be baptized and wash away your sins.”

“I am the light of the world,” Jesus says.  “Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”  “For you were once darkness,” Paul says in today’s Epistle Reading, “but now you are light in the Lord.”  “Declare the praises of him,” Peter says, “who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”   Like “The Blind Beggar,” you no longer have to go groping your way through life, for the Light of the world has come, for you.