A Sermon by the Rev. Elice Higginbotham
For the First Congregational United Church of Christ, Chappaqua, New York
It's very painful to be left out. All of us have known, at one point or another in our lives, the lonely ache of just not being part of things. Sometimes it had to do with the age you were, or the place you were, or what was going on around you. Sometimes it had to do with some kind of barrier - language, or illness, or disability, that kept you from participating in the activities of life that "everybody" carries on. Or just some difference of situation that seemed to make us feel not in sync with everyone else. Just moved to a different part of the country, where everyone else knows the customs, and talks the slang, and has a certain in-groupy understanding of what is courteous and what is not. Just recovering from a separation and divorce, or from the death of a spouse or partner, and don't you find yourself surrounded by couples? The odd one at a dinner party, with no one to be paired with? Of course, there are wider social settings of being left out. Many of us here are old enough to remember when people whose skin was a certain color were left out, by law, of restaurants and hotels and movies and neighborhoods, and left out of much of the educational or employment opportunities that people with my skin color could pretty much assume were available to us. My husband (most of you know that he is Asian) can tell you a story about visiting a church in the segregated South, and being "politely" asked to leave before worship could start. That kind of being left out resulted in enormous social upheaval, sometimes even violence, and we're still figuring out what to do about it to this day.
Whether it's a phase, or a period of adjustment, or a socially-reinforced way of living, being left out can become the definition of one's state of being. Not being able to participate eclipses all the other small blessings of daily life. Not being able to participate on a broad social scale becomes a social sickness, a grinding, daily, lifelong insult. All one knows, when one is left out, is that - one is left out. You can't. You can't be part; you can't go; you can't play; you can't compete on a level playing field.
The "man born blind" in our Gospel story today - we don't know his name, he's just "the man" and his parents are just "his parents" - that man was left out in the most cosmic sense. In his society, where there were as yet no biological or chemical or genetic or other scientific explanations for such terrible misfortunes as to be born without sight, there was only one explanation: sin. Somebody sinned, and God took retribution - in this case, apparently, a life sentence.
Jesus' disciples were men of their time; that is, they didn't know any more about biology than anybody else. But apparently, as we often see them in the Gospels, despite their vocational call as Jesus' disciples, they also didn't know much more about theology, or at least about the kind of God that Jesus was presenting in his words and work. Have you ever seen how people sometimes talk around a person in a wheelchair, or a blind person, or someone with a noticeable disability? Have you ever, as I unfortunately have, been embarrassed to catch yourself talking about the person in his or her presence, instead of to the person? Like, have you ever been having a meal in a restaurant, say, with a disabled person, and the server goes around the table, taking the orders, and then turns to someone who looks to be in charge and asks, pointing to the disabled person, "And what will she have?" - as if whatever the disability is, somehow makes the person incapable of deciding what to eat or communicating the order?
Well, that's exactly what Jesus' disciples do. There's a perfect stranger. Obviously, they had to be fairly close to him to note that he was blind, and Jesus was then able to walk right over and heal the man - so I think we could assume he could overhear what the disciples were saying about him: ...who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? Jeeeesh! Don't look to Jesus' disciples for a lesson in manners!
Jesus responds both in word and in action. In word he says, in effect, "What do you mean, who sinned? Nobody sinned!" And in action he immediately makes it possible for the man's disability to be taken away. Just like that. Changed his life: that is - Jesus made the whole issue of sin irrelevant!
And that, dear friends in faith, made everybody very nervous. It made the neighbors nervous. It made the formerly blind man's parents nervous - I mean, don't you think they'd be relieved and delighted? No, they're so nervous they have no comment on what happened, just "our son's a grown-up - go talk to him." Because healing someone born blind - taking away so thoroughly the clear identification of the presence of evil, wrong, bad behavior; not to mention doing it all illegally (healing is obviously work, and working on the Sabbath was outlawed) - all this made the religious authorities, the opinion-makers of the community, the politically correct very, very nervous.
What matters in this story, that makes it relevant at all for our modern ears, isn't whether or not Jesus actually performed a miracle cure. What matters is sin. What matters is who has the authority to define sin, and point out what is sinful, and make sure that the sinful and the sinner are noted, and contained, and prevented as much as possible from contaminating the rest of us. That's something that's very important to us: who's sinning, and who's not. What's an immoral act and what's a human right, or an expression of human identity? What's a terrorist act, and what's an act of war? What's a crime, and what's a revolutionary act? And who gets to decide, and what are the consequences of the decision?
In this story, the ones who get to decide are the ones the Gospel recorder calls the Pharisees. They have defined "sin" down to the nth degree. They define the sinner, and they determine the consequences. You - sinner - you're left out!
Not only is the formerly blind man corrupted by sin, why Jesus the healer is a sinner! And when the formerly blind man, his mind and confidence apparently healed along with his vision, when he disputes the Pharisees' definition -- well, don't forget who's in control here. ...they drove him out [of the synagogue]. We can't have these unrespectable people running around cavalierly undermining the social order!
It's useful for us to know a little bit about the audience who first heard or read this story. The early Jewish Christian hearers were just like the formerly blind man: they had taken their claims about Jesus too far. They had redefined the Jewish law, which the Pharisees were articulating and implementing as a definition of true "Jewishness," and saying that law and its traditional trappings now only function as a lead-up to the Messiah, Jesus, the Christ. And the Christ has become the authority. The Christ has declared forgiveness of sin. The Christ has called to himself the ones the authorities define as unacceptable, outcaste, "not part of us," sinners. And those first Christians were drummed out of their synagogues. This story may have offered those beleaguered believers some comfort.
But my question to us today is, does it offer us some comfort? Or does it make us a little nervous?
Jesus said, "I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind." Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, "Surely we are not blind, are we?"
About twenty-five years ago, I spent an evening, along with a colleague from our United Church of Christ overseas mission board, in the hall of a Baptist Church in Havana, Cuba. I'd looked forward to this evening. It was an opportunity to hear from a congregation of Cuban Christians who chose to remain in Cuba following the triumph of the socialist revolution, and who could talk to us about how they led their lives of faith in a society organized so very differently from my own. Well, we did some introductions, and my colleague and I were invited to witness - good old Baptist word; in this case, to speak briefly about our own Christian experience, our own churches and what they were like, so we could begin a dialogue with our Cuban sisters and brothers, comparing and contrasting our church experiences in our different settings. My friend, Jeff, was trying to think of some ways that we Congregationalists might observe some different practices from our Baptist friends -- after all, we both tend to be independent types, with congregational forms of church governance. Well, he hit upon the obvious difference: baptism. In his New England-accented Spanish, he said, "Well, I guess one practice that's probably different from yours is - well, I expect you folks practice believer baptism, isn't that right? Well, it's common among us to baptize infants."
Whew! Did he hit a Baptist nerve, or what! The room exploded. We spent the next 45 minutes quoting scripture at each other in increasingly loud voices, defending our theology of baptism. Finally, as we all were threatening to outdo the tropical heat and humidity with the passion of our arguments, the pastor stood up, calmed folks down, and said, "I think our American sister and brother really came here because they want to hear about how we are able to live our faith in our socialist society; and we want to hear from them how they are able to be Christians under capitalism. We want to talk with each other about where Christ is present."
We'd forgotten all about Christ's presence. We'd been so defensive about our way of doing things, and our extremely good and well-justified reasons for doing them that way, that Christ had gotten lost. We were humbled on both sides. We ended up having a great and inspiring conversation.
When we are defending our positions, struggling to make sure that we are right, and that the right thing gets done because we know it's right, we are operating out of fear, not faith. We are more worried about what we will lose then we are concerned about who is healed, and helped, and given new life.
Those arguments are so easy. And we're so good at them in the church. It's a finely-honed skill we have. It gets decisions made, and alliances built, and public image upheld, and money spent or saved. It just kind of leaves Jesus out in the cold. It just kind of ignores who and where Jesus calls us to be.
I don't know anything about the right or wrong of it, said the man who had been given a completely new and heretofore unthinkable chance at life. All I know is that I was blind, and now I see.
His sin was removed. He was removed from his well-defined place. His well-defined society had no place for him. He was left all alone. Except for Jesus.
Amen.
