SERMON: "Bad Things Happen To Everyone"

"Bad Things Happen to Everyone"
John 9:1-41

I've forgotten the number of times people have sent me the interesting list of truths children have learned. While I’m sure many of you have already seen the  list, I want to introduce my sermon blog with it.

“No matter how hard you try you cannot baptize a cat.”
“When your mom is mad at your dad, don’t let her brush your hair.”
“Never ask your 3-year-old brother to hold a tomato…or an egg.”
“You can’t trust dogs to watch your food for you.”
“Don’t sneeze when somebody is cutting your hair.”
“School lunches stick to the wall.”
“You can’t hide a piece of broccoli in a glass of milk.”
“Never wear polka-dot underwear under white shorts….no matter how cute the underwear is.”  (1)

I can't imagine the experiences these children had to have had in order to come to these “great truths.” Can’t you just picture a child attempting to baptize a cat? I think I remember learning the broccoli lesson myself – only it was a piece of tough steak. The point of my using this illustration today is that many new insights, new perceptions come to us as a result of such dramatic eye-popping experiences.

The disciples observed a man born blind and it dawned on them that this would be a good case study for them to learn from the master his perspective about such things – you know, what he believed about the relationship between sin and suffering. Personally, I find their question repulsive - I know that has to do with how we see things differently today, except I find a lot of the attitude the question represents still guiding the theology and comments by far too many people. Here’s a guy suffering and they want to connect it to someone’s sin – to something God intentionally did to the man as punishment for something. All I can say is WOW! What I wonder is, what kind of God do some people believe in?

Kathryn Lindskoog had MS, multiple sclerosis – a chronic disease that gradually weakens and paralyzes the body. Some of the things she reports people said to her in her life are utterly amazing. “You must really like to be sick; you bring so much of it on yourself.” The comment was made by a relative who never even sent her a get-well card.

Another relative once said to her: “the reason I have perfect health is that I think right; nobody gets sick unless he thinks wrong.”

And then there were these: “I know just how you feel about being crippled; I had a bad case of tennis elbow last month.” “Your present improvement is just wishful thinking.” “I know you fake your limp to try to get attention.” That one was from her pastor and he was serious. And then, perhaps the cruelest one of all: “God must cherish you to trust you with this burden." (2) Can you believe the kind of God some people believe in?

A country preacher visited his parishioners after a flood. One of his farming parishioners lost his crops and cows. The preacher tried to offer comfort by quoting: “Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth.” The farmer just looked at him and drily replied, “Well, I believe he overdid it this time.”
Who among us can forget the comments made by TV evangelists Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell after the 9-1-1 bombings; when they claimed that it was God’s unhappiness with gays, feminists and People for the American Way? (3) Of course, we've had the unfortunate experience of having to continue to hear such irrational venom from Fred Phelps and his followers from the Westboro Baptist Church. They've gained a modest amount of notoriety for their picketing the funerals of American soldiers who gave their lives for their/our country but whose deaths Phelps claimed were God's punishment for our country's expanding acceptance of the rights of our homosexual brothers and sisters. (Fred Phelps passed away a few days ago and at least some who have opposed his message of hate have chosen to use his death as an occasion to reach out to his loved ones with messages of love and forgiveness. I am proud of those who have done so and hope the message is heard and accepted. There have been others, more personally hurt perhaps, who've felt the need to make more vengeful responses and I understand their reaction.)

"Who sinned?” the disciples asked Jesus. "What?" we exclaim hardly able to believe such a question could be asked. The truth of the matter is that it is one understanding of the relationship between sin and suffering that existed in those days and relatives of it still surface in our own day.

Well, whenever I come across something as confusing or questionable as this suggested concept, I usually turn to my good friend, William Barclay (famous Bible scholar of the last century), to see what he has discovered. And, again he did not fail to provide some background of the mindset of the day. He notes first that there was indeed a view among some of the Jewish theologians that pre-natal sin was a possibility. They believed that an embryo could somehow begin to sin while still in the womb. Perhaps they perceived the kicking of a baby as an example of inner and pre-birth sin (that was my aside, not Barclay's).

Another explanation Barclay offers is the belief in the pre-existence of souls, a notion of Plato and the Greeks. The idea was that these souls existed together someplace and took turns entering a human body. It was believed that these were inherently good and it was the entering of the human body that corrupted them. Now, some of the rabbis believed that these pre- existing souls were both good and bad and ... capable of sinning before the entry into a human body. (4) Yep, the question reflected belief in a God who caused suffering either by an embryo sinning or the parent even before conception. Really? What some people believe about God is really strange.

I don’t know about you but I can’t help but wonder also about how the blind man and his parents felt about being the object of such a theological discussion. I mean, here was a man born blind and the reaction of the disciples was to have a theoretical discussion with Jesus about the man’s suffering.

Have you ever had it happen to you? You have a health problem and share it with some folks and they proceed to give you their perspective on why your sick.

One preacher told of just such an experience in his life with these words: “I put myself in the place of this man (the blind man) the other day. I had awoken earlier with a wretched sore throat. At a meeting that morning I said to some participants, ‘I’ve got a horrible sore throat. I can hardly talk. Don’t know how much I’ll be able to contribute to this meeting.’

“With that the two people to whom I said this launched into an energetic conversation on the origins of sore throats: ‘I heard that if you don’t intake enough vitamin C you are a candidate for lots of sore throats.’ The other said, ‘People just don’t take good care of themselves anymore. At this time of year people ought to know that with the constant changes of weather a sore throat is always a possibility.’

“On and on they went – I turned away in disgust. What I wanted was a modicum of sympathy, not a debate on how I had failed to take good care of myself and how I had no one to blame but myself for my sore throat! If I felt that way about a theoretical debate over my sore throat, think of how this poor man born blind felt about the disciples’ theological discussion! You’re blind? Well now, let’s get out our Bibles and see if we can find good material on the issue of the moral origins of blindness.”  (5)

One of my pet peeves is those phone calls we pastors get from the media after a disaster, “Tell me pastor, what do you have to say about this terrible thing has happened?” You have to understand, they don’t call wondering about our opinions about the thousands of children who die every day because of hunger or the thousands who are being killed in wars. They want to know why God kills people with hurricanes or floods or earthquakes. They want us to defend God or explain God or … I don’t know, you tell me what they want.

Bishop Willimon tells of the phone calls he received after the Tsunami hit the day after Christmas in 2006. “At first I wanted to reply, ‘How do I explain it? Well, I’m not an oceanographer myself but I think that the earth’s crust cools, the plates shift, earthquake happens, and then the tremors set off huge waves out at sea. At least that’s what I picked up on the Learning Channel.” But, he resisted because he knew what they meant by their question was really, “You say that you believe in a good God, so how could a good God allow something like
this to happen?” (6)

I don't know if you caught it or not, but Jesus really never answered the question. What he said was: "Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God's works might be revealed in him." (John 9:3) Frankly, that comment doesn't thrill me much either. It's important that we don't read the story too literally. There's no way the way I understand God that I can believe that God causes suffering (blindness) with the sole purpose of demonstrating something else or to make a point. There must be a deeper meaning to this text.

Bible scholars on the Gospel of John note that in this Fourth Gospel especially there is usually something more than what is written we are to think about. This healing miracle is one of the seven "signs" it is the author of John's  hope to highlight. It's remembered as an occasion when Jesus portrayed his reason for being as his being the light of the world - the light that disturbs the darkness and blindness of the religious establishment.
Friends, there are no easy answers here. Bad things happen to everyone - all of us. I have to admit to you that I mistrust almost all answers offered about why bad things happen to both good and bad people. I don’t think there are any good answers to the question.

In the British movie “Whistle in the Wind,” a pet kitten dies after the children had prayed that it would get well. They went to see their pastor. They found him in a teashop, taking a morning break. He was obviously enjoying his tea and reading a newspaper.  They asked him, “Why did God let our cat die?”

The pastor was a little annoyed at being disturbed during his tea about a dead cat, but he dutifully launched into this long, complex, theological response. The children stood there patiently and listened. He wished them well when he finished and went back to reading his newspaper.

As they walked away the little boy held his older sister’s hand. He looked up at her and said, “He doesn’t know, does he?”  (7)

For me, it’s not about providing an answer to the question about why, but understanding what’s going on with God when we suffer. For me, the most comforting thought is that God cries with me – that God hurts with me – that God is compassionate – that God resurrects out of the bad – that God heals – that God walks alongside  - that God breaks through the fog so that light can help clear things up.

One of the most helpful ways I have ever heard it put was reported in a newspaper interview  many years ago with Father Ron Wilker, then priest of Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Coldwater, Ohio after the tragic deaths of several members of one family in his parish. He said: “The first tears shed were the tears of God. This was not God’s plan. This was another example of how fragile our lives are." (8)

Professor Lew Smedes says in his book, How Can It Be All Right When Everything is All Wrong: “God’s own answer to suffering is to join it, feel it, hurt with it. A sufferer screams to God in the all-wrongness of his life, ‘Why have you abandoned me?’ God answers by joining him in life’s most horrible wrongness. Jesus hangs on a cross and somehow, God hangs with him. God joins us and gets himself hung for his trouble.”(9)

In my opinion, the real miracle here is that Jesus stood with the blind man in the midst of his suffering and had compassion and tried to do something about his suffering, thus revealing the true nature of God, compassion. Jesus cared for the man in need more than he cared to enter into a theological debate with his followers about the man’s suffering or what day of the week it was (remember one of the things he did wrong that day was healed on the Sabbath thus earning the  view that he was a sinner).

Behind everything that happens to us, there is a loving God who will never leave us or forsake us. Suffering is not necessarily the result of human sin. Bad happens to everyone – both the good and the bad. Our statement of faith is “God is with us.”

James W. Moore, “Encounters With Christ I: Jesus & the Man Born Blind,” Encounters with Christ, 2001, 0-0000-0000-15.
Kathryn Lindskoog, “What Do You Say to Job?” Leadership (Spring, 1985), pp. 93-94. Quoted in Ron Lee Davis, Healing Life’s Hurts (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1986) and further quoted in King Duncan’s sermon: “What Kind of God Is That?” Collected Sermons (Dynamic Preaching, 2005), 0- 000-0000-20.
King Duncan, “What Kind of God Is That?” Collected Sermons (Dynamic Preaching, 2005), 0-000- 0000-20.
William Barclay, The New Daily Bible Study: The Gospel of John Vol. 2 (Edinburgh: The Saint Andrew Press, 2001), Kindle ebook p. 43/346
William H. Willimon, “The Glory of God,” Pulpit Resource, January – March, 2008, p. 38.
Ibid.
Dr. Bill Bouknight, “Why Did God Allow That to Happen?” Christ United Methodist Church, for  www.eSermons.com, Memphis, TN, 0-000-000-01.
The Lima News, 1978-1985.
Lewis Smedes, How Can Everything Be All Right When Everything is All Wrong? (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1982), p. 68.