When I was a teenager, I spent about one year total of my three years of middle school on crutches, long enough that I managed to wear out my first pair and needed to get a second. Between three surgeries and some soccer injuries, I spent a lot of time injured and was laughed at and made fun of because of my gross scars and my ability to get injured so frequently. I remember some of my classmates thought it was really funny to steal my crutches, rendering me unable to move from the spot where I was sitting because I risked needing another surgery if I put weight on my leg. It would still be a few years before I would be diagnosed with a connective tissue disorder; something that causes chronic pain and will follow me around for the rest of my life. But at least I knew what was going on. It’s the kind of thing where last year at this time I had my arm in a sling because I dislocated my shoulder while stretching.
Because of my experience, I have always had a lot of empathy for the man born blind in today’s story. He was dismissed and rejected by all of those around him, and as we see from his conversation with the religious leaders, many believed that his blindness was caused by either the sin of him or the sin of his parents. Physical ailments were a sign that you were not right with God. Yet, I also struggle with Jesus’ initial response about that as well. “The disciples asked Jesus, ‘Rabbi, was it this individual’s sin that caused the blindness, or that of the parents?’ ‘Neither,’ answered Jesus, ‘It wasn’t because of anyone’s sin—not this person’s, nor the parents’. Rather, it was to let God’s work shine forth in this person’” (John 9:2-3).
Now, from studying the Gospels, we know that John’s emphasis is on glorifying God and showing that Jesus really is the Son of God, but I can’t help but feel hurt by Jesus’ response. I trust that God isn’t using this man as a pawn in the grand scheme of showing God’s glory to the world, and that Jesus is refuting the claims made that this man’s blindness is because of sin, but for anyone that has dealt with physical ailments or pain, this statement feels a lot like the platitudes “everything happens for a reason” or “God has a plan.” If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of those comments, especially while in physical or emotional pain, you’ll know that more often than not those words do very little to comfort us.
I think that also gets to the larger point in this story that healing is about so much more than just curing the physical ailments. Because even when this man could see and could testify to how his sight was regained, the people around him didn’t recognize him because they had dismissed him for so long. And, the religious leaders would not accept his testimony about who Jesus is because he was a man born in sin. (John 9: 34) There is a lot more work for Jesus to do for the kindom of God to draw near.
Yet, at the same time, the Gospel and Samuel’s anointing of David as King in our first reading today highlights the fact that God works through those who the world least expects. Even in 1 Samuel today, God reminds Samuel that God does not work off human standards, especially when it comes to leadership. It is a theme that we will see over and over again in the life of Jesus, as the Messiah who nobody expected either.
We will talk more about David later, but I see God’s election of David as king as a sign that God also doesn’t work through perfect people. God works through us even with all of our flaws and failures. Because, David, as a king with about 2.5 books of the Bible dedicated to him does a lot of harmful and unhelpful things. He throws a lot of tantrums, causes a vast degree of unnecessary violence, and does whatever he wants without thinking of the consequences. And, as frustrating as it can be to have a leader who acts in such a manner, I also think it can be helpful to see what happens to humans when we turn away from God in favor of humanly power, something that the prophets will remind David of a lot. When we take on the role of God.
We hear of this happening today too with the story of the religious leaders though. They could not accept that this man who had been born blind had been healed. They couldn’t see it as the work of God because it didn’t match their understanding of what should be able to happen. Instead, they called the man and his parents in for testimony after testimony about the nature of his healing and his blindness, all while dismissing him because he surely couldn’t testify to this because he had too much sin. No matter what he did, he would never be enough in their eyes; there was no way that his experience could be true.
I have a lot of empathy for this man, especially as a woman who has to go to the doctor for chronic pain a lot. I was remembering how last year when I dislocated my shoulder and spent months seeing different doctors, one of them after about two minutes of an exam to told that he didn’t think that I had a connective tissue disorder. His dismissal of my reality, and the hundreds of hours of tests and doctors’ appointments that led to my diagnosis broke me down in a way that nothing else had. Two minutes and he decided that it couldn’t possibly be right because it didn’t look the way that he thought it should.
I tell this story because I think that today’s readings remind us that God works through so many vast and differing ways, and we are invited to listen to one another tell of their experience of God. Who are we to dismiss the man’s healing or take away his comfort? Instead, I think we are called to celebrate all of the ways that God is at work in our world, even if, or maybe especially when we don’t understand what all is going on. Because God doesn’t usually work in the ways that we want or we expect, but like the blooming of the flowers in spring, we are able to trust that God is continually working something new around us. And we are called just as we are to participate in bringing about that newness too.