ISAIAH 35:4-7a

PSALM 146:4-9

JAMES 1:17-27

MARK 7:31-37

Sermon – September 7, 2003

“Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened”

Disease and disability have been part of human experience for as long as we have knowledge of our past. For probably just as long, we human beings have asked “Why?” Why to this person and not to that? Why this affliction and not that one, or not anyone? Human attitudes have often seesawed between a grim fatalism and the hope that somehow we could control everything, whether by magical rituals or evermore sophisticated medicine and technology.

Behind both responses have lurked the question of “What is God’s attitude toward our well-being, especially toward healing?” Many pagan belief systems viewed divinities as indifferent at best toward human well being, unless a particular human was a personal favorite of the divinity. Some of those pagan belief systems also viewed power and morality as disconnected – that, as in the Ancient Near Eastern paganisms, the divinities did not necessarily stand for any higher morality.

The Bible offered (and offers) a radically different worldview, with one God in whom absolute power and absolute goodness are combined. Divine Power was not arbitrarily used but was yoked to higher morality; the biblical story of the Great Flood depicts God sending the flood because of humanity’s persistent sinfulness and saving Noah because of his righteousness.

What, then, to do with mysterious afflictions and disasters which came out of nowhere to impact people? The conclusion many Old Testament thinkers came to was that affliction was sent by God to punish sin, since they believed that God did punish sin in this lifetime (belief in a meaningful after-life was very late development in Hebrew thought) and they had come to reject the existence of other gods, therefore whatever happened must have come from God and been sent for a purpose.

It’s a short jump from believing that sin merits immediate punishment to believing that someone who looks like they are being “punished” with sickness or disability must be sinful. So, to the burden of illness or disability carried by the ancient Hebrew was added the burden of being considered sinful by his or her own religious community, and sometimes therefore being unemployable or even kicked out of town as well.

The brutal belief that “everyone gets what they deserve” was protested eloquently by the Old Testament book of Job, which clearly states that righteous people can suffer, and not because of their sins. However, by the first Century, the dominant official religious view was that suffering was caused by sin, and this view infected even Jesus’ disciples, so we hear them posing the horrific question to Jesus in John 9 when they see a man who had been blind since birth, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

Tragically, this attitude is still with us. As recently as the Episcopal Church’s 1928 edition of The Book of Common Prayer (in wide use until the late 1970’s), the prayers for the sick declared that anyone who was sick, disabled or simply incapacitated due to extreme old age had been “visited by God’s hand.”

Whoever wrote or read that prayer seems not to have heard much about a man called Jesus.

In all his encounters with the sick or disabled, Jesus spent very little time on the issue of “where did this come from” – only enough to reject the theories about the source of the disability of the man born blind. Instead, when faced with people who sought healing on their own behalf or on behalf of others, he healed them – including at times forgiving their sins, which shocked the “good people” even more than the healings.

Some people have a hard time accepting good news.

Today’s healing story is vivid. Jesus crashes through all kinds of barriers here: he is healing in a region (the Decapolis, the 10 mainly non-Jewish cities just east of the Jordan River) filled with foreigners. Some people thought foreigners were beyond the reach of God’s love. Jesus begged to differ. He touched the ears and tongue of the

deaf mute; some people treated the sick or disabled as though they were contagious – not Jesus. Some people (even today) who do or claim to do wondrous things do it in ways to promote themselves; for Jesus, his actions are all about the suffering person, who he takes away from the crowd and tells not to publicize what happened.

Time and time again in the New Testament Jesus heals people. He never blames them for their own suffering but he also makes clear that he has come to liberate people from forces that are worse than physical suffering – he comes to liberate people from evil itself.

He still does.

And he still heals.

The miracles of the New Testament were just the prologue to the miracles since, which are just the segue to how life will be transformed “When he comes again with power and great glory to judge the living and the dead.”

We heard in today’s great passage from Isaiah 35 which was used in Handel’s Messiah, “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.”

This began to happen during Jesus’ earthly ministry. I have personally witnessed remarkable miracles in just my limited experience of the last quarter century. Not as many miracles as we hoped for, true; but a miracle is like seeing the first crocus bloom amid the snows of March: we know that Spring is coming. There may even be more snowstorms afterwards, but Spring will still come.

We live in such a time. We know that “snowstorms” of affliction will come before Christ returns, but that when he returns, “Spring” will come and will stay forever.

So yes, in September and at any time of year there are “crocuses” which come by God’s grace. Let us read and savor these passages of Scripture, and go pray and look for “crocuses”. And when we find them, we can talk about them and celebrate God’s liberating, healing love.

(The Rev.) Francis A. Hubbard

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church