"I'M RIGHT HERE WITH YOU"

Psalm 23; John 9:1-41

Last week,

our Old Testament reading asked the musical question

that's been with us from the beginning of time:

"Is God among us, or not?"

This week,

our lectionary readings are working together

to try and answer that same question.

If you do just a surface reading

of this very long passage from John,

the question seems to be,

"Why do bad things happen to good people?"

Or rather, more bluntly,

"Who sinned, this man or his parents,

that he was born blind?"

Is it, as they say in some circles,

"an act of God?"

Who is it that we can blame

when parents outlive their children,

when someone we care about keeps contracting illness after illness,

when hurricanes submerge a city or tornados blow them away,

when one whom we love more than life

is beyond the help of surgery, or chemotherapy,

or even, it seems like, prayer.

Perhaps the question remains,

"Is God among us, or not?"

When we encounter hardship after hardship after hardship,

it certainly doesn't seem to be the case.

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Our gospel reading this morning

has all the markings of an epic movie.

Some of the characters are straight out of Central Casting.

There's Jesus and his ragtag band of believers,

a marginalized blind man

and his two seemingly clueless parents

(although they're really more fearful than ignorant),

a bunch of curious and gossipy neighbors,

righteous religious authorities,

everything but dancing girls.

And all of them,

with the exception of the blind man and Jesus,

get sucked into the judgment game.

Even the disciples,

who have never even seen this man before,

decide that either he or his parents

have done something terribly wrong.

That was the point at which two miracles happen.

The first one is rather obvious,

mainly because it's messy.

Jesus spits on the ground,

then takes his hands and mixes it into the dirt

so that he can make a delightful little paste

and put it on the man's eyes.

And sure enough,

at his word,

the man goes to wash it off

and finds that,

for the first time in his life,

he can see.

That was the showy, if messy, miracle.

But the real miracle of this story

had nothing to do with saliva and dirt.

It had everything to do

with the glory of God being revealed.

The real miracle of this story

is that, in healing the man born blind,

Jesus reveals to us

the true nature of our compassionate God.

Most of the other people in this story

weren't interested in compassion.

They got more energized

by blaming and arguing and debating and gossiping

than they did by the miracle before them.

Fortunately, Jesus chose to just simply heal the man.

It didn't stop the debate.

But even that debate couldn't hinder the glory of God.

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There was a really popular book some years back

that purported to answer the question

of why bad things happen to good people.

I liked that book,

but for me it didn't fully answer the question.

And our reading this morning tells me

that it's not even asking the right question.

The disciples here were beginning to grapple

with a question that still stumps theologians today:

does God intervene in lives,

how does God intervene in lives,

and when bad things happen to us,

does God bring them about, or do we?

Even though we shouldn't try to answer this question

because there's not really a helpful answer,

it doesn't stop us from asking!

Our story today tells us, however,

that there is a more helpful question that we can ask.

The right question is far less about "why,"

and far more about "Who."

Every time we are tempted to ask ourselves

why bad things happen to good people,

perhaps we can pre-empt it

by asking ourselves the question

that Jesus asks this morning:

"Do you believe in the Son of God?"

That's the real question we are offered this morning.

And the Psalmist would tell us

that if you are able to answer that question,

then you have everything you need.

You shall never want.

You will be led, restored, and comforted.

You'll be accompanied even in the valley of the shadow of death.

Belief in Jesus Christ isn't everything;

it's the only thing.

If we can say "yes" to the question Jesus poses,

then the compassionate God revealed to us in Jesus

says to us,

"I'm right here with you,

all the way,

every moment of your life."

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Of course that's where I hope you come out

when Jesus poses that question.

But I hope and pray

that you and I have more in common with the man born blind

than we do with the crowd who surrounded him

and judged him

and wouldn't listen to him

as long as he failed to give the answer they wanted to hear.

Not only have we asked ourselves

that less-than-helpful question

about why bad things happen to good people,

we have tried to come up with answers,

or have listened to others try and answer it for us.

And all those answers sound pretty lame in comparison.

How many times has someone posed a question like that

and we have had nothing to say.

Or worse yet,

we HAD something to say.

We heard ourselves or someone else say something like,

"Well, God must have wanted another angel."

Or, "It must have been God's will."

Friends, that just doesn't cut it.

The truth is

that when we confront evil and suffering

and look them in the eye,

those kinds of answers

are not what God in Christ offers us.

God doesn't say to us "Okay, it's your time."

Neither does God have nothing to say.

God offers us Immanuel, God's very self,

standing with us,

reaching out to us,

God with us and for us.

We don't have to try and come up

with some answer that just cannot satisfy.

We don't even have to ask that question.

All we have to do

is to answer the question Jesus posed to the man born blind:

Yes, we believe in the Son of God.

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Len Roberts was one of those people

that everybody loved. 

He had been a professional baseball umpire

early on in his career.

Even Jackie Robinson said

that Len was the best umpire he'd ever worked with.

When he was a deacon at Oak Cliff Presbyterian Church,

he welcomed the first black visitor to the church

and personally ushered him to a seat.

If it had been anybody else in that day and time,

they would have been thrown off the board of Deacons.

But not Len.

Len could charm the socks off a snake,

and not only that but have the snake working for him

by the end of the day.

Len was like my second father.

I can't think of a time when I really needed him

that Len Roberts wasn't there.

So when I got the call about three years ago now

that Len was in the hospital with lung cancer,

I dropped everything

and went down to be with him and his wife.

I can't imagine a God

that would want to have Len all to himself

and deprive so many people of his company.

Fortunately,

we got to have him around until just a few weeks ago,

which was a lot longer than anybody predicted.

But that day in the hospital,

he didn't ask "why me," or "why now,"

or why anything.

He looked me straight in the eye and said,

"I'm not afraid to die." 

Did Len Roberts believe in the Son of God?

Unconditionally.

He didn't waste a minute asking pointless questions

or feeling sorry for himself.

Instead, he testified to all of us

about the One in whom he believed.

Were doctors able to cure his cancer?

Unfortunately, no.

Was he healed?

Absolutely.

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Friends,

suffering is an unavoidable part of the human condition.

It falls on the just and the unjust.

The world may call it an accident of birth,

or a twist of fate,

or drawing the short straw.

Whatever.

The good news of the gospel

is that all it takes

for us to move beyond blaming, or silence,

or trying to come up with some less-than-helpful answer,

is belief in the Son of God.

Terrible things happen to people we love,

and to each and every one of us.

But those terrible things do not define us.

What defines us

is the answer to Jesus' question.

Belief in the Son of God

means that the tragedies and losses which come our way

will never get the last word.

We know that the Good Shepherd is with us forever,

even to the valley of the shadow of death.

And we have enough strength to spare and to share

because we know the God who says to us,

at this table,

in our worship,

in the basic stuff of our everyday lives,

"I'm right here with you."

Thanks be to God!

Amen.