| Rector’s
Sermon
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| John 9:1–41 How can we expect Jesus to do everything Jesus does? It’s more than a body can bear, I would think. This long, long gospel we’ve just read is a sympathetic story about a blind man who had to defend his healing, who had to explain his healing, as if he had done something wrong. But it’s also all about Jesus having done something wrong, something illegal, something out of the ordinary—a kindness and a goodness that gets rewarded by crucifixion. Take this gospel home. Read it through again. It’s absolutely extraordinary how no one, not his neighbors, not his parents, not the clergy…no one wants to be associated with the man born blind and this wonderful thing Jesus has accomplished. It’s bizarre, something like suing your heart surgeon for malpractice after he’s just saved your life. And so how can we expect Jesus to do everything Jesus does? It’s more than a body can bear. This Lent we have had occasion to look more closely at the music and the texts of Handel’s Messiah, and one text in particular haunts me, the bit from Isaiah that says, “Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. He was wounded for our transgressions…” It’s from a famous part of Isaiah we have called “The Suffering Servant.” It has to do with the notion that humankind’s suffering is more than we can bear, and so God has raised up someone to take this suffering onto him or herself on our behalf. I’m reminded of Tevye’s questioning God in Fiddler on the Roof, “God, I know we are the chosen people. But couldn’t you choose someone else once in a while?” The Suffering Servant is in effect God choosing someone else and Christians have long identified that figure from Isaiah as Jesus. “Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.” And so, how can we expect Jesus to do everything Jesus does? It’s more than a body can bear. Actually the story of the blind man is less about the blind man and more about Jesus, and I would push a bit harder and suggest that if Jesus is also the Suffering Servant, then it’s less about Jesus than it is about God. God gave Jesus the power and the authority to heal the blind man. But God also allowed the crucifixion by which, at least in classical Christian theology, Christ took upon himself the sins of the world. Not everybody likes that about God. In recent years the doctrine of the atonement has been challenged as potentially and actually justification for violence. The Jews killed Jesus so let’s kill the Jews. Some of you may remember Owen Meany’s complaint when he was chosen as a Fourth Grader to play the baby Jesus in his church’s Christmas pageant because he was so short and the rector defended his position by saying to Owen, “But it’s an honor to play Jesus.” Owen Meany replied, “Jesus was set up, just like I’m being set up. Do you think Jesus really wanted to be crucified?” (That’s my paraphrase. It’s a good book: A Prayer for Owen Meany. You should read it.) That’s one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is that Jesus as God’s servant or even as God’s son is of God in such a way that it is God’s self who suffers on behalf of the people God loves, that it is God who is crucified, that it is God whose heart is broken by all violence and by all innocent suffering. And so we might amend the text from Isaiah to read, “Surely God hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. God was wounded for our transgressions, God was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon God.” Jesus isn’t a kind of substitute for God but was and is “the Word made flesh.” However we might want to define Christ’s divinity over and against his humanity, we will want to affirm how it is that his humanity reveals his divinity primarily through his love for us. Because Jesus longs for us, God longs for us. Because Jesus heals us, God heals us. Because Jesus suffers for us, God suffers for us. I don’t want Jesus to become less God because I’m afraid I won’t be able to relate to him. I want him to become more God so that I’m assured that in knowing Jesus I will know God. How can we expect Jesus to do everything Jesus does? It’s more than a body can bear, I would think. But he did bear it, and for that I’m sad, but also grateful. Amen. |
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