"Here's Mud in Your Eye" John 9:1-12

Sorry, I just couldn't resist using this title. I don't think the phrase often used in toasts for drinks is traceable to this miracle! The man's condition is that he's blind from birth. Today, we know all kinds of reasons why that could have happened, but back then they thought it was a sign that someone had sinned. In Deuteronomy, there is a general principle in the opening chapters that says basically, if you live good lives, God will bless you and if you do bad, God will punish you. This led many to think that when bad things happened, it was punishment for something. Regrettably, that kind of thinking continues to this day. I had parents of a teenager who was suffering from terminal cancer who were told that their son wouldn't have cancer if they just prayed differently or had gotten rid of the sin in their life. Why do people say "idiot" things like that? Partly, they do so because they want life to be fair and balanced.

And there is some truth to the idea that sin can lead to bad consequences. What we sow, we will reap. But even David in the Psalms struggled with the unfairness of life. He would recall how he led the people in worship and then had horrible things happen. Jesus takes this on (he does elsewhere, also), saying that these things were opportunities for God to get glory. What if our diseases, our losses, and even our mistakes are actually opportunities for God to work in our lives?

I don't believe that God sends maladies and challenges our way, nor do I think he allows them. There is a freedom in creation: freedom for you and I to make choices, freedom for nature to run its course. As human beings we are both fallible (mistake and sin prone) and temporal (we all die eventually from something)in this life. What do people mean when they say, "He (she) died of natural causes?" I know that people mean it wasn't by accident or cancer or heart attack or stroke, etc, that the person for unexplicable reasons just died. But isn't nearly every death (even from accidents) from natural causes? And in the midst of our fallibility and temporality, God works. As you have heard me say before, "God is in the mix."

Jesus' method is common for his day - taking saliva and dirt and mixing it together as a salve on the man's eyes. He send's the man to wash the salve off and he miraculously sees for the first time in his life. I have done some reading recently about the gift of sight for those who have never seen. It actually takes them a while to see clearly and even make sense of the colors, shapes, sizes and depth of the images they "see." We actually call on all kinds of information that helps us see what we see.

The man's neighbors cannot believe their eyes. The man who was condemned to a life of begging (as well as with the stigma of having been punished by God) is now whole. Some are not even sure that he is the same man, but he says clearly he is the man and he had received this miracle from Jesus.

There is much more to this story as we shall soon see.