During this season of lent, each week our church has been asking a question,
How do I begin again?
Where did you see God today?
Will you give me a drink?
Today looking at John Chapter 9 we are initially posed with the question “Who Sinned?”
However, very quickly in the scripture we sense this may be the wrong question, so I think we have three other questions to consider alongside,
Can we ask a wrong question?
If this is the wrong question what is the right question?
Would it be better just to stop asking questions?
I was thinking about this, and I have concluded that the main problem with the bible is that it’s full of sentences, lots and lots of individual sentences, thousands.
These sentences form paragraphs, stories, chapters that interconnect yet at the same time we can just pick a random sentence and build entire theological and social structures from it.
We use individual sentences, pieces of scripture, to make a point, normally a point we had already decided served us well. We pluck a sentence and declare “Aha I see! It is clear in the bible that…”
And not just that but we declare “Aha it is clear that is wrong and I am right and if you don’t agree you are sinners. End of”
I guess when God had this idea of the bible, he thought we would read it prayerfully, discuss various interpretations, see the cultural context of the time. That we would always put love compassion and mercy first.
I think God vastly overestimated us.
And if we are not plucking sentences to prove our own viewpoint, we turn to the bible with questions and demand answers, we demand that a single sentence can provide an answer to huge complex questions. In doing so, we don’t consider what sort of questions the bible could or should answer.
We pay this consideration with other books, for example we use a biology textbook to learn the function of the heart; but if my question is, “When I see someone and my heart flutters do I love them?” Well, we know that’s not the right book for that. We don’t turn to a biology textbook for love advice.
But we don’t do that with the bible, we take all sorts of questions to it.
We often go to the bible with three sorts of big questions.
- Why do you let that happen?! So here we are talking about natural disasters, child abuse, train wrecks and so on. This is huge stuff, and we want quick answers from the bible, answers that make us feel better.
- Who’s better: me or them? I think we have done this many times since the bible was first read, using the bible to ensure we are the master race, the most important gender, the correct sexuality, we are God’s beloved not you lot.
- “Go on then, what do you have to say about that”. We almost want the bible to let us down with the answers, we sort of want to trick Jesus, usually on topics that resonate with us. For me, because of my work with adults with disabilities, when I read the bible its often that topic of disabilities, seizures, blind people, those with skin conditions, and someone will ask Jesus a question on it my head goes, “Go on then Jesus… lets see how you answer this one,” we test to see if Jesus is truly someone we can follow.
In John Chapter 9 we start off with a big question, and it’s his disciples who ask him, who don’t necessarily want to trick him, but these guys have made quite a big decision to follow him so probably do want to keep testing him to feel confident in their following.
The scripture says,
And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth.
2 And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?
Now he is not the only blind person in the world and the disciples will know this, so the question is really, Why does God allow or cause people to be blind? Or have any physical challenger? This is a huge question.
Then they connect the man’s blindness to sin. They know he is blind, and they aren’t blind. There is a comparison to be made. They want to know if blindness is connected to sin has he sinned more they have, basically, assure us we are better than him, if not then the very bedrock of what we believe about ourselves is possibly ruined!
Now, if we believe that God knows everything, and that Jesus is God made man then if Jesus had wanted to he could have said:
Congenital anomalies such as anophthalmos, microphthalmos, coloboma, congenital cataract, infantile glaucoma, and neuro-ophthalmic lesions are causes of impairment present at birth. Ophthalmia neonatorum, retinopathy of prematurity, and cortical visual impairment are acquired during the perinatal period. This man was born blind as a result of one of these.
But he doesn’t. He approaches it differently.
Jesus hears their question, and maybe it’s the wrong question for that moment, I suggest Jesus ponders and thinks to himself, what’s this question really about?
Jesus could say, well yes it is the blind man that sinned and this is his punishment, or yes it was his parents; but how do either answers benefit the people asking on a practical level, they do not seem to have any solutions or suggestions of how they could better help the blind man based on how Jesus answers.
I think Jesus sees through this. He sees that what they want to know is a deeper truth about the nature of sin, the nature of God’s justice, how our physical bodies may or may not be an expression of our morality.
Jesus simply answers :
3 Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.
Now, we are all made in God’s image and God wants to manifest his works in all of us, so essentially Jesus is saying this man is blind because he is blind. Being blind is not a measure of sin nor is it a measure of virtue that makes this man extra special.
The disciples ask a big question, and Jesus answers it based on what they are really asking about, and he answers in a very beautiful way.
Maybe for us its helpful to think in this way next time we go to the bible looking for answers.
There is nothing inherently wrong with your question, but how might the bible better serve you, if you first ask yourself, what’s my question really about?
My dog Roxy passed away before Christmas after being very unwell, and of course I was upset and angry and livid with God. It would have been easy to go to the scripture and ask,
“Why did you let my dog die, why did you punish me like that, why is my dog dead but lots of horrible people still have their dogs?”
And there won’t be a scripture that says “Jesus proclaimed that a man’s dog will die due a combination of inflammatory bowel disease and uncontrolled seizure.”
But what’s my question really about? By asking this I can better find the loving answers I need. What do I need reassurance about, where do I need to feel comforted by the scripture?
I think it’s the same when we go to God in prayer.
We ask Why? How? We want God to explain himself to us through prayer, we want him to give us a rational answer to our irrational behaviours. We want answers that reflect our human version of justice, our ideas of how sin should be met by punishment.
But what are our questions, our prayers, really about?
Often, we question God to absolve ourselves of our personal and social responsibility.
God Why haven’t you done anything?
And he simply replies Well why haven’t you?
This is not to say we need to stop asking questions, not at all.
I like how this scripture ends in The Message version of the bible
39 Jesus then said, “I came into the world to bring everything into the clear light of day, making all the distinctions clear, so that those who have never seen will see, and those who have made a great pretense of seeing will be exposed as blind.”
40 Some Pharisees overheard him and said, “Does that mean you’re calling us blind?”
41 Jesus said, “If you were really blind, you would be blameless, but since you claim to see everything so well, you’re accountable for every fault and failure.”
“Since you claim to see everything so well,” I love that last bit. Your insistence that you can see the truth and no longer need to ask questions, is your downfall. That moment you stop going to God with prayers, with questions, you go wrong.
Doubt, uncertainty and questioning are what calls you to keep exploring and stepping forward in faith.
Doubt uncertainty and questioning stop you making yourself and your view points a false idol that you can not dare to let go of.
I think Jesus calls us to keep asking questions, but he calls us to question our questioning and look deeper in to what our questions might be asking us to consider about ourselves.
Maybe this week, every morning take two minutes in quiet prayer and simply ask
“What question do I need to ask today?”
And when questions and prayers arise simply ask yourself, what is this question really about and see how it may transform your relationship with God, your relationship with scripture.
The Unexpected Prayer 