Read John 9-10 ~ These two
chapters are rich in metaphor and meaning, worth reading a few times. Chapter 9 is a narrative of a beloved son of
God who is blind from birth. Notice how
the disciples want to explain (even blame or shame) who is at fault for this
brokenness. I don’t know what hurts more
~ the fact that this is in the Bible OR that we keep doing this today?! We keep blaming and shaming people who are hurting,
telling them that they didn’t pray enough, believe enough, follow our
instructions well enough. This adds salt
to the woundedness of the world. To be
sure, Jesus saying the blindness was for God to work through this beloved,
could be taken several different directions.
We should be clear that Jesus is breaking down the accepted theological
explanation of the day ~ that if you had a disease, it was from the
divine. You made God angry. Jesus is pushing against that. I wish that he had said this a little clearer
~ that illnesses/pain/grief are not punishment!! And I don’t want to miss how Jesus is
deconstructing bad theology equation of the day that a bad event was caused by
something you did. As the
story unfolds, the Pharisees (that is, good religious folk) want to figure this
out. So do we today. We want, almost demand, reasonable and
rational reasons for why bad things happen to good people. The Pharisees cannot accept mystery and
ambiguity. The question is, can we? Are we willing to enter a realm where
our brain won’t be able to come up with witty, cynical, thoughtful, well-argued
reasons? Are we willing to be
mystics who hold life loosely, or do we keep treating life as a problem to be
solved? Do we keep erasing the
chalkboard pushing ourselves to understand everything. Do we let grace confound and confuse us? Do we let joy disrupt and disturb us (that
evokes laughter at the absurdity of it all)?
One final note, I love how the medicine in 9:6 is mud – soil –
earth. This echoes Genesis 2 where God
makes humans out of the earth – mud – soil, breathing in us the breath of life.
Breathe in the breath of God.
Breathe in the One who longs
to shepherd your life through these words you’ve been reading for the last 40
plus days.
Breathe out the prayers of
your heart ~ what is life giving right now, what is life draining?
Breathe out the voices that
want to criticize and critique and throw tomatoes at you because you are daring
to let your light shine and follow the voice of our Shephard/Savior.
Breathe and be. Breathe and be. Breathe and be. Amen.
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