March 6, 2005

Mindekirken, March 6, 2005
Pastor Jens Arne Dale

John 9.1-41

Let us bow before God and confess our sins, the pastor says at the beginning of every (Norwegian) service. The pastor kneels at the altar, and the whole congregation reads aloud the confession of sins. We say that we have sinned against God in thoughts, words and deeds. This is a moment of truth. To have sinned against the Holy God is not a minor thing. Often we might not have a clear picture of what concrete sins we are responsible for. Other times the confession of sins may be a great relief from a bad conscience. We want to be honest and true humans. And it’s not only about certain sins, it’s also about what Paul calls our sinful nature; I have the desire to do evil things in my heart…

Through the confession of sins we place ourselves under the judgment of God. With that background, the words of the gospel are releasing. We get to hear that God has taken the judgement upon himself and atoned in our place. The confession of sins doesn’t leave us to despair, but forgiveness.

In the Norwegian order of service the Gloria comes as the answer to the confession of sins. (During the season of Lent, we don’t use the Gloria. We won’t sing Hallelujah during Lent in the same way as other times in the church year. Repentance is the mood of Lent). The words of the Gloria are: Glory to God in the highest, and peace to his people on earth. These words are taken from the night when Jesus came to earth. God sent his Son to save the world from sin and guilt.

The approach is different, but the confession of sins and the Gloria are themes in today’s text as well. It’s about a blind man. Who has sinned, he or his parents, that he was born blind? That’s the way in which the disciples asked. For them, it was the most natural thing that sickness was a result of sin….

We may also be familiar with that kind of logic. There are a lot of diseases that we may have caused ourselves. I have struggled with pneumonia this winter season. And I have heard from about 1000 of you: Now, you have to take care of yourself! And I try as much as I can. But is it my fault that I got pneumonia? Have I not been careful enough? We do have a responsibility to take care of out own health. We may contribute by eating healthily. Don’t forget fruit and vegetables, is eight a day the new standard? What’s the latest news about physical activity? Are we supposed to spend half an hour or a full hour of working out every day? And what about our mental health? Do we do whatever we can to live reconciled with ourselves and others? Do we chase away worries and think positively?

Several diseases are related to the wrong life style. Too much alcohol is not good. When the proposed statewide ban on smoking in most public places was voted down in a House committee on Wednesday, Minnesota lost a golden opportunity to improve the health for many of its inhabitants. There might be good reason for us to confess our destructive way of living as a sin. It does mean something that our body is described as a temple for the Holy Spirit, 1 Cor 6.19.

To a certain extent there is a connection between sin and sickness. But the disciples’ misunderstanding was that there is always such a connection. When a man was born blind, they thought that somebody must have sinned, he or his parents. In other words, sickness was a punishment from God.

Some think in this way even today. My fear and depression are a result of my sins, I get paid as deserved. Such a way of thinking is a gruesome extra burden for those who might have more than enough to carry from before. Heart attacks and cancer, asthma and allergies, Alzheimer and diabetes…. We don’t need to view our plagues as God’s punishment. In today’s text Jesus makes his point very clear when he rejects the concept of his disciples. Neither this man nor his parents have sinned.

What’s between the confession of sins and the Gloria in the Norwegian order of service? Kyrie eleison, Lord have mercy on me! Interestingly enough, this part of the service has been taken from another blind man. Bartimeus sat at the roadside by Jericho and cried for help from Jesus. Lord, have mercy on me! In the confession of sins we name what we’re responsible for ourselves. Kyrie is the cry to God for whatever we may be victims of. We cry on behalf of ourselves, others, whoever suffers in this world, victims of natural diseases, war, oppression, violence, disasters and sickness…Today’s text teaches us that we shouldn’t consider our distress as God’s punishment. As little as we are responsible for our own age, are we responsible for the diseases we may have. And in fact, with age the number of diseases increases.

Which motives did Jesus have to heal the man? God’s works may be revealed on him!!! That was a Gloria motive, the glory of God should be revealed through his life. According to the synoptic gospels Jesus healed because he pitied people and cared for them. Here another motive is emphasized, the glory of God. Though we shouldn’t construct too much opposition, after all the glory of God is revealed exactly through Jesus' care and compassion for people in distress.

Did you notice that Jesus healed by using spit? The historian Tacitus tells about emperor Vespasian that when he once visited Alexandria, he met a man with an eye disease. He asked the emperor to moisten his eyeballs with spit. Unwillingly the emperor did what the man asked for, and he got well. The Roman Plinius who had a scientific approach to the information he gathered, has a whole chapter about spit as medicine. Snake bites, epilepsy, and leprosy… there was no limit to what they believed spit could help for. In other words, Jesus acts according to the medicine of his time when he used spit on the eyes of that man. Even so, when the man washed himself in the pool of Siloam and got to see again, it was a miracle of God.

But what happened turned out to be a problem for some others, the Pharisees. The cure happened on the Sabbath day. And that was against their rules. The text displays the long investigation where both the man who was healed and his parents got to answer for a lot. And the Pharisees mess the whole thing up in a way that makes them conclude that the whole affair was a scandal. In that way what was good was turned upside down and regarded a wrongdoing. No wonder Jesus called them blind.

The texts the last Sundays have had some common characteristics. Nicodemus thought born again meant going into his mothers womb again. The woman at the well thought living water could be found in the well. Today we meet a man who got his vision back. In all three stories there’s a deeper meaning of the words, a spiritual aspect which was the more important. To be born again is to see the kingdom of God. The source of living water is Jesus himself. The man who got his vision back met Jesus another time, and started believing in Jesus. By that he really got his eyes opened. In the gospel of John to see Jesus is the same as to believe in him, John 6.40.

We are victims of different diseases, and ultimately we’ll all die. I would almost say, let it be that way. The point in our Christian faith is not to be healed, but to be forgiven. A Norwegian pastor, Hans Christian Lier, had prayed for a lot of people who got healed. But when he himself got Parkinson’s disease, he was not healed even though people prayed a lot for him. He said: I have not experienced healing, but I have experienced what is more important. I have become free. It doesn’t matter to God if we are victims of sickness, his forgiveness is complete even so. The glory of God may be revealed even in human misery. The greatest thing is the inner vision, to see Jesus as one’s savior. If we’re not healed in this world, God’s promise is that we one day will get to see him as he is; and become like him. Then the blind will see and the lamb will spring with joy. And the glory of God will be revealed in a recreated universe.

The Norwegian Lutheran Memorial Church ·  924 E. 21st St, Minneapolis, MN 55404-2952 ·  (612)874-0716