March 30, 2014 – John 9:1-41
John 9:1-41
Where’s Jesus?
Fourth Sunday in Lent – March 30, 2014
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
So I’m watching The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.
And what you need to know is that this is the second of three long films that
adapt J.R.R. Tolkien’s lovely little book The Hobbit.
So I’m sitting there watching armies of orcs and evil necromancers and a bunch of stuff that
isn’t in the book, and I’m thinking, “Where is the sweet story I read as a youth?”
It’s like Tolkien’s beloved adventure story has gone missing in all the epic action.
One film would have been plenty for this story; three is just crazy.
Anyway, the basic story is simple enough.
A hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, is recruited by dwarves to steal, from a nasty dragon,
some treasure that rightfully belongs to the dwarves.
The first film tells the story of Bilbo’s recruitment.
And now the second film tells the story of the journey to the Lonely Mountain,
inside of which dwells the dragon with his treasure hoard.
The person who sets all this in motion is the great wizard Gandalf, played by Ian McEllan.
Now after seeing the first film, and not being terribly impressed,
the only real reason I wanted to see the second film was to see Gandalf again.
Such a wonderful character, played by such a wonderful actor,
the same actor who played him in all three of the Lord of the Rings films.
So: imagine how ripped off I felt when I discovered that,
for most of the journey to the Lonely Mountain, Gandalf is nowhere to be found!
It’s like, “Where’s Gandalf?”
His absence is keenly felt as the characters get into all kinds of trouble without him.
And when they get into trouble is when they most keenly need him.
And yet, even by the end of the film, the characters do not know where he is,
although we the audience discover that he has been captured and imprisoned by
the evil Necromancer, who is really the evil Sauron,
if that means anything to you.
Gandalf is missing for almost the entire story of the journey.
And the characters could sure use Gandalf to show up.
I kind of felt the same way when I looked at the Gospel reading for this Sunday.
This is a very rich, but very strange, Gospel story.
It is totally unique in the Gospels in that Jesus is missing for most of it!
Like: Where is Jesus?
It’s what the people ask the man born blind when he tells them it was Jesus who healed him.
“Where is he?” they ask, and he honestly has to reply, “I do not know.”
In this way, the story is unique in the Gospels: for most of the action, Jesus is not there.
And the troubling thing is, is that as trouble begins to unfold for the man, Jesus is not there.
It would be one thing if the man lived happily ever after, and if all his friends and
family members and fellow church members were happy for him.
But that is not what happens: the man’s life becomes much more difficult after Jesus heals him.
It begins to appear as some cruel joke – and we wonder: has Jesus healed this man as a stunt to
simply show off, unconcerned about the consequences for the man?
Does Jesus really heal out of love, or simply from a desire to show off? Where is Jesus?
We don’t know.
What we do know is that things go from bad to worse for the poor guy.
First he tries to go home, and can’t.
You’d think people would be happy for him, but there’s no joy here, only dissension and doubt.
Secondly he’s hauled in front of the religious leaders who grill him.
Again, there’s no joy, but more dissension and now suspicion of Jesus.
Third, his parents are brought before the religious leaders and grilled.
And again, there is no joy in this interrogation, but fear: fear of being excommunicated:
yes, they say, he was blind and now he sees,
but we don’t know anything about it. Ask him about it!
And then, fourth, the man is once again interrogated by the authorities, this time more intensely.
The man is threatened with expulsion from the synagogue unless he denounces Jesus as a sinner.
He refuses to believe that anyone who healed could be anything but from God, and so
he is thrown out of the synagogue like trash.
Where is Jesus during all this? We simply do not know.
It’s after he’s driven out, alone, confused, and wondering, that Jesus comes to find him.
It’s after having been disregarded by his friends, rejected by his parents,
and being no longer welcomed at his place of worship: it’s then that Jesus finds him.
And it’s then that we come to know what it is, exactly, that the man born blind has come to see:
that Jesus is the light of the world, the one who brings healing, the one who saves,
the one with the power to bring light out of darkness,
the one who seeks out those in need, the one full of grace.
The grace to notice and heal a blind beggar of no consequence.
The grace to come and seek him out when he’s at his lowest.
The grace to share in his expulsion from the synagogue.
Though I was blind, he says, now I see. I see what matters most:
the grace that this Jesus incarnates. And that is why he worships Jesus:
because God’s gracious, restless, seeking, inclusive spirit is made flesh in this person.
The great irony in John’s story is that this person whose sight was limited by physical
blindness is the one who comes to see clearly, while
those who think they see everything perfectly well and who think they know everything are
the ones who are most spiritually blind, unable to see God most powerfully at work in
seeking out the lost and godforsaken.
What we come to see, in Jesus’ return, is that he is full of grace after all.
His initial cure is an act of grace: the man didn’t ask for it and Jesus didn’t ask him to earn it.
And his return is an act of grace: the guy was pretty much a complete failure as an
evangelist, and after being rejected by everyone – at his moment of greatest need –
is when Jesus returns to find him.
For us to ask, as the man born blind was, “Where is Jesus?” is an honest question.
And sometimes – maybe a lot of the time – our only honest answer is, “I don’t know.”
This story spoke to the experience of the early church: Jesus came in the flesh,
ministered and healed, and then, after his resurrection, he left and promised to return.
It was the time between his coming and his coming again during which,
sometimes, the people in the early church honestly did not know where he was.
When they were expelled from the synagogues for confessing Jesus as Lord,
like the man born blind they wondered where Jesus was when that happened.
Well, they are not so different from us.
Sometimes during the illness, in the hospital, after the divorce, in the nursing home,
at the funeral, people will ask: where is Jesus?
And sometimes the honest answer is, “I do not know.”
And usually the honest answer is the best answer.
For it’s the guy in the story who answers “I do not know” who is found by Jesus in the end.
See, it’s his not assuming to know everything about God or Jesus or the work of the Spirit that
leaves him open to growth and open to seeing Jesus in the
unlikeliest of places: right with the reject from the synagogue.
Right with the fellow rejected by his friends. Right with a fellow sufferer.
We so often assume that Jesus couldn’t possibly want a person like us.
We assume that Jesus couldn’t possible use a person like us, ungifted as we think we are.
We assume that Jesus wouldn’t bother to take the time to seek us out and find us and use us.
We so often assume that we are alone in our suffering.
That Jesus would surely be far above such suffering and such exclusion.
That Jesus would never share our crosses.
But there he is, on the outside of everything, right where the guy is – on a cross – and
Jesus finds him there: not in the guy’s glory, but in the guy’s suffering, rejection and loss.
In the story of the man born blind, Jesus comes late, but not too late, as the preacher
Fred Craddock observes – and there’s a lot of good news in that.
The truth is that Jesus and his somewhat mysterious Spirit are working even when
we cannot see it, even when we cannot hear it, even when we cannot feel it.
We confess that, sometimes, we do not know – but perhaps we can trust.
And we go, therefore, to those places we think he cannot be: among the lowly, the poor,
the rejected, the sick, the unpopular, the enemy.
I have no doubt that Gandalf will return in the third Hobbit film, and that will be kind of
late for me, but it won’t be too late.
The first great truth is that Jesus, too, will come, perhaps late, but not too late.
And the second great truth is that Jesus will come, perhaps late, but not too late, through us.
For we are not the only ones to experience God’s absence:
the world is full to overflowing with people who experience God’s absence.
But, as the Christian writer Daniel Clendenin has observed,
the absence of God is best met by the presence of God’s people.
When you wonder where Jesus is,
you should only have to look as far as the person sitting next to you.
When you wonder where Jesus is,
you should only have to look as far as this room.
And when the people outside this church building wonder where Jesus is,
they should only have to look as far as this congregation.
For you, now, are the physical body of Jesus on earth: you are the body of Christ.
It seems unlikely. Indeed, it seems utterly incredible.
But this is where Jesus chooses to be found: among you. Through you. In you.
And if you are wondering where Jesus is this morning,
you won’t have to wait long for an answer.
You will find him embracing you in the passing of the peace.
You will find him giving you himself to eat and take inside yourself in wine and bread.
You will find him dismissing you into a world he has bound himself up with for all time.
Sure: it seems unlikely.
About as unlikely as Jesus bothering to come back to find a reject and failed evangelist.
But Jesus will come. Late, perhaps, but not too late. Because it is never too late. Jesus will come.
So together let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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