March 22, 2020
One morning, however, he noticed that they gave less milk than usual. It was the same the next morning and the morning after that. It was that way for a whole week. So, he decided to stay up at night to see what was happening with his cows.
About midnight, he happened to look up at the stars. He saw one star that was getting larger and larger. Its light got stronger as it got closer and closer to earth. It landed in his cow pasture and stopped a few feet in front of him. It was a great ball of light and inside the light there was a luminous woman. As soon as her toes touched the ground, the light disappeared, and she stood there like an ordinary woman.
The farmer said to her, “Are you the one who has been stealing milk from my cows?”
“Yes,” she said. “My sisters and I love the milk from your cows.”
He said, “You are very beautiful. And I’m glad that you like my cows. So, this is what I want to say: If you marry me, we can live together. I will never hit you and you won’t have to take care of the cows all the time, because I’ll take care of them part of the time. Will you marry me?”
The woman was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “Yes, I will. But there is one condition: I have brought this basket with me, and I want you to agree that you will never look into this basket. You must never look into it, no matter how long we are married. Do you agree to that?”
“Oh, yes, I do,” he said.
So, they were married, and they lived together very well for six or seven months. Then one day, while she was out herding the cows, he happened to notice the basket standing in a corner of the house. He said to himself, “Well, you know, she is my wife, so it could be considered my basket!”
After he said this, he opened the basket and then he began to laugh. “There’s nothing in the basket! There’s nothing in the basket! There’s absolutely nothing in the basket! Nothing! There’s nothing in the basket!” He kept saying these words and laughing so loud that his wife eventually heard the laughter.
She came into the house and she said to him, “Have you opened the basket?”
He began laughing again. “I did,” he said. “I opened the basket! There’s nothing in it! There’s nothing in it at all! There’s absolutely nothing in the basket!”
The woman said, “I have to leave now. I have to go back.”
The man cried out, “No! Don’t go! Don’t leave me!”
She said, “I have to go back. You promised not to look in the basket, but you did. If you had only waited, I could have taught you to see what was in the basket.”
There are some things that we see immediately. There are some things that we see over time. But there are some things that we must learn to see. Our blindness is so great that it is only by faith in someone who can open our eyes that we learn to see what is really there.
Jesus is walking along, and he comes upon a man – a man who has been blind since his birth.
The disciples are with him, but they see something else. They do not see a man. They see a problem. And since they see a problem, the only question is – Who is to blame for the problem? Who sinned? Is it the man or his parents?
We think that this question is outdated, a product of a pre-scientific time, before health issues were properly understood. We are more advanced now. We are more sophisticated. We are more scientific. Of course, we say, sin has nothing to do with illness.
Yet, how often do we look at other people and see, not a person, but a problem? How quickly do we assign blame, saying, “It’s his parents or it’s her peers or it’s the schools or it’s the society or it’s Hollywood or it’s healthcare?” How often do we even do that to ourselves – look for someone to blame – someone else or even ourselves – for our problems?
Because of this, Jesus’ answer to the disciples is as radical today as it was two thousand years ago. “Who sinned?” Jesus says. “No one sinned. This man was born blind so that the works of God might be revealed in him.”
What would it be like for us to see other people – not as problems – but as possibilities for the revelation of God’s work? What would be like for us to see our own situations – not as burdens or threats – but as occasions for the presence and power of God? And what does it take us to overcome our blindness?
John 9 is an extended theological discourse on seeing and blindness. The man born blind, when first asked about his healer, simply describes him as a man – some guy named Jesus. When he is interrogated later in the story by the Pharisees, the man born blind then calls Jesus a prophet. Finally, at the end, when he comes face to face with Jesus and meets him for himself, he confesses that he is the Son of Man. And he worships him. His seeing is no longer merely physical. He now sees with the eyes of faith.
The Pharisees, on the other hand, do not see the work of God. They do not see the glory of God. They see only sin. They believe their understanding is correct according to the law of Moses. This man is a sinner because he was born blind. Jesus is a sinner because he performed a work on the Sabbath. But they cannot see beyond the law. They see only sin because they are blinded by their own sin. Since they are blinded by sin, they cannot recognize their own blindness and they fool themselves into believing that they can see.
All of us have blind spots. All of us choose to be blind to certain things and refuse to see them in any other way. The place that we can start is in trying to recognize our blindness, to ask, “What am I blind to? What do I choose to be blind to? What situations in my life do I presume to understand? What people in my life do I prefer to think of as problems rather than as real human beings? Where do I need my own eyes to be opened?”
In another version of the African folktale I told, the woman says at the very end, “You saw nothing? What I brought in the basket with me is spirit. It’s so like human beings to think of spirit as nothing.”
It is so like humans to think of spirit as nothing. It is so like humans not to see God, especially in the midst of problems. In fact, we tend to think of problems as barriers to God. But there is no weakness, there is no poverty, there is no grief – there is no virus! – there is no trouble that is a barrier to God.
God is present, not merely in spite of trouble; God is revealed in the very midst of trouble. Because, in the midst of trouble, then we will know that it’s not because of us that God is present. It’s not because of our goodness, or our faithfulness, or, least of all, because of our worthiness. It is because of love that God is present, a love so great that worthiness is beside the point. And if it is beside the point for us, it is beside the point for everyone, the whole world. It is a love so great that it touches every single being on the planet.
God loves us beyond all questions of sin. That’s where it starts – with God’s love for us and our trust that we are loved by God. And that is how our eyes our opened – with faith in God’s love for us and for everyone we meet.
For God so loved the world…
This is what we can remember in these troubling times – or in any time. For this is the very work of God. This is the glory of God. This is the light of God in Jesus Christ.
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