Living the Good News: A Spirit of Compassion

We want life to make sense, and a lot of the way the world works does. If I let go of this, it will drop. If I push this car, it will roll…and if I push it harder it will roll farther. If Barb puts her foot out, it will stop. If it’s going fast enough, it will flip. It’s basic physics, really.

We start trying to figure out how the world works when we are just toddlers –  experimenting with food over the side of our highchair. Straight down, every time. Then we advance to cause and effect. Dangling food brings the dog. Touching the hot burner on the stove will cause pain. Wearing a coat in winter helps keep you warm.

Some causes produce an immediate effect. Stay out in the sun too long without sunscreen, and you will burn. Some things have a contributory cause, if you get skin cancer, one factor may be how many times you have gotten sunburned. And then there are necessary and sufficient causes. Necessary causes must be present to an effect to occur – for example, you have to be exposed to the sun to get a sunburn. While sufficient causes may produce the effect but are not required for the effect to occur. If you have been a sun-loving, beach-going, sunscreen shunning, dark tanner for years, that may be the sufficient cause of your skin cancer. We like cause and effect, because we want to make sense of life…and we want life to make sense. When we see someone with sores on their face from the removal of spots of skin cancer, we may quietly wonder how much they tan and what their relationship with time in the sun is. We are tempted to identify a cause for their skin cells developing cancer to justify the effect.

Part of our motivation is self-concern. We see another person experiencing the effect of a sufficient cause and we weigh whether we are more or less likely than that person to suffer the same consequence. He works in the sun, doesn’t wear a hat, doesn’t wear sunscreen…more likely than I am to develop skin cancer because I am rarely in the sun, and when I am I wear a hat and sunscreen.

But there is suffering that happens in life with no identifiable cause. And we are left wondering, “Why?” Why did that happen? The Pharisees had an explanation for suffering that did not have an immediate cause – sin. Who sinned, this man or his parents to cause him to be born blind? It’s the same idea as karma. Do good, expect good back. But if something bad happens, you must have done something to deserve it. We want to believe it works. You walk up to the vending machine of life, you put in your good behavior, you get out the life you choose. A1 – healthy, B4 – wealthy, C7 – family – we all know life isn’t a vending machine. But when bad things happen, we want to kick the side of the machine and see if something else was supposed to fall out…or ask “Did you not press the right buttons?”

When his disciples ask him, “Who sinned?” Jesus explains to his disciples, and to us, that this is not the way the world works. There is no such thing as karma. Bad things happen to good people. Jesus responds to their assumption that someone must have sinned for a baby to be born blind, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. As long as it is day,” Jesus explains, “we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” Suffering in the world is allowed, so that the works of God can be seen. The imagery employed here is from creation, light and dark. Before God created, nothing existed, only darkness and chaos. God spoke and there was light and order. Darkness is still allowed to exist so that light can shine in it. Chaos is still allowed to exist so that we can recognize order. Suffering still happens so that we can experience God’s presence. Jesus is the light, the order (his followers were called followers of The Way), and God’s presence.

And then, without pause, Jesus does the work of God who sent him. Jesus spits on the ground, make some mud with the saliva, and puts it on the man’s eyes. He doesn’t wait for the man, or his parents, to ask. He doesn’t require allegiance or faith. There is no exchange, only compassion that compels Jesus to act. The man is told to go and wash, and when he does, he is no longer in a world of darkness. He can see. He is so changed, that when he goes home, the neighbors debate whether or not he is really their neighbor, the man who grew up next to them, or someone who just looks like him.

As we seek to live the Good News of Jesus, there are at least 3 lessons for us in this story. First, the explanation for suffering is that without it we would not know God’s glory. Bad things happen. Sickness happens. Pain happens. Accidents happen. Brokenness happens. No one is immune. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, “God causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” We often hear quoted Paul’s letter to the Romans, chapter 8, verse 28, “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” But sometimes we use that verse to dismiss someone’s suffering as God means it for good! What Paul is saying is that even our suffering, God can use for good, because we love God and trust God enough to allow God into our hurt and pain.

God didn’t choose for me to have cancer, but I have allowed God to use my cancer journey to comfort other people when they are scared, to walk alongside other people who are going through similar journeys, to share with other pastors what I learned about pastoral care through my experience…and I’m a better pastor for having had cancer. Good has come and does come and will come from it, because I let God into my suffering and let God use it. We all suffer. We all have hurt. We all have the choice of whether we will let God use it for good or not.

The second lesson is that the disciples have a spirit of judgment, and Jesus has a spirit of compassion. The disciples want to know who sinned – maybe just out of curiosity, maybe out of a desire to reassure themselves that they were not at risk of having a child born who could not see, maybe as an excuse not to do anything to alleviate his suffering. There he was, unable to see, unable to work, begging on the side of the road as they are walking along. Their question is not, “Rabbi, who sinned that this man is left on the side of the road to beg.” Their question is not, “Rabbi, how are we called to care for this man.” Their question isn’t even, “Rabbi, should we spare some change from the community purse.” Their question is, “Rabbi, who is to blame.” And Jesus just heals him. That is our example, when we meet suffering in the world, we meet it with a spirit of compassion. We care, we pray, we help, and we do all we can to alleviate the suffering.

The third lesson is that when we encounter Jesus in our suffering, we are changed. The healed man goes home so changed that his neighbors who have known him his whole life don’t recognize him. The rest of the passage tells us that they notified the Pharisees, who tried to figure out how someone who was offending God by working on the Sabbath could, on the Sabbath, access the power of God, because surely this was a miracle. Through the investigation the healed man begins to see not only with his eyes, but with the eyes of faith.

The first time he is brought to testify to the Pharisees, he says, ““He put mud on my eyes,” the man replied, “and I washed, and now I see.” When they ask him how, he responds, “He is a prophet.” The second time he is brought to testify, he says, “Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!” And when they ask how, he responds, “I have told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples too?” They are aghast. “We are disciples of Moses; he was sent by God. We don’t know where this guy came from.” To which the healed man responds, ever more faithfully, “Now that is remarkable! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly person who does his will. Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” They throw him out, and Jesus hears about it and comes to the man. This is their exchange,

“Do you believe in the Son of Man?”

“Who is he, sir? Tell me so that I may believe in him.”

“You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you.”

Then the healed man said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him.

May we, too, have eyes to see and believe.