4th Sunday in Lent
John 9:1-41
April 3, 2011
Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, Iowa
Who’s in? Who’s out? Who gets to decide? Or, to put it in a more learned way, “How does a group set and maintain its boundaries? And how do individuals negotiate those boundaries?”
A visitor comes to our church and finds their way into our sanctuary. The most important question they bring with them is, “Could I be a part of this body of people if I wanted to be?” To put in a more learned way, “Is the boundary of this group porous enough to allow me to cross it if I choose?” They’re probably not thinking in learned terms. They probably just want to know if they could belong here if they chose to.
The need to belong to a group is a core need of human beings. We are social animals. The prospect of abandonment arouses deep anxiety. The need for others is hard-wired in our species. Even those of us who like our solitude, who value the times when we can be alone with our thoughts, would panic if we were faced with permanent aloneness.
The flip side of this is that we all like to be liked. Being liked by a group can be a powerful drug. It’s one we’ll do almost anything to keep getting. We know just how painful withdrawal would be.
Groups use this carrot and stick combination to get their members to act the way they want them to. Street gangs and combat units in the military—as different as they are in some ways—are alike in their need to get their members to do two things that most people are very reluctant to do: face physical danger and kill other human beings. The alternatives of rejection and acclaim are powerful ways of shoving people toward doing these things.
There are plenty of less dramatic examples. With a little thought, each of us could name many of them. A group of co-workers always eats lunch together. Their conversation grows oddly quiet whenever someone who isn’t part of that group sits at the same table. A clique of girls in the junior high school makes it very clear with snide comments and shared laughter who is and who is not one of them.
We’d like to think that we wouldn’t deliberately exclude anyone who wanted to be a part of a group that we belong to, but an odd thing happens when a group feels like it’s the “right size.” We start to take less and less notice of the outside of the group and focus more and more on the inside. It’s what some people have called the “hedgehog effect.” When alarmed a hedgehog curls up in tight ball. Inside the ball it’s warm and soft and safe. That’s the inner experience. On the outside, though, an alarmed hedgehog—and that’s the only way I’ve ever seen them—is cold and prickly.
The sign outside a church says, “All are welcome.” Every member will tell you that what they like about their church is that it’s so friendly and warm. Talk to a visitor after they’ve visited and you will get a different story. “All are welcome” isn’t quite true. At least, it’s not the whole truth.
These questions about groups and boundaries and the enforcement of group standards, questions like, “Who is in? Who is out? And who gets to decide?” are very much in the foreground of the story that we heard from John’s gospel.
Jesus and the disciples came upon a man who had been born blind. The man’s congenital blindness raised a theological question and, since it was Sunday, it was a good time for theological questions. It was clear to the disciples that the blindness was a direct result of individual sin. Someone had violated the Law or, to put it differently, had behaved in a way that violated the group norms in the contemporary Jewish community. That was clear. What was also clear was that the man’s blindness was punishment for that violation.
The only question left was just who it was who had sinned. Was it the man himself? But he was born blind, so when was it he had sinned? But if not him, then who? His parents? It would surely be harmful to them for the son they had counted on as their retirement plan to be unable to earn his own living, let alone support them. But that didn’t seem quite right, either. Why should a man be punished for something his parents had done? A neat sort of conundrum, the sort that makes for a good conversation over Sunday dinner, or better yet in a bar after a couple of beers.
But Jesus short-circuited their conversation by healing the man. No blindness, no guilt, no sin. Only the glory of the God who makes whole. And that’s when the trouble began.
First were the man’s friends who at best only barely recognized him. Then there were the officers of his congregation. This couldn’t be a proper miracle because it was done on a Sunday. The healing violated the standards of behavior of their community. They said it violated God’s law, but groups are always blaming God for their rules. The healing was done on a Sunday, therefore the man who did it was a sinner, therefore the miracle could not have come from God, because God wouldn’t listen to a sinner. End of discussion. Case closed. QED.
But the man himself did not have the luxury of taking this for an exercise in theological thinking. This was about him. His was not an armchair theology. What it came down to was this. Apparently there was a choice between two different versions of God. The first was a God whose universe made perfect sense. In that God’s universe good things happened to good people and bad things happened only to the bad. Comfortable people could count their blessings twice, once for all the things they enjoyed and a second time because all those good things were proof that God loved them best.
The other God was a God who had little interest in figuring out who was to blame. That God was more interested in making this man whole, in giving him the dignity of work so that he could support himself and help his parents. If that God’s universe was puzzling, well, so what? He could see and that’s all that mattered to him.
If it came to a choice—and apparently it had—between those two versions of God, he would take the latter and his eyesight and leave neat theological systems to those who could afford them. He stuck by his testimony. “Here is an astonishing thing!” he said. “You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.”
Now a blind man, excluded from meaningful work, reduced to begging, unable to help his aging parents, and convinced that, somehow, in God’s eyes it was his fault was an acceptable member of this congregation. His presence gave people a chance to practice their pity and it was powerful evidence of the cost of sin. Him the congregation leaders could accept.
But a man born blind and now able to see, a man whose very presence confounded their notions of moral symmetry, a man whose presence suggested a God who didn’t care about community norms nearly as much as they did, a man who furthermore was eloquent in his testimony about his own experience and the conclusions about God to which that experience had led him, that man was a living accusation of comfortable armchair theologians. He was a rock in their shoe. He was a pain in their backside. He gave them indigestion and several other clichéd metaphors. So they spit him out, expelled him, excommunicated him.
They called a quick meeting of the Administrative Council. They never specified the charges against him. They never allowed him counsel. They didn’t even bother to consult The Book of Discipline to see what they proper procedure for a church trial against a layperson might be. They just said, “All in favor of kicking this guy out, say ‘Aye!’ All opposed say, ‘Nay!’ The ‘ayes’ have it. He is outta here!”
Who is in? Who is out? And who gets to decide?
When Jesus had heard that the man he had healed had been kicked out of the congregation, he made a point of seeking him out. If he had been cast out of his congregation, he was welcome to join with the Jesus followers. And so he did that. He took his stand with Jesus as Jesus took his stand with the God who stands with the outcast and outsider, the God who does not blame the poor for their poverty, nor the oppressed for their oppression, nor the blind for inability to see.
Who is in? Who is out? And who gets to decide? Well, according to Jesus, it wasn’t the Administrative Council of this man’s congregation. It was the God whose love is so large, whose arms are so long, whose embrace is so wide, that it can include us all. For those of us who need a world that makes perfect and complete sense, this will not come as good news. But for those of us who long for peace, for those of us who believe that there should be a place at this table for all who seek to eat here, for those of us who just knew in our hearts that God’s love would embrace everyone no matter what preachers or armchair theologians may say, it is the very best of all possible news. Everyone who wants to be in is in. No one who wants to be in is out. God says so.And that, as far as Jesus was concerned, is the end of the matter.
©2011, John M. Caldwell. Permission is given by the author to reproduce and distribute the unaltered text of this sermon provided this notice is reproduced in full and provided that this sermon shall not be offered for sale, nor included in any collection or publication that is offered for sale, without the express written permission of the author.
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