Suffering and blindness during a plague . . .

     Why doesn’t God stop this plague?  Is He punishing us for a particular sin?  Why doesn’t He protect the good people and let the bad people catch it?  Doesn’t He understand I don’t get paid if I don’t work?—Those questions, and dozens like them, are running through our collective heads and being given voice by ourselves, our loved one, and even strangers.  In truth, our Gospel reading for the day, the Fourth Sunday of Lent, is, dare we say, providential for times and discussions like these.

     As Christians, we make the unqualified claim that God is good.  In fact, we claim that we cannot even know what is truly good apart from God’s revelation.  Our perspectives, our desires, our very being are so impacted by sin that, were God not to reveal Himself and these things to us, we would be blind to the evil we do.

     I will give you a timely example.  Many of you have been at church and heard me talk about my discussions with someone from the CDC from my prior life.  I shared the expected infection percentages, mortality percentages, and the risks as a result.  I said at the time, though, I was more appalled at the system we had let grow up around us.  He reminded me that our hospitals run like airlines.  As much as the airlines hate empty seats, hospitals don’t want empty beds.  We base executive pay on revenues and profits, so our hospital directors try to keep beds full all the time, maximizing revenues and profits and salaries.  To use corporate lingo, they cut the fat, the empty beds in this case, from their system.  Now we are all going to be paying for those decisions.  Did we recognize at the time the reduction in available beds would hurt us in the future?  Probably some “worriers” expressed some concerns, but most of us ignored their warnings.  Certainly, there were not enough worries or their listeners out there to keep a little fat.  Now what do we have as a result?  A society that is desperately trying to “flatten the curve” from a disease that, for most of us, would be survivable, so long as there were beds and ventilators available.  Think on that for a second.  The most powerful, most advanced, most technically sophisticated societies the world has ever known, will be forced to pick and choose who lives and who dies.  In autocratic countries, such is no big deal.  Here in the United States, where everyone has a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we are adding an “except.”  And we think this is good or a necessary evil?

     Chances are, you can think of dozens of such seeming “goods” that promote systemic evils.  Certainly, your friends and families can, too.  Yet we claim God is good?

     The disconnect that we feel in such times is the subject of much conjecture.  Those who have led God’s people during various events in history have always wrestled to understand their time and their circumstances within God’s redemptive plan of salvation.  One way in which we, and the world, seek to understand this disconnect is to assume that all sufferings are punishment for evil or sin.

     For our Gospel lesson this week, the leadership knew the man born blind was suffering either because of his parents’ sin or his own.  God wants everybody to see, and the man cannot see.  Since God is good, and the man was experiencing evil, sin must be at work in this somehow.  Put more simply, they wanted to be assured that suffering is punishment for evil or sin.  When they ask Jesus the question, they expect Him to pronounce that the man’s blindness is a result of divine justice.  Jesus, of course, shocks them by telling them that neither the man nor the parents did anything to cause the blindness.

     The story is fairly well known.  Many non-Christians know the story of Jesus spitting in the dirt, making mud, putting it on the man’s eyes, telling the man to wash, and restoring his sight.  But the story is often passed over when it come to insights about suffering and God’s power and desire and punishment.  Jesus flat out rejects the teaching that the man is suffering because his parents or he sinned.  Are they sinners?  Of course.  We all are.  Did they do something special to merit their circumstances?  No, no more than any of us. 

     Jesus goes on to say that the man’s blindness was for the purpose of demonstrating God’s works in him.  God is so powerful that He can heal the man of his blindness.  And He does.  The rest of the story is about the consequences of such a healing.  Those in power, who want people to see their suffering as deserved for their own evil (and their blessed example as deserved for the leaders’ own goodness), threaten both the man and his parents.  All three have heard since the man’s birth that God rejects sinners and blesses only those who are good.  Now, he finds himself blessed beyond measure, in a way nobody else could, through the restoration of his sight.  His world has been turned upside-down.  Earlier, he had been told he deserved his blindness because he or his parents were evil.  Now he knows that God can redeem even blindness, and, perhaps just as importantly, that God knows his redemptive need!

     For his sight and understanding, the man is driven from the court.  But again he meets the One who cured His blindness.  Jesus asks the man a simple question, do you believe?  The man knows that God only listens to those who are good, more so on a Sabbath day, and so he asks Jesus who the Son of Man is.  Jesus identifies Himself as the Son of Man, and the former blind man believes and worships Jesus.

     Jesus, as we all know, is here for more than physical cures, though He freely dispenses them as He journeys around Judea and Samaria.  His real purpose is to redeem our sins, to make us able to stand before our Lord, our God, and our Father.  And so, each of these evils that Jesus cures points to the real Evil He came to redeem and His power and willingness so to do!

     In my conversations with folks and on social media, I have been reminded yet again that we are not nearly as different from those in Ancient History as we would like to believe.  Some leaders have posited that this plague is a punishment for abortion.  Others have posited that this plague is a punishment for our idolatries, be they money or power or sports or sex or whatever else they seem to be wrestling with in their personal struggles.  There is truly nothing new under the sun.

     For them and for us, the problem lies in another revelation about God.  We claim He is omnipotent, that He can do whatever He wants, whenever He wants, however He wants.  He can part seas.  He can burn bushes without consuming them.  He destroys with fire and brimstone.  And He can even raise the dead!  Can He stop the plague?  Of course.  Why does He not, then, to prevent suffering, which we all know is evil?  Ah, there’s the rub, right?  We think suffering is evil.  But God does not see suffering as evil.  For us, for those baptized into the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord, suffering becomes an opportunity to produce enduring faith in His providence.  For His Son our Lord, suffering and death was the way to save us.  As a result, each of our sufferings, our crosses, are meant to point the way to His Suffering and to His Cross.  Like the blind man in our story today, our sufferings from this plague are not due to our inherent evil.  Christ paid the price for that inherent evil, our rejection or distrust of God that we call sin, in full on Calvary nearly 2000 years ago!  There is no more punishment for us to pay.

     And while we long for His return and the recreation of the world, we recognize that we live in a world full of consequences of humanity’s rejection of Him as Lord and God.  And so, like the blind man in the story, we recognize that our sufferings, especially those of us who call God Lord and Father, may well be present in us so that God’s work of salvation might be revealed in us, so that others might turn to His saving embrace through our enduring faithfulness.

     Already at Advent we have been able to accept our suffering and trust that He will be glorified in our faithfulness.  Many of us would have loved to come and celebrate the Eucharist together this week, but we took our Lord’s command, and the command of our bishop and pleadings of our civil authorities, to love our neighbor seriously and refrained from gathering.  A number of Adventers complained that they missed the Eucharist, that watching on the web just was not the same thing.  Many of us, in ways previously thought unlikely, are experiencing a powerful Exile in the midst of 2020 Lent.  Who knows how God’s Word will come alive the next we read of Exiles or sufferings or plagues!

     So far, we have been blessed.  No Adventers have come down with COVID-19.  We understand that there is nothing within us that commends us or makes us worthy of such blessings; it is Christ dwelling in us, working through us, which makes us worthy.  We expect we will feel its effects at some point.  Yet look at some of the redemption that has already occurred.  Adventers have been able to explore worship in other venues from afar.  How might that experience impact our own worship experiences when we reach the other side of this plague?  Adventers have stepped up for other Adventers at risk, making sure groceries and medicines are delivered to those who cannot or should not be out!  We’ve even experienced our own loaves and fishes as we distributed several hundred pounds of fresh produce, none of which was provided by Adventers, in God’s name to those who are desperate for food in our midst.  Bless you and your people, Father, for this.  May the Lord protect you and your flock for remembering us?  Thank you for taking this risk for me.  – Dozens of like comments were made as people headed to their cars laden with food.  Some lamented they wanted to hug, but realized now was not the time.  Though what we offered was in no wise as satisfying as the manna in the wilderness or the loaves and fishes in the feeding of 5000 men, it was an answered prayer of provision for some 300-400 people in our midst, which the world has forgotten or cares not to see.  Truly, God has already been glorified in our own suffering, as He has been glorified in the lives of so many saints and so many Adventers who have come before us.

     The question of evil and suffering and the answers provided by humanity will continue long after we have all gone to our reward, but of one certainty we can remind ourselves this day, in this season, in a country beset by fear and anxiety by a plague: suffering is not evil.  Suffering will certainly hurt us emotionally.  It may hurt us physically and spiritually.  But behind the pain and anxieties and hurts of suffering lies a deeper truth.  Suffering is the means by which God chooses to produce enduring faith in us, and suffering is the means by which God makes it clear to us and to all who have eyes to see that He, and He alone, has the power redeem all things, even our own deaths.  And for that redemptive power and His merciful and gracious will to use it to our benefit, we rightly give Him thanks and honor and our trust, knowing that He will be glorified in our suffering, and, at the recreation, we will share in that glory for all eternity, as sons and daughters, of our loving Father in heaven.

In Christ’s Peace,

Brian†