Homily 4^th Sunday of Lent 2005

When Carol Potter asked if I might be interested in preaching this Sunday, I was a little reluctant. But the Man Born Blind has always been one of my favorite stories from the Gospels and the way that we have often read the story, singing the line from Amazing Grace, I once was blind but now I see, has always appealed to me. So I take a deep breath and pray, in the words of Psalm 19, that the words of my mouth and the mediations of my heart be acceptable in the sight of God, and be a guide of some use as we travel on toward Easter.

The story that we just heard has a lot going on. First Jesus passes the man born blind and the disciples ask the natural human question, This suffering, whose fault is it? Was it his sin or that of his parents. But Jesus tells them that they have it all backwards. What’s important is not how he got here, but what happens now. He’s just blind, but because he is blind, the works of God may be visible. So that all of you might see. Jesus then smears some mud on his eyes and sends him off to wash and be healed. The bulk of the story then involves how the various people in this little town dealt with the miracle of the man recovering his sight. The Pharisees and many others denied that the miracle had even taken place. Oh, this isn’t your son. How do you know he was born blind? Some said that Jesus could not possibly have healed him because Jesus was a sinner. And anyway, they didn’t believe the man because he was a sinner.

It seems to me that this story is all about how we deal with suffering and how we deal with miracles. We deal with them just like the people in the story did and Jesus is trying to teach us that there is a better way.

First, how do we deal with suffering? We see it all the time in big ways and little ways. The dying parent, the sobbing child, the cry of the poor, the devastation of tsumanis and the horror of sexual abuse. One of my enduring regrets as a parent is that I often acted like the disciples in this story. On a trip to the cabin in the mountains, my son came to me with a cut on his hand and almost the first thing out of my mouth was: "You should have been more careful." Now I know that there was a place for teaching him about sharp knives. And maybe he was a little thoughtless when he tested out how his new pocketknife not on a stick but on his finger. But the first question I should have thought about was not whose mistake is responsible for this, but how can I make the works of God visible. How can I heal, how can I make it whole. And only after that would it have been a time to teach and make sure it did not happen again.

It’s a human instinct to blame. When confronted by bad things, we leap to point the finger, we leap to accuse, it’s us versus them and they are responsible for all this mess. We leap to point out how others miss the mark. But this Gospel teaches us that when we do so, we are blind. Instead, we should look for the works of God being made visible. We should look for miracles.

My mother died three years ago this spring. Died of lung cancer after never smoking a day in her life. When she called me to tell me that the diagnosis was for sure and essentially acknowledge that her condition was terminal, all those blind responses went through my mind. Where were the doctors on this? Did living next to an oil refinery for fifty years cause the cancer? Then she said something that stopped me short and now reminds me a lot of this Gospel reading. She said. "Yes, this is bad, very bad, but I trust that God has a plan and that good will come in that plan. And I just pray that I will have the wisdom to see the good that comes." She had faith that good would come from bad and the hope that she would be able to understand that good before she died. During Advent, we often sing a hymn that has the line, "I believe beyond believing that life can spring from death, that growth can flower from our grieving." Every Advent, in fact every Sunday, I now remember those words and the words of my mother and know that miracles do happen, the works of God are made visible.

I’ve never seen any big miracles with a Capital M, like in the Gospel. But I have seen lots of little miracles – a child recovering from an illness, a friend sobering up and going to AA. What is miraculous is not the blind seeing, or the lame walking, but real miracle is the change that happens in the hearts of all involved. When my mother said that she had that faith and hope, there were two miracles, one her seeing so clearly, and two my change of heart, realizing the power of love. And that is what this Gospel teaches us, the real miracle of the man born blind is that it changed the hearts of people in that little town. And it can change our hearts.

But sometimes, we respond to miracles with a closed heart, denying them, pointing out the sin and refusing to open our lives to God. This is what the Pharisees did.

For the last six months, I have been doing a lot of work here in the parish on the sexual abuse crisis in the Church. I’ve talked to a lot of victims, parishioners, priests and even the bishop. This Gospel reading tells us quite a bit about how this crisis has come to pass, and gives us some hints about how to move forward.

A woman told about being sexually abused as a young teenager, abused in the rectory by a priest who was also her uncle. For years, she suffered in silence but recently she was able to find the courage to tell her story and she approached the Archdiocese to notify them of the abuse. The Archdiocese told her that they couldn’t help, this was a family matter and should be handled by the family. The fact that this woman was able after all those decades to see the truth and try to make it known was a miracle. Can we imagine how hard that must have been. But did the church acknowledge her suffering and welcome this miracle. No, to my mind, the hierarchy closed their eyes and hardened their hearts. They acted just like the Pharisees in the Gospel story. The cover-up, the denial, the defensiveness are all a perfectly natural response to suffering and to miracles, but they are not the response that the Gospel calls us to.

Sometimes, when I hear stories like this, I have a hard time taking my own advice. I become angry at the bishops and start pointing my finger at them. It’s all their sin. So this Gospel is a reminder to me to struggle with my blindness too and look for the good. Looking for the good does not mean ignoring the bad. We have to face the suffering, we have look directly at the blind man and we have to consider the full extent of the pain. We have to go into the tomb if we hope to rise again.

I have also read some of the affidavits of the victims recounting their abuse. They are absolutely horrifying, not only for the terrible things that were done to these people as children and but also for the way they were treated by the Church when they came forward. One recurring pattern struck me. Over and over, the priest abusers would tell these children, "You can’t tell anyone because no one will believe you." And the victims, over and over, talked about suffering in silence for years because they were convinced that no one would believe them.

And it’s true, the great sin of the Church is that if these victims had come forward our reaction would have been: "Father Janssen, he was a great guy. Fr. Deyo, Mgsr. Meinberg, they baptized our kids. Bp. Soens, he was a great principal at Regina." And we would have pointed our fingers at the victims. We would have accused them. "This must be your sin, or the sin of your parents, or the sin of someone else like lawyers or newpapers." We would not have been able to follow the advice of St. Paul to expose all these things to the light. We would have been blind.

So for all of us that might have responded in this way, this Lenten season can be a time to consider our failures and how we can make amends. But it is also a time to acknowledge the miracles that have happened. Some victims are moving toward healing. Some bishops are changing the habits of secrecy that protected the abusers. The laity is taking an active role in the Church. We now are beginning to understand how finger pointing on all sides only demonstrates our continuing blindness. These are real miracles showing a change of heart, making the works of God visible, and inviting each of us to open our hearts.

Like my mother, we can have faith that good will come from all this suffering and we all can hope that we will see and understand the good that comes. It’s hard work, painful to experience, but life can spring from death, and all our Good Fridays can be followed by Easter Sundays.