John 9:1-43 Susan J. Barnes
St. Matthew's, Austin 10 March 2002

Holy One. Thank you for loving us, for touching us, for healing us. Help us to share that love, that touch, that healing with all of your children. Amen.

For the last three Sundays, the Gospel readings from John have given us stories about insiders who don't get it--who don't understand who Jesus is and what he has come to do--versus outsiders who joyfully receive the gospel and proclaim it. The insiders are devout Jews: some are Pharisees--like Nicodemus, or the grumblers in today's gospel--sometimes it's the disciples themselves. These folks won't accept the truth that they see before their eyes. They are so wedded to the old covenant, the letter of the law, that they cannot take in the good news of God's grace, love, and forgiveness for all of humanity. They're blinded by their material, legalistic, literal beliefs.

The gospel stories contrast that skepticism with the faith of the outsiders: like the woman at the well from last week's gospel and the man blind from birth today. As a woman and as a Samaritan, the woman at the well was a non person to ordinary Jews. But not to Jesus. He engaged her as a peer in a sophisticated theological conversation. She drank in his message of living water and worship in the Spirit. She recognized Jesus as the Messiah. She became the first evangelist--leaving her precious water jar and going back to her village to bring other Samaritans to Jesus. Ironically--as Jesus points out--she reaped the harvest that the disciples had ignored when they went for food in the same village.

In this week's gospel, the poor old disciples aren't doing any better: they stay in the dark while the blind man comes to see. "Rabbi," they ask, Jesus, "who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" The disciples are stuck in the prejudices of their upbringing. Legalistic Jews saw physical infirmity or defect as a punishment from God for wrong-doing. By that standard, being born blind branded the child and/or the parents as sinners and made them social outcasts.

Jesus rejects that logic--the letter of the law--to reveal God's spirit and to act on God's will.

This parable is a great model for those of us who want to try to follow Jesus in our daily lives. Jesus gives us the example, in three simple steps. First: Jesus is present to God's will--to be revealed in the event. Second, Jesus gives himself completely to do God's work. Third, he moves on.

First, Jesus is present to God's will to be revealed in the blind man's life. Jesus refuses to judge or condemn the victim. He doesn't second-guess God. He doesn't get bogged down in useless questions. Jesus knows that it is God's will to heal and to reconcile all people to one another. He sees and he seizes the chance to reveal God's light and God's grace, transforming the life of an unfortunate person. Before him he sees--not someone to be judged--but a child of God, a sheep waiting to be brought back into the fold.

Second, Jesus sets his hand to do God's work. I love this scene. It seems so out of step with the poetry and mysticism of John's gospel. Here, Jesus gets down. He spits and makes mud--like the Creator in Genesis he makes a miracle from the earth. Jesus touches the man, and through his touch, God heals. Jesus can heal with a word, but somehow it's more poignant to me when he touches someone. Probably because I'm such a hugger, myself. But that kind of detail speaks of Jesus' human engagement with the person in front of him. Begin present again, in the event itself. He gives of himself--heart, soul, and hands.

Finally, having done the work God gave him to do Jesus moves on. This is really important. Jesus doesn't wait around to see how it came out. He doesn't want to be thanked. He doesn't get involved arguing with the Pharisees. He trusts in God to make of it what God wills, and he goes on to the next situation, to discover the next task that God has set out for him.

Several of us were privileged to try to follow Jesus' example on mission trips just now to Juarez and to Honduras. And-- thanks to all of your support and your prayers--we worked well and returned safely. The folks who went to Juarez built a lovely house--Holly Decherd showed me a photograph on Thursday: what a gift to the family who will live there and who helped with the construction! These missionaries were present to God's will; they lent their hands to God's work; then they moved on, they came back to Austin, leaving a lovingly-built home behind.

The results of the medical mission to Honduras on which I went are harder to see. There are statistics: two medical teams went to 9 villages. We saw a total of about 2500 patients, dispensing more than 8,000 prescriptions. But what's behind those numbers? Based on my previous trip to Honduras, just after the disastrous hurricane Mitch, I thought we might see a lot of seriously ill people. But the practitioners said that for the most part they did routine checkups. The medicine was pretty routine, too--at least to people like us who can drop into a corner drugstore for anti-biotics and ibuprofen--not so for impoverished people who live several hours walk away from any kind of town. Honduras is the second poorest country in the Western hemisphere. Her citizens are the "last, the least, and the lost,| whom Christians are called to serve.

I confess that on the first days of the trip my tiny, practical mind was trying to measure the value of the mission. More statistics: forty professional people gave eight days of their lives and spent about $1000 apiece to go to deliver routine medical services and dispense $200,000 worth of donated medications to people in a far away land. I wondered: what if we just sent the cash (to pay for local salaries) and the medicine? Would that have been more cost-effective?

That is missing the point altogether. Fortunately, God is loving and forgiving--even of clergy. Studying this gospel, I recognized I was as dumb as the disciples asking Jesus who had sinned for the man to have been born blind! I was focused on the material, not the spiritual. I was asking the wrong questions. As the week's mission progressed, I saw and recalled that God's work is about intangibles. The true worth of the trip has no earthly measure. In God's economy, the currency is the transformation of lives. Every day we saw that happen in the faces of the people we served. (Ask Margaret Carpenter to share her photos!) And we saw it in each other. I marveled at the teams, returning from long days working in improvised settings, in heat and under pressure. Every evening the bus came back filled with happy people, radiant and laughing, sharing stories and jokes. The Spirit nourished us as it nourished Jesus, with the food of doing God's will and God's work. We all worshipped together every morning and every night. We prayed with the patients and we prayed with each other. We were blessed. The Spirit animated our spirits, gave us the strength and joy that we needed for our work. And it gave us the hunger to do more.

Like all of you who do God's work as volunteers here--at El Buen, at Caritas, at Casa Marinella, at SafePlace, in schools, hospitals, shelters and soup kitchens--the people who went on mission to Juarez and Honduras went because they felt called to go. They trusted in God's will. They did not ask whether this was the most effective use of their time and their treasure. They did not stay around to see how it came out, or to be honored or thanked. They just gave freely. Most in Honduras were going back for the fourth or fifth year, because this service gives them something unique, something that they cannot really express and surely cannot measure. They come to give of themselves--heart, soul, voice and hands. And in giving, they are filled. One woman who interprets for the team is a housekeeper in a hospital here. She spends a week of her vacation as well as precious funds to come and interpret. She builds her whole year around this one week of work.

Through these trips countless lives are changed. First there are the lives of those who travel and of those they minister to. But it doesn't stop there. The Spirit moves and never stops. Last year Dr. Brad Fitzgerald, a resident at Scott and White in Temple, went for the first time to Honduras. He came back a changed man. When he and his wife Connie moved to Austin and joined St. Matthew's last summer practically the first thing he said was that he wanted to go back and to take some of us with him. That's how a half-dozen of us got to go. Brad's passion changed our lives, as well as the lives of his family, friends and colleagues.

Well, the Juarez group came back talking about next year's trip. And so did the Honduras group. But we don't want to go without you. We'll design trips so we can take you along--as many as we can. Stay tuned. Pray about it. Begin to save for it. Plan for it. It will cost you something--time, money, work. But any one of us will tell you, God repays those investments right away--with heavenly interest compounded.