God Is With Us

A Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent (Year A)
March 19, 2023

Text: John 9:1-41

Now, O Lord, take my lips, and speak through them. Take our minds, and think through them. Take our hearts, and set them on fire. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Several years ago, I came across a story about a young woman from North Carolina named Kate Bowler. Some of you may be familiar with Kate and her story. She’s written several books over the past few years, and she’s been interviewed many times on national television.

But if you don’t know who she is, let me share with you a little about her.

The first thing you should know about Kate is that, while she was in her twenties and thirties, she spent over a decade researching the “prosperity gospel.”

If you’re unfamiliar with this term, the “prosperity gospel” refers to a popular belief among many Christians that, if you have enough faith in God and do all the things you’re supposed to do and live your life a particular way, God will reward you and shower you with many blessings, including abundant wealth and a long and healthy life.

The “prosperity gospel” also teaches that, if something bad happens to you—like a terrible illness or a natural disaster—there must be a reason for it. Maybe you didn’t have enough faith in God. Or, maybe you didn’t pray enough or use the right words. Or, maybe you did something to make God angry.

Kate spent years traveling and meeting with teachers of the “prosperity gospel,” mostly televangelists and megachurch pastors. Her years of research eventually led her to write a book about the history of the “prosperity gospel” in America.

And then, her life took a dramatic turn.

At the age of thirty-give, she was diagnosed with stage-four colon cancer, and she was told by her doctor that she only had a fourteen percent chance of survival.

All of a sudden, her life was turned upside down, and she had no idea whether or not she would live longer than a couple more years.

She had the life she had always wanted—a newborn son, a loving husband, and her dream job as a professor at Duke Divinity School. She felt like all her hard work had finally paid off, and then everything suddenly came crashing down around her.

And all she was left with was the question, “Why me?”

“I’ve done everything right up to this point. What did I do to deserve this?”

Even though she had spent years researching the “prosperity gospel” and was familiar with its teaching, she couldn’t escape the idea that she might’ve done something to deserve her illness.

What Kate eventually came to realize is that—contrary to what a lot of people think—not everything happens for a reason.

She wasn’t being punished by God for something she did or didn’t do. She wasn’t given this disease because of her lack of faith, and God wasn’t testing her or using her disease as part of some grand, master plan.

She actually wrote a book about it that I highly recommend called, Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved.

I wanted to share with you Kate’s story this morning because it’s important for us to remember that sometimes, bad things happen for no good reason at all.

Bad things happen all the time. They happen to the most faithful among us and the most unfaithful. It doesn’t mean that God loves us any less or that God is angry with us.

Sometimes, bad things just happen, and we have no logical way of explaining why.

But, that doesn’t stop us from trying, does it?

And when we do, we end up believing in things like the “prosperity gospel” because they offer us a simple, clear-cut way of providing answers to life’s most difficult questions.

And who doesn’t want that? Wouldn’t life be so much simpler if it was based on a formula? In other words, if you do x, then you’ll never have anything to worry about, but if you don’t do x, then you should be prepared for the consequences.

But, that’s not how life works, and it’s certainly not how God works, either.

Our lives are filled with moments of joy and moments of suffering, and most of the time, we have no way of knowing which way it’ll go from day to day.

One day, life could be great, and the next, it could feel like everything is crumbling down. Life isn’t fair, at least not according to our standards of fairness.

All we can really do is hold onto to the hope that God is with us—even in those moments when we experience great suffering and loss—and that, in all things, God is working to restore us to healing and wholeness.

God is our Great Physician. We may not always know what healing will look like, but we can trust that God is always there and that, eventually, healing will come, one way or another.

I think our Gospel lesson for this morning is a really good example of that.

At the beginning of our lesson, we encounter Jesus walking along, when he suddenly discovers a man who had been blind since birth. We don’t really know anything else about the man. We don’t know his name, and we don’t know where he’s from. All we know is that he’s been blind since birth.

And, as soon as they see the man, Jesus’ disciples ask him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

If we stop and consider it for a moment, it’s interesting that the first question out of the disciples’ mouths is, “Who sinned?” In other words, “Who’s responsible for this?” “ Who made God angry enough to cause this man to be born blind?” “Was it him or his parents?”

To us, it may seem like a strange question.

But, in the time of Jesus, it wouldn’t have been strange at all. In fact, it would’ve been perfectly reasonable—based on certain scriptures from books like Numbers and Deuteronomy—to assume that either the man or his parents had done something to provoke God’s wrath and cause his blindness.

In some ways, it’s a lot like our modern-day “prosperity gospel.”

In response to their question, Jesus says to his disciples, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”

Jesus doesn’t provide his disciples with an easy answer. He offers them no reasonable explanation for the man’s blindness.

What he does say is that God’s love and God’s mercy will be revealed through him.

Now, it’s important that we take a moment to clarify something. Jesus isn’t saying that the man was born blind in order to show God’s power, as if God caused the man to be born blind for a specific purpose.

No, what he’s saying here is that, when we suffer, God is with us and that, out of our suffering and pain, God has the power to bring healing and wholeness to our lives.

That’s certainly what happens to the man in our story.

Jesus spits on the ground and makes mud.

He covers the man’s eyes with the mud and tells him to go wash his eyes in the pool of Siloam.

And for the first time in his life, he’s finally able to see.

God showed up and brought healing and wholeness to the man who was born blind.

And God continues to show up in the messy parts our lives—and in the lives of others—creating paths toward healing and wholeness that are sometimes hard to explain or understand.

Sometimes, God’s healing comes in ways that we don’t expect.

Sometimes, it comes in ways that we didn’t ask for.

And sometimes—most of the time—it takes a lot longer than we would like.

But, healing will come—in one form or another—in this life or in the life of the world to come.

It’s not because we deserve it.

It’s not because God rewards us for our faithfulness or whether or not we pray the right words.

It’s because God loves us, and we are his.

Amen.