Several years ago on a mission trip to the border region of Mexico, I went with a group to visit a neighboring church group.  Their mission was set up next door to garbage dump.  You see, over the last twenty years the population of cities in the border region have skyrocketed. Cities that had 20,000 people a generation ago now have 150,000 or more.  This puts an incredible strain on city services and resources.  One of the problems they faced was homeless children living in the garbage dump scavenging for food and fighting dogs and wild hogs for leftovers.  This mission was started not only to feed them but to house them and educate the children.  When I was there, they housed around fifty children.  The director of the program told us of church group that came there years before.  It was their first trip there.  They had heard about the “mission next door to the garbage dump” and wanted to help out.  They were well-meaning.  They arrived on a Sunday night and would begin work Monday morning. On that morning, the pastor and the entire group was standing outside the mission housing, bags in hand.  The pastor asked the mission director, “What do you all believe baptism?”  “What do you mean?” said the director.  “I mean, do you all make sure that all these kids are baptized before they come in here?” said the pastor.  The director of the mission went stood right in front of the pastor and looked him straight in the eye, “No, we feed these children, we give them clothes, take care of them, educate them and when we know they are safe then maybe we get around to asking about baptism.”  The pastor and the church members were so shamed by this incident that they literally threw their bags into the housing and went to work.  That church has been the greatest donor to the mission since then.

          The disciples made a similar error with this man who is blind from birth.  They are walking alongside Jesus, we have no indication that they were going to stop there are blind beggars all over the place, that is until they ask Jesus a rather heartless theological question. Instead of wondering what they could do to help the blind man, they ask Jesus “who sinned, this man or his parents?”  Which in reality is a good question to ask.  You have Jesus there.  He is the Son of God.  If anybody knows the answer he does.  If you walk by blind beggars everyday, I imagine it would strike you to ask that question at some point, “who sinned this man or his parents?”  It would also put to an end a great debate that was happening at the time which probably prompted the question in the first place.  The theological question of the day. There were basically two camps, two ways of understanding how somebody could be blind from birth.  Either his parents sinned and like it says in the Ten Commandments God was visiting their iniquity to the third and fourth generation or as some Rabbis of the time thought children in their mothers wombs could sin in some way and be punished by blindness.  Jesus rejects both options.  “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God's works might be revealed in him.”  And it is then that spit on the ground, made mud and put it on the guy’s eyes.  After he washed in the pool of Siloam, which was actually quite a ways away, he could see.  The no-longer blind man’s sight then becomes a great testimony to Jesus’ power and even more so for his love and care.

          This love and care would have been lost if Jesus had simply answered the question.  He would have fallen into the same trap that the disciples had fallen into.  The trap that sees the world and people as the answer to questions instead of valuable individuals whom God loves.  While the disciples debated heresy and orthodoxy, whether this man sinned or his parents, Jesus did something about it.  Jesus cared for the blind man. What an interesting concept and yet it was lost on the disciple who were ready to ask there question, go upon their way, and ask their next question.

          The disciples were not alone in their error.  The Pharisees heard about Jesus healing the blind and instead of congratulating this no-longer blind man on his new found sight, the Pharisees interrogate him because Jesus performed this miracle on the Sabbath.  How could Jesus be from God if performed a miracle on the Sabbath?  As I went through the week and worked more and more on this sermon and this passage, I really wish I would have titled, “Lessons in Missing the Point.”  JESUS MADE THIS GUY SEE.  He could not see before.  Blind from birth.  Now he sees.  The Pharisees only care about Jesus healing on the Sabbath.  Now like the disciples, the problem is not that this is an unimportant issue.  Sabbath was holy.  Sabbath was day of rest, a day of celebration and remembrance of God’s mighty acts.  You did not do anything.  You did not cook.  You could not even start a fire to keep yourself warm.  And yet with all the goodness and holiness of the Sabbath somehow the Pharisees missed the goodness and the holiness of what Jesus had done.  By acting, by doing something on this day when you are to do nothing, Jesus accomplished a great good that’s whole point was to show forth God’s mighty acts, God’s love and care for us.

          The danger for us reading the passage and hearing this sermon is to distance ourselves from the disciples and the Pharisees. To believe that we are somehow different.   To believe that we would not get so caught up in the theological navel gazing.  That we would not worry so much about heresy and orthodoxy like the disciples or maintaining the law like the Pharisees, to help.  Sadly though we do.  And this is a very personal issue for me.  There is any number of things we can care about in this church world we live in today.  All of them are important.  They are all not equally important though and not usually as important as we make them.  Think of the all the issues our denomination and others have fought over in the last twenty or thirty years.  There is a lot of them.  Regardless of where you fall on any particular issue, you have to admit we have had the same conversations over and over again.  The same committees and task force meeting year after year.  General Assemblies deciding the same issues, usually in same way time after time, the only thing changing being the location.  Not to belabor this point, but at the last General Assembly, the ministers and elders of the denomination talked about the ordination of homosexuals, which is still banned, longer than any five other topics combined.  And I agree, this is an important issue facing our church.  But with all the time, energy, money, and passion that goes into all of these issues and that one in particular we could have done so much else.  We could have cared enough to find out how to save more small churches.  We could have created a blue ribbon committee whose sole purpose was to find new and exciting ways to reach out to the unchurched.  We could founded any number of new mission initiatives targeted at the poor and homeless in our neighborhoods.  And we did none of that because these issues, these questions were more important.  Does the disciple’s question sound more familiar now, “who sinned this man or his parents?”  Does the Pharisee’s question sound more familiar now, “how can this man be from God if he heals on the Sabbath?”  I want you to hear me say this:  These issues are important. And they are important to me and they should be for you, but at the end of the day the blind man that we pass while we ask those questions is more important.

          At Galagher-Iba Arena at Oklahoma State University, there is a janitor named Micah.  Micah is mentally challenged.  He is also a huge basketball fan.  A couple years ago, he started showing up to basketball practice, both men and women.  He became the unofficial mascot of the teams.  Both coaches embraced him, bought him jerseys and basketball shoes.  If you have ever been to a game there, you might have noticed him.  He is the forty or fifty-something guy sitting in the student section right behind the goal.  He is there not because he was given tickets, but because one day he complained about how hard it was to get tickets.  One of the coaches said, “well if you were a student…”, so for the past few years Micah has been enrolled in one class per semester so he could get his student basketball tickets and hangout with his friends.  The coaches did not need to do that.  The letter of the law of their contracts says they are suppose to coach student athletes and win games, but both coaches cared enough to take an interest in Micah. 

          Ultimately, that is what this whole passage is about taking interest.  There is an interesting reversal that takes place in this passage.  The man who was blind from birth is given sight by the end of the passage.  And pretty much everybody else is revealed to be the people who are truly blind.  The blind man is given new eyes to see the world for the first time.  Jesus shows through this man and through the miracle that we too need new eyes.  That we are the ones with our concerns and our laws that are truly blind.  Blind to injustice.  Blind to poverty.  Blind to where God is working in this world.  Blind to the unchurched and underchurched around us.  Jesus is the light of the world.  Let him light your world.  Let the scales fall away from your eyes and see the world as a place in need of your love and your care.  Then do not ask questions about it or endlessly debate what should be done.  Do something about it.