Have you noticed that when you get sick, you get sick all over? When some part of your body isn’t up to par, then the whole person, the whole self, feels bad. When we get sick, we get sick all over.
Now you may speak of having an upset stomach, but it’s really an upset you. The physician might identify a diseased kidney, but the way you feel, it’s a diseased you. And it’s not simply a cancerous organ, it’s a whole person, a spirit, mind, and body who is sick. We are whole persons, mind, spirit, and body. And when we are sick we feel sick all over.
But now the Bible tells us that not only may we be sick all over, but also that God’s desire is that we be well all over. When we are sick in body, we tend to get sick in spirit and in mind also; but the will of God is wholeness and healing for the whole self.
You will remember that wherever Jesus went he went teaching, forgiving, and healing. He went about bringing wholeness to the mind, to the heart, and to the body. And if, as the Bible teaches, Jesus Christ is a sign of the kingdom to come, then we know that it is God’s ultimate desire that we be well. If Jesus Christ is giving us what God wants us to have, then God’s gift of redemption includes the healing of our bodies as well as the salvation of our souls and the renewal of our minds.
Each week during the last four I have referred to a verse of the hymn, "Just As I Am", and have told and retold the story of its author, Charlotte Elliott. I have spoken of her discovery that her sickliness had come to be a crutch, an excuse. Her illness had come to be her only identity. She was not just plain Charlotte, she had become sick Charlotte, invalid Charlotte, unhealthy Charlotte. That’s all she was. When she finally realized that in some sense she was depending on her sickness, obsessing on her sickness, she experienced renewal and hope, turning to Christ, and wrote this insightful hymn.
Now today listen to her fourth verse:
"Just as I am, poor, wretched, blind; Sight, riches, healing of the mind, all I need in thee to find, 0 lamb of God, I come." Miss Elliott had discovered that in the will of God for her to be whole and in her willingness to receive it there was everything she needed to be well. All I need in thee to find.
One day Jesus came across a young man begging by the side of the road. As he came closer it became obvious why the young man was doing this. He was blind. In fact, he had been blind from birth. And there was no useful work that his society offered him, nothing that he could do. Thus not only was he blind, but his blindness created poverty; and if his blindness created poverty, so also his poverty created a broken and a battered spirit. He was a broken person. In the words of Miss Elliott’s hymn, "poor, wretched, blind".
But Jesus healed him, healed him so that God’s work might be revealed. When Jesus healed this man born blind, everyone around learned something important about wholeness. I think that we need to learn exactly the same lessons.
I
For example, Jesus’ own disciples encountered this healing and learned from it. The disciples learned that the old theology, which made you feel guilty for being sick, needed to be replaced with a new theology, which made you feel grateful for being the channel of God’s grace.
Let me repeat that. The disciples learned to discard their old theology, which made you feel guilty just for being sick. And in its place they learned a new theology, in which it was possible to feel grateful for being sick, because your very sickness made it possible for God’s grace to work.
"Master, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" The commonplace theology of their day was that if you were sick, it meant you were a sinner. If you hurt, it was because you or maybe your parents hurt somebody else or broke one of God’s laws. In their wooden, rigid, thinking, you get what you give. You get paid in the same currency that you give out. In the theology of their day, sickness was a result of sin.
But Jesus helped his disciples turn this around. Jesus helped his disciples look at sickness from the positive side, not the negative side. He taught them that they didn’t have to look for somebody to blame for the sickness. What they needed to do was to see illness as an opportunity for the mercy of God to work.
"Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me ... "
I’ve seen people who were sick, even terminally ill, who, though they were naturally in a struggle about their own deaths, achieved peace. Some of their peace came from knowing that out of their illness, medical science might gain knowledge that would help someone else. Some persons I have known were spiritually mature enough to see that God, the author of life, who has never suggested that we will not all die, but who has promised eternal life ... that God will use their body, their organs, their tissues so that someone else might have life. There is a peace in that.
There is a peace that comes when you see, as Jesus taught his disciples, that we are not sick because we are sinful ... but as sick persons we may become the means of the grace and mercy of God. We may become an opportunity for the works of God. Poor, wretched, blind ... maybe so; but sight, riches, healing of the mind will come, if not for me, then at least for somebody. All I need in thee to find.
II
But now notice also that the disciples were not the only ones who reacted to Jesus’ healing of the man born blind. The man’s neighbors and friends had a reaction too. The folks who had grown up with him and who had supported him and who had seen him there by the village well day after day … they encountered this healing and they also learned from it.
What the neighbors learned was that their old image of this man had to give way to a new picture. Their old image, their old way of relating to the man born blind now had to yield to a new way of looking at him.
You see, they had grown accustomed to reinforcing his illness. They had enabled his sickness. But now they had to learn now to treat him as a whole person. They had to learn to respect him.
"The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, ’Is this not this the man who used to sit and beg?’ Some were saying, ’It is he.’ Others were saying, ’No, but it is someone like him.’ ... They kept asking him, ’ ... how were your eyes opened?’"
I like that line! "The neighbors who had seen him as a beggar ... "
Isn’t that a revealing statement? They had not seen him as a person, but as a beggar. They had not understood this man as a person with potential, they had seen only his brokenness. They had seen nothing more than an outstretched hand, they had experienced nothing more than one of the castoffs of society. They had written him off, they had set him aside, they barely even looked at him.
Isn’t it kind of funny, in fact, this dialogue that they have? "Isn’t that the fellow who used to sit and beg?" "Well, it looks like him." "No, it’s the not the same guy, is it? "Well, I never really paid much attention!" They had made him faceless, without worth. He may have been the one born blind, but his neighbors had become blind, for there is none so blind as those who will not see! And so they wrote him off.
When Jesus healed this man, his neighbors had to take him seriously. They now had to pay attention to him. No longer was he merely the blind beggar at the gate; now he was real! The issue is that we in our emotional blindness enable illness, we perpetuate sickness, because we write off sick people. We take them out of the human equation. We virtually pretend that they do not exist.
If you want to see what I mean, go to any nursing home and you will find there not only the physically disabled but also the emotionally starved. You will find there many people who have simply been discarded, abandoned by their families, threatening to their friends. No one even comes by. Small wonder that they are sick! Small wonder that they cannot do much! Some of them cannot do much because they have been told they cannot do much. If no one believes in them, if no one is willing to look for the potential in them, if no one is willing to discover that the image of God is in every human being, no matter how deteriorated, then of course they will decline. Of course they will self-destruct.
But touch them, love them, encourage them, and they will flourish. Challenge them, touch them, connect with them, and they will thrive. By the way, it is no accident that when Jesus healed the man born blind, he touched him, making a little mud and putting it on the man’s eyes. He touched him and connected with him and even gave him some responsibility. "Go and wash in the pool." Nobody else had ever thought the man could do something for himself, but Jesus did! Jesus trusted him and fostered his healing.
Some of us must learn to challenge illness. Charlotte Elliott’s pastor brother just wouldn’t give up on her. He wouldn’t enable her illness, he wouldn’t just let her enjoy her sickness. He brought about the crisis in which she finally gave up on giving up and wanted to find something more.
"Just as I am, poor, wretched, blind ... " Not any more! "Sight, riches, healing of the mind; all I need in thee to find, O lamb of God, I come, I come."
III
Now there is a third group that encountered Jesus’ healing of the man born blind. There is someone else who learned from this experience.
Not only did Jesus’ disciples learn that their old theology of guilt had to give place to a theology of grace and opportunity ...
And not only did the man’s neighbors have to learn that the old way they had seen this man had been a part of his illness, and that they had to start seeing him as a person of worth and dignity and potential …
But now there are the Pharisees, now there are the religious leaders, the establishment types. And theirs is the most important lesson of all. What they needed to learn is something every one of us must learn.
The Pharisee establishment learned from Jesus’ healing of the man born blind that the old skepticism has to give place to a new and broader faith. They learned that the old rigid rationalism that says, "This can’t be happening" must give way to a new and wider faith that says, "With God all things are possible."
Oh, listen to the Pharisees’ complaints and see if you don’t recognize them. They are found in every university, in every hospital, in every science lab, of course; but also they are heard in our homes and even in our churches. They are the voices of the cautious, the careful, the skeptical, the voices of those of us who think we know how everything works and who are therefore not willing to be open to new possibilities:
"Some of the Pharisees said, ’This man is not from God, for he does not observe the Sabbath.’ But others said, ’How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?’" And a verse or two later, even more telling, it says, "[They] did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight."
Can you imagine that! Something happens right in front of your face, and you won’t recognize it! The work of God, right in front of you, and you won’t accept it, because the miracle-worker does not fit your presuppositions. He doesn’t have the right credentials. He doesn’t use an approved method. We just won’t believe it can happen.
Friends, if this was the issue in the first century, how much more is it the issue in the twentieth! We are the children of science; we trust the scientific method. And well we might; there is nothing wrong with that. I happen to be one of those who thinks that science is a matter of thinking God’s thoughts after Him.
But the problem is that we are not willing to push back the limits of knowledge. We are not prepared to admit that God is broader far than our understanding of Him. And we set up a rigidity of heart, a woodenness of the spirit, and block the work of God.
I believe that a lost ingredient in the process of healing is faith, specifically the faith of the church. I believe that the church needs to take very, very seriously the ministry of healing. It is not just individual faith, but the faith of the church which fosters healing. The New Testament says that if anyone is sick, then the elders of the church should come and pray and that the prayer of that collective faith will heal.
I would like to see our church become an intentional, intelligent part of the work of healing. I envision our first studying rather carefully the relationship of faith and wholeness Then I can envision our putting that faith to work in some very intentional ways. There are doctors and nurses and other medical professionals in our congregation who could help us, but the worshipping community can do something too.
Specifically, I can imagine our holding healing services, when the prayers of God’s faithful arc focused very carefully on the needs of His people. Don’t read this as quackery, don’t think of this as irresponsible superstition. Neither I nor anyone else here is pretending to have some supernatural gift of healing.
I am thinking of only of being faithful to the healing Christ and to His promise.
If this sounds radical, just remember the Pharisees, who didn’t have room for healing in their rigid thinking. They didn’t have a place for a God of wonder, love, and power. They had God in a neat little box, controlled and domesticated. We need to learn from Jesus’ healing of the man born blind a broader faith, a faith shorn of skepticism, a faith ready to take risks for others’ needs.
Are there among us and in our community, the "poor, wretched, blind?" How wonderful if they might come into this church and here discover that "sight, riches, healing of the mind, all [they] need in [Christ] to find."
Yes, I agree, there is much we need to know about all of this. There is still a great deal to learn, just as the disciples learned, just as the man’s neighbors learned, just as the good stable, solid, religious folk learned. There is still a great deal to learn.
But one thing we already know. "One thing," said the man born blind, "One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see."
