"Why?"

John 9:1-3

When we look about our cities and our nation, we see the sorrow; the sickness; the disease;
the tragedies; the killer tornadoes; and the terrible floods, we see people
who have lost everything.
And there is always a specific question, if not asked, can be seen in their weary eyes -- "Why?"

And the men in our Scripture passage are tormented by the question,
"How is it that the man born blind is stricken by the dreadful fate of the dark world?"
The question of suffering is troubling to them.
They cannot understand the reason for the suffering.

In all the misfortunes and catastrophes our deepest human need compels us to ask
who are the guilty ones.
We see terrible things that happen in our world, and we have come to a conclusion
that these are judgments.
And where there is judgment, there is guilt.
And even when we cannot find a guilty party in some act or some misfortune,
we invent one.

In the face of all the horrors and woes of history and of our own lives,
we raise the insistent question, "Why?"
We find ourselves standing with those people in the circle around Jesus.
Their questions are our questions.
Their torments are our torments.
We stand close behind them, and we're anxious to hear the answer from Jesus.
"Why?"

We will look at the answer that Jesus gave to the question concerning guilt,
and to the great question of our lives -- the question of "Why?"

First, we would see that His whole earthly life is an answer to that question.
When John the Baptist sent this message to Jesus from prison:
"Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another?"

Jesus answered, "Go and tell John again those things which ye do see and hear;
the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear,
the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them."

Jesus is saying that, as Saviour, He lays His gentle healing hand on all the wounds
of this world, both of body and soul.
The wounds of the soul consist in a bad conscience and in the inner conflict of our hearts
which are not right with God, and in which we have no peace.
To these wounds of the innermost man, Jesus says: "Thy sins are forgiven thee."

The other wounds of life are those infected by disease and destiny and suffering,
by sickness and poverty.
To these hurt of tormented humanity, Jesus says, "Rise, take up by bed and walk."

Jesus has a lot to say about the dreadful connection between guilt and suffering.
He reminds us that there are two sides to the alienation which man has deserved
by his failure to have fellowship with the Father.

We live in a world that has nothing to do with God, and wants nothing to do, with Him.
It is a world in which one can perish without anyone knowing about it.
This world, which has separated itself, and rejected the love and grace of the Father,
is a world in which there are silent graves and in which distrust and ambition raise
their monstrous heads, and war puts one nation against another.

There is a final, accusing guilt behind all these horrors.
And surely, all that we see around us call us to repent, to make our peace with God,
to to come and rest in the open arms of a Father to which we have separated ourselves.
The doors of the Father's house are always open.

But our Scripture passage raises an even deeper question.
The disciples asked Jesus who has sinned, the man or his parents.
They know all the things that we have just said.
They have been brought up in the Biblical tradition.
They realize that there is a close connection between guilt and suffering.

But now a new question arises.
In this encounter with a sick and tormented man, this new question is even more urgent
and tormenting than the general question concerning guilt and suffering.
I'm referring to the question, "Why has judgment fallen on this man?"
Why must he in particular suffer so much.
Why did the tower of Siloam fall on the innocent 18 people who were buried under it?

We can also put the same question in the first person of ourselves.
Why must I go through my present suffering, and have empty hopes?
Why has this happened to me?
Why do I not have any relief?
Why has my son, my daughter, my wife, my husband ... been taken from me?

So, who has sinned -- this man or his parents?
We cannot avoid this question.

All of us deal with this troublesome question.
We who are in contempt or despair, or in sorrow or in other tragedies,
are constantly asking, "Why?"
This little word, "why," is only three letters, yet it can cause mortal injury to our souls.

The attitude of those who question Jesus is not that of inquisitive reporters
who are asking him to say a few words about an interesting problem of life.
They are asking a question that the whole human race would ask, "Why this man?" "Why me?"

Is His own soul wounded by this question?
Does He have nothing to say because He has a vision of the cross on which He Himself
will raise the question, "Why?"
"Why hast thou forsaken me, God?"

No, it is not that He has nothing to say.
He is telling the people that they are not asking the right question.
Neither this man nor his parents sinned.
God has a purpose for him.
This man is blind in order that the works of God should be manifested in him.
And then, Jesus healed him, and called down the glory of God into his darkness.

Many would go on to ask why Jesus rejects the question of "Why."
And how we ought to ask if this question is wrong.
For we cannot simply stop asking and seeking.
The darker it is around us, and the deeper the depths to which we are passing,
the less can we see.

So long as I ask why something happens to me, my thoughts are centered on myself.
And those whose ears are sensitive to the gospel also detect something of a complaint
-- I do not deserve this.

We constantly act as though we know how God ought to act.
But often, after years, or decades, we have to confess with shame how foolish and arrogant
we were in complaining about the way in which He did act.
How often have the dark hours in which we clinched our fists against God
proved to be simply stops on the wise paths of His directions,
and which we would not have missed for anything.

So, by rejecting the question, Jesus helps to liberate us from constant complaint against God
and from the injury which we do to ourselves.
Is this all that Jesus has to say on this pressing problem?
He is teaching us to ask in a new way.

He answers the questioners in our story as follows.
This poor man is blind "in order that" the works of God may be revealed in him.
So, he is blind in order that the light of God's saving grace and wonderful purpose
may shine more brightly about him.
It is true that the miracle of healing in this story sheds a bright light on the whole question
of suffering.

This is a tremendous liberation which Jesus brings to us in our need an in our bitter thoughts.
For Jesus teaches us that we should not ask, "Why?"
Rather that we should ask, "For what purpose?"

When Jesus teaches us how to ask, we understand the change.
We are no longer choked with terror.
We can breathe again.
We can cry and not be weary.
We can live with a profound peace in our hearts.

Why is this such a tremendous liberation?
When Jesus teaches us to ask "for what purpose," we learn to look away from ourselves,
and look to God and to His purpose and plans for our lives.
We learn not to be immersed in our own thoughts and fears.
We are given a new, positive, productive direction in our thinking.

Again and again, we see that sickness of spirit and incurable sorrows
display what the psychologist calls an "egocentric structure."
This means that in the darkest hours of this kind of melancholy our thoughts constantly
revolve around ourselves.
"Why has this happened to me?"
"What is to going to happen to me?"
"I feel helpless ,and see no way of escape."
And the more I become immersed in myself, the more wretched, I become.

This wretchedness can lead to real sickness.
All egocentric, self-centered people are basically unhappy, for they want to be the ruler
of their own lives but with fatal certainty the moment is bound to come
when they no longer know how.

Then, Jesus comes with His out-stretched hand.
He lifts up our heads, and shows us how fortunate it is that we are not the ruler of our lives,
and that God is in control.
He teaches us that God directs all things, and that He has a plan for us.

So, we look away from ourselves, and what an infinite blessing it is that we are no longer
in the center of the picture with that terrible sense of our own importance.
We see the clouds, the air, the winds around us, and realize that the God who directs their path
will not forget us, and that He has a goal for our life.

This is the productive aspect of this new matter of questioning.
We learn to look away from ourselves, and to look to the plans and the future
which God has for our lives.

There is a another liberation.
As humans, we are dominated by the moment.
If the sun shines, we rejoice to high heaven.
But when the storms come upon us, everything seems to be rotten.
Our heart is defiant or despairing, but with either way, it is vacillating.

However, Jesus frees us from the moment by His question, "For what purpose."
He causes us to look ahead to the future not back to the past.
Got has something for us, and not only for us, but for the whole world.

Again and again, the New Testament teaches us step by step to look to the end of all things.
So, when confusing paths develop in our lives, and on which there are so many ruined hopes
and the graves of our loved ones -- we will reach our goal, and God's great joy and peace
will be ours ultimately and finally.

The Revelation of John shows us how things will look at the of ultimate end.
Heaven will ring with the songs of praise of those who have overcome.
They have all gone through the same tribulation as we have.
They have suffered; they had been in distress in which they saw no hope,
and they couldn't see the Father's face; and they have called out of the depths,
"Father, where art thou?"

But through it all, they have sensed that this "wrong" way through tears and woes
could only end and praising God.

Jesus causes us to see and hear this final praise when He teaches us to ask,
"For what purpose?"
This question gives me peace.
For we cannot be nervous, even in a dangerous situation, if we know that it is going to end well,
and that is all leading to a goal which is marked out for me, and which God intends
the very best for me.

Christians, we have an assured future to which we will be led by the hand of our Lord.
Christians, we can lift up our heads because we know that the end is drawing near,
however it may not seem that it is doing so -- but it is!

Then, there is that liberation which Jesus gives us through this question
which is perhaps the greatest.

For when He asks, "For what purpose?," He puts us to work,
and gives us productive and meaningful tasks.
The best healing ointment for despair and oppression is that of work,
and of meaningful tasks to perform.
To work through to the question of "For what purpose?" means work and discipline.
To turn aside from a native question of "Why", means labor and effort.

God is always positive.
All that He does has a positive and helpful meaning.
We must simply be ready to go with Him on His way.

Those who live in perpetual opposition will never see the purposes of God for them
for they are always going against them.
It is from such opposition that the Lord will free us when He teaches us
how to ask the right question.
So in this way, He gives our inward man a very clear working task.
It means work, a holy, inner discipline not to look back to what has been taken from us,
and to look forward to the tasks which He is giving us.

To all those who have been wounded by suffering and sadness and sorrow,
I solemnly say to them on the promises of Jesus, and on the basis of our Scripture passage,
that with all their sorrow, they have been given a task.

Perhaps, we are given the task to live for others more than we ever did when life was secure.
I ask you, in the spirit of our Scripture passage, are you ready to go out, and to seek
the person who needs you, and find the task which God is giving to you.
So, put your hand to the plough, and do not look back.

It is so remarkable that Jesus calls the poor, that is, those who have lost everything,
the lonely, the hungry, the thirsty, "blessed."
Why does He do this.
It is because He has something for them.

It may well be that the ground has to give way under all of us in order that we may ask
where is the solid ground on which we can build our lives.
The very hour when all human security is shattered, and when we're on the streets
without a job or a payday.
The times when people turn away from us.
The times when our hopes crash all about us.
The times when all is cold because our loved ones are dead.
The times when we are no longer able to see our way -- these times can be
the most blessed in our lives.

For then, God is ready to be all things to us -- home and friend, mother and father,
food for the coming day, the place where we can lay down our heads,
the heart in which we can find rest, and when we can be like the fowls of the air
and the lilies of the field and say:
"I have nothing, and now O Lord thy help must be all things for me."

Almost all of our fathers of the faith have had to go through such testing times of fire.
They, like their Master, had to go through persecutions and afflictions.
They were often poorer than the fox with his hole and the birds of the air with their nests.
They were often hungrier than the lowest beast.

But when God did give them holes and nests and food, then they possessed these things
as new men; they enjoyed them in a different way.
They had learned to praise God even in the dark hours, and even when they did not know
that only a thin partition separated them from the greatest surprises of God.
So, that instead of the coming day with its anxiety, eternity was given to them.

It is all these great wonders which God has prepared, and for what we should be expecting.
We should look for surprises on the next stretch of the road.
We should look for the tasks which He will set before us.
We should look for the many kindnesses which He will have waiting for us
from the hand shake of a stranger to the laughter of a child.

It is to these things that we should look, for these are the things God has in store for us,
and it is for this reason that Jesus teaches us to ask, "For what purpose?"

Finally, we will see that everything changes when our hand is in the hand of our Lord,
then we are ready to march forward to the great ultimate purpose with our God.
This teaches us that we should look to the great plans and purposes of God.

All around us are purposes and promises.
The air is full of the divine question whether we are ready to come to Him,
and to accept the tasks that he gives us.
This is what Jesus means when He said that the darkness in the poor life of the man born blind,
the darkness in your life and mine, is only to show the purpose that the glory of God
should be manifested.

This glory will come, and it will be manifested in the most surprising ways.
It will come and be manifested in such a way that will astonish us, for God has a future for us,
and He has not yet completed His plans.
Therefore, "Lift up your heads, for your redemption draweth nigh."

Then Jesus Comes!
"One sat alone beside the highway begging
His eyes were blind the light he could not see.
He clutched his rags, and shivered in the shadows.
Then Jesus came and bade His darkness flee.

When Jesus comes the tempters power is broken.
When Jesus comes the tears are washed away.
He takes the gloom and fills the life with glory
For all is changed when Jesus comes to stay.

And so today, we find the Savior able
We can not conquer passion, lust, or sin.
Our broken hearts have left us sad and lonely,
But Jesus comes to dwell Himself within."
--- Lyrics by Oswald J. Smith


Sermon adapted from many sources by Dr. Harold L. White