Lectionary Scripture - John 9:1-11 (NRSV)
As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" Jesus answered, "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 while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world." When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man's eyes, saying to him, "Go, wash in the pool of Siloam" (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see. The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, "Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?" Some were saying, "It is he." Others were saying, "No, but it is someone like him." He kept saying, "I am the man." But they kept asking him, "Then how were your eyes opened?" He answered, "The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, "Go to Siloam and wash.' Then I went and washed and received my sight."
Receive Your Sight!
(Dear readers, my post this week draws heavily from Homiletics Online resource, “The Placebo Effect” dated March 14, 1999. Homiletics Online is a resource available for preachers that frees them from plagiarism concerns and generously allows ministers to massage a particular resource into the message they need to preach. As said on the Homiletics website, they’ve done the grocery shopping, the preacher does the cooking. Such is the case for me for this particular post. That said, Homiletics comments that if someone feels the need to cite a particular person in terms of the resource, the person to cite is Homiletics Online Senior Writer, Bob Kaylor. Bob also serves as Senior Minister for the Park City United Methodist Church in Park City, Utah. Thank you Bob for your generosity – and the material)
I don’t know about you, but I’ve certainly wondered whether Jesus actually needed the mud to heal the blind man. Whether he did or not, one thing is for certain, the poultice of dirt and saliva focused the man's faith and gave him a distinct memory from which to begin a new faith journey. For us today, we might stop and consider what faith-building mud-balls need to happen for us and our individual faith journeys.
One thing we might consider about the poultice Jesus made is something called the placebo effect. It’s quite real and not magical at all, but simply the mysterious ability of our bodies to sometimes heal what ails us, if only we believe. In medical research, it refers to a pharmacologically inactive substance - like a sugar pill - or a phony medical procedure that is administered as a control in testing the effectiveness of a drug or course of action.
Scientists and researchers at the forefront of study into the placebo effect are trying to learn why 30 to 40 percent of the people who suffer from conditions ranging from asthma to high blood pressure to depression actually benefit from taking a placebo. Researchers say, “Make no mistake, the healing affects of placebos are real and not merely delusions or wishful thinking." They tell us that it is easy to document and prove the effectiveness of placebos. So hear it again, 30 to 40 percent of people suffering from a range of illnesses benefit from taking a placebo.
So here in the ninth chapter of John, a man born blind receives sight. Jesus puts mud on his eyes and tells him to go wash in the pool of Siloam. When the man comes back he is able to see. At first the man says that he does not know who Jesus is but later he says that Jesus is a prophet. Finally, he stands before Jesus and says, "Lord, I believe." Although he never figures out just how Jesus has healed him, he knows that if Jesus were not from God, he could not have done anything to heal him. Call it the God Effect – or the mysterious ability of people to be healed when they allow God into their lives. But, at the same time, it is a placebo effect, because mud and spit play an important part in the healing that took place.
What a strange and wonderful story this is. Jesus refuses to put the label of "sinner" on either the blind man or his parents, but says that "he was born blind so that God's works might be revealed in him". With such an introduction, one might think that Jesus would go on to treat the man with courtesy and respect, but he does exactly the opposite: He treats him like dirt. Jesus spits on the ground and makes mud with his saliva; then he spreads the mud on the man's eyes.
He uses wet, sticky, soft, dirty earth. He uses mud - a symbol of all that is degrading, such as when a person's name is dragged "through the mud." Jesus puts this man in an awkward position. In effect, Jesus may have been the first person to utter the humorous drinking toast, "Here's mud in your eye"; hardly the sentiments you expect to hear from a teacher who is healing by the power of God.
And yet, the man born blind keeps himself open to this experience. He believes enough to follow the command of Jesus to "Go, wash in the pool of Siloam," and to stumble through the streets of Jerusalem wearing a ridiculous mask of mud. We don't know exactly how far the man had to walk after receiving his mudpack in the eyes. Hopefully it wasn’t far and hopefully friends or family assisted him, but the distance could have also been quite a hike. John tells us that Jesus encounters the man after leaving the temple, but does not reveal the precise location of their meeting. From what we do know about the location of the Temple and the pool of Siloam, if Jesus put mud in the man's eyes right outside the temple compound, then the man walked at least 500 yards to the pool of Siloam - the length of five football fields! Quite a distance for a blind man to cover, groping and stumbling and trying to ignore the reactions of the crowd which could have been anything from:
“What happened to you?”
“Are you all right?”
"Hey, filth-face!"
"Nice look! Be glad you're blind, boy."
So, it's not a pleasant walk. At the least, the blind man is feeling self-conscious. At worst, he feels embarrassed and humiliated. In any case, the blind man is willing to suspend disbelief as he has been touched by God’s agent who in this case is Jesus. From this encounter, he’s hopeful that an end to his lifelong darkness is about to happen. He probably asks himself what has he got to lose for he will be mocked by townspeople whether he had mud on his face or not. Remember that such a disability at that time was considered a mark of God’s punishment.
When news of this event reaches the Pharisees, they and their religious authority are immediately threatened. So they summon the blind man to question him and attack his story. But the blind man sticks his story and proceeds to testify that it was Jesus who gave him his vision. Standing before the Pharisees, he says, "He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see. He is a prophet."
The Pharisees counter that these things could not be for Jesus is a sinner. The man says, "I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see." And mockingly the man then asks the Pharisees, "Do you also want to become his disciples?" He might as well say to these religious leaders: "You need some mud for your own eyes!"
After this inquisition ends, the blind man is later face to face with Jesus. Jesus sought him out after the disgraceful experience to which the Pharisees subjected him. Not having seen the man who healed him, Jesus reveals that he is the one who did performed the healing. Out of gratitude, the former blind man becomes a follower of Jesus.
All of this probably sounds crazy to the skeptical world we are a part of today. Whatever our reaction may be, we shouldn’t scoff at the power of the placebo. Don't assume that dirt and spit had nothing to do with the healing of the blind man. At the very least, it helped to focus his faith.
What helps to focus our faith? Sometimes it's the unpleasant experiences that life throws at us. A number of years ago at a party, a church friend developed hiccups he couldn’t get rid of no matter how hard he tried. Eventually he asked me to lay my hands on his head and pray for him. From the moment I did so the hiccups disappeared. Several months later a similar episode occurred when with our spouses we were lodging at the Oregon Coast. As before, when I laid hands on his head, the spasms stopped immediately. I was unaware of this while praying, what I did note during that time was that my friend broke down in tears. When I finished praying and asked what was wrong, he told me he couldn’t believe that like before the spasms immediately ended.
What do such things mean? Why is it that in some circumstances people have these kinds of experiences and in others they don’t? I won’t even pretend to have answer to that question. What I choose to affirm however is that when we take even a small step of acknowledgement and belief in God, despite however uncertain the path ahead may be, we will discover that God is alive, active, and working.
I think it something like the experience a close friend shared with me nearly two years ago during a particularly dark night of the soul while trying to recover in the hospital from a hip replacement surgery that went bad. I heard that Jim’s spirits were very low due to complications caused by his rheumatoid arthritis. As we live thousands of miles apart, all I could do was to call Jim at the medical center where he was hospitalized. On the phone, he shared how deeply despondent, alone, and spiritually abandoned he felt. The complications from the surgeries and infections left him in a thick darkness suffocating life from his spirit and soul. As a nurse practitioner, he knew that chances of returning to his previous quality of life were slipping away from him -- to be extinguished forever. But in that dark night of the soul, the Spirit breathed into Jim a light and warmth he described as like a beautiful summer day sitting on his front porch. He then said to me, “Brad, I’m going to be a little emotional as I tell you this but God walked by me every single doctor, nurse, medical assistant, janitor, and visitor who had been caring for me directly and indirectly and he said, “All these have I sent to care for you.” Two years later, Jim is largely recovered. His mobility is considerably more limited than it was but he thanks God for the understanding and affirmation placed into his being that night in the hospital.
There's nothing magical about all this my friends, but one thing is for certain, it is certainly mysterious and miraculous. In simple terms, what happened was Jim’s own “mud-ball” experience. The application of a "mud ball" can lead to the healing of our bodies, minds and spirits - it only requires that we but open ourselves to the possibility of what can happen when God touches our lives, particularly through someone else.
The question facing you and me is what do we need packed onto our eyes in order to really open them up in these challenging times so we too can be God’s agents for a healed, just, and reconciled world. What are the dirt-and-spit placebos that Christ wants to use to motivate us out of our complacencies, mediocrities, comfort zones, and spiritual disabilities so God’s Peaceable Kingdom can be a reality here and now upon the earth? What kind of pain and humiliation must we suffer in order to see again and be vibrant and alive for the cause of the Kingdom?
Oddly enough, one of the placebos that can help us to be healed is pain itself. Yes, pain. Pain as unwanted as a mud-ball in the eye, pain that may be physical, emotional, or spiritual. We may want to deny or avoid such pain for it threatens to disrupt our happiness and destroy our well-being, but we should not, because pain is what God uses to arouse a blind and deaf world.
In his book, The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis wrote, "I am progressing along the path of life, enjoying friends and work and holidays, when suddenly a stab of abdominal pain threatens serious disease, or a headline in the newspapers threatens us all with destruction and sends this whole pack of cards tumbling down. At first I am overwhelmed, and all my little happinesses look like broken toys. Then, slowly and reluctantly, bit by bit, I try to bring myself into the frame of mind that I should be in at all times. I remind myself that all these toys were never intended to possess my heart, that my true good is in another world, and my only real treasure is Christ. And perhaps, by God's grace, I succeed, and for a day or two become a creature consciously dependent on God and drawing strength from the right sources."
So pain can be a placebo: a surprising bit of mud in the eye that reminds us that our true good lies in another condition, a condition called the Peaceable Kingdom which in my faith tradition we affirm as no closer nor further away than our spiritual condition justifies. The blessings of struggles in this life can help to take our eyes off worldly pleasures and give us a vision of the kingdom for which we should always be striving as long as there is breath in us. Financial problems can focus us on the priceless treasure of investing in faithful personal stewardship. Even illness can help us to see that health is far more than freedom from disease but rather a pathway into deeper relationship with God. And pain can be a placebo reconciling us to the work and challenges of the Zionic condition.
To these things -- and engagements -- let our lives be committed.
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