"Love Without Limit" John 9
Back in 1965, I was
graduating from high school and Bob Dylan had just written a song that came
back to me this week. The song was "Love Minus Zero, No Limits." It
begins, "My love she speaks like silence, without ideals or violence…" And there's a verse that brings to mind the
ancient religious rituals of chalice and blade. It goes like this:
The cloak and dagger dangles, Madams light the candles.
In ceremonies of the horsemen, Even the pawn must hold a
grudge.
Statues made of match sticks, Crumble into one another,
My love winks, she does not bother, She knows too much to argue
or to judge.
(© 1965 1993)
Some
years ago, I was inspired by a book from L. William Countryman entitled Good
News of Jesus: Reintroducing the Gospel which explains the Gospel as the
good news that "You are forgiven. Nothing more. Nothing less." I came
to formulate my understanding of the Word of God's grace and love this way:
NOTHING YOU EVER DID WOULD MAKE GOD LOVE YOU
LESS
NOTHING YOU COULD EVER DO WOULD MAKE GOD LOVE
YOU MORE.
I guess that's my insight
into the mystery of God, because I don't find those words anyplace on the
internet with a Google search. I hope that you will hold onto the insight when
I'm gone. It's the promise from Jesus that God loves us, without exception,
without limits.
When Jesus approaches the
man born blind, he faces many of the same issues that we talked about last
week, that might keep him from reaching out to this man.
First, as the disciples
make clear, people in Jesus' time assumed that a person born blind was born
blind because of someone's sin. As John's gospel so often does, it
points out the absurdity of taking things literally. The disciples ask Jesus,
Rabbi, who sinned, that this man was born blind? Was it some sin he committed
in the womb? Or was it his parents? Jesus answers, "Neither." Jesus
points to this difficulty as an occasion for ht revelation of God's glory.
Every problem in life is an opportunity to reveal God's glory.
Secondly,
the man born blind makes his living as a beggar. The Gospel of Luke (16:3) reminds
us that begging is a shameful occupation. When King David prays for evil to
befall his enemy (Psalm 109), he asks God, "May his children be wandering
beggars…" In Psalm 37, and aging King David voices the accepted wisdom of
the day: "I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the
righteous forsaken or their children begging bread." We have our own
instinctive revulsion toward people who approach us and ask for money. We
probably feel pity more than solidarity with them. We have a hard time
identifying ourselves with beggars, and yet John's gospel story invites us to
do just that--to see ourselves in the place of the beggar…
Before we can get there,
we have to see how much we are like the Pharisees, complaining about Jesus'
outreach, especially on the Sabbath. Barbara Brown Taylor challenges us to see
ourselves in the Pharisees. She suggests that we might find ourselves so
occupied with our own modern version of "ritual purity" and
"preserving the law" that we fail to see what really matters. We might be blind to the truth right in front
of us, especially if we don't expect it outside the normal bounds of what we
think religion ought to be. The folks who think they have it all together and
can judge others may be well-meaning and sincere, Taylor says, but they
"are the people to watch out for, because they think they can see…better
than other people, and they are not shy about telling you that you are not
really seeing what you think you see, or that what you are seeing is wrong.
They do not do this to be mean, either. They do this because they love God and
maybe even because they love you too. They are doing it to protect you from
believing the wrong things" ("A Tale of Two Heretics" in Home
by Another Way).
A little deeper looking
into the story as John's gospel presents it will help us to see how the man born
blind is presented as a model for Christian discipleship. He shows us what it
means to follow Jesus.
Did you notice that the
blind man (and his parents) get all the good lines in the story? They play a naïve
foil to the foolishness of the Pharisees. They ask innocent questions that
point out the absurdity of the Pharisees' rejection of Jesus, and thus speak
for the Christian community. This is John's gospel at its best--its most
literary and dramatic, its most ironic and humorous!
What it comes down to is
the message of "Love Without Limits." The Pharisee among us and
within us declares people like Jesus to be sinners because they don't respect
the rules and boundaries. The begging man born blind (and people who are like him) have learned
to see differently. We say, "One thing I do know. I was blind but now I
see!"
