Lent: Waiting on the Lord Inside of Suffering

Good morning.

It is our fourth Sunday.

It's our fourth Sunday of Lent.

So Lent is the 40 days leading up to Easter.

If you've been with us for the past month, you know this.

We've been talking about this each week, and each week we have a passage assigned to us that's been scheduled out for us to understand and think about and contemplate the goodness of Jesus as we work our way toward the crucifixion and the resurrection.

And so Lent is the 40 days leading up to Easter, and yet within Lent we have Sundays, which we've been talking about.

Sundays are feast days.

And so how fitting and how good it is for us that amidst what's been going on in our lives and our world, we have Sundays left for us to feast.

Not on more news or more emails.

I don't know about you, but I'm getting emails from every organization, company, places I bought socks from are emailing me about their feelings about COVID.

How great amidst feasting on all of those emails and all of those notifications of what's canceled and what's not and what's going on, the next beat of news, all of that we get to on Sunday's feast on the thing that is stable, the thing that is secure, the goodness of God to us amidst difficulty and amidst suffering, because we can so easily, no matter what our weeks have looked like these past week or two, ten days or so.

Some of us have felt very lonely.

Some of us have have become teachers overnight for our children, and you never wanted to be a teacher, and now you're working from home and trying to figure out how to teach common core math, and it's not how you learned math, and so you gotta relearn even how to do math.

And so so many of us are put in situations we've never been in, and yet admits that it can be easy to have busy hearts.

Even while we're busy in our homes with people or we're lonely, even then we can have busy hearts, and so it's so good for us to be able to come together on Sundays and feast on the thing that is stable and on the thing that helps calm our hearts and give us rest in our hearts.

And so we're gonna take a few minutes, we're gonna look at this story in John 9.

We could not get a more fitting story for us to contemplate the goodness of Jesus in this story this morning for us to feast on.

So here's our story in John 9, verses 1 through 3.

John 9:1–3

And it's a long passage, so I'm gonna read some and I'll tell some of the story a little bit, but it's a long passage, so we'll work our way through it.

John 9 verses 1 through 3, as he went along, Jesus, as Jesus went along, he saw a blind man from birth.

John 9:1–3

His disciples asked him, Rabbi, who sinned this man or his parents, that he was born blind?

So they have a the presupposition here.

They're just assuming, well, if he was born blind, he has suffering in his life.

Well, he must have done something wrong, or his parents must have done something wrong.

Verse 3, well, Jesus says, Neither this man nor his parents sinned, said Jesus, but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.

So the first point we get when we're thinking through the story, the first point is Jesus dismisses the moralizing of our suffering.

Jesus dismisses the moralizing of our suffering.

What good news this is for us.

There's this ridiculous Seinfeld episode.

So it's been a long time ago.

Maybe you you've seen the reruns.

And George Costanza, who's always a mess, Costanza, he's he's trying to apply for a great apartment, like a killer New York City apartment with, you know, with a good rent inside of his apartment building, and the tenant board is deciding between him and an older gentleman.

The older gentleman was a survivor of a shipwreck, the ship that sank.

And so the tenant board, because of this older gentleman's suffering, they're gonna give the apartment to this older gentleman.

And so George comes into Jerry's apartment and he's talking about things, oh, you know, I don't have a shot at this apartment.

This guy was on a you know a ship that sank.

And Jerry says, uh, you know, if this tenant board is so impressed with suffering, maybe you should tell them the astonishing tales of Costanza.

And George, you know, he's interested.

He's well, I should.

And Jerry says, I mean, your body of work in this field is unparalleled, right?

Like Jerry's saying, like, nobody has suffered like you have, George.

And we know this if you've watched Seinfeld, like he's always experiencing just horrible situations, you know, most of which he's creating, but otherwise ones come toward him.

And so the scene goes on, and and George goes back to the tenant board, and he's back at the tenant board, and he is going through his life just very, very matter-of-factly, not even emotionally, just going through all the suffering he has endured in his life, this ridiculous experience after ridiculous experience.

And it's funny, like when you're watching, it's funny.

You're laughing, you're like, this is so ridiculous, this is funny.

Uh and it's funny because of all of this ridiculous suffering, but underneath it there's this thought, right?

Like this whole scenes built upon it.

It's the same thing that these first few verses are built upon in this story, and it's that what you've had have experienced should warrant what you get in this world.

Well, if you've suffered enough, you should get the apartment, right?

And a similar thought, it's like a parallel thought here in this story, the disciples thinking at first, eventually the religious leaders will see later in the story, and it's this thought.

What you have done, or what your parents have done.

This is the cause of your suffering.

So here's what's easy to think.

Also, parallel thought to this.

Here's what's easy to think.

Well, the more devout I am, the better I am.

If I'm good, I'm a good girl, I'm a good boy, I behave, I'm moral, I pray, and how much I pray, and how passionate I am, and how zealous I am for the Lord, and how much I love the Lord, then God will, and we form this equation.

If only I lived good enough, and then we we sort of think, God will owe me.

Like God will owe me if I live good enough.

You know, I can avoid, I can avoid natural consequences, I can avoid natural suffering because God will owe me.

And the problem with this is that it eventually turns on us.

Like we like it because we're in control when life goes well, but eventually it turns on us and it condemns us, and we live in condemnation toward others, the equation works until a little bit of life happens, until COVID happens, until cancer happens, until you lose your job, until you can't find another job, until your significant other drops you.

Till you have depression, and you've never had depression before in your life.

And see, if you're living by that equation, what that means is something is wrong with you.

You did something wrong.

That's why you're blind.

And that is such unnecessary condemnation and exhaustion.

And Jesus in the story, he comes up to this natural suffering, suffering in a broken world that, of course, we do not like it.

And inside the sovereignty of God, we we don't understand how an almighty and unloving and an all-loving God allows it.

So we we understand this with some mystery and humility.

But we go, we're all experiencing suffering in this broken world, but what is unnecessary is to live by this equation that's only going to give us eventual condemnation and exhaustion.

And this story, Jesus right away in this story, says, no, no, no, neither.

No, not his fault, not his parents' fault.

See, any punishment due to us because of our sinfulness and our rebellion toward God, our continuous rebelliousness toward God, which we have in our own selfishness and lack of faith, any punishment has already been handled inside of Jesus on the cross.

That's why we always say our sin has been put upon him and his righteousness has been given to us.

So anything that we know of discipline in this world is inside of the loving kindness of God from a loving Abba Father, much more than any Abba Father that we've experienced inside of this world.

And any suffering we've experienced in this world, whether it be natural suffering just of existing in this world, or maybe we even caused it by stabbing ourselves in the ear with a screwdriver, and we go deaf, even that can be used inside the loving kindness of God for our own good.

And it's because God engages us inside of our suffering.

Okay, the story moves on.

Verse 6.

So Jesus is in front of this blind man, he spits on the ground, he gets a spit, he gets some dirt, and he mixes up into some mud, and he he wipes it on the eyes of that blind man, and he says, Go now and wash in the pool of siloam.

So the man goes and washes in the pool of siloam, he washes that mud off, and the man is healed.

He was blind, and now he can see, and the whole community knows it because he they know he was the blind man.

So the neighbors get this guy, you gotta go and you gotta show yourself to the religious leaders.

Somebody was healed, you've got to go to the religious leaders, and so they take him to the Pharisees, who end up being much more concerned about their religious system and their religious rules than the fact that a blind man has just been healed.

And how did that happen?

And let's go celebrate that and celebrate with you.

There's none of that joy for this man.

All they say is, oh, oh, you can't heal on the Sabbath.

You just broke the Sabbath.

That man who healed you broke the Sabbath.

And they're missing the fact that the man who broke the Sabbath is the Sabbath.

He actually is our rest.

The actual rest we need inside of our hearts.

And so we get this going on in this story where we have a blind man who was aware of his blindness and healed from it, and then we have these religious leaders that are completely unaware of their spiritual blindness.

So they asked the blind man, they say, Well, who do you think he was?

Like, who do you think that guy is who healed you?

And the blind man says, He's a prophet.

Well, not the blind man, the guy who can see now.

He's a prophet.

So now they go and they pull the parents in.

Like, we're, you know, they got to dig deeper into this guy who was blind and now he can see.

Let's figure this whole thing out.

Let's make sure he really was blind, and was he blind?

And now he can see.

Let's get this story straight.

So verse 19, is this your son?

They asked the parents.

Is this the one you say was born blind?

So they're kind of going, like, was he really blind or was he not blind?

Like, what's going on here?

How is it that he can now see?

Verse 20.

We know he's our son, the parents answered, and we know he was born blind, but how he can see now or who opened his eyes, we don't know.

Ask him.

He is of age, he will speak for himself.

The parents are going, like, I don't, we don't want to get into this.

Like these Pharisees, they they run the society.

They don't want to get too mixed up in this.

There could be social ramifications, financial ramifications for the parents, and so they're playing it overly cool.

That's what verse 22 says.

His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders who already had decided that anyone who acknowledged Jesus was the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue.

So then verse 25, the leaders they're now talking to the blind man who can now see.

And this man says, Whether he's a sinner or not, I don't know.

And so he's talking back about Jesus.

And he says, I don't know, but one thing I know.

So the blind means that's one thing I know.

I was blind, but now I can see.

So the leaders don't love this.

This is threatening their system, this is threatening all their rules.

And so they keep firing more questions and eventually they just start firing insults to him.

Because they have a system.

And good people end up with a good life.

And if you're not having a good life, it must mean you're not a good person.

And grace interrupts and destroys all of that.

Because it says, none of us, none of us are perfect.

None of us have our acts together.

And God actually pursues and accepts and delights in us as we're imperfect.

Later on, Jesus finds the man and he says, Do you know who the Son of Man is?

He's saying, Do you know who God is?

And the man in verse 38, finally he says, Lord, I believe.

I believe.

And he worshipped.

Point number two is this facing and feeling your suffering is the way to move toward healing.

Facing and feeling your suffering is the way to move toward healing.

This past week, Jimmy Fallon started hosting the Tonight Show from his apartment in New York City with his kids, his dogs running around, his two little girls are running around, his wife's running the camera.

It sort of feels like what we're doing here on Sunday mornings, except I didn't bring my dog in or my little girls in.

And the only one laughing at his jokes is his wife, which is really, really endearing and maybe my favorite part of the whole thing.

He even had a guest.

He interviews, you know, over online video chat.

He interviews Lynn Manuel, who wrote Hamilton, and within their conversation, because they're both they're both quarantined within their apartments with their families inside of New York City.

And Manuel says at one point, I'm not getting any work done on learning how to teach math.

And it was sort of funny, and Fallon laughs because Fallon's feeling the same thing, and they're both laughing, and like you sort of laugh along with them.

And there's a practical side to this, right?

Like, there's the practical side of like it can be really hard to get work done when we're stuck at home.

And for some of us, that has huge ramifications upon our businesses or the business we work for and our jobs.

And then underneath that, there's like this part of our heart that starts to wonder like, like, who am I if I'm not productive?

Who am I if I'm not busy?

Who am I if I'm not in control?

Who am I if if all I am is a blind man poor with nothing?

But I've been healed.

And though I've just been cast out of normal society, I'm a blind man who now sees.

What if that's all that I am?

Is that enough in the core of who I am?

Is that enough for me to rest in during days where everything else has been limited?

I think some of this helps us make sense of Romans 5.

I started thinking about Romans 5 this week.

Romans 5, the first five verses.

Therefore, since we've been justified by faith, that's good news right there.

That our justification with God, our being a child of God, is not by our merit, but by faith and what he's already done for us.

So we're justified by faith.

We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

That's why we have peace, is because we're justified by faith.

Verse 2, through Him, I love that.

Through Him is not through us, it's through Him, we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.

So that's where our hope is.

And then it gets even tougher.

Verse 3, not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings.

Why would we do that?

Knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.

And hope does not put us to shame.

Not like that other equation.

Not like do good enough and be good enough, and you'll get a good life.

The path of faith and grace and hope never puts you to shame.

At the end of verse 5, because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit has been given to us.

Last point, point number three.

Christian faith is not a list of how to become better.

Christian faith is not a list of how to become better.

Jesus is breaking that down in this story with this blind man who can now see, and with these religious leaders and his disciples asking this question.

It is not what this is.

Christian faith is a relationship with the healer of our souls.

The blind man does not receive a list.

He receives relationship with God incarnate who pursues him inside of his suffering.

Who pursues him and accepts him, absolves him and delights in him, heals him.

Jesus is always, he's always pursuing people to help them see they're blind.

Even when he is outright ruthless with the Pharisees, he's trying to get them to see that they're blind and their eyes need to be opened for the way of faith and grace and hope.

For me, all week, so evident, for me, the entire week, so evident, I've been waiting on something.

That's been the feeling that I've had.

I've been waiting on something.

I haven't checked my phone more than I have this week in a very, very long time.

I've been waiting for the next news article that would give me a little bit of information that would help resolve the anxiety in my heart.

Right?

It's just the next bit of news or the next, you know, Instagram post of the person who heard something from somebody and they got a text from somebody, and I got it forwarded from whoever, and it was my brother's cousin who works for the CDC.

And if I can just get enough of this knowledge, all of a sudden I'll be okay.

I've been just like I've been waiting for some bit of information.

It's just me wanting more control.

I'm waiting on something.

I even sneezed in public once this week.

And people saw me, and I was just waiting for somebody to smile at me to be relieved of the shame of the sneeze.

I was pretty sure it's just allergies, but still there's a lot of shame.

I've been waiting.

Last night we watched Notting Hill.

We can't watch enough rom-coms this week because we're just looking, we're waiting for something to sort of help us move through this.

Rescue us from the uncertainty of our day.

And my point is this we're not we're not as in control as we want to be.

And we're having to come to grips with that.

And we have to wait upon the one who gives sight to the blind, the healer of our soul.

We wait upon the one who gives hope inside of suffering that produces character and endurance and perseverance and hope inside of suffering, who he himself suffered.

If you're waiting for an answer for why God allows suffering, you'll wait forever.

But if you're waiting to know whether God is a God of love inside of suffering, the answer is a resounding yes.

And he engages your suffering and your suffering this week.

He walks with us on paths of healing.

This is the one who loves you this morning.

Wherever you're at, however you've been feeling this week, or however you feel this morning, this is the one we wait on.

Let's pray together.

God, thank you for your grace.

Inside of that grace, we place our faith that you are enough.

Inside of that grace, we we hope for some measure of endurance and perseverance amidst these days, and we hope for character to be born inside of us and inside of our neighbors and our community, our church and our country.

God, and we we just we hope that even greater hope and more hope will be produced inside of our hearts as we wait upon you and upon you alone.

Thank you that you know suffering, you know what it feels like, and that you walk with us in it, and there will be a day that you promise there will be a day where there is no more fear and there are more tears, and there will be restoration of this world, of all the brokenness.

And even that we wait upon as we walk with you.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.