In almighty God’s own good time

Our Lord is not bound by time. But our Lord chooses to act in time – in his own good time. The first deacon says quietly to the priest at the beginning of the Divine Liturgy, “It is time for the Lord to act.” The Lord acts in time. He is acting here and now. However, it seems to us sometimes that he takes his time.

Not until the fourth watch of the night does Jesus come walking on the water to his disciples (Matthew 14:25). As soon as evening had fallen, the boat bearing the disciples was beaten by waves – and the wind was against them all night long (14:24). But not until the fourth watch of the night does Jesus come to them and cause the wind to cease (14:32). He had been alone in the hills praying. This teaches us something about the importance of prayer as compared to earthly cares.

What are these watches of the night? In the custom of the Roman military, the night was divided into four parts by soldiers who stood watch in shifts. That way, everyone could get at least some sleep and also the watch could continue ceaselessly. Each of these watches lasted 3 hours so that the four watches of the night together made up the 12 hours of night. So, the fourth watch is the last watch and is from about 3 am until 6 am.

This is when Jesus comes to them who are in the boat, walking to them on the windswept water, after they had been fighting the wind and waves all night long. “They had been in danger the whole night,”[i] but the Lord comes in his own good time.

We also wait upon the coming of the Lord. And maybe we are tossed about by the disturbances and cares of the world, by unremitting temptations, and by demonic provocations, just as the disciples are harassed by the wind and the waves. But the Lord is coming in the fourth watch – in his own good time. He will return perhaps to a roving and shipwrecked Church, but he will return.[ii]

We must wait upon the Lord, and, at the same time, practice an awareness of his presence in every moment of time, even when it seems to us that he is distant. Even when Jesus was praying in the hills, he who knows all things knew of the disciples’ plight in the water. And he also knew they would be alright. So, he let them struggle a little while, as he does with us. St. John Chrysostom says that “He was instructing them not too hast­ily to seek for deliverance from their pressing dangers but to bear all challenges courageously.” We must have a little courage for this life.

It’s clear that for his own reasons, the Lord allows us, his disciples, to be tossed about a bit. And it is also clear that he brings some good out of our time of struggle. Through it, he increases our desire for his coming, helps us remember him, and reveals to us our complete dependence on him.[iii]

We must have a little humility for this life. St. Peter, who was in that boat, instructs us from his experience to “humble [ourselves] under the mighty hand of God, that in due time he may exalt [us]. Cast all your anxieties on him, for he cares about you” (1 Peter 5:6). He will deliver us in time. We must have a little hope and a little trust and a little faith for this life.  

St. Paul says to Timothy, that “the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ… will be made manifest at the proper time by the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen” (1 Tim 6:14-16).

As we wait upon his coming, we must paradoxically remember his constant presence with us. Every hour of the day and every watch of the night, we must be waiting and watching for the coming of the Lord. This is why, in our Byzantine tradition, there are services of liturgical prayer for every time of the day and night.

In charts of Byzantine time, one can see that there are still four watches and 12 hours of the night and day. There are traditional times of prayer throughout this cycle. There is Vespers, which belongs to the time of the setting of the sun, Compline, which is prayed usually around 9 in the evening just before bed, Mesonyktikon, which is the Midnight Office, and Matins – or Orthros as it is also called – which is meant to begin to come to an end about dawn. Other times of prayer in our tradition are First Hour, Third Hour, Sixth Hour, and Ninth Hour, corresponding to 7 and 9 in the morning, noon, and 3 in the afternoon. All this is to say, that all the time of the day and night is time for prayer, for calling attention to the presence of the Lord in each time, as we wait upon the Lord to come to us in his own good time.

There was an elderly and saintly priest in the parish I grew up in whose sermons eventually got to the point of always being the same. In every sermon, every Sunday, he said the same things – perhaps in a different order, but there were several key phrases that always got said. One thing he said again and again was that “almighty God will do what he will do in almighty God’s own good way and in almighty God’s own good time.” Wisdom. This is a voice of experience, I believe. We must wait upon the Lord.

God will act on our behalf just exactly when he means to. We must trust in him and hope in him. As we are buffeted by the storms of life, let us wait upon the Lord, watch, and pray for his coming. He is coming and he will calm the storm in due time.

---

[i] Jerome

[ii] Hilary of Poitiers, On Matthew 14:14

[iii] Chrys.: “But He suffers them to be tossed the whole night, exciting their hearts by fear, and inspiring them with greater desire and more lasting recollection of Him; for this reason He did not stand by them immediately.”

The Prophet, the Monk, and the Human Struggle against Death

The holy prophet Elijah is probably the most popular prophet in our church. And this despite the fact that he is one of the biblical prophets who does not even have a book named after him. What we know of Elijah we know mostly from the Books of Kings. I'm quite fond of him myself. I named my oldest son after him and John the Baptist. But why is he so popular with us? Is it only because on this day we get to have our cars blessed with his fiery chariot? I think there's more to it than that.

I think that one reason Christians may have traditionally loved Elijah so much is that he, though he lived long before Jesus Christ, seems to live rather like a Christian monk. The prophet has something of the monk about him and now the monks have something of the prophet about them. 

Good monks and nuns keep alive the prophetic spirit in the Church with their radical commitment to life in Christ and death to the world. This demonstrates to the world God's will for our lives. Monasticism is God speaking to the Church about how the Church should be living.

And the Prophet Elijah is a type for monks. He was the first of the prophets to embrace the life of virginity. And he lived an ascetic life of fasting and obedience to God and such a radical commitment to the prophetic message God had given him that he even embraced life in a deserted wilderness for it.

He is also rather like John the Baptist, our other early model of Christian monasticism. They both went into the wilderness, and fasted from ordinary food, and wore garments of coarse animal hair bound with leather belts. When John the Baptist went into the wilderness and behaved in this fashion, many believed that he was Elijah who was to come. Even Jesus says that John the Baptist comes in the spirit and the power of Elijah.

This was important because Malachi had prophesied that Elijah would return as the herald of the coming Messiah. This prophecy of Malachi is fulfilled in John the Forerunner and Baptist of the Lord. In our troparion today, we call Elijah the second forerunner of Christ. John, of course, is the first

The Messiah whose coming they herald turns out to be not only the deliverer of Israel from its enemies but also the deliverer of all of us who struggle from our last enemy of death. Elijah is important in this human struggle against death because Elijah is one of only two who never experiences death. The other is Enoch.

It is very rare to see an icon in the church of someone who has not experienced death.  Yet on the tetrapod today is Elijah. Notice that his background is red rather than the usual gold. Red for the fire of the fiery chariot that took him deathlessly into heaven.

Some say that Elijah will still return someday together with Enoch as the two witnesses mentioned in the Book of Revelation. As we await him, we honor him and remember him especially today on this his feast. Let us look to his example and to that of the monks and nuns who keep his prophetic spirit alive to guide us in a life of radical commitment and obedience to the word of God. 

Some of these ideas are stolen from Presvytera and Dr. Jeannie Constantinou: Elijah

Faith of the Blind

on Matt 9:27-35. Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

Today, two blind men teach us much about faith and about prayer.

When they encounter Jesus, they don’t exactly ask what you might expect – for sight or for healing. Rather, they follow him, calling out, “Have mercy on us, Son of David!” Now, mercy is healing, but it also more than healing.

Eventually, Jesus asks them, “Do you believe that I am able do this? So, not only, “Do you believe I can heal you?” but really also, “Do you have faith that I can have mercy on you?” Jesus is not asking these blind men merely what they think of him or who he is in their opinion – he is asking them about their faith – about whom they know him to be in their hearts. And they confess their faith that he is the one who can have mercy on them in their blindness. They do believe and, according to their faith, Jesus touches their eyes and opens them.

The Two Blind Men, detail, 6th Century Mosaic, Sant' Appollinare Nuovo, Ravenna

What drove Jesus to ask the two blind men about their faith? Well, first they followed him for quite some time, it would seem, as he walked from the house of a ruler back to his own house. This was probably quite a way, because Jesus likely wasn't staying in the same neighborhood as such a socially significant person. This in and of itself is a marvel: though they were blind, they were able to follow Jesus all the way to his house. They could not see him, but yet they went wherever he went. Now, maybe they had help, or maybe they were following him by sound, or maybe they simply knew the way to his house – the Gospel doesn’t say – but regardless, I think it is a good image of faith that, though blind, they could still follow Christ. They could see him, not with the eyes of the body, but with the eyes of faith. According to their faith, they could see already. Perhaps this is why they ask for mercy and not only for their sight. “Blessed are they who have not seen, but have believed.”

And all the while as they were following him, they were crying out, “Have mercy on us, son of David!” This kind of prayerful petition, repeated again and again, ought to seem familiar to us who follow Byzantine tradition – for here is one of the roots of the Jesus Prayer. I hope you all know the Jesus Prayer and pray it daily:

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, the sinner.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, the sinner.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, the sinner.

We can hear in this, I think, an echo of the blind men’s prayer: “Son of David, have mercy on us.” But it is also similar in the way that they prayed it – crying and saying their prayer while following after Jesus. It seems to me that they did not cry out their prayer only once, but continuously and repeatedly as they followed Jesus.

In our hesychast tradition, under the guidance of our spiritual fathers and mothers, we pray the Jesus prayer so frequently that the prayer becomes a part of our very breathing – and of the beating of our hearts so that we can aspire to pray unceasingly, as Paul teaches us (1 Thess 5:17). Again and again in peace we pray to the Lord for mercy – as did these two blind men before us.

Their way of prayer also evokes the uncomfortable parable of the widow and the unjust judge in Luke (18:1-8). Not once does the widow plead for justice, but repeatedly. Not once do the blind men cry out for mercy but continuously.

It seems sometimes like we have to nag the Lord; we have to bend his ear; we have to keep after him. Of course, this is only how it seems to us humans. Repetition, I think, helps evoke the eternal for us temporal creatures. And it helps us forgetful creatures to remember. Anyone memorizing lines for a play or multiplication tables for a math test knows the necessity of repetition for a human mind. If we creatures are to remember our creator and our God, we must often repeat our prayer to him and our calling upon his holy name. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, the sinner.

It is only after the widow has often plead for justice that the judge gives her a just judgement and it is only after the blind men have followed Jesus quite a way calling out for mercy and followed him into his house that he asks them if they have faith. Only after they have demonstrated faithfulness to some extent does he ask if they have faith. We must be persistent. We must persevere in the faith even when it seems we get no answer to our prayer the first time or the second time or the seventh time we pray. Pray again! Do not lose heart. Keep following after Jesus with a pure heart – not just in the hope of some material reward, mind you, but in the hope of mercy. This is our petition: for mercy, for healing, for eternal life, and for union with God. 

The physical blindness of these two men has also for us, I believe, a spiritual meaning. We are the blind men – until we through faith receive the grace and mercy of the Lord, for which we must continually cry out. Our vision of all things is darkened until we see them in the light of Christ.

Only in the light of Christ is it possible to see things as they really are.

Only in the light of Christ can we understand the true meaning of the Torah and the prophets.

Only in the light of Christ can we see and love our enemies as images of God.

Only in the light of Christ can we find any meaning in our suffering because without Christ and his cross, all suffering is meaningless. Only in Christ and in his cross can suffering become a means of union with God – because only in Christ and in his cross does the impassible God suffer with us

Only in the light of Christ can we see that for us even death is but falling asleep in the Lord and that the great dawn of resurrection is coming, when we will awaken.

Without the light of Christ, we are blind. And so, according to our faith and due to our unceasing prayer, Christ will open our eyes.

This is a reworking of a sermon I preached three years ago: Jesus Opens our Eyes 

Abandonment to the Will of God

The brothers Simon Peter and Andrew were fishermen. One day, while they were casting their nets into the Sea of Galilee, Jesus walks by and says to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Immediately, they leave their nets and follow him (Matt 4:18-20).

What did they leave behind really? A few nets and their little fishing boats? “Our holy merchants traded in their nets and vessels for the perpetual life of the angels,” says St. Gregory the Great. Not a bad trade, eh? Maybe this doesn't seem like so great a sacrifice. Others have given far more.

Christ calls Peter and Andrew to be his disciples.
Mosaic. Sant'Apollinare Nouvo, Ravenna, Italy.
Sixth century.

These simple fishing nets have more in common with the two copper coins - the two mites offered by the widow to the treasury of the Temple than with the large sums put in by the rich (Mark 12:41-44; Luke 21:1-4). So it's worth remembering what Jesus says about that paltry gift. He says, "Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them; for they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all the living that she had" (Luke 21:3-4). Likewise, Simon and Andrew left behind all the living that they had. Those nets and boats were their means of living. That was all they had. And it wasn’t as if they didn’t care about fishing either. They weren’t looking for a new gig. Not long after Jesus’ death and resurrection, Simon Peter stands up and says, “I’m going fishing” (John 21:3). As soon as Jesus is out of sight for a minute, Peter goes back to fishing. So I think it’s something close to his heart. Anyway, it’s what he knows. And so it is a great gift of the heart that they offer to the Lord, even if it is of little material account. Our Lord asks us to give or leave behind what we have - not to worry about what the world accounts as great or significant. Saint Gregory says, "That person has left behind a lot who keeps nothing for himself - who, though he has little, gives up everything. We [on the other hand] tend to be attached to those things we own.”

Jesus and his apostles, including Peter, will later encounter a rich young man seeking eternal life, but he will not find what he seeks - because he is so attached to what he owns and is not willing to sell his possessions and give to the poor so that he may be free to follow Jesus. Jesus says the same thing to this rich young man that he says to Andrew and Simon. He offers them the same invitation: "Follow me" (Matt 19:16-22). He addresses a simple fisherman and a rich young ruler the same way. He is no respecter of persons (Acts 10:34). He invites all to leave behind all they have and to follow him, but not all accept his invitation.

A good metaphor for this leaving all to follow Christ is that of marriage. Before we can cleave to our spouse, we must leave our parents. “A man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh” (Gen 2:24). It’s definitely worth it, and we understand that when it comes to marriage. It’s even more worth it when it comes to union with God in Jesus Christ, to which marriage points and for which marriage is. But before the cleaving, first must come the leaving, and that’s the part we have some trouble with. Before the Church can cleave to her bridegroom Christ, she must leave behind worldly things. We must “set aside all earthly cares,” as we repeat in the Cherubic Hymn.

“Peter and Andrew left much behind,” says St. Gregory. They left behind “covetousness and the very desire to own. That person has left much behind who renounces - with the thing owned - the very coveting of that thing... You will leave much behind [in holy imitation of those who disdain this world], if you renounce earthly desires... This will be enough for the Lord, since he looks at the heart and not at our material goods."

This works in the inverse as well. If we are grasping and covetous, even if it is only over some small thing, that will be enough to destroy us and damn us to hell. In The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky retells a parable, which some of you will probably have heard also because Metropolitan Kallistos Ware loves to retell it as well:

Once upon a time there was a peasant woman and a very wicked woman she was. And she died and did not leave a single good deed behind. The devils caught her and plunged her into the lake of fire. So her guardian angel stood and wondered what good deed of hers he could remember to tell to God; 'She once pulled up an onion in her garden,' said he, 'and gave it to a beggar woman.' And God answered: 'You take that onion then, hold it out to her in the lake, and let her take hold and be pulled out. And if you can pull her out of the lake, let her come to Paradise, but if the onion breaks, then the woman must stay where she is.' The angel ran to the woman and held out the onion to her. 'Come,' said he, 'catch hold and I'll pull you out.' he began cautiously pulling her out. He had just pulled her right out, when the other sinners in the lake, seeing how she was being drawn out, began catching hold of her so as to be pulled out with her. But she was a very wicked woman and she began kicking them. 'I'm to be pulled out, not you. It's my onion, not yours.' As soon as she said that, the onion broke. And the woman fell into the lake and she is burning there to this day. So the angel wept and went away (Ch. 3).

It was only an onion the woman claimed as her own and would not share with others. That was enough to break it - to destroy its true salvific purpose. It’s not about how much we have to let go of - this was a peasant woman who didn’t have much. It’s about letting go of everything we do have - of whatever we’re attached to that isn’t the Lord - whether it is great or small in the eyes of the world. If it is more precious to us than the Lord and the image of God, which is in our neighbors and strangers, our enemies and our friends, then, even if it is only an onion, it is an idol and will drag us to hell.

If there's something we won't let go of, then when it comes time to meet the Lord in the air, we'll find we have a millstone tied around our neck weighing us down and preventing our ascent (1 Thess 4:17). If we’re going to be taken up to heaven, we're going to have to let go of our attachment to earthly things - to cut anchor even as our ship bobs like a cork in what seems like a treacherous sea.

I’m not just talking about things here - as in material possessions - although those are a frequent stumbling block for us - but also any of our earthly attachments or aspirations or desires or ambitions. I’m talking about our own will. If Andrew and Peter and James and John are good examples of self-abandonment to the will of God (and they are - look at the immediacy with which they left all to follow him), Jesus is a still better example.

Here is the Lord, “who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of men” (Phil 2:6). The Lord did not grasp even his equality with God, but emptied himself. And we hesitate even to walk away from fishnets – from our earthly toils and vain anxieties.

Jesus, on the other hand, “being found in human form, humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross” (Phil 2:8). And listen to what he says to his Father in Gethsemane: “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.” (Matt 26:39; Luke 22:42). Not as I will, but as you will. Total and perfect abandonment to the inscrutable and mysterious will of the Father. That’s what we’re called to.

Ultimately, it is not only things that we must leave behind, but even our own will. We must give up on trying to get our own way and follow instead the Lord, who is the way, and who says to us, “Follow me.” He alone will lead us to perfect love and to eternal life. All it will cost is everything.

For the Fallen of War

Not always, but sometimes, the instincts of the nation and the instincts of the Church come into harmony. And today - Memorial Day - is one of those times.

War disrupts and cuts off too many lives far too soon. More than forty million have died fighting for this country in its many wars beginning with the revolution. The nation’s instinct has been to honor and remember these fallen soldiers with ceremonies and by visiting and decorating their graves. This eventually became the annual civil holiday first known as Decoration Day and now known as Memorial Day.

This, as I say, harmonizes with the instincts of the Church.

War has been a part of human behavior for all of history. And even before the coming of Christ, the people of God knew to remember and pray for those whose lives it claimed.

Attributed arms of David, Joshua, and Judas Maccabeus,
three of the "Nine Worthies"

The Old Testament books of Maccabees tell of the Jewish Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid Empire and against their oppression of the Jews. Many who died in one of the battles of this war had committed the sin of idolatry and when Judah Maccabee discovered this, he and his men “turned to prayer, begging that the sin which had been committed might be wholly blotted out” (2 Macc 12:42). He then saw to it that a sin offering was made for them in Jerusalem (12:43). He did this because he expected the resurrection of the dead and he knew therefore that the men who had died were not without hope and had a future.

We also believe in the resurrection of the dead. We know that our fallen men and women whose lives were cut short by war will one day rise again and those who believe will rise in Christ and live in him forever. And so now today we pray for them, even as Judah Maccabee prayed for his fallen men.

Even if they had sinned, they can yet be forgiven by the mercy of God. For them and for all the Lord Jesus offers his one perfect holy sacrifice and oblation of the cross, death, burial, and resurrection. In his resurrection is their hope of resurrection and life. In his mercy, is their hope of forgiveness and salvation. Let us commend them all to him and to his grace.

Violent Prayer

“The kingdom of heaven suffers violence and the violent bear it away” (Matt. 11:12). What does this mean?

This runs somewhat against our usual way of speaking as Christians, even though these are the words of Jesus Christ. This is no pacifist blurb, but a warcry! When Jesus says things like this, if we have a pacifist tendency, maybe we get embarrassed and don’t know how to respond. Or, if we are disposed the other way, maybe we get heated and take it as a justification for the violence we do or long to do or see done toward others. But I don’t think Jesus is talking about doing violence against others as a path to heaven.

I think he may be speaking rather about the spiritual warfare of the ascetic life. He’s talking about John the Baptist, after all - a great ascetic (for whom I’m named, by the way) who lives in the wasteland and not in a palace; who dresses in coarse robes of camel’s hair and nothing soft and luxurious; who fasts constantly - eating only locusts and wild honey (Matt 3:4; 11:7-8). (By the way, did you know that we can eat insects during fasting seasons? No one ever wants to take that up for some reason….) This ascetic way of life involves a kind of intense striving that may well be called violent.

St Gregory of Sinai says, “No bodily or spiritual activity without pain or toil ever brings fruit to him who practices it, because ‘the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force.”

He’s speaking of the effort involved in prayer. Our prayer must be joined to effort, to work, to toil, to striving, even to violent striving. We must pray even if it is inconvenient or uncomfortable - especially if it is inconvenient or uncomfortable! We must join our prayer to fasting and ascetic discipline. Otherwise, we’re telling ourselves and the whole world that other things are more important.

But nothing is more important than God and entering into union with him, entering the kingdom of heaven, taking it by force.

 Icon of the Third Finding of the Head of John the Baptist (bottom, center),
surrounded by St. Onesiphorus and other saints
Konetz, 19th century, Russia

Yet, today is a feast day. The Church feasts as well as fasts. Today is not a fast day, but a double feast day! It is the feast of the third finding of the head of John the Baptist and it is a post-festive day of Pentecost. Even though today is Friday, we do not fast even from meat today because of Pentecost. This is one of only a few Fridays of the year when we traditionally eat meat.

But we are celebrating a great faster! So that’s a bit paradoxical. We feast to celebrate finding the head of one who always fasted.

The other similar feast - the feast of the first and second findings of the head of John the Baptist, we also feast. (They kept losing his head! First he lost his head and then the Church kept losing it again!) It usually falls during the Great Fast, so we mitigate the fasting on that day if it does.

Then there is the day of his beheading. On that day we fast! Our Church commemorates the Beheading of John on August 29th with a strict fast - traditionally, we also eat nothing head-shaped on that day and nothing from a plate, in remembrance of John’s head, which was put on a platter for Salome.  

So, for losing his head we fast, but for finding his head we feast. There is death and there is also resurrection. The two are intertwined. You can’t have one without the other. As Paul says today, “we are… always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies” (2 Cor. 4:10). This is a violence in us as Christians - the violent death of Jesus is always within us, because we are baptized into his body.  If we would rise with Christ, first we must die with Christ (Rom. 6). If we would enter the kingdom of heaven, first we must become a people of persistent, fervent, violent prayer, make war against our own sinful passions, and take it by force.

The Mystery of Good and Evil

Why do we suffer? Why do bad things happen to good people? Why is it that babies sometimes die before they get a chance to live? Why is it that sometimes they are born blind, like the man in today's Gospel?

Healing of the man born blind
Codex Egberti, Fol 50

Theologians know that God does not make death – that no evil comes from God – that God is the author of every good and only good. In other words, theologians know that God is not to blame for our suffering or for death or for blindness.

Whence come these things into the world, then? Well, the wages of sin is death, they also say with St. Paul (Rom 6:23). So, it would seem that sin, which is missing the mark, is the origin of every injustice – every instance of a good person suffering evil maybe rightly blamed on sin – either on their own sin or on someone else's sin. It's clear that it's not always our own sin that causes us to suffer, though it often is. But if someone persecutes or abuses you, you suffer even though you have done nothing wrong. Everything that Jesus suffers is like this. Jesus is altogether sinless. Yet, he suffers greatly from the sins of others who persecute him and mock him and torture him and crucify him. When we suffer at the hands of others, we do well to remember that Jesus has identified with us in that – and has taught us how to respond to it – with forgiveness.

Nonetheless, people usually do not respond that way to the injustices they suffer. Most people, when they get hurt, lash out and hurt others – often the ones they hurt aren't even people that did them any harm. Sometimes, for example, a boss will humiliate someone at work and, too fearful and cowardly to respond like a Christian to the one who has wronged him – with courage and honesty – and without animosity or resentment, instead they swallow the humiliation and shame and anger and resentment and bring that home to their spouse and their kids – snapping at them and humiliating them, though they're totally innocent and only want love and kindness.

Sometimes, we're not even good at revenge. Revenge is a bad thing but taking it out on the innocent is even worse. Yet many times this is what we do.

In this way, our sin sends out ripples of harm into the world. That's clear. When one person gets hurt, it often leads to them hurting others. Hurt people hurt people. It's not a justification, by the way. There is no justification for us to hurt each other – to be nasty to one another, or unforgiving, or judgmental. It's not a justification, it's just an observation. This can all be easily observed in our own lives.

Partly extrapolating from these experiences, many theologians have concluded that all suffering results from sin. I have often counted myself as one who agrees with them. There are the obvious ways in which this is the case, such as the examples I have described, but there are also hidden ways in which our sins hurt other people and ourselves.

We are spirits as well as bodies and so our sins have spiritual ramifications in the spiritual world as well as physical ramifications in the physical world. Sin is a break with our true created nature, which is both spiritual and material. We cannot even begin to imagine how much suffering each of our sins, voluntary and involuntary, brings into the world – into the whole cosmos. With our sin, which is unnatural, we disrupt the whole created order of nature.

So if we understand that sin is the cause of all human suffering, the disciples' question to Jesus about the man blind since birth seems to be a reasonable one: "Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" (John 9:2). You see, they understood that blindness results from sin. That's true.  It's true of both physical blindness and spiritual blindness. 

And they understood that we suffer from one another's sins as well as from our own. In Exodus, the Lord says he will visit “the iniquity of the fathers upon the children” (Ex 20:5; 34:7). So they suggested that it might be the sins of his parents rather than his own sins that resulted in his blindness. Again, it’s not unreasonable, especially if we understand that this man's parents include not only his mother and his father but even all his ancestors back to his first parents Adam and Eve. Surely the world is broken and sometimes people are born blind into this broken world because of sin.

We might also add the sins of demons to our consideration. Their sins too – and not only the sins of us humans – yield great suffering in the cosmos. They too are at war with God and with their own created nature.

In any case, despite all of this, Jesus once again confounds conventional theology. He says, "It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be made manifest in him" (John 9:3). Jesus later says the same thing about the illness of Lazarus, saying that “it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it” (John 11:4).

I am left gasping at this explanation which confounds all my reason. I can dance around it with cleverness and point out that Jesus does not altogether deny the role of sin in the origin of blindness. He only says that it wasn't the sins of this man or his parents. One could argue that perhaps the sins of others or the sins of demons are to blame. But Jesus doesn't blame any sin at all in his etiology of the blindness. My reason wants to chirp, “If sin is not to blame, then what? If no sinner is at fault, then who? God?” I cannot blame God for this man's blindness. But Jesus says that he is blind so that the works of God might be made manifest in him.

I understand very well that Jesus heals him – and that this is a work of God that reveals the divinity of Jesus. I understand very well that the Lord uses the man's blindness to teach the world to see. This is what the Lord does again and again. Out of the darkness, he brings light – as on the first day of creation. He says, “Let there be light.” And there is light. I see that, out of death, the Lord brings life. By death, he tramples death. And so, how fitting that through the blindness of one man, he gives many the eyes of faith. The man whose eyes are opened testifies to the healing and that Jesus is of God, and he believes and worships Jesus (9:11, 25, 30-33, 38).

The Lord brings good out of evil. That's what the Lord does. But he is the origin of no evil. So today, when he says that the man is blind so that God can heal him, I don't understand. That's a mystery to me. It's rather like the mystery of the cross.

I want to ask Jesus after he gives his explanation, "Yeah, but, had it not been for sin in the world, surely this man would not have been born blind?" But that's not the kind of question we're going to hear from Jesus or his disciples. That's the kind of speculative theology they don't get into. Maybe that kind of thinking is more Greek than Hebrew – or maybe it's more a curse of this age than that to be vexed by such questions. You won't hear them saying things like, "Well, if reality were other than it is, what then would this or that be?" That's not their shtick – not at all. Jesus is much more interested in healing this man than in theoretically analyzing his condition.

We ought to be like Jesus in this. Simply love, show compassion, heal, deliver, all to the glory of God, rather than trying to subject everything to our finite analytical human understanding, as if reality, or even God, were subject to us. If instead, we seek to glorify God, then God blesses us beyond all understanding.

The mystery of good and evil is beyond our comprehension. And there comes a time to accept that we cannot understand everything and that every answer we can give is a lie. Perhaps we can understand best in silent contemplation of the awesome mystery when we stop trying to figure everything out and abandon ourselves completely to God.