John 9:1-41

Walking down the street, Jesus saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked, “Rabbi, who sinned: this man or his parents, causing him to be born blind?” Jesus said, “You’re asking the wrong question. You’re looking for someone to blame. There is no such cause-effect hereLook instead for what God can do. We need to be energetically at work for the One who sent me here, working while the sun shines. When night falls, the workday is over. For as long as I am in the world, there is plenty of light. I am the world’s Light. (John 9:1-5 MSG)

I believe discipleship happens in our everyday, ordinary life—our sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around lives as we discover how radically differently God thinks than us. I believe our passage today illustrates this idea.

As Jesus and His disciples were doing their everyday-walking around thing they encountered an impossible situation; a man who had been blind from birth. Here is how discipleship played out in this unscheduled seemingly random encounter….

In the course of their conversation the perceived cause and effect of this man’s circumstance comes up. The disciples, to a man, trace this poor beggar’s curse of blindness to his sins or that of his parents. Jesus chided them and said they were missing it. He informed them that illness was not a sin problem and that there were no humans to blame.  Jesus implied their wrong thinking would lead them to wrong decisions. [If you want to explore this story in greater depth, you can go to the archives of MwM and check out; Listening To God (Saturday) – 2 Chronicles 7:11-22.]

Jesus had brought them to a fork in the road. One sign pointed to the left; it said, “Blame It on Man’s Fallen Nature”. The sign that pointed to the right said, “What God Can Do”. This intersection was further complicated because there was another fork whose signage read “Somebody Else’s Problem”.

We may not always be conscious of it, but I believe, in light of God’s intimate awareness and involvement in our lives, discipleship is always underway, or at least it can be if we have ears to hear. Again, whether we are conscious of it or not, I believe we each are having a conversation with God. I believe that He sees to it that we will always be encountering impossible situations and that in each one of them, we will be asked to make a decision. So let’s review 4 principles  of discipleship our passage has flushed out;

1) God’s is intimately involved in the ordinary every day stuff of our lives.

2) Better listening will permit us to join the conversation.

3) God is inviting us to intentionally engage in our personal Missions Impossible.

4) It is Father’s way to bring us to crossroads where our decisions are our responses to Jesus as Lord (aka; discipleship)

There is another important word from our passage that should greatly impact the choices we make. It is the word “we“.  

We need to be energetically at work for the One who sent me here, working while the sun shines. When night falls, the workday is over. For as long as I am in the world, there is plenty of light. I am the world’s Light. (John 9 MSG)

Jesus’ use of “we” effectively rules out the Somebody-Else’s-Problem trail. He was trying to say that blindness and human suffering are our problems, that dealing with them is the work of Jesus and his disciples. I think it would be fair to say that Jesus’ life was our illustration of what it looks like when “Thy will is being done on earth as it is in heaven”. In other words healing is a work of God that we need to be energetically pursuing while the sun is still shining. Jesus is telling us that He and His disciples (which can include us) are living within a window of opportunity….

  ….while the sun shines. When night falls, the workday is over. For as long as I am in the world, there is plenty of light. I am the world’s Light. (John 9 MSG)

I see many who have taken the trail which limits the Holy Spirit’s contribution to being the interpreter of scripture. This path applies scriptural principles to the fallen nature of man as if this is the primary business of God in the earth. While I love and respect this part of the family, I can’t follow this trail because Jesus said that it would be expedient that He send us a Helper when there was, as yet, no Bible. So the Spirit’s helping must have been in the doing of all the works that Jesus had been demonstrating – not just sitting around waiting until the canon of scripture was formed so he could finally get to work interpreting it.

Is it possible that redemptive-providence is hidden in the seemingly random circumstances of our lives? Is it possible that where evil and impossible circumstances seem to abound that grace and redemption are actually present in the impossibility-potential of the circumstance in some kind of all-the- more capacity?

When will our night fall? Will it be as we draw our last earthly breath or when we are snatched up in to the air in a rapture? We don’t know the answer but Jesus’ point is that as long as we are drawing breath, our window of opportunity to do the works of God is still open. The Holy Spirit who is remaining in the world is the thing that is providing plenty of light for the remaining works we have been called to engage in.  He is the world’s light and He resides in us.  Let the work continue.

Father, help us to see our destinies as Your Kingdom agents called to reconcile this world to Your rule. Help us to expose the bullying administrators of darkness who press their lie upon us that all things are impossible with You instead of possible. Help us to see the lies beneath futility, bad theology and all hopeless circumstances.  Help us to be those who energetically work the works of God. Thank you for sending us the Spirit to work in and through us while the sun is still shining. Amen.

 

 

 

 

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