“Opportunities”
By Rev. Michael Stonhouse
Meditation – Monday, April 7, 2025
John 9: 1-17 (Forward, p. 68) CEV p. 1113
Today’s Scripture opens with the age-old question, one that has bedeviled countless people over the ages and even now still haunts us. It is the question we ask ourselves, and others: ‘what have I (what have they) done to deserve this?’ It is the kind of thinking to posits a direct cause and effect to everything that happens here on earth. A country has a terrorist attack, or is invaded, or suffers a devastating trade war and immediately some will jump to the conclusion that that country was somehow at fault. Or a person suddenly is found to have a rapidly progressing cancer or a serious heart issue, and some people will again ask, ‘what did that person do to bring this on?’ Just as this kind of thinking is still prevalent today, it certainly was in Jesus’ day. Back then any kind of illness or calamity was seen as a direct consequence of sin, as we see in today’s passage, verse 2, with the man who was born blind. (See also Luke 13:1-5, which dealt with the collapse of the Tower of Siloam and Herod’s massacre of some Galilean pilgrims).
The disciples ask whether this man’s blindness was caused either by his sin or his parents’ sin, and Jesus basically says, ‘neither.’ But then He adds something very, very significant: He basically says that this calamity will provide an opportunity, an opportunity to see God at work: “But because of his blindness, you will see God work a miracle for him” (v. 3).
I would like to think that there is something of a lesson here, a two-pronged lesson. Firstly, the world’s calamities, whether writ large as on a national or international stage, or more locally and personally, can be the setting for God to work in the ways that only He can. And maybe the secret here is our concerted prayers, our deliberate asking Him for help. It is one possible opportunity. The other opportunity is for us, you and I, to do something. We can be God’s instruments in this world, His hands and feet and voices. Opportunities abound, if only we have the eyes to see them.
The sad thing in today’s Scripture account is that while the man born blind ultimately did see and even saw God’s salvation in Jesus Christ and decided to follow Him, the authorities around Jesus did not. The blind man grasped the opportunity, while those ‘seeing people’ did not, and so lost out, lost out bigtime. Let us then, you and I, be constantly on the alert for whatever opportunities God might bring our way. Thanks be to God.
Forward notes: “Jesus answered, ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him’” (verse 3).
“Jesus makes it very clear in this healing that we are not disabled or ill because of the sins of our mothers or fathers or because we haven’t been prayerful or faithful enough. And yet we live in a world where many Christians believe the opposite. How have we strayed so far?
“In this passage, Jesus tells and shows us that with God, all things are possible, even when things have fallen apart. And, this is not because of human error or fallibility, but because God wants to reveal God’s self so we can know and love God more and more.
“Today, I will gather with friends to ‘walk a beloved sister home.’ We will pray and give thanks for her life, and then we will say goodbye. Her death is tragic, but God will be in the midst of this holy gathering to show us the power of God’s mighty works. We will celebrate her life and God’s presence on her journey to life eternal.”
Moving Forward: “Where have God’s works been revealed to you in pain, sadness, illness, or tragedy?”
A concluding note: amid all this, we must not fall into the opposite error or danger, that of saying there never is a cause and effect, that none of the terrible things that happen are not caused or brought on by something that we do or say. We need to remember that there is an accountability, a responsibility, written into the fabric of our world, and that while it is in not rigid and automatic, it is still there.