His disciples saw the man born blind and asked Jesus, “Who sinned, this man or his parents?” Do you notice that the idea that both parties could be innocent was not one of the options? Everybody knows that people get what they deserve. But, then what do we do when bad things happen to people, sometimes to good people, or innocent people? How do we reconcile this to the idea of a just and good God? This question has been around for a long time. In fact, that’s the theme of Job, one of the oldest books in the Bible. What answer do we have when tragedy strikes us or our loved ones, or people we know? Why did over eleven thousand people die in the earthquake and tsunami in Japan? Some of these people were perhaps bad people but how many of these were just children? And although Japan is largely a non-Christian country surely there were some Christians who perished in this disaster as well.
We can understand when people in war zones die—we don’t necessarily like it, but it is easier to understand. But when the children and others who are just minding their own business suddenly and without warning are killed by catastrophe, well, that’s something else entirely, isn’t it? What about when good people get cancer or some other disease, or what about when people die in an accident? Why do bad things happen to people? Jesus doesn’t skirt this question and talks of it 3 times in the Gospels. Let’s look at these three accounts now.
In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus says that neither this man nor his parents sinned. It wasn’t their fault. The parents had not been bad—the son had not been bad. He was born blind not through anybody’s fault. This fellow has been blind for all his childhood years and some years of his adulthood years so that the works of God might be displayed in him. So this is one answer for pain and suffering. So that God’s works can be shown through the situation. Sometimes we see God’s works through mighty miracles of healing like this one. As this man said to the Pharisees who were questioning him, “Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind.” It was a mighty act of God to heal this man. It could not be explained any other way than that God intervened and healed this man. Other times, however, we see God’s mighty works evident in the lives of the people who have to suffer. Jesus, you recall, suffered and died on the cross so that God would be glorified. He had to undergo the pain and humiliation of the cross before he was raised and glorified to the praise of glory of God. The Apostle Paul apparently had a disfiguring eye malady and Paul asked God to heal him. God told him, “No, my grace is enough for you, for my power is made complete in your weakness.” It is when I am weak that I have to depend upon God. Some of us are familiar with the story of Joni Erickson Tada who broke her neck in a diving accident and was paralyzed. God did not heal her even though many people prayed for her to be healed. But God has used her life through her suffering as an example of a person who has learned to trust in and on God through times of unbelievable hardship. So in times when bad things happen, first we ask for God to intervene and heal and help. But if He doesn’t, we can see the works of God, His Grace, shining through people in their sufferings like Jesus, like the Apostle Paul, and like Joni Erickson and others we may know personally who have suffered, who are suffering but God gives them enough grace to deal with it.
Let’s look at another passage that deals with this question. In Luke chapter 13 we read that Jesus was told of the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And Jesus answered, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered thus? 3 I tell you, No; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish. 4 Or those eighteen upon whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, No; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.” Pilate had some men of Galilee killed even while they were making their sacrifices to God at the temple. The consensus was that those Galileans must have been pretty bad sinners if that happened to them. And then, another tragedy, a tower collapsed and killed 18 people. Did God allow those people to die because they were more sinful than everybody else? That is the conclusion of the people talking to Jesus. But Jesus says that they are looking at it incorrectly. These people who died were no worse sinners than they were. The bad thing about their deaths was that they weren’t prepared to die. Therefore Jesus exhorted the people talking to him to repent—to be ready to face God, because we all are going to die. We all live in uncertain times. The tragedy is not death, that wasn’t the bad thing. After all each of us every day, hour by hour, minute by minute step closer to leaving our mortal bodies. When is not the issue in light of eternity. The bad thing is about not being ready to face God, so repent, Jesus says and get your life in order so you are ready to face God at any time.
The answer we get here is not an answer that is particularly comfortable one. We don’t know why the people died in Japan, for example. We are not told why; we are told here that it is not because they are worse sinners than we are. But in situations like this we are to realize anew that our lives are fragile and unpredictable as theirs were. Therefore Jesus tells us to be ready.
Then we have a third example in the Gospels that deals with this question of why bad things happen. It is found in John chapter five. A man has been an invalid and for 38 years has sat around the pool at the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem. Then Jesus walks up and heals him. Later in the day after the healing, Jesus finds the man in the temple and tells him, “See you are healed, sin no more so that nothing worse happens to you.” In this context, sin has been a factor in causing the illness. In this situation it was a self-inflicted wound so to speak. So here, had his disciples asked, “Who sinned, this man or his parents?” Jesus would have said, “This man.” This is an answer we understand. People do bad things and bad things happen to them. In fact, we are strangely comforted with this type of answer. It fits with our general world view. We reap what we sow, we get what we deserve.
But as we have seen, it doesn’t work out that way many times. Sometimes people seem to get what they don’t deserve. Sometimes it seems as though people get a really bad deal. There is one more thing in this matter we need to consider that is really important. This world is not all there is. As Christians we believe that there is more to life than what we can see here and now. As Paul writes in Romans chapter eight,” I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” This world is not our home. What happens here is not the end of the story. But while we are here we need to remember what Paul writes at the end of chapter 8. And who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, in other words very hard and difficult times, shall persecution or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword. Do any of these things separate us from the love of Christ? No, and it goes on to say that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord so that in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
So in this Lenten season, let us remember. Let us be ready. Bad things happen. Bad things will continue to happen to even very good people – people like you and me. But, even in the midst of bad things happening as followers of Jesus we are not separated from the love of Christ and we can be more than conquerors through Jesus who loves us.
