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Morning Meditation
September 3, 2026
Reading: John 9:1-5
As Jesus walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
Meditation by Peter Vanderveen
Have you ever had the thought, when you’ve had to face some sudden, difficult situation, that it must have been the result of something else that you already felt guilty about? A voice in our heads often pipes up: “If only you hadn’t done that, then this wouldn’t have happened.” There is, we trust – or we fear – some divine abacus that keeps track of our actions and that subtly pays us back for the wrongs we commit. It’s hard to erase this impulse from our consciences. And it’s this that drives the masterful story of the blind man in John’s gospel (it is the whole of the ninth chapter): “who sinned?” the disciples ask. Someone must be to blame for this tragedy. Someone is being punished now for something that was previously done.
In the Biblical world, sin was a causal thread. Somehow, in some way, bad things happened to bad people. This was what they deserved. God would see to it. This conviction gave people who thought well of themselves the confidence that nothing evil would befall them. It also gave them opportunity to stand over and above others with an air of accusation. In the book of Job, this was the source of Job’s furious indignation: he was certain that he was innocent of any evil, so how could such an array of personal calamities come to afflict him? God himself was proving unjust.
Jesus’ response to his disciples was that they were looking in entirely the wrong direction. They wanted to locate a cause, looking backward. Jesus gave them a redemption, looking forward. This one man’s blindness was not a punishment; it was, rather, a means by which God could show all of us who God is. The man who was blind rejoiced when he was given his sight (and note: he didn’t immediately turn to complaining about his suffering up to that point – for it no longer mattered). Those around him tried to shut down his rejoicing, insisting, instead, that there must be, somewhere, more blame to be dished out. They proved to be blind themselves to the goodness that Jesus brought and represented – the negation of sin.
We no longer give sin the same power as it once had, but, interestingly, we have lost none of our need to find causal explanations. Now we trace backwards to find specific conditions that, we posit, determine or explain the troubles we face. We give all sorts of names to complexes of biological, chemical, and experiential roots that, naturally, if not inevitably, provide reasons or excuses for what we may suffer now. It provides us a kind of negative freedom – we can’t be held at fault for what has been forced upon us.
True, but this shouldn’t preclude the astonishing positive freedom that Jesus announced – a redemption that grants us the possibility of leaving the past behind, not having to resolve it, but realizing, instead, a whole new future where we are not trapped by endless causation. One term for this is forgiveness. Another is salvation. It is a promise that overcomes the past, freeing us from having to untangle it, (which simply can’t be done anyway).
So much of our cultural expression now is characterized by the anger and resentment that results from looking backward without the release of a redemptive future. Faith, however, allows us to turn dramatically, looking forward, to bring hope and reconciliation where, before, it couldn’t be imagined – or seen.
Prayer
Father in Heaven! Hold not our sins up against us
But hold us up against our sins
So that the thought of Thee
When it wakens in our soul
Should not remind us of what we have committed
But of what Thou didst forgive
Not of how we went astray
But of how Thou didst save us.
Kierkegaard
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