Ashes to Beauty
by Frank Schaefer

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Song Link: Beautiful Things


Scripture Reading: John 9:1-9

As he 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...When [Jesus] had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man's eyes, saying to him, "Go, wash in the pool of Siloam." Then he went and washed and came back able to see. The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, "Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?" Some were saying, "It is he." Others were saying, "No, but it is someone like him." He kept saying, "I am the man."
This morning, I want you to put yourself into the shoes of the blind man. Because of his disability in first-century Judea, he didn't have many career choices. His job was to sit in the market place and beg for a few pennies.

Close your eyes with me if you will and let's imagine what his life must have been like for a moment. You sit in the all so familiar dirt once again, you listen to the hustling and bustling of people around you. As you hear people shuffling by you may stretch out your hand and say something like: "Sir, ma'am, can you spare a penny for a blind beggar?"

Suddenly you hear a group of people having a theological discussion about you. Has this man been born blind as punishment for his own sins or his parents' sins. You've heard this discussion before. You want to scream:
"What did my family or I ever do to deserve this?" But you don't dare do that because instinctively...and from experience...you know that this is not a safe thing to do. There could be terrible repercussions.

And then you hear someone spitting. This is unfortunately a sound you hear frequently and sometimes the spit is directed at you. You didn't feel anything wet on your face or hands, but you start wondering if the spit landed on your clothing or maybe this time it missed him, or someone just spat on the ground. You may open your eyes again.

You know, I had my former congregation do the same thing. And then I proceeded with my message talking about how Jesus healed the blind man and how the Pharisees put him on trial because he healed him on the Sabbath. How amazing that Jesus' compassion was so great, he even broke the law to heal this man! Not a bad message, but…..

But when my wife and I talked about the message over Sunday lunch, she had some amazing insights that I completely missed. She said: remember when you had people close their eyes and you asked them to imagine to be the blind person and then you said, he heard someone spitting and how this was not the first time someone spat at him, but this time, it missed him? Yes?

Well, isn't it amazing that Jesus took something that was hurtful to the man--you know--the spitting, and he turned it into his healing? When Brigitte said this, I felt goose bumps all over me. It was one of those spiritual enlightenment moments. I said to her: "Schatz, that never occurred to me. You just found the answer to the question, why did Jesus spit and use his spittle to heal this man. And I have not seen or heard that interpretation anywhere before.

So this morning's message is brought to you by the spiritual insights of your pastor's spouse. I asked her if she wanted to preach this message herself, and her response was an emphatic: NO. So I am preaching it for Brigitte today.

So, Jesus used spit as a means of healing. He took something out of the life of this blind man--a reality that was hurtful--and he turned it into a means of grace, a means of healing! I never understood that. I always thought, that's just gross. Why did Jesus do that?

But there is more; as my wife and I kept talking, she had more to say. Suddenly she made another connection. Think about it, she said, the dirt was another reality of the blind man. He came out into the market place and sat on the ground, in the dirt. The dirt was an every-day reality for the man as he begged for money. The dirt and the spit were the harsh realities in his life. Sitting in the dirt, being at the lowest social rung of society, not being able to perform any other work, but rather to be dependent on asking people for a welfare penny, we cannot possibly imagine how horrible that was.

When Jesus spat on the ground and started to mix it with the dirt, he took this man's two realities of suffering and shame and he transformed those things into a means of healing. Why did he do that? Somehow, we sense that there is some extraordinary significance.

Could it be that there was a message in this action? I believe it. I believe Jesus was saying: I will take all that is hurtful, shameful, sinful, and ugly in your life and will turn it into something joyful, gracious, glorious and beautiful. That's the kind of person Jesus was, and it was his way of teaching us about how loving, how gracious and how amazing our God is.

Jesus himself took on the dirt of the whole world when he hung on that cross. Jesus himself took the symbol of the ultimate punishment, suffering and death and turned it into the symbol of new life--the symbol of the cross. You know, when people in Jesus' time though of the cross, they were disgusted; they didn't even want to think about it. It'd be like us thinking of an electric chair. Execution on the cross was the most painful, slow, and shameful death imaginable. Jesus took all the things that were associated with that cross--the guilt, the sin, the shame and the suffering and he turned it into a symbol of forgiveness, healing and victory. Amen.