2022-11-15 A Meditation on Inherited Sins

“And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.” (Jn 9:2–3 ESV)

All life revolves around a few decisions we make. For example, the unspoken divisions that linger in the air, do plague our front-on efforts to heal via friendship. It is something inherited, prior to our arrival in the person’s life.

Faith repeats a narrative to us each and every time we come solemnly before the Lord in liturgy, in prayer, in communal worship. And the “stickiness” of this narrative is then encountered in the fast-paced highways and byways of life: we have loaned our heart of hearts to a time of hearing; now we question whether all will, elastic-like, resort to former ways. Or do we, in that vast and unspoken battle, impart some wish of how things should be, some “dying” last will and testament?

“Dying”, because our inner constitution—it isn’t that it hasn’t the strength; on the contrary—isn’t primed to recognize what lies before us as hazardous material, as no-man’s-land, as a gully of enmities and hatreds and standoffishness and selfish thoughts. It isn’t primed to go full-on defense mode, alongside that positive outlay, that kind word to the beggar, that astute and non-patronizing faith we now know to hold in others who surround us.

Some care for the systematically-oppressed? Some affinity for the one called names? Some sympathy for the self-assertions of one who, truth be told, is not much to look at? They are in their heart of hearts not accepting what life has dished out. They are an individual, one who yells and cries and screams and gets frustrated, and blames us who are there innocently-enough to bless them and be a passive source of support. Only, are we making the right decision in this regard? Ought we not to be even more sympathetic, when they show us ill constituted thoughts and demands? Yes, as listeners to a Christian narrative, we see each and every one in our midst as a prophet of good and evil, as one perhaps with something to teach us, as an insight into what makes we ourselves tick.

So that self-effacing, even accidental, decision we make, does bear gold and fruit and heavenly prospects. Yet, it was not according to “what is fair”; not according to “what they deserve”, not according to “what I see before me”. See before you, before us, the deep fault lines and really quite acceptable notions of cross-racial or cross-ethnic or cross-social-class encounters, and do humble yourself, ourself, a third and fourth and umpteenth time, if it is necessary.

One traumatic experience can at sad times withstand a hundred healing, directed, and purposeful “friendlinesses”. Yet, also, the Spirit works in us—these are the unintentional decisions made—at times to show us the illuminated skeleton key. So we observe, calling our observations Christian; calling them things that are in service to our soul and our people; calling them unthought out and not cynically planned, but effective unto the salvation of souls. Even that soul that is polite and formal in formal encounters, but who screams up a storm of suspicions and hate whilst out of reach but just in earshot. That is us, who have not yet coped with our frustration with any “God”; who think it an easy thing to “do worship”; to “fellowship”; yet that is a front; it is simulated goodness, whilst we need our hour in the prayer closet, railing against the heavens, achieving unto some playing field wherein we are calm and peace, weaned, quieted, reassured, assessed and found to be innocent, where the Blood of the Lamb has had its proper work.