Across the way from the soon-to-be-demolished Cole Hall on the campus of Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, six foam-core crosses were erected on what came to be known as Snow Hill. Five crosses were inscribed with the names of the
students killed during the Valentine’s Day shootings: Gayle, Catalina, Juliana,
Ryanne and Daniel; a sixth was turned the other way, its stark white façade
blank. Like the man whose suicide it commemorated, its presence offered
neither answers nor explanations.

But even that much ambiguity was too painful a burden for the violated university community to bear: within a day or so, the sixth cross was taken down; an action which honored the justified raw anger of the families and friends of the shooter’s victims. . .but left unaddressed the problem and the possibility presented by the life and death of Stephen Kazmierczak, the shooter.

Who
sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? In the world of
Jesus, the question was not as bad as it sounds. Maybe the disciple
who asked hoped there would be, for such an apparently difficult reality, a
somehow simple answer, hidden in the knowledge and the mercy of God. Like most
of us, the disciples apparently believed that their ability to tolerate
suffering would be enhanced by understanding the cause of suffering; by
being able to assign blame, thus escaping the awful randomness of bad things
happening to good people, and good things happening to bad. They also
believed, apparently, that Jesus—or the God in him—both had an answer,
and, more importantly, might be willing to share it.

Wouldn’t
that have been something? For God to tell us why? For Jesus
just to have answered the question for once—the man; or his folks; it
doesn’t really matter which one is guilty; just that someone is—so that the
painful scandal of God’s defenseless tolerance of undeserved suffering could be
laid to rest at last.

This
Sunday, we have achieved the pinnacle of the mountain of the Lenten season, and
begin our descent into the cold, dark days of the passion and death of Jesus.
In recognition of the fact that the forty days of Lent was a long time to be fasting, praying, and reflecting on sober spiritual themes in our lives,
the ancient church designated this fourth Sunday of Lent as “Laetare Sunday,” a
Sunday to give thanks for what is good in life, shifting our focus away from hard
times and hard work.

In token
of that spiritual coffee break, the colors for the day were lightened from
purple to a more cheerful rose, and folks who were denied meat and treats were
permitted, just for the day, to go back to their usual habits. God knows we
need such moments of light and ease, rest in the wilderness, so that spirits
are not broken by troubles we can neither resolve nor ignore. In a way, the
removal of the sixth cross—a painful reminder that one of those who died stole
the lives of five other beloved children—could be a kind of lataere, an
easing away from the burden of understanding or forgiving; an act of forgetful
mercy to help survivors make it through the long and sleepless night.

But there
are three hard weeks left before the dawn of Easter comes. And the problem of
the sixth cross and the question of the man born blind are burdens that must
eventually be picked up again and carried by the church; if need be, all the
way to the cross, that ultimate symbol of God’s heartbreaking failure to save
in the short run.

The
healing of the man born blind confronted neighbors, family, and religious
leaders with an undesirable gift. It was more than the restoration of sight to
a blind man: It restored an alienated, isolated loner to a place of dignity. It
turned a silent, dependent victim into an eloquent, self-determining,
challenging equal. It healed long-standing ruptures in the neighborhood, in
the blind man’s family, in the faith community, without even bothering to
ask whether those who were separated wanted to be reconciled. What Jesus
did was an act of forgiveness so radical its giver failed to even ask the
question whose fault is it, anyway? And some people got more than they
hoped for; and others, less than they believed they deserved.

The story
in the gospel of John invites us to consider how it might have been different
for the man born blind, his family, and his community of faith if, instead of
working so hard to make God make things make sense, they had just gotten down
into the mud with Jesus, and stayed there without anxiety or expectation until
the unfolding possibility of a miracle of grace let them all get up and move
on.

How it
might be different for us if, instead of trying to see it all and know it all,
we let the blind lead the blind, and waded into the work of our complicated
lives together, with hope and with patience. When the disciples asked “who
sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” they got far more
than they deserved with Jesus’ answer—but could they see it?

No
one sinned, said
Jesus, but that the work of God might be made visible. No one sinned.
When these things happen—to a man born blind, to a young man born angry, to a
mother, a child, a family, a father, or a friend—when these things happen to us
and to others, there is no easy answer, but there is a simple solution: don’t
run away, but get down in the mud, with whomever in your world is brave enough
and messy enough to join you; and make a healing paste of the dry dust and the
dirt of your life…apply it to your own eyes, and try to see the world a little
differently. No one sinned—but, let the work of God be manifest. Where
is God, or where can God be, through you, in the life of a crying child, an
angry town, a disgruntled worker, a hopeless situation, an answerless
question? What can you make in the mud that is beautiful, healing,
transforming, or even merely useful?

Lent
is about being in our lives—and in our lives’ questions—for the long haul.
The interminable story, the twisting plot, the lack of clean resolution, the
sudden, blinding experience of grace that somehow points us in a new and
unforeseen direction without ever, quite, wrapping up our loose ends. We don’t
control how God shows up to save us, or someone else. We don’t get to have all
the answers. But we do get to choose whether we are willing to receive our
sight, and what we will do with the knowledge that seeing gives us. Where we
want to show forth God’s mercy and love, and to Whom we wish to give our
ultimate allegiance: God, or someone, something with far less power to help us
see.

There
is a place still on the campus of Northern Illinois University where six
crosses stand: they are draped in Lenten purple and red, and like their
neighbors on Snow Hill, surrounded by flowers and gifts. None of the six
crosses bear names; all of the six are covered with words of sorrow,
compassion, forgiveness, love, and hope. Ryanne, Gloria, Juliana, Catalina,
Daniel AND Stephen are being remembered there; six children of God whose lives
were ended by violence, and whose souls are in God’s keeping. It will, I hope,
surprise no one in this sanctuary to learn that the place of six crosses, and
the place of prayer where six names are always spoken, is the Church—the brave
and fragile community of the baffled, the broken, and the believers: the
Church that Jesus is still making, here and now, with his body.

Amen.