Although I will still be with you next week, this is my last sermon, my swan song, so to speak. What I want to say to you will sound familiar and I promise I'm not just being lazy and pulling an old sermon out of the drawer. This is the message I want to leave you with.

It seems that Jesus had sent His disciples out ahead of Him with the idea that they were to try their hands at healing people. And later, He was walking down the road and came across His disciples who had found a man who had been born blind from birth. With great frustration, Jesus noticed that His disciples were ignoring the blind man and were, instead, having a heated argument.

Think with me about this, for a moment. Were the future leaders of the church arguing over who was going to do the healing? Were they arguing over how they were going to do the healing? No. They were disputing among themselves over whose fault it was that the man was born blind. It's so ironic, when you think about what the Lord saw. There were the disciples, who'd been given healing powers, in the heat of an argument. And there, sitting on the ground nearby was the man … unhealed.

Maybe Lord rolled His eyes and wondered if He should have chosen others to be His followers.

So He healed the man Himself. And made the point to His disciples that He'd not sent them to find fault in other people. He'd sent them to heal.

I'm soon going to be working for the Salvation Army. I used to work with them when I ran an urban ministry in Florida. I remember the Salvation Army workers and me getting a lot of flack from people who were focused on blaming the poor for being poor.

"Why are you feeding them?" I'd be asked. "It's their fault they're poor. You're just encouraging them to stay poor when you feed them."

Many many times I'd remind people of the message of John 9, that Jesus sent us out into the world to heal people, not blame them. Feeding poor people may not solve the root causes of poverty. But blaming the poor for being poor doesn't solve anything. In fact, blaming people makes things worse. Some of the poor may become dispirited and give up believing they can pull themselves out of poverty.

We are sent to encourage, not discourage. We are sent to find solutions, not make condemnations. We are sent to heal.

So Jesus healed the blind man … and things really began to spin out of control!

The Pharisees refused to believe that the healing had taken place because it didn't fit with their narrow views. In their view, the blind man was being punished by God for being a sinner. And if the blind man was innocent, then his parents must have been sinners.

I used to be the regional director of the New York City Easter Seal Society and I can tell you that these prejudices are still with us today. Blind or otherwise disabled persons often question their own righteousness. They must, they think, have done something wrong to be punished like this.

Wrong! These things happen to saints and sinners alike! As the Bible says, "the rain falls on the just and the unjust." It's not for us to blame ourselves or others for disabilities.

Our injured service persons returning from Iraq sometimes start thinking that they must have done something wrong in the past – something that made God explode the IED that took their legs. No, I tell them. IED's explode because our enemies detonate them. The line of reasoning that you are following is a slippery slope that leads to mental deterioration. It's not for us to blame ourselves.

Parents often blame themselves for everything that happens to their children. I was at the Ocean County Detention Center a few weeks ago. And there were several sets of parents there whose children had been jailed on drug charges. All of them felt guilty about what had happened.

And while parents can always think of some aspect of their parenting that they might have done differently, it does little good to wallow in guilt or blame if your kids get in trouble. Your job as a parent at that moment is to find the right sequence of choices, the right path, so to speak, that will lead to your child's healing.

We are sent to try to heal … even though there are times when our attempts at healing seem futile . I've prayed at the bedsides of many sick and dying people over the years. Sometimes people get better – but not always.

People sometimes get angry at God when their loved ones die. They angrily tell me that they want me to explain why a good God would let bad things happen. I've had my own losses in the last five years – both my parents since starting to work here. So I understand the anger that people can feel in the face of great inexplicable loss.

The key word here is "inexplicable." There is no answer to the question, "why does a good God let bad things happen?" Blaming God is not an answer. Blaming or denying God does not open up a pathway through the grief-filled "valley of the shadow of death."

But healing does.

In the 23rd Psalm, the Lord is likened to the shepherd who provides for others – who protects others, feeds others, comforts others in their distress and leads others to paths of righteousness. The world of the shepherd is still filled with danger and injury. But the shepherd is there to heal His sheep.

The great difference between the shepherd of the 23rd Psalm and Jesus, is that He invites His followers to become healing shepherds as well. John's main purpose in today's gospel is to give examples of followers who had to choose healing over blaming: His disciples with the blind man, and then Mary and Martha with Lazarus.

Martha and Mary were overcome with grief and blamed Jesus for the death of their brother. Before He could get to the gates of the town, he was met by Martha, one of His devoted followers, who accused Him of not being nearby when she needed Him.

It's easy to imagine the accusation. "Where were you when my brother was sick? He was your friend. I thought my sister Mary and I were your friends. Where were you? Don't you care about us? Your place is here, with us, taking care of us."

Jesus wept, but didn't let his grief stop Him from healing. He didn't blame God. He could have blamed Mary, Martha, and maybe even Lazarus for having committed a sin that lead to his death. But Jesus was a healer, not a blamer.

We who have been sent out into the world to heal, must sometimes do so in the midst of blame and sometimes while our own tears are still wet in our eyes.

Jesus brought Lazarus back to life.

But I have a question about Lazarus, though. Where is he today? And where is the blind man today?

Think about this for a moment. Where is the blind man? His eyes, quickened by the power of God, eventually dimmed and saw no more – this side of glory.

Physical healing, even healing done by the hand of God, is temporary because everyone dies, everyone goes to the spirit world.

And Lazarus, where is he? Unless he has somehow lived quietly among us all these years, his eyes too have dimmed and closed. Even the gift of life from the hand of God is temporary.

So what's the point? Why did Jesus heal? Why did He send his disciples out to heal? Why does He send us out to heal?

He healed because He could heal. We can't bring people back to life. But there are so many healing acts that we can perform, from first aid to kind words, we nonetheless have great healing powers. It is an act of great blindness for us to accuse God of not healing when we are able to do so much ourselves. THAT is what so frustrated Jesus about His disciples, that morning. He knew what his disciples were capable of doing. And he knew what His disciples would become, what they would "grow into" if they became healers.

He knew that every opportunity to heal is an opportunity to grow – grow as a person, grow in one's relationships with others, and grow in one's relationship with God.

That growth is something that you take with you to glory. And that's a point that John tries to make in his depiction of Lazarus on the morning that Jesus raised him.

Think of Lazarus as John describes him. He was wrapped head-to-toe. He smelled badly. And he was probably disoriented – notice he doesn't say anything.

Compare that with the descriptions of Jesus on Easter morning. He, witnesses tell us, has left his burial clothes behind..He is a vision who is untethered by space and time. He knows where he is. He appears and disappears at will, not always at first recognized, even by those who knew Him well.

And we are told that we will be like Him – not Lazarus – on the other side. We will not be people of the grave, but people who have been given new bodies, the kind that will not, like Lazarus, be fated to die again. We will be healed – with no further need of healing. He will take us with Him to the place that He has prepared for us.

In the meantime, we are to live as those who have no fear of death. And we are to heal as if we believed that we and the people around us are going to live forever.

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