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The Fourth Sunday In Lent Wow, that was another long one, wasn’t it? One of the things our new revised common lectionary has done for us, especially noticeable last week and this week is to give us complete gospel passages. Instead of snippets, instead of a reading in which editors have carefully selected the portions of the story that are surest to get the point across and omitted the rest, we get the whole shebang—in this case the whole of the ninth chapter of John’s gospel, the story of the healing of the blind beggar. As some one who loves scripture, who loves the stories, I’m delighted by this. But as a preacher I have to say that this makes my task both easier and more difficult—easier because we hear the story in a fuller, richer context, but more difficult because there is so much there—how can I possibly do justice to it all? Of course, the simplest thing to do would be to select just one small piece and focus on that. But in today’s gospel the pieces of the story are interwoven in such a way that to focus on just one piece would be to miss the fullness of what is there. And so what I’d like to ask you to do is to walk with me through this story, and as we go along, to pay particular attention to the whole idea of “seeing.” When today’s story begins, Jesus and his disciples are walking through Jerusalem. They’ve already stirred up some controversy there, and Jesus has had some run-ins with the powers-that-be, particularly the Pharisees, religious officials whose particular task it was to ensure that Torah, the law, was properly observed. As Jesus and his friends are walking, they pass by a blind beggar, a man who has been blind from birth. Because physical afflictions were generally held to be the outcome of sin, one of the disciples asks just whose sin it was that caused this blindness—the man’s or his parents’? Jesus replies that it was neither; rather this man’s blindness provided an opportunity for God’s works to be revealed. It’s important to note here that blindness was not understood as some piece of the visual perception system being broken as we might understand it. Rather blindness was seen as the absence of the living light, the fire that emanated from the eyes and allowed one to see the world. And if that light was absent, the person was not thought to be empty but rather to be full of darkness, and darkness was associated with sin and evil. In fact, the blind were often said to “have the evil eye.” So Jesus and the disciples encounter this man who has been blind from birth, this man who lacked light, and after proclaiming, “I am the light of the world,” Jesus goes over to him, spits in the dirt to make mud, puts the mud on the man’s eyes and sends him off to the pool of Siloam to wash, which he did—and lo and behold, he could SEE! Imagine if you will what this must have been like—unlike the protagonists in many of the healing stories, this beggar did not approach Jesus, did not seek him out, did not ask to be healed. Instead Jesus sought him out, told him what to do, and suddenly the man, blind from birth could SEE! Wow. A whole new world was opened up to him. Now something interesting happens. Others in the vicinity notice this man and they wonder, “Isn’t this the man who used to sit and beg?” But they aren’t sure—they don’t fully recognize him—in all the years that he sat begging in their midst they failed to REALLY SEE him. And despite his own insistence that he was the man, they were not convinced and they hauled him off to the Pharisees. Of course the plot thickens here. The Pharisees are concerned because this healing took place on the Sabbath, and it involved work—the making of mud. And one who would do such work on the Sabbath was by definition a sinner, and surely a sinner couldn’t cure a blind man—who was himself a sinner by virtue of his blindness. So just what was going on? Was this man the blind beggar or not? And if he was, how had this happened? Was this character Jesus, the one they’d already tangled with, involved in this? So they called in the man’s parents—“Is this really your son? The one who was blind from birth?” they demanded to know. “And how is it that he can now see?” “Yes, he is our son who was born blind, but you’ll have to ask HIM how he can see—we’re not going to get in the middle of this!” The Pharisees once again call in the man whose vision had been healed and tried to trip him up, tried to get him to acknowledge that the one who had healed him was a sinner. The man, however, turned the tables on the Pharisees, proclaiming to them that indeed, God doesn’t listen to sinners, but God had listened to this man who has done an unprecedented thing—given sight to one who was born blind. The Pharisees of course, still can’t SEE the truth and they send the man away—back to Jesus in fact, who helps the man reaffirm the faith that was awakened in him—now he not only sees the world around him, but he also sees Jesus for who he is—sees and believes. Jesus indeed brought light into the world in a literal and figurative way. This is a great story—a man blind from birth gains sight and comes to see not only the world around him but also Jesus as the messiah, the anointed one. We might stop right there. But this is the gospel of John, and John being the master of double meanings, this story begs for us to dig deeper. This story has a blind beggar as its main protagonist to be sure, but it is full of people who see and yet don’t see. What does it mean to really SEE? And how does the light that Jesus brings into the world illuminate what we see? Often we’re told that seeing is believing. But the people from the beggar’s neighborhood see his healing and can’t even recognize him as the same person. And the Pharisees see his healing and can’t get beyond the sinfulness of breaking the Sabbath. The man’s parents see his healing but still can’t see beyond their own fears. Only the blind beggar, the one who had never seen anything is able to not only see, but also SEE—see Jesus, see what matters, see the light that Jesus brings into the world—and believe. All the rest—his parents, his neighbors, the Pharisees are blind even when they can see—blinded by their fears, their self-absorption, their concern with self-preservation. And what about us? Can we see, really see? Do we see, really see, those around us who are in pain, those who suffering because of poverty, human cruelty, injustice? Or are we blinded by our own instincts to put ourselves first, by our busy-ness and self-absorption? Do we see when God acts in the world, when God’s glory is revealed to us in something miraculous, something unexpected? Or are we blinded by our need to be in control, to master the world around us? Can we see the light of Christ in the world? Even more, can we open our eyes so that that light can shine through us? In just a few more weeks we’ll come here to celebrate Easter—we’ll light the new fire and the paschal candle and we’ll sing about the light of Christ coming into the world. In the meantime, can we identify what it is that blinds us, that prevents us from really seeing—seeing the Christ in others, seeing God in the world. Can we open ourselves to that light of Chirst so that we might say, “I once was lost but now am found, AMEN |
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