Lent 4

May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

SEASON: Lent 4
PROPER: A
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: March 14,1999

TEXT: John 9:1-38 - Jesus heals a blind man, who believes and worships him.
Blind man says: "One thing I do know, that though I was blind now I see." . . . . . . . "Lord I believe." And he worshiped him.

ISSUE: The story of the healing of the blindman is a rich and insightful story in John. It tells of the new creation that Jesus brings, of new light for the darkness. It is hard for many to believe and trust. They are engrained in old beliefs of sin and alienation. Christ brings the light and new ways of seeing the Glory of God revealed as one who loves and restores, and gives new enlightenment. Can we also claim it?
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When we read this account in the Gospel of John of Jesus healing the blindman, you cannot but help feel a tremendous tension going on. We know that John's Gospel was written at a time when many early Christians, that is, people who were trusting that Jesus was the Messiah, were being excommunicated from the synagogues and shunned. In this passage you have the presentation of the healing of a blindman by Jesus. Then you have a long story of tension with the beliefs of the time: A blind man must be a sinner with a darkened heart. A man born blind must have had parents who were sinners causing the blindness of the child. There is argument among the Jews with the blindman and the parents over the healing. How could Jesus, whom then believed to be a sinner, have performed the healing. The parents or the blindman must be lying. Are they even sure of his identity. Is he the blindman, or just someone who looks like the blindman. The parents fear for what they say that they might be tossed out of the synagogue. There is in the story a significant reflection of the enormous tension of the early Christians with their Jewish authorities and their Jewish background. There is also like to be some tension over what various Christians themselves thought about who Jesus was.
In the tension of the story there is a struggle to know the truth. The truth did not always come easy in these times. People lied a lot. The tended to keep secrets. Lying and deception were a significant part of the Mediterranean culture which was very public. But in order to maintain your place and especially your honor, you didn't want people to know things about your private life that might jeopardize your honor and status. Thus, the blindman and his family are suspect, and you have this all out effort to get at the truth of what has happened and what is going on.
John tells the story in the midst of all the tension to ultimately reveal a new truth. It begins with the disciples asking Jesus who see the blindman who sinned, the blindman or his parents. It was the common belief of the time that if you were afflicted it must be the result of some sin. If you were born blind, it could be your parents, because it was believed that the sins of the fathers were passed on from one generation to another. It was a punishment reward system. But Jesus replies to this concept that neither the man nor his parents sinned, but the man is blind that the world might see the Glory of God. They are asking the wrong question. The issue is not who sinned, but what is God doing in his creation? God seeks to heal and make a new creation.
Understand that blindmen were seen pretty much as outcasts. They were not allowed to live in the city. They could only come into the city to beg during the day. They were degraded by virtue of this illness. Jesus, who is a folk healer does what folk healers do; he puts dirt mixed with spittle on the mans blind eyes. Spittle was believed to have healing cleansing power. (Actually we believe this today too. What mother has not spit on her handkerchief and cleaned and healed a distraught child?) He then sends the blindman to the pool of Siloam which means sent, as Jesus was "sent" to the world, and tells the man to wash in the pool. What you have here is a creation story. The man is a new creation, just as Adam was molded with the clay and scooped up out of the water to be the first man of God's creation. Here is a blind, rejected and degraded man spit upon spittle and mud and raised up out of the pool. He has his sight. He is healed. He is restored to community. He is enlightened. He is no longer sinner but redeemed. He's a new creation, and all this through Jesus Christ, the one who has come to give Light and Life, which light is for the world.
Now inspite of this wonderful gift that has been given, many people can't trust it or grasp it, understand it or "SEE". its significance. The world often remains blind to what God is doing in Christ. The arguments begin. He did this healing on the sabbath, which was against the law. You don't work, or even heal on the sabbath. The healing challenges the system of bad people being condemned sinners, often beyond redemption. Then you get the arguments and the tensions. Is this really the same man who was born blind? Is Jesus really a healer? Is Jesus the Messiah of God? The parents who are challenged are afraid of what to say for fear of their expulsion from the synagogue which would have effected every aspect of their lives, not just their religious life. They would have been shunned with no business connections for their livelihood. Expulsion or excommunication who have been very dramatic in that time.
Then too there is the tension between the healed blindman and the authorities. They challenge his identity and the witness he makes to having been blind and new seeing. They try to get him to "Give Glory to God" and deny what Jesus the healer did for him. The confront him with his heritage: they are the disciples of Moses. Would he deny his heritage? But the healed blindman speaks courageously. He stands up to his challengers: This healer could not do the things that he does unless he is from God. "Lord I believe" he concludes and worships Jesus. Courageous belief is what John's Gospel seeks so desperately to convey. He is a new and healed creation who has been given not just his physical sight but his enlightenment, his spiritual vision to see the Glory of God, to see the Light of God revealed in Christ Jesus the Lord.
The message here in this story is that no one is so truly blind as those who cannot believe, trust, have confidence, and courageously stand up for the fact that Jesus is Lord, that he reveals in the flesh the renewing health and beauty of the God of forgiveness and love.
We all know well what it is like to be in the dark. In the darkness we stump our toes on the bed boast. As children the shadows in the dark took on some frightening, if not terrifying images. As children and as adults as well, bad dreams come in the darkness. If you have ever done any spelunking, caving, and once deep in a cave you turned out the lights, as guides often do in commercial caves, you know without light there is no way out in a life time. We know darkness is dangerous. As a matter of fact without light except for a small number of species essentially nothing lives, and certainly not human beings. We need light to live.
We also know that in a metaphorical sense humanity has had periods of stumbling in the darkness. We refer to them sometimes as the dark ages. These were times of widespread ignorance. There have been in our history dark times, when we were involved in civil war, in World War, and the Vietnam war. Often prejudices and human hatred and distrust were at the root of these difficult times. We may even wonder why it is that the peoples in Bosnia and the Bulkan States, why the leadership of Iraq cannot see that continued hatreds and prejudices compound the darkness and the dismal futures of it people.
We experience dark and dismal times in our own personal lives in our relationship with one another. There are times when we so desperately need healing, rejuvenation, new enlightment, new engergies to restore us. Many people for the the life of themselves cannot break free from the addictions to drugs and alcohol that creates such terrible darkness in their lives. Sometimes we are foolish and do really dumb things like people fumbling in the dark, too dumb to turn on the light. Sometimes we cannot allow ourselves to see the light of day for the problems and the anxieties that surround us and in which we become absorbed.
According to John's Gospel, the light was coming into the world, and the world often rejected it. But to those who did receive the light, the light of Christ, he gave them power to become his children, restored, hopeful, forgiven and loved. Jesus came to the blindman, to all who are blind, to give them the Light, the Light of God that reveals truth, love, forgiveness, hope, the Kingdom of everlasting life. John's Gospel account calls people to believe, to trust, to be open to the light that will heal and change their lives. He calls them and us to courageous witness to our faith.