FOURTH SUNDAY OF LENT YEAR A

Mary Holmen

 Ephesians 5:8-14, John 9:1-41

Jesus said, “I am the light of the world; whoever follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life.”

We can read this story on three levels – the physical, the theological, and the spiritual.

On the physical level, John actually pays relatively little attention to the healing of the man born blind. It is one of seven signs included in this gospel. In each sign, Jesus is revealed as one in whom the power of God is present and active. Jesus says, “This man was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.” In each sign, those who were with Jesus and those who know about him through the gospel were – and are – called to a deeper faith and more intimate knowledge of God. The sign is simply a jumping-off point for a discussion about the significance of Jesus as the light of the world.

On the theological level – that is, the level of teaching about God and Jesus, their nature and their work –the first letter of John, which biblical scholars believe comes from the same writer as the gospel, says, “God is light, in whom there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). God has sent Jesus, the divine light, into the world. The prologue of John’s gospel lays it out: “In him was life, and that light was the light of all people...The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world...The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” Jesus is the light who gives life to those imprisoned in darkness. To those who are “sleepers”, who are dead in their sin, Christ shines as light and brings forgiveness and healing. John takes pains to emphasize that the man Jesus healed had never seen. Over and over again, John calls him “the man born blind”. This is not just the restoration of something lost, but a gift given to someone who had never possessed it. That Jesus could give sight to one who had never seen was remarkable – “never since the world began has it been heard”.

This story also illustrates Jesus’ attitude (or the attitude of John’s community) toward illness or disability. In Jesus’ day, it was commonly assumed that sickness was a punishment for sin – and in fact that belief has never gone away. Deep down inside, many people believe it today. This belief reveals a certain understanding about what God is like. This God turns out to be somewhat arbitrary, not to say harsh and unforgiving. The disciples’ question, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents?” is an occasion for the proclamation of something new. Neither party sinned, says Jesus. The man’s blindness was not punishment for some offence, whether real or imagined, on his part or anyone else’s. Jesus treated the man’s condition as an opportunity to respond to human need and to do the work of God. Jesus responds to the man’s physical need by healing him, and to his spiritual need after he is expelled from the synagogue. In both ways, he reveals something new about God – that God wills life and health and wholeness for all people. It is the basis of the Christian ministry of healing, and also of development and social justice work.

More than all this, though – Jesus is making a claim to divinity. Remember the story of God appearing to Moses in the burning bush? God sends Moses back to his people with a message, and Moses asks God, “If the people ask who sent me, what should I say?” And God says to Moses, “I AM. Tell them I AM has sent you. That is my name.” In John’s gospel, Jesus uses “I am” over and over again. Today – “I am the light of the world”. Last week, in the conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well, the woman says, “I know that Messiah is coming,” and Jesus replies, “I am he (in the original Greek, I am), the one who is speaking to you.” Next week we’ll hear “I am the resurrection and the life”. In other places, Jesus says I am the bread of life; I am the good shepherd; before Abraham was, I am. No wonder they wanted to stone him! Every time we hear those words “I am” in John’s gospel, it’s like an alert. John is telling us something about Jesus. He is not just sent from God, not just doing God’s work. Jesus is God present among us, present with us. Jesus does the works of God because he and the Father are one.

On the spiritual level, this is a story about coming to faith. The man gained spiritual sight as well as physical – that is, he gained insight as well as vision by becoming a believer. And this happens in four stages:

1. Immediately following the miracle, the man can only identify his healer as “the man called Jesus”. Asked where Jesus is, he says, “I don’t know.” All he knows and can repeat is what Jesus did – he made mud, he anointed my eyes, he told me to wash, I washed and now I can see. This is where all discipleship begins – simply saying what God has done for us in Jesus. Of course, that requires us to be attentive to God’s presence and action, to be aware of what God has done and is doing.
2. Next, the Pharisees ask the man what he thinks about Jesus. Well, he is a prophet, the man replies. When the Pharisees question him again and press him to denounce Jesus as a sinner, the man replies, “Well, he must be from God. If he weren’t, he could do nothing.”
3. Having been cut off from his community, his spiritual and social support system, the man is impelled to search for the source of his healing: “Tell me who this Son of Man is. I want to believe.”
4. Jesus identifies himself, “The one who is speaking to you is he.” And the man responds with faith: “Lord, I believe.”

The ironic part of this story is that, of all the characters, only the man born blind can actually see. Not that the others couldn’t see; they just couldn’t, or wouldn’t, see for various reasons. In contrast to the blind man’s growth in faith is the intensifying unbelief of the man’s acquaintances, his parents, and above all the religious authorities. This also happens in four stages:

1. Some of the man’s acquaintances refuse to believe it is he who has been healed. Surely, they say, it must be someone else. They don’t know what to make of the man’s story, so they bring him to the Pharisees.
2. The authorities are at first divided in their opinion of Jesus. Some condemn Jesus outright for breaking the Sabbath. Others ask, “How could a sinner do such things?” and inadvertently answer their own question – if Jesus did such a thing, he is no sinner.
3. The divisions disappear when the parents are summoned. The authorities simply will not have it that anyone could confess Jesus as the Messiah. The parents, afraid of losing their own position in the synagogue, hang their son out to dry and say, “Ask him; he can answer for himself.”
4. The upshot is that when the authorities question the man a second time, they are confirmed in their rejection of Jesus. They openly denounce Jesus as a sinner, they dissociate themselves from Jesus and cling to their affiliation with Moses, they ridicule the man and consign him to the company of those “born entirely in sin”, and finally throw him out of the synagogue, excommunicate him.

This entire story is the acting out of one verse (verse 39): “I came into this world for judgement, so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.” In people’s response to Jesus, judgement is already taking place. Those who believe come to the light; those who reject stand condemned by their own decision.

In our Lenten study, Making Sense of Scripture, the author David Lose refers several times to the conclusion of John’s gospel: “Now there were many other signs that Jesus did that are not written in this book. These are written in order that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and through believing you may have life in his name.” The purpose of this story – the purpose of John’s gospel and all the gospels – is to bring us to faith, that is, to a living relationship with the God who loves us and wants us to be whole in body, mind, and spirit, a relationship that gives life.

In the early church, baptism was referred to as enlightening or illumination, because in baptism the Christian shared in the light of Christ. The church even incorporated Jesus’ actions of anointing and the use of spittle into its baptismal rite, along with the giving of the lighted candle which we retain. The man in the story received his sight after he washed. Similarly, Christians understand baptism as a washing or cleansing that leads to light and new life. From the time of our baptism on, Christians are responsible for the light and are called to live appropriately – to walk as children of light. We are called to turn away from the darkness of our former lives and have no part of the vain deeds of darkness. But this is more than passively avoiding evil. Christians are actively to oppose evil, to expose it and positively to try to learn and do what pleases God. It is not enough to bask in the light of Jesus or reflect his glory. We are to become the light through an active commitment to Christ and his goodness.

So we need to become aware of the personal shortcomings and sins which blind and limit our faith – the slightly unethical angle of a deal, the desire for popularity and praise that causes us to betray our values. We need also to see the cultural side of our blindness – the assumption that our way is God’s way, the taint of consumerism. We need to expose and name the deeds of darkness – the fear, prejudice and stubbornness that denies justice for others, the division of the world into “us” and “them” that justifies rejecting the needs of the other.

Perhaps the hardest thing to believe in is not God, but ourselves. Seeing ourselves as we are is as hard as seeing the back of our own eyelids. The very thing we are looking at blocks out the light. We need to see with God’s eyes. We need to be enlightened. Thank God, God does not see as mortals see, but sees us with the eyes of love. Sometimes God enlightens in a great “Aha” experience. More often God enlightens gently, through the motes of insight and recognition that rise from the dust of daily human living, the dust softened with the divine moisture of compassion and grace.

So, my friends, this Lent – here’s mud in your eye.