THE FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT
I Samuel 16:1-13
Ephesians 5:8-14
John 9: 1-41
Year A
This week it was revealed
that workers, looking for termites in a Brazilian monastery, uncovered the
mummified remains of two bodies believed to be Spanish nuns; the bodies being
about 200 years old. Why they were buried behind an unmarked wall, no one
knows. As a flashlight illuminated the decayed bodies, it made me think about
all the years monks have walked past that wall, never knowing, never ‘seeing’
what was behind it – until now.
Also in the news this week
was something even more unbelievable.
The article on the internet
was entitled, “Blind Irishman sees with the aid of son’s tooth in his eye”. That certainly made my
eyes open wide. It made me wonder if I was looking at the front page of
the National Enquirer, instead of headlines on the Internet. But, sure enough,
a man blinded by an explosion two years ago has had his sight restored by
virtue of a tooth inserted into his eye. The operation, performed at the
The unifying theme in all our
readings today is sight. However, the miracle of sight and sight through miracles
is not the main focus. The main focus is sight verses blindness, but blindness
that is deeper than physical impairment and sight that is clearer than 20/20
vision.
In the gospel today the story
of Jesus curing the man blind from birth takes exactly two verses: the
controversy surrounding it takes thirty-nine verses. It’s almost like a trial.
Instead of rejoicing over the wondrous healing that has occurred everybody is
concerned about the rules having been broken. “Where is the man who did this? What did he say to you? What did he do
to you?” No one said, “Break open the
best bottle of champagne and let’s have a party!”
The belief that illness was
the result of sin is an ancient idea. In fact the view that sickness was a
punishment from God discouraged the development of medical science among the
pre-Dispersion Jews. Since sin caused sickness, forgiveness had to take place
before healing could occur. That’s why only priests practiced medicine in early
When Jesus began his ministry
the healings that he performed put his reputation on the map. But things got a
little shaky after awhile because the Jews believed it wasn’t right to try to
undo what God had obviously done. The Pharisees were sure of everything; that
God didn’t work on the Sabbath, that illness was a card God dealt you because
you deserved it – and anyone who dared to interfere with such absolutes had to be a sinner as well.
Even the newly sighted man’s
parents put distance between themselves and their son. After all, they don’t
want to look bad to the neighbors! The Pharisees ask them, “Is this your son?” They say, “Well…it
looks like him”. What? Did his face change that much since breakfast?
The only thing the blind man
was sure of was that he was blind but now could see. Growing weary with being
interrogated he says, “Why do you want to
hear all this again? Do you also want to become his disciples?” That did
it. How dare this inferior, whom people passed by in the streets and bumped
into in the archways, suddenly start to question the truth about how God
operates? So they drove him out; into an exile where they would not have to
‘see’ anything they did not want to see. The Pharisees system closed Jesus out
and it closed them in, because they let fear of being wrong keep them from seeing
the light of God’s presence and will.
It’s easy for us to sit back
and say things about those nasty Pharisees, but we know that when we are faced
with the unexpected intrusive grace of God, we too tend to get nervous.
Blindness becomes convenient because it keeps us from having to see things as
God sees them.
Yet, the whole relationship
between God and
The Pharisees drove the blind
man out of town because they couldn’t stand the fact that he had been the
central part of messing up how they saw truth. They couldn’t think outside the
box because they knew the rules and how the rules worked. They would not trust
their own eyes and refused to see what was right before them. They were stubborn
in their righteousness, and Jesus named it for what it was - blindness.
When Jesus talks about the
works of God being revealed through this man he is not saying the man was born blind
so that Jesus could heal him. He took
the opportunity to use this situation to ‘reveal’ who God is; over and against
the Pharisee’s belief system, over and against their blindness.
Sickness and disease are not
something God visits upon us. They belong to the realm of brokenness from which
God seeks to liberate the world. Why else would Jesus have spent so much time
healing? Otherwise he would have been ‘undoing’ the will of God. But God’s will
for our wholeness involves more than just physical healing.
We are called to ‘see’
differently. Perhaps the word ‘insight’ might be helpful for us. We are called
to ‘see’ with a third eye, if you will. Notice that nowhere in the story about
the man born blind does it say anything about him having faith. The one thing
he does have is a willingness to surrender to what Jesus wants to do for him.
Sadly, by the end of the story, he is the only one who can see.
It only takes a moment of
descending the steps into the catacombs, in
Somehow these early
Christians saw something we and the whole church need to see but too often do
not see. They experienced a vision beyond sight. They experienced a light
beyond darkness. They experienced a mercy and healing beyond all our fears.
So we need to remember that
when God’s mercy touches us in our neediness, seeking to make us whole,
bringing us out of the shadows to which we cling, we experience it as love – and
so we are called to ‘see’ this as God’s presence acting to make us whole
individually and acting to make the church whole collectively.
You can find the Pool of
Siloam in the southeast corner of
God provides the Pools of
Siloam. We are called to go there and splash our faces with the clear water of
amazing grace, that we too might receive our sight, that the glory of God and
the truth of God’s healing love might be revealed – even through us.
AMEN
The Rev. Virginia L. Bennett,
D.Min.
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church