| March 10, 2002 1 Samuel 16:6-13 + Ephesians 5:8-14 + John 9· 1-41 |
| Last week we were privileged to witness the conversion of a woman from Samaria as she drank deep in the water of Jesus. We shared her joy in his friendship, and celebrated our membership in the crowd who have come to believe because we have heard for ourselves and know him to be savior of the world. This week in our midst is a man born blind. We watch and listen as Jesus confronts the darkness of sin. In verses just before this story, He has called himself the Light of the Word. What the man receives from Jesus is not simply physical sight, but a deeper spiritual insight of faith.Strangely, he is the only one in this whole story who seems capable of seeing Jesus for who he really is. |
| Jesus saw a man no one else would see. The disabled, the challenged in his time were invisible. They were at the margins of human life, ignored, restricted, and totally without rights. Those who could see looked past them as if they were not there. But Jesus, the Light can see, and he sees this man and looks into his eyes and into his heart. Like the woman from last week, he is an unlikely candidate for God’s gift, God’s call, and God’s favor, yet he’s the one who emerges from all this power and prestige to reveal and announce the time of salvation and the coming of Light. |
| It becomes a story of Baptism, and so it becomes our story Anointed and washed in that pool, he moves gradually to understand what has happened to him and who it is that seeks him out. First he says, it is “the mancalled, Jesus.” Then he calls him “a Prophet.” Finally he calls Jesus, “Lord.” As each scene of this story unfolds we follow the steps of grace leading to faith. It is a story of sin confronted by light and a story of salvation for those who seethe Light. |
| For John, sin is not some discrete failing but a fundamental blind spot with regard to the revealing Word of God. This blindness which means “Sin” is a refusal to be open to God’s action outside of one’s narrow expectations about how God is supposed to behave. It is the stubborn blindness that refuses to be surprised by God. It is the unwillingness to accept something or someone not expected. It is the choice of darkness over the light of life. |
| Because Jesus healed the man on the Sabbath, those righteous, religious people closed their eyes to him because he did not behave the way they expected. Unlike the blind man who willingly accepted the mud/paste anointing and the water of the pool, these “holy” ones, all religious and proper refused to be anointed with the truth of works and words of Jesus, and that was sin. He did not meet their predetermined criteria or remain within the legal confines of the law they had made so burdensome to others. |
| A woman from Samaria leads us to the Messiah and a blind man leads us to the Lord. They are unlikely guides unless we are confess that we cannot see and that we need them to show us the way If we will accept Baptism’s anointing and take ourselves to the pool as he asks, this story suggests that he will come to seek us even if our faith may yet be a little incomplete. It is only our stubborn blindness that leaves us in the dark; that makes it impossible forus to see that God may come and God may work in places and in times where we would not choose nor expect to find him. In the smoke and rubble of a terrorists deed, in the tragedy of a child’s death, in the loneliness of broken and betrayed love, Light shines for those who wish to see. God can be there as well as in this church, a glorious sunset, or a beautiful face. |
| It is Lent’s Fourth Sunday We are now half the way, being drawn as we were, by the light of the Easter Fire. We have been seen by the Lord, even when we could not see, and we have been anointed and washed by his command. We are a people born blind not because of sin, but for the sake of the Glory of God. There is a price to pay for this sight. Cast out, ridiculed and judged harshly by others, those who chose to see will, like David in the first reading, be sought by the Lord and chosen above all others, and they will become children of the light, producing every kind of goodness and righteousness and truth. |