Lent IV A Blind to the Light March 30, 2011

Lent IV A Blind to the Light


Today we encounter a gospel of light and darkness and how being blind is a choice for some people. There are a lot of double meanings as Jesus sees a man blind from birth, heals him and then must deal with a more intractable form of blindness from the leaders of the synagogue who can only see that they are right.

Failing to acknowledge your failings, and knowing that you alone know, both are sins of great importance to the Son of Man who comes to bring light to the world. Jesus hates blind acceptance of law over the creative response to the problems of sin in the world. A blind beggar, a lowly man who is considered to be suffering for the sins of his parents, is given healing power to see the light that Jesus is the Son of Man. There is light all around in this gospel:

light first for the disciples who believe that sins of the parents are visited on their children, and learn that no sin has been committed by either the parents or the man

light for the blind man, who sees the world for the first time, then sees Jesus as the light of the world

light for this man’s parents, who are confronted by the Pharisees and try to wiggle out of telling them anything, who must be very confused by their son who can now see

light for some of the Pharisees who argue amongst themselves about what is real; is Jesus a sinner or not? Can a person who heals on the Sabbath, who is automatically a sinner because he worked on the Sabbath, really be a sinner because he has done healing?

This gospel makes us see where blindness comes from. The disciples and the Pharisees both have categories of how the world works and what is sin, but Jesus lets some light into this rigid world view. The man is not blind because someone sinned. And Jesus is not a sinner merely because he performed an act of mercy on the Sabbath. Acts of mercy, Jesus is telling us, are for every day of the week, God’s mercy never takes a rest. Rigidity is blindness and thinking we know the way the world works is blindness.

So why do we cling to these ways of being blind? Why do we need to know how the world works, want to know and cling to our knowledge?

Being blind can be comfortable. In medical annals, many people who are born blind can be terrified when they suddenly are able to see. Neurologists and ophthalmologists tell us that people who have been blind from birth when they have been cured and can now see can be totally disoriented. Their world is not the same world they had been comfortable being in. They had learned how to be in the world, to walk, get around, to know what their surroundings were without sight, using hearing and touch in a way that no one with sight used and now their comfortable way of getting around and their understanding of the things and people around them has suddenly been totally changed. You can imagine how unsettling and problematic that might be.

And there is a darker, more insidious side of not seeing. The pop singers the Indigo Girls lyrics say

Darkness has a hunger that’s insatiable, lightness has a call that’s hard to hear

This kind of darkness lures us into denial. We deny our bad habits, like overeating and drinking, lack of exercise and all the other unhealthy things. We deny that we are negative and nag people, or that we hold grudges, or that we judge other people. We deny that we are not perfect or perhaps we deny that we are capable of being loved at all and give up on ourselves. Whatever our denial, it is insidious and we are not capable of losing this type of blindness on our own.

The insatiability of this darkness is that we come to believe that we cannot change, or that change is not good, or that we would be uncomfortable, lose our way of being in the world, lose our habits that we wear like old clothes.

Whatever your blindness, the gospel today is not a gospel of comfort. Coming to the light that God has provided us in Jesus is coming out of our sense that everything is okay just the way it is. The challenge of the Light of the World is calling us to that lightness that is hard to hear according to the Indigo Girls. In the noise of everything we have built up in our lives to keep us from seeing the real us and dealing with our sins of omission and commission, Jesus is offering another way.

The way of our Christ is one of challenging the categories that we place things in to keep our world safe and secure. The light of the world comes into the dark places so that we may live a more authentic life, a more full life, a more generous and loving life. This way is not easy, but it is the way of love, first to love yourself out of our comfort zone and then to love the world out of theirs.

Can you hear the call of the light of the world?