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St. Charles Episcopal Church - St. Charles, IL

April 3, 2011 – Lent 4 Year A

1 Samuel 16:1-13; Psalm 23; Ephesians 5:8-14; John 9:1-41 

The Rev. Elizabeth Meade

Today we have one of the longest Gospel readings in the lectionary cycle: John’s account of the healing of a man who has been blind since birth. There is so much richness here, that I am going to preach a bit differently today. I will end by making three points for you to take home and consider, but I’m going to spend a lot more time setting the scene. I hope that by shifting my method a bit this week, we will all be led to consider how God might be calling us into Holy Week.

First, some historical background on John’s Gospel: Why did he include the story of the blind man in the first place? John’s Gospel was written after the other three gospels (the ones we call the “Synoptic” Gospels) and John has had years to reflect on what it all meant. What Jesus life, death and resurrection meant for him, and what it meant for all the Jews in the face of the biggest event in Jewish history since the Exodus: the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem 70 AD by the Romans. We often gloss over this event, the destruction of the Temple, because it was “way back then,” but we shouldn’t, because the destruction of the temple radically influenced the birth of Christianity. In fact, I think the destruction of the Temple is why Christianity caught on and became a major world religion.

To read the historian Josephus’ eye-witness account of that day is gut wrenching. It was bloody; traumatic. There was fire, there were rapes, there was dismemberment, and there was looting. It was an army out of control, hell bent on destroying the very Jewishness of Jerusalem. The main thing to remember about the destruction of the Temple is this: the Jews scattered when their temple was destroyed. There was nothing left in Jerusalem for them. Many of them fled for safer places in Turkey, in Greece, and even in Rome. It was a time of exile for the Jewish people, a time of exile that would last until 1947 – almost 2000 years.

It was also a time of great confusion and lost identity. The Jews were trying to figure out who they were in the world, and what had become of their identity as God’s chosen people. It was in this chaos and for these people that John wrote his gospel.

John spends a lot of time in his Gospel pointing to the divinity of Jesus. He, more than the other Gospel writers, desperately wanted the Jews who were left, the Jews who had scattered, to see the significance of Jesus’ life, ministry, death and resurrection; wanted them to see that even though they no longer had a temple, they had a Messiah. It’s why he started his prologue the way he did, aligning Jesus as being there with God in the beginning: “In the beginning was the Word (capital W) and the Word was with God, and the Word was God….. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” (John, Chapter 1) And it’s why John recorded statements like “I am the way and the truth and the life,” and “No one comes to the Father except through me,” and “I am the light of the world." John wants the Jews to see that Jesus was their way to identity; their way out of the chaos and exile. So that’s the historical background of today’s Gospel. But what does it say to us?

The painting I chose for today depicts today’s Gospel scene: painted by the 19^th century Danish artist: Carl Bloch, it was commissioned by The Royal Academy of Danish Art to be placed in the King’s Private Praying Chamber in Fredericksborg Castle in Denmark. It depicts Jesus healing the Blind Man. Keep in mind that we are in John’s Gospel, and John writes in symbols more than the other Gospel writers did, so we must think in symbols. What is John trying to teach the Jews here? And what is John trying to teach us? It’s about VISION.

As I see it, there are three main teachable points: three things we must remember as we seek to deepen our life in Christ.

And here they are:

Number 1. God is Love. God loves each one of us passionately, and God should never be construed as the cause of evil and disaster in the world. Look what happens in verses 1&2: Jesus is walking along the road, and the disciples ask a question familiar to that day and age: “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind?” (Jn 9:2) In 1^st century minds, conventional wisdom held that God punished people by besetting them with difficulties. It was also believed that the reverse was true: that if you lived righteously, nothing bad would happen to you. Jesus sought to debunk this myth.                                                     

God does not cause blindness, AIDS, cancer, wars, divorces or tsunamis, despite what Pat Robertson, Glen Beck and the 1^st century disciples believe. And the corollary is also false: that if you live a good life – you will somehow be more financially blessed than others and nothing bad will ever happen to you. God’s economy doesn’t work that way, and such beliefs reveal a faulty theology.

So the next time you are tempted to shout out, “What did I do to deserve this?” remember instead point # 1: That God loves you, and God is not the cause of the difficulties we face in life.

Number 2: The 2^nd point that John is trying to make to his brothers and sisters (and to us) is this: Relationships are key to a life in Christ. Look again at the very first line of Ch. 9: “As he was walking along, Jesus saw a man blind from birth.” John does not tell us whether the blind man asked for help as Bartimaeus did in Mark’s Gospel by yelling, “Jesus Son of God, have mercy upon me!”

John suggests that Jesus simply noticed the blind man, and seeking to enter into relationship with him, [Jesus] “spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man's eyes, saying to him, "Go, wash in the pool of Siloam." (v. 6). So if the blind man did not ask for help, where is the relationship? In this case, the relationship – or the transaction – is consummated when the man agrees to go wash. “So the man went, and washed, and came home seeing.” (v.7) Would the man have received his sight had he not done as Jesus asked? No, probably not. The key is that dialogue and understanding occur. Relationship occurs. Who initiates it is largely irrelevant. Again, remember context: The Jews were in shock over the savagery of the Roman destruction of Jerusalem. They were grieving the loss of their Temple, they were exiled from all that was familiar, and living in strange lands as refugees. Here John is saying, “You are not homeless, you are not without God, a Messiah has come, and his name was Jesus. He is seeking you out. Listen. And if you do not hear anything or see anything, then call out to Him He is here with us.” For us, 21^st century Christians, the same is true. Whether you initiate a relationship with Jesus by calling out, or whether you are blind to his presence, trust that he is only a whisper away. What is Christ asking you to do or be for him? Relationship with him is key.

And finally,

Point 3: Fear is all that stands between you and relationship with Jesus Christ. Fear of the establishment. Fear of Transformation. Fear of the unknown. Notice what happened when the man received his sight. Here John is taking a shot at the institution of “church,”of institutional religion. He’s poking at the Pharisees whose rigid adherence to the purity laws have caused them to forget that compassion always trumps rigidity. "He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see." Did you notice that everything was fine until the man got his sight? The Pharisees probably gave him alms – that was their duty – see the alms bowl there on the lower right of the painting?

But an interesting thing happened when the man received his sight. When the man received his sight, he was free of them – free of their duty bound beneficence. Celodonius (the Eastern Orthodox Church actually gave the blind man a name) Celedonius, was dragged before the Pharisees who grilled him. He told them openly what Jesus had done; there were no secrets, no darkness, only the Light of the Truth of what Jesus had done for him. Unsatisfied, the Pharisees sought out his parents. There’s the symbol of authority. Ask the parents about the man’s cure. But the parents operated out for fear as well:  

 "We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; but we do not know how it is that now he sees, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age.” (Jn. 9:18-23)

The text tells us that they were afraid of being thrown out of the Temple. But, remember, it was a Temple they no longer had anyway. Ahhhh. Fear. They feared excommunication, so they disavowed their own son. But Celedonius had been freed from darkness. By washing in the pool of Siloam he had been born again, baptized into new life with Christ. He had been transformed because of his relationship with Jesus and was freed from fear and from the tyranny of those who had been traditionally in power. Do you see what John is doing? He’s trying to show his fellow Jews the power that comes in aligning with Christ: Good power, freedom from fear, new-found confidence. We saw it two weeks ago as he wrote about Nicodemus slinking around in the dark of night, asking questions. We saw it last week in the story of the Woman at the Well: freed from her bucket, she found new confidence and ran into to town to tell everybody about the man who had freed her mind, and given her living water. Relationship; Love; Confidence; Freedom from fear: that’s what Christ promises.

Notice again Bloch’s painting. The high walls symbolize the institutional church. See than man peering over the wall? The fearful Pharisees, hiding behind the rigidity of the institution. But look outside the walls; look in the alley! There is the stuff of everyday life. Curious children, the man in the red turban, considering that which he is observing, free to wonder and ask questions. And look at Celedonius, free from his empty alms bowl, standing up to go to Siloam, entering into a relationship with Christ. “You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes.” (Jn 9:30) And they drove him out, v. 34. The coda is this. They threw him out: out of the temple – which, by the way, no longer existed when they were reading John’s Gospel. Do you see the irony here? And more importantly, do you see who is left? Who is left when the institution abandons him? Jesus. Jesus comes to him in the pain of being driven out, of being exiled.

Listen once again to the end of the passage:  

“And they drove him out. Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him, he said, ‘Do you believe in the Son of Man?’ He answered, ‘And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.’ He said, ‘Lord, I believe.’ And he worshiped him.”(John 9:35-38.)

So, three truths I beg us all to consider this week as we think about John’s Gospel.

1.   God loves us. God is faithful to us. And God can never be construed as the cause of evil.             

2.   Relationships are key to a life in Christ. Who needs you to notice them? Who needs you to free them from darkness? And what is Christ whispering into your ear this week?      

3.   Fear is the only thing that blocks a relationship with Christ. While transformation may alienate us from the status quo, from the familiar, there is sight to be gained. There is a faithful, constant light shining in the darkness, who is beckoning to every one of us: Our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.