4th Sunday of Lent 2023. John 9:1-41. I am the light of the world
As we continue our Lenten journey listening to the Gospel of John; lets remind ourselves why, in John’s own words, he wrote this gospel. “That you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God.” In these extraordinary times, this Lent is the time for truly getting back to the basics of our faith. Is my relationship with God deepening or not deepening? Is there any depth to my relationship at all?
One of the great dominating motifs or themes of John is light vs darkness, and the healing miracle (or what John calls sign) in today’s gospel is that a person living in darkness due to his congenital blindness can now see. From darkness into light. In all four gospels, the healing of a person physically blind is always followed by or includes an example of spiritual blindness; in today’s passage the blindness of not just the pharisees, but also his parents, who seem to abandon their son once he was healed.
In this Jesus story, he gives a blind man sight and then disappears. He leaves behind questions that the other characters struggle to answer by asking the wrong question. Everyone in the scene—the religious leaders, the parents of the now-sighted man, and the man himself—speak without connecting with each other.
When the religious leaders ask for the fifth time a question using the word “how”— “How did he open your eyes?”—we see that they are fixated on method rather than going to the deeper question: Who is this healer? The formerly blind man answers, in what ends up being one of those places in Scripture that is actually comic, whether the religious leaders want to know what Jesus did because they want to become his disciples.
We know they are not interested in becoming his followers. They want to trap a threatening rabbi (teacher) and healer who confronts them with their unmerciful rules, like not being allowed to do a holy work on the Sabbath.
The religious leaders even turn against the now-sighted man with disgust that he, a sinner, would deign to tell them how to think about Jesus. You can almost smell the self-glory dripping off these affronted religious types. We know them in our own time. They often get caught offending in just the way they accuse others of sinning.
Jesus as a person in this story comes in as a character at the beginning and the end. His absence for most of the story gives the ignorant and threatened people time to try to find someone who will blame Jesus rather than giving him credit for an amazing act of Grace from God. When he reappears, he perfectly depicts in double meaning the point of his healing: “I came into this world ... so that those who do not see may see” (John 9:39).
Giving sight to a blind man in the gospel, and repeated references to light in both the gospel and the other scripture readings are so we might be drawn to the role that vision plays in how we live as children of God. In our reading from Samuel the readings appointed to accompany the healing of the blind man, we are told that we see “as mortals see ... the Lord looks on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7).
In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians (5:8-14), light exposes what is done in secret, making visible what was not visible, bringing out the fruits of what is “good and right and true.” We need light to illuminate our way, because we cannot see with our eyes in the dark. This is true for all people, all races, and for most creatures (exceptions are some fantastical creatures that live in the deepest, darkest parts of the oceans).
Ephesians contrasts living or abiding “in darkness” with “in the Lord”. It is all about our orientation, perspective, and goals.
Some years ago I visited the Acland coal mine near Toowoomba with a guide and certain things happened when he turned off the light: You are oriented only to yourself— what you feel. The clammy humidity on your skin that occurs far underground, hearing or feeling the beat of your heart.
You can no longer see anyone else in the group. You alone are important; there is no larger picture. You are focused on the moment, on staying safe and not moving. There is no ‘big picture,’ because you simply can’t see.
Let’s contrast this with what John calls living in the light and Paul calls living in the Lord: our scope, the way we orient ourselves enlarges. We can see other people. Community becomes possible. We step with confidence into the unknown. We comprehend the landscape, the big picture.
These are conditions for a way of looking at things that leads to “what is pleasing to the Lord” (Eph 5:10).
When Jesus returns to the story at the end, he pulls out from God’s word the deeper meaning of having vision. He enlarges the meaning of the light that God gives so that it becomes a kind of interior seeing. Having vision becomes a way to connect with others.
The healed man doesn’t get caught up in the deliberately confusing questions of the religious leaders like whether Jesus is a sinner. The healed man says what he knows to be the flat truth: “he healed me.” And he is gutsy. He sounds exasperated at the religious leaders when they want to hear it again and he says, “I have told you already, and you would not listen.” His vision has brought him a clarity that we might all admire. Vision brings wisdom.
This story has all the people you can find in any religious or non-religious group: the self-righteous and powerful, the rubbernecking neighbours, the ones who want to turn a blind eye, and the ones who try to avoid getting involved.
The only one in this passage who truly receives light is the blind man. He’s the only one who is healed. He’s the only one who names Jesus appropriately.
The story of the blind man’s healing in John can be recounted in three parts. 1. Jesus comes and heals the man born blind. 2. Everybody is in a dither trying to figure out what happened. 3. Jesus comes again to the healed man when he is kicked out of the community.
This movement of events mirrors our world in every age, especially this one. Jesus came. We wonder what happened and argue about it. Jesus comes to us ... again and again and again ... with healing.
Jesus, the light of the world, is a mystery, except that while the whole world around the blind man is confused, the blind man is quietly abandoned by everyone but Jesus.
Finally, notice Jesus’ most telling action. Jesus comes to the man in his blindness and gives him vision. He does not quiz the blind man about anything. Only later, when Jesus returns, does he use the word “believe.” His healing makes no conditions. And this is exactly the way he comes to us. Let us pray …