Fourth Sundy in Lent, Year A – March 2, 2008
1 Samuel 16:1-13 | Psalm 23 | Ephesians 5:8-14 | John 9:1-41
“But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature…for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.’”
Our scriptures today describe the activity of God among us and within us in terms of darkness and light, blindness and sight. It would be tempting to be…well…black and white about this, but it’s never that simple. Nor should it be, for the activity of God is as deep and broad, as mysterious and complex as the universe God has breathed into being.
Speaking of creation, “in the beginning…darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light.”
In the order of creation, darkness precedes light. But it does not precede God. Any mystic worth her salt will tell you God is found in the dark, in the womb, in the tomb. The finding may be a flash of light, but it is in darkness that the next illumination waits.
A week ago Wednesday, we had that rarest of congruences in southern Indiana: an unusual celestial event — a total lunar eclipse — and absolutely clear skies. We watched as shadow flowed across the face of the moon, changing her from flat bright two-dimensional disc into three-dimensional sphere, ruddy as David in our first reading. How beautiful she was, something of her true nature revealed by the anointing of darkness.
To see as God sees, into the hidden heart, we must become able to navigate interior landscapes that are shrouded in deep shadow. Sometimes we do this by shining a light. Sometimes we do this by allowing other ways of perceiving to develop, ways that work in the darkness. You might say we learn to use the eyes of our hearts.
Yes, there is a timeless spiritual truth in that line from “Amazing Grace” – “t’was blind but now I see.” However, learning to see as God sees can turn that line inside out – “I thought I could see, but now I know that I’ve been blind.”
In the story from John’s gospel of the healing of the man born blind, there’s physical blindness and spiritual blindness and physical healing and the need for interior healing and God’s action through Jesus and the human response which may or may not be more or less an expression of the degree to which individuals embody the presence of God .
If we shine on it the bright light of intellect, the kind that tends toward black and white, this story becomes two-dimensional and implacable, reflecting the light back in ways that blind us to and distance us from its meaning. But if we regard it obliquely, with senses tuned to the deep and shadowed mystery in which God dwells, it becomes multi-dimensional and begins to reveal the sorts of truths about who God is and who we are in God that can only be seen with the eyes of the heart.
We should realize that we are in mysterious territory when the disciples, speaking from the Jewish understanding of that time that sin caused suffering, ask Jesus, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” and Jesus answers this either/or question with something that is neither. He says, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”
Now you may struggle with the implication that God would cause this man to be blind in order to make a point. I know I do. But, I think we have to try to see Jesus’ reply in the context of his time and place. In that context, what he says is revolutionary, for it offers something other than the conventional wisdom.
It is also revelatory, for it gives him the opening he needs to say that he is the vehicle by which God’s works will be revealed. “We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work,” he says, and then continues, “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
This is one of several “I am” statements made by Jesus in John’s gospel. The Greek is ego eimi (eye’-mee) or just eimi. Eimi means “to be” in the sense of “exist eternally” or “to have timeless being”. In it are echoes of God’s identifying statement on Sinai, “I am that I am”. In John, when Jesus says “Eimi the light of the world” or “Eimi the bread of life.” or “Eimi the way, the truth, and the life.” it’s like he’s cracking open a door onto the vast timeless living reality of God that flows through him, or is revealed in him, a reality that can only be seen with the eyes of the heart.
When he then spits on the ground to make a muddy paste that he smears onto the eyes of the man born blind, it seems odd to us. But this was a recognized healing modality in first century Palestine. And, for the moment, nothing happens. No miraculous and sudden manifestation of sight. No wowing the crowd. Instead, the man, still unable to see, is instructed to go wash in the pool of Siloam. Jesus, the light of the world, isn’t taking the wonder-worker route here. So, apparently God’s works are to be revealed in some other way than the spectacular.
Have you noticed what a cipher the man born blind is up until this point? He’s talked about, but does not speak. He doesn’t ask to be healed. He submits passively to Jesus’ ministrations. He doesn’t become active until he goes to the pool. It is in obedience that he first becomes active. Obedience comes hard for us humans, especially when asked for by the mystery which is God. The eyes of the heart observe that it is through an act of obedience that the man born blind receives his sight.
And his healing involves much more than the mending of his eyes. Just look at him when he returns able to see. He is the calm and eloquent center of an agitated and ever-widening circle of people — his neighbors, his parents, the religious authorities — who simply don’t know what to do with him.
For he is a living, breathing paradigm shift. He has fallen out of their reality and into a new one they can’t seem to see clearly. He can perceive it, not because his physical sight has been activated, but because the eyes of his heart have been opened.
Moreover, he can be it. While some of his neighbors are saying, “It is he,” and others are saying, “No, but it is someone like him,” what is it that he keeps saying? “I am the man.” Eimie the man. This is the only “I am” statement in John’s gospel that is made by someone other than Jesus.
Why are these words given to the man-who-now-can-see to say? Because the works of God have been revealed in him, not only in the reversal of his blindness, but in the aliveness, the wholeness that is the larger manifestation of that healing. He gets his own “I am” statement because he has begun to embody the presence of God and in this has begun to resemble the one who has healed him.
With the eyes of our hearts we begin to see other ways this inner resonance with Jesus is mysteriously expressed. I say mysterious because these expressions mirror events that have not yet happened. It’s as if linear time itself is suspended when the works of God are revealed.
When the man-who-now-can-see says “I am the man”, we are moved forward ten chapters in John to the moment when Pilate brings Jesus, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe, out to the waiting crowd, saying “Here is the man!”
When the neighbors of the man-who-now-can-see are unsure of who he is, time becomes fluid and we are reminded of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances when even those who knew him well did not recognize him.
When the man-who-now-can-see is brought before the Pharisees to explain the inexplicable, reality attenuates and re-forms into images of Jesus questioned, hounded, and rejected by the religious authorities.
Truly, the man-who-now-can-see has been given more than physical sight. He has been given his true self and that self resembles and bears witness to the person of Jesus. The delicious irony, the wonder, the mystery is that all this happens – the gift of sight, the witness of new life to his flummoxed neighbors, the amazing empowerment to tell the truth to the religious authorities – it all happens without the man-who-now-can-see ever having seen the one he so fully embodies.
He has been touched by Jesus. He has heard the voice of Jesus. But he has not seen him. Nor does he, until he has allowed the works of God to be revealed in his words and actions. And so it is for us.
We are told by the writer of this gospel that the pool where the man who was born blind becomes the man-who-now-can-see is called Siloam which means “Sent” – in the Greek: apostello (ap-os-tel’-lo). It is, of course, the word from which we get “apostle”. At that pool of sending, where the mysterious transaction of healing and empowerment takes place, the man-who-now-can-see enters the timeless time in which the true self who is Christ dwells.
In this he becomes an apostle sent to us, we who must also allow the works of God to be revealed in us without physically seeing Jesus. May we surrender as the man-who-now-can-see did to the process of being made whole. May the eyes of our hearts be opened. In darkness and in light, may it be the Christ we see, alive and active within us. And may it be the Christ who is seen by those to whom we, too, are sent.
AMEN.
1 Comment
March 3, 2008 at 7:15 pm
[...] Pamela wrote this today. I think it is worth reading. Here is a little snippet:In the story from John’s gospel of the healing of the man born blind, there’s physical blindness and spiritual blindness and physical healing and the need for interior healing and God’s action through Jesus and the human response which … [...]