From the Daily Lectionary for Monday in the Fifth Week of Lent
John 9:1-1
As Jesus walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” When he had said this, he 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” (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see. The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?” Some were saying, “It is he.” Others were saying, “No, but it is someone like him.” He kept saying, “I am the man.” But they kept asking him, “Then how were your eyes opened?” He answered, “The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ Then I went and washed and received my sight.” They said to him, “Where is he?” He said, “I do not know.”
They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. Now it was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight. He said to them, “He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see.” Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not observe the Sabbath.” But others said, “How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?” And they were divided. So they said again to the blind man, “What do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened.” He said, “He is a prophet.”
The irony in this passage is unmistakable. The blind man is the one who sees the truth about Jesus and his mission; the Pharisees are willfully blind to Jesus’s mission and ministry. God’s Spirit is not confined to the institution, not confined to the grandeur of the Temple, not expressed through privileged hierarchy. God’s Spirit meets the people where they are; and God’s Spirit is particularly focused on those who are marginalized, the sick, the poor, the left-out.
There is another important point here. The disciples ask Jesus “who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” It is a logical question because it was a commonly held belief that illness and disability were punishment from God for sin. I suspect some, if not many, still believe that in our own culture. Jesus’s answer, I imagine, was astounding to the disciples: “He was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”
So another reversal of institutional theology. God does not punish by causing suffering. Quite the contrary. God is drawn to the suffering of the world to restore and heal. Why? Because God loves God’s people. And we are to do the same. We are to seek out the suffering and the shamed of our world and show them the love of God. None of us are whole until all of us are whole.
Again, salvation is not about the individual. It is about society, a society of equals who share in the abundance and dignity that are birthrights as children of God. Who are the children of God? The short answer is all of us, but all is not all until the prostitute, the drive-by shooter, the drug dealer, the prisoner on death row, the embezzler, the thief, the corrupt politician… all projections of a shamed life… All is not all until the lost and the least of us are granted their humanity. God is drawn to the likes of these first, because God desires wholeness for God’s world.
So many are wounded and marginalized because of the structures and policies of power. Sin is a system. Ours is to shine the light of God upon the world’s darkness, so that, block by block, sin may be dismantled, and we can be about God’s work of healing and restoration. The light has many names; names like compassion, kindness, justice, embrace…. There are more. Be the light, good people. There is no greater thing.
A Prayer from the Order for Compline (BCP p. 133)
Be our light in the darkness, O God, and in your great mercy defend us from all perils of the night; for the love of your blessed Son, our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
