In the aftermath of the earthquake in Japan, there were several websites that posted satellite before and after pictures of the devastation. These images were also scattered across print media. Did you take time to consider them? Take time to prayerfully hold them in your gaze and your haze of emotion as a way of lifting up the people and the entire tragedy to God in prayer?
The photos were disturbingly stunning. On the one side … a landscape and town where it didn’t take much imagination to envision what day to day life for its people had been like. On the other side … flood, mud and mayhem. One side, one day things were fine … the next day an enormous earthen shift and one great swoosh. It’s conclusively clear that what appeared to be a normal, secure enough scene had experienced a horrifying conversion.
Today is the fourth Sunday in Lent, which is a season in the church for special reflection on all the deep woods darkness in this world and how of the promise of Easter Light inspires hope. Lent invites us, then, to think about before and after. Unlike the recent views of Japan, however, the before and after we are invited to contemplate gets reversed. The reality before is one of worldly tragedy, of darkness, sin and sorrow that just swallows us. The after image is one of holy radiant light and complete restoration. The dramatic process of conversion from broken down before to healed ever after is the essence of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And we have, in this morning’s lesson from John’s Gospel, a powerful and true life illustration of this conversion.
Let’s consider the before portrayed in these verses from the ninth chapter. The people in this picture of brokenness are as follows -- a man born blind, some of his neighbors, his parents, Jesus and his disciples, and several from the strict religious law abiding sect of Jewish leaders known as the Pharisees. Darkness lived within all of these people, except for our Lord.
The most obvious darkness belongs to the person without sight. His before condition was first and foremost a physical one. Aside from reports about needing to beg for money, I otherwise don’t know what life was like for the blind back in first century Palestine. I sure do wonder if they had lovingly well trained Seeing Eye camels available. And while we are used to thinking about blind men in the Bible metaphorically, I find it important to affirm that this was a real life differently abled person. Helps us truly connect with his story.
We do know from biblical studies that he lived with another sort of darkness as well – that of social stigma. The cause of blindness was not exactly scientifically explained in those days. In the Jewish community, the culprit for this condition was commonly identified as sin. Not sin in a broad theological sense, but sin more directly defined as a person’s moral failings before God.
Now, we are told this particular man from our Scriptural scene was born blind. This should get us all wondering. How could he have morally failed God in vitro? The conventional wisdom of the day answered this by saying he was born blind because of his parent’s moral failings. So, my goodness, from the get-go this poor soul not only endured physical darkness, but also awful spiritual darkness. It was quite good of Jesus’ disciples, then, to question whether or not the man’s blindness was the result of his or his parent’s sin. It was good of them to ask Jesus’ opinion, to have him shed His light on this conclusion.
How do you feel about the line of thinking that says disability results from moral failings, either those belonging to the individual or to the individual’s family line? Have you ever heard shades of this sort of thinking in our present day? If I accepted this as true, I sure would want to know who in my family is to blame for my arthritic knees! But I don’t accept it as true because of what we all learn from Jesus’ response in this morning’s lesson and because this view of differently abled people is just plain rude and socially dangerous.
As for other people in the before scene who had darkness within them, well let’s take a look. Ah, yes, when Jesus responded to the man, he did so on the Sabbath day. To work on the Sabbath was against religious law. This was brought to the attention of the Pharisees, a few of whom were quick to condemn both the blind man and Jesus as sinners. Theirs was the darkness of not being able to see God at work beyond narrow views and rigid understandings and traditional interpretations.
Also suffering darkness in this story were some of the man’s neighbors as well as his own parents. The darkness in some of the neighbors is the darkness of denial – they somehow didn’t even recognize the blind man after his encounter with Jesus, the same man they’d probably known and passed by his entire life! And as for the man’s own parents, mom and dad of the morally failed tribe, there darkness was the darkness of fear. When questioned by the Pharisees about their son and Jesus, they suffocated any joy they may have felt at the outcome of that meeting and instead chose to live in fear of being kicked out of their congregation by the Pharisaic leaders.
In the midst of all this darkness in everyone around him, the after picture progressively appeared to the blind man. Before, he was a blind beggar, socially stigmatized by religious leaders and it seems everyone else around him. Then, by way of the disciples pointing him out to Jesus, a great conversion occurred. Jesus was immediately empathic in proclaiming that blindness is not the result of anybody’s moral failings. What precious, radical news that must have been for this man! Then Jesus declared Himself the Light of the World, and after the application of some miracle mud, some holy spit, some liberating loogie (these are names suggest to me by friends on Facebook, by the way!), that amazingly gracious Light fully dawned on this child of God. He was reborn into healed ever after!
Those around him, however, could not, or simply would not, see this Light. As we just reviewed, the darkness of rigid traditional teachings, of denial, and of fearing exclusion continued in them. And so they drilled the man with questions, trying hard to debunk his rebirth.
But notice how his understanding of Jesus arose slowly like the morning sun. First, he identified Jesus just by his first name. This was followed by him declaring Jesus a prophet. And then, after the religious authorities demanded he give glory to God by declaring Jesus a sinner, he offered up one of the best zingers in the Bible. Refusing to abide by narrow interpretations, denials, and fear, he turned to the Pharisees, says he doesn’t know the validity of what they are talking about, and then zings, “One thing I do know, I was blind and now I see.” In doing so, he declared his faith in Jesus as the only trustworthy person of the entire lot around him – synagogue leaders, neighbors, even his own family. And so he gave witness to a powerful conversion from life before to new life after this incredible encounter with our Lord.
Have you seen any before and after pictures similar to this? In other people around you, in stories from television, or, perhaps, in the story reflected in your own mirror? Maybe you did, then questioned it, then dismissed it due to darkness within or around you. Or maybe you did, and rejoiced in the absolutely radiant, hope-filled, faithful light of this good news!
What our long lesson from John’s Gospel teaches us this morning is that the most valid voice of witness to the power of Jesus’ healing Light in this world is a person’s own. I believe we’ve all had miracle mud, Holy spit, liberating loogie spiritually slapped on us by Jesus. I believe we’ve all had conversion moments in Christ, moments when broken down darkness was broken wide open to a new, bold, bright view. I also believe it may not feel comfortable sharing such witness, and that we may well bristle at even hearing the words “witness” and “conversion.” But it’s not complicated. You don’t need the lingo. You just need the love. It’s simply speaking about how hope ever after in the Lord has irrevocably touched and transformed you.
People listening to this sort of deeply person story may well dismiss your words as did all the folks in the beforehand blind man’s life. From this pulpit and in many conversations, I’ve told my story of the powerful visual epiphany I had in Miller Chapel during my first year at Princeton Seminary. I had had belief in Jesus before this moment on that particular day, but I’ll attest until the day I die that until that happened I had not fully let the Light of the World shine through and convert my darkness. That was a serious shift to healed ever after for me, but one that more than a few folks through the years have tried to tell me was a daydream or something other than what I am convinced it was. Yet I stand on the power of that experience every single day. And for anyone suspicious of it, and, hey, for anyone dismissive of any of our words of witness from life changing moments to the day to day blessings we feel applied to us like a sacred compress, there is really only one thing to do. Zing ‘em with a great quote – “One thing I do know, I was blind and now I see!” Amen.
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