Year A, Lent 4
When I was
living in Princeton, I would occasionally take the train into New York City to
see friends. This was a labor of love
because I feared that city. I felt like
I could take a wrong turn and never be found.
Whenever I visited, I would ask my friend to meet me in one particular
spot in Penn Station because I didn’t want to go near the subway where people
have been lost for hours, if not days.
As I boarded the train, someone I recognized boarded with his guide dog.
He was blind. I had met him earlier when he was visiting the seminary. We ended up talking until we neared New York.
Then the unthinkable happened. The
train stopped in Penn Station in New Jersey (I know, it’s very confusing,
that’s why I am convinced that city is out to get me.) The conductor announced that there was
something wrong with the train and he had no idea how long it would take to fix
it. He advised us to find another way into the city. For me, finding an alternate way was like
asking me to turn water into wine. It
would have required a miracle. I turned to my new friend and asked, “What other
way is there?” He must have sensed my fear and anxiety because he told me that
he would show me the way.
There are a lot of amazing miracle stories in
the Bible and we all know that Jesus was a miracle worker. However, the Gospel of John depicts miracles
in a different way than the other gospels. For John, miracles were signs. They were signs pointing the way to the truth
about who Jesus really was. They were
opportunities for people to witness the glory of God. Our
rather lengthy Gospel story depicts a man who is blind from birth. Unlike the story in the Gospel of Mark where
Jesus also healed a blind man, this healing is not the result of a request. The
man never approached Jesus. Jesus healed
him after a conversation with his disciples about the cause of his blindness. He created some mud with his own holy
spittle, spread the mud on the man’s eyes and told the man to go wash in the
pool of Siloam.
The man followed his directions and went from being completely
blind to having his vision restored 100%.
There is no indication that he had trouble adjusting. There were no blurry images or vertigo. While his physical sight was restored almost
immediately, he gained spiritual insight gradually through the course of the
narrative. When he was first asked
about the person who healed him, he referred to “the man called Jesus.” The next time he was questioned he referred
to Jesus as a prophet, which means that he identified him as a man sent by
God.
However, the major turning point came when he saw Jesus for the
first time. It was then that he finally
understood who Jesus truly was. Now you
might think, well of course he believed, Jesus just cured him of a lifetime of
blindness. That would be helpful for most
of us on our faith journey. However, we
must remember that he did not receive his sight until he removed the mud from
his own eyes. Even before he was able to
see (and before he really understood who Jesus was) he had enough faith and
courage to find his way to the pool and wash the mud away.
While this man was able to believe despite living a life in darkness,
others in the story had more trouble.
The Pharisees, who represented the religious establishment more than
they represented the Jewish people, seemed almost obsessed with proving this
man and Jesus wrong. First, they hid in
the rather murky water of religious laws and rules. It was the Sabbath and you
are not allowed to heal on the Sabbath so obviously Jesus was not a man of
God. When the man maintained that Jesus
was a prophet (and thus a man of God), the Pharisees tried to convince others
that he was not actually blind from birth.
When this theory was proven false by the man’s rather frightened parents,
the Pharisees tried to manipulate the man with guilt and lofty religious
language. The man responded to this new
challenge with the clarity of someone who has experienced the truth of Jesus
Christ. “One thing that I do know, that
though I was blind, now I see.” For the
man who had been cured of his blindness, it was just that simple.
Yet the Pharisees tried to complicate the matter by asking again
how it happened. When they realized
that this man could not be convinced by religious law, guilt, lofty religious
language or even theology, they removed him from their community. They kicked him out of the synagogue. He was
no longer welcome to worship there. It
was then that Jesus sought him out. It
was then when Jesus revealed not only his glory, but also his love and
compassion.
In my trek
through the New York public transportation system, my friend used one hand to
hold the leash of his dog and one hand to stay connected with me. I would read the signs and he would tell me
if that was the right train. When we
finally reached the city, we were dropped a couple blocks from Penn
Station. When I asked him how I could
get there, he offered to take me the rest of the way. He led me through the streets of New York, me
telling him what signs I saw, and him telling me which direction to turn. He did not merely lead me to Penn Station, he
took me to the exact place where my friend was waiting. She looked a little
perplexed as I walked up holding the hand of a blind man. I introduced them and explained how I came to
know him. We said goodbye and he
disappeared into the crowd. As I hugged
my friend with relief she looked at me and said, “You do realize that you
followed a blind man.” That was true, but at least I had read the
signs.
Some people are able to read,
understand and follow the signs. Some
people can read and understand, but lack the courage to follow. Others can read them but not make sense of
them. Then there are some people who
are so blinded by the map that is in their head, they don’t even look for the
signs. The Pharisees were not bad
people. Most of them were very good
people who had dedicated their life to their religion. But somewhere along the way they stopped
being open to new signs because they already had all of the answers. Even when the signs were right in their face,
they found way to get around them.
Jesus gave the blind man sight, but
in many ways (much like my friend) he already had sight. He
had insight and a heart open to invisible and visible signs. We might not all have that insight
naturally. Some of us might be a little
stubborn or maybe we are new on this journey and the signs all look a little
alike. Perhaps like me, you occasionally
lack the courage to take risks and try new things. Yet at some point, I think we will all find
that Jesus has given us all the signs we need, even the courage and the miracle
cure. He gave it to us when he died for
us, when he was resurrected. He continues
to give them to us in the waters of Baptism and in the Eucharist. It is up to us to wash the mud out of our own
eyes.
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