Year A: Homily for 4th Sunday in Lent
1 Samuel 16:1, 6-7, 10-13 |
Ephesians 5:8-14 |
John 9:1-41 |
Just as last week there was a dominant image of water that tied the readings together, this week we have the image of light and sight that does the same. But, of course, the readings, and their selection, are much richer than just an image or symbol. As we go through Lent, there is a movement to the readings. The first two weeks of Lent let us meditate on the relationship between sin and grace, grace being God’s gift to us. Last week, the middle week, we were asked to make a conscious choice in choosing God over sin in our own lives. This week we focus on the community of believers – the church, and next we look at more universal matters. So hopefully you can see the movement from self, to community, to world.
In the first reading we look at the Israelite community who is seeking a new king. But it is God who is going to make that decision, and God’s ways, as we know, are not our ways. God sends Samuel to Jesse who has eight sons, though he only shows Samuel seven of them. Since seven is a number in Jewish thought which is perfect, we get the idea that the eighth son is rather an outsider, someone who doesn’t fit in and who was probably too young to even be considered. But God sees the youngest son’s heart and it is David the shepherd that he wants.
When Samuel proclaims that David is the one, he is taken by the appearance of the boy. The word “ruddy” which is used in our translation to describe David, has the same root as the word used to describe Adam who was made out of dust in the Book of Genesis. Thus the writer ties together Adam and David who are both empowered by the Spirit of God and who were both at the beginning of new chapters in Israel’s history. Samuel saw the light and chose David, seemingly the weakest of the brothers. The community of Israel would have a new king because God could see into the heart of this boy.
In keeping with the communal aspect of the theme today, we sang as a response to the first reading the most popular of all psalms “The Lord is my shepherd”. If David was the shepherd boy who would lead his people, so is God the shepherd over us all. He watches over his community, he finds a pasture that has enough support for the flock, he leads them there, he protects them and he sees to their needs. It is no wonder that this is the most prayed of the psalms and that it is the one we turn to when we are most fearful or troubled.
When we move to the second reading from St. Paul we get our first look at the image of light which will dominate our reading and our thought for the next little while. The actual transition is from darkness to light which is a metaphor for the changes that need to happen in each Christian and each Christian community.
The darkness/light metaphor is a strong one. We were not just IN the dark, we WERE the darkness, Paul says. Because of Jesus and our acceptance of his way, we have now BECOME the light. From this insight, Paul draws theological insights that we should follow: each of us and the community of believers have to choose the things that keep us in the light, we must choose to live honestly and openly, and we must light a path for others.
The quotation at the end of Paul’s letter: “Sleep, awake! Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you!” is probably an early Christian prayer associated somehow with the Baptism ceremony. It shows how the Christian moves from a negative to a positive state – from sleep to wake, from death to life from dark to light – and how Christ is the cause of this transition.
The Gospel from John is about darkness to light as well – as a result of Jesus’ intervention. The man born blind is cured by Jesus. Unlike what we know today, the Hebrews believed that blindness was caused by sin and, therefore, a blind person was seen as impure. Since this man was born blind, he has always been in darkness. Note that Christ was not ‘restoring’ sight to him but giving him new sight. Sight for someone who had never seen! This is reminiscent of St. Paul’s idea that we were the darkness and now are the light.
After the man is cured he is interrogated by the Pharisees who are trying to find out and understand how a man born blind is suddenly able to see. When they are told by the blind man exactly what happened and how Jesus was responsible for the cure, the Pharisees try to disparage Jesus and point out that this must be an evil act because it was done on the Sabbath and so Jesus was disobeying the Law. But the blind man does not give in and, in fact, tells the Pharisees that he believes Jesus is a prophet. The Pharisees insult him, calling him a sinner, and who was he to tell them who was a Prophet. And they dismiss him, “drive him out”.
The final scene is the blind man being sought out by Jesus because Jesus has heard how the Pharisees treated him. Because he has been faithful to Jesus and wants to learn from Jesus, Jesus tells him his identity and the blind man treats Jesus accordingly and “worships” him. The images of light and darkness run all through this story and help us to see that the lesson is that we must, like the blind man, move from spiritual darkness to spiritual intuition and light. And again, it is through Jesus that this can happen.
Jehovah's Witnesses are great at house to house evangelism. I remember this man who used to frequent our neighbourhood. He was blind. He usually began by raising up his red-edged Bible and shouting, "I was blind but now I see." This way he would attract a group of curious people around him and begin witnessing to them. If you needed a distinction between physical and spiritual blindness, this is it. Physically he was blind, but spiritually he was clear sighted, or at least so he believed.
Today's gospel centres on the analogy and distinction between physical and spiritual blindness, as do most of the Gospel miracle stories where Jesus heals blind people. The early Christians saw physical blindness as a metaphor for the spiritual blindness which prevents people from recognizing and coming to Jesus. These stories testify, therefore, to the power of Jesus to heal not just the blindness of the eye but, above all, the blindness of the heart.
The clue that the evangelist intended this story to be read on these two levels, physical and spiritual, is found at the tail end of the story:
Jesus said, "I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind." Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, "Surely we are not blind, are we?" Jesus said to them, "If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, 'We see,' your sin remains." (John 9:39-41)
The mission statement that Jesus gives here is valid not only for the Pharisees but also for the men and women of our time. To learn from Jesus we must first admit our ignorance, to be healed we must first acknowledge our blindness, to be forgiven we must confess our sins. The I'm-OK-you're-OK mentality so prevalent today may in fact not be too far from the mentality of the Pharisees. The great archbishop Fulton J. Sheen used to say that in the past only Catholics believed in the Immaculate Conception but today everybody thinks they are immaculately conceived and, therefore, sinless.
From earliest times today's gospel story has been associated with baptism. Just as the blind man went down into the waters of Siloam and came up whole, so also believers who are immersed into the waters of baptism come up spiritually whole, totally healed of the blindness with which we are born. For, like the blind man in the gospel, we are all born blind - spiritually, that is.
Another reason why this story was used in the preparation of catechumens for baptism is that it spells out in a very dramatic way what it takes to be a disciple of Jesus. It is, in fact, a story of how a blind man who used to sit and beg became a disciple who went about witnessing to Jesus. As in last week's story of the conversion of the Samaritan woman by Jacob's well, this story of the healing of the blind man shows that the one thing you need to qualify to bear witness to Jesus is not doing a certain kind of studies but having a certain kind of experience. The crisis of faith in our time is not very different from the crisis of faith of the Pharisees, namely, thinking that true piety means knowing and following the Book. But Christianity has a lot more to do with knowing and following the Person, the person of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The crisis of membership and commitment we have in our churches today can be traced to the understanding in the past that being a Christian was a matter of following certain doctrines and rituals. The most important thing, bringing people into a relationship with Jesus was neglected. The irony of the situation is that it is only after such a personal relationship with the Lord that people can begin to appreciate the importance of church worship and doctrine for the life of faith. Faith experience comes before theology. That is why the blind man arrived at the true faith in Jesus before the learned Pharisees. So, when in our ministry we stress doctrine and ritual over personal encounter with the Lord, one begins to wonder whether we are not putting the cart before the horse. Let us today admit our spiritual blindness and pray with St Augustine of Hippo in the spirit of Lent and today's gospel: "Lord that we may see." The Lord will give us light and spiritual insight.
As we consider these readings today and throughout the week, let us look at what in our lives is darkness, the places where we are blind and try to shed light on them. Are we blind to the sufferings and needs of our neighbor, do we show prejudice in our daily dealings with people, do we ignore or put into a dark place the things that we might have influence on to help others? Even though we have become light, we still must choose to put forth that light, to help others, to be a light for others. We must make sure that our community of believers is supported and that we show our love to each other. And this is the call that the Good News makes to us today in this fourth Sunday of our Lenten journey to the greatest light – that of resurrection.
By Rt.Rev.Prof. Kasomo Daniel
Bishop Kasomo is the Bishop of The Society of St. Peter and Paul (SSPP)