NewCreation

Homily for Fourth Sunday in Lent, Year A

Welcome, my sisters and brothers, to this the homily for the fourth Sunday in Lent. This Sunday we have the second of our three more or less chapter-length Johannine passages, meetings with Jesus that are so often used in the rites of initiation. Last week we saw Jesus offering living water, and we saw the effect on the Samaritan woman as she was turned herself into a bearer of living water. Today we have a look at Jesus as the light of the world and as the criterion for the world — that he's come as the judgment or the criterion for the world by which we may know and see things. Next Sunday he will be the resurrection and the life. But if he was more than a prophet last time, here he is doing something even more striking, because he is demonstrating that he is the Creator. And the relationship between Creator and humans that is central to John's Gospel and to our understanding of the Gospel is beautifully brought out in this passage. A number of years ago I did a very close reading of this passage, which is published, and I'll put a link to a page in which you can read it. So for those of you who want a more or less verse-by-verse trot through this long chapter, that's available to you if you'd like to read it. But I'm going to go through it with a slightly broader brush today, because it's too long to spend, you know, 45 minutes or whatever it would take to go through it point by point. So just to bring out the key factors in the life of the blind man who is going to become the new picture — just as the Samaritan woman was the picture of the disciple in the last gospel, so the man blind from birth is going to become the picture of the disciple in this gospel. So as Jesus walks along, he sees a man blind from birth — a relatively young man, as we discover, since his parents are still alive; they'll come into the picture later. And his disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned? This man or his parents, that he was born blind?" In other words, they're living within the moral universe — or the magical universe — of: if someone is in some way defective, it must be someone's fault; there must be someone who must have done something wrong. And I think that it is here we have one of the absolutely clear answers from Jesus, which later gets brought out very clearly by the blind man. Jesus answered: "Neither this man nor his parents sinned. He was born blind so that God's works might be revealed in him." And what we have in this chapter is precisely the revealing of God's works in this person. Jesus then turns to his disciples and says: "We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day. Night is coming when no one can work." So Jesus is now going to do the works of him who sent me. And the works refer to the continuation of the creative work of God. That's the way "works" are used in John's Gospel. Jesus says, "My Father is working still and I am working." So here we're talking about the creation being made full in a human. "This is a night is coming when no one could work" — so at the time of the crucifixion it'll all be opened again thereafter. But so he says, "As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world." So this Gospel is the illustration of him being the light of the world, but it's not merely an accidental light; it's the light that flows from creation itself. 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. Now apparently, behind the Greek here, there are Hebrew or Aramaic references to ground, adam, earth, and Adam the first man — so dam and Adam the first man. So what is he doing? He's fulfilling Adam. He's making Adam whole. The notion that as humans we are all in one way or another incomplete, and that what Jesus is doing, what the Creator does coming into our life, is not simply rescue us from, as it were, an evil creation, but say: no, creation was wonderful but it somehow got trapped in something less than itself. I am here to make it whole. So here is the Creator producing Adam. And he says to him, "Go, wash in the pool of Siloam" — which means "the one who is sent." And some people see this as a reference to baptism, but it would be a standard sign of respect for the customs of being able to show afterwards that you had gone through purification. Incidentally, I have read recently that the archaeologists have managed to find more fully the details of the original pool of Siloam. So that's a treat for those going to the Holy Land. Then this man washed. Please notice: up till now he's been purely passive. People have seen him. He hasn't said anything. He's been purely an object. Nothing human about him at all, really. Someone who people have pointed to, talked about, and then Jesus has done something to him. No conversation — until he says to him, "Go, wash in the pool of Siloam." That's the first instruction he gets. So he went and washed and came back able to see. The neighbors and those who'd 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's someone like him." So they're still used to him being a non-person in their midst, about whom people talk but who does not himself talk. He has no agency. But now he keeps saying, "I am the man." But in Greek, of course, what he says is a phrase which usually only Jesus gets to say. He says, ego eimi — "I am." The other person who gets to say ego eimi is Jesus. When Jesus says "I am," it's a reference to the Lord; it is God; it's the Creator. So here we have the created one at last standing up and being a human being, able to be the image of "I am." As if we know that Jesus is "I Am" in the big sense, this is what it looks like as a human to being gradually brought into agency and life. They kept asking — they kept on asking him: "Then how were your eyes opened?" He'd had to interrupt them to get across that point. But now they ask him: "If you are that person, why are your eyes opened?" And so he tells them the story. "The man called Jesus made mud and spread it on my eyes and said to me, 'Go to Siloam and wash.' Then I went and washed and received my sight." So it's all very straightforward. They said to him, "Where is he?" And he says, "I do not know." It's pretty obvious he couldn't see when he was around, and now he can see — he wouldn't recognize him. So they brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. Obviously something rather significant has happened. And here we get a second clue about why this is important. Now it was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. So the importance of "while it is still day" — this was the final day of rest before the whole of creation had to start again. And on the Sabbath day, theoretically, Jesus ought not to have done a work. But he'd already talked about having to work while it is still light: "The Father is working still, and I am working." So he had done this work, which was the bringing of creation to completeness. And now that's going to be the discussion: is this sort of thing able to be done on the Sabbath? "Now it was the Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes." Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he'd received his sight. He said to them, "He put mud on my eyes, then I washed and now I see." He's very straightforward — he's quite taut in his responses. So some of the Pharisees say, "This man is not from God, for he does not observe the Sabbath." In other words, rather than looking at the person, they're looking at the events, the propriety of all this being done. But others said, "How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?" That seems a reasonable question. So something has happened — what are we going to do about it? He can't be a good person because he worked on the Sabbath, but how can he have done something like this and yet not be a good person? And so they were divided. This is the worst possible thing that can happen to religious authorities: there's a division of opinion amongst them. They can't present a united front. So they said again to the blind man, "What do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened." And he said, "He is a prophet." So they're now trying to recreate their unity thanks to the blind man. And they're giving him the chance to take part in this conversation. "He is a prophet." Well, of course, this was not a happy answer for them because… That didn't resolve their problem. How could he both have done this work and it not be on the Sabbath, and him still be a prophet? So some of them came up with the idea that he had not been blind. The Jews did not believe that he'd been blind and had received his sight until they called the parents of the man who'd received his sight. So after talking to the man himself, they go for the parents in the hopes that they can put off their problem, their division problem. And they say, "Is this your son who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?" His parents answered, "We know that this is our son and that he was born blind, but we do not know how it is that he now sees, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him, he is of age, he will speak for himself." In other words, clever old parents — they realize that they're facing up a bunch of the righteous, just in a fit of righteous piety or holiness or whatever it is you'd like to call it, and that's a very dangerous place to be, so they pass the buck back to their son. His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews, for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. And you can see here it would happen in any group, in any religious culture. It's not a particularly Jewish thing that once the people in charge religiously feel that there's a threat of division, they try to unite together over against someone and put them out. So the second time they called the man who'd been blind and they said to him, "Give glory to God" — which is the formal phrase for putting somebody on oath — "we know that this man is a sinner." So they want him to give evidence to that; they want him to recognize the truth of that. And he answered, "I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I know: that though I was blind, now I see." And again, this is that marvellous clarity of the response, just as Jesus's response to the disciples earlier: I don't know any of the issues to do with morality here. I know that I was in a bad state and now I'm in a better state. Simple. They said to him, "What did he do? How did he open your eyes?" They're now looking for some technical excuse by which they can solve their problem and retain their unity and not have to deal with this. Maybe it was by witchcraft or something that Jesus had done this and they could dismiss him. And he answered them, "I have told you already and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?" So it's clear that this man is now standing up, and having talked straightforwardly, now he's being quite provocative. Really? Come on, you really don't need to work out your divisions against me. And what he did was perfectly clear, so you can't be united against him either. Well, then they reviled him. It was a very strong word. They were saying, "You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from" — possible reference to Nazareth being a kind of a non-place. But they want to say, "We have put you under oath; let us speak the truth." The law is the law of Moses, and this man is absolutely not part of our understanding of anything to do with God. So the man answered. Well, here's the astonishing thing: "You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will." So here we have the man born blind actually beginning to engage in a theological argument with them — a person who has no preparation, no education, obviously no reading skills up until now. "We know that God does not listen to sinners" — so that takes out the sinner aspect of it — "but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will." And that takes us back to the phrases used with the discussion with the Samaritan, but here it's the Jewish former blind man who is lecturing the Pharisees on worshipping him and obeying his will. "Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing." And this of course is the conclusive argument. After all, he's saying this man has taken part in the act of creation out of nothing. This is not possible unless he comes from God. Only God conceivably could do this. So it's really rather a masterful argument, and they of course have no response to this. It doesn't resolve their question, but it does bring out how lost they are. So they answered him, "You were born entirely in sins, and you're trying to teach us?" In other words, they resort to ad hominem, and they throw him out. Finally, their unity coalesces around him. So we have this interesting account of simultaneously an inclusion — Jesus bringing the Adam into fulfillment of creation — that person acquiring ever more agency, being able to say "I am," starting to be able to get recognition and starting to be able to talk and then to answer back and then to recognize who God is in a very, very fulsome way. He's been brought to life, and he's recognized the criterion. What the criterion is, is the criterion of someone who has turned me from someone who was in some way lacking something into someone who now has it. So Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him he said, "Do you believe in the Son of Man?" And he answered, "And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him." Jesus said to him, "You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he." So, "You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he" — this must have meant, referring to the At the same time that he was actually curing his eyes, but presumably he wasn't able to see very well, and he said, "I believe, Lord," and he worshipped him. So here is someone worshipping in spirit and in truth who has been brought to the fullness of his humanity, not simply by allowing God to do something to him, but by having fought his way, as it were, through various false paths to interpret this away so he would fit into someone else's system. And this is very significant. So Jesus says, "I came into this world for judgment, for criteria: so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind." Which is exactly what he's done here. He's indicated that someone who was visibly blind he has turned into a symbol, a sign of those who are treated as without worth, without personhood, without voice, without sight — nothing to enable them to participate. How they are brought into full participation, while those who think they can see, they're the ones who control everything, have voice, have participation, run the show — become blind. They can't see what's going on in front of their face. And some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, "Surely we're not blind, are we?" — which, I think, we can imagine the translation is being slightly more colloquial than that, as meaning effectively, "I suppose you're saying we're blind." And Jesus said to them, "If you were blind you would not have sinned, but now that you say, 'We see,' your sin remains." In other words, if you were in the position of people who weren't able to see what's going on, not be a problem. It's your reinforcing of your unity over against this person that has made you sinful, because you're insisting on your sight over against something that everybody can see, which has been brought into being and which you have rejected. So Jesus, bringing to life as a disciple another sign of who he is — the Creator bringing the fullness of creation into the light in such a way that that creation becomes fully human, develops agency, and is able to recognize the Lord in what he makes — and at the same time, those people who are frightened of loss of authority, prestige, power, ganging up against this person and actually becoming blind, not actually able to see the Creator in their midst. This is, if you like, a wonderful dynamic account of the creation, because we normally think of creation as something separate from the cultural process of becoming fully ourselves. And yet in the Christian understanding it's precisely the notion that we are all on our way to being fully created, but that our being fully created requires the work of the Lord. It requires us to be forgiven, so that we can learn our way out of the entanglements of our blindness, our belonging to false structural forms of goodness over against despised others, so that eventually we can stand tall and say, "As an image of God, I am." In the name of the Father, the Son… the Holy Spirit. Amen.