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The Fourth Sunday In Lent (Laetare)
Gracious Father, whose blessed Son Jesus Christ came down from heaven to be the true bread which giveth life to the world: Evermore give us this bread, that he may live in us, and we in him; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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Scripture citation(s): Ephesians 5:8-14; John 9:1-41
A Sermon by
Fr. Spurlock
on
Ephesians 5:8-14; John 9:1-41
✛
Light, Water, Harvest, Exodus
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When Jesus heals a man born blind he is doing so on the heels of a great Jewish feast called Sukkoth. The ceremonies surrounding the keeping of this feast included building booths or tents made out of tree branches, water being drawn from the pool of Siloam which was poured over the altar of the Temple; each morning the priests turned their backs to the rising sun to remind them of a time when their forefathers turned away from the lord and chased after idols. All this was done with joy and celebration for the gathering in of the harvest and as a remembrance of the sojourn in the desert during the exodus when God dwelled in the midst of his people.[1]
Jesus brings a new perspective to these observances as he walks through an encounter with a man who we learn has been blind from birth. Jesus and his disciples are just coming down from the temple at the conclusion of the festival. Jesus sees the blind man and his disciples enter into a theological discussion about his condition. Who sinned, this man or his parents that he should be born blind? That was a common enough thought in Jesus’ day; afflictions were God’s punishments for wrongdoing. This is a notion that persists in our own day. Think about the kinds of things that we sometimes say when natural disaster occurs, or pandemic emerges. “This is the hand of God and he is zapping us for our wrongdoing.” But Jesus doesn’t lend credence to such a notion. God has not zapped the man born blind for sin, but rather that God’s power might be made manifest.
And that is not to say that God willed the man be born blind just so he will come out looking like a swell when Jesus heals him. No, the infected atmosphere of a fallen creation is the cause of afflictions like blindness, disease, natural disaster, and ultimately death. We pray that things be on earth as they are in heaven and when the blind are given their sight, or diseases are healed, disaster is averted, or the dead rise from the grave, our prayer is answered. That is the sharp relief between the way we live down here and what it looks like when God’s kingdom breaks into this world, often with unsettling and miraculous result. This is the thing Jesus declared was happening through his works, and these are the works that God sent him into the world to perform.
We now move from talk to action. Jesus begins by breaking the law: he violates the day of rest appointed for the close of the feast of tabernacles. How? By spitting on the ground and making clay. This constitutes work in the eyes if the religious authorities. One day you are making a poultice to heal the blind, the next thing you know you’re making bricks and there goes the Sabbath. But in any case, Jesus places mud on the blind man’s eyes and sends him to wash in the pool of Siloam, which John takes pains to tell us means “sent”. Do you get it? Jesus sends the blind man to the pool called sent. That’s more than just a play on words. Recall what Jesus said, “The Father has sent me. And the Father who sent me has himself borne witness to me. His voice you have never heard, his form you have never seen. John 5.36-38 The sent one has spoken, the blind man has heard, and it remains to be seen whether or not he will behold his form.
There is another thing about this pool we should know. As part of the Tabernacle’s observances, each day of the festival a priest went down to the pool of Siloam and drew a container of water that he carried back up to the Temple. He poured the water onto the altar as a libation which was left to run down to the valley below. This evoked a vision by the prophet Ezekiel (47th chapter) who saw water flowing out of the temple toward a desert land to bring healing and new life. Healing and new life: this should make us think of baptism. Saint Peter, recalling another incident when people were saved by water, said, “Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a clear conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” 1 Peter 3.21
The blind man is at the pool. We must imagine him bending his neck, as much in obedience to Jesus’ voice, as to the practicalities of getting his face down to the water, and washing away the dirt from his eyes. Synapses, which have never fired before, burst to life. Before he can see or is able to comprehend what it is he is seeing, he must first discern the wild, nauseating, indescribable experience of perceiving light. And here we might remember something else Jesus said: “I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.” John 8.12 So we might ask ourselves, what does the man see first: the phenomena of electromagnetic radiation, or is it the light and life of Christ dawning in himself?
What is the next thing he sees, even if he doesn’t recognize it as such? Why, it must be water, his face is bent over a pool of it, after all. Could we blame him for wondering, what is this? To taste water is one thing, to hear it’s silvery trickle or burbling, rushing sound is still another but to see it’s mercurial workings is an entirely different thing altogether. And Jesus said, “If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. [For] the water that I shall give… shall be in a well of water springing up to eternal life.” John 7.37-38, 4.14
But before the man born blind can get back to Jesus, he falls into the hands of his neighbors who drag him off to see the clergy. This is not done out of malice but out of a desire for answers. Remember the disciples’ question: who sinned? To the man’s neighbors this is not a medical crisis, but a theological concern over what is going on down here that has God reversing judgment on sinners. But their interview with the clergy turns into an interrogation. Repeatedly, Pharisees ask the man and his stunned parents how he was healed… if he was healed… if he was even blind to begin with? The man’s explanation progresses from relating facts as they happened to a deeper profession about who it was who healed him. All the while the Pharisees don’t want to see anything beyond their own comprehension. They say, “This is not possible. You could not have been blind to begin with. Even if you were blind, this man could not heal you.” They continue to assert that what has happened did not happen and was not even able to happen. But the facts don’t square with their assertions and a sore division rose up in their ranks.
And here is one of those places where I wish I had another hour or more with you,[2] but the long and the short of it is that the man is expelled from their presence with a curse and he returns to Jesus. The man, who was born blind, lays his whole life down before who he now confesses as his Lord and worships him. And Jesus… gathers him in. The man does in fact behold the form of the one who sent him down this wild pilgrimage of grace. And whose form does he behold? It is none other than God incarnate.
The feast of tabernacles commemorated the time in the desert spent in tents. God remembered his time spent with them and he said, “I have not dwelt in any house since the time that I brought up the children of Israel out of Egypt, even to this day, but have walked in a tent and in a tabernacle. 2 Sam 7.6 Thus, it could be said by the Israelites when they sojourned in the desert, God is with us. Now a man once blind lays prostrate before Jesus whose birth was explained in this way: “Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.” Matthew 1.23 Jesus, who is Emmanuel, did not come to live in a tent made of curtains or branches, but of flesh, and not only to live in our presence, but to live in our human condition.
Immediately following the miracle of sight being granted to a blind man, our Lord continued to teach about himself as the shepherd who gathers in the flock. “I am the good shepherd; I know my own and my own know me… and I lay down my life for the sheep. And I have other sheep, that are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will heed my voice. So there shall be one flock, one shepherd.” John 10.14-17
In the story of the man born blind we are given a vision of a festival of light, water, of God’s presence and harvest-time, all adorned and beautified by the light of the world, the living water, God incarnate dwelling among us, and the good shepherd gathering in his sheep.
_______________
[1] My source for the feast’s ceremonial is the Mishna, a Jewish commentary on the Torah or the first five books of the Bible. The command for the feast is found in the Torah while the “rubrics” for how to celebrate it come from the Mishna .
[2] Some 1600 years ago, when Saint Augustine was called upon to preach on today’s gospel he wrote, “We have just read the long lesson of the man born blind…. but were we to attempt handling the whole of it…. in a way proportionate to its worth, the day would be insufficient.” Saint Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John, 44
