March 22, 2020

Cate Thorn

Lent 4     John 9:1-41

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On Thursday evening I popped into Pak and Save in Albany, just for one or two things. Not such a good idea, I’d not witnessed anything quite like it. 10 minute wait for a trolley, 30 minute wait at the checkout. But what really struck me was the feeling, the palpable experience of almost panic, it felt as if there was a thread, only a thread holding people back from stampeding into it. It’s swirling around, this disruptive unsettling feeling. It’s hard to imagine the reality of the Covid-19 virus. We hear of its effects overseas in frightening detail, which, though distanced, can be overwhelming. And the very time we want to reach out and touch, to comfort is the very time we must refrain.

While driving home I decided to pay attention to the unsettled disruption in my belly, to try to understand its cause – fear was the word that came to mind, yet of what was I afraid?

It may not be made real yet, here, immediately in our lives, but it’s closer day by day. This was to be our last chance to gather on Sunday for a while. Helen may be cross about it but I think it unlikely we’ll be able to gather in one place on Easter day. We can decide to do something in common in our scattered places on that day so we know ourselves connected. Perhaps intentionally enact a darkness to light ritual, or decide to pay attention in a particular way. We can decide to do something in common even as we cannot be in the same space. Prayer fully we can know we companion one another. And we plan for there to be virtual, live feed connectivity.

This new real is hard to imagine.

We have to change our behaviours to prevent the spread of a virus. A virus we cannot see, that can be carried and communicated even as the one carrying is unaware for they’re asymptomatic. It’s hard to get your head around.

Right now it feels as bit as if we’re neither here nor there. Adversity can bring out a spirit of innovation, tenacity, collegial creativity. But we’re not quite there yet.

Anxious and distracted we have to face this new way in a world of distanced togetherness.

Today we were to listen to scripture enacted, the gospel from John of the man blind from birth being healed and the ensuing “argument/discussion”.

How do we make connection between our experience of being a gathered community of St Matthew’s, this gospel and the ‘real’ world we know we’re going to walk into, necessarily separated, that’s not like we’ve known before? Do St Matthew’s and this gospel text simply fulfil a religious need in us? Or might we find them to have application beyond, to be deeper than religion’s possession?

As I’ve listened to this gospel over the week it seems to me to speak quite a lot about resistance to change. Within the narrative of the text the resistance, of those with religious power, to change the way they interpret the world, or rather to change how they interpret what happens in the world, despite the evidence before them.

A man born blind does receive sight but I’m not sure this narrative’s about miraculous healing per se. The blind man seems almost a pawn, a character used to reveal something, for John’s Jesus to make a point.

From the outset we’re introduced to a world view. Jesus and his disciples meet a beggar, a man blind from birth we’re told. The explanation for such condition, so the disciples interpret it, is because of the sinfulness of either the man or his parents. “Neither” Jesus declares, but the interchange provides opportunity for Jesus to reveal the effect of their unquestioned/unexamined interpretation. Without actually asking the blind man what he wants (which is a bit presumptuous), Jesus proceeds to spread mud and spit on the blind man’s eyes, sends the man to wash in the pool of Siloam and the man can see.

Then a whole number of arguments and interrogations ensue about the man’s identity, about the genuineness of his blindness, about who’s permitted to be named as the source of such healing. Over and again the statement of facts of what happened, of identity, is repeated, whether by the man born blind or by the parents of the man born blind. Leading questions from such factual response receive blunt response, I don’t know, we do not know. I/ we only know what happened.

As the text unfolds, with holy humour the farcically untenable position those with power insist on holding is exposed. Even so, with spluttering bluster they claim their hold of the holy high ground and with it the right to sin accuse, diminish and dismiss the personhood of another.

Holy humour, perhaps it’s a good reminder for us to laugh at ourselves more often. If we took ourselves less seriously perhaps we’d be open to see things as they are and let them be. Resist the temptation to impose our flights of interpretive fancy upon what is plainly before us.

In the times we find ourselves in, we can be tempted to overuse our access to information. To interpret it in a way to rationalise our fear and anxiety, even to the catastrophic.

Let’s be reminded to stick to what we know. We know the Covid-19 virus is rapidly moving across our world. Without underestimating the effect of Covid-19, statistically most people who get infected by it will recover. We’re fortunate to know, from the experience of countries whose management of this virus has minimised its impact, there are ways we can socially organise that will inhibit its spread. So we’ve been asked to accept the mantle of citizen responsibility and change the way we live.

The beginning conversation around Covid-19 was about not letting it be communicated. Was about living as if you had the virus, was about avoidance and prevention. This remains the intention, to slow its spread, to try and prevent a community outbreak. But increasingly the language is changing. Increasingly we’re being asked to live for one another. To live in socially responsible ways out of care for one another, especially those most vulnerable to the Covid-19 virus. We’re being asked to actively notice and care for our neighbour, to change for the good of one another and for the good of our society.

But it doesn’t remove our anxiety and our fear, that thin thread of almost panic among us. We’re being asked to live differently, unaided by the systems and structures that order our lives, without the distractions and diversions we use to cope and stimulate meaningfulness. And for many there’s no reassurance of economic or career continuity. We live present to the effects of the unseen Covid-19 virus and we know it’s not going to end anytime soon. Anxiety and fear are appropriate reactions.

What might the gospel narrative have to speak into all of this? Did you notice the somewhat enigmatic ending of today’s gospel, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains”? Maybe being blind is just being blind, if you’re honest about it. But if you’re blind and insist you’re not your responses inflict others with your shortcomings.

Anxiety and fear are appropriate reactions in the times we find ourselves. Yet they need not be our response to one another.

We need each other in these times. We need to hear and to speak how we are. We need to hear the resonance of our honest selves in the honest self of another. Communities of trust and deep care such as St Matthew’s matter in such times when we, together, are sensing, feeling and finding our way, negotiating how to live fully as who we are in a world changed. Let us, in our keeping safe distanced way, continue to be such community for one another that we may be valuable and rich resource to those who come into our care in these times.