April 3, 2011

Linda Murphy

Lent 4     John 9:1-41

Last Sunday Peter and I went to St Andrews in Pukekohe. In the congregation I noticed a young girl, she would have been about ten years old and she wore dark glasses. As she and another girl left to go to Sunday school I observed her cane for the sight impaired. After the service while sharing a cup of tea, the Vicar Jan told me this young girl had gone blind two years ago. Jan made the comment that she didn’t preach about miracles particularly as this young girl’s sudden and permanent blindness had caused much distress to her family and the wider congregation. Jan chose to use the alternative reading from Luke.

As I was on the roster to preach today, this conversation and the image of this little girl has been constantly in my thoughts. What are miracles? It is a word being used with abandon in the media over the last month or so. The earthquakes in Christchurch and Japan have reported miracles of survival. Medical science can perform miracles for many people with illnesses that a few years ago would lead to a premature death.

But is this gospel story from John telling us about a miracle or was he trying to tell his community something quite different and the curing of the man born blind with no name is actually just a vehicle to get them and us to see and listen with new eyes.

While this gospel opens with the healing of the of the man born blind, the story is saying so much more that the healing is just a small part of the message, more like an appetiser. It wasn’t the healing with spittle and mud; which was a common practice of healers in the first century but the consequences of the healing.

John’s Gospel was written during a period of conflict between Jews who believed in Jesus, Christian Jews and Jews like the Pharisees who did not believe Jesus was ‘sent from God’. The Christian Jews were being expelled from their synagogues they were being displaced and were feeling very vulnerable.

John uses ‘seeing’ as a metaphor for believing, for seeing past outward appearances to the truth in the heart of things.

This was a guide to the early Christian community to ‘see’ themselves in it. The healing of the blind man from birth allowed his life to be transformed. He was no longer a beggar he became over the course of this story a believer, a disciple and with this belief came God’s transforming grace.

The theme of darkness and light and the tensions in this story of conflict and judgement and the twists and turns these circumstances take. Beginning with the disciples query if the man born blind is ‘sinful’ due to his parents ‘sin’. The Pharisees consider Jesus ‘sinful’ because he disregarded the Mosaic Laws of the Sabbath. The man born blind parents are unwilling to say how or who healed their son. Jesus is challenging, enlightenment comes from the source that is ‘sent’ and from a source who is the sent one, the Son of Man. John the Seer was developing his Christology for the new Christian community. The way the various groups discuss this healing and the wrong of it rather than the joy of the man born blind gaining his sight are both intriguing and a very clever way to communicate with us. This story was told to reassure the believers that they were not alone; they now belonged to a community that shared the same faith, and ultimately, like the man born blind but newly sighted they would encounter Jesus on their journey.

John helps them to connect their loss with the gain of grace in their powerful experience of conversion and healing, understanding and trust. However this conversion and belief inspired judgment, rejection and condemnation from those around them and it continues to happen in our own contemporary world. Listening and seeing with new eyes can be a very lonely place.

Can we find ourselves in this story?

It is so tempting to identify with the man born blind rather than the Pharisees. After all we are here because we go to church, are Anglicans or are exploring the message of Progressive Christianity. Religion organised or not, seems to gravitate towards structure and control thereby placing limits on individuals search for God. An indiscriminate display of mercy such as this story’s healing plays havoc with the church and our need for order and decent behaviour.

 We read and hear in the media and from everyday conversation ”streeties, the homeless deserve what they get; they should just get a job.” Sounds just like the seeing but blind to outward appearance Pharisees to me. The rigid following of rules rather than seeing the situation and trying to repair the needs of those around us who are outsiders. We continue to say; no healing on the Sabbath and certainly no making of clay! We are just using different phrases. We as church can become preoccupied with the traditional rituals and fail to see what really matters. More like the Pharisees desperately trying to ‘preserve the law”. They too were in a time of displacement in the first century the Temple had been destroyed.

The post-impressionist painter Paul Gauguin said “I shut my eyes in order to see.” Thinking about his beautiful paintings particularly his work from his time in Tahiti, perhaps it’s worth a try.

What hidden truths and realities, do we need to see, in our own lives and each other? When and how do we take time to encounter God and hear a truth that could transform our lives, to follow a new path that we previously could not even see?

Barbara Brown Taylor, an American theological writer and Episcopal priest preached, “…wonder, not suspicion, is the beginning of worship, and seeing is believing only if we are willing to believe.” She continues… “There is a warning here, we must have a willingness to examine even our most cherished and deeply held ideas and suppositions. A willingness to engage in self examination is one of the key qualities of the Lenten season”. We have to be willing to see with different eyes and hear with new ears the many ways God is discernible in our daily lives and the world.

The demystification of the vindictive God, the revelation of the healing God, this is what this Gospel story is all about. It isn’t a miracle story of healing physical blindness it is a story illustrating the wonder of the unexpected in the most unexpected place, the wonder of God, Creation and Humanity when we choose to be open to grace.

The little blind girl in Pukekohe may receive a miracle through the advances of medical science, I surely hope so. Nevertheless, I saw a congregation who cared, a community involved with this blind girl who displayed compassion. A Vicar who didn’t feel happy about words that may hurt if heard and interpreted literally. For me the blind girl was unexpected. She was the unexpected presence of God for me that Sunday, allowing the demystification of God through John’s words speaking to us in the twenty first century. Finding God in the everyday even in tragedy. While we listen to the music during reflection let us close our eyes, you never know what you may see.

Amen.