FOURTH SUNDAY OF LENT

1 Samuel 16:1b, 6-7, 10-13a | Ephesians 5:8-14 | John 9:1-41

Oh God, who through your word reconcile the human race to yourself in a wonderful way, grant, we pray, that with prompt devotion and eager faith, the Christian people may hasten toward the solemn celebrations to come.  Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever, amen.

The opening prayer always sets the tone for this set of readings, and the first two readings are always there to somehow amplify something in the gospel, because the gospel is the source of the truth that I long to awaken you to see.  In the opening prayer, it’s clear that the role that God reveals himself to have in your life and in mine is somehow to awaken in us a way of being connected to him.  He wants to reconcile human beings to himself.  He wants a union and communion with us, and for some reason, his plan was for him to create us and then for us to grow, in our humanity, ever closer to who we are called to be, more like God.  And as we become more like him, there is more opportunity for us and for him to meld into one beautiful way of existence.  Humanity filled with divinity, that’s what the goal of the Old Testament was in order to prepare us for that incredibly beautiful connection.

So we’re looking at the first story, and it teaches us something really beautiful and simple.  God sees differently than the way human beings see, and we are human.  So our humanity is, in one sense, you would say it’s really a burden, because we’re just slow to catch on.  We’re slow to understand.  We live in illusions and false truths, and so it’s clear that we struggle.  But what he’s saying is, “Here’s the thing.”  And it’s like a prediction of how we will be one day.  God sees to the heart of things.  He sees the essence of a person.  He sees why the world is the way it is, and we’re going to have that one day.  And so God in this story simply allows a king to be chosen, King David, by insight given to Samuel.  He’s the one, the unexpected one.  He’s the surprise, in a sense.  He’s not the oldest, which is normally who would be given some kind of authority and power.  He’s not the tallest.  He’s short, and yet he’s the one.  God sees only what man longs to see.  

So then we go to the next reading, and we see something about the way we are empowered to see.  When God created the world, there was darkness, and he created light.  But it’s interesting.  He didn’t do away with darkness.  He created light in darkness, and so the darkness is a part of our life.  It is something when we’re in a place where we can’t figure things out or when we are just in a place of questioning or wondering or even just doubting.  So we’re supposed to be able to live in both places, in light and darkness, and darkness is where we don’t really do things as well as we should.  We make shortsighted decisions that cause us great pain and struggle, but the light is always, in the scripture, to be equated with the presence of Jesus in the world.  And what he is is truth.  So Jesus has come into the world to reveal to you and to me the truth, and one of the things he longs for the most is the hardest thing he asks us to do.  It’s not just to see things as God created them to be.  It’s not to figure out who he is or to unlock the mysteries of these readings.  No, his real challenge is for you to know who you are, who you are, and to look deeply into the darkness, and the darkness is what is in us that blocks us from being in union with God.  So we have this dynamic set up from the very beginning.  As soon as human beings came into the world and they were given dominion over everything, everything was for them, and they would care for everything.  And then darkness enters, and they are confused and make a bad choice, because they believe a lie.  And believing the lie is where we get into trouble.  

So if you want an image of what is light and what is dark, in terms of the scriptures, it is what is a lie and what is the truth.  That’s the distinction, and the interesting thing about this wonderful long but very beautiful gospel, it’s read every Lent, and it’s the story of a blindness that is absolutely incapable of seeing light.  It’s really terrifying when you think about it, that God has given us such free will that, when we’re presented with an absolute clear reason to believe, we don’t.  And why wouldn’t we?  Because it demands something, and what does it demand?  We change.  We have to become something different.  So let’s just try to glean from this gospel passage a message that’s directed to your heart, to your essence, to who you really are.  It’s first about an indication of who God really is.  Jesus is God.  Jesus represents God.  He gives us an insight into how God thinks and how God works, and it’s so clear that Jesus in his ⎯ all of his miracles, they’re therapeutic.  They’re always helping human beings to be more what they were intended to be by God.  So we’re always seeing the work of God in your life and in my life as a way of evolving deeper and deeper into who we really are.  

So we have Jesus in this gospel passage, as he did so often, seeing a need, seeing something, and he would then ⎯ I don't know.  There was this intention in him that was so intense so that he would want always to heal what he saw that was broken.  So he seeks a blind man, and his disciples ask a very obvious question, because the belief given to those people at the time of Jesus was that every sin that a person committed was being punished in this world by some infirmity or some disease or some bad luck.  And so there was always punishment and reward.  That’s all that God was able to do for the people, and most of the people were living punished, because their life was less than the life, let’s say, that the Pharisees claimed to have, because they had a life that was beautiful and easy.  They had a lot of good things, but their hearts were so far from God.  And yet they were able to look at those who didn’t have much, and they weren’t interested in helping them.  They were even told not to help them, because they were sinners, and they weren’t worthy of anything from God until they fixed themselves through the work of the temple.  Think of that as an image of religion that’s terrifying, that God would really be the God that some religions claim he is when he does not want to be around those who are longing and needing help, restoration, becoming fully who they are. 

So what is the truth that God is teaching us in this gospel passage?  It is this: the truth is that human beings have the capacity to have absolute proof that God would give to them, who they are and why they’re here and show them that he is the one who can change their life.  And he is willing to do it, he can do it, and people will still look at that and say, “I don’t believe it,” because it makes them aware of their darkness.  God wants to show you who you really are.  And when we see people around us, we see things, we become those things.  As children, we see people acting a way. We think that’s the way you should act.  So seeing is really important.  We have to see things for what they are, because we become them.  We see God as a judge who isn’t interested in us when we’re not really worthy of his time and attention.  That’s the way we are.  We become like that.  We do that to other people, but the gift of insight can only be given and received ⎯ can only be received rather by a heart that’s willing to face things that are not the way they should be.  They’re not who they’re supposed to be.  They’re faking it.  They’re phony.  They’re not real.  They’re not honest.  That’s our challenge, to face those things, that darkness and at admit we can’t fix it, but there’s someone in us already that says, “I’ll do it for you.”  Do you believe it?  Have you seen it?  Because it’s there.

Father, your call, your heart’s intention is that we become who you created us to be, that we are gifted with whatever it is that we need.  It’s there within us, and it’s our work to uncover it, to support it, to live it and not to live in an illusion that we are not who we are.  Bless us with this kind of self-awareness.  Give us the gift of who we are so that we can better serve you, and we ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.