And the challenge of grace
Lent 4A | John 9:1-41
Friends, I don’t know if you know this, but it is still Lent. It isn’t pre-Easter. Just because you can buy Cadbury Creme Eggs doesn’t mean we’re supposed to eat them. Though, it is Sunday morning, so if you do, it doesn’t count, right?
Lent is that curious time when we spend time talking about giving things up. Which tends to be the stuff we should give up anyway. But we can’t bring ourselves to do it. Or that we tend to have good reasons not to. Even when it’s just: I don’t wanna.
That falls under the heading of self-discipline. But we are also supposed to be spending time in study and self-examination. Which means we’re not just giving up stuff. We’re supposed to be learning and changing because of it.
And why do we do all of this?
It’s because we are teaching ourselves how to change by actively changing our habits and learning about them. To make our unconscious behavior face our conscious will. And then deal with what happens.
If we give up sweets, it means nothing if we don’t realize how that makes us feel. The year I gave up sweetener, I stopped drinking it in my coffee and I gave up Diet Coke altogether. By week three, I was drinking my coffee black. Ten years later and I still don’t sweeten my coffee.
Lent is about change.
Making small investments in changing personal behaviors so that we can accept the change that Easter brings.
You don’t get to love Easter and hate change.
God changes the world. And us. And we are to get our minds ready for that. Through self-examination, self-discipline, and by studying and meditating on Scripture.
And this week, we get a doozy of a gospel.
The Gospel
People refer to this passage from John as The Man Born Blind or The Man Who Was Blind From Birth. Because it starts with Jesus giving a man physical sight. But that is really only the first few verses. Soon, people are trying to figure out what to make of the miracle. And so the story quickly stops being about the man or his sight.
And, it even moves away from the miracle.
The people take the man to religious leaders who decide this miracle is really demonic. They interrogate the man. Then they interrogate his parents who pass the buck back to their son. So then they turn the interrogation back to him. And eventually, they kick him out.
The leaders are angry, bitter, eager to distort the truth, and seek to utterly destroy knowledge of this miracle.
The obvious question is why?
And the simple answer is fear.
Back in Chapter 7
The simple answer is fine. And since we know how the story ends, we are comfortable with the idea that the Pharisees hated Jesus. Again, simplistic, but fine.
But if we had read along, we would know that they started questioning Jesus in chapter 6. And that Jesus provoked their ire by pointing out that most of the people following him were selfish idiots trying to get something (heaven?) out of the deal. But that true people of faith followed him to learn how to serve.
Insulted (incriminated?), chapter 7 begins with Pharisees seeking to kill Jesus. Because they think his message is dangerous. They want to silence it forever. And the one spreading it.
Then Chapter 9
The bulk of these 41 verses are not taken up with the miracle. We don’t get any time to celebrate the man’s sight. It’s all questioning. Motives. Reality. Truth. Who gets to speak.
The appeal to authority sends the man into the arms of the people who vowed to kill Jesus.
They harass the young man. Then his parents. Then the young man again.
They confront Jesus, call him demonic, heretic, evil. Impugn his motives, the work, and all that he is doing.
Because he gave a man sight.
Keeping it Real
As a poet, I love the metaphor this whole story sets up. When placed in the wider context.
Here is a man who was blind his whole life and now he can see. And what does he physically see? People who can’t metaphorically see the miracle in front of them.
It is a beautiful and captivating image.
But it is also one that I, as a person of faith, can’t linger on today. Not like I normally do.
Because the man doesn’t just see a metaphorical blindness. He experiences abuse. For being blind before, being born blind, and for seeing now.
His abuse comes from people in authority. People, whose entire life is supposed to be devoted to the will of God. They are wishing Jesus, this man, and the miracle all dead. Quite literally.
To protect their status, of course. But mostly, on behalf of their faith.
It is hard for me right now to keep this image metaphorical when siblings in Christ, including our Trans siblings, some of whom I know personally, are wanted dead. By people claiming to protect our faith.
This is not just a story.
And I find it telling that we refer to this as a healing story when it is almost entirely a persecution story. A story of willing blindness, hatred, and bigotry. Of willful manipulation of the facts, refusal to acknowledge the grace of God, and the belittling of the needs of the downtrodden.
Look at this story. It is all confrontation and hatred.
And yet, behind that, is a miracle, a transformation of that man’s faith. He becomes a disciple! And between him and the cruel masses is Jesus. Calling them wrong.
Conflict
I don’t know what other preachers are doing this week. Many of them will focus on healing and grace. Many utilizing the beautiful image of things seen and unseen. And some will take up one of the other readings. Which are fine options. If we’re OK with avoiding the conflict.
But this story is all conflict. Which makes avoiding it really obvious.
And when we seek to avoid that conflict, in the church, the culture, or in ourselves, we avoid learning and growing and changing.
In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, they refer to Narnia under the White Queen as all Advent and never Christmas. Winter without Joy. And many liked to remark that Lent 2020 went from 5 weeks to over a hundred.
But avoiding this conflict is more like avoiding Lent so that we never get to Easter.
Who are we if we reject resurrection? Reject transformation? Who are we without mercy, grace, generosity, or love? How can we have faith in God if we have no faith in each other?
Uninherited Grace
Of course, what frightens the faithful most is that grace isn’t inherited. And neither is sin. Blindness isn’t the result of sin. Their spiritual blindness leads them into sin.
They pin their abuse of the poor man on the belief that he deserves it. Like everyone watching Gaston fall at the end of Beauty and the Beast.
The desire to condemn, to justify abuse, support unjust systems, refuse to learn or change or share generously is our daily temptation in the wilderness. The power we’re offered to have our will over others and the world around us. How to shape the will of God to fulfill our desires.
Or we can be like Jesus.
Who rejects the temptation for power and control. Refuses to play by Satan’s rules. And faces the abuse with grace, dignity, and hope. Hope, not only in God, but in us. That we will be different. Learn. Love. Hope too. Walking with him. Carrying our cross with him.
Loving. Loving the world, life, change. And becoming closer to the Kin-dom. That is our Lenten journey. To see the grace around us. And to love our neighbors enough to share that grace with them.