Luminous Exchanges

 Fourth Sunday in Lent

John 9:1-41

Gracious Father, whose blessed Son Jesus Christ came down from heaven to be the true bread which gives life to the world: Evermore give us this bread, that he may live in us, and we in him; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

When I head back to the parking lot after a hospital visit, I sometimes feel guilty. For about 10 or 15 minutes, I have blown into someone’s room to say a prayer, perhaps to listen for a few moments, and then I’m gone again. I know that the sick person is still stuck in his bed as I head out into the sunshine to enjoy the rest of my day. I know that his family is still bent over the bed in the stuffy room, full of concern and distress. But me, in the name of Jesus, I put on my collar and pop in, and then I pop back out again, hoping that my visit has brought some comfort to the sick parishioner or her family. But I am all too aware of the long days and nights that precede and follow my quick visits: of the tests and tedium, the fear and pain, that fill those days and nights. I might anoint a patient with oil for healing, but the transcendent touch of God in that oil is only one moment in the midst of a tangle of human relationships, hospital procedures, flesh and blood interactions—one moment in the midst of the long slog of all-too-human coping that makes up our lives.

Fred Craddock points out that our Gospel lesson today is also the story of human coping in Jesus’ absence.[1] On first glance, it might look like John 9 is just one more miracle story. But take a closer look. Jesus is not the focus of this story. Jesus quickly puts mud on the poor beggar’s eyes one day and then continues on his way. The man, blind since birth, has suddenly been given the gift of sight, but Jesus is nowhere to be found. The man has to deal with a whole series of interactions with those around him before Jesus returns at the end of the long story.

First, the newly healed man gains his sight, yet loses his identity. All his life, he has been a blind beggar—unable to work, a fixture at the city gates, someone you pass on your way to work, throwing a quarter into his hat. But now, thanks to Jesus’ healing touch, the man is no longer a beggar scooting along in the dust. He now walks rapidly down the street, purpose in his step. He is so changed that no one recognizes him. He has become an alien in his own village. He might be able to see, but if he looks in the mirror, I wonder if even he would recognize himself? By gaining his sight, he must begin the hard work of rebuilding a whole new self.

Next, the miracle man has to deal with being grilled by the religious leaders. Imagine if you were a homeless person suddenly dragged before the bishop and the police chief and asked to explain a mysterious public healing that you didn’t even ask for? He is an object of suspicion and a source of controversy—and Jesus is nowhere to be found during his interrogation.

And then the poor man’s parents refuse to back him up. They acknowledge him as their son, but, afraid what the change will mean for their own lives and reputations, they don’t stand behind his story: “Ask him,” they stammer as they wiggle away from controversy. “He’s a grown-up; he will speak for himself.”

Finally, as the man begins to make sense of what has happened to him and who Jesus truly must be, he is once again hauled before the authorities and then thrown out of the synagogue for his support of the man who has saved him, tossed out of the community that had sustained him in his blindness, and labeled as a heretic. As Craddock writes, “A few days previous the man’s life was blessed by Jesus and now his old friends disregard him, his parents reject him, and he is no longer welcome at his old place of worship. What a blessing!” Only after the man has dealt with all of the difficult changes brought about by his healing does Jesus finally reappear and reveal himself as the Son of Man.

For the Christians in the community to whom John is writing, Jesus has been gone almost a century. They themselves are Jews who have been labeled as heretics--thrown out of the synagogue for believing that Jesus is the Messiah. The animosity between their communities and the community of the Pharisees is strong, painful and probably all-consuming. In crafting today’s story of the blind man, John wants to encourage the fledgling Christians during this difficult time of transformation. “Stay strong in your testimony,” he is imploring them. “Even though Jesus has gone to the Father, the changes that he has brought to your lives are life-giving changes. You live in the light of his truth. It’s the other side that’s blind. In time, Jesus will return, and your coping will have its reward.

What does John’s story say to us here today, not just to us as individuals, but as a Christian community living together in Jesus’ absent presence? The Humana Festival play “The Christians” brought home to me this week a contemporary take on the plight of the blind man. The play features the well-meaning pastor of a successful conservative megachurch. This pastor’s eyes are suddenly opened to a new kind of Christianity—one in which all human beings are saved by the grace of Christ, one in which there is no hell at all. Full of enthusiasm for his vision, he preaches a sermon that encourages his parish to join him in testifying to this new revelation that he has had. For him, it is clearly a life-giving, grace-filled revelation. But he doesn’t take into account the ways in which such a dramatic change in understanding will affect the lives of those around him.  The idea of universal salvation is just as scandalous to much of his flock as was the idea in Jesus’ day of blindness and other physical ailments not being a punishment for sin. Both concepts touch on the ways in which we understand right and wrong; both revelations prevent us from the security of being able to keep our thumbs on what divine judgment means. Like the Pharisees, family, and villagers who challenge the blind man because of his newly opened eyes, the congregation in “The Christians” confronts the preacher over his new vision of God. Over the course of the play, we watch the associate pastor turn away sadly from his mentor. We watch faithful members interrogate the pastor, confused and hurt and scared by the things that he sees. We watch them shake their heads and shuffle out of the church. Finally, we watch the communication between the pastor and his wife sputter and break down, as she fails to see her way clear on the path that her husband has taken. As if to speak to the persistence of blindness, the lights slowly dim throughout the play. In the beginning, when the pastor’s revelation is new, all the lights are bright, even the house lights over the audience. Slowly, as people turn away, the lights continue to dim. The play ends with the stage in total darkness, and with the truth of the pastor’s revelation still in question. In darkness, the pastor offers to his wife, whose bags are packed, something like: “Even if we’re not certain where we will be in eternity, can’t we just love one another now, day by day, cherishing this time that we can be together.” She does not answer.

The play makes clear that coping with divine transformation has not gotten any easier in the past two thousand years, and that the difficult task of judging someone else’s testimony has not gotten any easier for us, either. Clearly, it is when we are certain that we have a grasp on God and on the souls of our fellow human beings that we are most blind. But the point of this Gospel for us, I think, can get lost in John’s polemic against the Pharisees. The Christian life should not be reduced to a tricky trap between sight and blindness, with Light on one side and Darkness on the other. The Good News is that, even before the Son of Man returns and all is made clear once and for all, there is light in our coping. As Jesus prays later in John’s Gospel, right before his death, “Righteous Father … I made your name known to [those to whom you sent me], and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” (Jn 17: 25-26). In our love for one another, smack in the messiness of change and impermanence, Jesus is indeed present with us. Even as Christ opens our eyes in miraculous ways, Christ also lives in us as we cope with what we see. Come to think of it, on those brief visits that I make to those shadowy hospital rooms, I can see Christ’s light flicker in every prayer, in every loving gesture, small glimmers even in the monotony of days. Indeed, as a friend wrote about his recent experience at the deathbed of his father, “Mainly I feel an immense gratitude tied to the discovery that, even in the last instants of life, when all the light seems to be going out, life offers us, in some unimaginable way, luminous exchanges.” God’s light can shine even from eyes not yet quite accustomed to seeing, from eyes that are learning to cope. In our coping, I too give thanks for those luminous exchanges.

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[1] Fred B. Craddock, “Coping in Jesus’ Absence” found at http://www.religion-online.org/sharticle.asp?title=706. I owe this interpretation completely to Craddock’s analysis!