SEEING THE LIGHT, BEING THE LIGHT

Sermon preached by Robert Shaw

[John 9:1-41; Ephesians 5:8-14]

Today’s scripture readings center on opposing pairs of images: darkness versus light in Ephesians, blindness versus clear vision in John’s gospel. To take the gospel first, here’s a question: how many blind people did Jesus heal? If (like me) you aren’t especially comfortable with numbers, and if (also like me) you don’t care to go combing through all four gospels to make a count, the internet stands ready to help.  The answer it gives is: more than eight. (That is, eight individual healings are described, but we’re told of several other ocular healings without any numbers being attached.) This is just one distraction in approaching this story. There is also what my children would call the ick factor: Jesus’s method of making mud (or, as other translations more delicately put it, “clay”). There is research that indicates that back in those days, saliva was thought to have medicinal value. All interesting, and all beside the point. What John is focusing on is not the wondrous healing itself. Jesus had done this sort of thing eight-plus times before. Of course, John tells us about the patient’s history and treatment; somewhat unnervingly, he even gives what might be called the medication formula: saliva; mud; water of Siloam. Nevertheless, his stress throughout the story is less on the healing and more on people’s reactions to it.

This is made clear, first and foremost, by the sheer length of the episode.   Our lector did a heroic job reading it, and as an incidental benefit of Morning Prayer, we were able to listen to it sitting down. These forty-one verses form the entire ninth chapter of John’s gospel.  The Pharisees and others in the religious establishment refuse to accept the truth that is before them. They double down on their interrogation; they grill the healed man himself, then his parents, then the healed man again. Over and over: “Did you really use to be blind?  Did that man heal you?”—and they refuse to take yes for an answer. When they cannot get the answer they want from the now clearsighted man, they expel him from the community.

It is in the story’s final scene that John makes us realize that this is not simply a very extended account of a medical miracle. Here the language of seeing and of blindness expands in meaning, in the dialogue between Jesus and the man he healed. Jesus asks him, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” The man answers, “And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.” Then, Jesus says to this man whom he has blessed with the gift of eyesight, “‘You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.’ He said, ‘Lord, I believe.’ And he worshiped him.”  So: here, seeing is believing, in the fullest sense imaginable. Conversely, the meaning of “blindness” expands at the end of the lesson, so that the Pharisees are now the ones who are said to be blind. They do not see, or they choose not to see, that the Messianic prophecies which they have been hearing throughout their lives are coming to pass, right now, in their midst.

We use this kind of figurative language so commonly that we scarcely notice it. (All right, you might say that we are blind to it.) We say, “I see,” meaning “I understand,” and if we don’t understand something, that it is a “blind spot” for us.  It is the same with Paul’s imagery of darkness and light, which appears in today’s lesson from Ephesians and frequently elsewhere in his writings. As for ourselves, I hear it said often that we are living in “dark times.” And this matches my own feelings when I watch the news while it is getting dark outside. Even before the recent onset of war in the Middle East, there was plenty to be alarmed and repelled by. I came of age in the 1960s, and any spectacle of threatening bands of authority figures surrounding individuals—demonstrators or others—calls up some of my least pleasant college memories. During some of the violent scenes from Minneapolis, I found myself yelling at government officials and agents on my TV screen, which is not my usual behavior. With history unfolding darkly before our eyes, it is hard not to be infected by that darkness.

Which brings me to Paul’s words to the Ephesians: “Once you were darkness, but now you are light.” Paul knew something about darkness, and even literally about blindness. He enters the Bible record in the Book of Acts, under his birth name of Saul, making a name for himself in another sense by persecuting the first Christians, “breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord” (Acts 9: 1). He stands by at the stoning of Stephen, the first Martyr, watching with approval. But this is followed by the well-known story of his conversion, On his way to Damascus, he hears a voice from Heaven crying “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”—and simultaneously he is thrown from his horse.  He is stricken blind for three days. When he regains his sight, the first thing he does is to be baptized, and he goes on to proclaim that Jesus is the Christ.

So: the man who was born blind received his sight, and Saul the persecutor became Paul the Apostle. Which was the greater miracle? Certainly, Paul’s understanding of darkness is deeply personal. It would not be surprising to find him echoing a Prophet like Isaiah, who wrote, “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light” (Isaiah 9:2). But, we notice, Paul doesn’t say to the Ephesians, “Once you were in darkness.” He says, bluntly, “Once you were darkness”—that is, part and parcel of it. This is a disturbing idea, and he is equally extreme in going on to say, “Now in the Lord you are light.” To see the light of day we only need to open our eyes. To “see the light” in the sense of understanding, or of discovering the truth about something, we can open our minds. That is not always easy, but most of us have enough natural curiosity and interest in the world around us to manage it.  But what do we have to do to be the light? Daunting as it is, we would have to open our hearts. And what makes that hard is that we might have to open them as well to those we find unappealing, or even alien to our own outlook.

Decidedly, that takes effort. Perhaps I could think of things to do that would be more constructive in times of social strife than simply yelling at government officials on TV. And hard as it is, I might realize and remember that those masked agents I am yelling at are as much in need of God’s grace and mercy as I am myself. That would be a good start for me.  And for those agents, a good start would be for them to have that same perception about the frightened, often bewildered people they are accosting and interrogating. It could even be possible that one or more of those agents might decide to go into another line of work.  It could happen: something similar happened to Paul.

The remarkable thing about all this is that we actually have a choice to make between the life of the children of darkness and the life of the children of light.  Throughout our lives, in this wonderful, sometimes frightening freedom, we get to decide what side to be on. It is useful to remember these things amid the deepening shadows of Lent, with Passion Week approaching. As John says at the beginning of his gospel: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (1:5). On Good Friday, the lights of the church will all be put out, but on Easter the new fire will be kindled and from it more lights will be ignited and multiplied.  Not long ago, on one of the Sundays in Epiphany, the Collect reminded us of our calling: not only to see the light, but to be the light. As it says:

Almighty God, whose Son our Savior Jesus Christ is the light of the world: Grant that your people, illumined by your Word and Sacraments, may shine with the radiance of Christ’s glory, that he may be known, worshiped, and obeyed to the ends of the earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, now and forever. Amen.