NOW I SEE!

A Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent
March 3, 2008
Pastor Laura Gentry

John 4:5-42
So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.” Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”

Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?” Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” They left the city and were on their way to him. Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.” Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.” (NRSV)

Grace and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Many times, when someone faces tragedy or loss, the first thing they ask is: “What have I done to deserve this? Why is God punishing me?” Perhaps you’ve asked this question a time or two yourself. Whether it is financial crisis, personal health problems, a death in the family, or some other tragedy, it is easy to assume that we’ve offended God in some way, and now we are receiving retribution.

Well this theory that we get what we deserve is exactly what the Pharisees of Jesus’ day were teaching. In our Gospel reading for this morning, Jesus and his disciples are passing a blind man on their way into the temple, and it reminds them of this very theological issue about the cause of suffering. They wonder about this particular beggar, whom everyone knows has been blind since birth—could he have somehow sinned in utero to bring this blindness upon himself, or was it the sin of his parents that caused him to suffer in this way? This may sound like a peculiar question to us, but it was really a pressing issue in Jesus’ time.

You see, the religious teachers had actually developed a whole theory of prenatal sin. They believed a person could begin to sin even before leaving the womb. There were lengthy conversations about whether sin first embraced a person before or after the child was born. Some theologians believed in the preexistence of the soul. They held that all souls existed from the beginning of the world and were holy, but the minute those souls were placed in bodies, they became corrupt and sinful. So certainly a person born blind could have caused his own affliction, or so they thought.

But of course, his troubles could well be the fruit of his parents’ sin. The idea that children inherit the consequences of their parents’ sin is woven into the thought of the Old Testament. In Exodus, we hear from God: “I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations.” (Exodus 20:5, 34:7) The theory behind this is that people do not live to themselves or die to themselves. Sin is infectious. When a person sins, a whole train of consequences is set into action which has no end.
So, back to our story—how does Jesus respond to this question? Surprisingly, he does not validate any of these popular streams of thought about the connection between sin and suffering. He tells them plainly: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.” (John 9:3) Suffering, Jesus demonstrates, is not a punishment for sin, but an opportunity for God’s glory to be revealed. It is a chance for God’s endless compassion to shine through and transform the sufferer as well as the whole community. Oh, if we could only believe and embrace these words—rather than blame ourselves every time we face trouble. If only we could truly say: “This tragedy has happened so that the work of God might be displayed in my life!”

Jesus is eager to display God’s work in the blind man’s life. He says to his disciples, “I am the light of the world!” (John 9:5) Then, he goes to work.. He spits on the ground, makes it into a clay paste, and smears it on the eyes of the blind man, then tells him to go wash in the pool of Siloam. Now the use of saliva to effect a cure seems strange and repulsive to us—and most unhygienic. But in the ancient world, believe it or not, it was quite common. Saliva, especially if it came from a famous person, was believed to posses great curative powers. I’m not sure if Medicare covered saliva or not, but I’m sure you would have needed a prescription for it. So, by doing this, Jesus is using the methods and customs of his time. He is a wise physician—first gaining the confidence of his patient.

Then, as the blind man rinses the clay from his eyes at the Pool of Siloam, his sight is miraculously given to him. And immediately, there is trouble. When he returns, the neighbors—who had always seem him begging—begin to gossip about whether or not it is really him. They cannot believe it is the same man. “How could he possibly have been healed?” They wonder.

But that is not even the whole of the dilemma. The religious people get wind of this and the questions begin to fly. Isn’t this the Sabbath day, after all, and isn’t healing someone considered work and isn’t working on the Sabbath day dreadfully sinful and how could such a sinful action produce a pretty convincing miracle like giving a blind man sight for the very first time? You see, this opens a whole can of worms and baffles everyone.

Understandably, it is hard for us to see all of this complexity, because we do not understand the religious laws of Jesus’ day. Sabbath day laws were very strict. You could not do any work on the Sabbath, according to the law. You couldn’t even fill up a dish with oil to light your lamp—you just had to leave the Friday night lamp burning all night long, so you wouldn’t have to “work” to light it on the Sabbath. And you couldn’t wear sandals that had nails in them because walking with the weight of those shoes would be considered “carrying a burden,” which would also be considered work. And in this story, Jesus spits on the ground, stoops down to mix it up, and then stands back up and spreads it on the eyes of the man. This was unquestionably doing “work on the Sabbath,” and by any measure, this is a most unholy thing to do! Jesus is breaking God’s holy law!

And as the on-lookers work to unravel the questions that this scenario brings up for them, they become more and more blind to the things of the Spirit. Ironically, as one man gains his sight, the others lose theirs. The healed man’s neighbors make him prove his identity, the Pharisee’s subject him to formal interrogations, and his own parents waffle under all the pressure, fearing that they will be thrown out of the temple for affirming the healing that Jesus has performed on their son. As for the healed man himself, he has little interest in all these theoretical musings: “Whether Jesus is a sinner or not, I don’t know,” he simply tells them, “One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see.” He has experienced the reality of God’s work in his life and he simply can’t deny it!

The Pharisees are livid about his response. This “prophet” Jesus has been already been censured in Jerusalem for being a heretic, but now he’s stirring up more trouble than they can take. And the worst part for the Pharisees is that, try as they might, they cannot disprove the miracle that Jesus has performed. It has been verified that the man been born blind is now seeing clearly! In fact, during their investigation, he looks them squarely in the eyes and taunts them in open court: “Why do you want to hear my story again?” he asks, “Do you also want to become his disciple?” And then, he says that Jesus must be from God or he would not have been able to perform such a marvelous miracle.

At this, the Pharisees snap right back to their old time-worn theory of punishment that the disciples had discussed with Jesus when the story began. “You were born entirely in sin, and you are trying to teach us?” They are so full of their own pride that they have become blind men! They simply cannot see God’s glory being revealed in this miracle. One Pharisee, sensing this asks, “Surely, we are not blind, are we?” And Jesus verifies that they are, indeed, blind.

Like the Pharisees in this story, many people today are walking around with deep spiritual blindness. We meet them all the time. They can be the super-religious, who feel they are so righteous by their good works that they really don’t need God’s grace to save them. They can be the people who have had a bad experience with a church and so they’ve dismissed God entirely. “I’m spiritual but not religious,” they claim and can never be persuaded into coming back to worship. They can be the self-declared atheists who cannot prove God and therefore, are blind to God’s actions all around them. And they can even be you and me.

This Sunday, our Lenten journey reaches a place where we are called to acknowledge our own spiritual blindness and seek Jesus' healing touch. But this kind of seeking is risky, because it has the possibility of turning our neatly-ordered lives upside-down. The man born blind in today's Gospel finds himself in unusual and unexpected places. Before, he was a beggar that nobody really noticed—his life was simple. After encountering Christ, he becomes unrecognizable to his neighbors and finds himself witnessing about the power of God in the court of the religious authorities. I’m sure he’d have never dreamed he would have the courage to do such a thing. But the power of Jesus has changed him and he will never be the same again.

How might the world look if we were healed of our blindness? We might see leadership emerging in strange and unexpected places. We might hear God speaking through the voices of people we’ve never listened to before, people we might not consider important by worldly standards. We might find new ways of relating to God and each other—ways that we had not even imagined before, ways that could bring healing to our life together. We might be given the grace to truly forgive those people who wronged us back in ‘73, you know, the ones we’ve successfully avoided these many decades? We might even dare to look beyond our conventional ways of thinking, to think "outside the box" and realize that God is greater than our ways of thinking allow. We might discover that the Holy Spirit can give us the courage to witness to the power of the Christ's light, even to people we thought we could never reach. We might realize that the problems we face as individuals and as a church truly are opportunities for God’s glory to be revealed. We might be able to cry out with the healed man, “All I know is that I was blind and now I see!”

So this Lenten Gospel reading indeed confronts us with a great challenge today. Do we dare risk the journey of the man born blind? Do we dare venture out like Samuel did in our first reading, to find something new in the unlikeliest of places? Christ is inviting us to put aside our old ways of seeing and to see, instead, through the eyes of God. And what we will see and how we will see remains a mystery until we actually dare to try—until we put our own blindness completely into the healing hands of the one who says, “I am the light of the world,” and are then, at last declare, “Now I see!”

Now, may the peace of God which passes all understanding, keep our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Amen.


© Laura Gentry 2008