Maggie Falenschek
John 9:1-41, Lent 4, Year A
3-30-14
If
I were to imagine this story being told in a more modern context, this is how I
expect it might go: As Jesus and
the disciples walked along, they spotted a woman without a home packing up her
belongings from staying the night at a local Synagogue Community center? Amongst themselves, the disciples
stared and began to whisper, “Rabbi, who made such bad decisions that left this
woman without a home, was it her or her parents?” Jesus replied, “You’re asking the wrong question, you’re
looking for someone to blame. Homelessness is not a sin. Instead, look how God’s works might be
revealed through those who have housed her and cared for her. We need to be energetically at work for
the One who sent me here, working to care for God’s children on earth. For as long as I am in the world, there
is plenty of light. I am the world’s Light.” Shortly after, Jesus told the woman that her housing voucher
had been received and approved.
“Go to the resource center,” he said, “soon you will be housed.” Quickly,
the town was buzzing. People
wondered where the woman went, how she had received housing. Some were even mad that she had
accepted a handout from this mysterious man and didn’t work to earn it. Others refused to believe it.
Aside
from seeing Jesus, the Son of God, offering a woman housing, I have seen this
situation play out time and time again. Although most people no longer believe that blindness
is a result of sin, in many ways, retribution remains one of our world’s most
dominant theologies. Surely, if
someone works hard enough, if someone takes all the right steps, if someone has
healthy parents, or gets an education, or pulls themselves up by their
bootstraps---they will not be homeless. And, well, if someone is homeless—they
probably did something to deserve it.
They’re lazy, have addictions, mental illness--- I don’t have list the
stereotypes for us to remember at a deeper level that they exist and we hear
them. I could take guesses at why
this sort of stigmatization or retribution theology exists but in doing so I would
be just like the disciples, and the villagers, and the Pharisees in this story.
It could be either comforting or
disconcerting to know that early Christian communities were struggling with the
same thing. Jesus’ words tell us
that we are asking all the wrong questions. It’s not about pointing fingers or discerning who is or is
not to blame.
The
more I read this story about the blind man in John, the more I feel that this
story is less about healing literal blindness, and more about confronting a
failure of seeing. The story is
less about the transformation of the blind man himself, he seems to “get it”
just fine, and more about a transformation for those who surround him. Perhaps this is why the actual healing
of the blind man takes up only one verse at the very beginning of a sixty-verse
discourse. When we make this story
simply about the healing of a blind man, then we fail to acknowledge all of the
ways in which we too are in need of healing. When we make the story all about healing actual blindness,
then we continue to perpetuate a theology that states that Jesus is just a
magic, fixer-uper who heals stigmatized conditions but fails to address a
prevailing darkness that does not discriminate.
The
biggest problem with focusing just on the healing of the blind man is that it
frees the Pharisees, the villagers, and ourselves from having to acknowledge
the darkness in our own lives.
Sometimes it’s a lot easier to point out the perceived darkness in
someone else’s life, like blindness or homelessness, and to believe that it
doesn’t pertain to you. It’s scary
to admit that we all experience darkness and that we are all in need of
healing. In a lot of ways, it appears
as though us humans are very afraid of the dark.
Themes
of light and dark are prevalent in Christianity, especially in the Gospel of
John. Right from the beginning of
the Gospel, the author proclaims creation and the Word as light. In total, this theme of light is
mentioned in 15 verses throughout the entire book, in nearly every
chapter. In many ways, understanding
Jesus in terms of a light that has come into darkness can be very helpful and
illustrative of God’s relationship with all of creation. All too often, however, darkness is
understood as a condition that some have, synonymous with all of the negative
things that happen in our lives.
In this sense, the Pharisees and the villagers in today’s gospel
believed the man’s blindness as a manifestation of his own darkness, something
that they did not possess. Further
more, they believed the man’s darkness was a direct result of
his own sin or that of his parents.
The villagers and the Pharisees in this story want to make darkness all
about deficiency, a deficiency of sight that points to a deficiency in
God.
Are we people of
light who avoid darkness?
There is
a problem in this thinking that affords light for some and darkness for others
who deserve it. This type of
thinking places God only in the light, the good things that happen in our
lives—making Christianity a religion only for the happy, creating a faith that
is only relevant when things are going well. Not only does this type of theology place God firmly in all
that is “light” but then consequently removes God from all that is “dark”, the
very places and times that we need God the most. The rhetoric then becomes, that if you have enough God in
your life, if you just have enough faith, then your life will be perfect—and if
your life isn’t perfect, then you must have some deficiency of God. The rhetoric works great as long as we
can keep denying darkness exists for everybody or that, oftentimes in our
world, bad things do happen to really good people. But when we finally acknowledge that darkness can and does
exist for everyone, we are left feeling alone, devoid of a God to proclaim
otherwise. That’s not good
news. That’s not gospel.
Through
scripture and the life of Jesus a different gospel is presented to us. Truly good news that shows us that God
is with us in all of our shortcomings, all of our suffering, all of it, and
that we do not need to be afraid of the darkness. When Nicodemus was questioning the meaning of his life, Jesus
was there. When the woman at the
well showed up at the well at noon, expecting to remain forgotten and isolated,
Jesus was there. When the blind
man was driven out of town by his own community because they just couldn’t
believe his healing, Jesus went out and searched until he found him. The stories are endless.
The
gospel, the good news, is that our faith is not at risk nor is it dependent on
the darkness of our lives—regardless of what that darkness looks like. In contrast with the “solar-spirituality”
of the world, theologian Barbara Brown Taylor instead describes her faith as a
“lunar-spirituality” defined in darkness.
Imagine the light from the moon, revealed in the darkness of night. The moon wanes and waxes, sometimes the
light a mere flicker, other times the light is bright and bold in the sky. Sometimes it seems as though the moon
disappears all together and that the light no longer exists but somehow,
despite our seeing, it is still there.
May
God revealed through Christ be ever present in your life. When darkness inevitably comes and it
becomes harder and harder to see any sign of light, may the promise of new life
and waxing light become your rest and your hope. May we, together, not be afraid of the dark but search for
ways to support one another, to sit with one another, until the darkness
fades. And may we experience a
faith that is not dependent on the theologies of this world, but on a God who
so loves the world.
