Come to the Light

4 Lent A 2014
http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Lent/ALent4_RCL.html


We did not know how blind we were before the light came on.

We had been in the wild Missouri cave for over an hour already, the middle school youth group and I. Our guide, a grizzled professional spelunker, had led us through tight holes and a base camp down through tunnels, some high enough to stand in, others barely able to accommodate one frantically wiggling kid. Our lights were cast down, carefully trying to illuminate the ground on which we were to plant the next step.

A breath of different air caressed our faces, a sense of space. “Turn your lights off” commanded our guide. With some hesitation we obeyed. The darkness enwrapped up like a tangible thing, like a blanket covering our eyes. The darkness smothered our chattering and, without another word spoken, silence reigned. Our guide allowed the power of the darkness to seep into our skin for a few moments. Then, “Shine your lights up and all around.”

We did so, and were at once dazzled and awed. We stood in a vaulted ceiling, high as this church. Glorious stalactites descended, glittering with mineral flecks and small semi-precious gemstones in the raw. We either gaped in wonder or simply continued in silence, gazing, not wanting the moment to end.

There are these moments when we are called from darkness into light. At such times we realize how much we did not see.

Ancient Christians called Baptism “photimsos”, “coming to the light”. One ancient text says that baptismal candidates were actually led from a pool of immersion kept in a dark space, dried and anointed in the darkness, dressed in a white robe, and then brought into a room that was filled with light. There they were greeted by the gathered congregation with affection and joy. There they celebrated the Eucharist, an experience that the candidates had never seen or been told of.

Knowing this, the New Testament comes alive with tales of darkness and light, of blindness and seeing. “Awake, o sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you” says Ephesians with a note of ecstasy. And in today’s Gospel, a man born blind, no fault of his own nor his parents, is brought to the light.

And there his troubles begin.

What’s stunning about this Gospel is that the actual “photismos”, the “coming to the light”, does not take much time at all. Jesus gets that done rather quickly. A healer’s spit was commonly thought to be a means of healing, so this spitting and making mud is not as bizarre as it would seem today. Jesus briefly remarks on light and darkness and that he is “the light of the world”, and the deed is done.

But coming to the light means our healed man runs head-on into other forms of darkness.

This darkness is shaped by custom, social order, and religious expectation. This new healer Jesus was already an upsetting figure to the status quo. Perhaps these good, devout people were half-expecting this so-called prophet to come and make trouble one of those days, breaking some laws, getting everyone confused. Maybe that is why they organize rather quickly, launching their own version of an Inquisition, gathering information, interrogating witnesses. Our blind man turned healed man simply tells the story over and over again, and finally defies the authorities, who cast him out.

Isn’t it interesting that Jesus only appears to the man again after he has been cast out? Maybe one needs to be on the margins of authority and established religious practice in order to run into Jesus.

Jesus ends the story with a remark implying that those who felt they saw just fine were actually caught up in blindness, and that they were choosing to stay there.

The early community of John told this story about their own lives at the fringe of tradition and established religion. They told this story because it was their own story of “photismos”, of coming to the light. They were in this story, the blind man chosen for no good reason other than the fact that Jesus chose him, healed beyond his wildest hope, now seeing the light. They were in this story, realizing that the Light who had come into the world meant they had to endure pressure and rejection, be kicked out of the place where decent religious people gathered to pray, even have some family trouble, because they now could see.

How about us?

Isn’t it funny that in our time we’ve assumed that “coming to the light” will make our lives more socially acceptable? We’ve assumed that coming to Christ will fix up most of our problems with our families and make us one of the decent people, those who tend to disapprove of people on the margins?

If we find ourselves at ease with the acceptable people, with the predictable people, with the people at the center who try to avoid the people on the margins, maybe we’re developing a case of spiritual macular degeneration. In other words, maybe we’re spiritually aging into eventual blindness, forgetting the light.

Lent is a good time to raise our eyes from our feet. Today the Gospel calls us to stand and let the Light show us the wonder of who we truly are, where we truly are, who we are called to be. Today we see the true Light, the Christ who comes to give us light.