SERMON Light
Lent
4 (A) (2008): 1 Samuel 16:1-13; Psalm 23; Ephesians 5:8-14; John 9:1-41
I have always had a fascination with glasses.
Beginning when I was very young with my Grandmother VanDemark's glasses (she
was an English and Latin teacher and called them "spectacles"). This
is a fascination continued into adulthood. Probably because I never had to wear
glasses growing up (and once was told I would never have to), I could afford to
take an interest in the glasses that my friends wore. And I did.
And it went beyond just the glasses that my friends
wore. In college, I remember being riveted by F. Scott Fitzgerald's description
in The Great Gatsby of the valley of ashes on Long Island lying next to
the railroad tracks running between
a fantastic
farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens;
where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and,
finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already
crumbling through the powdery air.
Then Nick Carraway continues:
But above
the gray land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you
perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg. The eyes of
Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic - their irises are one yard high.
They look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow
spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose. Evidently some wild wag of an
oculist set them there to fatten his practice in the borough of
An incredible image. One that always came to mind at
various points when I took trains to and from
But glasses were for me a fascination and a powerful
social and literary statement but not a reality until June 4, 1991. We were at
a 25th college reunion. I had the day to myself and had just purchased the Manual
on the Lutheran Book of Worship. As I curled up in a dorm room to read, I
suddenly discovered that I could not read the footnotes. I wanted to read the
footnotes. Really wanted to read them. I was
panicked. Until I remembered the drug store across the street and the reading
glasses I had seen there. I raced across the street randomly chose a pair of
reading glasses. When I got back to the room, I immediately put them on and
discovered the little unreadable words were separate and distinct. And huge. What a relief.
But also unsettling. The doctor who said I would never need glasses was
wrong. I now wear a contact lens so I can read. Even so I keep a large reserve
of the reading glasses that I accumulated before I got the contact lens five
years ago. Four years ago, I found my grandmother's spectacles and added them
to the reserve of other glasses. Amazingly, both her bifocals and her distance
glasses are exactly my prescriptions. I can and sometimes do wear them. They
are far different from the reading glasses that made everything huge in 1991. I
still have them. Know what? They are totally useless today. Not unlike the
yellow spectacles on Dr. Eckleburg's three feet high sightless eyes.
And it is the sight given to the sightless eyes of the
man born blind that makes what we just heard from the Gospel of John so
riveting. Not only riveting but unique. Indeed, there
are so many things that make John's telling of this healing unique,
it is hard to know where to begin.
·
This healing is
unique because nowhere in the Hebrew Bible or in the other gospels is someone
blind from birth given sight.
·
It is unique
because the man born blind does not ask to be healed.
·
It is unique
because Jesus takes salvia, kneads it with dirt to make mud, and puts the mud
(not just salvia) on the man's eyes.
·
It is unique
because the man born blind is directed to a pool (one with which the gospel
writer is obviously familiar) to wash off the mud.
·
It is unique
because it is in the washing that the sight is given.
But all that makes this narrative unique only scratches
the surface. This is the Gospel of John. The Gospel of John is never only what
it seems and always so much more. Notice how the miracle is prefaced with
Jesus' saying that he is the light of the world? Well, that's part of what John
is about.
In the first century, light and sight were
inseparable. Light was (for lack of a better word) "stuff." In the
words of one commentator,
The
light in a human being, which was "living" light as opposed to the
light of the sky, derived from the heart and emerged in the eyes in the seeing
process. . . . To be blind was to have eyes from which darkness emanated;
darkness was the presence of dark (also "stuff") rather than the
absence of light. Blind people were those whose hearts were full of darkness,
hence from whose eyes "dark" emanated. (Malina & Rohrbaugh, 1998,
170)
In giving sight to the man who was blind from birth,
Jesus was not only giving him physical sight, but the light to make that sight
possible.
But there is more than just physical sight and light
involved. And that's what this moving narrative is about. It is about a man who
was in total darkness who not only receives light but grows in insight and
understanding.
Three times the man born blind is pressed to say how
he had been cured. Each time his answer shows more and more understanding.
To his neighbors he can only say what has happened. In
repeating his story for the Pharisees, he states of Jesus, "He is a
prophet." The third time he is pressed, he counters the argument that
Jesus is a sinner -- kneading was prohibited on the Sabbath, and Jesus kneaded
the dirt and saliva to make the mud on the Sabbath and was therefore a
"sinner" -- the man counters that argument by saying,
"We
know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships
him and obeys his will. Never since the world began has it been heard that
anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God,
he could do nothing."
For this, the man born blind in John's gospel is
driven out from the synagogue.
But there is even more than insight and understanding
that happens here. This beautiful narrative ends with faith. It ends with Jesus
finding the man born blind and asking 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." And Jesus says to him, "You have seen him, and the
one speaking with you is he." The man says. "Lord, I believe"
and falls down at Jesus' feet and worships him.
And it is then that he sees. Really sees.
But there is more John is telling us here.
The man born blind was in total darkness until he was
sent to wash in the pool Siloam -- a pool (at least as John had learned it)
that means "one who was sent" -- a pool that refers to Jesus who is
the one who was sent. By the time John writes his gospel, this miracle of sight
and light is also about the rebirth and new creation that happens in the waters
of baptism. They were even called "waters of enlightenment" by the
early church fathers. This is the miracle account that the early church read on
this Sunday to those preparing for Baptism at the Easter Vigil. This is the
miracle account that we read today for John, who will be baptized at the Easter
Vigil and as a reminder to us that we will be reaffirming our own baptisms at
our Easter Vigil.
We read it because this is our experience of baptism. Our beginning of sight, light, and faith. It is a wonderful,
glorious beginning that is light years away from the gray and dust-filled
valley of ashes described by NickCarraway. However large and
blue, the sightless eyes of Dr. Eckleburg remain in darkness. The large
yellow spectacles do not help. They are a commentary on a world without light. A world in which we find ourselves. A
world that we are in but with a difference.
Jesus tells his disciples that the man born blind was
born blind "so that God's works might be revealed in him." And so
they are as the man born blind washes in the waters of the one sent by God and,
reborn, moves from sight to light to knowledge and understanding to faith. All for others to see. What the author of the letter to
Ephesians tells his readers could have been said of the man born blind:
Once
you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as [a child] of
light--for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and
true. Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the
unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them . . . . everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for
everything that becomes visible is light.
This making visible is not about reading glasses. It's
about who we are. About being a child of light. Something in our baptisms we
are all called and commissioned to be. Sometimes even with contact lenses and
reading glasses. Amen
March 2, 2008
Ruth VanDemark, pastor