In today’s Gospel Story (John 9:1-41) Jesus restores a blind man’s sight, then both he and the blind man are berated and criticized by the Scribes and the Pharisees. The majority report sees this as a story of Jesus bringing his Abba’s healing love to people and being rejected by the religious authorities of the time because he wasn’t following their laws. The minority opinion can take this a bit further.
The Gospel Verse offers a good reference point for experiencing some insights to this story: “I am the light of the world, says the Lord; whoever follows me will have the light of life”. We process scripture stories through the filter of what is going on in our life as we hear or read them. There is a lot going on around us today: the war in the mid-east causing untold suffering and pain, political duplicity and chicanery, fearmongering, world wide immigrant mistreatment and suffering, willful misuse and abuse of scripture for personal gain, various commotions in the church, just to name a few. There is also whatever in our personal life is making things difficult. In the middle of all this, Jesus offers “the light of life”, certainly something worth asking for.
The blind man was a person on the periphery according to social and religious rules. People believed he was made blind as a punishment for his parents’ sin. Jesus changed the focus dramatically: “Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him”. And then he restored the man’s sight. The people then brought him to the Pharisees who scolded him, and accused Jesus of being a sinner for healing on the sabbath. He could not be a holy man because he did not follow their rules. They had all the answers and felt the only way to know Abba was through their rules. That was then this is now, and not much has changed. The pharisees could not see the good Jesus was doing because they had their own blindness, their own conditions for determining what is good and what is not. If Abba was not following their rules and expectations, they could not see him. Perhaps the “light of life” offers us a new way of looking at our every day living. By analogy, it’s kinda like having cataracts and not getting treatment. It gets harder and harder to do simple things like reading. We miss a lot of what os going on around us. Then we’re fortunate enough to come across a doctor who helps us see what is going on and how we can change things and get the procedure. The “light of life” offers us the opportunity to “see” Abba happening among us in the ordinary people in our life. We may have to let go of the blinders we have become used to using.
Jesus said, “whoever follows me”. What might it mean to follow Jesus? Of course it involves asking the grace of coming to know him in our own life. If we have our own idea who Jesus is, the, the only thing we will come to is our own idea of Jesus. We will recognize it because it is what we expect. Yet, coming to know Jesus is always a surprise. Throughout the gospels Jesus is continually showing himself in ways the people do not expect. Some come to see and know him, others do not. The ones who knew him best were his close friends and disciples who had spent a lot of time with him. This shows us we can know him by spending time with him. It is not a matter of saying a lot of prayers and thinking “holy thoughts”. Saying prayers is not necessarily prayer, although it can lead us to prayer. Prayer is a way of living where we freely choose to let the Spirit lead us to however Abba is inviting us to know him. The very fact that we are thinking of prayer means that Abba is reaching out to us. It is living a constantly deepening sense of Abba happening in our life in even the smallest detail. It becomes not just something we believe, but a real experience that leads us to see things very differently from what we had become used to. Gradually what we expect of life changes, and when things go amiss we no longer get so upset, because we realize that everything in our life is of Abba. I’m using the phrase “of Abba” rather than from Abba which implies that Abba is somewhere our there. But Abba is always with us an in us in everything all the time. One of the pillars of Ignation spirituality is “finding God in all things”. Am I open and willing to do this? Where is Abba in the nastiness and evil all around me? I have no idea, but I hope I am willing to be led, perhaps to learn.
This does not imply that our life will be easy. Letting go of my need to feel in control never really goes away. It is something we learn to let go of step by step, often kicking and screaming. We come to know Abba as peaceful, caring, and not always gentle, deeply involved in my life. Sometimes I need a good kick, and so I get kicked. What becomes increasingly real is the experience that no matter what is going on I am never in any sense alone. At times this is clear and obvious, at other times not so much. The idea of the Welcome Prayer is a big help on the journey: “Abba, I welcome everything that comes into my life today because it is of you”. It is a real help on our journey of openness and letting go. One of the privileges of being a chaplain has been walking/crawling with people as they face amazingly terrible experiences and make choices that will impact their life in ways they could not even imagine at the time. This is clearer in retrospect than when it was happening, because then I was terrified too. At times we were going through the same experiences. And so together we come to know Abba happening in us, certainly not in those exact words, and at the time having no idea of the impact all this will have on us.
The Pharisees refused to grow. In their mind they already had all the answers and imposed them on the people. This is not a good place to be. The Spirit leads us through our questioning, not pat, staid answers. Jesus tried to help them recognize Abba but they refused. As we ask the grace to know Abba ever more deeply, may we find ourselves saying again and again, “I do believe, Lord,” And we continue on our journey, ever seeing the same things through new eyes, and recognizing the works of God being made visible around us, and in us. Just sayin . . .