The Lectionary texts for this coming Sunday are: 1 Samuel 16:1-3; Psalm 23; Ephesians 5:8-14; John 9:1-41.
What struck me today about the reading from John is how many people could not let the formally blind man be formally blind. He was not allowed to change.
The readings from John this Lentan cycle have been attributed to the Johanian community's catechism class: What does it mean to be a child of God? That is what these lesson are about. Some of these passages (like this one from John 9) might even have been acted out. So it is interesting to see how the Man Who Was Formally Blind interacts with the other characters (who may represent other "parties" or "groups." Notice, how the more he is questioned, the more his mind is made up about what this really means? Isn't that a bit like the rest of us?
In the meantime, this time reading this lesson, I was struck by how the larger community could not the Man Who Was Formally Blind change. Maybe we really cannot go home again. Not because the place has changed, but because we have changed. And yet, don't sabbaticals and pilgrimages by their very definition entail a sense of returning, so that the larger community can benefit from what has been learned and experienced?
If so, what does that mean for us who have remained? How do we act in gracious and generous ways to those who have returned? How do we admit that we, too, have changed? Our changing maybe at a slower pace and harder to see, but we have changed none-the-less.
In this way, John's lesson isn't just about the Man Who Was Formally Blind, it is also about us. Do we allow ourselves to be changed? Do we allow ourselves to recognize where our own "blindness" is in order that we might be healed and come to see? Or, do we choose to claim to see, and remain blind? I hope it is the former, rather than the later.
Blessed Be,
Joel
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