Father Riley's homily for Sunday, March 22, 2020

CEC Service Schedule :

…As directed by Bishop Jake Owensby, Christ Episcopal, Saint Joseph, will suspend services until at least March29, 2020.

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Father Riley's homily:

LENT IV - A - 20                             JOHN 9. 1-41

When we were kids, we played outside. There were no TVs in my house until I was in high school, certainly no video games, laptops, or cell phones. Kids today do not know how to play outside.

Mother said, “Get outside and play” and we did. There were more games then, than I can recall. Some we simply made up. One I remember playing was called “Blind man’s buff.”

I learned later in life that it was played 2000 years ago in Greece during the time of Jesus. Today there are variations of the game played throughout the world. To play the standard game, one player is blindfolded and then disoriented by being spun around several times.

The other players call out to the blind man and when he comes near, they dodge away from him. In the Middle Ages, blind man’s buff was an adult game, and the blindfolded player was usually struck and buffeted as well, hence “buff.” A player touched or caught by the blind man takes on the blindfold and the game continues.

Today’s gospel reading is a story about a man born blind. He is not buffeted in the physical sense, as was the case of the adult game of the Middle Ages. However, he is buffeted, if you will, by those who interrogate him, because they are unable or unwilling to accept the fact that he has been given the gift of sight, a gift given by Jesus on the Sabbath.

First, a little background. In the previous chapter of John’s gospel, Jesus has been in a long dialogue with the Pharisees in the Temple courtyard. It is the Sabbath. It was a dialogue that ended with the religious leaders angered by his reference to being one with the Father. Jesus told them he was the light of the world using the reference to God, “I am.”

Today’s passage picks up with Jesus still in Jerusalem.  Having left the Temple, Jesus and his disciples are simply passing by a man who was born blind. The blind man does not approach Jesus. It is the disciples that call Jesus’ attention to the man. “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” It was a theological teaching of the day that such individuals suffered because of sin. Jesus answers, neither.

In Christ, the human scene becomes a stage for God’s self-manifestation. Jesus is the Light of the world and light is the means by which God brings salvation to men. Jesus in the world is its light because he offers life and light to the world. “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world,” he told them.

Christ’ remedy for the man’s blindness was spittle, mud mixed together, and the man’s obedience to his command to go and wash in the Pool of Siloam. When the man obeys, his cure is immediate. The cure, however, is investigated.

First, his neighbors who have known him from birth are both puzzled and amazed that he is now able to see. How could it be the same man? How is this possible? They kept asking him “how did it happen?”

Of all the miracle stories in the Bible, this is the only one in which the person was born blind from birth gained his sight. Jesus’ healing of the man born blind is a confirmation of his divinity. This was one of the signs of the coming Messiah. Saint John uses it as his sixth sign in proving that Jesus is Messiah.

One of the man’s neighbors runs and tells the Pharisees what has happened. The religious leaders take over the interrogation and their examination of the man becomes as it were a trial of Jesus. OK, they ask the man, tell us how it happened. Give us the details. The man goes through it again.

He tells them that Jesus put mud on my eyes and I went and washed where he sent me, and now I can see. “Who could do such a thing,” they comment. “He can’t be a man of God. It is the Sabbath.” The Pharisees, like the man’s neighbors, were divided over their opinion of what happened and how, even more so over the person of Jesus.

Not only did Jesus open the eyes of the man, but he opened the eyes of his faith. With each ensuing period of questioning, the man whom Jesus healed grows in his knowledge of God in Christ.

First, he gives Jesus credit as a prophet. Then there is the bantering back and forth between the man and the Pharisees over whether or not Jesus is sinner. The man turns the tables on his inquisitors over the question of sin and consequently raises their anger.

The more the man is pressed, the more his faith is confirmed and the deeper into darkness the Pharisees go. Finally, the Pharisees have had enough. They excommunicate him from the Temple worship. We too often fail to see the glory of God because of our own prejudices.

Jesus learns that he has been cast out and finds him. Christ asks him “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” “Who is he that I may believe,” the man responds. Jesus identifies himself as He. The man professes his faith, “Lord, I believe” He moves from ignorance to unbelief to belief and ends by worshipping Jesus.

The Lord’s coming brought judgment into the world, not because he came to judge, but because of man’s accountability to him. Those who are aware of their blindness and ignorance may be made to see, because they will be prepared to believe in the Light when it shines upon them.

Those who are confident of their own power to see become blind, because they refuse to look at the Light. This aspect of judgment Jesus applies to the Pharisees. It is precisely because of their confidence of their ability to see apart from the Light, which shines in the world in the person of Jesus that they are under sentence of blindness.

The blind man is symbolic of all humanity; all need illumination by Christ, the Light of the world. Though suffering can be a direct result of personal sin, it is not this man’s case. The man’s blindness provides an occasion for the works of God to be revealed. The blind man, then, becomes a model of Christian witness.

Many people today do not become witnesses to Christ because they fear they will be asked questions they cannot answer. This man admits he “does not know,” but follows up with what he does know. This is foundational to witnessing one’s faith to others.

May we all learn to live as “children of the light” by setting aside our fear of ignorance and relying on the Holy Spirit to teach us how to witness to Him who is both the Life and the Light of the world, even Jesus Christ our Lord. AMEN+