Just a word before we go...Fourth Sunday of Lent...March 19, 2023

Just a word before we go...Fourth Sunday of Lent...March 19, 2023

 How many times have we, as individuals or as a community of any size, rushed to judgment about a person, a situation, or another group, only to discover that we have been mistaken, or worse, misled. Countless examples exist in our world and in our lives of times when we have operated under our existing presuppositions and have misread a person or situation, only to be astonished when the truth is revealed.  Situations that evolve from the most improbable of origins can and should cause us to question our underlying assumptions about life, and about God.

Such is the case of the revelation of David, the youngest son and least likely to be anointed by Samuel, in our first reading, in which the Lord declares that God does not judge by appearance, as humans do, but by looking into the heart.  The Spirit of the Lord then rushed upon David.

In our Gospel, a similar situation occurs, when Jesus gives the gift of sight to the man born blind. This gift unleashes a maelstrom among the Pharisees, who, blinded by their strict interpretation of the law, fail to recognize the miracle occurring in their midst. They go to great lengths to adhere to their law of not working on the Sabbath, and of maligning Jesus as not being from God.  They try to subjugate the miracle to their laws; their darkness is in clinging to an inaccurate understanding of God and God’s ways; they refuse to reconsider their presuppositions about God, believing that physical ailments are signs of sinfulness, despite evidence to the contrary. 

Jesus, meanwhile, re-appropriates the meaning of the Sabbath from not working, to continuing the work of God in creation, by re-creating, by bringing sight to the blind.

These readings remind us that we, too, can be held prisoner of our assumptions about people and situations and even God’s ways.  The healed man took seriously his lived human experience as he came to recognize Jesus as the Son of Man. We need to do the same, by allowing our experiences of light breaking through our various darknesses as invitations to revisit, and perhaps reconsider, our understandings of the ways in which God can work, remembering all the while that we do not control who it is that the Spirit moves, and heals, and inspires.