Born Blind

 

4^th Sunday of Lent

Cycle B – Scrutiny

 

Have you ever experienced total and complete darkness. It can be terrifying. A few years ago we went to the Black Hills of South Dakota and toured the Wind Cave. It is an amazing experience. The cave is one of the longest in the world, 150 miles long, and it goes down over 100 feet. It has a rare type of stalactite there that hangs really low, so at times you have to bend over to walk. There are strings of lights hanging in the caverns, so it’s easy to see the path, but 100 years ago, when it was first explored, the spelunkers used candles attached to tin hats. I can only imagine what would happen if the candles burnt out and they had to find their way back in complete darkness.

 

At one point we sat in a large cavern on wooden benches, and they turned out the lights. You literally couldn’t see your hand in front of your eyes, and the darkness was almost a physical being that engulfed you. Being that I have claustrophobia I almost panicked. I began to imagine what would happen if they didn’t go back on. It was a bit terrifying, even though I knew it was only temporary.

 

What would it be like to be born blind? What would life be like if we never had experienced light, with nothing to compare the darkness to? We equate darkness with evil. We call Satan the Prince of Darkness, and we fear the dark. Because we can see we feel uncomfortable in the dark. We fear the unknown, we fear what we cannot control. We’re afraid we’ll stumble and fall in the dark. Darkness is frightening for us only because we know the difference between light and darkness. If we were born blind, we would never have experienced light, so darkness would hold no fear for us. For one born blind, who has never experienced the light, stumbling and falling is a natural thing. Relying on the help of others is a requirement for survival.

 

This gospel begins with Jesus’ own disciples asking a question based upon a belief all Jews had at the time – that physical weakness and disease meant you or your family were steeped in sin. If you were a sinner God punished you with infirmity. If you were righteous, you were healthy, wealthy and wise. Everybody believed this: the Pharisees did, the disciples did, and the blind man himself did.

 

The blind man could not enter the temple. Everybody said he shouldn’t be there, and he himself thought he shouldn’t be there. He also thought he was unworthy to be in the presence of God, just because he was blind. He was reduced to begging at the door. The people who passed him every day saw him as unworthy, beneath them, worthless to God and man. And so, he saw himself as unworthy and worthless. How could he ever become worthy? How could he ever come in out of the darkness and be included among the seeing?

 

The saddest thing about the blind man is that he bought into his culture’s prejudices and allowed them to make him feel less about himself, to alienate himself from God and his community. Even today, we can allow outside influences to keep us from God. We can beat ourselves up so much that we actually stay away from God. How wretched you must feel to keep yourself from God. Have you ever not come to Mass because you felt unworthy? Or stayed away because you were not in the “right frame of mind” to receive the Eucharist; that you just didn’t think you could come to Mass with all those people there and try to pretend that everything was ok? Why just go through the motions?

 

Do you think that you shouldn’t come to Mass if you haven’t exactly been living a perfect Christian life lately? I mean, why add one more hypocrite to the mix? Do you think that you have to have it all together in order to worship the Lord? I’m not perfect, so I’ll stay away. Does Jesus really only call the righteous? If that were the case, there’d be no one here. It’s sort of like saying that I’m starving, so I really shouldn’t come to the banquet. The very thing you think you should avoid is the thing you really need. Sometimes we blind ourselves to what we’re really doing here.

 

It’s ironic that the best way to become worthy of the Eucharist is to experience the Eucharist. None of us can ever make ourselves worthy of being here. If blindness is equated with sinfulness, then we’re all born blind, aren’t we? Only God can make us worthy, just by willing it so. So, we have a choice, to beat ourselves up for not being worthy or to accept the grace of God that allows us to see. To exclude ourselves from the banquet or to humbly accept the invitation.

 

Today we hear a story that closely parallels those of our elect who are here with us this morning. Like the blind man, they’re on the outside looking in. Not really sure what they’re seeing. Jesus calls them forth. He makes them uncomfortable at times and calls them to the waters. They do not know the way, so others need to help them get there. When their eyes are opened, they still are not sure exactly who Jesus is, even when he is right in front of them. They come up against opposition. The entrenched prejudices of others try to derail their journey. Sometimes they are thrown out. Sometimes others try to keep them in their places. Finally, Jesus comes to them in the light, and they recognize him for who he is. They have become his disciples.

 

It’s funny, isn’t it, that the ones who thought they were worthy – the Pharisees – were the ones that Jesus said were blind. Their sin was their prejudice against people like the blind man, people they thought were sinners. They could not see their own shortcomings, and that we’re all blind in one way or another. And I am blind about many, many things. I am blind to the plight of the poor because I have never gone hungry in my life. I am blind to prejudice because I have never really experienced it personally. I am blind to the hurts suffered by other people because I am so focused on my own.

I guess in many ways we’re all Pharisees; we’re the good church going folks who think we have all the answers. We’re the ones who go along with the conventional wisdom of our day, blinded to how we are actually making things worse in our ignorance.

 

This morning we are celebrating the second scrutiny for our elect. We’re not here to scrutinize them. They’re here to scrutinize themselves. We all need to scrutinize ourselves. That scrutiny can be painful, but it must be undertaken with open eyes. Only then can we remove the blindness from our hearts. Blindness to our own sinfulness, and blindness to the needs of others, no matter how sinful they have been.

In many ways these elect see more than we do. They hunger for the light that we take so easily for granted, and they don’t have all the barnacles we good Pharisees have built up on our carcasses over time. But just as they have needed our help to see from time to time, we too can draw on their light as we all stumble together towards our Lord.

 

This story is really more a parable with a point, but it doesn’t really describe the blind man’s reaction to his first experience of light. Was it exhilarating, was it terrifying? He had never seen all the things he now could, people, trees, sunlight, buildings. He had only imagined what they would look like. And he never had the complete picture until now.

 

You may have heard the parable of the three blind men who come upon an elephant. They didn’t know what it was. One of them touched the tail and declared, “An elephant is a snake.” Another touched the trunk. “An elephant is like a hose.” The third touched the body and exclaimed, “An elephant is like a mountain!” Each only experienced a part of the reality of the elephant. Their vision was incomplete because they couldn’t see the big picture. They couldn’t see the completeness of the elephant. The blind man had a lot of unlearning to do. His life was really just beginning, and his world view had been completely and radically changed.

 

That’s what it means to be a disciple. St. Paul says, “For now we see in a mirror, darkly, but then face to face: now I know in part, but then shall I know fully even as also I am fully known”. We don’t and can’t see the complete picture yet, but as we encounter Christ more and more in our lives our eyes are opened more and more, and we see him, and ourselves, more distinctly. I remember when the lights went back on in the Wind Cave, how happy and relieved I was to be able to see. When we witness the light of Christ we will be called to completely and radically change our world view. We will be transformed if we allow ourselves to see.

 

Living Water

 

3^rd Sunday of Lent

Cycle A

We’ve sure had a heck of a lot of snow this year, haven’t we? They say it’s the most we’ve had in the past 40 years. And it’s a good thing and a bad thing, isn’t it? It made for a great ski season. Park City has never stayed open until the end of April. And the reservoirs are actually being let off a bit even now, in anticipation of a strong runoff in the Spring, so the watersports should be good this summer.

But I think even the most diehard skiers are a bit tired of it by now. We all say, “Well, we need the water”, and we do, but many towns are starting to fill sandbags just in case there’s flooding. And we’re seeing a lot of avalanches. Water is always a two-edged sword. We either have too much or too little. It can mean life or death. We need it to live but it can also kill us. With the spring runoff upon us, we’re going to start seeing a lot of water making its way down the mountains. Have you ever followed a stream as it meanders down the mountain? Why does it choose the path it does? It doesn’t go straight downhill, which would be the fastest way to flow. It goes this way and that, curving, dropping, and falling, seemingly randomly. Water seems to have a mind of its own, doesn’t it? It really does seem to be alive at times. It finds the path of least resistance, then forces its way into it. It is almost alive. It seems to know where to go and it can completely change the landscape it travels through.

That stream or river didn’t start out as a large, forceful body of water. It started out small, as a trickle of melt off, and it was joined by other small trickles, until it had the wherewithal to force some dirt out of the way, find a crack here and there and flow into it, eventually carving a path for itself. In time, moving through the path of least resistance, it could become a rushing stream or mighty river, giving life to nature and to humanity.

Living water. Finding small cracks and exploiting them. Giving life to nature and to humanity. Such a wonderful image for baptism. And today is all about baptism. This morning we will be celebrating the first scrutiny for our elect, and so we read from the wonderful gospel story of the woman at the well. Our elect are preparing for baptism at the Easter Vigil, and they need to hear this story today, because it’s their story.  Our candidates received their baptism earlier in their lives, and we honor their baptism as well as they hear the renewal of Jesus’ gift of lifegiving water that never dies.

Just like the water in a mountain stream, the living water of Jesus always finds a way through. It seeks out the smallest crack and fills it. Sometimes that crack is caused by our weakness and our sinfulness and our brokenness. God’s living water doesn’t avoid the brokenness, it seeks it out and finds it and fills it. It changes the landscape of our lives and heals it. Jesus knew the Samaritan woman’s sinfulness. He knew the pain her sins had caused her and her community. He didn’t judge her for it. He didn’t withhold his life-giving water. He offered it to her. And when she took it, the whole town was transformed.

The woman at the well came to love Jesus only after he “told me everything I have ever done”. But that was not what turned her heart. Everyone in her village knew her past. It was the fact that even though he had such intimate knowledge of her and her life, he did not judge her for it like her neighbors did. Instead, he offered her eternal life. How liberating that must have felt for someone who felt so ostracized and worthless that she had to go to the well in the middle of the hot day, when no other people were expected to be there! Jesus gave her back her dignity. He spoke to her when he wasn’t supposed to. He conversed with her as an equal, without looking down on her. And he offered her himself, the life-giving water that would change her life forever.

We are all the woman at the well. We all have a past that includes things we aren’t particularly proud of. We all have sinned and have felt the worthlessness sin can bring. And we have all encountered Jesus in some way or other. Some of us have moved our relationship with him to another level, to the level of trust. Some of us have gone all the way to love. We been transformed by the living water of Jesus.

How so very often we take water for granted. We turn on the tap and out it comes. The snows melt and the water somehow gets to the farms so we can have food and into our pipes, so our lawns remain green. We just expect it to be there. We rarely think about it. How so very often we take the living water of baptism for granted. After all, for most of us baptism happened a long, long time ago. What began as a trickle on our foreheads may have dried up. Or it may have grown into a rushing stream that cannot be contained.

Whatever it is now, take a lesson from the snows of winter. Every summer the waters recede, and the desert is parched, yet every winter the snows fall and in the spring it melts and runs down the mountains, starting small and growing in force until it gives life to all nature and to humanity. Every spring we celebrate the season of Lent when we are in the desert. When we are parched. When we come face to face with our own brokenness.

But the snows are melting, and the water is coming.

 

Eliminate Your Enemies

 

We know the great commandment, love your neighbor as yourself. We heard it in our first reading today from Leviticus. Jesus didn’t make up that law, he was just restating it. Today we hear the admonition from Jesus to love our enemies, too. I think the easiest way to love our neighbors is to eliminate them. That’s not as violent as it sounds. It’s actually quite simple. Just see your enemies as your neighbors.

Jesus defined who our neighbor is with the parable of the Good Samaritan, but he doesn’t really ever define what an enemy is. Is that because we all know what an enemy is? Probably not.

The Good Samaritan and the Jew were technically enemies, even though they didn’t know one another. Their societies hated one another going back hundreds of years. Jesus turned this parable on its head. He began it as a response to the arrogant lawyer’s question, “But who is my neighbor”. And the Jews listening expected that the person who would be the neighbor would be the Jew, but it was the person who showed compassion to the enemy who was the neighbor to him. We always think the enemy is the other guy. We never see the enemy as our neighbor.

The neighbor was the one who showed compassion. Jesus didn’t say that the Samaritan and the Jew became friends, or if they ever even met again. Loving your enemies is simply being compassionate in the moment. It is putting aside any prejudices and fears and enmity and just acting in the moment. We don’t know the Samaritan’s motivation. He just acted. Jesus doesn’t say why the enemy acted the way he did; he just acted.

It all boils down to how you view others, how you treat others, no matter who they are, no matter if you think they deserve to be treated badly or not. Like the Good Samaritan, we are called to act with compassion as our motivation and our intention. Don’t worry about the rest.

Wouldn’t that be a simpler way to live? Instead of seeing people as groups or stereotypes or whatever the way you want to classify them, just show them compassion in the moment. Just act as you will. Just go with your gut. Run into the burning building no matter who lives there. In the heat of the moment I think we would all act correctly. It’s those slow burning issues and the things we have to think through that give us fits.

The term neighbor is naturally local. We all live in neighborhoods and our neighbors are those who live close to us. Enemies I think we view from a more distant perspective. I am a history buff, especially military history. To me, the enemies are the Germans or the Japanese or the Russians. They don’t have faces or names. But for most of us our enemies really are those closest to us.

It is said that you can know a lot about a person by knowing who their enemies are. Who are your enemies? You will always have people who disagree with your ideas and positions, who hold prejudice against you just because of your race or religion or social status. You will have people who actually hate you for something you did or said. Many of these you will be unaware of. Most enemies don’t openly attack you or even have a relationship with you. Others are much more vocal and public. Either way, it hurts us to think that people don’t like us. But some enemies are worth having.

Enemies spring up whenever we do something controversial, or good, or these days, just about anything will make someone your enemy it seems. The only people who have no enemies are those who do nothing, say nothing, or stand for nothing. You will have enemies whether you like it or not, whether you choose to have them or not. People will choose to be your enemies and there may be nothing you will ever be able to do to change their minds or win them to your side. As long as there is sin there will be enemies. As long as you are a Christian you will have enemies. It goes with the territory.

You can choose not to view people as enemies. Why not think of them as opponents instead? The term enemy has an undercurrent of violence to it. An enemy doesn’t just oppose you they wish you harm. It has an undercurrent of hatred attached to it. We don’t hate our opponents. Often they can cause us to step up our game, to try to persuade rather than attack and hurt. We can have and can be worthy opponents.

Do you really hate anyone? Loving your enemies does not mean you have to give in to them when they hurt you. It doesn’t mean we are to roll over and play dead. Loving your enemies when they are in the wrong often means opposing them and their positions forcefully and publicly. Admonishing the sinner is one of the spiritual works of mercy. Admonishing isn’t attacking but is a sign of love.

What if they held a war and nobody showed up. Is it still a war? Doesn’t it take two to have a conflict? And how many of those enemies are we allowing to live rent free in our heads, when they probably are not even thinking about us? How many enemies do we make up in our minds? Let it go. What sins you forgive are forgiven them, and what sins you retain are retained. How many sins are you retaining? A grudge hurts you more than them.

But you don’t have to view them as enemies. You do not have to treat them as enemies. However, you don’t have to have a relationship with anyone to love them. Love is much bigger than that. You don’t have to agree with someone to love them, in fact, the bigger love is to love them in spite of your disagreements. You can show great love for an enemy simply by not treating them the way they treat you.

Eliminate your enemies by making them your opponents. But Jesus went even further. He did in fact love his enemies.

Jesus made some very powerful enemies of the religious and political leaders of his day. How did Jesus show love to his enemies? By forgiving them. Even from the cross. Even though they would remain his enemies. Even though they rejected the salvation he offered them. Even though the thought of that caused him just as much, if not more, suffering as the nails in his hands and in his feet. Continue to offer reconciliation. Leave your offering at the altar and go be reconciled to your brother. See your enemy as your brother. Forgive them even if they won’t forgive you, even if they don’t think they need forgiveness. Especially forgive those who have no awareness that they ever hurt you, or even that you consider them an enemy. Maybe they really aren’t. And take the time this lent to think how you are an enemy to others, an enemy vs. just an opponent. Pray for everyone, especially those who persecute you.

Pray for your enemies. I guess you could pray that they start to see things like you do, or that they will stop bothering you, but your enemies may never agree with you or leave you alone, so pray instead for their happiness, for their family, for the problems they are having in their life. Everyone has problems. The Good Samaritan didn’t try to win his enemy over, he just helped him with his problems.

We Boomers remember the famous comic strip, Pogo, with the famous saying, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” Oftentimes we are our own worst enemy, aren’t we? Don’t be an enemy to anyone. Forgive everyone. Show compassion for everyone, especially for yourself.

But why do this? What is the benefit of loving your enemies?

There are many times that Jesus tells his disciples to do things because by doing so it will gain them a place in heaven, will store up treasures in heaven, who will be the least in the kingdom of heaven and who will be the greatest. But is that why we should love one another? Is it just for our own benefit? Yes, we are to work out our own salvation in fear and trembling, but we are also called to lead others to salvation. We are all about saving souls, ours and our neighbors…and our enemies.

Eliminate your enemies by seeing them as your neighbors, treating them as you neighbors, loving them as your neighbors. Ironically, the way we are to gain everything for ourselves is to give everything to others, especially when it is hard.