Peace be with you.
Friends, we come to the Fourth Sunday of Lent
and just one of the most magnificent stories
in the Gospel of John.
I’ve said it many times before:
John is a theological master, of course,
but also a literary master.
And these stories
—think of the wedding feast at Cana,
the woman at the well,
this one (the man born blind),
the story of Lazarus—
they’re so beautifully crafted as sort of
icons of the spiritual life.
So we’re reading a story about an event in the life of Jesus,
something that he did, but we’re also meant to see
at a deeper level that this is a story about all of us.
These are the dynamics of the spiritual life on display.
And this is a beautiful example of it.
So let me just look at a few highlights from this.
We hear, “As Jesus passed by he saw a man blind from birth.”
Now it’s a physical condition.
Yes indeed.
And Jesus really did heal this blind man.
But think now of blindness in the context of the Bible.
It’s often used as a symbol of spiritual blindness.
What does sin do to us?
Well, many things, but one thing it does is it
obscures our consciousness.
It distorts our vision of things.
We might be able to function very well in the political
and economic order and all of that.
But if we’re sunk in sin, we are blind to
the most important realities.
We’re blind in terms of the right direction
for our lives.
Again, think of someone who’s flourishing in
every way in the worldly sense
but they’re just knocking around,
bumping into things, hopelessly lost
at the deeper level.
Well, mind you here, a man blind from birth.
That’s every one of us.
We talk about original sin.
That’s a great, marvelous doctrine.
What it means is that all of us are
—long before we begin to make any conscious choices—
we are born into a dysfunctional world.
Think of someone who’s born already addicted
to crack cocaine.
Well, the person hasn’t made any conscious moral choice,
but nevertheless, nevertheless,
he’s born with this addiction.
Well, so all of us are born blind,
born into a world that’s marked by cruelty and
violence and hatred and everything else that’s been
shaped for eons and millennia by these things.
And so we are born in original sin, born blind.
Well, Jesus is quite simply the enemy of this blindness.
He’s the enemy of darkness.
What do we hear him say?
“I am the light of the world.”
What do we hear from the very beginning of John’s Gospel but
“the light shines in the darkness
and the darkness will not overcome it”?
Jesus comes into our world as the light meant to
illumine eyes blinded by sin.
So as we read this story, it’s about us.
Okay.
What does Jesus do when he sees the man?
Well, something rather weird.
He makes a mud paste.
How?
By spitting on the ground and then making this paste
and rubbing it in the man’s eyes.
St. Augustine’s interpretation, which I love:
Think of the spittle that comes from the mouth of Jesus.
That’s evocative of his divinity.
The earth is evocative of his humanity.
When divinity and humanity meet,
they form a kind of salve, S-A-L-V-E.
“Salus” in Latin means health.
That’s why you’d say to somebody “salve”
when you saw them on the street
—it meant “health to you.”
Well, same word, S-A-L-V-E.
Jesus is called from the earliest days the “salvator”;
our word “savior” comes from that.
He’s the one who brings healing.
Can you see, everybody?
This mud paste that he makes is representative of his own being.
It’s his own life.
It’s his divinity and humanity coming together in such a way
that they heal sin-sick eyes.
So Jesus rubbing this mud paste into the blind man’s eyes,
that’s every one of us when we are addressed by Jesus.
I love the literal earthiness of this.
How often in the sacraments of the Church
—when we use the bread and wine and water and frequently oil,
oil that’s rubbed onto us—
those are all encounters with Christ.
When his being is rubbed into our sin-sick eyes,
we begin properly to see.
So he puts the mud paste on and then he tells him,
“Go wash in the pool of Siloam.”
Now, John adds helpfully,
what does Siloam mean but “sent”?
Very often in John’s Gospel, Jesus is referred to as
the one who was sent.
He himself refers to his Father as
“the one who sent me.”
Being immersed, therefore, in the pool of
the one who was sent is evocative of Baptism.
By Baptism, we are immersed in Christ,
the one who is sent by the Father.
We are washed clean.
But now in terms of the symbol system of this story,
the salve on his eyes, think of it now being washed
in the pool of Siloam and then the man is restored to sight.
It’s through the sacraments of the Church,
especially Baptism, that we are healed
and we are saved, salved,
that we are enabled to see.
This is about the beginning of the spiritual journey,
if you want.
Think of a parallel story of blind Bartimaeus.
Remember, sitting by the walls of Jericho?
Jericho is evocative of the fallen city.
So there he is again, blind Bartimaeus.
And it’s his encounter with Christ that gives him vision.
So here, this man and all of us born blind,
we begin the spiritual journey by this sacramental and
baptismal immersion in Christ.
Okay.
At this point, he recovers his sight.
It’s one of the great miracles of Jesus.
But watch now how people begin to respond.
So the man comes back.
And they’ve seen him.
Who knows how long, this man begging,
this blind man.
They’ve seen him.
But he comes back, and people are mixed.
They’re divided.
“Hey, there’s the blind man and now he can see.”
And others say,
“No, no, that’s not the blind man.”
Others say,
“No, it just kind of looks like him.”
Well, what’s going on here?
Probably something that really happened.
I mean, this is reportage of this event.
Imagine how people must have been confounded.
What do you mean he can see?
Blind people don’t start to see.
It must be someone who just looks like him.
I mean, that’s very credible to me.
But now read it with our deeper spiritual vision.
When we are immersed in Christ,
he’s rubbed his saving power into our sin-sick eyes,
when we are transformed by him,
we’re not the same person we were before.
We’re changed. We’re different.
We look different, we act different.
People can barely recognize us.
Think of someone that’s gone through a profound conversion.
“What, this is the guy I used to know?
No, no, no, that can’t be him.”
Praise God.
See, it’s the transformation of our lives that happens
when we really come into contact with Christ.
Now, here’s a little detail that is typical of St. John,
who was such a master of the literary craft
and the theological craft.
They asked the man himself
—so they’re confused, “who are you?”
—and they asked the man himself whether he is
the one that was blind.
And his response is translated correctly here as,
basically, “yeah, it’s me all right.”
But what he says in the Greek
—go back to the original language of the story—
what he says when they ask him “Is it really you?”
is he says “ego eimi.”
That means literally
“I am” in Greek. Well, if you’re an
attentive reader of John, you’re not going
to miss this, because ego eimi,
that’s the great name of God, right?
When Moses says,
“What’s your name? What will I tell them?”
God says, “I am who I am.”
Jesus throughout the Gospels —the Gospel John—
uses that little phrase.
Ego eimi, I am the bread of life.
Ego eimi, I am the good shepherd.
Ego eimi, I am the gate.
Ego eimi, I am the way, the truth and the life.
You see, what he’s saying again and again is that
he is in himself God’s own presence.
So here’s the extraordinary thing,
and it’s suggested in this little tiny detail.
When you are baptized, when you’re
immersed in Christ, when you have his
power rubbed into you, you become conformed to him.
You become another Christ.
Didn’t Paul say it?
It’s no longer I who live; it’s Christ who lives in me.
And so the man born blind, once he’s been christified
through Baptism and the sacraments,
can say like his master “ego eimi.”
He’s now been christified.
Okay.
Wonderful.
These wonderful details, and we’re speaking of the
origins here of the spiritual life.
But then don’t miss this, everybody,
the way this story ends.
You think, how great could this be?
How great could it be that this man born blind
is restored to sight?
He’s another Christ.
What a great story.
But how do they react?
Now, enter the scribes and Pharisees,
who just cannot deal with this.
They harass him.
They question his legitimacy.
They start to accuse Jesus of doing things
he shouldn’t be doing.
There’s a miracle that just happened right in front of you,
and you’re fussing about?
Well, see, here’s the truth.
Here’s the truth, everyone.
There are a lot of people in our world
deeply invested in blindness.
Let me just say that again.
There are a lot of people in this sinful world
who are deeply invested in blindness.
That means their whole life, their whole business,
their whole way of making money,
their whole political order, whatever it is,
is predicated upon the fact that most people are
not spiritually awake.
That most people are spiritually blind.
And so they don’t want someone who’s been liberated.
They don’t want that.
They don’t want someone that sees.
He’s going to cause them no end of trouble.
So I say to every one of you listening to me,
if you’re commencing the spiritual journey,
you’ve found vision and life in Christ,
great, great.
You can say ego eimi,
it’s no longer I who live but Christ living in me
Terrific.
But then stay wide awake. Be careful.
Know that the devil is prowling like a roaring lion
looking for someone to devour.
You will be opposed.
Trust me. Trust me.
And the more christlike you are,
the more you will be opposed because of all those people
who are invested in blindness.
See? So don’t be naive.
That’s why Jesus says be as innocent as doves and
as clever as serpents,
because you will be opposed as you walk the spiritual path.
So just be aware of that.
Let me just bring it to a close here.
There’s so much more we can say about this great story,
but having endured the tauntings of the crowd
and all of that,
they throw him out bodily, we hear.
Well, the Lord seeks him out and he tells him,
“I’m the one who’s given you sight.
Do you believe?”
And he makes then one of the great confessions of
faith in the New Testament:
“I do believe, Lord.”
And then we hear he worshiped him.
Well that means he’s acknowledging his divinity.
Well there’s the whole spiritual life.
We start blind.
We’re brought to vision through Baptism
and through immersion in the sacraments.
We’re changed.
We become other Christs.
Then we face opposition.
You bet you will.
But then finally, you give your whole life
to Christ in worship.
You want to know what the whole spiritual life looks like?
Reread this great story from the Gospel of John.
And God bless you.