Lent 4 Cygnet JSM Seeing the light

John 9;1-49

You might well wonder what Mr. Bean has to do with today’s readings

The readings for today are all about seeing the light, Revelation, the guidance of God.

We see Samuel anointing David through God’s guidance after seeing all of Jesse’s sons, the tall the dark and the handsome, in every way the apparent leadership material for the role of king. “Do you have any other sons” Samuel had to ask. Yes but it is just David, the youngest who is a shepherd. David, God’s chosen who was to be the father of modern ancient Israel.

Paul tells us that we should live in the light, that we are the light in Jesus.

This brings to mind Mr. Bean. You might be familiar with Mr. Bean being dropped into view in a spotlight and being wholly within the light. It is not so hard to imagine ourselves being within the light of Christ in a similar way. When we choose to wander away from the light we are outside of Jesus protection and guidance because we have chosen that path. We can move back into the light with repentance and be restored through forgiveness in the Grace of God. Paul tells us that we should choose light. To avoid the ways of darkness because that is how we were before we belonged to Christ.

These two readings about sight, light and insight support the gospel in which the blind beggar who was born blind receives his sight and then, even much better receives spiritual sight as well.

He is contrasted starkly by the Pharisees who demonstrate severe spiritual blindness in their determined attempt to defuse the threat they perceive in Jesus.

The reading goes through different phases, firstly addressing the question  of whether sickness is hereditary or not. Jesus makes it clear that neither the beggar nor his parents were responsible for his blindness, but that brokenness gives the opportunity for God’s glory to be revealed.

The blind man is a good advocate for Jesus, even before he has the second encounter with Jesus where he receives his spiritual sight he knows that Jesus is a prophet from God.

For a poor man, uneducated and very much on the fringes of society, he is able to out debate the Pharisees firstly by pointing out that such healings only come from God so it is simple to deduce where Jesus is from. He knows that Jesus’ power is from Heaven whilst the Pharisees are questioning even his geographical origins.

When pushed even further about his own opinion of how Jesus accomplished the healing, the man commits himself to Jesus by asking the Pharisees, do they want to become his disciples also.

Like his parents, he must have known that by opposing the Pharisees that he would be excommunicated. Having already spent his whole life in a state of excommunication, one would have thought that the last thing he would choose to do was to throw away the possibility of normality but he did just that.

He had not even had a day of getting used to not being a reject and yet he chose to become a reject from mainstream society because he knew Jesus had freed him from blindness and that Jesus power came from God.

It is interesting as an aside the sequence in which these events unfolded. Jesus took pity and healed the man without any bidding from the blind one.

Jesus healed on the Sabbath and used spittle to make the paste to smear on the mans eyes. Both would knowingly bring the wrath of the Pharisees as being contrary to Mosaic law.

The man professed to being a disciple of Jesus on the strength of his healing at which stage Jesus had not revealed himself as the son of man which must have been equivalent of announcing himself as the messiah. The restored man had no compunction in accepting Jesus word that he was the messiah. “Lord I believe” and he worshipped him.

At this point in his journey to the cross, Jesus revealed himself. In a similar way to God revealing David as the King elect, God revealed Jesus to be the messiah who would die on the cross.

It was obviously much more important to the now seeing man to commit to Jesus than to conform to the social and political mores of the day.

He had seen the light and how appropriate that is to us on our Lenten journey.

As our trip to and through the cross continues, we have heard about being born again through the exchange with Nicodemus, and we have heard the witness of the Samaritan woman that Jesus is the Christ.

In both those encounters we have seen how important it is to let go of all which inhibits us, all that holds us back. Nicodemus could not see past his humanity and his learning, so being born again had to be spelt out word by word for him. The Samaritan lady was an outcast and knowing she was in the presence of a prophet, she was prepared to receive the understanding that Jesus was the messiah.

Again through an outcast of society the same knowledge is revealed. Nicodemus had to discard all he knew to allow this strange concept in. The lady at the well had lost all already, she was at the bottom of the heap, a social reject and welcomed a God who would accept her rather than push her away as did her society. The blind man also had nothing, then he had everything, or so it seemed, that is a normal life to enjoy, but he threw it away and accepted Jesus as his Lord.

Our Lenten journey may not be so dramatic but we do try to expose all that is dark within us to the light and pass it to Jesus cross and as we do just that, maybe this lent, Jesus is revealed even more clearly than before. Christian life is about being born again, new life, every day and Lent is a special time where we can deepen our relationship and sense of purpose with Jesus. We have infirmities, we have levels of brokenness which need restoration and Jesus invites us to unload and see afresh that he is Lord and saviour.

The 23^rd psalm is the perfect scripture to reinforce that restoration that God offers us, leading us beside the still waters to restore our soul.

Lent is a special time for Christians, however that does not mean that it  is only for Christians.

This blind man’s experience challenges us to think about how people in our society who do not have a relationship with Jesus might have as dramatic a revelation as did he have. And that is where we come in.

We might not be involved in the restoration of someone’s sight, but the gaining of spiritual sight is equally astounding so we can believe that what we do to help people into relationship with Jesus is dramatic.

We continually have the challenge to live as people of God. To shine the light. And that is usually just the first step in bringing people to ask us how we cope, what is the meaning of life for us.

Our Samaritan friend last week showed us the way, she didn’t try to convert anyone, she just told them what Jesus had done for her and she posed the question, could he be the messiah?

They went on, met and formed their own relationship and believed.

There was an Every day Light article last week which I posted on the blog which asks how can we get closer to God?

Praying was of course the first answer, reading scripture and believing that it holds truths for us in our everyday lives is another. Expecting those truths to be realised and sharing our experience with others completes the cycle.

Sharing, whether it be our knowledge of Jesus, our car or a few eggs doubles the value of the item and builds society.

Today we can unload our darkness to Jesus, we can enjoy and share in the seeing of the light in a new and refreshing way, we can believe in the changes that are happening in our lives through Jesus, our healing, our refining, our learning our growing and our growing closer to Jesus.

And we come back to Mr. Bean, having renewed our relationship with Jesus we are living in the light which comes from within as well as from without at which point we not only reflect light but generate light.

And we can go out into the world feeling confident and expecting and wanting to share and knowing that so long as we do our bit honestly, the Holy Spirit will take over and add to and magnify and complete our efforts.

May this lent be lightening and enlightening for us all, for Jesus Sake

Amen