Lent: The Blind Man

Genesis 2:4-8

John 9:1-11

Meditation: 

We start the season of Lent with ashes, ashes of last year’s palms, ashes of the past, ashes of things that have died, and we remember that we are dust and to dust we shall return.  But over the past few years, when I mark the sign of the cross in ashes in other’s foreheads, I cannot say those words: to dust we shall return, instead, I use the words:  the old is gone, in Christ we are a new Creation. Lent is a spiritual spring, is a time of renewal, it is a time to name the old that we seek to shed and live into the promise  that in Christ we are a new creation.  Last week, we had the woman at the well, and in Christ, she became a new creation.  Today, we have a blind man and with his encounter with Jesus he too will encounter a new season in his own life. 

Words from Ash Wednesday involve:  Almighty God, you have created us out of the dust of the earth.   Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.  These words take us all the way back to the story of creation, the story of God creating Adam and Even in the Garden of Eden.  God creates, then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground,^[b] and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. The name Adam comes from the Hebrew word Adamah which means dirt, ground, red clay. 

          The other day, as we were doing our school distance learning, my younger one read about an animal called a Pika.  She immediately decided she was madly in love with this little creature and wanted to make one of her own.  So what did we do?  We pulled out the clay and created a very unique little Pika.  Just as God creates out of the dust, we too create, and clay is just one medium for us to express our creative outlet.  This story, creating out of dust, creating out of clay, is one that the potter can relate to.  Throughout the world, people use the dust of the ground, the dirt, the natural clay, and make useful items out of it. 

          When we take the time to stop, to think about our connection to God and our connection to creation, we need to be reminded from time to time that we are the soil, we are the air, we are what we eat, which depends on the nutrients in the ground, the sun, and the rain. 

          So, not only does God create Adam out of the dust of the ground, God then breathes life into him.  God does not just create Adam and place him in the garden, there is this intimate connection – God’s breath into Adam creating life.  One of my college roommates would always say:  Breathe in the good, breathe out the bad.  I think this is a good mediation in the stress we are living in today.  A form of meditation to help us deal with anxiety.  But we should also remember that as we breathe in the good, we are breathing in the breath of God. 

          Dirt and breath bring life at the crack of creation, and Jesus parallels this very act of creation in his encounter with the blind man.  As Jesus and his disciples encounter this man, born blind since birth, the disciples ask Jesus a theological question – who sinned, this man or his parents.  They lived in a day and age where they connected everything to God.  If someone was born blind, deaf, or lame, it was connected to some sort of divine punishment.  But instead of divine punishment, Jesus is telling them that this man’s blindness is now going to be used for God’s glory.  Jesus takes what is currently seen as a negative from God and is teaching that it is actually a positive.  This man was born blind so that God’s work might be revealed in him. 

          Yesterday, George to the Rescue was on the TV and I was only partly listening.  But he was doing a room remodel for a young woman that was blind.  Apparently, there is also a youtube personality that is a young blind woman.  Blindness can create many stresses in a person’s life including depression.  The one woman, through her youtube channel had brought hope and renewal to the life of the other person.  It renewed her desire to focus on her passion which is swimming and her goal of participating in one of the upcoming Olympic games.  There was no mention of God in this story, at least none that I heard, but in the sharing of hope, in the sharing of life still has meaning despite being blind, in the encouragement of engaging in one’s passions, the Kingdom of God was at work.  God’s work was being revealed through them. 

          So, as Jesus approaches this man, he continues to teach his disciples and tells them:  I am the light of the world.  Last week, Jesus described himself as the Living water.  Water, light, two essential things that life needs to grow.  And then he spits on the ground and mixes it with the dirt, the dust, and creates mud.  Sound familiar?  The Light of the world takes the dust of the ground, infuses it with his salvia, and places it on the blind man’s eyes.  Could we be, just for this moment in time, back in the garden of Eden?  Then he tells the man to go and wash.  But Jesus does not seem to stick around for the conversation that entails afterwards.  When Jesus heals, sometimes we hear him say, your faith has made you well.  But not here.  There are no more words from Jesus to this man – just go and wash in the pool.  In a sense, Jesus passes the baton onto this man to tell the story.  And he will be questioned over and over again.  Miracles are hard to accept, even when they are right in front of you. 

          The religious authorities are having a fit.  They want to know how Jesus opened his eyes.  The very people that are suppose to be the most connected to God, that know the scripture inside and out, cannot connect the story of creation to this man’s healing.  We get ourselves into our own rigid set of beliefs and understandings that we can actually prevent ourselves from seeing God at work.  I like to open to the mystery of God.  Instead of trying to make sense of it all, I like to think that God can do new things, that the creation story is not a thing of the past but an on-going story.  For the blind man, in Christ, he became a new creation, the old was gone and he had been made new. 

We may not ever experience such an easy to define miracle of the blind man, but in Christ, in the ways God works in our lives and transforms us, we are living miracles and just like Jesus proclaimed the glory of God was to be shown through the healing of the blind man, our lives too should proclaim the glory of God through our own stories, our own healings whatever they may be, our own understanding of how, in Christ, we are a new creation.  Amen.