The Light of Christ - The Rev. Mindy Bugaj

Today’s gospel reading is not just a story about one blind man. It is a story about the spiritual blindness of everyone involved and it’s about the blindness that each of us experiences too.

In the Gospel, the disciples were blinded by the traditional misunderstanding of sinfulness leading to physical or emotional disabilities. The people were blind to accept that the man’s sight had somehow been restored. The man’s parents were blind to how the miracle occurred for fear of being cast out of their community. The pharisees were blind to the healing power of God that was at work through Jesus. The only one with true sight in the story is the man. 

Today’s story begins with Jesus in Jerusalem for the festival of Booths. This festival is referenced in the book of  Leviticus as one of the three pilgrimage festivals when the people traveled to Jerusalem to make offerings at the temple. Jerusalem would have been crowed and busy with visitors from all around the region.

Jesus came across this man who had been blind from birth. He stopped to heal him. Different from other healing stories in scripture, this man didn’t ask to be healed. And, unlike other healing stories, Jesus did not attribute this healing to the man’s faith. Instead as John’s gospel explained, Jesus simply spits, mixes, and pastes the man’s eyes.  When the man washed, as directed by Jesus, his vision was restored.

The man then found himself lifted from what had been a life of begging and exclusion, to being an included member of the community. We should expect a party. Instead, he was faced with the towns people not sure that they really recognized him anymore. He then had to defend his identity. “I am the man!”  He responded to the people’s questioning. 

When the pharisees got involved, they were most concerned with how the man’s vision was restored and who did it. Then the parents were called in and they wanted no part of testifying to the officials about what happened. They had their lives within the synagogue and community to protect. The second interrogation of the man became a turning point for the man. He has been pushed for answers and seems to have had enough. Various writers of commentaries on this passage refer to this exchange as one where the man’s answers would have become sarcastic toward the authorities.

In that time in Jewish culture the official adulthood for men began at the age of 13. So, I imagine his answers to include some teenage angst. 

Using my own sons’ teenager years as examples, when being asked again and again how his eyes had been opened, his responses could have sounded more like,

“Again? Really? I told you once and you didn’t listen to me!” 

“I waaaaaas blind, NOW I seee, what don’t you get?” 

“Oh. Sure. Like, Do YOU want to be his disciples too? Whatever!”

Sarcasm or not, the interrogations ended with the man pushing back on what the pharisees were saying about Jesus being a sinner. The man says, “If this man (Jesus) were not from God, he could do nothing?” The man began to see Jesus more clearly only to then find himself driven out of his community. He was an outcast again. In all of this back and forth between the people and the pharisees, Jesus was not with him.

The last things the man heard from Jesus was being told to go to the pool to wash, and him saying “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” He could try to find Jesus, but he hadn’t actually seen Jesus so how would he know him in the crowds in town?

There he was, the man, alone and confused about who Jesus was, what Jesus said about the light, and what Jesus had done for him. He surely had mixed emotions about the consequences of having been healed by Jesus. Everything that he knew before, having been living on the margins and oppressed by society, had changed.

For a little while, he could have anticipated a new life of inclusion and acceptance. But then, once again, he was on the outside. He was alone and uncertain of what was to come. Though his life in darkness had ended, his life now would begin from a place of shadowed loneliness. He was stuck in the shadows of his family, his culture, his future with no clear path to escape them.    

Shadows have troubled people since the beginning. Many movies, poems and books have included frightening encounters within the shadows of a forest or an abandoned building where we are sure the characters should at least run in the opposite direction and certainly not go in.  

From the reading of Psalm 23 that we heard this morning, and that many of us are familiar with, the Psalmist speaks of a shadowed valley that we walk through. I imagine most of us have found ourselves in such a shadowy valley at times of our lives. Being in life’s shadows can trouble our spirits - with distraction, divisiveness, yearnings for power or wealth, addiction, uncertainty, illness, or fear - any of these challenges can overcome us and make our right pathways unclear or worse invisible.  

The horrific events of the world can certainly lead us into shadows of pain and doubt. It takes only a little time on our news feeds or on tv news to make us feel defeated. Hopeful resolutions between waring peoples often seem unfeasible. 

When evil enters into our communities in ways that terrify us and threaten our safety, the shadows can grow and dim our trust in humanity and in God. Shadows can turn us inward as we shutter ourselves off with an unwillingness to see and name those evils. As followers of Christ, we aren’t called to lives of shuttered protections in the face of evil. We are called to step out of the shadows and live in the light.

I listen to country music. One of my favorite singers is Miranda Lambert. In one of her songs there is a lyric that talks about passing on the tradition of country music as it was passed down to her from legends in the music business. When I heard it this week, I heard it differently.

Part of the song says:

Keeper of the flame
The teller of the story
Keeper of the flame
I'm not doing it for the glory
But for those little pilot lights, waiting to ignite
Like fireflies in the rain
Keeper of the flame

I heard it differently because it can apply to our lives as Christians too. 

The Epistle reading today from Ephesians 5 began with “Once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light…”

What does it mean for followers of Christ to live as children of light, to keep the light of Christ burning and to share it so that the little pilot lights of faith that reside in others can fully ignite too?

The Light of Christ is the very thing that a broken world needs. 

Christ as our light helps to drive out our personal fears and can guide us on paths of goodness and grace. Then we can be lights of faith and hope for others. That is the Light that can change the perceptions on the personal situations and challenges that we face. Having even a glimmer of hope through the light of Christ has comforted me during difficult times when doubt and fear where pulling me toward the shadows of spiritual blindness.

The gospel story ends as Jesus, the Good Shepherd, searched for the man and found him. The man asked to know the Son of Man so he could believe in him and Jesus says, that he has already seen him. The man could see clearly in that moment what he had been gradually coming to understand. Jesus brings light of hope and possibility, healing and love that can lift people out of a shadowy existence.

Christ’s light gives the opportunity to us all to see and follow him away from doubt and fear. May we each celebrate when the light of Christ leads us out of shadows. May we lead with the light of Christ witnessing to the wonders of what God’s love can do to change hearts and to change the world. Amen.

Keeper of the Flame lyrics © Warner-tamerlane Publishing Corp., Sony/atv Tree Publishing, Pink Dog Publishing, Songs Of Crazy Girl Music, Creative Pulse Music, Happygowrucke, Songs Of Mv2, Rainbow Shoals Music, Creative Nation Anthem Music Publishing I, Songwriters: Liz Rose / Miranda Lambert / Natalie Hemby