4th Sunday in Lent, March 2, 2008 “Series A”
Grace be unto you and peace, from God our Father and from our Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Let us pray: Dear Heavenly Father, you sent your Son into our world to reveal to us your grace and truth, and to restore us to a right relationship with you. Through the power of your Holy Spirit, open the eyes of our heats to embrace anew the hope of our baptism, that we might live our lives in the light of your saving grace. Increase our faith, that we might truly worship you with trust and conviction. This we ask in Christ’s holy name. Amen.
It appears that in the early years of the Christian Church, this 9th chapter of John’s Gospel was read as the chosen text for baptism, or adding new members to the congregation. As Raymond E. Brown points out in his two-volume commentary on John’s Gospel, “The story of the man born blind appears seven times in early catacomb art, most frequently as an illustration of Christian Baptism. [The catacombs, you may recall, were a maze of underground tunnels in Rome, where Christians in the first two centuries hid from their persecutors.] Thus, there is no doubt that the Church found a baptismal lesson in the healing of the blind man…
Although Jesus’ gestures are described, [that of anointing the blind man’s eyes with mud made of spittle] it is emphasized that the man was healed only when he washed in the pool of Siloam. Thus… the story illustrates the healing power of water. The Gospel pauses to interpret the name of the pool where this healing water was obtained, and the explanation that the name means ‘one who has been sent’ clearly associates the water with Jesus.” End quote. [The Anchor Bible, Doubleday, 1966]
Brown then goes on to cite two famous early Christian writers. Tertullian, seemed to have this passage in mind when he opened his teaching on baptism with the words: “Our sacrament of water which washes away the sins of our original blindness, sets us free unto eternal life.” And later, Augustine exclaims: “This blind man stands for the human race… If the blindness is infidelity, then the illumination is faith… He washes in the pool called Siloam, which is interpreted ‘one who has been sent’: [that is] he was baptized in Christ.”
In John’s Gospel, the miracles of Jesus, whether he healed a man of his paralysis, or opened the eyes of a man born blind, were not simple acts of mercy. Throughout John’s Gospel, the miracles that Jesus performs are referred to as signs, signs that point us to embrace the fact that Jesus is the Son of God. In fact, that is the stated purpose of his Gospel, in his own words, as he concludes: “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written, so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing, you may have life in his name.”
Thus, according to John, Jesus didn’t perform miracles just in sympathy with human need, or to show off his miraculous power, but rather, he did them with the intent of leading people to come to a deep and abiding faith, not only in him as the Christ, but in the grace of God for their redemption.
As John T. Rotto points out in his commentary on our text, “For the early Christians, this particular miracle spoke to them of the Savior who had led them from the blindness of unbelief and sin to the illumined eyesight and the new life of faith! This miracle spoke to them of the Christ, whose sole purpose in coming to live and to dies and to rise again was to light up their lives, and the life of the whole world!
They looked at their Baptism as the leaving behind of blindness and darkness to step daily into the glorious Light of God. IN other words, these early Christians realized that the very fact that they were Christians and had remained so from day to day, was indeed a miracle – as great as, if not greater than the healing of physical blindness. They saw their Baptism, then, as an ongoing miracle – a daily repetition of what occurred to this blind man that day when Jesus found him. For not only was he given his physical sight, he was given faith! End Quote [Augsburg Sermons, 1983]
Just think of this story, in light of our baptism. Here is a man blind since birth, left to beg on the streets for enough money to sustain his life. His own parents seem to have abandoned him to fend for himself. He has, since his birth, been living in total darkness, not knowing which way to turn, or in whom he might trust.
Then Jesus comes along, puts mud in his eyes, and tells him to go to wash off the mud in this pool meaning “one who is sent.” This person, who had been blind since birth, trusts what Jesus told him, goes to that pool, and washes his eyes. And when he does that, his eyes are opened. Out of gratitude, he then praises this person, whom he has not even seen, for his gift of sight.
But then the problems soon began for this man who could now see. He soon encountered questions about his identity, questions from those in authority regarding his miracle of sight, and in particular, whether he believed that he had experienced the grace of God.
His answer was a resounding “yes.” Even though this man had never seen Jesus, even though his parents again left him to fend for himself, even though he faced being ostracized from his community by those who had the power to do so, this man did not deny his allegiance to the one who brought him into light from darkness. Clearly, this man received more than his physical sight. He had received the sight of faith.
Is it any wonder, then, that this story was told as new members joined the early church. After all, they too, faced persecution for their faith in Jesus. This story of the blind beggar coming to the light of faith became for the early church a symbol of the Christian life, and it was told as a reminder to those joining the church that their belief in Christ, would require that they continue to hold fast to the light of faith.
This aspect on our Gospel lesson for this morning is especially meaningful in our life today, particularly for our youth. Over the past several years of frank and open discussion with “our kids,” whom I am very proud of, I have discovered that being a Christian and going to church on Sunday, is not seen as an endearing quality among ones peers in school. It seems to me that this is especially difficult among those whose faith is rooted in the mainline Christian denominations, such as us Lutherans.
First, they find themselves bombarded by accusations that they have not arrived at true faith, as we teach them to grow to understand the significance of their baptism, unless they come to be “born again,” to accept Jesus as their personal savior. Then, there are those who believe that there is no significance in one’s faith, who believe that it doesn’t matter whether one is a Jew, a Christian, a Muslim, or a Buddhist. And, perhaps the most difficult challenge that our youth face, are those who espouse that any religion is waste of time, a placebo to help us feel good.
Quite frankly, several of our youth have told me that it is not popular to be a Christian, to “have to” go to church on Sunday mornings, to embrace the significance of their baptism. Personally, I have come to believe that if we truly want to address the decline of membership in the church, we need to focus on this text of John, and pray that God’s Spirit give us, as parents, as teachers in our Sunday school, as pastors, and most importantly, as peers who have come to see the light of the Gospel, to speak up! We need to shed this idea that our baptism into the light of Christ was just a personal thing between “me and God.” We need to take this lesson to heart and act like the man born blind, who came to see, not just through his physical eyes, but with eyes of faith, that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, who redeems us sin and death.
Last Sunday I had a conversation following worship with a person whom I admire, who stated that America just might go the way that all the major countries in history have gone. “History is a good teacher”, he said. “Few nations have retained power for more than two hundred years. We have lost our roots. It’s time for the United States to decline.”
Well, as one who has served his country in the army, who has voted in nearly every election, who flies the flag outside his home, I can’t deny the fact that our country is not the same. And despite the fact that we are a nation of diversity, I find the erosion of our Christian faith to be a grave concern. As a Christian, I do not fear those who worship God by other means. What I fear is, the loss of our own faith, as Christians.
This was certainly a part of the early Church’s understanding of this story from our Gospel lesson. It served as a plea to those who were new to the faith to hold true to the light of Christ as they walked through the darkness of our world. It was a plea to hold true to the Gospel, to never give up on the love of God in Christ Jesus, even in the face of hardship.
The truth is, our nation and the future of the Christian church is not so different than it has been in years past. It rises and falls in various regions of the world. But we are a part of the kingdom of God, which will never fall. And because of our baptism, the new sight that we have received from Christ, we are called to uphold our faith, even when things might warrant against it.
The truth is, we have been baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection, and have been given the Holy Spirit. We may not be able to stand the forces that would deter our faith, except through the power of God’s Spirit. May we cling to the Spirit, to keep our faith alive, as did the blind man in our story.
Amen.
