The Light of the World

When we think of the season of Lent, we usually think of it as a way of commemorating the forty days that Jesus spent in the wilderness. This is the narrative that dominates our thinking about Lent – and that is one of the reasons why we tend to focus on resisting temptation with all those little dramatic and symbolic enactments of resisting temptation around chocolate and sugar in your tea. 

But of course the season of Lent began in the early church as a period of preparation for those who were to be baptised at Easter. And the three gospels readings from John are there to help us to think about the character of baptism during the successive Sundays of Lent. It was Thomas Cranmer who wrote in the Prayer Book Baptism rite that ‘Baptism doth represente unto us our profession’. It is in baptism that we discover what it means to be human. It is in baptism that we discover what it means to follow Christ.

So last Sunday, Jesus promised the gift of ‘living water’ to the Samaritan woman. Today, we learn that Jesus is the ‘light of the world’. And next week, we discover that Jesus is ‘the resurrection and the life’ – water, light and life together reveal different aspects of the mystery or sacrament of baptism. And so we prepare to celebrate the Easter mystery.

So what do we discover about our baptismal profession in the gospel story today? It is a story about a blind beggar. This is not just about a miracle Jesus did many years ago. It is about the way we see reality, and the way in which we often fail to see injustice, poverty and hatred. So often we do not want to look at the reality of the world as it is. As the poet, T S Eliot says: ‘human beings cannot bear very much reality’. And if we are oblivious to what is going on around us, sometimes we fail to see our own inner reality, our brokenness, our pain, and our fear. We pretend that everything is all right. Or when it isn’t, there is someone else to blame. We fear that if we see reality too clearly, we will be overwhelmed. 

John describes a pattern of blame and recrimination in this story today. Why is this man blind? Who is to blame? They ignore the deeper reality, the way in which this man is excluded and marginalised, the way in which his humanity has been diminished through no fault of his own. Jesus does not ignore him. He is attentive to him, and in that attentiveness, he brings healing and light. Through the gentleness of touch, he offers kindness and compassion. But in the story the pattern of blame and recrimination continues. The Pharisees refuse to believe that the man was blind in the first place. They set about discrediting his testimony and belitting his experience. And yet, he refuses to collude with them. The love of God revealed in Jesus challenges their attempts at power and control. It is the perennial challenge at the heart of any religious faith, when the people in authority seek to make God’s love too narrow with false limits of our own. And when the man who has been healed refuses to collude with them, they try to get his parents onside against him instead. And they say nothing because they are afraid. 

So again the Pharisees ask, Why does this man break the sabbath? Why does he not follow the commandments? Why does this sinner break the Law? The man who is healed is confused. All he knows is that he has been healed. He answers their questions as honestly as he can. He bears witness to the truth, and then John says, ‘they drove him out’. Because ‘human beings cannot bear very much reality.’

The story presents us with a stark and uncomfortable choice: do we use the language of faith to engage with the reality of our lives, enabling us to say how things are? Or do we use the language of faith to avoid reality, excluding or imprisoning others in order to protect ourselves from our own unwillingness to confront our own fears and insecurities?

The patient witness of the man who is healed teaches us that we should never be frightened of the truth, and that if we are willing to dig deeper, we will find beyond our own brokenness and our sense of insecurity that there is beauty and goodness in our hearts and in the hearts of others. And in that beauty and goodness, we discover again the confidence and the faith to give life to others, to grow in love and compassion for others, to become a source of encouragement and hope for others. The gospel story teaches us today that like the man who is healed we must bear witness to the light, even when confronted by darkness. For as St John teaches us, the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness shall never overcome it.