Archbishop of Sydney

Fourth Sunday of Lent

St Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney
1 Sam 16:1, 6-7, 10-13; Eph 5:8-14; Jn 9:1-41

By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
2/3/2008

On a number of occasions over the years I have remarked that it can be difficult to preach on some sections of John’s gospel, although it is a rich source for meditation, prayerful pondering over its teachings. Probably those repeated Sunday readings on different aspects of the Bread of Life were the reason for my preaching difficulties.

However there is no way a preacher could legitimately complain about the three Sunday gospels, all from John, recounting Jesus’ meetings with the Samaritan woman by the well, the man born blind and the raising of Lazarus. These are dramatic incidents.

They are, especially the first two, all stories of conversion, deepening faith, while the story of the man born blind also has a developing tension as the true lines of the conflict emerge.

We all know that God is spiritual, neither a man, nor a woman, nor anything material, unlike his only Son Jesus Our Lord. Many of the most important factors in human life are also spiritual, such as love, hate, forgiveness, faith, hope and grace. Therefore Jesus and religious writers generally have to use physical realities as symbols of these unseen realities. Last week John’s gospel used water and this week Our Lord is using light to explain Himself and goodness, contrasting light with darkness, a symbol of evil, blindness and confusion.

Jesus’ encounter with the man born blind is a story which moves at many levels. There is an emphasis on the unpredictable nature of God’s choice. We have noted that it uses the symbolism of light in contrast with darkness. It is a story of stress and conflict; of the good getting better and of ill-will dragging Jesus’ opponents deeper and deeper into hostility. It is a story of courage, perseverance and developing faith; of a dawning recognition of the importance of Jesus in one man’s life. And at its centre is a great miracle, a demonstration of God’s power in Jesus.

Jewish society 2,000 years ago was very different from Australian society today. There were no hospitals worth the name; no homes for the blind; no high schools. Adolescents did not exist, as they appeared with widespread secondary education. Life usually involved a rough transition from childhood to adult life, with the girls married about the age of thirteen and the boys, being slower, about the age of fifteen or sixteen. The streets of the city were narrow, piled with rubbish, thronged with people of every sort, especially the many unemployed. The mentally disturbed roamed about and the lepers existed on the edge of society. The Jews suffered foreign rule by Romans, partly administered through King Herod, a puppet and tyrant. There was only a limited rule of law. There were no social security payments, so the blind man at the centre of the story was a beggar to supplement family support.

Jesus began by denying the common Jewish belief that misfortune struck those who were sinners, or the children or grandchildren of sinners. But while Jesus denied that thesis, he did not claim that the blind man was a saint or unusually deserving among the many with serious afflictions. Life remains unpredictable, as Samuel’s choice of David, Jesse’s youngest and smallest son as the Lord’s anointed demonstrates.

Jesus made a paste from mud and spittle, rubbed it on the eyes of the blind man, who was cured. And then the trouble started. Incidentally the mud and spittle, with Jesus’ use of bread, wine and water, help explain our sacramental system, which uses created things to point to the uncreated spiritual God.

Our Lord was a controversial religious figure, regularly followed by friends and foes, the curious and the bored.

First of all Jesus’ opponents queried whether the miracle man really had been blind, was really the one whom they had known. He replied that he was the man, explained what had happened, that he could see and did not know where Jesus was.

Then he was taken before the Pharisees, who were disputing among themselves over the incident. Some objected that the miracle was performed on the Sabbath; some suggested an evil power was behind the miracle and others denied this. What did the miracle man think? Jesus is a prophet, he replied.

The Pharisees next collared the miracle man’s parents. As they were frightened of being excommunicated from their community, so they prudently said, “Our son is old enough to speak for himself. Ask him”. One parishioner lamented to me that they did not support their son more strongly, but they probably knew he could well look after himself.

Still unsatisfied, probably more and more frustrated, the Pharisees summoned the blind man again to tell him Jesus was a sinner. The man once blind had received a huge gift, a great miracle. He proved loyal and grateful to Jesus, well able to reject nonsense, and expressed his views succinctly.  “I’ve told you once. Are you deaf? Or perhaps you want to become his disciples too?” This provoked another outburst, marginally less offensive to Jesus: “We don’t know where this man comes from”.

By this stage the miracle man was on the front foot and drove them for four: “What an extraordinary reply. No person in history has worked a cure like this, and you don’t know where he comes from. If this man was not from God, he could not have done anything”.

Now the Pharisees decided to cut their losses. They were not going to be lectured to by a sinner and sent him away.

Later he met Jesus who asked if be believed in the Son of man. “Who is he?’ he asked “The man you are speaking to” was Jesus’ response. Then came the finale, the beautiful act of faith: “Lord I believe”. The blind man’s honesty and courage had also been rewarded with the gift of faith. He also saw the Son of Man.

Lent should be a time when we strive to deepen our faith, because it is possible to become spiritually blind, and it is by regular worship, prayer and good works that our faith is nourished.

In the Beatitudes we are told that the pure in heart will see God. St. Augustine (+430 A.D.), the greatest theologian in the first Christian millennium, wrote: “Our entire task in this life consists in healing the eyes of our heart so that they may be able to see God”.

We all know that eyes and ears are needed to hear and see effectively. To see God “the eye of the soul needs to be opened”. Some cannot see God, and they are like people with cataracts or those who are colour-blind. The God-like sun still shines, but God is not seen there.

With old metal mirrors it was necessary to keep them polished in order to use them to see. Lent is a time for polishing our spiritual mirrors.

Theophilus of Antioch once said that “purity, holiness and righteousness” are necessary to see God. Spiritually we can become like a run down battery in a transistor radio, or like a dying tube on a TV, with very poor reception. A minimum of purity, holiness and righteousness are necessary to see God.

The man born blind came to see physically and spirituality. Because he was honest, courageous and persistent he started on that journey, unaware of its final destination, but he arrived at Jesus, the Son of Man of God.  So may we all.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.