Lent 4

Lent 4 (John 9:1-41) As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.

False religion produces false answers to false problems.

Jesus had just performed an amazing miracle. He had healed a man born blind. The crowds were astonished. The man himself was filled with joy. The religious leaders were outraged.

Jesus healed the blind man on the Sabbath. According to the Law of Moses the Sabbath was a day God set aside for rest and worship. The Law says: do no work on the Sabbath day. It is a very simple straightforward command that the religious leaders had made incredibly complicated.

The purpose of the Sabbath is for people to set aside a time to enter more fully into a personal relationship with God. It is a time to ponder the wonders of God. It is a time set apart to enjoy the real presence of God.

The Pharisees and other religious leaders had redefined the Sabbath in terms of rigid rules and regulations focused on the minute detail of what a person could and could not do. They had taken an occasion of joy and delight and turned it into a day filled with restrictions and fear of punishment.

God had spoken through Moses and the Prophets to invite people into a personal life giving and life celebrating relationship with himself. When the co-eternal Son of God came to earth and became a human being he found a brittle fragmented and contentious religious culture in place of a spontaneous life giving relationship.
The question religious people asked themselves was: what must I do to avoid punishment and gain reward? What’s in it for me? They recreated God in their own image and according to their own expectations. They took the rituals and rules God had revealed to Moses as a means to an end and made them the end.

God always intended the Law, the rituals and the sacrifices to point beyond to the relationship God wanted people to enjoy. But, the people valued pleasure, power, possessions, prestige and pride more than the personal relationship. They wanted the material rewards they believed God could give them more than God himself.

They took religion and made it an end in and of itself rather than the means by which they could enter into the relationship. They made obedience to the Law as the guarantor of reward. They formed a religion of legalism to secure their own position in society.

When Jesus healed the blind man on the Sabbath the religious leaders could not rejoice that the love and compassion of God had brought healing and wholeness to someone who had suffered all of his life. They could only calculate the cost benefit equation for themselves.

They reasoned that if Jesus truly came from God and worked miracles by the power of God there were only two possible outcomes. He would succeed or he would fail.
If Jesus succeeded, if he became the new king of Israel, the Pharisees stood to lose everything they valued. For it was clear Jesus did not need them to administer the religious affairs of the nation. It was clear Jesus rejected their religious culture and institutions.

The new order would be revolutionary in its rejection of the established religious order. And, since the religious leaders only thought in categories of rewards and punishments they concluded that King Jesus would punish them and reward his circle of friends.

If Jesus failed to become the king there would be social chaos. The failed attempt to establish a new order would result in violent reaction and suppression by King Herod and the Romans. Many would die in the chaos including many of the Pharisees.
As the religious leaders assessed the situation, whether Jesus succeeded or failed they would suffer. They looked at Jesus through the lens of a religion of reward and punishment. They asked the question: what’s in it for me? They concluded Jesus would only bring them punishment. With that conclusion they knew they had to kill him before he could kill them.

Jesus knew this would happen. He knew the problem with humanity was not a lack of religious knowledge. He knew that people generally do not seek God. He knew that people create their own deities to suit their needs and desires. He knew what religious people refuse to acknowledge. Humanity has chosen separation from God and in that separation humanity is lost. We are not only lost we stubbornly refuse to be found.

If we are religious we tend to bend and warp and distort religion so it can answer the question: what’s in it for me? How does it build my resume? How does it advance my goals?

The disciples had the same problem as the Pharisees. The disciples saw the blind man and immediately asked: who sinned? Who is to blame? Who should we condemn?

They asked the wrong question because they, too, were trapped in a false religion that provided false answers to false problems. There is no condemnation in Jesus as he heals the blind man. There is no blame. There is no false assumption that if you do good you get good and if you do bad you get bad and its corollary that if you suffer it is only because you have sinned. Jesus knew the world didn’t work that way.
What Jesus wanted to reveal to the disciples and to the Pharisees is that the problem confronting humanity is not revealed in a man born blind but in a religious system that refused to see the light. The blind man is a vessel of grace by which the glory of God manifests to the lost.

In his own person and by his own example Jesus offers the people of his time and for all time a different question to ask. Where most people will ask: what’s in it for me? Jesus demonstrates the question: how may I help? Where can I bring forth the glory of God in a single act of compassion?

To the disciples Jesus says: stop trying to figure out who to blame. Blame is irrelevant. Ask rather, how may I help? As you ask that question you reveal the glory of God.

To the Pharisees Jesus says: personal holiness is personal responsibility for personal sin. Stop judging others. There is no condemnation in God. Righteousness is right relationship. Ask yourself: why do you see me as a threat? I come only with healing. I come only to restore sight to the blind.

It was a lot to ask the disciples and the Pharisees. It is a lot to ask of us. It is a question that only makes sense within the personal relationship God offers us in Jesus Christ who tell us As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.
It is Jesus who reveals the problem confronting humanity. It is Jesus who is the solution to that problem.