Lent IV

Lent IV (John 9:1-41) “Who sinned?”

Shame and blame are the twin enemies of grace.

The disciples’ comment “Who sinned?” reveals the fatal flaw inherent in law based religion. Law based religion uses shame and guilt to condemn and to control people.

Where law based religion encourages pride and arrogance in its adherents, Jesus embodies a different approach. Jesus is the gift of God for everyone.

In Jesus, God rescues religion from being an exclusive condescending club. Jesus draws from the same texts and uses the same rituals as those who condemn. Jesus fills those texts and rituals with new meaning and purpose.

The disciples shared the common belief of their time that sickness was a punishment for sin. Certainly, they thought to themselves, there must be some grievous sin that resulted in a man being born blind.

There were two possible explanations: God punished the man in advance for sins he would commit as an adult. Or, God punished the sins of his parents or even his grandparents in the child of sin.

There is no compassion in this approach. There is no sense of Divine Mystery. There is a prideful assertion of logic and reason. Since the man was born blind therefore someone must have sinned.

The essence of idolatry is to fix God in a rigid inflexible and uncompromising form. It may be a statue or a picture. It may be a set of beliefs, laws or rituals. Jesus reminds us that God cannot be reduced to the level of human definition.

God revealed Himself to Moses as “I AM.” God is Presence. As the incarnation of God, Jesus is greater than any human attempt to define God. Most religious people want a very small, narrow and easily understandable deity. Jesus is not that deity.

Jesus is the infinite and eternal love of God present to us.

C.S. Lewis used the image of a lion to help people understand Jesus. In his series of books, “The Chronicles of Narnia” the people of Narnia explain that the Lord of their land is named Aslan. Aslan is a lion. The children who visit Narnia are horrified to discover this. They ask: “ is he a tame lion?”. The people reply, “Oh no. He is not tame. But he is good.”

Jesus is not tame. He is not ours to define and he is not ours to control. He is the real presence of God in our midst.

Jesus offers conversion to people enslaved by sin. He does not offer condemnation.

Jesus identifies the redemptive plan and purpose of God in the life of the man born blind. This man’s blindness is not a punishment for sin. It is an invitation of grace to bring grace to a lost and sinful world.

What the people of the time see in the categories of condemnation and punishment, Jesus reveals to be a manifestation of redeeming grace.

God chose this particular blind man to reveal the Glory of Divine Love to a world that had created a wrathful god of judgment.

Where the disciples saw sin Jesus saw grace. And because Jesus saw grace he was able to use the grace to effect the healing. The healing bore witness to the reality of God in Christ.

Not surprisingly, the religious authorities condemn Jesus for healing the man. Jesus is not the image of God they have created. Jesus is not the god they worship. Jesus is not tame. He is not theirs to control. He does not stay within the lines of accepted religious practice.

If there were a theme to the religion of the first century it might be: “your god is too small.”

Jesus did not come into the world to bring a political or economic revolution. He did come to bring a spiritual revolution. As the Real Presence of God with us, Jesus challenges our limited definitions of who God is and how God works.

Jesus offers this challenge in the context of holiness and love.

Jesus is the Good News that God is with us and God is for us. What people see and use to bring division, confrontation and conflict Jesus transforms by divine love to bring grace.

The disciples were lost in the language of shame and blame. They were enslaved by the idolatry of rigid inflexible forms of religion. They saw only condemnation in God. They felt entitled to practice condemnation in God’s name.

The way of condemnation is the way of pride that perpetuates separation and leads to death.

The way of grace is the way of unconditional love that heals separation and leads to eternal life. That way is Jesus.