It’s been a pleasure listening to our different preachers the last few weeks on the gospel of John.
Today we skip a few chapters, where the lectionary takes us to Chapter 9:
BUT FIRST – let’s pray
God, I pray that you would open our eyes to see you and wash us that we may obey and follow you more faithfully.
The story of John 9 picks up at the end of Chapter 8 with Jesus leaving the temple after narrowly escaping death by stoning.
This comes after he makes one of his boldest statements yet –claiming for himself the title of the ‘I AM’/YWHW- God’s revealed name to Moses and Israel- effectively making himself equal with God.
The atmosphere of John 9 is tense and filled with danger, where people are too scared to speak.
AND YET at the same time, the story is about people, and specifically, one person plainly and boldly speaking truth, after an encounter with Jesus Christ.
And this encounter with Christ does something that shocks and even mocks the people in the story and us as readers.
The encounter shocks, not only because something impossible has happened, but because it disrupts what clearly seemed to be commonly held beliefs and assumptions.
It mocks, because of its grossness and the incredible events that follow.
The disciples’ question of why the blind man is blind reveals what seemed to be a common theology with its instinctive notions of sin and consequences.
There are sinners and not-sinners.
There are workdays and Sabbath.
Sabbath-breakers are sinners.
God does not listen to sinners.
Sinners suffer.
It is a theology with sin at the centre and seemed common as mud. Even the blind man held this to a degree.
On the other hand, Jesus’ answer reveals his ‘theology’ that placed God and himself at the centre.
Jesus says this man was born blind not because of sin, but so that God’s work would be displayed, and that work was Christ coming as light in the man’s dark world.
And what did that work look like?
It was an anointing ritual- but Jesus-style.
An anointing by spit, dirt, mud plastered on someone’s eyes and washing in spring water.
(The pool of Shiloam was water collected from the Gihon Spring, which is what made Jerusalem possible, a bit like the Alice Springs at the old Telegraph Station is what made this town possible.)
Two weeks ago, someone shared a story of them being spat on by a teenage boy. The boy had been troubled for a long time and apparently ended up in juvenile prison in Darwin for multiple offences.
There is nothing socially acceptable about spit in the face.
The controversy surrounding the use of the spit-hood in juvenile prisons is testament to people’s reaction to spit. It is offensive, unhygienic and something to protect ourselves from.
Yet, somehow, in Jesus’ hands, spit and dirt could be redeemed into anointing work.
The blind man is REALLY anointed by Christ and SENT out into life of discipleship- and we see it all in a kind of time-lapse in a single chapter:
- Encounter with Christ where grace and shame meet.
- There’s a response in faith and obedience
- Baptism that gives way to new sight, and new life
- Witnessing to the truth amidst opposition and persecution that leads to being cast out to the margins
- There in the margins there’s a new encounter with Jesus in shared suffering and mutual recognition that leads to deepened faith and spontaneous worship.
- And then the coming judgement – where the blind see, and those who see become blind.
Through this movement we see the blind man’s faith move from understanding Christ as ‘prophet’ to recognising Christ as the Son of Man, worthy of worship.
At the same time there are two other concurrent movements in the story.
The first is the fracturing of old and familiar alliances (neighbours, family, religious community) once held together by firmly established but unexamined social order and code (of sabbath and sin), now buckling under the weight of truth.
It is not to say sin or sabbath did not matter to God.
Clearly, guilt and judgement still mattered to Jesus.
It was that the order had overridden any form of discernment and could not accommodate the new and true thing.
They couldn’t recognise their neighbour for decades, finally healed, nor recognise the Christ in their midst.
But we see another thing at work here, a second movement we see that is led by Pharisees with the people’s compliance, that is the most troubling thing of all-
It was the commitment to protect the established order at all costs even if it means shutting out truth with force.
This is a hallmark of totalitarian rule – using power to preserve itself at the expense of truth.
So, they cast out Jesus.
And they cast out the blind man and intimidate even his parents into silence.
But within this totalitarian logic, lies dormant the seed of its own destruction.
Nothing built on a lie lasts forever.
Surprising things come along and changes things, like a river breaking its banks bringing life to some and destruction to others.
The river to me is apocalyptic- that is it reveals things.
A few weeks ago, I saw the edge of the Todd River flowing East just behind Old Timer’s camp and St Mary’s. At the edge of it I saw bugs being swept away but also tadpoles riding the rising waters. Two grandmothers, a toddler, and a camp dog were there too- watching and playing.
Meanwhile, I heard a story of someone who had to leave town after their house had flooded for the 6th time in the past month.
I spent a few hours by the river just north of Schwarz crossing by an old and large red gum.
Everything was happening there- there were cicadas molting on the tree trunks whilst young yepernye caterpillars were crawling on top of them trying to feed on the leaves.
There was also a half-buried knife close to where I was sitting, a pile of poo, and a Woolies shopping trolley on the opposite bank.
I had to walk carefully because of broken glass, and old campfires.
I wasn’t the only one there- there was a family whose kids and puppy dog were running up and down the river and jumping over the banks.
One child screamed in delight after spotting tadpoles which excited the puppy even more.
Author and art critic John Berger in his short book ‘Why look at animals’ – reflects on the work of the Finnish photographer Pentti Sammallahti called ‘The Russian Way’ by noting the peculiar thing that in all the photos of this work there is at least one dog.
Berger describes the work as capturing moments of something breaking from beyond our familiar frames that opens up a new kind of world (like Brittany and co. and their watercolours) through a narrow gap what he calls ‘interstices’.
These moments happen with incidental help from things that we might easily walk past or even despise -children, dogs, or perhaps blind beggar washing in a spring.
I want to share an extract from that book.
‘We live our daily lives in a constant exchange with the set of daily appearances surrounding us- often they are very familiar, sometimes they are unexpected and new, but always they confirm us in our lives. They do so even when they are threatening: the sight of a house burning, for example, or a man approaching us with a knife between his teeth, still reminds us (urgently) of our life and its importance. What we habitually see confirms us.
Yet it can happen, suddenly, unexpectedly, and most frequently in the half-light-of-glimpses, that we catch a sight of another visible order which intersects with ours and has nothing to do with it.
The speed of a cinema film is 25 frames per second. God knows how many frames per second flicker past our daily perception. But it is as if, at the brief moments I’m talking about, suddenly and disconcertingly we see between two frames. We come upon a part of the visible which wasn’t destined for us. Perhaps it was destined for night-birds, reindeer, ferrets, eels, whales…
Dogs, with their running legs, sharp noses and developed memory for sounds, are the natural frontier experts of these interstices. Their eyes, whose message often confuses us for it is urgent and mute, are attuned to both human order and other visible orders. Perhaps this is why, on so many occasions and for different reasons, we train dogs as guides’.
End quote.
In a way, we all need guides to see.
To admit this feels shameful, like having spit on our faces, and being cast out in the margins.
But that might not be so bad.
Because there, it seems, is where we are truly seen, and in turn see Christ in our midst and worship.
Amen.
