The Third Sunday in Lent

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

Yesterday, I was at the Reid Park Zoo with middle and high school youth, volunteering and cleaning the grounds and then traipsing through the zoo to look at all the beautiful animals.

Except one of the kids didn’t have their glasses.

At one of the exhibits, they remarked upon how large of a rock there was next to a tree..

It was a rhino.

The elephants also, apparently, looked like large rocks.

But at least they could see the colorful poison dart frogs in the reptile exhibit!

At some point I asked them, “Why didn’t you bring your glasses!?” And the response was, “I just forgot! I was in a rush!”

Hopefully next time they’ll remember to bring glasses to a place where much of what we do is simply… looking around and seeing animals.

Vision is an interesting and complex phenomenon. In a very generalized sense, we need two things to work for us to be able to see.

First, our eyes need to be clear to receive photons of light.

Second, the light turns into signals in the brain, and our brain needs to be able to make sense of what these photons of light mean.

The ability to see rests both on our ability to perceive the world around us, and make sense of it.

Now, a wise priest once told me that Lent is the eyedrop of the liturgical year. That’s a callback to the first Sunday in Lent! So how fitting it is that themes of sight, light, and vision are woven into our readings today!

This fourth Sunday in Lent invites us to reflect upon our spiritual sight in light of (pun!) the judgement of Christ, which both reveals our shortcomings, and heals them.

Today’s Gospel contrasts visual sight and spiritual blindness quite prominently.

The account begins when Jesus heals a blind man, who has been blind from birth.

After the miracle, the man is able to see: to perceive light and make sense of it. This is a moment to rejoice, right?!

In a twist, the man is hauled before the religious leaders and interrogated. They cannot fathom that this miracle would take place, especially to someone like him. This nobody - born with a condition that made his ability to exist in society difficult - was blind but now he could see.

They cannot fathom that Jesus Christ would heal him. They cannot fathom that Jesus could heal him. They cannot fathom the mercy of God being on full display for the downtrodden, the outcast, the marginalized and weak.

Again and again they interrogate this man. They haul his parents before them and interrogate them.

And the great irony of today’s Gospel is that the more this man testifies to the miraculous healing that restored his vision, the more the religious leader’s spiritual vision is clouded, darkened, blinded.

The climax of the Gospel comes with Jesus encountering this man who is - once again - cast out and separate from society. As Christ speaks to the man, He announces, “I came into this world for judgement so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.”

Judgement.

An uncomfortable word.

Normally when we think of divine judgement, we think of God’s wrath throwing the sinners into hell and the righteous being carried off to heaven.

But here we see judgement as something which reveals.

In the Gospel, we see that divine judgement is carried out in flipping the tables on the religious leaders: A blind man is healed and able to see; the religious leaders bear witness to this but do not perceive what has happened: they do not understand the proximity of God’s reign, the promise of God made full in the incarnation of the eternal Word made flesh in Jesus.

They refuse to see this, to accept the man’s testimony, to accept that Christ is who He says he is (a very common motif throughout the Gospels).

In light of Christ’s healing act - in light of the Judgement of Christ - the hardness of heart, the inability to comprehend, desire for power and the anger at not being able to control the mercy of God - is revealed.

St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians builds on this profound spiritual truth. “Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them!”

Expose our sins, our shame and guilt and shortcomings, our pain and shame, our anger and vitriol, our hated and violence.

Expose these writhing and difficult aspects of ourselves - we all have them - to the light of Christ. And in offering these difficult parts of ourselves to the light of Christ they are judged, made visible in the light of Christ, and the opportunity for healing and transformation can then occur.

Today’s Gospel helps us to understand that the act of hiding our failures, not acknowledging our failures and shortcomings, squirreling away our pain and shame, only serves to close us off from ourselves, from one another, and from the healing light of God.

In hiding these parts of ourselves we smear mud over our souls and cloud our spiritual vision to bear witness to the light of Christ in the world and be transformed. And that mud slowly cakes on and hardens our hearts, and closes our eyes and ears to the type of people God is calling us to be: compassionate and merciful, empowered by the grace offered by our loving God to offer to the world.

St. Paul writes today, “Everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for everything that becomes visible is light!”

In deep repentance, in wailing and lamentation, in grief over our shortcomings, the loving divine judgement of Christ helps us to see more fully the God who we worship.

To see more fully the divine image bearing existence of one another.

To see more fully the Holy Spirit who makes herself a temple in our hearts in not just our friends but in the vast swaths of humanity we’d rather not see, or despise, or are jealous of.

In offering our whole selves to the transforming love of Christ, we become like the blind man who is healed by Christ.

Because ultimately the judgement of Christ is not just to reveal our blind spots.

But to heal them.

And make them whole.

So that we, too, can be bearers of healing in the world empowered by the Holy Spirit and nourished by Christ’s own body and blood and sent by the Father.

The light of Christ is simultaneously the judgement of Christ.

And the judgement of Christ not only reveals, but also heals.

To harken back to vision, to see requires that we can perceive light and make sense of it.

Offering our whole selves, broken and weak as we are, to the light of Christ which is judgement and restoration, revealing and healing, allows us to more fully become like the very one we worship. This is a critical part of the Christian journey, to take on more and more of the attributes of Christ in our lives.

Lent is a time when we deeply reflect on our whole self and then trudge our whole self to the foot of the cross. Not out of shame. But out of a desire to be made whole by the one who is Wholeness itself.

For we recall as the Psalm writes, “For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light.” (Psalm 36:9)

Amen.