4th Sunday Lent A - Homily 2

Homily 2 – 2008 

We can approach today’s story not just as an incident in Jesus’ life but as a story offering us an insight into ourselves and encouraging us to open up.  The people in the story are in some ways all illustrations of different aspects and attitudes and possibilities in ourselves.

At the start of the story, there is the blind man who can’t see – can’t see anything, and doesn’t see the deep reality of Jesus.  There are the Pharisees who can see things but don’t see the deep reality of Jesus.  And there are the disciples – looking on and learning.

By the end of the story, the blind man can see things and, more wonderfully, he sees the deep reality of Jesus.  The Pharisees can see things just as they could see them before but still can’t see the true reality of Jesus and their hostility toward Jesus is even stronger than at the start.

What was the Pharisees’ problem? They were sure they could see – already: we know … we know, and so were closed to see another and deeper reality.  They were sure of their theology; and they knew their rules, particularly regarding observance of the Sabbath.  Their assurance of their knowledge and their certainty about their orthodoxy blinded them to what experience could have taught them.

The blind man did not know much.  He knew he didn’t know.  But he was open to experience, and his openness to experience and his reflection on experience led him to see Jesus, first as the one who healed him, then as at least a prophet, then as a man from God, and finally as the Son of Man.

What might the story say to us?  We need to keep in check the Pharisee within each of us: our reliance on what we think we know can be dangerous; our insistence on the rules can be dangerous.  They aren’t necessarily so.  In fact, they are helpful.  But, when we rely on our ability to say, We know, it’s time to look out!

The experience of the blind man can encourage us to let our experience touch us, stretch us, perhaps unsettle us, and open us even to the heart of God.  Our experience, along with what we already know, together, through prayer and reflection, can open us progressively more to the Mystery of God – that will remain always Mystery but a Mystery that can continually transform us.