4th Sunday Lent A

See Commentary on John 9:1-41 in John 9:1-7 & John 9:39-41

Homily 1 – 2005 

The Jewish authorities - defenders of the status quo, of what they believed was the good of the people – saw Jesus and his attitudes and actions as subversive.  They did not plot to get rid of him because they thought he was a nice, gentle and inoffensive sort of pious fool.  They saw bigger issues at stake.  He was a threat to law and order, to the established ways of doing things.  He was re-defining who was in and who was out.  His views were unsettling, to say the least, destructive to be more accurate.  He was, in their view, highly dangerous.  Given their concerns, they labelled his actions as evil.  They effectively called good evil, and saw their own evil plotting of his execution and removal as eminently good.  They were blind.

John’s Gospel does not spend much time giving its readers any insight into the teachings of Jesus.  Written sixty or probably more years after his death, with two generations of experience behind it, it asks rather the questions: what difference does Jesus make in our lives?  who is he to us?  how do we experience him present and at work within us and within our community?

One of John’s answers is brought out in today’s episode: he is the one who enables us to see; he is the one who enables us to see evil as it is, to name it, to unmask it; he is the one who liberates us from the oppressive power of culture, media and officialdom to call evil good and good evil; he is the one who enables us to see the bigger picture, to be a wake up to the easy solution - the quick fix - that ignores the structural problems; he reveals society’s tendency to focus its anger and outrage on a single victim or a single class - to scapegoat the already oppressed, in order to divert attention from the bigger problems needing to be addressed.

In New South Wales deep problems have surfaced in Macquarrie Fields, taking shape in three days of rioting.  The response has been to get tough, to crack down heavily on those who fought with the police, particularly their ring-leaders – and by and large to leave it at that.

But why have problems broken out in Macquarrie Fields and not in Sydney’s affluent North Shore, for example? Studies have shown that Macquarrie Fields is an area with extensive structural problems: unemployment, family-breakdown, early school-leaving.  Are these the problems that need addressing?  Is that where the real and more destructive evil lies – the evil that leads to unrest, to hatred of authority, to violent explosions?  

These problems are difficult to address; they are extremely complicated; their ramifications are wide; they call for change, perhaps reasonably radical change, in society as a whole.  It is too easy to scapegoat.  That is how society got rid of Jesus.

Who is Jesus to you, to me?  John claims that he is the one who gives sight to the blind; who liberates our world so that we can distinguish good from evil, and name them as such.  He then asks us the question: Do we believe Jesus?

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. 

Homily 3 – 2011 

In a couple of weeks we shall remember Good Friday when the religious leaders of Judea killed Jesus. What challenges me is that they were the religious leaders.  Some of the chief priests may not have been all that religious, perhaps.  Power can corrupt, after all.  But most of the leading Pharisees, though they get a bad press in the Gospel narratives, were conscientiously religious men.  How could they do it? How could good men do it? How could they be so blind?

One answer is to deny that they were good men.  A problem with that, however, is that similar instances of blindness seem to happen quite regularly, even in our enlightened world.  For example, how could many good bishops consistently try to keep under wraps the sexual abuse of minors by some of their priests? What happened to their spontaneous compassion for the victims? I have been up in Mildura this past week.  I read in the local paper that a teenager there had just committed suicide.  Friends I was with told me that he had been bullied at school because he was gay.

Blindness affects us all on some issues at some times.  Today’s Gospel put such blindness down to sin – not the conscious breaking of some commandment, but the unrecognised power working in people that leads them to do destructive things and even to feel virtuous as they do it.  

It is interesting to note some of the dynamics of this sin-driven blindness.  At the start of today’s Gospel story, even good disciples accepted unquestioningly that the man born blind was a sinner.  They had no evidence at all, but everyone knew he must have been: Who sinned – this man or his parents?

For the Pharisees, there was no question.  Without any evidence, they simply labelled the former blind man a sinner, and felt justified to discount his logic, and then to drive him out.  If they no longer saw him, he would no longer challenge them.  They did something similar with Jesus.  Jesus had not observed the Sabbath.  For them, that was evidence, incontrovertible evidence, that Jesus, also, had sinned.  That Jesus had enabled a man blind from birth to see was irrelevant – inconvenient, but ultimately irrelevant.

Labelling people is a great way to discount unwelcome evidence. as is pushing awkward people to the edges or out of sight.  Look at the way our society labels inconvenient people.  People escaping often unbelievable trauma are called illegals, or queue jumpers.  Case finished! We avoid the embarrassing facts of their humanity, of their former suffering, of their sometimes indomitable courage to risk death in order to seek a better life.  Their arrival might inconvenience us.  Then, again, it might not.

Our language has a whole raft of words to label people who are born with a homosexual orientation.  We have labels for most people whom we disagree with.

In the Church, we have conservatives or progressives.  Classifying them that way, we are then free to ridicule them, attack them, or vilify them.  I am guilty of that myself.  I do not spontaneously relate to the humanity of those I judge to be destroying the Church.  I not only struggle to love them first, but feel justified in relating to them in the negative way I do – despite the fact that Jesus said that the non-negotiable requirement of discipleship is not necessarily to agree with everyone, but is certainly to love them – to love even your enemies, and to pray for those who persecute you.  What destroys the Church? Disagreements? Or the violation of the primary commandment to love?

As Jesus said to his eventual murderers at the conclusion of today’s Gospel passage: Since you say, “We see”, your guilt remains.  Under the insidious grip of the power of sin and blind to its very existence, without second thoughts, they labelled, rejected, cast out and eventually killed the one who was God incarnate – convinced all the while that they were doing the right thing.  Such is the frightening power of sin.

Homily 4 - 2014

It has been a painful time for us Catholics over this past week. The evidence before the Royal Commission has been quite distressing. You are here tonight – that says something – some perhaps just hanging in, perhaps browned-off, sad … uncertain how to respond to what you are feeling. I was talking to a friend during the week. She said that God is still very much part of her life and she will keep coming to Mass; but she feels quite disillusioned with the Church. She looked so hurting, so sad; and I did not quite know how to help her, other than respect her hurt and sadness.

The need to give a homily this weekend has made me look at what is going on inside myself. I am sad. I am sad for the victims, not just for the original sexual abuse they experienced but for the way they were discounted, demeaned and unjustly fobbed off when they approached Church personnel hoping for compassion, understanding and practical help. I am sad for ones like my friend, loyal, salt-of-the-earth Catholics who want to love the Church and to feel at home in it; and now feel adrift.

I am sad. Yet, personally, I am not overwhelmed; nor do I think that I am caught in some kind of psychological avoidance. I feel that over the years I have, perhaps, become “battle-hardened”. I have wrestled with the Church, on-and-off, probably since the late 60s – I nearly left the priesthood during the 70s. But God has kept tight hold of me, and I have hung in. I have had to go deeper into myself to check out what I really believe, what was Jesus really like and what did he really say; and to engage with him constantly. I have had to come to terms with the mystery and the power of sin – in myself and in others, even in others I had put on a pedestal.

I have had to face the sinfulness of the Church – not just in theory; and to realise that there is nowhere better to go so long as people are people. It is my Church as much as anyone else’s, and no one, however they behave, will make me leave it. Before I receive Communion with all of you, I say: Lord, I am not worthy …, and you are all saying it too. It is true. I have had to learn to become comfortable with that, and comfortable that it is the only way I can meet God – bringing my own real unworthiness, and making peace with yours. It is hard at times to live in a Church like that, but where is the Church of the sinless? If there were one, what makes me think I would qualify?

Unworthiness, of course, is not the whole story. In this inevitably and always unworthy Church there is also grace; there is also beauty. Without being cynical, I see that grace-filled beauty more obviously as I look back down the hierarchical line rather than up the line – in people like you, young and old. You are blessed here in Hamilton to have the pastoral team you have – Marg, Paddy, John – all of them compassionate, wise, courageous.

And I have lived long enough to be convinced, like St Paul, that, whatever the reality, God can make all things work together for the good for those who love him. I have learnt to hope.

Before I went to bed last night the words of a poem came into my mind, written by a 19th century English poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins. He was saddened by the spread of industrialization. What he said of nature is even truer of supernature. He wrote:

Homily 5 - 2020

Today’s Gospel passage started, As Jesus went along, he saw a man who had been blind from birth. His disciples asked hims, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, for him to have been born blind?”

It is the sort of question that often arises spontaneously from an experience of unexpected suffering, either our own or that of others; and often times the questioning seems to come from an assumption that God is somehow behind it, punishing the sufferer, either justly or unjustly. [I have been holding my breath in recent days, half-expecting some religious leader to interpret the present coronavirus pandemic as God’s punishment on some aspect of the world’s immorality or lack of faith.]

Jesus immediately challenged the disciples’ assumption. There is no automatic connection between suffering and punishment. The God whom Jesus revealed was not a punishing God but a merciful, saving God — a God who loves. We struggle to understand love at any time [as children struggle to understand their parents’ love]. No wonder we struggle to comprehend God’s love! We also struggle to explain satisfactorily the “why” of suffering in our world.

St Paul wrote in his letter to the believers in Rome, “God makes all things work together for the good of those who love him” — “all things”, including suffering. Paul realised that God has an enormous respect, too, for human freedom. It is those who have come to know God who more easily trust God, and who most freely give God room to move within them. Yet, whether recognised or not, God is already present within everyone, silently inviting and empowering to deeper life and greater love.

Our creating and sustaining God is present and at work in our world right now; and it is fascinating to search for the signs of that presence. Along with the obvious suffering, disruption and fear occasioned by the corona virus, so too a lot of good things are happening. Across our world, scientists are working tirelessly to produce an effective vaccine to counteract the virus. Nations are cooperating more, sharing their professional expertise and their practical experience. Within our own borders, federal and state politicians are working together. Medical and nursing staff and emergency service personnel are on standby. As happened so beautifully during and after the recent bushfire emergencies, ordinary people are standing together, reaching out to each other, sensitive and responsive to people’s needs.

During any pandemic, a necessary way of caring for ourselves is to care for others. The better we can prevent or protect others from becoming infected by the virus, the less chance we have of becoming infected ourselves. A particular characteristic of this virus is that a person can be infected before being conscious of its presence or showing any symptoms for a number of days. During that period they can quite unconsciously contaminate whatever they touch and spread the disease to others. The more everyone can avoid physically engaging with others, the safer everyone is. This partial self-isolating will feel most unusual, and may well result in any number of unexpected personal and community stresses and challenges. The more we can be sensitive to how others are coping, and make allowances, the more helpful we can be.

Fortunately, not everyone who contracts the virus will die from it. It is, however, particularly dangerous for the elderly and those with preexisting medical conditions. As a caring community, we need to be especially protective of those at risk in our midst.

At times like this, our shared faith becomes most practical. That we “love our neighbour” becomes particularly imperative. The more we become alert to the signs of our God present and active in our world, the more we shall feel strengthened and motivated to help others. We can then validate from our own experience the conviction of Paul: “God makes all things work together for the good of those who love him.”  

Homily 6 - 2023

Today's Gospel passage presented us with the familiar account of Jesus' cure of a man born blind. What is special about the story is the variety of reactions of the people mentioned in it — a group of neighbours, another group of Pharisees, and particularly the blind man himself.

Of the neighbours, some stated that there was nothing unusual to explain. They declared that he was not the man born blind, though they conceded that he was like him. For them. that was the end of the story. Other neighbours accepted that he was indeed the same man — but they did not know what to make of the fact that now he could obviously see. They were confused, but realised that they could not simply let the incident pass unresolved. So in their uncertainty, they passed him over to the authorities. And that was the end of the story for them.

Those authorities to whom they handed him over were Pharisees. Pharisees had the reputation of being reliable men of God, experts in orthodoxy and champions of tradition. Anything new they saw as a threat. The possibility of a miracle was deeply unsettling. Most Pharisees desperately sought to maintain the status quo.

Without needing to deny the evident miracle, some concluded that whoever worked it was obviously a sinner because he had infringed the Sabbath. Other Pharisees disagreed, saying the undeniable evidence of the miracle indicated rather that the one who performed it could not have been a sinner.

In the forlorn hope of avoiding the issue somehow, they asked the blind man his opinion. He simply conjectured, “He is a prophet” — which was precisely a conclusion they were trying at all costs to avoid. To counter it, they vainly declared, in line with the cultural assumption of the time, that his blindness from birth obviously illustrated his sinfulness and the consequent unreliability of his judgment. Recognising their inability convincingly to deny the obvious conclusion, and yet totally unwilling to accept it, they sought to eliminate the problem altogether — and threw the blind out of the temple. They preferred the comfortable familiarity of the status quo at the price of truth, decency, and personal honesty.

The response of the blind man on the other hand was so beautifully different. He came quickly to recognise, accept and whole-heartedly relate to and connect with the unique specialness of Jesus. His growing insight led him from categorising him as a prophet to intuiting his utter uniqueness and finally to entrusting himself totally to him as Lord. To him, Jesus had become real.

What might the story say to us? We live now in an age which is agnostic, pluralistic, seductive, and distracting. Sadly, though being born into a Christian family and even attending church, people can still see their faith as little more than an ideology, a collection of reliable truths, or even as a community of worship; and do little more than barrack for it as they might for their favourite football club. Of themselves, these things fall short of actual faith and personal trust in God — without which everything else crumbles under pressure. There is only one way to real and personal relationship with Jesus and with God, and that is prayer — not prayers, but personal prayer. And praying personally needs time.

Let us face the issues — unlike the blind man’s neighbours and the Pharisees in today’s Gospel.

Do you remember from last Sunday's Gospel what the Samaritan townspeople said of themselves to the woman whom Jesus spoke to at the well? “Now we no longer believe because of what you told us; we have heard him ourselves — and we now know that he really is the saviour of the world”. She had brought the good news of Jesus. They took the steps to come to know him.
Can we say, from experience: “We have heard him ourselves”. “We know he is the saviour of today’s world.”