The Delight of Acknowledging Our Sin

4th SUNDAY OF LENT

Josh5, 9-12 / 2Cor 5, 17-21 / John 9, 1-41

One of the blessings of Lent is learning to acknowledge our sin.  It’s a real grace – a gift.  The gospel we have just heard wants to guide us toward that grace.  The story of the man born blind wants to guide us into the light of Christ – and there, in the light of Christ, it wants to expose our sin.  It wants to expose us to the lies that blind and bind us.

A little background helps to understand what is really going on in this story.  Jesus heals the blind man on the Sabbath.  The Pharisees object this violates the law of Moses.  God rested on the Sabbath after completing the work of creation.  So, the reasoning goes, not to observe Sabbath rest is a refusal to imitate God and therefore is a sin.

But in the gospel of John Jesus explicitly denies that God’s work of creation has been completed.  He denies that God rests on the Sabbath.  For example, when Jesus cures an invalid on the Sabbath – and the authorities object – he counters:  “My Father is working up until the present, and I also work.”[Jn 5, 17]  God’s work of completing creation is ongoing – and it’s being done through Jesus.

In today’s story Jesus completes what is incomplete by curing the blind man.  Jesus completes God’s work of creation by making the blind man into a full human being.

In the gospel the man born blind represents each of us.  Each of us is incomplete.  Obviously we have physical limits.  Even more obviously we have personal, moral and spiritual limits.  Our humanity screams for completion.  The story’s point – the gospel’s point – is that our many limitations do not make up our sin.  Jesus will work with us – he will work within us and among us – to bring to fullness and completion what is incomplete and limited.  For Jesus our incompleteness is completely human – only to be expected.  He knows God will deal compassionately with it.

Sin for Jesus shows itself in how the Pharisees deal with human incompleteness – in how they deal with our obvious moral and spiritual failures.  In the story the Pharisees judge, censure and expel the man born blind.  And that – that for Jesus – is the presence of radical evil in our lives: when we exclude and expel others – others incomplete like ourselves - even as God is working within them to bring them to fuller life.

We said learning to acknowledge our sin is a grace.  For Jesus we receive that grace when we come to recognize the times we choose to exclude others.  In excluding people we are resisting God’s creative work in them.  We sin when we resist God’s life-giving, life-expanding energy at work in people by scorning those very same people – all in the name of some petty self-righteousness.  And we sin when we do the same thing to ourselves.  Self-scorn resists the power of God bringing us new life and energy.

This gospel would bring us to the grace and the freedom of admitting we are all blatantly incomplete human beings.  Now like the Pharisees we may want to fume against that incompleteness in ourselves and in others.  But it is precisely there – where we experience our own undeniable failure and weakness – that’s where God’s ongoing presence and work in us are to be found.  We run from our incompleteness only at the risk of running from where we can find God’s presence in our lives.  Honest self-knowledge brings us into God’s real presence – into God’s here and now presence to us.  For Jesus our shames and our failures become holy ground – our burning bushes where God announces to us “I am.”  “I am with you.”

But Jesus wants even more for us.  He wants the full force of this gospel to explode in our minds and hearts.  He wants us to come to the discovery that God is not a Pharisee.  God does not judge – or censure – or exclude.  God has nothing at all to do with our self-righteous mechanisms for scorning and expelling what is incomplete in others or in ourselves.

On this Laetare Sunday we joyfully call our church Catholic.  Katholikos in Greek means universal, all-embracing.  Our Catholic Church includes and embraces every sort of human incompleteness.  But how could it be otherwise in a church that calls itself the church of Jesus Christ.

It is here – here among our clearly incomplete selves – here within our obviously imperfect selves – here in our all too human church - that we will have the joy of coming to know the God who is not a Pharisee – the un-self-righteous God of Jesus Christ – the God who wants mercy, not sacrifice.  God wants mercy of us – not just our Sunday mornings.

Fr. Pat Earl, SJ

Transfiguration

2nd SUNDAY OF LENT
Genesis22, 1-2, 9a, 10-13, 15-18 / Rom 8, 31-34 / Mark 9, 2-10

We have just heard the story of the transfiguration in Mark’s gospel.  Matthew and Luke give similar accounts.  It is a strange story.  The disciples, who accompany Jesus up the mountain become confused, even dumbfounded.  Mark says they didn’t know what to say or how to react.

What does it mean for Jesus to be transfigured and to shine like the sun?  And what does it mean for this burst of brightness to bring on confusion and fear among the disciples?  What is really being said here in the gospel?

Scripture scholars call all three accounts of the transfiguration “apocalyptic visions”.  They mean that the gospel writers are trying to convey an experience the disciples had on the mountain.  In the experience the disciples gained insight.  That’s why it’s called a “vision”: they gained a deep insight.  And the insight was into Jesus’ fundamental reality – insight into Jesus’ true self, into Jesus’ depth.  That’s why the vision is called “apocalyptic”.  The vision or insight is revelatory.  What is seen into – the depth reached – sees into and reaches into God.

The movement toward insight was frightening for the disciples.  It was frightening because to get to Jesus’ depth and truth they had to move beyond all that had become familiar to them about Jesus – beyond his clothes – beyond his looks and moods – beyond his bearing and manner.

To come to the core of another person does involve giving up one’s own favorite expectations and projections.  Coming to know another person – as that person truly, deeply is – requires a profound self-denial on my part.  For biblical and mystical writers this movement to the core, to the heart of the person of Jesus requires a particular kind of self-denial.  It requires what they call “unknowing”.  It requires giving up all my comfortable presumptions and presuppositions about Jesus, and God.  “Unknowing” requires giving up the illusion that I really do know Jesus – really do know God.  These writers also speak of the necessity of entering into the “cloud of unknowing” in order to come to know Jesus and God – in order to come to the core of all reality.

Here in the transfiguration scene in the gospel the disciples enter into the “cloud of unknowing”.  There they learn by un-learning; they know by un-knowing.  In the cloud they learn Jesus is:  my beloved son – in him you see what pleases me – listen and learn from him what it means to be child of God – listen and learn from him what it means to be divine – listen and learn from him what I, God, am like.

And so the disciples must enter into the frightening task of un-learning all that they held dear and sacred – all that they thought godly and holy.  That truly is a fearful journey – to have your basic certainties called into question – to un-learn cherished notions of God.

In Jesus we learn God’s true image.  We learn that God is vulnerable – that God does not defend himself – does not protect himself.  In Jesus we learn God’s humility – God’s absolute need to be with us and in us – not above us.  We learn God does not know how to lord it over us.  In Jesus we learn God’s justice forgives and does good to the enemy.  God’s justice is to love – simply and generously – without measure and without condition.

On our journey in Lent we as disciples must accompany Jesus up the mountain.  We must enter into the cloud.  We must become confused and uprooted from familiar images and certainties.  As disciples and as a church we must learn by un-learning.  We must learn our God’s power is wielded through vulnerability.  As disciples and as a church we must learn our God’s power is wielded through a humble being with people and through a justice which only loves them.

Once we have learned by un-learning, then we – as disciples and as a church – will be able to teach others the ways and will of God.  Then we will have something to say even to a powerful nation become so full of itself.

 
But, first, we must unlearn.

Fr. Pat Earl, SJ