Coracle Trust E-Reflections
Lent: Our status barometer
Sunday 10 April 2011
“Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” John 9:1
Healthy and wealthy?
The disciples belonged to a world in which fortune and misfortune formed the two extremes of a barometer measuring a person's status before God. Blind from birth? This told you that your status before God was at best 'stormy.' Healthy and wealthy? Then your relationship was clearly 'set fair'. Jesus is having none of it. The blind man they ask him about is not blind through any fault of his own, nor his parent's. He's just born blind, that's all. But there's a further implication, at which Jesus hints: aren't we all born blind? In bringing light to the eyes of the blind man, Jesus is demonstrating that he has come to be the 'light of the world.' What happened to this one man in physical terms, is there for all of us, spiritually. Naturally, we're cynical. This sounds too good to be true. Can we really begin to 'see' spiritually? Like the onlookers of Jesus' day, we sniff a rat. This man who can now see - is this really the blind man, or just his twin brother? Was he ever blind? And where is this supposed healer?
Seeing clearly?
How unsettling to hear that there may be people - beggars even - who see more clearly the things of God than we do. How much safer it is to return to the old belief, that our homes, our education, our income, and our status in the world, are evidence that God has deemed us worthy of special blessing. Safer, maybe. But evidence, more likely, that our barometer has got stuck. Duncan MacLaren (Trustee)