Fourth Sunday of Lent

Any of you who were English majors know something about rhetorical devices, figures of speech. We all know about similes: this is like that: “this homily is like watching paint dry.” There are metaphors, where one thing is identified with another: “This homilist is a dodo.”  Finally, there is synecdoche: a descriptor, a detail that contains the whole meaning, the whole event, a microcosm that implies the macrocosm: “When will this graybeard get on his wheels and go to his digs?” Perhaps even more relevantly, “The White House is having a bad week.” Part for the whole: I am more than my gray beard; my car is more than wheels, my house is more than the foundation that was dug for it, and the Executive Branch of the government is more than the president’s physical residence on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Synedoche works with the scriptures as well.  Today’s gospel passage, all 40 or so verses of it, is a wonderfully complex, very human story. And as so often happens, the part contains the whole, the microcosm explains the macrocosm, the words contain the meaning of The Word for us to ponder.

It seems to me that this story has three points:

First, the power of God is revealed when Jesus, who is light of the world, who heals the man born blind.

Second, opposition meets that revelation, that vision.

Finally, and most importantly, the love of God is revealed in the mercy of Jesus.

First of all, Jesus heals the man who was born blind. There are many stories in the gospels about similar healings: darkness is dispelled, darkness gives way to light, in fact and in metaphor, both physically and spiritually. In Mark’s telling of what seems to be the same story, we even see the very human side of Jesus: it takes him two tries to get it right. After Jesus touches the man’s eyes for the first time, the man says “I can see, but people look like trees walking.” So Jesus touches him again, and life, and light, come into focus. There was no doubt that the one who was healed was blind. “The one thing I know is that I was blind, and now I see.

It is a sad but true fact that no good deed ever goes unpunished in our wicked world. Jesus gives the man born blind his sight, but does it on the Sabbath, the Lord’s day, when people shouldn’t be working. Opposition arises; the man and his parents are grilled (another metaphor!), and the newly sighted man is expelled from the community after proclaiming his faith in Jesus as a prophet. “The one thing I know is that I was blind, and now I see.” He sees, but those in power are blinded by their position, their ambition, their righteousness.

Finally, this is a story about God’s loving kindness, God’s mercy revealed in Jesus. The part contains the whole. God wants us to see, and so sends Jesus as light of the world. God wants us to leave the darkness of sin and selfishness behind, and sends Jesus to lay his hands upon us, to help us walk towards the light. That light will be opposed by those who are more comfortable in their own darkness, yes. But that opposition does not quench the light. They tried, on a dark Friday afternoon, to do that once for all. But we believe and trust that two days later, light dawned in a garden, on the first day of the week.  

        If we listen again to the first reading, the story of the choosing of the 8^th and youngest son of Jesse as king of Israel, we hear the same truth proclaimed:

“Not as man sees does God see,
because man sees the appearance
but the Lord looks into the heart.

Reflecting on today’s Gospel, we can add:

Not as man acts does God act,

Because man acts for the sake of appearances,

But the Lord acts from the heart.

Not as man loves does God love,

Because man loves appearances,

But God loves from the heart.
 

“Awake, o sleeper

Arise from the dead

And Christ will be your light.”

Fr. Tom Lucas, S.J.