Saint Paul tells us plainly, “You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.” This is a profound statement of hope, and it really paints the theme for much of the rest of what we encounter in our readings and our Gospel today. The darkness we were enveloped in stemmed from hopelessness in sin, and from the time when all were still awaiting the coming of the Messiah. Yet this is all changed now, because of the coming of Jesus Christ, and our ability to have a deeply personal and intimate relationship with Him if we so choose. It’s important to clearly understand though that yes; our Lord came to us, he taught us, he suffered and died for us, and then rose from the bonds of death for each of us, but He still gives us the choice about whether we will accept Him into our lives.
This choice could not be more clearly illustrated than in our Gospel today. A man is born blind, and suffers with this for years, and is then granted his sight by the only one capable of bringing him out of darkness both physically and spiritually. The narrative speaks much of the physical healing that takes place, because this is a sign for the people and an alleviation of suffering for the blind man. Yet we must understand that there is more than one kind of suffering that was placed upon him. He suffered not being able to see the world around him, but he also suffered because his fellow men assumed that either he or his parents had committed some sin that warranted this suffering. He was in fact an outcast to his fellow men because of this assumed sinfulness. They looked upon him and only saw the physical blindness, they could not see into the heart, the way our Lord can, and so did not have the full awareness of this child of God’s situation. Instead, they chose to condemn, and to hold this man in a darkness of condemnation based upon the external. Yet our Lord freed him from this, and most importantly then allowed him the choice to escape a much more significant darkness than blindness. He asked him the same question that He asks of each of us – “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” and the response is profoundly faith filled and unvarnished by worldliness – “Who is he Sir, that I may believe in him?”. It was so simple, and so natural a question – he knew that he could only have received such a gift from God, and so there is no hesitation – he simply sought to know Him who had healed him and in doing so, escaped the more profound darkness that we are held in until we accept and believe in our Lord Jesus Christ. Those gathered who still ridiculed what was taking place could see visibly, but they were totally blinded by sin, and their hearts were hardened so that they would not accept what they had just witnessed with their own eyes. They clung to their original condemnation of the man that had been healed, and of their unbelief in the only One who could have healed him.
In this season of Lent, it is a time to ponder our own vision. What and whom do we look to as important in our lives? Do we seek to simply exist in a world where the injustices, infirmities, and petty condemnations of mankind can and will drag us down into darkness, or do we seek something more? “Awake O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.”
The Deacons Bench 