Blindness Sight, Mud, and Light

Do children still make mud pies? I suppose if the conditions are right, they do. Surely, mud is still irresistible to little ones. Most children’s activities are structured play now, with coaches, instructors, and such. Soccer practice, dance practice, and science camp get on the calendar, and the carpool drivers are busy. There is less free play and creative neighborhood play today. There may be a shortage of muddy children across the land today. When we played in the mud, it was just for fun. See now how when Jesus gets into it, it is for light and life to come to a man, and the glory of God to be shown.

The scriptures for the Fourth Sunday in Lent this year get a little messy and dirty, between the oil poured over the son of Jesse to anoint him God’s chosen, and the healing salve mudpack Jesus applies to the man born blind, giving him sight for the first time in his life.

 David went from the youth singing calming songs among the sheep in his father’s flocks to the one tagged for the leadership of God’s flock. His transition made him an oily mess, because God’s priest, Samuel, emptied a full horn of oil over his head. It is written, “the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward.” He was quite the new creation. The salve Jesus made with dirt and his saliva, he spread on the blind man’s eyes, Then Jesus sent him to take a bath in the pool of Siloam. He went from the blind man who could only sit and beg, to a man able to see and pursue goodness knows what. It is both a teaching and a sign of the divinity of Jesus:

As Jesus walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, saying to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see. (John 9:1-4)

In this part of the story, we find allusions to two creation narratives, one from The Book of Genesis and one from The Gospel according to John. Notice first the example of the gospel. You saw, in John 9:4-5, Jesus declaring, “We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” John begins his gospel with a specialized creation poem, elements of which come to light steadily through the rest of the account of Jesus’s signs and passion. One of the elements in John’s meaning-packed prologue is that of light. Sit with these verses for a while:

All things came into being through him, [Jesus, the Logos of God] and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it…The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. (John 1:3-5, 9)

We can observe how this passage in the opening chapter points forward toward Jesus’s declaration that he is the light of the world in chapter nine. We do well to notice too how the Epistle of the day emphasizes the light of Christ manifesting in the believer as a new creation, as a child of light:

Once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light—for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true. Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord. …everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for everything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says,

“Sleeper, awake
    Rise from the dead,
 and Christ will shine on you.” (Ephesians 5:8-10, 13-14)

The mud Jesus makes with his saliva might send our minds back to the ancient Hebrew story of God forming the first man and placing him in a garden:

Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed.  (Genesis 2:7b-8)

There is something fabulous about the word “human” having the same root as the word “humus” which is the organic component of soil. Fabulous too, is the poem by James Weldon Johnson, “The Creation” which breathes a lively spirit into the images of God’s creative work:

An excerpt from the poem, “The Creation’ by James Weldon Johnson - 1871-1938

Then God sat down—
On the side of a hill where he could think;
By a deep, wide river he sat down;
With his head in his hands,
God thought and thought,
Till he thought: I'll make me a man!

Up from the bed of the river
God scooped the clay;
And by the bank of the river
He kneeled him down;
And there the great God Almighty
Who lit the sun and fixed it in the sky,
Who flung the stars to the most far corner of the night,
Who rounded the earth in the middle of his hand;
This great God,
Like a mammy bending over her baby,
Kneeled down in the dust
Toiling over a lump of clay
Till he shaped it in is his own image;

Then into it he blew the breath of life,
And man became a living soul.
Amen.      Amen.

The One who created all is able to create eyes that see in the man whose eyes have never seen a thing. It is a rich irony that the blind man is the sighted one throughout, and sighted ones, the town’s folk, and the Pharisees are blind in other ways. They can only fixate on details of the identity of the man with eyes restored, how it was accomplished, and why Jesus seems to ignore the Sabbath.

At the end of the story, they drive the healed man out. Jesus asserts, “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see and those who do see may become blind.” His critics among the Pharisees protest, “Surely we are not blind, are we?” to which Jesus says, “If you were blind, you would not have sin, but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.” (John 9:34-41) It is all clear as mud to them. It’s a day of blindness and sight, mud, and light. It all works into a lesson for us to stick with the one who is the light of the world, who for our sake gets down in the dirt and makes us whole.