Encountering Jesus In the Dark
A homily preached by Rev. Ginger Gaines-Cirelli at St. Matthew’s UMC on April 3, 2011, the fourth Sunday in Lent.
Text: John 9:1-41
When I was in college, I spent a semester abroad in London and traveled most every weekend. On one long weekend, I went to Ireland and took the train to the west coast of the island to a little village called Spiddal where all the signs are still in Gaelic and folks speak the Irish language as much as they speak English. I set myself up in a B&B just outside town and figured I’d walk the mile or so back into town for supper at a place I’d noticed featured traditional Irish music each night. Just after dark, I left the B&B, and, by the time I reached the end of the driveway, I realized there was a problem. It was pitch black and there were no streetlights. There were no other houses between my place and the village. There were no cars on the road. I literally couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. I was young and stupid enough to be traveling without a flashlight, so I figured I’d just feel my way along the road’s edge to keep on the path. While unsettling, I was making out OK until, about half-way on the journey, I heard someone behind me. It didn’t help to turn and look because I couldn’t see anything. But it was clear that it was a man—and he was whistling, that eerie kind of whistling you might imagine in a horror movie when you know what’s about to happen, but the unsuspecting person who ridiculously decided to walk a mile in pitch black with no one even knowing where she is doesn’t have a clue. Well, the whistling was growing closer and I still couldn’t see even the hint of a light from the village; so I picked up the pace, still trying to feel my way along the side of the road as a guide. My heart was pounding and the mystery man was gaining, so eventually, I moved into what I imagined was the middle of the road and broke into a full-on sprint. In the dark. I was terrified. It probably only took a matter of minutes, but it felt like an eternity before I finally reached the edge of town and the sweet relief of light. When I collapsed onto a bench, out of breath and in tears, I waited…waited to see who or what had been following me. After a few minutes, he emerged. A man on a bicycle—probably about 75 years old—amiably pedaling away and whistling to keep himself company, oblivious to my terror.
In the dark we imagine all sorts of things, often the worst possible scenarios. Our deepest fears well up within us and we can’t help but acknowledge the deep insecurity of our lives, the fact that we are vulnerable and that we aren’t in control of the universe and that there are things we don’t know, don’t understand. To be “in the dark” means that we cannot see—can’t see the way forward, can’t see a way out, don’t know where we are, and, sometimes, that we cannot even see ourselves—our own hands in front of our faces. What are the things in our lives that keep us in the dark, keep us from seeing? Preconceived notions about the way things are, prejudices that blind us to others, fear of change, old patterns and habits of seeing and thinking, cynicism and skepticism. When we are out of some communication loop, we may find ourselves “in the dark” and more than ready to assume that someone is trying to hide something from us for some dark purpose. The truth is that we all have “blind spots,” those areas in our lives or relationships that we struggle to see with any semblance of clarity.
Some of you may have seen the 2004 film, Finding Neverland. The movie is about author, James Barrie, and his inspiration for writing the story of “Peter Pan.” His inspiration comes by way of a widow and her four young sons. He meets them out in the park as he plays with his dog… they all become fast friends. Early in the film, there is a scene in which Mr. Barrie describes how he is going to perform for the boys and their mother a daring and frightening thing: he, the ringmaster, will dance with a great, powerful bear that has large, scary teeth. The author, using his vibrant imagination, intends to dance with his dog—but invites the young family to allow themselves to see the “bear within the dog”…Well, one of the sons—Peter—is having none of it. He says something like: “That’s silly. That’s just a dog.” To this, Mr. Barrie comes close to the young, skeptical boy and says: “With eyes like that, you’ll never see.”
In our scriptures today, we hear basically the same thing. With eyes like that, you’ll never see…While we tend to see just the outward appearance, God sees right through to the heart of the matter or the person… God sees the bear within the dog… When the man who had formerly been blind is brought to the leaders of the religious establishment, the response is simply stunning: do they rejoice and give thanks to God for the man’s healing? No. In essence they put the man on trial. The first response of the Pharisees is to focus on the fact that the healing had been done on the Sabbath—that the rules had been broken. Another response is simple disbelief: the man must be lying—he must not have once been blind. Finally, it becomes clear that the focus of the proceedings is to figure out who is a sinner—and the ultimate verdict is that both the man who now sees AND Jesus are sinners. The result? The man whose life has been changed, whose darkness has been turned to light, who stands as a testimony to the possibility of radical, healing change, is driven out of the community. It seems ludicrous really, when we stop and look at what happens in this story. But if we quickly decide that we would never respond to such a wonderful miracle as the Pharisees do, we might hear Jesus saying to us, “If you say ‘we see,’ you reveal your blindness.” We all, to some degree, need to check our eyesight.
The writer of this Gospel makes much of the metaphor of darkness and light of blindness and sight. And in this account, we learn that when the Light of the World cuts through our darkness—whatever that darkness might be—we are given new eyes. When we truly encounter Jesus in our darkness—the darkness of fear, prejudice, judgmental attitudes, confusion, whatever!—that Light gives us eyes to see…not just what we want to see, but to see things as they are, to see the truth. As Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, says, when Jesus’ light cuts through our darkness it “is not a comfortable clearing up of problems and smoothing out of our difficulties and upsets. On the contrary, it brings on a kind of vertigo; it may make me a stranger to myself, to everything I have ever taken for granted…In short, when God’s light breaks on my darkness, the first thing I know is that I don’t know, and never did.”[i] The Pharisees struggled to let go of what they knew, of what they took for granted. And, in that struggle, remained in darkness, unable to see the beautiful truth of what had happened right in front of them. This happens in our own lives—our own preconceived notions and expectations and desires can keep us from seeing what is being offered, what is happening. Because someone doesn’t do things the way we think they should be done, we grumble about the means and may miss the beautiful ends! Because we don’t like the person involved, we may miss seeing the good they are accomplishing…
The paradox is that the light of Christ will shatter all the prideful and fearful darkness in order to bring us to a deeper darkness—that place of humble acknowledgement that we are not God, that our way of seeing is not God’s way of seeing, that we don’t know, that God is the center of the universe, not “ME.” This is to see the truth, to see things and ourselves more realistically; it may be painful sometimes, but with God at the center of things, light will always be shining—all we need is for Christ to give us the eyes to see. With these new, humbled eyes, we are able to look at our lives and at the lives of others differently. So that in the face of fear we can look with the eyes of trust; in the face of prejudice or judgment, we can look with the eyes of mercy and compassion; in the face of change, we can look with the eyes of hope; in the face of confusion, we can look with the eyes of wonder.
With eyes like that, just imagine what you will see!
[i] Rowan Williams, A Ray of Darkness, Cambridge: Cowley Publications, 1995, p. 100.
