FORWARD TOGETHER
Have you ever marveled at how intricate the plots in a soap opera are? They twist and turn so much, and so many characters pop in and out, that it’s pretty hard to bring someone up to speed if they haven’t kept up. Tom, a religion writer who knew nothing about soap operas, one day came upon those quick preview summaries of the soap plots in the newspaper.
Tom read in bewilderment: “Tomorrow, Ridge disappears again; Cassandra discovers she is pregnant with Cole’s baby; Felicity goes blind, and James leaves her; Ethan is lost at sea and presumed dead; a fire destroys the Inn; Mack loses his memory and doesn’t remember he is married to Rachel; a mysterious stranger returns to Bay City.”
Tom was laughing so hard after reading this action-packed paragraph, that he read all of the other soap summaries and really enjoyed himself…thinking they were written to be funny. His sister had to work hard to convince him that, no, this wasn’t a humor column – these were real summaries of actual TV plotlines that people were avidly following. Soaps do imitate life, to a degree, with their intertwining of characters, conversations, and crises. But the problem with summaries is that they only highlight names and actions.
To know the whole story, we have to go “behind the scenes” the way a director does. To get to the heart of the truth – whether in a story or in life – we can’t just settle for the summary. We have to go deeper and ask what motives, feelings, and questions are at play.
Take our story of the blind man in this weekend’s Gospel. It begins with the question, “Who sinned, this man or his parents?” This is Jesus’ cue to correct the ancient belief that illness and misfortune result from God’s punishment for sin. Jesus gives his answer that neither the man nor his parents sinned; his blindness exists “so that the works of God might be made visible through him.”
But the Pharisees have another answer. First, they pressure the man about how he was healed. But he is firm, “I was blind, and now I can see.” The “wild card” here is Jesus – he obviously performed a healing, and on the Sabbath, which was against the religious law.
So, the Pharisees try to discredit Jesus as a sinner who could not come from God. Here, the man born blind gives us some comic relief: “Wow, this is news! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes…If he weren’t from God, he couldn’t have done this.” At this, the Pharisees give their judgment: “What! You are steeped in sin from your birth, and you are giving us lectures?”
Here we see the deep truth of this story: it is the ancient struggle between good and evil, clothed in a present-day plot line. The Pharisees get clear evidence of new life from Jesus. It “hits them between the eyes” when a blind man goes from darkness to light. But the Pharisees refuse to see their own blindness and open their hearts to the light of Christ. They insist on clinging to the darkness of their own certitude, rigidity, and false righteousness.
They could receive the mercy and healing of Jesus very simply, as St. Paul tells us in the reading to the Ephesians: “For once you were in darkness, but now in the Lord you are light.” But it is difficult to admit to a different reality – and harder to give up a cherished belief or attitude. How often do we quickly judge another, and then turn away when someone tries to defend that person? It’s as if we don’t want to hear anything good about someone or some group of people we have already decided are lower.
What words get used to describe the homeless or people on welfare, for example? Bums, slime, low-lives, dirty, useless, lazy, those kinds of people. How often have we clung to our false righteousness? “Those people” VS “us”? But Jesus doesn’t see “those kinds of people.” Jesus only sees the heart of God’s beautiful son or daughter – are we as interested in seeing into hearts?
Jesus sought out the formerly blind man after the Pharisees expelled him from the Temple. When we judge self-righteously, we expel ourselves from the Jesus community; we claim to see but are painfully blind.
Jesus wants us to be blind to anything that causes us to judge against the dear neighbor. Listen to Jesus asking us, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” We need to be vulnerable, not righteous, in order to reply, “Who are you, that I may believe in you?”
Even if we feel “expelled” from God’s mercy, Jesus comes personally to us this Lent, eager to open the blind eyes of our hearts so we can really see him in each other.
FORWARD TOGETHER AND NO ONE LEFT BEHIND.
Fr. Bill