Fourth Sunday of Lent
March 6, 2005
John 9:1-41

Just as a week ago, we are reading a rather long selection from John’s gospel, a story that reads like a play and can be broken down into a chain of scenes and a sequence of dialogues. The climax and ultimate point of the story is neither the miraculous cure nor a vindication of Jesus’ practice of curing on the Sabbath. The ultimate point is the simple statement: “I do believe.” The cure comes to completion and achieves its purpose when the internal eyes of the man born blind open, and he truly begins to see as he recognizes Jesus’ identity.

By means of Johannine irony we are led once again to recognize ourselves in the story. Being born blind is a condition that involves all of us who search for the light of the world and have difficulties with recognizing Him. This general human condition is, however, not a consequence of particular guilt on anyone’s part, but is rather a condition that provides an opportunity for the manifestation of God’s “glory” – his saving grace.

A subtle yet important symbolism is attached to the fact that the blind man did not become blind but was born that way. This signifies an incompleteness of the work of creation in him, just as our spiritual blindness is a sign that our “becoming” is still an unfinished project. The same symbolism is included in the fact that Jesus uses mud for the cure, as if continuing the Genesis account of man’s creation from the soil of the earth. Thus, contrary to what we might conclude from Genesis, God did not “retire” on the seventh day, but has kept on working and is still working. In fact, Jesus continues speaking of “the works of God” in which he participates. This is the reason he is entitled to do such signs on the Sabbath. Incidentally, this outlook is consistently present in John’s Gospel: “The Father is still working and I am still working” (after the first cure on the Sabbath in the pool of Bethseda; 5:17 and also in 7:21-23, where Jesus compares his curing on the Sabbath to circumcision -- i.e., an act applying God’s salvific plan to a human being.).

An even deeper Christological and sacramental meaning is attached to the man’s washing in the pool of Siloam. The reference to the pool’s name, which means “the one who has been sent,” shows that the evangelist sees the cure as a symbol of an immersion into Christ -- i.e., in the same way that the early church regarded baptism as becoming united with the risen – newly made and thus full and complete – humanity of Christ.

The person born blind becomes enlightened and obtains a new vision of his existence only if he is transformed and becomes “a new creation” (Gal 6:15; 2Cor 5:17).

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