Almost every Lent, we hear this story of the man born blind. And it’s one of the essential stories for Lent because it’s about transformation — someone experiencing dramatic change and even liberation. And during Lent, that is what we are all after, a sense that something new is possible for us, something that frees us from whatever we need to leave behind.
But what we also see in this story is that transformation isn’t easy. We can’t rise to something new without giving up the old. Even this story of the blind man, who is healed by Jesus without even asking for it, shows that change has unintended consequences. When you read this gospel, you realize that the healing itself only takes up about the first 10 percent of the story; the rest is about all the side effects of someone being healed. Look at how complex life becomes for this man. Suddenly, people are even arguing about whether he is the same person he was before, and of course, in a way he isn’t. His own parents aren’t sure they want to be on his side. Everyone wants to know what happened and why it happened. Worst of all, no one seems very happy about it. Sure, the man’s life has been changed for the better, since he can now see, but his life has also been turned upside down. He wasn’t just healed — his future is now headed in a new direction that he never planned on, and maybe not such an easy direction.
And it all happens because that is what Jesus wants: people putting aside the burdens of their past lives in order to follow him, to see the light and go somewhere new and larger, even if beginning that new path is hard.
It so strange that in this story of an amazing miracle there’s so much talk about sin in this gospel, who sinned, who is breaking the law. But who are the only actual sinners we meet in this reading? It is the people who are looking for sin, who think it is their job to judge, trying to control who is favored by God, make sure it’s fair by human standards, that a sick man doesn’t get something he didn’t deserve. They don’t understand anything about how God works. Why are there blind people, the disciples ask? The blind man is blind, Jesus says, so that the works of God might be shown forth in him. He’s there so we can understand that God loves the blind, that God loves the fragile people like us he has placed here, that human weakness is loved by God. Even in a year like the past one where so many have been sick and died, so many have been lonely, God’s desire is to bring light to this darkness, to take this time of difficulty and help us to see something new, to see somewhere Christ is for us where we never expected him to come to us. It’s a difficult transformation for each of us, becoming someone that sees God in the poor, the unattractive, the failure. But that’s why they are all there, to reveal God to us, a God who loves much more than we can ever picture.
The work of God is to bring light out of darkness. We want light to come out of this year we have just spent in the darkness and where that will come from is not always easy to see. But somehow, if we ask, or maybe even if we don’t, one day we will see that light shining somewhere new and unfamiliar and where most of the world would never see it, and we’ll experience Christ at work in us.