03-15-26 Fourth Sunday in Lent Laetare (rejoice)
John 9:1-13, 28-38
Fr. Alan Heatherington (no audio recording)
John 9:1-13, 28-38
Fr. Alan Heatherington (no audio recording)
The grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of our God will stand forever.
Lord, make me know Your ways; teach me Your paths; lead me in Your truth; and teach me, for You are the God of my salvation. Amen. (Isaiah 40:8; Psalm 25:4,5)
We are living in a dark world, one that was created out of darkness, that descended again into darkness in the Fall, that had the possibility of a fresh start after the Flood but again fell into darkness after the Tower of Babel; a world that was in darkness when it rejected God’s Messiah, and that is in darkness today because it has rejected God’s self-revelation and God’s leadership. We feel victimized by all this, yet helpless to know what we could do to effect significant and lasting change. In our Gospel reading Jesus said, “We must work the works of Him Who sent Me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work.” We have today to be doing God’s work.
All four of today’s lectionary readings are trying to teach us this: that God is still on His throne, and that He is in charge even when His working is hard to discern. God tried to explain that to Samuel when He said, “God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” Samuel was looking for someone tall and rugged to be king, but God was looking for a young shepherd boy whom He could make into a giant-killer. What it means is that only God always gets it right, even when we are fully confident of our own flawed and fallen judgment. When we set ourselves up as the enlightened ones, we expose ourselves with our perpetual shortcomings. As you have heard me say many times, “God is God, and we are not.” In Psalm 100, we read:
Know that the Lord, He is God!
It is He Who has made us, and not we ourselves.
We are His people, the sheep of His pasture (100:3).
Our psalm for today, the 23rd psalm, is attributed to that shepherd boy. It is by far the best-known and most-loved of all the 150 psalms. And it is all about God’s sovereign leadership, whether or not we read it that way. It is God Who is our Shepherd, Who supplies all our needs. It is He Who feeds us, leads us, refreshes us, and brings us to paths of righteousness for His Name’s sake. It is He Who comforts us in the valley of the shadow of death, so that we need not fear any evil. He keeps us safe from our enemies. He anoints our heads with oil and fills our cups to overflowing. He pursues us with His goodness and lovingkindness, and He guarantees our eternal place in His house.
That is our God: One Who knows all our needs, and Who cares for them in His abundant lovingkindness. One way or another, God will execute His will and bring us to His eternal house. His ways are so far beyond our understanding that He often reveals them to us in mysterious imagery: in visions and words that puzzle us, overawe us, occasionally frighten us, but ultimately that comfort us. They speak of our proactive God Who will triumph over sin, death and darkness in a Kingdom where He Himself is the Light.
Think for a moment about darkness. We know that in some disturbingly obvious ways we are living in a time of darkness. I suspect that under the surface even the most naïvely optimistic persons recognize at least some areas where darkness prevails.
Darkness has a long history. The second verse of the Bible tells us that “darkness was over the face of the deep.” And so the very first recorded words spoken by God were, “Let there be light.” And because God is sovereign over His creation, the next words are, “and there was light” (Genesis 1:2,3). He spoke, and there was light.
Another time that we confront the scenario of darkness versus light is when our sovereign God was bringing plagues on the Egyptians, one of which involved bringing a darkness over the people of Egypt so complete that for three days they could not see anyone or anything, or go anywhere. But Exodus 10:23 tells us that “all the people of Israel had light where they lived.”
God always gives light to His people. He accommodates us because He knows that light is necessary for our life and health. And while we all acknowledge the necessity of physical light, we may mistakenly regard our need for spiritual light as optional.
King David recognized this when he wrote these beautiful words in another of his great psalms:
If I say, “Surely the darkness will cover me,” then will my night be turned to day. Even the darkness is not dark to You, and the night is as clear as the day; darkness and light to You are both alike
(139:11,12).
To us, darkness and light are not at all alike. But, as I said before: “God is God and we are not.”
In another psalm David wrote, “With You is the fountain of life; in Your light we see light” (36:9).
And again, he wrote,
You have delivered my soul from death and my feet from stumbling, that I may walk before God
in the light of life (56:13).
In the Collect for the First Sunday in Advent we pray, “Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.” Paul, in his letter to the Colossians, assures us that this prayer already has been heard and answered, writing,
The Father has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the Kingdom of His beloved Son (Colossians 1:12b,13).
Similarly, in today’s epistle reading to the Ephesians, St. Paul wrote:
You were formerly darkness, but now you are Light in the Lord; walk as children of Light, for the fruit
of the Light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth, discerning what is pleasing to the Lord (5:8-10).
He then continued with these words of admonition:
Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them; for it is shameful even to
speak of the things that they do in secret. Everything that is exposed by the light is made visible, for
everything that becomes visible is light. Therefore… awake, sleeper, and arise from your deadly
stupor, and Christ will shine (His) light on you (Ephesians 5:11-13).
Did you see the shift there? Light, that good thing that sustains us in life, the light that God created in the very beginning, the light that Jesus came to shine on everyone coming into the world, the light that He commanded us to be to others, the light that can dispel the darkness, is also the light that reveals wickedness, the “unfruitful deeds of darkness.” Darkness tries in vain to hide from the light or even tries to extinguish the light. But its efforts are doomed to failure. That’s a promise!
This is what we pray in the most common Proper Preface to our Eucharistic Feast:
It is right, and a good and joyful thing always and everywhere to give thanks to You, Father Almighty,
Creator of Heaven and earth; for You are the Source of light and life, You made us in Your image, and
called us to new life in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Because we are created in His image, God’s light is our light. Knowing that He would not be in this world for very long, Jesus wisely transferred the responsibility for spiritual light to us when, in the Sermon on the Mount, He said, “You are the light of the world… Let your light shine before men so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father Who is in the heavens” (Matthew 5:16).
Just before the healing in today’s Gospel, Jesus said,
Whoever follows Me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life (John 8:12).
That same thought is found near the very opening of St. John’s Gospel, in a prologue that mimics Genesis 1. There, John writes:
In the beginning was the Word. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not apprehended it (John 1:1,4,5).
After recording the greatest statement in all Scripture, John 3:16, St. John continues with these words:
This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the Light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But the one who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be clearly shown to have been done in God (3:19-21).
Now, at the beginning of our Gospel narrative, Jesus says,
We must carry out the works of Him Who sent Me as long as it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. While I am in the world, I AM the Light of the World (John 9:4,5).
He spoke those words as He stood in front of a man who had been blind from birth, one who had spent his entire life in darkness. The question His disciples asked was reflecting a commonly held belief that his blindness was the direct result of sin, either his own sin or that of his parents. Jesus replies that neither is the case, but that this was “so that the works of God might be displayed through him.”
In the verses from John 9 that are omitted from our lectionary reading, the Pharisees try to convince the man that Jesus was a sinner. His famous reply was,
This one thing I know: that once I was blind, but now I can see (9:25).
We used to sing a gospel hymn that began, “The whole world was lost in the darkness of sin. Like sunshine at noonday His glory shone in. Once I was blind but now I can see. The Light of the World is Jesus” (words and music by Philip P. Bliss, 1875).
The entire ninth chapter of St. John’s Gospel is devoted to this one healing; and in its conclusion, Jesus says to this man in the hearing of the Pharisees,
I came into this world for judgment, so that the blind may see and those who see may become blind.” (9:39).
By this He was referring to the blindness of the Pharisees who steadfastly refused to believe in Him, to see Him as the One Who had begun by stating that He was, indeed, “the Light of the World,” and had proved it to be true by the corroborative evidence of His miraculous sign (9:5).
The Book of Revelation closes the canon of Scripture with these words about John’s vision of the heavenly city (21:22-25; 22:3,5):
I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. And the city has no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God has illumined it, and its
lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light… and night will be no more. They will need no
light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.
The same God Who said, “Let there be light” will be our eternal light. He is the One to Whom “the darkness and the light are both alike,” the One in Whose “light we see light” (Psalm 36:9). We can conclude with King David:
The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom then shall I fear? Of whom shall I be afraid? (Psalm 27:1).
St. John assures us in his first epistle,
If we walk in the Light as He is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of
Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin” (1:7).
And so we must do what we sang in our Sequence hymn:
I want to walk as a child of the Light; I want to follow Jesus.
Think about what that might mean for you personally, “to walk as a child of the Light” and “to follow Jesus;” to be “the light of the world” just as He was “the Light of the World.” It may completely change the way you walk through Holy Week on the Via Crucis, the Way of the Cross. Only then will you understand more fully what it means to take up your cross daily and follow Him (Luke 9:23). Always remember:
You are the light of the world.
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Lord, make me know Your ways; teach me Your paths; lead me in Your truth; and teach me, for You are the God of my salvation. Amen. (Isaiah 40:8; Psalm 25:4,5)
We are living in a dark world, one that was created out of darkness, that descended again into darkness in the Fall, that had the possibility of a fresh start after the Flood but again fell into darkness after the Tower of Babel; a world that was in darkness when it rejected God’s Messiah, and that is in darkness today because it has rejected God’s self-revelation and God’s leadership. We feel victimized by all this, yet helpless to know what we could do to effect significant and lasting change. In our Gospel reading Jesus said, “We must work the works of Him Who sent Me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work.” We have today to be doing God’s work.
All four of today’s lectionary readings are trying to teach us this: that God is still on His throne, and that He is in charge even when His working is hard to discern. God tried to explain that to Samuel when He said, “God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” Samuel was looking for someone tall and rugged to be king, but God was looking for a young shepherd boy whom He could make into a giant-killer. What it means is that only God always gets it right, even when we are fully confident of our own flawed and fallen judgment. When we set ourselves up as the enlightened ones, we expose ourselves with our perpetual shortcomings. As you have heard me say many times, “God is God, and we are not.” In Psalm 100, we read:
Know that the Lord, He is God!
It is He Who has made us, and not we ourselves.
We are His people, the sheep of His pasture (100:3).
Our psalm for today, the 23rd psalm, is attributed to that shepherd boy. It is by far the best-known and most-loved of all the 150 psalms. And it is all about God’s sovereign leadership, whether or not we read it that way. It is God Who is our Shepherd, Who supplies all our needs. It is He Who feeds us, leads us, refreshes us, and brings us to paths of righteousness for His Name’s sake. It is He Who comforts us in the valley of the shadow of death, so that we need not fear any evil. He keeps us safe from our enemies. He anoints our heads with oil and fills our cups to overflowing. He pursues us with His goodness and lovingkindness, and He guarantees our eternal place in His house.
That is our God: One Who knows all our needs, and Who cares for them in His abundant lovingkindness. One way or another, God will execute His will and bring us to His eternal house. His ways are so far beyond our understanding that He often reveals them to us in mysterious imagery: in visions and words that puzzle us, overawe us, occasionally frighten us, but ultimately that comfort us. They speak of our proactive God Who will triumph over sin, death and darkness in a Kingdom where He Himself is the Light.
Think for a moment about darkness. We know that in some disturbingly obvious ways we are living in a time of darkness. I suspect that under the surface even the most naïvely optimistic persons recognize at least some areas where darkness prevails.
Darkness has a long history. The second verse of the Bible tells us that “darkness was over the face of the deep.” And so the very first recorded words spoken by God were, “Let there be light.” And because God is sovereign over His creation, the next words are, “and there was light” (Genesis 1:2,3). He spoke, and there was light.
Another time that we confront the scenario of darkness versus light is when our sovereign God was bringing plagues on the Egyptians, one of which involved bringing a darkness over the people of Egypt so complete that for three days they could not see anyone or anything, or go anywhere. But Exodus 10:23 tells us that “all the people of Israel had light where they lived.”
God always gives light to His people. He accommodates us because He knows that light is necessary for our life and health. And while we all acknowledge the necessity of physical light, we may mistakenly regard our need for spiritual light as optional.
King David recognized this when he wrote these beautiful words in another of his great psalms:
If I say, “Surely the darkness will cover me,” then will my night be turned to day. Even the darkness is not dark to You, and the night is as clear as the day; darkness and light to You are both alike
(139:11,12).
To us, darkness and light are not at all alike. But, as I said before: “God is God and we are not.”
In another psalm David wrote, “With You is the fountain of life; in Your light we see light” (36:9).
And again, he wrote,
You have delivered my soul from death and my feet from stumbling, that I may walk before God
in the light of life (56:13).
In the Collect for the First Sunday in Advent we pray, “Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.” Paul, in his letter to the Colossians, assures us that this prayer already has been heard and answered, writing,
The Father has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the Kingdom of His beloved Son (Colossians 1:12b,13).
Similarly, in today’s epistle reading to the Ephesians, St. Paul wrote:
You were formerly darkness, but now you are Light in the Lord; walk as children of Light, for the fruit
of the Light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth, discerning what is pleasing to the Lord (5:8-10).
He then continued with these words of admonition:
Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them; for it is shameful even to
speak of the things that they do in secret. Everything that is exposed by the light is made visible, for
everything that becomes visible is light. Therefore… awake, sleeper, and arise from your deadly
stupor, and Christ will shine (His) light on you (Ephesians 5:11-13).
Did you see the shift there? Light, that good thing that sustains us in life, the light that God created in the very beginning, the light that Jesus came to shine on everyone coming into the world, the light that He commanded us to be to others, the light that can dispel the darkness, is also the light that reveals wickedness, the “unfruitful deeds of darkness.” Darkness tries in vain to hide from the light or even tries to extinguish the light. But its efforts are doomed to failure. That’s a promise!
This is what we pray in the most common Proper Preface to our Eucharistic Feast:
It is right, and a good and joyful thing always and everywhere to give thanks to You, Father Almighty,
Creator of Heaven and earth; for You are the Source of light and life, You made us in Your image, and
called us to new life in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Because we are created in His image, God’s light is our light. Knowing that He would not be in this world for very long, Jesus wisely transferred the responsibility for spiritual light to us when, in the Sermon on the Mount, He said, “You are the light of the world… Let your light shine before men so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father Who is in the heavens” (Matthew 5:16).
Just before the healing in today’s Gospel, Jesus said,
Whoever follows Me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life (John 8:12).
That same thought is found near the very opening of St. John’s Gospel, in a prologue that mimics Genesis 1. There, John writes:
In the beginning was the Word. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not apprehended it (John 1:1,4,5).
After recording the greatest statement in all Scripture, John 3:16, St. John continues with these words:
This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the Light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But the one who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be clearly shown to have been done in God (3:19-21).
Now, at the beginning of our Gospel narrative, Jesus says,
We must carry out the works of Him Who sent Me as long as it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. While I am in the world, I AM the Light of the World (John 9:4,5).
He spoke those words as He stood in front of a man who had been blind from birth, one who had spent his entire life in darkness. The question His disciples asked was reflecting a commonly held belief that his blindness was the direct result of sin, either his own sin or that of his parents. Jesus replies that neither is the case, but that this was “so that the works of God might be displayed through him.”
In the verses from John 9 that are omitted from our lectionary reading, the Pharisees try to convince the man that Jesus was a sinner. His famous reply was,
This one thing I know: that once I was blind, but now I can see (9:25).
We used to sing a gospel hymn that began, “The whole world was lost in the darkness of sin. Like sunshine at noonday His glory shone in. Once I was blind but now I can see. The Light of the World is Jesus” (words and music by Philip P. Bliss, 1875).
The entire ninth chapter of St. John’s Gospel is devoted to this one healing; and in its conclusion, Jesus says to this man in the hearing of the Pharisees,
I came into this world for judgment, so that the blind may see and those who see may become blind.” (9:39).
By this He was referring to the blindness of the Pharisees who steadfastly refused to believe in Him, to see Him as the One Who had begun by stating that He was, indeed, “the Light of the World,” and had proved it to be true by the corroborative evidence of His miraculous sign (9:5).
The Book of Revelation closes the canon of Scripture with these words about John’s vision of the heavenly city (21:22-25; 22:3,5):
I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. And the city has no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God has illumined it, and its
lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light… and night will be no more. They will need no
light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.
The same God Who said, “Let there be light” will be our eternal light. He is the One to Whom “the darkness and the light are both alike,” the One in Whose “light we see light” (Psalm 36:9). We can conclude with King David:
The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom then shall I fear? Of whom shall I be afraid? (Psalm 27:1).
St. John assures us in his first epistle,
If we walk in the Light as He is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of
Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin” (1:7).
And so we must do what we sang in our Sequence hymn:
I want to walk as a child of the Light; I want to follow Jesus.
Think about what that might mean for you personally, “to walk as a child of the Light” and “to follow Jesus;” to be “the light of the world” just as He was “the Light of the World.” It may completely change the way you walk through Holy Week on the Via Crucis, the Way of the Cross. Only then will you understand more fully what it means to take up your cross daily and follow Him (Luke 9:23). Always remember:
You are the light of the world.
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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