Reflection on the Fourth Sunday of Lent

Helen Keller said, “The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.”

The Scribes and Pharisees in today’s Gospel were blind to the signs that were right there in front of them. They could see with their eyes but did not see any meaning in the action. Jesus was giving them many signs but their focus was on the past – the law –  and Jesus had broken that law, and they wanted to get rid of him. They could not open their minds to new light, a deeper understanding of what they were seeing with their eyes. 

Instead, they first question the blind man. They didn’t believe him when he told them how Jesus did it. They don’t believe his parents when they tell him this son of theirs was born blind. They go back to the blind man and ask again how it is that he can now see. He  has little patience with them – I told you what the man did to give me my sight. They just don’t get it – here is a man who had never seen light or trees or other human beings and now he sees. Here is Jesus, a man doing unique things that no other human being has done and all they can see is the law. They cannot see the wonder of this event.  

They say two things are certain, death and taxes. I would add a third thing, change. Most of us can testify to that after decades of experiencing change on a regular basis. Change happens in our bodies, our communities, in systems, in science, in culture, in nature, theology, philosophy, technology, climate and in the universe and everywhere else.

Change is both good and bad. The trick is to figure out what is going to be life-giving.    It can be painful as in the loss of a loved one or a physical impairment. It can bring us peace and happiness when we find our right niche or the right person. Sometimes it happens on its own, and we can’t do anything about it, but it also can be initiated or facilitated by ourselves or others. 

How we perceive and accept change is important. In some circumstances we may welcome it and in others, resist. Some people do not see it coming or if they do, choose to ignore it and hope it will go away. Some hop on the bandwagon because it is something new. Some, like the Scribes and Pharisees, get stuck and cannot move beyond their own perceptions. The wise person looks and listens before acting.

Right now we are living in the midst of a lot of change – socially, politically, environmentally. It feels and is chaotic. 

Ilia Delio writes, “It is a world blind, turned inward, satiated with things, and unconscious of its fundamental interdependency.”

These are painful kinds of change that can seem overwhelming unless we take a long view that such situations have happened in previous eras but new thought and ways of doing things have risen up out of the ashes. We do what we can by listening, watching, using our insight as much as our eyesight and acting in whatever way possible.

Not all change is bad. One of the most important and consoling areas of change in our lifetime has been in the change in the way we see God. Theology and philosophy have always followed science. When the understanding of the world was simply what one could observe: a flat surface, a blue dome with a few stars shining through, and a God making humans and animals one by one. It generated a view of God as up there, outside, the director and judge of creation. 

But centuries later came Darwin, Einstein, Jung, Teilhard de Chardin and other scientists who turned that picture of the world inside out.  A spark of light that ignited life that would expand from nothing to a universe so immense that our minds cannot comprehend it. There is not just one planet or a few starts. There are millions of stars, galaxies and probably more than one universe. It has shifted our image of God to a  divine presence and love that permeates all of creation down to the smallest particle. It gives us a view of a creator allowing evolution to happen at its own pace. It allows us to be free, to move at our own pace, gradually spiraling upward. This has been a welcome change that enriches our concept of what our creator might be. It fills us with wonder. Indeed, it enriches our whole outlook on human dignity and the intricate workings of nature. 

To maintain hope in the midst of our present chaos, we need to keep looking at the good that is happening underneath it all; the people who work tirelessly to make life better for others, the efforts that we ourselves make that are life-giving. We need to remind ourselves that God’s love is always present, entangled in everything whether good or bad. Finally, we need to hold on to the long view as spelled out by Teilhard de Chardin: “The End Time is the Time of Ascension; for Earth and humanity. The end of the old paradigms (fear, ego, materialism) is giving way to a new era of consciousness, love, unity, service to others and spiritual evolution.”

“Above all, trust in the slow work of God …  to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages.”