Scripture Reflection, March 2: Open to Possibilities

Scripture Readings:
1 Samuel 16: 1-13
Psalm 23
Ephesians 5: 8-14
John 9: 1-41

After having to write a few scripture reflections, I understand the challenge that priests and ministers experience when preparing weekly homilies and messages.  Sometimes the scriptures just don’t connect with one’s own lived experience, which makes it difficult to prepare reflections.  This Sunday we hear from John’s Gospel about the blind man who not only gained his sight, but also became a believer that Jesus was the Son of God.  This story has always been a challenging one for me, but fortunately I stumbled upon a magazine article that provided a different angle for reflection.

While waiting in the airport, I noticed the latest edition (February 2008) of the magazine, Real Simple, left behind on the bench.  The article, “After God Left,” caught my attention.  The author, Alison Smith, told of her childhood relationship with Jesus and how one day during her teenage years the relationship abruptly ended when her older brother was killed in a car accident.  She was raised Catholic, and throughout her childhood, she regularly practiced her faith with her family.  Her relationship and friendship with Jesus was a significant part of her life—Jesus was a peer, someone socially awkward at times and someone who needed her friendship as much as she needed his.  Whenever she was alone, Jesus would appear and they would talk.  After her brother had died, she recalls asking Jesus how something like this could have happened.  Jesus did not have an answer for her and got up and left.  One of the beauties of our Christian faith is our belief that God is always with us, through the good times and the bad.  Sometimes, though, our grief is too hard to bear, and our relationship and faith in God is challenged and even broken.  Doubt can take hold of our hearts and minds.

Our Gospel reading this Sunday not only focuses on the blind man who gained his sight and found his faith in God, but too on the Pharisees who challenged the blind man’s assertions about Jesus.  This story has always been difficult for me because I never saw room for the doubters and the wonderers of the group—I only saw the strong believers and the non-believers.  What about those of us in the middle?  After reading the scripture more closely (the longer version), I realized that the blind man came to know Jesus as the Son of God after some time.  It was not an instantaneous revelation.  When the Pharisees first questioned him, he said that he was a prophet.  During the second questioning, he renounced that Jesus was a sinner.  Finally, when the man met Jesus again, he fully understood that Jesus was “from God.”  The man’s faith had grown steadily after some time of questioning.  This is good news for the doubters among us.   For some their faith is a given, but for others, we need to work at it.

The woman who wrote the magazine article shared how it was just easier to claim to be a non-believer during college instead of explaining how Jesus left her after her brother died.  But one day, her perspective changed a bit when she learned from a friend that people of faith also have great doubt.  Her friend interviewed a woman religious superior who confided that the hardest part of her job is her own lack of faith.  Although the author does not consider herself a believer, she recognizes that she is open to the possibilities.  This is the real lesson of the Gospel for this Sunday—the blind man was open to the miraculous love of God while the Pharisees were not.

By JoEllen Windau