Sunday Reflection with Fr Robin Gibbons - 30 March 2014

John 9: 1-41

At the centre of our Christian life stands the ever-welcoming person of Jesus. With us till the end of time, he is present to us in so many ways, in the community called Church, in each other, in scripture and sacrament, prayer and work. This is the great gift we have from God, his love and mercy freely given to us all. But the question remains who will accept this gift, where do we find the presence of Jesus for ourselves?

Maybe John’s account of the man born blind can help us a little. It is a fascinating account of a healing of a man born blind, but has far deeper and more complicated nuances than this. Hidden in the depths of the story is the conflict between Jesus and the Law represented by the authority figures of official religion. There is also a focus on a theological conflict about blindness being connected to sinfulness, centering on the question of whose sin caused it, his parents or himself? We might note that this is the one place in John’s gospel where Jesus is actually accused of being a ‘sinner’! True blindness is spiritual not physical!

Into this steps Jesus who challenges the authority of those claiming the religious high ground, for the question asked in this account is, do we believe in Jesus as the true light of the world, the shepherd of a new flock which finds its law rooted in his merciful love?

The blind man gradually sees but also understands just and accepts Jesus as Lord, but any rejoicing in his healing, especially by his parents, is ruined by the questions and challenges of the religious authorities. And yet at the core of this story is the deep theology of Christ the Word, the one who has always existed, yes even from the creation of the world,. Mixing spittle and clay Jesus finishes the creation of the man who was incomplete in his mother’s womb, the potter God puts the final touches to the clay of Adam and makes him whole!

In our lives, might we not ask Jesus to make us whole, to help our spiritual blindness towards things? Christ is the true light of the World, He who only ‘says the word so that we shall be healed, for he is our true centre!

Fr Robin Gibbons is an Eastern Rite Chaplain for the Melkite Greek Catholics in Britain.