Fourth Sunday of Lent

A fascinating video popped up last week on the blog "Whispers in the Loggia.” It shows Pope Francis going to confession. One report noted that modern popes have been seen hearing confessions but none has been seen going to confession. Until now. And that’s the joy of Pope Francis. He leads by example. He does not just talk about how we should live our Christianity. He shows us how to do so. How unlike the Pharisees who are a persistent nuisance in the Gospel reading for the Fourth Sunday of Lent.

 

Jesus heals a man born blind. This story is full of twists and turns, the kind that explain to us the nature of sin. Sin makes us feel lost. Sin is confusing. It makes us feel as if we don’t know where we are going. If we don’t know where we are going, it is very likely we don’t know where we are. And really sinful sin means we don’t know who we are.

 

According to the Pharisees, the man born blind was a sinner. And the sin was either committed by the man himself or his parents. Whatever the sin was, in the view of the Pharisees, the blind man was struck by divine punishment. How often we can be so Pharisaical! We judge others – their sin will land them in hell - or something worse. That something worse is usually our judgment of them. Who permits us to determine the status of the conscience of another? Most of us are just self-righteous enough that we claim to know the sins of each other. And many of us are arrogant enough to declare these sins to the other.

 

But none of that is of God. The Pharisees proclaim Jesus to be a sinner. He not only cured the man of his blindness. He made clay from the dust. This was servile labor and it was forbidden on the Sabbath. In the eyes of the Pharisees, this condemns Jesus. Jesus worked on the Sabbath. Remember that elsewhere Jesus says the Sabbath is made for man not man for the Sabbath.

 

Pope Francis describes what is at work in this story as both a culture of encounter and a culture of exclusion. The latter is, of course, the prejudice of the Pharisees about the blind man’s so-called sin. The former is, of course, the blind man’s healing by Jesus. That encounter leads to the blind man, now healed, becoming a follower of Jesus. So we can proclaim a culture of exclusion by pointing out each other’s sins or we can proclaim a culture of encounter by leading others to Jesus who is the only one who can forgive sins.

 

The Gospels on Sunday during Lent each reveal to us how people who encounter Jesus are led to him. Sinners they may be but they encounter something so different in their lives that they cannot lead their lives in the same way anymore. Any conversion story I’ve ever heard has been the same. The something encountered is Jesus Himself. Someone is encountered. Are any of us so full of Jesus’ Spirit that we could lead others to Jesus? When we meet others, do we present Jesus to them? Or do we speak the language of exclusion and continue to judge them?