Sermon 15 March

Saint Margaret’s

Anglican Church

Budapest, Hungary

1 Samuel 16:1-13 ; Ephesians 5:8-14 ; John 9:1-41

; Psalm 23

Here is an astonishing thing!

At forty verses, the Scriptural narrative which we

just heard is, as far as I can determine, arguably

the longest passage in the Church’s annual cycle,

or lectionary, of assigned readings for Sunday

morning worship, excepting of course the

Passion narratives of Holy Week. You might think therefore, indeed perhaps expect, that

today’s sermon will also be the longest of the year, to match the Reading. Or the shortest.

You, as members of the congregation, will of course have to be the judge of that in due

course. Does anyone have a stopwatch …?

The passage before us famously recounts the story of Jesus healing of a man born blind. As he

walks along, our Lord suddenly and rather randomly encounters a blind man. He stops in his

tracks and without so much as a jó reggelt kívánok or any ado whatsoever, anoints the man’s

eyes with earth and his own spittle, of all things; the only instance in the Gospel of John, or

perhaps anywhere, of Jesus anointing anyone with anything. He then sends him off to wash.

The man, a beggar, by the way, quickly enough returns from the Pool of Siloam where he has

washed and, low and behold, is now able to see.

The other characters of the narrative, the neighbours, the Blind Man’s parents, and the

Pharisees, especially the Pharisees, from this point carry the weight of the narrative and

action, Jesus having more or less stepped aside. They question and dispute the meaning and

even the very reality of the Blind Man’s sudden healing. The neighbours ask themselves, for

instance, if this is the same man “who used to sit and beg.” Indeed, it is.

“I am the man,” the beggar responds, words which immediately identify this unnamed

Everyman, or every-person, with our Lord himself, the only other figure or person in all the

Gospels to proclaim, I AM. In Christ, the divinely Anointed One, the I AM of all time and

eternity, the Beggar himself now becomes the anointed image of the Anointed One. In his

anointing and washing, his Baptism, if you will, the beggar is now indeed the same man he

was but also a new creation in Christ. No wonder the neighbours fail at first to recognise him.

He has been transformed, though the full implications of this transformation do not become

apparent to him, or us, until toward the end of the narrative, as we shall see. Sight, it seems,

comes quickly enough. It operates, one could say, at the speed of light. Just open your eyes.

Vision and understanding, like this story itself, take time to develop. After all, the Beggar’sunderstanding of who our Lord is moves in majestic succession from “the man called Jesus,”

to “he is a prophet,” to “a man from God,” and ultimately to “Lord.” An astonishing thing,

indeed.

The Pharisees of the story, on the other hand, the quote-unquote enlightened ones of the

time and place, question everything. Seeing for themselves the reality unfolding before their

very eyes yet at the same time full of doubt and disbelief, they remain in the dark; they

remain the blind ones. Would-be first-century detectives of a sort, they go over every

possibility, every contingency, desperately seeking not to see, not to believe.

They call forward neighbours and family as witnesses, in the process very likely frightening the

Blind Man’s poor parents out of their wits. Wise mother and father, they rather cheekily

respond to the Pharisees interrogation saying, “Ask him; he is of age.” But for the Pharisees, it

all leads down a blind alley; it all goes nowhere. It becomes a case of the Blind leading the

Blind. In fact, that is exactly what it is.

This passage, like so many of the Evangelist John’s tales, as we have seen over the past weeks

of Lent, is filled with confusion and discord. What can be misunderstood is misunderstood.

The perfectly obvious is questioned and denied. Light becomes darkness and obsurity; and

sight becomes blindness. Chaos reigns until our Lord returns to the narrative, and the once

blind man proclaims his faith. For, only Christ brings light into this world of darkness and sin.

The blind beggar, now given sight, professes his own vision and faith and proclaims his own

Creed, “Lord, I believe,” his last words in the Gospel in fact, the last we ever hear from him,

but his lasting profession of faith. Astonishing.

This Man born Blind is in a sense the Adam, the Old Adam and Old Eve, in each of us; for at

some deeper level, we are all born blind, all incapable of seeing the deeper truth of the Gospel

until our eyes too are opened. And as the Lord God created Adam from the earth, from the

mud, and breathed life into him, so now our Lord, rubbing earth into the Blind Man’s eyes and

anointing him with the Word of God from his very lips, creates from him the new Adam, the

image of Christ himself; the very image each of us is called to become in our anointing, in our

washing, in our Baptism; a new image of light and Spirit.

We are of course all familiar with the old saying, “Seeing is believing.” According to those who

study the origin of words and expressions, this saying or maxim actually goes back to at least

the seventeenth century, and curiously enough, to Anglican clergyman and polymath, Thomas

Fuller, a scholar and preacher known for his wit and wisdom. Seeing is believing. Sometimes,

however, as with the Blind Man of today’s story and indeed with us as well, it is also a matter

of “believing is seeing.” It is sometimes only with the eyes of faith that we, like the Blind

Beggar, perceive the world for what it truly is; and come to know the light of the Gospel.

We live now in deeply troubling times; times in which it is not always possible to see just

where we are going. A time filled with so-called fake news and purposeful obscurity. The

world we thought we knew so well even short months or years ago has been changed forever

by war and deep and enduring economic uncertainty. It may be tempting to think God too has

left the scene as does Jesus in this Gospel narrative, disappeared from sight, disappeared and

left us to our own devices and blind will.But it is just at times such as these that we must keep our eyes opened and our vision focused

on the One who is indeed the Son of Man, the Anointed One, the Christ. That, my friends, is

the long and the short of it. That is this longest of Gospel narratives in a word, in the Word

made flesh. And so, with this nameless once Blind Beggar of long ago, we too can now

proclaim our own Creed, “Lord, I believe.” Things do not get much more astonishing than

that.

Amen.

The Revd Canon Dr Frank Hegedűs