What is it we who are not blind want to see? Do we want to see the true meaning of life? Do we want to see it as desperately as the man in this Sunday’s Gospel who is born blind wants to see the physical world? When Jesus heals the blind man people react with confusion and celebration but some, with anger. The anger seems inexplicable. It is expressed by Pharisees. They have a stake in the man’s blindness which they equate with sin. His blindness justifies their continued status over him and his continued suffering. History has always known people such as this story describes. People who cannot see, who will not see, and will prevent others from seeing. Also, history gives us people who are as Christ, helping others see because they are “the Light of the World”
The encounter between the man born blind, the Pharisees, and Jesus has parallels to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. The Cave consists of slaves whose eyes give them sight but they cannot really see as their heads are shackled. Their sight is confined to a wall that has changing shapes appearing on it. The slaves cannot see that the shapes are produced by guards who patrol behind them walking in front of a fire that projects their shape onto the wall. The slaves also cannot see they are in a cave, nor that outside that cave is life, with a sun shining brightly. The Allegory proposes how rare it is for a person to first recognize their confined and shadowy view of reality, to know it is a projection of an armed class, to then escape their confinement by progressing beyond their armed enslavers, and then to finally see the living light. It is rarer still for a person who makes it out of the cave to return and help others see the light. It is a rare journey because many of us are content with the pleasantries of shadow living (e.g. shopping, chemicals, entertainment, sports). If we begin the escape we may only get so far as to shift our fascination with the shadows to a fascination with the figures of our celebrity oppressors, their wealth, honor, status, marriages, or various antics. To realize any life in the cave is itself a confinement and a truly free life is only able to be lived beyond it, is a threat to the oppressor class. In the same way the blind man’s sight was a threat to the Pharisees. We can in our time progress beyond life as controlled by oppressors coercing us to live in the shadows – the shadow of hierarchy which they configure as democracy; the shadow of capitalism which they configure as economics; the shadow of institutional religiosity they configure as Christianity. It is a difficult climb out of the cave but we make it because we are not born blind. We know the meaning of life. It is to see the Light of the World in ourselves and in each other.
“Well, son, I’ll tell you: Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair. It’s had tacks in it, And splinters, And boards torn up, And places with no carpet on the floor. Bare. But all the time I’se been a-climbin’ on, And reachin’ landin’s, And turnin’ corners, And sometimes goin’ in the dark Where there ain’t been no light. So, boy, don’t you turn back. Don’t you set down on the steps. ‘Cause you finds it’s kinder hard. Don’t you fall now. For I’se still goin’, honey, I’se still climbin’, And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.” (Mother to Son – Langston Hughes)
Prayer: Spirit of Light, shine throughout our lives.
Question: What is the darkness I am struggling to climb out of and into the Light?
March 26, 2017 Gospel John 9:1-41 4th Sunday of Lent