Sunday Homily, March 30, 2014, 4th Lent, Cycle A
Readings:
Samuel 16, 1-13, Samuel anointed David.
Psalm 23, The Lord is my shepherd, there is nothing I shall want.
Ephesians 5, 8-14, You were once darkness, but now you are light.
John 9, 1-41, As Jesus passed by he saw a man blind from birth.
Mike's Homily:
Jesus perceived that a man who was begging had been blind from birth. So, he replies to his disciples that they must do the work of the one who has sent him. The work that the Father has given his Son is to proclaim the good news, the Father’s plan of salvation.
Jesus perceived by what the beggar has said or did not say, by what he was doing or was not doing, that the beggar was spiritually blind; he had never heard the good news of Jesus Christ that gives spiritual light to the world.
Jesus makes some clay and anoints the beggar’s eyes to make us aware that the beggar is about to become a new creation. Recall from the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah that God is the potter and that man is formed by Him. Jesus says to him, ‘Go, wash in the pool of Siloam which means sent.
To understand this command, the reader must return two chapters, to the Feast of Tabernacles at the pool of Siloam where gushing, spring fed living waters flowed into and were sent out from of this pool.
These living waters are a metaphor for the good news of Jesus Christ, for He had called out on the greatest, and last day of the feast, the only day when waters were not drawn from the pool, ‘Come to me if you are thirsty, for from my heart flows living waters.’ Jesus had sent the man to be baptized in the Holy Spirit, so that he could send him forth living and proclaiming the good news.
So, the beggar returned to the temple no longer unclean; he had been enlightened and the Spirit dwelled within him. Of course, the Pharisees who said that they could spiritually see, but reject the good news, remain blind.
Today’s reading purposely sends us back to the earlier reading of what happened at the end of the Feast of Tabernacles to another very similar parable. The scribes and the Pharisees bring a woman who was caught in the act of adultery to Jesus, saying to him, ‘Moses commanded that such a woman should be stoned. What do you say?’ The scribes and the Pharisees were the teachers of the Law.
They knew the oral and written tradition that required them to bring both the man and the woman accused of committing adultery, and at least two witnesses to Jesus, if they were seeking a judgment from him; but their intention was to discredit Jesus.
Now, during the feast of Tabernacles, the oral tradition required the high priest, as he cleansed himself in the waters of the pool of Siloam, to say from the prophet Jeremiah, ‘those who reject the Lord, the fountain of living waters, will in shame have their names written in the earth.
So when Jesus knelt down in front of them, he began writing the names, the most prominent first, of these scribes and Pharisees who had rejected the fountain of living waters, his life-giving good news. Shamed, for they understood what Jesus was doing, they left the people, the woman and Jesus, the oldest to the youngest, when Jesus said to them, ‘Let the one among you who is without sin, cast the first stone.’
After the woman acknowledges to Jesus that there is no one left to condemn her, he says to her, ‘go away,’ [better, go along the way believing the good news] and sin no more. She too had been sent forth.
In like manner each of us has been sent forth with and from the living waters.
From whom did you receive or give a drink of that living water this past week?