Unity Lutheran Church + Chicago
follow us
  • Welcome
  • Who Are We
    • Eternal Flame Saints
    • History of Unity
    • Affiliated with
    • Welcome & Vision Statement
    • Constitution & Bylaws
  • Our Faith in Action
    • Concerts at Unity
    • Green Space
    • Social Justice
  • Space Sharing
    • Calendar
    • Picture our Rooms
    • Space Sharing Partners
  • Contact Us
  • Donate
    • Offerings & Gifts >
      • Unity Special Funds
  • Community Resources

April 3, 2011 + "The Mud of Creation" [text: John 9:1-41]

4/4/2011

0 Comments

 
One of my life goals is to learn how to make pottery.  [hold up pottery]  Here is the first piece I ever made.  If you can’t see it from there, that’s alright, it’s no work of art!  I made it at a beginners class some years ago at Holden Village, the Lutheran camp up in the beautiful Cascade Mountains of Washington.  It’s not a work of art, that’s for sure.  But some day I hope to get my hands back into some clay and really learn how to do it. 

Speaking of real art!  Last year at the Art Institute of Chicago, they had that wonderful exhibit of Henri Matisse’s works, which featured, Bathers by a River.  Only recently was it discovered how this influential, abstract painting from the early 20th C. had been made by him.  Surprisingly, it evolved over many years of working and re-working it.  Through a kind of X-ray technology they found Matisse had scratched off what he had painted, using washes and acids, and added something new, many times over.  You can see the connection from the beginning of its life to the end, but it transformed into something completely different.  The canvas is huge, and the physical work was demanding for him.  He never admitted that it belonged in the Cubism movement of his time, and though it certainly evokes that, it is truly a style and a work all its own. 

Jesus, in our gospel reading, is creating too: “Jesus spat on the ground and made mud with his saliva and spread it on the man’s eyes.”  What we may miss with this crude gesture, is the more obvious connection to the creation stories of the first two chapters in Genesis.  God also created humans from the earth, as a kind of clay.  Or as the Psalmist and St Paul both noted, later on, God like a potter, forms us carefully and purposefully, as a clay jar, or earthen vessel.  So when the blind man’s neighbors ask him “how his eyes were opened,” he says, “the man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, …then I went and washed, and received my sight.”  Jesus is “working a work of God” in the blind man “while it is still day.” 

The symbolism is rich indeed, in this story of the blind man from John’s gospel.  Light and darkness, blind and seeing, beggar and believers, all point beyond themselves to God’s works. 

In the catacombs in Rome, there are believed to be perhaps the earliest pictures of the gospel stories.  And among them is the fresco of Jesus healing the blind man.  The blind man is kneeling down and Jesus is seen spreading mud on his eyes.  It is just one of the many saving stories portrayed there in the catacombs, along with Jonah and the whale, the healing of the woman with the flow of blood, and Jesus’ resurrection among others.  The early Christians thought and believed in a multi-layered way, perceiving the power of God working on many levels throughout the cosmos.  And there, in the darkness of the underground rooms, many believers worshiped “the light of the world.” 

And so, from the early centuries of the church, all our gospel stories from John in this season of Lent – the man born blind, the woman at the well, Nicodemus, and the raising of Lazarus – were used as catechetical stories for baptismal candidates.  The time of instruction in Lent culminated then, at the end of the 40 days, in a host of baptisms at the Great Easter Vigil. 

The man born blind then is a perfect example of our journeying with Christ, and how each of us comes to faith in our lives, as we encounter the Messiah of God, and take up our baptismal callings.  He comes into the world as a beggar, with nothing.  He is like Adam and Eve, creatures who don’t ask to be born into this world, but are formed out of the dust of the ground and enlivened by God’s breath and spirit.  And he is created like the first day of creation in which there was no light, only a watery chaos, until God said “let there be light,” and there was.  We too receive faith as a gift, and we see.  We do not ask for Jesus to come and rescue us or put mud in our eye!  But like the blind man that Jesus healed, we are saved anyway!  Many of us even were baptized as infants, without our permission, washed clean and claimed by God in Christ before we could speak for ourselves.  At first we are beggars and don’t know how it is that we have come to believe, all we know is that we do.  We learn to testify to the light that has come into our lives, however, just as the blind man did.  He had to defend himself, and actually holds his own against the learned ones of his time.  “Here is an astonishing thing,” he says to the religious leaders, “you do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes.”  “If this man [Jesus] were not from God, he could do nothing.” 

By the end, the man who was formerly blind, sees that Jesus is the Messiah, and the Judean leaders have become blind.  The one who used to sit and beg has gone from darkness to light.  Now his worship life is beginning!  He confesses his belief in Jesus and worships him. 

The Greek and Hebrew belief about seeing and blindness were so different compared to what we know about our vision today.  The Greeks believed that there was a fire within, and that the pupil of the eye let the light through, like a lamp burning, which made sight possible.  And for the Hebrews the light of life came from the heart, and the eye could see God’s goodness.  But a man born blind, meant his heart was full of darkness.  “Envy” was called “an evil eye.”  So the disciples assumed that the blind man was a sinner.  They just wondered who was responsible, the man himself, or his parents.  And when Jesus said neither, they must have been confused, taken aback!  “He was born blind,” Jesus said, “so that God’s works might be revealed through him.”  For Jesus, blindness was an opportunity for healing and God’s wholeness to shine through, not another excuse to keep people in their preordained boxes of in and out, touchables and untouchables.  Jesus is teaching us something new all the time – still!  As we continue to worship Christ, we continue to develop our relationship with the incarnate God.  Our eyes are opened, the potter’s wheel is spinning, and we are transformed more and more into the creatures God is making. 

And so we are on the way, from darkness to light, and from blindness to belief.  Everything we see is refocused through the lens of opportunity for the glory of God to shine through.  Jesus is in the world, as the light of the world.  And we are called to testify, having been washed in the pool of our baptisms, to go out in the world and work the works of the one who sends us.  We are master painters like Matisse, working and re-working the canvass of our lives for the sake of the world.  We are novice potters, dipping our hands in the clay and forming earthen vessels, co-creators with God, teaching others how to open their eyes to what God is doing.  Once we were blind, but now we see.  

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    November 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly