A sermon by Fr. Davenport ©
Church of the Ascension and S. Agnes, Washington, D.C.
10 March 2002
1 Samuel, 16:1-13
Ephesians, 5:1-14
John, 9:1-13,28-38
+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
The balmy weather we had at the end of last week is depressing. Pretty soon, we'll be contending with much more brilliant sunshine and vernal air, beckoning us to spend more time outside. Good weather becomes oppressive because we feel guilty about lying around the house on Sunday afternoons reading the paper and watching old movies. A few Sundays ago, on an exquisitely gray, damp, and cool day, I caught the tail end of To Kill a Mockingbird. Excellent Gregory Peck is Atticus Finch, a lawyer in the Jim Crow South, and he defends Tom Robinson, a black man, wrongly accused of assaulting and raping Mayella Ewell, a white woman. During the trial, Atticus convinces us that Mayella had tried to seduce Tom, who showed her much kindness and felt sorry for her, but still declined her advances, and that Mayella's father, Bob Ewell, had beat her for the effrontery of making a sexual advance toward a black man. Atticus, of course, loses the case, and Tom is sent to jail, and even worse, Tom supposedly tried to escape and is killed. Atticus visits Tom's family to deliver the bad news, and as he leaves the evil Bob Ewell accosts him and spits in his face. With the spit running down his cheek, there's a long moment when you think that the frustration and injustice and horror and humiliation will finally be too much for Atticus and that he might throw a punch. Atticus steps forward and then pulls out his handkerchief, wipes the spit from his face, and gets into his car. In these days of great violence in Afghanistan and the Middle East, it was a good reminder that before we resort to force and violence we have to distinguish between insult and danger. We can all pray that we too might have Atticus' composure and self-control and nobility.
When I read today's gospel the image of spittle running down Gregory Peck's face came back to me. Few things are so disrespectful and demeaning as spitting on someone. So what is this about Jesus rubbing his spittle on someone? Even if it were not insulting, it still seems - at the very least - vile and unhygienic to us. In the ancient world, however,
spittle, and especially the spittle of some distinguished person, was [widely] believed to possess certain curative qualities. . . . Pliny, the famous Roman collector of what was then called scientific information, has a whole chapter on the use of spittle. He says that it is a sovereign preservative against the poison of serpents; a protection against epilepsy; that lichens and leprous spots can be cured by the application of fasting spittle; that ophthalmia [a severe inflammation of the eyeball] can be cured by anointing the eyes every morning with fasting spittle. (1)
Our Lord used spittle to heal the blind man because our Lord embraces human customs, and he uses the things we know to heal us. It is another way that Jesus shows us that matter and things are good and may be used for good purposes. Yet even more, we ought to notice the symbolism of making clay. It reminds us of the story of God creating man: "a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground - then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being." (Gen 2:6-7) In rubbing clay made from his spittle on the blind man's eyes, Jesus is remaking him, renewing him.
Then our Lord tells the blind man to go and to wash in the pool of Siloam. In the late 8th century before Christ, King Hezekiah had built the pool of Siloam to provide water for Jerusalem during times of siege. The only water supply for Jerusalem, the spring of Gihon, was outside its walls. So Hezekiah carved a 600 yard tunnel through stone to bring water into the city. The spring water went through this conduit into the city to the pool of Siloam. S. John tells us that Siloam means 'sent;' it is called 'sent' because the water was sent into the city. John makes sure that we know the meaning of 'Siloam' because it is a way to associate the blind man's cleansing with Jesus. John frequently tells us that Jesus has been sent by the Father; in John's gospel, Jesus is the one sent. Also in John's gospel, Jesus had declared himself to be the source of life-giving water: "If anyone thirst, let him come to me and drink." (Jn 7:37) For John, the water of the pool of Siloam represents Jesus. So the blind man is washing himself in our Lord. It is baptism. The blind man washed in the pool of Siloam and received sight. He is remade; he is part of renewed creation.
The blind man represents humanity without Christ. His physical blindness represents humanity's spiritual blindness before the light came into the world and before baptism could wash away sin. According to S. Augustine, "The blind man stands for the human race ... if the blindness is infidelity, then the illumination is faith." (2) The early Christians called baptism 'enlightenment.' During the course of chapter nine of John, the blind man's faith grows; he is enlightened; he gradually sees the truth. At the beginning of the chapter, the blind man first refers to Jesus as a 'man;' he assumes that Jesus is a mere man. But then he is healed by Jesus, and he washes in Siloam. So later when the Pharisees interrogate him, he refers to Jesus as a 'prophet.' Then at the end of the chapter he confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, "Lord, I believe," and he worships him. Baptism begins his growth in faith. He gradually sees who Jesus is.
Part of the nurturing of the faith comes through suffering and hardship. For the middle section of the story - left out of today's gospel - tells of the hostility the blind man encountered once he had been healed. The Pharisees interrogated the blind man and resorted to insult, abuse, and threat to try to change his mind. It's the tactics of a Jim Crow court. Eventually, the Pharisees threw him out of the synagogue - they ex-communicate him. S. John Chrysostom said of the story, "'The Jews cast him out of the Temple; but the Lord of the Temple found him.' [The point is that] if any man's Christian witness separates him from his fellow-men, it brings him nearer to Jesus Christ. Jesus is always true to the man who is true to him." (3) By being loyal and by nobly withstanding the trials of life, the blind man grows in faith; his relationship with Christ deepens. The great irony is that those who claim to see are blind, and the blind see.
At the beginning of the gospel, the disciples asked the Lord if the man's blindness was due to his sin or his parents. Many of the Jews considered temporal suffering, like blindness, to be the result of sin. Many ancients assumed that if someone was suffering, God was allowing it as a punishment for sin. We might think that the Cross forever undermined that teaching. Alas, it has not. Indeed, it is alive and healthy even in the Church, the Church which proclaims that he who was innocent, pure, perfect suffered mightily. But in our country, failure and suffering have routinely been assumed to be the punishment for moral unworthiness. One of the most popular preachers in the 19th century, Henry Ward Beecher, told his congregation: "Looking comprehensively through city and town and village and country, the general truth will stand, that no man in this land suffers from poverty unless it be more than his fault - unless it be his sin." (4) Many, if not most Americans, still naively believe that virtue produces material success and rewards, that rectitude breeds respect. Probably the best selling book over the last year or so is The Prayer of Jabez, which teaches that everyone can have worldly success if they pray to God the right way. It harmonizes perfectly with Horatio Alger, Norman Vincent Peale, and countless others who essentially teach that our worldly fate reveals the quality of souls and of our relationship with God. They claim to see, but they are as blind as those who cast the blind man out of the synagogue.
Tom Robinson was noble, and he was killed. Atticus Finch was noble, and he was humiliated and ostracized. In these men we see that our worldly fate has nothing to do with the state of our souls. The gospel proclaims that sorrow and failure and suffering can show us God's power and grace. And that's why the Church gives us Lent, this small taste of the cross. Lent should impress upon us that suffering and hardships are an opportunity to grow in Christ and also to testify to him. Our Lenten disciplines remind us that all power and glory is God's. Our acts of self-denial, our fasting and our efforts to give more generously of ourselves, these strengthen our relationship to God. Concentrating on prayer and doing good works raise our minds from worldly things. So on this Refreshment Sunday, let us renew our resolve to keep Lent and to discipline ourselves so that we, too, might see Christ.
+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
1. William Barclay, The Gospel of John, Vol. 2., Revised Edition, Westminster (1975), pp. 41-42.
2. Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John, p. 381.
3. Barclay, p. 49.
4. Paul Johnson, A History of Christianity, Atheneum (1976), p. 455.
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