Christ Healing A Man Blind From Birth -- Brian Kershisnik
As he walked along, [Jesus] saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work.
As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
John 9:1-5 NRSVue
During Lent this year the gospel lessons for most Sundays are from John. We hear three one-on-one-ish encounters, the nighttime meeting between Jesus and Nicodemus, the healing of a man blind from birth (today), and the exchange between Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well -- his longest conversation with anyone in the gospels. The finale in these stories, next Sunday on Lent 5, is the raising of Lazarus from the dead which includes a much bigger cast of characters.
These are all fascinating, sometimes complex and even mystical moments. They are also lengthy, some might say looonnnnggg. Don't get me wrong, I love them all, and they aren't overly long, because the stories need length to tell them well. But we aren't accustomed to lots of scripture in worship services anymore. As I have noted, few congregations include a psalm now, which we always used to do as a form of responsive praise and prayer. For essentially all of my ministry I took a sort of "one from column A, one from column B" approach with either a Hebrew scripture passage or an epistle reading which were part of the lectionary, or table of lessons. Then a gospel passage, nearly always because we are Gospel people.
Woman at the Well -- Bryn Gillette
These Lenten passages are a unique challenge because of their length, and last week the story of the Woman at the Well was somewhat abbreviated and divided into two portions in our congregation. It was a good approach because there was still lots to chew on.
To make things a little more complicated for next week, the Hebrew scripture passage is the wonderful Valley of the Dry Bones in Ezekiel 37, to accompany the "prequel" resurrection story of the raising of Lazarus.
When I've visited some evangelical congregations through the years I've been surprised at how little scripture there is even though they claim to be "bible-believing." Long messages to be sure, but not a lot of bible. I hope we're not going to travel too far down that road.
There is an irony that the word Lent means "lengthen" at a time when we are inclined to shorten in order to hold people's attention. What do we do in a time when many of us are afflicted with "monkey mind" when it comes to just about anything? Perhaps a new parable -- Jesus heals the terminally distracted.
The Raising of Lazarus -- John Reilly
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