Fourth Sunday of Lent

 Lectionary: 31

His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"

....Jesus said to them, "If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you are saying, 'We see,' so your sin remains.

Today's gospel begins with a question about sin, and ends with an unexpected answer. 

Close to the heart of our religion is the doctrine of sin. I'm told that not every religion teaches about sin and guilt. Millions of people know their gods with neither intense love and self-sacrificing loyalty nor betrayal, sin, and guilt. These concepts belong to the Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. 

It may be possible for a Christian, in their mind, to separate the pluses love and loyalty from the negatives betrayal, sin, and guilt. It would be a "spirituality without consequences" or "religion for airheads;" something like romance novels for the lonely. But anyone who reads the scriptures or thinks seriously on the matter would dismiss such nonsense. A love, whether human or divine, which does not require sacrifice and intense loyalty is not worthy of the name.  

So long as we believe in a God who has chosen us and loved us, who has set us apart from all other nations to be a people peculiarly his own, we consider our attitudes, thoughts, words, and deeds, and their consequences. We live in the light of God's love and cannot refuse the blessing. 

Jesus's opponents are profoundly aware of evil in the world. They worry about the sins and guilt of others, but they ignore their own. They're eager to identify, sort, rank, and document the sins of others but are not so willing to inventory their own. 

But, in their defense, their understanding of sin is more realistic than ours. Sin, in the scriptures, is something wrong. It might be a wrongful word or deed or attitude; but it might also be an unacceptable condition, a situation that must be corrected. Someone is responsible for that situation and someone must correct it. 

I'm told that US Marines in basic training are punished severely if someone in the unit screws up. These young men and women have to learn that they're responsible to and for one another. Any mistake, oversight, or miscalculation in combat may cost many lives. There is no room for error and no patience with excuses. 

If the Lord of History can use an occupying army like Rome to punish his Chosen People, the Pharisees reasoned, then we should be very careful. With a similar belief, the first born child of a dysfunctional family may try to discipline younger siblings. However, the elder's punishment may be more severe and less reasonable than their abusive parents.  

Given the legitimate teaching authority of the Pharisees at that time, and the self-righteousness of many in the party, Jesus could only oppose them. Despite their good intentions, they were not speaking for God. In fact, as today's gospel points out, they were blind to their own sins. They were straining at gnats to swallow a camel.

Were all the Pharisees like that? We should not suppose so. The party is credited with the Jewish survival when Rome destroyed Jerusalem in 70AD. When the Essenes, Sadducees, and Herodians disappeared, the Pharisees survived to carry the faith of the Patriarchs to future generations. As we're seeing in today's Catholicism, a conservative religion survives while its liberal counterpart, too eager to make accommodations to the passing scene, perishes. 

Given that the Pharisees were law-abiding, decent citizens, we should have some sympathy for them. Their sins were ours. Unwilling to rock a sinking boat, many respected Jesus's teaching authority but could not abide the messianic claims of his disciples. Nor would they accept the Church's worship of him as the Only-Begotten Son of God. 

Can anyone see their own blindness? Can eyeball see itself? A prophet may point it out. A docile spirit may be willing to hear it. A friend or loved one, a good counselor or respected pastor might sit us down and say what everyone knows, if we're willing to hear.  

During Lent, we should pray for that docile spirit. No one can comprehend the full range of their sins, its depth, height, and breadth. That's because no one can conceive the depth, height, and breadth of God's love. We have seen it in Christ Crucified, but our gaze is sadly distracted.