Witnessing to the One Who is Light

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March 26, 2017

The Fourth Sunday in Lent


There is a lot to consider in this morning's Gospel reading – the second Sunday running we've had a big chunk of John's Gospel to chew over!

But at its heart, this story of the healing of the man born blind is a series of interactions between those who are experiencing the grace of God in their lives – the blind man and his parents – and a regressive religious authority which does not welcome it.

So, it begins with the religious assumptions of the disciples, common at the time, that if you had a disability it was because God had inflicted it on you as punishment for something you or your parents had done.

And then once he is given his sight by Jesus, the religious leaders, the Pharisees, cannot recognise the miracle as an act of God because healing on the Sabbath violates their restrictive religious codes. We are told that they instil fear in the blind man's parents because they had the power to eject people from the community of faith. And the response of the man himself is one of the few passages in the Bible that I think might genuinely be an expression sarcasm: "Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes." No wonder they react curtly: "You were born entirely in sin, don't try and teach us!"

The passage plays with the theme of light – light that illuminates but which can also blind people. "I came into this world for judgement so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind." And Jesus concludes by saying directly to the Pharisees that their sin is precisely in the fact that they declare themselves able to see. "Now that you say, 'We see,' your sin remains." It is their claim to full knowledge of God's ways and God's will that blinds them to the real truths of God.

So, we have two forms of religion in this passage. A religion of light and transformation, that brings new sight and new insight, a religion of freedom and forgiveness. And then there is a religion of power asserted through fear, a religion of judgement that labels people undeserving and denies them new life through its own rigid dogma and claims to absolute knowledge.

You don't need me to tell you that these two kinds of religion are still very present in the world today! And the dichotomy is not just between Christianity and Judaism as many have interpreted John's Gospel to imply. Everyone in this story is Jewish, including Jesus, reminding us that these two types of religion are manifest in their different forms in all the world religions.

And indeed, my concern is that as I look around the world today, the dogmatic form of religion seems to be almost uniformly on the increase. Whether it's Hindu Nationalism emanating from the Indian subcontinent, Jewish extremism coming from West Bank settlements, the Christian extremism of Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army, or the Salafist Muslim Jihadism of which we are all aware, religious fundamentalism seems to be on the rise.

In January of this year I was visiting Israel and Palestine with a group of LSE students from different faiths – Muslims, Christians, Jews and non-religious – and we encountered a beautiful illustration of the first kind of religion. We met Shaul and Antwan, an Israeli settler and a Palestinian Christian who are part of an extraordinary grassroots project to build dialogue and understanding between two groups that politicians are singularly failing to bring together. And one of the things that impressed and amazed me about Shaul and Antwan is that they did what politicians rarely do in the Middle East: they talked about God.

Across their religious and cultural divides, they had found a shared belief in a God who has the capacity to bring light to the conflict under which they live, a God who made the land of Israel a homeland for the Jewish people, but who has shown us through history that it has become a home for people of other faiths too. They have come to see how God cannot just heal but can bring new sight and new insight to God's children.

But something that has stuck in my mind from that encounter were the haunting words of Antwan that the second kind of religion is on the increase, particularly among the younger generation. "We are told to have hope in the young," he said, "but here I see no hope in young people. They are all turning away from one another: Muslim, Christian and Jew."

So, I happen to believe that few things are more important than the work we do at the LSE with students from all the world faith traditions, drawn from 150 countries, to develop the right kinds of religious leadership and the right kind of interreligious relationships in this new generation. And as a Christian doing this work I have learnt two things:

First, we have to resist the simplicity of the religious tribes' narrative. Many people will tell us that the two largest religions of the world – Christianity and Islam – are on an inevitable collision course, a clash of civilisations. And that is often caricatured in terms that cast Islam as harsh and controlling whereas Christianity is generous and loving. But the Gospel tells us that the fault lines of these two forms of religion run across human temperaments and not simply across belief systems. The Pharisees are there to tell us what we can be like. And none of us need to look far to see forms of Christianity that label people as undeserving, that restrict human freedom with controlling regulation.

And so, second I have learnt that to believe in Jesus Christ as the light of the world is a calling in which we can have confidence. But crucially it is not to live as if you have all the answers, to be one of those who, like the Pharisees says, "We see". Our faith is in things unseen. And our calling is not to assert dogma but to do what the letter to the Ephesians says and "live as children of light." We are called, not to control others with religious knowledge and systems, but to serve others with the humility of Christ. And it is more than anything else in that witness of love and service that I have seen hearts converted from a religion of judgement and fear to a religion of compassion and freedom.

So, in a world where religious certainty is leading to bloodshed and war, let us seek true faith. In a world where stark lines are being drawn between religious tribes, between the deserving and the undeserving, let us seek generosity and healing. And in a world that feels as if it is tilting towards darkness, let us commit ourselves afresh to witnessing in love and service to the one who is light.

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