• I Samuel 16: 1-13

Certain themes are under continuous re-telling and re-interpretation in the Hebrew scriptures.  In what is now called I Samuel, the editor re-tells the founding actions of God, compiling varying accounts with innovative variations.  In this episode, a recurring theme reappears: that God acts not where or through whom or how conventional ‘wisdom’ might dictate.  “…[F]or God does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”  A shepherd, David, is chosen and anointed for God’s work.  He is not the first nor the obvious choice; the way his chosen status is revealed defies conventional expectations.  God’s favor will be seen throughout the remainder of David’s story.

• Psalm 23

Psalm 23 testifies to protection, safety, abundance, consolation and personal intimacy with the One who provides all.  The metaphor of a shepherd and the intimate and complete care for the flock and each individual sheep conveys these reassuring assertions convincingly.

• Ephesians 5: 8-14

The use of light/darkness motif was common in late Jewish writing and other near-by religions and is used here in Ephesians, too.

• John 9: 1-41

John is addressing a contemporary issue: the relationship between Jewish tradition and new claims made by the followers of Jesus, the Christ.  He tells a story of a blind man whom Jesus heals.  Against traditional  teachings and customs and going against his parents, the healed man pleads ignorance (indifference) to the objections they raise and testifies that he personally knows just one thing for certain: he was blind all his life and now he sees.  A ritual washing by the incumbent religious authorities is a part of his healing, too.  Once again, Jesus ignores the urgent questions, in this episode–how can a “sinner” be healed; and how can Jesus be responsible for this act which only God could do?– and instead he becomes the litmus test that reveals where God is actually at work.

(Any conscientious preacher today cannot be unaware of the tragic interpretation of this and many other texts in John’s gospel, as well as other  Second Testament texts, to justify anti-Semitism throughout the history of the Church.  (Raymond Brown notes that Augustine, John Chrysostom, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, among many others, “made statements about the Christian duty to hate or punish the Jews because they killed the Lord.” [A Crucified Christ in Holy Week, p. 15])

Paul Ricoeur occasionally applied his complex,  fruitful  ideas about human knowledge and language to the specific task of interpreting biblical texts.  He argued for retrieving the “profound” or “existential” experience which inspired the text in the first place.  Each interpreter should seek the universal human experience that inspired the text to be written, not narrow polemical, moral or theological concepts which have accrued over time.  Taking Ricoeur’s approach to this passage from John, we might ask: what is the concrete, universal human experience which I can recognize, even in my own experience, to which this story is testifying?  One response to this question– in the spirit of Ricoeur’s approach– might be to ask: What extant religious expectations are so comfortable, so familiar for me that they might make me “blind” to the unexpected ways God is at work today?  Would I not recognize who is doing God’s work  because he or she might be functioning outside conventional religious expectations?  (As this episode  from John illustrates, Jesus was not recognized as God’s anointed.)  What unlikely person or persons has God anointed?  How can such persons be identified?  Is it–like Jesus– by the simple, irrefutable result of some form of healing once thought to be very unlikely or even impossible?   Am I open to God doing unexpected/impossible things in unexpected ways through unexpected people?  How do I recognize God at work?  Am I prepared to participate in  it?  Is the actual result more important than the means through which God’s work is accomplished?  Am I “blind” to God at work in the world today?

The Seventeenth century Welsh poet, Henry Vaughn, wrote of this extended sense of blindness and a greater healing in the final verses of his poem titled “Easter-day:”

    Arise, arise

And with his healing bloud [blood] anoint thine Eys,

    The inward Eys, his bloud will cure thy mind

    Whose spittle only could restore the blind.

Just as the Lord chose the least likely, a shepherd,  to become a great king of Israel, because God “does not see as mortals see,” so how are we “blind” to where and how and through whom God is acting now?  This is the “blindness” which for which we request “insight.”  This is the greater healing we know we ought to seek.