Psalm 23
Ephesians 5:8-14
John 9:1-41
“One thing...I know, that though I was blind now I see”. (John 9:25) The images of light and darkness, blindness and sight pervade the readings and the Gospel this morning, all seeming to suggest that sight is no guarantee of vision, and that the old adage holds true: “there are none so blind as those who will not see”. Jesus, speaking to the newly-sighted man, or to the crowd more generally (we are not sure), proclaims: “I came into the world…so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.” (John 9:39) For all who hear his voice, both then and now, his words beg the questions: “Is there more to sight than simply seeing? Could it just be that I am most blind, when I think I see, when I am convinced of my own sight? What must I stop looking at to really see what’s ahead of me.”
Our sight, like all our senses, is conditioned by our environment, by what we already know and by what we expect to see. Equally, our focus on some things can easily make us blind to others; our conditioning, presuppositions and expectations can blind us not only to possibility, but to what is actually and directly in front of us. This is true of outward sight certainly, but perhaps even more true of inward sight – spiritual, emotional, psychological sight. We often have to be reminded of a wider vision and that “the LORD does not see as mortals see” (1 Samuel 16:7) Moreover, we have to continually make ourselves cognizant about that which conditions and limits our sight. Jesse’s sight is conditioned by social understanding of kingship, saying to the prophet: “There remains yet my youngest [son], but he is keeping the sheep”, (1 Samuel 16:11) almost as to say, “Surely, he could not be king”. The sight of the Pharisees in John’s gospel is conditioned by the inherited religious tradition: “This man is not from God, for he does not observe the Sabbath.” (John 9:11); the sight of the healed man’s parents, by the inculcated fear of the authorities: “We do not know how it is that now he sees, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him he is of age. He will speak for himself.” (John 9:21) We have all inherited conditioning which keeps us blind, limited in one way or another.
James Henry Leigh Hunt was born in 1784 and lived through some of the most crucial years of the Industrial Revolution, that period of enormous change in Western Europe. It was a time not only of scientific and technological advancement, but also of a particular kind of self-satisfied certainty. The promises of the Enlightenment and its attendant rationalism seemed in the process of being fulfilled, as more efficient factories and machinery were replacing age-old systems of labour and production. At the same time, the British Empire was expanding throughout the globe; in part, to meet the increasing need for raw goods to supply the factories of the “mother country”. Wherever British officials and soldiers went, so did the Church of England in the form of missionary societies and individuals whose purpose was to convert to Christianity the “heathens” encountered. All this was a part of the conditioning Hunt and his contemporaries would have inherited: a trust in rationalism and industry, as well an exclusivist theology which understood Christ as the only avenue to God, and Christians the only faithful for whom God seemed to care.
This was the inherited blindness which they began to question, and their response gained its own name and became its own movement – the Romantic movement. The Romantics questioned the absolute trust in science and rationalism, and wondered about the place of beauty and emotions. They questioned also the privatised sense of the divine, the nationalistic theology which saw God as an Englishman and on the side of the strongest. So in his poem Abou Ben Adhem Hunt encourages his contemporaries to open their eyes to possibilities beyond their inherited cultural conditioning. He dares to ask whether loving one’s fellow men and women might not be the litmus test of real friendship with “the Lord”, and if it is realistic to continue claiming God as the personal possession of the British, of western civilisation or even of Christianity? As Hunt floods the poem’s end with “a great wakening light” when the angel makes his return, he grants to his readers a new vision and a new insight in which the love and blessing of God is conferred on the unexpected one, on the heathen Abou Ben Adhem. With that “great wakening light”, Hunt hoped to convey to his readers new sight, a vision larger than that of their conditioning; he tried to open their eyes from their blindness, from the narrowness. Of course, this new sight meant leaving behind all kinds of suppositions and certainties about themselves, their place in the world and their understanding of God; all a frightening prospect at best.
From our place in time and history, and as Episcopalians who have a rather generous view of God’s salvation, it may be difficult to appreciate how revolutionary – even shocking – were the ideas presented in Hunt’s poem. However, it should leave us asking where are our own limitations, our blindness; what is our own inherited conditioning by which we continue to allow ourselves to be blind? While we say that we live in the light of Christ, in so many ways – often unconscious ways – we continue to join ourselves to those things that blind us and keep us in the dark. Lent should be a time when we specifically examine are conditioning, our blindness. It should be a time when we specifically pray that “God’s work might be revealed in” us, and that we might have our vision clear. Lent is that time to examine how we might lay aside unfruitful, damaging works and perspectives which serve only to reinforce our limiting conditioning, and to be brave by opening the eyes of our hearts and minds and dare to live as “children of light”; by trying “to find what is pleasing to God” no matter what we must leave behind to see it.
The blind man healed by Jesus saw his world for the first time, and yet his new-found sight cost him his religious and familial affiliations. Freeing our vision from social conditioning always costs us something, and that is the reason so many of us are loathe to do it. It may cost us our certainty or it may cost us our privileged position. It may cost us our sense of self and sense of order. It cost Hunt and his fellow Romantics their reputation, as “polite” society labelled them irrational, libertines and godless, all because they had dared to open their eyes to new possibilities and conceive a picture of reality beyond that which they had inherited. We all inherit a conditioned world-view, and it is always difficult when true light is shined up on it, exposing its limitations and short-sightedness. But in the end all that we can do with any integrity is continually to open our eyes to the light and in that light to work the works of God and to trust; trust the goodness and kindness of the Light of the World through whom everything that is “exposed…becomes visible”, through whom God’s glory is revealed and through whom each of us are called out from being darkness to living light.
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