Monday, April 11: Susan Huenefeld

Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight. - John 9:1-17

Many of the stories in the Gospels are really the same ideas, presented to us in a slightly different way so we can eventually understand. This story of Jesus healing a blind man, and the Pharisees wanting to know how he did it, is one of these variations on the theme of how we are to know God.

The Pharisees are the rule follower in each of us. We like the structure and complacency of thinking that if we follow the rules, we will be rewarded. Jesus tells us that there is something even more important than just following the rules, so he flagrantly heals a blind man on the Sabbath.

There is more to this story than merely a physical healing. Throughout the Bible, sight and blindness are used metaphorically to mean knowing God…seeing with the heart. The metaphor is also in the well-loved hymn, “Amazing Grace”: “I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see.”

We don’t need words to access God, but an opening of our hearts and minds, a letting go of the rules and control. It is difficult to find words to explain God or our personal connection to God, so using metaphor is a way to circumvent that. The Pharisees are looking at the physical (outward) instructions of spitting on the ground, making a paste of mud, etc. that healed the man, but are failing to “see” the inward faith and God’s grace that transformed and healed the blind man. If we can follow the path that Jesus provides to each of us, transcending merely following the rules, but letting go and trusting in the Gospel, we can each be that blind man who was healed by Jesus.

— Susan Huenefeld

Sunday, April 3: The Fourth Sunday in Lent

One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see. - John 9:1-41

As a parent, I’ve expended a fair amount of energy anxiously worrying about the health, well-being and “normalcy” of my children. I spent many moments during the nine months I was pregnant with my son worrying about questions like: Will my child be born with a disability or be afflicted with a disease? In this as with many other things in life, I often find myself troubled and anxious over that which is out of my control.

How can God’s glory be revealed in an innocent child’s disability or illness? Jesus rejects the traditional thinking of the time, that illness and disability were the product of sin. Jesus states something that must have been quite surprising to the disciples. And Jesus challenges our own self-absorbed anxiety as well: God’s greatness is revealed in the one who we think is afflicted. God’s greatness is revealed when we think the worst possible thing has happened to us.

I am reminded yet again that if I can step back from trying to control that which is not in my control, then I can glimpse God at work in my life. If I can let go of the anxiety, the fear, and the attempts to control the big and small of my life, God’s works are revealed. Even as God’s glory was revealed in the blind man who was made to see, the scales can fall from my own eyes, that I may see God’s works revealed in the everyday experiences of my life.

—Andrea Sato Borgmann