Ignoring the facts until it is too late.
Sound familiar?
That is the definition of Sin in the Gospel according to John.
It isn’t really a moral category for John. It is about seeing Jesus and believing, or not, until time runs out.
Lent is about Sin. Or rather being freed from Sin.
And in Lent we always spend our time with John.
And Sin in John is about belief.
The Church for centuries during this season has listened to John’s lengthy vignettes of encountering Jesus.
Somebody meets Jesus, something happens, they either believe or not. Over and over.
And for John there is that tremendous irony that it is the least expected who believe, and the most accomplished who do not.
Like last week, when Jesus says that salvation comes from the Jews, but it is a marginal woman and Samaritan who has faith in that salvation, who meets Jesus and believes. Salvation comes from one place, but faith is found somewhere else.
Today is just as ironic. Even a blind man can see and believe, but everyone else who supposedly sees, they are the blind, they are the sinners.
And the blind man who now sees is cast out for pointing out that very specific cutting irony.
And Jesus finds him cast aside and life starts over.
In John’s Gospel, if we pay attention to the underlying currents that run through all these vignettes of encounter, we see that the community of belief that John comes from was a community of the marginal, and the unlikely who believed in Jesus, and who were cast out by the powerful who rejected Jesus.
The accomplished and the authoritative probably rejected Jesus because of the company that he kept, because of the agitation and inconvenience of those who believed, they were not proper company.
The crippled, the women, the foreigners all those who were supposed to stay out the way had for some reason gotten in the way, it had something to do with this Jesus character, so they were cast out, along with their Jesus.
And that is where Jesus finds them.
They lost their communities, their homes, their fellowship. And Jesus creates their fellowship again from the dust of creation, like the spit and mud that recreated the blindman’s sight. They start over. Belief cast them out and belief remade them.
Community is a precious gift, and when it is disrupted, we lose our moorings, our direction. We are disoriented.
In the weeks and months ahead, our community will continue to be disrupted.
This is a long-haul project we are on. The wilderness of pandemic is a long desert to cross.
We can’t do it alone.
It will take tremendous mental and spiritual endurance for our country to make this work and to start over.
It will take a community of belief that honors, and welcomes all who are on the margins.
It will take the life force of God, the living waters, the breath and word of Jesus creating community anew.
Believing in Jesus. Seeing and responding. It always means believing with those who the powerful and accomplished would rather forget, denigrate and scapegoat.
May we all see and believe.
May we find all who are cast aside and stand with Jesus.