Playing with Light

Lent 4A, 3/30/14
John 9:1-41

Oh Lord, open my lips, that my mouth might declare your praise. Amen.

So, here’s something you might not know about me. I really like to take photographs.

Maybe you’ve already seen me with my camera around the church, taking pictures that I can share on our church’s Facebook page – but my love of photography started way before Facebook was invented.

Back in the days when cameras used film to record images, I took a couple of photography classes.        

I learned all about how the shutter would open and let in a fraction of a second worth of light, which would reflect off the mirrors inside the camera and then imprint an image on the film.

I learned how to develop the film, how to take this thin strip of plastic covered in a gelatin emulsion and turn it into a negative image of the photos I had taken.

And then I learned how to use the chemicals and equipment in the darkroom to develop the negatives into prints. The processed film would go on the enlarger and light would shine through the negative onto the photographic paper just long enough for an image to appear.

I used to dream about having a darkroom in my house, so I could develop all my own photographs.

Somehow, fifteen years later, that didn’t quite make the cut when my husband and I bought a new home last summer.

Still, I love the skill and artistry that goes into good photography.

Photography is really little more than playing with light.

Taking a photograph is the miraculous action of capturing light, and saving an image for others to see just where the light was hitting at a particular time and place in history.

In John, chapter 8, verse 12, Jesus says, I am the light of the world.

And then, in John chapter 9, Jesus proceeds to bring light to a man who has never seen it before.

Jesus astonishes an entire community by giving sight to a man who has been blind from birth. And then, Jesus exits the scene for his longest absence in the entire Gospel of John – he slips away for 26 verses while    others    talk    about him and try to figure out what this healing means and what kind of person Jesus could be. They are alternately impressed by the miracle, doubtful of it’s authenticity, and confused that a man of faith would do work on the Sabbath.

As the conversations progress, the man who had received sight goes from describing his healer as the man called Jesus (v11) to a prophet (v17) to a man from God (v33) to the Son of Man and Lord (v38).

With each conversation or confrontation regarding his healing the man who was born blind gains a deeper understanding of just who Jesus really is.

Maybe faith is like photography.

Faith is kind of like capturing just a little bit of the divine light and putting it into a format that can be shared with others, so they can experience it too.

Maybe understanding Jesus is like changing the settings on a camera to let a little more light in, or to focus more clearly on the subject of the photograph.

Imagine taking a family photograph… and in the first one everyone’s out of focus. Then the flash doesn’t go off.    Then someone’s not looking at the camera, or two people are blinking.    Then, finally, after several adjustments, you get the shot that really brings across the best in everyone.

That kind of incremental clarity is what the man who was born blind experiences in today’s Gospel reading.

On a side note, did you realize that this man is never named? He’s like the Samaritan woman – an unimportant person in society, a beggar, someone with no social standing. And yet, Jesus still comes to him. Jesus meets him where he is, and heals the thing that is holding him back from being a fully participating member of society.

It reminds me of some of those fabulous photographs from the Great Depression – or even from the Civil War.

The photographs that really got across the depth of the events of the day were not the pictures of the important people. There are bunches of pictures of Roosevelt and Lincoln, but those pictures don’t tell the story.

It’s the picture of the young unnamed soldier on the battlefield, or the mother holding her children in rags, or the crowds of people standing in breadlines a block long – those are the photos that really get across the reality of the events. Those are the ones that won prizes and those are the ones we recognize now, decades later. They tell the story of our history as a nation.

We see this old familiar photo,

and we get a glimpse of the trials

of the Depression.

And then we see these others,

and our understanding of it grows.

          

The images tell the story.

Just like in the Gospel

Today Jesus heals a nameless man who was born blind.

And in that snapshot of an action, he gives us an image that tells the story of our faith.

With each conversation that follows, another image is added to the album of faith.

Little by little, the pieces start to assemble and the bigger picture starts to develop. The light of Christ shines through in a few more places, with a few more people, and the story begins to emerge, with the way being lit by Jesus.

Like these famous photos from the Depression, one image alone can’t tell the entire story of faith, but by absorbing many images, over the course of time, a clearer picture of a particular event becomes visible.

Eventually we can see more than what the photos show – we can imagine the scenes with us in them, we can feel the hunger or the dust or the cold that the images show.

Of course, growing in faith isn’t always a simple matter, just like capturing a scene in a photo to share with others isn’t always easy.

Here’s a photography “oops” that has probably happened to most of us.

You’re trying to take a picture of a beautiful scene – maybe you’re outdoors in the woods or at the Arboretum or at the botanical gardens – and everything just looks so beautiful that you try to get a picture of the whole thing.

But there’s a tree branch or something in the foreground, so the camera focuses on that, and the flash goes off, and all you’ve got for your picture is an overexposed tree branch in front of a darkish looking background.

It’s an instance of literally not being able to see the forest for the tree.

That happens with our faith all the time.

         We try to look at the big picture and see only the little details in front of us.

We want other people to know how amazing our faith is, but we describe the little things like Harvest Dinner or Easter breakfast, and forget the big things like grace and forgiveness.

We want our worship to glorify God, but we get stuck worrying about whether the Communion elements are set up correctly and whether the lector pronounces all the complicated Bible names correctly.

We want our church, this community of God, to grow, but we get stuck on the details of a word or two in the constitution rather than focusing on our mission as a community of God’s children in this world.

We want new people to join our faith community and see how active God is among us, but when they come, we focus so much on the way things have always been done, we fail to notice God speaking to us through them.

The big picture – the beautiful part of the scene – the reason we even wanted to pull out our cameras in the first place – is blacked out when we focus on the details and fail to see the work of God all around us. We only let Christ’s light shine on certain aspects of our life as individuals and as a community, and we ignore those other places.

But that’s not the example that’s set for us today.

The man who was born blind continues to seek Jesus. His faith evolves over the course of this story. He doesn’t let a single moment in time define his faith forever after.

He doesn’t fixate on a time like “when the church was founded” or “when I was in confirmation” or “when I became a member” or “for the past 20 years.”

He continues to reflect on Jesus throughout the narrative. His understanding of this healer changes from just some strange man to his own Lord and Savior.

The man wouldn’t ever get to that point if he didn’t keep talking about Jesus, risking ridicule from his neighbors. If all the man had been doing was trying to keep the peace and leave everyone’s feathers unruffled, he would never have been kicked out of town – and he would never have known Jesus as Lord.

But experiencing Jesus as Lord was the best thing that ever happened to this guy. And it’s the best thing that could ever happen to us. In order to get to that point, we can follow the example of the man born blind, and continue to seek Jesus, letting his light seep into all the corners of our lives.

Here’s the thing, folks. Jesus wants to change our lives, just like the life of the blind man was changed. Jesus wants us to experience life in a fuller, richer way than we could ever imagine.

But if we keep our cameras turned off and the lens cap on, the light of Jesus can never shine into our lives.

Christian faith is like opening a camera shutter to Jesus and letting his light shine through onto the film of our hearts and minds. And when we develop that picture of faith, we have captured just a little bit of who Jesus is, and we can share that image with others.

You get the analogy, right?

Jesus is the light of the world.

Jesus brings that light into places where it has never before been seen.

And when we open ourselves to Jesus’ presence, it’s like opening the shutter on a camera – we allow Jesus in to our lives, and his presence with us makes a difference.

Like the man who was born blind, Jesus comes into our lives and changes us. And the more we learn about Jesus, and the more we let Jesus in, the brighter our lives of faith will be. 

Thanks be to God. Amen.